Now from that day the humble Lenny and the regal Violante became great
friends. With what pride he taught her to distinguish between celery
and weeds--and how proud too was she when she learned that she was
_useful_! There is not a greater pleasure you can give to children,
especially female children, than to make them feel they are already of
value in the world, and serviceable as well as protected. Weeks and
months rolled away, and Lenny still read, not only the books lent him
by the Doctor, but those he bought of Mr Sprott. As for the bombs and
shells against religion which the Tinker carried in his bag, Lenny
was not induced to blow himself up with them. He had been reared from
his cradle in simple love and reverence for the Divine Father, and
the tender Saviour, whose life beyond all records of human goodness,
whose death beyond all epics of mortal heroism, no being whose infancy
has been taught to supplicate the Merciful and adore the Holy, yea,
even though his later life may be entangled amidst the thorns of some
desolate pyrrhonism, can ever hear reviled and scoffed without a shock
to the conscience and a revolt of the heart. As the deer recoils by
instinct from the tiger, as the very look of the scorpion deters you
from handling it, though you never saw a scorpion before, so the very
first line in some ribald profanity on which the Tinker put his black
finger, made Lenny's blood run cold. Safe, too, was the peasant boy
from any temptation in works of a gross and licentious nature, not only
because of the happy ignorance of his rural life, but because of a more
enduring safe-guard--genius! Genius, that, manly, robust, healthful
as it be, is long before it lose its instinctive Dorian modesty;
shame-faced, because so susceptible to glory--genius, that loves indeed
to dream, but on the violet bank, not the dung-hill. Wherefore, even
in the error of the senses, it seeks to escape from the sensual into
worlds of fancy, subtle and refined. But apart from the passions, true
genius is the most practical of all human gifts. Like the Apollo,
whom the Greek worshipped as its type, even Arcady is its exile, not
its home. Soon weary of the dalliance of Tempé, it ascends to its
mission--the Archer of the silver bow, the guide of the car of light.
Speaking more plainly, genius is the enthusiasm for self-improvement;
it ceases or sleeps the moment it desists from seeking some object
which it believes of value, and by that object it insensibly connects
its self-improvement with the positive advance of the world. At
present Lenny's genius had no bias that was not to the Positive and
Useful. It took the direction natural to his sphere, and the wants
therein--viz., to the arts which we call mechanical. He wanted to know
about steam-engines and Artesian wells; and to know about them it was
necessary to know something of mechanics and hydrostatics; so he bought
popular elementary works on those mystic sciences, and set all the
powers of his mind at work on experiments.
Noble and generous spirits are ye, who, with small care for fame, and
little reward from pelf, have opened to the intellects of the poor
the portals of wisdom! I honour and revere ye; only do not think ye
have done all that is needful. Consider, I pray ye, whether so good
a choice from the Tinker's bag would have been made by a boy whom
religion had not scared from the Pestilent, and genius had not led to
the Self-improving. And Lenny did not wholly escape from the mephitic
portions of the motley elements from which his awakening mind drew
its nurture. Think not it was all pure oxygen that the panting lip
drew in. No; there, were still those inflammatory tracts. Political
I do not like to call them, for politics mean the art of government,
and the tracts I speak of assailed all government which mankind has
hitherto recognised. Sad rubbish, perhaps, were such tracts to you, O
sound thinker, in your easy-chair! Or to you, practised statesman, at
your post on the Treasury Bench--to you, calm dignitary of a learned
Church--or to you, my lord judge, who may often have sent from your
bar to the dire Orcus of Norfolk's Isle the ghosts of men whom that
rubbish, falling simultaneously on the bumps of acquisitiveness and
combativeness, hath untimely slain. Sad rubbish to you! But seems
it such rubbish to the poor man, to whom it promises a paradise on
the easy terms of upsetting a world? For ye see, these "Appeals to
Operatives" represent that same world-upsetting as the simplest thing
imaginable--a sort of two-and-two-make-four proposition. The poor have
only got to set their strong hands to the axle, and heave-a-hoy! and
hurrah for the topsey-turvey! Then, just to put a little wholesome
rage into the heave-a-hoy! it is so facile to accompany the eloquence
of "Appeals" with a kind of stir-the-bile-up statistics--"Abuses of
the Aristocracy"--"Jobs of the Priesthood"--"Expenses of Army kept up
for Peers' younger sons"--"Wars contracted for the villanous purpose
of raising the rents of the landowners"--all arithmetically dished up,
and seasoned with tales of every gentleman who has committed a misdeed,
every clergyman who has dishonoured his cloth; as if such instances
were fair specimens of average gentlemen and ministers of religion! All
this, passionately advanced, (and observe, never answered, for that
literature admits no controversialists, and the writer has it all his
own way,) maybe rubbish; but it is out of such rubbish that operatives
build barricades for attack, and legislators prisons for defence.
Our poor friend Lenny drew plenty of this stuff from the Tinker's
bag. He thought it very clever and very eloquent; and he supposed the
statistics were as true as mathematical demonstrations.
A famous knowledge-diffuser is looking over my shoulder, and tells
me, "Increase education, and cheapen good books, and all this rubbish
will disappear!" Sir, I don't believe a word of it. If you printed
Ricardo and Adam Smith at a farthing a volume, I still believe that
they would be as little read by the operatives as they are now-a-days
by a very large proportion of highly cultivated men. I still believe
that, while, the press works, attacks on the rich, and propositions for
heave-a-hoys, will always form a popular portion of the Literature of
Labour. There's Lenny Fairfield reading a treatise on hydraulics, and
constructing a model for a fountain into the bargain; but that does
not prevent his acquiescence in any proposition for getting rid of a
National Debt, which he certainly never agreed to pay, and which he
is told makes sugar and tea so shamefully dear. No. I tell you what
does a little counteract those eloquent incentives to break his own
head against the strong walls of the Social System--it is, that he has
two eyes in that head, which are not always employed in reading. And,
having been told in print that masters are tyrants, parsons hypocrites
or drones in the hive, and landowners vampires and bloodsuckers, he
looks out into the little world around him, and, first, he is compelled
to acknowledge that his master is not a tyrant, (perhaps because he
is a foreigner and a philosopher, and, for what I and Lenny know, a
republican.) But then Parson Dale, though High Church to the marrow,
is neither hypocrite nor drone. He has a very good living, it is
true--much better than he ought to have, according to the "political"
opinions of those tracts; but Lenny is obliged to confess that, if
Parson Dale were a penny the poorer, he would do a pennyworth's less
good; and, comparing one parish with another, such as Roodhall and
Hazeldean, he is dimly aware that there is no greater CIVILISER than
a parson tolerably well off. Then, too, Squire Hazeldean, though as
arrant a Tory as ever stood upon shoe-leather, is certainly not a
vampire nor bloodsucker. He does not feed on the public; a great many
of the public feed upon him: and, therefore, his practical experience
a little staggers and perplexes Lenny Fairfield as to the gospel
accuracy of his theoretical dogmas. Masters, parsons, and landowners!
having, at the risk of all popularity, just given a _coup de patte_
to certain sages extremely the fashion at present, I am not going to
let you off without an admonitory flea in the ear. Don't suppose that
any mere scribbling and typework will suffice to answer the scribbling
and typework set at work to demolish you--_write_ down that rubbish
you can't--_live_ it down you may. If you are rich, like Squire
Hazeldean, do good with your money; if you are poor, like Signor
Riccabocca, do good with your kindness.
See! there is Lenny now receiving his week's wages; and though Lenny
knows that he can get higher wages in the very next parish, his blue
eyes are sparkling with gratitude, not at the chink of the money, but
at the poor exile's friendly talk on things apart from all service;
while Violante is descending the steps from the terrace, charged by her
mother-in-law with a little basket of sago, and suchlike delicacies,
for Mrs Fairfield, who has been ailing the last few days.
Lenny will see the Tinker as he goes home, and he will buy a most
Demosthenean "Appeal"--a tract of tracts, upon the "Propriety of
Strikes," and the Avarice of Masters. But, somehow or other, I think
a few words from Signor Riccabocca, that did not cost the Signor a
farthing, and the sight of his mother's smile at the contents of the
basket, which cost very little, will serve to neutralise the effects of
that "Appeal," much more efficaciously than the best article a Brougham
or a Mill could write on the subject.