"A heated fancy or imagination
May be mistaken for an inspiration."
BYROM.
With such tastes and views as the daughters of Lady Woodstock
possessed, it is not to be supposed that they should be long in town
without forming an acquaintance with the charming preacher, whose
melodious voice and pious similies so regularly delighted and edified
them every Sunday. And let no critic carp at this phraseology. To be
delighted is to be put in good humor; to be put in good humor is to
have the best feelings of our souls called into action. There is to
some ears devotional impulse and excitement to holy feeling in the
wordless eloquence of a well-played voluntary; and why should not a
well-turned period from the lips of a graceful speaker have power to
edify as well as to please? There was not any impropriety in Lady
Woodstock's taking notice of the preacher of whom we are speaking. He
was a middle-aged married man with a numerous family, for whom he was
endeavouring to provide as well as might be. His preferment was but
little, though his popularity was great. He was unfortunate in having
too many patrons. Every body thought that, as Mr. Henderson had a very
fashionable audience, he must of necessity be in the way of preferment;
and so he certainly was, as the one mile stone is on the road to
Windsor a very little way on, and not likely to get any farther.
Now old John Martindale had his crotchets, as our readers may have
perceived; and one of his crotchets was, that with all his natural
obstinacy, if he ever took a fancy to an individual for one quality
which pleased him, he kindly gave that individual credit for every
possible human excellence, and would suffer himself to be led, guided,
or drawn, _ad libitum_, by the said individual. He was pleased
with Lady Woodstock as being a woman of good natural sense, quiet,
unobtrusive, unaffected manners; and he was also pleased with the young
ladies her daughters, because they differed much from the majority of
young ladies of the present age. Thereupon, whatever Lady Woodstock
said was right; and the daughters also had their influence over the
old gentleman. Had any one else attempted to persuade Mr. Martindale
to attend service at Mr. Henderson's chapel, he would have uttered
such an outrageous and violent philippic against popular preachers, as
would have shocked and terrified all lovers of velvet cushions. But the
young ladies ruled their mamma, and Mr. Martindale thought that there
must be some good sense in a preacher whom so intelligent a woman as
Lady Woodstock could tolerate. He therefore was prevailed on to attend
occasionally at this fashionable chapel; and a very nice, warm, snug,
comfortable place it was. Yet, though Mr. Martindale was induced to
give his occasional attendance, he could not help so far yielding to
his natural propensity as to criticise somewhat cynically and severely
the performances and exhibitions of the preacher. When, indeed,
preachers condescend to lose sight of the dignity of their profession,
and to set themselves up as orators and flower-mongers to attract
the gaping gaze of a rabble of Sunday loungers, they must not feel
mortified if their performances undergo the same kind of criticism, and
produce no more than the same effect as the performances of singers,
dancers, fiddlers, conjurors, or any others who exhibit themselves for
the amusement of the public.
By more frequent attendance the old gentleman grew less
fastidious, and he fancied that he could discern, amidst all the
flowery and pretty eloquence of the popular preacher, some symptoms
of strong good sense; and he more than suspected that the style was
assumed for the sake of rendering that tolerable which otherwise
would not be attended to. Pleased with his imagined discovery, he was
desirous of being acquainted with Mr. Henderson, and very readily
acceded to Lady Woodstock's request to meet him at her house. Judging
from his own impression of Mr. Henderson's strength of mind and
fulness of information, he thought it not unlikely that he should
find in him a fit and proper person to induce Signora Rivolta to look
more favorably on the English religion. But the old gentleman was
not aware that it is possible for a man to be a popular preacher,
and to utter very elegant harangues, and even to display in his
composition a sound judgment as well as an elegant taste, but at the
same time to be grievously unfurnished with stores of literature,
and altogether unexercised in the harsher struggles and conflicts of
polemic disputation. This he found to be the case with Mr. Henderson.
The worthy preacher was a man of good sense, graceful and agreeable
manners, fluent in conversation, well acquainted with all the popular
and fashionable topics of conversation, and quite as well satisfied
as Mr. Martindale himself of the folly and vanity of the passions and
pursuits of the day. One of the two thought that he could not do better
than set himself cynically against the world--the other humored its
follies; the one did no good by his cynical humor--the other did a
little by his management and direction of the prevalent follies. Mr.
Henderson, we are inclined to think, judged the wisest of the two. It
is not in the power of a weak hand to stop a headstrong horse; but less
power than is required to stop the animal, may direct its course. Thus
thought the popular preacher. He was as aware as Mr. Martindale that
fashion was folly where folly was fashion. He knew that the springs
and motives of action must be of a mingled nature: he knew that action
was different from contemplation. The latter was pure virtue and
reason; the former mingled with passion and folly. From vanity the
preacher often extorted liberality. From the pride, the superstition,
the caprice, the indulgence of the rich, he was frequently able to
extract clothing and food, and medicine for the poor. Well and wisely
did he think that if all the benevolence that sprung from mixed motives
should immediately cease, and that if nothing were to be done for
the miseries and sufferings of humanity but from the purest and most
intellectual motives, a mass of good would be withdrawn from society,
the absence of which it would painfully and deeply feel. To his view
there was some use in splendid hospitals, even in their splendor; and
he was not wanting in the ingenuity that could manage to indulge those
benevolent ones who delighted in the _chiaro oscuro_ of benevolence,
and who wished to have the credit of unostentatious charity, and to
make their darkness visible: for if unostentatious benevolence is good,
it ought to be known to exist for the sake of example; and as there is
much merit in it, that merit should not go unrewarded. Mr. Henderson
was also of opinion, if elegant people by going to church could benefit
the world by the force of example, it was a pity not to indulge them
with something that might render church agreeable and pleasant. The
public he knew did not analyse the motives or think of the taste of the
church-going gentry; they merely saw and knew the fact, and that fact
had its influence on the public mind. It was something to the world
that the gentry and nobility should go to church; but it was nothing to
the world that the gentry and nobility in going to church should there
find gratification of their taste, and be as much delighted with the
fine-turned periods and graceful utterance of the preacher, as they are
by the elegant evolutions of the opera-dancer. Mr. Henderson in his
younger days had been as wise as any mental hero of one-and-twenty, he
had seen the nothingness and vanity of the world of fashion, and he
had declaimed in his early themes on the dignity of man and the purity
of motives; but growing up, he found that he could not model the world
according to his own pattern, and instead of turning cynic and snarling
at the world by way of teaching it wisdom and sobriety, he became a
popular preacher, and he was very much admired, and he enjoyed the
admiration, but he could see through it, and he had the good sense not
to overvalue himself for it. He had read Mandeville, and he found that
the analysis of motive, however agreeable an employment for the mind,
was but a thankless task, and that people would not believe what they
did not like to believe; and since he had become a father, he found
that the best mode of managing children was by flattery, and that the
encouraging though not always accurate expression of commendation
"There's a good boy!" did much more for the cause of virtue and order
than a more strict and book-like kind of philosophy. And so he managed
those children of a larger growth, to whose ears his lips distilled
the honied eloquence of Sunday exhortation. Such was Mr. Henderson's
character; and whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, whether it
be execrable or admirable, we decide not. It may however be easily
imagined, that with such a character and under such circumstances he
would not be offensive to old John Martindale; and it may be also as
easily imagined, that he would not be very likely to induce a mind
constituted as that of Signora Rivolta to renounce the religion in
which she had been educated. Many, however, were the attempts made by
Mr. Martindale to introduce and continue discussions for that purpose;
and Signora Rivolta could very readily discern the altitude of Mr.
Henderson's mind as regarded controversial discussion. It appeared to
her, that Mr. Henderson was a person more likely to be converted in
Italy than to convert in England.
One good, however, clearly accrued from the frequent and encouraged
visits of Mr. Henderson to the Woodstocks and Martindales; namely, that
the old gentleman was rendered rather less cynical, and more Catholic
in his general notions and views of society. The contrast between the
characters of the popular preacher and the old gentleman was very
great, but the collision was not attended with unpleasant effects,
because both of them had natural good-humor, and because Mr. Henderson
had been long practised in the habit of managing the opulent, and
yielding himself gracefully to their humors and whims.
In process of time, Mr. Martindale liked the preacher so much that
he felt inclined to patronise him, should it be found on inquiry
that patronage was desirable. But the old gentleman thought as many
others had thought, that a man so situated could not stand in need of
patronage, but must be well provided for. He did not think how heedless
the world in general was towards such as ministered to their pleasures,
and that they regarded the metropolitan Sunday lecturer as the minister
to their Sunday pleasures, thinking him, if they thought at all,
amply remunerated for his labors by the honor of their attendance and
approbation.
As hitherto Mr. Martindale did not know whether Mr. Henderson were
married or single, he one day asked him the question; and when that
question was answered in the affirmative, and mention was made of
the number of the reverend gentleman's family, the old gentleman
then proceeded to make further inquiries, such as are allowable
from a man of great wealth who has livings in his gift. The answer
to these inquiries astonished Mr. Martindale. But Mr. Henderson
was not at all astonished at Mr. Martindale's astonishment; for he
had been asked the same questions by many of his opulent hearers,
and had given them the same answers, and heard the same or similar
expressions of astonishment. Hitherto, however, no fruit had resulted
from these flattering and promising inquiries: therefore he did not
build any hopes on the language used by Martindale, which was to his
ear but an echo of what he had heard very, very many times for a
dozen years at least. The impression, however, on Mr. Martindale's
mind from Mr. Henderson's answers to his inquiries, was stronger
than the impression on Mr. Henderson's mind from Mr. Martindale's
expressions and exclamations of astonishment at the ill success which
the eloquent divine had experienced in his profession. It was one of
Mr. Martindale's fancies that he was a great patron of merit, and as
he wished to have an opportunity of indulging this propensity, he
was very willing to see in Mr. Henderson quite as much merit as the
reverend gentleman himself could ever think of laying claim to. As Mr.
Martindale also very highly enjoyed declaiming against the world and
its blindness and insensibility to all that was really deserving, he
was very well pleased that he could quote Mr. Henderson as an instance
of neglected merit. Notwithstanding his own general distaste of popular
and splendid preaching, he could not but admire Mr. Henderson, who,
he said, was far superior to the common run of popular men. There is
in Mr. Henderson, he used to say, a strong foundation of good sense
and knowledge of the world: he is far above the silly vanity of aiming
merely at popular applause; and he never uses figurative or splendid
language except where it is appropriate; and all his metaphors, and
similes, and illustrations, are in such pure and perfect good taste.
Now it fortunately happened just at this critical moment, that a
living in the gift of Mr. Martindale fell vacant. It was the immediate
impulse of the old gentleman's mind to present Mr. Henderson to that
living; and he also thought at the very same moment how very strange
it was that of all that host of people of fashion and opulence who
attended Mr. Henderson's chapel, not one of them should ever have
given him a living. But the wonder a little abated, when a host of
applications and recommendations, backed and seconded by most powerful
considerations, came rushing in upon him. Among the rest was one from
Lord Martindale himself, not so much supplicating for the living, as
reminding Mr. Martindale that as Trimmerstone was now vacant, it might
be desirable to place some one there to keep it till Robert Martindale,
who was now just going to the university, should be of age to take it.
There was also another application from a person of higher rank and
greater influence in the world, who accompanied his recommendation
with a hint that if gratified in this request, he might in his turn
be of some service to Lord Martindale's family. The motive to provide
for one's own family or connexions is certainly much stronger than the
motive to provide for a stranger; but the motive of caprice or crotchet
is as powerful as any motive that can rule the human heart. There was
a considerable struggle in the old gentleman's mind, but the motive
of caprice was the strongest. He had wealth enough to provide for his
family as well as they could expect to be provided for, and as for
government patronage he needed it not for himself or for any of his
relatives. He certainly did feel some gratitude, though he would hardly
acknowledge it, for the title by which the name of Martindale became
ennobled. As to Robert Martindale, he thought that it would be quite as
well to wait a little longer before any steps were to be taken in his
behalf. On this principle he wrote a note to Lord Martindale, stating
that he would not forget to provide in due time for the establishment
of his family, but that he did not approve of the practice of keeping
livings in reserve for young men who were not old enough to know their
own minds. The note concluded with an abundance or superabundance of
protestations on the part of the old gentleman; and requesting that
Lord Martindale would have the goodness to acknowledge the receipt of
the note, and to express his acquiescence in its principle.
Before, however, it was possible that this note could have reached
his lordship, another came from Lady Martindale, requesting to see the
old gentleman immediately, for Lord Martindale had been seized by a
return of his complaint, and his medical attendants thought him to be
in very imminent danger. There was no refusing such a summons as this.
He therefore promptly obeyed it, but firmly resolved to give the living
to Mr. Henderson; and very much did he dread any thing of a discussion
on the subject with his noble relatives.
There was no opportunity for the discussion he dreaded. Lord
Martindale was obviously near his end, and his power of thought and
attention was rapidly failing. He recognised his relative, and thanked
him very cordially and formally for his many acts of kindness to
himself and family. He then seemed to lose thought and sensation for
a few minutes. Again he opened his eyes, and inquired for Philip;
but when told that Philip was on a tour with his bride, he seemed
distressed at his forgetfulness, and endeavoured to make an effort to
revive his languishing strength, but it was all in vain. Not being
able to shake off his weakness, he endeavoured to disguise it, and
complained of drowsiness, and that the medicine which he had taken
last night had deprived him of rest, and that he would now sleep a
little, and then he should be better able to converse. This movement
was complied with by his attendants, and they were silent. The patient
closed his eyes, but his lips kept moving, and in a very few minutes he
awoke again, but the eyes looked more dim; and he endeavoured to fix
a steadfast look on Mr. Martindale, and he said, "Is that Philip?" He
had just discernment enough to see that he was wrong, and just power
enough to express a sense of his weakness. He presently ceased to ask
questions, and he no more attempted to reply to those which he asked
him. He once more looked on those about him, and waved his hand, and
faintly said "Go," as if he wished to be left alone; but there was not
time to comply with his request, for that word was his last: he was no
longer conscious. The empty or the crowded apartment was precisely the
same to him.