so striking as those of deaths, familiar as the thought of death is to
us, and natural as our own death would appear to ourselves, and to
everybody. To present witnesses, and in the midst of the activity of
life, the spectacle of death loses half its force. It is we who feel the
awful beauty of it, when the great Recorder intimates to us that they
who were strenuous in mutual conflict have lain down side by side; that
to old age its infirmities matter no longer, as the body itself is
surrendered; that the weary spirit of care is at rest, and that the most
active affections and occupations of life have been brought to a sudden
close. Many young and busy persons wish, as I used to wish, that Time
would be prophet as well as watchman. On New Year’s Eves, such long to
divine how many, and who of those they know, will be smitten and
withdrawn during the coming year. We, in our solitude, do not desire to
forestal the unrolling of the scroll. To ponder the register of the
year’s deaths at its close, is enough for us, to whom our seclusion
serves for all purposes of speculation. While we are waiting, every year
conveys away before us the infant, (a new immortality created before our
eyes); the busy citizen, or indispensable mother, (showing how much more
important in the eye of God is it what we are than what we do;) the
young maiden, full of sympathy, (perhaps for us,) and of hope; and the
aged, full of years, but perhaps not less of life. Such is the register
of every year at its close.
To us, whose whole life is sequestered,--who see nothing of the events
of which we hear so much, or see them only as gleam or shadow passing
along our prison-walls, there is something indescribably affecting in
the act of regarding History, Life, and Speculation as one. All are
enhanced to us by their melting into each other. History becomes like
actual life; life becomes comprehensive as history, and abstract as
speculation. Not only does human life, from the cradle to the grave, lie
open to us, but the whole succession of generations, without the
boundary line of the past being interposed; and with the very clouds of
the future so thinned,--rendered so penetrable, as that we believe we
discern the salient and bright points of the human destiny yet to be
revealed.
* * * * *
It would be impossible to set down, within any moderate limits, notices
of changes in the Modes of life,--modes arising from progressive
civilisation, and deeply affecting morals;--but there is one branch of
one great change, which I will mention, as it bears a relation to the
morals of the sick-room.
We all know how the present action of our new civilisation works to the
impairing of Privacy. As new discoveries are causing all-penetrating
physical lights so to abound as that, as has been said, we shall soon
not know where in the world to get any darkness, so our new facilities
for every sort of communication work to reduce privacy much within its
former limits. There are some limits, however, which ought to be
preserved with vigilance and care, as indispensable, not only to
comfort, but to some of the finest virtues and graces of mind and life.
It is to be hoped that the privacy of _vivâ voce_ conversation will ever
remain sacred: but it is known that that which ought to be as holy, that
of epistolary correspondence,--(the private conversation of distant
friends,) is constantly and deliberately violated, where there are
certain inducements to do so. The press works so diligently and
beneficially for society at large, that there is a tendency to commit
everything to it, on utilitarian considerations of a rather coarse kind:
and the moment it can be made out that the publication of anything will
and may do some ostensible good, the thing is published,--whatever
considerations of a different or a higher sort may lie behind. If the
people of note in society were inquired of, they would say that the
privilege--the right--of privacy of epistolary correspondence now exists
only for the obscure;--and for them, only till some person meets them
whose zeal for the public good leads him to lay hold on all material by
which anybody may be supposed likely to learn anything. As for people of
note,--their letters are naturally preserved by the recipients: when the
writer dies, these recipients are plied with entreaties and
remonstrances,--placed in a position of cruel difficulty (as it is to
many) between their delicacy of affection for the deceased, and the pain
of being made responsible for intercepting his fame, and depriving
society of the benefit of the disclosure of his living mind.
Under this state of things, what happens? Some destroy, through life,
all the letters they receive, but those on business. Some, with an
agonising heart, burn them after the writer’s death, to escape the
requisitions of executors. Many, alas! resign their privilege of freedom
of epistolary speech, and write no letters which any one would care to
preserve for an hour. Some call in their own letters;--a painful
process, both to writer and receivers. Of such as do not care what
becomes of their letters, there is no need to say anything. Their
feelings require no consideration, for their letters cannot be of a
private,--nor, therefore, of the most valuable kind. The misery of the
liability is in regard to letters of affection and confidence,--letters
which the writer could no more bear to see again than to have notes
taken of the out-pourings of his heart in an hour of confidence. It is
too certain that many such letters are now never written which crave to
be so: and it is much to be feared that some letters, purporting to be
private, are written with a view to ultimate publication; and thus the
receiver is insulted, or there is a sacrifice of honesty all round.
I do not see any probability of a dearth of biographies. I believe that
there will always be interest enough in human life and character to
secure a sufficiency of records of individuals:--that there will always
be enough of persons whose letters are not of a very private
kind,--always enough of provided and exceptional cases to serve society
with a sufficiency of biography, of a duly analytical kind. But if I did
not believe this,--if I believed that the choice lay between a sacrifice
of the completest order of biography and that of the inviolability of
private epistolary correspondence, I could not hesitate for a moment. I
would keep the old and precious privacy,--the inestimable right of
every one who has a friend and can write to him;--I would keep our
written confidence from being made biographical material, as anxiously
as I would keep our spoken conversation from being noted down for the
good of society. I would keep the power of free speech under all the
influences of life and fate,--and leave Biography to exist or perish.
And pretty sure it is of existence. It has, for its material, the life
and actions of all men and women of note;--their printed and otherwise
public writings and sayings;--the recollections of those who knew them;
and, in no small number of cases, material which, however we may wonder
at, we have only to take and be thankful for. A Doddridge keeps a copy
of every letter or note he ever wrote, labelled and put by for
posthumous use. A D’Arblay spends her last hours in elaborating her
revelations of the transactions, private and public, of her day; and
revises, for publication, the expressions of fondness and impulse,
written to sisters and other intimates, long dead. A Rousseau here and
there gives more. One way and another, the resources of biography are
secure enough, without encroachment on a sacred process of intercourse.
Biography will never fail. Would that we were all equally secure of a
higher matter,--our right of freedom of epistolary speech!
“But when all are dead,--and nobody concerned remains to be hurt?”
remonstrates one. The reply is, that as long as people of note, who love
their friends, remain, there are some left to be concerned and injured.
“But,” says another, “would you object to do good, after your death, by
your letters being published?” The reply is that, in the supposition, I
see an enormous sacrifice of a higher and greater good to a lower and
smaller. No letters, in any number and of any quality,--if they
exhibited all the wisdom of Solomon, and all the graces of the Queen of
Sheba, could do so much good as a single clear and strong protest
against the preservation of strictly private letters for biographical
material.
“But,” says another, “had you not better leave the matter to the
discretion of survivors? Surely you can trust your executors;--surely
you can trust the friends who will survive you.” The reply is--when this
critical state of our morals is past, no doubt executors may be trusted
about letters, as about other matters. But the very point of the case is
that its morality is not yet ascertained by those who do not suffer
under the liability, and have not fellow-feeling with those who do. My
executors may very sincerely think it their duty to publish my most
private letters,--and even to be now laying them by in order for the
purpose: while I feel that, once aroused to a view of the liability, I
could more innocently leave to the discretion of survivors the
disposition of lands and money than that of my private utterances to my
friends. In a case of differing or opposing views of duty,--if my own is
clear and stringent, I cannot innocently leave the matter to the chance
of other persons’ convictions. There cannot be a more strictly personal
duty, and I must do it myself.
I have, therefore, done it. Having made the discovery of the
preservation of my letters for purposes of publication hereafter, I have
ascertained my own legal rights, and acted upon them. I have adopted
legal precautions against the publication of my private letters;--I have
made it a condition of my confidential correspondence that my letters
shall not be preserved: and I have been indulged by my friends,
generally, with an acquiescence in my request that my entire
correspondence, except such as relates to business, shall be destroyed.
Of course, I do as I would be done by. The privacy I claim for myself, I
carefully guard for others. I keep no letters of a private and passing
nature. I know that others are thinking and acting with me. We enjoy, by
this provision, a freedom and fulness of epistolary correspondence which
could not possibly exist if the press loomed in the distance, or
executors’ eyes were known to be in wait hereafter. Our correspondence
has all the flow and lightness of the most secret talk. This is a
present reward, and a rich one, for the effort and labour of making our
views and intentions understood. But it is not our only reward. We
perceive that we have fixed attention upon what is becoming an important
point of Morals: and we feel, in our inmost hearts, that we have done
what we could to guard from encroachment an important right, and from
destruction a precious privilege. This may appear a strange statement to
persons whose privacy is safe in their obscurity. Those who know in
their own experience the liabilities of fame, will understand, and
deeply feel, what I have said.
I have mentioned above, that, to us in seclusion, History, Life, and
Speculation, assume a continuity such as would not have been believed
possible by ourselves in former days, when they appeared to constitute
departments of study as separate as moral studies can be. It would be
curious and interesting to an observer of the human mind, to pass from
retreat to retreat, and watch the progress of this fusion of objects; to
see the formerly busy member of society--“the practical man,”--growing
speculative in his turn of thought; the speculative writer nourishing
more and more of an antiquarian taste; and the antiquary finding
seclusion serve as well as the passage of ages, and viewing the modes
and instruments of the life of to-day with the eye and the gusto of the
antiquary of ten centuries hence.
And not only in their studies would men of such differing tastes be
found to be brought together under the influences of sequestration from
the world. There are matters of moral perception and taste in which they
would draw near no less remarkably. The one conspicuous, undying
humanity, which is the soul of all the forms of life that they
contemplate, must be, to all, the sun of their intellectual day, beneath
whose penetrating light all adventitious distinctions melt into
insignificance. Distinctions of rank, for instance, become attenuated to
a previously inconceivable degree. To the antiquary, as well as to the
most radical speculator, there would be little more in the sovereign
entering the sick-room than any other stranger whom kindness might
bring. It requires that we should live in the midst of the arrangements
of society, that our conventional ideas should be nourished by daily
associations, in order to keep up even the remembrance of differences of
hereditary rank, so overpowering in our view are the great interests of
life which are common to all,--Duty, Thought, Love, Joy, Sorrow, and
Death.
If the sovereign were to enter our rooms, there would be strong
interests and affections connected with her, but interests relating to
her responsibilities and her destinies, and scarcely at all to her
rank--to the singularity, and not the exaltation, of her position. It is
a strong doubt to me, whether one of high degree, placed in our
circumstances, could long retain aristocratic ideas and tendencies;
whether to the proudest noble, shut up in his chamber for five years,
the cottage child he sees from his window, the footboy who brings his
fuel, must not necessarily become as imposing to his imagination and his
heart as the young princes of the blood.
Something of the same process takes place, even with regard to the
distinctions of intellectual nobility. As for the nothingness of
literary fame, amidst the stress of personal trial (except in the
collateral benefits it brings), an hour in the sick-room might convince
the most superstitious worshipper of celebrity. As for the rest; in the
presence of the general ignorance, on the brink of that black abyss, our
best lights are really so ineffectual, that it is impossible to pride
ourselves on our intellectual differences, ranging merely as from the
torch to the farthing candle.
In truth, in our retreat, moral considerations are all in all. Moral
distinctions are the chief; and moral interests, common to all, are
supreme. They are so from their essential nature; and they are so to us
especially, from the singular advantage of our position for seeing their
beauty, and the abundance of it. We could make known--what is little
suspected by busy stirrers in the world, and wholly disbelieved by
despondent moralists who dwell amidst its apparent confusion--that there
is a deep heaven lying inclosed in the very centre of society, and a
genuine divinity residing in the heart of every member of it, which
might, if we would but recognise it, check, our longing to leave the
present scene, to search for God and Heaven elsewhere. All, that is most
frivolous and insignificant is ever most noisy and obtrusive; all that
is most wicked is most boastful and audacious; all that is worst in men,
and society, has a tendency to come uppermost; and thus the most
superficial observers of life are the most despondent. Meantime,
whatever is holy, pure, and peaceable, works silently and unremittingly;
and while turbulent passions are exhausting themselves before the eyes
of men, a calm and perpetual renovation is spreading outwards from the
central heart, of humanity. I have the image before my eyes at this
moment--the awful type of the blessed reality--in the tossing sea, which
the neighbours dare hardly look upon. It rages and rolls, it dashes, the
drift-wood on the shore, and heavy squalls come driving over it, like
messengers of dismay. At this very instant, how calm are its depths!
There light dwells, as long as there is light in heaven; and there is no
end to the treasures of beauty on which it shines. If it be a fable that
there are happy beings dwelling there, basking and singing, unconscious
of the tempests overhead, it is certainly true that it is thus in the
upper world, of which the ocean is a type. It is true, as a friend said
to me, that “the dark is full of beautiful things.” Without an image,
speaking in the plainest and most absolute terms, the least known parts
of human life are full of moral beauty. I am fully persuaded, that, if
we wish to extend and confirm our ideas of Heaven, we should not wander
back and afar to the old Eden, or forward and upward to some bright star
of the firmament, but we should look into the retired places of our own
actual world, of our own country, of our own town and village. We should
look into the faces to be met in the street every day; we should look
round by the light of our common sun. However, my immediate business is
to say that we, who are not abroad in the streets, and cannot go in
bodily presence into the by-places of life, have more of this heaven
disclosed to us than others, because we appear to need it more. If any
one of us could and might tell what we know of the good of human hearts,
the heavenly deeds of human hands, the desponding would hang their heads
no longer with fear, but with shame for their fear. If I alone might
make a record of the heavenly aspects which have been presented in this
one room, such a record would extinguish all revilings of man and of
life. And when I think that what has appeared to me must, in natural
course, have appeared to all my companions in infirmity, when I gather
into one all these revelations of the real moral life of society, I
perceive that, till death satisfies us in regard to a local heaven, we
may well be satisfied with that which lies all round about us--not mute,
while tender and pitying voices speak to us; nor wholly unseen, while
tearful or kindling eyes meet our own.
Thus, in some few of its leading aspects, does Life appear to the
invalid.
DEATH TO THE INVALID.
“To smell a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less
are the thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.”
FULLER.
“And yet as angels, in some brighter dreams,
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.”
HENRY VAUGHAN.
What subject is so interesting to the full of life as that of death?
What taste is so universal in childhood and youth as that for learning
all that can be known of the thoughts and feelings of the dying? Did we
not all, in our young days, turn to the death part in all biographies;
to the death articles in all cyclopædias; to the discourses on sickness
and death in all sermon books; to the prayers in the prospect of death
in all books of devotion? Do not the most common-place writers of
fiction crowd their novels with death scenes, and indifferent tragedy
writers kill off almost all their characters? Do not people crowd to
executions; and do not those who stay at home learn all they can of the
last words and demeanour of the sufferers? Are not the visions of heroic
children, (and of many grown children), chiefly about pain and a noble
departure? Is there any curiosity more lively than that which we all
feel about the revelations of persons resuscitated from drowning? Is it
not their nearer position to death which makes sick persons so awful to
children who are not familiar with them,--so interesting a subject of
speculation to all? How is it then with the invalids themselves?
Nothing need be said here of short, sharp, fatal illness. Most of us
know that short, sharp illnesses, not fatal, have not enlightened us
much in regard to death and its appropriate feelings. Either pain or
exhaustion usually causes, in such cases, an apathy which leaves nothing
to be remembered or revealed. I was once told by a child, after some
hours of exhausting pain, what she had overheard below,--that if some
contingency, which she specified, did not arise, I should die before
night. I fully believed it; and I felt nothing, unless it were some
wonder at feeling nothing. Almost every person has a similar anecdote to
tell; and there remains only the short and pregnant moral, that all
preparations for leaving this life, and entering on the next, should be
made while the body is well and the spirit alive.
But how does death appear to those who rest half-way between it and
life, or are very gradually passing over from the one to the other?
Much depends, of course, on how far the vital forces are impaired--on
whether the condition be such as to obscure or to purify the spiritual
vision. If we want to know the effect of nearness and realisation, and
not the pathology of the case, we must suppose the vital powers to
remain faithful, however they may be weakened.
In such cases, I imagine the views of death remain much what they were
before, though they must necessarily become more interesting, and the
conception of them more clear. I know of no case of any one who before
believed, or took for granted, a future life, who began to disbelieve or
doubt it through sickness. I have known cases of those who disbelieved
it in health, seeing no reason to change their opinion on the approach
of death,--being content to have lived--satisfied to leave life when its
usefulness and pleasantness are gone--not desiring a renewal of it, but
ready to awake again at the word of their Creator, if indeed a further
existence be in reserve for them. Such cases I have known: but none of a
material change of views in the prospect of death.
To me, the presumption of the inextinguishable vitality of the spirit
afforded by the experience of material decay, is the strongest I am
acquainted with. No amount of evidence of any fact before the reason, no
demonstration of any truth to the understanding, affords to me such a
sense of certainty as the action of the spirit yields, with regard to
its own immortality, at times when there can be no deception from animal
spirits, or from immediate sympathy with other minds, or from what is
called the natural desire for life. It is a mistake to say, as is
frequently said, that, with regard to a future life, “the wish is father
to the thought,” always or generally. Long-suffering invalids can tell
that there are seasons, neither few nor short, when the wishes are all
the other way,--when life is so oppressive to the frame that the
happiest news would be that we should soon be non-existent,--when,
thankful as we are that our beloved friends, the departed and the
remaining, are to live for evermore with God, and enjoy his universe and
its intercourses, we should be glad to, decline it for ourselves, and
to lie down in an eternal, unbroken rest. At these seasons, when, though
we _know_ all that can be said of renewed powers and relish, and a more
elevated and privileged life beyond the grave, we cannot _feel_ it; and,
while admitting all such consolations as truth, we cannot enjoy them,
but, as a mere matter of inclination, had rather resign our
privileges;--in these seasons, when the wish would be father to an
opposite thought, the belief in our immortality is at the strongest; the
truth of our inability to die becomes overwhelming, and the sleep of the
grave appears too light to satisfy our need of rest. I believe it to be
owing to this natural and unconquerable belief in our immortality, that
suicide is not more common than it is among sufferers. I am persuaded
that the almost intolerable weariness of long sicknesses, unrelieved by
occasional fits of severe pain, would impel many to put out a hand to
the laudanum-bottle, in hours when religious considerations and emotions
cannot operate through the indisposition of the frame, if it were not
for the intense conviction that life would not thus be extinguished, nor
even suspended. I do not believe much in the “natural love of life,”
which is usually said to be the preventive in such cases. I do believe
in the vast operation of religious affections in withholding from the
act: but I also believe in frequent instances of abstinence from death,
from a mere despair of getting rid of life--a sense of necessary
immortality.
I have spoken of the relief afforded by visitations of severe pain.
These rally the vital forces, and dismiss the temptation, by
substituting torture for weariness--at times a welcome change. The
healthy are astonished at the good spirits of sufferers under tormenting
complaints; and the most strait-laced preachers of fortitude and
patience admit an occasional wonder that there is no suicide among that
class of sufferers. The truth is, however, that the influence of acute
pain, when only occasional, and not extremely protracted, is vivifying
and cheering on the whole. The immediate anguish causes a temporary
despair: but the reaction, when the pain departs, causes a relish of
life such as the healthy and the gay hardly enjoy. Though a slow death
by a torturing disease is a lot unspeakably awful to meet, and even to
contemplate, there can be no question to the experienced, that illness
in which severe pain sometimes occurs is less trying than some in which
a different kind of suffering is not relieved by such a stimulus and its
consequent sensations.