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 slack
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, not because of a more
enduring safeguard--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 dunghill. 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 worshiped as its type, even Arcady is its exile, not its home.
Soon weary of the dalliance of Tempé, its 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 honor 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
recognized. Sad rubbish, perhaps, were such tracts to you, O sound
thinker, in your easy-chair! Or to you, practiced 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 topsy-turvy! 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 villainous 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 dishonored 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), may be rubbish; but it is out of such
rubbish that operatives build barricades for attack, and legislators
prisons for defense.
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 they would be as
little read by the operatives as they are nowadays 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 Labor. 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 Rood Hall and Hazeldean, he is dimly aware that
there is no greater CIVILIZER 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, 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 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 neutralize the effects of
that "Appeal," much more efficaciously than the best article a Brougham
or a Mill could write on the subject.