I am a young man, not quite four and twenty, of an ancient and
respectable family, and considerable estate in one of the northern
counties. Soon after I had completed my studies in the university of
Edinburgh, my father fell into a lingering illness. I attended him with
an assiduity which was richly rewarded by the lessons of wisdom, and the
example of piety, which I daily received from him. After languishing
about a year, I lost him, and in him the most affectionate father, the
most enlightened companion, and the most Christian friend.
The grief of my mother was so poignant and so lasting, that I could
never prevail on myself to leave her, even for the sake of attaining
those advantages, and enjoying those pleasures, which may be reaped by a
wider range of observation, by a more extended survey of the
multifarious tastes, habits, pursuits, and characters of general
society. I felt with Mr. Gray that we can never have but one mother, and
postponed from time to time the moment of leaving home.
I was her only child, and though it was now her sole remaining wish to
see me happily married, yet I was desirous of first putting myself in a
situation which might afford me a more extensive field of inquiry before
I ventured to take so irretrievable a step, a step which might perhaps
affect my happiness in both worlds. But time did not hang heavy on my
hands; if I had little society, I had many books. My father had left me
a copious library, and I had learnt from him to select whatever was most
valuable in that best species of literature which tends to form the
principles, the understanding, the taste, and the character. My father
had passed the early part of his life in the gay and busy world; and our
domestic society in the country had been occasionally enlivened by
visits from some of his London friends, men of sense and learning, and
some of them men of piety.
My mother, when she was in tolerable spirits, was now frequently
describing the kind of woman whom she wished me to marry. "I am so
firmly persuaded, Charles," would she kindly say, "of the justness of
your taste, and the rectitude of your principles, that I am not much
afraid of your being misled by the captivating exterior of any woman who
is greatly deficient either in sense or conduct; but remember, my son,
that there are many women against whose characters there lies nothing
very objectionable, who are yet little calculated to taste or to
communicate rational happiness. Do not indulge romantic ideas, of
super-human excellence. Remember that the fairest creature is a fallen
creature. Yet let not your standard be low. If it be absurd to expect
perfection, it is not unreasonable to expect _consistency_. Do not
suffer yourself to be caught by a shining quality, till you know it is
not counteracted by the opposite defect. Be not taken in by strictness
in one point, till you are assured there is no laxity in others. In
character, as in architecture, proportion is beauty. The education of
the present race of females is not very favorable to domestic happiness.
For my own part I call education, not that which smothers a woman with
accomplishments, but that which tends to consolidate a firm and regular
system of character; that which tends to form a friend, a companion, and
a wife. I call education not that which is made up of the shreds and
patches of useless arts, but that which inculcates principles, polishes
taste, regulates temper, cultivates reason, subdues the passions,
directs the feelings, habituates to reflection, trains to self-denial,
and, more especially, that which refers all actions, feelings,
sentiments, tastes, and passions, to the love and fear of God."
I had yet had little opportunity of contrasting the charms of my native
place with the less wild and romantic beauties of the south. I was
passionately fond of the scenery that surrounded me, which had never yet
lost that power of pleasing which it is commonly imagined that novelty
can alone confer.
The priory, a handsome Gothic mansion, stands in the middle of a park,
not extensive, but beautifully varied. Behind are lofty mountains, the
feet of which are covered with wood that descends almost to the house.
On one side a narrow cultivated valley winds among the mountains; the
bright variegated tints of its meadows and corn fields, with here and
there a little white cottage, embosomed in trees, are finely contrasted
with the awful and impassable fells which contain it.
An inconsiderable but impetuous river rushes from the mountains above,
through this unadorned but enchanting little valley, and passes through
the park at the distance of about a hundred yards from the house. The
ground falls beautifully down to it; and on the other side is a fine
wood of birch overhanging the river, which is here crossed by a small
rustic bridge; after being enlarged by many streams from the neighboring
hills, it runs about half a mile to the lake below, which, from the
front of the house, is seen in full beauty. It is a noble expanse of
water. The mountains that surround it are some of them covered with
wood, some skirted with cultivation, some rocky and barren to the
water's edge; while the rugged summits of them all present every variety
of fantastic outline. Toward the head of the lake a neat little village
ornaments the banks, and wonderfully harmonizes with the simple beauty
of the scene. At an opening among the hills, a view is caught of the
distant country, a wide vale richly wooded, adorned everywhere with
towns, villages, and gentlemen's houses, and backed by sublime
mountains, rivaling in height, though not in their broken and Alpine
forms, those that more immediately surround us.
While I was thus dividing my time between the enjoyment of this
exquisite scenery, my books, the care of my affairs, my filial
attentions, and my religious duties, I was suddenly deprived of my
inestimable mother. She died the death of the righteous.
Addison has finely touched on the singular sort of delicate and refined
tenderness of a father for a daughter: but I am persuaded that there is
no affection of the human heart more exquisitely pure than that which is
felt by a grateful son toward a mother who fostered his infancy with
fondness, watched over his childhood with anxiety, and his youth with an
interest compounded of all that is tender, wise, and pious.
My retirement was now become solitude: the former is, I believe, the
best state for the mind of man, the latter almost the worst. In
complete solitude the eye wants objects, the heart wants attachments,
the understanding wants reciprocation. The character loses its
tenderness when it has nothing to love, its firmness when it has none to
strengthen it, its sweetness when it has nothing to soothe it; its
patience when it meets no contradiction, its humility when it is
surrounded by dependants, and its delicacy in the conversation of the
uninformed. Where the intercourse is very unequal, society is something
worse than solitude.
I had naturally a keen relish for domestic happiness; and this
propensity had been cherished by what I had seen and enjoyed in my
father's family. Home was the scene in which my imagination had pictured
the only delights worthy of a rational, feeling, intellectual, immortal
man:
sole bliss of Paradise
Which has survived the fall.
This inclination had been much increased by my father's turn of
conversation. He often said to me, "I know your domestic propensities;
and I know, therefore, that the whole color of your future life will be,
in a particular manner, determined by the turn of mind of the woman you
may marry. Were you to live in the busy haunts of men; were you of any
profession, or likely to be engaged in public life, though I would still
counsel you to be equally careful in your choice, yet your happiness
would not so immediately, so exclusively depend on the individual
society of a woman, as that of a retired country gentleman must do. A
man of sense who loves home, and lives at home, requires a wife who can
and will be at half the expense of mind necessary for keeping up the
cheerful, animated, elegant intercourse which forms so great a part of
the bond of union between intellectual and well-bred persons. Had your
mother been a woman of an uninformed, inelegant mind, virtuous and
pious as she is, what abatement must there have been in the blessings of
my lot! The _exhibiting_, the _displaying_ wife may entertain your
company, but it is only the informed, the refined, the cultivated woman
who can entertain yourself; and I presume whenever you marry you will
marry primarily for yourself, and not for your friends; you will want a
COMPANION: an ARTIST you may hire.
"But remember, Charles, that when I am insisting so much on mental
delicacy, I am assuming that all is right in still more essential
points. Do not be contented with this superstructure, till you have
ascertained the solidity of the foundation. The ornaments which decorate
do not support the edifice! Guarded as you are by Christian principles,
and confirmed in virtuous habits, I trust you may safely look abroad
into the world. Do not, however, irrevocably dispose of your affections
till you have made the long-promised visit to my earliest, wisest, and
best friend, Mr. Stanley. I am far from desiring that your friends
should direct your choice. It is what even your father would not do: but
he will be the most faithful and most disinterested of counselors."
I resolved now for a few months to leave the priory, the seat of my
ancestors, to make a tour not only to London, but to Stanley Grove, in
Hampshire, the residence of my father's friend; a visit I was about to
make with him just before his last illness. He wished me to go alone,
but I could not prevail on myself to desert his sick-bed for any scheme
of amusement.
I began to long earnestly for the pleasures of conversation, pleasures
which, in our small, but social and select circle of cultivated friends,
I had been accustomed to enjoy. I am aware that certain fine town-bred
men would ridicule the bare mention of learned and polished conversation
at a village in Westmoreland, or indeed at any place out of the
precincts of the metropolis; just as a London physician or lawyer smiles
superciliously at the suggested merits of a professional brother in a
provincial town. Good sense, however, is of all countries, and even
knowledge is not altogether a mere local advantage. These, and not the
topics of the hour, furnish the best raw materials for working up an
improving intercourse.
It must be confessed, however, as I have since found, that for giving a
terseness and polish to conversation; for rubbing out prejudices; for
correcting egotism; for keeping self-importance out of sight, if not
curing it; for bringing a man to condense what he has to say, if he
intends to be listened to; for accustoming him to endure opposition; for
teaching him not to think every man who differs from him in matters of
taste, a fool, and in politics, a knave; for cutting down harangues; for
guarding him from producing as novelties and inventions, what has been
said a thousand times; for quickness of allusion, which brings the idea
before you without detail or quotation; nothing is equal to the
miscellaneous society of London. The advantages, too, which it possesses
in being the seat of the court, the parliament, and the courts of law,
as well as the common centre of arts and talents of every kind, all
these raise it above every other scene of intellectual improvement, or
colloquial pleasure, perhaps, in the whole world.
But this was only the secondary motive of my intended migration. I
connected with it the hope, that, in a more extended survey, I might be
more likely to select a deserving companion for life. "In such a
companion," said I, as I drove along in my post-chaise, "I do not want a
Helen, a Saint Cecilia, or a Madame Dacier; yet she must be elegant, or
I should not love her; sensible, or I should not respect her; prudent,
or I could not confide in her; well-informed, or she could not educate
my children; well-bred, or she could not entertain my friends;
_consistent_, or I should offend the shade of my mother; pious, or I
should not be happy with her, because the prime comfort in a companion
for life is the delightful hope that she will be a companion for
eternity."
After this soliloquy, I was frightened to reflect that so much was
requisite; and yet when I began to consider in which article I could
make any abatement, I was willing to persuade myself that my
requisitions were moderate.