I returned to town at the end of a few days. To a speculative stranger,
a _London day_ presents every variety of circumstance in every
conceivable shape, of which human life is susceptible. When you trace
the solicitude of the morning countenance, the anxious exploring of the
morning paper, the eager interrogation of the morning guest; when you
hear the dismal enumeration of losses by land, and perils by sea--taxes
trebling, dangers multiplying, commerce annihilating, war protracted,
invasion threatening, destruction impending--your mind catches and
communicates the terror, and you feel yourself "falling, with a falling
state."
But when, in the course of the very same day, you meet these gloomy
prognosticators at the sumptuous, not "dinner but Hecatomb," at the
gorgeous fete, the splendid spectacle; when you hear the frivolous
discourse, witness the luxurious dissipation, contemplate the boundless
indulgence, and observe the ruinous gaming, you would be ready to
exclaim, "Am I not supping in the antipodes of that land in which I
breakfasted? Surely this is a country of different men, different
characters, and different circumstances. This at least is a place in
which there is neither fear nor danger, nor want, nor misery, nor war."
If you observed the overflowing subscriptions raised, the innumerable
societies formed, the committees appointed, the agents employed, the
royal patrons engaged, the noble presidents provided, the palace-like
structures erected; and all this to alleviate, to cure, and even to
prevent, every calamity which the indigent can suffer, or the affluent
conceive; to remove not only want but ignorance; to suppress not only
misery but vice--would you not exclaim with Hamlet, "What a piece of
work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In action
how like an angel! In compassion how like a god!"
If you looked into the whole comet-like eccentric orb of the human
character; if you compared all the struggling contrariety of principle
and of passion; the clashing of opinion and of action, of resolution and
of performance; the victories of evil over the propensities to good; if
you contrasted the splendid virtue with the disorderly vice; the exalted
generosity with the selfish narrowness; the provident bounty with the
thoughtless prodigality; the extremes of all that is dignified, with the
excesses of all that is abject, would you not exclaim, in the very
spirit of Pascal, O! the grandeur and the littleness, the excellence
and the corruption, the majesty and the meanness of man!
If you attended the debates in our great deliberative assemblies; if you
heard the argument and the eloquence, "the wisdom and the wit," the
public spirit and the disinterestedness; Curtius's devotedness to his
country, and Regulus's disdain of self, expressed with all the logic
which reason can suggest, and embellished with all the rhetoric which
fancy can supply, would you not rapturously cry out, this is
Above all Greek, above all Roman fame?
But if you discerned the bitter personality, the incurable prejudice,
the cutting retort, the suspicious implication, the recriminating sneer,
the cherished animosity; if you beheld the interests of an empire
standing still, the business of the civilized globe suspended, while two
intellectual gladiators are thrusting each to give the other a fall, and
to show his own strength; would you not lament the littleness of the
great, the infirmities of the good, and the weaknesses of the wise?
Would you not, soaring a flight far above Hamlet or Pascal, apostrophize
with the royal Psalmist, "Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of
him, or the son of man that thou regardest him?"
But to descend to my individual concerns. Among my acquaintance, I
visited two separate families, where the daughters were remarkably
attractive; and more than usually endowed with beauty, sense, and
elegance; but I was deterred from following up the acquaintance, by
observing, in each family, practices which, though very different,
almost equally revolted me.
In one, where the young ladies had large fortunes, they insinuated
themselves into the admiration, and invited the familiarity, of young
men, by attentions the most flattering, and civilities the most
alluring. When they had made sure of their aim, and the admirers were
encouraged to make proposals, the ladies burst out into a loud laugh,
wondered what the man could mean; they never dreamt of any thing more
than common politeness; then petrified them with distant looks, and
turned about to practice the same arts on others.
The other family in which I thought I had secured an agreeable intimacy,
I instantly deserted on observing the gracious and engaging reception
given by the ladies to more than one libertine of the most notorious
profligacy. The men were handsome, and elegant, and fashionable, and had
figured in newspapers and courts of justice. This degrading popularity
rather attracted than repelled attention; and while the guilty
associates in their crimes were shunned with abhorrence by these very
ladies, the specious undoers were not only received with complaisance,
but there was a sort of competition who should be most strenuous in
their endeavors to attract them. Surely women of fashion can hardly make
a more corrupt use of influence, a talent for which they will be
peculiarly accountable. Surely, mere personal purity can hardly deserve
the name of virtue in those who can sanction notoriously vicious
characters, which their reprobation, if it could not reform, would at
least degrade.
On a further acquaintance, I found Sir John and Lady Belfield to be
persons of much worth. They were candid, generous, and sincere. They saw
the errors of the world in which they lived, but had not resolution to
emancipate themselves from its shackles. They partook, indeed, very
sparingly of its diversions, not so much because they suspected their
evil tendency, as because they were weary of them, and because they had
better resources in themselves.
Indeed, it is wonderful that more people from mere good sense and just
taste, without the operation of any religious consideration, do not,
when the first ardor is cooled, perceive the futility of what is called
pleasure, and decline it as the man declines the amusements of the
child. But fashionable society produces few persons, who, like the
ex-courtier of King David, assign their fourscore years as a reason for
no longer "delighting in the voice of singing men and singing women."
Sir John and Lady Belfield, however, kept a large general acquaintance;
and it is not easy to continue to associate with the world, without
retaining something of its spirit. Their standard of morals was high,
compared with that of those with whom they lived; but when the standard
of the gospel was suggested, they drew in a little, and thought _things
might be carried too far_. There was nothing in their practice which
made it their interest to hope that Christianity might not be true. They
both assented to its doctrines, and lived in a kind of general hope of
its final promises. But their views were neither correct, nor elevated.
They were contented to generalize the doctrines of Scripture, and though
they venerated its awful truths in the aggregate, they rather took them
upon trust than labored to understand them, or to imbue their minds with
the spirit of them. Many a high professor, however, might have blushed
to see how carefully they exercised not a few Christian dispositions;
how kind and patient they were! how favorable in their construction of
the actions of others! how charitable to the necessitous! how exact in
veracity! and how tender of the reputation of their neighbor!
Sir John had been early hurt by living so much with men of the world,
with wits, politicians, and philosophers. This, though he had escaped
the contagion of false principles, had kept back the growth of such as
were true. Men versed in the world, and abstracted from all religious
society, begin, in time, a little to suspect whether their own religious
opinions may not possibly be wrong, or at least rigid, when they see
them so opposite to those of persons to whose judgment they are
accustomed to look up in other points. He found too, that, in the
society in which he lived, the reputation of religion detracted much
from that of talents; and a man does not care to have his understanding
questioned by those in whose opinion he wishes to stand well. This
apprehension did not, indeed, drive him to renounce his principles, but
it led him to conceal them; and that piety which is forcibly kept out of
sight, which has nothing to fortify, and every thing to repel it, is too
apt to decline.
His marriage with an amiable woman, whose virtues and graces attached
him to his own home, drew him off from the most dangerous of his prior
connections. This union had at once improved his character, and
augmented his happiness. If Lady Belfield erred, it was through excess
of kindness and candor. Her kindness led to the too great indulgence of
her children; and her candor to the too favorable construction of the
errors of her acquaintance. She was the very reverse of my Hampstead
friend. Whereas Mrs. Ranby thought hardly any body would be saved, Lady
Belfield comforted herself that hardly any body was in danger. This
opinion was not taken up as a palliative to quiet her conscience, on
account of the sins of her own conduct, for her conduct was remarkably
correct; but it sprang from a natural sweetness of temper, joined to a
mind not sufficiently informed and guided by scriptural truth. She was
candid and teachable, but as she could not help seeing that she had more
religion than most of her acquaintance; she felt a secret complacency in
observing how far her principles rose above theirs, instead of an
humbling conviction of how far her own fell below the requisitions of
the gospel.
The fundamental error was, that she had no distinct view of the
corruptions of human nature. She often lamented the weaknesses and
vices of individuals, but thought all vice an incidental, not a radical
mischief, the effect of thoughtlessness and casual temptation. She
talked with discrimination of the faults of some of her children; but
while she rejoiced in the happier dispositions of the others, she never
suspected that they had all brought into the world with them any natural
tendency to evil; and thought it cruel to suppose that such, innocent
little things had any such wrong propensities as education would not
effectually cure. In every thing the complete contrast of Mrs. Ranby--as
the latter thought education could do nothing, Lady Belfield thought it
would do every thing; that there was no good tendency which it would not
bring to perfection, and no corruption which it could not completely
eradicate. On the operation of a higher influence she placed too little
dependence; while Mrs. Ranby rested in an unreasonable trust on an
interference not warranted by Scripture.
In regard to her children, Lady Belfield was led by the strength of her
affection to extreme indulgence. She encouraged no vice in them, but she
did not sufficiently check those indications which are the seeds of
vice. She reproved the actual fault, but never thought of implanting a
principle which might extirpate the evil from whence the fault sprung;
so that the individual error and the individual correction were
continually recurring.
As Mrs. Ranby, I had observed, seldom quoted any sacred writer but St.
Paul, I remarked that Lady Belfield admired almost exclusively
Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the historical books of the Bible. Of the
Epistles, that of St. James was her favorite; the others she thought
chiefly, if not entirely, applicable to the circumstances of the Jews
and Pagans, to the converts from among whom they were addressed. If she
entertained rather an awful reverence for the doctrinal parts, than an
earnest wish to study them, it arose from the common mistake of
believing that they were purely speculative, without being aware of
their deep practical importance. But if these two ladies were
diametrically opposite to each other in certain points, both were
frequently right in what they assumed, and both wrong only in what they
rejected. Each contended for one half of that which will not save when
disjointed from the other, but which when united to it, makes up the
complete Christian character.
Lady Belfield, who was, if I may so speak, constitutionally charitable,
almost thought that heaven might be purchased by charity. She inverted
the valuable superstructure of good works, and laid them as her
foundation; and while Mrs. Ranby would not, perhaps, much have blamed
Moses for breaking the tables of the law, had he only demolished the
second, Lady Belfield would have saved the second, as the more important
of the two.
Lady Belfield had less vanity than any woman I ever knew who was not
governed by a very strict religious principle. Her modesty never courted
the admiration of the world, but her timidity too much dreaded its
censure. She would not do a wrong thing to obtain any applause, but she
omitted some right ones from the dread of blame.