During these conversations I remarked that Lucilla, though she commonly
observed the most profound silence, had her attention always riveted on
the speaker. If that speaker was Dr. Barlow, or her father, or any one
whom she thought entitled to particular respect, she gently laid down
her work, and as quietly resumed it when they had done speaking.
I observed to Sir John Belfield, afterward, as we were walking together,
how modestly flattering her manner was when any of us were reading; how
intelligent her silence; how well-bred her attention.
"I have often contrasted it," replied he, "with the manners of some
other ladies of my acquaintance, who are sometimes of our quiet evening
party. When one is reading history, or any ordinary book, aloud to them,
I am always pleased that they should pursue their little employments. It
amuses themselves, and gives ease and familiarity to the social circle.
But while I have been reading, as has sometimes happened, a passage of
the highest sublimity, or most tender interest, I own I feel a little
indignant to see the shuttle plied with as eager assiduity as if the
Destinies themselves were weaving the thread. I have known a lady take
up the candlestick to search for her netting-pin, in the midst of Cato's
soliloquy; or stoop to pick up her scissors while Hamlet says to the
ghost, 'I'll go no further.' I remember another who would whisper across
the table to borrow thread while Lear has been raving in the storm, or
Macbeth starting at the spirit of Banquo; and make signs for a
thread-paper while cardinal Beaufort 'dies, and makes no sign.' Nay,
once I remember when I was with much agitation hurrying through the
gazette of the battle of Trafalgar, while I pronounced, almost agonized,
the last memorable words of the immortal Nelson, I heard one lady
whisper to another that she had broken her needle."
"It would be difficult to determine," replied I, "whether this
inattention most betrays want of sense, of feeling, or of good breeding.
The habit of attention should be carefully formed in early life, and
then the mere force of custom would teach these ill-bred women 'to
assume the virtue if they have it not.'"
The family at the Grove was, with us, an inexhaustible topic whenever we
met. I observed to Sir John, "that I had sometimes noticed in charitable
families a display, a bustle, a kind of animal restlessness, a sort of
mechanical _besoin_ to be charitably busy. That though they fulfilled
conscientiously one part of the apostolic injunction, that of 'giving,'
yet they failed in the other clause, that of doing it 'with simplicity.'"
"Yes," replied he, "I visit a charitable lady in town, who almost puts
me out of love with benevolence. Her own bounties form the entire
subject of her conversation. As soon as the breakfast is removed, the
table is regularly covered with plans, and proposals, and subscription
papers. This display conveniently performs the threefold office of
publishing her own charities, furnishing subjects of altercation, and
raising contributions on the visitor. Her narratives really cost me more
than my subscription. She is so full of debate, and detail, and
opposition; she makes you read so many papers of her own drawing up, and
so many answers to the schemes of other people, and she has so many
objections to every other person's mode of doing good, and so many
arguments to prove that her own is the best, that she appears less like
a benevolent lady than a chicaning attorney."
"Nothing," said I, "corrects this bustling bounty so completely, as when
it is mixed up with religion, I should rather say, as when it flows from
religion. This motive, so far from diminishing the energy, augments it;
but it cures the display, and converts the irritation into a principle.
It transfers the activity from the tongue to the heart. It is the only
sort of charity which 'blesses twice.' All charity, indeed, blesses the
receiver; but the blessing promised to the giver, I have sometimes
trembled to think, may be forfeited even by a generous mind, from
ostentation and parade in the manner, and want of purity in the motive."
"In Stanley's family," replied he, in a more serious tone, "I have met
with a complete refutation of that favorite maxim in the world, that
religion is a dull thing itself, and makes its professors gloomy and
morose. Charles! I have often frequented houses where pleasure was the
avowed object of idolatry. But to see the votaries of the 'reeling
goddess,' after successive nights passed in her temples! to see the
languor, the listlessness, the discontent--you would rather have taken
them for her victims than her worshipers. So little mental vivacity, so
little gayety of heart! In short, after no careless observations, I am
compelled to declare, that I never saw two forms less alike than those
of Pleasure and Happiness."
"Your testimony, Sir John," said I, "is of great weight in a case of
which you are so experienced a judge. What a different scene do we now
contemplate! Mr. Stanley seems to have diffused his own spirit through
the whole family. What makes his example of such efficacy is, that he
considers the Christian _temper_ as so considerable a part of
Christianity. This temper seems to imbue his whole soul, pervade his
whole conduct, and influence his whole conversation. I see every day
some fresh occasion to admire his candor, his humility, his constant
reference, not as a topic of discourse, but as a principle of conduct,
to the gospel as the standard by which actions are to be weighed. His
conscientious strictness of speech, his serious reproof of calumnies,
his charitable construction of every case which has two sides; 'his
simplicity and godly sincerity;' his rule of referring all events to
providential direction, and his invariable habit of vindicating the
divine goodness under dispensations apparently the most unfavorable."
Here Sir John left me, and I could not forbear pursuing the subject in
soliloquy as I proceeded in my walk. I reflected with admiration that
Mr. Stanley, in his religious conversation, rendered himself so useful,
because instead of the uniform nostrum of _the drop and the pill_, he
applied a different class of arguments, as the case required, to
objectors to the different parts of Christianity; to ill informed
persons who adopted a partial gospel without understanding it as a
scheme, or embracing it as a whole; to those who allow its truth merely
on the same ground of evidence that establishes the truth of any other
well authenticated history, and who, satisfied with this external
evidence, not only do not feel its power on their own heart, but deny
that it has any such influence on the hearts of others; to those who
believe the gospel to be a mere code of ethics; to their antipodes, who
assert that Christ has lowered the requisitions of the law; to Lady
Belfield, who rests on her charities--Sir John, on his correctness--Lady
Aston, on her austerities; to this man, who values himself solely on the
stoutness of his orthodoxy; to another, on the firmness of his
integrity; to a third, on the peculiarities of his party, he addresses
himself with a particular view to their individual errors. This he does
with such a discriminating application to the case as might lead the
ill-informed to suspect that he was not equally earnest in those other
points, which, not being attacked, he does not feel himself called on to
defend, but which, had they been attacked, he would then have defended
with equal zeal as relative to the discussion. To crown all, I
contemplated that affectionate warmth of heart, that sympathizing
kindness, that tenderness of feeling, of which the gay and the
thoughtless fancy that they themselves possess the monopoly, while they
make over harshness, austerity, and want of charity to religious men, as
their inseparable characteristics.
These qualities excite in my heart a feeling compounded of veneration,
and of love. And oh! how impossible it is, even in religion itself, to
be disinterested! All these excellences I contemplate with a more
heartfelt delight from the presumptuous hope that I may one day have the
felicity of connecting myself still more intimately with them.