The next morning I resumed my journey northward, and on the fourth day,
I reached the seat of my ancestors. The distant view of the Priory
excited strong but mingled emotions in my bosom. The tender sorrow for
the loss of the beloved society I had once enjoyed under its roof, was a
salutary check to the abundant joy arising from the anticipation of the
blessing which awaited me there. My mind was divided between the two
conflicting sentiments that I was soon to be in possession of every
material for the highest happiness--and that the highest happiness is
short! May I ever live under the influence of that act of devout
gratitude, in which, as soon as I entered the house, I dedicated the
whole of my future life to its divine Author, solemnly consecrating to
his service, my time, my talents, my fortune; all I am, and all I have.
I next wrote to Lucilla; with whom I continued to maintain a regular and
animated correspondence. Her letters gratify my taste, and delight my
heart, while they excite me to every thing that is good. This
interchange of sentiment sheds a ray of brightness on a separation which
every day is diminishing.
Mr. Stanley also has the goodness to write to me frequently. In one of
my letters to him, I ventured to ask him how he had managed to produce
in his daughter such complete satisfaction in his sober and correct
habits of life; adding, that her conformity was so cheerful that it did
not look so much like acquiescence as choice.
I received from Mr. Stanley the answer which follows:
"STANLEY GROVE, _September_, 1808.
"MY DEAR CHARLES;
"As I wish to put you in possession of whatever relates to the mind
of Lucilla, I will devote this letter to answer your inquiries
respecting her cheerful conformity to what you call our 'sober
habits of life;' and her indifference to those pleasures which are
usually thought to constitute the sole happiness of young women of
a certain rank.
"Mrs. Stanley and I are not so unacquainted with human nature, as
to have pretended to impose on her understanding, by attempting to
breed her up in entire ignorance of the world, or in perfect
seclusion from it. She often accompanied us to town for a short
time. The occasional sight of London, and the frequent enjoyment of
the best society, dissipated the illusions of fancy. The bright
colors with which young imagination, inflamed by ignorance, report,
and curiosity, invests unknown, and distant objects, faded under
actual observation. Complete ignorance and complete seclusion form
no security from the dangers incident to the world, or for correct
conduct at a distance from it. Ignorance may be the safety of an
idiot, and seclusion the security of a nun. Christian parents
should act on a more large and liberal principle, or what is the
use of observation and experience? The French women of fashion,
under the old regime, were bred in convents, and what women were
ever more licentious than many of them, as soon as marriage had set
them at liberty?
"I am persuaded that the best-intended formation of character, if
founded on ignorance or deceit, will never answer. As to Lucilla,
we have never attempted to blind her judgment. We have never
thought it necessary to leave her understanding out of the
question, while we were forming her heart. We have never told her
that the world is a scene absolutely destitute of pleasure: we have
never assured her that there is no amusement in the diversions
which we disapprove. Even if this assurance had not been deceitful,
it would have been vain and fruitless. We can not totally separate
her from the society of those who frequent them, who find their
happiness in them, and whom she would hear speak of them with
rapture.
"We went upon other grounds. We accustomed her to reflect that she
was an intellectual creature; that she was an immortal creature;
that she was a Christian. That to an intellectual being, diversions
must always be subordinate to the exercise of the mental faculties;
that to an immortal being, born to higher hopes than enjoyments,
the exercise of the mental faculties must be subservient to
religious duties. That in the practice of a Christian, self-denial
is the turning-point, the specific distinction. That as to many of
the pleasures which the world pursues, Christianity requires her
votaries to live above the temptations which they hold out. She
requires it the more especially, because Christians in our time,
not being called upon to make great and trying sacrifices, of life,
of fortune, and of liberty; and having but comparatively small
occasions to evidence their sincerity, should the more cheerfully
make the petty but daily renunciation of those pleasures which are
the very element in which worldly people exist.
"We have not misled her by unfair and flattering representations of
the Christian life. We have not, with a view to allure her to
embrace it on false pretenses, taught her that when religion is
once rooted in the heart, the remainder of life is uninterrupted
peace, and unbroken delight: that all shall be perpetually smooth
hereafter, because it is smooth at present. This would be as unfair
as to show a raw recruit the splendors of a parade day, and tell
him it was actual service. We have not made her believe that the
established Christian has no troubles to expect, no vexations to
fear, no storms to encounter. We have not attempted to cheat her
into religion, by concealing its difficulties, its trials, no, nor
its unpopularity.
"We have been always aware, that to have enforced the most exalted
Christian principles, together with the necessity of a
corresponding practice, ever so often and so strongly, would have
been worse than foolish, had we been impressing these truths one
part of the day, and had on the other part, been living ourselves
in the actual enjoyment of the very things against which we were
guarding her. My dear Charles, if we would talk to young people
with effect, we must, by the habits of which we set them the
example, dispose them to listen, or our documents will be something
worse than fruitless. It is really hard upon girls to be tantalized
with religious lectures, while they are at the same time tempted to
every thing against which they are warned; while the whole bent and
bias of the family practice are diametrically opposite to the
principles inculcated.
"In our own case, I think I may venture to affirm, that the plan
has answered. We endeavored to establish a principle of right,
instead of unprofitable invective against what was wrong. Perhaps
there can scarcely be found a religious family in which so few
anathemas have been denounced against this or that specific
diversion, as in ours. We aimed to take another road. The turn of
mind, the tendency of the employment, the force of the practice,
the bent of the conversation, the spirit of amusement, have all
leaned to the contrary direction, till the habits are gradually
worked into a kind of nature. It would be cruel to condemn a
creature to a retired life without qualifying her for retirement:
next to religion, nothing can possibly do this but mental
cultivation in women who are above the exercise of vulgar
employments. The girl who possesses only the worldly
acquirements--the singer and the dancer--when condemned to
retirement, may reasonably exclaim with Milton's Adam, when looking
at the constellations,
Why all night long shine these?
Wherefore, if none _behold_?
"Now the woman who derives her principles from the Bible, and her
amusements from intellectual sources, from the beauties of nature,
and from active employment and exercise, will not pant for
_beholders_. She is no clamorous beggar for the extorted alms of
admiration. She lives on her own stock. Her resources are within
herself. She possesses the truest independence. She does not wait
for the opinion of the world, to know if she is right; nor the
applause of the world, to know if she is happy.
"Too many religious people fancy that the infectious air of the
world is confined to the ball-room, or the play-house, and that
when you have escaped from these, you are got out of the reach of
its contagion. But the contagion follows wherever there is a human
heart left to its own natural impulse. And though I allow that
places and circumstances greatly contribute to augment or diminish
the evil; and that a prudent Christian will always avoid an
atmosphere which he thinks not quite wholesome; yet whoever lives
in the close examination of his own heart, will still find
something of the morbid mischief clinging to it, which will require
constant watching, whatever be his climate or his company.
"I have known pious persons, who would on no account allow their
children to attend places of gay resort, who were yet little
solicitous to extinguish the spirit which these places are
calculated to generate and nourish. This is rather a geographical
than a moral distinction. It is thinking more of the place than of
the temper. They restrain their persons; but are not careful to
expel from their hearts the dispositions which excite the appetite,
and form the very essence of danger. A young creature can not be
happy who spends her time at home in amusements destined for
exhibition, while she is forbidden to be exhibited.
"But while we are teaching them that Christianity involves a heroic
self-denial; that it requires some things to be done, and others to
be sacrificed, at which mere people of the world revolt; that it
directs us to renounce some pursuits because they are wrong, and
others because they are trifling; we should, at the same time, let
them see and feel, that to a Christian the region of enjoyment is
not so narrow and circumscribed, is not so barren and unproductive,
nor the pleasures it produces so few and small, as the enemies of
religion would insinuate. While early habits of self-denial are
giving firmness to the character, strengthening the texture of the
mind, and hardening it against ordinary temptations; the pleasures
and employments which we substitute in the stead of those we
banish, must be such as tend to raise the taste, to invigorate the
intellect, to exalt the nature, and enlarge the sphere of
enjoyment; to give a tone to the mind, and an elevation to the
sentiments, which shall really reduce to insignificance the
pleasures that are prohibited.
"In our own instance I humbly trust, that through the divine
blessing, perseverance has been its own reward. As to Lucilla, I
firmly believe that right habits are now so rooted, and the relish
of superior pleasures so established in her mind, that had she the
whole range of human enjoyment at her command; had she no higher
consideration, no fear of God, no obedience to her mother and me,
which forbade the ordinary dissipations, she would voluntarily
renounce them, from a full persuasion of their empty, worthless,
unsatisfying nature, and from a superinduced taste for higher
gratifications.
"I am as far from intending to represent my daughter as a faultless
creature, as she herself is from wishing to be so represented. She
is deeply conscious both of the corruption of her nature, and the
deficiencies of her life. This consciousness I trust will continue
to stimulate her vigilance without which all religion will decline,
and to maintain her humility, without which all religion is vain.
"My dear Charles! a rational sense of felicity lies open before you
both. It is lawful to rejoice in the fair perspective, but it is
safe to rejoice with trembling. Do not abandon yourself to the
chimerical hope that life will be to you, what it has never yet
been to any man--a scene of unmingled delight. This life, so bright
in prospect, will have its sorrows. This life, which at
four-and-twenty seems to stretch itself to an indefinite length,
will have an end. May its sorrows correct its illusions! May its
close be the entrance on a life, which shall have no sorrows and no
end.
"I will not say how frequently we talk of you, nor how much we miss
you. Need I tell you that the person who says least on the subject,
is not the one that least feels your absence? She writes by this
post.
"Adieu, my dear Charles! I am with great truth your attached
friend, and hope before Christmas to subscribe myself your
affectionate father,
"FRANCIS STANLEY."
Delightful hope! as Miss Stanley, when that blessed event takes place,
will resign her name, I shall resume mine, and joyfully renounce forever
that of
C[OE]LEBS.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Coelebs In Search of a Wife, by Hannah More