If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding;
If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures:
Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.
--Proverbs ii. 3, 4, 5.
While Clarence was thus misjudged by one whose affections and conduct
he, in turn, naturally misinterpreted; while Lady Flora was alternately
struggling against and submitting to the fate which Lady Westborough saw
approach with gladness, the father with indifference, and the bridegroom
with a pride that partook less of rapture than revenge,--our unfortunate
lover was endeavouring to glean, from Mordaunt’s conversation and
example, somewhat of that philosophy so rare except in the theories
of the civilized and the occasional practice of the barbarian, which,
though it cannot give us a charm against misfortune, bestows, at least,
upon us the energy to support it.
We have said already that when the first impression produced by
Mordaunt’s apparent pride and coldness wore away, it required little
penetration to discover the benevolence and warmth of his mind. But none
ignorant of his original disposition, or the misfortunes of his life,
could ever have pierced the depth of his self-sacrificing nature,
or measured the height of his lofty and devoted virtue. Many men may
perhaps be found who will give up to duty a cherished wish or even a
darling vice; but few will ever renounce to it their rooted tastes,
or the indulgence of those habits which have almost become by long use
their happiness itself. Naturally melancholy and thoughtful, feeding
the sensibilities of his heart upon fiction, and though addicted to
the cultivation of reason rather than fancy, having perhaps more of
the deeper and acuter characteristics of the poet than those calm
and half-callous properties of nature supposed to belong to the
metaphysician and the calculating moralist, Mordaunt was above all men
fondly addicted to solitude, and inclined to contemplations less useful
than profound. The untimely death of Isabel, whom he had loved with that
love which is the vent of hoarded and passionate musings long nourished
upon romance, and lavishing the wealth of a soul that overflows with
secreted tenderness upon the first object that can bring reality to
fiction,--that event had not only darkened melancholy into gloom, but
had made loneliness still more dear to his habits by all the ties
of memory and all the consecrations of regret. The companionless
wanderings; the midnight closet; the thoughts which, as Hume said of
his own, could not exist in the world, but were all busy with life in
seclusion,--these were rendered sweeter than ever to a mind for which
the ordinary objects of the world were now utterly loveless; and the
musings of solitude had become, as it were, a rightful homage and
offering to the dead. We may form, then, some idea of the extent to
which, in Mordaunt’s character, principle predominated over inclination,
and regard for others over the love of self, when we see him tearing
his spirit from its beloved retreats and abstracted contemplations,
and devoting it to duties from which its fastidious and refined
characteristics were particularly calculated to revolt. When we have
considered his attachment to the hermitage, we can appreciate the virtue
which made him among the most active citizens in the great world;
when we have considered the natural selfishness of grief, the pride of
philosophy, the indolence of meditation, the eloquence of wealth, which
says, “Rest, and toil not,” and the temptation within, which says, “Obey
the voice,”--when we have considered these, we can perhaps do justice
to the man who, sometimes on foot and in the coarsest attire, travelled
from inn to inn and from hut to hut; who made human misery the object
of his search and human happiness of his desire; who, breaking aside an
aversion to rude contact, almost feminine in its extreme, voluntarily
sought the meanest companions, and subjected himself to the coarsest
intrusions; for whom the wail of affliction or the moan of hunger was
as a summons which allowed neither hesitation nor appeal; who seemed
possessed of a ubiquity for the purposes of good almost resembling that
attributed to the wanderer in the magnificent fable of Melmoth for the
temptations to evil; who, by a zeal and labour that brought to habit and
inclination a thousand martyrdoms, made his life a very hour-glass, in
which each sand was a good deed or a virtuous design.
Many plunge into public affairs, to which they have had a previous
distaste, from the desire of losing the memory of a private affliction;
but so far from wishing to heal the wounds of remembrance by the
anodynes which society can afford, it was only in retirement that
Mordaunt found the flowers from which balm could be distilled. Many are
through vanity magnanimous, and benevolent from the selfishness of fame
but so far from seeking applause where he bestowed favour, Mordaunt
had sedulously shrouded himself in darkness and disguise. And by that
increasing propensity to quiet, so often found among those addicted to
lofty or abstruse contemplation, he had conquered the ambition of youth
with the philosophy of a manhood that had forestalled the affections
of age. Many, in short, have become great or good to the community by
individual motives easily resolved into common and earthly elements of
desire; but they who inquire diligently into human nature have not often
the exalted happiness to record a character like Mordaunt’s, actuated
purely by a systematic principle of love, which covered mankind, as
heaven does earth, with an atmosphere of light extending to the remotest
corners and penetrating the darkest recesses.
It was one of those violent and gusty evenings which give to an English
autumn something rude, rather than gentle, in its characteristics, that
Mordaunt and Clarence sat together,
“And sowed the hours with various seeds of talk.”
The young Isabel, the only living relic of the departed one, sat by her
father’s side upon the floor; and though their discourse was far beyond
the comprehension of her years, yet did she seem to listen with a quiet
and absorbed attention. In truth, child as she was, she so loved, and
almost worshipped, her father that the very tones of his voice had in
them a charm which could always vibrate, as it were, to her heart; and
hush her into silence; and that melancholy and deep though somewhat low
voice, when it swelled or trembled with thought,--which in Mordaunt was
feeling,--made her sad, she knew not why; and when she heard it, she
would creep to his side, and put her little hand on his, and look up
to him with eyes in whose tender and glistening blue the spirit of her
mother seemed to float. She was serious and thoughtful and loving beyond
the usual capacities of childhood; perhaps her solitary condition and
habits of constant intercourse with one so grave as Mordaunt, and who
always, when not absent on his excursions of charity, loved her to be
with him, had given to her mind a precocity of feeling, and tinctured
the simplicity of infancy with what ought to have been the colours of
after years. She was not inclined to the sports of her age; she loved,
rather, and above all else, to sit by Mordaunt’s side and silently pore
over some books or feminine task, and to steal her eyes every now and
then away from her employment, in order to watch his motions or provide
for whatever her vigilant kindness of heart imagined he desired. And
often, when he saw her fairy and lithe form hovering about him and
attending on his wants, or her beautiful countenance glow with pleasure,
when she fancied she supplied them, he almost believed that Isabel yet
lived, though in another form, and that a love so intense and holy as
hers had been, might transmigrate, but could not perish.
The young Isabel had displayed a passion for music so early that it
almost seemed innate; and as, from the mild and wise education she
received, her ardour had never been repelled on the one hand or
overstrained on the other, so, though she had but just passed her
seventh year, she had attained to a singular proficiency in the art,--an
art that suited well with her lovely face and fond feelings and innocent
heart; and it was almost heavenly, in the literal acceptation of the
word, to hear her sweet though childish voice swell along the still
pure airs of summer, and to see her angelic countenance all rapt and
brilliant with the enthusiasm which her own melodies created.
Never had she borne the bitter breath of unkindness, nor writhed beneath
that customary injustice which punishes in others the sins of our own
temper and the varied fretfulness of caprice; and so she had none of
the fears and meannesses and acted untruths which so usually pollute and
debase the innocence of childhood. But the promise of her ingenuous brow
(over which the silken hair flowed, parted into two streams of gold),
and of the fearless but tender eyes, and of the quiet smile which sat
forever upon the rosy mouth, like Joy watching Love, was kept in its
fullest extent by the mind, from which all thoughts, pure, kind, and
guileless, flowed like waters from a well which a spirit has made holy
for its own dwelling.
On this evening we have said that she sat by her father’s side
and listened, though she only in part drank in its sense, to his
conversation with his guest.
The room was of great extent and surrounded with books, over which at
close intervals the busts of the departed Great and the immortal Wise
looked down. There was the sublime beauty of Plato, the harsher and
more earthly countenance of Tully, the only Roman (except Lucretius) who
might have been a Greek. There the mute marble gave the broad front of
Bacon (itself a world), and there the features of Locke showed how the
mind wears away the links of flesh with the file of thought. And over
other departments of those works which remind us that man is made little
lower than the angels, the stern face of the Florentine who sung of hell
contrasted with the quiet grandeur enthroned on the fair brow of the
English poet,--“blind but bold,”--and there the glorious but genial
countenance of him who has found in all humanity a friend, conspicuous
among sages and minstrels, claimed brotherhood with all.
The fire burned clear and high, casting a rich twilight (for there
was no other light in the room) over that Gothic chamber, and shining
cheerily upon the varying countenance of Clarence and the more
contemplative features of his host. In the latter you might see that
care and thought had been harsh but not unhallowed companions. In the
lines which crossed his expanse of brow, time seemed to have buried many
hopes; but his mien and air, if loftier, were gentler than in younger
days; and though they had gained somewhat in dignity, had lost greatly
in reserve.
There was in the old chamber, with its fretted roof and ancient
“garniture,” the various books which surrounded it, walls that the
learned built to survive themselves, and in the marble likenesses
of those for whom thought had won eternity, joined to the hour, the
breathing quiet, and the hearth-light, by whose solitary rays we
love best in the eves of autumn to discourse on graver or subtler
themes,--there was in all this a spell which seemed particularly to
invite and to harmonize with that tone of conversation, some portions of
which we are now about to relate.
“How loudly,” said Clarence, “that last gust swept by; you remember that
beautiful couplet in Tibullus,--
‘Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem,
Et dominam tenero detinuisse sinu.’”
[“Sweet on our couch to hear the winds above,
And cling with closer heart to her we love.”]
“Ay,” answered Mordaunt, with a scarcely audible sigh, “that is the
feeling of the lover at the immites ventos, but we sages of the lamp
make our mistress Wisdom, and when the winds rage without it is to her
that we cling. See how, from the same object, different conclusions are
drawn! The most common externals of nature, the wind and the wave, the
stars and the heavens, the very earth on which we tread, never excite in
different bosoms the same ideas; and it is from our own hearts, and not
from an outward source, that we draw the hues which colour the web of
our existence.”
“It is true,” answered Clarence. “You remember that in two specks of the
moon the enamoured maiden perceived two unfortunate lovers, while the
ambitious curate conjectured that they were the spires of a cathedral?
But it is not only to our feelings, but also to our reasonings, that we
give the colours which they wear. The moral, for instance, which to one
man seems atrocious, to another is divine. On the tendency of the same
work what three people will agree? And how shall the most sanguine
moralist hope to benefit mankind when he finds that, by the multitude,
his wisest endeavours to instruct are often considered but as
instruments to pervert?”
“I believe,” answered Mordaunt, “that it is from our ignorance that our
contentions flow: we debate with strife and with wrath, with bickering
and with hatred; but of the thing debated upon we remain in the
profoundest darkness. Like the labourers of Babel, while we endeavour
in vain to express our meaning to each other, the fabric by which, for
a common end, we would have ascended to heaven from the ills of earth
remains forever unadvanced and incomplete. Let us hope that knowledge
is the universal language which shall reunite us. As, in their sublime
allegory, the Ancients signified that only through virtue we arrive at
honour, so let us believe that only through knowledge can we arrive at
virtue!”
“And yet,” said Clarence, “that seems a melancholy truth for the mass of
the people, who have no time for the researches of wisdom.”
“Not so much so as at first we might imagine,” answered Mordaunt: “the
few smooth all paths for the many. The precepts of knowledge it is
difficult to extricate from error but, once discovered, they gradually
pass into maxims; and thus what the sage’s life was consumed in
acquiring becomes the acquisition of a moment to posterity. Knowledge
is like the atmosphere: in order to dispel the vapour and dislodge
the frost, our ancestors felled the forest, drained the marsh, and
cultivated the waste, and we now breathe without an effort, in the
purified air and the chastened climate, the result of the labour of
generations and the progress of ages! As to-day, the common mechanic may
equal in science, however inferior in genius, the friar [Roger Bacon]
whom his contemporaries feared as a magician, so the opinions which now
startle as well as astonish may be received hereafter as acknowledged
axioms, and pass into ordinary practice. We cannot even tell how far
the sanguine theories of certain philosophers [See Condorcet “On the
Progress of the Human Mind,” written some years after the supposed date
of this conversation, but in which there is a slight, but eloquent and
affecting, view of the philosophy to which Mordaunt refers.] deceive
them when they anticipate, for future ages, a knowledge which shall
bring perfection to the mind, baffle the diseases of the body, and even
protract to a date now utterly unknown the final destination of life:
for Wisdom is a palace of which only the vestibule has been entered;
nor can we guess what treasures are hid in those chambers of which the
experience of the past can afford us neither analogy nor clew.”
“It was, then,” said Clarence, who wished to draw his companion into
speaking of himself, “it was, then, from your addiction to studies not
ordinarily made the subject of acquisition that you date (pardon me)
your generosity, your devotedness, your feeling for others, and your
indifference to self?”
“You flatter me,” said Mordaunt, modestly (and we may be permitted to
crave attention to his reply, since it unfolds the secret springs of
a character so singularly good and pure), “you flatter me: but I will
answer you as if you had put the question without the compliment; nor,
perhaps, will it be wholly uninstructive, as it will certainly be new,
to sketch, without recurrence to events or what I may call exterior
facts, a brief and progressive History of One Human Mind.”
“Our first era of life is under the influence of the primitive feelings:
we are pleased, and we laugh; hurt, and we weep: we vent our little
passions the moment they are excited: and so much of novelty have we
to perceive, that we have little leisure to reflect. By and by, fear
teaches us to restrain our feelings: when displeased, we seek to revenge
the displeasure, and are punished; we find the excess of our joy,
our sorrow, our anger, alike considered criminal, and chidden into
restraint. From harshness we become acquainted with deceit: the promise
made is not fulfilled, the threat not executed, the fear falsely
excited, and the hope wilfully disappointed; we are surrounded by
systematized delusion, and we imbibe the contagion.”
“From being forced into concealing thoughts which we do conceive, we
begin to affect those which we do not: so early do we learn the two main
tasks of life, To Suppress and To Feign, that our memory will not carry
us beyond that period of artifice to a state of nature when the
twin principles of veracity and belief were so strong as to lead the
philosophers of a modern school into the error of terming them innate.”
[Reid: On the Human Mind.]
“It was with a mind restless and confused, feelings which were
alternately chilled and counterfeited (the necessary results of my first
tuition), that I was driven to mix with others of my age. They did not
like me, nor do I blame them. ‘Les manieres que l’on neglige comme de
petites choses, sont souvent ce qui fait que les hommes decident de vous
en bien ou en mal. [“Those manners which one neglects as trifling are
often the cause of the opinion, good or bad, formed of you by men.”]
Manner is acquired so imperceptibly that we have given its origin to
Nature, as we do the origin of all else for which our ignorance can
find no other source. Mine was unprepossessing: I was disliked, and I
returned the feeling; I sought not, and I was shunned. Then I thought
that all were unjust to me, and I grew bitter and sullen and morose: I
cased myself in the stubbornness of pride; I pored over the books which
spoke of the worthlessness of man; and I indulged the discontent of
myself by brooding over the frailties of my kind.”
“My passions were strong: they told me to suppress them. The precept was
old, and seemed wise: I attempted to enforce it. I had already begun, in
earlier infancy, the lesson: I had now only to renew it. Fortunately I
was diverted from this task, or my mind in conquering its passions would
have conquered its powers. I learned in after lessons that the passions
are not to be suppressed; they are to be directed; and, when directed,
rather to be strengthened than subdued.”
“Observe how a word may influence a life: a man whose opinion I
esteemed, made of me the casual and trite remark, that ‘my nature
was one of which it was impossible to augur evil or good: it might be
extreme in either.’ This observation roused me into thought: could
I indeed be all that was good or evil? had I the choice, and could I
hesitate which to choose? But what was good and what was evil? That
seemed the most difficult inquiry.”
“I asked and received no satisfactory reply: in the words of Erasmus,
‘Totius negotii caput ac fontem ignorant, divinant, ac delirant omnes;’
[“All ignore, guess, and rave about the head and fountain of the whole
question at issue.”] so I resolved myself to inquire and to decide. I
subjected to my scrutiny the moralist and the philosopher. I saw that
on all sides they disputed, but I saw that they grew virtuous in the
dispute: they uttered much that was absurd about the origin of good, but
much more that was exalted in its praise; and I never rose from any work
which treated ably upon morals, whatever were its peculiar opinions,
but I felt my breast enlightened and my mind ennobled by my studies. The
professor of one sect commanded me to avoid the dogmatist of another
as the propagator of moral poison; and the dogmatist retaliated on the
professor: but I avoided neither; I read both, and turned all ‘into
honey and fine gold.’ No inquiry into wisdom, however superficial,
is undeserving attention. The vagaries of the idlest fancy will often
chance, as it were, upon the most useful discoveries of truth, and
serve as a guide to after and to slower disciples of wisdom; even as
the peckings of birds in an unknown country indicate to the adventurous
seamen the best and the safest fruits.”
“From the works of men I looked into their lives; and I found that there
was a vast difference (though I am not aware that it has before
been remarked) between those who cultivated a talent, and those who
cultivated the mind: I found that the mere men of genius were often
erring or criminal in their lives; but that vice or crime in the
disciples of philosophy was strikingly unfrequent and rare. The
extremest culture of reason had not, it is true, been yet carried far
enough to preserve the labourer from follies of opinion, but a moderate
culture had been sufficient to deter him from the vices of life. And
only to the sons of Wisdom, as of old to the sages of the East, seemed
given the unerring star, which, through the travail of Earth and the
clouds of Heaven, led them at the last to their God!”
“When I gleaned this fact from biography, I paused, and said, ‘Then
must there be something excellent in Wisdom, if it can even in its
most imperfect disciples be thus beneficial to morality.’ Pursuing this
sentiment, I redoubled my researches, and, behold, the object of
my quest was won! I had before sought a satisfactory answer to the
question, ‘What is Virtue?’ from men of a thousand tenets, and my heart
had rejected all I had received. ‘Virtue,’ said some, and my soul bowed
reverently to the dictate, ‘Virtue is Religion.’ I heard and humbled
myself before the Divine Book. Let me trust that I did not humble myself
in vain! But the dictate satisfied less than it awed; for either it
limited Virtue to the mere belief, or by extending it to the practice,
of Religion, it extended also the inquiry to the method in which the
practice should be applied. But with the first interpretation of the
dictate who could rest contented?--for while, in the perfect enforcement
of the tenets of our faith, all virtue may be found, so in the
passive and the mere belief in its divinity, we find only an engine as
applicable to evil as to good: the torch which should illumine the altar
has also lighted the stake, and the zeal of the persecutor has been no
less sincere than the heroism of the martyr. Rejecting, therefore, this
interpretation, I accepted the other: I felt in my heart, and I rejoiced
as I felt it, that in the practice of Religion the body of all virtue
could be found. But, in that conviction, had I at once an answer to my
inquiries? Could the mere desire of good be sufficient to attain it; and
was the attempt at virtue synonymous with success? On the contrary, have
not those most desirous of obeying the precepts of God often sinned the
most against their spirit, and has not zeal been frequently the most
ardent when crime was the most rife? [There can be no doubt that they
who exterminated the Albigenses, established the Inquisition, lighted
the fires at Smithfield, were actuated, not by a desire to do evil, but
(monstrous as it may seem) to do good; not to counteract, but to enforce
what they believed the wishes of the Almighty; so that a good intention,
without the enlightenment to direct it to a fitting object, may be as
pernicious to human happiness as one the most fiendish. We are told of
a whole people who used to murder their guests, not from ferocity or
interest, but from the pure and praiseworthy motive of obtaining the
good qualities, which they believed, by the murder of the deceased,
devolved upon them!] But what, if neither sincerity nor zeal was
sufficient to constitute goodness; what if in the breasts of the
best-intentioned crime had been fostered the more dangerously because
the more disguised,--what ensued? That the religion which they
professed, they believed, they adored, they had also misunderstood; and
that the precepts to be drawn from the Holy Book they had darkened by
their ignorance or perverted by their passions! Here then, at once,
my enigma was solved; here then, at once, I was led to the goal of my
inquiry! Ignorance and the perversion of passion are but the same thing,
though under different names; for only by our ignorance are our passions
perverted. Therefore, what followed?--that, if by ignorance the greatest
of God’s gifts had been turned to evil, Knowledge alone was the light
by which even the pages of Religion should be read. It followed that the
Providence that knew that the nature it had created should be constantly
in exercise, and that only through labour comes improvement, had wisely
ordained that we should toil even for the blessing of its holiest and
clearest laws. It had given us in Religion, as in this magnificent
world, treasures and harvests which might be called forth in
incalculable abundance; but had decreed that through our exertions only
should they be called forth a palace more gorgeous than the palaces
of enchantment was before us, but its chambers were a labyrinth which
required a clew.”
“What was that clew? Was it to be sought for in the corners of earth, or
was it not beneficially centred in ourselves? Was it not the exercise
of a power easy for us to use, if we would dare to do so? Was it not the
simple exertion of the discernment granted to us for all else? Was it
not the exercise of our reason? ‘Reason!’ cried the Zealot, ‘pernicious
and hateful instrument, it is fraught with peril to yourself and to
others: do not think for a moment of employing an engine so fallacious
and so dangerous.’ But I listened not to the Zealot: could the steady
and bright torch which, even where the Star of Bethlehem had withheld
its diviner light, had guided some patient and unwearied steps to the
very throne of Virtue, become but a deceitful meteor to him who kindled
it for the aid of Religion, and in an eternal cause? Could it be
perilous to task our reason, even to the utmost, in the investigation of
the true utility and hidden wisdom of the works of God, when God himself
had ordained that only through some exertion of our reason should we
know either from Nature or Revelation that He himself existed? ‘But,’
cried the Zealot again, ‘but mere mortal wisdom teaches men presumption,
and presumption doubt.’ ‘Pardon me,’ I answered; ‘it is not Wisdom,
but Ignorance, which teaches men presumption: Genius may be sometimes
arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as Knowledge.’ ‘But,’ resumed
the Zealot, ‘those accustomed to subtle inquiries may dwell only on the
minutiae of faith,--inexplicable, because useless to explain, and argue
from those minutiae against the grand and universal truth.’ Pardon me
again: it is the petty not the enlarged mind which prefers casuistry
to conviction; it is the confined and short sight of Ignorance which,
unable to comprehend the great bearings of truth, pries only into its
narrow and obscure corners, occupying itself in scrutinizing the atoms
of a part, while the eagle eye of Wisdom contemplates, in its widest
scale, the luminous majesty of the whole. Survey our faults, our errors,
our vices,--fearful and fertile field! Trace them to their causes: all
those causes resolve themselves into one,--Ignorance! For as we have
already seen that from this source flow the abuses of Religion, so also
from this source flow the abuses of all other blessings,--of talents, of
riches, of power; for we abuse things, either because we know not their
real use, or because, with an equal blindness, we imagine the abuse more
adapted to our happiness. But as ignorance, then, is the sole spring
of evil, so, as the antidote to ignorance is knowledge, it necessarily
follows that, were we consummate in knowledge, we should be perfect in
good. He, therefore, who retards the progress of intellect countenances
crime,--nay, to a State, is the greatest of criminals; while he who
circulates that mental light more precious than the visual is the
holiest improver and the surest benefactor of his race. Nor let us
believe, with the dupes, of a shallow policy, that there exists upon the
earth one prejudice that can be called salutary or one error beneficial
to perpetrate. As the petty fish which is fabled to possess the property
of arresting the progress of the largest vessel to which it clings, even
so may a single prejudice, unnoticed or despised, more than the adverse
blast or the dead calm, delay the bark of Knowledge in the vast seas of
Time.”
“It is true that the sanguineness of philanthropists may have carried
them too far; it is true (for the experiment has not yet been made) that
God may have denied to us, in this state, the consummation of knowledge,
and the consequent perfection in good; but because we cannot be perfect
are we to resolve we will be evil? One step in knowledge is one step
from sin: one step from sin is one step nearer to Heaven: Oh! never let
us be deluded by those who, for political motives, would adulterate the
divinity of religious truths; never let us believe that our Father in
Heaven rewards most the one talent unemployed, or that prejudice and
indolence and folly find the most favour in His sight! The very heathen
has bequeathed to us a nobler estimate of His nature; and the same
sentence which so sublimely declares ‘TRUTH IS THE BODY OF GOD’ declares
also ‘AND LIGHT IS HIS SHADOW.’” [Plato.]
“Persuaded, then, that knowledge contained the key to virtue, it was to
knowledge that I applied. The first grand lesson which it taught me
was the solution of a phrase most hackneyed, least understood; namely,
‘common-sense.’ [Koinonoaemosunae, sensus communis.] It is in the
Portico of the Greek sage that that phrase has received its legitimate
explanation; it is there we are taught that ‘common-sense’ signifies
‘the sense of the common interest.’ Yes! it is the most beautiful truth
in morals that we have no such thing as a distinct or divided interest
from our race. In their welfare is ours; and, by choosing the broadest
paths to effect their happiness, we choose the surest and the shortest
to our own. As I read and pondered over these truths, I was sensible
that a great change was working a fresh world out of the former
materials of my mind. My passions, which before I had checked into
uselessness, or exerted to destruction, now started forth in a nobler
shape, and prepared for a new direction: instead of urging me to
individual aggrandizement, they panted for universal good, and coveted
the reward of Ambition only for the triumphs of Benevolence.”
“This is one stage of virtue; I cannot resist the belief that there is
a higher: it is when we begin to love virtue, not for its objects, but
itself. For there are in knowledge these two excellences: first, that it
offers to every man, the most selfish and the most exalted, his peculiar
inducement to good. It says to the former, ‘Serve mankind, and you serve
yourself;’ to the latter, ‘In choosing the best means to secure your
own happiness, you will have the sublime inducement of promoting the
happiness of mankind.’”
“The second excellence of Knowledge is that even the selfish man, when
he has once begun to love Virtue from little motives, loses the motives
as he increases the love; and at last worships the deity, where before
he only coveted the gold upon its altar.”
“And thus I learned to love Virtue solely for its own beauty. I said
with one who, among much dross, has many particles of ore, ‘If it be not
estimable in itself, I can see nothing estimable in following it for the
sake of a bargain.’ [Lord Shaftesbury.]
“I looked round the world, and saw often Virtue in rags and Vice in
purple: the former conduces to happiness, it is true, but the happiness
lies within and not in externals. I contemned the deceitful folly
with which writers have termed it poetical justice to make the good
ultimately prosperous in wealth, honour, fortunate love, or successful
desires. Nothing false, even in poetry, can be just; and that pretended
moral is, of all, the falsest. Virtue is not more exempt than Vice from
the ills of fate, but it contains within itself always an energy
to resist them, and sometimes an anodyne to soothe,--to repay your
quotation from Tibullus,--
‘Crura sonant ferro, sed canit inter opus!’”
[“The chains clank on its limbs, but it sings amidst its tasks.”]
“When in the depths of my soul I set up that divinity of this nether
earth, which Brutus never really understood, if, because unsuccessful in
its efforts, he doubted its existence, I said in the proud prayer with
which I worshipped it, ‘Poverty may humble my lot, but it shall not
debase thee; Temptation may shake my nature, but not the rock on which
thy temple is based; Misfortune may wither all the hopes that have
blossomed around thine altar, but I will sacrifice dead leaves when the
flowers are no more. Though all that I have loved perish, all that I
have coveted fade away, I may murmur at fate, but I will have no voice
but that of homage for thee! Nor, while thou smilest upon my way, would
I exchange with the loftiest and happiest of thy foes! More bitter than
aught of what I then dreamed have been my trials, but I have fulfilled
my vow!’”
“I believe that alone to be a true description of Virtue which makes
it all-sufficient to itself, that alone a just portraiture of its
excellence which does not lessen its internal power by exaggerating its
outward advantages, nor degrade its nobility by dwelling only on its
rewards. The grandest moral of ancient lore has ever seemed to me that
which the picture of Prometheus affords; in whom neither the shaking
earth, nor the rending heaven, nor the rock without, nor the vulture
within, could cause regret for past benevolence, or terror for future
evil, or envy, even amidst tortures, for the dishonourable prosperity
of his insulter! [Mercury.--See the “Prometheus” of Aeschylus.] Who
that has glowed over this exalted picture will tell us that we must make
Virtue prosperous in order to allure to it, or clothe Vice with misery
in order to revolt us from its image? Oh! who, on the contrary, would
not learn to adore Virtue, from the bitterest sufferings of such a
votary, a hundredfold more than he would learn to love Vice from the
gaudiest triumphs of its most fortunate disciples?”
Something there was in Mordaunt’s voice and air, and the impassioned
glow of his countenance, that, long after he had ceased, thrilled in
Clarence’s heart, “like the remembered tone of a mute lyre.” And when
a subsequent event led him at rash moments to doubt whether Virtue was
indeed the chief good, Linden recalled the words of that night and the
enthusiasm with which they were uttered, repented that in his doubt he
had wronged the truth, and felt that there is a power in the deep heart
of man to which even Destiny is submitted!