third floor in —— Street. Thither we marched, with a hope, undiminished
by the two preceding disappointments, that here at length we would find
supper. Our knock at Mrs Smiles’s hospitable portal produced a strange
rushing noise within; and when the servant appeared, I observed in the
far, dim vista of the passage, one or two slip-slop figures darting
across out of one door into another, and others again crossing in the
opposite direction; and then there was heard a low anxious whispering,
while a single dishevelled head peeped out from one of the doors, and
then the head was withdrawn, and all was still. We were introduced into
a room which had evidently been the scene of some recent turmoil of no
ordinary kind, for female clothes lay scattered in every direction,
besides some articles which more properly belong to a dressing-room. We
had not been here above a minute, when we heard our advent announced
by the servant in an adjoining apartment to Mrs Smiles herself, and
some of her young ladies. A flood of obloquy was instantly opened upon
the girl by one of her young mistresses—Miss Eliza, we thought—for
having given admission to any body at this late hour, especially when
she knew that they were to be up early next morning to commence their
journey, and had still a great many of their things to pack. “And such
a room you have shown them into, you goose!” said the enraged Miss.
The girl was questioned as to our appearance, for she had neglected to
ask our name; and then we heard one young lady say, “It must be these
Balderstones. What can have set them a-gadding to-night? I suppose we
_must_ ask them to stay to supper, for they’ll have come for nothing
else—confound them! Mary, you are in best trim; will you go in and
speak to them till we get ourselves ready? The cold meat will do, with
a few eggs. I’m sure they could not have come at a worse time.” Miss
Mary accordingly came hastily in after a few minutes, and received
us with a thousand protestations of welcome. Her mother would be so
truly delighted to see us, for she had fairly given up all hope of our
ever visiting her again. She was just getting ready, and would be here
immediately. “In the meantime, Mrs Balderstone, you will lay by your
cloak and bonnet. Let me assist you,”—&c. We had got enough, however,
of the Smileses. We saw we had dropped into the midst of a scene of
easy dishabille, and surprised it with unexpected ceremony. It would
have been cruel to the Smileses to put them about at such a time, and
ten times more cruel to ourselves to sit in friendly intercourse with
a family who had treated us in such a manner behind our backs. “_These
Balderstones!_” The phrase was wormwood. My wife, therefore, made up a
story to the effect that we had only called in going home from another
friend’s house, in order to inquire after the character of a servant.
As Mrs Smiles was out of order, we would not disturb her that evening,
but call on some other occasion. Of course, the more that we declaimed
about the impossibility of remaining to supper, the more earnestly did
Miss Smiles entreat us to remain. It would be such a disappointment
to her mother, and still more to Eliza and the rest of them. She was
obliged, however, with well-affected reluctance, to give way to our
impetuous desire of escaping.
Having once more stepped forth into the cold blast of November,
we began to feel that supper was becoming a thing which we could
not much longer, with comfort, trust to the contingency of _general
invitations_. We therefore sent home our thoughts to the excellent
cold duck and green cheese which lay in our larder, and, picturing to
ourselves the comfort of our parlour fireside, with a good bottle of
ale toasting within the fender, resolved no more to wander abroad in
search of happiness, unless there should be something like a certainty
of good fare and a hearty welcome elsewhere.
Thus it is always with general invitations. “Do call on us some
evening, Miss Duncan, just in an easy way, and, pray, bring your seam
with you, for there is nothing I hate so much as ceremonious set
calls,” is the sort of invitations you will hear in the middle ranks
of life, given to some good-natured female acquaintance, while you
yourself, if a bachelor, will in the same way be bidden to call “just
after you are done with business, and any night in the week; it is
all the same, for you can never catch us unprepared.” The deuce is in
these general invitations. People give them without reflecting that
they cannot be at all times ready to entertain visitors; cannot be so
much as at home to have the chance of doing so. Other people accept and
act upon them, at the risk of either putting their visitors dreadfully
about, or receiving a very poor entertainment. The sudden arrival of
an unexpected guest who has come on the faith of one of these delusive
roving invitations, indeed, in many instances, disorganises the economy
of a whole household. Nothing tries a housewife so much. The state of
her larder or cupboard instantaneously flashes on her mind; and if she
do not happen to be a notable, and, consequently, not a regular curer
of beef, or curious in the matter of fresh eggs, a hundred to one but
she feels herself in an awkward dilemma, and, I have no doubt, would
wish the visitor any where but where he is. The truth is, by these
general invitations you may chance to arrive at a death or a marriage,
a period of mourning or rejoicing, when the sympathies of the family
are all engaged with matters of their own.
If people will have their friends beside them, let them, for the sake
of all that is comfortable, give them a definite invitation at once;
a general invitation is much worse than no invitation at all; it is
little else than an insult, however unintentional; for it is as much as
to say that the person is not worth inviting in a regular manner. In
“good” society, a conventional understanding obtains in the delicate
point of invitations; there is an established scale of the value of
the different meals adapted to the rank of the invited. I advise all
my friends to follow this invaluable code of civility. By all means
let your invitations have a special reference to time. On the other
hand, if a friend comes plump down with a request that you will favour
him with your company at a certain hour of the day, why, go without
hesitation. The man deserves your company for his honesty, and you will
be sure to put him to no more trouble than what he directly calculates
on. But turn a deaf ear, if you be wise, to _general_ invitations; they
are nets spread out to ensnare your comfort. Rather content yourself
with the good old maxim, which somebody has inscribed over an ancient
doorway in one of the old streets of Edinburgh, TECUM HABITA—_Keep at
Home_.
CONFESSORS.
It is a very general impression that the system of auricular confession
was given up at the Reformation. Such is by no means the case; every
man and mother’s son in the country still keeps his _confessor_. By
this epithet, it may be guessed, I mean that chief and most particular
friend whom every man keeps about him—who stands his best man when he
is married, and becomes his second when he fights a duel—his double,
in short, or second self—a creature whom you almost always find with
him when you call, and who either walks under his arm in the street, or
is found waiting for him while he steps into some neighbouring shop,
or, as the case may happen, is waited for by him.
I make bold to say, there is not a trader any where who does not keep
his confessor. The creature haunts the shop, till he almost seems the
Genius of the Place, to the grievous prepossession of newspapers,
and, what is more intolerable still, to the exclusive occupation of
the ear of the worthy shopkeeper himself. The evening is the grand
revel-time for confessors of this genus. Between eight and nine, you
see them gathering to the shops of their respective victims, like fowl
to roost. As you pass about nine, you observe, on looking in, that the
discipline and rigour of shop-life has dissolved. Master, men, and
boys, feel the approach of the moment of emancipation, with a peculiar
salience of thought, alternating with a deep and tranquil delight. The
confessor reigns in the spirit of this glorious hour, and his laugh,
and his joke, and his news, and his proffered pinch, are listened to,
re-echoed, and partaken of by his devotee, with a pleasure of the
keenest nature, and ominous, you may make sure, of oysters and gin
punch on the way home.
In some shops, confessors cluster like grapes over a vintner’s door.
They block up the way of custom; and it is evident, in many cases, that
the devotee would rather lose the chance of a penny from a customer, by
omitting opportunities of attack, temptation, and inveiglement, than
lose the joke that is passing in the merry circle of his confessors,
which his ear drinks in as a precious _aside_, while he only can spare
a mere fragment of his attention—a corner of one auditory organ—the
front shop of his mind—to the real business before him. In some shops,
confessors get no encouragement before dinner. The broad eye of garish
day, in those fastidious establishments, could no more endure such
a walking personification of idle gossip, than a ball-room, at high
twelve, could tolerate the intrusion of a man in a short coat, with a
pen stuck in his ear. But this is by no means the general case; and
even in some instances, where the front shop will not admit of such an
appendage, ten to one but, if the premises were well ransacked, you
would find a specimen of the class snug in some out-of-the-way corner,
filling up the greater part of his time with a newspaper, but every
now and then resorted to by his votary, in the intervals of actual
employment, like an Egeria receiving the visits of a Numa, and no doubt
administering equally precious counsel.
The more common position of a shopkeeper’s confessor is a chair
opposite the door, whence he may command a view of all that passes
on the street, with a full front inspection of every individual that
makes bold to enter. Into this chair the confessor invariably glides
as a matter of course. There he sits down, and, throwing one limb
over the other, considers himself entitled to inflict his company
upon the unhappy shopkeeper for any length of time. He notices, as if
he were not noticing, all that goes on in the premises. Not an order
is given for goods, not a payment made, or a pennyworth sold, but it
is seen, and very likely made the subject of after comment. It is of
no consequence to the confessor what description of customers enter
the place. Were a princess of the blood to come in, he would keep his
seat and his countenance equally unmoved, and a whole band of ladies,
driven in to escape a shower of rain, will not stir him from the
chair, to which he seems nailed, like the marble prince of the Black
Islands, in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. The customers very
naturally feel disinclined to patronise a shop which is thus, as it
were, haunted by an evil spirit. “Oh, how I do hate to enter that shop
of Mr Such-a-thing,” says one young lady to another, “for every thing
you do or say is noticed by that odious person who is always lounging
there.” And in this manner Mr Such-a-thing loses his business, almost
without the possibility of recalling it. He longs to discover a means
of disposing of the confessor, but he finds a great difficulty in
accomplishing his purpose. He is disinclined to be churlish to a
person to whom he has confessed himself for years. Still he makes an
effort. He grows cool in his civility, and makes a point of being
always busy on his arrival. Perhaps he has the good luck, at length,
to shake off this pest of his premises; but it is more than probable
that he submits to the terrific infliction for life, his confessor only
leaving him when he is fairly in his grave. I once knew a dreadful
case of confessorship, in which the shopkeeper had the hardihood to
expel his visitant, and by a plan so ingenious that I think it worth
while to advert to it. The shop contained four chairs, including the
confessional, which stood opposite the door. One day when the confessor
arrived, and, as usual, proceeded to his seat, he was a little
surprised in remarking that it was filled to a pretty good height with
parcels of some kind or other. But as this appeared naturally enough to
be caused by a press in the stock of goods, no observation took place
regarding it, and another chair was selected. However, next day when he
again appeared, another chair was found covered up in a similar manner.
The following day, he even found a third filled with parcels; and on
the fourth day the whole were thus engaged. The confessor now saw that
a conspiracy had been formed to destroy his functions, and to expel
him from his ancient settlements. Like the unhappy antediluvians, who,
as the flood arose, were driven from one spot of earth to another, and
at last did not find a dry piece of ground whereon to rest their foot,
so the unhappy confessor had been driven from chair to chair, till at
last he could not discover a place whereon he could plant himself.
A pang of vexation shot through his heart; a gleam of mingled shame
and indignation passed over his countenance; and, with a last look of
despair, he burst from the shop, and “ne’er was heard of more.”
It must be allowed that some men do not stand so much in need of
confessors, or do not indulge so much in them, as others; but, upon the
whole, it may be taken as a general rule, that no man can altogether
do without such an official. In the fair on-going business of life,
one acts _suo more solito_, according to one’s regular custom of
trade, or by the common rules of the world. But occasions occur, where
common practice does not furnish a rule. You are in love, and wish
to interest a friend in your passion; you are about to marry, and
require information about arrangements, and also some one to stand
beside you, and pull off your glove, preparatory to the ceremony; you
have a quarrel, and need a third party to tell you that you are in the
right; you are about to enter into some commercial or other enterprise
a little beyond your usual depth, and find it necessary to fortify
your resolution by the sanction of a friend; or you write a poem or a
novel, and require to have somebody to read the manuscript, and tell
you that it is sure of success. In all these cases, the confessor
is indispensable. _Without him_, you would be crossed in love; get
stranded in the straits of matrimony; permit yourself, after giving
offence and insult, to let off the object of it with impunity for his
remonstrance; break down in your new business scheme; and let your
manuscript waste its sweetness on the desert scrutoire. But _with him_
all goes smooth.
Upon the whole, it is better that one’s confessor should be a little
poorer, as well as a little more plausible in speech, than one’s
self: he ought to be a man to whom meat and drink are things of some
account—a broken-down Scotch licentiate—an author who has published
respectable books which have never sold; in short, some idle, poor,
servile individual, to whom it is of the last importance to get a good
grazing ground in the back premises of a substantial trader, upon whom
he may revenge that partiality of fortune, which decrees all the real
comforts of life to the mercantile and common-place, while the real
“clever fellows” starve.
But, after all, it must be allowed that there is a great deal of
confessorship in the world, independent of a regard to cake and
pudding. It is in many cases simply a fascination exerted over one
mind by another; in others, the result of that very common failing,
the want of confidence in one’s own resources. Young men—by which,
I mean men in the mason-lodge time of life, say between twenty and
five-and-twenty—are most apt to indulge in confession. _They_ think
friends all in all, and for friends would give up every thing. All
business and duty is to them an episode, only consented to because
it is unavoidable; while the enjoyment of the countenance of their
friends seems the main and true concern of life. Then are the joys
of confession truly relished. Then does the vampire confessor suck
deepest into the vitals of his devotee. Happy delusion—sweet morning
dream—alas! too certain to awake to the conviction that it is “but a
dream!”
A CHAPTER OF POLITICAL ECONOMY,
WRITTEN FOR THE BRITISH PEASANTRY.
The monstrous absurdity, that there is a principle in the economy of
nature by which population increases beyond the means of support, has
been stated by men eminent in various departments of political economy,
and countenanced by individuals in whom the soundest reasoning and
farsightedness might have been expected. There is _not_ a principle
in nature having a tendency to increase population beyond the means
of subsistence, or to overpeople the world. To suppose that there is,
is to impugn the magnificent designs of the Creator, and to call in
question his vigilant and ever-sustaining providence. When the globe
which we inhabit, and all that it sustains in the animal and vegetable
kingdoms, was called into existence, and sent forth fresh from the
hands of its Divine Constructor, certain fixed principles were ordained
and put into unintermitting action, by which all were to be sustained,
and prevented alike from coming to a stand, or into collision. These
principles involved the production and reproduction of food for man
and beast through an incalculable series of ages; and this process
of production was left to be excited or retarded in a great measure
by man, for whose convenience all subordinate parts were organised,
and by whose thinking faculties the increase or decrease of food was
apparently to be proportioned. In a word, it was left to our free-will
whether to cultivate the soil, or leave it in its rude and unproductive
condition.
It has happened in the course of some five or six thousand years after
the creation of the world, that a small island, lying in the seas which
border on the northern part of Europe—a spot of earth so comparatively
small that it may be traversed from one end to the other in the
space of little more than a week—has, by the artificial state of its
society, and a concourse of injudicious regulations, increased in its
population to about seventeen millions of inhabitants; and because, as
must necessarily be the case from the influence of these regulations,
a number of the people are in impoverished circumstances, and are not
so well fed as their neighbours, it has, forsooth, pleased a few men in
this large mass of humanity to impeach the God of the universe, and to
tell us that He creates millions of thinking beings only to put them to
death by starvation.
To show the utter fallacy of this detestable theory, I need only
bring under your notice two simple facts, in which all such vicious
and shallow-minded reasoning finds an insurmountable obstacle to its
establishment. It is a great, a comforting, and an undeniable fact,
that there are immense tracts of land, islands, and even continents,
which till this hour are lying in nearly their primeval state, with the
soil untouched since the beginning of the world. So boundless are these
almost uninhabited territories, so capable are they of sustaining
human life, that, if the proper means were used, they would yield food,
clothing, and a place of residence to more people than all that the
ancient settlements of the human race at present contain. They could
hold all the existing population of the earth, and not be filled.
Canada itself could receive and maintain the whole of the population
of Europe; and the seventeen millions of human beings belonging to the
little island which has raised such alarm, might be transported to the
banks of one of the mighty rivers in the United States, and it would
hardly be known that they had taken up their residence in the country.
“Send us over your whole population (says an American writer); we have
plenty of room for you all, and a hundred millions more.” But such a
gratifying fact as this gives but a faint idea of the vastness, the
capabilities of the world beyond the waters of the Atlantic. In one
of the numbers of the Journal, I presented the account given by the
ingenious naturalist Audubon, of the wild pigeons of America. Have my
readers any recollection of the extraordinary number of these animals,
and the calculation made regarding the quantity of their daily food?
Let me here repeat and extend the calculation. The number of pigeons
seen on the wing by Audubon, as computed by allowing two pigeons to
the square yard, was _one billion, one hundred and fifteen millions,
one hundred and thirty-six thousand_, and “as every pigeon (says he)
daily consumes fully half a pint of food, the quantity necessary for
supplying this vast multitude must be _eight millions seven hundred
and twelve thousand bushels per day_.” The species of food used is the
produce of the trees. We thus find, that by a moderate calculation a
single flock of pigeons in the back woods of America consumes in one
day as great an amount of food, whether by weight or measure, as would
support the whole seventeen millions of people in Great Britain for
at least a week. The mind is lost in wonder in contemplation of so
magnificent a fact. The faculty of thought is bewildered in pondering
on so striking an instance of the astonishing bounty of the great
Author of Nature in providing for the wants of his creatures. Where,
where, may we then ask, have the predicters of famine been examining
the sources of food for man? On what have their eyes and their thoughts
been fixed, that they have passed over this prospect of inexhaustible
plenty? It would seem that they have never looked beyond the confines
of that little spot of land in the ocean, which I have alluded to,
and whose superabundant thousands require only to be transferred to
that division on the earth’s surface holding out food, raiment, and
residence for their gratuitous acceptance, in order that society may
right itself.
The above is the _first_ fact I have to offer in the elucidation of
this important question; and I maintain, in direct opposition to
those who have taken a contrary view of the subject—among whom I am
sorry to include persons otherwise distinguished for the clearness
and comprehensiveness of their views of the social compact—that until
the _whole_ earth has been peopled, and until it can hold no more, it
cannot rationally be said that the means of subsistence are inadequate
for the wants of the population. These means are no more inadequate
than that the produce of a kitchen-garden is insufficient to support
the family to which it belongs; and if this family be prevented from
seeking its subsistence beyond its garden walls, and so be half
starved, their miserable case is exactly parallel with that of this
over-populated island. Remove, I would say, all restrictions of a
certain description; do not unnaturally foster population either in a
particular part of the country, or at a particular time; LET MANKIND
ALONE: and, in the same manner that fluids find their level, so will
the redundant population of Great Britain and Ireland be profitably
dispersed over territories hitherto untrodden by the footsteps of
civilised men.
My _second_ fact is more hypothetical, but not less obvious to our
understanding. It is an old proverbial expression, that “necessity
is the mother of invention.” Now, in this sentiment we discover one
of the wisest provisions of Providence. It is only by necessity that
mankind, in a savage state, are compelled to hunt, or otherwise toil,
for their subsistence. The same feeling predominates through all the
ramifications of civilised society. In proportion as the necessities of
men spur them on to seek out new means of subsistence, so do these new
means of subsistence open upon their view. If we cast a retrospective
glance upon those steps which society has traced from its infancy to
manhood—from a state of barbaric rudeness to a condition of luxury and
splendour—we invariably find that all improvements have originated in
the wants of the people; and that, in proportion as they increased in
number, so did they whet their invention, and contrive additional means
of support. It is from this cause that Scotland, for instance, had no
greater overplus of food when it had only a million of inhabitants than
it has now, when it supports nearly three times the number. Nay, it had
much less food in proportion when it had only a million of people; and
hence it is proved that mankind, by their inventions and improvements,
greatly increase the means of support beyond the point at which they
formerly stood. The power of seeking out, or inventing, new means of
subsistence, just as the old ones are perceived to be inadequate, has
been actively at work since the beginning of time, and will operate
for the benefit of our race as long as sun and moon endure. It is
in the exercise of this transcendent faculty of the human mind that
we see the beneficence of the Creator in providing unseen means of
subsistence; and it is in it that we find the cheering hope, that at no
period, however distant, even _when_ the _whole_ earth shall have been
covered with inhabitants, shall mankind languish for lack of food. As
they go on increasing in number, so will they go on perfecting their
contrivances; every succeeding generation may labour under some new
difficulty, but so will it be endowed with the faculty of releasing
itself from it.
THE DRAMA.
Theatricals are said to be losing public favour in almost every place
where they are known, and public writers are puzzled to account for it.
When the buckle-trade declined some years ago, the cause was at once
seen to be the ascendency of buttons. But it would appear that the
cause of the decline of theatricals, though almost equally obvious,
is more a subject of dispute. It is only so because the subject is
larger, and composed of more parts. We think, however, that a little
discussion will suffice to show, with equal clearness, what causes the
failure of dramatic amusements, as a part of the great system of public
entertainment.