"If an European," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, in one of his Discourses, "when
he has cut off his beard, and put false hair on his head, or bound up his
own hair in formal, hard knots, as unlike nature as he can make it, and
after having rendered them immoveable by the help of the fat of hogs, has
covered the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost
regularity--if, when thus attired, he issues forth and meets a Cherokee
Indian who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, and laid with equal
care and attention his yellow and red ochre on such parts of his forehead
and cheeks as he judges most becoming, whichever of these two despises the
other for this attention to the fashion of his country, whichever first
feels himself provoked to laugh, is the barbarian."
Granting this, the popular advocates of civilisation certainly are not the
most civilised of individuals. They appear to consider yellow ochre and
peacocks' feathers the climax of barbarism--marabouts and kalydor the acme
of refinement. A ring through the nose calls forth their deepest pity--a
diamond drop to the ear commands their highest respect. To them, nothing
can show a more degraded state of nature than a New Zealand chief, with his
distinctive coat of arms emblazoned on the skin of his face; nor anything
of greater social elevation than an English peer, with the glittering label
of his "nobility" tacked to his breast. To a rational mind, the one is not
a whit more barbarous than the other; they being, as Sir Joshua observes,
the real barbarians who, like these _soi-disant_ civilisers, would look
upon their own monstrosities as the sole standard of excellence.
The philosophy of the present age, however, is peculiarly the philosophy of
outsides. Few dive deeper into the human breast than the bosom of the
shirt. Who could doubt the heart that beats beneath a cambric front? or who
imagine that hand accustomed to dirty work which is enveloped in white kid?
What Prometheus was to the physical, Stultz is to the moral man--the one
made human beings out of clay, the other cuts characters out of
broad-cloth. Gentility is, with us, a thing of the goose and shears; and
nobility an attribute--not of the mind, but (supreme civilisation!) of _a
garter_!
Certain modern advocates appear to be devout believers in this external
philosophy. They are touchingly eloquent upon the savage state of those who
indulge in yellow ochre, but conveniently mute upon the condition of those
who prefer carmine. They are beautifully alive to the degradation of that
race of people which crushes the feet of its children, but wonderfully dead
to the barbarism of that race, nearer home, which performs a like operation
upon the ribs of its females. By them, also, we are told that "words would
manifestly fail in portraying _so low a state of morals as is pictured in
the lineaments of an Australian chief_,"--a stretch of the outside
philosophy which we certainly were not prepared to meet with; for little
did we dream that this noble science could ever have attained such
eminence, that men of intellect would be able to discover immorality in
particular noses, and crime in a certain conformation of the chin.
That an over-attention to the adornment of the person is a barbarism all
must allow; but that the pride which prompts the Esquimaux to stuff bits of
stone through a hole in his cheek, is a jot less refined than that which
urges the dowager-duchess to thrust coloured crystals through a hole in her
ear, certainly requires a peculiar kind of mental squint to perceive.
Surely there is as great a want of refinement among us, in this respect, as
among the natives of New Zealand. Why rush for subjects for civilisation to
the back woods of America, when thousands may be found, any fine afternoon,
in Regent-street? Why fly to Biddy Salamander and Bulkabra, when the Queen
of Beauty and Count D'Orsay have equally urgent claims on the attention and
sympathies of the civiliser?
On the subject of civilisation, two questions naturally present
themselves--the one, what _is_ civilisation?--the other, have we such a
superabundance of that commodity among us, that we should think about
exporting it? To the former question, the journal especially devoted to the
subject has, to the best of our belief, never condescended a reply;
although, like the celebrated argument on the colour of the chameleon, no
two persons, perhaps, have the same idea of it. In what then, does
civilisation consist, and how is it to be generally promoted? Does it, as
Sir E.L. B---- would doubtlessly assure us, does it lie in a strict
adherence to the last month's fashions; and is it to be propagated
throughout the world only by missionaries from Nugee's, and by the
universal dissemination of curling-tongs and Macassar--patent leather boots
and opera hats--white cambric pocket-handkerchiefs and lavender-water? Or,
does it consist, as the Countess of B---- would endeavour to convince us,
in abstaining from partaking twice of fish, and from eating peas with the
knife? and is it to be made common among mankind only by distributing
silver forks and finger-glasses to barbarians, and printing the Book of
Etiquette for gratuitous circulation among them? Or, is it, as the mild and
humane Judge P---- would prove to us, a necessary result of the Statutes at
Large; and can it be rendered universal only by sending out Jack Ketch as a
missionary--by the introduction of rope-walks in foreign parts, and the
erection of gallows all over the world? Or, is it, as the Archbishop of
Canterbury contests, to be achieved solely by the dissemination of bishops,
and by diffusing among the poor benighted negroes the blessings of sermons,
tithes, and church rates? Christianity, it has, on the other hand, been
asserted, is the only practical system of civilisation; but this is
manifestly the idea of a visionary. For ourselves, we must confess we
incline to the opposite opinion; and think either the bishops or Jack Ketch
(we hardly know which we prefer) by far the more rational means. Indeed,
when we consider the high state of civilisation which this country has
attained, and imagine for an instant the awful amount of distress which
would necessarily accrue from the general practice of Christianity among
us, even for a week, it is clear that the idea never could be entertained
by any moral or religious, mind. A week's Christianity in England! What
_would_ become of the lawyer, and parsons? It is too terrible to
contemplate.
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