CHAPTER XI.

TOWN MORALS.

Have you seen Charles Matthews in "Used Up?" Sir Charles Coldstream

represents us all. We are everlastingly seeking a sensation, and never

finding it. Sir Charles's valet's description of him describes us

all:--"He's always sighing for what he calls excitement--you see,

everything is old to him--he's used up--nothing amuses him--he can't

feel." And so he looks in the crater of Vesuvius and finds nothing in

it, and the Bay of Naples he considers inferior to that of Dublin--the

Campagna to him is a swamp--Greece a morass--Athens a bad

Edinburgh--Egypt a desert--the pyramids humbugs. The same confession is

on every one's lips. The boy of sixteen, with a beardless chin, has a

melancholy _blase_ air; the girl gets wise, mourns over the vanity of

life, and laughs at love as a romance; a heart--unless it be a bullock's,

and well cooked,--is tacitly understood to be a mistake; and conscience a

thing that no one can afford to keep. Our young men are bald at

twenty-five, and woman is exhausted still sooner. I am told Quakers are

sometimes moved by the spirit. I am told mad Ranters sing, and preach,

and roar as if they were in earnest. I hear that there is even

enthusiasm amongst the Mormons; but that matters little. We are very few

of us connected with such _outre_ sects, and the exceptions but prove the

rule.

But a truce to generalities. Let us give modern instances. Look at

Jenkins, the genteel stockbroker. In autumn he may be seen getting into

his brougham, which already contains his better-half and the

olive-branches that have blessed their mutual loves. This brougham will

deposit the Jenkinses, and boxes of luggage innumerable, at the Brighton

Railway Terminus, whence it is their intention to start for that crowded

and once fashionable watering-place. Jenkins has been dying all the

summer of the heat. Why, like the blessed ass as he is, did he stop in

town, when for a few shillings he might have been braced and cooled by

sea breezes, but because of that monotony which forbids a man consulting

nature and common sense. Jenkins only goes out of town when the

fashionable world goes; he would not for the life of him leave till the

season was over.

Again, does ever the country look lovelier than when the snows of winter

reluctantly make way for the first flowers of spring? Is ever the air

more balmy or purer than when the young breath of summer, like a tender

maiden, kisses timidly the cheek, and winds its way, like a blessing from

above, to the weary heart? Does ever the sky look bluer, or the sun more

glorious, or the earth more green, or is ever the melody of birds more

musical, than then? and yet at that time the _beau monde_ must resort to

town, and London drawing-rooms must emit a polluted air, and late hours

must enfeeble, and bright eyes must become dull, and cheeks that might

have vied in loveliness with the rose, sallow and pale.

It is a fine thing for a man to get hold of a good cause; one of the

finest sights that earth can boast is that of a man or set of men

standing up to put into action what they know to be some blessed God-sent

truth. A Cromwell mourning the flat Popery of St. Paul's--a Luther,

before principalities and powers, exclaiming, "Here stand I and will not

move, so help me God!"--a Howard making a tour of the jails of Europe,

and dying alone and neglected on the shores of the Black Sea--a Henry

Martyn leaving the cloistered halls of Cambridge, abandoning the golden

prospects opening around him, and abandoning what is dearer still, the

evils of youth, to preach Christ, and Him crucified, beneath the burning

and fatal sun of the East--or a Hebrew maiden, like Jepthah's daughter,

dying for her country or her country's good,--are sights rare and

blessed, and beautiful and divine. All true teachers are the same, and

are glorious to behold. For a time no one regards their testimony. The

man stands by himself--a reed, but not shaken by the wind--a voice crying

in the wilderness--a John the Baptist nursed in the wilds, and away from

the deadening spell of the world. Then comes the influence of the

solitary thinker on old fallacies; the young and the enthusiastic rush to

his side, the sceptic and the scoffer one by one disappear, and the world

is conquered; or if it be not so, if he languishes in jail like Galileo,

or wanders on the face of the earth seeking rest and finding none, like

our Puritan forefathers; or die, as many an hero has died, as the Christ

did, when the power of the Prince of Darkness prevailed, and the veil of

the Temple was rent in twain; still there is for him a resurrection, when

a coming age will honour his memory, collect his scattered ashes, and

build them a fitting tomb. Yet even this kind of heroism has come to be

but a monotonous affair.

Now-a-days the thing can be done, and in one way--a meeting at Exeter

Hall, a dinner at Freemasons' tavern, Harker for toast-master, a few

vocalists to sing between the pieces, and for chairman a lord by all

means; if possible, a royal duke. The truest thing about us is our

appetite. Our appreciation of a hero is as our appreciation of a coat; a

saviour of a nation and a Soyer we class together, and do justice to both

at the same time. We moderns eat where our fathers bled. Our powers we

show by the number of bottles of wine we can consume; our devotion is to

our dinners; the sword has made way for the carving-knife; our battle is

against the ills to which gluttonness and wine-bibbing flesh is heir; the

devil that comes to us is the gout; the hell in which we believe and

against which we fight is indigestion; our means of grace are blue pill

and black draught. All art and science and lettered lore, all the

memories of the past and the hopes of the future--

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights--

Whatever stirs this mortal frame,"

now-a-days, tend to dinner. Our sympathy with the unfortunate females,

or the indigent blind, with the propagation of the Gospel in foreign

parts, or with the diffusion of useful knowledge at home--with the Earl

of Derby or Mr. Cobden--with Lord John Russell or Mr. Disraeli--with the

soldier who has blustered and bullied till the world has taken him for a

hero--with the merchant who has bound together in the peaceful pursuits

of trade hereditary foes--with the engineer who has won dominion over

time and space--with the poet who has sat

"In the light of thought

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy, with hopes and joys it heeded not,"

finds a common mode of utterance, and that utterance to all has a common

emphasis. Even the Church apes the world in this respect; and even that

section which calls itself non-conforming, conforms here. When dinner is

concerned, it forgets to protest, and becomes dumb. Dr. Watts might

sing,

"Lord, what a wretched land is this

That yields us no supplies;"

but his successors do not. I read of grand ordination dinners, of grand

dinners when a new chapel is erected or an old pastor retires. But

lately I saw one reverend gentleman at law with another. Most of my

readers will recollect the case. It was that of Tidman against Ainslie.

Dr. Tidman triumphs, and the Missionary Society is vindicated. What was

the consequence?--a dinner to Dr. Tidman at the Guildhall Coffee-house,

at which all the leading ministers of the denomination to which he

belonged were present.

The Queen is the fountain of honour. What has been the manner of men

selected for royal honour? The last instance is Lord Dudley, who has

been made an earl. Why? Is it that he lent Mr. Lumley nearly 100,000

pounds to keep the Haymarket Opera House open? because really this is all

the general public knows about Lord Dudley. The other day Lord Derby was

the means of getting a peerage for a wealthy and undistinguished

commoner. Is it come to this, then, that we give to rich men, as such,

honours which ought to be precious, and awarded by public opinion to the

most gifted and the most illustrious of our fellows. If in private life

I toady a rich swell, that I may put my feet under his mahogany, and

drink his wine, besides making an ass of myself, I do little harm; but if

we prostitute the honours of the nation, the nation itself suffers; and,

as regards noble sentiments and enlightened public spirit, withers and

declines.

Guizot says--and if he had not said it somebody else would--that our

civilization is yet young. I believe it. At present it is little better

than an experiment. If it be a good, it is not without its

disadvantages. It has its drawbacks. Man gives up something for it.

One of its greatest evils perhaps is its monotony, which makes us curse

and mourn our fate--which forces from our lips the exclamation of

Mariana, in the "Moated Grange"--

"I'm a aweary, aweary--

Oh, would that I were dead;"

or which impels us, with the "Blighted Being" of Locksley Hall, to long

to "burst all bonds of habit and to wander far away." Do these lines

chance to attract the attention of one of the lords of creation--of one

who,

"Thoughtless of mamma's alarms,

Sports high-heeled boots and whiskers,"

--what is it, we would ask, most magnanimous Sir, in the most delicate

manner imaginable, that keeps you standing by the hour together, looking

out of the window of your club in Pall Mall, in the utter weariness of

your heart, swearing now at the weather, now at the waiter, and, anon,

muttering something about your dreaming that you dwelt in marble halls,

but that very monotony of civilization which we so much deprecate? Were

it not for that, you might be working in this working world--touching the

very kernel and core of life, instead of thus feeding on its shell. And

if it be that the soft eye of woman looks down on what we now write, what

is it, we would ask, O peerless paragon, O celestial goddess, but the

same feeling that makes you put aside the last new novel, and, in

shameless defiance of the rules taught in that valuable publication and

snob's _vade mecum_--"Hints on the Etiquette and the Usages of Society,"

actually yawn--aye, yawn, when that gold watch, hanging by your most

fairy-like and loveliest of forms, does not tell one hour that does not

bear with it from earth to heaven some tragedy acted--some villainy

achieved--some heroic thing done: aye, yawn, when before you is spread

out the great _role_ of life, with its laughter and tears--with its

blasts from hell--with its odours coming down from heaven itself. A

brave, bold, noble-hearted Miss Nightingale breaks through this monotony,

and sails to nurse the wounded or the dying of our army in the East, and

"Common Sense" writes in newspapers against such a noble act; and a

religious paper saw in it Popery at the very least. What a howl has

there been in some quarters because a few clergymen have taken to

preaching in theatres! Even, woman's heart, with its gushing sympathies,

has become dead and shrivelled up, where that relentless scourge--that

demon of our time, the monotony of civilization--has been suffered to

intrude. It is owing to that, that when we look for deeds angels might

love to do, our daughters, and sisters, and those whom we most

passionately love, scream out Italian songs which neither they nor we

understand, and bring to us, as the result of their noblest energies, a

fancy bag or a chain of German wool. Such is the result of what Sir W.

Curtis termed the three R's and the usual accomplishments. Humanity has

been stereotyped. We follow one another like a flock of sheep. We have

levelled with a vengeance; we have reduced the doctrine of human equality

to an absurdity--we live alike, think alike, die alike. A party in a

parlour in Belgrave Square, "all silent and all d---d," is as like a

party in a parlour in Hackney as two peas. The beard movement was a

failure; so was the great question of hat reform, and for similar

reasons. We still scowl upon a man with a wide-a-wake, as we should upon

a pick-pocket or a cut-throat. A leaden monotony hangs heavy on us all.

Not more does one man or woman differ from another than does policeman A1

differ from policeman A 999. Individuality seems gone: independent life

no longer exists. Our very thought and inner life is that of Buggins,

who lives next door. The skill of the tailor has made us all one, and

man, as God made him, cuts but a sorry figure by the side of man as his

tailor made him. This is an undeniable fact: it is not only true but

_the_ truth. One motive serves for every variety of deed--for dancing

the polka or marrying a wife--for wearing white gloves or worshipping the

Most High. "At any rate, my dears," said a fashionable dame to her

daughters when they turned round to go home, on finding that the crowded

state of the church to which they repaired would not admit of their

worshipping according to Act of Parliament,--"At any rate, my dears, we

have done the genteel thing." By that mockery to God she had made

herself right in the sight of man. Actually we are all so much alike

that not very long since in Madrid a journeyman tailor was mistaken for a

Prince. It is not always that such extreme cases happen; but the

tendency of civilization, as we have it now, is to work us all up into

one common, unmeaning whole--to confound all the old distinctions by

which classes were marked--to mix up the peasant and the prince, more by

bringing down the latter than elevating the former; and thus we all

become unmeaning, and monotonous, and common-place. The splendid livery

in which "Jeames" rejoices may show that he is footman to a family that

dates from the Conquest: it may be that he is footman to the keeper of

the ham and beef shop near London Bridge. The uninitiated cannot tell

the difference. A man says he is a lord; otherwise we should not take

him for one of the nobles of the earth. A man puts on a black gown, and

says he is a religious teacher: otherwise we should not take him for one

who could understand and enlighten the anxious yearnings of the human

heart. The old sublime faith in God and heaven is gone. We have had

none of it since the days of old Noll: it went out when Charles and his

mistresses came in. But instead, we have a world of propriety and

conventionalism. We have a universal worshipping of Mrs. Grundy. A

craven fear sits in the hearts of all. Men dare not be generous,

high-minded, and true. A man dares not act otherwise than the class by

which he is surrounded: he must conform to their regulations or die;

outside the pale there is no hope. If he would not be as others are, it

were better that a millstone were hung round his neck and that he were

cast into the sea. If, as a tradesman, he will not devote his energies

to money-making--if he will not rise up early and sit up late--if he will

not starve the mind--if he will not violate the conditions by which the

physical and mental powers are sustained--he will find that in Christian

England, in the nineteenth century, there is no room for such as he. The

externals which men in their ignorance have come to believe essential to

happiness, he will see another's. Great city "feeds"--white-bait dinners

at Blackwall, and "genteel residences," within a few miles of the Bank or

the bridges--fat coachmen and fiery steeds--corporation honours and

emoluments,--a man may seek in vain if he will not take first, the ledger

for his Gospel, and mammon for his God. It is just the same with the

professions. Would the "most distinguished counsel" ever have a brief

were he to scorn to employ the powers God has given him to obtain

impunity for the man whose heart's life has become polluted with crime

beyond the power of reform. Many a statesman has to thank a similar

laxity of conscience for his place and power.

CHAPTER XI.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

I am not in the best of humours. The wind and weather of the last few

months have been bad enough to vex the temper and destroy the patience of

a saint. I wish the papers would write a little more about reforms at

home, and not trouble themselves about the Emperor of the French. I wish

country gentlemen, when airing their vocabularies at agricultural

dinners, would not talk so much of our friends across the water being

desirous to avenge the disgrace of Waterloo, as if there were any

disgrace to France, after having been a match, single-handed, for all

Europe for a generation, in being compelled to succumb at last. I wish

we could be content with trading with China, without sending ambassadors

to Pekin, and endeavouring by fair means or foul to make that ancient

city, as regards red-tapeism and diplomatic quarrels, as great a nuisance

as Constantinople is now. I wish Mr. George Augustus Sala, with that

wonderful talent of his for imitating Dickens and Thackeray, would quite

forget there was such gentlemen in the world, and write independently of

them. And I wish the little essayists, who copy Mr. George Augustus

Sala, and are so very smart and facetious by his aid, would either swim

without corks, or not swim at all. Thank heaven, none of them are

permanent, and most of them speedily sink down into limbo. Where are the

gaudily-covered miscellanies, and other light productions of this class?

if not dead, why on every second-hand book-stall in London, in vain

seeking a sale at half-price, and dear at the money. But the spirit of

which they are the symptom, of which they are the outward and visible

sign, lives. Directly you take up one of these books, you know what is

coming. But after all, why quarrel with these butterflies, who, at any

rate, have a good conceit of themselves, if they have but a poor opinion

of others? Fontaine tells of a motherly crab, who exclaimed against the

obliquity of her daughter's gait, and asked whether she could not walk

straight. The young crab pleaded, very reasonably, the similarity of her

parent's manner of stepping, and asked whether she could be expected to

walk differently from the rest of the family?

This fable throws me back on general principles; our writers--our

preachers--our statesmen, are fearful, and tremble at the appearance of

originality. The age overrules us all, society is strong, and the

individual is consequently weak. We have no patrons now, but, instead,

we have a mob. Attend a public meeting,--the speaker who is the most

applauded, is the man most given to exaggeration. Listen to a popular

preacher,--is he not invariably the most commonplace, and in his sermons

least suggestive, of men? When a new periodical is projected, what care

is taken that it shall contain nothing to offend, as if a man or writer

were worth a rap that did not come into collision with some prejudices,

and trample on some corns. In describing some ceremony where beer had

been distributed, a teetotal reporter, writing for a teetotal public,

omitted all mention of the beer. This is ridiculous, but such things are

done every day in all classes. Society exercises a censorship over the

press of the most distinctive character. The song says,

"Have faith in one another."

I say, have faith in yourself. This faith in oneself would go far to put

society in a better position than it is. A common complaint in

everybody's mouth is the want of variety in individual character--the

dreary monotony we find everywhere pervading society. Men and women,

lads and maidens, boys and girls, if we may call the little dolls dressed

up in crinoline and flounces, and the young gentlemen in patent-leather

boots, such, are all alike. Civilization is a leveller of the most

destructive kind. Man is timid, imitative, and lazy. Hence, it is to

the past we must turn, whenever we would recall to our minds how sublime

and great man, in his might and majesty, may become. Hence it is we can

reckon upon but few who dare to stand alone in devotedness to truth and

human right. Most men are enslaved by the opinions of the little clique

in which they move; they can never imagine that beyond their little

circle there can exist anything that is lovely or of good report. We are

the men, and wisdom will die with us, is the burden of their song. We

judge not according to abstract principles, but conventional ideas. Ask

a young lady, of average intelligence, respecting some busy hive of

industry, and intelligence, and life. "Oh!" she exclaims, "there is no

society in such a place." Ask an evangelical churchman as to a certain

locality, and he will reply, "Oh it is very dark, dark, indeed;" as if

there was a spot on this blessed earth where God's sun did not shine.

The dancing Bayaderes, who visited London some fifteen years back, were

shocked at what they conceived the immodest attire of our English dames,

who, in their turn, were thankful that they did not dress as the

Bayaderes. All uneducated people, or rather all unreflective people, are

apt to reason in this way; orthodoxy is my doxy, heterodoxy, yours. But

we English, especially, are liable to this fallacy, on account of our

insular position, and the reserve and phlegm of our national character.

Abroad people travel more, come more into collision with each other,

socially are more equal. We can only recognize goodness and greatness in

certain forms. People must be well-dressed, must be of respectable

family, must go to church, and then they may carry on any rascality. Sir

John Dean Paul, Redpath, and others, were types of this class. Hence it

is society stagnates--such is a description of a general law, illustrated

in all history, especially our own. Society invariably sets itself

against all great improvements in their birth. Society gives the cold

shoulder to whatever has lifted up the human race--to whatever has

illustrated and adorned humanity--to whatever has made the world wiser

and better. Our fathers stoned the prophets, and we continue the amiable

custom. Our judgment is not our own, but that of other people. We think

what will other people think? our first question is not, Is a course of

action right or wrong? but; What will Mr. Grundy say? Here is the great

blunder of blunders. John the Baptist lived in a desert. "If I had read

as much as other men," said Hobbes, "I should have been as ignorant as

they." "When I began to write against indulgences," says Luther, "I was

for three years entirely alone; not a single soul holding out the hand of

fellowship and cooperation to me." Of Milton, Wordsworth writes, "his

soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."

The great original thinker of the last generation, John Foster, actually

fled the face of man. What a life of persecution and misrepresentation

had Arnold of Rugby to endure, and no wonder, when we quote against the

conclusions of common sense the imaginary opinions of an imaginary

scarecrow we term society. This deference to the opinion of others is an

unmitigated evil. In no case is it a legitimate rule of action. The

chances are that society is on the wrong side, as men of independent

thought and action are in the minority, and even if society be right; it

is not from a desire to win her smile or secure her favour that a man

should act. It is not the judgment of others that a man must seek, but

his own; it is by that he must act--by that he must stand or fall--by

that he must live--and by that he must die. All real life is internal,

all honest action is born of honest thought; out of the heart are the

issues of life. The want of exercising one's own understanding has been

admirably described by Locke. It is that, he says, which weakens and

extinguishes this noble faculty in us. "Trace it, and see whether it be

not so; the day labourer in a country village has commonly but a small

pittance of knowledge, because his ideas and notions have been confined

to the narrow bounds of a poor conversation and employment; the low

mechanic of a country town does somewhat outdo him--porters and cobblers

of great cities surpass him. A country gentleman, leaving Latin and

Learning in the University, who returns thence to his mansion-house, and

associates with his neighbours of the same strain, who relish nothing but

hunting and a bottle; with these alone he spends his time, with these

alone he converses, and can away with no company whose discourses go

beyond what claret and dissoluteness inspire. Such a patriot, formed in

this happy day of improvement, cannot fail, we see, to give notable

decisions upon the bench at quarter sessions, and eminent proofs of his

skill in politics, when the strength of his purse, and party, have

advanced him to a more auspicious situation. * * * To carry this a little

further: here is one muffled up in the zeal and infallibility of his own

sect, and will not touch a book, or enter into debate, with a person that

will question any of those things which, to him, are sacred." People

wonder now-a-days why we have so many societies--the cause is the same.

Men cannot trust themselves; to do that requires exercise of the

understanding. A man must take his opinions from society; he can do no

battle with the devil unless he have an association formed to aid him.

At Oxford the example of an individual, Dr. Livingstone, created a

generous enthusiasm. A society was formed under distinguished patronage,

subscription lists were opened, a public meeting was held, and the most

renowned men of the day--the Bishop of Oxford and Mr. Gladstone--lent to

the meeting not merely the attraction of their presence, but the charm of

their oratorical powers. The result is a very small collection, and a

talk of sending out six missionaries to christianize Africa. When

societies are formed there is no end to the absurdities they are guilty

of. Just think of the men of science at Aberdeen, all rushing over hill

and dale to Balmoral, where they were permitted, not to converse with

majesty (that were too great an act of condescension), but to have lunch

in an apartment of the royal residence. Then, again, what murmurs were

there at Bradford, because, at the close of the meeting, the younger

members of the Social Reform Congress were not permitted to dance the

polka. If old Columbus were alive now a new world would never have been

discovered. We should have had a limited liability company established

for the purpose. A board of lawyers, and merchants, and M.P.'s, as

directors, would have been formed. Some good-natured newspaper editors

would have inserted some ingenious puffs,--the shares would have gone up

in the market,--the directors would have sold out at a very fair rate of

profit. Columbus would have made one or two unsuccessful voyages--the

shares would have gone down--the company would have been wound up--and no

western continent, with its vast resources, would ever have been heard

of. I like the old plan best; I like to see a man. If I go into the

House of Commons I hear of men, somewhat too much talk of men is there;

on one side of the house Pitt is quoted, on another Fox, or Peel, or

Canning. If Pitt, and Fox, and Canning, and Peel had done so depend upon

it we should never have heard their names. It is a poor sign when our

statesmen get into this habit; it is a mutual confession of inability to

act according to the wants and necessities of the age. They quote great

men to hide their littleness. They imagine that by using the words of

great statesmen they may become such, or, at any rate, get the public to

note them for such themselves. They use the names of Pitt and Fox as

corks, by means of which they may keep afloat. Well, I must fain do the

same; while I rail against custom, I must e'en follow her.

"He seems to me," said old Montaigne, "to have had a right and true

apprehension of the power of custom, who first invented the story of a

country-woman who, having accustomed herself to play with and carry a

young calf in her arms, and daily continuing to do so as it grew up

obtained this by custom, that when grown to a great ox she was still able

to bear it. For, in truth, custom is a violent and treacherous

schoolmistress. She by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips

in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble

beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then

unmasks a furious and tyrannical countenance, against which we have no

more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes. We see it

at every turn forcing and violating the rules of nature. _Usus

efficacissimus rerum omnium magister_. Custom is the greatest master of

all things."

And now I finish with a fable. A knight surprised a giant of enormous

size and wickedness sleeping, his head lying under the shade of a big

oak. The knight prayed to heaven to aid his strength, and lifting his

battle-axe dashed it with all his might on the giant's forehead. The

giant opened his eyes, and drowsily passing his hand over his eyes,

murmured, "The falling leaves trouble my rest," and straight he slumbered

again. The knight summoned his energies for another stroke, again

whirled his axe in the air, and furiously dashed it to the utter

destruction of the giant's scull. The latter merely stirred, and said,

"The dropping acorns disturb my sleep." The knight flung down his axe

and fled in despair from an enemy who held his fiercest blows and his

vaunted and well-tried might but as falling leaves and dropping acorns.

Reader, so do I. My hardest blows shall seem but as leaves and acorns to

the giant with whom I am at war, and would fain destroy.

CHAPTER XII.

LONDON MATRIMONIAL.

Last year 25,924 couples were married in the metropolis. The

Registrar-General tells us the increase of early marriages chiefly occurs

in the manufacturing and mining districts.

In London 2.74 of the men and 12.11 of the women who married were not of

full age. There is an excess of adults in the metropolis at the marrying

ages over 21; and there are not apparently the same inducements to marry

early, as exist in the Midland counties.

Sir Cresswell Cresswell must have but a poor opinion of matrimony. At

the very moment of my writing, I am told there are six hundred divorce

cases in arrear; that is, after the hundreds whose chains he has

loosened, there are, it appears, already twelve hundred more of injured

wives and husbands eager to be free. The evil, such as it is, will

extend itself. Under the old system there was, practically speaking, no

redress, and a man and woman tied together would endeavour to make the

best of it; now, if they feel the more they quarrel and disagree with

each other, the better chance they have of being at liberty, it is to be

feared, in some cases, husband and wife will not try so heartily to

forget and forgive, as husbands and wives ought to do. I do not say

there ought not to be liberty, where all love has long since died out,

and been followed by bad faith and cruelty, and neglect. I believe there

should be, and that the Divorce Act was an experiment imperatively

required. Where mutual love has been exchanged for mutual hate, it is

hard that human law should bind together, in what must be life-long

misery--misery perhaps not the less intense that it has uttered no word

of complaint, made no sign, been unsuspected by the world, yet all the

while dragging its victim to an early or premature grave. But human

nature is a poor weak thing, and many a silly man or silly woman may

think that Sir Cresswell Cresswell may prove a healing physician, when

their malady was more in themselves than they cared to believe. I hear

of one case where a lady having 15,000 pounds a-year in her own right,

has run off with her footman. Would she have done that if there had been

no Sir Cresswell? I fancy not. Again, another married lady, with

100,000 pounds settled on her, runs off with the curate. Had it not

occurred to her that Sir Cresswell Cresswell would, in due time, dissolve

her union with her legitimate lord, and enable her to follow the bent of

her passions, would she not have fought with them, and in the conquest of

them won more true peace for herself, than she can ever hope for now? I

believe so. In the long commerce of a life, there must be times, when we

may think of others we have known, when we may idly fancy we should have

been happier with others; but true wisdom will teach us that it is

childish to lament after the event, that it were wiser to take what

comfort we can find, and that, after all, it is duty, rather than

happiness, that should be the pole-star of life. Southey told Shelley a

man might be happy with any woman, and certainly a wise man, once

married, will try to make the best of it. But to return to Sir Cresswell

Cresswell, I wish that he could give relief without stirring up such a

pool of stinking mud. Who is benefitted by the disgusting details? It

is a fine thing for the penny papers. They get a large sale, and so reap

their reward. The _Times_, also, is generally not very backward when

anything peculiarly revolting and indecent is to be told; but are the

people, high or low, rich or poor, the better? I find it hard to believe

they are. How husbands can be false, how wives can intrigue, how

servants can connive, we know, and we do not want to hear it repeated.

If Prior's Chloe was an ale-house drab, if the Clara of Lord Bolingbroke

sold oranges in the Court of Requests, if Fielding kept indifferent

company, we are amused or grieved, but still learn something of genius,

even from its errors; but of the tribe Smith and Brown I care not to

hear--ever since the Deluge the Smiths and Browns have been much the

same. What am I the better for learning all the rottenness of domestic

life? Is that fit reading for the family circle? I suppose the

newspapers think it is, but I cannot come to that opinion. Can it have a

wholesome effect on the national feeling? Can it heighten the reverence

for Nature's primary ordinance of matrimony?

In the Book of Common Prayer I read that matrimony is "holy;" that it was

instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the

mystical union that is between Christ and his Church, which holy estate

Christ adorned and beautified with his presence and first miracle that he

wrought in Cana of Galilee; and is commended of St. Paul to be honourable

among all men, and, therefore, is not by any to be enterprised, "nor

taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal

lusts or appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but

reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God, duly

considering the causes for which matrimony was ordained."

Alas! our age is not a marrying age; and, therefore, I fear it is an

unholy one: neither our young men nor our young maidens honestly fall in

love and marry now-a-days. I don't know that the Registrar-General's

report says such. I know that many of his marriages are affairs of

convenience; unions of businesses, or thousands, or broad lands; not

marriages "holy," in the sense of the prayer-book and of God. A man who

marries simply for love, exposes himself to ridicule; the modern

ingenuous youth is not so green as all that; if he marries at all, it

must be an heiress, or, at any rate, one well dowered. The last thing

your modern well-bred beauty does, is to unite her fate with that of a

man in the good old-fashioned way. She has learnt to set her heart upon

the accidents of life,--the fine house, the establishment; and if these

she cannot have, she will even die an old maid. The real is sacrificed

to the imaginary; the substance, to the shadow; the present, to the

morrow that never comes. A man says he will become rich; he will

sacrifice everything to that; and the chances are he becomes poor in

heart and purse. The maiden--

With the meek brown eyes,

In whose orb a shadow lies,

Like the dusk in evening skies--

loses all her divinity, and pines away, and becomes what I care not to

name; and the world--whose wisdom is folly--sanctions all this. It calls

it prudence, foresight. A man has no business to marry till he can keep

a wife, is the cuckoo cry; which would have some meaning if a wife was a

horse or a dog, and not an answer to a human need, and an essential to

success in life. The world forgets that man is not an automaton, but a

being fearfully and wonderfully framed. No machine, but a lyre

responsive to the breath of every passing passion: now fevered with

pleasure; now toiling for gold; anon seeking to build up a lofty fame;

and that the more eager and passionate and daring he is--the more eagle

is his eye, and the loftier his aim, the more he needs woman--the

comforter and the helpmeet--by his side. Our fathers did not ignore

this, and they succeeded. Because the wife preserved them from the

temptations of life; because she, with her words and looks of love,

assisted them to bear the burdens and fight the battles of life; because

she stood by her husband's side as his helpmeet; bone of his bone, flesh

of his flesh; soothing each sorrow; aiding each upward aim: it was thus

they became great; and it is because we do not thus, we pale before them.

It is not good for man to be alone. Man has tried to disobey the divine

law, and lived alone; and what has been the result?--even when tried by

men of superior sanctity, as in the case of the Romish Church, has the

world gained in happiness or morality? I trow not. Take the limited

experience of our own age, and fathers and mothers know, to their bitter

cost, I am right. The manhood, brave and generous, much of it wrecked in

our great cities, will bear me out. But matrimony is more than this. It

spite of the hard matter-of-fact, sceptical, and therefore sensual

character of the passing day, will it not be confessed that the union of

man and woman, as husband and wife, is the greatest earthly need, and is

followed by the greatest earthly good? Unhappy marriages there may be;

imprudent ones there may be; but such are not the rule; and very properly

our legislators have agreed to give relief in such cases. "Nature never

did betray the soul that loved her;" and nature tells men and women to

marry. Just as the young man is entering upon life--just as he comes to

independence and man's estate--just as the crisis of his being is to be

solved, and it is to be seen whether he decide with the good, and the

great, and the true, or whether he sink and be lost for ever, Matrimony

gives him ballast and a right impulse. Of course it can't make of a fool

a philosopher; but it can save a fool from being foolish. War with

nature and she takes a sure revenge. Tell a young man not to have an

attachment that is virtuous, and he will have one that is vicious.

Virtuous love--the honest love of a man for the woman he is about to

marry, gives him an anchor for his heart; something pure and beautiful

for which to labour and live; and the woman, what a purple light it sheds

upon her path; it makes life for her no day-dream; no idle hour; no

painted shadow; no passing show; but something real, earnest, worthy of

her heart and head. But most of us are cowards and dare not think so; we

lack grace; we are of little faith; our inward eye is dim and dark. The

modern young lady must marry in style; the modern young gentleman marries

a fortune. But in the meanwhile the girl grows into an old maid, and the

youth takes chambers--ogles at nursery-maids and becomes a man about

town--a man whom it is dangerous to ask into your house, for his business

is intrigue. The world might have had a happy couple; instead, it gets a

woman fretful, nervous, fanciful, a plague to all around her. He becomes

a sceptic in all virtue; a corrupter of the youth of both sexes; a curse

in whatever domestic circle he penetrates. Even worse may result. She

may be deceived, and may die of a broken heart. He may rush from one

folly to another; associate only with the vicious and depraved; bring

disgrace and sorrow on himself and all around; and sink into an early

grave. Our great cities show what becomes of men and women who do not

marry. Worldly fathers and mothers advise not to marry till they can

afford to keep a wife, and the boys spend on a harlot more in six months

than would keep a wife six years. Hence it is, all wise men (like old

Franklin) advocate early marriages; and that all our great men, with rare

exceptions, have been men who married young. Wordsworth had only 100

pounds a year when he first married. Lord Eldon was so poor that he had

to go to Clare-market to buy sprats for supper. Coleridge and Southey I

can't find had any income at all when they got married. I question at

any time whether Luther had more than fifty pounds a year. Our

successful men in trade and commerce marry young, like George Stephenson,

and the wife helps him up in the world in more ways than one. Dr.

Smiles, in his little book on Self-Help, gives us the following anecdote

respecting J. Flaxman and his wife--"Ann Denham was the name of his

wife--and a cheery, bright-souled, noble woman she was. He believed that

in marrying her he should be able to work with an intenser spirit; for,

like him, she had a taste for poetry and art! and, besides, was an

enthusiastic admirer of her husband's genius. Yet when Sir Joshua

Reynolds--himself a bachelor--met Flaxman shortly after his marriage, he

said to him, 'So, Flaxman, I am told you are married; if so, sir, I tell

you, you are ruined for an artist.' Flaxman went straight home, sat down

beside his wife, took her hand in his, and said, 'Ann, I am ruined for an

artist.' 'How so, John? How has it happened? And who has done it?'

'It happened,' he replied, 'in the church; and Ann Denham has done it.'

He then told her of Sir Joshua's remark--whose opinion was well known,

and has been often expressed, that if students would excel they must

bring the whole powers of their mind to bear upon their art from the

moment they rise until they go to bed; and also, that no man could be a

great artist, unless he studied the grand works of Raffaelle, Michael

Angelo, and others, at Rome and Florence. 'And I,' said Flaxman, drawing

up his little figure to its full height, 'I would be a great artist.'

'And a great artist you shall be,' said his wife, 'and visit Rome, too,

if that be really necessary to make you great.' 'But how?' asked

Flaxman. 'Work and economise,' rejoined his brave wife: 'I will never

have it said that Ann Denham ruined John Flaxman for an artist.' And so

it was determined by the pair that the journey to Rome was to be made

when their means would admit. 'I will go to Rome,' said Flaxman, 'and

show the President that wedlock is for man's good rather than for his

harm, and you, Ann, shall accompany me.' He kept his word."

By forbidding our young men and maidens matrimony, we blast humanity in

its very dawn. Fathers, you say you teach your sons prudence--you do

nothing of the kind; your worldly-wise and clever son is already ruined

for life. You will find him at Cremorne and at the Argyle Rooms. Your

wretched worldly-wisdom taught him to avoid the snare of marrying young;

and soon, if he is not involved in embarrassments which will last him a

life, he is a _blase_ fellow; heartless, false; without a single generous

sentiment or manly aim; he has--

"No God, no heaven, in the wide world."

CHAPTER XIII.

BREACH OF PROMISE CASES.

Every now and then, while the courts sit at Westminster, the general

public derives an immense amount of entertainment from what are described

as breach of promise cases. It is true there is a wonderful sameness

about them. The defendant is amorous, and quotes a great deal of poetry.

The court vastly enjoys the perusal of his letters, and the papers quote

them entire and unabridged. The lady suffers much, and the public

sympathies are decidedly with her. Of course there are some atrocious

cases, for which the men who figure in them cannot be punished too

severely; but as a rule, we do think the men have the worst of it. A

young man is thrown into the company of an attractive young female; they

both have little to do at the time, and naturally fall in love. She has

as much to do with the matter as he, and yet, if he begins to think that

he cannot keep a wife--that the marriage will not promote the happiness

of the parties concerned--that the affair was rash, and had better be

broken off--he is liable to an action for breach of promise. Such cases

are constantly occurring. The jury being decidedly romantic--thinking

love in a cottage to be Elysium--forgetting the vulgar saying that when

poverty comes in at the door love flys out of the window--mark their

sense of the enormity of the defendant's conduct in refusing to make an

imprudent marriage, by awarding to the lady substantial damages.

Now, we can understand how English jurymen--generally men with

marriageable daughters, can easily make up their minds to give damages in

such cases, but we more than question the invariable justice of such a

course. When affection has died out, we can conceive no greater curse

than a marriage; yet either that must be effected, or the jury will

possibly agree to damages that may ruin the defendant for life. This we

deem bad, nor do we think that a woman should always have before her the

certainty that the promise given in that state of mind, which poets

describe as brief insanity, an amiable jury will consider as an

equivalent to an I.O.U. to any amount they please. We do protest against

confounding a legal promise to marry with a promise to pay the bearer on

demand 1000 pounds. We rather fear that this distinction is likely to be

overlooked, not but that occasionally an action for breach of promise has

a very happy effect. It serves as a moral lesson to ardent youths of an

amorous disposition. It also furnishes the broken-hearted and forsaken

fair with a dowry, which has been known to purchase her a husband in

almost as good a state of preservation as the gentleman who was to have

borne that honoured name. All that we find fault with is the number of

such cases.

A gay deceiver is no enviable character for any respectable man to wear.

No man of mental or moral worth would voluntarily assume it. But a

spinster coming to a court of justice, and saying to the defendant, "You

have taken my heart, give me your purse," is no very desirable position

for a woman, though she may have the fortitude and strength of mind of a

Mrs. Caudle herself. At any rate, the legal view of woman is very

different to the poetical one, and for ourselves we infinitely prefer the

latter. The view of the jury is, that a woman not marrying a man who has

evidently no love for her, or he would not have married another, is to

the plaintiff an injury--we think it is a happy escape--and an injury

which deepens as the courtship lengthens. The jury reasons that the

plaintiff, Mary Brown, is as good-tempered a girl as ever lived--that

provided she could but marry she did not care who made her his wife. The

position of the sexes is reversed, and the woman sings--

"How happy could I be with either,

Were t'other dear charmer away."

According to the jury, if Jones had not married Mary Brown, Jenkins

would--consequently hers is a double loss. So that if a woman reaches

the ripe age of thirty, by this arithmetic she is more wronged than she

would have been had she been a blooming lass of twenty. In the same

manner there is a delicate sliding-scale for defendants in such cases. A

bridegroom well-made and well-to-do has to pay no end of sovereigns for

the damage he has done; while a short time since, a defendant who had

been attacked with paralysis was let off for 50 pounds. Woman, in this

view of the case, is as dangerous as a money-lender or a shark. Byron

tells us--

"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart--

'Tis woman's whole existence."

But our modern juries give us a very different reading. We prefer,

however, to abide by the old.

Most undoubtedly to win the affections of a woman and then desert her is

a crime--but it is of a character too ethereal to be touched by human

law. If the woman's heart be shattered by the blow, no amount of

money-compensation can heal the wound, and a woman of much worth and of

the least delicacy would shrink from the publicity such cases generally

confer on all the parties interested in them. But if the principle be

admitted, that disappointment in love can be atoned for by the possession

of solid cash--if gold can heal the heart wounded by the fact that its

love has been repelled--that its confidence has been betrayed--we do not

see why the same remedy should not be within the reach of man. And yet

this notoriously is not the case. When anything of the sort is tried the

unhappy plaintiff seldom gets more than a farthing damages. Besides,

what upright, honourable man would stoop for a moment to such a thing;

and yet, in spite of all modern enlightment, we maintain that the injury

of a breach of promise on the part of a woman is as great as that on the

part of a man. In the morning of life men have been struck down by such

disappointments, and through life have been blasted as the oak by the

lightning's stroke. With his heart gone--demoralised, the man has lived

to take a fearful revenge for the first offence, possibly to become a

cold cynic--sceptical of man's honour and woman's love. Yet breach of

promise cases are not resorted to by men, and we cannot congratulate our

fair friends on the fact that so many of them come into courts of law as

plaintiffs in such cases. Bachelors will fear that, after all, it is

true that--

"Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,

And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair."

And the result will be that while the more impetuous of us will commit

ourselves at once, and come within the clutches of law, the more cool and

cunning will excite hopes, which deferred will make sick the heart, and

inspire an affection which may exist but to torment the heart in which it

had its birth. Ay, beneath such mental grief the beauty and blessedness

of life may vanish, never to return, and yet all the while he who did the

deed may defy the power of human law.

Some letters which have recently appeared in the _Manchester Examiner_

may be taken as evidence that these breach of promise cases interfere

very materially with marriages. In the immediate neighbourhood of

Manchester the question, Why don't the men propose? appears to have

excited considerable interest. In that busy region men fall in love and

get married, and have families, and are gathered to their fathers, just

as do the rest of her Majesty's subjects in other parts of the United

Kingdom. But it seems the Lancashire witches are many of them still on

their parent's hands. Paterfamilias gets anxious. Deeply revolving the

question under the signature of "A Family Man," he sends the following

letter to the Editor of the journal alluded to--

"Sir, Your cosmopolitan journal," he writes to the Editor, "must have

many readers interested in the question 'Why don't the men propose?' It

would be dangerous to say I have found the entire solution to this

enigma, for fear of disclosing a mare's nest; but I will warrant that one

of the most powerful causes of the shyness of men in matters matrimonial,

is the frequency of breach of promise prosecutions. A lady may be quite

justified in prosecuting the man who has deceived her, but is she wise in

doing so? Or if acting wisely for herself, does she not lower the

character of her sex? Men think so, depend upon it. Your wavering,

undecided, fastidious bachelor is a great newspaper reader, and devours

breach of promise cases, and after reading that Miss Tepkins has obtained

so many hundred pounds' damages against Mr. Topkins,

soliloquises:--'Humph! It seems, then, that the best salve for a wounded

heart is gold. Bah! women only marry for a home. It is clear the woman

is the only gainer, else why estimate her disappointment at so many

hundred pounds? She gives a man nothing for his promise to marry but her

heart (if that), and how much is _it_ worth? What recompense can he get

from her should she steal back the heart she professes to have given him!

I'll take jolly good care I never make a promise of marriage to a woman

(which means a bond for so many hundred or thousand pounds). No; if I

marry, I marry; but catch me promising.' And thus, for fear of being

trapped into committing himself, he avoids the society of women (where he

might learn not only to really love, but to see the sophistry of his

reasoning), and eventually settles down into old bachelorhood. What do

the ladies say to this? Don't let them think I am a crusty old bachelor.

Heaven forfend! I protest my supreme admiration of the fair sex, and had

better say I am, A FAMILY MAN."

"An unmarried young girl" replies: "Sir, In looking over your valuable

paper of to-day, I saw a letter headed, 'Why do not the men propose?'

which I read with great interest, as I found that the writer, although of

the opposite sex, was of the same opinion as myself, in regard to ladies

prosecuting their late lovers for breach of promise of marriage. I do

think it shows in them a mean spirit of revenge, of which a lady should

not be guilty. It certainly does look as if they thought more of a

shelter, a name, and a ring, than they do of a comfortable home and a

loving and affectionate husband. I do not think it wise of them, as it

must lower themselves and all their sex in the estimation of the other

sex. Besides, it does not speak much of their love for their lovers, for

you know love hides many faults. I have never been deceived by any man,

and I hope I never may, but the best advice I can give to my poor

deceived sisters is to try and forget their faithless swains, and leave

them to the stings and reflections of their own consciences, which will

be a far greater punishment to them than parting with thousands of gold

and silver. Let them be thankful that they have shown themselves in

their true colours before they had entered on a life of unhappiness and

misery, feeling assured that the man who could deceive a fond, loving

woman is a man of no principle at all. For my own part, I would scorn

the man who ever proved false to a woman,--I would not trust him even in

business." After this condemnation by a woman, let us trust we shall

hear less for the future of breach of promise cases.

CHAPTER XIV.

COMMERCIAL LONDON.

In the Loudon Bankruptcy Court, at times, melancholy revelations are

made--revelations which, indeed, do "point a moral," though they can

hardly be said "to adorn a tale." Too generally the manifestations are

the same--the hastening to be rich, which to so many has been a

snare--the vulgar attempt to keep up appearances and impose on the

world--the recklessness and want of honour and principle which prevail

where we should least have expected it, in the middle classes, who, as

the heart and core of the nation, at times are apt to be too

indiscriminately eulogised. Last week an illustration of what we mean

occurred. It came out in evidence that a bankrupt had goods from a

London wholesale house, not for his legitimate trade, but merely that, by

their sale at less than cost price, funds might be provided for the

passing exigencies of the hour. These goods were not unpacked, but at

once sent up to a London auctioneer and sold. Nor, it seems, was this an

isolated case--the custom is a common one; it is but what takes place

every day. Again, a tradesman is in difficulties--he goes to his

principal creditor, who says, "Well you must not stop yet--you must try

and reduce my debt first,"--goods are ordered from Manchester or

Birmingham--and, perhaps without being unpacked, taken to the warehouse

of the London creditor--the tradesman then applies to the Bankruptcy

Court, and, as his books are well kept, a _sine qua non_ with the

Commissioners--and, as the principal creditor makes things as smooth as

possible, the man gets a first-class certificate and begins again. Bill

discounters tell you of the number of forged bills which pass through

their hands, and which are sure to be taken up when due. Even the oldest

and proudest firms are not free from shame. My readers need not that I

remind them of the conduct of Gurney, Overend, & Co. with reference to

the forged spelter warrants. A city lawyer, a man of considerable

practice and experience, once assured me he did not believe there was

such a thing as commercial morality--but we must hope that he had seen so

much of the dark side, as to forget that there was a bright side at all,

but that the true feeling in the city is not of the highest character is

evident if we recall the sympathy displayed toward the directors of the

Royal British Bank--and again exhibited in the case of Strachan and Sir

John Dean Paul, or remember the ridiculous manifestations of the

gentlemen of the Stock Exchange and Mincing Lane, of which Tom Sayers was

the embarrassed subject. How wide-spread was the delirium of the railway

mania--what rascalities have been laid bare by the bursting of some of

our insurance and other companies. Take that list just published by Mr.

Spachman, Jun., of the losses sustained by public companies through the

inadequate system of the audit of accounts. The list is short, but not

sweet.

"The Royal British Bank.--Stopped payment in 1856. The failure was

caused by making advances to directors and others on improper and

insufficient securities. Capital, 200,000 pounds; deposits, 540,000

pounds; on which 15s. in the pound has been returned; deficiency, 5s.

in the pound; 135,000 pounds; total, 335,000 pounds.

"The Tipperary Bank.--Failure caused by the frauds of Sadleir.

Accounts were wilfully falsified. Capital, 500,000 pounds; deposits,

700,000 pounds; total, 1,200,000 pounds. The whole has been lost.

"The London and Eastern Bank.--In this case the notorious Colonel

Waugh appropriated to himself an amount equal to the whole paid-up

capital of the bank, and has since absconded and set his creditors at

defiance. The loss exceeds 250,000 pounds.

"The Crystal Palace Company.--The frauds of Robson, committed by

tampering with the transfer-books, entailed a loss of 100,000 pounds.

"The Great Northern Railway Company.--Redpath's frauds, committed in

a similar manner to Robson's. The auditors here were greatly at

fault, as I understand that dividends were paid on a larger amount of

stock than had been issued. Loss, 250,000 pounds.

"The Union Bank of London.--The frauds just discovered, committed by

the head cashier, William George Pullinger, by means of a fictitious

pass-book, representing the account between the Union Bank and the

Bank of England. The frauds are said to have extended over a period

of five years, and with a proper check in the audit, ought to have

been detected in the first half-year."

The men who did these things--the Redpaths, and Sadleirs, and Colonel

Waughs--were men known and respected, be it remembered, in London life.

The _Times_ says our law is worthy a nation of savages. We have a great

deal to do yet, just remember the Hudson testimonial. There were our

merchant princes, men of integrity, of talent, of skill--men who have

made the name of British merchant a term of honour as far as our flag can

reach. If London wished to reward successful industry, it might have

looked amongst them. In this great city there was more than one lord of

thousands, who came here with hardly a penny in his pocket, or shoes on

his feet. London might have raised a testimonial to one of them; and had

it done so, every unfledged clerkling and embryo Rothschild would have

glowed as he saw how industry, and wealth, and honour, went hand in hand.

With what delight would the young aspirant for wealth have returned to

the study of those refreshing maxims in ethics which grandmammas so

zealously impress upon the juvenile mind, and of which the British public

are not a little fond. But a testimonial was given to Mr. Hudson for

none of these things. It was not for honesty, or industry, or worth,

that he was rewarded. It was simply for speculation--for a course of

conduct utterly hostile to legitimate business, which has made many a

decent tradesman a bankrupt, and which has turned many an honest man into

a knave. England stamped with its approval a system the morality of

which is somewhat questionable. It bade the young man eschew the dulness

of the counter and the office for the magic wand of speculation. It

passed by the industrious merchant, the philanthropist, the patriot, to

worship the golden calf, as did the Hebrews of old.

Eighteen hundred years back, on the plains of Palestine, appeared a

carpenter's son, with a divine mission but a human heart. He preached no

cash gospel--He was no prophet in the eyes of the rich. He had His

testimonial--He reaped it in the bad man's deadly hate. Alas! the Hebrew

nature is the true and universal one. In Mr. Hudson's, there is the

testimonial of the rich--for the Christ, and those who would follow in

His steps, there is the thorny path and the open tomb. Let us not

imagine that we are one whit better than the Hebrew. The Hudson

testimonial proves a common paternity. Gold has still more charms than

God. As Mr. Bright, if not in so many words, but in spirit, says,

"Perish Savoy, rather than not trade with France," so the London merchant

and tradesman ignore too often honour and conscience, and morality, for

vulgar gain.

It requires great philosophy to get over the effects of City Life. "Let

any one," says Addison, "behold the kind of faces he meets as soon as he

passes Cheapside Conduit, and you see a deep attention and a certain

feeble sharpness in every countenance; they look attentive, but their

thoughts are engaged on mean purposes." This feeling is perpetuated.

Addison remarks of a gentleman of vast estate, whose grandfather was a

trader, "that he is a very honest gentleman in his principles, but cannot

for his life talk fairly; he is heartily sorry for it, but he cheats by

constitution, and overreaches by instinct." I heard of such a one the

other day--A, a city merchant, married his daughter to B. A proposed

that A and B should stock the cellar of the young couple with vine--B

agreed--A purchased the wine--got a discount--and charged B full price

for his share--yet A was rich as Croesus. I have seen this grasping

displayed by city boys. The writer was once accosted by some little

children with a request that he would contribute something towards a

"grotto," on his declining any assistance, he was politely informed that

he was no good, as he had "got no money."

London abounds with Montagu Tiggs, and a genuine article of any kind in

any trade, if by any possibility it can be adulterated, by painful

experience we know it, is utterly impossibly to buy. In trade, words

have long ceased to represent things. We need not dwell at length on the

wrong thus inflicted on the community at large, all feel the minor evils

resulting from such conduct, and occasionally we hear of sickness

induced, or of life lost,--and for what? merely that Brown may get an

extra farthing on the rascally rubbish he sells as the genuine article.

I fear these are not times in which we may argue for the abolition of

death punishments. Such things as these sadly teach us that in London

commercial morality is in danger of undergoing gradual

demoralisation--that we are in danger of becoming absorbed in the pursuit

of material wealth, careless of the price it may cost--that our standard

of morality is not now as it ought to be in a city that boasts its

Christian life and light, and that from London the evil circulates all

over the British realm.

In proof of this, we may appeal to the occurrences of every day. Our

great cities are shadowed over by the giant forms of vice and crime.

Like a thick cloud, ignorance, dense and dark, pervades the land.

Ascending higher to the well-to-do classes, we find bodily comfort to be

the great end of life; we find everything that can conduce to its

realization is understood--that the priests and ministers of the sensual

are well paid--that a good cook, like a diamond, has always value in the

market. M. Soyer, as cook, in the Reform Club, pocketed, we believe, 800

pounds a year. Hood, in the dark days of his life, when weakened by the

fierce struggle with the world and its wants, became the prey of the

spoiler, and would have died of starvation had not Government granted him

a pension. Many a man, in whose breast genius was a presence and a power

has been suffered to pine and starve; but who ever heard of a cook dying

of starvation? How is it, then, that such is the case, that so much is

done for the body, and so little for the mind? that at this time the

teacher of spiritual realities can but at best scrape together as much

salary as a lawyer's clerk? We are not speaking now of wealthy fellows

who repose on beds of roses, but of the busy earnest men who from the

pulpit, or the press, or the schoolmaster's desk, proclaim the morality

and truth without which society would become a mass of corruption and

death. How is it that they are overlooked, and that honour is paid to

the soldier who gives up his moral responsibility, and does the devil's

work upon condition that food and raiment be granted him--to mere wealth

and rank--to what is accidental rather than to what is true and valuable

in life? The truth is our civilization is hardly worthy of the name? We

may say, in the language of Scripture, we have not attained, neither are

we already perfect. We have but just seen the dim grey of morn, and we

boast that we bask in the sunshine of unclouded day. Our commercial

morality brands our civilization with a voice of thunder, as an imposture

and a sham.

Undoubtedly we are a most thinking, rational, sober, and religious

people. It is a fact upon which we rather pride ourselves. It is one of

which we are firmly convinced, and respecting which we are apt to become

somewhat garrulous, and not a little dull. On this head we suffer much

good-natured prosing in ourselves and others. Like the Pharisees of old,

we go up into the temple and thank God that we are not rationalists, like

the Germans, or infidels, like the French. We are neither Turks nor

Papists, but, on the contrary, good honest Christian men. It may be that

we are a little too much given to boasting--that we are rather too fond

of giving our alms before men--that when we pray, it is not in secret and

when the door is shut, but where the prayer can be heard and the devotion

admired; but we are what we are--and we imagine we get on indifferently

well. We might, possibly, be better--certainly we might be worse; but,

as it is, we are not particularly dissatisfied, and have ever, on our

faces, a most complacent smirk, testifying so strongly, to our pleasing

consciousness, of the many virtues we may happen to possess, but in spite

of all this we need a considerable increase and improvement as regards

what is called commercial morality.

CHAPTER XV.

LONDON GENTS.

The newspapers, a few years since, contained an instance of folly such as

we seldom meet with, even in this foolish generation. Two young

men--gents, we presume--one Sunday evening promenading Regent Street, the

admired of all beholders, met two young ladies of equally genteel

manners, and equally fashionable exterior. It is said,

"When Greek meet Greek, then comes the tug of war."

In this case, however, the adage was reversed. The encounter, so far

from being hostile, was friendly in the extreme. Our gay Lotharios,

neither bashful nor prudent, learned that their fascinating enchantresses

were the daughters of a Count, whose large estates were situated neither

in the moon, nor in the New Atlantic, nor in the "golden Ingies," nor in

the lands remote, where a Gulliver travelled or a Sinbad sailed, but in

France itself. That they had come to England, bringing with them simply

their two hundred pounds a quarter, that they might, in calm

retirement--without the annoyances to which their rank, if known, would

subject them--judge for themselves what manner of men we were. The tale

was simple, strange, yet certainly true. Ladies of charming manners, and

distinguished birth--young--lovely--each with two hundred pounds a

quarter--cast upon this great Babylon, without a friend--no man with the

heart of an Englishman could permit such illustrious strangers to wander

unprotected in our streets. Accordingly an intimacy was

commenced--letters written behind the counter, but dated from the Horse

Guards, signed as if the composer were a peer of the realm, were sent in

shoals to Foley-place. The result was, that after our Regent Street

heroes were bled till no more money could be had, the secret was

discovered, and they found themselves, not merely miserably bamboozled,

but a laughing-stock besides.

But this tale has a moral. Ellam--he of the ill-spelt letters and the

Horse Guards--was a shopman somewhere in Piccadilly. No person of any

education could have been taken in by so trumpery a tale. Did the young

men in our shops have time for improvement, could they retire from

business at a reasonable hour, could they be permitted to inform and

strengthen the mind, such a remarkable instance of folly as that to which

we have alluded could not possibly occur.

The gent of the Regent Street style, of whom poor Wright used to sing to

an Adelphi audience, was evidently a very badly-dressed and

ill-bred-fellow in spite of the fact that his vest was of the last cut,

that his tile was faultless, that his boots were ditto, and that none

could more gracefully

"puff a cigar."

The gents of to-day are the same. I was amused by hearing of a party of

them, connected with one of the city houses, who went into the country

one Easter Monday to enjoy themselves; they did enjoy themselves, as all

young fellows should, thoroughly, but from their enjoyment they were

recalled to a sense of dignity, by a characteristic remark of one of

them, as he saw passers by, "Hush, hush!" he exclaimed, "They will think

we are retail." A writer in the _Builder_ remarking the degeneracy of

regular cocknies attributes it to the want of good air, the expensive

nature of a good education, the sedentary employment of many of them.

And no doubt these reasons are the true ones, and of considerable force.

Well might Coleridge anticipate for his son as prosperous career as

compared with his own.

"I was reared

In the great city, pent 'mid cloister dim,

And saw naught lovely but the sky and stars;

But _thou_, my babe, shall wander in the breeze,

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountains; beneath the clouds

Which image in their arch both lakes and shores,

And mountain crags, so shall thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds unchangeable,

Of that eternal language which thy God utters."

This is true, and hence, let us judge leniently of the lad living within

the sound of Bow Bells. Nature is the best and truest teacher a man can

have--and it is little of nature that the cockney sees, or hears, and

feels. He goes to Richmond, but, instead of studying the finest panorama

in the world, he stupifies himself with doubtful port; he visits the

Crystal Palace, but it is for the sake of the lobster-salad; he runs down

to Greenwich, not to revel in that park, beautiful still in spite of the

attacks of London on its purity, but to eat white-bait; he takes, it may

be, the rail or the steamboat to Gravesend, but merely that he may dance

with milliners at Tivoli. The only idea of a garden to a London gent, is

a place where there is dancing, and drinking, and smoking going on. And

this is a type of his inbred depravity. He has no rational amusements.

In the winter time shut up the casinos, and do away with the half-price

at the theatres, and the poor fellow is _hors de combat_, and has nothing

left him but suicide or delirium tremens. Literary and Scientific

Institutions don't answer in London--even a place like the Whittington

Club, where any respectable young man belonging to the middle classes may

find a home, is by no means (so I have understood) a success.

Tom Moore says there is not in the world so stupid or boorish a

congregation as the audience of an English play-house. I fear there is

some truth in this as regards London. The regular cockney is not a fine

sample of the genus homo, in the first place he is very conceited, and

when a man is that, it is little that will do him good; in the second

place, he thinks only of business and pleasure, he lives well, dresses

well, goes to church once on the Sunday, and laughs at new-fangled

opinions, and wonders why people grumble, and believes all he reads in

the _Times_. If you want to start any successful agitation you must

begin it in the provinces. The Anti-Corn Law League had its seat at

Manchester, the Reform agitation had its head quarters at Birmingham.

The wisest thing done by the United Kingdom-Alliance, was to plant

themselves in Manchester rather than in London. Sydney Smith said it

required a severe surgical operation to make a Scotchman understand a

joke, it is almost as difficult to get a Londoner to understand anything

new; he is slow to recognise worth or virtue, and if any of his own

connection rise, he exclaims, with the writing-master, who would not

believe Newton was a good mathematician, "the fool, he is an hour over a

sum in the rule of three."

The truth is we are a city of shopkeepers; and if intellectual pursuits

be denied to those engaged in trade, the consequence must be the popular

opinion must be that of those who know little else than the business of

the shop, and as a consequence a curse will go forth to the remotest

corner of the land. Bigotry, prejudice, falsehood, and passion will be

rampant and rife, and truth and reason will be trampled under foot. Just

as manhood is forming, just as the moral and intellectual parts of our

nature are developing themselves, just as life becomes a reality, and

glimpses of the work to be done, and of the blessedness of doing it,

catch and charm the youthful eye, the victim is compelled to stand behind

the counter, and is threatened with beggary if he fail practically to

remember that the pursuit of money, to the utter exclusion of aught

higher and nobler, is the end for which life is given man. No wonder

such a system fearfully avenges itself--that the sensual is exalted--that

we meet so little in accordance with principle and truth. Debarred from

intellectual pursuits, what awaits our young men but frivolous

excitement? Ignorant, with the feelings of our common nature unnaturally

aroused--with minds enfeebled by lack of healthy exercise--our middle

class--the class perhaps the most important in our land--stands by

society in its conventionalism and falsehood and wrong, and we mourn and

sigh over giant ills, that we cannot grapple with effectually because we

go the wrong way to work.

A great want of our age is education for the middle classes. We want to

have them taught to believe in something else than the shop or the desk.

We want them to believe the mind as fully entitled to their care as the

body, and the money-bag but poor and impotent compared with the

well-spent life. We would publish the all-important truth--a truth that

shall live and fructify when the great city in which we write shall have

become a desert-waste--the truth that man was made in the image of his

maker, and that the heart that beats within is capable of divinity

itself. We may have drawn in dark colours our national state. We fear

the picture is but too true; and that till something be done to burst the

bonds of habit, and educate the youth in our shops, the picture will

continue to be true. We write not to deprecate the land of our birth; it

is one dear to us by every remembrance of the past and hope for the

future. Because we thus cling to it do we deplore and expose what we

deem to be wrong, and that our social condition may be healthy, that our

civilization may be complete that our faith may be a living leavening

power, do we ask the emancipation of the sons and daughters of

trade--that that long-looked-for hour may quickly come.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE LONDON VOLUNTEERS.

In spite of Lord Palmerston's injudicious attempt to check the rifle

movement in its infancy, there can be no doubt now but that it is a

complete success. The appeal to the martial spirit--more or less strong

in the hearts of all Englishmen--has been most cheerfully responded to.

Something of the kind was evidently required to excite the energies and

to occupy the leisure hours of our numerous youth. We are always in

danger of becoming too peaceable a folk. Our avocations, all of a

mercantile or professional character,--our amusements, less out-door, and

more sedentary, than ought to be the case,--the very humane spirit which

pervades all English society,--our enormous wealth; all tend to make us

peaceably disposed. None can be alarmed at our warlike demonstrations.

No nation in Europe need fear a British invasion. No foreign government

can possibly pretend that the British government harbours designs of

active hostility against any European power. Indeed, the naturally and

necessarily peaceful intentions of this country are candidly acknowledged

by the most eminent men in France itself. Michel Chevalier, in his

account of a recent visit to this country, has done ample justice to our

moderation, and to our desire to be at peace with all the world.

We may, then, view the increase of our volunteer riflemen without any

alarm--nay, rather with a considerable amount of pleasure. People

connected with fast life, tell us that the falling off of the attendance

of young men at the casinos is something very remarkable; the reason of

this is attributed to the fact that they are engaged and interested in

their drill. It is with unmixed satisfaction, that we see, day by day,

the long columns of the _Times_ filled with the names of the towns which

have just joined the movement, and the proceedings of those which already

possess a corps of riflemen. The _Times_ tells us, that already the

force thus raised consists of 170,000, of whom half nearly are Londoners;

but the movement, we trust, will continue to be developed for some time

to come. Every young man should join it, as it gives him healthy

recreation, soldier-like habits, and a feeling that he is a son of our

common mother--fine Old England, the land of the brave and the free. We

are much in the habit of doing our work by proxy. Shareholders, in

companies, leave the management to a few directors, and learn, too late,

to curse their folly. Institutions of the most excellent character, in

the hands of a few become perverted, and are often real stumbling-blocks

in the way of reform. So it is with our army and navy. We pay for them

handsomely, we intrust their management to a few, and then we wake up to

find that we have been trusting on a broken reed; that our guns, and

muskets, are old-fashioned; that routine and favouritism in office are

more than a match for the cleverest of officers and the bravest of men;

and that we have almost all our work to begin over again. Now, one great

advantage of the rifle movement is that it throws us back upon

ourselves--that it teaches us all to feel that we have a personal stake

in the defence of the country--that it recalls the martial energy which

we are fast in danger of losing, and makes all panic-fear for the future

impossible. Surely, also, the moral effect of all this on Europe must be

great. The nation that arms itself is always respected. It is the

French army that makes the name of the French Emperor so famous in all

parts of the world. Again, the nation that is always protected is safe

from attack. People do not go to war with strong states, but weak ones.

In the fable, the wolf quarrels not with the wolf, but the lamb. It

ought not to be so, we freely admit; but we must take the world as we

find it, and act accordingly. And the _morale_ of all history is that

there is no such safeguard of peace as the knowledge that a nation has

set its house in order, and is thoroughly prepared for war.

Look back at the olden time, when we triumphed at Agincourt, Cressy, and

Poictiers--when we won for England her foremost place among the nations

of earth. A writer in the _Cambridge Chronicle_ has collected all that

he can find relative to "_The Longbow of the past_, _the Rifle of the

future_," and done good service by its republication under the title

already given.

There is a muster-roll of the army of Henry V. preserved among Rymer's

unprinted collection in the British Museum. The Earl of Cambridge

appears in it with a personal retinue of 2 knights, 57 esquires, and 100

horse archers. The Duke of Clarence brought in his retinue 1 earl, 2

bannerets, 14 knights, 222 esquires, and 720 horse archers. The roll

includes 2,536 men-at-arms, 4,128 horse archers, 38 arblesters

(cross-bowmen), 120 miners, 25 master gunners, 50 servitor gunners, a

stuffer of bacinets, 12 armourers, 3 kings of arms. A Mr. Nicholas

Colnet, a physician, also brought 3 archers, 20 surgeons, an immense

retinue of labourers, artisans, fletchers, bowyers, wheelwrights,

chaplains, and minstrels. Foot-archers were not enumerated, but the

total number of effective soldiers amounted to 10,731. These were the

men who gained the field at Agincourt. Philip de Comines acknowledged

that English archery excelled that of every other nation, and Sir John

Fortesque states "that the might of the Realme of England standyth upon

archers." In the reign of Henry II. the English conquests in Ireland

were principally owing, it is recorded, to the use of the long bow. The

victory gained over the Scots, by Edward I., in 1298, at the great battle

of Falkirk, was chiefly won by the power of the English bowmen. In 1333

Edward III., with small loss, gained a signal victory at Halidown Hill,

near Berwick, when attacked by the Scots under the Earl of Douglas.

Speed gives, from Walsingham, the following description of the

battle:--"The chief feat was wrought by the English archers, who first

with their stiff, close, and cruel storms of arrows made their enemies'

footmen break; and when the noble Douglas descended to the charge with

his choicest bands, himself being in a most rich and excellently tempered

armour, and the rest singularly well-appointed,--the Lord Percy's archers

making a retreat did withal deliver their deadly arrows so lively, so

courageously, so grievously, that they ran through the men-at-arms, bored

the helmets, beat their lances to the earth, and easily shot those who

were more slightly armed through and through." Gibbon notes the singular

dread with which the English archers filled their enemies in the

crusades, and states, "that at one time Richard, with seventeen knights

and 300 archers, sustained the charge of the whole Turkish and Saracen

army." In the reign of Richard II., in 1377, the Isle of Wight was

invaded by the French, who landed in great force at Franche-Ville (called

afterwards Newtown), which they destroyed, and then directed their march

to Carisbrooke Castle, for the purpose of taking that stronghold. The

news of the invasion soon spread throughout the island, and no time was

lost in mustering the forces which it possessed. These forces consisted

chiefly of archers, who so admirably posted themselves in ambush, that

they rendered a good account of the advanced division of the French. The

other division of the enemy had commenced an attack on Carisbrooke

Castle, when the victorious archers advanced to its relief, and soon

cleared the island of the intruders. The battle of Shrewsbury, in 1403,

was one of the most desperate encounters ever seen in England. The

archers on both sides did terrible execution. Henry IV. and the Prince

of Wales on one side, and Earl Douglas with Henry Hotspur, son of the

Earl of Northumberland, on the other, performed prodigies of valour. At

length, Hotspur being slain and Douglas taken, Henry remained master of

the field.