There is much to be learned from domestic annals. Southey has well
observed: “The history of any private family, however humble, could it
be fairly related for five or six generations, would illustrate the
state and progress of society better than could be done by the most
elaborate historian.”
Cheerfulness and a festival spirit fills the soul full of harmony; it
composes music for churches and hearts; it makes and publishes
glorifications of God; it produces thankfulness, and serves the ends of
charity; and when the oil of gladness runs over, it makes bright and
tall emissions of holy fires, reaching up to a cloud, and making joy
round about: and therefore, since it is so innocent, and may be so
pious, and full of holy advantage, whatever can minister to this holy
joy does set forward the work of religion and charity.[120]
In how delightful a strain has the same writer said: “There is some
virtue or other to be exercised, whatever happens, either patience or
thanksgiving, love or fear, moderation or humility, charity or
contentedness; and they are, every one of them, equally in order to his
great end and immortal felicity: and beauty is not made by white or red,
by black eyes and a round face, by a straight body and a smooth skin,
but by a proportion to the fancy. Whatever we talk, things are as they
are; not as we grant, dispute, or hope, depending on neither our
affirmative nor negative; but upon the rate and value which God sets
upon things.”
Lord Macaulay, too, has left us this touching picture:
Children, look in those eyes, listen to that dear voice, notice the
feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that
gentle hand! Make much of it while yet you have that most precious
of all good gifts—a loving mother. Read the unfathomable love of
those eyes; the kind anxiety of that tone and look, however slight
your pain. In after-life you may have friends—fond, dear, kind
friends—but never will you have again the inexpressible love and
gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows. Often
do I sigh in my struggles with the hard, uncaring world, for the
sweet, deep security I felt when, of an evening, nestling to her
bosom, I listened to some quiet tale, suitable to my age, read in
her tender and untiring voice. Never can I forget her sweet glances
cast upon me when I appeared asleep; never her kiss of peace at
night. Years have passed away since we laid her beside my father in
the old churchyard; yet still her voice whispers from the grave, and
her eye watches over me as I visit spots long since hallowed to the
memory of my mother.
We pass from these traits of sweet simplicity to a lesson for riper age,
by a living writer of sterling humour:
It is better for you to pass an evening once or twice a week in a
lady’s drawing-room, even though the conversation is slow, and you
know the girl’s song by heart, than in a club, tavern, or the pit of
a theatre. All amusements of youth to which virtuous women are not
admitted, rely on it, are deleterious to their nature. All men who
avoid female society have dull perceptions and are stupid, or have
gross tastes and revolt against what is pure. Your club-swaggerers,
who are sucking the butts of billiard-cues all night, call female
society insipid. Poetry is uninspiring to a yokel; beauty has no
charms for a blind man; music does not please a poor beast who does
not know one tune from another; but as a true epicure is hardly ever
tired of water, sancey, and brown bread and butter, I protest I can
sit for a whole night talking to a well-regulated, kindly woman
about her girl Fanny or her boy Frank, and like the evening’s
entertainment. One of the great benefits a man may derive from
woman’s society is, that he is bound to be respectful to her. The
habit is of great good to your moral men, depend upon it. Our
education makes of use the most eminently selfish men in the world.
We fight for ourselves, we push for ourselves, we yawn for
ourselves, we light our pipes and say we won’t go out, we prefer
ourselves and our ease; and the greatest that comes to a man from a
woman’s society is, that he has to think of somebody to whom he is
bound to be constantly attentive and respectful.—_Thackeray._
Every virtue enjoined by Christianity as a virtue, is recommended by
politeness as an accomplishment. Gentleness, humility, deference,
affability, and a readiness to assist and serve on all occasions, are as
necessary in the composition of a true Christian as in that of a
well-bred man. Passion, moroseness, peevishness, and supercilious
self-sufficiency, are equally repugnant to the characters of both, who
differ in this only, that the true Christian really is what the
well-bred man pretends to be, and would still be better bred if he
was.—_Soame Jenyns._
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Footnote 120:
Jeremy Taylor.
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The Spirit of the Age.
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