WHO is the most wretched man living? This question might constitute a
very fair puzzle to those of our readers whose kind hearts have given
them, in their own experience, no clue to the true answer. It is a
species of happiness to be rich; to have at one's command an abundance
of the elegancies and luxuries of life. Then he, perhaps, is the most
miserable of men who is the poorest. It is a species of happiness to be
the possessor of learning, fame, or power; and therefore, perhaps, he is
the most miserable man who is the most ignorant, despised, and helpless.
No; there is a man more wretched than these. We know not where he may be
found; but find him where you will, in a prison or on a throne, steeped
in poverty or surrounded with princely affluence; execrated, as he
deserves to be, or crowned with world-wide applause; that man is the
most miserable whose heart contains the least love for others.
It is a pleasure to be beloved. Who has not felt this? Human affection
is priceless. A fond heart is more valuable than the Indies. But it is
a still greater pleasure to love than to be loved; the emotion itself
is of a higher kind; it calls forth our own powers into more agreeable
exercise, and is independent of the caprice of others. Generally
speaking, if we deserve to be loved, others will love us, but this is
not always the case. The love of others towards us, is not always
in proportion to our real merits; and it would be unjust to make our
highest happiness dependent on it. But our love for others will always
be in proportion to our real goodness; the more amiable, the more
excellent we become, the more shall we love others; it is right,
therefore, that this love should be made capable of bestowing upon
us the largest amount of happiness. This is the arrangement which the
Creator has fixed upon. By virtue of our moral constitution, to love is
to be happy; to hate is to be wretched.
Hatred is a strong word, and the idea it conveys is very repulsive. We
would hope that few of our readers know by experience what it is in its
full extent. To be a very demon, to combine in ourselves the highest
possible degree of wickedness and misery, nothing more is needful than
to hate with sufficient intensity. But though, happily, comparatively
few persons are fully under the influence of this baneful passion, how
many are under it more frequently and powerfully than they ought to be?
How often do we indulge in resentful, revengeful feelings, with all
of which hatred more or less mixes itself? Have we not sometimes
entertained sentiments positively malignant towards those who have
wounded our vanity or injured our interests, secretly wishing them ill,
or not heartily wishing them happiness? If so, we need only consult
our own experience to ascertain that such feelings are both sinful and
foolish; they offend our Maker, and render us wretched.
We know a happy man; one who in the midst of the vexations and crosses
of this changing world, is always happy. Meet him anywhere, and at any
time, his features beam with pleasure. Children run to meet him, and
contend for the honour of touching his hand, or laying hold of the skirt
of his coat, as he passes by, so cheerful and benevolent does he always
look. In his own house he seems to reign absolute, and yet he never uses
any weapon more powerful than a kind word. Everybody who knows him is
aware, that, in point of intelligence, ay, and in physical prowess,
too--for we know few men who can boast a more athletic frame--he is
strong as a lion, yet in his demeanour he is gentle as a lamb. His wife
is not of the most amiable temper, his children are not the most docile,
his business brings him into contact with men of various dispositions;
but he conquers all with the same weapons. What a contrast have we often
thought he presents to some whose physiognomy looks like a piece of
harsh handwriting, in which we can decipher nothing but _self, self,
self_; who seem, both at home and abroad, to be always on the watch
against any infringement of their dignity. Poor men! their dignity
can be of little value if it requires so much care in order to be
maintained. True manliness need take but little pains to procure
respectful recognition. If it is genuine, others will see it, and
respect it. The lion will always be acknowledged as the king of the
beasts; but the ass, though clothed in the lion's skin, may bray loudly
and perseveringly indeed, but he will never keep the forest in awe.
From some experience in the homes of working-men, and other homes too,
we are led to think that much of the harsh and discordant feeling which
too often prevails there may be ascribed to a false conception of what
is truly great. It is a very erroneous impression that despotism is
manly. For our part we believe that despotism is inhuman, satanic, and
that wherever it is found--as much in the bosom of a family, as on
the throne of a kingdom. We cannot bring ourselves to tolerate the
inconsistency with which some men will inveigh against some absolute
sovereign, and straight-way enact the pettiest airs of absolutism in
their little empire at home. We have no private intimacy with “the
autocrat of all the Russias,” and may, with all humility, avow that
we do not desire to have any; but this we believe, that out of the
thousands who call him a tyrant, it would be no difficult matter to pick
scores who are as bad, if not worse. Let us remember that it is not a
great empire which constitutes a great tyrant. Tyranny must be measured
by the strength of those imperious and malignant passions from which it
flows, and carrying this rule along with us, it would not surprise us,
if we found the greatest tyrant in the world in some small cottage, with
none to oppress but a few unoffending children, and a helpless woman.
O! when shall we, be just!--when shall we cease to prate about wrongs
inflicted by others, and magnified by being beheld through the haze of
distance, and seek to redress those which lie at our own doors, and to
redress which we shall only have to prevail upon ourselves to be just
and gentle! Arbitrary power is always associated either with cruelty, or
conscious weakness. True greatness is above the petty arts of tyranny.
Sometimes much domestic suffering may arise from a cause which is easily
confounded with a tyrannical disposition--we refer to an exaggerated
sense of justice. This is the abuse of a right feeling, and requires
to be kept in vigilant check. Nothing is easier than to be one-sided in
judging of the actions of others. How agreeable the task of applying
the line and plummet! How quiet and complete the assumption of our own
superior excellence which we make in doing it! But if the task is in
some respects easy, it is most difficult if we take into account the
necessity of being just in our decisions. In domestic life especially,
in which so much depends on circumstances, and the highest questions
often relate to mere matters of expediency, how easy it is to be
“always finding fault,” if we neglect to take notice of explanatory and
extenuating circumstances! Anybody with a tongue and a most moderate
complement of brains can call a thing stupid, foolish, ill-advised, and
so forth; though it might require a larger amount of wisdom than the
judges possessed to have done the thing better. But what do we want with
captious judges in the bosom of a family? The scales of household polity
are the scales of love, and he who holds them should be a sympathizing
friend; ever ready to make allowance for failures, ingenious in
contriving apologies, more lavish of counsels than rebukes, and less
anxious to overwhelm a person with a sense of deficiency than to awaken
in the bosom, a conscious power of doing better. One thing is certain:
if any member of a family conceives it his duty to sit continually in
the censor's chair, and weigh in the scales of justice all that happens
in the domestic commonwealth, domestic happiness is out of the question.
It is manly to extenuate and forgive, but a crabbed and censorious
spirit is contemptible.
There is much more misery thrown into the cup of life by domestic
unkindness than we might at first suppose. In thinking of the evils
endured by society from malevolent passions of individuals, we are apt
to enumerate only the more dreadful instances of crime: but what are
the few murders which unhappily pollute the soil of this Christian
land--what, we ask, is the suffering they occasion, what their
demoralizing tendency--when compared with the daily effusions of
ill-humour which sadden, may we not fear, many thousand homes? We
believe that an incalculably greater number are hurried to the grave
by habitual unkindness than by sudden violence; the slow poison of
churlishness and neglect, is of all poisons the most destructive. If
this is true, we want a new definition for the most flagrant of all
crimes: a definition which shall leave out the element of time, and call
these actions the same--equally hateful, equally diabolical, equally
censured by the righteous government of Heaven--which proceed from the
same motives, and lead to the same result, whether they be done in a
moment, or spread out through a series of years. Habitual unkindness is
demoralizing as well as cruel. Whenever it fails to break the heart,
it hardens it. To take a familiar illustration: a wife who is never
addressed by her husband in tones of kindness, must cease to love him
if she wishes to be happy. It is her only alternative. Thanks to the
nobility of our nature, she does not always take it. No; for years she
battles with cruelty, and still presses with affection the hand which
smites her, but it is fearfully at her own expense. Such endurance preys
upon her health, and hastens her exit to the asylum of the grave. If
this is to be avoided, she must learn to forget, what woman should never
be tempted to forget, the vows, the self-renunciating devotedness of
impassioned youth; she must learn to oppose indifference, to neglect
and repel him with a heart as cold as his own. But what a tragedy lies
involved in a career like this! We gaze on something infinitely more
terrible than murder; we see our nature abandoned to the mercy of
malignant passions, and the sacred susceptibilities which were intended
to fertilize with the waters of charity the pathway of life, sending
forth streams of bitterest gall. A catalogue of such cases, faithfully
compiled, would eclipse, in turpitude and horror, all the calendars of
crime that have ever sickened the attention of the world.
The obligations of gentleness and kindness are extensive as the claims
to manliness; these three qualities must go together. There are some
cases, however, in which such obligations are of special force. Perhaps
a precept here will be presented most appropriately under the guise of
an example. We have now before our mind's eye a couple, whose marriage
tie was, a few months since, severed by death. The husband was a strong,
hale, robust sort of a man, who probably never knew a day's illness
in the course of his life, and whose sympathy on behalf of weakness or
suffering in others it was exceedingly difficult to evoke; while his
partner was the very reverse, by constitution weak and ailing, but
withal a woman of whom any man might and ought to have been proud. Her
elegant form, her fair transparent skin, the classical contour of her
refined and expressive face, might have led a Canova to have selected
her as a model of feminine beauty. But alas! she was weak; she could not
work like other women; her husband could not _boast_ among his shopmates
how much she contributed to the maintenance of the family, and how
largely she could afford to dispense with the fruit of his labours.
Indeed, with a noble infant in her bosom, and the cares of a household
resting entirely upon her, she required help herself, and at least
she needed, what no wife can dispense with, but she least of
all--_sympathy_, forbearance, and all those tranquilizing virtues which
flow from a heart of kindness. She least of all could bear a harsh
look; to be treated daily with cold, disapproving reserve, a petulant
dissatisfaction could not but be death to her. We will not say it
_was_--enough that she is dead. The lily bent before the storm, and at
last was crushed by it. We ask but one question, in order to point
the moral:--In the circumstances we have delineated, what course
of treatment was most consonant with a manly spirit; that which was
actually pursued, or some other which the reader can suggest?
Yes, to love is to be happy and to make happy, and to love is the very
spirit of true manliness. We speak not of exaggerated passion and false
sentiment; we speak not of those bewildering, indescribable feelings,
which under that name, often monopolize for a time the guidance of the
youthful heart; but we speak of that pure emotion which is benevolence
intensified, and which, when blended with intelligence, can throw the
light of joyousness around the manifold relations of life. Coarseness,
rudeness, tyranny, are so many forms of brute power; so many
manifestations of what it is man's peculiar glory not to be; but
kindness and gentleness can never cease to be MANLY.
Count not the days that have lightly flown,
The years that were vainly spent;
Nor speak of the hours thou must blush to own,
When thy spirit stands before the Throne,
To account for the talents lent.
But number the hours redeemed from sin,
The moments employed for Heaven;--
Oh few and evil thy days have been,
Thy life, a toilsome but worthless scene,
For a nobler purpose given.
Will the shade go back on the dial plate?
Will thy sun stand still on his way?
Both hasten on; and thy spirit's fate
Rests on the point of life's little date:--
Then live while 'tis called to-day.
Life's waning hours, like the Sibyl's page,
As they lessen, in value rise;
Oh rouse thee and live! nor deem that man's age
Stands on the length of his pilgrimage,
But in days that are truly wise.