PART I.--SYMPATHY.

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HUMAN INTERCOURSE.

BY PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON,

AUTHOR OF "THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE," "A PAINTER'S CAMP,"

"THOUGHTS ABOUT ART," "CHAPTERS ON ANIMALS," "ROUND MY

HOUSE," "THE SYLVAN YEAR" AND "THE UNKNOWN RIVER,"

"WENDERHOLME," "MODERN FRENCHMEN," "LIFE OF J. M. W.

TURNER," "THE GRAPHIC ARTS," "ETCHING AND ETCHERS,"

"PARIS IN OLD AND PRESENT TIMES," "HARRY BLOUNT."

"I love tranquil solitude,

And such society

As is quiet, wise, and good."

SHELLEY.

BOSTON:

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

1898.

AUTHOR'S EDITION.

University Press:

JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.

To the Memory of Emerson.

_If I dedicate this book on Human Intercourse to the memory of one whose

voice I never heard, and to whom I never addressed a letter, the seeming

inappropriateness will disappear when the reader knows what a great and

persistent influence he had on the whole course of my thinking, and

therefore on all my work. He was told of this before his death, and the

acknowledgment gave him pleasure. Perhaps this public repetition of it may

not be without utility at a time when, although it is clear to us that he

has left an immortal name, the exact nature of the rank he will occupy

amongst great men does not seem to be evident as yet. The embarrassment of

premature criticism is a testimony to his originality. But although it may

be too soon for us to know what his name will mean to posterity, we may

tell posterity what service he rendered to ourselves. To me he taught two

great lessons. The first was to rely confidently on that order of the

universe which makes it always really worth while to do our best, even

though the reward may not be visible; and the second was to have

self-reliance enough to trust our own convictions and our own gifts, such

as they are, or such as they may become, without either echoing the

opinions or desiring the more brilliant gifts of others. Emerson taught

much besides; but it is these two doctrines of reliance on the

compensations of Nature, and of a self-respectful reliance on our own

individuality, that have the most invigorating influence on workers like

myself. Emerson knew that each of us can only receive that for which he

has an affinity, and can only give forth effectually what is by

birthright, or has become, his own. To have accepted this doctrine with

perfect contentment is to possess one's soul in peace._

_Emerson combined high intellect with pure honesty, and remained faithful

to the double law of the intellectual life--high thinking and fearless

utterance--to the end of his days, with a beautiful persistence and

serenity. So now I go, in spirit, a pilgrim to that tall pine-tree that

grows upon "the hill-top to the east of Sleepy Hollow," and lay one more

wreath upon an honored grave._

_June 24, 1884._

PREFACE.

When this book was begun, some years ago, I made a formal plan, according

to which it was to have been one long Essay or Treatise, divided into

sections and chapters, and presenting that apparently perfect _ordonnance_

which gives such an imposing air to a work of art. I say "apparently

perfect _ordonnance_," because in such cases the perfection of the

arrangement is often only apparent, and the work is like those formal

pseudo-classical buildings that seem, with their regular columns, spaces,

and windows, the very highest examples of method; but you find on entering

that the internal distribution of space is defective and inconvenient,

that one room has a window in a corner and another half a window, that one

is needlessly large for its employment and another far too small. In

literature the ostentation of order may compel an author to extreme

condensation in one part of his book and to excessive amplification in

another, since, in reality, the parts of his subject do not fall more

naturally into equal divisions than words beginning with different letters

in the dictionary. I therefore soon abandoned external rigidity of order,

and made my divisions more elastic; but I went still further after some

experiments, and abandoned the idea of a Treatise. This was not done

without some regret, as I know that a Treatise has a better chance of

permanence than a collection of Essays; but, in this case, I met with an

invisible obstacle that threatened to prevent good literary execution.

After making some progress I felt that the work was not very readable, and

that the writing of it was not a satisfactory occupation. Whenever this

happens there is sure to be an error of method somewhere. What the error

was in this case I did not discover for a long time, but at last I

suddenly perceived it. A formal Treatise, to be satisfactory, can only be

written about ascertained or ascertainable laws; and human intercourse as

it is carried on between individuals, though it looks so accessible to

every observer, is in reality a subject of infinite mystery and obscurity,

about which hardly anything is known, about which certainly nothing is

known absolutely and completely. I found that every attempt to ascertain

and proclaim a law only ended, when the supposed law was brought face to

face with nature, by discovering so many exceptions that the best

practical rules were suspension of judgment and a reliance upon nothing

but special observation in each particular case. I found that in real

human intercourse the theoretically improbable, or even the theoretically

impossible, was constantly happening. I remember a case in real life which

illustrates this very forcibly. A certain English lady, influenced by the

received ideas about human intercourse which define the conditions of it

in a hard and sharp manner, was strongly convinced that it would be

impossible for her to have friendly relations with another lady whom she

had never seen, but was likely to see frequently. All her reasons would be

considered excellent reasons by those who believe in maxims and rules. It

was plain that there could be nothing in common. The other lady was

neither of the same country, nor of the same religious and political

parties, nor exactly of the same class, nor of the same generation. These

facts were known, and the inference deduced from them was that intercourse

would be impossible. After some time the English lady began to perceive

that the case did not bear out the supposed rules; she discovered that the

younger lady might be an acceptable friend. At last the full strange truth

became apparent,--that she was singularly well adapted, better adapted

than any other human being, to take a filial relation to the elder,

especially in times of sickness, when her presence was a wonderful

support. Then the warmest affection sprang up between the two, lasting

till separation by death and still cherished by the survivor. What becomes

of rules and maxims and wise old saws in the face of nature and reality?

What can we do better than to observe nature with an open, unprejudiced

mind, and gather some of the results of observation?

I am conscious of several omissions that may possibly be rectified in

another volume if this is favorably accepted. The most important of these

are the influence of age on intercourse, and the effects of living in the

same house, which are not invariably favorable. Both these subjects are

very important, and I have not time to treat them now with the care they

would require. There ought also to have been a careful study of the

natural antagonisms, which are of terrible importance when people,

naturally antagonistic, are compelled by circumstances to live together.

These are, however, generally of less importance than the affinities,

because we contrive to make our intercourse with antagonistic people as

short and rare as possible, and that with sympathetic people as frequent

and long as circumstances will permit.

I will not close this preface without saying that the happiness of

sympathetic human intercourse seems to me incomparably greater than any

other pleasure. I may be supposed to have passed the age of enthusiastic

illusions, yet I would at any time rather pass a week with a real friend

in any place that afforded simple shelter than with an indifferent person

in a palace. In saying this I am thinking of real experiences. One of my

friends who is devoted to archæological excavations has often invited me

to share his life in a hut or a cottage, and I have invariably found that

the pleasure of his society far overbalanced the absence of luxury. On the

other hand, I have sometimes endured extreme _ennui_ at sumptuous feasts

in richly appointed houses. The result of experience, in my case, has been

to confirm a youthful conviction that the value of certain persons is not

to be estimated by comparison with anything else. I was always a believer,

and am so at this day more than ever, in the happiness of genuine human

intercourse, but I prefer solitude to the false imitation of it. It is in

this as in other pleasures, the better we appreciate the real thing, the

less we are disposed to accept the spurious copy as a substitute. By far

the greater part of what passes for human intercourse is not intercourse

at all, but only acting, of which the highest object and most considerable

merit is to conceal the weariness that accompanies its hollow observances.

One sad aspect of my subject has not been touched upon in this volume. It

was often present in my thoughts, but I timidly shrank from dealing with

it. I might have attempted to show in what manner intercourse is cut short

by death. All reciprocity of intercourse is, or appears to be, entirety

cut short by that catastrophe; but those who have talked with us much in

former years retain an influence that may be even more constant than our

recollection of them. My own recollection of the dead is extremely vivid

and clear, and I cultivate it by willingly thinking about them, being

especially happy when by some accidental flash of brighter memory a more

than usual degree of lucidity is obtained. I accept with resignation the

natural law, on the whole so beneficent, that when an organism is no

longer able to exist without suffering, or senile decrepitude, it should

be dissolved and made insensible of suffering; but I by no means accept

the idea that the dead are to be forgotten in order that we may spare

ourselves distress. Let us give them their due place, their great place,

in our hearts and in our thoughts; and if the sweet reciprocity of human

intercourse is no longer possible with those who are silent and asleep,

let the memory of past intercourse be still a part of our lives. There are

hours when we live with the dead more than with the living, so that

without any trace of superstition we feel their old sweet influence acting

upon us yet, and it seems as if only a little more were needed to give us

"the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still."

Closely connected with this subject of death is the subject of religious

beliefs. In the present state of confusion and change, some causes of

which are indicated in this volume, the only plain course for honorable

men is to act always in favor of truthfulness, and therefore against

hypocrisy, and against those encouragers of hypocrisy who offer social

advantages as rewards for it. What may come in the future we cannot tell,

but we may be sure that the best way to prepare for the future is to be

honest and candid in the present. There are two causes which are gradually

effecting a great change, and as they are natural causes they are

irresistibly powerful. One is the process of analytic detachment, by which

sentiments and feelings once believed to be religious are now found to be

separable from religion. If a French peasant has a feeling for

architecture, poetry, or music, or an appreciation of eloquence, or a

desire to hear a kind of moral philosophy, he goes to the village church

to satisfy these dim incipient desires. In his case these feelings and

wants are all confusedly connected with religion; in ours they are

detached from it, and only reconnected with it by accident, we being still

aware that there is no essential identity. That is the first dissolving

cause. It seems only to affect the externals of religion, but it goes

deeper by making the consciously religious state of mind less habitual.

The second cause is even more serious in its effects. We are acquiring the

habit of explaining everything by natural causes, and of trying to remedy

everything by the employment of natural means. Journals dependent on

popular approval for the enormous circulation that is necessary to their

existence do not hesitate, in clear terms, to express their preference of

natural means to the invocation of supernatural agencies. For example, the

correspondent of the "Daily News" at Port Said, after describing the

annual blessing of the Suez Canal at the Epiphany, observes: "Thus the

canal was solemnly blessed. The opinion of the captains of the ships that

throng the harbor, waiting until the block adjusts itself, is that it

would be better to widen it." Such an opinion is perfectly modern,

perfectly characteristic of our age. We think that steam excavators and

dredgers would be more likely to prevent blocks in the Suez Canal than a

priest reading prayers out of a book and throwing a golden cross into the

sea, to be fished up again by divers. We cannot help thinking as we do:

our opinion has not been chosen by us voluntarily, it has been forced upon

us by facts that we cannot help seeing, but it deprives us of an

opportunity for a religious emotion, and it separates us, on that point,

from all those who are still capable of feeling it. I have given

considerable space to the consideration of these changes, but not a

disproportionate space. They have a deplorable effect on human intercourse

by dividing friends and families into different groups, and by separating

those who might otherwise have enjoyed friendship unreservedly. It is

probable, too, that we are only at the beginning of the conflict, and that

in years not immeasurably distant there will be fierce struggles on the

most irritating of practical issues. To name but one of these it is

probable that there will be a sharp struggle when a strong and determined

naturalist party shall claim the instruction of the young, especially with

regard to the origin of the race, the beginnings of animal life, and the

evidences of intention in nature. Loving, as I do, the amenities of a

peaceful and polished civilization much better than angry controversy, I

long for the time when these great questions will be considered as settled

one way or the other, or else, if they are beyond our intelligence, for

the time when they may be classed as insoluble, so that men may work out

their destiny without bitter quarrels about their origin. The present at

least is ours, and it depends upon ourselves whether it is to be wasted in

vain disputes or brightened by charity and kindness.

CONTENTS.

ESSAY PAGE

I. ON THE DIFFICULTY OF DISCOVERING FIXED LAWS 3

II. INDEPENDENCE 12

III. OF PASSIONATE LOVE 33

IV. COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE 44

V. FAMILY TIES 63

VI. FATHERS AND SONS 78

VII. THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST 99

VIII. THE DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP 110

IX. THE FLUX OF WEALTH 119

X. DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH 130

XI. THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE 148

XII. THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION 161

XIII. PRIESTS AND WOMEN 175

XIV. WHY WE ARE APPARENTLY BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS 205

XV. HOW WE ARE REALLY BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS 215

XVI. ON AN UNRECOGNIZED FORM OF UNTRUTH 232

XVII. ON A REMARKABLE ENGLISH PECULIARITY 239

XVIII. OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE 253

XIX. PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE 264

XX. CONFUSIONS 280

XXI. THE NOBLE BOHEMIANISM 295

XXII. OF COURTESY IN EPISTOLARY COMMUNICATION 315

XXIII. LETTERS OF FRIENDSHIP 336

XXIV. LETTERS OF BUSINESS 354

XXV. ANONYMOUS LETTERS 370

XXVI. AMUSEMENTS 383

INDEX 403

HUMAN INTERCOURSE.

HUMAN INTERCOURSE.

ESSAY I.

ON THE DIFFICULTY OF DISCOVERING FIXED LAWS.

A book on Human Intercourse might be written in a variety of ways, and

amongst them might be an attempt to treat the subject in a scientific

manner so as to elucidate those natural laws by which intercourse between

human beings must be regulated. If we knew quite perfectly what those laws

are we should enjoy the great convenience of being able to predict with

certainty which men and women would be able to associate with pleasure,

and which would be constrained or repressed in each other's society. Human

intercourse would then be as much a positive science as chemistry, in

which the effects of bringing substances together can be foretold with the

utmost accuracy. Some very distant approach to this scientific state may

in certain instances actually be made. When we know the characters of two

people with a certain degree of precision we may sometimes predict that

they are sure to quarrel, and have the satisfaction of witnessing the

explosion that our own acumen has foretold. To detect in people we know

those incompatibilities that are the fatal seeds of future dissension is

one of our malicious pleasures. An acute observer really has considerable

powers of prediction and calculation with reference to individual human

beings, but there his wisdom ends. He cannot deduce from these separate

cases any general rules or laws that can be firmly relied upon as every

real law of nature can be relied upon, and therefore it may be concluded

that such rules are not laws of nature at all, but only poor and

untrustworthy substitutes for them.

The reason for this difficulty I take to be the extreme complexity of

human nature and its boundless variety, which make it always probable that

in every mind which we have not long and closely studied there will be

elements wholly unknown to us. How often, with regard to some public man,

who is known to us only in part through his acts or his writings, are we

surprised by the sudden revelation of characteristics that we never

imagined for him and that seem almost incompatible with the better known

side of his nature! How much the more, then, are we likely to go wrong in

our estimates of people we know nothing about, and how impossible it must

be for us to determine how they are likely to select their friends and

companions!

Certain popular ideas appear to represent a sort of rude philosophy of

human intercourse. There is the common belief, for example, that, in order

to associate pleasantly together, people should be of the same class and

nearly in the same condition of fortune, but when we turn to real life we

find very numerous instances in which this fancied law is broken with the

happiest results. The late Duke of Albany may be mentioned as an example.

No doubt his own natural refinement would have prevented him from

associating with vulgar people; but he readily associated with refined and

cultivated people who had no pretension to rank. His own rank was a power

in his hands that he used for good, and he was conscious of it, but it did

not isolate him; he desired to know people as they are, and was capable of

feeling the most sincere respect for anybody who deserved it. So it is,

generally, with all who have the gifts of sympathy and intelligence.

Merely to avoid what is disagreeable has nothing to do with pride of

station. Vulgar society is disagreeable, which is a sufficient reason for

keeping aloof from it. Amongst people of refinement, association or even

friendship is possible in spite of differences of rank and fortune.

Another popular belief is that "men associate together when they are

interested in the same things." It would, however, be easy to adduce very

numerous instances in which an interest in similar things has been a cause

of quarrel, when if one of the two parties had regarded those things with

indifference, harmonious intercourse might have been preserved. The

livelier our interest in anything the more does acquiescence in matters of

detail appear essential to us. Two people are both of them extremely

religious, but one of them is a Mahometan, and the other a Christian; here

the interest in religion causes a divergence, enough in most cases to make

intercourse impossible, when it would have been quite possible if both

parties had regarded religion with indifference. Bring the two nearer

together, suppose them to be both Christians, they acknowledge one law,

one doctrine, one Head of the church in heaven. Yes, but they do not

acknowledge the same head of it on earth, for one accepts the Papal

supremacy, which the other denies; and their common Christianity is a

feeble bond of union in comparison with the forces of repulsion contained

in a multitude of details. Two nominal, indifferent Christians who take no

interest in theology would have a better chance of agreeing. Lastly,

suppose them to be both members of the Church of England, one of the old

school, with firm and settled beliefs on every point and a horror of the

most distant approaches to heresy, the other of the new school, vague,

indeterminate, desiring to preserve his Christianity as a sentiment when

it has vanished as a faith, thinking that the Bible is not true in the old

sense but only "contains" truth, that the divinity of Christ is "a past

issue,"[1] and that evolution is, on the whole, more probable than direct

and intentional creation,--what possible agreement can exist between these

two? If they both care about religious topics, and talk about them, will

not their disagreement be in exact proportion to the liveliness of their

interest in the subject? So in a realm with which I have some

acquaintance, that of the fine arts, discord is always probable between

those who have a passionate delight in art. Innocent, well-intentioned

friends think that because two men "like painting," they ought to be

introduced, as they are sure to amuse each other. In reality, their

tastes may be more opposed than the taste of either of them is to perfect

indifference. One has a severe taste for beautiful form and an active

contempt for picturesque accidents and romantic associations, the other

feels chilled by severe beauty and delights in the picturesque and

romantic. If each is convinced of the superiority of his own principles he

will deduce from them an endless series of judgments that can only

irritate the other.

Seeing that nations are always hostile to each other, always watchfully

jealous and inclined to rejoice in every evil that happens to a neighbor,

it would appear safe to predict that little intercourse could exist

between persons of different nationality. When, however, we observe the

facts as they are in real life, we perceive that very strong and durable

friendships often exist between men who are not of the same nation, and

that the chief obstacle to the formation of these is not so much

nationality as difference of language. There is, no doubt, a prejudice

that one is not likely to get on well with a foreigner, and the prejudice

has often the effect of keeping people of different nationality apart, but

when once it is overcome it is often found that very powerful feelings of

mutual respect and sympathy draw the strangers together. On the other

hand, there is not the least assurance that the mere fact of being born in

the same country will make two men regard each other with kindness. An

Englishman repels another Englishman when he meets him on the

Continent.[2] The only just conclusion is that nationality affords no

certain rule either in favor of intercourse or against it. A man may

possibly be drawn towards a foreign nationality by his appreciation of its

excellence in some art that he loves, but this is the case only when the

excellence is of the peculiar kind that supplies the needs of his own

intelligence. The French excel in painting; that is to say, that many

Frenchmen have attained a certain kind of excellence in certain

departments of the art of painting. Englishmen and Americans who value

that particular kind of excellence are often strongly drawn towards Paris

as an artistic centre or capital; and this opening of their minds to

French influence in art may admit other French influences at the same

time, so that the ultimate effect of a love of art may be a breaking down

of the barrier of nationality. It seldom happens that Frenchmen are drawn

towards England and America by their love of painting, but it frequently

happens that they become in a measure Anglicized or Americanized either by

the serious study of nautical science, or by the love of yachting as an

amusement, in which they look to England and America both for the most

advanced theories and the newest examples.

The nearest approach ever made to a general rule may be the affirmation

that likeness is the secret of companionship. This has a great look of

probability, and may really be the reason for many associations, but after

observing others we might come to the conclusion that an opposite law

would be at least equally applicable. We might say that a companion, to be

interesting, ought to bring new elements, and not be a repetition of our

own too familiar personality. We have enough of ourselves in ourselves; we

desire a companion who will relieve us from the bounds of our thoughts, as

a neighbor opens his garden to us, and delivers us from our own hedges.

But if the unlikeness is so great that mutual understanding is impossible,

then it is too great. We fancy that we should like to know this or that

author, because we feel a certain sympathy with him though he is very

different from us, but there are other writers whom we do not desire to

know because we are aware of a difference too excessive for companionship.

The only approximation to a general law that I would venture to affirm is

that the strongest reason why men are drawn together is not identity of

class, not identity of race, not a common interest in any particular art

or science, but because there is something in their idiosyncrasies that

gives a charm to intercourse between the two. What it is I cannot tell,

and I have never met with the wise man who was able to enlighten me.

It is not respect for character, seeing that we often respect people

heartily without being able to enjoy their society. It is a mysterious

suitableness or adaptability, and _how_ mysterious it is may be in some

degree realized when we reflect that we cannot account for our own

preferences. I try to explain to myself, for my own intellectual

satisfaction, how and why it is that I take pleasure in the society of one

very dear friend. He is a most able, honorable, and high-minded man, but

others are all that, and they give me no pleasure. My friend and I have

really not very much in common, far less than I have with some perfectly

indifferent people. I only know that we are always glad to be together,

that each of us likes to listen to the other, and that we have talked for

innumerable hours. Neither does my affection blind me to his faults. I see

them as clearly as if I were his enemy, and doubt not that he sees mine.

There is no illusion, and there has been no change in our sentiments for

twenty years.

As a contrast to this instance I think of others in which everything seems

to have been prepared on purpose for facility of intercourse, in which

there is similarity of pursuits, of language, of education, of every thing

that is likely to permit men to talk easily together, and yet there is

some obstacle that makes any real intercourse impossible. What the

obstacle is I am unable to explain even to myself. It need not be any

unkind feeling, nor any feeling of disapprobation; there may be good-will

on both sides and a mutual desire for a greater degree of intimacy, yet

with all this the intimacy does not come, and such intercourse as we have

is that of simple politeness. In these cases each party is apt to think

that the other is reserved, when there is no wish to be reserved but

rather a desire to be as open as the unseen obstacle will allow. The

existence of the obstacle does not prevent respect and esteem or even a

considerable degree of affection. It divides people who seem to be on the

most friendly terms; it divides even the nearest relations, brother from

brother, and the son from the father. Nobody knows exactly what it is, but

we have a word for it,--we call it incompatibility. The difficulty of

going farther and explaining the real nature of incompatibility is that

it takes as many shapes as there are varieties in the characters of

mankind.

Sympathy and incompatibility,--these are the two great powers that decide

for us whether intercourse is to be possible or not, but the causes of

them are dark mysteries that lie undiscovered far down in the "abysmal

deeps of personality."

ESSAY II.

INDEPENDENCE.

There is an illusory and unattainable independence which is a mere dream,

but there is also a reasonable and attainable independence not really

inconsistent with our obligations to humanity and our country.

The dependence of the individual upon the race has never been so fully

recognized as now, so that there is little fear of its being overlooked.

The danger of our age, and of the future, is rather that a reasonable and

possible independence should be made needlessly difficult to attain and to

preserve.

The distinction between the two may be conveniently illustrated by a

reference to literary production. Every educated man is dependent upon his

own country for the language that he uses; and again, that language is

itself dependent on other languages from which it is derived; and,

farther, the modern author is indebted for a continual stimulus and many a

suggestion to the writings of his predecessors, not in his own country

only but in far distant lands. He cannot, therefore, say in any absolute

way, "My books are my own," but he may preserve a certain mental

independence which will allow him to say that with truth in a relative

sense. If he expresses himself such as he is, an idiosyncrasy affected

but not annihilated by education, he may say that his books are his own.

Few English authors have studied past literature more willingly than

Shelley and Tennyson, and none are more original. In these cases

idiosyncrasy has been affected by education, but instead of being

annihilated thereby it has gained from education the means of expressing

its own inmost self more clearly. We have the true Shelley, the born

Tennyson, far more perfectly than we should ever have possessed them if

their own minds had not been opened by the action of other minds. Culture

is like wealth, it makes us more ourselves, it enables us to express

ourselves. The real nature of the poor and the ignorant is an obscure and

doubtful problem, for we can never know the inborn powers that remain in

them undeveloped till they die. In this way the help of the race, so far

from being unfavorable to individuality, is necessary to it. Claude helped

Turner to become Turner. In complete isolation from art, however

magnificently surrounded by the beauties of the natural world, a man does

not express his originality as a landscape-painter, he is simply incapable

of expressing _anything_ in paint.

But now let us inquire whether there may not be cases in which the labors

of others, instead of helping originality to express itself, act as a

check to it by making originality superfluous.

As an illustration of this possibility I may take the modern railway

system. Here we have the labor and ingenuity of the race applied to

travelling, greatly to the convenience of the individual, but in a manner

which is totally repressive of originality and indifferent to personal

tastes. People of the most different idiosyncrasies travel exactly in the

same way. The landscape-painter is hurried at speed past beautiful spots

that he would like to contemplate at leisure; the archæologist is whirled

by the site of a Roman camp that he would willingly pause to examine; the

mountaineer is not permitted to climb the tunnelled hill, nor the swimmer

to cross in his own refreshing, natural way the breadth of the

iron-spanned river. And as individual tastes are disregarded, so

individual powers are left uncultivated and unimproved. The only talent

required is that of sitting passively on a seat and of enduring, for hours

together, an unpleasant though mitigated vibration. The skill and courage

of the horseman, the endurance of the pedestrian, the art of the paddler

or the oarsman, are all made superfluous by this system of travelling by

machines, in which previous labors of engineers and mechanics have

determined everything beforehand. Happily, the love of exercise and

enterprise has produced a reaction of individualism against this levelling

railway system, a reaction that shows itself in many kinds of slower but

more adventurous locomotion and restores to the individual creature his

lost independence by allowing him to pause and stop when he pleases; a

reaction delightful to him especially in this, that it gives him some

pride and pleasure in the use of his own muscles and his own wits. There

are still, happily, Englishmen who would rather steer a cutter across the

Channel in rough weather than be shot through a long hole in the chalk.

What the railway is to physical motion, settled conventions are to the

movements of the mind. Convention is a contrivance for facilitating what

we write or speak by which we are relieved from personal effort and almost

absolved from personal responsibility. There are men whose whole art of

living consists in passing from one conventionalism to another as a

traveller changes his train. Such men may be envied for the skill with

which they avoid the difficulties of life. They take their religion, their

politics, their education, their social and literary opinions, all as

provided by the brains of others, and they glide through existence with a

minimum of personal exertion. For those who are satisfied with easy,

conventional ways the desire for intellectual independence is

unintelligible. What is the need of it? Why go, mentally, on a bicycle or

in a canoe by your own toilsome exertions when you may sit so very

comfortably in the train, a rug round your lazy legs and your softly

capped head in a corner?

The French ideal of "good form" is to be undistinguishable from others; by

which it is not understood that you are to be undistinguishable from the

multitude of poor people, but one of the smaller crowd of rich and

fashionable people. Independence and originality are so little esteemed in

what is called "good society" in France that the adjectives

"_indépendant_" and "_original_" are constantly used in a bad sense. "_Il

est très indépendant_" often means that the man is of a rude,

insubordinate, rebellious temper, unfitting him for social life. "_Il est

original_," or more contemptuously, "_C'est un original_," means that the

subject of the criticism has views of his own which are not the

fashionable views, and which therefore (whatever may be their accuracy)

are proper objects of well-bred ridicule.

I cannot imagine any state of feeling more destructive of all interest in

human intercourse than this, for if on going into society I am only to

hear the fashionable opinions and sentiments, what is the gain to me who

know them too well already? I could even repeat them quite accurately with

the proper conventional tone, so why put myself to inconvenience to hear

that dull and wearisome play acted over again? The only possible

explanation of the pleasure that French people of some rank appear to take

in hearing things, which are as stale as they are inaccurate, repeated by

every one they know, is that the repetition of them appears to be one of

the signs of gentility, and to give alike to those who utter them and to

those who hear, the profound satisfaction of feeling that they are present

at the mysterious rites of Caste.

There is probably no place in the whole world where the feeling of mental

independence is so complete as it is in London. There is no place where

differences of opinion are more marked in character or more frank and open

in expression; but what strikes one as particularly admirable in London is

that in the present day (it has not always been so) men of the most

opposite opinions and the most various tastes can profess their opinions

and indulge their tastes without inconvenient consequences to themselves,

and there is hardly any opinion, or any eccentricity, that excludes a man

from pleasant social intercourse if he does not make himself impossible

and intolerable by bad manners. This independence gives a savor to social

intercourse in London that is lamentably wanting to it elsewhere. There is

a strange and novel pleasure (to one who lives habitually in the country)

in hearing men and women say what they think without deference to any

local public opinion.

In many small places this local public opinion is so despotic that there

is no individual independence in society, and it then becomes necessary

that a man who values his independence, and desires to keep it, should

learn the art of living contentedly outside of society.

It has often occurred to me to reflect that there are many men in London

who enjoy a pleasant and even a high social position, who live with

intelligent people, and even with people of great wealth and exalted rank,

and yet who, if their lot had been cast in certain small provincial towns,

would have found themselves rigorously excluded from the upper local

circles, if not from all circles whatsoever.

I have sometimes asked myself, when travelling on the railway through

France, and visiting for a few hours one of those sleepy little old

cities, to me so delightful, in which the student of architecture and the

lover of the picturesque find so much to interest them, what would have

been the career of a man having, for example, the capacity and the

convictions of Mr. Gladstone, if he had passed all the years of his

manhood in such a place.

It commonly happens that when Nature endows a man with a vigorous

personality and its usual accompaniment, an independent way of seeing

things, she gives him at the same time powerful talents with which to

defend his own originality; but in a small and ancient city, where

everything is traditional, intellectual force is of no avail, and learning

is of no use. In such a city, where the upper class is an exclusive caste

impenetrable by ideas, the eloquence of Mr. Gladstone would be

ineffectual, and if exercised at all would be considered in bad taste. His

learning, even, would tend to separate him from the unlearned local

aristocracy. The simple fact that he is in favor of parliamentary

government, without any more detailed information concerning his political

opinions, would put him beyond the pale, for parliamentary government is

execrated by the French rural aristocracy, who tolerate nothing short of a

determined monarchical absolutism. His religious views would be looked

upon as those of a low Dissenter, and it would be remembered against him

that his father was in trade. Such is the difference, as a field for

talent and originality, between London and an aristocratic little French

city, that those very qualities which have raised our Prime Minister to a

not undeserved pre-eminence in the great place would have kept him out of

society in the small one. He might, perhaps, have talked politics in some

café with a few shop-keepers and attorneys.

It may be objected that Mr. Gladstone, as an English Liberal, would

naturally be out of place in France and little appreciated there, so I

will take the cases of a Frenchman in France and an Englishman in England.

A brave French officer, who was at the same time a gentleman of ancient

lineage and good estate, chose (for reasons of his own which had no

connection with social intercourse) to live upon a property that happened

to be situated in a part of France where the aristocracy was strongly

Catholic and reactionary. He then found himself excluded from "good

society," because he was a Protestant and a friend to parliamentary

government. Reasons of this kind, or the counter-reasons of Catholicism

and disapprobation of parliaments, would not exclude a polished and

amiable gentleman from society in London. I have read in a biographical

notice of Sidney Dobell that when he lived at Cheltenham he was excluded

from the society of the place because his parents were Dissenters and he

had been in trade.

In cases of this kind, where exclusion is due to hard prejudices of caste

or of religion, a man who has all the social gifts of good manners,

kind-heartedness, culture, and even wealth, may find himself outside the

pale if he lives in or near a small place where society is a strong little

clique well organized on definitely understood principles. There are

situations in which exclusion of that kind means perfect solitude. It may

be argued that to escape solitude the victim has nothing to do but

associate with a lower class, but this is not easy or natural, especially

when, as in Dobell's case, there is intellectual culture. Those who have

refined manners and tastes and a love for intellectual pursuits, usually

find themselves disqualified for entering with any real heartiness and

enjoyment into the social life of classes where these tastes are

undeveloped, and where the thoughts flow in two channels,--the serious

channel, studded with anxieties about the means of existence, and the

humorous channel, which is a diversion from the other. Far be it from me

to say anything that might imply any shade of contempt or disapprobation

of the humorous spirit that is Nature's own remedy for the evils of an

anxious life. It does more for the mental health of the middle classes

than could be done by the most sublimated culture; and if anything

concerning it is a subject for regret it is that culture makes us

incapable of enjoying poor jokes. It is, however, a simple matter of fact

that although men of great culture may be humorists (Mr. Lowell is a

brilliant example), their humor is both more profound in the serious

intention that lies under it, and vastly more extensive in the field of

its operations than the trivial humor of the uneducated; whence it follows

that although humor is the faculty by which different classes are brought

most easily into cordial relations, the humorist who has culture will

probably find himself _à l'étroit_ with humorists who have none, whilst

the cultured man who has no humor, or whose humorous tendencies have been

overpowered by serious thought, is so terribly isolated in uneducated

society that he feels less alone in solitude. To realize this truth in its

full force, the reader has only to imagine John Stuart Mill trying to

associate with one of those middle-class families that Dickens loved to

describe, such as the Wardle family in Pickwick.

It follows from these considerations that unless a man lives in London, or

in some other great capital city, he may easily find himself so situated

that he must learn the art of being happy without society.

As there is no pleasure in military life for a soldier who fears death, so

there is no independence in civil existence for the man who has an

overpowering dread of solitude.

There are two good reasons against the excessive dread of solitude. The

first is that solitude is very rarely so absolute as it appears from a

distance; and the second is that when the evil is real, and almost

complete, there are palliatives that may lessen it to such a degree as to

make it, at the worst, supportable, and at the best for some natures even

enjoyable in a rather sad and melancholy way.

Let us not deceive ourselves with conventional notions on the subject. The

world calls "solitude" that condition in which a man lives outside of

"society," or, in other words, the condition in which he does not pay

formal calls and is not invited to state dinners and dances. Such a

condition may be very lamentable, and deserving of polite contempt, but it

need not be absolute solitude.

Absolute solitude would be the state of Crusoe on the desert island,

severed from human kind and never hearing a human voice; but this is not

the condition of any one in a civilized country who is out of a prison

cell. Suppose that I am travelling in a country where I am a perfect

stranger, and that I stay for some days in a village where I do not know a

soul. In a surprisingly short time I shall have made acquaintances and

begun to acquire rather a home-like feeling in the place. My new

acquaintances may possibly not be rich and fashionable: they may be the

rural postman, the innkeeper, the stone-breaker on the roadside, the

radical cobbler, and perhaps a mason or a joiner and a few more or less

untidy little children; but every morning their greeting becomes more

friendly, and so I feel myself connected still with that great human race

to which, whatever may be my sins against the narrow laws of caste and

class, I still unquestionably belong. It is a positive advantage that our

meetings should be accidental and not so long as to involve any of the

embarrassments of formal social intercourse, as I could not promise myself

that the attempt to spend a whole evening with these humble friends might

not cause difficulties for me and for them. All I maintain is that these

little chance talks and greetings have a tendency to keep me cheerful and

preserve me from that moody state of mind to which the quite lonely man

exposes himself. As to the substance and quality of our conversations, I

amuse myself by comparing them with conversations between more genteel

people, and do not always perceive that the disparity is very wide. Poor

men often observe external facts with the greatest shrewdness and

accuracy, and have interesting things to tell when they see that you set

up no barrier of pride against them. Perhaps they do not know much about

architecture and the graphic arts, but on these subjects they are devoid

of the false pretensions of the upper classes, which is an unspeakable

comfort and relief. They teach us many things that are worth knowing.

Humble and poor people were amongst the best educators of Shakspeare,

Scott, Dickens, Wordsworth, George Eliot. Even old Homer learned from

them touches of nature which have done as much for his immortality as the

fire of his wrathful kings.

Let me give the reader an example of this chance intercourse just as it

really occurred. I was drawing architectural details in and about a

certain foreign cathedral, and had the usual accompaniment of youthful

spectators who liked to watch me working, as greater folks watch

fashionable artists in their studios. Sometimes they rather incommoded me,

but on my complaining of the inconvenience, two of the bigger boys acted

as policemen to defend me, which they did with stern authority and

promptness. After that one highly intelligent little boy brought paper and

pencil from his father's house and set himself to draw what I was drawing.

The subject was far too difficult for him, but I gave him a simpler one,

and in a very short time he was a regular pupil. Inspired by his example,

three other little boys asked if they might do likewise, so I had a class

of four. Their manner towards me was perfect,--not a trace of rudeness nor

of timidity either, but absolute confidence at once friendly and

respectful. Every day when I went to the cathedral at the same hour my

four little friends greeted me with such frank and visible gladness that

it could neither have been feigned nor mistaken. During our lessons they

surprised and interested me greatly by the keen observation they

displayed; and this was true more particularly of the bright little leader

and originator of the class. The house he lived in was exactly opposite

the rich west front of the cathedral; and I found that, young as he was (a

mere child), he had observed for himself almost all the details of its

sculpture. The statues, groups, bas-reliefs, and other ornaments were all,

for him, so many separate subjects, and not a confused enrichment of

labored stone-work as they so easily might have been. He had notions, too,

about chronology, telling me the dates of some parts of the cathedral and

asking me about others. His mother treated me with the utmost kindness and

invited me to sketch quietly from her windows. I took a photographer up

there, and set his big camera, and we got such a photograph as had been

deemed impossible before. Now in all this does not the reader perceive

that I was enjoying human intercourse in a very delicate and exquisite

way? What could be more charming and refreshing to a solitary student than

this frank and hearty friendship of children who caused no perceptible

hindrance to his work, whilst they effectually dispelled sad thoughts?

Two other examples may be given from the experience of a man who has often

been alone and seldom felt himself in solitude.

I remember arriving, long ago, in the evening at the head of a salt-water

loch in Scotland, where in those days there existed an exceedingly small

beginning of a watering-place. Soon after landing I walked on the beach

with no companion but the beauty of nature and the "long, long thoughts"

of youth. In a short time I became aware that a middle-aged Scotch

gentleman was taking exercise in the same solitary way. He spoke to me,

and we were soon deep in a conversation that began to be interesting to

both of us. He was a resident in the place and invited me to his house,

where our talk continued far into the night. I was obliged to leave the

little haven the next day, but my recollection of it now is like the

memorandum of a conversation. I remember the wild romantic scenery and the

moon upon the water, and the steamer from Glasgow at the pier; but the

real satisfaction of that day consisted in hours of talk with a man who

had seen much, observed much, thought much, and was most kindly and

pleasantly communicative,--a man whom I had never spoken to before, and

have never seen or heard of since that now distant but well-remembered

evening.

The other instance is a conversation in the cabin of a steamer. I was

alone, in the depth of winter, making a voyage by an unpopular route, and

during a long, dark night. It was a dead calm. We were only three

passengers, and we sat together by the bright cabin-fire. One of us was a

young officer in the British navy, just of age; another was an

anxious-looking man of thirty. Somehow the conversation turned to the

subject of inevitable expenses; and the sailor told us that he had a

certain private income, the amount of which he mentioned. "I have exactly

the same income," said the man of thirty, "but I married very early and

have a wife and family to maintain;" and then--as we did not know even his

name, and he was not likely to see us again--he seized the opportunity

(under the belief that he was kindly warning the young sailor) of telling

the whole story of his anxieties in detail. The point of his discourse was

that he did not pretend to be poor, or to claim sympathy, but he

powerfully described the exact nature of his position. What had been his

private income had now become the public revenue of a household. It all

went in housekeeping, almost independently of his will and outside of his

control. He had his share in the food of the family, and he was just

decently clothed, but there was an end to personal enterprises. The

economy and the expenditure of a free and intelligent bachelor had been

alike replaced by a dull, methodical, uncontrollable outgo; and the man

himself, though now called the head of a family, had discovered that a new

impersonal necessity was the real master, and that he lived like a child

in his own house. "This," he said, "is the fate of a gentleman who marries

on narrow means, unless he is cruelly selfish."

Frank and honest conversations of this kind often come in the way of a man

who travels by himself, and they remain with him afterwards as a part of

his knowledge of life. This informal intercourse that comes by chance is

greatly undervalued, especially by Englishmen, who are seldom very much

disposed to it except in the humbler classes; but it is one of the broadly

scattered, inestimable gifts of Nature, like the refreshment of air and

water. Many a healthy and happy mind has enjoyed little other human

intercourse than this. There are millions who never get a formal

invitation, and yet in this accidental way they hear many a bit of

entertaining or instructive talk. The greatest charm of it is its

consistency with the most absolute independence. No abandonment of

principle is required, nor any false assumption. You stand simply on your

elementary right to consideration as a decent human being within the great

pale of civilization.

There is, however, another sense in which every superior person is greatly

exposed to the evil of solitude if he lives outside of a great capital

city.

Without misanthropy, and without any unjust or unkind contempt for our

fellow-creatures, we still must perceive that mankind in general have no

other purpose than to live in comfort with little mental exertion. The

desire for comfort is not wholly selfish, because people want it for their

families as much as for themselves, but it is a low motive in this sense,

that it is scarcely compatible with the higher kinds of mental exertion,

whilst it is entirely incompatible with devotion to great causes. The

object of common men is not to do noble work by their own personal

efforts, but so to plot and contrive that others may be industrious for

their benefit, and not for their highest benefit, but in order that they

may have curtains and carpets.

Those for whom accumulated riches have already provided these objects of

desire seldom care greatly for anything except amusements. If they have

ambition, it is for a higher social rank.

These three common pursuits, comfort, amusements, rank, lie so much

outside of the disciplinary studies that a man of studious habits is

likely to find himself alone in a peculiar sense. As a human being he is

not alone, but as a serious thinker and worker he may find himself in

complete solitude.

Many readers will remember the well-known passage in Stuart Mill's

autobiography, in which he dealt with this subject. It has often been

quoted against him, because he went so far as to say that "a person of

high intellect should never go into unintellectual society, unless he can

enter it as an apostle," a passage not likely to make its author beloved

by society of that kind; yet Mill was not a misanthropist, he was only

anxious to preserve what there is of high feeling and high principle from

deterioration by too much contact with the common world. It was not so

much that he despised the common world, as that he knew the infinite

preciousness, even to the common people themselves, of the few better and

higher minds. He knew how difficult it is for such minds to "retain their

higher principles unimpaired," and how at least "with respect to the

persons and affairs of their own day they insensibly adopt the modes of

feeling and judgment in which they can hope for sympathy from the company

they keep."

Perhaps I may do well to offer an illustration of this, though from a

department of culture that may not have been in Mill's view when he wrote

the passage.

I myself have known a certain painter (not belonging to the English

school) who had a severe and elevated ideal of his art. As his earnings

were small he went to live in the country for economy. He then began to

associate intimately with people to whom all high aims in painting were

unintelligible. Gradually he himself lost his interest in them and his

nobler purposes were abandoned. Finally, art itself was abandoned and he

became a coffee-house politician.

So it is with all rare and exceptional pursuits if once we allow ourselves

to take, in all respects, the color of the common world. It is impossible

to keep up a foreign language, an art, a science, if we are living away

from other followers of our pursuit and cannot endure solitude.

It follows from this that there are many situations in which men have to

learn that particular kind of independence which consists in bearing

isolation patiently for the preservation of their better selves. In a

world of common-sense they have to keep a little place apart for a kind of

sense that is sound and rational but not common.

This isolation would indeed be difficult to bear if it were not mitigated

by certain palliatives that enable a superior mind to be healthy and

active in its loneliness. The first of these is reading, which is seldom

valued at its almost inestimable worth. By the variety of its records and

inventions, literature continually affords the refreshment of change, not

to speak of that variety which may be had so easily by a change of

language when the reader knows several different tongues, and the other

marvellous variety due to difference in the date of books. In fact,

literature affords a far wider variety than conversation itself, for we

can talk only with the living, but literature enables us to descend, like

Ulysses, into the shadowy kingdom of the dead. There is but one defect in

literature,--that the talk is all on one side, so that we are listeners,

as at a sermon or a lecture, and not sharers in some antique symposium,

our own brows crowned with flowers, and our own tongues loosened with

wine. The exercise of the tongue is wanting, and to some it is an

imperious need, so that they will talk to the most uncongenial human

beings, or even to parrots and dogs. If we value books as the great

palliative of solitude and help to mental independence, let us not

undervalue those intelligent periodicals that keep our minds modern and

prevent us from living altogether in some other century than our own.

Periodicals are a kind of correspondence more easily read than manuscript

and involving no obligation to answer. There is also the great palliative

of occasional direct correspondence with those who understand our

pursuits; and here we have the advantage of using our own tongues, not

physically, but at least in an imaginative way.

A powerful support to some minds is the constantly changing beauty of the

natural world, which becomes like a great and ever-present companion. I am

anxious to avoid any exaggeration of this benefit, because I know that to

many it counts for nothing; and an author ought not to think only of those

who have his own mental constitution; but although natural beauty is of

little use to one solitary mind, it may be like a living friend to

another. As a paragraph of real experience is worth pages of speculation,

I may say that I have always found it possible to live happily in

solitude, provided that the place was surrounded by varied, beautiful, and

changeful scenery, but that in ugly or even monotonous places I have felt

society to be as necessary as it was welcome. Byron's expression,--

"I made me friends of mountains,"

and Wordsworth's,

"Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her,"

are not more than plain statements of the companionship that _some_ minds

find in the beauty of landscape. They are often accused of affectation,

but in truth I believe that we who have that passion, instead of

expressing more than we feel, have generally rather a tendency to be

reserved upon the subject, as we seldom expect sympathy. Many of us would

rather live in solitude and on small means at Como than on a great income

in Manchester. This may be a foolish preference; but let the reader

remember the profound utterance of Blake, that if the fool would but

persevere in his folly he would become wise.

However powerful may be the aid of books and natural scenery in enabling

us to bear solitude, the best help of all must be found in our occupations

themselves. Steady workers do not need much company. To be occupied with a

task that is difficult and arduous, but that we know to be within our

powers, and to awake early every morning with the delightful feeling that

the whole day can be given to it without fear of interruption, is the

perfection of happiness for one who has the gift of throwing himself

heartily into his work. When night comes he will be a little weary, and

more disposed for tranquil sleep than to "danser jusqu' au jour chez

l'ambassadeur de France."

This is the best independence,--to have something to do and something that

can be done, and done most perfectly, in solitude. Then the lonely hours

flow on like smoothly gliding water, bearing one insensibly to the

evening. The workman says, "Is my sight failing?" and lo the sun has set!

There is but one objection to this absorption in worthy toil. It is that

as the day passes so passes life itself, that succession of many days. The

workman thinks of nothing but his work, and finds the time all too short.

At length he suddenly perceives that he is old, and wonders if life might

not have been made to seem a little longer, and if, after all, it has been

quite the best policy always to avoid _ennui_.

ESSAY III.

OF PASSIONATE LOVE.

The wonder of love is that, for the time being, it makes us ardently

desire the presence of one person and feel indifferent to all others of

her sex. It is commonly spoken of as a delusion, but I do not see any

delusion here, for if the presence of the beloved person satisfies his

craving, the lover gets what he desires and is not more the victim of a

deception than one who succeeds in satisfying any other want.

Again, it is often said that men are blinded by love, but the fact that

one sees certain qualities in a beloved person need not imply blindness.

If you are in love with a little woman it is not a reason for supposing

her to be tall. I will even venture to affirm that you may love a woman

passionately and still be quite clearly aware that her beauty is far

inferior to that of another whose coming thrills you with no emotion,

whose departure leaves with you no regret.

The true nature of a profound passion is not to attribute every physical

and mental quality to its object, but rather to think, "Such as she is,

with the endowments that are really her own, I love her above all women,

though I know that she is not so beautiful as some are, nor so learned as

some others." The only real deception to which a lover is exposed is that

he may overestimate the strength of his own passion. If he has not made

this mistake he is not likely to make any other, since, whatever the

indifferent may see, or fail to see, in the woman of his choice, he surely

finds in her the adequate reason for her attraction.

Love is commonly treated as if it belonged only to the flowering of the

spring-time of life, but strong and healthy natures remain capable of

feeling the passion in great force long after they are supposed to have

left it far behind them. It is, indeed, one of the signs of a healthy

nature to retain for many years the freshness of the heart which makes one

liable to fall in love, as a healthy palate retains the natural early

taste for delicious fruits.

This freshness of the heart is lost far more surely by debauchery than by

years; and for this reason worldly parents are not altogether dissatisfied

that their sons should "sow their wild oats" in youth, as they believe

that this kind of sowing is a preservative against the dangers of pure

love and an imprudent or unequal marriage. The calculation is well

founded. After a few years of indiscriminate debauchery a young man is

likely to be deadened to the sweet influences of love and therefore able

to conduct himself with steady worldliness, either remaining in celibacy

or marrying for position, exactly as his interests may dictate.

The case of Shelley is an apt illustration of this danger. He had at the

same time a horror of debauchery and an irresistible natural tendency to

the passion of love.

From the worldly point of view both his connections were degrading for a

young gentleman of rank. Had he followed the very common course of a

_real_ degradation and married a lady of rank after ten years of

indiscriminate immorality, is it an unjust or an unlikely supposition that

he would have given less dissatisfaction to his friends?

As to the permanence of love, or its transitoriness, the plain and candid

answer is that there is no real assurance either way. To predict that it

will certainly die after fruition is to shut one's eyes against the

evident fact that men often remain in love with mistresses or wives. On

the other hand, to assume that love is fixed and made permanent in a

magical way by marriage is to assume what would be desirable rather than

what really is. There are no magical incantations by which Love may be

retained, yet sometimes he will rest and dwell with astonishing tenacity

when there seem to be the strongest reasons for his departure. If there

were any ceremony, if any sacrifice could be made at an altar, by which

the capricious little deity might be conciliated and won, the wisest might

hasten to perform that ceremony and offer that acceptable sacrifice; but

he cares not for any of our rites. Sometimes he stays, in spite of

cruelty, misery, and wrong; sometimes he takes flight from the hearth

where a woman sits and grieves alone, with all the attractions of health,

beauty, gentleness, and refinement.

Boys and girls imagine that love in a poor cottage or a bare garret would

be more blissful than indifference in a palace, and the notion is thought

foolish and romantic by the wise people of the world; but the boys and

girls are right in their estimate of Love's great power of cheering and

brightening existence even in the very humblest situations. The possible

error against which they ought to be clearly warned is that of supposing

that Love would always remain contentedly in the cottage or the garret.

Not that he is any more certain to remain in a mansion in Belgrave Square,

not that a garret with him is not better than the vast Vatican without

him; but when he has taken his flight, and is simply absent, one would

rather be left in comfortable than in beggarly desolation.

The poets speak habitually of love as if it were a passion that could be

safely indulged, whereas the whole experience of modern existence goes to

show that it is of all passions the most perilous to happiness except in

those rare cases where it can be followed by marriage; and even then the

peril is not ended, for marriage gives no certainty of the duration of

love, but constitutes of itself a new danger, as the natures most disposed

to passion are at the same time the most impatient of restraint.

There is this peculiarity about love in a well-regulated social state. It

is the only passion that is quite strictly limited in its indulgence. Of

the intellectual passions a man may indulge several different ones either

successively or together; in the ordinary physical enjoyments, such as the

love of active sports or the pleasures of the table, he may carry his

indulgence very far and vary it without blame; but the master passion of

all has to be continually quelled, the satisfactions that it asks for have

to be continually refused to it, unless some opportunity occurs when they

may be granted without disturbing any one of many different threads in the

web of social existence; and these threads, to a lover's eye, seem

entirely unconnected with his hope.

In stating the fact of these restraints I do not dispute their necessity.

On the contrary, it is evident that infinite practical evil would result

from liberty. Those who have broken through the social restraints and

allowed the passion of love to set up its stormy and variable tyranny in

their hearts have led unsettled and unhappy lives. Even of love itself

they have not enjoyed the best except in those rare cases in which the

lovers have taken bonds upon themselves not less durable than those of

marriage; and even these unions, which give no more liberty than marriage

itself gives, are accompanied by the unsettled feeling that belongs to all

irregular situations.

It is easy to distinguish in the conventional manner between the lower and

the higher kinds of love, but it is not so easy to establish the real

distinction. The conventional difference is simply between the passion in

marriage and out of it; the real distinction would be between different

feelings; but as these feelings are not ascertainable by one person in the

mind or nerves of another, and as in most cases they are probably much

blended, the distinction can seldom be accurately made in the cases of

real persons, though it is marked trenchantly enough in works of pure

imagination.

The passion exists in an infinite variety, and it is so strongly

influenced by elements of character which have apparently nothing to do

with it, that its effects on conduct are to a great extent controlled by

them. For example, suppose the case of a man with strong passions combined

with a selfish nature, and that of another with passions equally strong,

but a rooted aversion to all personal satisfactions that might end in

misery for others. The first would ruin a girl with little hesitation; the

second would rather suffer the entire privation of her society by quitting

the neighborhood where she lived.

The interference of qualities that lie outside of passion is shown very

curiously and remarkably in intellectual persons in this way. They may

have a strong temporary passion for somebody without intellect or culture,

but they are not likely to be held permanently by such a person; and even

when under the influence of the temporary desire they may be clearly aware

of the danger there would be in converting it into a permanent relation,

and so they may take counsel with themselves and subdue the passion or fly

from the temptation, knowing that it would be sweet to yield, but that a

transient delight would be paid for by years of weariness in the future.

Those men of superior abilities who have bound themselves for life to some

woman who could not possibly understand them, have generally either broken

their bonds afterwards or else avoided as much as possible the

tiresomeness of a _tête-à-tête_, and found in general society the means of

occasionally enduring the dulness of their home. For short and transient

relations the principal charm in a woman is either beauty or a certain

sweetness, but for any permanent relation the first necessity of all is

that she be companionable.

Passionate love is the principal subject of poets and novelists, who

usually avoid its greatest difficulties by well-known means of escape.

Either the passion finishes tragically by the death of one of the parties,

or else it comes to a natural culmination in their union, whether

according to social order or through a breach of it. In real life the

story is not always rounded off so conveniently. It may happen, it

probably often does happen, that a passion establishes itself where it has

no possible chance of satisfaction, and where, instead of being cut short

by death, it persists through a considerable part of life and embitters

it. These cases are the more unfortunate that hopeless desire gives an

imaginary glory to its own object, and that, from the circumstances of the

case, this halo is not dissipated.

It is common amongst hard and narrow people, who judge the feelings of

others by their own want of them, to treat all the painful side of passion

with contemptuous levity. They say that people never die for love, and

that such fancies may easily be chased away by the exercise of a little

resolution. The profounder students of human nature take the subject more

seriously. Each of the great poets (including, of course, the author of

the "Bride of Lammermoor," in which the poetical elements are so abundant)

has treated the aching pain of love and the tragedy to which it may lead,

as in the deaths of Haidée, of Lucy Ashton, of Juliet, of Margaret. In

real life the powers of evil do not perceive any necessity for an

artistic conclusion of their work. A wrinkled old maid may still preserve

in the depths of her own heart, quite unsuspected by the young and lively

people about her, the unextinguished embers of a passion that first made

her wretched fifty years before; and in the long, solitary hours of a dull

old age she may live over and over again in memory the brief delirium of

that wild and foolish hope which was followed by years of self-repression.

Of all the painful situations occasioned by passionate love, I know of

none more lamentable than that of an innocent and honorable woman who has

been married to an unsuitable husband and who afterwards makes the

discovery that she involuntarily loves another. In well-regulated, moral

societies such passions are repressed, but they cannot be repressed

without suffering which has to be endured in silence. The victim is

punished for no fault when none is committed; but she may suffer from the

forces of nature like one who hungers and thirsts and sees a fair banquet

provided, yet is forbidden to eat or drink. It is difficult to suppress

the heart's regret, "Ah, if we had known each other earlier, in the days

when I was free, and it was not wrong to love!" Then there is the haunting

fear that the woful secret may one day reveal itself to others. Might it

not be suddenly and unexpectedly betrayed by a momentary absence of

self-control? This has sometimes happened, and then there is no safety but

in separation, immediate and decided. Suppose a case like the following,

which is said to have really occurred. A perfectly honorable man goes to

visit an intimate friend, walks quietly in the garden one afternoon with

his friend's wife, and suddenly discovers that he is the object of a

passion which, until that moment, she has steadily controlled. One

outburst of shameful tears, one pitiful confession of a life's

unhappiness, and they part forever! This is what happens when the friend

respects his friend and the wife her husband. What happens when both are

capable of treachery is known to the readers of English newspaper reports

and French fictions.

It seems as if, with regard to this passion, civilized man were placed in

a false position between Nature on the one hand and civilization on the

other. Nature makes us capable of feeling it in very great strength and

intensity, at an age when marriage is not to be thought of, and when there

is not much self-control. The tendency of high civilization is to retard

the time of marriage for men, but there is not any corresponding

postponement in the awakening of the passions. The least civilized classes

marry early, the more civilized later and later, and not often from

passionate love, but from a cool and prudent calculation about general

chances of happiness, a calculation embracing very various elements, and

in itself as remote from passion as the Proverbs of Solomon from the Song

of Songs. It consequently happens that the great majority of young

gentlemen discover early in life that passionate love is a danger to be

avoided, and so indeed it is; but it seems a peculiar misfortune for

civilized man that so natural an excitement, which is capable of giving

such a glow to all his faculties as nothing else can give, an excitement

which exalts the imagination to poetry and increases courage till it

becomes heroic devotion, whilst it gives a glamour of romance to the

poorest and most prosaic existence,--it seems, I say, a misfortune that a

passion with such unequalled powers as these should have to be eliminated

from wise and prudent life. The explanation of its early and inconvenient

appearance may be that before the human race had attained a position of

any tranquillity or comfort, the average life was very short, and it was

of the utmost importance that the flame of existence should be passed on

to another generation without delay. We inherit the rapid development

which saved the race in its perilous past, but we are embarrassed by it,

and instead of elevating us to a more exalted life it often avenges itself

for the refusal of natural activity by its own corruption, the corruption

of the best into the worst, of the fire from heaven into the filth of

immorality. The more this great passion is repressed and expelled, the

more frequent does immorality become.

Another very remarkable result of the exclusion of passionate love from

ordinary existence is that the idea of it takes possession of the

imagination. The most melodious poetry, the most absorbing fiction, are

alike celebrations of its mysteries. Even the wordless voice of music

wails or languishes for love, and the audience that seems only to hear

flutes and violins is in reality listening to that endless song of love

which thrills through the passionate universe. Well may the rebels against

Nature revolt against the influence of Art! It is everywhere permeated by

passion. The cold marble warms with it, the opaque pigments palpitate

with it, the dull actor has the tones of genius when he wins access to its

perennial inspiration. Even those forms of art which seem remote from it

do yet confess its presence. You see a picture of solitude, and think that

passion cannot enter there, but everything suggests it. The tree bends

down to the calm water, the gentle breeze caresses every leaf, the

white-pated old mountain is visited by the short-lived summer clouds. If,

in the opening glade, the artist has sketched a pair of lovers, you think

they naturally complete the scene; if he has omitted them, it is still a

place for lovers, or has been, or will be on some sweet eve like this.

What have stars and winds and odors to do with love? The poets know all

about it, and so let Shelley tell us:--

"I arise from dreams of Thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,

When the winds are breathing low

And the stars are shining bright:

I arise from dreams of thee,

And a spirit in my feet

Has led me--who knows how?--

To thy chamber-window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint

On the dark, the silent stream;

The champak odors fail

Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

The nightingale's complaint

It dies upon her heart,

As I must die on thine

O belovèd as thou art!"

ESSAY IV.

COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE.

If the reader has ever had for a travelling-companion some person totally

unsuited to his nature and quite unable to enter into the ideas that

chiefly interest him, unable, even, to _see_ the things that he sees and

always disposed to treat negligently or contemptuously the thoughts and

preferences that are most his own, he may have some faint conception of

what it must be to find one's self tied to an unsuitable companion for the

tedious journey of this mortal life; and if, on the other hand, he has

ever enjoyed the pleasure of wandering through a country that interested

him along with a friend who could understand his interest, and share it,

and whose society enhanced the charm of every prospect and banished

dulness from the dreariest inns, he may in some poor and imperfect degree

realize the happiness of those who have chosen the life-companion wisely.

When, after an experiment of months or years, the truth becomes plainly

evident that a great mistake has been committed, that there is really no

companionship, that there never will be, never can be, any mental

communion between the two, but that life in common is to be like a stiff

morning call when the giver and the receiver of the visit are beating

their brains to find something to say, and dread the gaps of silence, then

in the blank and dreary outlook comes the idea of separation, and

sometimes, in the loneliness that follows, a wild rebellion against social

order, and a reckless attempt to find in some more suitable union a

compensation for the first sad failure.

The world looks with more indulgence on these attempts when it sees reason

to believe that the desire was for intellectual companionship than when

inconstant passions are presumed to have been the motives; and it has so

happened that a few persons of great eminence have set an example in this

respect which has had the unfortunate effect of weakening in a perceptible

degree the ancient social order. It is not possible, of course, that there

can be many cases like that of George Eliot and Lewes, for the simple

reason that persons of their eminence are so rare; but if there were only

a few more cases of that kind it is evident that the laws of society would

either be confessedly powerless, or else it would be necessary to modify

them and bring them into harmony with new conditions. The importance of

the case alluded to lies in the fact that the lady, though she was

excluded (or willingly excluded herself) from general society, was still

respected and visited not only by men but by ladies of blameless life. Nor

was she generally regarded as an immoral person even by the outer world.

The feeling about her was one of regret that the faithful companionship

she gave to Lewes could not be legally called a marriage, as it was

apparently a model of what the legal relation ought to be. The object of

his existence was to give her every kind of help and to spare her every

shadow of annoyance. He read to her, wrote letters for her, advised her on

everything, and whilst full of admiration for her talents was able to do

something for their most effectual employment. She, on her part, rewarded

him with that which he prized above riches, the frank and affectionate

companionship of an intellect that it is needless to describe and of a

heart full of the most lively sympathy and ready for the most romantic

sacrifices.

In the preceding generation we have the well-known instances of Shelley,

Byron, and Goethe, all of whom sought companionship outside of social

rule, and enjoyed a sort of happiness probably not unembittered by the

false position in which it placed them. The sad story of Shelley's first

marriage, that with Harriett Westbrook, is one of the best instances of a

deplorable but most natural mistake. She is said to have been a charming

person in many ways. "Harriett," says Mr. Rossetti, "was not only

delightful to look at but altogether most agreeable. She dressed with

exquisite neatness and propriety; her voice was pleasant and her speech

cordial; her spirits were cheerful and her manners good. She was well

educated, a constant and agreeable reader; adequately accomplished in

music." But in spite of these qualities and talents, and even of

Harriett's willingness to learn, Shelley did not find her to be

companionable for him; and he unfortunately did discover that another

young lady, Mary Godwin, was companionable in the supreme degree. That

this latter idea was not illusory is proved by his happy life afterwards

with Mary so far as a life could be happy that was poisoned by a tragic

recollection.[3] Before that miserable ending, before the waters of the

Serpentine had closed over the wretched existence of Harriett, Shelley

said, "Every one who knows me must know that the partner of my life should

be one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy. Harriett is a noble

animal, but she can do neither." Here we have a plain statement of that

great need for companionship which was a part of Shelley's nature. It is

often connected with its apparent opposite, the love of solitude. Shelley

was a lover of solitude, which means that he liked full and adequate human

intercourse so much that the insufficient imitation of it was intolerable

to him. Even that sweetest solitude of all, when he wrote the "Revolt of

Islam" in summer shades, to the sound of rippling waters, was willingly

exchanged for the society of the one dearest and best companion:--

"So now my summer-task is ended, Mary,

And I return to thee, mine own heart's home;

As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faëry,

Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome.

Nor thou disdain that, ere my fame become

A star among the stars of mortal night

(If it indeed may cleave its native gloom),

Its doubtful promise thus I would unite

With thy beloved name, thou child of love and light.

"The toil which stole from thee so many an hour

Is ended, and the fruit is at thy feet.

No longer where the woods to frame a bower

With interlaced branches mix and meet,

Or where, with sound like many voices sweet,

Waterfalls leap among wild islands green

Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat

Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen:

But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been."

It is not surprising that the companionship of conjugal life should be

like other friendships in this, that a first experiment may be a failure

and a later experiment a success. We are all so fallible that in matters

of which we have no experience we generally commit great blunders.

Marriage unites all the conditions that make a blunder probable. Two young

people, with very little conception of what an unsurmountable barrier a

difference of idiosyncrasy may be, are pleased with each other's youth,

health, natural gayety, and good looks, and fancy that it would be

delightful to live together. They marry, and in many cases discover that

somehow, in spite of the most meritorious efforts, they are not

companions. There is no fault on either side; they try their best, but the

invisible demon, incompatibility, is too strong for them.

From all that we know of the characters of Lord and Lady Byron it seems

evident that they never were likely to enjoy life together. He committed

the mistake of marrying a lady on the strength of her excellent

reputation. "She has talents and excellent qualities," he said before

marriage; as if all the arts and sciences and all the virtues put together

could avail without the one quality that is _never_ admired, _never_

understood by others,--that of simple suitableness. She was "a kind of

pattern in the North," and he "heard of nothing but her merits and her

wonders." He did not see that all these excellencies were dangers, that

the consciousness of them and the reputation for them would set the lady

up on a judgment seat of her own, from which she would be continually

observing the errors, serious or trivial, of that faulty specimen of the

male sex that it was her lofty mission to correct or to condemn. All this

he found out in due time and expressed in the bitter lines,--

"Oh! she was perfect past all parallel

Of any modern female saint's comparison

* * * * *

Perfect she was."

The story of his subsequent life is too well known to need repetition

here. All that concerns our present subject is that ultimately, in the

Countess Guiccioli, he found the woman who had, for him, that one quality,

suitableness, which outweighs all the perfections. She did not read

English, but, though ignorant alike of the splendor and the tenderness of

his verse, she knew the nature of the man; and he enjoyed in her society,

probably for the first time in his life, the most exquisite pleasure the

masculine mind can ever know, that of being looked upon by a feminine

intelligence with clear sight and devoted affection at the same time. The

relation that existed between Byron and the Countess Guiccioli is one

outside of our morality, a revenge of Nature against a marriage system

that could take a girl not yet sixteen and make her the third wife of a

man more than old enough to be her grandfather. In Italy this revenge of

Nature against a bad social system is accepted, within limits, and is an

all but inevitable consequence of marriages like that of Count Guiccioli,

which, however they may be approved by custom and consecrated by religious

ceremonies, remain, nevertheless, amongst the worst (because the most

unnatural) immoralities. All that need be said in his young wife's defence

is that she followed the only rule habitually acted upon by mankind, the

custom of her country and her class, and that she acted, from beginning to

end, with the most absolute personal abnegation. On Byron her influence

was wholly beneficial. She raised him from a mode of life that was

deplored by all his true friends, to the nearest imitation of a happy

marriage that was accessible to him; but the irregularity of their

position brought upon them the usual Nemesis, and after a broken

intercourse, during which he never could feel her to be really his own, he

went to Missolonghi and wrote, under the shadow of Death,--

"The hope, the fear, the jealous care,

The exalted portion of the pain

And power of love, I cannot share,

But wear the chain."

The difference between Byron and Goethe in regard to feminine

companionship lies chiefly in this,--that whilst Byron does not seem to

have been very susceptible of romantic love (though he was often entangled

in _liaisons_ more or less degrading), Goethe was constantly in love and

imaginative in his passions, as might be expected from a poet. He appears

to have encouraged himself in amorous fancies till they became almost or

quite realities, as if to give himself that experience of various feeling

out of which he afterwards created poems. He was himself clearly conscious

that his poetry was a transformation of real experiences into artistic

forms. The knowledge that he came by his poetry in this way would

naturally lead him to encourage rather than stifle the sentiments which

gave him his best materials. It is quite within the comprehensive powers

of a complex nature that a poet might lead a dual life; being at the same

time a man, ardent, very susceptible of all passionate emotions, and a

poet, observing this passionate life and accumulating its results. In all

this there is very little of what occupies us just now, the search for a

satisfactory companionship. The woman with whom he most enjoyed that was

the Baroness von Stein, but even this friendship was not ultimately

satisfying and had not a permanent character. It lasted ten or eleven

years, till his return from the Italian journey, when "she thought him

cold, and her resource was--reproaches. The resource was more feminine

than felicitous. Instead of sympathizing with him in his sorrow at leaving

Italy, she felt the regret as an offence; and perhaps it was; but a truer,

nobler nature would surely have known how to merge its own pain in

sympathy with the pain of one beloved. He regretted Italy; she was not a

compensation to him; she saw this, and her self-love suffered."[4] And so

it ended. "He offered friendship in vain; he had wounded the self-love of

a vain woman." Goethe's longest connection was with Christiane Vulpius, a

woman quite unequal to him in station and culture, and in that respect

immeasurably inferior to the Baroness von Stein, but superior to her in

the power of affection, and able to charm and retain the poet by her

lively, pleasant disposition and her perfect constancy. Gradually she rose

in his esteem, and every year increased her influence over him. From the

precarious position of a mistress out of his house she first attained that

of a wife in all but the legal title, as he received her under his roof in

defiance of all the good society of Weimar; and lastly she became his

lawful wife, to the still greater scandal of the polite world. It may even

be said that her promotion did not end here, for the final test of love is

death; and when Christiane died she left behind her the deep and lasting

sorrow that is happiness still to those who feel it, though happiness in

its saddest form.

The misfortune of Goethe appears to have been that he dreaded and avoided

marriage in early life, perhaps because he was instinctively aware of his

own tendency to form many attachments of limited duration; but his

treatment of Christiane Vulpius, so much beyond any obligations which,

according to the world's code, he had incurred, is sufficient proof that

there was a power of constancy in his nature; and if he had married early

and suitably it is possible that this constancy might have stayed and

steadied him from the beginning. It is easy to imagine that a marriage

with a cultivated woman of his own class would have given him, in course

of time, by mutual adaptation, a much more complete companionship than

either of those semi-associations with the Frau von Stein and Christiane,

each of which only included a part of his great nature. Christiane,

however, had the better part, his heartfelt affection.

The case of John Stuart Mill and the remarkable woman by whose side he

lies buried at Avignon, is the most perfect instance of thorough

companionship on record; and it is remarkable especially because men of

great intellectual power, whose ways of thinking are quite independent of

custom, and whose knowledge is so far outside the average as to carry

their thoughts continually beyond the common horizon, have an extreme

difficulty in associating themselves with women, who are naturally

attached to custom, and great lovers of what is settled, fixed, limited,

and clear. The ordinary disposition of women is to respect what is

authorized much more than what is original, and they willingly, in the

things of the mind, bow before anything that is repeated with

circumstances of authority. An isolated philosopher has no costume or

surroundings to entitle him to this kind of respect. He wears no vestment,

he is not magnified by any architecture, he is not supported by superiors

or deferred to by subordinates. He stands simply on his abilities, his

learning, and his honesty. There is, however, this one chance in his

favor, that a certain natural sympathy may possibly exist between him and

some woman on the earth,--if he could only find her,--and this woman would

make him independent of all the rest. It was Stuart Mill's rare

good-fortune to find this one woman, early in life, in the person of Mrs.

Taylor; and as his nature was intellectual and affectionate rather than

passionate, he was able to rest contented with simple friendship for a

period of twenty years. Indeed this friendship itself, considered only as

such, was of very gradual growth. "To be admitted," he wrote, "into any

degree of mental intercourse with a being of these qualities, could not

but have a most beneficial influence on my development; though the effect

was only gradual, and many years elapsed before her mental progress and

mine went forward in the complete companionship they at last attained. The

benefit I received was far greater than any I could hope to give.... What

I owe, even intellectually, to her, is in its detail almost infinite."

Mill speaks of his marriage, in 1851 (I use his words), to the lady whose

incomparable worth had made her friendship the greatest source to him both

of happiness and of improvement during many years in which they never

expected to be in any closer relation to one another. "For seven and a

half years," he goes on to say, "that blessing was mine; for seven and a

half only! I can say nothing which could describe, even in the faintest

manner, what that loss was and is. But because I know that she would have

wished it, I endeavor to make the best of what life I have left and to

work on for her purposes with such diminished strength as can be derived

from thoughts of her and communion with her memory.... Since then I have

sought for such alleviation as my state admitted of, by the mode of life

which most enabled me to feel her still near me. I bought a cottage as

close as possible to the place where she is buried, and there her daughter

(my fellow-sufferer and now my chief comfort) and I live constantly during

a great portion of the year. My objects in life are solely those which

were hers; my pursuits and occupations those in which she shared, or

sympathized, and which are indissolubly associated with her. Her memory is

to me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, summing up as

it does all worthiness, I endeavor to regulate my life."

The examples that I have selected (all purposely from the real life of

well-known persons) are not altogether encouraging. They show the

difficulty that there is in finding the true companion. George Eliot found

hers at the cost of a rebellion against social order to which, with her

regulated mind and conservative instincts, she must have been by nature

little disposed. Shelley succeeded only after a failure and whilst the

failure still had rights over his entire existence. His life was like one

of those pictures in which there is a second work over a first, and the

painter supposes the first to be entirely concealed, which indeed it is

for a little time, but it reappears afterwards and spoils the whole.

Nothing could be more unsatisfactory than the domestic arrangements of

Byron. He married a lady from a belief in her learning and virtue, only to

find that learning and virtue were hard stones in comparison with the

daily bread of sympathy. Then, after a vain waste of years in error, he

found true love at last, but on terms which involved too heavy sacrifices

from her who gave it, and procured him no comfort, no peace, if indeed

his nature was capable of any restfulness in love. Goethe, after a number

of attachments that ended in nothing, gave himself to one woman by his

intelligence and to another by his affections, not belonging with his

whole nature to either, and never in his long life knowing what it is to

have equal companionship in one's own house. Stuart Mill is contented, for

twenty years, to be the esteemed friend of a lady married to another,

without hope of any closer relation; and when his death permits them to

think of marriage, they have only seven years and a half before them, and

he is forty-five years old.

Cases of this kind would be discouraging in the extreme degree, were it

not that the difficulty is exceptional. High intellect is in itself a

peculiarity, in a certain sense it is really an eccentricity, even when so

thoroughly sane and rational as in the cases of George Eliot, Goethe, and

Mill. It is an eccentricity in this sense, that its mental centre does not

coincide with that of ordinary people. The mental centre of ordinary

people is simply the public opinion, the common sense, of the class and

locality in which they live, so that, to them, the common sense of people

in another class, another locality, appears irrational or absurd. The

mental centre of a superior person is not that of class and locality.

Shelley did not belong to the English aristocracy, though he was born in

it; his mind did not centre itself in aristocratic ideas. George Eliot did

not belong to the middle class of the English midlands, nor Stuart Mill to

the London middle classes. So far as Byron belonged to the aristocracy it

was a mark of inferiority in him, owing to a touch of vulgarity in his

nature, the same vulgarity which made him believe that he could not be a

proper sort of lord without a prodigal waste of money. Yet even Byron was

not centred in local ideas; that which was best in him, his enthusiasm for

Greece, was not an essential part of Nottinghamshire common sense. Goethe

lived much more in one locality, and even in a small place; but if

anything is remarkable in him it is his complete independence of Weimar

ideas. It was the Duke, his friend and master, not the public opinion of

Weimar, that allowed Goethe to be himself. He refused even to be classed

intellectually, and did not recognize the vulgar opinion that a poet

cannot be scientific. In all these cases the mental centre was not in any

local common sense. It was a result of personal studies and observations

acting upon an individual idiosyncrasy.

We may now perceive how infinitely easier it is for ordinary people to

meet and be companionable than for these rare and superior minds. Ordinary

people, if bred in the same neighborhood and class, are sure to have a

great fund of ideas in common, all those ideas that constitute the local

common sense. If you listen attentively to their conversations you will

find that they hardly ever go outside of that. They mention incidents and

actions, and test them one after another by a tacit reference to the

public opinion of the place. Therefore they have a good chance of

agreeing, of considering each other reasonable; and this is why it is a

generally received opinion that marriages between people of the same

locality and the same class offer the greatest probability of happiness.

So they do, in ordinary cases, but if there is the least touch of any

original talent or genius in one of the parties, it is sure to result in

many ideas that will be outside of any local common sense, and then the

other party, living in that sense, will consider those ideas peculiar, and

perhaps deplorable. Here, then, are elements of dissension lying quite

ready like explosive materials, and the merest accident may shatter in a

moment the whole fabric of affection. To prevent such an accident an

artificial kind of intercourse is adopted which is not real companionship,

or anything resembling it.

The reader may imagine, and has probably observed in real life, a marriage

in which the husband is a man of original power, able to think forcibly

and profoundly, and the wife a gentle being quite unable to enter into any

thought of that quality. In cases of that kind the husband may be

affectionate and even tender, but he is careful to utter nothing beyond

the safest commonplaces. In the presence of his wife he keeps his mind

quite within the circle of custom. He has, indeed, no other resource.

Custom and commonplace are the protection of the intelligent against

misapprehension and disapproval.

Marriages of this unequal kind are an imitation of those equal marriages

in which both parties live in the local common sense; but there is this

vast difference between them, that in the imitation the more intelligent

of the two parties has to stifle half his nature. An intelligent man has

to make up his mind in early life whether he has courage enough for such

a sacrifice or not. Let him try the experiment of associating for a short

time with people who cannot understand him, and if he likes the feeling of

repression that results from it, if he is able to stop short always at the

right moment, if he can put his knowledge on the shelf as one puts a book

in a library, then perhaps he may safely undertake the long labor of

companionship with an unsuitable wife.

This is sometimes done in pure hopelessness of ever finding a true mate. A

man has no belief in any real companionship, and therefore simply conforms

to custom in his marriage, as Montaigne did, allying himself with some

young lady who is considered in the neighborhood to be a suitable match

for him. This is the _mariage de convenance_. Its purposes are

intelligible and attainable. It may add considerably to the dignity and

convenience of life and to that particular kind of happiness which results

from satisfaction with our own worldly prudence. There is also the

probability that by perfect courtesy, by a scrupulous observance of the

rules of intercourse between highly civilized persons who are not

extremely intimate, the parties who contract a marriage of this kind may

give each other the mild satisfactions that are the reward of the

well-bred. There is a certain pleasure in watching every movement of an

accomplished lady, and if she is your wife there may also be a certain

pride. She receives your guests well; she holds her place with perfect

self-possession at your table and in her drawing-room; she never commits a

social solecism; and you feel that you can trust her absolutely. Her

private income is a help in the maintenance of your establishment and so

increases your credit in the world. She gives you in this way a series of

satisfactions that may even, in course of time, produce rather

affectionate feelings. If she died you would certainly regret her loss,

and think that life was, on the whole, decidedly less agreeable without

her.

But alas for the dreams of youth if this is all that is to be gained by

marriage! Where is the sweet friend and companion who was to have

accompanied us through prosperous or adverse years, who was to have

charmed and consoled us, who was to have given us the infinite happiness

of being understood and loved at the same time? Were all those dreams

delusions? Is the best companionship a mere fiction of the fancy, not

existing anywhere upon the earth?

I believe in the promises of Nature. I believe that in every want there is

the promise of a possible satisfaction. If we are hungry there is food

somewhere, if we are thirsty there is drink. But in the things of the

world there is often an indication of order rather than a realization of

it, so that in the confusion of accidents the hungry man may be starving

in a beleaguered city and the thirsty man parched in the Sahara. All that

the wants indicate is that their satisfaction is possible in nature. Let

us believe that, for every one, the true mate exists somewhere in the

world. She is worth seeking for at any cost of trouble or expense, worth

travelling round the globe to find, worth the endurance of labor and pain

and privation. Men suffer all this for objects of far inferior

importance; they risk life for the chance of a ribbon, and sacrifice

leisure and peace for the smallest increase of social position. What are

these vanities in comparison with the priceless benefit, the continual

blessing, of having with you always the one person whose presence can

deliver you from all the evils of solitude without imposing the

constraints and hypocrisies of society? With her you are free to be as

much yourself as when alone; you say what you think and she understands

you. Your silence does not offend her; she only thinks that there will be

time enough to talk together afterwards. You know that you can trust her

love, which is as unfailing as a law of nature. The differences of

idiosyncrasy that exist between you only add interest to your intercourse

by preventing her from becoming a mere echo of yourself. She has her own

ways, her own thoughts that are not yours and yet are all open to you, so

that you no longer dwell in one intellect only but have constant access to

a second intellect, probably more refined and elegant, richer in what is

delicate and beautiful. There you make unexpected discoveries; you find

that the first instinctive preference is more than justified by merits

that you had not divined. You had hoped and trusted vaguely that there

were certain qualities; but as a painter who looks long at a natural scene

is constantly discovering new beauties whilst he is painting it, so the

long and loving observation of a beautiful human mind reveals a thousand

unexpected excellences. Then come the trials of life, the sudden

calamities, the long and wearing anxieties. Each of these will only reveal

more clearly the wonderful endurance, fidelity, and fortitude that there

is in every noble feminine nature, and so build up on the foundation of

your early love an unshakable edifice of esteem and respect and love

commingled, for which in our modern tongue we have no single term, but

which our forefathers called "worship."

ESSAY V.

FAMILY TIES.

One of the most remarkable differences between the English and some of the

Continental nations is the comparative looseness of family ties in

England. The apparent difference is certainly very great; the real

difference is possibly not so great. It may be that a good deal of that

warm family affection which we are constantly hearing of in France is only

make-believe, but the keeping-up of a make-believe is often favorable to

the reality. In England a great deal of religion is mere outward form; but

to be surrounded by the constant observance of outward form is a great

practical convenience to the genuine religious sentiment where it exists.

In boyhood we suppose that all gentlemen of mature age who happen to be

brothers must naturally have fraternal feelings; in mature life we know

the truth, having discovered that there are many brothers between whom no

sentiment of fraternity exists. A foreigner who knows England well, and

has observed it more carefully than we ourselves do, remarked to me that

the fraternal relationship is not generally a cause of attachment in

England, though there may be cases of exceptional affection. It certainly

often happens that brothers live contentedly apart and do not seem to feel

the need of intercourse, or that such intercourse as they have has no

appearance of cordiality. A very common cause of estrangement is a natural

difference of class. One man is so constituted as to feel more at ease in

a higher class, and he rises; his brother feels more at ease in a lower

class, adopts its manners, and sinks. After a few years have passed the

two will have acquired such different habits, both of thinking and living,

that they will be disqualified for equal intercourse. If one brother is a

gentleman in tastes and manners and the other not a gentleman, the

vulgarity of the coarser nature will be all the more offensive to the

refined one that there is the troublesome consciousness of a very near

relationship and of a sort of indefinite responsibility.

The frequency of coolness between brothers surprises us less when we

observe how widely they may differ from each other in mental and physical

constitution. One may be a sportsman, traveller, man of the world; another

a religious recluse. One may have a sensitive, imaginative nature and be

keenly alive to the influences of literature, painting, and music; his

brother may be a hard, practical man of business, with a conviction that

an interest in literary and artistic pursuits is only a sign of weakness.

The extreme uncertainty that always exists about what really constitutes

suitableness is seen as much between brothers as between other men; for we

sometimes see a beautiful fraternal affection between brothers who seem to

have nothing whatever in common, and sometimes an equal affection appears

to be founded upon likeness.

Jealousy in its various forms is especially likely to arise between

brothers, and between sisters also for the same reason, which is that

comparisons are constantly suggested and even made with injudicious

openness by parents and teachers, and by talkative friends. The

development of the faculties in youth is always extremely interesting, and

is a constant subject of observation and speculation. If it is interesting

to on-lookers, it is still more likely to be so to the young persons most

concerned. They feel as young race-horses might be expected to feel

towards each other if they could understand the conversations of trainers,

stud-owners, and grooms.

If a full account of family life could be generally accessible, if we

could read autobiographies written by the several members of the same

family, giving a sincere and independent account of their own youth, it

would probably be found in most cases that jealousies were easily

discoverable. They need not be very intense to create a slight fissure of

separation that may be slowly widened afterwards.

If you listen attentively to the conversation of brothers about brothers,

of sisters about sisters, you will probably detect such little jealousies

without difficulty. "My sister," said a lady in my hearing, "was very much

admired when she was young, _but she aged prematurely_." Behind this it

was easy to read the comparison with self, with a constitution less

attractive to others but more robust and durable, and there was a faint

reverberation of girlish jealousy about attentions paid forty years

before.

The jealousies of youth are too natural to deserve any serious blame, but

they may be a beginning of future coolness. A boy will seem to praise the

talents of his brother with the purpose of implying that the facilities

given by such talents make industry almost superfluous, whilst his own

more strenuous efforts are not appreciated as they deserve. Instead of

soothing and calming these natural jealousies some parents irritate and

inflame them. They make wounding remarks that produce evil in after years.

I have seen a sensitive boy wince under cutting sarcasms that he will

remember till his hair is gray.

If there are fraternal jealousies in boyhood, when the material comforts

and the outward show of existence are the same for brothers, much more are

these jealousies likely to be accentuated in after-life, when differences

of worldly success, or of inherited fortune, establish distinctions so

obvious as to be visible to all. The operation of the aristocratic custom

by which eldest sons are made very much richer than their brethren can

scarcely be in favor of fraternal intimacy. No general rule can be

established, because characters differ so widely. An eldest brother _may_

be so amiable, so truly fraternal, that the cadets instead of feeling envy

of his wealth may take a positive pride in it; still, the natural effect

of creating such a vast inequality is to separate the favored heir from

the less-favored younger sons. I leave the reader to think over instances

that may be known to him. Amongst those known to me I find several cases

of complete or partial suspension of intercourse and others of manifest

indifference and coolness. One incident recurs to my memory after a lapse

of thirty years. I was present at the departure of a young friend for

India when his eldest brother was too indifferent to get up a little

earlier to see him off, and said, "Oh, you're going, are you? Well,

good-by, John!" through his bedroom door. The lad carried a wound in his

heart to the distant East.

There is nothing in the mere fact of fraternity to establish friendship.

The line of "In Memoriam,"--

"More than my brothers are to me,"

is simply true of every real friend, unless friendship adds itself to

brotherhood, in which case the intimacy arising from a thousand details of

early life in common, from the thorough knowledge of the same persons and

places, and from the memories of parental affection, must give a rare

completeness to friendship itself and make it in these respects even

superior to marriage, which has the great defect that the associations of

early life are not the same. I remember a case of wonderfully strong

affection between two brothers who were daily companions till death

separated them; but they were younger sons and their incomes were exactly

alike; their tastes, too, and all their habits were the same. The only

other case that occurs to me as comparable to this one was also of two

younger sons, one of whom had an extraordinary talent for business. They

were partners in trade, and no dissension ever arose between them, because

the superiority of the specially able man was affectionately recognized

and deferred to by the other. If, however, they had not been partners it

is possible that the brilliant success of one brother might have created

a contrast and made intercourse more constrained.

The case of John Bright and his brother may be mentioned, as he has made

it public in one of his most charming and interesting speeches. His

political work has prevented him from laboring in his business, but his

brother and partner has affectionately considered him an active member of

the firm, so that Mr. Bright has enjoyed an income sufficient for his

political independence. In this instance the comparatively obscure brother

has shown real nobility of nature. Free from the jealousy and envy which

would have vexed a small mind in such a position he has taken pleasure in

the fame of the statesman. It is easy to imagine the view that a mean mind

would have taken of a similar situation. Let us add that the statesman

himself has shown true fraternal generosity of another kind, and perhaps

of a more difficult kind, for it is often easier to confer an obligation

than to accept it heartily.

It has often been a subject of astonishment to me that between very near

relations a sensitive feeling about pecuniary matters should be so lively

as it is. I remember an instance in the last generation of a rich man in

Cheshire who made a present of ten thousand pounds to a lady nearly

related to him. He was very wealthy, she was not; the sum would never be

missed by him, whilst to her it made a great difference. What could be

more reasonable than such a correction of the inequalities of fortune?

Many people would have refused the present, out of pride, but it was much

kinder to accept it in the same good spirit that dictated the offer. On

the other hand, there are poor gentlefolks whose only fault is a sense of

independence, so _farouche_ that nobody can get them to accept anything of

importance, and any good that is done to them has to be plotted with

consummate art.

A wonderful light is thrown upon family relations when we become

acquainted with the real state of those family pecuniary transactions that

are not revealed to the public. The strangest discovery is the widely

different ways in which pecuniary obligations are estimated by different

persons, especially by different women. Men, I believe, take them rather

more equally; but as women go by sentiment they have a tendency to

extremes, either exaggerating the importance of an obligation when they

like to feel very much obliged, or else adopting the convenient theory

that the generous person is fulfilling a simple duty, and that there is no

obligation whatever. One woman will go into ecstasies of gratitude because

a brother makes her a present of a few pounds; and another will never

thank a benefactor who allows her, year by year, an annuity far larger

than is justified by his precarious professional income. In one real case

a lady lived for many years on her brother's generosity and was openly

hostile to him all the time. After her death it was found that she had

insulted him in her will. In another case a sister dependent on her

brother's bounty never thanked him or even acknowledged the receipt of a

sum of money, but if the money was not sent to the day she would at once

write a sharp letter full of bitter reproaches for his neglect. The marvel

is the incredible patience with which toiling men will go on sending the

fruits of their industry to relations who do not even make a pretence of

affection.

A frequent cause of hostility between very near relations is the

_restriction_ of generosity. So long as you set no limit to your giving it

is well, you are doing your duty; but the moment you fix a limit the case

is altered; then all past sacrifices go for nothing, your glory has set in

gloom, and you will be considered as more niggardly than if you had not

begun to be generous. Here is a real case, out of many. A man makes bad

speculations, but conceals the full extent of his losses, and by the

influence of his wife obtains important sums from a near relation of hers

who half ruins himself to save her. When the full disaster is known the

relation stops short and declines to ruin himself entirely; she then

bitterly reproaches him for his selfishness. A very short time before

writing the present Essay I was travelling, and met an old friend, a

bachelor of limited means but of a most generous disposition, the kindest

and most affectionate nature I ever knew in the male sex. I asked for news

about his brother. "I never see him now; a coldness has sprung up between

us."--"It must be his fault, then, for I am sure it did not originate with

you."--"The truth is, he got into money difficulties, so I gave him a

thousand pounds. He thought that under the circumstances I ought to have

done more and broke off all intercourse. I really believe that if I had

given him nothing we should have been more friendly at this day."

The question how far we are bound to allow family ties to regulate our

intercourse is not easily treated in general terms, though it seems

plainer in particular cases. Here is one for the reader's consideration.

Owing to natural refinement, and to certain circumstances of which he

intelligently availed himself, one member of a family is a cultivated

gentleman, whose habitual ways of thinking are of rather an elevated kind,

and whose manners and language are invariably faultless. He is blessed

with very near relations whose principal characteristic is loud,

confident, overwhelming vulgarity. He is always uncomfortable with these

relations. He knows that the ways of thinking and speaking which are

natural to him will seem cold and uncongenial to them; that not one of his

thoughts can be exactly understood by them; that his deficiency in what

they consider heartiness is a defect he cannot get over. On the other

hand, he takes no interest in what they say, because their opinions on all

the subjects he cares about are too crude, and their information too

scanty or erroneous. If he said what he felt impelled to say, all his talk

would be a perpetual correction of their clumsy blunders. He has,

therefore, no resource but to repress himself and try to act a part, the

part of a pleased companion; but this is wearisome, especially if

prolonged. The end is that he keeps out of their way, and is set down as a

proud, conceited person, and an unkind relative. In reality he is simply

refined and has a difficulty in accommodating himself to the ways of all

vulgar society whatever, whether composed of his own relations or of

strangers. Does he deserve to be blamed for this? Certainly not. He has

not the flexibility, the dramatic power, to adapt himself to a lower

state of civilization; that is his only fault. His relations are persons

with whom, if they were not relations, nobody would expect him to

associate; but because he and they happen to be descended from a common

ancestor he is to maintain an impossible intimacy. He wishes them no harm;

he is ready to make sacrifices to help them; his misfortune is that he

does not possess the humor of a Dickens that would have enabled him to

find amusement in their vulgarity, and he prefers solitude to that

infliction.

There is a French proverb, "Les cousins ne sont pas parents." The exact

truth would appear to be rather that cousins are relations or not just as

it pleases them to acknowledge the relationship, and according to the

natural possibilities of companionship between the parties. If they are of

the same class in society (which does not always happen), and if they have

pursuits in common or can understand each other's interests, and if there

is that mysterious suitableness which makes people like to be together,

then the fact of cousinship is seized upon as a convenient pretext for

making intercourse more frequent, more intimate, and more affectionate;

but if there is nothing to attract one cousin to another the relationship

is scarcely acknowledged. Cousins are, or are not, relations just as they

find it agreeable to themselves. It need hardly be added that it is a

general though not an invariable rule that the relationship is better

remembered on the humbler side. The cousinly degree may be felt to be very

close under peculiar circumstances. An only child looks to his cousins

for the brotherly and sisterly affection that fate has denied him at home,

and he is not always disappointed. Even distant cousins may be truly

fraternal, just as first cousins may happen to be very distant, the

relationship is so variable and elastic in its nature.

Unmarried people have often a great vague dread of their future wife's

relations, even when the lady has not yet been fixed upon, and married

people have sometimes found the reality more terrible even than their

gloomy anticipation. And yet it may happen that some of these dreaded new

relations will be unexpectedly valuable and supply elements that were

grievously wanting. They may bring new life into a dull house, they may

enliven the sluggish talk with wit and information, they may take a too

thoughtful and studious man out of the weary round of his own ideas. They

may even in course of time win such a place in one's affection that if

they are taken away by death they will leave a great void and an enduring

sorrow. I write these lines from a sweet and sad experience.[5]

Intellectual men are, more than others, liable to a feeling of

dissatisfaction with their relations because they want intellectual

sympathy and interest, which relations hardly ever give. The reason is

extremely simple. Any special intellectual pursuit is understood only by a

small select class of its own, and our relations are given us out of the

general body of society without any selection, and they are not very

numerous, so that the chances against our finding intellectual sympathy

amongst them are calculably very great. As we grow older we get accustomed

to this absence of sympathy with our pursuits, and take it as a matter of

course; but in youth it seems strange that what we feel and know to be so

interesting should have no interest for those nearest to us. Authors

sometimes feel a little hurt that their nearest relations will not read

their books, and are but dimly aware that they have written any books at

all; but do they read books of the same class by other writers? As an

author you are in the same position that other authors occupy, but with

this difference, which is against you, that familiarity has made you a

commonplace person in your own circle, and that is a bad opening for the

reception of your higher thoughts. This want of intellectual sympathy does

not prevent affection, and we ought to appreciate affection at its full

value in spite of it. Your brother or your cousin may be strongly attached

to you personally, with an old love dating from your boyhood, but he may

separate _you_ (the human creature that he knows) from the author of your

books, and not feel the slightest curiosity about the books, believing

that he knows you perfectly without them, and that they are only a sort of

costume in which you perform before the public. A female relative who has

given up her mind to the keeping of some clergyman, may scrupulously avoid

your literature in order that it may not contaminate her soul, and yet she

may love you still in a painful way and be sincerely sorry that you have

no other prospect but that of eternal punishment.

I have sometimes heard the question proposed whether relations or friends

were the more valuable as a support and consolation. Fate gives us our

relations, whilst we select our friends; and therefore it would seem at

first sight that the friends must be better adapted for us; but it may

happen that we have not selected with great wisdom, or that we have not

had good opportunities for making a choice really answering to our deepest

needs. Still, there must have been mutual affinity of some kind to make a

friendship, whilst relations are all like tickets in a lottery. It may

therefore be argued that the more relations we have, the better, because

we are more likely to meet with two or three to love us amongst fifty than

amongst five.

The peculiar peril of blood-relationship is that those who are closely

connected by it often permit themselves an amount of mutual rudeness

(especially in the middle and lower classes) which they never would think

of inflicting upon a stranger. In some families people really seem to

suppose that it does not matter how roughly they treat each other. They

utter unmeasured reproaches about trifles not worth a moment's anger; they

magnify small differences that only require to be let alone and forgotten,

or they relieve the monotony of quarrels with an occasional fit of the

sulks. Sometimes it is an irascible father who is always scolding,

sometimes a loud-tongued matron shrieks "in her fierce volubility." Some

children take up the note and fire back broadside for broadside; others

wait for a cessation in contemptuous silence and calmly disregard the

thunder. Family life indeed! domestic peace and bliss! Give me, rather,

the bachelor's lonely hearth with a noiseless lamp and a book! The manners

of the ill-mannered are never so odious, unbearable, exasperating, as they

are to their own nearest kindred. How is a lad to enjoy the society of his

mother if she is perpetually "nagging" and "nattering" at him? How is he

to believe that his coarse father has a tender anxiety for his welfare

when everything that he does is judged with unfatherly harshness? Those

who are condemned to live with people for whom scolding and quarrelling

are a necessary of existence must either be rude in self-defence or take

refuge in a sullen and stubborn taciturnity. Young people who have to live

in these little domestic hells look forward to any change as a desirable

emancipation. They are ready to go to sea, to emigrate. I have heard of

one who went into domestic service under a feigned name that he might be

out of the range of his brutal father's tongue.

The misery of uncongenial relations is caused mainly by the irksome

consciousness that they are obliged to live together. "To think that there

is so much space upon the earth, that there are so many houses, so many

rooms, and yet that I am so unfortunate as to be compelled to live in the

same lodging with this uncivilized, ill-conditioned fellow! To think that

there are such vast areas of tranquil silence, and yet that I am compelled

to hear the voice of that scolding woman!" This is the feeling, and the

relief would be temporary separation. In this, as in almost everything

that concerns human intercourse, the rich have an immense advantage, as

they can take only just so much of each other's society as they find by

experience to be agreeable. They can quietly, and without rudeness, avoid

each other by living in different houses, and even in the same house they

can have different apartments and be very little together. Imagine the

difference between two rich brothers, each with his suite of rooms in a

separate tower of the paternal castle, and two very poor ones,

inconveniently occupying the same narrow, uncomfortable bed, and unable to

remain in the wretched paternal tenement without being constantly in each

other's way. Between these extremes are a thousand degrees of more or less

inconvenient nearness. Solitude is bad for us, but we need a margin of

free space. If we are to be crowded let it be as the stars are crowded.

They look as if they were huddled together, but every one of them has his

own clear space in the illimitable ether.

ESSAY VI.

FATHERS AND SONS.

There is a certain unsatisfactoriness in this relation in our time which

is felt by fathers and often avowed by them when they meet, though it does

not occupy any conspicuous place in the literature of life and manners. It

has been fully treated by M. Legouvé, the French Academician, in his own

lively and elegant way; but he gave it a volume, and I must here confine

myself to the few points which can be dealt with in the limits of a short

Essay.

We are in an interregnum between two systems. The old system, founded on

the stern authority of the father, is felt to be out of harmony with the

amenity of general social intercourse in modern times and also with the

increasing gentleness of political governors and the freedom of the

governed. It is therefore, by common consent, abandoned. Some new system

that may be founded upon a clear intelligence of both the paternal and the

filial relations has yet to come into force. Meanwhile, we are trying

various experiments, suggested by the different characters and

circumstances of fathers and sons, each father trying his own experiments,

and we communicate to each other such results as we arrive at.

It is obvious that the defect here is the absence of a settled public

opinion to which both parties would feel bound to defer. Under the old

system the authority of the father was efficiently maintained, not only by

the laws, but by that general consensus of opinion which is far more

powerful than law. The new system, whatever it may be, will be founded on

general opinion again, but our present experimental condition is one of

anarchy.

This is the real cause of whatever may be felt as unsatisfactory in the

modern paternal and filial relations. It is not that fathers have become

more unjust or sons more rebellious.

The position of the father was in old times perfectly defined. He was the

commander, not only armed by the law but by religion and custom.

Disobedience to his dictates was felt to be out of the question, unless

the insurgent was prepared to meet the consequences of open mutiny. The

maintenance of the father's authority depended only on himself. If he

abdicated it through indolence or weakness he incurred moral reprobation

not unmingled with contempt, whilst in the present day reprobation would

rather follow a new attempt to vindicate the antique authority.

Besides this change in public opinion there is a new condition of paternal

feeling. The modern father, in the most civilized nations and classes, has

acquired a sentiment that appears to have been absolutely unknown to his

predecessors: he has acquired a dislike for command which increases with

the age of the son; so that there is an unfortunate coincidence of

increasing strength of will on the son's part with decreasing disposition

to restrain it on the father's part. What a modern father really desires

is that a son should go right of his own accord, and if not quite of his

own accord, then in consequence of a little affectionate persuasion. This

feeling would make command unsatisfactory to us, even if it were followed

by a military promptitude of obedience. We do not wish to be like

captains, and our sons like privates in a company; we care only to

exercise a certain beneficent influence over them, and we feel that if we

gave military orders we should destroy that peculiar influence which is of

the most fragile and delicate nature.

But now see the unexpected consequences of our modern dislike to command!

It might be argued that there is a certain advantage on our side from the

very rarity of the commands we give, which endows them with extraordinary

force. Would it not be more accurate to say that as we give orders less

and less our sons become unaccustomed to receive orders from us, and if

ever the occasion arises when we _must_ give them a downright order it

comes upon their feelings with a harshness so excessive that they are

likely to think us tyrannical, whereas if we had kept up the old habits of

command such orders would have seemed natural and right, and would not

have been less scrupulously obeyed?

The paternal dislike to give orders personally has had a peculiar effect

upon education. We are not yet quite imbecile enough to suppose that

discipline can be entirely dispensed with; and as there is very little of

it in modern houses it has to be sought elsewhere, so boys are placed

more and more completely under the authority of schoolmasters, often

living at such a distance from the father of the family that for several

months at a time he can exercise no direct influence or authority over his

own children. This leads to the establishment of a peculiar boyish code of

justice. Boys come to think it not unjust that the schoolmaster should

exercise authority, when if the father attempted to exercise authority of

equal rigor, or anything approaching it, they would look upon him as an

odious domestic tyrant, entirely forgetting that any power to enforce

obedience which is possessed by the schoolmaster is held by him

vicariously as the father's representative and delegate. From this we

arrive at the curious and unforeseen conclusion that the modern father

only exercises _strong_ authority through another person who is often a

perfect stranger and whose interest in the boy's present and future

well-being is as nothing in comparison with the father's anxious and

continual solicitude.

The custom of placing the education of sons entirely in the hands of

strangers is so deadly a blow to parental influence that some fathers have

resolutely rebelled against it and tried to become themselves the

educators of their children. James Mill is the most conspicuous instance

of this, both for persistence and success. His way of educating his

illustrious son has often been coarsely misrepresented as a merciless

system of cram. The best answer to this is preserved for us in the words

of the pupil himself. He said expressly: "Mine was not an education of

cram," and that the one cardinal point in it, the cause of the good it

effected, was that his father never permitted anything he learnt to

degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He greatly valued the training

he had received, and fully appreciated its utility to him in after-life.

"If I have accomplished anything," he says, "I owe it, amongst other

fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training

bestowed on me by my father I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage

of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries."

But though in this case the pupil's feeling in after-life was one of

gratitude, it may be asked what were his filial sentiments whilst this

paternal education was going forward. This question also is clearly and

frankly answered by Stuart Mill himself. He says that his father was

severe; that his authority was deficient in the demonstration of

tenderness, though probably not in the reality of it; that "he resembled

most Englishmen in being ashamed of the signs of feeling, and by the

absence of demonstration starving the feelings themselves." Then the son

goes on to say that it was "impossible not to feel true pity for a father

who did, and strove to do, so much for his children, who would have so

valued their affection, yet who must have been constantly feeling that

fear of him was drying it up at its source." And we probably have the

exact truth about Stuart Mill's own sentiments when he says that the

younger children loved his father tenderly, "and if I cannot say so much

of myself I was always loyally devoted to him."

This contains the central difficulty about paternal education. If the

choice were left to boys they would learn nothing, and you cannot make

them work vigorously "by the sole force of persuasion and soft words."

Therefore a severe discipline has to be established, and this severity is

incompatible with tenderness; so that in order to preserve the affection

of his children the father intrusts discipline to a delegate.

But if the objection to parental education is clear in Mill's case, so are

its advantages, and especially the one inestimable advantage that the

father was able to impress himself on his son's mind and to live

afterwards in his son's intellectual life. James Mill did not _abdicate_,

as fathers generally do. He did not confine paternal duties to the simple

one of signing checks. And if it is not in our power to imitate him

entirely, if we have not his profound and accurate knowledge, if we have

not his marvellous patience, if it is not desirable that we should take

upon ourselves alone that immense responsibility which he accepted, may we

not imitate him to such a degree as to secure _some_ intellectual and

moral influence over our own offspring and not leave them entirely to the

teaching of the schoolfellow (that most influential and most dangerous of

all teachers), the pedagogue, and the priest?

The only practical way in which this can be done is for the father to act

within fixed limits. May he not reserve to himself some speciality? He can

do this if he is himself master of some language or science that enters

into the training of his son; but here again certain difficulties present

themselves.

By the one vigorous resolution to take the entire burden upon his own

shoulders James Mill escaped minor embarrassments. It is the _partial_

education by the father that is difficult to carry out with steadiness and

consistency. First, as to place of residence. If your son is far away

during his months of work, and at home only for vacation pleasures, what,

pray, is your hold upon him? He escapes from you in two directions, by

work and by play. I have seen a Highland gentleman who, to avoid this and

do his duty to his sons, quitted a beautiful residence in magnificent

scenery to go and live in the dull and ugly neighborhood of Rugby. It is

not convenient or possible for every father to make the same sacrifice,

but if you are able to do it other difficulties remain. Any speciality

that you may choose will be regarded by your son as a trifling and

unimportant accomplishment in comparison with Greek and Latin, because

that is the school estimate; and if you choose either Greek or Latin your

scholarship will be immediately pitted against the scholarship of

professional teachers whose more recent and more perfect methods will

place you in a position of inferiority, instantly perceived by your pupil,

who will estimate you accordingly. The only two cases I have ever

personally known in which a father taught the classical languages failed

in the object of increasing the son's affection and respect, because,

although the father had been quite a first-rate scholar in his time, his

ways of teaching were not so economical of effort as are the professional

ways; and the boys perceived that they were not taking the shortest cut to

a degree.

If, to avoid this comparison, you choose something outside the school

curriculum, the boy will probably consider it an unfair addition to the

burden of his work. His view of education is not your view. _You_ think it

a valuable training or acquirement; _he_ considers it all task-work, like

the making of bricks in Egypt; and his notion of justice is that he ought

not to be compelled to make more bricks than his class-fellows, who are

happy in having fathers too indolent or too ignorant to trouble them. If,

therefore, you teach him something outside of what his school-fellows do,

he does not think, "I get the advantage of a wider education than theirs;"

but he thinks, "My father lays an imposition upon me, and my

school-fellows are lucky to escape it."

In some instances the father chooses a modern language as the thing that

he will teach; but he finds that as he cannot apply the school discipline

(too harsh and unpaternal for use at home), there is a quiet, passive

resistance that will ultimately defeat him unless he has inexhaustible

patience. He decrees, let us suppose, that French shall be spoken at

table; but the chief effect of his decree is to reveal great and

unsuspected powers of taciturnity. Who could be such a tyrant as to find

fault with a boy because he so modestly chooses to be silent? Speech may

be of silver, but silence is of gold, and it is especially beautiful and

becoming in the young.

Seeing that everything in the way of intellectual training is looked upon

by boys as an unfair addition to school-work, some fathers abandon that

altogether, and try to win influence over their sons by initiating them

into sports and pastimes. Just at first these happy projects appear to

unite the useful with the agreeable; but as the youthful nature is much

better fitted for sports and pastimes than middle-age can pretend to be,

it follows that the pupil very soon excels the master in these things, and

quite gets the upper hand of him and offers him advice, or else dutifully

(but with visible constraint) condescends to accommodate himself to the

elder man's inferiority; so that perhaps upon the whole it may be that

sports and pastimes are not the field of exertion in which paternal

authority is most likely to preserve a dignified preponderance.

It is complacently assumed by men of fifty that over-ripe maturity is the

superior of adolescence; but an impartial balance of advantages shows that

some very brilliant ones are on the side of youth. At fifty we may be

wiser, richer, more famous than a clever boy; but he does not care much

for our wisdom, he thinks that expenses are a matter of course, and our

little rushlights of reputations are as nothing to the future electric

illumination of his own. In bodily activity we are to boyhood what a

domestic cow is to a wild antelope; and as boys rightly attach an immense

value to such activity they generally look upon us, in their secret

thoughts, as miserable old "muffs." I distinctly remember, when a boy,

accompanying a middle-aged gentleman to a country railway station. We were

a little late, and the distance was long, but my companion could not be

induced to go beyond his regular pace. At last we were within half a mile,

and the steam of the locomotive became visible. "Now let us run for it," I

cried, "and we shall catch the train!" Run?--_he_ run, indeed! I might as

well have asked the Pope to run in the streets of Rome! My friend kept in

silent solemnity to his own dignified method of motion, and we were left

behind. To this day I well remember the feelings of contemptuous pity and

disgust that filled me as I looked upon that most respectable gentleman. I

said not a word; my demeanor was outwardly decorous; but in my secret

heart I despised my unequal companion with the unmitigated contempt of

youth.

Even those physical exertions that elderly men are equal to--the ten

miles' walk, the ride on a docile hunter, the quiet drive or sail--are so

much below the achievements of fiery youth that they bring us no more

credit than sitting in a chair. Though our efforts seem so respectable to

ourselves that we take a modest pride therein, a young man can only look

upon them with indulgence.

In the mental powers elderly men are inferior on the very point that a

young man looks to first. His notion of cleverness, by which he estimates

all his comrades, is not depth of thought, nor wisdom, nor sagacity; it is

simply rapidity in learning, and there his elders are hopelessly behind

him. They may extend or deepen an old study, but they cannot attack a new

one with the conquering spirit of youth. _Too late! too late! too late!_

is inscribed, for them, on a hundred gates of knowledge. The young man,

with his powers of acquisition urging him like unsatisfied appetites, sees

the gates all open and believes they are open for him. He believes all

knowledge to be his possible province, knowing not yet the chilling,

disheartening truth that life is too short for success in any but a very

few directions. Confident in his powers, the young man prepares himself

for difficult examinations, and he knows that we should be incapable of

the same efforts.

Not having succeeded very well with attempts to create intercourse through

studies and amusements, the father next consoles himself with the idea

that he will convert his son into an intimate friend; but shortly

discovers that there are certain difficulties, of which a few may be

mentioned here.

Although the relationship between father and son is a very near

relationship, it may happen that there is but little likeness of inherited

idiosyncrasy, and therefore that the two may have different and even

opposite tastes. By the law or accident of atavism a boy may resemble one

of his grandfathers or some remoter ancestor, or he may puzzle theorists

about heredity by characteristics for which there is no known precedent in

his family. Both his mental instincts and processes, and the conclusions

to which they lead him, may be entirely different from the habits and

conclusions of his father; and if the father is so utterly unphilosophical

as to suppose (what vulgar fathers constantly _do_ suppose) that his own

mental habits and conclusions are the right ones, and all others wrong,

then he will adopt a tone of authority towards his son, on certain

occasions, which the young man will excusably consider unbearable and

which he will avoid by shunning the paternal society. Even a very mild

attempt on the father's part to impose his own tastes and opinions will be

quietly resented and felt as a reason for avoiding him, because the son is

well aware that he cannot argue on equal terms with a man who, however

amiable he chooses to be for the moment, can at any time arm himself with

the formidable paternal dignity by simply taking the trouble to assume it.

The mere difference of age is almost an insuperable barrier to

comradeship; for though a middle-aged man may be cheerful, his

cheerfulness is "as water unto wine" in comparison with the merriment of

joyous youth. So exuberant is that youthful gayety that it often needs to

utter downright nonsense for the relief of its own high spirits, and feels

oppressed in sober society where nonsense is not permitted. Any elderly

gentleman who reads this has only to consult his own recollections, and

ask himself whether in youth he did not often say and do utterly

irrational things. If he never did, he never was really young. I hardly

know any author, except Shakspeare, who has ventured to reproduce, in its

perfect absurdity, the full flow of youthful nonsense. The criticism of

our own age would scarcely tolerate it in books, and might accuse the

author himself of being silly; but the thing still exists abundantly in

real life, and the wonder is that it is sometimes the most intelligent

young men who enjoy the most witless nonsense of all. When we have lost

the high spirits that gave it a relish, it becomes very wearisome if

prolonged. Young men instinctively know that we are past the appreciation

of it.

Another very important reason why fathers and sons have a difficulty in

maintaining close friendships is the steady divergence of their

experience.

In childhood, the father's knowledge of places, people, and things

includes the child's knowledge, as a large circle includes a little one

drawn within it. Afterwards the boy goes to school, and has comrades and

masters whom his father does not personally know. Later on, he visits many

places where his father has never been.

The son's life may socially diverge so completely from that of the father

that he may really come to belong to a different class in society. His

education, habits, and associates may be different from those of his

father. If the family is growing richer they are likely to be (in the

worldly sense) of a higher class; if it is becoming poorer they will

probably be of a lower class than the father was accustomed to in his

youth. The son may feel more at ease than his father does in very refined

society, or, on the other hand, he may feel refined society to be a

restraint, whilst he only enjoys himself thoroughly and heartily amongst

vulgar people that his father would carefully avoid.

Divergence is carried to its utmost by difference of professional

training, and by the professional habit of seeing things that follows from

it. If a clergyman puts his son into a solicitor's office, he need not

expect that the son will long retain those views of the world that prevail

in the country parsonage where he was born. He will acquire other views,

other mental habits, and he will very soon believe himself to possess a

far greater and more accurate knowledge of mankind, and of affairs, than

his father ever possessed.

Even if the son is in the father's own profession he will have new views

of it derived from the time at which he learns it, and he is likely to

consider his father's ideas as not brought down to the latest date. He

will also have a tendency to look to strangers as greater authorities than

his father, even when they are really on the same level, because they are

not lowered in his estimate by domestic intimacy and familiarity. Their

opinion will be especially valued by the young man if it has to be paid

for, it being an immense depreciation of the paternal counsel that it is

always given gratuitously.

If the father has bestowed upon his son what is considered a "complete"

education, and if he himself has not received the same "complete"

education in his youth, the son is likely to accept the conventional

estimate of education because it is in his own favor, and to estimate his

father as an "uneducated" or a "half-educated" man, without taking into

much account the possibility that his father may have developed his

faculties by mental labor in other ways. The conventional division between

"educated" and "uneducated" men is so definite that it is easily seen. The

educated are those who have taken a degree at one of the Universities; the

rest are uneducated, whatever may be their attainments in the sciences, in

modern languages, or in the fine arts.

There are differences of education even more serious than this, because

more real. A man may be not only conventionally uneducated, but he may be

really and truly uneducated, by which I mean that his faculties may never

have been drawn out by intellectual discipline of any kind whatever. It is

hard indeed for a well-educated young man to live under the authority of

a father of that kind, because he has constantly to suppress reasons and

motives for opinions and decisions that such a father could not possibly

enter into or understand. The relationship is equally hard for the father,

who must be aware, with the lively suspicion of the ignorant, that his son

is not telling him all his thought but only the portion of it which he

thinks fit to reveal, and that much more is kept in reserve. He will ask,

"Why this reserve towards _me_?" and then he will either be profoundly

hurt and grieved by it at times, or else, if of another temper, he will be

irritated, and his irritation may find harsh utterance in words.

An educated man can never rid himself of his education. His views of the

most ordinary things are different from the views of the uneducated. If he

were to express them in his own language they would say, "Why, how he

talks!" and consider him "a queer chap;" and if he keeps them to himself

they say he is very "close" and "shut up." There is no way out of the

dilemma except this, that kind and tender feelings may exist between

people who have nothing in common intellectually, but these are only

possible when all pretence to paternal authority is abandoned.

Our forefathers had an idea with regard to the opinions of their children

that in these days we must be content to give up. They thought that all

opinions were by nature hereditary, and it was considered an act of

disloyalty to ancestors if a descendant ventured to differ from them. The

profession of any but the family opinions was so rare as to be almost

inconceivable; and if in some great crisis the head of a family took a

new departure in religion or politics the new faith substituted itself for

the old one as the hereditary faith of the family. I remember hearing an

old gentleman (who represented old English feeling in great perfection)

say that it was totally unintelligible to him that a certain Member of

Parliament could sit on the Liberal side of the House of Commons. "I

cannot understand it," he said; "I knew his father intimately, and he was

always a good Tory." The idea that the son might have opinions of his own

was unthinkable.

In our time we are beginning to perceive that opinions cannot be imposed,

and that the utmost that can be obtained by brow-beating a son who differs

from ourselves is that he shall make false professions to satisfy us.

Paternal influence may be better employed than in encouraging habits of

dissimulation.

M. Legouvé attaches great importance to the religious question as a cause

of division between fathers and sons because in the present day young men

so frequently imbibe opinions which are not those of their parents. It is

not uncommon, in France, for Catholic parents to have unbelieving sons;

and the converse is also seen, but more frequently in the case of

daughters. As opinions are very freely expressed in France (except where

external conformity is an affair of caste), we find many families in which

Catholicism and Agnosticism have each their open and convinced adherents;

yet family affection does not appear to suffer from the difference, or is,

at least, powerful enough to overcome it. In old times this would have

been impossible. The father would have resented a difference of opinion

in the son as an offence against himself.

A very common cause of division between father and son, in old times, was

the following.

The father expressed a desire of some kind, mildly and kindly perhaps, yet

with the full expectation that it should be attended to; but the desire

was of an exorbitant nature, in this sense, that it involved something

that would affect the whole course of the young man's future life in a

manner contrary to his natural instincts. The father was then grievously

hurt and offended because the son did not see his way to the fulfilment of

the paternal desire.

The strongest cases of this kind were in relation to profession and

marriage. The father wished his son to enter into some trade or profession

for which he was completely unsuited, or he desired him to marry some

young lady for whom he had not the slightest natural affinity. The son

felt the inherent difficulties and refused. Then the father thought, "I

only ask of my son _this one simple thing_, and he denies me."

In these cases the father was _not_ asking for one thing, but for

thousands of things. He was asking his son to undertake many thousands of

separate obligations, succeeding each other till the far-distant date of

his retirement from the distasteful profession, or his release, by his own

death or hers, from the tedious companionship of the unloved wife.

Sometimes the concession would have involved a long series of hypocrisies,

as for example when a son was asked to take holy orders, though with

little faith and no vocation.

Peter the Great is the most conspicuous example in history of a father

whose idiosyncrasy was not continued in his son, and who could not

understand or tolerate the separateness of his son's personality. They

were not only of independent, but even of opposite natures. "Peter was

active, curious, and energetic. Alexis was contemplative and reflective.

He was not without intellectual ability, but he liked a quiet life. He

preferred reading and thinking. At the age when Peter was making

fireworks, building boats, and exercising his comrades in mimic war,

Alexis was pondering over the 'Divine Manna,' reading the 'Wonders of

God,' reflecting on Thomas à Kempis's 'Imitation of Christ,' and making

excerpts from Baronius. While it sometimes seemed as if Peter was born too

soon for the age, Alexis was born too late. He belonged to the past

generation. Not only did he take no interest in the work and plans of his

father, but he gradually came to dislike and hate them.... He would

sometimes even take medicine to make himself ill, so that he might not be

called upon to perform duties or to attend to business. Once, when he was

obliged to go to the launch of a ship, he said to a friend, 'I would

rather be a galley-slave, or have a burning fever, than be obliged to go

there.'"[6]

In this case one is sorry for both father and son. Peter was a great

intelligent barbarian of immense muscular strength and rude cerebral

energy. Alexis was of the material from which civilization makes priests

and students, or quiet conventional kings, but he was even more unlike

Peter than gentle Richard Cromwell was unlike authoritative Oliver. The

disappointment to Peter, firmly convinced, as all rude natures are, of the

perfection of his own personality, and probably quite unable to appreciate

a personality of another type, must have been the more bitter that his

great plans for the future required a vigorous, practically minded

innovator like himself. At length the difference of nature so exasperated

the Autocrat that he had his son three times tortured, the third time in

his own presence and with a fatal result. This terrible incident is the

strongest expression known to us of a father's vexation because his son

was not of his own kind.

Another painful case that will be long remembered, though the character of

the father is less known to us, is that of the poet Shelley and Sir

Timothy. The little that we do know amounts to this, that there was a

total absence of sympathy. Sir Timothy committed the very greatest of

paternal mistakes in depriving himself of the means of direct influence

over his son by excluding him from his own home. Considering that the

supreme grief of unhappy fathers is the feebleness of their influence over

their sons, they can but confirm and complete their sorrow by annihilating

that influence utterly and depriving themselves of all chance of

recovering and increasing it in the future. This Sir Timothy did after the

expulsion from Oxford. In his position, a father possessing some skill and

tact in the management of young men at the most difficult and wayward

period of their lives would have determined above all things to keep his

son as much as possible within the range of his own control. Although

Shelley afterwards returned to Field Place for a short time, the scission

had been made; there was an end of real intercourse between father and

son; the poet went his own way, married Harriett Westbrook, and lived

through the rest of his short, unsatisfactory existence as a homeless,

wandering _déclassé_.

This Essay has hitherto run upon the discouraging side of the subject, so

that it ought not to end without the happier and more hopeful

considerations.

Every personality is separate from others, and expects its separateness to

be acknowledged. When a son avoids his father it is because he fears that

the rights of his own personality will be disregarded. There are fathers

who habitually treat their sons with sneering contempt. I have myself seen

a young man of fair common abilities treated with constant and undisguised

contempt by a clever, sardonic father who went so far as to make brutal

allusions to the shape of the young man's skull! He bore this treatment

with admirable patience and unfailing gentleness, but suffered from it

silently. Another used to laugh at his son, and called him "Don Quixote"

whenever the lad gave expression to some sentiment above the low

Philistine level. A third, whom I knew well, had a disagreeable way of

putting down his son because he was young, telling him that up to the age

of forty a man "might have impressions, but could not possibly have

opinions." "My father," said a kind-hearted English gentleman to me, "was

the most thoroughly unbearable person I ever met with in my life."

The frank recognition of separate personality, with all its rights, would

stop this brutality at once. There still remains the legitimate power of

the father, which he ought not to abdicate, and which is of itself enough

to prevent the freedom and equality necessary to perfect friendship. This

reason, and the difference of age and habits, make it impossible that

young men and their fathers should be comrades; but a relation may be

established between them which, if rightly understood, is one of the most

agreeable in human existence.

To be satisfactory it must be founded, on the father's side, on the idea

that he is repaying to posterity what he has received from his own

parents, and not on any selfish hope that the descending stream of benefit

will flow upwards again to him. Then he must not count upon affection, nor

lay himself out to win it, nor be timidly afraid of losing it, but found

his influence upon the firmer ground of respect, and be determined to

deserve and have _that_, along with as much unforced affection as the son

is able naturally and easily to give. It is not desirable that the

affection between father and son should be so tender, on either side, as

to make separation a constant pain, for such is human destiny that the two

are generally fated to see but little of each other.

The best satisfaction for a father is to deserve and receive loyal and

unfailing respect from his son.

No, this is not quite the best, not quite the supreme satisfaction of

paternity. Shall I reveal the secret that lies in silence at the very

bottom of the hearts of all worthy and honorable fathers? Their

profoundest happiness is to be able themselves to respect their sons.

ESSAY VII.

THE RIGHTS OF THE GUEST.

If hospitality were always perfectly practised it would be the strongest

of all influences in favor of rational liberty, because the host would

learn to respect it in the persons of his guests, and thence, by extension

of habit, amongst others who could never be his guests.

Hospitality educates us in respect for the rights of others. This is the

substantial benefit that the host ought to derive from his trouble and his

outlay, but the instincts of uncivilized human nature are so powerful that

this education has usually been partial and incomplete. The best part of

it has been systematically evaded, in this way. People were aware that

tolerance and forbearance ought to be exercised towards guests, and so, to

avoid the hard necessity of exercising these qualities when they were

really difficult virtues, they practised what is called exclusiveness. In

other words, they accepted as guests only those who agreed with their own

opinions and belonged to their own class. By this arrangement they could

be both hospitable and intolerant at the same time.

If, in our day, the barrier of exclusiveness has been in many places

broken down, there is all the greater need for us to remember the true

principle of hospitality. It might be forgotten with little inconvenience

in a very exclusive society, but if it were forgotten in a society that is

not exclusive the consequences would be exactly the opposite of what every

friend of civilization most earnestly desires. Social intercourse, in that

case, so far from being an education in respect for the rights of others,

would be an opportunity for violating them. The violation might become

habitual; and if it were so this strange result would follow, that society

would not be a softening and civilizing influence, but the contrary. It

would accustom people to treat each other with disregard, so that men

would be hardened and brutalized by it as schoolboys are made ruder by the

rough habits of the playground, and urbanity would not be cultivated in

cities, but preserved, if at all, in solitude.

The two views concerning the rights of the guest may be stated briefly as

follows:--

1. The guest is bound to conform in all things to the tastes and customs

of his host. He ought to find or feign enjoyment in everything that his

host imposes upon him; and if he is unwilling to do this in every

particular it is a breach of good manners on his part, and he must be made

to suffer for it.

2. The guest should be left to be happy in his own way, and the business

of the host is to arrange things in such a manner that each guest may

enjoy as much as possible his own peculiar kind of happiness.

When the first principle was applied in all its rigor, as it often used to

be applied, and as I have myself seen it applied, the sensation

experienced by the guest on going to stay in certain houses was that of

entirely losing the direction of himself. He was not even allowed, in the

middle classes, to have any control over his own inside, but had to eat

what his host ordered him to eat, and to drink the quantity of wine and

spirits that his host had decided to be good for him. Resistance to these

dictates was taken as an offence, as a crime against good fellowship, or

as a reflection on the quality of the good things provided; and

conversation paused whilst the attention of the whole company was

attracted to the recalcitrant guest, who was intentionally placed in a

situation of extreme annoyance and discomfort in order to compel him to

obedience. The victim was perhaps half an invalid, or at least a man who

could only keep well and happy on condition of observing a certain

strictness of regimen. He was then laughed at for idle fears about his

health, told that he was a hypochondriac, and recommended to drink a

bottle of port every day to get rid of such idle nonsense. If he declined

to eat twice or three times as much as he desired, the hostess expressed

her bitter regret that she had not been able to provide food and cookery

to his taste, thus placing him in such a position that he must either eat

more or seem to condemn her arrangements. It was very common amongst

old-fashioned French _bourgeois_ in the last generation for the hostess

herself to heap things on the guest's plate, and to prevent this her poor

persecuted neighbor had to remove the plate or turn it upside down. The

whole habit of pressing was dictated by selfish feeling in the hosts. They

desired to see their guests devour voraciously, in order that their own

vanity might be gratified by the seeming appreciation of their things.

Temperate men were disliked by a generation of topers because their

temperance had the appearance of a silent protest or censure. The

discomfort inflicted by these odious usages was so great that many people

either injured their health in society or kept out of it in self-defence,

though they were not sulky and unsociable by nature, but would have been

hearty lovers of human intercourse if they could have enjoyed it on less

unacceptable terms.

The wholesome modern reaction against these dreadful old customs has led

some hosts into another error. They sometimes fail to understand the great

principle that it is the guest alone who ought to be the judge of the

quantity that he shall eat and drink. The old pressing hospitality assumed

that the guest was a child, too shame-faced to take what it longed for

unless it was vigorously encouraged; but the new hospitality, if indeed it

still in every case deserves that honored name, does really sometimes

appear to assume (I do not say always, or often, but in extreme cases)

that the guest is a fool, who would eat and drink more than is good for

him if he were not carefully rationed. Such hosts forget that excess is

quite a relative term, that each constitution has its own needs. Beyond

this, it is well known that the exhilaration of social intercourse enables

people who meet convivially to digest and assimilate, without fatigue, a

larger amount of nutriment than they could in dull and perhaps dejected

solitude. Hence it is a natural and long-established habit to eat and

drink more when in company than alone, and the guest should have the

possibility of conforming to this not irrational old custom until, in

Homer's phrase, he has "put from him the desire of meat and drink."

Guests have no right whatever to require that the host should himself eat

and drink to keep them in countenance. There used to be a belief (it

lingers still in the middle classes and in country places) that the laws

of hospitality required the host to set what was considered "a good

example," or, in other words, to commit excesses himself that his friends

might not be too much ashamed of theirs. It is said that the Emperor

William of Germany never eats in public at all, but sits out every banquet

before an empty plate. This, though quite excusable in an old gentleman,

obliged to live by rule, must have rather a chilling effect; and yet I

like it as a declaration of the one great principle that no person at

table, be he host or guest, ought to be compelled to inflict the very

slightest injury upon his own health, or even comfort. The rational and

civilized idea is that food and wines are simply placed at the disposal of

the people present to be used, or abstained from, as they please.

It is clear that every invited guest has a right to expect some slight

appearance of festivity in his honor. In coarse and barbarous times the

idea of festivity is invariably expressed by abundance, especially by vast

quantities of butcher's meat and wine, as we always find it in Homer,

where princes and gentlemen stuff themselves like savages; but in refined

times the notion of quantity has lost its attraction, and that of

elegance takes its place. In a highly civilized society nothing conveys so

much the idea of festivity as plenty of light and flowers, with beautiful

table-linen and plate and glass. These, with some extra delicacy in

cookery and wines, are our modern way of expressing welcome.

There is a certain kind of hospitality in which the host visibly declines

to make any effort either of trouble or expense, but plainly shows by his

negligence that he only tolerates the guest. All that can be said of such

hospitality as this is that a guest who respects himself may endure it

silently for once, but would not be likely to expose himself to it a

second time.

There is even a kind of hospitality which seems to find a satisfaction in

letting the guest perceive that the best in the house is not offered to

him. He is lodged in a poor little room, when there are noble bedchambers,

unused, in the same house; or he is allowed to hire a vehicle in the

village, to make some excursion, when there are horses in the stables

plethoric from want of exercise. In cases of this kind it is not the

privation of luxury that is hard to bear, but the indisposition to give

honor. The guest feels and knows that if a person of very high rank came

to the house everything would be put at his disposal, and he resents the

slight put upon his own condition. A rich English lady, long since dead,

had a large mansion in the country with fine bedrooms; so she found a

pleasure in keeping those rooms empty and sending guests to sleep at the

top of the house in little bare and comfortless chambers that the

architect had intended for servants. I have heard of a French house where

there are fine state apartments, and where all ordinary guests are poorly

lodged, and fed in a miserable _salle à manger_. An aggravation is when

the host treats himself better than his guest. Lady B. invited some

friends to a country-house; and they drove to another country-house in the

neighborhood in two carriages, one containing Lady B. and one friend, the

other the remaining guests. Her ladyship was timid and rather selfish, as

timid people often are; so when they reached the avenue she began to fancy

that both carriages could not safely turn in the garden, and she

despatched her footman to the second carriage, with orders that her guests

(amongst whom was a lady very near her confinement) were to get out and

walk to the house, whilst she drove up to the door in state.

A guest has an absolute right to have his religious and political opinions

respected in his presence, and this is not invariably done. The rule more

generally followed seems to be that class opinions only deserve respect

and not individual opinions. The question is too large to be treated in a

paragraph, but I should say that it is a clear breach of hospitality to

utter anything in disparagement of any opinion whatever that is known to

be held by any one guest present, however humble may be his rank. I have

sometimes seen the known opinions of a guest attacked rudely and directly,

but the more civilized method is to do it more artfully through some other

person who is not present. For example, a guest is known to think, on

important subjects, very much as Mr. Herbert Spencer does; then the host

will contrive to talk at him in talking about Spencer. A guest ought not

to bear this ungenerous kind of attack. If such an occasion arises he

should declare his opinions plainly and with firmness, and show his

determination to have them respected whilst he is there, whatever may be

said against them in his absence. If he cannot obtain this degree of

courtesy, which is his right, let him quit the house and satisfy his

hunger at some inn. The innkeeper will ask for a little money, but he

demands no mental submission.

It sometimes happens that the nationality of a foreign guest is not

respected as it ought to be. I remember an example of this which is

moderate enough to serve as a kind of type, some attacks upon nationality

being much more direct and outrageous. An English lady said at her own

table that she would not allow her daughter to be partially educated in a

French school, "because she would have to associate with French girls,

which, you know, is undesirable." Amongst the guests was a French lady,

and the observation was loud enough for everybody to hear it. I say

nothing of the injustice of the imputation. It was, indeed, most unjust,

but that is not the point. The point is that a foreigner ought not to hear

attacks upon his native land even when they are perfectly well founded.

The host has a sort of judicial function in this way. The guest has a

right to look to him for protection on certain occasions, and he is likely

to be profoundly grateful when it is given with tact and skill, because

the host can say things for him that he cannot even hint at for himself.

Suppose the case of a young man who is treated with easy and rather

contemptuous familiarity by another guest, simply on account of his youth.

He is nettled by the offence, but as it is more in manner than in words he

cannot fix upon anything to answer. The host perceives his annoyance, and

kindly gives him some degree of importance by alluding to some superiority

of his, and by treating him in a manner very different from that which had

vexed him.

A witty host is the most powerful ally against an aggressor. I remember

dining in a very well-known house in Paris where a celebrated Frenchman

repeated the absurd old French calumny against English ladies,--that they

all drink. I was going to resent this seriously when a clever Frenchwoman

(who knew England well) perceived the danger, and answered the man herself

with great decision and ability. I then watched for the first opportunity

of making him ridiculous, and seized upon a very delightful one that he

unwittingly offered. Our host at once understood that my attack was in

revenge for an aggression that had been in bad taste, and he supported me

with a wit and pertinacity that produced general merriment at the enemy's

expense. Now in that case I should say that the host was filling one of

the most important and most difficult functions of a host.

This Essay has hitherto been written almost entirely on the guest's side

of the question, so that we have still briefly to consider the limitations

to his rights.

He has no right to impose any serious inconvenience upon his host. He has

no right to disturb the ordinary arrangements of the house, or to inflict

any serious pecuniary cost, or to occupy the host's time to the prejudice

of his usual pursuits. He has no right to intrude upon the privacy of his

host.

A guest has no right to place the host in such a dilemma that he must

either commit a rudeness or put up with an imposition. The very courtesy

of an entertainer places him at the mercy of a pushing and unscrupulous

guest, and it is only when the provocation has reached such a point as to

have become perfectly intolerable that a host will do anything so painful

to himself as to abandon his hospitable character and make the guest

understand that he must go.

It may be said that difficulties of this kind never occur in civilized

society. No doubt they are rare, but they happen just sufficiently often

to make it necessary to be prepared for them. Suppose the case of a guest

who exceeds his invitation. He has been invited for two nights, plainly

and definitely; but he stays a third, fourth, fifth, and seems as if he

would stay forever. There are men of that kind in the world, and it is one

of their arts to disarm their victims by pleasantness, so that it is not

easy to be firm with them. The lady of the house gives a gentle hint, the

master follows with broader hints, but the intruder is quite impervious to

any but the very plainest language. At last the host has to say, "Your

train leaves at such an hour, and the carriage will be ready to take you

to the station half an hour earlier." This, at any rate, is intelligible;

and yet I have known one of those clinging limpets whom even this

proceeding failed to dislodge. At the approach of the appointed hour he

was nowhere to be found! He had gone to hide himself in a wood with no

companion but his watch, and by its help he took care to return when it

was too late. That is sometimes one of the great uses of a watch.

ESSAY VIII.

THE DEATH OF FRIENDSHIP.

A sad subject, but worth analysis; for if friendship is of any value to us

whilst it is alive, is it not worth while to inquire if there are any

means of keeping it alive?

The word "death" is correctly employed here, for nobody has discovered the

means by which a dead friendship can be resuscitated. To hope for that

would be vain indeed, and idle the waste of thought in such a bootless

quest.

Shall we mourn over this death without hope, this blank annihilation, this

finis of intercourse once so sweet, this dreary and ultimate conclusion?

The death of a friendship is not the death of a person; we do not mourn

for the absence of some beloved person from the world. It is simply the

termination of a certain degree and kind of intercourse, not of necessity

the termination of all intercourse. We may be grieved that the change has

come; we may be remorseful if it has come through a fault of our own; but

if it is due simply to natural causes there is small place for any

reasonable sorrow.

Friendship is a certain _rapport_ between two minds during one or more

phases of their existence, and the perfection of it is quite as dependent

upon what is not in the two minds as upon their positive acquirements and

possessions. Hence the extreme facility with which schoolboys form

friendships which, for the time, are real, true, and delightful. School

friendships are formed so easily because boys in the same class know the

same things; and it rarely happens that in addition to what they have in

common either one party or the other has any knowledge of importance that

is not in common.

Later in life the pair of friends who were once comrades go into different

professions that fill the mind with special professional ideas and induce

different habits of thought. Each will be conscious, when they meet, that

there is a great range of ideas in the other's mind from which he is

excluded, and each will have a difficulty in keeping within the smaller

range of ideas that they have now in common; so that they will no longer

be able to let their _whole_ minds play together as they used to do, and

they will probably feel more at ease with mere acquaintances who have what

is _now_ their knowledge, what are now their mental habits, than with the

friend of their boyhood who is without them.

This is strongly felt by men who go through a large experience at a

distance from their early home and then return for a while to the old

place and old associates, and find that it is only a part of themselves

that is acceptable. New growths of self have taken place in distant

regions, by travel, by study, by intercourse with mankind; and these new

growths, though they may be more valuable than any others, are of no

practical use, of no social availableness, in the little circle that has

remained in the old ways.

Then there are changes of temper that result from the fixing of the

character by time. We think we remain the same, but that is one of our

many illusions. We change, and we do not always change in the same way.

One man becomes mellowed by advancing years, but another is hardened by

them; one man's temper gains in sweetness and serenity as his intellect

gains in light, another becomes dogmatic, peremptory, and bitter. Even

when the change is the same for both, it may be unfavorable to their

intercourse. Two merry young hearts may enjoy each other's company, when

they would find each other dull and flat if the sparkle of the early

effervescence were all spent.

I have not yet touched upon change of opinion as a cause of the death of

friendship, but it is one of the most common causes. It would be a calumny

on the intelligence of the better part of mankind to say that they always

desire to hear repeated exactly what they say themselves, though that is

really the desire of the unintelligent; but the cleverest people like to

hear new and additional reasons in support of the opinions they hold

already; and they do not like to hear reasons, hitherto unsuspected, that

go to the support of opinions different from their own. Therefore a slow

divergence of opinion may carry two friends farther and farther apart by

narrowing the subjects of their intercourse, or a sudden intellectual

revolution in one of them may effect an immediate and irreparable breach.

"If the character is formed," says Stuart Mill, "and the mind made up on

the few cardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and

feeling on these has been felt at all times to be an essential requisite

of anything worthy the name of friendship in a really earnest mind." I do

not quote this in the belief that it is absolutely true, but it expresses

a general sentiment. We can only be guided by our own experience in these

matters. Mine has been that friendship is possible with those whom I

respect, however widely they differ from me, and not possible with those

whom I am unable to respect, even when on the great matters of opinion

their views are identical with my own.

It is certain, however, that the change of opinion itself has a tendency

to separate men, even though the difference would not have made friendship

impossible if it had existed from the first. Instances of this are often

found in biographies, especially in religious biographies, because

religious people are more "pained" and "wounded" by difference of opinion

than others. We read in such books of the profound distress with which the

hero found himself separated from his early friends by his new conviction

on this or that point of theology. Political divergence produces the same

effect in a minor degree, and with more of irritation than distress. Even

divergence of opinion on artistic subjects is enough to produce coolness.

Artists and men of letters become estranged from each other by

modifications of their critical doctrines.

Differences of prosperity do not prevent the formation of friendship if

they have existed previously, and can be taken as established facts; but

if they widen afterwards they have a tendency to diminish it. They do so

by altering the views of one of the parties about ways of living and about

the multitude of things involving questions of expense. If the enriched

man lives on a scale corresponding to his newly acquired wealth, he may be

regarded by the other as pretentious beyond his station, whilst if he

keeps to his old style he may be thought parsimonious. From delicacy he

will cease to talk to the other about his money matters, which he spoke of

with frankness when he was not so rich. If he has social ambition he will

form new alliances with richer men, and the old friend may regard these

with a little unconscious jealousy.

It has been observed that young artists often have a great esteem for the

work of one of their number so long as its qualities are not recognized

and rewarded by the public, but that so soon as the clever young man wins

the natural meed of industry and ability his early friendships die. They

were often the result of a generous indignation against public injustice,

so when that injustice came to an end the kindness that was a protest

against it ceased at the same time. In jealous natures it would no doubt

be replaced by the conviction that public favor had rewarded merit far

beyond its deserts.

In the political life of democracies we see men enthusiastically supported

and really admired with sincerity so long as they remain in opposition,

and their friends indulge the most favorable anticipations about what they

would do if they came to power; but when they accept office they soon lose

many of these friends, who are quite sure to be disappointed with the

small degree in which their excessive hopes have been realized. There is

no country where this is seen more frequently than in France, where

Ministers are often criticised with the most unrelenting and uncharitable

acerbity by the men and newspapers that helped to raise them.

Changes of physical constitution may be the death of friendship in this

way. A friendship may be founded upon some sport that one of the parties

becomes unable to follow. After that the two men cease to meet on the

particularly pleasant occasions that every sport affords for its real

votaries, and they only meet on common occasions, which are not the same

because there is not the same jovial and hearty temper. In like manner a

friendship may be weakened if one of the parties gives up some indulgence

that both used to enjoy together. Many a friendship has been cemented by

the habit of smoking, and weakened afterwards when one friend gave up the

habit, declined the cigars that the other offered, and either did not

accompany him to the smoking-room or sat there in open and vexatious

nonconformity.

It is well known, so well known indeed as scarcely to require mention

here, that one of the most frequent and powerful causes of the death of

bachelor friendships is marriage. One of the two friends takes a wife, and

the friendship is at once in peril. The maintenance of it depends upon the

lady's taste and temper. If not quite approved by her, it will languish

for a little while and then die, in spite of all painful and visible

efforts on the husband's part to compensate, by extra attention, for the

coolness of his wife. I have visited a Continental city where it is always

understood that all bachelor friendships are broken off by marriage. This

rule has at least the advantage of settling the question unequivocally.

Simple neglect is probably the most common of all causes deadly to

friendship,--neglect arising either from real indifference, from

constitutional indolence, or from excessive devotion to business. Friendly

feelings must be either of extraordinary sincerity, or else strengthened

by some extraneous motive of self-interest, to surmount petty

inconveniences. The very slightest difficulty in maintaining intercourse

is sufficient in most cases to insure its total cessation in a short time.

Your house is somewhat difficult of access,--it is on a hill-side or at a

little distance from a railway station: only the most sincere friends will

be at the trouble to find you unless your rank is so high that it is a

glory to visit you.

Poor friends often keep up intercourse with rich ones by sheer force of

determination long after it ought to have been allowed to die its own

natural death. When they do this without having the courage to require

some approach to reciprocity they sink into the condition of mere clients,

whom the patron may indeed treat with apparent kindness, but whom he

regards with real indifference, taking no trouble whatever to maintain the

old connection between them.

Equality of rank and fortune is not at all necessary to friendship, but a

certain other kind of equality is. A real friendship can never be

maintained unless there is an equal readiness on both sides to be at some

pains and trouble for its maintenance; so if you perceive that a person

whom you once supposed to be your friend will not put himself to any

trouble on your account, the only course consistent with your dignity is

to take exactly the same amount of pains to make yourself agreeable to

him. After you have done this for a little time you will soon know if the

friendship is really dead; for he is sure to perceive your neglect if he

does not perceive his own, and he will either renew the intercourse with

some _empressement_ or else cease from it altogether.

In early life the right rule is to accept kindness gratefully from one's

elders and not to be sensitive about omissions, because such omissions are

then often consistent with the most real and affectionate regard; but as a

man advances towards middle-age it is right for him to be somewhat careful

of his dignity and to require from friends, whatever may be their station,

a certain general reciprocity. This should always be understood in rather

a large sense, and not exacted in trifles. If he perceives that there is

no reciprocity he cannot do better than drop an acquaintance that is but

the phantom and simulacrum of Friendship's living reality.

It is as natural that many friendships should die and be replaced by

others as that our old selves should be replaced by our present selves.

The fact seems melancholy when first perceived, but is afterwards accepted

as inevitable. There is, however, a death of friendship which is so truly

sad and sorrowful as to cast its gloomy shadow on all the years that

remain to us. It is when we ourselves, by some unhappy fault of temper

that might have been easily avoided, have wounded the kind breast of our

friend, and killed the gentle sentiment that was dwelling happily within.

The only way to be quite sure of avoiding this great and irretrievable

calamity is to remember how very delicate friendly sentiments are and how

easy it is to destroy them by an inconsiderate or an ungentle word.

ESSAY IX.

THE FLUX OF WEALTH.

We become richer or poorer; we seldom remain exactly as we were. If we

have property, it increases or diminishes in value; if our income is

fixed, the value of money alters; and if it increased proportionally to

the depreciation of money, our position would still be relatively altered

by changes in the fortunes of others. We marry and have children; then our

wealth becomes less our own after every birth. We win some honor or

professional advancement that seems a gain; but increased expenditure is

the consequence, and we are poorer than we were before. Amidst all these

fluctuations of wealth human intercourse either continues under altered

conditions or else it is broken off because they are no longer favorable

to its maintenance. I propose to consider, very briefly, how these altered

conditions operate.

We have to separate, in the first place, intercourse between individuals

from intercourse between families. The distinction is of the utmost

importance, because the two are not under the same law.

Two men, of whom one is extremely rich and the other almost penniless,

have no difficulty in associating together on terms agreeable to both when

they possess intellectual interests in common, or even when there is

nothing more than an attraction of idiosyncrasy; but these conditions only

subsist between one individual and another; they are not likely to subsist

between two families. Intercourse between individuals depends on something

in intellect and culture that enables them to understand each other, and

upon something in character that makes them love or respect each other.

Intercourse between families depends chiefly on neighborhood and

similarity in style of living.

This is the reason why bachelors have so much easier access to society

than men with wives and families. The bachelor is received for himself,

for his genius, information, manners; but if he is married the question

is, "What sort of people are _they_?" This, being interpreted, means,

"What style do they live in?" "How many servants do they keep?"

Whatever may be the variety of opinions concerning the doctrines of the

Church of Rome, there is but one concerning her astuteness. There can be

no doubt that she is the most influential association of men that has ever

existed; and she has decided for celibacy, that the priest might stand on

his merits and on the power of the Church, and be respected and admitted

everywhere in spite of notorious poverty.

Mignet, the historian, was a most intimate and constant friend of Thiers.

Mignet, though rich in reality, as he knew how to live contentedly on

moderate means, was poor in comparison with his friend. This inequality

did not affect their friendship in the least; for both were great workers,

well qualified to understand each other, though Thiers lived in a grand

house, and Mignet in a barely furnished lodging high up in a house that

did not belong to him.

Mignet was a bachelor, and they were both childless men; but imagine them

with large families. One family would have been bred in the greatest

luxury, the other in austere simplicity. Children are keenly alive to

these distinctions; and even if there had been neither pride in the rich

house nor envy in the poorer one the contrast would have been constantly

felt. The historical studies that the fathers had in common would probably

not have interested their descendants, and unless there had been some

other powerful bond of sympathy the two families would have lived in

different worlds. The rich family would have had rich friends, the poorer

family would have attached itself to other families with whom it could

have exchanged hospitality on more equal terms. This would have happened

even in Paris, a city where there is a remarkable absence of contempt for

poverty; a city where the slightest reason for distinction will admit any

well-bred man into society in spite of narrow means and insure him

immunity from disdain. All the more certainly would it happen in places

where money is the only regulator of rank, the only acknowledged claim to

consideration.

I once knew an English merchant who was reputed to be wealthy, and who,

like a true Englishman as he was, inhabited one of those great houses that

are so elaborately contrived for the exercise of hospitality. He had a

kind and friendly heart, and lived surrounded by people who often did him

the favor to drink his excellent wines and sleep in his roomy

bedchambers. On his death it turned out that he had never been quite so

rich as he appeared and that during his last decade his fortune had

rapidly dwindled. Being much interested in everything that may confirm or

invalidate those views of human nature that are current in ancient and

modern literature, I asked his son how those who were formerly such

frequent guests at the great house had behaved to the impoverished family.

"They simply avoided us," he said; "and some of them, when they met me,

would cut me openly in the street."

It may be said with perfect truth that this was a good riddance. It is

certain that it was so; it is undeniable that the deliverance from a horde

of false friends is worth a considerable sum per head of them; and that in

itself was only a subject of congratulation, but their behavior was hard

to bear because it was the evidence of a fall. We like deference as a

proof that we have what others respect, quite independently of any real

affection on their part; nay, we even enjoy the forced deference of those

who hate us, well knowing that they would behave very differently if they

dared. Besides this, it is not certain that an impoverished family will

find truer friends amongst the poor than it did formerly amongst the rich.

The relation may be the same as it was before, and only the incomes of the

parties altered.

What concerns our present subject is simply that changes of pecuniary

situation have always a strong tendency to throw people amongst other

associates; and as these changes are continually occurring, the result is

that families very rarely preserve the same acquaintances for more than a

single generation. And now comes the momentous issue. The influence of our

associates is so difficult to resist, in fact so completely irresistible

in the long run, that people belong far less to the class they are

descended from than to the class in which they live. The younger son of

some perfectly aristocratic family marries rather imprudently and is

impoverished by family expenses. His son marries imprudently again and

goes into another class. The children of that second marriage will

probably not have a trace of the peculiarly aristocratic civilization.

They will have neither the manners, nor the ideas, nor the unexpressed

instincts of the real aristocracy from which they sprang. In place of them

they will have the ideas of the lower middle class, and be in habits and

manners just as completely of that class as if their forefathers had

always belonged to it.

I have in view two instances of this which are especially interesting to

me because they exemplify it in opposite ways. In one of these cases the

man was virtuous and religious, but though his ancestry was aristocratic

his virtues and his religion were exactly those of the English middle

class. He was a good Bible-reading, Sabbath-observing, theatre-avoiding

Evangelical, inclined to think that dancing was rather sinful, and in all

those subtle points of difference that distinguish the middle-class

Englishman from the aristocratic Englishman he followed the middle class,

not seeming to have any unconscious reminiscence in his blood of an

ancestry with a freer and lordlier life. He cared neither for the sports,

nor the studies, nor the social intercourse of the aristocracy. His time

was divided, as that of the typical good middle-class Englishman generally

is, between business and religion, except when he read his newspaper. By a

combination of industry and good-fortune he recovered wealth, and might

have rejoined the aristocracy to which he belonged by right of descent;

but middle-class habits were too strong, and he remained contentedly to

the close of life both in that class and of it.

The other example I am thinking of is that of a man still better

descended, who followed a profession which, though it offers a good field

for energy and talent, is seldom pursued by gentlemen. He acquired the

habits and ideas of an intelligent but dissipated working-man, his vices

were exactly those of such a man, and so was his particular kind of

religious scepticism. I need not go further into detail. Suppose the

character of a very clever but vicious and irreligious workman, such as

may be found in great numbers in the large English towns, and you have the

accurate portrait of this particular _déclassé_.

In mentioning these two cases I am anxious to avoid misinterpretation. I

have no particular respect for one class more than another, and am

especially disposed to indulgence for the faults of those who bear the

stress of the labor of the world; but I see that there _are_ classes, and

that the fluctuations of fortune, more than any other cause, bring people

within the range of influence exercised by the habits of classes, and form

them in the mould, so that their virtues and vices afterwards, besides

their smaller qualities and defects, belong to the class they live in and

not to the class they may be descended from. In other words, men are more

strongly influenced by human intercourse than by heredity.

The most remarkable effect of the fluctuation of wealth is the extreme

rapidity with which the prosperous family gains refinement of manners,

whilst the impoverished family loses it. This change seems to be more

rapid in our own age and country than it has ever been before. Nothing is

more interesting than to watch this double process; and nothing in social

studies is more curious than the multiplicity of the minute causes that

bring it about. Every abridgment of ceremony has a tendency to lower

refinement by introducing that _sans-gêne_ which is fatal to good manners.

Ceremony is only compatible with leisure. It is abridged by haste; haste

is the result of poverty; and so it comes to pass that the loss of fortune

induces people to give up one little observance after another, for economy

of time, till at last there are none remaining. There is the excellent

habit of dressing for the evening meal. The mere cost of it is almost

imperceptible, except that it causes a small additional expenditure in

clean linen; but, although the pecuniary tax is slight, there is a tax on

time which is not compatible with hurry and irregularity, so it is only

people of some leisure who maintain it. Now consider the subtle influence,

on manners, of the maintenance or abandonment of this custom. Where it is

kept up, gentlemen and ladies meet in a drawing-room before dinner

prepared by their toilet for the disciplined intercourse of

well-regulated social life. They are like officers in uniform, or

clergymen in canonicals: they wear a dress that is not without its

obligations. It is not the luxury of it that does this, for the dress is

always plain for men and often simple for ladies, but the mere fact of

taking the trouble to dress is an act of deference to civilization and

disposes the mind to other observances. It has the further advantage of

separating us from the occupations of the day and marking a new point of

departure for the gentler life of the evening. As people become poorer

they give up dressing except when they have a party, and then they feel

ill at ease from the consciousness of a white tie. You have only to go a

little further in this direction to arrive at the people who do not feel

any inclination to wash their hands before dinner, even when they visibly

need it. Finally there are houses where the master will sit down to table

in his shirt-sleeves and without anything round his neck. People who live

in this way have no social intercourse whatever of a slightly ceremonious

kind, and therefore miss all the discipline in manners that rich people go

through every day. The higher society is a school of manners that the poor

have not leisure to attend.

The downward course of an impoverished family is strongly aided by an

element in many natures that the discipline of high life either subdues or

eliminates. There are always people, especially in the male sex, who feel

ill at ease under ceremonial restraints of any kind, and who find the

release from them an ineffably delightful emancipation. Such people hate

dressing for dinner, hate the forms of politeness, hate gloves and

visiting-cards, and all that such things remind them of. To be rid of

these things once for all, to be able to sit and smoke a pipe in an old

gray coat, seems to them far greater and more substantial happiness than

to drink claret in a dining-room, napkin on knee. Once out of society,

such men have no desire to enter it again, and after a very short

exclusion from it they belong to a lower class from taste quite as much as

from circumstances. All those who have a tendency towards the philosophy

of Diogenes (and they are more numerous than we suppose) are of this

manner of thinking. Sometimes they have a taste for serious intellectual

pursuits which makes the nothings of society seem frivolous, and also

consoles their pride for an apparent _déchéance_.

If it were possible to get rid of the burdensome superfluities of high

life, most of which are useless encumbrances, and live simply without any

loss of refinement, I should say that these philosophers would have reason

on their side. The complicated apparatus of wealthy life is not in itself

desirable. To convert the simple act of satisfying hunger into the tedious

ceremonial of a state dinner may be a satisfaction of pride, but it is

assuredly not an increase of pleasure. To receive as guests people whom we

do not care for in the least (which is constantly done by rich people to

maintain their position) offers less of what is agreeable in human

intercourse than a chat with a real friend under a shed of thatch.

Nevertheless, to be totally excluded from the life of the wealthy is to

miss a discipline in manners that nothing ever replaces, and this is the

real loss. The cultivation of taste which results from leisure forms, in

course of time, amongst rich people a public opinion that disciplines

every member of an aristocratic society far more severely than the more

careless opinion of the hurried classes ever disciplines _them_. To know

the value of such discipline we have only to observe societies from which

it is absent. We have many opportunities for this in travelling, and one

occurred to me last year that I will describe as an example. I was boating

with two young friends on a French river, and we spent a Sunday in a

decent riverside inn, where we had _déjeûner_ in a corner of the public

room. Several men of the neighborhood, probably farmers and small

proprietors, sat in another corner playing cards. They had a very decent

appearance, they were fine healthy-looking men, quite the contrary of a

degraded class, and they were only amusing themselves temperately on a

Sunday morning. Well, from the beginning of their game to the end of it

(that is, during the whole time of our meal), they did nothing but shout,

yell, shriek, and swear at each other loudly enough to be heard across the

broad river. They were not angry in the least, but it was their habit to

make a noise and to use oaths and foul language continually. We, at our

table, could not hear each other's voices; but this did not occur to them.

They had no notion that their noisy kind of intercourse could be

unpleasant to anybody, because delicacy of sense, fineness of nerve, had

not been developed in their class of society. Afterwards I asked them for

some information, which they gave with a real anxiety to make themselves

of use. Some rich people came to the inn with a pretty carriage, and I

amused myself by noting the difference. _Their_ manners were perfectly

quiet. Why are rich people quiet and poorer ones noisy? Because the

refinements of wealthy life, its peace and tranquillity, its leisure, its

facilities for separation in different rooms, produce delicacy of nerve,

with the perception that noise is disagreeable; and out of this delicacy,

when it is general amongst a whole class, springs a strong determination

so to discipline the members of the class that they shall not make

themselves disagreeable to the majority. Hence lovers of good manners have

a preference for the richer classes quite apart from a love of physical

luxury or a snobbish desire to be associated with people of rank. For the

same reason a lover of good manners dreads poverty or semi-poverty for his

children, because even a moderate degree of poverty (not to speak of the

acute forms of it) may compel them to associate with the undisciplined.

What gentleman would like his son to live habitually with the card-players

I have described?

ESSAY X.

DIFFERENCES OF RANK AND WEALTH.

The most remarkable peculiarity about the desire to establish distinctions

of rank is not that there should be definite gradations amongst people who

have titles, but that, when the desire is strong in a nation, public

opinion should go far beyond heralds and parchments and gazettes, and

establish the most minute gradations amongst people who have nothing

honorific about them.

When once the rule is settled by a table of precedence that an earl is

greater than a baron, we simply acquiesce in the arrangement, as we are

ready to believe that a mandarin with a yellow jacket is a

much-to-be-honored sort of mandarin; but what is the power that strikes

the nice balance of social advantages in favor of Mr. Smith as compared

with Mr. Jones, when neither one nor the other has any title, or ancestry,

or anything whatever to boast of? Amongst the many gifts that are to be

admired in the fair sex this seems one of the most mysterious, that ladies

can so decidedly fix the exact social position of every human being. Men

soon find themselves bewildered by conflicting considerations, but a woman

goes to the point at once, and settles in the most definite manner that

Smith is certainly the superior of Jones.

This may bring upon me the imputation of being a democrat and a leveller.

No, I rather like a well-defined social distinction when it has reality.

Real distinctions keep society picturesque and interesting; what I fail to

appreciate so completely are the fictitious little distinctions that have

no basis in reality, and appear to be instituted merely for the sake of

establishing differences that do not naturally exist. It seems to be an

unfortunate tendency that seeks unapparent differences, and it may have a

bad effect on character by forcing each man back upon the consideration of

his own claims that it would be better for him to forget.

I once dined at a country-house in Scotland when the host asked one of the

guests this question, "Are you a land-owner?" in order to determine his

precedence. It did so happen that the guest owned a few small farms, so he

answered "Yes;" but it struck me that the distinction between a man who

had a moderate sum invested in land and one who had twice as much in other

investments was not clearly in favor of the first. Could not the other buy

land any day if he liked? He who hath gold hath land, potentially. If

precedence is to be regulated by so material a consideration as wealth,

let it be done fairly and plainly. The best and simplest plan would be to

embroider the amount of each gentleman's capital in gold thread on the

breast of his dress-coat. The metal would be appropriate, the embroidery

would be decorative, and the practice would offer unequalled encouragement

to thrift.

Again, I have always understood in the most confused manner the

distinction, so clear to many, between those who are in trade and those

who are not. I think I see the only real objection to trade with the help

of M. Renan, who has stated it very clearly, but my difficulty is to

discover who are tradesmen, and, still more, who are not tradesmen. Here

is M. Renan's account of the matter:--

"Our ideal can only be realized with a Government that gives some

_éclat_ to those who are connected with it and which creates

distinctions outside of wealth. We feel an antipathy to a society in

which the merit of a man and his superiority to another can only be

revealed under the form of industry and commerce; not that trade and

industry are not honest in our eyes, but because we see clearly that

the best things (such as the functions of the priest, the magistrate,

the _savant_, the artist, and the serious man of letters) are the

inverse of the industrial and commercial spirit, the first duty of

those who follow them being not to try to enrich themselves, and never

to take into consideration the venal value of what they do."

This I understand, provided that the priest, magistrate, _savant_, artist,

and serious man of letters are faithful to this "first duty;" provided

that they "never take into consideration the venal value of what they do;"

but there are tradesmen in the highest professions. All that can be said

against trade is that its object is profit. Then it follows that every

profession followed for profit has in it what is objectionable in trade,

and that the professions are not noble in themselves but only if they are

followed in a disinterested spirit. I should say, then, that any attempt

to fix the degree of nobleness of persons by the supposed nobleness of

their occupations must be founded upon an unreal distinction. A venal

clergyman who does not believe the dogmas that he defends for his

endowment, a venal barrister, ready to prostitute his talents and his

tongue for a large income, seem to me to have in them far more of what is

objectionable in trade than a country bookseller who keeps a little shop

and sells note-paper and sealing-wax over the counter; yet it is assumed

that their occupations are noble occupations and that his business is not

noble, though I can see nothing whatever in it of which any gentleman need

be in the slightest degree ashamed.

Again, there seem to be most unreal distinctions of respectability in the

trades themselves. The wine trade has always been considered a gentlemanly

business; but why is it more respectable to sell wine and spirits than to

sell bread, or cheese, or beef? Are not articles of food more useful to

the community than alcoholic drinks, and less likely to contribute to the

general sum of evil? As for the honesty of the dealers, no doubt there are

honest wine-merchants; but what thing that is sold for money has been more

frequently adulterated, or more mendaciously labelled, or more

unscrupulously charged for, than the produce of European vintages?[7]

Another wonderful unreality is the following. People desire the profits of

trade, but are unwilling to lose caste by engaging in it openly. In order

to fill their pockets and preserve their rank at the same time they engage

in business anonymously, either as members of some firm in which their

names do not appear, or else as share-holders in great trading

enterprises. In both these cases the investor of capital becomes just as

really and truly a tradesman as if he kept a shop, but if you were to tell

him that he was a tradesman he would probably resent the imputation.

It is remarkable that the people who most despise commerce are the very

people who bow down most readily before the accomplished results of

commerce; for as they have an exaggerated sense of social distinctions,

they are great adorers of wealth for the distinction that it confers. By

their worship of wealth they acknowledge it to be most desirable; but then

they worship rank also, and this other cultus goes with the sentiment of

contempt for humble and plodding industry in all its forms.

The contempt for trade is inconsistent in another way. A man may be

excluded from "good society" because he is in trade, and his grandson may

be admitted because the grandfather was in trade, that is, through a

fortune of commercial origin. The present Prime Minister (Gladstone) and

the Speaker of the House of Commons (Mr. Arthur Peel) and many other men

of high position in both Houses may owe their fame to their own

distinguished abilities; but they owe the leisure and opportunity for

cultivating and displaying those abilities to the wits and industry of

tradesmen removed from them only by one or two generations.

Is there not a strange inconsistency in adoring wealth as it is adored,

and despising the particular kind of skill and ability by which it is

usually acquired? For if there be anything honorable about wealth it must

surely be as evidence of the intelligence and industry that are necessary

for the conquest of poverty. On the contrary, a narrowly exclusive society

despises the virtue that is most creditable to the _nouveau riche_, his

industry, whilst it worships his wealth as soon as the preservation of it

is compatible with idleness.

There is a great deal of unreal distinction in the matter of ancestry.

Those who observe closely are well aware that many undoubted and lineal

descendants of the oldest families are in humble social positions, simply

for want of money to make a display, whilst others usurp their

coats-of-arms and claim a descent that they cannot really prove. The whole

subject is therefore one of the most unsatisfactory that can be, and all

that remains to the real members of old families who have not wealth

enough to hold a place in the expensive modern aristocracy, is to remember

secretly the history of their ancestors if they are romantic and poetical

enough to retain the old-fashioned sentiment of birth, and to forget it

if they look only to the present and the practical. There is, indeed, so

little of the romantic sentiment left in the country, that even amongst

the descendants of old families themselves very few are able to blazon

their own armorial bearings, or even know what the verb "to blazon" means.

Amidst so great a confusion the simplest way would be not to think about

rank at all, and to take human nature as it comes without reference to it;

but however the ancient barriers of rank may be broken down, it is only to

erect new ones. English feeling has a deep satisfaction in contemplating

rank and wealth combined. It is that which it likes,--the combination.

When wealth is gone it thinks that a man should lock up his pedigree in

his desk and forget that he has ancestors; so it has been said that an

English gentleman in losing wealth loses his caste with it, whilst a

French or Italian gentleman may keep his caste, except in the most abject

poverty. On the other hand, when an Englishman has a vast fortune it is

thought right to give him a title also, that the desirable combination may

be created afresh. Nothing is so striking in England, considering that it

is an old country, as the newness of most of the great families. The

aristocracy is like London, that has the reputation of being a very

ancient city, yet the houses are of recent date. An aristocracy may be

stronger and in better repair because of its newness; it may also be more

likely to make a display of aristocratic superiorities, and expect

deference to be paid to them, than an easy-going old aristocracy would

be.

What are the superiorities, and what is the nature of the deference?

The superiority given by title depends on the intensity of title-worship

amongst the public. In England that religion is in a very healthy and

flourishing state, so that titles are very valuable there; in France the

sense of a social hierarchy is so much weakened that titles are of

infinitely less value. False ones are assumed and borne with impunity on

account of the general indifference, whilst true and authentic titles are

often dropped as an encumbrance. The blundering ignorance of the French

about our titles, which so astonishes Englishmen, is due to a carelessness

about the whole subject that no inhabitant of the British Islands can

imagine.[8] In those islands title is of very great importance because

the people have such a strong consciousness of its existence. In England,

if there is a lord in the room every body is aware of it.

Superiority of family, without title, is merely local; it is not

understood far from the ancestral home. Superiority of title is national;

it is imperfectly appreciated in foreign countries. But superiority of

wealth has the immense advantage over these that it is respected

everywhere and can display itself everywhere with the utmost ostentation

under pretext of custom and pleasure. It commands the homage of foolish

and frivolous people by possibilities of vain display, and at the same

time it appears desirable to the wise because it makes the gathering of

experience easy and human intercourse convenient.

The rich man has access to an immense range of varied situations; and if

he has energy to profit by this facility and put himself in those

situations where he may learn the most, he may become far more experienced

at thirty-five than a poor man can be at seventy. A poor man has a taste

for boating, so he builds a little boat with his own hands, and paints it

green and white, with its name, the "Cock-Robin," in yellow. Meanwhile his

good wife, in spite of all the work she has to do, has a kindly indulgence

for her poor Tom's hobby, thinks he deserves a little amusement, and

stitches the sail for him in the evenings. He sails five or six miles up

and down the river. Sir Thomas Brassey has exactly the same tastes: he

builds the "Sunbeam;" and whilst the "Cock-Robin" has been doing its

little trips, the "Sunbeam" has gone round the world; and instead of

stitching the sails, the kind wife has accompanied the mariner, and

written the story of his voyage. If after that you talk with the owners of

the two vessels you may be interested for a few minutes--deeply interested

and touched if you have the divine gift of sympathy--with the poor man's

account of his doings; but his experience is small and soon told, whilst

the owner of the "Sunbeam" has traversed all the oceans and could tell you

a thousand things. So it naturally follows in most cases, though the rule

has exceptions, that rich men are more interesting people to know than

poor men of equal ability.

I remember being forcibly reminded of the narrow experience of the poor on

one of those occasions that often happen to those who live in the country

and know their poorer neighbors. A friend of mine, with his children, had

come to stay with me; and there was a poor woman, living in a very

out-of-the-way hamlet on a hill, who had made me promise that I would take

my friend and his children to see her, because she had known their mother,

who was dead, and had felt for her one of those strong and constant

affections that often dwell in humble and faithful hearts. We have a great

respect for this poor woman, who is in all ways a thoroughly dutiful

person, and she has borne severe trials with great patience. Well, she was

delighted to see my friend and his children, delighted to see how well

they looked, how much they had grown, and so on; and then she spoke of her

own little ones, and showed us the books they were learning in, and

described their dispositions, and said that her husband was in full work

and went every day to the schist mine, and was much steadier than he used

to be, and made her much happier. After that she began again, saying

exactly the same things all over again, and she said them a third time,

and a fourth time. When we had left, we noticed this repetition, and we

agreed that the poor woman, instead of being deficient in intelligence,

was naturally above the average, but that the extreme narrowness of her

experience, the total want of variety in her life, made it impossible for

her mind to get out of that little domestic groove. She had about

half-a-dozen ideas, and she lived in them, as a person in a small house

lives in a very few rooms.

Now, however much esteem, respect, and affection you may have for a person

of that kind, you will find it impossible to enjoy such society because

conversation has no aliment. This is the one great reason why cultivated

people seem to avoid the poor, even when they do not despise them in the

least.

The greater experience of the rich is united to an incomparably greater

power of pleasant reception, because in their homes conversation is not

interfered with by the multitude of petty domestic difficulties and

inconveniences. I go to spend the day with a very poor friend, and this is

what is likely to happen. He and I can only talk without interruption when

we are out of the house. Inside it his children break in upon us

constantly. His wife finds me in the way, and wishes I had not come,

because she has not been able to provide things exactly as she desired. At

dinner her mind is not in the conversation; she is really occupied with

petty household cares. I, on my part, have the uncomfortable feeling that

I am creating inconvenience; and it requires incessant attention to soothe

the watchful sensitiveness of a hostess who is so painfully alive to the

deficiencies of her small establishment. If I have a robust appetite, it

is well; but woe to me if my appetite is small, and I must overeat to

prove that the cookery is good! If I accept a bed the sacrifice of a room

will cause crowding elsewhere, besides which I shall be a nuisance in the

early morning hours when nothing in the _ménage_ is fit for the public

eye. Whilst creating all this inconvenience to others, I suffer the great

one of being stopped in my usual pursuits. If I want a few quiet hours for

reading and writing there is only one way: I must go privately to some

hotel and hire a sitting-room for myself.

Now consider the difference when I go to visit a rich friend! The first

delightful feeling is that I do not occasion the very slightest

inconvenience. His arrangements for the reception of guests are permanent

and perfect. My arrival will scarcely cost his wife a thought; she has

simply given orders in the morning for a room to be got ready and a cover

to be laid at table. Her mind is free to think about any subject that

suggests itself. Her conversation, from long practice, is as easy as the

style of a good writer. All causes of interruption are carefully kept in

the background. The household details are attended to by a regiment of

domestics under their own officers. The children are in rooms of their own

with their governesses and servants, and we see just enough of them to be

agreeable. If I desire privacy, nothing is more easily obtained. On the

slightest hint a room is placed at my disposal. I remember one house where

that room used to be a splendid library, full of the books which at that

time I most wanted to consult; and the only interruption in the mornings

was the noiseless entrance of the dear lady of the house, always at eleven

o'clock precisely, with a glass of wine and a biscuit on a little silver

tray. It is not the material luxury of rich men's houses that a wise man

would desire; but he must thoroughly appreciate their convenience and the

varied food for the mind that they afford,--the books, the pictures, the

curiosities. In one there is a museum of antiquities that a large town

might envy, in another a collection of drawings, in a third a magnificent

armory. In one private house in Paris[9] there used to be fourteen noble

saloons containing the arts of two hundred years. You go to stay in ten

rich houses and find them all different; you enjoy the difference, and in

a certain sense you possess the different things. The houses of the poor

are all alike, or if they differ it is not by variety of artistic or

intellectual interest. By the habit of staying in each other's houses the

rich multiply their riches to infinity. In a certain way of their own (it

is not exactly the way of the early Christians) they have their goods in

common.

There are, no doubt, many guests in the houses of the rich who care little

for the people they visit, but much for the variety and

accommodation,--guests who visit the place rather than the owner; guests

who enjoy the cookery, the wines, the shooting, and who would go to the

house if the owner were changed, exactly as they continue to patronize

some pleasantly situated and well-managed hotel, after a change of

masters. I hardly know how to describe these people in a word, but it is

easy to characterize their entertainers. They are unpaid innkeepers.

There are also people, apparently hospitable, who care little for the

persons they invite,--so very little, indeed, that we do not easily

discover what motive they have for inviting them. The answer may be that

they dislike solitude so much that any guest is acceptable, or else that

they want admirers for the beautiful arrangements and furniture of their

houses; for what is the use of having beautiful things if there is nobody

to appreciate them? Hosts of this class are amateur exhibitors, or they

are like amateur actors who want an audience, and who will invite people

to come and listen, not because they care for the people, but because it

is discouraging to play to empty benches.

These two classes of guests and hosts cannot exist without riches. The

desire to be entertained ceases at once when it is known that the

entertainment will be of a poor quality; and the desire to exhibit the

internal arrangements of our houses ceases when we are too poor to do

justice to the refinement of our taste.

The story of the rich man who had many friends and saw them fall away from

him when he became poor, which, under various forms, reappears in every

age and is common to all literatures, is explained by these

considerations. Bucklaw does not find Lord Ravenswood a valuable

gratuitous innkeeper; and Ravenswood is not anxious to exhibit to Bucklaw

the housekeeping at Wolf's Crag.

But quite outside of parasite guests and exhibiting entertainers, there

still remains the undeniable fact that if you like a rich man and a poor

one equally well, you will prefer the rich man's hospitality for its

greater convenience. Nay, more, you will rightly and excusably prefer the

rich man's hospitality even if you like the poor man better, but find his

household arrangements disagreeable, his wife fagged, worn, irritable, and

ungracious, his children ill-bred, obtrusive, and dirty, himself unable to

talk about anything rational on account of family interruptions, and

scarcely his own better and higher self at all in the midst of his

domestic plagues.[10]

There is no nation in the world that has so acute a sense of the value,

almost the necessity, of wealth for human intercourse as the English

nation. Whilst in other countries people think "Wealth is peace of mind,

wealth is convenience, wealth is _la vie élégante_," in England they

silently accept the maxim, "A large income is a necessary of life;" and

they class each other according to the scale of their establishments,

looking up with unfeigned reverence to those who have many servants, many

horses, and gigantic houses where a great hospitality is dispensed. An

ordinary Englishman thinks he has failed in life, and his friends are of

the same opinion, if he does not arrive at the ability to imitate this

style and state, at least in a minor degree. I have given the best reasons

why it is desired; I understand and appreciate them; but at the same time

I think it deeply to be deplored that an expenditure far beyond what can

be met by the physical or intellectual labor of ordinary workers should be

thought necessary in order that people may meet and talk in comfort. The

big English house is a machine that runs with unrivalled smoothness; but

it masters its master, it possesses its nominal possessor. George Borrow

had the deepest sense of the Englishman's slavery to his big, well-ordered

dwelling, and saw in it the cause of unnumbered anxieties, often ending in

heart-disease, paralysis, bankruptcy, and in minor cases sacrificing all

chance of leisure and quiet happiness. Many a land-owner has crippled

himself by erecting a great house on his estate,--one of those huge,

tasteless buildings that express nothing but pompous pride. What wisdom

there is in the excellent old French adage, "A petite terre, petite

maison"!

The reader may remember Herbert Spencer's idea that the display of wealth

is intended to subjugate. Royal palaces are made very vast and magnificent

to subjugate those who approach the sovereign; and all rich and powerful

people use the same means, for the same purpose, though in minor degrees.

This leads us to the price that has to be paid for intercourse with

persons of great rank and wealth. May we not suspect that there is a heavy

price of some kind, since many of the best and noblest minds in the world

either avoid it altogether or else accept it cautiously and only with a

very few rich men whom they esteem independently of their riches?

The answer is that wealth and rank expect deference, not so much humble

and slavish manners as that intellectual deference which a thinker can

never willingly give. The higher the rank of the personage the more it is

considered ill-bred to contradict him, or even to have an opinion of your

own in his presence. This, to a thinker, is unendurable. He does not see

that because a person is rich and noble his views on everything must be

the best and soundest views.

You, my dear Aristophilus, who by your pleasing manners are so well fitted

for the very best society, could give interesting answers to the following

questions: Have you never found it advisable to keep silence when your

wealthy host was saying things against which you inwardly protested? Have

you not sometimes gone a step further, and given a kind of assent to some

opinion that was not your own? Have you not, by practice, attained the

power of giving a still stronger and heartier assent to what seemed

doubtful propositions?

There is one form of this assent which is deeply damaging to character.

Some great person, a great lady perhaps, unjustly condemns, in your

presence, a public man for whom you have a sincere respect. Instead of

boldly defending him, you remain silent and acquiescent. You are afraid

to offend, afraid to lose favor, afraid that if you spoke openly you would

not be invited to the great house any more.

Sometimes not a single individual but a class is attacked at once. A great

lady is reported to have said that she "had a deep objection to French

literature in all its branches." Observe that this expression of opinion

contains a severe censure on _all_ French authors and on all readers of

French literature. Would you have ventured to say a word in their defence?

Would you have dared to hint, for example, that a serious mind might be

none the worse for some acquaintance with Montesquieu and De Tocqueville?

No, sir, you would have bowed your head and put on a shocked expression of

countenance.

In this way, little by little, by successive abandonments of what we

think, and abdications of what we know, we may arrive at a state of

habitual and inane concession that softens every fibre of the mind.

ESSAY XI.

THE OBSTACLE OF LANGUAGE.

The greatest impediment to free intercourse between nations is neither

distance nor the differences of mental habits, nor the opposition of

national interests; it is simply the imperfect manner in which languages

are usually acquired, and the lazy contentment of mankind with a low

degree of attainment in a foreign tongue when a much higher degree of

attainment would be necessary to any efficient interchange of ideas.

It seems probable that much of the future happiness of humanity will

depend upon a determination to learn foreign languages more thoroughly.

International ill-will is the parent of innumerable evils. From the

intellectual point of view it is a great evil, because it narrows our

range of ideas and deprives us of light from foreign thinkers. From the

commercial point of view it is an evil, because it leads a nation to deny

itself conveniences in order to avoid the dreaded result of doing good to

another country. From the political point of view it is an enormous evil,

because it leads nations to make war upon each other and to inflict and

endure all the horrors, the miseries, the impoverishment of war rather

than make some little concession on one side or on both sides that would

have been made with little difficulty if the spirit of the two countries

had been more friendly. May we not believe that a more general spirit of

friendliness would result from more personal intercourse, and that this

would be the consequence of more thorough linguistic acquirement?

It has always seemed to me an inexpressible misfortune to the French that

they should not be better acquainted with English literature; and this not

simply from the literary point of view, but because on so many questions

that interest active minds in France it would be such an advantage to

those minds to be able to see how those questions have appeared to men

bred in a different and a calmer atmosphere. If the French read English

easily they might often avoid (without ceasing to be national) many of

those errors that result from seeing things only from a single point of

view. I know a few intelligent Frenchmen who do read our most thoughtful

writers in the original, and I can see what a gain this enlarged

experience has been to them. On the other hand, it is certain that good

French literature may have an excellent effect on the literary training of

an Englishman. The careful study of that clear, concise, and moderate

French writing which is the most perfect flower of the cultivated national

mind has been most beneficial to some English writers, by making them less

clumsy, less tedious, less verbose.

Of commercial affairs it would be presumptuous in me to say much, but no

one disputes that international commerce is a benefit, and that it would

not be possible without a class of men who are acquainted with foreign

languages. On this class of men, be they merchants or corresponding

clerks, the commercial intercourse between nations must depend. I find it

stated by foreign tradesmen that if they were better acquainted with the

English language much trade that now escapes them might be made to pass

through their hands. I have myself often observed, on a small scale, that

transactions of an international character have taken place because one of

the parties happened to know the language of the other, when they would

certainly not have taken place if it had been necessary to make them

through an agent or an interpreter.

With regard to peace and war, can it be doubted that the main reason for

our peaceful relations with the United States lies in the fact of our

common language? We may have newspaper quarrels, but the newspapers

themselves help to make every question understood. It is far harder to

gain acceptance for English ideas in France, yet even our relations with

France are practically more peaceful than of old, and though there is

intense jealousy between the two countries, they understand each other

better, so that differences which would certainly have produced bloodshed

in the days of Pitt, cause nothing worse than inkshed in the days of

Gladstone. This happy result may be attributed in great part to the

English habit of learning French and going to Paris or to the south of

France. We need not expect any really cordial understanding between the

two countries, though it would be an incalculable benefit to both. That is

too much to be hoped for; their jealousy, on both sides, is too irritable

and too often inflamed afresh by new incidents, for neither of them can

stir a foot without putting the other out of temper; but we may hope that

through the quietly and constantly exerted influence of those who know

both languages, war may be often, though perhaps not always, avoided.

Unfortunately an imperfect knowledge of a foreign language is of little

use, as it does not give any real freedom of intercourse. Foreigners do

not open their minds to one who blunders about their meaning; they

consider him to be a sort of child, and address to him "easy things to

understand." Their confidence is only to be won by a demonstration of

something like equality in intelligence, and nobody can give proof of this

unless he has the means of making his thoughts intelligible, and even of

assuming, when the occasion presents itself, a somewhat bold and

authoritative tone. People of mature and superior intellect, but imperfect

linguistic acquirements, are liable to be treated with a kind of

condescending indulgence when out of their own country, as if they were as

young in years and as feeble in power of thought as they are in their

knowledge of foreign languages.

The extreme rarity of that degree of attainment in a foreign language

which deserves to be called _mastery_ is well known to the very few who

are competent to judge. At a meeting of French professors Lord Houghton

said that the wife of a French ambassador had told him that she knew only

three Englishmen who could speak French. One of these was Sir Alexander

Cockburn, another the Duke of Bedford, and we may presume the third to

have been Lord Houghton himself. Amongst men of letters Lord Houghton only

knew one, Henry Reeve, the editor of the "Edinburgh Review" and

translator of the works of De Tocqueville. He mentioned Lord Arthur

Russell as an example of accomplishment, but he is "quasi French by

_l'esprit_, education, and marriage."

On reading the report of Lord Houghton's speech, I asked a cultivated

Parisian lady (who knows English remarkably well and has often been in

England) what her own experience had been. After a little hesitation she

said it had been exactly that of the French ambassadress. She, also, had

met with three Englishmen who spoke French, and she named them. I

suggested several others, and amongst them some very learned scholars,

merely to hear what she would say, but her answer was that their

inadequate power of expression compelled them to talk far below the level

of their abilities, so that when they spoke French nobody would suppose

them to be clever men. She also affirmed that they did not catch the

shades of French expression, so that in speaking French to them one was

never sure of being quite accurately understood.

I myself have known many French people who have studied English more or

less, including several who read English authors with praiseworthy

industry, but I have only met with one or two who can be said to have

mastered the language. I am told that M. Beljame, the learned Professor of

English Literature at the Sorbonne, has a wonderful mastery of our tongue.

Many French professors of English have considerable historical and

grammatical knowledge of it, but that is not practical mastery. In

general, the knowledge of English attained by French people (not without

more labor than the result would show) is so poor and insufficient as to

be almost useless.

I remember an accidental circumstance that put into my hands some curious

materials for judging of the attainments of a former generation. A Belgian

lady, for a reason that has no concern with our present subject, lent me

for perusal an important packet of letters in the French language written

by English ladies of great social distinction about the date of Waterloo.

They showed a rough familiarity with French, but no knowledge of its finer

shades, and they abounded in glaring errors. The effect of this

correspondence on my mind was that the writers had certainly used (or

abused) the language, but that they had never condescended to learn it.

These and other experiences have led me to divide progress in languages

into several stages, which I place at the reader's disposal in the belief

that they may be convenient to him as they have been convenient to me.

The first stage in learning a language is when every sentence is a puzzle

and exercises the mind like a charade or a conundrum. There are people to

whom this kind of exercise is a sport. They enjoy the puzzle for its own

sake and without any reference to the literary value of the sentence or

its preciousness as an utterance of wisdom. Such people are much better

adapted to the early stage of linguistic acquirement than those who like

reading and dislike enigmas.

The excessive slowness with which one works in this early stage is a cause

of irritation when the student interests himself in the thoughts or the

narrative, because what comes into his mind in a given time is so small a

matter that it seems not worth while to go on working for such a little

intellectual income. Therefore in this early stage it is a positive

disadvantage to have eager literary desires.

In the second stage the student can push along with the help of a

translation and a dictionary; but this is not _reading_, it is only aided

construing. It is disagreeable to a reader, though it may be endured by

one who is indifferent to reading. This may be made clear by reference to

other pursuits. A man who loves rowing, and who knows what rowing is, does

not like to pull a slow and heavy boat, such as an ordinary Scottish

Highlander pulls with perfect contentment. So a man who loves reading, and

knows what reading is, does not like the heavy work of laborious

translation. This explains the fact which is often so unintelligible to

parents, that boys who are extremely fond of reading often dislike their

classical studies. Grammar, prosody, philology, so far as they are the

subjects of _conscious attention_ (which they are with all pedagogues),

are the rivals of literature, and so it happens that pedagogy is

unfavorable to literary art. It is only when the sciences of dissection

are forgotten that we can enjoy the arts of poetry and prose.

If, then, the first stage of language-learning requires rather a taste for

solving puzzles than a taste for literature, so I should say that the

second stage requires rather a turn for grammatical and philological

considerations than an interest in the ideas or an appreciation of the

style of great authors. The most favorable state of mind for progress in

this stage is that of a philologist; and if a man has literary tastes in

great strength, and philological tastes in a minor degree, he will do

well, in this stage, to encourage the philologist in himself and keep his

love of literature in abeyance.

In the third stage the vocabulary has become rich enough to make

references to the dictionary less frequent, and the student can read with

some degree of literary enjoyment. There is, however, this remaining

obstacle, that even when the reader knows the words and can construe well,

the foreign manner of saying things still appears _unnatural_. I have made

many inquiries concerning this stage of acquirement and find it to be very

common. Men of fair scholarship in Latin tell me that the Roman way of

writing does not seem to be really a natural way. I find that even those

Latin works which were most familiar to me in youth, such as the Odes of

Horace, for example, seem unnatural still, though I may know the meaning

of every word, and I do not believe that any amount of labor would ever

rid me of this feeling. This is a great obstacle, and not the less that it

is of such a subtle and intangible nature.[11]

In the fourth stage the mode of expression seems natural, and the words

are perfectly known, but the sense of the paragraph is not apparent at a

glance. There is the feeling of a slight obstacle, of something that has

to be overcome; and there is a remarkable counter-feeling which always

comes after the paragraph is mastered. The reader then wonders that such

an obviously intelligible page can have offered any opposition whatever.

What surprises us is that this fourth stage can last so long as it does.

It seems as if it would be so easily passed, and yet, in fact, it is for

most persons impassable.

The fifth stage is that of perfection in reading. It is not reached by

everybody even in the native language itself. The reader who has attained

it sees the contents of a page and catches their meaning at a glance even

before he has had time to read the sentences.

This condition of extreme lucidity in a language comes, when it comes at

all, long after the mere acquisition of it. I have said that it does not

always come even in the native tongue. Some educated people take a much

longer time than others to make themselves acquainted with the contents of

a newspaper. A clever newspaper reader sees in one minute if there is

anything of importance. He knows what articles and telegrams are worth

reading before he separates the words.

These five stages refer only to reading, because educated people learn to

read first and to speak afterwards. Uneducated people learn foreign

languages by ear in a most confused and blundering way. I need not add

that they never master them, as only the educated ever master their native

tongue. It is unnecessary to go through the stages of progress in

conversation, as they are in a great degree dependent upon reading, though

they lag behind it; but I will say briefly that the greatest of all

difficulties in using foreign languages is to become really insensible to

the absurdities that they contain. All languages, I believe, abound in

absurd expressions; and a foreigner, with his inconveniently fresh

perceptions, can hardly avoid being tickled by them. He cannot use the

language seriously without having first become unconscious of these

things, and it is inexpressibly difficult to become unconscious of

something that has once provoked us to laughter. Again, it is most

difficult to arrive at that stage when foreign expressions of politeness

strike us no more and no less than they strike the native; or, in other

words, it is most difficult for us to attach to them the exact value which

they have in the country where they prevail. French forms seem absurdly

ceremonious to Englishmen; in reality, they are only convenient, but the

difficulty for an Englishman is to feel that they are convenient. There

are in every foreign tongue two classes of absurdities,--the real inherent

absurdities to which the natives are blinded by habit, though they are

seen at once to be comical when attention is directed to them, and the

expressions that are not absurd in themselves but only seem so to us

because they are not like our own.

The difficulty of becoming insensible to these things must be especially

great for humorous people, who are constantly on the look-out for subjects

of odd remarks. I have a dear friend who is gifted with a delightful

genius for humor, and he knows a little French. All that he has acquired

of that language is used by him habitually as material for fun, and as he

is quite incapable of regarding the language as anything but a funny way

of talking, he cannot make any progress in it. If he were asked to read

prayers in French the idea would seem to him incongruous, a mingling of

frivolous with sacred things. Another friend is serious in French because

he knows it well, and therefore has become unconscious of its real or

apparent absurdities, but when he is in a merry mood he talks Italian,

with which he is much less intimately acquainted, so that it still seems

droll and amusing.

Many readers will be already familiar with the idea of a universal

language, which has often been the subject of speculation in recent times,

and has even been discussed in a sort of informal congress connected with

one of the universal exhibitions. Nobody now looks forward to anything so

unlikely, or so undesirable, as the abandonment of all the languages in

the world except one. What is considered practicable is the selection of

one language as the recognized international medium, and the teaching of

that language everywhere in addition to the mother tongue, so that no two

educated men could ever meet without possessing the means of

communication. To a certain degree we have this already in French, but

French is not known so generally, or so perfectly, as to make it answer

the purpose. It is proposed to adopt modern Greek, which has several great

advantages. The first is that the old education has familiarized us

sufficiently with ancient Greek to take away the first sense of

strangeness in the same language under its modern form. The second is that

everything about modern arts and sciences, and political life, and trade,

can be said easily in the Greek of the present day, whilst it has its own

peculiar interest for scholars. The third reason is of great practical

importance. Greece is a small State, and therefore does not awaken those

keen international jealousies that would be inevitably aroused by

proposing the language of a powerful State to be learned, without

reciprocity, by the youth of the other powerful States. It may be some

time before the Governments of great nations agree to promote the study of

modern Greek, or any other living language, amongst their peoples; but if

all who feel the immense desirableness of a common language for

international intercourse would agree to prepare the way for its adoption,

the time might not be very far distant when statesmen would begin to

consider the question within the horizon of the practical. Let us try to

imagine the difference between the present Babel-confusion of tongues,

which makes it a mere chance whether we shall be able to communicate with

a foreigner or not, and the sudden facility that would result from the

possession of a common medium of intercourse! If it were once agreed by a

union of nations (of which the present Postal Union may be the forerunner)

that the learning of the universal language should be encouraged, that

language would be learned with a zest and eagerness of which our present

languid linguistic attempts give but a faint idea. There would be such

powerful reasons for learning it! All those studies that interest men in

different nations would lead to intercommunication in the common tongue.

Many books would be written in it, to be circulated everywhere, without

being enfeebled and falsified by translation. International commerce would

be transacted by its means. Travelling would be enormously facilitated.

There would be such a gain to human intercourse by language that it might

be preferred, in many cases, to the old-fashioned international

intercourse by means of bayonets and cannon-balls.

ESSAY XII.

THE OBSTACLE OF RELIGION.

Human intercourse, on equal terms, is difficult or impossible for those

who do not belong to that religion which is dominant in the country where

they live. The tendency has always been either to exclude such persons

from human intercourse altogether (a fate so hard to bear during a whole

life-time that they have often compromised the matter by outward

conformity), or else to maintain some degree of intercourse with them in

placing them at a social disadvantage. In barbarous times such persons,

when obstinate, are removed by taking away their lives; or if somewhat

less obstinate they are effectually deterred from the profession of

heretical opinions by threats of the most pitiless punishments. In

semi-barbarous times they are paralyzed, so far as public action is

concerned, by political disabilities expressly created for their

inconvenience. In times which pride themselves on having completely

emerged from barbarism political disabilities are almost entirely removed,

but certain class-exclusions still persist, by which it is arranged

(whilst avoiding all appearance of persecution) that although heretics are

no longer banished from their native land they may be excluded from their

native class, and either deprived of human intercourse altogether, or

left to seek it in classes inferior to their own.

The religious obstacle differs from all other obstacles in one remarkable

characteristic. It is maintained only against honest and truth-speaking

persons. Exemption from its operation has always been, and is still,

uniformly pronounced in favor of all heretics who will consent to lie. The

honorable unbeliever has always been treated harshly; the unbeliever who

had no sense of honor has been freely permitted, in every age, to make the

best use of his abilities for his own social advancement. For him the

religious obstacle is simply non-existent. He has exactly the same chances

of preferment as the most orthodox Christian. In Pagan times, when public

religious functions were a part of the rank of great laymen, unbelief in

the gods of Olympus did not hinder them from seeking and exercising those

functions. Since the establishment of Christianity as a State religion,

the most stringently framed oaths have never prevented an unscrupulous

infidel from attaining any position that lay within reach of his wits and

his opportunities. He has sat in the most orthodox Parliaments, he has

been admitted to Cabinet councils, he has worn royal crowns, he has even

received the mitre, the Cardinal's hat, and the Papal tiara. We can never

sufficiently admire the beautiful order of society by which

heretic-plus-liar is so graciously admitted everywhere, and

heretic-plus-honest man is so cautiously and ingeniously kept out. It is,

indeed, even more advantageous to the dishonest unbeliever than at first

sight appears; for not only does it open to him all positions accessible

to the orthodox, but it even gives him a noteworthy advantage over honest

orthodoxy itself by training him daily and hourly in dissimulation. To be

kept constantly in the habit of dissimulation on one subject is an

excellent discipline in the most serviceable of social arts. An atheist

who reads prayers with a pious intonation, and is exemplary in his

attendance at church, and who never betrays his real opinions by an

unguarded word or look, though always preserving the appearance of the

simplest candor, the most perfect openness, is, we may be sure, a much

more formidable person to contend with in the affairs of this world than

an honest Christian who has never had occasion to train himself in

habitual imposture. Yet good Christians willingly admit these dangerous,

unscrupulous rivals, and timidly exclude those truthful heretics who are

only honest, simple people like themselves.

After religious liberty has been nominally established in a country by its

lawgivers, its enemies do not consider themselves defeated, but try to

recover, through the unwritten law of social customs and observances, the

ground they have lost in formal legislation. Hence we are never sure that

religious liberty will exist within the confines of a class even when it

is loudly proclaimed in a nation as one of the most glorious conquests of

the age. It is often enjoyed very imperfectly, or at a great cost of

social and even pecuniary sacrifice. In its perfection it is the liberty

to profess openly, and in their full force, those opinions on religious

subjects which a man holds in his own conscience, and without incurring

any kind of punishment or privation on account of them, legal or social.

For example, a really sincere member of the Church of England enjoys

perfect religious liberty in England.[12] He can openly say what he

thinks, openly take part in religious services that his conscience

approves, and without incurring the slightest legal or social penalty for

so doing. He meets with no hindrance, no obstacle, placed in the path of

his worldly life on account of his religious views. True liberty is not

that which is attainable at some cost, some sacrifice, but that which we

can enjoy without being made to suffer for it in any way. It is always

enjoyed, to the full, by every one whose sincere convictions are heartily

on the side of authority. Sincere Roman Catholics enjoyed perfect

religious liberty in Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, and in England

under Mary Tudor. Even a Trappist who loves the rule of his order enjoys

the best kind of liberty within the walls of his monastery. He is not

allowed to neglect the prescribed services and other obligations; but as

he feels no desire to neglect them he is a free agent, as free as if he

dwelt in the Abbaye de Thélème of Rabelais, with its one rule, "Fay ce que

vouldras." We may go farther, and say that not only are people whose

convictions are on the side of authority perfectly free agents, but, like

successful artists, they are rewarded for doing what they themselves

prefer. They are always rewarded by the approval of their superiors and

very frequently by opportunities for social advancement that are denied to

those who think differently from persons in authority.

There are cases in which liberty is less complete than this, yet is still

spoken of as liberty. A man is free to be a Dissenter in England and a

Protestant in France. By this we mean that he will incur no legal

disqualification for his opinions; but does he incur no social penalty?

The common answer to this question is that the penalty is so slight that

there is nothing to complain of. This depends upon the particular

situation of the Dissenter, because the penalty is applied very

differently in different cases, and may vary between an unperceived

hindrance to an undeveloped ambition and an insurmountable obstacle to an

eager and aspiring one. To understand this thoroughly, let us ask whether

there are any positions in which a member of the Church of England would

incur a penalty for leaving it. Are there any positions that are socially

considered to be incompatible with the religious profession of a

Dissenter?

It will be generally admitted that royal personages do not enjoy any

religious liberty at all. A royal personage _must_ profess the State

religion of his country, and it is so well understood that this is

obligatory and has nothing to do with the convictions of the conscience

that such personages are hardly expected to have any conscience in the

matter. They take up a religion as part of their situation in the world. A

princess may abjure her faith for that of an imperial lover, and if he

dies before marriage she may abjure her adopted faith; and if she is asked

again in marriage she may abjure the religion of her girlhood a second

time without exciting comment, because it is well understood that her

private convictions may remain undisturbed by such changes, and that she

submits to them as a necessity for which she has no personal

responsibility.[13] And whilst princes are compelled to take up the

religion which best suits their worldly interests, they are not allowed

simply to bear the name of the State Church but must also conform to its

services with diligent regularity. In many cases they probably have no

objection to this, as they may be really conscientious members of the

State Church, or they may accept it in a general way as an expression of

duty towards God (without going into dogmatic details), or they may be

ready and willing to conform to it for political reasons, as the best

means of conciliating public opinion; but however this may be, all human

fellowship, so far as religion is concerned, must, for them, be founded on

deference to the State religion and a conciliatory attitude towards its

ministers. The Court circulars of different countries register the

successive acts of outward conformity by which the prince acknowledges the

power of the national priesthood, and it would be impossible for him to

suspend these acts of conformity for any reason except illness. The daily

account of the life of a French sovereign during the hunting season used

to be, "His Majesty heard mass; His Majesty went out to hunt." Louis

XVIII. had to hear mass like his ancestors; but after the long High Mass

which he was compelled to listen to on Sundays, and which he found

extremely wearisome, he enjoyed a compensation and a consolation in

talking impiously to his courtiers, and was maliciously pleased in

shocking pious people and in forcing them to laugh against their

conscience, as by courtly duty bound, at the blasphemous royal jests. This

is one of the great evils of a compulsory conformity. It drives the victim

into a reaction against the religion that tyrannizes over him, and makes

him _anti_-religious, when without pressure he would have been simply and

inoffensively _non_-religious. To understand the pressure that weighs upon

royal personages in this respect, we have only to remember that there is

not a sovereign in the whole world who could venture to say openly that he

was a conscientious Unitarian, and would attend a Unitarian place of

worship. If a King of England held Unitarian opinions, and was at the same

time scrupulously honest, he would have no resource but abdication, for

not only is the King a member of the Anglican Church, but he is its living

head. The sacerdotal position of the Emperor of Russia is still more

marked, and he can no more avoid taking part in the fatiguing ceremonies

of the orthodox Greek religion than he can avoid sitting on horseback and

reviewing troops.

The religious slavery of princes is, however, exclusively in ceremonial

acts and verbal professions. With regard to the moral side of religion,

with regard to every religious doctrine that is practically favorable to

good conduct, exalted personages have always enjoyed an astonishing amount

of liberty. They are not free to hold themselves aloof from public

ceremonies, but they are free to give themselves up to every kind of

private self-indulgence, including flagrant sexual immoralities, which are

readily forgiven them by a loyal priesthood and an admiring populace, if

only they show an affable condescension in their manners. Surely morality

is a part of Christianity; surely it is as unchristian an act to commit

adultery as to walk out during service-time on Sunday morning; yet

adultery is far more readily forgiven in a prince, and far easier for him,

than the merely negative religious sin of abstinence from church-going.

Amongst the great criminal sovereigns of the world, the Tudors, Bourbons,

Bonapartes, there has never been any neglect of ceremonies, but they have

treated the entire moral code of Christianity as if it were not binding

on persons of their degree.

Every hardship is softened, at least in some measure, by a compensation;

and when in modern times a man is so situated that he has no outward

religious liberty it is perfectly understood that his conformity is

official, like that of a soldier who is ordered to give the Host a

military salute without regard for his private opinion about

transubstantiation. This being understood, the religious slavery of a

royal personage is far from being the hardest of such slaveries. The

hardest cases are those in which there is every appearance of liberty,

whilst some subtle secret force compels the slave to acts that have the

appearance of the most voluntary submission. There are many positions of

this kind in the world. They abound in countries where the right of

private judgment is loudly proclaimed, where a man is told that he may act

in religious matters quite freely according to the dictates of his

conscience, whilst he well knows, at the same time, that unless his

conscience happens to be in unison with the opinions of the majority, he

will incur some kind of disability, some social paralysis, for having

obeyed it.

The rule concerning the ceremonial part of religion appears to be that a

man's liberty is in inverse proportion to his rank. A royal personage has

none; he must conform to the State Church. An English nobleman has two

churches to choose from: he may belong to the Church of England or the

Church of Rome. A simple private gentleman, a man of good family and

moderate independent fortune, living in a country where the laws are so

liberal as they are in England, and where on the whole there is so little

bitterness of religious hatred, might be supposed to enjoy perfect

religious liberty, but he finds, in a practical way, that it is scarcely

possible for him to do otherwise than the nobility. He has the choice

between Anglicanism and Romanism, because, though untitled, he is still a

member of the aristocracy.

As we go down lower in the social scale, to the middle classes, and

particularly to the lower middle classes, we find a broader liberty,

because in these classes the principle is admitted that a man may be a

good Christian beyond the pale of the State Churches. The liberty here is

real, so far as it goes, for although these persons are not obliged by

their own class opinion to be members of a State Church, as the

aristocracy are, they are not compelled, on the other hand, to be

Dissenters. They may be good Churchmen, if they like, and still be

middle-class Englishmen, or they may be good Methodists, Baptists,

Independents, and still be respectable middle-class Englishmen. This

permits a considerable degree of freedom, yet it is still by no means

unlimited freedom. The middle-class Englishman allows dissent, but he does

not encourage honesty in unbelief.

There is, however, a class in English society in which for some time past

religious liberty has been as nearly as possible absolute,--I mean the

working population in the large towns. A working-man may belong to the

Church of England, or to any one of the dissenting communities; or, if he

does not believe in Christianity, he may say so and abstain from

religious hypocrisy of all kinds. Whatever his opinions, he will not be

regarded very coldly on account of them by persons of his own class, nor

prevented from marrying, nor hindered from pursuing his trade.

We find, therefore, that amongst the various classes of society, from the

highest to the humblest, religious liberty increases as we go lower. The

royal family is bound to conform to whatever may be the dominant religion

for the time being; the nobility and gentry have the choice between the

present dominant faith and its predecessor; the middle class has, in

addition, the liberty of dissent; the lower class has the liberty, not

only of dissent, but also of abstinence and negation. And in each case the

increase of liberty is real; it is not that illusory kind of extension

which loses in one direction the freedom that it wins in another. All the

churches are open to the plebeian secularist if he should ever wish to

enter them.

We have said that religious liberty increases as we go lower in the social

scale. Let us consider, now, how it is affected by locality. The rule may

be stated at once. _Religious liberty diminishes with the number of

inhabitants in a place._

However humble may be the position of the dweller in a small village at a

distance from a town, he must attend the dominant church because no other

will be represented in the place. He may be in heart a Dissenter, but his

dissent has no opportunity of expressing itself by a different form of

worship. The laws of his country may be as liberal as you please; their

liberality is of no practical service in such a case as this because

religious profession requires public worship, and an isolated family

cannot institute a cult.

If, indeed, there were the liberty of abstinence the evil would not be so

great. The liberty of rejection is a great and valuable liberty. If a

particular kind of food is unsuited to my constitution, and only that kind

of food is offered me, the permission to fast is the safeguard of my

health and comfort. The loss of this negative liberty is terrible in

convivial customs, when the victim is compelled to drink against his will.

The Dissenter in the country can be forced to conform by his employer or

by public opinion, acting indirectly. The master may avoid saying, "I

expect you to go to Church," but he may say, "I expect you to attend a

place of worship," which attains precisely the same end with an appearance

of greater liberality. Public opinion may be really liberal enough to

tolerate many different forms of religion, but if it does not tolerate

abstinence from public services the Dissenter has to conform to the

dominant worship in places where there is no other. In England it may seem

that there is not very much hardship in this, as the Church is not extreme

in doctrine and is remarkably tolerant of variety, yet even in England a

conscientious Unitarian might feel some difficulty about creeds and

prayers which were never intended for him. There are, however, harder

cases than those of a Dissenter forced to conform to the Church of

England. The Church of Rome is far more extreme and authoritative, far

more sternly repressive of human reason; yet there are thousands of rural

places on the Continent where religious toleration is supposed to exist,

and where, nevertheless, the inhabitants are compelled to hear mass to

avoid the imputation of absolute irreligion. A man like Wesley or Bunyan

would, in such a position, have to choose between apparent Romanism and

apparent Atheism, if indeed the village opinion did not take good care

that he should have no choice in the matter.

It may be said that people should live in places where their own form of

worship is publicly practised. No doubt many do so. I remember an

Englishman belonging to a Roman Catholic family who would not spend a

Sunday in an out-of-the-way place in Scotland because he could not hear

mass. Such a person, having the means to choose his place of residence,

and a faith so strong that religious considerations always came first with

him, would compel everything to give way to the necessity for having mass

every Sunday, but this is a very exceptional case. Ordinary people are the

victims of circumstances and not their masters.

If a villager has little religious freedom he does not greatly enlarge it

when he becomes a soldier. He has the choice between the Church of England

and the Church of Rome. In some countries even this very moderate degree

of liberty is denied. Within the present century Roman Catholic soldiers

were compelled to attend Protestant services in Prussia. The truth is that

the genuine military spirit is strongly opposed to individual opinion in

matters of religion. Its ideal is that every detail in a soldier's

existence should be settled by the military authorities, his religious

belief amongst the rest.

What may be truly said about military authority in religious matters is

that as the force employed is perfectly well known,--as it is perfectly

well known that soldiers take part in religious services under

compulsion,--there is no hypocrisy in their case, especially where the

conscription exists, and therefore but slight moral hardship. Certainly

the greatest hardship of all is to be compelled to perform acts of

conformity with all the appearance of free choice. The tradesman who must

go to mass to have customers is in a harder position than the soldier. For

this reason, it is better for the moral health of a nation, when there is

to be compulsion of some kind, that it should be boldly and openly

tyrannical; that its work should be done in the face of day; that it

should be outspoken, uncompromising, complete. To tyranny of that kind a

man may give way without any loss of self-respect, he yields to _force

majeure_; but to that viler and meaner kind of tyranny which keeps a man

in constant alarm about the means of earning his living, about the

maintenance of some wretched little peddling position in society, he

yields with a sense of far deeper humiliation, with a feeling of contempt

for the social power that uses such miserable means, and of contempt for

himself also.

ESSAY XIII.

PRIESTS AND WOMEN.

PART I.--SYMPATHY.

Women hate the Inexorable. They like a condition of things in which

nothing is so surely fixed but that the rule may be broken in their favor,

or the hard decision reversed. They like concession for concession's sake,

even when the matter is of slight importance. A woman will ask a favor

from a person in authority when a man will shrink from the attempt; and if

the woman gains her point by entreaty she will have a keen and peculiar

feminine satisfaction in having successfully exercised what she feels to

be her own especial power, to which the strong, rough creature, man, may

often be made to yield. A woman will go forth on the most hopeless errands

of intercession and persuasion, and in spite of the most adverse

circumstances will not infrequently succeed. Scott made admirable use of

this feminine tendency in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian." Jeanie Deans, with a

woman's feelings and perseverance, had a woman's reliance on her own

persuasive powers, and the result proved that she was right. All things in

a woman combine to make her mighty in persuasion. Her very weakness aids

her; she can assume a pitiful, childlike tenderness. Her ignorance aids

her, as she seems never to know that a decision can be fixed and final;

then she has tears, and besides these pathetic influences she has

generally some magnetism of sex, some charm or attraction, at least, in

voice or manner, and sometimes she has that marvellous--that all but

irresistible--gift of beauty which has ruled and ruined the masters of the

world.

Having constantly used these powers of persuasion with the strongest being

on this planet, and used them with such wonderful success that it is even

now doubtful whether the occult feminine government is not mightier than

the open masculine government, whilst it is not a matter of doubt at all,

but of assured fact, that society is ruled by queens and ladies and not by

kings and lords,--with all these evidences of their influence in this

world, it is intelligible that women should willingly listen to those who

tell them that they have similar influence over supernatural powers, and,

through them, on the destinies of the universe. Far less willingly would

they listen to some hard scientific teacher who should say, "No, you have

no influence beyond this planet, and that which you exercise upon its

surface is limited by the force that you are able to set in motion. The

Empress Eugénie had no supernatural influence through the Virgin Mary, but

she had great and dangerous natural influence through her husband; and it

may be true, what is asserted, that she caused in this way a disastrous

war." An exclusively _originating_ Intelligence, acting at the beginning

of Evolution,--a setter-in-motion of a prodigious self-acting machinery

of cause producing effect, and effects in their turn becoming a new

complexity of causes,--an Intelligence that we cannot persuade because we

are born millions of years too late for the first impulse that started all

things,--this may be the God of the future, but it will be a distant

future before the world of women will acknowledge him.

There is another element in the feminine nature that urges women in the

same direction. They have a constant sense of dependence in a degree

hardly ever experienced by men except in debilitating illness; and as this

sense of dependence is continual with them and only occasional with us, it

becomes, from habit, inseparable from their mental action, whereas even in

sickness a man looks forward to the time when he will act again freely for

himself. Men choose a course of action; women choose an adviser. They feel

themselves unable to continue the long conflict without help, and in spite

of their great patience and courage they are easily saddened by solitude,

and in their distress of mind they feel an imperious need for support and

consolation. "Our valors are our best gods," is a purely masculine

sentiment, and to a woman such self-reliance seems scarcely

distinguishable from impiety. The feminine counterpart of that would be,

"In our weakness we seek refuge in Thy strength, O Lord!"

A woman is not satisfied with merely getting a small share in a vast

bounty for the general good; she is kind and affectionate herself, she is

personally attentive to the wants of children and animals, and cares for

each of them separately, and she desires to be cared for in the same way.

The philosopher does not give her any assurance of this whatever; but the

priest, on the contrary, gives it in the most positive form. It is not

merely one of the doctrines of religion, but the central doctrine, the

motive for all religious exercises, that God cares for every one of us

individually; that he knows Jane Smith by name, and what she is earning a

week, and how much of it she devotes to keeping her poor paralyzed old

mother. The philosopher says, "If you are prudent and skilful in your

conformity to the laws of life you will probably secure that amount of

mental and physical satisfaction which is attainable by a person of your

organization." There is nothing in this about personal interest or

affection; it is a bare statement of natural cause and consequence. The

priest holds a very different language; the use of the one word _love_

gives warmth and color to his discourse. The priest says, "If you love God

with all your soul and with all your strength He will love and cherish you

in return, and be your own true and tender Father. He will watch over

every detail and every minute of your existence, guard you from all real

evil, and at last, when this earthly pilgrimage shall be over, He will

welcome you in His eternal kingdom." But this is not all; God may still

seem at too unapproachable a distance. The priest then says that means

have been divinely appointed to bridge over that vast abyss. "The Father

has given us the Son, and Christ has instituted the Church, and the Church

has appointed _me_ as her representative in this place,--_me_, to whom you

may come always for guidance and consolation that will never be refused

you."

This is the language for which the ears of a woman thirst as parched

flowers thirst for the summer rain. Instead of a great, blank universe

with fixed laws, interesting to _savans_ but not to her, she is told of

love and affection that she thoroughly understands. She is told of an

affectionate Creator, of His beloved and loving Son, of the tender care of

the maternal Church that He instituted; and finally all this chain of

affectionate interest ends close to her in a living link,--a man with

soft, engaging manners, with kind and gentle voice, who takes her hand,

talks to her about all that she really cares for, and overflows with the

readiest sympathy for all her anxieties. This man is so different from

common men, so very much better and purer, and, above all, so much more

accessible, communicative, and consolatory! He seems to have had so much

spiritual experience, to know so well what trouble and sorrow are, to

sympathize so completely with the troubles and sorrows of a woman! With

him, the burden of life is ten times easier to bear; without his precious

fellowship, that burden would be heavy indeed!

It may be objected to this, that the clergy do not entirely teach a

religion of love; that, in fact, they curse as well as bless, and foretell

eternal punishment for the majority. All this, it may be thought, must be

as painful to the feelings of women as Divine kindness and human felicity

must be agreeable to them. Whoever made this objection would show that he

had not quite understood the feminine nature. It is at the same time

kinder and tenderer than the masculine nature, and more absolute in

vindictiveness. Women do not generally like the infliction of pain that

they believe to be undeserved;[14] they are not generally advocates for

vivisection; but as their feelings of indignation against evil-doers are

very easily aroused, and as they are very easily persuaded that severe

punishments are just, they have often heartily assented to them even when

most horrible. In these cases their satisfaction, though it seems to us

ferocious, may arise from feeling themselves God's willing allies against

the wicked. When heretics were burnt in Spain the great ladies gazed

calmly from their windows and balconies on the grotesque procession of

miserable _morituri_ with flames daubed on their tabards, so soon to be

exchanged for the fiery reality. With the influence that women possess

they could have stopped those horrors; but they countenanced them; and yet

there is no reason to believe that they were not gentle, tender,

affectionate. The most relentless persecutor who ever sat on the throne of

England was a woman. Nor is it only in ages of fierce and cruel

persecution that women readily believe God to be on the side of the

oppressor. Other ages succeed in which human injustice is not so bold and

bloodthirsty, not so candid and honest, but more stealthily pursues its

end by hampering and paralyzing the victim that it dares not openly

destroy. It places a thousand little obstacles in his way, the

well-calculated effect of which is to keep him alive in impotent

insignificance. In those ages of weaker malevolence the heretic is quietly

but carefully excluded from the best educational and social advantages,

from public office, from political power. Wherever he turns, whatever he

desires to do, he feels the presence of a mysterious invisible force that

quietly pushes him aside or keeps him in shadow. Well, in this milder,

more coldly cruel form of wrong, vast numbers of the gentlest and most

amiable women have always been ready to acquiesce.[15]

I willingly pass from this part of the subject, but it was impossible not

to make one sad reference to it, for of all the sorrowful things in the

history of the world I see none more sorrowful than this,--that the

enormous influence of women should not have been more on the side of

justice. It is perhaps too much to expect that they should have placed

themselves in advance of their age, but they have been innocent abettors

and perpetuators of the worst abuses, and all from their proneness to

support any authority, however corrupt, if only it can succeed in

confounding itself with goodness.

As the representatives of a Deity who tenderly cares for every one of His

creatures, the clergy themselves are bound to cultivate all their own

powers and gifts of sympathy. The best of them do this with the important

result that after some years spent in the exercise of their profession

they become really and unaffectedly more sympathetic than laymen generally

are. The power of sympathy is a great power everywhere, but it is so

particularly in those countries where the laity are not much in the habit

of cultivating the sympathetic feelings, and timidly shrink from the

expression of them even when they exist. I remember going with a French

gentleman to visit a lady who had very recently lost her father; and my

friend made her a little speech in which he said no more than what he

felt, but he said it so elegantly, so delicately, so appropriately, and in

such feeling terms, that I envied him the talent of expressing condolence

in that way. I never knew an English layman who could have got through

such an expression of feeling, but I have known English clergymen who

could have done it. Here is a very great and real superiority over us,

and especially with women, because women are exquisitely alive to

everything in which the feelings are concerned, and we often seem to them

dead in feeling when we are only awkward, and dumb by reason of our

awkwardness.

I think it probable that most readers of this page will find, on

consulting their own recollections, that they have received warmer and

kinder expressions of sympathy from clerical friends than from laymen. It

is certainly so in my own case. On looking back to the expressions of

sympathy that have been addressed to me on mournful occasions, and of

rejoicing on happy ones, I find that the clearest and most ample and

hearty utterances of these feelings have generally come either from

clergymen of the Church of England, or priests of the Church of Rome.

The power of sympathy in clergymen is greatly increased by their easy

access to all classes of society. They are received everywhere on terms

which may be correctly defined as easily respectful; for their sacred

character gives them a status of their own, which is neither raised by

association with rich people nor degraded by friendliness with the poor or

with that lower middle class which, of all classes, is the most perilous

to the social position of a layman. They enter into the joys and sorrows

of the most different orders of parishioners, and in this way, if there is

any natural gift of sympathy in the mind of a clergyman, it is likely to

be developed and brought to perfection.

Partly by arrangements consciously devised by ecclesiastical authorities,

and partly by the natural force of circumstances, the work of the Church

is so ordered that her representatives are sure to be present on the most

important occasions in human life. This gives them some influence over

men, but that which they gain by it over women is immeasurably greater,

because the minds of women are far more closely and exclusively bound up

in domestic interests and events.

Of these the most visibly important is marriage. Here the priest has his

assured place and conspicuous function, and the wonderful thing is that

this function seems to survive the religious beliefs on which it was

originally founded. It seems to be not impossible that a Church might

still survive for an indefinite length of time in the midst of surrounding

scepticism simply for the purpose of performing marriage and funeral

rites. The strength of the clerical position with regard to marriage is so

great, even on the Continent, that, although a woman may have scarcely a

shred of faith in the doctrines of the Church, it is almost certain that

she will desire the services of a priest, and not feel herself to be

really married without them. Although the civil ceremony may be the only

one recognized by the law, the woman openly despises it, and reserves all

her feelings and emotions for the pompous ceremony at the church. On such

occasions women laugh at the law, and will even sometimes declare that the

law itself is not legal. I once happened to say that civil marriage was

obligatory in France, but only legal in England; on which an English lady

attacked me vehemently, and stoutly denied that civil marriage was legal

in England at all. I asked if she had never heard of marriages in a

Registrar's office. "Yes, I have," she answered, with a shocked expression

of countenance, "but they are not legal. The Church of England does not

recognize them, and that is the legal church."

As soon as a child is born the mother begins to think about its baptism;

and at a time of life when the infant is treated by laymen as a little

being whose importance lies entirely in the future the clergyman gives it

consequence in the present by admitting it, with solemn ceremony, to

membership in the Church of Christ. It is not possible to imagine anything

more likely to gratify the feelings of a mother than this early admission

of her unconscious offspring to the privileges of a great religious

community. Before this great initiation it was alone in the world, loved

only by her, and with all its prospects darkened by original sin; now it

is purified, blessed, admitted into the fellowship of the holy and the

wise. A certain relationship of a peculiar kind is henceforth established

between priest and infant. In after years he prepares it for confirmation,

another ceremony touching to the heart of a mother when she sees her son

gravely taking upon himself the responsibilities of a thinking being. The

marriage of a son or daughter renews in the mother all those feelings

towards the friendly, consecrating power of the Church which were excited

at her own marriage.

Then come those anxious occasions when the malady of one member of the

family casts a shadow on the happiness of all. In these cases any

clergyman who unites natural kindness of heart with the peculiar training

and experience of his profession can offer consolation incomparably

better than a layman; he is more accustomed to it, more _authorized_. A

friendly physician is a great help and a great stay so long as the disease

is not alarming, but when he begins to look very grave (the reader knows

that look), and says that recovery is not probable, by which physicians

mean that death is certain and imminent, the clergyman says there is hope

still, and speaks of a life beyond the grave in which human existence will

be delivered from the evils that afflict it here. When death has come, the

priest treats the dead body with respect and the survivors with sympathy,

and when it is laid in the ground he is there to the last moment with the

majesty of an ancient and touching form of words already pronounced over

the graves of millions who have gone to their everlasting rest.[16]