THE VOYAGE, CONTINUED.
Continuant nostre routte, navigasmes par trois jours _sans rien
descouvrir_.—RABELAIS.
“THERE is a beautiful structure,” said Mr. Chainmail, as they glided by
Lechlade church; “a subject for the pencil, Captain. It is a question
worth asking, Mr. Mac Quedy, whether the religious spirit which reared
these edifices, and connected with them everywhere an asylum for
misfortune, and a provision for poverty, was not better than the
commercial spirit, which has turned all the business of modern life into
schemes of profit and processes of fraud and extortion. I do not see, in
all your boasted improvements, any compensation for the religious charity
of the twelfth century. I do not see any compensation for that kindly
feeling which, within their own little communities, bound the several
classes of society together, while full scope was left for the
development of natural character, wherein individuals differed as
conspicuously as in costume. Now, we all wear one conventional dress,
one conventional face; we have no bond of union but pecuniary interest;
we talk anything that comes uppermost for talking’s sake, and without
expecting to be believed; we have no nature, no simplicity, no
picturesqueness: everything about us is as artificial and as complicated
as our steam-machinery: our poetry is a kaleidoscope of false imagery,
expressing no real feeling, portraying no real existence. I do not see
any compensation for the poetry of the twelfth century.”
_Mr. Mac Quedy_.—I wonder to hear you, Mr. Chainmail, talking of the
religious charity of a set of lazy monks and beggarly friars, who were
much more occupied with taking than giving; of whom those who were in
earnest did nothing but make themselves and everybody about them
miserable with fastings and penances, and other such trash; and those who
were not, did nothing but guzzle and royster, and, having no wives of
their own, took very unbecoming liberties with those of honester men.
And as to your poetry of the twelfth century, it is not good for much.
_Mr. Chainmail_.—It has, at any rate, what ours wants, truth to nature
and simplicity of diction.
The poetry, which was addressed to the people of the dark ages, pleased
in proportion to the truth with which it depicted familiar images, and to
their natural connection with the time and place to which they were
assigned. In the poetry of our enlightened times, the characteristics of
all seasons, soils, and climates may be blended together with much
benefit to the author’s fame as an original genius. The cowslip of a
civic poet is always in blossom, his fern is always in full feather; he
gathers the celandine, the primrose, the heath-flower, the jasmine, and
the chrysanthemum all on the same day and from the same spot; his
nightingale sings all the year round, his moon is always full, his cygnet
is as white as his swan, his cedar is as tremulous as his aspen, and his
poplar as embowering as his beech. Thus all nature marches with the
march of mind; but among barbarians, instead of mead and wine, and the
best seat by the fire, the reward of such a genius would have been to be
summarily turned out of doors in the snow, to meditate on the difference
between day and night and between December and July. It is an age of
liberality, indeed, when not to know an oak from a burdock is no
disqualification for sylvan minstrelsy. I am for truth and simplicity.
_The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—Let him who loves them read Greek: Greek, Greek,
Greek.
_Mr. Mac Quedy_.—If he can, sir.
_The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—Very true, sir; if he can. Here is the Captain
who can. But I think he must have finished his education at some very
rigid college, where a quotation or any other overt act showing
acquaintance with classical literature was visited with a severe penalty.
For my part, I make it my boast that I was not to be so subdued. I could
not be abated of a single quotation by all the bumpers in which I was
fined.
In this manner they glided over the face of the waters, discussing
everything and settling nothing. Mr. Mac Quedy and the Reverend Doctor
Folliott had many digladiations on political economy: wherein, each in
his own view, Doctor Folliott demolished Mr. Mac Quedy’s science, and Mr.
Mac Quedy demolished Dr. Folliott’s objections.
We would print these dialogues if we thought anyone would read them; but
the world is not yet ripe for this _haute sagesse Pantagrueline_. We
must therefore content ourselves with an _échantillon_ of one of the
Reverend Doctor’s perorations.
“You have given the name of a science to what is yet an imperfect
inquiry, and the upshot of your so-called science is this: that you
increase the wealth of a nation by increasing in it the quantity of
things which are produced by labour: no matter what they are, no matter
how produced, no matter how distributed. The greater the quantity of
labour that has gone to the production of the quantity of things in a
community, the richer is the community. That is your doctrine. Now, I
say, if this be so, riches are not the object for a community to aim at.
I say the nation is best off, in relation to other nations, which has the
greatest quantity of the common necessaries of life distributed among the
greatest number of persons; which has the greatest number of honest
hearts and stout arms united in a common interest, willing to offend no
one, but ready to fight in defence of their own community against all the
rest of the world, because they have something in it worth fighting for.
The moment you admit that one class of things, without any reference to
what they respectively cost, is better worth having than another; that a
smaller commercial value, with one mode of distribution, is better than a
greater commercial value, with another mode of distribution; the whole of
that curious fabric of postulates and dogmas, which you call the science
of political economy, and which I call _politicæ æconomiæ inscientia_,
tumbles to pieces.”
Mr. Toogood agreed with Mr. Chainmail against Mr. Mac Quedy, that the
existing state of society was worse than that of the twelfth century; but
he agreed with Mr. Mac Quedy against Mr. Chainmail, that it was in
progress to something much better than either—to which “something much
better” Mr. Toogood and Mr. Mac Quedy attached two very different
meanings.
Mr. Chainmail fought with Doctor Folliott, the battle of the romantic
against the classical in poetry; and Mr. Skionar contended with Mr. Mac
Quedy for intuition and synthesis, against analysis and induction in
philosophy.
Mr. Philpot would lie along for hours, listening to the gurgling of the
water round the prow, and would occasionally edify the company with
speculations on the great changes that would be effected in the world by
the steam-navigation of rivers: sketching the course of a steamboat up
and down some mighty stream which civilisation had either never visited,
or long since deserted; the Missouri and the Columbia, the Oroonoko and
the Amazon, the Nile and the Niger, the Euphrates and the Tigris, the
Oxus and the Indus, the Ganges and the Hoangho; under the over canopying
forests of the new, or by the long-silent ruins of the ancient, world;
through the shapeless mounds of Babylon, or the gigantic temples of
Thebes.
Mr. Trillo went on with the composition of his opera, and took the
opinions of the young ladies on every step in its progress; occasionally
regaling the company with specimens; and wondering at the blindness of
Mr. Mac Quedy, who could not, or would not, see that an opera in
perfection, being the union of all the beautiful arts—music, painting,
dancing, poetry—exhibiting female beauty in its most attractive aspects,
and in its most becoming costume—was, according to the well-known
precept, _Ingenuas didicisse_, etc., the most efficient instrument of
civilisation, and ought to take precedence of all other pursuits in the
minds of true philanthropists. The Reverend Doctor Folliott, on these
occasions, never failed to say a word or two on Mr. Trillo’s side,
derived from the practice of the Athenians, and from the combination, in
their theatre, of all the beautiful arts, in a degree of perfection
unknown to the modern world.
Leaving Lechlade, they entered the canal that connects the Thames with
the Severn; ascended by many locks; passed by a tunnel, three miles long,
through the bowels of Sapperton Hill; agreed unanimously that the
greatest pleasure derivable from visiting a cavern of any sort was that
of getting out of it; descended by many locks again through the valley of
Stroud into the Severn; continued their navigation into the Ellesmere
canal; moored their pinnaces in the Vale of Llangollen by the aqueduct of
Pontycysyllty; and determined to pass some days in inspecting the
scenery, before commencing their homeward voyage.
The Captain omitted no opportunity of pressing his suit on Lady Clarinda,
but could never draw from her any reply but the same doctrines of worldly
wisdom, delivered in a tone of _badinage_, mixed with a certain kindness
of manner that induced him to hope she was not in earnest.
But the morning after they had anchored under the hills of the
Dee—whether the lady had reflected more seriously than usual, or was
somewhat less in good humour than usual, or the Captain was more pressing
than usual—she said to him: “It must not be, Captain Fitzchrome; ‘the
course of true love never did run smooth:’ my father must keep his
borough, and I must have a town house and a country house, and an opera
box, and a carriage. It is not well for either of us that we should
flirt any longer: ‘I must be cruel only to be kind.’ Be satisfied with
the assurance that you alone, of all men, have ever broken my rest. To
be sure, it was only for about three nights in all; but that is too
much.”
The Captain had _le cœur navré_. He took his portfolio under his arm,
made up the little _valise_ of a pedestrian, and, without saying a word
to anyone, wandered off at random among the mountains.
After the lapse of a day or two, the Captain was missed, and everyone
marvelled what was become of him. Mr. Philpot thought he must have been
exploring a river, and fallen in and got drowned in the process. Mr.
Firedamp had no doubt he had been crossing a mountain bog, and had been
suddenly deprived of life by the exhalations of marsh miasmata. Mr.
Henbane deemed it probable that he had been tempted in some wood by the
large black brilliant berries of the _Atropa Belladonna_, or Deadly
Nightshade; and lamented that he had not been by, to administer an
infallible antidote. Mr. Eavesdrop hoped the particulars of his fate
would be ascertained; and asked if anyone present could help him to any
authentic anecdotes of their departed friend. The Reverend Doctor
Folliott proposed that an inquiry should be instituted as to whether the
march of intellect had reached that neighbourhood, as, if so, the Captain
had probably been made a subject for science. Mr. Mac Quedy said it was
no such great matter to ascertain the precise mode in which the surplus
population was diminished by one. Mr. Toogood asseverated that there was
no such thing as surplus population, and that the land, properly managed,
would maintain twenty times its present inhabitants; and hereupon they
fell into a disputation.
Lady Clarinda did not doubt that the Captain had gone away designedly;
she missed him more than she could have anticipated, and wished she had
at least postponed her last piece of cruelty till the completion of their
homeward voyage.