Now, there are human beings who, in the great things they say and

do, seldom fail of having this great, vague backing. There are

others whom the grand current for the most part sets against. It

is part of the great fact of Luck--the indubitable fact that there

are men, women, ships, horses, railway-engines, whole railways,

which are lucky, and others which are unlucky. I do not believe in

the common theory of Luck, but no thoughtful or observant man can

deny the fact of it. And in no fashion does it appear more certainly

than in this, that in the case of some men cross-accidents are always

marring them, and the effect they would fain produce. The system

of things is against them. They are not in every case unsuccessful,

but whatever success they attain is got by brave fighting against

wind and tide. At college they carried off many honours, but no

such luck ever befel them as that some wealthy person should offer

during their days some special medal for essay or examination, which

they would have gained as of course. There was no extra harvest

for them to reap: they could do no more than win all that was to

be won. They go to the bar, and they gradually make their way; but

the day never comes on which their leader is suddenly taken ill,

and they have the opportunity of earning a brilliant reputation

by conducting in his absence a case in which they are thoroughly

prepared. They go into the Church, and earn a fair character as

preachers; but Ihe living they would like never becomes vacant, and

when they are appointed to preach upon some important occasion, it

happens that the ground is a foot deep with snow.

Several years since, on a Sunday in July, I went to afternoon service

at a certain church by the sea-shore. The incumbent of that church

was a young clergyman of no ordinary talent; he is a distinguished

professor now. It was a day of drenching rain and howling hurricane;

the sky was black, as in mid-winter; the waves were breaking angry

and loud upon the rocks hard by. The weather the previous week had

been beautiful; the weather became beautiful again the next morning.

There came just the one gloomy and stormy summer day. The young

parson could not forsee the weather. What more fitting subject for

a July Sunday than the teachings of the beautiful season which was

passing over? So the text was, Thou hast made summer: it was a sermon

on summer, and its moral and spiritual lessons. How inconsistent

the sermon seemed with everything around! The outward circumstances

reduced it to an absurdity. The congregation was diminished to a

sixth of its usual number; the atmosphere was charged with a muggy

vapour from sloppy garments and dripping umbrellas: and as the

preacher spoke, describing vividly (though with the chastened taste

of the scholar) blue skies, green leaves, and gentle breezes, ever

and anon the storm outside drove the rain in heavy plashes upon

the windows, and, looking through them, you could see the black sky

and the fast-drifting clouds. I thought to myself, as the preacher

went on under the cross influence of these surroundings, Now, I

am sure you are in small things an unlucky man. No doubt the like

happens to you frequently. You are the kind of man to whom the

Times fails to come on the morning you specially wish to see it.

Your horse falls lame on the morning when you have a long drive

before you. Your manservant catches a sore throat, and is unable

to go out, just when the visitor comes to whom you wish to show the

neighboring country. I felt for the preacher. I was younger then,

but I had seen enough to make me think how Mr. Snarling of the

next parish (a very dull preacher, with no power of description)

would chuckle over the tale of the summer sermon on the stormy

day. That youthful preacher (not Mr. Snarling) had been but a few

months in the church, and he probably had not another sermon to

give in the unexpected circumstances: he must preach what he had

prepared. He had fallen into error. I formed a resolution never to

do the like. I was looking forward then with great enthusiasm to

the work of my sacred, profession: with enthusiasm which has only

grown deeper and warmer through the experience of more than nine

years. I resolved that if ever I thought of preaching a summer

sermon, I would take care to have an alternative one ready for that

day in case of unfavourable weather. I resolved that I would give

my summer discourse only if external nature, in her soft luxuriant

beauty, looked summer-like: a sweet pervading accompaniment to my

poor words, giving them a force and meaning far beyond their own.

What talk concerning summer skies is like the sapphire radiance,

so distant and pure, looking in through the church windows? You

do not remember how blue and beautiful the sky is, unless when you

are looking at it: nature is better than our remembrance of her.

What description of a leafy tree equals that noble, soft, massive,

luxuriant object which I looked at for half-an-hour yesterday

through the window of a little country church, while listening to

the sermon of a friend? Do not think that I was inattentive. I heard

the sermon with the greater pleasure and profit for the sight. It

is characteristic of the preaching of a really able man, preaching

what he himself has felt, that all he says appears (as a general

rule) in harmony with all the universe; while the preaching of a

commonplace man, giving us from memory mere theological doctrine

which has been drilled into him, and which he repeats because he

supposes it must be all right, seems inconsistent with all the material

universe, or at least quite apart from it. Yet, even listening to

that excellent sermon (whose masculine thought was very superior to

its somewhat slovenly style), I thought, as I looked at the beautiful

tree rising in the silent churchyard,--the stately sycamore,

so bright green, with the blue sky all around it,--how truly John

Foster wrote, that when standing in January at the foot of a large

oak, and looking at its bare branches, he vainly tried to picture

to himself what that tree would be in June. The reality would be

far richer and finer than anything he could imagine on the winter

day. Who does not know this? The green grass and the bright leaves

in spring are far greener (you see when they come back) than you

had remembered or imagined; the sunshine is more golden, and the

sky more bright. God's works are better and more beautiful than

our poor idea of them. Though I have seen them and loved them now

for more than thirty summers, I have felt this year, with something

of almost surprise, how exquisitely beautiful are summer foliage

and summer grass. Here they are again, fresh from God! The summer

world is incomparably more beautiful than any imagination could

picture it on a dull December day. You did not know on New Year's

day, my reader, how fair a thing the sunshine is. And the commonest

things are the most beautiful. Flowers are beautiful: he must be

a blackguard who does not love them. Summer seas are beautiful, so

exquisitely blue under the blue summer sky. But what can surpass

the beauty of green grass and green trees! Amid such things let

me live; and when I am gone, let green grass grow over me. I would

not be buried beneath a stone pavement, not to sleep in the great

Abbey itself.

My summer sermon has never been written, and so has never been

preached; I doubt whether I could make much of the subject, treated as

it ought to be treated there. But an essay is a different matter,

notwithstanding that a dear, though sarcastic friend says that

my essays are merely sermons played in polka time; the thought of

sermons, to wit, lightened somewhat by a somewhat lighter fashion

of phrase and illustration. And all that has hitherto been said

is introductory to remarking, that I stand in fear of what kind of

day it may be when my reader shall see this essay, which as yet

exists but vaguely in the writer's mind; and upon, four pieces

of paper, three large and one small. If your eye lights upon this

page on a cold, bleak day; if it be wet and plashy; above all, if

there be east wind, read no further. Keep this essay for a warm,

sunshiny day; it is only then that you will sympathize with its

author. For amid a dismal, rainy, stormy summer, we have reached

fair weather at last; and this is a lovely, sunny summer morning.

And what an indescribably beautiful thing is a summer day! I do not

mean merely the hours as they pass over; the long light; the sun

going up and going down; but all that one associates with summer

days, spent in sweet rural scenes. There is great variety in summer

days. There is the warm, bright, still summer day; when everything

seems asleep, and the topmost branches of the tall trees do not

stir in the azure air. There is the breezy summer day, when warm

breaths wave these topmost branches gently to and fro, and you stand

and look at them; when sportive winds bend the green corn as they

swiftly sweep over it; when the shadows of the clouds pass slowly

along the hills. Even the rainy day, if it come with soft summer-like

rain, is beautiful. People in town are apt to think of rain as a

mere nuisance; the chief good it does there is to water the streets

more generally and thoroughly than usual; a rainy day in town is

equivalent to a bad day; but in the country, if you possess even

the smallest portion of the earth, you learn to rejoice in the

rain. You go out in it; you walk about and enjoy the sight of the

grass momently growing greener; of the trees looking refreshed,

and the evergreens gleaming, the gravel walks so free from dust,

and the roads watered so as to render them beautifully compact,

but not at all sloppy or muddy; summer rain never renders well-made

country roads sloppy or muddy. There is a pleasure in thinking that

you have got far ahead of man or machine; and you heartily despise

a watering-cart, while enjoying a soft summer shower. And after

the shower is over, what fragrance is diffused through the country

air; every tree and shrub has an odour which a summer shower

brings out, and which senses trained to perception will perceive.

And then, how full the trees and woods are of the singing of birds!

But there is one feeling which, if you live in the country, is

common to all pleasant summer days, but particularly to sunshiny

ones; it is that you are doing injustice to nature, that you are

losing a great deal, if you do not stay almost constantly in the

open air. You come to grudge every half hour that you are within

doors, or busied with things that call you off from observing and

thinking of all the beauty that is around you everywhere. That

fair scene,--trees, grass, flowers, sky, sunshine, is there to be

looked at and enjoyed; it seems wrong, that with such a picture

passing on before your eyes, your eyes should be turned upon

anything else. Work, especially mental work, is always painful;

always a thing you would shrink from if you could; but how strongly

you shrink from it on a beautiful summer morning! On a gloomy

winter day you can walk with comparative willingness into your study

after breakfast, and spread out your paper, and begin to write your

sermon. For although writing the sermon is undoubtedly an effort;

and although all sustained effort partakes of the nature of pain;

and although pain can never be pleasant; still, after all, apart

from other reasons which impel you to your work, you cannot but

feel that really if you were to turn away from your task of writing,

there is nothing to which you could take that you would enjoy very

much more than itself. And even on the fairest summer morning, you

can, if you are living in town, take to your task with comparative

ease. Somehow, in town, the weather is farther off from you;

it does not pervade all the house, as it does in the country: you

have not windows that open into the garden: through which you see

green trees and grass every time you look up; and through which you

can in a minute, without the least change of dress, pass into the

verdant scene. There is all the difference in the world, between the

shadiest and greenest public garden or park even within a hundred

yards of your door; and the green shady little spot that comes up

to your very window. The former is no very great temptation to the

busy scholar of rural tastes; the latter is almost irresistible.

A hundred yards are a long way to go, with purpose prepense of

enjoying something so simple as the green earth. After having walked

even a hundred yards, you feel that you need a more definite aim.

And the grass and trees seem very far away, if you see them at the

end of a vista of washing your hands, and putting on another coat

and other boots, and still more of putting on gloves and a hat.

Give me the little patch of grass, the three or four shady trees,

the quiet corner of the shrubbery, that comes up to the study

window, and which you can reach without even the formality of passing

through the hall and out by the front door. If you wish to enjoy

nature in the summer-time, you must attend to all these little

things. What stout old gentleman but knows that when he is seated

snugly in his easy chair by the winter evening fireside, he would

take up and read many pages in a volume which lay within reach of

his arm, though he would do without the volume, if in order to get

it he had to take the slight trouble of rising from his chair and

walking to a table half a dozen yards off? Even so must nature be

brought within easy reach of even the true lover of nature; otherwise

on a hundred occasions, all sorts of little, fanciful hindrances

will stand between him and her habitual appreciation. A very small

thing may prevent your doing a thing which you even wish to do;

but which you do not wish with any special excitement, and which

you may do at any time. I daresay some reader would have written

months since to a friend in India to whom he promised faithfully to

write frequently, but that when he sat down once or twice to write,

and pulled out his paper-drawer, lie found that all the thin Indian

paper was done. And so the upshot is, that the friend has been a

year out; and you have never written to him at all.

But to return to the point from which this deviation proceeded, I

repeat, that on a fine summer morning in the country it is excessively

difficult to take to your work. Apart from the repellent influence

which is in work itself, you think that you will miss so much. You

go out after breakfast (with a wide-awake hat, and no gloves) into

the fresh atmosphere. You walk round the garden. You look particularly

at the more eminent roses, and the largest trees. You go to the

stable-yard, and see what is doing there. There are twenty things

to think of: numberless little directions to give. You see a weedy

corner, and that must not be suffered: you see a long spray of a

climbing rose that needs training. You look into the corn-chest:

the corn is almost finished. You have the fact impressed upon you

that the old potatoes are nearly done, and the new ones hardly

ready for use. These things partake of the nature of care: if you

do not feel very well, you will regard them as worries. But it is

no care nor worry to walk down to your gate, to lean upon it, and

to look at the outline of the hills: nor to go out with your little

children, and walk slowly along the country lane outside your

gate, relating for the hundredth time the legend of the renowned

giant-killer, or the enchanted horse that flew through the air; to

walk on till you come to the bridge, and there sit down, and throw

in stones for your dog to dive after, while various shouts (very

loud to come from such little mouths) applaud his success. How

crystal-clear the water of the river! It is six feet deep, yet you

may see every pebble of its bed. An undefined laziness possesses

you. You would like to sit here, and look, and think, all day.

But of course you will not give in to the temptation. Slowly you

return to your door: unwillingly you enter it: reluctantly you take

to your work. Until you have got somewhat into the spirit of your

task, you cannot help looking sometimes at the roses which frame

your window, and the green hill you see through it, with white

sheep. And even when you have got your mind under control, and the

lines flow more willingly from your pen, you cannot but look out

occasionally into the sunshiny, shady corner in your view, and think

you should be there. And when the prescribed pages are at length

completed, how delightful to lock them up, and be off into the air

again! You are far happier now than you were in the morning. The

shadow of your work was upon you then: now you may with a pleased

conscience, and under no sense of pressure, saunter about, and

enjoy your little domain. Many things have been accomplished since

you went indoors. The weeds are gone from the corner: the spray

of the rose lias been trained. The potato-beds have been examined:

the potatoes will be all ready in two days more. Sit down in the

shade, warm yet cool, of a great tree. Now is the time to read the

Saturday Review, especially the article that pitches into you. What

do you care for it? I don't mean that you despise it: I mean that

it causes you no feeling but one of amusement and pleasure. You

feel that it is written by a clever man and a gentleman: you know

that there is not a vestige of malice in it. You would like to shake

hands with the writer, and to thank him for various useful hints.

As for reviewing which is truly malignant--that which deals in

intentional misrepresentation and coarse abuse--it is practically

unknown in respectable periodicals. And wherever you may find it

(as you sometimes may) you ought never to be angry with the man

who did it: you ought to be sorry for him. Depend upon it, the poor

fellow is in bad health or in low spirits: no one but a man who is

really unhappy himself will deliberately set himself to annoy any

one else. It is the misery, anxiety, poverty, which are wringing the

man's heart, that make their pitiful moan in that bitter article.

Make the poor man better off, and he will be better natured.

And so, my friend, now that our task is finished, let us go out

in this kindly temper to enjoy the summer day. But you must first

assure your mind that your work is really finished. You cannot thus

simply enjoy the summer day, if you have a latent feeling rankling

at your heart that you are neglecting something that you ought to

do. The little jar of your moral being caused by such a feeling,

will be like the horse-hair shirt, will be like the peas in the

pilgrim's shoes. So, clerical reader, after you have written your

allotted pages of sermon, and answered your few letters, turn to

your tablet-diary, or whatever contrivance you have for suggesting

to your memory the work you have to do. If you have marked down

some mere call to make, that may fairly enough be postponed on this

hot day. But look at your list of sick, and see when you visited

each last, and consider whether there be any you ought to visit

to-day. And if there be, never mind though the heat be sweltering

and the roads dusty and shadeless: never mind though the poor old

man or woman lives five miles off, and though your horse is lame:

get ready, and walk away as slowly as you can, and do your duty.

You are not the reader I want: you are not the man with whom I

wish to think of summer days: if you could in the least enjoy the

afternoon, or have the faintest pleasure in your roses and your

grass, with the thought of that neglected work hanging over you.

And though you may return four hours hence, fagged and jaded, you

will sit with a pleased heart down to dinner, and you will welcome

the twilight when it comes, with the cheerful sense of duty done

and temptation resisted. But upon my ideal summer day, I suppose

that after looking over your sick-list, and all your memoranda, you

find that there is nothing to do that need take you to-day beyond

your own little realm. And so, with the delightful sense of leisure

to breathe and think, you walk forth into the green shade to spend

the summer afternoon. Bring with you two or three books: bring the

Times that came that morning: you will not read much, but it is

pleasant to know that you may read if you choose: and then sit down

upon a garden-seat, and think and feel. Do you not feel, my friend

of even five-and-thirty, that there is music yet in the mention of

summer days? Well, enjoy that music now, and the vague associations

which are summoned up by the name. Do not put off the enjoyment

of these things to some other day. You will never have more time,

nor better opportunity. The little worries of the present cease

to sting in the pensive languor of the season. Enjoy the sunshine

and the leaves while they last: they will not last long. Grasp the

day and hold it and rejoice in it: some time soon you will find of

a sudden that the summer time has passed away. You come to yourself,

and find it is December. The earth seems to pause in its orbit in

the dreary winter days: it hurries at express speed through summer.

You wish you could put on a break, and make time go on more slowly.

Well, watch the sandgrains as they pass. Remark the several minutes,

yet without making it a task to do so. As you sit there, you will

think of old summer days long ago: of green leaves long since faded:

of sunsets gone. Well, each had its turn: the present has nothing

more. And let us think of the past without being lackadaisical.

Look now at your own little children at play: that sight will

revive your flagging interest in life. Look at the soft turf, feel

the gentle air: these things are present now. What a contrast to the

Lard, repellent earth of winter! I think of it like the difference

between the man of sternly logical mind, and the genial, kindly

man with both head and heart! I take it for granted that you agree

with me in holding such to be the true type of man. Not but what

some people are proud of being all head and no heart. There is no

flummery about them. It is stern, severe sense and principle. Well,

my friends, say I to such, you are (in a moral sense) deficient

of a member. Fancy a mortal hopping through creation, and boasting

that he was born with only one leg! Or even if you have a little of

the kindly element, but very little when compared with the logical,

you have not much to boast of. Your case is analogous to that of

the man who has two legs indeed, but one of them a great deal longer

than the other.

It is pleasanter to spend the summer days in an inland country

place, than by the seaside. The sea is too glaring in sunshiny

weather; the prospects are too extensive. It wearies eyes worn

by much writing and reading to look at distant hills across the

water. The true locality in which to enjoy the summer time is a

richly-wooded country, where you have hedges and hedge-rows, and

clumps of trees everywhere: where objects for the most part are

near to you; and, above all, are green. It is pleasant to live in

a district where the roads are not great broad highways, in whose

centre you feel as if you were condemned to traverse a strip of

arid desert stretching through the landscape; and where any carriage

short of a four-in-hand looks so insignificantly small. Give me

country lanes: so narrow that their glare does not pain the eye upon

even the sunniest day: so narrow that the eye without an effort

takes in the green hedges and fields on either side as you drive

or walk along.

And now, looking away mentally from this cool shady verdure amid

which we are sitting, let us think of summer days elsewhere. Let

us think of them listlessly, that we may the more enjoy the quiet

here: as a child on a frosty winter night, snug in his little bed,

puts out a foot for a moment into the chilly expanse of sheet that

stretches away from the warm nest in which he lies, and then pulls

it swiftly back again, enjoying the cozy warmth the more for this

little reminder of the bitter chill. Here, where the air is cool,

pure, and soft, let us think of a hoarding round some old house

which the labourers are pulling down, amid clouds of the white,

blinding, parching dust of lime, on a sultry summer day. I can hardly

think of any human position as worse, if not intended directly as

a position of torture. I picture, too, a crowded wharf on a river

in a great town, with ships lying alongside. There is a roar

of passing drays, a cracking of draymen's whips, a howling of the

draymen. There is hot sunshine; there are clouds of dust; and I see

several poor fellows wheeling heavy casks in barrows up a narrow

plank into a ship. Their faces are red and puffy with the exertion:

their hair is dripping. Ah, the summer day is hard upon these poor

fellows! But it would be pleasant to-day to drive a locomotive engine

through a fine agricultural country, particularly if one were driving

an express train, and so were not worried by perpetual stoppages.

I have often thought that I should like to be an engine-driver.

Should any revolution or convulsion destroy the Church, it is to

that field of industry that I should devote my energies. I should

stipulate not to drive luggage-trains; and if I had to begin with

third-class passenger-trains, I have no doubt that in a few months,

by dint of great punctuality and carefulness, and by having my

engine always beautifully clean and bright, I should be promoted

to the express. There was a time when driving a locomotive was not

so pleasant as now. In departed days, when the writer was wont to

stand upon the foot-plates, through the kindness of engine-driving

friends now far away, there was a difficulty in looking out ahead:

the current of air was so tremendous, and particles of dust were

driven so viciously into one's eyes. But advancing civilization

has removed that disadvantage. A snug shelter is now provided for

the driver: an iron partition arises before him, with two panes of

glass through which to look out. The result is that he can maintain

a far more effectual look-out; and that he is in great measure

protected from wind and weather. Yes, it would be pleasant to be an

engine-driver, especially on such a day as this. Pleasant to look

at the great train of carriages standing in the station before

starting: to see the piles of luggage going up through the exertions

of hot porters: to see the numbers of passengers, old and young,

cool and flurried, with their wraps, their newspapers, their books,

at length arranged in the soft, roomy interiors; and then the sense

of power, when by the touch of a couple of fingers upon the lever,

you make the whole mass of luggage, of life, of human interests and

cares, start gently into motion; till, gathering speed as it goes,

it tears through the green stillness of the summer noon, amid

daisied fields, through little woody dells, through clumps of great

forest-trees, within sight of quiet old manor houses, across little

noisy brooks and fair broad rivers, beside churchyard walls and

grey ivied churches, alongside of roads where you see the pretty

phaeton, the lordly coach, the lumbering waggon, and get glimpses

that suggest a whole picture of the little life of numbers of your

fellow-men, each with heart and mind and concerns and fears very

like your own. Yes, my friend, if you rejoice in fair scenery,

if you sympathize with all modes of human life--if you have some

little turn for mechanics, for neatness and accuracy, for that

which faithfully does the work it was made to do, and neither less

nor more: retain it in your mind as an ultimate end, that you may

one day drive a locomotive engine. You need not of necessity become

greasy of aspect; neither need you become black. I never have known

more tidy, neat, accurate, intelligent, sharp, punctual, responsible,

God-fearing, and truly respectable men, than certain engine-drivers.

Remember the engine must be a locomotive engine. Your taste for

scenery and life will not be gratified by employment on a stationary

one. And it is fearfully hot work on a summer day to take charge

of a stationary steam-engine; while (perhaps you would not think

it) to drive a locomotive is perfectly cool work. You never feel,

in that rapid motion, the raging flame that is doing its work so

near you. The driver of the express train may be a man of large

sympathies, of cheerful heart, of tolerant views; the man in charge

of the engine of a coal-pit or factory, even of a steam-ship, is

apt to acquire contracted ways of thinking, and to become somewhat

cynical and gloomy in his ideas as to the possible amelioration of

society. It cannot be a pleasing employment, one would think, on a

day like this, to sit and watch a great engine fire, and mend it

when needful. That occupation would not be healthful, either to

mind or body. I dare say you remember the striking and beautiful

description in Mr. Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop, of a man who

had watched and fed a furnace-fire for years, till he had come to

think of it as a living being. The fire was older than he was; it

had never gone out since before he was horn. I can imagine, perfectly

well, what kind of effect such a mode of life would have had on

myself. And very few readers are likely to have within themselves

an intellectual and moral fibre of bent and nature so determined,

that they are not what they are, mainly through the influence of

the external circumstances which have been acting upon them all

through life. Did you ever think to yourself that you would like

to make trial for a few days' space, of certain modes of life very

different from your own, and very different from each other? I have

done so many a time. And a lazy summer afternoon here in the green

shade is the time to try and picture out such. Think of being to-day

in a stifling counting-house in the hot bustling town. I have been

especially interested in a glazed closet which I have seen in a

certain immensely large and very crowded shop in a certain beautiful

city. It is a sort of little office partitioned off from the shop

it has a sloping table, with three or four huge books bound in

parchment. There is a ceaseless bustle, crush, and hum of talking

outside; and inside there are clerks Bitting writing, and receiving

money through little pigeonholes. I should like to sit for two or

three days in a corner of that little retreat; and to write a sermon

there. It would be curious to sit there to-day in the shadow, and

to see the warm sunbeams only outside through a distant window,

resting on sloping roofs. If one did not get seasick, there would

be something fresh in a summer day at sea. It is always cool and

breezy there, at least in these latitudes, on the warmest day.

Above all there is no dust. Think of the luxurious cabin of a fine

yacht to-day. Deep cushions; rich curtains; no tremor of machinery;

flowers, books, carpets inches thick; and through the windows, dim

hills and blue sea. Then, flying away in spirit, let us go to-day

(only in imagination) into the Courts of Law at Westminster. The

atmosphere on a summer day in these scenes is always hot and choky.

There is a suggestion of summer time in the sunshine through the

dusty lanterns in the roofs. Thinking of these courts, and all

their belongings and associations, here on this day, is like the

child already mentioned when he puts his foot into a very cold corner

of his bed, that he may pull it back with special sense of what a

blessing it is that he is not bodily in that very cold corner. Yes,

let us enjoy this spot where we are, the more keenly, for thinking

of the very last place in this world where we should like to-day to

be. I went lately (on a bright day in May) to revive old remembrances

of Westminster Hall. The judges of the present time are very able

and incorruptible men; but they are much uglier than the judges I

remember in my youth. Several of them, in their peculiar attire,

hardly looked like human beings. Almost all wrore wigs a great

deal too large for them; I mean much too thick and massive. The

Queen's Counsel, for the most part, seemed much younger than they

used to be; but I was aware that this phenomenon arose from the

fact that I myself was older. And various barristers, who fifteen

years since were handsome, smooth-faced young men, had now a

complexion rough as a nutmeg-grater, and red with that unhealthy

colour which is produced by long hours in a poisonous atmosphere.

The Courts at Westminster, for cramped space and utter absence of

ventilation, are nothing short of a disgrace to a civilized nation.

But the most painful reflection which they suggest to a man with

a little knowledge of the practical working of law, is, how vainly

human law strives to do justice. There, on the benches of the

various Courts, you have a number of the most able and honest men

in Britain: skilled by long practice to distinguish between right

and wrong, between truth and falsehood; and yet, in five cases out

of six that come before them, they signally fail of redressing the

wrongs brought before them. Unhappily, in the nature of things, much

delay must occur in all legal procedure; and further, the machinery

of the law cannot be set in motion unless at very considerable

expense. Now, every one knows that delay in gaining a legal decision

of a debated question, very often amounts to a decision against

both parties. What enjoyment of the summer days has the harassed

suitor, waiting in nervous anxiety for the judgment or the verdict

which may be his ruin? For very small things may be the ruin

of many men. A few pounds to be paid may dip an honest man's head

under water for years, or for life. But the great evil of the law,

after all, is, that it costs so much. I am aware that this may be

nobody's fault; it may be a vice inherent in the nature of things.

Still, where the matter in question is of no very great amount, it

is a fact that makes the wise man willing rather to take injustice than

to go to law. A man meets with an injury; he sustains some wrong.

He brings his action; the jury give him ten or twenty pounds damages.

The jury fancy that this sum will make him amends for what he has

lost or suffered; they fancy that of course he will get this sum.

What would the jury think if told that he will never get a penny

of it? It will all go (and probably a good deal more) for extra

costs; that is, the costs the winning party will have to pay his

own attorney, besides the costs in the cause which the losing party

has to pay. No one profits pecuniarily by that verdict or that

trial, except the lawyers on either side. And does it not reduce

the administration of justice to an absurdity, to think that in the

majority of cases, the decision, no matter on which side, does no

good to the man in whose favour it is given.

Another thing which makes the courts of law a sad sight is, that

probably in no scene in human affairs are disappointment and success

set in so sharp contrast--brought so close together. There, on the

bench, dignified, keen, always kind and polite (for the days of

bullying have gone by), sits the Chief Justice--a peer (if he pleases

to be one)--a great, distinguished, successful man; his kindred

all proud of him. And there, only a few yards off, sharp-featured,

desponding, soured, sits poor Mr. Briefless, a disappointed man,

living in lonely chambers in the Temple: a hermit in the great

wilderness of London; in short, a total failure in life. Very

likely he absurdly over-estimates his talents, and what he could

have done if he had had the chance; but it is at least possible

that he may have in him the genius of another Follett, wasting

sadly and uselessly away. Now, of course, in all professions, and

all walks of life, there are success and failure; but there is

none, I think, in which poor failure must bear so keenly the trial

of being daily and closely set in contrast with flushed success.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown were rival suitors for the hand of Miss

Jones; Mr. Smith succeeded, and Mr. Brown failed; but though Mr.

Brown feels his mortification severely even as things are, it would

be a great deal worse if he were compelled to follow at a hundred

yards' distance Mr. Smith and Miss Jones in their moonlight walks,

and contemplate their happiness; to be present when they are married,

and daily to attend them throughout their marriage excursion. Or

some one else gets the bishopric you wished for; but you are not

obliged daily to contemplate the cathedral and the palace which you

had hoped to call your own. In most cases in this world failure may

look away from the success which makes its eyes sore and its heart

heavy. You try to have a kindly feeling towards the man who succeeded

where you failed, and in time you have it; but just at first

you would not have liked to have had ever before you the visible

manifestation of his success and your failure. You must have a very

sweet nature, and (let me say it) much help from a certain high

Quarter, if, without the least envy or jealousy, genially and

unsoured, you can daily look upon the man who, without deserving

to beat you, actually did beat you;--at least while the wound is

fresh.

And while talking of disappointment and success in courts of law.

let me remark, that petty success sometimes produces, in vulgar

natures, manifestations which are inexpressibly disgusting. Did

you ever remark the exultation of some low attorney when he had

succeeded in snapping a verdict in some contemptible case which

he had taken up and carried en upon speculation? I have witnessed

such a thing, and cannot but say that it appeared to me one of

the most revolting and disgusting phases which it is possible that

human nature should assume. I think I see the dirty, oily-looking

animal, at once servile and insolent, with trickery and rascality

in every line of his countenance, rubbing his hands in the hour of

his triumph, and bustling about to make immediate preparation for

availing himself of it. And following him, also sneakily exulting,

I see an object more dirty, more oily-looking, than the low attorney;

it is the low attorney's clerk. And on such an occasion, glancing

at the bench, when the judgment-seat was occupied by a judge who

had not yet learned never to look as if he thought or felt anything

in particular, I have discerned upon the judicial countenance an

expression of disgust as deep as my own.

Pleasanter scenes come up this afternoon with the mention of summer

days. I see depths of wood, where all the light is coolly green,

and the rippling brook is crystal clear. I see vistas through pines,

like cathedral vaults; the space enclosed looks on a sunshiny day

almost black, and a bit of bright blue sky at the end of each is

framed by the trees into the likeness of a Gothic window. I see

walls of gray rock on either side of a river, noisy and brawling

in winter time, but now quiet and low. For two or three miles the

walls of rock stretch onward; there are thick woods above them,

and here and there a sunny field: masses of ivy clothe the rock

in places; long sprays of ivy hang over. I walk on in thought till

I reach the opening of the glen; here a green bank slopes upward

from a dark pool below, and there is a fair stretch of champaign

country beyond the river; on the summit of the green bank, on

this side, mouldering, grey, ivied, lonely, stand the ruins of the

monastery, which has kept its place here for seven hundred years.

I see the sky-framing eastern window, its tracery gone. There are

masses of large daisies varying the sward, and the sweet fragrance

of young clover is diffused through all the air. I turn aside, and

walk through lines of rose-trees in their summer perfection. I hear

the drowsy hum of the laden bees. Suddenly it is the twilight, the

long twilight of Scotland, which would sometimes serve you to read

by at eleven o'clock at night. The crimson flush has faded from the

bosom of the river; if you are alone, its murmur begins to turn to

a moan; the white stones of the churchyard look spectral through the

trees. I think of poor Doctor Adam, the great Scotch schoolmaster

of the last century, the teacher of Sir Walter Scott, and his last

words, when the shadow of death was falling deeper--'It grows dark,

hoys; you may go.' Then, with the professional bias, I go to a

certain beautiful promise which the deepening twilight seldom fails

to suggest to me; a promise which tells us how the Christian's

day shall end, how the day of life might be somewhat overcast and

dreary, but light should come on the darkened way at last. 'It

shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear

nor dark. But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord,

not day, nor night; but it shall come to pass that at evening time

it shall be light.' I think of various senses in which it might be

shown that these words speak truly; in which its great principle

holds good, that signal blessing shall come when it is needed most

and expected least; but I think mainly how, sometimes, at the close

of the chequered and sober day, the Better Sun has broken through

the clouds, and made the naming west all purple and gold. I think

how always the purer light comes, if not in this world, then in a

better. Bowing his head to pass under the dark portal, the Christian

lifts it on the other side, in the presence and the light of God.

J think how you and I, my reader, may perhaps have stood in the

chamber of death, and seen in the horizon the summer sun in glory

going down. But it is only to us who remain that the evening

darkness is growing--only for us that the sun is going down. Look

on the sleeping features, and think, 'Thy sun shall no more go

down, neither shall thy moon withdraw herself; for the Lord shall

be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be

ended.' And then, my reader, tell me--as the evening falls on you,

but not on him; as the shadows deepen on you, but not on him; as

the darkness gathers on you, but not on him--if, in sober reality,

the glorious promise has not found its perfect fulfilment, that

'at the evening time there shall be light!'

Every one knows that Summer Days dispose one to a certain listlessly

meditative mood. In cold weather, out of doors at least, you must

move about actively; it is only by the evening fireside, watching

the dancing shadows, that you have glimpses of this not wholly

unprofitable condition of mind. In summer-time you sometimes feel

disposed to stand and look for a good while at the top of a large

tree, gently waving about in the blue sky. You begin by thinking

it would be curious to be up there: but there is no thought or

speculation, moral, political, or religious, which may not come at

the end of the train started by the loftiest branches of the great

beech. You are able to sit for a considerable space in front of

an ivied wall, and think out your sermon for Sunday as you look at

the dark leaves in the sun. Above all, it is soothing and suggestive

to look from a height at the soft outline of distant hills of modest

elevation; and to see, between yourself and them, many farm-houses

and many little cottages dotted here and there. There, under your

eye, how much of life, and of the interests of life, is going on!

Looking at such things, you muse, in a vague, desultory way. I

wonder whether when ordinary folk profess to be thinking, musing,

or meditating, they are really thinking connectedly or to any purpose.

I daresay the truth is they have (so to speak) given the mind its

head; laid the reins of the will on the mind's neck; and are letting

it go on and about in a wayward, interrupted, odd, semi-conscious

way. They are not holding onward on any track of thought. I believe

that common-place human beings can only get their ideas upon any

subject into shape and order by writing them down, or (at least)

expressing them in words to some one besides themselves. You have

a walk of an hour, before you: you resolve that you will see your

way through some perplexed matter as you walk along; your mind is

really running upon it all the way: but when you have got within

a hundred yards of your journey's end, you find with a start that

you have made no progress at all: you are as far as ever from

seeing what to think or do. With most people, to meditate means

to approach to doing nothing at all as closely as in the nature of

humanity it is possible to do so. And in this sense of it, summer

days, after your work is over, are the time for meditation. So,

indeed, are quiet days of autumn: so the evening generally, when

it is not cold. 'Isaac went out to meditate in the field, at the

eventide.' Perhaps he thought of the progress of his crops, his

flocks, his affairs: perhaps he thought of his expected wife: most,

probably he thought of nothing in particular; for four thousand

years have left human nature in its essence the selfsame thing. It

would be miserable work to moon through life, never thinking except

in this listless, purposeless way: but after hard work, when you

feel the rest has been fairly earned, it is very delightful on

such a day and in such a scene as this, to sit down and muse. The

analogy which suggests itself to me is that of a carriage-horse,

long constrained to keep to the even track along hard dusty roads,

drawing a heavy burden; now turned free into a cool green field

to wander, and feed, and roll about untrammelled. Even so does

the mind, weary of consecutive thinking--of thinking in the track

and thinking with a purpose--expatiate in the license of aimless

meditation.

There are various questions which may fitly be thought of in the

listlessness of this summer day. They are questions the consideration

of which does not much excite; questions to which you do not very

much mind whether you get an answer or no. I have been thinking

for a little while, since I finished the last paragraph, of this

point: Whether that clergyman, undertaking the charge of some

important church, is best equipped for his duty, who has a great

many sermons carefully written and laid up in a box, ready to come

out when needed: or that other clergyman, who has very few sermons

fully written out, but who has spent great pains in disciplining

his mind into that state in which it shall always be able to produce

good material. Which of these has made best progress towards the

end of being a good and efficient preacher? Give me, I should say,

on the whole, the solid material stock, rather than the trained

inind. I look with a curious feeling upon certain very popular

preachers, who preach entirely extempore: who make a few notes of

their skeleton of thought; but trust for the words and even for the

illustrations to the inspiration of the moment. They go on boldly:

but their path crumbles away behind them as they advance. Their

minds are in splendid working order: they turn off admirable work

Sunday by Sunday: and while mind and nervous system keep their

spring, that admirable work may be counted on almost with certainty.

They have Fortunio's purse: they can always put their hand upon

the sovereigns they need: but they have no hoard accumulated which

they might draw from, should the purse some day fail. And remembering

how much the success of the extempore speaker depends upon the

mood of the moment: remembering what little things, menial and

physical, may mar and warp the intellectual machine for the moment:

remembering how entirely successful extempore speaking founds on

perfect confidence and presence of mind: remembering how as one

grows older the nervous system may get shaken and even broken down:

remembering how the train of thought which your mind has produced

melts away from you unless you preserve a record of it (for I am

persuaded that to many men that which they themselves have written

looks before very long as strange and new as that produced by

another mind): remembering these things, I say to myself, and to

you if you choose to listen: Write sermons diligently: write them

week by week, and always do your very best: never make up your mind

that this one shall be a third-rate affair, just to get the Sunday

over; and thus accumulate material for use in days when thoughts

will not come so readily, and when the hand must write tremblingly

and slow. Don't be misled by any clap-trap about the finer thing

being to have the mental machine always equal to its task. You

cannot have that. The mind is a wayward, capricious thing. The

engine which did its sixty miles an hour to-day, may be depended on

(barring accident) to do as much to-morrow. But it is by no means

certain that because you wrote your ten or twenty pages to-day,

you will be able to do the like on another day. What educated man

does not know, that when he sits down to his desk after breakfast,

it is quite uncertain whether he will accomplish an ordinary task,

or a double task, or a quadruple one? Dogged determination may

make sure, on almost every day, of a decent amount of produced

material: but the quality varies vastly, and the quantity which the

same degree and continuance of strain will produce is not a priori

to be calculated. And a spinning-jenny will day by day produce

thread of uniform quality: but a very clever man, by very great

labour, will on some days write miserable rubbish. And no one will

feel that more bitterly than himself.

I pass from thinking of these things to a matter somewhat connected

with them. Is it because preachers now-a-days shrink from the labour

of writing sermons for themselves, or is it because they distrust

the quality of what they can themselves produce, that shameless

plagiarism is becoming so common? One cannot but reflect, thus

lazily inclined upon a summer day, what an amount of painful labour

would be saved one if, instead of toiling to see the way through

a subject, and then to set out one's views in an interesting and

(if possible) an impressive manner, one had simply to go to the

volumes of Mr. Melvill or Bishop Wilberforce or Dean Trench; or,

if your taste be of a different order, to those of Mr. Spurgeon,

Mr. Punshon, or Mr. Stowell Brown--and copy out what you want. The

manual labour might be considerable--for one blessing of original

composition is, that it makes you insensible to the mere mechanical

labour of writing,--but the intellectual saving would be tremendous.

I say nothing of the moral deterioration. I say nothing as to

what a mean, contemptible pickpocket, what a jackdaw in peacock's

feathers, you will feel yourself. There is no kind of dishonesty

which ought to be exposed more unsparingly. Whenever I hear a sermon

preached which has been stolen, I shall make a point of informing

every one who knows the delinquent. Let him get the credit which

is his due. I have not read many published sermons, and I seldom

hear any one preach except myself; so that I do not speak from

personal knowledge of the fact alleged by many, that there never

was a period when this paltry lying and cheating was so prevalent.

But five or six times within the last nine years I have listened

to sermons in which there was not merely a manifest appropriation

of thoughts which the preacher had never digested or made his own,

but which were stolen word for word; and I have been told by friends

in whom I have implicit confidence of instances twice five or six.

Generally, this dishonesty is practised by frightful block-heads,

whose sole object perhaps is to get decently through a task for

which they feel themselves unfit; but it is much more irritating

to find men of considerable talent, and of more than considerable

popularity, practising it in a very gross degree. And it is curious

how such dishonest persons gain in hardihood as they go on. Either

because they really escape detection, or because no one tells

them that they have been detected, they come at length to parade

themselves in their swindled finery upon the most public occasions.

I do believe that, like the liar who has told his story so long

that he has come to believe it at last, there are persons who have

stolen the thoughts of others so often and so long, that they hardly

remember that they are thieves. And in two or three cases in which

I put the matter to the proof, by speaking to the thief of the

characteristics of the stolen composition, I found him quite prepared

to carry out his roguery to the utmost, by talking of the trouble

it had cost him to write Dr. Newman's or Mr. Logan's discourse.

'Quite a simple matter--no trouble; scribbled off on Saturday

afternoon,' said, in my hearing, a man who had preached an elaborate

sermon by an eminent Anglican divine. The reply was irresistible:

'Well, if it cost you little trouble, I am sure it cost Mr. Melvill

a great deal.'

I am speaking, you remark, of those despicable individuals who

falsely pass off as their own composition what they have stolen

from some one else. I do not allude to such as follow the advice

of Southey, and preach sermons which they honestly declare are

not their own. I can see something that might be said in favour of

the young inexperienced divine availing himself of the experience

of others. Of course, you may take the ground that it is better

to give a good sermon by another man than a bad one of your own.

Well, then, say that it is not your own. Every one knows that when

a clergyman goes to the pulpit and gives out his text, and then

proceeds with his sermon, the understanding is that he wrote that

sermon for himself. If he did not write it, he is bound in common

honesty to say so. But besides this, I deny the principle on which

some justify the preaching of another man's sermon. I deny that

it is better to give the good sermon of another than the middling

one by yourself. Depend upon it, if you have those qualifications

of head and heart that fit you for being in the Church at all,

your own sermon, however inferior in literary merit, is the better

sermon for you to give and for your congregation to hear; it is

the better fitted to accomplish the end of all worthy preaching,

which, as you know, is not at all to get your hearers to think how

clever a man you are. The simple, unambitious instruction into

which you have thrown the teachings of your own little experience,

and which you give forth from your own heart, will do a hundred

times more good than any amount of ingenuity, brilliancy, or even

piety, which you may preach at second-hand, with the feeling that

somehow you stand to all this as an outsider. If you wish honestly

to do good, preach what you have felt, and neither less nor more.

But in no way of regarding the case can any excuse be found for

persons who steal and stick into their discourses tawdry little bits

of bombast, purple patches of thought or sentiment, which cannot

be supposed to do any good to anybody, which stand merely instead

of a little stolen gilding for the gingerbread which is probably

stolen too. I happened the other day to turn over a volume of

discourses (not, I am thankful to say, by a clergyman of either

of the national churches), and I came upon a sermon or lecture on

Woman. You can imagine the kind of thing it was. It was by no means

devoid of talent. The writer is plainly a clever, flippant person,

with little sense, and no taste at all. The discourse sets out

with a request that the audience 'would kindly try to keep awake by

pinching one another in the leg, or giving some nodding neighbour

a friendly pull of the hair;' and then there is a good deal about

Woman, in the style of a Yankee after-dinner speech in proposing such

a toast. After a little we have a highly romantic description of

a battle-field after the battle, in which gasping steeds, midnight

ravens, spectral bats, moping owls, screeching vultures, howling

night wolves appear. These animals are suddenly startled by a figure

going about with a lantern 'to find the one she loves.' Of course

the figure is a woman; and the paragraph winds up with the following

passage:--

Shall we go to her? No! Let her weep on. Leave her, &c. Oh, woman!

God beloved in old Jerusalem! We need deal lightly with thy faults,

if only for the agony thy nature will endure, in bearing heavy

evidence against us on the day of judgment!

Now, my friend, have you read Mr. Dickens' story of Martin Chuzzlewit?

Turn up the twenty-eighth chapter of that work, and in the closing

sentence you may read as follows:--

Oh woman, God-beloved in old Jerusalem! The best among us need deal

lightly with thy faults, if only for the punishment thy nature will

endure, in bearing heavy evidence against us on the Day of Judgment!

I wonder whether the writer of the discourse imagined that by varying

one or two words, and adopting small letters instead of capitals

in alluding to the Last Day, he made this sentence so entirely his

own as to justify him in bagging it without one hint that it was a

quotation. As for the value of the property bagged, that is another

question.

After thinking for a few minutes of the curious constitution of

mind which enables a man to feel his vanity flattered when he gets

credit to which he knows he is not entitled, as the plagiarist does,

I pass away into the. vast field of thought which is afforded by

the contemplation of human vanity in general. The Ettrick Shepherd

was wont to say that when he tried a new pen, instead of writing

his name, as most people do, he always wrote Solomon's famous

sentence, All is vanity. But he did not understand the words in

Solomon's sense: what he thought of was the limitless amount of

self-conceit which exists in human beings, and which hardly any

degree of mortification can (in many cases) cut down to a reasonable

quantity. I find it difficult to arrive at any fixed law in regard

to human self-conceit. It would be very pleasant if one could

conclude that monstrous vanity is confined to tremendous fools; but

although the greatest intellectual self-conceit I have ever seen

has been in blockheads of the greatest density and ignorance; and

although the greatest self-conceit of personal attractions has

been in men and women of unutterable silliness; still, it must

be admitted that very great and illustrious members of the human

race have been remarkable for their vanity. I have met very clever

men, as well as very great fools, who would willingly talk of no

other matters than themselves, and their own wonderful doings and

attainments. I have known men of real ability, who were always

anxious to impress you with the fact that they were the best riders,

the best shots, the best jumpers, in the world; who were always

telling stories of the sharp things they said on trying occasions,

and the extraordinary events which were constantly befalling them.

When a clever man evinces this weakness, we must remember that

human nature is a weak and imperfect thing, and try to excuse the

silliness for the sake of the real merit. But there are few things

more irritating to witness than a stupid, ignorant dunce, wrapped

up in impenetrable conceit of his own abilities and acquirements.

It requires all the beauty, and all the listlessness too, of this

sweet summer day, to think, without the pulse quickening to an

indignant speed, of the half-dozen such persons whom each of us has

known. It would soothe and comfort us if we could be assured that

the blockhead knew that he was a blockhead: if we could be assured

that now and then there penetrated into the dense skull and reached

the stolid brain, even the suspicion of what his intellectual

calibre really is. I greatly fear that such a suspicion never is

known. If you witness the perfect confidence with which the man is

ready to express his opinion upon any subject, you will be quite

sure that the man has not the faintest notion of what his opinion is

worth. I remember a blockhead saying that certain lines of poetry

were nonsense. He said that they were unintelligible: that they

were rubbish. I suggested that it did not follow that they were

unintelligible because he could not understand them. I told him

that various competent judges thought them very noble lines indeed.

The blockhead stuck to his opinion with the utmost firmness. What

was the use of talking to him? If a blind man tells you he does

not see the sun, and does not believe there is any sun, you ought

to be sorry for him rather than angry with him. And when the

blockhead declared that he saw only rubbish in verses which I trust

every reader knows, and which begin with the line--

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

his declaration merely showed that he lacked the power to appreciate

Mr. Tennyson. But I think, my thoughtful friend, you would have found

it hard to pity him when you saw plainly that the poor blockhead

despised and pitied you.

The conceit of the stolid dunce is bad, but the conceit of the

brisk and lively dunce is worse. The stolid dunce is comparatively

quiet; his crass mind works slowly; his vacant face wears an aspect

of repose; his talk is merely dull and twaddling. But the talk of

the brisk dunce is ambitiously absurd: he lays down broad principles:

he announces important discoveries which lie has made: he has

heard able and thoughtful men talk, and he tries to do that kind

of thing. There is an indescribable jauntiness about him apparent

in every word and gesture. As for the stolid dunce, you would be

content if the usages of society permitted your telling him that

he is a dunce. As for the brisk dunce, you would like to take him

by the ears and shake him.

It is wonderful how ordinary, sensjble persons, with nothing brilliant

about them, may live daily in a comfortable feeling that they are

great geniuses: if they live constantly amid a little circle of

even the most incompetent judges, who are always telling them that

they are great geniuses. For it is natural to conclude that the

opinion of the people whom you commonly see is a fair reflex of

the opinion of all the world; and it is wonderful how highly even

a very able man will estimate the value of the opinion of even a

very stupid man, provided the stupid man entertains and frequently

expresses an immensely high opinion of the very able man. I have

known a man, holding a somewhat important position for which he was

grossly unfit, and for which every one knew he was grossly unfit;

yet perfectly self-satisfied and comfortable under circumstances

which would have crushed many men, because he was kept up by two

or three individuals who frequently assured him that he was a very

eminent and useful person. These two or three individuals acted

as a buffer between him and the estimate of mankind at large. He

received their opinion as a fair sample of the general opinion. He

was indeed a man of very moderate ability; but I have known another

of very great talent, who by the laudations of one or two old

women was led to suppose that he possessed abilities of a totally

different nature from those which he actually possessed. I do not

mean higher abilities, but abilities extending into a field into

which his peculiar talents did not reach. Yet no one would have

been sharper at discerning the worthlessness of the judgment of

the old women had it been other than very flattering to himself.

Who is there that does not know that sometimes clever young men

are bolstered up into a self-conceit which does them much harm with

the outer world, by the violent admiration and flattery of their

mothers, sisters, and aunts at home?

But not merely does the favourable estimate of the. little circle

in which he lives serve to keep a man on good terms with himself;

it goes some way towards influencing the estimation in which he

is held by mankind at large--so far, that is, as mankind at large

know anything about him. I have known such a thing as a family whose

several members were always informing everybody they met what noble

fellows the other members of the family were. And I am persuaded

that all this really had some result. They were fine fellows, no

doubt; but this tended to make sure that they should not be hid

under a bushel. I am persuaded that if half-a-dozen clever young

men were to form themselves into a little association, each member

of which should be pledged to lose no opportunity of crying up the

other five members in conversation, through the press, and in--every

other possible way, this would materially further their success in

life and the estimation in which they would be held wherever known.

The world would take them at the value so constantly dinned into

its ear. When you read on a silver coin the legend one shilling,

you readily take it for a shilling; and if a man walks about with

great genius painted upon him in large red letters, many people

will aecept the truth of the inscription. Every one has seen how

a knot of able young men hanging together at college and in after

life can help one another even in a material sense, and not less

valuably by keeping up one another's heart. All this is quite fair,

and so is even the mutual praise when it is hearty and sincere.

For several months past I have been possessed of an idea which has

been gradually growing into shape. I have thought of getting up an

association, whose members should always hold by one another, be

true to one another, and cry one another up. A friend to whom I

mentioned my plan highly approved it, and suggested the happy name

of the MUTUAL EXALTATION SOCIETY. The association would be limited

in number: not more than fifty members could be admitted. It would

include educated men in all walks of life; more particularly men

whose success in life depends in any measure upon the estimation

in which they are commonly held, as barristers, preachers, authors,

and the like. Its purposes and operations have already been indicated

with as much fulness as would be judicious at the present juncture.

Mr. Barnum and Messrs. Moses and Son would be consulted on the

details. Sir John Ellesmere, ex-solicitor-general and author of the

Essay on the Arts of Self-Advancement, would be the first president,

and the general guide, philosopher, and friend of the Mutual

Exaltation Society. The present writer will be secretary. The only

remuneration he would expect would be that all the members should

undertake, at least six times every day, to make favourable mention

of a recently published work. Six times a day would they be expected

to say promiscuously to any intelligent friend or stranger, 'Have

you read the Recreations of a Country Parson? Most wonderful book!

Not read it? Go to Mudie's and get it directly '--and the like.

For obvious reasons it would not do to make public the names of

the members of the association; the moral weight of their mutual

laudation would be much diminished. But clever young men in various

parts of the country who may desire to join the society, may make

application to the Editor of Eraser's Magazine, enclosing testimonials

of moral and intellectual character. Applications will be received

until the First of April, 1861.

I wonder whether any real impression is produced by those puffing

paragraphs which appear in country newspapers about some men, and

which are written either by the men themselves or by their near

relatives and friends. I think no impression is ever produced upon

intelligent people, and no permanent impression upon any one. Still,

among a rural population, there may be found those who believe all

that is printed in a newspaper; and who think that the man who is

mentioned in a newspaper is a very great man. And if you live among

such, it is pleasant to be regarded by them as a hero. The Reverend

Mr. Smith receives from his parishioners the gift of a silver

salver: the county paper of the following Friday contains a lengthy

paragraph recording the fact, and giving the reverend gentleman's

feeling and appropriate reply. The same worthy clergy-man preaches

a charity sermon: and the circumstance is recorded very fully, the

eloquent peroration being given with an accuracy which says much

for the perfection of provincial reporting--given, indeed, word

for word. Now it is natural to think that Mr. Smith is a much more

eminent man than those other men whose salvers and charity sermons

find no place in the newspaper: and Mr. Smith's agricultural

parishioners no doubt think so. A different opinion is entertained

by such as know that Mr. Smith's uncle is a large proprietor in

the puffing newspaper; and that he wrote the articles in question

in a much warmer strain than that in which they appeared, the editor

having sadly curtailed and toned them down. In the long run, all

this quackery does no good. And indeed long accounts in provincial

journals of family matters, weddings and the like, serve only to make

the family in question laughed at. Still, they do harm to nobody.

They are very innocent. They please the family whose proceedings

are chronicled; and if the family are laughed at, why, they don't

know it.

And, happily, that which we do not know does us no harm: at least,

gives us no pain. And it is a law, a kindly and a reasonable law,

of civilized life, that when it is not absolutely necessary that

a man should know that which would give him pain, he shall not be

told of it. Only the most malicious violate this law. Even they

cannot do it long: for they come to be excluded from society as

its common enemies. One great characteristic of educated society

is this: it is always under a certain degree of Restraint. Nohody,

in public, speaks out all his mind. Nobody tells the whole truth,

at least, in public speeches and writings. It is a terrible thing

when an inexperienced man in Parliament (for instance) blurts out

the awkward fact which everybody knows, but of which nobody is to

speak except in the confidence of friendship or private society.

How such a man is hounded down! He is every one's enemy. Every one

is afraid of him. No one knows what he may say next. And it is quite

fit that he should be stopped. Civilized life could not otherwise

go on. It is quite right (when you calmly reflect upon it) that the

county paper, speaking of the member of Parliament, should tell us

how this much-respected gentleman has been visiting his Constituents,

but should suppress a good deal of the speech he made, which the

editor (though of the same politics) tells you frankly was worthy

only of an escaped lunatic. Above all, it is fit and decent that

the very odd private life and character of the legislator should be

by tacit consent ignored even by the journals most opposed to him.

It is right that kings and nobles should be, for the most part,

spoken of in public as if they actually were what they ought to be.

It is something of a reminder and a rebuke to them: and it is just

as well that mankind at large should not know too much of the actual

fact as to those above them. I should never object to calling a

graceless duke Tour Grace: nor to praying for a villariously bad

monarch as our most religious and gracious King (I know quite well,

small critic, that religious is an absurd mistranslation: but let

us take the liturgy in the sense in which ninety-nine out of every

hundred who hear it understand it): for it seems to me that the

daily recurring phrases are something ever suggesting what mankind

have a right to expect from those in eminent station; and a kindly

determination to believe that such are at least endeavoring to be

what they ought. No doubt there is often most bitter rehuke in the

names! This law of Restraint extends to all the doings of civilized

men. No one does anything to the very utmost of his ability. No

one speaks the entire truth, unless in confidence. No one exerts

his whole bodily strength. No one ever spoke at the very top of

his voice, unless in mortal extremity. Unquestionably, the feeling

that you must work within limits curtails the result accomplished.

You may see this in cases in which the restraint of the civilized

man binds him no longer. A man delirious or mad needs four men to

hold him: there is no restraint keeping in his exertions; and you

see what physical energy can do when utterly unlimited. And a man

who always spoke out in public the entire truth about all men and

all things, would inspire I know not what of terror. He would be

like a mad Malay running a muck, dagger in hand. If the person who

in a deliberative assembly speaks of another person as his venerable

friend, were to speak of him there as he did half an hour before

in private, as an obstructive old idiot, how people would start!

It would be like the bare bones of the skeleton showing through

the fair covering of flesh and blood.

The shadows are lengthening eastward now; the summer day will soon

be gone. And looking about on this beautiful world, I think of

a poem by Bryant, in which he tells us how, gazing on the sky and

the mountains in June, he wished that when his time should come,

the green turf of summer might be broken to make his grave. He could

not bear, he tells us, the idea of being borne to his resting-place

through sleety winds, and covered with icy clods. Of course, poets

give us fanciful views, gained by looking at one side of a picture:

arid De Quincey somewhere states the opposite opinion, that death

seems sadder in summer, because there is a feeling that in quitting

this world our friend is losing more. It will not matter much,

friendly reader, to you and me, what kind of weather there may be

on the day of our respective funerals; though one would wish for

a pleasant, sunshiny time. And let us humbly trust that when we

go, we may find admission to a Place so beautiful, that we shall

not miss the green fields and trees, the roses and honeysuckle of

June. You may think, perhaps, of another reason besides Bryant's,

for preferring to die in the summer time; you remember the quaint

old Scotch lady, dying on a night of rain and hurricane, who said

(in entire simplicity and with nothing of irreverence) to the

circle of relations round her bed, 'Eh, what a fearfu' nicht for

me to be fleein' through the air!' And perhaps it is natural to

think it would be pleasant for the parted spirit, passing away from

human ken and comfort, to mount upwards, angel-guided, through the

soft sunset air of June, towards the country where suns never set,

and where all the days are summer days. But all this is no better

than a wayward fancy; it founds on forgetfulness of the nature of

the immaterial soul, to think that there need be any lengthened

journey, or any flight through skies either stormy or calm. You have

not had the advantage, I dare say, of being taught in your childhood

the catechism which is drilled into all children in Scotland;

and which sketches out with admirable clearness and precision

the elements of Christian belief. If you had, you would have been

taught to repeat words which put away all uncertainty as to the

intermediate state of departed spirits. 'The souls of believers are

at their death made perfect in holiness, and do IMMEDIATELY pass

into glory.' Yes; IMMEDIATELY; there is to the departed spirit no

middle space at all between earth and heaven. The old lady need

not have looked with any apprehension to going out from the warm

chamber into the stormy winter night, and flying far away. Not but

that millions of miles may intervene; not but that the two worlds

may be parted by a still, breathless ocean, a fathomless abyss of

cold dead space; yet, swift as never light went, swift as never

thought went, flies the just man's spirit across the profound.

One moment the sick-room, the scaffold, the stake; the next, the

paradisal glory. One moment the sob of parting anguish; the next

the great deep swell of the angel's song. Never think, reader,

that the dear ones you have seen die, had far to go to meet God

after they parted from you. Never think, parents who have seen

your children die, that after they left you, they had to traverse

a dark solitary way, along which you would have liked (if it had

been possible) to lead them by the hand, and bear them company

till they came into the presence of God. You did so, if you stood

by them till the last breath was drawn. You did bear them company

into God's very presence, if you only stayed beside them till they

died. The moment they left you, they were with him. The slight

pressure of the cold fingers lingered with you yet; but the little

child was with his Saviour.

CHAPTER VI.

CONCERNING SCREWS:

BEING THOUGHTS ON THE PRACTICAL SERVICE OF IMPERFECT MEANS.

A CONSOLATORY ESSAY.

Almost every man is what, if he were a horse, would be called a

screw. Almost every man is unsound. Indeed, my reader, I might well

say even more than this. It would be no more than truth, to say

that there does not breathe any human being who could satisfactorily

pass a thorough examination of his physical and moral nature by a

competent inspector.

I do not here enter on the etymological question, why an unsound

horse is called a screw. Let that be discussed by abler hands.

Possibly the phrase set out at length originally ran, that an unsound

horse was an animal in whose constitution there was a screw loose.

And the jarring effect produced upon any machine by looseness

on the part of a screw which ought to be tight, is well known to

thoughtful and experienced minds. By a process of gradual abbreviation,

the phrase indicated passed into the simpler statement, that the

unsound steed was himself a screw. By a bold transition, by a subtle

intellectual process, the thing supposed to be wrong in the animal's

physical system was taken to mean the animal in whose physical

system the thing was wrong. Or, it is conceivable that the use of

the word screw implied that the animal, possibly in early youth,

had got some unlucky twist or wrench, which permanently damaged its

bodily nature, or warped its moral development. A tendon perhaps

received a tug which it never quite got over. A joint was suddenly

turned in a direction in which Nature had not contemplated its

ever turning: and the joint never played quite smoothly and sweetly

again. In this sense, we should discern in the use of the word screw,

something analogous to the expressive Scotticism, which says of a

perverse and impracticable man, that he is a thrown person; that

is, a person who has got a thraw or twist; or rather, a person the

machinery of whose mind works as machinery might be conceived to

work which had got a thraw or twist. The reflective reader will

easily discern that a complex piece of machinery, by receiving an

unlucky twist, even a slight twist, would be put into a state in

which it would not go sweetly, or would not go at all.

After this excursus, which I regard as not unworthy the attention

of the eminent Dean of Westminster, who has for long been, through

his admirable works, my guide and philosopher in all matters relating

to the study of words, I recur to the grand principle laid down at

the beginning of the present dissertation, and say deliberately,

that ALMOST EVERY MAN THAT LIVES, IS WHAT, IF HE WERE A

HORSE, WOULD BE CALLED A

SCREW. Almost every man is unsound. Every man (to use the language

of a veterinary surgeon) has in him the seeds of unsoundness. You

could not honestly give a warranty with almost any mortal. Alas!

my brother; in the highest and most solemn of all respects, if

soundness ascribed to a creature implies that it is what it ought

to be, who shall venture to warrant any man sound!

I do not mean to make my readers uncomfortable, by suggesting that

every man is physically unsound: I speak of intellectual and moral

unsoundness. You know, the most important thing about a horse is.

his body; and accordingly when we speak of a horse's soundness or

unsoundness, we speak physically; we speak of his body. But the

most important thing about a man is his mind; and so, when we say

a man is sound or unsound, we are thinking of mental soundness or

unsoundness. In short, the man is mainly a soul; the horse is mainly

and essentially a body. And though the moral qualities even of a

horse are of great importance,--such qualities as vice (which in a

horse means malignity of temper), obstinacy, nervous shyness (which

carried out into its practical result becomes shying); still the

name of screw is chiefly suggestive of physical defects. Its main

reference is to wind and limb. The soundness of a horse is to the

philosophic and stable mind suggestive of good legs, shoulders, and

hoofs; of uncongested lungs and free air-passages; of efficient eyes

and entire freedom from staggers. It is the existence of something

wrong in these matters which constitutes the unsound horse, or

screw.

But though the great thing about rational and immortal man is

the soul: and though accordingly the most important soundness or

unsoundness about him is that which has its seat THERE; still, let

it be said that even as regards physical soundness there are few

men whom a veterinary surgeon would pass, if they were horses. Most

educated men are physically in very poor condition. And particularly

the cleverest of our race, in whom intellect is most developed and

cultivated, are for the most part in a very unsatisfactory state as

regards bodily soundness. They rub on: they manage somehow to get

through their work in life; but they never feel brisk or buoyant.

They never know high health, with its attendant cheerfulness. It

is a rare case to find such a combination of muscle and intellect

as existed in Christopher North: the commoner type is the shambling

Wordsworth, whom even his partial sister thought so mean-looking

when she saw him walking with a handsome man. Let it be repeated,

most civilized men are physically unsound. For one thing, most

educated men are broken-winded. They could not trot a quarter of

a mile without great distress. I have been amused, when in church

I have heard a man beyond middle age singing very loud, and plainly

proud of his volume of voice, to see how the last note of the line

was cut short for want of wind. I say nothing of such grave signs

of physical unsoundness as little pangs shooting about the heart,

and little dizzinesses of the brain; these matters are too serious

for this page. But it is certain that educated men, for the most

part, have great portions of their muscular system hardly at all

developed, through want of exercise. The legs of even hard brain-workers

are generally exercised a good deal; for the constitutional exercise

of such is usually walking. But in large town such men give fair

play to no other thews and sinews. More especially the arms of such

men are very flabby. The muscle is soft, and slender. If the fore

legs of a horse were like that, you could not ride him but at the

risk of your neck.

Still, the great thing about man is the mind; and when I set out

by declaring that almost every man is unsound, I was thinking of

mental unsoundness. Most minds are unsound. No horse is accepted

as sound in which the practised eye of the veterinarian can find

some physical defect, something, away from normal development

and action. And if the same rule be applied to us, my readers;

if every man is mentally a screw, in whose intellectual and moral

development a sharp eye can detect something not right in the play

of the machinery or the formation of it; then I fancy that we may

safely lay it down as an axiom, that there is not upon the face of

the earth a perfectly sane man. A sane mind means a healthy mind;

that is, a mind that is exactly what it ought to be. Where shall

we discover such a one? My reader, you have not got it. I have

not got it. Nobody has got it. No doubt, at the first glance, this

seems startling; but I intend this essay to be a consolatory one,

and I wish to show you that in this world it is well if means will

fairly and decently suffice for their ends, even though they be

very far from being all that we could wish. God intends not that

this world should go on upon a system of optimism. It is enough,

if things are so, that they will do. They might do far better. And

let us remember, that though a veterinary surgeon would tell you

that there is hardly such a thing as a perfectly sound horse in

Britain, still in Britain there is very much work done, and well

done, by horses. Even so, much work, fair work, passable work,

noble work, magnificent work, may be turned off, and day by day is

turned off, by minds which, in strict severity, are no better than

good, workable, or showy screws.

Many minds, otherwise good and even noble, are unsound upon the

point of Vanity. Nor is the unsoundness one that requires any very

sharp observer to detect. It is very often extremely conspicuous;

and the merest block-head can discern, and can laugh at, the

unfortunate defect in one who is perhaps a great and excellent man.

Many minds are off the balance in the respect of Suspiciousness;

many in that of absurd Prejudice. Many are unsound in the matters

of Silliness, Pettiness, Pettedness, Perversity, or general Unpleasantness

and Thrawn-ness. Multitudes of men are what in Scotland is called

Cat-witted. I do not know whether the word is intelligible in

England. It implies a combination of littleness of nature, small

self-conceit, readiness to take offence, determination in little

things to have one's own way, and general impracticability. There

are men to whom even the members of their own families do not like

to talk about their plans and views: who will suddenly go off on

a long journey without telling anyone in the house till the minute

before they go; and concerning whom their nearest relatives think

it right to give you a hint that they are rather peculiar in temper,

and you must mind how you talk to them. There are human beings whom

to manage into doing the simplest and most obvious duty, needs, on

your part, the tact of a diplomatist combined with the skill of a

driver of refractory pigs. In short, there are in human beings all

kinds of mental twists and deformities. There are mental lameness

and broken-windedness. Mental and moral shying is extremely common.

As for biting, who does not know it? We have all seen human biters;

not merely backbiters, but creatures who like to leave the marks

of their teeth upon people present too. There are many kickers; men

who in running with others do (so to speak) kick over the traces,

and viciously lash out at their companions with little or no

provocation. There are men who are always getting into quarrels,

though in the main warm-hearted and well-meaning. There are human

jibbers: creatures that lie down in the shafts instead of manfully

(or horsefully) putting their neck to the collar, and going stoutly at

the work of life. There are multitudes of people who are constantly

suffering from depression of spirits, a malady which appears

in countless forms. There is not a human being in whose mental

constitution there is not something wrong; some weakness, some

perversion, some positive vice. And if you want further proof

of the truth of what I am saying, given by one whose testimony is

worth much more than mine, go and read that eloquent and kindly and

painfully fascinating book lately published by Dr. Forbes Winslow,

on Obscure Diseases of the Brain and Mind; and you will leave off

with the firmest conviction that every breathing mortal is mentally

a screw.

And yet, my reader, if you have some knowledge of horse-flesh, and

if you have been accustomed in your progress through life (in the

words of Dr. Johnson) to practise observation, and to look about

you with extensive view, your survey must have convinced you that

great part of the coaching and other horse work of this country is

done, and fairly done, by screws. These poor creatures are out in

all kinds of weather, and it seems to do them little harm. Any one

who knows how snug, dry, and warm a gentleman's horses are kept,

and how often with all that they are unfit for their duty, will

wonder to see poor cab horses shivering on the stand hour after

hour on a winter day, and will feel something of respect mingle

with his pity for the thin, patient, serviceable screws. Horses

that are lame, broken-winded, and vicious, pull the great bulk of

all the weight that horses pull. And they get through their work

somehow. Not long since, sitling on the box of a highland coach of

most extraordinary shape, I travelled through Glenorchy and along

Loch Awe side. The horses were wretched to look at, yet they took

the coach at a good pace over that very up and down road, which

was divided into very long stages. At last, amid a thick wood of

dwarf oaks, the coach stopped to receive its final team. It was an

extraordinary place for a coach to change horses. There was not a

house near: the horses had walked three miles from their stable.

They were by far the best team that had drawn the coach that day.

Four tall greys, nearly white with age; but they looked well and went

well, checking the coach stoutly as they went down the precipitous

descents, and ascending the opposite hills at a tearing gallop.

No doubt you could see various things amiss. They were blowing a

little; one or two were rather blind; and all four a little stiff

at starting. They were all screws. The dearest of them had not cost

the coach proprietor seven pounds; yet how well they went over the

eleven-mile stage into Inverary!

Now in like manner, a great part of the mental work that is done,

is done by men who mentally are screws. The practical every-day

work of life is done, and respectably done, by very silly, weak,

prejudiced people. Mr. Carlyle has stated, that the population of

Britain consists of 'seventeen millions of people, mostly fools.'

I shall endeavour by and bye to make some reservation upon the great

author's sweeping statement; but here it is enough to remark that

even Mr. Carlyle would admit that the very great majority of these

seventeen millions get very decently and creditably through the

task which God sets them in this world. Let it be admitted that they

are not so wise as they should be; yet surely it may be admitted

too, that they possess that in heart and head which makes them

good enough for the rough and homely wear of life. No doubt they

blow and occasionally stumble, they sometimes even bite and kick

a little; yet somehow they get the coach along. For it is to be

remembered that the essential characteristic of a screw is, that

though unsound, it can yet by management be got to go through a

great deal of work. The screw is not dead lame, nor only fit for

the knacker; it falls far short of the perfection of a horse, but

still it is a horse, after all, and it can fulfil in some measure

a horse's duty. You see, my friend, the moderation of my view. I

do not say that men in general are mad, but only that men in general

are screws. There is a little twist in their intellectual or moral

nature; there is something wanting or something wrong; they are

silly, conceited, egotistical, and the like; yet decently equal

to the work of this world. By judicious management you may get a

great deal of worthy work out of the unsound minds of other men;

and out of your own unsound mind. But always remember that you have

an imperfect and warped machine to get on with; do not expect too

much of it; and be ready to humour it and yield to it a little.

Just as a horse which is lame and broken-winded can yet by care

and skill be made to get creditably through a wonderful amount of

labour; so may a man, low-spirited, foolish, prejudiced, ill-tempered,

soured, and wretched, be enabled to turn off a great deal of work

for which the world may be the better. A human being who is really

very weak and silly, may write many pages which shall do good to

his fellow men, or which shall at the least amuse them. But as you

carefully drive an unsound horse, walking him at first starting,

not trotting him down hill, making play at parts of the road which

suit him; so you must manage many men, or they will break down or

bolt out of the path. Above all, so you must manage your own mind,

whose weaknesses and wrong impulses you know best, if you would

keep it cheerful, and keep it in working order. The showy, unsound

horse can go well perhaps, but it must be shod with leather, otherwise

it would be dead-lame in a mile. And just in that same fashion we

human beings, all more or less of screws mentally and morally, need

all kinds of management, on the part of our friends and on our own

part, or we should go all wrong. There is something truly fearful

when we find that clearest-headed and soberest-hearted of men,

the great Bishop Butler, telling us that all his life long he was

struggling with horrible morbid suggestions, devilish is what he

calls them, which, but for being constantly held in check with the

sternest effort of his nature, would have driven him mad. Oh, let

the uncertain, unsound, unfathomable human heart be wisely and

tenderly driven! And as there are things which with the unsound

horse you dare not venture on at all, so with the fallen mind. You

who know your own horse, know that you dare not trot him hard down

hill. And you who know your own mind and heart, know that there are

some things of which you dare not think; thoughts on which your

only safety is resolutely to turn your back. The management needful

here is the management of utter avoidance. How often we find poor

creatures who have passed through years of anxiety and misery,

and experienced savage and deliberate cruelty which it is best to

forget, lashing themselves up to wrath and bitterness by brooding

over these things, on which wisdom would bid them try to close

their eyes for ever!

But not merely do screws daily draw cabs and stage-coaches: screws

have won the Derby and the St. Leger. A noble-looking thorough-bred

has galloped by the winning-post at Epsom at the rate of forty

miles an hour, with a white bandage tightly tied round one of

its fore-legs: and thus publicly confessing its unsoundness, and

testifying to its trainer's fears, it has beaten a score of steeds

which were not screws, and borne off from them the blue ribbon of

the turf. Yes, my reader: not only will skilful management succeed

in making unsound animals do decently the hum-drum and prosaic

task-work of the equine world; it will succeed occasionally in

making unsound animals do in magnificent style the grandest things

that horses ever do at all. Don't you see the analogy I mean to

trace? Even so, not merely do Mr. Carlyle's seventeen millions of

fools get somehow through the petty wrork of our modern life, but

minds which no man could warrant sound and free from vice, turn off

some of the noblest work that ever was done by mortal. Many of the

grandest things ever done by human minds, have been done by minds

that were incurable screws. Think of the magnificent service done

to humankind by James Watt. It is positively impossible to calculate

what we all owe to the man that gave us iho steam-engine. It is

sober truth that the inscription in Westminster Abbey tells, when

it speaks of him as among the 'best benefactors' of the race. Yet

what an unsound organization that great man had! Mentally, what a

screw! Through most of his life, he suffered the deepest misery

from desperate depression of spirits; he was always fancying that

his mind was breaking down: he has himself recorded that he often

thought of casting off, by suicide, the unendurable burden of life.

And Still, what work the rickety machine got through! With tearing

headaches, with a sunken chest, with the least muscular of limbs,

with the most melancholy of temperaments, worried and tormented by

piracies of his great inventions, yet doing so much and doing it

so nobly, was not James Watt like the lame race-horse that won the

Derby? As for Byron, he was unquestionably a very great man; and

as a poet, he is in his own school without a rival. Still, he was

a screw. There was something morbid and unsound about his entire

development. In many respects he was extremely silly. It was

extremely silly to take pains to represent that he was morally

much worse than he really was. The greatest blockheads I know are

distinguished by the same characteristic. Oh, empty-headed Noodle!

who have more than once dropped hints in my presence as to the awful

badness of your life, and the unhappy insight which your life has

given you into the moral rottenness of society, don't do it again.

I always thought you a contemptible fool: but next time I mean to

tell you so. Wordsworth was a screw. Though one of the greatest of

poets, he was dreadfully twisted by inordinate egotism and vanity:

the result partly of original constitution, and partly of living

a great deal too much alone in that damp and misty lake country.

lie was like a spavined horse. Coleridge, again, was a jibber. He

never would pull in the team of life. There is something unsound

in the mind of the man who fancies that because he is a genius,

he need not support his wife and children. Even the sensible and

exemplary Southey was a little unsound in the matter of a crotchety

temper, needlessly ready to take offence. He was always quarrelling

with his associates in the Quarterly Review: with the editor and

the publisher. Perhaps you remember how on one occasion he wrought

himself up into a fever of wrath with Mr. Murray, because that

gentleman suggested a subject on which he wished Southey to write

for the Quarterly, and begged him to put his whole strength to it,

the subject being one which was just then of great interest and

importance. 'Flagrant insolence,' exclaimed Southey. 'Think of

the fellow bidding me put my whole strength to an article in his

six-shilling Review!' Now, reader, there you see the evil consequence

of a man who is a little of a screw in point of temper, living in

the country. Most reasonable men would never have discerned any

insult in Mr. Murray's request: but even if such a one had thought

it a shade too authoritatively expressed, he would, if he had lived

in town, gone out to the crowded street, gone down to his club,

and in half an hour have entirely forgotten the little disagreeable

impression. But a touchy man, dwelling in the country, gets the

irritative letter by the morning's post, is worried by it all the

forenoon, and goes out and broods on the offence through all his

solitary afternoon walk,--a walk in which he does not see a face,

perhaps, and certainly does not exchange a sentence with any human

being whose presence is energetic enough to turn the current of

thought into a healthier direction. And so, by the evening he has

got the little offence into the point of view in which it looks

most offensive: he is in a rage at being asked to do his best in

writing anything for a six-shilling publication. Why on earth not

do so? Is not the mind unsoundly sensitive that finds an offence

in a request like that? My brilliant brethren who write for Fraser,

don't you put your whole strength to articles to be published in

a periodical that sells for half-a-crown?

You could not have warranted manly Samuel Johnson sound, on the

points of prejudice and bigotry. There was something unsound in that

unreasoning hatred of everything Scotch. Rousseau was altogether

a screw. He was mentally lame, broken-winded, a shyer, a kicker, a

jibber, a biter: he would do anything but run right on and do his

duty. Shelley was a notorious screw. I should say, indeed, that

his unsoundness passed the limit of practical sanity, and that

on certain points he was unquestionably mad. You could not have

warranted Keats sound. You could not deny the presence of a little

perverse twist even in the noble mind and heart of the great

Sir Charles Napier. The great Emperor Napoleon was cracky, if not

cracked, on various points. There was unsoundness in his strange

belief in his Fate. Neither Bacon nor Newton was entirely sound.

But the mention of Newton suggests to me the single specimen of

human kind who might stand even before him: and reminds me that

Shakspeare was as sound as any mortal ean be. Any defect in him

extends no farther than to his taste: and possibly where we should

differ from him, he is right and we are wrong. You could not say

that Shakspeare was mentally a screw. The noblest of all genius

is sober and reasonable: it is among geniuses of the second order

that you find something so warped, so eccentric, so abnormal, as

to come up to our idea of a screw. Sir Walter Scott was sound: save

perhaps in the matter of his veneration for George IV., and of his

desire to take rank as one of the country gentlemen of Roxburghshire.

To sum up: let it be admitted that very noble work has been turned

off by minds in so far unhinged. It is not merely that great wits

are to madness near allied, it is that great wits are sometimes

actually in part mad. Madness is a matter of degree. The slightest

departure from the normal and healthy action of the mind is an

approximation to it. Every mind is a little unsound; but you don't

talk of insanity till the un.-oundness becomes very glaring, and

unfits for the duty of life. Just as almost every horse is a little

lame: one leg steps a hair-breadth shorter than the other, or is

a thought less muscular, or the hoof is a shade too sensitive; but

you don't talk of lameness till the creature's head begins to go

up and down, or till it plainly shrinks from putting its foot to

the ground. Southey's wrath about the six-shilling Review, and his

brooding on Murray's slight offence, was a step in the direction

of marked delusion such as conveys a man to Harwell or Morningside.

And the sensitive, imaginative nature, which goes to the production

of some of the human mind's best productions, is prone to such

little deviations from that which is strictly sensible and right.

You do not think, gay young readers, what poor unhappy half-cracked

creatures may have written the pages which thrill you or amuse

you; or painted the picture before which you pause so long. I know

hardly any person who ever published anything; but I have sometimes

thought that I should like to see assembled in one chamber, on the

first of any month, all the men and women who wrote all the articles

in all the magazines for that month. Some of them doubtless would

be very much like other people; but many would certainly be very

odd-looking and odd-tempered samples of humankind. The history of

some would be commonplace enough, but that of many would be very

curious. A great many readers, I dare say, would like to stand

in a gallery, and look at the queer individuals assembled below.

Magazine articles, of course, are not (speaking generally) specimens

of the highest order of literature; but still, some experience, some

thought, some observation, have gone to produce even them. And it

is unquestionably out of deep sorrow, out of the travail of heart

and nature, that the finest and noblest of all human thoughts have

come.

As for the ordinary task-work of life, it must, beyond all question,

be generally done by screws,--that is, by folk whose mental

organization is unsound on some point. Vain people, obstinate people,

silly people, evil-foreboding people, touchy people, twaddling

people, carry on the work-day world. Not that it would be giving a

fair account of them to describe them thus, and leave the impression

that such are their essential characteristics. They are all that

has been said; but there is in most a good substratum of practical

sense; and they do fairly, or even remarkably well, the particular

thing which it is their business in this life to do. When Mr. Carlyle

said that the population of Britain consists of so many millions,

'mostly fools,' he conveys a quite wrong impression. No doubt

there are some who are silly out and out, who are always fools,

and essentially fools. No doubt almost all, if you questioned them

on great matters of which they have hardly thought, would express

very foolish and absurd opinions. But then these absurd opinions

are not the staple production of their minds. These are not a fair

sample of their ordinary thoughts. Their ordinary thoughts are,

in the main, sensible and reasonable, no doubt. Once upon a time,

while a famous criminal trial was exciting vast interest, I heard

a man in a railway-carriage, with looks of vast slyness and of

special stores of information, tell several others that the judge

and the counsel on each side had met quietly the evening before

to arrange what the verdict should be; and that though the trial

would go on to its end to delude the public, still the whole thing

was already settled. Now, my first impulse was to regard the man

with no small interest, and to say to myself, There, unquestionably,

is a fool. But, on reflection, I felt I was wrong. No doubt he

talked like a fool on this point. No doubt he expressed himself in

terms worthy of an asylum for idiots. But the man may have been a

very shrewd and sensible man in matters with which he was accustomed

to deal: he was a horse-dealer, I believe, and I doubt not sharp

enough at market; and the idiotic appearance he made was the

result of his applying his understanding to a matter quite beyond

his experience and out of his province. But a man is not properly

to be called a fool, even though occasionally he says and does very

foolish things, if the great preponderance of the things he says

and does be reasonable. No doubt Mr. Carlyle is right in so far

as this: that in almost every man there is an element of the fool.

Almost all have a vein of folly running through them, and cropping

out at the surface now and then. But in most men that is not the

characteristic part of their nature. There is more of the sensible

man than of the fool.

For the forms of unsoundness in those who are mental screws

of the commonplace order; they are endless. You sometimes meet an

intellectual defect like that of the conscientious blockhead James

II., who thought that to differ from him in opinion was to doubt his

word and call him a liar. An unsoundness common to all uneducated

people is, that they cannot argue any question without getting

into a rage and roaring at the top of their voice. This unsoundness

exists in a good many educated men too. A peculiar twist of some

minds is this--that instead of maintaining by argument the thesis

they are maintaining, which is probably that two and two make five,

they branch off and begin to adduce arguments which do not go to

prove that, but to prove that the man who maintains that two and two

make four is a fool, or even a ruffian. Some good men are subject

to this infirmity--that if you differ from them on any point

whatever, they regard the fact of your differing from them as

proof, not merely that you are intellectually stupid, but that you

are morally depraved. Some really good men and women cannot let

slip an opportunity of saying anything that may be disagreeable.

And this is an evil that tends to perpetuate itself; for when Mr.

Snarling comes and says to you something uncomplimentary of yourself

or your near relations, instead of your doing what you ought to

do, and pitying poor Snarling, and recommending him some wholesome

medicine, you are strongly tempted to retort in kind: and thus you

sink yourself to Snarling's level, and you carry on the row. Your

proper course is either to speak kindly to poor Snarling, or not

to speak to him at all. There is something unsound about the man

whom you never heard say a good word of any mortal, but whom you

have heard say a great many bad words of a great many mortals. There

is unsoundness verging on entire insanity in the man who is always

fancying that all about him are constantly plotting to thwart his

plans and damage his character. There is unsoundness in the man

who is constantly getting into furious altercations with his fellow

passengers in steamers and rail-ways, or getting into angry and

lengthy correspondence with anybody in the newspapers or otherwise.

There is unsoundness in the man who is ever telling you amazing

stories which he fancies prove himself to be the bravest, cleverest,

swiftest of mankind, but which (on his own showing) prove him to

be a vapouring goose. There is unsoundness in the man or woman who

turns green with envy as a handsome carriage drives past, and then

says with awful bitterness that he or she would not enter such a

shabby old conveyance. There is unsoundness in the mortal whose memory

is full to repletion of contemptible little stories going to prove

that all his neighbours are rogues or fools. There is unsoundness

in the unfortunate persons who are always bursting into tears and

bahooing out that nobody loves them. Nobody will, so long as they

bahoo. Let them stop bahooing. There is unsoundness in the mental

organization of the sneaky person who stays a few weeks in a

family, and sets each member of it against all the rest by secretly

repeating to each exaggerated and malicious accounts of what has

been paid as to him or her by the others. There is unsoundness in

the perverse person who resolutely docs the opposite of what you

wish and expect: who won't go the pleasure excursion you had arranged

on his account, or partake of the dish which has been cooked for his

special eating. There is unsoundness in the deluded and unamiable

person who, by a grim, repellent, Pharisaic demeanour and address

excites in the minds of young persons gloomy and repulsive ideas

of religion, which wiser and better folk find it very hard to rub

away. 'Will my father be there?' said a little Scotch boy to some

one who had been telling him of the Happiest Place in the universe,

and recounting its joys. 'Yes,' was the reply. Said the little

man, with prompt decision, 'Then I'll no gang!' He must have been

a wretched screw of a Christian who left that impression on a young

child's heart. There is unsoundness in the man who cannot listen to

the praises of another man's merit without feeling as though this

were something taken from himself. And it is amusing, though sad,

to gee how such folk take for granted in others the same pretty

enviousness which they feel in themselves. They will go to one

writer, painter, preacher, and begin warmly to praise the doings

of another man in the same vocation; and when I have seen the

man addressed listen to and add to the praises with the hearty,

self-forgetting sincerity of a generous mind, I have witnessed the

bitter disappointment of the petty malignants at the failure of

their poisoned dart. Generous honesty quite baffles such. If their

dart ever wounds you, reader, it is because you deserve that it

should. There is unsoundness in the kindly, loveable man, whose

opinions are preposterous, and whose conversation that of a jackass.

But still, who can help loving the man, occasionally to be met,

whose heart is right and whose talk is twaddle? Let me add, that

I have met with one or two cases in which conscience was quite

paralysed, but all the other intellectual faculties were right.

Surely there is no more deplorable instance of the mental screw.

Tou may find the notorious cheat who is never out of church, and who

fancies himself a most creditable man. You will find the malicious

tale-bearer and liar, who attends all the prayer-meetings within

her reach, and who thanks God (like an individual in former days)

that she is so much better than other women.