Now from that day the humble Lenny and the regal Violante became great
friends. With what pride he taught her to distinguish between celery and
weeds--and how proud too was she when she learned that she was _useful_!
There is not a greater pleasure you can give to children, especially
female children, than to make them feel they are already of value in the
world, and serviceable as well as protected. Weeks and months rolled
away, and Lenny still read, not only the books lent him by the Doctor,
but those he bought of Mr. Sprott. As for the bombs and shells against
religion which the Tinker carried in his bag, Lenny was not induced to
blow himself up with them. He had been reared from his cradle in simple
love and reverence for the Divine Father, and the tender Saviour, whose
life, beyond all records of human goodness, whose death, beyond all
epics of mortal heroism, no being whose infancy has been taught to
supplicate the Merciful and adore the Holy, yea, even though his later
life may be entangled amidst the thorns of some desolate pyrrhonism, can
ever hear reviled and scoffed without a shock to the conscience and a
revolt of the heart. As the deer recoils by instinct from the tiger, as
the very look of the scorpion deters you from handling it, though you
never saw a scorpion before, so the very first line in some ribald
profanity on which the Tinker put his black finger, made Lenny's blood
run cold. Safe, too, was the peasant boy from any temptation in works of
a gross and licentious nature, not only because of the happy ignorance
of his rural life, but because of a more enduring safeguard--genius!
Genius, that, manly, robust, healthful as it be, is long before it loses
its instinctive Dorian modesty; shamefaced, because so susceptible to
glory--genius, that loves indeed to dream, but on the violet bank, not
the dung-hill. Wherefore, even in the error of the senses, it seeks to
escape from the sensual into worlds of fancy, subtle and refined. But
apart from the passions, true genius is the most practical of all human
gifts. Like the Apollo, whom the Greek worshipped as its type, even
Arcady is its exile, not its home. Soon weary of the dalliance of Tempe,
it ascends to its mission--the archer of the silver bow, the guide of
the car of light. Speaking more plainly, genius is the enthusiasm for
self-improvement; it ceases or sleeps the moment it desists from seeking
some object which it believes of value, and by that object it insensibly
connects its self-improvement with the positive advance of the world. At
present Lenny's genius had no bias that was not to the positive and
useful. It took the direction natural to his sphere, and the wants
therein--viz., to the arts which call mechanical. He wanted to know
about steam-engines and artesian wells; and to know about them it was
necessary to know something of mechanics and hydrostatics; so he bought
popular elementary works on those mystic sciences, and set all the
powers of his mind at work on experiments.
Noble and generous spirits are ye, who, with small care for fame, and
little reward from pelf, have opened to the intellects of the poor the
portals of wisdom! I honor and revere ye; only do not think ye have done
all that is needful. Consider, I pray ye, whether so good a choice from
the Tinker's bag would have been made by a boy whom religion had not
scared from the pestilent, and genius had not led to the self-improving.
And Lenny did not wholly escape from the mephitic portions of the motley
elements from which his awakening mind drew its nurture. Think not it
was all pure oxygen that the panting lips drew in. No; there were still
those inflammatory tracts. Political I do not like to call them, for
politics mean the art of government, and the tracts I speak of assailed
all government which mankind has hitherto recognized. Sad rubbish,
perhaps, were such tracts to you, O sound thinker, in your easy-chair!
Or to you, practised statesman, at your post on the treasury bench--to
you, calm dignitary of a learned church--or to you, my lord judge, who
may often have sent from your bar to the dire Orcus of Norfolk's Isle
the ghosts of men whom that rubbish, falling simultaneously on the bumps
of acquisitiveness and combativeness, hath untimely slain. Sad rubbish
to you! But seems it such rubbish to the poor man, to whom it promises a
paradise on the easy terms of upsetting a world! For ye see, these
"Appeals to Operatives" represent that same world-upsetting as the
simplest thing imaginable--a sort of two-and-two-make-four proposition.
The poor have only got to set their strong hands to the axle, and
heave-a-hoy! and hurrah for the topsy-turvy! Then, just to put a little
wholesome rage into the heave-a-hoy! it is so facile to accompany
the eloquence of "Appeals" with a kind of stir-the-bile-up
statistics--"Abuses of the Aristocracy"--"Jobs of the
Priesthood"--"Expenses of Army kept up for Peers' younger sons"--"Wars
contracted for the villainous purpose of raising the rents of the
land-owners"--all arithmetically dished up, and seasoned with tales of
every gentleman who has committed a misdeed, every clergyman who has
dishonored his cloth; as if such instances were fair specimens of
average gentlemen and ministers of religion! All this passionately
advanced, (and observe, never answered, for that literature admits no
controversialists, and the writer has it all his own way) may be
rubbish; but it is out of such rubbish that operatives build barricades
for attack, and legislators prisons for defence.
Our poor friend Lenny drew plenty of this stuff from the Tinker's bag.
He thought it very clever and very eloquent; and he supposed the
statistics were as true as mathematical demonstrations.
A famous knowledge-diffuser is looking over my shoulder, and tells me,
"Increase education, and cheapen good books, and all this rubbish will
disappear!" Sir, I don't believe a word of it. If you printed Ricardo
and Adam Smith at a farthing a volume, I still believe that they would
be as little read by the operatives as they are now-a-days by a very
large proportion of highly cultivated men. I still believe that, while
the press works, attacks on the rich, and propositions for heave-a-hoys,
will always form a popular portion of the Literature of Labor. There's
Lenny Fairfield reading a treatise on hydraulics, and constructing a
model for a fountain into the bargain; but that does not prevent his
acquiescence in any proposition for getting rid of a National Debt,
which he certainly never agreed to pay, and which he is told makes sugar
and tea so shamefully dear. No. I tell you what does a little counteract
those eloquent incentives to break his own head against the strong walls
of the Social System--it is, that he has two eyes in that head, which
are not always employed in reading. And, having been told in print that
masters are tyrants, parsons hypocrites or drones in the hive, and
land-owners vampires and bloodsuckers, he looks out into the little
world around him, and, first, he is compelled to acknowledge that his
master is not a tyrant, (perhaps because he is a foreigner and a
philosopher, and, for what I and Lenny know, a republican.) But then
Parson Dale, though High Church to the marrow, is neither hypocrite nor
drone. He has a very good living, it is true--much better than he ought
to have, according to the "political" opinions of those tracts; but
Lenny is obliged to confess that, if Parson Dale were a penny the
poorer, he would do a pennyworth's less good; and, comparing one parish
with another, such as Roodhall and Hazeldean, he is dimly aware that
there is no greater CIVILIZER than a parson tolerably well off. Then,
too, Squire Hazeldean, though as arrant a Tory as ever stood upon
shoe-leather, is certainly not a vampire nor bloodsucker. He does not
feed on the public; a great many of the public feed upon him; and,
therefore, his practical experience a little staggers and perplexes
Lenny Fairfield as to the gospel accuracy of his theoretical dogmas.
Masters, parsons, and land-owners! having at the risk of all popularity,
just given a _coup de patte_ to certain sages extremely the fashion at
present, I am not going to let you off without an admonitory flea in the
ear. Don't suppose that any mere scribbling and typework will suffice to
answer the scribbling and typework set at work to demolish you--_write_
down that rubbish you can't--_live_ it down you may. If you are rich,
like Squire Hazeldean, do good with your money; if you are poor, like
Signor Riccabocca, do good with your kindness.
See! there is Lenny now receiving his week's wages; and though Lenny
knows that he can get higher wages in the very next parish, his blue
eyes are sparkling with gratitude, not at the chink of the money, but at
the poor exile's friendly talk on things apart from all service; while
Violante is descending the steps from the terrace, charged by her
mother-in-law with a little basket of sago, and such-like delicacies,
for Mrs. Fairfield, who has been ailing the last few days.
Lenny will see the Tinker as he goes home, and he will buy a most
Demosthenean "Appeal"--a tract of tracts, upon the "Propriety of
Strikes," and the Avarice of Masters. But, somehow or other, I think a
few words from Signor Riccabocca, that did not cost the Signor a
farthing, and the sight of his mother's smile at the contents of the
basket, which cost very little, will serve to neutralise the effects of
that "Appeal," much more efficaciously than the best article a Brougham
or a Mill could write on the subject.