Character Part 26

[Footnote 161: From Lovelace's lines to Lucusta [16Lucy Sacheverell], 'Going to the Wars.']

[Footnote 162: Amongst other great men of genius, Ariosto and Michael Angelo devoted to her their service and their muse.]

[Footnote 163: See the Rev. F. W. Farrar's admirable book, ent.i.tled 'Seekers after G.o.d' [16Sunday Library]. The author there says: "Epictetus was not a Christian. He has only once alluded to the Christians in his works, and then it is under the opprobrious t.i.tle of 'Galileans,' who practised a kind of insensibility in painful circ.u.mstances, and an indifference to worldly interests, which Epictetus unjustly sets down to 'mere habit.'

Unhappily, it was not granted to these heathen philosophers in any true sense to know what Christianity was. They thought that it was an attempt to imitate the results of philosophy, without having pa.s.sed through the necessary discipline. They viewed it with suspicion, they treated it with injustice. And yet in Christianity, and in Christianity alone, they would have found an ideal which would have surpa.s.sed their loftiest antic.i.p.ations."]

[Footnote 164: Sparks' 'Life of Washington,' pp. 141-2.]

[Footnote 165: Wellington, like Washington, had to pay the penalty of his adherence to the cause he thought right, in his loss of "popularity." He was mobbed in the streets of London, and had his windows smashed by the mob, while his wife lay dead in the house. Sir Walter Scott also was hooted and pelted at Hawick by "the people," amidst cries of "Burke Sir Walter!"]

[Footnote 166: Robertson's 'Life and Letters,' ii. 157.]

[Footnote 167: We select the following pa.s.sages from this remarkable report of Baron Stoffel, as being of more than merely temporary interest:--Who that has lived here [16Berlin] will deny that the Prussians are energetic, patriotic, and teeming with youthful vigour; that they are not corrupted by sensual pleasures, but are manly, have earnest convictions, do not think it beneath them to reverence sincerely what is n.o.ble and lofty?

What a melancholy contrast does France offer in all this? Having sneered at everything, she has lost the faculty of respecting anything.

Virtue, family life, patriotism, honour, religion, are represented to a frivolous generation as fitting subjects of ridicule. The theatres have become schools of shamelessness and obscenity. Drop by drop, poison is instilled into the very core of an ignorant and enervated society, which has neither the insight nor the energy left to amend its inst.i.tutions, nor--which would be the most necessary step to take--become better informed or more moral. One after the other the fine qualities of the nation are dying out. Where is the generosity, the loyalty, the charm of our ESPRIT, and our former elevation of soul? If this goes on, the time will come when this n.o.ble race of France will be known only by its faults. And France has no idea that while she is sinking, more earnest nations are stealing the march upon her, are distancing her on the road to progress, and are preparing for her a secondary position in the world.

"I am afraid that these opinions will not be relished in France. However correct, they differ too much from what is usually said and a.s.serted at home. I should wish some enlightened and unprejudiced Frenchmen to come to Prussia and make this country their study. They would soon discover that they were living in the midst of a strong, earnest, and intelligent nation, entirely dest.i.tute, it is true, of n.o.ble and delicate feelings, of all fascinating charms, but endowed with every solid virtue, and alike distinguished for untiring industry, order, and economy, as well as for patriotism, a strong sense of duty, and that consciousness of personal dignity which in their case is so happily blended with respect for authority and obedience to the law. They would see a country with firm, sound, and moral inst.i.tutions, whose upper cla.s.ses are worthy of their rank, and, by possessing the highest degree of culture, devoting themselves to the service of the State, setting an example of patriotism, and knowing how to preserve the influence legitimately their own. They would find a State with an excellent administration where everything is in its right place, and where the most admirable order prevails in every branch of the social and political system. Prussia may be well compared to a ma.s.sive structure of lofty proportions and astounding solidity, which, though it has nothing to delight the eye or speak to the heart, cannot but impress us with its grand symmetry, equally observable in its broad foundations as in its strong and sheltering roof.

"And what is France? What is French society in these latter days? A hurly-burly of disorderly elements, all mixed and jumbled together; a country in which everybody claims the right to occupy the highest posts, yet few remember that a man to be employed in a responsible position ought to have a well-balanced mind, ought to be strictly moral, to know something of the world, and possess certain intellectual powers; a country in which the highest offices are frequently held by ignorant and uneducated persons, who either boast some special talent, or whose only claim is social position and some versatility and address. What a baneful and degrading state of things! And how natural that, while it lasts, France should be full of a people without a position, without a calling, who do not know what to do with themselves, but are none the less eager to envy and malign every one who does....

"The French do not possess in any very marked degree the qualities required to render general conscription acceptable, or to turn it to account. Conceited and egotistic as they are, the people would object to an innovation whose invigorating force they are unable to comprehend, and which cannot be carried out without virtues which they do not possess--self-abnegation, conscientious recognition of duty, and a willingness to sacrifice personal interests to the loftier demands of the country. As the character of individuals is only improved by experience, most nations require a chastis.e.m.e.nt before they set about reorganising their political inst.i.tutions. So Prussia wanted a Jena to make her the strong and healthy country she is."]

[Footnote 168: Yet even in De Tocqueville's benevolent nature, there was a pervading element of impatience. In the very letter in which the above pa.s.sage occurs, he says: "Some persons try to be of use to men while they despise them, and others because they love them. In the services rendered by the first, there is always something incomplete, rough, and contemptuous, that inspires neither confidence nor grat.i.tude. I should like to belong to the second cla.s.s, but often I cannot. I love mankind in general, but I constantly meet with individuals whose baseness revolts me. I struggle daily against a universal contempt for my fellow, creatures."--MEMOIRS AND REMAINS OF DE TOCQUEVILLE, vol. i. p. 813.

[Footnote 16Letter to Kergorlay, Nov. 13th, 1833].]

[Footnote 169: Gleig's 'Life of Wellington,' pp. 314, 315.]

[Footnote 1610: 'Life of Arnold,' i. 94.]

[Footnote 1611: See the 'Memoir of George Wilson, M.D., F.R.S.E.' By his sister [Footnote 16Edinburgh, 1860].]

[Footnote 1612: Such cases are not unusual. We personally knew a young lady, a countrywoman of Professor Wilson, afflicted by cancer in the breast, who concealed the disease from her parents lest it should occasion them distress. An operation became necessary; and when the surgeons called for the purpose of performing it, she herself answered the door, received them with a cheerful countenance, led them upstairs to her room, and submitted to the knife; and her parents knew nothing of the operation until it was all over. But the disease had become too deeply seated for recovery, and the n.o.ble self-denying girl died, cheerful and uncomplaining to the end.

[Footnote 1613: "One night, about eleven o'clock, Keats returned home in a state of strange physical excitement--it might have appeared, to those who did not know him, one of fierce intoxication. He told his friend he had been outside the stage-coach, had received a severe chill, was a little fevered, but added, 'I don't feel it now.' He was easily persuaded to go to bed, and as he leapt into the cold sheets, before his head was on the pillow, he slightly coughed and said, 'That is blood from my mouth; bring me the candle; let me see this blood' He gazed steadfastly for some moments at the ruddy stain, and then, looking in his friend's face with an expression of sudden calmness never to be forgotten, said, 'I know the colour of that blood--it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die!'"--Houghton's LIFE OF KEATS, Ed. 1867, p. 289.

In the case of George Wilson, the bleeding was in the first instance from the stomach, though he afterwards suffered from lung haemorrhage like Keats. Wilson afterwards, speaking of the Lives of Lamb and Keats, which had just appeared, said he had been reading them with great sadness. "There is," said he, "something in the n.o.ble brotherly love of Charles to brighten, and hallow, and relieve that sadness; but Keats's deathbed is the blackness of midnight, unmitigated by one ray of light!"]

[Footnote 1614: On the doctors, who attended him in his first attack, mistaking the haemorrhage from the stomach for haemorrhage from the lungs, he wrote: "It would have been but poor consolation to have had as an epitaph:--

"Here lies George Wilson, Overtaken by Nemesis; He died not of Haemoptysis, But of Haematemesis."]

[Footnote 1615: 'Memoir,' p. 427.]

[Footnote 171: Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living.']

[Footnote 172: 'Michelet's 'Life of Luther,' pp. 411-12.]

[Footnote 173: Sir John Kaye's 'Lives of Indian Officers.']

[Footnote 174: 'Deontology,' pp. 130-1, 144.]

[Footnote 175: 'Letters and Essays,' p. 67.]

[Footnote 176: 'Beauties of St. Francis de Sales.']

[Footnote 177: Ibid.]

[Footnote 178: 'Life of Perthes,' ii. 449.]

[Footnote 179: Moore's 'Life of Byron,' 8vo. Ed., p. 483.]

[Footnote 181: Locke thought it of greater importance that an educator of youth should be well-bred and well-tempered, than that he should be either a thorough cla.s.sicist or man of science. Writing to Lord Peterborough on his son's education, Locke said: "Your Lordship would have your son's tutor a thorough scholar, and I think it not much matter whether he be any scholar or no: if he but understand Latin well, and have a general scheme of the sciences, I think that enough. But I would have him WELL-BRED and WELL-TEMPERED."]

[Footnote 182: Mrs. Hutchinson's 'Memoir of the Life of Lieut.-Colonel Hutchinson,'

p. 32.]

[Footnote 183: 'Letters and Essays,' p. 59.]

[Footnote 184: 'Lettres d'un Voyageur.']

[Footnote 185: Sir Henry Taylor's 'Statesman,' p. 59.]

[Footnote 186: Introduction to the 'Princ.i.p.al Speeches and Addresses of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort,' 1862.]

[Footnote 187:

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beween my outcast state, And troubled deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate; WISHING ME LIKE TO ONE MORE RICH IN HOPE, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy, contented least; Yet in these thoughts, MYSELF ALMOST DESPISING, Haply I think on thee," &c.--SONNET XXIX.

"So I, MADE LAME by sorrow's dearest spite," &c.--SONNET x.x.xVI]

[Footnote 188: "And strength, by LIMPING sway disabled," &c.--SONNET LXVI.

"Speak of MY LAMENESS, and I straight will halt."--SONNET Lx.x.xIX.]

[Footnote 189:

"Alas! 'tis true, I have gone here and there, And MADE MYSELF A MOTLEY TO THE VIEW, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new," &c.--SONNET CX.

"Oh, for my sake do you with fortune chide!

The guilty G.o.ddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide, THAN PUBLIC MEANS, WHICH PUBLIC MANNERS BREED; Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued, To what it works in like the dyer's hand," &c.--SONNET CXI.]

[Footnote 1810:

"In our two loves there is but one respect, Though in our loves a separable spite, Which though it alter not loves sole effect; Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight, I may not evermore acknowledge thee, Lest MY BEWAILED GUILT SHOULD DO THEE SHAME."--SONNET x.x.xVI.]

[Footnote 1811: It is related of Garrick, that when subpoenaed on Baretti's trial, and required to give his evidence before the court--though he had been accustomed for thirty years to act with the greatest self-possession in the presence of thousands--he became so perplexed and confused, that he was actually sent from the witness-box by the judge, as a man from whom no evidence could be obtained.]

[Footnote 1812: Mrs. Mathews' 'Life and Correspondence of Charles Mathews,' [18Ed.

1860: p. 232.]