Coelebs In Search of a Wife Part 3

After he had left the room, which he did as the shortest way of allaying the storm, she apologized for him, said, "he was a well-meaning man, and acted up to the little light he had;" but added, "that he was unacquainted with religious feelings, and knew little of the nature of conversion."

Mrs. Ranby, I found, seems to consider Christianity as a kind of free-masonry, and therefore thinks it superfluous to speak on serious subjects to any but the initiated. If they do not _return the sign_, she gives them up as blind and dead. She thinks she can only make herself intelligible to those to whom certain peculiar phrases are familiar; and though her friends may be correct, devout, and both doctrinally and practically pious; yet if they can not catch a certain mystic meaning, if there is not a sympathy of intelligence between her and them, if they do not fully conceive of impressions, and can not respond to mysterious communications, she holds them unworthy of intercourse with her. She does not so much insist on high moral excellence as the criterion of their worth, as on their own account of their internal feelings.

She holds very cheap, that gradual growth in piety which is, in reality, no less the effect of divine grace, than those instantaneous conversions, which she believes to be so common. She can not be persuaded that, of every advance in piety, of every improvement in virtue, of every illumination of the understanding, of every amendment in the heart, of every rectification of the will, the Spirit of G.o.d is no less the author, because it is progressive, than if it were sudden.

It is true Omnipotence can, when he pleases, still produce these instantaneous effects, as he has sometimes done; but as it is not his established or common mode of operation, it seems vain and rash, presumptuously to wait for these miraculous interferences. An implicit dependence, however, on such interferences, is certainly more gratifying to the genius of enthusiasm, than the anxious vigilance, the fervent prayer, the daily struggle, the sometimes scarcely perceptible though constant progress of the sober-minded Christian. Such a Christian is fully aware that his heart requires as much watching in the more advanced as in the earliest stages of his religious course. He is cheerful in a well-grounded hope, and looks not for ecstasies, till that hope be swallowed up in fruition. Thankful if he feel in his heart a growing love to G.o.d, and an increasing submission to his will, though he is unconscious of visions, and unacquainted with any revelation but that which G.o.d has made in his word. He remembers, and he derives consolation from the remembrance, that his Saviour, in his most gracious and soothing invitation to the "heavy laden," has mercifully promised "rest," but he has no where promised rapture.

CHAPTER VI.

But to return to Mrs. Ranby's daughters. Is this _consistency_, said I to myself, when I compared the inanity of the life with the seriousness of the discourse: and contrasted the vacant way in which the day was spent, with the decent and devout manner in which it was begun and ended? I recollected, that under the early though imperfect sacred inst.i.tution, the fire of the morning and evening sacrifice was never suffered to be extinguished during the day.

Though Mrs. Ranby would have thought it a little heathenish to have had her daughters instructed in polite literature, and to have filled a leisure hour in reading to her a useful book, that was not professedly religious, she felt no compunction at their waste of time, or the trifling pursuits in which the day was suffered to spend itself. The piano-forte, when they were weary of the harp, copying some indifferent drawings, gilding a set of flower-pots, and netting white gloves and veils, seemed to fill up the whole business of these immortal beings, of these Christians, for whom it had been solemnly engaged that they should manfully fight under Christ's banner.

On a further acquaintance, I was much more inclined to lay the blame on their education than their dispositions. I found them not only good-humored, but charitably disposed: but their charities were small and casual, often ill applied, and always without a plan. They knew nothing of the state, character, or wants of the neighboring poor; and it had never been pointed out to them that the instruction of the young and ignorant made any part of the duty of the rich toward them.

When I once ventured to drop a hint on this subject to Mrs. Ranby, she drily said there were many other ways of doing good to the poor, besides exposing her daughters to the probability of catching diseases, and the certainty of getting dirt by such visits. Her subscription was never wanting when she was _quite sure_ that the object was deserving. As I suspected that she a little over-rated her own charity, I could not forbear observing, that I did not think it demanded a combination of all the virtues to ent.i.tle a poor sick wretch to a dinner. And though I durst not quote so light an authority as Hamlet to her, I could not help saying to myself, _Give every man his due, and who shall 'scape whipping_? O! if G.o.d dealt so rigidly with us; if he waited to bestow his ordinary blessings till we were good enough to deserve them, who would be clothed? who would be fed? who would have a roof to shelter him?

It was not that she gave nothing away, but she had a great dislike to relieve any but those of her own religious persuasion. Though her Redeemer laid down his life for all people, nations, and languages, she will only lay down her money for a very limited number of a very limited cla.s.s. To be religious is not claim sufficient on her bounty, they must be religious in a particular way.

The Miss Ranbys had not been habituated to make any systematic provision for regular charity, or for any of those accidental calamities for which the purse of the affluent should always be provided; and being very expensive in their persons, they had often not a sixpence to bestow, when the most deserving case presented itself. This must frequently happen where there is no specific fund for charity, which should be included in the general arrangement of expenses; and the exercise of benevolence not be left to depend on the accidental state of the purse.

If no new trinket happened to be wanted, these young ladies were liberal to any application, though always without judging of its merits by their own eyes and ears. But if there was a compet.i.tion between a sick family and a new brooch, the brooch was sure to carry the day. This would not have been the case, had they been habituated to visit themselves the abodes of penury and woe. Their flexible young hearts would have been wrought upon by the actual sight of miseries, the impression of which was feeble when it reached their ears at a distance, surrounded as they were with all the softnesses and accommodations of luxurious life.

"They would do what they could. They hoped it was not so bad as was represented." They fell into the usual way of pacifying their consciences by their regrets; and brought themselves to believe that their sympathy with the suffering was an atonement for their not relieving it.

I observed with concern, during my visit, how little the Christian temper seemed to be considered as a part of the Christian religion. This appeared in the daily concerns of this high professor. An opinion contradicted, a person of different religious views commended, the smallest opposition to her will, the intrusion of an unseasonable visitor, even an imperfection in the dressing of some dish at table: such trifles not only discomposed her, but the discomposure was manifested with a vehemence which she was not aware was a fault; nor did she seem at all sensible that her religion was ever to be resorted to but on great occasions, forgetting that great occasions but rarely occur in common life, and that these small pa.s.ses, at which the enemy is perpetually entering, the true Christian will vigilantly guard.

I observed in Mrs. Ranby one striking inconsistency. While she considered it as forming a complete line of separation from the world, that she and her daughters abstained from public places, she had no objection to their indemnifying themselves for this forbearance, by devoting so monstrous a disproportion of their time to that very amus.e.m.e.nt which const.i.tutes so princ.i.p.al a part of diversion abroad. The time which is redeemed from what is wrong, is of little value, if not dedicated to what is right; and it is not enough that the doctrines of the gospel furnish a subject for discussion, if they do not furnish a principle of action.

One of the most obvious defects which struck me in this and two or three other families, whom I afterward visited, was the want of companionableness in the daughters. They did not seem to form a part of the family compact; but made a kind of distinct branch of themselves.

Surely, when only the parents and a few select friends are met together in a family way, the daughters should contribute their portion to enliven the domestic circle. They were always ready to sing and to play, but did not take the pains to produce themselves in conversation; but seemed to carry on a distinct intercourse by herding, and whispering, and laughing together.

In some women who seemed to be possessed of good ingredients, they were so ill mixed up together as not to produce an elegant, interesting companion. It appeared to me that three of the grand inducements in the choice of a wife, are, that a man may have a directress for his family, a preceptress for his children, and a companion for himself. Can it be honestly affirmed that the present habits of domestic life are generally favorable to the union of these three essentials? Yet which of them can a man of sense and principle consent to relinquish in his conjugal prospects?

CHAPTER VII.

I returned to town at the end of a few days. To a speculative stranger, a _London day_ presents every variety of circ.u.mstance in every conceivable shape, of which human life is susceptible. When you trace the solicitude of the morning countenance, the anxious exploring of the morning paper, the eager interrogation of the morning guest; when you hear the dismal enumeration of losses by land, and perils by sea--taxes trebling, dangers multiplying, commerce annihilating, war protracted, invasion threatening, destruction impending--your mind catches and communicates the terror, and you feel yourself "falling, with a falling state."

But when, in the course of the very same day, you meet these gloomy prognosticators at the sumptuous, not "dinner but Hecatomb," at the gorgeous fete, the splendid spectacle; when you hear the frivolous discourse, witness the luxurious dissipation, contemplate the boundless indulgence, and observe the ruinous gaming, you would be ready to exclaim, "Am I not supping in the antipodes of that land in which I breakfasted? Surely this is a country of different men, different characters, and different circ.u.mstances. This at least is a place in which there is neither fear nor danger, nor want, nor misery, nor war."

If you observed the overflowing subscriptions raised, the innumerable societies formed, the committees appointed, the agents employed, the royal patrons engaged, the n.o.ble presidents provided, the palace-like structures erected; and all this to alleviate, to cure, and even to prevent, every calamity which the indigent can suffer, or the affluent conceive; to remove not only want but ignorance; to suppress not only misery but vice--would you not exclaim with Hamlet, "What a piece of work is man! How n.o.ble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In action how like an angel! In compa.s.sion how like a G.o.d!"

If you looked into the whole comet-like eccentric orb of the human character; if you compared all the struggling contrariety of principle and of pa.s.sion; the clashing of opinion and of action, of resolution and of performance; the victories of evil over the propensities to good; if you contrasted the splendid virtue with the disorderly vice; the exalted generosity with the selfish narrowness; the provident bounty with the thoughtless prodigality; the extremes of all that is dignified, with the excesses of all that is abject, would you not exclaim, in the very spirit of Pascal, O! the grandeur and the littleness, the excellence and the corruption, the majesty and the meanness of man!

If you attended the debates in our great deliberative a.s.semblies; if you heard the argument and the eloquence, "the wisdom and the wit," the public spirit and the disinterestedness; Curtius's devotedness to his country, and Regulus's disdain of self, expressed with all the logic which reason can suggest, and embellished with all the rhetoric which fancy can supply, would you not rapturously cry out, this is

Above all Greek, above all Roman fame?

But if you discerned the bitter personality, the incurable prejudice, the cutting retort, the suspicious implication, the recriminating sneer, the cherished animosity; if you beheld the interests of an empire standing still, the business of the civilized globe suspended, while two intellectual gladiators are thrusting each to give the other a fall, and to show his own strength; would you not lament the littleness of the great, the infirmities of the good, and the weaknesses of the wise?

Would you not, soaring a flight far above Hamlet or Pascal, apostrophize with the royal Psalmist, "Lord, what is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou regardest him?"

But to descend to my individual concerns. Among my acquaintance, I visited two separate families, where the daughters were remarkably attractive; and more than usually endowed with beauty, sense, and elegance; but I was deterred from following up the acquaintance, by observing, in each family, practices which, though very different, almost equally revolted me.

In one, where the young ladies had large fortunes, they insinuated themselves into the admiration, and invited the familiarity, of young men, by attentions the most flattering, and civilities the most alluring. When they had made sure of their aim, and the admirers were encouraged to make proposals, the ladies burst out into a loud laugh, wondered what the man could mean; they never dreamt of any thing more than common politeness; then petrified them with distant looks, and turned about to practice the same arts on others.

The other family in which I thought I had secured an agreeable intimacy, I instantly deserted on observing the gracious and engaging reception given by the ladies to more than one libertine of the most notorious profligacy. The men were handsome, and elegant, and fashionable, and had figured in newspapers and courts of justice. This degrading popularity rather attracted than repelled attention; and while the guilty a.s.sociates in their crimes were shunned with abhorrence by these very ladies, the specious undoers were not only received with complaisance, but there was a sort of compet.i.tion who should be most strenuous in their endeavors to attract them. Surely women of fashion can hardly make a more corrupt use of influence, a talent for which they will be peculiarly accountable. Surely, mere personal purity can hardly deserve the name of virtue in those who can sanction notoriously vicious characters, which their reprobation, if it could not reform, would at least degrade.

On a further acquaintance, I found Sir John and Lady Belfield to be persons of much worth. They were candid, generous, and sincere. They saw the errors of the world in which they lived, but had not resolution to emanc.i.p.ate themselves from its shackles. They partook, indeed, very sparingly of its diversions, not so much because they suspected their evil tendency, as because they were weary of them, and because they had better resources in themselves.

Indeed, it is wonderful that more people from mere good sense and just taste, without the operation of any religious consideration, do not, when the first ardor is cooled, perceive the futility of what is called pleasure, and decline it as the man declines the amus.e.m.e.nts of the child. But fashionable society produces few persons, who, like the ex-courtier of King David, a.s.sign their fourscore years as a reason for no longer "delighting in the voice of singing men and singing women."

Sir John and Lady Belfield, however, kept a large general acquaintance; and it is not easy to continue to a.s.sociate with the world, without retaining something of its spirit. Their standard of morals was high, compared with that of those with whom they lived; but when the standard of the gospel was suggested, they drew in a little, and thought _things might be carried too far_. There was nothing in their practice which made it their interest to hope that Christianity might not be true. They both a.s.sented to its doctrines, and lived in a kind of general hope of its final promises. But their views were neither correct, nor elevated.

They were contented to generalize the doctrines of Scripture, and though they venerated its awful truths in the aggregate, they rather took them upon trust than labored to understand them, or to imbue their minds with the spirit of them. Many a high professor, however, might have blushed to see how carefully they exercised not a few Christian dispositions; how kind and patient they were! how favorable in their construction of the actions of others! how charitable to the necessitous! how exact in veracity! and how tender of the reputation of their neighbor!

Sir John had been early hurt by living so much with men of the world, with wits, politicians, and philosophers. This, though he had escaped the contagion of false principles, had kept back the growth of such as were true. Men versed in the world, and abstracted from all religious society, begin, in time, a little to suspect whether their own religious opinions may not possibly be wrong, or at least rigid, when they see them so opposite to those of persons to whose judgment they are accustomed to look up in other points. He found too, that, in the society in which he lived, the reputation of religion detracted much from that of talents; and a man does not care to have his understanding questioned by those in whose opinion he wishes to stand well. This apprehension did not, indeed, drive him to renounce his principles, but it led him to conceal them; and that piety which is forcibly kept out of sight, which has nothing to fortify, and every thing to repel it, is too apt to decline.

His marriage with an amiable woman, whose virtues and graces attached him to his own home, drew him off from the most dangerous of his prior connections. This union had at once improved his character, and augmented his happiness. If Lady Belfield erred, it was through excess of kindness and candor. Her kindness led to the too great indulgence of her children; and her candor to the too favorable construction of the errors of her acquaintance. She was the very reverse of my Hampstead friend. Whereas Mrs. Ranby thought hardly any body would be saved, Lady Belfield comforted herself that hardly any body was in danger. This opinion was not taken up as a palliative to quiet her conscience, on account of the sins of her own conduct, for her conduct was remarkably correct; but it sprang from a natural sweetness of temper, joined to a mind not sufficiently informed and guided by scriptural truth. She was candid and teachable, but as she could not help seeing that she had more religion than most of her acquaintance; she felt a secret complacency in observing how far her principles rose above theirs, instead of an humbling conviction of how far her own fell below the requisitions of the gospel.

The fundamental error was, that she had no distinct view of the corruptions of human nature. She often lamented the weaknesses and vices of individuals, but thought all vice an incidental, not a radical mischief, the effect of thoughtlessness and casual temptation. She talked with discrimination of the faults of some of her children; but while she rejoiced in the happier dispositions of the others, she never suspected that they had all brought into the world with them any natural tendency to evil; and thought it cruel to suppose that such, innocent little things had any such wrong propensities as education would not effectually cure. In every thing the complete contrast of Mrs. Ranby--as the latter thought education could do nothing, Lady Belfield thought it would do every thing; that there was no good tendency which it would not bring to perfection, and no corruption which it could not completely eradicate. On the operation of a higher influence she placed too little dependence; while Mrs. Ranby rested in an unreasonable trust on an interference not warranted by Scripture.

In regard to her children, Lady Belfield was led by the strength of her affection to extreme indulgence. She encouraged no vice in them, but she did not sufficiently check those indications which are the seeds of vice. She reproved the actual fault, but never thought of implanting a principle which might extirpate the evil from whence the fault sprung; so that the individual error and the individual correction were continually recurring.

As Mrs. Ranby, I had observed, seldom quoted any sacred writer but St.

Paul, I remarked that Lady Belfield admired almost exclusively Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the historical books of the Bible. Of the Epistles, that of St. James was her favorite; the others she thought chiefly, if not entirely, applicable to the circ.u.mstances of the Jews and Pagans, to the converts from among whom they were addressed. If she entertained rather an awful reverence for the doctrinal parts, than an earnest wish to study them, it arose from the common mistake of believing that they were purely speculative, without being aware of their deep practical importance. But if these two ladies were diametrically opposite to each other in certain points, both were frequently right in what they a.s.sumed, and both wrong only in what they rejected. Each contended for one half of that which will not save when disjointed from the other, but which when united to it, makes up the complete Christian character.

Lady Belfield, who was, if I may so speak, const.i.tutionally charitable, almost thought that heaven might be purchased by charity. She inverted the valuable superstructure of good works, and laid them as her foundation; and while Mrs. Ranby would not, perhaps, much have blamed Moses for breaking the tables of the law, had he only demolished the second, Lady Belfield would have saved the second, as the more important of the two.

Lady Belfield had less vanity than any woman I ever knew who was not governed by a very strict religious principle. Her modesty never courted the admiration of the world, but her timidity too much dreaded its censure. She would not do a wrong thing to obtain any applause, but she omitted some right ones from the dread of blame.

CHAPTER VIII.

The house of Sir John Belfield was become a pleasant kind of home to me.

He and his lady seldom went out in an evening. Happy in each other and in their children, though they lived much with the rational, they a.s.sociated as little as they thought possible with the racketing world.

Yet being known to be generally at home, they were exposed to the inroads of certain invaders, called fine ladies, who, always afraid of being too early for their parties, are constantly on the watch how to disburden themselves for the intermediate hour, of the heavy commodity _time_; a raw material, which as they seldom work up at home, they are always willing to truck against the time of their more domestic acquaintance. Now as these last _have_ always something to do, it is an unfair traffic; "all the reciprocity is on one side," to borrow the expression of an ill.u.s.trious statesman; and the barter is as disadvantageous to the sober home-trader, as that of the honest negroes, who exchange their gold-dust and ivory for the beads and bits of gla.s.s of the wily English.

These nightly irruptions, though sometimes inconvenient to my friends, were of use to me, as they enabled me to see and judge more of the gay world than I could have done without going in search of it; a risk which I thought bore no proportion to the gain. It was like learning the language of the enemy's country at home.

One evening, when we were sitting happily alone in the library, Lady Belfield, working at her embroidery, cheerfully joining in our little discussions, and comparing our peaceful pleasures with those pursued by the occupiers of the countless carriages which were tearing up the "wheel-worn streets," or jostling each other at the door of the next house, where a grand a.s.sembly was collecting its myriads--Sir John asked what should be the evening book. Then rising, he took down from the shelf Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination.

"Is it," said he, as soon as he sat down, "the rage for novelty, or a real degeneracy of taste, that we now so seldom hear of a poet, who, when I was a boy, was the admiration of every man who had a relish for true genius? I can not defend his principles, since in a work, of which _Man_ is professedly the object, he has overlooked his _immortality_: a subject which one wonders did not force itself upon him, as so congenial to the sublimity of his genius, whatever his religious views might have been. But to speak of him only as a poet; a work which abounds in a richer profusion of images, and a more variegated luxuriance of expression than the Pleasures of Imagination, can not easily be found.