Friends in Council Part 16

Dunsford. Now, Milverton, if you were called upon to say what are the peculiar characteristics of this age, what should you say?

Ellesmere. One of Dunsford's questions this, requiring a stout quarto volume with notes in answer.

Milverton. I would rather wait till I was called upon. I am apt to feel, after I have left off describing the character of any individual man, as if I had only just begun. And I do not see the extent of discourse that would be needful in attempting to give the characteristics of an age.

Ellesmere. I think you are prudent to avoid answering Dunsford's question. For my own part, I should prefer giving an account of the age we live in after we have come to the end of it--in the true historical fashion. And so, Dunsford, you must wait for my notions.

Dunsford. I am afraid, Milverton, if you were to write history, you would never make up your mind to condemn anybody.

Milverton. I hope I should not be so inconclusive. I certainly do dislike to see any character, whether of a living or a dead person, disposed of in a summary way.

Ellesmere. For once I will come to the rescue of Milverton. I really do not see that a man's belief in the extent and variety of human character, and in the difficulty of appreciating the circ.u.mstances of life, should prevent him from writing history--from coming to some conclusions. Of course such a man is not likely to write a long course of history; but that I hold has been a frequent error in historians--that they have taken up subjects too large for them.

Milverton. If there is as much to be said about men's character and conduct as I think there mostly is, why should we be content with shallow views of them? Take the outward form of these hills and valleys before us. When we have seen them a few times, we think we know them, but are quite mistaken. Approaching from another quarter, it is almost new ground to us. It is a long time before you master the outward form and semblance of any small piece of country that has much life and diversity in it. I often think of this, applying it to our little knowledge of men. Now, look there a moment: you see that house; close behind it is apparently a barren tract. In reality there is nothing of the kind there. A fertile valley with a great river in it, as you know, is between that house and the moors. But the plane of those moors and of the house is coincident from our present point of view. Had we not, as educated men, some distrust of the conclusions of our senses, we should be ready to swear that there was a lonely house on the border of the moors. It is the same in judging of men. We see a man connected with a train of action which is really not near him, absolutely foreign to him, perhaps, but in our eyes that is what he is always connected with. If there were not a Being who understands us immeasurably better than other men can, immeasurably better than we do ourselves, we should be badly off.

Such precautionary thoughts as these must be useful, I contend.

They need not make us indifferent to character, or prevent us from forming judgments where we must form them, but they show us what a wide thing we are talking about when we are judging the life and nature of a man.

Ellesmere. I am sure, Dunsford, you are already convinced: you seldom want more than a slight pretext for going over to the charitable side of things. You are only afraid of not dealing stoutly enough with bad things and people. Do not be afraid though.

As long as you have me to abuse, you will say many unjust things against me, you know, so that you may waste yourself in good thoughts about the rest of the world, past and present. Do you know the lawyer's story I had in my mind then? "Many times when I have had a good case," he said, "I have failed; but then I have often succeeded with bad cases. And so justice is done."

Milverton. To return to the subject. It is not a sort of equalising want of thought about men that I desire; only not to be rash in a matter that requires all our care and prudence.

Dunsford. Well, I believe I am won over. But now to another point.

I think, Milverton, that you have said hardly anything about the use of history as an incentive to good deeds and a discouragement to evil ones.

Milverton. I ought to have done so. Bolingbroke gives in his "Letters on History," talking of this point, a pa.s.sage from Tacitus, "Praecipuum munus annalium,"--can you go on with it, Dunsford?

Dunsford. Yes, I think I can. It is a pa.s.sage I have often seen quoted. "Praecipuum munus annalium, reor, ne virtutes sileantur; utque pravis dictis factisque ex posteritate et infamia metus sit."

Ellesmere. Well done; Dunsford may have invented it, though, for aught that we know, Milverton, and be pa.s.sing himself off upon us for Tacitus.

Milverton. Then Bolingbroke goes on to say (I wish I could give you his own flowing words), that the great duty of history is to form a tribunal like that amongst the Egyptians which Diodorus tells of, where both common men and princes were tried after their deaths, and received appropriate honour or disgrace. The sentence was p.r.o.nounced, he says, too late to correct or to recompense; but it was p.r.o.nounced in time to render examples of general instruction to mankind. Now, what I was going to remark upon this is, that Bolingbroke understates his case. History well written is a present correction, and a foretaste of recompense, to the man who is now struggling with difficulties and temptations, now overcast by calumny and cloudy misrepresentation.

Ellesmere. Yes; many a man makes an appeal to posterity which will never come before the court; but if there were no such court of appeal--

Milverton. A man's conviction that justice will be done to him in history is a secondary motive, and not one which, of itself, will compel him to do just and great things; but, at any rate, it forms one of the benefits that flow from history, and it becomes stronger as histories are better written. Much may be said against care for fame; much also against care for present repute. There is a diviner impulse than either at the doing of any actions that are much worth doing. As a correction, however, this antic.i.p.ation of the judgment of history may really be very powerful. It is a great enlightenment of conscience to read the opinions of men on deeds similar to those we are engaged in or meditating.

Dunsford. I think Bolingbroke's idea, which I imagine was more general than yours, is more important: namely, that this judicial proceeding, mentioned by Diodorus Siculus, gave significant lessons to all people, not merely to those who had any chance of having their names in history.

Milverton. Certainly: for this is one of Bolingbroke's chief points, if I recollect rightly.

Ellesmere. Our conversations are much better things than your essays, Milverton.

Milverton. Of course, I am bound to say so: but what made you think of that now?

Ellesmere. Why, I was thinking how in talk we can know exactly where we agree or differ. But I never like to interrupt the essay.

I never know when it would come to an end if I did. And so it swims on like a sermon, having all its own way: one cannot put in an awkward question in a weak part, and get things looked at in various ways.

Dunsford. I suppose, then, Ellesmere, you would like to interrupt sermons.

Ellesmere. Why, yes, sometimes--do not throw sticks at me, Dunsford.

Dunsford. Well, it is absurd to be angry with you; because if you long to interrupt Milverton with his captious perhapses and probablys, of course you will be impatient with discourses which do, to a certain extent, a.s.sume that the preacher and the hearers are in unison upon great matters.

Ellesmere. I am afraid to say anything about sermons, for fear of the argumentum baculinum from Dunsford; for many essay writers, like Milverton, delight to wind up their paragraphs with complete little aphorisms--shutting up something certainly, but shutting out something too. I could generally pause upon them a little.

Milverton. Of course one may err, Ellesmere, in too much aphorising as in too much of anything. But your argument goes against all expression of opinion, which must be incomplete, especially when dealing with matters that cannot be circ.u.mscribed by exact definitions. Otherwise, a code of wisdom might be made which the fool might apply as well as the wisest man. Even the best proverb, though often the expression of the widest experience in the choicest language, can be thoroughly misapplied. It cannot embrace the whole of the subject, and apply in all cases like a mathematical formula.

Its wisdom lies in the ear of the hearer.

Ellesmere. Well, I not know that there is anything more to say about the essay. I suppose you are aware, Dunsford, that Milverton does not intend to give us any more essays for some time. He is distressing his mind about some facts which he wants to ascertain before he will read any more to us. I imagine we are to have something historical next.

Milverton. Something in which historical records are useful.

Ellesmere. Really it is wonderful to see how beautifully human nature accommodates itself to anything, even to the listening to essays. I shall miss them.

Milverton. You may miss the talk before and after.

Ellesmere. Well, there is no knowing how much of that is provoked (provoked is a good word, is it not?) by the essays.

Dunsford. Then, for the present, we have come to an end of our readings.

Milverton. Yes, but I trust at no distant time to have something more to try your critical powers and patience upon. I hope that that old tower will yet see us meet together here on many a sunny day, discussing various things in friendly council.

NOTES.

{12} See Statesman, p. 30.

{42} The pa.s.sage which must have been alluded to is this: "The stricter tenets of Calvinism, which allow no medium between grace and reprobation, and doom man to eternal punishment for every breach of the moral law, as an equal offence against Infinite truth and justice, proceed (like the paradoxical doctrine of the Stoics), from taking a half-view of this subject, and considering man as amenable only to the dictates of his understanding and his conscience, and not excusable from the temptations and frailty of human ignorance and pa.s.sion. The mixing up of religion and morality together, or the making us accountable for every word, thought, or action, under no less a responsibility than our everlasting future welfare or misery, has also added incalculably to the difficulties of self- knowledge, has superinduced a violent and spurious state of feeling, and made it almost impossible to distinguish the boundaries between the true and false, in judging of human conduct and motives. A religious man is afraid of looking into the state of his soul, lest at the same time he should reveal it to heaven; and tries to persuade himself that by shutting his eyes to his true character and feelings, they will remain a profound secret, both here and hereafter."

{53} This was one of the pa.s.sages which Milverton afterwards read to us:-

"Thus, however much may be gained for the world as a whole by this fragmentary cultivation, it is not to be denied that the individuals whom it befalls are cursed for the benefit of the world. An athletic frame, it is true, is fashioned by gymnastic exercises; but a form of beauty only by free and uniform action. Just so the exertions of single talents can create extraordinary men indeed; but happy and perfect men only by their uniform temperature. And in what relation should we stand, then, to the past and coming ages, if the cultivation of human nature made necessary such a sacrifice? We should have been the slaves of humanity, and drudged for her century after century, and stamped upon our mutilated natures the humiliating traces of our bondage--that the coming race might nurse its moral healthfulness in blissful leisure, and unfold the free growth of its humanity!

"But can it be intended that man should neglect himself for any particular design? Ought Nature to deprive us, by its design, of a perfection which Reason, by its own, prescribes to us? Then it must be false that the development of single faculties makes the sacrifice of totality necessary; or, if indeed the law of Nature presses thus heavily, it becomes us to restore, by a higher art, this totality in our nature which art has destroyed."--The Philosophical and AEsthetical Letters and Essays of SCHILLER, Translated by J. WEISS, pp. 74, 75.

{93} Madame Necker de Saussure's maxim about firmness with children has suggested the above. "Ce que plie ne peut servir d'appui, et l'enfant veut etre appuye. Non-seulement il en a besoin, mais il le desire, mais sa tendresse la plus constante n'est qu'a ce prix. Si vous lui faites l'effet d'un autre enfant, si vous partagez ses pa.s.sions, ses vacillations continuelles, si vous lui rendez tous ses mouvements en les augmentant, soit par la contrariete, soit par un exces de complaisance, il pourra se servir de vous comme d'un jouet, mais non etre heureux en votre presence; il pleurera, se mutinera, et bientot le souvenir d'un temps de desordre et d'humeur se liera avec votre idee. Vous n'avez pas ete le soutien de votre enfant, vous ne l'avez pas preserve de cette fluctuation perpetuelle de la volonte, maladie des etres faibles et livres a une imagination vive; vous n'avez a.s.sure ni sa paix, ni sa sagesse, ni son bonheur, pourquoi vous croirait-il sa mere."--L'Education Progressive, vol.

i., p. 228.

{116a} See Health of Towns Report, vol. i., p. 336. A similar result may be deduced from a similar table made by the Rev. J. Clay, of Preston. See the same Report and vol., p. 175.

{116b} See Health of Towns Report, vol. i., p. 75.

{117a} See Dr. Arnott's letter, Claims of Labour, p. 282.

{117b} By zinc ventilators, for instance, in the windows and openings into the flues at the top of the rooms. See Health of Towns Report, 1844, vol. i., pp. 76, 77. Mr. Coulhart's evidence.- -Ibid., pp. 307, 308.