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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Friends in Council (First Series)
+by Sir Arthur Helps
+
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+Title: Friends in Council (First Series)
+
+Author: Sir Arthur Helps
+
+Release Date: February, 2005  [EBook #7438]
+[This file was first posted on April 30, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, FRIENDS IN COUNCIL (FIRST SERIES) ***
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
+
+
+
+
+FRIENDS IN COUNCIL (First Series)
+BY SIR ARTHUR HELPS.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION BY HENRY MORLEY.
+
+
+
+Arthur Helps was born at Streatham on the 10th of July, 1813.  He
+went at the age of sixteen to Eton, thence to Trinity College,
+Cambridge.  Having graduated B.A. in 1835, he became private
+secretary to the Hon. T. Spring Rice, who was Chancellor of the
+Exchequer in Lord Melbourne's Cabinet, formed in April, 1835.  This
+was his position at the beginning of the present reign in June,
+1837.
+
+In 1839--in which year he graduated M.A.--Arthur Helps was
+transferred to the service of Lord Morpeth, who was Irish Secretary
+in the same ministry.  Lord Melbourne's Ministry was succeeded by
+that of Sir Robert Peel in September, 1841, and Helps then was
+appointed a Commissioner of French, Danish, and Spanish Claims.  In
+1841 he published "Essays Written in the Intervals of Business."
+Their quiet thoughtfulness was in accord with the spirit that had
+given value to his services as private secretary to two ministers of
+State.  In 1844 that little book was followed by another on "The
+Claims of Labour," dealing with the relations of employers to
+employed.  There was the same scholarly simplicity and grace of
+style, the same interest in things worth serious attention.  "We
+say," he wrote, towards the close, "that Kings are God's Vicegerents
+upon Earth; but almost every human being has, at one time or other
+of his life, a portion of the happiness of those around him in his
+power, which might make him tremble, if he did but see it in all its
+fulness."  To this book Arthur Helps added an essay "On the Means of
+Improving the Health and Increasing the Comfort of the Labouring
+Classes."
+
+His next book was this First Series of "Friends in Council,"
+published in 1847, and followed by other series in later years.
+There were many other writings of his, less popular than they would
+have been if the same abilities had been controlled by less good
+taste.  His "History of the Conquest of the New World" in 1848, and
+of "The Spanish Conquest of America," in four volumes, from 1855 to
+1861, preceded his obtaining from his University, in 1864, the
+honorary degree of D.C.L.  In June, 1860, Arthur Helps was made
+Clerk of the Privy Council, and held that office of high trust until
+his death on the 7th of March, 1875.  He had become Sir Arthur in
+1872.
+                                     H. M.
+
+
+
+FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+
+None but those who, like myself, have once lived in intellectual
+society, and then have been deprived of it for years, can appreciate
+the delight of finding it again.  Not that I have any right to
+complain, if I were fated to live as a recluse for ever.  I can add
+little, or nothing, to the pleasure of any company; I like to listen
+rather than to talk; and when anything apposite does occur to me, it
+is generally the day after the conversation has taken place.  I do
+not, however, love good talk the less for these defects of mine; and
+I console myself with thinking that I sustain the part of a
+judicious listener, not always an easy one.
+
+Great, then, was my delight at hearing last year that my old pupil,
+Milverton, had taken a house which had long been vacant in our
+neighbourhood.  To add to my pleasure, his college friend,
+Ellesmere, the great lawyer, also an old pupil of mine, came to us
+frequently in the course of the autumn.  Milverton was at that time
+writing some essays which he occasionally read to Ellesmere and
+myself.  The conversations which then took place I am proud to say
+that I have chronicled.  I think they must be interesting to the
+world in general, though of course not so much so as to me.
+
+Milverton and Ellesmere were my favourite pupils.  Many is the
+heartache I have had at finding that those boys, with all their
+abilities, would do nothing at the University.  But it was in vain
+to urge them.  I grieve to say that neither of them had any ambition
+of the right kind.  Once I thought I had stimulated Ellesmere to the
+proper care and exertion; when, to my astonishment and vexation,
+going into his rooms about a month before an examination, I found
+that, instead of getting up his subjects, like a reasonable man, he
+was absolutely endeavouring to invent some new method for proving
+something which had been proved before in a hundred ways.  Over this
+he had wasted two days, and from that moment I saw it was useless to
+waste any more of my time and patience in urging a scholar so
+indocile for the beaten path.
+
+What tricks he and Milverton used to play me, pretending not to
+understand my demonstration of some mathematical problem, inventing
+all manner of subtle difficulties, and declaring they could not go
+on while these stumbling-blocks lay in their way!  But I am getting
+into college gossip, which may in no way delight my readers.  And I
+am fancying, too, that Milverton and Ellesmere are the boys they
+were to me; but I am now the child to them.  During the years that I
+have been quietly living here, they have become versed in the ways
+of the busy world.  And though they never think of asserting their
+superiority, I feel it, and am glad to do so.
+
+My readers would, perhaps, like one to tell them something of the
+characters of Ellesmere and Milverton; but it would ill become me to
+give that insight into them, which I, their college friend and
+tutor, imagine I have obtained.  Their friendship I could never
+understand.  It was not on the surface very warm, and their
+congeniality seemed to result more from one or two large common
+principles of thought than from any peculiar similarity of taste, or
+from great affection on either side.  Yet I should wrong their
+friendship if I were to represent it otherwise than a most true-
+hearted one; more so, perhaps, than some of softer texture.  What
+needs be seen of them individually will be by their words, which I
+hope I have in the main retained.
+
+The place where we generally met in fine weather was on the lawn
+before Milverton's house.  It was an eminence which commanded a
+series of valleys sloping towards the sea.  And, as the sea was not
+more than nine miles off, it was a matter of frequent speculation
+with us whether the landscape was bounded by air or water.  In the
+first valley was a little town of red brick houses, with poplars
+coming up amongst them.  The ruins of a castle, and some water
+which, in olden times, had been the lake in "the pleasaunce," were
+between us and the town.  The clang of an anvil, or the clamour of a
+horn, or busy wheelwright's sounds, came faintly up to us when the
+wind was south.
+
+I must not delay my readers longer with my gossip, but bring them at
+once into the conversation that preceded our first reading.
+
+                              -----
+
+Milverton.  I tell you, Ellesmere, these are the only heights I care
+to look down from, the heights of natural scenery.
+
+Ellesmere.  Pooh! my dear Milverton, it is only because the
+particular mounds which the world calls heights, you think you have
+found out to be but larger ant-heaps.  Whenever you have cared about
+anything, a man more fierce and unphilosophical in the pursuit of it
+I never saw.  To influence men's minds by writing for them, is that
+no ambition?
+
+Milverton.  It may be, but I have it not.  Let any kind critic
+convince me that what I am now doing is useless, or has been done
+before, or that, if I leave it undone, some one else will do it to
+my mind; and I should fold up my papers, and watch the turnips grow
+in that field there, with a placidity that would, perhaps, seem very
+spiritless to your now restless and ambitious nature, Ellesmere.
+
+Ellesmere.  If something were to happen which will not, then--O
+Philosophy, Philosophy, you, too, are a good old nurse, and rattle
+your rattles for your little people, as well as old Dame World can
+do for hers.  But what are we to have to-day for our first reading?
+
+Milverton.  An Essay on Truth.
+
+Ellesmere.  Well, had I known this before, it is not the novelty of
+the subject which would have dragged me up the hill to your house.
+By the way, philosophers ought not to live upon hills.  They are
+much more accessible, and I think quite as reasonable, when,
+Diogenes-like, they live in tubs upon flat ground.  Now for the
+essay.
+
+TRUTH.
+
+Truth is a subject which men will not suffer to grow old.  Each age
+has to fight with its own falsehoods:  each man with his love of
+saying to himself and those around him pleasant things and things
+serviceable for to-day, rather than the things which are.  Yet a
+child appreciates at once the divine necessity for truth; never
+asks, "What harm is there in saying the thing that is not?" and an
+old man finds, in his growing experience, wider and wider
+applications of the great doctrine and discipline of truth.
+
+Truth needs the wisdom of the serpent as well as the simplicity of
+the dove.  He has gone but a little way in this matter who supposes
+that it is an easy thing for a man to speak the truth, "the thing he
+troweth;" and that it is a casual function, which may be fulfilled
+at once after any lapse of exercise.  But, in the first place, the
+man who would speak truth must know what he troweth.  To do that, he
+must have an uncorrupted judgment.  By this is not meant a perfect
+judgment or even a wise one, but one which, however it may be
+biassed, is not bought--is still a judgment.  But some people's
+judgments are so entirely gained over by vanity, selfishness,
+passion, or inflated prejudices and fancies long indulged in; or
+they have the habit of looking at everything so carelessly, that
+they see nothing truly.  They cannot interpret the world of reality.
+And this is the saddest form of lying, "the lie that sinketh in," as
+Bacon says, which becomes part of the character and goes on eating
+the rest away.
+
+Again, to speak truth, a man must not only have that martial courage
+which goes out, with sound of drum and trumpet, to do and suffer
+great things; but that domestic courage which compels him to utter
+small sounding truths in spite of present inconvenience and outraged
+sensitiveness or sensibility.  Then he must not be in any respect a
+slave to self-interest.  Often it seems as if but a little
+misrepresentation would gain a great good for us; or, perhaps, we
+have only to conceal some trifling thing, which, if told, might
+hinder unreasonably, as we think, a profitable bargain.  The true
+man takes care to tell, notwithstanding.  When we think that truth
+interferes at one time or another with all a man's likings, hatings,
+and wishes, we must admit, I think, that it is the most
+comprehensive and varied form of self-denial.
+
+Then, in addition to these great qualities, truth-telling in its
+highest sense requires a well-balanced mind.  For instance, much
+exaggeration, perhaps the most, is occasioned by an impatient and
+easily moved temperament which longs to convey its own vivid
+impressions to other minds, and seeks by amplifying to gain the full
+measure of their sympathy.  But a true man does not think what his
+hearers are feeling, but what he is saying.
+
+More stress might be laid than has been on the intellectual
+requisites for truth, which are probably the best part of
+intellectual cultivation; and as much caused by truth as causing it.
+{12}  But, putting the requisites for truth at the fewest, see of
+how large a portion of the character truth is the resultant.  If you
+were to make a list of those persons accounted the religious men of
+their respective ages, you would have a ludicrous combination of
+characters essentially dissimilar.  But true people are kindred.
+Mention the eminently true men, and you will find that they are a
+brotherhood.  There is a family likeness throughout them.
+
+
+If we consider the occasions of exercising truthfulness and descend
+to particulars, we may divide the matter into the following heads: -
+-truth to oneself--truth to mankind in general--truth in social
+relations--truth in business--truth in pleasure.
+
+
+1.  Truth to oneself.  All men have a deep interest that each man
+should tell himself the truth.  Not only will he become a better
+man, but he will understand them better.  If men knew themselves,
+they could not be intolerant to others.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to say much about the advantage of a man
+knowing himself for himself.  To get at the truth of any history is
+good; but a man's own history--when he reads that truly, and,
+without a mean and over-solicitous introspection, knows what he is
+about and what he has been about, it is a Bible to him.  "And David
+said unto Nathan, I have sinned before the Lord."  David knew the
+truth about himself.  But truth to oneself is not merely truth about
+oneself.  It consists in maintaining an openness and justness of
+soul which brings a man into relation with all truth.  For this, all
+the senses, if you might so call them, of the soul must be
+uninjured--that is, the affections and the perceptions must be just.
+For a man to speak the truth to himself comprehends all goodness;
+and for us mortals can only be an aim.
+
+2.  Truth to mankind in general.  This is a matter which, as I read
+it, concerns only the higher natures.  Suffice it to say, that the
+withholding large truths from the world may be a betrayal of the
+greatest trust.
+
+3.  Truth in social relations.  Under this head come the practices
+of making speech vary according to the person spoken to; of
+pretending to agree with the world when you do not; of not acting
+according to what is your deliberate and well-advised opinion
+because some mischief may be made of it by persons whose judgment in
+this matter you do not respect; of maintaining a wrong course for
+the sake of consistency; of encouraging the show of intimacy with
+those whom you never can be intimate with; and many things of the
+same kind.  These practices have elements of charity and prudence as
+well as fear and meanness in them.  Let those parts which correspond
+to fear and meanness be put aside.  Charity and prudence are not
+parasitical plants which require boles of falsehood to climb up
+upon.  It is often extremely difficult in the mixed things of this
+world to act truly and kindly too; but therein lies one of the great
+trials of man, that his sincerity should have kindness in it, and
+his kindness truth.
+
+4.  Truth in business.  The more truth you can get into any
+business, the better.  Let the other side know the defects of yours,
+let them know how you are to be satisfied, let there be as little to
+be found as possible (I should say nothing), and if your business be
+an honest one, it will be best tended in this way.  The talking,
+bargaining, and delaying that would thus be needless, the little
+that would then have to be done over again, the anxiety that would
+be put aside, would even in a worldly way be "great gain."  It is
+not, perhaps, too much to say, that the third part of men's lives is
+wasted by the effect, direct or indirect, of falsehoods.
+
+Still, let us not be swift to imagine that lies are never of any
+service.  A recent Prime Minister said, that he did not know about
+truth always prevailing and the like; but lies had been very
+successful against his government.  And this was true enough.  Every
+lie has its day.  There is no preternatural inefficacy in it by
+reason of its falseness.  And this is especially the case with those
+vague injurious reports which are no man's lies, but all men's
+carelessness.  But even as regards special and unmistakable
+falsehood, we must admit that it has its success.  A complete being
+might deceive with wonderful effect; however, as nature is always
+against a liar, it is great odds in the case of ordinary mortals.
+Wolsey talks of
+
+                    "Negligence
+      Fit for a fool to fall by,"
+
+when he gives Henry the wrong packet; but the Cardinal was quite
+mistaken.  That kind of negligence was just the thing of which far-
+seeing and thoughtful men are capable; and which, if there were no
+higher motive, should induce them to rely on truth alone.  A very
+close vulpine nature, all eyes, all ears, may succeed better in
+deceit.  But it is a sleepless business.  Yet, strange to say, it is
+had recourse to in the most spendthrift fashion, as the first and
+easiest thing that comes to hand.
+
+In connection with truth in business, it may be observed that if you
+are a truthful man, you should be watchful over those whom you
+employ; for your subordinate agents are often fond of lying for your
+interests, as they think.  Show them at once that you do not think
+with them, and that you will disconcert any of their inventions by
+breaking in with the truth.  If you suffer the fear of seeming
+unkind to prevent your thrusting well-meant inventions aside, you
+may get as much pledged to falsehoods as if you had coined and
+uttered them yourself.
+
+5.  Truth in pleasure.  Men have been said to be sincere in their
+pleasures; but this is only that the taste and habits of men are
+more easily discernible in pleasure than in business.  The want of
+truth is as great a hindrance to the one as to the other.  Indeed,
+there is so much insincerity and formality in the pleasurable
+department of human life, especially in social pleasures, that
+instead of a bloom there is a slime upon it, which deadens and
+corrupts the thing.  One of the most comical sights to superior
+beings must be to see two human creatures with elaborate speech and
+gestures making each other exquisitely uncomfortable from civility:
+the one pressing what he is most anxious that the other should not
+accept, and the other accepting only from the fear of giving offence
+by refusal.  There is an element of charity in all this too; and it
+will be the business of a just and refined nature to be sincere and
+considerate at the same time.  This will be better done by enlarging
+our sympathy, so that more things and people are pleasant to us,
+than by increasing the civil and conventional part of our nature, so
+that we are able to do more seeming with greater skill and
+endurance.  Of other false hindrances to pleasure, such as
+ostentation and pretences of all kinds, there is neither charity nor
+comfort in them.  They may be got rid of altogether, and no moaning
+made over them.  Truth, which is one of the largest creatures, opens
+out the way to the heights of enjoyment, as well as to the depths of
+self-denial.
+
+
+It is difficult to think too highly of the merits and delights of
+truth; but there is often in men's minds an exaggerated notion of
+some bit of truth, which proves a great assistance to falsehood.
+For instance, the shame of some particular small falsehood,
+exaggeration, or insincerity, becomes a bugbear which scares a man
+into a career of false dealing.  He has begun making a furrow a
+little out of the line, and he ploughs on in it to try and give some
+consistency and meaning to it.  He wants almost to persuade himself
+that it was not wrong, and entirely to hide the wrongness from
+others.  This is a tribute to the majesty of truth; also to the
+world's opinion about truth.  It proceeds, too, upon the notion that
+all falsehoods are equal, which is not the case; or on some fond
+craving for a show of perfection, which is sometimes very inimical
+to the reality.  The practical, as well as the high-minded, view in
+such cases, is for a man to think how he can be true now.  To attain
+that, it may, even for this world, be worth while for a man to admit
+that he is inconsistent, and even that he has been untrue.  His
+hearers, did they know anything of themselves, would be fully aware
+that he was not singular, except in the courage of owning his
+insincerity.
+
+                              -----
+
+Ellesmere.  That last part requires thinking about.  If you were to
+permit men, without great loss of reputation, to own that they had
+been insincere, you might break down some of that majesty of truth
+you talk about.  And bad men might avail themselves of any
+facilities of owning insincerity, to commit more of it.  I can
+imagine that the apprehension of this might restrain a man from
+making any such admission as you allude to, even if he could make up
+his mind to do it otherwise.
+
+Milverton.  Yes; but can anything be worse than a man going on in a
+false course?  Each man must look to his own truthfulness, and keep
+that up as well as he can, even at the risk of saying, or doing,
+something which may be turned to ill account by others.  We may
+think too much about this reflection of our external selves.  Let
+the real self be right.  I am not so fanciful as to expect men to go
+about clamouring that they have been false; but at no risk of
+letting people see that, or of even being obliged to own it, should
+they persevere in it.
+
+Dunsford.  Milverton is right, I think.
+
+Ellesmere.  Do not imagine that I am behind either of you in a wish
+to hold up truth.  My only doubt was as to the mode.  For my own
+part, I have such faith in truth that I take it mere concealment is
+in most cases a mischief.  And I should say, for instance, that a
+wise man would be sorry that his fellows should think better of him
+than he deserves.  By the way, that is a reason why I should not
+like to be a writer of moral essays, Milverton--one should be
+supposed to be so very good.
+
+Milverton.  Only by thoughtless people then.  There is a saying
+given to Rousseau, not that he ever did say it, for I believe it was
+a misprint, but it was a possible saying for him, "Chaque homme qui
+pense est mechant."  Now, without going the length of this aphorism,
+we may say that what has been well written has been well suffered.
+
+     "He best can paint them who has felt them most."
+
+And so, though we should not exactly declare that writers who have
+had much moral influence have been wicked men, yet we may admit that
+they have been amongst the most struggling, which implies anything
+but serene self-possession and perfect spotlessness.  If you take
+the great ones, Luther, Shakespeare, Goethe, you see this at once.
+
+Dunsford.  David, St. Paul.
+
+Milverton.  Such men are like great rocks on the seashore.  By their
+resistance, terraces of level land are formed; but the rocks
+themselves bear many scars and ugly indents, while the sea of human
+difficulty presents the same unwrinkled appearance in all ages.  Yet
+it has been driven back.
+
+Ellesmere.  But has it lost any of its bulk, or only gone elsewhere?
+One part of the resemblance certainly is that these same rocks,
+which were bulwarks, become, in their turn, dangers.
+
+Milverton.  Yes, there is always loss in that way.  It is seldom
+given to man to do unmixed good.  But it was not this aspect of the
+simile that I was thinking of:  it was the scarred appearance.
+
+Dunsford.  Scars not always of defeat or flight; scars in the front.
+
+Milverton.  Ah, it hardly does for us to talk of victory or defeat,
+in these cases; but we may look at the contest itself as something
+not bad, terminate how it may.  We lament over a man's sorrows,
+struggles, disasters, and shortcomings; yet they were possessions
+too.  We talk of the origin of evil and the permission of evil.  But
+what is evil?  We mostly speak of sufferings and trials as good,
+perhaps, in their result; but we hardly admit that they may be good
+in themselves.  Yet they are knowledge--how else to be acquired,
+unless by making men as gods, enabling them to understand without
+experience.  All that men go through may be absolutely the best for
+them--no such thing as evil, at least in our customary meaning of
+the word.  But, you will say, they might have been created different
+and higher.  See where this leads to.  Any sentient being may set up
+the same claim:  a fly that it had not been made a man; and so the
+end would be that each would complain of not being all.
+
+Ellesmere.  Say it all over again, my dear Milverton:  it is rather
+hard.  [Milverton did so, in nearly the same words.]  I think I have
+heard it all before.  But you may have it as you please.  I do not
+say this irreverently, but the truth is, I am too old and too
+earthly to enter upon these subjects.  I think, however, that the
+view is a stout-hearted one.  It is somewhat in the same vein of
+thought that you see in Carlyle's works about the contempt of
+happiness.  But in all these cases, one is apt to think of the sage
+in "Rasselas," who is very wise about human misery till he loses his
+daughter.  Your fly illustration has something in it.  Certainly
+when men talk big about what might have been done for man, they omit
+to think what might be said, on similar grounds, for each sentient
+creature in the universe.  But here have we been meandering off into
+origin of evil, and uses of great men, and wickedness of writers,
+etc., whereas I meant to have said something about the essay.  How
+would you answer what Bacon maintains?  "A mixture of a lie doth
+ever add pleasure."
+
+Milverton.  He is not speaking of the lies of social life, but of
+self-deception.  He goes on to class under that head "vain opinions,
+flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would."
+These things are the sweetness of "the lie that sinketh in."  Many a
+man has a kind of mental kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken
+glass are his own merits and fortunes, and they fall into harmonious
+arrangements and delight him--often most mischievously and to his
+ultimate detriment, but they are a present pleasure.
+
+Ellesmere.  Well, I am going to be true in my pleasures:  to take a
+long walk alone.  I have got a difficult case for an opinion, which
+I must go and think over.
+
+Dunsford.  Shall we have another reading tomorrow?
+
+Milverton.  Yes, if you are both in the humour for it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+
+As the next day was fine, we agreed to have our reading in the same
+spot that I have described before.  There was scarcely any
+conversation worth noting, until after Milverton had read us the
+following essay on Conformity.
+
+CONFORMITY.
+
+The conformity of men is often a far poorer thing than that which
+resembles it amongst the lower animals.  The monkey imitates from
+imitative skill and gamesomeness:  the sheep is gregarious, having
+no sufficient will to form an independent project of its own.  But
+man often loathes what he imitates, and conforms to what he knows to
+be wrong.
+
+It will ever be one of the nicest problems for a man to solve how
+far he shall profit by the thoughts of other men, and not be
+enslaved by them.  He comes into the world, and finds swaddling
+clothes ready for his mind as well as his body.  There is a vast
+scheme of social machinery set up about him; and he has to discern
+how he can make it work with him and for him, without becoming part
+of the machinery himself.  In this lie the anguish and the struggle
+of the greatest minds.  Most sad are they, having mostly the deepest
+sympathies, when they find themselves breaking off from communion
+with other minds.  They would go on, if they could, with the
+opinions around them.  But, happily, there is something to which a
+man owes a larger allegiance than to any human affection.  He would
+be content to go away from a false thing, or quietly to protest
+against it; but in spite of him the strife in his heart breaks into
+burning utterance by word or deed.
+
+Few, however, are those who venture, even for the shortest time,
+into that hazy world of independent thought, where a man is not
+upheld by a crowd of other men's opinions, but where he must find a
+footing of his own.  Among the mass of men, there is little or no
+resistance to conformity.  Could the history of opinions be fully
+written, it would be seen how large a part in human proceedings the
+love of conformity, or rather the fear of non-conformity, has
+occasioned.  It has triumphed over all other fears; over love, hate,
+pity, sloth, anger, truth, pride, comfort, self-interest, vanity,
+and maternal love.  It has torn down the sense of beauty in the
+human soul, and set up in its place little ugly idols which it
+compels us to worship with more than Japanese devotion.  It has
+contradicted Nature in the most obvious things, and been listened to
+with abject submission.  Its empire has been no less extensive than
+deep-seated.  The serf to custom points his finger at the slave to
+fashion--as if it signified whether it is an old or a new thing
+which is irrationally conformed to.  The man of letters despises
+both the slaves of fashion and of custom, but often runs his narrow
+career of thought, shut up, though he sees it not, within close
+walls which he does not venture even to peep over.
+
+It is hard to say in what department of human thought and endeavour
+conformity has triumphed most.  Religion comes to one's mind first;
+and well it may when one thinks what men have conformed to in all
+ages in that matter.  If we pass to art, or science, we shall see
+there too the wondrous slavery which men have endured--from puny
+fetters, moreover, which one stirring thought would, as we think,
+have burst asunder.  The above, however, are matters not within
+every one's cognisance; some of them are shut in by learning or the
+show of it; and plain "practical" men would say, they follow where
+they have no business but to follow.  But the way in which the human
+body shall be covered is not a thing for the scientific and the
+learned only:  and is allowed on all hands to concern, in no small
+degree, one half at least of the creation.  It is in such a simple
+thing as dress that each of us may form some estimate of the extent
+of conformity in the world.  A wise nation, unsubdued by
+superstition, with the collected experience of peaceful ages,
+concludes that female feet are to be clothed by crushing them.  The
+still wiser nations of the west have adopted a swifter mode of
+destroying health, and creating angularity, by crushing the upper
+part of the female body.  In such matters nearly all people conform.
+Our brother man is seldom so bitter against us, as when we refuse to
+adopt at once his notions of the infinite.  But even religious
+dissent were less dangerous and more respectable than dissent in
+dress.  If you want to see what men will do in the way of
+conformity, take a European hat for your subject of meditation.  I
+dare say there are twenty-two millions of people at this minute each
+wearing one of these hats in order to please the rest.  As in the
+fine arts, and in architecture, especially, so in dress, something
+is often retained that was useful when something else was beside it.
+To go to architecture for an instance, a pinnacle is retained, not
+that it is of any use where it is, but in another kind of building
+it would have been.  That style of building, as a whole, has gone
+out of fashion, but the pinnacle has somehow or other kept its
+ground and must be there, no one insolently going back to first
+principles and asking what is the use and object of building
+pinnacles.  Similar instances in dress will occur to my readers.
+Some of us are not skilled in such affairs; but looking at old
+pictures we may sometimes see how modern clothes have attained their
+present pitch of frightfulness and inconvenience.  This matter of
+dress is one in which, perhaps, you might expect the wise to conform
+to the foolish; and they have.
+
+When we have once come to a right estimate of the strength of
+conformity, we shall, I think, be more kindly disposed to
+eccentricity than we usually are.  Even a wilful or an absurd
+eccentricity is some support against the weighty common-place
+conformity of the world.  If it were not for some singular people
+who persist in thinking for themselves, in seeing for themselves,
+and in being comfortable, we should all collapse into a hideous
+uniformity.
+
+It is worth while to analyse that influence of the world which is
+the right arm of conformity.  Some persons bend to the world in all
+things, from an innocent belief that what so many people think must
+be right.  Others have a vague fear of the world as of some wild
+beast which may spring out upon them at any time.  Tell them they
+are safe in their houses from this myriad-eyed creature:  they still
+are sure that they shall meet with it some day, and would propitiate
+its favour at any sacrifice.  Many men contract their idea of the
+world to their own circle, and what they imagine to be said in that
+circle of friends and acquaintances is their idea of public opinion-
+-"as if," to use a saying of Southey's, "a number of worldlings made
+a world."  With some unfortunate people, the much dreaded "world"
+shrinks into one person of more mental power than their own, or
+perhaps merely of coarser nature; and the fancy as to what this
+person will say about anything they do, sits upon them like a
+nightmare.  Happy the man who can embark his small adventure of
+deeds and thoughts upon the shallow waters round his home, or send
+them afloat on the wide sea of humanity, with no great anxiety in
+either case as to what reception they may meet with!  He would have
+them steer by the stars, and take what wind may come to them.
+
+A reasonable watchfulness against conformity will not lead a man to
+spurn the aid of other men, still less to reject the accumulated
+mental capital of ages.  It does not compel us to dote upon the
+advantages of savage life.  We would not forego the hard-earned
+gains of civil society because there is something in most of them
+which tends to contract the natural powers, although it vastly aids
+them.  We would not, for instance, return to the monosyllabic
+utterance of barbarous men, because in any formed language there are
+a thousand snares for the understanding.  Yet we must be most
+watchful of them.  And in all things, a man must beware of so
+conforming himself as to crush his nature and forego the purpose of
+his being.  We must look to other standards than what men may say or
+think.  We must not abjectly bow down before rules and usages; but
+must refer to principles and purposes.  In few words, we must think,
+not whom we are following, but what we are doing.  If not, why are
+we gifted with individual life at all?  Uniformity does not consist
+with the higher forms of vitality.  Even the leaves of the same tree
+are said to differ, each one from all the rest.  And can it be good
+for the soul of a man "with a biography of his own like to no one
+else's," to subject itself without thought to the opinions and ways
+of others:  not to grow into symmetry, but to be moulded down into
+conformity?
+
+                               ----
+
+Ellesmere.  Well, I rather like that essay.  I was afraid, at first,
+it was going to have more of the fault into which you essay writers
+generally fall, of being a comment on the abuse of a thing, and not
+on the thing itself.  There always seems to me to want another essay
+on the other side.  But I think, at the end, you protect yourself
+against misconstruction.  In the spirit of the essay, you know, of
+course, that I quite agree with you.  Indeed, I differ from all the
+ordinary biographers of that independent gentleman, Don't Care.  I
+believe Don't Care came to a good end.  At any rate he came to some
+end.  Whereas numbers of people never have beginning, or ending, of
+their own.  An obscure dramatist, Milverton, whom we know of, makes
+one of his characters say, in reply to some world-fearing wretch:
+
+                    "While you, you think
+     What others think, or what you think they'll say,
+     Shaping your course by something scarce more tangible
+     Than dreams, at best the shadows on the stream
+     Of aspen leaves by flickering breezes swayed--
+     Load me with irons, drive me from morn till night,
+     I am not the utter slave which that man is
+     Whose sole word, thought, and deed are built on what
+     The world may say of him."
+
+Milverton.  Never mind the obscure dramatist.  But, Ellesmere, you
+really are unreasonable, if you suppose that, in the limits of a
+short essay, you can accurately distinguish all you write between
+the use and the abuse of a thing.  The question is, will people
+misunderstand you--not, is the language such as to be logically
+impregnable?  Now, in the present case, no man will really suppose
+it is a wise and just conformity that I am inveighing against.
+
+Ellesmere.  I am not sure of that.  If everybody is to have
+independent thought, would there not be a fearful instability and
+want of compactness?  Another thing, too--conformity often saves so
+much time and trouble.
+
+Milverton.  Yes; it has its uses.  I do not mean, in the world of
+opinion and morality, that it should be all elasticity and no
+gravitation; but at least enough elasticity to preserve natural form
+and independent being.
+
+Ellesmere.  I think it would have been better if you had turned the
+essay another way, and instead of making it on conformity, had made
+it on interference.  That is the greater mischief and the greater
+folly, I think.  Why do people unreasonably conform?  Because they
+feel unreasonable interference.  War, I say, is interference on a
+small scale compared with the interference of private life.  Then
+the absurdity on which it proceeds; that men are all alike, or that
+it is desirable that they should be; and that what is good for one
+is good for all.
+
+Dunsford.  I must say, I think, Milverton, you do not give enough
+credit for sympathy, good-nature, and humility as material elements
+in the conformity of the world.
+
+Ellesmere.  I am not afraid, my dear Dunsford, of the essay doing
+much harm.  There is a power of sleepy conformity in the world.  You
+may just startle your conformists for a minute, but they gravitate
+into their old way very soon.  You talk of their humility, Dunsford,
+but I have heard people who have conformed to opinions, without a
+pretence of investigation, as arrogant and intolerant towards
+anybody who differed from them, as if they stood upon a pinnacle of
+independent sagacity and research.
+
+Dunsford.  One never knows, Ellesmere, on which side you are.  I
+thought you were on mine a minute or two ago; and now you come down
+upon me with more than Milverton's anti-conforming spirit.
+
+Ellesmere.  The greatest mischief, as I take it, of this slavish
+conformity, is in the reticence it creates.  People will be, what
+are called, intimate friends, and yet no real interchange of opinion
+takes place between them.  A man keeps his doubts, his difficulties,
+and his peculiar opinions to himself.  He is afraid of letting
+anybody know that he does not exactly agree with the world's
+theories on all points.  There is no telling the hindrance that this
+is to truth.
+
+Milverton.  A great cause of this, Ellesmere, is in the little
+reliance you can have on any man's secrecy.  A man finds that what,
+in the heat of discussion, and in the perfect carelessness of
+friendship, he has said to his friend, is quoted to people whom he
+would never have said it to; knowing that it would be sure to be
+misunderstood, or half-understood, by them.  And so he grows
+cautious; and is very loth to communicate to anybody his more
+cherished opinions, unless they fall in exactly with the stream.
+Added to which, I think there is in these times less than there ever
+was of a proselytising spirit; and people are content to keep their
+opinions to themselves--more perhaps from indifference than from
+fear.
+
+Ellesmere.  Yes, I agree with you.
+
+By the way, I think your taking dress as an illustration of extreme
+conformity is not bad.  Really it is wonderful the degree of square
+and dull hideousness to which, in the process of time and tailoring,
+and by severe conformity, the human creature's outward appearance
+has arrived.  Look at a crowd of men from a height, what an ugly set
+of ants they appear!  Myself, when I see an Eastern man, one of the
+people attached to their embassies, sweeping by us in something
+flowing and stately, I feel inclined to take off my hat to him (only
+that I think the hat might frighten him), and say, Here is a great,
+unhatted, uncravated, bearded man, not a creature clipt and twisted
+and tortured into tailorhood.
+
+Dunsford.  Ellesmere broke in upon me just now, so that I did not
+say all that I meant to say.  But, Milverton, what would you admit
+that we are to conform to?  In silencing the general voice, may we
+not give too much opportunity to our own headstrong suggestions, and
+to wilful licence?
+
+Milverton.  Yes:  to be somewhat deaf to the din of the world may be
+no gain, even loss, if then we only listen more to the worst part of
+ourselves; but in itself it is a good thing to silence that din.  It
+is at least a beginning of good.  If anything good is then gained,
+it is not a sheepish tendency, but an independent resolve growing
+out of our nature.  And, after all, when we talk of non-conformity,
+it may only be that we non-conform to the immediate sect of thought
+or action about us, to conform to a much wider thing in human
+nature.
+
+Ellesmere.  Ah me! how one wants a moral essayist always at hand to
+enable one to make use of moral essays.
+
+Milverton.  Your rules of law are grand things--the proverbs of
+justice; yet has not each case its specialities, requiring to be
+argued with much circumstance, and capable of different
+interpretations?  Words cannot be made into men.
+
+Dunsford.  I wonder you answer his sneers, Milverton.
+
+Ellesmere.  I must go and see whether words cannot be made into
+guineas:  and then guineas into men is an easy thing.  These trains
+will not wait even for critics, so, for the present, good-bye.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+
+Ellesmere soon wrote us word that he would be able to come down
+again; and I agreed to be at Worth-Ashton (Milverton's house) on the
+day of his arrival.  I had scarcely seated myself at our usual place
+of meeting before the friends entered, and after greeting me, the
+conversation thus began:
+
+Ellesmere.  Upon my word, you people who live in the country have a
+pleasant time of it.  As Milverton was driving me from the station
+through Durley Wood, there was such a rich smell of pines, such a
+twittering of birds, so much joy, sunshine, and beauty, that I began
+to think, if there were no such place as London, it really would be
+very desirable to live in the country.
+
+Milverton.  What a climax!  But I am always very suspicious, when
+Ellesmere appears to be carried away by any enthusiasm, that it will
+break off suddenly, like the gallop of a post-horse.
+
+Dunsford.  Well, what are we to have for our essay!
+
+Milverton.  Despair.
+
+Ellesmere.  I feel equal to anything just now, and so, if it must be
+read sometime or other, let us have it now.
+
+Milverton.  You need not be afraid.  I want to take away, not to add
+gloom.  Shall I read?
+
+We assented, and he began.
+
+
+DESPAIR.
+
+Despair may be serviceable when it arises from a temporary
+prostration of spirits:  during which the mind is insensibly
+healing, and her scattered power silently returning.  This is better
+than to be the sport of a teasing hope without reason.  But to
+indulge in despair as a habit is slothful, cowardly, short-sighted;
+and manifestly tends against Nature.  Despair is then the paralysis
+of the soul.
+
+These are the principal causes of despair--remorse, the sorrows of
+the affections, worldly trouble, morbid views of religion, native
+melancholy.
+
+
+REMORSE.
+
+Remorse does but add to the evil which bred it, when it promotes,
+not penitence, but despair.  To have erred in one branch of our
+duties does not unfit us for the performance of all the rest, unless
+we suffer the dark spot to spread over our whole nature, which may
+happen almost unobserved in the torpor of despair.  This kind of
+despair is chiefly grounded on a foolish belief that individual
+words or actions constitute the whole life of man:  whereas they are
+often not fair representatives of portions even of that life.  The
+fragments of rock in a mountain stream may tell much of its history,
+are in fact results of its doings, but they are not the stream.
+They were brought down when it was turbid; it may now be clear:
+they are as much the result of other circumstances as of the action
+of the stream; their history is fitful:  they give us no sure
+intelligence of the future course of the stream, or of the nature of
+its waters; and may scarcely show more than that it has not been
+always as it is.  The actions of men are often but little better
+indications of the men themselves.
+
+A prolonged despair arising from remorse is unreasonable at any age,
+but if possible, still more so when felt by the young.  To think,
+for example, that the great Being who made us could have made
+eternal ruin and misery inevitable to a poor half-fledged creature
+of eighteen or nineteen!  And yet how often has the profoundest
+despair from remorse brooded over children of that age and eaten
+into their hearts.
+
+There is frequently much selfishness about remorse.  Put what has
+been done at the worst.  Let a man see his own evil word, or deed,
+in full light, and own it to be black as hell itself.  He is still
+here.  He cannot be isolated.  There still remain for him cares and
+duties; and, therefore, hopes.  Let him not in imagination link all
+creation to his fate.  Let him yet live in the welfare of others,
+and, if it may be so, work out his own in this way:  if not, be
+content with theirs.  The saddest cause of remorseful despair is
+when a man does something expressly contrary to his character:  when
+an honourable man, for instance, slides into some dishonourable
+action; or a tender-hearted man falls into cruelty from
+carelessness; or, as often happens, a sensitive nature continues to
+give the greatest pain to others from temper, feeling all the time,
+perhaps, more deeply than the persons aggrieved.  All these cases
+may be summed up in the words, "That which I would not that I do,"
+the saddest of all human confessions, made by one of the greatest
+men.  However, the evil cannot be mended by despair.  Hope and
+humility are the only supports under this burden.  As Mr. Carlyle
+says,
+
+"What are faults, what are the outward details of a life; if the
+inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled,
+never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten.  'It is not in man that
+walketh to direct his steps.'  Of all acts, is not, for a man,
+repentance the most divine?  The deadliest sin, I say, were that
+same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death:  the heart
+so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact; is
+dead:  it is 'pure' as dead dry sand is pure.  David's life and
+history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be
+the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare
+here below.  All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful
+struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best.
+Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet
+a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true
+unconquerable purpose, begun anew.  Poor human nature! is not a
+man's walking, in truth, always that:  a 'succession of falls!'  Man
+can do no other.  In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle
+onwards; now fallen, deep abased; and ever, with tears, repentance,
+with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still
+onwards.  That his struggle be a faithful unconquerable one:  this
+is the question of questions."
+
+
+THE SORROWS OF THE AFFECTIONS.
+
+The loss by death of those we love has the first place in these
+sorrows.  Yet the feeling in this case, even when carried to the
+highest, is not exactly despair, having too much warmth in it for
+that.  Not much can be said in the way of comfort on this head.
+Queen Elizabeth, in her hard, wise way, writing to a mother who had
+lost her son, tells her that she will be comforted in time; and why
+should she not do for herself what the mere lapse of time will do
+for her?  Brave words! and the stern woman, more earnest than the
+sage in "Rasselas," would have tried their virtue on herself.  But I
+fear they fell somewhat coldly on the mother's ear.  Happily, in
+these bereavements, kind Nature with her opiates, day by day
+administered, does more than all the skill of the physician
+moralists.  Sir Thomas Browne says,
+
+"Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares
+with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly
+remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction
+leave but short smart upon us.  Sense endureth no extremities, and
+sorrows destroy us or themselves.  To weep into stones are fables.
+Afflictions induce callosities, miseries are slippery, or fall like
+snow upon us, which, notwithstanding, is no unhappy stupidity.  To
+be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a
+merciful provision in Nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our
+few and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into
+cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of
+repetitions."
+
+The good knight thus makes much comfort out of our physical
+weakness.  But something may be done in a very different direction,
+namely, by spiritual strength.  By elevating and purifying the
+sorrow, we may take it more out of matter, as it were, and so feel
+less the loss of what is material about it.
+
+The other sorrows of the affections which may produce despair, are
+those in which the affections are wounded, as jealousy, love
+unrequited, friendship betrayed and the like.  As, in despair from
+remorse, the whole life seems to be involved in one action:  so in
+the despair we are now considering, the whole life appears to be
+shut up in the one unpropitious affection.  Yet human nature, if
+fairly treated, is too large a thing to be suppressed into despair
+by one affection, however potent.  We might imagine that if there
+were anything that would rob life of its strength and favour, it is
+domestic unhappiness.  And yet how numerous is the bond of those
+whom we know to have been eminently unhappy in some domestic
+relation, but whose lives have been full of vigorous and kindly
+action.  Indeed the culture of the world has been largely carried on
+by such men.  As long as there is life in the plant, though it be
+sadly pent in, it will grow towards any opening of light that is
+left for it.
+
+
+WORLDLY TROUBLE.
+
+This appears too mean a subject for despair, or, at least, unworthy
+of having any remedy, or soothing thought out of it.  Whether a man
+lives in a large room or a small one, rides or is obliged to walk,
+gets a plenteous dinner every day, or a sparing one, do not seem
+matters for despair.  But the truth is, that worldly trouble, such
+for instance, as loss of fortune, is seldom the simple thing that
+poets would persuade us.
+
+     "The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned;
+      Content with poverty, my soul I arm,
+      And virtue, though in rags will keep me warm."
+
+So sings Dryden, paraphrasing Horace, but each of them with their
+knowledge of the world, cross-questioned in prose, could have told
+us how the stings of fortune really are felt.  The truth is, that
+fortune is not exactly a distinct isolated thing which can be taken
+away--"and there an end."  But much has to be severed, with
+undoubted pain in the operation.  A man mostly feels that his
+reputation for sagacity, often his honour, the comfort, too, or
+supposed comfort, of others are embarked in his fortunes.  Mere
+stoicism, and resolves about fitting fortune to oneself, not oneself
+to fortune, though good things enough in their way, will not always
+meet the whole of the case.  And a man who could bear personal
+distress of any kind with Spartan indifference, may suffer himself
+to be overwhelmed by despair growing out of worldly trouble.  A
+frequent origin of such despair, as indeed of all despair (not by
+any means excluding despair from remorse), is pride.  Let a man say
+to himself, "I am not the perfect character I meant to be; this is
+not the conduct I had imagined for myself; these are not the
+fortunate circumstances I had always intended to be surrounded by."
+Let him at once admit that he is on a lower level than his ideal
+one; and then see what is to be done there.  This seems the best way
+of treating all that part of worldly trouble which consists of self-
+reproval.  We scarcely know of any outward life continuously
+prosperous (and a very dull one it would be):  why should we expect
+the inner life to be one course of unbroken self-improvement, either
+in prudence, or in virtue?
+
+Before a man gives way to excessive grief about the fortunes of his
+family being lost with his own, he should think whether he really
+knows wherein lies the welfare of others.  Give him some fairy
+power, inexhaustible purses or magic lamps, not, however, applying
+to the mind; and see whether he could make those whom he would
+favour good or happy.  In the East, they have a proverb of this
+kind, Happy are the children of those fathers who go to the Evil
+One.  But for anything that our Western experience shows, the
+proverb might be reversed, and, instead of running thus, Happy are
+the sons of those who have got money anyhow, it might be, Happy are
+the sons of those who have failed in getting money.  In fact, there
+is no sound proverb to be made about it either way.  We know nothing
+about the matter.  Our surest influence for good or evil over others
+is, through themselves.  Our ignorance of what is physically good
+for any man may surely prevent anything like despair with regard to
+that part of the fortunes of others dear to us, which, as we think,
+is bound up with our own.
+
+
+MORBID VIEWS OF RELIGION.
+
+As religion is the most engrossing subject that can be presented to
+us, it will be considered in all states of mind and by all minds.
+It is impossible but that the most hideous and perverted views of
+religion must arise.  To combat the particular views which may be
+supposed to cause religious despair, would be too theological an
+undertaking for this essay.  One thing only occurs to me to say,
+namely, that the lives and the mode of speaking about themselves
+adopted by the founders of Christianity, afford the best
+contradiction to religious melancholy that I believe can be met
+with.
+
+
+NATIVE MELANCHOLY.
+
+There is such a thing.  Jacques, without the "sundry contemplation"
+of his travels, or any "simples" to "compound" his melancholy form,
+would have ever been wrapped in a "most humorous sadness."  It was
+innate.  This melancholy may lay its votaries open to any other
+cause of despair, but having mostly some touch of philosophy (if it
+be not absolutely morbid), it is not unlikely to preserve them from
+any extremity.  It is not acute, but chronic.
+
+It may be said in its favour that it tends to make men indifferent
+to their own fortunes.  But then the sorrow of the world presses
+more deeply upon them.  With large open hearts, the untowardness of
+things present, the miseries of the past, the mischief, stupidity,
+and error which reign in the world, at times almost crush your
+melancholy men.  Still, out of their sadness may come their
+strength, or, at least, the best direction of it.  Nothing, perhaps,
+is lost; not even sin--much less sorrow.
+
+Ellesmere.  I am glad you have ended as you have:  for, previously,
+you seemed to make too much of getting rid of all distress of mind.
+I always liked that passage in "Philip van Artevelde," where Father
+John says,
+
+     "He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.
+      Eternity mourns that."
+
+You have a better memory than I have:  how does it go on?
+
+Milverton.
+                              "'Tis an ill cure
+      For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them.
+      Where sorrow's held intrusive and turned out,
+      There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,
+      Nor aught that dignifies humanity."
+
+Still this does not justify despair, which was what I was writing
+about.
+
+Ellesmere.  Perhaps it was not a just criticism of mine.  One part
+of the subject you have certainly omitted.  You do not tell us how
+much there often is of physical disorder in despair.  I dare say you
+will think it a coarse and unromantic mode of looking at things; but
+I must confess I agree with what Leigh Hunt has said somewhere, that
+one can walk down distress of mind--even remorse, perhaps.
+
+Milverton.  Yes; I am for the Peripatetics against all other
+philosophers.
+
+Ellesmere.  By the way, there is a passage in one of Hazlitt's
+essays, I thought of while you were reading, about remorse and
+religious melancholy.  He speaks of mixing up religion and morality;
+and then goes on to say, that Calvinistic notions have obscured and
+prevented self-knowledge. {42}
+
+Give me the essay--there is a passage I want to look at.  This
+comparison of life to a mountain stream, the rocks brought down by
+it being the actions, is too much worked out.  When we speak of
+similes not going on four legs, it implies, I think, that a simile
+is at best but a four-legged animal.  Now this is almost a centipede
+of a simile.  I think I have had the same thought as yours here, and
+I have compared the life of an individual to a curve.  You both
+smile.  Now I thought that Dunsford at any rate would be pleased
+with this reminiscence of college days.  But to proceed with my
+curve.  You may have numbers of the points through which it passes
+given, and yet know nothing of the nature of the curve itself.  See,
+now, it shall pass through here and here, but how it will go in the
+interval, what is the law of its being, we know not.  But this
+simile would be too mathematical, I fear.
+
+Milverton.  I hold to the centipede.
+
+Ellesmere.  Not a word has Dunsford said all this time.
+
+Dunsford.  I like the essay.  I was not criticising as we went
+along, but thinking that perhaps the greatest charm of books is,
+that we see in them that other men have suffered what we have.  Some
+souls we ever find who could have responded to all our agony, be it
+what it may.  This at least robs misery of its loneliness.
+
+Ellesmere.  On the other hand, the charm of intercourse with our
+fellows, when we are in sadness, is that they do not reflect it in
+any way.  Each keeps his own trouble to himself, and often
+pretending to think and care about other things, comes to do so for
+the time.
+
+Dunsford.  Well, but you might choose books which would not reflect
+your troubles.
+
+Ellesmere.  But the fact of having to make a choice to do this, does
+away, perhaps, with some part of the benefit:  whereas, in
+intercourse with living men, you take what you find, and you find
+that neither your trouble, nor any likeness of it, is absorbing
+other people.  But this is not the whole reason:  the truth is, the
+life and impulses of other men are catching; you cannot explain
+exactly how it is that they take you out of yourself.
+
+Milverton.  No man is so confidential as when he is addressing the
+whole world.  You find, therefore, more comfort for sorrow in books
+than in social intercourse.  I mean more direct comfort; for I agree
+with what Ellesmere says about society.
+
+Ellesmere.  In comparing men and books, one must always remember
+this important distinction--that one can put the books down at any
+time.  As Macaulay says, "Plato is never sullen.  Cervantes is never
+petulant.  Demosthenes never comes unseasonably.  Dante never stays
+too long."
+
+Milverton.  Besides, one can manage to agree so well,
+intellectually, with a book; and intellectual differences are the
+source of half the quarrels in the world.
+
+Ellesmere.  Judicious shelving!
+
+Milverton.  Judicious skipping will nearly do.  Now when one's
+friend, or oneself, is crotchety, dogmatic, or disputatious, one
+cannot turn over to another day.
+
+Ellesmere.  Don't go, Dunsford.  Here is a passage in the essay I
+meant to have said something about--"why should we expect the inner
+life to be one course of unbroken self-improvement," etc.--You
+recollect?  Well, it puts me in mind of a conversation between a
+complacent poplar and a grim old oak, which I overheard the other
+day.  The poplar said that it grew up quite straight, heavenwards,
+that all its branches pointed the same way, and always had done so.
+Turning to the oak, which it had been talking at before for some
+time, the poplar went on to remark, that it did not wish to say
+anything unfriendly to a brother of the forest, but those warped and
+twisted branches seemed to show strange struggles.  The tall thing
+concluded its oration by saying, that it grew up very fast, and that
+when it had done growing, it did not suffer itself to be made into
+huge floating engines of destruction.  But different trees had
+different tastes.  There was then a sound from the old oak, like an
+"ah" or a "whew," or, perhaps, it was only the wind amongst its
+resisting branches; and the gaunt creature said that it had had ugly
+winds from without and cross-grained impulses from within; that it
+knew it had thrown out awkwardly a branch here and a branch there,
+which would never come quite right again it feared; that men worked
+it up, sometimes for good and sometimes for evil--but that at any
+rate it had not lived for nothing.  The poplar began again
+immediately, for this kind of tree can talk for ever, but I patted
+the old oak approvingly and went on.
+
+Milverton.  Well, your trees divide their discourse somewhat
+Ellesmerically:  they do not talk with the simplicity La Fontaine's
+would; but there is a good deal in them.  They are not altogether
+sappy.
+
+Ellesmere.  I really thought of this fable of mine the other day, as
+I was passing the poplar at the end of the valley, and I determined
+to give it you on the first occasion.
+
+Dunsford.  I hope, Ellesmere, you do not intend to put sarcastic
+notions into the sap of our trees hereabouts.  There's enough of
+sarcasm in you to season a whole forest.
+
+Ellesmere.  Dunsford is afraid of what the trees may say to the
+country gentlemen, and whether they will be able to answer them.  I
+will be careful not to make the trees too clever.
+
+Milverton.  Let us go and try if we can hear any more forest talk.
+The winds, shaped into voices by the leaves, say many things to us
+at all times.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+
+In the course of our walk Milverton promised to read the following
+essay on Recreation the next day.  I have no note of anything that
+was said before the reading.
+
+
+RECREATION.
+
+This subject has not had the thought it merits.  It seems trivial.
+It concerns some hours in the daily life of each of us; but it is
+not connected with any subject of human grandeur, and we are rather
+ashamed of it.  Schiller has some wise, but hard words that relate
+to it.  He perceives the pre-eminence of the Greeks, who could do
+many things.  He finds that modern men are units of great nations;
+but not great units themselves.  And there is some room for this
+reasoning of his.
+
+Our modern system of division of labour divides wits also.  The more
+necessity there is, therefore, for funding in recreation something
+to expand men's intelligence.  There are intellectual pursuits
+almost as much divided as pin-making; and many a man goes through
+some intellectual process, for the greater part of his working
+hours, which corresponds with the making of a pin's head.  Must
+there not be some danger of a general contraction of mind from this
+convergence of attention upon something very small, for so
+considerable a portion of a man's life?
+
+What answer can civilisation give to this?  It can say that greater
+results are worked out by the modern system; that though each man is
+doing less himself than he might have done in former days, he sees
+greater and better things accomplished; and that his thoughts, not
+bound down by his petty occupation, travel over the work of the
+human family.  There is a great deal, doubtless, in this argument;
+but man is not altogether an intellectual recipient.  He is a
+constructive animal also.  It is not the knowledge that you can pour
+into him that will satisfy him, or enable him to work out his
+nature.  He must see things for himself; he must have bodily work
+and intellectual work different from his bread-getting work; or he
+runs the danger of becoming a contracted pedant with a poor mind and
+a sickly body.
+
+I have seen it quoted from Aristotle, that the end of labour is to
+gain leisure.  It is a great saying.  We have in modern times a
+totally wrong view of the matter.  Noble work is a noble thing, but
+not all work.  Most people seem to think that any business is in
+itself something grand; that to be intensely employed, for instance,
+about something which has no truth, beauty, or usefulness in it,
+which makes no man happier or wiser, is still the perfection of
+human endeavour, so that the work be intense.  It is the intensity,
+not the nature, of the work that men praise.  You see the extent of
+this feeling in little things.  People are so ashamed of being
+caught for a moment idle, that if you come upon the most industrious
+servants or workmen whilst they are standing looking at something
+which interests them, or fairly resting, they move off in a fright,
+as if they were proved, by a moment's relaxation, to be neglectful
+of their work.  Yet it is the result that they should mainly be
+judged by, and to which they should appeal.  But amongst all
+classes, the working itself, incessant working, is the thing
+deified.  Now what is the end and object of most work?  To provide
+for animal wants.  Not a contemptible thing by any means, but still
+it is not all in all with man.  Moreover, in those cases where the
+pressure of bread-getting is fairly past, we do not often find men's
+exertions lessened on that account.  There enter into their minds as
+motives, ambition, a love of hoarding, or a fear of leisure--things
+which, in moderation, may be defended or even justified; but which
+are not so peremptory, and upon the face of them excellent, that
+they at once dignify excessive labour.
+
+The truth is, that to work insatiably requires much less mind than
+to work judiciously, and less courage than to refuse work that
+cannot be done honestly.  For a hundred men whose appetite for work
+can be driven on by vanity, avarice, ambition, or a mistaken notion
+of advancing their families, there is about one who is desirous of
+expanding his own nature and the nature of others in all directions,
+of cultivating many pursuits, of bringing himself and those around
+him in contact with the universe in many points, of being a man and
+not a machine.
+
+It may seem as if the preceding arguments were directed rather
+against excessive work than in favour of recreation.  But the first
+object in an essay of this kind should be to bring down the absurd
+estimate that is often formed of mere work.  What ritual is to the
+formalist, or contemplation to the devotee, business is to the man
+of the world.  He thinks he cannot be doing wrong as long as he is
+doing that.
+
+No doubt hard work is a great police agent.  If everybody were
+worked from morning till night and then carefully locked up, the
+register of crimes might be greatly diminished.  But what would
+become of human nature?  Where would be the room for growth in such
+a system of things?  It is through sorrow and mirth, plenty and
+need, a variety of passions, circumstances, and temptations, even
+through sin and misery, that men's natures are developed.
+
+
+Again, there are people who would say, "Labour is not all; we do not
+object to the cessation of labour--a mere provision for bodily ends;
+but we fear the lightness and vanity of what you call recreation."
+Do these people take heed of the swiftness of thought--of the
+impatience of thought?  What will the great mass of men be thinking
+of, if they are taught to shun amusements and the thoughts of
+amusement?  If any sensuality is left open to them, they will think
+of that.  If not sensuality, then avarice, or ferocity for "the
+cause of God," as they would call it.  People who have had nothing
+else to amuse them have been very apt to indulge themselves in the
+excitement of persecuting their fellow creatures.
+
+Our nation, the northern part of it especially, is given to believe
+in the sovereign efficacy of dulness.  To be sure, dulness and solid
+vice are apt to go hand in hand.  But then, according to our
+notions, dulness is in itself so good a thing--almost a religion.
+
+Now, if ever a people required to be amused, it is we sad-hearted
+Anglo-Saxons.  Heavy eaters, hard thinkers, often given up to a
+peculiar melancholy of our own, with a climate that for months
+together would frown away mirth if it could--many of us with very
+gloomy thoughts about our hereafter--if ever there were a people who
+should avoid increasing their dulness by all work and no play, we
+are that people.  "They took their pleasure sadly," says Froissart,
+"after their fashion."  We need not ask of what nation Froissart was
+speaking.
+
+There is a theory which has done singular mischief to the cause of
+recreation and of general cultivation.  It is that men cannot excel
+in more things than one; and that if they can, they had better be
+quiet about it.  "Avoid music, do not cultivate art, be not known to
+excel in any craft but your own," says many a worldly parent,
+thereby laying the foundation of a narrow, greedy character, and
+destroying means of happiness and of improvement which success, or
+even real excellence, in one profession only cannot give.  This is,
+indeed, a sacrifice of the end of living for the means.
+
+Another check to recreation is the narrow way in which people have
+hitherto been brought up at schools and colleges.  The classics are
+pre-eminent works.  To acquire an accurate knowledge of them is an
+admirable discipline.  Still, it would be well to give a youth but
+few of these great works, and so leave time for various arts,
+accomplishments, and knowledge of external things exemplified by
+other means than books.  If this cannot be done but by over-working,
+then it had better not be done; for of all things, that must be
+avoided.  But surely it can be done.  At present, many a man who is
+versed in Greek metre, and afterwards full of law reports, is
+childishly ignorant of Nature.  Let him walk with an intelligent
+child for a morning, and the child will ask him a hundred questions
+about sun, moon, stars, plants, birds, building, farming, and the
+like, to which he can give very sorry answers, if any; or, at the
+best, he has but a second-hand acquaintance with Nature.  Men's
+conceits are his main knowledge.  Whereas, if he had any pursuits
+connected with Nature, all Nature is in harmony with it, is brought
+into his presence by it, and it affords at once cultivation and
+recreation.
+
+But, independently of those cultivated pursuits which form a high
+order of recreation, boyhood should never pass without the boy's
+learning several modes of recreation of the humbler kind.  A parent
+or teacher seldom does a kinder thing by the child under his care
+than when he instructs it in some manly exercise, some pursuit
+connected with Nature out of doors, or even some domestic game.  In
+hours of fatigue, anxiety, sickness, or worldly ferment, such means
+of amusement may delight the grown-up man when other things would
+fail.
+
+An indirect advantage, but a very considerable one, attendant upon
+various modes of recreation, is, that they provide opportunities of
+excelling in something to boys and men who are dull in things which
+form the staple of education.  A boy cannot see much difference
+between the nominative and the genitive cases--still less any
+occasion for aorists--but he is a good hand at some game or other;
+and he keeps up his self-respect, and the respect of others for him,
+upon his prowess in that game.  He is better and happier on that
+account.  And it is well, too, that the little world around him
+should know that excellence is not all of one form.
+
+There are no details about recreation in this essay, the object here
+being mainly to show the worth of recreation, and to defend it
+against objections from the over-busy and the over-strict.  The
+sense of the beautiful, the desire for comprehending Nature, the
+love of personal skill and prowess, are not things implanted in men
+merely to be absorbed in producing and distributing the objects of
+our most obvious animal wants.  If civilisation required this,
+civilisation would be a failure.  Still less should we fancy that we
+are serving the cause of godliness when we are discouraging
+recreation.  Let us be hearty in our pleasures, as in our work, and
+not think that the gracious Being Who has made us so open-hearted to
+delight, looks with dissatisfaction at our enjoyment, as a hard
+taskmaster might, who in the glee of his slaves could see only a
+hindrance to their profitable working.  And with reference to our
+individual cultivation, we may remember that we are not here to
+promote incalculable quantities of law, physic, or manufactured
+goods, but to become men--not narrow pedants, but wide-seeing, mind-
+travelled men.  Who are the men of history to be admired most?
+Those whom most things became--who could be weighty in debate, of
+much device in council, considerate in a sick-room, genial at a
+feast, joyous at a festival, capable of discourse with many minds,
+large-souled, not to be shrivelled up into any one form, fashion, or
+temperament.  Their contemporaries would have told us that men might
+have various accomplishments and hearty enjoyments, and not for that
+be the less effective in business, or less active in benevolence.  I
+distrust the wisdom of asceticism as much as I do that of
+sensuality; Simeon Stylites no less than Sardanapalus.
+
+                              -----
+
+Ellesmere.  You alluded to Schiller at the beginning of the essay:
+can you show me his own words?  I have a lawyer's liking for the
+best evidence.
+
+Milverton.  When we go in, I will show you some passages which bear
+me out in what I have made him say--at least, if the translation is
+faithful. {53}
+
+Ellesmere.  I have had a great respect for Schiller ever since I
+heard that saying of his about death, "Death cannot be an evil, for
+it is universal."
+
+Dunsford.  Very noble and full of faith.
+
+Ellesmere.  Touching the essay, I like it well enough; but, perhaps,
+people will expect to find more about recreation itself--not only
+about the good of it, but what it is, and how it is to be got.
+
+Milverton.  I do not incline to go into detail about the matter.
+The object was to say something for the respectability of
+recreation, not to write a chapter of a book of sports.  People must
+find out their own ways of amusing themselves.
+
+Ellesmere.  I will tell you what is the paramount thing to be
+attended to in all amusements--that they should be short.  Moralists
+are always talking about "short-lived" pleasures:  would that they
+were!
+
+Dunsford.  Hesiod told the world, some two thousand years ago, how
+much greater the half is than the whole.
+
+Ellesmere.  Dinner-givers and managers of theatres should forthwith
+be made aware of that fact.  What a sacrifice of good things, and of
+the patience and comfort of human beings, a cumbrous modern dinner
+is!  I always long to get up and walk about.
+
+Dunsford.  Do not talk of modern dinners.  Think what a Roman dinner
+must have been.
+
+Milverton.  Very true.  It has always struck me that there is
+something quite military in the sensualism of the Romans--an
+"arbiter bibendi" chosen, and the whole feast moving on with fearful
+precision and apparatus of all kinds.  Come, come! the world's
+improving, Ellesmere.
+
+Ellesmere.  Had the Romans public dinners?  Answer me that.  Imagine
+a Roman, whose theory, at least, of a dinner was that it was a thing
+for enjoyment, whereas we often look on it as a continuation of the
+business of the day--I say, imagine a Roman girding himself up,
+literally girding himself up to make an after-dinner speech.
+
+Milverton.  I must allow that is rather a barbarous practice.
+
+Ellesmere.  If charity, or politics, cannot be done without such
+things, I suppose they are useful in their way; but let nobody ever
+imagine that they are a form of pleasure.  People smearing each
+other over with stupid flattery, and most of the company being in
+dread of receiving some compliment which should oblige them to
+speak!
+
+Dunsford.  I should have thought, now, that you would always have
+had something to say, and therefore that you would not be so bitter
+against after-dinner speaking.
+
+Ellesmere.  No; when I have nothing to say, I can say nothing.
+
+Milverton.  Would it not be a pleasant thing if rich people would
+ask their friends sometimes to public amusements--order a play for
+them, for instance--or at any rate, provide some manifest amusement?
+They might, occasionally with great advantage, abridge the expense
+of their dinners; and throw it into other channels of hospitality.
+
+Ellesmere.  Ah, if they would have good acting at their houses, that
+would be very delightful; but I cannot say that the being taken to
+any place of public amusement would much delight me.  By the way,
+Milverton, what do you say of theatres in the way of recreation?
+This decline of the drama, too, is a thing you must have thought
+about:  let us hear your notions.
+
+Milverton.  I think one of the causes sometimes assigned, that
+reading is more spread, is a true and an important one; but,
+otherwise, I fancy that the present decline of the drama depends
+upon very small things which might be remedied.  As to a love of the
+drama going out of the human heart, that is all nonsense.  Put it at
+the lowest, what a great pleasure it is to hear a good play read.
+And again, as to serious pursuits unfitting men for dramatic
+entertainments, it is quite the contrary.  A man, wearied with care
+and business, would find more change of ideas with less fatigue, in
+seeing a good play, than in almost any other way of amusing himself.
+
+Dunsford.  What are the causes then of the decline of the drama?
+
+Milverton.  In England, or rather in London,--for London is England
+for dramatic purposes; in London, then, theatrical arrangements seem
+to be framed to drive away people of sense.  The noisome atmosphere,
+the difficult approach, the over-size of the great theatres, the
+intolerable length of performances.
+
+Ellesmere.  Hear! hear!
+
+Milverton.  The crowding together of theatres in one part of the
+town, the lateness of the hours--
+
+Ellesmere.  The folly of the audience, who always applaud in the
+wrong place--
+
+Dunsford.  There is no occasion to say any more; I am quite
+convinced.
+
+Milverton.  But these annoyances need not be.  Build a theatre of
+moderate dimensions; give it great facility of approach; take care
+that the performances never exceed three hours; let lions and dwarfs
+pass by without any endeavour to get them within the walls; lay
+aside all ambition of making stage waves which may almost equal real
+Ramsgate waves to our cockney apprehensions.  Of course there must
+be good players and good plays.
+
+Ellesmere.  Now we come to the part of Hamlet.
+
+Milverton.  Good players and good plays are both to be had if there
+were good demand for them.  But, I was going to say, let there be
+all these things, especially let there be complete ventilation, and
+the theatre will have the most abundant success.  Why, that one
+thing alone, the villainous atmosphere at most public places, is
+enough to daunt any sensible man from going to them.
+
+Dunsford.  There should be such a choice of plays--not merely
+Chamberlain-clipt--as any man or woman could go to.
+
+Milverton.  There should be certainly, but how is such a choice to
+be made, if the people who could regulate it, for the most part,
+stay away?  It is a dangerous thing, the better classes leaving any
+great source of amusement and instruction wholly, or greatly, to the
+less refined classes.
+
+Dunsford.  Yes, I must confess it is.
+
+Great part of your arguments apply to musical as well as to
+theatrical entertainments.  Do you find similar results with respect
+to them?
+
+Milverton.  Why, they are not attended by any means as they would
+be, or made what they might be, if the objections I mentioned were
+removed.
+
+Dunsford.  What do you say to the out-of-door entertainments for a
+town population?
+
+Milverton.  As I said before, my dear Dunsford, I cannot give you a
+chapter of a "Book of Sports."  There ought, of course, to be parks
+for all quarters of the town:  and I confess it would please me
+better to see, in holiday times and hours of leisure, hearty games
+going on in these parks, than a number of people sauntering about in
+uncomfortably new and unaccustomed clothes.
+
+Ellesmere.  Do you not see, Dunsford, that, like a cautious official
+man, he does not want to enter into small details, which have always
+an air of ridicule?  He is not prepared to pledge himself to
+cricket, golf, football, or prisoner's bars; but in his heart he is
+manifestly a Young Englander--without the white waistcoat.  Nothing
+would please him better than to see in large letters, on one of
+those advertising vans, "Great match!  Victoria Park!!  Eleven of
+Fleet Street against the Eleven of Saffron Hill!!!"
+
+Milverton.  Well, there is a great deal in the spirit of Young
+England that I like very much, indeed that I respect.
+
+Ellesmere.  I should like the Young England party better myself if I
+were quite sure there was no connection between them and a clan of
+sour, pity-mongering people, who wash one away with eternal talk
+about the contrast between riches and poverty; with whom a poor man
+is always virtuous; and who would, if they could, make him as
+envious and as discontented as possible.
+
+Milverton.  Nothing can be more strikingly in contrast with such
+thinkers than Young England.  Young Englanders, according to the
+best of their theories, ought to be men of warm sympathy with all
+classes.  There is no doubt of this, that very seldom does any good
+thing arise, but there comes an ugly phantom of a caricature of it,
+which sidles up against the reality, mouths its favourite words as a
+third-rate actor does a great part, under-mimics its wisdom, over-
+acts its folly, is by half the world taken for it, goes some way to
+suppress it in its own time, and, perhaps, lives for it in history.
+
+Ellesmere.  Well brought out, that metaphor, but I don't know that
+it means more than that the followers of a system do in general a
+good deal to corrupt it, or that when a great principle is worked
+into human affairs, a considerable accretion of human folly and
+falseness mostly grows round it:  which things some of us had a
+suspicion of before.
+
+Dunsford.  To go back to the subject.  What would you do for country
+amusements, Milverton?  That is what concerns me, you know.
+
+Milverton.  Athletic amusements go on naturally here:  do not
+require so much fostering as in towns.  The commons must be
+carefully kept:  I have quite a Cobbettian fear of their being taken
+away from us under some plausible pretext or other.  Well, then, it
+strikes me that a great deal might be done to promote the more
+refined pleasures of life among our rural population.  I hope we
+shall live to see many of Hullah's pupils playing an important part
+in this way.  Of course, the foundation for these things may best be
+laid at schools; and is being laid in some places, I am happy to
+say.
+
+Ellesmere.  Humph, music, sing-song!
+
+Milverton.  Don't you observe, Dunsford, that when Ellesmere wants
+to attack us, and does not exactly see how, he mutters to himself
+sarcastically, sneering himself up, as it were, to the attack.
+
+Ellesmere.  You and Dunsford are both wild for music, from barrel-
+organs upwards.
+
+Milverton.  I confess to liking the humblest attempts at melody.
+
+Dunsford.  I feel as Sir Thomas Browne tells us he felt, that "even
+that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man merry, another
+mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion and a profound
+contemplation of the first composer.  There is something in it of
+divinity more than the ear discovers; it is an hieroglyphical and
+shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God:  such a
+melody to the ear as the whole world well understood, would afford
+the understanding."
+
+Milverton.  Apropos of music in country places, when I was going
+about last year in the neighbouring county, I saw such a pretty
+scene at one of the towns.  They had got up a band, which played
+once a week in the evening.  It was a beautiful summer evening, and
+the window of my room at the end overlooked the open space they had
+chosen for their performances.  There was the great man of the
+neighbourhood in his carriage looking as if he came partly on duty,
+as well as for pleasure.  Then there were burly tradesmen, with an
+air of quiet satisfaction, sauntering about, or leaning against
+railings.  Some were no doubt critical--thought that Will Miller did
+not play as well as usual this evening.  Will's young wife, who had
+come out to look again at him in his band dress (for the band had a
+uniform), thought differently.  Little boys broke out into imaginary
+polkas, having some distant reference to the music:  not without
+grace though.  The sweep was pre-eminent:  as if he would say,
+"Dirty and sooty as I am I have a great deal of fun in me.  Indeed,
+what would May-day be but for me?"  Studious little boys of the
+free-school, all green grasshopper-looking, walked about as boys
+knowing something of Latin.  Here and there went a couple of them in
+childish loving way, with their arms about each other's necks.
+Matrons and shy young maidens sat upon the door-steps near.  Many a
+merry laugh filled up the interludes of music.  And when evening
+came softly down upon us, the band finished with "God save the
+Queen," the little circle of those who would hear the last note
+moved off, there was a clattering of shutters, a shining of lights
+through casement-windows, and soon the only sound to be heard was
+the rough voice of some villager, who would have been too timid to
+adventure anything by daylight, but now sang boldly out as he went
+homewards.
+
+Ellesmere.  Very pretty, but it sounds to me somewhat fabulous.
+
+Milverton.  I assure you--
+
+Ellesmere.  Yes, you were tired, had a good dinner, read a speech
+for or against the corn-laws, fell asleep of course, and had this
+ingenious dream, which, to this day, you believe to have been a
+reality.  I understand it all.
+
+Milverton.  I wish I could have many more such dreams.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+
+Our last conversation broke off abruptly on the entrance of a
+visitor:  we forgot to name a time for our next meeting; and when I
+came again, I found Milverton alone in his study.  He was reading
+Count Rumford's essays.
+
+Dunsford.  So you are reading Count Rumford.  What is it that
+interests you there?
+
+Milverton.  Everything he writes about.  He is to me a delightful
+writer.  He throws so much life into all his writings.  Whether they
+are about making the most of food or fuel, or propounding the
+benefits of bathing, or inveighing against smoke, it is that he went
+and saw and did and experimented himself upon himself.  His
+proceedings at Munich to feed the poor are more interesting than
+many a novel.  It is surprising, too, how far he was before the
+world in all the things he gave his mind to.
+
+Here Ellesmere entered.
+
+Ellesmere.  I heard you were come, Dunsford:  I hope we shall have
+an essay to-day.  My critical faculties have been dormant for some
+days, and want to be roused a little.  Milverton was talking to you
+about Count Rumford when I came in, was he not?  Ah, the Count is a
+great favourite with Milverton when he is down here; but there is a
+book upstairs which is Milverton's real favourite just now, a
+portentous-looking book; some relation to a blue-book, something
+about sewerage, or health of towns, or public improvements, over
+which said book our friend here goes into enthusiasms.  I am sure if
+it could be reduced to the size of that tatterdemalion Horace that
+he carries about, the poor little Horace would be quite supplanted.
+
+Milverton.  Now, I must tell you, Dunsford, that Ellesmere himself
+took up this book he talks about, and it was a long time before he
+put it down.
+
+Ellesmere.  Yes, there is something in real life, even though it is
+in the unheroic part of it, that interests one.  I mean to get
+through the book.
+
+Dunsford.  What are we to have to-day for our essay?
+
+Milverton.  Let us adjourn to the garden, and I will read you an
+essay on Greatness, if I can find it.
+
+We went to our favourite place, and Milverton read us the following
+essay.
+
+
+GREATNESS.
+
+You cannot substitute any epithet for great, when you are talking of
+great men.  Greatness is not general dexterity carried to any
+extent; nor proficiency in any one subject of human endeavour.
+There are great astronomers, great scholars, great painters, even
+great poets who are very far from great men.  Greatness can do
+without success and with it.  William is greater in his retreats
+than Marlborough in his victories.  On the other hand, the
+uniformity of Caesar's success does not dull his greatness.
+Greatness is not in the circumstances, but in the man.
+
+What does this greatness then consist in?  Not in a nice balance of
+qualities, purposes, and powers.  That will make a man happy, a
+successful man, a man always in his right depth.  Nor does it
+consist in absence of errors.  We need only glance back at any list
+that can be made of great men, to be convinced of that.  Neither
+does greatness consist in energy, though often accompanied by it.
+Indeed, it is rather the breadth of the waters than the force of the
+current that we look to, to fulfil our idea of greatness.  There is
+no doubt that energy acting upon a nature endowed with the qualities
+that we sum up in the word cleverness, and directed to a few clear
+purposes, produces a great effect, and may sometimes be mistaken for
+greatness.  If a man is mainly bent upon his own advancement, it
+cuts many a difficult knot of policy for him, and gives a force and
+distinctness to his mode of going on which looks grand.  The same
+happens if he has one pre-eminent idea of any kind, even though it
+should be a narrow one.  Indeed, success in life is mostly gained by
+unity of purpose; whereas greatness often fails by reason of its
+having manifold purposes, but it does not cease to be greatness on
+that account.
+
+If greatness can be shut up in qualities, it will be found to
+consist in courage and in openness of mind and soul.  These
+qualities may not seem at first to be so potent.  But see what
+growth there is in them.  The education of a man of open mind is
+never ended.  Then, with openness of soul, a man sees some way into
+all other souls that come near him, feels with them, has their
+experience, is in himself a people.  Sympathy is the universal
+solvent.  Nothing is understood without it.  The capacity of a man,
+at least for understanding, may almost be said to vary according to
+his powers of sympathy.  Again, what is there that can counteract
+selfishness like sympathy?  Selfishness may be hedged in by minute
+watchfulness and self-denial, but it is counteracted by the nature
+being encouraged to grow out and fix its tendrils upon foreign
+objects.
+
+The immense defect that want of sympathy is, may be strikingly seen
+in the failure of the many attempts that have been made in all ages
+to construct the Christian character, omitting sympathy.  It has
+produced numbers of people walking up and down one narrow plank of
+self-restraint, pondering over their own merits and demerits,
+keeping out, not the world exactly, but their fellow-creatures from
+their hearts, and caring only to drive their neighbours before them
+on this plank of theirs, or to push them headlong.  Thus, with many
+virtues, and much hard work at the formation of character, we have
+had splendid bigots or censorious small people.
+
+But sympathy is warmth and light too.  It is, as it were, the moral
+atmosphere connecting all animated natures.  Putting aside, for a
+moment, the large differences that opinions, language, and education
+make between men, look at the innate diversity of character.
+Natural philosophers were amazed when they thought they had found a
+new-created species.  But what is each man but a creature such as
+the world has not before seen?  Then think how they pour forth in
+multitudinous masses, from princes delicately nurtured to little
+boys on scrubby commons, or in dark cellars.  How are these people
+to be understood, to be taught to understand each other, but by
+those who have the deepest sympathies with all?  There cannot be a
+great man without large sympathy.  There may be men who play loud-
+sounding parts in life without it, as on the stage, where kings and
+great people sometimes enter who are only characters of secondary
+import--deputy great men.  But the interest and the instruction lie
+with those who have to feel and suffer most.
+
+Add courage to this openness we have been considering, and you have
+a man who can own himself in the wrong, can forgive, can trust, can
+adventure, can, in short, use all the means that insight and
+sympathy endow him with.
+
+I see no other essential characteristics in the greatness of nations
+than there are in the greatness of individuals.  Extraneous
+circumstances largely influence nations as individuals; and make a
+larger part of the show of the former than of the latter; as we are
+wont to consider no nation great that is not great in extent or
+resources, as well as in character.  But of two nations, equal in
+other respects, the superiority must belong to the one which excels
+in courage and openness of mind and soul.
+
+Again, in estimating the relative merits of different periods of the
+world, we must employ the same tests of greatness that we use to
+individuals.  To compare, for instance, the present and the past.
+What astounds us most in the past is the wonderful intolerance and
+cruelty:  a cruelty constantly turning upon the inventors:  an
+intolerance provoking ruin to the thing it would foster.  The most
+admirable precepts are thrown from time to time upon this cauldron
+of human affairs, and oftentimes they only seem to make it blaze the
+higher.  We find men devoting the best part of their intellects to
+the invariable annoyance and persecution of their fellows.  You
+might think that the earth brought forth with more abundant
+fruitfulness in the past than now, seeing that men found so much
+time for cruelty, but that you read of famines and privations which
+these latter days cannot equal.  The recorded violent deaths amount
+to millions.  And this is but a small part of the matter.  Consider
+the modes of justice; the use of torture, for instance.  What must
+have been the blinded state of the wise persons (wise for their day)
+who used torture?  Did they ever think themselves, "What should we
+not say if we were subjected to this?"  Many times they must really
+have desired to get at the truth; and such was their mode of doing
+it.  Now, at the risk of being thought "a laudator" of time present,
+I would say, here is the element of greatness we have made progress
+in.  We are more open in mind and soul.  We have arrived (some of us
+at least) at the conclusion that men may honestly differ without
+offence.  We have learned to pity each other more.  There is a
+greatness in modern toleration which our ancestors knew not.
+
+Then comes the other element of greatness, courage.  Have we made
+progress in that?  This is a much more dubious question.  The
+subjects of terror vary so much in different times that it is
+difficult to estimate the different degrees of courage shown in
+resisting them.  Men fear public opinion now as they did in former
+times the Star Chamber; and those awful goddesses, Appearances, are
+to us what the Fates were to the Greeks.  It is hardly possible to
+measure the courage of a modern against that of an ancient; but I am
+unwilling to believe but that enlightenment must strengthen courage.
+
+The application of the tests of greatness, as in the above instance,
+is a matter of detail and of nice appreciation, as to the results of
+which men must be expected to differ largely:  the tests themselves
+remain invariable--openness of nature to admit the light of love and
+reason, and courage to pursue it.
+
+                              -----
+
+Ellesmere.  I agree to your theory, as far as openness of nature is
+concerned; but I do not much like to put that half-brute thing,
+courage, so high.
+
+Milverton.  Well, you cannot have greatness without it:  you may
+have well-intentioned people and far-seeing people; but if they have
+no stoutness of heart, they will only be shifty or remonstrant,
+nothing like great.
+
+Ellesmere.  You mean will, not courage.  Without will, your open-
+minded, open-hearted man may be like a great, rudderless vessel
+driven about by all winds:  not a small craft, but a most uncertain
+one.
+
+Milverton.  No, I mean both:  both will and courage.  Courage is the
+body to will.
+
+Ellesmere.  I believe you are right in that; but do not omit will.
+It amused me to see how you brought in one of your old notions--that
+this age is not contemptible.  You scribbling people are generally
+on the other side.
+
+Milverton.  You malign us.  If I must give any account for my
+personal predilection for modern times, it consists perhaps in this,
+that we may now speak our mind.  What Tennyson says of his own land,
+
+     "The land where, girt with friend or foe,
+      A man may say the thing he will,"--
+
+may be said, in some measure, of the age in which we live.  This is
+an inexpressible comfort.  This doubles life.  These things surely
+may be said in favour of the present age, not with a view to puff it
+up, but so far to encourage ourselves, as we may by seeing that the
+world does not go on for nothing, that all the misery, blood, and
+toil that have been spent, were not poured out in vain.  Could we
+have our ancestors again before us, would they not rejoice at seeing
+what they had purchased for us:  would they think it any compliment
+to them to extol their times at the expense of the present, and so
+to intimate that their efforts had led to nothing?
+
+Ellesmere.  "I doubt," as Lord Eldon would have said; no, upon
+second thoughts, I do not doubt.  I feel assured that a good many of
+these said ancestors you are calling up would be much discomforted
+at finding that all their suffering had led to no sure basis of
+persecution of the other side.
+
+Dunsford.  I wonder, Ellesmere, what you would have done in
+persecuting times.  What escape would your sarcasm have found for
+itself?
+
+Milverton.  Some orthodox way, I daresay.  I do not think he would
+have been particularly fond of martyrdom.
+
+Ellesmere.  No.  I have no taste for making torches for truth, or
+being one:  I prefer humane darkness to such illumination.  At the
+same time one cannot tell lies; and if one had been questioned about
+the incomprehensibilities which men in former days were so fierce
+upon, one must have shown that one disagreed with all parties.
+
+Dunsford.  Do not say "one:"  _I_ should not have disagreed with the
+great Protestant leaders in the Reformation, for instance.
+
+Ellesmere.  Humph.
+
+Milverton.  If we get aground upon the Reformation, we shall never
+push off again--else would I say something far from complimentary to
+those Protestant proceedings which we may rather hope were
+Tudoresque than Protestant.
+
+Ellesmere.  No, that is not fair.  The Tudors were a coarse, fierce
+race; but it will not do to lay the faults of their times upon them
+only.  Look at Elizabeth's ministers.  They had about as much notion
+of religious tolerance as they had of Professor Wheatstone's
+telegraph.  It was not a growth of that age.
+
+Milverton.  I do not know.  You have Cardinal Pole and the Earl of
+Essex, both tolerant men in the midst of bigots.
+
+Ellesmere.  Well, as you said, Milverton, we shall never push off,
+if we once get aground on this subject.
+
+Dunsford.  I am in fault:  so I will take upon myself to bring you
+quite away from the Reformation.  I have been thinking of that
+comparison in the essay of the present with the past.  Such
+comparisons seem to me very useful, as they best enable us to
+understand our own times.  And, then, when we have ascertained the
+state and tendency of our own age, we ought to strive to enrich it
+with those qualities which are complementary to its own.  Now with
+all this toleration, which delights you so much, dear Milverton, is
+it not an age rather deficient in caring about great matters?
+
+Milverton.  If you mean great speculative matters, I might agree
+with you; but if you mean what I should call the greatest matters,
+such as charity, humanity, and the like, I should venture to differ
+with you, Dunsford.
+
+Dunsford.  I do not like to see the world indifferent to great
+speculative matters.  I then fear shallowness and earthiness.
+
+Milverton.  It is very difficult to say what the world is thinking
+of now.  It is certainly wrong to suppose that this is a shallow age
+because it is not driven by one impulse.  As civilisation advances,
+it becomes more difficult to estimate what is going on, and we set
+it all down as confusion.  Now there is not one "great antique
+heart," whose beatings we can count, but many impulses, many circles
+of thought in which men are moving many objects.  Men are not all in
+the same state of progress, so cannot be moved in masses as of old.
+At one time chivalry urged all men, then the Church, and the
+phenomena were few, simple, and broad, or at least they seem so in
+history.
+
+Ellesmere.  Very true; still I agree somewhat with Dunsford, that
+men are not agitated as they used to be by the great speculative
+questions.  I account for it in this way, that the material world
+has opened out before us, and we cannot but look at that, and must
+play with it and work at it.  I would say, too, that philosophy had
+been found out, and there is something in that.  Still, I think if
+it were not for the interest now attaching to material things, great
+intellectual questions, not exactly of the old kind, would arise and
+agitate the world.
+
+Milverton.  There is one thing in my mind that may confirm your
+view.  I cannot but think that the enlarged view we have of the
+universe must in some measure damp personal ambition.  What is it to
+be a King, Sheik, Tetrarch, or Emperor, over a bit of a little bit?
+Macbeth's speech, "we'd jump the life to come," is a thing a man
+with modern lights, however madly ambitious, would hardly utter.
+
+Dunsford.  Religious lights, Milverton.
+
+Milverton.  Of course not, if he had them; but I meant scientific
+lights.  Sway over our fellow-creatures, at any rate anything but
+mental sway, has shrunk into less proportions.
+
+Ellesmere.  I have been looking over the essay.  I think you may put
+in somewhere--that that age would probably be the greatest in which
+there was the least difference between great men and the people in
+general--when the former were only neglected, not hunted down.
+
+Milverton.  Yes.
+
+Ellesmere.  You are rather lengthy here about the cruelties to be
+found in history; but we are apt to forget these matters.
+
+Milverton.  They always press upon my mind.
+
+Dunsford.  And on mine.  I do not like to read much of history for
+that very reason.  I get so sick at heart about it all.
+
+Milverton.  Ah, yes, history is a stupendous thing.  To read it is
+like looking at the stars; we turn away in awe and perplexity.  Yet
+there is some method running through the little affairs of man as
+through the multitude of suns, seemingly to us as confused as routed
+armies in full flight.
+
+Dunsford.  Some law of love.
+
+Ellesmere.  I am afraid it is not in the past alone that we should
+be awestruck with horrors:  we, who have a slave-trade still on
+earth.  But, to go back to the essay, I like what you say about the
+theory of constructing the Christian character without geniality;
+only you do not go far enough.  You are afraid.  People are for ever
+talking, especially you philanthropical people, about making others
+happy.  I do not know any way so sure of making others happy as of
+being so oneself, to begin with.  I do not mean that people are to
+be self-absorbed; but they are to drink in nature and life a little.
+From a genial, wisely-developed man good things radiate; whereas you
+must allow, Milverton, that benevolent people are very apt to be
+one-sided and fussy, and not of the sweetest temper if others will
+not be good and happy in their way.
+
+Milverton.  That is really not fair.  Of course, acid, small-minded
+people carry their narrow notions and their acidity into their
+benevolence.  Benevolence is no abstract perfection.  Men will
+express their benevolence according to their other gifts or want of
+gifts.  If it is strong, it overcomes other things in the character
+which would be hindrances to it; but it must speak in the language
+of the soul it is in.
+
+Ellesmere.  Come, let us go and see the pigs.  I hear them grunting
+over their dinners in the farmyard.  I like to see creatures who can
+be happy without a theory.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+
+The next time that I came over to Worth-Ashton it was raining, and I
+found my friends in the study.
+
+"Well, Dunsford," said Ellesmere, "is it not comfortable to have our
+sessions here for once, and to be looking out on a good solid
+English wet day?"
+
+Dunsford.  Rather a fluid than a solid.  But I agree with you in
+thinking it is very comfortable here.
+
+Ellesmere.  I like to look upon the backs of books.  First I think
+how much of the owner's inner life and character is shown in his
+books; then perhaps I wonder how he got such a book which seems so
+remote from all that I know of him--
+
+Milverton.  I shall turn my books the wrong side upwards when you
+come into the study.
+
+Ellesmere.  But what amuses me most is to see the odd way in which
+books get together, especially in the library of a man who reads his
+books and puts them up again wherever there is room.  Now here is a
+charming party:  "A Treatise on the Steam-Engine" between "Locke on
+Christianity" and Madame de Stael's "Corinne."  I wonder what they
+talk about at night when we are all asleep.  Here is another happy
+juxtaposition:  old Clarendon next to a modern metaphysician whom he
+would positively loathe.  Here is Sadler next to Malthus, and
+Horsley next to Priestley; but this sort of thing happens most in
+the best regulated libraries.  It is a charming reflection for
+controversial writers, that their works will be put together on the
+same shelves, often between the same covers; and that, in the minds
+of educated men, the name of one writer will be sure to recall the
+name of the other.  So they go down to posterity as a brotherhood.
+
+Milverton.  To complete Ellesmere's theory, we may say that all
+those injuries to books which we choose to throw upon some wretched
+worm, are but the wounds from rival books.
+
+Ellesmere.  Certainly.  But now let us proceed to polish up the
+weapons of another of these spiteful creatures.
+
+Dunsford.  Yes.  What is to be our essay to-day, Milverton?
+
+Milverton.  Fiction.
+
+Ellesmere.  Now, that is really unfortunate.  Fiction is just the
+subject to be discussed--no, not discussed, talked over--out of
+doors on a hot day, all of us lying about in easy attitudes on the
+grass, Dunsford with his gaiters forming a most picturesque and
+prominent figure.  But there is nothing complete in this life.
+"Surgit amari aliquid:" and so we must listen to Fiction in arm-
+chairs.
+
+FICTION.
+
+The influence of works of fiction is unbounded.  Even the minds of
+well-informed people are often more stored with characters from
+acknowledged fiction than from history or biography, or the real
+life around them.  We dispute about these characters as if they were
+realities.  Their experience is our experience; we adopt their
+feelings, and imitate their acts.  And so there comes to be
+something traditional even in the management of the passions.
+Shakespeare's historical plays were the only history to the Duke of
+Marlborough.  Thousands of Greeks acted under the influence of what
+Achilles or Ulysses did, in Homer.  The poet sings of the deeds that
+shall be.  He imagines the past; he forms the future.
+
+Yet how surpassingly interesting is real life when we get an insight
+into it.  Occasionally a great genius lifts up the veil of history,
+and we see men who once really were alive, who did not always live
+only in history; or, amidst the dreary page of battles, levies,
+sieges, and the sleep-inducing weavings and unweavings of political
+combination, we come, ourselves, across some spoken or written words
+of the great actors of the time, and are then fascinated by the life
+and reality of these things.  Could you have the life of any man
+really portrayed to you, sun-drawn as it were, its hopes, its fears,
+its revolutions of opinion in each day, its most anxious wishes
+attained, and then, perhaps, crystallising into its blackest
+regrets--such a work would go far to contain all histories, and be
+the greatest lesson of love, humility, and tolerance, that men had
+ever read.
+
+Now fiction does attempt something like the above.  In history we
+are cramped by impertinent facts that must, however, be set down; by
+theories that must be answered; evidence that must be weighed; views
+that must be taken.  Our facts constantly break off just where we
+should wish to examine them most closely.  The writer of fiction
+follows his characters into the recesses of their hearts.  There are
+no closed doors for him.  His puppets have no secrets from their
+master.  He plagues you with no doubts, no half-views, no criticism.
+Thus they thought, he tells you; thus they looked, thus they acted.
+Then, with every opportunity for scenic arrangement (for though his
+characters are confidential with him, he is only as confidential
+with his reader as the interest of the story will allow), it is not
+to be wondered at that the majority of readers should look upon
+history as a task, but tales of fiction as a delight.
+
+The greatest merit of fiction is the one so ably put forward by Sir
+James Mackintosh, namely, that it creates and nourishes sympathy.
+It extends this sympathy, too, in directions where, otherwise, we
+hardly see when it would have come.  But it may be objected that
+this sympathy is indiscriminate, and that we are in danger of mixing
+up virtue and vice, and blurring both, if we are led to sympathise
+with all manner of wrong-doers.  But, in the first place, virtue and
+vice are so mixed in real life, that it is well to be somewhat
+prepared for that fact; and, moreover, the sympathy is not wrongly
+directed.  Who has not felt intense sympathy for Macbeth?  Yet could
+he be alive again, with evil thoughts against "the gracious Duncan,"
+and could he see into all that has been felt for him, would that be
+an encouragement to murder?  The intense pity of wise people for the
+crimes of others, when rightly represented, is one of the strongest
+antidotes against crime.  We have taken the extreme case of sympathy
+being directed towards bad men.  How often has fiction made us
+sympathise with obscure suffering and retiring greatness, with the
+world-despised, and especially with those mixed characters in whom
+we might otherwise see but one colour--with Shylock and with Hamlet,
+with Jeanie Deans and with Claverhouse, with Sancho Panza as well as
+with Don Quixote.
+
+
+On the other hand, there is a danger of too much converse with
+fiction leading us into dream-land, or rather into lubber-land.  Of
+course this "too much converse" implies large converse with inferior
+writers.  Such writers are too apt to make life as they would have
+it for themselves.  Sometimes, also, they must make it to suit
+booksellers' rules.  Having such power over their puppets they abuse
+it.  They can kill these puppets, change their natures suddenly,
+reward or punish them so easily, that it is no wonder they are led
+to play fantastic tricks with them.  Now, if a sedulous reader of
+the works of such writers should form his notions of real life from
+them, he would occasionally meet with rude shocks when he
+encountered the realities of that life.
+
+
+For my own part, notwithstanding all the charms of life in swiftly-
+written novels, I prefer real life.  It is true that, in the former,
+everything breaks off round, every little event tends to some great
+thing, everybody one meets is to exercise some great influence for
+good or ill upon one's fate.  I take it for granted one fancies
+oneself the hero.  Then all one's fancy is paid in ready money, or
+at least one can draw upon it at the end of the third volume.  One
+leaps to remote wealth and honour by hairbreadth chances; and one's
+uncle in India always dies opportunely.  To be sure the thought
+occurs, that if this novel life could be turned into real life, one
+might be the uncle in India and not the hero of the tale.  But that
+is a trifling matter, for at any rate one should carry on with
+spirit somebody else's story.  On the whole, however, as I said
+before, I prefer real life, where nothing is tied up neatly, but all
+in odds and ends; where the doctrine of compensation enters largely,
+where we are often most blamed when we least deserve it, where there
+is no third volume to make things straight, and where many an
+Augustus marries many a Belinda, and, instead of being happy ever
+afterwards, finds that there is a growth of trials and troubles for
+each successive period of man's life.
+
+
+In considering the subject of fiction, the responsibility of the
+writers thereof is a matter worth pointing out.  We see clearly
+enough that historians are to be limited by facts and probabilities;
+but we are apt to make a large allowance for the fancies of writers
+of fiction.  We must remember, however, that fiction is not
+falsehood.  If a writer puts abstract virtues into book-clothing,
+and sends them upon stilts into the world, he is a bad writer:  if
+he classifies men, and attributes all virtue to one class and all
+vice to another, he is a false writer.  Then, again, if his ideal is
+so poor, that he fancies man's welfare to consist in immediate
+happiness; if he means to paint a great man and paints only a greedy
+one, he is a mischievous writer and not the less so, although by
+lamplight and amongst a juvenile audience, his coarse scene-painting
+should be thought very grand.  He may be true to his own fancy, but
+he is false to Nature.  A writer, of course, cannot get beyond his
+own ideal:  but at least he should see that he works up to it:  and
+if it is a poor one, he had better write histories of the utmost
+concentration of dulness, than amuse us with unjust and untrue
+imaginings.
+
+                              -----
+
+Ellesmere.  I am glad you have kept to the obvious things about
+fiction.  It would have been a great nuisance to have had to follow
+you through intricate theories about what fiction consists in, and
+what are its limits, and so on.  Then we should have got into
+questions touching the laws of representation generally, and then
+into art, of which, between ourselves, you know very little.
+
+Dunsford.  Talking of representation, what do you two, who have now
+seen something of the world, think about representative government?
+
+Ellesmere.  Dunsford plumps down upon us sometimes with awful
+questions:  what do you think of all philosophy? or what is your
+opinion of life in general?  Could not you throw in a few small
+questions of that kind, together with your representative one, and
+we might try to answer them all at once.  Dunsford is only laughing
+at us, Milverton.
+
+Milverton.  No, I know what was in Dunsford's mind when he asked
+that question.  He has had his doubts and misgivings, when he has
+been reading a six nights' debate (for the people in the country I
+daresay do read those things), whether representative government is
+the most complete device the human mind could suggest for getting at
+wise rulers.
+
+Ellesmere.  It is a doubt which has crossed my mind.
+
+Milverton.  And mine; but the doubt, if it has ever been more than
+mere petulance, has not had much practical weight with me.  Look how
+the business of the world is managed.  There are a few people who
+think out things, and a few who execute.  The former are not to be
+secured by any device.  They are gifts.  The latter may be well
+chosen, have often been well chosen, under other forms of government
+than the representative one.  I believe that the favourites of kings
+have been a superior race of men.  Even a fool does not choose a
+fool for a favourite.  He knows better than that:  he must have
+something to lean against.  But between the thinkers and the doers
+(if, indeed, we ought to make such a distinction), WHAT A NUMBER OF
+USEFUL LINKS THERE ARE IN A REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT on account of
+the much larger number of people admitted into some share of
+government.  What general cultivation must come from that, and what
+security!  Of course, everything has its wrong side; and from this
+number of people let in there comes declamation and claptrap and
+mob-service, which is much the same thing as courtiership was in
+other times.  But then, to make the comparison a fair one, you must
+take the wrong side of any other form of government that has been
+devised.
+
+Dunsford.  Well, but so much power centring in the lower house of
+Parliament, and the getting into Parliament being a thing which is
+not very inviting to the kind of people one would most like to see
+there, do you not think that the ablest men are kept away?
+
+Milverton.  Yes; but if you make your governing body a unit or a
+ten, or any small number, how is this power, unless it is Argus-
+eyed, and myriad-minded, and right-minded too, to choose the right
+men any better than they are found now?  The great danger, as it
+appears to me, of representative government is lest it should slide
+down from representative government to delegate government.  In my
+opinion, the welfare of England, in great measure, depends upon what
+takes place at the hustings.  If, in the majority of instances,
+there were abject conduct there, electors and elected would be alike
+debased; upright public men could not be expected to arise from such
+beginnings; and thoughtful persons would begin to consider whether
+some other form of government could not forthwith be made out.
+
+Ellesmere.  I have a supreme disgust for the man who at the hustings
+has no opinion beyond or above the clamour round him.  How such a
+fellow would have kissed the ground before a Pompadour, or waited
+for hours in a Buckingham's antechamber, only to catch the faintest
+beam of reflected light from royalty.
+
+But I declare we have been just like schoolboys talking about forms
+of government and so on.
+
+     "For forms of government let fools contest,
+      That which is WORST administered is best,"--
+
+that is, representative government.
+
+Milverton.  I should not like either of you to fancy, from what I
+have been saying about representative government, that I do not see
+the dangers and the evils of it.  In fact, it is a frequent thought
+with me of what importance the House of Lords is at present, and of
+how much greater importance it might be made.  If there were Peers
+for life, and official members of the House of Commons, it would, I
+think, meet most of your objections, Dunsford.
+
+Dunsford.  I suppose I am becoming a little rusty and disposed to
+grumble, as I grow old; but there is a good deal in modern
+government which seems to me very rude and absurd.  There comes a
+clamour, partly reasonable; power is deaf to it, overlooks it, says
+there is no such thing; then great clamour; after a time, power
+welcomes that, takes it to its arms, says that now it is loud it is
+very wise, wishes it had always been clamour itself.
+
+Ellesmere.  How many acres do you farm, Dunsford?  How spiteful you
+are!
+
+Dunsford.  I am not thinking of Corn Laws alone, as you fancy,
+Master Ellesmere.  But to go to other things.  I quite agree,
+Milverton, with what you were saying just now about the business of
+the world being carried on by few, and the thinking few being in the
+nature of gifts to the world, not elicited by King or Kaiser.
+
+Milverton.  The mill-streams that turn the clappers of the world
+arise in solitary places.
+
+Ellesmere.  Not a bad metaphor, but untrue.  Aristotle, Bacon--
+
+Milverton.  Well, I believe it would be much wiser to say, that we
+cannot lay down rules about the highest work; either when it is
+done, where it will be done, or how it can be made to be done.  It
+is too immaterial for our measurement; for the highest part even of
+the mere business of the world is in dealing with ideas.  It is very
+amusing to observe the misconceptions of men on these points.  They
+call for what is outward--can understand that, can praise it.
+Fussiness and the forms of activity in all ages get great praise.
+Imagine an active, bustling little praetor under Augustus, how he
+probably pointed out Horace to his sons as a moony kind of man,
+whose ways were much to be avoided, and told them it was a weakness
+in Augustus to like such idle men about him instead of men of
+business.
+
+Ellesmere.  Or fancy a bustling Glasgow merchant of Adam Smith's day
+watching him.  How little would the merchant have dreamt what a
+number of vessels were to be floated away by the ink in the
+Professor's inkstand; and what crashing of axes, and clearing of
+forests in distant lands, the noise of his pen upon the paper
+portended.
+
+Milverton.  It is not only the effect of the still-working man that
+the busy man cannot anticipate, but neither can he comprehend the
+present labour.  If Horace had told my praetor that
+
+     "Abstinuit Venere et vino, sudavit et alsit,"
+
+"What, to write a few lines!" would his praetorship have cried out.
+"Why, I can live well and enjoy life; and I flatter myself no one in
+Rome does more business."
+
+Dunsford.  All of it only goes to show how little we know of each
+other, and how tolerant we ought to be of others' efforts.
+
+Milverton.  The trials that there must be every day without any
+incident that even the most minute household chronicler could set
+down:  the labours without show or noise!
+
+Ellesmere.  The deep things that there are which, with unthinking
+people, pass for shallow things, merely because they are clear as
+well as deep.  My fable of the other day, for instance--which
+instead of producing any moral effect upon you two, only seemed to
+make you both inclined to giggle.
+
+Milverton.  I am so glad you reminded me of that.  I, too, fired
+with a noble emulation, have invented a fable since we last met
+which I want you to hear.  I assure you I did not mean to laugh at
+yours:  it was only that it came rather unexpectedly upon me.  You
+are not exactly the person from whom one should expect fables.
+
+Dunsford.  Now for the fable.
+
+Milverton.  There was a gathering together of creatures hurtful and
+terrible to man, to name their king.  Blight, mildew, darkness,
+mighty waves, fierce winds, Will-o'-the-wisps, and shadows of grim
+objects, told fearfully their doings and preferred their claims,
+none prevailing.  But when evening came on, a thin mist curled up,
+derisively, amidst the assemblage, and said, "I gather round a man
+going to his own home over paths made by his daily footsteps; and he
+becomes at once helpless and tame as a child.  The lights meant to
+assist him, then betray.  You find him wandering, or need the aid of
+other Terrors to subdue him.  I am, alone, confusion to him."  And
+all the assemblage bowed before the mist, and made it king, and set
+it on the brow of many a mountain, where, when it is not doing evil,
+it may be often seen to this day.
+
+Dunsford.  Well, I like that fable:  only I am not quite clear about
+the meaning.
+
+Ellesmere.  You had no doubt about mine.
+
+Dunsford.  Is the mist calumny, Milverton?
+
+Ellesmere.  No, prejudice, I am sure.
+
+Dunsford.  Familiarity with the things around us, obscuring
+knowledge?
+
+Milverton.  I would rather not explain.  Each of you make your own
+fable of it.
+
+Dunsford.  Well, if ever I make a fable, it shall be one of the old-
+fashioned sort, with animals for the speakers, and a good easy
+moral.
+
+Ellesmere.  Not a thing requiring the notes of seven German
+metaphysicians.  I must go and talk a little to my friends the
+trees, and see if I can get any explanation from them.  It is
+turning out a beautiful day after all, notwithstanding my praise of
+its solidity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+
+We met as usual at our old spot on the lawn for our next reading.  I
+forget what took place before reading, except that Ellesmere was
+very jocose about our reading "Fiction" in-doors, and the following
+"November Essay," as he called it, "under a jovial sun, and with the
+power of getting up and walking away from each other to any extent."
+
+
+ON THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS.
+
+The "Iliad" for war; the "Odyssey" for wandering; but where is the
+great domestic epic?  Yet it is but commonplace to say, that
+passions may rage round a tea-table, which would not have misbecome
+men dashing at one another in war-chariots; and evolutions of
+patience and temper are performed at the fireside, worthy to be
+compared with the Retreat of the Ten Thousand.  Men have worshipped
+some fantastic being for living alone in a wilderness; but social
+martyrdoms place no saints upon the calendar.
+
+We may blind ourselves to it if we like, but the hatreds and
+disgusts that there are behind friendship, relationship, service,
+and, indeed, proximity of all kinds, is one of the darkest spots
+upon earth.  The various relations of life, which bring people
+together, cannot, as we know, be perfectly fulfilled except in a
+state where there will, perhaps, be no occasion for any of them.  It
+is no harm, however, to endeavour to see whether there are any
+methods which may make these relations in the least degree more
+harmonious now.
+
+In the first place, if people are to live happily together, they
+must not fancy, because they are thrown together now, that all their
+lives have been exactly similar up to the present time, that they
+started exactly alike, and that they are to be for the future of the
+same mind.  A thorough conviction of the difference of men is the
+great thing to be assured of in social knowledge:  it is to life
+what Newton's law is to astronomy.  Sometimes men have a knowledge
+of it with regard to the world in general:  they do not expect the
+outer world to agree with them in all points, but are vexed at not
+being able to drive their own tastes and opinions into those they
+live with.  Diversities distress them.  They will not see that there
+are many forms of virtue and wisdom.  Yet we might as well say, "Why
+all these stars; why this difference; why not all one star?"
+
+Many of the rules for people living together in peace follow from
+the above.  For instance, not to interfere unreasonably with others,
+not to ridicule their tastes, not to question and re-question their
+resolves, not to indulge in perpetual comment on their proceedings,
+and to delight in their having other pursuits than ours, are all
+based upon a thorough perception of the simple fact that they are
+not we.
+
+Another rule for living happily with others is to avoid having stock
+subjects of disputation.  It mostly happens, when people live much
+together, that they come to have certain set topics, around which,
+from frequent dispute, there is such a growth of angry words,
+mortified vanity, and the like, that the original subject of
+difference becomes a standing subject for quarrel; and there is a
+tendency in all minor disputes to drift down to it.
+
+Again, if people wish to live well together, they must not hold too
+much to logic, and suppose that everything is to be settled by
+sufficient reason.  Dr. Johnson saw this clearly with regard to
+married people, when he said, "Wretched would be the pair above all
+names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason
+every morning all the minute detail of a domestic day."  But the
+application should be much more general than he made it.  There is
+no time for such reasonings, and nothing that is worth them.  And
+when we recollect how two lawyers, or two politicians, can go on
+contending, and that there is no end of one-sided reasoning on any
+subject, we shall not be sure that such contention is the best mode
+for arriving at truth.  But certainly it is not the way to arrive at
+good temper.
+
+If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism
+upon those with whom you live.  The number of people who have taken
+out judges' patents for themselves is very large in any society.
+Now it would be hard for a man to live with another who was always
+criticising his actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism.
+It would be like living between the glasses of a microscope.  But
+these self-elected judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to
+have the persons they judge brought before them in the guise of
+culprits.
+
+One of the most provoking forms of the criticism above alluded to is
+that which may be called criticism over the shoulder.  "Had I been
+consulted," "Had you listened to me," "But you always will," and
+such short scraps of sentences may remind many of us of
+dissertations which we have suffered and inflicted, and of which we
+cannot call to mind any soothing effect.
+
+Another rule is, not to let familiarity swallow up all courtesy.
+Many of us have a habit of saying to those with whom we live such
+things as we say about strangers behind their backs.  There is no
+place, however, where real politeness is of more value than where we
+mostly think it would be superfluous.  You may say more truth, or
+rather speak out more plainly, to your associates, but not less
+courteously than you do to strangers.
+
+Again, we must not expect more from the society of our friends and
+companions than it can give, and especially must not expect contrary
+things.  It is something arrogant to talk of travelling over other
+minds (mind being, for what we know, infinite); but still we become
+familiar with the upper views, tastes, and tempers of our
+associates.  And it is hardly in man to estimate justly what is
+familiar to him.  In travelling along at night, as Hazlitt says, we
+catch a glimpse into cheerful-looking rooms with light blazing in
+them, and we conclude involuntarily how happy the inmates must be.
+Yet there is heaven and hell in those rooms--the same heaven and
+hell that we have known in others.
+
+
+There are two great classes of promoters of social happiness--
+cheerful people, and people who have some reticence.  The latter are
+more secure benefits to society even than the former.  They are non-
+conductors of all the heats and animosities around them.  To have
+peace in a house, or a family, or any social circle, the members of
+it must beware of passing on hasty and uncharitable speeches, which,
+the whole of the context seldom being told, is often not conveying
+but creating mischief.  They must be very good people to avoid doing
+this; for let Human Nature say what it will, it likes sometimes to
+look on at a quarrel, and that not altogether from ill-nature, but
+from a love of excitement, for the same reason that Charles II.
+liked to attend the debates in the Lords, because they were "as good
+as a play."
+
+
+We come now to the consideration of temper, which might have been
+expected to be treated first.  But to cut off the means and causes
+of bad temper is, perhaps, of as much importance as any direct
+dealing with the temper itself.  Besides, it is probable that in
+small social circles there is more suffering from unkindness than
+ill-temper.  Anger is a thing that those who live under us suffer
+more from than those who live with us.  But all the forms of ill-
+humour and sour-sensitiveness, which especially belong to equal
+intimacy (though indeed, they are common to all), are best to be met
+by impassiveness.  When two sensitive persons are shut up together,
+they go on vexing each other with a reproductive irritability. {93}
+But sensitive and hard people get on well together.  The supply of
+temper is not altogether out of the usual laws of supply and demand.
+
+
+Intimate friends and relations should be careful when they go out
+into the world together, or admit others to their own circle, that
+they do not make a bad use of the knowledge which they have gained
+of each other by their intimacy.  Nothing is more common than this,
+and did it not mostly proceed from mere carelessness, it would be
+superlatively ungenerous.  You seldom need wait for the written life
+of a man to hear about his weaknesses, or what are supposed to be
+such, if you know his intimate friends, or meet him in company with
+them.
+
+
+Lastly, in conciliating those we live with, it is most surely done,
+not by consulting their interests, nor by giving way to their
+opinions, so much as by not offending their tastes.  The most
+refined part of us lies in this region of taste, which is perhaps a
+result of our whole being rather than a part of our nature, and, at
+any rate, is the region of our most subtle sympathies and
+antipathies.
+
+
+It may be said that if the great principles of Christianity were
+attended to, all such rules, suggestions, and observations as the
+above would be needless.  True enough!  Great principles are at the
+bottom of all things; but to apply them to daily life, many little
+rules, precautions, and insights are needed.  Such things hold a
+middle place between real life and principles, as form does between
+matter and spirit, moulding the one and expressing the other.
+
+                              -----
+
+Ellesmere.  Quite right that last part.  Everybody must have known
+really good people, with all Christian temper, but having so little
+Christian prudence as to do a great deal of mischief in society.
+
+Dunsford.  There is one case, my dear Milverton, which I do not
+think you have considered:  the case where people live unhappily
+together, not from any bad relations between them, but because they
+do not agree about the treatment of others.  A just person, for
+instance, who would bear anything for himself or herself, must
+remonstrate, at the hazard of any disagreement, at injustice to
+others.
+
+Milverton.  Yes.  That, however, is a case to be decided upon higher
+considerations than those I have been treating of.  A man must do
+his duty in the way of preventing injustice, and take what comes of
+it.
+
+Ellesmere.  For people to live happily together, the real secret is
+that they should not live too much together.  Of course, you cannot
+say that; it would sound harsh, and cut short the essay altogether.
+
+Again, you talk about tastes and "region of subtle sympathies," and
+all that.  I have observed that if people's vanity is pleased, they
+live well enough together.  Offended vanity is the great separator.
+You hear a man (call him B) saying that he is really not himself
+before So-and-so; tell him that So-and-so admires him very much and
+is himself rather abashed before B, and B is straightway
+comfortable, and they get on harmoniously together, and you hear no
+more about subtle sympathies or antipathies.
+
+Dunsford.  What a low view you do take of things sometimes,
+Ellesmere!
+
+Milverton.  I should not care how low it was, but it is not fair--at
+least, it does not contain the whole matter.  In the very case he
+has put, there was a subtle embarrassment between B and So-and-so.
+Well, now, let these people not merely meet occasionally, but be
+obliged to live together, without any such explanation as Ellesmere
+has imagined, and they will be very uncomfortable from causes that
+you cannot impute to vanity.  It takes away much of the savour of
+life to live amongst those with whom one has not anything like one's
+fair value.  It may not be mortified vanity, but unsatisfied
+sympathy, which causes this discomfort.  B thinks that the other
+does not know him; he feels that he has no place with the other.
+When there is intense admiration on one side, there is hardly a care
+in the mind of the admiring one as to what estimation he is held in.
+But, in ordinary cases, some clearly defined respect and
+acknowledgment of worth is needed on both sides.  See how happy a
+man is in any office or service who is acknowledged to do something
+well.  How comfortable he is with his superiors!  He has his place.
+It is not exactly a satisfaction of his vanity, but an
+acknowledgment of his useful existence that contents him.  I do not
+mean to say that there are not innumerable claims for acknowledgment
+of merit and service made by rampant vanity and egotism, which
+claims cannot be satisfied, ought not to be satisfied, and which,
+being unsatisfied, embitter people.  But I think your word Vanity
+will not explain all the feelings we have been talking about.
+
+Ellesmere.  Perhaps not.
+
+Dunsford.  Certainly not.
+
+Ellesmere.  Well, at any rate, you will admit that there is a class
+of dreadfully humble people who make immense claims at the very time
+that they are explaining that they have no claims.  They say they
+know they cannot be esteemed; they are well aware that they are not
+wanted, and so on, all the while making it a sort of grievance and a
+claim that they are not what they know themselves not to be;
+whereas, if they did but fall back upon their humility, and keep
+themselves quiet about their demerits, they would be strong then,
+and in their place and happy, doing what they could.
+
+Milverton.  It must be confessed that these people do make their
+humility somewhat obnoxious.  Yet, after all, you allow that they
+know their deficiencies, and they only say, "I know I have not much
+to recommend me, but I wish to be loved, nevertheless."
+
+Ellesmere.  Ah, if they only said it a few times!  Besides, there is
+a little envy mixed up with the humility that I mean.
+
+Dunsford.  Travelling is a great trial of people's ability to live
+together.
+
+Ellesmere.  Yes.  Lavater says that you do not know a man until you
+have divided an inheritance with him; but I think a long journey
+with him will do.
+
+Milverton.  Well, and what is it in travelling that makes people
+disagree?  Not direct selfishness, but injudicious management;
+stupid regrets, for instance, at things not being different from
+what they are, or from what they might have been, if "the other
+route" had been chosen; fellow-travellers punishing each other with
+each other's tastes; getting stock subjects of disputation; laughing
+unseasonably at each other's vexations and discomforts; and
+endeavouring to settle everything by the force of sufficient reason,
+instead of by some authorised will, or by tossing up.  Thus, in the
+short time of a journey, almost all modes and causes of human
+disagreement are brought into action.
+
+Ellesmere.  My favourite one not being the least--over-much of each
+other's company.
+
+For my part, I think one of the greatest bores of companionship is,
+not merely that people wish to fit tastes and notions on you just as
+they might the first pair of ready-made shoes they meet with, a
+process amusing enough to the bystander, but exquisitely
+uncomfortable to the person being ready-shod:  but that they bore
+you with never-ending talk about their pursuits, even when they know
+that you do not work in the same groove with them, and that they
+cannot hope to make you do so.
+
+Dunsford.  Nobody can accuse you of that fault, Ellesmere:  I never
+heard you dilate much upon anything that interested you, though I
+have known you have some pet subject, and to be working at it for
+months.  But this comes of your coldness of nature.
+
+Ellesmere.  Well, it might bear a more favourable construction.  But
+to go back to the essay.  It only contemplates the fact of people
+living together as equals, if we may so say; but in general, of
+course, you must add some other relationship or connection than that
+of merely being together.
+
+Milverton.  I had not overlooked that; but there are certain general
+rules in the matter that may be applied to nearly all relationship,
+just as I have taken that one from Johnson, applied by him to
+married life, about not endeavouring to settle all things by
+reasoning, and have given it a general application which, I believe,
+it will bear.
+
+Ellesmere.  There is one thing that I should think must often make
+women very unreasonable and unpleasant companions.  Oh, you may both
+hold up your hands and eyes, but I am not married, and can say what
+I please.  Of course you put on the proper official look of
+astonishment; and I will duly report it.  But I was going to say
+that Chivalry, which has doubtless done a great deal of good, has
+also done a great deal of harm.  Women may talk the greatest
+unreason out of doors, and nobody kindly informs them that it is
+unreason.  They do not talk much before clever men, and when they
+do, their words are humoured and dandled as children's sayings are.
+Now, I should fancy--mind, I do not want either of you to say that
+my fancy is otherwise than quite unreasonable--I should fancy that
+when women have to hear reason at home it must sound odd to them.
+The truth is, you know, we cannot pet anything much without doing it
+mischief.  You cannot pet the intellect, any more than the will,
+without injuring it.  Well then, again, if you put people upon a
+pedestal and do a great deal of worship around them, I cannot think
+but the will in such cases must become rather corrupted, and that
+lessons of obedience must fall rather harshly--
+
+Dunsford.  Why, you Mahometan, you Turk of a lawyer--would you do
+away with all the high things of courtesy, tenderness for the
+weaker, and--
+
+Milverton.  No, I see what he means; and there is something in it.
+Many a woman is brought up in unreason and self-will from these
+causes that he has given, as many a man from other causes; but there
+is one great corrective that he has omitted, and which is, that all
+forms, fashions, and outward things have a tendency to go down
+before realities when they come hand to hand together.  Knowledge
+and judgment prevail.  Governing is apt to fall to the right person
+in private as in public affairs.
+
+Ellesmere.  Those who give way in public affairs, and let the men
+who can do a thing do it, are so far wise that they know what is to
+be done, mostly.  But the very things I am arguing against are the
+unreason and self-will, which being constantly pampered, do not
+appreciate reason or just sway.  Besides, is there not a force in
+ill-humour and unreason to which you constantly see the wisest bend?
+You will come round to my opinion some day.  I do not want, though,
+to convince you.  It is no business of mine.
+
+Milverton.  Well, I may be wrong, but I think, when we come to
+consider education, I can show you how the dangers you fear may be
+greatly obviated, without Chivalry being obliged to put on a wig and
+gown, and be wise.
+
+Dunsford.  Meanwhile, let us enjoy the delightful atmosphere of
+courtesy, unreasonable sometimes, if you like, which saves many
+people being put down with the best arguments in the most convincing
+manner, or being weighed, estimated, and given way to, so as not to
+spoil them.
+
+Ellesmere.  Do not tell, either of you, what I have been saying.  I
+shall always be poked up into some garret when I come to see you, if
+you do.
+
+Dunsford.  I think the most curious thing, as regards people living
+together, is the intense ignorance they sometimes are in of each
+other.  Many years ago, one or other of you said something of this
+kind to me, and I have often thought of it since.
+
+Milverton.  People fulfil a relation towards each other, and they
+only know each other in that relation, especially if it is badly
+managed by the superior one; but any way the relationship involves
+some ignorance.  They perform orbits round each other, each
+gyrating, too, upon his own axis, and there are parts of the
+character of each which are never brought into view of the other.
+
+Ellesmere.  I should carry this notion of yours, Milverton, farther
+than you do.  There is a peculiar mental relation soon constituted
+between associates of any kind, which confines and prevents complete
+knowledge on both sides.  Each man, in some measure therefore, knows
+others only through himself.  Tennyson makes Ulysses say,
+
+     "I am a part of all that I have seen;"
+
+it might have run,
+
+     "I am a part of all that I have heard."
+
+Dunsford.  Ellesmere becoming metaphysical and transcendental!
+
+Ellesmere.  Well, well, we will leave these heights, and descend in
+little drops of criticism.  There are two or three things you might
+have pointed out, Milverton.  Perhaps you would say that they are
+included in what you have said, but I think not.  You talk of the
+mischief of much comment on each other amongst those who live
+together.  You might have shown, I think, that in the case of near
+friends and relations this comment also deepens into interference--
+at least it partakes of that nature.  Friends and relations should,
+therefore, be especially careful to avoid needless comments on each
+other.  They do just the contrary.  That is one of the reasons why
+they often hate one another so much.
+
+Dunsford.  Ellesmere!
+
+Ellesmere.  Protest, if you like, my dear Dunsford.
+     Dissentient,
+          1.  Because I wish it were not so.
+          2.  Because I am sorry that it is.
+                                 (Signed) DUNSFORD.
+
+Milverton.  "Hate" is too strong a word, Ellesmere; what you say
+would be true enough, if you would put "are not in sympathy with."
+
+Ellesmere.  "Have a quiet distaste for."  That is the proper medium.
+Now, to go to another matter.  You have not put the case of over-
+managing people, who are tremendous to live with.
+
+Milverton.  I have spoken about "interfering unreasonably with
+others."
+
+Ellesmere.  That does not quite convey what I mean.  It is when the
+manager and the managee are both of the same mind as to the thing to
+be done; but the former insists, and instructs, and suggests, and
+foresees, till the other feels that all free agency for him is gone.
+
+Milverton.  It is a sad thing to consider how much of their
+abilities people turn to tiresomeness.  You see a man who would be
+very agreeable if he were not so observant:  another who would be
+charming, if he were deaf and dumb:  a third delightful, if he did
+not vex all around him with superfluous criticism.
+
+Ellesmere.  A hit at me that last, I suspect.  But I shall go on.
+You have not, I think, made enough merit of independence in
+companionship.  If I were to put into an aphorism what I mean, I
+should say, Those who depend wholly on companionship are the worst
+companions; or thus:  Those deserve companionship who can do without
+it.  There, Mr. Aphoriser General, what do you say to that?
+
+Milverton.  Very good, but--
+
+Ellesmere.  Of course a "but" to other people's aphorisms, as if
+every aphorism had not buts innumerable.  We critics, you know,
+cannot abide criticism.  We do all the criticism that is needed
+ourselves.  I wonder at the presumption sometimes of you wretched
+authors.  But to proceed.  You have not said anything about the
+mischief of superfluous condolence amongst people who live together.
+I flatter myself that I could condole anybody out of all peace of
+mind.
+
+Milverton.  All depends upon whether condolence goes with the grain,
+or against the grain, of vanity.  I know what you mean, however:
+For instance, it is a very absurd thing to fret much over other
+people's courses, not considering the knowledge and discipline that
+there is in any course that a man may take.  And it is still more
+absurd to be constantly showing the people fretted over that you are
+fretting over them.  I think a good deal of what you call
+superfluous condolence would come under the head of superfluous
+criticism.
+
+Ellesmere.  Not altogether.  In companionship, when an evil happens
+to one of the circle, the others should simply attempt to share and
+lighten it, not to expound it, or dilate on it, or make it the least
+darker.  The person afflicted generally apprehends all the blackness
+sufficiently.  Now, unjust abuse by the world is to me like the
+howling of the wind at night when one is warm within.  Bring any
+draught of it into one's house though, and it is not so pleasant.
+
+Dunsford.  Talking of companionship, do not you think there is often
+a peculiar feeling of home where age or infirmity is?  The arm-chair
+of the sick or the old is the centre of the house.  They think,
+perhaps, that they are unimportant; but all the household hopes and
+cares flow to them and from them.
+
+Milverton.  I quite agree with you.  What you have just depicted is
+a beautiful sight, especially when, as you often see, the age or
+infirmity is not in the least selfish or exacting.
+
+Ellesmere.  We have said a great deal about the companionship of
+human beings; but, upon my word, we ought to have kept a few words
+for our dog friends.  Rollo has been lolling out his great tongue,
+and looking wistfully from face to face, as we each began our talk.
+A few minutes ago he was quite concerned, thinking I was angry with
+you, when I would not let you "but" my aphorism.  I am not sure
+which of the three I should rather go out walking with now:
+Dunsford, Rollo, Milverton.  The middle one is the safest companion.
+I am sure not to get out of humour with him.  But I have no
+objection to try the whole three:  only I vote for much continuity
+of silence, as we have had floods of discussion to-day.
+
+Dunsford.  Agreed!
+
+Ellesmere.  Come, Rollo, you may bark now, as you have been silent,
+like a wise dog, all the morning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+
+It was arranged, during our walk, that Ellesmere should come and
+stay a day or two with me, and see the neighbouring cathedral, which
+is nearer my house than Milverton's.  The visit over, I brought him
+back to Worth-Ashton.  Milverton saw us coming, walked down the hill
+to meet us, and after the usual greetings, began to talk to
+Ellesmere.
+
+Milverton.  So you have been to see our cathedral.  I say "our," for
+when a cathedral is within ten miles of us, we feel a property in
+it, and are ready to battle for its architectural merits.
+
+Ellesmere.  You know I am not a man to rave about cathedrals.
+
+Milverton.  I certainly do not expect you to do so.  To me a
+cathedral is mostly somewhat of a sad sight.  You have Grecian
+monuments, if anything so misplaced can be called Grecian, imbedded
+against and cutting into Gothic pillars; the doors shut for the
+greater part of the day; only a little bit of the building used:
+beadledom predominant; the clink of money here and there; white-wash
+in vigour; the singing indifferent; the sermons not indifferent but
+bad; and some visitors from London forming, perhaps, the most
+important part of the audience; in fact, the thing having become a
+show.  We look about, thinking when piety filled every corner, and
+feel that the cathedral is too big for the Religion which is a
+dried-up thing that rattles in this empty space.
+
+Ellesmere.  This is the boldest simile I have heard for a long time.
+My theory about cathedrals is very different, I must confess.
+
+Dunsford.  Theory!
+
+Ellesmere.  Well, "theory" is not the word I ought to have used--
+feeling then.  My feeling is, how strong this creature was, this
+worship, how beautiful, how alluring, how complete; but there was
+something stronger--truth.
+
+Milverton.  And more beautiful?
+
+Ellesmere.  Yes, and far more beautiful.
+
+Milverton.  Doubtless, to the free spirits who brought truth
+forward.
+
+Ellesmere.  You are only saying this, Milverton, to try what I will
+say; but, despite of all sentimentalities, you sympathise with any
+emancipation of the human mind, as I do, however much the meagreness
+of Protestantism may be at times distasteful to you.
+
+Milverton.  I did not say I was anxious to go back.  Certainly not.
+But what says Dunsford?  Let us sit down on his stile and hear what
+he has to say.
+
+Dunsford.  I cannot talk to you about this subject.  If I tell you
+of all the merits (as they seem to me) of the Church of England, you
+will both pick what I say to pieces, whereas if I leave you to fight
+on, one or the other will avail himself of those arguments on which
+our Church is based.
+
+Milverton.  Well, Dunsford, you are very candid, and would make a
+complete diplomatist:  truth-telling being now pronounced (rather
+late in the day) the very acme of diplomacy.  But do you not own
+that our cathedrals are sadly misused?
+
+Dunsford.  Now, very likely, if more were made of them, you, and men
+who think like you, would begin to cry out "superstition"; and would
+instantly turn round and inveigh against the uses which you now,
+perhaps, imagine for cathedrals.
+
+Milverton.  Well, one never can answer for oneself; but at any rate,
+I do not see what is the meaning of building new churches in
+neighbourhoods where there are already the noblest buildings
+suitable for the same purposes.  Is there a church religion, and is
+there a cathedral religion?
+
+Ellesmere.  You cannot make the present fill the garb of the past,
+Milverton, any more than you could make the past fill that of the
+present.  Now, as regards the very thing you are about to discuss
+to-day, if it be the same you told us in our last walk--Education:
+if you are only going to give us some institution for it, I daresay
+it may be very good for to-day, or for this generation, but it will
+have its sere and yellow leaf, and there will be a time when future
+Milvertons, in sentimental mood, will moan over it, and wish they
+had it and all that has grown up to take its place at the same time.
+But all this is what I have often heard you say yourself in other
+words.
+
+Dunsford.  This is very hard doctrine, and not quite sound, I think.
+In getting the new gain, we always sacrifice something, and we
+should look with some pious regard to what was good in the things
+which are past.  That good is generally one which, though it may not
+be equal to the present, would make a most valuable supplement to
+it.
+
+Milverton.  I would try and work in the old good thing with the new,
+not as patchwork though, but making the new thing grow out in such a
+way as to embrace the old advantage.
+
+Ellesmere.  Well, we must have the essay before we branch out into
+our philosophy.  Pleasure afterwards--I will not say what comes
+first.
+
+
+EDUCATION.
+
+The word education is so large, that one may almost as well put
+"world," or "the end and object of being," at the head of an essay.
+It should, therefore, soon be declared what such a heading does
+mean.  The word education suggests chiefly to some minds what the
+State can do for those whom they consider its young people--the
+children of the poorer classes:  to others it presents the idea of
+all the training that can be got for money at schools and colleges,
+and which can be fairly accomplished and shut in at the age of one-
+and-twenty.  This essay, however, will not be a treatise on
+government education, or other school and college education, but
+will only contain a few points in reference to the general subject,
+which may escape more methodical and enlarged discussions.
+
+
+In the first place, as regards government education, it must be kept
+in mind that there is a danger of its being too interfering and
+formal, of its overlying private enterprise, insisting upon too much
+uniformity, and injuring local connections and regards.  Education,
+even in the poorest acceptance of the word, is a great thing:  but
+the harmonious intercourse of different ranks, if not a greater, is
+a more difficult one; and we must not gain the former at any
+considerable sacrifice of the latter.
+
+There is another point connected with this branch of the subject
+which requires, perhaps, to be noted.  If government provision is
+made in any case, might it not be combined with private payment in
+other cases, or enter in the way of rewards, so as to do good
+throughout each step of the social ladder?  The lowest kind of
+school education is a power, and it is desirable that the gradations
+of this power should correspond to other influences which we know to
+be good.  For instance, a hard-working man saves something to
+educate his children; if he can get a little better education for
+them than other parents of his own rank for theirs, it is an
+incentive and a reward to him, and the child's bringing up at home
+is a thing which will correspond to this better education at school.
+In this there are the elements at once of stability and progress.
+
+These views may possibly seem too refined, but at any rate they
+require consideration.
+
+
+The next branch of the subject is the ordinary education of young
+persons not of the poorest classes, with which the State has
+hitherto had little or nothing to do.  This may be considered under
+four heads:  religious, moral, intellectual, and physical education.
+With regard to the first, there is not much that can be put into
+rules about it.  Parents and tutors will naturally be anxious to
+impress those under their charge with the religious opinions which
+they themselves hold.  In doing this, however, they should not omit
+to lay a foundation for charity towards people of other religious
+opinions.  For this purpose, it may be requisite to give a child a
+notion that there are other creeds besides that in which it is
+brought up itself.  And especially, let it not suppose that all good
+and wise people are of its church or chapel.  However desirable it
+may appear to the person teaching that there should be such a thing
+as unity of religion, yet as the facts of the world are against his
+wishes, and as this is the world which the child is to enter, it is
+well that the child should in reasonable time be informed of these
+facts.  It may be said in reply that history sufficiently informs
+children on these points.  But the world of the young is the
+domestic circle; all beyond is fabulous, unless brought home to them
+by comment.  The fact, therefore, of different opinions in religious
+matters being held by good people should sometimes be dwelt upon,
+instead of being shunned, if we would secure a ground-work of
+tolerance in a child's mind.
+
+
+INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION.
+
+In the intellectual part of education there is the absolute
+knowledge to be acquired, and the ways of acquiring knowledge to be
+gained.  The latter of course form the most important branch.  They
+can, in some measure, be taught.  Give children little to do, make
+much of its being accurately done.  This will give accuracy.  Insist
+upon speed in learning, with careful reference to the original
+powers of the pupil.  This speed gives the habit of concentrating
+attention, one of the most valuable of mental habits.  Then
+cultivate logic.  Logic is not the hard matter that is fancied.  A
+young person, especially after a little geometrical training, may
+soon be taught to perceive where a fallacy exists, and whether an
+argument is well sustained.  It is not, however, sufficient for him
+to be able to examine sharply and to pull to pieces.  He must learn
+how to build.  This is done by method.  The higher branches of
+method cannot be taught at first.  But you may begin by teaching
+orderliness of mind.  Collecting, classifying, contrasting and
+weighing facts, are some of the processes by which method is taught.
+When these four things, accuracy, attention, logic, and method are
+attained, the intellect is fairly furnished with its instruments.
+
+As regards the things to be taught, they will vary to some extent in
+each age.  The general course of education pursued at any particular
+time may not be the wisest by any means, and greatness will overleap
+it and neglect it, but the mass of men may go more safely and
+comfortably, if not with the stream, at least by the side of it.
+
+In the choice of studies too much deference should not be paid to
+the bent of a young person's mind.  Excellence in one or two things
+which may have taken the fancy of a youth (or which really may suit
+his genius) will ill compensate for a complete ignorance of those
+branches of study which are very repugnant to him; and which are,
+therefore, not likely to be learnt when he has freedom in the choice
+of his studies.
+
+Amongst the first things to be aimed at in the intellectual part of
+education is variety of pursuit.  A human being, like a tree, if it
+is to attain to perfect symmetry, must have light and air given to
+it from all quarters.  This may be done without making men
+superficial.  Scientific method may be acquired without many
+sciences being learnt.  But one or two great branches of science
+must be accurately known.  So, too, the choice works of antiquity
+may be thoroughly appreciated without extensive reacting.  And
+passing on from mere learning of any kind, a variety of pursuits,
+even in what may be called accomplishments, is eminently
+serviceable.  Much may be said of the advantage of keeping a man to
+a few pursuits, and of the great things done thereby in the making
+of pins and needles.  But in this matter we are not thinking of the
+things that are to be done, but of the persons who are to do them.
+Not wealth but men.  A number of one-sided men may make a great
+nation, though I much incline to doubt that; but such a nation will
+not contain a number of great men.
+
+The very advantage that flows from division of labour, and the
+probable consequences that men's future bread-getting pursuits will
+be more and more sub-divided, and therefore limited, make it the
+more necessary that a man should begin life with a broad basis of
+interest in many things which may cultivate his faculties and
+develop his nature.  This multifariousness of pursuit is needed also
+in the education of the poor.  Civilisation has made it easy for a
+man to brutalise himself:  how is this to be counteracted but by
+endowing him with many pursuits which may distract him from vice?
+It is not that kind of education which leads to no employment in
+after-life that will do battle with vice.  But when education
+enlarges the field of life-long good pursuits, it becomes formidable
+to the soul's worst enemies.
+
+
+MORAL EDUCATION.
+
+In considering moral education we must recollect that there are
+three agents in this matter--the child himself, the influence of his
+grown-up friends, and that of his contemporaries.  All that his
+grown-up friends tell him in the way of experience goes for very
+little, except in palpable matters.  They talk of abstractions which
+he cannot comprehend:  and the "Arabian Nights" is a truer world to
+him than that they talk of.  Still, though they cannot furnish
+experience, they can give motives.  Indeed, in their daily
+intercourse with the child, they are always doing so.  For instance,
+truth, courage, and kindness are the great moral qualities to be
+instilled.  Take courage, in its highest form--moral courage.  If a
+child perpetually hears such phrases (and especially if they are
+applied to his own conduct), as, "What people will say," "How they
+will look at you," "What they will think," and the like, it tends to
+destroy all just self-reliance in that child's mind, and to set up
+instead an exaggerated notion of public opinion, the greatest tyrant
+of these times.  People can see this in such an obvious thing as
+animal courage.  They will avoid over-cautioning children against
+physical dangers, knowing that the danger they talk much about will
+become a bug-bear to the child which it may never get rid of.  But a
+similar peril lurks in the application of moral motives.  Truth,
+courage, and kindness are likely to be learnt, or not, by children,
+according as they hear and receive encouragement in the direction of
+these pre-eminent qualities.  When attempt is made to frighten a
+child with these worldly maxims, "What will be said of you?" "Are
+you like such a one?" and such things, it is meant to draw him under
+the rule of grown-up respectability.  The last thing thought of by
+the parent or teacher is, that such maxims will bring the child
+under the especial guidance of the most unscrupulous of his
+contemporaries.  They will use ridicule and appeal to their little
+world, which will be his world, and ask, "What will be said" of him.
+There should be some stuff in him of his own to meet these awful
+generalities.
+
+
+PHYSICAL EDUCATION.
+
+The physical education of children is a very simple matter, too
+simple to be much attended to without great perseverance and
+resolution on the part of those who care for the children.  It
+consists, as we all know, in good air, simple diet, sufficient
+exercise, and judicious clothing.  The first requisite is the most
+important, and by far the most frequently neglected.  This neglect
+is not so unreasonable as it seems.  It arises from pure ignorance.
+If the mass of mankind knew what scientific men know about the
+functions of the air, they would be as careful in getting a good
+supply of it as of their other food.  All the people that ever were
+supposed to die of poison in the middle ages, and that means nearly
+everybody whose death was worth speculating about, are not so many
+as those who die poisoned by bad air in the course of any given
+year.  Even a slightly noxious thing, which is constant, affecting
+us every moment of the day, must have considerable influence; but
+the air we breathe is not a thing that slightly affects us, but one
+of the most important elements of life.  Moreover, children are the
+most affected by impurity of air.  We need not weary ourselves with
+much statistics to ascertain this.  One or two broad facts will
+assure us of it.  In Nottingham there is a district called Byron
+Ward, "the densest and worst-conditioned quarter of the town."  A
+table has been made by Mr. William Hawksley of the mortality of
+equal populations in different parts of the town:
+
+"On comparing the diagram No. 1, relating to Park Ward, with the
+diagram No. 7, relating to Byron Ward, it will be seen that the
+heavier pressure of the causes of mortality occasions in the latter
+district such an undue destruction of early life, that towards 100
+deaths, however occurring, Byron Ward contributes fifty per cent.
+more of children under five years of age than the Park Ward, for the
+former sends sixty children to an early grave, while the latter
+sends only forty." {116a}
+
+Mr. Hawksley, the former witness alluded to, goes on to say--
+
+"It has been long known that, with increase of years, up to that
+period of life which has been denominated the second childhood, the
+human constitution becomes gradually more resistful, and as it were
+slowly hardened against the repeated attacks of those more acute
+disorders, incident to an inferior degree of sanitary civilisation,
+by which large portions of an infant population are continually
+overcome and rapidly swept away.  From the operation of these and
+more extraneous influences of a disturbing character, an infant
+population is almost entirely exempted; and on this account it is
+considered that an infant population constitutes, as it were, a
+delicate barometer, from which we may derive more early and more
+certain indications of the presence and comparative force of local
+causes of mortality and disease than can be obtained from the more
+general methods of investigation usually pursued."
+
+The above evidence is confirmed by Mr. Toynbee: --
+
+"The disease of hydrocephalus, of water in the brain, so fatal to
+children, I find associated with symptoms of scrofula, and arising
+in abundance in these close rooms.  I believe water in the brain, in
+the class of patients whom I visit, to be almost wholly a scrofulous
+affection."  {116b}
+
+But supposing people aware of the necessity for good air, and
+therefore for ventilation, what is to be done?  In houses in great
+towns certainly, and I should say in all houses, some of the care
+and expense that are devoted to ornamental work, which when done is
+often a care, a trouble, an eyesore, and a mischief, should be given
+to modes of ventilation, {117a} sound building, abundant access of
+light, largeness of sleeping-rooms, and such useful things.  Less
+ormolu and tinsel of all kinds in the drawing-rooms, and sweeter air
+in the regions above.  Similar things may be done for and by the
+poor. {117b}  And it need hardly be said that those people who care
+for their children, if of any enlightenment at all, will care
+greatly for the sanitary condition of their neighbourhood generally.
+At present you will find at many a rich man's door {117c} a nuisance
+which is poisoning the atmosphere that his children are to breathe,
+but which he could entirely cure for less than one day's ordinary
+expenses.
+
+I am afraid that ventilation is very little attended to in school-
+rooms, either for rich or poor.  Now it may be deliberately said
+that there is very little learned in any school-room that can
+compensate for the mischief of its being learned in the midst of
+impure air.  This is a thing which parents must look to, for the
+grown-up people in the school-rooms, though suffering grievously
+themselves from insufficient ventilation, will be unobservant of it.
+{118}  In every system of government inspection, ventilation must
+occupy a prominent part.
+
+The advantage of simple food for children is a thing that people
+have found out.  And as regards exercise, children happily make
+great efforts to provide a sufficiency of this for themselves.  In
+clothing, the folly and conformity of grown-up people enter again.
+Loving mothers, in various parts of the world, carry about at
+present, I believe, and certainly in times past, carried their
+little children strapped to a board, with nearly as little power of
+motion as the board itself.  Could we get the returns of stunted
+miserable beings, or of deaths, from this cause, they would be
+something portentous.  Less in degree, but not less fatally absurd
+in principle, are many of the strappings, bandages, and incipient
+stays for children amongst us.  They are all mischievous.  Allow
+children, at any rate, some freedom of limbs, some opportunity of
+being graceful and healthy.  Give Nature--dear motherly, much-abused
+Nature--some chance of forming these little ones according to the
+beneficent intentions of Providence, and not according to the
+angular designs of ill-educated men and women.
+
+I do not say that attention to the above matters of good air,
+judicious clothing, and freedom from bandages, will absolutely
+secure health, because these very things may have been so ill
+attended to in the parents or in the parental stock as to have
+introduced special maladies; but at least they are the most
+important objects to be minded now; and, perhaps, the more to be
+minded in the children of those who have suffered most from neglect
+in these particulars.
+
+When we are considering the health of children, it is imperative not
+to omit the importance of keeping their brains fallow, as it were,
+for several of the first years of their existence.  The mischief
+perpetrated by a contrary course in the shape of bad health, peevish
+temper, and developed vanity, is incalculable.  It would not be just
+to attribute this altogether to the vanity of parents; they are
+influenced by a natural fear lest their children should not have all
+the advantages of other children.  Some infant prodigy which is a
+standard of mischief throughout its neighbourhood misleads them.
+But parents may be assured that this early work is not by any means
+all gain, even in the way of work.  I suspect it is a loss; and that
+children who begin their education late, as it would be called, will
+rapidly overtake those who have been in harness long before them.
+And what advantage can it be that the child knows more at six years
+old than its compeers, especially if this is to be gained by a
+sacrifice of health which may never be regained?  There may be some
+excuse for this early book-work in the case of those children who
+are to live by manual labour.  It is worth while, perhaps, to run
+the risk of some physical injury to them, having only their early
+years in which we can teach them book-knowledge.  The chance of
+mischief, too, will be less, being more likely to be counteracted by
+their after-life.  But for a child who has to be at book-work for
+the first twenty-one years of its life, what folly it is to exhaust
+in the least the mental energy, which, after all, is its surest
+implement.
+
+A similar course of argument applies to taking children early to
+church, and to over-developing their minds in any way.  There is no
+knowing, moreover, the disgust and weariness that may grow up in the
+minds of young persons from their attention being prematurely
+claimed.  We are now, however, looking at early study as a matter of
+health; and we may certainly put it down in the same class with
+impure air, stimulating diet, unnecessary bandages, and other
+manifest physical disadvantages.  Civilised life, as it advances,
+does not seem to have so much repose in it, that we need begin early
+in exciting the mind, for fear of the man being too lethargical
+hereafter.
+
+
+EDUCATION OF WOMEN.
+
+It seems needful that something should be said specially about the
+education of women.  As regards their intellects they have been
+unkindly treated--too much flattered, too little respected.  They
+are shut up in a world of conventionalities, and naturally believe
+that to be the only world.  The theory of their education seems to
+be, that they should not be made companions to men, and some would
+say, they certainly are not.  These critics, however, in the high
+imaginations they justly form of what women's society might be to
+men, forget, perhaps, how excellent a thing it is already.  Still
+the criticism is not by any means wholly unjust.  It appears rather
+as if there had been a falling off since the olden times in the
+education of women.  A writer of modern days, arguing on the other
+side, has said, that though we may talk of the Latin and Greek of
+Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth, yet we are to consider that that
+was the only learning of the time, and that many a modern lady may
+be far better instructed, although she knew nothing of Latin and
+Greek.  Certain it is, she may know more facts, have read more
+books:  but this does not assure us that she may not be less
+conversable, less companionable.  Wherein does the cultivated and
+thoughtful man differ from the common man?  In the method of his
+discourse.  His questions upon a subject in which he is ignorant are
+full of interest.  His talk has a groundwork of reason.  This
+rationality must not be supposed to be dulness.  Folly is dull.
+Now, would women be less charming if they had more power, or at
+least more appreciation, of reasoning?  Their flatterers tell them
+that their intuition is such that they need not man's slow processes
+of thought.  One would be very sorry to have a grave question of law
+that concerned oneself decided upon by intuitive judges, or a
+question of fact by intuitive jurymen.  And so of all human things
+that have to be canvassed, it is better, and more amusing too, that
+they should be discussed according to reason.  Moreover, the
+exercise of the reasoning faculties gives much of the pleasure which
+there is in solid acquirements; so that the obvious facts in life
+and history will hardly be acquired by those who are not in the
+habit of reasoning upon them.  Hence it comes, that women have less
+interest in great topics, and less knowledge of them, than they
+might have.
+
+Again, if either sex requires logical education, it is theirs.  The
+sharp practice of the world drives some logic into the most vague of
+men; women are not so schooled.
+
+But, supposing the deficiency we have been considering to be
+admitted, how is it to be remedied?  Women's education must be made
+such as to ensure some accuracy and reasoning.  This may be done
+with any subject of education, and is done with men, whatever they
+learn, because they are expected to produce and use their
+requirements.  But the greatest object of intellectual education,
+the improvement of the mental powers, is as needful for one sex as
+the other, and requires the same means in both sexes.  The same
+accuracy, attention, logic, and method that are attempted in the
+education of men should be aimed at in that of women.  This will
+never be sufficiently attended to, as there are no immediate and
+obvious fruits from it.  And, therefore, as it is probable, from the
+different career of women to that of men, that whatever women study
+will not be studied with the same method and earnestness as it would
+be by men, what a peculiar advantage there is in any study for them,
+in which no proficiency whatever can be made without some use of
+most of the qualities we desire for them.  Geometry, for instance,
+is such a study.  It may appear pedantic, but I must confess that
+Euclid seems to me a book for the young of both sexes.  The severe
+rules upon which the acquisition of the dead languages is built
+would of course be a great means for attaining the logical habits in
+question.  But Latin and Greek is a deeper pedantry for women than
+geometry, and much less desirable on many accounts:  and geometry
+would, perhaps, suffice to teach them what reasoning is.  I daresay,
+too, there are accomplishments which might be taught scientifically;
+and so even the prejudice against the manifest study of science by
+women be conciliated.  But the appreciation of reasoning must be got
+somehow.
+
+It is a narrow view of things to suppose that a just cultivation of
+women's mental powers will take them out of their sphere:  it will
+only enlarge that sphere.  The most cultivated women perform their
+common duties best.  They see more in those duties.  They can do
+more.  Lady Jane Grey would, I daresay, have bound up a wound, or
+managed a household, with any unlearned woman of her day.  Queen
+Elizabeth did manage a kingdom:  and we find no pedantry in her way
+of doing it.
+
+People who advocate a better training for women must not,
+necessarily, be supposed to imagine that men and women are by
+education to be made alike, and are intended to fulfil most of the
+same offices.  There seems reason for thinking that a boundary line
+exists between the intellects of men and women which, perhaps,
+cannot be passed over from either side.  But, at any rate, taking
+the whole nature of both sexes, and the inevitable circumstances
+which cause them to differ, there must be such a difference between
+men and women that the same intellectual training applied to both
+would produce most dissimilar results.  It has not, however, been
+proposed in these pages to adopt the same training:  and would have
+been still less likely to be proposed if it could be shown that such
+training would tend to make men and women unpleasantly similar to
+each other.  The utmost that has been thought of here is to make
+more of women's faculties, not by any means to translate them into
+men's--if such a thing were possible, which, we may venture to say,
+is not.  There are some things that are good for all trees--light,
+air, room--but no one expects by affording some similar advantages
+of this kind to an oak and a beech, to find them assimilate, though
+by such means the best of each may be produced.
+
+Moreover, it should be recollected that the purpose of education is
+not always to foster natural gifts, but sometimes to bring out
+faculties that might otherwise remain dormant; and especially so far
+as to make the persons educated cognisant of excellence in those
+faculties in others.  A certain tact and refinement belong to women,
+in which they have little to learn from the first:  men, too, who
+attain some portion of these qualities, are greatly the better for
+them, and I should imagine not less acceptable on that account to
+women.  So, on the other side, there may be an intellectual
+cultivation for women which may seem a little against the grain,
+which would not, however, injure any of their peculiar gifts--would,
+in fact, carry those gifts to the highest, and would increase
+withal, both to men and women, the pleasure of each other's society.
+
+There is a branch of general education which is not thought at all
+necessary for women; as regards which, indeed, it is well if they
+are not brought up to cultivate the opposite.  Women are not taught
+to be courageous.  Indeed, to some persons courage may seem as
+unnecessary for women as Latin and Greek.  Yet there are few things
+that would tend to make women happier in themselves, and more
+acceptable to those with whom they live, than courage.  There are
+many women of the present day, sensible women in other things, whose
+panic-terrors are a frequent source of discomfort to themselves and
+those around them.  Now, it is a great mistake to imagine that
+harshness must go with courage; and that the bloom of gentleness and
+sympathy must all be rubbed off by that vigour of mind which gives
+presence of mind, enables a person to be useful in peril, and makes
+the desire to assist overcome that sickliness of sensibility which
+can only contemplate distress and difficulty.  So far from courage
+being unfeminine, there is a peculiar grace and dignity in those
+beings who have little active power of attack or defence, passing
+through danger with a moral courage which is equal to that of the
+strongest.  We see this in great things.  We perfectly appreciate
+the sweet and noble dignity of an Anne Bullen, a Mary Queen of
+Scots, or a Marie Antoinette.  We see that it is grand for these
+delicately-bred, high-nurtured, helpless personages to meet Death
+with a silence and a confidence like his own.  But there would be a
+similar dignity in women's bearing small terrors with fortitude.
+There is no beauty in fear.  It is a mean, ugly, dishevelled
+creature.  No statue can be made of it that a woman would like to
+see herself like.
+
+Women are pre-eminent in steady endurance of tiresome suffering:
+they need not be far behind men in a becoming courage to meet that
+which is sudden and sharp.  The dangers and the troubles, too, which
+we may venture to say they now start at unreasonably, are many of
+them mere creatures of the imagination--such as, in their way,
+disturb high-mettled animals brought up to see too little, and
+therefore frightened at any leaf blown across the road.
+
+We may be quite sure that, without losing any of the most delicate
+and refined of feminine graces, women may be taught not to give way
+to unreasonable fears, which should belong no more to the fragile
+than to the robust.
+
+There is no doubt that courage may in some measure be taught.  We
+agree that the lower kinds of courage are matter of habit, therefore
+of teaching:  and the same thing holds good to some extent of all
+courage.  Courage is as contagious as fear.  The saying is, that the
+brave are the sons and daughters of the brave; but we might as truly
+say that they must be brought up by the brave.  The great novelist,
+when he wants a coward descended from a valorous race, does well to
+take him from his clan and bring him up in an unwarlike home. {126}
+Indeed, the heroic example of other days is in great part the source
+of courage of each generation; and men walk up composedly to the
+most perilous enterprises, beckoned onwards by the shades of the
+brave that were.  In civil courage, moral courage, or courage shown
+in the minute circumstances of everyday life, the same law is true.
+Courage may be taught by precept, enforced by example, and is good
+to be taught to men, women, and children.
+
+
+EDUCATION TO HAPPINESS.
+
+It is a curious phenomenon in human affairs, that some of those
+matters in which education is most potent should have been amongst
+the least thought of as branches of it.  What you teach a boy of
+Latin and Greek may be good; but these things are with him but a
+little time of each day in his after-life.  What you teach him of
+direct moral precepts may be very good seed:  it may grow up,
+especially if it have sufficient moisture from experience; but then,
+again, a man is, happily, not doing obvious right or wrong all day
+long.  What you teach him of any bread-getting art may be of some
+import to him, as to the quantity and quality of bread he will get;
+but he is not always with his art.  With himself he is always.  How
+important, then, it is, whether you have given him a happy or a
+morbid turn of mind; whether the current of his life is a clear
+wholesome stream, or bitter as Marah.  The education to happiness is
+a possible thing--not to a happiness supposed to rest upon
+enjoyments of any kind, but to one built upon content and
+resignation.  This is the best part of philosophy.  This enters into
+the "wisdom" spoken of in the Scriptures.  Now it can be taught.
+The converse is taught every day and all day long.
+
+To take an example.  A sensitive disposition may descend to a child;
+but it is also very commonly increased, and often created.
+Captiousness, sensitiveness, and a Martha-like care for the things
+of this world, are often the direct fruits of education.  All these
+faults of the character, and they are amongst the greatest, may be
+summed up in a disproportionate care for little things.  This is
+rather a growing evil.  The painful neatness and exactness of modern
+life foster it.  Long peace favours it.  Trifles become more
+important, great evils being kept away.  And so, the tide of small
+wishes and requirements gains upon us fully as fast as we can get
+out of its way by our improved means of satisfying them.  Now the
+unwholesome concern that many parents and governors manifest as to
+small things must have a great influence on the governed.  You hear
+a child reprimanded about a point of dress, or some trivial thing,
+as if it had committed a treachery.  The criticisms, too, which it
+hears upon others are often of the same kind.  Small omissions,
+small commissions, false shame, little stumbling-blocks of offence,
+trifling grievances of the kind that Dr. Johnson, who had known
+hunger, stormed at Mrs. Thrale for talking about, are made much of;
+general dissatisfaction is expressed that things are not complete,
+and that everything in life is not turned out as neat as a Long-Acre
+carriage; commands are expected to be fulfilled by agents, upon very
+rapid and incomplete orders, exactly to the mind of the person
+ordering;--these ways, to which children are very attentive, teach
+them in their turn to be querulous, sensitive, and full of small
+cares and wishes.  And when you have made a child like this, can you
+make a world for him that will satisfy him?  Tax your civilisation
+to the uttermost:  a punctilious, tiresome disposition expects more.
+Indeed, Nature, with her vague and flowing ways, cannot at all fit
+in with a right-angled person.  Besides, there are other precise,
+angular creatures, and these sharp-edged persons wound each other
+terribly.  Of all the things which you can teach people, after
+teaching them to trust in God, the most important is, to put out of
+their hearts any expectation of perfection, according to their
+notions, in this world.  This expectation is at the bottom of a
+great deal of the worldliness we hear so much reprehended, and
+necessarily gives to little things a most irrational importance.
+
+Observe the effect of this disproportionate care for little things
+in the disputes of men.  A man who does so care, has a garment
+embroidered with hooks which catch at everything that passes by.  He
+finds many more causes of offence than other men; and each offence
+is a more bitter thing to him than to others.  He does not expect to
+be offended.  Poor man!  He goes through life wondering that he is
+the subject of general attack, and that the world is so quarrelsome.
+
+The result of a bad education in developing undue care for trifles
+may be seen in its effect on domestic government and government in
+general.  If those in power have this fault, they will make the
+persons under them miserable by petty, constant blame; or they will
+make them indifferent to all blame.  If this fault is in the
+governed, they will captiously object to all the ways and plans of
+their superiors, not knowing the difficulty of doing anything; they
+will expect miracles of attention, justice, and temper, which the
+rough-hewed ways of men do not admit of; and they will repine and
+tease the life out of those in authority.  Sometimes both superiors
+and inferiors, governors and governed, have this fault.  This must
+often happen in a family, and is a fearful punishment to the elders
+of it.  Scarcely any goodness of disposition, and what are called
+great qualities, can make such difficult materials work well
+together.
+
+But I end with somewhat of the same argument as I began with,
+namely, that as a man lives more with himself than with art,
+science, or even with his fellows, a wise teacher, having before him
+the intent to make a happy-minded man of his pupil, will try to lay
+a groundwork of divine contentment in him.  If he cannot make him
+easily pleased, he will at least try and prevent him from being
+easily disconcerted.  Why, even the self-conceit that makes people
+indifferent to small things, wrapping them in an atmosphere of self-
+satisfaction, is welcome in a man compared to that querulousness
+which makes him an enemy to all around.  But most commendable is
+that easiness of mind which is easy because it is tolerant, because
+it does not look to have everything its own way, because it expects
+anything but smooth usage in its course here, because it has
+resolved to manufacture as few miseries out of small evils as can
+be.
+
+Most of us know what it is to vex our minds because we cannot recall
+some name or trivial thing which has escaped our memory for the
+moment.  But then we think how foolish this is, what little concern
+it is to us.  We are right in that; yet any defect of memory is a
+great concern compared to many of the trifling niceties, comforts,
+offences, and rectangularities which, perhaps, we do not think it an
+ignoble use of heart and time to waste ourselves upon.  It would be
+well enough to entertain the rabble of small troubles and offences,
+if we could lay them aside with the delightful facility of children,
+who, after an agony of tears, are soon found laughing or asleep.
+But the chagrin and vexation of grown-up people are grown-up too;
+and, however childish in their origin, are not to be laughed or
+danced or slept away in childlike simple-heartedness.
+
+We must not imagine that too much stress can well be laid upon the
+importance of an education to contentment, for it comes under the
+head of those things which are not adjuncts or acquisitions for a
+man, but which form the texture of his being.  What a man has learnt
+is of importance; but what he is, what he can do, what he will
+become, are more significant things.  Finally, it may be remarked,
+that, to make education a great work, we must have the educators
+great; that book-learning is mainly good as it gives us a chance of
+coming into the company of greater and better minds than the average
+of men around us; and that individual greatness and goodness are the
+things to be aimed at rather than the successful cultivation of
+those talents which go to form some eminent membership of society.
+Each man is a drama in himself--has to play all the parts in it; is
+to be king and rebel, successful and vanquished, free and slave; and
+needs a bringing-up fit for the universal creature that he is.
+
+                              -----
+
+Ellesmere.  You have been unexpectedly merciful to us.  The moment I
+heard the head of the essay given out, there flitted before my
+frightened mind volumes of reports, Battersea schools, Bell,
+Wilderspin, normal farms, National Society, British Schools,
+interminable questions about how religion might be separated
+altogether from secular education, or so much religion taught as all
+religious sects could agree in.  These are all very good things and
+people to discuss, I daresay; but, to tell the truth, the whole
+subject sits heavy on my soul.  I meet a man of inexhaustible
+dulness, and he talks to me for three hours about some great
+subject--this very one of education, for instance--till I sit
+entranced by stupidity, thinking the while, "And this is what we are
+to become by education--to be like you."  Then I see a man like D---
+, a judicious, reasonable, conversable being, knowing how to be
+silent too--a man to go through a campaign with--and I find he
+cannot read or write.
+
+Milverton.  This sort of contrast is just the thing to strike you,
+Ellesmere:  and yet you know as well as any of us that to bring
+forward such contrasts by way of depreciating education would be
+most unreasonable.  There are three things that go to make a man--
+the education that most people mean by education; then the education
+that goes deeper, the education of the soul; and, thirdly, a man's
+gifts of Nature.  I agree with all you say about D---; he never says
+a foolish thing, and does a great many judicious ones.  But look
+what a clever face he has.  There are gifts of Nature for you.
+Then, again, although he cannot read or write, he may have been most
+judiciously brought up in other respects.  He may have had two,
+therefore, out of the three elements of education.  What such
+instances would show, I believe, if narrowly looked into, is the
+immense importance of the education of heart and temper.
+
+I feel with you in some measure about the dulness of the subject of
+education.  But then it extends to all things of the institution
+kind.  Men must have a great deal of pedantry, routine, and folly of
+all sorts, in any large matter they undertake.  I had had this
+feeling for a long time (you know the way in which you have a thing
+in your mind, although you have never said it out exactly even to
+yourself)--well, I came upon a passage of Emerson's which I will try
+to quote, and then I knew what it was that I had felt.
+
+"We are full of mechanical actions.  We must needs intermeddle, and
+have things in our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues of
+society are odious.  Love should make joy; but our benevolence is
+unhappy.  Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper societies,
+are yokes to the neck.  We pain ourselves to please nobody.  There
+are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at which these aim,
+but do not arrive.  Why should all virtue work in one and the same
+way?" . . . "And why drag this dead weight of a Sunday-school over
+the whole of Christendom?  It is natural and beautiful that
+childhood should inquire, and maturity should teach; but it is time
+enough to answer questions when they are asked.  Do not shut up the
+young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to
+ask them questions for an hour against their will."
+
+Now, without agreeing with him in all points, we may sympathise with
+him.
+
+Ellesmere.  I agree with him.
+
+Dunsford.  I knew you would.  You love an extreme.
+
+Milverton.  But look now.  It is well to say, "It is natural and
+beautiful that the young should ask and the old should teach"; but
+then the old should be capable of teaching, which is not the case we
+have to deal with.  Institutions are often only to meet individual
+failings.  Let there be more instructed elders, and the "dead
+weight" of Sunday-schools would be less needed.
+
+I think the result of our thoughts would be, that there should be as
+much life, joy, and Nature put into teaching as can be; but I, for
+one, am not prepared to say that the most mechanical process is not
+better than none.
+
+Ellesmere.  Well, you have now shut up the subject, according to
+your fashion, in a rounded sentence; and you think after that there
+is nothing more to be said.  But I say it goes to my heart--
+
+Dunsford.  What is that?
+
+Ellesmere.  To my heart to see the unmerciful quantity of
+instruction that little children go through on a Sunday.  I suppose
+I am a very wicked man; but I know how wearied I should have been,
+at any time of my life, if so much virtuous precept and good
+doctrine had been poured into me.
+
+Milverton.  Well, I will not fight certainly for anything that is to
+make Sunday a wearisome day for children.  Indeed, what I meant by
+putting more joy and life into teaching was, that in such a thing as
+this Sunday-schooling, for instance, a judicious man, far from being
+anxious to get a certain quantity of routine done about it, would do
+with the least--would endeavour to connect it with something
+interesting--would, in a word, love children, and not Sunday-
+schools.
+
+Ellesmere.  Ah, we will have no more about Sunday-schools.  I know
+we all agree in reality, although Dunsford has been looking very
+grave and has not said a word.  I wanted to tell you that I think
+you are quite right, Milverton, in saying a good deal about
+multifariousness of pursuit.  You see a wretch of a pedant who knows
+all about tetrameters or statutes of uses, but who, as you hinted an
+essay or two ago, can hardly answer his child a question as they
+walk about the garden together.  The man has never given a good
+thought or look to Nature.  Well then, again, what a stupid thing it
+is that we are not all taught music.  Why learn the language of many
+portions of mankind, and leave the universal language of the
+feelings, as you would call it, unlearnt?
+
+Milverton.  I quite agree with you; but I thought you always set
+your face, or rather your ears, against music.
+
+Dunsford.  So did I.
+
+Ellesmere.  I should like to know all about it.  It is not to my
+mind that a cultivated man should be quite thrown out by any topic
+of conversation, or that there should be any form of human endeavour
+or accomplishment which he has no conception of.
+
+Dunsford.  I liked what you said, Milverton, about the philosophy of
+making light of many things, and the way of looking at life that may
+thus be given to those we educate.  I rather doubted at first,
+though, whether you were not going to assign too much power to
+education in the modification of temper.  But, certainly, the mode
+of looking at the daily events of life, little or great, and the
+consequent habits of captiousness or magnanimity, are just the
+matters which the young especially imitate their elders in.
+
+Milverton.  You see, the very worst kind of tempers are established
+upon the fretting care for trifles that I want to make war upon in
+the essay.  A man is choleric.  Well, it is a very bad thing; it
+tends to frighten those about him into falseness.  He has outrageous
+bursts of temper.  He is humble for days afterwards.  His dependants
+rather like him after all.  They know that "his bark is worse than
+his bite."  Then there is your gloomy man, often a man who punishes
+himself most--perhaps a large-hearted, humorous, but sad man, at the
+same time liveable with.  He does not care for trifles.  But it is
+your acid-sensitive (I must join words like Mirabeau's Grandison-
+Cromwell, to get what I mean), and your cold, querulous people that
+need to have angels to live with them.  Now education has often had
+a great deal to do with the making of these choice tempers.  They
+are somewhat artificial productions.  And they are the worst.
+
+Dunsford.  You know a saying attributed to the Bishop of  --- about
+temper.  No?  Somebody, I suppose, was excusing something on the
+score of temper, to which the Bishop replied, "Temper is nine-tenths
+of Christianity."
+
+Milverton.  There is an appearance we see in Nature, not far from
+here, by the way, that has often put me in mind of the effect of
+temper upon men.  It is in the lowlands near the sea, where, when
+the tide is not up (the man out of temper), there is a slimy,
+patchy, diseased-looking surface of mud and sick seaweed.  You pass
+by in a few hours, there is a beautiful lake, water up to the green
+grass (the man in temper again), and the whole landscape brilliant
+with reflected light.
+
+Ellesmere.  And to complete the likeness, the good temper and the
+full tide last about the same time--with some men at least.  It is
+so like you, Milverton, to have that simile in your mind.  There is
+nothing you see in Nature, but you must instantly find a parallel
+for it in man.  Sermons in stones you will not see, else I am sure
+you might.  Here is a good hard flint for you to see your next essay
+in.
+
+Milverton.  It will do very well, as my next will be on the subject
+of population.
+
+Ellesmere.  What day are we to have it?  I think I have a particular
+engagement for that day.
+
+Milverton.  I must come upon you unawares.
+
+Ellesmere.  After the essay you certainly might.  Let us decamp now
+and do something great in the way of education--teach Rollo, though
+he is but a short-haired dog, to go into the water.  That will be a
+feat.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+
+Ellesmere succeeded in persuading Rollo to go into the water, which
+proved more, he said, than the whole of Milverton's essay, how much
+might be done by judicious education.  Before leaving my friends, I
+promised to come over again to Worth-Ashton in a day or two, to hear
+another essay.  I came early and found them reading their letters.
+
+
+"You remember Annesleigh at college," said Milverton, "do you not,
+Dunsford?"
+
+Dunsford.  Yes.
+
+Milverton.  Here is a long letter from him.  He is evidently vexed
+at the newspaper articles about his conduct in a matter of ----, and
+he writes to tell me that he is totally misrepresented.
+
+Dunsford.  Why does he not explain this publicly?
+
+Milverton.  Yes, you naturally think so at first, but such a mode of
+proceeding would never do for a man in office, and rarely, perhaps,
+for any man.  At least, so the most judicious people seem to think.
+I have known a man in office bear patiently, without attempting any
+answer, a serious charge which a few lines would have entirely
+answered, indeed, turned the other way.  But then he thought, I
+imagine, that if you once begin answering, there is no end to it,
+and also, which is more important, that the public journals were not
+a tribunal which he was called to appear before.  He had his
+official superiors.
+
+Dunsford.  It should be widely known and acknowledged then, that
+silence does not give consent in these cases.
+
+Milverton.  It is known, though not, perhaps, sufficiently.
+
+Dunsford.  What a fearful power this anonymous journalism is!
+
+Milverton.  There is a great deal certainly that is mischievous in
+it; but take it altogether, it is a wonderful product of
+civilisation--morally too.  Even as regards those qualities which
+would in general, to use a phrase of Bacon's, "be noted as
+deficients" in the press, in courtesy and forbearance, for example,
+it makes a much better figure than might have been expected; as any
+one would testify, I suspect, who had observed, or himself
+experienced, the temptations incident to writing on short notice,
+without much opportunity of after-thought or correction, upon
+subjects about which he had already expressed an opinion.
+
+Dunsford.  Is the anonymousness absolutely necessary?
+
+Milverton.  I have often thought whether it is.  If the
+anonymousness were taken away, the press would lose much of its
+power; but then, why should it not lose a portion of its power, if
+that portion is only built upon some delusion?
+
+Ellesmere.  It is a question of expediency.  As government of all
+kinds becomes better managed, there is less necessity for protection
+for the press.  It must be recollected, however, that this
+anonymousness (to coin a word) may not only be useful to protect us
+from any abuse of power, but that at least it takes away that
+temptation to discuss things in an insufficient manner which arises
+from personal fear of giving offence.  Then, again, there is an
+advantage in considering arguments without reference to persons.  If
+well-known authors wrote for the press and gave their signatures, we
+should often pass by the arguments unfairly, saying, "Oh, it is only
+so-and-so:  that is the way he always looks at things," without
+seeing whether it is the right way for the occasion in question.
+
+Milverton.  But take the other side, Ellesmere.  What national
+dislikes are fostered by newspaper articles, and--
+
+Ellesmere.  Articles in reviews and by books.
+
+Milverton.  Yes, but somehow or other, people imagine that
+newspapers speak the opinion of a much greater number of people--
+
+Ellesmere.  Do not let us talk any more about it.  We may become
+wise enough and well-managed enough to do without this
+anonymousness:  we may not.  How it would astound an ardent Whig or
+Radical of the last generation if we could hear such a sentiment as
+this--as a toast we will say--"The Press:  and may we become so
+civilised as to be able to take away some of its liberty."
+
+Milverton.  It may be put another way:  "May it become so civilised
+that we shall not want to take away any of its liberty."  But I see
+you are tired of this subject.  Shall we go on the lawn and have our
+essay?
+
+We assented, and Milverton read the following: --
+
+
+UNREASONABLE CLAIMS IN SOCIAL AFFECTIONS AND RELATIONS.
+
+We are all apt to magnify the importance of whatever we are thinking
+about, which is not to be wondered at; for everything human has an
+outlet into infinity, which we come to perceive on considering it.
+But with a knowledge of this tendency, I still venture to say that,
+of all that concerns mankind, this subject has, perhaps, been the
+least treated of in regard to its significance.  For once that
+unreasonable expectations of gratitude have been reproved,
+ingratitude has been denounced a thousand times; and the same may be
+said of inconstancy, unkindness in friendship, neglected merit and
+the like.
+
+To begin with ingratitude.  Human beings seldom have the demands
+upon each other which they imagine; and for what they have done they
+frequently ask an impossible return.  Moreover, when people really
+have done others a service, the persons benefited often do not
+understand it.  Could they have understood it, the benefactor,
+perhaps, would not have had to perform it.  You cannot expect
+gratitude from them in proportion to your enlightenment.  Then,
+again, where the service is a palpable one, thoroughly understood,
+we often require that the gratitude for it should bear down all the
+rest of the man's character.  The dog is the very emblem of
+faithfulness; yet I believe it is found that he will sometimes like
+the person who takes him out and amuses him more than the person who
+feeds him.  So, amongst bipeds, the most solid service must
+sometimes give way to the claims of congeniality.  Human creatures
+are, happily, not to be swayed by self-interest alone:  they are
+many-sided creatures; there are numberless modes of attaching their
+affections.  Not only like likes like, but unlike likes unlike.
+
+To give an instance which must often occur.  Two persons, both of
+feeble will, act together:  one as superior, the other as inferior.
+The superior is very kind; the inferior is grateful.  Circumstances
+occur to break this relation.  The inferior comes under a superior
+of strong will, who is not, however, as tolerant and patient as his
+predecessor.  But this second superior soon acquires unbounded
+influence over the inferior:  if the first one looks on, he may
+wonder at the alacrity and affection of his former subordinate
+towards the new man, and talk much about ingratitude.  But the
+inferior has now found somebody to lean upon and to reverence.  And
+he cannot deny his nature and be otherwise than he is.  In this case
+it does not look like ingratitude, except perhaps to the complaining
+person.  But there are doubtless numerous instances in which, if we
+saw all the facts clearly, we should no more confirm the charge of
+ingratitude than we do here.
+
+Then, again, we seldom make sufficient allowance for the burden
+which there is in obligation, at least to all but great and good
+minds.  There are some people who can receive as heartily as they
+would give; but the obligation of an ordinary person to an ordinary
+person is more apt to be brought to mind as a present sore than as a
+past delight.
+
+Amongst the unreasonable views of the affections, the most absurd
+one has been the fancy that love entirely depends upon the will;
+still more that the love of others for us is to be guided by the
+inducements which seem probable to us.  We have served them; we
+think only of them; we are their lovers, or fathers, or brothers:
+we deserve and require to be loved and to have the love proved to
+us.  But love is not like property:  it has neither duties nor
+rights.  You argue for it in vain; and there is no one who can give
+it you.  It is not his or hers to give.  Millions of bribes and
+infinite arguments cannot prevail.  For it is not a substance, but a
+relation.  There is no royal road.  We are loved as we are lovable
+to the person loving.  It is no answer to say that in some cases the
+love is based on no reality, but is solely in the imagination--that
+is, that we are loved not for what we are, but for what we are
+fancied to be.  That will not bring it any more into the dominions
+of logic; and love still remains the same untamable creature, deaf
+to advocacy, blind to other people's idea of merit, and not a
+substance to be weighed or numbered at all.
+
+Then, as to the complaints about broken friendship.  Friendship is
+often outgrown; and his former child's clothes will no more fit a
+man than some of his former friendships.  Often a breach of
+friendship is supposed to occur when there is nothing of the kind.
+People see one another seldom; their courses in life are different;
+they meet, and their intercourse is constrained.  They fancy that
+their friendship is mightily cooled.  But imagine the dearest
+friends, one coming home after a long sojourn, the other going out
+to new lands:  the ships that carry these meet:  the friends talk
+together in a confused way not relevant at all to their friendship,
+and, if not well assured of their mutual regard, might naturally
+fancy that it was much abated.  Something like this occurs daily in
+the stream of the world.  Then, too, unless people are very
+unreasonable, they cannot expect that their friends will pass into
+new systems of thought and action without new ties of all kinds
+being created, and some modification of the old ones taking place.
+
+
+When we are talking of exorbitant claims made for the regard of
+others, we must not omit those of what is called neglected merit.  A
+man feels that he has abilities or talents of a particular kind,
+that he has shown them, and still he is a neglected man.  I am far
+from saying that merit is sufficiently looked out for:  but a man
+may take the sting out of any neglect of his merits by thinking that
+at least it does not arise from malice prepense, as he almost
+imagines in his anger.  Neither the public, nor individuals, have
+the time, or will, resolutely to neglect anybody.  What pleases us,
+we admire and further:  if a man in any profession, calling, or art,
+does things which are beyond us, we are as guiltless of neglecting
+him as the Caffres are of neglecting the differential calculus.
+Milton sells his "Paradise Lost" for ten pounds; there is no record
+of Shakespeare dining much with Queen Elizabeth.  And it is Utopian
+to imagine that statues will be set up to right men in their day.
+
+The same arguments which applied to the complaints of ingratitude,
+apply to the complaints of neglected merit.  The merit is oftentimes
+not understood.  Be it ever so manifest, it cannot absorb men's
+attention.  When it is really great, it has not been brought out by
+the hope of reward, any more than the kindest services by the hope
+of gratitude.  In neither case is it becoming or rational to be
+clamorous about payment.
+
+There is one thing that people hardly ever remember, or, indeed,
+have imagination enough to conceive; namely, the effect of each man
+being shut up in his individuality.  Take a long course of sayings
+and doings in which many persons have been engaged.  Each one of
+them is in his own mind the centre of the web, though, perhaps, he
+is at the edge of it.  We know that in our observations of the
+things of sense, any difference in the points from which the
+observation is taken gives a different view of the same thing.
+Moreover, in the world of sense, the objects and the points of view
+are each indifferent to the rest; but in life the points of views
+are centres of action that have had something to do with the making
+of the things looked at.  If we could calculate the moral parallax
+arising from these causes, we should see, by the mere aid of the
+intellect, how unjust we often are in our complaints of ingratitude,
+inconstancy, and neglect.  But without these nice calculations, such
+errors of view may be corrected at once by humility, a more sure
+method than the most enlightened appreciation of the cause of error.
+Humility is the true cure for many a needless heartache.
+
+It must not be supposed that in thus opposing unreasonable views of
+social affections, anything is done to dissever such affections.
+The Duke of Wellington, writing to a man in a dubious position of
+authority, says "The less you claim, the more you will have."  This
+is remarkably true of the affections; and there is scarcely anything
+that would make men happier than teaching them to watch against
+unreasonableness in their claims of regard and affection; and which
+at the same time would be more likely to ensure their getting what
+may be their due.
+
+                              -----
+
+Ellesmere (clapping his hands).  An essay after my heart:  worth
+tons of soft trash.  In general you are amplifying duties, telling
+everybody that they are to be so good to every other body.  Now it
+is as well to let every other body know that he is not to expect all
+he may fancy from everybody.  A man complains that his prosperous
+friends neglect him:  infinitely overrating, in all probability, his
+claims, and his friends' power of doing anything for him.  Well,
+then, you may think me very hard, but I say that the most absurd
+claims are often put forth on the ground of relationship.  I do not
+deny that there is something in blood, but it must not be made too
+much of.  Near relations have great opportunities of attaching each
+other; if they fail to use these, I do not think it is well to let
+them imagine that mere relationship is to be the talisman of
+affection.
+
+Dunsford.  I do not see exactly how to answer all that you or
+Milverton have said; but I am not prepared, as official people say,
+to agree with you.  I especially disagree with what Milverton has
+said about love.  He leaves much too little power to the will.
+
+Milverton.  I daresay I may have done so.  These are very deep
+matters, and any one view about them does not exhaust them.  I
+remember C---- once saying to me that a man never utters anything
+without error.  He may even think of it rightly; but he cannot bring
+it out rightly.  It turns a little false, as it were, when it quits
+the brain and comes into life.
+
+Ellesmere.  I thought you would soon go over to the soft side.
+Here, Rollo; there's a good dog.  You do not form unreasonable
+expectations, do you?  A very little petting puts you into an
+ecstasy, and you are much wiser than many a biped who is full of his
+claims for gratitude, and friendship, and love, and who is always
+longing for well-merited rewards to fall into his mouth.  Down, dog!
+
+Milverton.  Poor animal! it little knows that all this sudden notice
+is only by way of ridiculing us.  Why I did not maintain my ground
+stoutly against Dunsford is, that I am always afraid of pushing
+moral conclusions too far.  Since we have been talking, I think I
+see more clearly than I did before what I mean to convey by the
+essay--namely, that men fall into unreasonable views respecting the
+affections FROM IMAGINING THAT THE GENERAL LAWS OF THE MIND ARE
+SUSPENDED FOR THE SAKE OF THE AFFECTIONS.
+
+Dunsford.  That seems safer ground.
+
+Milverton.  Now to illustrate what I mean by a very similar
+instance.  The mind is avid of new impressions.  It "travels over,"
+or thinks it travels over, another mind; and, though it may conceal
+its wish for "fresh fields and pastures new," it does so wish.
+However harsh, therefore, and unromantic it may seem, the best plan
+is to humour Nature, and not to exhaust by overfrequent presence the
+affection of those whom we would love, or whom we would have to love
+us.  I would not say, after the manner of Rochefoucauld, that the
+less we see of people the more we like them; but there are certain
+limits of sociality; and prudent reserve and absence may find a
+place in the management of the tenderest relations.
+
+Dunsford.  Yes, all this is true enough:  I do not see anything hard
+in this.  But then there is the other side.  Custom is a great aid
+to affection.
+
+Milverton.  Yes.  All I say is, do not fancy that the general laws
+are suspended for the sake of any one affection.
+
+Dunsford.  Still this does not go to the question whether there is
+not something more of will in affection than you make out.  You
+would speak of inducements and counter-inducements, aids and
+hindrances; but I cannot but think you are limiting the power of
+will, and therefore limiting duty.  Such views tend to make people
+easily discontented with each other, and prevent their making
+efforts to get over offences, and to find out what is lovable in
+those about them.
+
+Ellesmere.  Here we are in the deep places again.  I see you are
+pondering, Milverton.  It is a question, as a minister would say
+when Parliament perplexes him, that we must go to the country upon;
+each man's heart will, perhaps, tell him best about it.  For my own
+part, I think that the continuance of affection, as the rise of it,
+depends more on the taste being satisfied, or at least not
+disgusted, than upon any other single thing.  Our hearts may be
+touched at our being loved by people essentially distasteful to us,
+whose modes of talking and acting are a continual offence to us; but
+whether we can love them in return is a question.
+
+Milverton.  Yes, we can, I think.  I begin to see that it is a
+question of degree.  The word love includes many shades of meaning.
+When it includes admiration, of course we cannot be said to love
+those in whom we see nothing to admire.  But this seldom happens in
+the mixed characters of real life.  The upshot of it all seems to me
+to be, that, as Guizot says of civilisation, every impulse has room;
+so in the affections, every inducement and counter-inducement has
+its influence; and the result is not a simple one, which can be
+spoken of as if it were alike on all occasions and with all men.
+
+Dunsford.  I am still unanswered, I think, Milverton.  What you say
+is still wholly built upon inducements, and does not touch the power
+of will.
+
+Milverton.  No; it does not.
+
+Ellesmere.  We must leave that alone.  Infinite piles of books have
+not as yet lifted us up to a clear view of that matter.
+
+Dunsford.  Well, then, we must leave it as a vexed question; but let
+it be seen that there is such a question.  Now, as to another thing;
+you speak, Milverton, of men's not making allowance enough for the
+unpleasant weight of obligation.  I think that weight seems to have
+increased in modern times.  Essex could give Bacon a small estate,
+and Bacon could take it comfortably, I have no doubt.  That is a
+much more wholesome state of things among friends than the present.
+
+Milverton.  Yes, undoubtedly.  An extreme notion about independence
+has made men much less generous in receiving.
+
+Dunsford.  It is a falling off, then.  There was another comment I
+had to make.  I think, when you speak about the exorbitant demands
+of neglected merit, you should say more upon the neglect of the just
+demands of merit.
+
+Milverton.  I would have the Government and the public in general
+try by all means to understand and reward merit, especially in those
+matters wherein excellence cannot, otherwise, meet with large
+present reward.  But, to say the truth, I would have this done, not
+with the view of fostering genius so much as of fulfilling duty:  I
+would say to a minister--it is becoming in you--it is well for the
+nation, to reward, as far as you can, and dignify, men of genius.
+Whether you will do them any good or bring forth more of them, I do
+not know.
+
+Ellesmere.  Men of great genius are often such a sensitive race, so
+apt to be miserable in many other than pecuniary ways and want of
+public estimation, that I am not sure that distress and neglect do
+not take their minds off worse discomforts.  It is a kind of
+grievance, too, that they like to have.
+
+Dunsford.  Really, Ellesmere, that is a most unfeeling speech.
+
+Milverton.  At any rate, it is right for us to honour and serve a
+great man.  It is our nature to do so, if we are worth anything.  We
+may put aside the question whether our honour will do him more good
+than our neglect.  That is a question for him to look to.  The world
+has not yet so largely honoured deserving men in their own time,
+that we can exactly pronounce what effect it would have upon them.
+
+Ellesmere.  Come, Rollo, let us leave these men of sentiment.  Oh,
+you will not go, as your master does not move.  Look how he wags his
+tail, and almost says, "I should clearly like to have a hunt after
+the water-rat we saw in the pond the other day, but master is
+talking philosophy, and requires an intelligent audience."  These
+dogs are dear creatures, it must be owned.  Come, Milverton, let us
+have a walk.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+
+After the reading in the last chapter, my friends walked homewards
+with me as far as Durley Wood, which is about half-way between
+Worth-Ashton and my house.  As we rested here, we bethought
+ourselves that it would be a pleasant spot for us to come to
+sometimes and read our essays.  So we agreed to name a day for
+meeting there.  The day was favourable, we met as we had appointed,
+and finding some beech logs lying very opportunely, took possession
+of them for our council.  We seated Ellesmere on one that we called
+the woolsack, but which he said he felt himself unworthy to occupy
+in the presence of King Log, pointing to mine.  These nice points of
+etiquette being at last settled, Milverton drew out his papers and
+was about to begin reading, when Ellesmere thus interrupted him: --
+
+Ellesmere.  You were not in earnest, Milverton, about giving us an
+essay on population?  Because if so, I think I shall leave this
+place to you and Dunsford and the ants.
+
+Milverton.  I certainly have been meditating something of the sort;
+but have not been able to make much of it.
+
+Ellesmere.  If I had been living in those days when it first beamed
+upon mankind that the earth was round, I am sure I should have said,
+"We know now the bounds of the earth:  there are no interminable
+plains joined to the regions of the sun, allowing of indefinite
+sketchy outlines at the edges of maps.  That little creature man
+will immediately begin to think that his world is too small for
+him."
+
+Milverton.  There has probably been as much folly uttered by
+political economy as against it, which is saying something.  The
+danger as regards theories of political economy is the obvious one
+of their abstract conclusions being applied to concrete things.
+
+Ellesmere.  As if we were to expect mathematical lines to bear
+weights.
+
+Milverton.  Something like that.  With a good system of logic
+pervading the public mind, this danger would of course be avoided;
+but such a state of mind is not likely to occur in any public that
+we or our grandchildren are likely to have to deal with.  As it is,
+an ordinary man hears some conclusion of political economy, showing
+some particular tendency of things, which in real life meets with
+many counteractions of all kinds:  but he, perhaps, adopts the
+conclusion without the least abatement, and would work it into life,
+as if all went on there like a rule-of-three sum.
+
+Ellesmere.  After all, this error arises from the man's not having
+enough political economy.  It is not that a theory is good on paper,
+but unsound in real life.  It is only that in real life you cannot
+get at the simple state of things to which the theory would rightly
+apply.  You want many other theories and the just composition of
+them all to be able to work the whole problem.  That being done
+(which, however, scarcely can be done), the result on paper might be
+read off as applicable at once to life.  But now, touching the
+essay; since we are not to have population, what is it to be?
+
+Milverton.  Public improvements.
+
+Ellesmere.  Nearly as bad; but as this is a favourite subject of
+yours, I suppose it will not be polite to go away.
+
+Milverton.  No; you must listen.
+
+
+PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS.
+
+What are possessions?  To an individual, the stores of his own heart
+and mind pre-eminently.  His truth and valour are amongst the first.
+His contentedness, or his resignation may be put next.  Then his
+sense of beauty, surely a possession of great moment to him.  Then
+all those mixed possessions which result from the social affections-
+-great possessions, unspeakable delights, much greater than the gift
+last mentioned in the former class, but held on more uncertain
+tenure.  Lastly, what are generally called possessions?  However
+often we have heard of the vanity, uncertainty, and vexation that
+beset these last, we must not let this repetition deaden our minds
+to the fact.
+
+Now, national possessions must be estimated by the same gradation
+that we have applied to individual possessions.  If we consider
+national luxury, we shall see how small a part it may add to
+national happiness.  Men of deserved renown, and peerless women,
+lived upon what we should now call the coarsest fare, and paced the
+rushes in their rooms with as high, or as contented thoughts, as
+their better-fed and better-clothed descendants can boast of.  Man
+is limited in this direction; I mean, in the things that concern his
+personal gratification; but when you come to the higher enjoyments,
+the expansive power both in him and them is greater.  As Keats says,
+
+     "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;
+      Its loveliness increases; it will never
+      Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
+      A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
+      Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."
+
+What then are a nation's possessions?  The great words that have
+been said in it; the great deeds that have been done in it; the
+great buildings, and the great works of art, that have been made in
+it.  A man says a noble saying:  it is a possession, first to his
+own race, then to mankind.  A people get a noble building built for
+them:  it is an honour to them, also a daily delight and
+instruction.  It perishes.  The remembrance of it is still a
+possession.  If it was indeed pre-eminent, there will be more
+pleasure in thinking of it than in being with others of inferior
+order and design.
+
+
+On the other hand, a thing of ugliness is potent for evil.  It
+deforms the taste of the thoughtless:  it frets the man who knows
+how bad it is:  it is a disgrace to the nation who raised it; an
+example and an occasion for more monstrosities.  If it is a great
+building in a great city, thousands of people pass it daily, and are
+the worse for it, or at least not the better.  It must be done away
+with.  Next to the folly of doing a bad thing is that of fearing to
+undo it.  We must not look at what it has cost, but at what it is.
+Millions may be spent upon some foolish device which will not the
+more make it into a possession, but only a more noticeable
+detriment.
+
+
+It must not be supposed that works of art are the only, or the
+chief, public improvements needed in any country.  Wherever men
+congregate, the elements become scarce.  The supply of air, light,
+and water is then a matter of the highest public importance:  and
+the magnificent utilitarianism of the Romans should precede the nice
+sense of beauty of the Greeks.  Or rather, the former should be
+worked out in the latter.  Sanitary improvements, like most good
+works, may be made to fulfil many of the best human objects.
+Charity, social order, conveniency of living, and the love of the
+beautiful, may all be furthered by such improvements.  A people is
+seldom so well employed as when, not suffering their attention to be
+absorbed by foreign quarrels and domestic broils, they bethink
+themselves of winning back those blessings of Nature which
+assemblages of men mostly vitiate, exclude, or destroy.
+
+
+Public improvements are sometimes most difficult in free countries.
+The origination of them is difficult there, many diverse minds
+having to be persuaded.  The individual, or class, resistance to the
+public good is harder to conquer than in despotic states.  And, what
+is most embarrassing, perhaps, individual progress in the same
+direction, or individual doings in some other way, form a great
+hindrance, sometimes, to public enterprise.  On the other hand, the
+energy of a free people is a mine of public welfare; and individual
+effort brings many good things to bear in much shorter time than any
+government could be expected to move in.  A judicious statesman
+considers these things; and sets himself especially to overcome
+those peculiar obstacles to public improvement which belong to the
+institutions of his country.  Adventure in a despotic state,
+combined action in a free state, are the objects which peculiarly
+demand his attention.
+
+To return to works of art.  In this also the genius of the people is
+to be heeded.  There may have been, there may be, nations requiring
+to be diverted from the love of art to stern labour and industrial
+conquests.  But certainly it is not so with the Anglo-Saxon race, or
+with the Northern races generally.  Money may enslave them; logic
+may enslave them; art never will.  The chief men, therefore, in
+these races will do well sometimes to contend against the popular
+current, and to convince their people that there are other sources
+of delight, and other objects worthy of human endeavour, than severe
+money-getting or more material successes of any kind.
+
+In fine, the substantial improvement, and even the embellishment of
+towns, is a work which both the central and local governing bodies
+in a country should keep a steady hand upon.  It especially concerns
+them.  What are they there for but to do that which individuals
+cannot do?  It concerns them, too, as it tells upon the health,
+morals, education, and refined pleasures of the people they govern.
+In doing it, they should avoid pedantry, parsimony, and favouritism;
+and their mode of action should be large, considerate, and
+foreseeing.  Large; inasmuch as they must not easily be contented
+with the second best in any of their projects.  Considerate;
+inasmuch as they have to think what their people need most, not what
+will make most show.  And therefore, they should be contented, for
+instance, at their work going on underground for a time, or in
+byways, if needful; the best charity in public works, as in private,
+being often that which courts least notice.  Lastly, their work
+should be with foresight, recollecting that cities grow up about us
+like young people, before we are aware of it.
+
+                              -----
+
+Ellesmere.  Another very merciful essay!  When we had once got upon
+the subject of sanitary improvements, I thought we should soon be
+five fathom deep in blue-books, reports, interminable questions of
+sewerage, and horrors of all kinds.
+
+Milverton.  I am glad you own that I have been very tender of your
+impatience in this essay.  People, I trust, are now so fully aware
+of the immense importance of sanitary improvements, that we do not
+want the elementary talking about such things that was formerly
+necessary.  It is difficult, though, to say too much about sanitary
+matters, that is, if by saying much one could gain attention.  I am
+convinced that the most fruitful source of physical evil to mankind
+has been impure air, arising from circumstances which might have
+been obviated.  Plagues and pestilences of all kinds, cretinism too,
+and all scrofulous disorders, are probably mere questions of
+ventilation.  A district may require ventilation as well as a house.
+
+Ellesmere.  Seriously speaking, I quite agree with you.  And what
+delights me in sanitary improvements is, that they can hardly do
+harm.  Give a poor man good air, and you do not diminish his self-
+reliance.  You only add to his health and vigour--make more of a man
+of him.  But now that the public mind, as it is facetiously called,
+has got hold of the idea of these improvements, everybody will be
+chattering about them.
+
+Milverton.  The very time when those who really do care for these
+matters should be watchful to make the most of the tide in their
+favour, and should not suffer themselves to relax their efforts
+because there is no originality now about such things.
+
+Dunsford.  Custom soon melts off the wings which Novelty alone has
+lent to Benevolence.
+
+Ellesmere.  And down comes the charitable Icarus.  A very good
+simile, my dear Dunsford, but rather of the Latin-verse order.  I
+almost see it worked into an hexameter and pentameter, and
+delighting the heart of an Eton boy.
+
+Dunsford.  Ellesmere is more than usually vicious to-day, Milverton.
+A great "public improvement" would be to clip the tongues of some of
+these lawyers.
+
+Ellesmere.  Possibly.  I have just been looking again at that part
+of the essay, Milverton, where you talk of the little gained by
+national luxury.  I think with you.  There is an immensity of
+nonsense uttered about making people happy, which is to be done,
+according to happiness-mongers, by quantities of sugar and tea, and
+such-like things.  One knows the importance of food, but there is no
+Elysium to be got out of it.
+
+Milverton.  I know what you mean.  There is a kind of pity for the
+people now in vogue which is most effeminate.  It is a sugared sort
+of Robespierre talk about "The poor but virtuous People."  To
+address such stuff to the people is not to give them anything, but
+to take away what they have.  Suppose you could give them oceans of
+tea and mountains of sugar, and abundance of any luxury that you
+choose to imagine, but at the same time you inserted a hungry,
+envious spirit in them, what have you done?  Then, again, this
+envious spirit, when it is turned to difference of station, what
+good can it do?  Can you give station according to merit?  Is life
+long enough for it?
+
+Ellesmere.  Of course we cannot always be weighing men with nicety,
+and saying, "Here is your place, here yours."
+
+Milverton.  Then, again, what happiness do you confer on men by
+teaching them to disrespect their superiors in rank, by turning all
+the embellishments which adorn various stations wrong side out,
+putting everything in its lowest form, and then saying, "What do you
+see to admire here?"  You do not know what injury you may do a man
+when you destroy all reverence in him.  It will be found out some
+day that men derive more pleasure and profit from having superiors
+than from having inferiors.
+
+Dunsford.  It is seldom that I bring you back to your subject, but
+we are really a long way off at present; and I want to know,
+Milverton, what you would do specifically in the way of public
+improvements.  Of course you cannot say in an essay what you would
+do in such matters, but amongst ourselves.  In London, for instance.
+
+Milverton.  The first thing for Government to do, Dunsford, in
+London, or any other great town, is to secure open spaces in it and
+about it.  Trafalgar Square may be dotted with hideous absurdities,
+but it is an open space.  They may collect together there specimens
+of every variety of meanness and bad taste; but they cannot prevent
+its being a better thing than if it were covered with houses.
+Public money is scarcely ever so well employed as in securing bits
+of waste ground and keeping them as open spaces.  Then, as under the
+most favourable circumstances, we are likely to have too much carbon
+in the air of any town, we should plant trees to restore the just
+proportions of the air as far as we can. {161}  Trees are also what
+the heart and the eye desire most in towns.  The Boulevards in Paris
+show the excellent effect of trees against buildings.  There are
+many parts of London where rows of trees might be planted along the
+streets.  The weighty dulness of Portland Place, for instance, might
+be thus relieved.  Of course, in any scheme of public improvements,
+the getting rid of smoke is one of the first objects.
+
+Ellesmere.  Yes, smoke is a great abuse; but then there is something
+ludicrous about it, just as there is about sewerage.  I believe,
+myself, that for one person that the Corn Laws have injured, a dozen
+have had their lives shortened and their happiness abridged in every
+way by these less palpable nuisances.  But there is no grandeur in
+opposing them--no "good cry" to be raised.  And so, as abuses cannot
+be met in our days but by agitation--a committee, secretaries,
+clerks, newspapers, and a review--and as agitation in this case
+holds out fewer inducements than usual, we have gone on year after
+year being poisoned by these various nuisances, at an incalculable
+expense of life and money.
+
+Milverton.  There is something in what you say, I think, but you
+press it too far; for of late these sanitary subjects have worked
+themselves into notice, as you yourself admit.
+
+Ellesmere.  Late indeed.
+
+Milverton.  Well, but to go on with schemes for improving London.
+Open spaces, trees--then comes the supply of water.  This is one of
+the first things to be done.  Philadelphia has given an example
+which all towns ought to imitate.  It is a matter requiring great
+thought, and the various plans should be thoroughly canvassed before
+the choice is made.  Great beauty and the highest utility may be
+combined in supplying a town like London with water.  By the way,
+how much water do you think London requires daily?
+
+Ellesmere.  As much as the Serpentine and the water in St. James's
+Park.
+
+Milverton.  You are not so far out.
+
+Well, then, having gone through the largest things that must be
+attended to, we come to minor matters.  It is a great pity that the
+system of building upon leases should be so commonly adopted.
+Nobody expects to live out the leasehold term which he takes to
+build upon.  But things would be better done if people were more
+averse to having anything to do with leasehold property.  C. always
+says that the modern lath-and-plaster system is a wickedness, and
+upon my word I think he is right.  It is inconceivable to me how a
+man can make up his mind to build, or to do anything else, in a
+temporary, slight, insincere fashion.  What has a man to say for
+himself who must sum up the doings of his life in this way, "I
+chiefly employed myself in making or selling things which seemed to
+be good and were not, and nobody has occasion to bless me for
+anything I have done."
+
+Ellesmere.  Humph! you put it mildly.  But the man has made perhaps
+seven per cent. off his money; or, if he has made no per cent., has
+ruined several men of his own trade, which is not to go for nothing
+when a man is taking stock of his good deeds.
+
+Milverton.  There is one thing I forgot to say, that we want more
+individual will in building, I think.  As it is at present, a great
+builder takes a plot of ground and turns out innumerable houses, all
+alike, the same faults and merits running through each, thus adding
+to the general dulness of things.
+
+Ellesmere.  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, when she came from abroad,
+remarked that all her friends seemed to have got into drawing-rooms
+which were like a grand piano, first a large square or oblong room,
+and then a small one.  Quite Georgian, this style of architecture.
+But now I think we are improving immensely--at any rate in the
+outside of houses.  By the way, Milverton, I want to ask you one
+thing:  How is it that Governments and Committees, and the bodies
+that manage matters of taste, seem to be more tasteless than the
+average run of people?  I will wager anything that the cabmen round
+Trafalgar Square would have made a better thing of it than it is.
+If you had put before them several prints of fountains, they would
+not have chosen those.
+
+Milverton.  I think with you, but I have no theory to account for
+it.  I suppose that these committees are frequently hampered by
+other considerations than those which come before the public when
+they are looking at the work done; and this may be some excuse.
+There was a custom which I have heard prevailed in former days in
+some of the Italian cities, of making large models of the works of
+art that were to adorn the city, and putting them up in the places
+intended for the works when finished, and then inviting criticism.
+It would really be a very good plan in some cases.
+
+Ellesmere.  Now, Milverton, would you not forthwith pull down such
+things as Buckingham Palace and the National Gallery?  Dunsford
+looks at me as if I were going to pull down the Constitution.
+
+Milverton.  I would pull them down to a certainty, or some parts of
+them at any rate; but whether "forthwith" is another question.
+There are greater things, perhaps, to be done first.  We must
+consider, too,
+
+     "That eternal want of pence
+      Which vexes public men."
+
+Still, I think we ought always to look upon such buildings as
+temporary arrangements, and they vex one less then.  The Palace
+ought to be in the higher part of the Park, perhaps on that slope
+opposite Piccadilly.
+
+Dunsford.  Well, it does amuse me the way in which you youngsters go
+on, pulling down, in your industrious imaginations, palaces and
+national galleries, building aqueducts and cloacae maximae, forming
+parks, destroying smoke (so large a part of every Londoner's diet),
+and abridging plaster, without fear of Chancellors of the Exchequer,
+and the resistance of mankind in general.
+
+Milverton.  We must begin by thinking boldly about things.  That is
+a larger part of any undertaking than it seems, perhaps.
+
+Dunsford.  We must, I am afraid, break off our pleasant employment
+of projecting public improvements, unless we mean to be dinnerless.
+
+Ellesmere.  A frequent fate of great projectors, I fear.
+
+Milverton.  Now then, homewards.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+
+My readers will, perhaps, agree with me in being sorry to find that
+we are coming to the end of our present series.  I say, "my
+readers," though I have so little part in purveying for them, that I
+mostly consider myself one of them.  It is no light task, however,
+to give a good account of a conversation; and I say this, and would
+wish people to try whether I am not right in saying so, not to call
+attention to my labour in the matter, but because it may be well to
+notice how difficult it is to report anything truly.  Were this
+better known, it might be an aid to charity, and prevent some of
+those feuds which grow out of the poverty of man's power to express,
+to apprehend, to represent, rather than out of any malignant part of
+his nature.  But I must not go on moralising.  I almost feel that
+Ellesmere is looking over my shoulder, and breaking into my
+discourse with sharp words; which I have lately been so much
+accustomed to.
+
+I had expected that we should have many more readings this summer,
+as I knew that Milverton had prepared more essays for us.  But
+finding, as he said, that the other subjects he had in hand were
+larger than he had anticipated, or was prepared for, he would not
+read even to us what he had written.  Though I was very sorry for
+this--for I may not be the chronicler in another year--I could not
+but say he was right.  Indeed, my ideas of literature, nourished as
+they have been in much solitude, and by the reading, if I may say
+so, mainly of our classical authors, are very high placed, though I
+hope not fantastical.  And, therefore, I would not discourage anyone
+in expending whatever thought and labour might be in him upon any
+literary work.
+
+In fine, then, I did not attempt to dissuade Milverton from his
+purpose of postponing our readings:  and we agreed that there should
+only be one more for the present.  I wished it to be at our
+favourite place on the lawn, which had become endeared to me as the
+spot of many of our friendly councils.
+
+It was later than usual when I came over to Worth-Ashton for this
+reading; and as I gained the brow of the hill, some few clouds
+tinged with red were just grouping together to form the accustomed
+pomp upon the exit of the setting sun.  I believe I mentioned in the
+introduction to our first conversation that the ruins of an old
+castle could be seen from our place of meeting.  Milverton and
+Ellesmere were talking about it as I joined them.
+
+Milverton.  Yes, Ellesmere, many a man has looked out of those
+windows upon a sunset like this, with some of the thoughts that must
+come into the minds of all men on seeing this great emblem, the
+setting sun--has felt, in looking at it, his coming end, or the
+closing of his greatness.  Those old walls must have been witness to
+every kind of human emotion.  Henry the Second was there; John, I
+think; Margaret of Anjou and Cardinal Beaufort; William of Wykeham;
+Henry the Eighth's Cromwell; and many others who have made some stir
+in the world.
+
+Ellesmere.  And, perhaps, the greatest there were those who made no
+stir.
+
+     "The world knows nothing of its greatest men."
+
+Milverton.  I am slow to believe that.  I cannot well reconcile
+myself to the idea that great capacities are given for nothing.
+They bud out in some way or other.
+
+Ellesmere.  Yes, but it may not be in a noisy way.
+
+Milverton.  There is one thing that always strikes me very much in
+looking at the lives of men:  how soon, as it were, their course
+seems to be determined.  They say, or do, or think, something which
+gives a bias at once to the whole of their career.
+
+Dunsford.  You may go farther back than that, and speak of the
+impulses they got from their ancestors.
+
+Ellesmere.  Or the nets around them of other people's ways and
+wishes.  There are many things, you see, that go to make men
+puppets.
+
+Milverton.  I was only noticing the circumstance that there was such
+a thing, as it appeared to me, as this early direction.  But, if it
+has been ever so unfortunate, a man's folding his hands over it in a
+melancholy mood, and suffering himself to be made a puppet by it, is
+a sadly weak proceeding.  Most thoughtful men have probably some
+dark fountains in their souls, by the side of which, if there were
+time, and it were decorous, they could let their thoughts sit down
+and wail indefinitely.  That long Byron wail fascinated men for a
+time; because there is that in Human Nature.  Luckily, a great deal
+besides.
+
+Ellesmere.  I delight in the helpful and hopeful men.
+
+Milverton.  A man that I admire very much, and have met with
+occasionally, is one who is always of use in any matter he is mixed
+up with, simply because he wishes that the best should be got out of
+the thing that is possible.  There does not seem much in the
+description of such a character; but only see it in contrast with
+that of a brilliant man, for instance, who does not ever fully care
+about the matter in hand.
+
+Dunsford.  I can thoroughly imagine the difference.
+
+Milverton.  The human race may be bound up together in some
+mysterious way, each of us having a profound interest in the
+fortunes of the whole, and so, to some extent, of every portion of
+it.  Such a man as I have described acts as though he had an
+intuitive perception of that relation, and therefore a sort of
+family feeling for mankind, which gives him satisfaction in making
+the best out of any human affair he has to do with.
+
+But we really must have the essay, and not talk any more.  It is on
+History.
+
+
+HISTORY.
+
+Among the fathomless things that are about us and within us, is the
+continuity of time.  This gives to life one of its most solemn
+aspects.  We may think to ourselves:  Would there could be some
+halting-place in life, where we could stay, collecting our minds,
+and see the world drift by us.  But no:  even while you read this,
+you are not pausing to read it.  As one of the great French
+preachers, I think, says, We are embarked upon a stream, each in his
+own little boat, which must move uniformly onwards, till it ceases
+to move at all.  It is a stream that knows "no haste, no rest"; a
+boat that knows no haven but one.
+
+This unbated continuity suggests the past as well as the future.  We
+would know what mighty empires this stream of time has flowed
+through, by what battle-fields it has been tinged, how it has been
+employed towards fertility, and what beautiful shadows on its
+surface have been seized by art, or science, or great words, and
+held in time-lasting, if not in everlasting, beauty.  This is what
+history tells us.  Often in a faltering, confused, be-darkened way,
+like the deed it chronicles.  But it is what we have, and we must
+make the best of it.
+
+The subject of this essay may be thus divided:  Why history should
+be read--how it should be read--by whom it should be written--how it
+should be written--and how good writers of history should be called
+forth, aided, and rewarded.
+
+
+I.  WHY HISTORY SHOULD BE READ.
+
+It takes us out of too much care for the present; it extends our
+sympathies; it shows us that other men have had their sufferings and
+their grievances; it enriches discourse, it enlightens travel.  So
+does fiction.  But the effect of history is more lasting and
+suggestive.  If we see a place which fiction has treated of, we feel
+that it has some interest for us; but show us a spot where
+remarkable deeds have been done, or remarkable people have lived,
+and our thoughts cling to it.  We employ our own imagination about
+it:  we invent the fiction for ourselves.  Again, history is at
+least the conventional account of things:  that which men agree to
+receive as the right account, and which they discuss as true.  To
+understand their talk, we must know what they are talking about.
+Again, there is something in history which can seldom be got from
+the study of the lives of individual men; namely, the movements of
+men collectively, and for long periods--of man, in fact, not of men.
+In history, the composition of the forces that move the world has to
+be analysed.  We must have before us the law of the progress of
+opinion, the interruptions to it of individual character, the
+principles on which men act in the main, the trade winds, as we may
+say, in human affairs, and the recurrent storms which one man's life
+does not tell us of.  Again, by the study of history, we have a
+chance of becoming tolerant travelling over the ways of many nations
+and many periods; and we may also acquire that historic tact by
+which we collect upon one point of human affairs the light of many
+ages.
+
+We may judge of the benefit of historical studies by observing what
+great defects are incident to the moral and political writers who
+know nothing of history.  A present grievance, or what seems such,
+swallows up in their minds all other considerations; their little
+bottle of oil is to still the raging waves of the whole human ocean;
+their system, a thing that the historian has seen before, perhaps,
+in many ages, is to reconcile all diversities.  Then they would
+persuade you that this class of men is wholly good, that wholly bad;
+or that there is no difference between good and bad.  They may be
+shrewd men, considering what they have seen, but would be much
+shrewder if they could know how small a part that is of life.  We
+may all refer to our boyhood, and recollect the time when we thought
+the things about us were the type of all things everywhere.  That
+was, perhaps, after all no silly princess who was for feeding the
+famishing people on cakes.  History takes us out of this confined
+circle of child-like thought; and shows us what are the perennial
+aims, struggles, and distractions of mankind.
+
+History has always been set down as the especial study for
+statesmen, and for men who take an interest in public affairs.  For
+history is to nations what biography is to individual men.  History
+is the chart and compass for national endeavour.  Our early voyagers
+are dead:  not a plank remains of the old ships that first essayed
+unknown waters; the sea retains no track; and were it not for the
+history of these voyages contained in charts, in chronicles, in
+hoarded lore of all kinds, each voyager, though he were to start
+with all the aids of advanced civilisation (if you could imagine
+such a thing without history), would need the boldness of the first
+voyager.
+
+And so it would be with the statesman, were the civil history of
+mankind unknown.  We live to some extent in peace and comfort upon
+the results obtained for us by the chronicles of our forefathers.
+We do not see this without some reflection.  But imagine what a
+full-grown nation would be if it knew no history--like a full-grown
+man with only a child's experience.
+
+The present is an age of remarkable experiences.  Vast improvements
+have been made in several of the outward things that concern life
+nearly, from intercourse rapid as lightning to surgical operation
+without pain.  We accept them all; still, the difficulties of
+government, the management of ourselves, our relations with others,
+and many of the prime difficulties of life remain but little
+subdued.  History still claims our interest, is still wanted to make
+us think and act with any breadth of wisdom.
+
+At the same time, however, that we claim for history great powers of
+instruction, we must not imagine that the examples which it
+furnishes will enable its readers to anticipate the experience of
+life.  An experienced man reads that Caesar did this or that, but he
+says to himself, "I am not Caesar."  Or, indeed, as is most
+probable, the reader has not to reject the application of the
+example to himself:  for from first to last he sees nothing but
+experience for Caesar in what Caesar was doing.  I think it may be
+observed, too, that general maxims about life gain the ear of the
+inexperienced, in preference to historical examples.  But neither
+wise sayings nor historical examples can be understood without
+experience.  Words are only symbols.  Who can know anything soundly
+with respect to the complicated affections and struggles of life,
+unless he has experienced some of them?  All knowledge of humanity
+spreads from within.  So in studying history, the lessons it teaches
+must have something to grow round in the heart they teach.  Our own
+trials, misfortunes, and enterprises are the best lights by which we
+can read history.  Hence it is that many an historian may see far
+less into the depths of the very history he has himself written than
+a man who, having acted and suffered, reads the history in question
+with all the wisdom that comes from action and suffering.  Sir
+Robert Walpole might naturally exclaim, "Do not read history to me,
+for that, I know, must be false."  But if he had read it, I do not
+doubt that he would have seen through the film of false and
+insufficient narrative into the depth of the matter narrated, in a
+way that men of great experience can alone attain to.
+
+
+II.  HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE READ.
+
+I suppose that many who now connect the very word history with the
+idea of dulness, would have been fond and diligent students of
+history if it had had fair access to their minds.  But they were set
+down to read histories which were not fitted to be read
+continuously, or by any but practised students.  Some such works are
+mere framework, a name which the author of the Statesman applies to
+them; very good things, perhaps, for their purpose, but that is not
+to invite readers to history.  You might almost as well read
+dictionaries with a hope of getting a succinct and clear view of
+language.  When, in any narration, there is a constant heaping up of
+facts, made about equally significant by the way of telling them, a
+hasty delineation of characters, and all the incidents moving on as
+in the fifth act of a confused tragedy, the mind and memory refuse
+to be so treated; and the reading ends in nothing but a very slight
+and inaccurate acquaintance with the mere husk of the history.  You
+cannot epitomise the knowledge that it would take years to acquire
+into a few volumes that may be read in as many weeks.
+
+The most likely way of attracting men's attention to historical
+subjects will be by presenting them with small portions of history,
+of great interest, thoroughly examined.  This may give them the
+habit of applying thought and criticism to historical matters.
+
+For, as it is, how are people interested in history? and how do they
+master its multitudinous assemblage of facts?  Mostly, perhaps, in
+this way.  A man cares about some one thing, or person, or event,
+and plunges into its history, really wishing to master it.  This
+pursuit extends:  other points of research are taken up by him at
+other times.  His researches begin to intersect.  He finds a
+connection in things.  The texture of his historic acquisitions
+gradually attains some substance and colour; and so at last he
+begins to have some dim notions of the myriads of men who came, and
+saw, and did not conquer--only struggled on as they best might, some
+of them--and are not.
+
+When we are considering how history should be read, the main thing
+perhaps is, that the person reading should desire to know what he is
+reading about, not merely to have read the books that tell of it.
+The most elaborate and careful historian must omit, or pass lightly
+over, many points of his subject.  He writes for all readers, and
+cannot indulge private fancies.  But history has its particular
+aspect for each man:  there must be portions which he may be
+expected to dwell upon.  And everywhere, even where the history is
+most laboured, the reader should have something of the spirit of
+research which was needful for the writer:  if only so much as to
+ponder well the words of the writer.  That man reads history, or
+anything else, at great peril of being thoroughly misled, who has no
+perception of any truthfulness except that which can be fully
+ascertained by reference to facts; who does not in the least
+perceive the truth, or the reverse, of a writer's style, of his
+epithets, of his reasoning, of his mode of narration.  In life, our
+faith in any narration is much influenced by the personal
+appearance, voice, and gesture of the person narrating.  There is
+some part of all these things in his writing; and you must look into
+that well before you can know what faith to give him.  One man may
+make mistakes in names, and dates, and references, and yet have a
+real substance of truthfulness in him, a wish to enlighten himself
+and then you.  Another may not be wrong in his facts, but have a
+declamatory or sophistical vein in him, much to be guarded against.
+A third may be both inaccurate and untruthful, caring not so much
+for anything as to write his book.  And if the reader cares only to
+read it, sad work they make between them of the memories of former
+days.
+
+In studying history, it must be borne in mind that a knowledge is
+necessary of the state of manners, customs, wealth, arts, and
+science at the different periods treated of.  The text of civil
+history requires a context of this knowledge in the mind of the
+reader.  For the same reason, some of the main facts of the
+geography of the countries in question should be present to him.  If
+we are ignorant of these aids to history, all history is apt to seem
+alike to us.  It becomes merely a narrative of men of our own time,
+in our own country; and then we are prone to expect the same views
+and conduct from them that we do from our contemporaries.  It is
+true that the heroes of antiquity have been represented on the stage
+in bag-wigs, and the rest of the costume of our grandfathers:  but
+it was the great events of their lives that were thus told--the
+crisis of their passions--and when we are contemplating the
+representation of great passions and their consequences, all minor
+imagery is of little moment.  In a long-drawn narrative, however,
+the more we have in our minds of what concerned the daily life of
+the people we read about, the better.  And in general it may be said
+that history, like travelling, gives a return in proportion to the
+knowledge that a man brings to it.
+
+
+III.  BY WHOM HISTORY SHOULD BE WRITTEN.
+
+Before entering directly on this part of the subject, it is
+desirable to consider a little the difficulties in the way of
+writing history.  We all know the difficulty of getting at the truth
+of a matter which happened yesterday, and about which we can examine
+the living actors upon oath.  But in history the most significant
+things may lack the most important part of their evidence.  The
+people who were making history were not thinking of the convenience
+of future writers of history.  Often the historian must contrive to
+get his insight into matters from evidence of men and things which
+is like bad pictures of them.  The contemporary, if he knew the man,
+said of the picture, "I should have known it, but it has very little
+of him in it."  The poor historian, with no original before him, has
+to see through the bad picture into the man.  Then, supposing our
+historian rich in well-selected evidence--I say well-selected,
+because, as students tell us, for many an historian one authority is
+of the same weight as another, provided they are both of the same
+age; still, how difficult is narration even to the man who is rich
+in well-selected evidence.  What a tendency there is to round off a
+narrative into falsehood; or else by parenthesis to destroy its pith
+and continuity.  Again, the historian knows the end of many of the
+transactions he narrates.  If he did not, how differently often he
+would narrate them.  It would be a most instructive thing to give a
+man the materials for the account of a great transaction, stopping
+short of the end, and then see how different would be his account
+from the ordinary ones.  Fools have been hardly dealt with in the
+saying that the event is their master ("eventus stultorum
+magister"), seeing how it rules us all.  And in nothing more than in
+history.  The event is always present to our minds; along the
+pathways to it, the historian and the moralist have walked till they
+are beaten pathways, and we imagine that they were so to the men who
+first went along them.  Indeed, we almost fancy that these ancestors
+of ours, looking along the beaten path, foresaw the event as we do;
+whereas, they mostly stumbled upon it suddenly in the forest.  This
+knowledge of the end we must, therefore, put down as one of the most
+dangerous pitfalls which beset the writers of history.  Then
+consider the difficulty in the "composition," to use an artist's
+word, of our historian's picture.  Before both the artist and the
+historian lies Nature as far as the horizon; how shall they choose
+that portion of it which has some unity and which shall represent
+the rest?  What method is needful in the grouping of facts; what
+learning, what patience, what accuracy!
+
+By whom, then, should history be written?  In the first place, by
+men of some experience in real life; who have acted and suffered;
+who have been in crowds, and seen, perhaps felt, how madly men can
+care about nothings; who have observed how much is done in the world
+in an uncertain manner, upon sudden impulses and very little reason;
+and who, therefore, do not think themselves bound to have a deep-
+laid theory for all things.  They should be men who have studied the
+laws of the affections, who know how much men's opinions depend on
+the time in which they live, how they vary with their age and their
+position.  To make themselves historians, they should also have
+considered the combinations amongst men and the laws that govern
+such things; for there are laws.  Moreover our historians, like most
+men who do great things, must combine in themselves qualities which
+are held to belong to opposite natures; must at the same time be
+patient in research and vigorous in imagination, energetic and calm,
+cautious and enterprising.  Such historians, wise, as we may suppose
+they will be, about the affair of other men, may, let us hope, be
+sufficiently wise about their own affairs to understand that no
+great work can be done without great labour, that no great labour
+ought to look for its reward.  But my readers will exclaim as
+Rasselas to Imlac on hearing the requisites for a poet, "Enough!
+thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be an historian.
+Proceed with thy narration."
+
+
+IV.  HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE WRITTEN.
+
+One of the first things in writing history is for the historian to
+recollect that it is history he is writing.  The narrative must not
+be oppressed by reflections, even by wise ones.  Least of all should
+the historian suffer himself to become entangled by a theory or a
+system.  If he does, each fact is taken up by him in a particular
+way:  those facts that cannot be so handled cease to be his facts,
+and those that offer themselves conveniently are received too fondly
+by him.
+
+Then, although our historian must not be mastered by system, he must
+have some way of taking up his facts and of classifying them.  They
+must not be mere isolated units in his eyes, else he is mobbed by
+them.  And a man in the midst of a crowd, though he may know the
+names and nature of all the crowd, cannot give an account of their
+doings.  Those who look down from the housetop must do that.
+
+But, above all things, the historian must get out of his own age
+into the time in which he is writing.  Imagination is as much needed
+for the historian as the poet.  You may combine bits of books with
+other bits of books, and so make some new combinations, and this may
+be done accurately, and, in general, much of the subordinate
+preparation for history may be accomplished without any great effort
+of imagination.  But to write history in any large sense of the
+words, you must be able to comprehend other times.  You must know
+that there is a right and wrong which is not your right and wrong,
+but yet stands upon the right and wrong of all ages and all hearts.
+You must also appreciate the outward life and colours of the period
+you write about.  Try to think how the men you are telling of would
+have spent a day, what were their leading ideas, what they cared
+about.  Grasp the body of the time, and give it to us.  If not, and
+these men could look at your history, they would say, "This is all
+very well; we daresay some of these things did happen; but we were
+not thinking of these things all day long.  It does not represent
+us."
+
+After enlarging upon this great requisite, imagination, it seems
+somewhat prosaic to come down to saying that history requires
+accuracy.  But I think I hear the sighs, and sounds more harsh than
+sighing, of those who have ever investigated anything, and found by
+dire experience the deplorable inaccuracy which prevails in the
+world.  And, therefore, I would say to the historian almost as the
+first suggestion, "Be accurate; do not make false references, do not
+mis-state:  and men, if they get no light from you, will not
+execrate you.  You will not stand in the way, and have to be
+explained and got rid of."
+
+Another most important matter in writing history, and that indeed in
+which the art lies, is the method of narrating.  This is a thing
+almost beyond rules, like the actual execution in music or painting.
+A man might have fairness, accuracy, an insight into other times,
+great knowledge of facts, some power even of arranging them, and yet
+make a narrative out of it all, so protracted here, so huddled
+together there, the purpose so buried or confused, that men would
+agree to acknowledge the merit of the book and leave it unread.
+There must be a natural line of associations for the narrative to
+run along.  The separate threads of the narrative must be treated
+separately, and yet the subject not be dealt with sectionally, for
+that is not the way in which the things occurred.  The historian
+must, therefore, beware that those divisions of the subject which he
+makes for our ease and convenience, do not induce him to treat his
+subject in a flimsy manner.  He must not make his story easy where
+it is not so.
+
+After all, it is not by rule that a great history is to be written.
+Most thinkers agree that the main object for the historian is to get
+an insight into the things which he tells of, and then to tell them
+with the modesty of a man who is in the presence of great events;
+and must speak about them carefully, simply, and with but little of
+himself or of his affections thrown into the narration.
+
+
+V.  HOW GOOD WRITERS OF HISTORY SHOULD BE CALLED FORTH, AIDED, AND
+REWARDED.
+
+Mainly by history being properly read.  The direct ways of
+commanding excellence of any kind are very few, if any.  When a
+State has found out its notable men, it should reward them, and will
+show its worthiness by its measure and mode of reward.  But it
+cannot purchase them.  It may do something in the way of aiding
+them.  In history, for instance, the records of a nation may be
+discreetly managed, and some of the minor work, therefore, done to
+the hand of the historian.  But the most likely method to ensure
+good historians is to have a fit audience for them.  And this is a
+very difficult matter.  In works of general literature, the circle
+of persons capable of judging is large; even in works of science or
+philosophy it is considerable:  but in history, it is a very
+confined circle.  To the general body of readers, whether the
+history they read is true or not is in no way perceptible.  It is
+quite as amusing to them when it is told in one way as in another.
+There is always mischief in error:  but in this case the mischief is
+remote, or seems so.  For men of ordinary culture, even if of much
+intelligence, the difficulty of discerning what is true or false in
+the histories they read makes it a matter of the highest duty for
+those few persons who can give us criticism on historical works, at
+least to save us from insolent and mendacious carelessness in
+historical writers, if not by just encouragement to secure for
+nations some results not altogether unworthy of the great enterprise
+which the writing of history holds out itself to be.  "Hujus enim
+fidei exempla majorum, vicissitudines rerum, fundamenta prudentiae
+civilis, hominum denique nomen et fama commissa sunt." {183}
+
+
+Ellesmere.  Just wait a minute for me, and do not talk about the
+essay till I come back.  I am going for Anster's Faust.
+
+Dunsford.  What has Ellesmere got in his head?
+
+Milverton.  I see.  There is a passage where Faust, in his most
+discontented mood, falls foul of history--in his talk to Wagner, if
+I am not mistaken.
+
+Dunsford.  How beautiful it is this evening!  Look at that yellow-
+green near the sunset.
+
+Milverton.  The very words that Coleridge uses.  I always think of
+them when I see that tint.
+
+Dunsford.  I daresay his words were in my mind, but I have forgotten
+what you allude to.
+
+Milverton.
+
+     "O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,
+      To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,
+        All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
+      Have I been gazing on the western sky,
+      And its peculiar tint of yellow-green:
+      And still I gaze--and with how blank an eye!
+      And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
+      That give away their motion to the stars;
+      Those stars that glide behind them or between,
+      Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
+      Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew
+      In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
+      I see them all so excellently fair,
+      I see, not feel how beautiful they are."
+
+Dunsford.  Admirable!  In the Ode to Dejection, is it not? where,
+too, there are those lines,
+
+     "O Lady! we receive but what we give,
+      And in our life alone does Nature live."
+
+Milverton.  But here comes Ellesmere with triumphant look.  You look
+as jovial, my dear Ellesmere, as if you were a Bentley that had
+found a false quantity in a Boyle.
+
+Ellesmere.  Listen and perpend, my historical friends.
+
+     "To us, my friend, the times that are gone by
+      Are a mysterious book, sealed with seven seals:
+      That which you call the spirit of ages past
+      Is but, in truth, the spirit of some few authors
+      In which those ages are beheld reflected,
+      With what distortion strange heaven only knows.
+      Oh! often, what a toilsome thing it is
+      This study of thine--at the first glance we fly it.
+      A mass of things confusedly heaped together;
+      A lumber-room of dusty documents,
+      Furnished with all approved court-precedents
+      And old traditional maxims!  History!
+      Facts dramatised say rather--action--plot--
+      Sentiment, everything the writer's own,
+      As it bests fits the web-work of his story,
+      With here and there a solitary fact
+      Of consequence, by those grave chroniclers,
+      Pointed with many a moral apophthegm,
+      And wise old saws, learned at the puppet-shows."
+
+Milverton.  Yes; admirable lines; they describe to the life the very
+faults we have been considering as the faults of badly-written
+histories.  I do not see that they do much more.
+
+Ellesmere.
+
+     "To us, my friend, the times that are gone by
+      Are a mysterious book."--
+
+Milverton.  Those two first lines are the full expression of Faust's
+discontent--unmeasured as in the presence of a weak man who could
+not check him.  But, if you come to look at the matter closely, you
+will see that the time present is also in some sense a sealed book
+to us.  Men that we live with daily we often think as little of as
+we do of Julius Caesar, I was going to say--but we know much less of
+them than of him.
+
+Ellesmere.  I did not mean to say that Faust spoke my sentiments
+about history in general.  Still, there are periods of history which
+we have very few authors to tell us about, and I daresay in some of
+those cases the colouring of their particular minds gives us a false
+idea of the whole age they lived in.
+
+Dunsford.  This may have happened, certainly.
+
+Milverton.  We must be careful not to expect too much from the
+history of past ages, as a means of understanding the present age.
+There is something wanted besides the preceding history to
+understand each age.  Each individual life may have a problem of its
+own, which all other biography accurately set down for us might not
+enable us to work out.  So of each age.  It has something in it not
+known before, and tends to a result which is not down in any books.
+
+Dunsford.  Yet history must be of greatest use in discerning this
+tendency.
+
+Ellesmere.  Yes; but the Wagner sort of pedant would get entangled
+in his round of history--in his historical resemblances.
+
+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
+circumstances 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 passage from Tacitus,
+"Praecipuum munus annalium,"--can you go on with it, Dunsford?
+
+Dunsford.  Yes, I think I can.  It is a passage 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 passing 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
+pronounced, he says, too late to correct or to recompense; but it
+was pronounced 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 anticipation 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, assume 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 circumscribed 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 passage 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 passion.  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 passages 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
+passions, 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 assure 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.
+
+{117c} There are several thousand gratings to sewers and drains
+which are utterly useless on account of their position, and
+positively injurious from their emanations.--Mr. Guthrie's
+evidence.--Ibid., vol. ii., p. 255.
+
+{118} Mr. Wood states that the masters and mistresses were generally
+ignorant of the depressing and unhealthy effects of the atmosphere
+which surrounded them, and he mentions the case of the mistress of a
+dame-school who replied, when he pointed out this to her, "that the
+children thrived best in dirt!"--Health of Towns Report, vol. i.,
+pp. 146, 147.
+
+{126} See "The Fair Maid of Perth."
+
+{161} See "Health of Towns Report," 1844, vol. i., p. 44.
+
+{183} Bacon, de Augmentis Scientiarum.
+
+
+
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