In five months she became ruddy, and then her perseverance in being packed twice every day was rewarded. The returning muscular power was advanced to perfect recovery of the free use of her limits.
She grew stout and strong, and now walks ten miles daily.
We confess we should like to have this story confirmed by some competent authority. It appears to verge on the impossible: unless, indeed, the fact was that the lady was some nervous, fanciful person, who took up a hypochondriac idea that she was paralysed, and got rid of the notion by having her const.i.tution braced up.
We have already said a good deal of the enjoyable nature of the water system; we make a final quotation from our military friend:--
I have given some account of my daily baths, and on reading over what I have written, I feel quite ashamed of the coldness of the recital of all my delight, the recollection of which makes my mouth water. The reader will observe that I am a Scotchman (proverbially a matter-of-fact race), an old fellow, my enemy would say a slow coach. I might enlarge on my ecstatic delight in my baths, my healthy glow, my light-heartedness, my feelings of elasticity, which made me fancy I could trip along the sward like a patent Vestris. I might go much farther, I might indulge in poetic rapture--most unbecoming my mature age--and after all, fall far short of the reality. The reader will do well to allow a large percentage of omitted ecstatic delineation in consequence of want of ardour on the part of the writer. This is in fact due to justice.
See how old patients describe the Water Cure! This is, at all events, a different strain from that of people who have been victimized by ordinary quacks and quack medicines, and who bestow their imprecations on the credulity which has at once ruined their const.i.tutions and emptied their pockets.
We trust we have succeeded in persuading those who have glanced over these pages, that the Water Cure is by no means the violent thing which they have in all probability been accustomed to consider it. There is no need for being nervous about going to it. There is nothing about it that is half such a shock to the system as are blue pill and mercury, purgatives and drastics, leeches and the lancet. Almost every appliance within its range is a source of positive enjoyment; the time spent under it is a cheerful holiday to body and mind. We take it to be quackery and absurdity to maintain that all possible diseases can be cured by the cold water system; but, from our own experience, we believe that the system and its concomitants do tend powerfully to brace and re-invigorate, when mental exertion has told upon the system, and even threatened to break it down. But really it is no new discovery that fresh air and water, simple food and abundant exercise, change of scene and intermission of toil and excitement, tend to brace the nerves and give fresh vigour to the limbs. In the only respect in which we have any confidence in the Water Cure, it is truly no new system at all. We did not need Priessnitz to tell us that the fair element which, in a hundred forms, makes so great a part of Creation"s beauty--trembling, crystal-clear, upon the rosebud; gleaming in the sunset river; spreading, as we see it to-day, in the bright blue summer sea; fleecy-white in the silent clouds, and gay in the evening rainbow,--is the true elixir of health and life, the most exhilarating draught, the most soothing anodyne; the secret of physical enjoyment, and mental buoyancy and vigour.
CHAPTER XI
CONCERNING FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.
[Footnote: Friends in Council: a Series of Readings and Discourse thereon. A. New Series. Two Volumes. London: John W. Parker and Son, West Strand, 1859.]
There is a peculiar pleasure in paying a visit to a friend whom you never saw in his own house before. Let it not be believed that in this world there is much difficulty in finding a new sensation. The genial, unaffected, hard-wrought man, who does not think it fine to appear to care nothing for anything, will find a new sensation in many quiet places, and in many simple ways. There is something fresh and pleasant in arriving at an entirely new railway station, in getting out upon a platform on which you never before stood; in finding your friend standing there looking quite at home in a place quite strange to you; in taking in at a glance the expression of the porter who takes your luggage and the clerk who receives your ticket, and reading there something of their character and their life; in going outside, and seeing for the first time your friend"s carriage, whether the stately drag or the humbler dog-cart, and beholding horses you never saw before, caparisoned in harness heretofore unseen; in taking your seat upon cushions. .h.i.therto impressed by you, in seeing your friend take the reins, and then in rolling away over a new road, under new trees, over new bridges, beside new hedges, looking upon new landscapes stretching far away, and breaking in upon that latent idea common to all people who have seen very little, that they have seen almost all the world. Then there is something fresh and pleasant in driving for the first time up the avenue, in catching the first view of the dwelling which is to your friend the centre of all the world, in walking up for the first time to your chamber (you ought always to arrive at a country house for a visit about three quarters of an hour before dinner), and then in coming down and finding yourself in the heart of his belongings; seeing his wife and children, never seen before; finding out his favourite books, and coming to know something of his friends, horses, dogs, pigs, and general way of life; and then after ten days, in going away, feeling that you have occupied a new place and seen a new phase of life, henceforward to be a possession for ever.
But it is pleasanter by a great deal to go and pay a visit to a friend visited several times (not too frequently) before: to arrive at the old railway station, quiet and country-like, with trees growing out of the very platform on which you step; to see your friend"s old face not seen for two years; to go out and discern the old drag standing just where you remember it, and to smooth down the horses" noses as an old acquaintance; to discover a look of recognition on the man-servant"s impa.s.sive face, which at your greeting expands into a pleased smile; to drive away along the old road, recognizing cottages and trees; to come in sight of the house again, your friend"s conversation and the entire aspect of things bringing up many little remembrances of the past; to look out of your chamber window before dinner and to recognize a large beech or oak which you had often remembered when you were far away, and the field beyond, and the hills in the distance, and to know again even the pattern of the carpet and the bed curtains; to go down to dinner, and meet the old greeting; to recognize the taste of the claret; to find the children a little bigger, a little shy at first, but gradually acknowledging an old acquaintance; and then, when your friend and you are left by yourselves, to draw round the fire (such visits are generally in September), and enjoy the warm, hearty look of the crimson curtains hanging in the self-same folds as twenty-four months since, and talk over many old things.
We feel, in opening the new volumes of Friends in Council, as we should in going to pay a visit to an old friend living in the same pleasant home, and at the same pleasant autumnal season in which we visited him before. We know what to expect. We know that there may be little variations from what we have already found, little changes wrought by time; but, barring great accident or disappointment, we know what kind of thing the visit will be. And we believe that to many who have read with delight the previous volumes of this work, there can hardly be any pleasanter antic.i.p.ation than that of more of the same wise, kindly, interesting material which they remember. A good many years have pa.s.sed since the first volume of Friends in Council was published; a good many years even since the second: for, the essays and discourses now given to the public form the third published portion of the work. Continuations of successful works have proverbially proved failures; the author was his own too successful rival; and intelligent readers, trained to expect much, have generally declared that the new production was, if not inferior to its predecessor, at all events inferior to what its predecessor had taught them to look for. But there is no falling off here. The writing of essays and conversations, set in a framework of scenery and incident, and delineating character admirably though only incidentally, is the field of literature in which the author stands without a rival. No one in modern days can discuss a grave subject in a style so attractive; no one can convey so much wisdom with so much playfulness and kindliness; no one can evince so much earnestness unalloyed by the least tinge of exaggeration. The order of thought which is contained in Friends in Council, is quarried from its authors best vein. Here, he has come upon what gold-diggers call a pocket: and he appears to work it with little effort. However difficult it might be for others to write an essay and discourse on it in the fashion of this book, we should judge that its author does so quite easily. It is no task for suns to shine. And it will bring back many pleasant remembrances to the minds of many readers, to open these new volumes, and find themselves at once in the same kindly atmosphere as ever; to find that the old spring is flowing yet. The new series of Friends in Council is precisely what the intelligent reader must have expected. A thoroughly good writer can never surprise us. A writer whom we have studied, mused over, sympathized with, can surprise us only by doing something eccentric, affected, unworthy of himself. The more thoroughly we have sympathized with him; the more closely we have marked not only the strong characteristics which are already present in what he writes, but those little matters which may be the germs of possible new characteristics; the less likely is it that we shall be surprised by anything he does or says. It is so with the author of Friends in Council. We know precisely what to expect from him. We should feel aggrieved if he gave us anything else. Of course there will be much wisdom and depth of insight; much strong practical sense: there will be playfulness, pensiveness, pathos; great fairness and justice; much kindness of heart; something of the romantic element; and as for Style, there will be language always free from the least trace of affectation; always clear and comprehensible; never slovenly; sometimes remarkable for a certain simple felicity; sometimes rising into force and eloquence of a very high order: a style, in short, not to be parodied, not to be caricatured, not to be imitated except by writing as well. The author cannot sink below our expectations; cannot rise above them. He has already written so much, and so many thoughtful readers have so carefully studied what he has written, that we know the exact length of his tether, and he can say nothing for which we are not prepared. You know exactly what to expect in this new work. You could not, indeed, produce it; you could not describe it, you could not say beforehand what it will be; but when you come upon it, you will feel that it is just what you were sure it would be. You were sure, as you are sure what will be the flavour of the fruit on your pet apple-tree, which you have tasted a hundred times. The tree is quite certain to produce that fruit which you remember and like so well; it is its nature to do so. And the a.n.a.logy holds further. For, as little variations in weather or in the treatment of the tree--a dry season, or some special application to the roots--may somewhat alter the fruit, though all within narrow limits; so may change of circ.u.mstances a little affect an author"s writings, but only within a certain range. The apple-tree may produce a somewhat different apple; but it will never producn an orange, neither will it yield a crab.
So here we are again among our old friends. We should have good reason to complain had Dunsford, Ellesmere, or Milverton been absent; and here they are again just as before. Possibly they are even less changed than they"should have been after thirteen or fourteen years, considering what their age was at our first introduction to them. Dunsford, the elderly country parson, once fellow and tutor of his college, still reports the conversations of the friends; Milverton and Ellesmere are, in their own way, as fond of one another as ever; Dunsford is still judicious, kind, good, somewhat slow, as country parsons not unnaturally become; Ellesmere is still sarcastic, keen, clever, with much real worldly wisdom and much affected cynicism overlying a kind and honest heart. As for Milverton, we should judge that in him the author of the work has unconsciously shown us himself; for a.s.suredly the great characteristics of the author of Friends in Council must be that he is laborious, thoughtful, generous, well-read, much in earnest, eager for the welfare of his fellow-men, deeply interested in politics and in history, impatient of puritanical restraints, convinced of the substantial importance of amus.e.m.e.nt. Milverton, we gather, still lives at his country-seat in Hampshire, and takes some interest in rustic concerns. Ellesmere continues to rise at the bar; since we last met him has been Solicitor-General, and is now Sir John, a member of the House of Commons, and in the fair way to a Chief Justiceship. The clergyman"s quiet life is going on as before. But in addition to our three old friends we find an elderly man, one Mr. Midhurst, whose days have been spent in diplomacy, who is of a melancholy disposition, and takes gloomy views of life, but who is much skilled in cookery, very fat, and very fond of a good dinner.
Also Mildred and Blanche, Milverton"s cousins, two sisters, have grown up into young women of very different character: and they take some share in the conversations, and, as we shall hereafter see, a still more important part in the action of the story.
We feel that we are in the midst of a real group of actual human beings:--just what third-rate historians fail to make us feel when telling us of men and women who have actually lived. The time and place are very varied; hut through the greater portion of the book the party are travelling over the Continent. A further variation from the plan of the former volumes, besides the introduction of new characters, is, that while all the essays in the preceding series were written by Milverton, we have now one by Ellesmere, one by Dunsford, and one by Mr. Midhurst, each being in theme and manner very characteristic of its author. But, as heretofore, the writer of the book holds to his principle of the impolicy of "jading anything too far," and thinks with Bacon that "it is good, in discourse and speech of conversation, to vary and intermingle speech of the present occasion with arguments, tales with reasons, asking of questions with telling of opinions, and jest with earnest." The writer likewise holds by that system which his own practice has done so much to recommend--of giving locality and time to all abstract thought, and thus securing in the case of the majority of readers an interest and a reality in no other way to be attained. Admirable as are the essays contained in the work, but for their setting in something of a story, and their vivification by being ascribed to various characters, and described as read and discussed in various scenes, they would interest a very much smaller cla.s.s of readers than now they do. No doubt much of the skill of tho dramatist is needed to secure this souce of interest. It can be secured only where we feel that the characters are living men and women, and the attempt to secure it has often proved a miserable failure. But it is here that the author of Friends in Council succeeds so well. Not only do we know precisely what Dunsford, Milverton, and Ellesmere are like; we know exactly what they ought and what they ought not to say. The author ran a risk in reproducing those old friends. We had a right to expect in each of them a certain idiosyncrasy; and it is not easy to maintain an individuality which does not dwell in mere caricature and exaggeration, but in the truthful traits of actual life. We feel we have a vested interest in the characters of the three friends: not even their author has the right essentially to alter them; we should feel it an injury if he did. But he has done what he intended. Here we have the selfsame men. Not a word is said by one of them that ought to have been said by another.
And here it may be remarked, that any one who is well read in the author"s writings, will not fail here and there to come upon what will appear familiar to him. Various thoughts, views, and even expressions, occur which the author has borrowed from himself. It is easy to be seen that in all this there is no conscious repet.i.tion, but that veins of thought and feeling long entertained have cropped out to the surface again.
We do not know whether or not the readers of Friends in Council will be startled at finding that these volumes show us the grave Milverton and the sarcastic Ellesmere in the capacity of lovers, and leave them in the near prospect of being married--Ellesmere to the bold and dashing Mildred; Milverton to the quiet Blanche. The gradual tending of things to this conclusion forms the main action of the book. The incidents are of the simplest character: there is a plan but no plot, except as regards these marriages. Wearied and jaded with work at home, the three friends of the former volumes resolve on going abroad for awhile. Midhurst and the girls accompany them: and the story is simply that at various places to which they came, one friend read an essay or uttered a discourse (for sometimes the essays are supposed to have been given extempore), and the others talked about it. But the gradual progress of matters towards the weddings (it may be supposed that the happy couples are this September on their wedding tours) is traced with much skill and much knowledge of the fashion in which such things go; and it supplies a peculiar interest to the work, which will probably tide many young ladies over essays on such grave subjects as Government and Despotism. Still, we confess that we had hardly regarded Ellesmere and Milverton as marrying men. We had set them down as too old, grave, and wise, for at least the preliminary stages. We have not forgotten that Dunsford told us [Footnote: Friends in Council, Introduction to Book II.] that in the summer of 1847 he supposed no one but himself would speak of Milverton and Ellesmere as young men; and now of course they are twelve years older, and yet about to be married to girls whom we should judge to be about two or three and twenty. And although it is not an unnatural thing that Ellesmere should have got over his affection for the German Gretchen, whose story is so exquisitely told in the Companions of my Solitude, we find it harder to reconcile Milverton"s marriage with our previous impression of him. Yet perhaps all this is truthful to life. It is not an unnatural thing that a man who for years has settled down into the belief that he has faded, and that for him the romantic interest has gone from life, should upon some fresh stimulus gather himself up from that idea, and think that life is not so far gone after all. Who has not on a beautiful September day sometimes chidden himself for having given in to the impression that the season was so far advanced, and clung to the belief that it is almost summer still?
In a preliminary Address to the Reader, the author explains that the essay on War, which occupies a considerable portion of the first volume, was written some time ago, and intends no allusion to recent events in Europe. The Address contains an earnest protest against the maintenance of large standing armies; it is eloquent and forcible, and it affords additional proof how much the author has thought upon the subject of war, and how deeply he feels upon it. Then comes the Introduction proper, written, of course, by Dunsford. It sets out with the praise of conversation, and then it sums up what the "Friends" have learned in their longer experience of life:--
We "Friends in Council" are of course somewhat older men than when we first began to meet in friendly conclave; and I have observed as men go on in life they are less and less inclined to be didactic.
They have found out that nothing is, didactically speaking, true.
They long for exceptions, modifications, allowances. A boy is clear, sharp, decisive in his talk. He would have this. He would do that.
He hates this; he loves that: and his loves or his hatreds admit of no exception. He is sure that the one thing is quite right, and the other quite wrong. He is not troubled with doubts. He knows.
I see now why, as men go on in life, they delight, in anecdotes.
These tell so much, and argue, or p.r.o.nounce directly, so little.
The three friends were sauntering one day in Milverton"s garden, all feeling much overwrought and very stupid. Ellesmere proposed that for a little recreation they should go abroad. Milverton pleads his old horror of picture-galleries, and declares himself content with the unpainted pictures he has in his mind:--
It is curious, but I have been painting two companion pictures ever since we have been walking about in the garden. One consists of some dilapidated garden architecture, with overgrown foliage of all kinds, not forest foliage, but that of rare trees such as the Sumach and j.a.pan-cedar, which should have been neglected for thirty years. Here and there, instead of the exquisite parterre, there should be some miserable patches of potatoes and beans, and some squalid clothes hung out to dry. Two ill-dressed children, but of delicate features, should be playing about an ugly neglected pool that had once been the basin to the fountain. But the foliage should be the chief thing, gaunt, grotesque, rare, beautiful, like an unkempt, uncared-for, lovely mountain girl. Underneath this picture:--"Property in the country, in chancery."
The companion picture, of course, should be:--"Property in town, in chancery." It should consist of two orthree hideous, sordid, window-broken, rat-deserted, paintless, blackened houses, that should look as if they had once been too good company for the neighbourhood, and had met with a fall in life, not deplored by any one. At the opposite corner should be a flaunting new gin-palace.
I do not know whether I should have the heart to bring any children there, but I would if I could.
The reader will discern that the author of Friends in Council has lost nothing of his power of picturesque description, and nothing of his horror of the abuses and cruelties of the law. And the pa.s.sage may serve to remind of the touching, graphic account of the country residence of a reduced family in the Companions of my Solitude. [Footnote: Chap. iv.] Ellesmere a.s.sures Milverton that he shall not be asked to see a single picture; and that if Milverton will bring Blanche and Mildred with him, he will himself go and see seven of the chief sewers in seven of the chief towns. The appeal to the sanitarian"s feelings is successful; the bargain is struck; and we next find the entire party sauntering, after an early German dinner, on the terrace of some small town on the Rhine,--Dunsford forgets which. Milverton, Ellesmere, and Mr. Midhurst arc smoking, and we commend their conversation on the soothing power of tobacco to the attention of the Dean of Carlisle. Dean Close, by a bold figure, calls tobacco a "gorging fiend." Milverton holds that smoking is perhaps the greatest blessing that we owe to the discovery of America. He regards its value as abiding in its power to soothe under the vexations and troubles of life. While smoking, you cease to live almost wholly in the future, which miserable men for the most part do. The question arises, whether the sorrows of the old or the young are the most acute? It is admitted that the sorrows of children are very overwhelming for the time, but they are not of that varied, perplexed, and bewildering nature which derives much consolation from smoke. Ellesmere suggests, very truthfully, that the feeling of shame for having done anything wrong, or even ridiculous, causes most acute misery to the young. And, indeed, who does not know, from personal experience, that the sufferings of children of even four or five years old are often quite as dreadful as those which come as the sad heritage of after years? We look back on them now, and smile at them as we think how small were their causes. Well, they were great to us. We were little creatures then, and little things were relatively very great. "The sports of childhood satisfy the child:" the sorrows of childhood overwhelm the poor little thing. We think a sympathetic reader would hardly read without a tear as well as a smile, an incident in the early life of Patrick Fraser Tytler, recorded in his recently published biography. When five years old he got hold of the gun of an elder brother, and broke the spring of its lock. What anguish the little boy must have endured, what a crushing sense of having caused an irremediable evil, before he sat down and printed in great letters the following epistle to his brother, the owner of the gun--"Oh, Jamie, think no more of guns, for the main-spring of that is broken, and my heart is broken!" Doubtless the poor little fellow fancied that for all the remainder of his life he would never feel as he had felt before he touched the unlucky weapon. Doubtless the little heart was just as full of anguish as it could hold. Looking back over many years, most of us can remember a child crushed and overwhelmed by some sorrow which it thought could never be got over, and can feel for our early self as though sympathizing with another personality.
The upshot of the talk which began with tobacco was, that Milverton was prevailed upon to write an essay on a subject of universal interest to all civilized beings, an essay on Worry. He felt, indeed, that he. should be writing it at a disadvantage; for an essay on worry can be written with full effect only by a thoroughly worried man.
There was no worry at all in that quiet little town on the Rhine; they had come there to rest, and there was no intruding duty that demanded that it should be attended to. And probably there is no respect in which that great law of the a.s.sociation of ideas, that like suggests like, holds more strikingly true than in the power of a present state of mind, or a present state of outward circ.u.mstances, to bring up vividly before us all such states in our past history.
We are depressed, we are worried: and when we look back, all our departed days of worry and depression appear to start up and press themselves upon our view to the exclusion of anything else, so that we are ready to think that we have never been otherwise than depressed and worried all our life. But when more cheerful times come, they suggest only such times of cheerfulness, and no effort will bring back the worry vividly as when we felt it. It is not selfishness or heartlessness; it is the result of an inevitable law of mind that people in happy circ.u.mstances should resolutely believe that it is a happy world after all; for looking back, and looking around, the mind refuses to take distinct note of anything that is not somewhat akin to its present state. Milverton wrote an excellent essay on Worry on the evening of that day; but he might possibly have written a better one at Worth-Ashton on the evening of a day on which he had discovered that his coachman was stealing the corn provided for the carriage horses, or galloping these animals about the country at the dead of night to see his friends.
We must have a score of little annoyances stinging us at once to have the undiluted sense of being worried. And probably a not wealthy man, residing in the country, and farming a few acres of ground by means of somewhat unfaithful and neglectful servants, may occasionally find so many things going wrong at once, and so many little things demanding to be attended to at once, that he shall experience worry in as high a degree as it can be felt by mortal.
Thus truthfully does Milverton"s essay begin:--
The great characteristic of modern life is Worry.
If the Pagan religion still prevailed, the new G.o.ddess, in whose honour temples would be raised and to whom statues would be erected in all the capitals of the world, would he the G.o.ddess Worry. London would be the chief seat and centre of her sway. A gorgeous statue, painted and enriched after the manner of the ancients (for there is no doubt that they adopted this practice, however barbarous it may seem to us), would he set up to the G.o.ddess in the West-end of the town: another at Temple Bar, of less ample dimensions and less elaborate decoration, would receive the devout homage of worshippers who came to attend their lawyers in that quarter of the town: while a statue, on which the cunning sculptor should have impressed the marks of haste, anxiety, and agitation, would be sharply glanced up at, with as much veneration as they could afford to give to it, by the eager men of business in the City.
The G.o.ddess Worry, however, would be no local deity, worshipped merely in some great town, like Diana of the Ephesians; but, in the market-places of small rural communities, her statue, made somewhat like a vane, and s.h.i.tting with every turn of the wind, would be regarded with stolid awe by anxious votaries belonging to what is called the farming interest. Familiar too and household would be her worship: and in many a snug home, where she might be imagined to have little potency, small and ugly images of her would be found as household G.o.ds--the Lares and Penates--near to the threshold, and ensconced above the glowing hearth.
The poet, always somewhat inclined to fable, speaks of Love as ruling
The court, the camp, the grove, And men below, and heaven above;
but the dominion of Love, as compared with that of Worry, would be found, in the number of subjects, as the Macedonian to the Persian--in extent of territory, as the county of Rutland to the empire of Russia.
Not verbally accurate is the quotation from the Lay of the Last Minstrel, we may remark; but we may take it for granted that no reader who has exceeded the age of twenty-five will fail to recognize in this half-playful and half-earnest pa.s.sage the statement of a sorrowful fact. And the essay goes on to set forth many of the causes of modern worry with all the knowledge and earnestness of a man who has seen much of life, and thought much upon what he has seen.
The author"s sympathies are not so much with the grand trials of historical personages, such as Charles V., Columbus, and Napoleon, as with the lesser trials and cares of ordinary men; and in the following paragraph we discern at once the conviction of a clear head and the feeling of a kind heart:--
And the ordinary citizen, even of a well-settled state, who, with narrow means, increasing taxation, approaching age, failing health, and augmenting cares, goes plodding about his daily work thickly bestrewed with trouble and worry (all the while, perhaps, the thought of a sick child at home being in the background of his mind), may also, like any hero of renown in the midst of his world-wide and world-attracting fortune, be a beautiful object for our sympathy.
There is indeed no more common error, than to estimate the extent of suffering by the greatness of the causes which have produced it; we mean their greatness as regards the amount of notice which they attract. The anguish of an emperor who has lost his empire, is probably not one whit greater than that of a poor lady who loses her little means in a swindling Bank, and is obliged to take away her daughter from school and to move into an inferior dwelling.
Nor is it unworthy of remark, in thinking of sympathy with human beings in suffering, that scrubby-looking little men, with weak hair and awkward demeanour, and not in the least degree gentleman-like, may through domestic worry and bereavement undergo distress quite as great as heroic individuals six feet four inches in height, with a large quant.i.ty of raven hair, and with eyes of remarkable depth of expression. It is probable, too, that in the lot of ordinary men a ceaseless and countless succession of little worries does a great deal more to fret away the happiness of life than is done by the few great and overwhelming misfortunes which happen at long intervals. You lose your child, and your sorrow is overwhelming; but it is a sorrow on which before many months you look back with a sad yet pleasing interest, and it is a sorrow which you know you are the better for having felt. But petty unfaithfulness, carelessness, and stupidity on the part of your servants; little vexations and cross-accidents in your daily life; the ceaseless cares of managing a household and family, and possibly of making an effort to maintain appearances with very inadequate means;--all those little annoying things which are not misfortune but worry, effectually blister away the enjoyment of life while they last, and serve no good end in respect to mental and moral discipline.
"Much tribulation," deep and dignified sorrow, may prepare men for "the kingdom of G.o.d;" but ceaseless worry, for the most part, does but sour the temper, jaundice the views, and embitter and harden the heart.
"The grand source of worry," says our author, "compared with which perhaps all others are trivial, lies in the complexity of human affairs, especially in such an era of civilization as our own."
There can be no doubt of it. In these modern days, we are enc.u.mbered and weighed down with the appliances, physical and moral, which have come to be regarded as essential to the carry lag forward of our life. We forget how many thousands of separate items and articles were counted up, as having been used, some time within the last few years, by a dinner-party of eighteen persons, at a single entertainment. What incalculable worry in the procuring, the keeping in order, the using, the damage, the storing up, of that enormous complication of china, gla.s.s, silver, and steel! We can well imagine how a man of simple tastes arid quiet disposition, worried even to death by his large house, his numerous servants and horses, his quant.i.ties of furniture and domestic appliances, all of a perishable nature, and all constantly wearing out and going wrong in various degrees, might sigh a wearied sigh for the simplicity of a hermit"s cave and a hermit"s fare, and for "one perennial suit of leather."
Such a man as the Duke of Buccleuch, possessing enormous estates, oppressed by a deep feeling of responsibility, and struggling to maintain a personal supervision of all his intricate and mult.i.tudinous belongings, must day by day undergo an amount of worry which the philosopher would probably regard as poorly compensated by a dukedom and three hundred thousand a year. He would be a n.o.ble benefactor of the human race who should teach men how to combine the simplicity of the savage life with the refinement and the cleanliness of the civilized. We fear it must be accepted as an unquestionable fact, that the many advantages of civilization are to be obtained only at the price of countless and ceaseless worry. Of course, we must all sometimes sigh for the woods and the wigwam; but the feeling is as vain as that of the psalmist"s wearied aspiration, "Oh that I had wings like a dove: then would I flee away and be at rest!"
Our author says,
The great Von Humboldt went into the cottages of South American Indiana, and, amongst an unwrinkled people, could with difficulty discern who was the father and who was the son, when he saw the family a.s.sembled together.
And how plainly the smooth, cheerful face of the savage testified to the healthfulness, in a physical sense; of a life devoid of worry!
If you would see the reverse of the medal, look at the anxious faces, the knit brows, and the bald heads, of the twenty or thirty greatest merchants whom you will see on the Exchange of Glasgow or of Manchester. Or you may find more touching proof of the ageing effect of worry, in the careworn face of the man of thirty with a growing family and an uncertain income; or the thin figure and bloodless cheek which testify to the dull weight ever resting on the heart of the poor widow who goes out washing, and leaves her little children in her poor garret under the care of one of eight years old. But still, the cottages of Humboldt"s "unwrinkled people" were, we have little doubt, much infested with vermin, and possessed a pestilential atmosphere; and the people"s freedom from care did but testify to their ignorance, and to their lack of moral sensibility. We must take worry, it is to be feared, along with civilization. As you go down in the scale of civilization, you throw off worry by throwing off the things to which it can adhere.
And in these days, in which no man would seriously think of preferring the savage life, with its dirt, its stupidity, its listlessness, its cruelty, the good we may derive from that life, or any life approximating to it, is mainly that of a sort of moral alterative and tonic. The thing itself would not suit us, and would do us no good; but we may be the better for musing upon it. It is like a refreshing shower-bath, it is like breathing a cool breeze after the atmosphere of a hot-house, to dwell for a little, with half-closed eyes, upon pictures which show us all the good of the unworried life, and which say nothing of all the evil. We know the thing is vain: we know it is but an idle fancy; but still it is pleasant and refreshful to think of such a life as Byron has sketched as the life of Daniel Boone. Not in misanthropy, but from the strong preference of a forest life, did the Kentucky backwoodsman keep many scores of miles ahead of the current of European population setting onwards to the West. We shall feel much indebted to any reader who will tell us where to find anything more delightful than the following stanzas, to read after an essay on modern worry:--
He was not all alone: around him grew A sylvan tribe of children of the chase; Whose young, unwakened world was ever new, Nor sin, nor sorrow, yet had left a trace On her unwrinkled brow; nor could you view A frown on Nature"s or on human face: The free-born forest found and kept them free, And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.
And tall, and strong, and swift of foot were they, Beyond the dwarfing city"s pale abortions: Because their thoughts had never been the prey Of care or gain: the green woods were their portions.
No sinking spirits told them they grew grey, No fashion made them apes of her distortions; Simple they were, not savage, and their rifles, Though very true, were yet not used for trifles.