The commonplace philosopher in town and country ..

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Chapter I. To Work Again

TF you had slept last night in any one of the -■■ row of houses which forms the north side of a certain street in a certain city, you would almost certainly have been wakened up a little before six o'clock this morning by a most dreadful squall, which was the culmination of a stormy night. It was quite dark. The rain was driven in bitter plashes against the windows. The windows rattled, the doors creaked ; the very walls seemed to tremble ; and there was a dismal howling in the chimneys. For though the street I have mentioned has the city all round it, yet the ground on which it is built slopes so much, that the houses catch the unbroken force of the wind from the not distant sea. And from the upper windows, if you look to the north, beyond the gleam of a frith six miles in breadth, you may discern a range of hills, not far enough distant to seem blue.

It was a time in which to remember those who are at sea ; and to be thankful that you were safe on shore. But there is a farther association with such a time, which would probably be present to the mind of many who in former days studied at a certain ancient University which the writer will never cease to hold in affectionate remembrance. For this morning was one of the latest mornings of October : and on the selfsame morning in time, and on just such a morning for pleasantness, has many a student risen at six from his bed, that he might be present in the lecture-room, a mile and a half away, at half-past seven. On the previous day, he had gone at a comfortable forenoon hour to the Common Hall of the University, and assisted at the ceremony of opening the session. The ceremony was a simple one. Several hundreds of students, arrayed in gowns of flaming scarlet, assembled in that plain Hall 3 and heard the Principal give a short address on academic dignity and duty. And if the student were one who had studied at the University in former sessions, he would be cheered up somewhat in the prospect of resuming his studies by the sight of some familiar and kindly faces. But that ceremony in the early forenoon was but the gentle introduction to college work : here is its stern reality. I am well aware that human beings in this world have oftentimes very dark and repulsive prospects to face, on rising from their bed in the morning : and I could think of things so grave as awaiting worthier men, that they make me almost ashamed to chronicle lesser trials.

Yet I can say, from sorrowful experience, that duty and work seldom look more gloomy and disheartening than they do to a student of that ancient University of which the writer is an unworthy son, when he gets up in darkness and cold and hurricane ; and hastens through mud and sleet along the gloomy streets to the lecture at half-past seven.

One happy result follows. During all the remainder of his life, the man who for three long winters in succession, eagh beginning about the twenty-eighth of October, and reaching on till the end of April, has undergone that discipline, can never cease to have a special feeling of thankfulness when on a day of late October or early November he awakes at half-past five in the morning, and hears the rain outside ; and then reflects that he need not get up and go out. The remembrance of many mornings past may send a chill through his frame ; and various worries and cares which must be faced at rising may painfully suggest themselves : yet at least there is not that dismal rising before he has gathered heart to face the dreary day.

Things which were very far from pleasant when they occurred, are sometimes very pleasant to look back on. I remember well how through months of over-work at College, anything but enjoyable while they passed over, I kept written on a piece of paper, always before my eyes, Virgil's line which says so. I can see it yet, in large letters on my table : I used to look at it, in the silent house, at half-past three in the morning before going to bed, and to repeat it over when getting up wearily at halt-past six again. Forsan et hcec olim meminisse juvabit: which was the graceful classic way of saying that there is a good time coming, and of advising sensible folk to wait a little longer. That time has come to the writer, and to many of his friends. We like to talk, when we meet, of the old days with their dismal mornings. It rejoiced me, between five and six this morning, to remember these things; and to feel the force of the anniversary. And now, when a new generation is gathering, on this very day, within the gloomy courts so well remembered, the recollection does no worse than call up in the writer many thoughts of the varied ways in which men take to work again. Suffer me to say here, my friendly reader. May the City and the University flourish together ; according to the simple and straightforward wish of the pious burghers who first inscribed the motto on the scutcheon of the ancient town. And let me confess that I have already grown so old, that not without a certain mist that dims one's eyes, I can look on the crowd of lads and boys (for most of them are no more) in the Hall on the day of the opening of a session. You look back yourself, my friend : and from a record, not far to seek, you are able to discern a little of the mistakes, the follies, the repentances, the humiliations, the mortifications* the labours, the manifold takings-down, which await those hopeful young fellows, before they are battered, rudely enough, into trim for sober life. The Duke of Wellington said that all war was a series of blunders : it is not too much to say that blunders and repentances make up great part of the career of every mortal, especially in the days when he begins first to think for himself.

The winter session, which is the only one of the year in that University which is not to be named here, begins, as has been said, about the twentyseventh or twenty-eighth of October. The vacation has lasted since the first of the preceding May. It need not be said, that to the more industrious students, that long vacation is in great part given to diligent study : yet it is always study to which your own sense of duty fixes the times and limits. Now^ you begin to be under authority, and to have your task allotted to you from day to day. And at this season, it is a curious thing to come from the country to that city. You pass at a step from autumn, still rich with colour, into winter, gloomy and gray. In an inland country region, late October is often a charming time ; and the landscape has its own touching and even glowing beauty. Though many leaves have fallen, and make a dry rustle under your feet as you go through woodland ways, yet many of the trees are thickly clad : some wonderfully green ; some touched by decay into beauty and glory, in the still sunshine of those beautiful days that come. And the dahlias and hollyhocks are blazing : for as the season advances, the colours of nature deepen ; and the pale and delicate hues of the early snowdrops, primroses, and lilies, pass through the gradation of summer blossoms and roses into the glow of the late autumn flowers. It is as gentle maidenhood passes into blooming matronhood, with all its qualities more pronounced. And coming away from the country, at such a season, I daresay you have thought it still looking almost its best. But all these things are not, in the great city of that ancient University. The leaves are gone : all the country round is bare and bleak. The College gardens, large and black-looking, are the most dismal scene that ever bore the pleasant name. You will find no winding walks through thick masses of evergreens, which in winter rain or winter frost look so life-like and warm and cheering. The trees, poor and stunted, are all deciduous : and their leaves are not merely capable of falling, but have fallen in fact. The air is thick, and smoke abounds — the smoke that makes the wealth of that wealthy city. And though you may be willing enough to set to work, and indeed rather weary of idleness or desultory study for some weeks past, you will probably confess that, even apart from the dismal lectures at half-past seven in the morning, it is rather a sad setting to work again.

Let us be thankful, my friend, if our work be such, that, after some escape from it, we can take to it again cheerfully and willingly. When we read in the newspapers about the re-assembling of Parliament, the genera] effect conveyed to one's mind is a pleasant one. The impression left with us is that the members come back to their work willingly ; they have been free from it so long that the appetite for the kind of thing has revived ; and each man rises that morning with a positive feeling of exhilaration as he looks on to the event of the day. It is not as it was with Napoleon, even when he was Emperor. You remember how he enjoyed his Saturday and Sunday in the country quiet : and how on Sunday night he was accustomed to say, thinking of his return next morning to Paris and the cares of state, ' To-morrow I must put on the yoke of misery again.' Many people, young and old, feel as Napoleon felt. There is the heartsinking of the nervous little boy, going back to school after the holidays, with vague fears of evil. There is the apprehension of a great mercantile man, entering upon a season in which he foresees many painful difficulties and complications, and does not know how things may turn out. It is as with the little bark, which, from a sheltered nook where it was lying snug and safe, puts out unwillingly into the full fury of winds and waves. And even coming back to work which you like, and to which you thankfully feel yourself in some degree equal, there is a certain shrinking from putting the shoulder to the collar again, and going stoutly at your task. There is a certain inertia, a certain nervous timidity, to be overcome. You would like to quietly sit still where you are, and hide your head in a hole.

You will feel this, I think, in coming back from your autumn holiday-time; especially if you live and work in town. Human beings are never content. When you lived entirely in the country, it is very likely you used to think how pleasant and cheerful it would be to spend the dead months of the year in town ; and just as the season is darkening down to winter, and the country beginning to look bleak and desolate, to get in among the warm dwellings and multitudes of your fellow-men. But now, if your home be in the city, you probably think, about this season, how enjoyable a thing it is to stay on in the country still, watching the stages through which it passes into its winter aspect ; feeling the weather so much nearer you, and so much a greater part of your life, than it is in the town ; looking for the days of the Martinmas summer, beautiful as any in all the year ; waiting for the exhilaration of the frost, and the silence of the snow : and finding a value in the dreariest aspect of fields and hills and roads, for the hearty thankfulness with which it teaches you to enjoy the warm fireside, and light and books and music. It is October that gathers many men into town to work again, the yearly holidays over. And if you be a working man, who must earn your family's support by your labour, you may be pleased if you have had six weeks

To Work again, g

or two months of rest. If you have been away from work during the chief part of August and September, Nemesis might well be angry if you were to complain of coming back now as a hardship. Still you shrink a little. Nobody quite enjoys the idea of setting to work again ; unless, indeed, his vacation have been so long that it has ceased to be enjoyed as rest, and come to be felt merely as the misery of idleness.

I suppose it is in human nature, that, after living for a while in a pleasant place, you should shrink from leaving it : many people find it costs them a painful effort to go away from their home ; but, once away, they can quite easily stay away a long time. Inertia is unquestionably a property of mind as well as of matter. We don't like to move. Likely enough, my friend, in the autumn of this year, we have each been in half a dozen places, in any one of which we should have been content to have stayed all our days. And though no one can oe fonder of his duty than yourself, my friend, or more pleased with the place where God has cast your lot : though it was a great strain and exertion to you to go away from both : yet it was a considerable strain and exertion to rise and come back.

Yes, it is a curious feeling you have, in coming away from any place which has been your home for even a short time ; and there are not many things, besides actual physical pain, to which it does not cost a little pang to say Good-bye. The thoughtful reader has probably remarked how different a place looks lo To Work again,

when you are coming away from it, from what it ever looked before. You observe, almost with a start, a great many little things, and relations of things about it, which you never previously observed. All the familiar objects seem dumbly asking you to stay. And you must know the feeling by your own experience before you can rightly understand it. You cannot evolve it, a priori^ out of your own consciousness. You may try to imagine what it would be like ; but you cannot. Well does this writer remember how, in the days when he was a country clergyman, he used sometimes to pace up and down a certain little walk, every shrub by whose side had the look of an old friend j and to wonder what the feeling would be, and what the place would look like, if he should ever go away from it. But in those days he never thought he would; and his imagination would not serve him. And when the day,vaguely anticipated, came atlast, every familiar holly and yew wore a new face ; and the aspect of the whole scene was one never beheld before. In a lesser degree, but still a very appreciable degree, you feel all this in quitting a place where you have been staying for even six weeks. And you will be aware of a certain cheerlessness and desolateness, till your roots, thus torn up, get buried anew in the earth of your familiar home and its interests. Once fairly amid your own belongings and duties again, and you are all right. Your home seemed misty and unsubstantial while you were far away from it ; but here

To Work again i T

it is again, real and warm, and with a general look of not unpleased recognition. And if you and I, my reader, in any degree deserve them, some kind looks and words of welcome, in the first busy days of somewhat confused occupation, may probably warm and cheer our spirit, and make us set with all the more hope and heart to work again.

There is no pleasanter incident in the little history of this time of return to very arduous duty, than the sending out of these Essays, which have been written in months past, as some not unsalutary change of occupation from graver thoughts and labours. The writer trusts that they may fall into the right hands. Certain volumes, which the friendly reader may know, have done so ; and have gained for the writer the approval of various wise and good men, whose approval is to him among the most prized of earthly possessions. If these pages should fall into the hands of the man they do not suit, I hope he will not take the trouble of reading them : he has but to close the volume, and they will worry him no more. But the people for whom the author writes will understand easily that these chapters contain thoughts which are not unconsidered, and which aim at something beyond the mere amusement of a vacant hour.

In closing a former volume, I said I hoped the chapters it contained might not be the last. And now I am very pleased and thankful that the wish has been

IZ To Work again.

indulged. It is but a little part of a life, devoted to the most solemn and the happiest of all work, that has been spared to these Essays. But they have found an audience vastly wider than the writer's voice could reach, or than will ever listen to his sermons. And believing what I like to believe, not in self-conceit, but in thankfulness, I receive and cherish the assurance of very many who have told me that the reading of these pages did some little good to them j as the writing of these pages has done some little good to myself.

CHAPTER II. CONCERNING THE WORLD's OPINION I

WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON COWED PEOPLE.

IT seems to me that there are few things in which it is more difficult to hold the just mean, than our feeling as to the opinion of those around us. For the most part, you will find human beings taking a quite extreme position as to what may be called the World's Opinion. They pay either too much regard to it, or too little. Either they are thoroughly cowed by it, or they stand towards it in an attitude of defiance. The cowed people, unquestionably, are in the majority. Most people live in a vague atmosphere of dread of the world, and of what the world is saying of them. You may discern the belief which prevails with the steady- going mass of humankind, in the typical though not historical fact which was taught most of us in childhood, — that Don't Care came to a bad end. The actual idea which is present to very many minds is difficult to define. Even to attempt to define it takes away that vagueness which is of the essence of its nature, and which is a great reason of the fear it excites. And the actual idea varies much in different minds, and in the same mind at different times. Sometimes, if put into shape, it would amount to this : — that some great and uncounted number of human beings is watching the person ; is thinking of him ; is forming an estimate of him, and an opinion as to what he ought to do. Sometimes the world's opinion becomes a more tangible thing: it means the opinion of the little circle of the person's acquaintance; or the opinion of the family in which he or she lives ; or the opinion of even some single individual of a somewhat strong, and probably somewhat coarse and meddlesome nature.

In such a case the world becomes personified in the typical Mrs. Grundy ; and the fear of the world's opinion is expressed in the question — What will Mrs. Grundy say ? Most people, then, live in a vague fear of that which may be styled Mrs. Grundy ; and are cowed into abject submission not merely to her ascertained opinions, but also to what they fancy that possibly her opinions maybe. Others, again — a smaller number, and a number lessening as the individuals who constitute it grow older — confront Mrs. Grundy, and defy her. Don't Care was a leader of this little band. But even though Don't Care had not come to trouble, it is highly probable that as he advanced in years he would have found that he must care, and that he did care. For a good many years I have enjoyed the acquaintance and the conversation of a man who, even after he became Solicitor-General, held bravely yet temperately by the forlorn hope of which a large part has always consisted of the young and the wrongheaded ; and from which, with advancing years and increasing experience, men are so apt to drop away. I know that it was not vapouring in him to say, ' The hissing of collected Europe, provided I knew the hissers could not touch me, would be a grateful sound rather than the reverse — that is, if heard at a reasonable distance.'* But though I believe the words were sincere when he said them, yet I am convinced it was only by a stiffening of the moral nature, implying effort too great to last, that he was able to keep the feeling which these words expressed. I see in these words the expression of a desperate reaction against a strong natural bias ; and I believe that time would gradually crumble that resolute purpose down. By a determined effort you may hold out a heavy weight at arm's length for a ^qw minutes ; you may defy and vanquish the law of gravitation for that short space ; but the law of gravitation, quietly and unvaryingly acting, will beat you at last. And even if Ellesmere could peacefully go about his duty, and tranquilly enjoy his home, with that universal hiss in his ears, I know of those into whose hearts that hiss would sink down — whose hearts that hiss would break. How

* Ellesmere, in Companions of my Solitudei

1 6 Concerning the Worl£s Opinion,

about his wife and children ? And how would the strong man himself feel, when day by day he saw by the pale cheek, the lined brow, the anxious eye, the unnatural submissiveness, that they were living in a moral atmosphere that was poisoning them ? Think of the little children coming in and saying that the other children would not play with them or speak to them. Think of the poor wife going to some meeting of charitable ladies, and left in a corner without one to notice her or take pity on her. Ah, my friend Ellesmere, once you have given hostages to fortune, we know where the world can make you feel !

Let us give a little time to clearing up our minds on this great practical question, as to the influence which of right belongs to the world's opinion ; as to the deference which a wise man will accord to it. Let us try to define that great shadowy phantom which holds numbers through all their life in a slavery which extends to all they say and do ; to the food they eat, and the raiment they put on, and the home they dwell in ; and in many cases even to what they think, and to what they will admit to themselves that they think. The tyranny of the world's opinion is a tyranny infinitely more subtle and farther-reaching than that of the Inquisition in its worse days \ one which passes its sentences, though no one knows who are the judges that pronounce them; and one which inflicts its punishments by the hands of numbers who utterly disapprove them, And yet, one has not the comfort of feeling

Concerning the World's Opinion, i able to condemn this strange tribunal out and out 5 you are obliged to confess that in the main its judgments are just, and its supervision is a wholesome one. Now and then it does things that are flagrantly unjust and absurd ; but if I could venture, with my experience of life, to lay down any general principle, it would be the principle, abhorrent to warm young hearts, and to hasty young heads, that in the main the world's opinion is right in those matters to which the world's opinion has a right to extend. I dare say you will think that this is a general principle promulgated with considerable reservation. So it is ; and I hardly know to which thing, the principle or the reservation, it seems to me that the greater consideration is due.

It is wrong, doubtless, to be always thinking what people will say. It is a low and wretched state of mind to come to. There is no more contemptible or miserable mortal than one of whom this can be said :

While you, you think What others think, or what you think they'll say j Shaping your course by something scarce more tangible Than dreams, at best the shadows on the stream Of aspen trees by flickering breezes swayed — Load me with irons, drive me from morn till night, 1 am not the utter slave which that man is Whose sole thought, word, and deed are built on what The world may say of him !

The condition of mind described in these indignant lines is doubtless wrong and wretched. But still one feels that these lines must be understood with much c qualification and restriction. Neither in moral principle, nor in common sense or taste, can one go with those who run to the other extreme. It is as well for most people to be cowed by a rule which in the main will keep them right, as to be suffered to run wild with no rule at all. The road to insanity is even more short and direct to the man who resolves that he shall do nothing like anybody else, than to the poor subdued creature in whom the fear of the world's judgment has run to that morbid excess that she fancies that as she goes along the street everyone is pointing at her. There was nothing fine in Shelley's wearing a round blue jacket after he was a married man, just because men in general do not wear boys' jackets. And his writing Atheist after his name in the tourists' book, to shock people, does not strike me for its profanity half so much as for its idiotic silliness and its contemptible littleness. I do not admire the woman who walks about, a limp and conspicuous figure, in the days when crinoline is universally accepted. The extreme of crinoline is silly ; the utter absence of it is silly ; the wise and safe course is the middle one. I do not think it wise or admirable for a lady to walk a quarter of a mile bareheaded along a crowded street to a friend's house, even though thus she may save the trouble of going upstairs for her bonnet. I do not approve the young fellow who tells you, when you speak to him about some petty flying in the face of the conventional notion of propriety, that he will do exactly what he likes, and that he does not care a straw what anyone may think or say. That young fellow is in a very unsafe and a very unstable position. It is not likely that he will long remain at his present moral stand-point. It is extremely probable that, after a few signal instances of mischief brought upon himself by that defiant spirit, he will be cowed into abject submission to what people may think; and become afraid almost to move or breathe for fear of what may be said by folk whose opinion he secretly despises. He will gain a reputation for want of common sense, which it will be very difficult to get rid of. And even the humblest return to his allegiance to Mrs. Grundy may fail to conciliate that individual's favour, lost by many former insults.

There are some persons who are bound, not merely in prudence, but in principle, to consider the world's opinion a good deal. They are bound, not merely to avoid evil, but to avoid even the appearance of evil. And this because their usefulness in this world may be very prejudicially affected by the unfavourable opinion of those around them. It is especially so with the clergy. A clergyman's usefulness depends very much on the estimation in which he is held by his parishioners. It is desirable that his parishioners should like him : it is quite essential that they should respect him. It is not wise in the parson to shock the prejudices of those around him. It will be his duty sometimes to yield to opinions which he thinks groundless. However fond a clergyman of the Anglican Church may be of a choral service, it will be extremely foolish and wrongheaded in him to endeavour to thrust such a service upon a congregation of people who in their ignorance think it Popish. And it will not be prudent in a clergyman of the Scotch Church, placed in a remote country parish where the population retains a good deal of the old covenanting leaven, to fill his church windows with stained glass, or even to put a cross above the eastern gable. And such a man will also discern that it is his duty to practise a certain economy and reticence in the explaining of his views as to instrumental music in church, and liturgical services. If it be the fact that many rustics in the parish regard these things as marks of the Beast, he need not obtrude the fact that he holds a different opinion. For he would then, in some quarters, bring all his teaching into suspicion. Let Mr. Snarling take notice, that I am counselling no reserve in the grave matters of doctrine : no reserve, that is, in the sense of making your people fancy that you believe what you do not believe, or that you do not believe what you do. The only economy in doctrine which I should approve would be that of bringing out and applying the truth which seems most needful at the time, and best fitted for its exigencies. But as to other things, both in statement and in conduct, I hold by a high authority which states that many things may be lawful for the parson which