The crown of wild olive

Contents

THE CEOWN OF WILD OLIVE.

LECTURE I.

PAGE

Preface

XV fanaticism, not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the bestowal of their heart's treasure, to separate themselves from the crowd of whom it is written, " After all these things do the Gentiles seek."

It cannot, however, be assumed, with any semblance of reason, that a general audience is now wholly, or even in majority composed of these religious persons. A large portion must always consist of men who admit no such creed; or who, at least, are inaccessible to appeals founded on it. And as, with the so-called Christian, I desired to plead for honest declaration and fulfillment of his belief in life — with the so-called Infidel, I desired to plead for an honest declaration and fulfillment of his belief in death. The dilemma is inevitable. Men must either hereafter live, or hereafter die; fate may be bravely met, and conduct wisely ordered, on either expectation ; but never in hesitation between ungrasped hope, and unconfronted fear. We usually believe in immortality, so far as to avoid preparation for death; and in mortality, so far as to avoid preparation for anything after death. Whereas, a wise man w411 at least hold himself prepared for one or other of two events, of which one or other is inevitable ; and will have all things in order, for his sleep, or in readiness, for his awakening.

]^or have we any right to call it an ignoble judgment, if he determine to put them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an enviable xvi PREFACE.

state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, an unusual one. I know few Christians so convinced of the splendor of the rooms in their Father's house, as to be happier when their friends are called to those mansions, than they would have been if the Queen had sent for them to live at court : nor has the Church's most ardent "desire to depart, and be with Christ," ever cured it of the singular habit of putting on mourning for every person summoned to such departure. On the contrary, a brave belief in death has been assuredly held by many not ignoble persons, and it is a sign of the last depravity in the Church itself, when it assumes that such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of character, or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which may be granted him; nor does the anticipation of death to-morrow suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunkenness today. To teach that there is no device in the grave, may indeed make the deviceless person more contented in his dullness; but it will make the deviser only more earnest in devising ; nor is human conduct likely, in every case, to be purer under the conviction that all its evil may in a moment be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in a moment redeemed; and that the sigh of repentance, which purges the guilt of the past, will waft

PREFACE, xvii

the soul into a felicity which forgets its pain — than it may be under the sterner, and to many not unwise minds, more probable, apprehension, that " what a man soweth that shall he also reap '^ — or others reap — when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more in darkness, but lies down therein.

But to men whose feebleness of sight, or bitter ness of soul, or the offense given by the conduct of those who claim higher hope, may have rendered this painful creed the only possible one, there is an appeal to be made, more secure in its ground than any which can be addressed to happier persons. I would fain, if I might offenselessly, have spoken to them as if none others heard ; and have said thus : Hear me, you dying men, who will soon be deaf forever. For these others, at your right hand and your left, who look forward to a state of infinite existence, in which all their errors will be overruled, and all their faults forgiven; for these, who, stained and blackened in the battle smoke of mortality, have but to dip themselves for an instant in the font of death, and to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove that is covered with silver, and her feathers like gold ; for these, indeed, it may be permissible to waste their numbered moments, through faith in a future of innumerable hours ; to these, in their weakness, it may be conceded that they xviii FREPACBi.

should tamper with sin which can only bring forth fruit of righteousness, and profit by the iniquity which, one day, will be remembered no more. In them, it may be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the poor, over whom they know their Master is watching; and to leave those to perish temporarily who cannot perish eternally. But, for you, there is no such hope, and therefore no such excuse. This fate, which you ordain for the wretched, you believe to be all their inheritance ; you may crush them, before the moth, and they will never rise to rebuke you — their breath, which fails for lack of food, once expiring, will never be recalled to whisper against you a word of accusing — they and you, as you think, shall lie down together in the dust, and the worms cover you — and for them there shall be no consolation, and on you no vengeance — only the question murmured above your grave : " Who shall repay him what he hath done?" Is it therefore easier for you in your heart to inflict the sorrow for which there is no remedy ? Will you take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your poor brother, and make his brief hours long to him with pain ? Will you be readier to the injustice which can never be redressed ; and niggardly of mercy which you can bestow but once, and which, refusing, you refuse forever ? I think better of you, even of the most selfish, than that you would do

PREFACE. xix

this, well understood. And for yourselves, it seems to me, the question becomes not less grave, in these curt limits. If your life were but a fever fit — the madness of a night, whose follies were all to be forgotten in the dawn, it might matter little how you fretted away the sickly hours — what toys you snatched at, or let fall — • what visions you followed wistfully with the deceived eyes of sleepless frenzy. Is the earth only an hospital ? Play, if you care to play, on the floor of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what crowns please you ; gather the dust of it for treasure, and die rich in that, clutching at the black motes in the air with your dying hands — and yet, it may be well with you. But if this life be no dream, and the world no hospital; if all the peace and power and joy you can ever win, must be won now; and all fruit of victory gathered here, or never — will you still, throughout the puny totality of your life, weary yourselves in the fire of vanity 'i If there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none you might presently take? was this grass of the earth made green for your shroud only, not for your bed ? and can you never lie down upon it, but only under it? The heathen, to whose creed you have returned, thought not so. They knew that life brought its contest, but they expected from it also the crown of all contest. No proud one ! no jeweled circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of the unmerited tfirotie, only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, through a few years of peace. It should have been of gold, they thought ; but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the god could give them. Seeking a greater than this, they had known it a mockery, l^ot in war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found for them — only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath was to be of wild olive, mark you — the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch; only with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with gray leaf and thorn-set stem ; no fastening of diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery ! But this, such as it is, you may win while yet you live; type of gray honor and sweet rest. Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to their pain — these, and the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath ; and mysteries and presences, innumerable, of living things — these may yet be here your riches ; un tormenting and divine : serviceable for the life that now is ; nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come.

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.

THREE LEOTUltES.

1. WORK.

2. TRAFBIO. & WAR.

LEOTURE I.

WORK.

(Delivered before the Working Men^s Institute, at CarriberweU.)

My Fkiends — I have not come among you to-night to endeavor to give you an entertaining lecture ; but to tell you a few plain facts, and ask you some plain, but necessary questions. I have seen and known too much of the struggle for life among our laboring population, to feel at ease, even under any circumstances, in inviting them to dwell on the trivialities of my own studies ; but, much more, as I meet to-night, for the first time, the members of a working Institute established in the district in which I have passed the greater part of my life, I am desirous that we should at once understand each other, on graver matters. I would fain tell you, with what feelings, and with what hope, I regard this Institution, as one of many such, now happily established throughout England, as well as in other countries — Institutions which are preparing the way for a great change m ail the circumstances of industrial life; but of which the success must wholly depend upon our clearly understanding the circumstances and necessary limits of this change. No teacher can truly promote the cause of education until he knows the conditions of the life for which that education is to prepare his pupil. And the fact that he is called upon to address you, nominally, as a " Working Class," must compel him, if he is in any wise earnest or thoughtful, to inquire in the outset, on what you yourselves suppose this class distinction has been founded in the past, and must be founded in the future. The manner of the amusement, and the matter of the teaching, which any of us can offer you, must depend wholly on our first understanding from you, whether you think the distinction heretofore drawn between workingmen and others, is truly or falsely founded. Do you accept it as it stands? do you wish it to be modified? or do you think the object of education is to efface it, and make us forget it forever?

Let me make myself more distinctly understood. We call this — you and I — a "Working Men's" Institute, and our college in London, a "Working Men's" College. Kow, how do you consider that these several institutes differ, or ought to differ, from "idle men's" institutes and "idle men's" colleges? Or by what other word than "idle" shall I distinguish those whom the happiest and wisest of working-

WORK, 3

men do not object to call the " Upper Classes ? " Are there really upper classes — are there lower? How much should they always be elevated, how much always depressed ? And, gentlemen and ladies — I pray those of you who are here to forgive me the offense there may be in what I am going to say. It is not 7 who wish to say it. Bitter voices say it ; voices of battle and of famine through all the world, which must be heard some day, whoever keeps silence. Neither is it to you specially that I say it. I am sure that most now present know their duties of kindness, and fulfill them, better perhaps than I do mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class, which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the less terribly. Willful error is limited by the will, but what limit is there to that of which we are unconscious ?

Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these workmen, and ask them, also as representing a great multitude, what they think the " upper classes " are, and ought to be, in relation to them. Answer, you workmen who are here, as you would among yourselves, frankly; and tell me how you would have me call those classes. Am I to call them — would you think me right in calling them — the idle classes? I think you would feel somewhat uneasy, and as if I were not treating my subject honestly, or speaking from my heart, if I went on under the supposition that all rich people were idle. You would be both unjust and unwise if you would allow me to say that — not less unjust than the rich people who say that all the poor are idle, and will never work if they can help it, or more than they can help.

For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor and idle rich ; and there are busy poor and busy rich. Many a beggar is as lazy as if he had ten thousand a year ; and many a man of large fortune is busier than his errand-boy, and never would think of stopping in the street to play marbles. So that, in a large view, the distinction between workers and idlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the very heart and innermost economies of men of all ranks and in all positions. There is ^ working class — strong and happy — among both rich and poor; there is an idle class — weak, wicked and miserable — among both rich and poor. And the worst of the misunderstandings arising between the two orders come of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class habitually contemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be right ; and if the busy poor people watched and rebuked the idle poor people, all would be right. But each class has a tendency to look for the faults of the other. A hard-working man of property is particularly offended by an idle beggar; but an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant of

WOBK, 5

the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in the unjust — but among the unjust onl]/. N'one but the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage their houses and divide their property. None but the dissolute among the rich speak in opprobrious terms of the vices and follies of the poor.

There is, then, no class distinction between idle and industrious people ; and I am going to-night to speak only of the industrious. The idle people we will put out of our thoughts at once — they are mere nuisances — what ought to be done with the7n, we'll talk of at another time. But there are class distinctions among the industrious themselves — tremendous distinctions, which rise and fall to every degree in the infinite thermometer of human pain and of human power — distinctions of high and low, of lost and won, to the whole reach of man's soul and body.

These separations we will study, and the laws of them, among energetic men only, who, whether they work or whether they play, put their strength into the work, and their strength into the game ; being in the full sense of the word " industrious," one way or another — with a purpose, or without. And these distinctions are mainly four:

I. Between those who work, and those who play.

II. Between those who produce the means of life, and those who consume them

III. Between those who work with the head, and those who work with the hand.

lY. Between those who work wisely, and who work foolishly.

For easier memory, let us say we are going to oppose, in our examination :

I. Work to play ; II. Production to consumption ; III. Head to hand ; and, lY. Sense to nonsense.

I. First, then, of the distinction between the classes who work and the classes who play. Of course we must agree upon a definition of these terms — work and play — before going further. IS'ow, roughly, not with vain subtlety of definition, but for plain use of the words, "pla^^" is an exertion of body or mind, made to please ourselves, and with no determined end ; and work is a thing done because it ought to be done, and with a determined end. You play, as you call it, at cricket, for instance. This is as hard work as anything else ; but it amuses you, and it has no result but the amusement. If it were done as an ordered form of exercise, for health's sake, it would become work directly. So, in like manner, whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is ''play," the "pleasing thing,"

not the useful thing. Play may be useful in a secondary sense (nothing is indeed more useful or necessary); but the use of it depends on its being spontaneous.

Let us, then, inquire together what sort of games the playing class in England spend their lives in playing at.

The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing game; and we knock each other down oftener in pla3dng at that than at football, or any other roughest sport ; and it is absolutely without purpose; no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a great moneymaker what he wants to do with his money — he never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. " What will you make of what you have got?" you ask. "Well, I'll get more," he says. Just as, at cricket, you get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game. And there's no use in the money, but to have more of it than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there — rattling, growling, smoking, stinking — a ghastly heap of fermenting brick-work, pouring out poison at every pore — you fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play, and very hard play, but still play. It is only Lord's cricket ground without the turf — a huge billiard-table witliout the cloth, and with pockets as deep as the bottomless pit; but mainly a billiard-table, after all.

Well, the first great English game is this playing at counters. It differs from the rest in that it appears always to be producing money, while every other game is expensive. But it does not always produce money. There's a great difference between "winning" money and "making" it; a great difference between getting it out of another man's pocket into ours, or filling both. Collecting money is by no means the same thing as making it ; the tax-gatherer's house is not the Mint; and much of the apparent gain (so-called), in commerce, is only a form of taxation on carriage or exchange.

Our next great English game, however, hunting and shooting, is costly altogether ; and how much we are fined for it annually in land, horses, gamekeepers, and game laws, and all else that accompanies that beautiful and special English game, I will not endeavor to count now : but note only that, except for exercise, this is not merely a useless game, but a deadly one, to all connected with it. For through horse-racing, you get every form of what the higher classes everywhere call "Play," in distinction from all other plays; that is — gambling; by no means a beneficial or recreative game: and, through gamepreserving, you get also some curious laying out of ground; that beautiful arrangement of dwelling-house

WOBK. y

for man and beast, by which we have grouse and blackcock — so many brace to the acre, and men and women — so many brace to the garret. I often wonder what the angehc builders and surveyors — the angelic builders who build the " many mansions " up above there ; and the angelic surveyors, who measured that four-square city with their measuring reeds — I wonder what they think, or are supposed to think, of the laying out of ground by this nation, which has set itself, as it seems, literally to accomplish, word for word, or rather fact for word, in the persons of those poor whom its Master left to represent him, what that Master said of himself — that foxes and birds had homes, but He none.

Then, next to the gentlemen's game of hunting, we must put the ladies' game of dressing. It is not the cheapest of games. I saw a brooch at a jeweler's in Bond Street a fortnight ago, not an inch wide, and without any singular jewel in it, yet worth £3,000. And I wish I could tell you what this " play " costs^ altogether, in England, France, and Eussia annually. But it is a pretty game, and on certain terms, I like it ; nay, I don't see it played quite as much as I would fain have it. You ladies like to lead the fashion — by all means lead it — lead it thoroughly, lead it far enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody else nicely. Lead the fashions for the poor first ; make them look well, and you yourselves will look, in waj^s of which you have no conception, all the better. The fashions you have set for some time among your peasantry are not pretty ones ; their doublets are too irregularly slashed, and the wind blows too f ranldy through them.

Then there are other games, wild enough, as I could show you if I had time.

There's playing at literature, and playing at art — very different, both, from working at literature, or working at art, but I've no time to speak of these. I pass to the greatest of all — the play of plays, the great gentlemen's game, which ladies like them best to play at — the game of War. It is entrancingly pleasant to the imagination ; the facts of it, not always so pleasant. We dress for it, however, more finely than for any other sport ; and go out to it, not merely in scarlet, as to hunt, but in scarlet and gold, and all manner of fine colors : of course we could fight better in gray, and without feathers ; but all nations have agreed that it is good to be well dressed at this play. Then the bats and balls are very costly ; our English and French bat?^ with the balls and wickets, even those which we don't make use of, costing, I suppose, now about fifteen millions of money annually to each nation ; all of which you know is paid for by hard laborer's work in the furrow and furnace. A costly game ! — not to speak of its consequences ; I will say at present nothing of these. The mere immediate cost of all these plays is Avhat I

WOEK. 11

want you to consider ; they all cost deadly work somewhere, as many of us know too well. The jewelcutter, whose sight fails over the diamonds ; the weaver, whose arms fails over the web; the ironforger, whose breath fails before the furnace — they know what work is — they, who have all the work and none of the play, except a kind they have named for themselves down in the black north country, whert ^'play" means being laid up by sickness. It is a pretty example for philologists, of varying dialect, this change in the sense of the word " play," as used in the black country of Birmingham, and the red-and-black country of Baden Baden. Yes, gentlemen, and gentlewomen, of England, who think ''one moment unamused a misery, not made for feeble man," this is what you have brought the word " play " to mean, in the heart of merry England ! You may have your fluting and piping ; but there are sad children sitting in tK. market-place, who indeed cannot say to you, " We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced : " but eternally shall say to you, "We have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented."

This, then, is the first distinction between the " upper and lower " classes. And this is one which is by no means necessary ; which indeed must, in process of good time, be by all honest men's consent abolished. Men will be taught that an existence of play, sustained by the blood of other creatures, is a good existenct;)

12 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVK

for gnatsi and sucking fish; but not for men: that neither days, nor hves, can be made holy by doing nothing in them : that the best prayer at the beginning of a day is that we may not lose its moments ; and the best grace before meat, the consciousness that we have justly earned our dinner. And when we have this much of plain Christianity preached to us again, and enough respect what we regard as inspiration, as not to think that " Son, go work to-day in my vineyard," means "Fool, go play to-day in my vineyard," we shall all be workers, in one way or another; and this much at least of the distinction between " upper " and " lower " forgotten.

II. I pass then to our second distinction ; between the rich and poor^ between Dives and Lazarus — distinction which exists more sternly, I suppose, in this day, than ever in the world. Pagan or Christian, till now. I will put it sharply before you, to begin with, merely by reading two paragraphs which I cut from two papers that lay on my breakfast-table on the same morning, the 25th of E'ovember, 1864. The piece about the rich Russian at Paris is commonplace enough, and stupid besides (for fifteen francs — 12^. 6d. — is nothing for a rich man to give for a couple of peaches, out of season). Still, the two paragraphs printed on the same day are worth putting side by side.

*'Such a man is now here. He is a Eussian, and^

WORK 13

with jour permission, we will call him Count Teufelskine. In dress he is sublime ; art is considered in that toilet, the harmony of color respected, the chiarooscuro evident in well-selected contrast. In manners he is dignified — nay, perhaps apathetic ; nothing disturbs the placid serenity of that calm exterior. One day our friend breakfasted che^ Bignon. When the bill came he read, 'Two peaches, 15f.' He paid. 'Peaches scarce, I presume?' was his sole remark. 'Iso, sir,' replied the waiter, 'but Teufelskines are.'" Telegraph, November 25, 1864.

"Yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, a woman, passing a dung heap in the stone-yard near the recently-erected almshouses in Shadwell Gap, High street, Shadwell, called the attention of a Thames police-constable to a man in a sitting position on the dung heap, and said she was afraid he was dead. Her fears proved to be true. The wretched creature appeared to have been dead several hours. He had perishgd of cold and wet, and the rain had been beating down on him all night. The deceased was a bone-picker. He was in the lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, and half -starved. The police had frequently driven him away from the stone-yard, between sunset and sunrise, and told him to go home. He selected a most desolate spot for his wretched death. A penny and some bones were found in his pockets. The deceased was between fifty and sixty years of age. Inspector Eoberts, of the K division, has given directions for inquiries to be made at the lodging-houses respecting the deceased, to ascertain his identity, if possible." — Morning Post^ November 25, 1864.

You have the separation thus in brief compass ; and I want you to take notice of the " a penny and some bones were found in his pockets," and to compare it with this third statement, from the Telegraph of January 16th of this year :