""Twill indiscretion seem, and want of wit, Whose very sound hath made his heart rejoice?" Our old wise poets feel sensibly the needless severity, not to say baseness, of such combinations. So Athenais, hearing religion urged, replies, 66 O fly not to such an evasion! Whate'er I am, being a woman, in humanity you Are bound to right me." But there is sometimes occasion to exclaim with Panura, in the Island Princess,— Have turn'd thy heart to stone; thou hast made the gods hard too Ask such persons on any common ground to pity you, and their disdain becoming actually ludicrous, they will reply, like Touchstone when entreated to hear his penitent apprentice and his companions, "I will sail by you and not hear you, like the wise Ulysses. Away, Sirens! I will immure myself against your cries, and lock myself up to your lamentations. I am deaf; I do not hear you; I have stopt mine ears with shoemakers' wax; and drank Lethe and Mandragora to forget you; all you speak to me I commit to the air. I am deaf still, I say; I will neither yield to the song of the Siren nor to the voice of the hyena; the tears of the crocodile, nor the howling of the wolf." At last, where such transcendental views wholly prevail, it becomes not merely a habit of thinking, but an expressly recognized thing, that if you make a great show of propriety, and of adopting those views, with all their conventional phraseology, you may trample on the common bonds of nature, and even demand approval for having done so. So Goneril outrages her old father while affecting to be shocked at his "bold, debauched, and disordered knights,” saying,— "That this our court, infected with their manners, Than a graced palace. The shame itself doth speak -" Lear demands, "Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?" He turns to a daughter, who he thinks "will be kind and comfortable, whose tender-hefted nature will not give her o'er to harshness, in whom 'tis not to grudge his pleasures." He only finds that desired character too late in one who from the first had made no professions of extraordinary devotion, who had rejected all hyperboles, all immoderate expressions of duty, avowing that she viewed her obligations in the light of common mortals, as no less and no more,-who loved and was silent. All this serves to explain why men like Elia are said to have never greatly cared for the society of what are called good people. If any of these were scandalized (and offences were sure to arise), he could not help it. When he has been remonstrated with for not making more concessions to the feelings of good people, he would retort by asking what one point did these good people ever concede to him? He had a horror of looking like any thing important. He had a general aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable character. He associated gravity and respectability with this contempt and neglect of common things, and doing so, no one, at least at the Lover's Seat, will be offended at his conclusions. Upon the whole, then, I think we have seen sufficient proof that the highest and best of all things connected with virtue needs what is most common and familiar in that order, to prevent it from becoming positively evil; that piety separated from common things degenerates, or rather loses its whole nature; that those who think such a separation advisable forfeit all power of benefitting their fellow-creatures; that, as Flowerdew says,― "This ignorance even makes religion sin, Sets zeal upon the rack, and stretches her Her convictions, when awakened to perceive that ignorance, were as strong as they were grateful; and so, addressing the dramatic monitor whom the muse presented her with, she adds, 66 most blessed looking-glass That didst instruct my blinded eyes to-day, I might have gone to hell the narrow way." CHAPTER IV. HAVING briefly noticed some of the evil effects of neglecting or outraging common things in relation to virtue, let us now remark the good which follows from respecting and practising them. Already we must have awakened some sense of their merit, by having observed the magnitude of the evils which result from their being set aside in matters of the first importance, and even in those relations where, if, under any circumstances, we might have supposed they were unnecessary and superseded by provisions of more effective value; for if religion, that celestial source of goodness, cannot dispense with them, if they are absolutely essential to its purity and to its beneficial operation, or rather, if they enter into its very essence and into the immediate scope of its immense designs, we may be sure that human life in its lower, more confined, and familiar dependencies cannot suffer them with impunity to be forgotten. But as we are not to be contented with a negative view of the subject, we must proceed now to observe how these common things in relation to virtue possess a positive excellence in themselves, which renders them inferior to no gifts that belong to the integrity and happiness of our nature. Let us begin with attending to what is signified by the word humanity, of which the absence constituted the primary and radical evil that has just been the subject of our thoughts. Humanity is the aggregate of those virtues which are the most common and familiar. The word, no doubt, has been in recent times abused by a disagreeable tribe of writers; and men under their influence have misapplied it, substituting it for charity, which it can never supersede: but the word has still a distinct meaning, and the thing itself will ever be dear to every one that is unsophisticated; for, as an eloquent writer says, "Those human affections which are the monopoly of none are more productive of solid happiness than wealth, or power, or fame; than learning that comprehends all knowledge, than understanding which sweeps over the whole domain of thought, than imaginations which rise and run over regions to which the heaven of heavens is but a veil." In fact, the commonest and weakest attributes of nature cannot be given up with a view to any adequate compensation. "The wild flower's tendril, proof of feebleness, Proves strength; and so we fling our feelings out, The tendrils of the heart, to bear us up." But, before we hear any words in praise of humanity, let me propose something that savours rather of the customs of the bower than of the rules of study. Let us throw down the books, and, like truant children, look out at the sky; for I do maintain that its sweet glorious hues and ever changing forms possess a kind of language quite intelligible to people like ourselves, that will prove a very appropriate prelude to the subject before us: indeed, a philosopher of late, though himself a very practical writer, speaks in one of his essays of the forms that he remembers seeing in the clouds as being suggestive of the highest thoughts and acts. To us seated here lovingly the summer sky appears to proclaim, without our being conscious of knowing aught about it, that divine ideal which associates religion with humanity and heaven with earth; for, besides that they both seem to meet at the horizon and to blend into each other, while the ground and water assume the colours of the sky, the vault of heaven appears to borrow shapes and tints from earth. The sky is suggestive of a celestial existence, but it is coloured by the atmosphere of our world, and it appears often to reflect even its scenery; for, as a poet says,― "Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish, A fork'd mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon't, that nod unto the world Within this beautiful expanse we, who are like children in that respect, can trace lakes and wooded islands, sunny shores and picturesque crags, snow-capt Alps, delicious plains, crystal palaces, meadows dotted with beautiful white shapes, cities with domes and towers, in short, the same objects that we admire on earth, only transfigured and radiant with divine beauty. Summer skies, with the feelings they can inspire, seem to plead with eloquence for humanity. The blue heaven bends over all. It seems to apologize for us all, to breathe love for us all; to proclaim even that there is much to love that is purely earth; since it is towards the horizon, tinged with the vapours of earth; it is smiling, warm, bright. In the morning it seems to invite youth to rise, like the lark, on the wings of poetry; at noon, to remind manhood that it must labour in worldly matters, for then it withdraws its alluring colours and becomes comparatively colourless, and, one might almost say, prosaic. No one cares to walk in the middle of the day; he is content to work, like others. In the evening, reassuming its soft glorious tints, it seems to whisper to age charity and peace. The sky seems intended to inspire, to console, and, when necessary, to shame our nature; to inspire, as when Springlove says, ""Tis the season of the year that calls me. What moves the birds provokes my disposition by a more absolute power of nature than philosophy can render an accompt for." "Fine skies make fine birds," says the proverb; that is, they call on us all to keep holiday and to dress ourselves for the occasion. The sky seems intended to console, as when Sir John in the old play says, "What's wealth accompanied with disobedience in a wife and children? My heart will break." And a friend answers, "Be comforted, and hope better : We'll ride abroad; the fresh air or discourse In fine, it seems designed to shame our nature if there is occasion, as when some one in an ancient drama says to another who lacked humanity (asking, like Lucifer in Festus, "Why love mankind?"), "You should be ashamed to look upon the VOL. I. H |