Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843

The writer takes occasion to regret the narrow spirit which prevents our nobility, or, to speak more properly, our fashionable coteries, from acquiring a healthier tone, by mixing with societies in which habits of more vigorous thought predominate. In France, to whatever degree frivolity may be carried, a French lady would be ashamed not to affect an interest in the great writers by whom her country has been ennobled; and to betray an ignorance of their works, or an indifference to their renown, would be considered a proof not only of the greatest stupidity, but of bad taste and unrefined habits. Here we are distinguished unfavourably from our neighbours—exceptions, of course, there must always be—but in general to betray an acquaintance with any literature beyond the last novel, or the current trash and gossip of the day, might provoke the charge of pedantry, but at any rate would fail in exciting the slightest sympathy. Hence men of letters, and women of letters, form a caste by themselves much to their own disadvantage, and still more to the injury of those to the improvement of whom they might imperceptibly contribute; hence the statesman, or the lawyer, or the writer, generally keeps aloof from the great world, which he leaves to idle young men and aged coxcombs; or, if he enters it, takes care to abstain from those topics on which his conversation would be most natural, instructing, and entertaining. Instances, indeed, may be found, where men, eminent for science and literature, or of high professional reputation, inflamed with a distempered appetite for fashionable society, "drag their slow lengths along" among the guardsmen and dowagers who frequent such scenes; but they are rather tolerated than encouraged, and the sacrifices by which they purchase their admission into the dullest society of Europe are so numerous, their appearance is so mortifying, and the effect produced upon themselves so pernicious, that hitherto such instances have served not as models to imitate, but as bywords to deter. Instead of improving others, they degrade themselves; instead of inspiring the frivolous with nobler aims and better principles, they condescend to be the echoes of imbecility; instead of raising the standard of conversation, they yield implicitly to any signal, however corrupt, worthless, or utterly unreasonable may be the quarter from which it proceeds, that the most submissive votaries of fashion watch for and obey. The system is denounced by our author in the following vigorous and eloquent passage:—

"The assembly-room or dinner-table is the very focus of care and anxiety, so that a funereal dulness often overhangs it; and there, where there is the greatest amount of money, time, and contrivance expended on pleasure—there is least animation of spirits. For one who is pleased, a dozen are chewing the cud of some petty annoyance, and the flow of spirits excited and animated by rapid interchange of ideas is scarcely known. When it occurs, it is seldom owing to those who live for dissipation, but to men whom the duties of office compel to work very hard. Notwithstanding their wealth, the pursuits of ambition compel them to become men of business, and the elasticity of their minds is preserved. That languid and depressed condition which cankers the very heart of social enjoyment, loses its solemn character on occasions of disappointment and vexation. Its pleasures are not cheerful, but its distresses are ludicrous, and are felt to be so. Each laughs at his neighbour's mortifications, and the consciousness he is supplying the same malicious amusement in his turn, does not take the sting from his own griefs when they arise.

"Nor is it merely as destructive of social enjoyment, that the habits of the great world are unfriendly to happiness. It is not the place for those who have warm imaginations and tender hearts. There is scarcely any circumstance in which that sphere differs more from others, than in the deficiency of strong affections. The chances are many against their existence; and if a woman be born to move in the haunts of the worldly, it were almost cruel to snatch her from that immersion in their follies which may serve to stifle the pangs of disappointed affection. For after all that can be said of the misery of its empty pursuits and corrupted tastes, the disappointments that end its petty passions, and the mortifications that cling to its apparent splendours, sorrows like those bear no comparison with tears of anguish shed by the grave of love. Surrounding pleasures, even the tranquil and elevating beauty of external nature, seem but a mockery when offered in place of the one thing needful—perfect and overflowing affection. The exterior decorum and attention on the part of an altered husband, which betrays to the world no dereliction of morals but what its easy code passes over as a right, is no substitute for love. Not unfrequently there is something almost appalling in the sense of solitude, which on occasions of sickness or retirement oppresses a young woman, who to all appearance is overwhelmed with attendance. The hand is not there that would render every other superfluous. A voice is wanting, whose absence leaves the silence and horror of death. The eyes are missed, whose glances first called forth the fervour of her affections from their peaceful sleep; or, if looking on her for a moment, they express nothing but indifference. These are the occasions that dispel the laboured illusion, wherewith, under the garb of business, or cares, or natural manner, she had sought to disguise from herself the marks of an estranged heart. In these sad and desolate hours her memory retraces her early years, her mother's tender watchfulness, and the soft voices of sisters contending for their place by her bedside. The contrast with her present stately solitude bursts resistless through every effort to repel it; and life and youth, with their long futurity, present her with nothing but a frightful chasm."

"Alas! alas my song is sad;
How should it not be so,
When he, who used to make me glad,
Now leaves me in my woe?
With him my love, my graciousness,
My beauty, all are vain;
I feel as if some guiltiness
Had mark'd me with its stain.

"One sweet thought still has power o'er me,
In this my heart's great need;
'Tis, that I ne'er was false to thee,
Dear friend, in word or deed:
I own that nobler virtues fill
Thy heart, love only mine;
Yet why are all thy looks so chill
Till they on others shine?

"Oh! long-loved friend, I marvel much
Thy heart is so severe,
That it will yield not to the touch
Of love and sorrow's tear.
No, no! it cannot be, that thou
Should seek another's love;
Oh! think upon our early vow,
And thou wilt faithful prove.

"Thy virtues—pride, thy lofty fame,
Assures me thou art true,
Though fairer ones than I may claim
Thy hand, and deign to sue.
But think, beloved one, that, to bless
With perfect blessing, thou
Must seek for trusting tenderness:
Remember then our vow!"

"Collectively," says our author, "women might do much to remove the national stigma of leaving men of science and letters neglected. But their education is seldom such as enables them to know the great importance of science and literature to human improvement; and they are rarely brought up to regard it as any part of their duty to promote the interests of society. They would not, indeed, be able directly to reward men of talent by employment or honours, but they might make them acquainted with those who could; at all events, mere social distinction, the attention and approbation of our fellow creatures, is in itself an advantage to men who seldom possess that passport to English respect—wealth. Though learning is tacitly discouraged in women, yet the access to every species of knowledge requisite to direct their efforts wisely and well, is as open to them as to men. With this power of forming the mind of the rising generation, this influence over the opinions, the morals, and the tastes of society, this direct power in promoting objects both of private benevolence and national importance—with so many advantages, how is it that women are still exposed to so many sufferings, from dependence, oppression, mortification, and contempt? why are their opinions yet sneered at? why is their influence rather deprecated than sought? Is it not that they have never learnt even the selfish policy of connecting themselves with the spirit of moral and intellectual advancement? Is it not because their liberty, their privileges, their power, have proceeded in many respects, less from a spirit of justice in the other sex, or a sense of moral fitness, than from the love of pleasure and luxury, of which women are the best promoters?"

In England, these evils are peculiarly great; for in England they are without compensation. It is possible to imagine such brilliant conversation, such varied wit, such graceful manners, such apparent gentleness, that would stifle the complaints of the moralist, and cause the half-uttered expostulation to die away upon his lips. So we can conceive that Arnaud and Nicole may have listened to the enchanting discourse of Madame de Sevigne, and under an influence so irresistible, have forborne to scan with severity the faults, glaring as they were, of the system to which she belonged. But with us the case is different—compare the English lady in her country-house, hospitable to her guests, benevolent to her dependents, as a wife spotless, as a mother most devoted, caring for all around her, dispensing education, relieving distress, encouraging merit, the guard of innocence, the shame of guilt, active, contented, gracious, exemplary: and see the same person in London—her frame worn out with fatigue, her mind ulcerated with petty mortifications, her brow clouded, her look hardened, her eye averted from unprofitable friends, her tone harsh, her demeanour restless, her whole being changed: and were there no higher motive, were it a question of advantage and convenience only, were dignity, and the good opinion of others, and consideration in the world, alone at stake, can any one hesitate as to which situation a wife or daughter should prefer? We should, indeed, be sorry if our demeanour in those vast crowds where English people flock together, rather, as it would seem, to assert a right than to gratify an inclination, were to be taken as an index of our national character—the want of all ease and simplicity, those essential ingredients of agreeable society, which distinguish these dreary meetings, have been long unfortunately notorious. No nation is so careful of the great, or so indifferent to the lesser, moralities of life as the English; and in no country is society, indebted, perhaps, to polished idleness for its greatest charms, more completely misunderstood. Too busy to watch the feelings of others, and too earnest to moderate our own, that true politeness which pays respect to age, which strives to put the most insignificant person in company on a level with the most considerable—virtues which our neighbours possess in an eminent degree,—are, except in a few favoured instances, unknown among us; while affectation, in other countries the badge of ignorance and vulgarity, is in ours, even in its worst shape, when it borrows the mien of rudeness, and impertinence, and effrontery, the appanage of those whose station is most conspicuous, and whose dignity is best ascertained. There is more good breeding in the cottage of a French peasant than in all the boudoirs of Grosvenor Square.

But God forbid that a word should escape from us which should seem to place the amusements of society, or the charms of conversation, in competition with those stern virtues which are the guardians of an English hearth! The austere fanaticism of the Puritans, tainted with hypocrisy as it was, was preferable a thousand times to the orgies of the Regent and the Parc-aux-Cerfs. If purity and refined society be, indeed, incompatible—if the love of freedom and active enterprise necessarily exclude the grace and softness which lessen, or at least teach us to forget, the burden of existence, let us be what we are; and, indeed, it is the opinion of many, that the rant of social pleasure is the price we pay for the excellence of our political institutions. It is because before the law all men are equal, that in the world so much care is taken to show that they are different. If to this we add the mercantile habits of our countrymen, the enormous wealth which their pursuits enable them to accumulate—the great honours which are the reward of successful industry and ambition—the absurd value annexed to technical distinctions—the manner in which, in our as in all free countries, those distinctions are conferred—and a certain disposition to sneer at any chivalrous, or elevated feeling, from which few of our ladies are exempt—we shall find it easy to account for the cold, stiff, ungraceful, harsh, and mercenary habits which disfigure, to the astonishment of all foreigners, the patrician class of English society. Nothing, indeed, can be less graceful than the frivolity of an Englishman. Naturally grave, serious, contemplative, if his angry stars have endowed him with enormous wealth, he carries into the pursuit of trifles the same solemnity and perseverance which, had he been more fortunately situated, would have been employed in a professional career—he carries a certain degree of gravity into his follies and his vices; as Pope, no less keen an observer than finished a poet, observed, he

"Judicious sups, and greatly daring dines"—

devotes himself to an eternal round of puerile follies, with a pompous self-importance that would be ludicrous were it exhibited in the discharge of the noblest and most sacred duties. Plate and wine seem his religion, and a well-furnished room his morality—his dinners engross his thoughts—his field sports are a nation's care. He writes books on arm-chairs, hunts with the most ineffable self-sufficiency, and talks of his dogs and horses as Howard or Clarkson might speak of the jails they had visited, and the mourners they had set free. He commits errors with a stolid air of deliberation, which the reckless passions of boiling youth could hardly palliate, but which, when perpetrated as a title to fashion, and as a passport to society, no epithets that contempt can suggest are vehement enough to stigmatize. The Englishman's vice has a business-like air with it that is intolerable—there is no illusion, no refinement—it is coarse, direct, groveling brutality—it wears its own hideous aspect with no garnish or disguise; and how seldom, even among that sex which these volumes are intended to instruct, does the brow wreathed with roses, amid the haunts of dissipation, wear a gay, a serene, or even a contented aspect! Where all the treasures that inanimate nature can furnish are scattered in profusion—where the air is fragrant with perfume, and vocal with melody, how vainly do we look for the freshness and animation, and the simplicity and single-mindedness of buoyant and delighted youth! We feel inclined, amid this gloomy dissipation and depressing pleasure, to reverse the most beautiful passage in Euripides, and to say, that the banquet and the festival do require all the heightening of art, all the embellishments of luxury, all the illusions of song, to conceal the struggles of corroding interest, and the pangs of constant mortification.

"There" (but we quote one of the most remarkable passages in the book) "is a general aversion from the labour of thought, in all who have not had the faculties exercised while they were pliant, nor been supplied with a certain stock of elementary knowledge, essential alike to any subject of science that may be presented to their maturer years. By means of the press, many broken and ill-sustained rays pierce across the neglect or indifference of parents, to the minds of the young. Gleams of a rational spirit and enlarged feeling may often be found among the daughters of country gentlemen, whose sons are still solely devoted to sporting and party politics.

"When we think of those mighty resources we have just been adverting to, the strength all such tastes acquire by sympathy, and the observation of nature and of human life they tend to excite, we might expect they would furnish society with everlasting sources of excitement and mutual interest, that they would create a universal sympathy with genius and ability wherever it was found, and soften the repulsive austerity with which it is the nature of rank and wealth to look on humble fortunes.

"Little or nothing of all this takes place. Frivolity and insipidity are the prevailing characters of conversation; and nowhere in Europe, perhaps, does difference of fortune or station produce more unsocial and illiberal separation. Very few of those whom fortune has released from the necessity of following some laborious profession, are capable of passing their time agreeably without the assistance of company; not from a spirit of gaiety which calls on society for indulgence—not from any pleasure they take in conversation, where they are frequently languid and taciturn, but to rival each other in the luxury of the table, or, by a great variety of indescribable airs, to make others feel the pain of mortification. They meet as if 'to fight the boundaries' of their rank and fashion, and the less definite and perceptible is the line which divides them, the more punctilious is their pride. It is a great mistake to suppose that this low-minded folly is peculiar to people of rank: it is an English disease. But the higher we go in society, the wider the circle of the excluded becomes, consequently, the greater the range of human beings cast forth from the pale of sympathy; and the more contracted do the judgment, experience, and feelings of its inmates become. The lofty walls, the iron spikes that surround our villas, and the notices every where affixed 'that trespassers will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law,' are meet emblems of the social spirit that connects the different orders of society in England. The effect of this is to produce narrow minds, or, what is worse, narrow hearts on one side, and a host of dissocial, irritable passions on the other. In each step of the scale, those beneath see chiefly the unamiable qualities of their superiors."

The disproportion of the happiness of society with its means, is a subject which calls forth all the eloquence and sagacity of this writer. Nor is this surprising; for it might startle the most sluggish indifference—the most incurious stupidity. How does it come to pass, that with us misery is the fruit of successful labour, that with us experience does not teach caution, that with us the most munificent charity is unable to check the accumulation of evil, moral and physical, with which it vainly endeavours to contend? How is it, that while the wealth of England is a proverb among nations, the distress of her labourers is a byword no less universal; that while her commerce encircles the globe, while her colonies are spread through both hemispheres, while regions hitherto unknown are but the resting-place of her never-ceasing enterprise, the producers of all this wealth, the causes of all this luxury, the instruments of all this civilization, lie down in despair to perish by hundreds, amid the miracles of triumphant industry by which they are surrounded? How happens it, that as our empire extends abroad, security diminishes at home? that as our reputation becomes more splendid, and our attitude more commanding, the fabric of our strength decays, and our social bulwarks rock from their foundations? Who can say that the skill and valour of the general who has added a province to our Indian empire—who, triumphing over obstacles hitherto insurmountable, has caused the tide of victory to flow from East to West, and make the Sepoy invincible—may not erelong be called upon to fulfil the thankless task of suppressing insurrection, and to control the kindling fury of a mistaken, it is true, but of a kindred population? Shall the day indeed come when in our streets there shall be solitude, and in our harbours be heard no sound of oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby? Is the vaunted splendour of this country to furnish a melancholy lesson of the instability of earthly power, and its fate to conclude a tale more glorious, to point a moral more affecting, than any which Tyre, or Sidon, or Carthage have furnished, to curb the insolence of prosperity, and to show the insignificance of man?

"Quamvis Pontica pinus,
Sylvae filia nobilis,
Jactes et genus et nomen inutile."

After dwelling on the supply of information which the present age enjoys, and which is quite without parallel in any former period, and pointing out the inconsistencies among us, of which, nevertheless, every day affords perpetual examples, the writer asks—

"Do these evils proceed from some moral perversity in the people? Is there some natural barrier in England against the effects of capital, industry, science, and religion; or is it not that ignorance of the laws that regulate and harmonize social existence, and of those that govern the human mind, has hitherto been extensively prevalent, and is still resisting the remedies of riper experience?

"But the poor and ignorant cannot educate themselves; it must be the upper classes who give them the means of improvement. In the natural laws of society, the use of a class who are independent of labour for subsistence, is, that a certain part of the community should have leisure to acquire that general knowledge which is the parent of wise institutions and pure morals. That they should have such affluence as to give weight to their example and authority, is also desirable. Government, as has already been observed, cannot act effectively against a very great preponderance of error and prejudice, but must legislate in the spirit of truths that are generally known, and in the service of interests that excite general sympathy.

"The object of this work is not to advocate particular measures, nor even to assume that every thing that is wrong is so through culpable neglect; but it is to call attention to the grievous evils, that neither legislation nor zeal and charity can counteract with effect, till the increased education of all classes assists their efforts. Something must be wanting, when such unrivalled knowledge and wealth are accompanied by such various and wide-spread evils. It is not benevolence that is deficient, for nowhere can we turn without meeting it in private, struggling against miseries too great for its power, and in public devoting abilities of the first order to the cause of humanity.

"It is the wider diffusion of knowledge we require: more heads and hands still are wanted, qualified for acting in concert, or at least acting generally on right principles. Too many persons capable of generous feeling are absorbed and corrupted by luxury and frivolity; too many waste their efforts from shallow, mistaken, and contradictory views."

Then follows a splendid description of scientific energy, the gratification which it affords, and the noble objects to which it points the way.

"In examining the prodigious resources at the command of the upper classes of English society, it is finely remarked, that 'the fine arts are the materials by which our physical and animal sensations are converted into moral perceptions.'

"Every thing in the form of matter, however coarse—the refuse and dross of more valuable materials—is resolvable, by science, into elements too subtle for our vision, and yet possessed of such potency that they effect transmutations more surprising than the fables of magic. The points that spangle the still blue vault, and make night lovely to the untaught peasant, interpreted by science, expand into worlds and systems of worlds: some so remote, that even the character of light, in which their existence is declared to us, can scarcely give full assurance of their reality—some, kindred planets which science has measured, and has told their movements, their seasons, and the length of their days. Such resemblances to our own globe are ascertained in their general laws, and such diversity in their peculiar ones, that we are led irresistibly to believe they all teem with beings, sentient and intelligent as we are, yet whose senses, and powers, and modes of existence, must be very dissimilar, and indefinitely varied. The regions of space, within the field of our vision, present us with phenomena the most incomprehensibly mysterious, and with knowledge the most accurate and demonstrable. Light, motion, form, and magnitude—the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms—have their several sciences, and each would exhaust a life to master it completely. No uneasy passion follows him who engages in such speculations, where continual pursuit is made happy by the sense of continual progress. He leaves his cares at the threshold; for when his attention is fixed, so great is the pleasure of contemplation, that it seems good to have been born for this alone.

"If we turn to the moral world, where, strange as it seems, we meet with less clearness and grandeur, yet there our deep interest in its truths supplies a different, perhaps a more powerful attraction. While we wonder and hope, the general laws of sentient existence give us glimpses of their harmony with those of inanimate nature. The latter seems assuredly made for the use of the former. The identity of benevolence with wisdom presents itself to our minds as a necessary truth, and, notwithstanding our perplexities, brings peace to our hearts. Social distinctions sink to insignificance when contemplating our place in existence, and the privilege of reading the book of nature, and sharing the thoughts and the sentiments of the distinguished among men, atones for obscurity and neglect; neither would the troubled power of a throne nor the flushing of victory repay us for the sacrifice of those pleasures."

The second volume opens with a dissertation on luxury, in which the subject is treated with the depth and perspicuity that the extracts we have already made will have prepared our readers to anticipate. Luxury is a word of relative, and therefore of ambiguous signification; it may be the test of prosperity—it may be the harbinger of decay: according to the state of society in which it prevails, its signification will, of course, be different. The effect of civilization is to increase the number of our wants. The same degree of education which, during the last century, was considered, even by the upper classes, a superfluity, is now a necessary for the middling class, and will soon become a necessary for the lowest, or all but the lowest, members of society. Most of our readers are acquainted with the story of the Highland chief who rebuked his son indignantly for making a pillow of a snowball. Sumptuary laws have always been inefficient, or efficient only for the purposes of oppression. Public morality has been their pretext—the private gratification of jealousy their aim. In republics they were intended to allay the envy of the poor—in monarchies to flatter the arrogance of the great. The first of these motives produced, as Say observes, the law Orchia at Rome, which prohibited the invitation of more than a certain number of guests. The second was the cause of an edict passed in the reign of Henry II. of France, by which the use of silken shoes and garments was confined to princes and bishops. States are ruined by the extravagance, not of their subjects, but of their rulers.

Luxury is pernicious when it is purchased at an excessive price, or when it stands in the way of advantages greater and more attainable. The worse a government is, the more effect does it produce upon the manners and habits of its subjects. The influence of a government of favourites and minions over the community, is as prodigious as it is baneful. Every innocent pleasure is a blessing. Luxury is innocent, nay, it is desirable, as far as it can contribute to health and cleanliness—to rational enjoyment; as far as it serves to prevent gross debauchery; and, as one of our poets has expressed it,

"When sensual pleasures cloy,
To fill the languid pause with finer joy,"

it should be encouraged. It does not follow, because the materials for luxury are wanted, that the bad passions and selfishness, which are its usual companions, will be wanted also. A Greenlander may display as much gluttony over his train oil and whale blubber as the most refined epicure can exhibit with the Physiologie du Goût in his hand, and with all Monsieur Ude's science at his disposal. When the gratification of our taste and senses interferes with our duty to our country, or our neighbours, or our friends—when, for the sake of their indulgence, we sacrifice our independence—or when, rather than abandon it, we neglect our duties sacred and imperative as they may be—the most favourable casuists on the side of luxury allow that it is criminal. But even when it stops far short of this scandalous excess, the habit of immoderate self-indulgence can hardly long associate in the same breast with generous, manly, and enlightened sentiments: its inevitable effect is to stifle all vigorous energy, as well as to eradicate every softer virtue. It is the parent of that satiety which is the most unspeakable of all miseries—a short satisfaction is purchased by long suffering, and the result is an addition to our stock, not of pleasure, but of pain.

The next topic to which our attention is directed is the influence of habit. Habit is thus defined:—

"Habit is the aptitude for any actions or impressions produced by frequent repetition of them."

The word impressions is used to designate affections of mind and body that are involuntary, in contradistinction to those which we can originate and control. For instance, we may choose whether or not we will enter into any particular enquiry; but when we have entered upon it, we cannot prevent the result that the evidence concerning it will produce upon our minds. A person conversant with mathematical studies can no more help believing that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side, than, if his hand had been thrust in the fire, he could help feeling heat. The remarks which follow are ingenious and profound:—

"The more amusements," continues the writer, "partake of an useful character, the more lasting they are. This is never the case with trifles; when the enjoyment is over, they leave little or nothing in the mind. They are not steps to something else, they have no connexion with other and further results, to be brought out by further endeavours. The attempt to make life a series of quickly succeeding emotions, will ever prove a miserable failure; whereas, when the chief part of our time is spent in labour, active power increases—the exertion of it becomes habit—the mind gathers strength; and emotion being husbanded, retains its freshness, and the spirits preserve their alacrity through life. It follows that the most agreeable labours are those which superadd to an object of important and lasting interest a due mixture of intermediate and somewhat diversified results. To a mechanic, making a set of chairs and tables, for example, is more agreeable than working daily at a sawpit. But nothing can deprive the industrious man (however undiversified his employment) of the advantage of having a constant and important pursuit—viz. earning the necessaries and comforts of life; and when we consider the uneasiness of a life without any steady pursuit, and how slight is the influence that such as one merely voluntary has over most men, it seems certain that, as a general rule, we do not err in representing the necessity of labour as a safeguard of happiness."