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Portrait of George Eliot,
()rii;iiial Htcliin^ Uy E. A. Fowlc.
ROSEHILL LIMITED EDITION
Scenes of Clerical Life
IN TWO VOLUMES
Vol. II.
ESSAYS
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK
BV
GEORGE ELIOT
JIOSTON
ESTES AM) LAUKIAT
1894
/ ■ /
/ ' ■
/ »
SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
JANET'S REPENTANCE.— (7o«ftnM<!rf.
CONTENTS.
PAOS
Janet's Eepentancz (Continued) 1
ESSAYS.
WOBLDLINESS AKD OtHEB-WoRLDLINESS : ThE PoET
Young . 191
(Wettminiter Review, 1867.
Evangelical Teaching: Du. Gumming 258
(WestminsteT Renew, 1856.^
The Inpluence op Rationalism: Leckt's History . 302
(Fortnightly Review, 1865.)
Address to Working-Men, by Felix Holt .... 325
(Blackwood's Magaiine, 1868.)
LEAVES EROM A NOTE-BOOK.
Authorship 349
Judgments on Authobs 355
Stoby-Tellino 358
Historic Imagination 361
Value in Originality 363
vi CONTENTS.
To TMK Vu/AklC ALL TiriNGS ABE PrOSAIC .... 364
''Dkak Rkmoiouh IjOvk" 364
Wk make oi;tt OWN Pkeckdents 365
BlETII or ToLKttANCK 365
Felix qi;i non pc/tuit 366
Divine Grace a Heal Emanation 366
"A Fine Excess." — Feeling is Energy 367
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAOB
Portrait op Georob Eliot Frontispiece
Portrait of Georoe Eliot at Thirty 189
SCENES OF CIjEEICAL LIFE.
' • • •
JANETS REPENTANCE, -^ffffjainutd.
• - • • •
• • . •
• • •_• •
• I • '
CHAPTER V.
It was half -past nine o'clock in the morning.
The midsummer sun was already warm on the
roofs and weathercocks of Milby. The church-
bells were ringing, and many families were con-
scious of Sunday sensations, chiefly referable to
the fact that the daughters had come down to
breakfast in their best frocks, and with their hair
particularly well dressed. For it was not Sunday,
but Wednesday ; and though the Bishop was going
to hold a Confirmation, and to decide whether or
not there should be a Sunday evening lecture in
Milby, the sunbeams had the usual working-day
look to the haymakers already long out in the
fields, and to laggard weavers just " setting up "
their week's "piece." The notion of its being
Sunday was the strongest in young ladies like
Miss Phipps, who was going to accompany her
younger sister to the Confirmation, and to wear a
" sweetly pretty " transparent bonnet with marabout
feathers on the interesting occasion, thus throwing
into relief the suitable simplicity of her sister's
attire, who was, of course, to appear in a new white
VOL. n. — 1
* •
_ •
• • •
• • • •
2 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
frock; or in the pupils at. .Miss Townley's, who
were absolved from all lessqiis, and were going to
church to see the Bishop,' HJid'to hear the Honoura-
ble and Eeverend Mr. jffendergast, the rector, read
prayers, — a higl\iiiteftectual treat, as Miss Townley
assured theni. -"'It seemed only natural that a rector
who was honolirable should read better than old
• • • •
Mr. CreWfi/'jrho was only a curate and not honour-
able ;\nd when little Clara Eobins wondered why
^ spjaQ. clergymen were rectors and others not, Ellen
•.^fftfriott assured her with great confidence that it
•, "was only the clever men who were made rectors.
Ellen Marriott was going to be confirmed. She
was a short, fair, plump girl, with blue eyes and
sandy hair, which was this morning arranged in
taller cannon curls than usual, for the reception of
the Episcopal benediction, and some of the young
ladies thought her the prettiest girl in the school ;
but others gave the preference to her rival, Maria
Gardner, who was much taller, and had a lovely
" crop " of dark-brown ringlets, and who, being
also about to take upon herself the vows made in
her name at her baptism, had oiled and twisted
her ringlets with especial care. As she seated her-
self at the break fast- table before Miss Townley 's
entrance to dispense the weak coffee, her crop ex-
cited so strong a sensation that Ellen Marriott was
at length impelled to look at it, and to say with
suppressed but bitter sarcasm, ** Is that Miss
Gardner's head?" "Yes," said Maria, amiable
and stuttering, and no match for Ellen in retort ;
•* th — th — this is my head. " " Then I don't admire
it at all ! " was the crushing rejoinder of Ellen,
followed by a murmur of approval among her
friends. Young ladies, I suppose, exhaust their
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 3
eac of venom io this way at school. That is the
reason wliy they Lave such a harmless tooth for
each other iu after life.
The only othur candidate for confirmation ftt
Miss Townley's was Mary Dunn, a draper's daugh-
ter in Milby and a distant relation of the Miss
Linnets. Her pale lanky hair could never be
coaxed into permanent curl, and this morning the
lieat had brought it down to its natural condition
of lankiuess earlier than usual. But that was not
vfhat made her ait melancholy and apart at the
lower end of the form. Her parents were admirers
of Mr. Tryan, and had been persuaded, by the
Miss Linnets' influence, to insist that their daugh-
ter ehoiild be prepared for confirmation by him,
over and above the preparation given to Miaa
Townley'a pupils by Air, Crewe. Poor Mary
Dunn! I am afraid she thought it too heavy a
price to pay for these spiritual advantages, to be
excluded from every game at ball, to be obliged to
walk with none but little girls, — in fact, to be
the object of an aversion that nothing short of an
incessant supply of plumcakcs would have neutral-
ized. And Mrs. Dunn was of opinion that plum-
cake was unwholesome. The anti-Tryanite spirit,
you perceive, was very strong at Misa Townley's,
imported probably by day scholars, as well as
encourt^ed by the fact that that clever woman was
herself strongly opposed to innovation, and re-
marked every Sunday that Mr. Crewe had preached
an" excellent discourse. " Poor Mary Dunn dreaded
the moment when school-hours would be over, for
then she was sure to be the butt of those very
explicit remarks which, in young ladies' as well
as young gentlemen's seminaries, constitute the
4 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIEE.
most subtle and delicate form of the innuendo.
" I 'd never be a Tryanite, would you ? " " Oh,
here comes the lady that knows so much more
about religion than we do ! ** " Some people think
themselves so very pious ! **
It is really surprising that young ladies should
not be thought competent to the same curriculum
as young gentlemen. I observe that their powers
of sarcasm are quite equal ; and if there had been
a genteel academy for young gentlemen at Milby,
I am inclined to think that, notwithstanding
Euclid and the classics, the party spirit there
would not have exhibited itself in more pungent
irony or more incisive satire than was heard in
Miss Townley's seminary. But there was no such
academy, the existence of the grammar-school
under Mr. Crewe's superintendence probably dis-
couraging speculations of that kind; and the
genteel youths of Milby were chiefly come home
for the midsummer holidays from distant schools.
Several of us had just assumed coat-tails, and the
assumption of new responsibilities apparently fol-
lowing as a matter of course, we were among the
candidates for confirmation. I wish I could say
that the solemnity of our feelings was on a* level
with the solemnity of the occasion ; but unimagi-
native boys find it difficult to recognize apostolical
institutions in their developed form, and I fear our
chief emotion concerning the ceremony was a sense
of sheepishness, and our chief opinion the specula-
tive and heretical position that it ought to be con-
fined to the girls. It was a pity, you will say ; but
it is the way with us men in other crises that come
a long while after confirmation. The golden mo-
ments in the stream of life rush past us, and we
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 5
see nothing but sand ; the angels come to visit us,
and we only know them when they are gone.
But, as I said, the morning was sunny, the bells
were ringing, the ladies of Milby were dressed in
their Sunday garments.
And who is this bright-looking woman walking
with hasty step along Orchard Street so early,
with a large nosegay in her hand? Can it be
Janet Dempster, on whom we looked with such
deep pity, one sad midnight, hardly a fortnight
ago ? Yes ; no other woman in Milby has those
searching black eyes, that tall graceful uncon-
strained figure, set off by her simple muslin dress
and black lace shawl, that massy black hair now
so neatly braided in glossy contrast with the white
satin ribbons of her modest cap and bonnet. No
other woman has that sweet speaking smile, with
which she nods to Jonathan Lamb, the old parish
clerk. And, ah ! — now she comes nearer — there
are those sad lines about the mouth and eyes on
which that sweet smile plays like sunbeams on the
storm-beaten beauty of the full and ripened corn.
She is turning out of Orchard Street, and making
her way as fast as she can to her mother's house, —
a pleasant cottage facing a roadside meadow, from
which the hay is being carried. Mrs. Eaynor has
had her breakfast, and is seated in her armchair
reading, when Janet opens the door, saying in her
most playful voice, —
** Please, mother, I *m come to show myself to
you before I go to the Parsonage. Have I put on
my pretty cap and bonnet to satisfy you ? "
Mrs. Eaynor looked over her spectacles, and met
her daughter's glance with eyes as dark and loving
as her own. She was a much smaller woman than
6 SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
Janet, both in figure and feature, the chief resem-
blance lying in the eyes and the clear brunette
complexion. The mother's hair had long been
gray, and was gathered under the neatest of caps,
made by her own clever fingers, as all Janet's caps
and bonnets were too. They were well-practised
fingers, for Mrs. Raynor had supported herself in
her widowhood by keeping a millinery establish-
ment, and in this way had earned money enough to
give her daughter what was then thought a first-rate
education, as well as to save a sum which, eked
out by her son-in-law, sufficed to support her in
her solitary old age. Always the same clean, neat
old lady, dressed in black silk, was Mrs. Raynor:
a patient, brave woman, who bowed with resigna-
tion under the burden of remembered sorrow, and
bore with meek fortitude the new load that the
new days brought with them.
** Your bonnet wants pulling a trifle forwarder,
my child," she said, smiling, and taking off her
spectacles, while Janet at once knelt down before
her, and waited to be " set to rights, " as she would
have done when she was a child. " You 're going
straight to Mrs. Crewe's, I suppose. Are those
flowers to garnish the dishes ? "
** No, indeed, mother. This is a nosegay for
the middle of the table. I 've sent up the dinner-
service and the ham we had cooked at our house
yesterday, and Betty is coming directly with the
garnish and the plate. We shall get our good Mrs.
Crewe through her troubles famously. Dear tiny
woman! You should have seen her lift up her
hands yesterday, and pray heaven to take her
before ever she should have another collation to
get ready for the Bishop. She said, ' It 's bad
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 7
enough to have the Archdeacon, though he doesn't
want half so many jelly -glasses. I wouldn't
mind, Janet, if it was to feed all the old hungry
cripples in Milby; but so much trouble and ex-
pense for people who eat too much every day of
their lives ! * We had such a cleaning and f ur-
bishing-up of the sitting-room yesterday ! Nothing
will ever do away with the smell of Mr. Crewe's
pipes, you know ; but we have thrown it into the
background, with yellow soap and dry lavender.
And now I must run away. You will come to
church, mother ? "
"Yes, my dear, I wouldn't lose such a pretty
sight It does my old eyes good to see so many
fresh young faces. Is your husband going ? "
** Yes, Eobert will be there. I 've made him as
neat as a new pin this morning, and he says the
Bishop will think him too buckish by half. I
took him into Mammy Dempster's room to show
himself. We hear Tryan is making sure of the
Bishop's support; but we shall see. I would give
my crooked guinea, and all the luck it will ever
bring me, to have him beaten, for I can't endure
the sight of the man coming to harass dear old
Mr. and Mrs. Crewe in their last days. Preach-
ing the Gospel indeed! That is the best Gospel
that makes everybody happy and comfortable,
isn't it, mother? "
** Ah, child, I 'm afraid there 's no Gospel will
do that here below. *
"Well, I can do something to comfort Mrs.
Crewe at least ; so give me a kiss, and good-by till
church-time. "
The mother leaned back in her chair when Janet
was gone, and sank into a painful reverie. When
8 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
our life is a continuous trial, the moments of res-
pite seem only to substitute the heaviness of dread
for the heaviness of actual suffering : the curtain
of cloud seems parted an instant only that we may
measure all its horror as it hangs low, black, and
imminent, in contrast with the transient bright-
ness; the water-drops that visit the parched lips
in the desert bear with them only the keen imagi-
nation of thirst. Janet looked glad and tender
now — but what scene of misery was coming next.
She was too like the cistus flowers in the little
garden before the window, that, with the shades
of evening, might lie with the delicate white and
glossy dark of their petals trampled in the road-
side dust When the sun had sunk, and the
twilight was deepening, Janet might be sitting
there, heated, maddened, sobbing out her griefs
with selfish passion, and wildly wishing herself
dead.
Mrs. Eaynor had been reading about the lost
sheep, and the joy there is in heaven over the sin-
ner that repenteth. Surely the eternal love she
believed in through all the sadness of her lot,
would not leave her child to wander farther and
farther into the wilderness till there was no turn-
ing, — the child so lovely, so pitiful to others, so
good, — till she was goaded into sin by woman's
bitterest sorrows ! Mrs. Raynor had her faith and
her spiritual comforts, though she was not in the
least evangelical, and knew nothing of doctrinal
zeal. I fear most of Mr. Try an 's hearers would
have considered her destitute of saving knowledge,
and I am quite sure she had no well-defined views
on justification. Nevertheless, she read her Bible
a great deal, and thought she found divine lessons
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 9
there, — how to bear the cross meekly, and be mer-
ciful. Let us hope that there is a saving ignorance,
and that Mrs. Eaynor was justified without know-
ing exactly how.
She tried to have hope and trust, though it was
hard to believe that the future would be anything
else than the harvest of the seed that was being
sown before her eyes. But always there is seed
being sown silently and unseen, and everywhere
there come sweet flowers without our foresight or
labour. We reap what we sow, but Nature has
love over and above that justice, and gives us
shadow and blossom and fruit that spring from no
planting of ours.
CHAPTER VL
MoBT people must have agreed with Mrs. Baynor
that the Confirmation that day was a pretty sight,
at leant when those slight girlish forms and fair
young faces moved in a white rivulet along the
ftlHl'jH, and flowed into kneeling semicircles under
the light of the great chancel window, softened by
patch(!H of dark old painted glass ; and one would
think that to look on while a pair of venerable
hands ])reHH(Ml such young heads, and a venerable
face looked upward for a blessing on them, would
l>e very likely to make the heart swell gently, and
U) nioisUin the eyes. Yet T remember the eyes
se(?nu;d very dry in Milby Church that day, not-
withstanding that the Bishop was an old man, and
prol)ably venerable (for though he was not an emi-
nent (iHJcian, he was the brother of a Whig lord) ;
and I think the eyes must have remained dry,
because he had small delicate womanish hands
adorned with ruffles, and, instead of laying them
on the girls' heads, just let them hover over each
in quick succession, as if it were not etiquette
to touch them, and as if the laying on of hands
were like the theatrical embrace, — part of the
play, and not to be really believed in. To be
sure, there were a great many heads, and the
Kishop's time was limited. Moreover, a wig can,
under no circumstances, be affecting, except in
rare cases of illusion; and copious lawn-sleeves
JANETS REPENTANCE. ii
cannot be expected to go directly to any heart ex-
cept a washerwoman's,
I know Ned Phippa, who Icnelt against me, and
I am sure made me behave much worse than I
shouM have dune without him, whispered that he
thought the Bishop was a " guy," and I certainly
remember thinking that Mr. Prendergast looked
much more dignified with his plain white surplice
and black hair. He was a tall commanding man,
and read the Liturgy in a strikingly sonorous and
uniform voice, which I tried to imitate the next
Sunday at home, until my little sister began to
cry. and said I was " yoaring at her. "
Mr. Tryan sat in a pew near the pulpit with
several other clergymen. He looked pale, and
tubbed his hand over his face and pushed back his
hair oftener than usual. Standing in the aisle
close to him, and repeating the reaponses with
edifying loudness, was Mr. Budd, churchwarden
and delegate, with a white staff in his hand and a
backward bend o[ his small head and person, such
as, I suppose, he considered suitable to a friend of
soitnd religion. Conspicuous in the gallery, too,
was the tall figure of Mr, Dempeter, whose pro-
fessional avocations rarely allowed him to occupy
his place at church.
" There 's Dempster, ' said Mrs. Linnet to her
daughter Mary, " looking more respectable than
usual, I declare. He 's got a fine speech by heart
to make to the Bishop, I '11 answer for it. But
he *11 he pretty well sprinkled with snuif before
service is over, and the Bishop won't be able to
listen to him for sneezing, that 's one comfort;. "
At length the last stage in the long ceremony
was over, the large assembly streamed warm and
12 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
weary into the open afternoon sunshine, and the
Bishop retired to the Parsonage, where, after hon-
ouring Mrs. Crewe's collation, he was to give audi-
ence to the delegates and Mr. Tryan on the great
question of the evening lecture.
Between five and six o'clock the Parsonage was
once more as quiet as usual under the shadow of
its tall elms, and the only traces of the Bishop's
recent presence there were the wheel-marks on the
gravel, and the long table with its garnished
dishes awry, its damask sprinkled with crumbs,
and its decanters without their stoppers. Mr.
Crewe was already calmly smoking his pipe in the
opposite sitting-room, and Janet was agreeing with
Mrs. Crewe that some of the blancmange would
be a nice thing to take to Sally Martin, while the
little old lady herself had a spoon in her hand
ready to gather the crumbs into a plate, that she
might scatter them on the gravel for the little
birds.
Before that time the Bishop's carriage had been
seen driving through the High Street on its way to
Lord Trufford's, where he was to dine. The ques-
tion of the lecture was decided, then ?
The nature of the decision may be gathered from
the following conversation which took place in the
bar of the Eed Lion that evening.
" So you *re done, eh, Dempster ? " was Mr.
Pilgrim's observation, uttered with some gusto.
He was not glad Mr. Tryan had gained his point,
but he was not sorry Dempster was disappointed.
" Done, sir ? Not at all. It is what I antici-
pated. I knew we had nothing else to expect in
these days, when the Church is infested by a set
of men who are only fit to give out hymns from
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 13
an empty cask, to tunes set by a journeyman cob-
bler. But I was not the less to exert myself in
the cause of sound Churchmanship for the good of
the town. Any coward can fight a battle when
he 's sure of winning ; but give me the man who
has pluck to fight when he 's sure of losing.
That *s my way, sir ; and there are many victories
worse than a defeat, as Mr. Tryan shall learn to
his cost *
" He must be a poor shuperannyated sort of a
bishop, that *s my opinion, " said Mr. Tomlinson,
" to go along with a sneaking Methodist like
Tryan. And, for my part, I think we should be
as well wi*out bishops, if they 're no wiser than
that Where *s the use o' havin' thousands a-year
an' livin* in a pallis, if they don't stick to the
Church ? "
" No. There you 're going out of your depth,
Tomlinson, " said Mr. Dempster. ** No one shall
hear me say a word against Episcopacy, — it is a
safeguard of the Church ; we must have ranks and
dignities there as well as everywhere else. No,
sir ! Episcopacy is a good thing ; but it may hap-
pen that a bishop is not a good thing. Just as
brandy is a good thing, though this particular
brandy is British, and tastes like sugared rain-
water caught down the chimney. Here, Katcliflfe,
let me have something to drink a little less like
a decoction of sugar and soot "
" / said nothing again' Episcopacy," returned
Mr. Tomlinson. " I only said I thought we
should do as well wi'out bishops; an' I'll say it
again for the matter o' that Bishops never
brought any grist to my mill. "
" Do you know when the lectures are to begin ? *
said Mr. Pilgrim.
14 SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
** They are to begin on Sunday next, " said Mr.
Dempster, in a significant tone ; " but I think it
will not take a long-sighted prophet to foresee the
end of them. It strikes me Mr. Tryan will be
looking out for another curacy shortly. *
** He *11 not get many Milby people to go and
hear his lectures after a while, I *11 bet a guinea, "
observed Mr. Budd. ** I know I *11 not keep a
single workman on my ground who either goes to
the lecture himself or lets anybody belonging to
him go. *
" Nor me nay ther, * said Mr. Tomlinson. * No
Tr}'anito sliall touch a sack or drive a wagon o*
mine, that you may depend on. An' I know
more besides me as are o' the same mind."
" Tryan has a good many friends in the town,
though, and friends that are likely to stand by
him too," said Mr. Pilgrim. "I should say it
would be as well to let him and his lectures alone.
If he goes on preaching as he does, with such a
constitution as his, he *11 get a relaxed throat by
and by, and you '11 be rid of him without any
trouble. "
" We *11 not allow him to do himself that in-
jury," said Mr. Dempster. "Since his health is
not good, we '11 persuade him to try change of air.
Depend upon it, he *11 find the climate of Milby
too hot for him. "
CHAPTER VII.
Mr. Dempster did not stay long at the Red Lion
that evening. He was summoned home to meet
Mr. Armstrong, a wealthy client; and as he was
kept in consultation till a late hour, it happened
that this was one of the nights on which Mr.
Dempster went to bed tolerably sober. Thus the
day which had been one of Janet's happiest, be-
cause it had been spent by her in helping her dear
old friend Mrs. Crewe, ended for her with unusual
quietude; and as a bright sunset promises a fair
morning, so a calm lying down is a good augury
for a calm waking. Mr. Dempster, on the Thurs-
day morning, was in one of his best humours, and
though perhaps some of the good-humour might
result from the prospect of a lucrative and exciting
bit of business in Mr. Armstrong's probable law-
suit, the greater part of it was doubtless due to
those stirrings of the more kindly, healthy sap of
human feeling, by which goodness tries to get the
upper hand in us whenever it seems to have the
slightest chance, — on Sunday mornings, perhaps,
when we are set free from the grinding hurry of
the week, and take the little three-year-old on our
knee at breakfast to share our egg and muflBn ; in
moments of trouble, when death visits our roof or
illness makes us dependent on the tending hand
of a slighted wife; in quiet talks with an aged
mother, of the days when we stood at her knee
i6 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
with our first picture-book, or wrote her loving let-
ters from school. In the man whose childhood has
known caresses there is always a fibre of memory
that can be touched to gentle issues; and Mr.
Dempster, whom you have hitherto seen only as
the orator of the Red Lion, and the drunken tyrant
of a dreary midnight home, was the first-born
darling son of a fair little mother. That mother
was living still; and her own large black easy-
chair, where she sat knitting through the livelong
day, was now set ready for her at the breakfast-
table by her son's side, a sleek tortoise-shell cat
acting as provisional incumbent.
" Good morning, Mamsey ! why, you *re looking
as fresh as a daisy this morning. You 're getting
young again, ** said Mr. Dempster, looking up from
his newspaper when the little old lady entered.
A very little old lady she was, with a pale,
scarcely wrinkled face, hair of that peculiar white
which tells that the locks have once been blond,
a natty pure white cap on her head, and a white
shawl pinned over her shoulders. You saw at a
glance that she had been a mignonne blonde,
strangely unlike her tall, ugly, dingy-complex-
ioned son ; unlike her daughter-in-law, too, whose
large-featured brunette beauty seemed always
thrown into higher relief by the white presence
of little Mamsey. The unlikeness between Janet
and her mother-in-law went deeper than outline
and complexion, and indeed there was little sym-
pathy between them, for old Mrs. Dempster had
not yet learned to believe that her son, Robert,
would have gone wrong if he had married the right
woman, — a meek woman like herself, who would
have borne him children, and been a deft, orderly
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 17
housekeeper. Ih spite of Janet's tenderness and
attention to her, she had had little love £or her
daughter-in-law from the first, and had witnessed
the sad growth of home-misery through long years,
always with a disposition to lay the blame on the
wife rather than on the husband, and to reproach
Mrs, Eaynor for encouraging her daughter's faults
by a too exclusive sympathy. But old Mrs.
Dempster bad that rare gift of silence and passiv-
ity which oft«n supplies the absence of mental
strength; and whatever were her thoughts, she
said no word to aggravate the domestic discord.
Patient and mute she sat at her knitting through
many a scene of quarrel and anguish ; resolutely
she appeared unconscious of the sounds that
reached her ears, and the facts she divined after
she bad retired to her bed; mutely she witnessed
poor Janet's faults, only registering them as a
balance of excuse on the side of her son. The
hard, astute, domineering attorney was still that
little old woman's pet, as he had been when she
watched with triumphant pride his first tumbling
effort to march alone across the nursery floor.
" See what a good son he is to me ! " she often
thought. " Never gave me a harsh word. And
80 he might have been a good husband. "
Oh, it is piteous, — that sorrow of aged women I
In early youth, perhaps, they said to themselves,
" I shall be happy when I have a husband to love
me best of all ; ° then when the husband was too
careless, "My child will comfort me;" then,
through the mother's watching and toil, " My
child will repay me all when it grows up. " And
at last, after the long journey of years has been
wearily travelled through, the mother's heart is
\^
1 8 SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
weighed down by a heavier burden, and no hope
remains but the grave.
But this morning old Mrs. Dempster sat down
in her easy-chair without any painful, suppressed
remembrance of the preceding night.
" I declare mammy looks younger than Mrs.
Crewe, who is only sixty-five, " said Janet. " Mrs.
Crewe will come to see you to-day, mammy, and
tell you all about her troubles with the Bishop
and the collation. She '11 bring her knitting, and
you *11 have a regular gossip together. "
" The gossip will be all on one side, then, for
Mrs. Crewe gets so very deaf I can't make her
hear a word. And if I motion to her, she always
understands me wrong. "
" Oh, she will have so much to tell you to-day,
you will not want to speak yourself. You who
have patience to knit those wonderful counter-
panes, mammy, must not be impatient with dear
Mrs. Crewe. Good old lady! I can't bear her to
think she 's ever tiresome to people, and you know
she 's very ready to fancy herself in the way. I
think she would like to shrink up to the size of a
mouse, that she might run about and do people
good without their noticing her. *
"It isn't patience I want, God knows; it's
lungs to speak loud enough. But you '11 be at
home yourself, I suppose, this morning; and you
can talk to her for me. "
" No, mammy ; I promised poor Mrs. Lowme to
go and sit with her. She *s confined to her room,
and both the Miss Lowraes are out ; so I 'm going
to read the newspaper to her and amuse her."
"Couldn't you go another morning? As Mr.
Armstrong and that other gentleman are coming
JANET-S REPENTANCE. 19
to dinner, I should think it would be better to
etay at home. Can you tniBt Betty to see to
evor^-thing ? She 'a new to the place. °
"Oh, I couldn't disappoint Mra. Lowme ; I
promised her. Betty will do very well, no fear. "
Old Mrs. Dempster was silent after this, and
began to sip her t«a. The breakfast went on with-
out further conversation for some time, Mr. Demp-
8ter being absorbed in the papers. At length, when
he was running over the advertisements, his eye
seemed to be caught by something that suggested
a new thought to him. He presently thumped the
table with an air of exultation, and said, turning
to Janet, —
"I've a capital idea, Gypsy! ' (that was his
name for his dark-eyed wife when he was in an
extraordinarily good humour), " and you shall help
me. It 'b just what you 're up to. "
" Wliat is it?" said Janet, her face beaming at
the sound of the pet name, now heard so seldom.
"Anything to do with conveyancing?"
" It 'a a bit of fun worth a dozen fees, — a plan
for raising a laugh against Tryan and his gang of
hypocrites. '
" What is it ? Nothing that wants a needle and
thread, I hope, else I must go and tease mother. "
"No, nothing sharper than your wit — except
mine. I '11 tell you what it ia. We '11 get up a
programme of the Sunday evening lecture, like a
play-bill, you know, — ' Grand Performance of the
celebrated Mountebank, ' and so ou. We '11 bring
in the Tryanites — old Landor and the rest — in
appropriate characters. Proctor shall print it, and
we '11 circulate it in the town. It will be a capital
hit'
20 SCENES OP CLERICAL LITE.
" Bravo ! * said Janet, clapping her hands. She
would just then have pretended to like almost any-
thing, in her pleasure at being appealed to by her
husband, and she really did like to laugh at the
Tryanites. ** We '11 set about it directly, and
sketch it out before you go to the oflBce. I 've got
Try an 's sermons upstairs, but I don't think
there 's anything in them we can use. I 've only
just looked into them ; they 're not at all what I
expected, — dull, stupid things, — nothing of the
roaring fire-and-brimstone sort that I expected. *
" Eoaring ? No ; Tryan 's as soft as a sucking
dove, — one of your honey-mouthed hypocrites.
Plenty of devil and malice in him, though, I could
see that, while he was talking to the Bishop ; but
as smooth as a snake outside. He 's beginning a
single-handed fight with me, I can see, — per-
suading my clients away from me. We shall see
who will be the first to cry peccavi, Milby will
do better without Mr. Tryan than without Eobert
Dempster, I fancy! and Milby shall never be
flooded with cant as long as I can raise a break-
water against it But now, get the breakfast-things
cleared away, and let us set about the play-bilL
Come, Mamsey, come and have a walk with me
round the garden, and let us see how the cucum-
bers are getting on. I 've never taken you round
the garden for an age. Come, you don't want a
bonnet. It 's like walking in a greenhouse this
morning. "
" But she will want a parasol, * said Janet
" There 's one on the stand against the garden-door,
Eobert "
The little old lady took her son's arm with
placid pleasure. She could barely reach it so as
JANETS REPENTANCE. 21
to rest upon it, but he inclined a little towards
her, and accommodated his heavy long- limbed
ateps to her feeble pace. The cat cboao to sun
herself too, and walked close beside them, with
tail erect, rubbing her sleek sides against their
legs, — too well fed to be excited by the twittering
birds. The garden was of the grassy, shady kind,
often seen attached to old houses in provincial
towns; the apple-trees had had time to spread
their branches very wide, the shrubs and hardy
perennial plants had grown into a luxuriance that
required constant trimming to prevent them from
intruding on the space for walking. But the
farther end, which united with green fields, was
open and sunny.
It was rather sad, and yet pretty, to see that
little group passing out of the shadow into the
sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shadow
^ain: sad, because this tenderness of the son for
the mother was hardly more than a nucleus of
healthy life in an organ burdening by disease, be-
cause the man who was linked in this way with
an innocent past had become callous in worldli-
ness, fei'ered by sensuality, enslaved by chance
impulses; pretty, because it showed how hard it
is to kill the deep-down fibrous roots of human
love and goodness, — how the man from whom we
make it our pride to shrink has yet a close brother-
hood with us through some of our most sacred
feelings.
As they were returning to the house, Janet met
them, and said, " Now, Robert, the writing things
are ready. I shall be clerk, and Mat Paine can
copy it out after. "
Mammy once more deposited in her arm-chair,
id
22 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
with her knitting in her hand, and the cat purring
at her elbow, Janet seated herself at the table,
while Mr. Dempster placed himself near her, took
out his snufif-box, and plentifully sufifusing himself
with the inspiring powder, began to dictate.
What he dictated, we shall see by and by.
CHAPTER VIII.
The next day, Friday, at five o'clock by the sun-
dial, the large bow-window of Mrs. Jerome's parlour
was open ; and that lady herself was seated within
its ample semicircle, having a table before her on
which her best tea-tray, her best cliina, and fier
best urn-rug had already been standing in readiness
for half an hour. Mrs. Jerome's best tea-service
was of delicate white tinted china, with gold sprigs
upon it, — as pretty a tea-service as you need wish
to see, and quite good enough for chimney orna-
ments; indeed, as the cups were without handles,
moat visitors who had the distinction of taking tea
out of them wished that such charming china hnJ
already been promoted to that honorary position.
Mrs. Jerome was like her china^ handsome and old-
fashioned. She was a buxom lady of sixty, in an
elaborate lace cap fastened by a frill under her chin,
a dark, well-curled front concealing her forehead, a
snowy neckerchief exhibiting its ample folds as far
as her waist, and a stiff gray silk gown. She had a
clean damask napkin pinned before her to guard her
dress during the procejis of tea-making ; her favour-
ite geraniums in the bow-window were looking as
healthy as she could desire ; her own handsome por-
trait, painted when she was twenty years younger,
was smiling down on her with agreeable flattery;
and altogether she seemed to be in as peaceful and
pleasant a position as a buxom, well-dressed elderly
24 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
lady need desire. But, as in so many other cases,
appearances were deceptive. Her mind was greatly
perturbed and her temper ruffled by the fact that
it was more than a quarter-past five even by the
losing timepiece, that it was half-past by her large
gold watch, which she held in her hand as if she
were counting the pulse of the afternoon, and that
by the kitchen clock, which she felt sure was not an
hour too fast, it had already struck six. The lapse
of time was rendered the more unendurable to Mrs.
Jerome by her wonder that Mr. Jerome could stay
out in the garden with Lizzie in that thoughtless
way, taking it so 'easily that tea-time was long past,
and that, after all the trouble of getting down the
best tea-things, Mr. Tryan would not come.
This honour had been shown to Mr. Tryan, not at
all because Mrs. Jerome had any high appreciation
of his doctrine or of his exemplary activity as a pas-
tor, but simply because he was a " Church clergy-
man/' and as such was regarded by her with the
same sort of exceptional respect that a white woman
who had married a native of the Society Islands
might be supposed to feel towards a white-skinned
visitor from the land of her youth. For Mrs. Jerome
had been reared a Church woman, and having attained
tlie age of thirty before she was married, had
felt the greatest repugnance in the first instance to
renouncing the religious forms in which she had
been brought up. "You know," she said in confi-
dence to her Church acquaintances, "I wouldn't
give no ear at all to Mr. Jerome at fust ; but after
all, I begun to think as there was a many things
worse nor goin' to chapel, an* you 'd better do that
nor not pay your way. Mr. Jerome had a very
pleasant manner with him, an' there was niver
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
2S
another as kept a gig, an' 'ud make a settlement on
me like him. chapel or no chapel. It seeiued very
odd to me for a long while, the preachin' without
book, an' the stannin' up to one long prayer, istid o'
changin' your postur. But la ! there 'a nothin' as
you may n't get used to i' time ; you can al'ya sit
down, you know, hefore tlie prayer's done. The
ministers say pretty nigh the same things as the
Church parsons, by what I could iver make out,
an' we 're out o' chapel i' the mornin' a deal sooner
nor they 're out o' church. An' as for pews, ours is
a deal comfortabler nor any i' Milby Church."
Mrs. Jerome, you perceive, had not a keen sus-
ceptibility to shades of doctrine, and it is probable
that, att«r listening to Dissenting eloquence for
thirty years, she might safely have re-entered the
Establishment without performing any epirituol
quarantine. Her mind, apparently, was of that
non-porous flinty character which is not in the least
danger from surrounding damp. But on the ques-
tion of getting start of the sun on the day's business,
and clearing her conscience of the necessary sum of
meals and the consequent " washing up " as soon
as possible, so that the family might be well in bed
at nine, Mrs, Jerome was susceptible ; and the pre-
sent lingering pace of things, united with Mr.
Jerome's unaccountable obliviouness, was not to be
borne any longer. So she rang the bell for Sally.
" Goodness me, Sally ! go into the garden an' see
after your master. Tell him it's goiu' on for six,
an' Mr. Tryan 'ull niver think o' comin' now, an'
it's time we got tea over. An' he's lettin' Lizzie
stain her frock, I expect, among them strawberry-
beds. Make her come in this minute."
No wonder Mr. Jerome was tempted to linger in
26 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
the garden, for though the house was pretty and well
deserved its name, the " White House," the tall
damask roses that clustered over the porch being
thrown into relief by rough stucco of the most brill-
iant white, yet the garden and orchards were Mr.
Jerome's glory, as well they might be; and there
was nothing in which he had a more innocent pride
— peace to a good man's memory ! all his pride was
innocent — than in conducting a hitherto unini-
tiated visitor over his grounds, and making him in
some degree aware of the incomparable advantages
possessed by the inhabitants of the White House in
tlie matter of red-streaked apples, russets, northern
greens (excellent for baking), swan-egg pears, and
early vegetables, to say nothing of flowering " srubs,"
pink hawthorns, lavender bushes more than ever
Mrs. Jerome could use, and in short, a superabun-
dance of everything that a person retired from busi-
ness could desire to possess himself or to share with
his friends. The garden was one of those old-fash-
ioned paradises which hardly exist any longer except
as memories of our childhood : no finical separation
between flower and kitchen garden there ; no monot-
ony of enjoyment for one sense to the exclusion of
another ; but a charming paradisiacal mingling of
all that was pleasant to the eyes and good for food.
The rich flower-border running along every walk,
with its endless succession of spring flowers, ane-
mones, auriculas, wall-flowers, sweet-williams, cam-
panulas, snapdragons, and tiger-lilies, had its taller
beauties, such as moss and Provence roses, varied
with espalier apple-trees ; the crimson of a carnation
was carried out in the lurking crimson of the neigh-
bouring strawberry-beds; you gathered a moss-rose
one moment and a bimch of currants the next ; you
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 27
were in a delicious fluctuation between the scent of
jasmine and the juice of gooseberries. Then what
a high wall at one end, flanked by a summer-house
BO lofty that after ascending its long flight of steps
you could see perfectly well there was no view
worth looking at ; what alcoves and garden-seats in
all directions; and along one side, what n hedge,
tall and Arm and unbroken, like a green wall !
It was near this hedge that Mr. Jerome was stand-
ing when Sally found him. He had set down the
basket of strawberries on the gravel, and had lifted
up little Lizzie in hia arms to look at a bird's-nest.
Lizzie peeped, and then looked at her grandpa with
round blue eyes, and then peeped again.
"D'ye see it, Lizzie?" he whispered.
"Yes," she whispered in return, putting her lips
very near grandpa's face. At this moment Sally
appeared.
"Eh, eh, Sally, what's the matter! Is Mr.
Tryan come ? "
" No, sir, an" Missis says she's sure he won't come
now, an' she wants yon to come in an' bev tea.
Dear heart, Miss Lizzie, you've stained your pina-
fore, an' I should n't wonder if it 's gone through to
your frock. There '11 be fine work ! Come along
wi' me, do ! "
" Nay, nay, nay, we 've done no harm, we 've
done no harm, hev we, Lizzie? The washtub 'nil
make all right again. "
Sally, regarding the washtub from a different
point of view, looked sourly serious, and hurried
away with Lizzie, who trotted submissively along,
her little head in eclipse under a large nankin
bonnet, while Mr. Jtrome followed leisurely with
his full broad shoulders in rather a stooping
28 SCENES or CLERICAL LIFE.
posture, and his large good-natured features and
white locks shaded by a broad-brimmed hat
** Mr. Jerome, I wonder at you, * said Mrs.
Jerome, in a tone of indignant remonstrance, evi-
dently sustained by a deep sense of injury, as her
husband opened the parlour door. " When will you
leave off invitin' people to meals an* not lettin*
'em know the time ? I *11 answer for 't, you
niver said a word to Mr. Tryan as we should take
tea at five o'clock. It 's just like you! "
" Nay, nay, Susan, ' answered the husband, in
a soothing tone, "there's nothin' amiss. I told
Mr. Tryan as we took tea at five punctial ; mayhap
summat 's a-detainin' on him. He 's a deal to do
an* to think on, remember. "
" Why, it 's struck six i' the kitchen a 'ready.
It *s nonsense to look for him comin' now. So you
may s well ring for th' urn. Now Sally's got th'
heater in the fire, we may 's well hev th' urn in,
though he does n't come. I niver see'd the like
o' you, Mr. Jerome, for axin' people an' givin' me
the trouble o' gettin' things down an' hevin'
crumpets made, an' after all they don't come.
I shall hev to wash every one o' these tea-things
myself, for there *s no trustin' Sally, — she'd break
a fortin i' crockery i' no time ! "
" But why will you give yourself sich trouble,
Susan? Our every -day tea-things would ha' done
as well for Mr. Tryan, an' they're a deal con-
venenter to hold. "
" Yes, that *s just your way, Mr. Jerome, you 're
al'ys a-findin' faut wi' my chany, because I bought
it myself afore I was married. But let me tell you,
I knowed how to choose chany if I didn't know
how to choose a husband. An* where 's Lizzie?
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
29
You 've niver left her i' the garden by herself, with
her white frock on an' clean stockJu's ? "
" Be easy, my dear Susan, be easy ; Lizzie 's come
in wi' Sally. She 's hevin' her pinafore took off, I '11
be bound. Ah 1 there 's Mr. Tryan a-comin' through
the gate,"
Mrs. Jerome began hastily to adjust her damask
napkin and the expression of her countenance for
the reception of the clergyman ; and Mr. Jerome
went out to meet bis guest, whom he greeted out-
side the door.
" Mr. Tryan, how do you do, Mr. Tryan ? Wel-
come to the White House! I'm glad to see you,
sir, — I 'm glad to see you."
If you had heard the tone of mingled good-will,
veneration, and condolence in which this greeting
was uttered, even without seeing the face that com-
pletely harmonized with it, you would have no diffi-
culty in inferring the ground-notes of Mr. Jerome's
character. To a fine ear that tone said as plainly
as possible : " Whatever recommends itself to me,
Thomas Jerome, as piety and goodness, shall have
my love and honour. Ah, friends, this pleasant
world is a sad one too, b n't it ? Let us help one
another, let us help one another." And it waa
entirely owing to this basis of character, not at all
from any clear and precise doctrinal discrimination,
that Mr. Jerome had very early in Ufe become e
Dissenter. In his boyish days he had been thrown
where Dissent seemed to have the balance of piety,
purity, and good works on its side, and to become a
Dissenter seemed to him identical with choosing God
instead of mammon. That race of Dissenters is
extinct in these days, when opinion has got far
ahead of feeling, and every chapel-going youth can
30 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
fill our ears with the advantages of the Voluntary
system, the corruptions of a State Church, and the
Scriptural evidence that the first Christians were
Congregationalists. Mr. Jerome knew nothing of
this theoretic basis for Dissent, and in the utmost
extent of his polemical discussion he had not gone
further than to question whether a Christian man
was bound in conscience to distinguish Christmas
and Easter by any peculiar observance beyond the
eating of mince-pies and cheese-cakes. It seemed
to him that all seasons were alike good for thank-
ing God, departing from evil and doing well, whereas
it might be desirable to restrict the period for
indulging in unwholesome forms of pastry. Mr.
Jerome's dissent being of this simple, non-polemical
kind, it is easy to understand that the report he
heard of Mr. Tryan as a good man and a powerful
preacher, who was stirring the hearts of the people,
had been enough to attract him to the Paddiford
Church, and that having felt himself more edified
there than he had of late been under Mr. Stickney's
discourses at Salem, he had driven thither repeat-
edly in the Sunday afternoons, and had sought an
opportunity of making Mr. Tryan's acquaintance.
The evening lecture was a subject of warm interest
with him, and the opposition Mr. Tryan met with
gave that interest a strong tinge of partisanship ; for
there was a store of irascibility in Mr. Jerome's
nature which must find a vent somewhere, and in
so kindly and upright a man could only find it in
indignation against those whom he held to be ene-
mies of truth and goodness. Mr. Tryan had not
hitherto been to the White House ; but yesterday,
meeting Mr. Jerome in the street, he had at once
accepted the invitation to tea, saying there was
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 31
6omethiDg he -wished to talk about Ife appeared
worn and fatigued now, and after shaking hands
with Mrs. Jerome, threw himself into a chair and
looked out on the pretty garden with an air of relief,
" ^\'Tiat a nice place you have here, Mr. Jerome !
I "ve not seen anything so quiet and pretty since
I came to Milby, On Paddiford Common, where I
live, you know, the Lushes are all sprinkled with
Boot, and there 's never any quietexcept in the dead
of night."
" Dear heart ! dear heart ! That 's very bad, —
and for you, too, as hev to study. Would n't it be
better for you to he somewhere more out i' the coun-
try like ? "
" Oh, no ! I should loge so much time in going to
and fro ; and besides, I like tij be amonu the people.
I 've no face to go and preach resignation to those
poor things in their smoky air and comfortless
homes, when I come straight from every luxury
myself. There are many things quite lawful for
other men, which a clergyman must forego if he
would do any good in a manufacturing population
like this."
Here the preparations for tea were crowned by
the simultaneous appearance of Lizzie and the crum-
pet It ia a pretty surprise, when one visits an elderly
couple, to see a little figure enter in a white frock
with a blond head as smooth as satin, rouud blue
eyes, and a cheek like an apple-blossom. A tod-
dling little girl is a centre of common feeUng which
makes the most dissimilar people understand each
other ; and Mr. Tryan looked at Lizzie with that
quiet pleasure which is always genuine.
" Here we are, here we are ! " said proud grandpapa.
"You didn't think we'd got such a little gell as
32 SCENES or CLERICAL LIFE.
this, did you, Mr. Tryan ? Why, it seems but th'
other day since her mother was just such another.
This is our little Lizzie, this is. Come an' shake
hands wi' Mr. Tryan, Lizzie ; come."
Lizzie advanced without hesitation, and put out
one hand, while she fingered her coral necklace with
the other, and looked up into Mr. Tryan's face with
a reconnoitring gaze. He stroked the satin head,
and said in his gentlest voice, " How do you do,
Lizzie ? will you give me a kiss ? " She put up her
little bud of a mouth, and then retreating a little
and glancing down at her frock, said, —
" Dit id my noo fock. I put it on *tod you wad
toming. Tally taid you would n't 'ook at it"
" Hush, hush, Lizzie ! little gells must be seen
and not heard," said Mrs. Jerome ; while grand-
papa, winking significantly, and looking radiant
with delight at Lizzie's extraordinary promise of
cleverness, set her up on her high cane-chair by the
side of grandma, who lost no time in shielding the
beauties of the new frock with a napkin.
"Well now, Mr. Tryan," said Mr. Jerome, in a
very serious tone when tea had been distributed,
" let me hear how you *re a-goin* on about the lectur.
When I was i' the town yisterday, I beared as there
was pessecutin* schemes a-bein' laid again* you. I
fear me those raskills '11 mek things very onpleasant
to you."
" I 've no doubt they will attempt it ; indeed, I
quite expect there will be a regular mob got up on
Sunday evening, as there was when the delegates
returned, on purpose to annoy me and the congre-
gation on our way to church. "
" Ah, they *re capible o* anything, such men as
Dempster an' Budd; an' Tomlinson backs 'em wi'
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 33
money, though he can't wi' "brains. Howiver,
Dempster's lost one client by his wicked doin's,
au' I 'm deceived if lie won't lose more nor one.
I little thought, Mr. Tryan, when I put my affairs
into his bands twenty 'ear ago this Michaelmas,
as he was to turn out a pessecutor o' religion. T
niver lighted on a cliverer, promisiner young man
nor he was then. They talked of his bein" fond of
a extry glass now an' then, but niver nothin' like
what he's come to since. An' it's head-piece
you must look for in a lawyer, Mr. Tryan, it 'a
head-piece. His wife, too, was al'ys au uncom-
mon favourite 0' mine, — poor thing ! I hear sad
stories about her now. But she 's druv to it, she 'a
druv to it, Mr. Tryan, A tender-hearted woman
to the poor, she is, as iver lived; an' as pretty-
spoken a woman as you need wish to talk to.
Yes I I 'd al'ys a likin' for Dempster an' his wife,
spite 0' iver)'thing. But as soon as iver I beared
0' that dilegate business, I says, says I, that man
shall hev no more to do wi' my affairs. It may
put me t' inconvenience, but I '11 encourage no
man as pessecutes religion. "
" He is evidently the brain and hand of the
persecution, ° said Mr. Tryan. " There may be a
strong feeling against me in a large number of the
inhabitants, — it must be so from the great igno-
rance of spiritual things in this place. But I fancy
there would have been no formal opposition to the
lecture, if Dempster had not planned it I am
not myself the least alarmed at anything he can
do; he will find I am not to be cowed or driven
away by insult or personal danger. God has sent
me to this place, and, by His blessing, I '11 not
shrink from anything I may have to encounter in
34 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
doing His work among the people. But I feel it
right to call on all those who know the value of
the Gospel, to stand by me publicly. I think —
and Mr. Landor agrees with me — that it will be
well for my friends to proceed with me in a body
to the church on Sunday evening. Dempster, you
know, has pretended that almost all the respecta-
ble inhabitants are opposed to the lecture. Now,
I wish that falsehood to be visibly contradicted.
What do you think of the plan? I have to-day
been to see several of my friends, who will make
a point of being there to accompany me, and will
communicate with others on the subject "
" I '11 make one, Mr. Tryan, I *11 make one.
You shall not be wantin* in any support as I can
give. Before you come to it, sir, Milby was a
dead an' dark place; you are the fust man i' the
Church to my knowledge as has brought the word
o' God home to the people ; an' I '11 stan' by you,
sir, I '11 stan' by you. I 'm a Dissenter, Mr.
Tryan ; I 've been a Dissenter ever sin' I was
fifteen 'ear old; but show me good i* the Church,
an' I 'm a Churchman too. When I was a boy I
lived at Tilston ; you mayn't know the place;
the best part o* the land there belonged to Squire
Sandeman ; he *d a club-foot, had Squire Sande-
man, — lost a deal o' money by canal shares. Well,
sir, as I was sayin', I lived at Tilston, an' the
rector there was a terrible drinkin', fox-huntin'
man; you niver see'd such a parish i' your time
for wickedness; Milby's nothin' to it. Well, sir,
my father was a workin* man, an' could n't afford
to gi' me ony eddication, so I went to a night-
school as was kep by a Dissenter, one Jacob
Wright; an* it was from that man, sir, as I got
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
' Jacob, ■
I
my little Bchoolir
I went to chapel ■
was Jacob, — an" to chapel I 've been iver since.
But I 'm no enemy o' the Church, sir, when the
Church brings light to the ignorant and the sinful ;
an* that 'a what you 're a-doin'. Mr, Tryan. Yes,
air, I '11 Stan' by you. I '11 go to church wi' you
o' Sunday evenin". °
" You 'd far better stay at home, Mr. Jerome, if
I may give my opinion,' interposed Mrs. Jerome.
" It 'a not as I hevn't ivery respect for you, Mr.
Tryan. but Mr. Jerome 'nil do you no good by his
interferin". Dissenters are not at all looked on i'
Milby, an' he 's as nervonsas iver he can be; he "U
come back as ill as ill, an' niver let me hev a wink
o' sleep all night, "
Mrs. Jerome had been frightened at the mention
of a mob, and her retrospective regard for the reli-
gious communion of her youth by no means inspired
her with the temper of a martyr. Her husband
looked at her with an expression of tender and
grieved remonstrance, which might have been that
of the patient patriarch on the memorable occasion
when he rebuked his wife.
" Susan, Susan, let me beg on you not to oppose
me, and put stumblin'-blocks i' the way o' doin'
what 's right. I can't give up my conscience, let
me give up what else I may. "
■ Perhaps," said Mr. Tryan, feeling slightly
uncomfortable, " since you are not very strong, my
dear sir, it will be well, as Mrs. Jerome suggests,
that you should not ran the risk of any excitement, "
" Say no more, Mr. Tryan. I 'II stan' by you,
sir. It's my duty. It's the cause o' God, sir;
it "a the cause o' God. "
36 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
Mr. Tryan obeyed his impulse of admiration and
gratitude, and put out his hand to the white-haired
old man, saying, " Thank you, Mr. Jerome, thank
you. "
Mn Jerome grasped the proffered hand in silence,
and then threw himself back in his chair, casting
a regretful look at his wife, which seemed to say,
" Why don't you feel with me, Susan ? "
The sympathy of this simple-minded old man
was more precious to Mn Tryan than any mere
onlooker could have imagined. To persons pos-
sessing a great deal of that facile psychology which
prejudges individuals by means of formulae, and
casts them, without further trouble, into duly
lettered pigeon-holes, the Evangelical curate might
seem to be doing simply what all other men like
to do, — carrying out objects which were identified
not only with his theory, which is but a kind of
secondary egoism, but also with the primary egoism
of his feelings. Opposition may become sweet to a
man when he has christened it persecution : a self-
obtrusive, over hasty reformer complacently dis-
claiming all merit, while his friends call him a
martyr, has not in reality a career the most arduous
to the fleshly mind. But Mr. Tryan was not cast
in the mould of the gratuitous martyr With a
power of persistence which had been often blamed
as obstinacy, he had an acute sensibility to the very
hatred or ridicule he did not flinch from provoking.
Every form of disapproval jarred him painfully;
and though he fronted his opponents manfully, and
often with considerable warmth of temper, he had
no pugnacious pleasure in the contest. It was one
of the weaknesses of his nature to be too keenly
alive to every harsh wind of opinion; to wince
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 37
andei the trowna of the foolish ; to be irritated by
the iDJustice of those who could not possibly have
the elements indispensable for judging him rightly ;
and with all this acute sensibility to blame, this
dependence on sympathy, he had for years been
constrained into a position of antagonism. No
wonder, then, that good old Mr. Jerome's cordial
words were ba!m to him. He hnd often been
thankful to an old woman for saying " God bless
you;" toa little child for smiling at him; toadog
for submitting to be patted by liim.
Tea being over by this time, Mr Tryan proposed
a walk in the garden as a means of dissipating all
recollection of the recent conjugal dissidence.
Little Lizzie's appeal, "Me go, gandpa!" could
not be rejected; so she was duly bonneted and
pinafored, and then they turned out into the even-
ing sunshine. Not Mrs. Jerome, however; she
had a deeply meditated plan of retiring ad interim
to the kitchen and washing up the best tea-thinga,
as 8 mode of getting forward with the sadly
retarded business of the day.
" This way, Mr. Tryan, this way," said the old
gentleman ; " I must take you to my pastur fust,
an' show you our cow, — the best milker i' the
country. An' see here at these back-buildins, how
convenent the dairy ia; I planned it ivery bit my-
self. An' here I've got my little carpenter's
shop an' my blacksmith's shop. I do no end 0'
jobs here myself 1 niver could bear to be idle,
Mc Tryan ; 1 must al'ys be at somethio' or other.
It was time for me to lay by business an' mek
room for younger folks. I 'd got money enough
wi" only one daughter to leave it to, an' I says
to myself, says I,, it 's time to leave ofl moitherin'
38 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
myself wi' this world so much, an* give more
time to thinkin' of another. But there 's a
many hours atween getting up an' lyin* down,
an ' thoughts are no cumber ; you can move about
wi ' a good many on 'em in your head. See, here 's
the pastur. "
A very pretty pasture it was, where the large-
spotted short-horned cow quietly chewed the cud
as she lay and looked sleepily at her admirers, — a
daintily trimmed hedge all round, dotted here and
there with a mountain-ash or a cherry-tree.
" I *ve a good bit more land besides this, worth
your while to look at, but mayhap it *s further nor
you *d like to walk now. Bless you! I *ve welly
an acre o' potato-ground yonders; I 've a good big
family to supply, you know. " (Here Mr. Jerome
winked and smiled significantly.) " An* that puts
me i* mind, Mr Try an, o* summat I wanted to
say to you. Clergymen like you, I know, see a
deal more poverty an* that than other folks, an'
hev a many claims on *em more nor they can well
meet; an' if you *11 mek use o' my purse any time,
or let me know where I can be o* any help, 1 11
tek it very kind on you. "
" Tlmuk you, Mr. Jerome, I will do so, I prom-
ise you. I saw a sad case yesterday ; a collier — a
tine broad-chested fellow about thirty — was killed
by the falling of a wall in the Paddiford colliery.
I was in one of the cottages near, when they
brought him home on a door, and the shriek of the
wife has been ringing in my ears ever since. There
are three little children. Happily the woman has
her loom, so she will be able to keep out of the
workhouse ; but she looks very delicate. "
" Give me her name, Mr. Tryan, " said Mr.
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 39
Jerome, drawing out his pocket-bouk. " I '11 call
au' see her. '
Deep was the fountain of pity in the good old .
man's heart 1 He often ate his dinner stintingly,
oppressed by the thought that there were men,
women, and children with no dinner to ait down
to, and would relieve his mind by goinp out in the
afternoon to look for some need that he could sup-
ply, some honest struggle in which be could lend
a helping hand. That any living being should
want, was his chief sorrow; that any rational
being should waste, was the next. Sally, indeed,
having been scolded by master for a too lavish use
of sticks in lighting the kitchen fire, and various
instances of recklessness with regard to candle-
ends, considered hira "as mean aa aenythink;"
but he had as kindly a warmth as the morning
sunlight, and, like the sunlight, his goodness
shone on all thai came in his way, from the saucy
rosy-cheeked lad whom he delighted to make
happy with a Christmas box, to the pallid sufferers
up dim entries, languishing under the tardy death
of want and misery.
It was very pleasant to Mr. Tryan to listen to
the simple chat of the old man, — to walk in the
shade of the incomparable orchard, and hear the
story o[ the crops yielded by the red-streaked
apple-tree, and the quite embarrassing plentiful-
s of the summer-pears, — to drink in the sweet
evening breath of the garden, as they sat in the
alcove, — and so, for a short interval, to feel the
strain of his pastoral task relaxed.
Perhaps be felt the return to that task through
the dusty roads all the more painfully, perhaps
something in that quiet shady home had reminded
40 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
him of the time before he had taken on him the
yoke of self-denial. The strongest heart will faint
sometimes under the feeling that enemies are
bitter, and that friends only know half its sorrows.
The most resolute soul will now and then cast
back a yearning look in treading the rough moun-
tain-path, away from the greensward and laughing
voices of the valley. However it was, in the nine
o'clock twilight that evening, when Mr. Tryan
had entered his small study and turned the key in
the door, he threw himself into the chair before
his writing-table, and, heedless of the papers
there, leaned his face low on his hand, and moaned
heavily.
It is apt to be so in this life, I think. While
we are coldly discussing a man's career, sneering
at his mistakes, blaming his rashness, and label-
ling his opinions " Evangelical and narrow, " or
" Latitudinarian and Pantheistic, " or ** Anglican
and supercilious, " that man, in his solitude, is per-
haps shedding hot tears because his sacrifice is a
hard one, because strength and patience are failing
him to speak the difficult word and do the diffi-
cult deed.
CHAPTER IX.
Mr. Trtan showed no such symptoma of weakness
on the critical Sunday. He uuhesitatingly re-
jected the suggestion that he should be taken to
church in Mr. Landor'a carriage, — a proposition
which that gentleman made as an amendment on
the original plan, when the rumours of meditated
insult became alarming. Mr. Tryan declared he
would have no precautions taken, but would sim-
ply trust in God and his good cause. Some of his
more timid friends thought this conduct rather
defiaut than wise, and reflecting that a mob has
great talents [or impromptu, and that legal redress
is imperfect satisfaction for having one's head
broken with a brickbat, were beginning to ques-
tion their consciences very closely as to whether it
was not a duty they owed to their families to stay
at home on Sunday evening. These timorous per-
sons, however, were in a small minority, and the
generality of Mr, Tryan 's friends and hearers
rather exulted iu an opportunity of braving insult
for the sake of a preacher to whom they were
attached on personal as well as doctrinal grounds.
Miss Pratt spoke of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer,
and observed that the present crisis afforded an
occasion for emulating their heroism even in these
degenerate times; while less highly instructed
persons, whose memories were not well stored with
precedents, simply expressed their determination,
42 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
as Mr. Jerome had done, to " stan' by" the
preacher and his cause, believing it to be the
" cause of God. "
On Sunday evening, then, at a quarter-past six,
Mr. Tryan, setting out from Mr. Landor*s with a
party of his friends who had assembled there, was
soon joined by two other groups from Mr. Pratt's
and Mr. Dunn's; and stray persons on their way
to church naturally falling into rank behind this
leading file, by the time they reached the entrance
of Orchard Street, Mr. Tryan 's friends formed
a considerable procession, walking three or four
abreast. It was in Orchard Street, and towards
the church gates, that the chief crowd was col-
lected; and at Mr. Dempster's drawing-room
window, on the upper floor, a more select assem-
bly of Anti-Tryanites were gathered to witness the
entertaining spectacle of the Tryanites walking to
church amidst the jeers and hootings of the crowd.
To prompt the popular wit with appropriate
sobriquets, numerous copies of Mr. Dempster's
play-bill were posted on the walls, in suitably
large and emphatic type. As it is possible that
the most industrious collector of mural literature
may not have been fortunate enough to possess
himself of this production, which ought by all
means to be preserved among the materials of our
provincial religious history, I subjoin a faithful
copy.
GRAND ENTERTAINMENT ! ! !
To be given at Milby on Sunday evening next, by the
Famous Comedian, TRY-IT-ON 1
And his first-rate Company, including not only an
Unparalleled Cast for Comedy I
But a Large Collection of reclaimed ai^d converted Animals ;
JANETS REPENTANCE. 43
Among the rest
A Bear, who used to danei !
A Parrot, once Riven to rataring 1 1
A I'lAjigamoiit Fig .'II
A Monkey who used to eateh fieok on u Sunday ! ! 1 1
Together with a
Pnir of regenerated Linnrts !
With an entirely new eong, and plujiuige
Mr. Trt-it-on
Will first pass through the streets, in procesnion, with his nn-
rivalled Company, warranted to have their eye» tunted vp
higher, and the eanicTi 0/ their mouthi turned down Imeer,
than any otter company of Mountehanka in this circuit I
The Theatre will l>e o[ieni!<l, and the entertftinmeiit will
conimcQce at Half-Past Six,
When will be presented
A piece, never before performed on any stage, entitled
THE WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING;
The Methodist in a Mask.
Mr. BoanfTges Soft Sawder ... Mr. Try-it-om.
014 Ten-per-cent Godly .... Mr. Gandes-
Dr. Feedemup Mr. Tonic.
Mr. Lime-Twifi Lady-winner ... Mr. Tbt-it-on.
Miai Piety-bait-lh'e-hook . . . Mias Tosic.
Angelica Miss Sekaphina Tonic.
After which
A miscellaneoas Uusicnl Interlude, commencing with
The Lamentation* of Jerom-iah!
In na^ recitative.
To be followed by
The favourite Cackling Quartette,
by
Ttvo Urn-birdt who are no chukensi
The well-known CDun(cr-tenor, Mr. Done, and a Gander,
lineally descended from the Goo'e that kid golden egga I
44 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
To conclude with a
Grand Chorus by the
Entire Orchestra of Converted Animals ! !
But owing to the unavoidable absence (from illness) of the
BuMdog, who has left off fighting^ Mr. Tonic has kindly under-
taken, at a moment's notice, to supply the " bark I "
The whole to conclude with a
Screaming Farce of
THE PULPIT SNATCHER.
Mr. Saintly Smooth-Face .... Mr. Try-it-on !
Mr. Worming Sneaker . . .
Mr. All-grace No-works . .
Mr. Elect-and-Chosen Apewell
Mr. Malevolent Prayerful . .
Mr. Foist-himself-everywhere .
Mr. Flout-the-aged Upstart
Mr. Try-it-on ! !
Mr. Try-it-on ! ! !
Mr. Try-it-on ! ! ! !
Mr. Try-it-on ! ! ! ! !
Mr. Try-it-on !!!!!!
Mr. Try-it-on !!!!!!
Admission Free. A Collection will be made at the Doors.
Vivat Rex I
This satire, though it presents the keenest edge
of Milby wit, does not strike you as lacerating, I
imagine. But hatred is like fire, — it makes even
light rubbish deadly. And Mr. Dempster's sar-
casms were not merely visible on the walls ; they
were reflected in the derisive glances, and audible
in the jeering voices of the crowd. Through this
pelting shower of nicknames and bad puns, with an
ad libitum accompaniment of groans, howls, hisses,
and hee-haws, but of no heavier missiles, Mr.
Tryan walked pale and composed, giving his arm
to old Mr. Landor, whose step was feeble. On the
other side of him was Mr. Jerome, who still walked
firmly, though his shoulders were slightly bowed.
Outwardly Mr. Trj^an was composed, but in-
wardly he was suffering acutely from these tones
JANErS REPENTANCE. 45
of hatred and scorn. However strong his con-
sciousness of right, he found it no stronger armour
against such weapons as derisive glances and viru-
lent words than against stones and clubs : his
conscience was in repose, but his sensibility was
bruised.
Once more only did the Evangelical curate pass
up Orchard Street followed by a train of friends ;
once more only was there a crowd assembled to
witness his entrance through the church gates.
But that second time no voice was heard above a
whisper, and the whispers were words of sorrow
and blessing. That second time Janet Dempster
was not looking on in scorn and merriment; her
eyes were worn with grief and watching, and she
was following her beloved friend and pastor to the
grave.
CHAPTER X.
History, we know, is apt to repeat herself, and to
foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight
change of costume. From the time of Xerxes
downwards, we have seen generals playing the
braggadocio at the outset of their campaigns, and
conquering the enemy with the greatest ease in
after-dinner speeches. But events are apt to be in
disgusting discrepancy with the anticipations of
the most ingenious tacticians; the difficulties of
the expedition are ridiculously at variance with
able calculations; the enemy has the impudence
not to fall into confusion as had been reasonably
expected of him ; the mind of the gallant general
begins to be distracted by news of intrigues against
him at home, and, notwithstanding the handsome
compliments he paid to Providence as his un-
doubted patron before setting out, there seems
every probability that the Te Deums will be all on
the other side.
So it fell out with Mr. Dempster, in his memo-
rable campaign against the Auti-Tryanites. After
all the premature triumph of the return from
Elmstoke, the battle of the Evening Lecture had
been lost; the enemy was in possession of the
field ; and the utmost hope remaining was, that by
a harassing guerilla warfare he might be driven to
evacuate the country.
For some time this sort of warfare was kept up
with considerable spirit The shafts of Milby
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
47
ridicule were made more formidable by being
poisoned with calumny; and very ugly stories,
narrated with circumstantial minuteness, were soon
in circulation concerning Mr. Tryan and his hear-
ers, from which stories it was plainly deducible
that Evangelicalism led by a necessary consequence
to hypocritical indulgence in vice. Some old
friendships were broken asunder, and there were
near relations who felt that religious difl'erences,
unmitigated by any prospect of a legacy, were a
sufKcient ground for exhibiting their family anti-
pathy. Mr. Budd harangued his workmen, and
threatened them with dismissal if they or their
families were known to attend the evening lecture;
and Mr Tomlinson, on discovering that his fore-
man was a rank Tryanite, blustered to a great
extent, and would have cashiered that valuable
functionary on the spot, if such a retributive pro-
cedure had not been inconvenient.
On the whole, however, at the end of a few
months, the balance of substantial loss was on the
side of the Anti-Tryanites. Mr. I'ratt, indeed,
had lost a patient or two besides Mr. Dempster's
family; but as it was evident that Evangelicalism
had not dried up the stream of his anecdote, or in
the least altered his view of any lady's constitu-
tion, it is probable that a change accompanied by
ao few outward and visible signs, was rather the
pretext than the ground of his dismissal in those
additional cases. Mr. Dunn was threatened with
the loss of several good customers, Mrs. Phipps
and Mrs. Lowme having set the example of order-
ing him to send in his bill; and the draper began
to look forward to his next stock-taking with an
anxiety which was but slightly mitigated by the
48
SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
parallel liis wife suggested between his own case
and that of Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego,
who were thrust into a burning fiery furnace. For,
as he observed to her the next morning, with that
perspicacity which belongs to the period of shav-
ing, whereas their deliverance consisted in the fact
that their linen and woollen goods were not con-
sumed, his own deliverance lay in precisely the
opposite result But convenience, that admirable
branch system from the main line of self-interest,
makes us all fellow-helpers in spite of adverse
resolutions. It is probable that no speculative or
theological hatred would be ultimately strong
enough to resist the persuasive power of conven-
ience : that a latitudinarian baker, whose bread
was honourably free from alum, would command
the custom of any dyspeptic Puseyite; that an
Arminian with the toothache would prefer a skil-
ful Calvinistic dentiat to a bungler stanch against
the doctrines of Election and Final Perseverance,
who would be likely to break the tooth in his
head ; and that a Plymouth Brother, who had a
well -furnished grocery-shop in a favourable vici-
nage, would occasionally have the pleasure of
furnishing sugar or vinegar to orthodox families
that found themselves unexpectedly " out of "
those indispensable commodities. In this persua-
sive power of convenience lay Mr. Dunn's ultimate
security from martyrdom. His drapery was the
best in Milby; the comfortable use and wont of
procuring satisfactory articles at a moment's notice
proved too strong for Anti-Tryanite zeal ; and the
draper could soon look forward to his next stock-
tAking without the support of a Scriptural parallel.
On the other hand, Mr. Dempster had lost his
JANET'S REPENTANCE, 49
excellent client, Mr. Jerome, — a loss which gallud
him out of proportion to tlie mere monetary deficit
it represented. The attorney loved money, but he
loved power still better. He had always been
proud of having early won the confidence of a con-
venticle-goer, and of being able to " turn the prop
of Salem round hia thumb. * Like most other
men, too, he had a certain kindness towards those
who had employed him when he was only starting
in life ; and juat as we do not like to part with an
old weather-glass from our study, or a two-feet
ruler that we have carried in our pocket ever since
we began business, so Mr, Dempster did not like
having to erase his old client's name from the
accustomed drawer in the bureau. Our habitual
life is like a wall hung with pictures, which has
been shone on by the suns of many years : take one
of the pictures away, and it leaves a definite blank
space, to which our eyes can never turn without
a sensation o( discomfort Nay, the involuntary
loss of any familiar object almost always brings a
chill as from an evil omen ; it seems to be the first
finger-shadow of advancing death.
From all these causes combined, Mr. Dempster
could never think of his lost client without strong
irritation, and the very sight ot Mr, Jerome pass-
ing in the street was wormwood to him.
One day, when the old gentleman was coming
up Orchard Street on his roan mare, shaking the
bridle, and tickling her flank with the whip as
usual, though there was a perfect mutual under-
standing that she was not to quicken her pace,
Janet happened to be on her own door-step, and
he could not resist the temptation of stopping to
speak to that "nice little woman," as he always
so SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
called her, though she was taller than all the rest
of his feminine acquaintances. Janet, in spite of
her disposition to take her husband's part in all
public matters, could bear no malice against her
old friend; so they shook handa
" Well, Mrs. Dempster, I 'm sorry to my heart
not to see you sometimes, that I am,* said Mr.
Jerome, in a plaintive tone. " But if you 've got
any poor people as wants help, and you know 's
deservin*, send *em to me, send 'em to me, just
the same. "
" Thank you, Mr. Jerome, that I will. Good-
by."
Janet made the interview as short as she could,
but it was not short enough to escape the observa-
tion of her husband, who, as she feared, was on
his mid-day return from his office at the other end
of the street ; and this offence of hers, in speaking
to Mr. Jerome, was the frequently recurring theme
of Mr. Dempster's objurgatory domestic eloquenca
Associating the loss of his old client with Mr.
Try an 's influence, Dempster began to know more
distinctly why he hated the obnoxious curate.
But a passionate hate, as well as a passionate love,
demands some leisure and mental freedom. Perse-
cution and revenge, like courtship and toadyism,
will not prosper without a considerable expendi-
ture of time and ingenuity ; and these are not to
spare with a man whose law-business and liver are
both beginning to show unpleasant symptoms.
Such was the disagreeable turn affairs were taking
with Mr. Dempster; and, like the general dis-
tracted by home intrigues, he was too much
harassed himself to lay ingenious plans for harass-
ing the enemy.
JANET'S REPENTANCE. si
Meanwhile the evening lecture drew larger and
larger congregatinns ; not perhaps attracting many
from that selert aristocratic circle in which the
Lowmes and Pittmans were predominant, but win-
ning the larger proportion of Mr Crewe's morning
and afternoon hearers, and thinning Mr. Stickney's
evening audiences at Salem. Evangelicalism was
making its way in Milby, and grndually diffusing
its subtle odour into chambers that were bolted and
barred against it The movement, like all other
religions "revivals." had a mixed effucL Reli-
gious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once
set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of
instruments, some of them wofully coarse, feeble,
or out of tune, until people are in danger of crj'ing
out that the melody itself is detestable. It may
be that some of Mr. Tryan'a hearers had gained a
religious vocabulary rather than religious experi-
ence ; that here and there a weaver's wife who
a few months before had been simply a silly slat-
tern, was converted into that more complex nui-
sance, a silly and sanctimonious slattern; that the
old Adam, with the pertinacity of middle age,
continued to tell fibs behind the counter, notwith-
standing the new Adam's addiction to Bible-reading
and family prayer; that the children in the I'addi-
ford Sunday-school had their memories crammed
with phrases about the blood of cleansing, imputed
righteousness, and justification by faith alone,
which an experience lying principally in chuck-
farthing, hop-scotch, parental slappiugs, and long-
ings after unattainable lollypop, served rather to
darken than to illustrate; and that at Milby in
those distant days, as in all other times and places
where the mental atmosphere is changing, and
52 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
men are inhaling the stimulus of new ideas, folly
often mistook itself for wisdom, ignorance gave
itself airs of knowledge, and selfishness, turning
its eyes upward, called itself religion.
Nevertheless, Evangelicalism had brought into
palpable existence and operation in Milby society
that idea of duty, that recognition of something to
be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self,
which is to the moral life what the addition of a
great central ganglion is to animal life. No man
can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea
without rising to a higher order of experience :
a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has
been introduced into his nature ; he is no longer a
mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses.
Whatever might be the weaknesses of the ladies
who pruned the luxuriance of their lace and rib-
bons, cut out garments for the poor, distributed
tracts, quoted Scripture, and defined the true Gos-
pel, they had learned this, — that there was a
divine work to be done in life, a rule of goodness
higher than the opinion of their neighbours ; and
if the notion of a heaven in reserve for themselves
was a little too prominent, yet the theory of fitness
for that heaven consisted in purity of heart, in
Christ-like compassion, in the subduing of selfish
desires. They might give the name of piety to
much that was only puritanic egoism ; they might
call many things sin that were not sin ; but they
had at least the feeling that sin was to be avoided
and resisted, and colour-blindness, which may mis-
take drab for scarlet, is better than total blindness,
which sees no distinction of colour at all. Miss
Rebecca Linnet, in quiet attire, with a somewhat
excessive solemnity of countenance, teaching at
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
53
the Sunday-school, visiting the poor, and striving
after a atandard of purity and goodness, had surely
more moral loveliness than in those flnuntiug
peony-days, when she had no other model than the
costumes of the heroines in the circulating library.
Miss Eliza Pratt, listening in rapt attention to
Mr. Tryan's evening lecture, no doubt found evan-
gelical channels for vanity and egoism; but she
was clearly in moral advance of Miss Phipps gig-
gling under her feathers at old Mr. Crewe's pecu-
liarities of enunciation. And even elderly fathers
and mothers, with minds, like Mrs. Linnet's, too
tough to imbibe much doctrine, were the better
for having their hearts inclined towards the new
preacher as a messenger from God. They became
ashamed, perhaps, of their evil tempers, ashamed
of their worldliness, ashamed of their trivial,
futile past. The lirst condition of human goodness
is something to love ; the second, something to rev-
erence; and this latter precious gift was brought
to Milby by Mr. Trj^an and Evangelicalism.
Yes, the movement was good, though it had that
mixture of folly and evil which often makes what
is good an ofl'euce to feeble and fastidious minds,
who want human actions and characters riddled
through the sieve of their own ideas, before they
can accord their sympathy or admiration. Such
minds, I dare say, would have found Mr. Tryan 's
character very much in need of that riddling pro-
cess. The blessed work of helping the world
forward, happily does not wait to be done by per-
fect men ; and I should imagine that neither Luther
nor John Eunyan, for example, would have satisfied
the modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes
nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what
54 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
is exalted, and does nothing but what is graceful
The real heroes of God's making are quite dififer-
ent : they have their natural heritage of love and
conscience which they drew in with their mother's
milk ; they know one or two of those deep spirit-
ual truths which are only to be won by long wrest-
ling with their own sins and their own sorrows ;
they have earned faith and strength so far as they
have done genuine work ; but the rest is dry barren
theory, blank prejudice, vague hearsay. Their
insight is blended with mere opinion ; their sym-
pathy is perhaps confined in narrow conduits of
doctrine, instead of flowing forth with the freedom
of a stream that blesses every weed in its course ;
obstinacy or self-assertion will often interfuse it-
self with their grandest impulses ; and their very
deeds of self-sacrifice are sometimes only the
rebound of a passionate egoism. So it was with
Mr. Tryan ; and any one looking at him with the
bird's-eye glance of a critic might perhaps say that
he made the mistake of identifying Christianity
with a too narrow doctrinal system ; that he saw
God's work too exclusively in antagonism to the
world, the flesh, and the devil; that his intellec-
tual culture was too limited — and so on; making
Mr. Tryan the text for a wise discourse on the
characteristics of the Evangelical school in his
day.
But I am not poised at that lofty height I am
on the level and in the press with him, as he
struggles his way along the stony road, through
the crowd of unloving fellow-men. He is stum-
bling, perhaps ; his heart now beats fast with dread,
now heavily with anguish ; his eyes are sometimes
dim with tears, which he makes haste to dash
JANETS REPENTANCE. 55
away; he pushes manfully on, with fluctuating
faith and courage, with a sensitive failing body ;
at last he falls, the struggle is ended, and the
crowd closes over the space he has left
" One of the Evangelical clergy, a disciple of
Venn," says the critic from his bird's-eye station.
" Not a remarkable specimen ; the anatomy and
habits of his species have been determined long
ago."
Yet surely, surely the only true knowledge of
our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel
with him, — which gives us a fine ear for the heart-
pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of
circumstance and opinion. Our subtlest analysis
of schools and sects must miss the essential truth,
unless it be lit up by the love that sees in all
forms of human thought and work the life and
death struggles of separate human beings.
CHAPTER XI
Mr. Tkyan's most unfriendly observers were
obliged to admit that he gave himself no rest
Three sermons on Sunday, a night-school for young
men on Tuesday, a cottage-lecture on Thursday,
addresses to school-teachers, and catechising of
school-children, with pastoral visits, multiplying
as his influence extended beyond his own district
of Paddiford Common, would have been enough to
tax severely the powers of a much stronger man.
Mt Pratt remonstrated with him on his impru-
dence, but could not prevail on him so far to
economize time and strength as to keep a horse.
On some ground or other, which his friends found
difficult to explain to themselves, Mr. Tryan
seemed bent on wearing himself out. His enemies
were at no loss to account for such a course. The
Evangelical curate's selfishness was clearly of too
bad a kind to exhibit itself after the ordinary
manner of a sound, respectable selfishness. *' He
wants to get the reputation of a saint, " said one ;
** He 's eaten up with spiritual pride, " said an-
other ; " He 's got his eye on some fine living, and
wants to creep up the Bishop's sleeve," said a
third.
Mr Stickney, of Salem, who considered all
voluntary discomfort as a remnant of the legal
spirit, pronounced a severe condemnation on this
self-neglect, and expressed his fear that Mr. Tryan
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
5?
was still far from having attained true Christian
liberty. Good Mr. Jerome eagerly seized this doc-
trinal view of the subject as a means of enforcing
the suggtations of his own benevolence; and one
cloudy afternoon, in the end of November, he
mounted his roan mare with the determination of
riding to Paddiford and " arguying " the point with
Mr. Tryan.
The old gentleman's face looked very mournful
as he rode along the dismal Paddiford lanes, be-
tween rows of grimy houses, darkened with hand-
looms, while the black dust was whirled about
him by the cold November wind. He was think-
ing of the object which had brought him on this
afternoon ride ; and his thoughts, according to hia
habit when alone, found vent every now and then
in audible speech. It seemed to him, as his eyes
rested on this scene of Mr. Tryan's labours, that
he could understand the clergyman's self-priva-
tion without resorting to Mr. Stickney's theory of
defective spiritual enlightenment Do not philo-
sophic doctors tell us that we are unable to dis-
cern so much as a tree, except by an unconscious
cunning which combines many past and separate
sensations ; that no one sense is independent of
another, so that in the dark we can hardly taste a
fricassee, or tell whether our pipe is alight or not,
and the most intelligent boy, if accommodated
with claws or hoofs instead of fingers, would be
likely to remain on the lowest form? If so, it is
easy to understand that our discernment of men's
motives must depend on the completeness of the
elements we can bring from our own susceptibility
and our own experience. See to it, friend, before
you pronounce a too hasty judgment, that your
i
58 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
own moral sensibilities are not of a hoofed or
clawed character. The keenest eye will not serve,
unless you have the delicate fingers, with their
subtle nerve filaments, which elude scientific len-
ses, and lose themselves in the invisible world of
human sensationa
As for Mr. Jerome, he drew the elements of his
moral vision from the depths of his veneration and
pity. If he himself felt so much for these poor
things to whom life was so dim and meagre, what
must the clergyman feel who had undertaken be-
fore God to be their shepherd?
*^ Ah ! " he whispered interruptedly, " it 's too
big a load for his conscience, poor man ! He wants
to mek himself their brother, like; can't abide to
preach to the fastin' on a full stomach. Ah ! he 's
better nor we are, that s it, — he 's a deal better
nor we are "
Here Mr. Jerome shook his bridle violently, and
looked up with an air of moral courage, as if
Mr. Stickney had been present, and liable to take
offence at this conclusion. A few minutes more
brought him in front of Mrs. Wagstaff's, where
Mr Tryan lodged. He had often been here before,
so that the contrast between this ugly square brick
house, with its shabby bit of grass-plot, stared at
all round by cottage windows, and his own pretty
white home, set in a paradise of orchard and gar-
den and pasture, was not new to him ; but he felt
it with fresh force to-day, as he slowly fastened
his roan by the bridle to the wooden paling, and
knocked at the door. Mr. Tryan was at home,
and sent to request that Mr. Jerome would walk
up into his study, as the fire was out in the parlour
below.
JANET'S REPENTANCE, 59
At the mention of a clergyman's study, perhaps,
your too active imagination conjures up a perfect
snuggery, where the general air of comfort is res-
cued from a secular character by strong ecclesias-
tical suggestions in the shape of the furniture, the
pattern of the carpet, and the prints on the wall ;
where, if a nap is taken, it is in an easy-chair
with a Gothic back, and the very feet rest on a
warm and velvety simulation of church windows;
where the pure art oE rigorous English Protestan-
tism smiles above the mantelpiece iu the portrait
oE an eminent bishop, or a reliued Anglican taste
is indicated by a German print from Overbeck;
where the walls are lined with choice divinity in
sombre binding, and the light is softened by a
screen of boughs with a gray church in the back-
ground.
But I must beg you to dismiss all such scenic
prettiuess, suitable as they may be to a clergy-
man s character and complexion; for I have to
confess that Mr Tryan's study was a very ugly
little room indeed, with an ugly slap-dash pattern
on the walls, an ugly carpet on the floor, and an
ugly view of cottage roofs and cabbage -gardens
from the window. His own person, his writing-
table, and his bookcase were the only objects in
the room that had the slightest air oE refinement;
and the sole provision for comfort was a clumsy
Btrsight'backed arm-chair, covered with faded
chintz. The man who could live in such a room,
unconstrained by poverty, must either have his
vision fed from within by an intense passion, or
he must have chosen that least attractive form of
self mortification which wears no haircloth and has
no meagre days, but accepts the vulgar, the com-
6o SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
monplace, and the ugly, whenever the highest
duty seems to lie among them.
" Mi: Tryan, 1 hope you 11 excuse me disturbin*
on you/' said Mr. Jerome ; " but I *d summat par-
tickler to say."
** You don't disturb me at all, Mr. Jerome ; I *m
very glad to have a visit from you," said Mr. Tryan,
shaking him heartily by the hand, and offering him
the chintz-covered " easy "-chair ; '* it is some time
since I've had an opportunity of seeing you, except
on a Sunday."
" Ah, sir I your time 's so taken up, I 'm well
aware o* that; it's not only what you hev to do,
but it's goin' about from place to place; an' you
dcn't keep a boss, Mr. Tryan. You don't take care
enough o' yourself, — you don't indeed, an^ that's
what I come to talk to y about"
"That's very good of you, Mr. Jerome; but I
assure you I think walking does me no harm. It
is rather a relief to me after speaking or writing.
You know I have no great circuit to maka The
farthest distance I have to walk is to Milby Church,
and if ever I want a horse on a Sunday, 1 hire
Eadley's, who lives not many hundred yards from
me."
" Well, but now ! the winter 's comin* on, an*
you'll get wet i' your feet, an' Pratt tells me as
your constitution 's dillicate, as anybody may see,
for the matter o' that, wi'out bein' a doctor. An'
this is the light I look at it in, Mr Tryan : who 's
to fill up your place, if you was to be disabled, as
I may say ? Consider what a valyable life yours
is You've begun a great work i' Milby, and so
you might carry it on, if you 'd your health and
strengtL The more care you take o' yourself, the
JJINETS RErENTANCE
Ci
longer you '11 livp. belike, God willing, to do good
to your fellow-creaturs."
'* Why, my dear Mn Jerome, I tbink I should
not be a long-lived man in any case ; and if 1 were
to take care of myself under the pretext of doing
more good, I should very likely die and leave
nothing done after all,"
" Well ! but keepin' a boss would n't hinder you
from workin; It 'ud help you to do more, though
Pratt says as it 's usin' your voice so constant as
does you the most barm. Now, is n't it — I 'm no
scholard, Me Tryau, an' I 'ni not a-goin' to dictiite
to you — but is n't it a' most a-killin' o' yourself, to
go OQ a' that way beyond your strength ? We
must n't fling our lives away."
" No, not fling them away lightly, but we are per-
mitted to lay down our lives in a right cause. There
are many duties, as you know, Mr. Jerome, which
stand before taking care of our own lives."
" Ah ! I can't arguy wi' you, Mr. Trj-an ; but what
I wanted to say 's this : There 's my little cliacenut
boss ; I should take it quite a kindness if you 'd liev
him through the winter an' ride him. I "ve thought
o' sellin' him a many times, for Afrs. Jerome can't
abide him ; and what do I want wi' two nags ? But
I 'm fond o' the little chacenut, an' I should n't like to
sell him. So if you 1\ only ride him for me. you '11
do me a kindness, — you will, indeed Mr. Trj'an."
"Thank you, Mr, Jerome. I promise you to ask
for him, when I feel that I want a nag. There is
no man I would more gladly be indebted to than
you : but at present I would rather not have a horse.
1 should ride him very little, and it would be an
inconvenience to me to keep him rather than
til er wise."
62 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
Mr. Jerome looked troubled and hesitating, as if
he had something on his mind that would not
readily shape itself into words. At last he said:
•* You 11 excuse me, Mr Tryan, I would n't be takin'
a liberty, but I know what great claims you hev on
you as a clergyman. Is it the expense, Mr Tryan ?
is it the money ? "
" No, my dear sir. I have much more than a
single man needs. My way of living is quite of
my own choosing, and I am doing nothing but
what I feel bound to do, quite apart from money
considerations. We cannot judge for one another,
you know ; we have each our peculiar weaknesses and
temptations. I quite admit that it might be right
for another man to allow himself more luxuries,
and I assure you I think it no superiority in myself
to do without them. On the contrary, if my heart
were less rebellious, and if I were less liable to
temptation, I should not need that sort of self-
denial. But/' added Mr. Tryan, holding out his
hand to Mr. Jerome, " 1 understand your kindness,
and bless you for it. If I want a horse, I shall ask
for the chestnut."
Mr. Jerome was obliged to rest contented with this
promise, and rode home sorrowfully, reproaching
himself with not having said one thing he meant
to say when setting out, and with having " clean
forgot " the arguments he had intended to quote
from Mr. Stickney.
Mr. Jerome's was not the only mind that was
seriously disturbed by the idea that the curate was
overworking himself. There were tender women's
hearts in which anxiety about the state of his
affections was beginning to be merged in anxiety
about the state of his health. Miss Eliza Pratt had
JiNET'S REPENTANCE.
63
I
at one time passed through much sleepless cogita-
tion on tlie possibility of Mr, Trj-an's being attached
to Bome lady at a distance, — at Laxeter, perhaps,
where he had formerly held a curacy ; and her 6ne
eyes kept close watch lest any symptom of engaged
affections on his part should escape her. It seemed
an alarming fact that his handkerchiefs were beauti-
fully marked with hair, until she reflected that he
had an unmarried sister of whom he spoke with
much affection as his father's companion and com-
forter, Besides, Mr. Tr)'an had never paid any
distant visit, except one for a few days to his father,
and no hint escaped him of his intending to take a
house, or change his mode of living No I he could
not be engaged, though he might have been disap-
pointed. But this latter misfortune is one from
which a devoted clergyman has been known to
recover, by the aid of a fine pair of gray eyes that
beam on him with affectionate reverence. Before
Christmas, however, her cogitations began to take
another turn. She heard her father say very confi-
dently that " Tryan was consumptive, and if he
did n t take more care of himself, his life would not
be worth a year's purchase;" and shame at having
speculated on suppositions that were likely to prove
80 false sent poor Miss Eliza's feelings with all the
stronger impetus into the one channel of sorrowful
alarm at the prospect of losing the pastor who had
opened to her a new life of piety and self-subjection.
It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the
thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us ; as
if life were not sacred too. — as if it were compara-
tively a light thing to fail in love and reverence to
the brother who has to climb the whole toilsome
ateep with ns, and all our tears and tenderness were
doe to the one who is spared that hard journey.
i
64 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
The Miss Linnets, too, were beginning to take a
new view of the future, entirely uncoloured by jeal-
ousy of Miss Eliza Pratt
** Did you notice/* said Mary, one afternoon when
Mrs Pettifer was taking tea with them — " did you
notice that short dry cough of Mr Try an 's yester-
day ? I think he looks worse and worse every
week, and I only wish I knew his sister ; I would
write to her about him. I *m sure something should
be done to make him give up part of his work, and
he will listen to no one here."
** Ah," said Mrs. Pettifer, ** it 's a thousand pities
his father and sister can't come and live with him,
if he is n't to marry. But I wish with all my heart
he could have taken to some nice woman as would
have made a comfortable home for him. I used to
think he might take to Eliza Pratt ; she 's a good
girl, and very pretty ; but I see no likelihood of it
now."
** No, indeed," said Eebecca, with some emphasis ;
"Mr. Tryan's heart is not for any woman to win;
it is all given to his work ; and I could never wish
to see him with a young inexperienced wife who
would be a drag on him instead of a helpmate."
'*He'd need have somebody, young or old,"
observed Mrs. Linnet, ** to see as he wears a flannel
wescoat, an' changes his stockins when he comes
in. It 's my opinion he 's got that cough wi' sittin'
r wet shoes and stockins ; an* that Mrs. Wagstaff 's
a poor addle-headed thing ; she does n't half tek
care on him."
" Oh, mother 1 " said Rebecca, " she 's a very pious
woman. And I'm sure she thinks it too great a
privilege to have Mr. Tryan with her, not to do the
best she can to make him comfortable. She can't
help her rooms being shabby."
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
6s
" I Ve nothing to say again' her piety, my dear ;
but I know very well I should n't like her to cook
my victual. When a man comes in hungry an
tired, piety won't feed him, I reckon Hard
carrots 'nil lie heavy on his stomach, piety or no
piety. 1 called in one day when she was dishin"
up Mr. Trj-an's dinner, an' I could see the pota-
toes was as watery as watery. It's right enough
to be speritial, — I 'm no enemy to that , but I like
my potatoes mealy. I don't see as anybody 'uU go
to heaven the sooner for not digestin' their dinner, —
providin' they don't die sooner, as, mayhap, Mr.
Tryan will, poor dear man ! "
" It will be a heavy day for us all when that comes
to pass," said Mrs. Pettifer. " We shall never get
anybody to fill up that gap. There 's the new
clergyman that's just come to Shepperton, — Mr,
Parry ; I saw him the other day at Mrs. Bond's. He
may be a very good man, and a fine preacher; they
say he is ; but I thought to myself, Wliat a differ-
ence between him and Mr. Tryan • He 's a sharp-
sortof looking man, and has n't that feeling way with
him that Mr. Tryan has. What is so wonderful to
me in Mc Tryan is the way he puts himself on a
level with one, and talks to one like a brother. 1 'm
never afraid of telling him anything. He never
seems to look down on anybody. He knows how
to lift up those that are cast down, if ever man
did."
'■ Yea," said Mary. " And when I see all the
faces turned up to him in Paddiford Church, I often
think how hard it would be for any clergyman who
had to come after him ; he has made the people
love him so."
CHAPTER XIL
In her occasional visits to her near neighbour Mrs.
Pettifer, too old a friend to be shunned because she
was a Tryanite, Janet was obliged sometimes to
hear allusions to Mr. Tryan, and even to listen to
his praises, which she usually met with playful
incredulity
" Ah, well," she answered one day, " I like dear
old Mr. Crewe and his pipes a great deal better than
your Mr. Tryan and his Gospel. When I was a little
toddle, Mr. and Mrs. Crewe used to let me play
about in their garden, and have a swing between
the great elm-trees, because mother had no garden.
I like people who are kind ; kindness is my religion ;
and that 's the reason I like you, dear Mrs. Pettifer,
though you are a Tryanite."
" But that s Mr. Tryan's religion too, — at least
partly. There *s nobody can give himself up more
to doing good amongst the poor ; and he thinks of
their bodies too, as well as their souls."
" Oh, yes, yes ; but then he talks about faith, and
grace, and all that, making people believe they are
better than others, and that God loves them more
than He does the rest of the world. I know he has
put a great deal of that into Sally Martin's head,
and it has done her no good at all. She was as
nice, honest, patient a girl as need be before; and
now she fancies she has new light and new wisdom.
I don't like those notions."
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 6?
" You mistake him, indeed you do, my dear Mrs.
Dempster ; I wish you 'd go and hear him preach."
" Hear him preach ! Why, you wicked woman,
yoa would persuade me to disobey my husband,
would you ? Oh, shocking ! I shall run away from
yoiL Good-hy, "
A few days after this eonveraation, however,
Janet went to Sally Martin's about three o clock' in
the afternoon. The pudding that had been sent in
for herself and "Mammy" struck her as just the
sort of delicate morsel the poor consumptive girl
would be likely to fancy, and in her usual impul-
sive way she had started up from the dinnet-table
at once, put on her bonnet, and set off with a cov-
ered plateful to the neighbouring street. When she
entered the house there was no one to be seen ;
but in the little side-room where Sally lay, Janet
heard a voice. It was one she had not heard before,
but she immediately gaessed it to be Mr. Tryan's.
Her first impulse was to set down her plate and go
away ; but Mrs. Martin might not be in, and then
there would be no one to give Sally that delicious
bit of pudding. So she stood still, and was obliged
to hear what Mr. Tryan was saying. He was inter-
rupted by one of the invalid's violent fits of coughing.
" It is very hard to bear, is it not ? " he said, when
she was still again. " Yet God seems to support
you under it wonderfully. Pray for me, Sally, that
I may have strength too when the hour of great
suffering comes. It is one of my worst weaknesses
to shrink from bodily pain, and I think the time is
perhaps not far off when I shall have to bear what
you are bearing. But now I have tired you. We
have talked enough. Good-by."
Janet was surprised, and forgot her wish not to
68 SCENES OP CLERICAL LU'E.
encounter Mr, Tryan ; the tone and the words were
so unlike what she had expected to hear. There
was none of the self-satisfied unction of' the teacher,
quoting or exhorting or expounding, for the benefit of
the hearer, but a simple appeal for help, a confession
of weakness, Mr. Tryan had his deeply felt troubles
then ? Mr. Tryan, too. like herself, knew what it
was to tremble at a foreseen trial, — to shudder at
an impending burden heavier than he felt able to
bear?
The most brilliant deed of virtue could not have
inclined Janet's good-will towards Mr. Tryan so
much as this fellowship in suffering ; and the soften-
ing thought was in her eyes when be appeared in
the doorway, pale, weary, and depressed. The sight
of Janet standing there with the entire absence of
self-consciousness which belongs to a new and vivid
impression, made bim start and pause a little. Their
eyes met, and they looked at each other gravely for
a few moments. Then they bowed, and Mr. Tryan
passed out.
There is a power in the direct glance of a sincere
and loving human soul which will do more to dis-
sipate prejudice and kindle charity thao the most
elaborate arguments. The fullest exposition of Mr.
Tryan's doctrine might not have sufficed to convince
Janet that he had not an odious self-complacency
in believing himself a peculiar child of God ; but
one direct, pathetic look of his had associated him
with that conception forever.
This happened late in the autumn, not long before
Sally Martin died, Janet mentioned her new impres-
sion to no one, tor she was afraid of arriving at a
still more complete contradiction of bet former ideas.
We have all of us considerable regard for our past
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 69
self, and are not fond of casting reflections on that
respected individual by a total negation of his opin-
ions. Janet could no longer think of Mr. Tryan
without sympathy, but she still shrank from the idea
of becoming his hearer and admirer. That was a
reversal of the past which was as little accordant
with her inclination as her circumstances
And indeed this interview with Mi; Tryan was
soon thrust into the background of poor Janet*s
memory by the daily thickening miseries of her
life.
CHAPTER XIII.
The loss of Mt. Jerome as a client proved only the
beginning of annoyances to Dempster. That old
gentleman had in him the vigorous remnant of an
energy and perseverance which had created his own
fortune ; and being, as I have hinted, given to chew-
ing the cud of a righteous indignation with con-
siderable relish, he was determined to carry on his
retributive war against the persecuting attorney.
Having some influence with Mr. Pryme, who was one
of the most substantial rate-payers in the neigh-
bouring parish of Dingley, and who had himself
a complex and long-standing private account with
Dempster, Mr. Jerome stirred up this gentleman
to an investigation of some suspicious points in the
attorney's conduct of the parish aflairs. The natu-
ral consequence was a personal quarrel between
Dempster and Mr. Pryme ; the client demanded
his account, and then followed the old story of an
exorbitant lawyer's bill, with the unpleasant anti-
climax of taxing.
These disagreeables, extending over many months,
ran along side by side with the pressing business
of Mr. Armstrong's lawsuit, which was threatening
to- take a turn rather depreciatory of Dempster's
professional prevision ; and it is not surprising that,
being thus kept in a constant state of irritated excite-
ment about his own affairs, he had little time for
the further exhibition of his public spirit, or for
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 71
rallying the forlorn hope of sound church inanship
agaiust cant and hypocrisy. Not a few jjersona
who had a grudge against him hegau to remark,
with satisfaction, that " Dempster's luck was for-
saking him ;" particularly Mra. Linnet, who thought
she saw distinctly the gradual ripening of a provi-
dential scheme whereby a juat retribution would
be wrought on the man who had deprived her of
Pye'g Croft. On the other hand, Dempster's well-
satisfied clients, who were of opinion that the
punishment of his wickedness might conveniently
be deferred to another world, noticed with some
concern that he was drinking more than ever, and
that both his temper and his driving were becoming
more furious. Unhappily those additional glasses of
brandy, that exasperation of Inud-tongued abuse, had
other effects than any that entered into the con-
templation of anxious clients : they were the little
superadded symbols that were perpetually raising
the sum of home misery.
Poor Janet ! how heavily the months rolled on
for her, laden with fresh sorrows as the summer
passed into autumn, the autumn into winter, and
the winter into spring again ! Every feverish morn-
ing, with its blank listlessness and despair, seemed
more hateful than the last ; every coming night
more impossible to brave without arming herself in
leaden stupour. The morning light brought no glad-
ness to her: it seemed only to throw its glare on
what had happened in the dim candle-light, — on
the cruel man seated immovable in drunken obsti-
nacy by the dead fire and dying lights in the dining-
room, rating her in harsh tones, reiterating old
reproaches, — or on a hideous blank of something
unremembered, something that must have made
72 SCENES OE CLERICAL LIFE.
that dark bruise on her shoulder, which ached as
she dressed herself.
Do you wonder how it was that things had come
to this pass, — what ofiTence Janet had committed
in the early years of marriage to rouse the brutal
hatred of this man ? The seeds of things are very
small : the hours that lie between sunrise and the
gloom of midnight are travelled through by tiniest
markings of the clock ; and Janet, looking back
along the fifteen years of her married life, hardly
knew how or where this total misery began ; hardly
knew when the sweet wedded love and hope that
had set forever had ceased to make a twilight of
memory and relenting, before the oncoming of the
utter dark.
Old Mrs. Dempster thought she saw the true
beginning of it all in Janet's want of housekeeping
skill and exactness. "Janet," she said to herself,
** was always running about doing things for other
people, and neglecting her own house. That pro-
vokes a man : what use is it for a woman to be
loving, and making a fuss with her husband, if she
does n't take care and keep his home just as he likes
it; if she isn*t at hand when he wants anything
done ; if she does n't attend to all his wishes, let
them be as small as they may ? That was what I
did when I was a wife, though I did n't make half
so much fuss about loving my husband. Then,
Janet had no children." . . . Ah ! there Mammv
Dempster had touched a true spring, not perhaps of
her son's cruelty, but of half Janet's misery. If she
had had babes to rock to sleep, — little ones to
kneel in their nightdress and say their prayers at
her knees, — sweet boys and girls to put their young
arms round her neck and kiss away her tears, — her
JANETS REPENTANCE. 73
poor hungry heart would have been fed with strong
love, and might never have needed that fiery poisou
to still it3 cravings. Mighty is the force of mother-
hood! says the great tragic poet to us across the
ages, finding, as usual, the simplest words for the
sublimest fact,— heivov to Ti/cTetv iuriv. It trans-
forms all things by ita vital heat; it turns timidity
into fierce courage, and dreadless defiance into tremu-
lous submission ; it turns thoughtlessness into fore-
sight, and yet stills all an.\iety into calm content ; it
makes selfishness become self-denial, and gives even
to hard vanity the glance of admiring love. Yes ;
if Jauet bad been a mother, she might have been
saved from much sin, and therefore from much of
her sorrow.
But do not believe that it was anything either
present or wanting in poor Janet that formed the
motive of her husband's cruelty. Cruelty, like every
other vice, requires no motive outside itself, — it only
requires opportunity. You do not suppose Demp-
ster had any motive for drinking beyond the craving
for drink ; the presence of brandy was the only
necessary condiliou. And an unloving, tyrannous,
brutal man needs no motive to prompt his cruelty ;
he needs only the perpetual presence of a woman
he can call his own. A whole park full of tame or
timid-eyed animals to torment at his will would
not serve him so well to glut his lust of torture;
they could not feel as one woman does ; they could
not throw out the keen retort which whets the edge
of hatred.
Janet's bitterness would overflow in ready words ;
she was not to be made meek by cruelty ; she would
repent of nothing in the face of injustice, though
^^ she was subdued in a moment by a word or a look
74
SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
that recalled tlie old days of fondness ; and in times
of comparative calm would often recover her sweet
woman's habit of caressing playful affection. But
such days were become rare, aud poor Janet's soul
was kept like a vexed sea, tossed by a new storm
before the old waves have fallen. Proud, angry
resistance and sullen endurance were now almost
the only alternations she knew. She would bear it
all proudly to the world, but proudly towards him
too ; her woman's weakness might shriek a cry for
pity under a heavy blow, but voluntarily she would
do nothing to mollify him, unless he first relented.
What had she ever done to him hut love him too
well, — but believe in him too foolishly ? He had
no pity on her tender flesh ; he could strike the soft
neck he had once asked to kiss. Yet she would
not admit her wretchedness ; she had married him
blindly, and she would hear it out to the terrible
end, whatever that might be. Better this misery
than the blank that lay for her outside her married
home.
But there was one person who heard all the plaints
and all the outbursts of bitterness aud despair which
Janet was never tempted to pour into any other
ear ; and alas ! in her worst moments Janet would
throw out wild reproaches against that patient lis-
tener. For the wrong that rouses our angry pas-
sions finds only a medium in us ; it passes through
us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have
suffered.
Mrs. Eaynor saw too clearly all through the
winter that things were getting worse in Orchard
Street She had evidence enough of it in Janet's
visits to her ; and though her own visits to her
daughter were so timed that she saw little of Demp-
I
JANErS REPENTANCE.
75
ster personally, she noticed manj indications not
only that he was drinking to greater excess, but
that he was beginning to lose that physical power
of supporting excess which had long been the ad-
miration of such fine spirits as Mr. Toralinson. It
seemed as if Dempster had some consciousness of
this, — some new distnist of himself ; for, before
winter was over, it was observed that he had re-
nounced his habit of driving out alone, and was
never seen in his gig without a servant by his side.
If^emesis is lame, hut she is of colossal stature,
like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is
not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left
arm and grasps her victim. The miglity hand is
invisible, but the victim tottvrs under the dire
clutch.
The various symptoms that things were getting
worse with the Dempsters afforded Milby gossip
something new to say on an old subject Mrs.
Dempster, every one remarked, looked more miser-
able than ever, though she kept up the old pretence
of being happy and satisfied. She was scarcely ever
seen, as she used to be, going about on her good-
natured errands ; and even old Mrs. Crewe, who had
always been wilfully blind to anything wrong in
her favourite Janet, was obliged to admit that she
had not seemed like herself lately. " The poor
thing's out of health," said the kind little old lady,
in answer to all gossip about Janet ; " her headaches
always were bad, and I know what headaches are;
why, they make one quite delirious sometimes."
Mrs, Phipps. for her part, declared she would never
accept an invitation to Dempster's again ; it was
getting so very disagreeable to go there. Mrs. Demp-
ster was often " so strange." To be sure, there were
i
76
SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
dreadful stories about the way Dempster used hia
wife; but in Mrs. Phipps's opinion, it was six of
one and half-a-dozen of the other. Mrs. Dempster
had never been like other women ; sbe had always a
flighty way with her, carrying parcels of snuEf to old
Mrs. Tooke, and going to drink tea with Mrs. Briu-
ley, the carpenter's wife ; and then never taking
care of her clothes, always wearing the same things
week-day or Sunday. A man has a poor look-out
with a wife of that sort. Mr. Phipps, amiable and
laconic, wondered how it was women were so fond
of running each other down.
Mr. Pratt having been called in provisionally to
a patient of Mr. Pilgrim's in a case of compound
fracture, observed in a friendly colloquy with his
brother surgeon the next day, —
" So Dempster has left off driving himself, I see ;
he won't end with a broken neck, after all. You '11
have a case of meningitis and delirium tremens
instead. "
"Ah," said Mr. Pilgrim, "he can hardly stand
it much longer at the rate he 's going on, one
would think. He 's been confoundedly cut up
about that business of Armstrong's, I fancy. It
may do hira some harm, perhaps, but Dempster
must have feathered his nest pretty well ; he can
afford to lose a little business. "
° His business will outlast him, that 's pretty
clear," said Pratt; " he '11 run down like a watch
with a broken spring one of these daya "
Another prognostic of evil to Dempster came at
the beginning of March ; for then little " Mam-
sey " died, — died suddenly. The housemaid found
her seated motionless in her arm-chair, her knit-
tiog fallen down, and the tortoise-shell cat repos-
JANET'S REPENTANCE. ^^
ing on it unreproved. The little white old woman
had ended her wintry age of patient sorrow,
believing to the last that ** Robert might have
been a good husband as he had been a good son. '
When the earth was thrown on Mamsey's coffin,
and the son, in crape scarf and hat-band, turned
away homeward, his good angel, lingering with out-
stretched wing on the edge of the grave, cast one
despairing look after him, and took flight forever.
CHAPTER XIV.
The last week in March — three weeks after old
Mrs. Dempster died — occurred the unpleasant
winding-up of affairs between Dempster and Mr.
Pryme, and under this additional source of irrita-
tion the attorney's diurnal drunkenness had taken
on its most ill-tempered and brutal phase. On
the Friday morning before setting out for Roth-
erby he told his wife that he had invited ** four
men " to dinner at half-past six that evening. The
previous night had been a terrible one for Janet ;
and when her husband broke his grim morning
silence to say these few words, she was looking so
blank and listless that he added in a loud, sharp
key, " Do you hear what I say ? or must I tell the
cook ? " She started, and said, ** Yes, I hear. '
" Then mind and have a dinner provided, and
don't go mooning about like crazy Jane."
Half an hour afterwards Mrs. Raynor, quietly
busy in her kitchen with her household labours,
— for she had only a little twelve-year-old girl as
a servant, — heard with trembling the rattling of
the garden gate and the opening of the outer door.
She knew the step, and in one short moment she
lived beforehand through the coming scene. She
hurried out of the kitchen, and there in the pas-
sage, as she had felt, stood Janet, her eyes worn
as if by night-long watching, her dress careless, her
step languid. No cheerful morning greeting to her
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
79
mother, — no kiss. She turned into the parlour,
and, seating herself on the sofa opposite her
mother's chair, looked vacantly at the walls and
fumitnre until the comers of Ler mouth began to
trerahle, and her dark eyes filled with tears that
tell unwiped down her cheeks. The mother sat
silently opposite to her, afraid to speak. She felt
sure there was nothing new the matter, — sure that
the torrent of vfords would come sooner or later.
"Mother! why don't you speak tome?" Janet
burst out at last; " you don't care about my suffer-
ing; you are blaming me because I feel —because
I am miserabla *
" My child, I am not blaming you, — my heart
is bleeding for you. Your head is bad this morn-
ing. — you have had a bad night. Let me make
you a cup of tea now. Perhaps you didn't like
your breakfast "
" Yes, that is what you always think, mother.
It is the old story, you think. You don't ask me
what it is I have had to bear. You are tired of
hearing me. You are cruel, like the rest; everyone
is cruel in this world. Nothing but blame — blame
— blame; never any pity. God is cruel to have
sent me into the world to bear all this misery. "
" Janet, Janet, don't say aa It ia not for ns to
judge; we must submit; we must be thankful for
the gift of life."
" Thankful for life I why should I be thankful ?
God has made me with a heart to feel, and He has
Bent me nothing but misery. How could I help
it? How could I know what would come! Why
did n't you tell me, mother ? — why did you let me
many? You knew what brutes men could be;
and there 's no help for me, — no hope. I can't
So SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
kill myself. I've tried; but I can't leave this
world and go to another. There may be no pity
for me there, as there is none here. "
" Janet, my child, there is pity. Have I ever
done anything but love you ? And there is pity in
God. Hasn't He put pity into your heart for
many a poor sufferer ? Where did it come from, if
not from Him ? "
Janet's nervous irritation now broke out into
sobs instead of complainings ; and her mother was
thankful, for after that crisis there would very
likely come relenting, and tenderness, and com-
parative calm. She went out to make some tea;
and when she returned with the tray in her hands,
Janet had dried her eyes, and now turned them
towards her mother with a faint attempt to smile ;
but the poor face, in its sad blurred beauty, looked
all the more piteous.
" Mother will insist upon her tea, " she said,
" and I really think I can drink a cup. But I
must go home directly, for there are people coming
to dinner: Could you go with me and help me,
mother ? "
Mrs. Eaynor was always ready to do that. She
went to Orchard Street with Janet, and remained
with her through the day, — comforted, as evening
approached, to see her become more cheerful and
willing to attend to her toilet. At half-past five
everything was in order. Janet was dressed ; and
when the mother had kissed her and said good-by,
she could not help pausing a moment in sorrowful
admiration at the tall rich figure, looking all the
grander for the plainness of the deep mourning
dress, and the noble face with its massy folds of
black hair, made matronly by a simple white cap.
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 8i
Janet had that enJuring beauty which belongs to
pure majealic outline and depth of tint Sorrow
and neglect leave their traces on such beauty, but
it thrills U3 to the last like a glorious Greek tem-
ple, which, for all the loss it has suffered Erom
time and barbarous hands, has gained a solemn
history, and fills our imagination the more because
it ia incomplete to the sense.
It was sis o'clock before Dempster returned from
Eotherby. He had evidently drunk a great deal,
and was in an angry humour; but Janet, who had
gathered some little cuuraye and forbearance from
the consciousness that she had done her best to-day,
was determined to speak pleasantly to him.
" Robert," she said gently, as she .saw him seat
himself in the dining-room in his dusty anuffy
clothes, and take some documents out of his
pocket, " will you not wash and change your dress ?
It will refresh you. "
" Leave me alone, will you ? ° said Dempster, in
his moat brutal tone.
" Do change your coat and waistcoat, they are
so dusty. I 've laid all your things out ready. '
" Oh, you have, have you? " After a few min-
utes he rose very deliberately and walked upstairs
into his bedruom. Janet had often been scolded
before for not laying out his clothes, and she
thought now. not without some wonder, that this
attention of hers had brought him to compliance.
Presently he called out, " Janet I " and she went
upstairs.
" Here ! take that ! " he said, as soon as she
reached ihe door, flinging at her the coat she had
laid out. " Another time, leave me to do as I
please, will you? "
L
i
82 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
The coat, flung with great force, only brushed
her shoulder, and fell some distance within the
drawing-room, the door of which stood open just
opposite. She hastily retreated as she saw the
waistcoat coming, and one by one the clothes she
had laid out were all flung into the drawing-room.
Janet's face flushed with anger, and for the first
time in her life her resentment overcame the long-
cherished pride that made her hide her griefs from
the world. There are moments when by some
strange impulse we contradict our past selves, —
fatal moments, when a fit of passion, like a lava
stream, lays low the work of half our lives. Janet
thought, "I will not pick up the clothes; they
shall lie there until the visitors come, and he shall
be ashamed of himself. "
There was a knock at the door, and she made
haste to seat herself in the drawing-room, lest the
servant should enter and remove the clothes, which
were lying half on the table and half on the ground.
Mr Lowme entered with a less familiar visitor, a
client of Dempster's ; and the next moment Demp-
ster himself came in.
His eye fell at once on the clothes, and then
turned for an instant with a devilish glance of
concentrated hatred on Janet, who, still flushed
and excited, affected unconsciousness. After shak-
ing hands with his visitors, he immediately rang
the bell.
" Take those clothes away ! " he said to the ser-
vant, not looking at Janet again.
During dinner she kept up her assumed air of
indifference, and tried to seem in high spirits,
laughing and talking more than usual. In reality,
she felt as if she had defied a wild beast within
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
83
the four walla of his den, and he was crouching
backward in preparation for his deadly spring-
Dempster affected to take no notice of her, talked
obstreperously, and drank steadily.
About eleven the party dispersed, with the ex-
ception of Mr. Budd, who had joined them after
dinner, and appeared disposed to stay drinking a
little longer. Janet begaa to hope that he would
etay long enough for Dempster to become heavy
and stupid, and so to fall asleep downstairs, which
was a rare but occasional ending of his nights. She
told the servants to sit up no longer, and she her-
8e!f undressed and went to bed, trying to cheat her
imagination into the belief that the day was euded
for her. But when she lay down, she became
more intensely awake than ever. Everything she
had taken this evening seemed only to stimulate
her senses and her apprehensions to new vividness.
Her heart beat violently, aud she heard every
sound in the house.
At last, when it was twelve, she beard Mr.
Bndd go out ; she heard the door slam. Dem[)ster
had not moved. Was he asleep? Would he for-
get? The mimite seemed long, while, with a
quickening pulse, she was on the stretch to catch
every sound.
' Janet ! " The loud jarring voice seemed to
strike her like a hurled weapon.
"Janet!" be called again, moving out of the
dining-room to the foot of the stairs.
There was a pause of a minuta
" If you don't come, I 'II kill you. '
Another pause, aud she heard him turn back
into the dining-room. He was gone for a ligbt, —
perhaps for a weapon. Perhaps he would kill her
84 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
Let him. Life was as hideous as death. For
years she had been rushing on to some unknown
but certain horror ; and now she was close upon it.
She was almost glad. She was in a state of
flushed feverish defiance that neutralized her
woman's terrors.
She heard his heavy step on the stairs ; she saw
the slowly advancing light Then she saw the
tall massive figure, and the heavy face, now fierce
with drunken rage. He had nothing but the can-
dle in his hand. He set it down on the table,
and advanced close to the bed.
" So you think you *11 defy me, do you ? We '11
see how long that will last. Get up, madam ; out
of bed this instant!"
In the close presence of the dreadful man — of
this huge crushing force, armed with savage will
— poor Janet's desperate defiance all forsook her,
and her terrors came back. Trembling she got up,
and stood helpless in her nightdress before her
husband.
He seized her with his heavy grasp by the
shoulder, and pushed her before him.
** I '11 cool your hot spirit for you! I '11 teach
you to brave me ! "
Slowly he pushed her along before him, down-
stairs and through the passage, where a small oil-
lamp was still flickering. What was he going to
do to her? She thought every moment he was
going to dash her before him on the ground. But
she gave no scream, — she only trembled.
He pushed her on to the entrance, and held her
firmly in his grasp while he lifted the latch of the
door. Then he opened the door a little way,
thrust her out, and slammed it behind her.
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
For a short e
> it s
led like a delivi
; space i
to Janet, The harsh northeast wind that Ijlew
through lier thin nightdress, and sent her long
heavy black hair streaming, seemed like the breath
ot pity after the gi;isp of that threatening monster.
Bnt soon the sense of release from an overpowering
terror gave way before the sense of the fate that
had really coroe ujion her.
This, then, was what she had been travelling
towards through her long years of misery! Not
yet death. Ob ! if she had been brave enough for
it, death would have been better. The servants
slept at the back of the house; it was impossible
to make them hear, so that they might let her in
again quietly, without her husband's knowledge.
And she would not have tried. He had thrust her
out. and it should be forever.
There would have been dead silence in Orchard
Street but for the whistling of the wind and the
swirling of the March dust on the pavement
Thick clouds covered the sky ; every door was
closed; every window was dark. No ray ot light
fell on the tall white figure that stood in lonely
misery on the door-step; no eye rested on Janet
as she sank down ou the cold stone, and looked
into the dismal night She seemed to be looking
into her own blank future.
•
CHAPTER XV.
The stony street, the bitter northeast wind and
darkness — and in the midst of them a tender
woman thrust out from her husband's home in her
thin nightdress, the harsh wind cutting her naked
feet, and driving her long hair away from her half-
clad bosom, where the poor heart is crushed with
anguish and despair.
The drowning man, urged by the supreme agony
lives in an instant through all his happy and un-
happy past; when the dark flood has fallen like
a curtain, memory, in a single moment, sees the
drama acted over again. And even in those earlier
crises, which are but types of death, — when we
are cut off abruptly from the life we have known,
when we can no longer expect to-morrow to resem-
ble yesterday, and find ourselves by some sudden
shock on the confines of the unknown, — there is
often the same sort of lightning-flash through the
dark and unfrequented chambers of memory.
When Janet sat down shivering on the door-
stone, with the door shut upon her past life, and
the future black and unshapen before her as the
night, the scenes of her childhood, her youth,
and her painful womanhood rushed back upon
her consciousness, and made one picture with her
present desolation. The petted child taking her
newest toy to bed with her, — the young girl,
proud in strength and beauty, dreaming that life
JANETS REPENTA-NXE. 87
WHS an eas)" thing, and that it vras pitiful weak-
u<;ss to be uiihappy, — the bride, passing with
trembliug joy from the outer court tn the inner
sanctuaty' ot womau's life, — the wife, bo}>iiiuing
her initiation into sorrow, wounded, resenting, yet
still hoping and forgiving, — the poor bruised
woman, seeking through weary years the one
refuge of despair, oblivion, — Janet seemed to her-
self all these in the same moment that she was
conacious of being seated on the cold stone under
the shock of a new misery. All her early glad-
ness, all her bright hopes and illusions, all her
gifts of beauty and affection, served only to rlarken
the riddle of her life; they were the betraying
promises of a cruel destiny which had bruuf^ht out
those sweet blossoms only that the wiuds and
storms might have a greater work of desolation,
which had nursed her like a pet fawn into tender-
ies3 and fond expectation, only that she might feul
» keener terror in the clutch of the panther. Her
mother had sometimes said that troubles were sent
to make us better and draw us nearer to (jod.
T^Tiat mockery that seemed to Janet ! Her troubles
had been sinking her lower from year to year,
pressing upon her like heavy fever-laden vapours,
and perverting the very plenitude of her nature
into a deeper source of disease. Her wretchedness
had been a perpetually tightening instrument of
torture, which had gradually absorbed all the other
sensibilities of her nature into the sense of pain
and the maddened craving for reliet Oh, if some
ray of hope, of pity, of consolation, would pierce
through the horrible gloom, she might believe (hen
in a Divine love, — in a heavenly Father wlio cared
for His children! But now she had no faith, no
88 SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
trust There was nothing she could lean on in
the wide world, for her mother was only a fellow-
suflferer in her own lot The poor patient woman
could do little more than mourn with her daugh-
ter : she had humble resignation enough to sustain
her own soul, but she could no more give comfort
and fortitude to Janet than the withered ivy-
covered trunk can bear up its strong, fuU-boughed
offspring crashing down under an Alpine storm.
Janet felt she was alone : no human soul had
measured her anguish, had understood her self-
despair, had entered into her sorrows and her sins
with that deep-sighted sympathy which is wiser
than all blame, more potent than all reproof, — such
sympathy as had swelled her own heart for many
a suflTerer. And if there was any Divine Pity, she
could not feel it ; it kept aloof from her, it poured
no balm into her wounds, it stretched out no hand
to bear up her weak resolve, to fortify her fainting
courage.
Now, in her utmost loneliness, she shed no tear :
she sat staring fixedly into the darkness, while
inwardly she gazed at her own past, almost losing
the sense that it was her own, or that she was
anything more than a spectator at a strange and
dreadful play.
The loud sound of the church clock, striking
one, startled her. She had not been there more
than half an hour, then ? And it seemed to her
as if she had been there half the night She was
getting benumbed with cold. With that strong in-
stinctive dread of pain and death, which had made
her recoil from suicide, she started up; and the
disagreeable sensation of resting on her benumbed
feet helped to recall her completely to the sense of
t
JANETS REPENTANCE.
the present The wind was begianing to make
reut3 JD the clouds, and there came every now and
then a dim light of stars that frightened her more
than the darkoesa ; it was like a cruel finger point-
ing het out in her wretchedness and humiliation;
it made her shudder at the thought of the morning
twilight. What could she do? Not go to her
mother, — not rouse her in the dead of night to tell
her this. Her mother would think she was a
spectre; it would be enough to kill her with hor-
ror. And the way there was ao long ... if she
should meet some one . . ■ yet she must seek
some shelter, somewhere to hide hersall Five
doors ofl there was Mrs. I'ettifer's; that kind
woman would take her in. It was of no use now
to be proud and mind about the world's knowing:
she had nothing to wish tor, nothing to care about ;
only she could not help shuddering at the thought
of braving the morning light, there in the street.
— she was frightened at the thought of spending
long hours in the cold. Life might mean anguish,
might mean despair; but — oh, she must clutch
it. though with bleeding fingers; her feet must
cling to the firm earth that the sunlight would
revisit, not slip into the untried abyss, where she
might long even for familiar pains.
Janet trod slowly with het naked feet on the
rough pavement, trembling at the fitful gleams of
starlight, and supporting herself by the wall, as
the gusts of wind drove right against her. The
very wind was cruel : it tried to push her back
from the door where she wanted to go and knock
and ask for pity.
Mra PetLifer's house did not look into Orchard
Street: it stood a little way up a wide passage
90 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
which opened into the street through an archway,
Janet turned up the archway, and saw a faint light
coming from Mrs. Pettifer's bedroom window. The
glimmer of a rushlight from a room where a friend
was lying was like a ray of mercy to Janet, after
that long, long time of darkness and loneliness ; it
would not be so dreadful to awake Mrs. Pettifer as
she had thought. Yet she lingered some minutes
at the door before she gathered courage to knock ;
she felt as if the sound must betray her to others
besides Mrs. Pettifer, though there was no other
dwelling that opened into the passage, — only ware-
houses and outbuildings. There was no gravel for
her to throw up at the window, nothing but heavy
pavement ; there was no door-bell ; she must knock.
Her first rap was very timid, — one feeble fall of the
knocker; and then she stood still again for many
minutes ; but presently she rallied her courage and
knocked several times together, not loudly, but
rapidly, so that Mrs Pettifer, if she only heard
the sound, could not mistake it. And she had
heard it, for by and by the casement of her win-
dow was opened, and Janet perceived that she was
bending out to try and discern who it was at the
door.
" It is I, Mrs. Pettifer ; it is Janet Dempster.
Take me in, for pity's sake."
" Merciful God ! what has happened ? "
" Iwobert has turned me out. I have been in the
cold a long while. "
Mra Pettifer said no more, but hurried away
from the window, and was soon at the door with a
light in her hand.
" Come in, my poor dear, come in, * said the
good woman in a tremulous voice, drawing Janet
JANETS REPENTAN'CE. 91
withia the door. " Come into my warm bed, and
may God in heaven save and comfort you. "
The pitying eyes, the tender voice, the warm
touch, caused a rush of uew feeling in Janet Her
heart swelled, and she burst out suddenly, like a
child, into loud passionate sobs. Mrs. Pettifer
could not help crying with her, but she said,
' Come upstairs, my dear, come. Don't linger in
the cold, '
She drew the poor sobbing thing gently up-
stairs, and persuaded her to get into the warm bed.
But it was long before Janet could lie down. She
sat leaning her head on her knees, convulsed by
sobs, while the motherly woman covered her with
clothes and held her arms round her to comfort her
with warmth. At last the hysterical passion had
exhausted itself, and she fell back on the pillow;
but her throat was still agitated by piteous after-
sobs, such as shake a little child eveu wheu it has
found a refuge from its alarms on its mother's lap.
Now Janet was getting quieter, Mrs. Pettifer
determined to go down and make a cup of tea, — the
first thing a kiud old woman thinks of as a solace
and restorative under all calamities. Hnppily
there was no danger of awaking her servant, a
heavy girl of sixteen, who was snoring blissfully
in the attic, and might be kept ignorant of the
way in which Mrs, Dempster had come in. So
Mrs, Pettifer busied herself with rousing the
kitchen fire, which was kept in under a huge
"raker," — a possibility by which the coal of the
midland counties atones for all its slowness and
white ashes.
When she carried up the tea, Janet was lying
quite still; the spasmodic agitation had ceased.
92 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
and she seemed lost in thought; her eyes were
fixed vacantly on the rushlight shade, and all the
lines of sorrow were deepened in her face.
** Now, my dear, " said Mrs. Pettifer, " let me
persuade you to drink a cup of tea ; you '11 find it
warm you and soothe you very much. Why, dear
heart, your feet are like ice still. Now, do drink
this tea, and I 11 wrap 'em up in flannel, and then
they '11 get warm. *
Janet turned her dark eyes on her old friend,
and stretched out her arms. She was too much
oppressed to say anything ; her suflTering lay like
a heavy weight on her power of speech; but she
wanted to kiss the good kind woman. Mrs.
Pettifer, setting down the cup, bent towards the
sad beautiful face, and Janet kissed her with ear-
nest sacramental kisses, — such kisses as seal a new
and closer bond between the helper and the helped.
She drank the tea obediently. " It does warm
me. •* she said. " But now you will get into bed.
I shall lie still now. "
Mrs Pettifer felt it was the best thing she could
do to lie down quietly and say no mora She
hoped Janet might go to sleep. As for herself,
with that tendency to wakefulness common to
advanced years, she found it impossible to com-
pose herself to sleep again after this agitating
surprise. She lay listening to the clock, wonder-
ing what had led to this new outrage of Dempster's,
praying for the poor thing at her side, and pitying
the mother who would have to hear it all to-morrow.
CHAPTER XVI,
JaKET lay still, aa she had promised! hut the tea,
which had warmed her and given her a sense of
greater bodily ease, had only heightened the pre-
vious excitement of her brain. Her ideaa had a
new vividness, which made her feel aa if she had
only seen life through a dim haze before; her
thoughts, instead of springing from the action o£
her own mind, were external existences, that
thrust themselves imperiously upon her like
haunting visions. The future took shape after
shape of misery before her, always ending in her
being dragged back ayain to her old life of terror
and stupor and fevered despair. Her husband
had so long overshadowed her life that her imagi-
nation could not keep hold of a condition in which
that great dread was absent; and even his absence
— what was it? Only a dreary vacant flat, where
there was nothing to strive after, nothing to long
for.
At last the light of morning quenched the rush-
light, and Janet's thoughts became more and more
fragmentary and confused. She was every moment
slipping off the level on which she lay thinking,
down, down into some depth from which she tried
to rise again with a start. Slumber was stealing
over her weary brain, — that uneasy slumber which
is only better than wretched waking, because the
life we seemed to live in it determines no wretched
94 SCENES OE CLERICAL LIEE.
future, because the things we do and suffer in it
are but hateful shadows, and leave no impress that
petrifies into an irrevocable past
She had scarcely been asleep an hour when her
movements became more violent, her mutterings
more frequent and agitated, till at last she started
up with a smothered cry, and looked wildly round
her, shaking with terror.
" Don 't be frightened, dear Mrs. Dempster, *
said Mrs. Pettifer, who was up and dressing ; " you
are with me, your old friend, Mrs. Pettifer.
Nothing will harm you.*
Janet sank back again on her pillow, still trem-
bling. After lying silent a little while, she said :
" It was a horrible dream. Dear Mrs. Pettifer,
don't let any one know I am here. Keep it a
secret. If he finds out, he will come and drag me
back again. '
** No, my dear, depend on me. I 've just thought
I shall send the servant home on a holiday, — I 've
promised her a good while. I *11 send her away as
soon as she 's had her breakfast, and she '11 have
no occasion to know you 're here. There 's no
holding servants' tongues, if you let *em know
anything. What they don't know, they won't
tell; you may trust 'em so far. But shouldn't
you like me to go and fetch your mother ? "
" No, not yet, not yet I can't bear to see her
yet"
" Well, it shall be just as you like. Now try
and get to sleep again. I shall leave you for an
hour or two, and send off Phoebe, and then bring
you some breakfast I '11 lock the door behind
me, so that the girl may n't come in by chance. "
The daylight changes the aspect of misery to us,
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
9S
as of everj-thing else In the night it presses on
onr imagination, — the forma it takes are false, fit-
ful, exaggerated; in broad day it sickens our sense
with the dreary persistence of definite measnrable
reality. The man who looks with ghastly horror
on all his property aflame in the dead of night
has not half the sense of destitution he will have
in the morning, when he walks over the ruins
lying blackened in the pitiless sunshine. That
moment of intensest depression was come to ,Tanet,
when the daylight which showed her the walls
Bnd chairs and tables, and all the commonplace
reality that surrounded her. seemed to lay bare the
future too, and bring out into oppressive distinct-
ness all the details of a weary life to he lived from
day to day, with no hope to strengthen her against
that evil habit, which she loathed in retrospect
and yet was powerless to resist. Her husband
would never consent to her living away from him ;
9he was become necessary to his tyranny, he would
never willingly loosen his grasp on her. She had
B vague notion of some protection the law might
give her, if she could prove her life in danger from
him; but she shrank utterly, as she had always
done, from any active, public resistance or ven-
geance: she felt too crushed, too faulty, too liable
to reproach, to have the courage, even if she had
had the wish, to put herself openly in the position
of a wronged woman seeking redress. She had no
strength to sustain her in a course of self-defence
and independence : there was a darker shadow over
her life than the dread of her husband, —it was
the shadow of self-despair. The easiest thing
would be to go away and hide herself from him.
But then there was her mother : Robert had all
96
SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
her little property in his liands, and that little
was scarcely enough to keep her in comfort with-
out liis aid. If Janet went away alone, he would
be sure to persecute her mother ; and if she did go
away, — what then ? She must work to maintain
herself; she must exert herself, weary and hope-
less as she was, to tegin life afresh. How hard
that seemed to her! Janet's nature did not h^lie
her grand face and form : there was energy, there
was strength in it ; but it was the strength of the
vine, which must have its broad leaves and rich
clusters borne up by a firm stay. And now she
had nothing to rest on, —no faith, no lova I(
her mother had been very feeble, aged, or sickly.
Janet's deep pity and tenderness might have made
a daughter's duties an interest and a solace j but
Mrs. Haynor had never needed tendance. She had
always been giving help to her daughter; she had
always been a sort of humble ministering spirit;
and it was one of Janet's pangs of memory that,
instead of being her mother's comfort, she had
been her mother's triaL Everywhere the same
sadness! Her life was a sun-dried, barren tract,
where there was no shadow, and where all the
waters were bitter.
Nol She suddenly thought — and the thought
was like an electric shock — there was one spot in
her memory which seemed to promise her an un-
tried spring, where the waters might be sweet
That short interview with Mr. Tryan had come
back upon her, — his voice, his words, his look,
which told her that he knew sorrow. His words
had implied that he thought his death was near,
yat he had a faith which enabled him to labour, —
enabled him to give comfort to others. That look
JANETS REPKNTANCE. 97
of his came back on her with a vividness greater
than it had had for her in reality : surely he knew
more of the secrets of sorrow than other men ; per-
haps he had some message of comfort, different
from the feeble words she had been used to hear
from others. ■ She was tired, she was sick of that
harren exhortation, — Do right, and keep a clear
conscience, and God will reward you, and your
troubles will be easier to benr. She wanted
ftrength to do right, ■ — ^ she wanted something to
rely on besides her own resolutions ; for was not
the path behind her all strewn with broken resolu-
tions ? How could she trust in new ones ? She
bad often heard Mr. Tryau laughed at for being
fond of great sinners. She began to see a new
meaning in those words ; he would perhaps under-
stand her helplessness, her wants. If she could
pour out her heart to him! If she could for the
first time in her life unlock all the chambers of
her soul!
The impulse to confession almost, always requires
the presence of a fresh ear and a fresh heart ; and
in our moments of spiritual need, the man to
whom we have no tie but our common nature
seems nearer to us than mothtsr, brother, or friend.
Our daily familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves
from each other behind a screen of trivial words
and deeds; and those who sit with us at the same
hearth are often the farthest off from the deep
human soul within us, full of unspoken evil and
unacted good.
When Mrs, Pettifer came back to her, tuminf^
the key and opening the door very gently, Janet,
instead of being asleep, as Ler good friend had
hoped, was intensely occupied with her new
I
98 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
thought She longed to ask Mrs. Pettifer if she
could see Mr. Tryan; but she was arrested by
doubts and timidity. He might not feel for her,
— he might be shocked at her confession, — he
might talk to her of doctrines she could not under-
stand or believe. She could not make up her
mind yet; but she was too restless under this
mental struggle to remain in bed.
" Mrs. Pettifer," she said, " I can't lie here any
longer; I must get up. Will you lend me some
clothes ? "
Wrapped in such drapery as Mrs. Pettifer could
find for her tall figure, Janet went down into the
little parlour, and tried to take some of the break-
fast her friend had prepared for her. But her
effort was not a successful one ; her cup of tea and
bit of toast were only half finished. The leaden
weight of discouragement pressed upon her more
and more heavily. The wind had fallen, and a
drizzling rain had come on; there was no prospect
from Mrs. Pettifer's parlour but a blank wall ; and
as Janet looked out at the window, the rain and
the smoke-blackened bricks seemed to blend them-
selves in sickening identity with her desolation of
spirit and the headachy weariness of her body.
Mrs. Pettifer got through her household work as
soon as she could, and sat down with her sewing,
hoping that Janet would perhaps be able to talk a
little of what had passed, and find some relief by
unbosoming herself in that way. But Janet could
not speak to her; she was importuned with the
longing to see Mr. Tryan, and yet hesitating to
express it.
Two hours passed in this way. The rain went
on drizzling, and Janet sat still, leaning her ach-
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 99
ing head on her hand, and looking alternately at
the fire and out of the window. She felt this
could not last, — this motionless, vacant misery.
She must determine on something, she must take
some step; and yet everything was so difficult.
It was one o'clock, and Mrs. Pettifer rose from
her seat, saying, " I must go and see about dinner. "
The movement and the sound startled Janet
from her reverie. It seemed as if an opportunity
were escaping her, and she said hastily, " Is Mr.
Tryan in the town to-day, do you think ? "
*' No, I should think not, being Saturday, you
know," said Mrs. Pettifer, her face lighting up
with pleasure ; " but he would come if he was sent
fot I can send Jesson's boy with a note to him
any time. Should you like to see him ? "
" Yes, I think I should. "
" Then I '11 send for him this instant *
CHAPTER XVII.
When Dempster awoke in the morning, he was at
no loss to account to himself for the fact that
Janet was not by his side. His hours of drunken-
ness were not cut off from his other hours by any
blank wall of oblivion ; he remembered what Janet
had done to offend him the evening before, he
remembered what he had done to her at mid-
night, just as he would have remembered if he
had been consulted about a right of road.
The remembrance gave him a definite ground for
the extra ill-humour which had attended his waking
every morning this week, but he would not admit
to himself that it cost him any anxiety. " Pooh ! *
he said inwardly, ** she would go straight to her
mother's. She 's as timid as a hare ; and she '11
never let anybody know about it. She '11 be back
again before night. "
But it would be as well for the servants not to
know anything of the affair ; so he collected the
clothes she had taken off the night before, and
threw them into a fireproof closet of which he
always kept the key in his pocket. When he
went downstairs, he said to the housemaid, " Mrs.
Dempster is gone to her mother's; bring in the
breakfast "
The servants, accustomed to hear domestic broils
and to see their mistress put on her bonnet hastily
I
I
JANET'S REEEKTANCE loi
snd go to her mother's, thoughrt.-it only something
s litile worse than usual that shs should have
gone thither, in conaequL-nce of a'iiioleM quarrel,
either at midnight, or in the early mPHHUg. before
they were up. The housemaid told the cook-' what
she supposed had happened; the cook shoOt her
head and said, " Eh. dear, dear I ' but they baili
expected to see their, mistress back again in an ■
hour or two.
Dempster, on hia return home the evening be-
fore, had ordered his man, who lived away from
the house, to bring up bis horse and gig from the
stables at tea After breakfast he said to the
housemaid, " No one need sit up for me to-uight;
I shall nol be at home till to-morrow evening;"
and then he walked to the office to give some
orders, expecting, as he returned, to see the man
waiting with his gig But though the church
clock had struck ten, no gig was there. In Derap-
Bter's mood this was more than enough to exnsper-
8te him. Ke went in to take his accustomed glass
of brandy before setting out, promising himself
the satisfaction of presently thundering at Dawes
for being a few minutes behind his time. Au
outbreak of temper towards his man was not com-
mon with him; for Derap.ster, like most tyrannous
people, had that dastardly kind of self-restraint
vhlcli enabled him to control his temper where it
suited his own convenience to do so; and feeling
the value of Dawes, a steady punctual fellow, he
not only gave him high wages, but usually treated
him with exceptional civility. This morning,
however, ill-humour got the better of prudence,
and Dempster was determined to rate him soundly;
a resolution for which Dawes gave him much
I
•••
• • •
102 SCENES O^-CySRICAL LIFE,
better ground thaiJ;-lie expected Five minutes,
ten minutes^ ^**^la7ter of an hour, had passed, and
Dempster/Wia5'*Betting off to the stables in a back
street, ttr^ce'what was the cause of the delay, when
Pawp?.a^peared with the gig.
\ •* What the devil do you keep me here for,*
^ -•';/•. tbtindered Dempster, ** kicking my heels like a
-'.;•/••• beggarly tailor waiting for a carrier's cart? I
..'• * ordered you to be here at tea We might have
driven to Whitlow by this tima "
" Why, one o' the traces was welly i' two, an* I
had to take it to Brady's to be mended, an* he
didn't get it done i' time."
*• Then why did n't you take it to him last night ?
Because of your damned laziness, I suppose. Do
you think I give you wages for you to choose your
own hours, and come dawdling up a quarter of an
hour after my time ? "
** Come, give me good words, will yer ? " said
Dawes, sulkily. ** I 'm not lazy, nor no man shall
call me lazy. I know well anuff what you gi' me
wages for ; it 's for doin* what yer won't find many
men as 'ull do. "
"What! you impudent scoundrel," said Demp-
ster, getting into the gig, " you think you 're
necessary to me, do you ? As if a beastly bucket-
carrying idiot like you wasn't to be got any day.
Look out for a new master, then, who '11 pay you
for not doing as you *re bid. "
Dawes's blood was now fairly up. " I *11 look
out for a master as has got a better charicter nor a
lyin* bletherin' drunkard, an' I shouldn't hev to
go fur. "
Dempster, furious, snatched the whip from the
socket, and gave Dawes a cut which he meant to
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 103
fall across his shoulders, saying, ** Take that, sir,
and go to hell with you ! "
Dawes was in the act of turning with the reins
in his hand when the lash fell, and the cut went
across his face. With white lips he said, ** I '11
have the law on yer for that, lawyer as y' are,*
and threw the reins on the horse's back.
Dempster leaned forward, seized the reins, and
drove off.
" Why, there 's your friend Dempster driving
out without his man again, " said Mr. Luke Byles,
who was chatting with Mz Budd in the Bridge
Way. " What a fool he is to drive that two-
wheeled thing! He'll get pitched on his head
one of these days. "
" Not he, " said Mr. Budd, nodding to Dempster
as he passed ; " he • s got nine lives, Dempster
ha&"
CHAPTER XVIIL
It was dusk, and the candles were lighted before
Mr. Try an knocked at Mrs. Pettifer's door. Her
messenger had brought back word that he was not
at home, and all afternoon Janet had been agitated
by the fear that he would not come ; but as soon
as that anxiety was removed by the knock at the
door, she felt a sudden rush of doubt and timidity:
she trembled and turned cold.
Mrs, Pettifer went to open the door, and told Mr.
Tryan, in as few words as possible, what had hap-
pened in the night As he laid down his hat and pre-
pared to enter the parlour, she said, " 1 won't go in
with you, for I think perhaps she would rather see
you go in alone."
Janet, wrapped up in a large white shawl which
threw her dark face into startling relief, was seated
with her eyes turned anxiously towards the door
when Mr. Tryan entered. He had not seen her
since their interview at Sally Martin's long months
ago ; and he felt a strong movement of compassion
at the sight of the pain-stricken face which seemed
to bear written on it the signs of all Janet's inter-
vening misery. Her heart gave a great leap, as her
eyes met his once more. No ! she had not deceived
herself : there was all the sincerity, all the sadness,
all the deep pity in them her memory had told her
of; more than it had told her, for in proportion as
his face had become thinner and more worn, his
eyes appeared to have gathered intensity.
JANETS REPENTANCE.
los
He came forward, and putting out his hand, said.
" I am so glad you sent for me, — I am so thaukful
you thought 1 could be any comfort to you," Janet
took his hand in silence. She was unable to utter
any words of mere politeness, or even o( gratitude;
her heart was too full of other words that had
welled up the moment she met his pitying glance,
and felt her doubts fall away.
They sat down opjKisite each other, and she said
iu a low voice, while slow difficult tears gathered
in her aching eyes, —
"I want to tell you how unhappy I am, — how
weak and wicked. I feel no strength to live or die.
I thought you could tell me something that would
hel|i me." She paused.
"Perhaps I can," Mr. Trj'an said, "for in speak-
ing to me you are speaking to a fcllow-siDuer who
has needed just the comfort and help you are
needing."
" And you did find it ? "
" Yes ; and I trust ynu will find it."
"Oh, I should like to be good and to do right,"
Janet burst forth ; '" but indeed, indeed, my lot has
been a very hard one. I loved ray husband very
dearly when we were married, and I meant to make
him happy, — I wanted nothing else. But he began
to be angry with me for little things and . . . I don't
want to accuse him , . . but he drank and got
e and more unkind to me, and then very cruel,
and he heat me. And that cut me to the heart.
It made me almost mad sometimes to think all
our love had come to that ... I couldn't bear up
against it. I had never been used to drink any-
thing but water I hated wine and spirits because
Robert drank them so; but one day when I was
io6 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIER
very wretched, and the wine was standing on the
table, I suddenly ... I can hardly remember how
I came to do it ... I poured some wine into a
large glass and drank it. It blunted my feelings,
and made me more indifferent. After that the
temptation was always coming, and it got stronger
and stronger. I was ashamed, and I hated what I
did; but almost while the thought was passing
through my mind that I would never do it again,
I did it It seemed as if there was a demon in me
always making me rush to do what I longed not to
do. And I thought all the more that God was
cruel ; for if he had not sent me that dreadful
trial, so much worse than other women have to
bear, I should not have done wrong in that way.
I suppose it is wicked to think so ... I feel as if
there must be goodness and right above us, but I
can't see it, I can*t trust in it. And I have gone on
in that way for years and years. At one time it
used to be better now and then, but everything has
got worse lately : I felt sure it must soon end some-
how. And last night he turned me out of doors . . •
I don't know what to da I will never go back to
that life again if I can help it ; and yet everything
else seems so miserable. I feel sure that demon
will be always urging me to satisfy the craving
that comes upon me, and the days will go on as
they have done through all those miserable years.
I shall always be doing wrong, and hating myself
after, — sinking lower and lower, and knowing that
I am sinking. Oh, can you tell me any way of
getting strength ? Have you ever known any one
like me that got peace of mind and power to do
right? Can you give me any comfort, any hope ? "
While Janet was speaking, she had forgotten
JANET'S REPEKTA.NCE.
107
eveiything but her misery and her yearning for
comfort. Her voice had risen from the low tone of
tiuiid distress to an intense pitch o( imploring
anguish. She clasped her hands tightly, and looked
at Mr. Trj'an with eager questioning eyes, with
parted trembling lips, with the deep horizontal
lines of overmastering pain on her brow. In this
artificial life of ours it is not often we see a human
face with all a heart's agony iii it, uncontrolled by
self -consciousness ; when we do see it, it startles us
83 if we hnd suddenly waked into the real world
of which this every-day one is but a puppet-show
copy. For some moments Mr, Tryan was too deeply
moved to speak.
" Yes, dear Mrs. Dempster," he said at last, " there
is comfort, there is hojw for you. Believe me there
is, for I speak from my own deep and hard experi-
ence" He paused, as if he had not made up his
mind to utter the words that were urging them-
selves to his lips, presently he continued: "Ten
years ago, I felt as wretched as you do. I think
my wretchedness was even worse than yours, for
I had a heavier sin on my conscience, J had
suffered no wrong from others as you have, and I
bad injured another irreparably in body and soul.
The image of the wrong I had done pursued me
everywhere, and I seemed on the brink of madness.
I hated my life, for I thought, just as you do, that
I should go on falling into temptation and doing
more harm in the world ; and I dreaded death, for
with that sense of guilt on my soul, I felt that
whatever state I entered on must be one of misery.
But a dear friend to whom I opened my mind
showed me it was just such as f — the helpless
who feel themselves helpless ^ that God specially
M
loS SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
invites to come to him, aud offers all the riches of
his salvation: not foi^iveness only. — forgiveness
would be worth little if it left us under the power
of our evil passions ; but strength, — that strength
which enables us to conquer sin."
" But," said Janets " I can feel no trust in God
He seems always to have left me to myself. I
have sometimes prayed to him to help me, and yet
everything has been just the same as before. If
you felt like me, how did you come to have hope
and trust?"
" Do not believe that God has left you to your-
self. How can you tell but that the hardest trials
you have known have been only the road by which
he was leading you to that complete seuse of your
own ain and helplessness, without which you would
never have renounced all other hopes, and trusted
in his love alone ? I know, dear Mrs. Dempster, I
know it is hard to bear. I would not speak lightly
of your sorrows. I feel that the mystery of our life
is great, and at one time it seemed as dark to me aa
it does to you." Mr. Tryan hesitated again. He
saw that the first thing Janet needed was to be
assured of sympathy. She must be made to feel
that her anguish wns not strange to him ; that he
entered into the only half-ex pressed secrets of her
spiritual weakness, before any other message of con-
solation could find its way to her heart The tale
of the Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips
that were not felt to be moved by human pity. And
Janet's anguish was not strange to Mr. Tryan. He
had never been in the presence of a sorrow and a
self-desjiair that had sent so strong a thrill through
all the recesses of his saddest experience ; and it is
because sympathy is but a living again through our
I
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
109
own past ID anew form, that confession often prompts
ft response of confession. Mr Trj-an felt this prompt-
ing, and his judgment, too, told him that in ol^eying
it he wonld be taking the best means of adminis-
tering comfort to Janet, Yet he hesitated; as we
tremble to lot in the daylight on a chamber of relics
which we have never visited except in curtained
silenca But the Brst impulse triumphed, and he
went on. "I have lived all my life at a distance
from God. My youth was spent in thoughtless
self-indulgence, and all my hopes were of a vain
worldly kind. 1 had no tliought of entering the
Church ; 1 looked forward to a political career, for
my father was private secretary to a man high in
the Whig Ministry, and had been promised strong
interest in my behalf. At college Hived in intimacy
with the gayest men, even adopting follies and vices
for which I had no taste, out of mere pliancy and
the love of standing well with my companions. You
see, I was more guilty even then than you have
been, for I threw away all the rich blessings of
untroubled youth and health ; I had no excuse in
my outward lot. But while I was at college that
event in my life occurred which in the end brought
on the state of mind I have mentioned to you, — the
state of self-reproach and despair, which enables
me to understand to the full what you are suffer-
ing; and I tell you the facts, because I want you to
be assured that 1 am not uttering mere vague words
when I say that I have been raised from as low a
depth of sin and sorrow as that in which you feel
yourself to ba At college I had an attachment to
a lovely girl of seventeen ; she was very much below
my own station in life, and I never contemplated
marrying her; but I induced her to leave her father's
no SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
house. I did not mean to forsake her when I left
college, and I quieted all scruples of conscience by
promising myself that I would always take care of
poor Lucy. But on my return from a vacation spent
in travelling, I found that Lucy was gone, —gone
away with a gentleman, her neighbours said. I was
a good deal distressed, but I tried to persuade my-
self that no harm would come to her. Soon after-
wards I had an illness which left my health delicate,
and made all dissipation distasteful to ma Life
seemed very wearisome and empty, and I looked
with envy on every one who had some great and
absorbing object, — even on my cousin who was
preparing to go out as a missionary, and whom I had
been used to think a dismal, tedious person, because
he was constantly urging religious subjects upon
me. We were living in London then ; it was three
years since I had lost sight of Lucy; and one sum-
mer evening, about nine o'clock, as I was walking
along Gower Street, 1 saw a knot of people on the
causeway before me. As 1 came up to them, I
heard one woman say, ' I tell you she is dead.' This
awakened my interest, and I pushed my way within
the circle: The body of a woman dressed in fine
clothes was lying against a doorstep. Her head
was bent on one side, and the long curls had fallen
over her cheek. A tremor seized me when I saw
thehnir: itwas light chestnut, — thecolourofLucy'g.
1 knelt down and turned aside the hair; itwas Lucy
— dead — with paint on her cheeks. I found out
afterwards that she had taken poison, — that she
was in the power of a wicked woman, — that the
very clothes on her back were not her own. It was
then that my past life burst upon me in all its hide-
ousnesa. I wished I had never been bom. I could n't
JANET'S REPENTANCE iii
look into Uie future. Lucy's dead painted face would
follow me there, as it did when I looked back into
the past, — as it did when I sat down to table with
ray friends, when I lay down in my bed, and when
I rose up. There was only one thing that could
nflke life tolerable to me ; that was to spend all the
rest of it in trying to save others from the ruin T had
brought on one But how was that possible for
me ? I had no comfort, no strength, no wisdom iri
my own soul ; how could 1 give them to others ?
My mind was dark, rebellious, at war with itself
and with God."
Mr. Tryan had been looking away from Janet
Hia face was towards the fire, and he was absorbed
in the images his memory was recalling. But now
he turned his eyes on her, and they met hers, fixed
on him with the look of rapt expectation with
which one clinging to a slippery summit of rock,
while the waves are rising higher and higher,
watches the boat that has put from shore to his
rescue.
" You see, Mrs, Dempster, how deep my need was.
I went on in this way for months. I was convinced
that if I ever got health and comfort, it must be
from religion. I went to hear celebrated preachers,
and I read religious books. But I found nothing
that fitted my own need. The faith which puts the
einner in possession of salvation seemed, as I under-
Btood it, to be quite out of my reach. 1 had no
faith ; I only felt utterly wretched, under the power
of habits and dispositions which had wrouglit hide-
ous evil. At last, as I told you, I found a friend to
whom I opened all my feelings, — to whom I con-
fessed everything. He was a man who had gone
through very deep experience, and could understand
d
ri2 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
the different wants of different minds. He made it
clear to me that the only preparation for coming to
Christ and partaking of his salvation was that very
sense of guilt and helplessness which was weighing
me down. He said. You are weary and heavy-iadon ;
well, it is you Christ invites to come to him and find
rest He asks you to cling to him, to lean ou him ; ha
does not command you to walk alone without stum-
bling. He does not tell you, as your fellow -men do, that
you must first merit his love : be neither condemns
nor reproaches you for the past, he only bids you
come to bira that you may have life : he bids you
stretch out your bands, and take of the fulness of his
love. You have only to rest on him as a child rests
on its mother's arms, and you will be upborne by
his divine strength. That is what is meant by faith.
Your evil habits, you feel, are too strong for you ;
you are unable to wrestle with them ; you know
beforehand you shall fall. But when once we feel
our helplessness in that way, and go to the Saviour.
desiring to be freed from the power as well as the
punishment of sin, we are no longer left to our own
strength. As long as we live in rebellion against
God, desiring to have our own will, seeking happi-
ness in the things of this world, it is as if we shut
ourselves up in a crowded stifling room, where we
breathe only poisoned air; but we have only to walk
out under the infinite heavens, and we breathe the
pure free air that gives us health and strength and
gladness. It is just so with God's spirit : as soon
as we submit ourselves to his will, as soon as we
desire to be united to him, and made pure and holy
it is as if the walls had fallen down that shut us
out from God, and we are fed with his spirit, which
gives us new strength."
JANET'S REPENTANCE. irj
•That is what 1 want," said Janet; " I have left
off minding about pleasure. I think I could he
contented in the midst of hardship, if I felt that
God cared for me, and would give me strength to
lead a pure life. But tell me, did you soon find
peace and strength 1 "
"Not perfect peace tor a long while, hut hope
and trust, which is strength. No sense of pardon
for myself could do away with the pain I had in
thinking what I had helped to bring on another.
My friend used to urge upon me that my siu
against God was greater than my sin against her;
but — it may be from want of deeper spiritual feel-
ing — that has remained to this hour the sin which
causes me the bitterest pang. I could never rescue
Lucy; but by God's blessing I might rescue other
weak and falling souls ; and that was why I entered
the Church. I asked for nothing through the rest
of my life but that 1 might be devoted to God's
work, without swerving in search of pleasure either
to the right hand or to the left. It has been often
a hard aLruggle — but God has been with me — and
perhaps it may not last much loiigec"
Mr, Tryan paused. For a moment he had for-
gotten Janet, and for a moment she had forgotten
her own sorrows. \\Tien she recurred to herself,
it was with a new feeling
"Ah, what a difference between our lives! You
have been choosing pain, and working, and denying
yourself ; and I have been thinking only of myself.
I was only angry and discontented because I had
pain to bear. You never had that wicked feeling
that I have had so often, did you ? — that God was
cruel to send me trials and temptations worse than
others hava"
114 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
" Yes, I had ; I had very blasphemous thoughts,
and I know that spirit of rebellion must have made
the worst part of your lot You did not feel how
impossible it is for us to judge rightly of God's
dealings, and you opposed yourself to his will.
But what do we know? We cannot foretell the
working of the smallest event in our own lot;
how can we presume to judge of things that are
so much too high for us? There is nothing that
becomes us but entire submission, perfect resigna-
tion. As long as we set up our own will and our
own wisdom against God's, we make that wall
between us and his love which I have spoken of
just now. But as soon as we lay ourselves entirely
at his feet, we have enough light given us to guide
our own steps ; as the foot-soldier who hears noth-
ing of the councils that determine the course of the
great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word
of command which he must himself obey. I know,
dear Mrs. Dempster, I know it is hard — the hardest
thing of all, perhaps — to flesh and blood. But
carry that difficulty to the Saviour along with all
your other sins and weaknesses, and ask him to
pour into you a spirit of submission. He enters
into your struggles ; he has drunk the cup of our
suffering to the dregs ; he knows the hard wrestling
it costs us to say, ' Not my will, but Thine be
done.'"
" Pray with me," said Janet, — *' pray now that
I may have light and strength."
CHAPTEE XIX.
Before leaving Janet, Mt Tryan urged her strongly
to send for her mother.
"Do not wound her," he said, "by shutting her
out any longer from your troubles. It is right that
you should be with het"
"Yes, I will send for her," said Janet "But I
would rather not go to my mother's yet, because ray
husband is sure to think I am there, and he might
come and fetch me. I can't go back to him , . .
at least, not yet Ought I to go back to him ? "
" No, certainly not, at present Something should
be done to secure you from violence. Your mother,
I think, should consult some confidential friend,
some man of character and experience, who might
mediate between you and your husband."
" Yes, I will send for my mother directly. But
I will stay here, with Mrs. Pettifer, till something
has been done. I want no one to know where I
am, except you. You will come again, will you
not? You will not leave me to myself?"
"You will not he left to yourself. God is with
yoa If 1 have been able to give you any comfort,
it is because his power and love have been present
with us. But I am very thankful that he has
chosen to work through me. I shall see you again
to-morrow, — not before evening, for it will be
Sunday, you know ; but after the evening lecture
I shall be at liberty. You will be in my prayers
ii6 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
till then. In the mean time, dear Mrs. Dempster,
open your heart as much as you can to your mother
and Mrs. Pettifer. Cast away from you the pride
that makes us shrink from acknowledging our
weakness to our frieoda. Ask them to help you
in guarding yourself from the least approach of the
sin you most dread. Deprive yourself as far as
possible of the very means and opportunity of
committing it Every effort of that kind made in
humility and dependence is a prayer. Promise me
you will do this."
" Yes, I promise jou, I know I have always
been too proud ; I could never bear to speak to
any one about myself. I have been proud towards
my mother, even ; it has always made me angry
when she has seemed to take notice of my faults."
" Ah, dear Mrs. Derap.ster, you will never say again
that life is blank, and that there is nothing to live
for, will you ? See what work there is to be done
in life, both in our own souls and for others ! Surely
it matters little whether we have more or less of this
world's comfort in these short years, when God is
training us for the eternal enjoyment of his love.
Keep that great end of life before you. and your
troubles here will seem only the small hardships of
a journey. Now I must go."
Mr. Tryan rose and held out his hand. Janet
took it and said, " God has been very good to me in
sending you to me. I will trust in him. I will try
to do everything you tell me."
Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on
another ! Not calculable by algebra, not deducibla
by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the
hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened,
and bursts forth into tall stem, and broad leaf, and
I
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 117
glowing tasselled flower. Ideas are often poor
ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them;
tbey pass athwart us in thin vapour, and cannot
make themselves felt But sometimes they are
made flesh; they hreathe upon us with warm
hreatb, they touch us with soft responsive bands,
they look at us with sad sincere eyes, and speak
to us in appealing tones ; they are clothed in a
living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith,
and its love. Then their presence is a power, then
they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn
after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is
drawn to flame.
Janet's dark grand face, still fatigued, had become
quite calm, and looked up, as she sat, with a humble
childlike expression at the thin blond face and
slightly sunken gray eyes which now shone with
hectic brightness. She might have been taken for an
image of passionate strength beaten and worn with
conflict; and he for an image of the self-renouncing
faith which has soothed that conflict into rest As
he looked at the sweet submissive face, he re-
membered its look of despairing anguish, and his
heart was very full as be turned away from her.
"Let me only live to see this work confirmed, and
then — "
It was nearly ten o'clock when Mr. Tryan left,
but Janet was bent on sending for her mother; so
Mrs. Pettifer, as the readiest plan, put on her
bonnet and went herself to fetch Mrs. Eaynor,
The mother had been too long used to expect that
every fresh week would he more painful than the
last, for Mrs. Pettifer's news to come upon her
with the shock of a surprise. Quietly, without
any show of distress, she made up a bundle of
ii8 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
clothes, and, telling her little maid that she should
not return home that night, accompanied Mrs.
Pettifer back in silence.
When they entered the parlour, Janet, wearied
out, had sunk to sleep in the large chair which
stood with its back to the door. The noise of the
opening door disturbed her, and she was looking
round wonderingly, when Mrs. Raynor came up
to her chair, and said, " It 's your mother, Janet "
" Mother, dear mother ! " Janet cried, clasping
her closely. " I have not been a good tender child
to you, but I vnll be, — I will not grieve you any
more. "
The calmness which had withstood a new sorrow
was overcome by a new joy, and the mother burst
into teara
CHAPTER XX.
On Sunday morning the rain had ceased, and
Janet, looking out of the bedroom window, saw,
above the house-tops, a shining mass of white
cloud rolling under the far-away blue sky. It was
going to be a lovely April day. The fresh sky,
left clear and calm after the long vexation of wind
and rain, mingled its mild influence with Janet's
new thoughts and prospects. She felt a buoyant
courage that surprised herself, after the cold crush-
ing weight of despondency which had oppressed
her the day before: she could think even of her
husband's rage without the old overpowering
dread. For a delicious hope — the hope of purifi-
cation and inwurd peace — had entered into Janet's
son), and made it spring-time there as well as in
the outer world.
While her mother was brushing and coiling up
her thick black hair, — a favourite task, because it
seemed to renew the days of her daughter's girl-
hood, — Janet told how she came to send for Mr.
Tryan, how she had remembered their meeting at
Sally Martin's in the autumn, and had felt an
irresistible desire to see him, and tell him her sins
and her troubles.
" I see God's goodness now, mother, in ordering
it so that we should meet in that way, to overcome
my prejudice against him, and make me feel that
he was good, and then bringing it back to my
120 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
mind in the depth of my trouble. You know what
foolish things I used to say about him, knowing
nothing of him all the while. And yet he was
the man who was to give me comfort and help
when everything else failed ma It is wonderful
how I feel able to speak to him as I never have
done to any one before ; and how every word he
says to me enters my heart, and has a new mean-
ing for ma I think it must be because he has
felt life more deeply than others, and has a deeper
faith. I believe everything he says at onca His
words come to me like rain on the parched ground.
It has always seemed to me before as if I could see
behind people's words, as one sees behind a screen;
but in Mr. Tryan it is his very soul that speaka "
*' Well, my dear child, I love and bless him for
your sake, if he has given you any comfort I
never believed the harm people said of him, though
I had no desire to go and hear him, for I am con-
tented with old-fashioned ways. I find more good
teaching than I can practise in reading my Bible
at home, and hearing Mr. Crewe at church. But
your wants are different, my dear, and we are not
all led by the same road. That was certainly good
advice of Mr. Tryan's you told me of last night, —
that we should consult some one that may inter-
fere for you with your husband; and I have been
turning it over in my mind while I 've been lying
awake in the night. I think nobody will do so
well as Mr. Benjamin Landor, for we must have a
man that knows the law, and that Robert is rather
afraid ot And perhaps he could bring about an
agreement for you to live apart Your husband 's
bound to maintain you, you know ; and, if you
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
liked,
i could I
' from Milbj and liv
1 move (
somewhere else.'
" Ob, mother, we must do nothing yet; I must
tbink about it a little longer, I have a ditfereut
feeling this morniug from what I had yesterday.
Something seems to tell me that I must go back to
Robert some time, — after a little while. I loved
him once belter than all the world, and I have
never had any children to love. There were things
in me that were wrong, and I should like to make
up tor them if I can. "
" Well, my dear, I won't persuade you. Think
of it a little longer. But something must be done
soon. "
" How I wish r had my bonnet and shawl and
black gown here I' said Janet, after a tew min-
utes' silence. " I should like to go to Paddiford
Church and hear Mr, Tryan. There would be no
fear of my meeting Robertj for he never goes out
on a Sunday morning."
" I 'm afraid it would not do for me to go to the
house and fetch your clothes," said Mrs. Raynor.
"Oh, no. no! I must stay quietly here while
you two go to church. I will be Mrs. Pettifer's
maid, and get the dinner ready for her by the time
she comes back, Dear good woman ! She was so
tender to roe when she took me in, in the night,
mother, and all the next day, when I couldn't
speak a word to her to thank her. '
(
CHAPTER XXI.
The servants at Dempster's felt some surprise when
the morning, noon, and evening of Saturday had
passed, and still their mistress did not re-appear.
" It 's very odd, ** said Kitty, the housemaid, as
she trimmed her next week's cap, while Betty,
the middle-aged cook, looked on with folded arms.
** Do you think as Mrs. Eaynor was ill, and sent for
the missis afore we was up ? "
" Oh, " said Betty, '^ if it had been that, she 'd
ha' been back'ards an* for'ards three or four times
afore now ; leastways, she 'd ha' sent little Ann to
let us know. "
•* There 's summat up more nor usal between
her an' the master, that you may depend on." said
Kitty. ** 1 know those clothes as was lying i' the
drawing-room yesterday, when the company was
come, meant summat. I should n't wonder if that
was what they 've had a fresh row about. She 's
p'raps gone away, an 's made up her mind not to
come back again. "
" An' i' the right on*t, too," said Betty. " I 'd
ha' overrun him long afore now, if it had been me.
I would n't Stan' bein' mauled as she is by no
husband, not if he was the biggest lord i' the land.
It's poor work bein' a wife at that price: I'd
sooner be a cook wi'out perkises, an' hev roast,
an' boil, an' fry, an' bake, all to mind at once.
She may well do as she does. I know I 'm glad
JANETS REPENTANCE.
'23
I of a drop o' sutnmat myself when I "m
plagued. I feel very low, like, to-uight; I Lliitik
I shall put my beer i' the saucepaa an' warm it,"
- What a one you are for warmin' your beer,
Betty I I could n't abide it, — nasty bitter stuff ! "
" It 's fine talkiu' ; if you was a cook you 'd
know what belongs to bein' a cook. It's none so
nice to hev a sinkin' at your stomach, I can toll
you. You wouldn't think so much o' Sue rilihius
i' your cap then. "
"Well, well, Betty, don't be grumpy. Liza
Thomson, as is at Phipps's, said to me last Sunday,
' I wonder you '11 stay at Dempster's,' she says,
' such goins-on as there is. ' But I says, ' There 's
things to put up wi' in ivery place, an' you may
change an' change, an' not better yourself when
all's said an' done.' LorsI why, Liza told me
herself as Mrs. I'hipps was as skiony as skinny i'
the kitchen, for all they keep so much company;
and as for follyers, she 's as cross as a turkey-cock
if she finds 'em out. There 's nothin' o' that sort
i' the missis. How pretty she come an' spoke to
Job last Sunday 1 There isn't a good-natur'der
woman i' the world, that's my belief — an' ban-
some too. 1 al'ys think there 's nobody looks half
so well as the missis when she 's got her 'air done
nice. Lors! I wish I 'd got long "air like her, —
my air's a-comin' off dreadful."
"There'll be fine work to-morrow, I expect,"
said Betty, " when the master comes home, an'
Dawes a-sweariu' as he "11 uiver do a stroke o'
work for him again. It '11 be good fun if he sets
the justice on him for cuttin' him wi' the whip;
the master 'II p'raps get his comb cut for ouce in
his lite!"
124 SCENES OF CLERICAL -LIFE.
" Why, he was in a temper like a fi-end this
morniDg," eaiii Kitty. "I dare say it was aloug
o' what had happened wi' the missis. We shall
hev a pretty house wi' him if she doesn't come
back, — he '11 waat to be leatherin' ws, I shouldn't
wonder. He must hev somethin' t' ill-use when
he 's in a passion. "
" I 'd tek care he did n't leather me, — no, not if
he was my husban' ten times o'er; I'd pout hot
drippin' on him sooner. But the missis has n't a
sperrit like me. He '11 mek her come back, you 'U
see; he '11 come round her somehow. There "s no
likelihood of her coming back to-night, though;
so I should think we might fasten the doors and
go to bed when we like."
On Sunday morning, however, Kitty's mind
became disturbed by more definite and alarming
conjectures about her mistress. Whila Betty, en-
couraged by tlie prospect of unwonted leisure, was
sitting down to continue a letter which had long
lain unfinished between the leaves of her Bible,
Kitty came running into the kitchen, and said, —
"Lor! Betty, I'm all of a tremble; you might
knock me down wi' a feather. I've just looked
into the mi.'isis's wardrobe, an' there 'a both her
bonnets. She must ha' gone wi'out her bonnet.
An' then I remember as her night-clothes wasn't
on the bed yesterday momin' ; I thought she 'd
put *em away to be washed; but she bed n't, for
I 've been lookin'. It 'a my belief he 's murdered
her, and shut her up i' that closet as he keeps
locked al'ya. He's capible on't. "
■ Lors ha'-raassy ! why, you 'd better run to
Mrs. Eaynor's an' see if she 's there, arter all.
It was p'raps all a lie. "
JANETS REPENTANCE.
izS
Mrs, Eaynor had returned home to give direc-
tions to her. little maiden, when Kitty, with the
elaborate manifestation of alarm which servants
delight in, rushed in without knocking, and, hold-
ing her hands on her heart as if the consequences
to that organ were likely to be very serious, said, —
" If you please, 'm, is the missis here ? "
" No, Kitty ; why are yon come to ask ? "
" Because, 'm, she 's niver been at home since
yesterday mornin', since afore we was up; an' we
thought somethin' must ha" happened to her. "
■No, don't be frightened, Kitty. Your mis-
tress is quite safe; I know where she is. Is your
master at home ? '
"No, 'm; he went out yesterday mornin", an'
said he shouldn't be back afore to-night.'
" Well, Kitty, there 'a nothing the matter with
your mistress. You needn't say anything to any
one about her being away from home. I shall call
presently and fetch her gown and bonnet. She
wants them to put on. '
Kitty, perceiving there was a mystery she
was not to inquire into, returned to Orchard
Street, really glad to know that her mistress was
safe, but disappointed nevertheless at being told
that she was not to he frightened. She was soon
followed by Mrs. Eaynor in quest of the gown and
bonnet The good mother, on learning that Demp-
ster was not at home, had at once thought that
she could gratify Janet's wish to go to Puddiford
Church.
" See, my dear," she said, as she entered Mrs.
Pettifer's parlour; " I 've brought you your black
clothes, Kobert 's not at home, and is not coming
till this evening. I could n't find your best black
^
126
SCENES OF CLERICAL LTFE.
gown, but this will do. I wouldn't bring any-
thing else, you know; but there can't be any
objection to my fetching clothea to cover you.
You can go to Paddiford Church now, if you like;
and I will go with you. "
" That 's a dear mother ! Then we '11 all three go
together. Come and help me to get ready. Good
little Mrs, Crewel It will vex her sadly that I
should go to hear Mr. Tryan. But I must kiss
her, and make it up with her. "
Many eyes were turned on Janet with a look of
aurpriae as she walked up the aisle of Paddiford
Church. She felt a little tremor at the notice
she knew she was exciting; but it was a strong
satisfaction to her that she had been able at once
to take a step that would let her neighbours know
her change of feeling towards Mr. Tryan: she had
left herself now no room for proud reluctance or
weak hesitation. The walk through the sweet
spring air had stimulated all her fresh hopes, all
her yearning desires after purity, strength, and
peace. She thought she should find a new mean-
ing in the prayers this morning; her full heart,
like an overflowing river, wanted those ready-made
channels to pour itself into; and then she should
hear Mr. Tryan again, and his words would fall on
her like precious balm, as they had done last
night There was a liquid brightness in her eyes
as they rested on the mere walls, the pews, the
weavers and colliers in their Sunday clothes.
The commonest things seemed to touch the spring
of love within her, just as, when we are suddenly
released from an acute absorbing bodily pain, our
heart and senses leap out in new freedom ; we
of streets harmonious, and
JANETS REPENTANCE. 127
are ready to hug the tradesman who is wrapping
up our change. A door had been opened in
Janet's cold dark prison of aelf-despair, and the
golden light of morning was pouring in its slant-
ing beams through the blessed opening, There
was sunlight in the world; there woa a divine love
caring for her ; it had given her an earnest of good
things; it had been preparing comfort for her in
the very moment when she had thought herself
most forsaken.
Mr. Tryan might well rejoice when his eye
rested on her aa he entered his desk ; but he re-
joiced with trembling. He could not look at the
sweet hopeful face without remembering its yes-
terday's look of agony ; and there was the possibility
that that look might return.
Janet's appearance at church was greeted not
only by wondering eyes, but by kind hearts; and
after the service several of Mr. Tryan's hearers
with whom she had been on cold terms of late,
contrived to come up to her and take her by the
hand.
■ Mother," said Miss Linnet, " do let us go and
speak to Mrs. Dempster. I "ni sure there 's a great
change in her mind towards Mr. Tryan, I no-
ticed how eagerly she listened to the sermon, and
she 's come with Mrs. Pettifer, you see. We ought
to go and give her a welcome among us. "
" Why, my dear, we 've never spoke friendly
these five year. You know she '9 been as haughty
as anything since I quarrelled with her husband.
However, let bygones be bygones: I "ve no grudge
again' the poor thing, more particular as she must
ha' flew in her husband's face to come an' hear
r.Ir. Tryan. Yes, let us go an' speak to her."
[23
SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
The friendly words and looks touched Janet a
little too keenly, and Mrs. Pettifer wisely hurried
her home hy the least frequented road. When
they reached home, a violent fit of weeping, fol-
lowed by continuous lassitude, showed that the
emotions of the morning bad overstrained her
nerves. She was suffering, too, from the absence
of the long-accustomed stimulus which she had
promised Mr, Tryan not to touch again. The poor
thing was conscious of this, and dreaded her own
weakness, as the victim of intermittent insanity
dreads the oncoming of the old illusion.
" Mother, " she whispered when Mrs. Raynor
urged her to lie down and rest all the afternoon,
that she might be the better prepared to see Mr.
Tryan in the evening, — "mother, don't let me
have anything if I ask for it, '
In the mother's mind there was the same anx-
iety, and in her it was mingled with another fear,
— the fear lest Janet, in her present excited state of
mind, should take some premature step in relation
to her husband which might lead back to all the
former troubles. The hint she had thrown out in the
morning of her wish to return to him after a time
showed a new eagerness for difficult duties that
only made the long-saddened sober mother tremble.
But as evening approached, Janet's morning
heroism all forsook her: her imagination, influ-
enced by physical depression as well as by mental
habits, was haunted by the vision of her husband's
return home, and she began to shudder with the
yesterday's dread. She heard him calling her,
she saw him going to her mother's to look for her,
she felt sure he would Gnd her out and burst in
upon her.
I
JANKT'S REPENTANCE.
i;9
I
" Pray, pray, don't leave me, don't go to church, "
she said to Mrs. Pettiter. " You auj mother hoth
stay with me till Mr. Tryan comes. "
At twenty minutes past six the church bells
were ringing for the evening service, and soon the
congregation was streaming along Orchard Street
in the mellow sunset. The street opened towards
the west. The red halt-sunken suu shed a solemn
splendour on the every-day houses, and crimsoned
the windows o£ Dempster's projecting upper story.
Suddenly a loud murmur arose and spread along
the stream of church-goers, and one group after
another paused and looked backward. At the far
end of the street, men, accompanied by a miscel-
laneous group o£ onlookers, were slowly carrying
lething, — a body stretched on a door. Slowly
they passed along the middle of the street, lined
all the way with awestruck faces, till they turned
aside and paused in the red sunlight before Demp-
ster's door.
It was Dempster's body. No one knew whether
he was alive oi dead.
CHAPTER XXII.
It was probably a hard saying to the Pharisees, that
" there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that
repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons
that need no repentance. " And certain ingenious
philosophers of our own day must surely take
offence at a joy so entirely out of correspondence
with arithmetical proportion. But a heart that has
been taught by its own sore struggles to bleed for
the woes of another — that has " learned pity
through suffering " — is likely to find very imper-
fect satisfaction in the " balance of happiness, "
" doctrine of compensations, " and other short and
easy methods of obtaining thorough complacency
in the presence of pain ; and for such a heart that
saying will not be altogether dark. The emotions,
I have observed, are but slightly influenced by
arithmetical considerations : the mother, when her
sweet lisping little ones have all been taken from
her one after another, and she is hanging over her
last dead babe, finds small consolation in the fact
that the tiny dimpled corpse is but one of a neces-
sary average, and that a thousand other babes
brought into the world at the same time are doing
well, and are likely to live; and if you stood be-
side that mother — if you knew her pang and
shared it — it is probable you would be equally
unable to see a ground of complacency in statistics.
Doubtless a complacency resting on that basis is
JANETS REPENTA'NCE.
• 31
highly rational ; but emotion, I fear, is obstinately
irrational: it insists on caring for individuals;
it absolutely refuses to adopt the quantitative
view of human anguish, and to admit that thirteen
happy lives are a set-off against twelve miserable
lives, which leaves a clear balance on the side of
satisfaction. This is the inherent imbecility o£
feeling, and one must be a great philosopher to
have got quite clear of all that, and to have
emerged into the serene air of pure intellect, in
which it is evident that individuals really exist
for DO other purpose than that abstractions may be
drawn from them, — abstractious that may rise
from heaps of ruined lives like the sweet savour of
B sacrifice iu the nostrils of philosophers, and of a
philosophic Deity, And so it comes to pass that
(or the man who knows sympathy because he has
known sorrow, that old. old saying about the joy
of angels over the repentant sinner outweighing
their joy over the ninety-nine just has a meaning
which does not jar with the language of his own
heart. It only tells him that for angels too there
is a transcendent value in human pain, which re-
fuses to be settled by equations ; that the eyes of
angels too are turned away from the serene happi-
ness of the righteous to bend with yearning pity
on the poor erring soul wandering in the desert
where no water is; that for angels too the misery
of one casts so tremendous a shadow as to eclipse
the bliss of ninety-nine.
Mr. Tryan had gone through the initiation of
suffering: it is no wonder, then, that Janet's res-
toration was the work that lay nearest his heart;
and that, wear}' as he was in body when he entered
the vestry after the evening service, he was im-
m
132 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
patient to fulfil the promise of seeing her. His
experience enabled him to divine — what was the
fact — that the hopefulness of the morning would
be followed by a return of depression and discour-
agement; and his sense of the inward and outward
difficulties in the way of her restoration was so
keen that he could only find relief from the fore-
boding it excited by lifting up his heart in prayer.
There are unseen elements which often frustrate our
wisest calculations. — which raise up the sufiferer
from the edge of the grave, contradicting the
prophecies of the clear-sighted physician, and ful-
filling the blind clinging hopes of affection ; such
unseen elements Mr. Tryan called the Divine
Will, and filled up the margin of ignorance which
surrounds all our knowledge with the feelings of
trust and resignation. Perhaps the profoundest
philosophy could hardly fill it up better.
His mind was occupied in this way as he was
absently taking off his gown, when Mr. Landor
startled him by entering the vestry and asking
abruptly, —
" Have you heard the news about Dempster ? "
" No, " said Mr. Tryan, anxiously ; " what is it ? *
" He has been thrown out of his gig in the
Bridge Way, and he was taken up for dead. They
were carrying him home as we were coming to
church, and 1 stayed behind to see what I could
do. I went in to speak to Mrs. Dempster, and
prepare her a little, but she was not at home.
Dempster is not dead, however; he was stunned
with the fall. Pilgrim came in a few minutes,
and he says the right leg is broken in two places.
It 's likely to be a terrible case, with his state of
bod^. It seems he was more drunk than usual,
JANET'S REPENTANCE,
and they say he came along the Bridge Way flogging
his hoi
i like a madmitu, till al last it
gave a
sud-
deo wheel and he was pitched i
said they didn't know where Mrs- Dempster was:
she had been away from home since yesterday
morning; but Mrs. Raynor knew."
" I know where she is, " said Mr. Ttyan ; " but
I think it will be better for her not to be told of
this just yet. "
" Ah, that was what Pilgrim said, and so I
didn't go round to Mrs. Itaynor's. He said it
would be all the better if Mrs, Dempster could be
Vept out of the house for the present. Do you
know if anything new has happened between
Dempster and his wifo lately? I was surprised
to hear of her being at Paddiford Church this
morning, '
" Yes, something has happened ; but I believe
she is anxious that the particulars of his behaviour
towards her should not be kuowa. She is at Mrs.
Pettifer's, — there is no reason fur concealing that,
since what has happened to her husband; and
yesterday, when she was in very deep trouble, she
sent for me. I was very thankful she did so ; 1
believe a great change of feeling has begun in her.
But she is at present in thnt excitable state of
mind, she has been shaken by so many painful
emotions during the last two days, that I think it
■would be better, for this evening at least, to guard
her from a new shock, if possible. But I am
going now to call upon her, and I shall see how
she is. '
" Mr. Tryan," said Mr, Jerome, who had entered
during the dialogue, and had been standing by,
listening with a distressed face, " I shall take it
4
134 . SCENES OF CLERICAL LIPE.
as a favour if you '11 let me know if iver there 's
anything I can do for Mrs. Dempster. Eh, dear,
what a world this is! I think I see 'em fifteen
years ago, — as happy a young couple as iver was ;
and now, what it's all come to! I was in a
hurry, like, to punish Dempster for pessecutin* ;
but there was a stronger hand at work nor mine. *
" Yes, Mr. Jerome; but don't let us rejoice in
punishment, even when the hand of God alone
inflicts it The best of us are but poor wretches
just saved from shipwreck : can we feel anything
but awe and pity when we see a fellow passenger
swallowed by the waves ? '
" Right, right, Mr. Tryan. I *m over hot and
hasty, that I am. But I beg on you to tell Mrs.
Dempster — I mean, in course, when you *ve an
opportunity — tell her she *s a friend at the White
House as she may send for any hour o* the day. "
" Yes ; I shall have an opportunity, I dare say,
and I will remember your wish. I think," con-
tinued Mr. Tryan, turning to Mr. Landor, ** I had
better see Mr. Pilgrim on my way, and learn what
is exactly the state of things by this time. What
do you think? "
" By all means : if Mrs. Dempster is to know,
there 's no one can break the news to her so well
as you. I'll walk with you to Dempster's door.
I dare say Pilgrim is there still. Come, Mr.
Jerome, you 've got to go our way too, to fetch
your horse. "
Mr. Pilgrim was in the passage giving some
directions to his assistant, when, to his surprise,
he saw Mr. Tryan enter. They shook hands ; for
Mr. Pilgrim, never having joined the party of the
Anti-Tryanites, had no ground for resisting the
JANETS REPENTANCE. 13s
growing conviction that the Evangelical curate
was really a good fellow, though he was a fool foi
not taking better care of himself.
" Why, I didn't espect to see you in your old
enemy's quarters," he said to Mr. Tryan. " How-
ever, it will be a good while before poor Dempster
shows any fight again."
" I came on Mrs. Dempster's account," said Mr.
Tryan. "She is staying at Mrs. I'ettiter's; she
has had a great shock from some severe domestic
trouble lately, and I think it will be wise to defer
telling her of this dreadful event for a short time. "
" Why, what has been up, eh?" said Mr. Pil-
grim, whose curiosity was at once awakened.
' She used to be no friend of yours. Has there
been some split between them ? It "s a new thing
for her to turn round on him."
■ Oh, merely an exaggeration of scenes that must
often have happened before. But the question
now is, whether you think there is any immediate
danger of her husband's death ; for in that case, I
think, from what I have observed of ber feelings,
she would be pained afterwards to have been kept
in ignorance. "
" Well, there "s no telling in these cases, you
know. I don't apprehend speedy death, and it is
not absolutely impossible that we may bring him
round again. At present he 's in a state of apo-
plectic stupor; but if that subsides, delirium is
almost sure to supervene, and we shall have some
painful scenes. It 's one of those complicated
cases in which the delirium is likely to be of the
worst kind, — meningitis and dullrium tremens
together, — and we may have a good deal of trouble
with him. If Mrs. Dempster were told, I should
136 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
say it would be desirable to persuade her to remain
out of the house at present She could do no good,
you know. I 've got nurses. "
" Thank you, " said Mr. Tryan. " That is what
I wanted to know. Good-by. *
When Mrs. Pettifer opened the door for Mr.
Tryan, he told her in a few words what had hap-
pened, and begged her to take an opportunity of
letting Mrs. Raynor know, that they might, if
possible, concur in preventing a premature or
sudden disclosure of the event to Janet.
*• Poor thing! " said Mrs. Pettifer. " She 's not
fit to hear any bad news ; she 's very low this
evening, — worn out with feeling ; and she 's not
had anything to keep her up, as she *s been used
to. She seems frightened at the thought of being
tempted to take it.**
"Thank God for it; that fear is her greatest
security. '
When Mr. Tryan entered the parlour this time,
Janet was again awaiting him eagerly, and her
pale sad face was lighted up with a smile as she
rose to meet him. But the next moment she said,
with a look of anxiety, —
" How very ill and tired you look ! You have
been working so hard all day, and yet you are
come to talk to me. Oh, you are wearing yourself
out. I must go and ask Mrs. Pettifer to come and
make you have some supper. But this is my
mother; you have not seen her before, I think."
While Mr. Tryan was speaking to Mrs. Raynor,
Janet hurried out ; and he, seeing that this good-
natured thoughtfulness on his behalf would help
to counteract her depression, was not inclined to
oppose her wish, but accepted the supper Mrs.
JANETS "REPENTANCE.
'37
Pettifer offered him, quietly talking the while
abuut a clothing-club he was going to establish in
Paddiford, and the want of provident habits among
the poor.
Presently, however, Mrs Eaynor said she must
go home for an hour, to see how her little maiden
was jjoiug on, and Mrs. Pettifer left the room with
her to take the opportunity of telling her what
had happened to Dempster. When Janet was left
alone with Mr Tryan, she said, —
" I feel so uncertain what to do about my hus-
band. I am so weak. — my feelings change so
from hour to hour. This morning when I felt so
hopeful and happy. I thought I should like to go
back to him, and try to make up for what has
been wrong in me, I thought, now t>od would
help me, and I should have you to teach and ad-
vise me, and I could bear the troubles that would
come. But since then — all this afternoon and
evening — I have had the same feelings I used to
have, the same dread of his anger and cruelty ; and
it seems to me as if I should never be able to hear
it without falling into the same sins and doing
just what I did before. Yet, if it were settled
that I should live apart from hira, I know it would
tlways be a load on my mind that I had shut
myself out from going back to him. It seems a
dreadful thing in life, when any one has been so
near to one as a husband for fifteeu years, to part
and be nothing to each other any more. Surely
that is a very strong tie, and I feel as if my duty
can never lie quite away from it. It is very diffi-
cult to know what to do : what ought I to do ? "
" I think it will be well not to take any decisive
step yet. "Wait until your mind is calmer. You
I
138 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
might remain with your mother for a little while.
I think you have no real ground for fearing any
annoyance from your husband at present; he has
put himself too much in the wrong ; he will very
likely leave you unmolested for some time. Dis-
miss this difficult question from your mind just
now, if you can. Every new day may bring you
new grounds for decision, and what is most need-
ful for your health of mind is repose from that
haunting anxiety about the future which has been
preying on you. Cast yourself on God, and trust
that he will direct you ; he will make your duty
clear to you, if you wait submissively on him. "
*' Yes ; I will wait a little, as you tell me. I
will go to my mother's to-morrow, and pray to be
guided rightly. You will pray for me too. *
CHAPTER XXni.
The next moming Janet was so much calmer, and
at breakfast spoke so decidedly of going to her
mother's, that Mrs. Pettifer and Mrs. Eaynor
agreed it would be wise to let her know by de-
grees what had befallen her husband, since aa
600U as she went out there would be danger of ber
meeting some one who would betray the fact. But
Mrs. Raynor thought it would be well first to call
at Dempster's and ascertain how he was; so she
said to Janet, —
" My dear, I '11 go home first, and see to things,
and get your room ready. You needn't come yet,
you know. I shall be back again in an hour or
so, and we can go together. "
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Pettifer. "Stay with me
till evening, I shall be lost without you. You
needn't go till quite evening."
Janet had dipped into the " Life of Henry
Martyn, " which Mrs. Pettifer had from the Paddi-
ford Lending Library ; and her interest was so
arrested by that pathetic missionary story that
she readily acquiesced in both propositions, and
Mrs. Raynor set out.
She had been gone more than an hour, and it
was nearly twelve o'clock, when Janet put down
her book ; and after sitting meditatively for some
minutes with her eyes unconsciously fixed on the
opposite wall, she rose, went to hei bedroom, and.
140 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIPE.
hastily putting on her bonnet and shawl, came
down to Mrs. Pettifer, who was busy in the
kitchen.
* Mrs. Pettifer," she said, "tell mother, when
she comes back, I *m gone to see what has become
of those poor Lakins in Butcher Lane. I know
they 're half starving, and I 've neglected them so,
lately. And then, I think, I '11 go on to Mrs.
Crewe. I want to see the dear little woman,
and tell her myself about my going to hear Mr.
Tryan. She won't feel it half so much if I tell
her myself. "
"Won't you wait till your mother comes, or
put it off till to-morrow ? ' said Mrs. Pettifer,
alarmed. " You *11 hardly be back in time for
dinner, if you get talking to Mrs. Crewe. And
you '11 have to pass by your husband's, you know;
and yesterday you were so afraid of seeing him. "
*• Oh, Robert will be shut up at the office now,
if he 's not gone out of the town. I must go — I
feel I must be doing something for some one —
not be a mere useless log any longer. I 've been
reading about tliat wonderful Henry Martyn ; he *s
just like Mr. Tryan, — wearing himself out for
other people, and I sit thinking of nothing but
myself. I must go. Good-by. I shall be back
soon. "
She ran off before Mrs. Pettifer could utter
another word of dissuasion, leaving the good
woman in considerable anxiety lest this new im-
pulse of Janet's should frustrate all precautious to
save her from a sudden shock.
Janet, having paid her visit in Butcher Lane,
turned again into Orchard Street on her way to
Mrs. Crewe's, and was thinking rather sadly that
JANETS REPE^■TA^•CE. 141
her mother's economical housekeeping would leave
no abundant surplus to be sent to the hungry
Lakins, when she saw Mr. Pilgrim in advance of
her on the other side of the street He was walking
at a rapid pace; and when he reached Dempster's
door, he turned and entered without knocking.
Janet was startled. Mr. Pilgrim would never
enter in that way unless there were some one very
ill in the house. It was her husband; she felt
certain of it at once. Something had happened to
him. Without a moment's pause she ran across
the street, opened the door, and entered, There
was no one in the passage. The dining-room door
was wide open. — no one was there. Mr. Pilgrim,
then, was already upstairs. She rushed up at
once to Dempster's room, — her own room. The
door was open, and she paused in pale horror at the
sight before her, which seemed to stand out only
with the more appalling distinctness because the
noonday light was darkened to twilight in the
chamber.
Two strong nurses were using their utmost force
to hold Dempster in hed, while the medical assist-
ant was applying a sponge to his head, and Mr.
Pilgrim was busy adjusting some apparatus in the
background. Dempster's face was purple and
swollen, his eyes dilated, and fixed with a look
of dire terror on something he seemed to see ap-
proaching him from the iron closet He trembled
violently, and struggled as if to jump out of bed.
"Let me go, let me go,' he said in a loud,
hoarse whisper; "she's coming . . . she's cold
. . . she 's dead . . . she '11 strangle me with her
black hair. Ah ! " he shrieked aloud, " her hair is
all serpents . . . they 're black serpents , , .
I
J
142 SCENES or CLERICAL LITE.
they hiss . . . they hiss ... let me go .. . let
me go . . . she wants to drag me with her cold
arms . . . her arms are serpents . . . they are
great white serpents . , . they *11 twine round me
. . . she wants to drag me into the cold water
. . . her bosom is cold ... it is black ... it
is all serpents — "
** No, Robert, " Janet cried, in tones of yearning
pity, rushing to the side of the bed, and stretching
out her arms towards him, " no, here is Janet
She is not dead, — she forgives you. "
Dempster's maddened senses seemed to receive
some new impression from her appearance. The
terror gave way to rage.
" Ha ! you sneaking hypocrite ! " he burst out
in a grating voice, " you threaten me . . . you
mean to have your revenge on me, do you? Do
your worst! I've got the law on my side . . .
I know the law ... I '11 hunt you down like a
hare . . . prove it . . . prove that I was tampered
with . . . prove that I took the money . . . prove
it . . . you can prove nothing . . . you damned
psalm-singing maggots! 1*11 make a fire under
you, and smoke off the whole pack of you . . .
I '11 sweep you up . . . I '11 grind you to powder
. . . small powder . . . [here his voice dropped
to a low tone of shuddering disgust] . . . powder
on the bed-clothes . . . running about . . . black
lice . . . they are coming in swarms . . . Janet!
come and take them away . . . curse you ! why
don't you come? Janet!"
Poor Janet was kneeling by the bed with her
face buried in her hands. She almost wished her
worst moment back again rather than this. It
seemed as if her husband was already imprisoned
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 143
in misery, and she could not reach him, — his ear
deaf forever to the sounds of love and forgiveness.
His ains had made a hard crust round his soul;
her pitying voice could not pierce it.
" Not there, is n't she ? " he went on in a defiant
tone, " Why do you ask me where she is? I 11
have every drop of yellow blood out of your veins
if you come questioning me- Your blood is yellow
, . . in your purse , . . runuingout of your purse.
. . . What! you're changing it into toads, are
yon? They 're crawling . . . they're flying . . .
they 're flying about my head . . . the toads are
flying about. Ostler I ostler! bring out my gig
. . , bring it out, you lazy beast ... ha! you '11
follow me, will you? , . . you'll fly about my
head . . , you've got fiery tongues - . . Ostler!
curse you! why don't you come? Janet! come and
take the toads away . . . Janet I "
This last time he uttered her name with such a
shriek of terror that Janet involuntarily started up
from her knees, and stood as if petrified by the
horrible vibration, Dempster stared wildly in
silence for some moments; then he spoke again in
a hoarse whisper, —
" Dead ... is she dead ? She did it, then.
She buried herself in the iron chest . . . she left
her clothes out, though . . . she isn't dead . . .
why do you pretend she 's dead ? . . . she 's com-
ing . . . she 's coming out of the iron closet . . .
there are the black serpents . . . stop her . . .
let me go . . . stop her . . . she wants to drag
me away into the cold black water . . . her bosom
is black ... it is all serpents . . . they are get-
ting longer , . , the great white serpents are
getting longer — "
144 SCENES OP CLERICAL LIFE.
Here Mr. Pilgrim came forward with the appara-
tus to bind him; but Dempster's struggles became
more and more violent ** Ostler ! ostler ! " he
shouted, ** bring out the gig . . . give me the
whip ! ' and bursting loose from the strong hands
that held him, he began to flog the bed-clothes
furiously with his right arm.
" Get along, you lame brute ! — sc — sc — sc !
that 's it! there you go! They think they 've out-
witted me, do they? The sneaking idiots! I'll
be up with them by and by. I '11 make them say
the Lord's Prayer backwards ... I '11 pepper
them so that the devil shall eat them raw . . .
sc — sc — sc — we shall see who '11 be the winner
yet . . . get along, you damned limping beast . . .
I '11 lay your back open . . . I '11 — "
He raised himself with a stronger effort than
ever to flog the bed-clothes, and fell back in con-
vulsions. Janet gave a scream, and sank on her
knees again. She thought he was dead.
As soon as Mr. Pilgrim was able to give her a
moment's attention, he came to her, and, taking
her by the arm, attempted to draw her gently out
of the room.
" Now, ray dear Mrs. Dempster, let me persuade
you not to remain in the room at present. We
shall soon relieve these symptoms, I hope ; it is
nothing but the delirium that ordinarily attends
such cases. "
" Oh, what is the matter ? what brought it on ? "
" He fell out of the gig ; the right leg is broken.
It is a terrible accident, and I don't disguise that
there is considerable danger attending it, owing to
the state of the brain. But Mr. Dempster has a
strong constitution, you know ; in a few days these
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 145
symptoms may be allayed, and he may do well.
Let me beg of you to keep out of the room at pres-
ent: you can do no good until Mr. Dempster is
better, and able to know you. But you ought not
to be alone; let me advise you to have Mrs.
Baynor with you. "
** Yes, I will send for mother. But you must
not object to my being in the room. I shall be
very quiet now, only just at first the shock was so
great; I knew nothing about it. I can help the
nurses a great deal ; I can put the cold things to
his head. He may be sensible for a moment and
know ma Pray do not say any more against it :
my heart is set on being with him. "
Mr. Pilgrim gave way; and Janet, having sent
for her mother and put off her bonnet and shawl,
returned to take her place by the side of her hus-
band's bed.
VOL. II. — 10
CHAPTER XXIV.
Day after day, with only short intervals of rest,
Janet kept her place in that sad chamber. No
wonder the sick-room and the lazaretto have so
often been a refuge from the tossings of intellec-
tual doubt, — a place of repose for the worn and
wounded spirit. Here is a duty about which all
creeds and all philosophies are at one; here, at
least, the conscience will not be dogged by doubt,
the benign impulse will not be checked by adverse
theory ; here you may begin to act without settling
one preliminary question. To moisten the suffer-
er's parched lips through the long night-watches,
to bear up the drooping head, to lift the helpless
limbs, to divine the want that can find no utter-
ance beyond the feeble motion of the hand or
beseeching glance of the eye, — these are oflBces
that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no
assent to propositions, no weighing of conse-
quences. Within the four walls where the stir
and glare of the world are shut out, and every
voice is subdued, — where a human being lies pros-
trate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow,
the moral relation of man to man is reduced to its
utmost clearness and simplicity : bigotry cannot
confuse it ; theory cannot pervert it ; passion, awed
into quiescence, can neither pollute nor perturb it
As we bend over the sick-bed, all the forces of our
nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience,
and of love, and sweep down the miserable choking
I
I
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 147
drift of our quarrels, our debates, our would-be
wisdom, and our clamorous selfish desires. This
blessing of serene freedom from the importuuities
of opinion lies in all simple direct acts of mercy,
and is one source of that sweet calm which is often
felt by the watcher in the sick-room, even when
the duties there are of a hard and terrible kind.
Something of that benign result was felt by
Janet during bor tendance in her husband's cham-
ber. When the first heart-piercing hours were over
— when her horror at his delirium was no longer "
fresh — she began to be conscious of her relief
from the burden of decision as to her future course.
The question that agitated her about returning to
her husband had been solved iu a moment; and
this illness, after all, might be the herald of an-
other blessing, just a.s that dreadful midnight when
she stood an outcast in cold and darkness had been
followed by the dawn of a new hope. Eobert wouhl
get better; this illness might alter him ; he would
be a long time feeble, needing help, walking with a
crutch perhaps She would wait on him with such
tenderness, such all-forgiving love, that the old
harshness and cruelty must melt away forever
under the heart-sunshine she would pour around
him. Her bosom heaved at the thought, and deli-
cious tears fell. Janet's was a nature in which
hatred and revenge could find no place; the long
bitter years drew half their bitterness from her
ever living remembrance of the too short years
of love that went before; and the thought that
her husband would ever put her hand to bis
lips again, and recall the days when they sat on
the grass together, and be laid scarlet poppies on
her black hair, and called her his gypsy queen,
148 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
seemed to send a tide of loving oblivion over all
the harsh and stony space they had traversed
since. The Divine Love that had already shone
upon her would be with her; she would lift up
her soul continually for help; Mr. Tryan, she
knew, would pray for her. If she felt herself
failing, she would confess it to him at once; if
her feet began to slip, there was that stay for her
to cling to. Oh , she could never be drawn back
into that cold damp vault of sin and despair
again; she had felt the morning sun, she had
tasted the sweet pure air of trust and penitence
and submission.
These were the thoughts passing through Janet's
mind as she hovered about her husband's bed, and
these were the hopes she poured out to Mr. Tryan
when he called to see her. It was so evident that
they were strengthening her in her new struggle, —
they shed such a glow of calm enthusiasm over her
face as she spoke of them, that Mr. Tryan could not
bear to throw on them the chill of premonitory
doubts, though a previous conversation he had had
with Mr. Pilgrim had convinced him that there
was not the faintest probability of Dempster's re-
covery. Poor Janet did not know the significance
of the changing symptoms, and when, after the
lapse of a week, the delirium began to lose some of
its violence, and to be interrupted by longer and
longer intervals of stupor, she tried to think that
these might be steps on the way to recovery, and
she shrank from questioning Mr. Pilgrim, lest he
should confirm the fears that be^^^an to get pre-
dominance in her mind. But before many days
were past, he thought it right not to allow her to
blind herself any longer. One day — it was just
I
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 149
about uoon, when bad news alwnvs seems most
sickening — he led her from her husband's chamber
into the opposite drawing-room, where Mrs. Eaynor
was sitting, and said to her, in that low tone of
Bympathetic feeling which sometimes gave a sudden
air of gentleness to this rough man, —
" My dear Mrs. Dempster, it is right in tliese
cases, you know, to be prepared for the worst. I
think I shall be saving you pain by preventing
you from entertaining any false hopes, and Mr.
Dempster's state is now such that I fear we must
consider recovery impossible. The affection of the
brain might not have been hopeless, but, you see,
there is a terrible complication ; and I am grieved
to say the broken limb ia mortifying."
Janet listened with a sinking heart. That future
of love and forgiveness would never come, then : he
waa going out of her sight forever, where her pity
could never reach him. She turned cold, and
trembled,
" But do you think he will die," she said, " with-
out ever coming to himself, without ever knowing
meV
" One cannot say that with certainty. It is not
impossible that the cerebral oppression may sub-
side, and that he may become conscious. If there
is anything you would wish to be said or done in
that case, it would be well to be prepared. I should
think," Mr. Pilgrim continued, turning to Mrs. Ray-
nor, "Mr. Dempster's affairs are likely to be in
order, — his will is — "
" Oh. I would n't have him tronbled about those
things," interrupted Janet ; " he has no relations hut
quite distant ones, — no one but me. 1 wouldn't
take up the time with that. I ocily want to — "
ISO SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
She was unable to finish ; she felt her sobs rising,
and left the room. " God," she said inwardly, " is
not Thy love greater than mine ? Have mercy on
him 1 have mercy on him ! "
This happened on Wednesday, ten days after the
fatal accident. By the following Sunday, Dempster
was in a state of rapidly increasing prostration; and
when Mr. Pilgrim, who, in turn with his assistant,
had slept in the house from the beginning, came in,
about half-past ten, as usual, he scarcely believed
that the feebly struggling life would last out till
morning. For the last few days he had been ad-
ministering stimulants to relieve the exhaustion
which had succeeded the alternations of delirium
and stupor. This slight office was all that now
remained to be done for the patient ; so at eleven
o'clock Mr. Pilgrim went to bed, having given
directions to the nurse, and desired her to call him
if any change took place, or if Mrs. Dempster
desired his presence.
Janet could not be persuaded to l^ve the room.
She was yearning and watching for a moment in
which her husband's eyes would rest consciously
upon her, and he would know that she had forgiven
him.
How changed he was since that terrible Monday,
nearly a fortnight ago 1 He lay motionless, but for
the irregular breathing that stirred his broad chest
and thick muscular neck. His features were no
longer purple and swollen ; they were pale, sunken,
and haggard. A cold perspiration stood in beads
on the protuberant forehead, and on the wasted
hands stretched motionless on the bed-clothes. It
was better to see the hands so, tlian convulsively
picking the air, as they had been a week ago.
JANET'S HEPENTANCE. iji
Janet sat on the edge of the bed through the
long hours of candle-light, watching the iincon-
8ciuus half-closed eyes, wiping tlie perspiration
from the brow and cheeks, and keeping her left
hand on the cold unanswering right hand that lay
lieside her on the bed-clothes. She was almost as
pale as her dying husband, and there were dark
lines under her eyes, for this was the third night
Bince alie had taken off her clothes ; but the eager
straining gaze of her dark eyes, and the acute sensi-
bility that lay in every line about her mouth, made
a strange contrast with the blank unconsciousnesa
and emaciated animalism of the face she was
watching.
There was profound stillness in the house. She
heard no sound but her husband's breathing and
the ticking of the watch on the mantelpiece. The
candle, placed high up, shed a soft light down on
the one object she cored to see. There was a smell
of brandy in the room ; it was given to her husband
from time to time ; but this smell, which at first
had produced in her a taint shuddering sensation,
was now becoming indifferent to her: she did not
even perceive it ; she was too unconscious of herself
to feel either temptations or accusations. She only
felt that the husband of her youth was dying; far,
far out of her reach, as if she were standing help-
less on the shore, while he was sinking in the black
storm-waves ; she only yearned for one moment in
which she might satisfy the deep forgiving pity of
her soul by one look of love, one word of tenderness.
Her sensations and thoughts were so persistent
that she could not measure the hours, and it was a
surprise to her when the nurse put out the candle,
and let in the faint morning light Mrs. Raynor,
m
152 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
anxious about Janet, was already up, and now
brought in some fresh coffee for her; and Mr.
Pilgrim, having awaked, had hurried on his clothes,
and was come in to see how Dempster was.
This change from candle-light to morning, this
recommencement of the same round of things that
had happened yesterday, was a discouragement
rather than a relief to Janet She was more con-
scious of her chill weariness ; the new light thrown
on her husband's face seemed to reveal the still
work that death had been doing through the night ;
she felt her last lingering hope that he would ever
know her again forsake her.
But now Mr. Pilgrim, having felt the pulse, was
putting some brandy in a tea-spoon between Demp-
ster's lips ; the brandy went down, and his breath-
ing became freer. Janet noticed the change, and
her heart beat faster as she leaned forward to watch
him. Suddenly a slight movement, like the passing
away of a shadow, was visible in his face, and he
opened his eyes full on Janet.
It was almost like meeting him again on the
resurrection morning, after the night of the grave.
'* Robert, do you know me V
He kept his eyes fixed on her, and there was a
faintly perceptible motion of the lips, as if he
wanted to speak.
But the moment of speech was forever gone, —
the moment for asking pardon of her, if he wanted
to ask it Could he read the full forgiveness that
was written in her eyes ? She never knew ; for,
as she was bending to kiss him, the thick veil of
death fell between them, and her lips touched a
corpse.
CHAPTER XXV.
The faces looked very hard and unmoved that sur-
roaoded Dempster's grave, while old Mr. Crewe read
the burial-service in his low, broken voice. The
pall-bearers were such men as Mr. Pittiuan, Mr.
Lowme, and Mr, liudd. — men whom Dempster had
called his friends while he was in life; and worldly
faces never look so worldly as at a funeral They
have the same effect of grating incongruity as the
sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence
of qight.
The one face that had sorrow in it was covered
by a thick crape veil, and the sorrow was suppressed
and silent- No one knew how deep it was ; for the
thought in most of her neighbours' minds was that
Mrs. Dempster could hardly have had better fortune
than to lose a bad husband who had left her the com-
pensation of a good income. They found it difficult
to conceive that her husband's death could be felt
by her otherwise than as a deliverance. The person
who was most thoronghly convinced that Janet's
grief was deep and real was Mr. Pilgrim, who in
general was not at all weakly given to a belief in
disinterested feeling.
"That woman has a tender heart," he was fre-
quently heard to observe in his morning rounds
about this time. " I used to think there was a great
deal of palaver in her, but you may depend upon it
there's no pretence about her. If he'd been the
kindest husband in the world, she could n't have felt
1 54 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
more. There *8 a great deal of good in Mrs. Demp-
ster, — a great deal of good."
" / always said so," was llrs. Lowme's reply, when
he made the observation to her; "she was always
so very full of pretty attentions to me when I was
ill. IJut they tell me now she 's turned Tryanite ;
if that's it, we sha'n't agree again. It's very incon-
sistent in her, I think, turning round in that way,
after being the foremost to laugh at the Tryanite
cant, and especially in a woman of her habits ; she
should cure herself of them before she pretends to
be over-religious."
" Well, I think she means to cure herself, do you
know," said Mr. Tilgrim, whose good-will towards
Janet was just now quite above that temperate point
at which he could indulge his feminine patients with
a little judicious detraction. " I feel sure she has
not taken any stimulants all through her husband*s
illness; and she has been constantly in the way of
them. I can see she sometimes suffers a good deal
of depression for want of them, — it shows all the
more resolution in her. Those cures are rare; but
1 've known them happen sometimes with people of
strong will."
Mrs. Lowme took an opportunity of retailing Mr.
Pilgrim's conversation to Mrs. Phipps, who, as a vic-
tim of Pratt and plethora, could rarely enjoy that
j)loasur(3 at first hand Mrs. Phipps was a woman
of docnded opinions, though of wheezy utterance.
" For my part," she remarked, " I 'm glad to hear
there 's any likelihood of improvement in Mrs Demp-
ster, but I think the way things have turned out
seems to show that she was more to blame than people
thouglit she was; else why should she feel so much
about her husband ? And Dempster, I understand, has
JANETS REPENTANCE.
IS5
left hia wife pretty nearly all his property to do as
she likes with ; that is n't behaving like such a very
bad biisbaiid. I don't believe Mrs. Dempster can
have had so much provocation as they pretended.
I've known husbands who've laid plans for tor-
menting their wives when they're underground, —
tying up their money and hindering them from
marrying again. Not that / should ever wish to
marry again ; I think one husband in one's life is
enough in all conscience." — here shii threw a
fierce glance at the amiable Mr. Phipps, who was
innocently delighting himself with the fuceticB in
the "Rotherhy Guardian," and thinking the editor
must be a droll fellow, — " but it 's aggravating to
be tied up in that way. Why, they say Mrs. Demp-
ster will have as good as six hundred a-year at least.
A fine thing for her. that was a poor girl without a
farthing to her fortuna It's well if she doesn't
make ducks and drakes of it somehow."
Mrs. Pbipps's view of Janet, however, was for
from being the prevalent one in Milby. Eveu
neighbours who had no strong personal interest in
her could hardly see the noble-looking woman in
her widow's dress, with a sad sweet gravity in her
face, and not be touched with fresh admiration
for her, — and not feel, at least vaguely, that she
had entered on a new life in which it was a sort of
desecration to allude to the painful past. And the
old friends who had a real regard for her, but whose
cordiality had been repelled or chilled of late years,
now came round her with hearty demonstrations of
affection. Mr. Jerome felt that his happiness had
a substantial addition now he could once more call
on that " nice little woman Mrs. Dempster," and
think of her with rejoicing instead of sorrow. The
156 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
Pratts lost no time in returning to the footing of old-
established friendship with Janet and her mother ;
and Miss Pratt felt it incumbent on her, on all suit-
able occasions, to deliver a very emphatic approval
of the remarkable strength of mind she understoo4
Mrs. Dempster to be exhibiting. The Miss Linnets
were eager to meet Mr. Tryan*s wishes by greeting
Janet as one who was likely to be a sister in reli-
gious feeling and good works ; and Mrs. Linnet was
so agreeably surprised by the fact that Dempster
had left his wife the money " in that handsome way,
to do what she liked with it," that she even included
Dempster himself, and his villanous discovery of
the flaw in her title to Pye*s Croft, in her magnani-
mous oblivion of past offences. She and Mrs. Jerome
agreed over a friendly cup of tea that there were " a
many husbands as was very fine spoken an* all that,
an' yet all the while kep' a will locked up from you,
as tied you up as tight as anything. I assure you^
Mrs. Jerome continued, dropping her voice in a con-
fidential manner, " I know no more to this day about
Mr. Jerome's will nor the child as is unborn. I *ve
no fears about a income, — I'm well aware Mr.
Jerome 'ud niver leave me stret for that ; but I
should like to hev a thousand or two at my own
disposial ; it makes a widow a deal more looked on."
Perhaps this ground of respect to widows might
not be entirely without its influence on the Milby
mind, and might do something towards conciliating
those more aristocratic acquaintances of Janet's,
who would otherwise have been inclined to take
the severest view of her apostasy towards Evangeli-
calism. Errors look so very ugly in persons of small
means, — one feels they are taking quite a liberty
in going astray ; whereas people of fortune may
JANETS REPENTANCE.
'sr
naturally indulge in a few delinquencies. " They 've
got the money for it," as the girl said of her mistress
who had made herself ill with pickled salmon.
However it may have been, there was not an ac-
quaiutance of Janet's, in Milby, that did not offer
her civilities in the early days of her widowhood.
Even the severe Mrs. Phipps was not an exception ;
for heaven knows what would become of our social-
ity if we never visited people we speak ill of: we
should live, like Egyptian hermits, in crowded
solitude.
Perhaps the attentions most grateful to Janet
were those of her old friend Mrs. Crewe, whose
attachment to her favourite proved quite too strong
for any resentment she might be supposed to feel
on the score of Mr. Tryan. The little deaf old lady
couldn't do without her accustomed visitor, whom
she had seen grow up from child to woman, always
80 willing to chat with her and tell her all the news,
though she was deaf ; while other people thought it
tiresome to shout in her ear, and irritated her by
recommending ear-trumpets of various construction.
All this friendliness was very precious to Janet.
She was conscious of the aid it gave her in the self-
conquest which was the blessing she prayed for
with every fresh morning. The chief strength of
her nature lay in her affection, which coloured all
the rest of her mind: it gave a personal sisterly
tenderness to her acts of beneivolcnce ; it made her
cling with tenacity to every object that had once
stirred her kindly emotions. Alas ! it was unsatis-
fied, wounded affection that had made her trouble
greater than she could bear. And now there was
no check to the full How of that plenteous current
in her nature, no gnawing secret anguish, no
158 SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
overhanging terror, no inward shame. Friendly
faces beamed on her ; she felt that friendly hearts
were approving her and wishing her well ; and that
mild sunshine of good-will fell beneficently on her
new hopes and efforts, as the clear shining after
rain falls on the tender leaf-buds of spring, and wins
them from promise to fulfilment.
And she needed these secondary helps, for her
wrestling with her past self was not always easy.
The strong emotions from which the life of a human
being receives a new bias, win their victory as the sea
wins his : though their advance may be sure, they
will often, after a mightier wave than usual, seem
to roll back so far as to lose all the ground they
had made. Janet showed the strong bent of her
will by taking every outward precaution against
the occurrence of a temptation. Her mother was
now her constant companion, having shut up her
little dwelling and come to reside in Orchard Street ;
and Jaiiet gave all dangerous keys into her keeping,
entreating her to lock them away in some secret
place. Whenever the too well-known depression
and cravinj? threatened her, she would seek a refucre
in what had always been her purest enjoyment, —
in visiting one of her poor neighbours, in carrying
some food or comfort to a sick-bed, in cheerinfi: with
her smile some of the familiar dwellings up the
dingy back lanes. But the great source of courage,
tlie great help to perseverance, was the sense tliat
she had a friend and teacher in Mr. Trvan : she could
confess her difficulties to him; she knew he prayed
for lier; she had always before her the prospect of
soon seeing him, and hearing words of admonition and
comfort that came to her cliarged with a divine power
such as she had never found in human words before.
JANET'S REPENTAKCE.
So the time passed, till it was tar c
1 May,
I month a
she and her mother were seated peacefully at break-
fast in tlie dining-room, looking through the open
window at the old-fashioned garden, where the graas-
plot was now whitened with apple-hlossoms, a letter
was brought in for Mrs. RnyDor.
"Why, there's the Thurston post-mark on it," she
said. ■' It must be about your aunt Anna. Ah, so
it is, poor thing! she's been taken worse this last
day or two, and has asked them to send for me.
That dropsy is canying her off at last, I dare say.
Poor thing! it will be a happy release. 1 must go,
my dear, — she 's your father's last sister, — though
I am sorry to leave yon. However, perhaps I shall
not have to stay more than a night or two."
Janet looked distressed as she said : " Yes, you
must go, mother. But T don't know what T shall
do without you. I think I shall run in to Mrs.
Pettifer, and ask her to come and stay with me
while yon 're away. I 'm sure she will."
At twelve o'clock Janet, having seen her mother
in the coach that was to carry her to Thurston,
called, on her way back, at Mrs. Pettifer's, but
found, to her great disappointment, that her old
friend was gone ont for the dny. So she wrotfi on
a leaf of her pocket-book an urgent request that
Mrs. Pettifer would come and stay with her while
her mother was away; and desiring the servant-
girl to give it to her mistress as soon as she came
home, walked on to the Vicarage to sit with Mrs.
Crewe, thinking to relieve in this way the feeling
of desolatene^s and undefiued fear that was taking
possession of her on being left alone for the first
time since that great crisis in her life. And Mrs.
Crewe, too, was not at home !
4
i6o SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
Janet, with a sense of discouragement for which
she rebuked herself as childish, walked sadly home
again ; and when she entered the vacant dining-room,
she could not help bursting into tears. It is such
vague undefinable states of susceptibility as this —
states of excitement or depression, half mental,
half physical — that determine many a tragedy in
women's lives. Janet could scarcely eat anything
at her solitary dinner : she tried to fix her attention
on a book in vain ; she walked about the garden,
and felt the very sunshine melancholy.
Between four and five o'clock, old Mr. Pittman
called, and joined her in the garden, where she had
been sitting for some time under one of the great
apple-trees, thinking how Robert, in his best moods,
used to take little Mamsey to look at the cucumbers,
or to see the Alderney cow with its calf in the
paddock. The tears and sobs had come again at
these thoughts ; and when Mr. Pittman approached
her, she was feeling languid and exhausted. But
the old gentleman's sight and sensibility were
obtuse, and, to Janet's satisfaction, he showed no
consciousness that she was in grief.
"I have a task to impose upon you, Mrs. Demp-
ster,*' he said, with a certain toothless pomposity
habitual to him : '* I want you to look over those
letters again in Dempster's bureau, and see if you can
find one from Poole about the mortgage on those
houses at Dingley. It will be worth twenty pounds,
if you can find it ; and I don't know where it can be,
if it is n't among those letters in the bureau. I *ve
looked everywhere at the office for it I *m going
home now, but I'll call again to-morrow, if you'll be
good enough to look in the mean time."
Janet said she would look directlv, and turned
with Mr. Pittman into the house. But the search
JANET'S REPENTANCE. i6i
would take her some time ; so be bade her good-by,
and she went at once to a bureau which stood in a
smalt back-room, where Dempster used sometimes
to write letters and receive people who came on
business out of office hours. She had looked through
the contents of the bureau more than once; but to-
day, on removing the last bundle of letters from one
of the compartments, she saw what she had never
seen before, a smalt nick in the wood, made in the
shape of a thumb-nail, evidently intended as a means
of pushing aside the movable back of the compart-
tneot. In her examination hitherto slie had not
found such a letter as Mr. I'ittman had described, —
perhaps there might be more letters betiind tliis
slide. She pushed it back at once, and saw — no
letters, but a small spirit-decanter, half full of pate
brandy, Dempster's habitual drink.
An impetuous desire shook Janet througli all her
members; it seemed to master her witti the inevit-
able force of strong fumes that flood our senses
before we are aware. Her hand was on the decan-
ter ; pate and excited, she was lifting it out of its
niche, when, with a start and a shudder, she dashed
it to the ground, and the room was filled with tho
odour of the spirit. Without staying to stmt up the
bureau, she rushed out of the room, snatched up
her bonnet and mantle which lay in the dining-
room, and hurried out of tlie house.
Where should atie go ? In what place would this
demon that had re-entered her be scared back again ?
She walked rapidly along the street in the direction
of the church. She was soon at the gate of the
churchyard ; she passed through it, and made her
way across the graves to a spot she knew, — a spot
where the turf had been stirred not long before.
i62 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
where a tomb was to be erected soon. It was very
near the church wall, on the side which now lay in
deep shadow, quite shut out from the rays of the
westering sun by a projecting buttress.
Janet sat down on the ground. It was a sombre
spot. A thick hedge, surmounted by elm-trees, was
in front of her ; a projecting buttress on each side.
But she wanted to shut out even these objects.
Her thick crape veil was down ; but she closed her
eyes behind it, and pressed her hands upon them.
She wanted to summon up the vision of the past ;
she wanted to lash the demon out of her soul with
the stinging memories of the bygone misery; she
wanted to renew the old horror and the old anguish,
that she might throw herself with the more desper-
ate clinging energy at the foot of the cross, where the
Divine Sufferer would impart divine strength. She
tried to recall those first bitter moments of shame,
which were like the shuddering discovery of the
leper that the dire taint is upon him ; the deeper
and deeper lapse ; the oncoming of settled despair ;
the awful moments by the bedside of her self-
maddened husband. And then she tried to live
through, with a remembrance made more vivid by
that contrast, the blessed hours of hope and joy and
peace that had come to her of late, since her whole
soul had been bent towards the attainment of purity
and holiness.
But now, when the paroxysm of temptation was
past, dread and despondency began to thrust them-
selves, like cold heavy mists, between her and the
heaven to which she wanted to look for light and
guidance. The temptation would come again, —
that rush of desire might overmaster her the next
time, — she would slip back again into that deep
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
163
slimy pit from which she had beon once rescued,
and there might be no deliverBnce for her more,
ller prayers did not help her, for fear predominated
over trust; she had no confidence that the aid she
sought would be given ; the idea of her future fall
had grasped her mind too strongly. Alone, in this
way. she was powerless. If she could see Mr. Tryan,
if she could confess all to him, she might gather
hope again. She tnust see him; she must go to
him.
Janet rose from the ground, and walked away
with a quick resolved step. She had been seated
there a long while, and the sun had already sunk.
It was late for her to walk to Paddiford and go to
Mr. Tryan's, where she had never called before ;
hut there was no other way of seeing him that even-
ing, and slie could not hesitate about it. She
walked towards a footpath through the fields, which
would take her to Paddiford without obliging her
to go through the town. Tlie way was rather long,
but she preferred it, l>ecause it left less probability
of her meeting acquaintances, and she shrank from
having to speak to any one.
The evening red had nearly faded by the time
Janet knocked at Mrs. WagstafTs door. The good
woman looked surprised to see her at that hour;
but Janet's mourning weeds and the painful agitation
of her face quickly brought the second thought, that
some urgent trouble had sent her there.
" Mr, Tryan 's just come in," she said. " If you '11
Btep into the parlour, I 'II go up and tell him you 're
here. He seemed very tired and poorly."
At another time Janet would have felt distress
at the idea that she was disturbing Mr. Tr)-an when
he required rest ; but now her need was too great
I
i64 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
for that: she could feel nothing but a sense of
coming relief, when she heard his step on the stair
and saw him enter the room.
He went towards her with a look of anxiety, and
said : " I fear something is the matter. I fear you
are in trouble."
Then poor Janet poured forth her sad tale of
temptation and despondency; and even while she
was confessing she felt half her burden removed.
The act of confiding in human sympathy, the con-
sciousness that a fellow-being was listening to her
with patient pity, prepared her soul for that stronger
leap by which faith grasps the idea of the Divine
sympathy. When Mr. Tryan spoke words of con-
solation and encouragement, she could now believe
the message of mercy; the water-floods that had
threatened to overwhelm her rolled back again, and
life once more spread its heaven-covered space be-
fore her. She had been unable to pray alone ; but
now his prayer bore her own soul along with it, as the
broad tongue of flame carries upwards in its vigorous
leap the little flickering fire that could hardly keep
alight by itself.
But Mr. Tryan was anxious that Janet should
not linger out at this late hour. When he saw that
she was calmed, he said, " I will walk home with
you now ; we can talk on the way." But Janet's
mind was now sufficiently at liberty for her to
notice the signs of feverish weariness in his appear-
ance, and she would not hear of causing him any
furtlier fatigue.
" No, no," she said earnestly, " you will pain me
very much, — indeed you w^ill, by going out figain
to-night on my account. There is no real reason
why I should not go alone." And when he per-
JANET'S REPENTANCE,
165
sisted, fearing that for her to be seen out so late
aluiie might excit* remark, she said imploringly,
with a half soh in her voice, "What should I —
what would others like me do, if you went from us!
Whff will you not thiuk more of that, and take care
of yourself?"
He had often had that appeal made to him before,
but to-night — from Janet's lips — it seemed to have
a new force for him, and he gave way. At first,
indeed, he only did so on condition that she would
let Mrs. Wagstaff go with her ; but Janet had deter-
mined to walk home alone. She preferred solitude ;
she wished not to have her present feelings dis-
tracted by any conversation.
So she went out into the dewy starlight; and as
Mr. Tryan turned away from her, he felt a stronger
wish than ever that his fragile life might last out
for him to see Janut's restoration thoroughly estab-
lished, — to see her no longer fleeing, struggling,
clinging up the steep sides of a precipice whence
she might be any moment hurled back into the
depths of despair, but walking firmly 00 the level
ground of habit. He inwardly resolved that noth-
ing but a peremptory duty should ever take him
from Milby, — that he would not cease to watch
over her until life forsook him.
Janet walked on quickly till she turned into the
fields; then she slackened her pace a little, enjoying
the sense of solitude which a few hours before had
been intolerable to her. The Divine Presence did
not now seem far off, where she had not wings to
reach it; prayer itself seemed superfluous in those
moments of calm trust. The temptation which had
so lately made her shudder before the possibilities
of the future was now a source of confidence; tor
i
i66 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
had she not been delivered from it ? Had not rescue
come in the extremity of danger? Yes; Infinite
Love was caring for her. She felt like a little
child whose hand is firmly grasped by its father, as
its frail limbs make their way over the rough ground ;
if it should stumble, the father will not let it go.
That walk in the dewy starlight remained forever
in Janet's memory as one of those baptismal epochs,
when the soul, dipped in the sacred waters of joy
and peace, rises from them with new energies, with
more unalterable longings.
When she reached home, she found Mrs. Pettifer
there, anxious for her return. After thanking her for
coming, Janet only said, " I have been to Mr. Tryan's ;
I wanted to speak to him ; " and then remembering
how she had left the bureau and papers, she went
into the back-room, where, apparently, no one had
been since she quitted it ; for there lay the frag-
ments of glass, and the room was still full of the
hateful odour. How feeble and miserable the temp-
tation seemed to her at this moment! She rang
for Kitty to come and pick up the fragments and
rub the floor, while she herself replaced the papers
and locked up the bureau.
The next morning, when seated at breakfast with
Mrs. Pettifer, Janet said, —
" What a dreary, unhealthy-looking place that is
where Mr. Tryan lives! I'm sure it must be very
bad for him to live there. Do you know, all this
morning, since I 've been awake, I Ve been turning
over a little plan in my mind. I think it a charm-
ing one, — all the more because you are concerned
in it."
** Why, what can that be ? "
** Yuu know that house on the Eedhill road they
JANETS REPENTANCE.
167
call Holly Mount; it is shut up now That is
Kobert's house ; at least, it is mine now, and it
stands on one of the healthiest spots about here.
Now, I "ve been settling in my own mind that if a
dear good woman of my acquaintance, who knows
how to make a liome as comfortable and cost-y as a
bird'a-neat, were to take up her abode there, and
have Mr. Tryan as a lodger, she would be doing one
of the most useful deeds in all her useful life."
" You 've such a way of wrapping up things in
pretty words. You must speak plainer."
" In plain words, then, I should like to settle you
at Holly ilount. You would not have to pay any
more rent than where you are, and it would be
twenty times pleasanter tor you than living up that
passage where you see nothing but a brick wall.
And then, as it is not far from Paddiford, I think
Mr. Tryan might he persuaded to lodge with you,
instead of in that musty house, among dead cab-
bages and smoky cottages. I know you would like
to have bim live with you, and you would be such a
mother to him."
" To be sure I should like it ; it would be the
finest thing in the world for me. But there '11 he
furniture wanted. My little bit of furniture won't
fill that house."
"Oh, I can put some in out of this house: it is
too full ; and we can buy the rest. They tell me
I 'm to have more money than I shall know what to
do with."
" I 'm almost afraid," said Mrs. Pettifer, doubtfully.
" Mr. Tryan will hardly be persuaded. He's been
talked to so much about leaving that place ; and he
always said he must stay there, — he must be among
the people, and there was no other place for him in
i68 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
Paddiford. It cuts me to the heart to see him get-
ting thinner and thinner, and I Ve noticed him quite
short 0* breath sometimes. Mrs. Linnet will have
it Mrs. Wagstaflf half poisons him with bad cooking.
I don't know about that, but he can't have many
comforts. I expect he '11 break down all of a sudden
some day, and never be able to preach any more."
" Well, I shall try my skill with him by and by.
I shall be very cunning, and say nothing to him till
all is ready. You and I and motlier, when she
comes home, will set to work directly and get the
house in order, and then we '11 get you snugly settled
in it. I shall see Mr. Pittman to-day, and I will
tell him what I mean to do. I shall say I wish to
have you for a tenant. Everybody knows I *m very
fond of tliat naughty person, Mrs. Pettifer; so it
will seem the most natural thing in the world. And
then I shall by and by point out to Mr. Tryan that
he will be doing you a service as well as himself by
taking up his abode with you. I think I can pre-
vail upon him ; for last night, when he was quite
bent on coming out into the night air, I persuaded
him to give it up."
" Well, I only hope you may, my dear. I don't
desire anything better than to do something towards
prolonging Mr. Tryan's life, for I 've sad fears about
him."
"Don't speak of them, — I can't bear to think
of them. We will only think about getting the
house ready. We shall be as busy as bees. How
we shall want mother's clever fingers ! I know the
room upstairs that will just do for Mr. Tryan's
study. There shall be no seats in it except a very
easy chair and a very easy sofa, so that he shall be
obliged to rest himself when he comes home."
CHAPTER XXVI.
That was the last terrible crisis of temptation Janet
had to pass through. The good-will ot her neigh-
bours, the helpful sympathy of the friends who
shared her religiuus feelings, the occupations sug-
gested to her by Mr. Tryaa, concurred, with her
strong spontaneous impulses towards works of love
and mercy, to fill up her days with quiet social
intercourse and charitable exertion. Besides, her
constitution, naturally healthy and strong, was every
week tending, with the gathering force of hahit, to
recover its equipoise, and set her tree from those
physical solicitntious which the smallest habitual
vice always leaves behind it The prisoner feels
where the iron has galled him long after his fetters
have been loosed.
Tliere were always neighbourly visits to be paid
and received; and as the months wore on, increas-
ing familiarity with Janet's present self began to
efface, even from minds as rigid as Mrs. Phipps's,
the unpleasant impressions that had been left by
recent years. Janet was recovering the popularity
which her beauty and sweetness of nature had won
for her when she was a girl ; and popularity, as
every one knows, is the most complex and self-
multiplying of echoes. Even anti-Tryanite preju-
dice could not resist the fact that Janet Dumpster
was a cbangud woman, — changed as the dusty,
bruised, and sun-withered plant is changed when
170 SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
the soft rains of heaven have fallen on it, — and
that this change was due to Mr. Tryan's influence.
The last lingering sneers against the Evangelical
curate began to die out ; and though much of the
feeling that had prompted them remained behind,
there was an intimidating consciousness that the
expression of such feeling would not be effective, —
jokes of that sort had ceased to tickle the Milby
mind. Even Mr. Budd and Mr. Tomlinson, when
they saw Mr. Tryan passing pale and worn along
the street, had a secret sense that this man was
somehow not that very natural and comprehensible
thing, a humbug, — that, in fact, it was impossible
to explain him from the stomach-and-pocket point
of view. Twist and stretch their theory as they
might, it would not fit Mr. Tryan; and so, with
that remarkable resemblance as to mental processes
which may frequently be observed to exist between
plain men and philosophers, they concluded that
the less they said about him the better.
Among all Janet's neighbourly pleasures, there
was nothing she liked better than to take an early
tea at the White House, and to stroll with Mr.
Jerome round the old-fashioned garden and orchard.
There was endless matter for talk between her and
the good old man, for Janet had that genuine delight
in human fellowship which gives an interest to all
personal details that come warm from truthful lips ;
and, besides, they had a common interest in good-
natured plans for helping their poorer neighbours.
One great object of Mr. Jerome's charities was, as
he often said, " to keep industrious men an' women
off the parish. I 'd rether give ten shillin* an' help
a man to stan' on his own legs, nor pay half-a-crown
to buy him a parish crutch ; it 's the ruination on
JANET'S RErEKTANCE, 171
him if he ouce goes to the parish. I 've see'd many
B time, if you help a mau wi' a present in a nee-
bourly way, it sweetens his blood, — he thinks it
kind on you ; but the parish shillius turn it sour. —
be niver thinks 'em enough." In illustration of
this opinion Mr. Jerome had a large store of details
about such persons as Jim Hardy, the coal-carrier,
" as lost his hoss," and Sally Butts, " as hed to sell
her mangle, though she was as decent a woman as
need to be ;" to the hearing of which details Janet
seriously inclined j and you would hardly desire to
see a prettier picture than the kind-faced, white-
haired old man telling these fragments of his simple
experience as he walked, with shoulders slightly
bent, among the moss-roses and espalier apple-trees,
while Janet in her widow's cap. her dark eyes bright
with interest, went listening by his side, and little
Lizzie, with her nankin bonnet hanging down her
back, toddled on before them. Mrs. Jerome usu-
ally declined these lingering strolls, and often
observed, " I niver see the like to Mr. Jerome when
he's got Mrs. Dempster to talk to; it sinnifies
nothin' to him whether we 've tea at four or at five
o'clock ; he 'd go on till six, if you 'd let him alone,
— he's like o£f his head." However, Mrs. Jerome
herself could not deny that Janet was a very pretty-
spoken woman : " She al'ys says, she niver gets aich
pikelets as mine nowhere ; 1 know that very well.
— other folks buy 'em at shops, — thick unwhole-
some things, you might as well eat a sponge."
The sight of little Lizzie often stirred in Janet's
mind a sense of the childlessness which had made a
fatal blank in her life. She had fleeting thoughts
that perhaps among her husband's distant relatives
there might be some children whom she could help
172 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
to bring up, some little girl whom she might adopt ;
and she promised herself one day or other to hunt
out a second cousin of his, — a married woman, of
whom he had lost sight for many years.
But at present her hands and heart were too full
for her to carry out that scheme. To her great dis-
appointment, her project of settling Mrs. Pettifer at
Holly Mount had been delayed by the discovery
that some repairs were necessary in order to make
the house habitable, and it was not till September
had set in that she had the satisfaction of seeing
her old friend comfortably installed, and the rooms
destined for Mr. Tryan looking pretty and cosey to
her heart's content. She had taken several of his
chief friends into her confidence, and they were
warmly wishing success to her plan for inducing
him to quit poor Mrs. WagstafiTs dingy house and
dubious cookery. That he should consent to some
such change was becoming more and more a matter
of anxiety to his hearers ; for though no more decided
symptoms were yet observable in him than increasing
emaciation, a dry hacking cough, and an occa-
sional shortness of breath, it was felt that the ful-
filment of Mr. Pratt's prediction could not long be
deterred, and that this obstinate persistence in labour
and self-disregard must soon be peremptorily cut
short by a total failure of strength. Any hopes
that the influence of Mr. Tryan's father and sister
would prevail on him to change his mode of life —
that they would perhaps come to live with him, or
that his sister at least might come to see him, and
that the arguments which had failed from other
lips might be more persuasive from hers — were
now quite dissipated. His father had lately had an
attack of paralysis, and could not spare his only
JANET'S EEPENTANCE.
173
diiugliter's teadiinc«. On Mr. Trjan'a returu from
a visit to his father. Miss Linnet was very anxious
to know whether his sister had not urged him to try
change of air. From his answers she gathered that
Miss Tryan wished him to give up his curacy and
travel, or at least go to the south Devonshire coast.
"And why will you not do so?" Miss Linnet
said ; " you might come back to us well and strong,
and have many years of usefulness before you."'
" No," he answered quietly, " I think people attach
more importance to such measures than is warranted,
I don't see any good end that is to be served by
going to die at Nice, instead of dying amongst one's
friends and one's work. I cannot leave Milhy, — at
least 1 will not leave it voluntarily."
But though he remained immovable on this point, he
had been compelled to give up his afternoon service oq
the Sunday, and to accept Mr, Parry's offer of aid in
the evening service, as well as to curtail his week-day
labours , and he had even written to Mr. Prendergast to
request that he would appoint another curate to the
Paddiford district, on the understanding that the new
curate should receive the salary, but that Mr. Tryan
should co-operate with him as long as he was able.
The hopefulness which isflu almost constant attend-
ant on consumption, had not the effect of deceiving
him as to the nature of his malady, or of making
him look forward to ultimate recovery. He believed
himself to be consumptive, and he had not yet felt
any desire to escai>e the early death which he had
for some time contemplated as probable. Even
diseased hopes will take their direction from the
strong habitual bias of the mind, and to Mr, Tryan
death had for years seemed nothing else than the
laying down of a burden, under which he some-
If
174 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIEE.
times felt himself fainting. He was only sanguine
about his powers of work : he flattered himself that
what he was unable to do one week he should be
equal to the next, and he would not admit that in
desisting from any part of his labour, he was renounc-
ing it permanently. He had lately delighted Mr.
Jerome by accepting his long-profifered loan of the
"little chacenut horse;" and he found so much
benefit from substituting constant riding exercise
for walking, that he began to think he should soon
be able to resume some of the work he had dropped.
That was a happy afternoon for Janet, when,
after exerting herself busily for a week with her
mother and Mrs. Pettifer, she saw Holly Mount
looking orderly and comfortable from attic to
cellar. It was an old red brick house, with two
gables in front, and two clipped holly-trees flank-
ing the garden-gate, — a sfmple, homely-looking
place, that quiet people might easily get fond of ;
and now it was scoured and polished and carpeted
and furnished so as to look really snug within.
When there was nothing more to be done, Janet
delighted herself with contemplating Mr. Tryan's
study, first sitting down in the easy -chair, and then
lying for a moment on the sofa, thatshe might have
a keener sense of the repose he would get from those
well-stuffed articles of furniture, which she had
gone to Rotherby on purpose to choose.
" Now, mother, " she said, when she had fin-
ished her survey, " you have done your work as
well as any fairy-mother or godmother that ever
turned a pumpkin into a coach and horses. You
stay and have tea cosily with Mrs. Pettifer while
I go to Mrs. Linnet's. I want to tell Mary and
Rebecca the good news, that I 've got the excise-
JANETS EEPEXTANXE. 175
man to promise that he will take Mrs. WagstaEE's
lodgings when Mr. Trj'an leaves. They '11 be bo
pleased to hear it, because they thought he would
make her poverty an objection to his leaving her. '
" But. my dear child, " said Mrs, Haynor, whose
face, alwaj'3 calm, was now a happy one, " have a
cup of tea with us first You '11 perhaps miss
Mta. Linnet's teatime. "
° No, I feel too excited to take tea yet I 'm
like a child with a new baby-houae. Walking in
the air will do me good. "
So she set out. Holly Mount was about a mile
from that outskirt of Padditord Common where
Mrs. Linnet's house stood nestled among its labur-
nums, lilacs, and syringas. Janet's way thither
lay for a little while along the high-road, and then
led her into a deep-rutted lane, which wound
through a flat tract of meadow and pasture, while
in front lay smoky Paddiford, and away to the left
the mother-town of Milby. There was no line of
silvery willows marking the course of a stream, —
no group of Scotch firs with their trunks reddening
in the level sunbeams, — nothing to break the
flowerless monotony of grass and hedgerow but an
occasional oak or elm, and a few cows sprinkled
here and there. A very commonplace scene in-
deed. But what scene was ever commonplace in
the descending sunlight, when colour has awakened
from its noonday sleep, and the long shadows awe
us like a disclosed presence? Above all, what
scene is commonplace to the eye that is filled with
serene gladness, and brightens all things with its
own joy ?
And Janet just now was verj- happy. As she
walked along the rough lane with a buoyant step.
176 SCENES OF CLERICAL LITE.
a half smile of innocent, kindly triumph played
about her mouth. She was delighting beforehand
in the anticipated success of her persuasive power,
and for the time her painful anxiety about Mr.
Tryan's health was thrown into abeyance. But
she had not gone far along the lane before she
heard the sound of a horse advancing at a walking
pace behind her. Without looking back, she
turned aside to make way for it between the ruts,
and did not notice that for a moment it had
stopped, and had then come on with a slightly
quickened pace. In less than a minute she heard
a well-known voice say, " Mrs. Dempster ; " and,
turning, saw Mr. Tryan close to her, holding his
horse by the bridle. It seemed very natural to
her that he should be there. Her mind was so
full of his presence at that moment that the
actual sight of him was only like a more vivid
thought, and she behaved, as we are apt to do
when feeling obliges us to be genuine, with a total
forgetfulness of polite forms. She only looked at
him with a slight deepening of the smile that was
already on her face. He said gently, " Take my
arm ; " and they walked on a little way in silence.
It was he who broke it. " You are going to
Paddiford, I suppose ? "
The question recalled Janet to the consciousness
that til is was an unexpected opportunity for begin-
ning her work of persuasion, and that she was
stupidly neglecting it.
" Yes," she said, " I was going to Mrs. Linnet's.
I knew Miss Linnet would like to hear that our
friend Mrs. Pettifer is quite settled now in her
new house. She is as fond of Mrs. Pettifer as I
am — almost; I won't admit that any one loves
JANET'S REPENTAKCE.
177
faer quitt as well, for no one else has such good
reason as I have. But now the dear woman wants
8 lodger, for you know ahe can't aflord to live in
80 large a house by herself. But I knew when I
persuaded her to go there that she would be sure to
get one, — she 's such a comfortable creature to live
with; and I didn't like her to spend all the rest
of her days up that dull passage, being at every
one's beck and call who wanted to make use of
her. '
" Yes, " said Mr. Tryan, " I quite understand
your feeling ; I don't wouder at your strong regard
for her. "
" Well, but now I want her other friends to
second me. Tliere she is, with three rooms to let,
ready furnished, everything in order; and I know
some one, who thinks as well of her as I do, and
who would be doing good all round, — to every one
that knows him, as well as to Mrs. Pettifer, — if he
would go to live with her. He would leave some
uncomfortable lodgings, which another person is
already coveting and would take immediately; and
he would go to breathe pure air at Holly Mount,
and gladden Mrs. Pettifer's heart by letting her
wait on him; and comfort all his friends, who are
quite miserable about him."
Mr. Tryan saw it all in a moment, — he saw
that it had all been dune for his sake. He could
not be sorry; he could not say no; he could not
resist the sense that lite had a new sweetness tor
him, and that he should like it to be prolonged a
little, — only a little, for the sake of feeling a
stronger security about Janet. When 'she had
finished speaking, she looked at him with a doubt-
ful, inquiring glance. He was not looking at her ;
178 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
his eyes were cast downwards ; but the expression
of his face encouraged her, and she said, in a half-
playful tone of entreaty, —
" You taill go and live with her ? I know you
wilL You will come back with me now and see
the house.*
He looked at her then, and smiled. There is an
unspeakable blending of sadness and sweetness in
the smile of a face sharpened and paled by slow
consumption. That smile of Mr. Tryan's pierced
poor Janet's heart : she felt in it at once the assur-
ance of grateful affection and the prophecy of
coming death. Her tears rose ; they turned round
without speaking, and went back again along the
lane.
CHAPTER XXVTI.
In less than a week Mr. Tryan was settled at
Holly Mount, and there was not one of his many
attached hearers who did not sincerely rejoice at
the event
The autumn that year was bright and warm, and
at the beginning of October Mr. Walsh, the new
curate, came. The mild weather, the relaxation
from excessive work, and perhaps another benig-
nant influence, had for a few weeks a visibly
favourable effect on Mr. Tryan. At least he began
to feel new hopes, which sometimes took the guise
of new strength. He thought of the cases in
which consumptive patients remain nearly station-
ary for years, without suffering so as to make
their life burdensome to themselves or toothers;
and he began to struggle with a longing that it
might be so with him. He struggled with it, be-
cause he felt it to be an indication that earthly
affection was beginning to have too strong a hold
on him, and he prayed earnestly for more perfect
submission, and for a more absorbing delight in
the Divine Presence as the chief good. He was
conscious that he did not wish for prolonged life
solely that he might reclaim the wanderers and
sustain the feeble : he was conscious of a new
yearning for those pure human joys which he had
voluntarily and determinedly banished from his
life, — for a draught of that deep affection from
i8o SCENES OP CLERICAL LIFE.
which he had been cut off by a dark chasm of
remorse. For now, that affection was within his
reach ; he saw it there, like a palm-shadowed well
in the desert; he cotUd not desire to die in sight
of it
And so the autumn rolled gently by in its " calm
decay." Until November, Mr. Tryan continued
to preach occasionally, to ride about visiting his
flock, and to look in at his schools ; but his grow-
ing satisfaction in Mr. Walsh as his successor
saved him from too eager exertion and from worry*
ing anxieties. Janet was with him a great deal
now, for she saw that he liked her to read to him
in the lengthening evenings, and it became the
rule for her and her mother to have tea at Holly
Mount, where, with Mrs. Pettifer, and sometimes
another friend or two, they brought Mr. Tryan the
unaccustomed enjoyment of companionship by his
own fireside.
Janet did not share his new hopes, for she was
not only in the habit of hearing Mr. Pratt's opin^
ion that Mr. Tryan could hardly stand out through
the winter, but she also knew that it was shared
by Dr. Madeley of Eotherby, whom, at her re-
quest, he had consented to call in. It was not
necessary or desirable to tell Mr. Tryan what was
revealed by the stethoscope, but Janet knew the
worst.
She felt no rebellion under this prospect of be-
reavement, but rather a quiet submissive sorrow.
Gratitude that his influence and guidance had been
given her, even if only for a little while, — grati-
tude that she was permitted to be with him, to
take a deeper and deeper impress from daily com-
munion with him, to be something to him in these
JAXETS REPENTANCE. i8i
Iftst months of his life, was so strong in her thai
it almost silenced regret Janet had lived through
the great tragedy of woman's life. Her keenest
personal emotions had been poured forth iii her
early love, — her wounded aflection with its years
of anguish, — her agouy of unavailing pity over that
deathbed seven months ago. The thought of Mr.
Tryan was associated for her with repose from that
conflict of emotion, with trust in the unchange-
able, with the influx of a power to subdue self.
To have been assured of his sympathy, his teach-
ing, his help, all through her life, would have
been to her like a heaven already begun, — a deliv-
erance from fear and danger; but the time was not
yet come for her to be conscious that the hold he
had on her heart was any other than that of the
heaven-sent friend who had come to her like the
angel in the prison, and loosed her bonds, and led
her by the hand till she could look back on the
dreadful doors that bad once closed her in.
Before November was over Mr. Tryan had ceased
to go out A new crisis had come on : the cough
had changed its character, and the worst symptoms
developed themselves so rapidly that Mr. Pratt
began to think the end would arrive sooner than
he had expected. Janet became a constant attend-
ant on him now, and no one could feel that she
was performing anything but a sacred offica She
made Holly Mount her home, and, with her
mother and Mrs. Pettifer to help her, she filled
the painful days and nights with every soothing
influence that care and tenderness could devise.
There were many visitors to the sick-room, led
thither by venerating affection; and there could
hardly be one who did not retain in after-yeara a
1 82 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
vivid remembrance of the scene there, — of the pale
wasted form in the easy -chair (for he sat up to the
last), of the gray eyes so full even yet of inquiring
kindness, as the thin, almost transparent hand
was held out to give the pressure of welcome ; and
of the sweet woman, too, whose dark watchful
eyes detected every want, and who supplied the
want with a ready hand.
There were others who would have had the
heart and the skill to fill this place by Mr. Tryan's
side, and who would have accepted it as an hon-
our ; but they could not help feeling that God had
given it to Janet by a train of events which were
too impressive not to shame all jealousies into
silence.
That sad history which most of us know too
well, lasted more than three months. He was too
feeble and suffering for the last few weeks to see
any visitors, but he still sat up through the day.
The strange hallucinations of the disease which had
seemed to take a more decided hold on him just at
the fatal crisis, and had made him think he was
perhaps getting better at the very time when death
had begun to hurry on with more rapid movement,
had now given way, and left him calmly conscious
of the reality. One afternoon near the end of
February, Janet was moving gently about the
room, in the fire-lit dusk, arranging some things
that would be wanted in the night. There was no
one else in the room, and his eyes followed her as
she moved with the firm grace natural to her,
while the bright fire every now and then lit up
her face, and gave an unusual glow to its dark
beauty.
Even to follow her in this way with his eyes
JANET'S REPENTANCE.
183
was an exertion that gave a painful tension to his
face; while she looked like an image of life and
strength.
■ Janet, ' he aaid presently, in his taint voice, —
he always called her Janet now. In a moment
she was close to him, bending over him. He
opened his hand as he looked up at her, and she
placed hers within it.
" Janet, ' he said again, " you will have a long
while to live after I am gone. "
A sudden pang of fear shot through her. She
thought he felt himself dying, and she sank on
her knees at his feet, holding his hand, while she
looked up at him, almost breathless.
° But you will not feel the need of me as you
have done. . . . You have a sure trust in God
... I shall not look for you in vain at the last "
■ No . . . no . . . I shall be there . . . God
will not forsake me. "
She could hardly utter the words, though she
was not weeping. She was waiting with trem-
bling eagerness for anything else he might have
to say.
" Let us kiss each other before we part "
She lifted up her face to his; and the full life-
hreathing lips met the wasted dying ones in a
eacred kiss of promise.
CHAPTER XXVIIL
It soon came, — the blessed day of deliverance, the
sad day of bereavement ; and in the second week
of March they carried him to the grava He was
buried as he had desired : there was no hearse, no
mourning-coach ; his coffin was borne by twelve of
his humble hearers, who relieved each other by
turns. But he was followed by a long procession
of mourning friends, women as well as men.
Slowly, amid deep silence, the dark stream
passed along Orchard Street, where eighteen
months before the Evangelical curate had been
saluted with hootings and hisses. Mr. Jerome
and Mr. Landor were the eldest pall-bearers ; and
behind the coffin, led by Mr. Tryan's cousin,
walked Janet, in quiet submissive sorrow. She
could not feel that he was quite gone from her ;
the unseen world lay so very near her, — it held all
that had ever stirred the depths of anguish and joy
within her.
It was a cloudy morning, and had been raining
when they left Holly Mount ; but as they walked,
the sun broke out, and the clouds were rolling off
in large masses when they entered the churchyard,
and Mr. Walsh's voice was heard saying, " I am
the Resurrection and the Life. " Tlie faces were
not hard at this funeral ; the burial- service was
not a liollow form. Every heart there was filled
with the memory of a man who, through a self-
JANET'S REPENTANCE. 185
S8cri6cing life and in a painful death, had been
sustained by the faith which fills that form with
breath and substance.
When Janet left the grave, she did not return to
Holly Mount ; she went to her home in Orchard
Street, where her mother was waiting to receive
her. She said quite calmly, " Let us walk round
the garden, mother. " And they walked round in
silence, with their hands clasped together, looking
at the golden crocuses bright in the spring sun*
shine. Janet felt a deep stillness within. She
thirsted for uo pleasure; she craved no worldly
good. She saw the years to come stretch before
her like an autumn afternoon, filled with resigned
memory. Life to her could nevermore have any
eagerness ; it was a solemn service of gratitude
and patient eEfort. She walked in the presence of
unseen witnesses, — of the Divine love that had
rescued her, of the human love that waited for its
eternal repose until it had seen her endure to the
end.
Janet is living still. Her black hair is gray,
and her stop is no longer buoyant ; but the sweet-
ness of her smile remains, the love is not gone
from her eyes ; and strangers sometimes ask, Wlio
is that noble-looking elderly woman that walks
about holding a little bny by the hand ? The little
boy is the son of Janet's aJopted daughter, and
Janet in her old age has children about her knees,
and loving young arms round her neck.
There is a simple gravestone in Milby Church-
yard, telling that in this spot lie the remains of
Edgar Tryan, for two years officiating curate at the
Padditord Chapel-of-Ease, in this parish. It is a
1 86 SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.
meagre memorial, and tells you simply that the
man who lies there took upon him, faithfully or
unfaithfully, the office of guide and instructor to
his fellow-men.
But there is another memorial of Edgar Tryan,
which bears a fuller record : it is Janet Dempster,
rescued from self -despair, strengthened with divine
hopes, and now looking back on years of purity
and helpful labour. The man who has left such a
memorial behind him must have been one whose
heart beat with true compassion, and whose lips
were moved by fervent faith.
THE END.
ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
Porfra/f of George Eliot at Thirty.
Photo-etchinij: - From Paiiitiiiii bv M. D'All\?rl-Diirade.
PREFACE.
Wishes have often been expressed that the articles
known to have been written by Greorge Eliot in
the ** Westminster Eeview " before she had become
famous under that pseudonyme, should be repub-
lished. Those wishes are now gratified, — as far,
at any rate, as it is possible to gratify them. For
it was not George Eliot's desire that the whole of
those articles should be rescued from oblivion.
And in order that there might be no doubt on the
subject, she made, some time before her death, a
collection of such of her fugitive writings as she
considered deserving of a permanent form, care-
fully revised them for the press, and left them in
the order in which they here appear, with written
injunctions that no other pieces written by her, of
date prior to 1857, should be republished.
It will thus be seen that the present collection
of Essays has the weight of her sanction, and has
had, moreover, the advantage of such corrections
and alterations as a revision long subsequent to
the period of writing may have suggested to her.
The opportunity afforded by this republication
seemed a suitable one for giving to the world some
" notes, " as George Eliot simply called them,
which belong to a much later period, and which
have not been previously published. The exact
190 PREFACE.
date of their writing cannot be fixed with any cer-
tainty, but it must have been some time between
the appearance of " Middlemarch * and that of
" Theophrastus Such. " They were probably writ-
ten without any distinct view to publication, —
some of them for the satisfaction of her own mind ;
others perhaps as memoranda, and with an idea of
working them out more fully at some later time.
It may be of interest to know that, besides the
* notes * here given, the note-book contains four
which appeared in ** Theophrastus Such, " three of
them practically as they there stand ; and it is not
impossible that some of those in the present vol-
ume might also have been so utilized had they not
happened to fall outside the general scope of the
work. The marginal titles are George Eliot's
own, but for the general title, " Leaves from a
Note-book,* I am responsible.
I need only add that, in publishing these notes,
I have the complete concurrence of my friend,
Mr. Cross.
Chables Lee Lewes.
HiOHOATS, December, 1883.
ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT.
WOELDLINESS AND OTHER-WOBLDLI-
NESS: THE POET YOUNG.
The study of men, as they have appeared in differ-
ent ages and under various social conditions, may
be considered as the natural history of the race.
Let us, then, for a moment imagine ourselves as
students of this natural history, dredging the first
half of the eighteenth century, in search of speci-
mens. About the year 1730 we have hauled up
a remarkable individual of the species divine, — a
surprising name, considering the nature of the
animal before us, but we are used to unsuitable
names in natural history. Let us examine this
individual at our leisure. He is on the verge of
fifty, and has recently undergone his metamorphosis
into the clerical form. Rather a paradoxical speci-
men, if you observe him narrowly : a sort of cross
between a sycophant and a psalmist ; a poet whose
imagination is alternately fired by the Last Day
and by a creation of peers, who fluctuates between
rhapsodic applause of King George and rhapsodic
applause of Jehovah. After spending ** a foolish
youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being
a hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton,
after aiming in vain at a parliamentary career, and
angling for pensions and preferment with fulsome
192 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
dedications and fustian odes, he is a little dis-
gusted with his imperfect success, and has deter-
mined to retire from the general mendicancy
business to a particular branch; in other words,
he has determined on that renunciation of the
world implied in " taking orders,* with the pros-
pect of a good living and an advantageous matri-
monial connection. And no man can be better
fitted for an Established Church. He personifies
completely her nice balance of temporalities and
spiritualities. He is equally impressed with the
momentousness of death and of burial fees; he
languishes at once for immortal life and for " liv-
ings ; * he has a fervid attachment to patrons in
general, but on the whole prefers the Almighty.
He will teach, with something more than official
conviction, the nothingness of earthly things; and
he will feel something more than private disgust
if his meritorious efforts in directing men's atten-
tion to another world are not rewarded by substan-
tial preferment in this. His secular man believes
in cambric bands and silk stockings as character-
istic attire for " an ornament of religion and
virtue, " hopes courtiers will never forget to copy
Sir Robert Walpole, and writes begging-letters to
the king's mistress. His spiritual man recognizes
no motives more familiar than Golgotha and * the
skies ; ' it walks in graveyards, or it soars among
the stars. His religion exhausts itself in ejacula-
tions and rebukes, and knows no medium between
the ecstatic and the sententious. If it were not
for the prospect of immortality, he considers, it
would be wise and agreeable to be indecent, or to
murder one's father; and, heaven apart, it would
be extremely irrational in any man not to be a
I
IVORLDLINESS AND OTIIEn-lTORLDLINESS, 193
knave, Man, he thinks, is a compound of the
angel ami the brute; the hrutc is to he humbled
by being remiuded of its " relation to the stalls, °
and frightened into moderation by the ccmtempla-
tion of death-beds and skulls; the angel is to be
developed by vituperating this world and uxalting
the next ; and by this double process you get the
Christian, " the highest stylo of man. " With all
this, our new-made divine is an unmistakable
poet To a clay compounded ehietiy of the world-
ling and the rhetorician, there is added a real
spark of Promethean fire. He will one day clothe
his apostrophes and objurgatious, his astronomical
religion and his charnel-house morality, in lasting
verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made
of gold and jewels, at once uingnificent and repul-
sive; for this divine is Edward Young, the future
author of the " Night Thoughts. °
It would be extremely ill-bred in us to suppose
that our readers are not acquainted with the facts
of Young's life; they are amongst the things that
' every one knows ; " but we have ohser\'ed that
with regard to these universally known matters
the majority of readers like to be treated after the
plan suggested by Monsieur Jourdain. When that
distinguished bourgeois was asked if he knew
Latin, he replied, " Oni, mais faites coinme si je
ne le savais pas. ' Assuming, then, as a polite
writer should, that our readers know everything
about Young, it will be a direct sequitur from that
assumption that ws should proceed as if they
knew nothing, and recall the incidents oE bis biog-
raphy with as much particularity as we may, with-
out trenching on the space we shall need tor our
VOL. II. — 13
194 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
main purpose, — the reconsideration of his character
as a moral and religious poet.
Judging from Young *s works, one might imagine
that the preacher had been organized in him by
hereditary transmission through a long line of
clerical forefathers, that the diamonds of the
" Night Thoughts ' had been slowly condensed
from the charcoal of ancestral sermons. Yet it
was not so. His grandfather, apparently, wrote
himself gentleman, not clerk; and there is no
evidence that preaching had run in the family
blood before it took that turn in the person of the
poet's father, who was quadruply clerical, being
at once rector, prebendary. Court chaplain, and
dean. Young was bom at his father's rectory of
Upham, in 1681. We may confidently assume
that even the author of the ** Night Thoughts *
came into the world without a wig; but, apart
from Dr. Doran's authority, we should not have
ventured to state that the excellent rector " kissed,
vrith dignified emotion, his only son and intended
namesake. ' Dr. Doran doubtless knows this,
from his intimate acquaintance with clerical phy-
siology and psychology. He has ascertained that
the paternal emotions of prebendaries have a sa-
cerdotal quality, and that the very chyme and
chyle of a rector are conscious of the gown and
band.
In due time the boy went to Winchester College,
and subsequently, though not till he was twenty-
two, to Oxford, where, for his father's sake, he
was befriended by the wardens of two colleges, and
in 1708, three years after his father's death, nomi-
nated by Archbishop Tenison to a law-fellowship
at All Souls. Of Young's life at Oxford in these
ffORLDLINESS AND OTHER-"WORLDLINESS. 195
years, hardly anything is known. His biographer,
Croft, has nothing to tell us but the vague report
that, when " Youug found himself independent
and his own master at All Souls, he was not the
ornament to religion and morality that he after-
wards became," and the perhaps apocryphal anec-
dote, that Tindal, the atheist, confessed himself
embarrassed by the originality of Young's argu-
meuts. Both the report and the anecdote, how-
ever, are borne out by indirect evidence. As to
the latter, Young has left us sufficient proof that
he waa fond of arguing on the theological side,
and that he had his own way of treating old sub-
jects. As to the former, we learn that Pope, after
saying other things which we know to be true of
Young, added, that he passed " a foolish youth,
the sport of peers and poets ; " and from all the
indications we possess of his career till he waa
nearly fifty, we are inclined to think that Pope's
statement only errs by defect, and that he should
rather have said, " a foolish youth and middle
age. ' It is not likely that Young was a verj- hard
student, for he impressed Johnson, who saw him
in hia old age, as "not a great scholar," and as
surprisingly ignorant of what Johnson thought
" quite common maxima " in literature; and there
is no evidence that he filled either his leisure or
his purse by taking pupils. His career aa an
author did not commence till he was nearly thirty,
even dating from the publication of a portion of
the " Last Day, " in the " Tatler ; " so that he
could hardly have been absorbed in composition.
But where the fully developed insect is parasitic,
we believe the larva is usually parasitic also, and
we shall probably not be far wrong in supposing
196 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
that Young at Oxford, as elsewhere, spent a good
deal of his time in hanging about possible and
actual patrons, and accommodating himself to their
habits with considerable flexibility of conscience
and of tongue; being none the less ready, upon
occasion, to present himself as the champion of
theology, and to rhapsodize at convenient moments
in the company of the skies or of skulls. That
brilliant profligate, the Duke of Wharton, to
whom Young afterwards clung as his chief patron,
was at this time a mere boy; and though it is
probable that their intimacy had commenced,
since the Duke's father and mother were friends
of the old Dean, that intimacy ought not to aggra-
vate any unfavourable inference as to Young's
Oxford life. It is less likely that he fell into any
exceptional vice than that he differed from the
men around him chiefly in his episodes of theo-
logical advocacy and rhapsodic solemnity. He
probably sowed his wild oats after the coarse fash-
ion of his times, for he has left us sufficient evi-
dence that his moral sense was not delicate ; but
his companions, who were occupied in sowing
their own oats, perhaps took it as a matter of
course that he should be a rake, and were only
struck with the exceptional circumstance that he
was a pious and moralizing rake.
There is some irony in the fact that the two
first poetical productions of Young, published in
the same year, were his " Epistle to Lord Lans-
downe, " celebrating the recent creation of peers,
— Lord Lansdowne's creation in particular, — and
the " Last Day. " Other poets, besides Young,
found the device for obtaining a Tory majority —
by turning twelve insignificant commoners into
"WOKLDLINESS AND OTHER-WOBLDLINESS. 197
insignificant lords — an irresistible stimuhis to
verse; but no other poet showed so versatile an
enthusiasm, so nearly equal an ardour for the hon-
our oE the new baron and the honour of the Deity.
But the twofold nature of the sycophant and the
psalmist is not more strikingly shown in the con-
trasted themes of the two poems than in the
transitions from bombast about monarchs to bom-
bast about the resurrection, in the ° Last Day " it-
self. The dedication of the poem to Queen Anne,
Young afterwards suppressed, for he was always
ashamed of having ttnttered a dead patron. In
this dedication, Crott tells us, " he gives her Maj-
esty praise indeed for her victories, but says that
the author is more pleased to see her rise from
this lower world, soaring above the clouds, pass-
ing the Grst and second heavens, and leaving the
fixed stars behind her; nor will he lose her there,
he says, but keep her still in view through the
boundless spaces on the other side of creation, in
her journey towards eternal bliss, till he behold
the heaven of heavens open, and angels receiving
and conveying her still onward from the stretch of
his imagination, which tires in her pursuit, and
falls back again to earth. "
The self-criticism which prompted the suppres-
sion of the dedication did not, however, lead him
to improve either the rhyme or the reason of the
unfortunate couplet, —
'* When other Bourbons reign in other laniK
And, if men's sins forbid not, other Amies."
In the " Epistle to Lord Lansdowne, " Young
indicates his taste for the drama ; and there is
evideuce that his tragedy of " Busiris " was " in
\
198 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
the theatre * as earlj as this veiy year, 1713,
though it was not brought on the stage till nearly
six years later ; so that Young was now very de*
cidedly bent on authorship, for which his degree
of B. C. L , taken in this year, was doubtless a
magical equipment Another poem, " The Force
of Religion ; or. Vanquished Love, " founded on
the execution of Lady Jane Grey and her husband,
quickly followed, showing fertility in feeble and
tasteless verse ; and on the Queen's death, in 1714,
Young lost no time in making a poetical lament
for a departed patron a vehicle for extravagant
laudation of the new monarch. No further literary
production of his appeared until 1716, when a
Latin oration which he delivered on the founda-
tion of the Codrington Library at All Souls, gave
him a new opportunity for displaying his alacrity
in inflated . panegyric.
In 1717 it is probable that Young accompanied
the Duke of Wharton to Ireland, though so slender
are the materials for his biography that the chief
basis for this supposition is a passage in his * Con-
jectures on Original Composition," written when
he was nearly eighty, in which he intimates that
he had once been in that country. But there are
many facts surviving to indicate that for the next
eight or nine years Young was a sort of attach^ of
Wliarton's. In 1719, according to legal records,
the Duke granted him an annuity, in consideration
of his having relinquished the office of tutor to
Lord Burleigh with a life annuity of £100 a year,
on his Grace's assurances that he would provide
for him in a much more ample manner. And
again, from the same evidence, it appears that in
1721 Young received from Wharton a bond for
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 195
£600. in compensation of expenses incurred in
steiiding for Parliament at the Duke's desire, and
as an earnest of greater services which his Graca
had promised him on his refraining from the spir-
itual and temporal advantages of taking orders,
with a certainty of two livings in the gift of his
college. It is clear, therefore, that lay advance-
ment, as long as there was any chance of it, had
more attractions for Young than clerical prefer-
ment; and that at this time he accepted the Duke
of Wharton as the pilot o( his career.
A more creditable relation of Youog'a was his
friendship with Tickell, with whom he was in the
habit of interchanging criticisms, and to whom in
1719 — the same year, let us note, in which he
took bis doctor's degree — ha addressed his " Lines
on the Death of Addison. " Close upon these fol-
lowed his " Paraphrase of part of the Book of Job, "
with a dedication to Parker, recently made Lord
Chancellor, showing that the possession of Whar-
ton's patronage did not prevent Young from fishing
in other waters. He knew nothing of Parker, but
that did not prevent him from magnifying the
new Chancellor's merits ; on the other hand, he did
know Wharton, but this again did not prevent
him from prefixing to his tragedy, " The Revenge, "
which appeared in 1721, a dedication attributing
to the Duke all virtues as well as all accomplish-
ments. In the concluding sentence of this dedi-
cation Young naively indicates that a considerable
ingredient in his gratitude was a lively sense of
anticipated favours. " My present fortune is his
bounty, and my future his care, — which I will
venture to say will always be remembered to his
honour; since he. I know, intended his generosity
{
200 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
as an encouragement to merit, though, through his
very pardonable partiality to one who bears him
so sincere a duty and respect, I happen to receive
the benefit of it. * Young was economical with
his ideas and images ; he was rarely satisfied with
using a clever thing once, and this bit of ingenious
humility was afterwards made to do duty in the
** Instalment, ' a poem addressed to Walpole : —
** Be this thy partial smile, from censure free ;
'T was meant for merit, though it fell on me.*'
It was probably " The Eevenge, * that Young
was writing when, as we learn from Spence*s
anecdotes, the Duke of Wharton gave him a skull
with a candle fixed in it, as the most appropriate
lamp by which to write tragedy. According to
Young's dedication, the Duke was " accessary ' to
the scenes of this tragedy in a more important
way, ** not only by suggesting the most beautiful
incident in them, but by making all possible pro-
vision for the success of the whole. * A statement
which is credible, not indeed on the ground of
Young's dedicatory assertion, but from the known
ability of the Duke, who, as Pope tells us, possessed
** each gift of Nature and of Art,
And wanted nothing but an honest heart."
The year 1722 seems to have been the period of
a visit to Mr. Dodington, of Eastbury. in Dorset-
shire, — the "pure Dorsetian downs," celebrated
by Thomson, — in which Young made the acquaint-
ance of Voltaire ; for in the subsequent dedication
of his " Sea Piece " to " Mr. Voltaire," he recalls
their meeting on " Dorset Downs;" and it was in
this year that Christopher Pitt, a gentleman-poet
WOHLDLINESS AND OTHEE-WORLDLINESS. »i
of those days, addressed an " Epistle to Dr. Edward
Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire," which has at
least the merit of this biographical couplet, —
"While with your Dodington retired you sit,
ChflJined with hi£ flowing Burgundy aud wit." '
Dodington, apparently, was charmed in his turn,
for he told Dr. Wharton that Young was " far
superior to the French poet in the variety and
novelty of his bon-mols and repartees, " Unfortu-
nately, the only specimen of Young's wit on this
occasion, that has been preserved to us, is the
epigram represented as an extempore retort (spoken
aside, surely) to Voltaire's criticism of Milton's
episode of sin and death : —
'' Tbon art so witty, profligate, and thin.
At once we thiak thee Milton, Death, and Sin ; "
an epigram which, in the absence of " flowing Bur-
gundy, " does not strike us as remarkably brilliant
Let us give Young the benefit of the doubt thrown
on the genuineness of this epigram by his own
poetical dedication in which he represents himself
as having " soothed " Voltaire's " rage " against
Milton " with gentle rhymes ; " though in other
respects that dedication is anything but favourable
to a high estimate of Young's wit Other evidence
apart, we should not ha eager for the after-dinner
conversation of the man who wrote, —
"Thine ia the Drama, how renowned!
Thine Epic'fl loftier trump bo sound ;
But let Arion't tea-iltwiig harj) be mine ;
But vhere '( hi» dolphin ? Kiww'it (Aou vAtre 1
May that be faiitulin thit, Vollaire/"
202 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
The " Satires " appeared in 1725 and 1726, each,
of course, with its laudatory dedication and its
compliments insinuated amongst the rhymes. The
seventh and last is dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole,
is very short, and contains nothing in particular
except lunatic flattery of George the First and his
prime minister, attributing that royal hog's late
escape from a storm at sea to the miraculous influ-
ence of his grand and virtuous soul ; for George, he
says, rivals the angels : —
'' George, who in foes can soft affections raise,
And charm envenomed satire into praise.
Nor human rage alone his power perceives,
But the mad winds and the tumultuous waves,
E*en storms (Death's Qercest ministers !) forbear^
And in their own wild empire learn to spare.
Thus, Nature's self, supporting Man's decree,
Styles Britain's sovereign, sovereign of the sea.**
As for Walpole, what he felt at this tremendous
crisis, —
'' No powers of language, but his own, can tell ;
His own, which Nature and the Graces form,
At will to raise or hush the civil storm."
It is a coincidence worth noticing that this
Seventh Satire was published in 1726, and that
the warrant of George the First, granting Young
a pension of £200 a year from Lady-day, 1725, is
dated May 3, 1726. The gratitude exhibited in
this Satire may have been chiefly prospective; but
the " Instalment, " a poem inspired by the thrilling
event of Walpole's installation as Knight of the
Garter, was clearly written with the double ardour
of a man who has got a pension, and hopes for
something more. His emotion about Walpole is
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 203
precisely at the same pitch as his subaequent
emotion about the Second Advent. In tbe " In-
stalment " he says, —
" With invi>catiDns some their hearW inflame ;
/ nerd no miut, a WidpoU u my Uunu."
And of God coming to Judgment, he says, in the
" Night Thoughts " : —
" I find aij inspiratioi
The graHdcur of my 11
Nothing can be feebler than this " Instalment,"
except in the strength of impudence with which
the wTiter professes to scorn the prostitution of
fair fame, the " profanation of celestial fire. °
Herbert Croft tells us that Youug made more
than three thousand pounds by his " Satires," — a
surprising statement, taken in connection with the
reasonable doubt he throws on the story related in
Spence's " Anecdotes," that the Duke of Wharton
gave Young £2,000 for this work. Young, how-
ever, seems to have been tolerably fortunate in
the pecuniary results of hia publications; and
with his literary profits, his annuity from Whar-
ton, his fellowship, and his pension, not to men-
tion other bounties which may be inferred from
the high merits he discovers in many men of
wealth and position, we may fairly suppose that
be now laid the foundation of the considerable for-
tune he left at his death.
It is probable that the Duke of Wharton's final
departure tor the Continent and disgrace at Court
in 1726, and the consequent cessation of Young's
reliance on his patronage, tended not only to
heighten the temperature of his poetical enthusi-
1
204 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
asm for Sir Eobert Walpole, but also to turn his
thoughts towards the Church again, as the second-
best means of rising in the world. On the acces-
sion of Greorge the Second, Young found the same
transcendent merits in him as in his predecessor,
and celebrated them in a style of poetry previously
unattempted by him, — the Pindaric ode, a poetic
form which helped him to surpass himself in furi-
ous bombasta " Ocean, an Ode : concluding with
a Wish,* was the title of this piece. He after-
wards pruned it, and cut off, amongst other things
the concluding Wish expressing the yearning for
humble retirement which, of course, had prompted
him to the effusion; but we may judge of the
rejected stanzas by the quality of those he has
allowed to remaia For example, calling on Brit-
ain's dead mariners to rise and meet their ** coun-
try's full-blown glory,* in the person of the new
King, he says: —
" What powerful charm
Can death disarm ?
Your long, your iron slumbers break ?
By Jove^ by Fame,
By George^s nam-e.
Awake ! awake ! awake ! awake ! "
Soon after this notable production, which was
written with the ripe folly of forty-seven. Young
took orders, and was presently appointed chaplain
to the King. " The Brothers, " his third and last
tragedy, which was already in rehearsal, he now
withdrew from the stage, and sought reputation in
a way more accordant with the decorum of his
new profession, by turning prose writer. But after
publishing "A True Estimate of Human Life."
with a dedication to the Queen, as one of the
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER--VVORLDLINESS. 20s
" most shiaiDg representatives " of God on earth,
and a sermon entitled "An Apology for Princes;
or, the Eeverence due to Government," preached
before the House of Commons, his Pindaric ambi-
tion again seized him, and be matched his former
ode by another, called " Imperium Pelagi ; a Naval
Lyric; written in imitation of Pindar's spirit,
occasioned by his Majesty's return from Hanover,
17^9, and the succeeding Peace, " Since he after-
wards suppressed this second ode, we must suppose
that it was rather worse than the first. Next
came his two " Epistles to Pope, concerning the
Authors of the Age, " remarkalile for nothing but
the audacity of affectation with which the most
servile of poets professes to despise servility.
In 1730 Young was presented by his college
with the rectory of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire,
", in the following year, when he was just fifty,
he married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a widow with two
children, who seems to have been in favour with
Queen Caroline, and who probably had an income,
— two attractions which doubtless enhanced the
power of her other charms. Pastoral duties and
domesticity probably cured Young of some had
habits; but. unhappily, they did not cure him
either of flattery or of fustian. Three more odes
followed, quite as bad as those of his bachelor-
hood, except that in the third he announced the
wise resolution of never writing another. It must
have been about this time, since Young was now
" turned of fifty," that he WTote the letter to Mrs.
Howard (afterwards Lady Suft'olk), George the
Second's mistress, which proves that he used other
engines, besides Pindaric ones, in " besieging Court
favour. " The letter is too characterietic to be
omitted : —
2o6 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
Monday MoRwnfO.
Madam, — I know his majesty's goodness to his ser-
vantSy and his love of justice in general, so well, that
1 am confident, if His Majesty knew my case, I should
not have any cause to despair of his gracious favour to
me.
Ahilities. Want.
Good Manners. Sufferings ^
Service. and V for his majesty.
Age. Zeal )
These, madam, are the proper points of consideration
in the person that humhly hopes his majesty's favour.
As to Abilities^ all I can presume to say is, I have
done the best I could to improve them.
As to Good manners, I desire no favour, if any just
objection lies against them.
As for Service, I have been near seven years in his
majesty's, and never omitted any duty in it, which few
can say.
As for Afjfe, I am turned of fifty.
As for Want, 1 have no manner of preferment.
As for Sufferings, I have lost £300 per ann. by
being in his majesty's service; as I have shown in a
Representation which his majesty has been so good as
to read and consider.
As for Zeal, I have written nothing without showing
my duty to their majesties, and some pieces are dedi-
cated to them.
This, madam, is the short and true state of my case.
They that make their court to the ministers, and not
their majesties, succeed better. If my case deserves
some consideration, and you can serve me in it, I hum-
bly hope and believe you will : I shall, therefore, trouble
you no farther; but beg leave to subscribe myself, with
truest respect and gratitude.
Yours, &c.,
Edward Young.
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 207
P. 8. I bave some hope that my Lord Towushend is
my friend; if therefore booh, and before he leaves the
court, you had an opportunity of mentioning' me, with
that favour yon have been so good to show, I think it
would not fail of success; and if not, I shall owe you
more than any. (Suffolk Letters, vol. i. p. 286.)
Young's wife died in 1741, leaving him one
son, bom in 1733. That he bad attached himself
strongly to her two daughters by her former mar-
riage, there is better evidence in the report, men-
tioned by Mrs. Montagu, of his practical kindness
and liberality to the younger, than in his lamenta-
tiona over the elder as the Narcissa of the " Night
Thoughts." Narcissa had died in 1735, shortly
after marriage to Mr. Temple, the son oE Lord
Palmerston; and Mr. Temple himself, after a
second marriage, died in 1740, a year before Lady
Elizabeth Young. These, then, are the three
deaths supposed to have inspired " The Com-
plaint, " which forms the three first books of the
■Night Thoughts" :~
" InsBtiate archer, couM not one Biiffice ?
Tliy ehnft flew tlirice : and ihrice my peace was slain r
And tlirice, ere thrice yon moou had filled her horn."
Since we find Young departing from the truth
of dates, in order to heighten the effect of his
calamity, or at least of his climax, we need not be
surprised that he allowed his imagination great
freedom in other matters besides chronology, and
that the character of Philander can, by no process, be
made to fit Mr. Temple. The supposition that the
much-lectured Lorenzo, of the " Night Thoughts, "
was Young's own son, is hardly rendered more
1
2o8 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
absurd by the fact that the poem was written
when that son was a boy, than by the obvious
artificiality of the characters Young introduces as
targets for his arguments and rebukes. Among
all the trivial efforts of conjectured criticism, there
can hardly be one more futile than the attempt to
discover the original of those pitiable lay-figures,
the Lorenzos and Altamonts of Young's didactic
prose and poetry. His muse never stood face to
face with a genuine, living human being; she
would have been as much startled by such an
encounter as a necromancer whose incantations
and blue fire had actually conjured up a demon.
The ** Night Thoughts " appeared between 1741
and 1745. Although he declares in them that he
has chosen God for his " patron " henceforth, this
is not at all to the prejudice of some half-dozen
lords, duchesses, and right honourables, who have
the privilege of sharing finely turned compliments
with their co-patron. The line which closed the
Second Night in the earlier editions, —
** Wits spare not Heaven, Wilmington ! — nor thee " —
is an intense specimen of that perilous juxtaposi-
tion of ideas by which Young, in his incessant
search after point and novelty, unconsciously con-
verts his compliments into sarcasms ; and his
apostrophe to the moon, as more likely to be
favourable to his song if he calls her " fair Portland
of the skies, ** is worthy even of his Pindaric ravings.
His ostentatious renunciation of worldly schemes,
and especially of his twenty years* siege of Court
favour, are in the tone of one who retains some
hope in the midst of his querulousness.
He descended from the astronomical rhapsodies
WOllLDLlNESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 209
of his Ninth Night, published in 1745, to mora
terrestrial atraius, in his " Eellections on the Pub-
lic Situation of the Kingdom." dedicated to the
Duke of Newcastle; but in this critical year we
get a glimpse of him through a more prosaic and
less refracting medium. He spent a part of thj
year at Tunbridge Wells; and Mrs. Montagu, who
was there too, gives a very lively picture of the
'divine doctor," in her letters to the Duchess of
Portland, on whom Young had bestowed the super-
lative bombast to which we have recently alluded
We shall borrow the quotations from Dr. Dorau,
in spite of their length, because, to our mind, they
present the most agreeable portrait we possess of
Young : —
" I have great joy in Dr. Young, whom I disturbed
in a reTcrie. At first he started, then bowed, then fell
back into a surprise; then began a speech, relapsed
into his astonishment two or three times, forgot what
he had been Haying; began a new subject, and bo went
on. I tiild liim your grace desired he would write
longer letters; to which he cried ' Ha! ' moat emphati-
cally, and I leave you to interpret what it meant. He
has made a friendship with one person here, whom I
believe you would not imagine to have been made for
his bosom friend. You would, perhaps, suppose it was
a bishop or dean, a prebend, a pious preacher, a clergy-
man of exemplary life, or, if a layman, of most virtu-
ous conversation, one that had paraphrased St. Matthew,
or wrote comments on St. Paul. , . . You would not
guess that this associate of the doctor's was — old Gib-
ber! Certainly in their religious, moral, and civil
character, there is no relation; but in their dramatic
capacity there is some." — fMra. Montagu was not
aware that Gibber, whom Young had named not dis-
paragingly in his Satires, was the brother of his old
3
210 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
schoolfellow ; but to return to our hero. ] " The waters,*'
says Mrs. Montagu, ''hare raised his spirits to a fine
pitch, as your grace will imagine, when I tell you how
sublime an answer he made to a very vulgar question.
I asked him how long he stayed at the Wells: he said,
'As long as my rival stayed; — as long as the sun did.'
Among the visitors at the Wells were Lady Sunder-
land (wife of Sir Robert Sutton) and her sister, Mrs.
Tich borne. He did an admirable thing to Lady Sun-
derland: on her mentioning Sir Robert Sutton, he asked
her where Sir Robert's lady was; on which we all
laughed very heartily, and I brought him off, half
ashamed, to my lodgings, where, during breakfast, he
assured me he had asked after Lady Sunderland, because
he had a great honour for her; and that, having a re-
spect for her sister, he designed to have inquired after
her, if we had not put it out of his head by laughing
at him. You must know Mrs. Tichborne sat next
to Lady Sunderland. It would have been admirable
to have had him finish his compliment in that man-
ner. . . . His expressions all bear the stamp of nov-
elty, and his thoughts of sterling sense. He practises
akindof philosophical abstinence. . . . He carried Mrs.
Rolt and myself to Tunbridge, five miles from hence,
where we were to see some fine old ruins. . . . First
rode the doctor on a tall steed, decently caparisoned
in dark gray; next, ambled Mrs. Rolt on a hackney
horse; . . . then followed your humble servant on a
milk-white palfrey. I rode on in safety, and at leisure
to obser^^e the company, especially the two figures that
brought up the rear. The first was my servant, val-
iantly armed with two uncharged piv^tols; the last was
the doctor's man, whose uncombed hair so resembled
the mane of the horse he rode, one could not help ima-
gining they were of kin, and wishing for the honour of
the family, that they had had one comb betwixt them.
On his head was a velvet cap, much resembling a black
saucepan, and on his side hung a little basket. At last
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. an
we arrived at the King's Head, where the loyalty of the
doctor induced him to alight; and then, knight^rrant-
like, he took his damsels from off their palfreys, and
courteously handed us into the inn. . . . The party
returned to the Well§; and 'the silver Cynthia held
up her lamp in the heavens ' the while. The oight
silenced all but our divine doctor, who sometimes ut-
tered things fit to be spoken in a iieason when all nature
seems to be hushed and hearkening. I followed, gath-
ering wisdom as I went, till I found, by my horse's
stumbling, that I was in a bad road, and that the blind
was leading the blind. So I placed my servant between
the doctor and myself; which he not perceiving, went
on in a most philosophical strain, to the great admira-
tion of my poor clown of a servant, who, not being
wrought up to any pitch of enthusiasm, nor making
any answer to all the fine things he heard, the doctor,
wondering I was dumb, and grieving I was so stupid,
looked round and declared hia surprise."
Young's oddity and absence of mind are gathered
from other sources besides these stories of Mrs.
Montagu's, and gave rise to the report that he was
the original of Fielding's " Parson Adams;" but
this Croft denies, and mentions another Young,
who really sat for the portrait, and who, we im-
agine, had both more Greek and more genuine
simplicity than the poet His love of chatting
with Colley Gibber was an indication that the old
predilection for the stage survived, in spite of hia
emphatic contempt for " all joys but joya that
never can expire;" and the production of "The
Brothers," at Drury Lane in 1753, after a auppres-
Bion of fifteen years, was perhaps not entirely due
to the expressed desire to give the proceeds to the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The
212 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
author's profits were not more than X400, — in
those days a disappointing sum ; and Young, as
we learn from his friend Eichardson, did not make
this the limit of his donation, but gave a thousand
guineas to the Society. ** I had some talk with
him, " says Eichardson in one of his letters, * about
this great action. * I always, ' said he, * intended
to do something handsome for the Society. Had I
deferred it to my demise, I should have given away
my son's money. All the world are inclined to
pleasure ; could I have given myself a greater by
disposing of the sum to a different use, I should
have done it ' " Surely he took his old friend
Eichardson for Lorenzo !
His next work was " The Centaur not Fabulous ;
in Six Letters to a Friend, on the Life in Vogue, '
which reads very much like the most objurgatory
parts of the " Night Thoughts " reduced to prose.
It is preceded by a preface which, though addressed
to a lady, is, in its denunciations of vice, as grossly
indecent and almost as flippant as the epilogues
written by ** friends," which he allowed to be re-
printed after his tragedies in the latest edition of
his works. We like much better than " The Cen-
taur, " " Conjectures on Original Composition, "
written in 1759, for the sake, he says, of commu-
nicating to the world the well-known anecdote
about Addison's death-bed and, with the exception
of his poem on Eesignation, the last thing he ever
published.
The estrangement from his son which must have
embittered the later years of his life, appears to
have begun not many years after the mother's
death. On the marriage of her second daughter,
who had previously presided over Young's house-
W0RLDLINES8 AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 213
hold, a Mrs. Hallows, understood to be a woman
of discreet age, aud the daughter {or widow) of a
clergyman who was an old friend of Young's, be-
came housekeeper at Welwyn. Opinions about
ladiea are apt to differ. " Mrs. Hallows was a
woman of piety, improved by reading," says one
witness. " She was a very coarse woman, ° says
Dr. Johnson; and we shall presently find some
indirect evidence that her temjKr was perhaps not
quite so much improved as her piety. Servants,
it seems, were not fond of remaining long in the
house with her; a satirical curate, named Kidgell,
hints at "drops of juniper' taken as a cordial
(but perhaps he was spiteful, and a teetotaler) ;
and Young's son is said to have told his father
that " an old man should not resign himself
to the management of anybody. " The result
was, that the son was banished from home for
the rest of his father's lifetime, though Young
seema never to have thought of disinheriting
him.
Our latest glimpses of the aged poet are derived
from certain letters of Mr. Jones, his curate, —
letters preserved in the British Museum, and
happily made accessible to common mortals in
Nichols's " Anecdotes. ' Mr. Jones was a man of
some literary activity and ambition, —a collector
of interesting documents, and one of those con-
cerned in the "Free and Candid Disquisitions,'
the design of which was " to point out such things
in our ecclesiastical establishment as want to be
reviewed and amended. " On these and kindred
subjects he corresponded with Dr. Birch, occasion-
ally troubling him with queries and manuscripts.
We have a respect for Mr. Jones. Unlike any
214 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
person who ever troubled ils with queries or manu-
scripts, he mitigates the infliction by such gifts as
** a fat pullet, " wishing he * had anything better
to send ; but this depauperizing vicarage [of Alcon-
bury] too often checks the freedom and forwardness
of my mind. " Another day comes a ** pound can-
ister of tea ; " another, a " young fatted goose. *
Clearly Mr. Jones was entirely unlike your literary
correspondents of the present day; he forwarded
manuscripts, but he had ** bowels, " and forwarded
poultry too. His first letter from Welwyn is
dated June, 1759, not quite six years before
Young's death. In June, 1762, he expresses a
wish to go to London " this summer. But, * he
continues, —
''My time and pains are almost continually taken
up here; and ... I have been, I now find, a consider-
able loser, upon the whole, by continuing here so long.
The consideration of this, and the inconveniences I
sustained, and do still experience, from my late illness,
obliged me at last to acquaint the Doctor [Young]
with my case, and to assure him that I plainly per-
ceived the duty and confinement here to be too much
for me; for which reason I must, I said, beg to be at
liberty to resign my charge at Michaelmas. I began
to give him these notices in February, when I was very
ill ; and now I perceive, by what he told me the other
day, that he is in some difficulty: for which reason he
is at last, he says, resolved to advertise, and eveti,
which is much wondered aty to raise the salary con-
siderably higher. (What he allowed my predecessors
was £20 per annum ^ and now he proposes £50, as he
tells me.) I never asked him to raise it for me, though
I well knew it was not equal to the duty; nor did I say
a word about myself when he lately suggested to me
his intentions upon this subject.''
WORLDLINESS AND OTUER-TVORLDLINESB, 215
In a postscript to this letter, he says : —
"I may mention to you farther, as a friend that may
be trusted, that, in all likclihooil, tliu poor old gentle-
man will not liud U a very easy matter, unless by dint
of money, and force upon himself, to procure a man
that he can like for his next curate, nor one that will
itay with him so long as I have done. Then, his great
age will recur to people's thoughts; and if he has any
foibles, either in temper or conduct, they will be sure
not to be forgotten on this occasion by those who know
him; and those who do not, will probably be on their
guard. On these and the like considerations, it its by
no means an eligible office to be seeking out for a curate
for him, as he has several times wished me to do; and
would, if he huew that I am now writing to you, wish
your assistance also. But my best friends here, who
well foresee the jtrobable consequences, and wish me well,
earnestly dissuade me from complying; and I will
decline the office with as much decency as I can: but
high salary will, I suppose, fetch in somebody or other ;
soon."
In the following July he writes: —
"The old gentleman here (I may venture to tell you
freely) seems to me to be in a pretty odd way of late,
— moping, dejected, self-willed, and aa if surrounded
with some perplexing circumstances. Though I visit
him pretty frequently for short intervals, I say very
little to his affairs, not choosing to be a party concerned,
especially in cases of so critical and tender a nature.
There is much mystery in almost all his temporal
affairs, as well as in many of his speculative theories.
Whoever lives in this neighbourhood to see his exit,
will probably see and hear some very strange things.
Time will show, — I am afraid, not greatly to his credit.
There is thought to be an irremovable obstruction to
his happiness within his walls, as well as another
2i6 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
without them; but the former is the more powerfal,
and like to continue so. He has this day been trying
anew to engage me to stay with him. No lucrative
views can tempt me to sacrifice my liberty or my health
to such measures as are proposed here. Nor do I like
to have to do with j^ersons wJwse word and honour can*
not he depended on. So much for this very odd and
unhappy topic."
In August, Mr. Jones's tone is slightly modified.
Earnest entreaties, not lucrative considerations,
have induced him to cheer the Doctor's dejected
heart by remaining at Welwyn some time longer.
The Doctor is, " in various respects, a very un-
happy man," and few know so much of these
respects as Mr. Jones. In September he recurs to
the subject : —
'' My ancient gentleman here is still full of trouble:
which moves my concern, though it moves only the
secret laughter of many, and some untoward surmises
in disfavour of him and his household. The loss of a
very large sum of money (about £200) is talked of;
wliereof this vill and neighbourhood is full. Some dis-
believe ; others say, ' It is no wonder^ where about
eighteen or more servants are sometimes taken and dis-
missed in the course of a year^ The gentleman him-
self is allowed by all to be far more harmless and easy
in his family than some one else who hath too much
the lead in it. This, among others, was one reason
for my late motion to quit."
No other mention of Young's affairs occurs until
April 2, 1765, when he says that Dr. Young is
very ill, attended by two physicians.
'* Having mentioned this young gentleman [Dr.
Young's son], I would acquaint you next, that he came
WORIDLUTESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 217
hither this morning, having been seut for, as I am
told, by the direction of Mrs. Hallows. Indeed, she
intimated to me as much herself. And, if thia be so, I
must say that it is one of the naost prudent acts she
ever did, or cotild have done in such a case as this; as
it may prove a means of preventing much confusion
after the death of the Doctor. I have had some little
discourse with the sun : he seems much affected, and
I believe really ia so. He earnestly wishes his father
might be pleased to ask after him; for you must kuuw
be has not yet done this, nor is, in my opiniou, like to
do it. And it has been said, farther, that upon a late
application made to him on the behalf of his son, he
desired that no more might be said to him about it.
How true this may be I cauuut as yet ho certain; all I
sbalt say is, it seems not improbable. ... I heartily
wish the ancient man's heart may prove tender towards
his son; thoui/h, hnowing him, so well, I can scarce hoj)9
to liear such desirable neivs."
Eleven days later he writes : —
"I have now the pleasure to acquaint yoa that the
late Dr. Young, though he had for many years kept
his son at a distance from him, yet has now at last left
him all his possessions, after the payment of certain
legacies; ao that the young gentleman, who bears a
fair character and behaves well, as far as I can hear or
see, will, I hope, soon enjoy and make a prudent use
of a handsome fortune. The father, on bis death-bed,
and since my return from London, was applied to in
the tenderest manner, by one of liis physicians and by
another person, to admit the son into his presence, —
to make submission, intreat forgiveness, and obtain his
blessing. As to an interview with his son, he inti-
mated that he chose to decline it, as his spirits were
then low and his nerves weak. With regard to the
next particular, he said, 'T heartily forgive him, ;' and
upon mention of this last, be gently lifted up his hand,
i
2i8 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
and letting it gently fall, pronounced these words,
* God bless him / ' . . . I know it will give you plea-
sure to be farther informed that he was pleased to make
respectful mention of me in his will, — expressing his
satisfaction in my care of his parish, bequeathing to
me a handsome legacy, and appointing me to be one
of his executors."
So far Mr. Jones, in his confidential correspond-
ence with a ** friend who may be trusted. " In a
letter communicated apparently by him to the
"Gentleman's Magazine,* seven years later, —
namely, in 1782, — on the appearance of Croft's
biography of Young, we find him speaking of * the
ancient gentleman, " in a tone of reverential eulogy
quite at variance with the free comments we have
just quoted. But the Rev. John Jones was proba-
bly of opinion with Mrs. Montagu, whose contem-
porary and retrospective letters are alao set in a
different key, that " the interests of religion were
connected with the character of a man so distin-
guished for piety as Dr. Young. " At all events,
a subsequent quasi-official statement weighs noth-
ing as evidence against contemporary, spontaneous,
and confidential hints.
To Mrs. Hallows, Young left a legacy of .£1,000,
with the request that she would destroy all his
manuscripts. This final request, from some un-
known cause, was not complied with ; and among
the papers he left behind him was the following
letter from Archbishop Seeker, which probably
marks the date of his latest effort after preferment
Deanery of St. Paul's, July 8, 1758.
Good Dr. Young, — I have long wondered that
more suitable notice of your great merit hath not been
taken by persons in power. But how to remedy the
WORLDLINESS AND OTHEtl-WORLDLlNESS. 219
omission I flee not. No encouragement hath ever
been given me to mention things of t\ui nature to his
Majesty. And therefore, in all likelihood, the only
consequence of doing it would be weakening the little
influence which else I may possibly have on some other
occasions. Your fortune and yoar reputation set you
above the need of adeaneement ; and your sentiments
aboee that concern for it, on your ou-n account, which
on that of the public is sincerely felt by
Your loving Brother,
Tho. Cakt.
The " loving Brother's ' irony is severe !
Perhaps the least questiouable testimony to the
better side of Young's character is that of Bishop
Hildesley, who, as the vicar of & parish nuar
Welwyn, had been Youug's neighbour for upwards
of twenty years. The afl'ectiou of the clergy for
each other, we have observed, is, like that of the
fair sex, not at all of a blind and infatuated kind;
and we may therefore the rather believe them
when they give each other any extra-official praise.
Bishop Hildesley, then writing of Young to
Eichardson, says : —
" The iiupertiuence of my frequent visita to him was
amply rewarded; forasmuch as, I can truly say, he
never received me but with agreeable open compla-
cency; audi never left him but with profitable pleasure
and improvement. He was one or other, the most
modest, the most patient of contradiction, and the most
informing and entertaining I ever conversed with, — at
least, of any man who had so just pretensions to perti-
nacity and reserve."
Mr. Langton, however, who was also a frequent
visitor of Young's, iuforiued Boswell —
220 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
''That there was an air of benevolence in Yds man-
ner; but that he could obtain from him less information
than he had hoped to receive from one who had lived
80 much in intercourse with the brightest men of what
had been called the Augustan Age of England; and that
he showed a degree of eager curiosity concerning the
common occurrences that were then passing, which
appeared somewhat remarkable in a man of such intel-
lectual stores, of such an advanced age, and who had re-
tired from life with declared disappointment in his
expectations. "
The same substance, we know, will exhibit
difTerent qualities under different tests; and,
after all, imperfect reports of individual impres-
sions, whether immediate or traditional, are a
very frail basis on which to build our opinion of a
man. One's character may be very indifferently
mirrored in the mind of the most intimate neigh-
bour ; it all depends on the quality of that gentle-
man's reflecting surface.
But, discarding any inferences from such uncer-
tain evidence, the outline of Young's character is
too distinctly traceable in the well-attested facts
of his life, and yet more in the self-betrayal that
runs through all his works, for us to fear that our
general estimate of him may be false. For, while
no poet seems less easy and spontaneous than
Young, no poet discloses himself more completely.
Men's minds have no hiding-place out of them-
selves ; their affectations do but betray another
phase of their nature. And if, in the present view
of Young, we seem to be more intent on laying
bare unfavourable facts than on shrouding them in
" charitable speeches, " it is not because we have
any irreverential pleasure in turning men's charac-
WORLDLMESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. an
ters " the seamy side without, " but because we see
no great advantage In considering a man as he was
not. Young's biographers and critics have usually
set out from the position that he was a great reli-
gious teacher, and that his poetry is morally sub-
lime; and they have toned down bis failings into
harmony with their conception of the divine and
the poet For our own part, we set out from pre-
cisely the opposite conviction, — namely, that the
religious and moral spirit of Young's poetry is low
and false; and we think it of some importance to
show that the " Night Thoughts " are the reflex of
a mind in which the higher human sympathies
were inactive. This judgment is entirely opposed
to our youthful predilections and enthusiasm.
The sweet garden-breath of early enjoyment lingers
about many a page of the " Night Thoughts," and
even of the " Last Day, " giving an extrinsic charm
to passages of stilted rhetoric and false sentiment;
but the sober and repeated reading of maturer
years has convinced ua that it would hardly be
possible to find a more typical instance than
Young's poetry, of the mistake which substitutes
interested obedience for sympathetic emotion, and
baptizes egoism as religion.
Pope said of Young, that he had " much of a
sublime genius without common sense. ° The
deficiency Pope meant to indicate was, we imagine,
moral rather than intellectual ; it was the want of
that fine sense of what is fitting in speech and
action, which is often eminently possessed by men
and women whoso intellect is of a very common
order, but who have the sincerity and dignity
which can never coexist with the selfish preoccu-
pations of vanity or interest. This was the " com-
mon sense ' in which Young was conspicuously
222 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOX
deficient; and it was partly owing to this defi-
ciency that his genius, waiting to be determined
by the highest prize, fluttered uncertainly from
effort to effort, until, when he was more than
sixty, it suddenly spread its broad wing, and
soared so as to arrest the gaze of other generations
besides his own. For he had no versatility of
faculty to mislead him. The " Night Thoughts "
only differ from his previous works in the degree
and not in the kind of power they manifest
Whether he writes prose or poetry, rhyme or blank
verse, dramas, satires, odes, or meditations, we see
everywhere the same Young, — the same narrow
circle of thoughts, the same love of abstractions,
the same telescopic view of human things, the
same appetency towards antithetic apothegm and
rhapsodic climax. The passages that arrest us in
his tragedies are those in which he anticipates
some fine passage in the " Night Thoughts, " and
where his characters are only transparent shadows,
through which we see the bewigged embonpoint of
the didactic poet, excogitating epigrams or ecstatic
soliloquies by the light of a candle fixed in a skull.
Thus in " The Revenge, " Alonzo, in the conflict of
jealousy and love that at once urges and forbids
him to murder his wife, says, —
" This vast and solid earth, that blazing sun,
Those skies, through which it rolls, must all have end.
What then is man ? The smallest part of nothing.
Day buries day ; month, month ; and year, the year !
Our life is but a chain of many deaths.
Can then Death's self be feared ? Our life much rather :
Life 18 the desert, life the solitude ;
Death joins us to the great majority :
'T is to be born to Plato and to Cajsar ;
'T is to be great forever ;
'Tis pleasure, *t is ambition, then, to die."
WORLDLINESS AND OTnER-WORLDLINESS. 223
His prose writings all read like the "Night
Thoughts," either diluted into prase, or not yet
crystallized into poetry. For example, in hia
"Thoughts for Age," he says, —
"Though we stand on ita awful hrink, such our
leaden bias to the world, we tiiru our faces the wrong
way ; we are still looking on our old acquaintance,
Time, though now so wasted and reduced that we can
see little more of him than Lis wings and his scythe :
oar age enlarges his wings to our imagination ; and
our fear of death, his scythe ; as Time himself grows
less. His consumption is deep; hia annihilation is at
This ia a dilution of the magnificent image : —
" Time in advance behind him bidei b'm wingti.
And seems to creep decrepit with his age.
Behold him when post by ! What then ia seen
fiut his proud pinionn, swifter tlian the winds i"
Again: — ■
"A requesting Omnipotence? What can stun and
confound thy reason more ? What more can ravish and
exalt thy heart 7 It cannot but ravish and esalt ; it
cannot but gloriously disturb and perplex thee, to take
in all that thought suggests. Thou child of the dust 1
Thou speck of misery and sin 1 How abject thy weak-
ness, how great is thy power ! Thou crawler on earth,
and possible (I was about to say) controller of tho
skies ! Weigh, and weigh well, the wondrous truths
I have in view : which cannot he weighed too much ;
which the more they are weighed, amaze the more ;
which to have supposed, before they were revealed,
woold have been as great madness, and to have pre-
enmed on as great sin, as it is now madness and sin not
to believe."
L
Ji
224 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT.
Even in his Pindaric odes, in which he made the
most violent eflforts against Nature, he is still neither
more nor less than the Young of the " Last Day,"
emptied and swept of his genius, and possessed by
seven demons of fustian and bad rhyme. Even
here his "Ercles' Vein" alternates with his moral
platitudes, and we have the perpetual text of the
" Night Thoughts " : —
" Gold, pleasure buys ;
But pleasure dies,
For soon the gross fruition cloys ;
Though raptures court,
The sense is short;
But virtue kindles living joys, —
" Joys felt alone !
Joys asked of none !
Which Time's and Fortune's arrows miss :
Joys that subsist,
Though fates resist.
An unprecarious, endless bliss I
** Unhappy they !
And falsely gay !
Who bask forever in success ;
A constant feast
Quite palls the tJiste,
And long enjoyment u distress"
In the "Last Day," again, which is the earliest
thing he wrote, we have an anticipation of all his
greatest faults and merits. Conspicuous among the
faults is that attempt to exalt our conceptions of
Deity by vulgar images and comparisons, which is
so offensive in the later "Night Thoughts." In a
burst of prayer and homage to God, called forth by
the contemplation of Christ coming to Judgment, he
asks, " Who brings the change of the seasons ? " and
answers, —
WORLDLINESS AND OTHEE-WOnLDLINESS. 225
" Not the great Ottcnian, or Greater Czar ;
Not Europe's arbitrtes ii{ peace and war I "
Conceive the soul in its most solemn momeDts,
assuring God that it doea'nt place his power below
that of Louis Napoleon or Queen Victoria !
But iu tlie midst of uneasy rlijmes, inappropriate
imagery, vaulting sublimity that o'erleaps itself,
and vulgar emotions, we have in this poem an
occasional flash of genius, a touch of simple gran-
deur, which promises as much as Young ever
achieved. Describing the on-coming of the dissolu-
tion of all things, he says, —
"No eon in radiant glory shines on high ;
No tie/lit but from the (errof* of the iky."
And again, speaking of great armies, —
And this wail of the lost souls is fine : — ■
" And this for ain I
Could I offend if 1 bad never been ?
Bat Btill iDcreased the senselegs, happy mass.
Flowed in the atream, or thivend in the grau ?
Father of mercies I Why fmrn silent earth
Didat thou awake and curse me into birth 1
Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night.
And make a thankless present of thy light ?
Push into being a reverse of thee.
And animate a clod vrilh inucry t "
But it 13 seldom in Young's rhymed poems tlint
the effect of a felicitous thought or image is not
counteracted by our sense of the constraint he
suffered from the necessities of rhyme, — that
" Grothic demon," as he afterwards called it, " which
226 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
modem poetry tasting, became mortaL" In rela-
tion to his own power, no one will question the
truth of his dictum, that " blank verse is verse un-
fallen, uncurst ; verse reclaimed, reinthroned in the
true language of the gods ; who never thundered nor
suffered their Homer to thunder in rhyme." His
want of mastery in rhyme is especially a drawback
on the eflfects of his satires ; for epigrams and witti-
cisms are peculiarly susceptible to the intrusion of a
superfluous word, or to an inversion which implies
constraint. Here, even more than elsewhere, the art
that conceals art is an absolute requisite, and to have
a witticism presented to us in limping or cumbrous
rhythm is as counteractive to any electrifying effect
as to see the tentative grimaces by which a comedian
prepares a grotesque countenance. We discern the
process, instead of being startled by the result
This is one reason why the Satires, read seriatim,
have a flatness to us which, when we afterwards
read picked passages, we are inclined to disbelieve
in, and to attribute to some deficiency in our own
mood. But there are deeper reasons for that dis-
satisfaction. Young is not a satirist of a high order.
His satire has neither the terrible vigour, the lacer-
ating energy, of genuine indignation, nor the humour
which owns loving fellowship with the poor human
nature it laughs at ; nor yet the personal bitterness
which, as in Pope's characters of Sporus and Atticus,
ensures those living touches by virtue of which
the individual and particular in Art becomes the
universal and immortal. Young could never de-
scribe a real, complex human being ; but what he
could do, with eminent success, was to describe with
neat and finished point obvious tt/jyes of manners
rather than of character, — to write cold and clever
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WO RLDLINESS. 227
epigrams on personified vices and absurdities. There
is DO more emotion in his satire than i£ he were
turning witty verses on a waxen image of Cupid, or
a lady's glove. He has none of those felicitous
epithets, none of those pregnant lines, by which
Pope's Satires have enriclied the ordinary speech
of educated men. Young's wit will be found in
almost every instance to consist in that antithetic
combination of ideas which, of all the forms of wit,
is most within reach of clever effort. In his gravest
arguments, as well as in his lightest satire, one
might imagine that he had set himself to work out
the problem, how much antithesis might be got out
of a given subject And there he completely suc-
ceeds. His neatest portraits are all wrought on
this plan. Narcissus, for example, who
" Omitn no duty; nor can Envy say
He missed, tbese many yeiiiv, the Church or Play :
Ue makes no noise in Parliament, 't ie true ;
But pays hia debts, and visit when *t is due ;
His cbaracte.r and glovea ore ever clean,
And then he can ont-how the howing Dean ;
A smile eternal on his lip he wears.
Which equally the wise and worthless shares.
In gay fatigues, this most undaunted chief,
Patietit of idleneas heyond belief,
Most charitably lends the town his face
For ornament in every public place ;
As sure as cards he to th' aase-mbly cornea.
And is the furniture of drawing-rootiia :
When Ombre calls, his band and heart are free.
And, joined to two, he fails not — to make three ;
Narcissus is the glory of hie race ;
For who does nothing with a betler grace ?
To deck my list by nature were designed
Such shining expletives of human kind,
Who want, while through blank life they dream along,
Sense to be right and poeaion to be wrong."
228 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
It is but seldom that we find a touch of that
easy slyness which gives an additional zest to sur-
prise; but here is an instance: —
** See Tityrus, with merriment poesest,
Is burst with laughter ere he hears the jest ;
What need he stay, for when the joke is o'er,
His teeth will be no whiter than before."
Like Pope, whom he imitated, he sets out with
a psychological mistake as the basis of his satire,
attributing all forms of folly to one passion, — the
love of fame, or vanity, — a much grosser mistake,
indeed, than Pope's exaggeration of the extent to
which the " ruling passion " determines conduct in
the individual Not that Young is consistent in
his mistake. He sometimes implies no more than
what is the truth, — that the love of fame is the
cause, not of all follies, but of many.
Young's satires on women are superior to Pope's,
which is only saying that they are superior to
Pope's greatest failure. We can more frequently
pick out a couplet as successful than an entire
sketch. Of the too emphatic Syrena he says : —
** Her judgment just, her sentence is too strong ;
Because she *s right, she 's ever in the wrong."
Of the diplomatic Julia : —
** For her own breakfast she *11 project a scheme.
Nor take her tea without a stratagem."
Of Lyce, the old painted coquette : —
*' In vain the cock has summoned sprites away ;
She walks at noon, and blasts the bloom of day."
Of the nymph who, " gratis, clears religious
mysteries : " —
WORLDUNESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 229
•< T 18 hard, too, she who makes no use bat chat
Of her leligion, nhoold be barred in that.**
The description of the literary belU, Daphne,
well prefaces that of Stella, admired by Johnson :
*' With legs tossed high, on her sophee she sits,
Vouchsafing audience to contending wits :
Of each perfonnance she's the final test;
One act read o'er, she prophesies the rest;
And then, pronouncing with decisive air,
Fully convinces all the town — the *sfair.
Had lonely Daphne Hecatessa's face.
How would her elegance of taste decrease!
Some ladies' judgment in their features lies.
And all their genius sparkles in their eyes.
But hold, she cries, lampooner ! have a care !
Must I want common sense because I 'm fair ?
Oh, no ; see Stella : her eyes shine as bright
As if her tongue was never in the right ;
And yet what real leamiug, judgment, fire !
She seems inspired, and can herself inspire.
How then (if malice ruled not all the fair)
CaiUd Daphne puhlishy and could the forbear ? "
-^fter all, when we have gone through Young's
seven Satires, we seem to have made but an indif-
ferent meal. They are a sort of fricassee, with
some little solid meat in them, and yet the flavour
is not always piquant It is curious to find him,
when he pauses a moment from his satiric sketch-
ing, recurring to his old platitudes —
'' Can gold calm passion, or make reason shine ?
Can we dig peace or wisdom from the mine ?
Wisdom to gold prefer : " —
platitudes which he seems inevitably to fall into,
for the same reason that some men are constantly
asserting their contempt for criticism, — because he
felt the opposite so keenly.
230 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
The outburst of genius in the earlier books of
the " Night Thoughts " is the more remarkable,
that, in the interval between them and the Satires,
he had produced nothing but his Pindaric odes, in
which he fell far below the level of his previous
works. Two sources of this sudden strength were
the freedom of blank verse and the presence of a
genuine emotion. Most persons, in speaking of
the ** Night Thoughts, " have in their minds only
the two or three first Nights; the majority of
readers rarely getting beyond these, unless, as
Wilson says, they " have but few books, are poor,
and live in the country. " And in these earlier
Nights there is enough genuine sublimity and
genuine sadness to bribe us into too favourable
a judgment of them as a whole. Young had
only a very few things to say or sing, — such
as that life is vain, that death is imminent,
that man is immortal, that virtue is wisdom,
that friendship is sweet, and that the source
of virtue is the contemplation of death and '
immortality, — and even in his two first Nights
he had said almost uU he had to say in his finest
manner. Through these first outpourings of ** com-
plaint ' we feel that the poet is really sad, that
the bird is singing over a rifled nest ; and we bear
with his morbid picture of the world and of life,
as the Job-like lament of a man whom " the hand
of God hath touched. " Death has carried away
his best-beloved ; and that " silent land, " whither
they are gone, has more reality for the desolate
one than this world, which is empty of their
love : —
** This is the desert, this the solitude ;
How populous, how vital, ia the grave ! "
■ffORLDLINBSS AND OTHER-WORLDLIKESS. 231
Joy died with the loved one ; —
" The diseiicbiuiteil earth
Lost all her luiitre. Where her glittering tnwere ?
Hgt ){o]den lUDuiilBiiiB, where ? All darkened down
To DolcHd waste ; a druary vale of tears :
Tht great magician 't dead ! "
TJoder the pang of parting, it seema to the b«-
reaved man as if love were only a nervo to suffer
with, and he sickens at the thought of every joy
of which he must one day say, " it was. ' In its
unreasoning anguish, the soul rushes to the idea
of perpetuity as the one element of bliss: —
•' O ye Mest Rcenee of penuaaent deli^jht !
Could ye, so rich in rapture, fear an end, ^
That ghastly thoufiht would dritik up all your joy,
And quite unpanidbe the realms of Ught."
In a man under the immediate pressure of a
great sorrow, we tolerate morbid exaggerations;
we are prepared to see him turn away a weary eye
from sunlight and Sowers and sweet human faces,
as if this rich and glorious life had no significance
but as a preliminary of death ; we do not criticise
his views, we compassionate his feelings. And so
it is with Young in these earlier Nights. There is
already some artificiality even in his grief, and
feeling often slides into rhetoric; but through it
all we are thrilled with the unmistakable cry of
pain, which makes us tolerant of egoism and
hyperbole : —
" Id every varieil posture, place, and hour,
How widowed every tbnnght of every joy !
Thought, busy thought I too busy for my peace I
Through the dark postern of time long elapsed
Led softly, by the dtillneM of the night, —
232 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
Led like a muiderer (and such it proves !)
Strays (wretched rover !) o'er the pleasing past, —
In quest of wretchedness, perversely strays ;
And finds all desert now ; and meets the ghosts
Of my departed joys."
But when he becomes didactic rather than com-
plaining, — when he ceases to sing his sorrows,
and begins to insist on his opinions, — when that
distaste for life, which we pity as a transient feel-
ing, is thrust upon us as a theory, we become
perfectly cool and critical, and are not in the least
inclined to be indulgent to false views and selfish
sentiments.
Seeing that we are about to be severe on Young's
failings and failures, we ought, if a reviewer's
space were elastic, to dwell also on his merits, —
on the startling vigour of his imagery, on the
occasional grandeur of his thought, on the piquant
force of that grave satire into which his medita-
tions continually run. But, since our limits are
rigorous, we must content ourselves with the less
agreeable half of the critic's duty; and we may
the rather do so, because it would be difficult to
say anything new of Young in the way of admi-
ration, while we think there are many salutary
lessons remaining to be drawn from his faults.
One of the most striking characteristics of
Young is his radical insincerity as a poetic artist.
This, added to the thin and artificial texture of
his wit, is the true explanation of the paradox, —
that a poet who is often inopportunely witty has
the opposite vice of bombastic absurdity. The
source of all grandiloquence is the want of taking
for a criterion the true qualities of the object de-
scribed, or the emotion expressed. The grandilo-
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WO RLDLINESS. 133
quent man is never bent on saying what he feels
or what he sees, but on prod\icing a certain eS'ect
on his audience; hence he may float away into
alter inanity without meeting any criterion to
arrest him. Here lies the distinction between
grandiloquence and genuine fancy or bold imagi-
nativeness. The fantastic or the boldly imagina-
tive poet may be as sincere as the most realistic;
he is true to his own sensibilities nr inward vision,
and in his wildcat flights be never breaks loose
from his criterion, — the truth of his own mental
state. Now, this disruption of language from
genuine thought and feeling is what we are con-
stantly detecting in Young; and his insincerity is
the more likely to betray him into absurdity, be-
cause he habitually treats of abstractions, and not
of concrete objects or specific emotions. He des-
cants perpetually on virtue, religion, " the good
man,' life, death, immortality, eternity, — subjects
which are apt to give a factitious grandeur to
empty wordineas. When a poet Boats in the empy-
rean, and only takes a bird's-eye view of the earth,
some people accept the mere tact of his soaring for
sublimity, and mistake his dim vision of earth for
proximity to heaven. Tlius, —
" Hia hand the good man fises on the skies,
Aod bids earth roll, nor f&ela her idle whirl,"
may, perhaps, pass for sublime with some readers.
But pause a moment to realize the image, and the
monstrous absurdity of a man's grasping the skies,
and hanging habitually suspended there, while he
contemptuously bids the earth roll, warns you that
no genuine feeling could have suggested so unnatu-
ral a conception.
234 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
Again, —
'* See the man immortal : him, I mean,
Who lives as such ; whose heart, full bent on Heaven,
Leans all that way, his bias to the stars."
This is worse than the previous example; for
you can at least form some imperfect conception
of a man hanging from the skies, though the posi-
tion strikes you as uncomfortable and of no par-
ticular use ; but you are utterly unable to imagine
how his heart can lean towards the stars. Exam-
ples of such vicious imagery, resulting from
insincerity, may be found, perhaps, in almost
every page of the " Night Thoughts. " But simple
assertions or aspirations, undisguised by imagery,
are often equally false. No writer whose rhetoric
was checked by the slightest truthful intentions
could have said, —
" An eye of awe and wonder let me roll,
And roll forever."
Abstracting the more poetical associations with the
eye, this is hardly less absurd than if he had
wished to stand forever with his mouth open.
Again —
" Far beneath
A soul immortal is a mortal joy."
Happily for human nature, we are sure no man
really believes that. Which of us has the impiety
not to feel that our souls are only too narrow for
the joy of looking into the trusting eyes of our
children, of reposing on the love of a husband or a
wife, nay, of listening to the divine voice of
music, or watching the calm brightness of autum-
nal afternoons ? But Young could utter this falsity
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 235
without detecting it, because, when he spoke of
"mortal joys," he rarely had in his miud any
ohject to which he could attach Bacrednesa. He
was thinking of bishoprica and benefices, of smil-
ing mouarchs, patronizing prime-miuiatera, and a
" much indebted muse, " Of anything between
these and eternal blias, he was but rarely and
moderately conscious. Often, indeed, he sinks very
much below even the bishopric, and seems to have
no notion of earthly pleasure, but such as breathes
gaslight and the fumea of wine. His picture of
life is precisely such as j-ou would expect from a
man who has risen from his bed at two o'clock in
the afternoon with a headache, and a dim re-
membrance that he has added to his " debts of
honour " : —
" What wretched repetition doys us here!
What periodic potions for the flick,
Diatempered bodies and distempered niiiida 1 "
And then he flies off to his usual antithesis : —
" In on eternity what scenes ahail strike I
Adventures thicken, noveltits sarpriee 1 "
" Earth " means lords and levees, duchesses and
Delilaha, South-Sea dreams and illegal percentage ;
and the only things distinctly preferable to these
are eternity and the stars. Deprive Young of this
antithesis, and more than half his eloquence would
be shrivelled up, Place him on a breezy common,
where the furze is in its golden bloom, where chil-
dren are playing, and horses are standing in the
auushine with fondling necks, and he would have
nothing to say. Here are neither depths of guilt
nor heights of glory; and we doubt whether in
236 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
such a scene he would be able to pay his usual
compliment to the Creator: —
" Where'er I turn, what claim on all applanae 1 "
It is true that he sometimes — not often —
speaks of virtue as capable of sweetening life, as
well as of taking the sting from death and winning
heaven ; and, lest we should be guilty of any un-
fairness to him, we will quote the two passages
which convey this sentiment the most explicitly.
In the one he gives Lorenzo this excellent recipe
for obtaining cheerfulness : —
" Go, fix some weighty truth ;
Chain down some passion ; do some generous good ;
Teach Ignorance to see, or Grief to smile ;
Correct thy friend ; befriend thy greatest foe ;
Or, with warm heart, and confidence divine,
Spring up, and lay strong hold on Him who made thee."
The other passage is vague but beautiful, and
its music has murmured in our minds for many
years : —
'* The cuckoo seasons sing
The same dull note to such as nothing prize
But what those seasons from the teeming earth
To doting sense indulge. But nobler minds,
Which relish fruit unripened by the sun.
Make their days various ; various as the dyes
On the dove's neck, which wanton in his rays.
On minds of dove-like innocence possessed.
On lightened minds that bask in Virtue's beams.
Nothing hangs tedious, nothing old revolves
In that for which they long, for which they live.
Their glorious efforts, winged with heavenly hopes,
Each rising morning sees still higher rise;
Each bounteous dawn its novelty presents
To worth maturing, new strength, lustre, fame;
While Nature's circle, like a chariot wheel,
Rolling beneath their elevated aims.
Makes their fair prospect fairer every hour ;
Advancing virtue in a line to bliss."
WORLDLINESS AND 0THER-W0RLDLINES8.
237
Even here, where he is in his most i
mood, you see itt what a telescopic distapce he
stands from mother Earth and simple human joys,
— "Nature's circle rolls beneath." Indeed, we
rcmemher no mind in poetic literature that seems
to have absorhed less of the beauty and the healthy
breath of the common landscape than Young's.
His images, often grand and finely presented, wit-
ness that sublimely sudden leap of thought, —
"Embryfw we must be till we burat the shell,
Yon ambitnt azure thtU, aud spring to life," —
lie almost entirely within that circle of observa-
tion which would be familiar to a man who lived
in town, hung about the theatres, read the news-
paper, and went home often by mooo and star
light.
There is no natural object nearer than the moon
that seems to have any strong attraction for him ;
and even to the moon he chiefly appeals for patron-
age, and " pays his court ' to her. It is reckoned
among the many deficiencies of Lorenzo, that he
" never asked the moon one question," — an omis-
sion which Young thinks eminently unbecoming a
rational being. He describes nothing so well as
a comet, and is tempted to linger with fond detail
over nothing more familiar than the Day of Judg-
ment and an imaginary journey among the stars.
Once on Saturn's ring, he feels at home, and his
language becomes quite easy; —
" What behold I now 1
A wildemeBB of wonders burning roond,
Where larger suns inhabit higher aphereB,
Perhaps tlie villat of deicendiiu) godi I "
238 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
It is like a siidden relief from a strained posture
when, in the " Night Thoughts," we come on any
allusion that carries us to the lanes, woods, or
fields. Such allusions are amazingly rare, and we
could almost count them on a single hand. That
we may do him no injustice, we will quote the
three best: —
*' Like blossomed trees overturned by vemcU storm.
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay.
In the same brook none ever bathed him twice :
To the same life none ever twice awoke.
We call the brook the same — the same we think
Our life, though still more rapid in its flow ;
Nor mark the much irrevocably lapsed
And mingled with the sea.
The crown of manhood is a winter joy ;
An evergreen that stands the northern blast,
And blossoms in the rigour of our fate."
The adherence to abstractions, or to the personi-
fication of abstractions, is closely allied in Young
to the want of genuine emotion. He sees Virtue
sitting on a mount serene, far above the mists and
storms of earth; he sees Religion coming down
from the skies, with this world in her left hand
and the other world in her right; but we never
find him dwelling on virtue or religion as it really
exists, — in the emotions of a man dressed in an
ordinary coat, and seated by his fireside of an
evening, with his hand resting on the head of his
little daughter, in courageous effort for unselfish
ends, in the internal triumph of justice and pity
over personal resentment, in all the sublime self-
renunciation and sweet charities which are found
in the details of ordinary life. Now emotion links
WORLDLINESS AND OTILETl-WORLDLINESS. 239
itself with particulars, and only in a faint and
secondary manner with abstractions. An orator
may discourse very eloquently on injustice in gen-
eral, and leave his audience cold; but let him
state a special case of oppression, and every heart
will throl). The most uutheoretic persons are
aware of this relation between true emotion and
particular facts, as opposed to general terms, and
implicitly recognize it in the repulsion they feel
towards any one who professes strong feeling about
abstractions, in the interjectionnl 'humbug!'
which immediately rises to their lips. Wherever
abstractions appear to excit« strong emotion, this
occurs in men of active intellect and imagination,
in whom the abstract term rapidly and vividly
calls up the particulars it rejiresents, these particu-
lars being the true source of the emotion ; and such
men, if they wished to express their feeling, would
be infallibly prompted to the presentation of de-
tails. Strong emotion can no more be directed to
generalities apart from particulars, than skill in
figures can be directed to arithinetic apart from
numbers. Generalities are the refuge at once of
deficient intellectual activity and deficient feeling.
If we except the passages in " Philander, " " Nar-
cissa, ' and " Lucia, ° there is hardly a trace of
human sympathy, of self-forgetfulness in the joy
or sorrow of a fellow-being, throughout this long
poem, which professes to treat the various phases
of man's destiny. And even in the "Narcissa'
Night, Young repels us by the low moral tone of
his exaggerated lament. This married step-daugh-
ter died at Lyons, and being a I'rotestant, was
denied burial, so that her friends had to bury her
in secret, — one of the many miserable results of
240 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT,
superstition, but not a fact to throw an educated,
still less a Christian, man into a fuTy of hatred
and vengeance, in contemplating it after the lapse
of five years. Young, however, takes great pains
to simulate a bad feeling : —
*• Of grief
And indignation rival bursts I poured,
Half execration mingled with my prayer ;
Kindled at man, while I bis God adored ;
Sore grudged the savage land her sacred dust ;
Stamped the cursed soil ; and vnth humanity
(Denied Narcissa) wished them all a grave"
The odiously bad taste of this last clause makes
us hope that it is simply a platitude, and not in-
tended as witticism, until he removes the possi-
bility of this favourable doubt by immediately
asking, ** Flows my resentment into guilt ? "
When, by an afterthought, he attempts some-
thing like sympathy, he only betrays more clearly
his want of it Thus, in the first Night, when
he turns from his private griefs to depict earth as
a hideous abode of misery for all mankind, and
asks, —
" What then am I, who sorrow for myself?"
he falls at once into calculating the benefit of
sorrowing for others : —
** More generous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts;
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.
Nor virtue, more than prudence, bids me give
Swollen thought a second channel."
This remarkable negation of sympathy is in per-
fect consistency with Young's theory of ethics : —
** Virtue is a crime,
A crime to reason, if it costs us pain
Unpaid."
WOHLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 24'
If there is no immortality for man, —
" Sense 1 take tbe rein ; blind Pasaiori ! drive us on ;
And ignorance '. befriend ua on our way.
Yes, give the Pulse full empire ; live the Brute,
, Since la the brut« we clie. The nutn of man,
Of godlike man, to revel and to rot.
If this life's gain invites him to the deed,
V/by not hia countiy sold, his father slain?
Ambition, avarice, by the wisa disdained,
Is perfect wisdom, while mnnkind are fnots.
And think a turf or tomlistoiie covers alL
Die for thy country, thou romantic fool 1
Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink.
As in tbe dying pnrent dies the child,
Virtue with Immortality expires.
Who tells me he denies his sou) immortal,
Whale'er hit boail, hai told m« he't a knave.
Hit duly 't U to lave himttlf alont ;
Nor care Ounu/h mankind periih, if he imiUi."
We Can imagine the man who " denies his soul
immortal," replying: 'It is quite possible that
1/ou would be a knave, and love yourself alone, if
it were not for your belief in immortality; but
you are not to force upon me what would result
from your own utter want of moral emotion. I
am just and honest, not because I expect to live in
another world, but because, having felt the pain of
injustice and dishonesty towards myself, I have a
fellow-feeling with other men, who would suffer
the same pain if I were unjust or dishonest towards
them. Why should I give my neighbour short
weight in this world, because there is not another
world in which I should have uothing to weigh
242 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
out to him ? I am honest, because I don't like to
inflict evil on others in this life, not because I 'm
afraid of evil to myself in another. The fact is, I
do not love myself alone, whatever logical neces-
sity there may be for that in your mind. I have
a tender love for my wife and children and friends,
and through that love I sympathize with like affec-
tions in other men. It is a pang to me to witness
the sufferings of a fellow-being, and I feel his
suffering the more acutely because he is mortal, —
because his life is so short, and I would have it, if
possible, filled with happiness and not misery.
Through my union and fellowship with the men
and women I have seen, I feel a like, though a
fainter, sympathy with those I have not seen ; and
I am able so to live in imagination with the gen-
erations to come, that their good is not alien to
me, and is a stimulus to me to labour for ends
which may not benefit myself, but will benefit
them. It is possible that you may prefer to live
the brute, to sell your country, or to slay your
father, if you were not afraid of some disagreeable
consequences from the criminal laws of another
world ; but even if I could conceive no motive but
my own worldly interest, or the gratification of my
animal desire, I have not observed that beastliness,
treachery, and parricide are the direct way to hap-
piness and comfort on earth. And I should say
that if you feel no motive to common morality
but your fear of a criminal bar in heaven, you are
decidedly a man for the police on earth to keep
their eye upon, since it is matter of world-old
experience that fear of distant consequences is a
very insufficient barrier against the rush of imme-
diate desire. Fear of consequences is only one
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 243
form of egoism, which will hardly stand against
half-a-dozeu other forms of egoism bearing down
upon it. And in opposition to your theory that
a belief in immortality is the only source of virtue,
I maintain that, so far as moral action is depend-
ent on that belief, so far the emotion which prompts
it 13 not truly moral, — is still in the stage of ego-
ism, and has not yet attained the higher develop-
ment of sympathy. In proportion as a man would
care less for the rights and welfare of his fellow if
he did not believe in a future life, in that propor-
tion is he wanting in the genuine feelings of jus-
tice and benevolence; as the musician who would
care less to play a sonata of Beethoven finely in
solitude than in public, where he was to be paid
for it, is wanting in genuine enthusiasm for
music. '
Thus far might answer the man who ' denies
himself immortal;" and — allowing for that defi-
cient recognition of the finer and more indirect
influences exercised by the idea of immortality
which might be expected from one who took up a
dogmatic position on such a subject — we think he
would have given a sufficient reply to Young and
other theological advocates who, like him, pique
themselves on the loftiness of their doctrine when
they maintain that " Virtue with Immortality
expires. ' We may admit, indeed, that if the
better part of virtue consists, as Young appears to
think, in contempt for mortal joys, in " medita-
tion of our own decease." and in "applause' of
God in the style of a congratulatory address to her
Majesty, — all which has small relation to the
well-being of mankind on this earth, — the motive
to it must be gathered from something that lies
244 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
quite outside the sphere of human sympathy. But
for certain other elements of virtue, which are of
more obvious importance to untheological minds,
— a delicate sense of our neighbour's rights, an
active participation in the joys and sorrows of our
fellow-men, a magnanimous acceptance of privation
or suffering for ourselves when it is the condition
of good to others, in a word, the extension and in-
tensification of our sympathetic nature, — we think
it of some importance to contend that they have
no more direct relation to the belief in a future
state than the interchange of gases in the lungs
has to the plurality of worlda Nay, to us it is
conceivable that in some minds the deep pathos
lying in the thought of human mortality — that
we are here for a little while and then vanish
away, that this earthly life is all that is given to
our loved ones and to our many suffering fellow-
men — lies nearer the fountains of moral emotion
than the conception of extended existence And
surely it ought to be a welcome fact, if the thought
of mortality, as well as of immortality, be favour-
able to virtue. Do writers of sermons and reli-
gious novels prefer that men should be vicious in
order that there may be a more evident political
and social necessity for printed sermons and cleri-
cal fictions ? Because learned gentlemen are theo-
logical, are we to have no more simple honesty and
good-will? We can imagine that the proprietors
of a patent water-supply have a dread of common
springs; but, for our own part, we think there
cannot be too great a security against a lack of
fresh water or of pure morality. To us it is a
matter of unmixed rejoicing that this latter neces-
sary of healthful life is independent of theological
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 245
ink, and that its evolution is ensured in the inter-
action of human souls, as certainly as the evolution
of science or of art, with which, indeed, it is but
K twin ray melting into them with undefinable
limits,
To return to Young. We can often detect a
man's deficiencies in what he admires more clearly
than in what he contemns, — in the sentiments he
presents as laudable rather than in those he de-
cries. And in Young's notion of what is lofty he
casts a shadow by which we can measure him
without further trouble. For example, in arguing
for human immortality he aays : —
" First, what ia Inie atnbiHon ? The pursuit
Of glory nothiiig less f^an man can ihare. •
The Viaible and Present are for brutes,
A slender purtion, and a narrow bound I
These Reason, with an energj- divine,
O'erieaps, and claims the Future and DnBeen, —
The vast Unseen, the Future fathomless I
When the great soul buoys up to this high point,
Leaving ((ross Nature's sediments l*Iow,
Then, and then only, Adam's oITspring quits
The sage and hero of the fields and woods,
Asserla hia rank, and rises into man."
So, then, if it were certified that, as some be-
nevolent minds have tried to infer, our dumb
fellow -creatures would share a future existence, in
which it is to be hoped we should neither beat,
starve, nor maim them, our ambition for a future
life would cease to be " lofty ! " This is a notion
of loftiness which may pair off with Dr. Whewell's
celebrated observation, that Bentham's moral the-
ory is low, because it includes justice and mercy
to brutes.
246 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
But, for a reflection of Young's moral personal-
ity on a colossal scale, we must turn to those
passages where his rhetoric is at its utmost stretch
of inflation, — where he addresses the Deity, dis-
courses of the divine operations, or describes the
Last Judgment. As a compound of vulgar pomp,
crawling adulation, and hard selfishness, presented
under the guise of piety, there are few things in
literature to surpass the Ninth Night, entitled
** Consolation, " especially in the pages where he
describes the Last Judgment, a subject to which,
with naive self-betrayal, he applies phraseology
favoured by the exuberant penny-a-liner. Thus,
when God descends, and the groans of hell are
opposed by ** shouts of joy, * — much as cheers and
groans contend at a public meeting where the reso-
lutions are not passed unanimously, — the poet
completes his climax in this way: —
<* Hence, in one peal of loud, eternal praise.
The charmed spectators thunder their appkuae."
In the same taste he sings : —
" Eternity, the various sentence past,
Assigns the severed throng distinct abodes,
Sulphureous or ambrosial,"
Exquisite delicacy of indication! He is too
nice to be specific as to the interior of the " sul-
phureous " abode ; but when once half the human
race are shut up there, hear how he enjoys turning
the key on them ! —
" What ensues 1
The deed predominant, the deed of deeds !
Which makes a hell of hell, a heaven of heaven /
The goddess, with detennined aspect, turns
Her adamantine key's enormous size
WORLDLINESS AND OTHEH-WORLDLINESS. 247
Through destiny's inextricable wordB,
Deep driving ever^ holt on both Ibcir fatea.
Then, from the crystal batllemenla of heaven,
Down, down she tmrls it tbrough tlie dark profonnd.
Ten thousand, tbcinsaixl fathom ; there to rust
And ne'er Dulock her reaolution more.
The deep resoundit ; and bell, through all ber glooms,
ReturuB, in groans, the nieUnoboly roar."
This is one of the blessings for which Dr. Young
thanks God " most : " —
" For all I bless thee, meet, for the aeven;
Her death — my own at hand — Ouji-ry golf,
Thai _flaming bound ofviratk omiiipolutt/
It tkuntUrt I hut it thunderi to praervt ;
its wholcBoine dread
Averts the dreaded pain ; iU hideoua groaru
Join luaven,'» iweet HaHdujahi in iky praite,
Qreat Source of good alunul How kind In all!
In vengeance kind 1 Puin, Death, Ochemia, mm " , . .
t, e. , save me. Dr. Young ; who, in return for that
favour, proraisa to give my divine patron the
monopoly of that exuberance in laudatory epithet
of which specimens may be seen at any moment in
a large number of dedications and odes to kings,
queens, prime ministers, and other persons of dis-
tinction. That, in Young's conception, is what
God delights in. His crowning aim in the drama
of the ages is to vindicate his own renown. The
God of the ° Night Thoughts ' is simply Young
himself, "writ large, " *— a didactic poet, who
" lectures " mankind in the antithetic hyperbole of
mortal and immortal joys, earth and the stars,
hell and heaven, and .expects the tribute of inex-
haustible " applause, " Young has no conception
of religion as anything else than egoism turned
heavenward; and he does not merely imply this,
248 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
he insists on it. Beligion, he tells us, in argu-
mentative passages too long to quote, is * ambition,
pleasure, and the love of gain," directed towards
the joys of the future life instead of the present
And his ethics correspond to his religion. He
vacillates, indeed, in his ethical theory, and shifts
his position in order to suit his immediate purpose
in argument; but he never changes his level so
as to see beyond the horizon of mere selfishness.
Sometimes he insists, as we have seen, that the
belief in a future life is the only basis of morality ;
but elsewhere he tells us, —
** In self-applaoBe is virtue's golden prize."
Virtue, with Young, must always squint, — must
never look straight towards the immediate object
of its emotion and effort. Thus, if a man risks
perishing in the snow himself, rather than forsake
a weaker comrade, he must either do this because
his hopes and fears are directed to another world,
or because he desires to applaud himself after-
wards! Young, if we may believe him, would
despise the action as folly unless it had these
motives. Let us hope he was not so bad as he
pretended to be ! The tides of the divine life in
man move under the thickest ice of theory.
Another indication of Young's deficiency in
moral — i. e. , in sympathetic — emotion, is his
unintermitting habit of pedagogic moralizing. On
its theoretic and perceptive side, morality touches
science ; on its emotional side, art Now, the pro-
ducts of art are great in proportion as they result
from that immediate prompting of innate power
which we call Genius, and not from laboured
obedience to a theory or rule ; and the presence of
TVORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLD LINE S3. 249
genius or innate prompting is directly opposed to the
perpetual consciousness of a rule. The action of
faculty is imperious, and excludes the reflection why
it should act. In the same way, in proportion as
morality is emotional, i. e., has affinity with art,
it will exhibit itself in direct sympathetic feeling
and action, and not as the recognition of a rule.
Love does not say, " I ought to love, ' — it loves.
Pity does not say, " It is right to be pitiful, " — it
pities. Justice does not say, " I am bound to be
just," — it feels justly. It is only where moral
emotion is comparatively weak that the contem-
plation of a rule or theory habitually mingles with
its action; and in accordance with tliis, we thiuk
experience, both in literature and life, has shown
that the minds which are pre-emiuently didactic
— which insist on a lesson and despise everything
that will not convey a moral — are deficient in
sympathetic emotion. A certain poet is recorded
to have said that he " wished everything of his
burnt that did not impress some moral; even in
Inve-verses, it might be flung in by the way. "
What poet was it who took this medicinal view of
poetry ? Dr. Watts, or James Montgomery, or
some other singer of spotless life and ardent pioty ?
Not at all. It was Waller. A significant fact in
relation to our position, that the predominant
didactic tendency proceeds rather from the poet's
perception that it is good for other men to be
moral, than from any overflow of moral feeling in
himself! A man who is perpetually thinking in
apothegms, who has an uuintermittent flux of
admonition, can have little energy left for simple
emotion. And this is the case with Young. In
his highest flights of contemplation, and his most
250 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
wailing soliloquies, he interrupts himself to fling
an admonitory parenthesis at Lorenzo, or to hint
that " folly's creed " is the reverse of his own.
Before his thoughts can flow, he must fix his eye
on an imaginary miscreant, who gives unlimited
scope for lecturing, and recriminates just enough
to keep the spring of admonition and argument
going to the extent of nine Books. It is curious
to see how this pedagogic habit of mind runs
through Young's contemplation of Natura As the
tendency to see our own sadness reflected in
the external world has been called by Mr. Buskin
the "pathetic fallacy," so we may call Young's
disposition to see a rebuke or a warning in every
natural object the * pedagogic fallacy. " To his
mind the heavens are ** forever scolding as they
shine ; ' and the great function of the stars is to
be a " lecture to mankind. " The conception of
the Deity as a didactic author is not merely an
implicit point of view with him ; he works it out
in elaborate imagery, and at length makes it the
occasion of his most extraordinary achievement in
the " art of sinking, " by exclaiming, apropos, we
need hardly say, of the nocturnal heavens : —
** Divine Instructor! Thy first volume this
For man's perusal ! all in capitals I '*
It is this pedagogic tendency, this sermonizing
attitude of Young's mind, which produces the
wearisome monotony of his pauses. After the
first two or three Nights, he is rarely singing,
rarely pouring forth any continuous melody in-
spired by the spontaneous flow of thought or feel-
ing. He is rather occupied with argumentative
insistence, with hammering in the proofs of his
WORLDLINESS AND OTHEU-WORLDLINESS. 351
propositions by disconnected verses, which he puts
down at intervals. The perpetual recurrence of
the pause at the end o£ the line throu<;hont long
passages, makes them as fatiguing to the ear as a.
mouotouous chant, which consists of the endless
repetition of one short musical phrose. For
example : —
" Past hours.
If ntit 1>y guilt, yet wound ua Ly their flight.
If folly bound nur pnispect by the gtuve,
All feelitig ot futurity be numbed.
All godlike poasiou for eternals quenched,
Ail relbh of realities expired i
BenoUDced all correspondence with the skies ;
Out freedom chained ; quite wingless our desire ;
In sense dark -prisoned all that ought to eoorj
Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust;
Dismounted every great and glorious aim ;
Enthralled every faculty divine,
Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world."
How different from the ensy, graceful melody
of Cowper's Llank verse! lujeed, it is hardly
possible to criticise Young, without being reminded
at every step of the contrast presented to him by
Cowper. And this contrast urges itself upon us the
more from the fact that there is, to a certain ex-
tent, a parallelism between the " Night Thoughts '
and the " Task. " In both poems the author
achieves his greatest, in virtue of the new freedom
conferred by blank verse ; both poems are profes-
sedly didactic, and mingle much satire with their
graver meditations; both poems are the produc-
tions of men whose estimate of this life was formed
by the light of a belief in immortality, and who
were intensely attached to Christianity. On some
grounds we might have anticipated a more morbid
view of things from Cowpei than from Young.
252 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
Cowper's religion was dogmatically the more
gloomy, for he was a Calvinist ; while Young was
a ** low * Arminian, — believing that Christ died
for all, and that the only obstacle to any man's
salvation lay in his will, which he could change
if he chose. There was real and deep sadness in-
volved in Cowper's personal lot; while Young,
apart from his ambitious and greedy discontent,
seems to have had no great sorrow.
Yet see how a lovely, sympathetic nature mani-
fests itself in spite of creed and circumstance!
Where is the poem that surpasses the ** Task, " —
in the genuine love ijt breathes, at once towards
inanimate and animate existence ; in truthfulness
of perception and sincerity of presentation ; in the
calm gladness that springs from a delight in ob-
jects for their own sake, without self -reference ; in
divine sympathy with the lowliest pleasures, with
the most short-lived capacity for pain ? Here is
no railing at the earth's ** melancholy map,* but
the happiest lingering over her simplest scenes
with all the fond minuteness of attention that be-
longs to love ; no pompous rhetoric about the infe-
riority of the brutes, but a warm plea on their
behalf against man's inconsiderateness and cruelty,
and a sense of enlarged happiness from their com-
panionship in enjoyment; no vague rant about
human misery and human virtue, but that close
and vivid presentation of particular sorrows and
privations, of particular deeds and misdeeds, which
is the direct road to the emotions. How Cowper's
exquisite mind falls with the mild warmth of
morning sunlight on the commonest objects, at
once disclosing every detail, and investing every
detail with beauty! No object is too small to
prompt his song. — not the sooty film on the bars,
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 253
or the spoutless teapot Iiolding a bit of mignon-
ette, that serves to cheer the dingy town-lodging
with a "hint that Nature lives;" and yet his
song is never trivial, for he is alive to small
objects, not because his mind is narrow, bnt be-
cause his glance is clear and his heart is large.
Instead of trying to edify us by supercilious allu-
sions to the brutes and the stalls, he interests us
io that tragedy of the hen-roost, when the thief
has wrenched the door,
' ' Where Chftntideer amidst hia harem sleeps
In untuipectiTig pomp ; ''
in the patient cattle, that on the winter's morning
" Mourn in comere where the fence
Screens them, and eeeni half petrified to sleep
In unrecumlient tadTiet$ ; "
in the little squirrel, that, surprised by him in
his woodland walk,
" At once, swift as & liird.
Ascends the neighbouring beech ; there whisks his brush,
And perks bio ears, and stamps, and cries aloud,
With all the prettinesa of feigned alarm
And anger insignificantly fierce."
And then he passes into reflection, not with curt
apothegm and snappish reproof, but with that
melodious How of utterance which belongs to
thought when it is carried along in a stream of
feeling : —
" The heart is hard in nature, and unfit
For human fellowship, — as being void
Of synipatbj, and therefore dead alike
To love and friendship both, — that ia not pleased
With sight of animals enjoying life,
Nor feels their happiness augment his own."
254 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
His large and tender heart embraces the most
every-day forms of human life, — the carter driving
his team through the wintry storm ; the cottager's
wife who, painfully nursing the embers on her
hearth, while her infants ** sit cowering o'er the
sparks, "
** Retires, content to quake, so they be warmed; "
or the villager, with her little ones, going out to
pick
^' A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook ; *'
and he compels our colder natures to follow his in
its manifold sympathies, not by exhortations, not
by telling us to meditate at midnight, to indulge
the thought of death, or to ask ourselves how we
shall " weather an eternal night, " but by presenting
to U8 the object of his compassion truthfully and
lovingly.
And when he handles greater themes, when he
takes a wider survey, and considers the men or the
deeds which have a direct influence on the welfare
of communities and nations, there is the same
unselfish warmth of feeling, the same scrupulous
truthfulness. He is never vague in his remon-
strance or his satire ; but puts his finger on some
particular vice or folly, which excites his indig-
nation or " dissolves his heart in pity, " because of
some specific injury it does to his fellow-man or to
a sacred cause. And when he is asked why he
interests himself about the sorrows and wrongs of
others, hear what is the reason he gives. Not,
like Young, that the movements of the planets
show a mutual dependence, and that, —
" Thus man his sovereign duty leams in this
Material picture of benevolence ; "
WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 255
. or that, •«-
" More generous sorrow while it sinks, exalts,
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang/'
What is Cowper's answer, when he imagines
some * sage erudite, profound, " asking him
" What 's the world to you ? " —
** Much. I was horn of woman, and drew milk
As sweet as charity from human breasts,
I think, articulate, I laugh and weep,
And exercise all functions of a man.
How then should I and any man that lives
Be strangers to each other ? *'
Young is astonished that men can make war on
each other, — that any one can " seize his brother's
throat," while
" The Planete cry, * Forbear.' "
Cowper weeps because
" There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart :
It does not feel for man,^*
Young applauds God as a monarch with an em-
pire, and a court quite superior to the English, or
as an author- who produces "volumes for man's
perusal. " Cowper sees his Father's love in all
the gentle pleasures of the home fireside, in the
charms even of the wintry landscape, and thinks, —
** Happy who walks with him ! whom what he finds
Of flavour or of scent in fruit or flower,
Or what he views of beautiful or grand
In nature, from the broad, majestic oak
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun,
Prompts irith remembrance of a present God."
256 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
To conclude, — for we must arrest ourselves in a
contrast that would lead us beyond our bounds, —
Young flies for his utmost consolation to the Day
of Judgment, when
" Final Ruin fiercely drives
Her ploughshare o'er creation ; "
when earth, stars, and sun are swept aside, —
** And now, all dross removed, heaven's own pure day,
Full on the confines of our ether, fiames :
While (dreadful contrast !) far (how far I) beneath,
Hell, bursting, belches forth her blazing seas.
And storms sulphureous ; her voracious jaws
Expanding wide, and roaring for her prej," —
Dr. Young, and similar ** ornaments of religion
and virtue, " passing of course with grateful " ap-
plause " into the upper region. Cowper finds his
highest inspiration in the Millennium, — in the
restoration of this, our beloved home of earth, to
perfect holiness and bliss, when the Supreme
'< Shall visit earth in mercy; shall descend
Propitious in his chariot paved with love ;
And what bis storms have blasted and defaced
For man's revolt, shall with a smile repair."
And into what delicious melody his song flows
at the thought of that blessedness to be enjoyed by
future generations on earth ! —
** The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks
Shout to each other, and the mountain-tops
From distant mountains catch the flying joy;
Till, nation after nation taught the strain.
Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round 1 "
The sum of our comparison is this : In Young
we have the type of that deficient human sympa-
WOKLDLDIBSS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 257
thy, that impiety towards the present and the
visible, which flies for its motives, its sanctities,
and its religion to the remote, the vague, and the
unknown; in Cowper we have the type of that
genuine love which cherishes things in proportion
to their nearness, and feels its reverence grow in
proportion to the intimacy of its knowledge.
VOL. II. — 17
EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR GUMMING.
Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral
standard not higher than the average, some rhetor-
ical affluence and great glibness of speech, what is
the career in which, without the aid of birth or
money, he may most easily attain power and repu-
tation in English society ? Where is that Goshen
of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and
learning will pass for profound instruction, where
platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted
narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as Grod-
given piety ? Let such a man become an evangeli-
cal preacher; he will then find it possible to
reconcile small ability with great ambition, super-
ficial knowledge with the prestige of erudition, a
middling morale with a high reputation for sanc-
tity. Let him shun practical extremes and be
ultra only in what is purely theoretic : let him be
stringent on predestination, but latitudinarian on
fasting ; unflinching in insisting on the Eternity
of punishment, but difi&dent of curtailing the sub-
stantial comforts of Time ; ardent and imaginative
on the pre-millennial advent of Christ, but cold
and cautious towards every other infringement of
the status quo. Let him fish for souls, not with
the bait of inconvenient singularity, but with the
drag-net of comfortable conformity. Let him be
hard and literal in his interpretation only when
he wants to hurl texts at the heads of unbelievers
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 259
and adversaries ; but when the letter of the Scrip-
tures presses too closely on the yenteel Christianity
of the nineteenth century, let him use his spiritu-
alizing alembic aud disperse it into impalpable
ether. Let him preach less of Christ than of
Antichrist; let him be less definite in showing
what sin is than in showing who is the Man of
Sin, less expansive on the blessedness of faith than
on the accursedneaa of infidelity. Above all, let
him set up as an interpreter of prophecy, and rival
Moore's Almanack in the prediction of political
events, tickling the interest of hearers who are but
moderately spiritual by showing how the Holy
Spirit has dictated problems and charades for their
benefit, and how, if they are ingenious enough to
solve these, they may have their Christian graces
nourished by learning precisely to whom they may
point as the "horn that had eyes," "the lying
prophet, ° and the " unclean spirits. " In this way
he will draw men to him by the strong chords of
their passions, made reason-proof by heing bap-
tized with the name of piety, ^n this way he
may gain a metropolitan pulpit; the avenues to
his church will he as crowded as the passages to
the opera; he has but to print his prophetic ser-
mons and bind them in lilac and gold, and they
will adorn the drawing-room table of all evangeli-
cal ladies, who will regard as a sort of pious " light
reading " the demonstration that the prophecy of
the locusts whose sting is in their tail is fulfilled in
the fact of the Turkish commander's having taken
a horse's tail for his standard, and that the French
are the very frogs predicted in the Revelations.
Pleasant to the clerical flesh under such circum-
stances is the arrival of Sunday ! Somewhat at a
26o ESSAYS or GEORGE ELIOT.
disadvantage during the week, in the presence
of working-day interests and lay splendours, on
Sunday the preacher becomes the cynosure of a
thousand eyes, and predominates at once over the
Amphitryon with whom he dines, and the most
captious member of his church or vestry. He has
an immense advantage over all other public
speakers. The platform orator is subject to the
criticism of hisses and groans. Counsel for the
plaintiff expects the retort of counsel for the de-
fendant The honourable gentleman on one side of
the House is liable to have his facts and figures
shown up by his honourable friend on the opposite
side. Even the scientific or literary lecturer, if
he is dull or incompetent, may see the best part of
his audience quietly slip out one by one. But the
preacher is completely master of the situation : no
one may hiss, no one may depart Like the writer
of imaginary conversations, he may put what im-
becilities he pleases into the mouths of his antago-
nists, and swell with triumph when he has refuted
them. He may riot in gratuitous assertions, con-
fident that no man will contradict him; he may
exercise perfect free-will in logic, and invent
illustrative experience ; he may give an evangelical
edition of history with the inconvenient facts
omitted, — all this he may do with impunity,
certain that those of his hearers who are not sym-
pathizing are not listening. For the Press has no
band of critics who go the round of the churches
and chapels, and are on the watch for a slip or
defect in the preacher, to make a ** feature ' in
their article ; the clergy are, practically, the most
irresponsible of all talkers. For this reason, at
least, it is well that they do not always allow their
EVANGELICAL TEACHING; DR. GUMMING. 261
distiouraes to be merely fugitive, but are often
induced to &x them in that black and white in
which they are open to the criticiBm of any man
who has the courage and patience to treat them
with thorough freedom of speech and pen.
It is because we think this criticism of clerical
teaching desirable for the public good, that we
devote some pages to Dr. Gumming. He is, as
every one knows, a preacher of immense popularity ;
and of the numerous publications in which he
perpetuatus his pulpit labours, all circulate widely,
and some, according to their titlepage, have reached
the sixteenth thousand. Now. our opinion ot these
publications is the very opposite of that given by
a. newspaper eulogist: we do nut " believe that the
repented issues of Dr. Curaming's thoughts aie
having a beneficial effect on society, ' but the
reverse: and hence, little inclined as we are to
dwell on his pages, we think it worth while to do
BO, for the sake of pointing out in them what we
believe to be profoundly mistaken and pernicious.
Of Dr. Gumming personally we know absolutely
nothing; our acquaintance with" him is couliued to
a perusal of his works, our judgment of him is
founded solely on the manner in which he has
written himself down on his pages. We know
neither how he looks nor how he lives. We are
ignorant whether, like Saiut Paul, he has a bodily
presence that is weak and contemptible, or whether
hia person is as florid and as prone to amplifica-
tion as his style. For aught we know, he may not
only have the gift of prophecy, hut may bestow
the profits of all his works to feed the poor, and he
ready to give his own body to be burned with as
much alacrity as he infers the everlasting burning
Wl
262 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT.
of Boman Catholics and Poseyites. Ont of the
pulpit he may be a model of justice, truthfulness,
and the love that thinketh no evil; but we are
obliged to judge of his charity by the spirit we
find in his sermons, and shall only be glad to learn
that his practice is, in many respects, an amiable
non sequitur from his teaching.
Dr. Cumming's mind is evidently not of the
pietistic order. There is not the slightest leaning
towards mysticism in his Christianity, — no indi-
cation of religious raptures, of delight in God, of
spiritual communion with the Father. He is
most at home in the forensic view of Justification,
and dwells on salvation as a scheme rather than
as an experience. He insists on good works as
the sign of justifying faith, as labours to be
achieved to the glory of God ; but he rarely repre-
sents them as the spontaneous, necessary outflow
of a soul filled with Divine love. He is at home
in the external, the polemical, the historical, the
circumstantial, and is only episodically devout and
practical. The great majority of his published
sermons are occupied with argument or philippic
against Komanists and unbelievers, with " vindica-
tions " of the Bible, with the political interpretation
of prophecy, or the criticism of public events;
and the devout aspiration or the spiritual and
practical exhortation is tacked to them as a sort
of fringe in a hurried sentence or two at the end.
He revels in the demonstration that the Pope is
the Man of Sin ; he is copious on the downfall of
the Ottoman Empire; he appears to glow with
satisfaction in turning a story which tends to
show how he abashed an " infidel ; " it is a favour-
ite exercise with him to form conjectures of the
EVANGELICAL TEACHINQ: DR. GUMMING. 263
process by which the earth ia to be burned up, and
to picture Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Wilberforce being
caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Eoman-
ists, Puaeyitea, and infidels are given over to
gnashing of teeth. But of really spiritual joys
and Borrows, of the life and death of Christ as a
manifestation of love that constrains the soul, of
sympathy with that yearning over the lost and
erring which made Jesus weep over Jerusalem,
and prompted the sublime prayer, " Father, for-
give them,' of the gentler fruits of the Spirit, and
the peace of God which paaseth understanding, —
of all this, we fiud little trace in Dr. Cumming'a
discourses.
His style is in perfect correspondence with this
habit of mind. Though diffuse, as that of all
preachers must be, it has rapidity of movement,
perfect clearness, and some aptness of illustration.
He has much of that literary talent which makes
a good journalist, — the power of beating out an
idea over a large space, and of introducing far-
fetched hpropos. His writings have, indeed, no
high merit: they have no originality or force of
thought, no striking felicity of presentation, no
depth of emotion. Throughout nine volumes we
have alighted on no passage which impressed us as
worth extracting, and placing among the " beau-
ties " of evangelical writers, such as Robert Hall,
Foster the Essayist, or Isaac Taylor. Everywhere
there is commonplace cleverness, nowhere a spark
of rare thought, of lofty sentiment, or pathetic
tenderness. We fee! ourselves in company with
a voluble retail talker, whose language is exuber-
ant but not exact, and to whom we should never
think of referring for precise information or for
264 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
well-digested thought and experience. His argu-
ment continually slides into wholesale assertion
and vague declamation, and in his love of orna-
ment he frequently becomes tawdry. For example,
he tells us ^ that ** Botany weaves around the cross
her amaranthine garlands; and Newton comes
from his starry home, Linnaeus from his floweiy
resting-place, and Werner and Hutton from their
subterranean graves, at the voice of Chalmers, to
acknowledge that all they learned and elicited in
their respective provinces, has only served to show
more clearly that Jesus of Nazareth is enthroned
on the riches of the universe ; " and so prosaic an
injunction to his hearers as that they should choose
a residence within an easy distance of church is
magnificently draped by him as an exhortation to
prefer a house " that basks in the sunshine of the
countenance of God. " Like all preachers of his
class, he is more fertile in imaginative paraphrase
than in close exposition, and in this way he gives
us some remarkable fragments of what we may call
the romance of Scripture, filling up the outline of
the record with an elaborate colouring quite un-
dreamed of by more literal minds. The serpent,
he informs us, said to Eve, " Can it be so ? Surely
you are mistaken that God hath said you shall
die, a creature so fair, so lovely, so beautiful. It
is impossible. The lavjs of nature and physical
science tell you that my interpretation is correct ;
you shall not die. I can tell you by my own ex-
perience as an angel that you shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil. " ^ Again, according to
Dr. Cumming, Abel had so clear an idea of the
Incarnation and Atonement that when he offered
» Apoc. Sketches, p. 265. « Ibid. p. 294.
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. GUMMING. 265
hia sacrifice, " he must have said, ' I feel myseU a
guilty sinner, and that in myself I cannot meet
thee ftlive; I lay on thine altar this victim, and I
shed its hlood as my testimony that mine should
be shed; and I look for foi^iveness and undeserved
mercy through Him who is to bruise the serpent's
head, and whose atonement this typifies, ' " ^ In-
deed, his productions are essentially ephemeral;
he is essentially a journalist, who writes sermons
instead of leading articles, who, instead of venting
diatribes against her Majesty's Ministers, directs
hia power of invective agaiu-st Cardinal Wiseman
and the Puseyites, — instead of declaiming on
public spirit, perorates on the " glory of God. '
We fancy he la called, in the more refined evan-
gelical circles, an " intellectual preacher; ' by the
plainer sort of Christians, a "flowery preacher;'
and we are inclined to think that the more spirit-
ually minded class of believers, who look with
greater anxiety for the kingdom of God within
them than for the visible advent of Christ in 1864,
will be likely to find Dr. Gumming'a declamatory
flights and historico-prophetical exercitationa as
little better than " clouts o' canld parritch, °
Such is our general impression from his writings,
after an attentive perusal. There are some particu-
lar characteri.'itics which we shall consider more
closely, but in doing so we must be understood as
altogether declining any doctrinal discussion. We
have no intention to consider the grounds of Dr.
Cnmming's dogmatic system, to examine the prin-
ciples of his prophetic exegesis, or to question hia
opinion concerning the little horn, the river
Euphrates, or the seven viala. We identify our-
1 Occaa. Disc, vol, i. p. 23.
266 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
selves with no one of the bodies whom he regards
it as his special mission to attack; we give our
adhesion neither to Eomanism, Puseyism, nor to
that anomalous combination of opinions which he
introduces to us under the name of Infidelity. It
is simply as spectators that we criticise Dr. Gum-
ming *s mode of warfare ; and we concern ourselves
less with what he holds to be Christian truth than
with his manner of enforcing that truth, less with
the doctrines he teaches than with the moral spirit
and tendencies of his teaching.
One of the most striking characteristics of Dr.
Cumming's writings is unscrupulosity of statement.
His motto apparently is, Christianitatem, quocunque
modo Christianitatem ; and the only system he in-
cludes under the term Christianity is Calvinistic
Protestantism. Experience has so long shown that
the human brain is a congenial nidus for inconsis-
tent beliefs that we do not pause to inquire how
Dr. Cumming, who attributes the conversion of
the unbelieving to the Divine Spirit, can think it
necessary to co-operate with that Spirit by argu-
mentative white lies. Nor do we for a moment
impugn the genuineness of his zeal for Christian-
ity, or the sincerity of his conviction that the
doctrines he preaches are necessary to salvation ;
on the contrary, we regard the flagrant unveracity
that we find on his pages as an indirect result of
that conviction, — as a result, namely, of the in-
tellectual and moral distortion of view which is
inevitably produced by assigning to dogmas, based
on a very complex structure of evidence, the place
and authority of first truths. A distinct apprecia-
tion of the value of evidence — in other words, the
intellectual perception of truth — is more closely
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DE. GUMMING. 267
allied to tnithfulneaa of statement, or the moral J
quality of veracity, than is generally admitted. '
There is not a more pernicious fallacy afloat in
common parlance than the wide distinction made
between intellect and morality. Amiable impulses
wilhoot intellect man may have in common with
dogs and horses ; but morality, which is specifi-
cally human, is dependent on the regulation of
feeling by intellect. All human beings who can
be saltf to be in any degree moral have thoir im-
pulses guided, not indeed always by their own
intellect, but by the intellect of human beinga
who have gone before them, and createil traditions
and associations which have taken the rank of
lawa. Now, that highest moral habit, the con-
stant preference of truth both tlieoretically and
practically, pre-eminently demands the co-opera-
tion of the intellect with the impulses; as is
indicated by the fact that it is only found in
anything like completeness in the highest class
of minds. In accordance with this we think it is
found that. In proportion as religious sects exalt
feeling above intellect, and believe themselves to
be guided by direct inspiration rather than by a
spontaneous exertion of their faculties, — that is,
in proportion as they are removed from rational-
ism, — their sense of truthfulness is misty and
confused. No one can have talked to the more
enthusiastic Methodists, and listened to their
stories of miracles, without perceiving that they
require no other passport to n statement than that
it accords with their wishes and their general con-
ception of God's dealings; nay, they regard as a
flymptom of sinful scepticism an inquiry into the
evidence for a story which they think unqueation-
268 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
ably tends to the glory of God, and in retailing
such stories, new particulars, further tending to
his glory, are ** borne in " upon their minds. Now
Dr. Gumming, as we have said, is no enthusiastic
pietist : within a certain circle, within the mill of
evangelical orthodoxy, his intellect is perpetually
at work; but that principle of sophistication
which our friends the Methodists derive from the
predominance of their pietistic feelings, is involved
for him in the doctrine of verbal inspiration ; what
is for them a state of emotion submerging the in-
tellect, is with him a formula imprisoning the
intellect, depriving it of its proper function, — the
free search for truth, — and making it the mere ser-
vant-of -all -work to a foregone conclusion. Minds
fettered by this doctrine no longer inquire concern-
ing a proposition whether it is attested by suffi-
cient evidence, but whether it accords with
Scripture ; they do not search for facts, as such,
but for facts that will bear out their doctrine.
They become accustomed to reject the more direct
evidence in favour of the less direct, and where
adverse evidence reaches demonstration they must
resort to devices and expedients in order to explain
away contradiction. It is easy to see that this
mental habit blunts not only the perception of
truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the
man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads
close upon the precipice of falsehood.
We have entered into this digression for the sake
of mitigating the inference that is likely to be drawn
from that characteristic of Dr. Cumniing*s works to
which we have pointed. He is much in the same
intellectual condition as that professor of Padua
who, in order to disprove Galileo's discovery of
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMillNG. 269
Jupiter's satellites, urged that as there were only
seven metals there could not be more than seven
planets, — a mental condition scarcely compatible
with candour. And we may well suppose that if the
Professor had held the belief in seven planets, and
no more, to he a necessary condition of salvation,
his mental condition would have been so dazed that
even if he had consented to look through Galileo's
telescope, his eyes would have reported in accordance
with his inward alarms rather than with the external
fact. So long as a belief in propositions is regarded
as indispensable to salvation, the pursuit of truth
as such is not possible, any more than it is possible
for ft man who is swimming (or his life to make
meteorological observations on the storm which
threatens to overwhelm him. The sense of alarm
and haste, the anxiety for personal safety, which
Dr. Gumming insists upon as the proper religious
attitude, unmans the nature, and allows no thorough
calm-thinking, no truly noble, disinterested feeling.
Hence we by no means suspect that the unscrupulos-
ity of statement with which we charge Dr. Gumming
extends beyond the sphere of his theological preju-
dices ; we do not doubt that, religion apart, he
appreciates and practises veracity.
A grave general accusation must be supported by
details; and in adducing those, we purposely select
the most obvious cases of misrepresentation, — such
as require no argument to expose them, but can be per-
ceived at a glance. Among Dr, Cummiug's numerous
books, one of the most notable for unscrupulos-
ity of statement is the " Manual o! Christian Evi-
dences," written, as he tells us in his preface, not to
give the deepest solutions of the difficulties in ques-
tion, but to furnish Scripture-Readers, City Mission-
270 ESSAYS OF GEOEGE ELIOT,
ariea, and Sunday-school Teachers with a " ready
reply " to sceptical argumeats. This announce meut
that readiness was the chief quality sought for in
the solutions here given, modifies our iufereoce from
the other qualities which those solutions present;
and it is but fair to presume that wheu the Chris-
tian disputant is not in a hurry. Dr. Cumming would
recommend replies less ready and inorii veracious.
Here is an example of what in another place ' he
tells his readers is " change in their pocket, ... a
little ready argument which they can employ, and
therewith answer a fool according to hia folly."
From the nature of this argumentative small coin,
we are inclined to think Dr. Cumming understands
answering a fool according to his folly to mean, giving
him a foolish answer. We quote from the " Manual
of Christian Evidences," p. 62 : —
"Some of the gods which the heathen worshipped
were among the greateat monsters that ever walked
the earth. Mercury was a thief; and because he was
an expert thief, he was enrolled among the goda. Bac-
chus was a mere sensualist and drunkard; and there-
fore he was enrolled among the goda. Venua was a
dissipated and abandoned courtesan ; and therefore she
was enrolled among the goddesses. Mara was a savage,
that gloried in battle and in hluodj and therefore he
was deiiied and enrolled among the gods."
Does Dr. Cumming helieve the purport of these
sentences? If so, this passage is worth handing
down as his theory of the Greek myth, — as a
specimen of the astoxiuding ignorance which was
possible in a metropolitan preacher, a. d. 1854. And
if he does not believe them, — the inference must
' Lect UD Dooiel, p. 6.
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMIKG. 371
then be that he thinks delicate veracity about the
ancient Greeks is not a Christian virtue, but only a
"splendid sin " of the iinregenerate. This inference
is rendered the more probable by our finding, a little
further on, that he is not more scrupulous about
the moderua, it they come under his definition of
" Infidels." But the passage we are about to quote
in proof of this has a worse quality than its discrep-
ancy with fact. Who that has a spark of generous
feeling, that rejoices in the presence of good in a
fellow-being, has not dwelt with pleasure on the
thought that Lord Byron's unhappy career was
ennobled and purified towards its close by a high
and sympathetic purpose, by honest and enei^tic
efforts for his fellow-men T Who has not read
with deep emotion those last pathetic lines, beauti-
ful as the after-glow of sunset, in which love and
resignation are mingled with something of a melan-
choly heroism? Who has not lingered with com-
passion over the dying scene at Miasolonghi, — the
sufferer's inability to make his farewell messages of
love intelligible, and the last long hours of silent
pain 1. Yet for the sake of furnishing his disciples
with a " ready reply," Dr. Gumming can prevail on
himself to inoculate them with a bad-spirited falsity
like the following : —
"We have one striking exhibition of an infidel's
brightest thoughts in Bome lines written m his di/ing
moments by a man gifted with great genius, capable
of prodigious intellectual prowees, but of worthless
principle and yet more worthless practices. — I mean
the celebrated Lord Byron. He aaya : —
' Tliou){h gay companions o'er the bowl
Dii!pel awhile the eenee of ill,
Though pleasure fills the madilening soul,
The heart — iht htart is lonely etilL
272 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
' Ay, but to die, and go, alas I
Where all have gone and all must go ;
To be the Nothing that I was,
Ere bom to life and living woe I
' Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
T is something better not to be.
' Nay, for myself, so dark my fate
Through every turn of life hath been,
Man and the world so much / hate,
I care not when I quit the scene.' "
It is difficult to suppose that Dr. Cumming can
have been so grossly imposed upon, — that he can
be so ill-informed as really to believe that these lines
were "written" by Lord Byron in his dying mo-
ments; but, allowing him the full benefit of that
possibility, how shall we explain his introduction
of this feebly rabid doggerel as " an infidel's bright-
est thoughts " ?
In marshalling the evidences of Christianity, Dr.
Cumming directs most of his arguments against
opinions that are either totally imaginary or that
belong to the past rather than to the present, while
he entirely fails to meet the difficulties actually felt
and urged by those who are unable to accept Reve-
lation. There can hardly be a stronger proof of
misconception as to the character of free-thinking
in the present day, than the recommendation of
Leland's " Short and Easy Method with the Deists,"
— a method which is unquestionably short and
easy for preachers disinclined to reconsider their
stereotyped modes of thinking and arguing, but
which has quite ceased to realize those epithets in
the conversion of Deists. Yet Dr. Cumming not
only recommends this book, but takes the trouble
EVANGELICAL TEACHING t DK. CUMMING. 273
bimaelf to write a feebler version of its arguments.
For example, on the question of the genuineness
and authenticity of the New Testament writings, he
says : " If, therefore, at a period long subsequent to
the death of Christ, a number of men had appeared
in the world, drawn up a book which they christ-
ened by the name of the Holy Scripture, and recorded
these things which appear in it as facta when they
were only the fancies of their own imagination,
surely the Jews would have instantly reclaimed
that no such events transpired, that no such person
as Jesus Christ appeared in their capital, and that
thtir crucifixion of him, and their alleged evil treat-
ment of hia apostles, were mere fictions." ' It is
scarcely necessary to say that, in such argument as
this, Dr. Gumming is beating the air. He is meet-
ing a hypothesis which no one holds, and totally
missing the real question. The only type of "infi-
del" whose existence Dr. Cumming recognizes is
that fossil personage who " calls the Bible a lie and
a foi^ery." He seems to beignorant — or he chooaea
to ignore the fact — thatfthere is a large body of ,
eminently instructed and earnest men who regard '
the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures aa a aeries of
historical documents, to be denlt with according toi
the rules of historical criticism, and that on equally)
large number of men, who are not historical critics!
find the dogmatic scheme built on the letter of tha
Scriptures opposed to their profoundeat moral con-|
victions. ."] Dr. Cumming'a infidel is a man who,
because his lite is vicious, tries to convince himself
that there is no God, and that Christianity is an
imposture, but who is all the while secretly con-
scious that he is opposing the truth, and cannot
1 Man. of Evideuues, p. 81,
274 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
help "letting out" admissions "that the Bible is
the Book of God." We are favoured with the fol-
•
lowing " Creed of the Infidel : " —
**I believe that there is no God, but that matter is
God, and God is matter; and that it is no matter
whether there is any God or not. I believe also that the
world was not made, but that the world made itself, or
that it had no beginning, and that it will last forever.
I believe that man is a beast; that the soul is the body,
and that the body is the soul; and that after death
there is neither body nor soul. I believe that there
is no religion, that natural relit/ion is ike only reli-
gion, and all religion unnatural. I believe not in
Moses; I believe in the first philosophers. I believe
not in the evangelists; I believe in Chubb, Collins,
Toland, Tindal, and Hobbes. I believe in Lord Boling-
broke, and I believe not in St. Paul. I believe not
in revelation; I believe in tradition; I believe in ths
Talmud ; I believe in the Koran : I believe not in the
Bible. I believe in Socrates; I believe in Confucius;
I believe in Mahomet; I believe not in Christ. And
lastly I believe in all unbelief."
The intellectual and moral monster whose creed
is this complex web of contradictions is, moreover,
according to Dr. Gumming, a being who unites
much simplicitv and imbecility with his Satanic
hardihood, much tenderness of conscience with
his obdurate vice. Hear the " proof : " —
'* I once met with an acute and enlightened infidel,
with whom I reasoned day after day, and for hours
togothor; I submitted to him the internal, the external,
and the experimental evidences, but made no impres-
sion on his scorn and unbelief. At length I enter-
tained a susj)icion that there was something morally
rather than intellectually wrong, and that the bias
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. GUMMING. 775
was not in tlie intellect but in the heart; one day
therefore I snid to him, ' I mugt now Btate my convic-
tion, and you may call mo uncharitable, but duty coin-
pels me; you are living in some known and gross sin.'
The man's countenanct became pale ; he bowed and
left me." '
Here we have the remarkable psychological phe-
nomenon of an " acute and eulightened " man who
deliberately purposing to indulge in a favourite sin,
and regarding the Gospel with scorn and unbelief,
is, nevertheless, bo much more scrupulous than the
majority of Christians, that he cannot " embrace sin
and the Gospel simultaneously ; " who is so alarmed
at the Gospel in which he does not believe, that he
cannot be easy without trying to crush it; whose
acuteneas and enlightenment suggest to him, as a
means of crushing the Gospel, to argue from day to
day with Dr. Gumming; and who 13 withal so naive
that he is taken by surprise when Dr. Gumming,
failing in argument, resorts to accusation, and so
tender in conscience that, at the mention of his sin.
he turns pale and leaves the spot. If there be any
human mind in existence capable of holding Dr.
Cumming's " Greed of the Infidel," of at the same
time believing in tradition and " believing in all
unbelief," it must be the mind of the infidel just
described, for whose existence we have Dr. Cum-
ming's ex officio word as a theologian ; and to theo-
logians we may apply what Sancho Panza says of
the bachelors of Salamanca, that they never tell
lies, — except when it suits their purpose.
The total absence from Dr. Cumming's theologi-
cal mind of any demarcation between fact and
■ ' Man, of Evideaces, p. !54.
276 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT.
rhetoric is exhibited in another passage, where he
adopts the dramatic form : —
''Ask the peasant on the hill — and I have asked
amid the mountains of Braemar and Deesidej — * How
do you know that this book is divine, aud that the reli-
gion you profess is true ? You never read Paley ? '
*No, I never heard of him/ *You have never read
Butler?' 'No, I have never heard of him.' *Nor
Chalmers? ' *No, I do not know him.' *You have
never read any books on evidence ? ' * No, I have read
no such books.' 'Then how do you know this book is
true ? ' * Know it ! Tell me that the Dee, the Clunie,
and the Garrawalt, the streams at my feet, do not run;
that the winds do not sigh amid the gorges of these
blue hills; that the sun does not kindle the peaks of
Loch-na-Gar ; tell me my heart does not beat, and I
will believe you; but do not tell me the Bible is not
divine. I have found its truth illuminating my foot-
steps; its consolations sustaining my heart. May my
tongue cleave to my mouth's roof, and my right hand
forget its cunning, if I ever deny what is my deepest
inner experience, that this blessed book is the book of
God.'"^
Dr. Gumming is so slippery and lax in his mode
of presentation that we find it impossible to gather
whether he means to assert that this is what a
peasant on the mountains of Braemar did say, or
that it is what such a peasant would say : in the
one case the passage may be taken as a measure of
his truthfulness ; in the other, of his judgment.
His own faith, apparently, has not been alto-
gether intuitive, like that of his rhetorical peasant,
for he tells us^ that he has himself experienced
what it is to have religious doubts. " I was
* Church before the Flood, p. 35. ^ Apoc. Sketches, p. 405.
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. GUMMING, a??
tainted while at tlie Uuivereity by this spirit of
scepticism. I thought Christianity might not be
true. The very possibility of its beiug true was
the thought I felt I must meet and settle. Con-
science could give me no peace till I had settled
it I read, and I have read from that day, for
fourteen or fifteen years, till this, and now I am
ns convinced, upon the clearest evidence, that this
book is the hook of God as that I now address
you.' This experience, however, instead of im-
pressing on him the fact that doubt may be the
stamp of a truth-loving mind, — that sttnt quibus
now, credidissf. honor est, et fidei futura: pignus, —
seema to have produced precisely the coutrary
effect It has not enabled him even to conceive
the condition of a mind " perple.\ed in faith but
pure in deeds," craving light, yearning for a faith
that will harmonize and cherish its highest powers
and aspirations, but imable to find that faith, in |
dogmatic Christianity. His owu doubts apparently
were of a different kind. Nowhere in his pages
have we found a humble, candid, sympathetic
attempt to meet the difficulties that may be felt
by an ingenuous mind. Everywhere he supposes
that the doubter is hardened, conceited, con-
sciously shutting his eyes to the light, — a fool
who is to be answered according to his folly, —
that is, with ready replies made up of reckless
assertions, of apocrj-phal anecdotes, and, where
other resources fail, of vituperative imputation.
As to the reading which he has prosecuted for
fifteen years, — either it has left him totally igno-
rant of the relation which his own religious creed
bears to the criticism and philosophy of the nine-
teenth century, or he systematically blinks that
278 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
criticism and that philosophy ; and instead of hon-
estly and seriously endeavouring to meet and solve
what he knows to be the real difficulties, contents
himself with setting up popinjays to shoot at, for
the sake of confirming the ignorance and winning
the cheap admiration of his evangelical hearers
and readers. Like the Catholic preacher who,
after throwing down his cap and apostrophizing it
as Luther, turned to his audience and said, " You
see this heretical fellow has not a word to say for
himself," Dr. Gumming, having drawn his ugly
portrait of the infidel, and put arguments of a con-
venient quality into his mouth, finds a " short and
easy method ' of confounding this ** croaking frog. *
In his treatment of infidels, we imagine he is
guided by a mental process which may be ex-
pressed in the following syllogism: Whatever
tends to the glory of God is true; it is for the
glory of God that infidels should be as bad as
possible ; therefore whatever tends to show that
infidels are as bad as possible is true. All infidels,
he tells us, have been men of " gross and licentious
lives. " Is there not some well-known unbeliever
— David Hume, for example — of whom even Dr.
Cumming's readers may have heard as an excep-
tion ? No matter. Some one suspected that he
was not an exception ; and as that suspicion tends
to the glory of God, it is one for a Christian to
entertain.^ If we were unable to imagine this kind
of self-sophistication, we should be obliged to sup-
pose that, relying on the ignorance of his evangeli-
cal disciples, he fed them with direct and conscious
falsehoods. " Voltaire, " he informs them, " de-
clares there is no God ; * he was " an antitheist,
* See Man. of Evideuces, p. 73.
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CDMMING. 279
that ia, one who deliberately and avowedly opposed
and hated God, who awore in his blasphemy that
he would dethrone him," and " advocated the very
depths o£ the lowest sensuality.' With regard
to many statements of a similar kind, eijually at
variance with truth, in Dr. Cumming's volumes,
we presume that he has been misled by hearsay
or by the second-hand character of his acquaint-
ance with free-thinking literature. An evangeli-
cal preacher is not obliged to be well-read. Here,
however, is a case which the extremest supposition
of educated ignorance will not reach. Even books
of " evidences " quote from Voltaire the line, —
* ■ Si Bieu n'uxistait pas, il avdrait I'iuvcuter ; "
even persons fed on the mere whey and buttermilk
of literature must know that in philosophy Vol-
taire was nothing if not a theist, — must know
that he wrote not against God, but against Jeho-
vah, the God of the Jews, whom he believed to be
a false God, — must know that to say Voltaire was
an atheist on this ground is as absurd as to say
that a Jacobite opposed hereditary monarchy he-
cause he declared the Brunswick family had no
title to the throne. That Dr. Gumming should
repeat the vulgar fables about Voltaire's death is
merely what we might expect from the specimens
we have seen of his illustrative stories. A man
whose accounts of his own experience are apocry-
phal is not likely to put borrowed narratives to
any severe test.
The alliance between intellectual and moral per-
version is strikingly typified by the way in which
he alternates from the unveracious to the absurd,
from misrepresentation to contradiction. Side by
28o ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
side with the adduction of " facts " such as those
we have quoted, we find him arguing on one page
that the Trinity was too grand a doctrine to have
been conceived by man, and was there/ore Divine ;
and on another page, that the Incarnation Jiad
been preconceived by man, and is therefore to be
accepted as Divine. But we are less concerned
with the fallacy of his " ready replies * than with
their falsity ; and even of this we can only afford
space for a very few specimens. Here is one :
" There is a thousand times more proof that the
gospel of John was written by him than there is
that the Avaj3a<n9 was written by Xenophon, or
the Ars Poetica by Horace. " If Dr. Gumming had
chosen Plato's Epistles or Anacreon's Poems, in-
stead of the Anabasis or the Ars Poetica, he would
have reduced the extent of the falsehood, and
would have furnished a ready reply which would
have been equally efifective with his Sunday-school
teachers and their disputants. Hence we conclude
this prodigality of misstatement, this exuberance
of mendacity, is an efifervescence of zeal in majo^
rem gloriam Dei. Elsewhere he tells us that " the
idea of the author of the * Vestiges * is that man
is the development of a monkey, that the monkey
is the embryo man, so that if you keep a baboon
long enough, it will develop itself into a man, '
How well Dr. Gumming has qualified himself to
judge of the ideas in " that very unphilosophical
book, " as he pronounces it, may be inferred from
the fact that he implies the author of the " Ves-
tiges " to have originated the nebular hypothesis.
In the volume from which the last extract is
taken, even the hardihood of assertion is surpassed
by the suicidal character of the argument It is
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. GUMMING. 281
called ° The Church hefore the Flood,' and is de-
voted chiefly to the adjustment of the question
between the Bible and Geolcigy. Keeping within
the limits we have prescribed to ourselves, we do
not enter into the matter of this discussion; we
merely pause a little over the volume in order to
point out Dr. Cumming's naode of treating the
question. He first tells us that " the Bible has
not a single scientific error in it ; " that " its slightest
intimations of sdtntijlc principles or natural plu-
lumiena have in every ijistance been demonstrated to
be exactly mid strictly true,' and he asks; —
" How is it that Moseii, with no greater education
than the Hindoo or the ancient philosopher, has writ-
ten hia book, touching science at a thousand points, so
accurately that scientific research has discovered no
flaws in it; and yet in those investigations which have
taken place in more recent centuries, it has not been
shown that he has committed one single error, or made
one solitary assertion which can be proved by the ma-
tureat science or by the moat eagle-eyed philosopher
to be incorrect, scientifically or historically? "
According to this, the relation of the Bible to
Science should he one of the strong points of apolo-
gists for Revelation; the scientific accuracy of
Moses should stand at the head of their evidences ;
and they might urge, with some cogency, that since
Aristotle, who devoted himself to science, and
lived many ages after Moses, does little else than
err ingeniously, this fact, that the Jewish Law-
giver, though touching science at a thousand
points, has written nothing that has not been
" demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true,' is
an irrefragable proof of hia having derived his
282 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
knowledge from a supernatural source. How does
it happen, then, that Dr. Gumming forsakes this
strong position? How is it that we find him,
some pages further on, engaged in reconciling
Grenesis with the discoveries of science, by means
of imaginative hypotheses and feats of " interpre-
tation " ? Surely, that which has been demon-
strated to be exactly and strictly true does not
require hypothesis and critical argument, in order
to show that it may possibly agree with those very
discoveries by means of which its exact and strict
truth has been demonstrated. And why should
Dr. Gumming suppose, as we shall presently find
him supposing, that men of science hesitate to
accept the Bible, because it appears to contradict
their discoveries? By his own statement, that
appearance of contradiction does not exist ; on the
contrary, it has been demonstrated that the Bible
precisely agrees with their discoveries. Perhaps,
however, in saying of the Bible that its " slightest
intimations of scientific principles or natural phe-
nomena have in every instance been demonstrated
to be exactly and strictly true," Dr. Gumming
merely means to imply that theologians have found
out a way of explaining the biblical text so that it
no longer, in their opinion, appears to be in con-
tradiction with the discoveries of science. One of
two things, therefore : either he uses language
without the slightest appreciation of its real mean-
ing; or the assertions he makes on one page are
directly contradicted by the arguments he urges on
another.
Dr. Guraming's principles — or, we should rather
say, confused notions — of biblical iut<3rpretation,
as exhibited in this volume, are particularly sig-
EVANGELICAL TEACHING; DR. GUMMING 2S3
nificant oE his mental calibre. He says:' "Men
of science, who are full of scientific investigation
and enamoured of scientific discovery, will hesi-
tate before tbey accept a book which, they think,
contradicts the plainest and the most unequivocal
disclosures they have made in the bowels of the
earth or among the stars of the sky. To all these
we answer, as we havo already indicated, there is
not the least dissonance between God's written
book and the most mature discoveries of geological
science. One thing, however, there may be: thej-e
viay be a contradiction between the discoveries nf
geology and our preconceived iiiteTpretations of the
Bible. But this is not because the Bible is wrong,
but because our interpretation ia wrong. " (The
italics in all cases are our own.)
Elsewhere he says; "It secras to me plainly
evident that the record of Genesis, when read fairly
and not in the light of our prejudices, — and, mind
you, the essence of Popery is to read the Bihle in
the light of our opinions, instead of viewing our
opinions in the light of the Bible, in its plain and
obvious sense, — falls in perfectly with the assertion
of geologists. "
On comparing these two passages, we gather
that when Dr. Gumming, under stress of geological
discovery, assigns to the biblical text a meaning
entirely different from that which, on his own
showing, was universally ascribed to it for more
than three thousand years, he regards himself as
" viewing his opinions in the light of the Bible in
its plain and obvious sense " ! Now he is reduced
to one of two alternatives : either he must hold
that the " plain and obvious meaning " of the
' Churcli before tlia I'luuil, p. 93.
284 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT-
whole Bible differs from age to age, so that the
criterion of its meaning lies in the sum of knowl-
edge possessed by each successive age, — the Bible
being an elastic garment for the growing thought
of mankind ; or he must hold that some portions
are amenable to this criterion, and others not sa
In the former case he accepts the principle of in-
terpretation adopted by the early Grerman rational-
ists ; in the latter case he has to show a further
criterion by which we can judge what parts of the
Bible are elastic and what rigid. If he says that
the interpretation of the text is rigid wherever it
treats of doctrines necessary to salvation, we an-
swer that for doctrines to be necessary to salvation
they must first be true ; and in order to be true,
according to his own principle, they must be
founded on a correct interpretation of the biblical
text Thus he makes the necessity of doctrines to
salvation the criterion of infallible interpretation,
and infallible interpretation the criterion of doc-
trines being necessary to salvation. He is whirled
round in a circle, having, by admitting the prin-
ci])le of novelty in interpretation, completely de-
prived himself of a basis. That he should seize
the very moment in which he is most palpably
betraying that he has no test of biblical truth be-
yond his own opinion, as an appropriate occasion
for flinging the rather novel reproach against Popery
that its essence is to " read the Bible in the light
of our opinions, " would be an almost pathetic self-
exposure, if it were not disgusting. Imbecility
that is not even meek ceases to be pitiable and
becomes simply odious.
Parenthetic lashes of this kind against Popery are
very frequent with Dr. Gumming, and occur even
EVANGELICAL TEACHING; DR. GUMMING. 285
in bis more devout passages, where their introduc-
tion must surely disturb the spiritual exercises of
his hearers. Indeed, Roman Catholics fare worse
with him even than infidels. lufidels are the
small vermin, — the mice to be bagged en passant.
The main object of his chase — the rats which are to
be nailed upas trophies — are the Roman Catholics.
Romanism is the masterpiece of Satan ; but reas-
sure yourselves ! Dr. Gumming has been created.
Antichrist is enthroned in the Vatican; but he is
stoutly withstood by the Boanerges of Crown Court
The personality of Satan, as might be expected, is
a very prominent tenet in Dr. Cumming's dis-
courses; those who doubt it are, he thiuks, "gen-
erally specimens of the victims of Satan as a
triumphant seducer ; " and it is through the medium
of this doctrine that he habitually contemplates
Roman Catholics. They are the puppets of which
the Devil holds the strings. It is only exception-
ally that he speaks of them as fellow-men, acted
on by the same desires, fears, and hopes as him-
self; his rule is to hold them up to his hearers as
foredoomed instruments of Sutan, and vessels of
wrath. If he is obliged to admit that they are
" no shams, ' that they are " thoroughly in earnest, '
that is because they are inspired by hell, because
they are under an " infra-natural " influenca If
their missionaries are found wherever Protestant
missionaries go, this zeal in propagating their
faith is not in them a consistent virtue, as it is in
Protestants, but a "melancholy fact,' affording
additional evidence that they are instigated and
assisted by the Devil Aud Dr, Cumming is in-
clined to think that they work miracles, because
that is no more than might he expected from the
286 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
known ability of Satan, who inspires them.* He
admits, indeed, that " there is a fragment of the
Church of Christ in the very bosom of that awful
apostasy, " ^ and that there are members of the
Church of Bome in glory; but this admission is
rare and episodical, — is a declaration, jproformd,
about as influential on the general disposition and
habits as an aristocrat's profession of democracy.
This leads us to mention another conspicuous
characteristic of Dr. Cumming's teaching, — the
absence of genuine charity. It is true that he makes
large profession of tolerance and liberality within
a certain circle ; he exhorts Christians to unity ; he
would have Churchmen fraternize with Dissenters,
and exhorts these two branches of God's family to
defer the settlement of their differences till the
millennium. But the love thus taught is the love
of the clan, which is the correlative of antagonism
to the rest of mankind. It is not sympathy and
helpfulness towards men as men, but towards men
as Christians, and as Christians in the sense of
a small minority. Dr Gumming 's religion may
demand a tribute of love, but it gives a charter to
hatred; it may enjoin charity, but it fosters all
uncharitableness. If I believe that God tells me
to love my enemies, but at the same time hates
his own enemies and requires me to have one will
with him, which has the larger scope, love or
hatred ? And we refer to those pages of Dr.
Cumming's in which he opposes Roman Catholics,
Puseyites, and Infidels, — pages which form the
larger proportion of what he has published, — for
proof that the idea of God which both the logic
and spirit of his discourses keep present to his
^ Signs of the Times, p. 38. * Apoc. Sketches, p. 243.
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 287
hearers, is that of a God who hates his enemies, a
God who teaches love by fierce denunciations of
wrath, a God who encourages ohedience to his pre-
cepts by elaborately revealing to us that his own
government is in precise opposition to those pre-
cepts. We know the usual evasions on this sub-
ject We know Dr. Cnmining would say that even
Roman Catholics are to be loved and succoured as
men; that he would help even that "unclean
spirit," Cardinal Wiseman, out of a ditch. But
who that is in the slightest degree acquainted
with the action of the human mind, will believe
that any genuine and large charity can grow out
of an exercise ot love which is always to have an
arriire-pensee of hatred ! Of what quality would
he the conjugal love of a hushand who loved his
spouse as a wife, but hated her as a woman? It
is reserved for the regenerate mind, according to
Dr. Cumming's conception of it, to be " wise,
amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral,
in a moment " Precepts of chanty uttered with
faint breath at the end of a eermon are perfectly
futile, when all the force of the lungs has been
spent in keeping the hearer's mind fixed on the
conception of his fellow-men, not as fellow-sinners
and fellow-auETerers, but as agents of hell, as auto-
mata through whom Satan plays his game upon
earth, — not on objects which call forth their rev-
erence, their love, their hope of good even in the
most strayed and perverted, but on a minute
identification of human things with such symbols
as the scarlet whore, the beast out of the abyss,
scorpions whose sting is in their tails, men who
have the mark of the beast, and unclean spirits like
frogs. You might as well attempt to educate a
288 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
child's sense of beauty by hanging its nursery
with the horrible and grotesque pictures in which
the early painters represented the Last Judgment,
as expect Christian graces to flourish on that pro-
phetic interpretation which Dr. Gumming offers
as the principal nutriment of his flock. Quite
apart from the critical basis of that interpretation,
quite apart from the degree of truth there may be
in Dr. Cumming's prognostications, — questions
into which we do not choose to enter, — his use of
prophecy must be a priori condemned in the judg-
ment of right-minded persons, by its results as tes-
tified in the net moral effect of his sermons. The
best minds that accept Christianity as a divinely
inspired system believe that the great end of the
Gospel is not merely the saving but the educating
of men's souls, the creating within them of holy
dispositions, the subduing of egoistical preten-
sions, and the perpetual enhancing of the desire
that the will of God — a will synonymous with
goodness and truth — may be done on earth. But
what relation to all this has a system of interpre-
tation which keeps the mind of the Christian in
the position of a spectator at a gladiatorial show,
of which Satan is the wild beast in the shape of
the great red dragon, and two thirds of mankind
the victims, — the whole provided and got up by
God for the edification of the saints ? The demon-
stration that the Second Advent is at hand, if
true, can have no really holy, spiritual effect ; the
highest state of mind inculcated by the Gospel is
resignation to the disposal of God's providence, —
" Whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; whether
we die, we die unto the Lord, " — not an eagerness
to see a temporal manifestation which shall con-
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUJ^nNG.
■ found the enemies of God and give exultation to
the saints; it is to dwell in Christ by spiritual
communion with his nature, not to fix the date
when he shall appear in the sky ? Dr. Cumming's
delight in shadowing forth the downfall of the
Man of Sin, in prognosticating the battle of Gog
and Magog, and in advertising the premillennial
Advent, is simply the transportation of political
passions on to a so-called religious platform; it is
the anticipation of the triumph of "our party,'
accomplished by our principal men being " sent
for " into the clouds. Let ua be understood to
speak in all seriousness. If wo were in search of
amusement, we should not seek for it by examin-
ing Dr. Cumming's works in order to ridicule them.
We are simply discharging a disagreeable duty in
delivering our opinion that, judged by the highest
standard even of orthodox Christianity, they arc
little calculated to produce
" A closer walk with God,
A calm and heavenly frame ;"
but are more likely to nourish egoistic complacency
and pretension, a hard and condemnatory spirit
towards one's fellow-men, and a busy occupation
with the minutice of events, instead of a reverent
contemplation of great facts and a wise applica-
tion of great principles. It ^¥ould be idle to con-
sider Dr. Cumming's theory of prophecy in any
other light; as a philosophy of history or a speci-
men of biblical interpretation, it hears about the
same relation to the extension of genuine knowl-
edge as the astrological " house ' in the heavens
bears to the true structure and relations of the
universe.
290 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT.
The slight degree in which Dr. Cumming's faith
is imbued with truly human sympathies is ex-
hibited in the way he treats the doctrine of Eternal
Punishment Here a little of that readiness to
strain the letter of the Scriptures which he so
often manifests when his object is to prove a point
against Bomanism would have been an amiable
frailty if it had been applied on the side of mercy.
When he is bent on proving that the prophecy
concerning the Man of Sin, in the Second Epistle
to the Thessalonians, refers to the Pope, he can
extort from the innocent word Kadurai the meaning
cathedrize, though why we are to translate ** He as
God cathedrizes in the temple of God, " any more
than we are to translate ** Cathedrize here while I
go and pray yonder," it is for Dr. Gumming to
show more clearly than he has yet done. But
when rigorous literality will favour the conclusion
that the greater proportion of the human race will
be eternally miserable, — then he is rigorously
literal.
He says ; *' The Greek words, ek rots alcSva^
ro)v alojvcov, here translated * everlasting,' signify
literally * unto the ages of ages ; ' aUl cSp^ ' always
being/ that is, everlasting, ceaseless existence.
Plato uses the word in this sense when he says,
'The Gods that live forever.' But I must also
admit, that this word is used several times in a
limited extent, — as, for instance, * The everlast-
ing hills. ' Of course, this does not mean that
there never will be a time when the hills will
cease to stand ; the expression here is evidently
figurative, but it implies eternity. The hills shall
remain as long as that earth lasts, and no hand
has power to remove them but that Eternal One
EVANGELICAL TEACHING; DR. GUMMING. 391
which first called them into being; so the date of
the soul remains the same after death as long as
the soul exists, and no one has power to alter it.
The same word is often applied to denote the
existence of God, — ' the Eternal God. ' Can we
limit the word when applied to him ? Because
occasionally used in a limited sense, we must not
infer it is always so. ' Everlasting ' plainly means
in Scripture ' without end;* it is only to be ex-
plained figuratively when it is evident it cannot
be interpreted in any other way. "
We do not discuss whether Dr. Curaming's in-
terpretation accords with the meaning of the New
Testament writers: we simply point to the fact
that the text becomes elastic tor him when he
wants freer play for his prejudices, while he makes
it an adamantine barrier against the admission
that mercy will ultimately triumph, — ^that God,
i. t.. Love, will be all in all. He assures us that
he does not " delight to dwell on the misery of
the lost;" and we believe him. That misery doea
not seem to be a question of feeling with him,
either one way or the other. He doea not merely
resign himself to the awful mystery of eternal
punishment; he contends for it. Do we object,
he asks,^ to everlasting happiness? then why
object to everlasting misery ? — reasoning which is
perhaps felt to be cogent by theologians who an-
ticipate the everlasting happiness for themselves
and the everlasting misery for their neighbours.
The compassion of some Christians has been
glad to take refuge in the opinion that the Bible
allows the supposition of annihilation for the
impenitent ; but the rigid sequence of Dr. Cum-
1 Mim. of Clirifit Evidences, p. 184.
292 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
ming's reasoning will not admit of this idea. He
sees that flax is made into linen, and linen into
paper ; that paper, when burned, partly ascends as
smoke and then again descends in rain or in dust
and carbon. ** Not one particle of the original
flax is lost, although there may be not one particle
that has not undergone an entire change : annihi-
lation is not, but change of form is. It will he thus
vrith our bodies at the resurrection. The death of
the body means not annihilation. Not one feature
of the face will be annihilated. " Having estab-
lished the perpetuity of the body by this close and
clear analogy, namely, that as there is a total
change in the particles of flax in consequence of
which they no longer appear as flax, so there will
not be a total change in the particles of the human
body, but they will reappear as the human body,
he does not seem to consider that the perpetuity of
the body involves the perpetuity of the soul, but
requires separate evidence for this, and finds such
evidence by begging the very question at issue;
namely, by asserting that the text of the Scriptures
implies " the perpetuity of the punishment of the
lost, and the consciousness of the punishment
which they endure. " Yet it is drivelling like this
which is listened to and lauded as eloquence by
hundreds, and which a Doctor of Divinity can
believe that he has his " reward as a saint " for
preaching and publishing!
One more characteristic of Dr. Gumming 's writ-
ings, and we have done. This is the perverted
moral judgment that everywhere reigns in them.
Not that this perversion is peculiar to Dr. Gum-
ming : it belongs to the dogmatic system which
he shares with all evangelical believers. But the
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DH. GUMMING. 293
abstract tendencies of systems are represented in
veiy different degrees according to the different
characters of those who embrace them, jast as the
same food tells differently on diGferent coustitii-
tioQs; and there are certain qualities in Dr.
Gumming that cause the perversion of which we
speak to exhibit itself with peculiar prominence in
his teaching. A single extract will enable us to
explain what we mean.
evil. If it were poasible for
,d to detect the thoughts that
"The 'thoughts' i
human eye to discern
flutter around the heart of
mark their hue and their multitude, it would be found
that they are iodeed ' eviJ.' We apeak not of the thief,
and the murderer, and the adulterer, and such like,
whose crimes draw down the cognizance of earthly tri-
bunals, aud whose unenviable character it is to take the
lead in the paths of sin; but we refer to the men who
are marked out by their practice of many of the seemli-
est moralities of life, — by the eserciso of the kindliest
affections, aud the interchange of the sweetest recipro-
cities, — and of these meo, if unrenewed and unchanged,
we pronounce that their thoughts are evil. To ascer-
tain this, we must refer to the object around which our
thoughts ought continually to circulate. The Scrip-
tures assert that this object is the glory of Qod ; that
for this we ought to think, to act, and to speak; and
that in thus thinking, acting, and speaking, there is
involved the purest and most enduring bliss. Kow it
will be found true of the most amiable men, that with
all their good society and kindliness of heart, and all
their strict and unbending integrity, they never or
rarely think of the glory of God. The question never
occurs to them. Will this redound to the glory of God ?
Will this make bis name more known, his being more
loved, his praise more sung? And just inasmuch as
294 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
their every thought comes short of this lofty aim, in so
much does it come short of good, and entitle itself to
the character of evil. If the glory of God is not the
absorbing and the influential aim of their thoughts,
then they are evil; but God's glory never enters into
their minds. They are amiable, because it chances to
be one of the constitutional tendencies of their individ-
ual character, left uneffaced by the Fall ; and they are
just and uprighty because they have perhaps no occa-
sion to he otherwise, or find it subservient to their
interests to maintain such a character,'' ^
Again we read :^ —
'^ There are traits in the Christian character which
the mere worldly man cannot understand. He can
understand the outward morality, but he cannot under-
stand the inner spring of it ; he can understand Dorcas'
liberality to the poor, but he cannot penetrate the
ground of Dorcas' liberality. Some men give to the
poor because they are ostentatious^ or because they think
the poor will ultimately avenge their neglect ; but the
Christian gives to the poor, not only because he has
sensibilities like other men, but because, ' inasmuch as
ye did it to the least of these my brethren, ye did it
unto me.' "
Before entering on the more general question in-
volved in these quotations, we must point to the
clauses we have marked with italics, where Dr.
Gumming appears to express sentiments which, we
are happy to think, are not shared by the majority
of his brethren in the faith. Dr. Gumming, it
seems, is unable to conceive that the natural man
can have any other motive for being just and
upright than that it is useless to be otherwise, or
that a character for honesty is profitable ; according
1 Occ. Disc. vol. i. p. 8. « Ibid. p. 236.
/
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. GUMMING, 295
to his experience, between the feelings of ostenta-
tion and selfish alarm and the feeling of love to
Christ, there lie no sensibilities which can lead a
man to relieve want. Granting, as we should pre-
fer to think, that it is Dr. Cumming's exposition
of his sentiments which is deficient rather than
his sentiments themselves, still the fact that the
deficiency lies precisely here, and that he can
overlook it not only in the haste of oral delivery
but in the examination of proof-sheets, is strongly
significant of his mental bias, of the faint degree
in which he sympathizer with the disinterested
elements of human feeling, and of the fact, which
we are about to dwell upon, that those feelings are
totally absent from his religious theory. Now,
Dr. Gumming invariably assumes that, in fulmi-
nating against those who differ from him, he is
standing on a moral elevation to which they are
compelled reluctantly to look up; that his theory
of motives and conduct is in its loftiness and
purity a perpetual rebuke to their low and vicious
desires and practice. It is time he should be told
that the reverse is the fact ; that there are men
who do not merely cast a superficial glance at his
doctrine, and fail to see its beauty or justice, but
who, after a close consideration of that doctrine,
pronounce it to be subversivii of true moral devel-
opment, and therefore positively noxious. Dr.
Gumming is fond of showing up the teaching of
Romanism, and accusing it of undermining true
morality : it is time he should be told that there
is a lai^e body, both of thinkers and practical
men, who hold precisely the same opinion of his
own teaching, — with this difference, that they do
not regard it as the inspiration of Satan, but as
296 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
the natural crop of a human mind where the soil
is chiefly made up of egoistic passions and dog-
matic beliefs.
Dr. Gumming *s theory, as we have seen, is that
actions are good or evil according as they are
prompted or not prompted by an exclusive refer-
ence to the " glory of God. " God, then, in Dr.
Gumming 's conception, is a being who has no
pleasure in the exercise of love and truthfulness
and justice, considered as affecting the well-being
of his creatures ; he has satisfaction in us only in
so far as we exhaust our motives and dispositions
of all relation to our fellow-beings, and replace
sympathy with men by anxiety for the " glory of
God. " The deed of Grace Darling, when she took
a boat in the storm to rescue drowning men and
women, was not good if it was only compassion
that nerved her arm and impelled her to brave
death for the chance of saving others ; it was only
good if she asked herself, Will this redound to the
glory of God ? The man who endures tortures
rather than betray a trust, the man who spends
years in toil in order to discharge an obligation
from which the law declares him free, must be
animated not by the spirit of fidelity to his fellow-
man, but by a desire to make " the name of God
more known. " The sweet charities of domestic
life, — the ready hand and the soothing word in
sickness, the forbearance towards frailties, the
prompt helpfulness in all efforts and sympathy in
all joys, are simply evil if they result from a
" constitutional tendency, " or from dispositions
disciplined by the experience of suffering and the
perception of moral loveliness. A wife is not to
devote herself to her husband nut of love to him
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR GUMMING.
297
and A sense of tlie duties implied by a close rela-
tion, — she is to be a faithful wife for the glory
of God. If she feels her natural affections welliny
up too strongly, she is to repress them ; it will
not do to act from natural affection, — she must
think of the glory of God. A man is to guide his
affairs with energy and discretion, not from an
honest desire to ful&l his responsibilities as a
member of society and a father, but — that " God's
praise may be sung. ' Dr. Cumming's Christian
pays his debts for the glory of Crod ; were it not
for the coercion of that supreme motive, it would
be evil to pay them. A man is not to be just from
a feeling of justice; he is not to help his fellow
men out of good-will to his fellow-men; he is not
to be a tender husband and father out of affection :
all these natural muscles and fibres are to be torn
away and replaced by a patent steel-spring, —
anxiety for the " glory of God. "
Happily, the constitution of human nature for-
bids the complete prevalence of such a theory.
Fatally powerful as religious systems have been,
human nature is stronger and wider than religious
systems ; and though dogmas may hamper, they
cannot absolutely repress its growth : build walls
round the living tree as you will, the bricks and
mortar have by and by to give way before the
slow and sure operation of the sap. But next to
that hatred of the enemies of God which is the
principle of persecution, there perhaps has been
no perversion more obstructive of true moral de-
velopment than this substitution of a reference to
the glory of God for the direct promptings of the
sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and justice are
strong only in proportion as they are directly and
298 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
inevitably called into activity by their proper
objects ; pity is strong only because we are strongly
impressed by suffering ; and only in proportion as
it is compassion that speaks through the eyes
when we soothe, and moves the arm when we
succour, is a deed strictly benevolent If the
soothing or the succour be given because another
being wishes or approves it, the deed ceases to be
one of benevolence, and becomes one of deference,
of obedience, of self-interest, or vanity. Accessory
motives may aid in producing an action^ but they
presuppose the weakness of the direct motive ; and
conversely, when the direct motive is strong, the
action of accessory motives will be excluded. If,
then, as Dr, Gumming inculcates, the glory of God
is to be " the absorbing and the influential aim *
in our thoughts and actions, this must tend to
neutralize the human sympathies; the stream of
feeling will be diverted from its natural current in
order to feed an artificial canaL The idea of God
is really moral in its influence — it really cherishes
all that is best and loveliest in man — only when
God is contemplated as sympathizing with the
pure elements of human feeling, as possessing in-
finitely all those attributes which we recognize to
be moral in humanity. In this light, the idea of
God and the sense of His presence intensify all
noble feeling, and encourage all noble effort, on
the same principle that human sympathy is found
a source of strength : the brave man feels braver
when he knows that another stout heart is beating
time with his ; the devoted woman who is wearing
out her years in patient effort to alleviate suffering
or save vice from the last stages of degradation,
finds aid in the pressure of a friendly hand which
EVANGELICAL TEACHING; DR. CUMMINtt 299
tells her that there is one who uuderstands her
deeds, and in her place would do the like. The
idea of a God who not ouly sympathizes with all
we feel and endure for our fellow-men, but who
will pour new life into our too languid love, and
{;ive firmness to our vacillating purpose, is an ex-
tension and multiplication of the effects produced
hy human sympathy; and it has been intensified
for the better spirits who have been under the
influence of orthodox Christianity by the contem-
plation of Jesus as " God manifest in the Heah. "
But Dr. Cumming's God is the very opposite ot
all this. He is a God who, instead of sharing and
aiding our human sympathies, ia directly in colli-
sion with them ; who, instead of strengthening
the bond between man and man, by encouraging
the sense that they are both alike the objects of
His love and care, thrusts Himself between them
and forbids them to feel for each other except as
they have relation to Him. He is a God who,
instead of adding His solar force to swell the tide
of those impulses that tend to give humanity a^
common life in which the good of one is the good
of all, commands us to check those impulses, lest
they should prevent us from thinking of His glory.
It is in vain for Dr. Gumming to say that we are
to love man for God's sake. With the conception
of God which his teaching presents, the love of
man for God's sake involves, as his writings
abundantly show, a strong principle of hatred.
We can only love one being for the sake of another
when there is an habitual delight in associating
the idea of those two beings, — that is, when the
object of our indirect love is a source of joy and
honour to the object of our direct love ; but ac-
300 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
cording to Dr. Cumming's theory, the majority of
mankind — the majority of his neighbours — are
in precisely the opposite relation to God. His
soul has no pleasure in them ; they belong more to
Satan than to Him ; and if they contribute to His
glory, it is against their will. Dr. Gumming
then can only love some men for God's sake; the
rest he must in consistency hate for God's sake.
There must be many, even in the circle of Dr.
Gumming 's admirers, who would be revolted by
the doctrine we have just exposed, if their natural
good sense and healthy feeling were not early
stifled by dogmatic beliefs, and their reverence
misled by pious phrases. But as it is, many a
rational question, many a generous instinct, is
repelled as the suggestion of a supernatural enemy,
or as the ebullition of human pride and corrup-
tion. This state of inward contradiction can be
put an end to only by the conviction that the free
and diligent exertion of the intellect, instead of
being a sin, is part of their responsibility, — that
Right and Reason are synonymous. The funda-
mental faith for man is, faith in the result of a
brave, honest, and steady use of all his faculties :
" Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell ;
That mind and soul according well
May make one music as before,
But vaster."
Before taking leave of Dr. Gumming, let us ex-
press a hope that we have in no case exaggerated
the unfavourable character of the inferences to be
drawn from his pages. His creed often obliges
him to hope the worst of men, and exert himself
EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 301
in proving that the worst is true ; but thus far we
are happier than he. We have no theory which
requires us to attribute unworthy motives to Dr.
Gumming, no opinions, religious or irreligious,
which can make it a gratification to us to detect
him in delinquencies. On the contrary, the better
we are able to think of him as a man, while we
are obliged to disapprove him as a theologian,
the stronger will be the evidence for our convic-
tion that the tendency towards good in human
nature has a force which no creed can utterly coun-
teract, and which ensures the ultimate triumph of
that tendency over all dogmatic perversions.
THE INFLUENCE OF EATIONALISM.
There is a valuable class of books on great subjects
which have something of the character and func-
tions of good popular lecturing. They are not
original, not subtle, not of close logical texture,
not exquisite either in thought or style ; but by
virtue of these negatives they are all the more fit
to act on the average intelligence. They have
enough of organizing purpose in them to make
their facts illustrative, and to leave a distinct
result in the mind even when most of the facts are
forgotten ; and they have enough of vagueness and
vacillation in their theory to win them ready
acceptance from a mixed audience. The vagueness
and vacillation are not devices of timidity; they
are the honest result of the writer's own mental
character, which adapts him to be the instructor
and the favourite of the " general reader. " For
the most part, the general reader of the present
day does not exactly know what distance he goes ;
he only knows that he does not go " too far. " Of
any remarkable thinker, whose writings have ex-
cited controversy he likes to have it said that " his
errors are to be deplored, " leaving it not too cer-
tain what those errors are ; he is fond of what may
be called disembodied opinions, that float in vapoury
phrases above all systems of thought or action ; he
likes an undefined Christianity which opposes it-
self to nothing in particular, an undefined educa-
tion of the people, an undefined amelioration of all
THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 303
things: in fact, he likes sound views, — nothing
extreme, but something between the excesses of
the past and the excesses of the present. This
modern type of the general reader may be known
in conversation by the cordiality with which Ife
assents to indistinct, blurred statements: say that
black ia black, he will shake bis head and hardly
think it; say that black is not so very black, he
will reply, "Exactly.* He has no hesitation, if
you wish it, even to get up a public meeting and
express his conviction that at times, and within
certain limits, the radii of a circle have a tendency
to be equal ; but on the other hand, he would urge
that the spirit of geometry may be carried a little
too far. His only bigotry is a bigotry against any
clearly defined scepticism, but belonging to a lack
of coherent thought, — a spongy texture of mind,
that gravitates strongly to nothing. The one thing
he is staunch for, is the utmost liberty of private
haziness.
But precisely these characteristics of the general
reader, rendering him incapable of assimilating
ideas unless they are administered in a highly
diluted form, make it a matter of rejoicing that
there are clever, fair-minded men, who will write
books for him, — men very much above him in
knowledge and ability, but not too remote from
him in their habits of thinking, and who can thus
prepare for him infusions of history and science
that will leave some solidifying deposit, and save
him from a fatal softening of the intellectual skele-
ton. Among such ser\'iceable writers, Mr, Lecky's
" History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
Eationalism in Europe' entitles him to a high
place. He has prepared himself for its production
304 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
by an unusual amount of well-directed reading;
he has chosen his facts and quotations with much
judgment ; and he gives proofs of those important
moral qualifications, impartiality, seriousness, and
modesty. This praise is chiefly applicable to the
long chapter on the History of Magic and Witch-
craft, which opens the work, and to the two chap-
ters on the Antecedents and History of Persecution,
which occur the one at the end of the first volume,
the other at the beginning of the second. In these
chapters Mr. Lecky has a narrower and better
traced path before him than in other portions of
his work ; he is more occupied with presenting a
particular class of facts in their historical sequence,
and in their relation to certain grand tide-marks
of opinion, than with disquisition ; and his writing
is freer than elsewhere from an apparent confused-
ness of thought, and an exuberance of approxima-
tive phrases, which can be serviceable in no other
way than as diluents needful for the sort of reader
we have just described.
The history of magic and witchcraft has been
judiciously chosen by Mr. Lecky as the subject of
his first section on the declining sense of the
miraculous, because it is strikingly illustrative of
a position, with the truth of which he is strongly
impressed, though he does not always treat of it
with desirable clearness and precision; namely,
that certain beliefs become obsolete, not in conse-
quence of direct arguments against them, but
because of their incongruity with prevalent habits
of thought. Here is his statement of the two
classes of influences by which the mass of men, in
what is called civilized society, get their beliefs
gradually modified: —
TEE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM.
305
"If we ask wliy it is tliat the world liaa rejected
what was once so universally and so intensely believed,
why a narrative of an old woman who had been seen
riding on a broomstick, or who was proved to have
trausformed herself into a wolf, and to have devoured
the flocks of her neighbours, is deemed 80 entirely
incredible, most persona would probably be unable to
give a very definite answer to the question. It is not
because we have examined the evidence and fouud it
insufficient, for the disbelief always precedes, when it
does not prevent, examination. It is rather because the
idea of absurdity is so strongly attached to such narra-
tives, that it is difficult even to consider them with
gravity. Yet at one time no such improbability was
felt, and hundreds of persons have been burnt simply
on the two grounds I have mentioned.
"When so complete a change takes place in public
opinion, it may be ascribed to one or other of two causes.
It may be the result of a controversy which has con-
clusively settled the question, establishing to the satis-
faction of all parties a clear preponderance of argument
or fact in favour of one opinion, and making that opin-
ion a truism which is accepted by all enlightened men,
even though they have not themselves examined the
evidence on which it rests. Thus, if any one in a com-
pany of ordinarily educated persons were to deny the
motion of the earth or the circulation of the blood, his
statement would be received with derision, though it is
probable that some of his audience would be unable to
demonstrate the first truth, and that very few of them
could give sufficient reasons for the second. They may
not themselves be able to defend their poaitioni but
they are aware that, at certain known periods of his-
tory, controversies on those subjects took place, and
that known writers then brought forward some defin-
ite arguments or experiments, which were ultimately
accepted by the whole learned world as rigid and con-
clusive demo nstrat ions. It is possible, also, for as com-
3o6 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
plete a change to be effected by what is called the spirit
of the age. The general intellectual tendencies pervad-
ing the literature of a century profoundly modify the
character of the public mind. They form a new tone
and habit of thought. They alter the measure of prob-
ability. They create new attractions and new antipa-
thies, and they eventually cause as absolute a rejection
of certain old opinions as could be produced by the
most cogent and definite arguments."
Mr. Lecky proceeds to some questionable views
concerning the evidences of witchcraft, which
seem to be irreconcilable even with his own re-
marks later on ; but they lead him to the state-
ment, thoroughly made out by his historical survey,
that " the movement was mainly silent, unargu-
mentative, and insensible ; that men came gradually
to disbelieve in witchcraft, because they came grad-
ually to look upon it as absurd ; and that this new
tone of thought appeared, first of all, in those who
were least subject to theological influences, and
soon spread through the educated laity, and, last
of all, took possession of the clergy. "
We have rather painful proof that this " second
class of influences " with a vast number go hardly
deeper than fasliion, and that witchcraft to many
of us is absurd only on the same ground that our
grandfathers' gigs are absurd. It is felt preposter-
ous to think of spiritual agencies in connection
with ragged beldames soaring on broomsticks, in
an age when it is known that mediums of commu-
nication with the invisible world are usually
unctuous personages dressed in excellent broad-
cloth, who soar above the curtain-poles without
any broomstick, and who arc not given to unprofit-
able intrigues. The enlightened imagination
THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM.
307
rejects the figure of a witch with her profile in dark
relief against the moon, and her broomstick cutting
a constellation. No undiscovered natural laws,
no names of " respectable " witnesses, are invoked
to make us feel our presumption in questioning
the diabolic intimacies of that obsolete old woman ;
for it is known now that the undiscovered lawa,
and the witnesses qualified by the payment of
income tax, are all in favour of a different con-
ception,— the image of a heavy gentleman in boots
and black coat-tails foreshortened against the cor-
nice. Yet no less a person than Sir Thomas
Browne once wrote that those who denied there
were witches, inasmuch as they thereby denied
spirits also, were " obliquely and upon conse-
quence a sort, not of infidels, but of atheists. * At
present, doubtless, in certain circles unbelievers in
heavy gentlemen who float in the air by means of
undiscovered laws are also taxed with atheism,
illiberal as it is not to admit that mere weakness
of understanding may prevent one from seeing how
that phenomenon is necessarily involved in the
divine origin of things. With still more remark-
able parallelism. Sir Thomas Browne goes on :
" Those that, to refute their incredulity, desire to
see apparitions, shall questionless never behold
any, nor have the power to be so much as witches.
The Devil hath made them already in a heresy as
capital as witchcraft, and to appear to them were
but to convert thrm-. " It would be difficult to see
what has been changed here but the mere drapery
of circumstance, if it were not for this prominent
difference between our days and the days of witch-
craft, that instead of torturing, drowning, or burn-
ing the innocent, we give hosiJitality and large pay
yoS ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
to the highly distinguished medium. At least we
are safely rid of certain horrors ; but if the multi-
tude — that * farraginous concurrence of all condi-
tions, tempers, sexes, and ages * — do not roll
back even to a superstition that carries cruelty in
its train, it is not because they possess a culti-
vated reason, but because they are pressed upon
and held up by what we may call an external
reason, — the sum of conditions resulting from the
laws of material growth, from changes produced
by great historical collisions shattering the struc-
tures of ages and making new highways for events
and ideas, and from the activities of higher minds
no longer existing merely as opinions and teach-
ings, but as institutions and organizations with
which the interests, the affections, and the habits
of the multitude are inextricably interwoven. No
undiscovered laws accounting for small phenomena
going forward under drawing-room tables are likely
to affect the tremendous facts of the increase of
population, the rejection of convicts by our colo-
nies, the exhaustion of the soil by cotton planta-
tions, which urge even upon the foolish certxiin
questions, certain claims, certain views concerning
the scheme of the world, that can never again be
silenced.
If right reason is a right representation of the
co-existences and sequences of things, here are
co-existences and sequences that do not wait to be
discovered, but press themselves upon us like bars
of iron. No seances at a guinea a head for the
sake of being pinched by " Mary Jane " can anni-
hilate railways, steamships, and electric telegraphs,
which are demonstrating the interdependence of all
human interests, and making self-interest a duct
I
I
THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 309
for sympathy. These things are part of the ex-
ternal reason to which internal silliness has inevi-
tably to accommodate itself.
Three points in the history of magic and witch-
craft are well brought out by Mr. Lecky : First,
that the cruelties connected with it did not begin
until meu's minds had ceased to repose implicitly
in a sacramental system which made them feel
well armed against evil spirits; that is, until the
eleventh century, when there cume a sort of morn-
ing dream of doubt and heresy, bringing on the
one side the terror of timid consciences, and on
the other the terrorism of authority or zeal bent
on checking the rising struggla In that time of
comparative mental repose, says Mr. Lecky, —
"all those conceptions of diabolical presence, all that
predisposition towards the miraculous, which acted so
fearfully upon the imaginations of the flfteenth and
sixteenth centuries, existed; but the implicit faith, the
bouudless and triumphant credulity, with which the
virtue of ecclesiastical rites was accepted, rendered
them comparatively innocuous. If men had been a
little less superstitious, the effects of their superstition
would have been much more terrible. It was firmly
believed that any one who deviated from the strict line
of orthodoxy must soou succumb beneath the power of
Satan; but as there was no spirit of rebellion or doubt,
this persuasion did not produce any extraordinary
terrorism."
The Church was disposed to confound heretical
opinion with sorcery; false doctrine was especially
the Devil's work, and it was a ready conclusion that
a denier or innovator had held consultation with
the father of lies. It is a saying of a zealous Catho-
lic in the sixteenth century, q^aoted by Maury in
310 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
his excellent work, " De la Magie," — " Crescit cum
magia hceresis, cum hccresi magicu'* Even those
who doubted were terrified at their doubts, for trust
is more easily undermined than terror; fear is
easier born than hope, lays a stronger grasp on
man's system than any other passion, and remains
master of a larger group of involuntary actions. A
chief aspect of man's moral development is the slow
subduing of fear by the gradual growth of intelli-
gence, and its suppression as a motive by the
presence of impulses less animally selfish ; so that
in relation to invisible power fear at last ceases to
exist, save in that interfusion with higher faculties
which we call awe.
Secondly, Mr. Lecky shows clearly that dogmatic
Protestantism, holding the vivid belief in Satanic
agency to be an essential of piety, would have felt
it shame to be a whit behind Catholicism in sever-
ity against the Devil's servants. Luther's sentiments
were, that he would not suffer a witch to live (he
was not much more merciful to Jews) ; and, in spite
of his fondness for children, believing a certain
child to have been begotten by the Devil, he recom-
mended the parents to throw it into the river. The
torch must be turned on the worst errors of heroic
minds, not in irreverent ingratitude, but for the
sake of measuring our vast and various debt to all
the influences which have concurred in the inter-
vening ages to make us recognize as detestable
errors the honest convictions of men who in mere
individual capacity and moral force were very much
above us. Again, the Scotch Puritans, during the
comparatively short period of their ascendency,
surpassed all Christians before them in the elaborate
ingenuity of the tortures they applied for the dis-
THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM.
3"
covery of witclicraft and sorcery, and did their
utmost to prove that if Scotch Calvinism was the
true religion, the chief " note "* of the true religion
wn3 cruelty. It is hardly an endurable task to read
the story of their doings; thoroughly to imagine
them as a past reality is already a sort of torture.
One detail is enough, and it is a comparatively mild
one. It was the regular profession of men, called
"prickers," to thrust long pius into the body of a
suspected witch in order to detect the iuaenaible
spot which was the infallible sign of her guilt. On
a superficial view one would he in dauger of saying
that the main difference between the teachers who
sanctioned these things, and the much-despised
ancestors who offered human \ictims inside a huge
wicker idol, was tliat they arrived at a more elabo-
rate barbarity by a longer series of dependent pro-
positions. We do not share Mr. Buckle's opinion
that a Scotch minister's groans were a part of his
deliberate plan for keeping the people in a state of
terrified subjection ; the ministers themselves held
the belief they taught, and well might groan over
it. What a blessing has a little false logic been to
the world 1 Seeing that men are so slow to ques-
tion their premises, they mast have made each
other much more miserable, if pity had not some-
times drawn tender conclusions not warranted by
major and minor ; if there had not been people with
an amiable imbecility of reasoning which enabled
them at once to cling to hideous beliefs, and to he
conscientiously inconsistent with them in their
conduct. There is nothing like acute deductive
reasoning for keeping a man in the dark; it might
be called the technique of the intellect, and the
concentration of the mind upon it corresponds to
312 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
that predominance of technical skill in art which
ends in degradation of the artist's function, unless
new inspiration and invention come to guide it
And of this there is some good illustration fur-
nished by that third node in the history of
witchcraft, the beginning of its end, which is
treated in an interesting manner by Mr. Lecky.
It is worth noticing that the most important defences
of the belief in witchcraft, against the growing scep-
ticism in the latter part of the sixteenth century
and in the seventeenth, were the productions of
men who in some departments were among the
foremost thinkers of their time. One of them was
Jean Bodin, the famous writer on government and
jurisprudence, whose " Eepublic," Hallam thinks,
had an important influence in England, and fur-
nished " a store of arguments and examples that
were not lost on the thoughtful minds of our coun-
trymen." In some of his views he was original and
bold ; for example, he anticipated Montesquieu in
attempting to appreciate the relations of govern-
ment and climate. Hallam inclines to the opinion
that he was a Jew, and attached Divine authority
only to the Old Testament. But this was enough
to furnish him with his chief data for the existence
of witclies and for their capital punishment ; and in
the account of his " Republic," given by Hallam,
there is enough evidence that the sagacity which
often enabled him to make fine use of his learning
was also often entangled in it, to temper our surprise
at finding a writer on political science of whom it
couH be said that, along with Montesquieu, he was
" the most philosophical of those who had read so
deeply, the most learned of those who had thought
so much," in the van of the forlorn hope to main-
THE INFLUENCE OF KATIONALISM.
313
tain tlie reality of witchcraft. It should be said
that he was equally confident o£ the unreality of
the Copernican hypothesis, on the ground that it
was contrary to the tenets of the theologians and
philosophers ami to common-sense, and therefore
subversive of the foundations of every science. Of
his work on Witchcraft, Mr, Lecky says ; —
"The ' Deinonomanie dea Sorciera' is chiefly an appeal
to authoritj, which the author deemed on this subject
so unanimous and so coiiclusive that it waa scarcely
possible for any sane oian to resist it. He appealed to
the popular belief iu all countries, in all ages, and in
all religious. He cited the opinions of an immense
multitude of the greatest writers of pagan antiquity,
and of the most illustrious of the fathers. He showed
how the laws of all nations recognized the existence of
witchcraft; and he collected hundreds of cases which
had been investigated before the tribunals of his own
or of other countries. He relates with the most
minute and circumstantial detail, and with the most
unfaltering confidence, all the proceedings at the
witches' Sabbath, the methods which the witches em-
ployed in transporting themselves through tho air,
their transformations, their carnal intercourse with the
Devil, their various means of injuring their enemies,
the signs that led to their detection, their confessions
when condemned, and their demeanour at the stake."
Something must be allowed for a lawyer's affec-
tion towards a belief which had furnished so many
" cases." Eodiu's work had been prompted by the
treatise. " De Prestigiis Dfemonum," written by John
Wier, a German physician, — a treatise which is
worth notice as an example of a transitional form of
opinion for which many analogies may he found in
the history of both religion and science. Wier
314 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
believed in demons, and in possession by demons ;
but his practice as a physician had convinced him
that the so-called witches were patients and victims,
that the Devil took advantage of their diseased
condition to delude them, and that there was no
consent of an evil will on the part of the women.
He argued that the word in Leviticus translated
" witch " meant " poisoner," and besought the princes
of Europe to hinder the further spilling of innocent
blood. These heresies of Wier threw Bodin into
such a state of amazed indignation that if he had
been an ancient Jew, instead of a modern economi-
cal one, he would have rent his garments. " No
one had ever heard of pardon being accorded to
sorcerers ; " and probably the reason why Charles IX.
died young was because he had pardoned the
sorcerer, Trois Echelles I We must remember that
this was in 1581, when the great scientific move-
ment of the Kenaissance had hardly begun, when*
Galileo was a youth of seventeen, and Kepler a boy
of ten.
But directly afterwards, on the other side, came
Montaigne, whose sceptical acutenCvSs could arrive
at negatives without any apparatus of method. A
certain keen narrowness of nature will secure a man
from many absurd beliefs which the larger soul,
vibrating to more manifold intiuences, would have a
long struggle to part with. And so we find the
charming, chatty Montaigne, in one of the brightest
of his essays, " Des Boiteux," where he declares
that, from his own observation of witches and sor-
cerers, he should have recommended them to be
treated with curative hellebore, stating in his own
way a pregnant doctrine, since taught more gravely.
It seems to him much less of a prodigy that men
THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 315
should lie, or that their imaginations should deceive
them, than that a human body should be carried
through the air on a broomstick or up a chimney
by some unknown spirit. He thinks it a sad busi-
ness to persuade one'a self that the test of truth lies
in the multitude of believers : " En une presse ou lea
fols surpassent de tant les sages en nombre." Ordi-
narily hi! has observed, when men have something
stated to them as a fact, they are more ready to ex-
plain it than to inquire whether it is real : " lis pas-
sent par-dessus les propositions, mais ils examinent
les consequences ; iU laisseni les ckoses, et courent
aux causes." There is a sort of strong and generous
ignorance which is as honourable and courageous aa
science : " Ignorance pour laquelle concevoir il n'y a
pas moins de science qu'a concevoir la science."
And apropos of the immense traditional evidence
which weighed with such men as Bodin, he says :
" As for the proofs and arguments founded on
experience and facts, I do not pretend to unravel
these. What end of a thread is there to lay hold
of ? I often cut them, as Alexander did his
knot Apres tout, c'est vicUre ses conjectures a
bien haul prix, que d'en fuire cuire wn homme tout
Writing like this, when it finds eager readers, is
a sign that the weather is changing; jet much
later, namely, after 1665, when the Royal Society
had been founded, our own Glanvil, the author of
the " Scepsis Scientifica," — a work that was a
remarkable advance towards a true de^nitiou of the
limits of inquiry, and that won him his election
as fellow of the Society, — published an energetic
vindication of the belief in witchcraft, of which
Mr. Lecky gives the following sketch : —
3i6 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
"The ' Sadducismus Triumphatus,' which is proba-
bly the ablest book ever published in defence of the
superstition, opens with a striking picture of the rapid
progress of the scepticism in England. Everywhere
a disbelief in witchcraft was becoming fashionable in
the upper classes ; but it was a disbelief that arose
entirely from a strong sense of its antecedent improba-
bility. All who were opposed to the Orthodox faith
united in discrediting witchcraft. They laughed at
it as palpably absurd, as involving the most grotesque
and ludicrous conceptions, as so essentially incredible
that it would be a waste of time to examine it. This
spirit had arisen since the Restoration, although the
laws were still in force, and although little or no direct
reasoning had been brought to bear upon the subject.
In order to combat it, Glanvil proceeded to examine
the general question of the credibility of the miracu-
lous. He saw that the reason why witchcraft was
ridiculed was because it was a phase of the miraculous,
and the work of the Devil ; that the scepticism was
chiefly due to those who disbelieved in miracles and
the Devil; and that the instances of witchcraft or pos-
session in the Bible were invariably placed on a level
with those that were tried in the courts of England.
That the evidence of the belief was overwhelming, he
firmly believed; and this, indeed, was scarcely dis-
puted; but, until the sense of a priori improbability
was removed, no possible accumulation of facts would
cause men to believe it. To that task he accord-
ingly addressed himself. Anticipating the idea and
almost the words of modern controversialists, he urged
that there was such a thing as a credulity of unbelief;
and that those who believed so strange a concurrence
of delusions as was necessary on the supposition of the
unreality of witchcraft, were far more credulous than
those who accepted the belief. He made his very
scepticism his principal weapon; and analyzing with
much acuteness the a priori objections, he showed that
THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM.
317
they rested upon an unwarrantable confidence in our
knowledge of the laws of the spirit world, that they
implied the existence of aome stricl; analogy between
the faculties of men and of spirits, and that, as such
analogy most probably did not esist, no reasoning
based on the supposition could dispense men from
examining the evidence. He concluded with a large
collection of cases, the eridonce of which was, as he
thought, incontestable."
We have quoted this sketch because GlanviVa
argument against the a priori objection of absur-
dity is fatiguingly urged in relation to other alleged
marvels which to busy people, seriously occupied
with the difficulties of affairs, of science, or of art,
seem as little w-orthy of osamination as aeronautic
broomsticks ; and also because we here see Glanvil,
in combating an incredulity that does not happen
to be his own, wielding that very argument of
traditional evidence which he had made the subject
of vigorous attack in his " Scepsis Scientifica." But
perhaps large minds have been peculiarly liable to
this fluctuation concerning the sphere of tradition,
because, while they have attacked its misapplica-
tions, they have been the more solicited by the
vague sense that tradition is really the basis of our
best life. Our sentiments may be called organized
traditions ; and a large part of our actions gather
all their justification, all their attraction and aroma,
from the memory of the life lived, of the actions
done, before we were born. In the absence of any
profound research into psycliolt^ical functions or
into the mysteries of inheritance, in the absence of
any profound comprehensive view of man's histori-
cal development and the dependence of one age on
another, a mind at all rich in sensibilities must always
3i8 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
have had an indefinite uneasiness in an undistinguish-
ing attack on the coercive influence of tradition.
And this may be the apology for the apparent incon-
sistency of Glanvil's acute criticism on the one side,
and his indignation at the "looser gentry," who
laughed at the evidences for witchcraft on the other.
We have already taken up too much space with this
subject of witchcraft, else we should be tempted to
dwell on Sir Thomas Browne, who far surpassed
Glanvil in magnificent incongruity of opinion, and
whose works are the most remarkable combination
existing, of witty sarcasm against ancient nonsense
and modem obsequiousness, with indications of a
capacious credulity. After all, we may be sharing
what seems to us the hardness of these men, who
sat in their studies and argued at their ease about
a belief that would be reckoned to have caused
more misery and bloodshed than any other super-
stition, if there had been no such thing as persecu-
tion on the ground of religious opinion.
On this subject of persecution, Mr. Lecky writes
his best; with clearness of conception, with calm
justice, bent on appreciating the necessary tendency
of ideas, and with an appropriateness of illustration
that could be supplied only by extensive and intel-
ligent reading. Persecution, he shows, is not in any
sense peculiar to the Catliolic church ; it is a direct
sequence of the doctrines that salvation is to be
had onlv within the Church, and that erroneous
belief is damnatory, — doctrines held as fully by
Protestant sects as by the Catholics ; and in pro-
portion to its power. Protestantism has been as per-
secuting as Catholicism. He maintains, in opposition
to the favourite modern notion of persecution defeat-
ing its own object, that the Church, holding the dogma
THE nJFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 319
of exclusive salvation, was perfectly consequent, and
really achieved its end of spreading one belief and
quenching another, by calling in the aid of the civil
arm. Who will say that governments, by their
power over institutions and patronage, as well as
over punishment, have not power over the interests
and inclinations of men, and over most of those
external conditions into which subjects are bom,
and which make them adopt the prevalent belief
as a second nature ? Hence, to a sincere believer
in the doctrine of exclusive salvation, governments
had it in their power to save men from perdition ;
and wherever the clergy were at the elbow of the
civil arm, no matter whether they were Catholic
or Protestant, persecution was the result. "Compel
them to come in," was a rule that seemed sanctioned
by mercy ; and the horrible sufferings it led men to
inflict seemed small to minds accustomed to con-
template, as a perpetual source of motive, the
eternal, unmitigated miseries of a hell that was
the inevitable destination of a majority amongst
mankind.
It is a signilicant fact, noted by Mr. Lecky, that
the only two leaders of the Reformation who advo-
cated tolerance were Zuinglius and Socinus, both
of them disbelievers in exclusive salvation. And
in corroboration of other evidence that the chief
triumphs of the Reformation were due to coercion,
he commends to the special attention oE his readers
the following quotation from a work attributed
without question to the famous Protestant the-
ologian, Jurieu, who had himself been hindered,
OS a Protestant, from exercising his professional
functions in France, and was settled aa pastor
at Rotterdam. It should be remembered that
320 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
Jurieu's labours fell in the latter part of the seven-
teenth century and in the beginning of the eigh-
teenth, and that he was the contemporary of Bayle,
with whom he was in bitter controversial hos-
tility. He wrote, then, at a time when there
was warm debate on the question of toleration ;
and it was his great object to vindicate himself
and his French fellow-Protestants from all laxity
on this point : —
''Pent on nier que le paganisme est tomb^ dans le
monde par I'autorit^ des empereurs remains? On peut
assurer sans t^m^rit^ que le paganisme seroit encore
debout, et que les trois quarts de 1 'Europe seroient
encore payens si Constant in et ses successeurs n^avaient
employ^ leur autorit^ pour Tabolir. Mais, je vous prie,
de quelles voies Dieu s'est il servi dans ces derniers si^-
cles pour r^tablir la veritable religion dans roccident?
Les rois de Suede^ ceux de Danemarck, eeux d* Angle-
terre, les magistrats souverains de Suisse, des Pais Bas,
des villes litres d^Allemagne, les princes electeurs, et
autres princes souverains de PempirCy n^ont ils pas
emploie leur autorite pour ahhattre le papisme?^^
Indeed, wherever the tremendous alternative of
everlasting torments is believed in, — believed in
so that it becomes a motive determining the life,
— not only persecution, but every other form of
severity and gloom, is the legitimate consequence.
There is much ready declamation in these days
against the spirit of asceticism and against zeal for
doctrinal conversion ; but surely the macerated
form of a St. Francis, the fierce denunciations of a
St. Dominic, the groans and prayerful wrestlings
of the Puritan who seasoned his bread with tears,
and made all pleasurable sensation sin, are more
THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM.
321
in keeping with the contemplation of unmending
anguish as the destiny of a vast multitude whose
nature we share, than the rnhicund cheerfuluess
of some modern divines, who profess to unite a
smiling liberalism with a well-bred and tacit but
unshaken confidence in the reality of the bottomless
pit. But, in fact, as Mr. Lecky maintains, that
awful image, with its group of associated dogmas
concerning the inherited curse, and the damnation
of unbaptized infants, of heathens, and of heretics,
has passed away from what he is fond of calling
" the realizations " of Cliriateudom. These things
are no longer the objects of practical belief. They
may be mourned for in encyclical letters; bishops
may regret them ; doctors of divinity may sign
testimonials to the excellent character of these
decayed beliefs; but for the mass of ChrisLiana
they are no more influential than unrepealed but
forgotten statutes. And with these dogmas has
melted away the strong basis for the defence of
persecution. No man now writes eager vindica-
tions of himself and bis colleagues from the suspi-
cion of adhering to the principle of toleration.
And this momentous change, it is Mr. Lecky's
object to show, is due to that concurrence of con-
ditions which he has chosen to call " the advance
of the spirit of rationalism."
In other parts of his work, where he attempts to
trace the action of the same conditions on the
acceptance of miracles and on other chief phases of
our historical development, Mr. Lecky has laid
himself open to considerable criticism. The chap-
ters on the miracles of the Church, the iusthetic,
scientific, and moral development of rationalism,
the secularization of politics, and the industrial
322 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT.
history of rationalism, embrace a wide range of
diligently gathered facts; but they are nowhere
illuminated by a sufficiently clear conception and
statement of the agencies at work, or the mode
of their action, in the gradual modification of
opinion and of life. The writer frequently im-
presses us as being in a state of hesitation concern*
ing his own standing-point, which may form a
desirable stage in private meditation but not in
published exposition. Certain epochs in theoretic
conception, certain considerations, which should
be fundamental to his survey, are introduced quite
incidentally in a sentence or two, or in a note
which seems to be an afterthought. Great writers
and their ideas are touched upon too slightly and
with too little discrimination, and important theo-
ries are sometimes characterized with a rashness
which conscientious revision will correct There
is a fatiguing use of vague or shifting phrases,
such as " Modern Civilization, " ** Spirit of the
Age, " " Tone of Thought, " " Intellectual Type of the
Age, * " Bias of the Imagination, " ** Habits of Reli-
gious Thought," unbalanced by any precise defini-
tion ; and the spirit of rationalism is sometimes
treated of as if it lay outside the specific mental
activities of which it is a generalized expression.
Mr. Curdle 's famous definition of the dramatic
unities as "a sort of a general oneness," is not
totally false ; but such luminousness as it has
could only be perceived by those who already
knew what the unities were. Mr. Lecky has the
advantage of being strongly impressed with tlie
great part played by the emotions in the formation
of opinion, and with the high complexity of the
causes at work in social evolution ; but he fre-
THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 323
qnently writes as if he had never yet distinguished
between the complexity of the conditiona that
produce prevalent states of mtad, and the inability
of particular minds to give distinct reasons for the
preferences or persuasions produced by those states.
In brief, he does not discriminate, or does not help
his reader to discTtminate, between objective com-
plexity and subjective confusion. But the most
muddle-headed gentleman who represents the spirit
of the age by observing, as he settles his collar,
that the development theory is quite " the thing,"
is a result of definite procesaes, if we could only
trace them. " Mental attitudes " and " predispo-
sitions," however vague in consciousness, have not
vague causes, any more than the " blind motions
of the spring " in plants and animals.
The word ° rationalism ' has the misfortune,
shared by most words in this gray world, of being
somewhat equivocal. This evil may be nearly
overcome by careful preliminary definition; but
Mr. Lecky does not supply this, and the original
specific application of the word to a particular
phase of Biblical interpretation seems to have clung
about his use of it with a misleading effect
Through some parts of his book he appears to re-
gard the grand characteristics of modern thought
and civilization, compared with ancient, as a
radiation in the first instance from a change in
religious conceptions. The supremely important
fact that the gradual reduction of all phenomena
within the sphere of established law, which carries
as a consequence the rejection of the miraculous.
has its determining current in the development of
physical science, seems to have engaged compara-
tively little of hia attention; at least, be gives it
324 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
no prominence. The great conception of universal
regular sequence, without partiality and without
caprice, — the conception which is the most potent
force at work in the modification of our faith, and
of the practical form given to our sentiments, —
could only grow out of that patient watching of
external fact and that silencing of preconceived
notions which are urged upon the mind by the
problems of physical science.
There is not room here to explain and justify
the impressions of dissatisfaction which have been
briefly indicated; but a serious writer like Mr.
Lecky will not find such suggestions altogether
useless. The objections, even the misunderstand-
ings, of a reader who is not careless or ill-disposed,
may serve to stimulate an author's vigilance over
his thoughts as well as his style. It would be
gratifying to see some future proof that Mt Lecky
has acquired juster views than are implied in the
assertion that philosophers of the sensational school
" can never rise to the conception of the disinter*
ested ; " and that he has freed himself from all temp-
tation to that mingled laxity of statement and
ill -pitched elevation of tone which are painfully
present in the closing pages of his second volume.
ADDEESS TO WORKING-MEN. BY FELIX
HOLT.
Fellow-Workmen : I am not going to take up your
time by compli men ting you. It has been the fash-
ion to compliment kings and other authoritiea
when they have come into power, and to tell them
that, under their wise and beneficent rule, happi-
ness would certainly overflow the land. But the
end has not always corresponded to that beginning.
If it were true that we who work for wages had
more of the wisdom and virtue necessary to the
right use of power than has been shown by the
aristocratic and mercantile classes, we should not
glory much in that fact, or consider that it carried
with it any near approach to infallibility.
In my opinion there has been too much com-
plimenting of that sort ; and whenever a speaker,
whether he is one of ourselves or not, wastes our
time in boasting or flattery, I say, let ua hiss him.
If we have the hegiuning of wisdom, which is, to
know a little truth about ourselves, we know that
as a body we are neither very wise nor very virtu-
ous. And to prove this, I will not point specially
to our own habits and doings, but to the general
state of the country. Any nation that had within
it a majority of men — and we are the majority —
possessed of much wisdom and virtue, would not
tolerate the bad practices, the commercial lying
and swindling, the poisonous adulteration of goods.
326 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT.
the retail cheating, and the political bribery which
are carried on boldly in the midst of us. A major-
ity has the power of creating a public opinion.
We could groan and hiss before we had the fran-
chise : if we had groaned and hissed in the right
place, if we had discerned better between good and
evil, if the multitude of us artisans, and factory
hands, and miners, and laborers of all sorts, had
been skilful, faithful, well-judging, industrious,
sober, — and I don't see how there can be wisdom
and virtue anywhere without these qualities, — we
should have made an audience that would have
shamed the other classes out of their share in the
national vices. We should have had better mem-
bers of Parliament, better religious teachers, hon-
ester tradesmen, fewer foolish demagogues, less
impudence in infamous and brutal men ; and we
should not have had among us the abomination of
men calling themselves religious while living in
splendour on ill-gotten gains. I say, it is not
possible for any society in which there is a very
large body of wise and virtuous men to be as
vicious as our society is, — to have as low a stand-
ard of right and wrong, to have so much belief in
falsehood, or to have so degrading, barbarous a
notion of what pleasure is, or of what justly raises
a man above his fellows. Therefore let us have
done with this nonsense about our being much
better than the rest of our countrymen, or the
pretence that that was a reason why we ought to
have such an extension of the franchise as has
been given to us. The reason for our having the
francliise, as I want presently to show, lies some-
where else than in our personal good qualities, and
does not in the least lie in any high betting chance
ADDRESS TO WORKlNG-ilEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 327
that a delegate is a better man than a duke, or
that a Sheffield grinder is a better man than any
one of the firm he works for.
However, we have got our franchise now. We
hnve been aarcaatically called in the House of
Commous the future masters of the country; and
if that sarcasm contains any truth, it seems to me
that the first thing we had better think of is, our
heavy responsibility. — that is to aay. the terrible
risk we run of working mischief and missing good,
as others have done before us. Suppose certain
men, discontented with the irrigation of a country
which depended for all its prosperity on the right
direction being given to the waters of a great river,
had got the management of the irrigation before
they were quite sure how exactly it could be
altered for the better, or whether they could com-
mand the necessary agency for such an alteration.
Those men would have a difficult and dangerous
business on their hands ; and the more sense, feel-
ing, and knowledge they had, the more they would
be likely to tremble rather than to triumph. Our
situation is not altogether unlike theirs. For
general prosperity and well-being is a vast crop,
that like the corn in Egypt can be come at, not at
all by hurried snatching, but only by a well-
judged patient process; and whether our political
power will be any good to us now we have got it,
must depend entirely on the means and materials,
— the knowledge, ability, and honesty we have at
command. These three things are the only con-
ditions on which we can get any lasting benefit, as
every clever workman among us knows : he knows
that for an article to be worth much there must be
a good invention or plan to go upon, there must
328 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT.
be a well-prepared material, and there must be
skilful and honest work in carrying out the plan.
And by this test we may try those who want to be
our leaders. Have they anything to oflFer us be-
sides indignant talk ? When they tell us we ought
to have this, that, or the other thing, can they
explain to us any reasonable, fair, safe way of
getting it ? Can they argue in favour of a particu-
lar change by showing us pretty closely how the
change is likely to work ? I don't want to decry a
just indignation ; on the contrary, I should like it
to be more thorough and general. A wise man,
more than two thousand years ago, when he was
asked what would most tend to lessen injustice in
the world, said, " If every bystander felt as indig-
nant at a wrong as if he himself were the sufferer. '
Let us cherish such indignation. But the long-
growing evils of a great nation are a tangled busi-
ness, asking for a good deal more than indignation
in order to be got rid of. Indignation is a fine
war-horse, but the war-horse must be ridden by a
man : it must be ridden by rationality, skill, cour-
age, armed with the right weapons, and taking
definite aim.
We have reason to be discontented with many
things, and, looking back either through the his-
tory of England to much earlier generations or to
the legislation and administrations of later times,
we are justified in saying that many of the evils
under which our country now suffers are the con-
sequences of folly, ignorance, neglect, or self-
seeking in those who, at different times, have
wielded the powers of rank, office, and money.
But the more bitterly we feel this, the more loudly
we utter it, the stronger is the obligation we lay
ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 329
on ourselves to beware, lest we also, by a too hasty
wresting of measures which seem to promise an
immediate partial relief, make a worse time of it
for our own generation, and leave a bad inheritance
to our children. The deepest curae of wrong-doing,
whether of the foolish or wicked sort, is that its
effects are difficult to be undone. I suppose there
is hardly anything more to he shuddered at than
that part of the history of disease which shows
how, when a man injures his constitution by a life
of vicious excess, his children and grandchildren
inherit diseased bodies and minds, and how the
eflects of that unhappy inheritance continue to
spread beyond our calculation. This is only one
example of the law by which human lives are
linked together; another example of what we com-
plain of when we point to our pauperism, to the
brutal ignorance of multitudes among our fellow-
countrymen, to the weight of taxation laid on us
by blamable wars, to the wasteful channels made
for the public money, to the expense and trouble
of getting justice, and call these the eflects of bad
rule. This is the law that we all bear the yoke
of, — the law of no man's making, and which no
man can undo. Everybody now stes an example
of it in the case of Ireland. We who are living
now are suff'erers by the wrong-doing of those who
lived before us; we are the sufferers by each
other's wrong-doing; and the children who come
after ua are and will be sufferers from the same
causes. Will any man say he doesn't care for
that law — it is nothing to him — what he wants
is to better himself? With what face then will
he complain of any injury ? It he says that in
politics or in any sort of social action he will not
330 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
care to know what are likely to be the conse-
quences to others besides himself, he is defending
the very worst doings that have brought about his
discontent. He might as well say that there is
no better rule needful for men than that each
should tug and drive for what will please him,
without caring how that tugging will act on the
fine wide-spread network of society in which he is
fast meshed. If any man taught that as a doc-
trine, we should know him for a fool. But there
are men who act upon it; every scoundrel, for
example, whether he is a rich religious scoundrel
who lies and cheats on a large scale, and will per-
haps come and ask you to send him to Parliament,
or a poor pocket-picking scoundrel, who will steal
your loose pence while you are listening round the
platform. None of us are so ignorant as not to
know that a society, a nation, is held together by
just the opposite doctrine and action, — by the
dependence of men on each other and the sense
they have of a common interest in preventing in-
jury. And we working-men are, I think, of all
classes the last that can afford to forget this ; for
if we did we should be much like sailors cutting
away the timbers of our own ship to warm our
grog with. For what else is the meaning of our
trades-unions ? What else is the meaning of every
flag we carry, every procession we make, every
crowd we collect for the sake of making some pro-
test on behalf of our body as receivers of wages,
if not this : that it is our interest to stand by each
other, and that this being the common interest, no
one of us will try to make a good bargain for him-
self without considering what will be good for his
fellows ? And every member of a union believes
ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 331
that the wider he can spread his union, the
stronger and surer will be the effect of it. So I
think I shall be borne out in saying that a work-
ing-man who can put two and two together, or
take three from four and see what will be the re-
mainder, can understand that a society, to be well
off, must be made up chiefly of men who consider
the general good as well as their own.
Well, but taking the world as it is — and this
is one way we must take it when we want to find
out how it can be improved — no society is made
np of a single class : society stands before us like
that wonderful piece of life, the human body,
with all its various parts depending on one another,
aud with a terrible liability to get wrong because
of that delicate dependence. We all know how
many diseases the human body is apt to suffer
from, and how difficult it is even for the doctors
to find out exactly where the seat or beginning of
the disorder is. That is because the body is made
up of so mauy various parts, all related to each
other, or likely all to feel the effect if any one of
them goes wrong. It is somewhat the same with
our old nations or societies. No society ever stood
long in the world without getting to be composed
of different classes. Now, it is all pretence to
say that there is no such thing as class interest.
It is clear that if any particular number of men
get a particular benefit from any existing institu-
tion, they are likely to band together, in order to
keep up that benefit and increase it, until it is
perceived to be unfair and injurious to another
large number, who get knowledge and strength
enough to set up a resistance. And this, again,
has been part of the history of every great society
332 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT.
since historj b^an. Bat the simple reason far
this being, that any large body of men is likely to
have more of stupidity, narrowness, and greed
than of far-sightedness and generosity, it is plain
that the number who resist unfairness and injury
are in danger of becoming injurious in their turn.
And in this way a justifiable resistance has become
a damaging convulsion, making everything worse
instead of better. This has been seen so often that
we ought to profit a little by the experience. So
long as there is selfishness in men ; so long as they
have not found out for themselves institutions
which express and carry into practice the truth,
that the highest interest of mankind must at last
be a common and not a divided interest ; so long
as the gradual operation of steady causes has not
made that truth a part of every man's knowledge
and feeling, just as we now not only know that it
is good for our health to be cleanly, but feel that
cleanliness is only another word for comfort, which
is the under side or lining of all pleasure, — so
long, I say, as men wink at their own knowing-
ness, or hold their heads high because thev have
got an advantage over their fellows, so long class
interest will be in danger of making itself felt
injuriously. No set of men will get any sort of
power without being in danger of wanting more
than their right share. But, on the other hand,
it is just as certain that no set of men will get
angry at having less than their right share, and
set up a claim on tliat ground, without falling into
just the same danger of exacting too much, and
exacting it in wrong ways. It 's human nature
we have got to work with all round, and nothing
else. That seems like saying something very
ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 333
commonplace, — nay, obvious; aa if one should
say that where there are hands there are moutha
Yet, to hear a good deal of the speechifying and to
see a. good deal of the action that go forward, one
might suppose it was forgotten.
But I come back to this : that, in our old so-
ciety, there are old institutions, and among them
the various distinctions and inherited advantages
of classes, which have shaped themselves along
with all the wonderful, slow-growing system of
things made up of our laws, our commerce, and
our stores of all sorts, whether in material objects,
such as buildings and machinery, or in knowledge,
such as scientific thought and professional skill.
Just as in that case I spoke of before, the irriga-
tion of a country, which must absolutely have ita
water distributed or it will bear no crop ; there are
the old channels, the old banks, and the old pumps,
which must be used as they are until new and
better have beeu prepared, or the structure of the
old has been gradually altered. But it would be
fool's work to batter down a pump only because a
better might be made, when you had no machin-
ery ready for a new one i it would be wicked work,
if villages lost their crops by it. Now the only
safe way by which society can be steadily improved
and our worst evils reduced, is not by any attempt
to do away directly with the actually existing
class distinctions and advantages, as if every-
body could have the same sort of work, or lead
the same sort of life (which none of my hearers
are stupid enough to suppose), but by the turning
of class interests into class functions or duties.
What I mean is, that each class should be urged
by the surrounding conditions to perform its par-
334 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT.
ticular work under the strong pressure of responsi-
bility to the nation at large ; that our public afifairs
should be got into a state in which there should
be no impunity for foolish or faithless conduct
In this way the public judgment would sift out
incapability and dishonesty from posts of high
charge, and even personal ambition would necessa-
rily become of a worthier sort, since the desires of
the most seltish men must be a good deal shaped
by the opinions of those around them ; and for one
person to put on a cap and bells, or to go about
dishonest or paltry ways of getting rich that he
may spend a vast sum of money in having more
finery than his neighbours, he must be pretty sure
of a crowd who will applaud him. Now, changes
can only be good in proportion as they help to
bring about this sort of result; in proportion as
they put knowledge in the place of ignorance, and
fellow-feeling in the place of selfishness. In the
course of that substitution class distinctions must
inevitably change their character, and represent
the varying duties of men, not their varying in-
terests. But this end will not come by impa-
tience. " Day will not break the sooner because
we get up before the twilight. " Still less will
it come by mere undoing, or change merely as
change. And moreover, if we believed that it
would be unconditionally hastened by our getting
the franchise, we should be what I call supersti-
tious men, believing in magic, or the production
of a result by hocus-pocus. Our getting the fran-
chise will greatly hasten that good end in propor-
tion only as every one of us has the knowledge,
the foresight, the conscience, that will make him
well-judging and scrupulous in the use of it The
ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 335
nature ot things in this world hag been deterioined
for us beforehand, and in such a way that no ship
can be expected to sail well on a difficult voyage,
and reach the right port, unless it is well manned :
the nature of the winds and the waves, of the
timbers, the sails, and the cordage, will not ac-
comiuodate itself to drunken, mutinous sailors.
You will not suspect me of wanting to preach
any cant to you, or of joining in the pretence that
everything is in a fine way, and need not be made
better. What I am striving to keep in our minds
is the care, the precaution, with which we should
go about making things better, so that the public
order may not he destroyed, so that no fatal shock
may be given to this society of ours, this living
body in which our lives are bound up. After the
Keform Bill o£ 1832 I was in an election riot,
which showed me clearly, on a small scale, what
public disorder must always be ; and I have never
forgotten that the riot was brought about chiefly
by the agency of dishonest men who professed to
be on the people's aide. Now, the danger hanging
over change is great, just in proportion as it tends
to produce such disorder by giving any large num-
ber of ignorant men, whose notions of what is
good are of a low and brutal sort, the belief that
they have got power into their hands, and may do
pretty much as they like. If any one can look
round ua and say that he sees no signs ot any such
danger now, and that our national condition is
running along like a clear broadening stream, safe
not to get choked with mnd, I call him a cheerful
man. Perhaps he does his own gardening, and
seldom takes exercise tar away from home. To
U8 who have no gardens, and often walk abroad, it
336 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOX
is plain that we can never get into a bit of a crowd
but we must rub clothes with a set of roughs, who
have the worst vices of the worst rich, — who are
gamblers, sots, libertines, knaves, or else mere
sensual simpletons and victims. They are the
ulgy crop that has sprung up while the stewards
have been sleeping ; they are the multiplying brood
begotten by parents who have been left without
all teaching save that of a too craving body, with-
out all well-being save the fading delusions of
drugged beer and gin. They are the hideous mar-
gin of society, at one edge drawing toward it the
undesigning ignorant poor, at the other darkening
imperceptibly into the lowest criminal class.
Here is one of the evils which cannot be got rid of
quickly, and against which any of us who have got
sense, decency, and instruction have need to watch.
That these degraded fellow-men could really get
the mastery in a persistent disobedience to the
laws and in a struggle to subvert order, I do not
believe ; but wretched calamities must come from
the very beginning of such a struggle, and the
continuance of it would be a civil war, in which
the inspiration on both sides might soon cease to
be even a false notion of good, and might become
the direct savage impulse of ferocity. We have
all to see to it that we do not help to rouse what
I may call the savage beast in the breasts of our
generation, — that we do not help to poison the
nation's blood, and make richer provision for bes-
tiality to come. We know well enough that oppres-
sors have sinned in this way, — that oppression
has notoriously made men mad ; and we are deter-
mined to resist oppression. But let us, if possible,
show that we can keep sane in our resistance, and
ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 337
shape our means more and more reasonably toward
the least harmful, and therefore the speediest,
attainment of our end. Let us. I say, show that
oar spirits are too strong to be driven mad, but can
keep that sober determination which alone gives
mastery over the adaptation of means. And a
first guarantee of this sanity will be to act as if we
understood that the fundamental duty of a govern-
ment is to preserve order, to enforce obedience of
the laws. It haa been held hitherto that a man
can be depended on as a guardian of order only
when he has much money and comfort to lose.
But a better state of things would be, that men
who had little money and not much comfort should
still be guardians of order, because they had sense
to see that disorder would do no good, and had a
heart of Justice, pity, and fortitude, to keep them
from making more misery only because they felt
some misery themselves. There are thousands of
artisans who have already shown this fine spirit,
and have endured much with patient heroism. If
such a spirit spread, and penetrated us all, we
should soon become the masters of the country in
the best sense and to the best ends. For, the
public order being preserved, there can be no gov-
ernment in future that will not be determined by
our insistence on our fair and practicable demands.
It is only by disorder that our demands will be
choked, that we shall find ourselves lost among a
brutal rabble, with all the intelligence of the
country opposed to us, and see government in the
shape of guns that will sweep us down in the igno-
ble martyrdom of fools.
It has been a too common notion that to insist
much on the preservation of order is the part of a
338 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
selfish aristocracy and a selfish commercial class,
because among these, in the nature of things, have
been found the opponents of change. I am a Radi-
cal ; and what is more, I am not a Radical with a
title, or a French cook, or even an entrance into
fine society. I expect great changes, and I desire
them. But I don't expect them to come in a
hurry, by mere inconsiderate sweeping. A Her-
cules with a big besom is a fine thing for a filthy
stable, but not for weeding a seed-bed, where his
besom would soon make a barren floor.
That is old-fashioned talk, some one may say.
We know all that.
Yes, when things are put in an extreme way,
most people think they know them ; but, after all,
they are comparatively few who see the small de-
grees by which those extremes are arrived at, or
have the resolution and self-control to resist the
little impulses by which they creep on surely to-
ward a fatal end. Does anybody set out meaning
to ruin himself, or to drink himself to death, or
to waste his life so that he becomes a despicable
old man, a superannuated nuisance, like a fly in
winter. Yet there are plenty, of whose lot this
is the pitiable story. Well now, supposing us
all to have the best intentions, we working-men,
as a body, run some risk of bringing evil on the
nation in that unconscious manner — half huiTy-
ing, half pushed in a jostling march toward an end
we are not thinking of. For just as there are
many things which we know better and feel much
more strongly than the richer, softer-handed classes
can know or feel them ; so there are many things
— many precious benefits — which we, by the very
fact of our privations, our lack of leisure and in-
ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 339
Btruction, are not so likely to be aware of and take
into our account. Those precious benefits form a
chief part of what I may call the common estate of
society; a wealth over and above buildings, ma-
chinery, produce, shipping, and so on, though
closely connected with these; a wealth of a more
delicate kind, that we may more unconsciously
bring into danger, doing harm and not knowing
that we do it- I mean that treasure of knowledge,
science, poetry, refinement of thought, feeling,
and manners, great memories and the interpreta-
tion of great records, which is carried on from the
minds of one generation to the minds of another.
This is something distinct from the indulgences of
luxury and the pursuit of vain finery; and one of
the hardships in the lot of working-men is that
they have been for the most part shut out from
sharing in this treasure. It can make a man's life
very great, very full of delight, though he has no
smart furniture and no horses : it also yields a
great deal of discovery that corrects error, and of
invention that lessens bodily pain, and must at
least make life easier for all.
Now the security of this treasure demands, not
only the preservation of order, but a certain pa-
tience on our part with many institutions and
facts of various kinds, especially touching the
accumulation of wealth, which from the light we
stand in, we are more likely to discern the evil
than the good of. It is constantly the task of
practical wisdom not to say, " This is good, and I
will have it, ' hut to say, " This is the less of two
unavoidable evils, and I will bear it." And this
treasure of knowledge, which consists in the fine
activity, the exalted vision of many minds, ia
340 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
bound up at present with conditions which have
much evil in them. Just as in the case of mate-
rial wealth and its distribution we are obliged to
take the selfishness and weaknesses of human nature
into account, and however we insist that men
might act better, are forced, unless we are fanati-
cal simpletons, to consider how they are likely to
act ; so in this matter of the wealth that is carried
in men's minds, we have to reflect that the too
absolute predominance of a class whose wants have
been of a common sort, who are chiefly struggling
to get better and more food, clothing, shelter, and
bodily recreation, may lead to hasty measures for
the sake of having things more fairly shared,
which, even if they did not fail of their object,
would at last debase the life of the nation. Do
anything which will throw the classes who hold
the treasures of knowledge — nay, I may say, the
treasures of refined needs — into the background,
cause them to withdraw from public afifairs, stop
too suddenly any of the sources by which their
leisure and ease are furnished, rob them of the
chances by which they may be influential and pre-
eminent, and you do something as short-sighted as
the acts of France and Spain when in jealousy and
wrath, not altogether unprovoked, they drove from
among them races and classes that held the tradi-
tions of handicraft and agriculture. You injure
your own inheritance and the inheritance of your
children. You may truly say that this which I
call the common estate of society has been any-
thing but common to you ; but the same may be
said, by many of us, of the sunlight and the air,
of the sky and the fields, of parks and holiday
games. Nevertheless, that these blessings exist
ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT, 34i
makes life worthier to us, and urges us the more
to energetic, likely means of getting our share in
them ; and I say, let us watch carefully, lest we
do anything tu lessen this treasure which is held
in the minds of men, while we exert ourselves,
first of all, and to the very utmost, that we and
our children may share in all its heneBts. Yes;
exert ourselves to the utmost, to break the yoke of
ignorance. It we demand more leisure, more ease
in our lives, let us show that we don't deserve the
reproach of wanting to shirk that industry which,
in some form or other, every man, whether rich or
poor, should feel himself as much bound to as he
is bound to decency. Let us show that we want
to have some time and strength left to us, that we
may use it, not for brutal indulgence, but for the
rational exercise of the faculties which make us
men. Without this no political measures can
benefit us. No political institution will alter the
nature of Ignorance, or hinder it from producing
vice and misery. Let Ignorance start how it will,
it must run the same round of low appetites, pov-
erty, slavery, and superstition. Some of us know
this well, — nay, I will say, feel it, — for knowl-
edge of this kind cuts deep ; and to us it is one of
the most painful facts belonging to our condition
that there are numbers of our fellow-workmen who
are so far from feeling in the same way, that they
never use the imperfect opportunities already
offered them for giving their children some school-
ing, hut turn their little ones of tender age into
bread-winners, often at cruel tasks, exposed to the
horrible infection of childish vice. Of course, the
causes of these hideous things go a long way back.
Parents' misery has made parents' wickedness.
342 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
But we who are still blessed with the hearts of
fathers and the consciences of men, — we who have
some knowledge of the curse entailed on broods of
creatures in human shape, whose enfeebled bodies
and dull perverted minds are mere centres of un-
easiness in whom even appetite is feeble and joy
impossible, — I say we are bound to use all the
means at our command to help in putting a stop
to this horror. Here, it seems to me, is a way in
which we may use extended co-operation among us
to the most momentous of all purposes, and make
conditions of enrolment that would strengthen all
educational measures. It is true enough that there
is a low sense of parental duties in the nation at
large, and that numbers who have no excuse in
bodily hardship seem to think it a light thing to
beget children, to bring human beings with all
their tremendous possibilities into this difficult
world, and then take little heed how they are dis-
ciplined and furnished for the perilous journey
they are sent on without any asking of their own.
This is a sin, shared in more or less by all classes ;
but there are sins which, like taxation, fall the
heaviest on the poorest, and none have such gall-
ing reasons as we working-men to try and rouse to
the utmost the feeling of responsibility in fathers
and mothers. We have been urged into co-opera-
tion by the pressure of common demands. In war
men need each other more ; and where a given
point has to be defended, fighters inevitably find
themselves shoulder to shoulder. So fellowship
grows, so grow the rules of fellowship, which
gradually shape themselves to thoroughness as the
idea of a common good becomes more complete.
We feel a right to say, If you will be one of us,
ADDRESS TO WOEKING-MIN, BY FELIX HOLT. 343
you must make such and such a contribution, you
must renounce such and such a separate advantage,
you must set your face against such and such an
infringement. If we have any false ideas about
our common good, our rules will be wrong, and
we aliall be co-operating to dumage each other.
But, now, here is a part of our good, without
which everything else we strive for will be worth-
less, — I mean the rescue of our children. Let ua
demand from the members of our unions that they
fulfil their duty as parents in this definite matter,
which rules can reach. Let us demand that they
send their children to school, so as not to go on
recklessly, breeding a moral pestilence among ua,
just as strictly as we demand that they pay their
contributions to a common fund, understood to
be for a common benefit. While we watch our
public men, let us watch one another as to this
duty, which is also public, and more momentous
even than obedience to sanitary regulations. While
we resolutely declare against the wickedness in
high places, let us set ourselves also against the
wickedness in low places, not quarrelling which
came first, or which is the worse of the two, — ^not
trying to settle the miserable precedence of plague
or famine, but insisting unflinchingly on remedies
once ascertained, and summoning those who hold
the treasure of knowledge to remember that they
hold it iu trust, and that with them lies the task
of searching for new remedies, and finding the
right methods of applying them.
To find right remedies and right methods. Here
is the great function of knowledge: here the life
of one man may make a fresh era straight away,
in which a sort of sufTeriug that has existed shall
344 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
exist no more. For the thousands of years down
to the middle of the sixteenth century that human
limbs had been hacked and amputated, nobody
knew how to stop the bleeding except by searing
the ends of the vessels with red-hot iron. But
then came a man named Ambrose Par^, and said,
" Tie up the arteries ! " That was a fine word to
utter. It contained the statement of a method, —
a plan by which a particular evil was forever
assuaged. Let us try to discern the men whose
words carry that sort of kernel, and choose such
men to be our guides and representatives, — not
choose platform swaggerers, who bring us nothing
but the ocean to make our broth with.
To get tlie chief power into the hands of the
wisest, which means to get our life regulated
according to the truest principles mankind is in
possession of, is a problem as old as the very
notion of wisdom. The solution comes slowly,
because men collectively can only be made to
embrace principles, and to act on them, by the
slow stupendous teaching of the world's events.
Men will go on planting potatoes, and nothing else
but potatoes, till a potato disease comes and forces
them to find out tlie advantage of a varied crop.
Selfishness, stupidity, sloth, persist in trying to
adapt the world to their desires, till a time comes
when the world manifests itself as too decidedlv
inconvenient to them. Wisdom stands outside of
man and urges itself upon him, like the marks of
the changing seasons, before it finds a home within
him, directs his actions, and from the precious
effects of obedience begets a corresponding love.
But while still outside of us, wisdom often looks
terrible, and wears strange forms, wrapped in the
ADDRESS TO WORKING-MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 345
changing conditions of & struggling world. It
wears now the form of wants and juat demands in
a great multitude of British meu: wants and de-
mands urged into existence by the forces of a
maturing world. And it is in virtue of this — in
virtue of this presence of wisdom on our side as a
mighty fact, physical and moral, which must enter
into and shape the thoughts and actions of man-
kind — that we working-men have obtained the
suffrage. Not because we are an excellent multi-
tude, but because we are a needy multitude.
But now, for our own part, we have seriously to
consider this outside wisdom which lies in the
supreme unalterable nature of things, and watch
to give it a home within us and oljey it. If the
claims of the unendowed multitude of working-
men hold within them principles which must
shape the future, it is not less true that the en-
dowed classes, in their inheritance from the past,
hold the precious material without which no
worthy, noble future cau be moulded. Many of
the highest uses oE life are in their keeping ; and
if privilege has often been abused, it has also been
the nurse of excellenea Here again we have to
submit ourselves to the great law of inheritance.
If we quarrel with the way in which the labours
and earnings of the past have been preserved and
handed down, we are just as bigoted, just as nar-
row, just as wanting in that religion which keeps
an open ear and an obedient mind to the teachings
of fact, as we accuse those of being, who quarrel
with the new truths and new needs which are dis-
closed in the present. The deeper insight we get
into the causes of human trouble, and the ways by
which men are made better and happier, the less
346 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
we shall be inclined to the unprofitable spirit
and practice of reproaching classes as such in
a wholesale fashion. Not all the evils of our
condition are such as we can justly blame others
for; and, I repeat, many of them are such as no
changes of institutions can quickly remedy. To
discern between the evils that energy can remove
and the evils that patience must bear, makes the
diflference between manliness and childishness, be-
tween good sense and folly. And more than that,
without such discernment, seeing that we have
grave duties toward our own body and the country
at large, we can hardly escape acts of fatal rashness
and injustice.
I am addressing a mixed assembly of workmen,
and some of you may be as well or better fitted
than I am to take up this office. But they will
not think it amiss in me that I have tried to bring
together the considerations most likely to be of
service to us in preparing ourselves for the use of
our new opportunities. I have avoided touching
on special questions. The best help toward judg-
ing well on these is to approach them in the
right temper without vain expectation, and with a
resolution which is mixed with temperance.
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AUTHORSHIP.
To lay down in the shape of practical moral rules
courses of conduct only to be made real by the
rarest states of motive and disposition, tends not to
elevate, but to degrade the general standard, by
turning that rare attainment from an object of
admiration into an impossible prescription, against
which the average nature first rebels and then
flings out ridicule. It is for art to present images
of a lovelier order than the actual, gently winning
the affections, and so determining the taste. But
in any rational criticism of the time which is meant
to guide a practical reform, it is idle to insist that
action ought to be this or that, without considering
how far the outward conditions of such change are
present, even supposing the inward disposition
towards it. Practically, we must be satisfied to
aim at something short of perfection, — and at
something very much further off it in one case
than in another. While the fundamental concep-
tions of morality seem as stationary through ages
as the laws of life, so that a moral manual written
eighteen centuries ago still admonishes us that we
are low in our attainments, it is quite otherwise
with the degree to which moral conceptions have
penetrated the various forms of social activity, and
made what may be called the special conscience of
350 ESSAYS OF 0E0E6E EUOT.
each calling, art, or industiy. While on some
points of social duty public opinion has reached a
tolerably high standard, on others a public opinion
is not yet bom ; and there are even some functions
and practices with r^ard to which men far above
the line in honourableness of nature feel hardly any
scrupulosity, though their consequent behaviour is
easily shown to be as injurious as bribery, or any
other slowly poisonous procedure which degrades
the social vitality.
Among those callings which have not yet acquired
anything near a full-grown conscience in the public
mind is Authorship. Yet the changes brought
about by the spread of instruction and the conse-
quent struggles of an uneasy ambition are, or at
least might well be, forcing on many minds the
need of some regulating principle with regard to
the publication of intellectual products, which
would override the rule of the market, — a princi-
ple, that is, which should be derived from a fixing
of the author's vocation according to those charac-
teristics in which it differs from the other bread-
winning professions. Let this be done, if possible,
without any cant, which would cany the subject
into Utopia, away from existing needs. The guid-
ance wanted is a clear notion of what should justify
men and women in assuming public authorship, and
of the way in which they should be determined by
what is usually called success. But the forms of
authorship must be distinguished ; journalism, for
example, carrying a necessity for that continuous
production which in other kinds of writing is pre-
cisely the evil to be fought against, and judicious
careful compilation, which is a great public service,
holding in its modest diligence a guarantee against
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those deductions of vanity and idleness which draw
many a young gentleman into reviewing, instead of
the sorting and copying which his small talents
could not rise to with any vigor and completeness.
A manufacturer goes on producing calicoes as long
and as fast as he can find a mnrket for them ; and in
obeying this indication of demand he gives his fac-
tory its utmost usefulness to the world in general
and to himself iu particular. Another manufac-
turer buys a new invention of some light kind
likely to attract the public fancy, is successful in
finding a multitude who will give their testers for
the transiently desirable commodity, and before the
fashion is out, pockets a considerable sum : the com-
modity was coloured with n green which had arsenic
in it that damaged the factory workers and the pur-
chasers. What then ? These, he contends (or does
not know or care to contend), are superficial effects,
which it is folly to dwell upon while we have epi-
demic diseases and bad government.
The first manufacturer we will suppose blame-
less. Is an author simply on a par with him, as to
the rules of production ?
The author's capital is his brain-power, — power
of invention, power of writing. The manufacturer'a
capitid, in fortunate cases, is being continually
reproduced and increased. Here is the first grand
difference between the capital which is turned into
calico and the brain capital which is turned into
literature. The calico scarcely varies in appropri-
ateness of quality; no consumer is in danger of
getting too much of it, and neglecting his boots, hats,
and fianael shirts in consequence. Tliat there should
be large quantities of the same sort iu the calico
manufacture is an advantage : the sameness is desir-
352 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
able, and nobody is likely to roll his person in so
many folds of calico as to become a mere bale of
cotton goods, and nullify his senses of hearing and
touch, while his morbid passion for Manchester
shirtings makes him still cry " More ! " The wise
manufacturer gets richer and richer, and the con-
sumers he supplies have their real wants satisfied
and no more.
Let it be taken as admitted that all legitimate
social activity must be beneficial to others besides
the agent. To write prose or verse as a private
exercise and satisfaction is not social activity ;
nobody is culpable for this any more than for learn-
ing other people's verse by heart, if he does not
neglect his proper business in consequence. If
the exercise made him sillier or secretly more self-
satisfied, that, to be sure, would be a roundabout way
of injuring society ; for though a certain mixture of
silliness may lighten existence, we have at present
more than enough.
But man or woman who publishes writings inevi-
tably assumes the office of teacher or influencer of
the public mind. Let him protest as he will that
he only seeks to amuse, and has no pretension to do
more than while away an hour of leisure or weari-
ness, — " the idle singer of an empty day," — he can
no more escape influencing the moral taste, and with
it the action of the intelligence, than a setter of
fashions in furniture and dress can till the shops
with his designs and leave the garniture of persons
and houses unaffected by his industry.
For a man who has a certain gift of writing to
say, " I will make the most of it while the public
likes my wares, as long as the market is open and
I am able to supply it at a money profit, such profit
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 353
being the sign of liking," he should have a belief
that his wares have nothing akin to the arsenic
green in them, and also that his continuous supply
is secure from a degradation in quality which the
habit of consumption encouraged in tlie buyers may
hinder them from marking their sense of by rejec-
tion, 90 that they complain, but pay, and read while
they complain. Unless he has that belief, he is on
a level with the manufacturer who gets rich by
fancy wares coloured with arsenic greeu. He really
cares for nothing but his income. He carries on
authorship on the principle of the gin-palace ; and
bad literature of the sort called amusing is spiritual
gin.
A writer capable of being popular can only escape
this social culpability by first of all getting a pro-
found sense that literature is good for nothing if it
is not admirably good ; he must detest bad literature
too heartily to be indifferent about producing it if
only other people don't detest it. And if he has
this sign of the divine afflatus within him, he must
make up his mind that he must not pursue author-
ship as a vocation with a trading determination to
get rich by it. It is in the highest sense lawful for
him to get as good a price as he honourably can for
the best work he is capable of; but not for him to
force or hurry his production, or even do over again
what has already been done, either by himself or
others, so as to render his work no real contribu-
tion, for the sake of bringing up his income to the
fancy pitch. An author who would keep a pure and
noble conscience, and with that a developing instead
of degenerating intellect and taste, must cast out of
his aims the aim to be rich. And therefore he must
keep his expenditure low, — he must make for him-
354 ESSAYS OF GEOEGS ELIOT.
self no dire necessity to earn sums in order to pay
bills.
In opposition to this, it is common to cite Walter
Scott's case, and cry, " Would the world have got as
much innocent (and therefore salutary) pleasure out
of Scott, if he had not brought himself under the
pressure of money-need ? " I think it would — and
more; but since it is impossible to prove what would
have been, I confine myself to replying that Scott
was not justified in bringing himself into a position
where severe consequences to others depended on
his retaining or not retaining his mental competence.
Still less is Scott to be taken as an example to be
followed in this matter, even if it were admitted
that money-need served to press at once the best
and the most work out of him ; any more than a
great navigator who has brought his ship to port in
spite of having taken a wrong and perilous route, is
to be followed as to his route by navigators who are
not yet ascertained to be great
But after the restraints and rules which must
guide the acknowledged author, whose power of
making a real contribution is ascertained, comes the
consideration, How or on what principle are we to
find a check for that troublesome disposition to
authorship arising from the spread of what is called
Education, which tumes a growing rush of vanity
and ambition into this current? The well-taught
— an increasing number — are almost all able to
write essays on given themes, which demand new
periodicals to save them from lying in cold obstruc-
tion. The ill-taught — also an increasing number
— read many books, seem to themselves able to
write others surprisingly like what they read, and
probably superior, since the variations are such as
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355
please their own fancy, and sncli as they would have
recoramended to their favourite authors : these ill-
taught persona are perhaps idle and want to give
themselves " an object ; " or they are short of money,
and feel disinclined to get it by a comraonet kind of
work ; or they find a facihty in putting sentences
together which gives them more than a suspicion
that they have genius, which, if not very cordially
believed in by private confidants, will be recognized
by an impartial public ; or, finally, they observe that
writing is sometimes well paid, and sometimes a
ground of fame or distinction, and without any use
of punctilious logic, they conclude to become writers
themselves.
As to these ill-taught persons, whatever medicines
of a spiritual sort can be found good against mental
emptiness and indation, such medicines are needful
for thfm. The contempt of the world for their pro-
ductions only comes after their disease has wrought
its worst effects. But what is to be said to the well-
taught, who have such an alarming equality in their
power of writing " like a scholar and a gentlemen ? "
Perhaps they too can only be cured by the medicine
of higher ideals in social duty, and by a fuller rep-
resentation to themselves of the processes by which
the general culture is furthered or impeded.
JUDGMENTS OF AUTHORS.
In endeavouring to estimate a remarkable writer
who aimed at more than temporary influence, we
have first to consider what was his individual con-
tribution to the spiritual wealth of mankind. Had
he a new conception? Did he animate long-known
but neglected truths with new vigour, and cast fresh
356 SSaATS OV GIOROl ELIOT.
light on their relation to other admitted . trutha f
Did he impregnate any ideas with a fresh store of
emotion, and in this way enlarge the area of moral
sentiment 7 Did he, hj a wise emphasis here, and a
wise disregard there, give a more useful or beautiful
proportion to aims or motives? And even where
his thinking was most mixed with the sort of mis-
take which is obvious to the majority, as well as
that which can only be discerned by the instructed,
or made manifest by the progress of things, has it
that salt of a noble enthusiasm which should rebuke
our critical discrimination if its correctness is in-
spired with a less admirable habit of feeling ?
This is not the common or easy course to take in
estimating a modem writer. It requires considerable
knowledge of what he has himself done, as well as
of what others have done before him, or what they
were doing contemporaneously ; it requires . deliber-
ate reflection as to the degree in which our own
prejudices may hinder us from appreciating the
intellectual or moral bearing of what on a first view
offends us. An easier course is to notice some salient
mistakes, and take them as decisive of the writer's
incompetence ; or to find out that something appar-
ently much the same as what he has said in some
connection not clearly ascertained had been said
by somebody else, though without great effect, until
this new effect of discrediting the other's originality
had shown itself as an adequate final cause ; or to
pronounce from the point of view of individual taste
that this writer for whom regard is claimed is repul-
sive, wearisome, not to be borne except by those dull
persons who are of a different opinion.
Elder writers who have passed into classics were
doubtless treated in this easy way when they were
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK.
3S7
etill under the misfortune of being recent, — nay,
are still dismissed with the same rapidity of judg-
ment by daring ignorance. But people who think
that they have a reputation to lose in the matter of
knowledge liave looked into cyclopsedias and his-
tories of philosophy or literature, and possessed
themselves of the duly balanced epithets concerning
the immortals. They are not left to their own
unguided rashness, or their own nnguided pusilla-
nimity. And it is this sheeplike flock who have no
direct impressions, no spontaneous delight, no genu-
ine objection or self-confeased neutrality in relation
to the writers become classic, — it is these who are
incapable of passing a genuine judgment on the liv-
ing. Necessarily, The susceptibility they have
kept active is a susceptibility to their own reputation
for passing the right judgment, not the susceptibility
to qualities in the object of judgment Wlio learna
to discriminate shades of colour by considering what
is expected of him? The habit of expressing bor-
rowed judgments stupefies the sensibilities, which
are the only foundation of genuine judgments, just
as the constant reading and retailing of results from
other men's observations through the microscope,
without ever looking through the lena one's self, is
an instruction in some truths and some prejudices,
but is no instruction in observant susceptibility;
on the contrary, it breeds a habit of inward seeing
according to verbal statement, which dulls the power
of outward seeing according to visual evidence.
On this subject, as on so many others, it is difficult
to strike the balance between the educational needs
of passivity or receptivity, and independent selection.
We should learn nothing without the tendency to
implicit acceptance ; but there must clearly be a
358 SSSAI8 Of GBORGB SLIOT.
limit to saeh mental sabmission, else we ehould
come to a standstilL The human mind woold be
no better than a diied specimen, representing aa
unchangeable type. When the assimilation of new
matter ceases, decaj must begin. In a reasoned
self-restraining deference there is as much eneigjr
as in rebellion; but among the less capable, one
must admit that the superior energy is on the side
of the rebels. And certainl j a man who dares to
say that he finds an eminent classic feeble here,
extravagant there, and in general overrated, may
chance to give an opinion which has some genuine
discrimination in it concerning a new work or a liv-
ing thinker, — an opinion su(£ as can hardly ever be
got from the reputed judge who is a correct echo
of the most approved phrases concerning those who
have been already canonised.
STOBY-TELLINQ.
What is the best way of telling a story ? Since
the standard must be the interest of the audience,
there must be several or many good ways rather
than one best For we get interested in the stories
life presents to us through divers orders and modes
of presentation. Very commonly our first awaken-
ing to a desire of knowing a man's past or future
comes from our seeing him as a stranger in some
unusual or pathetic or humorous situation, or mani-
festing some remarkable characteristics. We make
inquiries in consequence, or we become observant
and attentive whenever opportunities of knowing
more may happen to present themselves without
our search. You have seen a refined face among the
prisoners picking tow in jail; you afterwards see
LEAVES FROM A MOTE-BOOK.
359
the same uuforgetable face in a pulpit: he must be
of dull fibre who would uot tare to know more about
a life which showed such contrasts, though he
might gather his knowledge in a fragmentary and
unehroaological way.
Again, we have heard much, or at least something
uot quite common, about a man whom we have
never seen, and hence we look round with curiosity
when we are told that he is present ; whatever he
says or does before us is charged with a meaning
due to our previous hearsay knowledge about him,
gathered either from dialogue of which he was
exprwssly and emphatically the subject, or from
incidental remark, or from general report either in
or out of print.
These indirect ways of arriving at knowledge are
always the most stirring even in relation to imper-
sonal subjects. To see a chemical experiment gives
an attractiveness to a definition of chemistry, and
tilla it with a significance which it would never
have had without the pleasant shock of an unusual
sequence, such as the transformation of a solid into
gas, and vice versa. To see a word for the first time
either as substantive or adjective in a connection
where we care about knowing its complete mean-
ing, is the way to vivify its meaning in our recol-
lection. Curiosity becomes the more eager from
the incompleteness of the first information. More-
over, it is in this way that memory works in its
incidental revival of events ; some salient experi-
ence appears in inward vision, and in consequence
the antecedent facts are retraced from what is
regarded as the beginning of the episode in which
that experience made a more or less strikingly
memorable part. "Ah! I remember addressing
36o 188AY8 Of CaSORGI ELIOI.
the mob from the hustings at Westaninstery-^jcta
would n't have thought that I could ev^ev have been
in such a position. Well, how I came there was
in this waj;'' and then follows a retrospeetive
narration.
The modes of telling a story founded on these
processes of outward and inward life derive their
effectiveness from the superior mastery of images
and pictures in grasping the attention, — or, one
might say with more fundamental accuracy, from
the fact that our earliest, strongest impressions, our
most intimate convictions, are simply images added
to more or less of sensation. These are the {nrimitive
instruments of thought Hence it is not surprising
that early poetry took this way, — telling a daring
deed, a glorious achievement, without caring for
what went before. The desire for orderly narration
is a later, more reflective birth. The presence of
the Jack in the box afEects every child : it is the
more reflective lad, the miniature philosopher, who
wants to know how he got there.
The only stories life presents to us in an orderly
way are those of our autobiography, or the career of
our companions from our childhood upwards, or per-
haps of our own children. But it is a great art to
make a connected strictly relevant narrative of such
careers as we can recount from the beginning. In
these cases the sequence of associations is almost
sure to overmaster the sense of proportion. Such
narratives ab ovo are summer's-day stories for happy
loungers ; not the cup of self-forgetting excitement
to the busy who can snatch an hour of entertainment
But the simple opening of a story with a date and
necessary account of places and people, passing on
quietly towards the more rousing elements of nar*
LEAVES TROM A NOTE-BOOK,
361
rative and dramatic presentation, without need of
retrospect, has its advantages, which have to be
measured by the nature of the story. Spirited nar-
rative, without more than a touch of dialogue here
and there, may be made eminently interesting, and
is suited to the novelette. Examples of its charm
are seen in the short tales in which the French
have a mastery never reached by the English, who
usually demand coarser flavours than are given by
that delightful gayety which is well described by
La Fontaine ^ as not anything that provokes fits of
laughter, but a certain charm, an agreeable mode ot
handling, which lends attractiveness to all subjects,
even the most serious. And it is this sort of gayety
which plays around the best French novelettes.
But the opening chapters o£ the " Vicar of Wake-
fiiild " are as fine as anything that can be done in
this way.
Wliy should a story not be told in the most
irregular fashion that an author's idiosyncrasy may
prompt, provided that he gives us what we can
enjoy ? The objections to Sterne's wild way of tell-
ing "Tristram Shandy" lie more solidly in the
quality of the interrupting matter than in the fact
of interruption. The dear public would do well to
reflect that they are often hored from the want of
flexibility in their own minds. They are like the
topers of " one liquor,"
HISTORIC IMAGINATION.
The exercise of a veracious imagination in his-
torical picturing seems to be capable of a development
I " Je n'appplle piia gayoti m
362 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.
that might help the judgment greatlj with r^;ard
to present and future events. By veracious imagi-
nation, I mean the working out in detail of the
various steps by which a political or social change
was reached, using all extant evidence and supply-
ing deficiencies by careful analogical creation. How
triumphant opinions originally spread ; how institu-
tions arose; what were the conditions of great
inventions, discoveries, or theoretic conceptions ;
what circumstances affecting individual lots are
attendant on the decay of long-established systems,
— all these grand elements of history require the
illumination of special imaginative treatment But
effective truth in this application of art requires
freedom from the vulgar coercion of conventional
plot, which is become hardly of higher influence on
imaginative representation than a detailed " order **
for a picture sent by a rich grocer to an eminent
painter, — allotting a certain portion of the canvas
to a rural scene, another to a fashionable group,
with a request for a murder in the middle distance,
and a little comedy to relieve it. A slight approxi-
mation to the veracious glimpses of history artisti-
cally presented, which I am indicating, but applied
only to an incident of contemporary life, is " Un
Paquet de Lettres " by Gustave Droz. For want of
such real, minute vision of how changes come about
in the past, we fall into ridiculously inconsistent
estimates of actual movements, condemning in the
present what we belaud in the past, and pronoun-
cing impossible processes that have been repeated
again and again in the historical preparation of the
very system under which we live. A false kind of
idealization dulls our perception of the meaning in
words when they relate to past events which have
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK.
363
had a glorious issue ; for lack of comparison no
warning image rises to check scorn of the very
phrases which in other associations are consecrateih
Utopian pictures help tlie reception of ideas as to
constructive results, hut hardly so much as a vivid
presentation of how results have heen actually
hrought about, especially in religious and social
change. And there is the pathos, the heroism,
often accompanying the decay and final struggle of
old systems, which has not had it« share of tragic
commemoration. What really took place in and
around Constanttne before, upon, and immediately
after his declared conversion ? Could a momentary
flash be tlirown on Eusebius in his sayings and
doings as an ordinary man in bishop's garments i
Or on JuUan and Libanius ? There has been abun-
dant writing on such great turning-points, but not
such as serves to instruct the imagination in true
comparison, I want something different from the
abstract treatment which belongs to grave history
from a doctrinal point of view, and something dif-
ferent from the schemed picturesqueness of ordinary
historical fiction. I want brief, severely conscien-
tious reproductions, in their concrete incidents, of
pregnant movements in the past.
VALUE IN ORIGINALITY.
The supremacy given in European cultures to the
literatures of Greece and Rome has had an effect
almost equal to that of a common religion in bind-
ing the Western nations together. It is foolish to
be forever complaining of the consequent uniformity,
as if there were an endless power of originality in
the human mind. Great and precious origination
964 IB84¥B Of OBOBfiB SiKnr.'
must always be eampan^dj nterand can onty
exist on c(»iditi(»i of <a wide, massive itnifonnity.
When a multitade of men have leamed to nae the
same language in speech and writing, then and then
Only can the gxeatest masters of language ansa For
in what does their mastery consist f They use words
which are already a f Midliar medium of understands^
ing and sympathy in such a way as greatly to en*
kige the understanding and sympathy. Or4[inality
of this order changes the wild grasses into world-
feeding grain. Idiosyncrasies axe pepper and spieea
of questionable aronuL
TO THE PBC^AIO ALL THINQS ABS PBOBAia
" Is the time we live in prosaic t " ^ That depends :
it must certainly be prosaic to one whose mind takes
a prosaic stand in contemplating it** ** But it is
precisely the most poetic minds that most groan
over the vulgarity of the present^ its d^;enerate
sensibility to beauty, eagerness for materialistic ex-
planation, noisy triviality.** ''Perhaps they would
have had the same complaint to make about the age
of Elizabeth, if, living then, they had fixed their
attention on its more sordid elements, or had been
subject to the grating influence of its every-day
meannesses, and had sought refuge from them in
the contemplation of whatever suited their taste in
a former age."
"DEAR RELIGIOUS LOVE."
We get our knowledge of perfect Love by glimpses
and in fragments chiefly, — the rarest only among
us knowing what it is to worship and caress, rever-
ence and cherish, divide our bread and mingle our
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 365
thoughts at one and the same time, under inspira-
tion of the same ohject. Tineat aroraas will so
often leave the fruits to which they are native and
cling elsewhere, leaving the fruit empty of all but
r structure !
WE MAKE OUR OWN PRECEDENTS.
In the times of national mixture, when modem
Europe was, as one may say. a-brewing, it was open
to a man who did not like to be judged by the
Iloman law to choose which of certain other codes
he would be tried by. So, in our own times, they who
openly adopt a higher rule than their neighbors do
thereby make act of choice as to the laws and pre-
cedents by which they shall be approved or con-
demned ; and thus it may happen that we see a man
morally pilloried for a very customary deed, and yet
having no right to complain, inasmuch as in his
foregoing deliberative course of life he had referred
himself to the tribunal of those higher conceptions,
before wliich such a deed is without question
condemn able,
BIRTH OF TOLERANCE.
ToLEHANCE first Comes through equality of strug-
gle, aa in the case of Arianism and Catholicism in
the early times, — Valens, Eastern and Arian, Val-
entinian, Western and Catholic, alike publishing
edicts of tolerance; or it comes from a common need
of relief from an oppre-ssive predominance, as when
James II. published his Act of Tolerance towards
non-Anglicans, being forced into liberality towards
the Dissenters by the need to get it for the Catholics.
Community of interest is the root of justice; com-
366 ESSAYS OF GEORGE EUOT.
munity of suffering, the root of pity ; commiinity of
joy, the root of love.
Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk
in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist
that enshrouds others.
Stmpathetio people are often incommunicative
about themselves : they give back reflected images
which hide their own depths.
The pond said to the ocean, ^ Why do you rage
so 7 The wind is not so very violent^ — nay, it is
already fallen. Look at me. I rose into no foam-
ing waves, and am already smooth again.''
FELIX QUI NON POTUIT.
Mant feel themselves very confidently on safe
groxmd when they say : It must be good for man to
know the Truth. But it is dearly not good for a
particular man to know some particular truth, as
irremediable treachery in one whom he cherishes, —
better that he should die without knowing it.
Of scientific truth, is it not conceivable that some
facts as to the tendency of things afiTecting the final
destination of the race might be more hurtful when
they had entered into the human consciousness than
they would have been if they had remained purely
external in their activity ?
DIVINE GRACE A REAL EMANATION.
There is no such thing as an impotent or neutral
deity, if the deity be really believed in, and con-
templated either in prayer or meditation. Every
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 367
object of thought reacts on the mind that conceives
it, still more on that which habitually contemplates
it. In this we may be said to solicit help from a
generalization or abstraction. Wordsworth had this
truth in his consciousness when he wrote (in the
Prelude), —
" Nor general truths, which are themselves a sort
Of elements and agents, Under-powers,
Subordinate helpers of the living mind *' —
not indeed precisely in the same relation, but with a
meaning which involves that wider moral influence.
•'A FINE EXCESS." — FEELING IS ENERGY.
One can hardly insist too much, in the present
stage of thinking, on the eflBcacy of feeling in stim-
ulating to ardent co-operation, quite apart from the
conviction that such co-operation is needed for the
achievement of the end in view. Just as hatred
will vent itself in private curses no longer believed
to have any potency, and joy, in private singing far
out among the woods and fields, so sympathetic feel-
ing can only be satisfied by joining in the action
which expresses it, though the added " Bravo ! " the
added push, the added penny, is no more than a
grain of dust on a rolling mass. When students
take the horses out of a political hero's carriage,
and draw him home by the force of their own mus-
cle, the struggle in each is simply to draw or push,
without consideration whether his place would not
be as well filled by somebody else, or whether his
one arm be really needful to the effect. It is under
the same inspiration that abundant help rushes
towards the scene of a fire, rescuing imperilled lives,
and labouring with generous rivalry in carrying
368 S884TO OF GSOBGB ILIOT.
buckets. * So the old blind Song John of Bohemia
at the battle of Orfcj begged his vassals to lead him
into the fight that he might strike a good blow,
though his own stroke, possibly fatal to himself
could n<^ turn bj a hair's breadth the imperious
course of victorir.
The question, '' Of what use is it for me to work
towards an end confessedly good ? " comes from that
sapless kind of reasoning which is fadsely taken for
a sign of supreme mental activity, but is really due
to languor, or incapability of that mental grasp
which makes objects strongly present, and to a lack
of sympathetic emotion. In the " Spanish Oypsy **
Fedalma says, —
'"The grandest deftUiI to die in viin — for Love
Qieater than sways the forces of the world " ^
referring to the image of the disciples throwing
themselves, consciously in vain, on the Boman
spears. I really believe and mean this — not as a
rule of general action, but as a possible grand in-
stance of determining energy in human sympathy,
which even in particular cases, where it has only a
magnificent futility, is more adorable, or as we say
divine, than unpitying force, or than a prudent cal-
culation of results. Perhaps it is an implicit joy in
the resources of our human nature which has stim-
ulated admiration for acts of self-sacrifice which are
vain as to their immediate end. Marcus Curtius
was probably not imagined as concluding to himself
that he and his horse would so fill up the gap as to
make a smooth terra firma. The impulse and act
^ Vide what Demosthenes 8a3r8 ("De Coronft") aboat Athens
pnrsning the same coarse, thoagh she had known from the be-
ginning that her heroic resistance woold be in vain.
LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 369
made the heroism, not the correctness of adaptation.
No doubt the passionate inspiration which prompts
and sustains a course of self-sacrificing labour in the
light of soberly estimated results gathers the high-
est title to our veneration, and makes the supreme
heroism. But the generous leap of impulse is
needed too, to swell the flood of sympathy in us
beholders, that we may not fall completely under
the mastery of calculation, which in its turn may
fail of ends for want of energy got from ardour.
We have need to keep the sluices open for possible
influxes of the rarer sort.
VOL II. — 24
THE END.
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a bios 013 111 134
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