COMMON PLACES

I. The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.

II. Liberty is the only true riches. Of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.

III. Do I not feel this from the least shadow of restraint, of obligation, of dependence? Why then do I complain? I have hadnothing to do all my life but to think, and have enjoyed the objects of thought, the sense of truth and beauty, in perfect integrity of soul. No one has said to me,Believe this, do that, say what we would have you; no one has come between me and my free-will; I have breathed the very air of truth and independence. Compared with this unbiassed, uncontrouled possession of the universe of thought and nature, what I have wanted is light in the balance, and hardly claims the tribute of a sigh. Oh! Liberty, what a mistress art thou! Have I not enjoyed thee as a bride, and drank thy spirit as of a wine-cup, and will yet do so to my latest breath!

IV. But is not Liberty dangerous, and self-will excessive? I do not think so: for those who are not governed by their own feelings are led away by prejudice or interest; and reason is a safer guide than opinion, liberty a nobler one than fear.

V. Do I see a Claude? What is there to prevent me from fixing my eye, my heart, my understanding, upon it? What sophist shall deter me from thinking it fine? What is there to make me afraid of expressing what I think? I enter into all its truth and beauty. I wonder over it, I detect each hidden grace, I revel and luxuriate in it, without any doubts or misgivings. Is not this to be master of it and of myself? But is the picture mine? No—oh! yes, ten times over!

VI. That thing,a lie, has never come near my soul. I know not what it is to fear to think or to say what I think.

VII. I am choked, pent up in any other atmosphere but this. I cannot imagine how kings and courtiers contrive to exist. I could no more live without daring to speak, to look, to feel what I thought, than I could hold in my breath for any length of time. Nor could I bear to debar others of this privilege. Were it not that the Great would play the part of slaves themselves, they would hate to be surrounded with nothing but slaves, and to see meanness and hypocrisy crawling before them, as much as we do to see a spider crawling in our path.

VIII. I never knew what it was to feel like a footman. How many lords in waiting can say as much?

IX. When I consider how little difference there is in mankind (either in body or mind) I cannot help being astonished at the airs some people give themselves.

X. I am proud up to the point of equality—every thing above or belowthatappears to me arrant impertinence or abject meanness.

XI. The ignorant and vulgar think that a man wants spirit, if he does not insult and triumph over them. This is a great mistake.

XII. For a man to be a coxcomb, shews a want of imagination. No one will ever pride himself on his beauty who has studied the head of the Antinous, or be in danger of running into the excess of the fashion, who has any knowledge of the Antique. Theidealis incompatible with personal vanity.

XIII. A scholar is like a book written in a dead language—it is not every one that can read in it.

XIV. Just as much as we see in others, we have in ourselves.

XV. A painter gives only his own character in a portrait, whether grave or gay, gross or refined, wise or foolish. Even in copying a head, there is some difficulty in making the features unlike our own. A person with a low forehead or a short chin puts a constraint upon himself in painting a high forehead or a long chin. So much has sympathy to do with the operations both of the eye and the hand, with observation and practice!

XVI. People at a play hiss an unsuccessful author or actor, as if the latter had committed some heinous crime—he has committed the greatest crime, that of setting up a superiority over us which he has failed to make good.

XVII. The rich, who do nothing themselves, represent idleness as the greatest crime. They have reason: it is necessary that some one should do something.

XVIII. What a pity that kings and great men do not write books, instead of mere authors! What superior views they must have of things, and how the world would be benefited by the communication!

XIX. The greatest proof of superiority is to bear with impertinence.

XX. No truly great man ever thought himself so.

XXI. Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary.

XXII. Abuse is an indirect species of homage.

XXIII. From the height from which the great look down on the world, all the rest of mankind seem equal.

XXIV. It is a bad style that requires frequentbreaksand marks of admiration.

XXV. It happens in conversation as in different games. One person seems to excel, till another does better, and we then think no more of the first.

XXVI. Those who can keep secrets, have no curiosity. We only wish to gain knowledge, that we may impart it.

XXVII. Genius is native to the soil where it grows—is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun—and is not a hot-house plant or an exotic.

XXVIII. All truly great works of art arenationalin their character and origin.

XXIX. People are distinguished less by a genius for any particular thing, than by a peculiar tone and manner of feeling and thinking, whatever be the subject. The same qualities of mind or characteristic excellence that a man shows in one art, he would probably have displayed in any other. I have heard Mr. Northcote say, that he thought Sir Joshua Reynolds would have written excellent genteel comedies. HisDiscoursescertainly are bland and amiable (rather than striking or original) like his pictures.

XXX. The same kind of excellence may be observed to prevail in different arts at the same period of time, as characteristic of the spirit of the age. Fielding and Hogarth were cotemporaries.

XXXI. There is an analogy in the style of certain authors to certain professions. One writes like a lawyer: it seems as if another would have made an eminent physician. Mandeville said of Addison that he was ‘a parson in a tye-wig:’ and there is something inThe Spectatorto justify this description of him.

XXXII. Salvator Rosa paints like a soldier; Nicholas Poussin like a professor at a University; Guido like a finished gentleman; Parmegiano with something of the air of a dancing master. Alas! Guido was a gamester and a madman; and Parmegiano a searcher after the philosopher’s stone. One of the happiest ideas in modern criticism was that of designating different living poets by the cupsApollo gives them to drink out of: thus Wordsworth is made to drink out of a wooden bowl, Lord Byron out of a skull chased with silver, &c.

XXXIII. Extreme impatience and irritability are often combined with a corresponding degree of indifference and indolence. When the eagerness of pursuit or the violence of opposition ceases, nothing is left to interest the mind, that has been once accustomed to a state of morbid excitement.

XXXIV. Artists and other studious professions are not happy, for this reason: they cannot enjoy mental repose. A state of lassitude and languor succeeds to that of overstrained, anxious exertion.

XXXV. It is the custom at present to exclude all but Scientific and Mechanical subjects from our fashionable Public Institutions, lest any allusions to popular sentiments or the cause of humanity should by chance creep in, to the great annoyance of the polite and well-informed part of the audience.

XXXVI. People had much rather be thought to look ill than old: because it is possible to recover from sickness, but there is no recovering from age.

XXXVII. I never knew but one person who had a passion for truth—and only one who had the same regard to the distinction between right and wrong, that others have to their own interest.

XXXVIII. Women are the sport of caprice, the slaves of custom.

XXXIX. When men are not favourites with women, it is either from habits of vulgar debauchery, or from constitutional indifference, or from an overstrained and pedantic idea of the sex, taken from books, and answering to nothing in real life.

XL. The object of books is to teach us ignorance; that is, to throw a veil over nature, and persuade us that things are not what they are, but what the writer fancies or wishes them to be.

XLI. My little boy said the other day, ‘He could not tell what to do without a book to read—he should wander about without knowing what to do with himself.’ So have I wandered about, till now, and, waking from the dream of books at last, don’t know what to do with myself. My poor little fellow! may’st thou dream long amidst thy darling books, and never wake!

XLII. Political truth is a libel; religious truth, blasphemy.

XLIII. The greatest crime in the eye of the world is to endeavour to instruct or amend it.

XLIV. Weighing remote consequences in the mind is like weighing the air in scales.

XLV. A hypocrite seems to be the only perfect character—since it embraces the extremes of what human natureis, and of what itwould be thought.

XLVI. The Scotch understanding differs from the English, as an Encyclopedia does from a circulating library. An Englishman is contented to pick up a few odds and ends of knowledge; a Scotchman is master of every subject alike. Here each individual has a particularhobbyand favourite bye-path of his own: in Scotland learning is a common hack, which every one figures away with, and uses at his pleasure.

XLVII. A misanthropic writer might be calledthe Devil’s amanuensis.

XLVIII. To be a lord, a papist, and poor, is the most enviable distinction of humanity. There is all the pride and sense of independence, irritated and strengthened by being proscribed by power, and liable to be harassed by petty daily insults from every, the meanest vassal. What a situation to make the mind recoil from the world upon itself, and to sit and brood in moody grandeur and disdain of soul over fallen splendours and present indignities! It is just the life I should like to have led.

XLIX. The tone of good company is marked by the absence of personalities. Among well-informed persons, there are plenty of topics to discuss, without giving pain to any one present—without submitting to act the part of abutt, or of that still poorer creature, the wag that plays upon him.

L. Londoners complain of the dullness of the country, and country people feel equally uncomfortable and at a loss what to do with themselves in town. The fault is neither in the town nor in the country—every one is naturally unsettled and dissatisfied without his usual resources and occupations, let them bewhatorwherethey may.

LI. Each rank in society despises that which is a step below it, and the highest looks down upon them all. To get rid of theimpertinence of artificial pretensions, we resort to nature at last. Kings, for this reason, are fond of low company; and lords marry actresses and barmaids. The Duke of York (not the present, but the late King’s brother) was at a ball at Plymouth. He danced with a Miss Byron, a very pretty girl, daughter of the admiral of that name, and aunt to our poet. But there was a Mrs. Fanning present, who was a paragon of beauty. The Duke asked, ‘Who is she?’ ‘A baker’s daughter,’ was the answer. ‘I don’t mean that; but what is she now?’—‘A broker’s wife.’ The lady did not perceive, that to a prince of the blood there was little difference between a tradesman’s wife and the daughter of a naval officer; but that the handsomest woman at a ball was an object of admiration in spite of circumstances.

LII. It has been asked, whether Lord Byron is a writer likely to live? Perhaps not: he has intensity of power, but wants distinctive character. In my opinion, Mr. Wordsworth is the only poet of the present day that is likely to live—should he ever happen to be born! But who will be the midwife to bring his works to light? It is a question whether Milton would have become popular without the help of Addison; nay, it is a question whether he is so, even with it.

LIII. An anecdote is told of General Wolfe,[66]that he was out with a party of friends in a boat the day before the Battle of Quebec. It was a beautiful summer’s evening, and the conversation turned to Gray’sElegy in a Country Churchyard, which was just then published. Wolfe repeated the lines, ‘For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey,’ &c., with enthusiasm, and said, ‘I would rather be the author of those lines than beat the French to-morrow!’ He did beat the French, and was himself killed the next day. Perhaps it was better to be capable of uttering a sentiment like this, than to gain a battle or write a poem.

LIV. Authors, a short time since, set upon Government: Government have of late turned the tables on them, and set upon authors. In one respect, it must be confessed, the court-tools have greatly the advantage of us: they can go all lengths in vulgar Billingsgate and abuse, without being charged with vulgarity. They have the sanction of the Court; they plead the King’s privilege. It is not to be supposed that any thing inelegant or gross can be patronised at Carlton-house. Every thing about a place, even the convenience of an Admiralty secretary, must, one would think, be kept sweet and wholesome. But instead of the least refinement and polish, they treatus with nothing, but garbage. A lie and a nickname are their favourite figures of rhetoric—the alternate substitutes for wit and argument—the twin-supporters of the Bible and the Crown. They use us (it seems) contrary to the advice of Hamlet, ‘according to our own deserts, and not their own dignity.’ The dirt they fling sticks on their opponents, without soiling their own fingers. Loyalty is ‘the true fuller’s earth that takes out all stains.’ At all events, do or say what they can, it is they who are thegentlemen, and we who are theblackguards. If we were to call Sir Walter Scott aSawneywriter, or Mr. CrokerJackey, it would be thought shocking, indecent, vulgar, and no one would look at our publication twice: yet on the Tory side the same thing passes for the height of sense and wit; and ladies of quality are delighted with theJohn Bull, gentlemen readBlackwood, and divines take in theQuarterly. There is Mr. William Mudford, of theCourier—a vapid common-place hack, pert and dull—but who would think of calling him by the diminutive of his Christian name? No; these are the extreme resources reserved for the Court-classics, who, in the zeal of their loyalty, are allowed to forget their manners. There is, in fact, nothing too mean for the genius of these writers, or too low for the taste of their employers.

LV. A Tory can rise no higher thanthe assumption of a question. If he relied on any thing but custom and authority, he would cease to be a Tory. He has a prejudice in favour of certainthings, and against certainpersons. This is all he knows of the matter. He therefore gives you assertions for argument, and abuse for wit. If you ask a reason for his opinions, he calls you names; and if you ask why he does so, he proves that he is in the right, by repeating them a thousand times. A nickname with him is the test of truth. It vents his spleen, strengthens his own prejudices, and communicates them mechanically to his hearers.

LVI. When an Elector of Hanover is made into a King of England, what does he become in the course of a century?—A George the Fourth.

LVII. If I were to give a toast at a loyal and patriotic meeting, it should be,Down with the Stuarts all over the world!

LVIII. The taste of the great in pictures is singular, but not unaccountable. The King is said to prefer the Dutch to the Italian school of painting; and if you hint your surprise at this, you are looked upon as a very Gothic andoutrésort of person. You are told, however, by way of consolation, ‘To be sure, there is LordCarlisle likes an Italian picture—Mr. Holwell Carr likes an Italian picture—the Marquis of Stafford is fond of an Italian picture—Sir George Beaumont likes an Italian picture.’ These, notwithstanding, are regarded as quaint and daring exceptions to the established rule; and their preference is a species oflèse-majestéin the Fine Arts—as great an eccentricity and want of fashionable etiquette, as if any gentleman or nobleman still preferred old claret to new, when the King is known to have changed his mind on this subject, or was guilty of the offence of dipping his fore-finger and thumb in the middle of a snuff-box, instead of gradually approximating the contents to the edge of the box, according to the most approved models. One would imagine that the great and exalted in station would like lofty subjects in works of art, whereas they seem to have an exclusive predilection for the mean and mechanical. One would think those whose word is law, would be pleased with the great and striking effects of the pencil[67]: on the contrary, they admire nothing but the little and elaborate. They have a fondness for cabinet orfurniturepictures, and a proportionable antipathy to works of genius. Even arts with them must be servile, to be tolerated. Perhaps the seeming contradiction may be thus explained. These persons are raised so high above the rest of the species, that the more violent and agitating pursuits of mankind appear to them like the turmoil of ants on a molehill. Nothing interests them but their own pride and self-importance. Our passions are to them an impertinence; an expression of high sentiment they rather shrink from as a ludicrous and upstart assumption of equality. They, therefore, like what glitters to the eye, what is smooth to the touch; but they shun, by an instinct of sovereign taste, whatever has a soul in it, and implies areciprocityof feeling. The gods of the earth can have no interest in any thing human; they are cut off from all sympathy with the ‘bosoms and businesses of men.’ Instead of requiring to be wound up beyond their habitual feeling of stately dignity, they wished to have the springs of overstrained pretension let down, to be relaxed with ‘trifles light as air,’ to be amused with the familiar and frivolous, and to have the world appear a scene ofstill life, except as they disturb it! The little in thought and internal sentiment is a necessary relief and set-off to the oppressive sense of external magnificence. Hence Kingsbabble and repeat they know not what. A childish dotage often accompanies the consciousness of absolute power. Repose is somewhere necessary, and the soul sleeps, while the senses gloat around. Besides, the mechanical and high-finished style of art may be considered as somethingdone to order. It is a task to be executed more or less perfectly, according to the price given and the industry of the artist. We stand by, as it were, see the work done, insist upon a greater degree of neatness and accuracy, and exercise a sort of petty jealous jurisdiction over each particular. We are judges of the minuteness of the details, and though ever so nicely executed, as they give us no ideas beyond what we had before, we do not feel humbled in the comparison. The artisan scarcely rises into the artist; and the name of genius is degraded, rather than exalted in his person. The performance is so far ours that we have paid for it, and the highest price is all that is necessary to produce the highest finishing. But it is not so in works of genius and imagination. Their price is above rubies. The inspiration of the Muse comes not with thefiatof a monarch, with the donation of a patron; and therefore the Great turn with disgust or effeminate indifference from the mighty masters of the Italian school because such works baffle and confound their self-will, and make them feel that there is something in the mind of man which they can neither give nor take away.

‘Quam nihil ad tuum, Papinane, ingenium!’

LIX. The style of conversation in request in courts proceeds much upon the same principle. It is low, and it is little. I have known a few persons who have had access to the Presence (and who might be supposed to catch what they could of the tone of royalty at second-hand, bating the dignity—God knows there was nothing of that!) and I should say they were thehighest finishersin this respect I ever met with. No circumstance escaped them, they worked out all the details (whether to the purpose or not) like a fac-simile, they mimicked every thing, explained every thing; the story was nottold, but acted over again. It is true, there were nograndes pensées, there was a complete truce with all thought and reflection; but they were everlasting dealers in matters of fact, and there was no end of their minute prolixity—one must suppose this mode pleased their betters, or was copied from them. Dogberry’s declaration—‘Were I as tedious as a king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all upon your worship’—is not so much a blunder of the clown’s, as a sarcasm of the poet’s. Are we to account for the effect (as before) from supposing that their overstrained attention to great things makes them seek for a change in little ones?—Or that their idea of themselves as raisedabove every one else is confirmed by dwelling on the meanest and most insignificant objects?—Or is it that from their ignorance and seclusion from the world, every thing is alike new and wonderful to them? Or that dreading the insincerity of those about them, they exact an extraordinary degree of trifling accuracy, and require every one to tell a story, as if he was giving evidence on oath before a court of justice? West said that the late King used to get him up into a corner, and fairly put his hands before him so that he could not get away, till he had got every particular out of him relating to the affairs of the Royal Academy. This weakness in the mind of kings has been well insisted on by Peter Pindar. It is of course like one of the spots in the sun.

LX. I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.

LXI. Happy are they that can say with Timon—‘I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind!’ They can never be at a loss for subjects to exercise their spleen upon: their sources of satisfaction must hold out while the world stands. Those who do not pity others, assuredly need not envy them: if they take pleasure in the distresses of their fellow-creatures, they have their wish. Let them cast an eye on that long disease, human life, on that villainous compound, human nature, and glut their malice. There is madness, there is idiotcy, there is sickness, old age, and death; there is the cripple, the blind, and the deaf; there is the deformed in body, the weak in mind, the prisoner and the gaoler, the beggar and the dwarf; there is poverty, labour, pain, ignominy; there is riches, pride, griping avarice, bloated luxury; there is the agony of suffering or the lassitude ofennui; there is the sickness of the heart from hope delayed, and the worse and more intolerable sickness from hope attained; there is the gout, the stone, the plague, cold, fever, thirst, and nakedness, shipwreck, famine, fire and the sword, all are instruments of human fate, and pamper the dignity of human nature: there are the racking pains of jealousy, remorse, and anguish, the lingering ones of disappointment, sorrow, and regret; there is the consciousness of unmerited, hopeless obscurity, and ‘the cruel sunshine thrown by fortune on a fool;’ there is unrequited love, and—marriage; there is the coquet slighting others and slighted in her turn, the jilt, the antiquated prude, the brutal husband, and the common-place wife; there are vows of celibacy and lost character; there is the cabal, the idlegossiping, the churlishness and dulness of the country, the heartlessness and profligacy of great cities; there are the listless days, the sleepless nights, the having too much or too little to do; years spent in vain in a pursuit, or, if successful, the having to leave it at last; there are the jealousies of different professions among themselves or of each other, lawyers, divines, physicians, artists; the contempt of the more thriving for the less fortunate, and the hatred and heart-burnings with which it is repaid; there is hypocrisy, oppression, falsehood, treachery, cowardice, selfishness, meanness; the luck of fools, the respectability of knaves; the cant of piety, loyalty, and humanity; the lamentations of West-India planters over the ingratitude of their negro slaves, and LouisXVIII.resigning to God and the Mother of all Saints the credit of the success of his arms; there are sects and parties, kings and their subjects, queens and common-council men, speeches in Parliament, plays and actorsdamned, or successful for a time and then laid on the shelf, and heard of no more; quacks at all corners, mountebanks in the pulpit, and drones in the state, peace and war, treaties of offence and defence, conspiracies, revolutions, Holy Alliances, the sudden death of Lord Castlereagh, and the oratory of his successor Mr. Canning, hid for the present like the moon ‘in its vacant interlunar cave;’ and Ferdinand and his paper-kites, and the Cortes, unconscious of the rebel maxim, ‘Catch a king and kill a king’; and Slop raving at the bloodthirsty victims of courtly assassins, and whetting mild daggers for patriot throats; and Mr. Croker’scheat-the-gallows facein theQuarterly, and Lord Wellington’sheartin the cause of Spanish liberty, and a beloved Monarch retired amid all this to shady solitude ‘to play with Wisdom.’ A good hater may here find wherewithal to feed the largest spleen and swell it, even to bursting!

LXII. Happiness, like mocking, is catching. At least, none but those who are happy in themselves, can make others so. No wit, no understanding, neither riches nor beauty, can communicate this feeling—the happy alone can make happy. Love and Joy are twins, or born of each other.

LXIII. No one knows when he is safe from ridicule.

LXIV. Is it a misfortune or a happiness that we so often like the faults of one we love better than the virtues of any other woman; that we like her refusals, better than all other favours; that we like her love of others, better than any one else’s love of us?

LXV. If a man were refused by a woman a thousand times, andhe really loved her, he would still think that at the bottom of her heart she preferred him to every one else. Nor is this wonderful, when we consider that all passion is a species of madness; and that the feeling in the mind towards the beloved object is the most amiable and delightful thing in the world. Our love to her is heavenly, and so (the heart whispers us) must hers be to us—though it were buried at the bottom of the sea; nay, from the tomb our self-love would revive it! We never can persuade ourselves that a mistress cares nothing about us, till we no longer care about her. No! It is certain that there is nothing truly deserving of love but love, and

‘In spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,’

we still believe in the justice of the blind God!

LXVI. It would be easy to forget a misplaced attachment, but that we do not like to acknowledge ourselves in the wrong.

LXVII. A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.

LXVIII. The grand scenes of Nature are more adapted for occasional visits than for constant residence. They are the temples of the Goddess, not fit dwellings for her worshippers. Familiarity breeds contempt or indifference; and it is better to connect this feeling with the petty and trivial than with the lofty and sublime. Besides, it is unnecessary to run the risk in the latter case. One chief advantage of the great and magnificent objects of Nature is, that they stamp their image on the mind for ever; the blow need not be repeated to have the desired effect. We take them with us wherever we go; we have but to think of them and they appear; and at the distance of half a life or of the circumference of the globe, we unlock the springs of memory, and the tall mountain shoots into the sky, the lake expands its bosom, and the cataract rushes from the pine-clad rock. The bold majestic outline is all that there is to discover in such situations, and this we can always remember. In more cultivated and artificial scenes we may observe a thousand hedge-row beauties with curious eye, or pluck the tender flower beneath our feet, while Skiddaw hovers round our heads, and the echoes of Helvellyn thunder in our hearts.

LXIX. I should always choose to live within reach of a fine prospect, rather than to see one from my windows. A number of romantic, distant objects staring in upon one (uncalled-for) tantalise the imagination, and tempt the truant feet; whereas, at home, I wish to feel satisfied where I am, and sheltered from the world.

LXX. Mr. Martin’s picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise has this capital defect, that there is noreposein it. You see two insignificant naked figures, and a preposterous architectural landscape, like a range of buildings overlooking them. They might as well be represented sleeping on the top of the pinnacle of the Temple with the world and all the glories thereof spread out before them. They ought to have been painted imparadised in one another’s arms, shut up in measureless content, with Eden’s choicest bowers closing round them, and Nature stooping to clothe them with vernal bowers. Nothing could be too retired, too voluptuous, too sacred from day’s garish eye: instead of which, you have a gaudy panoramic view, a glittering barren waste, a triple row of clouds, of rocks, and mountains piled one upon the other, as if the imagination already bent its idle gaze over that wide world, which was so soon to be their place of exile, and the aching restless spirit of the artist was occupied in building a stately prison for our first parents, instead of decking their bridal bed, and wrapping them in a short-lived dream of bliss!

LXXI. The mind tires of variety, but becomes reconciled to uniformity. Change produces a restless habit, a love of farther change: the recurrence of the same objects conduces to repose, and to content. My Uncle Toby’s bowling-green bounded his harmless ambition; Bonaparte, not contented with France and Europe for a pleasure-ground, wanted to have Russia for an ice-house; and Alexander, at the farthest side of India, wept for new worlds to conquer. If we let our thoughts wander abroad, there is no end to fantastic projects, to the craving after novelty, to fickleness, and disappointment: if we confine them at home, Peace may find them there. Mr. Horne Tooke used to contend that all tendency to excess was voluntary in the mind: the wants of Nature kept within a certain limit. Even if a person adhered to a regular number of cups of tea or glasses of wine, he did not feel tempted to exceed this number: but if he once went beyond his usual allowance, the desire to transgress increased with its indulgence, and the artificial appetite was proportioned to the artificial stimulus. It has been remarked that in the tropical climates, where there is no difference of seasons, time passes away on smoother and swifter pinions, ‘the earth spins round on its soft axle,’ unnoticed, unregretted: and life wears out soonest and best in sequestered privacy, within the round of a few, simple, unenvied enjoyments.

LXXII. The retailing of a set of anecdotes is not conversation. A story admits of no answer: a remark or an opinion naturally callsforth another, and leads to as many different views of a subject as there are minds in company. An officer in a Scotch marching regiment has always a number of very edifying anecdotes to communicate: but unless you are of the same mess or the same clan, you are necessarilysent to Coventry. Prosing, mechanical narrations of this kind are tedious, as well as tinctured with egotism: if they are set off with a brilliant manner, with mimicry, and action, they become theatrical: the speaker is a kind ofMr. Matthews at home, and the audience are more or less delighted and amused with the exhibition; but there is an end of society, and you no more think of interrupting a confirmed story-teller, than you would of interrupting a favourite actor on the stage.

LXXIII. The Queen’s trial gave a deathblow to the hopes of all reflecting persons with respect to the springs and issues of public spirit and opinion. It was the only question I ever knew that excited a thorough popular feeling. It struck its roots into the heart of the nation; it took possession of every house or cottage in the kingdom; man, woman, and child took part in it, as if it had been their own concern. Business was laid aside for it: people forgot their pleasures, even their meals were neglected, nothing was thought of but the fate of the Queen’s trial. The arrival of theTimes Newspaperwas looked upon as an event in every village, the Mails hardly travelled fast enough; and he who had the latest intelligence in his pocket was considered as the happiest of mortals. It kept the town in a ferment for several weeks: it agitated the country to the remotest corner. It spread like wildfire over the kingdom; the public mind was electrical. So it should be on other occasions; it was only so on this. An individual may be oppressed, a nation may be trampled upon, mankind may be threatened with annihilation of their rights, and the threat enforced; and not a finger is raised, not a heart sinks, not a pulse beats quicker in the public or private quarrel, a momentary burst of vain indignation is heard, dies away, and is forgotten. Truth has no echo, but folly and imposture have a thousand reverberations in the hollowness of the human heart. At the very time when all England went mad about the poor Queen, a man of the name of Bruce was sent to Botany Bay for having spoken to another who was convicted of sedition; and no notice was taken of it. We have seen what has been done in Spain, and Earth does not roll its billows over the heads of tyrants, to bury them in a common grave. What was it then in the Queen’s cause that stirred this mighty ‘coil and pudder’ in the breast? Was it the love of truth, of justice, of liberty? No such thing! Her case was at best doubtful, and she had only suffered theloss of privileges peculiar to herself. But she was a Queen, she was a woman, anda thorn in the King’s side. There was the cant of loyalty, the cant of gallantry, and the cant of freedom mixed altogether in delightful and inextricable confusion. She was a Queen—all the loyal and well-bred bowed to the name; she was a wife—all the women took the alarm; she was at variance with the lawful sovereign—all the free and independent Electors of Westminster and London were up in arms. ‘The Queen’s name was a tower of strength,’ which these persons had hitherto wanted, and were glad to catch at. Though a daughter of the Duke of Brunswick, though a grand-daughter of GeorgeIII., yet because she was separated from her husband, she must be hand-and-glove with the people, the wretched, helpless, doating, credulous, meddlesome people, who are always ready to lick the hands, not just then raised to shed their blood or rivet on their chains. There was here an idol to pull down and an idol to set up. There was an imperial title and meretricious frontispiece to the spurious volume of Liberty. There was the mock-majesty of an empty throne behind the real one, and the impertinence of mankind was interested to thrust the unwelcome claimant into it. City patriots stood a chance of becoming liege men, and true to a Queen—of their own choosing. The spirit of faction was half merged in the spirit of servility. There was a rag-fair of royalty—every one carried his own paints and patches into the presence of the new Lady of Loretto—there was a sense of homage due, of services and countenance bestowed on Majesty. This popular farce had all the charm ofprivate theatricals. The Court of St. James’s was nothing to themake-believeCourt at Kew. The king was a sort ofstate-fixture; but the Queen-Consort, the favourite of the rabble, was herself one of them. The presence-doors were flung open, and every blackguard and blockhead rushed in. What an opportunity to see, to hear, to touch a Queen! To gratify the itch of loyalty by coming in contact with the person of the Sovereign was a privilege reserved for a few; but to receive this favour at the Queen’s hands was a distinction common to all. All the trades of London came to kiss the Queen’s hand: Presbyterian parsons knelt to kiss the hand of their royal mistress; the daughters of country curates and of city knights sipped loyalty from the back of her Majesty’s hand. Radicals and reformers contended who should be first in paying homage to the Queen; there was a race for precedence, quarrelling and pulling of caps between the wives of distinguished orators and caricaturists, at the very footsteps of the throne; while Mr. Alderman Wood,

‘A gentle Husher, Vanity by name.’

strove to keep the peace, and vindicate the character of civic dames for courtly manners. Mr. Place, Mr. Hone, Mr. Thelwall, Sir Richard Phillips, kissed her Majesty’s hand; Mr. Cobbett alone was not invited,—it was thought he mightbite. What a pity that it was before Mr. Irving’s time, or he might have thrown in the casting-weight of his perfect mind and body, andoustedboth the King and Bergami! In the midst of all this, his Majesty went to the play, bowed to the boxes, the pit, the gallery, and to theactors, and you would suppose in four days’ time, that a whisper had never been uttered to imply that the King not only was not the most graceful man in his dominions, but the best of monarchs and of husbands. The Queen and herpic-nicparties were no more thought of. What a scene for history to laugh at!

LXXIV. A crowd was collected under the Horse-Guards, and on enquiry I found it was to see the Duke of York come out. ‘What went they forth for to see?’ They were some of the lowest and most wretched of the people, and it was perhaps the sense of contrast,—a sense of which the great and mighty have always availed themselves liberally, to cherish the enthusiasm of their admirers. It was also curiosity to see a name, a sound that they had so often heard, reduced to an object of sight; a metaphysical and political abstraction actually coming out of a door with a ruddy face and a frock-coat. It was, in the first place, the Commander-in-Chief, and the commander of the troops at Dunkirk, the author of the love-letters to Mrs. Clarke and of army-circulars, the son of the King, and presumptive heir to the Crown;—there were all these contradictions embodied in the same person. ‘Oh, the wonderful works of nature,’ as theRecruitin the play says on looking at the guinea which has just enlisted him: so we may say on looking at a king or a king’s brother. I once pointed out the Duke of York to a Scotchman. ‘Is that his Grace—I mean his Royal Highness?’ said the native of the North, out of breath to acknowledge the title, and pay with his tongue the instinctive adulation which his heart felt!

LXXV. When Effie Deans becomes a fine lady, do we not look back with regret to the time when she was the poor faded lily of St. Leonards, the outcast and condemned prisoner? So, should the cause of liberty and mankind ever become triumphant, instead of militant, may we not heave a sigh of regret over the past, and think that poor suffering human nature, with all its wrongs and insults, trodden into the earth like a vile weed, was a more interesting topic for reflection? We need not be much alarmed for the event, evenif this should be so; for the way to Utopia is not ‘the primrose path of dalliance;’ and at the rate we have hitherto gone on, it must be many thousand years off!

LXXVI. Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols—it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.

LXXVII. The Devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate. He supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him. Mr. Irving may perhaps bring him into fashion again.

LXXVIII. Perhaps the evils arising from excessive inequality in a state would be sufficiently obviated if property were divided equally among the surviving children. But it is said it would be impossible to make a law for this purpose, under any circumstances or with any qualifications, because the least interference with the disposal of property would be striking at its existence and at the very root of all property. And yet this objection is urged in those very countries, where the law of primogeniture (intended to keep it in disproportionate masses, and setting aside the will of the testator altogether) is established as an essential part of the law of the land. So blind is reason, where passion or prejudice intervenes!

LXXIX. Kings, who set up for Gods upon earth, should be treated as madmen, which one half of them, or as idiots, which the other half, really are.

LXXX. Tyrants are at all times mad with the lust of power.

LXXXI. Reformers are naturally speculative people; and speculative people are effeminate and inactive. They brood over ideas, till realities become almost indifferent to them. They talk when they should act, and are distracted with nice doubts and distinctions, while the enemy is thundering at the gates, and the bomb-shells are bursting at their feet. They hold up a paper Constitution as their shield, which the sword pierces through, and drinks their heart’s blood! They are cowards, too, at bottom; and dare not strike a decisive blow, lest it should be retaliated. While they merely prate of moderation and the public good, they think, if the worst comes to the worst, there may still be a chance of retreat for them, hoping toscreen themselves behind their imbecility. They are not like their opponents, whose all is at stake, and who are urged on by instinctive fury and habitual cunning to defend it: the common good is too remote a speculation to call forth any violent passions or personal sacrifices; and if it should be lost, it is as fine a topic as ever to harangue and lament about. Patriots are, by the constitution of their minds, poets; and an Elegy on the fall of Liberty is as interesting to hear or to recite as an Ode on its most triumphant success. They who let off Ferdinand the other day, confiding in the promises of a traitor and in the liberality of a despot, were greater hypocrites to themselves than he was.

LXXXII. In the late quarrel about Liberty, upwards of five millions of men have been killed, andone king.

LXXXIII. The people (properly speaking) are not a herd of slaves just let loose, or else goaded on, like blind drudges, to execute the behests of their besotted taskmasters; but the band of free citizens, taught to know their rights, and prepared to exercise them.

LXXXIV. The people are the slaves of ignorance and custom; the friends of the people are the dupes of reason and humanity. Power stops at nothing but its own purposes.

LXXXV. The Author of Waverley observes—‘In truth, the Scottish peasantry are still infected with that rage for funeral ceremonial, which once distinguished the grandees of the kingdom so much, that a sumptuary law was made by the Parliament of Scotland for the purpose of restraining it; and I have known many in the lowest stations who have denied themselves not merely the comforts, but almost the necessaries of life, in order to save such a sum of money as might enable their surviving friends to bury them like Christians, as they termed it; nor could their faithful executors be prevailed upon, though equally necessitous, to turn to the use and maintenance of the living the money vainly wasted upon the interment of the dead.’—‘Antiquary,’ vol. IV. p. 48. If I were to attempt an explanation of the peculiar delight and pride which the Scotch are thus supposed to take in funeral ceremonies, I should say, that as inhabitants of wild and barren districts, they are more familiar with the face of nature than with the face of man; and easily turn to it as their place of rest and final home. There is little difference, in their imaginations, between treading the green mountain turf, and being laid beneath it. The world itself is but a living tomb to them. Their mode of subsistence is cold, hard, comfortless, bare of luxuriesand of enjoyments, torpid, inured to privations and self-denial; and death seems to be its consummation and triumph, rather than its unwelcome end. Their life was a sort of struggle for a dreary existence; so that it relapses into the grave with joy and a feeling of exultation. The grey rock out of which their tomb is cut is a citadel against all assaults of the flesh and the spirit; the kindred earth that wraps the weather-beaten, worn-out body, is a soft and warm resting-place from the hardships it has had to encounter. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Scotch prepare for the due celebration of this event with the foresight characteristic of them, and that their friends consign them to the earth with becoming fortitude and costly ceremony. ‘Man,’ says Sir Thomas Brown, though in quite a different spirit, ‘man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave; solemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery, even in theINFAMYof his nature.—See hisURN BURIAL.

LXXXVI. In the Heart of Midlothian vol.IV.p. 13, we meet with the following reflections: ‘Perhaps one ought to be actually a Scotchman to conceive how ardently, under all distinctions of rank and situation, they feel their mutual connection with each other as natives of the same country. There are, I believe, more associations common to the inhabitants of a rude and wild than of a well-cultivated and fertile country: their ancestors have more seldom changed their place of residence; their mutual recollection of remarkable objects is more accurate; the high and the low are more interested in each other’s welfare; the feelings of kindred and relationship are more widely extended; and, in a word, the bonds of patriotic affection, always honourable, even when a little too exclusively strained, have more influence on men’s feelings and actions.’ Thus far our author, but without making much progress in the question he has started. ‘ViaGoodman Dull! thou hast spoken no word all this while’—I might say, but I do not choose, to say so, to the Great Unknown. There is an enumeration of particulars, slightly and collaterally connected with the subject, but, as ‘Douce David Deans’ would say, ‘they do not touch the root of the matter.’ In fact, then, the mind more easily forms a strong and abstracted attachment to the soil (in which it was bred) in remote and barren regions, where few artificial objects or pursuits fritter away attention, or divert it from its devotion to the naked charms of nature—(perhaps the privations, dangers, and loneliness incident to such situations also enhance the value and deepen the interest we take in them)—and again, in a rude and scattered population, where there is a dearth and craving after generalsociety, we naturally become more closely and permanently attached to those few persons with whom neighbourhood, or kindred, or a common cause, or similar habits or language, bring us into contact. Two Englishmen meeting in the wilds of Arabia would instantly become friends, though they had never seen one another before, from the want of all other society and sympathy. So it is in the ruder and earlier stages of civilisation. This is what attaches the Highlander to his hill and to his clan. This is what attaches Scotchmen to their country and to one another. A Londoner, in his fondness for London, is distracted between the play-houses, the opera, the shops, the coffee-houses, the crowded streets, &c. An inhabitant of Edinburgh has none of these diversities to reconcile: he has but one idea in his head or in his mouth,—that of the Calton Hill; an idea which is easily embraced, and which he never quits his hold of, till something more substantial offers,—a situation as porter in a warehouse, or as pimp to a great man.

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