“Now Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here—As into these vases this water I pour;One shall hold less, another more,But the water the same in every case,Shall take the figure of the vase.O thou who wouldst unity reach through strife,Canst thou fit this sign to the Waters of Life.”
“Now Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here—As into these vases this water I pour;One shall hold less, another more,But the water the same in every case,Shall take the figure of the vase.O thou who wouldst unity reach through strife,Canst thou fit this sign to the Waters of Life.”
“Now Ambrose, thou maker of creeds, look here—
As into these vases this water I pour;
One shall hold less, another more,
But the water the same in every case,
Shall take the figure of the vase.
O thou who wouldst unity reach through strife,
Canst thou fit this sign to the Waters of Life.”
When Ambrose looked up, the youth, the vases, and the stream were gone; but he knew he had talked with an angel, and his heart was changed. I wish that angel would come and do a great deal of preaching to our English Ambroses.
“There is no doubt,” as Lord Russell says, “that concession gives rise to demands for fresh concession,and it is right that it should be so. The true limit is, that all it is just to concede should be conceded; all that it is true to affirm should be affirmed; but that which is false should be denied.” Besides this power of concession, which she has in a much greater degree than any other religious body, the English Church, if she be a Catholic Church, as she pretends to be, has also greater power of assimilation. Let her not be afraid of those sides of the truth which have been most prominently put forward by other religious communities. She can assimilate them if she pleases, and it is her duty to assimilate whatever is true in them. Her mission in this world is not to hold her own in the sense of resisting all reform, of resisting all concession, but her duty and her mission is to go to the lost people of our country, and of every country where she is established or where she exists, and to draw those together into her fold who cannot get into that of other religious bodies, which have such limits as I have been speaking of to bar the gates of admission. Her great mission is to seek and save those which are lost in every community. The highest title of her ministers isServi servorum Dei(the servants of the servants of God), and, if she remembers this high mission, if she endeavors by her life to exemplify her Master’s spirit and to illustrate His life, she never need be afraid of disestablishment or disendowment. What did the greatest of churchmen who ever lived say on the point of people carrying on those miserablesquabbles that are dividing us in this day? They were saying, “We are of Paul,” “We are of Apollos,” “We are of Peter?” and he said, “Who is Paul? Who is Apollos? Who is Peter?” If you only understand to what an inheritance you are called to, “all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, for ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.”
It is said by some, as I think, unwise defenders of the faith, that a colorless Christianity is no Christianity at all, that you can have no church without a definite creed. To the first I would reply that, after all, the bright white light is, in its purity, better than all color. To the second, I admit that every church must have a definite creed, but the more simple and broad that creed is the better. It is only the simplest creed which can give us the unity, or the tolerance in diversity, for which all good men are longing.
Meekness, liberality, tolerance of other confessions! These are great virtues, but hard, very hard to practise in such hurrying, driving, democratic, competitive timesas ours, when respect for authority seems to have almost died out. Nevertheless, they must be practised, if the church is ever to fulfil her great mission, and to become in a larger and truer sense than she has ever yet been, “The Church of the People.”
Poor conscience! to what pitiful uses is that sacred name turned! The stolid Essex peasant, one of the Peculiar People, lets his child die because he will not allow it to take medicine, and believes himself to be suffering for conscience’s sake because he is summoned before a magistrate to answer for its life. And he has far more reason on his side than the Ritualist martyrs. I desire neither to speak nor think scornfully or bitterly of them, but this at least I must say, that men who can make matters of conscience of such trivialities as the shape and color of vestments, the burning of candles and incense, the position of tables, and the like, and in defence of these things are prepared to defy authority, and break what they know to be the law of their country, are not fit to be trusted with the spiritual guidance of any portion of our people. England has a great work still to do in the world, for which she needs children with quite other kind of consciences than these—consciences which shall be simple, manly, obedient, qualitieswhich must disappear under such examples and teaching as these men are giving.
Let us look to the One life as our model, and turn to Him who lived it on our earth, as to the guide, and friend, and helper, who alone can strengthen the feeble knees, and lift up the fainting heart. Just in so far as we cleave to that teaching and follow that life, shall we live our own faithfully.
In certain crises in one’s life nothing is so useful or healthy for one, as coming into direct and constant contact with an intellect stronger than one’s own, which looks at the same subjects from a widely different standpoint.
Ah! light words of those whom we love and honor, what a power ye are, and how carelessly wielded by those who can use you! Surely for these things also God will ask an account.
On went the talk and laughter. Two or three of the little boys in the long dormitory were already in bed, sitting up with their chins on their knees. The light burned clear, the noise went on. It was a trying moment for Arthur, the poor little lonely boy; however, this time he didn’t ask Tom what he might or might not do, but dropped on his knees by his bedside, as he had done every day from his childhood, to open his heart to Him who heareth the cry and beareth the sorrows of the tender child, and the strong man in agony....
There were many boys in the room by whom that little scene was taken to heart before they slept. But sleep seemed to have deserted the pillow of poor Tom. For some time his excitement, and the flood of memories which chased one another through his brain kept him from thinking or resolving. His head throbbed, his heart leapt, and he could hardly keep himself from springing out of bed and rushing about the room. Then the thought of his own mother came across him, and the promise he had made at her knee, years ago, never to forget to kneel by his bedside, and give himself up to his Father, before he laid his head on the pillow, from which it might never rise; and he lay down gently and cried as if his heart would break. He was only fourteen years old.
It was no light act of courage in those days for a little fellow to say his prayers publicly, even at Rugby. A few years later, when Arnold’s manly piety had begun to leaven the school, the tables turned; before he died, in the school-house, at least, and I believe in the other houses, the rule was the other way. But poor Tom had come to school in other times. The first few nights after he came he did not kneel down because of the noise, but sat up in bed till the candle was out, and then stole out and said his prayers, in fear lest some one should find him out. So did many another poor little fellow. Then he began to think that he might just as well say his prayers in bed, and then it didn’t matter whether he was kneeling, or sitting, or lying down. And so it had come to pass with Tom, as with all who will not confess their Lord before men; and for the last year he had probably not said his prayers in earnest a dozen times.
Poor Tom! the first and bitterest feeling which was likely to break his heart was the sense of his own cowardice. The vice of all others which he loathed was brought in and burned in on his own soul. He had lied to his mother, to his conscience, to his God. How could he bear it? And then the poor little weak boy, whom he had pitied and almost scorned for his weakness, had done that which he, braggart as he was, dared not do. The first dawn of comfort came to him in swearing to himself that he would stand by that boythrough thick and thin, and cheer him, and help him, and bear his burdens, for the good deed done that night. Then he resolved to write home next day and tell his mother all, and what a coward her son had been. And then peace came to him, as he resolved lastly, to bear his testimony next morning. The morning would be harder than the night to begin with, but he felt that he could not afford to let one chance slip. Several times he faltered, for the devil showed him first all his old friends calling him “Saint” and “Square-toes,” and a dozen hard names, and whispered to him that his motives would be misunderstood, and he would only be misunderstood, and he would only be left alone with the new boy; whereas it was his duty to keep all means of influence, that he might do good to the largest number. And then came the more subtle temptation, “Shall I not be showing myself braver than others by doing this? Have I any right to begin it now? Ought I not rather to pray in my own study, letting other boys know that I do so, and trying to lead them to it, while in public at least I should go on as I have done?” However, his good angel was too strong that night, and he turned on his side and slept, tired of trying to reason, but resolved to follow the impulse which had been so strong, and in which he had found peace.
Next morning he was up and washed and dressed, all but his jacket and waistcoat, just as the ten minutes’ bell began to ring, and then in the face of thewhole room knelt down to pray. Not five words could he say—the bell mocked him; he was listening for every whisper in the room—what were they all thinking of him? He was ashamed to go on kneeling, ashamed to rise from his knees. At last, as it were from his inmost heart, a still small voice seemed to breathe forth the words of the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” He repeated them over and over, clinging to them as for his life, and rose from his knees comforted and humbled, and ready to face the whole world. It was not needed: two other boys besides Arthur had already followed his example, and he went down to the great school with a glimmering of another lesson in his heart—the lesson that he who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole outward world; and that other one which the old prophet learned in the cave in Mount Horeb, when he hid his face, and the still small voice asked, “What doest thou here, Elijah,” that however we may fancy ourselves alone on the side of good, the King and Lord of men is nowhere without his witnesses; for in every society, however seemingly corrupt and godless, there are those who have not bowed the knee to Baal.
“It is about the toughest part of a man’s life, I dobelieve,” said Hardy, “the time he has to spend at college. My university life has been so different altogether from what yours will be, that my experience isn’t likely to benefit you.”
“I wish you would try me, though,” said Tom; “you don’t know what a teachable sort of fellow I am, if anybody will take me the right way. You taught me to scull, you know; or at least put me in the way to learn. But sculling, and rowing, and cricket, and all the rest of it, with such reading as I am likely to do, won’t be enough. I feel sure of that already.”
“I don’t think it will,” said Hardy. “No amount of physical or mental work will fill the vacuum you were talking of just now. It is the empty house swept and garnished, which the boy might have had glimpses of, but the man finds yawning within him, and which must be filled somehow. It’s a pretty good three-years’ work to learn how to keep the devils out of it, more or less, by the time you take your degree. At least I have found it so.”
Hardy rose and took a turn or two up and down his room. He was astonished at finding himself talking so unreservedly to one of whom he knew so little, and half-wished the words recalled. He lived much alone, and thought himself morbid and too self-conscious; why should he be filling a youngster’s head with puzzles? How did he know that they were thinking of the same thing?
But the spoken word cannot be recalled; it must go on its way for good or evil; and this one set the hearer staring into the ashes, and putting many things together in his head.
It was some minutes before he broke silence, but at last he gathered up his thoughts, and said, “Well, I hope I sha’n’t shirk when the time comes. You don’t think a fellow need shut himself up, though? I’m sure I shouldn’t be any the better for that.”
“No, I don’t think you would,” said Hardy.
“Because, you see,” Tom went on, waxing bolder and more confidential, “if I were to take to moping by myself, I shouldn’t read as you or any sensible fellow would do; I know that well enough. I should just begin, sitting with my legs up on the mantle-piece, and looking into my own inside. I see you are laughing, but you know what I mean, don’t you, now?”
“Yes; staring into the vacuum you were talking of just now; it all comes back to that,” said Hardy.
“Well, perhaps it does,” said Tom; “and I don’t believe it does a fellow a bit of good to be thinking about himself and his own doings.”
“Only he can’t help himself,” said Hardy. “Let him throw himself as he will into all that is going on up here, after all he must be alone for a great part of his time—all night at any rate—and when he gets his oak sported, it’s all up with him. He must belooking more or less into his own inside as you call it.”
“Then I hope he won’t find it as ugly a business as I do. If he does, I’m sure he can’t be worse employed.”
“I don’t know that,” said Hardy; “he can’t learn anything worth learning in any other way.”
“Oh, I like that!” said Tom; “it’s worth learning how to play tennis, and how to speak the truth. You can’t learn either by thinking about yourself ever so much.”
“You must know the truth before you can speak it,” said Hardy.
“So you always do in plenty of time.”
“How?” said Hardy.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Tom; “by a sort of instinct, I suppose. I never in my life felt any doubt about what Ioughtto say or do; did you?”
“Well, yours is a good, comfortable, working belief, at any rate,” said Hardy, smiling; “and I should advise you to hold on to it as long as you can.”
“But you don’t think I can for very long, eh?”
“No; but men are very different. There’s no saying. If you were going to get out of the self-dissecting business altogether though, why should you have brought the subject up at all to-night? It looks awkward for you, doesn’t it?”
Tom began to feel rather forlorn at this suggestion,and probably betrayed it in his face, for Hardy changed the subject suddenly.
“You don’t mean to say,” said Tom, “that it makes any real difference to a man in society here in Oxford, whether he is poor or rich; I mean, of course, if he is a gentleman and a good fellow?”
“Yes, it does—the very greatest possible. But don’t take my word for it. Keep your eyes open and judge for yourself; I daresay I’m prejudiced on the subject.”
“Well, I sha’n’t believe it if I can help it,” said Tom; “you know you said just now that you never called on any one. Perhaps you don’t give men a fair chance. They might be glad to know you if you would let them, and may think it’s your fault that they don’t.”
“Very possibly,” said Hardy; “I tell you not to take my word for it.”
“It upsets all one’s ideas so,” went on Tom, “why, Oxford ought to betheplace in England where money should count for nothing. Surely, now, such a man as Jervis, our captain, has more influence than all the rich men in the college put together, and is more looked up to?”
“He’s one of a thousand,” said Hardy; “handsome, strong, good-tempered, clever, and up to everything.Besides, he isn’t a poor man; and mind, I don’t say that if he were he wouldn’t be where he is. I am speaking of the rule, and not of the exceptions.”
Here Hardy’s scout came in to say that the Dean wanted to speak to him. So he put on his cap and gown, and Tom rose also.
“Well, I’m sorry to turn you out,” said Hardy, “and I’m afraid I’ve been very surly and made you very uncomfortable. You won’t come back again in a hurry.”
“Indeed I will though, if you will let me,” said Tom; “I have enjoyed my evening immensely.”
“Then come whenever you like,” said Hardy.
“But I am afraid of interfering with your reading,” said Tom.
“Oh, you needn’t mind that; I have plenty of time on my hands; besides, one can’t read all night, and from eight till ten you’ll find me generally idle.”
“Then you’ll see me often enough. But promise, now, to turn me out whenever I am in the way.”
“Very well,” said Hardy, laughing; and so they parted for the time.
Some twenty minutes afterwards Hardy returned to his room after his interview with the Dean, who merely wanted to speak to him about some matter of college business. He flung his cap and gown on to the sofa, and began to walk up and down his room, at first hurriedly, but soon with his usual regular tramp. However expressive a man’s face may be, and however well youmay know it, it is simply nonsense to say that you can tell what he is thinking about by looking at it, as many of us are apt to boast. Still more absurd would it be to expect readers to know what Hardy is thinking about, when they have never had the advantage of seeing his face even in a photograph. Wherefore, it would seem that the author is bound on such occasions to put his readers on equal vantage-ground with himself, and not only to tell them what a man does, but, so far as may be, what he is thinking about also.
His first thought, then, was one of pleasure at having been sought out by one who seemed to be just the sort of friend he would like to have. He contrasted our hero with the few men with whom he generally lived, and for some of whom he had a high esteem—whose only idea of exercise was a two hours’ constitutional walk in the afternoons, and whose life was chiefly spent over books and behind sported oaks—and felt that this was more of a man after his own heart. Then came doubts whether his new friend would draw back when he had been up a little longer, and knew more of the place. At any rate he had said and done nothing to tempt him; “if he pushes the acquaintance—and I think he will—it will be because he likes me for myself. And I can do him good too, I feel sure,” he went on, as he ran over rapidly his own life for the last three years. “Perhaps he won’t flounder into all the sloughs that I have had to drag through; he will get too much of thehealthy, active life up here for that, which I never had; but some of them he must get into. All the companionship of boating and cricketing, and wine-parties and supper-parties, and all the reading in the world won’t keep him from many a long hour of mawkishness, and discontent, and emptiness of heart; he feels that already himself. Am I sure of that, though? I may be only reading myself into him. At any rate, why should I have helped to trouble him before the time? Was that a friend’s part? Well, hemustface it, and the sooner the better perhaps. At any rate it is done. But what a blessed thing if one can only help a youngster like this to fight his way through the cold clammy atmosphere which is always hanging over him, and ready to settle down on him—can help to keep some living faith in him, that the world, Oxford and all, isn’t a respectable piece of machinery set going some centuries back! Ah! it’s an awful business, that temptation to believe, or think you believe, in a dead God. It has nearly broken my back a score of times. What are all the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil to this? It includes them all. Well, I believe I can help him, and, please God, I will, if he will only let me; and the very sight of him does me good; so I won’t believe we went down the lasher together for nothing.”
Don’t let reformers of any sort think that they are going really to lay hold of the working boys and young men of England by any educational grapnel whatever, which hasn’t somebona fideequivalent for the games of the old country “veast” in it; something to put in the place of the back-swording and wrestling and racing; something to try the muscles of men’s bodies, and the endurance of their hearts, and to make them rejoice in their strength. In all the new-fangled comprehensive plans which I see, this is all left out: and the consequence is, that your great Mechanics’ Institutes end in intellectual priggism, and your Christian Young Men’s Societies in religious Pharisaism.
Well, well, we must bide our time. Life isn’t all beer and skittles—but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education. If I could only drive this into the heads of you rising Parliamentary Lords, and young swells who “have your ways made for you,” as the saying is—you, who frequent palaver houses and West-end Clubs, waiting always to strap yourselves on to the back of poor dear old John Bull, as soon as the present used-up lot (your fathers and uncles), who sit there on the great Parliamentary-majorities’ pack-saddle, and make believe they’re grinding him with theirred-tape bridle, tumble, or have to be lifted off!
I don’t think much of you yet—I wish I could; though you do go talking and lecturing up and down the country to crowded audiences, and are busy with all sorts of philanthropic intellectualism, and circulating libraries and museums, and heaven only knows what besides, and try to make us think, through newspaper reports, that you are, even as we, of the working classes. But, bless your hearts, we ain’t so “green,” though lots of us of all sorts toady you enough certainly, and try to make you think so.
I’ll tell you what to do now: instead of all this trumpeting and fuss, which is only the old Parliamentary-majority dodge over again—just you go, each of you (you’ve plenty of time for it, if you’ll only give up the other line), and quietly make three or four friends, real friends, among us. You’ll find a little trouble in getting at the right sort, because such birds don’t come lightly to your lure—but found they may be. Take, say, two out of the professions, lawyer, parson, doctor—which you will; one out of trade, and three or four out of the working classes, tailors, engineers, carpenters, engravers—there’s plenty of choice. Let them be men of your own ages, mind, and ask them to your homes; introduce them to your wives and sisters, and get introduced to theirs; give them good dinners, and talk to them about what is really at the bottom of your hearts, and box, and run, and row with them, when youhave a chance. Do all this honestly as man to man, and by the time you come to ride old John, you’ll be able to do something more than sit on his back, and may feel his mouth with some stronger bridle than a red-tape one.
Ah, if you only would! But you have got too far out of the right rut, I fear. Too much over-civilization, and the deceitfulness of riches. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. More’s the pity. I never came across but two of you who could value a man wholly and solely for what was in him; who thought themselves verily and indeed of the same flesh and blood as John Jones, the attorney’s clerk, and Bill Smith, the costermonger, and could act as if they thought so.
The change in Tom’s opinions and objects of interest brought him now into more intimate relations with a set of whom he had as yet seen little. For want of a better name, we may call them “the party of progress.” At their parties, instead of practical jokes, and boisterous mirth, and talk of boats, and bats, and guns, and horses, the highest and deepest questions of morals, and politics, and metaphysics, were discussed, and discussed with a freshness and enthusiasm which is apt to wear off when doing has to take the place of talking,but has a strange charm of its own while it lasts, and is looked back to with loving regret by those for whom it is no longer a possibility.
With this set Tom soon fraternized, and drank in many new ideas, and took to himself also many new crotchets besides those with which he was really weighted. Almost all his new acquaintances were Liberal in politics, but a few only were ready to go all lengths with him. They were all Union men, and Tom, of course, followed the fashion, and soon propounded theories in that institution which gained him the name of Chartist Brown.
There was a strong mixture of self-conceit in it all. He had a kind of idea that he had discovered something which it was creditable to have discovered, and that it was a very fine thing to have all these feelings for, and sympathies with, “the masses,” and to believe in democracy, and “glorious humanity,” and “a good time coming,” and I know not what other big matters. And, although it startled and pained him at first to hear himself called ugly names, which he had hated and despised from his youth up, and to know that many of his old acquaintances looked upon him, not simply as a madman, but as a madman with snobbish proclivities; yet, when the first plunge was over, there was a good deal on the other hand which tickled his vanity, and was far from being unpleasant.
To do him justice, however, the disagreeables weresuch that, had there not been some genuine belief at the bottom, he would certainly have been headed back very speedily into the fold of political and social orthodoxy. As it was, amidst the cloud of sophisms, and platitudes, and big one-sided ideas half-mastered, which filled his thoughts and overflowed in his talk, there was growing in him and taking firmer hold on him daily a true and broad sympathy for men as men, and especially for poor men as poor men, and a righteous and burning hatred against all laws, customs, or notions, which, according to his light, either were or seemed to be setting aside, or putting anything else in the place of, or above the man. It was with him the natural outgrowth of the child’s and boy’s training (though his father would have been much astonished to be told so), and the instincts of those early days were now getting rapidly set into habits and faiths, and becoming a part of himself.
In this stage of his life, as in so many former ones, Tom got great help from his intercourse with Hardy, now the rising tutor of the college. Hardy was travelling much the same road himself as our hero, but was somewhat further on, and had come into it from a different country, and through quite other obstacles. Their early lives had been so different; and, both by nature and from long and severe self-restraint and discipline, Hardy was much the less impetuous and demonstrative of the two. He did not rush out, therefore (as Tom was too much inclined to do), the moment he had seizedhold of the end of a new idea which he felt to be good forhimand whathewanted, and brandish it in the face of all comers, and think himself a traitor to the truth if he wasn’t trying to make everybody he met with eat it. Hardy, on the contrary, would test his new idea, and turn it over, and prove it as far as he could, and try to get hold of the whole of it, and ruthlessly strip off any tinsel or rose-pink sentiment with which it might happen to be mixed up.
Often and often did Tom suffer under this severe method, and rebel against it, and accuse his friend, both to his face and in his own secret thought, of coldness, and want of faith, and all manner of other sins of omission and commission. In the end, however, he generally came round, with more or less of rebellion, according to the severity of the treatment, and acknowledged that, when Hardy brought him down from riding the high horse, it was not without good reason, and that the dust in which he was rolled was always most wholesome dust.
For instance, there was no phrase more frequently in the mouths of the party of progress than “the good cause.” It was a fine big-sounding phrase, which could be used with great effect in perorations of speeches at the Union, and was sufficiently indefinite to be easily defended from ordinary attacks, while it saved him who used it the trouble of ascertaining accurately for himself or settling for his hearers what it really did mean.But, however satisfactory it might be before promiscuous audiences, and so long as vehement assertion or declaration was all that was required to uphold it, this same “good cause” was liable to come to much grief when it had to get itself defined. Hardy was particularly given to persecution on this subject, when he could get Tom, and, perhaps, one or two others, in a quiet room by themselves. While professing the utmost sympathy for “the good cause,” and a hope as strong as theirs that all its enemies might find themselves suspended to lamp-posts as soon as possible, he would pursue it into corners from which escape was most difficult, asking it and its supporters what it exactly was, and driving them from one cloud-land to another, and from “the good cause” to the “people’s cause,” “the cause of labor,” and other like troublesome definitions, until the great idea seemed to have no shape or existence any longer even in their own brains.
But Hardy’s persecution, provoking as it was for the time, never went to the undermining of any real conviction in the minds of his juniors, or the shaking of anything which did not need shaking, but only helped them to clear their ideas and brains as to what they were talking and thinking about, and gave them glimpses—soon clouded over again, but most useful, nevertheless—of the truth, that there were a good many knotty questions to be solved before a man could be quite sure that he had found out the way to set the worldthoroughly to rights, and heal all the ills that flesh is heir to.
Hardy treated another of his friend’s most favorite notions even with less respect than this one of “the good cause.” Democracy, that “universal democracy,” which their favorite author had recently declared to be “an inevitable fact of the days in which we live,” was, perhaps, on the whole the pet idea of the small section of liberal young Oxford, with whom Tom was now hand and glove. They lost no opportunity of worshipping it, and doing battle for it; and, indeed, did most of them very truly believe that that state of the world which this universal democracy was to bring about and which was coming no man could say how soon, was to be in fact that age of peace and good-will which men had dreamt of in all times, when the lion should lie down with the kid, and nation should not vex nation any more.
After hearing something to this effect from Tom on several occasions, Hardy cunningly lured him to his rooms on the pretence of talking over the prospects of the boat club, and then, having seated him by the fire, which he himself proceeded to assault gently with the poker, propounded suddenly to him the question:
“Brown, I should like to know what you mean by ‘democracy?’”
Tom at once saw the trap into which he had fallen, and made several efforts to break away, but unsuccessfully;and, being seated to a cup of tea, and allowed to smoke, was then and there grievously oppressed, and mangled, and sat upon, by his oldest and best friend. He took his ground carefully, and propounded only what he felt sure that Hardy himself would at once accept—what no man of any worth could possibly take exception to. “He meant much more,” he said, “than this; but for the present purpose it would be enough for him to say that, whatever else it might mean, democracy in his mouth always meant that every man should have a share in the government of his country.”
Hardy, seeming to acquiesce, and making a sudden change in the subject of their talk, decoyed his innocent guest away from the thought of democracy for a few minutes, by holding up to him the flag of hero-worship, in which worship Tom was, of course, a sedulous believer. Then, having involved him in most difficult country, his persecutor opened fire upon him from masked batteries of the most deadly kind, the guns being all from the armory of his own prophets.
“You long for the rule of the ablest man, everywhere, at all times? To find your ablest man, and then give him power, and obey him—that you hold to be about the highest act of wisdom which a nation can be capable of?”
“Yes; and you know you believe that too, Hardy, just as firmly as I do.”
“I hope so. But then, how about our universaldemocracy, and every man having a share in the government of his country?”
Tom felt that his flank was turned; in fact, the contrast of his two beliefs had never struck him vividly before, and he was consequently much confused. But Hardy went on tapping a big coal gently with the poker, and gave him time to recover himself and collect his thoughts.
“I don’t mean, of course, that every man is to have an actual share in the government,” he said at last.
“But every man is somehow to have a share; and, if not an actual one, I can’t see what the proposition comes to.”
“I call it having a share in the government when a man has share in saying who shall govern him.”
“Well, you’ll own that’s a very different thing. But, let’s see; will that find our wisest governor for us—letting all the foolishest men in the nation have a say as to who he is to be?”
“Come now, Hardy, I’ve heard you say that you are for manhood suffrage.”
“That’s another question; you let in another idea there. At present we are considering whether thevox populiis the best test for finding your best man. I’m afraid all history is against you.”
“That’s a good joke. Now, there I defy you, Hardy.”
“Begin at the beginning, then, and let us see.”
“I suppose you’ll say, then, that the Egyptian andBabylonian empires were better than the little Jewish republic.”
“Republic! well, let that pass. But I never heard that the Jews elected Moses, or any of the judges.”
“Well, never mind the Jews; they’re an exceptional case: you can’t argue from them.”
“I don’t admit that. I believe just the contrary. But go on.”
“Well, then, what do you say to the glorious Greek republics, with Athens at the head of them?”
“I say that no nation ever treated their best men so badly. I see I must put on a lecture in Aristophanes for your special benefit. Vain, irritable, shallow, suspicious old Demus, with his two oboli in his cheek, and doubting only between Cleon and the sausage-seller, which he shall choose for his wisest man—not to govern, but to serve his whims and caprices. You must call another witness, I think.”
“But that’s a caricature.”
“Take the picture, then, out of Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, how you will—you won’t mend the matter much. You shouldn’t go so fast, Brown; you won’t mind my saying so, I know. You don’t get clear in your own mind before you pitch into every one who comes across you, and so do your own side (which I admit is mostly the right one) more harm than good.”
Tom couldn’t stand being put down so summarily, and fought over the ground from one country to another,from Rome to the United States, with all the arguments he could muster, but with little success. That unfortunate first admission of his, he felt it throughout, like a mill-stone round his neck, and could not help admitting to himself, when he left, that there was a good deal in Hardy’s concluding remark: “You’ll find it rather a tough business to get your ‘universal democracy,’ and ‘government by the wisest,’ to pull together in one coach.”
Notwithstanding all such occasional reverses and cold baths, however, Tom went on strengthening himself in his new opinions, and maintaining them with all the zeal of a convert. The shelves of his bookcase, and the walls of his room, soon began to show signs of the change which was taking place in his ways of looking at men and things. Hitherto a framed engraving of George III. had hung over his mantel-piece; but early in this, his third year, the frame had disappeared for a few days, and when it reappeared, the solemn face of John Milton looked out from it, while the honest monarch had retired into a portfolio. A facsimile of Magna Charta soon displaced a large colored print of “A Day with the Pycheley;” and soon afterwards the death-warrant of Charles I., with its grim and resolute rows of signatures and seals, appeared on the wall in a place of honor, in the neighborhood of Milton.
“I can’t for the life of me fancy, I confess,” wrote Tom, “what you think will come of speculating about necessity and free will. I only know that I can hold out my hand before me, and can move it to the right or left, despite of all powers in heaven or earth. As I sit here writing to you I can let into my heart, and give the reins to, all sorts of devils’ passions, or to the Spirit of God. Well, that’s enough for me. Iknowit of myself, and I believe you know it of yourself, and everybody knows it of themselves or himself; and why you can’t be satisfied with that, passes my comprehension. As if one hasn’t got puzzles enough, and bothers enough, under one’s nose, without going afield after a lot of metaphysical quibbles. No, I’m wrong—not going afield—anything one has to go afield for is all right. What a fellow meets outside himself he isn’t responsible for, and must do the best he can with. But to go on forever looking inside of one’s self, and groping about amongst one’s own sensations, and ideas, and whimsies of one kind and another, I can’t conceive a poorer line of business than that. Don’t you get into it now, that’s a dear boy.
“Very likely you’ll tell me you can’t help it; that every one has his own difficulties, and must fight them out, and that mine are one sort, and yours another. Well, perhaps you may be right. I hope I’m getting toknow that my plummet isn’t to measure all the world. But it does seem a pity that men shouldn’t be thinking about how to cure some of the wrongs which poor dear old England is pretty near dying of, instead of taking the edge off their brains, and spending all their steam in speculating about all kinds of things, which wouldn’t make any poor man in the world—or rich one either, for that matter—a bit better off, if they were all found out, and settled to-morrow.”
William Cobbett was born in 1762 at Farnham, the third son of a small farmer, honest, industrious, and frugal, from whom, as his famous son writes, “if he derived no honor, he derived no shame,” and who used to boast that he had four boys, the eldest but fifteen, who did as much work as any three men in the parish of Farnham. “When I first trudged afield,” William writes, “with my wooden bottle and satchel slung over my shoulder, I was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles.” From driving the small birds from the turnip-seed and rooks from the peas, he rose to weeding wheat, hoeing peas, and so up to driving the plough for 2d.a day, which paid for the evening school where he learned to read and write, getting in this rough way the rudiments of an education over which he rejoices as he contrasts it triumphantly with that of the “frivolous idiotsthat are turned out from Winchester and Westminster Schools, or from those dens of dunces called Colleges and Universities,” as having given him the ability to become “one of the greatest terrors to one of the greatest and most powerful bodies of knaves and fools that were ever permitted to afflict this or any other country.”
At eleven he was employed in clipping the boxedgings in the gardens of Farnham Castle, and, hearing from one of the gardeners of the glories of Kew, he started for that place with 1s.1½d.in his pocket, 3d.of which sum he spent in buying “Swift’s Tale of a Tub.” The book produced a “birth of intellect” in the little rustic. He carried it with him wherever he went, and at twenty-four lost it in a box which fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy, a “loss which gave me greater pain than I have ever felt at losing thousands of pounds.” He returned home, and continued to work for his father till 1782, attending fairs and hearing Washington’s health proposed by his father at farmers’ ordinaries. In that year he went on a visit to Portsmouth, saw the sea for the first time, and was with difficulty hindered from taking service at once on board a man-of-war. He returned home “spoilt for a farmer,” and next year started for London. He served in a solicitor’s office in Gray’s Inn for eight months (where he worked hard at grammar), then enlisted in the 54th regiment, and after a few weeks’ drill at Chatham embarked for Nova Scotia, where the corps were serving. Here his temperatehabits, strict performance of duty, and masterly ability and intelligence, raised him in little more than a year to the post of sergeant-major over the heads of fifty comrades his seniors in service. His few spare hours were spent in hard study, especially in acquiring a thorough mastery of grammar. He had bought Lowth’s Grammar, which he wrote out two or three times, got it by heart, and imposed on himself the task of saying it over to himself every time he was posted sentinel. When he had thoroughly mastered it, and could write with ease and correctness, he turned to logic, rhetoric, geometry, French, to Vauban’s fortification, and books on military exercise and evolutions. In this way, by the year 1791, when the 54th was recalled, he had become the most trusted man in the regiment. The colonel used him as a sort of second adjutant; all the paymaster’s accounts were prepared by him; he coached the officers, and used to make out cards with the words of command for many of them, who, on parade, as he scornfully writes, “were commanding me to move my hands and feet in words I had taught them, and were in everything except mere authority my inferiors, and ought to have been commanded by me.” Notwithstanding the masterfulness already showing itself, Cobbett was a strictly obedient soldier, and left the army with the offer of a commission, and the highest character for ability and zeal.
No sooner, however, was his discharge accomplished,than he set himself to work to expose and bring to justice several of the officers of his regiment, who had systematically mulcted the soldiers in their companies of their wretched pay. His thorough knowledge of the regimental accounts made him a formidable accuser; and, after looking into the matter, the then Judge-Advocate-General agreed to prosecute, and a court-martial was summoned at Woolwich for the purpose in 1792. But Cobbett did not appear. He found that it would be necessary to call his clerks, still serving in the regiment, and the consequences to them in those days were likely to be so serious, that he preferred to abandon his attempt. Accordingly, he did not appear, and the fact was bitterly used against him in later days by his political opponents. The whole story is worth reading, and is very fairly given by Mr. Smith. He had now made a happy marriage with the girl to whom he had entrusted all his savings years before, and started with her to Paris; but, hearing on the way of the king’s dethronement, and the Bastile riots, he turned aside and embarked for America.
He arrived in Philadelphia in October 1792, enthusiastic for the land of liberty, and an ardent student of Paine’s works, and set to work to gain his living by teaching English to the French emigrants there, and by such literary work as he could get. In both he was very successful, but soon found himself in fierce antagonism with the American press, and, after publishingseveral pamphlets, “A Kick for a Bite,” “A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats,” &c., established his first famous periodical, “Peter Porcupine,” which soon gained him the reputation in England as well as America of a staunch and able loyalist, and severe critic of Republican institutions. The only serious mistake in his American career was his attack on Dr. Priestly, then also an emigrant in Philadelphia. The States had become an undesirable place of residence for him before 1798, when an intimation reached him through the British Embassy that the English Government were sensible of the obligations they owed him, and were prepared to advance his interests. These overtures he steadily refused; but, finding a Royalist’s life was becoming too hot, and having been beaten in a libel suit, which nearly ruined him (though his expenses were nominally defrayed by the subscriptions of his American admirers), he closed the brilliant career of “Peter Porcupine’s Gazette,” and returned to England, having at last, to use his own phrase, “got the better of all diffidence in my own capacity.”
He reached home in 1800, and found himself at once courted and famous. He was entertained by Ministers of State and publishers, but after looking round him in his own sturdy fashion, and finding the condition of the political and literary world by no means to his mind, while that of the great body of the people was becoming worse every day, he resisted all temptationsand started on the career which he followed faithfully till his death. In 1802 appeared the first number of “Cobbett’s Political Register,” which (with the break of two months in 1817, when he fled from the new Gagging Act to America) continued to appear weekly till June 1835, and remains a wonderful witness to the strength and the weaknesses of the Sussex ploughboy. During those long years, and all the fierce controversies which marked them, he was grandly faithful, according to his lights, to the cause of the poor:—“I for my part should not be at all surprised,” he wrote in 1806, “if some one were to propose selling the poor, or mortgaging them to the fund-holders. Ah! you may wince; you may cry Jacobin or leveller as long as you please. I wish to see the poor men of England what the poor men of England were when I was born; and from endeavoring to accomplish this wish nothing but the want of means shall make me desist.” And loyally he maintained the fight against sinecures, place-hunting, and corruption of all kinds until his death, full of years, the member for Oldham, and the popular leader of the widest influence among the Liberal party of the first Reform period. For the incidents of the long struggle—how the government press turned savagely on the man whom they had hailed on his return from America as one “whom no corruption can seduce nor any personal danger intimidate from the performance of his duty;” how Attorney-Generals watched him and prosecuted; howhe insisted on conducting his own causes, and so spent two years in jail, and was mulcted again and again in heavy damages; how he fought through it all, and tended his farm and fruit-trees, and wrote his “Rural Rides” and “Cottage Economy,” and was a tender and loving man in his own home, and retained the warm regard of such men as Wyndham and Lord Radnor, while he was the best hated and abused man in England—we must refer all (and we hope there are many) who care to know about them to the second volume of Edward Smith’s life of Cobbett.
There are few lives that we know of better worth careful study in these times. We have no space here to do more than quote the best estimate of the man’s work which has ever come from one of those classes who for thirty-five years looked on him as their most dangerous enemy:—