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116 THE LEADER. [Satprdat*
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XIII. March 22,1862. ©PgljU R plans have...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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116 The Leader. [Satprdat*
116 THE LEADER . [ Satprdat *
Xiii. March 22,1862. ©Pglju R Plans Have...
XIII . March 22 , 1862 . © PgljU R plans have been materially altered since I last wrote to ValperxlillP ^ u * a ; at ^ east > in tne metn ° d ° f proceeding to discover Margaret's till ? health ; and I am afraid , my dear friends , that you will find the HUKI ) change not advantageous to my correspondence , since it must furnish materials less amusing than an actual tour . We , that is , a few of us , assembled in Stanhope ' s studio to settle the details . When I got there , Margaret was enthroned , sitting for a sketch ; which Stanhope is to repeat in a finished form after her return . " I shall be unable to finish this , " he said , " because , after a month's wandering , every line will be altered . " But he would not wait . And he was right ; for there is in Margaret ' s aspect , now that illness has impaired the rounded outline , a severer beauty , and at the same time a gentler , which ought not to pass without record . And Stanhope is executing his work beautifully ; at which I am rather surprised ; for I have always found that the hand refused to be faithful to the portraiture of the faces we best know ; perhaps because , knowing them in so many aspects , we vainly seek to compress those many aspects into one view . But Stanhope ' s hand is more masterly than most of us can boast , and Margaret is a sitter such as we seldom meet . Although her face is far from moveless—is , indeed , visited by an endless variety of feeling—its predominant expression is that of life in repose—great intellectual animation and strong emotion in a self-possessed and observing repose . I found only Conway there , and we had to wait for Edwardes ; but Werneth came in to know if he might join us in part of our journey . " May he ? " I asked of Margaret . " Yes , " she answered , with that full utterance which makes a single word thoroughly do its office . I do not know by what transition , from our tour to Cheshire , and thence to our recent experiences at Audley Hall , we passed to discuss the state of affairs there ; but I soon found myself asking Werneth for the reasons which regulate the apparent discrepancies of society in certain matters . I was anxious to learn through him , for many reasons ; and especially because his courageous spirit , his philosophic insight , and his rank , combine to give him opportunities of learning realities such as few men possess . At first , I think he denied much that I assumed , especially in social matters . " The cases you have observed , " he said , " are exceptional . You are yourself an exceptional man , and you have fallen into exceptional circles ; and you must not judge of society by what you witness . " There may be some truth in that , and I confessed as much ; yet a difficulty would be thrown upon every social inquirer , if he admitted the cancelling of personal experience . What we see , is , or we should not see it . Besides , as I told Werneth , I doubt the degree of the exceptional . Indeed , the cases are not to be presumed to be exceptional . Johnson is no exceptional man—you may match him anywhere ; so you may his son William , his wife , his cousin , his daughters—save the one exception enthroned before Stanhope ; whose influence within her family , through her youth and pride , had been negative . Audley is not an exceptional man ; nor are those two families connected , save by the accident of my knowing both . But many of the things I had observed are as little connected . And it is to be remembered that these things arc systematically hushed up among the English . The exception consists in the outspeaking upon them , or even in the discovery . The skeleton in every house knows not his neighbour ; but if all were called out , what a grim militia might we review ! Werneth , however , went further in his philosophic mood ; and Edwardes , who came in , sided with him . Werneth insisted that I made too much account of one influence in life , and expected people who had settled down in life to be too much swayed by the romantic passion which can only find free scope in ruder society . Love , he said , is not the business , but the condiment of life . " Your metaphor will not do , " I answered ; " because love is an essential of human life—in its rudest element , essential to the continuance of human kind ; in its highest element , affection , essential to happiness ; in its full perfection , essential to the full action of life . I do not complain only that love is mortified ; there might be redemption in that . The mortilied devotion of a widowed heart , or the religious devotion to a great cause of a heart , naturally affectionate , may be noble exercises of the highest virtues . And in ordinary life , short of sublime perfection , there may be a placid middle course which is estimable— -when affections , and circumstances , and events harmonize . The Ilartnells are not alone in their happiness . Hut what 1 complain of is , that even that full but modest developement of life is denied to many ; that the denial of it to others begets depraved substitutions ; that the reducing of affection to routine , and substituting contract for inclination or for the earning of affection , destroy the vital part of life ; insomuch that ; , with many bright exceptions , the level of society is dull , where the home is a pleasure only professedly ; that numbers pine away in mortified frustration of life ; that numbers are sacrificed to the depravities which tread upon lawn at variance with nature . I point to your Own institutions : I say the faces of your people are not unhappy , but dull ; that your young men are , in multitude * , not wild only , nor rudo , but low in their indulgences ; that multitudes of women are victims to a custom which encounters you in the streets , though it must not be named , which is an institution , and which is the actual , if not the necessary , comp lement of the institution of murriage . You hold your
tongue about these things , and speak and look as if they were not . If I say these things generally , you object to general charges j if I bring instances , you say they are exceptional . " "We do not , as Lord Werneth says , ' * insisted Edwardes , " make so much account as you do of love . It is inevitable , and we undergo it . But devotion to it we leave to idlers , or to the young ; intellect graduall ybreaking away from the thrall . " " I did not say that , " said Werneth . " Edward himself does not think it , " said Margaret from her throne , with an indignant emphasis that her deep voice could give , although it did not grow loud ; " he knows better . " Edwardes did not look at her , and he kept his countenance unchanged . " It was , " I said , " they who mistook me . I did not insist on love as the sole influence or end of life . Quite the reverse . Give to life all its action in other things than love , and in due proportion . What I assert is > that you either deny love altogether , or that you are low sots in the counterfeit of passion ; it is those excesses that shock me . You suffer the human race itself to degenerate with inaction , and leave youth , idle , to the worst temptations of pleasure . Or you find c employment' of an irksome and tedious kind , as a vent for the superabundant vitality of youth ; stimulating excitement with intellectual restlessness , or making the nervous faculties thirst for excitement by wearisome drudgery . Yet worse , I complain that you do not discuss these things fairly . Although matters of life and death , you hold your tongues , and trust to chance . Barbarians have known better . The grand corrective of vicious tendencies in youth is , not intellectual study , nor mechanical drudgery , but action , physical action , bodily activity and " fatigue . Your physicians now will confirm the moralizer of old . But you mew your boys up in a school-room or counting-house j and if they issue forth with pale , worn-out faces , you will not ask the reason why . Nay , worse still—some of you know better , and you refuse to act according to a code so mortal in its consequences . But how do you act ? Do you protest against it ? do you extend the benefit of your awakened experience to others ? do you assist with your countenance and support those who agree with you ? No ; you pretend to think as your adversaries do , and only take for yourselves , secretly , the benefit of your better knowledge . Why , you know , Edwardes , as well as I , that there are hundreds , thousands , who think with us , who act with us , and who yet pretend to be of the prevailing faith , in morals and politics , as well as religion . " "But , " said Conway , " we are not so independent as you are . You are not bound by any ties : we are . " " Yes , I am ; but let that pass . You do not even do what you might . You arrogate to yourselves private judgment , and then suffer society to suppress individual judgment , joining with those who frown it out of sight . I say it is so , not only in matters of social affection—important as that is —> -itis so in public action . You are now all consenting to institutions for which you have little respect ; you join in crying down the working classes , or in tacitly withholding their equal right with yours , because ' influential people' are against you . You pretend to religious views which you have not . " " In all these things , " answered Conway , " there is much to be said with you . We are weak . But it is a respectable weakness , that makes the majority shrink from change , and that makes us , the minority , shrink from offending the majority ; that makes us love stability . You have no sympathy with repose . " " Not respectable at all , unless you mean to say that sincerity must be offensive or tyrannical . And what do you mean by ' repose , ' ' stability V What is stable ? Not organic life . What organic creature can find an inorganic structure that shall contain it permanently ? Clothes wear out , walls crumble , and institutions change . The only worthy result of human ' institutions' is that which accrues , at a given moment , from the vital energy of that moment . Organic life is not still for an instant ; secretion , circulation , breath , thought , arc all action , ceaseless action . Cultivate the human mind to its highest perfection , and the result , at nny given moment , will be the most perfect human action : that is the true * institution , ' which cannot be builded or reduced to statutes , and which forbids repose , —breaks down by the conviction of this moment the stiffened notion of the last . " " It appears to me , " said Edwardes , in bis systematic way , " that the position you take up as an observer is open to three qualifications , which you have not answered . You take a part for the whole ; you disturb without giving us anything instead ; and you set up your own individual opinion nbove others . " — " If you frown so , Margaret , " cried Stanhope , " I shall paint your brow aa I see it . ""No , " said Conway , earnestly , "he docs no such thing . As to your first qualification , he has answered that ; and if he has not , I will . It is true that these abnormal aspects of society nre only partial—the whole is not ennkcred , or it would die . But the disease ; appears in many parts , in parts wholly unconnected with each other . I know , as a clergyman , how widely extensive is the disregard or evasion of the marriage rule ; how the young men of the working class disregard it , in town or country ; how young men of the middle class * take their fling . ' I know how many sceptics there are to that faith among the most educated classes . Triatan does not exaggerate . We must not say in these things , any more than in boasting , that we are not as other men . And it is not true , Edwardes , that Tristan sets up his own opinion above others . " " No , " I interrupted , " I only say that what I see shocks me , from its
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 29, 1853, page 116, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_29011853/page/20/
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