The those who like Miss Edgeworth have performed the part of mothers to sisters, brothers, or strangers. However much the hints of such teachers have been directed to methods of intellectual culture, their object has been by one method or another to form a character; their chief skill has been shewn in tracing the influence of different members of a family on the characters of each other. The Family, small circle as it must be, has been found large enough for the discovery of innumerable varieties of feeling and disposition, every variety having some tendency to produce another by collision or sympathy. So those who have begun with the most practical purpose of improving household discipline, have also given us clear and vivid pictures of different households which they have seen or imagined. Historical novels have had a certain attraction for us. Brilliant pictures like those in Ivanhoe when painted by an antiquarian who is also a man of genius, must have an interest even them as guides to the true knowBut in general the portion of such domestic produces by far the most The strictly domestic story has become characteristic of our times, not in this country only, but, as far as I can make out, in all countries of Europe. The morality may be of one kind or another. The Family may be merely a ground-plot for the display of sensational incidents. Still these incidents are found to be most startling, and therefore most agreeable to those who wish to be startled, when they are associated with outrages of one kind or another upon family order. Those who do not want field. such stimulants to their own feelings and fancies, and when we suspect ledge of an age. books which is novelmore powerful effect. The Domestic prized than the Historical. The Sen. sation novel. The quiet observer chooses the same do not hold it an honest trade to mix them for others, have found in the quietest home-life materials for Art. All social harmonies and social contradictions, they see, may come forth in the relations of fathers and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, masters and servants. There is a certain character, they are sure, which helps to make a family peaceful or miserable-a home out of which blessings or curses may diffuse themselves over the commonwealth. Even those who are impatient of national boundaries as too narrow, are yet occupying themselves with theories and controversies about the conditions of the family, some of them denouncing our ordinary conceptions of it as antiquated, some reviving most ancient theories respecting it, some maintaining that all the order of Christendom is due to the difference between its domestic forms and that of countries in which polygamy prevails, all its disease and disorders to the loss of the spirit which should quicken these forms. I am Domestic Morality entitled therefore to claim the authority of the most admitted thoughtful as well as the most popular writers, of all to be the schools and of both sexes, for the opinion that Do- of Social mestic Morality is not only an integral portion of Morality. Social Morality, but should be the starting point of any discussion respecting it. They are equally agreed that in treating of this topic our business is not chiefly with acts or modes of conduct, but with a character or state of mind from which the acts proceed, by which the conduct must be regulated. first stage II. The fierce onslaught of Rousseau upon the Second Civilisation which he found in France, and upon the very name of Civilisation-his preference for the life of woods-was endorsed in the declaration of Rights division. The declaration of Civili. which inaugurated the Revolution. For in this deof Rights. claration maxims determining what Society ought to be were deduced from a state prior to the existence of Society itself. The difficulties and contradictions of that assumption became every day more palpable; many who embraced Rousseau's doctrine concerning the sovereignty of the people were industrious in Defenders pointing them out. None again have been so much sation, alive to the worth of Civilisation, and have been so eager to vindicate it from the charges of Rousseau, as countrymen of his own who have shared in his dislike of the Ancien Régime. M. Guizot's work, which is so well known in England, and is so conspicuous for its learning and ability, represents the temper of the time in which it was composed. It is specially occupied in exhibiting Civilisation as the antagonist of Feudalism. Strictly, almost sternly, etymological, M. Guizot makes us feel that the word Civilisation points specially to that formation of towns, that develop(Lectures ment of cities, which counteracted the solitary inbonne). fluence of the territorial Proprietor in the midst of his land, the barbarism of those who were, in a great measure, adscripti glebæ. With a critical knowledge of history to which Montesquieu could make no pretension, he distinguishes the different agencies, legal, personal, ecclesiastical-derived from the traditions of Rome, from Gothic kings, from the papal authority, from distinguished men, from the co-operation and clashing of these forces-which brought forth a civic life in modern Europe. He has made us perceive the the book. meaning of this process which was working through so many ages. But he does not disguise from us or from himself that it was a mysterious process, which Guizot. de la Civi- at the Sor Characteristics of operation and col lision of various forces procertain ducing a manner or it requires an historical instinct to apprehend, which cannot be reduced under formulas now more than it could when the Esprit des Lois was composed. The The colights of modern criticism have not tended, he shews us, to make Society, or the Manners of Society, more explicable by mere laws or systems of Government. On the contrary they have helped greatly to perplex the man who has thought that some one clue would guide him through the labyrinth-that he could determine, for instance, the condition of Europe, by attributing its blessings or its curses to the influence of the Clergy. They have brought with them blessings and curses which the faithful student of Civilisation, according to M. Guizot's notion of it, must equally recognise. character. Civilisa tion in England, and II. 1858. for statis tics. Mr. Buckle's work on Civilisation is in most re- Buckle's spects very unlike Guizot's. At first sight it would History of seem not to concern my subject, since he has expressed in more than one or two very decisive sentences his opinion, that the further civilisation advances, the more will intellectual studies take precedence of moral. Such an opinion is in accordance with one part of the writer's scheme. He had an Reverence immense appreciation of statistics; a great confidence that by help of them we may be able to predict in what circumstances certain acts (e. g. homicide or suicide) will be frequent or rare. Now the intellect is no doubt chiefly conversant with such calculations as these; they are scarcely applicable to states of mind or feeling; it may be difficult to discover how these can be indicated by tables. But Mr. Buckle His supinsists strongly on the difference between the nations posed contempt of of the East, which bow before the powers of Nature, Morality more verbal than real. Objection to the word Civil or Politi cal as indi cating a department in Social and those of the West which defy them. That is a state of mind or feeling. Again, he deems it the grand test of a nation's civilisation that it loses the disposition to make war and to persecute for religious opinions. He does therefore in fact connect Civilisation with the formation of an eos, or Social Morality, however he may trace that eos to certain external conditions or suppose it to be produced by certain exercises of intellect. The Morality which he scorned seems to consist of certain maxims. That he did not suppose these to be of much worth, may be accepted as a proof that he demanded a character which he found they could not of themselves produce. He is not therefore to be set down as an exception to our rule. As much as Montesquieu, or Guizot, he supposes Civilisation to consist in a certain social manner; one which cannot be expressed in formal edicts, which must be in the men who compose the society. Here then we have another division of Social Morality. We might call it the Civil or the Political. But useful as both these words are, they are borrowed from countries in which the city had an absorbing importance that does not belong to it in later history. Such cities as Pisa, Milan, Florence, when they first Morality. attract attention in Mediaval History, seem as if they might represent Italy, as Athens, Sparta, Thebes represent ancient Greece. But the Italian of this day will not tolerate that doctrine. He claims to be the member of a nation. London has never stood for England; the most popular writers among contemporary Frenchmen are careful to shew us that we must study the provinces and not merely Paris to know what France is. M. Guizot may be right in Why the epithet Nationalis more convenient. |