1856.]

Criticism-its good and its evil.

5

until I had been punished by innumerable criticisms on my own style. I used to read books with a kind of fury, tearing the hearts out of them as it were

A strongish metaphor that!

ELLESMERE.

MILVERTON.

and I could not have uttered a single rational word about the style of men most remarkable for their style. I scarcely knew (you will hardly believe it) that Johnson was pompous, Gibbon measured, and Addison polite. I asked each book, What have you that is new to tell me?' And I read even poems without much thought about their metre or their melody.

ELLESMERE.

Swinish, my dear fellow, swinish! I should have prophesied that such a man would ultimately go to live in Pigshire. I know I always criticised from the very first; sometimes, even, before I had read the book, as is the way with the best and surest critics of all ages.

MILVERTON.

I can well believe you. For my part, I should not be sorry at times to go back to my former swinishness,' as you call it. In a highly thoughtful and enlightened age, we are all of us too much disposed to criticise. Criticism has, perhaps, destroyed more good action than it ever guided.

ELLESMERE.

That is so like you, Milverton,-winding up with an imposing aphorism, which Dunsford and the rest of your followers take for gospel. I wish I had time or energy to cross-examine it; I would work it down to nothing.

MILDRED.

It might not be the less true for all that.

I

[After this, we walked about the wood in separate parties. observed that ELLESMERE attached himself to MR. MIDHurst, which was a great comfort to me, as I had been afraid of ELLESMERE's bluntness shocking our new friend. In about half an hour we were all sitting again at our old spot, which had been chosen originally by MR. MIDHURST, who seems to have a keen eye for what is comfortable as well as beautiful. ELLESMERE began by saying that he was becoming a serious character, a solid personage, as he had promised us at Dessin's.]

ELLESMERE.

And now, in my new character, I shall feel it my duty (something unpleasant is coming, of course) to bring before the Court a few arguments in reply to my learned friend's pleadings of yesterday. You must know, intelligent jurymen, and still more intelligent jury women-flattery is never lost in that quarter-that Mr. Milverton is a very subtle individual; as plausible as he is subtle; and as pertinacious as he is plausible. (There is nothing like abusing the lawyer on the opposite side before one begins one's case.) Another thing that imposes upon you is, that he has manifestly a great respect for his own opinions, which gives an appearance of weight to what he says. If he were to tell you delays are dangerous,' he would put it in such a way as to lead you to think that he had carefully considered the other side, and had exhausted the question of whether delays are not useful. Indeed, if he were to tell you that two and two make four,' it would not be that the common public thought so that would have had no weight with him; but that he, Leonard Milverton, Esquire, of Worth-Ashton, in the county of Hants, had come to that conclusion,-that is the point.

MILVERTON.

How adroit all this is. And so you are going to take up the puritan

side ?

ELLESMERE.

Yes, I take up any side for a fee, and I have imagined a fee to myself

in this case. Obadiah Snuffleton and others, against the common, profane people of England-one hundred guineas.

DUNSFORD.

How full you are of mockery, Ellesmere. You cannot help ridiculing the side you are about to take up.

ELLESMERE.

Well, I shall do my best for them. And first, I beg you all to remark that we heard not one word yesterday about the question of other peoples' time being taken up in order to provide innocent amusements for Milverton's dear, dirty public.

MILVERTON.

Not dirty, Ellesmere. That is not in your brief.

ELLESMERE.

But what do you say to the main question? You must make some people work who don't want to work, and who ought to have rest, on the Sunday. You introduce the practice of work, you sanction it, you would almost compel it. Whether you please to consider this an argument or not, it is one which weighs with a great many good people.

MILVERTON.

I am glad to hear that it does, as when it is answered-and I am sure it is answerable,-they are likely to be on my side.

Do you imagine that no work is caused now by the demands for amusement of some kind-perhaps for simple stupefaction,-which are made on a Sunday by those numerous classes to whom I have alluded? I would engage to furnish the people of any great city with all the rational amusement that can be requisite, at the same, or at a less, expense of labour than the same people demand now for the coarsest purposes on that day. These are all questions of detail. How you can furnish some amusement, and minimize the amount of labour to be expended upon it on a particular day-how you can contrive that that minimum of labour shall be so shared by a number of persons as to preserve to them their enjoyment of the day in question four times out of five-how you can manage, by the use of great establishments, admirably organized, to prevent the work of thousands of small establishments-all these are questions to which intelligent men might direct their minds.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, you are to recollect that thousands and tens of thousands of persons spend the Sunday in a dangerous and brutal manner. You are to recollect the cost, the suffering, and the misery of drunkenness, and you are not lightly to throw away the opportunity of combating so great an evil.

ELLESMERE.

The intelligent jurymen who surround me, especially the stout gentleman in the blue coat with metal buttons, will observe that all the arguments of my learned friend are hypothetical. It will be seen-it may be tried-it is sure to be found-are the modes of speech of that ingenious advocate.

MILVERTON.

All that we want is the opportunity of trying what can judiciously and fairly be done to elevate, improve, and utilize the people's day of rest, which, with a strange forgetfulness of the just liberty of the subject, you deny to us.

As to the religious part of the question, about which I have not hitherto said anything, I should merely observe that, the Sabbath being made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, and the nature, habits, and climate of man in the West being totally different from that of man in the East, the mode of spending the Sabbath might also be totally different, and yet the spirit of the commandment be entirely maintained. What would be rest to a Jew in Palestine, would be fatigue to us in England. There are some remarks of Sir Humphry Davy on this point, which however I will not molest you with at present.

1856.]

Christian Liberty as regards the Sabbath.

7

Moreover, I maintain, resting upon that passage in one of St. Paul's Epistles, Let no man judge you in meat and drink,* that we Christians have a thorough Christian liberty to consider this matter of the Sabbath for ourselves.

And lastly, I must tell this good company that I would rather not argue the theological point with them until they have read the greatest and most elaborate work that has been written on the subject of the Sabbath: I mean that book by Sir William Domville.† It is one of the ablest controversial works I ever read, written in the soberest and most pious spirit, with an abundance of learning admirably brought to bear upon the subject.

ELLESMERE.

My brief, here, at this part of the argument, is rather lengthy, and at the same time somewhat illegible. Proceed.

MILVERTON.

Again, there is one awkward question I wish to put to the learned lawyer on the other side-namely, what is to be done with the vacant hours of uneducated men? How are the soldiers to employ themselves at Aldershot and in the Crimea? And, by the way, do not these stupid outbreaks, in Hyde Park, of the listless ignorance and love of mischief in large masses of our poor fellow-countrymen, suggest something to your mind as to the danger of the present state of things?

ELLESMERE.

I am not instructed how to answer these vague and unpleasant questions; but I am instructed to maintain that dancing is a foolish, unprofitable, ungodly, carnal amusement.

MILVERTON.

Then you are instructed to maintain as great a piece of folly as ever existed in the mind of man. You lawyers proceed greatly upon authority. Will you put your finger upon any single passage of any great authority, sacred or profane, who has declared this doctrine?

DUNSFORD.

Our Saviour was present at the Marriage at Cana. Dances were in usage at some of the Jewish ceremonies-were perhaps used on that occasion.

ELLESMERE.

What, you against me! If you venture even to have a cricket-match amongst the boys on a Sunday, at Twaddleton-cum-Mud, I will make the parish too hot to hold you. What will Miss Smith say? What the reverend and severe Miss Jones? What the all-important Mrs. Grundy?

DUNSFORD, becoming very red in the face.

I do not want your assistance, sir, in managing my parish, and I think it is rather impertinent in a young man like you, to I am a clergyman of what is called the Low Church, (not that I recognise any such distinctions as 'high' and 'low,') but I am not going to subscribe to every foolish tenet of my brethren, and to make my parish less manageable than it otherwise would be. But what an old fool am to let myself be angry with one whose business it is to annoy and provoke everybody.

ELLESMERE.

My dear Dunsford, I honour and esteem you above all people. You are the bravest clergyman I know. How could you be in such a rage with me? But as Charles Lamb said, or intimated, men of fun and humour are seldom thoroughly understood. I'll take care that none of you have an opportunity of misunderstanding me again, and being cross with me. Henceforward I will talk like a rational being, and be the worst companion you ever lived with.

'Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.' (Col. ii. 16, 17.)

+ The Sabbath, by Sir W. Domville, Bart. Two vols. 8vo. London: Chapman and Hall,

DUNSFORD, taking ELLESMERE's hand.

Mehercle, senex stultissimus sum. Peccavi, peccavi.

ELLESMERE, turning to the young ladies.

He allows that he is a little afraid of Miss Jones; that is the meaning of the Latin.

Now that this little encounter between one of the Jury and the Counsel has ended, I shall take the opportunity of explaining some of my former statements, and of fortifying some of my positions. I am not particularly wedded to dancing-I don't suppose it to be a panacea for human ills-I do not wish to contend that any particular day should be set apart for festivity-I do not want to shock good people more than can be helped. But I do declare that the amusements of the common people in England are infrequent, unsocial, not beautiful, and not improving.

MIDHURST.

Just look at those gin-palaces, expressing in their form the collected ignorance of the most ignorant body of men in the world-architects and builders, that is, with some splendid and rare exceptions, of men who least know what they can do and what they ought to do with the materials before them. Look at those flaring, hideous things that affront the night. Palaces they are called! There is no society in any palace so dull as society in a gin-palace. Think only of one thing, that the guests there drink their melancholy fiery potions, standing. Now, what I want to substitute are cheap cafés. Such a change will not be effected easily or speedily; but you may rely upon it that these cafés would be the greatest boon to the poor, and would do more good than oceans of sermons.

ELLESMERE.

Add also essays, and I will agree with you. But you have really come out splendidly, Mr. Midhurst. Hitherto you have been employed, as far as I could discern, only in blackening all creation; now a little speck of white appears upon the horizon. But do not let us talk any more about the subject. If you want me to speak seriously about it, I must say that I agree substantially with Milverton; but I am sure you will never succeed in doing any good until you thoroughly appreciate all that can be said on the other side, and do your best to conciliate the many excellent persons who have the misfortune to hold the narrowest views upon the whole matter.

I am tired of being wise; let us turn head-over-heels a little. Boy, you shall have a pound of cherries (which will be a good thing for your father, as he will have a chance of getting rid of you sooner), if you will go down the hill, making windmills all the way. A boy seems to me to express more of the boy-nature when he is doing that than in anything else.

[The boy began to take ELLESMERE at his word. We all laughed

very much, except Mr. MIDHURST, who seldom goes beyond a slow, pleasant smile. ELLESMERE and DUNSFORD were unusually gracious to each other, as if they wished to efface all recollection of any offence that had been given or taken.]

IV.

SCENE.-Steamboat on the Meuse. A good-natured and lively foreigner, supposed to be a Belgian manufacturer, is talking earnestly with ELLESMERE, and gesticulating not a little.

FOREIGNER.

There is lines behind lines, I tell you. There is seventy thousand men there. When you take one thing what you have but another as beeg or beeger? Bah! I have the best of informations. It is impossible to take Sebastopol.

1856.]

Determination to take Sebastopol.

ELLESMERE.

9

It may be so; but the place will be taken, nevertheless. We do not know how to leave off when we have once begun a thing. That is an incapacity, Sir, which the English labour under. You say that the intelligence we have now of the state of affairs in Sebastopol would make any rational people reconsider their plans. You admit that the French are not rational in this respect-that when they have once begun what they call ' a career of glory,' they are not likely to leave off.

FOREIGNER.

Oh de devils! dey go right over de world, and never look behind dem.

ELLESMERE.

But you were pleased to add that we English were a thoughtful people -a commercial people-and that you hoped better things from us. Now, you speak very good English

FOREIGNER.

Oh you flatter, Sir; but when I was young, I live two three years at Leeverpool.

ELLESMERE.

You do not speak exactly as we do, but I can see you thoroughly understand all I say. I wish I had as much knowledge of any foreign language. Now, regard all the gentlemen and ladies that I shall point out to you. They are of one party. Look at that dark, weary-looking, heavy-lipped man who is smoking a cigar, into whose face the bulldog is looking up. He is a writer, and we call him in our party the philosopher.

FOREIGNER.

Oh yes, I understand. He believe in noting.

ELLESMERE.

No, he believes in many things. And besides, if a philosopher believes in nothing else, he is sure to believe in himself pretty largely. Then you see that fat, sickly-looking man on the other side of the vessel.

FOREIGNER.

Oh yes, he regular Englishman; he over-eat a good deal.

ELLESMERE.

You deceive yourself, my friend. We eat less than any other European nation; only we eat faster and with less enjoyment, and our food disagrees with us more. Then look at that gentleman in black, with tights.

Ah, ver respectab' man!

FOREIGNER.

ELLESMERE.

Yes. Then you see that chubby boy, who of course is talking to the man at the helm, as it is specially forbidden to do so. Then you see those two young ladies in the brown dresses.

FOREIGNER.

Ah, the ver pretty round-faced young ladies. You Englishmen are so ver happy; the ladies are all so pretty.

ELLESMERE.

And then you see that serving man, in livery (his name is Joseph), who is looking about with a bewildered stare at the fortifications of Huy, which, if I mistake not, we are just passing. Go and ask all these people (they represent many classes in society) what they think about the taking of Sebastopol. Say you were sent by me, if you feel any difficulty about being introduced.

No, I no feel.

FOREIGNER.

Everybody is what you call introduced in a steamship. (Goes over to the boy.) Well, my leetel man, and so you would like to command a ship and go and take the Russian by his beard?