Characters of this stamp are, as you have often observed to me, far more acceptable to very young men than those more swayed by rigid rules of right; and when they join to natural acuteness considerable practical knowledge of life, they soon obtain a great influence over the less gifted and less experienced. I see this in James; for, though not by any means blind to the blemishes in Lord George's character, nor even indifferent to them, yet is he submissive to every dictate of his will, and an implicit believer in all his opinions. But why should I feel astonished at this? Is not his influence felt by every member of the family; and papa himself, with all his native shrewdness, strongly disposed to regard his judgments as wise and correct? I remark this the more because I have been away from home, and after an absence one returns with a mind open to every new impression; nor can I conceal from myself that many of the notions I now see adopted and approved of, are accepted as being those popular in high society, and not because of their intrinsic correctness. Had we remained in Ireland, my dear Miss Cox, this had never been the case. There is a corrective force in the vicinity of those who have known us long and intimately, who can measure our pretensions by our station, and pronounce upon our mode of life from the knowledge they have of our condition; and this discipline, if at times severe and even unpleasant, is, upon the whole, beneficial to us. Now, abroad, this wholesome—shall I call it—"surveillance" is wanting altogether, and people are induced by its very absence to give themselves airs, and assume a style quite above them. From that very moment they insensibly adopt a new standard of right and wrong, and substitute fashion and conventionality for purity and good conduct. I 'm sure I wish we were back in Dodsborough with all my heart! It is not that there are not objects and scenes of intense interest around us here on every hand. Even I can feel that the mind expands by the variety of impressions that continue to pour in upon it. Still, I would not say that these things may not be bought too dearly; and that if the price they cost is discontent at our lot in life, a craving ambition to be higher and richer, and a cold shrinking back from all of our own real condition, they are unquestionably not worth the sacrifice.
To really enjoy the Continent it is not necessary—at least, for people bred and brought up as we have been—to be very rich; on the contrary, many—ay, and the greatest—advantages of Continental travel are open to very small fortunes and very small ambitions. Scenery, climate, inexpensive acquaintanceship, galleries, works of art, public libraries, gardens, promenades, are all available. The Morrises have certainly much less to live on than we have, and yet they have travelled over every part of Europe, know all its cities well, and never found the cost of living considerable. You will smile when I tell you that the single secret for this is, not to cultivate English society. Once make up your mind abroad to live with the people of the country, French, German, and Italian,—and there is no class of these above the reach of well-bred English,—and you need neither shine in equipage nor excel in a cook. There is no pecuniary test of respectability abroad; partly because this vulgarity is the offspring of a commercial spirit, which is, of course, not the general characteristic, and partly from the fact that many of the highest names have been brought down to humble fortunes by the accidents of war and revolution, and poverty is, consequently, no evidence of deficient birth. Our gorgeous notions of hospitality are certainly very fine things, and well become great station and large fortune, but are ruinous when they are imitated by inferior means and humble incomes. Foreigners are quite above such vulgar mimicry; and nothing is more common to hear than the avowal, "I am too poor to do this; my fortune would not admit of that;" not uttered in a mock humility, or with the hope of a polite incredulity, but in all the unaffected simplicity with which one mentions a personal fact, to which no shame or disgrace attaches. You may imagine, then, how unimpressively fall upon the ear all those pompous announcements by which we travelling English herald our high and mighty notions; the palaces we are about to hire, the fêtes we are going to give, and the other splendors we mean to indulge in.
I have read and re-read that part of your letter wherein you speak of your wish to come and live abroad, so soon as the fruits of your life of labor will enable you. Oh, my dear kind governess, with what emotion the words filled me,—emotions very different from those you ever suspected they would call up; for I bethought me how often I and others must have added to that toilsome existence by our indolence, our carelessness, and our wilfulness. In a moment there rose before me the anxieties you must have suffered, the cares you must have endured, the hopes for those who threw all their burdens upon you, and left to you the blame of their shortcomings and the reproach of their insufficiency.
What rest, what repose would ever requite such labor! How delighted am I to say that there are places abroad where even the smallest fortunes will suffice. I profited by the permission you gave me to show your letter to Mrs. Morris, and she gave me in return a list of places for you to choose from, at any one of which you could live with comfort for less than you speak of. Some are in Belgium, some in Germany, and some in Italy. Think, for instance, of a small house on the "Meuse," in the midst of the most beauteous scenery, and with a country teeming in every abundance around you, for twelve pounds a year, and all the material of life equally cheap in proportion. Imagine the habits of a Grand-Ducal capital, where the Prime Minister receives three hundred per annum, and spends two; where the admission to the theatre is fourpence, and you go to a Court dinner on foot at four o'clock in the day, and sit out of an evening with your work in a public garden afterwards.
Now, I know that in Ireland or Scotland, and perhaps in Wales too, places might be discovered where all the ordinary wants of life would not be dearer than here, but then remember that to live with this economy at home, you subject yourself to all that pertains to a small estate; you endure the barbarizing influences of a solitary life, or, what is worse, the vulgarity of village society. The well-to-do classes, the educated and refined, will not associate with you. Not so here. Your small means are no barrier against your admission into the best circles; you will be received anywhere. Your black silk gown will be "toilet" for the "Minister's reception," your white muslin will be good enough for a ball at Court! When the army numbers in its cavalry fifty hussars, and one battalion for its infantry, the simple resident need never blush for his humble retinue, nor feel ashamed that a maid-servant escorts him to a Court entertainment with a lantern, or that a latch-key and a lucifer-match do duty for a hall-porter and a chandelier!
One night—I was talking of these things—Captain Morris quoted a Latin author to the effect "that poverty had no such heavy infliction as in its power to make people ridiculous." The remark sounds at first an unfeeling one, but there is yet a true and deep philosophy in it, for it is in our own abortive and silly attempts to gloss over narrow fortune that the chief sting of poverty resides, and the ridicule alluded to is all of our making! The poverty of two thousand a year can be thus as glaringly absurd, as ridiculous, as that of two hundred, and even more so, since its failures are more conspicuous.
Now, had we been satisfied to live in this way, it is not alone that we should have avoided debt and embarrassment, but we should really have profited largely besides. I do not speak of the negative advantages of not mingling with those it had been better to have escaped; but that in the society of these smaller capitals there is, especially in Germany, a highly cultivated and most instructive class, slightly pedantic, it may be, but always agreeable and affable. The domesticity of Germany is little known to us, since even their writers afford few glimpses of it. There are no Bulwers nor Bozes nor Thackerays to show the play of passion, nor the working of deep feeling around the family board and hearth. The cares of fathers, the hopes of sons, the budding anxieties of the girlish heart, have few chroniclers. How these people think and act and talk at home, and in the secret circle of their families, we know as little as we do of the Chinese. It may be that the inquiry would require long and deep and almost microscopic study. Life with them is not as with us, a stormy wave-tossed ocean; it is rather a calm and landlocked bay. They have no colonial empires, no vast territories for military ambition to revel in, nor great enterprise to speculate on. There are neither gigantic schemes of wealth, nor gold-fields to tempt them. Existence presents few prizes, and as few vicissitudes. The march of events is slow, even, and monotonous, and men conform themselves to the same measure! How, then, do they live,—what are their loves, their hates, their ambitions, their crosses, their troubles, and their joys? How are they moved to pity,—how stirred to revenge? I own to you I cannot even fancy this. The German heart seems to me a clasped volume; and even Goethe has but shown us a chance page or two, gloriously illustrated, I acknowledge, but closed as quickly as displayed.
Is Marguerite herself a type? I wish some one would tell me. Is that childlike gentleness, that trustful nature, that resistless, passionate devotion, warring with her piety, and yet heightened by it,—are these German traits? They seem so; and yet do these Fräuleins that I see, with yellow hair, appear capable of this headlong and impetuous love. Faust, I 'm convinced, is true to his nationality. He loves like a German,—and is mad, and mystical, fond, dreamy, and devoted by turns.
But all these are not what I look for. I want a family picture—a Teerburgh or a Mieris—painted by a German Dickens, or touched by a native Titmarsh. So far as I have read of it, too, the German Drama does not fill up this void; the comedies of the stage present nothing identical of the people, and yet it appears to me they are singularly good materials for portraiture. The stormy incidents of university life, its curious vicissitudes, and its strange, half-crazed modes of thought blend into the quiet realities of after-life, and make up men such as one sees nowhere else. The tinge of romance they have contracted in boyhood is never thoroughly washed out of their natures, and although statecraft may elevate them to be grave privy councillors, or good fortune select them for its revenue officers, they cherish the old memories of Halle and Heidelberg, and can grow valorous over the shape of a rapier, or pathetic about the color of Fräulein Lydchen's hair.
It is doubtless very presumptuous in me to speak thus of a people of whom I have seen so little; but bear in mind, my dear Miss Cox, that I'm rather giving Mrs. Morris's experiences than my own, and, in some cases, in her own very words. She has a very extensive acquaintance in Germany, and corresponds, besides, with many very distinguished persons of that country. Perhaps private letters give a better insight into the habits of a people than most other things, and if so, one should pronounce very favorably of German character from the specimens I have seen. There are everywhere, great truthfulness, great fairness; a willingness to concede to others a standard different from their own; a hopeful tone in all things, and extreme gentleness towards women and children. Of rural life, and of scenery, too, they speak with true feeling-; and, as Sir Walter said of Goethe, "they understand trees."