Says old Alice, in “Mary Barton,” “I sometimes think the Lord is against planning. Whene’er I plan over much, He is sure to send and mar all my plans, as if He would ha’ me put the future into His hands. Afore Christmas-time I was as full as full could be of going home for good and all; yo has heard how I’ve wished it this terrible long time.... Many a winter’s night did I lie awake and think that, please God, come summer, I’d go home at last. Little did I think how God Almighty would baulk me for not leaving my days in His hands, who had led me through the wilderness hitherto.” It is very like Rousseau to say, in reference to a fully determined project of his, for the fulfilment of which nothing was wanting but “ce qui ne dépend pas des hommes dans les projets les mieux concertés,”—that “on dirait qu’il n’y a que les noirs complots des méchants qui réussissent; les projets innocents des bons n’ont presque jamais d’accomplissement.” But who can hope for anything like contentment, as Mr. Helps somewhere asks, so long as he continues to attach that ridiculous degree of importance to the events of this life which so many people are inclined to do? Observe, he bids us, the effect which it has upon them: they are most uncomfortable if their little projects do not turn out according to their fancy—nothing is to be angular to them—they regard external things as the only realities; and as they have fixed their abode here, they must have it arranged to their mind. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu assures one of her correspondents that never had she been so little mistress of her own time and actions as since she lived alone; and going on to account for this, she observes, “Mankind is placed in a state of dependency, not only on one another (which all are in some degree), but so many inevitable accidents thwart our designs and limit our best-laid projects.” The poor efforts of our utmost prudence, and political schemes, she fancies must appear in the eyes of some superior beings, like the pecking of a young linnet to break a wire cage, or the climbing of a squirrel in a hoop. If to this bit of morality from the greatest of lady letter-writers in England, a parallel passage may readily be cited from the greatest of lady letter-writers in France, there is a characteristic difference, in the tone of religious feeling, conspicuous generally by its absence in Lady Mary’s case, but a pervading, though underlying, force in that of Madame de Sévigné. The latter describes on one occasion the “cruel derangement” of her family plans, so nicely arranged, and so ripe for completion; then adds, if with a sigh, with a sigh of gentle resignation, “La Providence le veut ainsi. Elle est tellement maitresse de toutes nos actions, que nous n’exécutons rien que sous son bon plaisir, et je tache de ne faire de projets que le moins qu’il m’est possible, afin de n’être pas si souvent trompée; car qui compte sans elle compte deux fois.” How vain, exclaims the author of “Destiny,” are all our schemes for futurity! Human wisdom exhausts itself in devising what a higher Power shows to be vanity. We decide for to-day, and a passing moment scatters our decisions as chaff before the wind. We resolve for to-morrow, to-morrow comes but to root up our resolutions. We scheme for our works to remain monuments of our power and wisdom, and the most minute, the most trivial event is sufficient to overturn all our purposes, and cast down to the dust the thoughts and the labours of a life. Truly, “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”
Were the affairs of this world to be guided implicitly by human wisdom, suggests one of Scott’s sententious doctors of divinity, or were they uniformly to fall out according to the conjectures of human foresight, events would no longer be under the domination of that time and chance which happen unto all men; since we should, in the one case, work out our own purposes to a certainty, by our own skill; and, in the other, regulate our conduct according to the views of unerring prescience. “But man is, while in this vale of tears, like an uninstructed bowler, so to speak, who thinks to attain the jack by delivering the bowl straightforward upon it, being ignorant that there is a concealed bias within the spheroid, which will make it, in all probability, swerve away, and lose the cast.” The future, in the words of a later fiction, is not a blank sheet of paper, for us to write any story we please upon, but a wonderful chart, mapped out by a Divine and unerring hand.
Ούδέ τις ἀνθρώπων ἐργάζεται, ἐν φρεσὶν εἰδὼς
Ἐς τέλος, εἴτ’ ἀγαθὸν γίγνεται εἴτε κακὸν.
Πολλάκι γαρ δοκέων θήσειν κακόν, ἐσθλὸν ἔθηκε,
Καί τε δοκῶν θήσειν ἐσθλόν, ἔθηκε κακόν.
Ὀυδέ τῳ ἀνθρώπων παραγίγνεται ὅσσ’ ἐθέλησεν.
When Mr. Thackeray propounds the query, Who can foresee everything, and always? and returns his own answer (a sufficiently safe one), Not the wisest amongst us,—he does so in reference to the counsels of the worldly woman who governed and directed the Newcome family; which counsels bore results so different from what that elderly lady desired, and foresaw. And he proceeds to point his moral by the tale of a French king’s fall. “When his majesty, Louis XIV., jockied his grandson on to the throne of Spain (founding thereby the present revered dynasty of that country), did he expect to peril his own, and bring all Europe about his royal ears? Could a late King of France, eager for the advantageous establishment of one of his darling sons, and anxious to procure a beautiful Spanish princess, with a crown and kingdom in reversion, for the simple and obedient youth, ever suppose that the welfare of his whole august race and reign would be upset by that smart speculation?” The master of irony professes to take only the most noble examples to illustrate the conduct of such a noble old personage as her ladyship of Kew, who brought a prodigious deal of trouble upon some of the innocent members of her family, whom no doubt she thought to better in life by her experienced guidance, and undoubted worldly wisdom. We may be as deep as Jesuits, he continues,—may know the world ever so well, lay the best ordered plans, and the profoundest combinations,—and by a certain not unnatural turn of fate, we, and our plans and combinations, are sent flying before the wind. “We may be as wise as Louis Philippe, that many counselled Ulysses whom the respectable world admired so; and after years of patient scheming, and prodigies of skill; after coaxing, wheedling, doubling, bullying wisdom, behold, yet stronger powers interpose: and schemes and skill and violence are nought.” As Schiller’s Wallenstein puts it, in his rather heathenish way—
“For jealous are the powers of destiny.
Joy premature, and shouts ere victory,