My friend the major kindly took me with him to messes and wherever he was invited.
These mess parties I then thought very pleasant, though I confess I should now derive very little pleasure from the scenes in which I was then wont to delight, particularly on what were considered public nights—toasting, speechifying, drinking, singing songs (many of the grossest description), roaring and screeching, with the finale of devilled biscuits, daybreak, pale faces, perhaps a quarrel or two, and half a dozen under the table, in a few words describe them.
Since those days, and twenty-five years are now equal to a century of the olden time as respects progress, things have improved; we have begun to learn in what true sociality really consists—even and tranquil interchange of thought, with a sprinkling of decent mirth, the genuine “feast of reason and the flow of soul”—to which eating and drinking, the mere gastronomic pleasures of the table, are considered as secondary rather than as principal sources of enjoyment.
The change, however, is yet but beginning; aldermen, it is true, have ceased to be inseparably associated (as twin ideas) with huge paunches and red noses—your seven-bottle men have enjoyed the last of their fame, which reposes with the celebrity of a Beau Brummel; but too much of the old Saxon leaven—the wine and wassail-loving and gormandizing spirit, with an excess of animalism in other respects—still characterizes us; and, little as it may be thought, is a serious hindrance to social and intellectual advancement.
The more exalted pleasures of the heart and intellect, let it be observed in passing, can only be enjoyed, individually and nationally, by those who can restrain their grosser appetites within moderate bounds. This great truth the Easterns of old perceived, though (like all truth when first discerned) it was pushed to a vicious extreme in this case—that of excessive mortification.
This inordinate love of that which administers gratification to the senses (allowable in a moderate degree) is, it appears to my humble apprehension, our prime national defect; it engenders a fearful selfishness and profusion—militates against that moderation and simplicity of character from which great things spring—marks a state of pseudo-civilization, and causes to be left fallow or but partially cultivated the field of the benevolent affections—the true source of the purest enjoyments.
When man shall be sought and prized for his qualities and virtues, and not for his mere adjuncts of wealth and station; when happy human hearts and smiling human faces shall have more real charms for the great and refined than the pirouettes of a Taglioni or the strains of a Rubini; when the glow of self-approval shall be able to battle with the fashionable sneer and the “world’s dread laugh,” and the duties of kindred and country shall take precedence of “missions to the blacks,” and the like; then, indeed, shall we be opening a new field for the mighty energies of our race, and entering on a happy millennium.
What a power to effect good, by leading the young and awakening spirit of the age into paths of peace, do the aristocracy of this country possess, if they would but use it! Standing on the vantage ground of fashion, wealth and station, they might infuse fresh moral and intellectual vigour into the nation, and stem, by all that is liberal, ennobling, and refining, the somewhat sordid and mediocre influences of mere commercial wealth. “Truth,” from them, would prevail with “double sway;” whilst philanthropists in “seedy coats” may plead in vain with the fervour of a Paul and the eloquence of a Demosthenes. “What’s in a name?” says Shakespeare—“a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” There the immortal bard utterly belied his usual accuracy.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A military execution must be, under all circumstances and to all persons, an awful and striking exhibition; but seen for the first time, it makes on the young mind a peculiarly deep and painful impression. An European soldier of one of the regiments at the station had, in a fit of passion and disappointment, attempted the life of his officer, and, agreeably to the necessarily stern provisions of military law, was sentenced to be shot. I witnessed the execution;[[53]] a solemn scene it was, and one which will never be effaced from my memory.