Useful arts and inventions spread so rapidly in these days of improving communication, that they are no longer the decisive marks of enlightenment in a people that they were when each nation had the benefit of its own discoveries, and little more. Yet it is worthy of remark what kinds of improvement are the most generally adopted; whether those which enhance the luxury of the rich, or such as benefit the whole society. It is worthy of remark whether the newest delight is in splendid club-houses, where gentlemen may command the rarest luxuries at a smaller expense than would have been possible without the aid of the principle of economy of association, or in the groups of mechanics' dwellings, where the same principle is applied in France to furnishing numbers with advantages of warmth, light, cookery, and cleanliness, which they could no otherwise have enjoyed. It is worth observing whether there are most mechanical inventions dedicated to the selfishness of the rich, or committed to the custom of the working classes. If the rich compose the great body of purchasers who are to be considered by inventors, the working classes are probably depressed. If there are most purchasers among the most numerous classes, the working order is rising, and the state of things is hopeful.—How speed the great discoveries and achievements which cannot, by any management, be confined to the few? How prospers the steam-engine, the rail-road,—strong hands which cannot be held back, by which a multitude of the comforts of life are extended to the poor, who could not reach up to them before? Do men glory most in the activity of these, or in the invention of a new pleasure for the satiated?
In the finer arts, for whom are heads and hands employed? The study of the ruins of all old countries tells the antiquary of the lives of the rich alone. There are churches which record the living piety or the dying penitence of the rich; priories and convents which speak of monkish idleness, and the gross luxuries which have cloaked themselves in asceticism; there are palaces of kings, castles of nobles, and villas of opulent commoners; but nowhere, except in countries recently desolated by war, are the relics of the abodes of the poor the study of the traveller. If he now finds skill bestowed on the buildings which are the exclusive resort of the labouring classes, and taste employed in their embellishment, it is clear that the order is rising. The record of each upward heave will remain for the observation of the future traveller, in the buildings to which they resort;—a record as indisputable as a mountain fissure presents to the geologist.
Time was when the dwellings of the opulent were ornamented with costly and beautiful works of art, while the eye of the peasant and the artisan found no other beauty to rest on than the face of his beloved, and the forms of his children. At this day, there are countries in Europe where the working man aspires to nothing more than to stick up an image of the Virgin, gay with coloured paper, in a corner of his dwelling. But there are other lands where a higher taste for beauty is gratified. There are good prints provided cheap, to hang in the place of the ancient sampler or daub. Casts from all the finest works of the statuary, ancient and modern, are hawked about the streets, and may be seen in the windows where green parrots and brown cats in plaster used to annoy the eye. In societies where the working class is thus worked for, in the gratification of its finer tastes, the class must be rising. It is rising into the region of intellectual luxury, and must have been borne up thither by the expansion of the fraternal spirit.
The great means of progress, for individuals, for nations, and for the race at large, is the multiplication of Objects of interest. The indulgence of the passions is the characteristic of men and societies who have but one occupation and a single interest; while the passions cause comparatively little trouble where the intellect is active, and the life diversified with objects. Pride takes a safe direction, jealousy is diverted from its purposes of revenge, and anger combats with circumstances, instead of with human foes. The need of mutual aid, the habit of co-operation caused by interest in social objects, has a good effect upon men's feelings and manners towards each other; and out of this grows the mutual regard which naturally strengthens into the fraternal spirit. The Russian boor, imprisoned in his serfhood, cannot comprehend what it is to care for any but the few individuals who are before his eyes, and the Grand Lama has probably no great sympathy with the race; but in a town within whose compass almost all occupations are going forward, and where each feels more or less interest in what engages his neighbour, nothing of importance to the race can become known without producing more or less emotion. A famine in India, an earthquake in Syria, causes sorrow. The inhabitants meet to petition against the wrongs inflicted on people whom they have never seen, and give of the fruits of their labour to sufferers who have never heard of them, and from whom they can receive no return of acknowledgment. It is found that the more pursuits and aims are multiplied, the more does the appreciation of human happiness expand, till it becomes the interest which predominates over all the rest. This is an interest which works out its own gratification, more surely than any other. Wherever, therefore, the greatest variety of pursuits is met with, it is fair to conclude that the fraternal spirit of society is the most vigorous, and the society itself the most progressive.
This is as far as any nation has as yet attained,—to a warmer than common sympathy among its own members, and compassion for distant sufferers. When the time comes for nations to care for one another, and co-operate as individuals, such a people will be the first to hold out the right hand.
Manners have not been treated of separately from Morals in any of the preceding divisions of the objects of the traveller's observation. The reason is, that manners are inseparable from morals, or, at least, cease to have meaning when separated. Except as manifestations of morals, they have no interest, and can have no permanent existence. A traveller who should report of them exclusively is not only no philosopher, but does not merit the name of an observer; for he can have no insight into the matter which he professes to convey an account of. His interpretation of what is before his eyes is more likely to be wrong than correct, like that of the primitive star-gazers, who reported that the planets went backwards and forwards in the sky. To him, and to him only, who has studied the principles of morals, and thus possessed himself of a key to the mysteries of all social weal and woe, will manners be an index answering as faithfully to the internal movements, harmonious or discordant, of society, as the human countenance to the workings of the human heart.