‘Ask as much as you like,’ said Wentworth; ‘but I do not know that I am bound to answer.’
‘Wentworth, you are making an ass of yourself. You may think the language rather strong, but it is true, nevertheless. You know I am a candid friend, and I tell you this is not your place.’
‘I am almost of the same opinion.’
‘Let us look at the thing seriously. What is Parliamentary life but the dreariest drudgery going?—worse than that of the treadmill. The House meets at four, and rises God knows when. In any civilized community the House would meet in the day, and the business would be got through in a creditable manner. In that House you must remain night after night, never out of the sound of the division-bell or the call of the whip. There is a nice smoking-room, I own, but as it is, I believe you smoke too much. There is a fine library, but it is not so convenient for you as your own in Clifford’s Inn. I believe the dinners are not bad; but you are a philosopher, and prefer your roast potato and your mutton-bone—
‘“A hollow tree,
A crust of bread and liberty.”
—to the dainties of the gourmand. On a hot night you can have a moonlight walk, to breathe the odours of the silvery Thames, and the chances are you will go home to be laid up with rheumatism.’
This latter aspect of the question was always a serious thing to the speaker. He was a medical man, and had constituted himself the guardian of Wentworth’s health. The two were warmly-attached friends. Buxton, for such was his name, had not made much way in his profession; in fact, he was not a lady’s man. He was rough in voice, blunt in manner, somewhat uncouth in appearance. He might have done for the army or navy; but as a general practitioner he had no chance.
Any respectable lady who had injured her health by tight-lacing or late hours, or her figure by high-heeled boots, or her complexion by cosmetics; any decent tradesman or substantial British merchant who had ruined his liver by a too generous diet and want of fresh air and exercise; any devoted parson who had induced—as he may well have done—softening of the brain, considering what he has to say, and to whom, not once a week, but all the year round, would have deemed Buxton, with his absence of all finesse, with his straightforward habit of talking, with his rude and, to them, impertinent and unfeeling questions, a brute; and thus Buxton spread out his net and displayed his head full of strange wares in vain. But he was honest to the core, and a genuine friend, with a love of science nothing could quench, and with a desire to benefit his neighbours, which in his case was its own reward.
His wants were not many, for he was a bachelor; and independently of his profession, he had a comfortable little property of his own. England owes much to her medical men. In the priesthood of the future they will not occupy the lowest scale. Already they rank amongst our greatest theological reformers. Undoubtedly one of the healthiest signs of the times is the attention paid by the modern Christian to that wonderful temple of ours, the human body, fashioned, as we would fain believe, in the Divine image by an Almighty power.
It is lamentable to see how at one time all trace of that elevating idea was lost sight of, and how widely it was accepted as a matter of course that this poor carcase, this earthly tabernacle, this vile body of sin and death, was, if the Divine life was to be kept alive, to be subjected to treatment which would have brought the wrong-doer within the four corners of any decent Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, had such an Act been in existence. A good many of the sighs and groans accepted as evidences of exalted piety in past days, were more the result of earthly than of celestial influences—more due to the fact that the digestion was weak than that the spirit was strong; that it was ill with the body rather than it was well with the soul.