“Unquestionably, Mr. Burns,” said the man in black, addressing the farmer, “politeness is but a very shadow, as the poet hath it, if the heart be wanting. I saw, to-night, in a strictly polite family, so marked a presumption of the lack of that natural affection of which politeness is but the portraiture and semblance, that truly I have been grieved in my heart ever since.”
“Ah, Mr. Murdoch,” said the farmer, “there is ever more hypocrisy in the world than in the church, and that, too, among the class of fine gentlemen and fine ladies who deny it most. But the instance”—
“You know the family, my worthy friend,” continued Mr. Murdoch—“it is a very pretty one, as we say vernacularly, being numerous, and the sons highly genteel young men; the daughters not less so. A neighbour of the same very polite character, coming on a visit when I was among them, asked the father, in the course of a conversation to which I was privy, how he meant to dispose of his sons; when the father replied that he had not yet determined. The visitor said, that were he in his place, seeing they were all well-educated young men, he would send them abroad; to which the father objected the indubitable fact, that many young men lost their health in foreign countries, and very many their lives. ‘True,’ did the visitor rejoin; ‘but, as you have a number of sons, it will be strange if some one of them does not live and make a fortune.’ Now, Mr. Burns, what will you, who know the feelings of paternity, and the incalculable, and assuredly I may say, invaluable value of human souls, think when I add, that the father commended the hint, as showing the wisdom of a shrewd man of the world!”
“Even the chief priests,” said the old man, “pronounced it unlawful to cast into the treasury the thirty pieces of silver, seeing it was the price of blood; but the gentility of the present day is less scrupulous. There is a laxity of principle among us, Mr. Murdoch, that, if God restore us not, must end in the ruin of our country. I say laxity of principle; for there have ever been evil manners among us, and waifs in no inconsiderable number, broken loose from the decencies of society—more, perhaps, in my early days than there are now. But our principles at least were sound; and not only was there thus a restorative and conservative spirit among us, but, what was of not less importance, there was a broad gulf, like that in the parable, between the two grand classes, the good and the evil—a gulf which, when it secured the better class from contamination, interposed no barrier to the reformation and return of even the most vile and profligate, if repentant. But this gulf has disappeared, and we are standing unconcernedly over it, on a hollow and dangerous marsh of neutral ground, which, in the end, if God open not our eyes, must assuredly give way under our feet.”
“To what, father,” inquired my friend, who sat listening with the deepest and most respectful attention, “do you attribute the change?”
“Undoubtedly,” replied the old man, “there have been many causes at work; and, though not impossible, it would certainly be no easy task to trace them all to their several effects, and give to each its due place and importance. But there is a deadly evil among us, though you will hear of it from neither press nor pulpit, which I am disposed to rank first in the number—the affectation of gentility. It has a threefold influence among us: it confounds the grand eternal distinctions of right and wrong, by erecting into a standard of conduct and opinion that heterogeneous and artificial whole which constitutes the manners and morals of the upper classes; it severs those ties of affection and good-will which should bind the middle to the lower orders, by disposing the one to regard whatever is below them with a true contemptuous indifference, and by provoking a bitter and indignant, though natural jealousy in the other for being so regarded; and, finally, by leading those who most entertain it into habits of expense, torturing their means, if I may so speak, on the rack of false opinion—disposing them to think, in their blindness, that to be genteel is a first consideration, and to be honest merely a secondary one—it has the effect of so hardening their hearts, that, like those Carthaginians of whom we have been lately reading in the volume Mr. Murdoch lent us, they offer up their very children, souls and bodies, to the unreal, phantom-like necessities of their circumstances.”
“Have I not heard you remark, father,” said Gilbert “that the change you describe has been very marked among the ministers of our church?”
“Too marked and too striking,” replied the old man; “and in affecting the respectability and usefulness of so important a class, it has educed a cause of deterioration, distinctly from itself, and hardly less formidable. There is an old proverb of our country—‘Better the head of the commonality than the tail of the gentry.’ I have heard you quote it, Robert, oftener than once, and admire its homely wisdom. Now, it bears directly on what I have to remark—the ministers of our church have moved but one step during the last sixty years; but that step has been an all-important one—it has been from the best place in relation to the people, to the worst in relation to the aristocracy.”
“Undoubtedly, worthy Mr. Burns,” said Mr. Murdoch, “there is great truth, according to mine own experience, in that which you affirm. I may state, I trust, without over-boasting or conceit, my respected friend, that my learning is not inferior to that of our neighbour the clergyman—it is not inferior in Latin, nor in Greek, nor yet in French literature, Mr. Burns, and probable it is he would not much court a competition, and yet, when I last waited at the manse regarding a necessary and essential certificate, Mr. Burns, he did not so much as ask me to sit down.”
“Ah!” said Gilbert, who seemed the wit of the family, “he is a highly respectable man, Mr. Murdoch—he has a fine house, fine furniture, fine carpets—all that constitutes respectability, you know; and his family is on visiting terms with that of the laird. But his credit is not so respectable, I hear.”