Those calm desires that asked but little room,
Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene,
Lived in each look, and brightened all the green.”
We doubt whether the consummation, imagined by the poet, has arrived, when “rural mirth and manners are no more,” but we see that they are being fast swept into the vortex of the great maelstrom of utilitarianism and generalisation. Carp we at these changes, then? We merely, according to our first proposition, balance gains against loss, crediting so many more cultivated acres, so many more turnips, so much more corn, against the loss of picturesqueness, the loss of many moral features and characteristics in a class which has hitherto been no mean element in our commonwealth. Had the Age, however, done no more than this, we should not have grudged the sacrifices thrown in the path of the great Juggernaut of progress. Spite of railroad and factory, there will still be beauty enow in our land—enow for poet and painter. It will not lie so much in our daily paths; it will not be such a constant presence to worker and wayfarer; but it will still be found by its worshippers. Even utilitarianism cannot nullify nature or denude the world of its Edens. Still must the corn wave, the grasses grow, the trees bud. Still will the “stately homes of England” stand beautiful “amid their tall ancestral trees through all the pleasant land,”—the cottage homes peep from their coverts. Still will the mountains stand in their grandeur, the rivers run in their gladness, and the valleys laugh and sing.
The rural virtues, too, may have only disappeared, to reappear under the influence of a higher intelligence. At least, we feel that a vocation, which is carried on in the open air, in constant communion with nature, must ever maintain a certain healthiness of feeling, a certain manliness of spirit.
But if this self-same utilitarianism, which has levelled our fields, turned our rivers, and laid open our valleys, be also levelling and laying bare our hearts, and frittering the great currents of the soul into a thousand channels—if it be overthrowing our moral landmarks, and invading the moral principles, which were once laws in our social cosmos, what hast thou, O Age, amid all thy wonders, to balance such work?
First of the levelling. We speak not of the changes or influences of democracy, for we have a firm belief that the proportions of society are determined by laws so fixed and true, that any attempt to violate them will eventually produce reaction; but of the changes which are gradually levelling and overthrowing the moral distinctions and moral barriers of our social life, and especially those of age. Where is now our youth?—where our old age? Where are our boys?—where our old men? We have men-boys and boy-men. But where are the veritable boys—the boys with eager hearts, throbbing pulses, buoyant spirits, gay hopes, glowing fancies, unreasoning beliefs, and ready faith—the boys with the young thoughts and the young feelings gushing through them like the juices of young life—the boys who hail their stage of existence joyfully, gathering its pleasures, battling its sorrows, and venting its impulses; not striving and straining after an unripe knowledge and a forced maturity? Where are now our veritable grey-beards—the old men who calmly, and of course, enter on their stage of life assuming its dignities, claiming its privileges, and fulfilling its functions; separating themselves from the turbid action, the toil and strife of the world, and reposing honourably in the retirement of experience and council; not clinging to the semblance of foregone periods, not envying the energies of youth or the prime of manhood, but keeping alive the memories and feelings of both to ray their declining day with mellow light—the old men who rejoiced to wear their grey hairs as a crown of glory, and stood amid their fellows with their hoary heads, their wise hearts, and their brows engraven with the lines of thought like
“The white almond-trees full of good days.”
Such a man the poet draws—
“Behold a patriarch of years, who leaneth on the staff of religion;