The leaden chains of that dull lust have not bound him prisoner:
The shrewd world laughed at him for honesty, the vain world mouthed at him for honour;
The false world hated him for truth, the cold world despised him for affection:
Still he kept his treasure, the warm and noble heart,
And in that happy wise old man survive the child and lover.”
Such men may still exist, scattered like old pollards over the levelled face of society; but they are not thy products, not the results of thy materialism, O Age! The youth which opens under thy auspices, and runs by thy creeds, cannot sow the seeds of such a harvest. The youth formed under thy influences and action will have no growth, will not know the natural processes of maturation—“First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” Thy youth will be put up and fashioned like a piece of mechanism, set to work like a steam-engine, moving ever by the same hard heavy material laws,—so much speed from so much power, so much knowledge from so much pressure.
Such a morning cannot end in the even we have pictured. “The merely practical,” “the facts and figures,” “the exacting coarse materialism of mind,” “the passionate thirst,” will be “the leading chains” which must bind the old age of the man who lives by thy doctrines and fulfils thy theories. Affection, feeling, imagination, faith, cannot wreathe or foliage the hoar trunk, for these will have been long before lopped off and withered by “that solid falsehood, the material.”
Truly the tendency of thee and thy utilitarianism, O Age! is to materialise the beginning and end of life—to take from youth its freshness and romance, from old age its geniality and repose; and better so, thou sayest, for thus will its space, its strength, and its energies, be concentrated on the great producing period manhood, and not expended in boyish frolics and follies—in the maunderings and idleness of dotage. Why should there be these waste places in life? “Is not youth the preparation for manhood, and old age its result?” Is it not right, therefore, that our youth should not be fed on nursery tales, prurient fancies, fiction, poetry, and high-flown sentiment, but be early imbued with the solid facts, the useful knowledge, the rules of science, and the power of calculation, which will fit it to play its part well and ably in the great battle of utility? And why should old age rest, sink into placid inaction? If it cannot labour, cannot it scheme and calculate and speculate, till the brain begin to err, and the mind to fail in its correctness?—then, indeed, let it be thrown aside like an old file, or used-up machine, to moulder and decay. It were well said, O Age! if life had no uses save the practical—if this world were merely one great warehouse, one great mart, one mass on which trade and manufacture were to erect their fulcra, and were not, as it is, covered and filled with the beautiful and sublime; if man were a machine of brain, muscle, and bone, and not endowed with heart and soul, the divine sparks of vitality; if he were to live by bread alone, or be judged by his gold,—then, indeed, ’twere well said and well done. But whilst beauty and sublimity still exist as elements of the physical cosmos, and heart and soul of the moral; whilst we know the glorious thoughts and glorious deeds which the study and culture of them has produced through all time, we cannot but think that they will still be, as ever, chief agencies in this great world of ours; we cannot but think that the beautiful and sublime, reflected on heart and soul, should now, as ever, radiate in the warm impulses, pure worship, and warm imaginings of youth, and beam round age in the sunset hues of a summer day. What are their uses, sayest thou? What are spring and autumn to the seasons? What morn and even to the day? Shall there be no more spring shooting of leaves—no bursting buds, no fluttering or carollings of spring life? Shall there be no brown leaves, no fallow, no mellow fruit? Shall there be no rosy lights of morn, no jocund sounds or pleasant sights of waking life? Shall there be no gorgeous sunsets, no calm splendour of declining day? Is life to toil and sit henceforth under summer heat, and abide ever in the blaze and glare of noonday, rising only in the glimmer of infancy, and setting in the cold gleam of twilight? Shall the bounding step, the joyous laugh, the free heart, generous thought, and intuitive heroism, be no longer the attributes of our youth? Have these no uses? Do they cast no bright lights on a land, raise no pleasant echoes? Have they no genial influences, no glad inspirations for the working world? Shall we no longer see the glorious sight—to us the most sublime spectacle which human life or the world can offer—the sight of a man resting in old age from his labours, not estranging himself from the world, but weaning his thoughts from its cares and turmoil, holding still by its affections and memories, but gently withdrawing his spirit from the strife, to prepare it by repose for the great emancipation it is expecting? Has this no uses? Has it no grand lessons—no sublime teachings—no infinite suggestions? Does it shed no blessing or holiness around—nor reflect a ray of its own peacefulness on striving, toiling men? And are these things nought, and shall they not be? Wilt thou dare, O Age! to cast thy spell over youth and old age, and thus sacrifice to thy materialism and utility the periods which God has sanctified to the highest manifestations of spiritualism—to the purest developments of innocence, love, truth, and faith—to the richest perfectedness of peace, purpose, and wisdom?
We have seen somewhat of the system by which thou nurturest thy youth, and like not it nor its results. We love not the Lanista, gladiatorial training by which heart and imagination are rubbed, starved, and sweated down—and the mind fed, the intellect exercised, for the merely material struggle—the combat of facts and realities—the great game of profit and loss. We love not the training, nor love we those who undergo it. They have not, in our eyes, the loveliness or the lovableness which we used to associate with the image of youth. Young without youth, old without maturity, young in form, old in heart and brain, they stand before us, keen, sharp, and confident; strong in a knowledge of facts, dates, and tables—a knowledge unleavened by the touches of imagination, unsoftened by modesty, unmoved by the freshness and simplicity which give such beauty to youth, and which sometimes make even the wisdom of manhood bow to its intuitions, confessing with the German philosopher, that “the fresh gaze of the child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the most indubitable seer.”
In what spirit dost thou lead them to the first study—the book of nature? Dost thou spread it before them as a book of God, that they may see its great wonders, learn its great lessons, perceive its great symbols, learn its great poesy, and inhale its great sublime worship,—not comprehending all at once, but gathering them in, for future thought and future perception? Is it thus thou presentest nature to thy children, or not rather as a science and mechanism, the laws, rules, times and measurements of which they must learn and master, forgetting or heeding not the great principles which these represent, the great system of which they are a part? Thy children are taught accurately the distances between stars and the times of their movements; they can babble of strata and formation, explain the secrets of tide, and current, and the law of storms; classify plants, from the hyssop on the wall to the cedar which groweth on Lebanon, and name scientifically the shells on the sea-shore; but we seldom hear them talk of the glory of the heavens or the beauty of the earth, or the wonders of the sea, or point to them as types and revelations of the Power which made and moveth in them all. Nature, with her laws and changes, appeareth in thy schools as the result of mechanic forces and chemical combinations. If thou teachest more than this, we find it not in thy books, in thy public teachings, or in the minds of thy pupils! Is it not the same with other studies? History, science, and poesy are, with thee, so abridged, extracted, epitomised, and tabulated, that only facts are left for the memory, not thought for the mind. All the noble examples, the heroic deeds, the noble thoughts, and great principles which they recorded or contained, are carefully suppressed or parodied; for what have they to do with the practical work on which this generation is about to enter? Thus with their catechisms and manuals, thy pupils, learning without reverence, thinking without feeling, knowing without believing, unencumbered by modesty, unchecked by impulse, enthusiasm, or imagination, can rush at once into the arena, ready and confident. And in choosing this system of training and education, thou art wise in thy generation—wise as the serpent—for by what other couldst thou hope to raise men, who, eschewing nobleness, and aspiring not to greatness—who, rejecting antecedents and abandoning individuality, shall swell the throng of money-getters, buyers, sellers, producers, contractors, speculators, and other zealots of utility, and thus elevate thee to the height of practical glory, thus make thee still more wondrous!