Such men thou wilt have, such men thy system must make; but to quote more eloquent words and thoughts than our own, “If we read history with any degree of thoughtfulness, we shall find that the checks and balances of profit and loss have never been the grand agents with men; that they have never been roused into deep, thorough, all-pervading efforts by any commutable prospect of profit and loss, for any visible finite object, but always for some invisible and infinite one.”
Ages, in which self-interest has been the one pervading principle, this world has seen before: such an age was that of Louis XV., only that then pleasure, not profit, was the prevailing object; lust, not mammon, the presiding deity. Such an era is being now enacted across the Atlantic. There self-interest, in the shape of mammon, is running its race boldly and fiercely, unstayed by old traditions, old memories, or old institutions, and is exhibiting to the world, in all its glory and success, the reign of the practical, the triumph of utility. Let thy admirers, followers, pupils, study these well, ere they rush on their onward career.
We, personally, stand aghast at thy offspring. They terrify us by their unripe shrewdness and “Smallweed” wisdom. Though verging on the period of the sere and yellow leaf, we ever loved the companionship of boys, and were considered rather a good fellow by them. We could discuss the shape of a bat, the colour of a fly, the merits of a pony, or the distinction of prison bar and prison base, pretty well, and at a push could even talk respectably of the stories of old Virgil, the marches of Xenophon, or the facetiæ of Horace. This was all well. But one does not now dare to touch one of these young prodigies without a fear that he will forthwith shoot an arrow from his quiver of facts and dates, by deliberately asking, how far Saturn is from the Earth, or at what rate sound travels, or what is the population of China, or the date of the Council of Nice.
Our flesh quakes even now, and a cold perspiration comes over us, at the thought of the intellectual contests we shall have to undergo with our firstborn. That child-man haunts us like a phantom. The vision sits upon us like a nightmare. We believe him to be our lawfully-begotten offspring, but he will be thy child, O Age; child of thy nurture, of thy circumstances, thy influences. Thou wilt be the she-wolf who will suckle him! We see him grown formal, knowing, and conceited, battering us with questions from his catechisms, ’ologies, tables, and measures. We are not yet resolved how to meet this coming contest; whether to read up covertly for the emergency, or to follow an expedient once successfully adopted by a patriarch of our experience—that of affecting to despise and pooh-pooh all elementary knowledge as beneath and unworthy of him. Yes; we see this our offspring, and we know him chiefly by negatives, chiefly by contrast with boys of our own youth. We know that he will be more proper, discreet, and decorous than ourselves or our contemporaries. We know that he will not be misled by impulse or sympathy; that his mind will never be led from Euclid or Greek grammar, by the ringing of some old rhyme in his brain, or the memory of some old joke, or the thought of the green fields and green woods on which the sun is shining without; that his pulse will not beat quick at reading of the heroic three hundred at Thermopylæ; that he will perhaps vote the Horatii and Camillus humbugs; pronounce the Lay of the Last Minstrel an idle tale, and the Arabian Nights a collection of fooleries; that he will never believe in ghosts, and will smile scornfully at the mention of fairies and pixies; that he will never risk a flogging for the sake of Robinson Crusoe or Roderick Random; that Childe Harold and Don Juan, so sedulously kept from us, may safely be left within his reach; that he will never secrete the family tinder-box, or tear leaves from his father’s logbook to make bonfires on the 5th of November; that he will never give, except a quid pro quo; or play, except with a calculation of gain or loss. Will he ever know a boy’s love? Yes, perhaps, but he will pursue it calmly and discreetly, like a man and a gentleman; will approach his inamorata without diffidence, and talk to her without hesitation. Not such was our boy’s love; not thus did we go through that ordeal of beating pulse and rushing thought. To our recollection, we never spoke six words to the object of our adoration, and never entered her presence without blushing or stammering; but the sight of her flaxen curls and blue eyes at the window would set our brain in a whirl, and a smile or bob of the curls would cause such a beating of the heart that we forthwith set off at topmost speed, and were only stopped by loss of breath or wind. After all such interviews, the said curls and eyes, and certain frilled trousers with which our deity was generally invested, would come dancing in on every mote and sunbeam, drawing off eye and thought from slate or book; and the memory of the many occasions on which we ate cane on account of such distractions, still causes a tingling in the regions devoted to flagellation.
Will he be a sportsman? Probably, but scientifically and unenthusiastically. We think not that he will ever mingle with his sport that love of wood and fell, stream and river, rock and waterfall, cloud and sunshine, leaf and spray, without which rod and gun would be to us as vain and idle implements. We know that he will never sleep in barn or outhouse to be early by the side of the stream or cover; that he will never invest pocket-money in flies, until their fitness for the season or stream has been well tested; that he will never, in anticipation of a raid on hare or rabbit, collect and lock up all the curs and mongrels in the neighbourhood, thereby delighting his parents by a midnight serenade. Will he delight in feasts and revelry? Yes; but staidly and soberly, dressed in fitting costume, conducting himself decorously, and talking on most proper topics. He will never, methinks, taste the luxury of banqueting on potatoes and sausages roasted in the cinders of a bonfire, or rejoice in the irregular joviality of harvest-home, village feast, or dancing in a barn. Wretch that we are! the shadows of such things cling lovingly to the skirts of our memory. One occasion we remember especially. It was the custom of our locale, that every village should have a day appointed for a feast, and on this all doors were opened, all friends welcomed from far and near. On such a day we crossed accidentally the threshold of a yeoman friend, and were dragged forthwith to a board literally groaning under the weight of a piece of beef of nameless form, a kid-pie made in a milk-pan, a plum-pudding ditto, with other delicacies of the like light kind. After trying our digestion, and working our wicked will on them, we adjourned to the barn, and there, claimed as a partner by a cherry-cheeked daughter of our host, we had to confront the struggle of a country-dance or jig, which or what we know not now, and knew not then. It was a fair trial to dance each other down. A bumpkin at our elbow looked on us with invidious rivalry, and commenced at once most outrageous operations with heel and toe. Our partner rushed recklessly on her fate. We felt misgivings as to our own powers. The limbs grew weak, the breath faint. We looked at the Cherry-cheeks; a few oily drops were trickling down them. We felt encouraged. Presently the steps of our bumpkin fell more fitfully and irregularly. Again we looked at the Cherry-cheeks; the moisture was streaming down now in copious rivulets. Bumpkin at last went off in a convulsive fling, and Cherry-cheeks, with a groan and a sigh, confessed herself beaten. We stood conqueror on the field. It was our first and last saltatory triumph. We have never before or since gained éclat in the mazy. Blush not for thy parent, child of our love, but throw thy mantle decently over his delinquencies! No such escapades will ever disturb the regular mechanism of the life which thou and thy comrades will lead!
Thus we trace him onwards by negatives from a youth without enthusiasm to a manhood without generosity or nobleness—a perfect machine, with the parts well adjusted and balanced, regulated to a certain power, fitted to work for certain ends by certain means—the end profit, the means the quickest and cheapest which can be found. As such a man, he will be a richer and shrewder one than his forefathers, and gain more distinction—perhaps become a railway director, have pieces of plate presented to him at public dinners, die a millionaire or a beggar, and be regarded hereafter, according to success, as a great man or a swindler. Such, O Age! is the distinction, and the reverse, which thou offerest to thy children!
Yes; so bigoted are we, that we would not exchange the memory of days spent on green banks, with the water rippling by and the bright sky above us—of nights passed with an old friend—of hours of loving commune with the gifted thoughts and gifted tongues of other days—the memory of the wild impulses, fervid thoughts, high hopes, bounding sympathies, and genial joys of our past—a past which we hope to carry on as an evergreen crown for our old age—even to play for such a high stake, and win.
We cannot test thee so well by old age, for the old men now standing in this generation are not wholly of thy begetting; but, judging by the law of consequences, we can foretell that material youth and material manhood must lead to a material old age; that souls long steeped in reekings from the presses of Profit, and bound for years in the chains of Utilitarianism, cannot readily escape from their pollution and bondage; and we can see also, even now, the dark shadow of the present passing over the spirits of men who began their career in a past. Old age is not, as of yore, a privileged period. Men no longer recognise and value it as a distinction, nor aspire to it as to an order having certain dignities, privileges, and immunities, like the old men at Rome, who were granted exemption from the heavy burden of state duty, and served her by their home patriotism and counsel. Men love not now to be considered or to become old; they fight against this stage of life by devices and subterfuges, and strive to stave off or disguise its approaches. Nor are they so much to blame. The relations of age are changed; it holds not the same consideration or position as in former days, receives not reverence and deference as its due homage, nor is accorded by common consent an exemption from attack, a freedom of warning and counsel. The practical workers of to-day would as soon think of bowing to the hoary head or wise heart of a man past his labours, as to the remains of a decayed steam-engine or broken-down spinning-jenny. The diseased faculties of old age are to them as the disjecta membra of worn-out mechanism. It is this non-estimation, this non-appreciation, which drives men to ignore and repudiate the signs and masks of a period which brings only disability and disqualification, and makes them cling by every falsehood, outward and inward, to the semblance of youth—very martyrs to sham and pretence.
It was not always thus. Within our own experience, men at a certain time of life assumed a change of dress, habits, and bearing—not relinquishing their vocations and amusements, but withdrawing quietly from the mêleé, and becoming quiet actors or spectators; thus signifying that they were no longer challengers or combatants, but rather judges and umpires in the great tussle of life. We remember with what respect we used to regard these as men set apart—a sort of lay priesthood—an everyday social house of peers—a higher court of council and appeal. How deeply we felt their rebukes and praises; with what reverence we received their oracles, whether as old sportsmen, old soldiers, old scholars, or old pastors. These men are becoming few, for such feeling in regard to them is dying out or extinct. Your young utilitarian would show no more mercy to a grey-haired veteran, than the barbarians did to the senatorial band of Rome, but would indifferently hurl Cocker at his head, or joust at him with his statics.
How many classes of these old men, familiar to this generation, are disappearing! We will not touch on the old gentleman, the old yeoman, and others; their portraits have been drawn most truly already, and are impressed on most of our memories; but we must mourn over them with a filial sorrow, believing, O Age! that the high honour, dignity, worth, courage, and integrity by which they tempered society, were of more use to it than the artificial refinement, multiplied conveniences, rabid production, and forced knowledge which thou callest civilisation—that the moral virtues which they represented were more precious to a people, and more glorious to a nation, than the products and wonders of thy mechanism! If thou has bereft us of these, it will be hard to strike the balance!