Sometimes men pursue a certain course, not that it is right, not even that they think it is right, but because they stand committed to it. Oftener, men hold upon a course that everybody but themselves sees is wrong, believing it to be right; but it is only prejudice that blinds them. This is very apt to be true of us all. When once we have chosen our way, we generally keep on till death stops us. Our religion, our politics, our very prejudices, we rarely modify; and we seldom inquire why we hold certain religious or political creeds. Occasionally, a more than ordinarily strong-minded man has courage to think for himself, and even goes the length of acting for himself; but such cases are comparatively rare. Were men not mortal, were men even to live as long as did the antediluvians, progress in the world would be very slow. Threescore years and ten we may hold the world back, but no longer. We hold very different opinions from our grandfathers; but had they lived till now, it is doubtful if they would have greatly modified theirs. Enlightened as we think ourselves, it is quite probable that the generation that acts a century hence may wonder how we managed to rub along in our benightedness!
Many men are morbidly fearful of being thought inconsistent, and will rather hide their opinion than run the risk of being thought so. Though a man may cling thus to what he may have reason to believe is not quite correct, for fear of being inconsistent, nobody will blame his son, far less his grandson, for maintaining exactly the opposite to his father’s opinion. Thus, as men die, errors die; as they are swept from the stage of life, their opinions are replaced by more forward ones, held by the men who fill the shoes of those that went before.
As the Angel of Death is the destroyer of prejudices, so is he the healer of national animosities. The Scotsmen and the Englishmen who fought so fiercely and hated so bitterly at Bannockburn and at Flodden are long since gone, and in their place there is a living race of Scotsmen and Englishmen who belong to one nation, and are proud of each other. Eighty years ago, Frenchmen and Englishmen hated and fought as fiends hate and fight; but death has taken the haters away, and a new race of Englishmen and a new race of Frenchmen to-day regard each other in a very different way. To-day, the Frenchman spends his surplus hate on the Prussian, and the Prussian returns it with not a little insolence, by way of interest. But Death has a drug that is potent enough to quench even their animosities; and when he has had time to practise his art, there will remain Germans and Frenchmen ready to acknowledge that there is room enough in Europe for both; to respect the greatness of each other, and to exchange, not rifle-shots, but friendly greetings.
For centuries, misgovernment has sown evil seed in unhappy Ireland, and the result is a race of Irishmen smarting under a sense of wrong, and crying out accordingly. Were men to live for ever, were memories to live for ever, Ireland never would be pacified. Bit by bit, justice is being done to Ireland, and man by man, death is removing those in whose breast the sense of wrong swelled till it has developed into fury. By-and-by their hatred will be extinguished; in course of time, the animosities between landlord and tenant will be buried. Death sits final arbiter in many a strife.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.—WHIRLWINDS.
Miss Hadleigh was always effusive in her welcomes, and on the present occasion she was more effusive than ever in her reception of Madge.
‘I have been dying with anxiety to see you, dear; and if you had not come to-day, I should have gone to Willowmere, or sent for you.’
‘I am glad to have come at the proper moment, then—when you wanted me.’
‘Oh, it is most, most fortunate!’ (She found a difficulty in discovering a sufficient superlative, and so doubled the one at her command.) ‘And it concerns you as much as us, for it is about Philip and his uncle.’