LXVII. A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.
LXVIII. The grand scenes of Nature are more adapted for occasional visits than for constant residence. They are the temples of the Goddess, not fit dwellings for her worshippers. Familiarity breeds contempt or indifference; and it is better to connect this feeling with the petty and trivial than with the lofty and sublime. Besides, it is unnecessary to run the risk in the latter case. One chief advantage of the great and magnificent objects of Nature is, that they stamp their image on the mind for ever; the blow need not be repeated to have the desired effect. We take them with us wherever we go; we have but to think of them and they appear; and at the distance of half a life or of the circumference of the globe, we unlock the springs of memory, and the tall mountain shoots into the sky, the lake expands its bosom, and the cataract rushes from the pine-clad rock. The bold majestic outline is all that there is to discover in such situations, and this we can always remember. In more cultivated and artificial scenes we may observe a thousand hedge-row beauties with curious eye, or pluck the tender flower beneath our feet, while Skiddaw hovers round our heads, and the echoes of Helvellyn thunder in our hearts.
LXIX. I should always choose to live within reach of a fine prospect, rather than to see one from my windows. A number of romantic, distant objects staring in upon one (uncalled-for) tantalise the imagination, and tempt the truant feet; whereas, at home, I wish to feel satisfied where I am, and sheltered from the world.
LXX. Mr. Martin’s picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise has this capital defect, that there is no repose in it. You see two insignificant naked figures, and a preposterous architectural landscape, like a range of buildings overlooking them. They might as well be represented sleeping on the top of the pinnacle of the Temple with the world and all the glories thereof spread out before them. They ought to have been painted imparadised in one another’s arms, shut up in measureless content, with Eden’s choicest bowers closing round them, and Nature stooping to clothe them with vernal bowers. Nothing could be too retired, too voluptuous, too sacred from day’s garish eye: instead of which, you have a gaudy panoramic view, a glittering barren waste, a triple row of clouds, of rocks, and mountains piled one upon the other, as if the imagination already bent its idle gaze over that wide world, which was so soon to be their place of exile, and the aching restless spirit of the artist was occupied in building a stately prison for our first parents, instead of decking their bridal bed, and wrapping them in a short-lived dream of bliss!
LXXI. The mind tires of variety, but becomes reconciled to uniformity. Change produces a restless habit, a love of farther change: the recurrence of the same objects conduces to repose, and to content. My Uncle Toby’s bowling-green bounded his harmless ambition; Bonaparte, not contented with France and Europe for a pleasure-ground, wanted to have Russia for an ice-house; and Alexander, at the farthest side of India, wept for new worlds to conquer. If we let our thoughts wander abroad, there is no end to fantastic projects, to the craving after novelty, to fickleness, and disappointment: if we confine them at home, Peace may find them there. Mr. Horne Tooke used to contend that all tendency to excess was voluntary in the mind: the wants of Nature kept within a certain limit. Even if a person adhered to a regular number of cups of tea or glasses of wine, he did not feel tempted to exceed this number: but if he once went beyond his usual allowance, the desire to transgress increased with its indulgence, and the artificial appetite was proportioned to the artificial stimulus. It has been remarked that in the tropical climates, where there is no difference of seasons, time passes away on smoother and swifter pinions, ‘the earth spins round on its soft axle,’ unnoticed, unregretted: and life wears out soonest and best in sequestered privacy, within the round of a few, simple, unenvied enjoyments.
LXXII. The retailing of a set of anecdotes is not conversation. A story admits of no answer: a remark or an opinion naturally calls forth another, and leads to as many different views of a subject as there are minds in company. An officer in a Scotch marching regiment has always a number of very edifying anecdotes to communicate: but unless you are of the same mess or the same clan, you are necessarily sent to Coventry. Prosing, mechanical narrations of this kind are tedious, as well as tinctured with egotism: if they are set off with a brilliant manner, with mimicry, and action, they become theatrical: the speaker is a kind of Mr. Matthews at home, and the audience are more or less delighted and amused with the exhibition; but there is an end of society, and you no more think of interrupting a confirmed story-teller, than you would of interrupting a favourite actor on the stage.
LXXIII. The Queen’s trial gave a deathblow to the hopes of all reflecting persons with respect to the springs and issues of public spirit and opinion. It was the only question I ever knew that excited a thorough popular feeling. It struck its roots into the heart of the nation; it took possession of every house or cottage in the kingdom; man, woman, and child took part in it, as if it had been their own concern. Business was laid aside for it: people forgot their pleasures, even their meals were neglected, nothing was thought of but the fate of the Queen’s trial. The arrival of the Times Newspaper was looked upon as an event in every village, the Mails hardly travelled fast enough; and he who had the latest intelligence in his pocket was considered as the happiest of mortals. It kept the town in a ferment for several weeks: it agitated the country to the remotest corner. It spread like wildfire over the kingdom; the public mind was electrical. So it should be on other occasions; it was only so on this. An individual may be oppressed, a nation may be trampled upon, mankind may be threatened with annihilation of their rights, and the threat enforced; and not a finger is raised, not a heart sinks, not a pulse beats quicker in the public or private quarrel, a momentary burst of vain indignation is heard, dies away, and is forgotten. Truth has no echo, but folly and imposture have a thousand reverberations in the hollowness of the human heart. At the very time when all England went mad about the poor Queen, a man of the name of Bruce was sent to Botany Bay for having spoken to another who was convicted of sedition; and no notice was taken of it. We have seen what has been done in Spain, and Earth does not roll its billows over the heads of tyrants, to bury them in a common grave. What was it then in the Queen’s cause that stirred this mighty ‘coil and pudder’ in the breast? Was it the love of truth, of justice, of liberty? No such thing! Her case was at best doubtful, and she had only suffered the loss of privileges peculiar to herself. But she was a Queen, she was a woman, and a thorn in the King’s side. There was the cant of loyalty, the cant of gallantry, and the cant of freedom mixed altogether in delightful and inextricable confusion. She was a Queen—all the loyal and well-bred bowed to the name; she was a wife—all the women took the alarm; she was at variance with the lawful sovereign—all the free and independent Electors of Westminster and London were up in arms. ‘The Queen’s name was a tower of strength,’ which these persons had hitherto wanted, and were glad to catch at. Though a daughter of the Duke of Brunswick, though a grand-daughter of George III., yet because she was separated from her husband, she must be hand-and-glove with the people, the wretched, helpless, doating, credulous, meddlesome people, who are always ready to lick the hands, not just then raised to shed their blood or rivet on their chains. There was here an idol to pull down and an idol to set up. There was an imperial title and meretricious frontispiece to the spurious volume of Liberty. There was the mock-majesty of an empty throne behind the real one, and the impertinence of mankind was interested to thrust the unwelcome claimant into it. City patriots stood a chance of becoming liege men, and true to a Queen—of their own choosing. The spirit of faction was half merged in the spirit of servility. There was a rag-fair of royalty—every one carried his own paints and patches into the presence of the new Lady of Loretto—there was a sense of homage due, of services and countenance bestowed on Majesty. This popular farce had all the charm of private theatricals. The Court of St. James’s was nothing to the make-believe Court at Kew. The king was a sort of state-fixture; but the Queen-Consort, the favourite of the rabble, was herself one of them. The presence-doors were flung open, and every blackguard and blockhead rushed in. What an opportunity to see, to hear, to touch a Queen! To gratify the itch of loyalty by coming in contact with the person of the Sovereign was a privilege reserved for a few; but to receive this favour at the Queen’s hands was a distinction common to all. All the trades of London came to kiss the Queen’s hand: Presbyterian parsons knelt to kiss the hand of their royal mistress; the daughters of country curates and of city knights sipped loyalty from the back of her Majesty’s hand. Radicals and reformers contended who should be first in paying homage to the Queen; there was a race for precedence, quarrelling and pulling of caps between the wives of distinguished orators and caricaturists, at the very footsteps of the throne; while Mr. Alderman Wood,
‘A gentle Husher, Vanity by name.’
strove to keep the peace, and vindicate the character of civic dames for courtly manners. Mr. Place, Mr. Hone, Mr. Thelwall, Sir Richard Phillips, kissed her Majesty’s hand; Mr. Cobbett alone was not invited,—it was thought he might bite. What a pity that it was before Mr. Irving’s time, or he might have thrown in the casting-weight of his perfect mind and body, and ousted both the King and Bergami! In the midst of all this, his Majesty went to the play, bowed to the boxes, the pit, the gallery, and to the actors, and you would suppose in four days’ time, that a whisper had never been uttered to imply that the King not only was not the most graceful man in his dominions, but the best of monarchs and of husbands. The Queen and her pic-nic parties were no more thought of. What a scene for history to laugh at!
LXXIV. A crowd was collected under the Horse-Guards, and on enquiry I found it was to see the Duke of York come out. ‘What went they forth for to see?’ They were some of the lowest and most wretched of the people, and it was perhaps the sense of contrast,—a sense of which the great and mighty have always availed themselves liberally, to cherish the enthusiasm of their admirers. It was also curiosity to see a name, a sound that they had so often heard, reduced to an object of sight; a metaphysical and political abstraction actually coming out of a door with a ruddy face and a frock-coat. It was, in the first place, the Commander-in-Chief, and the commander of the troops at Dunkirk, the author of the love-letters to Mrs. Clarke and of army-circulars, the son of the King, and presumptive heir to the Crown;—there were all these contradictions embodied in the same person. ‘Oh, the wonderful works of nature,’ as the Recruit in the play says on looking at the guinea which has just enlisted him: so we may say on looking at a king or a king’s brother. I once pointed out the Duke of York to a Scotchman. ‘Is that his Grace—I mean his Royal Highness?’ said the native of the North, out of breath to acknowledge the title, and pay with his tongue the instinctive adulation which his heart felt!