LEVITY.
THE fascination which Mr. Labottchere's speeches seems,to exert over the mind of the reading public in general, as well as over that particular class of thorough-going Radicals who might almost be called the "Mountain," if there were any Mountain possible in English politics, seems to indicate that in the present day, at all events, levity is likely to be regarded with positive favour. We will make an admission. Perhaps it is not unnatural that during the popularity, and even the ascendency, of so very earnest and enthusiastic a mind as Mr. Gladstone's, there should be a certain reaction felt in the political arena, where that ascendency chiefly predominates, in favour of the quality which is in the most piquant contrast to that earnest- ness and enthusiasm. Otherwise levity is not in much request in any section of English society, English selfishness itself being too deeply and seriously bent upon securing its own ends, to underrate, either to itself or to anybody else, the vast im- portance it attaches to gaining them. Indeed, the attenuating circumstance which sometimes almost makes one inclined to treat levity with comparative favour, is that at least light- minded people cannot and do not claim for conspicuously and vulgarly selfish considerations that overpowering im- portance which men of gravity who are without humour and also without any noble enthusiasm sometimes appear to attach to them. One cannot imagine Mr. Labouchere suggest- ing that the world was out of joint, just because he was in danger of ruin. He would, we may suppose, treat even his own ruin with the same light air with which he would treat the ruin of the House of Lords, or the ruin of the Society of Friends. True levity is obliged by the very law of its being to make light even of itself; and to those who are sick of the dismal faces which selfish wealth makes at the prospect of even the slightest danger either to its property or to its amour propre, levity is almost tolerable, at least if it honestly treats its own interests with the same scorn with which it treats the interests of others. When Bertie Stanhope threw into his conversation with the Bishop of Barchester so light a scorn as to ask, Do they often move you, Bishop P 'and intimated that he had at one time thought of being a Bishop himself, it is impossible not to feel a certain satisfaction in the blow struck at unreal pomposity ; and though any kind of levity which is not witty and self-possessed never gives us this satisfaction, but like all merely impertinent things, is simply annoying, yet even such levity—stupid levity—is not so offen- sive as the often preposterous self-importance of selfish and narrow-minded vulgarity. It would be ridiculous to say that levity can claim any of the praise of genuine humility, for levity only makes light of self because it makes light of everything; but even to make light of everything equally, is better than to be absorbed in one thing only, and that the most insignificant thing of all,—one's own self-interest. Levity is a sort of thistle- down ; it floats everywhere, and everywhere plants the germs of a prickly and forbidding weed. But though nothing shows more fecundity and more aptitude for wasting all the moral riches of Nature than levity, at least it is not guilty of that strenuous attachment to its own demerits which distinguishes the more malignant forms of selfish pride.
Perhaps, even, it might not be too much to say that the best and highest natures ought to be capable of a certain levity in dealing with what is, relatively at all events, insignificant in relation to the greater ends of life. All true humour implies a capacity for levity in dealing with what is intrinsically light ; it is only priggish earnestness which is always on stilts, and cannot treat even trifles as if they were trifles. The reason levity is sometimes so popular in society is not that average men really like to see life belittled and made trivial, but that a certain lightness in dealing with what is light, is a good guarantee against that habit of laying an equal stress on every asser- tion which is so fatal to true discrimination, and even to true earnestness. When once we are quite sure that a man or a woman does not think the world likely to go to ruin only because a customary practice or institution has disappeared, we are ready to appreciate that man's or that woman's earnestness in relation to any practice or institution to which earnestness is really appropriate. Levity, of course, properly means only the habit of treating lightly that which is serious; and it is not levity at all which treats lightly only that which is trivial. But still, what is serious and what is trivial being matters on which judgments differ, and to some extent rightly differ in the case of different characters and circumstances, it is always a step gained for the appreciation of true earnestness to know that there were things about which no deep concern was expressed, especially if these were things which affected the private interests of the man who showed the unconcern. Men who are equally solemn on every subject, are hardly capable of true earnestness on any. Indeed, though we do not attribute levity to a pompous ass, it is not because his self-importance is in any respects better than levity, but because levity implies at least more mobility of mind than self.importanee, in its ridiculous eagerness, can ever attain to. It is as easy to make too much of what is trivial, as it is to make too little of what is important, and the former is very much the commoner vice of the two,—at all events in this country, where life is taken almost as seriously even by the most gross and selfish beings, as it is by the spiritual enthusiasts who sacrifice their life to the promotion of the highest ends. For 0138 person whose character comes to grief from genuine in- difference to great ends, there are probably ten whose character comes to grief from selfish and ruinous eagerness for small ends.
Still, after admitting that levity is un-English, and a com- paratively uncommon sort of vice in this country, it must be admitted also that it is, perhaps, of all forms of moral evil, the least likely to be overcome. A very common form of warning addressed some fifty years ago to children who professed that they did not care for anything for which it was desirable that they should care, was, "'Don't care' comes to the gallows." On the whole, that was hardly accurate. "Don't care" comes to the Bankruptcy Court much oftener than to the gallows. "Don't care," when it is genuine, is hardly up to the commission of a great crime. It does not care enough for any human end to commit the sort of crimes by which life is forfeited. Still, though "don't care" does not very often come to the gallows, it attains seldomer to anything great and good than any other form of human defect. A man may be educated out of narrowness, or chastened out of selfishness, or purified from passion ; but for true levity, which finds nothing in life worth a great effort, which recognises nothing that can wound deep, nothing that can greatly elate, nothing that can fill the heart with gratitude, nothing that can bow it in despair, nothing that can string it up to high endurance, there seems to be absolutely no cure. Indeed, there would be more prospect of developing an immortal soul in a. moth, than in a being who, having been intro- duced to all the changes and chances of this human lot, finds in them occasion only for giddiness of mind and fickleness of heart, for joking, laughing, idling, gossip- ing, and ringing the changes on empty excitements and emptier disappointments. Perhaps levity is almost the only state of mind of which one may say that it does not seem even to afford the materials of growth. Sin may bring repentance, crime may bring suffering by which even a light nature may be condensed into something strong and significant, and in such repentance or such suffering there is the possibility of strength. But levity too great for any anguish of repentance or any impulse to crime, levity which, if it is intelligent at all, bases itself upon a theory of cynicism, and if it is not, wastes itself away in ever-dwindling pleasures, seems to lead nowhere, to be incapable alike of intense joy or in- tense grief, of triumph or of shame, of anything better than a thrill of agreeable surprise on the one hand, or a thrill of disagreeable mortification on the other. Yet certainly, nn- English as levity is, it is less nn-English than it used to be, because every succeeding age appears to imply a more common and more extended dissipation of men's natures among a variety of energies and pleasures, and all such dissipation tends to the characteristic temperament which breeds levity,—the tempera- ment which delights in everything by turns, and in nothing long, which substitutes many acquaintances for a few friendships, many hobbies for a few studies, many philanthropies for a few affections, many emotions for a few passions, and many enthu- siasms for one religion.
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