WAITING.
THERE is one aspect of the Queen's great reign to which we think sufficient attention has not been given. At all events the greater portion of it, all that has elapsed since she lost the Prince Consort in 1861, has been for her Majesty a long period of patient waiting ; and in other senses for the people over whom she has reigned, it has been during that period one sometimes of patient, some- times of impatient, waiting, partly for political, partly and increasingly for social, and still more perhaps for personal convictions, which have been slow in coming, and are not even now coming very fast. The earlier part of her reign was marked by one or two precipitate strokes of policy. The Crimean War, if we judge it only from our own point of view, was precipitate and mistaken ; though possibly from the point of view of Russia and the Slays, it may have been necessary to convince them that the time had passed for overrunning the Continent of Europe after the fashion in which the invasions of the Huns, and those whom the Hans drove before them, had been carried out. But from the point of view of those who hoped to renovate the Turkish Empire, it is certain that the policy of the Treaty of Paris, and to a certain extent even that later and much modified and improved policy which was adopted nearly twenty years ago at Berlin, was far too sanguine and belated. The view of those who deprecated the attempt to bolster up the Turkish Empire has been justified, though no one can say with confidence that, though that -enterprise has failed, there might not have been considerable danger in directly stimulating the impatience and flushing the hopes of the Slavonic race. However, we are not going to dwell on the political aspects of the precipitation of which our nation has found reason to repent, but rather on the sharp checks frequently administered to the precipitate temper in itself. In relation again to very far-reaching social and consti- tutional reforms, it seems to us that the great lessons taught to the English people under this reign have been of the same kind,—namely, 'Don't let us be in a hurry; there are a great many reasons for not acting precipitately, even where we are most sure that we should act, and act firmly, too.' The great social reform of the new Poor-law had been hardly com- pleted before the Queen ascended the throne. It was a great and unquestionable step in advance, and yet perhaps one of the most remarkable results of her reign is that before its close we are learning that it probably went too far, and that we should reconsider and materially modify some of its most conspicuous features. Again,
what is more evident than that the steady and almost tumultous advance of democracy, in spite of its many and incontestable advantages, has brought with it great and equally incontestable set-offs that have diminished the effectiveness, and to some extent attenuated the moral in.
fluence, of England in the world. We have gained much popular sympathy ; we have found for ourselves mighty allies at the ends of the earth, partly because we have become so democratic ; but there is far more doubt than formerly as to what it is prudent for us to do in Europe, and as to the probable effect even of what we have actually done. Our statesmen of this generation hesitate where our statesmen of the last genera- tion promptly intervened ; and we find ourselves hampered and controlled in all that seems to us to be almost imperatively needed in the West, for every great step which we take in Asia and Africa. The huge classes which we have admitted to in- fluence our policy do not understand these foreign questions, and yet for that very reason their influence constrains the action of those who do more or less understand them. Our new masters fix their minds on very different issues, and so are unable to give that stimulus to any English foreign policy which was given to it in former generations, even perhaps when our statemanship was shortsighted, rash, and premature.
But what strikes us as even more characteristic of the waiting attitude of England in the Queen's reign is the uncertainty, the often patient, as well as now and then impatient, uncertainty, of its moral and spiritual con- victions. The sensationalism of our modern literature, the feverish desire to try new theories, is more than half due to the popular discovery that there is a good deal more to be said on every side of every great question than our fathers seem to have understood, and to the impatience felt that we cannot simultaneously enjoy the strength of great convictions and also throw off the incumbrance of great con- straints. Look at the literature which concerns "the new woman." It is little more than an attempt to state the disadvantages,—which are not to be denied,—of the inability to be both woman and man at the same time. The fretfulness of much of our literature is mere revolt against the placid satisfaction that used to prevail at the narrow limitations of women's life, and against the complacent moralities of those who say that the duty of waiting, and waiting patiently, to see where the limitations of the old view of women's lot were mischievous and extravagant, and where they were wise and inevitable, ought not to be an irksome duty, bat should be easy to perform with genuine satisfaction. The duty of waiting is a duty against which youth at least, revolts, but it is one which, in almost every sphere of thought, the latter part of this reign has enforced upon us. Clough's great lesson has been, to our mind, one of the most emphatic lessons of the last thirty years :—
" • Old things need not be therefore true ;' 0 brother men, nor yet the new;
Ah, still awhile the old thought retain, And yet consider it again.
The souls of now two thousand years Have laid up here their toils and fears, And all the earnings of their pain. Ab, yet consider it again."
And in spite of the frequent impatience of the day, the patience, we think, predominates over the impatience, and in- sists on "considering it again." Take the region of Christian faith. Who has been the characteristic representative of the duty of waiting and "considering it again," except the late Poet Laureate who after stating in the strongest form the excuses for doubt, proceeded to say of himself :—
" I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar stairs That slope through darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith and grope And gather dust and chaff, and call To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope."
Whatever else Tennyson has taught us,' he has certainly taught us that doubt may be much too confident, that doubt should doubt itself as well as that which "the souls of now two thousand years" have laid us up as "the earnings of their pain," and may well hesitate to cast recklessly away.
Milton said that "they also serve who only stand and wait." Might he not have dispensed with thee' only " ? Is it not one of the most difficult of attitudes of mind to stand and wait to see the issue P For Englishmen at least we believe it to be so, and yet it is often the highest of duties, though of course we are not for a moment denying that it may often be a mere excuse for failure to take prompt action where prompt action is a duty, and one of the first of duties. -Still, this reign has taught us, alike in matters of political, social, and spiritual moment, that prompt action may be rash action, and that " Ah, yet consider it again" may be the wisest of all counsels. Waiting is not an easy matter, at all events to the young and eager. Men are so driven into action by the urgency of outward circumstance, that they -often mistake the crave for action for its necessity. It is quite true that a man who acts promptly, though he acts wrongly, may often do better in life than a man who considers it again, and considers it again, till the time for wise action is altogether past. " Waiting " is so difficult just because it often overstays the emergency. Still, on the whole we think that Englishmen oftener err on the impatient than on the -dilatory side. If we look to our statesmen, we hold that the most conspicuous of the last half - century, Palmerston and Gladstone, both erred in over-promptitude,—Palmerston in foreign policy, Gladstone in his latest Irish policy. And if we look to matters of even deeper moment, we should not scruple to say that most of those thinkers who have, for instance, taken up the sceptical philosophy, who have hastily treated Darwin's great evolution doctrine as destructive of theism, or, like Matthew Arnold or Mr. Goldwin Smith, have regarded "the Higher Criticism" as fatal to the Christian revelation, have lost their heads through their impatience of considering it again. No doubt " waiting " may become a disease. But it is a disease to which Englishmen do not very often incline until they get beyond the age for mature judgment, and even then it is not unlikely that they may hurry into an error, as Mr. Gladstone Aid when he was seventy-six. "The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie. Though it tarry wait for it, because it will surely come ; it will not tarry."
Previous page
