CORRESPONDEN CE.
have just newly stepped across the threshold of life. I re- member long ago—how long ago !—in those days which were so foolish, and are so pretty to look back upon with that tenderest charity which we feel for the silly and childish being who was Oneself, helping to decorate some room or hall, still vaguely visible to me in the far distance, with its banners and trophies, like a thing in a dream—when the special illumina- tion which occurred to me as appropriate was a line from a hapless young poet of Scotch birth, then lately dead,—" We'll make the world better yet." Save the child ! It was by amateur teachings, and the effect of her own exalting friend- ship upon certain poor little girls gathered about her, that she meant to accomplish this at sixteen : which shows that the young gentlemen at Toynbee Hall are perhaps not so original as they suppose, but that young persons at all periods, even their grandmothers—to whom they are perhaps not so respectful as they ought to be—have had their moments of similar inspira- tion. This, I do not doubt, is also the inspiring sentiment of the critics of art and literature, modified by wholesome impulses of rebellion, and the necessity of casting down the idols and destroying the altars of those who have gone before them ; so that it becomes them to be young and, for choice, in their very first swing of celestial certainty and contempt for all that the other generations have done before. But when the criticism is that of life rather than of production, it may be allowed occasionally that the part should fall to the old, who cannot but have seen a number of things in their day, the beginning of them and the end of them, which is a potent education in its way.
It is not very long since there appeared in the pages of this journal, as well as in other quarters, certain disquisitions upon " Old Age," in which it seemed to me that that condition of humanity was treated rather hardly, as in every sense a fallen-off and diminished state, to be accepted no doubt patiently and bravely, but yet as a matter of endurance rather than of satisfaction. I am not of that despondent way of thinking : it is not a mimic brightness which makes us play at being glad " because we have been glad before," which commends itself to me as the sentiment of the cheerful old man. Wordsworth's Matthew, in those lovely poems which keep his memory green, lamented this half-fictitious gaiety in his own case, not because he was old, but because he was lonely, "the household hearts who were his own" having all gone before him ; and it needs not old age to make that con- dition sad. Indeed, if I may dare to say so, I think that old age makes it perhaps easier to bear, since the period of separation and sorrow is shorter, and life so ready to detach itself and flutter away from the diminished sources. But in itself, when not over-heavily bowed down with inevitable troubles, there are many compensations in being old. I find a great quiet invading the mind that once was restless with many thinkings, a power of being silent yet not consuming the heart, a capacity of content that was not in earlier days. " Going over the past ; living your life over again in memory ?" suggests a wistful spectator. Not so : per- haps to say not thinking at all would be more true, save that it seems to express a cessation of being, which has nothing to do with this softened mood of age. I can sit and muse and let the strays of thought flit by me, and take no note of them, save as I note in subdued pleasure the flitting of the birds, the flicker of the sunshine between the summer leaves. Sometimes an easy fancy will linger on one of those flitting, flying thoughts, as sometimes a pleased observation will follow a special sparrow in his bold approaches and precipitate flights. But the one like the other, mildly, with- out excitement. When one was young, one lamented one's distractions, the difficulty of fixing one's thoughts. Now the distraction is sweet, the soft stream that is so broken, so various, good for so little, floats on with an exquisite quiet. Is not this perhaps really thought, instead of the strained thinkings of other days ? And sometimes in that stillness there arises the sense of a great Companion—Some One there who is invisible, contemplating His world and all its broken harmonies, in the great silence, and seeing how yet to tune all the jarred and jangled chords, as we do not, yet fain would do, musing like Him.
This, however, is a summer version of a mood, which is perhaps the best mood of the old : and the immediate aspect presented to us by this sudden chill from which we are all suffering is a very wintry one, permitting
no babbling of green fields or flitting birds. The fire- side, however, is so appropriate to old people, that there needs no exposition of the very legitimate sentiments with which a grey-haired spectator of the game at which he or she -has played out the pantie, winning or losing, takes the paper or the book which permits them to look on while others pick up and launch the flying missiles, and meet in that hurly-burly -which we contemplate more or less in safety, with either longings to be in it again, or satisfied reflections on being out of it, or that keen spectatorship, sometimes so eager, which is the most engrossing of all. Cowper from his "loop-holes of retreat,"—after he had drawn the curtains and wheeled round the sofa, and heard with satisfied conscious- ness that popple from the urn which showed it to be, as we say in Scotland (or as we once said), "on the boil"—looked forth upon the world, and could find nothing better to do than to rail at it, and compare its wretched pleasures with those which he enjoyed, Mary and Anna on either side of him, and the tea :shedding its fragrant fumes. But Cowper, mark, was not old in those days, but only, as it were, fictitiously old, withdrawn before his time from a life he had never entered into like other men. And what was perhaps still more to the purpose, it was the fashion of his period to make disagreeable remarks about the world. But it is not the fashion of ours. We have perhaps gained so much in this respect in the process of time, that it is now but a limited class which enjoys the prospect of a world lying in wickedness, while it sits holy and superior above the abyss. The most of us are willing to allow that we :are very like each other all round; very much more like each -other than the best of us are like the angels, or the worst of us like the devils,—of both of which classes of being we have, in point of fact, very little knowledge, whereas we know a -great deal about each other. This, however, is not to say that Pharisaism is dead among us, though it is no longer the prevalent type of religious opinion. In politics it is still strong, and perhaps always will be. We are all very willing to proclaim ourselves of one flesh, and to consent to the -general sentiment that we are men and brothers : at least, what Mr. Gladstone calls the classes are willing enough in general to acknowledge a fundamental truth of the kind, and have ceased to look (if they ever looked) upon the masses as Cowper looked upon the world. But on the other side it is not at all so, and your workman is still like our poet. (Dear -poet, beloved even in your unconscious, unintentional adoption of that role of the Pharisee, forgive !) The best-intentioned of working men, the most truly romantic of Socialistic visionaries -cannot get over this tendency of the consciously superior. They are all of them Pharisees ; they are glad that they are not like this publican ; they still bid the rest of us stand aside because I am holier than thou.
They are not perhaps, however, so much to blame, just as the members of Little Bethel are not so much to blame for considering those who disagree with them on the edge of perdition—or as Cowper was not so much to blame for denouncing the inferiority of the whole world to himself, Mrs. Tinwin, and Lady Austen over their tea—as the people who 'have led the fashion and taught them that thus to think was the better way. For instance, Mr. Morley the other day indulged in a most eloquent and pathetic passage about the terrible and tragical sight it was to see an honest workman eager to work, and getting no work to do. There was no more terrible sight in the world, that distinguished writer said, with an earnestness and conviction which no doubt brought tears to the eyes of his hearers. But I wonder whether Mr. Morley, when he was, so to speak, an employer of labour, when a young man (or an elderly one, for that matter) came to him in the days of the old Pall Mall—the ancient days, before that journal fell like Lucifer—I wonder, I say, whether Mr. John -Morley wept tears of blood as he dismissed the would-be con- tributor, or thought it a tragic sight, the most tragic of sights, -to turn that poor professional away ? I have heard of cases in which the then undeveloped statesman has done this thing without any appearance of acute suffering,—and yet the position of the young writer was not less but probably much more tragical than that of the working man, who can find a hundred masters for one who is possible to his brother of the pen. Burns long ago complained sternly of the bitterness of fate and the cruelty of the employer who would not grant to his fellow-man leave to toil; but then Burns was a plough- man, and unacquainted with the laws of supply and demand
like Mr. Morley. All the same, I think that the wickedness of the master who will not give his fellow-man leave to toil should be shared by all masters if it is wickedness, and not by Dock Companies and such like alone.
All such criticisms, however, die before the thought of six degrees of frost, and the poor little houses that may be without fires this bitter night. Ah ! what does it matter what the politicians say ? We are all brothers ; we are alike cold; we want a fire to warm our hearts as well as our toes, and a blanket to cover us. I knew a lady once in the old days—and very well, for she was my mother—who had a simple scheme of political economy. It was, that every family not itself in absolute poverty should stand by another poorer family, helping where need was, not over-much, but brotherly, in keeping the wolf from the door, supplying what was indis- pensable to the best of its ability, finding work, caring for the children,—doing, indeed, what brother could do to brother, without shame on one side or boast on the other. It may be said that this would be a very insufficient expedient to meet the want of a great city ; but there are a large number of comfortable families even at Whitechapel and Mile-End. I believe it is hoped that when there is a universal eight- hours' working-day, nobody will need any help : but I fear that even then frost will come, and for many there will be no work at all,—and in the meantime we are still a good way off that consummation. Perhaps some readers of the Spectator will try this simple method, without pre- judice to the vicar's fund for coals, or the parish soup- kitchen, or any other charity;—another family like our own, not to pauperise it but to back it up. There are few things so good in this world for any of us as to have a steady friend to fall back upon, somebody to stand by us, advise, sympathise, help. And it is good for those who give as well as those who receive, as every exercise of kindness is. " Highlanders shoulder to shoulder," said the old proverb—which is not so true now as once it was—but there is nothing better for a rule of social life.
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