CONVENTIONAL COUNSEL.
AMIDST the deluge of discourses now poured forth every day almost to the drowning of thought, there is one class of speech which we seem to miss,—the speech in which the old communicated to the young the results of accumulated experience, the speech of the schoolmaster who had made a reputation, of the employer who had succeeded, of the clergy- man who had lived forty years in one parish and yet had retained a certain popularity. Surely we are not dreaming, and there was such a kind of speech, an utterance full of the wisdom which no one ever disputed, which parents and guardians thought most becoming, and which boys and employes and parishioners received with perfect respectfulness as the kind of thing which ought to be said, and ought also to be heard without criticism either at the time or afterwards. There were remarks in that speech about the sluggard, and about moderation in desires, and about the rewards of exertion, which were, we are sure, quite beautifully true, and which were expected like the conclusion of a sermon, and were received like it, with a reverential turning down of the eyes. The times must have changed very much, for one never hears or reads that kind of speech now ; and if one did, the laugh which once was so impossible, could hardly be restrained. At least, we find ourselves smiling in a manner of which we are ashamed at an improved version of the old speech delivered, according to the Telegraph of Wednesday, by Sir Hercules Robinson to some collegiate students at the Cape. Sir Hercules is said by the Colonial Office to be really an able man, one of the most efficient officials in the service, a Governor who can be trusted never to misrepresent opinion, and never to make a blunder in action ; and we should he the last either to ridicule or to underrate that kind of merit. Men like that are the men who do subordinate work well ; and without men who do subordinate work well, the great machine would stop, or, worse still, go on without keeping on the rails. Sir Hercules, however, had to deliver a speech to boys at some function or other, and being, we fancy, either a little taken aback, or for the moment a little sterile, he rescued himself from his dilemma by a speech of the old kind, one quite of the old world, recalling the grave and excellent pedagogue, the down-eyed audience, the hottish atmosphere, the general air of reverence modified by a carefully concealed but nearly irresistible desire to go to sleep. One listens as if in a dream to the sound of one's own recollections, or as one would listen to a phonograph repeating with that softened, far-away, spiritualised thinness of voice to which phonographs accustom us, and which no one hears for the first time without a thrill as of one hearkening to a message from another world, the speech of a friend buried some fifty years ago. Sir Hercules told his audience—or, at least, the Daily Telegraph says so—that a lad should learn to write a distinct hand, as " an accomplishment of greater value than more pre- tentious things ;" should take care of his health, as "essential to sustained application in any direction ;" should accustom himself to take exercise daily ; and should keep a common- place-book, because a reference to it in after-life will be found " both useful and interesting." Nowadays, in a changed world, the kind of student with a getting-on mind would probably observe that good handwriting benefited one's Mends—and enemies—far more than oneself; that the men who succeed have to sit up late and want sleep in the mornings; that much exercise does not tend to intellectual keenness ; that a kind of ricketty health which never quite breaks down is a great deal more useful than the squirearchical health which Sir Hercules doubtless intends ; and that a commonplace-book is ruinous to the memory, by impairing the habit of attention on which the memory depends. The student who will get on may be right—we greatly fear that he is, and that he could read the Governor of the Cape many a worldly lesson—but he should be silent, and not break with his shrill sense upon the old- -world charm. Sir Hercules Robinson is repeating " the wisdom of a world which bores tired not," which listened to any truth for the thousandth time as if it were fresh discovered, and which thought with Sir Robert Peel—or, at least, Disraeli said it of Sir Robert Peel—that the constant applause of an audience justified any repetition of an old idea. The Governor has his justification in precedent, and should neither be blamed nor mocked because the world has grown impatient, and will have even the conventional " counsels to the young"
brightened with a little sparkle of epigram, or dressed up in the verbal paddings which so decently conceal even hopeless attenuation of thought.
Why has this manner of speech died so entirely away that Sir Hercules Robinson, a distinctly able man in his own line, seems a little foolish only because he accidentally lapsed into it when he had nothing particular to say P 'The young are just as inexperienced as ever they were, or at least strike their elders so, and the passion of didacticism is not dead. We should say, indeed, that it had increased in strength, and that there never was a time when so many people, women more especially, prefaced their sentences with the words "you ought," or "it is the duty of us all." They teach--especially their elders —on all fit occasions, and some unfit ones, with a will, and with a decision and cock-sureness which is at least as impressive as the quiescent certainty of an elder and perhaps less aggres- sive generation. Everybody would like to lecture, and most people would like to lecture in incontrovertible formulas; yet nobody ever ventures, not even the very youngest head- master, upon a speech containing the irrefutable conventional counsels of old. We doubt if even Lord Granville, who has said so many good things that he sometimes allows him- self a platitude as a rest for his own mind, and a relief for his hearers' facial muscles, would quite dare to tell the London graduates when he caps them, that early rising was beneficial, or that exercise was indispensable, or that "health was essential to sustained application ;" but we do not exactly know why. The words are as true as ever they were—that is, in the abstract, perfectly true—and the new generation includes as many lie-a-beds as the last, and rather more youngsters who do not, except as an excuse for flirting over lawn-tennis or neglecting work for cricket, take sufficient care of their health. It is not that reverence for the old or their experience has died away, for the young are eager to be taught by the ear ; and if a successful Colonial Governor would tell them how he really got on, and the practices which he thought had decidedly helped him, they would listen by the hour. There is nothing in the world which more interests men than the record of actual experience, so only it be actual, and they are patient of voluminousness to a degree which suggests that they are becoming conscious of the five years or so for reading which sanitation and good doctoring are now adding to their lives. We know half-a- dozen men under thirty who have read every word of Living- stone's travels, the most tedious book ever published by a great man ; and surely they must be incapable, when -seeking nuggets of knowledge, of any fatigue from digging. Then why does one read so seldom in the papers the true didactic speech, the speech which is studded with words of long- accepted wisdom, and with nothing else P Why would anybody, except, perhaps, a Prince of Wales or an Archbishop, be posi- tively afraid to say that early rising was good, or to quote Solomon about the ant? That teaching, you say, is old and over-worn ; but so it was fifty years ago, and it is just as new as ever to the young,—newer, for they have not heard it half so often in the nursery, where also aphoristic wisdom is dying away, like fairy lore and the habit of scolding at large. We suppose the truth is, that the old conventional counsels derived their weight, and therefore their fitness for use in public, mainly from authority, and that with the decay of authority, they also have come to seem absurd. The strength was not in the words, but in the sway of him that uttered them. We suppose if Queen Victoria told an audience of her subjects that early rising was good, they would listen with a feeling that they had heard something of considerable interest, and we should not be surprised to learn that Sir Hercules Robinson was quite pleased at the interest manifested by his Africander students. It was attractive to them to know what the Governor thought, even though the run of his thinking tallied so closely with the often repeated counsel of grand- mothers and aunts. Arguments against waste sound trite in any other mouth, but the servants do not think so when the master uses them.
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