FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. * IN the new series of Friends in
Council we gladly renew old amities and cultivate fresh ones. Again we listen to the specu- lations of the genial cosmopolitan Milverton, comparatively care- less how things about him go if the distant world go well ; again we hear the witty sallies of the would-be cynic and really noble- natured Ellesmere ; and once more we receive with ambiguous silence the unimpeachably orthodox opinions of the childlike and academic Dunsford. Among the new interlocutors the principal is the corpulent but uncomfortable Midhurst, with his microscopic insight into the miseries of mortal life, the " Rasselas Falstaff" of the party, dealing out in rounded, ample, latinized, gorgeous sentences heavy blows and great discouragements upon the unfor- tunate human race. Lucy Daylmer, Dunsford's pleasant-spoken niece, has retired into wedded life, but is well replaced by Mildred and Blanche Vernon, wards of our " black letter" tutor, and cousins of Milverton's. They are orphans ; both beautiful and both intelligent. Mildred, like her cousin Milverton, is an en- thusiastic person, caring much about what goes on in the world, tiresome to teach in earlier days from her sharpness of interro- gation, and with a touch of imperiousness in her eye and disposi- tion. " Blanche, on the contrary, cares only for what is near her, dutifully learning when she was younger, whatever Dunsford gave her to learn. In her countenance all is smooth and rounded, gracious and impressive." These two young ladies accompany our Friends in Council in their foreign tour. Under their aus- pices picturesque Namur and mediaeval Nuremberg were seen to peculiar advantage ; the Rhine, "the most charming river in Europe," received an additional attraction, and the blue Moselle became more " deeply beautifully blue." Milverton's eloquence grows more fluent, Ellesmere's sarcasm more pleasantly poignant, and even the doleful epicurean Midhurst appears more humor- ously sagacious in the detection of human miseries, as the bright eyes of their fair fellow-travellers "rain influence." Aneoiote follows anecdote and witticism succeeds to witticism. The heavier speculations of the essays contributed by the gentlemen tourists are relieved by the light criticism and the agreeable repartee of the sequent conversations ; while Dunsford contrives in his obvious, somewhat platitudinizing way, to introduce us behind the scenes and keep us acquainted with the local move- ments and moral surroundings of the little party. In this, the machinery and framework of his severer elaboration, the accom- plished author of these volumes seems to us to have achieved unusual success. The whole presentment of the persons of the dialogue, inferior as it is to the vivid dramatic portraiture of the matchless Plato, has yet a characteristic verisimilitude, with a life, colouring, and motion of its own, impressing us pleasantly if not powerfully.
The essays themselves are of varying interest and worth. Some are political and didactic ; others deal rather with the medley subject matter of human life :
" Quicquid agunt homines, votum, tumor, ira, voluptas Gaudia, discursus "-
Fact, inference, shrewd observation, comment of loving wisdom, anecdote, apologue, and happy quotation compose, with a curious felicity, the fabric of these essays. It is a certain homely and even commonplace philosophy of which Mr. Helps is the trium- phant expositor. Believing that wisdom is oftener nearer when we stoop than when we soar, he approaches man in his every day life, considering it in its moral and social aspects, rather than in its metaphysic or cosmical phases. He is the philosopher of the threshold and the hearth, of the market and the Parliamentary committee, accepting the report of others on the "divine signifi- cance" of life, or the " spheral harmonies" of the Universe, rather than sounding the perilous depths or exploring the inaccessible heights of existence for himself.
• Friends in Council. A Series of Readings and Discourse thereon. A New Series. Published by .1. W. Parker and Son.
The first essay, read by the philanthropic Milverton, is on the power of the great goddess Worry. Repudiating the savage theories of Rousseau, Mr. Helps yet complains of our complex civi- lization, quoting Goethe, who avers that " our diet and mode of life want nature, and our social intercourse is without love and benevolence." gome of the sources of worry in the present day are taxation, with its "needless annoyance ". fire insurance, the vexations of which might be abridged by better architectural arrangements ; social claims ; routine work ; conjoint enterprise ; the risks of business adventure, whose sterling variety of attrac- tions is so superior to "the sweet simplicity of the Three per Cents." The catalogue of worries is not easily exhausted. There is the worry of education, of keeping up appearances, of governing servants, maintaining a household, buying and selling. In fact, the great goddess, who is the theme of the essay, "not only rules over a territory in which the sun never sets, but even the dark hours of the night are peopled by her myrmidons."
In the second chapter of the work under review the conversa- tion takes a military turn, and Milverton talks, statistically and philosophically, on that great public worry, War. He contrasts the war establishment of Europe, (378,850 men, including the naval forces,) in the first year of the religion of peace and gentle- ness, with the 2,682,929, exclusive of the naval forces, which formed the war establishment in the present year of grace, before the commencement of the Italian Campaign. A pacific spirit ani- mates the whole of this essay. It is contended that in Europe " we are too old or too wise ' to aggress "with the thought of permanent occupation" ; that war can no longer be expected in any case to be self-supporting ; that the forcible propagation of opinion is impracticable ; that the internal administration is cramped and hindered by the increased outlay of public money ; that popular progress is checked ; that funds which might be em- ployed on reproductive work at home are misapplied to external outlay for war. Mr. Helps sees little prospect of an invasion of England, and thinks that to make this or any other country im- pregnable is simply impossible in these times. Among the re- straints on warlike tendencies enumerated in this essay are the absorbing pursuits of our industrial civilization, modification of public opinion influencing even thrones ; greater power of combi- nation, promising national leagues and associations which shall have for their object the discouragement of needless wars. Our wisdom meanwhile is to maintain such a readiness for war as may prlevent war. " Self-advancement " is an essay read by Sir John i esmere containing much sound advice to aspirants after worldly success, and indicating the conditions of securing it. Attempt little ; work in a groove ; avoid delicacy, eccentricity of position and conduct, and perhaps originality of character ; be industrious, hard, prompt, frank, self-sacrificing, somewhat unrefined, brave, bold, observant and cautious, and you will not fall to succeed in any department of life. Retrospection and re- gret are not fitting luxuries for those who have their fortunes to make. They should cultivate forgetfulness ; " Oublier e'est le grand secret des natures fortes et creatrices." The Miseries of Human Life are anatomized with the sharp and delicate knife of the mild and melancholy Midhurst. He explores the " web of adverse circumstances " into which man is born ; denounces the costliness of experience, " mostly bought so dear that there is no money left to buy anything else with "; reckons up the few bright names which adorn the annals of friendship, some of them in fic- tion ; points to the seventh heaven of love's creation fading before careful, tiresome, ordinary life. The inane monotonous employ- ments of mankind ; the lawyer's wearisome round of nice cavil- ling and dull verbiage-spinning ; the wider career of the divine, who, however, will find it dangerous to think out anything of his own ; the slavish routine of the physician, " who, as Voltaire says, pours drugs of which he knows little into a body of which he knows less ;" and the " specialty" of the artist and man of letters who " go droning on at the same thing which they can do a little better than some one else," are all passed in lugubrious review. This doctrine of despair is controverted by Milverton and Elles- mere, who maintain, with some wisdom and no little wit, that " life is not so miserable after all." Milverton, in particular, while contending for the bright side in relationship, thus pleasantly protests agaiusts redundancies of parental interference.
" Take the case of parents. Their lives seem to be spent sometimes in restraining and forbidding. I go out and see Walter on the water, in a little boat with crowded sail, and I have to call him in and forbid the sailing. I next find him injuring my new gates which had just been painted. I have to forbid that. Shortly afterwards I catch him throwing stones at some- body or something which does not require to have stones thrown at it. Then he is wet through and I am peremptory in insisting upon a change of clothes. All day long sometimes, in the management of children, it is don't, don't, don't. "
In illustration of the French proverb, " Les malheurs des malheurs sent ceux qui n'arrivent jamais," Milverton tells a whimsical story of two old maids who were found in agonies of grief ; at first they declined to tell the cause of their misery, but the importunity of their friend prevailed, and at last one of them confessed.
"Suppose, Bridget said to me, we had both been married ; you know, my dear, it might have been. And suppose I had a little boy and you a little girl, and suppose that we had both been dandling them at this very. window. And suppose, said I, some horrid boy coming by made a great noise. You know how nervous we are, sister, at noises. And suppose we had both let the children tumble into the water. And suppose, said she, they had both been drowned. Then we began to cry, for it would have been so dreadful you know. Here the two old ladies commenced crying again."
There are some very sensible remarks in Milverton's Essay on Government. He complains of the unworkable character of many
Acts of Parliament; of the arrears of Parliamentary business ; of the tendency of the House of Commons to absorb the whole func- tion of Government. As remedial or palliative measures he pro- poses to leave things alone, provisionally at least ; to strengthen the executive, and devise some plan for the introduction into the House of Commons of "men who have a peculiar aptitude for public business," with the removal of those disabling conditions which "fetter our choice of public servants." In the thoughtful paper which follows, despotism is defined as " the product of some previous wrong-doing." It springs out of the earth fully armed and ready to commence its natural career of torpifying activity. It has for its recommendation promptitude and clearness of re- solve in foreign affairs. It can cleanse, beautify, maintain order, construct great public works, and " occasionally perform signal acts of public charity "; but with the fatal accompaniment that it destroys individual independence and annihilates freedom of thought. The remaining essays on " Pleasantness," and " Criti- cism," and the dialogues on " Biography," Proverbs, the Farm Yard, Tolerance," &c., have all their peculiar charm or interest. One of them, entitled " Lovers' Quarrels," happily ends in the usual renewing of love assigned them by the poet. Sir John Elles- mere officially announces himself as the accepted lover of Mildred. Vernon, suddenly asking his friends if they had ever heard of the malediction which the Duke of Buckingham had uttered on the dog that bit him, " I wish you were married and went to live in the country." After this appalling proof of his quondam pupil's de- finitive adhesion to the cynical sect, with the sound, too, of Mil- verton's marriage bells in a possible future, Dimsford perceives that his labours are ended, and apprises us that he has nothing more now to report of the sayings or doings of " Our Friend in Council."
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