A PAROXYSM OF DOUBTS.
IT must be the weather—there are such unmistakeable signs that chaos is once more approaching. All the world is going to all manner of places, on the slightest pretexts ; every- body's notion is in the ascendant ; all things are making progress, and also going back, and all the while standing still.
The moon has eclipsed the sun, and the clouds have eclipsed the mooa ; the Lord Mayor of London has gone to Paris; Mr. M‘Ma- nus, the distinguished Irish patriot, has arrived in California from his residence in Iran Diemen's Land ; M. Thiers has come to Lon- don, to meet his friends from Austria ; Lord Arundel and Surrey has gone to Limerick, to raise the banner of religious freedom ; Mr. Gladstone is writing parallel to Mazzini against Naples, and Mr. Senior is going to sing basso profondo in that trio ; the Queen is about to dismiss Members "to their homes "—in Paris, on the Rhine, the moors, and the Nile.
M`Manus is welcomed in the land of gold by Judge Lynch, who feasts him on his escape from gaol—such is the Anti-British feel- ing among those whose daily labour is to work out the raw material of sovereigns! Perhaps the strong infusion of British blood in that youngest of republics is of a kind to have a strong sympathy with the gaol-bird race.
The Paris fete is given to the Commissioners of the Exposition in London; and it seems to be intended as an earnest that if the French have not conceived that great idea, they would have done so; and to prove as much, they manifest their appreciation of it to the extent of eight thousand guests at one ball, including our Lord Mayor.
. The Exposition stimulates invention. Mr. Meehi has been ex- hibiting his agricultural improvements ; among them a reaping- machine, which will do the work of twenty men,—a grand thing to supply the defalcation which the Irish famine has made among harvest-men. It will of course displace some human labour ; but, they say, improvements always do so, and "industry transfers itself to other occupations." Reapers are on the decline, but schoolmasters will be in demand—when education shall have be- come general. Meanwhile, it is certain that when Mr. Mechi's machines are old, they will not, like the present machines, become chargeable to the poor-rates. Would they be allowed to exercise the franchise ? A question for Lord John. They would be a very " safe " addition to the -electoral body. • But that question has not created half so wide a stir as the one
of costume. The " wide-awake " idea has taken possession of many heads, even some of the gravest and fairest. The Exposi- tion has quite unsettled the broad-cloth institutions. The "Bloomer costume" is seizing hold of women in the -United States, and the republic is overrun by ladies in Turkish dress. At the late meeting of the Peace Congress, M. Delbruek started the idea of abolishing war by a reform of toys, and coquetry by the reform of dolls' costume. "No more swords and fine dolls, and there would be no more Orlandos or Ilinaldos, no more Angelicas or A rmidas ! Shall we dress out dolls in fine clothes or not ? lial1 women be- come Turks ? Shall it be wide-awake or the old chimney-pot? These are profound questions, not to receive a solution in haste. Let us confess, that we have no belief in extirpating the tribe of Angelica the Fair ; and we are not quite sure that we would if we could.
Some wags at Rome lately set the police crying about the place a dear child that had been lost, dressed in a red boddiee, a green petticoat, and a white apron ; and it was not until all Rouse was laughing that the criers discovered the colours to be those of Beatrice ; which were altered in the recently discovered portrait of Dante at Florence, because they have become the colours of "Young Italy."
Doubt invades even the highest seats of law, and Chancellor Truro does not know what to do. An old lady of considerable fortune (90,000/.) is in his care as a lunatic ; she has three poor re- lations—a sister, a niece, and a nephew. Truro wishes to allow them something, but doubts his power. He thinks he can only do what the lunatic would do if she had been sane. What is sanity ? does it not include meanness, hardness of heart, and many other prudential virtues ? Truro feels bound to conceive the possibility of imitating those qualities on presumption. However, he is bold, and he will allow the two poor ladies 50/. a year. But the lunatic seems to have forgotten the nephew ; and can he, officially, have a quicker or more tender memory ? He doubts, but will consider. To act on broad grounds of generosity, of humanity, of Christi- anity, as fittest for "Equity "—that does not appear to have oc- curred to the Chancellor's mind. Are such grounds technical grounds ?
What is technical ? Forms are technical, and they are the great safeguard to fall back upon. And men always think of something to fall back upon. Your ancient hero burned his ships : your modern hero goes to battle with a feather-bed behind him, a patent folding life-boat, a circular letter of credit, one of Mechi's dressing- eases, a medicine-chest, a fire-escape, a dozen pair of kid gloves, a Mackintosh cloak, ditto pillow, an umbrella, a respirator, and an Epsom veil ; and with all these, he is as slow to stir as an elephant crossing a plank, lest there be " consequences." Not a man of them but has something "to fall back upon."
" There you are out," cries Sceptic : " what on earth has Dis- raeli to fall back upon, now that Protection has exploded ? " "Why, friend, where do you come from ? Do you not know the growing sense, throughout all society, of the vacuum left by George Robins ? "
"That is readily answered. But do you mean to tell me, that if—and people do believe it—the French mean to keep the Lord Mayor of London and all his host, then, although Cobden and the Peace Congress have made such progress, a thousand English youth would not at once declare a crusade to rescue their lord and his captive lady ?"
We give in : that would be WAR, and nowadays there can be no doubt on that point. England has done with war for ever.
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