Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

for them, which is chiefly to blame for their shortcomings and their indifference. What is wanted to bring things right is not a painful effort, a sustained struggle against evil, so much as the unsealing of a spring which has been choked up; the turning of a key which has grown rusty in the lock.

To turn this key and set this fountain playing, I do not believe that any better method can be found than that of joining hands to serve the poor-either the poor in our own neighbourhood or the strangers whom we may invite from a distance, or more likely both. But I am suggesting no violent or irrevocable step which any one need be afraid to take. An invitation given to any poor stranger pledges you to nothing more than that one visit; and even a course of such invitations can be discontinued or suspended at any time. So that the experiment may be easily tried, and the amount of your hospitality exactly adjusted to your means and your inclinations.

But the principle, once grasped, of enlisting our domestic servants in works of mercy, is one which can be turned to account in all sorts of ways. It is only an extension-but what a vast extension it might be !-of the plan which has been found to work so well, of employing district nurses, and Bible and mission women, and other poor visitors among the poor, each under a lady superintendent. The mission woman or district nurse, being herself of the same or nearly the same class as those whom she visits, brings to bear on their wants and circumstances a very different kind of knowledge from that supplied by the lady who superintends her work, and both supplement and correct each other. The lady's habit of looking forwards and of referring to general principles, her tact and gentleness, and command of various resources, are admirably combined by this plan with the working woman's practical experience, knowledge of details, sharpsightedness, and plainness of speech. And so it might be and is with mistress and servant, where both work together for the poor.

The particular advantages of hospitality over other forms of charity are: first, that it can do no human being any possible harmno one can by possibility be pauperised by any kindness received in the character of an invited guest; secondly, that it is essentially homework-it can interfere with no domestic duty, on the contrary, it may heal the grievous breach between parlour and kitchen as nothing else could do, and fill many a dull and sad house with life and sunshine, and joyous activity, and free both mistress and maids from the trammels of petty corroding carefulness about trifles, and selfish absorption in the luxury which deadens and hardens; thirdly, it goes straight to the heart as few other forms of beneficence can do. When you take the poor and the weary and the suffering into your own house, you open the door, very likely unawares,' to such strangers as you may well thank God for allowing you to entertain. You have the

[ocr errors]

joy of welcoming and cherishing-one of the joys that are dearest to women's hearts. And it speaks to others with an eloquence beyond that of any kind of almsgiving. Distributing relief is, to receiving strangers, what giving a child a penny is to taking up the little one into your arms and blessing it. Both are good, but we know which is the more natural and delightful to a woman; and which tells the most of that love which it is our highest privilege to show forth in every act-which having freely received, it should be our joy freely to give.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

NOVEL-READING.

The Works of Charles Dickens.

The Works of W. Makepeace Thackeray.

In putting at the head of this paper the names of two distinguished English novelists whose tales have been collected and republished since their death,' it is my object to review rather the general nature of the work done by English novelists of latter times than the contributions specially made by these two to our literature. Criticism has dealt with them, and public opinion has awarded to each his own position in the world of letters. But it may be worth while to inquire what is and what will be the result of a branch of reading which is at present more extended than any other, and to which they have contributed so much. We used to regard novels as ephemeral; and a quarter of a century since were accustomed to consider those by Scott, with a few others which, from Robinson Crusoe downwards, had made permanent names to themselves, as exceptions to this rule. Now we have collected editions of one modern master of fiction after another brought out with all circumstances of editorial luxury and -editorial cheapness. The works of Dickens are to be bought in penny numbers; and those of Thackeray are being at the present moment reissued to the public with every glory of paper, print, and illustration, at a proposed cost to the purchaser of 33l. 128., for the set. I do not in the least doubt that the enterprising publishers will find themselves justified in their different adventures. The popular British novel is now so popular that it can be neither too cheap nor too dear for the market.

Equo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
Regumque turres.

I believe it to be a fact that of no English author has the sale of the works been at the same time so large and so profitable for the first half-dozen years after his death as of Dickens; and I cannot at the moment remember any edition so costly as that which is now being brought out of Thackeray's novels, in proportion to the amount

The Collected Works of Charles Dickens. In 20 volumes. Chapman & Hall.
The Collected Works of W. M. Thackeray. In 22 volumes.

Smith, Elder,

& Co.

and nature of the work. I have seen it asserted that the three English authors whose works are most to be found in the far-off homes of our colonists-in Australia, Canada, and South Africa-are Shakespeare, Macaulay, and Dickens. Shakespeare no doubt is there, as he is in the houses of so many of us not so far off, for the sake of national glory. Macaulay and Dickens, perhaps, share between them the thumbs of the family, but the marks of affection bestowed on the novelist will be found to be the darker.

With such evidence before us of the wide-spread and enduring popularity of popular novels, it would become us to make up our minds whether this coveted amusement is of its nature prone to do good or evil. There cannot be a doubt that the characters of those around us are formed very much on the lessons which are thus taught. Our girls become wives, and our wives mothers, and then old women, very much under these inspirations. Our boys grow into manhood, either nobly or ignobly partly as they may teach, and in accordance with such teaching will continue to bear their burdens gallantly or to repudiate them with cowardly sloth.

Sermons have been invented, coming down to us from the Greek Chorus, and probably from times much antecedent to the Greek dramatists, in order that the violence of the active may be controlled by the prudence of the inactive, and the thoughtlessness of the young by the thoughtfulness of the old. And sermons have been very efficacious for these purposes. There are now among us preachers influencing the conduct of many, and probably delighting the intellectual faculties of more. But it is, we think, felt that the sermon which is listened to with more or less of patience once or twice a week does not catch a hold of the imagination as it used to do, so as to enable us to say that those who are growing up among us are formed as to their character by the discourses which they hear from the pulpit. Teaching to be efficacious must be popular. The birch has, no doubt, saved many from the uttermost depth of darkness, but it never yet made a scholar. I am inclined to think that the lessons inculcated by the novelists at present go deeper than most others. To ascertain whether they be good or bad, we should look not only to the teaching but to that which has been taught,-not to the masters only but the scholars. To effect this thoroughly, an essay on the morals of the people would be necessary,―of such at least of the people as read sufficiently for the enjoyment of a novel. We should have to compare the conduct of the present day with that of past years, and our own conduct with that of other people. So much would be beyond our mark. But something may be done to show whether fathers and mothers may consider themselves safe in allowing to their children the latitude in reading which is now the order of the day, and also in giving similar freedom to themselves. It is not the daughter only who now reads her Lord Aimworth without thrust

ing him under the sofa when a strange visitor comes, or feels it necessary to have Fordyce's sermons open on the table. There it is, unconcealed, whether for good or bad, patent to all and established, the recognised amusement of our lighter hours, too often our mainstay in literature, the former of our morals, the code by which we rule ourselves, the mirror in which we dress ourselves, the index expurgatorius of things held to be allowable in the ordinary affairs of life. No man actually turns to a novel for a definition of honour, nor a woman for that of modesty; but it is from the pages of many novels that men and women obtain guidance both as to honour and modesty. As the writer of the leading article picks up his ideas of politics among those which he finds floating about the world, thinking out but little for himself and creating but little, so does the novelist find his ideas of conduct, and then create a picture of that excellence which he has appreciated. Nor does he do the reverse with reference to the ignoble or the immodest. He collects the floating ideas of the world around him as to what is right and wrong in conduct, and reproduces them with his own colouring. At different periods in our history, the preacher, the dramatist, the essayist, and the poet have been efficacious over others;-at one time the preacher, and at one the poet. Now it is the novelist. There are reasons why we would wish it were otherwise. The reading of novels can hardly strengthen the intelligence. But we have to deal with the fact as it exists, deprecating the evil as far as it is an evil, but acknowledging the good if there be good.

Fond as most of us are of novels, it has to be confessed that they have had bad name among us. Sheridan, in the scene from which we have quoted, has put into Lydia's mouth a true picture of the time as it then existed. Young ladies, if they read novels, read them on the sly, and married ladies were not more free in acknowledging their acquaintance with those in English than they are now as to those in French. That freedom was growing then as is the other now. There were those who could read unblushingly; those who read and blushed; and those who sternly would not read at all. At a much later date than Sheridan's it was the ordinary practice in well-conducted families to limit the reading of novels. In many houses such books were not permitted at all. In others Scott was allowed, with those probably of Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen. And the amusement, though permitted, was not encouraged. It was considered to be idleness and a wasting of time. At the period of which we are speaking,-say forty years ago,-it was hardly recognised by any that much beyond amusement not only might be, but must be, the consequence of such reading. Novels were ephemeral, trivial, of no great importance except in so far as they might perhaps be injurious. As a girl who is, as a rule, duly industrious, may be allowed now and then to sit idle over the fire, thinking as

« ZurückWeiter »