CHAPTER LXII.
If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for
understanding;
If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid
treasures:
Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the
knowledge of God.--Proverbs ii. 3, 4, 5.
While Clarence was thus misjudged by one whose affections and conduct
he, in turn, naturally misinterpreted; while Lady Flora was
alternately struggling against and submitting to the fate which Lady
Westborough saw approach with gladness, the father with indifference,
and the bridegroom with a pride that partook less of rapture than
revenge,--our unfortunate lover was endeavouring to glean, from
Mordaunt's conversation and example, somewhat of that philosophy so
rare except in the theories of the civilized and the occasional
practice of the barbarian, which, though it cannot give us a charm
against misfortune, bestows, at least, upon us the energy to support
it.
We have said already that when the first impression produced by
Mordaunt's apparent pride and coldness wore away, it required little
penetration to discover the benevolence and warmth of his mind. But
none ignorant of his original disposition, or the misfortunes of his
life, could ever have pierced the depth of his self-sacrificing
nature, or measured the height of his lofty and devoted virtue. Many
men may perhaps be found who will give up to duty a cherished wish or
even a darling vice; but few will ever renounce to it their rooted
tastes, or the indulgence of those habits which have almost become by
long use their happiness itself. Naturally melancholy and thoughtful,
feeding the sensibilities of his heart upon fiction, and though
addicted to the cultivation of reason rather than fancy, having
perhaps more of the deeper and acuter characteristics of the poet than
those calm and half-callous properties of nature supposed to belong to
the metaphysician and the calculating moralist, Mordaunt was above all
men fondly addicted to solitude, and inclined to contemplations less
useful than profound. The untimely death of Isabel, whom he had loved
with that love which is the vent of hoarded and passionate musings
long nourished upon romance, and lavishing the wealth of a soul that
overflows with secreted tenderness upon the first object that can
bring reality to fiction,--that event had not only darkened melancholy
into gloom, but had made loneliness still more dear to his habits by
all the ties of memory and all the consecrations of regret. The
companionless wanderings; the midnight closet; the thoughts which, as
Hume said of his own, could not exist in the world, but were all busy
with life in seclusion,--these were rendered sweeter than ever to a
mind for which the ordinary objects of the world were now utterly
loveless; and the musings of solitude had become, as it were, a
rightful homage and offering to the dead. We may form, then, some
idea of the extent to which, in Mordaunt's character, principle
predominated over inclination, and regard for others over the love of
self, when we see him tearing his spirit from its beloved retreats and
abstracted contemplations, and devoting it to duties from which its
fastidious and refined characteristics were particularly calculated to
revolt. When we have considered his attachment to the hermitage, we
can appreciate the virtue which made him among the most active
citizens in the great world; when we have considered the natural
selfishness of grief, the pride of philosophy, the indolence of
meditation, the eloquence of wealth, which says, "Rest, and toil not,"
and the temptation within, which says, "Obey the voice,"--when we have
considered these, we can perhaps do justice to the man who, sometimes
on foot and in the coarsest attire, travelled from inn to inn and from
hut to hut; who made human misery the object of his search and human
happiness of his desire; who, breaking aside an aversion to rude
contact, almost feminine in its extreme, voluntarily sought the
meanest companions, and subjected himself to the coarsest intrusions;
for whom the wail of affliction or the moan of hunger was as a summons
which allowed neither hesitation nor appeal; who seemed possessed of a
ubiquity for the purposes of good almost resembling that attributed to
the wanderer in the magnificent fable of Melmoth for the temptations
to evil; who, by a zeal and labour that brought to habit and
inclination a thousand martyrdoms, made his life a very hour-glass, in
which each sand was a good deed or a virtuous design.
Many plunge into public affairs, to which they have had a previous
distaste, from the desire of losing the memory of a private
affliction; but so far from wishing to heal the wounds of remembrance
by the anodynes which society can afford, it was only in retirement
that Mordaunt found the flowers from which balm could be distilled.
Many are through vanity magnanimous, and benevolent from the
selfishness of fame but so far from seeking applause where he bestowed
favour, Mordaunt had sedulously shrouded himself in darkness and
disguise. And by that increasing propensity to quiet, so often found
among those addicted to lofty or abstruse contemplation, he had
conquered the ambition of youth with the philosophy of a manhood that
had forestalled the affections of age. Many, in short, have become
great or good to the community by individual motives easily resolved
into common and earthly elements of desire; but they who inquire
diligently into human nature have not often the exalted happiness to
record a character like Mordaunt's, actuated purely by a systematic
principle of love, which covered mankind, as heaven does earth, with
an atmosphere of light extending to the remotest corners and
penetrating the darkest recesses.
It was one of those violent and gusty evenings which give to an
English autumn something rude, rather than gentle, in its
characteristics, that Mordaunt and Clarence sat together,
"And sowed the hours with various seeds of talk."
The young Isabel, the only living relic of the departed one, sat by
her father's side upon the floor; and though their discourse was far
beyond the comprehension of her years, yet did she seem to listen with
a quiet and absorbed attention. In truth, child as she was, she so
loved, and almost worshipped, her father that the very tones of his
voice had in them a charm which could always vibrate, as it were, to
her heart; and hush her into silence; and that melancholy and deep
though somewhat low voice, when it swelled or trembled with thought,--
which in Mordaunt was feeling,--made her sad, she knew not why; and
when she heard it, she would creep to his side, and put her little
hand on his, and look up to him with eyes in whose tender and
glistening blue the spirit of her mother seemed to float. She was
serious and thoughtful and loving beyond the usual capacities of
childhood; perhaps her solitary condition and habits of constant
intercourse with one so grave as Mordaunt, and who always, when not
absent on his excursions of charity, loved her to be with him, had
given to her mind a precocity of feeling, and tinctured the simplicity
of infancy with what ought to have been the colours of after years.
She was not inclined to the sports of her age; she loved, rather, and
above all else, to sit by Mordaunt's side and silently pore over some
books or feminine task, and to steal her eyes every now and then away
from her employment, in order to watch his motions or provide for
whatever her vigilant kindness of heart imagined he desired. And
often, when he saw her fairy and lithe form hovering about him and
attending on his wants, or her beautiful countenance glow with
pleasure, when she fancied she supplied them, he almost believed that
Isabel yet lived, though in another form, and that a love so intense
and holy as hers had been, might transmigrate, but could not perish.
The young Isabel had displayed a passion for music so early that it
almost seemed innate; and as, from the mild and wise education she
received, her ardour had never been repelled on the one hand or
overstrained on the other, so, though she had but just passed her
seventh year, she had attained to a singular proficiency in the art,--
an art that suited well with her lovely face and fond feelings and
innocent heart; and it was almost heavenly, in the literal acceptation
of the word, to hear her sweet though childish voice swell along the
still pure airs of summer, and to see her angelic countenance all rapt
and brilliant with the enthusiasm which her own melodies created.
Never had she borne the bitter breath of unkindness, nor writhed
beneath that customary injustice which punishes in others the sins of
our own temper and the varied fretfulness of caprice; and so she had
none of the fears and meannesses and acted untruths which so usually
pollute and debase the innocence of childhood. But the promise of her
ingenuous brow (over which the silken hair flowed, parted into two
streams of gold), and of the fearless but tender eyes, and of the
quiet smile which sat forever upon the rosy mouth, like Joy watching
Love, was kept in its fullest extent by the mind, from which all
thoughts, pure, kind, and guileless, flowed like waters from a well
which a spirit has made holy for its own dwelling.
On this evening we have said that she sat by her father's side and
listened, though she only in part drank in its sense, to his
conversation with his guest.
The room was of great extent and surrounded with books, over which at
close intervals the busts of the departed Great and the immortal Wise
looked down. There was the sublime beauty of Plato, the harsher and
more earthly countenance of Tully, the only Roman (except Lucretius)
who might have been a Greek. There the mute marble gave the broad
front of Bacon (itself a world), and there the features of Locke
showed how the mind wears away the links of flesh with the file of
thought. And over other departments of those works which remind us
that man is made little lower than the angels, the stern face of the
Florentine who sung of hell contrasted with the quiet grandeur
enthroned on the fair brow of the English poet,--"blind but bold,"--
and there the glorious but genial countenance of him who has found in
all humanity a friend, conspicuous among sages and minstrels, claimed
brotherhood with all.
The fire burned clear and high, casting a rich twilight (for there was
no other light in the room) over that Gothic chamber, and shining
cheerily upon the varying countenance of Clarence and the more
contemplative features of his host. In the latter you might see that
care and thought had been harsh but not unhallowed companions. In the
lines which crossed his expanse of brow, time seemed to have buried
many hopes; but his mien and air, if loftier, were gentler than in
younger days; and though they had gained somewhat in dignity, had lost
greatly in reserve.
There was in the old chamber, with its fretted roof and ancient
"garniture," the various books which surrounded it, walls that the
learned built to survive themselves, and in the marble likenesses of
those for whom thought had won eternity, joined to the hour, the
breathing quiet, and the hearth-light, by whose solitary rays we love
best in the eves of autumn to discourse on graver or subtler themes,--
there was in all this a spell which seemed particularly to invite and
to harmonize with that tone of conversation, some portions of which we
are now about to relate.
"How loudly," said Clarence, "that last gust swept by; you remember
that beautiful couplet in Tibullus,--
'Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem,
Et dominam tenero detinuisse sinu.'"
["Sweet on our couch to hear the winds above,
And cling with closer heart to her we love."]
"Ay," answered Mordaunt, with a scarcely audible sigh, "that is the
feeling of the lover at the immites ventos, but we sages of the lamp
make our mistress Wisdom, and when the winds rage without it is to her
that we cling. See how, from the same object, different conclusions
are drawn! The most common externals of nature, the wind and the
wave, the stars and the heavens, the very earth on which we tread,
never excite in different bosoms the same ideas; and it is from our
own hearts, and not from an outward source, that we draw the hues
which colour the web of our existence."
"It is true," answered Clarence. "You remember that in two specks of
the moon the enamoured maiden perceived two unfortunate lovers, while
the ambitious curate conjectured that they were the spires of a
cathedral? But it is not only to our feelings, but also to our
reasonings, that we give the colours which they wear. The moral, for
instance, which to one man seems atrocious, to another is divine. On
the tendency of the same work what three people will agree? And how
shall the most sanguine moralist hope to benefit mankind when he finds
that, by the multitude, his wisest endeavours to instruct are often
considered but as instruments to pervert?"
"I believe," answered Mordaunt, "that it is from our ignorance that
our contentions flow: we debate with strife and with wrath, with
bickering and with hatred; but of the thing debated upon we remain in
the profoundest darkness. Like the labourers of Babel, while we
endeavour in vain to express our meaning to each other, the fabric by
which, for a common end, we would have ascended to heaven from the
ills of earth remains forever unadvanced and incomplete. Let us hope
that knowledge is the universal language which shall reunite us. As,
in their sublime allegory, the Ancients signified that only through
virtue we arrive at honour, so let us believe that only through
knowledge can we arrive at virtue!"
"And yet," said Clarence, "that seems a melancholy truth for the mass
of the people, who have no time for the researches of wisdom."
"Not so much so as at first we might imagine," answered Mordaunt: "the
few smooth all paths for the many. The precepts of knowledge it is
difficult to extricate from error but, once discovered, they gradually
pass into maxims; and thus what the sage's life was consumed in
acquiring becomes the acquisition of a moment to posterity. Knowledge
is like the atmosphere: in order to dispel the vapour and dislodge the
frost, our ancestors felled the forest, drained the marsh, and
cultivated the waste, and we now breathe without an effort, in the
purified air and the chastened climate, the result of the labour of
generations and the progress of ages! As to-day, the common mechanic
may equal in science, however inferior in genius, the friar [Roger
Bacon] whom his contemporaries feared as a magician, so the opinions
which now startle as well as astonish may be received hereafter as
acknowledged axioms, and pass into ordinary practice. We cannot even
tell how far the sanguine theories of certain philosophers [See
Condorcet "On the Progress of the Human Mind," written some years
after the supposed date of this conversation, but in which there is a
slight, but eloquent and affecting, view of the philosophy to which
Mordaunt refers.] deceive them when they anticipate, for future ages,
a knowledge which shall bring perfection to the mind, baffle the
diseases of the body, and even protract to a date now utterly unknown
the final destination of life: for Wisdom is a palace of which only
the vestibule has been entered; nor can we guess what treasures are
hid in those chambers of which the experience of the past can afford
us neither analogy nor clew."
"It was, then," said Clarence, who wished to draw his companion into
speaking of himself, "it was, then, from your addiction to studies not
ordinarily made the subject of acquisition that you date (pardon me)
your generosity, your devotedness, your feeling for others, and your
indifference to self?"
"You flatter me," said Mordaunt, modestly (and we may be permitted to
crave attention to his reply, since it unfolds the secret springs of a
character so singularly good and pure), "you flatter me: but I will
answer you as if you had put the question without the compliment; nor,
perhaps, will it be wholly uninstructive, as it will certainly be new,
to sketch, without recurrence to events or what I may call exterior
facts, a brief and progressive History of One Human Mind."
"Our first era of life is under the influence of the primitive
feelings: we are pleased, and we laugh; hurt, and we weep: we vent our
little passions the moment they are excited: and so much of novelty
have we to perceive, that we have little leisure to reflect. By and
by, fear teaches us to restrain our feelings: when displeased, we seek
to revenge the displeasure, and are punished; we find the excess of
our joy, our sorrow, our anger, alike considered criminal, and chidden
into restraint. From harshness we become acquainted with deceit: the
promise made is not fulfilled, the threat not executed, the fear
falsely excited, and the hope wilfully disappointed; we are surrounded
by systematized delusion, and we imbibe the contagion."
"From being forced into concealing thoughts which we do conceive, we
begin to affect those which we do not: so early do we learn the two
main tasks of life, To Suppress and To Feign, that our memory will not
carry us beyond that period of artifice to a state of nature when the
twin principles of veracity and belief were so strong as to lead the
philosophers of a modern school into the error of terming them
innate." [Reid: On the Human Mind.]
"It was with a mind restless and confused, feelings which were
alternately chilled and counterfeited (the necessary results of my
first tuition), that I was driven to mix with others of my age. They
did not like me, nor do I blame them. 'Les manieres que l'on neglige
comme de petites choses, sont souvent ce qui fait que les hommes
decident de vous en bien ou en mal. ["Those manners which one
neglects as trifling are often the cause of the opinion, good or bad,
formed of you by men."] Manner is acquired so imperceptibly that we
have given its origin to Nature, as we do the origin of all else for
which our ignorance can find no other source. Mine was
unprepossessing: I was disliked, and I returned the feeling; I sought
not, and I was shunned. Then I thought that all were unjust to me,
and I grew bitter and sullen and morose: I cased myself in the
stubbornness of pride; I pored over the books which spoke of the
worthlessness of man; and I indulged the discontent of myself by
brooding over the frailties of my kind."
"My passions were strong: they told me to suppress them. The precept
was old, and seemed wise: I attempted to enforce it. I had already
begun, in earlier infancy, the lesson: I had now only to renew it.
Fortunately I was diverted from this task, or my mind in conquering
its passions would have conquered its powers. I learned in after
lessons that the passions are not to be suppressed; they are to be
directed; and, when directed, rather to be strengthened than subdued."
"Observe how a word may influence a life: a man whose opinion I
esteemed, made of me the casual and trite remark, that 'my nature was
one of which it was impossible to augur evil or good: it might be
extreme in either.' This observation roused me into thought: could I
indeed be all that was good or evil? had I the choice, and could I
hesitate which to choose? But what was good and what was evil? That
seemed the most difficult inquiry."
"I asked and received no satisfactory reply: in the words of Erasmus,
'Totius negotii caput ac fontem ignorant, divinant, ac delirant
omnes;' ["All ignore, guess, and rave about the head and fountain of
the whole question at issue."] so I resolved myself to inquire and to
decide. I subjected to my scrutiny the moralist and the philosopher.
I saw that on all sides they disputed, but I saw that they grew
virtuous in the dispute: they uttered much that was absurd about the
origin of good, but much more that was exalted in its praise; and I
never rose from any work which treated ably upon morals, whatever were
its peculiar opinions, but I felt my breast enlightened and my mind
ennobled by my studies. The professor of one sect commanded me to
avoid the dogmatist of another as the propagator of moral poison; and
the dogmatist retaliated on the professor: but I avoided neither; I
read both, and turned all 'into honey and fine gold.' No inquiry into
wisdom, however superficial, is undeserving attention. The vagaries
of the idlest fancy will often chance, as it were, upon the most
useful discoveries of truth, and serve as a guide to after and to
slower disciples of wisdom; even as the peckings of birds in an
unknown country indicate to the adventurous seamen the best and the
safest fruits."
"From the works of men I looked into their lives; and I found that
there was a vast difference (though I am not aware that it has before
been remarked) between those who cultivated a talent, and those who
cultivated the mind: I found that the mere men of genius were often
erring or criminal in their lives; but that vice or crime in the
disciples of philosophy was strikingly unfrequent and rare. The
extremest culture of reason had not, it is true, been yet carried far
enough to preserve the labourer from follies of opinion, but a
moderate culture had been sufficient to deter him from the vices of
life. And only to the sons of Wisdom, as of old to the sages of the
East, seemed given the unerring star, which, through the travail of
Earth and the clouds of Heaven, led them at the last to their God!"
"When I gleaned this fact from biography, I paused, and said, 'Then
must there be something excellent in Wisdom, if it can even in its
most imperfect disciples be thus beneficial to morality.' Pursuing
this sentiment, I redoubled my researches, and, behold, the object of
my quest was won! I had before sought a satisfactory answer to the
question, 'What is Virtue?' from men of a thousand tenets, and my
heart had rejected all I had received. 'Virtue,' said some, and my
soul bowed reverently to the dictate, 'Virtue is Religion.' I heard
and humbled myself before the Divine Book. Let me trust that I did
not humble myself in vain! But the dictate satisfied less than it
awed; for either it limited Virtue to the mere belief, or by extending
it to the practice, of Religion, it extended also the inquiry to the
method in which the practice should be applied. But with the first
interpretation of the dictate who could rest contented?--for while, in
the perfect enforcement of the tenets of our faith, all virtue may be
found, so in the passive and the mere belief in its divinity, we find
only an engine as applicable to evil as to good: the torch which
should illumine the altar has also lighted the stake, and the zeal of
the persecutor has been no less sincere than the heroism of the
martyr. Rejecting, therefore, this interpretation, I accepted the
other: I felt in my heart, and I rejoiced as I felt it, that in the
practice of Religion the body of all virtue could be found. But, in
that conviction, had I at once an answer to my inquiries? Could the
mere desire of good be sufficient to attain it; and was the attempt at
virtue synonymous with success? On the contrary, have not those most
desirous of obeying the precepts of God often sinned the most against
their spirit, and has not zeal been frequently the most ardent when
crime was the most rife? [There can be no doubt that they who
exterminated the Albigenses, established the Inquisition, lighted the
fires at Smithfield, were actuated, not by a desire to do evil, but
(monstrous as it may seem) to do good; not to counteract, but to
enforce what they believed the wishes of the Almighty; so that a good
intention, without the enlightenment to direct it to a fitting object,
may be as pernicious to human happiness as one the most fiendish. We
are told of a whole people who used to murder their guests, not from
ferocity or interest, but from the pure and praiseworthy motive of
obtaining the good qualities, which they believed, by the murder of
the deceased, devolved upon them!] But what, if neither sincerity nor
zeal was sufficient to constitute goodness; what if in the breasts of
the best-intentioned crime had been fostered the more dangerously
because the more disguised,--what ensued? That the religion which
they professed, they believed, they adored, they had also
misunderstood; and that the precepts to be drawn from the Holy Book
they had darkened by their ignorance or perverted by their passions!
Here then, at once, my enigma was solved; here then, at once, I was
led to the goal of my inquiry! Ignorance and the perversion of
passion are but the same thing, though under different names; for only
by our ignorance are our passions perverted. Therefore, what
followed?--that, if by ignorance the greatest of God's gifts had been
turned to evil, Knowledge alone was the light by which even the pages
of Religion should be read. It followed that the Providence that knew
that the nature it had created should be constantly in exercise, and
that only through labour comes improvement, had wisely ordained that
we should toil even for the blessing of its holiest and clearest laws.
It had given us in Religion, as in this magnificent world, treasures
and harvests which might be called forth in incalculable abundance;
but had decreed that through our exertions only should they be called
forth a palace more gorgeous than the palaces of enchantment was
before us, but its chambers were a labyrinth which required a clew."
"What was that clew? Was it to be sought for in the corners of earth,
or was it not beneficially centred in ourselves? Was it not the
exercise of a power easy for us to use, if we would dare to do so?
Was it not the simple exertion of the discernment granted to us for
all else? Was it not the exercise of our reason? 'Reason!' cried the
Zealot, 'pernicious and hateful instrument, it is fraught with peril
to yourself and to others: do not think for a moment of employing an
engine so fallacious and so dangerous.' But I listened not to the
Zealot: could the steady and bright torch which, even where the Star
of Bethlehem had withheld its diviner light, had guided some patient
and unwearied steps to the very throne of Virtue, become but a
deceitful meteor to him who kindled it for the aid of Religion, and in
an eternal cause? Could it be perilous to task our reason, even to
the utmost, in the investigation of the true utility and hidden wisdom
of the works of God, when God himself had ordained that only through
some exertion of our reason should we know either from Nature or
Revelation that He himself existed? 'But,' cried the Zealot again,
'but mere mortal wisdom teaches men presumption, and presumption
doubt.' 'Pardon me,' I answered; 'it is not Wisdom, but Ignorance,
which teaches men presumption: Genius may be sometimes arrogant, but
nothing is so diffident as Knowledge.' 'But,' resumed the Zealot,
'those accustomed to subtle inquiries may dwell only on the minutiae
of faith,--inexplicable, because useless to explain, and argue from
those minutiae against the grand and universal truth.' Pardon me
again: it is the petty not the enlarged mind which prefers casuistry
to conviction; it is the confined and short sight of Ignorance which,
unable to comprehend the great bearings of truth, pries only into its
narrow and obscure corners, occupying itself in scrutinizing the atoms
of a part, while the eagle eye of Wisdom contemplates, in its widest
scale, the luminous majesty of the whole. Survey our faults, our
errors, our vices,--fearful and fertile field! Trace them to their
causes: all those causes resolve themselves into one,--Ignorance! For
as we have already seen that from this source flow the abuses of
Religion, so also from this source flow the abuses of all other
blessings,--of talents, of riches, of power; for we abuse things,
either because we know not their real use, or because, with an equal
blindness, we imagine the abuse more adapted to our happiness. But as
ignorance, then, is the sole spring of evil, so, as the antidote to
ignorance is knowledge, it necessarily follows that, were we
consummate in knowledge, we should be perfect in good. He, therefore,
who retards the progress of intellect countenances crime,--nay, to a
State, is the greatest of criminals; while he who circulates that
mental light more precious than the visual is the holiest improver and
the surest benefactor of his race. Nor let us believe, with the
dupes, of a shallow policy, that there exists upon the earth one
prejudice that can be called salutary or one error beneficial to
perpetrate. As the petty fish which is fabled to possess the property
of arresting the progress of the largest vessel to which it clings,
even so may a single prejudice, unnoticed or despised, more than the
adverse blast or the dead calm, delay the bark of Knowledge in the
vast seas of Time."
"It is true that the sanguineness of philanthropists may have carried
them too far; it is true (for the experiment has not yet been made)
that God may have denied to us, in this state, the consummation of
knowledge, and the consequent perfection in good; but because we
cannot be perfect are we to resolve we will be evil? One step in
knowledge is one step from sin: one step from sin is one step nearer
to Heaven: Oh! never let us be deluded by those who, for political
motives, would adulterate the divinity of religious truths; never let
us believe that our Father in Heaven rewards most the one talent
unemployed, or that prejudice and indolence and folly find the most
favour in His sight! The very heathen has bequeathed to us a nobler
estimate of His nature; and the same sentence which so sublimely
declares 'TRUTH IS THE BODY OF GOD' declares also 'AND LIGHT IS HIS
SHADOW.'" [Plato.]
"Persuaded, then, that knowledge contained the key to virtue, it was
to knowledge that I applied. The first grand lesson which it taught
me was the solution of a phrase most hackneyed, least understood;
namely, 'common-sense.' [Koinonoaemosunae, sensus communis.] It is
in the Portico of the Greek sage that that phrase has received its
legitimate explanation; it is there we are taught that 'common-sense'
signifies 'the sense of the common interest.' Yes! it is the most
beautiful truth in morals that we have no such thing as a distinct or
divided interest from our race. In their welfare is ours; and, by
choosing the broadest paths to effect their happiness, we choose the
surest and the shortest to our own. As I read and pondered over these
truths, I was sensible that a great change was working a fresh world
out of the former materials of my mind. My passions, which before I
had checked into uselessness, or exerted to destruction, now started
forth in a nobler shape, and prepared for a new direction: instead of
urging me to individual aggrandizement, they panted for universal
good, and coveted the reward of Ambition only for the triumphs of
Benevolence."
"This is one stage of virtue; I cannot resist the belief that there is
a higher: it is when we begin to love virtue, not for its objects, but
itself. For there are in knowledge these two excellences: first, that
it offers to every man, the most selfish and the most exalted, his
peculiar inducement to good. It says to the former, 'Serve mankind,
and you serve yourself;' to the latter, 'In choosing the best means to
secure your own happiness, you will have the sublime inducement of
promoting the happiness of mankind.'"
"The second excellence of Knowledge is that even the selfish man, when
he has once begun to love Virtue from little motives, loses the
motives as he increases the love; and at last worships the deity,
where before he only coveted the gold upon its altar."
"And thus I learned to love Virtue solely for its own beauty. I said
with one who, among much dross, has many particles of ore, 'If it be
not estimable in itself, I can see nothing estimable in following it
for the sake of a bargain.' [Lord Shaftesbury.]
"I looked round the world, and saw often Virtue in rags and Vice in
purple: the former conduces to happiness, it is true, but the
happiness lies within and not in externals. I contemned the deceitful
folly with which writers have termed it poetical justice to make the
good ultimately prosperous in wealth, honour, fortunate love, or
successful desires. Nothing false, even in poetry, can be just; and
that pretended moral is, of all, the falsest. Virtue is not more
exempt than Vice from the ills of fate, but it contains within itself
always an energy to resist them, and sometimes an anodyne to soothe,--
to repay your quotation from Tibullus,--
'Crura sonant ferro, sed canit inter opus!'"
["The chains clank on its limbs, but it sings amidst its tasks."]
"When in the depths of my soul I set up that divinity of this nether
earth, which Brutus never really understood, if, because unsuccessful
in its efforts, he doubted its existence, I said in the proud prayer
with which I worshipped it, 'Poverty may humble my lot, but it shall
not debase thee; Temptation may shake my nature, but not the rock on
which thy temple is based; Misfortune may wither all the hopes that
have blossomed around thine altar, but I will sacrifice dead leaves
when the flowers are no more. Though all that I have loved perish,
all that I have coveted fade away, I may murmur at fate, but I will
have no voice but that of homage for thee! Nor, while thou smilest
upon my way, would I exchange with the loftiest and happiest of thy
foes! More bitter than aught of what I then dreamed have been my
trials, but I have fulfilled my vow!'"
"I believe that alone to be a true description of Virtue which makes
it all-sufficient to itself, that alone a just portraiture of its
excellence which does not lessen its internal power by exaggerating
its outward advantages, nor degrade its nobility by dwelling only on
its rewards. The grandest moral of ancient lore has ever seemed to me
that which the picture of Prometheus affords; in whom neither the
shaking earth, nor the rending heaven, nor the rock without, nor the
vulture within, could cause regret for past benevolence, or terror for
future evil, or envy, even amidst tortures, for the dishonourable
prosperity of his insulter! [Mercury.--See the "Prometheus" of
Aeschylus.] Who that has glowed over this exalted picture will tell
us that we must make Virtue prosperous in order to allure to it, or
clothe Vice with misery in order to revolt us from its image? Oh!
who, on the contrary, would not learn to adore Virtue, from the
bitterest sufferings of such a votary, a hundredfold more than he
would learn to love Vice from the gaudiest triumphs of its most
fortunate disciples?"
Something there was in Mordaunt's voice and air, and the impassioned
glow of his countenance, that, long after he had ceased, thrilled in
Clarence's heart, "like the remembered tone of a mute lyre." And when
a subsequent event led him at rash moments to doubt whether Virtue was
indeed the chief good, Linden recalled the words of that night and the
enthusiasm with which they were uttered, repented that in his doubt he
had wronged the truth, and felt that there is a power in the deep
heart of man to which even Destiny is submitted!
