and Mrs. Clavering and Mary on the other. | himself as though conscious of what he had "Upon my word," said the Rector, "I done, but in no degree ashamed of the dothink it was very impertinent." Fanny ing it. The Rector's manner to him was would not have liked to use that word herself, but she loved her father for using it. "I do not see that," said Mrs. Clavering. "He could not know what Fanny's views in life might be. Curates very often marry out of the houses of the clergymen with whom they are placed, and I do not see why Mr. Saul should be debarred from the privilege of trying." Then it was that Mrs. Clavering had declared that she was not surprised, that she had suspected it, and had almost made Fanny angry by saying so. When Harry came back two days afterwards, the family news was imparted to him, and he immediately ranged himself on his father's side. Upon my word I think that he ought to be forbidden the house," said Harry. "He has forgotten himself in making such a proposition." 66 er. "That's nonsense, Harry," said his moth If he can be comfortable coming here, there can be no reason why he should be uncomfortable. It would be an injustice to him to ask him to go, and a great trouble to your father to find another curate that would suit him so well." There could be no doubt whatever as to the latter proposition, and therefore it was quietly argued that Mr. Saul's fault, if there had been a fault, should be condoned. On the next day he came to the rectory, and they were all astonished at the 'ease with which he bore himself. It was not that he affected any special freedom of manner, or that he altogether avoided any change in his mode of speaking to them. A slight blush came upon his sallow face as he first spoke to Mrs. Clavering, and he hardly did more than say a single word to Fanny. But he carried But stiff and formal;-seeing which Mrs. Clav- Clavering," he said to Harry, a day or two after this, "I hope there is to be no difference between you and me." "Difference! I don't know what you mean by difference." "We were good friends, and I hope that we are to remain so. No doubt vou know what has taken place between me and your sister." 66 Oh, yes; I have been told, of course." "What I mean is, that I hope you are not going to quarrel with me on that account? What I did, is it not what you would have done in my position?-only you would have done it successfully?" "I think a fellow should have some income, you know." "Can you say that you would have waited for income before you spoke of marriage?" "I think it might have been better that you should have gone to my father." "It may be that that is the rule in such things, but if so I do not know it. Would she have liked that better?" "Well; - I can't say." "You are engaged? Did you go to the young lady's family first?" "I can't say I did; but I think I had given them some ground to expect it. I fancy they all knew what I was about. But it's over now, and I don't know that we need say anything more about it." "Certainly not. Nothing can be said that would be of any use; but I do not think I have done anything that you should resent." "Resent is a strong word. I don't resent it, or, at any rate, I won't; and there may be an end of it." After this, Harry was more gracious with Mr. Saul, having an idea that the curate had made some sort of apology for what he had done. But that, I fancy, was by no means Mr. Saul's view of the case. Had he offered to marry the daughter of the Archbishop of Canterbury, instead of the daughter of the Rector of Clavering, he would not have imagined that his doing so needed an apology. The day after his return from London Lady Clavering sent for Harry up to the house. "So you saw my sister in London?" she said. "Yes," said Harry blushing; "as I was in town I might as well meet her. But, as you said, Lady Ongar is able to do without much assistance of that kind. I only just saw her." "Julia took it so kindly of you; but she seems surprised that you did not come to her the following day. She thought you would have called." "Oh, dear, no. I fancied that she would be too tired and too busy to wish to see any mere acquaintance." "Ah, Harry, I see that she has angered you," said Lady Clavering; "otherwise you would not talk about mere acquain tance." "Not in the least. Angered me! How could she anger me? What I meant was at such a time she would probably wish to see no one but people on business, unless it was some one near to her, like yourself or Hugh." "Hugh will not go to her." "But you will do so; will you not?" "Before long I will. You don't seem to understand, Harry, and, perhaps, it would be odd if you did, that I can't run up to town and back as I please. I ought not to tell you this, I dare say, but one feels as though one wanted to talk to some one about one's affairs. At the present moment, I have not the money to go, -even if there were no other reason." These last words she said almost in a whisper, and then she looked up into the young man's face, to see what he thought of the communication she had made him. "Oh, money!" he said. "You could soon get money. But I hope it won't be long before you go." On the next morning but one a letter came by the post for him from Lady Ongar. When he saw the handwriting, which he knew, his heart was at once in his mouth, and he hesitated to open his letter at the breakfast-table. He did open it and read it, but, in truth, he hardly understood it or digested it till he had taken it away with him up to his own room. The letter, which was very short, was as follows: DEAR FRIEND. I FELT your kindness in coming to me at the station so much!- the more, perhaps, because others, who owed me more kindness, have paid me less. Don't suppose that I allude to poor Hermione, for, in truth, I have no intention to complain of her. I thought, perhaps, you would have come to see me before you left London; but I suppose you were hurried. I hear from Clavering that you are to be up about your new profession in a day or two. Pray come and see me before you have been many days in London. I shall have so much to say to you! The rooms you have taken are everything that I wanted, and I am so grateful! Yours ever, J. O. When Harry had read and had digested this, he became aware that he was again fluttered. "Poor creature!" he said to himself; "it is sad to think how much she is in want of a friend." From the Argosy. moral deliverances such as we have seen in and the like. Sometimes, at a "serious" festival, you may have heard the chairman say,- "Mr. So-and-so will now speak to the following sentiment— The cause of civil and religious liberty all over the world!'" And then Mr. So-andso rises, with a slip of paper in his hand, supposed to contain a copy of this sentiment in MS., and he speaks to it. 'It would be amusing to trace the steps by which the words sentiments and sentimental, once words of praise, have come to mean something bad. When Sterne wrote his Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, he intended, and was understood to intend, to describe the book by an adjective that would recommend it. In one of the posthumous stories of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, I remember a passage in which the heroine is delighted to find in a book some pencil notes by the hero, of "the most reflective and sentimental kind." Who cannot find among his old books, "Poems, Didactic and Sentimental"? or "Sentimental Discourses for Youth "? Did not Wordsworth classify some of his writings as poems" of sentiment and reflection "? Does not Isaac Disraeli, in the Curiosities of Literature (Second Series), devote a long race of creatures going about in drawingIt is difficult to picture to one's self a paper to the task of commending to people's rooms and dining-rooms, parlours and shops, attention a new class of biography to be streets and market-places, and discharging called Sentimental, which he thinks insuffi- sentiments at the rest of mankind. But ciently cultivated? Does he not wind up evidently the conception was not so diffiby saying that Gibbon (1) had "contem-cult to our grandfathers as it is to ourselves. plated the very ideal of Sentimental Biography;" that "the subject would powerfully address itself to the feelings of every Englishman;" and that "we may regret that bank, by the side of a brawling rivulet, Gibbon had left only the project?" How often, in turning over an old-fashioned book, and not so very old either, may we find a pencilled comment something like this Take up an oldish copy of Thomson or Gray, or Elegant Extracts. Here is a steel engraving, and a good one too. On a mossy whose rapid passage over the pebbly shallows is supposed to be suggestive, is reclined a handsome young man - such a A most admirable and sentimental author, where you may read his portrait in pen and one as Fielding drew in Joseph Andrews, my dear― read him and follow his counsels, ink. But he is attired in the costume of a so prays your affectionate mother!" I later period-pumps, silk-stockings, cuthave the very case now under my eyes, in away coat, frilled shirt, long kerseymere a book that seems to have been well read vest, with angular tippety collar. Over his in Calcutta at the beginning of the centu- shoulders broad are his hyacinthine locks, ry. Now when did the tide begin to turn and he has no hat on. His face is towards in the use of this adjective? I think the the spectator of the picture, and he is raislast, or almost the last speech uttered by ing both hands, with the palms turned outSir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal wards. He might be saying, "Dear me, is, “Oh, d—n your sentiment!”. but the now!" but a reference below the picture, break-down of Joseph Surface can never have done it all. Indeed, if there ever were any considerable number of persons running about in society who habitually talked what our grandfathers called sentiment, they must have been bores of a degree and quality that would speedily wear out human patience and produce a reac tion. What our forefathers meant by sentiments was what we now call maxims *This heading covers, in my edition, the "Ode to Duty," the " Happy Warrior," "Dion," and "Lycoris." to "p. 91," instructs you better. You there Health is at best a vain precarious thing, Now this is a sentiment. The youth might walk straight off the page before the footlights, go on for Joseph Surface, and provoke, indirectly, Sir Peter Teazle's imprecation. He belongs to the period at which were current coin, not flouted "token pieces," those little classic bits which we now call delectus quotations; such as Nemo mortalium omnibus boris sapit,—Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes, &c.- Sic vos non vobis, &c and all the rest of them. If Colonel Newcome had met him, he would have broken out directly," Emollunt mores," and if Clive (who, by-the-by, was not born) or any one else had pulled his coattail, it would have been because of the bad syntax, and not because it was mauvais ton to be sentimental. Now-a-days it would be mauvais ton. If a young man, ever so well dressed, were to go about saying, as opportunity offered, "Virtue rewards her followers," or "Ingratitude to parents is base," he would not be thought a prize by affectionate mothers with marriageable daughters. But in the days when Lindley Murray wrote his Grammar, it seems to have been a proper part of a polite education to instil into the minds of youth at every chance, by way of "example" in grammar for instance-maxims in morals or theology. As-"The sun that rolls over our heads, the food that we eat, and the rest that we enjoy, daily admonish us of a benevolent, superintending power!" (is that correctly quoted, young shaver?) To such a length, indeed, was the taste for these little statements of opinion carried, that almost anything, however obvious, was made to fall into the mode of the Sentiment proper, and do duty for it. As" Gold is corrupting; the sea is green; a lion is bold," which is also in Murray's gram-posed that no sentiment at all is expressed. tivity, that the excuse for mere talk is less. It is difficult not to believe, reading oldfashioned books, and looking at old-fashioned prints, that there was a real difference. There is a particular print, now in my mind, which I once saw at a broker's shop in a back street. It belongs to about the first days of the Regency, or a few years before; just about when Dr. Buchan was writing his Domestic Medicine, I should say. It is dedicated to the President or something of the Royal Humane Society, and represents a young man who had been half drowned restored to his friends, alive. Of course there is a "scene." All the female figures have short-waisted frocks; all the males have knee-breeches, and long hairexcept those who have wigs. And they have all, I think, their hands upraised and their mouths open. They are all uttering sentiments, I presume- - which, now-a-days, a newspaper paragraph would probably have uttered for them. Indeed, everybody must have noticed that in the caricatures of those days, and even so recently as those of H. B., sentiments were openly put into the mouths of the people represented in pictures. You see a bladder-shaped scroll issuing from the mouth, and the speech is written inside the scroll. When we make a caricature, we put the speeches at the bottom, if anywhere, like scraps of comedy dialogue. But in the majority of cases there is so complete an under-current of intelligence on the spectator's part presup mar. It is the same in social intercourse. We no more want a man to tell us that Virtue rewards her followers than that Queen Anne is dead. Three-fourths, perhaps, of every company do not believe Virtue does reward her followers; those who do believe it take a mutual understanding for granted. The established use of the word Sentimental as a term of reproach in our own days deserves a little serious attention. In modern times we have changed all that. If a person were to contribute to a conversation the sentiment, "We should ever heed the voice of nature," he would be thought as much out of order as Mr. F.'s aunt"There's milestones on the Dover road." We learn now to epigram and banter rather than to sentiment and maxim. In point of fact, we have no means of telling whether there ever really was any considerable number of people who went There are certain currents of sensation about in society saying fine things, but who which have their origin in the strongest and never did them; or whether, on the other deepest emotions of which we are capable. hand, there ever was a large class of listen- The symmetrical play of these currents ers who were predisposed to believe in the connects itself with the highest forms of goodness of the people who went about beauty and sublimity. The most momenuttering the maxims. But we must bear in tous of moral truths—namely, that through mind that there was scarcely any popular suffering we may reach the highest pinnaliterature in those days, and comparatively cles of Life-shines, reflected like a star, very little associated effort. At present the in all these currents. When they flow forth public hires and fees a class- the literary to action, obedient to the voice of God, men class to do the sentiment for it, as much and angels desire to look into these things. as it wants done; and, besides, there are so But a certain facility in the nervous and many opportunities for "sentimental " ac-glandular systems of some people permits the voluntary self-conscious awakening of these craft Godwin: "After a violent debauch currents at points far distant from their he would let his beard grow, and the saddeeper sources, and distant, too, from any ness that reigned in the house I shall never possible ends of noble action. To wake forget: he was ashamed to meet even the them up by artificial excitement becomes a eyes of his children. This is so contrary to sort of depraved pleasure to weak, thin na- the nature of things that it gave me exquisite tures, which shun the test of duty. They pain; I used at those times to show him exmay do it by talking, by reading, by reve- treme respect." An amusing idea, is it not, rie, by drinking, by music, by trivial, petty to show "extreme respect" to a wrongphilanthropisings, by the abuse of "reli- doer? to show all the more because of his gious" services, and in other ways. When wrong-doing, our grief that an Unseen Mathis happens we are offended, and justly of-jesty should be wronged? As amusing as fended. It is self-injury, sacrilege, and in- the idea of a child, for example, who has sult all at once. It is, at best, a voluptuous never been addressed with an overbearing indecency. Could a poet translate the word, whose body has never been touched, crime into images of thought? Yes; but or even approached, except with respectful nobody could bear to hear him recite them. tenderness! But I must not allow a passing A person, then, who is "sentimental" in illustration to carry me out of the direct this way is a proper object of disapproba- line of what I was saying. There is no tion; perhaps dislike. He not only lowers guidance to anything but death, decay, and himself; he does what he can to lessen the rotteness, for either individuals or nations, grounds of our reliance in the most desperate in thought which pretends to have dischargsituations of humanity. Relaxing his own ed itself of the colouring-matter of Senticharacter, he sets a bad example, too; and, ment. If once we have really ceased to worse still, makes liable to the ridicule of hear the murmur of the infinite, beautiful the sons of Belial whatever an oath can be ocean in the shell, we soon fling the shell sworn by in the heavens above or in the away, and it is trodden underfoot of men. earth beneath. There is not an act of our lives - no, not one into which it is not the interest of every human being to import as much as possible of that diffused sense of Terror, Mystery, Beauty, and Tenderness, which is the nature of true Sentiment. What, then, in the just and noble meaning, is Sentiment? It is the backwater of mighty feeling. It is what is left behind by the high tides of the great primitive emotions. It is the memory of passion. It is the ingrained colouring of thought. To discharge thought of that colouring is impossible; but a good many people who abuse "Sentimentalism seem as if they would like to do just that impossible thing. Thus, they have a cold sneer ready for us if we speak of the sacredness of life, the majesty of human nature, the beauty of a minister's love, or the innocence of childhood. Thus, Jeremy Bentham, mentioning that Constantine forbade the branding of criminals on the face because it was a violation of the law of nature to disfigure the majesty of the human countenance, exclaims, with disgust, "The majesty of the face of a scoundrel!" But Benthan mistook; and so do other writers of his school. If there was no "majesty" of which a scoundrel was capable, then there was nothing to make it worth our while to discipline him. If there was, it was our duty to create or to increase any degree of incapacity on his part, or anybody else's part. You shall not, said the Hebrew code, give more than forty blows in punishment, lest thy brother seem vile unto thee." And here is a short passage, not uninstructive, from another tale by Mary Wollstone 11 To suppose that this diffused sense of whatever makes our little lives worth while, implies any mean flinching from painour own, or that of others is a great mistake. The Aristotelian virtue of Tragedy - the παθημάτων καθαρσιν — assuredly contemplated nothing so weak. It is well known, as a matter of fact, that the highest tragedy, deeply as it moves one, does not move to tears; which are always a relief, sometimes a positive pleasure. What Englishman or Englishwoman cries at Lear, at Macbeth, or at Hamlet? When did the reading or the representation of them ever enfeeble for action or dispose to anything that was bad? The rule by the observance of which Art, in all its kind, must escape false Sentiment, will present itself in another Essay. For this time, it will be enough to say that Sentiment is the diffused sense which makes it possible for Art to address us at all; *This writer is appropriately quoted here, be cause, though she belonged to the time when the word "sentimental" was respectable, and uses it as a term of praise, she was, in fact, what many people would now call an anti-sentimentalist; and she hits hard too. |