Part 3 (2/2)
The most singular innovations in our tastes and opinions would spring out of the statutes. It was only a few days ago where a man sought reparation for the greatest injury one could inflict on another, the great argument of the defendant's counsel was based on the circ.u.mstance that the plaintiff and his wife had not been proved to have lived happily together, except on the testimony of their servants. Great stress was laid upon this fact by the advocate; and such an impression did it make on the minds of the jury, that the damages awarded were a mere trifle. Now, only reflect for a moment on the absurdity of such a plea, and think how many persons there are whose quiet and un.o.btrusive lives are unnoticed beyond the precincts of their own door--nay, how many estimable and excellent people who live less for the world than for themselves, and although, probably for this very reason, but little exposed to the casualty in question, would yet deem the injustice great that placed them beyond the pale of reparation because they had been homely and domestic.
Civilisation and the march of mind are fine things, and doubtless it is a great improvement that the criminal is better lodged, and fed, in the prison, than the hungry labourer in the workhouse. It is an admirable code that makes the debt of honour, the perhaps swindled losses of the card-table, an imperative obligation, while the money due to toiling, working industry, may be evaded or escaped from. Still, it is a bold step to invade the privacy of domestic life, to subvert the happiness we deem most national, and to suggest that the world has no respect for, nor the law no belief in, that peaceful course in life, which, content with its own blessings, seeks neither the gaze of the crowd, nor the stare of fas.h.i.+on. Under the present system, a man must appear in society like a candidate on the hustings--profuse in protestations of his happiness and redolent of smiles; he must lead forth his wife like a blooming _debutante_, and, while he presents her to his friends, must display, by every endeavour in his power, the angelic happiness of their state. The _coram publico_ endearments, so much sneered at by certain fastidious people, are now imperative; and, however secluded your habits, however retiring your tastes, it is absolutely necessary you should appear a certain number of times every year before the world, to a.s.sure that kind-hearted and considerate thing, how much conjugal felicity you are possessed of.
It is to no purpose that your man-servant and your maid-servant, and even the stranger within your gates, have seen you in the apparent enjoyment of domestic happiness: it is the crowd of a ball-room must testify in your favour--it is the pit of a theatre--it is the company of a steam-boat, or the party on a rail-road, you must adduce in evidence.
They are the best--they are the only judges of what you, in the ignorance of your heart, have believed a secret for your own bosom.
Your conduct within-doors is of little moment, so that your bearing without satisfy the world. What a delightful picture of universal happiness will England then present to the foreigner who visits our salons! With what ecstasy will he contemplate the angelic felicity of conjugal life! Instead of the indignant coldness of a husband, offended by some casual levity of his wife, he will now redouble his attentions, and take an opportunity of calling the company to witness that they live together like turtle-doves. He knows not how soon, if he mix much in fas.h.i.+onable life, their testimony may avail him; and the loving smile he throws his spouse across the supper-table is worth three thousand pounds before any jury in Middles.e.x.
Romance writers will now lose one stronghold of sentiment. Love in a cottage will possess as little respect as it ever did attraction for the world. The pier at Brighton, a Gravesend steamer, Hyde Park on a Sunday, will be the appropriate spheres for the interchange of conjugal vows.
No absurd notions of solitude will then hold sway. Alas! how little prophetic spirit is there in poetry! But a few years ago, and one of our sirens of song said,
”When should lovers breathe their vows?
When should ladies hear them?
When the dew is on the boughs-- When none else is near them.”
Not a word of it! The appropriate place is amid the glitter of jewels, the glare of lamps, the crush of fas.h.i.+on, and the din of conversation.
The private boxes of the opera are even, too secluded, and your happiness is no more genuine, until recognised by society, than is an exchequer bill with the mere signature of Lord Monteagle.
The benefits of this system will be great. No longer will men be reduced to the cultivation of those meeker virtues that grace and adorn life; no more will they study those accomplishments that make home happy and their hearth cheerful. A winter at Paris and a box at the Varietes will be more to the purpose. Scribe's farces will teach them more important lessons, and they will obtain an instructive example in the last line of a vaudeville, where an injured husband presents himself at the fall of the curtain, and, as he bows to the audience, embraces both his wife and her lover, exclaiming, ”_Maintenant je suis heureux--ma femme--mon meilleur ami!_” He then may snap his fingers at Charles Phillips and Adolphus: he has not only proved his affection to his wife, but his confidence in his friend. Let him lay the damages at ten thousand, and, with a counsel that can cry, he'll get every s.h.i.+lling of the money.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 104]
A NUT FOR LADIES BOUNTIFUL.
Jean Jacques tells us, that when his wife died every farmer in the neighbourhood offered to console him by one of their daughters; but that a few weeks afterwards his cow having shared the same fate, no one ever thought of replacing his loss by the offer of another; thereby proving the different value people set upon their cows and children--this seems absurd enough, but is it a bit more so, than what is every day taking place in professional life? How many parsons are there who would not lend you five pounds, would willingly lend you their pulpit, and the commonest courtesy from a hospital surgeon is, to present his visitor with a knife and entreat him to carve a patient. He has never seen the individual before, he doesn't know whether he be short-sighted, or nervous, or ignorant, or rash, all he thinks of, is doing the honours of the inst.i.tution; and although like a hostess, who sees the best dish at her table mangled by an unskilful carver, he suffers in secret, yet is she far too well-bred to evince her displeasure, but blandly smiles at her friend, and says ”No matter, pray go on.” This, doubtless, is highly conducive to science; and as medicine is declared to be a science of experiment, great results occasionally arise from the practice. Now that I am talking of doctors--what a strange set they are, and what a singular position do they hold in society; admitted to the fullest confidence of the world, yet by a strange perversion, while they are the depositaries of secrets that hold together the whole fabric of society, their influence is neither fully recognised, nor their power acknowledged. The doctor is now what the monk once was, with this additional advantage, that from the nature of his studies and the research of his art, he reads more deeply in the human heart, and penetrates into its most inmost recesses. For him, life has little romance; the grosser agency of the body re-acting ever on the operations of the mind, destroy many a poetic daydream and many a high-wrought illusion. To him alone does a man speak ”_son dernier mot:_” while to the lawyer the leanings of self-respect will make him always impart a favourable view of his case. To the physician he will be candid, and even more than candid--yes, these are the men who, watching the secret workings of human pa.s.sion, can trace the progress of mankind in virtue, and in vice; while ministering to the body they are exploring the mind, and yet, scarcely is the hour of danger pa.s.sed, scarcely the shadow of fear dissipated, when they fall back to their humble position in life, bearing with them but little grat.i.tude, and, strange to say, no fear!
The world expects them to be learned, well-bred, kind, considerate, and attentive, patient to their querulousness, and enduring under their caprice; and, after all this, the humbug of h.o.m.oeopathy, the preposterous absurdity of the water cure, or the more reprehensible mischief of Mesmerism, will find more favour in their sight than the highest order of ability accompanied by, great natural advantages.
Every man--and still more, every woman--imagine themselves to be doctors. The taste for physic, like that for politics, is born with us, and nothing seems easier than to repair the injuries of the const.i.tution, whether of the state or the individual. Who has not seen, over and over again, physicians of the first eminence put aside, that the nostrum of some ignorant pretender, or the suggestion of some twaddling old woman, should be, as it is termed, tried? No one is too stupid, no one too old, no one too ignorant, too obstinate, or too silly, not to be superior to Brodie and Chambers, Crampton and Marsh; and where science, with anxious eye and cautious hand, would scarcely venture to interfere, heroic ignorance would dash boldly forward and cut the Gordian difficulty by snapping the thread of life. How comes it that these old ladies, ol either s.e.x, never meddle with the law? Is the game beneath them, where the stake is only property, and not life? or is there less difficulty in the knowledge of an art whose principles rest on so many branches of science, than in a study founded on the basis of precedent? Would to heaven the ”Ladies Bountiful” would take to the quarter-sessions and the a.s.sizes, in lieu of the infirmaries and dispensaries, and make Blackstone their aid-de-camp--_vice_ Buchan retired.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 107]
A NUT FOR THE PRIESTS.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 108]
There would be no going through this world if one had not an India-rubber conscience, and one could no more exist in life without what watch-makers call accommodation, in the machinery of one's heart, than a blue-bottle fly could grow fat in the shop of an apothecary.
Every man's conscience has, like Ja.n.u.s, two faces--one looks most plausibly to the world, with a smile of courteous benevolence, the other with a droll leer seems to say, I think we are doing them. In fact, not only would the world be impossible, and its business impracticable, but society itself would be a bear-garden without hypocrisy.
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