Part 13 (1/2)
”I have often contrasted it,” replied he, ”with the manners of some other ladies of my acquaintance, who are sometimes of our quiet evening party. When one is reading history, or any ordinary book, aloud to them, I am always pleased that they should pursue their little employments. It amuses themselves, and gives ease and familiarity to the social circle.
But while I have been reading, as has sometimes happened, a pa.s.sage of the highest sublimity, or most tender interest, I own I feel a little indignant to see the shuttle plied with as eager a.s.siduity as if the Destinies themselves were weaving the thread. I have known a lady take up the candlestick to search for her netting-pin, in the midst of Cato's soliloquy; or stoop to pick up her scissors while Hamlet says to the ghost, 'I'll go no further.' I remember another who would whisper across the table to borrow thread while Lear has been raving in the storm, or Macbeth starting at the spirit of Banquo; and make signs for a thread-paper while cardinal Beaufort 'dies, and makes no sign.' Nay, once I remember when I was with much agitation hurrying through the gazette of the battle of Trafalgar, while I p.r.o.nounced, almost agonized, the last memorable words of the immortal Nelson, I heard one lady whisper to another that she had broken her needle.”
”It would be difficult to determine,” replied I, ”whether this inattention most betrays want of sense, of feeling, or of good breeding.
The habit of attention should be carefully formed in early life, and then the mere force of custom would teach these ill-bred women 'to a.s.sume the virtue if they have it not.'”
The family at the Grove was, with us, an inexhaustible topic whenever we met. I observed to Sir John, ”that I had sometimes noticed in charitable families a display, a bustle, a kind of animal restlessness, a sort of mechanical _besoin_ to be charitably busy. That though they fulfilled conscientiously one part of the apostolic injunction, that of 'giving,'
yet they failed in the other clause, that of doing it 'with simplicity.'”
”Yes,” replied he, ”I visit a charitable lady in town, who almost puts me out of love with benevolence. Her own bounties form the entire subject of her conversation. As soon as the breakfast is removed, the table is regularly covered with plans, and proposals, and subscription papers. This display conveniently performs the threefold office of publis.h.i.+ng her own charities, furnis.h.i.+ng subjects of altercation, and raising contributions on the visitor. Her narratives really cost me more than my subscription. She is so full of debate, and detail, and opposition; she makes you read so many papers of her own drawing up, and so many answers to the schemes of other people, and she has so many objections to every other person's mode of doing good, and so many arguments to prove that her own is the best, that she appears less like a benevolent lady than a chicaning attorney.”
”Nothing,” said I, ”corrects this bustling bounty so completely, as when it is mixed up with religion, I should rather say, as when it flows from religion. This motive, so far from diminis.h.i.+ng the energy, augments it; but it cures the display, and converts the irritation into a principle.
It transfers the activity from the tongue to the heart. It is the only sort of charity which 'blesses twice.' All charity, indeed, blesses the receiver; but the blessing promised to the giver, I have sometimes trembled to think, may be forfeited even by a generous mind, from ostentation and parade in the manner, and want of purity in the motive.”
”In Stanley's family,” replied he, in a more serious tone, ”I have met with a complete refutation of that favorite maxim in the world, that religion is a dull thing itself, and makes its professors gloomy and morose. Charles! I have often frequented houses where pleasure was the avowed object of idolatry. But to see the votaries of the 'reeling G.o.ddess,' after successive nights pa.s.sed in her temples! to see the languor, the listlessness, the discontent--you would rather have taken them for her victims than her wors.h.i.+pers. So little mental vivacity, so little gayety of heart! In short, after no careless observations, I am compelled to declare, that I never saw two forms less alike than those of Pleasure and Happiness.”
”Your testimony, Sir John,” said I, ”is of great weight in a case of which you are so experienced a judge. What a different scene do we now contemplate! Mr. Stanley seems to have diffused his own spirit through the whole family. What makes his example of such efficacy is, that he considers the Christian _temper_ as so considerable a part of Christianity. This temper seems to imbue his whole soul, pervade his whole conduct, and influence his whole conversation. I see every day some fresh occasion to admire his candor, his humility, his constant reference, not as a topic of discourse, but as a principle of conduct, to the gospel as the standard by which actions are to be weighed. His conscientious strictness of speech, his serious reproof of calumnies, his charitable construction of every case which has two sides; 'his simplicity and G.o.dly sincerity;' his rule of referring all events to providential direction, and his invariable habit of vindicating the divine goodness under dispensations apparently the most unfavorable.”
Here Sir John left me, and I could not forbear pursuing the subject in soliloquy as I proceeded in my walk. I reflected with admiration that Mr. Stanley, in his religious conversation, rendered himself so useful, because instead of the uniform nostrum of _the drop and the pill_, he applied a different cla.s.s of arguments, as the case required, to objectors to the different parts of Christianity; to ill informed persons who adopted a partial gospel without understanding it as a scheme, or embracing it as a whole; to those who allow its truth merely on the same ground of evidence that establishes the truth of any other well authenticated history, and who, satisfied with this external evidence, not only do not feel its power on their own heart, but deny that it has any such influence on the hearts of others; to those who believe the gospel to be a mere code of ethics; to their antipodes, who a.s.sert that Christ has lowered the requisitions of the law; to Lady Belfield, who rests on her charities--Sir John, on his correctness--Lady Aston, on her austerities; to this man, who values himself solely on the stoutness of his orthodoxy; to another, on the firmness of his integrity; to a third, on the peculiarities of his party, he addresses himself with a particular view to their individual errors. This he does with such a discriminating application to the case as might lead the ill-informed to suspect that he was not equally earnest in those other points, which, not being attacked, he does not feel himself called on to defend, but which, had they been attacked, he would then have defended with equal zeal as relative to the discussion. To crown all, I contemplated that affectionate warmth of heart, that sympathizing kindness, that tenderness of feeling, of which the gay and the thoughtless fancy that they themselves possess the monopoly, while they make over harshness, austerity, and want of charity to religious men, as their inseparable characteristics.
These qualities excite in my heart a feeling compounded of veneration, and of love. And oh! how impossible it is, even in religion itself, to be disinterested! All these excellences I contemplate with a more heartfelt delight from the presumptuous hope that I may one day have the felicity of connecting myself still more intimately with them.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Some days after, while we were conversing over our tea, we heard the noise of a carriage; and Mr. Stanley, looking out from a bow window in which he and I were sitting, said it was Lady and Miss Rattle driving up the avenue. He had just time to add, ”These are our _fine_ neighbors.
They always make us a visit as soon as they come down, while all the gloss and l.u.s.tre of London is fresh upon them. We have always our regular routine of conversation. While her Ladys.h.i.+p is pouring the fas.h.i.+ons into Mrs. Stanley's ear, Miss Rattle, who is about Ph[oe]be's age, entertains my daughters and me with the history of her own talents and acquirements.”
Here they entered. After a few compliments, Lady Rattle seated herself between Lady Belfield and Mrs. Stanley at the upper end of the room; while the fine, sprightly, boisterous girl of fifteen or sixteen threw herself back on the sofa at nearly her full length between Mr. Stanley and me, the Miss Stanleys and Sir John sitting near us, within hearing of her lively loquacity.
”Well, Miss Amelia,” said Mr. Stanley, ”I dare say you have made good use of your time this winter; I suppose you have ere now completed the whole circle of the arts. Now let me hear what you have been doing, and tell me your whole achievements as frankly as you used to do when you were a little girl.” ”Indeed,” replied she, ”I have not been idle, if I must speak the truth. One has so many things to learn, you know. I have gone on with my French and Italian of course, and I am beginning German.
Then comes my drawing-master; he teaches me to paint flowers and sh.e.l.ls, and to draw ruins and buildings, and to take views. He is a good soul, and is finis.h.i.+ng a set of pictures, and half a dozen fire-screens, which I began for mamma. He _does_ help me to be sure, but indeed I do some of it myself, don't I, mamma?” calling out to her mother, who was too much absorbed in her own narratives to attend to her daughter.
”And then,” pursued the young prattler, ”I learn varnis.h.i.+ng, and gilding, and j.a.paning. And next winter I shall learn modeling, and etching, and engraving in mezzotinto and aquatinta; for Lady Di. Dash learns etching, and mamma says, as I shall have a better fortune than Lady Di., she vows I shall learn every thing she does. Then I have a dancing-master, who teaches me the Scotch and Irish steps; and another who teaches me att.i.tudes, and I shall soon learn the waltz, and I can stand longer on one leg already than Lady Di. Then I have a singing-master, and another who teaches me the harp, and another for the piano-forte. And what little time I can spare from these _princ.i.p.al_ things, I give by odd minutes to ancient and modern history, and geography, and astronomy, and grammar, and botany. Then I attend lectures on chemistry, and experimental philosophy, for as I am not yet come out, I have not much to do in the evenings; and mamma says there is nothing in the world that money can pay for but what I shall learn. And I run so delightfully fast from one thing to another that I am never tired. What makes it so pleasant is, as soon as I am fairly set in with one master, another arrives. I should hate to be long at the same thing.
But I sha'n't have a great while to work so hard, for as soon as I come out, I shall give it all up, except music and dancing.”
All this time Lucilla sat listening with a smile, behind the complacency of which she tried to conceal her astonishment. Ph[oe]be, who had less self-control, was on the very verge of a broad laugh. Sir John, who had long lived in a soil where this species is indigenous, had been too long accustomed to all its varieties to feel much astonishment at this specimen, which, however, he sat contemplating with philosophical but discriminating coolness.
For my own part, my mind was wholly absorbed in contrasting the coa.r.s.e manners of this voluble and intrepid, but good-humored girl, with the quiet, cheerful, and una.s.suming elegance of Lucilla.
”I should be afraid, Miss Rattle,” said Mr. Stanley, ”if you did not look in such blooming health, that, with all these incessant labors, you did not allow yourself time for rest. Surely you never sleep?”
”O yes, that I do, and eat too,” said she; ”my life is not quite so hard and moping as you fancy. What between shopping and morning visits with mamma, and seeing sights, and the park, and the gardens (which, by the way, I hate, except on a Sunday when they are crowded), and our young b.a.l.l.s, which are four or five in a week after Easter, and mamma's music parties at home, I contrive to enjoy myself tolerably, though after I have been presented, I shall be a thousand times better off, for then I sha'n't have a moment to myself. Won't that be delightful?” said she, twitching my arm rather roughly, by way of recalling my attention, which, however, had seldom wandered.
As she had now run out her London materials, the news of the neighborhood next furnished a subject for her volubility. After she had mentioned in detail one or two stories of low village gossip, while I was wondering how she could come at them, she struck me dumb by quoting the coachman as her authority. This enigma was soon explained. The mother and daughter having exhausted their different topics of discourse nearly at the same time, they took their leave, in order to enrich every family in the neighborhood, on whom they were going to call, with the same valuable knowledge which they had imparted to us.
Mr. Stanley conducted Lady Rattle, and I led her daughter; but as I offered to hand her into the carriage she started back with a sprightly motion, and screamed out, ”O no, not in the inside, pray help me up to the _d.i.c.key_; I always protest I never _will_ ride with any body but the coachman, if we go ever so far.” So saying, with a spring which showed how much she despised my a.s.sistance, the little hoyden was seated in a moment, nodding familiarly at me as if I had been an old friend.
Then with a voice, emulating that which, when pa.s.sing by Charing Cross, I have heard issue from an over-stuffed vehicle, when a robust sailor has thrust his body out at the window, the fair creature vociferated, ”Drive on, coachman!” He obeyed, and turning round her whole person, she continued nodding at me till they were out of sight.
”Here is a ma.s.s of accomplishments,” said I, ”without one particle of mind, one ray of common sense, or one shade of delicacy! Surely somewhat less time and less money might have sufficed to qualify a companion for the coachman!”