Part 20 (1/2)
”How little,” said she, ”is the human heart known except to him who made it! While a fellow creature may admire our apparent devotion, he who appears to be its object, witnesses the wandering of the heart, which seems to be lifted up to him. He sees it roving to the ends of the earth, busied about any thing rather than himself, running after trifles which would not only dishonor Christian, but would disgrace a child. As to my very virtues, if I dare apply such a word to myself, they sometimes lose their character by not keeping their proper place. They become sins by infringing on higher duties. If I mean to perform an act of devotion, some crude plan of charity forces itself on my mind, and what with trying to drive out one, and to establish the other, I rise dissatisfied and unimproved, and resting my sole hope, not on the duty I have been performing, but on the mercy I have been offending.”
I a.s.sured her with all the simplicity of truth, and all the sincerity of affection, that this confession only served to raise my opinion of the piety she disclaimed; that such deep consciousness of imperfection, so quick a discernment of the slightest deviation, and such constant vigilance to prevent it, were the truest indications of an humble spirit; and that those who thus carefully guarded themselves against small errors, were in little danger of being betrayed into great ones.
She replied, smiling, that ”she should not be so angry with vanity, if it would be contented to keep its proper place among its vices; but her quarrel with it was, that it would mix itself among our virtues, and rob us of their reward.”
”Vanity, indeed,” replied I, ”differs from the other vices in this; _they_ commonly are only opposite to the one contrary virtue, while this vice has a kind of ubiquity, is on the watch to intrude everywhere, and weakens all the virtues which it can not destroy. I believe vanity was the harpy of the ancient poets, which, they tell us, tainted whatever it touched.”
”Self-deception is so easy,” replied Miss Stanley, ”that I am even afraid of highly extolling any good quality, lest I should sit down satisfied with having borne any testimony in its favor, and so rest contented with the praise instead of the practise. Commending a right thing is a cheap subst.i.tute for doing it, with which we are too apt to satisfy ourselves.”
”There is no mark,” I replied, ”which more clearly distinguishes that humility which has the love of G.o.d for its principle, from its counterfeit--a false and superficial politeness--than that while this last flatters, in order to extort in return more praise than its due, humility, like the divine principle from which it springs, seeketh not even its own.”
In answer to some further remark of mine, with an air of infinite modesty, she said, ”I have been betrayed, sir, into saying too much. It will, I trust, however, have the good effect of preventing you from thinking better of me than I deserve. In general, I hold it indiscreet to speak of the state of one's mind. I have been taught this piece of prudence by my own indiscretion. I once lamented to a lady the fault of which we have now been speaking, and observed how difficult it was to keep the heart right. She so little understood the nature of this inward corruption, that she told in confidence to two or three friends, that they were all much mistaken in Miss Stanley, for though her character stood so fair with all the world, she had secretly confessed to her that she was a great sinner.”
I could not forbear repeating though she had chid me for it before, how much I had been struck with several instances of her indifference to the work, and her superiority to its pleasures. ”Do you know,” continued she, smiling, ”that you are more my enemy than the lady of whom I have been speaking? She only defamed my principles, but you are corrupting them. The world, I believe, is not so much a place as a nature. It is possible to be religious in a court, and worldly in a monastery. I find that the thoughts may be engaged too anxiously about so petty a concern as a little family arrangement; that the mind may be drawn off from better pursuits, and engrossed by things too trivial to name, as much as by objects more apparently wrong. The country is certainly favorable to religion, but it would be hard on the millions who are doomed to live in towns if it were exclusively favorable. Nor must we lay more stress on the accidental circ.u.mstance than it deserves. Nay, I almost doubt if it is not too pleasant to be quite safe. An enjoyment which a.s.sumes a sober shape may deceive us by making us believe we are practicing a duty when we are only gratifying a taste.”
”But do you not think,” said I, ”that there may be merit in the taste itself? May not a succession of acts, forming a habit, and that habit a good one, induce so sound a way of thinking that it may become difficult to distinguish the duty from the taste, and to separate the principle from the choice? This I really believe to be the case in minds finely wrought and vigilantly watched.”
I observed that however delightful the country might be a great part of the year, yet there were a few winter months when I feared it might be dull, though not in the degree Sir John's Richmond lady found it.
With a smile of compa.s.sion at my want of taste, she said, ”she perceived I was no gardener. To me,” added she, ”the winter has charms of its own.
If I were not afraid of the light habit of introducing Providence on an occasion not sufficiently important, I would say that he seems to reward those who love the country well enough to live in it the whole year, by making the greater part of the winter the busy season for gardening operations. If I happen to be in town a few days only, every sun that s.h.i.+nes, every shower that falls, every breeze that blows, seems wasted, because I do not see their effects upon my plants.”
”But surely,” said I, ”the winter at least suspends your enjoyment.
There is little pleasure in contemplating vegetation in its torpid state, in surveying
The naked shoots, barren as lances,
as Cowper describes the winter-shrubbery.”
”The pleasure is in the preparation,” replied she. ”When all appears dead and torpid to you idle spectators, all is secretly at work; nature is busy in preparing her treasures under ground, and art has a hand in the process. When the blossoms of summer are delighting you mere amateurs, then it is that we professional people,” added she, laughing, ”are really idle. The silent operations of the winter now produce themselves--the canvas of nature is covered--the great Artist has laid on his colors--then we petty agents lay down our implements, and enjoy our leisure in contemplating _his_ work.”
I had never known her so communicative; but my pleased attention, instead of drawing her on, led her to check herself. Ph[oe]be, who had been busily employed in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a flaunting yellow Azalia, now turned to me and said: ”Why it is only the Christmas-month that our labors are suspended, and then we have so much pleasure that we want no business; such in-door festivities and diversions that that dull month is with us the gayest in the year.” So saying, she called Lucilla to a.s.sist her in tying up the branch of an orange-tree which the wind had broken.
I was going to offer my services when Mrs. Stanley joined us, before I could obtain an answer to my question about these Christmas diversions.
A stranger, who had seen me pursuing Mrs. Stanley in her walks, might have supposed not the daughter, but the mother, was the object of my attachment. But with Mrs. Stanley I could always talk of Lucilla, with Lucilla I durst not often talk of herself.
The fond mother and I stood looking with delight on the fair gardeners.
When I had admired their alacrity in these innocent pursuits, their fondness for retirement, and their cheerful delight in its pleasures, Mrs. Stanley replied: ”Yes, Lucilla is half a nun. She likes the rule, but not the vow. Poor thing! her conscience is so tender that she oftener requires encouragement than restraint. While she was making this plantation, she felt herself so absorbed by it that she came to me one day and said that her gardening work so fascinated her that she found whole hours pa.s.sed unperceived, and she began to be uneasy by observing that all cares and all duties were suspended while she was disposing beds of carnations, or knots of anemones. Even when she tore herself away, and returned to her employments, her flowers still pursued her, and the improvement of her mind gave way to the cultivation of her geraniums.
”'I am afraid,' said the poor girl, 'that I must really give it up.' I would not hear of this. I would not suffer her to deny herself so pure a pleasure. She then suggested the expedient of limiting her time, and hanging up her watch in the conservatory to keep her within her prescribed bounds. She is so observant of this restriction, that when her allotted time is expired, she forces herself to leave off even in the midst of the most interesting operation. By this limitation a treble end is answered. Her time is saved, self-denial is exercised, and the interest which would languish by protracting the work is kept in fresh vigor.”
I told Mrs. Stanley that I had observed her watch hanging in a citron-tree the day I came, but little thought it had a moral meaning.
She said it had never been left there since I had been in the house, for fear of causing interrogatories. Here Mrs. Stanley left me to my meditations.
It is wisely ordered that all mortal enjoyments should have some alloy.
I never tasted a pleasure since I had been at the Grove, I never witnessed a grace, I never heard related an excellence of Lucilla, without a sigh that my beloved parents did not share my happiness. ”How would they,” said I, ”delight in her delicacy, rejoice in her piety, love her benevolence, her humility, her usefulness! O how do children feel who wound the peace of _living_ parents by an unworthy choice, when not a little of my comfort springs from the certainty that the departed would rejoice in mine! Even from their blessed abode, my grateful heart seems to hear them say, 'This is the creature we would have chosen for thee! This is the creature with whom we shall rejoice with thee through all eternity!'”
Yet such was my inconsistency, that charmed as I was that so young and lovely a woman could be so cheaply pleased, and delighted with that simplicity of taste which made her resemble my favorite heroine of Milton in her amus.e.m.e.nts, as well as in her domestic pursuits; yet I longed to know what these Christmas diversions, so slightly hinted at, could be, diversions which could reconcile these girls to their absence not only from their green-house, but from London. I could hardly fear indeed to find at Stanley Grove what the newspapers pertly call _Private Theatricals_. Still I suspected it might be some gay dissipation not quite suited to their general character, nor congenial to their usual amus.e.m.e.nts. My mother's favorite rule of _consistency_ strongly forced itself on my mind, though I tried to repel the suggestion as unjust and ungenerous.
Of what meannesses will not love be guilty: it drove me to have recourse to my friend Mrs. Comfit to dissipate my doubts. From her I learned that that cold and comfortless season was mitigated at Stanley Grove by several feasts for the poor of different cla.s.ses and ages. ”Then, sir,”