Macmillan's Magazine

have been published only last year as a fashionable treatise by the Hon. Mr. A—— or Lady B- — on good breeding and the manners of a gentleman. Alter a word or two here and there; blot out the rather offensive self-sufficiency; lay a very thin wash of colour over the superciliousness of manner which is somewhat too manifest in Aristotle's magnanimous man, and you might be reading a description of "the swell," as poor Jones calls the man who lives and moves and has his being in society. There is no doubt, in fact, that the laws of good breeding, the leges inscripta of society, do tend, more or less, to produce an appearance of what the old Greeks named magnanimity. These laws are simply the barriers which the common sense of most has erected, to protect people who are thrown much together from each other's impertinences. They are lines of defence, and therefore their tendency is to isolate the individual from the crowd; to make him self-contained, reticent, and independent of opinions; alike careless of censure and indifferent to applause. It may be said that much of this is only manner. But, as in poetry the matter often grows out of the manner, so the character is often insensibly influenced by the outward bearing; a man becomes to some extent what he wishes to appear.

For the question must needs present itself,-Is this a mere matter of fashion and good breeding. The calm and stately bearing, the polished, urbane address, the unruffled surface of a stream which seems to have no slimy depths,-are these things the mere accidents of a position, the mere outward husk and shell of a man; or are they the indices of certain qualities inherent in a certain class, and in which other classes are not equally privileged to share? Aristotle associates magnanimity with good fortune.

He declares boldly that wealth and power tend to make men magnanimous. And a philosopher of a later age, the clever and witty Becky Sharpe, if we mistake not, held a similar opinion. "Ah! how good and great-minded I

thousand a year." And really there is something more in her assertion than appears upon the surface. She saw that she was living a life of petty shifts and little meannesses, cajoling one friend, flattering another, and cringing to a third; and all for the sake of a maintenance, for a few paltry pounds more or less. Give her the money, and what need would there be any longer for flattery, or meanness? Another modern philosopher, however, is of quite a different opinion from our friend Becky. Mr. Ruskin, in one of his amusing pamphlets,

which, under the name of Art, treats of all things and a few things besides, whether in heaven or earth, or in the waters under the earth,-Mr. Ruskin suggests that some benevolent gentleman shall set up shop, in order to show the world that honesty, and gravity, and truth, and piety, may be found behind a counter as well as anywhere else. But has Mr. Ruskin forgotten the old adage about contact with pitch? I will state his case and illustrate his idea. His model tradesman, let us suppose, a gentleman by birth and education, dons the apron and commences trade in-we will say the small grocery line of business in a little country town. Of course he finds that there is an opposition shop -there always is an opposition shop in little country towns-quite ready to compete with him, and to undersell him by any and every means, legitimate or otherwise. All goods must be sold at the lowest price compatible with any profit at all; and, if his rival has capital enough to carry on the game, at a lower price still. Then come the sanding of the sugar, the dusting of the pepper, the watering of the tobacco at the opposition shop; and what is our magnanimous man to do? Shall he preserve his integrity and vacate the field, or shall he throw his honesty to the dogs, and strangle his truth? It is clear that one or other of these things he must do. Do I then mean to assert that magnanimity is incompatible with trade, that greatness of soul is not to be found in the man whose daily business is weighing out

is but one of many ways in which greatness of soul can manifest itself; and perhaps it is not even the highest manifestation of the virtue. For I am not

sure but that some men, in whom ambition and vanity are strong, may not find it easier to forgive the injuries of a foe than to pardon the successes of a friend. Dean Trench has shown us how words have dropped out of the world's vocabulary, as being no longer needed, or have altogether lost their primary meaning. And it will be worth while to inquire whether the virtue which was magnanimity in heathen days has found no place for itself under the Christian dispensation, and so has narrowed itself down to the Christian virtue of forgiveness, or whether it has undergone a rebaptism, and is known in the modern world under some other name.

At any

rate, it is evident that even in Christian England, in the nineteenth century, there is room for a word which shall express the contrary to that fidgety, prying, invidious, mean and despicable condition of mind which men fall into who deal with things rather than with persons, who are chiefly conversant with the petty concerns of life, with moneygetting, with buying and selling, and so forth, and so insensibly lapse into a low and stunted condition of soul.

"The magnanimous man," said Aristotle, "is he who, being really worthy, "estimates his own worth highly. If a man puts too high a value upon him'self, he is vain. And if a man, being worthy, does not rate himself at his proper worth, why he is little better "than a fool. But the magnanimous man will be only moderately gratified "by the honours which the world heaps "upon him, under the impression that "he has simply got what is his due. He "will behave with moderation under "both bad fortune and good. He will "know how to be exalted and how to be "abased. He will neither be delighted "with success, nor grieved by failure. "He will neither shun danger, nor seek "it; for there are few things which he 66 cares for. He is reticent and some

"mind openly and boldly when occasion "calls for it. He is not apt to admire, "for nothing is great to him. He over"looks injuries. He is not given to talk "about himself or about others; for he "does not care that he himself should "be praised, or that other people should "be blamed. He does not cry out about "trifles, and craves help from none. "The step of the magnanimous man is "slow, his voice deep, and his language stately for he who cares about few "things has no need to hurry, and he "who thinks highly of nothing needs "not to be vehement about anything." Such is the character of the magnanimous man, as drawn by an old heathen writer more than 2,000 years ago. Doubtless this was a standard of perfection at which Aristotle himself aimed, and which many a Greek attained to,-in outward seeming at least; though the Athenian magnanimity must have sadly degenerated when Paul of Tarsus preached on Mars Hill to a crowd or gossips and triflers four hundred years later. And certainly the portrait as drawn by Aristotle has something grand, we may almost say noble, in its lineaments. Indeed, it would be noble but for the lazy scorn which flashes from the eye and curls the lip. Self-contained and self-reliant, the magnanimous man towers above his fellows, like an oak amongst reeds,-his motto nec franges nec flectes. And, if there be somewhat too much of self-sufficiency about him, we must remember that, to be great and strong, a heathen must necessarily lean upon himself. The settler in foreign and sparsely inhabited countries needs and acquires a degree of self-reliance and self-assertion which would be offensive in the person of a member of civilised society. And the Greek became selfsufficient even in his ethics, as having no definite promise of help out of himself, or beyond his own resources.

But it is curious to notice how in the main the ethics of 2,000 years ago repeat themselves in the fashionable ethics of to-day. Much of what Aristotle has said of the magnanimous man

have been published only last year as a fashionable treatise by the Hon. Mr. A or Lady B- on good breeding and the manners of a gentleman. Alter a word or two here and there; blot out the rather offensive self-sufficiency; lay a very thin wash of colour over the superciliousness of manner which is somewhat too manifest in Aristotle's magnanimous man, and you might be reading a description of "the swell," as poor Jones calls the man who lives and moves and has his being in society. There is no doubt, in fact, that the laws of good breeding, the leges inscripta of society, do tend, more or less, to produce an appearance of what the old Greeks named magnanimity. These laws are simply the barriers which the common sense of most has erected, to protect people who are thrown much together from each other's impertinences. They are lines of defence, and therefore their tendency is to isolate the individual from the crowd; to make him self-contained, reticent, and independent of opinions; alike careless of censure and indifferent to applause. It may be said that much of this is only manner. But, as in poetry the matter often grows out of the manner, so the character is often insensibly influenced by the outward bearing; a man becomes to some extent what he wishes to appear.

For the question must needs present itself,-Is this a mere matter of fashion and good breeding. The calm and stately bearing, the polished, urbane address, the unruffled surface of a stream which seems to have no slimy depths, are these things the mere accidents of a position, the mere outward husk and shell of a man; or are they the indices of certain qualities inherent in a certain class, and in which other classes are not equally privileged to share? Aristotle associates magnanimity with good fortune. He declares boldly that wealth and power tend to make men magnanimous. And a philosopher of a later age, the clever and witty Becky Sharpe, if we mistake not, held a similar opinion. "Ah! how good and great-minded I

His

which, under the name of Art, treats of all things and a few things besides, whether in heaven or earth, or in the waters under the earth,-Mr. Ruskin suggests that some benevolent gentleman shall set up shop, in order to show the world that honesty, and gravity, and truth, and piety, may be found behind a counter as well as anywhere else. But has Mr. Ruskin forgotten the old adage about contact with pitch? I will state his case and illustrate his idea. model tradesman, let us suppose, a gentleman by birth and education, dons the apron and commences trade in-we will say the small grocery line of business in a little country town. Of course he finds that there is an opposition shop -there always is an opposition shop in little country towns-quite ready to compete with him, and to undersell him by any and every means, legitimate or otherwise. All goods must be sold at the lowest price compatible with any profit at all; and, if his rival has capital enough to carry on the game, at a lower price still. Then come the sanding of the sugar, the dusting of the pepper, the watering of the tobacco at the opposition shop; and what is our magnanimous man to do? Shall he preserve his integrity and vacate the field, or shall he throw his honesty to the dogs, and strangle his truth? It is clear that one or other of these things he must do. Do I then mean to assert that magnanimity is incompatible with trade, that greatness of soul is not to be found in the man whose daily business is weighing out

But I am very much of Becky Sharpe's opinion, that it is much easier to be magnanimous on five thousand a year than on fifty pounds a year. Of course

there are exceptional men who will show their greatness by bending their minds to mean but necessary occupations, and raising these occupations by the spirit in which they are followed. But such men as these are the salt of the earth. And I take it that such men as these are very rare. In truth, even with the highest class of minds, the accidents of their position, the men with whom they are thrown, the callings they pursue, do contribute more or less to foster or to destroy the virtue we are considering. It is hard to live with narrow-minded people and yet not to contract some stain of narrow-mindedness. It is above all a difficult thing to be engaged in the business of money-getting and still to value money at its proper worth; for the subject of our daily labours and anxieties must necessarily be apt to obtain an undue and preponderating prominence in our thoughts.

But, if poverty be inimical to magnanimity, as tending to make men exalt the temporal at the expense of the eternal, wealth and prosperity have no less their dangers. The struggling man of business, who has safely carried honour and magnanimity out of the fray, may find his Capua in respectability and a handsome income in the funds. He may become littleminded and a trifler, a hanger-on upon great people, a taster of entrées, and a connoisseur of wines, and be a little too apt to complain of the crumpled rose-leaf in his couch. And what then can restore him to himself but the sharp pinch of a great trial? If he has any regard for the virtue he has lost, I recommend him at once to draw his money out of the funds, and to invest it in the private bank of an intimate friend, if possible of a near relation, with interest at the rate of six, or even seven, per cent. paid quarterly. And then, if there does not speedily come such a crash as shall astonish him, and send him back to his mutton chop and

dependence of mind and a sovereign contempt for the world's opinion, I can only say that he will have tried my remedy in vain. For it is strange to see how even the meanest minds often rise into magnanimity under the pressure of a great and sudden trial. We will take the first instance that offers itself for an example: that poor private in the Buffs who was killed by the Chinese a year or two back for refusing to kotow at the name of their emperor. Here was an ignorant country lad, a mere clod of Suffolk or Dorsetshire clay, far from friends and home, and fresh from the unheroic discipline of pipeclay and goosestep, yet giving his life like a hero for his honour and his duty. Yesterday, a clown, his highest pleasure the grogshop-to-day, Leonidas does not surpass him in magnanimity !

On the whole I think it will be found that a strong religious conviction is the best, perhaps the only, specific for delivering men from the petty interests, the little cares, the envies, the heartburnings, the meannesses, which pertain to an overcrowded state of society. I believe that few religious enthusiasts will be found to have been littleminded in worldly matters. They may have been bigoted, fierce, cruel; they may have had a narrowmindedness peculiarly their own: but we must acknowledge that the zealots of religion have, on the whole, been magnanimous in dealing with the things that are Cæsar's. Indeed, the interests with which religion is concerned are so vast that all merely temporal interests are dwarfed into insignificance by the side of them. And, of all human exemplars of magnanimity, I know of none who can for a moment compare with that poor prisoner, who from his dungeon at Rome declared with unfaltering voice that he had learnt through much suffering, in whatever state of life he was, therewith to be content; that he knew how to be full and to be hungry, how to abound and to suffer want; and that he was willing, if it pleased God, to live, and yet was not afraid, yea, was even ready, if so it

II. "OF ESSAY WRITING." It is not to be wondered at that Essays are popular. We all like gossip. The human bow cannot always be bent, or its string would soon crack. The most thinking and aspiring philosopher cannot be always in the cloudland of high thoughts and aspirations, but must come down sometimes to the dead level of common everyday humanity, and find himself swayed more or less by the currents of hopes and fears, of anxieties and passions, by which his fellow-men are swayed. When Johnson the logician, and Thompson the great art-critic meet each other on the shady side of Pall Mall, do you think they fall to immediately at a word-battle of dialectics, or are engrossed by a critical discussion of Millais's last new picture? Not a bit of it. The probability is that the topic which interests them, and on which they have so much to say to each other, is closely connected with Johnson's dinner-hour, or Thompson's mother-inlaw.

In fact we all like that common chat which grows out of our common life. And it is for this reason that Essaywriting, which is only a better sort of gossip, has been always a popular form of literature; bringing, as it does, literature home to men's businesses and bosoms.

And, considering what classes of society contribute the great mass of readers at the present day, the only wonder is that the writing of Essays does not form a more manifest current in that great flood of book-making which is sweeping the modern mind on to chaos and forgetfulness. I suppose that the greater number of readers-of people to whom books are a necessity-is to be found in country-houses, amongst those who are tolerably well educated, and yet are isolated and shut off from communion with many cultivated minds. To such people books are society, books are friends. It was not in London, but at Foston-in-the-Clay, in the wilds of Yorkshire, that Sydney Smith exclaimed so devoutly, "Thank God for books!"

And one would suppose that Essays afford the pabulum on which the minds of country readers will love to feed. Take the country parson for instance,— and the country parson interest is 20,000 strong; will he not find just the sort of reading he wants in Essays (I do not mean Essays and Reviews "), when he comes home to his fireside after going the rounds of his parish? Whilst he has been about his work--I am supposing him to be a conscientious man,— his mind has been on the stretch in the endeavour to infuse into other minds, duller and less intelligent than his own, certain great truths, which have to be adapted to the individual capacity of each person with whom he has been talking. He has been striving to rouse dead consciences, and to awaken love in cold hearts. He has been occupied in that most difficult work, applying special remedies to special diseases. Wearied and jaded with his labour, with a heart pierced and stained by contact with many forms of sin, as his feet are mudstained with the mire of the lanes through which they have passed, he comes home, to seek refreshment for mind and body. Now, what book shall he take up, when dinner is over, and the reading-lamp throws its cheerful light over drawn curtains and crowded shelves? Fiction would seem too trivial; history, perhaps, too solid. The very thing for him would be a desultory chat, grave or gay, with some intellectual and talkative friend. And such a friend does he find in the Essayist.

For the Essay furnishes one of the few instances in which easy writing is at the same time easy reading. In the first place it is in some measure fragmentary, and can be taken up and put down at odd times. Then it does not profess much. It does not set out with drawing a heavy bill on our attention, and so we are all the more ready to honour its demands. It does not address us, so to speak, ex cathedrá. It assumes no judicial or magisterial functions; it rather comes to us as a cheerful, talkative friend who stops us in the street going to or coming from business, and

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Macmillan's Magazine, Band 11