A 1 recognises the possibility of changes for the better; but its negative side is much more strongly marked. It implies, on the part of a person who feels it, not only dislike to the schemes and doctrines which on different occasions have most strongly excited the passions of men, but something very like positive disbelief in them, or at all events in any marked and detailed ways of stating them. A man who takes this view will never be eager for new principles or new applications of old principles in morals, in politics, or in religion. He will be apt to be contented with what he has got already, and to be disinclined to part with it. When this theory takes the fervid poetical shape it becomes Toryism of the romantic order, and in that condition it has a great affinity to Radicalism, because the one idealizes the past as the other idealizes the future. When it is united with a cold selfish temper it becomes simple obstructive conservatism. "I am satisfied, why can't you all bold your tongues and let me alone?" When it is connected with sincere benevolence, a warm heart, and a high spirit, it produces a man like Lord Macaulay-a man who exaggerates nothing, who takes as moderate, if you please as cold and hard, a view of the world in which we live, and of the conditions on which we live in it, as the most selfish of mankind; and who, for all that, is not selfish in the least, but is, on the contrary, full of warmth, full of kindness, full of zeal for the principles in which he believes, and prepared to make great sacrifices to carry them out. one can read his notes on the Indian Code' or the speculations which are dispersed through all his books, and especially through certain parts of his essays, without seeing that he had at least as much aptitude for argument upon moral, political and religious questions as for narration. We should be inclined to think that his final and deliberate preference for history was due in a great measure to the conviction that it is hardly possible to arrive by speculative processes at results permanently satisfactory, whereas it is possible by careful study of historical facts to come to some sort of conclusion as to the practical working on men and things of the principles which we see in operation around us under a variety of different forms. In short, it was a love for the concrete, and a distrust of abstractions, which led one of the most square-minded, logical, and systematic of men to turn aside from speculation to the task of recording and describing matters of fact. In all his writings, however, and with all his love for the concrete, the abstract temper of mind is always present. He liked history principally because he viewed it as concrete politics. In all that he writes he is continually thinking of Whig and Tory, Protestant and Roman Catholic. With all his genius for picturesque descriptions and his boundless command of detail he enters singularly little into individual character. He will give less of a notion of William III., or Marlborough, or Charles II. in half a volume than Mr. Carlyle would in ten pages. On the other hand, there is a greater body of distinct moral and political propositions in some particular essays of Lord Macaulay's than in all Mr. Carlyle's writings put together. His history is constantly little else than gorgeous description running into discussion. Argument, debate, moral or political controversy in one form or another, was the element in which he lived, and history was valuable as supplying an unlimited number of texts for such debates, whilst it kept the debates themselves from falling into vagueness. In all Lord Macaulay's writings and in all his political conduct the degree in which he was actuated by this temper is most remarkable; the more remarkable because the warmth of his disposition, and the somewhat florid character of some of his peculiar gifts, formed a contrast to the extreme caution, reserve, and general scepticism as to nostrums of all sorts, which formed the basis of his character. Thus, for instance, in all his vigorous advocacy of the Reform Bill, he never took a violent line, though he was quite a young man at the time, and carefully The general character of the doctrines confined himself to arguing the question as which he preached through the medium of one of immediate practical expediency. He his favourite studies corresponded exactly to says in so many words, in one of his speech- the principle to which we have referred as es, that he has no general theory of politics, the foundation of his whole state of mind. and does not believe in such theories at all. They are, with hardly an exception, modeIn his writings this temper shows itself much rate, sensible, and vigorous; but, apart from more powerfully than in his political con- the energy with which they are expressed, duct. It had no doubt a great deal to do and the earnestness with which Lord Macwith his preference for history over other aulay himself entertained them, there is pursuits for which he would appear to have little about them to create enthusiasm. That been at least as well fitted by nature. No the Revolution of 1688 was a happy event; that Charles I. was a great tyrant; that Jews string of vigorous, well-chosen, well-cut illusought to be allowed to sit in Parliament; trations by which this principle is enforced, that Mr. Gladstone wrote great nonsense and by which the consequence is deduced about the relations between Church and from it that the current modern notions State, and had no clear conception of the about toleration, the maintenance of an Esmeaning of his own theory; that Southey's tablished Church, and other such matters Colloquies are full of fallacies; that, on the are all perfectly satisfactory. The objection whole, it was wise to pass the Reform Bill to all this is that it deals in no way whatever these and other doctrines of the same with the real difficulties of the subject. It kind, together with endless lively discussions is a mere statement of an existing state of upon particular individuals, upon Warren opinion, as if it were an ultimate indisputable Hastings, Clive, Pitt, Walpole, and innu- truth. Why should the protection of permerable other persons, are what is to be got son and property be the sole or chief end of out of Lord Macaulay. It is all perfectly government? Does not the determination true, and, taken together, very instructive to treat it as such, and to organize the most and important; but there is something dis- important of human institutions with an exappointing in the way in which the greatest clusive view to it depend upon further views, problems of all are quietly passed over as positive or negative, as to the objects of hubeing altogether insoluble, or else are dis- man life? Suppose, for instance, that it is cussed in a thoroughly unsatisfactory man- true that the holding of particular religious ner, although it is impossible not to feel that opinions involves damnation or salvation so powerful a writer might and ought to after death, and suppose that governments have thrown much light upon them. Almost can, as a fact, influence the religious belief every one of the essays raises this feeling. of those who are subject to them, why should Take, for instance, the review of Mr. Glad they neglect a matter so much more imporstone's book on Church and State. When tant than the protection of person and propLord Macaulay comes to give his own views erty? Again, is the production of good and of that great subject, they are very meagre, great men, of a high type of character and and it is difficult to avoid the reflection that a high level of happiness, a proper object the fact that they are clear, and that they for governments to aim at? The protection admitted of being stated in a forcible epi- of person and property is, after all, only a grammatic manner, and not any real consid- means to an end; and why should governeration of their truth, was the reason why they ments regard part of that end only? Here are stated as they stand. The whole of the we come upon the great fundamental probtheory is an amplification of one proposition lems of morals, politics, and theology, and -"We consider the primary end of gov- Lord Macaulay has nothing to say about ernment as a purely temporal end, the them. His silence on these great matters is protection of the persons and property of men." It may be able incidentally to promote other good objects, such as religious instruction, and, if so, it ought to do so. Most of our readers will remember the long the weak point of his literary character, just as the extraordinary vigour and massive thought which he delighted to lavish on matters of far less importance was its strong point, CHAPTER VI. MY LOVE IN HER ATTIRE DOTH SHOW Paventry, the heiress. She brought Lambs HER WIT. THE morning room at Lambswold was a grey, melancholy, sunshiny room. The light shone in through two great open windows on the grey walls and ancient possessions. A glass drop chandelier, quaint and old-fashioned, reflected it in bright prisms. A shrouded harp stood in one corner of the room. There was an old pink carpet, with a pattern of faded wreaths; a tall chimneypiece, with marble garlands, yellowed by time; and fountains and graceful ornamentations. A picture was hanging over it - a picture of a lady, all blue and green shadows in a clouded world of paint, with a sort of white turban or nightcap on. She had the pretty coquettish grace which belonged to the women of her time, who still seem to be smiling archly out of their frames at their gaping descendants. Through the window there was a sight of a lawn and a great spreading tree, where figures were busy preparing the tables, and beyond them again a sweet pastoral valley and misty morning hills. "Ah, how pretty!" cried Catherine Butler, stepping out at once through the window. Beamish, who had been cross coming down, and who had fancied she talked too much to Dick's new friend, Mr. Holland, followed her to give her a scolding; but Catherine met him with a smile and a great red rose she had just pulled off the trellis. And so the two made it up, and stood picking rosebuds for one another, like a Dresden shepherd and shepherdess. "What time do we dine?" said Hervey. "I suppose this is only luncheon, Charles?" Humph!" said Charles, "I don't know what this is earwigs most likely. Dick would have it out there." who began to play showman, "is the celebrated portrait of my great-aunt, Miss wold into the family, and two very ugly wine-coolers, which shall be exhibited free of any extra charge. That"-pointing to a picture between the windows" is Richard Butler, the first martyr of the name. He was burned at the stake at Smithfield in Queen Mary's reign, surnamed the❞— "What a charming picture!" said Holland, who had been all this time looking at the portrait of Miss Paventry, while the children stood round staring at him in turn. "Charming!" echoed Dick, suddenly astride on his hobby-horse; "I didn't expect this from you, Holland." "What "Ta ta ta," said Charles Butler. have I done with the cellar key? I shall only get out my second-best sherry; it is quite good enough for any of you." And the host trotted off with a candle to a sacred inner vault, where nobody but himself ever penetrated not even Mundy, the devoted factotum upon whose head it was always found necessary to empty the vials before anything could be considered as satisfactorily arranged. - Meanwhile Dick was careering round and round at full gallop on his favourite steed, although he was lounging back to all appearance on the sofa by Madame de Tracy. "I see no charm in a lie," he was saying, in his quiet, languid way; "and the picture is a lie from beginning to end." Holland was beginning to interrupt, but Dick went on pointing as he spoke: :-"Look at that shapeless, impudent substitute for a tree; do you see the grain of the bark? Is there any attempt at drawing in those coarse blotches meant, I suppose, for ivyleaves? Look at those plants in the foreground- do you call that a truthful rendering of fact? Where is the delicate tracery of Nature's lacework?" "In the first place I don't quite under"Alas! we are no longer young enough stand what you mean by a rendering of to go without our dinners, my dear broth-fact," said Holland; "I can't help thinking er," cried Madame de Tracy. "Do you re- you have cribbed that precious phrase out member?" of a celebrated art-critic." "The phrase isn't English," said Madame de Tracy, who always longed to rush into any discussion, whether she understood or not what it was all about. "I hate all the jargon," said Holland, drawing himself up (a tall figure in an irongrey suit, such as young men wear now-adays, with a smart yellow rose in the button-hole). "Art-critic! art-history! wordpainting! germ-spoiling of English. Pah! tell you, my dear fellow, whatever you may choose to criticise, Gainsborough looked at Nature in the right way. I tell you he'd got another sort of spectacles on his noble nose than what are worn now-a-days by your new-fangled would-be regenerators of art. If you want the sort of truth you are talking about, you had better get a microscope at once to paint with, and the stronger the instrument the more truthful you'll be. I tell you," continued Holland, more and more excited, "if you and your friends are right, then Titian and Giorgione and Tintoret are wrong." 46 Hang Titian!" interrupted Dick, with quiet superiority, while his hobby-horse gave a sudden plunge and became almost unmanageable. "He was utterly false and conventional - infernally clever, if you like. But we want truth-we want to go back to a more reverential treatment of Nature, and that is only to be done by patience and humble imitation." The reformer Dick was still lounging among the cushions, but his grey eyes were twinkling as they did when he was excited. Miss George, who had been listening absorbed all this time, looked up into his face almost frightened at the speech about Titian. Mrs. Butler said, "Fie, fie, you naughty boy!" with lumbering playfulness. The sun was shining so brightly outside that the roses looked like little flames, and the grass was transfigured; the children were tumbling about in it. Miss George should have remembered that there was youth and inexperience to palliate Richard Butler's irreverence. Youth has a right to be arrogant, or is at least an excuse for presumption, since it can't have experience; and, moreover, Dick's exaggeration had its kernel of truth amidst a vast deal of frothy_pulp. The Truth, as Dick would write it, was that he and his comrades were reformers, and like reformers they would have broken the time-honoured images of the old worship in their new-born zeal. It is healthier to try and paint a blade of grass to the utmost of your ability, than to dash in a bold background and fancy you are a Reynolds or a Gainsborough. But honest Dick will find that to imitate blades of grass and bits of fern and birds'-nests with bluish eggs, however well and skilfully, is not the end and the object of painting. And, indeed, the right treatment was already visible in his works, fighting against system and theories. What can they produce but dry pieces of mechanism? The true painter is the man who paints with his soul, and so finds his way to the hearts of his fellow-creatures. "She was a most delightful person, I believe," said Mrs. Butler, gazing in her turn at Miss Paventry. "She never married." "It is very curious," said Holland, "but don't you see a decided likeness?" and he looked from the picture to one of the persons present; and then back at the picture again. 66 "You mean Miss George," said Dick. "I've often noticed it; but she has got a much prettier and more becoming hat on than that affair of poor old Aunt Lydia's. I like your red feather," said he, turning to Catherine. "If I were a woman," Dick went on, still contrary and discursive, “I should like to be a green woman, or a blue woman, or a red one I shouldn't like to be a particoloured woman. I don't know why ladies are so much afraid of wearing their own colours, and are all for semitones and mixtures. Now that feather of yours is a capital bit of colour, and gives one pleasure to look at." "I should think the reason that most ladies prefer quiet colours," said Mrs. Butler, stiffly, "is, that they do not generally wish to make themselves conspicuous. No lady wishes to attract attention by over-fine clothes," she repeated, glancing at the obnoxious feather and rustling in all the conscious superiority of two pale mauve daughters, and garments of flowing dun-colour and sickly magenta and white. "I do believe, my dear aunt, there are people who would like to boil down the Union Jack into a sort of neutral tint,” said Dick, "and mix up the poor old buff and blue of one's youth into a nondescript green." 66 Such things have certainly been tried before now," said Holland, while Butler, turning to Catherine, went on"Don't let them put you out of conceit with your flame-colour, Miss George; it is very pretty indeed, and very becoming." He was vexed with his aunt for the rude, pointed way in which she had spoken; he saw Catherine looking shy and unhappy. But she soon brightened up, and as she blushed with pleasure to hear Dick liked her feather, its flames seemed to mount into her cheeks. In the fair apparel of youth and innocence and happiness, no wonder she looked well and charmed them all by her artless arts. There is no dress more gorgeous and dazzling than Catherine's that day. Not Solomon in all his glory, not Madame Rachel selves for once, and could not be repressed. Nobody could put them out. Even when she was silent these things were speaking for her in a language no one could fail to understand. If it had been one of Mrs. Butler's own daughters, she would have looked on with gentlest maternal sympathy at so much innocent happiness; but for Miss George she had no feeling save that of uneasiness and disquiet. It was hard upon the poor mother to have to stand by and see her own well-educated, perfectly commonplace Georgie eclipsed- put out — distanced altogether by this stiff, startled, dark-eyed little creature, with the sudden bright blushes coming and going in her cheeks. Mrs. Butler could not help seeing that they all liked talking to her. Charles Butler, Holland (Mr. Holland had quite lost his heart to the pretty little governess), Dick, and Beamish even. But then Georgie did not look up all grateful and delighted if anybody noticed her, and flush up like a snow mountain at sunrise! and all her nostrums, not all the hair-pins, sweet abrupt girlishness asserted themand eye-washes, and affectations can equal it. I cannot attempt to define how rightly or wrongly Catherine was behaving in looking so pretty and feeling so happy in Dick Butler's company, in having placed an idol upon her most secret shrine, and then fallen down and worshipped it. An idol somewhat languid and nonchalant, with mustachios, with a name, alas! by this time. Poor little worshipper! it was in secret that she brought her offerings, her turtle-dove's eggs, and flowers, and crystal drops, and sudden lights, and flickering tapers. She was a modest and silent little worshipper; she said nothing, did nothing: only to be in this Paradise with her idol there before her walking about in a black velvet suit; to be listening to his talk, and to the song of the birds, and to the scythe of the reapers; to witness such beautiful sights, gracious as pects, changing skies-it was too good almost to be true. It seemed to Catherine as if the song in her heart was pouring out, she could not contain it, and all the air seemed full of music. She wondered if the others were listening to it too. But they were busy unpacking the hampers and get ting out the sherry, nor had they all of them the ears to hear. Some gifts are dangerous to those who possess them this one of Catherine's means much discord in life as well as great harmony; saddest silence, the endless terrors and miseries of an imaginative nature; the disappointment of capacities for happiness too great to be ever satisfied in this world. But in the meantime, Mrs. Butler, returning from a short excursion to the hampers, could hardly believe it was her silent and subdued little governess who was standing there chattering and laughing. Her eyes were dancing and her voice thrilling, for was not Dick standing by? Providence made a great mistake when it put hearts into girls hearts all ready to love, and to admire, and to be grateful and happy with a word, with a nothing. And if Providence had made a still further mistake, and made dependents of the same stuff as the rest, and allowed them to forget for one instant their real station in life, Mrs. Butler was determined to supply any such deficiencies, and to remind Miss George if ever she chanced to forget. But poor little Catherine, as I have said, defied her in her brief hour of happiness. She would not remember, and, indeed, she could not prevent her cheeks from blushing and her eyes from shining more brightly than any others present. Her youth, her beauty, her even She was Of course, Catherine would have been behaving much better if she had shown far more strength of character, and never thought of anything less desirable than Augusta's French, or Lydia's History, and if she had overcome any feelings. before she was conscious of them - except those connected with her interesting profession. But Catherine had no strength of mind. She was led by anybody and anything that came across her way. one of those people who are better liked by men than by women. For it is difficult sometimes for the weary and hardly-tried amazons of life to feel a perfect tolerance and sympathy with other women of weaker mould and nature. These latter are generally shielded and carried along by other strength than their own; they rest all through the heat of the day, leaving others to fight their battles and to defend them, and then when the battle is over are resting still. The strongest and fiercest of amazons would be glad to lay down her arms at times, and rest and be weak and cared for; but the help comes not for her; she must bear the burden of her strength and courage, and fight on until the night. Mrs. Butler was one of the amazons of the many tribes of amazons that still exist in the world. They are married as well as unmarried. This woman for years and years had worked and striven and battled for her husband and children; she managed them and her husband and his affairs; she dictated, and ruled, and commanded; she |