Book: My Novel, Volume 2.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 2.




He arrived at the Hall to find that all the family were at church; and,
according to the patriarchal custom, the churchgoing family embraced
nearly all the servants. It was therefore an old invalid housemaid who
opened the door to him. She was rather deaf, and seemed so stupid that
Randal did not ask leave to enter and wait for Frank's return. He
therefore said briefly that he would just stroll on the lawn, and call
again when church was over.

The old woman stared, and strove to hear him; meanwhile Randal turned
round abruptly, and sauntered towards the garden side of the handsome old
house.

There was enough to attract any eye in the smooth greensward of the
spacious lawn, in the numerous parterres of variegated flowers, in the
venerable grandeur of the two mighty cedars, which threw their still
shadows over the grass, and in the picturesque building, with its
projecting mullions and heavy gables; yet I fear that it was with no
poet's nor painter's eye that this young old man gazed on the scene
before him.

He beheld the evidence of wealth--and the envy of wealth jaundiced his
soul.

Folding his arms on his breast, he stood a while, looking all around him,
with closed lips and lowering brow; then he walked slowly on, his eyes
fixed on the ground, and muttered to himself,--

"The heir to this property is little better than a dunce; and they tell
me I have talents and learning, and I have taken to my heart the maxim,
'Knowledge is power.' And yet, with all my struggles, will knowledge
ever place me on the same level as that on which this dunce is born? I
don't wonder that the poor should hate the rich. But of all the poor,
who should hate the rich like the pauper gentleman? I suppose Audley
Egerton means me to come into parliament, and be a Tory like himself?
What! keep things as they are! No; for me not even Democracy, unless
there first come Revolution. I understand the cry of a Marat,--'More
blood!' Marat had lived as a poor man, and cultivated science--in the
sight of a prince's palace."

He turned sharply round, and glared vindictively on the poor old Hall,
which, though a very comfortable habitation, was certainly no palace;
and, with his arms still folded on his breast, he walked backward, as if
not to lose the view, nor the chain of ideas it conjured up.

"But," he continued to soliloquize,--"but of revolution there is no
chance. Yet the same wit and will that would thrive in revolutions
should thrive in this commonplace life. Knowledge is power. Well, then,
shall I have no power to oust this blockhead? Oust him--what from? His
father's halls? Well, but if he were dead, who would be the heir of
Hazeldean? Have I not heard my mother say that I am as near in blood to
this squire as any one, if he had no children? Oh, but the boy's life is
worth ten of mine! Oust him from what? At least from the thoughts of
his Uncle Egerton,--an uncle who has never even seen him! That, at
least, is more feasible. 'Make my way in life,' sayest thou, Audley
Egerton? Ay,--and to the fortune thou hast robbed from my ancestors.
Simulation! simulation! Lord Bacon allows simulation. Lord Bacon
practised it, and--"

Here the soliloquy came to a sudden end; for as, rapt in his thoughts,
the boy had continued to walk backwards, he had come to the verge where
the lawn slided off into the ditch of the ha-ha; and just as he was
fortifying himself by the precept and practice of my Lord Bacon, the
ground went from under him, and--slap into the ditch went Randal Leslie!

It so happened that the squire, whose active genius was always at some
repair or improvement, had been but a few days before widening and
sloping off the ditch just in that part, so that the earth was fresh and
damp, and not yet either turfed or flattened down. Thus when Randal,
recovering his first surprise and shock, rose to his feet, he found his
clothes covered with mud; while the rudeness of the fall was evinced by
the fantastic and extraordinary appearance of his hat, which, hollowed
here, bulging there, and crushed out of all recognition generally, was as
little like the hat of a decorous, hard-reading young gentleman--protege
of the dignified Mr. Audley Egerton--as any hat picked out of a kennel
after some drunken brawl possibly could be.

Randal was dizzy and stunned and bruised, and it was some moments before
he took heed of his raiment. When he did so his spleen was greatly
aggravated. He was still boy enough not to like the idea of presenting
himself to the unknown squire and the dandy Frank in such a trim: he
resolved incontinently to regain the lane and return home, without
accomplishing the object of his journey; and seeing the footpath right
before him, which led to a gate that he conceived would admit him into
the highway sooner than the path by which he had come, he took it at
once.

It is surprising how little we human creatures heed the warnings of our
good genius. I have no doubt that some benignant power had precipitated
Randal Leslie into the ditch, as a significant hint of the fate of all
who choose what is, nowadays; by no means an uncommon step in the march
of intellect,--namely, the walking backwards, in order to gratify a
vindictive view of one's neighbour's property! I suspect that, before
this century is out, many a fine fellow will thus have found his ha-ha,
and scrambled out of the ditch with a much shabbier coat than he had on
when he fell into it. But Randal did not thank his good genius for
giving him a premonitory tumble,--and I never yet knew a man who did!




CHAPTER, XI.

The squire was greatly ruffled at breakfast that morning. He was too
much of an Englishman to bear insult patiently, and he considered that he
had been personally insulted in the outrage offered to his recent
donation to the parish. His feelings, too, were hurt as well as his
pride. There was something so ungrateful in the whole thing, just after
he had taken so much pains, not only in the resuscitation but the
embellishment of the stocks. It was not, however, so rare an occurrence
for the squire to be ruffled as to create any remark. Riccabocca,
indeed, as a stranger, and Mrs. Hazeldean, as a wife, had the quick tact
to perceive that the host was glum and the husband snappish; but the one
was too discreet, and the other too sensible, to chafe the new sore,
whatever it might be, and shortly after breakfast the squire retired into
his study, and absented himself from morning service. In his delightful
"Life of Oliver Goldsmith," Mr. Forster takes care to touch our hearts by
introducing his hero's excuse for not entering the priesthood. "He did
not feel himself good enough." Thy Vicar of Wakefield, poor Goldsmith,
was an excellent substitute for thee; and Dr. Primrose, at least, will be
good enough for the world until Miss Jemima's fears are realized. Now,
Squire Hazeldean had a tenderness of conscience much less reasonable than
Goldsmith's. There were occasionally days in which he did not feel good
enough--I don't say for a priest, but even for one of the congregation,--
"days in which," said the squire in his own blunt way, "as I have never
in my life met a worse devil than a devil of a temper, I'll not carry
mine into the family pew. He sha'n't be growling out hypocritical
responses from my poor grandmother's prayer-book." So the squire and his
demon stayed at home. But the demon was generally cast out before the
day was over: and on this occasion, when the bell rang for afternoon
service, it may be presumed that the squire had reasoned or fretted
himself into a proper state of mind; for he was then seen sallying forth
from the porch of his hall, arm-in-arm with his wife, and at the head of
his household. The second service was (as is commonly the case in rural
districts) more numerously attended than the first one; and it was our
parson's wont to devote to this service his most effective discourse.

Parson Dale, though a very fair scholar, had neither the deep theology
nor the archaeological learning that distinguish the rising generation of
the clergy. I much doubt if he could have passed what would now be
called a creditable examination in the Fathers; and as for all the nice
formalities in the rubric, he would never have been the man to divide a
congregation or puzzle a bishop. Neither was Parson Dale very erudite in
ecclesiastical architecture. He did not much care whether all the
details in the church were purely Gothic or not; crockets and finials,
round arch and pointed arch, were matters, I fear, on which he had never
troubled his head.

But one secret Parson Dale did possess, which is perhaps of equal
importance with those subtler mysteries,--he knew how to fill his church!
Even at morning service no pews were empty, and at evening service the
church overflowed.

Parson Dale, too, may be considered nowadays to hold but a mean idea of
the spiritual authority of the Church. He had never been known to
dispute on its exact bearing with the State,--whether it was incorporated
with the State or above the State, whether it was antecedent to the
Papacy or formed from the Papacy, etc. According to his favourite maxim,
"Quieta non movere,"--["Not to disturb things that are quiet."]--I have
no doubt that he would have thought that the less discussion is provoked
upon such matters the better for both Church and laity. Nor had he ever
been known to regret the disuse of the ancient custom of excommunication,
nor any other diminution of the powers of the priesthood, whether
minatory or militant; yet for all this, Parson Dale had a great notion of
the sacred privilege of a minister of the gospel,--to advise, to deter,
to persuade, to reprove. And it was for the evening service that he
prepared those sermons which may be called "sermons that preach at you."
He preferred the evening for that salutary discipline, not only because
the congregation was more numerous, but also because, being a shrewd man
in his own innocent way, he knew that people bear better to be preached
at after dinner than before; that you arrive more insinuatingly at the
heart when the stomach is at peace. There was a genial kindness in
Parson Dale's way of preaching at you. It was done in so imperceptible,
fatherly, a manner that you never felt offended. He did it, too, with so
much art that nobody but your own guilty self knew that you were the
sinner he was exhorting. Yet he did not spare rich nor poor: he preached
at the squire, and that great fat farmer, Mr. Bullock, the churchwarden,
as boldly as at Hodge the ploughman and Scrub the hedger. As for
Mr. Stirn, he had preached at him more often than at any one in the
parish; but Stirn, though he had the sense to know it, never had the
grace to reform. There was, too, in Parson Dale's sermons something of
that boldness of illustration which would have been scholarly if he had
not made it familiar, and which is found in the discourses of our elder
divines. Like them, he did not scruple now and then to introduce an
anecdote from history, or borrow an allusion from some non-scriptural
author, in order to enliven the attention of his audience, or render an
argument more plain. And the good man had an object in this, a little
distinct from, though wholly subordinate to, the main purpose of his
discourse. He was a friend to knowledge,--but to knowledge accompanied
by religion; and sometimes his references to sources not within the
ordinary reading of his congregation would spirit up some farmer's son,
with an evening's leisure on his hands, to ask the parson for further
explanation, and so to be lured on to a little solid or graceful
instruction, under a safe guide.

Now, on the present occasion, the parson, who had always his eye and
heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realization of
his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of discontent
was already at work amongst the peasants, and that magisterial and
inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural benevolence of the
squire,--seen, in short, the signs of a breach between classes, and the
precursors of the ever inflammable feud between the rich and the poor,
meditated nothing less than a great Political Sermon,--a sermon that
should extract from the roots of social truths a healing virtue for the
wound that lay sore, but latent, in the breast of his parish of
Hazeldean.

And thus ran--

THE POLITICAL SERMON OF PARSON DALE.




CHAPTER XII.

For every man shall bear his own burden.--Gal. vi. 5.

"BRETHREN! every man has his burden. If God designed our lives to end at
the grave, may we not believe that He would have freed an existence so
brief from the cares and sorrows to which, since the beginning of the
world, mankind has been subjected? Suppose that I am a kind father, and
have a child whom I dearly love, but I know by a divine revelation that
he will die at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex his
infancy by needless preparations for the duties of life? If I am a rich
man, I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to the stern
discipline of school. If I am a poor man, I should not take him with me
to hedge and dig, to scorch in the sun, to freeze in the winter's cold:
why inflict hardships on his childhood for the purpose of fitting him for
manhood, when I know that he is doomed not to grow into man? But if, on
the other hand, I believe my child is reserved for a more durable
existence, then should I not, out of the very love I bear to him, prepare
his childhood for the struggle of life, according to that station in
which he is born, giving many a toil, many a pain, to the infant, in
order to rear and strengthen him for his duties as man? So it is with
our Father that is in heaven. Viewing this life as our infancy and the
next as our spiritual maturity, where 'in the ages to come He may show
the exceeding riches of His grace,' it is in His tenderness, as in His
wisdom; to permit the toil and the pain which, in tasking the powers and
developing the virtue of the soul, prepare it for 'the earnest of our
inheritance.' Hence it is that every man has his burden. Brethren, if
you believe that God is good, yea, but as tender as a human father, you
will know that your troubles in life are a proof that you are reared for
an eternity. But each man thinks his own burden the hardest to bear: the
poor-man groans under his poverty, the rich man under the cares that
multiply with wealth. For so far from wealth freeing us from trouble,
all the wise men who have written in all ages have repeated, with one
voice, the words of the wisest, 'When goods increase, they are increased
that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the
beholding of them with their eyes?' And this is literally true, my
brethren: for, let a man be as rich as was the great King Solomon
himself, unless he lock up all his gold in a chest, it must go abroad to
be divided amongst others; yea, though, like Solomon, he make him great
works,--though he build houses and plant vineyards, and make him gardens
and orchards,--still the gold that he spends feeds but the mouths he
employs; and Solomon himself could not eat with a better relish than the
poorest mason who builded the house, or the humblest labourer who planted
the vineyard. Therefore 'when goods increase, they are increased that
eat them.' And this, my brethren, may teach us toleration and compassion
for the rich. We share their riches, whether they will or not; we do not
share their cares. The profane history of our own country tells us that
a princess, destined to be the greatest queen that ever sat on this
throne, envied the milk-maid singing; and a profane poet, whose wisdom
was only less than that of the inspired writers, represents the man who,
by force--and wit, had risen to be a king sighing for the sleep
vouchsafed to the meanest of his subjects,--all bearing out the words of
the son of David, 'The sleep of the labouring man is sweet, whether he
eat little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to
sleep.'

"Amongst my brethren now present there is, doubtless, some one who has
been poor, and by honest industry has made himself comparatively rich.
Let his heart answer me while I speak: are not the chief cares that now
disturb him to be found in the goods he hath acquired? Has he not both
vexations to his spirit and trials to his virtue, which he knew not when
he went forth to his labour, and took no heed of the morrow? But it is
right, my brethren, that to every station there should be its care, to
every man his burden; for if the poor did not sometimes so far feel
poverty to be a burden as to desire to better their condition, and (to
use the language of the world) 'seek to rise in life,' their most
valuable energies would never be aroused; and we should not witness that
spectacle, which is so common in the land we live in,--namely, the
successful struggle of manly labour against adverse fortune,--a struggle
in which the triumph of one gives hope to thousands. It is said that
necessity is the mother of invention; and the social blessings which are
now as common to us as air and sunshine have come from that law of our
nature which makes us aspire towards indefinite improvement, enriches
each successive generation by the labours of the last, and in free
countries often lifts the child of the labourer to a place amongst the
rulers of the land. Nay, if necessity is the mother of invention,
poverty is the creator of the arts. If there had been no poverty, and no
sense of poverty, where would have been that which we call the wealth of
a country? Subtract from civilization all that has been produced by the
poor, and what remains?--the state of the savage. Where you now see
labourer and prince, you would see equality indeed,--the equality of wild
men. No; not even equality there! for there brute force becomes
lordship, and woe to the weak! Where you now see some in frieze, some in
purple, you would see nakedness in all. Where stands the palace and the
cot, you would behold but mud huts and caves. As far as the peasant
excels the king among savages, so far does the society exalted and
enriched by the struggles of labour excel the state in which Poverty
feels no disparity, and Toil sighs for no ease. On the other hand, if
the rich were perfectly contented with their wealth, their hearts would
become hardened in the sensual enjoyments it procures. It is that
feeling, by Divine Wisdom implanted in the soul, that there is vanity and
vexation of spirit in the things of Mammon, which still leaves the rich
man sensitive to the instincts of Heaven, and teaches him to seek for
happiness in those beneficent virtues which distribute his wealth to the
profit of others. If you could exclude the air from the rays of the
fire, the fire itself would soon languish and die in the midst of its
fuel; and so a man's joy in his wealth is kept alive by the air which it
warms; and if pent within itself, is extinguished.

"And this, my brethren, leads me to another view of the vast subject
opened to us by the words of the apostle, 'Every man shall bear his own
burden.' The worldly conditions of life are unequal. Why are they
unequal? O my brethren, do you not perceive? Think you that, if it had
been better for our spiritual probation that there should be neither
great nor lowly, rich nor poor, Providence would not so have ordered the
dispensations of the world, and so, by its mysterious but merciful
agencies, have influenced the framework and foundations of society? But
if from the remotest period of human annals, and in all the numberless
experiments of government which the wit of man has devised, still this
inequality is ever found to exist, may we not suspect that there is
something in the very principles of our nature to which that inequality
is necessary and essential? Ask why this inequality? Why?--as well ask
why life is the sphere of duty and the nursery of virtues! For if all
men were equal, if there were no suffering and no ease, no poverty and no
wealth, would you not sweep with one blow the half, at least, of human
virtues from the world? If there were no penury and no pain, what would
become of fortitude; what of patience; what of resignation? If there
were no greatness and no wealth, what would become of benevolence, of
charity, of the blessed human pity, of temperance in the midst of luxury,
of justice in the exercise of power? Carry the question further; grant
all conditions the same,--no reverse, no rise, and no fall, nothing to
hope for, nothing to fear,--what a moral death you would at once inflict
upon all the energies of the soul, and what a link between the Heart of
Man and the Providence of God would be snapped asunder! If we could
annihilate evil, we should annihilate hope; and hope, my brethren, is the
avenue to faith. If there be 'a time to weep and a time to laugh,' it is
that he who mourns may turn to eternity for comfort, and he who rejoices
may bless God for the happy hour. Ah, my brethren, were it possible to
annihilate the inequalities of human life, it would be the banishment of
our worthiest virtues, the torpor of our spiritual nature, the palsy of
our mental faculties. The moral world, like the world without us,
derives its health and its beauty from diversity and contrast.

"'Every man shall bear his own burden.' True; but now turn to an earlier
verse in the same chapter,--'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil
the law of Christ.' Yes, while Heaven ordains to each his peculiar
suffering, it connects the family of man into one household, by that
feeling which, more perhaps than any other, distinguishes us from the
brute creation,--I mean the feeling to which we give the name of
sympathy,--the feeling for each other! The herd of deer shun the stag
that is marked by the gunner; the flock heedeth not the sheep that creeps
into the shade to die; but man has sorrow and joy not in himself alone,
but in the joy and sorrow of those around him. He who feels only for
himself abjures his very nature as man; for do we not say of one who has
no tenderness for mankind that he is inhuman; and do we not call him who
sorrows with the sorrowful humane?

"Now, brethren, that which especially marked the divine mission of our
Lord is the direct appeal to this sympathy which distinguishes us from
the brute. He seizes, not upon some faculty of genii given but to few,
but upon that ready impulse of heart which is given to us all; and in
saying, 'Love one another,' 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' he elevates
the most delightful of our emotions into the most sacred of His laws.
The lawyer asks our Lord, 'Who is my neighbour?' Our Lord replies by the
parable of the good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite saw the wounded
man that fell among the thieves and passed by on the other side. That
priest might have been austere in his doctrine, that Levite might have
been learned in the law; but neither to the learning of the Levite nor to
the doctrine of the priest does our Saviour even deign to allude. He
cites but the action of the Samaritan, and saith to the lawyer, 'Which
now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among
the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy unto him. Then said
Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.'

"O shallowness of human judgments! It was enough to be born a Samaritan
in order to be rejected by the priest, and despised by the Levite. Yet
now, what to us the priest and the Levite, of God's chosen race though
they were? They passed from the hearts of men when they passed the
sufferer by the wayside; while this loathed Samaritan, half thrust from
the pale of the Hebrew, becomes of our family, of our kindred; a brother
amongst the brotherhood of Love, so long as Mercy and Affliction shall
meet in the common thoroughfare of Life!

"'Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ.' Think
not, O my brethren, that this applies only to almsgiving, to that relief
of distress which is commonly called charity, to the obvious duty of
devoting from our superfluities something that we scarcely miss to the
wants of a starving brother. No. I appeal to the poorest amongst ye, if
the worst burdens are those of the body,--if the kind word and the tender
thought have not often lightened your hearts more than bread bestowed
with a grudge, and charity that humbles you by a frown. Sympathy is a
beneficence at the command of us all,--yea, of the pauper as of the king;
and sympathy is Christ's wealth. Sympathy is brotherhood. The rich are
told to have charity for the poor, and the poor are enjoined to respect
their superiors. Good: I say not to the contrary. But I say also to the
poor, '/In your turn have charity for the rich/;' and I say to the rich,
'/In your turn respect the poor/.'

"'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.' Thou,
O poor man, envy not nor grudge thy brother his larger portion of worldly
goods. Believe that he hath his sorrows and crosses like thyself, and
perhaps, as more delicately nurtured, he feels them more; nay, hath he
not temptations so great that our Lord hath exclaimed, 'How hardly shall
they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven'? And what are
temptations but trials; what are trials but perils and sorrows? Think
not that you can bestow no charity on the rich man, even while you take
your sustenance from his hands. A heathen writer, often cited by the
earliest preachers of the gospel, hath truly said, 'Wherever there is
room for a man there is place for a benefit.'

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