CHAPTER XVI. THE BULWARK AND FOUNDATION OF A PEOPLE'S GREATNESS.— COURAGE OR COWARDICE AT OUR DISPOSAL.-COMMUNITY WANTED.-RECIPE FOR LONGEVITY.-COMMENTS UPON CHES TERFIELD'S ESTHETICS OF POLITESSE. "Gird your hearts with silent fortitude, THE worst education which teaches man self-denial, is better than the best which teaches everything else and not that. "Thy guilt, and thy father's guilt, must bring many sorrows in their company." What is the bulwark of a people, the foundation of its greatness, and the substance of its power? The virtue of the masses,—that virtue which is safe in a den of lions; their courage, their independence, the severe fortitude of their souls, their hearts filled with just and strong sympathies. But all these excellencies, we repeat, to be enduring and perfect must have a good tap root-a good physical stamina for a basis, that can battle valiantly with "the kicks and thumps of outrageous fortune;" or vain and futile will be all our efforts. True, there is a majestic meaning in Great Britain; without presuming to prophecy about the signs of the times, may it never be called Little Britain-may it be long before the fate of the Roman Empire is its doom. But if the effeminating luxuries of the land are not withstood, the march of intellect, or any other march, avails not: if the Atlas or nervous stamina is at a discount, we tremble for the consequences. It is puerile to talk of the energy of the human mind, from which the energy of genius springs. If we have not a good fulcrum obtained by bodily training, inertness, if not imbecility, must naturally follow. Such elements as darkness, narrowness, and gloominess, are preferred to democratic light, height, and space. How few there are who keep on the wing long enough to see their ambitious and towering views carried out! No genius can maintain its influence long against such adverse influences; all is purposeless, comparatively, if the nerves are gossamer. Any free-born Englishman who was not gifted with an independent £500 per annum (Sidney Smith observed), "had to be very cautious what sort of politics he talked to a stranger." Carlyle truly says, that each man carries under his hat a private theatre, whereon a greater drama than is ever performed on the stage is acted, beginning and ending in eternity. Is not honesty, then, the best policy? For honest men (says the Right Hon. Bulwer Lytton) are the gentlemen of nature. The man who is truly honest, cannot fail to be truly polite. Honesty depends also upon feeling, as a principle of action opposed to mere intellect; and this is not known to many of our popular orators, and itinerant lecturers or educationalists. True, that "honesty is the best policy;" but policy without honesty, does not find that out, or ever will, until the great and all-important question of education is settled, the advocacy of which must be national, rather than sectarian. On this great and vital question, we must avoid the sterility of party antagonism, by labouring honestly to promote united and harmonious action among the real friends of education in the country. Honesty, both pecuniary and immaterial, to wit, that will not wrong another in any way, by word, or deed, or thought, as a national trait, rests upon kindly, generous feeling, and the latter much depends upon the gastric and sensorial chords. Courage, frank and fearless kind-heartedness, rest on the same foundation. Unless you keep the body under, and the strings in tune, you may look in vain for music in the soul: if you would have true national virtue, the whole organisation must be heightened harmoniously; the heart, head, and muscles must vegetate together. To rely habitually on intellect, and not on feeling, is wrong; as well as the reverse. The common understanding forms a low estimate of the great facts of imagination and sensibility: they are to it unintelligible, and it will not even believe that they have ever been felt, except by morbid enthusiasts. Either understanding or feeling, cultivated alone, becomes adverse to the other; cultivated together (which is not the mode of popular education now), they are friendly, mutually supporting, guiding, and making joint strength. May we humbly inquire of those who decry feeling, what is meant by "an understanding heart?" If feeling do exist, how it must languish, grow dim, and die, under the distrust, or contempt, or ignorance of the understanding that ought to cherish it! It is needless, perhaps, to remind the student, that every sunbeam which passes through pollution unpolluted, brings with its light a shadow. The cypress grows best beside the laurel. We are told there are two periods of human society-the first, of nature ruling man; and the second, of man ruling nature. During the first period, man is governed by errors; in the second, he tends wisely to govern himself by truth. The transition from one period to the other, is a time of crisis, and maybe of convulsions the laws of nations will work out the changeindividuals may hasten it. Our business is not alone to hunt error out of the earth, but to invite and induce truth. It is a work not of enmity, but of love. prayeth best who loveth best." "Love knows no age." "Yes, love indeed is light from Heaven; A spark of that immortal fire With angels shared,-by Alla given, To lift from earth our low desire." "He "There is a future left all men who have virtue to repent, and energy to atone." Therefore, double honour be unto those who in this perilous road walk uprightly; double pity unto those who fall! "Why, then, my honesty shall be my dower; For by that loss I will not purchase them." Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate (or continent) in all things.-1 COR: ix. 15. There are those who have such a malignity in their whispers, that it blights like an easterly wind, and withers every reputation that it breathes upon; yet if the upright suffer calumny to move him so as to disturb the animal economy, he fears the tongue of men more than the eye of God. It was the boast of the sturdy John Knox, that he never feared the face of man: no, his sincerity and virtues were his panoply, and these were preserved by his uniform self-denial. Don't be dismayed by your noisy angrily. speaking enemies, for as Pope says, "an angry fool is a very harmless thing;" they will never hurt you, they are under captivity: but have a good physical eye upon your mean silent foe-"the noisy thunder never injures you; the silent lightning has shivered palaces!" It is sad to reflect that there are those whose hearts never expand with joy, only when they hear of the ruin of their friends, but many have not sagacity enough to distinguish a friend from a foe. There are many notions or judgments floating in the mind of every man, which are mutually distinctive of each other. In this sense men's opinions are governed by high and low spirits, by the state of the solids and fluids of the human body and by the state of the weather. But, in a paramount sense, that can only be said to be a man's opinion which he entertains in his clearest moments, and from which, when he is most himself, he is least subject to vary. In this emphatical sense I should say, a man does not know what is his real opinion. We cannot strictly be said to believe anything in the best bodily and mental state, when we afterwards change our opinions without the introduction of some evidence that was unknown to us before. This should teach us the mighty importance of persevering in a steady and unflinching system of every kind of temperance, as well as charity and forbearance towards those who are being continually stigmatised as moral and political weathercocks. And |