George William Erskine Russell

“ The look of favour—the voice of power, no more;—the deserted palace—the wretched monarch on his funeral bier—the mourners ready—the dismal march of death prepared. Who are we, and what are we? and for what has God made us? and why are we doomed to thus frail and unquiet existence? Who does not feel all this? in whose heart does it not provoke appeal to, and dependence on, God? before whose eyes does it not bring the folly and the nothingness of all things human? ”

“ The smoking-room of the House of Commons is his shrine, and there, poised in an American rocking-chair and delicately toying with a cigarette, he unlocks the varied treasures of his well-stored memory, and throws over the changing scenes of life the mild light of his genial philosophy. It is a chequered experience that has made him what he is. He has known men and cities; has probed in turn the mysteries of the caucus, the green-room, and the Stock Exchange; has been a diplomatist, a financier, a journalist, and a politician. ”

“ As our idea of perfection widens beyond the narrow limits to which the over-rigour of Hebraising has tended to confine it, we shall yet come again to Hebraism for that devout energy in embracing our ideal, which alone can give to man the happiness of doing what he knows. "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them!"—the last word for human infirmity will always be that. For this word, reiterated with a power now sublime, now affecting, but always admirable, our race will, as long as the world lasts, return to Hebraism." ”

“ A funeral under the sapphire sky and blazing sun of June loses nothing of its sadness—perhaps is made more sad—by the unsympathetic aspect of the visible world. December does not suspend its habitual gloom because all men of goodwill are trying to rejoice in the Birthday of the Prince of Peace. We all can recall disasters and disappointments which have overcast the spring, and tidings of achievement or deliverance which have been happily out of keeping with the melancholy beauty of autumn.
In short, Nature cares nothing for the acts and sufferings of human kind ”

“ Lord Salisbury goes so little into general society that his qualities as a talker are not familiarly known. He is painfully shy, and at a club or in a large party undergoes the torments of the lost. Yet no one can listen, even casually, to his conversation without appreciating the fine manner, full both of dignity and of courtesy; the utter freedom from pomposity, formality, and self-assertion, and the agreeable dash of genuine cynicism, which modifies, though it does not mask, the flavour of his fun. ”

“ An emulous ostentation has killed hospitality.
So now, when a season of financial pressure sets in, people shut up their country houses, let their shooting, cut themselves off with a sigh of relief from all the unexciting duties and simple pleasures of the Home, and take refuge from boredom in the delights of London. In London life has no duties. Little is expected of one, and nothing required. One can live on a larger or a smaller scale according to one's taste or one's purse; cramp oneself in a doll's house in Mayfair, or expand one's wings in a Kensingtonian mansion ”

“ The power of the outward reaches the inward chiefly through the eye and the ear. Colour, as Ruskin taught us, is not only delightful, but sacred. "Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.... Consider what sort of a world it would be if all flowers were grey, all leaves black, and the sky brown." The perfection of form—the grace of outline, the harmony of flowing curves—appeals, perhaps, less generally than colour, because to appreciate it the eye requires some training, whereas to love colour one only needs feeling. ”

“ There is more of misery inflicted upon mankind by one year of war, than by all the civil peculations and oppressions of a century. Yet it is a state into which the mass of mankind rush with the greatest avidity, hailing official murderers, in scarlet, gold, and cocks' feathers, as the greatest and most glorious of human creatures. It is the business of every wise and good man to set himself against this passion for military glory, which really seems to be the most fruitful source of human misery. ”

“ Stress must be laid upon those last words; for Religion, according to its full and catholic ideal, is the perfection and consecration of man's whole nature, intellectual and physical, as well as moral and spiritual. All that is lovely, splendid, moving, heroic, even enjoyable, in human life—all health and vigour and beauty and cleverness and charm—all nature and all art, all science and all literature—are among the good and perfect gifts which come down from the Father of Lights. ”

“ These are the amenities of electioneering; but a man who enters on a political campaign expecting fair treatment from his opponents is indeed walking in a vain shadow. The ordinary rules of fairplay and straightforward conduct are forgotten at an election. In a political contest people say and do a great many things of which in every-day life they would be heartily ashamed. An election-agent of the old school once said to me in the confidence of after-dinner claret, "For my own part, when I go into a fight, I go in to win, and I'm not particular to a shade or two." ”

“ The State is built upon the Home; and, as a training-place for social virtue, there can surely be no comparison between a home in the country and a home in London.
"Home! Sweet Home!" Yes. (I am quoting now from my friend, Henry Scott Holland.) That is the song that goes straight to the heart of every English man and woman. For forty years we have never asked Madame Adelina Patti to sing anything else. The unhappy, decadent, Latin races have not even a word in their languages by which to express it, poor things! Home is the secret of our honest British Protestant virtues. ”

“ Good God! was Arthur Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords, and did he not start up and exclaim, 'Hold! I have seen the aliens do their duty'?... I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid bosom—tell me, for you needs must remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance, while death fell in showers—tell me if for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the 'aliens' blenched.... ”

“ And what is the cure for this great evil to which your profession exposes you? The cure is, to keep a sacred place in your heart, where Almighty God is enshrined, and where nothing human can enter; to say to the world, 'Thus far shalt thou go, and no further'; to remember you are a lawyer, without forgetting you are a Christian; to wish for no more wealth than ought to be possessed by an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven; to covet no more honour than is suitable to a child of God ”

“ Gladstone, to whom during the rather dreary reign of exhausted Whiggery we had looked as to our rising star—the one man who combined Religion and Poetry and Romance with the love of Progress and the passion of Freedom—had told us that "the great social forces were on our side," and that our opponents "could not fight against the future." Philosophers, like Mill, had told us that all the intelligence, all the science, all the mental courage of the world were with us, and that Toryism was the creed of the intellectually destitute. ”

“ Surely, if there is one question which, more conspicuously than another, a nation is entitled to settle for itself it is the question whether military service shall be compulsory. True, the legislative machinery of Home Rule is not yet in action; but legislative machinery is not the only method by which national sentiment can be ascertained. To introduce conscription into Ireland by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, after you have conceded to the Irish their claim to have a Parliament of their own, may not indeed be a breach of faith, but it surely is a breach of manners and good sense. ”

“ It is the Prince of Wales who transacts its ceremonial business, and exhibits to the masses the embodiment of the monarchical principle. If there were no Marlborough House, there would be no Court in London. The house of the Prince of Wales may be an unsatisfactory substitute for a Court, but it is the only substitute which exists, and it is the best which, under the circumstances, is attainable.
"In his attitude to English Society, the Prince of Wales is a benevolent despot. He wishes it to enjoy itself, to disport itself, to dance, sing, and play to its heart's content. ”

“ Lately it has been my privilege to address a considerable gathering of Oxford undergraduates, all keenly alive to the interests and controversies of the present hour, all devotedly loyal to the tradition of Oxford as each understood it, and all with their eyes eagerly fixed on "the wistful limit of the world." With such an audience it was inevitable to insist on the graces and benedictions which Oxford can confer, and to dwell on Mr. Gladstone's dogma that to call a man a "typically Oxford man" is to bestow the highest possible praise. ”

“ To those who speculate in matters of race and pedigree it is interesting to watch the two elements contending in the character of Canon Basil Wilberforce, the Bishop's youngest and best-beloved son. When you see his graceful figure and clean-shaven ecclesiastical face in the pulpit of his strangely old-fashioned church, or catch the vibrating notes of his beautifully modulated voice in
"The hush of our dread high altar,
Where The Abbey makes us We,"
you feel yourself in the presence of a born ecclesiastic, called from his cradle by an irresistible vocation to a separate and sanctified career. ”

“ CHAPTER IV SOCIETY
"Culture seeks to do away with classes and sects; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely; nourished, and not bound, by them. This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles of equality."
The words—social idea—which Arnold himself italicized in the foregoing extract from Culture and Anarchy, will indicate the sense in which "Society" is here intended. ”

“ A high merit in Sir James Mackintosh was his real and unaffected philanthropy. He did not make the improvement of the great mass of mankind an engine of popularity, and a stepping-stone to power, but he had a genuine love of human happiness. Whatever might assuage the angry passions, and arrange the conflicting interests of nations; whatever could promote peace, increase knowledge, extend commerce, diminish crime, and encourage industry; whatever could exalt human character, and could enlarge human understanding, struck at once at the heart of your father, and roused all his faculties. ”

“ I lately saw the following sentence quoted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: "Hatred steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do." The enlightened conscience of humanity (to say nothing of Christianity) repudiates this sentiment as ethically unsound and historically untrue; and yet, erroneous as it is, it is worth pondering for the sake of a truth which it overstates.
However little we may like to make the confession in the twentieth century of the Christian era, hatred is a very real power, and there is more of it at work in civilized society than we always recognize. ”

“ That is what we all repeat, and all believe, and cheer to the echo. And, behind all our British complacency about it, nobody would deny the vital truth that there is in this belief of ours. Whatever tends to make the Home beautiful, attractive, romantic—to associate it with the ideas of pure pleasure and high duty—to connect it not only with all that was happiest but also with all that was best in early years—whatever fulfils these purposes purifies the fountains of national life. A home, to be perfectly a home, should "incorporate tradition, and prolong the reign of the dead." ”

“ In later years we have seen the gradual resumption of more public offices; the occasional reappearances, so earnestly anticipated by her subjects, and hedged with something of a divinity more than regal; the incomparable majesty of personal bearing which has taught so many an onlooker that dignity has nothing to do with height, or beauty or splendour of raiment; and, mingled with that majesty and unspeakably enhancing it, the human sympathy with suffering and sorrow, which has made Queen Victoria, as none of her predecessors ever was or could be, the Mother of her People. ”

“ The Sloth, in its wild state, spends its life in trees, and never leaves them but from force or accident. The eagle to the sky, the mole to the ground, the sloth to the tree; but what is most extraordinary, he lives not upon the branches, but under them. He moves suspended, rests suspended, sleeps suspended, and passes his life in suspense—like a young clergyman distantly related to a bishop. ”

“ Having thus described the function of Hebraism, Arnold goes on to define Hellenism as "the intelligence driving at those ideas which are, after all, the basis of right practice, the ardent sense for all the new and changing combinations of them which man's development brings with it, the indomitable impulse to know and adjust them perfectly." These two great forces divide the empire of the world between them; and we call them Hebraism and Hellenism after the two races of men who have most signally illustrated them. "Hebraism and Hellenism—between these two points of influence moves our world." ”

“ Then the fun begins, and the bright hours fly swiftly, till one o'clock suggests the tender thought of supper, which is served on gold plate and Sèvres china in a garden-tent of Gobelins tapestry. And now it is time for a move; and our youth, extricating himself from the undesired attentions of the linkmen, pops into a hansom and speeds to Piccadilly, where he finds delights of a different kind—no Royalty, no pomp, no ceremony; but a warm welcome, and all his intimate friends, and the nicest girls in London eager for a valse. ”

“ If ye would that men should love you, love ye also them, not with gentleness of face alone, or the shallow mockery of smiles, but in singleness of heart, in forbearance, judging mercifully, entering into the mind of thy brother, to spare him pain, to prevent his wrath, to be unto him an eternal fountain of peace. These are the fruits of the Spirit, and this the soul that emanates from our sacred religion. ”

“ Never was a brighter intellect or a more gallant heart housed in a more fragile form. His figure, features, bearing, and accent were the very type of refinement; and as the spare figure, so short yet so full of dignity, marked out by the decanal dress and the red ribbon of the Order of the Bath, threaded its way through the crowded saloons of London society, one felt that the Church, as a civilizing institution, could not be more appropriately represented. ”

“ But here in England we crown our kings as we have crowned them for a thousand years, and our act of crowning is the august symbol of a nation's story and a people's will. For before ever the ministers of God approach the altar, before the sacred emblems of sovereignty are hallowed, before the Christian's Mysteries begin, before the Eternal Spirit is invoked and the consecrating unction bestowed, the English people plays its part, and, through the mouth of its chief citizen asserts its fundamental place in the system of the Kingly Commonwealth. ”

“ The greatest curse which can be entailed upon mankind is a state of war. All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace—all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance, of nations—are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils which stalk over the world in a state of war. ”

“ It was eloquence particularly well calculated to sway a popular assembly which yet had none of the characteristics of a mob. A sonorous voice; a figure and bearing which, though stiff and ungainly, were singularly dignified; an inexhaustible copiousness of grandiloquent phrase; a peculiar vein of sarcasm which froze like ice and cut like steel—these were some of the characteristics of the oratory which from 1782 to 1806 at once awed and fascinated the House of Commons.
"I never want a word, but Mr. Pitt always has at command the right word." ”

“ For people who had a country house the interests of life were very much bound up in the park and the covers, the croquet-ground and the cricket-ground, the kennel, the stable, and the garden. I remember, when I was an undergraduate, lionizing some Yorkshire damsels on their first visit to Oxford, then in the "high midsummer pomp" of its beauty. But all they said was, in the pensive tone of an unwilling exile, "How beautifully the sun must be shining on the South Walk at home!" ”

“ If ever a nation was happy, if ever a nation was visibly blessed by God—if ever a nation was honoured abroad, and left at home under a government (which we can now conscientiously call a liberal government) to the full career of talent, industry, and vigour, we are at this moment that people—and this is our happy lot.—First the Gospel has done it, and then Justice has done it; and he who thinks it his duty to labour that this happy condition of existence may remain, must guard the piety of these times, and he must watch over the spirit of Justice which exists in these times. ”

“ Look what we are, and what just laws have done for us:—a land of piety and charity;—a land of churches, and hospitals, and altars;—a nation of good Samaritans;—a people of universal compassion. All lands, all seas, have heard we are brave. We have just sheathed that sword which defended the world; we have just laid down that buckler which covered the nations of the earth. God blesses the soil with fertility; English looms labour for every climate. All the waters of the globe are covered with English ships. We are softened by fine arts, civilized by humane literature, instructed by deep science ”

“ A pure, secure, and even-handed administration of Justice is the strongest safeguard of national stability and happiness.—
"The whole tone and tenor of public morals is affected by the state of supreme Justice; it extinguishes revenge, it communicates a spirit of purity and uprightness to inferior magistrates; it makes the great good, by taking away impunity; it banishes fraud, obliquity, and solicitation, and teaches men that the law is their right. Truth is its handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion; safety walks in its steps, victory follows in its train ”

“ As for the opinion itself, I hold it in the utmost contempt. The people are waiting in virtuous patience for the completion of the bill, because they know it is in the hands of men who do not mean to deceive them. I do not believe they have given up one atom of reform—I do not believe that a great people were ever before so firmly bent upon any one measure. I put it to any man of common sense, whether he believes it possible, after the King and Parliament have acted as they have done, that the people will ever be content with much less than the present bill contains. ”

“ These are the occasions which try a man's inward heart, and separate the dross of human nature from the gold of human nature. On these occasions, never mind being mixed up for a moment with the criminal, and the crime; fling yourself back upon great principles, fling yourself back upon God; yield not one atom to violence; suffer not the slightest encroachments of injustice; retire not one step before the frowns of power; tremble not, for a single instant, at the dread of misrepresentation. The great interests of mankind are placed in your hands ”

“ When this bill passes, it will be a signal to all the religious sects of that unhappy country to lay aside their mutual hatred, and to live in peace, as equal men should live under equal law—when this bill passes, the Orange flag will fall—when this bill passes, the Green flag of the rebel will fall—when this bill passes, no other flag will fly in the land of Erin than that which blends the Lion with the Harp—that flag which, wherever it does fly, is the sign of freedom and of joy—the only banner in Europe which floats over a limited King and a free people. ”