J. Ewing Ritchie

“ For ages have science, and nature, and man been preparing its way. Society had to become intellectual—letters had to be invented—types had to be formed—paper had to be substituted for papyrus—the printing-press had to become wedded to steam—the electric-telegraph had to be discovered, and the problem of liberty had to be solved, in a manner more or less satisfactory, before a newspaper, as we understand the word, could be; and that we have the fruit of all this laid on our breakfast-table every morning, for at the most five-pence, and at the least one-penny, is wonderful indeed. ”

“ Highgate has much the air of a provincial town. It has its Literary Institution, and its police office, and water-works, and gas, its seminaries for ingenious youth of either sex, and its shops filled with miscellaneous wares. The great city is creeping up the hill, and seeking to encircle it with its chains of brick, but it resists lustily, and with its quaint old houses, and fine old trees, will not assume a cockney appearance. I honour it for its obstinacy, and trust that it will be long before it shall have the wicked, busy, towny appearance of the Modern Babylon. ”

“ In the morning of life men have been struck down by such disappointments, and through life have been blasted as the oak by the lightning’s stroke. With his heart gone—demoralised, the man has lived to take a fearful revenge for the first offence, possibly to become a cold cynic—sceptical of man’s honour and woman’s love. Yet breach of promise cases are not resorted to by men, and we cannot congratulate our fair friends on the fact that so many of them come into courts of law as plaintiffs in such cases. ”

“ I do not say there ought not to be liberty, where all love has long since died out, and been followed by bad faith and cruelty, and neglect. I believe there should be, and that the Divorce Act was an experiment imperatively required. Where mutual love has been exchanged for mutual hate, it is hard that human law should bind together, in what must be life-long misery—misery perhaps not the less intense that it has uttered no word of complaint, made no sign, been unsuspected by the world, yet all the while dragging its victim to an early or premature grave. ”

“ At every turn you come to the most beautiful prospects. When London will consume its own smoke, if that time ever does arrive, the view from Highgate, across the great city, will be the grandest in the world. On a clear day, standing in the Archway Road—that road esteemed such a wonder of engineering in its day, and forming such a disastrous property for its shareholders (the £50 shares may be bought at about 18s. a share) —you may see across the valley of the Thames as far as the Kent and Surrey hills looming obscurely in the distance. ”

“ She dreamt not of the cup of bitterness it was hers to drink—how she should be driven from the land that then hailed her with delight—how all that woman should abhor should be laid to her charge—how, in her desolate chateau, stripped of her power, and fame, and crown, lonely and broken-hearted, she should spend the evening of her life in unavailing sorrow and regret, till, with bloodshot eyes, and wrinkled brow, and leprous skin, she should become all that men shuddered to behold. ”

“ I am sitting by my sea-coal fire, and, from the clear way in which it burns, and the peculiarly pleasant warmth it seems to give out, I have every reason to believe that the thermometer is below the freezing point, that the ground is hard as iron, and that before to-morrow’s sun rises, Jack Frost will not only have lavishly strewn the earth with pearls, but have sketched fairy landscapes innumerable on my window-panes. ”

“ We have heard much in favour of competition in the civil service, at home and in India, since then, but never was the argument more clearly put—more copiously illustrated, more clothed in grace and beauty; and then came a few short years of infirmity of body, of labour with the pen, and sudden death, and the burial at Westminster Abbey. Out of the thousands standing by the grave, few could ever expect to see the career of such another genius. ”

“ We are always in danger of becoming too peaceable a folk. Our avocations, all of a mercantile or professional character,—our amusements, less out-door, and more sedentary, than ought to be the case,—the very humane spirit which pervades all English society,—our enormous wealth; all tend to make us peaceably disposed. None can be alarmed at our warlike demonstrations. No nation in Europe need fear a British invasion. No foreign government can possibly pretend that the British government harbours designs of active hostility against any European power. ”

“ It is not good for man to be alone. Man has tried to disobey the divine law, and lived alone; and what has been the result?—even when tried by men of superior sanctity, as in the case of the Romish Church, has the world gained in happiness or morality? I trow not. Take the limited experience of our own age, and fathers and mothers know, to their bitter cost, I am right. The manhood, brave and generous, much of it wrecked in our great cities, will bear me out. But matrimony is more than this. ”

“ It is not always that such extreme cases happen; but the tendency of civilization, as we have it now, is to work us all up into one common, unmeaning whole—to confound all the old distinctions by which classes were marked—to mix up the peasant and the prince, more by bringing down the latter than elevating the former; and thus we all become unmeaning, and monotonous, and common-place. The splendid livery in which “Jeames” rejoices may show that he is footman to a family that dates from the Conquest: it may be that he is footman to the keeper of the ham and beef shop near London Bridge. ”

“ We understand the meaning of such men when they raise a cry of alarm. What such men dread does in reality infuse into the constitution fresh vigour and life. Not national death, but the reverse is the result. The removal of one abuse, behind which monopoly and class legislation have skulked, is like stripping from the monarch of the forest the foul parasite by which his beauty is hidden and his strength devoured. ”

“ The boy of sixteen, with a beardless chin, has a melancholy blasé air; the girl gets wise, mourns over the vanity of life, and laughs at love as a romance; a heart—unless it be a bullock’s, and well cooked,—is tacitly understood to be a mistake; and conscience a thing that no one can afford to keep. Our young men are bald at twenty-five, and woman is exhausted still sooner. ”

“ And now, once more, is there not an upheaving of humanity from beneath? and over society as it is, does not once more loom the shadow of a coming change? Does not middle-class civilization in its mode of utterance and thought, betoken symptoms of decay? Look at it as it does the genteel thing, and sleeps an easy hour in Episcopalian church or Dissenting chapel—as it faintly applauds a world-renovating principle, and gracefully bows assent to a divine idea. Ask it its problem of life, its mission, and it knows no other than to have a good account at the bank, and to keep a gig ”

“ The modern young lady must marry in style; the modern young gentleman marries a fortune. But in the meanwhile the girl grows into an old maid, and the youth takes chambers—ogles at nursery-maids and becomes a man about town—a man whom it is dangerous to ask into your house, for his business is intrigue. The world might have had a happy couple; instead, it gets a woman fretful, nervous, fanciful, a plague to all around her. He becomes a sceptic in all virtue; a corrupter of the youth of both sexes; a curse in whatever domestic circle he penetrates. ”

“ In the long commerce of a life, there must be times, when we may think of others we have known, when we may idly fancy we should have been happier with others; but true wisdom will teach us that it is childish to lament after the event, that it were wiser to take what comfort we can find, and that, after all, it is duty, rather than happiness, that should be the pole-star of life. ”

“ Again, the nation that is always protected is safe from attack. People do not go to war with strong states, but weak ones. In the fable, the wolf quarrels not with the wolf, but the lamb. It ought not to be so, we freely admit; but we must take the world as we find it, and act accordingly. And the morale of all history is that there is no such safeguard of peace as the knowledge that a nation has set its house in order, and is thoroughly prepared for war. ”

“ To the rank we take amidst the nations of the earth, from the first we were destined. Ours is not the blue sky of Italy, nor the warm breath of the sunny south, but it is an atmosphere that fits man for persevering industry and daily toil. Let us, then, brace ourselves up for our mission. Let us proclaim the dignity of labour—its beneficent effects—its more than magical results. Let us honour the workman, whether he stand at the loom or plough the field—or sail
“—Beyond the sunset
Or the baths of all the western stars,”
or labour in the dark and dangerous recesses of the mine. ”

“ A common complaint in everybody’s mouth is the want of variety in individual character—the dreary monotony we find everywhere pervading society. Men and women, lads and maidens, boys and girls, if we may call the little dolls dressed up in crinoline and flounces, and the young gentlemen in patent-leather boots, such, are all alike. Civilization is a leveller of the most destructive kind. Man is timid, imitative, and lazy. Hence, it is to the past we must turn, whenever we would recall to our minds how sublime and great man, in his might and majesty, may become. ”

“ But, on the other hand, from the time of Whittington and his cat, London has abounded with instances showing how, by industry and intelligence, and—let us trust—honesty, the poorest may rise to the possession of great wealth and honour. Indeed all the great city houses abound with examples. Poor lads have come up to town, friendless and moneyless, have been sober and steady, and firm against London allurements and vices, have improved the abilities and opportunities God has given them, and are now men of note and mark. ”

“ The truth is our civilization is hardly worthy of the name? We may say, in the language of Scripture, we have not attained, neither are we already perfect. We have but just seen the dim grey of morn, and we boast that we bask in the sunshine of unclouded day. Our commercial morality brands our civilization with a voice of thunder, as an imposture and a sham. ”

“ Hudson’s, there is the testimonial of the rich—for the Christ, and those who would follow in His steps, there is the thorny path and the open tomb. Let us not imagine that we are one whit better than the Hebrew. The Hudson testimonial proves a common paternity. Gold has still more charms than God. As Mr. Bright, if not in so many words, but in spirit, says, “Perish Savoy, rather than not trade with France,” so the London merchant and tradesman ignore too often honour and conscience, and morality, for vulgar gain.
It requires great philosophy to get over the effects of City Life. ”

“ But the history of the past teaches us how those storms will be met and overcome. Not by accident is modern history so rich in the possession of the new creed and the new blood, for the want of which the glory of Athens and Corinth, and of her “who was named eternal” passed away as a dream of the night. Not that England may perish does that new blood course through the veins, and that new creed fructify in the hearts of her sons. The progress we have made is the surest indication of the progress it is yet our destiny to make. ”

“ Four hundred years have but seen the increase of their wealth, of their respectability, and power. Their struggle upwards has been long and tedious, but it has been safe and sure. The wars of the red rose and the white—wars which beggared the princes of England, and spilt the blood of its nobles like water—were favourable to the progress of the middle class. The battle of Barnet witnessed the fall and death of the kingmaker, and with her champion feudalism fell. ”

“ Let them be thankful that they have shown themselves in their true colours before they had entered on a life of unhappiness and misery, feeling assured that the man who could deceive a fond, loving woman is a man of no principle at all. For my own part, I would scorn the man who ever proved false to a woman,—I would not trust him even in business.” After this condemnation by a woman, let us trust we shall hear less for the future of breach of promise cases. ”

“ Then his hours of work are such as to ruffle a naturally serene temper, and when he finds it hard work to make both ends meet, and sees how gaily young fellows spend their money—how he drives them from one public to another, and from one place of amusement to another—and in what questionable society,—one can scarce wonder if now and then cabby is a little sour, and if his language be as rough as his thoughts. ”

“ A man toiling all day, bearing, it may be, heavy burdens in the summer sun, miles it may be from his home, parched with thirst, practically to quench that thirst has been compelled to resort to the beer-shop or the gin-palace. And what has been the consequence, that the man has been led to drink more than was good for him—that he has got into bad company—that he has wasted his time and his money, injured his health, and possibly been led into the commission of vice and crime. Every day the evil has been demonstrated in the most striking, in the most alarming, and in the most abundant manner. ”

“ If these gentlemen are right, then the melancholy conviction must be forced upon us that England has seen her best days; that it will never be with her what it was in time past, when she bred up an indomitable race, when her flag of triumph fluttered in every breeze, and floated on every sea. We must believe that England’s sun is about to set; that, with its brightness and its beauty, it will never more bless and irradiate the world. ”

“ The great warehouses in Cheapside and Cannon-street, and elsewhere, are owned by men who mostly began life without a rap. Go to the beautiful villas at Norwood, at Highgate, at Richmond, and ask who lives there, and you will find that they are inhabited by men whose wealth is enormous, and whose career has been a marvellous success. Fortunes in London are made by trifles. I know a man who keeps a knacker’s yard, who lives out of town in a villa of exquisite beauty, and who drives horses which a prince might envy. ”

“ The Times says our law is worthy a nation of savages. We have a great deal to do yet, just remember the Hudson testimonial. There were our merchant princes, men of integrity, of talent, of skill—men who have made the name of British merchant a term of honour as far as our flag can reach. If London wished to reward successful industry, it might have looked amongst them. In this great city there was more than one lord of thousands, who came here with hardly a penny in his pocket, or shoes on his feet. London might have raised a testimonial to one of them ”