Philip Gilbert Hamerton

“ No one ever felt so convinced, and so anxious as he to convince others, that God was a loving Father who wished all to come to Him, and to preach of a living personal Saviour, One who loved us as a brother and a friend, to whom all could and should come with trust and confidence. No one ever raised and strengthened one’s faith more than Dr. Macleod. His own faith was so strong, his heart so large, that all—high and low, weak and strong, the erring and the good—could alike find sympathy, help, and consolation from him. ”

“ But alas for the dreams of youth if this is all that is to be gained by marriage! Where is the sweet friend and companion who was to have accompanied us through prosperous or adverse years, who was to have charmed and consoled us, who was to have given us the infinite happiness of being understood and loved at the same time? Were all those dreams delusions? Is the best companionship a mere fiction of the fancy, not existing anywhere upon the earth? ”

“ The manners of the ill-mannered are never so odious, unbearable, exasperating, as they are to their own nearest kindred. How is a lad to enjoy the society of his mother if she is perpetually “nagging” and “nattering” at him? How is he to believe that his coarse father has a tender anxiety for his welfare when everything that he does is judged with unfatherly harshness? Those who are condemned to live with people for whom scolding and quarrelling are a necessary of existence must either be rude in self-defence or take refuge in a sullen and stubborn taciturnity. ”

“ Even those forms of art which seem remote from it do yet confess its presence. You see a picture of solitude, and think that passion cannot enter there, but everything suggests it. The tree bends down to the calm water, the gentle breeze caresses every leaf, the white-pated old mountain is visited by the short-lived summer clouds. If, in the opening glade, the artist has sketched a pair of lovers, you think they naturally complete the scene ”

“ It is believed, also, that there is no landscape-beauty in England,—nothing but a green field with a hedge, and then another green field with another hedge, till you come to the bare chalk cliffs and the dreary northern sea. The English have no Devonshire, no valley of the Severn, no country of the Lakes. The Thames is a foul ditch, without a trace of natural beauty anywhere. ”

“ One of the many charms, to his taste, of a rocky mountain-side in the Highlands is that cricket is impossible there. At the same time he quite believes and admits everything that is so enthusiastically claimed for cricket by those who have a natural affinity for the game.
There are not only sports and pastimes, but there is the long reverberating echo of every sport in endless conversations. Here it may be remarked that the lovers of a particular amusement, when they happen to be a majority, possess a terrible power of inflicting ennui upon others, and they often exercise it without mercy. ”

“ You have pleasure merely in being afloat, even without motion, and all the degrees of motion under sail have their own peculiar charm for you, from an insensible gliding through glassy waters to a fight against opposite winds and raging seas. You have a thorough, intimate, and affectionate knowledge of all the details of your ship. The constant succession of little tasks and duties is an unfailing interest, a delightful occupation. You enjoy the manual labor, and acquire some skill not only as a sailor but as ship’s carpenter and painter. ”

“ I should call French ignorance of the Royal Academy, for example, genuine patriotic ignorance, because it proceeds from a conviction that English art is unworthy of notice, and that the French Salon is the only exhibition that can interest an enlightened lover of art. That is the essence of patriotism in ignorance,—to be ignorant of what is done in another nation, because we believe our own to be first and the rest nowhere; and so the English ignorance of the University of France is genuine patriotic ignorance. ”

“ Patriotic ignorance likes to shut its eyes to all inconvenient facts of this kind, and to dwell on what is unfavorable. A man may like a glass of absinthe in a café and still be as energetic as if he drank port wine at home. I know an old French officer who never misses his daily visit to the café, and so might serve as a text for moralizing, but at the same time he walks twenty kilomètres every day. Patriotic ignorance has its opportunity in every difference of habit. What can be apparently more indolent, for an hour or two after déjeûner, than a prosperous man of business in Paris? ”

“ Instead of a great, blank universe with fixed laws, interesting to savans but not to her, she is told of love and affection that she thoroughly understands. She is told of an affectionate Creator, of His beloved and loving Son, of the tender care of the maternal Church that He instituted; and finally all this chain of affectionate interest ends close to her in a living link,—a man with soft, engaging manners, with kind and gentle voice, who takes her hand, talks to her about all that she really cares for, and overflows with the readiest sympathy for all her anxieties. ”

“ That which ought to be the pouring forth of a man’s nature often liberates only a part of his nature, and perhaps that part which has least to do with friendship. Your friend delights you by his ease and affectionate charm of manner, by the happiness of his expressions, by his wit, by the extent of his information, all these being qualities that social intercourse brings out in him as colors are revealed by light. ”

“ George Borrow had the deepest sense of the Englishman’s slavery to his big, well-ordered dwelling, and saw in it the cause of unnumbered anxieties, often ending in heart-disease, paralysis, bankruptcy, and in minor cases sacrificing all chance of leisure and quiet happiness. Many a land-owner has crippled himself by erecting a great house on his estate,—one of those huge, tasteless buildings that express nothing but pompous pride. ”

“ It is not surprising that the companionship of conjugal life should be like other friendships in this, that a first experiment may be a failure and a later experiment a success. We are all so fallible that in matters of which we have no experience we generally commit great blunders. Marriage unites all the conditions that make a blunder probable. Two young people, with very little conception of what an unsurmountable barrier a difference of idiosyncrasy may be, are pleased with each other’s youth, health, natural gayety, and good looks, and fancy that it would be delightful to live together. ”

“ The more this great passion is repressed and expelled, the more frequent does immorality become.
Another very remarkable result of the exclusion of passionate love from ordinary existence is that the idea of it takes possession of the imagination. The most melodious poetry, the most absorbing fiction, are alike celebrations of its mysteries. Even the wordless voice of music wails or languishes for love, and the audience that seems only to hear flutes and violins is in reality listening to that endless song of love which thrills through the passionate universe. ”

“ The difference between this Prince and King Louis II. of Bavaria is perhaps the most striking contrast in modern royal existences. Prince Albert Edward is accessible to everybody, and shares the common pleasures of his countrymen; the Bavarian sovereign is never so happy as when in one of his romantic and magnificent residences, surrounded by the sublimity of nature and the embellishments of art, he sits alone and dreams as he listens to the strains of exquisite music. ”

“ When wealth is gone it thinks that a man should lock up his pedigree in his desk and forget that he has ancestors; so it has been said that an English gentleman in losing wealth loses his caste with it, whilst a French or Italian gentleman may keep his caste, except in the most abject poverty. On the other hand, when an Englishman has a vast fortune it is thought right to give him a title also, that the desirable combination may be created afresh. Nothing is so striking in England, considering that it is an old country, as the newness of most of the great families. ”

“ On the contrary, it is evident that infinite practical evil would result from liberty. Those who have broken through the social restraints and allowed the passion of love to set up its stormy and variable tyranny in their hearts have led unsettled and unhappy lives. Even of love itself they have not enjoyed the best except in those rare cases in which the lovers have taken bonds upon themselves not less durable than those of marriage; and even these unions, which give no more liberty than marriage itself gives, are accompanied by the unsettled feeling that belongs to all irregular situations. ”

“ The world’s amusements are an infliction that I consider myself at liberty to avoid. I love musical or silent solitude, and the enchantments of a fair garden and a lofty dwelling amidst the glorious Bavarian mountains. ”

“ Social intercourse, in that case, so far from being an education in respect for the rights of others, would be an opportunity for violating them. The violation might become habitual; and if it were so this strange result would follow, that society would not be a softening and civilizing influence, but the contrary. It would accustom people to treat each other with disregard, so that men would be hardened and brutalized by it as schoolboys are made ruder by the rough habits of the playground, and urbanity would not be cultivated in cities, but preserved, if at all, in solitude. ”

“ We all can see from the outside how fond women generally are of flowers, though I believe it is impossible for us to realize all that flowers are to them, as there are no inanimate objects that men love with such affectionate and even tender solicitude. However, we see that women surround themselves with flowers, in gardens, in conservatories, and in their rooms; we see that they wear artificial flowers in their dress, and that they paint flowers in water-color and on china. Now observe how the Church of Rome and the Ritualists in England show sympathy with this feminine taste! ”

“ The first of these is reading, which is seldom valued at its almost inestimable worth. By the variety of its records and inventions, literature continually affords the refreshment of change, not to speak of that variety which may be had so easily by a change of language when the reader knows several different tongues, and the other marvellous variety due to difference in the date of books. In fact, literature affords a far wider variety than conversation itself, for we can talk only with the living, but literature enables us to descend, like Ulysses, into the shadowy kingdom of the dead. ”

“ This remoteness is due, in great part, to a sincerity of disposition which declines amusements that do not amuse, and desires only those real pleasures which are in perfect harmony with one’s own nature and constitution. We like the sociability, the ready human sympathy, of the Prince of Wales; we think that in his position it is well for him to be able to keep all that endless series of engagements, but has not King Louis some claim upon our indulgence even in his eccentricity? He has refused the weary round of false amusements and made his choice of ideal pleasure. ”

“ There you make unexpected discoveries; you find that the first instinctive preference is more than justified by merits that you had not divined. You had hoped and trusted vaguely that there were certain qualities; but as a painter who looks long at a natural scene is constantly discovering new beauties whilst he is painting it, so the long and loving observation of a beautiful human mind reveals a thousand unexpected excellences. ”

“ I only know that we are always glad to be together, that each of us likes to listen to the other, and that we have talked for innumerable hours. Neither does my affection blind me to his faults. I see them as clearly as if I were his enemy, and doubt not that he sees mine. There is no illusion, and there has been no change in our sentiments for twenty years. ”

“ It is very difficult for courtesy to survive this modern passion for brevity, and we see it more and more openly cast aside. All the long phrases of politeness have been abandoned in English correspondence for a generation, except in formal letters to official or very dignified personages; and the little that remains is reduced to a mere shred of courteous or affectionate expression. We have not, it is true, the detestable habit of abridging words, as our ancestors often did, but we cut our phrases short, and sometimes even words of courtesy are abridged in an unbecoming manner. ”

“ To a mind that does not analyze but simply receives impressions, magnificent architecture is a convincing proof that the words of the preacher are true. It appears inconceivable that such substantial glories, so many thousands of tons of masonry, such forests of timber, such acres of lead and glass, all united in one harmonious work on which men lavished wealth and toil for generations,—it appears inconceivable that such a monument can perpetuate an error or a dream. ”

“ When death has come, the priest treats the dead body with respect and the survivors with sympathy, and when it is laid in the ground he is there to the last moment with the majesty of an ancient and touching form of words already pronounced over the graves of millions who have gone to their everlasting rest. ”

“ Surely a man, or a woman either, might have as good manners, and be as highly civilized in all respects, with accurate notions of things as with a head full of illusions. To understand the world as it really is, to see the direction in which humanity is travelling, ought to be the purpose of every strong and healthy intellect, even though such knowledge may take it out of gentility altogether. ”

“ We have enough of ourselves in ourselves; we desire a companion who will relieve us from the bounds of our thoughts, as a neighbor opens his garden to us, and delivers us from our own hedges. But if the unlikeness is so great that mutual understanding is impossible, then it is too great. We fancy that we should like to know this or that author, because we feel a certain sympathy with him though he is very different from us, but there are other writers whom we do not desire to know because we are aware of a difference too excessive for companionship. ”

“ However powerful may be the aid of books and natural scenery in enabling us to bear solitude, the best help of all must be found in our occupations themselves. Steady workers do not need much company. To be occupied with a task that is difficult and arduous, but that we know to be within our powers, and to awake early every morning with the delightful feeling that the whole day can be given to it without fear of interruption, is the perfection of happiness for one who has the gift of throwing himself heartily into his work. ”

“ Then the warmest affection sprang up between the two, lasting till separation by death and still cherished by the survivor. What becomes of rules and maxims and wise old saws in the face of nature and reality? What can we do better than to observe nature with an open, unprejudiced mind, and gather some of the results of observation?
I am conscious of several omissions that may possibly be rectified in another volume if this is favorably accepted. The most important of these are the influence of age on intercourse, and the effects of living in the same house, which are not invariably favorable. ”

“ In any other place than a confessional to talk about self at any length is an error; in the confessional it is a virtue. The truth is that pious Roman Catholic women find happiness in the confessional and try the patience of the priests by minute accounts of trifling or imaginary sins. No doubt confession places an immense power in the hands of the Church, but at an incalculable cost of patience. It is not felt to weigh unfairly on the laity, because the priest who to-day has forgiven your faults will to-morrow kneel in penitence and ask forgiveness for his own. ”

“ This independence gives a savor to social intercourse in London that is lamentably wanting to it elsewhere. There is a strange and novel pleasure (to one who lives habitually in the country) in hearing men and women say what they think without deference to any local public opinion.
In many small places this local public opinion is so despotic that there is no individual independence in society, and it then becomes necessary that a man who values his independence, and desires to keep it, should learn the art of living contentedly outside of society. ”

“ With her you are free to be as much yourself as when alone; you say what you think and she understands you. Your silence does not offend her; she only thinks that there will be time enough to talk together afterwards. You know that you can trust her love, which is as unfailing as a law of nature. ”

“ It is said that the Emperor William of Germany never eats in public at all, but sits out every banquet before an empty plate. This, though quite excusable in an old gentleman, obliged to live by rule, must have rather a chilling effect; and yet I like it as a declaration of the one great principle that no person at table, be he host or guest, ought to be compelled to inflict the very slightest injury upon his own health, or even comfort. The rational and civilized idea is that food and wines are simply placed at the disposal of the people present to be used, or abstained from, as they please. ”