1861.] Manners and Morals, as Affected by Civilization. set free for a nobler service; and this we believe would more than countervail the source of weakness we have referred to. At least, if the time, as we hope, is near when the name of the Volunteers of Ireland will suggest to England a sense of pride, and not of national humiliation and disaster, the double gain of having that country self-organized for defence in part, and of liberating the regular army from this task, would more than redress the general account on the side of the military strength of the empire. On the whole, therefore, we cannot doubt that the census of Ireland is a witness to the great material progress of that nation, and must gratify all lovers of England. It points, too, to the social advancement of a people whose unfortunate lot has been for ages a reproach and bye-word. In tracing these effects, we were led of course to dwell on the brighter 307 side of the picture; and we may have left behind the impression that there are no features of gloom in it. Such a notion would, indeed, be a wild one, since no one at all acquainted with Ireland can doubt that beneath her present prosperity there remain traces of many of the ills which have so long embittered her destiny. She has not got rid of sectarian rancour, of the old contention of race and class; and as a nation she has shown too clearly the want of a thoughtful public spirit, and of capacity for self-management. To discuss these points would, however, be out of place in observations exclusively confined to a subject with which they have little in common; we can only hope 'that the politic order, the good governance, and the happy estate' which no mean statesman invoked for Ireland in the early years of the sixteenth century, may become her destiny ere this has passed away. W. O'C. M. MANNERS AND MORALS, AS AFFECTED BY THE days of Vauxhall and Rane lagh, where lovely duchesses and women of quality said and did what they pleased, and were still the prettiest sort of women in the world,' are over. After a moral oasis, however, which extended at least over the surface of society, and denied to coarse truths the flattering distinction of familiar discussion and comment, we are arrived at a period when the outspoken language of the Spectator is again adopted to satirize the vices and follies of the day. Extremes meet everywhere, in philosophy, in science, and in art; and we find now that the lengthened tether of progressive civilization, gains the border of the latitude conceded to the coarseness of a former age. An article from the Spectator, written in modern English, and the words 'pretty horsebreakers' and 'Belgravian mothers' exchanged for 'painted Narcissas' and match-making Sempronias.' I would not shock the writers and readers of the semi-serious, semisatirical letters which appeared in the Times not long ago, under the heading of 'The Belgravian Lament.' The moralist of the eighteenth century complains that in the fashionable circles in his time, 'all strictness of behaviour was so unmercifully laughed at, that the other much worse extreme was the more common folly.' These words were penned in the year 1729, when the Spring Gardens of Vauxhall were most frequented, and the fashionable rage for them at its height. But they would apply equally well to-day to Rotten-row or Cremorne. All strictness of behaviour' may not perhaps be laughed at, for the hearty laugh of our ancestors, so easily provoked and so loudly sustained, has given place to the covert sneer or to the cynical inuendo; but certainly we may safely affirm that it is stigmatized as decidedly unfashionable. If any one doubt that laxity of manners is on the increase (in fashionable society at least), let him take with him to any place of public resort, Rottenrow, Cremorne, the Opera, where the upper ten thousand congregate, some dignified, correct, middle-aged lady (if she has not of late years moved in such circles, and, provided of course that he is an experienced cicerone), and let him put her in possession of all the facts which there come under their notice. If she does not become by this experience a sadder and a wiser woman, we will allow that a grave change has not overspread the surface of society during the last few years, and that civilization, by dragging wickedness to light, not with a view to reform, but for the sake of amusement, is not defeating its own ends. It is an open question whether things are au fond worse than they used to be, or whether the relative amount of vice and virtue is not as equally balanced as in former days. But it is an unquestionable fact, that the boundaries which separate them are sadly out of repair, and that through the gaps left so invitingly open, it is possible to pass and repass with little observation, from the flower-gardens of innocence and purity, into the haunts of wickedness and the plea sure grounds of vice and depravity. It is true also that subjects which were tabooed in refined society a few years ago, because they were revolting and contemptible to those whom society honoured itself by supposing at least to be virtuous and refined, are now become familiar as household words to tongues and ears the most polite. Individual self-respect refines and ennobles the manners of a man, and social self-respect refines and ennobles the manners of a nation. This delicate fabric has been undergoing rough handling at the hands of friend and foe. Attack and defence have been carried on in a flippant, scoffing tone, all the more dangerous because it irritates and inflames, without seeking to eradicate or heal. Comparative virtue is indeed sometimes artfully satirized, while unmasked vice is upheld. In the Spectator, on the contrary, we find the coarse but moral satire enlisted on the side of virtue. The ungainly weapons are brandished in the right cause, and with an honest purpose; for we find domestic happiness, manly honour, and feminine dignity and virtue painted with a brush as vigorous and true, as that which holds up their opposites to obloquy and contempt. Now, on the contrary, the skill of the artist is not lavished on the 'painting of the lily,' but too frequently we find it softening down and concealing every sharp angle in the anatomy of vice. The subtle dexterity with which language tempers and ameliorates unpalatable truths, has not been without its influence on the manners of our time. To take a harmless illustration, we will say that frolic innocence has in the heyday of youth and spirits overstepped the bounds of propriety. Well, no one in these days minds being considered fast; it is a much prettier word than immodest, although it may have the same meaning. We have no wish to go through the category of crimes, but there is a considerate, and in some cases almost a flattering vocabulary very much at their service also. That immorality is always the most dangerous which approaches us with insidious steps under the assumed garb of refinement. But as long as refinement is a name, and not a truth, vice will be prepared at any moment to throw aside the mask, and to challenge hypocrisy with open taunts to do the same. Milton, in the marching cadences of his majestic poem, describes the arch-fiend himself as standing ashamed in the presence of awful goodness.' So spake the cherub, and his grave rebuke, Severe in youthful beauty, added grace Invincible. Abashed the devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her own shape, how lovely! saw and pin'd His loss. As regards the manners of society, women have it in their power to administer this grave rebuke; for the manners, if not the morals of society, are moulded and governed by them. If they prefer to take vice by the hand, and to let virtue and dignity claim them as their natural defenders in vain, they must expect to be worsted when the vulgar weapons of raillery and jest, are turned on them by their own allies. If mothers, Belgravian or otherwise, care for the respect of the opposite sex, and the apparently coveted guerdon, husbands for their beautiful and accomplished daughters, they must be at pains to keep them in the pure and dignified position to which their merits and their innocence entitle them. They must keep them in ignorance not only of the truths, but of the surface language and outer garb of depravity. They must be content to find them unskilled in the accomplishments which can only be attained by the sacrifice of modesty and self-respect. The mother whose lack of daughters, or lack of fortune, has kept her in the country apart from fashionable circles, holds up her hands in amazement, when told of the laxity which prevails in the morals, or (in what are the morals to the young and innocent) in the manners of May Fair. When such a mother finds herself in a fashionable assembly, the light (we may almost say bold) manners of young girls, whom she has been accustomed to consider as rosebuds with the dew still glittering on their tender foliage, or as grapes to which the delicate bloom still clings, she is not surprised that the 'malicious world should draw its own conclusions from innocent glances, short whispers, and pretty familiarities with fashionable men.' Girls are not supposed to be acquainted with the quicksands of society; but that women and mothers who are, who make a boast of being so, and who would not for worlds be behind the rest of the world in that knowledge, should allow their daughters to approach them innocently and unconsciously 309 at every step, is marvellous in the extreme. The mothers are to blame, but the daughters suffer-suffer to the deepest degree; to the extent of being placed in odious and even unfavourable comparison with those unfortunate women who jest and laugh with a thorn in their hearts and a brand on their names, who trade in the accomplishments which young girls are now accused of striving to attain in emulation of them. The bitter truths of the scoffing masculine letters on the Belgravian Lament, should be revenged, not by words of equally frivolous remonstrance and repartee, but by popular demonstration against the abuses brought to light. If mothers will look back to their own young days, and compare the salutary caution exercised with regard to their acquaintance with evil in any shape, with the reckless indifference with which they allow the 'rampageous ponies' or 'the becoming hats' of degraded women to be stock topics of comment and observation to their children; they will tremble for the results in a generation to come, whose mothers will be the fast girls, the pretty amazons of the modern Rotten-row; whose fathers will be men who have learned to talk of feminine purity as a myth, and of modesty and refinement as two of the great shams of the age. And having thus cursorily glanced at the manners of the upper classes, as affected or not affected by a progressive civilization, we will pass on to the social condition of the nation at large, with a view to ascertaining how civilization affects the morality of the people, and whether it extends to the nature as well as to the intellect, to the heart as well as to the head. We would not be supposed to make the inquiry in an invidious or depreciating spirit, but with a view to ascertaining how far the proposition set down by a great philosopher of former days will hold good in our time. 'Certainly,' he says, 'the great multiplication of virtues upon human nature resteth upon societies well ordained and disciplined, for commonwealths and good governments do nourish virtue grown, but do not much mind the seeds; and the misery is, that the most effectual means are now applied to the ends least to be desired.' The question then, is, how are we to mind the seeds? As long as they are uncared for and neglected, it is obvious that the sunshine of a meridian civilization will not avail to bring the fruit of social virtue to perfection. The weeds, on the contrary, always of ready growth, will grow fat and succulent under its feeding beams. As we have maintained above that it is in the power of the gentler sex to mould the manners of society, that woman is in fact what she has been described by the poet, No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt Sway to her from their orbits as they constitution or government, we cannot dispense with the fear of man, as the framer of social law, as the punisher of vice, and as the rewarder of virtue. It is left to him to institute and repair the fences of morality, and to keep society free from the degrading inroads of crime. It has been aptly observed that 'religion is a road, and morality a fence.' It is impossible to force even a single mind into a road which must be sought by the voluntary impulse of the heart; but it is possible to fence it in from harm by a higher and purer code of morality, and by the fostering of the divine and immutable law, the law of moral distinction between right and wrong. Oh! a sermon it is possible that some reader may exclaim. But we deny the impeachment. This paper professes to treat of refinement and morality, as affected not only by laws Divine and religious which enjoin them, but by the human and social laws which, in our high state of civilization, ought to enforce them; it professes merely to inquire whether that civilization tends to ennoble the nature, as well as to cultivate the understanding; whether it fans or extinguishes the flame of that inborn principle which is a law in itself; a basis on which have been raised constitutions and governments, in the fairest proportions of order and moral rectitude, the contemplation of which ought to fill the mind with pleasure and delight. That civilization must be imperfect, and must eventually defeat its own ends, that raises the intellectual faculties and weakens the force of conscience. Of conscience it has been justly observed, that 'had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world.' It is a difficult task to raise a standard that has been allowed for centuries to maintain a pretty equal level; but there is no real reason why the standard of morality should not keep pace with the standard of civilization. This can only be effected by attending to the seeds, which, as the philosopher affirms, are too often left to chance; or stimulated so much that they attain the ends least to be desired. And this attention to seeds and fences is not the sort of work that we like. The progressive nineteenth century to be turned from the contemplation of its high-pressure steam-engines, its new lights, and theories of intellectual development, to such elementary dogmas, is considered derogatory in the extreme. There is much more chance for any experiments whose results can be proved at once-for anything that can be done, as it were, by steamthan for investigation of the works, of the very, very slow process of the moral education of the people. Reformation in this point will 1861.] Sentiment and Principle. not be the result of desultory debate, or of the propounding of vague theory. Dreamy, poetic, highly cultivated theorists, are apt to imagine that they can take a lump of dough, in the shape of the instructed but essentially vulgar mind of the masses, and that with a judicious admixture of their own high-flown sentiment, they will eventually leaven the whole lump. But experience teaches us daily that this will not do. It has been the cause of heartbreak and disgust to many a real philanthropist, who finds that the social loaf it has cost him so much pains and trouble to make is, if anything, a trifle more heavy and indigestible than that of the dishonest baker convicted of adulteration by means of alum or potatoes. We cannot educate upon sentiment, for this reason, that there is not a germ of it in half of the natures with which we have to deal. But the lowest as well as the highest nature must recognise the dictates of conscience, as implanted in his breast by the divine Lawgiver of the universe; and if developed and fostered by education, they will not fail to point out to the mind the least æsthetic, or the least refined, the immutable moral distinction between right and wrong. It has been said that a 'conscientious man, in considering an action which involves a point of moral duty, does not enter upon any calculation of its consequences; he simply asks himself is it right? and so decides according to an influence within him which he feels to be a part of his moral constitution, susceptible of no explanation, and not admitting of being referred to any other principle.' Montaigne ascribes to women what he calls 'l'esprit de primesautier, or of bounding at once upon the right conclusion. An educated conscience imparts this power to a remarkable extent. It is as infallible as it is immutable, with regard to all moral distinctions. It studies neither cause nor consequence, either remote or collateral. In the consciousness of divine origin, its commands are VOL. LXIV. NO. CCCLXXXI. 311 simple and clear; and to nourish and strengthen this great force, and to fan the 'heavenly flame' in the mind of youth, should be the object and aim of our system of moral education. All large systems and vast organizations have their types in miniature, where the simple law is more obvious, because less entangled with the ramifications and complications which are necessarily involved in the carrying out of wider schemes. The laws, therefore, that govern a kingdom or people may be justly placed in comparison with those that govern a household or a family; and it appears to us that many of the evils which an ill-judged education produces in a smaller system, are to be found in the large family of the State, amongst the masses of the people. Children now are brought up on a very different principle from that on which their fathers and mothers were prepared for the wear and tear, for the suffering and temptations of life. The difference between right and wrong, we frequently find now-a-days is made more of argumentative than of practical interest; and it is not unusual to hear a parent discussing with a mere infant the whys and the wherefores, the pros and the cons, of everything which it is required to do. A sharp child consequently often gets the best of the argument; the humiliated parent is reduced to silence or snappishness, according to his individual temperament, and the child sees his advantage, and does not fail to let it appear that he does so. This is a very different system from the laconic 'do this,' and 'do that,' of a day gone by or from the wholesome neglect," the disgrace and isolation of the juvenile delinquent who was a wilful transgressor of established rules. No one was then allowed to plead moral colour-blindness to the different shades of right and wrong. Children were not so much experimentalized upon; or brought up in that visionary theoretic school whose training leaves the youthful mind impressed with the idea that nothing is very right, and that Y |