we had better take that sum on religious and commercial principles, without fuss? And the day after, may not the same pious and moral instructors recommend to us the contented acceptance of eighteenpence? A stand must clearly be made somewhere, and we choose to make it here, and now.' The masters again have reason to rejoin: "True, but if we give you three shillings to-day, how are we to know you will not stand for three-and-sixpence to-morrow, and for four shillings next week? A stand must be made somewhere, and we choose to make it here, and now." What solution is there, then? and of what use are any quantity of homilies either to man or master, on their manner of debate, that show them no possible solution in another way? As things are at present, the quarrel can only be practically closed by imminence of starvation on one side, or of bankruptcy on the other: even so, closed only for a moment,-never ended, burning presently forth again, to sink silent only in death;-while, year after year, the agonies of conflict and truces of exhaustion produce, for reward of the total labour, and fiat of the total council, of the people, the minimum of gain for the maximum of misery. Scattered up and down, through every page I have written on political economy for the last twenty years, the reader will find unfailing reference to a principle of solution in such dispute, which is rarely so much as named by other arbitrators;-or, if named, never believed in: yet, this being indeed the only principle of decision, the conscience of it, however repressed, stealthily modifies every arbitrative word. The men are rebuked, in the magistral homilies, for their ingratitude in striking! Then there must be a law of Grace, which at least the masters recognize. The men are mocked in the magistral homilies for their folly in striking. Then there must be a law of Wisdom, which at least the masters recognize. Appeal to these, then, for their entire verdict, most virtuous masters, all-gracious and all-wise. These reprobate ones, graceless and senseless, cannot find their way for themselves; you must guide them. That much I told you years and years ago. You will have to do it, in spite of all your liberty-mongers. Masters, in fact, you must be; not in name. But, as yet blind; and drivers-not leaders-of the blind, you must pull the beams out of your own eyes, now; and that bravely. Preach your homily to yourselves first. Let me hear once more how it runs, to the men. "Oh foolish and ungrateful ones," you say, "did we not once on a time give you high wages-even so high that you contentedly drank yourselves to death; and now, oh foolish and forgetful ones, that the time has come for us to give you low wages, will you not contentedly also starve yourselves to death?" Alas, wolf-shepherds-this is St. George's word to you :"In your prosperity you gave these men high wages, not in any kindness to them, but in contention for business among yourselves. You allowed the men to spend their wage in drunkenness, and you boasted of that drunkenness by the mouth of your Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in the columns of your leading journal, as a principal sign of the country's prosperity. You have declared again and again, by vociferation of all your orators, that you have wealth so overflowing that you do not know what to do with it. These men who dug the wealth for you, now lie starving at the mouths of the hell-pits you made them dig; yea, their bones lie scattered at the grave's mouth, like as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth. Your boasted wealth-where is it? Is the war between these and you, because you now mercilessly refuse them food, or because all your boasts of wealth were lies, and you have none to give?"—(On Strikes.-Fors Clavigera, New Series, Letter II.)* I think the experience of most thoughtful persons will confirm me in saying that extremely good girls, (good children, broadly, but especially girls), usually die young. The pathos of their deaths is constantly used in poetry and novels; but the power of the fiction rests, I suppose, on the fact that most persons of affectionate temper have lost their own May Queens or little Nells in their time. For my own part of grief, I have known a little Nell die, and a May Queen die, and a queen of May, and of December also, die ;-all of them, in economists' language, as good as gold,' and in Christian language, only a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honour.' And I could count the like among my bestloved friends, with a rosary of tears. But, they It seems, therefore, that God takes care, under present circumstances, to prevent, or at least to check, the glut of that kind of girls. Seems, I say, and say with caution-for perhaps it is not entirely in His good pleasure that these things are so. being so, the question becomes therefore yet more imperative-how far a country paying this enforced tax of its good girls annually to neaven is wise in taking little account of the number it has left? For observe that, just beneath these girls of heaven's own, come another kind, who are just earthly enough to be allowed to stay with us; but who get put out of the way into convents, or made mere sick-nurses of, or take to mending the irremediable, -(I've never got over the loss to me, for St. George's work, of one of the sort). Still, the nuns are always happy themselves; and the nurses do a quantity of good that may be thought of as infinite in its own way; and there's a chance of their being forced to marry a King of the Lombards and becoming Queen Theodolindas and the like: pass these, and we come to a kind of girl, just as good, but with less strong will-who is more or less spoilable and mis-manageable; and these are almost sure to come to grief, by the faults of others, or merely by the general fashions and chances of the world. In romance, for instance, Juliet-Lucy Ashton-Amy Robsart. In my By kind permission of he Author. own experience, I knew one of these killed merely by a little piece of foolish pride-the exactly opposite fault to Juliet's. She was the niece of a most trusted friend of my father's, also a much trusted friend of mine in the earliest Herne Hill days of my Cock Robinhood; when I used to transmute his name, Mr. Dowie, into Mr. Good-do,' not being otherwise clear about its pronunciation. His niece was an old sea-captain's only daughter, motherless, and may have been about twenty years old when I was twelve. She was certainly the most beautiful girl of the pure English-Greek type I ever saw, or ever am likely to see of any type whatever. I've only since seen one who could match her, but she was Norman-English. My mother was her only confidante in her love affairs: consisting mostly in gentle refusals-not because she despised people, or was difficult to please, but wanted simply to stay with her father; and did so serenely, modestly, and with avoidance of all pain she could spare her lovers, dismissing quickly and firmly, never tempting or playing with them. At last, when she was some five or six and twenty, came one whom she had no mind to dismiss; and suddenly finding herself caught, she drew up like a hart at bay. The youth, unluckily for him, dared not push his advantage, lest he should be sent away like the rest; and would not speak,—partly, could not, loving her better than the rest, and struck dumb, as an honest and modest English lover is apt to be, when he was near her; so that she fancied he did not care for her. At last, she came to my mother to ask what she should do. My mother said, Go away for a while,-if he cares for you, he will follow you; if not, there's no harm done." But she dared not put it to the touch, thus, but lingered on, where she could sometimes see him, and yet, in her girl's pride, lest he should find out she liked him, treated him worse than she had anybody ever before. Of course this piece of wisdom soon brought matters to an end. The youth gave up all hope, went away, and, in a month or two after, died of the then current plague, cholera: upon which his sister—I do not know whether in wrath or folly-told his mistress the whole matter, and showed her what she had done. The poor girl went on quietly taking care of her father, till his death, which soon followed; then, with some kindly woman-companion, went to travel. Some five or six years afterwards, my father and mother and I were going up to Chamouni, by the old char-road under the Cascade de Chêde. There used to be an idiot beggar-girl, who always walked up beside the chars, not ugly or cretinous, but inarticulate and wildeyed, moaning a little at intervals. She came to be, in time, year after year, a part of the scene, which one would even have been sorry to have lost. As we drew near the top of the long hill, and this girl had just ceased following, a lady got out of a char at some little distance behind, and ran up to ours, holding out her hands. We none of us knew her. There was something in the eyes like the wild look of the other's; the face was wrinkled, and a little hard in expression-Alpine, now, in its beauty. "Don't you know Sybilla?" said she. My mother made her as happy as she could for a week at Chamouni,-I am not sure if they ever met again: the girl wandered about wistfully a year or two longer, then died of rapid decline. I have told this story in order to draw two pieces of general moral from it, which may perhaps be more useful than if they were gathered from fable. First, a girl's proper confidant is her father. If there is any break whatever in her trust in him, from her infancy to her marriage, there is wrong somewhere,-often on his part, but most likely it is on hers; by getting into the habit of talking with her girl-friends about what they have no business with, and her father much. What she is not inclined to tell her father, should be told to no one; and, in nine cases out of ten, not thought of by herself. And I believe that few fathers, however wrong-headed or hardhearted, would fail of answering the habitual and patient confidence of their child with true care for her. On the other hand, no father deserves, nor can he entirely and beautifully win, his daughter's confidence, unless he loves her better than he does himself, which is not always the case. But again here, the fault may not be all on papa's side. In the instance before us, the relations between the motherless daughter and her old sea-captain father were entirely beautiful, but not rational enough. He ought to have known, and taught his pretty Sybilla, that she had other duties in the world than those immediately near his own arm-chair; and she, if resolved not to marry while he needed her, should have taken more care of her own heart, and followed my mother's wise counsel at once. In the second place, when a youth is fully in love with a girl, and feels that he is wise in loving her, he should at once tell her so plainly, and take his chance bravely, with other suitors. No lover should have the insolence to think of being accepted at once, nor should any girl have the cruelty to refuse at once; without severe reasons. If she simply doesn't like him, she may send him away for seven years or so he vowing to live on cresses, and wear sackcloth meanwhile, or the like penance: if she likes him a little, or thinks she might come to like him in time, she may let him stay near her, putting him always on sharp trial to see what stuff he is made of, and requiring, figuratively, as many lion-skins or giants' heads as she thinks herself worth. The whole meaning and power of true courtship is Probation; and it oughtn't to be shorter than three years at least,-seven is, to my own mind, the orthodox time. And these relations between the young people should be openly and simply known, not to their friends only, but to everybody who has the least interest in them: and a girl worth anything ought to have always half a dozen or so of suitors under vow for her.-(Lost Jewels. -Fors Clavigera, New Series, Letter VI.)* By kind permission of the Author. |