XV.

THE PROPER TOUCH.

WHAT is most wanted by all of us at home and abroad, but perhaps most of all at home, is tact. The most skilful man will feel at times that he wants it, and the most persuasive will, by a moment's forgetfulness, lose a year's hard work.

This is an old story. Here is an old illustration. King Radbod was a most excellent Dane, and of an enthusiastic temper; so that whatever he did, he carried with him his Court and his nobles-and it is needless to say his people. St. Vulfran, who had been sent from the Bishop of Rome, had got a footing in that Court, had converted many of the nobles, and had so far touched the king that he consented to be baptized. Upon a day appointed, therefore, the good saint prepared the font, and the king marched into the little church, with its communion table (for they did not dream of altars in those days of primitive honesty and simplicity), and surrounded by as many courtiers as could well squeeze in, he was received with a jubilant hymn by St. Vulfran and his missionary friars.

The king, depositing his crown in the hands of his attendants, put one foot in the font, and was about to accept the holy chrism, when he paused: he had a question to ask, and a loyal question too. "Vulfran," said he, “what do you say has become of that long line of ancestors of mine who ruled in this land before you came with your Gospel tidings, and who were never baptized?” Vulfran, a strict believer in regeneration—at that time, indeed, never disputed nor mooted-answered hastily: "Assure yourself of this, Radbod, that those unbaptized kings were not Christians, and are most certainly damned."

Whereupon King Radbod drew his foot out of the font, and placing his crown upon his head, girded on his sword, and proudly swept away, saying: "For my part I would rather be damned with a long line of kings and warriors, than be saved with a few poor snivelling, shaveling monks." His courtiers withdrew with him. Vulfran was left with his

fratres singing a hymn, and begging for help; and that kingdom and its dependencies, its people and its neighbours, were lost for long years to Christianity, and therefore to light, civilization, piteousness, good faith, mercy to the poor, and all its attendant blessings. It was like putting back the sun; for, sooner or later, all lands must come under this forerunner of light and knowledge.

Now what lost Vulfran this kingdom was not truth, for it is not true that those who have not heard of Christ are

damned; nay, it is

utterly contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, and is false. That by which he lost King Radbod has cost the Church thousands of souls,―want of tact; and this want is, by anticipation, condemned by the great Head of the Church Himself when He says, "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves:" and perhaps want of tact has been more harmful to religion than anything else. People who believe that they are in possession of the actual truth, are not to be excused if they make that truth unattractive to those who have not arrived at their standpoint: even St. Paul rightly prides himself on his tact. He was all things to all men: not that he was a hypocrite, or ever shunned the truth or feared to declare it; but he was a many-sided man. He felt where other men felt; he put himself in their place; in a word, he knew the proper touch; and he knew the value of it.

And what is tact? It is a little and important word, from the Latin tangere, to touch. It means a delicacy of perception, a knowledge of when a fact is arrived at. A good scholar derives the word from the French tactique, Italian tallica, and the Greek τακτική, τάσσω, I place in order; which seems to us to apply more to the word "tactics" and its meaning, than to tact. Richardson says that “tact is a modern word, frequent in conversation,” and quoting Lord Macaulay's words, defines it as "skill or adroitness in adapting (one's self) to circumstances, and our

words to our deeds." It is all this, and a great deal more. It is the art of putting things adroitly. With tact you may with impunity tell the most sensitive person of the most terrible misfortune; without tact, such an announcement would knock the same person down, as a bullock is felled by a pole-axe. With tact a man makes a request for a favour, for a loan of money, for a place for his son, his daughter or his nephew, begs his son-in-law into a living or himself into a bishopric, and does all or any of these things with such absolute delicacy that he either succeeds, or makes the act of denial painful to him who performs it; without tact he muddles everything, he even begs the girl who loves him for her hand at the wrong time. He is always out of season. He makes a joke when people are exhausted with laughter; he ventures upon a melancholy remark just as people are tired of sadness and longing to laugh. He is the person whom Sydney Smith pictures as being himself square, and yet being always thrust into round holes. "We shall generally find in life," writes Sydney Smith, and it will be interesting to put this famous but rarely traced quotation rightly before the reader, "that the triangular person has got in the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself in the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for each other."

When we can say so, we may be assured that we have met a person of much tact, and of course of considerable knowledge for tact consists as much in Art as in Heart, in a sensitive good nature, much perception, quickness, vivacity, and receptivity. To know what to say, and how and when to say it, argues a very considerable grasp of mind. To say the wrong thing, and to remember the right thing at the wrong time, is a fault of so general a character, that not only have Aunt Tabitha Bramble, Mrs. Nickleby, and a dozen other characters been built upon it, but in Punch Mr. Burnand has been carrying on a series of comic papers entirely on this theme, and these papers have grown into a volume which has gone into many editions. The fun of these "Happy Thoughts" consists in a dull and smallminded fellow's having what he considers happy thoughts always too late for use, simply because he wants mental quickness and tact. He always gets the worst in an argument or in a single combat of badinage or chaff; he recollects the cutting rejoinder he ought to have made when it is five minutes too late. Happy thoughts of this sort are as useless as those

66 -words congeal'd in Northern air,"

which Butler tells us of in "Hudibras": a vulgar notion, said to be prevalent in his time, that in Greenland words were frozen in their utterance; and upon a thaw, as Chesterfield has it, "a very mixed and utterly incomprehensible

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