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DR. E. M. F.

From The Spectator. THE MORALITY OF EXTRAVAGANCE.

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therein, has laid a solid foundation to He-pelled to give it up. He was not conbrew. We recommend the book unhesitat- demned, be it observed, for taking wine in ingly to teachers and learners. the morning, - his neighbours were quite The beauty of types, and the excellency well aware that he was temperate enough to of the work done by the printer, deserve take them all in, and had he drank beer, a special favorable notice. as many of his townsmen did, not a word would have been said. But, 66 Claret for breakfast! what shocking extravagance! that man will fail!" was the sentence repeated in a hundred different ways, for months after the unlucky merchant had yielded to social pressure. His whole exTHE English people is, we believe, the penditure on his luxury he said was a shilonly one in the world which considers thrift ling a day, which he could perfectly well discreditable, which attaches opprobrious afford; but he could not stand the doubt epithets to carefulness in expenditure, and the claret threw on his reputation for a busiregards foresight against wastry with some- ness head, and, indeed, on his general thing of moral as well as intellectual disdain. character. He might have thrown away It is also the only one which denounces ex- five times the sum in a whist club, and notravagance not as a folly, but a vice, as a body would have made a remark; but he habit showing defect of conscience as well was spending money in a way his neighbours as deficiency of judgment. We are inclined, did not understand, - was, in short, extrain the absence of any more pressing consid- vagans, going beyond the sacred limit of erations, to speculate for a moment on the the usual! - and wandering of that kind in soundness as well as the origin of this feel- England is held to be immoral. "John," ing, which out of London, and sometimes says some old lady of the family, "is all in London, has a marvellous effect in limit- very well, but, my dear, he is so extravaing the freedom of individual action. In gant;" and she says it with just the feeling New England, as Mrs. Beecher Stowe has with which she would say he is wild," or told us, it is so powerful that neighbours "he drinks too much," or "he is harsh to will sharply remonstrate against what the his wife," or would accuse him of any other Scotch call wasting the mercies, will sit in offence not precisely punishable by law. committee and decide whether gilt salt- The object of the expenditure in her judgspoons are consistent." Even in Eng- ment, which is that of the majority of England, though neighbours hardly venture on lishmen, has nothing to do with the matter, remonstrance, they regard extravagance as and its extent very little indeed. A man full apology for that form of reprobation may put 500l. in a rotten investment and which is half backbiting, half moral repre- escape all blame, and then be held up as an hension, and which the majority of people awful example to the neighbourhood because are so afraid to excite. There are thou- he gives 1007. for a diamond for his wife, sands of families in English country towns an investment about as secure and nearly where the pursebearer literally dare not live as profitable as Consols. We have known as he likes or do as he likes, because "the a man who could not eat the mass of halffamily," or the neighbours, or the commu- baked flour which it pleases Englishmen to nity generally would think the attendant ex- consider bread condemned for "extravapenditure wanton, and in all future discus-gance" because he "peeled the loaf," at a sion of him and his character would qualify cost of about a pound a year, while his any praise by the assertion that he was "so health was worth a pound an hour; and very extravagant." People hire houses for have heard serious reprobation of another years rather than build, because other peo- because he had a fancy for taking in two ple would characterize that act of economy newspapers instead of one. He was exas extravagance, just as the British Govern- travagant, and that was enough, and he ment pays eight per cent. in rent lest the might, as far as his acquaintance were conHouse of Commons should condemn an cerned, almost as well have been called a outlay of the same capital obtainable at drunkard, or a profligate, or a blasphemer. three.

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We have known an instance in which a man in business was half-ruined by the discredit brought on him by an assertion that "he drank wine at breakfast." It was quite true; he had lived long abroad, and preferred claret and water to tea, but so strong became the bruit, that he was com

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The cause of this special dislike of some forms cf spending money among a people by no means thrifty is, we imagine, the rooted blunder in English philosophy which tends so strongly to stereotype society, the confusion between selfishness and self-will. There can be no doubt that there are forms

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Nobody is ever ruined in candle-ends, and the effort to keep them only ensures a discontented, and therefore a spasmodically expensive household. No form of wastefulness strikes some men-and some liberal men- so much as wastefulness of silver in cab-hire, in petty gifts, in minute purchases, and no income seems to exempt those who practise it from the charge of extravagance. Nevertheless, it is often quite certain that a waste of half-a-crown a day

of extravagance in which the habit amounts | than that of Mr. Pitt, who ruined himself to vice, and quite deserves all the social in order to be able to govern England unreprobation it receives, and more than it is disturbed by household cares. One is allikely to get. The man who spends on most driven amidst such instances to accept himself till he is unable to meet the claims result rather than motive as the basis of or, it may be, the rights of others, is, of judgment, -a very unsound mode of induccourse, a vicious man, vicious not for his tion in ethics. expenditure, but for indulging a selfishness There is a form of extravagance which is so great as to involve a cruelty. For a vicious, but as a rule the acts to which that married man, without property, to postpone word is usually applied in England are either a life insurance to a daily glass of port, or indifferent or actually praiseworthy, are the even a daily journal, is an offence against results of mere idiosyncrasy, of that indithe highest law of morals, and so is any viduality of judgment which it ought to be extravagance involving debts which will the object of Englishmen to encourage; or, never be paid. That is in reality a form of at worst, of a wilfulness not worthy blame. theft, though palliated usually as to motive, The most common form of all extravagances, but not as to result, by a certain want of indifference to petty outlays, is very often consciousness of the injury inflicted. So, as right as if it were the result of wise and we suppose, is extravagance of the kind deliberate judgment. Up to a certain point, most usually commented on in newspapers, care about such expenditure cramps and an expenditure on some habit, or taste, or worries the mind- causes in actual loss of pursuit so wild that the spendthrift ultimate- money more waste than it saves. Sixpences ly falls out of his position, is, in popular smooth life, and to the nervous organizaparlance, a ruined man. It is excessively tions bred in our cities life needs smoothing. difficult to define in words the immorality of this particular form of extravagance, that is, its immorality without reference to the object of the expenditure, though we all feel that it is immoral. To waste a fortune on the Turf is clearly wrong, because the object is almost always a selfish pursuit of excitement; and the same condemnation must be passed on the most ruinous extravagance of all, social ostentation. That is a loss of power for the indulgence of a low vanity, and is as morally wrong as it would be for a man to cut off his hand in order to excite the impression that he was a wounded hero. But suppose the object to be beneficial or indifferent. A childless man might give, though it never has been done, the bulk of his means to reduce the National Debt, would that be wrong? The late Duke of Buckingham borrowed vast sums at 5 per cent., in order to buy land which only returned 3 per cent., in order to increase his political influence, and so reduced his family for a time to the comparative poverty out of which they are now again emerging. Supposing the increase of political influence a worthy or indifferent object, which it might or might not be, - was that wrong? Men have an instinct that it was, and we suppose the true argument is, that no man can have a right to throw away his own capacity of usefulness, of which power and station and command of money are, no doubt, important constituents. It is very difficult, however, to show that the gift to the National Debt would be worse than any other gift to the people, or that the Duke of Buckingham's extravagance was worse

407. a year-will increase a man's power of making the best of himself, of earning, if it is to be put in that way, more than twice the sum expended in things yielding a visible return. It is right to save temper, even at the expense of cash. There are degrees in all things; but we suspect that the professional class, in their habitual extravagance in sixpences, are wiser than the trading class, who so often condemn them for that disregard. One of the commonest forms of extravagance, building, is often a direct moral and intellectual benefit to the amateur, gratifying a healthy passion of constructiveness, which, ungratified, would exhibit itself in the search for much more dangerous excitements. Book-buying, picture-buying, gem or toy-buying are defensible on the same grounds, as at worst blameless amusements, and it will rarely be found, we think, that men with any special extravagance of that sort come to much pecuniary grief. On the contrary, they as often acquire the habit of thrift and regularity in pecuniary matters in order to gratify the exceptional taste. "Collectors," for example, even if it be of old china, are very

rarely ruined.

Other men, again—and | nature, and relying for success simply upon this is a very frequent case get a rep- its truthfulness and its direct expression of utation for extravagance by a habit decid- quiet sentiment. There is a terrible waste edly wise, that of concentrating wasteful- of power amongst novelists caused by their ness, of making presents, or buying toys, want of faith in their capacity to interest us. for example, very seldom, but when they When ladies sit down to write a story, as give or buy securing things really worth the nearly all ladies do at some period of their money. The woman who saves in "chif-lives, they have a natural mistrust of their fons "what will buy lace or diamonds is the knowledge and abilities. They feel that very reverse of extravagant, though she is they have seen very little which has not certain to be so considered by people to been seen by hundreds of other people, and whom daily extravagance in smaller things they have no reason to suppose that they would seem quite unobjectionable. can invest a commonplace narrative with But, it may be urged, you are proving any special interest. Nothing, in nine cases only that extravagance may be prudent, out of ten, can be better founded than this not that it can be moral. No, we are not; distrust; and if they would only draw from for our point is that, apart from selfishness it the logical and obvious inference, we or loss of usefulness through waste, expen- should have nothing to complain of. Havditure is a matter to be governed by indi-ing nothing to say, they would say nothing; vidual will, with little or no moral meaning the world would be relieved from a great whatever. A man is not bound to spend mass of useless literature, and nobody but his money in the way approved by the com- the waste-paper buyers would have any munity, but in the way approved by him- reason for lamentation. Unluckily, the orself. If he has 300l. a year to spend on a dinary conclusion is very different. They carriage, and chooses to spend it on dia- endeavour to patch up a feeble bit of work mond buttons instead, he may be a fool for out of the boundless stores of fictitious litehis pains, though as an investor he would rature; they take half a dozen conventional be simply shrewd, but he is not in any way characters from the common stock, and set morally wrong. He only prefers his own them to work in the mazes of some artifiway to other people's, and he not only has cial plot. They make one more réchauffé a right to prefer it, but is bound to prefer of the dry old fragments that have been it, if he wants to preserve any individuality served up a hundred times before, and perof character at all- a doctrinė we are pro-haps endeavour to enliven the dismal result claiming from the housetop about once a by a terrible murder or the discovery of the month, without, we fear, the smallest result. rightful heir. Of course they produce It is easy to fight, and not difficult to defeat, nothing but a crude imitation at second-hand Mrs. Worldly Grundy; but to defeat Mrs. of a story which has long ago been exhaustSpiritual Grundy is nearly impossible, and ed of every element of vitality. Nobody, even to fight her fairly is considered in Eng-it is said, can be so impudent as a very shy land to involve something of the sin of pre- man; in the effort to overcome his natural sumption. It is a work which wants doing, repugnance he loses his head, and is thrown nevertheless, and as the right of Christian completely off his balance. On the same liberty is the last the old pulpit will ever principle, many of the most preposterous preach up, the new one will do well to take combinations of unnatural characters and it under its care. startling catastrophes are due to their authors' secret conviction that they have no claim to be heard at all. They plunge into extravagance from sheer distrust of their own powers.

From The Saturday Review. STONE EDGE. * Now, if it is hopeless to persuade such writers into silence, we may possibly induce THIS is a book for which, even if the exsome of them to be modest. It is better, ecution were less commendable than is ac- even for one's own vanity, to be dull than tually the case, the critic would feel strongly to be ridiculous, and to fail in attracting us inclined to speak a good word. Whatever by honest bread and butter than to poison may be its faults, it has not the most pro- us by a mess seasoned with adulterated voking fault of affectation; if it had failed, condiments. The very first principle of we might have called it insipid, but we novel-writing is that the book should be could not accuse it of pandering to any founded on personal experience, or, at morbid tastes. It is a fresh, healthy pic- least, on intimate familiarity with the subjectture of country life, evidently drawn from matter. There is scarcely a writer, even • Stone Edge. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1868. of a high order, who has succeeded in the 386

LIVING AGE.

VOL. X.

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STONE EDGE.

historical novel, that is to say, in writing | impassable in savage snowstorms, are the about a state of things removed by centu- background to an old-fashioned stone farmries from himself. The only chance is that house, perversely placed so as to avoid the his mind should be thoroughly saturated view of a lovely valley, and to look out with the ideas he is endeavouring to repro- upon the bleak hillsides. The inhabitants duce; and probably, if our ancestors could are in harmony with the scenery. They come to life to read even our best de- do not indeed show such tough and indomscriptions of their ways and thoughts, itable eccentricity as Miss Brontë's Yorkthey would find them more ridiculous than shiremen. They are many degrees nearer we find the roughest descriptions of our to the ordinary English clodhopper. But selves by a foreigner. A Frenchman who they have a sturdy character of their own; has passed a month in Leicester Square and we may fancy Mr. Tennyson's Northprobably knows as much about the aspect ern Farmer would have found himself at of England as almost any Englishman ease amongst them. Old customs are supknows of the appearance of feudal barons posed to linger in the hills, still unprofaned or Roman gladiators; and we remember by railways or factories. At the chief vilwhat marvellous caricatures are the result of such French investigations. Yet ladies often have a special fondness for describing to us men about town, or Jesuit priests, or knavish attorneys, with whose ways they are considerably less familiar than Scott was with the habits of Wamba or Frontde-Bœuf or Louis XI. And, unluckily, we have the originals by us to compare with the strange pictures of their fancy. If they would only be content to describe what they have seen, they would add at least something to our knowledge. A genuine questionable accomplishments, and hold sketch from nature by a poor artist may tell us something; but if he insists on high art-on a composition in rivalry with Claude and Turner-his work must of necessity be worthless. If a lady ventures to describe accurately so simple a thing as life in a girl's school or under a governess, she can hardly fail to give some new ideas to the male part of mankind. Unluckily, she is far more likely to describe murderers of whose thoughts and habits she knows less than the first policeman she meets.

The most remarkable case of success achieved by a simple reproduction of her own experience was perhaps that of Miss Brontë. She just opened her eyes-eyes, it is true, of very unusual keenness and put down what she saw. vision remarkably confined she managed to From a field of extract the means of producing a singularly profound impression. And though few people could feel the influence of commonplace objects with such intensity, it is a valuable example of what may be done with scanty materials. Although the difference between Jane Eyre and Stone Edge is as wide as can be easily imagined, there is a certain similarity in this respect. Miss Brontë's novels, is a picture of life in Stone Edge, like a secluded country district, and the scenery in both cases is of a similar character. Wide desolate moors, and hills which the author boldly describes as mountains, often

lage they retain the ceremony of "blessing the wells," and adorning them for the occasion with wreaths of flowers. This poetical celebration is concluded by a football match, in which it is expected that one or two limbs should be broken, and it is considered highly creditable if one or more of the combatants are drowned in the river. The greatest dissipation which the minds of the villagers can imagine is the sight of a wildbeast show in a neighbouring town. They look upon reading and writing as rather

that some special justification is required for so unusual a luxury. They entertain a firm belief in witchcraft, charms, and "boggles." An incipient scepticism in this last particular is implied in the assertion of a respectable farmer that "there ain't no such things in nature, not a bit." He proceeds, however, to assert that the particular ghost in question was come beyont the dale ""never knowed to rather invalidates his general proposition. - a statement which points about it for the novelist's purpose. A population of this kind has some good One of the great amusements in a quiet country place is well known to consist in quarrelling. Farmer Ashford lives by himself on the top of a dreary hill, and solaces lord, partly by bullying his wife and family, his dulness partly by grumbling at his landand partly by expatiating at intervals upon the bitter grudges which he owes to his various male remote connections. His only relaxation is getting drunk at the market, and quarrelling promiscuously with the rest of the world who may happen to come in contact with him. Any civilized being condemned to pass his life in the society of improbably end by cutting his throat, to be such people as Farmer Ashford would not rid of it. But, as encountered in the pages of a novel, there is a certain crabbed originality about this gentleman and his like which is decidedly pleasant. If people liv

LORD BYRON.*

(SECOND NOTICE.- See Living Age, No. 1258.) THE chapter in the work before us that will doubtless attract the most general attention is that in which Byron's marriage is recorded and commented upon. This, besides the ordinary danger of interfering between man and wife, is obviously a very delicate topic for the noble authoress delicate as it would have been for Paris to enter upon the grounds of Helen's separation from Menelaus. We have, however, no other fault to find with this chapter than that it imparts little that was not known already. Probably there is nothing more to

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ing under such circumstances are more stolid and immovable than the larger world, they have time to nurse their oddities into amazing proportions. They have stubborn virtues of their own, and at least they have a grotesque quaintness about them which saves them from being purely insipid. Whether it is a good thing that all these provincial oddities should be improved off the face of the earth, and that Englishmen after the Northern Farmer type should become as rare as dancers round the Maypole, may admit of argument. But, at any rate, they are now in the position which fits them for fiction; they are so far extinct that we can afford to look more upon their pic-be told. turesque side than upon their frequent coarse brutalities; we can admire them as Lord Byron [says his best biographer], when we admire the still unbroken bits of gorse seems to have expressed, in a few words, the at Cephalonia a short time before his death, and heather that survive amidst a triumph-whole pith of the mystery. An English gentleant cultivation, much as we should have dis- man with whom he was conversing on the subliked the same wild land when cultivation was jeet of Lady Byron having ventured to enumerstill feebly struggling against it. It is pleas-ate to him the various causes he had heard alant to catch the likeness of a dying form of society before it is too far gone to recover a faithful portrait, and when it is yet sufficiently rare to have the charm of rarity and of historical association.

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leged for the separation, the noble poet, who had seemed much amused with their absurdity and falsehood, said, after listening to them all, The causes, my dear sir, were too simple to be easily. found out.'

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larities, was one who lived without such rule or measure as society thinks it has a right to exact. She, on the contrary, had been nurtured in a regular English family, such as Miss Edgeworth delights to describe, wherein morning and evening certify to one another, and the verse of the satirist,

There are other characters than Farmer Without exception the poet's intimate Ashford, showing the amiable side of the friends perceived the incompatibility of the same rough type, and described with a affianced pair, and if they did not forebode great deal of quiet humour. They go the worst, they at least anticipated a very through the scenes of a very unpretending moderate measure of happiness from the story, and we follow their fortunes with union. He, not to dwell on graver irregusufficient interest. It must, however, be added that the story is the most unsatisfactory part of the book. It begins very well, and up to the horrible murder (for we must confess that there is a horrible murder even in Stone Edge, though murder seems to fit in very well with the rough horseplay of the district) we have no complaints to make. The lovers have been separated by a due complication of difficulties, and we anticipate some pleasure in seeing how they are again brought together. Unluckily, the author seems to have slurred over this part of her task, and the story winds up after a pointless fashion, giving us the impression that it has been cut short arbitrarily, rather than artistically developed to the right conclusion. It is true that this has the incidental advantage of confining the story within the modest limits of a single short volume, and for such an advantage we should on no account be ungrateful. But a little more care would have materially improved the effect of the whole, and removed an awkward blemish from what is otherwise a very meritorious work.

Ipse dies pulcro distinguitur ordine rerum, might serve as a rule for the servants' hall, or a motto for the family pedigree. The housekeeping at Seaham, Sir Ralph Milbanke's seat, was as unlike the housekeeping at Newstead Abbey as the carte of a Lord Mayor's dinner is to the beeves, sheep, and swine of Homer's heroes. Newstead was liberty hall, whereas at Seaham the hallclock was the arbiter of the household's destiny. The morning had its avocations, commencing with family prayers and ending with luncheon; the afternoon was mapped out into drives, visits, dinner, tea, longwhist, and chess; and yet, while a bride

* Lord Byron, jugé par les Témoins de sa Vie. 2 tomes. Paris: Amyot. 1868.

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