Volume 70 — THE ESSAYS OF MR HELPS.[1]

THE ESSAYS OF MR HELPS.^[1]

The writings which we have set down at the foot of our page have been so generally attributed to a gentleman of the name of Helps, that, although even the latest of the series is published anonymously, we have ventured to ascribe them to him. Why the author should withhold his name from the title-page when it has become so currently associated with his works, is a matter of personal taste with which, it may be said, we have nothing to do. It may be genuine modesty, or whim, or caprice, or something bordering on affectation. “It is his pleasure.” We would simply suggest that, if we are to talk about books, it is pleasant to have some name to which to ascribe them, although it may teach us nothing more of the author than he had chosen to reveal in his works: it is pleasant to have a name, and it is pleasant also to feel that we have the right one, to feel that we speak with certainty and security. If a writer has a motive for keeping his authorship a secret, by all means let him keep the secret; but if publicity and renown are not avoided, why may we not have that feeling of certainty which the name on the title-page can alone give to perfect strangers?

To us the name gives no further information than the books themselves. From these we gather that the earlier essays were written by some gentleman in office, who occupied the intervals of business in literary composition; and that the later series are the production of the same gentleman, retired from official cares, and enjoying in some country retreat that combination—surely the most delightful which human life presents—of domestic joys with literary pursuits. We hope this part of the picture is not merely a dramatic artifice of composition. The retirement from official duties has certainly been favourable to the cultivation of literature; the later series are far superior to the former. His last work, Companions of my Solitude, is a very charming little book; and its perusal, by inducing us to revert to its predecessors, has led us to this general notice of his writings.

Mr Helps has, in his quiet way, been somewhat severe upon the presumption of the critics; we hope we shall not be manifesting any undue or ungracious presumption if we take notice, at the outset, of the very marked improvement his works exhibit. There is a steady progressive movement displayed in each successive effort of his pen. In the list which the reader has before him, and in which the works are set down in their order of publication, each one is conspicuously in advance of its predecessor. The second is better than the first, the third better than the second, and the fourth best of all. There has been a still later publication, The Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen; but of this only one volume has hitherto appeared. It is a historical work, and does not run on the same line with the others. So far as we can at present judge of it, we are afraid that it would form something like an anticlimax. We shall therefore take advantage of its unfinished state to dismiss it at once out of court. This steady progress we have noticed is a rather unusual characteristic. At least in our own epoch, men have more frequently given us of their abundance in their first or their second work, and have put us off with scantier measure in their subsequent dealings with the public. With Mr Helps it has been otherwise: his last work is the most thoughtful; and if he retains the habits of a student, and is disposed to literary labour, we may confidently expect from him productions still more excellent than anything he has given us. We do not think, however, that he will surpass himself by turning to history. We should petition for a second series of Companions of my Solitude.

The first work on our list, the Essays written in Intervals of Business, has no attractions for us whatever. It is full of good advice, which no one will gainsay, and no one will ever think of applying; and of general truths, so very true, and so very general, that they are worth nothing. These essays seemed to be written for no definite purpose; they have the air of themes, very carefully composed out of pure love, and for the practice, of composition. Very correct is our official author, very formal and precise, and has an excessive love for giving good counsels. He says, shrewdly enough, that “it is with advice as with taxation; we can endure very little of either, if they come to us in a direct way.” But this does not check him for a moment; he goes on to give advice about this very matter of advice, telling folks where and how they may get it. Throughout this little volume there does not seem to be a single sentence that would provoke dispute, and, as a consequence, not a single sentence of any real utility. As we are passing in review the whole of Mr Helps’ works, we are compelled to say thus much of his earliest production. But we say it without the least asperity. We should not have gone out of our way to speak a word in disparagement of these essays. Mr Helps has written and thought in so much more effective manner since their publication, that he would probably now agree with us that many of them should have been treated as college exercises—themes that we turn into Johnsonian English, or Ciceronian Latin, and there leave. Practice is an excellent thing in composition, as well as in music; but it is not agreeable to listen to the do, re, mi, fa of the finest voice in the world.

The Claims of Labour, and the accompanying essay on the improvement of the condition of the poor, have a direct and serious object, and this at once raises them into a far higher character than their predecessors. Here the author writes for a purpose, and a very excellent purpose. If we do not dwell long on these essays, it is because the subjects of them have at other times occupied our attention, and will again be frequently discussed in our pages. Mr Helps, however, has the merit of calling public attention to the condition of the poor, and especially to the state of their dwelling-houses, at a time when the subject had not become quite so familiar to men’s minds as it is at present. The Report upon the Health of Towns had been lately published, and he was amongst the first to extend the information collected by it, and to insist upon the measures which it pointed out. The relation, too, which the employers bear to those they employ, whether as domestic servants or paid artisans, is a subject which has lately risen up before us in all its vital importance; and even a little “moral preachment” on the topic was not altogether out of place. We like that fine sense which Mr Helps, on more than one occasion, displays, of the consideration due to the domestic servant who is living under your roof. A very galling tyranny may be exercised by ladies and gentlemen.

“Only think,” he says, “what it must be to share one’s home with one’s oppressor; to have no recurring time when one is certain to be free from those harsh words and unjust censures, which are almost more than blows, ay, even to those natures we are apt to fancy so hardened to rebuke. Imagine the deadness of heart that must prevail in that poor wretch who never hears the sweet words of praise or of encouragement. Many masters of families, men living in the rapid current of the world, who are subject to a variety of impressions which, in their busy minds, are made and effaced even in the course of a single day, can with difficulty estimate the force of unkind words upon those whose monotonous life leaves few opportunities of effacing any unwelcome impressions.”

Still more important is it that the capitalist, the great employer of labour, should understand how great a power, and, with it, how great a trust is confided into his hands.

“Can a man,” says our author, “who has this destiny intrusted to him, imagine that his vocation consists merely in getting together a large lump of gold, and then being off with it to enjoy it, as he fancies, in some other place; as if, indeed, the parable of the talents were to be taken literally, and that a man should think that he has done his part when he has made much gold and silver out of little?”

And he adds, that men in this position of life would, in the skilful direction and humane supervision of labour, “find room for the exercise of all the powers of their minds, of their best affections, and of whatever was worthy in their ambition.”

Nor do those who indirectly employ labour by purchasing articles, and giving commissions, escape from all responsibility in this matter; nor does our author fail to visit them with a due measure of reproof.

“What a striking instance,” he says, “the treatment of these poor milliner girls is of the neglect of duty on the part of employers! I mean of those who immediately superintend this branch of labour, and of those who cause it. Had the former been the least aware of their responsibility, would they have hesitated to remonstrate against the unreasonable orders of their customers? And as for the latter, for the ladies who expect such orders to be complied with, how sublimely inconsiderate of the comfort of those beneath them they must have become. I repeat it again: The careless cruelty in the world almost outweighs the rest.”

The subject of the second essay is of a practical importance that scarcely admits of exaggeration. When multitudes are crowded together, the dwelling-houses of the poor, the ventilation and drainage of the city, become matters of the most momentous consequence. Foul air, foul habits of living, have been the source of all our plagues, our choleras, our typhus fevers, our pestilences of every description. There never was any other source for these scourges of man’s indolence or cupidity. There never was a plague that had any other origin than dirt and idleness, and the injustice that treads down into the dirt. However such plagues have been propagated when they have once reached their dreadful maturity, this is their only origin. You must look into the alleys and wynds of Constantinople if you would know why the plague has ever travelled to us from the East: it originated there, just as the British cholera rises upon us, the natural exhalation of filth and impurity. Mr Helps seems to be occasionally embarrassed by some presumed objection to the interference of Government in these sanitary measures. We have heard some outcries, more or less sincere, against the centralisation which certain measures adopted by the Legislature have been thought to favour. The machinery which the Legislature had employed has been objected to; and it has been said that our local or municipal governments ought to be more largely intrusted or empowered. But we never heard that any sane man had objected to the fact of legislation itself being applied to what is really a matter of life or death to the community. We can hardly believe that anyone could be so utterly witless and besotted as to think this a proper occasion for exercising his jealousy against the interference of Government. It is quite true that there is a class of cases where the end is most desirable, and where yet that interference is deprecated. And why? Because legislation cannot accomplish the end proposed. To secure to each man a fair remuneration for his labour would be infinitely desirable. Government ought to do it—if it could. But it cannot; and therefore it is we oppose any legislative attempt to regulate the rate of wages. The attempt would only aggravate the mischief it sought to remedy.

Where there is a good end to be attained, which cannot be secured by separate and individual effort, and which can be attained by an effort of the national will through the organs of Government, there you have made out an indisputable case for the interference of the Legislature. It is not a good end if it be not worth the costly or cumbrous machinery you put in motion to accomplish it. In that case it is a slight and trivial object. Now, great sanitary measures answer entirely to the criterion we have given; they are of indisputable utility, worth any conceivable cost. The object to be attained is one which requires co-operation, which cannot be attained by separate and voluntary efforts; and it is one within the scope and power of legislation. “The Athenian in the comedy,” writes Mr Helps, “wearied of war, concludes a separate peace with the enemy for himself, his wife, his children, and his servant.” But it is only in the comedy that such a separate peace is possible. And it would be a still grosser fiction that would represent any one of our citizens, buried in the living mass of a town population, making a private treaty against foul air and filthy drainage, for himself, his wife, his children, and his servant. If his neighbour can make money by poisoning the air, or if he has but a senseless or depraved nostril, the whole district must suffer.

Friends in Council, a Series of Readings and Discourse thereon, has more of original matter than either of its predecessors; and the device adopted of interspersing fictitious conversation with the essays, gives relief and variety to the composition. The author, who takes the name of Milverton, is supposed to read his several papers before his friends—Dunsford, a clergyman—and Ellesmere, a barrister. After the essay a conversation ensues either on the subject of it, or on some other topic which it may have suggested, and which is not always very closely connected with the essay. We notice that, when the “Reading” has been rather dull, the “Discourse,” by a just compensation, is more sprightly than usual. Thus the attention of the reader is never allowed to flag for any length of time; although here also it is sometimes tried by that theme-like writing we have spoken of before. Essays on “Truth,” on “Greatness,” have a very formidable aspect. He who has anything of his own on topics like these should tell it us at once, and with as little prefatory or formal matter as possible. We do not want the whole skeleton of an essay for one single pound of flesh. Here is “An Essay upon History,” which does not occupy a very long space, but where we have the subject laid out in regular sections. 1. Why History should be read; 2. How History should be read; 3. By whom History should be written; and so forth. Why, it is dreary as land-measuring. All this superficial measurement, so many acres of bog, so many of pasture, we could willingly dispense with. If you have any edible root, or but a wild-flower gathered from a hedge, give us that, and give it at once. One is not to survey a whole district every time one digs out a potato.

The character of Ellesmere is well sustained throughout the conversations; it is quite a life-like and dramatic sketch. He talks neither better nor worse than many a clear-headed barrister of Westminster Hall. Under a glittering hardness of manner he retains kind feelings and genuine convictions. Such men as Ellesmere every one has encountered. They repel you at first by their flippancy, their boundless impudence of assertion, and their perpetual air of mockery and derision: you think they have neither love for anything, nor faith in anything; but, on closer acquaintance, they are found really to have a heart under that jingling coat of mail which they carry over it. Let us give a specimen of the lighter manner of Ellesmere. An Essay on Education has been read.

“Ellesmere.—You have been unexpectedly merciful to us. The moment I heard the essay given out, there flitted before my frightened mind volumes of reports, Battersea schools, Bell, Wilderspin, normal farms, National Society, British schools, interminable questions about how religion might be separated altogether from secular education, or so much religion taught as all religious sects could agree in. These are all very good things for people to discuss, I dare say; but, to tell the truth, the whole subject sits heavy on my soul. I meet a man of inexhaustible dulness, and he talks to me for three hours upon some great subject—this very one of education, for instance—till I sit entranced by stupidity, thinking the while, ‘And this is what we are to become by education—to be like you?’ Then I see a man like D——, a judicious, reasonable, conversable being, knowing how to be silent too—a man to go through a campaign with—and I find he cannot read or write.

“Milverton.—This sort of contrast is just the thing to strike you, Ellesmere; and yet you know as well as any of us, that to bring forward such contrasts by way of depreciating education would be most unreasonable....

“Ellesmere.—I wanted to tell you that I think you are quite right, Milverton, in saying a good deal about multifariousness of pursuit. You see a wretch of a pedant, who knows all about tetrameters, or statutes of uses, but who can hardly answer his child a question as they walk about the garden together. The man has never given a good thought or look to nature. Well then, again, what a stupid thing it is that we are not all taught music. Why learn the language of many portions of mankind, and leave the universal language of the feelings, as you would call it, unlearnt!

“Milverton.—I quite agree with you; but I thought you always set your face, or rather your ears, against music.

“Dunsford.—So did I.

“Ellesmere.—I should like to know all about it. It is not to my mind that a cultivated man should be quite thrown out by any topic of conversation, or that there should be any form of human endeavour or accomplishment which he has no conception of.”

In the quotation we shall next give, it is the good sense of Milverton which perhaps takes the lead. The Essay has been on Public Improvements, and this is part of the conversation which ensues:—

“Ellesmere.—Another very merciful essay! When we had once got upon the subject of sanitary improvements, I thought we should soon be five-fathom deep in blue books, reports, interminable questions of sewerage, and horrors of all kinds.

“Milverton.—It would be difficult to say too much about sanitary matters—that is, if by saying much one could gain attention. I am convinced that the most fruitful source of physical evil to mankind has been impure air, arising from circumstances which might have been obviated. Plague and pestilence of all kinds—cretinism, too, and all scrofulous disorders—are probably mere questions of ventilation.

“Ellesmere.—Seriously speaking, I quite agree with you. And what delights me in sanitary improvements is, that they can hardly do harm. Give a poor man good air, and you do not diminish his self-reliance. You only add to his health and vigour—make more of a man of him.... There is an immensity of nonsense uttered about making people happy, which is to be done, according to happiness-mongers, by quantities of sugar and tea, and suchlike things. One knows the importance of food, but there is no Elysium to be got out of it.

“Milverton.—I know what you mean. Suppose you could give them oceans of tea and mountains of sugar, and abundance of any luxury that you choose to imagine, but at the same time you inserted a hungry, envious spirit; and then what have you done?... You do not know what injury you may do a man, when you destroy all reverence in him. It will be found out some day that men derive more pleasure and profit from having superiors than from having inferiors.... To come to minor matters. It is a great pity that the system of building upon leases should be so commonly adopted. Nobody expects to live out the leasehold term which he takes to build upon. C. always says that the modern lath-and-plaster system is a wickedness; and upon my word I think he is right. It is inconceivable to me how a man can make up his mind to build, or do anything else, in a temporary, slight, insincere fashion. What has a man to say for himself who must sum up the doings of his life in this way, ‘I chiefly employed myself in making and selling things which seemed to be good, and were not, and nobody has occasion to bless me for anything I have done’?

“Ellesmere.—Humph! you put it mildly. But the man has made, perhaps, seven per cent of his money; or, if he has made no per cent, he has ruined several men of his own trade, which is not to go for nothing when a man is taking stock of his good deeds.”

Recreation is a favourite subject with our author. We have an essay on it here. He is very solicitous that amusement should be found for the people: our own notion is that people will best amuse themselves, and that it would be the hardest thing in the world to attempt to do this for them. However, there are many good things on this subject in Mr Helps’s Essay.

“If ever a people,” he says, “required to be amused, it is we sad-hearted Anglo-Saxons. Heavy eaters, hard thinkers, often given up to a peculiar melancholy of our own, with a climate that, for months together, would frown away mirth if it could—many of us with very gloomy thoughts about our hereafter: if ever there were a people who should avoid increasing their dulness by all work and no play, we are that people. ‘They took their pleasure sadly,’ says Froissart, ‘after their fashion.’ We need not ask of what nation Froissart was speaking.”

See that Dutchman, how lumpish, how very fat he gets—he is the very person who ought to dance, and he stands looking on. But your Dutchman does not want to dance. Foreigners marvel how Englishmen can spend their Sunday as they do—so very monotonously, as it seems—they have no idea how very agreeable mere rest is to the man who has been energetically occupied the whole week. “All work, and no play,” sounds very terrible; but ask any man when he has been most happy, and he will tell you, when he was absorbed in his work, when play would have been a mere hindrance, when the mere pleasure of relieved attention, or of quick animal movement after one constrained position, was all the amusement he could have welcomed. Work is the greatest pleasure we have—while it is the predominant habit, and no longer. Remember this, you busy philanthropists.

The subject of slavery occupies a very prominent place; several consecutive Readings are devoted to it. The whole is brought to bear upon the existence of negro slavery in the southern states of America. Mr Helps combats every excuse that has been brought forward in its defence, and argues that it is as needless as it is cruel and unjust.

We ourselves will not for a moment attempt to justify what is plainly opposed to the fundamental laws of morality. We would beg leave simply to suggest that these great laws of morality present us with a model of human conduct to which it is to be hoped human societies will one day attain. But human societies, in the course of this progress, cannot be altogether governed by such rules. A perfect morality is the last thing to be realised. The law of progress being assumed, it is necessary that humanity should pass through many phases by no means reconcilable to the pure laws of morality. Such are all Roman empires, all Indian conquests, all colonisations where the hunting-field of the aborigines is converted into a corn-field, and the native inhabitants driven back and exterminated, and perhaps many other achievements and institutions of human societies which are not even suspected at present of having any taint of immorality.

Touching this very subject of slavery, we see that in early and patriarchal times it was the necessary form which the relation took between the owner of land or flocks and his labourer. It is here the natural predecessor of our present system of payment by wages. Money payment of wages, it is plain, could have no place till money was in general use—till markets had been formed—till something of trade and commerce had been established. In earliest times the landlord must pay his labourer by supplying him with food and clothing. But the labourer could not save up his food for the period of old age or the days of sickness. Presuming, therefore, that the owner of land or flocks was to keep possession of his property, that arrangement which we denominate slavery was the only equitable one which could be made. If the wealthy patriarch were to say to his labourer, I will feed and clothe you so long as you are willing to serve me, and do serve me, the result would be, that in sickness and in old age the labourer would be utterly destitute. The only fair bargain that could be made was just this, to buy the labour of the man for his whole life, by sustaining him for his whole life. The labourer must become his bondsman.

There is also another origin of slavery odious enough—that of war. Here the captive is only spared from death to be made an unwilling drudge for life. Slavery may then become one of the most terrible curses and crimes of a community. We merely point out that there is a state of society in which it is inevitable. With the introduction of commerce better forms of relationship between landlord and labourer become possible, and are, or ought to be, adopted.

Now, reverting to the case before us of the southern states of America, we presume that an advocate of their cause would urge that, owing to the simplicity and ignorance of the black population, and their careless and improvident character, the system of paying for labour by wages would be as inapplicable here as in those early and patriarchal times we have been alluding to. Here, also, the best forms of the bargain for both parties would be to buy the labour of the man for his whole life, by taking care of him for his whole life.

We do not acquiesce in this reasoning; at the same time we are ready to admit that it requires a more intimate knowledge of the negro population than we can possibly possess, to determine how far it ought to carry conviction. But presuming that it is a fair defence, there can be surely no doubt that it would be most desirable to cultivate a provident and reflective character in the negro, so far as this can be done during the continuance of slavery, in order that a better system may be introduced. That slavery brings with it a terrible abuse of power, must be admitted by every one. Granting, therefore, that no better form of relationship could at present be established between landlord and labourer, it must be infinitely desirable to prepare the way for a better. Here it is that we take up the controversy against the planters. Instead of doing their best to prepare the negro population for a better system, (which, if once established, would be to their own advantage as well,) they do their utmost to oppose the education of the slave, which is the only means of preparation they have in their power. In some provinces to educate a slave is treated as a criminal act; but doubtless there are very different laws and customs amongst different states and different masters. It is here, however, that we join issue with the planters. We do not like, and do not call for, sudden changes; we have always sought to allay rather than to excite the popular agitation of this topic. If the existing system is the only one at present practicable, we must, of force, accept it. We shall not tell the planter, in the high vein of certain moralists—if you and your white brethren cannot cultivate this soil without slave-labour, go to some other soil and to some other climate. Such high heroic maxims of morality, which we have not to practise ourselves, it is of very little use to preach to others. But we do say that, by opposing the education of the slave, the planters are rendering all but impossible that gradual change from one system to the other, which would be so much for the benefit of both parties. The ignorance of the slave may keep him unfit for manumission, but it will not secure him from the access of passion, and from sudden or violent attempts to obtain his liberty.

Mr Helps takes some pains to show that the negro is of the same species as the white man. What if he were not? What if the black population of Africa sprang originally from a different stock—their resemblance to ourselves would not be the less on this account. We are far from wishing to throw the least doubt upon the question; we would merely observe, that the advocate of permanent slavery, if such there be, would gain nothing by his doctrine of races. The negro is a man, just as certainly whether you call him a variety or a new species. The difference between him and ourselves is neither greater nor less; the bond of brotherhood is the same.

We pass on somewhat rapidly, that we may reserve space for the last, and in our opinion the far most interesting, of Mr Helps’s essays. In the Companions of my Solitude, we at length take leave entirely of that formal, precept-giving manner, which we cannot but think must have had some connection with the official state and character of our author. He now comes before us as the retired student and meditative man. He saunters through the woods or over the downs, revolving the hard problems of social philosophy. He is accompanied only by his thoughts; and these, which are the companions of his solitude, he gives us in an easy unrestrained manner. He has become an erring and perplexed mortal, like one of ourselves, and therefore has become instructive; he is open to dispute, and therefore suggests and teaches something. There is but one way of being always correct, and agreeing with everybody; it is to say nothing that can be of possible use to any one. Mr Helps closes his volume with a chapter on the “art of leaving off,” and evidently flatters himself that he has practised the art to perfection in the present instance. But if there be such a thing as leaving off too soon, Mr Helps has not been so successful as he imagines. He leaves off here a great deal too soon.

“When in the country,” it is thus the book opens, “I live much alone; and as I wander over downs and commons, and through lanes with lofty hedges, many thoughts come into my mind. I find, too, the same ones come again and again, and are spiritual companions. At times they insist upon being with me, and are resolutely intrusive. I think I will describe them, that so I may have more mastery over them....

“I think often of the hopes of the race here, of what is to become of our western civilisation, and what can be made of it. Others may pursue science or art, and I long to do so too; but I cannot help thinking of the state and fortune of large masses of mankind, and hoping that thought may do something for them. After all my cogitations, my mind generally returns to one thing, the education of the people. For want of general cultivation, how much individual excellence is crippled. Of what avail, for example, is it for any one of us to have surmounted any social terror, or any superstition, while his neighbours lie sunk in it. His conduct in reference to them becomes a constant care and burden.

“Meditating upon general improvement, I often think a great deal about the climate in these parts of the world; and I see that without much husbandry of our means and resources, it is difficult for us to be anything but low barbarians. The difficulty of living at all in a cold, damp, destructive climate is great. Socrates went about with very scanty clothing, and men praise his wisdom in caring so little for the goods of this life. He ate sparingly and of mean food. That is not the way, I suspect, that we can make a philosopher here. Here we must make prudence one of the substantial virtues.

“One thing, though, I see, and that is, that there is a quantity of misplaced labour—of labour which does not go in stern contest with the rugged world around us, in the endeavour to compel nature to give us our birthright, but in fighting with ‘strong delusions’ of all kinds, or rather of putting up obstacles which we laboriously knock down again. Law, for example—what a loss is there; of time, of heart, of love, of leisure! There are good men whose minds are set upon improving the law; but I doubt whether any of them are prepared to go far enough....

“There are many things done now in the law at great expense by private individuals, which ought to be done for all by officers of the State. It is as if each individual had to make a road for himself whenever he went out, instead of using the King’s highway.”

The whole passage is studded with thought. If we have abridged it in our extract, it has been only to save space: we would more willingly have quoted without any omission or interruption. We pause in the last paragraph to carry out a little further the observation it contains. Government pays the judges, but leaves the suitor to pay for all the preparatory services necessary to bring his cause before him to be adjudicated. Even officers of the court are paid by fees. One of the commissions for inquiring into the law has recommended the substitution of a salary from Government instead of this mode of remuneration. The recommendation, we believe, in some cases, has been already attended to. But, as Mr Helps suggests, much more might be done for the relief of the suitor. There is a well-known passage in Blackstone, wherein he tells us that kings, lords, and commons, army and navy, customs and taxes, have all for their great ultimate object, to seat a judge upon the bench, and put twelve jurymen in the jury-box. But kings, lords and commons, and the rest of these imposing powers have accomplished their task very inefficiently, if, before the suitor can have the benefit of judge and jury, he must pay the doorkeepers most exorbitantly.

It has at first a certain air of plausibility, to say, that he who wants to go to law must pay the expenses of it. But, in reality, those reap most completely the benefit of an established system of jurisprudence who never have occasion to go to law. To throw the expenses of justice on the hapless suitor is by no means equitable. As far as possible the whole society ought to take upon itself the burden and the costs of administering justice. We say as far as possible, because there are certain services which an attorney renders to his client, which it would not be well for the client himself to transfer to a salaried functionary. They would not be so effectually performed.

Of course we know that we are laying down general principles, out of hearing of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and we confess that there is little pleasure or profit in contemplating schemes to which he has so decisive an answer at hand—no funds, no ways and means. Nevertheless, in the course of our reading on this subject of law reform, we remember to have fallen in with a scheme or proposition which—setting aside the fiscal objections—won considerably upon us. Of all impracticable schemes it seemed to us the least unreasonable. It was this—to leave the function of the attorney at present untouched, but to join the barrister with the judge—having a bar appointed and paid by Government. A blow at the independence of the bar, it will be said, in the first place. But in these days of a free press and a representative Parliament, no political mischief can ensue from such a measure. We may proceed to discuss it as it would simply affect our jurisprudence.

The anonymous author of this proposal looks upon the saving of the fee paid to the counsel as the least part of the benefit to result from it. He is of opinion that it would ultimately lead to the framing of a simple intelligible code, both of substantial law and of procedure, and thus, indirectly, sweep away the causes of delay and of expenditure. The bar, under this system, would consist of a body of men who had thoroughly studied the law, and from whom the judges would be selected, who would act as assistants to justice, not as engaged partisans of the client. Some system of advocacy is required, because the suitors can very rarely state their own case, and the law bearing on it, with distinctness, nor marshal the evidence they have to bring into court. But this is the utmost duty of an advocate, if the administration of justice is the true end to be sought for. Zeal for the client which carries him farther than this, is zeal for injustice. The existing system of advocacy presents us with the very immoral practice, and the altogether most anomalous proceeding, of a highly cultivated lawyer not only stating the truth and the evidence on one side, (which is all that justice requires or admits,) but exercising his utmost ingenuity to disguise the truth, to distort the law, and to shut out the evidence upon the opposite side. All this leads to a perpetual entanglement of the law itself; whereas the bar ought, in reality, to present to us a cultivated and laborious class of men, who had made jurisprudence their great study, and who were there to expound the law to such as needed advice, to conduct the causes of such as had causes to try, to be the great depositaries of the learning and science of jurisprudence, and have it for their object and ambition to advance the jurisprudence of their country. The publicity with which their functions would be performed, the intellectual nature of those functions, and the fact that the judges would be chosen from their body, our author argues, would be sufficient security that they would not grow sluggish or neglectful in the discharge of their duties. As to displays of oratory—if oratory be regarded as an appeal to passion—he boldly asserts that a court of justice is not a fit arena for it. Such eloquence may be carried into Parliament, into public meetings of a hundred descriptions; and there is the pulpit and the lecture-room for the display of oratory of a reflective and imaginative cast. But there is an eloquence which consists in lucid, succinct statement of law and of facts; this, which has been often described as the eloquence of the bench, in contradistinction to that of the bar, is the only species which it is at all desirable to cultivate in a court of justice. Such are the outlines of our author’s scheme, and his reasons for it. But we have no wish to enter further into what bears so evidently the character of a quite imaginary reform.

From the law Mr Helps takes us to the church, and to some of the delicate questions which are now agitated with respect to it. This is a topic on which he both interests and tantalises us. Whether from a prudent restraint, or a timidity not inexcusable, there is evidently much in his thoughts on this subject which he withholds. When we express a wish that such a man as Mr Helps would speak out fully on this topic, it is not because we expect, or ought rationally to expect, any novelty upon questions so long agitated, but because, if we mistake not, he is one of a party amongst English laymen who have become important by their numbers, their intelligence, and their piety. They belong to the national church; they do not desire to quit it; but they desire, in some way which we do not clearly understand, to render its ritual and its discipline more effective. We should wish persons of this description to explain themselves distinctly. The following intimations of opinion we ourselves read with interest, and, as we have said, felt a little tantalised that they were not more than intimations:—

“As I went along, I thought of the Church of England and of what might be its future fortunes. One’s acquaintances who meet one in the streets shrug their shoulders and exclaim, ‘What a state the Church is in! Oh that these questions that divide it had never been raised!’ I do not agree with them, and sometimes I tell them so. If there are these great differences amongst thoughtful men about great subjects, why should they (the differences) be stifled? Are we always to be walking about as masked figures?

“For my own part, it has long appeared to me that our Church stands upon foundations which need more breadth and solidity, both as it regards the hold it ought to have on the reason, and on the affection of its members....

“As regards affection, how can any but those who are naturally devout and affectionate, which is not the largest class, have an affectionate regard for anything which presents so cold and formal an appearance as the Church of England? The services are too long; and, for the most part, are surrounded by the most prosaic circumstances. Too many sermons are preached; and yet, after all, too little is made by preaching. Order, decency, cleanliness, propriety, and very often good sense, are to be seen in full force in Anglican Churches once a-week; but there is a deficiency of heartiness.

“The perfection to be aimed at, as it seems to me, and so I have said before, would be a Church with a very simple creed, and very grand ritual, and a useful and devoted priesthood. But these combinations are only in utopias, blessed islands, and other fabulous places: no vessel enters their ports, for they are as yet only in the minds of thoughtful men.

“In forming such an imaginary Church, there certainly are some things that might be adopted from the Roman Catholics. The other day I was at Rouen. I went to see the grand old cathedral. The great western doors were thrown wide open. Right upon the market place filled with flowers, and in the centre aisle, not before any image, a poor woman and her child were praying. I was only there a few minutes, and these two figures remain impressed upon my mind. It is surely very good that the poor should have some place free from the restraints, interruptions, the familiarity and the squalidness of home, where they may think a great thought, utter a lonely sigh, a fervent prayer, an inward wail. And the rich need the same thing too....

“People say to themselves if we touch this or that thing which they disapprove of, we do not know what harm we may be doing to people of less insight or less caution than ourselves, and so they go on, content with a very rude attempt indeed at communion in spiritual matters, provided they do not, as they would say, unsettle their neighbours. There is something good and humble in this; there is something also of indifference: if our ancestors had always been content with silent protests against the thing they disapproved of, we might have been in a worse position than we are now.

“The intellectual energies of cultivated men want directing to the great question. If there is doubt in any matter, shall we not examine? Instead of that, men shut their thoughts up, and pretend to be orthodox—play at being orthodox.”

“A simple creed and a grand ritual”—Are they not incompatible? In all the instances we can call to mind the ritual has a spiritual meaning, and this spiritual meaning becomes a portion of the creed. For our own part, we are like those acquaintances of Mr Helps, who deeply regret that any divisions should exist in the Church. At the same time we quite agree with Mr Helps himself in recognising the impossibility of preventing those divisions, by imposing silence on any considerable number of its genuine members.

A National Church can exist no longer than it represents a certain amount of the national piety. Those who conform to it from policy, or indifference, or love of ease and tranquillity, lend to it a secondary support of unquestionable importance. But the least reflection will tell us that this support is most truly of a secondary character. If the spirit of piety has deserted it, and gone elsewhere, the institution may be said to be defunct. Now, whilst only a few sincere and pious members of the Church feel a desire for any change in its ritual, they will do well to remain silent; but if the numbers of such men increase, it becomes of importance that they should be heard, and, if possible, their wishes attended to. It is for such men, and by such men, that the Church really exists. As for the politician, or the worldling, or the mere formalist, they may buttress round a church when it is once erected, but not for them was it built, nor by them alone could it possibly be sustained. When a man of the world, for instance, complains that the Church services are too long, we pass by the murmur unheeded. Long or short, he cares in his heart very little about them; perhaps finds in their acknowledged length a convenient excuse for not attending them at all. It is quite a different matter when the sincere pietist, for whom these services are framed, expresses the same opinion, and laments that by the time the sermon commences, from which he would desire to profit, his attention has been quite exhausted. We repeat that we should prefer that such men as Mr Helps should explain to us distinctly what changes they would effect. If they are such as are not adverse to the broad principles of Protestantism, it is of moment that their wishes should be consulted. If they are, indeed, such as would tend to efface the great landmarks of our Protestant faith, let us know them—that we may resist them to the utmost.

No small portion of the volume before us is occupied by a subject as important as it is delicate and difficult to treat. Mr Helps calls it “the sin of great cities.” The appellation is very correct, and of itself gives rise to one consolatory reflection. There may be illicit pleasure in the village or the hamlet, but it is only in great towns that the degrading trade of the prostitute is known. Human society can therefore exist without this foul and shameful species of commerce.

Our author has been meditating on the sad waste of youth and beauty which the streets of a great city reveal to us, and on the many women who might have made a home happy, who are left to corrupt and to be corrupted in the highways of life; and he thus prettily introduces his subject:—

“It was a bright winter’s day; and I sat upon a garden seat in a sheltered nook towards the south, having come out of my study to enjoy the warmth, like a fly that has left some snug crevice to stretch his legs upon the unwontedly sunny pane in December. My little daughter (she is a very little thing, about four years old) came running up to me, and when she had arrived at my knees, held up a straggling but pretty weed. Thus, with great earnestness, as if fresh from some controversy on the subject, she exclaimed, ‘Is this a weed, papa? is this a weed?’

“‘Yes, a weed,’ I replied.

“With a look of disappointment she moved off to the one she loved best amongst us; and asking the same question, received the same answer.

“‘But it has flowers,’ the child replied.

“‘That does not signify; it is a weed,’ was the inexorable answer.

“Presently after a moment’s consideration, the child ran off again, and meeting the gardener just near my nook, though out of sight from where I sat, she coaxingly addressed him.

“‘Nicholas dear, is this a weed?’

“‘Yes, Miss; they call it shepherds’ purse.’

“A pause ensued. I thought the child was now fairly silenced by authority, when all at once the little voice began again, ‘Will you plant it in my garden, Nicholas dear? Do plant it in my garden.’

“There was no resisting the anxious entreaty of the child; and man and child moved off together to plant the weed in one of those plots of ground which the children walk about upon a good deal, and put branches of trees in and grownup flowers, and which they call their garden.

“But the child’s words, ‘Will you plant it in my garden?’ remained upon my mind. That is what I have always been thinking, I exclaimed; and it is what I will begin by saying.”

Mr Helps asserts, with perfect truth, that there is no hope for any great reform here, whilst the moral opinion of men remains what it is upon the subject. The religious world are sufficiently stringent upon every breach of chastity; but men in general have very inadequate notions of the evil they do, when they encourage the polluting and pestilential commerce of the prostitute. It used to be the fashion—and perhaps is still in some quarters—to defend this corruption on the plea that it draws off the libertine from the modest and virtuous woman. A very poor argument. It makes the libertine. Those who corrupt or invade the chastity of women, are the same persons who have been themselves corrupted by association with a class of the opposite sex, whose very business it has become to break down all the restraints of modesty. It is here that a Lovelace receives his first instructions; and the annals of Newgate will tell us that those who have committed still more violent crimes, are not men who have lived chaste up to the time of their offence. It makes the libertine. Still, if we had Ellesmere amongst us, we should hear him replying, we suspect, in some such manner as this:—I know that it is not the maiden knight who practises the arts of the seducer. I know very well that he who is tried at the Old Bailey has not rushed from a life of innocence and purity to the foul violence he has committed. But this, too, I know, that if men become, in their moral opinion, more strict against one form of unconjugal pleasure, they will become more indulgent in regard to some other form. There will be more intrigue. I detest this Venus of the market place as much as you; but I cannot help seeing that, if you banish her, you must expect more lovemaking to go on in the private dwelling-house. I do not say, however, that upon the whole this might not be a good bargain.

But we have not Ellesmere with us, and we shall attend to Milverton. As one part of his subject he touches on the cruel indifference which some men, who would still be thought very moral, can be guilty of towards their illegitimate children. We should have hesitated to draw the following picture; we should have doubted whether so flagrant a hypocrisy existed in the world. Mr Helps, however, is a cautious man, and probably drew from real life.

“I suppose there are few things clearer to the human mind than that a father owes duties to his child. The dullest savages have seen that. How can a man for a moment imagine that any difference of rank between the mother of his child and himself can absolve him from paternal duties? I am lost in astonishment at the notion. And then imagine a man performing all manner of minor duties, neglecting this first one the while. I always fancy that we may be surrounded by spiritual powers. Now, think what a horrible mockery it must seem to them, when they behold a man going to charity dinners, busying himself about flannel for the poor, jabbering about education at public meetings, immersed in indifferent forms and ceremonies of religion, or raging against such things, because it is his duty, as he tells you; and at the door, holding a link, or perhaps at that moment bringing home the produce of small thefts in a neighbouring narrow alley—is his own child, a pinched-up, haggard, outcast, cunning-looking little thing. Throw down, man, the flannel and the soap, and the education, and the Popery, and the Protestantism, and go up that narrow alley and tend your child. Do not heap that palpably unjust burden on the back of a world which has enough at all times of its own to bear. If you cannot find your own child, adopt two others in its place, and let your care for them be a sort of sin-offering.”

We have extended our extracts very far, but we do not like exactly to leave off with this melancholy topic. At the same time it is by no means our wish to spoil the perusal of this little book to such as have not yet read it, by being too liberal in our quotations. From the number of passages against which we find our pencil-mark, we will extract one more. Mr Helps makes some observations worth giving reflection to, on the power which the weak have over the strong—in what he calls “the tyranny of the weak.”

“I venture to say that there is no observant man of the world who has lived to the age of thirty, who has not seen numerous instances of severe tyranny exercised by persons belonging to one or other of these classes—(the sick, the aged, the spoilt, the pious but weak-minded); and which tyranny has been established, continued and endured, solely by reason of the weakness, real or supposed, of the persons exercising it. Talking once with a thoughtful man on this subject, he remarked to me, that, of course, the generous suffered much from the tyranny I was speaking of, as the strength of it was drawn from their strength.

“If you come to analyse it, it is a tyranny exercised by playing upon the good-nature, the fear of responsibility, the dread of acting selfishly, the horror of giving pain, prevalent among good and kind people. They often know that it is a tremendous tyranny they are suffering under, but they do not feel it the less because they are consenting parties.”

We must now bid adieu to Mr Helps, again expressing our hope that he will give us more of these thoughts, which we promise him shall be the “Companions of our Solitude” as well as of his own.

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