THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. T the close of his sixty-third A year, the Spirit of the Age has received the rite of baptism at the hands of a certain distinguished philosopher, whose connexion with other 'spirits,' more or less apocryphal, renders the function peculiarly appropriate. We have all heard much concerning this 'Decemnovenarianism' for a long time before he received his formidable cognomen. For good and evil he has been a byword. While by one party a mere reference to his numerals Anno Domini was supposed sufficient to convict all ignorance and superstition of utter anachronism and imposture; by another party a keen sarcasm was understood to be conveyed against the world at large by the hint that it has the bad taste to exist in a century so low in the chronologic scale, instead of in the artistic cinquecento, or those yet nobler Ages of Faith,' profanely termed the Dark.' Perhaps it may not be unprofitable to afford brief study to the question, What is this Spirit of the Nineteenth Century? How does it differ from that of other times? and is it on the whole worthy of either the laudation or disparagement with which it is commonly treated? On the face of the matter appears a fact, which yet is often curiously overlooked both by eulogists and depreciators. The Spirit of the Age is not singular but dual. We have had two generations since the century began. There is Nineteenth Century Père and Nineteenth Century Fils; and they are as different from one another in principles, opinions, manners, and costume as fathers and sons usually contrive to be. Praise or blame addressed vaguely to both, must usually be unjust to one or the other. Let us try to draw the portraits of these two characters, so as to mark such differences as clearly as we may. Men and women who enjoyed their youthful prime in the first quarter of this century, must have been as little imbued with what we commonly think the Spirit of our Age, as any generation in history. VOL. LXIX. NO. CCCCXII. With the few exceptions of salient men like Shelley, who held ultra free opinions, and were socially outlawed for holding them, the time was to the last degree conservative. The retreating wane of the great French Revolution carried men's minds back further than they had gone for long years towards Absolutism in politics and Traditionalism in religion. The connexion between liberty and the guillotine, free-thinking and a Reign of Terror, presided over by a Goddess of Reason, was fresh in all men's minds. The equally intimate relation previously existing between despotism and the Bastile, orthodoxy and Autos-da-fé, was sufficiently distant to be forgotten. The Whig and Liberal of those days was more conservative than the Tory of our own; and the Tory was a being of whom no living specimen remains, any more than of the Elephas Primigenius. His footsteps may be tracked in a few old sand-coloured books, and his teeth lie embedded in the lower strata of Blackwood and the Quarterly. Nearly all which constitutes the most living life of our time was then unknown. Scientific theories and discoveries, and philanthropic schemes occupied no space compared to the theatre and the card - table. Social Science, proper, was then unborn. The principle of association, with all its machinery (so familiar to us) of committees, patrons, secretaries, subscribers, meetings, and reports, was as little known as the omnibuses which each society resembles in purpose and noise, and which are as common as such societies now. There existed then the 'Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,' and the 'Society for the Discountenancing of Vice and the Promotion of the Christian Religion and Virtue.' Who does not feel the verbosity of these titles? proof enough that they belonged to the age when there was ample space in the world for their swelling skirts to expand, and time enough on men's hands to repeat six words where two would suffice. It is needless to point out the familiar I I changes wrought by Telegraphs, Steam, Chloroform, the Penny Post, and Photography, which if we could deduct from our present modes of existence, they would collapse like Nadar's balloon. These outward differences typified the inward between our fathers' lives and ours. They were emphatically slow lives, in the cant sense, and in all senses. People had leisure in those days. That constant sense of being drivennot precisely like 'dumb' cattle, but cattle who must read, write, and talk more in twenty-four hours than twenty-four hours will permit, can never have been known to them, nor the curious sort of an ache, somewhere between head, chest, and stomach, which comes of such driving. People read Richardson still in country parts, and Scott was the nearest approach to 'sensation' known. They dined at four o'clock so as to secure the loss of the best part of every day, even if they were not too muddled afterwards to attend to anything. Cards were played by grave ecclesiastics, and ladies of eminent virtues and 'parts,' at ten in the forenoon, if the day chanced to be rainy, and from six till midnight, whether it rained or shone. Drives were taken with four or even six horses, not for the purpose of going the faster, but rather for that of slow dignity. They danced minuets still in 1810: in fact life was a minuet, only now and then breaking out into some gavotte of masquerade or rout, or wild gambling wherein human nature avenged itself. Was all this dull to them as it seems to us? Was it really dull at all? Were those old Tories and card-players so far behind us intellectually and morally? Some doubts may be entertained on the subject. In the first place, life among all classes in the last generation seems to have been much less a struggle than it is with us. Perhaps in the highest sense it lacked something of aspiration, something of the longing which pervades all nobler hearts now, to do some one thing, however small, towards hastening God's kingdom in the world, and striking one blow, however weak, in the battle for the Right and the True. But Orm if it A the world in vails to the household The gentleman and lady of the last generation not only led lives essentially different from ours-they stood themselves in widely different moral and mental positions. The ethics of 1800-1820, and of 18401860, are opposed in their very sources, so are the theologies, so are the politics, so are the æsthetics. Very briefly can we point out these contrasts. The morals of the last generation were all embued with the spirit of Paley, if not absolutely founded on his miserable Moral Philosophy. Locke's metaphysics were still dominant in England, though Kant had revolutionized Germany. It was generally accepted that we knew right and wrong only because an outward Revelation had commanded the one and forbidden the other; or else (as Bentham taught the more advanced minds) that a lot of pleasures' could only be judged to be good or evil by their results on the greatest happiness of the greatest number.' There was 'no higher law' heard of, nor was there any theoretic admission of a purely unselfish motive. It was considered quite a liberal and enlightened thing to say, 'It is not the Fear of Hell, but the Hope of Heaven, which ought to guide us.' Virtue was, in Paley's phrase, 'doing good for the sake of eternal reward in heaven.' Of course, human hearts were not really cramped to such pitiful systems. The same clergyman whom the writer has heard teaching a class of scholars that it was wrong to commit murder, because the Sixth Commandment forbids homicide, and scoffing at the suggestion that Conscience gave the law of the case; that clergyman acted probably with as direct and simple adherence to his own conscience on all moral questions, as any of those who count reason ripe by resting on the law within.' The same noble old soldier who said he acted always from Hope of Heaven, probably never once in his whole life thought whether he was increasing his chances of going thither by being just, generous, and brave. False theories assimilate with difficulty in healthy human organizations, and, as the teetotallers say of alcohol, only run about the bloodvessels, and disorder the brains now and then, without ever becoming a part of the individual's own flesh and blood. Still these bad ethics were bad things, and tended to lower the tone of sentiment. Selfish principles did not shock the ear as they do now, for they were heard every Sunday, attached to all holiest sentiments and duties. God himself was said to have made man 'for His own glory;' and man was to love Him (as Waterland said) because He is more able to make us happy than all beside."* Small marvel was it then that those who could use such a word as 'love' in such a sense misapplied it equally in human relationships. Marriage was a thing understood to be properly contracted, if the man or woman had the means of bestowing some benefits; and statecraft, war, philanthropy, science, and art might surely be pursued by any man avowedly for his own fame, and with no nobler end, when it was taught that the creation of heaven and earth had had no other aim, even with Him whose 'glory' could have no witness of equals, or receive increase from the hallelujahs of the universe. There seems to have been a sharper line drawn in those days also than we now admit between the higher and lower kinds of virtue. * Waterland's Sermon on the Nature and Kinds of Self-Love. II 2 the old buffer should have nothing for his money.' After this the tragedy flew backwards and forwards like a shuttlecock, between Boreham Park and all the managers and publishers who were thought of sufficient standing to deserve the compliment of the offer; but it became at last evident that they were all in a conspiracy to keep down rising genius. 'I wouldn't mind paying the whole expense myself, rather than not have it acted,' said Mr. Cheshire, when the packet had been reluctantly opened, and found to contain, besides the tragedy, only Mr.'s compliments. 'Papa,' said the young lady, somebody has been saying-at least I've been thinking that we might get Charles's play acted among ourselves. A great many people have private plays now; and there's the old drawing-room, which is too big for anything almost, but it would do beautifully for a theatre. It would be so nice.' among th the garde in some v ble, two an unde adverse stones o and prev ning sm upsettin that obs any mor dare say The in due Society Mr. Cheshire said 'Pho! pho!' appear two ye from steadily what le being so tha whethe the ad negati The back t should the m blow access In the former days of tribulation, before her father's accession to the throne of Boreham Park, her chief friend-in-ordinary had been the daughter of a surgeon residing in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, at whose house she had become acquainted with a young lawyer, then eating his way to the bar in the hall. The three had had many romantic walks It v him t a gre shoul groun the s youn Th of t most to p by th the i the play crue in w whi gag in q whi wit tim by don pla you for He do know how to choose among 'rotten apples,' and take the one that has the most sound spots. must run the risk of offending his possible father-in-law, or flout Dame Fortune the first time she had shown him any favour. The former he believed might be made to hear reason; the lady was known to be deaf as well as blind; so he resolved to trust to the chapter of accidents, and a certain influence that he knew he might count upon to make his peace, and plunging boldly into his client's cause, brought him victoriously out of the troubled waters, and placed a crown of glory on his own new wig. He wrote to Adelina, imploring her to keep the newspapers out of her father's way for a few days; and though she did not know how to manage that, not being privileged to enter the club, she did contrive by a well-timed excursion to keep her father out of the way of the newspapers. Shortly after their return came the welcome news-welcome, at least, to the young lady-that Mr. Sharpe had been making wonderful progress, had been employed to defend a railway petition before a Committee of the House, and, after that, that he would be down in that part of the country on business connected with an approaching county election, so that there seemed every prospect that the lovers would meet once more, and possibly the vessel of their hopes be brought safely into port. Just at the entrance to the harbour, however, there came an unexpected squall that threatened considerably to retard the voyage, if not frustrate it altogether. Ever since the project of the play had been resolved in a committee of the whole house, that is, of Addy and her papa, the latter had been relieved from one of the greatest evils that can befal either a poor or a rich man that of being 'out of work,' and, fortunately for him, the tragedy required considerable aid from the carpenter. It was entitled The Rajah of Jabberabad; or, the Faithful Elephant, and the scene was laid, as may be conjectured, in India. I have not a very clear remembrance of the plot I know it was concerned with guilty machinations of an ambi and wicked young Englishman a tender-hearted and sentim Hindoo prince, who, together, pl against the domestic peace of family of a political resident. wicked young Englishman, w view to clear away an inconver elder brother, the Rajah to a priate a beautiful young En lady with whom he was most votedly and, as it afterwards peared, disinterestedly in Their knavish tricks were, how frustrated, and their politics founded, chiefly by the zeal sagacity of a faithful elephant, always carried off the villains time to prevent their villanies, picked up the virtuous and prod them no less àpropos. There a handsome young English of to love the lady and perform digies of chivalry, beard the mig Rajah surrounded by his court, rescue and carry off the heroine a whole army in pursuit. Rajah, I remember too, overtook captured the lovers; but in the moment of victory, he bethou himself of the lessons of a mission who had been the friend of youth, reflected that passions ou always to be controlled, and rendered the lady, with a n speech expressive of the deligh self-sacrifice. The English off was so powerfully struck by generosity, and so shocked tha benighted heathen should outdo self-renunciation a Christian E lish gentlemen, that he decli receiving the young lady, being solved, in his turn, to sacrifice feelings, so that the spectators came a little anxious concern her. settlement in life; when, s denly a shot was fired by the vill from behind a rock, and the h fell over a precipice into a la which we were given to understa was a favourite watering-pla for tigers and big serpents. T Faithful Elephant, however, scended the rocks, picked up body of the young officer, and stored it to his disconsolate frien and then devoted himself to t |