Heart | Page 6

cold, with all his impetuosity? so formal, in spite
of his rapidity? so little generous of spirit, notwithstanding all his
wonderful prosperity?"
Ah, Maria, if you had not been quite so unsophisticated, you would
have left out the latter "notwithstanding." Nothing hardens the heart,
dear child, like prosperity; and nothing dries up the affections more
effectually than this hot pursuit of wealth. The deeper a man digs into
the gold mine, the less able--ay, less willing--is he to breathe the sweet
air of upper earth, or to bask in the daylight of heaven: downward,
downward still, he casts the anchor of his grovelling affections, and
neither can nor will have a heart for any thing but gold.
Moreover, have you wondered, dear Maria, at the common fact (one
sees it in every street, in every village), that parental love is oftenest at
its zenith in the nursery, and then falls lower and lower on the
firmament of human life, as the child gets older and older? Look at all
dumb brutes, the lower animals of this our earth; is it not thus by
nature's law with them? The lioness will perish to preserve that very
whelp, whom she will rend a year or two hence, meeting the young lion
in the forest; the hen, so careful of her callow brood, will peck at them,
and buffet them away, directly they are fully fledged; the cow forgets
how much she once loved yonder well-grown heifer; and the
terrier-bitch fights for a bit of gristle with her own two-year-old, whom
she used to nurse so tenderly, and famished her own bowels to feed.
And can you expect that men, who make as little use as possible of
Heart, that unlucrative commodity--who only exercise Reason for
shrewd purposes of gain, not wise purposes of good, and who might as
well belong to Cunningham's "City of O," for any souls they seem to
carry about with them--can you expect that such unaffectioned,
unintelligent, unspiritualized animals, can rise far above the brute in

feeling for their offspring? No, Maria; the nursery plaything grows into
the exiled school-boy; and the poor child, weaned from all he ought to
love, soon comes to be regarded in the light of an expensive youth; he
is kept at arm's length, unblest, uncaressed, unloved, unknown; then he
grows up apace, and tops his father's inches; he is a man now, and may
well be turned adrift; if he can manage to make money, they are friends;
but if he can only contrive to spend it, enemies. Then the complacent
father moans about ingratitude, for he did his duty by the boy in
sending him to school.
O, faults and follies of the by-gone times, which lingered even to a
generation now speedily passing away!--ye are waning with it, and a
better dawn has broken on the world. Happily for man, the
multiplication of his kind, and pervading competition in all manner, of
things mercantile, are breaking down monopolies, and hindering unjust
accumulation, with its necessary love of gain. "Satisfied with little" is
young England's cry; a better motto than the "Craving after much" of
their fathers. No longer immersed, single-handed, in a worldly business,
which seven competitors now relieve him of; no longer engrossed with
the mint of gold gains, which a dozen honest rivals now are sharing
with him eagerly, the parent has leisure to instruct his children's minds,
to take an interest in their pursuits, and to cultivate their best affections.
Home is no longer the place perpetually to be driven from; the voices
of paternal duty and domestic love are thrillingly raised to lead the
tuneful chorus of society; and fathers, as well as mothers, are beginning
to desire that their children may be able to remember them hereafter as
the ever-sympathizing friend, the wisely indulgent teacher, the guide of
their religion, and the guardian of their love; quite as much as the payer
of their bills and the filler of their purses.
The misfortune of a past and passing generation has been, too much
money in too few hands; its faults, neglect of duty; its folly, to expect
therefrom the too-high meed of well-earned gratitude; and from this
triple root has grown up social selfishness, a general lack of Heart. No
parent ever yet, since the world was, did his duty properly, as God
intended him to do it, by the affections of the mind and the yearnings of
the heart, as well as by the welfare of the body with its means, and

lived to complain of an ungrateful child. He may think he did his duty;
oh yes, good easy man! and say so too, very, very bitterly; and the
world may echo his most partial verdict, crying shame on the unnatural
Goneril and Regan, bad