Some Private Views | Page 3

less
numerous than of old, are still studious--that is in their aspirations--to
avoid taking (shall I say delicately) the lower road; but only a few,
comparatively, are solicitous to reach the goal of the upper.
Let me once more observe that I am speaking of the ordinary
passengers--those who travel by the mail. Of the persons who are
convinced that there never was an Architect of the Universe, and that
Man sprang from the Mollusc, I know little or nothing: they mostly
travel two and two, in gigs, and have quarrelled so dreadfully on the
way, that, at the Inn, they don't speak to one another. The commonalty,

I repeat, are losing their hopes of heaven, just as the grown-up
schoolboy finds his paradise no more in home. I can remember when
divines were never tired of painting the lily, of indulging in the most
glowing descriptions of the Elysian Fields. A popular artist once drew a
picture of them: 'The Plains of Heaven' it was called, and the painter's
name was Martin. If he was to do so now, the public (who are vulgar)
would exclaim 'Betty Martin.' Not that they disbelieve in it, but that the
attractions of the place are dying out, like those of Bath and
Cheltenham.
Of course some blame attaches to the divines themselves that things
have come to such a pass. 'I protest,' says a great philosopher, 'that I
never enter a church, but the man in the pulpit talks so unlike a man, as
though he had never known what human joys or sorrows are--so
carefully avoids every subject of interest save _one_, and paints that in
colours at once so misty and so meretricious--that I say to myself, I will
never sit under him again.' This may, of course, be only an ingenious
excuse of his for not going to church; but there is really something in it.
The angels, with their harps, on clouds, are now presented to the eyes,
even of faith, in vain; they are still appreciated on canvas by an old
master, but to become one of them is no longer the common aspiration.
There is a suspicion, partly owing, doubtless, to the modern talk about
the dignity and even the divinity of Labour, that they ought to be doing
something else than (as the American poet puts it with characteristic ii
reverence) 'loafing about the throne;' that we ourselves, with no ear
perhaps for music, and with little voice (alas!) for praise, should take
no pleasure in such avocations. It is not the sceptics--though their
influence is getting to be considerable--who have wrought this change,
but the conditions of modern life. Notwithstanding the cheerful 'returns'
as to pauperism, and the glowing speeches of our Chancellors of the
Exchequer, these conditions are far harder, among the thinking classes,
than they were. The question 'Is Life worth Living?' is one that
concerns philosophers and metaphysicians, and not the persons I have
in my mind at all; but the question, 'Do I wish to be out of it?' is one
that is getting answered very widely--and in the affirmative. This was
certainly not the case in the days of our grand-sires. Which of them
ever read those lines--
'For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being

e'er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one
longing lingering look behind?'--
without a sympathetic complacency? This may not have been the best
of all possible worlds to them, but none of them wished to exchange it,
save at the proper time, and for the proper place. Thanks to overwork,
and still more to over-worry, it is not so now. There are many
prosperous persons in rude health, of course, who will ask (with a
virtuous resolution that is sometimes to be deplored), 'Do you suppose
then that I wish to cut my throat?' I certainly do not. Do not let us talk
of cutting throats; though, mind you, the average of suicides, so
admirably preserved by the Registrar-General and other painstaking
persons, is not entirely to be depended upon. You should hear the
doctors at my Inn (in the intervals of their abuse of their professional
brethren) discourse upon this topic--on that overdose of chloral which
poor B. took, and on that injudicious self-application of chloroform
which carried off poor C. With the law in such a barbarous state in
relation to self-destruction, and taking into account the feelings of
relatives, there was, of course, only one way of wording the certificate,
but--and then they shake their heads as only doctors can, and help
themselves to port, though they know it is poison to them.
It is an old joke that annuitants live for ever, but no annuity ever had
the effect of prolonging life which