Victorian Worthies | Page 5

to one another, and were unlike their successors of our own day. They were more evidently in earnest, less conscious of themselves, more indifferent to ridicule, more absorbed in their work. To many of them full work and the cares of office seemed a necessity of life. It was a typical Victorian who, after sixteen years of public service, writing a family letter, says, 'I feel that the interest of business and the excitement of responsibility are indispensable to me, and I believe that I am never happier than when I have more to think of and to do than I can manage in a given period'. Idleness and insouciance had few temptations for them, cynicism was abhorrent to them. Even Thackeray was perpetually 'caught out' when he assumed the cynic's pose. Charlotte Bront?, most loyal of his admirers and critics, speaks of the 'deep feelings for his kind' which he cherished in his large heart, and again of the 'sentiment, jealously hidden but genuine, which extracts the venom from that formidable Thackeray'. Large-hearted and generous to one another, they were ready to face adventure, eager to fight for an ideal, however impracticable it seemed. This was as true of Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and all the genus irritabile vatum, as of the politicians and the men of action. They made many mistakes; they were combative, often difficult to deal with. Some of them were deficient in judgement, others in the saving gift of humour; but they were rarely petty or ungenerous, or failed from faint-heartedness or indecision. Vehemence and impatience can do harm to the best causes, and the lives of men like the Napiers and the Lawrences, like Thomas Arnold and Charles Kingsley, like John Bright and Robert Lowe, are marred by conflicts which might have been avoided by more studied gentleness or more philosophic calm. But the time seemed short in which they could redress the evils which offended them. They saw around them a world which seemed to be lapped in comfort or swathed in the dead wrappings of the past, and would not listen to reasoned appeals; and it would be futile to deny that, by lifting their voices to a pitch which offends fastidious critics, Carlyle and Ruskin did sometimes obtain a hearing and kindle a passion which Matthew Arnold could never stir by his scholarly exhortations to 'sweetness and light'.
But it would be a mistake to infer from such clamour and contention that the Victorians did not enjoy their fair share of happiness in this world. The opposite would be nearer the truth: happiness was given to them in good, even in overflowing measure. Any one familiar with Trevelyan's biography of Macaulay will remember with what fullness and intensity he enjoyed his life; and the same fact is noted by Dr. Mozley in his Essay on that most representative Victorian, Thomas Arnold. The lives of Delane, the famous editor of The Times, of the statesman Palmerston, of the painter Millais, and of many other men in many professions, might be quoted to support this view. In some cases this was due to their strong family affections, in others to their genius for friendship. A good conscience, a good temper, a good digestion, are all factors of importance. But perhaps the best insurance against moodiness and melancholy was that strenuous activity which made them forget themselves, that energetic will-power which was the driving force in so many movements of the day.
How many of the changes of last century were due to general tendencies, how far the single will of this man or that has seriously affected its history, it is impossible to estimate. To many it seems that the r?le of the individual is played out. The spirit of the coming era is that of organized fellowship and associated effort. The State is to prescribe for all, and the units are, somehow, to be marshalled into their places by a higher collective will. Under the shadow of socialism the more ambitious may be tempted to quit the field of public service at home and to look to enterprises abroad--to resign poor England to a mechanical bureaucracy, a soulless uniformity where one man is as good as another. But it is difficult to believe that society can dispense with leaders, or afford to forget the lessons which may be learnt from the study of such noble lives. The Victorians had a robuster faith. Their faith and their achievements may help to banish such doubts to-day. As one of the few survivors of that Victorian era has lately said: 'Only those whose minds are numbed by the suspicion that all times are tolerably alike, and men and women much of a muchness, will deny that it was a generation of intrepid efforts forward.' Some fell in