A sweet sound came through the orange boughs, and floated to the ears of the Parson, as he wound slowly up the gentle ascent—so sweet, so silvery, he paused in delight—unaware, wretched man! that he was thereby conniving at Papistical errors. Soft it came, and sweet: softer and sweeter—"Ave Maria!" Violante was chanting the evening hymn to the Virgin Mother. The Parson at last distinguished the sense of the words, and shook his head with the pious shake of an orthodox Protestant. He broke from the spell resolutely, and walked on with a sturdy step. Gaining the terrace, he found the little family seated under an awning. Mrs. Riccabocca knitting; the Signor with his arms folded on his breast: the book he had been reading a few moments before had fallen on the ground, and his dark eyes were soft and dreamy. Violante had finished her hymn, and seated herself on the ground between the two, pillowing her head on her step-mother's lap, but with her hand resting on her father's knee, and her gaze fixed fondly on his face.
"Good evening," said Mr. Dale. Violante stole up to him, and, pulling him so as to bring his ear nearer to her lip, whispered, "Talk to papa, do—and cheerfully; he is sad."
She escaped from him, as she said this, and appeared to busy herself with watering the flowers arranged on stands round the awning. But she kept her swimming, lustrous eyes wistfully on her father.
"How fares it with you, my dear friend?"' said the Parson, kindly, as he rested his hand on the Italian's shoulder. "You must not let him get out of spirits, Mrs. Riccabocca."
"I am very ungrateful to her if I ever am so," said the poor Italian, with all his natural gallantry. Many a good wife, who thinks it is a reproach to her if her husband is ever "out of spirits," might have turned peevishly from that speech more elegant than sincere, and so have made bad worse. But Mrs. Riccabocca took her husband's proffered hand affectionately, and said with great naiveté—
"You see I am so stupid, Mr. Dale; I never knew I was so stupid till I married. But I am very glad you are come. You can get on some learned subject together, and then he will not miss so much his—"
"His what?" asked Riccabocca inquisitively.
"His country. Do you think that I can not sometimes read your thoughts?"
"Very often. But you did not read them just then. The tongue touches where the tooth aches, but the best dentist can not guess at the tooth unless one opens one's mouth.—Basta! Can we offer you some wine of our own making, Mr. Dale? it is pure."
"I'd rather have some tea," quoth the Parson hastily.
Mrs. Riccabocca, too pleased to be in her natural element of domestic use, hurried into the house to prepare our national beverage. And the Parson, sliding into her chair, said:
"But you are dejected, then? Fie! If there's a virtue in the world at which we should always aim, it is cheerfulness."
"I don't dispute it," said Riccabocca, with a heavy sigh. "But though it is said by some Greek, who, I think, is quoted by your favorite Seneca, that a wise man carries his country with him at the soles of his feet, he can't carry also the sunshine."
"I tell you what it is," said the Parson, bluntly. "You would have a much keener sense of happiness if you had much less esteem for philosophy."
"Cospetto!" said the Doctor, rousing himself. "Just explain, will you?"
"Does not the search after wisdom induce desires not satisfied in this small circle to which your life is confined? It is not so much your country for which you yearn, as it is for space to your intellect, employment for your thoughts, career for your aspirations."
"You have guessed at the tooth which aches," said Riccabocca, with admiration.
"Easy to do that," answered the Parson. "Our wisdom teeth come last, and give us the most pain. And if you would just starve the mind a little, and nourish the heart more, you would be less of a philosopher, and more of a—" The Parson had the word "Christian" at the tip of his tongue: he suppressed a word that, so spoken, would have been exceedingly irritating, and substituted, with inelegant antithesis, "and more of a happy man!"
"I do all I can with my heart," quoth the Doctor.
"Not you! For a man with such a heart as yours should never feel the want of the sunshine. My friend, we live in an age of over mental cultivation. We neglect too much the simple, healthful outer life, in which there is so much positive joy. In turning to the world within us, we grow blind to this beautiful world without; in studying ourselves as men, we almost forget to look up to heaven, and warm to the smile of God."
The philosopher mechanically shrugged his shoulders, as he always did when another man moralized—especially if the moralizer were a priest; but there was no irony in his smile, as he answered thoughtfully;
"There is some truth in what you say. I own that we live too much as if we were all brain. Knowledge has its penalties and pains, as well as its prizes."
"That is just what I want you to say to Leonard."
"How have you settled the object of your journey?"
"I will tell you as we walk down to him after tea. At present, I am rather too much occupied with you."
"Me? The tree is formed—try only to bend the young twig!"
"Trees are trees, and twigs twigs," said the Parson, dogmatically; "but man is always growing till he falls into the grave. I think I have heard you say that you once had a narrow escape of a prison?"
"Very narrow."
"Just suppose that you were now in that prison, and that a fairy conjured up the prospect of this quiet home in a safe land; that you saw the orange-trees in flower, felt the evening breeze on your cheek; beheld your child gay or sad, as you smiled or knit your brow; that within this phantom home was a woman, not, indeed all your young romance might have dreamed of, but faithful and true, every beat of her heart all your own—would you not cry from the depth of the dungeon, 'O fairy! such a change were a paradise.' Ungrateful man! you want interchange for your mind, and your heart should suffice for all!"
Riccabocca was touched and silent.
"Come hither, my child," said Mr. Dale, turning round to Violante, who still stood among the flowers, out of hearing, but with watchful eyes. "Come hither," he said, opening his arms.
Violante bounded forward, and nestled to the good man's heart.
"Tell me, Violante, when you are alone in the fields or the garden, and have left your father looking pleased and serene, so that you have no care for him at your heart—tell me, Violante, though you are all alone, with the flowers below and the birds singing overhead, do you feel that life itself is happiness or sorrow?"
"Happiness!" answered Violante, half shutting her eyes, and in a measured voice.
"Can you explain what kind of happiness it is?"
"Oh, no, impossible! and it is never the same. Sometimes it is so still—so still—and sometimes so joyous, that I long for wings to fly up to God, and thank him!"
"O, friend," said the Parson, "this is the true sympathy between life and nature, and thus we should feel ever, did we take more care to preserve the health and innocence of a child. We are told that we must become as children to enter into the kingdom of heaven; methinks we should also become as children to know what delight there is in our heritage of earth!"
The maid-servant (for Jackeymo was in the fields) brought the table under the awning, and, with the English luxury of tea, there were other drinks as cheap and as grateful on summer evenings—drinks which Jackeymo had retained and taught from the customs of the south—unebriate liquors, pressed from cooling fruits, sweetened with honey, and deliciously iced; ice should cost nothing in a country in which one is frozen up half the year! And Jackeymo, too, had added to our good, solid, heavy English bread, preparations of wheat much lighter, and more propitious to digestion—with those crisp grissins, which seem to enjoy being eaten, they make so pleasant a noise between one's teeth.
The Parson esteemed it a little treat to drink tea with the Riccaboccas. There was something of elegance and grace in that homely meal, at the poor exile's table, which pleased the eye as well as taste. And the very utensils, plain Wedgewood though they were, had a classical simplicity, which made Mrs. Hazeldean's old India delf, and Mrs. Dale's best Worcester china, look tawdry and barbarous in comparison. For it was Flaxman who gave designs to Wedgewood, and the most truly refined of all our manufactures in porcelain (if we do not look to the mere material) is in the reach of the most thrifty.
The little banquet was at first rather a silent one; but Riccabocca threw off his gloom, and became gay and animated. Then poor Mrs. Riccabocca smiled, and pressed the grissins; and Violante, forgetting all her stateliness, laughed and played tricks on the Parson, stealing away his cup of warm tea when his head was turned, and substituting iced cherry-juice. Then the Parson got up and ran after Violante, making angry faces, and Violante dodged beautifully, till the Parson, fairly tired out, was too glad to cry "Peace," and come back to the cherry-juice. Thus time rolled on, till they heard afar the stroke of the distant church-clock, and Mr. Dale started up and cried, "But we shall be too late for Leonard. Come, naughty little girl, get your father his hat."
"And umbrella!" said Riccabocca, looking up at the cloudless moonlit sky.
"Umbrella against the stars?" asked the Parson, laughing.
"The stars are no friends of mine," said Riccabocca, "and one never knows what may happen!"
The Philosopher and the Parson walked on amicably.
"You have done me good," said Riccabocca, "but I hope I am not always so unreasonably melancholic as you seem to suspect. The evenings will sometimes appear long, and dull too, to a man whose thoughts on the past are almost his sole companions."
"Sole companions?—your child?"
"She is so young."
"Your wife?"
"She is so—," the bland Italian appeared to check some disparaging adjective, and mildly added, "so good, I allow; but you must own that we can not have much in common."
"I own nothing of the sort. You have your house and your interests, your happiness and your lives, in common. We men are so exacting, we expect to find ideal nymphs and goddesses when we condescend to marry a mortal; and if we did, our chickens would be boiled to rags, and our mutton come up as cold as a stone."
"Per Bacco, you are an oracle," said Riccabocca, laughing. "But I am not so skeptical as you are. I honor the fair sex too much. There are a great many women who realize the ideal of men to be found in—the poets!"
"There's my dear Mrs. Dale," resumed the Parson, not heeding this sarcastic compliment to the sex, but sinking his voice into a whisper, and looking round cautiously—"there's my dear Mrs. Dale, the best woman in the world—an angel I would say, if the word was not profane; but—"
"What's the BUT" asked the Doctor demurely.
"BUT I too might say that 'we have not much in common,' if I were only to compare mind to mind, and, when my poor Carry says something less profound than Madame de Stael might have said, smile on her in contempt from the elevation of logic and Latin. Yet, when I remember all the little sorrows and joys that we have shared together, and feel how solitary I should have been without her—oh, then, I am instantly aware that there is between us in common something infinitely closer and better than if the same course of study had given us the same equality of ideas; and I was forced to brace myself for a combat of intellect, as I am when I fall in with a tiresome sage like yourself. I don't pretend to say that Mrs. Riccabocca is a Mrs. Dale," added the Parson, with lofty candor—"there is but one Mrs. Dale in the world; but still, you have drawn a prize in the wheel matrimonial! Think of Socrates, and yet he was content even with his—Xantippe!"
Dr. Riccabocca called to mind Mrs. Dale's "little tempers," and inly rejoiced that no second Mrs. Dale had existed to fall to his own lot. His placid Jemima gained by the contrast. Nevertheless, he had the ill grace to reply, "Socrates was a man beyond all imitation!—Yet I believe that even he spent very few of his evenings at home. But, revenons à nos moutons, we are nearly at Mrs. Fairfield's cottage, and you have not yet told me what you have settled as to Leonard."
The Parson halted, took Riccabocca by the button, and informed him, in very few words, that Leonard was to go to Lansmere to see some relations there, who had the fortune, if they had the will, to give full career to his abilities.
"The great thing, in the mean while," said the Parson, "would be to enlighten him a little as to what he calls—enlightenment."
"Ah!" said Riccabocca, diverted, and rubbing his hands, "I shall listen with interest to what you say on that subject."
"And must aid me; for the first step in this modern march of enlightenment is to leave the poor Parson behind; and if one calls out, 'Hold! and look at the sign-post,' the traveler hurries on the faster, saying to himself, 'Pooh, pooh!—that is only the cry of the Parson!' But my gentleman, when he doubts me, will listen to you—you're a philosopher!"
"We philosophers are of some use now and then, even to Parsons!"
"If you were not so conceited a set of deluded poor creatures already, I would say 'Yes,'" replied the Parson generously; and, taking hold of Riccabocca's umbrella, he applied the brass handle thereof, by way of a knocker, to the cottage door.
Certainly it is a glorious fever that desire To Know! And there are few sights in the moral world more sublime than that which many a garret might afford, if Asmodeus would bare the roofs to our survey—viz., a brave, patient, earnest human being, toiling his own arduous way, athwart the iron walls of penury, into the magnificent Infinite, which is luminous with starry souls.
So there sits Leonard, the self-taught, in the little cottage alone; for, though scarcely past the hour in which great folks dine, it is the hour in which small folks go to bed, and Mrs. Fairfield has retired to rest, while Leonard has settled to his books. He had placed his table under the lattice, and from time to time he looked up and enjoyed the stillness of the moon. Well for him that, in reparation for those hours stolen from night, the hardy physical labor commenced with dawn. Students would not be the sad dyspeptics they are, if they worked as many hours in the open air as my scholar-peasant. But even in him you could see that the mind had begun a little to affect the frame. They who task the intellect must pay the penalty with the body. Ill, believe me, would this work-day world get on if all within it were hard-reading, studious animals, playing the deuce with the ganglionic apparatus.
Leonard started as he heard the knock at the door; the Parson's well-known voice reassured him. In some surprise, he admitted his visitors.
"We are come to talk to you, Leonard," said Mr. Dale, "but I fear we shall disturb Mrs. Fairfield."
"Oh, no, sir! the door to the staircase is shut, and she sleeps soundly."
"Why, this is a French book—do you read French, Leonard?" asked Riccabocca.
"I have not found French difficult, sir. Once over the grammar, and the language is so clear; it seems the very language for reasoning."
"True. Voltaire said justly, 'Whatever is obscure is not French,'" observed Riccabocca.
"I wish I could say the same of English," muttered the Parson.
"But what is this?—Latin too?—Virgil?"
"Yes, sir. But I find I make little way there without a master. I fear I must give it up" (and Leonard sighed).
The two gentlemen exchanged looks and seated themselves. The young peasant remained standing modestly, and in his air and mien there was something that touched the heart while it pleased the eye. He was no longer the timid boy who had sunk from the frown of Mr. Stirn, nor that rude personation of simple physical strength, roused to undisciplined bravery, which had received its downfall on the village-green of Hazeldean. The power of thought was on his brow—somewhat unquiet still, but mild and earnest. The features had attained that refinement which is often attributed to race, but comes, in truth, from elegance of idea, whether caught from our parents or learned from books. In his rich brown hair, thrown carelessly from his temples, and curling almost to the shoulders in his large blue eye, which was deepened to the hue of the violet by the long dark lash—in that firmness of lip which comes from the grapple with difficulties, there was considerable beauty, but no longer the beauty of the mere peasant. And yet there was still about the whole countenance that expression of goodness and purity which a painter would give to his ideal of the peasant lover—such as Tasso would have placed in the Aminta, or Fletcher have admitted to the side of the Faithful Shepherdess.
"You must draw a chair here, and sit down between us, Leonard," said the Parson.
"If any one," said Riccabocca "has a right to sit, it is the one who is to hear the sermon; and if any one ought to stand, it is the one who is about to preach it."
"Don't be frightened, Leonard," said the Parson, graciously; "it is only a criticism, not a sermon," and he pulled out Leonard's Prize Essay.
Parson.—"You take for your motto this aphorism[8]—'Knowledge is Power.—Bacon.'"
Riccabocca.—"Bacon make such an aphorism! The last man in the world to have said any thing so pert and so shallow."
Leonard (astonished).—"Do you mean to say, sir, that that aphorism is not in Lord Bacon! Why, I have seen it quoted as his in almost every newspaper, and in almost every speech in favor of popular education."
Riccabocca.—"Then that should be a warning to you never again to fall into the error of the would-be scholar—viz., quote second-hand. Lord Bacon wrote a great book to show in what knowledge is power, how that power should be defined, in what it might be mistaken. And, pray, do you think so sensible a man would ever have taken the trouble to write a great book upon the subject, if he could have packed up all he had to say into the portable dogma, 'Knowledge is power?' Pooh! no such aphorism is to be found in Bacon from the first page of his writings to the last."
Parson (candidly).—"Well, I supposed it was Lord Bacon's, and I am very glad to hear that the aphorism has not the sanction of his authority."
Leonard (recovering his surprise).—"But why so?"
Parson.—"Because it either says a great deal too much, or just—nothing at all."
Leonard.—"At least, sir, it seems to me undeniable."
Parson.—"Well, grant that it is undeniable. Does it prove much in favor of knowledge? Pray, is not ignorance power too?"
Riccabocca.—"And a power that has had much the best end of the quarter-staff."
Parson.—"All evil is power, and does its power make it any thing the better?"
Riccabocca.—"Fanaticism is power—and a power that has often swept away knowledge like a whirlwind. The Mussulman burns the library of a world—and forces the Koran and the sword from the schools of Byzantium to the colleges of Hindostan."
Parson (bearing on with a new column of illustration).—"Hunger is power. The barbarians, starved out of their energy by their own swarming population, swept into Italy and annihilated letters. The Romans, however degraded, had more knowledge, at least, than the Gaul and the Visigoth."
Riccabocca (bringing up the reserve).—"And even in Greece, when Greek met Greek, the Athenians—our masters in all knowledge—were beat by the Spartans, who held learning in contempt."
Parson.—"Wherefore you see, Leonard, that though knowledge be power, it is only one of the powers of the world; that there are others as strong, and often much stronger; and the assertion either means but a barren truism, not worth so frequent a repetition, or it means something that you would find it very difficult to prove."
Leonard.—"One nation may be beaten by another that has more physical strength and more military discipline; which last, permit me to say, sir, is a species of knowledge—"
Riccabocca.—"Yes; but your knowledge-mongers at present call upon us to discard military discipline, and the qualities that produce it, from the list of the useful arts. And in your own essay, you insist upon knowledge as the great disbander of armies, and the foe of all military discipline."
Parson.—"Let the young man proceed. Nations, you say, may be beaten by other nations less learned and civilized?"
Leonard.—"But knowledge elevates a class. I invite my own humble order to knowledge, because knowledge will lift them into power."
Riccabocca.—"What do you say to that, Mr. Dale?"
Parson.—"In the first place, is it true that the class which has the most knowledge gets the most power? I suppose philosophers, like my friend Dr. Riccabocca, think they have the most knowledge. And pray, in what age have philosophers governed the world? Are they not always grumbling that nobody attends to them?"
"Per Bacco," said Riccabocca, "if people had attended to us, it would have been a droll sort of world by this time!"
Parson.—"Very likely. But, as a general rule, those have the most knowledge who give themselves up to it the most. Let us put out of the question philosophers (who are often but ingenious lunatics), and speak only of erudite scholars, men of letters and practical science, professors, tutors, and fellows of colleges. I fancy any member of Parliament would tell us that there is no class of men which has less actual influence on public affairs. They have more knowledge than manufacturers and ship-owners, squires and farmers; but, do you find that they have more power over the Government and the votes of the House of Commons?"
"They ought to have," said Leonard.
"Ought they?" said the Parson: "we'll consider that later. Meanwhile, you must not escape from your own proposition, which is, that knowledge is power—not that it ought to be. Now, even granting your corollary, that the power of a class is therefore proportioned to its knowledge—pray, do you suppose that while your order, the operatives, are instructing themselves, all the rest of the community are to be at a stand-still? Diffuse knowledge as you may, you will never produce equality of knowledge. Those who have most leisure, application, and aptitude for learning, will still know the most. Nay, by a very natural law, the more general the appetite for knowledge, the more the increased competition would favor those most adapted to excel by circumstance and nature. At this day, there is a vast increase of knowledge spread over all society, compared with that in the Middle Ages; but is there not a still greater distinction between the highly-educated gentleman and the intelligent mechanic, than there was then between the baron who could not sign his name and the churl at the plow? between the accomplished statesman, versed in all historical lore, and the voter whose politics are formed by his newspaper, than there was between the legislator who passed laws against witches, and the burgher who defended his guild from some feudal aggression? between the enlightened scholar and the dunce of to-day, than there was between the monkish alchemist and the block head of yesterday? Peasant, voter, and dunce of this century are no doubt wiser than the churl, burgher, and blockhead of the twelfth. But the gentleman, statesman, and scholar of the present age are at least quite as favorable a contrast to the alchemist, witch-burner, and baron of old. As the progress of enlightenment has done hitherto, so will it ever do. Knowledge is like capital: the more there is in a country, the greater the disparities in wealth between one man and another. Therefore, if the working class increase in knowledge, so do the other classes; and if the working class rise peacefully and legitimately into power, it is not in proportion to their own knowledge alone, but rather according as it seems to the knowledge of the other orders of the community, that such augmentation of proportional power is just, and safe, and wise."
Placed between the Parson and the Philosopher, Leonard felt that his position was not favorable to the display of his forces. Insensibly he edged his chair somewhat away, and said mournfully—
"Then, according to you, the reign of knowledge would be no great advance in the aggregate freedom and welfare of man?"
Parson.—"Let us define. By knowledge, do you mean intellectual cultivation?—by the reign of knowledge, the ascendency of the most cultivated minds?"
Leonard, (after a pause.)—"Yes."
Riccabocca.—"Oh indiscreet young man, that is an unfortunate concession of yours: for the ascendency of the most cultivated minds would be a terrible oligarchy!"
Parson.—"Perfectly true; and we now reply to your exclamation, that men who, by profession, have most learning ought to have more influence than squires and merchants, farmers and mechanics. Observe, all the knowledge that we mortals can acquire, is not knowledge positive and perfect, but knowledge comparative, and subject to all the errors and passions of humanity. And suppose that you could establish, as the sole regulators of affairs, those who had the most mental cultivation, do you think they would not like that power well enough to take all means their superior intelligence could devise to keep it to themselves? The experiment was tried of old by the priests of Egypt; and in the empire of China, at this day, the aristocracy are elected from those who have most distinguished themselves in learned colleges. If I may call myself a member of that body, 'the people,' I would rather be an Englishman, however much displeased with dull Ministers and blundering Parliaments, than I would be a Chinese under the rule of the picked sages of the Celestial Empire. Happily, therefore, my dear Leonard, nations are governed by many things besides what is commonly called knowledge; and the greatest practical ministers, who, like Themistocles, have made small states great—and the most dominant races who, like the Romans, have stretched their rule from a village half over the universe—have been distinguished by various qualities which a philosopher would sneer at, and a knowledge-monger would call 'sad prejudices,' and 'lamentable errors of reason.'"
Leonard (bitterly.)—"Sir, you make use of knowledge itself to argue against knowledge."
Parson.—"I make use of the little I know to prove the foolishness of idolatry. I do not argue against knowledge; I argue against knowledge-worship. For here, I see in your Essay, that you are not contented with raising human knowledge into something like divine omnipotence, you must also confound her with virtue. According to you, we have only to diffuse the intelligence of the few among the many, and all at which we preachers aim is accomplished.—Nay more; for whereas we humble preachers have never presumed to say, with the heathen Stoic, that even virtue is sure of happiness be low (though it be the best road to it), you tell us plainly that this knowledge of yours gives not only the virtue of a saint, but bestows the bliss of a god. Before the steps of your idol, the evils of life disappear. To hear you, one has but 'to know,' in order to be exempt from the sins and sorrows of the ignorant. Has it ever been so? Grant that you diffuse among the many all the knowledge ever attained by the few. Have the wise few been so unerring and so happy? You supposed that your motto was accurately cited from Bacon. What was Bacon himself? The poet tells you—
Can you hope to bestow upon the vast mass of your order the luminous intelligence of this 'Lord Chancellor of nature?' Grant that you do so—and what guarantee have you for the virtue and the happiness which you assume as the concomitants of the gift? See Bacon himself; what black ingratitude! what miserable self-seeking! what truckling servility! what abject and pitiful spirit! So far from intellectual knowledge, in its highest form and type, insuring virtue and bliss, it is by no means uncommon to find great mental cultivation combined with great moral corruption." (Aside to Riccabocca)—"Push on, will you?"
Riccabocca.—"A combination remarkable in eras as in individuals. Petronius shows us a state of morals at which a commonplace devil would blush, in the midst of a society more intellectually cultivated than certainly was that which produced Regulus or the Horatii. And the most learned eras in modern Italy were precisely those which brought the vices into the most ghastly refinement."
Leonard (rising in great agitation, and clasping his hands.)—"I can not contend with you, who produce against information so slender and crude as mine the stores which have been locked from my reach. But I feel that there must be another side to this shield—a shield that you will not even allow to be silver. And oh, if you thus speak of knowledge, why have you encouraged me to know?"
"Ah, my son!" said the Parson, "if I wished to prove the value of Religion, would you think I served it much, if I took as my motto, 'Religion is power?' Would not that be a base and sordid view of its advantages? And would you not say he who regards religion as a power, intends to abuse it as a priestcraft?"
"Well put!" said Riccabocca.
"Wait a moment—let me think. Ah—I see, sir!" said Leonard.
Parson.—"If the cause be holy, do not weigh it in the scales of the market; if its objects be peaceful, do not seek to arm it with the weapons of strife; if it is to be the cement of society, do not vaunt it as the triumph of class against class."
Leonard (ingenuously.)—"You correct me nobly, sir. Knowledge is power, but not in the sense in which I have interpreted the saying."
Parson.—"Knowledge is one of the powers in the moral world, but one that, in its immediate result, is not always of the most worldly advantage to the possessor. It is one of the slowest, because one of the most durable, of agencies. It may take a thousand years for a thought to come into power; and the thinker who originated it might have died in rags or in chains."
Riccabocca.—"Our Italian proverb saith that 'the teacher is like the candle, which lights others in consuming itself.'"
Parson.—"Therefore he who has the true ambition of knowledge should entertain it for the power of his idea, not for the power it may bestow on himself; it should be lodged in the conscience, and, like the conscience, look for no certain reward on this side the grave. And since knowledge is compatible with good and with evil, would it not be better to say, 'Knowledge is a trust?'"
"You are right, sir," said Leonard, cheerfully, "pray proceed."
Parson.—"You ask me why we encourage you to know. First, because (as you say yourself in your Essay) knowledge, irrespective of gain, is in itself a delight, and ought to be something far more. Like liberty, like religion, it may be abused; but I have no more right to say that the poor shall be ignorant, than I have to say that the rich only shall be free, and that the clergy alone shall learn the truths of redemption. You truly observe in your treatise that knowledge opens to us other excitements than those of the senses, and another life than that of the moment. The difference between us is this, that you forget that the same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains—the horny hand of the peasant feels not the nettles which sting the fine skin of the scholar. You forget also, that whatever widens the sphere of the desires, opens to them also new temptations. Vanity, the desire of applause, pride, the sense of superiority—gnawing discontent where that superiority is not recognized—morbid susceptibility, which comes with all new feelings—the underrating of simple pleasures apart from the intellectual—the chase of the imagination, often unduly stimulated, for things unattainable below—all these are surely among the first temptations that beset the entrance into knowledge."
Leonard shaded his face with his hand.
"Hence," continued the Parson, benignantly—"hence, so far from considering that we do all that is needful to accomplish ourselves as men, when we cultivate only the intellect, we should remember that we thereby continually increase the range of our desires, and, therefore, of our temptations; and we should endeavor, simultaneously, to cultivate both those affections of the heart, which prove the ignorant to be God's children no less than the wise, and those moral qualities which have made men great and good when reading and writing were scarcely known—to wit, patience and fortitude under poverty and distress; humility and beneficence amidst grandeur and wealth: and, in counteraction to that egotism, which all superiority, mental or worldly, is apt to inspire, Justice, the father of all the more solid virtues, softened by Charity, which is their loving mother. Thus accompanied, knowledge, indeed, becomes the magnificent crown of humanity—not the imperious despot, but the checked and tempered sovereign of the soul."
The Parson paused, and Leonard, coming near him, timidly took his hand, with a child's affectionate and grateful impulse.
Riccabocca.—"And if, Leonard, you are not satisfied with our Parson's excellent definitions, you have only to read what Lord Bacon himself has said upon the true ends of knowledge, to comprehend at once how angry the poor great man, whom Mr. Dale treats so harshly, would have been with those who have stinted his elaborate distinctions and provident cautions, into that, coxcombical little aphorism, and then misconstrued all he designed to prove in favor of the commandant, and authority of learning. For," added the sage, looking up as a man does when he is tasking his memory, "I think it is thus that, after saying the greatest error of all is the mistaking or misplacing the end of knowledge, and denouncing the various objects for which it is vulgarly sought;—I think it is thus that he proceeds.... 'Knowledge is not a shop for profit or sale, but a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of men's estate.'"[9]
Parson (remorsefully.)—"Are those Lord Bacon's words? I am very sorry I spoke so uncharitably of his life. I must examine it again. I may find excuses for it now, that I could not when I first formed my judgment. I was then a raw lad at Oxford. But I see, Leonard, there is still something on your mind."
Leonard.—"It is true, sir. I would but ask whether it is not by knowledge that we arrive at the qualities and virtues you so well describe, but which you seem to consider as coming to us through channels apart from knowledge?"
Parson.—"If you mean by the word knowledge something very different from what you express in your essay—and which those contending for mental instruction, irrespective of religion and ethics, appear also to convey by the word—you are right;—but, remember, we have already agreed that by the word knowledge we mean culture purely intellectual."
Leonard.—"That is true—we so understood it."
Parson.—"Thus, when this great Lord Bacon erred, you may say that he erred from want of knowledge—the knowledge that moralists and preachers would convey. But Lord Bacon had read all that moralists and preachers could say on such matters; and he certainly did not err from want of intellectual cultivation. Let me here, my child, invite you to observe, that He who knew most of our human hearts and our immortal destinies, did not insist on this intellectual culture as essential to the virtues that form our well-being here, and conduce to our salvation hereafter. Had it been essential, the All-wise One would not have selected humble fishermen for the teachers of his doctrine, instead of culling his disciples from Roman Portico, or Athenian Academy. And this, which distinguishes so remarkably the Gospel from the ethics of heathen philosophy, wherein knowledge is declared to be necessary to virtue, is a proof how slight was the heathen sage's insight into the nature of mankind, when compared with the Saviour's; for hard, indeed, would it be to men, whether high or low, rich or poor, if science and learning, or contemplative philosophy, were the sole avenues to peace and redemption; since, in this state of ordeal, requiring active duties, very few, in any age, whether they be high or low, rich or poor, ever are or can be devoted to pursuits merely mental. Christ does not represent heaven as a college for the learned. Therefore the rules of the Celestial Legislator are rendered clear to the simplest understanding as to the deepest."
Riccabocca.—"And that which Plato and Zeno, Pythagoras and Socrates, could not do, was done by men whose ignorance would have been a by-word in the schools of the Greek. The gods of the vulgar were dethroned; the face of the world was changed! This thought may make us allow, indeed, that there are agencies more powerful than mere knowledge, and ask, after all, what is the mission which knowledge should achieve?"
Parson.—"The Sacred Book tells us even that; for, after establishing the truth that, for the multitude, knowledge is not essential to happiness and good, it accords still to knowledge its sublime part in the revelation prepared and announced. When an instrument of more than ordinary intelligence was required for a purpose divine—when the Gospel, recorded by the simple, was to be explained by the acute, enforced by the energetic, carried home to the doubts of the Gentile—the Supreme Will joined to the zeal of the earlier apostles the learning and genius of St. Paul—not holier than the others—calling himself the least, yet laboring more abundantly than them all—making himself all things unto all men, so that some might be saved. The ignorant may be saved no less surely than the wise; but here comes the wise man who helps to save! And how the fullness and animation of this grand Presence, of this indomitable Energy, seem to vivify the toil, and to speed the work! 'In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren.' Behold, my son! does not Heaven here seem to reveal the true type of Knowledge—a sleepless activity, a pervading agency, a dauntless heroism, an all-supporting faith?—a power—a power, indeed—a power apart from the aggrandizement of self—a power that brings to him who owns and transmits it but 'weariness and painfulness; in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness'—but a power distinct from the mere circumstance of the man, rushing from him as rays from a sun;—borne through the air, and clothing it with light—piercing under earth, and calling forth the harvest! Worship not knowledge—worship not the sun, O my child! Let the sun but proclaim the Creator; let the knowledge but illumine the worship!"
The good man, overcome by his own earnestness, paused; his head drooped on the young student's breast, and all three were long silent.
Whatever ridicule may be thrown upon Mr. Dale's dissertations by the wit of the enlightened, they had a considerable, and I think a beneficial effect upon Leonard Fairfield—an effect which may perhaps create less surprise, when the reader remembers that Leonard was unaccustomed to argument, and still retained many of the prejudices natural to his rustic breeding. Nay, he actually thought it possible that, as both Riccabocca and Mr. Dale were more than double his age, and had had opportunities not only of reading twice as many books, but of contracting experience in wider ranges of life—he actually, I say, thought it possible that they might be better acquainted with the properties and distinctions of knowledge than himself. At all events, the Parson's words were so far well-timed, that they produced in Leonard very much of that state of mind which Mr. Dale desired to effect, before communicating to him the startling intelligence that he was to visit relations whom he had never seen, of whom he had heard but little, and that it was at least possible that the result of that visit might be to open to him greater facilities for instruction, and a higher degree in life.
Without some such preparation, I fear that Leonard would have gone forth into the world with an exaggerated notion of his own acquirements, and with a notion yet more exaggerated as to the kind of power that such knowledge as he possessed would obtain for itself. As it was, when Mr. Dale broke to him the news of the experimental journey before him, cautioning him against being over-sanguine, Leonard received the intelligence with a serious meekness, and thoughts that were nobly solemn.
When the door closed on his visitors, he remained for some moments motionless, and in deep meditation: then he unclosed the door, and stole forth. The night was already far advanced, the heavens were luminous with all the host of stars. "I think," said the student, referring, in later life, to that crisis in his destiny—"I think it was then, when I stood alone, yet surrounded by worlds so numberless, that I first felt the distinction between mind and soul." "Tell me," said Riccabocca, as he parted company with Mr. Dale, "whether you think we should have given to Frank Hazeldean, on entering life, the same lecture on the limits and ends of knowledge which we have bestowed on Leonard Fairfield."
"My friend," quoth the Parson, with a touch of human conceit; "I have ridden on horseback, and I know that some horses should be guided by the bridle, and some should be urged by the spur."
"Cospetto!" said Riccabocca; "you contrive to put every experience of yours to some use—even your journey on Mr. Hazeldean's pad. And I see now why, in this little world of a village, you have picked up so general an acquaintance with life."
"Did you ever read White's Natural History of Selborne?"
"No."
"Do so, and you will find that you need not go far to learn the habits of birds, and know the difference between a swallow and a swift.—Learn the difference in a village, and you know the difference wherever swallows and swifts skim the air."
"Swallows and swifts!—true; but men—"
"Are with us all the year round—which is more than we can say of swallows and swifts."
"Mr. Dale," said Riccabocca, taking off his hat, with great formality, "if ever again I find myself in a dilemma, I will come to you instead of to Machiavelli."
"Ah!" cried the Parson, "if I could but have a calm hour's talk with you on the errors of the Papal relig—"
Riccabocca was off like a shot.
The next day, Mr. Dale had a long conversation with Mrs. Fairfield. At first, he found some difficulty in getting over her pride, and inducing her to accept overtures from parents who had so long slighted both Leonard and herself. And it would have been in vain to have put before the good woman the worldly advantages which such overtures implied. But when Mr. Dale said, almost sternly, "Your parents are old, your father infirm; their least wish should be as binding to you as their command," the widow bowed her head and said,
"God bless, them, sir, I was very sinful—'Honor your father and mother.' I'm no scollard, but I know the Commandments. Let Lenny go. But he'll soon forget me, and mayhap he'll learn to be ashamed of me."
"There I will trust him," said the Parson; and he contrived easily to re-assure and soothe her.
It was not till all this was settled that Mr. Dale drew forth an unsealed letter, which Mr. Richard Avenel, taking his hint, had given to him, as from Leonard's grandparents, and said, "This is for you, and it contains an inclosure of some value."
"Will you read it, sir? As I said before, I'm no scollard."
"But Leonard is, and he will read it to you."
When Leonard returned home that evening, Mrs. Fairfield showed him the letter. It ran thus: