SPIRITED PEOPLE
Every species of wealth is difficult of acquisition, and every species of wealth is valuable. It is as difficult for a poor-spirited man to become rich in spirit, as it is for a poor-pocketed man to become a millionaire. More difficult; the latter is possible, but the former seems almost impossible. A poor man may become rich in a day by a legacy or a “treasure trove,” but there are no legacies for the spirit that one man can leave to another. There are no such charms as the mantle of Elijah in these days of drudgery. The grey redingote, the hat, and the sword of Napoleon will not make an emperor; and the pen of a Wordsworth or a Byron will neither kindle the poetic fire, nor provide the fuel. Richness of soul is a gift of God, and like all his gifts, it is distributed without respect of persons amongst rich and poor.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven!”
A strange sentence, seeming to imply that poverty of spirit is better than riches. But all sorts of contradictions are true in the mystic world. This poverty of spirit is humility—a beautiful and most becoming virtue. Nothing more admirable in rich or poor. This poverty is riches; it is the reverse of arrogance, haughtiness, and superciliousness. But that poverty of spirit which constitutes meanness is so far from being the reverse of arrogance, that it is generally its concomitant. Extremes meet and embrace. The miser can send a beggar from his door with as much heartlessness as a peer; when he is not craving or beseeching he is cursing and reviling. The coward is always cruel; and when he is not the victim, he is glad to be the persecutor. All the vices seem to go together, and all the virtues together. The humble man has a noble pride, the mean man has a petty pride, and the poor-spirited man has a courage peculiar to himself.
One of the proudest and haughtiest women we ever met was also the meanest. She would ring for a servant from the bottom to the top of the house merely to stir the fire with the poker, when she herself was sitting beside it in perfect health. She had no mercy on an inferior; and she either admired with extravagance, or regarded with indifference and contempt. She could borrow a shawl or a bonnet from a friend and wear it out. If there were any curiosity in your possession that you particularly valued, she could beseech you to give it to her, and importune you till she succeeded. When she succeeded she cared nothing for it, but probably gave it to one of her children to play with. The daughters were like the mother. They could borrow even a pair of shoes from an acquaintance, and wear them, without returning an equivalent, or even condescending to make an apology. This woman was both proud and mean, high-spirited, fractious and extravagant, and indomitable; the ruin of an excellent husband, and the mother of a reckless family—daughters who wore stockings with holes in the heels, and silk dresses torn and stained, having eyes without hooks, and hooks without eyes to match them—and sons who kept the house in perpetual uproar, because they wanted heart for good behaviour, and the mother wanted authority or inclination to enforce it.
This lady was called, by some of her acquaintances, very aristocratical! Are there such beings amongst the aristocracy? Did you ever meet amongst your acquaintances a scion of some noble or gentle family reduced to poverty, who could be guilty of meanness, selfishness or importunacy that would make a labourer blush? Some dowager, who, on the strength of a descent from some captain or colonel who fought at Blenheim, or Waterloo, could solicit, with indomitable perseverance for years, a pension for herself and places for her sons? or some ancient maiden, proud of her lineage, who, on the assumed importance of her genealogical tree, could get twopenny cabbages for a penny, lobsters for half-price, and a herring into the bargain?
Did you ever hear of an Archbishop of Canterbury, who, in obedience to the pious injunction of an apostle, to “provide for his own and especially for those of his own house,” appointed three of his own sons to the three lucrative registrarships of Canterbury? and of another, who, when one of these three registrars died, appointed his own son, a boy, to hold the valuable appointment of 3000 pounds a year, with a deputy to do all the work for him? High-spirited men no doubt! High Churchmen, doubtless, with wives as high and devout as themselves, firmly believing in baptismal regeneration, and the power of the priest to give absolution of sins.
Did you ever hear of cathedral trusts committed to deans and chapters for the benefit of the public, for the endowments of schools and the support of poor scholars, so entirely diverted from their original purpose that, whilst the revenue has increased as much as ten or twenty-fold, the increase has been transferred to the pockets of the trustees, and the benefit to the poor has diminished to a hundredth part? In 1542, when the cathedral of Canterbury had an income of 2,542 pounds, it expended 230 pounds per annum on grammar schools. In 1843, when its income had increased to 21,551 pounds, it expended only 182 pounds on grammar schools, under the high-spirited high church and aqua-baptismal superintendence of those apostolic men, who provide for their own and especially for those of their own house!
Custom will sanction anything. The king and queen of Tahiti used to ride upon men’s shoulders, and the chevalier who bore the interesting burthen took firm hold of the legs of majesty, as he darted along with the velocity of a quadruped. This was accounted very dignified. Now that the Tahitans are civilised, they no doubt consider it very indelicate. When England is christianised an equal change will take place in its spirit and its practices. What now passes for high spirit will then be regarded as meanness, and what now looks like poverty and meanness of spirit, to the falsely educated and fashion led, will rise by public acclamation and universal assent to the top of the scale of society. Bishops will not then spend the best of their time in political discussions in the metropolis, apart from their sees, or sitting on ecclesiastical commissions, voting large sums for palaces and gardens to one another, and small sums for augmenting the poor livings of their humble brethren—ceasing to study theology so soon as they receive the theological crown—fighting and contending for mere forms of words and modes of ceremony, like High Churchmen—and exhibiting to the world an example of worldliness, which may be high enough in a political sense, but is certainly very far from being an imitation of the highest of all churchmen.
It is difficult to say what is high and what is low. Fashion teaches one thing, philosophy another, sectarianism a third. One man thinks himself high and dignified if he keeps a good house, gives good dinners and wines, talks curtly and snappishly to servants, and is ever ready to fight to avenge an insult. Such men can get into debt with butchers, bakers, wine merchants, tailors and shoemakers, and play hide-and-seek with them for years, without losing caste. It is legal sport. Transportation is not the penalty, and prisons are not without the pale of polite society. Men of this description are spirited in one sense. But everything in Nature, like a medal, has its reverse. So they are mean in another sense; but not, we suspect, in that particular theological sense in which the kingdom of Heaven is promised to the poor in spirit.
There are simple quiet men in the world, who have so little spirit, that they can never buy a new hat till they have paid for the old one, nor run up a bill with their tailors, however importuned to do so. They tremble at the very idea of an importunate creditor. They pay their bills so soon as they are sent in, and proportion their length to the amount of their income. If they have a thousand a-year, they never spend a thousand and one; but, on the contrary, reserve a floating sum to give them power over all emergencies. Such men exhibit no spirit to the world. But they may feel it. It is a secret spirit—a retiring, self-possessed, independent spirit—not likely to make a figure in the world, but one that is likely to get well out of it, as a Manchester man once remarked, “The grand thing in this world is to get well dead.”
By this reversion of the poles of character, it really looks as if every man in himself was both high and low spirited at the same time; just like the High Churchman, who is high, in the external sense, in relation to rites and ceremonies, sacerdotal pomp, and apostolic sublimity, demonstrated by words and scholastic logic, but not by deeds; and low, in reference to the spirit of the Church, which he subjects to the form. There is a class of men who are spiritual and spirited in words, but are just like other people in deeds—most evangelical men, who have formalised themselves after a pattern of solemnity that is somewhat imposing. These are the men “that take captive silly women,” and become the living idols of small sects and localities. Their piety is rewarded with silver plate and tea-things, worsted slippers knit by ladies, * dwelling-houses, furniture, wines and other delicacies, and the more worthy they think themselves. Whether this qualifies them the better for rebuking the foolish and the immoral amongst the givers with great boldness we cannot tell, but we have no doubt that it strengthens their countenances amongst the poor; money is a powerful thing, it makes a weak man strong. Even the Church must have its money-prizes to induce the learned men of the Universities to enter it. What would the Archbishop of Canterbury be with 150 pounds a-year? The day was when mendicants could rebuke and scourge kings, but those were times of old spirit; such times are gone. Poverty once reigned in the world—it will reign again, for money cannot reign well, and pride cannot reign well. The kingdom of Heaven is promised to the poor in spirit.
Who are they? You may well ask who are they. Nobody will own himself one of the number; but everybody can point to some of the fraternity. Are those the creatures that Heaven is to be peopled with? It seems so. The poor in spirit, the poor-spirited! Those who have not the courage to cheat a creditor; who are not so bold-faced as to be able to deceive or tell a lie, but whose heart and soul are revealed in their very looks; those who are not so fierce, so active, and energetic as to attempt to drive the world before them, as if they thought they could put Providence in harness; those who delight more in the passive enjoyments of life than the active domination of society, and who for that very reason are deaf to all temptations that lead to disorder, injustice and corruption, as tending inevitably to break the peace and mar their felicity—gentle-men and gentle-women, the inheritors of the age to come, creatures so very timid as to be afraid to do wrong.
Now, as all great truths are mysteries, reason, in the form of a circle, or the serpent wisdom with its tail in its mouth, we might here begin and contradict much that we have said without ever changing the character of the discourse or impairing its moral efficiency. Suffice it to say, that he is possessed of the greatest riches of soul who respects the law of universal rectitude, and never deviates from its straight path. He is a bold and reckless fellow who deliberately breaks it. He alone is a hero who abides by its injunctions, and fears to disobey. —Family Herald.
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* One evangelical clergyman has a little closet all hung round with such slippers, which he is in the habit of showing to his friends with glistening eyes.
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