will be better acquainted some time within the next two years, and which will do you a world more good than a whole Bodleian library of novels. Among many other curious facts in man's moral anatomy, which the great philosopher lays bare, are these two which by the way show distinctly for what God designed us, and what course we ought to take in our own culture, That, from our very faculty of habits, passive impressions, by being repeated, grow weaker, and that practical habits are formed and strengthened by repeated acts.” 66 But I find my sermon has been so long, that, like other preachers, I must, if I continue, huddle up the last, though most important part, in haste; therefore, as they sometimes do, I will reserve what I have to say for another discourse, begging you, my fair hearer, to ponder on the words I have just transcribed for you—if so be you may spell out their meaning, and profit thereby. Yours affectionately, LETTER XLI. To the same. R. E. H. G. Aug. 6, 1846. My dear Mary, I resume the "thread" of my last discourse by expounding the seeming paradox with which it closed. "Who can be more tender-hearted," perhaps you will say, "than heroes and heroines in novels, or more ready to cry than an inveterate novel reader ?" Nevertheless be pleased to remember that, however prompt the fancy may be to depict distress, or the eye to attest the genuineness of the emotion that distress has awakened, they indicate what may be merely passive states of mind; and no benevolence is worth a farthing that does not proceed to action. Now, the frequent repetition of that species of emotion which fiction stimulates tends to prevent benevolence, because it is out of proportion to corresponding action; it is like that frequent "going over the theory of virtue in our own thoughts," which, as Butler says, so far from being auxiliary to it, may be obstructive of it. As long as the balance is maintained between the stimulus given to imagination with the consequent emotions, on the one hand, and our practical habits, which those emotions are chiefly designed to form and strengthen, on the other, so long, I say, the stimulus of the imagination will not stand in the way of benevolence, but aid it; and, therefore, my dear, if you will read a novel extra now and then, impose upon yourself the corrective of an extra visit or two to the poor, the distressed, and afflicted! Keep a sort of debtor and creditor account of sentimental indulgence and practical benevolence. I do not care if your pocket-book contains some such memoranda as these: "For the sweet tears I shed over the romantic sorrows of Charlotte Devereux, sent three basins of gruel and a flannel petticoat to poor old Molly Brown;" "For sitting up three hours beyond the time over the 'Bandit's Bride,' gave half a crown to Betty Smith;" "My sentimental agonies over the pages of the 'Broken Heart' cost me three visits to the Orphan Asylum and two extra hours of Dorcas Society work ;" "Two quarts of caudle to poor Jobson's wife, and some gaberdines for his ragged children, on account of a good cry over the pathetic story of the Forsaken One.' But if the luxury — and it is a luxury, and in itself nothing more of sympathy and mere benevolent feeling be separated from action, then Butler's paradox becomes a terrible truth, and "the heart is not made better," but worse, by it. And the following causes are peculiarly apt to render the species of emotion which fiction excites, not merely disproportionate to the habits of benevolence, but unfriendly to their formation. First; in order to make the representations of fictitious distress pleasant, and that is the object of any fiction which depicts it, for it is a work of art, there must be a careful exclusion of those repulsive features of distress which shock genuine sensibility and sympathy in real life. Poverty, and misfortune, and sickness are to be "interesting," captivating; the dirt, the filth, the vulgarity, the ingratitude, which real benevolence encounters in the attempt to relieve them, must be removed, not merely from the senses, but as far as possible from the imagination, of the reader; no offensive aura must steal from the sick chamber where the faithful heroine suffers or watches, or from the chamber of death itself ; none which even the fancy can detect; chloride of lime, and eau de Cologne, double distilled of fancy, — must cleanse from the sweet pages every ill odour, lest the delicate reader that lies languidly on the sofa, wrapped in the luxury of woe, (perhaps with streaming eyes and frequent applications of the fine cambric,) should feel too acutely; - lest the refined pleasure thus cunningly extracted out of the sorrows of the world should turn to pain ! Now the more this feeling is indulged, the more fastidious it becomes; till at last, if the practice of benevolence has not been in full proportion, the obstacles encountered by benevolence, when it attempts its proper task, become insurmountable, and its efforts are quenched at once. Accordingly, many a young lady has found on her first attempt to visit the cabins of the poor, and relieve the wants of the sick, that, as a great general declared "nothing was so unlike a battle as a review," so nothing is so unlike real benevolence, as the luxurious semblance of it excited by a novel, and acted" with great applause" on the theatre of the imagination. So squeamish may this feeling become, that even novels may depict scenes of sorrow, all too real. Even the reflected light of real life may be too strong for it. The fair reader in danger of dying of "aromatic pain," cannot tolerate the vividness of this pre-Raphaelite style of literary painting! Perhaps, as art, it ought not to be tolerated; for art ought to be confined within the limits which secure an overbalance of pleasure. But whether this be a correct canon of art or not, the moral effect of too much novel reading (let the novels be ever so excellent as works of art) is just what I say. It is apt to produce a fastidiousness, which cannot bear the real; no, nor even the faithful delineation of the real. Many a dear novel reader, one would imagine, supposes that the "final cause" (but one) of all the misery in the world, is to furnish the elements of the picturesque and the "interesting," the raw material for the fictitious painter,—and the "final cause itself, the delicious luxury of that sentimental sympathy with which he inspires the elegant and fastidious reader! Pleasurable sympathy with fictitious distress and benevolent desire to relieve real, differ infinitely. How picturesque some loathsome, squalid cabin, or a gipsies' tent often looks in a picture! "How prettily," we all say, "that little piece of humanity is introduced there!" yet how few would relish the thought of entering the reality! With what reluctance would they do it, even though benevolence bade! See there an illustration of the difference between sentimental emotion and benevolent principle. The luxury of mere sympathy and sensibility (now do not look so shocked) of the "fine feelings" excited by fiction is, when disjoined from practical benevolence, so great, that it may actually form a notable element in a person's daily felicity, and yet he may be one of the most selfish creatures in the world! How delightful it is to sit still, and play, not only with no trouble, but with the liveliest pleasure, the part of great philanthropists! What ignorance and sorrow have been relieved-in fancy, by soft enthusiasts! What sums expended-without costing a farthing! What content and felicity diffused everywhere—and the ungrateful world none the better or the wiser for it all! Sentimental philanthropists, who thus revel in secret welldoing, transcend the Gospel maxim of not "letting their left hand know what their right hand doeth," for they let neither their "right" nor their "left hand" know any thing of the matter! Out upon them! Now, this selfish luxury not only blinds those who surrender themselves to it by the mask of seeming worth it wears, but by daily craving, like any other pleasant emotion, a more unrestrained indulgence, it makes real benevolence, and its hardy tasks, more and more impossible. And thus, as Bishop Butler justly says, the heart may be growing all the more selfish for all the heroic sacrifices of an imaginary virtue. Pray observe too, and it is well to remember it in the present L tendencies of popular literature, that similar effects, in the absence of a genuine practical benevolence, may be produced by an opposite class of delineations from those which exhibit fictitious distress: I mean those which exhibit almost exclusively the follies and weaknesses of mankind. When such descriptions are too often read,—no matter how kindly the vein of the humourist, the man who has not trained his heart to pity by actual benevolence is soon apt to fall into a cynical contempt of human infirmity, and to think that all the world's absurdities are game for laughter, when at least as often they call for compassion. You may perhaps be still puzzled a little to reconcile the paradox of the hardening effects of excessive sensibility.-You will find all difficulty removed if you sufficiently meditate on the fact so beautifully pointed out by the great moralist I quoted in my last. So little (as he shows) is emotion, even the best and most refined, in itself, any index of virtue, that emotion may be weakened, and indeed is so, by every practical advance in virtue. It is, as he says, a great law of our nature, (and nothing can be more beautifully adapted to our condition as creatures who are designed for real practical virtue,) that while our passive emotions decay in vividness by repetition, (though it is true we crave them more and more strongly,) our practical habits strengthen by exercise; so that, as this writer observes, a man may be advancing in moral excellence by that very course which deadens his emotions. He, whose sensibility gloats over fictitious scenes of sorrow, as the exciting cause of agreeable passive sensations, is in the opposite position; he craves them more and more, though he feels them less vividly, just as is the case with the drunkard and his dram-he hankers for it more and enjoys it less. Practical habits, on the other hand, render emotion less vivid, but become more and more easy and pleasant—nay, like all habits, crave their wonted gratification. So true is it, however, that practical habit generally deadens passive impressions, that you may lay it down as a rule, that he who feels poignantly, I do not say deeply, but poignantly, -the distress he relieves, is a novice in benevolence; and hence novel-reading -- |