Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/348

336 Whitsuntide week, if we were permitted to enjoy in it that repose we so urgently need and so fondly seek. We are quite enamoured, when we first turn our steps from the smoky city, with the trees and fields, and we enjoy indescribably our rides and drives and walks, and the aspects of nature, and the beasts and birds wherewith we are surrounded. But one thing we have not bargained for, and that is — country society. Of course we love our friends and relations in whose homes we are received with kindness and affection, whom we know to be the salt of the earth for goodness, and who love us enough to feel an interest even in our towniest gossip. But their country friends, the neighbouring gentlefolk, the clergyman's wife, the family doctor, the people who are invariably invited to meat us at the long formal country dinner! This is the trial beneath which our new-found love of rural life is apt to succumb. Sir Cornewall Lewis's too famous dictum returns, slightly modified, to our memories — as "life would be tolerable, but for its pleasures," so the country would be enchanting, were it not for its society. Could we be allowed to live in the country, and see only our hosts, we should be as happy as kings and queens. But to fly, for the sake of rest and quiet, from the tables where we might have met some of the most brilliant men and women of the day, and then to find that we shall incur the disgrace of being unsociable curmudgeons, if we object to spend the afternoon in playing croquet with the rector's stupid daughters, and to dine afterwards at the house of a particularly dull and vulgar neighbour, with whom we would fain avoid such acquaintance as may justify him in visiting us in town, this is surely an evil destiny! When, alas! will all the good and kind people who invite town friends to come and rest with them in the country forbear to make their acceptance the occasion for a round of rural dissipation, and believe that their weary friends would be only too glad, did civility permit, to inscribe on the doors of their bedroom during their sojourn, the affecting Italian epitaph, Implora pace!

The Country Mouse has naturally said as little as possible of the drawbacks of his favourite mode of existence — metaphorically speaking, the dampness of his "hollow tree," and its liability to be infested by owls. It may be well to jot off a few of the less-recognized offsets to the pleasures of rural life before listening to any eulogies thereof.

The real evil of country life I apprehend is this — the whole happiness or misery of it is so terribly dependent on the character of those with whom we live, that if we are not so fortunate as to have for our companions the best and dearest, wisest and pleasantest of men and women (in which case we may be far happier than in any other life in the world), we are infinitely worse off than we can ever be in town. One, two, or perhaps three, relatives and friends who form our permanent housemates, make or mar all our days by their good or evil tempers, their agree-ability or stupidity, their affection and confidence, or their dislike and jealousy. "Etre avec les gens qu'on aime cela suffit," says Rousseau, and he speaks truth. But "être avec les gens qu'on n'aime pas," and buried in a dull country house with them, without any prospect of change, is as bad as having a millstone tied round our necks and being drowned in the depth of the sea. In a town house, if the fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, scold and wrangle, if the husband be a bear, or the wife a shrew, there is always the refuge of the outer circle of acquaintances, wherein cheer and comfort, or, at least, variety and relief, may be found. Reversing the pious Dr. Watts' maxim, we cry: —

The club is the shelter of henpecked man; a friend's house or Marshall and Snelgrove's the refuge of cockpecked woman. On the stormiest domestic debate, the advent of a visitor intervenes, throwing temporary oil on the waters, and compelling the belligerents to put off their quarrels and put on their smiles; and when the unconscious peacemaker has departed, it is often found difficult, if not impossible, to take up the squabble just where it was left off. But there is no such luck for cross-grained people in country houses. Humboldt's "Cosmos" contains several references to certain observations made by two gentlemen who passed a winter together on the inhospitable northern shores of Asia, and one of name of Wrangle. It is difficult to imagine any trial more severe than that of spending the six dark months of the year with Wrangle on the Siberian coast of the Polar Sea; but this is a mere fancy sketch, whereas hundreds of unlucky English men and women