Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/335

Rh confine within ever narrower limits all manifestations of unpleasant feeling. Since it is a grateful thing to witness pleasurable feeling, and painful to see the expression of suffering in another, a polite form of society does all it can to encourage the one and to suppress the other. A man is for the most part supposed to be able to obtain all needed sympathy, in his troubles, from his family and his intimate friends. Before the rest of the world he is expected to hide his grief and maintain a cheerful aspect. It is one of the delicate forms of sensibility, produced by a high culture, to be fearful of obtruding one's feelings on unconcerned onlookers. This growing perception of the vulgar aspects of uncontrolled emotional display appears to have much to do with the partial concealments of feeling of which Mr. Spencer speaks. But comparatively few persons are completely able to hide a sharp and sudden vexation, however public the occasion of experiencing it. An annoying piece of intelligence, affecting, it may be, one's matrimonial chances or equally dear ambitions, will very likely call up a momentary expression of dismay even in presence of a fashionable company. We wonder to how many persons it is still a necessity, under the smart of a sudden disappointment, to flee as soon as possible from all spectators, and relieve the pressure of emotion by a few energetic expletives, if not a spare shower of tears? We do not know how many ages it may require to discipline our species in a perfect concealment of painful feeling; but, at present, it looks as though we were passing through the hardest stages of this schooling.

One other influence which probably contributes to make emotion more and more private and invisible is the partial revival of the Stoical doctrine that all sentiment is a moral weakness. This idea appears to hold most sway in our own country, and especially among those classes who are most concerned to maintain a not too obvious gentility. A common supposition among young aspirants to social rank seems to be, that lofty breeding is best seen in a uniformly passionless and vacuous arrangement of the facial muscles. To appear interested in any object in his environment strikes the pseudo-aristocrat as a pitiable infirmity of vulgar minds. The ways in which this curious self-imposed check acts are at times very funny. We remember hearing Macready give a series of readings to a fashionably-dressed assembly, in a small provincial town, and we were much struck by the almost heroic efforts which many of the company made to conceal the emotion so powerfully aroused by the tragedian's art. Possibly English people are less impressible by scenic display and music than Continental nations. Whether this be so or not, it is very curious to contrast the perfectly apathetic aspect of an assembly at Covent Garden with the lively demonstrations of an audience at a Paris opera, or the deep, earnest absorption of the worshipers of Wagner at Berlin or Munich. This notion that it is the final attainment of civilization to appear impartially indifferent to every thing about one, and constantly to