Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 094.djvu/418

408 causes of human suffering in any one day—from miserable family quarrels to the discomfort caused by injudicious dress; and he contends that the latter, worn entirely in deference to the most foolish of mankind—the tyrannous majority, would outweigh many an evil that sounds very big; in fact, he classes the probable evil of women's stays with an occasional pestilence, as the cholera, and regards our every-day shaving, severe shirt-collars, and other ridiculous garments, as equivalent to a great European war once in seven years. Anon he pictures to himself a distant descendant of his—a man of dilapidated fortune, but still owning his house and garden—and tracks out a hypothetical map of that descendant's outer and inner life—a sketch graced with many beautiful touches; as where the poor man is seen in the then damp and cheerless room, occupied, during his meagre supper, with listening to a list of the repairs that must be looked to, but in reality thinking all the while of his pale mother (quietly housed in the wooded churchyard), and of his wondering, as a child, why she never used to look up when horse or man went by, as she sat working at that bay-window, and getting his clothes ready for school. Then, again, we have a dialogue about the claims of literature, and its bearing on life in general—including a shrewd complaint of the way in which a man becomes twisted and deformed by surrendering himself to any one art, science, or calling, and ceasing to be a man, a wholesome man, fairly developed in all ways. The great sins of great cities—the provision of some small aids and consolations for various forms of unhappiness, arising from obloquy, neglect, injustice, and petty anxieties—the advantages and philosophy of travelling—the position and prospects of the Anglican Church—the art of coming to an end, i. e., of curing the "fatal superabundance" which makes all human affairs tedious—of abating the lengthiness of visits, dinners, concerts, plays, speeches, pleadings, essays, sermons—these are among the manifold themes successively and successfully "vexed" by the discursive essayist.

We can only briefly allude to his other acknowledged writings. The "Claims of Labour" (1844) is a valuable treatise on the duties of employers to the employed, vigorous in exposition, kindly in tone, and a book which those most affrighted at political economy will not find heavy reading. As in his other publications, the author harmonises, in a manner as rare as it is agreeable, the characteristics of shrewdness and benevolence. He contends for an earnest and practical application, on the part of the employing class, of thought and labour for the welfare of those whom they employ. He points to the dark stream of profligacy which overflows and burns into those parts of the land where want and ignorance prevail; and stoutly does he battle with the thoughtless cruelty which says, "Why vex me with these things? Go to those whose business it is to redress grievances." Surely, he argues, the largeness of a calamity ought not to be so ready a shelter for those who have not heart enough to adventure any opposition to it: surely a man may find a sphere small enough, as well as large enough, for him to act in. "The foolish sluggard stares hopelessly into the intricacy of the