First Love. Mrs. Loudon

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      CHAPTER XI.

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      “There is nothing great,

       Which religion does not teach; nothing good,

       Of which she is not the eternal source;

       At once the motive and the recompense.”

      From the evening of the birth of Lady L.’s babies, it was evident that our hero, though not yet seven years old, no longer thought himself little. He assumed a manly air and carriage, and could not bear the idea of being suspected of wanting assistance or protection. He, indeed, was always ready to give his assistance, if one of the babies stretched a little hand for any thing, or his protection, if the bark of a dog, the sight of a stranger, or any such awful occurrence, alarmed either of them; or his soothings, if they cried.

      He would no longer hold by any one’s hand in walking, but would step out in front of the nursery party, with quite a proud air, looking over his shoulder, from time to time, and telling the nurses that he was going first, to see that there was nothing there to hurt the babies. He often asked if they would ever be as big as he was; and always kept alive, by perpetual inquiries, and additional caresses, a perfect recollection of the identity of the eldest baby—the one that had been held across his arms, the evening it was born; and which, at the moment it seemed to clasp his finger, had awakened in his little breast the first emotion of tenderness, that was not accompanied by that almost awe-inspiring feeling—a grateful looking up, as from an immeasurable distance, to beings, in whose love and protection he himself sought shelter.

      The partiality evinced by Mr. Jackson for our hero, on the day of the christening, encouraged Mrs. Montgomery to put in immediate execution a plan which Lady L. and herself had been for some time meditating; namely, to request that gentleman to undertake the education of Edmund, till he was of an age to be sent to the Naval College.

      Mr. Jackson was eminently fitted for the task of instructing youth. He had been a fellow of one of the universities, and distinguished both for his learning and his talents.

      Since his retirement from college on his present living, he had enjoyed much leisure, and had devoted it to elegant studies: modern classics, modern languages, the fine arts, late discoveries in science, &c. &c. In short, to use his own words, he had, since that period, wandered daily through the pleasure-grounds of literature; not suffering his mind to sink into utter indolence, yet giving it no more than the healthful stimulus of gentle exercise. He was born a poet, but had, through life, indulged more in poetical feelings than in poetical effusions; unless, indeed, we admit as such, the energetic overflowing of his spontaneous eloquence in conversation; for his sermons, he took care, should be plain and practical. He was not a shepherd, who, at the instigation of vanity, would turn the green pasture-lands of his flock into beds of tulips. Yet did not the pure and perspicuous style, which good taste, as well as good feeling, taught him to adopt on sacred subjects, want for that true sublime which is derived from simplicity, when the grandeur of the thought itself leaves laboured language far behind.

      The topic on which he was unwearied was, the inseparable connexion between right faith and right practice, and between both and happiness. He proved, by the most beautiful and feeling arguments and illustrations, that, like the root, the blossom, and the fruit, they grew out of, necessarily produced, and, as necessarily, could not exist without each other. He then proceeded to show, that the whole chain of natural causes and effects formed one unbroken, practical revelation of the Almighty will, ordaining virtue and forbidding vice; inasmuch as not only is virtue necessary to make us capable of happiness even here, but out of vice invariably grows suffering, not only moral, but generally physical also, lest the lowest capacity should be slow to comprehend this manifestation of the sovereign purpose of him who called us into being, but bestows upon us that felicity, towards which, his all-wise government is constituted to lead us; of him who, had it been possible even to infinite power, to bestow a consciousness of individuality of spiritual being, without an equal consciousness of freedom of will, would have rendered it impossible for his creatures to err; or, in other words, to forfeit that bliss which “eye hath not seen, ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.”

      “For,” our Christian philosopher would add, as he drew his arguments to their close, “had that emanation of the divinity which is the soul of man, been without choice between good and evil; or, in other words, necessitated to act by no other impulse than that of its great source, the Almighty had created but a material world, all spiritual intelligence, the whole soul of the universe, had still been God himself!”

      Mr. Jackson’s imaginings, especially when he walked alone amid the majestic scenery that surrounded his dwelling, certainly were poetry; but he seldom interrupted his pleasing reveries, or checked his nights of fancy, to place them on paper, or even to arrange them in any precise order of words. Indeed, it was one of his favourite positions, (and he was famous for theories of his own,) that a man might be a poet, without possessing one word of any language whatsoever, in which to express his poetic ideas.

      In judging a new work, too, he seldom descended to verbal criticism; but, taking an enlarged view of the spirit in which the thing was written, pronounced it, at once, to want, or to possess, that poetical spark, that vivifying principle, which must, he maintained, breathe a soul into every composition, whether prose or verse, worth the trouble of reading.

      To complete Mr. Jackson’s qualifications for a preceptor, he himself found a sensible pleasure in imparting knowledge. Let others prove the wonders, the properties, the virtues of all that the material world affords; and, admired be their curious, and respected their useful labours; but the natural philosophy in which he delighted, was the development of the young mind. In his mode, too, of communicating instruction, there was a peculiar felicity. He never required of a pupil an arbitrary act of mere memory: “indeed,” he would say, “there is no such a power as mere memory.” What is commonly called having a good memory, he considered as nothing more than the natural result of fixing the attention, awaking the feelings, and forming the associations. These last, he termed the roots, by which remembrances entwine themselves with our whole constitution, till the very heart vibrates to a sound, a colour, or but the scent of a flower, plucked in the day of joy, or of sorrow. He, therefore, always endeavoured to lead the understanding to facts, through their causes; and, again, to interest the feelings in the consequences of those facts: thus were the lessons he taught never to be effaced. Above all things, he hasted to supply the infant mind with salutary associations, on every subject tending to implant principles and form character; considering every avenue of the soul, not thus timely fortified, as laid open to the incursions of wrong, perhaps, fatal opinions. For instance, whilst others railed, with common-place argument, against bribing children, as they termed it, into goodness; he maintained that the lowest animal gratification of the infant, (that is, before it can understand any other,) may be so judiciously bestowed, as to become the first seed of that grand principle, a thorough conviction that the virtuous only can enjoy happiness. If the child’s daily and hourly experience prove to it, that when it is good it has all from which it knows how to derive pleasure; and that when it is not good, the reverse is the case; must it not soon learn to connect, so thoroughly, goodness with happiness, that, through after-life, the ideas can never present themselves apart. “As mind is developed,” he would say, “let the sources of the child’s happiness be ennobled: teach it to prize, as its best reward, the love and approval of its parent; to dread, as its greatest punishment, the withholding such. And, to acquire this power, let your tenderest indulgence, the perpetual sunshine of your countenance, be the very atmosphere in which your child is reared; and soon, the sight of features on which no smile appears, will be chastisement sufficient, and you be spared the brutalizing and alienating your offspring, by beating it into forced obedience, and spontaneous СКАЧАТЬ