Herein may we find a key to the riddle of governmental vicissitudes in France. People so easily satisfied with illusions, so fertile in superficial expedients, are like children and savages in their sense of what is novel and amusing, and their love of excitement,and make no such demands upon reality as full-grown men and educated citizens instinctively crave. Their powers, in this regard, have not been disciplined,their wants but vaguely realized. Accustomed to look out of themselves for a law of action, to consult authority upon every occasion, to defer to official sources for guidance in every detail of municipal and personal affairs,the lesson of self-dependence, the courage and the knowledge needful for efficiency are wanting. "Savez-vous," asks an epicure, "ce qui a chassé la gaîté? C'est la politique." They rally at the voice of command, submit to interference, and take for granted a prescribed formula, partly because it is troublesome to think, and partly on account of inexperience in assuming responsibility. De Tocqueville has remarked, that, in every instance of attempted colonization, they have adapted themselves to, instead of elevating savage tribes. They have never gone through the process of state-education by the inevitable claim of personal duty, like the Anglo-Saxons. Hence their need of a master, and the feeling of stability realized among them only under legitimacy and despotism. Shallow reasoners argue from the mere acknowledgment of this state of things that it is an ultimate public blessing when the man appears with wit and will enough to regulate and keep from chaos a society thus destitute of political training. But those who look deeper know that this political inefficiency is but the external manifestation or the latent cause of more serious defects: by impeding healthful development in one way, it occasions a morbid development in another. If citizenship in its most free and active privilege were enjoyed, there would be less devotion to amusement, a more virile national character, and the sanctities of life would have observance. Public spirit and a political career are incentives to manly ambition,to an employment of mind and feeling that wins men from trifling pursuits and vain diversion; they are the national basis of private usefulness; to thwart them is to condemn humanity to perpetual childhood,to render members of a state machines.
The social evils and kinds of crime in France are referable in no small degree to the absence of great motives,the limited spheres and hopeless routine involved in arbitrary government, unsustained by any elevated sentiment. Such a rule makes literature servile, enterprise mercenary, and manners profligate: all history proves this. It is not, therefore, rational to infer, from the apparent want of ability in the nation to take care of its own affairs, that a military despotism is justifiable; when the truth is equally demonstrated, that such a sway, by indefinitely postponing the chance to acquire the requisite training, keeps down and throws back the national impulse and destiny. The man who thus abuses power is none the less a traitor and a parricide.
THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFICULTIES; AND WHAT CAME OF IT
"Mr. Geer!"
Mr. Geer was unquestionably asleep.
This certainly did not indicate a sufficiently warm appreciation of Mrs. Geer's social charms; but the enormity of the offence will be greatly modified by a brief review of the attending circumstances. If you will but consider that the crackling of burning wood in a huge Franklin stove is strongly soporific in its tendencies,that the cushion of a capacious arm-chair, constructed and adjusted as if with a single eye to a delicious dose, nay, to a long succession of doses, is a powerful temptation to a sleepy soul,that the regular, and, it must be confessed, somewhat monotonous click, click, click of Mrs. Geer's knitting-needles only served to measure, without disturbing the silence,and, lastly, that they had been husband and wife for thirty years,you will not cease to wonder that Mr. Geer
"was glorious,
O'er all the ills of life victorious."
To most men, an interruption at such a time would have been particularly annoying; but when Mrs. Geer spoke in that way, Mr. Geer, asleep or awake, always made a point of hearing; so he roused himself, and turned his round, honest face and placid blue eyes on the partner of his bosom, who went on,
"Mr. Geer, our Ivy will be seventeen, come fall."
"Possible?" replied Mr. Geer. "Who'd 'a' thunk it?"
Mr. Geer, as you may infer, was eminently a free-thinker, or rather, a free-actor, in respect of irregular verbs. In fact, he tyrannized over all parts of speech: wrested nouns and verbs from their original shape, till you could hardly recognize their distorted faces; and committed that next worst sin to murdering one's mother, namely,murdering one's mother-tongue, with an abandon that was absolutely fascinating. Having delivered his opinion thus sententiously, he at once subsided, closed his placid eyes, and retired into his inner world ofthought, perhaps.
"Mr. Geer!"
This time he fairly jumped from his seat, and cast about him scared, blinking eyes.
"Mr. Geer, how can you sleep away your precious time so?"
"Sleep? IIam sure, I was never wider awake in my life."
"Well, then, tell me what I said."
"Said? Eh,eh,something about Ivy, wasn't it?"
And Mr. Geer nervously twitched up the skirts of his coat, and replaced his awry cushion, and began to think that perhaps, after all, he had been asleep. But Mrs. Geer was too much interested in the subject of her own cogitations to pursue her victory farther; so she answered,
"Yes, and what is a-going to become of her?"
"Lud, lud! What's the matter?" asked Mr. Geer, wildly.
"Matter? Why, she'll be seventeen, come fall, and doesn't know a thing."
"O Lud! that all? That a'n't nothin'."
And Mr. Geer settled comfortably down into his arm-chair once more. He felt decidedly relieved. Visions of smallpox, cholera, and throat-distemper, the worst evils that he could think of and dread for his darling, had been conjured up by his wife's words; and when he found the real state of the case, a great burden, which had suddenly fallen on his heart, was as suddenly lifted.
"But I tell you it is something," continued Mrs. Geer, energetically. "Ivy is 'most a woman, and has never been ten miles from home in her life, and to no school but our little district"
"And she's as pairk a gal," interrupted Mr. Geer, "as any you'll find in all the ten miles round, be the other who she will."
"She's well enough in her way," replied Mrs. Geer, in all the humility of motherly pride; "and so much the more reason why she shouldn't be let go so. There's Mr. Dingham sending his great logy girls to Miss Porter's seminary. (I wonder if he expects they'll ever turn out anything.) And here's our Ivy, bright as a button, and you full well able to maintain her like a lady, and have done nothing but turn her out to grass all her life, till she's fairly run wild. I declare it's a shame. She ought to be sent to school to-morrow."
"Nonsense, Sally! nonsense! I a'n't a-goin' lo have no such doin's. Sha'n't go off to school. What's the use havin' her, if she can't stay at home with us? Let Mr. Dingham send his gals to Chiny, if he wants to. All the book-larnin' in the world won't make 'em equal to our Ivy with only her own head. I don't want her to go to gettin' up high-falutin' notions. She's all gold now. She don't need no improvin'. Sha'n't budge an inch. Sha'n't stir a step."