{21} I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the 'Pall Mall Gazette' established; for the power of the press in the hands of highly educated men, in independent position, and of honest purpose, may indeed become all that it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor will therefore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very reason of my respect for the journal, I do not let pass unnoticed an article in its third number, page 5, which was wrong in every word of it, with the intense wrongness which only an honest man can achieve who has taken a false turn of thought in the outset, and is following it, regardless of consequences. It contained at the end this notable passage:- "The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction,--aye, and the bedsteads and blankets of affliction, are the very utmost that the law ought to give to OUTCASTS MERELY AS OUTCASTS." I merely put beside this expression of the gentlemanly mind of England in 1865, a part of the message which Isaiah was ordered to "lift up his voice like a trumpet" in declaring to the gentlemen of his day: "Ye fast for strife, and to smite with the fist of wickedness. Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor THAT ARE CAST OUT (margin, 'afflicted') to THY house?" The falsehood on which the writer had mentally founded himself, as previously stated by him, was this: "To confound the functions of the dispensers of the poor-rates with those of the dispensers of a charitable institution is a great and pernicious error." This sentence is so accurately and exquisitely wrong, that its substance must be thus reversed in our minds before we can deal with any existing problem of national distress. "To understand that the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the nation, and should distribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of hand as much greater and franker than that possible to individual charity, as the collective national wisdom and power may be supposed greater than those of any single person, is the foundation of all law respecting pauperism." (Since this was written the 'Pall Mall Gazette' has become a mere party paper--like the rest; but it writes well, and does more good than mischief on the whole.){22} [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
{23} I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have noted the various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other great characters of men in the Waverley novels--the selfishness and narrowness of thought in Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in Edward Glendinning, and the like; and I ought to have noticed that there are several quite perfect characters sketched sometimes in the backgrounds; three--let us accept joyously this courtesy to England and her soldiers--are English officers: Colonel Gardiner, Colonel Talbot, and Colonel Mannering.
{24} Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often or too carefully; as far as I know he is the only living poet who always strengthens and purifies; the others sometimes darken, and nearly always depress and discourage, the imagination they deeply seize.
{25} Observe, it is "Nature" who is speaking throughout, and who says, "while she and I together live."{26} "Joan of Arc: in reference to M. Michelet's 'History of France.'" De Quincey's Works. Vol. iii. p. 217.
{27} I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at a given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title; attainable only by certain probation and trial both of character and accomplishment; and to be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of any dishonourable act. Such an institution would be entirely, and with all noble results, possible, in a nation which loved honour. That it would not be possible among us, is not to the discredit of the scheme.
{28} See note {19}
{29} That no reference should be made to religious questions.
{30} I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for wealth.
{31} See "The Two Paths,"--paragraph beginning "You know I said of that great and pure..."
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