The Crown of Wild Olive
rendered this painful creed the only possible one, there is an appeal to
be made, more secure in its ground than any which can be addressed to
happier persons. I would fain, if I might offencelessly, have spoken to
them as if none others heard; and have said thus: Hear me, you dying
men, who will soon be deaf for ever. For these others, at your right
hand and your left, who look forward to a state of infinite existence,
in which all their errors will be overruled, and all their faults
forgiven; for these, who, stained and blackened in the battle smoke of
mortality, have but to dip themselves for an instant in the font of
death, and to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove that is covered with
silver, and her feathers like gold; for these, indeed, it may be
permissible to waste their numbered moments, through faith in a future
of innumerable hours; to these, in their weakness, it may be conceded
that they should tamper with sin which can only bring forth fruit of
righteousness, and profit by the iniquity which, one day, will be
remembered no more. In them, it may be no sign of hardness of heart to
neglect the poor, over whom they know their Master is watching; and to
leave those to perish temporarily, who cannot perish eternally. But, for
you, there is no such hope, and therefore no such excuse. This fate,
which you ordain for the wretched, you believe to be all their
inheritance; you may crush them, before the moth, and they will never
rise to rebuke you;--their breath, which fails for lack of food, once
expiring, will never be recalled to whisper against you a word of
accusing;--they and you, as you think, shall lie down together in the
dust, and the worms cover you;--and for them there shall be no
consolation, and on you no vengeance,--only the question murmured above
your grave: 'Who shall repay him what he hath done?' Is it therefore
easier for you in your heart to inflict the sorrow for which there is no
remedy? Will you take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your
poor brother, and make his brief hours long to him with pain? Will you
be readier to the injustice which can never be redressed; and niggardly
of mercy which you _can_ bestow but once, and which, refusing, you
refuse for ever? I think better of you, even of the most selfish, than
that you would do this, well understood. And for yourselves, it seems to
me, the question becomes not less grave, in these curt limits. If your
life were but a fever fit,--the madness of a night, whose follies were
all to be forgotten in the dawn, it might matter little how you fretted
away the sickly hours,--what toys you snatched at, or let fall,--what
visions you followed wistfully with the deceived eyes of sleepless
phrenzy. Is the earth only an hospital? Play, if you care to play, on
the floor of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what crowns please
you; gather the dust of it for treasure, and die rich in that, clutching
at the black motes in the air with your dying hands;--and yet, it may be
well with you. But if this life be no dream, and the world no hospital;
if all the peace and power and joy you can ever win, must be won now;
and all fruit of victory gathered here, or never;--will you still,
throughout the puny totality of your life, weary yourselves in the fire
for vanity? If there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none
you might presently take? was this grass of the earth made green for
your shroud only, not for your bed? and can you never lie down _upon_
it, but only _under_ it? The heathen, to whose creed you have returned,
thought not so. They knew that life brought its contest, but they
expected from it also the crown of all contest: No proud one! no
jewelled circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of the
unmerited throne; only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired
brow, through a few years of peace. It should have been of gold, they
thought; but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the god could give
them. Seeking a greater than this, they had known it a mockery. Not in
war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found
for them--only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath was to be
of _wild_ olive, mark you:--the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the
rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch; only with soft snow of
blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with grey leaf and thornset
stem; no fastening of diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery! But
this, such as it is, you may win while yet you live; type of grey honour
and sweet rest.[2] Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed
trust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the
ministry to their pain;--these, and the blue sky above you, and the
sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath; and mysteries and
presences, innumerable, of living things,--these may yet be here your
riches; untormenting and divine: serviceable for the life that now is
nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 'A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, near
Wolverhampton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty as the "keeper"
of a blast furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John Gardner, aged
eighteen, and Joseph Swift, aged thirty-seven. The furnace contained
four tons of molten iron, and an equal amount of cinders, and ought to
have been run out at 7.30 P.M. But Snape and his mates, engaged in
talking and drinking, neglected their duty, and in the meantime, the
iron rose in the furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water was
contained. Just as the men had stripped, and were proceeding to tap the
furnace, the water in the pipe, converted into steam, burst down its
front and let loose on them the molten metal, which instantaneously
consumed Gardner; Snape, terribly burnt, and mad with pain, leaped into
the canal and then ran home and fell dead on the threshold, Swift
survived to reach the hospital, where he died too.
In further illustration of this matter, I beg the reader to look at the
article on the 'Decay of the English Race,' in the '_Pall-Mall Gazette_'
of April 17, of this year; and at the articles on the 'Report of the
Thames Commission,' in any journals of the same date.
[2] [Greek: melitoessa, aethlon g' eneken].
THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE.
LECTURE I.
_WORK._
(_Delivered before the Working Men's Institute, at Camberwell._)
My Friends,--I have not come among you to-night to endeavour to give you
an entertaining lecture; but to tell you a few plain facts, and ask you
some plain, but necessary questions. I have seen and known too much of
the struggle for life among our labouring population, to feel at ease,
even under any circumstances, in inviting them to dwell on the
trivialities of my own studies; but, much more, as I meet to-night, for
the first time, the members of a working Institute established in the
district in which I have passed the greater part of my life, I am
desirous that we should at once understand each other, on graver
matters. I would fain tell you, with what feelings, and with what hope,
I regard this Institution, as one of many such, now happily established
throughout England, as well as in other countries;--Institutions which
are preparing the way for a great change in all the circumstances of
industrial life; but of which the success must wholly depend upon our
clearly understanding the circumstances and necessary _limits_ of this
change. No teacher can truly promote the cause of education, until he
knows the conditions of the life for which that education is to prepare
his pupil. And the fact that he is called upon to address you nominally,
as a 'Working Class,' must compel him, if he is in any wise earnest or
thoughtful, to inquire in the outset, on what you yourselves suppose
this class distinction has been founded in the past, and must be founded
in the future. The manner of the amusement, and the matter of the
teaching, which any of us can offer you, must depend wholly on our first
understanding from you, whether you think the distinction heretofore
drawn between working men and others, is truly or falsely founded. Do
you accept it as it stands? do you wish it to be modified? or do you
think the object of education is to efface it, and make us forget it for
ever?
Let me make myself more distinctly understood. We call this--you and
I--a 'Working Men's' Institute, and our college in London, a 'Working
Men's' College. Now, how do you consider that these several institutes
differ, or ought to differ, from 'idle men's' institutes and 'idle
men's' colleges? Or by what other word than 'idle' shall I distinguish
those whom the happiest and wisest of working men do not object to call
the 'Upper Classes?' Are there really upper classes,--are there lower?
How much should they always be elevated, how much always depressed? And,
gentlemen and ladies--I pray those of you who are here to forgive me the
offence there may be in what I am going to say. It is not _I_ who wish
to say it. Bitter voices say it; voices of battle and of famine through
all the world, which must be heard some day, whoever keeps silence.
Neither is it to _you_ specially that I say it. I am sure that most now
present know their duties of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhaps
than I do mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class,
which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the
less terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but what limit is
there to that of which we are unconscious?
Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these workmen, and ask them,
also as representing a great multitude, what they think the 'upper
classes' are, and ought to be, in relation to them. Answer, you workmen
who are here, as you would among yourselves, frankly; and tell me how
you would have me call those classes. Am I to call them--would _you_
think me right in calling them--the idle classes? I think you would feel
somewhat uneasy, and as if I were not treating my subject honestly, or
speaking from my heart, if I went on under the supposition that all rich
people were idle. You would be both unjust and unwise if you allowed me
to say that;--not less unjust than the rich people who say that all the
poor are idle, and will never work if they can help it, or more than
they can help.
For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor and idle rich; and
there are busy poor and busy rich. Many a beggar is as lazy as if he had
ten thousand a year; and many a man of large fortune is busier than his
errand-boy, and never would think of stopping in the street to play
marbles. So that, in a large view, the distinction between workers and
idlers, as between knaves and honest men, runs through the very heart
and innermost economies of men of all ranks and in all positions. There
is a working class--strong and happy--among both rich and poor; there is
an idle class--weak, wicked, and miserable--among both rich and poor.
And the worst of the misunderstandings arising between the two orders
come of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class habitually
contemplate the foolish of the other. If the busy rich people watched
and rebuked the idle rich people, all would be right; and if the busy
poor people watched and rebuked the idle poor people, all would be
right. But each class has a tendency to look for the faults of the
other. A hard-working man of property is particularly offended by an
idle beggar; and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant
of the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the
minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in the
unjust--but among the unjust _only_. None but the dissolute among the