It was agreed that the reading to-day should be in the drawing-room, in order that the ladies might be able to go on with their work (they were very busy preparing for some fancy fair) while we were talking or reading.

Before the reading commenced, there was an interesting conversation, which began in this way:

_Milverton._ I have just been into your room, Ellesmere, to see about the chimney, which they say smokes.

_Ellesmere._ Pray don’t trouble yourself. There is a proper concatenation in all human affairs. One must have a smoky chimney when one has a scolding wife.

_Milverton._ I saw Dickens’s “American Notes” on your table, and, looking at it, I came upon a passage about solitary confinement. I suppose it is the dreadful punishment which Dickens says it is, and in which he is supported by Mr. Reade in “Never Too Late to Mend;” but I have always fancied that I could bear a little of this solitary confinement very well.

See what advantages there are:--

No letters.

No choice given you about your food.

Lots of time for thinking about and inventing things.

No servants to manage.

No visitors to entertain.

The chief pain of life is in deciding; and there, in your solitary cell, there would be no occasion to decide anything.

_Ellesmere._ I agree with you. Life becomes more and more tiresome from our having more and more to decide. Now, at a dinner-party, they _will_ bother you with two sorts of soup, two kinds of fish, and innumerable wines.

_Mauleverer._ Very wrong of the host to throw such a weight of responsibility upon his guests. One is sure to believe that one has chosen indiscreetly, to feel that it is irremediable, and to be tormented by regret throughout the dinner for one’s error--say, in the choice of the soup. I have often felt that.

_Sir Arthur._ I always admired the plan that great Catholic monarchs had of going into retirement in some monastery for two or three weeks.

_Milverton._ I am afraid they received despatches. Now, in solitary confinement, one should have ceased to be a person to whom anybody could address anything.

It would be better than being in a yacht--at least to any one who is apt to be sea-sick.

_Sir Arthur._ There would be no bells to molest you. The three great evils in life are noise, poverty, and popularity. Nobody can tell what I have suffered from noise in the course of my life. It has been an act of great forbearance on my part to endure dogs, for I do so much detest their barking. The weak part of their character is, that they will bark, in season and out of season, for good reason, or for no reason at all--generally the latter. I love horses, because they make so little noise. Rabbits, too, and white mice are----

_Ellesmere._ I will not have a word said against dogs. They are the best fellows I know. Sir Arthur objects to their barking; why does he not object to men’s talking? Pray, sir, by which have you been most bored: by the injudicious barking of dogs, or by the foolish talk of men? Do dogs make two hours’ speeches to convey ideas (ideas?) which might have been conveyed in ten minutes?

Of course, if I wished to run them down--that is, if I were a base and ungrateful man--I too could say something against them. They are a little too prone to be vulgarly aristocratic, for my taste,--too apt to despise poor and ragged people, and to bark at their heels. But then, again, if they are on the other side of the House, if they belong to poor and ragged persons, they have a proper respect for rags and poverty, and sniff contemptuously at carriage people. In short, they partake the errors and vices of their masters: that is all. Milverton’s dogs howl philosophy; Sir Arthur’s whine poetry; Mauleverer’s (epicurean dogs those!) discern great difference between different kinds of bones: and mine bark at everybody, just like me, without doing any harm to anybody.

In general, dogs have rather too much love for good society--a failing which they partake with most of us. We all like to visit the best people, as they are called. So with dogs. The kitchen is warm, its atmosphere is rich with unctuous and savoury odours, the cook is kind; but the parlour is preferred by the dog, from an innate love of high society.

I do not believe there has been any instance of a man committing suicide when he has had a dog to love him. Move for a return, Mr. Cranmer, and you will find I am right.

As regards friendship, the very word would have been unknown but for dogs. Does not Max Müller say that the word for friendship in the original language was “man-and-dog-in-the-desert?”

_Milverton._ What an ingenious way Ellesmere has of insinuating that he is supported by some great authority! “Does not Max Müller say?” No, he does not say anything of the kind.

_Ellesmere._ How do you know? I have no doubt it is in a note which has hitherto escaped your observation. But, at any rate, the friendship between a dog and a man is the highest form and exemplar of friendship. Does a dog ever say, or look as if he would say, “I told you so,” when you are mortified to death at having committed some grievous folly? or does it use what is called “the privilege of a friend,” to say the most cutting things to you?

Then look at the nice appreciation of character which dogs manifest: their tolerance of children, their boundless fidelity, their interest in all human affairs.

“Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res.”

Aristippus must have been very like a dog. Dogs will go with you to a badger-bait, to a fox-hunt, to a public meeting, to races, to church, and will almost always behave themselves well and creditably, and not disgrace their masters.

_Cranmer._ The irrepressible dog at the Derby?

_Ellesmere._ If I wanted an instance to show the brutality of men and the humanity of dogs, I would rely upon the case of the dog at the Derby. He knows that his master has backed heavily Vauban, or Hermit, or Lord Lyon, and, of course, he has a deep and affectionate interest in the race for his master’s sake. And then the poor creature is malignantly shouted at all along the racecourse; and when he perceives, with the tact of a dog, that he is doing something wrong, and wishes to escape to the right or the left, no good Christians make way for him.

By the way, talking of Christians, I admit that dogs are not good Christians: they are too prejudiced for that, and too much inclined to persecute the inferior animals; but then how few men are Christians! In short, you cannot say anything against dogs which does not apply with equal force to human beings; while, on the other hand, how many things may be said against human beings, which do not apply to dogs? If Rochefoucauld had passed his time with dogs instead of with courtiers, would he ever have said “that there is something in the misfortunes of our friends which is not entirely displeasing to us?” I ask you, did you ever know a dog bark out any maxim like that? No; down with men, and up with dogs, say I.

If the Pythagorean system is true, it will only be the very good and choice men who will become dogs in the next stage of existence. Come here, Fairy: I have no doubt you were an exemplary woman; that you never scandalized any other woman at tea-time; that you did not thwart your husband seriously more than twice a day; that you did not worry him to sign cheques; and that you did not say he was a brute if he declined to go out shopping with you. Yes, turn up the whites of your eyes, my dear, to show how horrified you are to think that there are women not quite so good as you were. But you were a wonder of a woman, as you are now a wonder of a dog. I will not have dogs run down: I am their champion. What does the excellent Dr. Watts say, somewhat ironically?--

“If dogs delight to bark and bite, We make a great to-do; If men show fight, and women spite, Why, ’tis their nature to.”

Any excuse for ourselves; none for the poor dogs.

_Milverton._ Poor Dr. Watts! What would he say to hearing his good words so parodied?

_Sir Arthur._ Notwithstanding Ellesmere’s eulogium upon dogs, I venture to say again, what I said before, that I do not like their barking. But, to pursue the general question of noise, we never hardly, in our houses, make any sensible provision against it.

_Milverton._ Very true, Sir Arthur. I remember reading of some murder committed in a Russian palace,--a noisy murder, too--but nobody heard anything of it in the next room. Now that is my idea of how a house should be built. It should be possible to commit a murder in any room, without the rest of the house being troubled or disturbed. As it is, architects seem to have set their faces against all quiet and privacy. Studious men are the victims of neighbouring pianos. A nursery is a hot-bed of annoyance. I have studied the question of noise very deeply, and I will tell you something of the greatest importance. Put a layer of small shells between the flooring that separates a room from the room above it. You will find these shells admirable non-conductors of sound.

_Cranmer._ I wish architects were subject to examinations.

_Milverton._ Very good. The first question I should ask them would be, What thickness of what material will prevent such and such noises--say the playing of a piano by a beginner--from being heard in the adjacent rooms?

_Sir Arthur._ I remember when I was in Germany, and used to spell over the German newspapers, nothing used to delight me more than the advertisements of servants, which so often began, “_Ein stilles Mädchen_.” Now, if one could advertise about houses, and say truthfully, “_Ein stilles Haus_” (I’m sure I do not know whether that is the right German), what an attractive advertisement it would be!

_Ellesmere._ You were quoting just now “Never Too Late to Mend.” I don’t think Mr. Reade protested so much against solitary confinement as against the cruelty which in that particular case accompanied solitary confinement. At least such is my recollection of that eloquent and fervid book.

_Milverton._ No, you are wrong; he protested against the system as well as against the cruelties which he stated to have accompanied it in that particular case.

It is a commonplace remark to make, but what an atrocious thing cruelty is! Do not you all feel that circumstances favouring you might have committed all other sins known in the calendar of sinfulness? but cruelty is unspeakably abhorrent to all thoughtful men. There is nothing Christianity has set its face so distinctly against.

_Ellesmere._ But then, you see, there are so few Christians in the world. At least such is the conclusion I have come to, from my limited experience. There is something in my mind upon this subject which would, I fear, perfectly horrify you all. It is a strange, almost ridiculous resemblance that has often struck me between Christianity and something which is considered to be one of the most frivolous of all the frivolous things in this world.

I would not have said it before dear Dunsford for the world, and I am afraid to say it even to you.

_Cranmer._ Let us hear it. We are not bound to agree with it, and I am certain beforehand I shall disagree with it.

_Sir Arthur._ Do not all at once be modest and timid, Sir John. If you are suddenly taken in this way, we shall all think you are going to have an illness.

_Lady Ellesmere._ Pray do not imagine such a thing. I did not half describe to you, when we talked upon the subject of illness the other day, what an irrational person he is. He had the audacity to complain of me. But, indeed, the great superiority of women to men is never more conspicuous than in illness. Men oscillate from utter abjectness to obstinate indocility.

One day it is, “Oh, pray manage for me, and pray manage me. I have no will of my own; I am nobody, only a bundle of pain and misery.”

The next day my lord is a little better, and has resumed his usual grandeur and obstinacy. If you bring him some beef-tea or some water-gruel, he insists upon your explaining to him (at least Sir John does) the exact nature and effect of those harmless fluids. He once reasoned with me for three-quarters of an hour about a mustard-plaster; and, indeed, he made a speech about it (at a time when he was ordered not to talk at all) which would have done him great credit before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He divided his speech into seven heads, and it ended by showing that a mustard-plaster was one of the most dangerous remedies that could be applied; but I did apply it nevertheless. I say again, that the superiority of a woman to a man is never more manifest than in a sick-room, whether as nurse or patient--in the one case showing a skilfulness and tenderness; in the other, a patience and endurance utterly unknown to what is facetiously called the stronger-minded sex.

_Ellesmere._ Doesn’t she talk like a book?--like a bit of the _Rambler_ or _Spectator_? “Showing in the one case a clumsiness and hardness, and, in the other, an impatience and irritability, which are quite unknown to the wiser and the gentler sex, that is, to the sex masculine.” I think those were her words, or, at least, such as they ought to have been.

_Sir Arthur._ I thought that what Lady Ellesmere said was equally true and well-expressed.

_Ellesmere._ The poor husband, or father, or brother, is always at a sad disadvantage in dealing with his womankind. He brings, with trembling and reluctant hand, the invigorating but distasteful acid of the medicinal potion, while the polite stranger assiduously presents the fallacious palliative of the consequential saccharinity.

At least, that is how Dr. Johnson and Lady Ellesmere would express it. Plain John (that is how some people describe me, as they used to describe a former Lord Chancellor), plain John has to administer the dose, and the polite Sir Arthur gives the sugar or the jam which weak people take after their doses.

_Milverton._ This is a very pleasant and instructive interlude; but you were going to say something which would horrify us. I join with Mauleverer, and maintain that it is beyond your power to horrify me.

_Ellesmere._ Here goes, as you will have it. Is there anything that Christianity protests against so much as riches and the belief in riches? Or, to put the question more largely, Is there anything that Christianity protests against so much as a slavish yielding to worldly greatness of any kind--to great riches, great power, great intellect, great force, or great worldly success of any kind?

_Milverton._ Yes; you are right.

_Sir Arthur._ Yes.

_Ellesmere._ Well, then, _Fashion is the only thing which, in modern times, has stood up boldly against wealth, power, rank, dignity, and success of all kinds._ I am not old enough to remember when Fashion was predominant, but I heard older men talk about it, and I learned to estimate its power. There was a time when it was the fashion to be poor. Think of that. It is very like Christianity, you know.

_Sir Arthur._ This is the most paradoxical thing I ever heard, and yet there really is something in it. _Fashion_ did make a sort of protest against riches, rank, and adventitious worth of all kinds. But, my dear Sir John, the idol it set up instead was a miserable one.

_Ellesmere._ I do not care about that; it somehow appealed to what was considered to be personal worth rather than adventitious circumstances. Men were fashionable who did not possess any of the things that the world generally dotes upon.

_Milverton._ What you say, Ellesmere, is very ingenious; and I must honestly say I sympathise with anything that thwarts, or tends to thwart, the brute power of wealth.

How many a man may say, as some Don Alonso, or Don Juan, says in one of Calderon’s plays--

“Y el haber, en mí, ó no haber, O temor ó atrevimiento, No consiste en otra cosa Que haber ó no haber dinero;”

which being liberally translated, means, “If I have cash, I have courage; but if I am poor, I have none.”

_Ellesmere._ You see neither Sir Arthur nor Milverton have much to say against my theory. I am not such a fool and scoundrel after all, Mr. Cranmer, am I?

_Cranmer._ Nobody thought that you were, Sir John; but, for my part, I must say I prefer a great contractor to Beau Brummel.

_Ellesmere._ I do not.

_Sir Arthur._ The best protest I ever knew made against worldly success was by a small society of young men at college. Their numbers were very few, and their mode of election was the most remarkable I have ever known. The vacancies were exceedingly rare--perhaps one or two in the course of a year--and the utmost care and study were bestowed on choosing the new members. Sometimes, months were given to the consideration of a man’s claim.

Rank neither told for a man, nor against him. The same with riches, the same with learning, and what is more strange, the same with intellectual gifts of all kinds. The same, too, with goodness; nor even were the qualities that make a man agreeable any sure recommendation of him as a candidate.

_Mauleverer._ What did you go by then?

_Sir Arthur._ I really feel a difficulty in describing to you, and yet I know perfectly what it was.

A man to succeed with us must be a real man, and not a “sham,” as Carlyle would say. Matthew Arnold has invented a word to describe certain people, which is not a bad one. He calls them “Philistines.” Now our man was never a “Philistine.” He was not to talk the talk of any clique; he was not to believe too much in any of his adventitious advantages; neither was he to disbelieve in them--for instance, to affect to be a radical because he was a lord. I confess I have no one word which will convey all that I mean; but I may tell you that, above all things, he was to be open-minded. When we voted for a man, we generally summed up by saying, “He has an apostolic spirit in him,” and by that we really meant a great deal.

I remember ----, who is now a very great personage in the world, saying to me, “In the course of one’s chequered life one meets with many disgraces and contumelies, and also with several honours; but no honour ever affected me so much as being elected, as a youth, into that select body. And, to speak very frankly, I think they were right in choosing me, for, with many demerits of the gravest kind, I do think I am a real human being, and I say what I think, and I try to think for myself, and the world’s gauds and vanities do not, I conceive, excessively impose upon me.”

By the way, I must tell you a curious thing--viz. that the choice made by these young men, though made without any view to future worldly pre-eminence, yet seemed to involve it, for a very large proportion of the men so selected have made their mark in the world; and some of the foremost men of the time belonged to that society. But boys at school and youths at college do choose so wisely and so well, as Milverton has told us. They are not to be deceived by wrappages of any kind.

_Milverton._ But we wander from our subject. Ellesmere said that there were few Christians anywhere. If he means that there are few perfect Christians, every one would agree with him. But if he means that Christianity has not prevailed, is not prevailing, and will not prevail in a much higher degree, I humbly think he is mistaken. The truth is, so large a conquest has already been made by Christianity in the human mind, that each individual Christian looks smaller, and is of course of far less account, than when he was surrounded by a Pagan world. “_Non meus hic sermo._” These are not my words, but Dunsford’s--almost his last words to me.

Dunsford was our tutor, Ellesmere’s and mine, at college. He lived near us here, and was much with us.

_Ellesmere._ I never asked, Milverton, what he died of. As you know, I was abroad at the time.

_Milverton._ Of simple exhaustion. You know he was about the most learned man in England, being great in science, in classical lore, and in literature of all kinds. He kept up his learning, was a most diligent student to the last, and withal a most active clergyman in a large and scattered parish. He burned the candle at both ends, rising early and going to bed late.

_Lady Ellesmere._ He had no wife. Wives are of some use, if only to prevent their husbands from overworking.

_Milverton._ Well, a day or too before his death, he cleared the room of his attendants, and told me he wished to speak to me. He began by talking of the critical spirit of the present age, and how the historical part of Christianity would have to undergo a severe ordeal. He spoke of some of the great heresiarchs of the present day, both of those who were eminent in Biblical criticism and in science, and he spoke of them with the greatest kindness, saying that many of them were good men who loved the truth, and that no permanent harm could come to religion from a sincere search after truth.

“I do not wish,” he said, “my dear boy” (he always looked upon Ellesmere and myself as his children)----

_Ellesmere._ Yes; Dunsford was one of those persons who think you never grow any older, and always treated Milverton and me as boys, because we had been his pupils. I remember once, after he had been lecturing me in a very pedagogic way about some heresy which I had presumed to utter anent the classics (I dare say about the manufacture of Latin verses), I let the conversation drop, and then a few minutes afterwards, in the most demure way (I was staying at his house), I asked whether one of the maids could be spared to take me out for a little walk. The good man laughed heartily, and did not attempt to tutorize me for the next three days. It is true it was some years ago, but I had “taken silk” (as we say at the Bar), and did not by any means think myself a small or insignificant personage. As we grow older we grow more modest: at least I do every day.

But go on, Milverton, with what dear Dunsford said to you.

_Milverton._ “I do not wish,” he said, “to prevent such people as you and Ellesmere (he named you, John) from reading all this criticism, and accepting any of it that seems to you good; but let no man rob you of the main truths of Christianity: let no one blind you to what there is essentially divine in our religion.

“I may be an enthusiast, but I think that the triumphs of Christianity are but commencing. I look forward to a time when war, which so distresses you now, Milverton, will be an obsolete thing; when the pity we have at present for the woes and miseries of other men, will seem, comparatively speaking, but hardness of heart; when the grief of any one will be largely partaken by all those who know of it, and when our souls will not be isolated; when good men will allow themselves to give full way to their benevolent impulses, because no unfair advantage will be taken of their benevolence; when the weak will not traffic upon their weakness, nor the strong abuse their strength; when wealth will not be ardently sought for, except by those who feel that they can undertake the heavy burden of dispensing wealth for the good of their brethren; when men and women will be able to live together in a household without mean dissensions; when the lower seats shall be preferred; when men will differ about nice points of doctrine without adjudging to their opponents eternal condemnation; when, in short, instead of a tumult of discord ascending to heaven from this bewildered world, there shall go up one harmonious melody, breathing peace and faith, and love and concord and contentment.”

_Mauleverer_ (aside to me). And when every fir-tree in the wood shall be a Christmas-tree bearing pretty toys and delicious sweetmeats.

_Ellesmere._ “_Jam redeunt Saturnia regna._” There will be no room for the like of me in this good world that the excellent Dunsford contemplated, but I shall only be too delighted to behold it, whether from near or from afar; and certain it is, that if we do not believe and hope for better things, we shall never try to make things better.

_Milverton._ And then he added something which impressed me very much, for he was not a man of a romantic turn of mind, or given to daring speculations.

“Moreover,” he said, “I fondly believe that physical nature will then become less obdurate--that is, if men are fitted to receive a softer, gentler state of being. Now, as it is, if Nature were more easy and more bountiful, men would only have more spare time for annoying and persecuting one another; but depend upon it, if we were more fitted to receive good things from our Father, we should receive them.

“Think of these sayings of mine when I have gone, my dear, and let no one persuade you that Christianity is the mere dream of a few benighted enthusiasts. I can say no more. Good night;--and perhaps it is good night for ever.”

It was not so, for I saw him die; and it is a sight that is not without consolation to see a good man die.

No one seemed inclined to comment upon these last words of the good Dunsford. Mr. Milverton soon got up and walked about the room. The others looked at one another with a curious expression of countenance, half sad, half hopeful. Mr. Mauleverer shrugged up his shoulders, and Ellesmere replied to him by a similar gesture (it was not a mocking gesture, but one of sadness), but neither of them said anything.

The Story of Realmah.