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Page 35
[61] Isa. xxxii. 17.
[62]
_Maria_. How can we love?--
_Giovanna_ (interrupting). Mainly, by hearing none
Decry the object, then by cherishing
The good we see in it, and overlooking
What is less pleasant in the paths of life.
All have some virtue if we leave it them
In peace and quiet, all may lose some part
By sifting too minutely good and bad.
The tenderer and the timider of creatures
Often desert the brood that has been handled,
Or turned about, or indiscreetly looked at.
The slightest touches, touching constantly,
Irritate and inflame.
LANDOR'S _Giovanna and Andrea_.
[63] Miss Edgeworth says that proverbs are vulgar because they are
common sense.
[64] Emerson.
LETTER VII.
ECONOMY.
Perhaps there is no lesson that needs to be more watchfully and
continually impressed on the young and generous heart than the difficult
one of economy. There is no virtue that in such natures requires more
vigilant self-control and self-denial, besides the exercise of a free
judgment, uninfluenced by the excitement of feeling.
To you this virtue will be doubly difficult, because you have so long
watched its unpleasant manifestations in a distorted form. You are
exposed to danger from that which has perverted many notions of right
and wrong; you have so long heard things called by false names that you
are inclined to turn away in disgust from a noble reality. You have been
accustomed to hear the name of economy given to penuriousness and
meanness, so that now, the wounded feelings and the refined tastes of
your nature having been excited to disgust by this system of falsehood,
you will find it difficult to realize in economy a virtue that joins to
all the noble instincts of generosity the additional features of
strong-minded self-control.
It will therefore be necessary, before I endeavour to impress upon your
mind the duty and advantages of economy, that I should previously help
you to a clear understanding of the real meaning of the word itself.
The difficulty of forming a true and distinct conception of the virtue
thus denominated is much increased by its being equally misrepresented
by two entirely opposite parties. The avaricious, those to whom the
expenditure of a shilling costs a real pang of regret, claim for their
mean vice the honour of a virtue that can have no existence, unless the
same pain and the same self-control were exercised in withholding, as
with them would be exercised in giving. On the other hand, the
extravagant, sometimes wilfully, sometimes unconsciously, fall into the
same error of applying to the noble self-denial of economy the degrading
misnomers of avarice, penuriousness, &c.
It is indeed possible that the avaricious may become economical,--after
first becoming generous, which is an absolutely necessary preliminary.
That which is impossible with man is possible with God, and who may dare
to limit his free grace? This, however, is one of the wonders I have
never yet witnessed. It seems indeed that the love of money is so
literally the "root of all evil,"[65] that there is no room in the heart
where it dwells for any other growth, for any thing lovely or excellent.
The taint is universal, and while much that is amiable and interesting
may originally exist in characters containing the seeds of every other
vice, (however in time overshadowed and poisoned by such neighbourhood,)
it would seem that "the love of money" always reigns in sovereign
desolation, admitting no warm or generous feeling into the heart which
it governs. Such, however, you will at once deny to be the case of
those from whose penuriousness your early years have suffered; you know
that their character is not thus bare of virtues. But do not for this
contradict my assertion; theirs was not always innate love of money for
its own sake, though at length they may have unfortunately learned to
love it thus, which is the true test of avarice. It has, on the
contrary, been owing to the faults of others, to their having long
experienced the deprivations attendant on a want of money, that they
have acquired the habit of thinking the consciousness of its possession
quite as enjoyable as the powers and the pleasures its expenditure
bestows. They know too well the pain of want of money, but have never
learned that the real pleasure of its possession consists in its
employment.[66] It is only from habit, only from perverted experience,
that they are avaricious, therefore I at once exonerate them from the
charges I have brought against those whose very nature it is to love
money for its own sake. At the same time the strong expressions I have
made use of respecting these latter, may, I hope, serve to obviate the
suspicion that I have any indulgence for so despicable a vice, and may
induce you to expect an unprejudiced statement of the merits and the
duty of economy.
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