“It would have pleased me better,” said
Aram, “had the speaker of the two particularized
less; and you observed that he seemed eager not to
let his companion speak; that is a little suspicious.”
“Shall I call them back?” asked the Squire.
“Why it is scarcely worth while,” said
Aram; “perhaps I over refine. And now I
look again at them, they seem really what they affect
to be. No, it is useless to molest the poor wretches
any more. There is something, Lester, humbling
to human pride in a rustic’s life. It grates
against the heart to think of the tone in which we
unconsciously permit ourselves to address him.
We see in him humanity in its simple state; it is a
sad thought to feel that we despise it; that all we
respect in our species is what has been created by
art; the gaudy dress, the glittering equipage, or
even the cultivated intellect; the mere and naked material
of Nature, we eye with indifference or trample on
with disdain. Poor child of toil, from the grey
dawn to the setting sun, one long task!—no
idea elicited— no thought awakened beyond
those that suffice to make him the machine of others—the
serf of the hard soil! And then too, mark how
we scowl upon his scanty holidays, how we hedge in
his mirth with laws, and turn his hilarity into crime!
We make the whole of the gay world, wherein we walk
and take our pleasure, to him a place of snares and
perils. If he leave his labour for an instant,
in that instant how many temptations spring up to
him! And yet we have no mercy for his errors;
the gaol—the transport-ship—the
gallows; those are our sole lecture-books, and our
only methods of expostulation—ah, fie on
the disparities of the world! They cripple the
heart, they blind the sense, they concentrate the thousand
links between man and man, into the two basest of earthly
ties— servility, and pride. Methinks
the devils laugh out when they hear us tell the boor
that his soul is as glorious and eternal as our own;
and yet when in the grinding drudgery of his life,
not a spark of that soul can be called forth; when
it sleeps, walled around in its lumpish clay, from
the cradle to the grave, without a dream to stir the
deadness of its torpor.”
“And yet, Aram,” said Lester, “the
Lords of science have their ills. Exalt the soul
as you will, you cannot raise it above pain. Better,
perhaps, to let it sleep, when in waking it looks only
upon a world of trial.”
“You say well, you say well,” said Aram
smiting his heart, “and I suffered a foolish
sentiment to carry me beyond the sober boundaries of
our daily sense.”
Military preparations.—The
commander and his man.—Aram
is
persuaded to pass the night at the Manor-house.
Falstaff.—“Bid
my Lieutenant Peto meet me at the town’s end.
. . I pressed me none but such toasts
and butter, with hearts
in their bellies no bigger than pins’
heads.”
—Henry
IV.
