Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

song closely may pass in, and they who would listen more loosely and talk the while, may stay out. But under all circumstances, and not for the sake of the talk only but for the sake of the songs, it is well that there should be some pause and space between one and another of them filled up with instrumental music if you will. For a song which has a wholeness in itself should be suffered to stand by itself, and then to die away in the mind of the hearer, time being allowed for the effect of a preceding song to get out of the way of the effect of one which is to follow. It would be well, therefore, if ladies, who are often slow to begin their songs, would not be, when once begun, unknowing to intermit them.

John de Witt, in portraying the character of one of the princes of the house of Orange, says that he "was not blemished with many court "vices; not delighting in music, dancing, hunt"ing, gluttony, or drinking." I have not been deterred by the opinion of the Grand Pensionary,

as implied in this passage, from commending music as a mode of relaxation; for a greater man than he, and though perhaps not a better man, yet certainly a more austere moralist, has said, notwithstanding all his austerity, “Who "shall silence the airs and madrigals that whis66 per softness in chambers?" *-and in another place has advised that students should be recreated with music "whilst unsweating them"selves," and that "the like also would not be "inexpedient after meat, to assist and cherish “nature in her first concoction.”†

As to eating and drinking, they are matters of great danger to a statesman if he resort to them as a relaxation; and it has been observed that men of great abilities are generally of a large and vigorous animal nature. I have heard it remarked by a statesman of high reputation,

*Milton, Areopagitica.

+ Letter to Master Hartlib.

that most great men have died of over-eating themselves; and without absolutely subscribing to the remark, I would say that it points to a principal peril in the life of such men ; namely, the violent craving for one kind of excitement, which is left as in a void by the flames of another. If a statesman would live long,

which

to do is a part of his duty, granting him fitted to

-

render good service to the state, he must pay a jealous and watchful attention to his diet. A patient in the fever-ward of an hospital scarcely requires to be more carefully regulated in this particular. And he should observe that there are two false appetites to which he is liable;— the one an appetite resulting from intellectual labour, which though not altogether morbid is not to be relied upon for digestion in the same degree as that which results from bodily exercise; the other proceeding from nervous irritability, which is purely fallacious.

The sitting after dinner, though much ab

breviated in our days, might be further abridged, or indeed altogether abandoned, with advantage. An irritability of the stomach often results from confinement to the same posture for more than half an hour after dinner; and if the conversation fails in interest the dessert is resorted to, which, besides being superfluous, is an indefinite sort of eating.

Those to whom public speaking is much of an effort (and it tries the nerves of most men even after they have been accustomed to it for years) should, if possible, dine lightly at least an hour before they are called upon to speak, and should resist the propensity which they will feel to eat soon after they have spoken. The relief and diversion to the nerves which is apt to be sought in this way after a speech, would be obtained in a more wholesome manner by walking for a considerable distance at a rapid pace.

232

CHAPTER XXXI.

ON MANNERS.

CONSIDERATIONS of manner and demeanour are by no means to be overlooked as frivolous or unimportant. Whether or not they ought to be, they are, in point of fact, an important element in the life and fortunes of a statesman, or of one who aspires to be a statesman, and generally of all men who seek advancement in a civil or in any other career. And in truth a man's manners have much real and intrinsic significancy, in so far forth as they are the result of his individual nature and taste, and not merely learnt or adopted from the society which he frequents. There is a conventional

« AnkstesnisTęsti »