“Come but the direst storm and stress that Fate Can bring upon us in its darkest hour, Then will the realm awake, however late, From the warm sloth in which we yawn and cower, And pass our sordid lives in greed, or mate With animal delights in luxury’s bower; Then will the ancient virtues bloom anew, And love of country quench the love of gold; Then will the mocking spirits that imbue Our daily converse fade like misty cold When the clear sunshine permeates the blue; Men will be manly as in days of old, And scorn the base delights that sink them down Into the languid waters where they drown!”
There is an old song, a very old song, the refrain of which runs thus: “’Twas merry in the hall, when the beards wagged all, We shall never see the like again, again!--We shall never see the like again!” Whether there was anything particularly hilarious in the wagging of beards we may not feel able to determine, but there is unquestionably a vague sense of something festive and social conveyed in the quaint lines. We feel, without knowing why, that it was, it _must_ have been, “merry in the hall,” at the distant period alluded to,--while at the present time we are daily and hourly made painfully aware that whether it be in hall, drawing-room or extensive “reception gallery,” the merriment formerly so well sung and spoken of exists no longer. The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls--no!--I mean the Beards that once wagged in the Hall, wag no more. Honest laughter has given place to the nanny-goat sniggering bleat now common to polite society, and understood to be the elegantly trained and “cultured” expression of mirth. The warm hand-shake has, in a very great measure, degenerated into the timorous offer of two or three clammy fingers extended dubiously, as with a fear of microbes. And Hospitality, large-hearted, smiling, gracious Hospitality, is dead and wrapped in its grave-clothes, waiting in stiff corpse-like state for its final burial. Public dinners, public functions of all kinds,--in England at any rate,--are merely so many funeral feasts in memory of the great defunct virtue. Its spirit has fled,--and there is no calling it back again. The art of entertaining is lost,--together with the art of conversation. And when our so-called “friends” are “at home,” we are often more anxious to find reasons for declining rather than for accepting their invitations, simply because we know that there is no real “at home” in it, but merely an “out-of-home” arrangement, in which a mixed crowd of people are asked to stand and swelter in an uneasy crush on staircases and in drawing-rooms, pretending to listen to music which they can scarcely hear, and scrambling for tea which is generally too badly made to drink. Indeed, it may be doubted whether, of all the various ludicrous social observances in which our progressive day takes part, there is anything quite so sublimely idiotic as a smart “At Home” in London during the height of the season. Nothing certainly presents men and women in such a singularly unintelligent aspect. Their faces all wear more or less the same expression of forced amiability,--the same civil grin distorts their poor mouths--the same wondering and weary stare afflicts their tired straining eyeballs--and the same automatic arm-movement and hand-jerk works every unit, as each approaches the hostess in the conventional manner enjoined by the usages of that “cultured” hypocrisy which covers a multitude of lies. Sheep, herding in a field and cropping the herbage in the comfortable unconsciousness that they are eating merely to be eaten, are often stated to be the silliest of animals,--but whether they are sillier than the human beings who consent to be squashed together in stuffy rooms where they can scarcely move, under the sham impression that they are “at home” with a friend, is a matter open to question. Of course to some minds it may be, and no doubt is, extremely edifying to learn by the society papers that Mrs. So-and-So, or Lord and Lady Thingummy will “entertain a great deal this season.” People who have no idea what this kind of “entertaining” means, may have glittering visions thereof. They may picture to themselves scenes of brilliancy where “a thousand hearts beat happily, and when, Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage-bell!” Only these things do not happen.