Essays and Tales

Title: Essays and Tales

Author: Joseph Addison

PUBLIC CREDIT.



- Quoi quisque fere studio devinctus adhaeret
Aut quibus i rebus multum sumus ante morati
Atque in quo ratione fuit contenta magis mens,
In somnis cadem plerumque videmur obire.
LUCR., iv. 959.

- What studies please, what most delight,
And fill men's thoughts, they dream them o'er at night.

CREECH.

In one of my rambles, or rather speculations, I looked into the
great hall where the bank is kept, and was not a little pleased to
see the directors, secretaries, and clerks, with all the other
members of that wealthy corporation, ranged in their several
stations, according to the parts they act in that just and regular
economy. This revived in my memory the many discourses which I had
both read and heard concerning the decay of public credit, with the
methods of restoring it; and which, in my opinion, have always been
defective, because they have always been made with an eye to
separate interests and party principles.

The thoughts of the day gave my mind employment for the whole night;
so that I fell insensibly into a kind of methodical dream, which
disposed all my contemplations into a vision, or allegory, or what
else the reader shall please to call it.

Methoughts I returned to the great hall, where I had been the
morning before; but to my surprise, instead of the company that I
left there, I saw, towards the upper end of the hall, a beautiful
virgin, seated on a throne of gold. Her name, as they told me, was
Public Credit. The walls, instead of being adorned with pictures
and maps, were hung with many Acts of Parliament written in golden
letters. At the upper end of the hall was the Magna Charta, with
the Act of Uniformity on the right hand, and the Act of Toleration
on the left. At the lower end of the hall was the Act of
Settlement, which was placed full in the eye of the virgin that sat
upon the throne. Both the sides of the hall were covered with such
Acts of Parliament as had been made for the establishment of public
funds. The lady seemed to set an unspeakable value upon these
several pieces of furniture, insomuch that she often refreshed her
eye with them, and often smiled with a secret pleasure as she looked
upon them; but, at the same time, showed a very particular
uneasiness if she saw anything approaching that might hurt them.
She appeared, indeed, infinitely timorous in all her behaviour: and
whether it was from the delicacy of her constitution, or that she
was troubled with vapours, as I was afterwards told by one who I
found was none of her well-wishers, she changed colour and startled
at everything she heard. She was likewise, as I afterwards found, a
greater valetudinarian than any I had ever met with, even in her own
sex, and subject to such momentary consumptions, that in the
twinkling of an eye, she would fall away from the most florid
complexion and the most healthful state of body, and wither into a
skeleton. Her recoveries were often as sudden as her decays,
insomuch that she would revive in a moment out of a wasting
distemper, into a habit of the highest health and vigour.

I had very soon an opportunity of observing these quick turns and
changes in her constitution. There sat at her feet a couple of
secretaries, who received every hour letters from all parts of the
world, which the one or the other of them was perpetually reading to
her; and according to the news she heard, to which she was
exceedingly attentive, she changed colour, and discovered many
symptoms of health or sickness.

Behind the throne was a prodigious heap of bags of money, which were
piled upon one another so high that they touched the ceiling. The
floor on her right hand and on her left was covered with vast sums
of gold that rose up in pyramids on either side of her. But this I
did not so much wonder at, when I heard, upon inquiry, that she had
the same virtue in her touch, which the poets tell us a Lydian king
was formerly possessed of; and that she could convert whatever she
pleased into that precious metal.

After a little dizziness, and confused hurry of thought, which a man
often meets with in a dream, methoughts the hall was alarmed, the
doors flew open, and there entered half a dozen of the most hideous
phantoms that I had ever seen, even in a dream, before that time.
They came in two by two, though matched in the most dissociable
manner, and mingled together in a kind of dance. It would be
tedious to describe their habits and persons; for which reason I
shall only inform my reader, that the first couple were Tyranny and
Anarchy; the second were Bigotry and Atheism; the third, the Genius
of a commonwealth and a young man of about twenty-two years of age,
whose name I could not learn. He had a sword in his right hand,
which in the dance he often brandished at the Act of Settlement; and
a citizen, who stood by me, whispered in my ear, that he saw a
sponge in his left hand. The dance of so many jarring natures put
me in mind of the sun, moon, and earth, in the Rehearsal, that
danced together for no other end but to eclipse one another.

The reader will easily suppose, by what has been before said, that
the lady on the throne would have been almost frighted to
distraction, had she seen but any one of the spectres: what then
must have been her condition when she saw them all in a body? She
fainted, and died away at the sight.

Et neque jam color est misto candore rubori;
Nec vigor, et vires, et quae modo rise placebant;
Nec corpus remanet...

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THE BANKS OF WYE

BOOK I.


"Rouse from thy slumber, pleasure calls, arise,
Quit thy half-rural bower, awhile despise
The thraldom that consumes thee. We who dwell
Far from thy land of smoke, advise thee well.
Here Nature's bounteous hand around shall fling,
Scenes that thy Muse hath never dar'd to sing.
When sickness weigh'd thee down, and strength declin'd;
When dread eternity absorb'd thy mind,
Flow'd the predicting verse, by gloom o'erspread,
That 'Cambrian mountains' thou should'st never tread,
That 'time-worn cliff, and classic stream to see,'
Was wealth's prerogative, despair for thee.
Come to the proof; with us the breeze inhale,
Renounce despair, and come to Severn's vale;
And where the COTSWOLD HILLS are stretch'd along,
Seek our green dell, as yet unknown to song:
Start hence with us, and trace, with raptur'd eye,
The wild meanderings of the beauteous WYE;
Thy ten days leisure ten days joy shall prove,
And rock and stream breathe amity and love."

Such was the call; with instant ardour hail'd.
The syren Pleasure caroll'd and prevail'd;
Soon the deep dell appear'd, and the clear brow
Of ULEY BURY [A] smil'd o'er all below,
[Footnote A: Bury, or Burg, the Saxon name for a hill, particularly for
one wholly or partially formed by art.]
Mansion, and flock, and circling woods that hung
Round the sweet pastures where the sky-lark sung.
O for the fancy, vigorous and sublime,
Chaste as the theme, to triumph over time!
Bright as the rising day, and firm as truth,
To speak new transports to the lowland youth,
That bosoms still might throb, and still adore,
When his who strives to charm them beats no more!

One August morn, with spirits high,
Sound health, bright hopes, and cloudless sky,
A cheerful group their farewell bade
To DURSLEY tower, to ULEY'S shade;
And where bold STINCHCOMB'S greenwood side.
Heaves in the van of highland pride,
Scour'd the broad vale of Severn; there
The foes of verse shall never dare
Genius to scorn, or bound its power,
There blood-stain'd BERKLEY'S turrets low'r,
A name that cannot pass away,
Till time forgets "the Bard" of GRAY.

Quitting fair Glo'ster's northern road,
To gain the pass of FRAMELODE,
Before us DEAN'S black forest spread,
And MAY HILL, with his tufted head,
Beyond the ebbing tide appear'd;
And Cambria's distant mountains rear'd
Their dark blue summits far away;
And SEVERN, 'midst the burning day,
Curv'd his bright line, and bore along
The mingled _Avon_, pride of song.

The trembling steeds soon ferry'd o'er,
Neigh'd loud upon the forest shore;
Domains that once, at early morn,
Rang to the hunter's bugle horn,
When barons proud would bound away;
When even kings would hail the day,
And swell with pomp more glorious shows,
Than ant-hill population knows.
Here crested chiefs their bright-arm'd train
Of javelin'd horsemen rous'd amain,
And chasing wide the wolf or boar,
Bade the deep woodland vallies roar.

Harmless we past, and unassail'd,
Nor once at roads or tumpikes rail'd:
Through depths of shade oft sun-beams broke,
Midst noble FLAXLEY'S bowers of oak;
And many a cottage trim and gay,
Whisper'd delight through all the way;
On hills expos'd, in dells unseen,
To patriarchal MITCHEL DEAN.
Rose-cheek'd _Pomona_ there was seen,
And _Ceres_ edg'd her fields between,
And on each hill-top mounted high,
Her sickle wav'd in extasy;
Till Ross, thy charms all hearts confess'd,
Thy peaceful walks, thy hours of rest
And contemplation. Here the mind,
With all its luggage left behind,
Dame Affectation's leaden wares,
Spleen, envy, pride, life's thousand cares,
Feels all its dormant fires revive,
And sees "the _Man of Ross_" alive;
And hears the Twick'nham Bard again,
To KYRL'S high virtues lift his strain;
Whose own hand cloth'd this far-fam'd hill
With rev'rend elms, that shade us still;
Whose mem'ry shall survive the day,
When elms and empires feel decay.
KYRL die, by bard ennobled? Never;
"_The Man of Ross_" shall live for ever;
Ross, that exalts its spire on high,
Above the flow'ry-margin'd WYE,
Scene of the morrow's joy, that prest
Its unseen beauties on our rest
In dreams; but who of dreams would tell,
Where truth sustains the song so well?

The morrow came, and Beauty's eye
Ne'er beam'd upon a lovelier sky;
Imagination instant brought,
And dash'd amidst the train of thought,
Tints of the bow. The boatman stript;
Glee at the helm exulting tript,
And way'd her flower-encircled wand,
"Away, away, to Fairy Land."
Light dipt the oars; but who can name
The various objects dear to fame,
That changing, doubting, wild, and strong,
Demand the noblest powers of song?
Then, O forgive the vagrant Muse,
Ye who the sweets of Nature choose;
And thou whom destiny hast tied
To this romantic river's side,
Down gazing from each close retreat,
On boats that glide beneath thy feet,
Forgive the stranger's meagre line,
That seems to slight that spot of thine;
For he, alas! could only glean
The changeful outlines of the scene;
A momentary bliss; and here
Links memory's power with rapture's tear...

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DEBIT AND CREDIT.

DEBIT AND CREDIT.


Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag.

Since our German literature attained maturity, no novel has achieved a
reputation so immediate, or one so likely to increase and to endure, as
_Soll und Haben_, by Gustav Freytag. In the present, apparently
apathetic tone and temper of our nation, a book must be of rare
excellence which, in spite of its relatively high price (15s.), has
passed through six editions within two years; and which, notwithstanding
the carping criticism of a certain party in Church and State, has won
most honorable recognition on every hand. To form a just conception of
the hold the work has taken of the hearts of men in the educated middle
rank, it needs but to be told that hundreds of fathers belonging to the
higher industrious classes have presented this novel to their sons at
the outset of their career, not less as a work of national interest than
as a testimony to the dignity and high importance they attribute to the
social position they are called to occupy, and to their faith in the
future that awaits it.

The author, a man about fifty years of age, and by birth a Silesian, is
editor of the _Grenz-bote_ (Border Messenger), a highly-esteemed
political and literary journal, published in Leipsic. His residence
alternates between that city and a small estate near Gotha. Growing up
amid the influences of a highly cultivated family circle, and having
become an accomplished philologist under Lachmann, of Berlin, he early
acquired valuable life-experience, and formed distinguished social
connections. He also gained reputation as an author by skillfully
arranged and carefully elaborated dramatic compositions--the weak point
in the modern German school.

The enthusiastic reception of his novel can not, however, be attributed
to these earlier labors, nor to the personal influence of its author.
The favor of the public has certainly been obtained in great measure by
the rare intrinsic merit of the composition, in which we find aptly
chosen and melodious language, thoroughly artistic conception, life-like
portraiture, and highly cultivated literary taste. We see before us a
national and classic writer, not one of those mere journalists who count
nowadays in Germany for men of letters.

The story, very unpretending in its opening, soon expands and becomes
more exciting, always increasing in significance as it proceeds. The
pattern of the web is soon disclosed after the various threads have been
arranged upon the loom; and yet the reader is occasionally surprised,
now by the appearance on the stage of a clever Americanized German, now
by the unexpected introduction of threatening complications, and even of
important political events. Though confined within a seemingly narrow
circle, every incident, and especially the Polish struggle, is depicted
grandly and to the life. In all this the author proves himself to be a
perfect artist and a true poet, not only in the treatment of separate
events, but in the far more rare and higher art of leading his
conception to a satisfactory development and _dщnouement_. As this
requirement does not seem to be generally apprehended either by the
writers or the critics of our modern novels, I shall take the liberty of
somewhat more earnestly attempting its vindication.

The romance of modern times, if at all deserving of the name it inherits
from its predecessors in the _romantic_ Middle Ages, represents the
latest _stadium_ of the epic.

Every romance is intended, or ought to be, a new Iliad or Odyssey; in
other words, a poetic representation of a course of events consistent
with the highest laws of moral government, whether it delineate the
general history of a people, or narrate the fortunes of a chosen hero.
If we pass in review the romances of the last three centuries, we shall
find that those only have arrested the attention of more than one or two
generations which have satisfied this requirement. Every other romance,
let it moralize ever so loudly, is still immoral; let it offer ever so
much of so-called wisdom, is still irrational. The excellence of a
romance, like that of an epic or a drama, lies in the apprehension and
truthful exhibition of the course of human things.

_Candide_, which may appear to be an exception, owes its prolonged
existence to the charm of style and language; and, after all, how much
less it is now read than _Robinson Crusoe_, the work of the talented De
Foe; or than the _Vicar of Wakefield_, that simple narrative by
Voltaire's English contemporary. Whether or not the cause can be clearly
defined is here of little consequence; but an unskillfully developed
romance is like a musical composition that concludes with discord
unresolved--without perhaps inquiring wherefore, it leaves an unpleasant
impression on the mind.

If we carry our investigation deeper, we shall find that any such defect
violates our sense of artistic propriety, because it offends against our
healthy human instinct of the fundamental natural laws; and the artistic
merit, as well of a romance as of an epic, rises in proportion as the
plot is naturally developed, instead of being conducted to its solution
by a series of violent leaps and make-shifts, or even by a pretentious
sham. We shall take occasion hereafter to illustrate these views by
suitable examples...

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LIFE'S HANDICAP

LIFE'S HANDICAP

Being Stories of Mine Own People

By Rudyard Kipling

THE LANG MEN O' LARUT

The Chief Engineer's sleeping suit was of yellow striped with blue, and
his speech was the speech of Aberdeen. They sluiced the deck under him,
and he hopped on to the ornamental capstan, a black pipe between his
teeth, though the hour was not seven of the morn.

'Did you ever hear o' the Lang Men o' Larut?' he asked when the Man from
Orizava had finished a story of an aboriginal giant discovered in the
wilds of Brazil. There was never story yet passed the lips of teller,
but the Man from Orizava could cap it.

'No, we never did,' we responded with one voice. The Man from Orizava
watched the Chief keenly, as a possible rival.

'I'm not telling the story for the sake of talking merely,' said the
Chief, 'but as a warning against betting, unless you bet on a perrfect
certainty. The Lang Men o' Larut were just a certainty. I have had talk
wi' them. Now Larut, you will understand, is a dependency, or it may be
an outlying possession, o' the island o' Penang, and there they will get
you tin and manganese, an' it mayhap mica, and all manner o' meenerals.
Larut is a great place.'

'But what about the population?' said the Man from Orizava.

'The population,' said the Chief slowly, 'were few but enorrmous. You
must understand that, exceptin' the tin-mines, there is no special
inducement to Europeans to reside in Larut. The climate is warm and
remarkably like the climate o' Calcutta; and in regard to Calcutta, it
cannot have escaped your obsairvation that--'

'Calcutta isn't Larut; and we've only just come from it,' protested the
Man from Orizava. 'There's a meteorological department in Calcutta,
too.'

'Ay, but there's no meteorological department in Larut. Each man is a
law to himself. Some drink whisky, and some drink brandipanee, and some
drink cocktails--vara bad for the coats o' the stomach is a cocktail--
and some drink sangaree, so I have been credibly informed; but one and
all they sweat like the packing of piston-head on a fourrteen-days'
voyage with the screw racing half her time. But, as I was saying, the
population o' Larut was five all told of English--that is to say,
Scotch--an' I'm Scotch, ye know,' said the Chief.

The Man from Orizava lit another cigarette, and waited patiently. It was
hopeless to hurry the Chief Engineer.

'I am not pretending to account for the population o' Larut being laid
down according to such fabulous dimensions. O' the five white men
engaged upon the extraction o' tin ore and mercantile pursuits, there
were three o' the sons o' Anak. Wait while I remember. Lammitter was the
first by two inches--a giant in the land, an' a terreefic man to cross
in his ways. From heel to head he was six feet nine inches, and
proportionately built across and through the thickness of his body. Six
good feet nine inches--an overbearin' man. Next to him, and I have
forgotten his precise business, was Sandy Vowle. And he was six feet
seven, but lean and lathy, and it was more in the elasteecity of his
neck that the height lay than in any honesty o' bone and sinew. Five
feet and a few odd inches may have been his real height. The remainder
came out when he held up his head, and six feet seven he was upon the
door-sills. I took his measure in chalk standin' on a chair. And next to
him, but a proportionately made man, ruddy and of a fair countenance,
was Jock Coan--that they called the Fir Cone. He was but six feet five,
and a child beside Lammitter and Vowle. When the three walked out
together, they made a scunner run through the colony o' Larut. The
Malays ran round them as though they had been the giant trees in the
Yosemite Valley--these three Lang Men o' Larut. It was perfectly
ridiculous--a lusus naturae--that one little place should have contained
maybe the three tallest ordinar' men upon the face o' the earth.

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International Finance

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE

BY

HARTLEY WITHERS


CAPITAL AND ITS REWARD

Finance, in the sense in which it will be used in this book, means the
machinery of money dealing. That is, the machinery by which money which
you and I save is put together and lent out to people who want to borrow
it. Finance becomes international when our money is lent to borrowers in
other countries, or when people in England, who want to start an
enterprise, get some or all of the money that they need, in order to do
so, from lenders oversea. The biggest borrowers of money, in most
countries, are the Governments, and so international finance is largely
concerned with lending by the citizens of one country to the Governments
of others, for the purpose of developing their wealth, building
railways and harbours or otherwise increasing their power to produce.

Money thus saved and lent is capital. So finance is the machinery that
handles capital, collects it from those who save it and lends it to
those who want to use it and will pay a price for the loan of it. This
price is called the rate of interest, or profit. The borrower offers
this price because he hopes to be able, after paying it, to benefit
himself out of what he is going to make or grow or get with its help, or
if it is a Government because it hopes to improve the country's wealth
by its use. Sometimes borrowers want money because they have been
spending more than they have been getting, and try to tide over a
difficulty by paying one set of creditors with the help of another,
instead of cutting down their spending. This path, if followed far
enough, leads to bankruptcy for the borrower and loss to the lender.

If no price were offered for capital, we should none of us save, or if
we saved we should not risk our money by lending it, but hide it in a
hole, or lock it up in a strong room, and so there could be no new
industry.

Since capital thus seems to be the subject-matter of finance and it is
the object of this book to make plain what finance does, and how, it
will be better to begin with clear understanding of the function of
capital. All the more because capital is nowadays the object of a good
deal of abuse, which it only deserves when it is misused. When it is
misused, let us abuse it as heartily as we like, and take any possible
measures to punish it. But let us recognize that capital, when well and
fairly used, is far from being a sinister and suspicious weapon in the
hands of those who have somehow managed to seize it; but is in fact so
necessary to all kinds of industry, that those who have amassed it, and
placed it at the disposal of industry render a service to society
without which society could not be kept alive.

For capital, as has been said, is money saved and lent to, or employed
in, industry. By being lent to, or employed in, industry it earns its
rate of interest or profit. There are nowadays many wise and earnest
people who think that this interest or profit taken by capital is not
earned at all but is wrung out of the workers by a process of extortion.
If this view is correct then all finance, international and other, is
organized robbery, and instead of writing and reading books about it, we
ought to be putting financiers into prison and making a bonfire of their
bonds and shares and stock certificates. But, with all deference to
those who hold this view, it is based on a complete misapprehension of
the nature and origin of capital.

Capital has been described above as money put to certain purposes. This
was done for the sake of clearness and because this definition fits in
with the facts as they usually happen in these days. Economists define
capital as wealth reserved for production, and we must always remember
that money is only a claim for, or a right to, a certain amount of goods
or a certain amount of other people's work. Money is only a title to
wealth, because if I have a sovereign or a one-pound note in my pocket,
I thereby have the power of buying a pound's worth of goods or of
hiring a doctor to cure me or a parson to bury me or anybody else to do
anything that I want, up to the buying power of that sovereign. This is
the power that money carries with it. When the owner of this power,
instead of exercising it in providing himself with luxuries or
amusements, uses it by lending it to someone who wants to build a
factory, and employ workers, then, because the owner of the money
receives his rate of interest he is said to be exploiting labour,
because, so it is alleged, the workers work and he, the capitalist, sits
in idleness and lives on their labour.

And so, in fact, he does. But we have not yet found out how he got the
money that he lent. That money can only have been got by work done or
services rendered, for which other people were ready to pay. Capital,
looked at from this point of view, is simply stored up work, and
entitled to its reward just as much as the work done yesterday. The
capitalist lives on the work of others, but he can only do so because he
has wrought himself in days gone by or because someone else has wrought
and handed on to him the fruits of his labour. Let us take the case of
a shopkeeper who has saved a hundred pounds. This is his pay for work
done and risk taken (that the goods which he buys may not appeal to his
customers) during the years in which he has saved it. He might spend his
hundred pounds on a motor cycle and a side-car, or on furniture, or a
piano, and nobody would deny his right to do so. On the contrary he
would probably be applauded for giving employment to makers of the
articles that he bought. Instead of thus consuming the fruit of his work
on his own amusement, and the embellishment of his home, he prefers to
make provision for his old age. He invests his hundred pounds in the 5
per cent. debenture stock of a company being formed to extend a boot
factory. Thereby he gives employment to the people who build the
extension and provide the machinery, and thereafter to the men and women
who work in the factory, and moreover he is helping to supply other
people with boots. He sets people to work to supply other people's wants
instead of his own, and he receives as the price, of his service five
pounds a year. But it is his work, that he did in the years in which he
was saving, that is earning him this reward...

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