The Express.
London, England, 1868-08-07 00:00:00

IS PUBLISHED

EVERY EVENING.

LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST 7.

THE POLICY OF AMUSEMENT.

Witten of us has not been disheartened from
time to time by the reflection what dreary lives
a great number of Englishmen habitually lead ?
Existence may be very endurable without active
amusements, or without absorbing interests, or
without intense emotions. But what does it be-
come when it is deprived of all these at once,
when there is nothing to vary the constant routine
of petty cares and sordid necessities, when work-
ing days and holidays differ from each other only
negatively, when business and—we cannot say
pleasure, but that abstinence from business which
by courtesy is called pleasure—are alike dull and
unprofitable P This side of life presents, in some
respects, a more depressing spectacle than actual
physical needs. The latter seems, at all events,
less remote from some kind of alleviation. We
feel that many of them are due to causes
which admit of removal, that it is not
beyond the bounds of possibility that the
organisation of society may be so far improved
as to make actual want, except as the consequence
of vice or reckless imprudence, almost unknown
among us. But the intellectual necessities
are harder to be supplied—and all the
more so because the sense of them has
usually to be created in the first instance.
And then they extend over a far larger area
than the physical necessities. When we pass
beyond the class which supporta itself by manual
labour, starvation becomes an enemy, which may be
dreaded indeed at a distance, but has rarely to be
met face to face. Intellectual starvation on the
other hand is the lot of many far above the
artisan. It reigns at Islington as supremely as at
Bethnal-green ; it keeps its court with as much
circumstance in the respectable wilderness of a
middle class suburb as in the hovels of the most
degraded poor.

In a paper in the last number of the Fortnightly
Review Mr. ALZIANDER Balm has discussed
whether, and how far, it is possible to " rouse
" and rescue the English population from
" their comparative dulness to a more
" lively and cheerful flow of existence." He is
not sanguine of success, and some of the reasons
he 'gives for not being sanguine certainly de-
serve consideration. To tell a man, he says, to
be habitually cheerful, is like telling him to triple
his fortune, or to add a cubit to his stature. It is
partly a matter of temperament, and so altogether
beyond his control, and partly " the outcome of
" the whole manner of life"—and so almost
beyond his control. Men are cheerful when they
are young, healthy, well fed, well lodged, and
not over worked. When these conditions are
wanting the temperament resulting from them is
*sating also. Consequently, if you would
make a nation cheerful you must first of
all " increase the supports and diminish the

" burdens of We." You must ratthe eta 44,
of health ; you must prohibit deterred:, and
so change the ideal of the English people . you
must cheek anxiety es to the Means, and mike
men indifferent to their own affairs and the le of
other people ; and, finally, you must provide the
money which amusement even in its cheapest forms
is sure to cost. Mr. BAne is evidently so much
oppressed with the difficulties of the task that he
ends by questioning whether it is worth while to
undertake it at all. "There will always be, in a
" cautious-minded people, a disposition to remain
"satisfied with few and safe delights: to assume
" a sobriety of aims that some might call dulness
"but that many of us call the middle path."
We confess that we are not disposed to give the
matter up so completely. In the first place Mr.
Bethseems to us to exaggerate the oonditions
which must be found in combination to produce
the desired temperament ; in the second place, ho
underrates the degree in which these conditions
may be produced by wise social arrangements.
For example, is cheerfulness found by experience
to be incompatible with hard work? Does
it not depend rather on the kind than on the
amount of exertion P and, even where the kind
is unfavourable to its generation, may not this
evil be qualified by some care in the selection of
recreations ? A man whose work is calculated to
fatigue and exhaust his mind is often indisposed
to any pleasures which are not of the same de-
scription as his employment. He despises amuse-
ment
that is not intellectual, and then he says,
truly enough, that if his brain is to be equally
active, he may as well be working as play-
ing. Surely, the want here is a better com-
prehension of mental hygiene. We are learning
by degrees that when the body is exhausted by
labour it is bad policy to give the digestion too
much to do ; but we have not yet learnt that
when the mind is exhausted it shows an equal de-
gree of ignorance to give it, by way of relaxa-
tion, occupations that differ only in name
from those in which it has already been en-
gaged. We should not tell an oarsman
who has just pulled at racing speed from Putney
to Mortlake to rest himself by a run round Barnes-
common ; but we think it perfectly natural that a
musician should seek refreshment after a morn-
ing's composing in an afternoon spent in criticising
pictures, or that a man of letters should go to the
Opera at night by way of a pleasant change after
a day's writing.
Again, Ms. BMN is hardly happy in the
example he chooses to support the state-
ment that the cheerful temperament is not
fitted for arduous enterprises, nor " distin-
" guished by a severe rigid attention to the
" obligations and punctualities of life." His in-
stance of this is Lord Paemeasroe. "It is very
" doubtful," he says, " if Peeseeasrrore could have
" borne the part of WELLINGTON in the Peninsula;
" his easy going temperament would not have
" submitted itself to all the anxieties and precau-
" tions of that vast enterprise. But PALMERSTON
" was halo and buoyant, and the Prime Minister of
" England, at eighty ; WELLINGTON was infirm
"at sixty." We should certainly not have quoted
Lord PALMERSTON as an instance of want of at-
tention "to the obligations and punctualities of
life." If Mr. Lowe and Lord GRANVILLE are
to be believed, he was an eminent example
the other way. Mr. Lowe, speaking at
Bomsey the other day, singled out the
habit of conscientious and scrupulous perform-
ance of all the work that came before him as the
quality which m ost struck him in his intercourse with
Lord Peemzetrrosr, and Lord °Juicer:unmentioned
that at a time when he was occupied night and day
with political cares, the old statesman found time
for weeks together to write a daily budget of
London gossip for the amusement of a young
friend who was rll abroad. Nor was the conduct
of the Foreign-office, though doubtless not equal
in anxiety to the conduct of an arduous campaign,
by any means a light matter, while it probably
required a large share of that punctilious cir-
cumspection which Mr. Baur sets down as incon-
sistent with buoyancy of temper.
No doubt the objection that overwork, which is
the special characteristic of Englishmen, is spe-
cially inimical to cheerfulness, and the further
objection that there are few very cheap pleasures,
do suggest difficulties which are very hard to
be overcome. Still, something may be done
towards removing even these obstacles. To
return to our former illustration, what is wanted
is to diffuse sounder knowledge of the elementary
facts of our mental constitution. A generation
ago there was just as pressing a need for know-
ledge of the elementary facts of our physical con-
stitution. People are learning by degrees
that if they want to keep well they must
have fresh air and take moderate exer-
cise. Why should we despair of teaching
them in time that there are other things as little
thought of now as these were thirty years ago,
which are nevertheless essential to the health of
the mind. We meet old people every day who
cannot bear open windows. Perhaps our
children will feel equal surprise when they
see an old man who thinks every hour
spent in amusement as so much time
waited. So again with the dearness of
pleasure. Many sanitary appliances that to-day
are ranked almost as necessaries would have been
set down as luxuries a few years back. In like
manner, when people grow wiser, they will
doubtless look on some of the amusements
which we condemn because they are costly
as bringing in good interest for every penny in-
vested in them. That there is a time to spend as
well as a time to save, and that the secret of eco-
nomy lies in the proportion between the outlay
and the return, are lessons which may perhaps
have been so seldom learned by Englishmen,
mainly because they have been so seldom taught.