The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

THE "LONDON RETTEIT" ON MR HOPLEY'S CARE FOR
THE STATE OF MRS HOPLEY'S Sonii.—=Mr Hopley has
appealed from a British jury to the British public at large,
in a pamphlet entitled "A. Cry for Justice, and for the
Souls of thy Wife slid Children." Whether the meaning of
the last portion of the title be that Mrs Hopley is endanger-
ing her eternal welfare by taking refuge from her husband
upon the Continent, or that she has already endangered it
by giving evidence against Mr Hopley in the Divorce Court,
may be a matter of debate. It is sufficient to say that Mrs
Hopley's course makes Mr Hopley very anxious for her
immortal soul. There are certain natures with whom a
quarrel is sure to take this theological shape. In some
cases, and in some mouths, blessing becomes bitterer and
more effective than cursing itself and to propose to pray
for the other side is the last and most terrible arrow from
the quiver of an angry controversialist. "Charity, my
dear," said the injured Mr Peclisniff, "when I take my
bedroom candlestick, remind me more particularly to pray
fir Mr Martin Chuzzlewit." There are some nymphs, and
some male angels, too, in whose "orisons" all their neigh-
bours sins are sure to be "remembered ;" and whose devo-
tional exercises partake not so much of the character of a
Litany as of a Commination Service. It would, perhaps,
be refusing Mr Hopley that justice for which, with many
gushes of religious expostulation, he appeals, if we
were to put down to hypocrisy his ostentatious anxiety
for the spiritual condition of those who have offended
him. He is, doubtless, sincere in the belief that he
is an ill-used man. But his missionary efforts to im•
prove the souls of his pupils and his family have
been attended hitherto with such lamentable results,
that when, after all his trials, the missionary vein
crops up again as luxuriant as ever, it is perhaps na-
tural for Mrs. Hopley and her relatives to feel alarmed.
Similar phenomena preceded the death of the unhappy boy
Chancellor, and accompanied the moulding by which Mrs•
Hopley was to be made fit to be the mother of juvenile
Hopleys. If Mr. Hopley had chastised his unhappy wife
out of ill temper and hot blood, there might be some hopes
that his long imprisonment might have taught him the
necessity of domestic self-control ; but when we discover
that all was part and parcel of a pious curriculum, and that
Mr. Hopley's victims have been victims rather of his de-
sire to reform his fellow-creatures than of any natural
ferocity, the domestic future of the Hopley household looks
very dark indeed. The charge made against the gentle-
' man in question by his wile and by the public is not that
he is a Quilp ; nor does Mr. Hopley meet the issue by
affirming, with some appearance of truth, that he is far
!ram being a monster in human shape. Nobody says that
he is a monster. What is alleged against him is that he
carries concern for his fellow-creatures to the verge of mo-
nomania, and that be polishes and brightens the Christian
character of those about him in a way that seriously affects
their physical health and comfort. That he has begun
again, after so serious a warning, to discuss Mrs Hopley's
soul, is, then, not a reassuring symptom. By this time,
very possibly Mrs Hopley trembles at the very mention of
her soul at all, and when she learns from her secure retreat
that Mr. Hopley has been thinking over her immortal pro-
spects, she will feel like the emancipated slave who dreamed
of the cracking of his master's thong.
In order to vindicate himself, and partly doubtless in order
to expose the true nature of the religious precipice oNer
which Mrs Hopley's soul is balancing itself, Mr Hopley
prints at considerable length the letters which his wife
wrote to him during his confinement, The taste of pub-
lishing such documents is most questionable, but the ex-
citement under which he is evidently labouring and the
obvious character and mental training of the man render
it unnecessary to discuss his conduct from an aethestic point
of view. The panegyrics he himself bestows upon his
wife's correspondence for refinement and delicacy are pro-
bably sincere and certainly deserved. No one can peruse
her effusions without a strong feeling of sympathy for the
woman who is their author. If it be true (and we see no
reason to believe the contrary) that Mr Hopley found his
wife whon he married her an ignorant and half-educated
girl, and has made her an accomplished and clover woman,
the fact says nothing for him that might not be conceded
by his severest critics. From the fiery ordeal which she
entered as a raw young lady Mrs Hopley has emerged a
cultivated wife and mother; but, for all that, the process
which has been so intellectually successful may have been
physical and mental anguish. The great poet who tells
us the discipline of pain with which it pleased Heaven to
try a lady of his acquaintance, winds up with the funeral
remark—
" The saint survived it, but the woman died."

It ie possible that Mrs Hopley's virtue in like manner
increased, pari passu, with her misery; but the principle
which prOduces hot-house matronly graces at such a cost
would justify the worst enormities of a Grand Inquisitor,
If it be lawful to do God service at the risk of cruelty
to man, there is no form of torture that may not logically
be supported. The instinct that leads to such excesses,
either in public or in private life, may be termed the peda-
gogue instinct in its worst and most dangerous form, It
is an instinct which has done more to retard progress than
any other which can be named; and when it breaks out
violently in private has led men, before now, to the gallows.
The feminine devotion and warmth of heart which are
conspicuous throughout the whole of Mrs Hopley's corre-
spondence, do not disprove what the jury have asserted—
that Mr Hopley has been cruel; it only confirms their fur-
ther admission, that his cruelty has been unfortunately
condoned. It is by no means a rare spectacle ,to see a
woman, in the hey- day of youth and imagination,
attracted rather than repelled by harshness. The annals
of the police-courts show that many a woman retains her
infatuation for some drunken ruffian, who beats her and ill
uses her from day to day—and Mr Hopley has posssibly
mental qualities sufficient to fascinate the fancy even of a
frightened and ill-treated wife. Still less can such a cor-
respondence be taken to rebut the accusstion of original
cruelty, when the circumstances are considered under
which it was penned. Mr Hopley was at the time in
prison, and both he and his wife well knew that he was an
outcast from society. If ever a noble and generous woman
would feel inclined to condone her injuries, it would be
when she felt the loneliness and miseryofDtihveoremeanwho
had been her tyrant. Mrs Hopley the
Court,
with her own letters before her, solemnly swore,neverthe-
less, that she had been cruelly dealt with. The jury)
to a man, believed her. Mr Hopley replies that she
has perjured herself. He must be insane not
to perceive that the grace and tenderness of the lettere
which he himself produces from her, are the strongest pos-
sible argument against his assertion.
It is far easier to be-
lieve that the woman who wrote thenwas, in spite of her
and
fraudulent
love ;and affection, the worn and illused companion of a
monomaniac
an innocent and v
rttoutoebusetsliimhe vuoens
byhaenf
for.
Nor was his wife's tes-
timony unsupported. Servants were called to corroborate
c talip
e purpose of ruining
a ble of having given
false
her in important particulars; and though Mr. Hopley in-
sinuates that their character was not of the best description
the only alternative theory to that of his own guilt is the
theory of a domestic conspiracy between his wiie) his wife's
famoy, and his own household. The fact that none of his
pupils were privy to any of the. conduct of which he was
accused goes for very little. The strictest conjugal discip.
linarian would not be likely to punish his wife, so to speak,
upon parade, and in the presence of a regiment of boys.
Even Mr. Quilp did not pinch Mrs. Quilp when strangers
were looking on. He chose quiet moments, when nobody
observed him, and made her life a burden to her without
violating decent conventionalities. Idr. Hopley is a man
whose vanity and dignity would preserve him from the
error of making his matrimonial training a by-word in his
house and schoolroom; and if, as. seems probable, his
cruelty is only a form of pedagogersua run mad, he pro-
bably inflicts unhappiness on those under his iron rule
upon a strictly decorous system. If We wished for an
instance of the truth, that men who Commit crimes are
not wholly bad, we do not know whither we could
better turn than in the ease of such a man. Mr.
Hopley with tears protests that he is not a demon, or a
butcher, or a murderer. The social philanthropist knows
well that those who draw upon themselves the indignant
censures of society are rarely demons.
There is often
some good in them, as in Mr yopley, coupled with a
monstrous want of self-control in one direction, which
poisons their whole nature, and ruins
their a hole life.
The consciousness of some good intentions and some
noble ambitions is a possession I which Mr Hopley
shares with not a few of the greatest tyrants of history.
It is not the pleasure of any generous mind to trample on a
fallen man, or to outrage even Mr Hopley by comparisons
which would be insulting and unjust. It is quite enough
to say that his pamphlet by no means makes us regret that
Mrs Hopley has escaped from his society. His self-delu-
sions are probably genuine, but they amount to disease.
In carrying out his vain and inflexible plans he has done
much harm and caused ranch unhappiness; and his tone
and temper render it probable that in his obstinate blind-
ness to his own defects, he MU cause still more unhappi-
ness before he dies.

THE "EXAMINER " ONTWO SOVEREIGNS AT VIENNA.
—The Germans have certainly reason to be proud. They
have outrun all other people for the moment, and step for.
ward as the most prominent at least of the European w
The obstinacy and wilfulness of the Americans, their turn
for bloodshed too, certainly are not equalled by Pruitsia.
But in the old world, what is talked of but Germany ?
Russia seems to be under an eclipse. Italy is unobtrusive;
the French Emperor running unlucky France up to her
oars in debt ; England quietly minding her own business.
Other nations are asking what the G ermans will next be at.
Wiil they reconquer Lombardy or claim Alsen ? That so
powerful au alliance should limit itself to the acqui-
sition of the poor little province of Schleswig is not an
adequate result. The Emperor of Austria and the King of
Prussia have met at Vienna. Now the anxiety is great to
know who is to be the next enemy, and where lies the prey
whose turn it is to be devoured, Their last joint meal, the
victim of this summer, has, however, yet to be devoured and
digested ; and it was precisely to rub beaks over this carcase
that the Eagles of Prussia and Austria were gathered toge-
ther. The meeting was like fire and water. As is evident
from the explosion of hostility which burst forth immediately
from the press of Vienna and that of Berlin. It is remark-
able how these organs, more or less, of the two peoples and
the two Governments, have exchanged their traditional tone.
So much so, that to look merely at the papers, one at Vienna
might fancy hiu[self in Berlin, and Bceliet has the air of