THE "RACING PACE" OF MODERN LIFE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1298, 29 November 1911, Page 9

THE "RACING PACE" OF MODERN LIFE.

MR. FREDERIC HARRISON'S AUTO■A' BIOGRAPHY. On his eightieth birthday appear the roeitodiiw of Mr. Frederic Harrison. Many, no doubt, will expect to find in these remarkable volumes the usual flimsy gossip of reminiscence. They will not do so. They will liud -something tar more significant. i'or Mr. Frederic Harrison is a philosopher. He is more interested in causes than in people, lie wight l say with Wordsworth: l am not one who much or oft delight In personal talk. There is no gossip in his Memoirs, scarcely uuy anecdotes. Though lie has, known a great' many of the most distinguished- men and women of the past fifty years,' ho tells us little about them. Thiro Vjiro several pages devoted to RusKiri, but tho only picture we get ot him is as he sat at tablo talking his incomparable talk with his old father who "but ■ half understood his brilliant son, crying '.out at his splendid paradoxes, 'John,. John, what nonsense you're talking," in rather broad Scotch." Tennyson Mr. ; Hafrison knew well, but tho only direct, light thrown upon liim is in the story,of his seriously asking Huxley at the : ; Metaphysical Society . whether tho sap rising iii' the plant did not dispose of the nrguni6ht that the ltiw of gravitation was universal fores. . • ' . With Gladstone Mr. Harrison was intimate for many years, but he tells us W-hasaid'so much about him .in a pf-eyidus book "that Iwill not hero enlargo upon his . . . fascinating and inspiring,.; personality." This seems hardly,; fair. There is a .characteristic little-Snapshot of "Dizzy." At a big party oil Carapden Hill Gladstone was watching a Punch and Judy show set up to aiiiuso... the children, "laughing and open-mouthed, ns delighted n-s any.girl or boy "of them all. Opposite tojhim Disraeli . . . seemed by his look of con-tcuipt.-'to be saying, "i'hey call this a statesman.' " Thackeroy Mr. -Harrison just _'iiiiised knowing. "Once when I was-invited to meet the great rebuker of Bridbs at dinner, ■ho was kept away by en--attack of 'gout.' We learned' from "The, Times' next day that the remedy he had : taken to euro his gout was dining with a duke." ; Mr/, Harrison can be severe on occasion..;. let, on the whole, his judgments erd kihdly. He would rather speak to a -ril&n's credit than to disparage him. There is a charming little story, for inBMifiM, of Millet, the. painter of "The Angelus." He had a stauding agrecwent with a'firm of art dealers who "took all - his - work -in exchango for regular paytaciits of £10 a month. When he was • toldI that they could sell a single picture for as much as .£2OOO, lie said simply, "That is their .affair.' As long ss;'..5 s ;'.. a 'l J need, and can paint what I like, and as I like .it,. I do not mind wnat they get for my pictures." Prophet of a New Religion. It will be asked, If tho personal recolJections are meagre, what then do these cm pages consist of? They consist mainly of Mr. Harrison s opinions do omnibus rebus'; et guibusdam aliis. To be quite 7n nk ' 1 ere is rather too much of them. All' that are fresh are full of interest and stimulus. But the Memoirs suffer, as mUcli ; pf Mr. Harrison's work has suffered, from his taking himself just a shade too seriously. His criticism would be al-together-admirable if he did not drop so easily into dogmatism. As the St. Paul otiPositivisni, ho is entitled to pontifii j' ma y be whispered that in early,life Mr. Harrison only just eseapod being a prig. As a freshman he was disappointed by Oxford, "by the coldness felnslihess, and want of sense exhibited" by everybody. This at eighteen! A few yeara -later ho was refusing to see Wols funeral because he objected to 1 militarism/' At the Great Exposition of 1851' he was disgusted by tho "appalling vulgarity of aU - British-'ornamentation. ii 1 contempt for the "barbarous folly railed sport. I[ B not stand for 1 ariiameut because he "could not canvass or solicit anything.'' At thirtv, "I finally.'made up my mind how J "would arrange my life" • Uvea "in'tho chapter' SW'fSs to this book there- is a- touch of the;old solemnity: "I decide against holy orders. I'become a lilulical," '"I doBign. Kingsway," and so on. • ■ ' Bi.it with maturity cariio a more mellow Bpint,' came n, wider tolerauce, came'wisdom ; lhe vigour remained;, the (Might in .Strong expressions of opinion was unabated, is unabated yet. It is characteristic of-Mr.-Harrison that he finds golf tqo;Slow fo Thim "even iu old age." He in these volumes .-some.passages of scornful vituperation which ring us heartily as over. But there is about his views on the.great issues-of lifo a breadth, a cftlmness which breathes the temper of the true, philosopher. - After all, a lifetime spent in making oneself familiar with tho best thought of all the ages and in fighting'for the causes which seem to one to n l 18 !? r ' n ff s richest reward. UnMhe-eternal questions which perplex humanity he speaks with a note in his voice that commands attention and respect. *; - Seventy Years of Change. Moit. old men as they look at the changed aspect of tho world declare that nothing is as it was in their youth. Mr •Harrison, takes what is . certainly the justor View (Vo. I, p. 18): -.As I look back over seventy years of :hange7-in - mechanical things the greatest and the most rapid that has evor happened I ani amazed toobserve how little on the whole humail life differs m I'JIO from what it was ln 1833. A'nrhngain (Vol. 11., p. 3H) ; Life, habits, society hav6 not been- ' transformed by a multitude of mechanical appliances. The pace has been accelerated. Tho course remains the ;BaiUC. 'In sonic directions there have been changes- for the better. "We are a far cleaner, healthier, kindlier race than the men'and women of 'Vanity lair,' not to say than the contemporaries of Squire VVdslßtn and loin Jones." But we do not' elijfty ourselves so much. "My impression is < clear, that lit'© oil the whole used to lie more pleasant, more varied,' and more sociable than it is to-day.... There .was certsuil.y more tun, more originality, more bonhomie going about the world." This is.'.dilp;partly to the growth of cities' which .-makes city life "wholly -different from and far less natural and pleasant than, what city like used, to be'in my own boyhood. Ihe "racing pace" also has something to do with it. But there is a cause lying deeper than these. The restless (hscontent of modern life, with what called " its sit* hurry, its divided aims,", is the result of havin" no. chart to steer by: . ° 'All our mighty, achievements are being hampered and often, neutralised, all our difficulties are being doubled, aud all our Oioral and social diseases are hoin o, aggravated by this supreme and dominant iact that we have suflnred our Teligion to slide from us, and that in effect our ,V a ahl()in S taith iu any religion at all. The urgent task of our time is to recover a religious faith as a basis of life both personal and social. ( Be.vond question that is a true diagnosis of the. strange disease" from whicli civilisation is suffering.—H.H.F., in the ' IJaily Mail." •