MAX O'RELL'S " JOHN BULL AND HIS ISLAND."

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1177, 5 September 1885, Page 3

MAX O'RELL'S " JOHN BULL AND HIS ISLAND."

Part 11. Of course as might be expected, and perhaps with justice so far as ordinary cookery is concerned, Max O'Rell thinks that in England " Heaven sends us good meat, but the devil sends cooks." He says : " The English meat is superior to any ; the cookery of John Bull leaves much to be desired. ... It would seem that man had been placed in this world to deny himself the good things the Creator put in it. "In Scotland," he says, " things are still worse. Sir Walter Scott relates that when a child he one day took the liberty of exclaiming before his father, 'Oh how nice the soup is.' The Puritan parent forthwith ordered a pint of cold water to be added to it." Walter Scott's childhood, however, dates back about a century, so Max O'Rell is hardly just to Scotland. In another of his criticisms Max O'Rell appears to be j quite correct, and, indeed, taking the fact into consideration that Max O'Rell is a Frenchman, he shows a wonderful knowledge of the state of religious society in i England. He evidently has seen through the hypocrisy that is rampant and blatant in the " right little, tight little Island," and no one who is not an ignorant bigot will deny that such is the case. "In Paris he (John Bull) has no need to make a parade of goodness ; while in London he is obliged to. In England he goes to Church ; in Paris he goes to Mabile — of course it is perfectly understood thac it is only to look on and to be able to describe to his wife when he returns home how wicked these Frenchmen are." He hits the eight nail on the head by pointing out how little either Churchmen or Dissenters care for the poor — " though believers in the doctrine that the other world will be peopled with all sorts and conditions of men, yet none of them are anxious to commence acquaintance with the poor in this world." The account given of an ordinary Anglican service is very comical. " The service commences with a general confession — a confession all the more convenient that there is no need for each sinner to specify his sins ; it is the same confession for the greatest sinner as for the most innocent child, 'we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.' Very easy and convenient as you see. The confession over, the priest then gives the absolution . This moral cleaning being concluded to the general satisfaction, the troop of spotless lambs begin to express their sense of relief in all manner of keys. The service terminates with a sermon, which is generally a very ordinary production of the mind, and rendered still more tiresome to listen to by being read. ' How do the Church of England clergy think I am going to remember their sermons when they cannot remember them themselves?'" said a Presbyterian friend to me one day. " The Frenchman," Max O'Rell says, " is the braggart of vice, but the Englishman is the hypocrite of virtue. ! . . . There are few bankrupts really worthy of the name that have not built a church or chapel to win the confidence of the investors, and, maybe, to offer God a little of what they had taken from men." Max O'Rell seems to have had the old Latin line in his memory, " Spcctatmn j veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsoe," when he narrates the following :—": — " Why do you come to Church ? I heard the clergyman of a little Protestant Church in Devonshire exclaim one day from the pulpit, 'I will tell you the reason. Some of you come to look as good as your neighbors, and better. You farmers, my lord's tenants, come to please your Jand- i lord ; you tradespeople to inspire your customers with confidence in you ; you ' young women to display your new dresses ; in fact you all go to church because you are nowhere unless you go to church.'" This is hardly in the style of an English clergyman ; but of course a3 Max O'Rell heard the sermon there is an end of it. It lias been said you must go from home to hear news, and certainly it will be news j 1 to hear from the lips of a Frenchman that j I there are 183 religious sects in England, and very queer names some of these ! | sects have, such as " The Glory Band," !"The Halifax Pyschological Society,", " The Glassites," " The Inghamites," " The Recreation Religionists," &c. "To ! see Protestantism," Max O'Rell says, I " you must go to Scotland. There Calvinism in all its severity is practised. You see in Scotland trifling is not countenanced ; nothing is done by halves ; no levity or frivolity is tolerated. I know a Scotch Presbyterian minister who teaches the Lord's Prayer to his children cane in hand ; each hesitation or mistake is punished by a cut across the back of the small supplicant." Surely this must also have happened in the childhood of Sir Walter Scott. Max O'Rell derives great enjoyment from the absurd fad, actually ! believed in by many Englishmen who are j not in lunatic asylums, that the lost ten tribes of Israel are the British nation ; and to show how ridiculous the whole affair is he adds a proof of his own. " The House of Judah was told—' Behold thy servants shall drink and ye shall i be thirsty ' (Isaiah lxv 13). I find in an i official report got up by. the English | Government in 1877 that the number of persons arrested for drunkenness in England alone in 1876 to be no less than 104,174 Since the British nation can produce such figures alone, therefore she must be Israel." For this notable proof Max O'Rell expects to be elected a fellow of the Anglo-Israel Identity Society. So far as tho Salvation Army is concerned, which is the natural outcome of the neglect of the poor by both Church and Dissent, Max O'Rell says : " Woe betide you if your salvation should appear to some member of the army to be doubtful. A detachment will boldly come and plant itself under your windows with trombones, cornets, tambourines, and a big drum, a cacophony fit to make your hair stand on j an end. ' The Devil is there and let us fire a volley,' they will cry ; and whether you like it or not you must be saved unless you take the wise precaution of saving yourself by flight." In regard to the great public schools and the universities, Max O'Rell speaks very eulogistically, and certainly considers them superior to similar establishments in France ; in fact, to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge he cannot give praise high enough, and he. flatters both the Universities and the Church of England when he says:— "All the clergymen of the Church of England have studied at Oxford or Cambridge ; therefore, they are at once well educated men and gentlemen. They marry and become useful members of society." (Bachelors, Max O'Rell would, therefore, seem to think, contrary to the great Bacon, not to be useful members of society.) " The young vicar is very much sought after in the

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higher classes ; he has only to choose a girl and throw the handkerchief and she is his." After this the Grand Turk is nowhere. It is a fact, however, that the English clergy have opportunities second to none of making good marriages, and this is but natural. On the one side is :an undoubted position in society, and character vouched for by their profession.. On the other, money and beauty. The bargain is surely a fair one. Max O'Rell is very about the Royal Family and the Court. Ha says : "So long as there ia a monarchy, there will be one in England, a monarchy capable of giving lessons to more than one Republic." He is quite right in giving his compatriots a reminder as to the evanescent character of their governments. Since the great French Revolution, " la belle France " has been busily engaged in patting in one form of Government after another — republic, empire, monarchy ; republic, empire, republic, have been tried in turn and found wanting. The only parallel example in modern history is that of our local Tuapeka Parliamentary Union ; an institution in which the man is distinguished who has not been or has not had the opportunity of being Premier. He is hardly, however, complimentary to the aristocracy, and is evidently a disbeliever in blue blood ; as he says "English pale ale and double stout have more earls and barons to answer for than any other national products." Though Max O'Rell j is' aVFjrehchman, * and a patriotic one Hjo'o, he refrains with very good taste from indulging in any diatribes against the Germans. He, however, does allow himself a mild slap at them and their position in the English Court, and it seems somewhat to vex his soul that Germans should carry off all our princesses. He has the sympathy of Englishmen in this matter. As all the world knows the Quee^ did once marry a daughter to one of her subjects, but the experiment wa3 not so successful as to lead to its, repetition. After referring to this matter Max O^Rell says : " The rest of the German princes (at the Court) are generals and admirals, and they are very inoffensive for that matter, and never harmed anybody, not even Her Majesty's enemies." Max O'Rell finishes his very interesting little book by comparing the two nations, the English and the French. " The French," he says, " are the most brilliant nation in Europe, and the best calculated to become in turn an object of admiration, of hatred, of pity, of terror ; but of indifference, never. On the contrary the Englishman has greatness, but no magnanimity ; virtue, but no heroism ; when British interests are not at stake (why should he 1). He is not so brilliant or impulsive as his neighbor, more richly endowed by nature, but he is more independent, more enterprising, more persevering, and more wise. Let us conclude by quoting Voltaire's saying — ' If I had had to choose my birthplace, I would have chosen England.' " Max O'Rell's book is in the local Athenaeum, and will well repay perusal, as it is much more interesting than the generality of novels and a great deal more witty than most numbers of "Punch." ■ Vbnatok.

Saturday, September 5, 1885,