VICIOUS FOOLS.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXII, Issue XXII, 23 November 1867, Page 7

VICIOUS FOOLS.

[From the Saturday Review.] Worse than the plain vacuous fool is the fool who has brains enough to be vicious. It is the latter temperament which enters more largely than the other into the com- j position of idle men of fashion. When Mr Cavlyle declares that most people are fools, he is not altogether wrong, but then the continual demands and strain of life prevent this ■ universal folly from talcing a vicious turn. The necessities of bread-winning, or the urgencies of ambition, occupy too much of most men's time and thought for them to degenerate into pure animals. If everybody in the counh'y had as little to do, or did as little, as the band of unoccupied people who lounge at the West End, society, apart from its material wants, would speedily bo dissolved morally. Nothing could resist the action of those acrid and penetrating moral solvents which such a mass of idleness must infallibly generate. It is useless to deny or to conceal from ourselves that some of the conditions which, if found on a large scale, would destroy society, are found on a smnll scale in some portions, and those not the least august and decorated, of the society of London. The root of all corruption of character is idleness. This is no more than a copybook common place, nn incontrovertible apophthegm borrowed from Dr Watts. A man in whom idleness hns struck a deep root is in a sure way to become fit for treasons, stratagems,, and any evil thing that is done under the sun. If he is only idle enough there is scarcely any pitch of depravity to which he may not come with favoring circumstances. The only tie which holds him is a sort of tradition about virtue being a good thing in a general way. If he be a . plnin fool, this tie may be strong enough to keep him out of mischief. But if he have just enough brains in his head to think a little for himself in moments which he can spare from Inß strenuous inactivity, ho will not be long in convincing himself that moral tradition is not much better than an old nurse's tales, which may do to frighten children with, but is too stale for grown-up | men. It is when a man has got to this state that his condition becomes dangerous for ; himself, and certainly not less dangerous for the people who are afflicted with his acquaintance. A man of this sort is obviously a great deal worse than the poor fop who cannot think even in his spare momentß. Just as the woman who has no interest in the world but marriage, who bos an empty mind and a

vapid hollow character, becomes weary and degraded, so the idle man, living luxuriously pa fine wines and dainty meats, habitually lazy and habitually vacant, becomes a satyr. He becomes pretty nearly as much beast as man. Most of his interests in life are interests which a beast might very well share. Sensuality in all its forma is the law and inspiration of his life. A satyr had his excuses. It was his nature to. But a man with centuries of human effort behind him, surrounded alike by the sight of all that effort has done, and all that effort has left undone to be achieved by us and those who come after us, living in the late and grey age of the world, haa no excuse. He is a monstrous and unseemly birth. A satyr in Piccadilly is as incongruous and out of the time as an alter for human sacrifice would be in Piccadilly. The presence of the first makes one deplore that we have not the latter too. Besides, the modern satyr is a poor creature, when we think of his ancient prototype. The satyr when earth was y oun/» was a fine jovial fellow, who enjoyed his cup and his chase after the fleet nymphs ; but then he loved music too, and the jocund dance, and all the greenness and beauty and bounty of nature. His modern counterpart does not care a straw for nature and all her greenness and beauty. To him the dance is no jocund delight, but a solemn, decorous business, almost of the nature of an inverted religious rite. The nymphs are not free and joyous comrades, but either his victims or his bores. A satyr in patent leather boots and a dress coat is a dismal personage when you think of the fine old satyr who was not ashamed of his goat's feet and his tail. The satyr of Piccadilly is a shrivelled artificial person, without anything robust or wholesome about him. A brassy or tinkling impudence is his nearest approach to blithe humor, an unclean chuckle his nearest approach to vivacity or mirth. He is a fit companion for the woman whom a judicious mother haa prepared for him, and taught to lay baits and snares for him. Even if a man is neither a simpleton nor a satyr, the intense luxuriousneßS and dissipation of the life to which more and more people of quality are surrendering themselves must do something towards the depravation of his character. We are apt to be deceived by old and oft-repeated traditions. We have been told so often and so long that our fashionable young men are all a hardy tribe, that we go on believing it even when we ought to know better. During the frivolities and dissipation of the season, an optimist would declare that, though you might think the bein«a who waltzed madly all the livelong night and lounged daintily most of the livelong day were a frivolous flippant crew, yet in truth you had before you the most muscular, plucky, athletic race of young men in all Europe. Some of them are worthy of this praise. Most of them are a long way from it. It is not the exquisites who olimb mountains, or go salmon fishing, or follow any of those other pastimes in which we vow that no nation equals us. College dons, or at least college men, mostly supply the climbing class, Elegant loafers are as little to be found at this moment on the mountain tops as they are to be found in St. James's street. The worst hardship they know in this summer and autumnal season, when they are supposed to be performing untold feats of muscularity, is to be dragged off to shoot too soon after a big lunch, or to be roused a little earlier than usual in the morning. After all, battuo shooting entails no terrible hardships. It is not so very much more exhausting a piece of exercise than strolling down Bond street on a warm day. At all events it confers no title for strength or endurance, or even sportsmanlike skill upon performer. In spite of all that is said about the compensation of Nature, we barely see it in the case of the " curled darling" of a hundred drawing-rooms. She has put an empty head on his shoulders. Circumstances have never filled it. And as he has a weak mind, so he has not the less a weak body. Profound idleness and luxuriousness are as noxious for one as the other. What has such a soul done that it should have been kindled into life P The greatest joy known to it is a simperiDg match in a drawing-room, or the achievement of an unusually successful toilette. Beyond the satisfaction of a few simple joys of sense, all life is a blank. All the rest of the universe exists in vain. He sees no beauties in it, feels no note of sympathy with his fellows, is altogether of too placid an organisation to be capable of being attuned to anything. His huir, his complexion, his clothes, his tiuy triumphs with women— there is his life. Yet perhaps if he had been born in more favorable circumstances, he might have been trained up into a decent hodman or tolerable carter. How much better for him and for us if he had been ! Perhaps the most horrible part of all this is that he is pretty sure one day or other to become the pai f ent of a new generation. The imagination positively staggers under the thought of the kind of offspring which would be bequeathed to the world by this curled creature and the vapid woman who he has at length taken to wife. The thought of the continuation of such a stock is too appalling. The only comfort is that, as physiologists teach us, Nature often skips a generation and reproduces some anterior type. Let us pray that she may perform this kindly process on the issue of some of the marriages in high life.