The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES' JOURNAL. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1890.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume V, Issue 46, 15 November 1890, Page 10

The New Zealand Graphic AND LADIES' JOURNAL. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1890.

When the Auckland Synod negatives the motion advocating religious instruction in the public schools we may safely regard the days of that cause as numbered. In this matter, as in many others relating to politics and social subjects, the daughter-land takes the lead of the mother-country. There, though in the publie schools themselves the instruction is of an exclusively secular character, the liberal grants made to the denominational schools, which willingly subject themselves to the periodical inspections of the officers appointed by the State for that purpose, indicate the very partial nature of the system erected throughout the United Kingdom just twenty years ago. In the older community the respect for traditions and ideas long observed is so much greater and more persistent, that every onward movement must of necessity be more or less tentative at the outset, and the vast and powerful interests which these changes are destined to affect must be discreetly propitiated until public ■opinion slowly but surely veers round. Ultimately the advanced ideas of her progeny will be accepted by England to remodel her institutions and bring them into harmony with those of the coming family ot English-speaking nations.

The idea of recreating the fallen nature of humanity or restraining those propensities which are deemed indicative of its utter depravity by giving it the merest lick of religious white-wash in the course of the educational curriculum, is based upon an entirely unscientific knowledge of the working of the human mind. From birth to death we are all imitators. It is very doubtful whether we would do anything we were told if we did not see those for whose personality we have some respect doing it also. This truth is embodied in the saying that ‘ example is better than precept.’ The mere daily contact with instructors declaiming religious commonplaces in their public capacity, but whose personal influence is never exercised privately upon the minds of the pupils, cannot be productive of any appreciable effect when, directly these children return to their homes, they see in tho.-e thej- imitate either an indifference towards, or a practical reputation of, the maxims so baldly expounded to them by a stranger. It is from the home that the finest aroma of mannersand morality jcrcolates thiough the generation that is to carry on society when the present one lays down its burdens and departs. If the heads of families are true to their ideals of goodness and right, they will in the main transmit the belief in them to their children. Failures theie will be, but even then salvation, if it does come, w ill come of the parent rather than from the stranger, is the parent such as to evoke a keen sense of love and contrition in the child.

Now and then, in turning over our daily paper, our eyes are sainted with the news that one more unfortunate has voluntarily made their bow to the garish footlights illumining the drama of life, and gone off prematurely to indulge that curiosity which we ourselves will be content to gratify in the ordinary course of nature. There is a story told of a Frenchman who hung himself for the reason that he found the acts of dressing and undressing every day so ridiculous and monotonous that he could endure it no longer, and in many cases the irritation pressing up in the minds of those who seek oblivion is little more than that arising from ennui. Travellers who have moved among the rural populations of an old continent like that of Europe must have noted how much more quickly l>ersons whose habitat is unchanging and whose line of occupation is mechanical age than do the townspeople whose surroundings are full of variety. Indeed, when social science shall have extirpated the diseases artificially begot-

ten by the close aggregation of human beings, and the present architecture of great cities has yielded to a disposition of dwellings giving freer access to the purifying influences of light and air, the townsman will have, not only intellectually, but physically, the advantage of the country person. It was a saying of Byron’s that ‘ man being reasonable must get drunk,’ by which he doubtless meant that it is the reflective faculty which urges us to seek all sorts of anodynes for the tedium ritir, and that alcohol was merely one of these. That suicide is in many cases the outcome of drunkenness is no evidence necessarily that drunkenness is the cause of suicide. If the truth were known habitual intoxication is ofttime begotten by the sense of disappointment—disappointment inlove, ambition, pleasure, or any of those numerous phantoms which men and women pursue as the be-all and end-all of life. In savagery it is rare, and in the most highly-educated province of the most highly-educated people in the world, to wit, the Germans it is every year growing more frequent. Social-pressure, combined with keen intellectual desires, is probably the cause which, though it keeps people moving brightly for awhile, makes their ultimate collapse all the more sudden and remarkable.

Amid the deluge of literature —of novels and books of travel, which issue annually from the press, it is astonishing to notice the extent to which the writers draw up>n their imagination, generating an overwhelming flood of verbiage out of a very small nucleus of experience. As we know, the vast bulkof novelsissuingfrom the London press, and averaging something like one a day, are written by women, and as the experience of the writer is, as a rule, very small, the writing in these works has an almost entirely subjective character. Words expressive of the emotions, especially the emotion of love, abound, but those embodying the fruits of reflection or observation appear in a curiously small proportion. It is in writing a good deal as it is in business—the person who has the money hasn’t got the experience, and the person who has the experience can't make use of it for want of the money.

In every generation there have been hundreds of restless spirits, rolling stones, whom inclination or force of circumstances have carried out into the current of life which eddies and swirls around the stable landmarks of family-life, but who have gone down to the grave mute and inglorious with their thrilling experiences untold. In these days of migration and easy travel the number grows to thousands and thousands, and even whole families change their situation continually. In the United States it is computed that 75 per cent, of the population have moved from the place in which they were born, while the shifting character of the elements in New Zealand is very large in proportion to its people. Now and then the decease is announced of some old resident, who until middleage underwent experiences and saw enough of thepains and pleasures of life to fill many books, but who, owing to the lack of the literary faculty or the desire to put it into words, has vanished silent into the region of the unknown. Fortunately in this matter, as in many others, persons are not sensible of the possible pleasure that might be theirs, so there is no special lamentation ; but in literature, as in every other walk in life, the waste of materials is enormous, and the work done frequently comes from those who have only one half the qualifications necessary for achieving the highest results.

The Dunedin hospital is very sick. The great difficulty in this colony is to discover an hospital which is not troubled in some part of its economy. In most others the complaint is of a moral character, the visible machinery being in working order, butthe soul of it distracted by the concussion of a multitude of counsellors, who sit fiddling out their favourite solos while the common enemy is rampaging about the wards. The report of the Commission of Investigation shows that at Dunedin the hospital is seriously troubled in its ‘innards.’ Like the Highlander’s gun, it requires repairing out of existence before it becomes a fit place in which to give up the ghost. No one, however afflicted, would willingly select such a place for the purpose of committing suicide when so many more agreeable methods are available without. If we are to be polished off, one is inclined to prefer some straightforward natural complaint, and not that peculiar hybrid * hospitalism ’ which is alto-

gether too rechcrchi a compound for ordinary mortals. Living we accept gratefully our blended teas and rejoice in drinks that are deftly mingled, but dying we prefer to take our diseases * straight,’ and so, as none of us know where we may set up for our last night, let Dunedin get a new hospital.

' The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact,'says Mr W.S., but why did he omit the musician t Probably because in his day that form of insanity was too much in embryo to excite alarm. Nowadays, however, like the musical pitch, the musician is getting screwed up a shade higher with every generation, so that ultimately he may go on his head altogether and the race disappear, to the great delight of those who think with Dr. Johnson. Poor old lexicographer, he could swill bohea and declaim worldly wisdom from a somewhat narrow Cockney point ot view, but the violin was beyond him. Had he survived till the time of Monsieur Poussard he would perhaps have again sighed for the impossibility of such exhibitions as he did in his own day. But however much the old bear might have growled at the fiddler, there was one who, like Orpheus, woulu nave been able to make the brute get up and dance. Keats's sings, ‘Oh ! for a draught of vintage—full of the true the blushful Hippacrene but more potent than even this is a creamy draught from the fount of Burton. There is the stuff wnerewu.fi to soften rocks and bend the knotted oak, and does the Philistine still hold out, hey presto ! and from behind her, a Babered shaft shoots forth and he lies prostrate, transfixed with the sting of a B natuial. All Honour to the sweet singers,all honour to the sweet players, for they preach no sermon to us other than that wfiicn we choose to read lu the milestones of our pilgrimage. When they-speak the clammy cerements ot realityfall away from the enshrouded imagination, and she soars upwards with us over an enchanted panorama of our life, which is like and yet unlike in the indescribable beauty or its suggestive haziness.