Olla Podrida. Фредерик МарриетЧитать онлайн книгу.
they will take a partiality to people or animals, which becomes a feeling so dominant, that their existence appears to depend upon its not being interfered with. I had an instance of this kind, and the parties are all living. I put up, for an hour or two, at a livery stables in town, a pair of young ponies. On my taking them out again, the phaeton was followed by a large coach-dog, about two years old, a fine grown animal, but not well marked, and in very poor condition. He followed us into the country; but having my establishment of dogs (taxes taken into consideration), I ordered him to be shut out. He would not leave the iron gates; and when they were opened, in he bolted, and hastening to the stables, found out the ponies, and was not to be dislodged from under the manger without a determined resistance. This alternate bolting in and bolting out continued for many days; finding that I could not get rid of him, I sent him away forty miles in the country; but he returned the next day, expressing the most extravagant joy at the sight of the ponies, who, strange to say, were equally pleased, allowing him to put his paws upon them, and bark in their faces. But although the ponies were partial to the dog, I was not; and aware that a voyage is a great specific for curing improper attachments, I sent the dog down the river in a barge, requesting the men to land him where they were bound, on the other side of the Medway; but in three days the dog again made his appearance, the picture of famine and misery. Even the coachman’s heart was melted, and the rights and privileges of his favourite snow-white terrier were forgotten. It was therefore agreed, in a cabinet council held in the harness room, that we must make the best of it; and, as the dog would not leave the ponies, the best thing we could do, was to put a little flesh on his bones, and make him look respectable. We therefore victualled him that day, and put him on our books with the purser’s name of Pompey. Now this dog proved, that sudden as was his attachment to the ponies, it was of the strongest quality. He never would and never has since left these animals. If turned out in the fields, he remains out with them, night as well as day, taking up his station as near as possible half way between the two, and only coming home to get his dinner. No stranger can enter their stables with impunity; for he is very powerful, and on such occasions very savage. A year or two after his domiciliation, I sold the ponies, and the parties who purchased were equally anxious at first to get rid of the dog; but their attempts, like mine, were unavailing, and, like me, they at last became reconciled to him. On my return from abroad, I re-purchased them, and Pompey of course was included in the purchase.
We are none of us perfect—and Pompey had one vice; but the cause of the vice almost changed it into a virtue. He had not a correct feeling relative to meum and tuum, but still he did not altogether steal for himself, but for his friends as well. Many have witnessed the fact of the dog stealing a loaf, or part of one, taking it into the stables, and dividing it into three portions, one for each pony, and the other for himself. I recollect his once walking off with a round of beef, weighing seventeen or eighteen pounds, and taking it to the ponies in the field—they smelt at it, but declined joining him in his repast. By-the-bye, to prove that lost things will turn up some day or another, there was a silver skewer in the beef, which was not recovered until two years afterwards, when it was turned up by the second ploughing. One day, as the ponies were in the field where I was watching some men at work, I heard them narrating to a stranger the wonderful feats of this dog, for I have related but a small portion. The dog was lying by the ponies as usual, when the servants’ dinner-bell rang, and off went Pompey immediately at a hard gallop to the house to get his food. “Well, dang it, but he is a queer dog,” observed the man, “for now he’s running as fast as he can, to answer the bell.”
Chapter Eleven
With all the faults of the Roman church, it certainly appears to me that its professors extend towards those who are in the bosom of their own church a greater share than most other sects, of the true spirit of every religion—charity. The people of the Low Countries are the most bigoted Catholics at present existing, and in no one country is there so much private as well as public charity. It is, however, to private charity that I refer. In England there is certainly much to be offered in extenuation, as charity is extorted by law to the utmost farthing. The baneful effects of the former poor laws have been to break the links which bound together the upper and lower classes, produced by protection and good will in the former, and in the latter, by respect and gratitude. Charity by act of parliament has dissolved the social compact—the rich man grumbles when he pays down the forced contribution—while the poor man walks into the vestry with an insolent demeanour, and claims relief, not as a favour, but as a right. The poor laws have in themselves the essence of revolution, for if you once establish the right of the poor man to any portion of the property of the rich, you admit a precedent so far dangerous, that the poor may eventually decide for themselves what portion it may be that they may be pleased to take; and this becomes the more dangerous, as it must be remembered, that the effect of the poor laws is repulsion between the two classes, from the one giving unwillingly, and the other receiving unthankfully. How the new Poor Law Bill will work remains to be proved; but this is certain, that much individual suffering must take place, before it works out the great end which it is intended to obtain.
That the Roman Catholic laity are more charitable is not a matter of surprise, as they are not subjected to forced contributions: but it appears to me that the Catholic clergy are much more careful and kind to their flocks than our own. Now, indeed, can it be otherwise, when even now, although so much reform in the Church has been effected, so many of our clergymen are pluralists and non-residents, expending the major part of the church revenue out of the parish, leaving to the curate, who performs the duty, a stipend which renders it impossible for him to exercise that part of his Christian duty to any extent?—for charity begins at home, and his means will not allow him to proceed much farther. That serious evils have arisen from the celibacy of the Roman clergy is true, for priests are but men, and are liable to temptation; but it is equally certain that when a Roman Catholic clergyman is a pure and pious man, he has nothing to distract his attention from the purposes of his high calling; and not only his whole attention is devoted to his flock, but his existence, if necessary, is voluntarily endangered. At the period of the cholera, there were many remarkable instances of this devotion to death on the part of the Roman priesthood, and as many, I am forced to say, of the Protestant clergy flying from the epidemic, and leaving their flocks without a shepherd. And why so? because the Protestant clergymen had wives and families depending upon them for support, and whose means of existence would terminate with their own lives. It was very natural that they should prefer the welfare of their own families to that of their parishioners. But in other cases not so extreme, the encumbrance of a family to a clergyman in England is very often in opposition to his duty. To eke out a scanty remuneration, he sets up a school or takes in pupils. Now if the duties of a clergyman consisted in merely reading the services on a Sunday, and christening, burying, and marrying, he might well do so; but the real duties of a clergyman are much more important. His duty is to watch over the lives and conduct of his parishioners, to exhort, persuade, and threaten, if necessary; to be ever among his flock, watching them as a shepherd does his sheep. And how can he possibly do this, if he takes charge of pupils?—he must either neglect his pupils or neglect his parish. He cannot do justice to both. As Saint Paul says to the bishops, “Although it is better to marry than burn, still it is better to be even as I am,” unencumbered with wife and family, and with no ties to distract my attention from my sacred and important calling.
But the public charitable institutions abroad are much better conducted than those of England, where almost every thing of the kind is made a job, and a source of patronage for pretending pious people, who work their way into these establishments for their own advantage. It is incredible the number of poor people who are effectually relieved on the Continent in the course of the year, at an expense which would not meet the weekly disbursements of a large parish in England. But then, how much more judicious is the system! I know for a fact, that in the county where I reside, and in which the hard-working labourer, earning his twelve shillings a week, is quite satisfied if he can find sufficient bread for his family, (not tasting meat, perhaps, ten times during the whole year,) that those who were idlers, supported by charity, were supplied with meat three or four times a week; nay, even the felons and prisoners in the county gaol were better fed than was the industrious working man. And this is what in England is called charity. It is base injustice to the meritorious. But many of the charitable