One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
glish musical composer, who had not then made his money—
now by the mystery of events knighted!—had been (he makes
now fifteen thousand a year) black-balled. ‘Fiddler? no; can’t
admit a Fiddler to associate on equal terms with gentlemen.’
Only five years back: and at present we are having the Fiddler
everywhere.
A sprinkling of the minor ladies also would have been glad
if Mr. Radnor had kept himself somewhat more exclusive.
Dr. Schlesien heard remarks, upon which his weighty Teutonic
mind sat crushingly. Do these English care one bit for
music?—for anything finer than material stuffs?—what that
man Durance calls, ‘their beef, their beer, and their pew in
eternity’? His wrath at their babble and petty brabble doubted
that they did.
But they do. Art has a hold of them. They pay for it; and
the thing purchased grapples. It will get to their bosoms to
breathe from them in time: entirely overcoming the taste for
feudalism, which still a little objects to see their born gentleman
acting as leader of musicians. A people of slow movement,
developing tardily, their country is wanting in the
distincter features, from being always in the transitional state,
like certain sea-fish rolling head over-you know not head
from tail. Without the Welsh, Irish, Scot; in their composition,
there would not be much of the yeasty ferment: but it
should not be forgotten that Welsh, Irish, Scot, are now
largely of their numbers; and the taste for elegance, and for
spiritual utterance, for Song, nay, for Ideas, is there among
them, though it does not everywhere cover a rocky surface
to bewitch the eyes of aliens;—like Louise de Seilles and Dr.
Schlesien, for example; aliens having no hostile disposition
toward the people they were compelled to criticize;
honourably granting, that this people has a great history. Even
such has the Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of his
deeds. But the gentle aliens would image our emergence from
wildness as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear
menagerie Lion, alone or mated; with hardly an animated
moment save when the raw red joint is beneath his paw,
reminding him of the desert’s pasture.
Nevertheless, where Strength is, there is hope:—it may be
said more truly than of the breath of Life; which is perhaps
but the bucket of breath, muddy with the sediment of the
well: whereas we have in Strength a hero, if a malefactor;
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