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"Say, Loo-tenant," said Rawbon, panting hard. "There's no crossin' that mud puddle Fry-Pan. They're holding the barricade 'cross there; got loopholes an' shootin' through 'em. Can't we climb out an' over the open an' on top of 'em?" "No good," said Courtenay. "They're sweeping it with maxims. Listen!"
This is a most pertinent observation, for the general maxims of democracy are just as likely to make pupils despise their masters as to make sons despise their fathers. The master, too, represents in the eyes of his pupil that past which has no connection with the present and which by the law of progress is very inferior to the present.
He has half a dozen old maxims, which he advances on all occasions, and though his antagonist may overturn them never so often, yet he always brings them anew into the field. He is like the robber in Ariosto, who, though his head might be cut off half a hundred times, yet whipped it on his shoulders again in a twinkling, and returned as sound a man as ever to the charge.
All the nursery rhymes, and all the Bible, and reading out of "Step by Step," and then "Reading Without Tears," and then, in advancing series, the "Royal Readers," and writing, first holding their hands, and then first in pencil and afterwards with pens having three huge blobs to teach you how to place your fingers properly in copybooks graded from enormous lines which had brick-red covers to astoundingly narrow little lines enclosing pious and moral maxims which had severe grey covers; and the multiplication tables and then simple arithmetic; and General Knowledge out of "The Child's Guide to Knowledge," which asked you "What is sago?" and required you to reply by heart, "Sago is a dried, granulated substance prepared from the pith of several different palms."
There are maxims and ways of living, and so on, characteristic of the Christian life, which are in as complete antagonism to the ideas and maxims and practices that prevail amongst men who are outside of the influences of this Christian truth in their own hearts, as ever they were.
The marquis of Tweedale moved for an address of thanks, which was opposed by the earl of Chesterfield, for the reasons so often urged on the same occasion; but supported by lord Carteret on his new-adopted maxims, with those specious arguments which he could at all times produce, delivered with amazing serenity and assurance. The motion was agreed to, and the address presented to his majesty.
In this part of his performances He had none to imitate, but has himself been imitated by all succeeding writers; and it may be doubted, whether from all his successors more maxims of theoretical knowledge, or more rules of practical prudence, can be collected, than he alone has given to his country.
A bell rang in the marquis's chamber. It was one of his lordship's smaller economic maxims that in every house, and the larger the house the more necessary its observance, the master thereof should have his private rooms as far apart from each other as might, with due respect to general fitness, be arranged for, in order that, to use his own figure, he might spread his skirts the wider over the place, and chiefly the part occupied by his own family and immediate attendants thereby to give himself, without paying more attention to such matters than he could afford, a better chance of coming upon the trace of anything that happened to be going amiss.
However, I shall conclude with three maxims, which may serve both as characteristics to distinguish a true modern critic from a pretender, and will be also of admirable use to those worthy spirits who engage in so useful and honourable an art.
Awe of him is the incipient Religion; and his maxims furnish its first precepts. Submission is made to him in the forms he prescribes; and these give birth to Manners.
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