A CHOICE OF WORK.
IT is commonly said that the professions are losing their attraction. A few days ago the present writer was listening to lamentations on the subject from a public.sthool master and a University don. Both agreed that, with the possible exception of the medical profession, boys and young men show no eagerness for a professional career. Money and medicine appeal to them. They want to be doctors or "City men." One cannot be surprised that the element of chance in the one case and the human element in the other should fire the imaginations of the young. We cannot stand monotony just now. We imagine, however, that both the learned and active professions have bad times of unpopu- larity in the past—times which soon passed away. More than a hundred and thirty years ago the now forgotten but once "immensely popular, essay-writer Vicesimus Knox wrote on the choice of a profession with a decided leaning in favour of "a merchant's career." The subject is an ever- present one, discussed again and again in every family of educated people. The same discussion was going on when Knox wrote, and what he mid is not without interest. His essays are as commonplace as they were popular, and when platitudes are popular it means that they represent ordinary opinion. No doubt the father of sons, musing upon the future of his boys in the year 1780, said to himself very much what Knox said to the world.
First of all, he speaks of the clerical profession. He was a parson, and he must have known something about it. We cannot say that his criticism would be likely to increase the number of candidates for Orders. No mention what- ever is made of intellectual difficulties. Our author's point of view is frankly worldly and common-sense. For an ordinary man without "interest" there exist, he explains, no prizes in the clerical profession. " There are, indeed, rich preferment's ; but these, it ie observed, do not usually fall to merit." They are "lavished where interest and family connexion put in their irresistible claim." They are reserved for "younger brothers of opulent and noble families." This fact of the past rouses in him no bitterness. Bishops, he has already told us in a former essay, "are, notwithstanding the appearance of indolence, both orna- mental and useful to the Church and to society." He himself, be explains, is not one who would wish to strip a Church dignitary of "those outworks which either defend him from contempt, or facilitate the exercise of his jurisdiction, or con- tribute to his complacency." He is convinced that "when the clergy are despised they will degenerate," and he is very anxious to keep up their dignity. He has a great feeling for propriety and dignity at all times, and is distressed to see the nobility beginning to dress like their grooms. "Everything that lowers the great in the eyes of the vulgar, injures society by disturbing the settled climax of subordination," and "the vulgar are awed into submission by no methods so effectually, as by a respectable outside."
Times are changed. Preferments are honestly given; and no one works harder than a Bishop. All the same, some of the essayist's words may find an echo in the modern father's mind. The "sealed climax of subordination" has been disturbed, and the clergy, while they are rightly more respected than ever, have loot the prestige which belongs to authority. Their influence depends entirely now upon personality and not at all upon office. But to return to our chapter of advice. "The stipends of the most useful part of the clergy, those who officiate, are often not greater than the earnings of a hireling mechanic. Yet an appearance of a competency must be supported by the mute, not from pride alone, but from a laudable design of accomplishing the purposes of his profession. In vain will he preach, in vain will he set a good example, if a mean appearance and mode of living contradict the received opinions of congruity, and produce contempt." Poverty still makes dignity difficult to those not naturally endowed with it. How gladly would one disbelieve this disagreeable truth ! Saintliness destroys the sordid element in poverty, but saintliness is a great ana rare gift. In fact, the candidate for Orders should be of a contented disposition, pleased to be to a great extent "master of his time," and determined to value "the agreeable privilege of instructing his fellow-creatures in moral, philosophical, and religious truths." The prospect is not alluring—less alluring from a worldly point of view to-day than ever it was, because the curate is no longer master of his time.
The Law fares as badly as the Church at the hands of this parson. "Perhaps, during the time of business, there are few employments more irksome and unhealthy. The truly valuable rewards are indeed seldom obtained in the law, till age and application have weakened the powers of perception ; and when these are decayed, what are external advantages ? Upon the whole, we may conclude, that thOugh the profession of the law, when attended with success, is lucrative and well adapted to raise and establish a family, it is seldom consistent with personal tranquillity." Success still comes late to the lawyer, and late success prohibits early marriage.
Against doctors Vicesimus Knox seems to have bar- homed a personal grudge, and that in spite of the fact that he married the daughter of an eminent physician. In his experience, he says, only those doctors succeed "who have, little else to recommend them than confidence and external grace of behaviour." It is idle to deny that these two gifts still help the consultant. Knox would advise no one without private means sufficient to enable him "to be easy under the neglect of a capricious world" to attempt the study of medicine. Even then he should recollect that "the prepara- tion for the practice of physic is by no means agreeable."
Last on our author's list come the Army and Navy, and certainly he says nothing to encourage his readers to put their eons into either. " The Army," we read, " affords a fine asylum for those spirits, which are too restless for domestic life. But though it has many charms for a warm imagination, it seems little adapted to give solid comfort, at any time, much less in the season of infirmity and in old age. It is happy for the commonwealth, as things me now constituted, that the acknowledged gentility of the profession obliterates the sense of its hardships." Tranquillity and gentility are both out of fashion. The latter, however, still plays a part, we suppose, in the making of armies. But some other deterrent than want of " tranquillity " must nowadays weigh with the father who decides against Wooltich or Sandhurst for his son. The Navy is, according to Knox, " still less suited to afford tranquil pleasure." "To be confined with a crowd for many months in a wooden machine, is a situation which nothing but use and example could render tolerable." Dr. Johnson himself did not put a ship in a leas attractive light.
On the whole, the essayist decides for a business career. It is true that " the arts of keeping and improving money have a tendency to contract the sentiments," yet " in our commercial country, and in the present age, the mereantili orders have frequently shown themselves truly honourable and enlightened; and be would act imprudently and ridiculously who should slight a good opportunity of introducing his son to a success- ful merchandise, merely because it has not been held so liberal as the profession of him who starves with a doctor's degree." His advice to those who practise merchandise is not to strive to live among the fashionable, hot to remember that it is better to be " first in the neighbourhood of the Exchange "than " last in Bloomsbury Square." "I would advise the merchant who would live with real dignity to make the City respectable, if he does not find it so, by displaying his worth in it Worthy conduct, with a noble fortune, will aggrandize any place."
The modification is delightful. He compares the solid merchant to "the venerable oak " and the man of fashion to "the transitory tulip." A cross between these two creatures of the vegetable kingdom seemed to Knox impossible, but we Lave accomplished it I
We should be sorry to see the essays of the Rev. Yicesimus Knox come back to popularity. They would certainly encourage a pharisaical spirit. "How wonderfully we have improved !" the reader can but exclaim after every second sentence. What an array of hateful people seem to pass before us as we read ! Lazy Bishops, parsons trusting to appearances to awaken respect, humbugging doctors, senile lawyers, and a crowd of good-for-nothing young men who must be warned against the active professions lest in entering the Services they risk their "tranquillity." We are surely not quite so worldly as we were, and we are willing to work a great deal harder. We take altogether a less smug view of life than the Rev. Ticesimus Knox took, for all that we seem to have come very nearly to the same conclusion. Fewer and fewer people find work interesting for its own sake. They demand an element of chance in the game, and they want money on it. It is a phase of feeling—or, mindful of Mr. Knox, should we say a contraction of the sentiments P- unt likely to last.
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