The Decay of Sentiment by Agnes Repplier

That useful little phrase, "the complexity of modern thought," has been so hard worked of late years that it seems like a refinement of cruelty to add to its obligations. Begotten by the philosophers, born of the essayists, and put out to nurse among the novel-writers, it has since been apprenticed to the whole body of scribblers, and drudges away at every trade in literature. How, asks Vernon Lee, can we expect our fiction to be amusing, when a psychological and sympathetic interest has driven away the old hard-hearted spirit of comedy? How, asks Mr. Pater, can Sebastian Van Stork make up his mind to love and marry and work like ordinary mortals, when the many-sidedness of life has wrought in him a perplexed envy of those quiet occupants of the churchyard, "whose deceasing was so long since over"? How, asks George Eliot, can Mrs. Pullet weep with uncontrolled emotion over Mrs. Sutton's dropsy, when it behooves her not to crush her sleeves or stain her bonnet-strings? The problem is repeated everywhere, either in mockery or deadly earnestness, according to the questioner's disposition, and the old springs of simple sentiment are drying fast within us. It is heartless to laugh, it is foolish to cry, it is indiscreet to love, it is morbid to hate, and it is intolerant to espouse any cause with enthusiasm.

There was a time, and not so many years ago, when men and women found no great difficulty in making up their minds on ordinary matters, and their opinions, if erroneous, were at least succinct and definite. Nero was then a cruel tyrant, the Duke of Wellington a great soldier, Sir Walter Scott the first of novelists, and the French Revolution a villainous piece of business. Now we are equally enlightened and confused by the keen researches and shifting verdicts with which historians and critics seek to dispel this comfortable frame of darkness. Nero, perhaps, had the good of his subjects secretly at heart when he expressed that benevolent desire to dispatch them all at a blow, and Robespierre was but a practical philanthropist, carried, it may be, a little too far by the stimulating influences of the hour. "We have palliations of Tiberius, eulogies of Henry VIII., and devotional exercises to Cromwell," observes Mr. Bagehot, in some perplexity as to where this state of things may find an ending; and he confesses that in the mean time his own original notions of right and wrong are growing sadly hazy and uncertain. Moreover, in proportion as the heavy villains of history assume a chastened and ascetic appearance, its heroes dwindle perceptibly into the commonplace, and its heroines are stripped of every alluring grace; while as for the living men who are controlling the destinies of nations, not even Macaulay's ever useful schoolboy is too small and ignorant to refuse them homage.