The exclusive jurisdiction over the subjects of their own nation,

exercised by the legations of the different European powers in virtue

of capitulations with the Porte, was doubtless at one time necessary

for the protection of foreigners from the arbitrary proceedings of

Turkish despotism; it has, however, given rise to great abuses, and at

the present day its practical effect is only to secure impunity to

crime, by impeding the course of justice. The system in all the

legations is extremely defective; "but in none is it more flagrantly

vicious and ineffective than in that of Great Britain." This is a

grave charge; but only too fully borne out by the facts adduced. Not

fewer than three thousand British subjects are now domiciled in and

about the Turkish capital, chiefly vagabonds and desperadoes, driven

by the rigour of English law from Malta and the Ionian Isles:--and

half the outrages in Stamboul "are committed by or charged to the

Queen's adopted subjects, who, well knowing that eventual impunity is

their privilege, are not restrained by fear of retribution." All the

zeal and energy of our consul-general, Mr Cartwright, (in whom are

vested the judicial functions exercised by chancellors of other

legations,) are paralysed by the necessity of adhering to the forms of

British law, the execution of which is practically impossible. "In a

case of murder or felony, for instance,--a case which often occurs--a

_pro forma_ verdict of guilty is returned; but what follows? The

ambassador has no power to order the law to be carried into effect:

nothing remains, therefore, but to send the accused, with the

depositions, to Malta or England. But the Maltese courts declare

themselves incompetent, and either liberate or send back the prisoner;

and English tribunals do not adjudicate on documentary evidence. The

consequence is, that unless witnesses proceed to England, criminals

must be liberated at Pera, or sent to be liberated at home, for want

of legal testimony. They have then their action at law against the

consul-general for illegal arrest." It appears scarcely credible that

a state of things, so calculated to degrade the British national

character in the eyes of the representatives of the other European

powers, should ever have been suffered to exist, and still more that

it should have remained so long unheeded. A bill was indeed carried

through Parliament in 1835, in consequence of the urgent reclamations

of Lord Ponsonby and Mr Cartwright, for empowering the Crown to remedy

the evil; but though the subject was again pressed by Sir Stratford

Canning in 1842, it still remains a dead letter. Mr White has done

good service in placing this plain and undeniable statement of facts

before the public eye; and we trust that the next session of

Parliament will not pass over without our seeing the point brought

forward by Mr D'Israeli, Mr Monckton Milnes, or some other of those

members of the legislature whose personal knowledge of the East

qualifies them to undertake it. "One plan ought to be adopted

forthwith, that of investing the consul-general with such full powers

as are granted to London police magistrates, or, if possible, to any

magistrates at quarter-sessions. He would then be able to dispose of a

multitude of minor correctional cases, which now pass unpunished, to

the constant scandal of all other nations. The delegated power might

be arbitrary, and inconsistent with our constitutional habits, but the

evil requires extrajudicial measures."

In pursuing Mr White's devious course through the various marts of

Constantinople, we have not yet brought our readers to the Missr

Tcharshy, or Egyptian market, probably the most diversified and purely

Oriental scene to be seen in Constantinople, and a representation of

which forms the frontispiece to one of the volumes. The building, the

entrance to which is between the Fishmarket Gate and the beautiful

mosque of the Valida, (built by the mother of Mohammed IV.,) consists

of an arcade lighted from the roof, like those of our own capital, 140

yards long, and 20 wide, filled on each side with shops, not separated

from each other by partitions, so as to impede the view; the tenants

of which are all Osmanlis, and dealers exclusively in perfumes,

spices, &c., imported chiefly through Egypt from India, Arabia, &c.

Here may be found "the Persian atar-gul's perfume," sandalwood, and

odoriferous woods of all kinds from the lands of the East; opium for

the _Teryakis_, a race whose numbers are happily now daily decreasing;

ambergris for pastilles; "cinnamon and ginger, nutmegs and cloves;"

the pink henna powder brought from Mekka by the pilgrims for tinging

ladies' fingers, though these "rosy-fingered Auroras" (as Mr W. kindly

warns the poetasters of Franguestan) are now only to be found among

slaves and the lower orders, the custom being now utterly exploded

among dames of high degree: "add to the above, spices, roots,

dyewoods, and minerals, and colours of every denomination, and an

idea may be formed of the contents of this neatly-arranged and

picturesque bazar. Its magnitude, its abundance and variety of goods,

the order that reigns on every side, and the respectability of the

dealers, render it one of the most original and interesting sights of

the city; it serves to refresh the senses and to dispel the

unfavourable impressions caused on first landing."

In the foregoing remarks and extracts, it has been our aim rather to

give a condensed view of the information to be derived from the

volumes before us, on topics of interest, than to attempt any thing

like a general abstract of a work so multifarious in its nature, and

so broken into detail, as to render the ordinary rules of criticism as

inapplicable to it as they would be to an encylopaedia. In point of

arrangement, indeed, the latter would have the advantage; for a total

absence of _lucidus ordo_ pervades Mr White's pages, to a degree

scarcely to be excused even by the very miscellaneous nature of the

subject. Thus, while constant reference is made, from the first, to

the bezestans, the names of their different gates, &c., no description

of these edifices occurs till the middle of the second volume, where

it is introduced apropos to nothing, between the public libraries and

the fur-market. The chapter headed "Capital Punishments," (iv. vol.

1.) is principally devoted to political disquisitions, with an episode

on lunatic asylums and the medical academy of Galata Serai, while only

a few pages are occupied by the subject implied in the title; which is

treated at greater length, and illustrated by the _proces-verbaux_ of

several criminal trials, at the end of the second volume, where it is

brought in as a digression from the slavery laws, on the point of the

admissibility of a slave's evidence! But without following Mr White

further through the slipper-market, the poultry-market, the

coffee-shops, and tobacco-shops, the fruit and flower market, the

Ozoon Tcharshy or long market, devoted to the sale of articles of

dress and household furniture, _cum multis aliis_; it will suffice to

say that there is no article whatever, either of luxury or use, sold

in Constantinople, from diamonds to old clothes, of which some

account, with the locality in which it is procurable, is not to be

found in some part or other of his volumes. We have, besides,

disquisitions on statistics and military matters; aqueducts and baths,

marriages and funerals, farriery and cookery, &c. &c.--in fact on

every imaginable subject, except the price of railway shares, which

are as yet to the Turks a pleasure to come. It would be unpardonable

to omit mentioning, however, for the benefit of gourmands, that for

the savoury viands called kabobs, and other Stamboul delicacies, the

shop of the worthy Hadji Mustapha, on the south side of the street

called Divan-Yolly, stands unequaled; while horticulturists and

poetasters should be informed, that in spite of Lord Byron's fragrant

descriptions of "the gardens of Gul in their bloom," the finer

European roses do not sympathize with the climate. Lady Ponsonby's

attempts to introduce the moss-rose at Therapia failed; and the only

place where they have succeeded is the garden of Count Stuermer, the

Austrian Internuncio, whose palace is, in more respects than one,

according to Mr White, the Gulistan of Stamboul society.

But we cannot take leave of this part of the subject without

remarking, that while all praise is due to Mr White's accuracy in

describing the scenes and subjects on which he speaks from personal

knowledge, his acquaintance with past Turkish history appears to be by

no means on a par with the insight he has succeeded in acquiring into

the usages and manners of the Turks of the present day. The

innumerable anecdotes interspersed through his pages, and which often

mar rather than aid the effect of the more solid matter, are

frequently both improbable and pointless; and the lapses which here

and there occur in matters of historical fact, are almost

incomprehensible. Thus we are told (i. 179,) that the favour enjoyed

(until recently) by Riza Pasha, was owing to his having rescued the

present sultan, when a child, from a reservoir in the Imperial Gardens

of Beglerbey, into which he had been hurled by his father in a fit of

brutal fury--an act wholly alien to the character of Mahmoud, but

which (as Mr W. observes,) "will not appear improbable to those

acquainted with Oriental history"--since it is found related, in all

its circumstances, in Rycaut's history of the reign of Ibrahim, whose

infant son, afterwards Mohammed IV., nearly perished in this manner by

his hands, and retained through life the scar of a wound on the face,

received in the fall. This palpable anachronism is balanced in the

next page by a version of the latter incident, in which Mohammed's

wound is said to have been inflicted by the dagger of his intoxicated

father, irritated by a rebuke from the prince (who, be it remarked,

was only seven years old at Ibrahim's death, some years later) on his

unseemly exhibition of himself as a dancer. As a further instance of

paternal barbarity in the Osmanli sultans, it is related how Selim I.

was bastinadoed by command of his father, Bajazet II., for misconduct

in the government of Bagdad! with the marvellous addition, (worthy of

Ovid's _Metamorphoses_,) that from the sticks used for his punishment,

and planted by his sorrowing tutor, sprung the grove of Tchibookly,

opposite Yenikouy! History will show that Selim and Bajazet never met

after the accession of the latter, except when the rebellious son met

the father in arms at Tchourlou; and it is well known that Bagdad did

not become part of the Ottoman empire till the reign of Soliman the

Magnificent the son of Selim. The mention of the City of the Khalifs,

indeed, seems destined to lead Mr White into error; for in another

story, the circumstances of which differ in every point from the same

incident as related by Oriental historians, we find the Ommiyade

Khalif, Yezid III., who died A.D. 723, (twenty-seven years before the

accession of the Abbasides, and forty before the foundation of

Bagdad,) spoken of as an Abbaside khalif of Bagdad! Again, we find in

the list of geographical writers, (ii. 172,) "Ebul Feredj, Prince of

Hama, 1331"--thus confounding the monk Gregory Abulpharagius with the

Arabic Livy, Abulfeda, a prince of the line of Saladin! This last

error, indeed, can scarcely be more than a slip of the pen. But

instances of this kind might be multiplied; and it would be well if

such passages, with numerous idle legends (such as the patronage of

black bears by the Abbasides, and brown bears by the Ommiyades,) be

omitted in any future edition.

We have reserved for the conclusion of our notice, the consideration

of Mr White's observations on the late _constitution_ (as it has been

called) of Gul-khana, a visionary scheme concocted by Reshid Pasha,

under French influence, by which it was proposed to secure equal

rights to all the component parts of the heterogeneous mass which

constitutes the population of the Ottoman empire. The author's remarks

on this well-meant, but crude and impracticable _coup-d'etat_, evince

a clear perception of the domestic interests and relative political

position of Turkey, which lead us to hope that he will erelong turn

his attention on a more extended scale, to the important subject of

Ottoman politics. For the present, we must content ourselves with

laying before our readers, in an abridged form, the clear and

comprehensive views here laid down, on a question involving the future

interests of Europe, and of no European power more than of Great Britain.

"The population of the Turkish empire consists of several distinct

races, utterly opposed to each other in religion, habits, descent,

objects, and in every moral and even physical characteristic. The

Turkomans, Kurds, Arabs, Egyptians, Druses, Maronites, Albanians,

Bosnians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Jews, and Armenians, are so many

distinct nations, inhabiting the same or contiguous soils, without

having intermixed in the slightest degree from their earliest

conquest, and without having a single object in common. Over these

dissentient populations stands the pure Ottoman race, the paramount

nation, charged with maintaining the equilibrium between all, and with

neutralizing the ascendancy of one faction by the aid of others. Were

this control not to exist--were the Turks, who represent their

ancestors, the conquerors of the land, to be reduced to a level with

those now beneath them, or were the preponderating influence of the

former to be destroyed by the elevation and equalization of the

latter, perpetual revolts and civil wars could not fail to ensue. The

dependent populations, now constituting so large a portion of the

empire, would continue the struggle until one of them obtained the

supremacy at present exercised by the Turkish race, or until the

territory were divided among themselves, or parcelled out by foreign

powers. In this last hypothesis will be found the whole secret of the

ardent sympathy evinced by most foreigners, especially by the press of

France, for the subjugated races.

"Many benevolent men argue, that the surest means of tranquillizing

the tributaries of the Porte, and attaching them to the government, is

by raising them in the social scale, and by granting to all the same

rights and immunities as are enjoyed by their rulers. But it has been

repeatedly proved, that concessions do but lead to fresh demands, and

that partial enfranchisement conducts to total emancipation. 'And why

should they not?' is often asked. To this may be replied, that the

possession of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles by any other power, or

fraction of power, than the Porte, would be a source of interminable

discord to Europe, and irreparable detriment to England. It would not

only affect our commerce, and undermine our political influence

throughout the East, but would add enormously to our naval

expenditure, by requiring an augmentation of our maritime force

equivalent to that now remaining neuter in the Golden Horn. Treaties,

it is said, might be concluded, exacting maritime restrictions. But

what are treaties in the face of events? Whoever possesses the

Bosphorus, Propontis, and Archipelago, _must_ become a maritime nation

in spite of treaties. Whoever possesses Constantinople _must_ become a

great manufacturing and exporting nation, in defiance of competition.

In less than half a century, the romantic villas and tapering

cypresses that now fringe the blue Bosphorus, would be replaced by

factories and steam-chimneys--every one of which would be a deadly

rival to a similar establishment in Great Britain. I argue as an

Englishman, whose duty it is to consider the material interests of his

country, now and hereafter, and not to occupy himself with the

theories of political philanthropists.

"According to the levelling system, recommended as the basis of

reforms, all classes would eventually be assimilated--the desert Arabs

to the laborious Maronites, the intractable Arnoots to the industrious

Bulgarians, the thrifty Armenians to the restless and ambitious

Greeks, and the humble and parsimonious Jews to the haughty and lavish

Osmanlis. Thus, contiguous populations, which now keep each other in

check, because their interests are divergent and their jealousies

inveterate, would find their interests assimilated; and in the event

of opposition to government, the Porte, in lieu of being able to

overcome one sect through the rivalry of another, would find them all

united against the dominant power. The Ottoman government should

therefore avoid establishing any community of rights or interests

among the races subjected to its rule. Each of these races ought to be

governed according to its own usages and individual creed; there

should be uniformity in the principles of administration, but

diversity in the application. The Ottoman tenure cannot be maintained

but by decided and peremptory superiority. Adhesion on the part of the

subjugated is impossible; connexion is all that can be expected; and

to preserve this connexion, the supremacy of conquest must not be

relaxed. The Porte cannot expect attachment; it must consequently

enforce submission. When this absolutism ceases to exist, the power

will pass into other hands; and where is the politician that can

calculate the results of the transfer? One issue may be safely

predicted--England must lose, but cannot gain by the change. With the

increasing embarrassments to commerce and industry, which continental

states are raising against Britain, it is essential that we should not

allow a false cry of philanthropy to throw us off our guard in the

Levant. France in Africa, and Russia on the Danube, are intent on the

same object. Their battle-cries are civilization and religion; their

pretext the improvement of the Christian populations. But who is there

that has studied the recent policy of the one, and the undeviating

system of the other, since the days of Catherine, that can question

for a moment the purport of both? _And yet England and Austria have

acted recently as if France were sincere, and Russia disinterested._"

[Footnote 28: _Three Years in Constantinople; or, Domestic Manners of

the Turks in 1844._ By CHARLES WHITE, ESQ.]

[Footnote 29: The root of bezestan and bazar is _bez_, cloth;--of

tcharshy, _tchar_, four, meaning a square.]

[Footnote 30: A catalogue of works printed from the establishment of

the press in 1726 to 1820, is given in the notes to Book 65 of Von

Hammer Purgstall's Ottoman History.]

[Footnote 31: Mr White erroneously calls him Mourad III., and places

the expedition against Bagdad in 1834.]

[Footnote 32: Mr White here introduces a digression on the other

relics of the Prophet, the Moslem festivals, &c., his account of which

presents little novelty; but he falls into the general error of

describing the Mahmil, borne by the holy camel in the pilgrim caravan,

as containing the brocade covering of the Kaaba, when it is in fact

merely an emblem of the presence of the monarch, like an empty

carriage sent in a procession.--(See _Lane's Modern Egyptians_, ii. p.

204, 8vo. ed.) It is indeed sufficiently obvious, that a box six feet

high and two in diameter, could not contain a piece of brocade

sufficient to surround a building described by Burckhardt as eighteen

paces long, fourteen broad, and from thirty-five to forty feet high.]

THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOUD.

(A REMINISCENCE OF SWITZERLAND)

The cloud is to the mountain what motion is to the sea; it gives to it

an infinite variety of expression--gives it a life--gives it joy and

sufferance, alternate calm, and terror, and anger. Without the cloud,

the mountain would still be sublime, but monotonous; it would have but

a picture-like existence.

How thoroughly they understand and sympathize with each other--these

glorious playmates, these immortal brethren! Sometimes the cloud lies

supported in the hollow of the hill, as if out of love it feigned

weariness, and needed to be upheld. At other times the whole hill

stands enveloped in the cloud that has expanded to embrace and to

conceal it. No jealousy here. Each lives its own grand life under the

equal eye of heaven.

As you approach the mountains, it seems that the clouds begin already

to arrange themselves in bolder and more fantastic shapes. They have a

fellowship here. They built their mountains upon mountains--their

mountains which are as light as air--huge structures built at the

giddy suggestion of the passing breeze. Theirs is the wild liberty of

endless change, by which they compensate themselves for their thin and

fleeting existence, and seem to mock the stationary forms of their

stable brethren fast rooted to the earth. And how genially does the

sun pour his beam upon these twin grandeurs! For a moment they are

assimilated; his ray has permeated, has etherealized the solid

mountain, has fixed and defined the floating vapour. What now is the

one but a stationary cloud? what is the other but a risen

hill?--poised not in the air but in the flood of light.

I am never weary of watching the play of these giant children of the

earth. Sometimes a soft white cloud, so pure, so bright, sleeps,

amidst open sunshine, nestled like an infant in the bosom of a green

mountain. Sometimes the rising upcurling vapour will linger Just above

the summit, and seem for a while an incense exhaling from this vast

censer. Sometimes it will descend, and _drape_ the whole side of the

hill as with a transparent veil. I have seen it sweep between me and

the mountain like a sheeted ghost, tall as the mountain, till the

strong daylight dissolved its thin substance, and it rose again in

flakes to decorate the blue heavens. But oh, glorious above all! when

on some brightest of days, the whole mass of whitest clouds gathers

midway upon the snow-topped mountain. How magnificent then is that

bright eminence seen above the cloud! How it seems rising upwards--how

it seems borne aloft by those innumerable wings--by those enormous

pinions which I see stretching from the cloudy mass! What an ascension

have we here!--what a transfiguration! O Raphael! I will not disparage

thy name nor thy art, but thy angels bearing on their wings the

brightening saint to Heaven--what are they to the picture here?

Look! there--fairly in the sky--where we should see but the pure

ether--above the clouds which themselves are sailing high in serenest

air--yes, there, in the blue and giddy expanse, stands the solid

mountain, glittering like a diamond. O God! the bewildered reason pent

up in cities, toils much to prove and penetrate thy being and thy

nature--toils much in vain. Here, I reason not--I see. The Great King

lives--lo there is his throne.

* * * * *

To him who quits the plain for the mountain, how the character of the

cloud alters. That which seemed to belong exclusively to the sky, has

been drawn down and belongs as plainly to the earth. Mount some noble

eminence and look down--you will see the clouds lying _on_ and _about_

the landscape, as if they had fallen on it. You are on the steadfast

earth, and they are underneath you. You look down perhaps on the lake,

and there is a solitary cloud lying settled on it; when the rest of

the fleecy drove had risen from their couch, this idle sleeper had

been left dreaming there.

Or stay below, and see the sun rise in the valley. When all is warm

and clear upon the heights, and the tops of the hills are fervid with

the beams of heaven, there still lies a cold white mass of cloud about

your feet. It is not yet morning in the valley. There the cloud has

been slumbering all night--there it found its home. It also will by

and by receive the beam, and then it will arise, enveloping the hill

as it ascends; the hill will have a second dawn; the cloud will assume

its proud station in the sky; but it will return again to the valley

at night.

I am sailing on the lake of Brienz on a day golden with sunbeams. The

high ridge of its rocky castellated hills is distinct as light can

make it. Yet half-way up, amidst the pine forests, there lies upon the

rich verdure a huge motionless cloud. What does it there? Its place

was surely in the sky. But no; it belongs, like ourselves, to the

earth.

Is nature gaily mocking us, when upon her impregnable hills she builds

these _castles in the air_? But, good heavens! what a military aspect

all on a sudden does this mountain-side put on. Mark that innumerable

host of pine-trees. What regiments of them are marching up the hill in

the hot sun, as if to storm those rocky forts above! What serried

ranks! and yet there are some stragglers--some that have hastened on

in front, some that have lingered in the rear. Look at that tall

gigantic pine breasting the hill alone, like an old grenadier. How

upright against the steep declivity! while his lengthened shadow is

thrown headlong back behind him down the precipice. I should be giddy

to see such a shadow of my own. I should doubt if it would consent to

be drawn up by the heels to the summit of the mountain--whether it

would not rather drag me down with it into the abyss.

* * * * *

I have seen hills on which lay the clear unclouded sky, making them

blue as itself. I have gazed on those beautiful far-receding

valleys--as the valley of the Rhone--when they have appeared to

collect and retain the azure ether. They were full of Heaven. Angels

might breathe that air. And yet I better love the interchange, the

wild combination of cloud and mountain. Not cloud that intercepts the

sun, but that reflects its brilliancy, and brightens round the hills.

It is but a gorgeous drapery that the sky lets fall on the broad

Herculean shoulders of the mountain. No, it should not intercept the

beams of the great luminary; for the mountain loves the light. I have

observed that the twilight, so grateful to the plain, is mortal to the

mountain. It craves light--it lifts up its great chalice for

light--this great flower is the first to close, to fade, at the

withdrawal of the sun. It stretches up to heaven seeking light; it

cannot have too much--under the strongest beam it never droops--its

brow is never dazzled.

But then these clouds, you will tell me, that hover about the

mountain, all wing, all plumage, with just so much of substance for

light to live in them--these very clouds can descend, and thicken, and

blacken, and cover all things with an inexpressible gloom. True, and

the mountain, or what is seen of it, becomes now the very image of a

great and unfathomable sorrow. And only the great can express a great

sadness. This aspect of nature shall never by me be forgotten; nor

will I ever shrink from encountering it. If you would know the gloom

of heart which nature can betray, as well as the glory it can

manifest, you must visit the mountains. For days together, clouds,

huge, dense, unwieldy, lie heavily upon the hills--which stand, how

mute, how mournful!--as if they, too, knew of death. And look at the

little lake at their feet. What now is its tranquillity when not a

single sunbeam plays upon it? Better the earth opened and received it,

and hid for ever its leaden despondency. And now there comes the

paroxysm of terror and despair; deep thunders are heard, and a madness

flashes forth in the vivid lightning. There is desperation amongst the

elements. But the elements, like the heart of man, must rage in

vain--must learn the universal lesson of submission. With them, as

with humanity, despair brings back tranquillity. And now the driving

cloud reveals again the glittering summits of the mountains, and light

falls in laughter on the beaming lake.

How like to a ruined Heaven is this earth! Nay, is it not more

beautiful for being a ruin?

* * * * *

Who can speak of lakes and not think of thee, beautiful Leman? How

calm! how exquisitely blue! Let me call it a liquid sky that is spread

here beneath us. And note how, where the boat presses, or the oar

strikes, it yields ever a still more exquisite hue--akin to the

violet, which gives to the rude pressure a redoubled fragrance--akin

to the gentlest of womankind, whose love plays sweetest round the

strokes of calamity.

Oh, there is a woman's heart in thy waters, beautiful Leman!

I have seen thee in all thy moods, in all thy humours. I have watched

thee in profoundest calm; and suddenly, with little note of

preparation, seen thee lash thy blue waves into a tempest. How

beautiful in their anger were those azure waves crested with their

white foam! And at other times, when all has been a sad unjoyous calm,

I have seen, without being able to trace whence the light had broken,

a soft expanse of brightness steal tremulous over the marble waters. A

smile that seemed to speak of sweet caprice--that seemed to say that

half its anger had been feint.

Yes, verily there is a woman's heart in thy waters, beautiful Leman!

I lie rocking in a boat midway between Vevay and Lausanne. On the

opposite coast are the low purple hills _couching_ beside the lake.

But there, to the left, what an ethereal structure of cloud and snowy

mountain is revealed to me! What a creation of that spirit of beauty

which works its marvels in the unconscious earth! The Alps here, while

they retain all the aerial effect gathered from distance, yet seem to

arise from the very margin of the lake. The whole scene is so

ethereal, you fear to look aside, lest when you look again it may have

vanished like a vision of the clouds.

And why should these little boats, with their tall triangular sails,

which glide so gracefully over the water, be forgotten? The sail,

though an artifice of man, is almost always in harmony with nature.

Nature has adopted it--has lent it some of her own wild

privileges--her own bold and varied contrasts of light and shade. The

surface of the water is perhaps dark and overclouded; the little

upright sail is the only thing that has caught the light, and it

glitters there like a moving star. Or the water is all one dazzling

sheet of silver, tremulous with the vivid sunbeam, and now the little

sail is black as night, and steals with bewitching contrast over that

sparkling surface.

* * * * *

But we fly again to the mountain. Tourists are too apt to speak of the

waterfall as something independent, something to be visited as a

separate curiosity. There may be some such. But in general, the

waterfall should be understood as part of the mountain--as the great

fountain which adorns the architecture of its rocks, and the gardens

of its pine forests. It belongs to the mountain. Pass through the

valley, and look up; you see here and there thin stripes of glittering

white, noiseless, motionless. They are waterfalls, which, if you

approach them, will din you with their roar, and which are dashing

headlong down, covered with tossing spray. Or ascend the face of the

mountain, and again look around and above you. From all sides the

waterfalls are rushing. They bear you down. You are giddy with their

reckless speed. How they make the rock live! What a stormy vitality

have they diffused around them! You might as well separate a river

from its banks as a waterfall from its mountain.

And yet there is one which I could look at for hours together, merely

watching its own graceful movements. Let me sit again in imagination

in the valley of Lauterbrunnen, under the fall of the Staubbach. Most

graceful and ladylike of descents! It does not fall; but over the

rock, and along the face of the precipice, developes some lovely form

that nature had at heart;--diffuses itself in down-pointing pinnacles

of liquid vapour, fretted with the finest spray. The laws of gravity

have nothing to do with its movements. It is not hurled down; it does

not leap, plunging madly into the abyss; it thinks only of beauty as

it sinks. No noise, no shock, no rude concussion. Where it should dash

against the projecting rock, lo! its series of out-shooting pinnacles

is complete, and the vanishing point just kisses the granite. It

disappoints the harsh obstruction by its exquisite grace and most

beautiful levity, and springs a second time from the rock without

trace of ever having encountered it.

The whole side of the mountain is here barren granite. It glides like

a spirit down the adverse and severe declivity. It is like Christ in

this world. The famous fall of the Griesbach, near the lake of Brienz,

thunders through the most luxuriant foliage; the Staubbach meets the

bare rock with touches of love, and a movement all grace, and a voice

full of reconcilement.

* * * * *

Mont Blanc! Mont Blanc! I have not scaled thy heights so boldly or so

far as others have, but I will yield to none in worship of thee and

thy neighbour mountains. Some complain that the valley of Chamouni is

barren; they are barren souls that so complain. True, it has not the

rich pastures that lie bordering on the snow in the Oberland. But

neither does it need them. Look _down_ the valley from the pass of the

Col de Balme, and see summit beyond summit; or ascend the lateral

heights of La Flegere, and see the Alps stretched out in a line before

you, and say if any thing be wanting. Here is the sculpture of

landscape. Stretched yourself upon the bare open rock, you see the

great hills built up before you, from their green base to their snowy

summits, with rock, and glacier, and pine forests. You see how the

Great Architect has wrought.

And for softer beauty, has not the eye been feasted even to

excess--till you cried "hold--enough!" till you craved repose from

excitement--along the whole route, from Lausanne to this spot? What

perfect combinations of beauty and sublimity--of grandeur of outline

with richness of colouring--have you not been travelling through!

It seems a fanciful illustration, and yet it has more than once

occurred to me, when comparing the scenery of the Oberland with that

of the valley of Chamouni and its neighbourhood; the one resembles the

first work--be it picture or poem--of a great genius; the other, the

second. On his first performance, the artist lavishes beauties of

every description; he crowds it with charms; all the stores of his

imagination are at once unfolded, and he must find a place for all. In

the second, which is more calm and mature, the style is broader, the

disposition of materials more skilful: the artist, master of his

inspiration, no longer suffers one beauty to crowd upon another, finds

for all not only place, but place sufficient; and, above all, no

longer fears being simple or even austere. I dare not say that the

Oberland has a fault in its composition--so charming, so magnificent

have I found it; but let me mark the broad masterly style of this

Alpine region. As you journey from Villeneuve, with what a gentle,

bland magnificence does the valley expand before you! The hills and

rocks, as they increase in altitude, still fall back, and reveal in

the centre the towering _Dent du Midi_, glittering with its eternal

snows. The whole way to Martigny you see sublimity without admixture

of terror; it is beauty elevated into grandeur, without losing its

amenity. And then, if you cross by the Col de Balme, leaving the

valley of the Rhone as you ascend, and descending upon the valley of

Chamouni, where the Alps curve before you in most perfect

grouping--tell me if it is possible for the heart of man to desire

more. Nay, is not the heart utterly exhausted by this series of scenic

raptures?

For ever be remembered that magnificent pass of the Col de Balme! If I

have a white day in my calendar, it is the day I spent in thy defiles.

Deliberately I assert that life has nothing comparable to the delight

of traversing alone, borne leisurely on the back of one's mule, a

mountain-pass such as this. Those who have stouter limbs may prefer to

use them; give me for my instrument of progression the legs of the

patient and sure-footed mule. They are better legs, at all events,

than mine. I am seated on his back, the bridle lies knotted upon his

neck--the cares of the way are all his--the toil and the anxiety of

it; the scene is all mine, and I am all in it. I am seated there, all

eye, all thought, gazing, musing; yet not without just sufficient

occupation to keep it still a luxury--this leisure to contemplate. The

mule takes care of himself, and, in so doing, of you too; yet not so

entirely but that you must look a little after yourself. That he by no

means has your safety for his primary object is evident from this,

that, in turning sharp corners or traversing narrow paths, he never

calculates whether there is sufficient room for any other legs than

his own--takes no thought of yours. To keep your knees, in such

places, from collision with huge boulders, or shattered stumps of

trees, must be your own care; to say nothing of the occasional

application of whip or stick, and a _very_ strong pull at his mouth to

raise his head from the grass which he has leisurely begun to crop.

Seated thus upon your mule, given up to the scene, with something

still of active life going on about you, with full liberty to pause

and gaze, and dismount when you will, and at no time proceeding at a

railroad speed, I do say--unless you are seated by your own

incomparable Juliet, who has for the first time breathed that she

loves you--I do say that you are in the most enviable position that

the wide world affords. As for me, I have spent some days, some weeks,

in this fashion amongst the mountains; they are the only days of my

life I would wish to live over again. But mind, if you would really

enjoy all this, go alone--a silent guide before or behind you. No

friends, no companion, no gossip. You will find gossip enough in your

inn, if you want it. If your guide thinks it is his duty to talk, to

explain, to tell you the foolish names of things that need no

name--make belief that you understand him not--that his language, be

it French or German, is to you utterly incomprehensible.

I would not paint it all _couleur de rose_. The sun is not always

shining.

There is tempest and foul weather, fatigue and cold, and abundant

moisture to be occasionally encountered. There is something to endure.

But if you prayed to Heaven for perpetual fair weather, and your

prayer were granted, it would be the most unfortunate petition you

could put up. Why, there are some of the sublimest aspects, the

noblest moods and tempers of the great scene, which you would utterly

forfeit by this miserable immunity. He who loves the mountain, will

love it in the tempest as well as in the sunshine. To be enveloped in

driving mist or cloud that obscures every thing from view--to be made

aware of the neighbouring precipice only by the sound of the torrent

that rushes unseen beneath you--how low down you can only guess--this,

too, has its excitement. Besides, while you are in this total blank,

the wind will suddenly drive the whole mass of cloud and thick vapour

from the scene around you, and leave the most glorious spectacle for

some moments exposed to view. Nothing can exceed these moments of

sudden and partial revelation. The glittering summits of the mountains

appear as by enchantment where there had long been nothing but dense

dark vapour. And how beautiful the wild disorder of the clouds, whose

array has been broken up, and who are seen flying, huddled together in

tumultuous retreat! But the veering wind rallies them again, and again

they sweep back over the vast expanse, and hill and valley, earth and

sky, are obliterated in a second.

* * * * *

He who would ponder what _man_ is, should journey amongst the

mountains. What _men_ are, is best learnt in the city.

How, to a museful spirit, the heart and soul of man is reflected in

the shows of nature! I cannot see this torrent battling for ever along

its rocky path, and not animate it with human passions, and torture it

with a human fate. Can it have so much turmoil and restlessness, and

not be allied to humanity?

But all are not images of violence or lessons of despondency. Mark the

Yungfrau, how she lifts her slight and virgin snows fearlessly to the

blazing sun! She is so high, she feels no _reflected heat_.

* * * * *

How well the simple architecture of the low-roofed buildings of

Switzerland accords with its magnificent scenery! What were lofty

steeples beside Mont Blanc, or turreted castles beside her pinnacles

of granite? Elsewhere, in the level plain, I love the cathedral. I had

lately stood enraptured in the choir of that of Cologne, gazing up at

those tall windows which spring where other loftiest buildings

terminate--windows so high that God only can look in upon the

worshipper.

But here--what need of the stately edifice, when there is a church

whose buttresses are mountains, whose roof and towers are above the

clouds, verily in the heavens? What need of artificial reminiscences

of the Great King, here where he has built for himself? The plain, it

is _man's_ nature--given to man's wants; there stands his corn, there

flow his milk and honey. But the mountain, it is God's nature--his

stationary tabernacle--reserved for the eye only of man and the

communing of his spirit. If meant to subserve the wants of his earthly

nature, meant still more expressly to kindle other wants. Do they not

indeed lead to Heaven, these mountains? At least I know they lead

beyond this earth.

There is a little church stands in the valley of Chamouni. It was

open, as is customary in Catholic countries, to receive the visits and

the prayers of the faithful; but there was no service, no priest, nor

indeed a single person in the building. It was evening--and a solitary

lamp hung suspended from the ceiling, just before the altar. Allured

by the mysterious appearance of this lamp burning in solitude, I

entered, and remained in it some time, making out, in the dim light,

the wondrous figures of virgins and saints generally found in such

edifices. When I emerged from the church, there stood Mont Blanc

before me, reflecting the last tints of the setting sun. I am

habitually tolerant of Catholic devices and ceremonies; but at this

moment how inexpressibly strange, how very little, how poor,

contemptible, and like an infant's toy, seemed all the implements of

worship I had just left!

And yet the tall, simple, wooden cross that stands in the open air on

the platform before the church, this was well. This was a symbol that

might well stand, even in the presence of Mont Blanc. Symbol of

suffering and of love, where is it out of place? On no spot on earth,

on no spot where a human heart is beating.

Mont Blanc and this wooden cross, are they not the two greatest

symbols that the world can show? They are wisely placed opposite each

other.

I have alluded to the sunset seen in this valley. All travellers love

to talk a little of their own experience, their good or their ill

fortune. The first evening I entered Chamouni, the clouds had gathered

on the summits of the mountains, and a view of Mont Blanc was thought

hopeless. Nevertheless I sallied forth, and planted myself in the

valley, with a singular confidence in the goodness of nature towards

one who was the humblest but one of the sincerest of her votaries. My

confidence was rewarded. The clouds dispersed, and the roseate sunset

on the mountain was seen to perfection. I had not yet learned to

distinguish that summit which, in an especial manner, bears the name

of Mont Blanc. There is a modesty in its greatness. It makes no

ostentatious claim to be the highest in the range, and is content if

for a time you give the glory of pre-eminence to others. But it

reserves a convincing proof of its own superiority. I had been looking

elsewhere, and in a wrong direction, for Mont Blanc, when I found that

all the summits had sunk, like the clouds when day deserts them, into

a cold dead white--all but one point, that still glowed with the

radiance of the sun when all beside had lost it. There was the royal

mountain.

What a cold, corpse-like hue it is which the snow-mountain assumes

just after the sun has quitted it. There is a short interval then,

when it seems the very image of death. But the moon rises, or the

stars take up their place, and the mountain resumes its beauty and its

life. Beauty is always life. Under the star-light how ethereal does it

look!

* * * * *

In the landscapes of other countries, the house--the habitation of

man--be it farm-house or cottage--gathers, so to speak, some of the

country about itself--makes itself the centre of some circle, however

small. Not so in Switzerland. The hooded chalet, which even in summer

speaks so plainly of winter, and stands ever prepared with its low

drooping roof to shelter its eyes and ears from the snow and the

wind--these dot the landscape most charmingly, but yet are lost in it;

they form no group, no central point in the scene. I am thinking more

particularly of the chalets in the Oberland. There is no path

apparently between one and the other; the beautiful green verdure lies

untrodden around them. One would say, the inhabitants found their way

to them like birds to their nests. And like enough to nests they are,

both in the elevation at which they are sometimes perched, and in the

manner of their distribution over the scene.

However they got there, people at all events are living in them, and

the farm and the dairy are carried up into I know not what altitudes.

Those beautiful little tame cattle, with their short horns, and long

ears, and mouse-coloured skin, with all the agility of a goat, and all

the gentleness of domesticity--you meet them feeding in places where

your mule looks thoughtfully to his footing. And then follows perhaps

a peasant girl in her picturesque cloak made of the undressed fur of

the goat and her round hat of thickly plaited straw, calling after

them in that high sing-song note, which forms the basis of what is

called Swiss music. This cry heard in the mountains is delightful, the

voice is sustained and yet varied--being varied, it can be sustained

the longer--and the high note pierces far into the distance. As a real

cry of the peasant it is delightful to hear; it is appropriate to the

purpose and the place. But defend my ears against that imitation of it

introduced by young ladies into the Swiss songs. Swiss music in an

English drawing-room--may I escape the infliction! but the Swiss

peasant chanting across the mountain defiles--may I often again halt

to listen to it!

* * * * *

But from the mountain and the cloud we must now depart. We must wend

towards the plain. One very simple and consolatory thought strikes

me--though we must leave the glory of the mountain, we at least take

the sun with us. And the cloud too, you will add. Alas! something too

much of that.

But no murmurs. We islanders, who can see the sun set on the broad

ocean--had we nothing else to boast of--can never feel deserted of

nature. We have our portion of her excellent gifts. I know not yet how

an Italian sky, so famed for its deep and constant azure, may affect

me, but I know that we have our gorgeous melancholy sunsets, to which

our island tempers become singularly attuned. The cathedral

splendours--the dim religious light of our vesper skies--I doubt if I

would exchange them for the unmitigated glories of a southern clime.

THE SECOND PANDORA.

Methought Prometheus, from his rock unbound,

Had with the Gods again acceptance found.

Once more he seem'd his wond'rous task to ply,

While all Olympus stood admiring by.

To high designs his heart and hands aspire,

To quicken earthly dust with heavenly fire,

Won by no fraud, but lent by liberal love,

To raise weak mortals to the realms above;

For the bright flame remembers, even on earth,

And pants to reach, the region of its birth.

A female form was now the artist's care;

Faultless in shape, and exquisitely fair.

Of more than Parian purity, the clay

Had all been leaven'd with the ethereal ray.

Deep in the heart the kindling spark began,

And far diffused through every fibre ran;

The eyes reveal'd it, and the blooming skin

Glow'd with the lovely light that shone within.

The applauding Gods confess'd the matchless sight;

The first Pandora was not half so bright;

That beauteous mischief, formed at Jove's command,

A curse to men, by Mulciber's own hand;

Whose eager haste the fatal jar to know,

Fill'd the wide world with all but hopeless woe.

But dawn of better days arose, when He,

The patient Hero, set Prometheus free,

Alcides, to whose toils the joy was given

To conquer Hell and climb the heights of Heaven.

In the fair work that now the master wrought,

The first-fruits of his liberty were brought;

The Gods receive her as a pledge of peace,

And heap their gifts and happiest auspices.

Minerva to the virgin first imparts

Her skill in woman's works and household arts;

The needle's use, the robe's embroider'd bloom,

And all the varied labours of the loom.

Calm fortitude she gave, and courage strong,

To cope with ill and triumph over wrong;

Ingenuous prudence, with prophetic sight,

And clear instinctive wisdom, ever right.

Diana brought the maid her modest mien,

Her love of fountains and the sylvan scene;

The Hours and Seasons lent each varying ray

That gilds the rolling year or changing day.

The cunning skill of Hermes nicely hung,

With subtle blandishments, her sliding tongue,

And train'd her eyes to stolen glances sweet,

And all the wiles of innocent deceit.

Phoebus attuned her ear to love the lyre,

And warm'd her fancy with poetic fire.

Nor this alone; but shared his healing art,

And robb'd his son of all the gentler part;

Taught her with soothing touch and silent tread

To hover lightly round the sick one's bed,

And promised oft to show, when medicines fail,

A woman's watchful tenderness prevail.

Next Venus and the Graces largely shed

A shower of fascinations on her head.

Each line, each look, was brighten'd and refined,

Each outward act, each movement of the mind,

Till all her charms confess the soft control,

And blend at once in one harmonious whole.

But still the Eternal Sire apart remain'd,

And Juno's bounty was not yet obtained.

The voice of Heaven's High Queen then fill'd the ear,

"A wife and mother, let the Nymph appear."

The mystic change like quick enchantment shows--

The slender lily blooms a blushing rose.

Three gentle children now, by just degrees,

Are ranged in budding beauty round her knees:

Still to her lips their looks attentive turn,

And drink instruction from its purest urn,

While o'er their eyes soft memories seem to play,

That paint a friend or father far away.

A richer charm her ripen'd form displays,

A halo round her shines with holier rays;

And if at times, a shade of pensive grace

Pass like a cloud across her earnest face,

Yet faithful tokens the glad truth impart,

That deeper happiness pervades her heart.

Jove latest spoke: "One boon remains," he said,

And bent serenely his ambrosial head;

"The last, best boon, which I alone bestow;"

Then bade the waters of Affliction flow.

The golden dream was dimm'd; a darken'd room

Scarce show'd where dire disease had shed its gloom.

A little child in death extended lay,

Still round her linger'd the departing ray.

Another pallid face appear'd, where Life

With its fell foe maintain'd a doubtful strife.

Long was the contest; changeful hopes and fears

Now sunk the Mother's soul, now dried her tears.

At last a steady line of dawning light

Show'd that her son was saved, and banish'd night.

Though sad her heart, of one fair pledge bereft,

She sees and owns the bounties Heaven hath left.

In natural drops her anguish finds relief,

And leaves the Matron beautified by grief;

While consolation, beaming from above,

Fills her with new-felt gratitude and love.

O happy He! before whose waking eyes,

So bright a vision may resplendent rise--

The New PANDORA, by the Gods designed,

Not now the bane, but blessing of Mankind!

THE REIGN OF GEORGE THE THIRD.[33]

It is scarcely theoretical to say, that every century has a character

of its own. The human mind is essentially progressive in Europe. The

accumulations of past knowledge, experience, and impulse, are

perpetually preparing changes on the face of society; and we may

fairly regard every hundred years as the period maturing those changes

into visible form. Thus, the fifteenth century was the age of

discovery in the arts, in the powers of nature, and in the great

provinces of the globe: the sixteenth exhibited the general mind under

the impressions of religion--the Reformation, the German wars for

liberty and faith, and the struggles of Protestantism in France. The

seventeenth was the brilliant period of scientific advance, of

continental literature, and of courtly pomp and power. The eighteenth

was the period of politics; every court of Europe was engaged in the

game of political rivalry; the European balance became the test, the

labour, and the triumph of statesmanship. The negotiator was then the

great instrument of public action. Diplomacy assumed a shape, and

Europe was governed by despatches. The genius of Frederick the Second

restored war to its early rank among the elements of national life;

but brilliant as his wars were, they were subservient to the leading

feature of the age. They were fought, not, like the battles of the old

conquerors, for fame, but for influence--not to leave the king without

an enemy, but to leave his ambassadors without an opponent--less to

gain triumphs, than to ensure treaties: they all began and ended in

diplomacy!

It is remarkable, that this process was exhibited in Europe alone. In

the East, comprehending two-thirds of human kind, no change was made

since the conquests of Mahomet. That vast convulsion, in which the

nervousness of frenzy had given the effeminate spirit of the Oriental

the strength of the soldier and the ambition of universal conqueror,

had no sooner wrought its purpose than it passed away, leaving the

general mind still more exhausted than before. The Saracen warrior

sank into the peasant, and the Arab was again lost in his sands; the

Turk alone survived, exhibiting splendour without wealth, and pride

without power--a decaying image of Despotism, which nothing but the

jealousy of the European saved from falling under the first assault.

Such is the repressive strength of evil government; progress, the most

salient principle of our nature, dies before it. And man, of all

beings the most eager for acquirement, and the most restless under all

monotony of time, place, and position, becomes like the dog or the

mule, and generation after generation lives and dies with no more

consciousness of the capacities of his existence, than the root which

the animal devours, or the tree under which it was born.

In England, the eighteenth century was wholly political. It was a

continual struggle through all the difficulties belonging to a free

constitution, exposed to the full discussion of an intellectual

people. Without adopting the offensive prejudice, which places the

individual ability of the Englishmen in the first rank; or without

doubting that nature has distributed nearly an equal share of personal

ability among all European nations; we may, not unjustly, place the

national mind of England in the very highest rank of general

capacity--if that is the most intellectual nation, by which the public

intellect is most constantly employed, in which all the great

questions of society are most habitually referred to the decision of

the intellect, and in which that decision is the most irresistible in

its effects, no nation of Europe can stand upon equal ground with the

English. For, in what other nation is the public intellect in such

unwearied exercise, in such continual demand, and in such unanswerable

power?

In what other nation of the world (excepting, within those few years,

France; and that most imperfectly) has public opinion ever been

appealed to? But, in England, to what else is there any appeal? Or,

does not the foreign mind bear some resemblance to the foreign

landscape--exhibiting barren though noble elevations, spots of

singular though obscure beauty among its recesses, and even in its

wildest scenes a capacity of culture?--while, in the mind of England,

like its landscape, that culture has already laid its hand upon the

soil; has crowned the hill with verdure, and clothed the vale with

fertility; has run its ploughshare along the mountain side, and led

the stream from its brow; has sought out every finer secret of the

scene, and given the last richness of cultivation to the whole.

From the beginning of the reign of Anne, all was a contest of leading

statesmen at the head of parties. Those contests exhibit great mental

power, singular system, and extraordinary knowledge of the art of

making vast bodies of men minister to the personal objects of avarice

and ambition. But they do no honour to the moral dignity of England.

All revolutions are hazardous to principle. A succession of

revolutions have always extinguished even the pretence to principle.

The French Revolution is not the only one which made a race of

_girouettes_. The political life of England, from the death of Anne to

the reign of George the Third, was a perpetual turning of the

weathercock. Whig and Tory were the names of distinction. But their

subordinates were of as many varieties of feature as the cargo of a

slave-ship; the hue might be the same, but the jargon was that of

Babel. It was perhaps fortunate for the imperial power of England,

that while she was thus humiliating the national morality, which is

the life-blood of nations; her reckless and perpetual enemy beyond the

Channel had lost all means of being her antagonist. The French sceptre

had fallen into the hands of a prince, who had come to the throne a

debauchee; and to whom the throne seemed only a scene for the larger

display of his vices. The profligacy of Louis-Quatorze had been

palliated by his passion for splendour, among a dissolute people who

loved splendour much, and hated profligacy little. But the vices of

Louis the Fifteenth were marked by a grossness which degraded them in

the eye even of popular indulgence, and prepared the nation for the

overthrow of the monarchy. In this period, religion, the great

purifier of national council, maintained but a struggling existence.

The Puritanism of the preceding century had crushed the Church of

England; and the restoration of the monarchy had given the people a

saturnalia. Religion had been confounded with hypocrisy, until the

people had equally confounded freedom with infidelity. The heads of

the church, chosen by freethinking administrations, were chosen more

for the suppleness than for the strength of their principles; and

while the people were thus taught to regard churchmen as tools, and

the ministers to use them as dependents, the cause of truth sank

between both. The Scriptures are the life of religion. It can no more

subsist in health without them, than the human frame can subsist

without food; it may have the dreams of the enthusiast, or the frenzy

of the monk; but, for all the substantial and safe purposes of the

human heart, its life is gone for ever. It has been justly remarked,

that the theological works of that day, including the sermons, might,

in general, have been written if Christianity had never existed. The

sermons were chiefly essays, of the dreariest kind on the most

commonplace topics of morals. The habit of reading these discourses

from the pulpit, a habit so fatal to all impression, speedily rendered

the preachers as indifferent as their auditory; and if we were to name

the period when religion had most fallen into decay in the public

mind, we should pronounce it the half century which preceded the reign

of George the Third.

On the subject of pulpit eloquence there are some remarks in one of

the reviews of the late Sydney Smith, expressed with all the

shrewdness, divested of the levity of that writer, who had keenly

observed the popular sources of failure.

"The great object of modern sermons is, to hazard nothing. Their

characteristic is decent debility; which alike guards their authors

from ludicrous errors, and precludes them from striking beauties. Yet

it is curious to consider, how a body of men so well educated as the

English clergy, can distinguish themselves so little in a species of

composition, to which it is their peculiar duty, as well as their

ordinary habit, to attend. To solve this difficulty, it should be

remembered that the eloquence of the bar and of the senate force

themselves into notice, power, and wealth." He then slightly guards

against the conception, that eloquence should be the sole source of

preferment; or even "a common cause of preferment." But he strongly,

and with great appearance of truth, attributes the want of public

effect to the want of those means by which that effect is secured in

every other instance.

"Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking into

reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of

eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart that mankind

can be very powerfully affected. What can be more unfortunate, than an

orator delivering stale indignation, and fervour of a week old;

turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in German

text; reading the tropes and metaphors into which he is hurried by the

ardour of his mind; and so affected, at a preconcerted line and page,

that he is unable to proceed any further?"

This criticism was perfectly true of sermons forty years ago, when it

was written. Times are changed since, and changed for the better. The

pulpit is no longer ashamed of the doctrines of Christianity, as too

harsh for the ears of a classic audience, or too familiar for the ears

of the people. Still there are no rewards in the Church, for that

great faculty, or rather that great combination of faculties, which

commands all the honours of the senate and the bar. A clerical

Demosthenes might find his triumph in the shillings of a charity

sermon, but he must never hope for a Stall.

We now revert to the curious, inquisitive, and gossiping historian of

the time. Walpole, fond of French manners, delighting in the easy

sarcasm, and almost saucy levity, of French "Memoirs," and adopting,

in all its extent, the confession, (then so fashionable on the

Continent,) that the perfection of writing was to be formed in their

lively _persiflage_, evidently modelled his "History" on the style of

the Sevignes and St Simons. But he was altogether their superior. If

he had been a chamberlain in the court of Louis XV., he might have

been as frivolously witty, and as laughingly sarcastic, as any

Frenchman who ever sat at the feet of a court mistress, or whoever

looked for fame among the sallies of a _petit souper_. But England was

an atmosphere which compelled him to a manlier course. The storms of

party were not to be stemmed by a wing of gossamer. The writer had

bold facts, strong principles, and the struggles of powerful minds to

deal with, and their study gave him a strength not his own.

Walpole was fond of having a hero. In private life, George Selwyn was

his Admirable Crichton; in public, Charles Townshend. Charles was

unquestionably a man of wit. Yet his wit rather consisted in dexterity

of language than in brilliancy of conception. He was also eloquent in

Parliament; though his charm evidently consisted more in happiness of

phrase, than in richness, variety, or vigour, of thought. On the

whole, he seems to have been made to amuse rather than to impress, and

to give a high conception of his general faculties than to produce

either conviction by his argument, or respect by the solid qualities

of his genius. Still, he must have been an extraordinary man. Walpole

describes his conduct and powers, as exhibited on one of those days of

sharp debate which preceded the tremendous discussions of the American

war. The subject was a bill for regulating the dividends of the East

India Company--the topic was extremely trite, and apparently trifling.

But any perch will answer for the flight of such bird. "It was on

that day," says Walpole, "and on that occasion, that Charles Townshend

displayed, in a latitude beyond belief, the amazing powers of his

capacity, and the no less amazing incongruities of his character."

Early in the day he had opened the business, by taking on himself the

examination of the Company's conduct, had made a calm speech on the

subject, and even went so far as to say, "that he hoped he had atoned

for the inconsiderateness of his past life, by the care which he had

taken of that business." He then went home to dinner. In his absence a

motion was made, which Conway, the secretary of state, not choosing to

support alone, it being virtually Townshend's own measure besides,

sent to hurry him back to the House. "He returned about eight in the

evening, half drunk with champagne," as Walpole says, (which, however,

was subsequently denied,) and more intoxicated with spirits. He then

instantly rose to speak, without giving himself time to learn any

thing, except that the motion had given alarm. He began by vowing that

he had not been consulted on the motion--a declaration which

astonished every body, there being twelve persons round him at the

moment, who had been in consultation with him that very morning, and

with his assistance had drawn up the motion on his own table, and who

were petrified at his unparalleled effrontery. But before he sat down,

he had poured forth, as Walpole says, "a torrent of wit, humour,

knowledge, absurdity, vanity, and fiction, heightened by all the

graces of comedy, the happiness of quotation, and the buffoonery of

farce. To the purpose of the question he said not a syllable. It was a

descant on the times, a picture of parties, of their leaders, their

hopes, and effects. It was an encomium and a satire on himself; and

when he painted the pretensions of birth, riches, connexions, favours,

titles, while he effected to praise Lord Rockingham and that faction,

he yet insinuated that nothing but parts like his own were qualified

to preside. And while he less covertly arraigned the wild incapacity

of Lord Chatham, he excited such murmurs of wonder, admiration,

applause, laughter, pity, and scorn, that nothing was so true as the

sentence with which he concluded--when, speaking of government, he

said, that it had become what he himself had often been called--the

weathercock."

Walpole exceeds even his usual measure of admiration, in speaking of

this masterly piece of extravagance. "Such was the wit, abundance, and

impropriety of this speech," says he, "that for some days men could

talk or enquire of nothing else. 'Did you hear Charles Townshend's

champagne speech,' was the universal question. The bacchanalian

enthusiasm of Pindar flowed in torrents less rapid and less eloquent,

and inspired less delight, than Townshend's imagery, which conveyed

meaning in every sentence. It was Garrick acting extempore scenes of

Congreve." He went to supper with Walpole at Conway's afterwards,

where, the flood of his gaiety not being exhausted, he kept the table

in a roar till two in the morning. A part of this entertainment,

however, must have found his auditory in a condition as unfit for

criticism as himself. Claret till "two in the morning," might easily

disqualify a convivial circle from the exercise of too delicate a

perception. And a part of Townshend's facetiousness on that occasion

consisted in mimicking his own wife, and a woman of rank with whom he

fancied himself in love. He at last gave up from mere bodily

lassitude. Walpole happily enough illustrates those talents and their

abuse by an allusion to those eastern tales, in which a benevolent

genius endows a being with supernatural excellence on some points,

while a malignant genius counteracts the gift by some qualification

which perpetually baffles and perverts it. The story, however, of

Charles Townshend's tipsiness is thus contradicted by a graver

authority, Sir George Colebrook, in his Memoirs.

"Mr Townshend loved good living, but had not a strong stomach. He

committed therefore frequent excesses, considering his constitution;

which would not have been intemperance in another. He was supposed,

for instance, to have made a speech in the heat of wine, when that was

really not the case. It was a speech in which he treated with great

levity, but with wonderful art, the characters of the Duke of Grafton

and Lord Shelburne, whom, though his colleagues in office, he

entertained a sovereign contempt for, and heartily wished to get rid

of. He had a black riband over one of his eyes that day, having

tumbled out of bed, probably in a fit of epilepsy; and this added to

the impression made on his auditors that he was tipsy. Whereas, it was

a speech he had meditated a great while upon, and it was only by

accident that it found utterance that day. I write with certainty,

because Sir George Yonge and I were the only persons who dined with

him, and we had but one bottle of champagne after dinner; General

Conway having repeatedly sent messengers to press his return to the

House."

This brings the miracle down to the human standard, yet that standard

was high, and the man who could excite this admiration, in a House

which contained so great a number of eminent speakers, and which could

charm the caustic spirit of Walpole into the acknowledgment that his

speech "was the most singular pleasure of the kind he had ever

tasted," must have been an extraordinary performance, even if his

instrument was not of the highest tone of oratory. A note from the

Duke of Grafton's manuscript memoirs also contradicts, on Townshend's

own authority, his opinion of the "wild incapacity of Lord Chatham."

The note says:--

"On the night preceding Lord Chatham's first journey to Bath, Mr

Charles Townshend was for the first time summoned to the Cabinet.

The business was on a general view and statement of the actual

situation and interests of the various powers in Europe. Lord

Chatham had taken the lead in this consideration in so masterly a

manner, as to raise the admiration and desire of us all to

co-operate with him in forwarding his views. Mr Townshend was

particularly astonished, and owned to me, as I was carrying him in

my carriage home, that Lord Chatham had just shown to us what

inferior animals we were, and that as much as he had seen of him

before, he did not conceive till that night his superiority to be

so transcendant."

Walpole writes with habitual bitterness of the great Lord Chatham. The

recollection of his early opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, seems to

have made him an unfaithful historian, wherever this extraordinary

man's name comes within his page; but at the period of those

discussions, it seems not improbable that the vigour of Chatham's

understanding had in some degree given way to the tortures of his

disease. He had suffered from gout at an early period of life; and as

this is a disease remarkably affected by the mind, the perpetual

disturbances of a public life seem to have given it a mastery over the

whole frame of the great minister. Walpole talks in unjustifiable

language of his "haughty sterility of talents." But there seems to be

more truth in his account of the caprices of this powerful

understanding in his retirement. Walpole calls it the "reality of Lord

Chatham's madness." Still, we cannot see much in those instances,

beyond the temper naturally resulting from an agonizing disease. When

the Pynsent estate fell to him, he removed to it, and sold his house

and grounds at Hayes--"a place on which he had wasted prodigious sums,

and which yet retained small traces of expense, great part having been

consumed in purchasing contiguous tenements, to free himself from all

neighbourhood. Much had gone in doing and undoing, and not a little in

planting by torchlight, as his peremptory and impatient habits could

brook no delay. Nor were those the sole circumstances which marked his

caprice. His children he could not bear under the same roof, nor

communications from room to room, nor whatever he thought promoted

noise. A winding passage between his house and children was built with

the same view. When, at the beginning of his second administration, he

fixed at North End by Hampstead, he took four or five houses

successively, as fast as Mr Dingley his landlord went into them,

still, as he said, to ward off the houses of the neighbourhood."

Walpole relates another anecdote equally inconclusive. At Pynsent, a

bleak hill bounded his view. He ordered his gardener to have it

planted with evergreens. The man asked "with what sorts." He replied,

"With cedars and cypresses." "Bless me, my lord," replied the

gardener, "all the nurseries in this county would not furnish a

hundredth part." "No matter, send for them from London: and they were

brought by land carriage." Certainly, there was not much in this

beyond the natural desire of every improver to shut out a disagreeable

object, by putting an agreeable one in its place. His general object

was the natural one of preventing all noise--a point of importance

with every sufferer under a wakeful and miserable disease. His

appetite was delicate and fanciful, and a succession of chickens were

kept boiling and roasting at every hour, to be ready whenever he

should call. He at length grew weary of his residence and, after

selling Hayes, took a longing to return there. After considerable

negotiation with Mr Thomas Walpole the purchaser, he obtained it

again, and we hear no more of his madness.

The session was one of continual intrigues, constant exhibitions of

subtlety amongst the leaders of the party, which at this distance of

time are only ridiculous, and intricate discussions, which are now

among the lumber of debate. Townshend, if he gained nothing else,

gained the freedom of the city for his conduct on the East India and

Dividend bills, for which, as Walpole says, "he deserved nothing but

censure." A contemptuous epigram appeared on the occasion by "somebody

a little more sagacious"--that "somebody" probably being Walpole

himself:

"The joke of Townshend's box is little known,

Great judgment in the thing the cits have shown;

The compliment was an expedient clever,

To rid them of the like expense for ever.

Of so burlesque a choice the example sure

For city boxes must all longing cure,

The honor'd Ostracism at Athens fell,

Soon as Hyperbolus had got the shell."

It is scarcely possible to think that an epigram of this heavy order

could have been praised by Walpole, if his criticism had not been

tempered by the tenderness of paternity.

We then have a character of a man embalmed in the contempt poured upon

him by Junius--the Duke of Grafton. Though less bitter, it is equally

scornful. "Hitherto," says Walpole, "he had passed for a man of much

obstinacy and firmness, of strict honour, devoid of ambition, and,

though reserved, more diffident than designing. He retained so much of

this character, as to justify those who had mistaken the rest. If he

precipitated himself into the most sudden and inextricable

contradictions, at least he pursued the object of the moment with

inflexible ardour. If he abandoned himself to total negligence of

business, in pursuit of his sports and pleasures, the love of power

never quitted him; and, when his will was disputed, no man was more

imperiously arbitrary. If his designs were not deeply laid, at least

they were conducted in profound silence. He rarely pardoned those who

did not guess his inclination. It was necessary to guess, so rare was

any instance of his unbosoming himself to either friends or

confidants. Why his honour had been so highly rated I can less

account, except that he had advertised it, and that obstinate young

men are apt to have high notions, before they have practised the

world, and essayed their own virtue."

At length, after a vast variety of intrigues, which threw the public

life of those days into the most contemptible point of view, the King

being made virtually a cipher, while the families of the Hertfords,

Buckinghams, and Rockinghams trafficked the high offices of state as

children would barter toys; an administration was tardily formed.

Walpole, who seemed to take a sort of _dilettante_ pleasure in

constructing those intrigues, and making himself wretched at their

failure, while nobody suffered him to take advantage of their success;

now gave himself a holiday, and went to relax in Paris for six

weeks--his relaxation consisting of gossip amongst the literary ladies

of the capital. During his absence an event happened which, though it

did not break up the ministry, yet must have had considerable effect

in its influence on the House of Commons. This was the death of the

celebrated Charles Townshend, on the 4th of September 1767, in the

forty-second year of his age. The cause of his death was a neglected

fever; if even this did not arise from his carelessness of health, and

those habits which, if not amounting to intemperance, were certainly

trespasses on his constitution. Walpole speaks of him with continual

admiration of his genius, and continual contempt of his principles. He

also thinks, that he had arrived at his highest fame, or, in his

peculiar phrase, "that his genius could have received no accession of

brightness, while his faults only promised multiplication." Walpole,

with no pretence to rival, probably envied this singular personage;

for, whenever he begins by panegyric, he uniformly ends with a sting.

One of the Notes gives an extract on Sir George Colebrook's Memoirs,

which perhaps places his faculties in a more favourable point of view

than the high-coloured eulogium of Burke, or the polished insinuations

of Walpole. Sir George tells us, that Townshend's object was to be

prime minister, and that he would doubtless have attained that object

had he lived to see the Duke of Grafton's resignation. Lord North

succeeded him as chancellor of the exchequer, and Townshend would

evidently have preceded _him_ as prime minister. "As a private man,

his friends were used to say, that they should not see his like again.

Though they were often the butts of his wit, they always returned to

his company with fresh delight, which they would not have done had

there been either malice or rancour in what he said. He loved society,

and in his choice of friends preferred those over whom he had a

decided superiority of talent. He was satisfied when he had put the

table in a roar, and he did not like to see it done by another. When

Garrick and Foote were present, he took the lead, and hardly allowed

them an opportunity of showing their talents for mimicry, because he

could excel them in their own art. He shone particularly in taking off

the principal members of the House of Commons. Among the few whom he

feared was Mr Selwyn, and at a dinner at Lord Gower's they had a trial

of skill, in which Mr Selwyn prevailed. When the company broke up, Mr

Townshend, to show that he had no animosity, carried him in his

carriage to White's; and, as they parted, Selwyn could not help

saying--'Remember, this is the first set-down you have given me

to-day.'"

As Townshend lived at a considerable expense, and had little paternal

fortune, he speculated occasionally in both the French and English

funds. One of the incidents related by Sir George, and without a

syllable of censure too, throws on him an imputation of trickery

which, in our later day, would utterly destroy any public man. "When

he was chancellor of the exchequer, he came in his nightgown to a

dinner given by the Duke of Grafton to several of the principal men of

the city to settle the loan. After dinner, when the terms were

settled, and every body present wished to introduce some friend on the

list of subscribers, he pretended to cast up the sums already

admitted, said the loan was full, huddled up his papers, got into a

chair, and returned home, reserving to himself by this manoeuvre a

large share of the loan." An act of this kind exhibits the honesty of

the last age in a very equivocal point of view. If proud of nothing

else, we may be proud of the public sense of responsibility; in our

day, it may be presumed that such an act would be impossible, for it

would inevitably involve the ruin of the perpetrator, followed by the

ruin of any ministry which would dare to defend him.

At this period died a brother of the king, Edward Duke of York, a man

devoted to pleasure, headstrong in his temper, and ignorant in his

conceptions. "Immoderate travelling, followed by immoderate balls and

entertainments," had long kept his blood in a peculiar state of

accessibility to disease. He died of a putrid fever. Walpole makes a

panegyric on the Duke of Gloucester, his brother; of which a part may

be supposed due to the Duke's marriage with Lady Waldegrave, a

marriage which provoked the indignation of the King, and which once

threatened political evils of a formidable nature. Henry, the Duke of

Cumberland, was also an unfortunate specimen of the blood royal. He is

described as having the babbling loquacity of the Duke of York,

without his talents; as at once arrogant and low; presuming on his

rank as a prince, and degrading himself by an association with low

company. Still, we are to remember Walpole's propensity to sarcasm,

the enjoyment which he seems to have felt in shooting his brilliant

missiles at all ranks superior to his own; and his especial hostility

to George the Third, one of the honestest monarchs that ever sat upon

a throne.

In those days the composition of ministries depended altogether upon

the high families.--The peerage settled every thing amongst

themselves. A few of their dependents were occasionally taken into

office; but all the great places were distributed among a little

clique, who thus constituted themselves the real masters of the

empire. Walpole's work has its value, in letting us into the secrets

of a conclave, which at once shows us the singular emptiness of its

constituent parts, and the equally singular authority with which they

seem to have disposed of both the king and the people. We give a scene

from the _Historian_, which would make an admirable fragment of the

_Rehearsal_, and which wanted only the genius of Sheridan to be an

admirable pendant to Mr Puff's play in the _Critic_. "On the 20th a

meeting was held at the Duke of Newcastle's, of Lord Rockingham, the

Duke of Richmond, and of Dowdeswell, with Newcastle himself on one

part, and of the Duke of Bedford, Lord Weymouth, and Rigby on the

other. The Duke of Bedford had powers from Grenville to act for him;

but did not seem to like Lord Buckingham's taking on himself to name

to places. On the latter's asking what friends they wished to prefer,

Rigby said, with his cavalier bluntness--Take the _Court Calendar_ and

give them one, two, three thousand pounds a-year! Bedford

observed--They had said nothing on measures. Mr Grenville would insist

on the sovereignty of this country over America being asserted. Lord

Rockingham replied--He would never allow it to be a question whether

he had given up this country--he never had. The Duke insisted on a

declaration. The Duke of Richmond said--We may as well demand one from

you, that you will never disturb that country again. Neither would

yield. However, though they could not agree on measures; as the

distribution of place was more the object of their thoughts and of

their meeting, they reverted to that topic. Lord Rockingham named Mr

Conway. Bedford started; said he had no notion of Conway; had thought

he was to return to the military line. The Duke of Richmond said it

was true, Mr Conway did not desire a civil place; did not know whether

he would be persuaded to accept one; but they were so bound to him for

his resignation, and thought him so able, they must insist. The Duke

of Bedford said--Conway was an officer _sans tache_, but not a

minister _sans tache_. Rigby said--Not one of the present cabinet

should be saved. Dowdeswell asked--'What! not one?' 'No.' 'What! not

Charles Townshend.' 'Oh!' said Rigby, 'that is different. Besides, he

has been in opposition.' 'So has Conway,' said Dowdeswell. 'He has

voted twice against the court, Townshend but once.' 'But,' said Rigby,

'Conway is Bute's man.' 'Pray,' said Dowdeswell, 'is not Charles

Townshend Bute's?' 'Ah! but Conway is governed by his brother

Hertford, who is Bute's.' 'But Lady Ailesbury is a Scotchwoman.' 'So

is Lady Dalkeith.' Those ladies had been widows and were now married,

(the former to Conway, the latter to Townshend.) From this dialogue

the assembly fell to wrangling, and broke up quarrelling. So high did

the heats go, that the Conways ran about the town publishing the issue

of the conference, and taxing the Bedfords with treachery."

Notwithstanding this collision, at once so significant, and so

trifling--at once a burlesque on the gravity of public affairs, and a

satire on the selfishness of public men--on the same evening, the Duke

of Bedford sent to desire another interview, to which Lord Rockingham

yielded, but the Duke of Bedford refused to be present. So much,

however, were the minds on both sides ulcerated by former and recent

disputes, and so incompatible were their views, that the second

meeting broke up in a final quarrel, and Lord Rockingham released the

other party from all their engagements. The Duke of Bedford desired

they might still continue friends, or at least to agree to oppose

together. Lord Rockingham said no, "they were broken for ever."

It was at this meeting that the Duke of Newcastle appeared for the

last time in a political light. Age and feebleness had at length worn

out that busy passion for intrigue, which power had not been able to

satiate, nor disgrace correct. He languished above a year longer, but

was heard of no more on the scene of affairs. (He died in November 1768.)

A remarkable circumstance in all those arrangements is, that we hear

nothing of either the king or the people. The king is of course

applied to to sign and seal, but simply as a head clerk. The people

are occasionally mentioned at the end of every seven years; but in the

interim all was settled in the parlours of the peerage! The scene

which we have just given was absolutely puerile, if it were not

scandalous; and, without laying ourselves open to the charge of

superstition on such subjects, we might almost regard the preservation

of the empire as directly miraculous, while power was in the hands of

such men as the Butes and Newcastles, the Bedfords and Rockinghams, of

the last century. It is not even difficult to trace to this

intolerable system, alike the foreign calamities and the internal

convulsions during this period. Whether America could, by any

possibility of arrangement, have continued a British colony up to the

present time, may be rationally doubted. A vast country, rapidly

increasing in wealth and population, would have been an incumbrance,

rather than an addition, to the power of England. If the patronage of

her offices continued in the hands of ministers, it must have supplied

them with the means of buying up every man who was to be bought in

England. It would have been the largest fund of corruption ever known

in the world. Or, if the connexion continued, with the population of

America doubling in every five-and-twenty years, the question must in

time have arisen, whether England or America ought to be the true seat

of government. The probable consequence, however, would have been

separation; and as this could scarcely be effected by amicable means,

the result might have been a war of a much more extensive, wasteful,

and formidable nature, than that which divided the two countries

sixty-five years ago.

But all the blunders of the American war, nay the war itself, may be

still almost directly traceable to the arrogance of the oligarchy. Too

much accustomed to regard government as a natural appendage to their

birth, they utterly forgot the true element of national power--the

force of public opinion. Inflated with a sense of their personal

superiority, they looked with easy indifference or studied contempt on

every thing that was said or done by men whose genealogy was not

registered in the red book. Of America--a nation of Englishmen--and of

its proceedings, they talked, as a Russian lord might talk of his

serfs. Some of them thought, that a Stamp act would frighten the

sturdy free-holders of the Western World into submission! others

talked of reducing them to obedience by laying a tax on their tea!

others prescribed a regimen of writs and constables! evidently

regarding the American farmers as they regarded the poachers and

paupers on their own demesnes. All this arose from stupendous

ignorance; but it was ignorance engendered by pride, by exclusiveness

of rank, and by the arrogance of _caste_. So excessive was this

exclusiveness, that Burke, though the most extraordinary man of his

time, and one of the most memorable of any time, could never obtain a

seat in the cabinet; where such triflers as Newcastle, such figures of

patrician pedantry as Buckingham, such shallow intriguers as the

Bedfords, and such notorious characters as the Sandwiches, played with

power, like children with the cups and balls of their nursery. Lord

North, with all his wit, his industry, and his eloquence, owed his

admission into the cabinet, to his being the son of the Earl of

Guilford. Charles Fox, though marked by nature, from his first

entrance into public life, for the highest eminence of the senate,

would never have been received into the government _class_, but for

his casual connexion with the House of Richmond. Thus, they knew

nothing of the real powers of that infinite multitude, which, however

below the peerage, forms the country. They thought that a few frowns

from Downing Street could extinguish the resistance of millions, three

thousand miles off, with muskets in their hands, inflamed by a sense

of wrong, whether fancied or true, and insensible to the gatherings of

a brow however coroneted and antique.

This haughty exclusiveness equally accounts for the contests with

Wilkes. They felt themselves affronted, much more than resisted; they

were much more stung by the defiance of a private individual to

themselves, than they were urged to the collision by any conceivable

sense of hazard to the Monarchy. No man, out of bedlam, could

conceive, that Wilkes had either the power or the intention to subvert

the state. But Mr Wilkes, an obscure man, whose name was not known to

the calendar of the government fabricators, had actually dared to call

their privilege of power into question; had defied them in the courts

of law; had rebuked them in the senate; had shaken their influence in

the elections; and had, in fact, compelled them to know, what they

were so reluctant to learn, that they were but human beings after all!

The acquisition of this knowledge cost them half a dozen years of

convulsions, the most ruinous to themselves, and the most hazardous to

the constitution. Wilkes' profligacy alone, perhaps, saved the

constitution from a shock, which might have changed the whole system

of the empire. If he had not been sunk by his personal character, at

the first moment when the populace grew cool, he might have availed

himself of the temper of the times to commit mischiefs the most

irreparable. If his personal character had been as free from public

offence as his spirit was daring, he might have led the people much

further than the government ever had the foresight to contemplate. The

conduct of the successive cabinets had covered the King with

unpopularity, not the less fierce, that it was wholly undeserved.

Junius, the ablest political writer that England has ever seen, or

probably ever will see, in the art of assailing a ministry, had

pilloried every leading man of his time except Chatham, in the

imperishable virulence of his page. The popular mind was furious with

indignation at the conduct of all cabinets; in despair of all

improvement in the system; irritated by the rash severity which

alternated with the equally rash pusillanimity of ministers; and

beginning to regard government less as a protection, than as an

encroachment on the natural privileges of a nation of freemen.

They soon had a growing temptation before them in the successful

revolt of America.

We do not now enter into that question; it is too long past. But we

shall never allude to it without paying that homage to truth, which

pronounces, that the American revolt was a rebellion, wholly

unjustifiable by the provocation; utterly rejecting all explanation,

or atonement for casual injuries; and made in the spirit of a

determination to throw off the allegiance to the mother country. But,

if Wilkes could have sustained his opposition but a few years longer,

and with any character but one so shattered as his own, he might have

carried it on through life, and even bequeathed it as a legacy to his

party; until the French Revolution had joined flame to flame across

the Channel, and England had rivalled even the frenzy of France in the

rapidity and ruin of her Reform.

Fortunately, the empire was rescued from this most fatal of all

catastrophes. A great English minister appeared, on whom were to

devolve the defence of England and the restoration of Europe. The

sagacity of Pitt saw where the evil lay; his intrepidity instantly

struck at its source, and his unrivalled ability completed the saving

operation. He broke down the cabinet monopoly. No man less humiliated

himself to the populace, but no man better understood the people. No

man paid more practical respect to the peerage, but no man more

thoroughly extinguished their exclusive possession of power. He formed

his cabinet from men of all ranks, in the peerage and out of the

peerage. The great peers chiefly went over to the opposition. He

resisted them there, with as much daring, and with as successful a

result, as he had expelled them from the stronghold of government. He

made new peers. He left his haughty antagonists to graze on the barren

field of opposition for successive years; and finally saw almost the

whole herd come over for shelter to the ministerial fold.

At this period a remarkable man was brought into public life--the

celebrated Dunning, appointed solicitor-general. Walpole calls this

"an extraordinary promotion," as Dunning was connected with Lord

Shelburne. It was like every thing else, obviously an intrigue; and

Dunning would have lost the appointment, but for his remarkable

reputation in the courts; Wedderburne being the man of the Bedfords.

Walpole's opinion of Dunning in the House, shows, how much even the

highest abilities may be influenced by circumstances. He says, "that

Dunning immediately and utterly lost character as a speaker, although

he had acquired the very highest distinctions as a pleader;" so

different, says he, is the oratory of the bar and of parliament.

Mansfield and Camden retained an equal rank in both. Wedderburne was

most successful in the House. Norton had at first disappointed the

expectations that were conceived of him when he came into parliament;

yet his strong sense, that glowed through all the coarseness of his

language and brutality of his manner, recovered his weight, and he was

much distinguished. While Sir Dudley Ryder, attorney-general in the

preceding reign, the soundest lawyer, and Charles Yorke, one of the

most distinguished pleaders, soon talked themselves out of all

consideration in parliament; the former by laying too great a stress

on every part of his diffusive knowledge, and the latter by the

sterility of his intelligence.

An intelligent Note, however, vindicates the reputation of Dunning. It

is observed, that Dunning's having been counsel for Wilkes, and the

intimate of Lord Shelburne, it could not be expected that he should

take a prominent part in any of the debates which were so largely

occupied with Wilkes' misdemeanours. Lord North, too, was hostile to

Dunning. Under such conditions it was impossible that any man should

exhibit his powers to advantage; but at a later period, when he had

got rid of those trammels, his singular abilities vindicated

themselves. He became one of the leaders of the opposition, even when

that honour was to be shared with Burke. We have heard, that such was

the pungency of Dunning's expressions, and the happy dexterity of his

conceptions, that when he spoke, (his voice being feeble, and unable

to make itself heard at any great distance,) the members used to

throng around the bench on which he spoke. Wraxall panegyrizes him,

and yet with a tautology of terms, which must have been the very

reverse of Dunning's style. Thus, he tells us that when Dunning spoke,

"every murmur was hushed, and every ear attentive," two sentences

which amount to the same thing. Hannah More is also introduced as one

of the panegyrists; for poor Hannah seems to have been one of the most

bustling persons possible; to have run every where, and to have given

_her_ opinion of every body, however much above her comprehension. She

was one of the spectators on the Duchess of Kingston's trial, (a most

extraordinary scene for the choice of such a purist;) but Hannah was

not at that time quite so sublime as she became afterwards. Hannah

describes Dunning's manner as "insufferably bad, coughing and spitting

at every word; but his sense and expression pointed to the last

degree." But the character which the annotator gives as a model of

panegyric, pleases us least of all. It is by Sir William Jones, and

consists of one long antithesis. It is a studied toil of language,

expressing ideas, a commonplace succession, substituting words for

thoughts, and at once leaving the ear palled, and the understanding

dissatisfied. What, for instance, could be made of such a passage as

this? Sir William is speaking of Dunning's wit. "This," says he,

"relieved the weary, calmed the resentful, and animated the drowsy.

This drew smiles even from such as were _the object of it, and

scattered flowers over a desert_, and, like _sunbeams sparkling on a

lake_, gave spirit and vivacity to the dullest and least interesting

cause." And this mangling of metaphor is to teach us the qualities of

a profound and practical mind. What follows, is the perfection of

see-saw. "He was endued with an intellect sedate yet penetrating,

clear yet profound, subtle yet strong. His knowledge, too, was equal

to his imagination, and his memory to his knowledge." He might have

equally added, that the capacity of his boots was equal to the size of

his legs, and the length of his purse to the extent of his generosity.

This reminds us of one of Sydney Smith's burlesques on the balancing

of epithets by that most pedantic of pedants, the late Dr

Parr--"profundity without obscurity, perspicuity without prolixity,

ornament without glare, terseness without barrenness, penetration

without subtlety, comprehensiveness without digression, and a great

number of other things without a great number of other things."

Little tricks, or rather large ones, now and then diversify the

narrative. On the same day that Conway resigned the seals, Lord

Weymouth was declared secretary of state. At the same time, Lord

Hilsborough kissed hands for the American department, but nominally

retaining the post-office, the salary of which he paid to Lord

Sandwich, _till the elections should be over_; there being so strict a

disqualifying clause in the bill for prohibiting the postmasters for

interfering in elections, which Sandwich _was determined to do_ to the

utmost, that he did not dare to accept the office in his own name,

_till he had incurred the guilt_. Another trick of a very

dishonourable nature, though ultimately defeated, may supply a moral

for our share-trafficking days in high quarters. Lord Bottetort, one

of the bedchamber, and a kind of second-hand favourite, had engaged in

an adventure with a company of copper-workers at Warmley. They broke,

and his lordship, in order to cover his estate from the creditors,

begged a privy seal to incorporate the company, by which means private

estates would not be answerable. The king ignorantly granted the

request; but Lord Chatham, aware of the deception, refused to affix

the seal to the patent, pleading that he was not able. Lord Bottetort,

outrageous at the disappointment, threatened to petition the lords to

remove Lord Chatham, on the ground of inability. The annotator justly

observes, that the proposal was absolutely monstrous, being nothing

but a gross fraud on his lordship's creditors. It, however, does not

seem to have attracted the attention of the attorney-general, or the

home-office; but, for some cause or other, the patent did not pass,

the result being, that Lord Bottetort, unable to retrieve his losses,

obtained the government of Virginia in the following summer, where he

subsequently died.

A curious instance of parliamentary corruption next attracted the

notice of the public. It came out, that the city of Oxford had offered

their representation to two gentlemen, if they would pay L7500 towards

the debts of the corporation. They refused the bargain, and Oxford

sold itself to the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Abingdon. The matter

was brought before the House, and the mayor of Oxford and ten of the

corporation appeared at the bar, confessing their crime, and asking

pardon. It ended with committing them to prison for five days. A note

describes the whole affair as being treated with great ridicule,

(there being probably not a few who looked upon things of this nature

as a matter of course;) and the story being, that the aldermen

completed their bargain with the Duke of Marlborough, during their

imprisonment in Newgate.

On the 11th of March 1768, the parliament was dissolved. Walpole says,

"that its only characteristic was servility to the government; while

our ancestors, we presume, from the shamelessness of its servility,

might have called it the Impudent Parliament."

After wearying himself in the dusty field of politics, Walpole

retired, like Homer's gods from Troy, to rest in the more flowery

region of literature. His habits led him to the enjoyment of bitter

political poetry, which, in fact, is not poetry at all; while they

evidently disqualified him from feeling the power and beauty of the

imaginative, the only poetry that deserves the name. Thus, he

describes Goldsmith as the "correct author of _The Traveller_," one of

the most beautiful poems in the language; while he panegyrizes, with a

whole catalogue of plaudits, Anstey's _Bath Guide_--a very scandalous,

though undoubtedly a lively and ingenious, caricature of the habits of

the time. An ultra-heavy poem by Bentley, the son of the critic,

enjoys a similar panegyric. We give, as an evidence of its dulness, a

fragment of its praise of Lord Bute:--

"Oh, if we seize with skill the coming hour,

And reinvest us with the robe of power;

Rule while we live, let future days transmute

To every merit all we've charged on Bute.

Let late posterity receive his name,

And swell its sails with every breath of fame--

Downwards as far as Time shall roll his tide,

With ev'ry pendant flying, let it glide."

The rest is equally intolerable.

But Bentley was lucky in his patrons, if not in his poetry; as, in

addition to a Commissionership of Lotteries, he received a pension for

the lives of himself and his wife of L500 a-year! Though thus

undeservedly successful in attracting the notice of the government,

his more honest efforts failed with the public. He wrote two plays,

both of which failed. Walpole next describes Robertson the historian

in these high-coloured terms, "as sagacious and penetrating as

Tacitus, with a perspicuity of Livy:" qualities which every one else

knows to be directly the reverse of those which characterize

Robertson. That very impudent woman, Catharine Macaulay, seems also to

have been one of the objects of his literary admiration. He describes

her, as being as partial in the cause of liberty as bigots to the

church and royalists to tyranny, and as exerting manly strength with

the gravity of a philosopher.

But Walpole is aways amusing when he gives anecdotes of passing

things. The famous Brentford election finds in him its most graphic

historian. The most singular carelessness was exhibited by the

government on this most perilous occasion--a carelessness obviously

arising from that contempt which the higher ranks of the nobility in

those days were weak enough to feel for the opinion of those below

them. On the very verge of an election, within five miles of London,

and which must bring to a point all the exasperation of years; Camden,

the chancellor, went down to Bath, and the Duke of Grafton, the prime

minister, who was a great horse-racer, drove off to Newmarket.

Mansfield, whom Walpole seems to have hated, and whom he represents as

at "once resentful, timorous, and subtle," the three worst qualities

of the heart, the nerves, and the understanding, pretended that it was

the office of the chancellor to bring the outlaw (Wilkes) to justice,

and did nothing. The consequence was, that the multitude were left

masters of the field.

On the morning of the election; while the irresolution of the court,

and the negligence of the prime minister, caused a neglect of all

precautions; the populace took possession of all the turnpikes and

avenues leading to the hustings by break of day, and would suffer no

man to pass who did not wear in his hat a blue cockade, with "Wilkes

and Number 45," on a written paper. Riots took place in the streets,

and the carriage of Sir William Proctor, the opposing candidate, was

demolished. The first day's poll for Wilkes was 1200, for Proctor 700,

for Cooke 300. It must be remembered, that in these times the

elections were capable of being prolonged from week to week, and that

the first day was regarded as scarcely more than a formality. At night

the West-end was in an uproar. It was not safe to pass through

Piccadilly. Every house was compelled to illuminate; the windows of

all which did not exhibit lights were broken; the coach-glasses of

such as did not huzza for "Wilkes and liberty" were broken; and the

panels of the carriages were scratched with 45! Lord Weymouth, the

secretary of state, wrote to Justice Fielding for constables. Fielding

answered, that they were all gone to Brentford. On this, the guards

were drawn out. The mob then attacked Lord Bute's house and Lord

Egmont's, but without being able to force an entrance. They compelled

the Duke of Northumberland to give them liquor to drink Wilkes's

health. Ladies of rank were taken out of their sedan-chairs, and

ordered to join the popular cry. The lord-mayor was an anti-Wilkite--the

mob attacked the Mansion-house, and broke the windows. He ordered out

the trained bands; they had no effect. Six thousand weavers had risen

under the Wilkite banner, and defied all resistance. Even some of the

regimental drummers beat their drums for Wilkes! His force at the

election was evidently to be resisted no longer. The ministerial

candidate was beaten, Wilkes threw in his remaining votes for Cooke,

and they came in together. The election was thus over on the second

day, but the mob paraded the metropolis at night, insisting on a

general illumination. The handsome Duchess of Hamilton, one of the

Gunnings, who had now become quite a Butite, was determined not to

illuminate. The result was, that the mob grew outrageous, broke down

the outward gates with iron-crows, tore up the pavement of the street,

and battered the doors and shutters for three hours; fortunately

without being able to get in. The Count de Sollein, the Austrian

ambassador, the most stately and ceremonious of men, was taken out of

his coach by the mob, who chalked 45 on the sole of his shoe! He

complained in form of the insult. Walpole says, fairly enough, "it was

as difficult for the ministers to help laughing as to give him

redress."

Walpole frequently alludes to the two Gunnings as the two handsomest

sisters of their time. They were Irish-women, fresh-coloured, lively,

and well formed, but obviously more indebted to nature than to

education. Lady Coventry died young, and had the misfortune, even in

her grave, of being made the subject of an epitaph by Mason, one of

the most listless and languid poems of an unpoetic time. The Duchess

of Hamilton survived to a considerable age, and was loaded with

matrimonial honours. She first married the Duke of Hamilton. On his

death, she married the Marquis of Lorn, eldest son of the Duke of

Argyll, whom he succeeded in the title--thus becoming mother of the

heirs of the two great rival houses of Hamilton and Argyll. While in

her widowhood, she had been proposed for by the Duke of Bridgewater.

Lady Coventry seems to have realized Pope's verses of a dying belle--

"And, Betty, give this cheek a little red,

One would not, sure, look ugly when one's dead."

"Till within a few days of her death, she lay on a couch with a

looking-glass in her hand. When she found her beauty, which she

idolized, was quite gone, she took to her bed, and would be seen by

nobody, not even by her nurse, suffering only the light of a lamp in

her room."