“----He heard amazed, on every side
His church insulted, and her priests belied,
The laws reviled, the ruling powers abused,
The land derided, and her foes excused,
He heard and ponder’d. What to men so vile
Should be his language? For his threatening style
They were too many. If his speech were meek,
They would despise such vain attempts to speak:
----These were reformers of each different sort.”--CRABBE.
[Sidenote: OUR TOWN POLITICS.]
In former times people knocked one another on the head for the sake
of their masters--fellows whom they had made too great to care at
all about them; in the present age they have become so much wiser,
that they quarrel on their own behalf alone. An entire people might
be regarded in the past as an immense engine, with perhaps a single
mind for its moving power; we may now compare every petty district
to a magazine, stored like the warehouse of a watchmaker with little
detached machines, each one furnished with a moving power of its own.
But though politics and party spirit change almost every ten years,
human nature is always the same;--aspects vary, and circumstances
alter, but the active principle, through all its windings and amid all
its disguises, is ever consistent with itself.
The people of Cromarty who lived ninety years ago were quite as
unskilled in politics as their neighbours, and thought as little
for themselves. They were but the wheels and pinions of an immense
engine; and regarding their governors as men sent into the world to
rule--themselves, as men born to obey--they troubled their heads no
more about the matter. Even the two Rebellions had failed of converting
them into politicians; for, viewing these in only their connexion
with religion, they exulted in the successes of Hanover as those of
Protestantism, and identified the cause of the Stuarts with Popery and
persecution. Their Whiggism was a Whiggism of the future world only;
and the liberty of preparing themselves for heaven was the only liberty
they deemed worth fighting for.
Principles such as these, and the dominancy of the Protestant
interest, rendered the people of Cromarty, for two whole reigns, as
quiet subjects as any in the kingdom. In latter times, too, there
was a circumstance which thoroughly attached them to the Government,
by shutting out from among them the Radicalism of modern times for
well-nigh a whole age. The Scotch, early in the reign of George
III., had risen high at court;--Earl Bute had become Premier, and
Mansfield Lord Chief-Justice; and the English, who would as lief have
witnessed the return of William and his Normans, grumbled exceedingly.
The Premier managed his business like most other premiers;--the
Chief-Justice conducted _his_ rather better than most other
chief-justices; but both gentlemen, says Smollett, “had the misfortune
of being born natives of North Britain; and this circumstance was,
in the opinion of the people, more than sufficient to counterbalance
all the good qualities which human nature could possess.” Junius,
and Wilkes, and Churchhill, and hundreds more, who, with as much
ill-nature, but less wit, were forgotten as soon as the public ceased
to be satisfied with ill-nature alone, opened in full cry against the
King, the Ministry, and the Scotch. The hollo reached Cromarty, and
the town’s-folk were told, with all the rest of their countrymen, that
they were proud, and poor, and dirty, and not very honest, and that
they had sold their King; all this, too, as if they hadn’t known the
whole of it before. Now it so happened, naturally enough I suppose,
that they could bear to be dirty, but not to be told of it, and poor,
but not to be twitted with their poverty, and that they could be quite
as angry as either Junius or Churchhill, though they could not write
letters like the one, nor make verses like the other. And angry they
were--desperately angry at Whiggism and the English, and devotedly
attached to the King, poor man, who was suffering so much for his
attachment to the Scotch. Nothing could come amiss to them from so
thorough a friend of their country; and when, on any occasion, they
could not wholly defend his measures, they contented themselves with
calling him an honest man.
On came the ill-fated, ill-advised American War, and found the
people of Cromarty as loyal as ever. Washington, they said, was a
rascal; Franklin, an ill-bred mechanic; and the people of the United
States, rebels to a man. There was a ballad, the composition of some
provincial poet of this period, which narrated, in very rude verse, the
tragical death of two brothers, natives of Ross-shire, who were killed
unwittingly by their father, a soldier of the Republic; and this simple
ballad did more for the cause of the King among the people of Cromarty,
than all the arguments in Locke could have done for that of the
Americans; there was not an old woman in either town or parish who did
not thoroughly understand it. The unfortunate father, Donald Munro, had
emigrated to America, says the ballad, many years before; leaving his
two infant sons with his brother, a farmer of Ross-shire. The children
had shot up into active young men, when the war broke out; and, unable
to pay for their passage, had enlisted into a regiment destined for
the colonies, in the hope of meeting with their father. They landed in
America; and finding themselves one evening, after a long and harassing
march, within a few miles of the place where he resided, they set out
together to pay him a visit; but in passing through a wood on their
way, they were shot at from among the trees, and with so fatal an
aim that the one was killed, and the other mortally wounded. A stout
elderly man, armed with a double-barrelled rifle, came pressing
towards them through the bushes, as a fowler would to the game he had
just knocked down. It was their father, Donald Munro; and the ballad
concludes with the ravings of his horror and despair on ascertaining
the nature of his connexion with his victims, blent with the wild
expressions of his grief and remorse for having joined in so unnatural
a rebellion.
[Sidenote: THE FIRST WHIG.]
Even in this age, however, as if to show that there can be nothing
completely perfect that has human nature in it, Cromarty had its one
Whig;--a person who affirmed that Franklin was a philosopher, and
Washington a good man, and that the Americans were very much in the
right. Could anything be more preposterous? The town’s-folk lacked
patience to reason with a fellow so amazingly absurd. He was a slater,
and his name was John Holm;--a name which became so proverbial in the
place for folly, that, when any one talked very great nonsense, it was
said of him that he talked like John Holm. The very children, who had
carried the phrase with them to the playground and the school, used to
cut short the fudge of a comrade, or, at times, even some unpopular
remark of the master, with a “Ho! ho! John Holm!” John, however, held
stiffly to his opinions, and the defence of Washington; and some of the
graver town’s-men, chafed by his pertinacity, were ill-natured enough
to say that he was little better than Washington himself. Curious as it
may appear, he was, notwithstanding the modern tone of his politics,
a rare and singular piece of antiquity;--one of that extinct class of
mechanics described by Coleridge, “to whom every trade was an allegory,
and had its own guardian saint.” He was a connecting link between two
different worlds--the worlds of popular opinion and of popular mystery;
and, strange as it may seem, both a herald of the Reform Bill, and a
last relic of the age “in which” (to use the language of the writer
just quoted) “the detail of each art was ennobled in the eyes of its
professors, by being spiritually improved into symbols and mementos
of all doctrines and all duties.” John had, besides, a strong turn for
military architecture, and used to draw plans and construct models. He
was one evening descanting to an old campaigner on the admirable works
at Fort George (a very recent erection at that time), and illustrating
his descriptions with his stick on a hearth-stone strewed over with
ashes, when by came the cat, and with one sweep of her tail demolished
the entire plan. “Och, Donald!” said John, “it’s all in vain;” a remark
which, simple as it may seem, passed into a proverb. When an adventure
proved unsuccessful, or an effort unavailing, it was said to be “All
in vain, like John Holm’s plan of the fort.” But John’s day was at
hand.--We, the people, are excellent fellows in our way, but I must
confess not very consistent. I have seen the principles which we would
hang a man for entertaining at the beginning of one year, becoming
quite our own before the end of the next.
[Sidenote: THE REVOLUTION.]
The American War was followed by the French Revolution, and the crash
of a falling throne awakened opinion all over Europe. The young
inquired whether men are not born equal; the old shook their heads,
and asked what was to come next? There were gentlemen of the place who
began to remark that the tradesfolk no longer doffed to them their
bonnets, and tradesfolk that the gentlemen no longer sent them their
newspapers. But the people got newspapers for themselves;--these,
too, of a very different stamp from the ones they had been accustomed
to; and a crop of young Whigs began to shoot up all over the place,
like nettles in spring. They could not break into the meanings of
all the new, hard-shelled words they were meeting with--words ending
in _acy_ and _archy_; but no people could understand better that a
king is only a kind of justice of the peace, who may be cashiered for
misconduct just like any other magistrate; that all men are naturally
equal; and that one whose grandfather had mended shoes, was every
whit as well-born as one whose grandfather was the bastard of an
emperor. And seldom were there people more zealous or less selfish in
their devotion than the new-made politicians of Cromarty. Their own
concerns gave place, as they ought, to the more important business of
the state; and they actually hurt their own heads, and sometimes, when
the ale was bad, their own bellies, in drinking healths to the French.
Light after light gleamed upon them, like star after star in a frosty
evening. First of all, Paine’s Rights of Man shone upon them through
the medium of the newspapers, with the glitter of fifty constellations;
then the Resolutions of the Liberty and Equality clubs of the south
looked down upon them with the effulgence of fifty more; at length,
up rose the scheme for the division of property, like the moon at
full, and, flaring with portentous splendour, cast all the others into
comparative obscurity. The people looked round them at the parks which
the modern scheme of agriculture had so conveniently fenced in with
dikes and hedges; and spoke of the high price of potato-land and the
coming Revolution.--A countryman went into one of the shops about this
time, craving change for a pound-note. “A pound-note!” exclaimed the
shopkeeper, snapping his fingers;--“a pound-note!--Man, I widna gie you
tippence for’t.”
[Sidenote: THE DEMOCRACY.]
There was a young man of the place, the son of a shopkeeper, who
had been marked from his earliest boyhood by a smart precocity of
intellect, and the boldness of his opinions; his name (for I must not
forget that, to borrow one of Johnson’s figures, I am walking over
ashes the fires of which are not yet extinguished) I shall conceal. He
was one of those persons who, like the stormy petrel of the tropics,
come abroad when the seas begin to rise, and the heavens to darken;
and who find their proper element in a wild mixture of all the four
elements jumbled into one. He read the newspapers, and, it was said,
wrote for them; he corresponded, too, with the Jacobin clubs of the
south, and strove to form similar clubs at home; but the people were
not yet sufficiently ripe. No one could say that he was disobliging or
ill-tempered; on the contrary, he was a favourite with, at least, his
humbler town’s-men for being much the reverse of both; but he was poor
and clever, and alike impatient of poverty, and of seeing the wealth
of the country in the hands of duller men than himself; and so the
man who was unfortunate enough to be born to a thousand pounds a year
had little chance of finding him either well-tempered or obliging. He
had stept into the ferry-boat one morning, and the ferrymen had set
themselves to their oars, when a neighbouring proprietor came down to
the beach, and called on them to return and take him aboard. “Get on!”
shouted the Democrat, “and let the fellow wait;--’tis I who have hired
you this time.” “O Sir! it’s a shentleman,” said one of the ferrymen,
propelling the boat sternwards, as he spoke, by a back stroke of the
oar. “Gentleman!” exclaimed the Democrat, seizing the boat-hook and
pushing lustily in a contrary direction--“Gentleman truly!--we are all
gentlemen, or shall be so very soon.” The proprietor, meanwhile, made
a dash at the rudder, and held fast, but with such good-will did the
other ply the boat-hook, that ere he had made good a lodgment he was
drenched to the armpits. “Nothing like being accustomed to hardship in
time,” muttered the Democrat, as, glancing his eye contemptuously on
the dripping vestments of the proprietor, he laid down the pole and
quietly resumed his seat.
[Sidenote: THE PROCESSION.]
There were about a dozen young men in the place who were so excited by
the newspaper accounts of the superb processions of their south-country
friends, that they resolved on having a procession of their own.
They procured a long pole with a Kilmarnock cap fixed to the one end
of it, which they termed the cap of liberty, and a large square of
cotton, striped blue, white, and red, which they called the tricolor of
independence. In the middle stripe there were inscribed in huge Roman
capitals, the words Liberty and Equality; and a stuffed cormorant,
intended to represent an eagle, was perched on the top of the staff.
They got a shipmaster of the place prevailed on to join with them. He
was a frank, hearty sailor, who saw nothing unfair in the anticipated
division of property, and hated a pressgang as he hated the devil. “But
how,” said he, “will we manage, after all hands have been served out,
should a few of us take a _bouse_ and melt our portions? just divide
again, I suppose?” “Highly probable,” replied the revolutionists; “but
we have not yet fully determined on that.” “I see, I see,” rejoined
the sailor; “everything can’t be done at once.” On the day of the
procession he brought with him his crew attired in their best, and
with all the ship flags mounted on poles. The revolutionists demurred.
“To be sure,” they said, “nothing could be finer; but then the flags
were British flags.” “And ---- it,” said the master, “would you have
me bring French flags?” It was no time, however, to dispute the point;
and the procession moved on, followed by all the children of the
place. It reached an eminence directly above the links; and drawing
up beside an immense pile of brushwood, and a few empty tar-barrels,
its leader planted the tree of liberty amid shouts, and music, and
the shooting of muskets, on the very spot on which the town gallows
had been planted about two centuries before. No one, however, so
much as thought of the circumstance; for people were too thoroughly
excited to employ themselves with anything but the future; besides,
a very little ingenuity could have made it serve the purpose of
either party. After planting the tree, the brushwood was fired, and a
cask of whisky produced, out of which the republicans drank healths
to liberty and the French. “The French! the French!” exclaimed the
shipmaster. “Well, ---- them, I don’t care though I do; here’s health
to the French; may they and I live long enough to speak to one another
through twelve-pounders!” All the boys and all the sailors huzza’d; the
republicans said nothing, but thought they had got rather a queer ally.
The evening, however, passed off in capital style; and, ere the crowd
dispersed, they had burnt two fishing-boats, a salmon coble, and almost
all the paling of the neighbouring fields and gardens.
[Sidenote: HOSSACK’S PLEDGE.]
The day of the procession was also that of a Redcastle market; at
that time one of the chief cattle fairs of the north. It was largely
attended on this occasion by Highlanders from the neighbouring straths,
many of whom had fought for the Prince, and remembered the atrocities
of Cumberland; it was attended, too, by parties of drovers from
England and the southern counties of Scotland, all of them brimful of
the modern doctrines, and scarcely more loyal than the Highlanders
themselves; it was attended, besides, by a Cromarty salmon-fisher,
George Hossack, a man of immense personal strength and high spirit,
now a little past his prime perhaps, but so much a politician of the
old school, that he would have willingly fought for his namesake the
King with any two men at the fair. But he was no match for everybody,
and everybody to-day seemed to hold but one opinion. “Awfu’ expensive
government this of ours,” said an East-Lothian drover; “we maun just
try whether we canna manage it mair cheaply for ourselves.” “Ay, and
what a blockhead of a king have we got!” said an Englishman; “not
fit, as Tom Paine says, for a country constable; but, poor wretch, we
must turn him about his business, and see whether he can’t work like
ourselves.” “Och, but he’s a limmer anyhow, and a creat plack whig!”
remarked an old Highlander, “and has nae right till ta crown. Na,
na, Charlie my king!” Poor George was almost broken-hearted by the
abuse poured out against his sovereign on every side of him; but what
could he do? He would look first at one speaker, then at another, and
repress his rising wrath by the consideration, that there was little
wit in being angry with about three thousand people at once. He had
driven a bargain with two Englishmen, and on going in to drink with
them, according to custom, was shown into a room which chanced at
the time, unlike every other room in the house, to be unoccupied. The
Englishmen seated themselves at the table; George cautiously fastened
the door, and took his place fronting them. “Now, gentlemen,” said
he, filling the glasses, “permit me to propose a toast:--Health and
prosperity to George the Third.” He drank off his glass, and set it
down before him. One of the Englishmen, a bit of a wag in his way,
looked at him with a droll, quizzical expression, and took up his.
“Health and prosperity,” he said, “to George the _herd_.”--“Well, young
man,” remarked George, “he is, as you say, a herd, and a very excellent
one;--allow me, however, to wish him a less unruly charge.” “Health
and prosperity,” shouted out the other, “to George the ----.” This was
unbearable: George sprang from his seat, and repaid the insult with a
blow on the ear, which drove both man and glass to the floor. Up rose
the other Englishman--up rose, too, the fallen one, and fell together
upon George; but the cause of the king was never yet better supported.
Down they both went, the one over the other, and down they went a
second, and a third, and a fourth time; till at length, convinced that
nothing could be more imprudent than their attempts to rise, they lay
just where they fell. George departed, after discharging the reckoning,
leaving them to congratulate one another on their liberalism and their
wit; and reached Cromarty as the last gleam of the Jacobin bonfire was
dancing on the chimney-tops, to learn that there was scarcely more
loyalty among his town’s-men than at the market, and that his favourite
salmon-coble had perished among the flames about two hours before. I
remember George--a shrewd, clear-headed man of eighty-two, full of
anecdote and remark; and I have derived not a few of my best traditions
from him. But he is gone, and well-nigh forgotten; and when the sexton
of some future age shall shovel up his huge bones, the men who come to
gaze on them may descant, as they turn them over, on modern degeneracy
and the might of their fathers, but who among them all will know that
they belonged to the last of the loyalists!
[Sidenote: THE COUNTY MEETING.]
The day after the procession came on, pregnant with mystery and
conjecture. Rider after rider entered the town, and assembled in front
of the council-house;--the town’s officer was sent for, together with
the sergeant of a small recruiting party that barracked in one of the
neighbouring lanes; they then entered the hall, and made fast the
doors. The country gentlemen, it was said, had come in to put down the
revolutionists. Shortly after, two of the soldiers and a constable
glided into the house of the young democrat, and producing a warrant
for his apprehension, and the seizure of all his papers, hurried him
away to the hall--the soldiers, with their bayonets fixed, guarding him
on either side, and the constable, laden with a hamper of books and
papers, bringing up the rear. In they all went, and the door closed as
before. The curiosity of the town’s-people was now awakened in right
earnest, and an immense crowd gathered in front of the council-house;
but they could see or hear nothing. At length the door opened, and the
sergeant came out; he looked round about him, and beckoned on George
Hossack. “George,” he said, “one of the London smacks has just entered
the bay; you must board her and seize on all the parcels addressed to
* * * * the Jacobin merchant; there is an information lodged that he
is getting a supply of pikes from London for arming the town’s-people.
Take the custom-house boatmen with you; and bring whatever you find
to the hall. And, hark ye, we must see and get up an effigy of the
blackguard Tom Paine;--try and procure some oakum and train-oil, and
I’ll furnish powder enough to blow him to Paris.” Away went George,
delighted with the commission, and returned in about an hour after,
accompanied by some boatmen bearing two boxes large enough to contain
pistols and pike-heads for all the men of the place. They were admitted
into the hall, where they found the bench occupied by the town and
county gentlemen--the soldiers ranged in the area in front, and the
Republican, nothing abashed, standing at the bar. He had baffled all
his judges, and had given them so much more wit and argument than they
wanted, that they had ceased questioning him, and were now employed
in turning over his papers. A letter written in cipher had been found
on his person, and a gentleman, somewhat skilled in such matters, was
examining it with much interest, while his more immediate neighbours
were looking over his shoulders. “Bring forward the boxes, George,”
said one of the gentlemen. George placed them both on the large table
fronting the bench, and proceeded to uncord them. The first he opened
was filled with gingerbread, the other with girls’ dolls and boys’
whistles, and an endless variety of trinkets and toys of a similar
class. Some of the elderly gentlemen took snuff and looked at one
another;--the younger laughed outright. “Have you deciphered that
scrawl, Pointzfield?” inquired one of the more serious, with a view
of restoring the court to its gravity. “Yes,” said Pointzfield dryly
enough, “I rather think I have.”--“Treasonable of course,” remarked the
other. “No, not quite that now,” rejoined the other, “whatever it might
have been fifty years ago. It is merely a copy in shorthand of the old
Jacobitical ballad, the Sow’s Tail to Geordie.” A titter ran along the
bench as before, and the court broke up after determining that the
Democrat should be sent to the jail of Tain to abide further trial,
and that Paine should be burnt in effigy at the expense of the county.
Paine was accordingly burnt; and all the children were gratified with
a second procession and a second bonfire, quite as showy in their way
as those of the preceding evening. The prisoner was escorted to Tain
by a party of soldiers; and on his release, which took place shortly
after, he quitted the country for London, where he became the editor
of a newspaper on the popular side, which he conducted for many years
with much spirit and some ability. Meanwhile the revolutionary cause
languished for lack of a leader; and, on the declaration of war with
France, sunk entirely amid the stormy ebullitions of a feeling still
more popular than the Republican one.
[Sidenote: THE FRENCH WAR.]
There are some passions and employments of the human mind which give
it a sceptical bias, and others, apparently of a very similar nature,
which incline it to credulity. So long as the revolutionary spirit
stalked abroad, it seemed as if every other spirit stayed at home. The
spectre slept quietly in its churchyard, and the wraith in its pool;
the dead-light was hooded by an extinguisher, and the witch minded
her own business without interfering with that of her neighbours. On
the breaking out of the war, however, there came on a season of omens
and prodigies, and the whole supernatural world seemed starting into
as full activity as the fears and hopes of the community. Armies were
seen fighting in the air, amid the waving of banners and the frequent
flashing of cannon; and the whole northern sky appeared for three
nights together as if deluged with blood. In the vicinity of Inverness,
shadowy bands of armed men were descried at twilight marching across
the fields--at times half enveloped in smoke, at times levelling their
arms as if for the charge. There was an ominously warlike spirit, too,
among the children, which the elderly people did not at all like;--they
went about, just as before the American war, with their mimic drums and
fifes, and their muskets and halberts of elder, disturbing the whole
country with uncouth music, and their zeal against the French. Then
came the tug of war; trade sank; and many of the mechanics of the place
flung aside their tools and entered either the army or navy. Party
spirit died; the Whigs forgot everything but that they were Britons;
and when orders came that such of the males of the place as volunteered
their services should be embodied into a kind of domestic militia, old
men of seventy and upwards, some of whom had fought at Culloden, and
striplings of fifteen, who had not yet left school, came to the house
of their future colonel, begging to be enrolled and furnished with
arms. In less than two days every man in the town and parish was a
soldier. Then came the stories of our great sea victories: the glare of
illuminations and bonfires; the general anxiety when the intelligence
first arrived that a battle had been fought, and the general sadness
when it was ascertained that a town’s-man had fallen. When the news of
Duncan’s victory came to the town, a little girl, who had a brother a
sailor, ran more than three miles into the country, to a field in which
her mother was employed in digging potatoes, and falling down at her
feet, had just breath enough left to say, “Mither, mither, the Dutch
are beaten, and Sandy’s safe.” The report of a threatened invasion
knit the people still more firmly together, and they began to hate
the French, not merely as national, but also as personal enemies. And
thus they continued to feel, till at length the battle of Waterloo,
by terminating the war, reduced them to the necessity of seeking, as
before, their enemies at home.
[Sidenote: WHIGGISM OF THE PEOPLE.]
For more than twenty years the words Whig and Tory had well-nigh gone
out; and the younger town’s-men were for some time rather doubtful
about their meaning. At length, however, they learned that _the Whigs_
meant the people, and _the Tories_ those who wished to live by them,
and yet call them names. The town’s-people, therefore, became Whigs
to a man, execrated the Holy Alliance and the massacre at Manchester,
drank healths to Queen Caroline and Henry Brougham; and though they
petitioned against Catholic emancipation--for, like most Scotch folks,
they had too thorough a respect for their grandfathers to be wholly
consistent--they were yet shrewd enough to inquire whether any one had
ever boasted of his country because the great statesmen opposed to that
measure were his countrymen. The Reform Bill, however, set them all
right again, by turning them full in the wake of their old leaders; and
yet, no sooner was Whiggism intrusted with the keys of office, than
they began to make discoveries which had the effect of considerably
modifying the tone of their politics. They began to discover--will it
be believed?--that all men are not born equal, and that there exists an
aristocracy in the very economy of nature. It was not merely the choice
of his countrymen that made Washington a great general, or Franklin
a profound statesman. They have also begun to discover, that a good
Whig may be a bad man; nay, that one may be at once Whig and Tory--a
Tory to his servants and dependants, a Whig to his superiors and his
country. For my own part, I am a Whig--a born Whig; but no similarity
of political principle will ever lead me to put any confidence in
the man to whom I could not intrust my private concerns; and as for
the Whiggism that horsewhipped the poor woman who was picking a few
withered sticks out of its hedge, it may wear the laurel leaf and the
blue ribbon in any way it pleases, but I assure it--it won’t be of my
party.
_Sanson & Co., Printers, Edinburgh._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Chiefly between the years 1829 and 1832, inclusive. A few of the
paragraphs were, however, introduced at a later time.
[2] _Cromba_, _i.e._, crooked bay.
[3] Two ancient farms in the neighbourhood bear the names of Meikle and
Little _Farness_, and a third that of _Eathie_.
[4] Since, however, blown down during a storm, and broken into three
pieces.
[5] See Burns’s Halloween.
[6] The resemblance between the inventions of Sir Thomas as described
in the _Jewel_, and of the Marquis as intimated in the _Century_, is
singularly close. The following passages, selected chiefly for their
brevity as specimens, may serve to show how very much the minds that
produced them must have been of a piece.
FROM THE JEWEL. FROM THE CENTURY.
“In the denominations of the “To write
fixed stars, the Universal by a knotted silk string, so
Language affordeth the most that every knot shall signify
significant way imaginary; for any letter, with a comma,
by the single word alone which full point, or interrogation,
represents the star you shall and as legible as with pen
know the magnitude, together with and ink upon white paper. The
the longitude and latitude, both like by the smell, by the
in degrees and minutes, of the taste, by the touch, by these
star that is expressed by it. three senses, as perfectly,
distinctly, and unconfusedly,
yea, as readily as by the
“Such as will hearken to my sight.
instructions, if some strange
word be proposed to them, whereof “How to compose
there are many thousands of an universal character,
millions devisable by the wit methodical, and easy to be
of man, which never hitherto by written, yet intelligible
any breathing have been uttered, in any language; so that
shall be able, although they know if an Englishman write it
not the ultimate signification in English, a Frenchman,
thereof, to declare what part Italian, Spaniard, Irish,
of speech it is; or if a noun, Welch, being scholars, yea,
to what predicament or class it Grecian or Hebritan, shall
is to be reduced; whether it be as perfectly understand
the sign of a real or natural it in their own tongue,
thing, or somewhat concerning distinguishing the verbs
mechanic trades in their tools from the nouns, the numbers,
or terms; or if real, whether tenses, and cases, as
natural or artificial, complete properly expressed in their
or incomplete.” own language as it was in
English.”
[7]
For why? because the good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.
[8] Sea-nettle.
[9] Cowper has said quite as much, and rather more, in his “TRUTH.”
“Let heathen worthies, whose exalted mind
Left sensuality and dross behind,
Possess for me their undisputed lot,
And take unenvied the reward they sought.”
[10] It was abolished by the late Rev. Mr. Stewart, in the second year
of his incumbency (1826.)
[11] These fine couplets were written, I have since learned, by
Henry Mackenzie, “The Man of Feeling,” an attached friend of the
deceased. Mackenzie has also dedicated to his memory one of his most
characteristic _Mirrors_--the ninetieth. After making a few well-turned
remarks on the unhappiness of living too long, “I have been led to
these reflections,” we find him saying, “by a loss I lately sustained
in the sudden and unlooked-for death of a friend, to whom, from my
earliest youth, I have been attached by every tie of the most tender
affection. Such was the confidence that subsisted between us, that in
his bosom I was wont to repose every thought of my mind, and every
weakness of my heart. In framing him, nature seemed to have thrown
together a variety of opposite qualities, which, happily tempering
each other, formed one of the most engaging characters I have ever
known;--an elevation of mind, a manly firmness, a Castilian sense of
honour, accompanied with a bewitching sweetness, proceeding from the
most delicate attention to the feelings of others. In his manners,
simple and unassuming; in the company of strangers, modest to a degree
of bashfulness; yet possessing a fund of knowledge and an extent of
ability, which might have adorned the most exalted station. But it was
in the small circle of his friends that he appeared to the highest
advantage; there the native benignity of his soul diffused, as it were,
a kindly influence on all around him, while his conversation never
failed at once to amuse and instruct.
“Not many months ago, I paid him a visit at his seat in a remote part
of the kingdom. I found him engaged in embellishing a place, of which
I had often heard him talk with rapture, and the beauties of which
I found his partiality had not exaggerated. He showed me all the
improvements he had made, and pointed out those he had meant to make.
He told me all his schemes and all his projects. And while I live I
must ever retain a warm remembrance of the pleasure I then enjoyed in
his society.
“The day I meant to set out on my return he was seized with a slight
indisposition, which he seemed to think somewhat serious; and indeed,
if he had a weakness, it consisted in rather too great anxiety with
regard to his health. I remained with him till he thought himself
almost perfectly recovered; and, in order to avoid the unpleasant
ceremony of taking leave, I resolved to steal away early in the
morning, before any of the family should be astir. About daybreak I got
up and let myself out. At the door I found an old and favourite dog of
my friend’s, who immediately came and fawned upon me. He walked with
me through the park. At the gate he stopped and looked up wistfully
in my face; and though I do not well know how to account for it, I
felt at that moment, when I parted with the faithful animal, a degree
of tenderness, joined with a melancholy so pleasing, that I had no
inclination to check it. In that frame of mind I walked on (for I
had ordered my horses to wait me at the first stage) till I reached
the summit of a hill, which I knew commanded the last view I should
have of the habitation of my friend. I turned to look back on the
delightful scene. As I looked, the idea of the owner came full into
my mind; and while I contemplated his many virtues, and numberless
amiable qualities, the suggestion arose, if he should be cut off, what
an irreparable loss it would be to his family, to his friends, and to
society. In vain I endeavoured to combat this melancholy foreboding by
reflecting on the uncommon vigour of his constitution, and the fair
prospect it afforded of his enjoying many days. The impression still
recurred, and it was some considerable time before I had strength of
mind sufficient to conquer it.
“I had not been long at home, when I received accounts of his being
attacked by a violent distemper; and, in a few days after, I learned it
had put an end to his life.”
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.
Italics are represented thus _italic_, bold thus =bold=, and
superscripts thus y^{n}.