and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or
political; peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations,
entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments and
all their rights as the most competent of administrations for our domestic
concerns; the preservation of the general government in its whole
constitutional vigor, as a sheet anchor of peace at home and safety
abroad.... The supremacy of civil over military authority; economy in
public expense, honest payment of public debts; the diffusion of
information; freedom of religion; freedom of the press and freedom of the
person, under the protection of the habeas corpus and trial by jury." When
Jefferson's second term as President came to an end he retired from the
White House poorer than he had entered it. A third term was declined by him
with these words: "To lay down a public charge at the proper period is as
much a duty as to have borne it faithfully. If some termination to the
services of a chief magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution or supplied
by practice, this office, nominally four years, will in fact become for
life; and history shows how easily that degenerates into an inheritance."
Together with Washington's similar action, this established a custom which
has since been followed in the North American Republic.
[Sidenote: John Adams's career]
Jefferson's predecessor, John Adams, who died on the same day, though
likewise a model President, was less fortunate in his career. His
administration was a struggle almost from beginning to end. The troubles
with France, though not attaining the dignity of international warfare,
presented all the difficulties of such a war. Adams's extreme measures
against domestic danger, as embodied in his "alien and sedition laws," were
unfortunate. They were in fact an infringement of the rights of free
speech and personal liberty, and were with justice denounced as
unconstitutional and un-American. His departure from the American Bill of
Rights among other things effectually prevented his re-election as
President. His wisest closing act was the appointment of John Marshall to
the Chief Justiceship of the American Supreme Court.
[Sidenote: Stars of the stage]
[Sidenote: "The Last of the Mohicans"]
In the annals of the American stage the season of 1826 is remembered for
the first appearance of the three great actors Edwin Forrest, Macready and
James H. Hackett, the American comedian. The same year saw the first
appearance of Paulding's "Three Wise Men of Gotham," and Cooper's "Last of
the Mohicans."
[Sidenote: Philhellenic efforts]
The Greek cause found friends in Switzerland, England and America. Two
loans for $14,000,000 were raised in London by American and English
subscriptions. Both loans were disgracefully financed. Barely one-half of
the amount was finally accounted for. With the proceeds contracts were made
for eight warships. The "Perseverance," a steam corvette, mounting eight
68-pound cannon, reached Nauplia in September. The "Hope," a staunch
frigate of 64 guns, built in New York, arrived in December. She was
rechristened the "Hellas."
[Sidenote: Dom Pedro IV.]
The death of Dom Juan de Braganza in March had placed the throne of
Portugal as well as that of Brazil at the disposal of his oldest son, Dom
Pedro IV., at Rio. Under the terms of England's mediation of the previous
year, Dom Pedro renounced the throne of Portugal in favor of his infant
daughter, Maria Gloria, while at the same time he conferred upon Portugal a
liberal constitution, the so-called Charta de Ley, similar to that conceded
to Brazil in 1822.
[Sidenote: Dom Miguel's revolt]
[Sidenote: Canning's policy]
Dom Pedro IV. had intrusted the throne of Portugal to the regency of his
sister Maria Isabella, on condition that his infant daughter should marry
her uncle, Dom Miguel. It was his intention that the infant Princess should
be recognized as Queen, while Dom Miguel would reign as regent. Under the
leadership of Marquis de Chaves, instigated by Dom Miguel, several
provinces revolted and declared for Miguel as absolute king. Conquered in
Portugal, the insurgents retired to Spain, where they were well received.
The Portuguese constitutional government called for help from England.
France threatened to invade Spain. Canning acted at once: "To those who
blame the government for delay," declared Canning in Parliament, "the
answer is very short. It was only last Friday that I received the official
request from Portugal. On Saturday the Ministers decided what was to be
done. On Sunday our decision received the King's sanction. On Monday it was
communicated to both Houses. At this very moment the troops are on their
way to Portugal." It was then that Canning delivered the great speech in
defence of his foreign policy which he closed with Shakespeare's famous
lines:
Oh, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength. And it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.
1827
[Sidenote: Portuguese revolt suppressed]
On the first day of January an English army corps under Clinton was landed
at Lissabon and a squadron of eleven British ships of the line came to
anchor at the mouth of the Tagus. The news of this foreign intervention
dismayed the revolutionists. On the banks of the Mondego the Marquis de
Chaves, with 10,000 rebels, still commanded the approach to Coimbra. On
January 9, a drawn battle was fought with 7,000 constitutional troops under
Saldanha. Next morning Dom Miguel's followers, on the news of an
approaching British column, quitted the field and dispersed. The Spanish
troops on the frontier disarmed those that crossed into Spain.
[Sidenote: Dissatisfaction in France]
In France, the government of Charles X., after some violent attacks in the
Chambers, recalled the Swiss brigade sent to protect the royal family in
Madrid. There was trouble enough at home. The clerical reaction in France
brought about a popular outcry against the order of the Jesuits. On the
occasion of a royal military review on April 29, some of the companies of
the National Guards shared in demonstrations against them. "I am here,"
said the King, "to receive your homage, not your murmurings." The entire
National Guard of Paris was disbanded by royal ordinance.
[Sidenote: Russians invade Persia]
Early in the spring the Russian forces under Paskievitch had crossed the
Araxes and forced the defiles of the Persian frontier. By a rapid flank
movement an army of 10,000 Persians was detached and brought to surrender.
Erivan, the bulwark of Persia, was taken by assault. The triumphant Russian
column entered Pauris, the second city of the kingdom. Thence an advance
was made on Teheran.
[Sidenote: Intervention in Greece favored]
These easy victories in Persia left the Czar free to resume his threatening
attitude toward Turkey. In this he received the hearty support of Canning.
A protocol at St. Petersburg, concluded between the Duke of Wellington and
Nesselrode, formed the basis for Anglo-Russian intervention in the East.
The royalists of France were won over by an offer from the Greek insurgents
to place the Duke of Nimours on the throne of Greece. Without giving actual
support to the proposed intervention the French ambassador in
Constantinople was instructed to act with his English and Russian
colleagues. Under the weight of this combination even Prince Metternich
gave way.
Affairs in Germany were calculated to excite his alarm. At Dresden the
accession of Anthony Clement to the crown of Saxony met with extreme
disfavor on the part of the Saxon people by reason of Anthony's pronounced
Catholicism. Soon his measures provoked a rising of the people. Anthony had
to resign, and Frederick Augustus II. became regent.
[Sidenote: Death of Hauff]
In Wurtemberg, where public affairs had taken a more liberal turn, the
death of Wilhelm Hauff, the young author, was felt as a great loss. Hauff
died in his twenty-fifth year, while still in the first promise of his
literary activity. His stories of the Black Woods and his Oriental Tales,
together with his medieval romance "Lichtenstein," modelled after the best
of Walter Scott's romances, have assured him a prominent place in German
letters.
[Sidenote: Laplace]
[Sidenote: The nebular hypothesis]
On March 15, Marquis Pierre Simon de Laplace, one of the greatest
mathematicians and physical astronomers of all time, died at Arcueil.
Laplace was born in 1749, in Normandy. Although a poor farmer's son, he
soon won the position of a teacher at the Beaumont Military School of
Mathematics, and later at the Ecole Militaire of Paris. One of the early
notable labors of Laplace was his investigation of planetary perturbations,
and his demonstration that planetary mean motions are invariable--the first
important step in the establishment of the stability of the solar system
and one of the most brilliant achievements in celestial mechanics. In his
"Exposition du Systeme du Monde" was formulated the theory called the
"nebular hypothesis," the glory of which he must share with Kant. "He would
have completed the science of the skies," says Fourier, "had the science
been capable of completion." As a physicist he made discoveries that were
in themselves sufficient to perpetuate his name, in specific heat,
capillary action and sound. In mathematics he furnished the modern
scientist with the famous Laplace co-efficients and the potential function,
thereby laying the foundation of the mathematical sciences of heat and
electricity. Not satisfied with scientific distinction, Laplace aspired to
political honors and left a public record which is not altogether to his
credit. Of his labors as Minister of the Interior, Napoleon remarked: "He
brought into the administration the spirit of the infinitesimals." Although
he owed his political success, small as it was, to Napoleon--the man whom
he had once heralded as the "pacificator of Europe"--he voted for his
dethronement.
[Sidenote: Death of Beethoven]
Shortly after the death of Laplace, Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna on
March 26. The last years of his life were so clouded by his deafness and by
the distressing vagaries of his nephew that he was often on the verge of
suicide. In December, 1826, he caught a violent cold, which brought on his
ultimate death from pneumonia and dropsy. Beethoven, though he adhered to
the sonata form of the classic school, introduced into his compositions
such daringly original methods that he must be regarded as the first of the
great romantic composers. Some of his latest compositions notably, were so
very unconventional that they found no appreciation, even among musicians,
until years after his death. Technically, his art of orchestration reached
such a perfection of general unity and elaboration of detail that he must
stand as the greatest instrumental composer of the nineteenth century. The
profound subjective note that pervades his best compositions lifts his
music above that of his greatest predecessors: Bach, Haydn and Mozart.
[Sidenote: Beethoven's career]
[Sidenote: Notable compositions]
[Sidenote: "Fidelio"]
[Sidenote: Beethoven's declining years]
Beethoven came of a line of musical ancestors. His grandfather and
namesake was an orchestral leader and composer of operas. His father was a
professional singer, who took his son's musical education in hand at the
age of four. At eight the boy was a fluent performer both on the violin and
on the piano. When but ten years old Beethoven produced his first
pianoforte sonata, and was installed as assistant organist in the Electoral
Chapel at Bonn. When the lad visited Vienna, in 1787, his extemporizations
on the piano made Mozart exclaim: "He will give the world something worth
listening to." It was Haydn that persuaded Beethoven's patron to send the
youth to Vienna; there he became Haydn's pupil and received material
support from Prince Lichnovsky, one of his warmest admirers. From his first
entrance into the musical circles of Vienna, Beethoven was justly regarded
as a highly eccentric man. His generosity of soul and transcendent genius
made all those that learned to know him condone his freaks. It was after
the opening of the Nineteenth Century that Beethoven reached his freest
creative period. Between 1800 and 1815 he composed the first six of his
great symphonies, the music to "Egmont," the best of his chamber-music
pieces, fourteen pianoforte sonatas, among them the "Pastorale" and the
"Appassionata," and his only opera "Fidelio." This opera, which was first
named "Leonore," with an overture that was afterward abandoned, had its
first public performance in Vienna just before Napoleon's entry into the
capital in 1805. After three representations it was withdrawn. Nearly ten
years later, after complete revision by Beethoven, "Fidelio" achieved its
first great success. The great "Heroica Symphony" composed at the same time
was originally dedicated to Bonaparte. When Napoleon had himself proclaimed
Emperor, Beethoven tore up the dedication in a rage. It was subsequently
changed "to the memory of a great man." After 1815, when the composer had
grown quite deaf, his compositions, like his moods, took a gloomy cast. The
extravagances of his nephew, whose guardianship he had undertaken, caused
him acute material worries. In truth he need have given himself no concern,
for his admirers, Archduke Rudolph and Princes Lobkovitz and Kinsky,
settled on him an annuity of 4,000 florins; but to the end of his days the
unhappy composer believed himself on the verge of ruin. When he died, his
funeral was attended by the princes of the imperial house and all the
greatest magnates of Austria and Hungaria. Twenty thousand persons followed
his coffin to the grave.
[Illustration: BEETHOVEN AND HIS ADMIRERS
Painted by A. Grafle]
[Sidenote: English officers in Greece]
[Sidenote: Fall of Athens]
[Sidenote: Turks reject armistice]
By this time a number of foreign volunteers had flocked to Greece. Lord
Cochrane, an English naval officer of venturous disposition, was appointed
High Admiral. Sir Richard Church was put in command of the Greek land
forces. Early in May, Church and Cochrane sought in vain to break the line
of Turks under Kiutahi Pasha pressing upon Athens. They were defeated with
great loss, and on June 5 the Acropolis of Athens surrendered to the Turks.
In July a treaty for European intervention in Greece was signed in London.
Turkey and Greece were summoned to consent to an armistice, and to accept
the mediation of the powers. All Turks were to leave Greece, and the Greeks
were to come into possession of all Turkish property within their limits on
payment of an indemnity. Greece was to be made autonomous under the
paramount sovereignty of the Sultan. The demand for an armistice was gladly
accepted by Greece. But the Sultan rejected it with contempt. The conduct
of the Turkish troops in Bulgaria caused the Bulgarians to rise and call
for Russian help.
[Sidenote: Death of Canning]
[Sidenote: Canning's policy]
It was at this crisis of European affairs that Canning died. His Ministry,
brief as it was, marked an epoch for England. Unlike his predecessors,
George Canning was called to the Ministry by a king who disliked him. What
he accomplished was done amid the peculiar embarrassments and difficulties
of such a situation. On the other hand, it freed him from certain
concessions to the personal prejudices of his sovereign that hampered other
Ministers. Thus he was able to introduce in Parliament his great measure
for the removal of the political disabilities of the Catholics, a reform on
which so great a Prime Minister as the younger Pitt came to grief. Had this
measure passed the House of Lords it would stand as the crowning act of
Canning's administration. By an irony of fate the same Canning that so
bitterly opposed the French Revolution and the claims of America achieved
highest fame by his latter day recognition of the rights of revolution in
the New World.
[Sidenote: William Blake]
[Sidenote: Artist and poet]
[Sidenote: Blake's mysticism]
[Sidenote: Thomson's lines]
William Blake, the English poet and artist, died at Fountain Court in
London on August 12. While Blake's poems and paintings belonged to the
Eighteenth Century, chronologically, the spirit of his works, with its
extraordinary independence of contemporary fashions, make him a herald of
the poetic dawn of the Nineteenth Century. An engraver by profession and
training, Blake began while still very young to apply his technical
knowledge to his wholly original system of literary publication. As a poet
he was not only his own illustrator, but his own printer and publisher as
well. Beginning with the "Poetical Sketches" and his delightful "Songs of
Innocence," down to the fantastic "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," all of
Blake's books, with the exception of his "Jerusalem" and "Milton," were
issued during the Eighteenth Century. Blake's artistic faculties seemed to
strengthen with advancing life, but his literary powers waned. He produced
few more satisfying illustrations than those to the Book of Job, executed
late in life. His artistic work also was left comparatively untainted by
the morbid strain of mysticism that runs through his so-called "prophetic
writings." The charm of Blake's poetry, as well as of his drawings, was not
fully appreciated until late in the Nineteenth Century. Charles Lamb, to be
sure, declared, "I must look upon him as one of the extraordinary persons
of the age," but his full worth was not recognized until Swinburne and
Rossetti took up his cause. In America, Charles Eliot Norton, at Harvard,
was Blake's ablest expounder. Famous are James Thomson's lines on William
Blake:
He came to the desert of London town,
Gray miles long;
He wandered up and he wandered down,
Singing a quiet song.
He came to the desert of London town,
Mirk miles broad;
He wandered up and he wandered down,
Ever alone with God.
There were thousands and thousands of human kind,
In this desert of brick and stone;
But some were deaf and some were blind,
And he was there alone.
At length the good hour came; he died
As he had lived, alone;
He was not missed from the desert wide,
Perhaps he was found at the Throne.
[Sidenote: Richard Bright]
In this year Dr. Richard Bright of London published his famous "Reports of
medical cases with a view to illustrate the symptoms and cure of diseases
by a reference to morbid anatomy." A special feature of the book was a full
description of Bright's discoveries in the pathology of the peculiar
disease of the kidneys which bears his name. Bright, in response to urgent
demands, lectured more fully on his great discovery before the London
College of Physicians and Surgeons.
[Sidenote: Delacroix]
Eugene Delacroix, the great exponent of French romantic art, and a pupil of
Guerin, exhibited this year his "Christ in the Garden of Olives." He had
previously exhibited "Dante and Virgil," which created a sensation by its
rich coloring. This was followed by his "Massacre of Scio," "The Death of
the Doge," "Marino Faliero," "Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi" and
"Death of Sardanapalus." Not until some time after his death was he
recognized as the greatest early master of the French art after David. The
great majority of his works, embracing mural paintings and pictures of
immense size, are to be found in the principal churches and galleries of
France.
[Sidenote: Wellington Prime Minister]
[Sidenote: Powers intervene in Greece]
[Sidenote: Greek Naval victory]
[Sidenote: Turkish warships stopped]
[Sidenote: The Morea ravaged]
[Sidenote: An international demonstration]
After the brief interregnum of Goderich's administration in England,
Canning was succeeded by his rival, the Duke of Wellington. The good sense
and great renown of this distinguished soldier promised strength and
prestige to his administration. For a while the change of Ministry brought
no avowed change in Canning's plans. Huskisson and Palmerston were retained
in the Cabinet, and Canning's policy of active intervention in Greece was
upheld. In consequence of the Turkish refusal of mediation, the war
continued on both sides. The Turks got heavy reinforcements from Egypt, and
a strong expedition was on the point of leaving Navarino to make a descent
upon Hydra, the last stronghold of the insurrection. An Anglo-French fleet
under Admirals Codrington and Regnier made a demonstration in Greek waters.
The foreign admirals exacted a promise from Ibrahim that he would make no
movement until further orders should arrive from Constantinople. An oral
agreement to this effect was reached late in September. A few days later
the Greeks in free continuance of hostilities won a brilliant naval victory
in the Gulf of Corinth. The hero on this occasion was Captain Hastings, an
English volunteer. Ibrahim was so incensed that he sailed out of Navarino
and made for Patras. Codrington threw his British squadron across the
track of the Egyptian ships and forced them to turn back by a threat to
sink them. It was regretted at the time that Codrington did not compel
Ibrahim to take his expedition out of Greek waters back to Alexandria. As
it was, Ibrahim returned to Navarino, and there found orders from the
Sultan to carry on the war without regard to Western intermeddling. Another
Turkish column was forthwith despatched into the Morea and devastated that
country with fire and sword. Clouds of smoke revealed to the European naval
officers how the Turks had met their proposals for peace. Admiral
Codrington sent messages to Ibrahim, calling for instant cessation of
hostilities, for the evacuation of the Morea, and the return of his fleet
to Constantinople and Alexandria. The answer to this message was that
Ibrahim had marched into the Morea and could not be reached. The three
squadrons of England, Russia and France cruising off Zante immediately came
together. They consisted of twenty-nine vessels, ten ships of the line, ten
frigates, four brigs and five schooners. United in one column, under
command of Codrington as senior admiral, they sailed for Navarino.
Codrington was unhampered by instructions. He could feel sure of the
support of his government, however, for in his pocket was a confidential
note from the Duke of Clarence, the royal commander of the navy,
encouraging him to "find" a quarrel with the Turkish admiral.
[Sidenote: Navarino]