Il n’est jamais permis de deteriorer une ame humaine pour
l’avantage des autres, ni de faire un scelerat pour le
service des honnetes gens.--ROUSSEAU.
[“It is not permitted us to degrade one single soul for the
sake of conferring advantage on others, nor to make a rogue
for the good of the honest.”]
As the reader approaches the termination of this narrative, and
looks back upon the many scenes he has passed, perhaps, in the mimic
representation of human life, he may find no unfaithful resemblance to
the true.
As, amongst the crowd of characters jostled against each other in their
course, some drop off at the first, the second, or the third stage, and
leave a few only continuing to the last, while Fate chooses her agents
and survivors among those whom the bystander, perchance, least noticed
as the objects of her selection; and they who, haply, seemed to him, at
first, among the most conspicuous as characters, sink, some abruptly,
some gradually, into actors of the least importance in events; as the
reader notes the same passion, in different strata, producing the most
opposite qualities, and gathers from that notice some estimate of the
vast perplexity in the code of morals, deemed by the shallow so plain
a science; when he finds that a similar and single feeling will produce
both the virtue we love and the vice we detest, the magnanimity we
admire and the meanness we despise; as the feeble hands of the author
force into contrast ignorance and wisdom, the affectation of philosophy
and its true essence, coarseness and refinement, the lowest vulgarity
of sentiment with an exaltation of feeling approaching to morbidity, the
reality of virtue with the counterfeit, the glory of the Divinity with
the hideousness of the Idol, sorrow and eager joy, marriage and death,
tears and their young successors, smiles; as all, blent together, these
varieties of life form a single yet many-coloured web, leaving us to
doubt whether, in fortune the bright hue or the dark, in character the
base material or the rich, predominate,--the workman of the web could
almost reconcile himself to his glaring and great deficiency in art
by the fond persuasion that he has, at least in his choice of tint and
texture, caught something of the likeness of Nature: but he knows,
to the abasement of his vanity, that these enumerated particulars of
resemblance to life are common to all, even to the most unskilful of his
brethren; and it is not the mere act of copying a true original, but
the rare circumstance of force and accuracy in the copy, which can alone
constitute a just pretension to merit, or flatter the artist with the
hope of a moderate success.
The news of Lord Ulswater’s untimely death soon spread around the
neighbourhood, and was conveyed to Mordaunt by the very gentleman whom
that nobleman had charged with his hostile message. Algernon repaired at
once to W----, to gather from Wolfe some less exaggerated account of the
affray than that which the many tongues of Rumour had brought to him.
It was no difficult matter to see the precise share of blame to be
attached to Wolfe; and, notwithstanding the biased account of Glumford
and the strong spirit of party then existing in the country, no rational
man could for a moment term the event of a sudden fray a premeditated
murder, or the violence of the aggrieved the black offence of a wilful
criminal. Wolfe, therefore, soon obtained a release from the confinement
to which he had been at first committed; and with a temper still more
exasperated by the evident disposition of his auditors to have treated
him, had it been possible, with the utmost rigour, he returned to
companions well calculated by their converse and bent of mind to inflame
the fester of his moral constitution.
It happens generally that men very vehement in any particular opinion
choose their friends, not for a general similarity of character, but
in proportion to their mutual congeniality of sentiment upon that
particular opinion; it happens, also, that those most audibly violent,
if we may so speak, upon any opinion, moral or political, are rarely the
wisest or the purest of their party. Those with whom Wolfe was
intimate were men who shared none of the nobler characteristics of the
republican; still less did they participate in or even comprehend the
enlightened and benevolent views for which the wise and great men of
that sect--a sect to which all philanthropy is, perhaps too fondly,
inclined to lean--have been so conspicuously eminent. On the contrary,
Wolfe’s comrades, without education and consequently without principle,
had been driven to disaffection by desperate fortunes and ruined
reputations acting upon minds polluted by the ignorance and hardened
among the dross of the populace. But the worst can by constant
intercourse corrupt the best; and the barriers of good and evil, often
confused in Wolfe’s mind by the blindness of his passions, seemed, as
his intercourse with these lawless and ruffian associates thickened, to
be at last utterly broken down and swept away.
Unhappily too--soon after Wolfe’s return to London--the popular
irritation showed itself in mobs, perhaps rather to be termed disorderly
than seditious. The ministers, however, thought otherwise; the military
were summoned, and much injury, resulting, it is to be hoped, from
accident, not design, ensued to many of the persons assembled. Some
were severely wounded by the swords of the soldiers; others maimed and
trampled upon by the horses, which shared the agitation or irritability
of their riders; and a few, among whom were two women and three
children, lost their lives. Wolfe had been one of the crowd; and
the scene, melancholy as it really was, and appearing to his temper
unredeemed and inexcusable on the part of the soldiers, left on his mind
a deep and burning impression of revenge. Justice (as they termed it)
was demanded by strong bodies of the people upon the soldiers; but the
administration, deeming it politic rather to awe than to conciliate, so
far from censuring the military, approved their exertions.
From that time Wolfe appears to have resolved upon the execution of a
design which he had long imperfectly and confusedly meditated.
This was no less a crime (and to him did conscientiously seem no less
a virtue) than to seize a favourable opportunity for assassinating the
most prominent member of the administration, and the one who, above all
the rest, was the most odious to the disaffected. It must be urged,
in extenuation of the atrocity of this design, that a man perpetually
brooding over one scheme, which to him has become the very sustenance of
existence, and which scheme, perpetually frustrated, grows desperate by
disappointment, acquires a heat of morbid and oblique enthusiasm, which
may be not unreasonably termed insanity; and that, at the very time
Wolfe reconciled it to his conscience to commit the murder of his fellow
creature, he would have moved out of his path for a worm. Assassination,
indeed, seemed to him justice; and a felon’s execution the glory of
martyrdom. And yet, O Fanatic, thou didst anathematize the Duellist as
the Man of blood: what is the Assassin?