"Rich in the gems of India's gaudy zone,
And plunder piled from kingdoms not their own,
Degenerate trade! thy minions could despise
Thy heart-born anguish of a thousand cries:
Could lock, with impious hands, their teeming store,
While famish'd nations died along the shore;
Could mock the groans of fellow-men, and bear
The curse of kingdoms, peopled with despair;
Could stamp disgrace on man's polluted name,
And barter with their gold eternal shame."
CAMPBELL.
Gold!--gold! for thee, what will man not attempt?--for thee, to what
degradation will he not submit?--for thee, what will he not risk in this
world, or prospectively in the next? Industry is rewarded by thee;
enterprise is supported by thee; crime is cherished, and heaven itself is
bartered for thee, thou powerful auxiliary of the devil! One tempter was
sufficient for the fall of man; but thou wert added, that he ne'er might
rise again.
Survey the empire of India; calculate the millions of acres, the billions
with which it is peopled, and then pause while you ask yourself the
question--How is it that a company of merchants claim it as their own? By
what means did it come into their possession?
Honestly, they will reply. Honestly! you went there as suppliants; you were
received with kindness and hospitality, and your request was granted, by
which you obtained a footing on the soil. Now you are lords of countless
acres, masters of millions, who live or perish as you will; receivers of
enormous tribute. Why, how is this?
Honestly, again you say; by treaty, by surrender, by taking from those who
would have destroyed us the means of doing injury. Honestly! say it again,
that Heaven may register, and hell may chuckle at your barefaced, impudent
assertion.
No! by every breach of faith which could disgrace an infidel; by every act
of cruelty which could disgrace our nature; by extortion, by rapine, by
injustice, by mockery of all laws, or human or divine. The thirst for gold,
and a golden country, led you on; and in these scorching regions you have
raised the devil on his throne, and worshipped him in his proud
pre-eminence as Mammon.
Let us think. Is not the thirst for gold a temptation to which our natures
are doomed to be subjected--part of the ordeal which we have to pass? or
why is it that there never is sufficient?
It appears to be ordained by Providence that this metal, obtained from the
earth to feed the avarice of man, should again return to it. If all the
precious ore which for a series of ages has been raised from the dark mine
were now in tangible existence, how trifling would be its value! how
inadequate as a medium of exchange for the other productions of nature, or
of art! If all the diamonds and other precious stones which have been
collected from the decomposed rocks (for hard as they once were, like all
sublunary matter, they too yield to time) why, if all were remaining on the
earth, the frolic gambols of the May-day sweep would shake about those
gems, which now are to be found in profusion only where rank and beauty pay
homage to the thrones of kings. Arts and manufactures consume a large
proportion of the treasures of the mine, and as the objects fall into
decay, so does the metal return to the earth again. But it is in Eastern
climes, where it is collected, that it soonest disappears. Where the despot
reigns, and the knowledge of an individual's wealth is sufficient warranty
to seal his doom, it is to the care of the silent earth alone that the
possessor will commit his treasures; he trusts not to relation or to
friend, for gold is too powerful for human ties. It is but on his death-bed
that he imparts the secret of his deposit to those he leaves behind him;
often called away before he has time to make it known, reserving the fond
secret till too late; still clinging to life, and all that makes life dear
to him. Often does the communication, made from the couch of death, in
half-articulated words, prove so imperfect, that the knowledge of its
existence is of no avail unto his intended heirs; and thus it is that
millions return again to the earth from which they have been gathered with
such toil. What avarice has dug up avarice buries again; perhaps in future
ages to be regained by labour, when, from the chemical powers of eternal
and mysterious Nature, they have again been filtered through the indurated
earth, and reassumed the form and the appearance of the metal which has
lain in darkness since the creation of the world.
Is not this part of the grand principle of the universe?--the eternal cycle
of reproduction and decay, pervading all and every thing--blindly
contributed to by the folly and wickedness of man! "So far shalt thou go,
but no further," was the fiat; and, arrived at the prescribed limit, we
must commence again. At this moment intellect has seized upon the
seven-league boots of the fable, which fitted everybody who drew them on,
and strides over the universe. How soon, as on the decay of the Roman
empire, may all the piles of learning which human endeavours would rear as
a tower of Babel to scale the heavens, disappear, leaving but fragments to
future generations, as proofs of pre-existent knowledge! Whether we refer
to nature or to art, to knowledge or to power, to accumulation or
destruction, bounds have been prescribed which man can never pass, guarded
as they are by the same unerring and unseen Power, which threw the planets
from his hand, to roll in their appointed orbits. All appears confused
below, but all is clear in heaven.
I have somewhere heard it said, that wherever heaven may be, those who
reach it will behold the mechanism of the universe in its perfection. Those
stars, now studding the firmament in such apparent confusion, will there
appear in all their regularity, as worlds revolving in their several
orbits, round suns which gladden them with light and heat, all in harmony,
all in beauty, rejoicing as they roll their destined course in obedience to
the Almighty fiat; one vast, stupendous, and, to the limits of our present
senses, incomprehensible mechanism, perfect in all its parts, most
wonderful in the whole. Nor do I doubt it: it is but reasonable to suppose
it. He that hath made this world and all upon it can have no limits to His
power.
I wonder whether I shall ever see it.
I said just now, let us think. I had better have said, let us not think;
for thought is painful, even dangerous when carried to excess. Happy is he
who thinks but little, whose ideas are so confined as not to cause the
intellectual fever, wearing out the mind and body, and often threatening
both with dissolution. There is a happy medium of intellect, sufficient to
convince us that all is good--sufficient to enable us to comprehend that
which is revealed, without a vain endeavour to pry into the hidden; to
understand the one, and lend our faith unto the other; but when the mind
would soar unto the heaven not opened to it, or dive into sealed and dark
futurity, how does it return from its several expeditions? Confused,
alarmed, unhappy; willing to rest, yet restless; willing to believe, yet
doubting; willing to end its futile travels, yet setting forth anew. Yet,
how is a superior understanding envied! how coveted by all!--a gift which
always leads to danger, and often to perdition.
Thank Heaven! I have not been entrusted with one of those thorough-bred,
snorting, champing, foaming sort of intellects, which run away with Common
Sense, who is jerked from his saddle at the beginning of its wild career.
Mine is a good, steady, useful hack, who trots along the high-road of life,
keeping on his own side, and only stumbling a little now and then, when I
happen to be careless,--ambitious only to arrive safely at the end of his
journey, not to pass by others.
Why am I no longer ambitious? Once I was, but 'twas when I was young and
foolish. Then methought "It were an easy leap to pluck bright honour from
the pale-faced moon;" but now I am old and fat, and there is something in
fat which chokes or destroys ambition. It would appear that it is requisite
for the body to be active and springing as the mind; and if it is not, it
weighs the latter down to its own gravity. Who ever heard of a fat man
being ambitious? Cæsar was a spare man; Buonaparte was thin as long as he
climbed the ladder; Nelson was a shadow. The Duke of Wellington has not
sufficient fat in his composition to grease his own Wellington-boots. In
short, I think my hypothesis to be fairly borne out, that fat and ambition
are incompatible.
It is very melancholy to be forced to acknowledge this, for I am convinced
that it may be of serious injury to my works. An author with a genteel
figure will always be more read than one who is corpulent. All his
etherealness departs. Some young ladies may have fancied me an elegant
young man, like Lytton Bulwer, full of fun and humour, concealing all my
profound knowledge under the mask of levity, and have therefore read my
books with as much delight as has been afforded by "Pelham." But the truth
must be told. I am a grave, heavy man, with my finger continually laid
along my temple, seldom speaking unless spoken to--and when ladies talk, I
never open my mouth; the consequence is, that sometimes, when there is a
succession of company, I do not speak for a week. Moreover, I am married,
with five small children; and now all I look forward to, and all I covet,
is to live in peace, and die in my bed.
I wonder why I did not commence authorship before! How true it is that a
man never knows what he can do until he tries! The fact is, I never thought
that I could make a novel; and I was thirty years old before I stumbled on
the fact. What a pity!
Writing a book reminds me very much of making a passage across the
Atlantic. At one moment, when the ideas flow, you have the wind aft, and
away you scud, with a flowing sheet, and a rapidity which delights you: at
other times, when your spirit flags, and you gnaw your pen (I have lately
used iron pens, for I'm a devil of a crib-biter), it is like unto a foul
wind, tack and tack, requiring a long time to get on a short distance. But
still you do go, although but slowly; and in both cases we must take the
foul wind with the fair. If a ship were to furl her sails until the wind
was again favourable, her voyage would be protracted to an indefinite time;
and if an author were to wait until he again felt in a humour, it would
take a life to write a novel.
Whenever the wind is foul, which it now most certainly is, for I am writing
anything but "Newton Forster," and which will account for this rambling,
stupid chapter, made up of odds and ends, strung together like what we call
"skewer pieces" on board of a man-of-war; when the wind is foul, as I said
before, I have, however, a way of going a-head by getting up the steam,
which I am now about to resort to--and the fuel is brandy. All on this side
of the world are asleep, except gamblers, house-breakers, the new police,
and authors. My wife is in the arms of Morpheus--an allegorical _crim.
con._, which we husbands are obliged to wink at; and I am making love to
the brandy-bottle, that I may stimulate my ideas, as unwilling to be roused
from their dark cells of the brain as the spirit summoned by Lochiel, who
implored at each response, "Leave, oh! leave me to repose."
Now I'll invoke them, conjure them up, like little imps, to do my
bidding:--
By this glass which now I drain,
By this spirit, which shall cheer you,
As its fumes mount to my brain,
From thy torpid slumbers rear you.
By this head, so tired with thinking,
By this hand, no longer trembling,
By these lips, so fond of drinking,
Let me feel that you're assembling.
By the bottle placed before me,
(Food for you, ere morrow's sun),
By this second glass, I pour me,
Come, you _little beggars_, come.