AND LAST.
Subtle, Surly,--Mammon, Dol,
Hot Ananias, Dapper, Dragger,--all
With whom I traded.
The Alchemist.
As when some rural citizen-retired for a fleeting holiday, far from the
cares of the world _strepitumque Romae_,--[" And the roar of Rome."]--
to the sweet shades of Pentonville or the remoter plains of Clapham--
conducts some delighted visitor over the intricacies of that Daedalian
masterpiece which he is pleased to call his labyrinth or maze,--now
smiling furtively at his guest's perplexity, now listening with calm
superiority to his futile and erring conjectures, now maliciously
accompanying him through a flattering path in which the baffled
adventurer is suddenly checked by the blank features of a
thoroughfareless hedge, now trembling as he sees the guest stumbling
unawares into the right track, and now relieved as he beholds him after
a pause of deliberation wind into the wrong,--even so, O pleasant reader!
doth the sage novelist conduct thee through the labyrinth of his tale,
amusing himself with thy self-deceits, and spinning forth, in prolix
pleasure, the quiet yarn of his entertainment from the involutions which
occasion thy fretting eagerness and perplexity. But as when, thanks to
the host's good-nature or fatigue, the mystery is once unravelled, and
the guest permitted to penetrate even into the concealed end of the leafy
maze, the honest cit, satisfied with the pleasant pains he has already
bestowed upon his visitor, puts him not to the labour of retracing the
steps he hath so erratically trod, but leads him in three strides, and
through a simpler path, at once to the mouth of the maze, and dismisseth
him elsewhere for entertainment; even so will the prudent narrator, when
the intricacies of his plot are once unfolded, occasion no stale and
profitless delays to his wearied reader, but conduct him, with as much
brevity as convenient, without the labyrinth which has ceased to retain
the interest of a secret.
We shall therefore, in pursuance of the tit's policy, relate as rapidly
as possible that part of our narrative which yet remains untold. On
Brandon's person was found the paper which had contained so fatal an
intelligence of his son; and when brought to Lord Mauleverer, the words
struck that person (who knew Brandon had been in search of his lost son,
whom we have seen that he had been taught however to suppose
illegitimate, though it is probable that many doubts whether he had not
been deceived must have occurred to his natural sagacity) as sufficiently
important to be worth an inquiry after the writer. Dummie was easily
found, for he had not yet turned his back on the town when the news of
the judge's sudden death was brought back to it; and taking advantage of
that circumstance, the friendly Dunnaker remained altogether in the town
(albeit his long companion deserted it as hastily as might be), and
whiled the time by presenting himself at the jail, and after some
ineffectual efforts winning his way to Clifford. Easily tracked by the
name he had given to the governor of the jail, he was conducted the same
day to Lord Mauleverer; and his narrative, confused as it was, and
proceeding even from so suspicious a quarter, thrilled those digestive
organs, which in Mauleverer stood proxy for a heart, with feelings as
much resembling awe and horror as our good peer was capable of
experiencing. Already shocked from his worldly philosophy of
indifference by the death of Brandon, he was more susceptible to a
remorseful and salutary impression at this moment than he might have been
at any other; and he could not, without some twinges of conscience, think
of the ruin he had brought on the mother of the being he had but just
prosecuted to the death. He dismissed Dummie, and after a little
consideration he ordered his carriage, and leaving the funeral
preparations for his friend to the care of his man of business, he set
off for London, and the house, in particular, of the Secretary of the
Home Department. We would not willingly wrong the noble penitent;
but we venture a suspicion that he might not have preferred a personal
application for mercy to the prisoner to a written one, had he not felt
certain unpleasant qualms in remaining in a country-house overshadowed by
ceremonies so gloomy as those of death. The letter of Brandon and the
application of Mauleverer obtained for Clifford a relaxation of his
sentence. He was left for perpetual transportation. A ship was already
about to sail; and Mauleverer, content with having saved his life, was by
no means anxious that his departure from the country should be saddled
with any superfluous delay.
Meanwhile the first rumour that reached London respecting Brandon's fate
was that he had been found in a fit, and was lying dangerously ill at
Mauleverer's; and before the second and more fatally sure report arrived,
Lucy had gathered from the visible dismay of Barlow, whom she anxiously
cross-questioned, and who, really loving his master, was easily affected
into communication, the first and more flattering intelligence. To
Barlow's secret delight, she insisted instantly on setting off to the
supposed sick man; and accompanied by Barlow and her woman, the
affectionate girl hastened to Mauleverer's house on the evening after the
day the earl left it. Lucy had not proceeded far before Barlow learned,
from the gossip of the road, the real state of the case. Indeed, it was
at the first stage that with a mournful countenance he approached the
door of the carriage, and announcing the inutility of proceeding farther,
begged of Lucy to turn back. So soon as Miss Brandon had overcome the
first shock which this intelligence gave her, she said with calmness,--
"Well, Barlow, if it be so, we have still a duty to perform. Tell the
postboys to drive on!"
"Indeed, madam, I cannot see what use it can be fretting yourself,--and
you so poorly. If you will let me go, I will see every attention paid to
the remains of my poor master."
"When my father lay dead," said Lucy, with a grave and sad sternness in
her manner, "he who is now no more sent no proxy to perform the last
duties of a brother; neither will I send one to discharge those of a
niece, and prove that I have forgotten the gratitude of a daughter.
Drive on!"
We have said that there were times when a spirit was stricken from Lucy
little common to her in general; and now the command of her uncle sat
upon her brow. On sped the horses, and for several minutes Lucy remained
silent. Her woman did not dare to speak. At length Miss Brandon turned,
and, covering her face with her hands, burst into tears so violent that
they alarmed her attendant even more than her previous stillness. "My
poor, poor uncle!" she sobbed; and those were all her words.
We must pass over Lucy's arrival at Lord Mauleverer's house; we must
pass over the weary days which elapsed till that unconscious body was
consigned to dust with which, could it have retained yet one spark of its
haughty spirit, it would have refused to blend its atoms. She had loved
the deceased incomparably beyond his merits, and resisting all
remonstrance to the contrary and all the forms of ordinary custom, she
witnessed herself the dreary ceremony which bequeathed the human remains
of William Brandon to repose and to the worm. On that same day Clifford
received the mitigation of his sentence, and on that day another trial
awaited Lucy. We think briefly to convey to the reader what that scene
was; we need only observe that Dummie Dunnaker, decoyed by his great love
for little Paul, whom he delightedly said he found not the least "stuck
up by his great fame and helewation," still lingered in the town, and was
not only aware of the relationship of the cousins, but had gleaned from
Long Ned, as they journeyed down to ------, the affection entertained by
Clifford for Lucy. Of the manner in which the communication reached
Lucy, we need not speak; suffice it to say, that on the day in which she
had performed the last duty to her uncle, she learned for the first time
her lover's situation.
On that evening, in the convict's cell, the cousins met.
Their conference was low, for the jailer stood within hearing; and it was
broken by Lucy's convulsive sobs. But the voice of one whose iron nerves
were not unworthy of the offspring of William Brandon, was clear and
audible to her ear, even though uttered in a whisper that scarcely
stirred his lips. It seemed as if Lucy, smitten to the inmost heart by
the generosity with which her lover had torn himself from her at the time
that her wealth might have raised him in any other country far above the
perils and the crimes of his career in this; perceiving now, for the
first time, and in all their force, the causes of his mysterious conduct;
melted by their relationship, and forgetting herself utterly in the
desolation and dark situation in which she beheld one who, whatever his
crimes, had not been criminal towards her;--it seemed as if, carried away
by these emotions, she had yielded altogether to the fondness and
devotion of her nature,--that she had wished to leave home and friends
and fortune, and share with him his punishment and his shame.
"Why," she faltered,--"why--why not? We are all that is left to each
other in the world! Your father and mine were brothers; let me be to you
as a sister. What is there left for me here? Not one being whom I love,
or who cares for me,--not one!"
It was then that Clifford summoned all his courage, as he answered.
Perhaps, now that he felt (though here his knowledge was necessarily
confused and imperfect) his birth was not unequal to hers; now that he
read, or believed he read, in her wan cheek and attenuated frame that
desertion to her was death, and that generosity and self-sacrifice had
become too late,--perhaps these thoughts, concurring with a love in
himself beyond all words, and a love in her which it was above humanity
to resist, altogether conquered and subdued him. Yet, as we have said,
his voice breathed calmly in her ear; and his eye only, which brightened
with a steady and resolute hope, betrayed his mind. "Live, then!" said
he, as he concluded. "My sister, my mistress, my bride, live! In one
year from this day--I repeat--I promise it thee!"
The interview was over, and Lucy returned home with a firm step. She was
on foot. The rain fell in torrents, yet even in her precarious state her
health suffered not; and when within a week from that time she read that
Clifford had departed to the bourne of his punishment, she read the news
with a steady eye and a lip that, if it grew paler, did not quiver.
Shortly after that time Miss Brandon departed to an obscure town by the
seaside; and there, refusing all society, she continued to reside. As
the birth of Clifford was known but to few, and his legitimacy was
unsuspected by all except, perhaps, by Mauleverer, Lucy succeeded to the
great wealth of her uncle; and this circumstance made her more than ever
an object of attraction in the eyes of her noble adorer. Finding himself
unable to see her, he wrote to her more than one moving epistle; but as
Lucy continued inflexible, he at length, disgusted by her want of taste,
ceased his pursuit, and resigned himself to the continued sterility of
unwedded life. As the months waned, Miss Brandon seemed to grow weary of
her retreat; and immediately on attaining her majority, which she did
about eight months after Brandon's death, she transferred the bulk of her
wealth to France, where it was understood (for it was impossible that
rumour should sleep upon an heiress and a beauty) that she intended in
future to reside. Even Warlock (that spell to the proud heart of her
uncle) she ceased to retain. It was offered to the nearest relation of
the family at a sum which he did not hesitate to close with; and by the
common vicissitudes of Fortune, the estate of the ancient Brandons has
now, we perceive by a weekly journal, just passed into the hands of a
wealthy alderman.
It was nearly a year since Brandon's death when a letter bearing a
foreign postmark came to Lucy. From that time her spirits--which before,
though subject to fits of abstraction, had been even and subdued, not
sad--rose into all the cheerfulness and vivacity of her earliest youth.
She busied herself actively in preparations for her departure from this
country; and at length the day was fixed, and the vessel was engaged.
Every day till that one, did Lucy walk to the seaside, and ascending the
highest cliff, spend hours, till the evening closed, in watching, with
seemingly idle gaze, the vessels that interspersed the sea; and with
every day her health seemed to strengthen, and the soft and lucid colour
she had once worn, to rebloom upon her cheek.
Previous to her departure Miss Brandon dismissed her servants, and only
engaged one female, a foreigner, to accompany her. A certain tone of
quiet command, formerly unknown to her, characterized these measures, so
daringly independent for one of her sex and age. The day arrived,--it
was the anniversary of her last interview with Clifford. On entering the
vessel it was observed that she trembled violently, and that her face was
as pale as death. A stranger, who had stood aloof wrapped in his cloak,
darted forward to assist her; that was the last which her discarded and
weeping servants beheld of her from the pier where they stood to gaze.
Nothing more in this country was ever known of the fate of Lucy Brandon;
and as her circle of acquaintances was narrow, and interest in her fate
existed vividly in none save a few humble breasts, conjecture was never
keenly awakened, and soon cooled into forgetfulness. If it favoured,
after the lapse of years, any one notion more than another, it was that
she had perished among the victims of the French Revolution.
Meanwhile let us glance over the destinies of our more subordinate
acquaintances.
Augustus Tomlinson, on parting from Long Ned, had succeeded in reaching
Calais; and after a rapid tour through the Continent, he ultimately
betook himself to a certain literary city in Germany, where he became
distinguished for his metaphysical acumen, and opened a school of morals
on the Grecian model, taught in the French tongue. He managed, by the
patronage he received and the pupils he enlightened, to obtain a very
decent income; and as he wrote a folio against Locke, proved that men had
innate feelings, and affirmed that we should refer everything not to
reason, but to the sentiments of the soul, he became greatly respected
for his extraordinary virtue. Some little discoveries were made after
his death, which perhaps would have somewhat diminished the general odour
of his sanctity, had not the admirers of his school carefully hushed up
the matter, probably out of respect for the "sentiments of the soul!"
Pepper, whom the police did not so anxiously desire to destroy as they
did his two companions, might have managed, perhaps many years longer,
to graze upon the public commons, had not a letter, written somewhat
imprudently, fallen into wrong hands. This, though after creating a
certain stir it apparently died away, lived in the memory of the police,
and finally conspired, with various peccadilloes, to produce his
downfall. He was seized, tried, and sentenced to seven years'
transportation. He so advantageously employed his time at Botany Bay,
and arranged things there so comfortably to himself, that at the
expiration of his sentence he refused to return home. He made an
excellent match, built himself an excellent house, and remained in "the
land of the blest" to the end of his days, noted to the last for the
redundance of his hair and a certain ferocious coxcombry of aspect.
As for Fighting Attie and Gentleman George, for Scarlet Jem and for Old
Bags, we confess ourselves destitute of any certain information of their
latter ends. We can only add, with regard to Fighting Attie, "Good luck
be with him wherever he goes!" and for mine host of the Jolly Angler,
that, though we have not the physical constitution to quaff "a bumper of
blue ruin," we shall be very happy, over any tolerable wine and in
company with any agreeable convivialist, to bear our part in the polished
chorus of--
"Here's to Gentleman George, God bless him!"
Mrs. Lobkins departed this life like a lamb; and Dummie Dunnaker obtained
a license to carry on the business at Thames Court. He boasted, to the
last, of his acquaintance with the great Captain Lovett, and of the
affability with which that distinguished personage treated him. Stories
he had, too, about Judge Brandon, but no one believed a syllable of them;
and Dummie, indignant at the disbelief, increased, out of vehemence, the
marvel of the stories, so that, at length, what was added almost
swallowed up what was original, and Dummie himself might have been
puzzled to satisfy his own conscience as to what was false and what was
true.
The erudite Peter MacGrawler, returning to Scotland, disappeared by the
road. A person singularly resembling the sage was afterward seen at
Carlisle, where he discharged the useful and praiseworthy duties of Jack
Ketch. But whether or not this respectable functionary was our identical
Simon Pure, our ex-editor of "The Asinaeum," we will not take upon
ourselves to assert.
Lord Mauleverer, finally resolving on a single life, passed the remainder
of his years in indolent tranquillity. When he died, the newspapers
asserted that his Majesty was deeply affected by the loss of so old and
valued a friend. His furniture and wines sold remarkably high; and a
Great Man, his particular intimate, who purchased his books, startled to
find, by pencil marks, that the noble deceased had read some of them,
exclaimed, not altogether without truth,
"Ah! Mauleverer might have been a deuced clever fellow--if he had liked
it!"
The earl was accustomed to show as a curiosity a ring of great value,
which he had received in rather a singular manner. One morning a packet
was brought him which he found to contain a sum of money, the ring
mentioned, and a letter from the notorious Lovett, in which that person
in begging to return his lordship the sums of which he had twice assisted
to rob him, thanked him, with earnest warmth, for the consideration
testified towards him in not revealing his identity with Captain
Clifford; and ventured, as a slight testimony of respect, to inclose the
aforesaid ring with the sum returned.
About the time Mauleverer received this curious packet, several anecdotes
of a similar nature appeared in the public journals; and it seemed that
Lovett had acted upon a general principle of restitution,--not always, it
must be allowed, the offspring of a robber's repentance. While the idle
were marvelling at these anecdotes, came the tardy news that Lovett,
after a single month's sojourn at his place of condemnation, had, in the
most daring and singular manner, effected his escape. Whether, in his
progress up the country, he had been starved or slain by the natives, or
whether, more fortunate, he had ultimately found the means of crossing
seas, was as yet unknown. There ended the adventures of the gallant
robber; and thus, by a strange coincidence, the same mystery which
wrapped the fate of Lucy involved also that of her lover. And here, kind
reader, might we drop the curtain on our closing scene, did we not think
it might please thee to hold it up yet one moment, and give thee another
view of the world behind.
In a certain town of that Great Country where shoes are imperfectly
polished--[See Captain Hall's late work on America]--and opinions are not
prosecuted, there resided, twenty years after the date of Lucy Brandon's
departure from England, a man held in high and universal respect, not
only for the rectitude of his conduct, but for the energies of his mind,
and the purposes to which they were directed. If you asked who
cultivated that waste, the answer was, "Clifford!" who procured the
establishment of that hospital, "Clifford!" who obtained the redress of
such a public grievance, "Clifford!" who struggled for and won such a
popular benefit, "Clifford!" In the gentler part of his projects and his
undertakings--in that part, above all, which concerned the sick or the
necessitous--this useful citizen was seconded, or rather excelled, by a
being over whose surpassing loveliness Time seemed to have flown with a
gentle and charming wing. There was something remarkable and touching in
the love which this couple (for the woman we refer to was Clifford's
wife) bore to each other; like the plant on the plains of Hebron, the
time which brought to that love an additional strength brought to it also
a softer and a fresher verdure. Although their present neighbours were
unacquainted with the events of their earlier life previous to their
settlement at ----------, it was known that they had been wealthy at the
time they first came to reside there, and that, by a series of
fatalities, they had lost all. But Clifford had borne up manfully
against fortune; and in a new country, where men who prefer labour to
dependence cannot easily starve, he had been enabled to toil upward
through the severe stages of poverty and hardship with an honesty and
vigour of character which won him, perhaps, a more hearty esteem for
every successive effort than the display of his lost riches might ever
have acquired him. His labours and his abilities obtained gradual but
sure success; and he now enjoyed the blessings of a competence earned
with the most scrupulous integrity, and spent with the most kindly
benevolence. A trace of the trials they had passed through was
discernible in each; those trials had stolen the rose from the wife's
cheek, and had sown untimely wrinkles in the broad brow of Clifford.
There were moments, too, but they were only moments, when the latter sank
from his wonted elastic and healthful cheerfulness of mind into a gloomy
and abstracted revery; but these moments the wife watched with a jealous
and fond anxiety, and one sound of her sweet voice had the power to
dispel their influence; and when Clifford raised his eyes, and glanced
from her tender smile around his happy home and his growing children, or
beheld through the very windows of his room the public benefits he had
created, something of pride and gladness glowed on his countenance, and
he said, though with glistening eyes and subdued voice, as his looks
returned once more to his wife, "I owe these to thee!"
One trait of mind especially characterized Clifford,--indulgence to the
faults of others. "Circumstances make guilt," he was wont to say; "let
us endeavour to correct the circumstances, before we rail against the
guilt!" His children promised to tread in the same useful and honourable
path that he trod himself. Happy was considered that family which had
the hope to ally itself with his.
Such was the after-fate of Clifford and Lucy. Who will condemn us for
preferring the moral of that fate to the moral which is extorted from the
gibbet and the hulks,--which makes scarecrows, not beacons; terrifies our
weakness, not warms our reason. Who does not allow that it is better to
repair than to perish,--better, too, to atone as the citizen than to
repent as the hermit? Oh, John Wilkes, Alderman of London, and
Drawcansir of Liberty, your life was not an iota too perfect,--your
patriotism might have been infinitely purer, your morals would have
admitted indefinite amendment, you are no great favourite with us or with
the rest of the world,--but you said one excellent thing, for which we
look on you with benevolence, nay, almost with respect. We scarcely know
whether to smile at its wit or to sigh at its wisdom. Mark this truth,
all ye gentlemen of England who would make law as the Romans made
fasces,--a bundle of rods with an axe in the middle,--mark it, and
remember! long may it live, allied with hope in ourselves, but with
gratitude in our children,--long after the book which it now "adorns" and
"points" has gone to its dusty slumber,--long, long after the feverish
hand which now writes it down can defend or enforce it no more: "THE VERY
WORST USE TO WHICH YOU CAN PUT A MAN IS TO HANG HIM!"
NOTE.
In the second edition of this novel there were here inserted two
"characters" of "Fighting Attie" and "Gentleman George," omitted in the
subsequent edition published by Mr. Bentley in the "Standard Novels." At
the request of some admirers of those eminent personages, who considered
the biographical sketches referred to impartial in themselves, and
contributing to the completeness of the design for which men so
illustrious were introduced, they are here retained, though in the more
honourable form of a separate and supplementary notice.
FIGHTING ATTIE.
When be dies, the road will have lost a great man, whose foot was rarely
out of his stirrup, and whose clear head guided a bold hand. He carried
common-sense to its perfection, and he made the straight path the
sublimest. His words were few, his actions were many. He was the
Spartan of Tobymen, and laconism was the short soul of his professional
legislation!
Whatever way you view him, you see those properties of mind which command
fortune; few thoughts not confusing each other,--simple elements, and
bold. His character in action maybe summed in two phrases,--"a fact
seized, and a stroke made." Had his intellect been more luxurious, his
resolution might have been less hardy; and his hardiness made his
greatness. He was one of those who shine but in action,--chimneys (to
adapt the simile of Sir Thomas More) that seem useless till you light
your fire. So in calm moments you dreamed not of his utility, and only
on the road you were struck dumb with the outbreaking of his genius.
Whatever situation he was called to, you found in hire what you looked
for in vain in others; for his strong sense gave to Attie what long
experience ought, but often fails, to give to its possessors. His energy
triumphed over the sense of novel circumstance, and be broke in a moment
through the cobwebs which entangled lesser natures for years. His eye
saw a final result, and disregarded the detail. He robbed his man.
without chicanery; and took his purse by applying for it rather than
scheming. If his enemies wish to detract from his merit,--a merit great,
dazzling, and yet solid,--they may, perhaps, say that his genius fitted
him better to continue exploits than to devise them; and thus that,
besides the renown which he may justly claim, he often wholly engrossed
that fame which should have been shared by others: he took up the
enterprise where it ceased at Labour, and carried it onwards, where it
was rewarded with Glory. Even this charge proves a new merit of address,
and lessens not the merit less complicated the have allowed him before.
The fame he has acquired may excite our emulation; the envy he has not
appeased may console us for obscurity.
A stanza of Greek poetry--Thus, not too vigorously, translated by Mr.
West,--
"But wrapped in error is the human mind,
And human bliss is ever insecure--
Know we what fortune shall remain behind?
Know we how long the present shall endure?"
GENTLEMAN GEORGE.
For thee, Gentleman George, for thee, what conclusive valediction
remains? Alas! since we began the strange and mumming scene wherein
first thou went introduced, the grim foe hath knocked thrice at thy
gates; and now, as we write,--[In 1830]--thou art departed thence,--thou
art no more! A new lord presides to thine easy-chair, a new voice rings
from thy merry board,--thou art forgotten! thou art already, like these
pages, a tale that is told to a memory that retaineth not! Where are thy
quips and cranks; where thy stately coxcombries and thy regal gauds?
Thine house and thy pagoda, thy Gothic chimney and thy Chinese sign-
post,--these yet ask the concluding hand. Thy hand is cold; their
completion, and the enjoyment the completion yields, are for another!
Thou sowest, and thy follower reaps; thou buildest, thy successor holds;
thou plantest, and thine heir sits beneath the shadow of thy trees,--
"Neque harum, quas colis, arborum
Te, praeter invisas cupressos,
Ulla brevem dominum sequetur!"
["Nor will any of these trees thou didst cultivate follow thee,
the shortlived lord, save the hateful Cyprus."]
At this moment thy life,--for thou veert a Great Man to thine order, and
they have added thy biography to that of Abershaw and Sheppard,--thy life
is before us. What a homily in its events! Gayly didst thou laugh into
thy youth, and run through the courses of thy manhood. Wit sat at thy
table, and Genius was thy comrade. Beauty was thy handmaid; and
Frivolity played around thee,--a buffoon that thou didst ridicule, and
ridiculing enjoy! Who among us can look back to thy brilliant era, and
not sigh to think that the wonderful men who surrounded thee, and amidst
whom thou wert a centre and a nucleus, are for him but the things of
history, and the phantoms of a bodiless tradition? Those brilliant.
suppers, glittering with beauty, the memory of which makes one spot (yet
inherited by Bachelor Bill) a haunted and a fairy ground; all who
gathered to that Armida's circle,--the Grammonts and the Beauvilliers and
the Rochefoucaulds of England and the Road,--who does not feel that to
have seen these, though but as Gil Blas saw the festivities of his
actors, from the sideboard and behind the chair, would have been a
triumph for the earthlier feelings of his old age to recall? What,
then, must it have been to have seen them as thou didst see,--thou, the
deceased and the forgotten!---seen them from the height of thy youth and
power and rank (for early wert thou keeper to a public), and reckless
spirits, and lusty capacities of joy? What pleasures where sense
lavished its uncounted varieties? What revellings where wine was the
least excitement?
Let the scene shift. How stirring is the change! Triumph and glitter
and conquest! For thy public was a public of renown; thither came the
Warriors of the Ring,--the Heroes of the Cross,--and thou, their patron,
wert elevated on their fame! "Principes pro victoria pugnant, comites
pro Principe."--[Chiefs for the victory fight,--for chiefs the soldiers]
--What visions sweep across us! What glories didst thou witness! Over
what conquests didst thou preside! The mightiest epoch, the most
wonderful events which the world, _thy_ world, ever knew,--of these was
it not indeed, and dazzlingly thine,--
"To share the triumph and partake the gale"?
Let the scene shift. Manhood is touched by age; but Lust is "heeled" by
Luxury, and Pomp is the heir of Pleasure; gewgaws and gaud, instead of
glory, surround, rejoice, and flatter thee to the last. There rise thy
buildings; there lie, secret but gorgeous, the tabernacles of thine ease;
and the earnings of thy friends, and the riches of the people whom they
plunder, are waters to thine imperial whirlpool. Thou art lapped in
ease, as is a silkworm; and profusion flows from thy high and unseen
asylum as the rain poureth from a cloud.--Much didst thou do to beautify
chimney-tops, much to adorn the snuggeries where thou didst dwell.
Thieving with thee took a substantial shape; and the robberies Of the
public passed into a metempsychosis of mortar, and became public-houses.
So there and thus, building and planning, didst thou spin out thy latter
yarn, till Death came upon thee; and when we looked around, lo! thy
brother was on thy hearth. And thy parasites and thy comrades and thine
ancient pals and thy portly blowens, they made a murmur, and they packed
up their goods; but they turned ere they departed, and they would have
worshipped thy brother as they worshipped thee,--but he would not! And
thy sign-post is gone and mouldered already; and to the Jolly Angler has
succeeded the Jolly Tar! And thy picture is disappearing fast from the
print-shops, and thy name from the mouths of men! And thy brother, whom
no one praised while thou didst live, is on a steeple of panegyric built
above the churchyard that contains thy grave. O shifting and volatile
hearts of men! Who would be keeper of a public? Who dispense the wine
and the juices that gladden, when the moment the pulse of the band
ceases, the wine and the juices are forgotten?
To History,--for thy name will be preserved in that record which, whether
it be the calendar of Newgate or of nations, telleth its alike how men
suffer and sin and perish,--to History we leave the sum and balance of
thy merits and thy faults. The sins that were thine were those of the
man to whom pleasure is all in all: thou wert, from root to branch, sap
and in heart, what moralists term the libertine; hence the light wooing,
the quick desertion, the broken faith, the organized perfidy, that
manifested thy bearing to those gentler creatures who called thee
'Gentleman George.' Never to one solitary woman, until the last dull
flame of thy dotage, didst thou so behave as to give no foundation to
complaint and no voice to wrong. But who shall say be honest to one, but
laugh at perfidy to another? Who shall wholly confine treachery to one
sex, if to that sex he hold treachery no offence? So in thee, as in all
thy tribe, there was a laxness of principle, an insincerity of faith,
even unto men: thy friends, when occasion suited, thou couldst forsake;
and thy luxuries were dearer to thee than justice to those who supplied
them. Men who love and live for pleasure as thou, are usually good-
natured; for their devotion to pleasure arises from the strength of their
constitution, and the strength of their constitution preserves them from
the irritations of weaker nerves. So went thou good-natured and often
generous; and often with thy generosity didst thou unite a delicacy that
showed thou hadst an original and a tender sympathy with men. But as
those who pursue pleasure are above all others impatient of interruption,
so to such as interfered with thy main pursuit thou didst testify a deep,
a lasting, and a revengeful anger. Yet let not such vices of temperament
be too severely judged! For to thee were given man's two most persuasive
tempters, physical and moral,--Health and Power! Thy talents, such as
they were,--and they were the talents of a man of the world,--misled
rather than guided thee, for they gave thy mind that demi-philosophy,
that indifference to exalted motives, which is generally found in a
clever rake. Thy education was wretched; thou hadst a smattering of
Horace, but thou couldst not write English, and thy letters betray that
thou went wofully ignorant of logic. The fineness of thy taste has been
exaggerated; thou wert unacquainted with the nobleness of simplicity; thy
idea of a whole was grotesque and overloaded, and thy fancy in details
was gaudy and meretricious. But thou hadst thy hand constantly in the
public purse, and thou hadst plans and advisers forever before thee; more
than all, thou didst find the houses in that neighbourbood wherein thou
didst build, so preternaturally hideous that thou didst require but
little science to be less frightful in thy creations. If thou didst not
improve thy native village and thy various homes with a solid, a lofty,
and a noble taste, thou didst nevertheless very singularly improve. And
thy posterity, in avoiding the faults of thy masonry, will be grateful
for the effects of thy ambition. The same demi-philosophy which
influenced thee in private life exercised a far benigner and happier
power over thee in public. Thou wert not idly vexatious in vestries, nor
ordinarily tyrannic in thy parish; if thou wert ever arbitrary it was
only when thy pleasure was checked, or thy vanity wounded. At other
times thou didst leave events to their legitimate course, so that in thy
latter years thou wert justly popular in thy parish; and in the grave thy
great good fortune will outshine thy few bad qualities, and men will say
of thee with a kindly, not an erring judgment, "In private life he was
not worse than the Rufers who came to this bar; in public life he was
better than those who kept a public before him." Hark! those huzzas!
what is the burden of that chorus? Oh, grateful and never time-serving
Britons, have ye modified already for another the song ye made so solely
in honour of Gentleman George: and must we, lest we lose the custom of
the public and the good things of the tap-room,--roust we roar with
throats yet hoarse with our fervour for the old words, our ardour for the
new--
"Here's to Mariner Bill, God bless him!
God bless him!
God bless him!
Here 's to Mariner Bill, God bless him!"