On returning to London I found the world in the "transition state." The
spirit of the people was changed; the nature of the war was changed; the
principle of the great parties in the legislature was changed. A new era
of the contest had arrived; and, in the midst of the general perplexity
as to the nature of the approaching events, every one exhibited a
conviction, that when they came their magnitude would turn all the
struggles of the past into child's play.
I, too, had my share in the change. I had now passed my public
novitiate, and had obtained my experience of statesmanship on a scale,
if too small for history, yet sufficiently large to teach me the working
of the machinery. National conspiracy, the council-chamber, popular
ebullition, and the tardy but powerful action of public justice, had
been my tutors; and I was now felt, by the higher powers, to be not
unfit for trust in a larger field. A seat in the English House of
Commons soon enabled me to give satisfactory evidence that I had not
altogether overlooked the character of the crisis; and, after some
interviews with the premier, his approval of my conduct in Ireland was
followed by the proposal of office, with a seat in the cabinet.
I had thus attained, in the vigour of life, a distinction for which
hundreds, perhaps thousands, had laboured through life in vain. But mine
was no couch of rosy prosperity. The period was threatening. The old
days of official repose were past, never to return. The state of Europe
was hourly assuming an aspect of the deepest peril. The war had hitherto
been but the struggle of armies; it now threatened to be the struggle of
nations. It had hitherto lived on the natural resources of public
expenditure; it now began to prey upon the vitals of the kingdom. The
ordinary finance of England was to be succeeded by demands pressing
heavily on the existing generation, and laying a hereditary burden on
all that were to follow. The nature of our antagonist deepened the
difficulty. All the common casualties of nations were so far from
breaking the enemy down, that they only gave him renewed power. Poverty
swelled his ranks; confiscation swelled his coffers; bankruptcy gave him
strength; faction invigorated his government; and insubordination made
him invincible. In the midst of this confusion, even a new terror arose.
The democracy of France, after startling Europe, had seemed to be
sinking into feebleness and apathy, when a new wonder appeared in the
political hemisphere, too glaring and too ominous to suffer our eyes to
turn from it for a moment. The Consulate assumed the rule of France.
Combining the fiery vigour of republicanism with the perseverance of
monarchy, it now carried the whole force of the country into foreign
fields. Every foreign capital began to tremble. The whole European
system shook before a power which smote it with the force of a
cannon-ball against a crumbling bastion. The extraordinary man who now
took the lead in France, had touched the string which vibrated in the
heart of every native of the soil. He had found them weary of the crimes
of the democracy; he told them that a career of universal supremacy was
open before them. He had found them degraded by the consciousness of
riot and regicide; he told them that they were the chevaliers of the new
age, and destined to eclipse the chevaliers of all the ages past. His
Italian campaigns, by their rapidity, their fine combinations, and their
astonishing success, had created a new art of war. He had brought them
romantic triumphs from the land of romance. Day by day the populace of
the capital were summoned to see pageants of Italian standards, cannon,
and prisoners. Every courier that galloped through the streets brought
tidings of some new conquest; and every meeting of the Councils was
employed in announcing the addition of some classic province, the
overthrow of some hostile diadem, or the arrival of some convoy of those
most magnificent of all the spoils of war, the treasures of the Italian
arts. France began to dream of the conquest of the world.
The contrast between her past calamities and her present splendour,
powerfully heightened the illusion. France loves illusion; she has
always rejoiced in glittering deceptions, even with the perfect
knowledge that they were deceptions; and here stood the most dazzling of
political charlatans, the great wonder-worker, raising phantoms of
national glory even out of the charnel. The wrecks of faction, the
remnants of the monarchy, and the corpses lying headless in the shadow
of the guillotine, gave all semblance to the conception--France _was_ a
charnel. Her people, by nature rushing into extremes, wild and fierce,
yet gallant and generous, had become at length conscious of the national
fall in the eyes of Europe. They had been scandalized by the rudeness,
the baseness, and the brutishness, of rabble supremacy. They gazed upon
their own crimsoned hands and tarnished weapons with intolerable
disgust; and it was in this moment of depression that they saw a sudden
beam of military renown shot across the national darkness. After so long
defeat that it had extinguished all but the memory of her old triumphs,
France was a conqueror; after a century of helpless exhaustion, she had
risen into almost supernatural vigour; after a hundred years, scarcely
marked by a single victory, her capital rang with the daily sound of
successful battles against the veterans of Frederick and Maria Theresa;
after lingering for generations in the obscurity so bitter to the
popular heart, France had been suddenly thrown into the broadest lustre
of European sovereignty. The world _was_ changed; and the limits of that
change offered only a more resistless lure to the popular passion, for
their being still indistinct to the keenest eye of man.
But our chief struggle was at home, and the reaction of our foreign
disasters came with terrible weight upon a cabinet already tottering. We
saw its fate. Days and nights of the most anxious consultation, could
not relieve us from the hourly increasing evidence, that the Continent
was on the verge of ruin. The voice of Opposition, reinforced by the
roar of the multitude, could no longer be shut out by the curtains of
the council-chamber. Fox, always formidable, was never more confident
and more popular, than when he made the House ring with prophecies of
national downfall. His attacks were now incessant. He flung his
hand-grenades night after night into our camp, and constantly with still
greater damage. We still fought, but it was the fight of despair. Pitt
was imperturbable; but there was not one among his colleagues who did
not feel the hopelessness of calling for public reliance, when, in every
successive debate, we heard the leader of Opposition contemptuously
asking, what answer we had to the Gazette crowded with bankruptcy? to
the resolutions of great bodies of the people denouncing the war? or to
the deadly evidence of its effects in the bulletin which he held in his
hand, announcing some new defeat of our allies; some new treaty of
submission; some new barter of provinces for the precarious existence of
foreign thrones?
In all my recollections of public life, this was the period of the
deepest perplexity. The name of the great minister has been humiliated
by those who judge of the past only by the present. But then all was
new. The general eye of statesmanship had been deceived by the formal
grandeur of the continential sovereignties. They had lain untouched,
like the bodies of their kings, with all their armour on, and with every
feature unchanged; and such they might have remained for ages to come,
had not a new force broken open their gilded and sculptured shrines,
torn off their cerements, and exposed them to the light and air. Then a
touch extinguished them; the armour dropped into dust; the royal robes
dissolved; the royal features disappeared; and the whole illusion left
nothing but its moral behind.
It can be no dishonour to the memory of the first of statesmen, to
acknowledge that he had not the gift of prophecy. Europe had never
before seen a war of the people. The burning passions, rude vigour, and
remorseless daring of the multitude, were phenomena of which man knows
no more than he knows of the materials of destruction which lie hid in
the central caverns of the globe, and which some new era may be suffered
to develope, for the new havoc of posterity. Even to this hour, I think
that the true source of revolutionary triumph has been mistaken. It was
not in the furious energy of its factions, nor in the wild revenge of
the people, nor even in the dazzling view of national conquest. These
were but gusts of the popular tempest, currents of the great popular
tide. But the mighty mover of all was the sudden change from the
disgusts and depressions of serfdom, into a sense that all the world of
possession lay before the bold heart and the ruthless hand. Every form
of wealth and enjoyment was offered to the man who had begun life in the
condition of one chained to the ground, and who could never have hoped
to change his toil but for the grave. But the barrier was now cast down,
and all were free to rush in. The treasury of national honours was
suddenly flung open, and all might share the spoil. This was the true
secret of the astonishing power of the Revolution. The man who was
nothing to-day, might be everything to-morrow. The conscript might be a
captain, a colonel, a general, before the Austrian or Prussian soldier
could be a corporal. Who can wonder at the march of France, or the
flight of her enemies?
Although every night now produced a debate, and the demand on the
activity and vigilance of ministers was incessant and exhausting, the
real debates in both Houses were few in comparison with those of later
times. In those pitched battles of the great parties, their whole
strength was mustered from every quarter; the question was long
announced; and its decision was regarded as giving the most complete
measure of the strength of the Cabinet and Opposition. One of these
nights came, unfortunately for ministers, on the very day in which the
bulletin arrived, announcing the signature of the first Austrian
armistice. The passage of the Tyrol had stripped Austria of its mountain
barrier. Terror had done the rest; and the armistice was signed within
three marches of Vienna! The courier who had been sent to the Austrian
ambassador, and had been permitted to pass through France, reported the
whole nation to be in a frenzy of triumph. He had every where seen civic
processions, military displays, and illuminations in the cities. The
exultation of the people had risen to the utmost height of national
enthusiasm; and Europe was pronounced, by every Frenchman, from the
Directory to the postilion, to be at their feet.
This intelligence was all but fatal. If a shower of cannon-balls had
been poured in upon the ministerial benches, it could scarcely have
produced a more sweeping effect. It was clear that the sagacity of the
"independent members"--only another name for the most flexible portion
of the House--was fully awake to the contingency; the "waiters upon
Providence," as they were called, with no very reverent allusion, were
evidently on the point of deciding for themselves; and the "King's
friends"--a party unknown to the constitution, but perfectly knowing,
and known by, the treasury--began to move away by small sections; and,
crowded as the clubs were during the day, I never saw the minister rise
with so few of his customary troops behind him. But the Opposition bench
was crowded to repletion; and their leader sat looking round with
good-humoured astonishment, and sometimes with equally good-humoured
burlesque, on the sudden increase of his recruits. The motion was in
answer to a royal message on continental subsidies. Nothing could have
been more difficult than the topic at that juncture. But I never
listened to Pitt with more genuine admiration. Fox, in his declamatory
bursts, was superior to every speaker whom I have ever heard. His
appearance of feeling was irresistible. It seemed that, if one could
have stripped his heart, it could scarcely have shown its pulsations
more vividly to the eye, than they transpired from his fluent and most
eloquent tongue. But if Fox was the most powerful of declaimers, Pitt
was the mightiest master of the language of national council. He, too,
could be occasionally glowing and imaginative. He could even launch the
lighter weapons of sarcasm with singular dexterity; but his true rank
was as the ruler of Empire, and his true talent was never developed but
when he spoke for the interests of Empire.
On this night he was more earnest and more impressive than ever; the
true description would have been, more _imperial_. He spoke, less like a
debater, than like one who held the sceptre in his hand; and one who
also felt that he was transmitting his wisdom as a parting legacy to a
great people.
A portion of that speech, which ought never to be forgotten by the
leaders of public affairs in England, was singularly full and powerful.
Referring to the calumniated Revolution of 1688--"We now stand," said
he, "almost in the same position with respect to France and Europe, in
which the government of William III. stood a century ago. We have only
to substitute the democracy of France for the monarchy; and Europe
enfeebled by the shocks of war, as it is now, for Europe untouched and
intrepid, awake to the ambition of the French king, and determined to
meet him sword in hand. But the King of England was even then the
guiding mind of Europe. I now demand, what was the redeeming policy of
that pre-eminent sovereign? It was, never to despair of the triumph of
principle; never to doubt of the ultimate fortunes of good in a contest
with evil; and never to hesitate in calling upon a great and free people
for the defence of that constitution which had made them great and
free."
Those high-toned sentiments were received with loud cheers. Even
Opposition felt the natural force of the appeal, and the cheering was
universal; party was forgotten for the time, and the name of England,
and the revived glory of those illustrious days, bowed the whole House
at the will of the great orator. In the midst of their enthusiasm, he
took from the table a volume of the records, and read the final address
of William to his Parliament; the bequest of a dying king to the people
whom he had rescued from slavery. This royal speech had evidently formed
his manual of government, and, certainly, a nobler declaration never
came from the throne.
"My Lords and Gentlemen--I promise myself that you are met together
with that just sense of the common danger of Europe, and that
resentment of the late proceedings of the French king, which have
been so fully and universally expressed in the loyal and seasonable
addresses of my people." In allusion to the French plan of
universal monarchy in the reign of Louis XIV., the speech
pronounced that the alliance of Spain was the commencement of a
system for subjugating Europe. "It is fit," said the King, "that I
should tell you that the eyes of all Europe are upon this
Parliament--all matters are at a stand until your resolutions are
known; and therefore no time ought to be lost.
"You have yet an opportunity, by God's blessing, to secure to
yourselves and your posterity the quiet enjoyment of your religion
and liberties, if you are not _wanting to yourselves_, but will
exert the utmost vigour of the English nation. But I tell you
plainly, that if you do not lay hold of this occasion, you have no
reason to hope for another." One of the measures proposed was, for
the maintenance of the public good faith. "I cannot but press upon
you," said the King, "to take care of the public credit, which
cannot be preserved but by keeping sacred the maxim, that _they
shall never be losers_ who trust to parliamentary security.
"Let me conjure you to disappoint the only hopes of your enemies by
your unanimity. I have shown, and will always show, how desirous I
am to be the common father of all my people: do you, in like
manner, lay aside parties and divisions; let there be no other
distinction heard of amongst us, but of those who are for the
Protestant religion and the present establishment; and of those who
mean a Popish prince and a French government.
"I shall only add this; that if you do, in good earnest, desire to
see England hold the balance of Europe, and to be indeed at the
head of the Protestant interest, it will appear by the present
opportunity."
Daylight shone on the windows of St Stephen's before the debate closed.
The minister had retired immediately after his exhausting speech, and
left his friends to sustain the combat. It was long and fierce; but
Opposition was again baffled, and the division gave us a lingering
majority. It was now too late, or too early, to go to rest; and I had
returned to my official apartments, to look over some returns required
for the next council, when, my friend the secretary tapped at my door.
His countenance looked care-worn; and for a few moments after he had sat
down, he remained in total silence, with his forehead resting on his
hands. This was so unlike the cheerful spirit of former times--times in
which he had seemed to defy, or almost to enjoy, the struggles of public
life--that I began to express alarm for his health. But he interrupted
me by a look of the deepest distress, and the words "Pitt is dying." No
words could be fuller of ill omen, and my anxiety was equal to his own.
"My meaning," said he, "is not, that he must die to-day, or to-morrow,
nor in six months, nor perhaps in a year, but that the statesman is
dead. He must speak no more, act no more, and even think no more, or he
must go to his grave. This night has finished the long supremacy of the
noblest mind that ever ruled the councils of this country. William Pitt
may live, but the minister has finished his days."
"Yet," I remarked, "I never heard him more animated or more impressive
than on this night. He absolutely broke down all resistance. His mind
seemed richer than ever, and his combination of facts and reasoning
appeared to me unequalled by even his greatest previous efforts. I
should have almost pronounced him to be inspired by the increased
difficulties of the time."
"True--yet I conveyed him from the House, fainting;--I have sate, along
with his physician, at his bedside ever since, applying restoratives to
him, with scarcely a hope of recovery. It is plain that another night of
such effort would be too much for his frame; and the question on which I
have now come to summon an immediate meeting of our friends, turns on
the means of calming public opinion until he shall be able to appear in
his place once more. His career is unquestionably at an end, but his
name is powerful still; and though another trial of his powers in
Parliament would cost him his life, still, as the head of the cabinet,
he might effect, for a while, all the principal purposes of an
administration."
I doubted the possibility of encountering the present strength of
Opposition, reinforced, as it was, by calamity abroad, and asked,
"Whether any expedient was contemplated, to restore the public fortunes
on the Continent?"
"Every point of that kind has been long since considered," was the
answer. "Our alliances have all failed; and we are now reproached, not
simply with the folly of paying for inefficient help, but with the
cruelty of dragging the states of Europe into a contest, where to be
crushed was inevitable."
I still urged an enquiry into the strength of states which had never
been sharers in the war. "If the minor German powers have been absorbed;
if Prussia has abandoned the cause; if Austria has fought in vain--is
the _world_ included in Germany?" I threw the map of Europe on the
table. "See what a narrow circle comprehends the whole space to which we
have hitherto limited the defence of society against the enemy of all
social order. Our cause is broader than Austria and Prussia; it is
broader than Europe; it is the cause of civilization itself; and why not
summon all civilization to its defence? Russia alone has an army of half
a million, yet she has never fired a shot." Still, I found it difficult
to convince my fellow minister.
"Russia--jealous, ambitious, and Asiatic; Russia, with the Eastern world
for her natural field--what object can she have in relieving the broken
powers of the Continent? Must she not rather rejoice in the defeats and
convulsions which leave them at her mercy?" I still continued to urge
him.
"Rely upon it; it is in the North that we must look for the
reinforcement. If the councils of Catharine were crafty, the councils of
her successor may be sincere. Catharine thought only of the seizure of
Turkey; Paul may think only of the profits of commerce. Yet, is it
altogether justifiable to suppose that monarchs may not feel the same
sympathies, the same principles of honour--nay, the same abhorrence of a
sanguinary republicanism--which a private individual might feel in any
other instance of oppression?"
"Still, Marston, I am at a loss to know by what influence a British
government could urge a Russian despotism into a contest, a thousand
miles from its frontier; in which it can gain no accession of territory,
and but little accession of military fame; and all this, while it is
itself perfectly secure from all aggression."
"All true; but remember the striking commencement of Voltaire's Memoir
of Peter--'Who could have pretended to say, in the year 1700, that a
magnificent and polished court would be formed at the extremity of the
Gulf of Finland; that the inhabitants of Cazan and the banks of the
Wolga would be ranked among disciplined warriors, and, after beating the
Turk and the Swede, gain victories in Germany? That a desert of two
thousand leagues in length, should, in the space of fifty years, extend
its influence to all the European courts; and that, in 1759, the most
zealous patron of literature in Europe should be a Russian sovereign?
The man who had said this would have been regarded as the most
chimerical mortal on earth.' But all this has been done, and the career
is not closed. More will be done still. It may even be our most
essential policy to bring Russia into full collision with France. She is
now the only rival: and I shall scarcely regret the fall of the German
sovereignties, if it clears the field, to bring face to face the two
great powers which hold at their sword's point the fate of the
Continent."
A month passed, of perpetual difficulty in the cabinet, of ill news from
abroad, and of violent discontents among the people. A deficient harvest
had come, to increase the national murmurs; a season of peculiar
inclemency had added its share to the public vexations; and I fully
experienced the insufficiency of office, and of the showy honours of
courts, to constitute happiness. But a new scene was reserved for me.
Casual as my conversation with the secretary of state had been, it was
not forgotten: it had been related to the minister; and it had so far
coincided with the conceptions of a mind, which seemed to comprehend
every chance of human things, that I was shortly sent for, to enter into
the necessary explanations. The result was, the offer of a mission to St
Petersburg. The proposal was so unexpected, that I required time for my
answer. I must abandon high employment at home for a temporary
distinction abroad; my knowledge of Russia was slight; the character of
the Czar was eccentric; and the success of an embassy, dependent on the
most capricious of mankind, was so uncertain, that the result might
strip me of whatever credit I already possessed.
But, there was one authority, to which I always appealed. I placed the
proposal in the hands of Clotilde; and she settled all my doubts at
once, by declaring, "that it was the appointment which, if she had been
suffered to choose, she would have selected, in preference to all
others, for its honour and its services." I had no power to resist such
pleadings--seconded as they were by the rosiest smiles, and the most
beaming eyes. But Clotilde was still the woman, and I only valued her
the more for it.--Her sincerity had not a thought to hide; and she
acknowledged her delight at the prospect of once more treading on the
soil of the Continent; at gazing even on the borders of her native land,
excluded as she might be from its entrance; at the enjoyment of seeing
continental life in the brilliant animation of its greatest court; and
at mingling with the scene in a rank which entitled her to its first
distinctions.
"But, Clotilde, how will you reconcile your tastes to the wild habits
of Russia, and even to the solemn formalities of a northern court?"
"They both present themselves to me," was her answer, "with the charm at
once of novelty and recollection. From my nursery days, the names of
Peter, Catharine, and their marvellous city, rang in the ears of all
Paris. Romance had taken refuge at the pole; Voltaire, Buffon,
D'Alembert--all the wit, and all the philosophy of France--satirized the
French court under the disguise of Russian panegyric; and St Petersburg
was to us the modern Babylon--a something compounded of the wildness of
a Scythian desert, and the lustre of a Turkish tale."
The ministerial note had been headed "most secret and confidential," and
as such I had regarded it. But I soon saw the difficulty of keeping "a
state secret." I had scarcely sent in my acceptance of the appointment,
when I found a letter on my table from my old Israelite friend,
Mordecai, congratulating me on "my decision." It was in his usual abrupt
style:--
"I was aware of the minister's offer to you within twelve hours
after it was made. I should have written to you, urging its
acceptance; but I preferred leaving your own judgment to settle the
question. Still, I can give you some personal knowledge on the
subject of Russia. I have been there for the last six months. My
daughter--for what purpose I have never been able to
ascertain--took a sudden whim of hating Switzerland, and loving the
snows and deserts of the North. But I have known the sex too long,
ever to think of combating their wills by argument.--The only
chance of success is to give way to them. Mariamne, sick of hills
and valleys, and unable to breathe in the purest air of the globe,
determined to try the exhalations from the marshes of the Neva.
But, she is my child, after all--the only being for whom I
live--and I was peculiarly grateful that she had not fixed on
Siberia, or taken a resolution to live and die at Pekin. I do not
regret my journey. It has thrown a new light on me. I must
acknowledge to you, that I was astonished at Russia. I had known it
in early life, and thought that I knew it well. But it is
singularly changed. The spirit of the people--the country--the
throne itself--have undergone the most remarkable of silent
revolutions, and the most effective of all. Russia is now Russia no
longer; she is Greece, Germany, France--and she will yet be
England. Her politics and her faculties, alike, embrace the
civilized world. She is Greece in her subtlety, Germany in her
intelligence, and France in her ambition. St Petersburg is less the
capital of her empire, though of all capitals the most magnificent,
than an emblem of her mind. I often stood on the banks of the Neva,
and, looking round me on their mass of palaces, involuntarily asked
myself--Could all this have been the work of a single mind? Other
capitals have been the work of necessity, of chance, of national
defence, of the mere happiness of location. But this was founded in
ambition alone--founded by the sovereign will of one who felt, that
in it he was erecting an empire of conquest; and that from this
spot, in after ages, was to pour forth the force that was to absorb
every other dominion of the world. Peter fixed on the site of his
city to tell this to the world. I see in its framer, and in its
site, the living words--'I fix my future capital in a
wilderness--in a swamp--in a region of tempests--on the shores of
an inhospitable sea--in a climate of nine months' winter--to show
that I am able to conquer all the obstacles of nature. I might have
fixed it on the shores of the Euxine--in the most fertile regions
of Asia--in the superb plains of central Russia--or on the banks of
the Danube; but I preferred fixing it in the extremity of the
North, to show that the mind and power of Russia dreaded no
impediments, of either man or nature.'
"I am now in London for a week. You will find me in my den."
I visited him "in his den;" and it deserved the name as much as ever.
Not a pane had been cleared of its dinginess; not a cobweb had been
swept from its ceiling; nothing had been removed, except the pair of
living skeletons who once acted as his attendants. They had been
removed by the Remover of all things; and were succeeded by a pair, so
similar in meagreness and oddity of appearance, that I could not have
known the change, except for its mention by their master, congratulating
himself on being so "fortunate" in finding substitutes. I found Mordecai
immersed in day-books and ledgers, and calculating the exchanges with as
much anxiety as if he were not worth a shilling. But his look was more
languid than before, and his powerful eye seemed to have sunk deeper
beneath his brow.
"You are probably surprised at seeing me here;" said he, "but I have
more reason than ever to be here. There is a time for all things, but
not if we throw it away. My last excursion to Poland has revived my zeal
in behalf of my nation; and as years advance on me, like the rest of the
world, I find that I must only exert myself the more."
"But, Mordecai, you are opulent; you can have no necessity for
abandoning the natural indulgences of life. You will only shorten your
days by this toil. At least why do you linger in this dungeon?"
He smiled grimly. "It _is_ a dungeon, and I only value it the more. To
this dungeon, as you call it, come, day by day, some of the haughtiest
names of the land. If I lived in some west-end Square, with my
drawing-room filled with _Louis Quatorze_ gew-gaws, and half-a-dozen
idle fellows in livery to announce my visitors, I should not feel the
hundredth part of the sense of superiority, the contemptuous triumph,
the cool consciousness of the tyranny of gold, which I feel when I see
my shrinking supplicants sitting down among my dusty boxes and
everlasting cobwebs. I shall not suffer a grain of dust to be cleared
away. It is my pride--it is my power--it is my revenge."
His visage assumed so completely the expression which I had always
imagined for Shylock, that I should scarcely have been surprised if I
had seen him produce the knife and the scales.
"You are surprised at all this," said he after a pause, in which he
fixed his searching eyes on me. "I see by your countenance, that you
think me a Goth, a monster, a savage.--I think myself none of those
things. I am a man; and, if I am not much deceived, I am also a
philosopher. My life has been a perpetual struggle through a world where
every one worships self. My nation are scorned, and they struggle too.
The Jew has been injured, not by the individual alone, but by all
mankind; and has he not a right to his revenge? He has at last found the
means. He is now absorbing the wealth of all nations. With the wealth he
will have the power; and another half century will not elapse, before
all the grand questions of public council--nay, of national
existence--must depend on the will of the persecuted sons of Abraham.
Who shall rise, or who shall fall; who shall make war, or who shall
obtain peace; what republic shall be created, or what monarchy shall be
rent in pieces--will henceforth be the questions, not of cabinets, but
of the 'Change. There are correspondences within this escritoire, worth
all the wisdom of all the ministers of earth. There are commands at the
point of this pen, which the proudest statesmanship dares not
controvert. There is in the chests round you a ruler more powerful than
ever before held the sceptre--the dictator of the globe; the true Despot
is Gold."
After this wild burst, he sank into silence; until, to change the fever
of his thoughts, I enquired for the health of his daughter. The father's
heart overcame him again.
"My world threatens to be a lonely one, Mr Marston," said he in a feeble
voice. "You see a heartbroken man. Forgive the bitterness with which I
have spoken. Mariamne, I fear, is dying; and what is wealth now to me? I
have left her in Poland among my people. She seemed to feel some slight
enjoyment in wandering from place to place; but her last letter tells me
that she is wearied of travelling, and has made up her mind to live and
die where she may be surrounded by her unhappy nation. I remain here
only to wind up my affairs, and in a week I quit England--and for ever."
But a new object caught my glance. Mordecai--who, while he was thus
speaking in paroxysms of alternate indignation and sorrow, had never for
a moment ceased to turn over his books and boxes--had accidentally
shaken a pile of tin cases from its pinnacle, and the whole rolled down
at my feet. On one of them I saw, with no very strong surprise, the
words--"Mortgage--Mortimer Castle." The eyes of both glanced in the same
direction.
"There," said the Israelite, "you have your paternal acres in your
hand--your Plantagenet forests, and your Tudor castle, all in a cubic
foot. On the chair where you are now sitting, your lordly brother sat
yesterday, gathering up his skirts from the touch of every thing round
him, and evidently suffering all the torture of a man of fashion, forced
to smile on the holder of his last mortgage. He is ruined--not worth a
sixpence; Melton and Newmarket have settled that question for him. But
do you recognise that hand?" He drew a letter from his portfolio. I knew
the writing: it was from my mother--on whom, now old and feeble, this
accomplished _roue_ had been urging the sale of her jointure. Helpless
and alone, she had consented to this fatal measure; and my noble
brother's visit to the Israelite had been for the purpose of inducing
him to make the purchase.
I started up in indignation; declared that the result must reduce my
unfortunate parent to beggary; and demanded by what means I could
possibly prevent what was "neither more nor less than an act of
plunder."
"I see no means," said Mordecai coolly, "except your making the purchase
yourself, and thus securing the jointure to her ladyship. It is only ten
thousand pounds."
"_I_ make the purchase! I have not the tenth part of the money upon
earth. I ask you, what _is_ to be done?"
"Your brother has here the power of selling--and will sell, if the
starvation of fifty mothers stood in his way. Newmarket suffers no
qualms of that kind; and, when his matters there are settled, his
coachmaker's bill for landaulets and britchskas will make him a
pedestrian for the rest of his life. But _I_ have refused the purchase;
and it was chiefly on this subject that I was induced to invite you to
my 'dungeon,' as you not unjustly term it."
The picture of a mother, of whom I had always thought with the
tenderness of a child, cast out in her old age to poverty, with the
added bitterness of being thus cast out by her reliance on the honour of
a cruel and treacherous son, rose before my eyes with such pain, that I
absolutely lost all power of speech, and could only look the distress
which I felt. Mordecai gazed on me with an enquiring countenance.
"You love this mother, Mr Marston. You are a good son. We Israelites,
with all our faults, respect the feelings which 'honour the father and
the mother.' It is a holy love, and well earned by the cares and sorrows
of parentage." He paused, and covered his forehead with his gigantic
hands. I could hear him murmur the name of his daughter. The striking of
a neighbouring church clock startled him from his reverie.
Suddenly again bustling among his papers, he said--"Within this half
hour, your brother is to call again for my definitive answer. Now,
listen to me. The jointure shall be purchased." I bit my lip; but he did
not leave me long in suspense--"And _you_ shall be the purchaser." He
wrote a cheque for the amount, and placed it in my hand.
"Mordecai, you are a noble fellow! But how am I to act upon this? I am
worth nothing. I might as well attempt to repay millions."
"Well, so be it, Mr Marston. You are a man of honor, and a good son. You
will repay it when you can. I exact but one condition: that you will
come and visit Mariamne and me in Poland."
A loud knock at the hall-door put an end to our interview.
"That is your brother," said he. "You must not see him, as I choose to
keep the name of the purchaser to myself. Take your mother's letter with
you; and give her my best advice to write no more--at least to such
correspondents as his lordship."
I rose to take my leave. He followed me hastily; and, taking me by the
hand, said--"Another condition I have to make. It is, that not a
syllable of all that has passed between us on this subject shall be
suffered to transpire. I should make but a bad figure on 'Change, if I
were suspected of transactions in that style. Remember, it must be a
profound secret to all the world."
"Even to my wife?" I asked. "Is _she_ included?"
"No, no," he replied, with a faint laugh; "I look upon you as a mere
mortal still. All vows are void in their nature, which require
impossibilities in their execution." We parted.
I told my little city tale to Clotilde. She wept and smiled alternately,
as I told it. Mordecai received all his due praise; and we pledged
ourselves to find out his Mariamne, in whatever corner of the Lithuanian
wilderness she might have hidden her fantastic heart and head. But I had
now another duty. Within a few hours, we were on our way to the
jointure-house. It was a picturesque old building, the residence of the
Father Abbot, in the times before the insatiable hand of Somerset had
fallen upon the monasteries. We reached it in the twilight of a gentle
day, when all its shrubs and flowers were filling the air with freshness
and fragrance. I found my mother less enfeebled than I had expected; and
still affectionate and tender, as she had always been to her long-absent
son. She was still fully susceptible of the honours which had now opened
before me. Clotilde almost knelt before her noble air and venerable
beauty. My mother could not grow weary with gazing on the expressive
countenance of my beautiful wife. I had secured my parent's comfort for
life; and I, too, was happy.
* * * * *
My embassy, like all other embassies, had its vexations; but on the
whole I had reason to congratulate myself on its acceptance. My
reception at St Petersburg was most distinguished; I had arrived at a
fortunate period. The French expedition to Egypt had alarmed the Russian
councils for Constantinople; a possession to which every Russian looks,
in due time, as naturally as to the right of his copecks and caftan. But
the victory of Aboukir, which had destroyed the French fleet, again
raised the popular exultation, and English heroism was the topic of
every tongue. The incomparable campaign of the Russian army in Italy;
the recovery, in three months, of all which it had cost the power of
France, and the genius of her greatest general, in two years of pitched
battles, sanguinary sieges, artful negotiation, and incessant intrigue,
to obtain, excited the nation to the highest degree of enthusiasm, and
the embassy basked in the broadest sunshine of popularity. Fete now
succeeded fete; the standards taken in Suwarrow's battles, the proudest
trophies ever won by Russian arms, were carried in procession to the
cathedral; illuminations of the capital, balls in the palaces, and
public sports on the waters and banks of the Neva, kept St Petersburg in
a perpetual tumult of joy.
But all was not sunshine: the character of the sovereign in a despotism
demands perpetual study; and Paul was freakish and headstrong beyond all
human calculation. No man was more misunderstood at a distance, nor less
capable of being understood near. He had some striking qualities. He was
generous, bold, and high-principled; but the simplest accident would
turn all those qualities into their reverse. To-day he was ready to
devote himself to the cause of Europe; every soldier of Russia must
march: but, when the morrow came, he revoked the order for his troops,
and cashiered the secretaries who had been rash enough to take him at
his word. The secret was in his brain; disease was gathering on his
intellect, and he was daily becoming dangerous to those nearest him. The
result was long foreseen. In Spain, Gil Blas recommends that no man who
wishes for long life should quarrel with his cook. In Russia, let no
Czar rouse the suspicions of his courtiers. As the Pagans hung chaplets
on the statues of their gods in victory, and flogged them in defeat, the
Russians, in every casualty of their arms, turned a scowling eye upon
their liege lord: and the retreat of Suwarrow, the greatest of Russian
soldiers, from Switzerland, at once stripped the Emperor of all his
popularity.
My position now became doubly anxious. Even despots love popularity, and
the Czar was alternately furious and frightened at its loss. Guards were
planted in every part of the city, with orders to disperse all groups.
Every man who looked at the Imperial equipage as it passed through the
streets, was in danger of being arrested as an assassin. Nobles were
suddenly exiled--none knew why, or where. The cloud was thickening
round the palace. It is a perilous thing to be the one object on which
every eye involuntary turns, as the cause of public evil. Rumours of
conspiracy rose and died, and were heard again. In free governments
public discontents have room to escape, and they escape. In despotisms
they have no room to evaporate, and they condense until they explode. St
Petersburg at length became a place of silence and solitude by day, and
of murmurs and meetings by night. It reminded one of Rome in the days of
Nero; and I looked with perpetual alarm for the catastrophe of Nero.
The Russian is a submissive man, and even capable of strong attachment
to the throne: but there is no spot of the earth where national injury
is more deeply resented; and Paul had been regarded as tarnishing the
fame of Russia. His abandonment of Suwarrow--a warrior, of whom the
annals of the Russian army will bear record to the end of time--had
stung all classes. More than a soldier, Suwarrow was a great military
genius. He gained battles without tactics, and in defiance of them. He
had astonished the Austrian generals by the fierce rapidity of his
movements; he had annihilated the French armies in Italy by the
desperate daring of his attacks. Wherever Suwarrow came, he was
conqueror. In his whole career he had never been beaten. The soldiery
told numberless tales of his eccentricity--laughed at, mimicked, and
adored him. The nation honoured him as the national warrior. But the
failure of some of his detached corps in Switzerland had embarrassed the
campaign; and Paul, capricious as the winds, hastily recalled him. The
popular indignation now burst out in every form of anger. Placards fixed
at night on the palace walls; gipsy ballads sung in the streets;
maskers, at the countless balls of the nobles; satires in quaint verse,
and national proverbs, showed the public resentment to be universal.
Every incident furnished some contemptuous comment. The Czar had built a
wing to one of the palaces of Catharine. The addition wanted the
stateliness of the original fabric. This epigram was posted on the
building, in angry Slavonic:--
"One built a palace, one a stall.
One marble; one a plaster wall.
One sure to stand; one sure to fall.
So much for Catharine--and for Paul!"
In the midst of this growing perplexity, the English messenger arrived.
His tidings had been long anticipated, yet they came with the effect of
a thunderclap. The cabinet had resigned! I of course now waited only for
my order to return. But, in the mean time, this event formidably
increased the difficulties of my position. Foreigners will never allow
themselves to comprehend the nature of any English transaction whatever.
They deal with them all as if they were scenes on a stage. In the
incorrigible absurdity of their theatrical souls, they imagine a
parliamentary defeat to be a revolution, and the change of a ministry
the fall of an empire. Paul instantly cast off all his old partialities.
He pronounced England undone. The star of France was to be the light of
the west; he himself to be the luminary of the east. The bold ambition
of Catharine was to be realized; however, without the system or the
sagacity of her imperial genius. But Paul was to learn the terrible
lesson of a despotic government. The throne separated from the people,
is the more in peril the more widely it is separated. The people _would_
not be carried along with their master to the feet of his new political
idol. The substantial virtues of the national character resisted that
French alliance, which must be begun at once by prostration and
ingratitude. France was their new taunter. England was their old ally.
They hated France for its republican insolence; they honoured England
for its resolute determination to fight out the battle, not for its own
sake alone, but for the cause of all nations. Paul, in the attempt to
partition the globe, was narrowing his supremacy to his own sepulchre.
Yet, this time of national gloom was the most splendid period of the
court. With the double purpose of recovering his popularity, and
concealing his negotiations, Paul plunged into the most extraordinary
festivity. Balls, masquerades, and fetes succeeded each other with
restless extravagance. But the contrast of the saturnine Emperor with
the sudden change of his court was too powerful. It bore the look of
desperation; though for what purpose, was still a mystery to the
million. I heard many a whisper among the diplomatic circle, that this
whirl of life, this hot and fierce dissipation, was, in all Russian
reigns, the sure precursor of a catastrophe; though none could yet
venture to predict its nature. It was like the furious and frenzied
indulgence of a crew in a condemned ship, breaking up the chests and
drinking the liquors, in the conviction that none would survive the
voyage. Even I, with all my English disregard of the speculative
frivolities which to the foreigner are substance and facts, was startled
by the increasing glare of those hurried and feverish festivities. More
than once, as I entered the imperial saloon, crowded with the civil and
military uniforms of every court of Europe, and exhibiting at once
European taste and Asiatic magnificence, I could scarcely suppress the
feeling that I was only entering the most stately of theatres; where,
with all the temporary glitter of the stage, the sounds of the
orchestra, and the passion and poetry of the characters--the fifth act
was preparing, and the curtain was to fall on the death of nobles and
kings.
The impression that evil was to come, already seemed to be universal.
Rumours of popular conspiracy, fresh discoveries by the police, and new
tales of imperial eccentricity, kept the public mind in constant
fitfulness. At length, I received the formal communication of a
"challenge" from the Czar to my sovereign, along with all the other
crowned heads of Europe, to meet him in a _champ-clos_, and, sword in
hand, decide the quarrels of nations. With this despatch came an
invitation for the whole diplomatic body to a masquerade! in which all
were commanded to appear as knights in armour--the Czar, as grand-master
of the Order of Malta, exhibiting himself in the panoply in which he was
to settle the disputes of mankind.
Perplexities like those form a large share of the trials of the foreign
ambassador. To attend the fete was embarrassing; but to decline the
invitation, would have been equivalent to demanding my passports. And I
must acknowledge, that if the eye was to be gratified by the most superb
and the most curious of all displays, never was there an occasion more
fitted for its indulgence. All the armouries of Europe, and of Asia,
seemed to have been searched for the arms and ornaments of this
assemblage. The Kremlin had given up its barbaric shields and caps of
bronze; the plate-mail of the Crusader; the gold-inlaid morions and
cuirasses of France; the silver chain-mail of the Circassian; the steel
corslet of the German chivalry; and a whole host of the various and rich
equipments of the Greek, the Hungarian, the Moresco, and the Turkoman,
made the Winter palace a blaze of knighthood.
Yet, to me, after the first excitement, the whole conveyed a deep
impression of melancholy. It irresistibly reminded me of the last
ceremonial of dead sovereigns, the "Chapelle Ardente." Even the curtains
which fell round the throne, fringed with jewels as they were, to me
looked funereal. The immense golden candelabra were to me the lights
round a bier. I almost imagined that I could see the sword and sceptre
laid across the coffin, and all of the Lord of Empire that remained, a
corpse within.
I was roused from my reluctant reverie by the approach of a group of
masks, who came dancing towards the recess where I had retired, wearied
with the general noise, and the exhaustion of the fete. One of the
casements opened into the famous Conservatory; and I was enjoying the
scents of the thousand flowers and shrubs, of, perhaps, the finest
collection in the world. But, in the shade, the group had evidently
overlooked me; for they began to speak of matters which they could not
have designed for a stranger's ear. The conduct of the Czar, the wrongs
of Russia, and the "necessity of coming to a decision," were the topics.
Suddenly, as if to avert suspicion, one of the group struck up a popular
air on the little three-stringed guitar which throws the Russian crowd
into such ecstasies; and they began a dance, accompanying it by a
murmuring chorus, which soon convinced me of the dangerous neighbourhood
into which I had fallen. The words became well known afterwards. No
language excels the Russian in energy; but I must give them in the
weakness of a translation.
The Neva may rush
To its fountain again;
The bill of a bird
Lake Ladoga may drain;
The blast from the Pole
May be held in a chain;
But the cry of a Nation
Was never in vain!
When the bones of our chiefs
Feed the wolf and the kite;
When the spurs of our squadrons
Are bloody with flight;
When the Black Eagle's banner
Is torn from its height;
Then, dark-hearted dreamer!
Beware of the _night_!
I hear in the darkness
The tread of the bold;
They stop not for iron,
They stop not for gold;
But the Sword has an edge,
And the Scarf has a fold.
Proud master of millions,
Thy tale has been told!
Now the chambers are hush'd,
And the strangers are gone,
And the sire is no sire,
And the son is no son,
And the mightiest of Earth
Sleeps for ever alone,
The worm for his brother,
The clay for his throne!
My conviction was complete, when, in the whirl of the dance, a small
roll of paper dropped from the robe of one of the maskers, and fell at
my feet. In taking it up to return it to him, I saw that it was a list
of names, and, at the head, a name which, from private information, I
knew to be involved in dark political purposes. The thought flashed
across me, in connexion with the chorus which I had just heard, that the
paper was of too much importance to be suffered to leave my
possession.--The life of the sovereign might be involved. The group, who
had been evidently startled by my sudden appearance among them, now
surrounded me, and the loser of the paper insisted on its instant
surrender. The violence of his demand only confirmed my resolution. He
grew more agitated still, and the group seized me. I laid my hand upon
my sword. This measure stopped them for the moment. But in the next, I
saw a knife brandished in the air, and felt myself wounded in the arm.
My attempt to grasp the weapon had alone saved me from its being buried
in my heart. But the fracas now attracted notice; a crowd rushed towards
us, and the group suddenly scattered away, leaving me still in
possession of the paper. My wound bled, and I felt faint, and desired to
be led into the open air. My mask was taken off; and this was scarcely
done when I heard my name pronounced, and saw the welcome countenance of
my friend Guiscard by my side. He had arrived but on that day, on a
mission from his court; had, with his usual eagerness of friendship,
gone to enquire for me at the hotel of the embassy; and thus followed
me to the fete at the critical time. As he supported me to my equipage,
I communicated the circumstances of the rencontre to his clear head and
generous heart; and he fully agreed with me on the duty of instantly
apprising the Czar of his probable danger. As I was unable to move
through pain and feebleness, he offered to take the roll with him, and
demand an interview with the sovereign himself, if possible; or, if not,
with the governor of the palace. The paper contained not only names of
individuals, all, long before, objects of public suspicion, but a sketch
of the imperial apartments, and, at the bottom, the words--"three hours
after midnight." I looked at my watch, it was already half-past two.
This might, or might not be, the appointed night for this dreadful
business; but, if it were, there was but one half hour between the
throne and the grave. Guiscard hurried off, leaving me in the deepest
anxiety, but promising to return as speedily as in his power. But he
came not. My anxiety grew intolerable; hour after hour passed away,
while I reckoned minute after minute, as if they were so much drained
from my own existence. Even, if I had been able to move, it was
impossible to know where to follow him. His steps might have been
watched. Doubtless the conspirators were on the alert to prevent any
approach to the palace. He might have fallen by the pistol of some of
those men, who had not scrupled to conspire against their monarch. The
most miserable of nights at length wore away; but it was only to be
succeeded by the most fearful of mornings. The career of Paul was
closed! On the entrance of the chamberlains into his sleeping apartment,
the unhappy Czar was found dead. There could be no doubt that he had
perished by treason. He was strangled. The intelligence no sooner spread
through the capital, than it produced a burst of national sorrow. All
his errors were forgotten. All his good qualities were remembered.
But where was my gallant and excellent friend--Guiscard?--Of him I heard
nothing.
Another week of suspense, and he appeared. His history was of the most
singular kind. On the night when I had last seen him, he had made his
way through all obstacles into the palace, and been promised a private
interview with the Czar. But, while he urged that no time should be
lost, he had sufficient proof that there could be no chance of an
interview. A succession of apologies was made: the 'Czar was at
supper'--'he was engaged with the minister'--'he had gone to rest.' In
total hopelessness of communicating his pressing intelligence in person,
he at length consented to seal the roll, and place it in the hands of
one of the officers of rank in the household. But that officer himself
was in the conspiracy. The paper was immediately destroyed; and the
bearer of it was considered to be too dangerous to be sent back. He was
put under arrest in an apartment of the palace, and told that his life
depended on his silence. He urged his diplomatic character in vain. The
only answer was the sword of the conspirator turned to his throat. But
within the week the revolution was complete, and he was set at liberty.
A new monarch, a new government, a new feeling followed this dangerous
act. But the character of the young monarch was made to be popular; the
reign of caprice was at an end. The empire felt relieved; and Russia
began the most glorious period of her national history.
My mission was now accomplished, for I refused to hold the embassy under
a rival cabinet; but I carried with me from St Petersburg two
trophies:--the former was the treaty concluded by Paul with France for
the march of an army, in conjunction with a French column of 300,000
men, to invade India--a document which had hitherto baffled all
diplomatic research; the other was the pathetic and noble letter of
Alexander to the British sovereign, proposing a restoration of the
national friendship.
I took my leave of the Russian court with a most gracious audience of
its new monarch. I saw him long afterwards, under different
circumstances, struggling with a tremendous war, pressed by every
difficulty which could beset the throne, and throwing the last
melancholy and doubtful cast for the independence of Europe. But, both
now and then, I saw him, what nature had made him--a noble being. His
stature was tall and commanding; and he was one of the most striking
figures of his court when in the uniform of his guards. But his manner
was still superior--it was at once affable and dignified; he spoke of
European interests with intelligence, of his own intentions with
candour, and of England with a rational respect for its spirit and
institutions. Of his own country, he expressed himself with candour. "I
feel," said he, "that I have a great trust laid on me, and I am
determined to fulfil it. I shall not make the throne a bed of roses.
There is still much to be done, and I shall do what I can. I have the
advantage of a fine material in the people. No being is at once more
susceptible of improvement, and more grateful for it, than the Russian.
He has quick faculties and an honest heart. If the common hazards of
empire should come, I know that he will not desert me. In the last
extremity of human fortunes, I shall not desert him."
Those generous declarations were gallantly realized on both sides within
a few years. I was not then aware that the Imperial prediction would be
soon brought to the test. But it was gloriously fulfilled at Moscow, and
proudly registered in the fragments of the throne of Napoleon.
Impatient as I was to reach England, I left St Petersburg with regret.
Clotilde left it with those feelings which belong to the finer fancy of
woman. She remembered it as the scene where she had enjoyed the most
dazzling portion of her life; where every countenance had met her with
smiles, and every tongue was prodigal of praise; where the day rose on
the promise of new enjoyments, and the night descended in royal
festivity. As we drove along the banks of the Neva, she more than once
stopped the carriage, to give herself a parting glance at the long vista
of stately buildings, which she was then to look upon, perhaps, for the
last time. The scene was certainly of the most striking order; for we
had commenced our journey on the evening of one of the national
festivals; and we thus had the whole population, in all their holiday
dresses, to give animation to the general aspect of the massive and
gigantic architecture. The Neva was covered with barges of the most
graceful form; the fronts of the citizens' houses were hung with
decorations; music sounded from a vast orchestra in front of the palace;
and the air re-echoed with the voices of thousands and tens of
thousands, all evidently determined to be happy for the time. We both
gazed in silence and admiration. The carriage had accidentally drawn up
in view of the little hut which is preserved in the Neva as the dwelling
of Peter. I saw a tear glistening on the long eyelash of my lovely
fellow traveller.
"If I wanted a proof," said she, "of the intellectual greatness of man,
I should find it in this spot. I may see in that hut the emblem of his
mind. That a Russian, two centuries ago--almost before the name of
Russia was known in Europe--while its court had scarcely emerged from
the feuds of barbarous factions, and its throne had been but just
rescued from the hands of the Tartar--should have conceived the design
of such an empire, and should have crowned his design with such a
capital, is to me the most memorable effort of a ruling mind, within all
human recollection."
"Clotilde, I was not aware that you were inclined to give the great Czar
so tender a tribute," I said laughingly, at her embarrassment in the
discovery of a tear stealing down her cheek.
Truth was in her reply. "I agree in the common censure of the darker
portions of his course. But I can now judge of him only by what I see.
Who is to know the truth of his private history? What can be more unsafe
than to judge of the secret actions of princes, from the interested or
ignorant narratives of a giddy court, or foreign enemies? But the
evidence round us allows of no deception. These piles of marble are
unanswerable;--these are the vindications of kings. The man who, sitting
in that hut, in the midst of the howling wilderness, imagined the
existence of such a city rising round him and his line--at once bringing
his country into contact with Europe, and erecting a monument of
national greatness, to which Europe itself, in its thousand years of
progress, has no equal--must have had a nature made for the highest
tasks of human advancement. Of all the panegyrics of an Imperial life,
St Petersburg is the most Imperial."
* * * * *
We passed rapidly through the Russian provinces, and, intending to
embark in one of our frigates cruising the Baltic, felt all the delight
of having at length left the damp and dreary forests of Livonia far down
in the horizon, and again feeling the breezes blowing from that ocean
which the Englishman instinctively regards as a portion of his home.
But, as we drove along the smooth sands which line so many leagues of
the Baltic, and enjoyed with the full sense of novelty the various
contrast of sea and shore, we were startled by the roar of guns from the
ramparts of Riga, followed by the peal of bells. What victory, what
defeat, what great event, did those announce? The intelligence at length
broke on us at the gates; and it was well worth all our interest. "Peace
with France." The English ambassador had arrived in Paris. "War was at
end, and the world was to be at rest once more." I changed my route
immediately, and flew on the road to Paris.
My life was destined to be a succession of scenes. It had been thrown
into a whirl of memorable incidents, any one of which would have served
for the tumult of fifty years, and for the meditation of the fifty
after. But this was the period of powerful, sometimes of terrible,
vicissitudes. All ranks of men were reached by them. Kings and statesmen
only felt them first: they penetrated to the peasant; and the Continent
underwent a moral convulsion--an outpouring of the general elements of
society--like that of some vast inundation, sweeping away the landmarks,
and uprooting the produce of the soil; until it subsided, leaving the
soil in some places irreparably stripped--in others, filled with a new
fertility.
I found France in a state of the highest exultation. The national cry
was, "that she had covered herself with glory;" and to earn that cry,
probably, no Frenchman who ever existed would hesitate to march to
Timbuctoo, or swim across the Atlantic. The name of "conquest" is a
spell which no brain, from Calais to Bayonne, has ever thought of
resisting. The same spell lives, masters, domineers over the national
mind, to this hour; and will last, long after Paris has dropped into the
depths of its own catacombs, and its fifteen fortresses are calcined
under the cannon of some Austrian or Russian invader. It will be
impossible to tell future ages the scene which France then presented to
the mind. If objects are capable of record, impressions are beyond the
power of the pen. No image can be conveyed to posterity by the
sensations which crowded on Europe in the course of the French
Revolution--the rapidity, the startling lustre, and the deep despair; as
it went forth crushing all that the earth had of solid or sacred. It was
now only in its midway. The pause had come; but it was only the pause in
the hurricane--the still heavier trial was at hand. Even as a stranger,
I could see that it was but a lull. Every thing that met the eye in
Paris was a preparative for war. The soldier was every thing, and every
where. I looked in vain for the Republican costumes which I so fearfully
remembered. They had been flung aside for the uniform of the Imperial
Guard; or were to be seen only on a few haggard and desolate men, who
came out in the twilight, and sat in silence, and gloomy dreams of
revenge, in some suburb _cafe_. Where were the deadly tribunals, with
their drunken judges, their half-naked assassins, and the eternal clank
of the guillotines?--all vanished; the whole sullen furniture of the
Republican drama flung behind the scenes, and the stage filled with the
song and the dance--the pageant and the feast--with all France gazing
and delighted at the spectacle. But, my still stronger curiosity was
fixed on the one man who had been the soul of the transformation. I have
before my eye at this moment his slender and _spirituel_ figure; his
calm, but most subtle glance; and the incomparable expression of his
smile. His face was classic--the _ideal_ of thought; and, when Canova
afterwards transferred it to marble, he could not have made it less like
flesh and blood. It was intensely pale--pure, profound, Italian.