"There was ordained for the corps a sumptuous and valuable chariot of four
wheels, very long and large, with four pillars, overlaid with cloth of
gold at the four corners, bearing a pillow of rich cloth of gold and
tissue, fringed with a goodly deep fringe of blew silk and gold; and
underneath that, turned towards the chariot, was a marvellous excellent
cloth of majesty, having in it a doom artificially wrought, in fine gold
upon oyl: and at the nether part of the said Chariot was hanged with blew
velvet down to the ground, between the wheels, and at other parts of the
chariot, enclosed in like manner with blew velvet." Ibid. 295.
"The next day early, the 14 February, the chariot was brought to the court
hall door; and the corps with great reverence brought from the _herse_ to
the same, by mitred prelats and others, temporal lords." Ibid. 598.
Then, over the area of thirteen remaining pages, the record contains the
minute particulars of the monarch's obsequies, which, though full of
interest, are no farther to our present purpose.
No. CIV.
Bull--I speak not of Ole, but of John--Bull, when the teazle of opposition
has elevated the nap of his temper, is a pestilent fellow: whatever the
amount--and there is enough--of the milk of human kindness within him,
there is, then, but one way, known among men, of getting it out, and that
is, by giving Bull a bloody nose; whereupon he comes to his senses
directly, and to a just appreciation of himself and his neighbors. True
indeed it is, Bull is remarkably oblivious; and it sometimes becomes
necessary to give him another, which is invariably followed, by the same
happy result.
_Qui haeret in cortice_ will never come at the milk of a cocoa nut. It is
necessary to strip off its rough coat, and punch sundry holes in its
_wooden walls_, and give it a regular cracking. It is precisely so with
Bull. When the fit is upon him, Bull is terrible. He is the very Bull of
Crete--the Bull of Claudian, in his rape of Proserpine--
Dictaeus quatiens mugitibus urbes
Taurus--------------------------
Bull is a prodigious fellow;
Nations tremble at his bellow.
There seems to have existed a strange, political hallucination, in regard
to Bull and Jonathan. We are clearly, all of us, of one and the same
family--a Bull-begotten people; and have a great deal of pleasure, in
believing, that old madam Bull was the mother of us all. A goodly number
of highly respectable Bulls came over the water, of old, and were well
contented with the green pastures of the New World. They differed, upon
some points, from the Bulls they had left behind. They did not believe,
that there was a power or right, to bellow louder than the rest, vested in
any particular Bull, which power came down from Bull to Bull, in unbroken
succession, from the Bull of Bashan. Such a belief, in their opinion,
would have been a terrible Bull. Well; all at once, the trans-atlantic
Bulls began to call the cis-atlantic Bulls--_Jonathans_. A very good name
it was--a great deal better than _Bulls_. There could be no objection to
the name, in the abstract.
But, unfortunately, it was bestowed, as a diminutive, and in derision; and
the old Bulls, ere long, began to beat their flanks with their tails, and
paw up the earth, and look unutterable things, about Jonathan's cowardice;
and they came over the water in droves, and began to roar awfully; and
tore up the earth, under our very noses: and, after doing all, in our
power to spare the world the miserable spectacle of a conflict, among
Bulls, that were brothers, of the whole blood, we went to work, _ex
necessitate_, with hoofs and horns; and tossed up such a terrible dust, at
Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker's Hill, and Long Island, and White
Plains, and upon the Lakes, and at Sheensborough, and Albany, and
Brandywine, and Saratoga, and Bennington, and Germantown, and Rhode
Island, and Briar's Creek, and Camden, and Broad River, and Guilford, and
Hobkirk's Hill, and the Eutaw Springs, and York Town, and at fifty places
beside, that the old Bulls were perfectly astonished; and so very severely
gored withal, that their roaring sunk, at last, into something like
Snug's, when he became fearful of frightening the ladies. The old
Bulls--those that survived--went _back again_, like Sawney, out of the
peach orchard; and the mammoth Bull, in London, publicly acknowledged,
that we were as independent a set of Bulls, as ever he saw, or heard of.
No man, in his senses, marvels, that a contemptuous, and supercilious
sentiment, towards us, in our days of small things, should have been
indulged, by the vulgar and unphilosophical, among the English people. It
is matter for surprise, nevertheless, that so much ignorance of the
American character should have existed, in the higher ranks of British
society--such disparaging estimates of men and _materiel_, on this side
the water--such mistaken conceptions--such a general belief of almost
universal pusillanimity, among men, who were not a whit the less
Englishmen, than their revilers; as though there were something,
particularly enervating, in breathing the bracing air of America, and
listening to the thorough bass of the wild waters, breaking on our
original walls of granite; and in struggling, with our horny hands, along
the precipices, for bread--such an awful miscalculation of probabilities,
as resulted at last, in the loss to King George of thirteen inestimable
jewels, of the fairest water.
The impressions, entertained of the Americans, by the English people, or a
great majority of them, about that period, were truly amusing. It is
scarcely worth while to comment on the abuse of us, by the early
reviewers, and the taunting inquiry, long--long ago, what American had
ever produced an epic?--Unluckily, Joel did, at last.--This question, thus
early and impudently propounded, was quite as sensible, as it might be, to
ask men, who, by dint of industry and thrift, are just getting plain
shirts to their backs--who among them ever had lace ruffles? We have
improved since that time; and _halmost hevery man in the ole population
can hutter imself hin werry decent Henglish_.
Josiah Quincy, _then_ junior, father of the late President of Harvard
University, has noted some curious facts, in his journal, as reported by
Gordon, i. 438. In a conversation between him and Col. Barre, who, though
he opposed the Stamp Act, in 1765, supported the Boston Port Bill, in
1774. Col. Barre said to Mr. Quincy--"About fourteen or fifteen years ago,
I was through a considerable part of your country; for, in the expedition
against Canada, my business caused me to pass by land, through
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Albany; and, when I returned again
to this country, I was often speaking of America, and could not help
speaking well of its climate, soil, and inhabitants; for you must know,
sir, America was always a favorite with me. But, will you believe it, sir,
yet I assure you it is true, more than two thirds of this island, at this
time, thought the Americans were all negroes." Mr. Quincy replied that he
did not in the least doubt it, for, if he was to judge by the late acts of
Parliament, he should suppose, that a great majority of the people of
Great Britain still thought so, for he found that their representatives
still treated them as such.
The ministry had decided, that "_the punishment of a few of the worst
sort of traitors, such as Hancock and his crew, might be sufficient to
teach the rest their duty, in future_."--"Some men of rank in the army,"
says Gordon, i. 457, "treated all idea of resistance, by the Americans,
with the utmost contempt. They are neither soldiers, nor ever can be made
so, being naturally of a pusillanimous disposition, and utterly incapable
of any sort of order or discipline; and by their laziness, uncleanliness,
and radical defect of constitution, they are disabled from going through
the service of a campaign. Many ludicrous stories, to that purport, were
told, greatly to the entertainment of the house."
Jonathan turned out, at the end of the Bull baiting, to have been neither
a fool nor a coward: and the American Congress received a memorable
compliment from Lord Chatham--"_For genuine sagacity, for singular
moderation, for manly spirit, for sublime sentiments, and simplicity of
language, for everything respectable and honorable, the Congress of
Philadelphia shines unrivalled_."
In the war of 1812, Bull was the very identical Bull, that he had been
before: Frenchmen were frogs; Yankees were cowards--there was nobody that
could fight, on the land or the sea, but Bull.
"It has always," says that wittiest, and, I fear, wickedest of wags,
William Cobbett, while addressing Lord Liverpool, "been the misfortune of
England, that her rulers and her people have spoken and have thought
contemptuously of the Americans. Was there a man in the country, who did
not despise the American navy? Was there a public writer beside myself,
who did not doom that navy to destruction in a month? Did not all parties
exceedingly relish the description given, in a very august assembly, of
'_half a dozen of fir frigates, with bits of striped bunting tied to their
mast heads_'! Did not the Guerriere sail up and down the American coast,
with her name, written on her flag, challenging those fir frigates? Did
not the whole nation, with one voice exclaim at the affair of the _Little
Belt_--'Only let Rogers come _within reach_ of one of our _frigates_!' If
such was the opinion of the whole nation, with what justice is the Board
of Admiralty blamed, for not sending out the means of combatting this
extraordinary sort of foe? and for issuing a privilege to our frigates to
run away from one of those _fir things with a bit of striped bunting at
its mast head_? The result of the former war, while it enlightened nobody,
added to the vindictiveness of hundreds of thousands; so that we have
entered into this war with all our old stock of contempt, and a vastly
increased stock of rancor. To think that the American republic is to be a
great power is unsupportable. Of the effect of this contempt I know
nobody, who has so much reason to repent, as the officers of his Majesty's
navy. If they had triumphed, it would only have been over half a dozen
_fir things, with bits of bunting at their mast heads_. They were sure to
gain no reputation in the contest; and, if they failed, what was their
lot? The worst of it is, they themselves did, in some measure, contribute
to their own ill fate: for, of all men living, none spoke of poor Jonathan
with so much contempt. There are some people, who are for taking the
American commodores at their word, and ascribing their victories to the
immediate intervention of Providence. Both Perry and McDonough begin their
despatches by saying--"_Almighty God has given us a victory_."
This is keen political satire; and it is well, that it should come to
neighbor Bull's ears, from the mouth of an Englishman. It is more
gracefully administered thus. That it was entirely deserved, no one will
doubt, who has any recollection of Bull's unmeasured and unmitigated
impudence, during the war of 1812, in its earlier stages. May God of his
infinite mercy grant, that Peace Societies may have these matters,
hereafter, very much their own way; though I have a little misgiving, I
confess, as to the expediency of any sudden, or very general conversion of
swords into ploughshares, or spears into pruning hooks.
No. CV.
_Modus in rebus_--an admirable proverb, upon all common occasions--is
inapplicable, of course, to musical matters. No doubt of it. The luxury of
sweet sounds cannot be too dearly bought; and, for its procurement,
mankind may go stark mad, without any diminution of their respectability.
Such I infer to be the popular philosophy of today--_while it is called
today_. The moderns have been greatly perplexed, by the legends, which
have come down to us, respecting the melody of swans. The _carmina
cycnorum_ of Ovid, and the _Cantantes sublime ferent ad sidera cycni_, of
Virgil, are perfectly incomprehensible by us. Cicero also, in his Tusculan
Questions, i. 74, says, they die, _cum cantu et voluptate_. Martial, xiii.
77, asserts the matter, very positively--
_Dulcia defecta modulatur carmina lingua
Cantator cycnus funeris ipse sui._
I no more believe in the power of a living or a dying swan to make melody
of any kind, than I believe in the antiquated hum-bug of immediate
emancipation. Pliny had no confidence in the story, and expresses himself
to that effect, x. 23, _Olorum morte narratur flebilis cantus (falso, ut
arbitror) aliquot experimentis_.
No mortal has done more than Shakspeare, among the moderns, to perpetuate
this pleasant fancy--no bard, when weary of Pegasus, and preferring a
drive to a ride, has harnessed his cygnets more frequently--or compelled
them to sing more sweetly, in a dying hour. A single example may suffice.
When prince Henry is told, that his father, King John, sang, during his
dying frenzy, he says--
"Tis strange, that death should sing--
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death:
And, from the organ pipe of frailty, sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest."