_Original._
Young, beautiful, and learned Jane, intent
On knowledge, found it peace; her vast acquirement
Of goodness was her fall; she was content
With dulcet pleasures, such as calm retirement
Yields to the wise alone;--her only vice
Was virtue: in obedience to her sire
And lord she died, with them, a sacrifice
To their ambition: her own mild desire
Was rather to be happy than be great;
For though at their request she claimed the crown,
That they, through her, might rise to rule the state,
Yet, the bright diadem, and gorgeous throne,
She view’d as cares, dimming the dignity
Of her unsullied mind, and pure benignity.
*
1815. On the 4th of January, died Alexander Macdonald, Esq., who is no
other way remarkable, than for a chivalrous devotion to the family of
Stuart. He raised a monument in the vale of Glenfinnyn, at the head of
Lochshiel, in the county of Inverness, with a Latin, Gaelic, and English
inscription, to commemorate the last open efforts of that family, for
the recovery of a crown they had forfeited by innumerable breaches of
the laws, and whose aggressions on life and property being suffered,
till
“_Non-resistance_ could no further go,”
they were excluded from the throne of the people, by the aristocracy and
commonalty of England in parliament assembled. As evidence of the spirit
that dictated such a memorial, and of the proper feeling which permits
that spirit to be expressed, in spite of its hostility to the principles
that deposited and continued the diadem of the commonwealth in the
custody of the house of Hanover, the inscription on the monument is
placed in the next column. It stands in English in these words:
On the spot where
PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD
First raised his Standard,
On the 19th day of August, MDCCXLV,
When he made the daring and romantic attempt
To recover a Throne lost by the imprudence of his
Ancestors,
This Column was erected by
ALEXANDER MACDONALD, Esq., of
Glenaladale,
To commemorate the generous zeal,
Undaunted bravery, and the inviolable fidelity,
Of his forefathers, and the rest of those
Who fought and bled in that
Arduous and unfortunate enterprise.
This Pillar is now,
Alas!
Also become the Monument
Of its amiable and accomplished Founder,
Who,
Before it was finished,
Died in Edinburgh on the 4th day of January,
MDCCCXV.
The “right line” of the Stuart race terminated in the late cardinal
York. He was the second son of “the Pretender,” and was born at Rome on
the 26th of March 1725; where he was baptized by the name of Henry
Benedict Maria Clemens: he died there in 1807, in the 83d year of his
age. In 1745 he went to France to head an army of fifteen thousand men,
assembled at Dunkirk for the invasion of England. The battle of Culloden
settled “the arduous and unfortunate enterprise,” which the “amiable and
accomplished founder” of the monument commemorates, and not a single
transport left Dunkirk roads. As soon as Henry Benedict heard of the
affair at Culloden, he returned to Rome, entered into priest’s orders,
and in 1747 was made a cardinal by pope Benedict XIV. It was taunted by
a former pope upon James II. that he “lost his kingdom for a mass;” and
it is certain that Henry Benedict was better qualified to take a red-hat
and pull on and off red stockings, than to attempt the conquest of a
free protestant nation.
After the expulsion of pope Pius VI. from “the chair of St. Peter,” by
the French, he fled from his splendid residences at Rome and Frascati to
Venice, infirm in health, distressed in circumstances, and at the age of
seventy-five. He subsisted for awhile on the produce of some silver
plate, which he had saved from the ruin of his property. By the friendly
interference of sir John Cox Hippisley, the cardinal’s situation was
made known to his late majesty, and lord Minto had orders to remit him a
present of 2000_l._, which he received in February 1800, with an
intimation that he might draw for the same amount in the July following;
and sir J. C. Hippisley communicated to him, that an annuity of 4000_l._
would be at his service, so long as his circumstances might require it.
This liberality was received and acknowledged by the cardinal in terms
of gratitude, and made a considerable impression on the reigning pope
and his court. These facts are extracted from the Gentleman’s Magazine,
(vols. 74 and 77,) which also observes, that “from the time he devoted
himself to ecclesiastical functions he seemed to have laid aside all
worldly views, till his father’s death in 1788, when he had medals
struck, bearing on their face his head, with ‘HENRICUS NONUS ANGLIÆ
REX;’ on the reverse, a city, with ‘GRATIA DEI, SED NON VOLUNTATE
HOMINUM:’ if we are not misinformed, our sovereign has one of these
medals.” From one in the possession of the compiler of this work, he is
enabled to present an engraving of it to his readers.
[Illustration: HENRY IX. KING OF ENGLAND.]
[Illustration: ST. SIMEON STYLITES, HERMIT OF THE PILLAR]
~January 5.~
_St. Simeon Stylites._ _St. Telesphorus._ _St. Syncletia._
_St. Simeon Stylites._
Alban Butler declares, that St. Simeon astonished the whole Roman empire
by his mortifications. In the monastery of Heliodorus, a man sixty-five
years of age, who had spent sixty-two years so abstracted from the
world, that he was ignorant of the most obvious things in it; the monks
ate but once a day: Simeon joined the community, and ate but once a
week. Heliodorus required Simeon to be more private in his
mortifications; “with this view,” says Butler, “judging the rough rope
of the well, made of twisted palm-tree leaves, a proper instrument of
penance, Simeon tied it close about his naked body, where it remained
unknown both to the community and his superior, till such time as it
having ate into his flesh, what he had privately done was discovered by
the effluvia proceeding from the wound.” Butler says, that it took three
days to disengage the saint’s clothes, and that “the incisions of the
physician, to cut the cord out of his body, were attended with such
anguish and pain, that he lay for some time as dead.” After this he
determined to pass the whole forty days of Lent in total abstinence, and
retired to a hermitage for that purpose. Bassus, an abbot, left with him
ten loaves and water, and coming to visit him at the end of the forty
days, found both loaves and water untouched, and the saint stretched on
the ground without signs of life. Bassus dipped a sponge in water,
moistened his lips, gave him the eucharist, and Simeon by degrees
swallowed a few lettuce leaves and other herbs. He passed twenty-six
Lents in the same manner. In the first part of a Lent he prayed
standing; growing weaker he prayed sitting; and towards the end, being
almost exhausted, he prayed lying on the ground. At the end of three
years he left his hermitage for the top of a mountain, made an enclosure
of loose stones, without a roof, and having resolved to live exposed to
the inclemencies of the weather, he fixed his resolution by fastening
his right leg to a rock with a great iron chain. Multitudes thronged to
the mountain to receive his benediction, and many of the sick recovered
their health; but as some were not satisfied unless they touched him in
his enclosure, and Simeon desired retirement from the daily concourse,
he projected a new and unprecedented manner of life. He erected a pillar
six cubits high, (each cubit being eighteen inches,) and dwelt on it
four years; on a second of twelve cubits high he lived three years; on a
third of twenty-two cubits high ten years; and on a fourth of forty
cubits, or sixty feet high, which the people built for him, he spent the
last twenty years of his life. This occasioned him to be called
_stylites_, from the Greek word _stylos_, a pillar. This pillar did not
exceed three feet in diameter at the top, so that he could not lie
extended on it: he had no seat with him; he only stooped or leaned to
take a little rest, and bowed his body in prayer so often, that a
certain person who counted these positions, found that he made one
thousand two hundred and forty-four reverences in one day, which if he
began at four o’clock in the morning and finished at eight o’clock at
night, gives a bow to every three-quarters of a minute; besides which he
exhorted the people twice a day. His garments were the skins of beasts,
he wore an iron collar round his neck, and had a horrible ulcer in his
foot. During his forty days’ abstinence throughout Lent, he tied himself
to a pole. He treated himself as the outcast of the world and the worst
of sinners, worked miracles, delivered prophecies, had the sacrament
delivered to him on the pillar, and died bowing upon it, in the
sixty-ninth of his age, after having lived upon pillars for six and
thirty years. His corpse was carried to Antioch attended by the bishops
and the whole country, and worked miracles on its way. So far this
account is from Alban Butler.
Without mentioning circumstances and miracles in the Golden Legend,
which are too numerous, and some not fit to be related, it may be
observed that it is there affirmed of him, that after his residence on
the pillars, one of his thighs rotted a whole year, during which time he
stood on one leg only. Near Simeon’s pillar was the dwelling of a
dragon, so very venomous, that nothing grew near his cave. This dragon
met with an accident; he had a stake in his eye, and coming all blind to
the saint’s pillar, and placing his eye upon it for three days without
doing harm to any one, Simeon ordered earth and water to be placed on
the dragon’s eye, which being done, out came the stake, a cubit in
length; when the people saw this miracle, they glorified God, and ran
away for fear of the dragon, who arose and adored for two hours, and
returned to his cave. A woman swallowed a little serpent, which
tormented her for many years, till she came to Simeon, who causing earth
and water to be laid on her mouth, the little serpent came out four feet
and a half long. It is affirmed by the Golden Legend, that when Simeon
died, Anthony smelt a precious odour proceeding from his body; that the
birds cried so much, that both men and beasts cried; that an angel came
down in a cloud that the patriarch of Antioch taking Simeon’s beard to
put among his relics, his hand withered, and remained so till multitudes
of prayers were said for him, and it was healed: and that more miracles
were worked at and after Simeon’s sepulture, than he had wrought all his
life.