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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 422, December 1850

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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 422, December 1850

Author: Various


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, VOL. 68, NO 422, DECEMBER 1850 ***

                               BLACKWOOD'S

                           EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

        *       *       *       *       *

          NO. CCCCXXII.     DECEMBER, 1850.     VOL. LXVIII.

        *       *       *       *       *




CONTENTS.


  MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. PART IV.,                 627

  ANCIENT AND MODERN ELOQUENCE,                                      645

  LAING'S OBSERVATIONS ON EUROPE,                                    671

  WHO ROLLED THE POWDER IN?                                          689

  A LECTURE ON JOURNALISM,                                           691

  THE GREAT UNKNOWN,                                                 698

  MODERN STATE TRIALS. PART III.,                                    712

  THE DEFENCES OF BRITAIN,                                           736

  THE POPISH PARTITION OF ENGLAND,                                   745

  INDEX,                                                             755

       *       *       *       *       *

                              EDINBURGH:

              WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET;
                    AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

   _To whom all communications (post paid) must be addressed._

          SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

       *       *       *       *       *

           PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

                              BLACKWOOD'S

                          EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

          NO. CCCCXXII.     DECEMBER, 1850.     VOL. LXVIII.




MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.


                        BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.


BOOK II.--CHAPTER VII.

In spite of all his Machiavellian wisdom, Dr Riccabocca had been foiled
in his attempt to seduce Leonard Fairfield into his service, even
though he succeeded in partially winning over the widow to his views.
For to her he represented the worldly advantages of the thing. Lenny
would learn to be fit for more than a day-labourer; he would learn
gardening, in all its branches--rise some day to be a head gardener.
"And," said Riccabocca, "I will take care of his book learning, and
teach him whatever he has a head for."

"He has a head for everything," said the widow.

"Then," said the wise man, "everything shall go into it."

The widow was certainly dazzled; for, as we have seen, she highly
prized scholarly distinction, and she knew that the Parson looked
upon Riccabocca as a wondrous learned man. But still, Riccabocca was
said to be a Papist, and suspected to be a conjuror. Her scruples on
both these points the Italian, who was an adept in the art of talking
over the fair sex, would no doubt have dissipated, if there had
been any use in it; but Lenny put a dead stop to all negotiations.
He had taken a mortal dislike to Riccabocca; he was very much
frightened by him--and the spectacles, the pipe, the cloak, the long
hair, and the red umbrella; and said so sturdily, in reply to every
overture,--"Please, sir, I'd rather not; I'd rather stay along with
mother"--that Riccabocca was forced to suspend all farther experiments
in his Machiavellian diplomacy. He was not at all cast down, however,
by his first failure; on the contrary, he was one of those men whom
opposition stimulates. And what before had been but a suggestion of
prudence, became an object of desire. Plenty of other lads might no
doubt be had, on as reasonable terms as Lenny Fairfield; but the moment
Lenny presumed to baffle the Italian's designs upon him, the special
acquisition of Lenny became of paramount importance in the eyes of
Signor Riccabocca.

Jackeymo, however, lost all his interest in the traps, snares, and gins
which his master proposed to lay for Leonard Fairfield, in the more
immediate surprise that awaited him on learning that Dr Riccabocca had
accepted an invitation to pass a few days at the Hall.

"There will be no one there but the family," said Riccabocca. "Poor
Giacomo, a little chat in the servants' hall will do you good; and the
Squire's beef is more nourishing, after all, than the sticklebacks and
minnows. It will lengthen your life."

"The Padrone jests," said Jackeymo statelily, "as if any one could
starve in his service."

"Um," said Riccabocca. "At least, faithful friend, you have tried that
experiment as far as human nature will permit;" and he extended his
hand to his fellow-exile with that familiarity which exists between
servant and master in the usages of the Continent. Jackeymo bent low,
and a tear fell upon the hand he kissed.

"_Cospetto!_" said Dr Riccabocca, "a thousand mock pearls do not make
up the cost of a single true one! The tears of women, we know their
worth; but the tear of an honest man--Fie, Giacomo!--at least I can
never repay you this! Go and see to our wardrobe."

So far is his master's wardrobe was concerned, that order was pleasing
to Jackeymo; for the Doctor had in his drawers suits which Jackeymo
pronounced to be as good as new, though many a long year had passed
since they left the tailor's hands. But when Jackeymo came to examine
the state of his own clothing department, his face grew considerably
longer. It was not that he was without other clothes than those on
his back--quantity was there, but the quality! Mournfully he gazed
on two suits, complete in the three separate members of which man's
raiments are composed: the one suit extended at length upon his bed,
like a veteran stretched by pious hands after death; the other brought
piecemeal to the invidious light--the _torso_ placed upon a chair, the
limbs dangling down from Jackeymo's melancholy arm. No bodies long
exposed at the Morgue could evince less sign of resuscitation than
those respectable defuncts! For, indeed, Jackeymo had been less thrifty
of his apparel--more _profusus sui_--than his master. In the earliest
days of their exile, he preserved the decorous habit of dressing for
dinner--it was a respect due to the Padrone--and that habit had lasted
till the two habits on which it necessarily depended had evinced the
first symptoms of decay; then the evening clothes had been taken into
morning wear, in which hard service they had breathed their last.

The Doctor, notwithstanding his general philosophical abstraction from
such household details, had more than once said, rather in pity to
Jackeymo, than with an eye to that respectability which the costume
of the servant reflects on the dignity of the master--"Giacomo, thou
wantest clothes: fit thyself out of mine!"

And Jackeymo had bowed his gratitude, as if the donation had been
accepted: but the fact was, that that same fitting-out was easier said
than done. For though--thanks to an existence mainly upon sticklebacks
and minnows--both Jackeymo and Riccabocca had arrived at that state
which the longevity of misers proves to be most healthful to the
human frame,--viz., skin and bone--yet, the bones contained in the
skin of Riccabocca all took longitudinal directions; while those in
the skin of Jackeymo spread out latitudinally. And you might as well
have made the bark of a Lombardy poplar serve for the trunk of some
dwarfed and pollarded oak--in whose hollow the Babes of the Wood
could have slept at their ease--as have fitted out Jackeymo from the
garb of Riccabocca. Moreover, if the skill of the tailor could have
accomplished that undertaking, the faithful Jackeymo would never have
had the heart to avail himself of the generosity of his master. He
had a sort of religious sentiment, too, about those vestments of the
Padrone. The ancients, we know, when escaping from shipwreck, suspended
in the votive temple the garments in which they had struggled through
the wave. Jackeymo looked on those relics of the past with a kindred
superstition. "This coat the Padrone wore on such an occasion. I
remember the very evening the Padrone last put on those pantaloons!"
And coat and pantaloons were tenderly dusted, and carefully restored to
their sacred rest.

But now, after all, what was to be done? Jackeymo was much too
proud to exhibit his person, to the eyes of the Squire's butler, in
habiliments discreditable to himself and the Padrone. In the midst of
his perplexity the bell rang, and he went down into the parlour.

Riccabocca was standing on the hearth under his symbolical
representation of the "Patriæ Exul."

"Giacomo," quoth he, "I have been thinking that thou hast never done
what I told thee, and fitted thyself out from my superfluities. But we
are going now into the great world: visiting once begun, Heaven knows
where it may stop! Go to the nearest town and get thyself clothes.
Things are dear in England. Will this suffice?" And Riccabocca extended
a £5 note.

Jackeymo, we have seen, was more familiar with his master than
we formal English permit our domestics to be with us. But in his
familiarity he was usually respectful. This time, however, respect
deserted him.

"The Padrone is mad!" he exclaimed; "he would fling away his whole
fortune if I would let him. Five pounds English, or a hundred and
twenty-six pounds Milanese![1] Santa Maria! Unnatural father! And what
is to become of the poor Signorina? Is this the way you are to marry
her in the foreign land?"

"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, bowing his head to the storm; "the
Signorina to-morrow; to-day, the honour of the house. Thy
small-clothes, Giacomo. Miserable man, thy small-clothes!"

"It is just," said Jackeymo, recovering himself, and with humility;
"and the Padrone does right to blame me, but not in so cruel a way. It
is just--the Padrone lodges and boards me, and gives me handsome wages,
and he has a right to expect that I should not go in this figure."

"For the board and the lodgment, good," said Riccabocca. "For the
handsome wages, they are the visions of thy fancy!"

"They are no such thing," said Jackeymo, "they are only in arrear.
As if the Padrone could not pay them some day or other--as if I was
demeaning myself by serving a master who did not intend to pay his
servants! And can't I wait? Have I not my savings too? But be cheered,
be cheered; you shall be contented with me. I have two beautiful suits
still. I was arranging them when you rang for me. You shall see, you
shall see."

And Jackeymo hurried from the room, hurried back into his own chamber,
unlocked a little trunk which he kept at his bed head, tossed out a
variety of small articles, and from the deepest depth extracted a
leathern purse. He emptied the contents on the bed. They were chiefly
Italian coins, some five-franc pieces, a silver medallion enclosing
a little image of his patron saint--San Giacomo--one solid English
guinea, and two or three pounds' worth in English silver. Jackeymo
put back the foreign coins, saying prudently, "One will lose on them
here;" he seized the English coins, and counted them out. "But are you
enough, you rascals?" quoth he angrily, giving them a good shake. His
eye caught sight of the medallion--he paused; and after eyeing the tiny
representation of the saint with great deliberation, he added, in a
sentence which he must have picked up from the proverbial aphorisms of
his master--

"What's the difference between the enemy who does not hurt me, and
the friend who does not serve me? _Monsignore San Giacomo_, my patron
saint, you are of very little use to me in the leathern bag. But if
you help me to get into a new pair of small-clothes on this important
occasion, you will be a friend indeed. _Alla bisogna, Monsignore._"
Then, gravely kissing the medallion, he thrust it into one pocket, the
coins into the other, made up a bundle of the two defunct suits, and,
muttering to himself, "Beast, miser that I am, to disgrace the Padrone,
with all these savings in his service!" ran down stairs into his
pantry, caught up his hat and stick, and in a few moments more was seen
trudging off to the neighbouring town of L----.

Apparently the poor Italian succeeded, for he came back that evening in
time to prepare the thin gruel which made his master's supper, with a
suit of black--a little threadbare, but still highly respectable--two
shirt fronts, and two white cravats. But, out of all this finery,
Jackeymo held the small-clothes in especial veneration; for as they
had cost exactly what the medallion had sold for, so it seemed to him
that San Giacomo had heard his prayer in that quarter to which he had
more exclusively directed the saint's direction. The other habiliments
came to him in the merely human process of sale and barter; the
small-clothes were the personal gratuity of San Giacomo!


CHAPTER VIII.

Life has been subjected to many ingenious comparisons; and if we do
not understand it any better, it is not for want of what is called
"reasoning by illustration." Amongst other resemblances, there are
moments when, to a quiet contemplator, it suggests the image of one
of those rotatory entertainments commonly seen in fairs, all known by
the name of "whirligigs or roundabouts," in which each participator of
the pastime, seated on his hobby, is always apparently in the act of
pursuing some one before him, while he is pursued by some one behind.
Man, and woman too, are naturally animals of chase; the greatest still
finds something to follow, and there is no one too humble not to be an
object of prey to another. Thus, confining our view to the village of
Hazeldean, we behold in this whirligig Dr Riccabocca spurring his hobby
after Lenny Fairfield; and Miss Jemima, on her decorous side-saddle,
whipping after Dr Riccabocca. Why, with so long and intimate a
conviction of the villany of our sex, Miss Jemima should resolve upon
giving the male animal one more chance of redeeming itself in her
eyes, I leave to the explanation of those gentlemen who profess to
find "their only hooks in woman's looks" Perhaps it might be from the
over-tenderness and clemency of Miss Jemima's nature; perhaps it might
be that, as yet, she had only experienced the villany of man born and
reared in these cold northern climates; and in the land of Petrarch
and Romeo, of the citron and myrtle, there was reason to expect that
the native monster would be more amenable to gentle influences, less
obstinately hardened in his iniquities. Without entering farther into
these hypotheses, it is sufficient to say, that on Signor Riccabocca's
appearance in the drawing-room, at Hazeldean, Miss Jemima felt more
than ever rejoiced that she had relaxed in his favour her general
hostility to man. In truth, though Frank saw something quizzical in the
old-fashioned and outlandish cut of the Italian's sober dress; in his
long hair, and the _chapeau bras_, over which he bowed so gracefully,
and then pressed it, as if to his heart, before tucking it under his
arm, after the fashion in which the gizzard reposes under the wing of
a roasted pullet; yet it was impossible that even Frank could deny
to Riccabocca that praise which is due to the air and manner of all
unmistakeable gentleman. And certainly as, after dinner, conversation
grew more familiar, and the Parson and Mrs Dale, who had been invited
to meet their friend, did their best to draw him out, his talk, though
sometimes a little too wise for his listeners, became eminently
animated and agreeable. It was the conversation of a man who, besides
the knowledge which is acquired from books and life, had studied the
art which becomes a gentleman--that of pleasing in polite society.
Riccabocca, however, had more than this art--he had one which is
often less innocent--the art of penetrating into the weak side of his
associates, and of saying the exact thing which hits it plump in the
middle, with the careless air of a random shot.

The result was, that all were charmed with him; and that even Captain
Barnabas postponed the whist-table for a full hour after the usual
time. The Doctor did not play--he thus became the property of the two
ladies, Miss Jemima, and Mrs Dale.

Seated between the two, in the place rightfully appertaining to
Flimsey, who this time was fairly dislodged, to her great wonder and
discontent, the Doctor was the emblem of true Domestic Felicity, placed
between Friendship and Love.

Friendship, as became her, worked quietly at the embroidered
pocket-handkerchief, and left Love to its more animated operations.
"You, must be very lonely at the Casino," said Love, in a sympathising
tone.

"Madam," replied Riccabocca, gallantly, "I shall think so when I leave
you."

Friendship cast a sly glance at Love--Love blushed or looked down
on the carpet, which comes to the same thing. "Yet," began Love
again--"yet solitude, to a feeling heart--"

Riccabocca thought of the note of invitation, and involuntarily
buttoned his coat, as if to protect the individual organ thus
alarmingly referred to.

"Solitude, to a feeling heart, has its charms. It is so hard even for
us, poor ignorant women, to find a congenial companion--but for _you_!"
Love stopped short, as if it had said too much, and smelt confusedly at
its bouquet.

Dr Riccabocca cautiously lowered his spectacles, and darted one glance,
which, with the rapidity and comprehensiveness of lightning, seemed
to envelope and take in it, as it were, the whole inventory of Miss
Jemima's personal attractions. Now, Miss Jemima, as I have before
observed, had a mild and pensive expression of countenance, and she
would have been positively pretty had the mildness looked a little more
alert, and the pensiveness somewhat less lackadaisical. In fact, though
Miss Jemima was constitutionally mild, she was not _de naturâ_ pensive;
she had too much of the Hazeldean blood in her veins for that sullen
and viscid humour called melancholy, and therefore this assumption of
pensiveness really spoilt her character of features, which only wanted
to be lighted up by a cheerful smile to be extremely prepossessing.
The same remark might apply to the figure, which--thanks to the same
pensiveness--lost all the undulating grace which movement and animation
bestow on the fluent curves of the feminine form. The figure was a
good figure, examined in detail--a little thin, perhaps, but by no
means emaciated--with just and elegant proportions, and naturally light
and flexible. But that same unfortunate pensiveness gave the whole a
character of inertness and languor; and when Miss Jemima reclined on
the sofa, so complete seemed the relaxation of nerve and muscle, that
you would have thought she had lost the use of her limbs. Over her face
and form, thus defrauded of the charms Providence had bestowed on them,
Dr Riccabocca's eye glanced rapidly; and then moving nearer to Mrs
Dale--"Defend me" (he stopped a moment, and added,) "from the charge of
not being able to appreciate congenial companionship."

"Oh, I did not say that!" cried Miss Jemima.

"Pardon me," said the Italian, "if I am so dull as to misunderstand
you. One may well lose one's head, at least, in such a neighbourhood as
this." He rose as he spoke, and bent over Frank's shoulder to examine
some Views of Italy, which Miss Jemima (with what, if wholly unselfish,
would have been an attention truly delicate) had extracted from the
library in order to gratify the guest.

"Most interesting creature, indeed," sighed Miss Jemima, "but too--too
flattering!"

"Tell me," said Mrs Dale gravely, "do you think, love, that you could
put off the end of the world a little longer, or must we make haste in
order to be in time?"

"How wicked you are!" said Miss Jemima, turning aside.

Some few minutes afterwards, Mrs Dale contrived it so that Dr
Riccabocca and herself were in a farther corner of the room, looking at
a picture said to be by Wouvermans.

MRS DALE.--"She is very amiable, Jemima, is she not?"

RICCABOCCA.--"Exceedingly so. Very fine battle-piece!"

MRS DALE.--"So kind-hearted."

RICCABOCCA.--"All ladies are. How naturally that warrior makes his
desperate cut at the runaway!"

MRS DALE.--"She is not what is called regularly handsome, but she has
something very winning."

RICCABOCCA, with a smile.--"So winning, that it is strange she is not
won. That gray mare in the foreground stands out very boldly!"

MRS DALE, distrusting the smile of Riccabocca, and throwing in a more
effective grape charge.--"Not won yet; and it is strange!--she will
have a very pretty fortune."

RICCABOCCA.--"Ah!"

MRS DALE.--"Six thousand pounds, I daresay--certainly four."

RICCABOCCA, suppressing a sigh, and with his wonted address.--"If Mrs
Dale were still single, she would never need a friend to say what her
portion might be; but Miss Jemima is so good that I am quite sure it is
not Miss Jemima's fault that she is still--Miss Jemima!"

The foreigner slipped away as he spoke, and sate himself down beside
the whist-players.

Mrs Dale was disappointed, but certainly not offended.--"It would be
such a good thing for both," muttered she, almost inaudibly.

"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he was undressing, that night, in the
large, comfortable, well-carpeted English bedroom, with that great
English four-posted bed in the recess which seems made to shame folks
out of single-blessedness--"Giacomo, I have had this evening the offer
of probably six thousand pounds--certainly of four thousand."

"_Cosa meravigliosa!_" exclaimed Jackeymo--"miraculous thing!" and
he crossed himself with great fervour. "Six thousand pounds English!
why, that must be a hundred thousand--blockhead that I am!--more than
a hundred and fifty thousand pounds Milanese!" And Jackeymo, who was
considerably enlivened by the Squire's ale, commenced a series of
gesticulations and capers, in the midst of which he stopped and cried,
"But not for nothing?"

"Nothing! no!"

"These mercenary English!--the Government wants to bribe you."

"That's not it."

"The priests want you to turn heretic."

"Worse than that," said the philosopher.

"Worse than that! O Padrone! for shame!"

"Don't be a fool, but pull off my pantaloons--they want me never to
wear _these_ again!"

"Never to wear what?" exclaimed Jackeymo, staring outright at his
master's long legs in their linen drawers--"never to wear--"

"The breeches," said Riccabocca laconically.

"The barbarians!" faltered Jackeymo.

"My nightcap!--and never to have any comfort in this," said Riccabocca,
drawing on the cotton head-gear; "and never to have any sound sleep
in that," pointing to the four-posted bed. "And to be a bondsman and
a slave," continued Riccabocca, waxing wroth; "and to be wheedled
and purred at, and pawed, and clawed, and scolded, and fondled,
and blinded, and deafened, and bridled, and saddled--bedevilled
and--married."

"Married!" said Jackeymo, more dispassionately--"that's very bad,
certainly; but more than a hundred and fifty thousand _lire_, and
perhaps a pretty young lady, and"--

"Pretty young lady!" growled Riccabocca, jumping into bed and drawing
the clothes fiercely over him. "Put out the candle, and get along with
you--do, you villanous old incendiary!"


CHAPTER IX.

It was not many days since the resurrection of those ill-omened stocks,
and it was evident already, to an ordinary observer, that something
wrong had got into the village. The peasants wore a sullen expression
of countenance; when the Squire passed, they took off their hats with
more than ordinary formality, but they did not return the same broad
smile to his quick, hearty "Good day, my man." The women peered at him
from the threshold or the casement, but did not, as was their wont, (at
least the wont of the prettiest,) take occasion to come out to catch
his passing compliment on their own good looks, or their tidy cottages.
And the children, who used to play after work on the site of the old
stocks, now shunned the place, and, indeed, seemed to cease play
altogether.

On the other hand, no man likes to build, or rebuild, a great public
work for nothing. Now that the Squire had resuscitated the stocks,
and made them so exceedingly handsome, it was natural that he should
wish to put somebody into them. Moreover, his pride and self-esteem
had been wounded by the Parson's opposition; and it would be a
justification to his own forethought, and a triumph over the Parson's
understanding, if he could satisfactorily and practically establish a
proof that the stocks had not been repaired before they were wanted.

Therefore, unconsciously to himself, there was something about the
Squire more burly, and authoritative, and menacing than heretofore. Old
Gaffer Solomons observed, "that they had better mind well what they
were about, for that the Squire had a wicked look in the tail of his
eye--just as the dun bull had afore it tossed neighbour Barnes's little
boy."

For two or three days these mute signs of something brewing in the
atmosphere had been rather noticeable than noticed, without any
positive overt act of tyranny on the one hand, or rebellion on the
other. But on the very Saturday night in which Dr Riccabocca was
installed in the four-posted bed in the chintz chamber, the threatened
revolution commenced. In the dead of that night, personal outrage was
committed on the stocks. And on the Sunday morning, Mr Stirn, who was
the earliest riser in the parish, perceived, in going to the farmyard,
that the nob of the column that flanked the board had been feloniously
broken off; that the four holes were bunged up with mud; and that some
Jacobinical villain had carved, on the very centre of the flourish
or scroll work, "Dam the stoks!" Mr Stirn was much too vigilant a
right-hand man, much too zealous a friend of law and order, not to
regard such proceedings with horror and alarm. And when the Squire came
into his dressing-room at half-past seven, his butler (who fulfilled
also the duties of valet) informed him, with a mysterious air, that
Mr Stirn had something "very partikler to communicate, about a most
howdacious midnight 'spiracy and 'sault."

The Squire stared, and bade Mr Stirn be admitted.

"Well?" cried the Squire, suspending the operation of stropping his
razor.

Mr Stirn groaned.

"Well, man, what now?"

"I never knowed such a thing in this here parish afore," began Mr
Stirn, "and I can only 'count for it by s'posing that them foreign
Papishers have been semminating"--

"Been what?"

"Semminating"--

"Disseminating, you blockhead--disseminating what?"

"Damn the stocks," began Mr Stirn, plunging right _in medias res_, and
by a fine use of one of the noblest figures in rhetoric.

"Mr Stirn!" cried the Squire, reddening, "did you say 'Damn the
stocks?'--damn my new handsome pair of stocks!"

"Lord forbid, sir; that's what _they_ say: that's what they have digged
on it with knives and daggers, and they have stuffed mud in its four
holes, and broken the capital of the elewation."

The Squire took the napkin off his shoulder, laid down strop and razor;
he seated himself in his arm-chair majestically, crossed his legs, and
in a voice that affected tranquillity, said--

"Compose yourself, Stirn; you have a deposition to make, touching an
assault upon--can I trust my senses?--upon my new stocks. Compose
yourself--be calm. NOW! What the devil is come to the parish?"

"Ah, sir, what indeed?" replied Mr Stirn; and then, laying the
forefinger of the right hand on the palm of the left, he narrated the
case.

"And whom do you suspect? Be calm now, don't speak in a passion. You
are a witness, sir--a dispassionate, unprejudiced witness. Zounds and
fury! this is the most insolent, unprovoked, diabolical--but whom do
you suspect, I say?"

Stirn twirled his hat, elevated his eyebrows, jerked his thumb over his
shoulder, and whispered--"I hear as how the two Papishers slept at your
honour's last night."

"What, dolt! do you suppose Dr Rickeybockey got out of his warm bed to
bung up the holes in my new stocks?"

"Noa; he's too cunning to do it himself, but he may have been
semminating. He's mighty thick with Parson Dale, and your honour knows
as how the Parson set his face again the stocks. Wait a bit, sir--don't
fly at me yet. There be a boy in this here parish"--

"A boy!--ah, fool, now you are nearer the mark. The Parson write 'Damn
the stocks,' indeed! What boy do you mean?"

"And that boy be cockered up much by Mister Dale; and the Papisher went
and sat with him and his mother a whole hour t'other day; and that
boy is as deep as a well; and I seed him lurking about the place, and
hiding hisself under the tree the day the stocks was put up--and that
ere boy is Lenny Fairfield."

"Whew," said the Squire, whistling, "you have not your usual senses
about you to-day, man. Lenny Fairfield--pattern boy of the village.
Hold your tongue. I dare say it is not done by any one in the parish,
after all; some good-for-nothing vagrant--that cursed tinker, who goes
about with a very vicious donkey--whom, by the way, I caught picking
thistles out of the very eyes of the old stocks! Shows how the tinker
brings up his donkeys! Well, keep a sharp look-out. To-day is Sunday;
worst day of the week, I'm sorry and ashamed to say, for rows and
depredations. Between the services, and after evening church, there are
always idle fellows from all the neighbouring country about, as you
know too well. Depend on it, the real culprits will be found gathering
round the stocks, and will betray themselves: have your eyes, ears, and
wits about you, and I've no doubt we shall come to the rights of the
matter before the day's out. And if we do," added the Squire, "we'll
make an example of the ruffian!"

"In course," said Stirn; "and if we don't find him, we must make an
example all the same. That's where it is, sir. That's why the stocks
ben't respected; they has not had an example yet--we wants an example."

"On my word, I believe that's very true; and the first idle fellow you
catch in anything wrong we'll clap in, and keep him there for two hours
at least."

"With the biggest pleasure, your honour--that's what it is."

And Mr Stirn, having now got what he considered a complete and
unconditional authority over all the legs and wrists of Hazeldean
parish, _quoad_ the stocks, took his departure.


CHAPTER X.

"Randal," said Mrs Leslie, on this memorable Sunday--"Randal, do you
think of going to Mr Hazeldean's?"

"Yes, ma'am," answered Randal. "Mr Egerton does not object to it; and
as I do not return to Eton, I may have no other opportunity of seeing
Frank for some time. I ought not to fail in respect to Mr Egerton's
natural heir!"

"Gracious me!" cried Mrs Leslie, who, like many women of her cast and
kind, had a sort of worldliness in her notions, which she never evinced
in her conduct--"gracious me!--natural heir to the old Leslie property!"

"He is Mr Egerton's nephew, and," added Randal, ingenuously letting out
his thoughts, "I am no relation to Mr Egerton at all."

"But," said poor Mrs Leslie, with tears in her eyes, "it would be
a shame in the man, after paying your schooling and sending you to
Oxford, and having you to stay with him in the holidays, if he did not
mean anything by it."

"Anything, mother--yes--but not the thing you suppose. No matter. It is
enough that he has armed me for life, and I shall use the weapons as
seems to me best."

Here the dialogue was suspended, by the entrance of the other members
of the family, dressed for church.

"It can't be time for church! No! it can't!" exclaimed Mrs Leslie. She
was never in time for anything.

"Last bell ringing," said Mr Leslie, who, though a slow man, was
methodical and punctual. Mrs Leslie made a frantic rush at the
door, the Montfydget blood being now in a blaze--whirled up the
stairs--gained her room, tore her best bonnet from the peg, snatched
her newest shawl from the drawers, crushed the bonnet on her head,
flung the shawl on her shoulders, thrust a desperate pin into its
folds, in order to conceal a buttonless yawn in the body of her gown,
and then flew back like a whirlwind. Meanwhile the family were already
out of doors, in waiting; and just as the bell ceased, the procession
moved from the shabby house to the dilapidated church.

The church was a large one, but the congregation was small, and so was
the income of the Parson. It was a lay rectory, and the great tithes
had belonged to the Leslies, but they had been long since sold. The
vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than £100
a-year. The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon. He was a
good man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious
cares for wife and family, combined with what may be called _solitary
confinement_ for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two-legged
creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which it can
exchange an extra-parochial thought--had lulled him into a lazy
mournfulness, which at times was very like imbecility. His income
allowed him to do no good to the parish, whether in work, trade, or
charity; and thus he had no moral weight with the parishioners beyond
the example of his sinless life, and such negative effect as might be
produced by his slumberous exhortations. Therefore his parishioners
troubled him very little; and but for the influence which, in hours of
Montfydget activity, Mrs Leslie exercised over the most tractable--that
is, the children and the aged--not half-a-dozen persons would have
known or cared whether he shut up his church or not.

But our family were seated in state in their old seignorial pew, and Mr
Dumdrum, with a nasal twang, went lugubriously through the prayers; and
the old people who could sin no more, and the children who had not yet
learned to sin, croaked forth responses that might have come from the
choral frogs in Aristophanes. And there was a long sermon _apropos_ to
nothing which could possibly interest the congregation--being, in fact,
some controversial homily, which Mr Dumdrum had composed and preached
years before. And when this discourse was over, there was a loud
universal grunt, as if of release and thanksgiving, and a great clatter
of shoes--and the old hobbled, and the young scrambled, to the church
door.

Immediately after church, the Leslie family dined; and, as soon as
dinner was over, Randal set out on his foot journey to Hazeldean Hall.

Delicate and even feeble though his frame, he had the energy and
quickness of movement which belongs to nervous temperaments; and he
tasked the slow stride of a peasant, whom he took to serve him as a
guide for the first two or three miles. Though Randal had not the
gracious open manner with the poor which Frank inherited from his
father, he was still (despite many a secret hypocritical vice, at
war with the character of a gentleman) gentleman enough to have no
churlish pride to his inferiors. He talked little, but he suffered his
guide to talk; and the boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted,
indulged in eulogistic comments on that young gentleman's pony, from
which he diverged into some compliments on the young gentleman himself.
Randal drew his hat over his brows. There is a wonderful tact and fine
breeding in your agricultural peasant; and though Tom Stowell was but
a brutish specimen of the class, he suddenly perceived that he was
giving pain. He paused, scratched his head, and glancing affectionately
towards his companion, exclaimed--

"But I shall live to see you on a handsomer beastis than that little
pony, Master Randal; and sure I ought, for you be as good a gentleman
as any in the land."

"Thank you," said Randal. "But I like walking better than riding--I am
more used to it."

"Well, and you walk bra'ly--there ben't a better walker in the county.
And very pleasant it is walking; and 'tis a pretty country afore you,
all the way to the Hall."

Randal strode on, as if impatient of these attempts to flatter or to
soothe; and, coming at length into a broader lane, said--"I think I can
find my way now. Many thanks to you, Tom;" and he forced a shilling
into Tom's horny palm. The man took it reluctantly, and a tear started
to his eye. He felt more grateful for that shilling than he had for
Frank's liberal half-crown; and he thought of the poor fallen family,
and forgot his own dire wrestle with the wolf at his door.

He staid lingering in the lane till the figure of Randal was out of
sight, and then returned slowly. Young Leslie continued to walk on
at a quick pace. With all his intellectual culture, and his restless
aspirations, his breast afforded him no thought so generous, no
sentiment so poetic, as those with which the unlettered clown crept
slouchingly homeward.

As Randal gained a point where several lanes met on a broad piece of
waste land, he began to feel tired, and his step slackened. Just then a
gig emerged from one of these by-roads, and took the same direction as
the pedestrian. The road was rough and hilly, and the driver proceeded
at a foot's-pace; so that the gig and the pedestrian went pretty well
abreast.

"You seem tired, sir," said the driver, a stout young farmer of the
higher class of tenants, and he looked down compassionately on the
boy's pale countenance and weary stride. "Perhaps we are going the same
way, and I can give you a lift?"

It was Randal's habitual policy to make use of every advantage
proffered to him, and he accepted the proposal frankly enough to please
the honest farmer.

"A nice day, sir," said the latter, as Randal sat by his side. "Have
you come far?"

"From Rood Hall."

"Oh, you be young Squire Leslie," said the farmer, more respectfully,
and lifting his hat.

"Yes, my name is Leslie. You know Rood, then?"

"I was brought up on your father's land, sir. You may have heard of
Farmer Bruce?"

RANDAL.--"I remember, when I was a little boy, a Mr Bruce, who rented,
I believe, the best part of our land, and who used to bring us cakes
when he called to see my father. He is a relation of yours?"

FARMER BRUCE.--"He was my uncle. He is dead now, poor man."

RANDAL.--"Dead! I am grieved to hear it. He was very kind to us
children. But it is long since he left my father's farm."

FARMER BRUCE, apologetically.--"I am sure he was very sorry to go. But,
you see, he had an unexpected legacy--"

RANDAL.--"And retired from business?"

FARMER BRUCE.--"No. But, having capital, he could afford to pay a good
rent for a real good farm."

RANDAL, bitterly.--"All capital seems to fly from the lands of Rood.
And whose farm did he take?"

FARMER BRUCE.--"He took Hawleigh, under Squire Hazeldean. I rent it
now. We've laid out a power o' money on it. But I don't complain. It
pays well."

RANDAL.--"Would the money have paid as well, sunk on my father's land?"

FARMER BRUCE.--"Perhaps it might, in the long run. But then, sir, we
wanted new premises--barns and cattle-sheds, and a deal more--which the
landlord should do; but it is not every landlord as can afford that.
Squire Hazeldean's a rich man."

RANDAL.--"Ay!"

The road now became pretty good, and the farmer put his horse into a
brisk trot.

"But which way be you going, sir? I don't care for a few miles more or
less, if I can be of service."

"I am going to Hazeldean," said Randal, rousing himself from a reverie.
"Don't let me take you out of your way."

"Oh, Hawleigh Farm is on the other side of the village, so it be quite
my way, sir."

The farmer then, who was really a smart young fellow--one of that race
which the application of capital to land has produced, and which, in
point of education and refinement, are at least on a par with the
squires of a former generation--began to talk about his handsome horse,
about horses in general, about hunting and coursing: he handled all
these subjects with spirit, yet with modesty. Randal pulled his hat
still lower down over his brows, and did not interrupt him till past
the Casino, when, struck by the classic air of the place, and catching
a scent from the orange trees, the boy asked abruptly--"Whose house is
that?"

"Oh, it belongs to Squire Hazeldean, but it is let or lent to a
foreign Mounseer. They say he is quite the gentleman, but uncommonly
poor."

"Poor," said Randal, turning back to gaze on the trim garden, the neat
terrace, the pretty belvidere, and (the door of the house being open)
catching a glimpse of the painted hall within--"poor, the place seems
well kept. What do you call poor, Mr Bruce?"

The farmer laughed. "Well, that's a home question, sir. But I believe
the Mounseer is as poor as a man can be who makes no debts and does not
actually starve."

"As poor as my father?" asked Randal openly and abruptly.

"Lord, sir! your father be a very rich man compared to him."

Randal continued to gaze, and his mind's eye conjured up the contrast
of his slovenly shabby home, with all its neglected appurtenances! No
trim garden at Rood Hall, no scent from odorous orange blossoms. Here
poverty at least was elegant--there, how squalid! He did not comprehend
at how cheap a rate the luxury of the Beautiful can be effected. They
now approached the extremity of the Squire's park pales; and Randal,
seeing a little gate, bade the farmer stop his gig, and descended.
The boy plunged amidst the thick oak groves; the farmer went his way
blithely, and his mellow merry whistle came to Randal's moody ear as he
glided quick under the shadow of the trees.

He arrived at the Hall, to find that all the family were at church;
and, according to the patriarchal custom, the church-going family
embraced nearly all the servants. It was therefore an old invalid
housemaid who opened the door to him. She was rather deaf, and seemed
so stupid that Randal did not ask leave to enter and wait for Frank's
return. He therefore said briefly that he would just stroll on the
lawn, and call again when church was over.

The old woman stared, and strove to hear him; meanwhile Randal turned
round abruptly, and sauntered towards the garden side of the handsome
old house.

There was enough to attract any eye in the smooth greensward of the
spacious lawn--in the numerous parterres of varying flowers--in the
venerable grandeur of the two mighty cedars, which threw their still
shadows over the grass--and in the picturesque building, with its
projecting mullions and heavy gables; yet I fear that it was with no
poet's nor painter's eye that this young old man gazed on the scene
before him.

He beheld the evidence of wealth--and the envy of wealth jaundiced his
soul.

Folding his arms on his breast, he stood awhile, looking all around him
with closed lips and lowering brow; then he walked slowly on, his eyes
fixed on the ground, and muttered to himself--

"The heir to this property is little better than a dunce; and they tell
me I have talents and learning, and I have taken to my heart the maxim,
'Knowledge is power.' And yet, with all my struggles, will knowledge
ever place me on the same level as that on which this dunce is born? I
don't wonder that the poor should hate the rich. But of all the poor,
who should hate the rich like the pauper gentleman? I suppose Audley
Egerton means me to come into Parliament, and be a Tory like himself.
What! keep things as they are! No; for me not even Democracy, unless
there first come Revolution. I understand the cry of a Marat--'More
blood!' Marat had lived as a poor man, and cultivated science--in the
sight of a prince's palace."

He turned sharply round, and glared vindictively on the poor old hall,
which, though a very comfortable habitation, was certainly no palace;
and with his arms still folded on his breast, he walked backward, as if
not to lose the view, nor the chain of ideas it conjured up.

"But," he continued to soliloquise--"but of revolution there is no
chance. Yet the same wit and will that would thrive in revolutions
should thrive in this commonplace life. Knowledge is power. Well, then,
shall I have no power to oust this blockhead? Oust him--what from? His
father's halls? Well--but if he were dead, who would be the heir of
Hazeldean? Have I not heard my mother say that I am as near in blood to
this Squire as any one, if he had no children? Oh, but the boy's life
is worth ten of mine! Oust him from what? At least from the thoughts
of his uncle Egerton--an uncle who has never even seen him! That, at
least, is more feasible. 'Make my way in life,' sayest thou, Audley
Egerton. Ay--and to the fortune thou hast robbed from my ancestors.
Simulation--simulation. Lord Bacon allows simulation. Lord Bacon
practised it--and"--

Here the soliloquy came to a sudden end; for as, rapt in his thoughts,
the boy had continued to walk backwards, he had come to the verge where
the lawn slided off into the ditch of the ha-ha--and, just as he was
fortifying himself by the precept and practice of my Lord Bacon, the
ground went from under him, and slap into the ditch went Randal Leslie!

It so happened that the Squire, whose active genius was always at
some repair or improvement, had been but a few days before widening
and sloping off the ditch just in that part, so that the earth was
fresh and damp, and not yet either turfed or flattened down. Thus when
Randal, recovering his first surprise and shock, rose to his feet, he
found his clothes covered with mud; while the rudeness of the fall
was evinced by the fantastic and extraordinary appearance of his hat,
which, hollowed here, bulging there, and crushed out of all recognition
generally, was as little like the hat of a decorous hard-reading young
gentleman--_protégé_ of the dignified Mr Audley Egerton--as any hat
picked out of a kennel after some drunken brawl possibly could be.

Randal was dizzy, and stunned, and bruised, and it was some moments
before he took heed of his raiment. When he did so, his spleen was
greatly aggravated. He was still boy enough not to like the idea of
presenting himself to the unknown Squire, and the dandy Frank, in such
a trim: he resolved at once to regain the lane and return home, without
accomplishing the object of his journey; and seeing the footpath right
before him, which led to a gate that he conceived would admit him into
the highway sooner than the path by which he had come, he took it at
once.

It is surprising how little we human creatures heed the warnings of our
good genius. I have no doubt that some benignant Power had precipitated
Randal Leslie into the ditch, as a significant hint of the fate of all
who choose what is, now-a-days, by no means an uncommon step in the
march of intellect--viz., the walking backwards, in order to gratify a
vindictive view of one's neighbour's property! I suspect that, before
this century is out, many a fine fellow will thus have found his ha-ha,
and scrambled out of the ditch with a much shabbier coat than he had
on when he fell into it. But Randal did not thank his good genius for
giving him a premonitory tumble;--and I never yet knew a man who did!


CHAPTER XI.

The Squire was greatly ruffled at breakfast that morning. He was too
much of an Englishman to bear insult patiently, and he considered that
he had been personally insulted in the outrage offered to his recent
donation to the parish. His feelings, too, were hurt as well as his
pride. There was something so ungrateful in the whole thing, just after
he had taken so much pains, not only in the resuscitation, but the
embellishment of the stocks. It was not, however, so rare an occurrence
for the Squire to be ruffled, as to create any remark. Riccabocca,
indeed, as a stranger, and Mrs Hazeldean, as a wife, had the quick tact
to perceive that the host was glum and the husband snappish; but the
one was too discreet and the other too sensible, to chafe the new sore,
whatever it might be; and shortly after breakfast the Squire retired
into his study, and absented himself from morning service.

In his delightful _Life of Oliver Goldsmith_, Mr Foster takes care to
touch our hearts by introducing his hero's excuse for not entering
the priesthood. He did not feel himself good enough. Thy Vicar of
Wakefield, poor Goldsmith, was an excellent substitute for thee; and
Dr Primrose, at least, will be good enough for the world until Miss
Jemima's fears are realised. Now, Squire Hazeldean had a tenderness
of conscience much less reasonable than Goldsmith's. There were
occasionally days in which he did not feel good enough--I don't say
for a priest, but even for one of the congregation--"days in which,
(said the Squire in his own blunt way,) as I have never in my life met
a worse devil than a devil of a temper, I'll not carry mine into the
family pew. He shan't be growling out hypocritical responses from my
poor grandmother's prayer-book." So the Squire and his demon staid at
home. But the demon was generally cast out before the day was over;
and, on this occasion, when the bell rang for afternoon service, it
may be presumed that the Squire had reasoned or fretted himself into
a proper state of mind; for he was then seen sallying forth from the
porch of his hall, arm-in-arm with his wife, and at the head of his
household. The second service was (as is commonly the case, in rural
districts) more numerously attended than the first one; and it was our
Parson's wont to devote to this service his most effective discourse.

Parson Dale, though a very fair scholar, had neither the deep theology
nor the archæological learning that distinguish the rising generation
of the clergy. I much doubt if he could have passed what would now be
called a creditable examination in the Fathers; and as for all the nice
formalities in the rubric, he would never have been the man to divide a
congregation or puzzle a bishop. Neither was Parson Dale very erudite
in ecclesiastical architecture. He did not much care whether all the
details in the church were purely gothic or not: crockets and finials,
round arch and pointed arch, were matters, I fear, on which he had
never troubled his head. But one secret Parson Dale did possess, which
is perhaps of equal importance with those subtler mysteries--he knew
how to fill his church! Even at morning service no pews were empty, and
at evening service the church overflowed.

Parson Dale, too, may be considered, now-a-days, to hold but a mean
idea of the spiritual authority of the Church. He had never been
known to dispute on its exact bearing with the State--whether it
was incorporated with the State, or above the State--whether it was
antecedent to the Papacy, or formed from the Papacy, &c., &c. According
to his favourite maxim, _Quieta non movere_, (not to disturb things
that are quiet), I have no doubt that he would have thought that the
less discussion is provoked upon such matters, the better for both
church and laity. Nor had he ever been known to regret the disuse of
the ancient custom of excommunication, nor any other diminution of
the powers of the priesthood, whether minatory or militant; yet for
all this, Parson Dale had a great notion of the sacred privilege of a
minister of the gospel--to advise--to deter--to persuade--to reprove.
And it was for the evening service that he prepared those sermons,
which may be called, "sermons that preach _at_ you." He preferred the
evening for that salutary discipline, not only because the congregation
was more numerous, but also because, being a shrewd man in his own
innocent way, he knew that people bear better to be preached at after
dinner than before; that you arrive more insinuatingly at the heart
when the stomach is at peace. There was a genial kindness in Parson
Dale's way of preaching at you. It was done in so imperceptible
fatherly a manner, that you never felt offended. He did it, too, with
so much art that nobody but your own guilty self knew that you were
the sinner he was exhorting. Yet he did not spare rich nor poor: he
preached at the Squire, and that great fat farmer, Mr Bullock the
churchwarden, as boldly as at Hodge the ploughman, and Scrub the
hedger. As for Mr Stirn, he had preached at _him_ more often than at
any one in the parish; but Stirn, though he had the sense to know
it, never had the grace to reform. There was, too, in Parson Dale's
sermons, something of that boldness of illustration which would have
been scholarly if he had not made it familiar, and which is found in
the discourses of our elder divines. Like them, he did not scruple, now
and then, to introduce an anecdote from history, or borrow an allusion
from some non-scriptural author, in order to enliven the attention of
his audience, or render an argument more plain. And the good man had
an object in this, a little distinct from, though wholly subordinate to
the main purpose of his discourse. He was a friend to knowledge--but
to knowledge accompanied by religion; and sometimes his references
to sources not within the ordinary reading of his congregation would
spirit up some farmer's son, with an evening's leisure on his hands, to
ask the Parson for farther explanation, and so be lured on to a little
solid or graceful instruction under a safe guide.

Now on the present occasion, the Parson, who had always his eye and
heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realisation
of his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of
discontent was already at work amongst the peasants, and that
magisterial and inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural
benevolence of the Squire; seen, in short, the signs of a breach
between classes, and the precursors of the ever inflammable feud
between the rich and the poor, meditated nothing less than a great
Political Sermon--a sermon that should extract from the roots of social
truths a healing virtue for the wound that lay sore, but latent, in the
breast of his parish of Hazeldean:

And thus ran--

_The Political Sermon of Parson Dale._


CHAPTER XII.

              "For every man shall bear his own burden."
                                         _Galatians_, c. vi. v. 5.

"Brethren, every man has his burden. If God designed our lives to end
at the grave, may we not believe that he would have freed an existence
so brief from the cares and sorrows to which, since the beginning of
the world, mankind has been subjected? Suppose that I am a kind father,
and have a child whom I dearly love, but I know by a divine revelation
that he will die at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex
his infancy by needless preparations for the duties of life. If I am
a rich man, I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to
the stern discipline of school. If I am a poor man, I should not take
him with me to hedge and dig, to scorch in the sun, to freeze in the
winter's cold: why inflict hardships on his childhood, for the purpose
of fitting him for manhood, when I know that he is doomed not to grow
into man? But if, on the other hand, I believe my child is reserved for
a more durable existence, then should I not, out of the very love I
bear to him, prepare his childhood for the struggle of life, according
to that station in which he is born, giving many a toil, many a pain
to the infant, in order to rear and strengthen him for his duties as
man? So is it with our Father that is in Heaven. Viewing this life as
our infancy, and the next as our spiritual maturity, where 'in the ages
to come, he may show the exceeding riches of his grace,' it is in his
tenderness, as in his wisdom, to permit the toil and the pain which, in
tasking the powers and developing the virtues of the soul, prepare it
for 'the earnest of our inheritance, the redemption of the purchased
possession.' Hence it is that every man has his burden. Brethren, if
you believe that God is good, yea, but as tender as a human father,
you will know that your troubles in life are a proof that you are
reared for an eternity. But each man thinks his own burden the hardest
to bear: the poor man groans under his poverty, the rich man under
the cares that multiply with wealth. For, so far from wealth freeing
us from trouble, all the wise men who have written in all ages, have
repeated with one voice the words of the wisest, 'When goods increase,
they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners
thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?' And this is
literally true, my brethren; for, let a man be as rich as was the great
King Solomon himself, unless he lock up all his gold in a chest, it
must go abroad to be divided amongst others; yea, though, like Solomon,
he make him great works--though he build houses and plant vineyards,
and make him gardens and orchards--still the gold that he spends feeds
but the mouths he employs; and Solomon himself could not eat with a
better relish than the poorest mason who builded the house, or the
humblest labourer who planted the vineyard. Therefore, 'when goods
increase, they are increased that eat them.' And this, my brethren, may
teach us toleration and compassion for the rich. We share their riches
whether they will or not; we do not share their cares. The profane
history of our own country tells us that a princess, destined to be
the greatest queen that ever sat on this throne, envied the milk-maid
singing; and a profane poet, whose wisdom was only less than that of
the inspired writers, represents the man who by force and wit had risen
to be a king, sighing for the sleep vouchsafed to the meanest of his
subjects--all bearing out the words of the son of David--'The sleep
of the labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much; but the
abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.'

"Amongst my brethren now present, there is doubtless some one who has
been poor, and by honest industry has made himself comparatively rich.
Let his heart answer me while I speak: are not the chief cares that
now disturb him to be found in the goods he hath acquired?--has he not
both vexations to his spirit and trials to his virtue, which he knew
not when he went forth to his labour, and took no heed of the morrow?
But it is right, my brethren, that to every station there should be its
care--to every man his burden; for if the poor did not sometimes so far
feel poverty to be a burden as to desire to better their condition, and
(to use the language of the world) 'seek to rise in life,' their most
valuable energies would never be aroused; and we should not witness
that spectacle, which is so common in the land we live in--namely, the
successful struggle of manly labour against adverse fortune--a struggle
in which the triumph of one gives hope to thousands. It is said that
necessity is the mother of invention; and the social blessings which
are now as common to us as air and sunshine, have come from that law
of our nature which makes us aspire towards indefinite improvement,
enriches each successive generation by the labours of the last, and,
in free countries, often lifts the child of the labourer to place
amongst the rulers of the land. Nay, if necessity is the mother of
invention, poverty is the creator of the arts. If there had been no
poverty, and no sense of poverty, where would have been that which
we call the wealth of a country? Subtract from civilisation all that
has been produced by the poor, and what remains?--the state of the
savage. Where you now see labourer and prince, you would see equality
indeed--the equality of wild men. No; not even equality there! for
there, brute force becomes lordship, and woe to the weak! Where you
now see some in frieze, some in purple, you would see nakedness in
all. Where stand the palace and the cot, you would behold but mud huts
and caves. As far as the peasant excels the king among savages, so
far does the society exalted and enriched by the struggles of labour
excel the state in which Poverty feels no disparity, and Toil sighs
for no ease. On the other hand, if the rich were perfectly contented
with their wealth, their hearts would become hardened in the sensual
enjoyments it procures. It is that feeling, by Divine Wisdom implanted
in the soul, that there is vanity and vexation of spirit in the things
of Mammon, which still leaves the rich man sensitive to the instincts
of heaven, and teaches him to seek for happiness in those elevated
virtues to which wealth invites him--namely, protection to the lowly
and beneficence to the distressed.

"And this, my brethren, leads me to another view of the vast subject
opened to us by the words of the apostle--'Every man shall bear his
own burden.' The worldly conditions of life are unequal. Why are they
unequal? O my brethren, do you not perceive? Think you that, if it had
been better for our spiritual probation that there should be neither
great nor lowly, rich nor poor, Providence would not so have ordered
the dispensations of the world, and so, by its mysterious but merciful
agencies, have influenced the framework and foundations of society?
But if, from the remotest period of human annals, and in all the
numberless experiments of government which the wit of man has devised,
still this inequality is ever found to exist, may we not suspect that
there is something in the very principles of our nature to which that
inequality is necessary and essential? Ask why this inequality! Why?
as well ask why life is the sphere of duty and the nursery of virtues.
For if all men were equal, if there were no suffering and no ease, no
poverty and no wealth, would you not sweep with one blow the half at
least of human virtues from the world? If there were no penury and
no pain, what would become of fortitude?--what of patience?--what of
resignation? If there were no greatness and no wealth, what would
become of benevolence, of charity, of the blessed human pity, of
temperance in the midst of luxury, of justice in the exercise of power?
Carry the question farther; grant all conditions the same--no reverse,
no rise and no fall--nothing to hope for, nothing to fear--what a moral
death you would at once inflict upon all the energies of the soul, and
what a link between the heart of man and the Providence of God would
be snapped asunder! If we could annihilate evil, we should annihilate
hope; and hope, my brethren, is the avenue to faith. If there be 'a
time to weep, and a time to laugh,' it is that he who mourns may
turn to eternity for comfort, and he who rejoices may bless God for
the happy hour. Ah! my brethren, were it possible to annihilate the
inequalities of human life, it would be the banishment of our worthiest
virtues, the torpor of our spiritual nature, the palsy of our mental
faculties. The moral world, like the world without us, derives its
health and its beauty from diversity, and contrast.

"'Every man shall bear his own burden.' True: but now turn to an
earlier verse in the same chapter.--'Bear ye one another's burdens,
and so fulfil the law of Christ.' Yes; while Heaven ordains to each his
peculiar suffering, it connects the family of man into one household,
by that feeling which, more perhaps than any other, distinguish us
from the brute creation--I mean the feeling to which we give the name
of _sympathy_--the feeling for each other! The herd of deer shun the
stag that is marked by the gunner; the flock heedeth not the sheep that
creeps into the shade to die; but man has sorrow and joy not in himself
alone, but in the joy and sorrow of those around him. He who feels only
for himself abjures his very nature as man; for do we not say of one
who has no tenderness for mankind that he is _inhuman_? and do we not
call him who sorrows with the sorrowful, _humane_?

"Now, brethren, that which especially marked the divine mission of our
Lord, is the direct appeal to this sympathy which distinguishes us
from the brute. He seizes, not upon some faculty of genius given but
to few, but upon that ready impulse of heart which is given to us all;
and in saying, 'Love one another,' 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' he
elevates the most delightful of our emotions into the most sacred of
his laws. The lawyer asks our Lord, 'Who is my neighbour?' Our Lord
replies by the parable of the good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite
saw the wounded man that fell among the thieves, and passed by on the
other side. That priest might have been austere in his doctrine, that
Levite might have been learned in the law; but neither to the learning
of the Levite, nor to the doctrine of the priest, does our Saviour even
deign to allude. He cites but the action of the Samaritan, and saith
to the lawyer, 'Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour
unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy
unto him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.'

"O shallowness of human judgments! It was enough to be born a Samaritan
in order to be rejected by the priest, and despised by the Levite.
Yet now, what to us the priest and the Levite, of God's chosen race
though they were? They passed from the hearts of men when they passed
the sufferer by the wayside; while this loathed Samaritan, half thrust
from the pale of the Hebrew, becomes of our family, of our kindred;
a brother amongst the brotherhood of Love, so long as Mercy and
Affliction shall meet in the common thoroughfare of Life!

"'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.'
Think not, O my brethren, that this applies only to almsgiving--to that
relief of distress which is commonly called charity--to the obvious
duty of devoting, from our superfluities, something that we scarcely
miss, to the wants of a starving brother. No. I appeal to the poorest
amongst ye, if the worst burdens are those of the body--if the kind
word and the tender thought have not often lightened your hearts more
than bread bestowed with a grudge, and charity that humbles you by a
frown. Sympathy is a beneficence at the command of us all,--yea, of the
pauper as of the king; and sympathy is Christ's wealth. Sympathy is
brotherhood. The rich are told to have charity for the poor, and the
poor are enjoined to respect their superiors. Good: I say not to the
contrary. But I say also to the poor, '_In your turn have charity for
the rich_;' and I say to the rich, '_In your turn respect the poor_.'

"'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.'
Thou, O poor man, envy not nor grudge thy brother his larger portion
of worldly goods. Believe that he hath his sorrows and crosses like
thyself, and perhaps, as more delicately nurtured, he feels them
more; nay, hath he not temptations so great that our Lord hath
exclaimed--'How hardly they that have riches enter into the kingdom
of heaven?' And what are temptations but trials?--what are trials but
perils and sorrows? Think not that you cannot bestow your charity on
the rich man, even while you take your sustenance from his hands. A
heathen writer, often cited by the earliest preachers of the gospel,
hath truly said--'Wherever there is room for a man, there is place for
a benefit.'

"And I ask any rich brother amongst you, when he hath gone forth to
survey his barns and his granaries, his gardens and orchards, if
suddenly, in the vain pride of his heart, he sees the scowl on the
brow of the labourer--if he deems himself hated in the midst of his
wealth--if he feels that his least faults are treasured up against
him with the hardness of malice, and his plainest benefits received
with the ingratitude of envy--I ask, I say, any rich man, whether
straightway all pleasure in his worldly possessions does not fade from
his heart, and whether he does not feel what a wealth of gladness it is
in the power of the poor man to bestow! For all these things of Mammon
pass away; but there is in the smile of him whom we have served, a
something that we may take with us into heaven. If, then, ye bear one
another's burdens, they who are poor will have mercy on the errors, and
compassion for the griefs, of the rich. To all men it was said--yes,
to the Lazarus as to the Dives--'Judge not that ye be not judged.'
But think not, O rich man, that we preach only to the poor. If it be
their duty not to grudge thee thy substance, it is thine to do all
that may sweeten their labour. Remember, that when our Lord said 'How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven,'
he replied also to them who asked, 'Who then shall be saved?' 'The
things which are impossible with men are possible with God:' that is,
man left to his own temptations would fail; but strengthened by God,
he shall be saved. If thy riches are the tests of thy trial, so may
they also be the instruments of thy virtues. Prove by thy riches that
thou art compassionate and tender, temperate and benign; and thy riches
themselves may become the evidence at once of thy faith and of thy
works.

"We have constantly on our lips the simple precept, 'Do unto others
as ye would be done by.' Why do we fail so often in the practice?
Because we neglect to cultivate that SYMPATHY which nature implants
as an instinct, and the Saviour exalts as a command. If thou wouldst
do unto thy neighbour as thou wouldst be done by, ponder well how
thy neighbour will regard the action thou art about to do to him. Put
thyself into his place. If thou art strong, and he is weak, descend
from thy strength, and enter into his weakness; lay aside thy burden
for the while, and buckle on his own; let thy sight see as through his
eyes--thy heart beat as in his bosom. Do this, and thou wilt often
confess that what had seemed just to thy power will seem harsh to his
weakness. For 'as a zealous man hath not done his duty, when he calls
his brother drunkard and beast,'[2] even so an administrator of the law
mistakes his object if he writes on the grand column of society, only
warnings that irritate the bold, and terrify the timid: and a man will
be no more in love with law than with virtue, 'if he be forced to it
with rudeness and incivilities.'[3] If, then, ye would bear the burden
of the lowly, O ye great--feel not only _for_ them, but _with_! Watch
that your pride does not chafe them--your power does not wantonly gall.
Your worldly inferior is of the class from which the apostles were
chosen--amidst which the Lord of Creation descended from a throne above
the seraphs."

The Parson here paused a moment, and his eye glanced towards the pew
near the pulpit, where sat the magnate of Hazeldean. The Squire was
leaning his chin thoughtfully on his hand, his brow inclined downwards,
and the natural glow of his complexion much heightened.

"But"--resumed the Parson softly, without turning to his book, and
rather as if prompted by the suggestion of the moment--"But he who
has cultivated sympathy commits not these errors, or, if committing
them, hastens to retract. So natural is sympathy to the good man, that
he obeys it mechanically when he suffers his heart to be the monitor
of his conscience. In this sympathy behold the bond between rich and
poor! By this sympathy, whatever our varying worldly lots, they become
what they were meant to be--exercises for the virtues more peculiar to
each; and thus, if in the body each man bear his own burden, yet in the
fellowship of the soul all have common relief in bearing the burdens of
each other.

"This is the law of Christ--fulfil it, O my flock!"

Here the Parson closed his sermon, and the congregation bowed their
heads.




ANCIENT AND MODERN ELOQUENCE.


Eloquence, in its highest flights, is beyond all question the
greatest exertion of the human mind. It requires for its conception
a combination of the most exalted faculties; for its execution, a
union of the most extraordinary powers. Unite in thought the most
varied and dissimilar faculties of the soul--strength of understanding
with brilliancy of imagination; fire of conception with solidity of
judgment; a retentive memory with an enthusiastic fancy; the warmth of
poetry with the coldness of prose; an eye for the beauties of nature
with a command of the realities of life; a mind stored with facts
and a heart teeming with impressions--and you will form the elements
from which the most powerful style of oratory is to be created. But
this is not all. Physical powers, if not essential, are at least a
great addition to the mental qualities required for its success. The
orator must have at once the lengthened thought which is requisite for
a prolonged argument, and the ready wit which can turn to the best
advantage any incident which may occur in the course of its delivery.
More than all is required the fixity of purpose, the energy in effort,
the commanding turn, which, as it is the most valuable and important
faculty of the mind, so it is the one most rarely to be met with in any
walk of life, and least of all in combination with the brilliant and
imaginative qualities, which are the very soul of every art which is to
subdue or captivate mankind.

It is not surprising that the art of the orator should require, for its
highest flights, so rare a combination of qualities, for of all the
efforts of the human mind it is the most astonishing in its nature,
and the most transcendent in its _immediate_ triumphs. The wisdom
of the philosopher, the eloquence of the historian, the sagacity of
the statesman, the capacity of the general, may produce more lasting
effects upon human affairs; but they are incomparably less rapid
in their influence, and less intoxicating from the ascendency they
confer. In the solitude of his library the sage meditates on the truths
which are to influence the thoughts and direct the conduct of men in
future times; amidst the strife of faction the legislator discerns
the measures calculated, after a long course of years, to alleviate
existing evils or produce happiness yet unborn; during long and
wearisome campaigns the commander throws his shield over the fortunes
of his country, and prepares in silence and amidst obloquy the means
of maintaining its independence. But the triumphs of the orator are
immediate; his influence is instantly felt: his, and his alone, it is

    "The applause of listening senates to command,
       The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
    To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
       And read his history in a nation's eyes."

To stand up before a vast assembly composed of men of various passions,
habits, and prepossessions; to conciliate their feelings by the art,
and carry away their judgment by the eloquence, of the orator; to see
every gaze at length turned on his countenance, and every ear intent
on the words which drop from his lips; to see indifference turn into
excitement, and aversion melt away amidst enthusiasm; to hear thunders
of applause at the close of every sentence, and behold the fire of
enthusiasm kindled in every eye, as each successive idea is brought
forth; and to think that all this is the creation of the moment, and
has sprung extempore from the ardour of his conceptions, and the
inspiration they have derived from what passes around him, is perhaps
the greatest triumph of the human mind, and that in which its divine
origin and immortal destiny is most clearly revealed.

It is the magnitude of the combination requisite for its greatest
efforts which renders eloquence of the loftiest kind so extremely rare
among mankind. It is less frequent than the highest flights in epic or
dramatic poetry. Greece produced three great tragedians, but only one
Demosthenes; Cicero stands alone to sustain by his single strength the
fame of Roman oratory. Antiquity could not boast of more than five or
six persons who, by the common consent of their contemporaries, had
attained the highest rank in forensic eloquence; it is doubtful if
modern times could count as many: as many, we mean, who have attained
the very highest place in this noble and difficult art; for, doubtless,
in the second class, great numbers of names are to be found; and in the
third their name is legion. It is not meant to be asserted that great
temporary fame and influence by eloquence may not be, and often has
been, acquired by persons who are deficient in many of the qualities
above enumerated, as required to form a perfect orator. Without doubt,
brilliancy of genius will often, for passing effect, compensate the
want of solidity of judgment; and fire of imagination make us for the
moment forget a squeaking voice, a diminutive figure, an ungainly
countenance. No one, at times, commanded the attention of the House
of Commons more entirely than the late Mr Wilberforce, and yet his
stature was small, and his voice weak and painfully shrill. But great
earnestness of will and brilliancy of fancy are required to compensate
such defects; and we are persuaded that none will more readily admit
the justice of these observations than those who have laboured under,
and, by their powers, in a certain degree surmounted them.

As little is it intended to assert that vast influence may not be
acquired, and unbounded celebrity for the time obtained, not merely
without the cooperation of such varied and extensive qualities, but by
the aid, in many cases, of the very reverse. As temporary influence,
not lasting fame, is the immediate and chief end of oratory, its style
must be adapted to the prevailing cast of mind, and ruling interests
or passions, of the persons to whom it is addressed; and as it will
share in elevation of sentiment, if that is their characteristic, so
it will be deformed by vulgarity or selfishness when they are vulgar
and selfish. It is a common saying, that a speaker must descend to the
level of his audience, if he means to command their suffrages or enlist
their passions; and we have only to look around us to see how often, in
assemblies of an inferior, interested, or impassioned character, the
highest celebrity and most unbounded success are attained by persons
who not only have exhibited few of the qualities of a refined orator,
but who had studiously concealed those which they did possess, and
secretly despised in their hearts the arts to which their triumphs
had been owing.[4] But this is no more than is the case with all the
arts which aim at influencing, or charming mankind. The theatre,
the romance, poetry itself, share at times in the same degradation.
It would be as unjust to stigmatise oratory as the art of sophists
or declaimers, intended to seduce or deceive those who cannot see
through its artifices, as it would be to reproach the stage with the
vulgarity of the buffoon, or novels with the licentiousness of Aretin,
or poetry with the seductions of Ovid. We must not think lightly of an
art which has been ennobled by the efforts of Cicero and Burke in the
most refined assemblies, because it has also led to the triumphs of
O'Connell and Wilkes in the most ignorant.

To the highest triumphs of the art of oratory, that first of blessings,
CIVIL LIBERTY, is indispensable. More truly of it than of the liberty
of the press, it may be said, "It is our vital air: withdraw it, and
we perish." Regulated freedom is essential to its success. It is hard
to say whether it perishes most rapidly amidst the studied servility
of courtly rhetoric, or the coarse adulations of democratic flattery;
whether the atmosphere of Constantinople or that of New York is most
fatal to its existence. Genius, and that of the very highest kind, may
exist in despotic communities; but it is degraded by selfishness and
misdirected by servility.

Where there is only one ruling power in the state--be it monarchical,
aristocratic, or democratic--this corruption is equally certain,
and equally unavoidable. The sonorous periods in which Fontanes
celebrated the triumphs of the empire, the impassioned strains in
which Robespierre eulogised the incorruptible virtue of the people,
the coarse flattery with which O'Connell captivated his ignorant
and excitable audiences, equally marked the approach of the period
in which oratory, if such a _régime_ continued, must die a natural
death. Under such influences it necessarily perished from its own
exaggeration: it ceased to be impressive, it became ridiculous. As in
all the other arts which are intended to please and instruct mankind,
TRUTH, and a regard to the limits of nature, are essential to its
success. Exaggeration and hyperbole not only degrade the character
of eloquence, but destroy its influence, because they induce a style
of expression with which subsequent times, emancipated from passing
influences, cannot sympathise--look upon as contemptible. Then, and
then only, will oratory attain its highest perfection, during that
period "slow to come, soon to perish," as Tacitus said of balanced
freedom, during which no one interest in the state is irresistible; and
truth, in assailing the vices or resisting the encroachments of others,
can find a fulcrum from whence to direct its efforts. Withdraw the
fulcrum--remove the support--and truth, and with it genius, will sink
to rise no more.

It is surprising, however, how solicitous the human soul is for liberty
of expression; how eagerly, if one channel is closed, it seeks out and
often finds another. When the power of Government, or the tyranny of
the majority, has shut out the natural expression of unfettered opinion
in the discussion of the social and political interests of man, it
takes refuge in the regions of imagination. Romance becomes the vehicle
of independent thought: the stage the arena of unrestrained debate.
So delightful is free expression to the human mind, that it proves
agreeable even to those whose ascendency may seem to be endangered by
its prevalence. It may appear strange, but it is undoubtedly true, that
the germ of the doctrines of human perfectibility, the general vices of
those in authority, and the expedience of universal freedom alike in
trade and employment, emanated from the precincts of the most despotic
authority in Europe, and at the period of its highest exaltation. It
was in the palace of Versailles, in the court of the Grande Monarque,
and when discharging the duties of tutor to the Dauphin, that Fenelon
wrote, for the instruction of his royal pupil, _Telémaque_--perhaps the
most thoroughly democratic work, in its principles, that ever emanated
from the pen of genius. It was in the boudoir of Madame de Pompadour,
and when surrounded by the corruptions of Louis XV., that Quesnay
first announced the doctrines of throwing all taxes on the land, and
of universal freedom of trade and occupation, which have subsequently
had so powerful an influence in producing the Revolution of France, and
altering the political system and social conditions of Great Britain.

The extraordinary perfection to which tragedy has been brought in many
modern countries where the institutions are of a despotic character,
is mainly to be ascribed to this cause. The stage became the outlet
of independent thought; it was there alone that unfettered expression
could be safely attempted. Put into the mouths of historical or
imaginary characters, portraying remote events, for the most part
drawn from the classical ages of Greece or Rome, such unrestrained
ideas attracted no disquietude in the depositories of authority. They
were regarded as an attribute of a primeval world, which had as little
relation to the present, and as little bearing on its fortunes, as
the skeletons of the Mammoth, or the backbones of the Ichthyosauri,
on its material interests. A direct argument in favour of republican
institutions would have secured for its author a place in the Bastile,
or in the dungeons of the Inquisition; an incitement to the people to
take up arms, to dethrone the reigning monarch, would have led to the
scaffold; but the most eloquent and impassioned declamations in support
of both the one and the other, when couched in verse, put into the
mouth of Virginius or Brutus, and repeated on the stage by a popular
actor, excited no sort of apprehension. On the contrary, it was only
the more admired from its very novelty. Such ideas fell on the mind,
amidst the seductions and restrictions of a despotic court, with
somewhat of the charm with which the voice of nature, and the picture
of her beauties, was in the last days of the French monarchy listened
to from the gifted pen of Rousseau, or the vehement and imaginary
passions of the Greek Corsairs, as delineated by Byron, were regarded
by the worn-out victims of London dissipation.

If we would see in modern literature the most exact counterpart which
Europe has been able to present to the oratorical perfection of
antiquity, we must look for it, not in the debates of its National
Assemblies, or even the effusions of its pulpit eloquence, but in the
speeches of its great tragic poets. The best declamations in Corneille,
Alfieri, and Schiller, are often nothing but ancient eloquence put
into verse. The brevity and force of Shakspeare belong to the same
school. These men exhibit the same condensation of ideas, terseness
of expression, depth of thought, acquaintance with the secrets of the
heart, which have rendered the historians and orators of antiquity
immortal. Like them in their highest flights, they present intellect
and genius disdaining the attractions of style, the flowers of
rhetoric, the amplifications of imagination, and resting solely on
condensed reason, cogent argument, and impassioned pathos. They are the
bones and muscles of thought, without its ornament or covering. It is
this circumstance which rendered their drama so popular, and has given
its great masters their colossal reputation; and in their lasting fame
may be found the most decisive proof of the undying influence of the
highest species of eloquence on cultivated minds. Men and women went
to the theatre not to be instructed in the story--it was known to all;
not to be dazzled by stage effect--there was none of it: but to hear
oratory of the highest, pathos of the most moving, magnanimity of the
most exalted kind, repeated with superb effect by the first performers.
The utmost vehemence of action, with all the aids of intonation,
action, and delivery, was employed to heighten the effect of condensed
eloquence, conveying free and lofty sentiments which could nowhere
else be heard. This was the secret of the wonderful influence of the
stage on the polished society of Paris, during the latter days of the
monarchy. The audience in the _parterre_ might be seen repeating every
celebrated speech with the actor.

To illustrate these observations, we shall subjoin a few passages--two
from Corneille, one from Shakspeare, one from Alfieri, and two from
Schiller, in prose--partly to show how nearly they approach to the
style of ancient oratory, and partly from a sense of the hopelessness
of any translation conveying more than a prosaic idea of the terseness
and vigour of the originals,--

     "When the people are the master, tumults become national events.
     Never is the voice of reason consulted. Honours are sold to the
     most ambitious, authority yielded to the most seditious. These
     little sovereigns, made for a year, seeing the term of their
     power so near expiring, cause the most auspicious designs to
     miscarry, from the dread that others who follow may obtain the
     credit of them. As they have little share in the property which
     they command, they reap without hesitation in the harvest of the
     public, being well assured that every one will gladly pardon what
     they themselves hope to do on a future occasion. The worst of
     states is the popular state."[5]

Corneille's celebrated picture of Attila, which he puts into the mouth
of Octar, but which was really intended for Louis XIV., exhibits
another example of the condensed style of oratory, perhaps still more
applicable to a greater man than the Grande Monarque,--

     "I have seen him, alike in peace and war, bear everywhere the air
     of the conqueror of the earth. Often have I beheld the fiercest
     nations disarm his wrath by their submission. I have seen all
     the pleasure of his heroic mind savouring of the grand and the
     magnificent, while his ceaseless foresight in the midst of peace
     had prepared the triumphs of war; his noble anxiety, which, amidst
     his very recreations prepared the success of future designs. Too
     happy the people against whom he does not turn his invincible
     arms! I have seen him, covered with smoke and dust, give the
     noblest example to his army--spread terror everywhere by his
     own danger--overturn walls by a single glance, and heap his own
     conquests on the broken pride of the haughtiest monarchs."[6]

Napoleon said, if he had lived in his time, he would have made
Corneille his first councillor of state. He was right: for his thoughts
were more allied to the magnanimity of the hero than the pathos of the
tragedian; and his language savoured more of the sonorous periods of
the orator than the fire of the poet.

Beside these specimens of French tragic eloquence, we gladly place
the well-known speech of Brutus in _Julius Cæsar_, which proves that
Shakspeare was endowed with the very soul of ancient oratory:--

     "Romans, countrymen, and lovers! Hear me for my cause, and be
     silent that you may hear; believe me for mine honour, and have
     respect to mine honour that you may believe; censure me in your
     wisdom, and awake your senses that you may the better judge. If
     there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Cæsar's, to
     him I say that Brutus' love to Cæsar was not less than his. If,
     then, that friend demand why Brutus rose against Cæsar, this is
     my answer: not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome
     more. Had you rather that Cæsar were living and die all slaves,
     than that Cæsar were dead to live all free men? As Cæsar loved
     me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice in it; as he
     was valiant, I honour him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him.
     There are tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honour for his
     valour, and death for his ambition. Who is there so base that
     would be a bondsman? If any, speak, for him have I offended. Who
     is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak, for
     him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his
     country? If any, speak, for him have I offended. I have done no
     more to Cæsar than you should do to Brutus. The question of his
     death is enrolled in the Capitol; his glory is not extenuated,
     wherein he was worthy; nor his offences enforced for which he
     suffered death."[7]

This is in the highest style of ancient oratory. Whoever has had the
good fortune to hear this noble speech repeated by the lips, and with
the impressive manner of Kemble, will have no difficulty in conceiving
how it was that eloquence in Greece and Rome acquired so mighty an
ascendency. Shakspeare has shown, however, in the speech of Antony,
which follows, that he is not less master of that important part of
oratory which consists in moving the feelings, and conciliating by
pathos an adverse audience. Antiquity never conceived anything more
skilful, or evincing a more thorough knowledge of the human heart, than
thus turning aside the lofty patriotic and republican ideas awakened
by Brutus' speech, first by the exhibition of Cæsar's garments, rent
by the daggers of his murderers, and yet wet with his blood, and then
unveiling the mangled corpse itself!

The eloquence of Alfieri and Schiller, perhaps, of all modern writers,
is that which approaches most closely to the brief and condensed style
of ancient oratory. The speech of Icilius, in the noble drama of
_Virginia_, by the first of these writers, affords a fair specimen of
its power:--

     "Listen to my words, O people of Rome! I who heretofore have never
     been deceitful, who have never either betrayed or sold my honour;
     who boast an ignoble origin, but a noble heart! hear me. This
     innocent free maid is daughter of Virginius. At such a name, I
     see your eyes flash with resplendent fire. Virginius is fighting
     for you in the field: think on the depravity of the times;
     meanwhile, exposed to shame, the victim of outrage, his daughter
     remains in Rome. And who outrages her? Come forward, O Marcus!
     show yourself. Why tremble you? He is well known to you: the last
     slave of the tyrant Appius and his first minister--of Appius,
     the mortal enemy of every virtue--of Appius, the haughty, stern,
     ferocious oppressor, who his ravished from you your freedom, and,
     to embitter the robbery, has left you your lives. Virginia is my
     promised bride: I love her. Who I am, I need not say: some one
     may perhaps remind you. I was your tribune, your defender; but in
     vain. You trusted rather the deceitful words of another than my
     free speech. We now suffer, in common slavery, the pain of your
     delusion. Why do I say more? The heart, the arm, the boldness of
     Icilius is known to you not less than the name. From you I demand
     my free bride. This man does not ask her: he styles her slave--he
     drags her, he forces her. Icilius or Marcus is a liar: say,
     Romans, which it is."[8]

That Schiller was a great dramatic and lyric poet, need be told to
none who have the slightest acquaintance with European literature; but
his great oratorical powers are not so generally appreciated, for they
have been lost in the blaze of his poetic genius. They were, however,
of the very highest order, as will at once appear from the following
translation (imperfect as it, of course, is) in prose, which we have
attempted of the celebrated speeches of Shrewsbury and Burleigh, who
discussed before Queen Elizabeth the great question of Queen Mary's
execution, in his noble tragedy of _Maria Stuart_:--

                              SHREWSBURY.

     "God, whose wondrous hand has four times protected you, and who
     to-day gave the feeble arm of gray hairs strength to turn aside
     the stroke of a madman, should inspire confidence. I will not now
     speak in the name of justice; this is not the time. In such a
     tumult you cannot hear her still small voice. Consider this only:
     you are fearful now of the living Mary; but I say it is not the
     living you have to fear. _Tremble at the dead--the beheaded._ She
     will rise from the grave a fiend of dissension. She will awaken
     the spirit of revenge in your kingdom, and wean the hearts of
     your subjects from you. At present she is an object of dread to
     the British; but when she is no more, they will revenge her. No
     longer will she then be regarded as the enemy of their faith; her
     mournful fate will cause her to appear only as the granddaughter
     of their king, the victim of man's hatred and woman's jealousy.
     Soon will you see the change appear! Drive through London after
     the bloody deed has been done; show yourself to the people, who
     now surround you with joyful acclamations: then will you see
     another England, another people! No longer will you then walk
     forth encircled by the radiance of heavenly justice which now
     binds every heart to you. Dread the frightful name of tyrant which
     will precede you through shuddering hearts, and resound through
     every street where you pass. You have done the last irrevocable
     deed. What head stands fast when this sacred one has fallen?"

     BURLEIGH.

     "Thou sayest, my Queen, thou lovest thy people more than
     thyself--show it now! Choose not peace for yourself, and leave
     discord to your people. Think on the Church! Shall the ancient
     faith be restored with this Stuart? Shall the monk of new lord it
     here--the legate of Rome return to shut up our churches, dethrone
     our queen? I demand the souls of all your subjects from you.
     As you now decide, you are saved or lost. This is no time for
     womanish pity: the salvation of your people is your highest duty.
     Has Shrewsbury saved your life to-day? I will deliver England, and
     that is more."--_Maria Stuart_, Act iv. s. 7.

Demosthenes could have written nothing more powerful--Cicero imagined
nothing more persuasive.

We shall now, to justify our assertion that it is in the dramatic poets
of modern Europe that a parallel can alone be found to the condensed
power of ancient eloquence, proceed to give a few quotations from the
most celebrated speeches of antiquity. We have selected, in general,
those from the historians, as they are shorter than the orations
delivered in the forum, and can be given entire. A fragment from a
speech of Demosthenes or Cicero gives no sort of idea of the original,
because what goes before is withheld. To scholars we need not plead
indulgence for the inadequacy of our translations: they will not expect
what they know to be impossible.

Tacitus, in his Life of Agricola, puts into the mouth of Galgacus the
following oration, when he was animating the Caledonians to their last
battle with the Romans under Agricola.

     "As often as I reflect on the origin of the war, and our
     necessities, I feel a strong conviction that this day, and your
     will, are about to lay the foundations of British liberty. For
     we have all known what slavery is, and no place of retreat lies
     behind us. The sea even is insecure when the Roman fleet hovers
     around. Thus arms and war, ever coveted by the brave, are now
     the only refuge of the cowardly. In former actions, in which the
     Britons fought with various success against the Romans, our valour
     was a resource to look to, for we, the noblest of all the nation,
     and on that account placed in its inmost recesses, unused to the
     spectacle of servitude, had our eyes even inviolate from its
     hateful sight. We, the last of the earth, and of freedom, unknown
     to fame, have been hitherto defended by our remoteness; now, the
     extreme limits of Britain appear, and the unknown is ever regarded
     as the magnificent. No refuge is behind us; naught but the rocks
     and the waves, and the deadlier Romans: men whose pride you have
     in vain sought to deprecate by moderation and subservience. The
     robbers of the globe, when the land fails they scour the sea.
     Is the enemy rich, they are avaricious; is he poor, they are
     ambitious--the East and the West are unable to satiate their
     desires. Wealth and poverty are alike coveted by their rapacity.
     To carry off, massacre, seize on false pretences, they call
     empire; and when they make a desert, they call it peace.

     "Nature has made children and relations dearest to all: they are
     carried off by levies to serve elsewhere: our wives and sisters,
     if they escape the lust of our enemies, are seduced by these
     _friends_ and _guests_. Our goods and fortunes they seize on as
     tribute, our corn as supplies; our very bodies and hands they
     wear out amidst strifes and contumely, in fortifying stations in
     the woods and marshes. Serfs born in servitude are once bought,
     and ever after fed by their masters; Britain alone daily buys its
     slavery, daily feeds it. As in families the last slave purchased
     is often a laughing-stock to the rest, so we, the last whom they
     have reduced to slavery, are the first to be agonised by their
     contumely, and reserved for destruction. We have neither fields,
     nor minerals, nor harbours, in working which we can be employed:
     the valour and fierceness of the vanquished are obnoxious to the
     victors: our very distance and obscurity, as they render us the
     safer, make us the more suspected. Laying aside, therefore, all
     hope of pardon, assume the courage of men to whom salvation and
     glory are alike dear. The Trinobantes, under a female leader, had
     courage to burn a colony and storm castles, and, had not their
     success rendered them negligent, they would have cast off the
     yoke. We, untouched and unconquered, nursed in freedom, shall we
     not show, on the first onset, what men Caledonia has nursed in her
     bosom?

     "Do not believe the Romans have the same prowess in war as lust
     in peace. They have grown great on our divisions: they know how
     to turn the vices of men to the glory of their own army. As it
     has been drawn together by success, so disaster will dissolve
     it, unless you suppose that the Gauls and the Germans, and, I am
     ashamed to say, many of the Britons, who now lend their blood to
     a foreign usurpation, and in their hearts are rather enemies than
     slaves, can be retained by faith and affection. Fear and terror
     are but slender bonds of attachment; when you remove them, as fear
     ceases terror begins. All the incitements of victory are on our
     side: no wives inflame the Romans; no parents are there, to call
     shame on their flight; they have no country, or it is elsewhere.
     Few in number, fearful from ignorance, gazing on unknown woods
     and seas, the gods have delivered them shut in and bound into
     your hands. Let not their vain aspect, the glitter of silver and
     gold, which neither covers nor wounds, alarm you. In the very
     line of the enemy we shall find our friends: the Britons will
     recognise their own cause; the Gauls will recollect their former
     freedom; the other Germans will desert them, as lately the Usipii
     have done. No objects of terror are behind them; naught but empty
     castles, age-ridden colonies; dissension between cruel masters and
     unwilling slaves, sick and discordant cities. Here is a leader,
     an army; there are tributes, and payments, and the badges of
     servitude, which to bear for ever, or instantly to avenge, lies
     in your arms. Go forth then into the field, and think of your
     ancestors and your descendants."[9]

It is scarcely necessary to say that this speech was written by
Tacitus: most certainly nothing half so perfect was ever conceived
by Caledonian chief or Caledonian orator, from that day to this.
But as the great speeches in antiquity were all written, this gives
a specimen, doubtless of the most favourable kind, of the style of
oratory which prevailed amongst them. No modern historian has either
ventured or been able to put anything so nervous and forcible into the
mouth of any orator, how great soever. If he did, it would at once be
known that it had not been spoken, but was the fruit of the composition
of the closet.

Catiline, who, like many other revolutionists, possessed abilities
commensurate to his wickedness, thus addressed the conspirators who
were associated to overturn the sway of the Roman patricians:--

     "Had not your valour and fidelity been well known to me, fruitless
     would have been the smiles of Fortune: the prospect of as mighty
     domination would in vain have opened upon us; nor would I have
     mistaken illusive hopes for realities, uncertain things for
     certain. But since, on many and great occasions, I have known
     you to be brave and faithful, I have ventured to engage in the
     greatest and noblest undertaking; for I well know that good and
     evil are common to you and me. That friendship at length is
     secure which is founded on wishing and dreading the same things.
     You all know what designs I have long revolved in my mind; but
     my confidence in them daily increases, when I reflect what our
     fate is likely to be, if we do not vindicate our freedom by our
     own hands. For, since the republic has fallen under the power
     and dominion of a few, kings yield their tributes, governorships
     their profits to them: all the rest, whether strenuous, good,
     noble or ignoble, are the mere vulgar: without influence, without
     authority, we are obnoxious to those to whom, if the commonwealth
     existed, we should be a terror. All honour, favour, power, wealth,
     is centred in them, or those whom they favour: to us are left
     dangers, repulses, lawsuits, poverty. How long will you endure
     them, O ye bravest of men? Is it not better to die bravely, than
     drag out a miserable and dishonoured life, the sport of pride, the
     victims of disgrace? But by the faith of gods and men, victory is
     in our own hands: our strength is unimpaired; our minds energetic:
     theirs is enfeebled by age, extinguished by riches. All that is
     required is to begin boldly; the rest follows of course. Where
     is the man of a manly spirit, who can tolerate that they should
     overflow with riches, which they squander in ransacking the sea,
     in levelling mountains, while to us the common necessaries of
     life are awanting? They have two or more superb palaces each; we
     not wherein to lay our heads. When they buy pictures, statues,
     basso-relievos, they destroy the old to make way for the new: in
     every possible way they squander away their money; but all their
     desires are unable to exhaust their riches. At home, we have only
     poverty; abroad, debts; present adversity; worse prospects. What,
     in fine, is left us, but our woe-stricken souls? What, then, shall
     we do? That, that which you have ever most desired. Liberty is
     before your eyes; and it will soon bring riches, renown, glory:
     Fortune holds out these rewards to the victors. The time, the
     place, our dangers, our wants, the splendid spoils of war, exhort
     you more than my words. Make use of me either as a commander or
     a private soldier. Neither in soul or body will I be absent from
     your side. These deeds I hope I shall perform as Consul with you,
     unless my hopes deceive me, and you are prepared rather to obey as
     slaves, than to command as rulers."[10]

The topics here handled are the same which in every age have been the
staple of the conspirator and the revolutionist; but it may be doubted
whether they ever were put together with such force and address. The
same desperate chief, on the eve of their last conflict with the
consular legions:--

     "I well know, fellow-soldiers, that words add nothing to the
     valour of the brave; and that an army will not be made from
     slothful, strenuous--from timid, courageous, by any speech from
     its commander. Whatever boldness nature or training has implanted
     in any one, that appears in war. It is vain to exhort those whom
     neither dangers nor glory excite. Terror shuts their ears. But I
     have called you together to mention a few things, and to make you
     sharers of my councils. You know, soldiers, what a calamity has
     been brought upon us by the cowardice of Lentulus; and how, when I
     awaited succours from the city, I was unable to set out for Gaul.
     Now, however, I will candidly tell you how our affairs stand. Two
     armies, one issuing from Rome, one from Gaul, beset us: want of
     provisions obliges us quickly to change our quarters, even if we
     inclined to remain where we are. Wherever we determine to go, we
     must open a way with our swords. Therefore it is that I admonish
     you that you have now need of stern and determined minds: and
     when you engage in battle, recollect that riches, honour, glory,
     in addition to liberty, are to be won by your own right hands. If
     we conquer, everything awaits us: provisions will be abundant,
     colonies ready, cities open. If we yield from fear, circumstances
     are equally adverse: neither solitude nor friend shields him whom
     his arms cannot protect. Besides, soldiers, the same necessity
     does not impel them as us. We fight for our country, our liberty,
     our lives; they for the domination of a few. On that account,
     mindful of your pristine valour, advance to the attack. You might
     have, with disgrace, lingered out a miserable life in exile:
     a few, bereft of their possessions, might have remained, fed
     by charity, at Rome: but as such a fate seemed intolerable to
     freemen, you have attended me here. If you would shun these evils,
     now is the moment to do so. None ever exchanged war for peace,
     save by victory. To hope for safety in flight, and, at the same
     time, rescue from the enemy the arms by which the body is covered,
     is the height of madness. Ever in battle they run the greatest
     danger who are most timid: boldness is the only real rampart. When
     I reflect on you and your deeds, O soldiers, I have great hopes
     of victory. Your spirit, your age, your bravery, encourage me:
     besides necessity, which makes heroes even of cowards. The straits
     of the ground secure you from being outflanked by the enemy.
     Should Fortune fail to second your valour, beware lest you perish
     unavenged. Rather fall, fighting like men, and leave a mournful
     and bloody triumph to your enemies, than be butchered like sheep
     when captured by their arms."[11]

With what exquisite judgment and taste is the stern and mournful style
of this speech suited to the circumstances, all but desperate, in which
Catiline's army was then placed!

No one supposes that these were the identical words delivered by
Catiline on this occasion. Unquestionably, Sallust shines through in
every line. But they were probably his ideas; and, unquestionably,
they were in the true style of ancient oratory. And that what was
spoken fully equalled what has come down to us written, is proved by
innumerable passages in speeches which undoubtedly were spoken; among
which, we select the graphic picture of Antony in his revels--spoken by
Coelius, and preserved by Quintilian:--

     "They found him (Antony) oppressed with a half-drunken sleep,
     snoring aloud, lying across the most beautiful concubines, while
     others were reposing around. The latter, when they perceived the
     approach of an enemy, strove to awaken Antony, but in vain. They
     called on him by name, they raised him by the neck: one whispered
     softly in his ear, one struck him sharply; but to no purpose. When
     he was so far roused as to recognise the voice or touch of the
     nearest, he put his arms round her neck, unable alike to sleep and
     to rise up; but, half in a stupor, he was tossed about between the
     hands of the centurions and the harlots."[12]

What a picture of the triumvir and rival of Brutus, as well as of the
corrupted manners of Rome!

Demosthenes, in his celebrated speech against Æschines, burst into the
following strain of indignant invective:--

     "You taught writing, I learned it: you were an instructor, I was
     the instructed: you danced at the games, I presided over them:
     you wrote as a clerk, I pleaded as an advocate: you were an actor
     in the theatres, I a spectator: you broke down, I hissed: you
     ever took counsel for our enemies, I for our country. In fine,
     now on this day the point at issue is--Am I, yet unstained in
     character, worthy of a crown? while to you is reserved the lot
     of a calumniator, and you are in danger of being silenced by not
     having obtained the fifth part of the votes.

     "I have not fortified the city with stone, nor adorned it with
     tiles, neither do I take any credit for such things. But if you
     would behold my works aright, you will find arms, and cities, and
     stations, and harbours, and ships, and horses, and those who are
     to make use of them in our defence. This is the rampart I have
     raised for Attica, as much as human wisdom could effect: with
     these I fortified the whole country, not the Piræus only and the
     city. I never sank before the arms or cunning of Philip. No! it
     was by the supineness of your own generals and allies that he
     triumphed."[13]

We add only an extract from the noble speech of Pericles, on those who
had died in the service of their country, which is the more valuable
that Thucydides, who has recorded it in his history, says that the
version he has given of that masterpiece of oratory is nearly the same
as he heard from Pericles himself.

     "Wherefore I will congratulate rather than bewail the parents of
     those who have fallen that are present. They know that they were
     born to suffering. But the lot of those is most to be envied who
     have come to such an end, that it is hard to say whether their
     life or their death is most honourable. I know it is difficult to
     persuade you of this, who had often rejoiced in the good fortune
     of others; and it is not when we are deprived of goods not yet
     attained that we feel grief, but when we are bereaved of what
     we have already enjoyed. To some the hope of other children,
     who may emulate those who have gone before, may be a source of
     consolation. Future offspring may awaken fresh interests in place
     of the dead; and will doubly benefit the city by peopling its
     desert places, and providing for its defence. We cannot expect
     that those who have no children whom they may place in peril for
     their country, can be considered on a level with such as have
     made the sacrifices which those have made. To such of you as time
     has denied this hope, I would say, 'Rejoice in the honour which
     your children have won, and let that console the few years that
     still remain to you--for the love of glory alone knows no age;
     and in the decline of life it is not the acquisition of gain, as
     some say, which confers pleasure, but the consciousness of being
     honoured.

     "To the children and brothers of those we mourn, who are here
     present, I foresee a noble contest. Every one praises the dead.
     You should endeavour, I will not say to equal those we have lost,
     but to be only a little inferior to them. Envy often divides the
     living; but the grave extinguishes jealousy, for it terminates
     rivalry. I must speak of the virtue of the women who have shared
     in our bereavement; but I shall do so in a few words. Great will
     be your renown, if you do not yield to the weakness of your sex;
     and place as little difference as possible between yourselves
     and the virtue of men. I propose that the children of those who
     have fallen should be maintained, till puberty, at the public
     expense--a reward at once to the virtue of the dead, and an
     incitement to the emulation of the living: for among those to whom
     the highest rewards of virtue are opened, the most worthy citizens
     are found. And now, having honoured the dead by your mourning,
     depart every one to his home."[14]

Enough--and some may, perhaps, think more than enough--has been done to
convey an idea of that far-famed oratory, of which Milton has said--

    "Thence to the famous orators repair,
    Those ancients, whose resistless eloquence
    Wielded at will that fierce democracy,
    Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece,
    To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne."[15]

For comparison with these splendid passages, we gladly lay before
our readers the famous peroration of Mr Burke's oration against Mr
Hastings, long esteemed the masterpiece of British eloquence.

     "My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and
     surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing
     generations, between which, as a link in the great chain of
     eternal order, we stand. We call this nation, we call the world to
     witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no labour; that we have
     been guilty of no prevarication; that we have made no compromise
     with crime; that we have not feared any odium whatsoever, in
     the long warfare which we have carried on with the crimes--with
     the vices--with the exorbitant wealth--with the enormous and
     overpowering influence of Eastern corruption. This war, my Lords,
     we have waged for twenty-two years, and the conflict has been
     fought, at your Lordships' bar, for the last seven years. My
     Lords, twenty-two years is a great space in the scale of the life
     of man; it is no inconsiderable space in the history of a great
     nation. A business which has so long occupied the councils and
     the tribunals of Great Britain cannot possibly be huddled over in
     the course of vulgar, trite, and transitory events. Nothing but
     some of those great revolutions, that break the traditionary chain
     of human memory, and alter the very face of nature itself, can
     possibly obscure it. My Lords, we are all elevated to a degree of
     importance by it; the meanest of us will, by means of it, more or
     less, become the concern of posterity--if we are yet to hope for
     such a thing, in the present state of the world, as a recording,
     retrospective, civilised posterity: but this is in the hand of the
     great Disposer of events; it is not ours to settle how it shall
     be. My Lords, your House yet stands; it stands as a great edifice;
     but let me say, that it stands in the midst of ruins--in the midst
     of the ruins that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake
     that ever convulsed and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it
     has pleased Providence to place us in such a state, that we appear
     every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. There
     is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation, that
     which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of
     the world itself--I mean justice; that justice which, emanating
     from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us,
     given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and with regard to
     others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned to ashes,
     our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He comes
     to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.

     "My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your
     Lordships; there is nothing sinister which can happen to you, in
     which we shall not all be involved; and if it should so happen
     that we shall be subjected to some of those frightful changes
     which we have seen--if it should happen that your Lordships,
     stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human society,
     should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those scaffolds
     and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious queens
     have shed their blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the nobles,
     amidst the magistrates, who supported their thrones, may you in
     those moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they
     felt in the critical moments of their dreadful agony!... My
     Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! but, if you stand--and
     stand I trust you will--together with the fortune of this ancient
     monarchy--together with the ancient laws and liberties of this
     great and illustrious kingdom--may you stand as unimpeached in
     honour as in power; may you stand, not as a substitute for virtue,
     but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue; may you
     stand long, and long stand the terror of tyrants; may you stand
     the refuge of afflicted nations; may you stand a sacred temple,
     for the perpetual residence of an inviolable justice."[16]

The peroration of Lord Brougham's speech in favour of Queen Caroline,
which was carefully studied, and, it is said, written over several
times, is not unworthy to be placed beside this splendid burst.

     "Such, my Lords, is the case before you! such is the evidence in
     support of this measure--evidence inadequate to prove a debt,
     impotent to deprive of a civil right, ridiculous to convict of
     the lowest offence, scandalous, if brought forward to support a
     charge of the highest nature which the law knows, monstrous to
     ruin the honour and blast the name of an English Queen! What shall
     I say, then, if this is the proof by which an act of judicial
     legislation, a parliamentary sentence, an _ex post facto_ law,
     is sought to be passed against a defenceless woman? My Lords, I
     pray you to pause: I do earnestly beseech you to take heed. You
     are standing upon the brink of a precipice--then beware! It will
     go forth as your judgment, if sentence shall pass against the
     Queen. But it will be the only judgment you ever pronounced which,
     instead of reaching its object, will return and bound back upon
     those who give it. Save the country, my Lords, from the horrors
     of this catastrophe--save yourselves from this peril. Revere that
     country of which you are the ornaments, but in which you can
     flourish no longer, when severed from the people, than the blossom
     when cut off from the roots and stem of the tree. Save that
     country, that you may continue to adorn it; save the crown, which
     is in jeopardy, the aristocracy, which is shaken; save the altar,
     which must stagger with the blow that rends its kindred throne!
     You have said, my Lords, you have willed, the church to the Queen
     have willed that she should be deprived of its solemn service.
     She has instead of that solemnity the heartfelt prayers of the
     people. She wants no prayers of mine. But I do here pour forth my
     humble supplication to the Throne of mercy, that that mercy may be
     poured down upon the people, in a larger measure than the merits
     of its rulers may deserve, and that your hearts may be turned to
     justice."[17]

On the trial of Mr John Stockdale, Lord Erskine thus spoke:--

     "I have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human
     dominion, from what I have seen of them myself among nations
     reluctant of our authority. I know what they feel, and how such
     feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth
     from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince,
     surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British
     colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of
     his unlettered eloquence. 'Who is it,' said the jealous ruler
     of the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English
     adventure--'who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of
     winter, and that calms them again in summer? Who is it that causes
     this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself
     into the ocean? Who is it that rears up the shade of these lofty
     forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure?
     The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the
     waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend
     it,' said the warrior, throwing his tomahawk upon the ground, and
     raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of
     subjugated man all round the globe; and, depend upon it, nothing
     but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection."[18]

Some of Mr Grattan's speeches are said to have been the most eloquent
ever delivered in the House of Commons. The following burst of
indignant patriotism, on the supposed wrongs of Ireland, affords a
favourable specimen of his style of oratory:--

     "Hereafter, when these things shall be history, your age of
     thraldom and poverty, your sudden resurrection, commercial
     redress, and miraculous armament, shall the historian stop to
     declare, that here the principal men amongst us fell into mimic
     traces of gratitude: they were awed by a weak ministry, and bribed
     by an empty treasury; and when liberty was within their grasp, and
     the temple opened her folding-doors, and the arms of the people
     clanged, and the zeal of the nation urged and encouraged them on,
     that they fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold.

     "I will not be answered by a public lie in the shape of an
     amendment: neither, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to
     hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our
     island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I
     have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to break your chains,
     and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied as long as
     the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain
     clanking in his rags: he may be naked, he shall not be in irons.
     And I do see the time is at hand, the spirit is gone forth, the
     declaration is planted: and though great men should apostatise,
     yet the cause will live: and though the public speaker should die,
     yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it,
     and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, shall
     not die with the prophet, but survive him."[19]

We shall add only to these copious and interesting quotations two
passages from the greatest masters of French eloquence.

Bossuet, in his funeral oration on Henrietta, daughter of France and
Queen of England, the consort of Charles I., thus expresses himself:--

     "Christians!" says he, in the exordium of his discourse, "it is
     not surprising that the memory of a great queen--the daughter,
     the wife, the mother of monarchs--should attract you from all
     quarters to this melancholy ceremony; it will bring forcibly
     before your eyes one of those awful examples which demonstrate
     to the world the vanity of which it is composed. You will see in
     her single life the extremes of human things: felicity without
     bounds, miseries without parallel; a long and peaceable enjoyment
     of one of the most noble crowns in the universe--all that birth
     and grandeur could confer that was glorious--all that adversity
     and suffering could accumulate that was disastrous; the good
     cause attended at first with some success, then involved in
     the most dreadful disasters. Revolutions unheard of, rebellion
     long restrained, at length reigning triumphant; no curb there
     to license, no laws in force. Majesty itself violated by bloody
     hands--usurpation and tyranny, under the name of liberty--a
     fugitive queen, who can find no retreat in her three kingdoms, and
     was forced to seek in her native country a melancholy exile. Nine
     sea voyages undertaken against her will by a queen, in spite of
     wintry tempests--a throne unworthily overturned, and miraculously
     re-established. Behold the lessons which God has given to kings!
     thus does He manifest to the world the nothingness of its pomps
     and its grandeur. If our words fail, if language sinks beneath the
     grandeur of such a subject, the simple narrative is more touching
     than aught that words can convey. The heart of a great queen,
     formerly elevated by so long a course of prosperity, then steeped
     in all the bitterness of affliction, will speak in sufficiently
     touching language; and if it is not given to a private individual
     to teach the proper lessons from so mournful a catastrophe, the
     King of Israel has supplied the words--'Hear, O ye great of the
     earth! Take lessons, ye rulers of the world!'"[20]

A very different man from Bossuet, but who was perhaps his superior in
nervous eloquence, Robespierre, thus spoke on the last occasion when he
addressed the Convention, then bent on his destruction:--

     "They call me a tyrant! If I were so, they would fall at my feet:
     I should have gorged them with gold, assured them of impunity
     to their crimes, and they would have worshipped me. Had I been
     so, the kings whom we have conquered would have been my most
     cordial supporters. It is by the aid of scoundrels you arrive
     at tyranny. Whither tend those who combat them? To the tomb and
     immortality! Who is the tyrant that protects me? What is the
     faction to which I belong? It is yourselves! What is the party
     which, since the commencement of the Revolution, has crushed all
     other factions--has annihilated so many specious traitors? It
     is yourselves; it is the people; it is the force of principles!
     This is the party to which I am devoted, and against which crime
     is everywhere leagued. I am ready to lay down my life without
     regret. I have seen the past; I foresee the future. What lover
     of his country would wish to live, when he can no longer succour
     oppressed innocence? Why should he desire to remain in an order
     of things where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth--where
     justice is deemed an imposture--where the vilest passions, the
     most ridiculous fears, fill every heart, instead of the sacred
     interests of humanity? Who can bear the punishment of seeing
     that horrible succession of traitors, more or less skilful in
     concealing their hideous vices under the mask of virtue, and who
     will leave to posterity the difficult task of determining which
     was the most atrocious? In contemplating the multitude of vices
     which the Revolution has let loose pell-mell with the civic
     virtues, I own I sometimes fear that I myself shall be sullied in
     the eyes of posterity by their calumnies. But I am consoled by
     the reflection that, if I have seen in history all the defenders
     of liberty overwhelmed by calumny, I have seen their oppressors
     die also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth;
     but in very different conditions. No, Chaumette! 'Death is _not_
     an eternal sleep!'--Citizens, efface from the tombs that maxim,
     engraven by sacrilegious hands, which throws a funeral pall over
     nature, which discourages oppressed innocence: write rather,
     'Death is the commencement of immortality!' I leave to the
     oppressors of the people a terrible legacy, which well becomes the
     situation in which I am placed: it is the awful truth, 'Thou shalt
     die!'"[21]

It must be evident to every impartial person, from these quotations,
that the superiority of ancient to modern eloquence, so far as the art
itself is concerned, is great and indisputable. The strong opinion of
Lord Brougham, on this subject, must command the universal assent of
every reasonable mind:--

     "It is impossible for any but the most careless observer, to avoid
     remarking the great differences which distinguish the oratory of
     ancient from that of modern times. The immeasurable superiority of
     the former is far from being the only, or even the principal, of
     these diversities: that proceeds, in part, from the greater power
     of the languages, especially the Greek--the instrument wielded
     by the great masters of diction; and in so far the superiority
     must for ever remain undiminished by any efforts on the part of
     modern rhetoricians. If, in such varied and perfect excellencies,
     the most prominent shall be selected, then doubtless is the palm
     due to that entire and uninterrupted devotion which throws the
     speaker's whole soul into his subject, and will not even--no,
     not for an instant--suffer a rival idea to cross its resistless
     course, without being swiftly swept away and driven out of sight,
     as the most rapid engine annihilates or shoots off whatever
     approaches it with a velocity that defies the eye. There is no
     coming back on the same ground, any more than any lingering over
     it. All is done at once; but the blow is as effectual as it is
     single, and leaves not anything to do. All is at each instant
     moving forward, regardless of every obstacle. The mighty flood
     of speech rolls on in a channel ever full, but which never
     overflows. Whether it rushes in a torrent of allusion, or moves
     along in a majestic exposition of enlarged principles, descends
     hoarse and headlong in overwhelming invective, or glides melodious
     in narrative and description, or spreads itself out shining in
     illustrations, its course is ever onward and ever entire; never
     scattered, never stagnant, never sluggish. At each point manifest
     progress has been made, and with all that art can do to charm,
     strike, and please. No sacrifice, even the smallest, is ever
     made to effect; nor can the hearer ever stop for an instant to
     contemplate or admire, or throw away a thought upon the great
     artist, till all is over, and the pause gives time to recover his
     breath."[22]

It is the more remarkable that this great and decisive superiority on
the part of ancient oratory should exist, when it is recollected that
the information, sphere of ideas, and imagery at the command of public
speakers, in modern times, is so widely extended in comparison of what
it was in Greece and Rome. As much as the wide circuit of the globe
exceeds the limited shores of the Mediterranean Sea, do the knowledge
and ideas which the modern orator may make use of outstrip those which
were at the disposal of the brightest genius in antiquity. Science has,
since the fall of Rome, been infinitely extended, and furnished a great
variety of images and allusions--many of them of the most elevated
kind--which at once convey a clear idea to any educated audience, and
awaken in their minds associations or recollections of a pleasing or
ennobling description. The vast additions made to geographical and
physical knowledge have rendered the wide surface of the globe, and the
boundless wonders of the heavens, the theme alike for the strains of
the poet, the meditations of the philosopher, and the eloquence of the
orator. Modern poetry has added its treasures to those which antiquity
had bequeathed to us, as if to augment the chords which eloquence can
touch in the human heart. Chivalry has furnished a host of images,
ideas, and associations wholly unknown to ancient times; but which,
however at times fantastic or high-flown, are all of an ennobling
character, because they tend to elevate humanity above itself, and
combat the selfish by the very excess of the generous affections.
History has immensely extended the sphere of known events, and not
only studded the annals of mankind with the brightest instances of
heroism or virtue, but afforded precedents applicable to almost every
change that can occur in the varied circumstances of human transaction.
Above all, Religion has opened a new fountain in the human heart, and
implanted in every bosom, with the exception only of those utterly
depraved, associations and recollections at once of the most purifying
and moving kind. The awful imagery and touching incidents of the Old
Testament, exceeding those in the Iliad itself in sublimity and pathos;
the pure ideas and universal charity of the New, as much above the
utmost efforts of unassisted humanity, have given the orator, in modern
times, a store of images and associations which, of all others, are the
most powerful in moving the human heart. If one-half of this magazine
of ideas and knowledge had been at the disposal of the orators of
antiquity, they would have exceeded those of modern Europe as much in
the substance and magnificence of their thoughts, as they already do in
the felicity and force of their expression.

A key may be found to the causes of this remarkable superiority in
ancient eloquence, notwithstanding the comparatively limited extent of
the materials of which they had the disposal, in the very qualities
in which the ancient orators stand pre-eminent. It is the exquisite
taste and abbreviated force of their expression which renders them
unrivalled. In reading their speeches, we are perpetually tempted to
shut the book even in the most interesting passages, to reflect on the
inimitable brevity and beauty of the language. It is a mistake to say
this is owing to the construction of the Greek and Roman languages,
to the absence of auxiliary verbs, and the possibility of combining
expression, as in modern German, so as to convey a complex idea in
a single word. Undoubtedly that is true; but who made the ancient
languages at once so copious and condensed? It was the ancients
themselves who did this. It was they who moulded their tongues into so
brief and expressive a form, and, in the course of their progressive
formation through successive centuries, rendered them daily more brief
and more comprehensive. It was the men who made the language--not the
language the men. It was their burning thoughts which created such
energetic expressions, as if to let loose at once the pent-up fires of
the soul. Those who assert the reverse fall into the same error as the
philosophers who ascribe the character of the Anglo-Saxons to their
institutions, when, in truth, their institutions are owing to their
character.

The main causes to which the extraordinary perfection of ancient
oratory are to be ascribed, are the great pains which were bestowed on
the education of the higher classes in this most difficult art, and the
practice of preparing nearly all their finest orations before delivery.
It will sound strange in modern ears to assign these as the causes of
this undoubted superiority, when the practice with them is in both
particulars directly the reverse; but a very little consideration must
convince every reasonable mind that it is to these that it is to be
ascribed.

Great as is the importance and undoubted the influence of eloquence
in modern Europe, it is by no means so considerable as it was in
the states of antiquity. This arises in part from the different
structure of government in ancient and modern times. We hear nothing
of eloquence in Persia, Egypt, or the East. Military power, political
address, were then, as they have ever since been in that part of
the world, the sole passports to greatness. But it was otherwise in
the republics which studded the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Universally, in them, supreme power was lodged in the citizens of a
single city, or in them jointly with the landowners in the vicinity,
who could with ease attend its public assemblies. Every free citizen
had a vote in those assemblies, in which every subject, political,
social, and judicial, was discussed and determined. Questions of peace
and war, of imposing or taking off taxes, of concluding treaties, of
domestic laws, of appointing generals and ambassadors, of providing
for the public subsistence, of determining private suits, of criminal
punishments, of life and death, were all submitted to those assemblies,
debated in their presence, and decided by their suffrages. Political
power, personal fame, the direction of the state, the command of its
armaments, the decision of its dearest public and private interests,
were all to be attained by obtaining a sway in these public assemblies,
and could seldom be obtained in any other way. Hence it was that, as
has been finely observed, in modern times, the soldier is brave, and
the lawyer is eloquent; but in ancient, the soldier was eloquent, and
the lawyer was brave. Power of any sort could be attained only by
acquiring an ascendency in the popular assemblies; whoever acquired
that ascendency was liable to be immediately called to command the
fleets or armies of the republic. Whatever opinions may be formed of
the tendency of such a system of government, to insure either the wise
direction of its civil interests or the successful protection of its
military enterprises, there can be but one as to its effect in insuring
the highest attention to oratory, by which alone the command of either
could be obtained.

But, in addition to this, the two great instruments of power which, in
modern times, so often outweigh the influence of spoken oratory, were
awanting. The _press_ was unknown in antiquity; there was no public
religious instruction: there were neither daily newspapers to discuss
passing events, nor a stock of printed works to form the principles
of the people, or mould their judgments, nor an Established Church,
to give them early and creditable impressions. Education, derived
entirely from oral instruction or costly manuscripts, was so extremely
expensive that it was beyond the reach of all but the most wealthy
classes. Three-fourths of the persons who had votes in any public
assembly had their principles formed, their information acquired, their
taste refined, in the theatres and the forum. The temples were open
for sacrifice or ceremonies only; not for instruction in religious
principle or moral duty. Immense was the addition which this entire
want alike of a public press, and a system of religious instruction,
had upon the importance of popular oratory. The tragedian and the
orator had the entire moulding of the public mind in their hand, alike
in fixed principle, previous prepossessions, and instant decision.
No daily, or monthly, or quarterly paper existed to form the subject
of study at home; no standard works were in every one's hands, to
give principles right or wrong, from which they were very unlikely
to swerve:--no religious tuition, to the influence of which, in any
momentous crisis, appeal might be made. The eloquence of the forum, the
transports of the theatre, were all in all.

It resulted, from this extraordinary and most perilous power of oratory
in ancient times, that the attention bestowed throughout life, but
especially in youth, on training to excellence in it, was unbounded.
In truth, education with them was so much directed to the study and
the practice of oratory, that it formed in most of their academies the
main object of instruction. Other topics--philosophy, poetry, science,
mathematics, history--were not neglected, but they were considered
chiefly as _subordinate to oratory_--rather, they were the preparatory
studies, from which a perfect orator was to be formed. Cicero says
expressly, that there is no subject of human knowledge of which the
orator may not avail himself, in his public address, and which may not
serve to enlighten his narrative, strengthen his argument, or adorn
his expression.[23] This shows how lofty was the idea which he had
formed of this noble art, and the aids which he was fain to obtain for
it, from all, even the most dissimilar, branches of human knowledge.
The greatest orators and philosophers of antiquity devoted themselves
to instruction in its principles, and consideration of the manner of
cultivating it with the highest success. Demosthenes taught, as every
schoolboy knows, for a talent: a sum above £200, and equal to at least
£500 in modern times. Cicero has left several beautiful treatises on
oratory; Isocrates owes his fame mainly to his writings on the same
subject; Quintilian has bequeathed to us a most elaborate work on its
principles, and the mode of its instruction; the treatise of Aristotle
on oratory is not the least celebrated of his immortal works. So vast
was the number, and so great was the influence of the schools of
rhetoric, that they came, in the later days of antiquity, to supersede
almost every other subject of study; they attracted the ingenious
youth from every part of the world to the groves of the Academy, and
singly supported the prosperity and fame of Greece, for centuries after
they had sunk under the withering grasp or declining fortunes of the
Byzantine empire.

It is evident from these considerations, as well as the intrinsic
beauties which the great masters of the art exhibit, that oratory in
ancient times was regarded as one of the _Fine Arts_. It was considered
not merely as the means of winning the favour, of convincing the
judgment, or securing the suffrages of the judges, but of moving the
affections, rousing the feelings, and elevating the mind. Quintilian
mentions the various definitions of the art of oratory which had been
invented by the rhetorical writers of antiquity, and he inclines to
that of Cicero, who held that it was the art of speaking "_apte ad
persuadendum_." This was its end, its aim; and undoubtedly it was so:
but the _modes of persuasion_--the methods of influencing the judgment
or moving the affections--were as various as the channels by which the
intellect may be determined, the feelings roused, or the heart touched.
Not less than poetry, painting, or statuary, they classed oratory
among the fine arts; and, indeed, they placed it at the head of them
all, because it embraced all their influences, and retouched, as it
were, by allusion, all the chords which they had previously caused to
vibrate. The surprising force with which they did this, considering the
comparatively limited stock of ideas, knowledge, and imagery which was
at their disposal, compared to what obtains in modern times, affords
the most decisive proof of the great attention they had bestowed on the
principles of the art, and the perfection to which they had brought
the means of influencing the mind--not only by the force of reason, or
the conceptions of genius, but by all the subordinate methods by which
their effect in delivery was to be augmented. With them the object of
oratory was not merely to persuade the understanding, but

    "To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
    To move the passions, and to melt the heart."

Nor was less attention bestowed, in ancient times, upon training young
men, to whatever profession they were destined, in that important and
difficult branch of oratory which consists in intonation and delivery.
It is well known that this is a branch of the art which is susceptible
of the very greatest improvement by education and practice, and that
even the brightest natural genius can rarely attain it, without the aid
of instruction or the lessons of experience. The surprising improvement
which is so often observed in persons trained to different professions
or habits, when they have been for some time engaged in public
speaking--above all, in emphasis and action--affords daily proof of the
vast effects of practice and experience in brightening the delivery of
thought. The prodigious influence of accent and intonation in adding
to the power of eloquence is equally well known, and may often be
perceived in listening to the difference between the same verses when
recited by an ordinary reader, and what they appear when illuminated
by the genius, or enforced by the feeling, of a Kemble or a Faucit.
The ancients, accordingly, were indefatigable in their endeavours
to improve themselves in this particular, and availed themselves of
means to attain perfection in it to which modern genius would scarcely
condescend. Cicero, when advanced in life, and in the meridian of
his fame, took lessons from Roscius, the great tragic actor of the
day; and the efforts of Demosthenes to overcome the impediments of a
defective elocution, by putting pebbles in his mouth, and declaiming
on the shores of the ocean, the roar of which resembled the murmurs
of the forum, demonstrate that the greatest masters of the art of
eloquence were fully alive to the vast influence of a powerful voice
and animated delivery, in heightening the effect even of the most
perfect efforts of oratory, and disdained no means of adding to their
impression. When asked, What is the first requisite of eloquence? the
last of these orators answered "Action;" the second? "Action;" the
third? "Action." Without going so great a length, and admitting the
full influence of the genius of Demosthenes in composing the speeches
which he so powerfully delivered, every one must admit the influence of
an impassioned delivery in heightening the effect of the highest, and
concealing the defects of the most ordinary oratory.

Quintilian opens his second book by a discussion of the question, which
he says occupied a prominent place in the schools of antiquity, at what
age a boy should be taken from the teachers of grammar, and delivered
to the instructors in rhetoric. By the former, they were taught grammar
and the elements of composition; by the latter, exercised in themes,
compositions in their own language, translations from Greek, extempore
debate, and instructed in declamation, intonation, and action. They
were not sent out into the world till they had spent several years in
the latter preparatory studies and exercises; and in them were trained
young men of all sorts, whether intended for the civil or military
classes. It was this which gave its statesmen and generals so wonderful
a command of the means of moving the human heart, and enabled them,
in the most trying situations, and often in the crisis of a battle or
the heat of a tumult, to utter those noble and impassioned sentiments
which so often determined the fate of the day, or even the fortunes
of their country; and which are so perfect that, when recorded in
the historians of antiquity, they have the appearance of having been
imagined by the genius of the writer. Nor was the attention to these
elements of eloquence sensibly diminished in the progress of time, when
the establishment of absolute power in the hands of a single person had
transferred, as in the days of Napoleon, the discussion of all public
or national questions to the council of state, or the private closet
of the emperor. On the contrary, it seems to have daily increased, and
was never so great as when the military fortunes of the empire were
declining, and its external influence yielding to the increasing weight
of the northern nations. A false and turgid style of eloquence, indeed,
became then generally prevalent, as it always does in the later days
of a nation, and in periods of political servitude: but attention to
the means of attaining it underwent no diminution. The wisdom or policy
of the emperors left various important functions to their _municipia_,
or "little senates," as they were called. The judicial functions,
for the most part, were still intrusted to the citizens: they had
the management, almost uncontrolled, of their local concerns: and so
great was the importance of securing their suffrages that the power of
influencing them, by means of oratory, continued to the very last to be
the chief object of instruction to the youth.

The instructors of youth in England have practically solved the
question which divided the teachers of antiquity, for they deliver
the youth at once from the grammar-school to the forum. They teach
him the dead languages incessantly, up to the age of eighteen, at
school: in the universities, mathematics in one university, and logic
in the other, divide his time with the composition of Greek prose or
Latin verse. But in those branches of study which have a bearing on
eloquence, or are likely to improve the style of composition, the
main attention of all is still directed to composition in the _dead
languages_. They think the art of speaking or writing in English is
not to be learned by exercise in that language, but by exercise in
another. They hold we are likely to become eloquent in this our English
isle, not by translating Cicero into English, but by translating
Addison into Latin; to become great poets, not by rendering Horace
into the tongue of Gray and Campbell, but by rendering the immortal
verses of these into the languages of Pindar or Virgil. Cicero and Mr
Pitt were of an opposite opinion. They held that, although the study
of the masterpieces of antiquity is the great school of oratory, and
the best path to rivalling their beauties, yet this is to be done, not
by prosecuting the vain endeavour to emulate, in these days, their
perfection in _their tongue_, but by seeking to _transfer it to our
own_. Translations from the Greek into Latin formed a large part of
the preparatory studies of Cicero,--from Thucydides and Cicero were
the favourite occupation at college of Mr Pitt.[24] It may be that
these great masters of ancient and modern eloquence were wrong--that
their time would have been better employed in composing Greek and
Latin verses, in attaining a thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin
prosody, or becoming masters of all the niceties of Greek or Latin
prose composition; but we shall not enter on the great debate. We are
content to let education for all classes, in our universities, remain
what Mr Locke long ago said it was, the education of schoolmasters;[25]
and shall content ourselves with signalising this peculiar system of
training as one great cause of the admitted inferiority of modern to
ancient eloquence.

None can be more thoroughly impressed than we are with the vast
importance of these noble establishments, or their effect in elevating
the tone of the national mind, and improving the taste of the youth
who daily issue from their walls. It is just from a sense of these
advantages that we are so desirous to enhance and extend the sphere of
their usefulness, and, by keeping them abreast of the age, and prepared
to meet its wants, secure for the classes they instruct the lead in the
national affairs to which they are entitled.

It cannot be disputed that, although English composition, or
translation from the classics into English, is not altogether
overlooked in the English universities, yet it forms a subordinate
object of attention. We are all aware how many eminent men have first
become celebrated by their prize poems. But those are the exceptions,
not the rule. The classics at one university, the higher mathematics at
another, form the great passports to distinction; the highest honours
at either are only to be won by attention to one or other, or both, of
these branches of knowledge. It is not surprising that, when this is
the case, the attention of the young men should be mainly turned to
composition in the dead languages, or to the most abstruse parts of
mathematics; and that when they come to speak in public, or deliver
sermons in their own language, they should, in the great majority of
cases, be entire novices, both as concerns the method of composition
and the graces of oratory. They are, in truth, called upon for the
first time to speak what is to them a _foreign_ language; to discuss
topics, to them, for the most part unknown; and practise a difficult
art, that of delivery, to which they are entire strangers. If they
were to address their audiences in Greek, they might possibly rival
Æschines or Demosthenes; if in Latin, outstrip Cicero; and if required
to compose verses, equal Horace or Pindar. But since they are called
on, when they go out into life, to speak neither in Greek prose nor
Latin prose, to compose neither in Greek verse nor Latin verse, but
to _speak in good English_, and not about gods and goddesses, but the
prices of corn and beef, the evils of pauperism and the load of taxes,
they too often find themselves entirely at a loss, and inwardly lament
the precious years, never to be recalled, which have been devoted to
pursuits of no practical utility in life.

It is the more extraordinary that so little attention should be paid at
our universities to composition, or the art of oratory, in the English
tongue, that every day's experience proves that the power of public
speaking is not only absolutely essential to the most moderate success
in many professions, but is indispensable to the highest grades _in
all_. In the Houses of Lords and Commons, at the Bar, in the Church, it
is of course necessary from the very outset, if the very least eminence
is to be looked for. But not only in the professions of which oratory
is the very foundation, but in every case of life where a certain
degree of eminence has been attained, it becomes of equal importance,
and the want of it will be equally felt. The landed proprietor will
find it impossible to maintain his influence in his county, unless,
on the hustings and in political meetings, on the bench of justices,
at county and railway meetings, he is prepared to take his part in
debate, and can come off with a creditable appearance. The merchant or
manufacturer who has become a _millionnaire_ by a life of laborious
industry, will find that he cannot keep his place in society unless he
call deliver his sentiments with effect at civic dinners, meetings for
business, in the magisterial chair, or at the festive board. Even the
soldier and sailor, when they rise to eminence in their profession,
are called on to speak in public, and grievously suffer if they cannot
do so. Many a gallant spirit, which never quailed before an enemy, has
been crushed, and his reputation injured, by inability to speak in a
public assembly, or to answer appropriately a complimentary speech at a
public dinner. Indeed, the influence of public speaking in the country
is not only great, but daily increasing, and it confers influence and
distinction often far beyond the real merits of the speaker, and, for
its want, the most solid or brilliant parts in other respects can make
no compensation. The great body of men invariably impute inability
to speak well in public to want of ideas; whereas, in reality, it
generally arises from want of practice, and often coexists with the
greatest acquirements and the most brilliant genius. Strange that the
art of English oratory, upon which the experience of all tells them
success in the higher stations of life is entirely dependent, should,
by common consent, be invariably neglected, and that the art of making
Latin verses, which universal experience tells all is of no earthly use
in life, except to one in a thousand, should, by common consent, be
universally cultivated!

It is constantly said, that the object of the extraordinary attention
paid in our schools and colleges to composition in the dead languages,
is to enable the students properly to appreciate the beauties of their
authors, and that, without an exact knowledge of prosody and writing
in them, this appreciation cannot be attained. This is doubtless in
some degree true: but the point is, at what cost is this proficiency
attained, and to what proportion of the students is it of any practical
benefit? Is there one in ten to whom the beauty of poetry will ever be
intelligible, one in a hundred who will ever be a poet? If we were to
live to the age of Methusalem, it might be worth while to set apart
ten years for classical composition, ten more for Italian, and ten for
German; but since our life is limited to threescore and ten years, and
a seventh of that only can be devoted to education, is it expedient to
devote the _whole_ of that time to that one object? If ten years are
devoted to the mastering of Greek composition and Latin prosody, _what
time is left_ for learning to speak or write in English? What should
we say if ten years were devoted by every English young man to the
composition of German or Italian verses, because it would better enable
him to appreciate the beauties of Schiller or Metastasio, of Korner or
Petrarch? Yet is composition in these living languages more practically
useful, both for the business of life and for improvement in our own
tongue, than in the dead, because it is often of advantage in society,
and their tongues are at bottom derived from the same roots, and are
similar in construction to our own.

It is the more to be regretted that, in our Universities, translations
from English into Greek or Latin should be made so great an object,
instead of translations from Greek or Latin into English, because the
latter study is perhaps the most beneficial, both to spread a taste for
ancient beauties, and to diffuse the means of rivalling them in our own
tongue, which the wit of man has ever devised. There is nothing which
improves the style like translation from the masterpieces of foreign
languages. It is far more beneficial than copying or committing to
memory the most perfect specimens of composition in our own tongue,
because it both brings us in contact with the most exquisite specimens
of human genius, and exercises the mind in the endeavour to transfer
them to our own idiom. It varies the thought, it extends the ideas, it
suggests new methods of expression. It is the foreign travelling of the
soul. It renders foreign or ancient languages tributary to our own;
it fills the mind with remote ideas; it not only "elevates us in the
scale of thinking beings," but increases our power of communicating
our thoughts to the world. What boundless treasures have Milton and
Collins, Taylor and Gray, imported into our language from the classical
writers: how much was the nerve and form of their expression enhanced
by their study of antiquity! Of what value are all their Latin
compositions compared to those which, so enriched, they have left in
their own tongue?

The next circumstance which has contributed to stamp its peculiar
style, and hitherto unequalled perfection, on ancient oratory, is the
circumstance that it was all, or nearly all, WRITTEN and committed to
memory. This at least was _certainly_ the case with all the orations
which have come down to our times; for, if not written, how have they
been preserved? There were no short-hand writers in those days. The
art of stenography was unknown. No reporters from the _Times_ were in
attendance, to catch, with almost magical rapidity, every word which
fell from the speaker's lips, and render it with exact fidelity in its
ample columns the following morning. What was written came, and could
only come, from the author himself. It is well known that several of
the most celebrated speeches of Cicero never were delivered at all: the
frequent repetition of the same ideas, in the same identical words, in
the orations of Demosthenes, affords conclusive evidence that they were
not merely carefully prepared, but actually written out. Indeed, to any
one who considers the style of the speeches, not only of these great
masters, but of all the orators of antiquity, it must be sufficiently
evident that nearly all that has come down to us had been written. Some
part, without doubt, was caught from the inspiration of the moment: a
happy retort was sometimes the result of an interruption, a felicitous
reply of an antagonist's attack. But these were the exceptions, not
the rule. These extempore bursts were interwoven with the framework of
the piece, and committed to paper next day, when the author corrected
his speech for permanent preservation. In the dexterous interweaving
consisted no small part of the skill of the orator. But the greater
part of every speech was, beyond all doubt, written and committed to
memory. The style everywhere proves this. It is as impossible for any
man, how bright soever his genius or copious his language, to speak
extempore in the condensed and emphatic style of the ancient orators,
as it would be to compose, as an Improvisatore, the verses of Pope or
Campbell.

This circumstance sounds strange in those times, and especially to an
Englishman, because it is well known that the grand requisite, the
one thing needful to a modern orator, is to speak extempore. Power
in reply is considered as the highest quality; and it is to it, _par
excellence_, that the much coveted phrase "effective" is applied. We
all know what would be the fate of a speaker in the House of Commons
who should commit his speeches to memory, and take lessons from
Macready or Kean in their delivery. Beyond all doubt, derision would
take the place of admiration; the laughs would be much more frequent
than the cheers. Yet this is precisely what Cicero and Demosthenes did;
it was thus that Pericles ruled the Athenian Democracy, and Æschines
all but overturned the giant strength of his immortal adversary. We
are not to imagine that these men, whose works have stood the test
of twenty centuries, were wrong in their system; it is not to be
supposed that every subsequent nation of the earth has misdirected its
admiration. It is more probable that some circumstances have occurred
to turn oratory, in modern times, aside from its highest flights, and
induced a style in public speaking which has now become habitual,
and will alone be tolerated, but which is inconsistent with the most
perfect style of oratory. Nor is it difficult, if we consider the
composition of modern senates, and the objects for which they are
assembled, to see what these circumstances are.

As freedom and popular institutions are indispensable to eloquence,
it is in England and France, since the Revolution, that oratory of
a high description can alone be looked for. But the Anglo-Saxons
are essentially a _practical_ race; and the stamp in this respect
which nature has affixed to their character, appears, in every age,
not less in their deeds than their accomplishments. Imagination has
shone forth most brilliantly in many individuals of the race--but,
generally speaking, we are not an imaginative people. The Fine Arts
have never struck their roots in the open air amongst us; they are
the delicate plants of southern realms, which require the shelter and
warmth of our conservatories. It is in the highly educated classes
alone that a taste for them is general. The romantic, not the classical
drama, alone has ever been popular with the mass of our people; the
attractions and fashion of the opera are required to make even the
beauties of Metastasio tolerable to the very highest ranks. In matters
of business, the same disposition is apparent. What is required, what
commands success, is neither the flowers of oratory nor brilliancy of
imagination nor elegance of diction, but argument to the point. It is
thus that the suffrages of jurymen are to be obtained; it is thus that
a majority in the House of Commons is to be secured. As the assemblies
to whom modern oratory is addressed are much less numerous than those
of antiquity--as they are representatives, not citizens; juries, not
Areopagites--a different style of speaking has become established from
that which was universally felt to be essential in the assemblies of
antiquity. When the crowds of a theatre were no longer to be addressed,
the theatrical style of oratory fell into disuse.

As argument to the point, accurate acquaintance with the subject,
and the power of communicating something of value to the interests
with which senates in modern times are intrusted, are the great
requisites which are now looked for, set and prepared speeches have
been abandoned. It was soon discovered that they would seldom meet
the exigencies of a debate, and still less furnish the materials of
a reply. They were felt to be of little value, because they did not
meet what the audience wished. They were as much out of place as a
set speech would be to a jury, after evidence had been led in a case.
It will always be so in situations where real business is to be done,
and the persons by whom it is to be done are not numerous assemblies,
little acquainted with the subjects of discussion--and therefore liable
to be swayed by the eloquence of the orator--but a limited number of
persons, most of whom are somewhat acquainted with it, and desire to
have their information extended, rather than their feelings touched.
It has accordingly been often observed, that the style of speaking in
the House of Commons has sensibly declined in beauty, though it has
increased in knowledge of the subject, since the Reform Bill introduced
the representatives of the commercial towns, and business men have
found a place in such numbers in the House of Commons. It may be
anticipated that, as their numbers and influence increase, the same
change will become still more conspicuous.

But although these considerations sufficiently explain how it has
happened that the style of speaking, in our national assemblies,
has become more business-like and less ornate than in the republics
of antiquity, and extempore speaking has grown into a universal
practice with all public men who aspire to the honours of "effective"
oratory--or such as would acquire a practical sway in the assemblies
to which it is addressed--it by no means follows from this, that
this system is not a deviation from the method by which alone a
perfect style of eloquence is to be attained, or a step in descent
in that noble art. Because a thing is useful and necessary, or even
unavoidable, with a view to attain certain ends, it is not to be
concluded, that it is by attending exclusively to it that the highest
and most perfect style in it is to be attained. The simple style of
singing best suits private performers, and often appears in the highest
degree charming, when flowing from the lips of taste and beauty; but no
one would compare art, in these its early stages, to what it appears
in the hands of Grisi or Mademoiselle Lind. The style of speaking
adopted by our leaders at the Chancery bar, or on the North Circuit, is
probably the best that could be devised to attain the object to which
the gentlemen of the long robe aspire--that of influencing the judges
or juries of those courts; but every one must see that that object is a
much inferior one to that which was aimed at by Cicero, Demosthenes, or
Bossuet. Their business is with oratory as an art; but, in addition to
this, eloquence is a fine art. Great eminence in the latter department
can never be attained but by sedulous preparation, and the committing
to memory of written compositions; and unless this is done, the fame of
no orator, how much soever he may be celebrated during his career, can
possibly be durable, or exceed the lifetime of the contemporaries to
whom his extempore effusions were addressed.

Nothing is more common than to hear it said, after a powerful speech in
the House of Lords or Commons has been delivered, that it rivalled the
most finished pieces of ancient eloquence; nay, it is sometimes added
that it was "above all Greek, above all Roman fame." In no instance,
however, has it been found that this reputation has been lasting, or
even long survived the actual appearance of the orator before the
Houses of Parliament. The ample columns of Hansard's _Parliamentary
Debates_ are often searched to discover inconsistencies in the
delivered opinions of public men; sometimes to bring to light facts
on statistics which subsequent time has caused to be forgotten; but
rarely, if ever, to cull out specimens of elevated thought, condensed
argument, or felicitous expression. None of these speeches will take
their place beside those of Cicero and Demosthenes, or the _Oraisons
Funèbres_ of Bossuet, all of which were written compositions. When the
historian comes to record the arguments used on the opposite sides, on
great public questions, he cannot refer to a more valuable and faithful
record than the Parliamentary Debates; for they tell at once what was
advanced in the legislature, and said in the nation, on every subject
that came under discussion: but he cannot turn to one which it will be
less safe to transfer unaltered to his pages. If he means to render
the arguments interesting, or even intelligible, to the great body of
readers, he must distil them into a twentieth part of their original
bulk: he must dismiss all the repetitions and circumlocutions; he must
say in words what he finds delivered in sentences; he must abridge a
hundred pages into four or five; he must, in short, do _ex post facto_,
and to convey an impression of the argument to future times, what the
ancient orators did _ab ante_, and in order to secure the suffrages
of the present. It is surprising, when this is carefully done, how
effectually a lengthened argument can be condensed into a few pages;
and how powerful the bone and muscle appears when delivered from the
oppression of the superincumbent flesh.

It is not to be wondered at that it should be so. The reason for it
is permanent, and will remain the same to the end of the world. In
the heat and animation of a debate, a happy idea may occasionally be
struck out, a felicitous retort may be suggested by an interruption.
The Parliamentary speeches contain many instances of such ready talent;
and it need hardly be said that the effect of it, at the moment of
delivery, is in general prodigious. But it is altogether impossible
to keep up a speech extempore in that style. Preparation and previous
study are the parents of brief and emphatic expression: without their
meeting, the offspring need not be looked for. The reason is, that it
is while one thought is in the course of delivery that the mind is
arranging those which are to succeed it. The conception of a ready
extempore speaker must always be two or three sentences ahead of his
elocution. Thence the necessity for circumlocution and repetition. It
is to _gain time_ for thought--to mould future ideas. If it were not
so, he would come to a dead stop, and break down at the end of the
first sentence. The faculty of doing this--of speaking of one thing
and thinking of another; of composing words in one sentence, and
arranging ideas for another, without pause or hesitation--and doing
this often in the midst of applause or interruption, is one of the most
wonderful efforts of the human mind; and it is its extreme difficulty
which renders elegant extempore speaking so very rare, and makes it,
when it does appear, the object of such general admiration. But we
are persuaded that the greatest master of extempore speaking will
admit, that it is wholly impossible to keep up eloquent and condensed
expression, for any length of time, without previous preparation.
Whenever you hear an orator bringing out condensed and elegant
expression for any length of time together, it may be concluded, with
absolute certainty, that he is speaking from preparation.

Nor is such preparation inconsistent with occasional allusion to
previous argument or retort against interruption; on the contrary, it
is by such extempore effusions or sallies, interwoven in the text of a
prepared oration, that the highest perfection in the art of oratory is
to be attained. If it is wholly prepared, it will appear lifeless and
methodical--it will wear the aspect of a spoken essay. If it is wholly
extempore, it will be diffuse and cumbrous--crowded with repetitions,
and destitute of emphasis. It is by the combination of general
careful composition with occasional felicitous reply that the highest
perfection in this noble art is to be attained; for the first will give
it general power, the last the appearance of extempore conception. By
no other method is it possible to combine the two grand requisites of
the highest species of oratory--emphatic and condensed language--with
those occasional allusions and sudden replies which add so much to its
immediate effect, and give it all the air of being produced at the
moment. It is true, this is a dangerous style to adopt, and many are
the speakers who have broken down under it; for nothing is so apt to
induce confusion in the mind, and forgetfulness of what should follow,
as new introductions into a prepared composition. But where is there
anything great or magnificent achieved in life without difficulty and
danger? and the examples of the ancient orators, by whom both were
overcome, is sufficient to demonstrate that it is not beyond the reach
of genius and perseverance.

Still less is it to be supposed that such a style of speaking is
inconsistent with the most vehement and powerful action, and all the
aids which oratory can derive from intonation, gesture, and animation
in delivery. On the contrary, it is in delivering such speeches that
these may be brought to bear with the happiest effect,--as we daily
see on the stage, where known speeches, every word of which is got by
heart by the actor, and often is familiar to the audience, are every
day repeated with the utmost possible effect, and the most impassioned
action. It is the want of such animation in delivery which is the
great cause of the failure of many able speakers, and nowhere more
than in the pulpit. The common opinion that discourses there must be
delivered in a cold inanimate manner, suitable to the gravity of the
subject and the solemnity of the place, is an entire mistake, and has
contributed, perhaps, more than any other cause, to the vast numbers
whom the Dissenters have succeeded, both in England and Scotland, in
enticing away from the Established Church. It is this animation which
generally follows the delivery of thought extempore, compared with
the cold monotonous style in which written discourses are usually
delivered,--which is one great cause of the signal success which has
attended the efforts of the Methodists and Low Churchmen in England,
and the Free Church clergy in Scotland. The common opinion among the
peasants of Scotland, that the inspiration of Heaven only descends
upon extempore speakers, arises from the same cause. They think the
extempore preacher is inspired because he is animated; they are sure he
who reads his discourse is not so, because he is monotonous. But many
examples prove that it is quite possible to combine the most finished
and elaborate written composition with such intensity of feeling, and
vehemence of action, as will give it the appearance of extempore and
uncontrollable bursts of eloquence. The great effect of Dr Chalmers's
sermons in Scotland, and Mr Irving's in England, were not required to
show that it is by this combination that the highest triumphs in pulpit
oratory are to be attained.

Contrast this with the tame and monotonous way in which too many
learned and unexceptionable sermons were delivered in the days of
Addison, and which, it is to be feared, has not become obsolete since
his time:--

     "Our preachers stand stock-still in the pulpit, and will not so
     much as move a finger to set off the best sermons in the world.
     We meet with the same speaking statues at our bars, and in all
     our public places of debate. Our words flow from us in a smooth
     continued stream, without those strainings of the voice, motions
     of the body, and majesty of the head, which are so much celebrated
     in the orators of Greece and Rome. We can talk of life and death
     in cold blood, and keep our temper in a discourse which turns
     upon everything that is dear to us. Though our zeal breaks out
     in the finest tropes and figures, it is not able to stir a limb
     about us. It was just the reverse in antiquity. We are told that
     the great Latin orator very much impaired his health by this
     _laterum contentio_, this vehemence of action, with which he used
     to deliver himself. The Greek orator was likewise so very famous
     for this particular in rhetoric that one of his antagonists, whom
     he had banished from Athens, reading over the oration which had
     procured his banishment, and hearing his friends admire it, could
     not forbear asking them, if they were so much affected by the bare
     reading of it, how much more they would have been charmed had
     they heard him actually throwing out such a storm of eloquence.
     How cold and dead a figure, in comparison of these two great men,
     does our orator often make at the British bar or in the senate! A
     deaf man would think he was cheapening a beaver, when, perhaps, he
     is talking of the fate of the British nation. It is certain that
     proper gestures, and vehement exertions of the voice, cannot be
     too much studied by a public orator. They keep the audience awake,
     and fix their attention on what is delivered to them, at the same
     time that they show that the speaker is in earnest, and affected
     himself with what he so passionately recommends to others. In
     England, we often see people lulled asleep with cold and elaborate
     discourses of piety, who would be transported out of themselves by
     the bellowings of enthusiasm."[26]

It is no answer to our observations to say, that our greatest orators
have been bred at the universities, and that the system cannot be very
faulty which has produced Pitt and Fox, Chatham and Burke, Peel and
Stanley. Supposing that all these orators had devoted themselves, at
college, to classical verses, instead of compositions in their own
tongue--which was by no means the case--still, that would by no means
prove that the system of education in which they were bred was not
eminently defective. They became great speakers, not from having been
proficients in "longs and shorts" at Oxford, or in the differential
calculus at Cambridge, but in spite of these acquirements. They learned
the art of speaking in the forum, as Wellington's soldiers learned
the art of war in the field, by practice, in presence of the enemy.
Doubtless a great deal may be done, by able and energetic men, in this
way; but does it follow from this that education is to go for nothing,
and that the old system of sending out officers to begin a campaign and
besiege towns without knowing a ravelin from a bastion, was advisable,
or likely to insure success in the military art? If you have two or
three thousand young men, comprising the élite of the nation, at
certain seminaries, _you cannot help finding your leading statesmen
and orators there_, whatever they learn at them. They would be found
there, though they were taught at them nothing but riding, music, and
dancing. The whole rulers of Persia were found at its schools, though
they learned nothing at them but to ride, to shoot with the bow, and
speak the truth. But it would be rather dangerous to hold that this
proves that seminaries, where nothing else was taught, were the ones
best suited to secure the first place in society for their scholars, or
the blessings of good government to the state.

Nor let it be said that there is no room, as society is now
constituted, for the triumphs of the higher species of eloquence;
that it cannot be attempted at the bar, and would be hooted down in
the House of Commons, where business men now form a large majority,
and business speeches, not the flowers of rhetoric, will alone be
listened to. There is much truth in these observations, although it
will probably be found that, even in courts of justice and in the
Reformed House of Commons, a study of the condensed and cogent style of
ancient eloquence is not the worst passport to success, and is almost
indispensable to the highest triumphs. But supposing the bar and the
senate set aside, as places in which business will alone be tolerated,
are these the _only_ places in which oratory may be practised, in
which opinion may be moulded, and influence by eloquence obtained? Are
there no public meetings held amongst us for the purposes of political
change, social improvement, religious extension, moral amelioration,
charity, or festivity, in which large numbers of the people, and
often of all ranks and both sexes, are brought together, in which
there is ample room for the display of all the graces of oratory, and
in which the most eloquent and impassioned speaker is sure to carry
away the palm? Are not these meetings the "primary assemblies," as it
were, in which the ideas are elaborated, or the principles formed,
which afterwards make their way into the press and the Legislature,
and so determine the course of national policy, or the fate of
national fortunes? Every day, with the increasing popularising of our
institutions, is adding to the influence of eloquence, and multiplying
the situations in which its highest style may be poured forth with the
greatest effect. Above all, is not the pulpit to be found in every
parish, where every week an opportunity is afforded for the most
earnest appeals to the consciences of men--where the highest temporal
and eternal interests are constantly the subject of discussion--where
the most earnest appeals to the feelings are not only allowed, but
commendable--and where a mixed and willing audience is always to be
met with, of both sexes, who receive, not only with patience, but with
gratitude and admiration, the most powerful and moving strains of
eloquence which can be addressed to them? Rely upon it, opportunities
for oratory in its very highest style are not awanting. What is
awanting is due attention early in life to that noble art, the lofty
spirit which arises at great objects, and the energetic will, the
resolute perseverance, which deem the labour of a lifetime a light
price to pay for their attainment.




LAING'S OBSERVATIONS ON EUROPE.


It is not the least merit of Mr Laing's writings that they embrace
much matter within a manageable compass. The objects claiming our
attention are multiplying so fast upon us--the path of the inquirer
is strewn with so many important topics, that he who would keep pace
with the march of knowledge, must be content to throw aside all but
what is really useful for the journey. The volume before us, forming
a sequel to the _Notes of a Traveller_ published by Mr Laing in
1842, fulfils this condition, and comprises within the limits of a
moderate octavo a vast variety of subjects, social and political,
domestic and foreign--population, the division of land, emigration,
militia, university education, Continental railroads, taxes, theatres,
fresco-painting, and a multitude of other topics. Among so many
subjects, there are of course some on which we are unable to concur
in the opinions expressed by the author; and some of his views we can
hardly reconcile with the acute good sense that characterises most of
his observations. But even on matters where we are forced to differ
from him, his remarks are always instructive, original, and suggestive;
and he generally presents both sides of a disputed question with
remarkable impartiality, leaving the reader to form the conclusion for
himself.

There is one circumstance which, in our opinion, greatly enhances the
value of Mr Laing's observations on the social condition of our own
and other countries. The very worst of all travellers is a political
economist--that is, a dogmatist in the science. Whether his _Magnus
Apollo_ be Smith, or Say, or Ricardo, he sees all things through the
spectacles of his favourite theories. Any inquiries he makes are
directed, not to elicit the truth, but to support his pre-formed
opinions; and, of course, no one who goes forth on this errand ever
fails of finding what he seeks. And thus it happens that a Cobden
may traverse Europe from end to end; and at the very time when the
thunderclouds of social convulsion were about to burst in the most
awful storm that has ever shaken civilised nations, he not only
discerns no symptom of the impending hurricane, but beholds nothing but
the smiling prospect of contented industry--the budding spring-time of
universal peace and reciprocity. But, on the other hand, the observer
who is either unacquainted with the doctrines of political economy, or
who affects to consider them only as objects of speculative curiosity,
is, in the opposite way, just as unfit as the pedant in the science to
form correct and comprehensive views of the social condition of foreign
states. He wants the proper rule to direct his observations, and can
hardly attain any but confused and superficial ideas of the meaning of
what he sees around him. He alone is qualified to observe wisely, and
to write instructively, about the institutions and customs of other
nations, who, having worked out for himself the leading principles of
the science, and ascertained their true limits, possesses at the same
time sufficient common sense and independence of judgment to apply
them. Mr Laing seems to us to be gifted in an eminent degree with these
requisites for making good practical use of his theoretical knowledge
of political economy. He appears to be fully aware of the vast amount
of dangerous error that has resulted from a blind and indiscriminate
application of the same abstract laws to all cases, without fully
ascertaining their true character, or making allowance for those
disturbing causes which often render the law wholly irrelevant.
Political economy, like other sciences, has its two parts--the theory
and the application; and it too often happens that a man who is well
read in the first is totally incapable of giving an opinion on the
second, and infinitely the more difficult branch. The platform orator
or newspaper writer thinks that if he can but refer to an abstract
formula borrowed from Ricardo or M'Culloch, it is sufficient to
settle any question of social interests that may come before him--not
considering that these formula and maxims _are_ abstract: and that
their applicability to the affairs of everyday life may be affected by
so many causes that it is scarcely possible to find any actual example
to which they can be applied rigorously, and to their full extent.
And hence the nonsense that is talked and written, under the name of
political economy; hence the absurdities that are enacted under the
idea, that nations can be governed by the square and plummet of its
rules.

     "The truth has been missed," says Mr Jones, in the preface to his
     work on the Distribution of Wealth, "not because a steady and
     comprehensive study of the story and condition of mankind would
     not yield truth, but because those who have been most prominent in
     circulating error have really turned aside from the task of going
     through such an examination at all; have confined the observations
     on which they have founded their reasonings to the small portion
     of the earth's surface by which they were immediately surrounded;
     and have then proceeded at once to erect a superstructure of
     doctrines and opinions, either wholly false, or, if partially
     true, as limited in their application as the field from which the
     materials for them were collected."

Mr Laing supplies us[27] with an apt illustration of the fallacious use
that is very commonly made of general laws, by neglecting to attend
to the special circumstances of each case. It has been laid down as a
maxim by economists, that a government should not attempt to direct,
restrict, or interfere with the employment of capital and industry;
but that every man should be left free to use the portion of them he
possesses, how, where, and when he pleases. Now this maxim may be true
enough in the abstract, and where there are no conditions to limit its
application; but it is not equally true in all political states, nor
in the same state at different times. The social condition of Great
Britain, at the present day, may admit its application more fully than
that of most other nations. But we have only to cross the German Ocean
to find a circumstance easily overlooked--namely, that of climate,
which upsets its relevancy altogether.

A still more striking exemplification of the same fallacy presents
itself too obviously, in the opening of the corn trade in our own
country. "There should be no artificial restrictions on the food of
the people"--that is the abstract axiom on which our legislators
grounded the abolition of all customs on imported grain. Does any
one question the truth of it as a general axiom? Certainly not: and
if we were setting out on a new social system--if the field on which
we had to work was a _tabula rasa_, and we were free in all other
respects, as well as this, to devise a scheme of government for a
nascent community--that maxim would no doubt be kept in view in the
construction of our code. But we have to legislate for a state of
society in which everything else is artificial--in which restrictions
meet us wherever we turn. Our task is not to rear a new edifice, in
the plan of which we could give free scope to our taste and skill; but
to repair, and if possible improve, an ancient fabric, the work of
many different ages, and abounding in all manner of quaint angles and
irregularities. We have to deal with the case of a country burdened
with an enormous weight of general and local taxation, arbitrarily and
unequally distributed,--where the employment of the people, and the
application of their capital and industry, is founded on the faith of
old laws and a settled commercial principle,--above all, a country
where the business of exchange has to be conducted through the most
anomalous medium--the medium of a _fettered currency_. One and all of
these peculiarities in our condition are so many limitations of the
general maxim; and the attempt to carry it out in its full extent,
in defiance of these limitations, can only end in confusion and
disappointment. Political economy is a safe guide in the hands of a
practical legislator, only when he has fully apprehended the truth that
there is not one of its principles, from beginning to end, that may
not be limited by the special condition of each individual state; and
unless he can carry with him this master-principle, so necessary to a
right use of the theory of the science, it is far better and safer for
those whose interests he directs that he should be wholly ignorant of
it, and should trust altogether to common-sense and experience.

There is a very manifest disposition at present, to extend the
jurisdiction of political economy to all public questions--to take
it for granted that, when a case has once been argued and decided
according to its laws, there is no more to be said on the subject.
We are apt to forget that there is in all cases an appeal to another
court, where the inquiry is not as to what is most favourable to the
production of exchangeable Wealth, but what most conduces to the
Happiness of the people; and that, still beyond, there is the last
supreme tribunal on earth of all human actions, where there is but
one law--the universal law of Morality. Are these three jurisdictions
identical? Or are the decrees that issue from them necessarily in
harmony with each other? So, at least, we are told by those who take
the strongest view of the importance of political economy. Their
doctrine is, that whatever promotes one of these objects promotes the
others; and that wealth, happiness, and virtue, though distinguishable
in thought, are mutually and reciprocally united in the history and
experience of nations. To buy cheap and sell dear is the way for a
man to get rich; but the riches of individuals in the aggregate form
national wealth, national wealth produces civilisation, civilisation
promotes happiness and contentment, and happiness and contentment
promote virtue--such is the sorites on which is founded the creed
of a very large section of the present school of economists. That
country in which the means of production are most developed is the soil
where the higher qualities of man's nature will be found flourishing
in greatest perfection. Wealth, then, is the principal thing in the
guidance of private conduct, as well as in the government of nations;
and with all our getting, the chief concern is to get capital. It is
this disposition to submit everything to the test of productiveness
that Sismondi has so aptly designated by the title of _chrematism_.
The views of that great and philosophic writer, as to the inevitable
tendencies of the doctrine, have been already fully explained in our
pages.[28] We allude to them now only to observe how remarkable a
confirmation of his opinions is furnished by the history of the great
Continental states since that review of his doctrines was written.

Is there, then, no way of reconciling the apparent antagonism between
the development of man's industrial powers, and his higher interests
as a rational and accountable being? Are we to conclude that the roads
that lead to wealth, to happiness, and to virtue, are necessarily
divergent? and that national advancement in any one of these paths
implies a departure from the others? No; not necessarily so. Such is
not the doctrine taught by Sismondi, and by those who, with him, impugn
the title of political economy to be considered as the great paramount
rule of social existence. All that they maintain is, that there is
_no necessary agreement_ between these three great springs of human
action; that though the law of morality may, and obviously often does,
concur with the maxims of happiness, and those again with the rules of
political economy, there are nevertheless many questions on which we
are at a loss to reconcile them. The learned Archbishop of Dublin has
an elaborate argument in his _Introductory Lectures_, to show, on _a
priori_ grounds, that the condition most favourable to the exercise
of man's productive energies must also be favourable, not only to the
highest development of his intellectual faculties, but also to his
advancement in moral purity. Now, we venture to think that no such
argument, however ingeniously conducted, can be satisfactory, simply
because IT IS _a priori_. Reason and experience are at variance; and
no _a priori_ deduction will help us out of the practical difficulty.
We, no doubt, all naturally desire and hope--nay, believe--that at
some future time, and in some way at present unknown, the perplexing
contradiction will be explained. Reason affirms unhesitatingly, that
the same Providence which placed so bounteous a store of the physical
materials of wealth at our disposal, can never have designed that
their cultivation should embitter the lives of those who labour,
still less that it should endanger their moral wellbeing; and we look
forward, therefore, with firm faith to a period when these paths,
which to our present sight seem to lead in directions so opposite,
shall all be seen to reunite and terminate in one common end. But, in
the present state of our powers, that insight is yet far from being
attained, and the great problem yet remains to be solved.--What do
we see around us? In this country--whose physical character and the
spirit of whose people seem to destine her for the very home and centre
of production--are there no discordant elements in our condition?
While wealth has increased among us with a rapidity unexampled in the
history of the world, and the struggling energies of all men have been
strained to the uttermost in the race of industry--while, under the
sway of commercial Ministries, legislation has been specially, almost
exclusively, directed to stimulating manufactures in every way, and
removing every obstacle that could be supposed, however indirectly, to
hinder their extension--can we venture to assert that the condition of
the great mass of the people has improved in proportion to our riches?
Are the relations of employers and the employed on so satisfactory a
footing as to give no grounds for anxiety? Has the labourer, by whose
toil all those vast accumulations of capital are created, enjoyed an
equitable share of them? Have his means of domestic comfort increased
in the same ratio as the wealth of his master? Is not the rate of his
remuneration diminishing with every step in our progress? Has not
crime, during the last half century, increased fully ten times as fast
as the numbers of our population? Who can look at these, and a hundred
other similar indications that readily suggest themselves, and say that
all is well; that, as far as the experience of Britain goes, the road
to national wealth has also conducted us to greater happiness and moral
wellbeing? Alas! the evidence is but too convincing that, if there be
any way of reconciling these ends, we at least have not yet found it.
But we repeat that the contrariety between them is not a necessary or
universal one. The conditions of great advancement in commerce and
the industrial

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