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Página 154 - ... at the court ; because nothing is more true than that great merit is safe from all enemies save one — safe and secure, so its possessor will only not join its foes. Unhappily, he formed this inauspicious junction, and the alliance was fatal to his fame. Seduced by the profligate arts of one woman, and the perilous fascinations of another, he lent himself to a proceeding deformed by the blackest colours of treachery and of murder. A temporary aberration of mind can explain though not excuse...
Página 56 - By these dogmas he abided through his whole life, with a steadfastness, and even to a sacrifice of power, which sets at defiance all attempts to question their perfect sincerity. Such as he was when he left Oxford, such he continued above sixty years after, to the close of his long and prosperous life; — the enemy of all reform, the champion of the throne and the altar, and confounding every abuse that surrounded the one, or grew up within the precincts of the other, with the institutions themselves...
Página 75 - ... admirable in itself, and as certain of being new to the audience. But in this saying there was considerably more wit than truth. The Doctor's speech was sure to contain materials not for one, but for half a dozen speeches ; and a person might with great advantage listen to it, in order to use those materials, in part, afterwards, as indeed many did, both in Parliament and at the Bar where he practised, make an effort to attend to him, how difficult soever, in order to hear all that could be said...
Página 56 - ... of sovereignty ! With all these apparent discrepancies between Lord Eldon's outward and inward man, nothing could be more incorrect than to represent him as tainted with hypocrisy, in the ordinary sense of the word. He had imbibed from his youth, and in the orthodox bowers which Isis waters, the dogmas of the Tory creed in all their purity and rigour. By these dogmas he abided through his whole life, with a steadfastness and even at a sacrifice of power, which sets at defiance all attempts to...
Página 173 - I stoop to acquire it by servility and corruption. ' If I rise not to rank, I shall at least be honest ; and should I ever cease to be so, many an example shows me, that an ill-acquired elevation, by making me the more conspicuous, would only make me the more universally and the more notoriously contemptible...
Página 6 - ... or ruffle his repose. His natural abilities, too, were far above mediocrity ; he was quick, lively, gifted with a retentive memory, and even with a ready wit — endowed with an exquisite ear for music, and a justness of eye, that fitted him to attain refined taste in the arts — possessing, too, a nice sense of the ludicrous, which made his relish for humour sufficiently acute, and bestowed upon him the powers of an accomplished mimic. The graces of his person and his manners need not be noted,...
Página 255 - ... observable, though much less observable, in his poetical pieces, which generally possessed very high excellence. It is singular to mark the extraordinary contrast which his thoughts and his expressions presented in this respect. There was nothing superfluous or roundabout in his reasoning — nothing dilatory or feeble in the conceptions which produced his plans. He saw his object at once, and with intuitive sagacity; he saw it in its true colours and real dimensions ; he at one glance espied...
Página 202 - It concealed a cut-and-thrust sword, and looked like a common whip. and preaches rights to promote wrongs.* It is a collection of unamiable speculations, equally subversive of good government, good thinking, and good feeling. It establishes a kind of republic in the mind; dethrones the majesty of sentiment; degrades the dignity of noble and elevated feelings: and substitutes a democracy of mean and vulgar calculation. In their usurpation, all the grace, and elegance, and order of the human heart...
Página 150 - The mind of the historian) weary with recounting the deeds of human baseness, and mortified with contemplating the frailties of illustrious men, gathers a soothing refreshment from such scenes as these; where kindred genius, exciting only mutual admiration and honest rivalry, gives birth to no feeling of jealousy or envy, and the character which stamps real greatness is found in the genuine value...
Página 188 - ... pleaders ; and to forget that the surest way of bringing out the truth in any case is to let the conflicting feelings and interests of parties come into their natural collision. His impatience was thus very manifest ; and had his nerves been in the same proportion firm as his dislike to declamation and illustration was strong, a struggle would have ensued in which the eloquence of the bar would either have been extinguished, or have silenced and discomfited the bench. In like manner, when, during...

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