they met as strangers whom public business | do not prove it to be true. For an English col had brought together, and behaved to each lector or judge would have found it easy to inother with cold and distant civility. Burke duce any native who could write, to sign a had in his vortex whirled away Windham. panegyric on the most odious ruler that ever Fox had been followed by Sheridan and Grey. was in India. It was said that at Benares, the Only twenty-nine peers voted. Of these very place at which the acts set forth in the only six found Hastings guilty, on the charges first article of impeachment had been comrelating to Cheyte Sing and to the Begums. mitted, the natives had erected a temple to On other charges the majority in his favour Hastings; and this story excited a strong senwas still greater. On some he was unani- sation in England. Burke's observations on mously absolved. He was then called to the the apotheosis were admirable. He saw no bar, informed from the woolsack that the Lords reason for astonishment, he said, in the incihad acquitted him, and solemnly discharged. dent which had been represented as so strikHe bowed respectfully, and retired. ing. He knew something of the mythology of the Brahmins. He knew that, as they worshipped some gods from love, so they worshipped others from fear. He knew that they erected shrines, not only to the benignant deities of light and plenty, but also to the fiends who preside over smallpox and murder. Nor did he at all dispute the claim of Mr. Hastings to be admitted into such a Pantheon. This reply has always struck us as one of the finest that ever was made in Parliament. It is a grave and forcible argument, decorated by the most brilliant wit and fancy. We have said that the decision had been fully expected. It was also generally approved. At the commencement of the trial there had been a strong and indeed unreasonable feeling against Hastings. At the close of the trial, there was a feeling equally strong and equally unreasonable in his favour. One cause of the change was, no doubt, what is commonly called the fickleness of the multitude, but what seems to us to be merely the general law of human nature. Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are Hastings was, however, safe. But, in every all inclined to depreciate whatever we have thing except character, he would have been overpraised; and, on the other hand, to show far better off, if, when first impeached, he had undue indulgence where we have shown un- at once pleaded guilty, and paid a fine of fifty due rigour. It was thus in the case of Hast- thousand pounds. He was a ruined man. The ings. The length of his trial, moreover, made legal expenses of his defence had been enorhim an object of compassion. It was thought, mous. The expenses which did not appear in and not without reason, that, even if he was his attorney's bill were perhaps larger still. guilty, he was still an ill-used man, and that Great sums had been paid to Major Scott. an impeachment of eight years was more than Great sums had been laid out in bribing newsa sufficient punishment. It was also felt that, papers, rewarding pamphleteers, and circulatthough in the ordinary course of criminal law, ing tracts.. Burke, so early as 1790, declared a defendant is not allowed to set off his good in the House of Commons that twenty thousand actions against his crimes, a great political pounds had been employed in corrupting the cause should be tried on different principles; press. It is certain that no controversial and that a man who had governed a great weapon, from the gravest reasoning to the country during thirteen years might have done coarsest ribaldry, was left unemployed. Logan, some very reprehensible things, and yet might in prose, defended the accused governor with be on the whole deserving of rewards and ho- great ability. For the lovers of verse, the nours rather than of fine and imprisonment. speeches of the managers were burlesqued in The Press, an instrument neglected by the pro- Simpkin's letters. It is, we are. afraid, indissecutors, was used by Hastings and his friends putable that Hastings stooped so low as to with great effect. Every ship, too, that arrived court the aid of that malignant and filthy bafrom Madras or Bengal brought a cuddy full boon, John Williams, who called himself Anof his admirers. Every gentleman from India thony Pasquin. It was necessary to subsidize spoke of the late Governor-General as having such allies largely. The private hoards of Mrs. deserved better, and having been treated Hastings had disappeared. It is said that the worse, than any man living. The effect of banker to whom they had been intrusted had this testimony, unanimously given by all per- failed. Still, if Hastings had practised strict sons who knew the East, was naturally very economy, he would, after all his losses, have great. Retired members of the Indian ser- had a moderate competence; but in the mavices, civil and military, were settled in all nagement of his private affairs he was impru. corners of the kingdom. Each of them was, dent. The dearest wish of his heart had always of course, in his own little circle regarded as been to regain Daylesford. At length, in the an oracle on an Indian question; and they very year in which his trial commenced, the were, with scarcely one exception, the zealous wish was accomplished; and the domain, advocates of Hastings. It is to be added, that alienated more than seventy years before, rethe numerous addresses to the late Governor- turned to the descendant of its old lords. But General, which his friends in Bengal obtained the manor-house was a ruin; and the grounds from the natives and transmitted to Engiand, round it had, during many years, been utterly made a considerable impression. To these ad- neglected. Hastings proceeded to build, to dresses we attach little or no importance. plant, to form a sheet of water, to excavate a That Hastings was beloved by the people grotto; and, before he was dismissed from the whom he governed is true; but the eulogies bar of the House of Lords, he had expended of pundits, zemindars, Mohammedan doctors, more than 40,000l. in adorning his sea. with marked favour. Fox had been a principa manager of the impeachment. To Pitt it was owing that there had been an impeachment; and Hastings, we fear, was on this occasion guided by personal considerations, rather than by a regard to the public interest. The general feeling both of the Directors and of the proprietors of the East India Company was, that he had great claims on them, that his services to them had been eminent, and that his misfortunes had been the effect of his zeal for their interests. His friends in Leadenhall street, proposed to reimburse him for the costs The last twenty-four years of his life were of his trial, and to settle on him an annuity of chiefly passed at Daylesford. He amused himfive thousand pounds a year. But the consent self with embellishing his grounds, riding fine of the Board of Control was required; and at Arab horses, fattening prize-cattle, and trying the head of the Board of Control was Mr. Dun- to rear Indian animals and vegetables in Eng das, who had himself been a party to the im- land. He sent for seeds of a very fine custardpeachment, who had, on that account, been apple, from the garden of what had once been reviled with great bitterness by the partisans his own villa, among the green hedgerows of of Hastings, and who, therefore, was not in a Allipore. He tried also to naturalize in Worvery complying mood. He refused to consent cestershire the delicious leechee, almost the to what the Directors suggested. The Directors only fruit of Bengal, which deserves to be reremonstrated. A long controversy followed. gretted even amidst the plenty of Covent-GarHastings, in the mean time, was reduced to den. The Mogul emperors, in the time of their such distress that he could hardly pay his greatness, had in vain attempted to introduce weekly bills. At length a compromise was into Hindostan the goat of the table-land of made. An annuity of four thousand a year Thibet, whose down supplies the looms of was settled on Hastings; and, in order to en- Cashmere with the materials of the finest able him to meet pressing demands, he was to shawls. Hastings tried, with no better fortune, receive ten years' annuity in advance. The to rear a breed at Daylesford; nor does he Company was also permitted to lend him fifty seem to have succeeded better with the cattle thousand pounds, to be repaid by instalments, of Bootan, whose tails are in high esteem as the without interest. This relief, though given in best fans for brushing away the musquitoes. the most absurd manner, was sufficient to en- Literature divided his attention with his conable the retired governor to live in comfort, servatories and his menagerie. He had always and even in luxury, if he had been a skilful | loved books, and they were now necessary to manager. But he was careless and profuse, him. Though not a poet, in any high sense and was more than once under the necessity of the word, he wrote neat and polished lines of applying to the Company for assistance, which was liberally given. with great facility, and was fond of exercising this talent. Indeed, if we must speak out, he seems to have been more of a Trissotin than was to be expected from the powers of his mind, and from the great part which he had played in life. We are assured in these Me He had security and affluence, but not the power and dignity, which, when he landed from India, he had reason to expect. He had then looked forward to a coronet, a red riband, a seat at the Council-board, an office at White-moirs, that the first thing which he did in the hall. He was then only fifty-two, and might hope for many years of bodily and mental vigour. The case was widely different when he left the bar of the Lords. He was now too old a man to turn his mind to a new class of studies and duties. He had no chance of receiving any mark of royal favour while Mr. Pitt remained in power; and, when Mr. Pitt retired, Hastings was approaching his seven-ment. Tastes differ widely. For ourselves tieth year. Once, and only once, after his acquittal, he interfered in politics, and that interference was not much to his honour. In 1804, he exerted himself strenuously to prevent Mr. Addington, against whom Fox and Pitt had combined, from resigning the Treasury. It is difficult to believe that a man so able and energetic as Hastings, can have thought that, when Bonaparte was at Boulogne with a great army, the defence of our island could safely be intrusted to a ministry which did not contain a single person whom flattery could describe as a great statesman. It is also certain that, on the important question which had raised Mr. Addington to power, and on which he differed from both Fox and Pitt, Hastings, as might nave been expected, agreed with Fox and Pitt, and was decidedly opposed to Addington. Religious intolerance has never been the vice of the India service, and certainly was not the vice of Hastings. But Mr. Addington had treated him morning was to compose a copy of verses. When the family and guests assembled, the poem made its appearance as regularly as the eggs and rolls; and Mr. Gleig requires us to believe that, if from any accident Hastings came to the breakfast-table without one of his charming performances in his hand, the omis sion was felt by all as a grievous disappoint we must say that, however good the breakfasts at Daylesford may have been-and we are assured that the tea was of the most aromatic flavour, and that neither tongue nor venisonpasty was wanting-we should have thought the reckoning high, if we had been forced to earn our repast by listening every day to a new madrigal or sonnet composed by our host. We are glad, however, that Mr. Gleig has preserved this little feature of character, though we think it by no means a beauty. It is good to be often reminded of the inconsistency of human nature; and to learn to look without wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the strongest minds. Dionysius in old times, Frederic in the last century, with capacity and vigour equal to the conduct of the greatest af fairs, united all the little vanities and affectations of provincial blue-stockings. These great examples may console the admirers of Hast ings for the affliction of seeing him reduced to the level of the Hayleys and the Sewards. Yet With all his fa ilts-and they were neithe. few nor small-only one cemetery was worthy to contain his remains. In that temple of si lence and reconciliation, where the enmities of twenty generations lie buried, in the Great Abbey which has for ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall, the dust of the illustrious accused should have been mingled with the dust of the illustrious accusers. This was not to be. the place of interment was not ill chosen. Behind the chancel of the parish-church of Daylesford, in earth which already held the bones of many chiefs of the house of Hastings, was laid the coffin of the greatest man who has ever borne that ancient and widely extended name. On that very spot probably, fourscore years before, the little Warren, meanly clan and scantily fed, had played with the children of ploughmen. Even then his young mind had revolved plans which might be called romantic. Yet, however romantic, it is not like When Hastings had passed many years in He lived about four years longer in the en retirement, and had long outlived the common joyment of good spirits, of faculties not image of men, he again became for a short time paired to any painful or degrading extent, and an object of general attention. In 1813 the of health such as is rarely enjoyed by those charter of the East India Company was renew-who attain such an age. At length, on the 22d ed; and much discussion about Indian affairs of August, 1819, in the eighty-sixth year of his took place in Parliament. It was determined to age, he met death with the same tranquil and examine witnesses at the bar of the Commons, decorous fortitude which he had opposed to and Hastings was ordered to attend. He had all the trials of his various and eventful life. appeared at that bar before. It was when he read his answer to the charges which Burke had laid on the table. Since that time twentyseven years had elapsed; public feeling had undergone a complete change; the nation had now forgotten his faults, and remembered only his services. The reappearance, too of a man who had been among the most distinguished of a generation that had passed away, who now belonged to history, and who seemed to have risen from the dead, could not but produce a solemn and pathetic effect. The Commons received him with acclamations, ordered a chair to be set for him, and when he retired, rose and uncovered. There were, indeed, a few who did not sympathize with the general feeling. One or two of the managers of the impeachment were present. They sat in the same seats which they had occupied when they had been thanked for the services which they had rendered in Westminster Hall; for, by the courtesy of the House, a member who has been thanked in his place, is considered as having a right always to occupy that place. These gen-ly that they had been so strange as the truth. tlemen were not disposed to admit that they had employed several of the best years of their lives in persecuting an innocent man. They accordingly kept their seats, and pulled their hats over their brows; but the exceptions only made the prevailing enthusiasm more remarkable. The Lords received the old man with similar tokens of respect. The University of Oxford conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws; and, in the Sheldonian theatre, the under-graduates welcomed him with tumultuous cheering. These marks of public esteem were soon followed by marks of the favour of the crown. Hastings was sworn of the Privy Council, and was admitted to a long private audience of the Prince Regent, who treated him very gracious, ly. When the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia visited England, Hastings appeared in their train both at Oxford and in the Guildhall of London; and, though surrounded by a crowd of princes and great warriors, was everywhere received by the public with marks of respect and admiration. He was presented by the Prince Regent both to Alexander and to Frederic William; and his Royal Highness went so far as to declare in public, that honours far higher than a seat in the Privy Council were due, and should soon be paid, to the man who had saved the British dominions in Asia. Hastings now confidently expected a peerage; but, from some unexplained cause, he was agan disappointed. Not only had the poor orphan retrieved the fallen fortunes of his line. Not only had he repurchased the old lands, and rebuilt the old dwelling. He had preserved and extended an empire. He had founded a polity. He had administered government and war with more than the capacity of Richelieu; and had patronised learning with the judicious liberality of Cosmo. He had been attacked by the most formidable combination of enemies that ever sought the destruction of a single victim; and over that combination, after a struggle of ten years, he had triumphed. He had at length gone down to his grave in the fulness of agein peace, after so many troubles; in honour, after so much obloquy. Those who look on his character without fa. vour or malevolence, will pronounce that, in the two great elements of all social virtue-in respect for the rights of others, and in sympathy for the sufferings of others-he was deficient. His principles were somewhat lax. His heart was somewhat hard. But while we cannot with truth describe him either as a righteous or as a merciful ruler, we cannot regard without admiration the amplitude and fertility of his intellect-his rare talents for command, for administration, and for contro versy-his dauntless courage-his honourable poverty-his fervent zeal for the interests of the state-his noble equanimity, tried by both extremes of fortune, ar never disturbed by either. FREDERIC THE GREAT.* EDINBURGH REVIEW, APRIL, 1842.] THIS work, which has the high honour of | tentatious and profuse, negligent of his true being introduced to the world by the author of interests and of his high duties, insatiably "Lochiel" and "Hohenlinden," is not wholly eager for frivolous distinctions, he added no unworthy of so distinguished a chaperon. It thing to the real weight of the state which he professes, indeed, to be no more than a compi- governed; perhaps he transmitted his inherilation; but it is an exceedingly amusing com- tance to his children impaired rather than pilation, and we shall be glad to have more of augmented in value, but he succeeded in gainit. The narrative comes down at present onlying the great object of his life, the title of king. to the commencement of the Seven Years' In the year 1700 he assumed this new dignity. War, and therefore does not comprise the He had on that occasion to undergo all the most interesting portion of Frederic's reign. mortifications which fall to the lot of ambitious that which a Nabob or a Commissary, who had bought a title, would make in the company of Peers whose ancestors had been attainted for treason against the Plantagenets. It may not be unacceptable to our readers upstarts. Compared with the other crowned that we should take this opportunity of pre-heads of Europe, he made a figure resembling senting them with a slight sketch of the life of the greatest king that has, in modern times, succeeded by right of birth to a throne. It may, we fear, be impossible to compress so long and eventful a story within the limits which we must prescribe to ourselves. Should we be compelled to break off, we shall, when the continuation of this work appears, return to the subject. exacted large sacrifice in return for her recognition, and at last gave it ungraciously. The envy of the class which he quitted, and the civil scorn of the class into which he intruded himself, were marked in very significant ways. The elector of Saxony at first The Prussian monarchy, the youngest of the refused to acknowledge the new majesty. great European states, but in population and Louis the Fourteenth looked down on his broin revenue the fifth amongst them, and in art, ther king with an air not unlike that with science, and civilization entitled to the third, if which the count in Molière's play regards not the second place, sprang from an humble Monsieur Jourdain, just fresh from the mumorigin. About the beginning of the fifteenth cen-mery of being made a gentleman. Austria tury, the marquisate of Brandenburg was bestowed by the Emperor Sigismund on the noble family of Hohenzollern. In the sixteenth century Frederic was succeeded by his son, Frederic that family embraced the Lutheran doctrines. William, a prince who must be allowed to Early in the seventeenth century it obtained have possessed some talents for administrafrom the King of Poland the investiture of the tion, but whose character was disfigured by duchy of Prussia. Even after this accession the most odious vices, and whose eccentriciof territory, the chiefs of the house of Hohen- ties were such as had never been seen out of a zollern hardly ranked with the Electors of Sax- madhouse. He was exact and diligent in the ony and Bavaria. The soil of Brandenburg | transaction of business, and he was the first was for the most part sterile. Even round who formed the design of obtaining for PrusBerlin, the capital of the province, and round | sia a place among the European powers, altoPotsdam, the favourite residence of the Mar-gether out of proportion to her extent and graves, the country was a desert. In some population, by means of a strong military ortracts, the deep sand could with difficulty be ganization. Strict economy enabled him to forced by assiduous tillage to yield thin crops keep up a peace establishment of sixty thouof rye and oats. In other places, the ancient sand troops. These troops were disciplined forests, from which the conquerors of the Ro-in such a manner, that placed beside them, man empire had descended on the Danube, the household regiments of Versailles and St. remained untouched by the hand of man. James's would have appeared an awkward Where the soil was rich it was generally squad. The master of such a force could not marshy, and its insalubrity repelled the culti- but be regarded by all his neighbours as a forvators whom its fertility attracted. Frederic midable enemy, and a valuable ally. William, called the Great Elector, was the prince to whose policy his successors have agreed to ascribe their greatness. He acquired by the peace of Westphalia several valuable possessions, and among them the rich city and district of Magdeburg; and he left to his son Frederic a principality as considerable as any which was not called a kingdom. Frederic aspired to the style of royalty. Os * Frederic the Great and his Times. Edited, with an Introduction, by THOMAS CAMPBELL, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London 1842. But the mind of Frederic William was se ill-regulated, that all his inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of the character of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp and order became a mania, like that of a Dutch burgo master for tulips; or that of a member of the Roxburgh club for Caxtons. While the en voys of the court of Berlin were in a state of such squalid poverty as moved the laughter of foreign capitals; while the food placed be fore the princes an: the princesses of the brats. If he saw a clergyman staring at the cused, truly or falsely, of vices, from which History averts her eyes, and which even Satire blushes to name-vices such that, to borrow the energetic language of Lord-Keeper Coventry, "the depraved nature of man, which of itself carrieth man to all other sin, abhorreth them." But the offences of his youth were not Frederic, surnamed the Great, son of Fre-characterized by any peculiar turpitude. They deric William, was born in January, 1712. It may safely be pronounced that he had received from nature a strong and sharp understanding, and a rare firmness of temper and intensity of will. As to the other parts of his character, it is difficult to say whether they are to be ascribed to nature, or to the strange training which he underwent. The history of his boyhood is painfully interesting. Oliver Twist in the parish workhouse, Smike at Dotheboys Hall, were petted children when compared with this wretched heir-apparent of a crown. The nature of Frederic William was hard and bad, and the habit of exercising arbitrary power had made him frightfully savage. His rage constantly vented itself to right and left in curses and blows. When his majesty took a walk, every human being fled before him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a menagerie. If he met a lady in the street, he gave her a kick, and told her to go home and mind her excited, however, transports of rage in the king, who hated all faults except those to which he was himself inclined; and who conceived that he made ample atonement to Heaven for his brutality, by holding the softer passions in detestation. The Prince-Royal, too, was not one of those who are content to take their religion on trust. He asked puzzling questions, and brought forward arguments which seemed to savour of something different. from pure Lutheranism. The king suspected that his son was inclined to be a heretic cf some sort or other, whether Calvinist or Atheist his maj sty did not very well know. The or dinary malignity of Frederic William was bad enough. He now thought malignity a part of his duty as a Christian man, and all the con science that he had stimulated his hatred. The flute was broken-the French books were sent out of the palace-the prince was kicked, and cudgelled, and pulled by the hair. At din |