Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

among us. To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirsting for blood! against whom? your Protestant brethren! to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name by the aid and instrumentality of these horrible hellhounds of war! Spain can no longer boast pre-eminence in barbarity. She armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico; we, more ruthless, loose these dogs of war against our countrymen in America, endeared to us by every tie that can sanctify humanity. I solemnly call upon your lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. More particularly I call upon the holy prelates of our religion to do away this iniquity; let them perform a lustration, to purify the country from this deep and deadly sin. My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor even reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving vent to my eternal abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles.

The last ten years of Lord Chatham's life were attended with great bodily infirmity; and his final appearance in the House of Lords is thus touchingly described by Belsham the historian :

'The mind feels interested in the minutest circumstances relating to the last day of the public life of this renowned statesman and patriot. He was dressed in a rich suit of black velvet, with a full wig, and covered up to the knees in flannel. On his arrival in the house, he refreshed himself in the lord chancellor's room, where he staid till prayers were over, and till he was informed that business was going to begin. He was then led into the house by his son and son-in-law, Mr. William Pitt and Lord Viscount Mahon, all the lords standing up out of respect, and making a lane for him to pass to the earl's bench, he bowing very gracefully to them as he proceeded. He looked pale and much emaciated, but his eye retained all its native fire; which, joined to his general deportment, and the attention of the house, formed a spectacle very striking and impressive.

When the Duke of Richmond had sat down, Lord Chatham rose, and began by lamenting that his bodily infirmities had so long and at so important a crisis prevented his attendance on the duties of parliament. He declared that he had made an effort almost beyond the powers of his constitution to come down to the house on this day, perhaps the last time he should ever be able to enter its walls, to express the indignation he felt at the idea which he understood was gone forth of yielding up the sovereignty of America. My lords,' continued he, 'I rejoice that the grave has not closed upon me, that I am still alive to lift up my voice against the dismemberment of this ancient and noble monarchy. Pressed down as I am by the load of infirmity, I am little able to assist my country, in this most perilous conjuncture; but, my lords, while I have sense and memory I never will consent to tarnish the lustre of this nation by an ignominious surrender of its rights and fairest possessions. Shall a people, so lately the terror of the world, now fall prostrate before the house of Bourbon? It is impossible! In God's name, if it is absolutely necessary to declare either for peace or war, and if peace can not be preserved with honour, why is not war commenced without hesitation? I am not, I confess, well informed of the resources of this kingdom, but I trust it has still sufficient to maintain its just rights, though I know them not. Any state, my lords, is better than despair. Let us at least make one effort, and if we must fall, let us fall like men.'

The Duke of Richmond, in reply, declared himself to be 'totally ignorant of the means by which we were to resist with success the combination of America with the house of Bourbon. He urged the noble lord to point out any possible mode, if he were able to do it, of making the Americans renounce that independence of which

they were in possession. His Grace added, that if he could not, no man could; and if it was not in his power to change his opinion on the noble lord's authority, unsupported by any reasons but a recital of the calamities arising from a state of things not in the power of this country now to alter.'

Lord Chatham, who had appeared greatly moved during the reply, made an eager effort to rise at the conclusion of it, as if labouring with some great idea, and impatient to give full scope to his feelings; but before he could utter a word, pressing his hand on his bosom, he fell down suddenly in a convulsive fit. The Duke of Cumberland, Lord Temple, and other lords near him, caught him in their arms. The house was immediately cleared; and his lordship being carried into an adjoining apartment, the debate was adjourned. Medical assistance being obtained, his lordship in some degree recovered, and was conveyed to his favourite villa of Hayes in Kent, where, after lingering some few weeks, he expired May 11, 1778, in the 70th year of his age.'

The Earl of Chatham's literary labors, independent of his public position, were chiefly confined to two series of letters, the one addressed to his nephew, Lord Camelford, and the other to various contemporaries, and not published till many years after the noble author's death. The former contains much excellent advice for regulating the conduct and intercourse of life, a sincere admiration of classical learning, and great kindliness of domestic feeling and affection. By the latter, which was not published till 1841, some light is thrown on cotemporary history and public events; but its principal value is of a reflex nature, derived from our interest in all that relates to the lofty and commanding intellect which so long stamped the destinies of Europe.

A review of the life, genius, and public career of Burke, the most eloquent and imaginative of English political writers, and the most philosophical of her statesmen, with a brief notice of The Letters of Junius, will close our remarks on English literature.

EDMUND BURKE was born in Dublin, on the first of January, 1730. His father was a respectable attorney, and afforded his son the best of educational advantages. His classical studies were pursued at an academy in the vicinity of Dublin, and conducted by Abraham Shackleton, a quaker of talents and learning. At this school, according to his own statement, Burke acquired the most valuable of his mental habits; and his gratitude to the memory of his early instructor ceased only with his life. In the fifteenth year of his age he entered Trinity College, Dublin, and, in 1749, received his bachelor's degree. Having now the world before him and his own way to make through it, he repaired to London, and with the usual ardor of youth, entered the Middle Temple as a student of law. He soon found, however, that the law had no attractions for him, and he therefore resolved to turn his attention to literature and politics. After laboring for some time on the periodicals of the day, he produced his first conspicuous work, in the form of a parody on the style and manner of Lord Bolingbroke. The title of this performance is a Vindication of Natural Society, and in it the para

doxical reasoning of the noble skeptic is pushed to a ridiculous extreme, and its absurdity very happily exposed.

In 1757, Burke published an original and very important work under the title of A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. The boldness of the author's views, clothed in language at once strong and perspicuous, soon attracted public attention, and prepared the way for his introduction to the society of Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith, and other eminent men of the day. Though thus elevated in his associations, he had still many difficulties to struggle with, and was compelled to pass much of his time compiling for booksellers. He suggested to Dodsley, the plan of an Annual Register, which that spirited publisher adopted, Burke furnishing the whole of the original matter. He continued for several years to write the historical portion of this valuable compilation. In 1771 he accompanied the Earl of Halifax to Ireland as one of his secretaries; and four years afterwards he was fairly lanched into public life, as a Whig politician, by becoming private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, then appointed first lord of the treasury. A seat in parliament next followed, and Burke soon became a leading speaker in the House of Commons. His first seat was for Wendover, and he was afterwards member for Bristol, and Malton. His speeches on American affairs were among his most vigorous and felicitous appearances; his most important duty was the part he took in the trial of Warren Hastings, and his opposition to the regency bill o Mr. Pitt.

Stormier times were, however, at hand: the French Revolution was then, to use one of his own metaphors, 'blackening the horizon,' and he early predicted the course it would take. He strenuously warned his countrymen against the dangerous influence of French principles, and published his memorable Reflections on the French Revolution. This produced a rupture between him and his Whig friends, Fox in particular; but with characteristic ardor Burke went on denouncing the doctrines of the revolution, and published his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs; his Letters to a Noble Lord; and his Letters on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France. The splendor of these compositions, the various knowledge which they display, the rich imagery with which they abound, and the spirit of philosophical reflection which pervades them all, stamp them among the first literary productions of their time. Judged as political treatises, they may, in some instances, be considered as exaggerated in their tone and manner the imagination of the orator transported him beyond the bounds of sober prudence and correct taste; but in all his wanderings, genius, wisdom and eloquence equally appear, and such a flood of rich illustration had never before been poured on questions of state policy and government.

When the revolution broke out, Burke's sagacity enabled him to foresee the dreadful consequences which it would entail upon France, and the world; and his enthusiastic temperament led him to state his impressions in language sometimes overcharged and almost bombastic; sometimes full of

prophetic fire, and always with an energy and exuberance of fancy in which, among philosophical politicians, he was unrivalled. According to one of his contemporaries he labored to form his character in eloquence, in policy, in ethics, and in philosophy, upon the model of Cicero, and it must be confessed that he greatly surpassed the original.

In 1794, Burke retired from parliament; and having previously been enabled, through the friendship of the Marquis of Rockingham, to purchase an estate near Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire, thither he now repaired, and there spent, exclusively, his few remaining years. In 1795, he was rewarded with an annual pension of three thousand pounds, from the civi list, and it was in contemplation to elevate him to the peerage, but the death of his only son rendered him indifferent, if not averse, to such a distinction. The force and energy of his mind, and the creative richness of his imagination, continued with him to the last. His Letter to a Noble Lord on his Pension, his Letters on a Regicide Peace, and his Observations on the Conduct of the Minority, all written after his retirement, bear no traces of decaying vigor, though produced when he had passed the age of sixty-seven. The keen interest with which he regarded passing events, particularly the great drama then being acted in France, is still manifest in these works; with general observations and reflections, the profundity and universal application of which strike the mind with irresistible force. Burke was at once a poet, an orator, a philosopher, and a practical statesman; and his knowledge, his industry, and his perseverance, were as remarkable as his genius. The protracted and brilliant career of this great man was terminated on the ninth of July, 1797, and he was buried in the church at Beaconsfield, where a plain marble tablet still indicates the place of his repose.

It remains for us only to illustrate the genius and style of this truly great writer, by suitable selections from his works. For this purpose we present the following brief extracts :

THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL COMPARED.

On closing this general view of beauty, it naturally occurs that we should compare it with the sublime; and, in this comparison, there appears a remarkable contrast; for sublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small : beauty should be smooth and polished; the great, rugged and negligent: beauty should shun the right line, yet deviate from it insensibly; the great, in many cases, loves the right line, and when it deviates, it often makes a strong deviation: beauty should not be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy: beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought to be solid, and even massive. They are, indeed, ideas of a very different nature, one being founded on pain, the other on pleasure; and, however they may vary afterward from the direct nature of their causes, yet these causes keep up an eternal distinction between them, a distinction never to be forgotten by any whose business it is to affect the passions. In the infinite variety of natural combinations, we must expect to find the qualities of things the most remote imaginable from each other united in the same object. We must expect, also, to find combinations of the same kind in the works of art. But when we consider

the power of an object upon our passions, we must know that, when any thing is intended to affect the mind by the force of some predominate property, the affection produced is like to be the more uniform and perfect, if all the other properties or qualities of the object be of the same nature, and tending to the same design as the principal:

If black and white blend, soften, and unite

A thousand ways, is there no black and white?

If the qualities of the sublime and beautiful are sometimes found united, does this prove that they are the same; does it prove that they are any way allied; does it prove even that they are not opposite and contradictory? Black and white may soften, may blend, but they are not, therefore, the same. Nor, when they are so softened and blended with each other, or with different colors, is the power of black as black, or of white as white, so strong as when each stands uniform and distinguished.

ACCOUNT OF HIS SON'S DEATH.

Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family; I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient living spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived, he would have re-purchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever, but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment, the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied. But a Disposer, whose power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behooves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might suggest,) a far better. The storm has gone over me, and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honours, I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth! There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the divine justice, and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbours of his who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honour in this world. This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury; it is a privilege; it is an indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace as we are made to shrink from pain and poverty, and disease. It is an instinct, and under the direction of reason, instinct is always in the right. I live in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeed

« AnteriorContinuar »