Four years after my father's death, it began to be perceived that there was no purpose to be answered in any longer keeping up the costly establishment of Greenhay. A head gardener, besides laborers equal to at least two more, were required for the grounds and gardens. And no motive existed any longer for being near to a great trading town, so long after the commercial connection with it had ceased. Bath seemed, on all accounts, the natural station for a person in my mother's situation; and thither, accordingly, she went. I, who had been placed under the tuition of one of my guardians, remained some time longer under his care. I was then transferred to Bath. During this interval the sale of the house and grounds took place. It may illustrate the subject ofguardianship, and the ordinary execution of its duties, to mention the result. The year was in itself a year of great depression, and every way unfavorable to such a transaction; and the particular night for which the sale had been fixed turned out remarkably wet; yet no attempt was made to postpone it, and it proceeded. Originally the house and grounds had cost about £6000. I have heard that only one offer was made, viz., of £2500. Be that as it may, for the sum of £2500 it was sold; and I have been often assured that, by waiting a few years, four to six times that sum might have been obtained with ease. This is not improbable, as the house was then out in the country; but since then the town of Manchester has gathered round it and enveloped it. Meantime, my guardians were all men of honor and integrity; but their hands were filled with their own affairs. One (my tutor) was a clergyman, rector of a church, and having his parish, his large family, and three pupils to attend. He was, besides, a very sedentary and indolent man—loving books, hating business. Another was a merchant. A third was a country magistrate, overladen with official business: him we rarely saw. Finally, the fourth was a banker in a distant county, having more knowledge of the world, more energy, and more practical wisdom than all the rest united, but too remote for interfering effectually.
Reflecting upon the evils which befell me, and the gross mismanagement, under my guardians, of my small fortune, and that of my brothers and sisters, it has often occurred to me that so important an office, which, from the time of Demosthenes, has been proverbially maladministered, ought to be put upon a new footing, plainly guarded by a few obvious provisions. As under the Roman laws, for a long period, the guardian should be made responsible in law, and should give security from the first for the due performance of his duties. But, to give him a motive for doing this, of course he must be paid. With the new obligations and liabilities will commence commensurate emoluments. If a child is made a ward in Chancery, its property is managed expensively, but always advantageously. Some great change is imperatively called for—no duty in the whole compass of human life being so scandalously treated as this.
In my twelfth year it was that first of all I entered upon the arena of a great public school, viz., the Grammar School [1] of Bath, over which at that time presided a most accomplished Etonian—Mr. (or was he as yet Doctor?) Morgan. If he was not, I am sure he ought to have been; and, with the reader's concurrence, will therefore create him a doctor on the spot. Every man has reason to rejoice who enjoys the advantage of a public training. I condemned, anddocondemn, the practice of sending out into such stormy exposures those who are as yet too young, too dependent on female gentleness, and endowed with sensibilities originally too exquisite for such a warfare. But at nine or ten the masculine energies of the character are beginning to develop themselves; or, if not, no discipline will better aid in their development than the bracing intercourse of a great English classical school. Even the selfish arethereforced into accommodating themselves to a public standard of generosity, and the effeminate in conforming to a rule of manliness. I was myself at two public schools, and I think with gratitude of the benefits which I reaped from both; as also I think with gratitude of that guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so effectually. But the small private schools, of which I had opportunities for gathering some brief experience,—schools containing thirty to forty boys,—were models of ignoble manners as regarded part of the juniors, and of favoritism as regarded the masters. Nowhere is the sublimity of public justice so broadly exemplified as in an English public school on the old Edward the Sixth or Elizabeth foundation. There is not in the universe such an Areopagus for fair play, and abhorrence of all crooked ways, as an English mob, or one of the time-honored English "foundation" schools. But my own first introduction to such an establishment was under peculiar and contradictory circumstances. When my "rating," or graduation in the school, was to be settled, naturally my altitude (to speak astronomically) was taken by my proficiency in Greek. But here I had no advantage over others of my age. My guardian was a feeble Grecian, and had not excited my ambition; so that I could barely construe books as easy as the Greek Testament and the Iliad. This was considered quite well enough for my age; but still it caused me to be placed under the care of Mr. Wilkins, the second master out of four, and not under Dr. Morgan himself. Within one month, however, my talent for Latin verses, which had by this time gathered strength and expansion, became known. Suddenly I was honored as never was man or boy since Mordecai the Jew. Without any colorable relation to the doctor's jurisdiction, I was now weekly paraded for distinction at the supreme tribunal of the school; out of which, at first, grew nothing but a sunshine of approbation delightful to my heart. Within six weeks all this had changed. The approbation indeed continued, and the public expression of it. Neither would there, in the ordinary course, have been any painful reaction from jealousy, or fretful resistance, to the soundness of my pretensions; since it was sufficiently known to such of my school-fellows as stood on my own level in the school, that I, who had no male relatives but military men, and those in India, could not have benefited by any clandestine aid. But, unhappily, Dr. Morgan was at that time dissatisfied with some points in the progress of his head class; [2] and, as it soon appeared, was continually throwing in their teeth the brilliancy of my verses at eleven or twelve, by comparison with theirs at seventeen, eighteen, and even nineteen. I had observed him sometimes pointing to myself, and was perplexed at seeing this gesture followed by gloomy looks, and what French reporters call "sensation," in these young men, whom naturally I viewed with awe as my leaders—boys that were called young men, men that were reading Sophocles, (a name that carried with it the sound of something seraphic to my ears,) and who had never vouchsafed to waste a word on such a child as myself. The day was come, however, when all that would be changed. One of these leaders strode up to me in the public playground, and, delivering a blow on my shoulder, which was not intended to hurt me, but as a mere formula of introduction, asked me "what the devil I meant by bolting out of the course, and annoying other people in that manner. Were 'other people' to have no rest for me and my verses, which, after all, were horribly bad?" There might have been some difficulty in returning an answer to this address, but none was required. I was briefly admonished to see that I wrote worse for the future, or else——. At thisaposiopesisI looked inquiringly at the speaker, and he filled up the chasm by saying that he would "annihilate" me. Could any person fail to be aghast at such a demand? I was to write worse than my own standard, which, by his account of my verses, must be difficult; and I was to write worse than himself, which might be impossible. My feelings revolted against so arrogant a demand, unless it had been far otherwise expressed; if death on the spot had awaited me, I could not have controlled myself; and on the next occasion for sending up verses to the head master, so far from attending to the orders issued, I double-shotted my guns; double applause descended on myself; but I remarked with some awe, though not repenting of what I had done, that double confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my enemies. Amongst them loomed out in the distance my "annihilating" friend, who shook his huge fist at me, but with something like a grim smile about his eyes. He took an early opportunity of paying his respects to me again, saying, "You little devil, do you call this writing your worst?" "No," I replied; "I call it writing my best." The annihilator, as it turned out, was really a good-natured young man; but he was on the wing for Cambridge; and with the rest, or some of them, I continued to wage war for more than a year. And yet, for a word spoken with kindness, how readily I would have resigned (had it been altogether at my own choice to do so) the peacock's feather in my cap as the merest of bawbles. Undoubtedly, praise sounded sweet inmyears also; but that was nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions that were connected with mortification to others; and, even if I could have got overthat, the eternal feud fretted and tormented my nature. Love, that once in childhood had been so mere a necessity to me,thathad long been a reflected ray from a departed sunset. But peace, and freedom from strife, if love were no longer possible, (as so rarely it is in this world,) was the clamorous necessity of my nature. To contend with somebody was still my fate; how to escape the contention I could not see; and yet, for itself, and for the deadly passions into which it forced me, I hated and loathed it more than death. It added to the distraction and internal feud of my mind, that I could notaltogethercondemn the upper boys. I was made a handle of humiliation to them. And, in the mean time, if I had an undeniable advantage in one solitary accomplishment, which is all a matter of accident, or sometimes of peculiar direction given to the taste, they, on the other hand, had a great advantage over me in the more elaborate difficulties of Greek and of choral Greek poetry. I could not altogether wonder at their hatred of myself. Yet still, as they had chosen to adopt this mode of conflict with me, I did not feel that I had any choice but to resist. The contest was terminated for me by my removal from the school, in consequence of a very threatening illness affecting my head; but it lasted more than a year, and it did not close before several among my public enemies had become my private friends. They were much older, but they invited me to the houses of their friends, and showed me a respect which affected me—this respect having more reference, apparently, to the firmness I had exhibited, than to any splendor in my verses. And, indeed, these had rather drooped from a natural accident; several persons of my own class had formed the practice of asking me to write verses forthem. I could not refuse. But, as the subjects given out were the same for the entire class, it was not possible to take so many crops off the ground without starving the quality of all.
The most interesting public event which, during my stay at this school, at all connected itself with Bath, and indeed with the school itself, was the sudden escape of Sir Sidney Smith from the prison of the Temple in Paris. The mode of his escape was as striking as its time was critical. Having accidently thrown a ball beyond the prison bounds in playing at tennis, or some such game, Sir Sidney was surprised to observe that the ball thrown back was not the same. Fortunately, he had the presence of mind to dissemble his sudden surprise. He retired, examined the ball, found it stuffed with letters; and, in the same way, he subsequently conducted a long correspondence, and arranged the whole circumstances of his escape; which, remarkably enough, was accomplished exactly eight days before the sailing of Napoleon with the Egyptian expedition; so that Sir Sidney was just in time to confront, and utterly to defeat, Napoleon in the breach of Acre. But for Sir Sidney, Bonaparte would have overrun Syria,thatis certain. What would have followed from that event is a far more obscure problem.
Sir Sidney Smith, I must explain to readers of this generation, and Sir Edward Pellew, (afterwards Lord Exmouth,) figured as the two [3] Paladins of the first war with revolutionary France. Rarely were these two names mentioned but in connection with some splendid, prosperous, and unequal contest. Hence the whole nation was saddened by the account of Sir Sidney's capture; and this must be understood, in order to make the joy of his sudden return perfectly intelligible. Not even a rumor of Sir Sidney's escape had or could have run before him; for, at the moment of reaching the coast of England, he had started with post horses to Bath. It was about dusk when he arrived: the postilions were directed to the square in which his mother lived: in a few minutes he was in his mother's arms, and in fifty minutes more the news had flown to the remotest suburb of the city. The agitation of Bath on this occasion was indescribable. All the troops of the line then quartered in that city, and a whole regiment of volunteers, immediately got under arms, and marched to the quarter in which Sir Sidney lived. The small square overflowed with the soldiery; Sir Sidney went out, and was immediately lost to us, who were watching for him, in the closing ranks of the troops. Next morning, however, I, my younger brother, and a school-fellow of my own age, called formally upon the naval hero.Why, I know not, unless asalumniof the school at which Sir Sidney Smith had received his own education, we were admitted without question or demur; and I may record it as an amiable trait in Sir Sidney, that he received us then with great kindness, and took us down with him to the pump room. Considering, however, that we must have been most afflicting bores to Sir Sidney,—a fact which no self-esteem could even then disguise from us,—it puzzled me at first to understand the principle of his conduct. Having already done more than enough in courteous acknowledgment of our fraternal claims as fellow-students at the Bath Grammar School, why should he think it necessary to burden himself further with our worshipful society? I found out the secret, and will explain it. A very slight attention to Sir Sidney's deportment in public revealed to me that he was morbidly afflicted with nervous sensibility and withmauvaise honte. He that had faced so cheerfully crowds of hostile and threatening eyes, could not support without trepidation those gentle eyes, beaming with gracious admiration, of his fair young countrywomen. By accident, at that moment Sir Sidney had no acquaintances in Bath, [4] a fact which is not at all to be wondered at. Living so much abroad and at sea, an English sailor, of whatever rank, has few opportunities for making friends at home. And yet there was a necessity that Sir Sidney should gratify the public interest, so warmly expressed, by presenting himself somewhere or other to the public eye. But how trying a service to the most practised and otherwise most callous veteran on such an occasion, that he should step forward, saying in effect, "So you are wanting to see me: well, then, here I am: come and look at me!" Put it into what language you please, such a summons was written on all faces, and countersigned by his worship the mayor, who began to whisper insinuations of riots if Sir Sidney did not comply. Yet, if hedid, inevitably his own act of obedience to the public pleasure took the shape of an ostentatious self-parading under the construction of those numerous persons who knew nothing of the public importunity, or of Sir Sidney's unaffected and even morbid reluctance to obtrude himself upon the public eye. The thing was unavoidable; and the sole palliation that it admitted was—to break the concentration of the public gaze, by associating Sir Sidney with some alien group, no matter of what cattle. Such a group would relieve both parties—gazer and gazee—from too distressing a consciousness of the little business on which they had met. We, the schoolboys, being three, intercepted and absorbed part of the enemy's fire, and, by furnishing Sir Sidney with realbona fidematter of conversation, we released him from the most distressing part of his sufferings, viz., the passive and silent acquiescence in his own apotheosis—holding a lighted candle, as it were, to the glorification of his own shrine. With our help, he weathered the storm of homage silently ascending. And we, in fact, whilst seeming to ourselves too undeniably a triad of bores, turned out the most serviceable allies that Sir Sidney ever had by land or sea, until several moons later, when he formed the invaluable acquaintance of the Syrian "butcher," viz., Djezzar, the Pacha of Acre. I record this little trait of Sir Sidney's constitutional temperament, and the little service through which I and my two comrades contributed materially to his relief, as an illustration of that infirmity which besieges the nervous system of our nation. It is a sensitiveness which sometimes amounts to lunacy, and sometimes even tempts to suicide. It is a mistake, however, to suppose this morbid affection unknown to Frenchmen, or unknown to men of the world. I have myself known it to exist in both, and particularly in a man that might be said to live in the street, such was the American publicity which circumstances threw around his life; and so far were his habits of life removed from reserve, or from any predisposition to gloom. And at this moment I recall a remarkable illustration of what I am saying, communicated by Wordsworth's accomplished friend, Sir George Beaumont. TohimI had been sketching the distressing sensitiveness of Sir Sidney pretty much as I have sketched it to the reader; and how he, the man that on the breach at Acre valued not the eye of Jew, Christian, or Turk, shrank back—me ipso teste—from the gentle, though eager—from admiring, yet affectionate—glances of three very young ladies in Gay Street, Bath, the oldest (I should say) not more than seventeen. Upon which Sir George mentioned, as a parallel experience of his own, that Mr. Canning, being ceremoniously introduced to himself (Sir George) about the time when he had reached the meridian of his fame as an orator, and should therefore have becomeblaséto the extremity of being absolutely seared and case-hardened against all impressions whatever appealing to his vanity or egotism, did absolutely (credite posteri!) blush like any roseate girl of fifteen. And that this was no accident growing out of a momentary agitation, no sudden spasmodic pang, anomalous and transitory, appeared from other concurrent anecdotes of Canning, reported by gentlemen from Liverpool, who described to us most graphically and picturesquely the wayward fitfulness (not coquettish, or wilful, but nervously overmastering and most unaffectedly distressing) which besieged this great artist in oratory, and the time approached—was coming—was going, at which the private signal should have been shown for proposing his health. Mr. P. (who had been, I think, the mayor on the particular occasion indicated) described the restlessness of his manner; how he rose, and retired for half a minute into a little parlor behind the chairman's seat; then came back; then whispered,Not yet I beseech you; I cannot face them yet;then sipped a little water, then moved uneasily on his chair, saying,One moment, if you please: stop, stop: don't hurry: one moment, and I shall be up to the mark:in short, fighting with the necessity of taking the final plunge, like one who lingers on the scaffold.
Sir Sidney was at the time slender and thin; having an appearance of emaciation, as though he had suffered hardships and ill treatment, which, however, I do not remember to have heard. Meantime, his appearance, connected with his recent history, made him a very interesting person to women; and to this hour it remains a mystery with me, why and how it came about, that in every distribution of honors Sir Sidney Smith was overlooked. In the Mediterranean he made many enemies, especially amongst those of his own profession, who used to speak of him as far too fine a gentleman, and above his calling. Certain it is that he liked better to be doing business on shore, as at Acre, although he commanded a fine 80 gun ship, the Tiger. But however that may have been, his services, whether classed as military or naval, were memorably splendid. And, at that time, his connection, of whatsoever nature, with the late Queen Caroline had not occurred. So that altogether, to me, his case is inexplicable.
From the Bath Grammar School I was removed, in consequence of an accident, by which at first it was supposed that my skull had been fractured; and the surgeon who attended me at one time talked of trepanning. This was an awful word; but at present I doubt whether in reality any thing very serious had happened. In fact, I was always under a nervous panic for my head, and certainly exaggerated my internal feelings without meaning to do so; and this misled the medical attendants. During a long illness which succeeded, my mother, amongst other books past all counting, read to me, in Hoole's translation, the whole of the "Orlando Furioso;" meaning bythe wholethe entire twenty-four books into which Hoole had condensed the original forty-six of Ariosto; and, from my own experience at that time, I am disposed to think that the homeliness of this version is an advantage, from not calling off the attention at all from the narration to the narrator. At this time also I first read the "Paradise Lost;" but, oddly enough, in the edition of Bentley, that greatparadiorthotaes, (or pseudo-restorer of the text.) At the close of my illness, the head master called upon my mother, in company with his son-in-law, Mr. Wilkins, as did a certain Irish Colonel Bowes, who had sons at the school, requesting earnestly, in terms most flattering to myself, that I might be suffered to remain there. But it illustrates my mother's moral austerity, that she was shocked at my hearing compliments to my own merits, and was altogether disturbed at what doubtless these gentlemen expected to see received with maternal pride. She declined to let me continue at the Bath School; and I went to another, at Winkfield, in the county of Wilts, of which the chief recommendation lay in the religious character of the master.
[1] "Grammar School."—By the way, as the grammar schools of England are amongst her most eminent distinctions, and, with submission to the innumerable wretches (gentlemen I should say) that hate England "worse than toad or asp," have never been rivalled by any corresponding institutions in other lands, I may as well take this opportunity of explaining the wordgrammar, which most people misapprehend. Men suppose a grammar school to mean a school where they teach grammar. But this is not the true meaning, and tends to calumniate such schools by ignoring their highest functions. Limiting by a false limitation the earliest object contemplated by such schools, they obtain a plausible pretext for representing all beyond grammar as something extraneous and casual that did not enter into the original or normal conception of the founders, and that may therefore have been due to alien suggestion. But now, when Suetonius writes a little book, bearing this title, "De Illustribus Grammaticis," what does he mean? What is it that he promises? A memoir upon the eminentgrammariansof Rome? Not at all, but a memoir upon the distinguished literati of Rome.Grammaticadoes certainly mean sometimes grammar; but it is also the best Latin word for literature. Agrammaticusis what the French express by the wordlitterateur. We unfortunately have no corresponding term in English: aman of lettersis our awkward periphrasis in the singular, (too apt, as our jest books remind us, to suggest the postman;) whilst in the plural we resort to the Latin wordliterati. The school which professes to teachgrammatica, professes, therefore, the culture of literature in the widest and most liberal extent, and is opposedgenericallyto schools for teaching mechanic arts; and, within its ownsub-genusof schools dedicated to liberal objects, is opposed to schools for teaching mathematics, or, more widely, to schools for teaching science.
[2] "Class," or "form."—One knows not how to make one's self intelligible, so different are the terms locally.
[3] Tothemin the next stage of the ward succeeded Sir Michael Seymour, and Lord Cochrane, (the present Earl of Dundonald,) and Lord Camelford. The two last were the regular fireeaters of the day. Sir Horatio Nelson being already an admiral, was no longer looked to for insulated exploits of brilliant adventure: his name was now connected with larger and combined attacks, less dashing and adventurous, because including heavier responsibilities.
[4] Lord Camelford was, I believe, his first cousin; Sir Sidney's mother and Lady Camelford being sisters. But Lord Camelford was then absent from Bath.
Yes, at this stage of my life, viz., in my fifteenth year, and from this sequestered school, ankle deep I first stepped into the world. At Winkfield I had staid about a year, or not much more, when I received a letter from a young friend of my own age, Lord Westport, [1] the son of Lord Altamont, inviting me to accompany him to Ireland for the ensuing summer and autumn. This invitation was repeated by his tutor; and my mother, after some consideration, allowed me to accept it.
In the spring of 1800, accordingly, I went up to Eton, for the purpose of joining my friend. Here I several times visited the gardens of the queen's villa at Frogmore; and, privileged by my young friend's introduction, I had opportunities of seeing and hearing the queen and all the princesses; which at that time was a novelty in my life, naturally a good deal prized. Lord Westport's mother had been, before her marriage, Lady Louisa Howe, daughter to the great admiral, Earl Howe, and intimately known to the royal family, who, on her account, took a continual and especial notice of her son.
On one of these occasions I had the honor of a brief interview with the king. Madame De Campan mentions, as an amusing incident in her early life, though terrific at the time, and overwhelming to her sense of shame, that not long after her establishment at Versailles, in the service of some one amongst the daughters of Louis XV., having as yet never seen the king, she was one day suddenly introduced to his particular notice, under the following circumstances: The time was morning; the young lady was not fifteen; her spirits were as the spirits of a fawn in May; hertourof duty for the day was either not come, or was gone; and, finding herself alone in a spacious room, what more reasonable thing could she do than amuse herself withmaking cheeses?that is, whirling round, according to a fashion practised by young ladies both in France and England, and pirouetting until the petticoat is inflated like a balloon, and then sinking into a courtesy. Mademoiselle was very solemnly rising from one of these courtesies, in the centre of her collapsing petticoats, when a slight noise alarmed her. Jealous of intruding eyes, yet not dreading more than a servant at worst, she turned, and, O Heavens! whom should she behold but his most Christian majesty advancing upon her, with a brilliant suite of gentlemen, young and old, equipped for the chase, who had been all silent spectators of her performances? From the king to the last of the train, all bowed to her, and all laughed without restraint, as they passed the abashed amateur of cheese making. But she, to speak Homerically, wished in that hour that the earth might gape and cover her confusion. Lord Westport and I were about the age of mademoiselle, and not much more decorously engaged, when a turn brought us full in view of a royal party coming along one of the walks at Frogmore. We were, in fact, theorizing and practically commenting on the art of throwing stones. Boys have a peculiar contempt for female attempts in that way. For, besides that girls fling wide of the mark, with a certainty that might have won the applause of Galerius, [2] there is a peculiar sling and rotary motion of the arm in launching a stone, which no girl evercanattain. From ancient practice, I was somewhat of a proficient in this art, and was discussing the philosophy of female failures, illustrating my doctrines with pebbles, as the case happened to demand; whilst Lord Westport was practising on the peculiar whirl of the wrist with a shilling; when suddenly he turned the head of the coin towards me with a significant glance, and in a low voice he muttered some words, of which I caught "Grace of God," "France[3]and Ireland," "Defender off the Faith, and so forth." This solemn recitation of the legend on the coin was meant as a fanciful way of apprising me that the king was approaching; for Lord W. had himself lost somewhat of the awe natural to a young person in a first situation of this nature, through his frequent admissions to the royal presence. For my own part, I was as yet a stranger even to the king's person. I had, indeed, seen most or all the princesses in the way I have mentioned above; and occasionally, in the streets of Windsor, the sudden disappearance of all hats from all heads had admonished me that some royal personage or other was then traversing (or, if not traversing, was crossing) the street; but either his majesty had never been of the party, or, from distance, I had failed to distinguish him. Now, for the first time, I was meeting him nearly face to face; for, though the walk we occupied was not that in which the royal party were moving, it ran so near it, and was connected by so many cross walks at short intervals, that it was a matter of necessity for us, as we were now observed, to go and present ourselves. What happened was pretty nearly as follows: The king, having first spoken with great kindness to my companion, inquiring circumstantially about his mother and grandmother, as persons particularly well known to himself, then turned his eye upon me. My name, it seems, had been communicated to him; he did not, therefore, inquire about that. Was I of Eton? This was his first question. I replied that I was not, but hoped I should be. Had I a father living? I had not: my father had been dead about eight years. "But you have a mother?" I had. "And she thinks of sending you to Eton?" I answered, that she had expressed such an intention in my hearing; but I was not sure whether that might not be in order to waive an argument with the person to whom she spoke, who happened to have been an Etonian. "O, but all people think highly of Eton; every body praises Eton. Your mother does right to inquire; there can be no harm in that; but the more she inquires, the more she will be satisfied—that I can answer for."
Next came a question which had been suggested by my name. Had my family come into England with the Huguenots at the revocation of the edict of Nantz? This was a tender point with me: of all things I could not endure to be supposed of French descent; yet it was a vexation I had constantly to face, as most people supposed that my name argued a French origin; whereas a Norman origin argued pretty certainly an originnotFrench. I replied, with some haste, "Please your majesty, the family has been in England since the conquest." It is probable that I colored, or showed some mark of discomposure, with which, however, the king was not displeased, for he smiled, and said, "How do you know that?" Here I was at a loss for a moment how to answer; for I was sensible that it did not become me to occupy the king's attention with any long stories or traditions about a subject so unimportant as my own family; and yet it was necessary that I should say something, unless I would be thought to have denied my Huguenot descent upon no reason or authority. After a moment's hesitation, I said, in effect, that the family from which I traced my descent had certainly been a great and leading one at the era of the barons' wars, as also in one at least of the crusades; and that I had myself seen many notices of this family, not only in books of heraldry, &c., but in the very earliest of all English books. "And what book was that?" "Robert of Gloucester's 'Metrical Chronicle,' which I understood, from internal evidence, to have been written about 1280." The king smiled again, and said, "I know, I know." But what it was that he knew, long afterwards puzzled me to conjecture. I now imagine, however, that he meant to claim a knowledge of the book I referred to—a thing which at that time I thought improbable, supposing the king's acquaintance with literature not to be very extensive, nor likely to have comprehended any knowledge at all of the blackletter period. But in this belief I was greatly mistaken, as I was afterwards fully convinced by the best evidence from various quarters. That library of 120,000 volumes, which George IV. presented to the nation, and which has since gone to swell the collection at the British Museum, had been formed (as I was often assured by persons to whom the whole history of the library, and its growth from small rudiments, was familiarly known) under the direct personal superintendence of George III. It was a favorite and pet creation; and his care extended even to the dressing of the books in appropriate bindings, and (as one man told me) to theirhealth; explaining himself to mean, that in any case where a book was worm-eaten, or touched however slightly with the worm, the king was anxious to prevent the injury from extending, or from infecting others by close neighborhood; for it is supposed by many that such injuries spread rapidly in favorable situations. One of my informants was a German bookbinder of great respectability, settled in London, and for many years employed by the Admiralty as a confidential binder of records or journals containing secrets of office, &c. Through this connection he had been recommended to the service of his majesty, whom he used to see continually in the course of his attendance at Buckingham House, where the books were deposited. This artist had (originally in the way of his trade) become well acquainted with the money value of English books; and that knowledge cannot be acquired without some concurrent knowledge of their subject and their kind of merit. Accordingly, he was tolerably well qualified to estimate any man's attainments as a reading man; and from him I received such circumstantial accounts of many conversations he had held with the king, evidently reported with entire good faith and simplicity, that I cannot doubt the fact of his majesty's very general acquaintance with English literature. Not a day passed, whenever the king happened to be at Buckingham House, without his coming into the binding room, and minutely inspecting the progress of the binder and his allies— the gilders, toolers, &c. From the outside of the book the transition was natural to its value in the scale of bibliography; and in that way my informant had ascertained that the king was well acquainted, not only with Robert of Gloucester, but with all the other early chronicles, published by Hearne, and, in fact, possessed that entire series which rose at one period to so enormous a price. From this person I learned afterwards that the king prided himself especially upon his early folios of Shakspeare; that is to say, not merely upon the excellence of the individual copies in a bibliographical sense, as "tallcopies" and having large margins, &c., but chiefly from their value in relation to the most authentic basis for the text of the poet. And thus it appears, that at least two of our kings, Charles I. and George III., have made it their pride to profess a reverential esteem for Shakspeare. This bookbinder added his attestation to the truth (or to the generally reputed truth) of a story which I had heard from other authority, viz., that the librarian, or, if not officially the librarian, at least the chief director in every thing relating to the books, was an illegitimate son of Frederic, Prince of Wales, (son to George II.,) and therefore half-brother of the king. His own taste and inclinations, it seemed, concurred with his brother's wishes in keeping him in a subordinate rank and an obscure station; in which, however, he enjoyed affluence without anxiety, or trouble, or courtly envy, and the luxury, which he most valued, of a superb library. He lived and died, I have heard, as plain Mr. Barnard. At one time I disbelieved the story, (which possibly may have been long known to the public,) on the ground that even George III. would not have differed so widely from princes in general as to leave a brother of his own, however unaspiring, wholly undistinguished by public honors. But having since ascertained that a naval officer, well known to my own family, and to a naval brother of my own in particular, by assistance rendered to him repeatedly when a midshipman in changing his ship, was undoubtedly an illegitimate son of George III., and yet that he never rose higher than the rank of post captain, though privately acknowledged by his father and other members of the royal family, I found the insufficiency of that objection. The fact is, and it does honor to the king's memory, he reverenced the moral feelings of his country, which are, in this and in all points of domestic morals, severe and high toned, (I say it in defiance of writers, such as Lord Byron, Mr. Hazlitt, &c., who hated alike the just and the unjust pretensions of England,) in a degree absolutely incomprehensible toSouthernEurope. He had his frailties like other children of Adam; but he did not seek to fix the public attention upon them, after the fashion of Louis Quatorze, or our Charles II., and so many other continental princes. There were living witnesses (more than one) ofhisaberrations as of theirs; but he, with better feelings than they, did not choose, by placing these witnesses upon a pedestal of honor, surmounted by heraldic trophies, to emblazon his own transgressions to coming generations, and to force back the gaze of a remote posterity upon his own infirmities. It was his ambition to be thefatherof his people in a sense not quite so literal. These were things, however, of which at that time I had not heard.
During the whole dialogue, I did not even once remark that hesitation and iteration of words generally attributed to George III.; indeed,sogenerally, that it must often have existed; but in this case, I suppose that the brevity of his sentences operated to deliver him from any embarrassment of utterance, such as might have attended longer and more complex sentences, where some anxiety was natural to overtake the thoughts as they arose. When we observed that the king had paused in his stream of questions, which succeeded rapidly to each other, we understood it as a signal of dismissal; and making a profound obeisance, we retired backwards a few steps. His majesty smiled in a very gracious manner, waved his hand towards us, and said something (I did not know what) in a peculiarly kind accent; he then turned round, and the whole party along with him; which set us at liberty without impropriety to turn to the right about ourselves, and make our egress from the gardens.
This incident, to me at my age, was very naturally one of considerable interest. One reflection it suggested afterwards, which was this: Could it be likely that much truth of a general nature, bearing upon man and social interests, could ever reach the ear of a king, under the etiquette of a court, and under that one rule which seemed singly sufficient to foreclose all natural avenues to truth?—the rule, I mean, by which it is forbidden to address a question to the king. I was well aware, before I saw him, that in the royal presence, like the dead soldier in Lucan, whom the mighty necromancing witch tortures back into a momentary life, I must have no voice except foranswers:—
"Vox illi linguaque tantumResponsuradatur." [4]
I was to originate nothing myself; and at my age, before so exalted a personage, the mere instincts of reverential demeanor would at any rate have dictated such a rule. But what becomes of that man's general condition of mind in relation to all the great objects moving on the field of human experience, where it is a law generally for almost all who approach him, that they shall confine themselves to replies, absolute responses, or, at most, to a prosecution or carrying forward of a proposition delivered by theprotagonist, or supreme leader of the conversation? For it must be remembered that, generally speaking, the effect of putting no question is to transfer into the other party's hands the entireoriginatingmovement of the dialogue; and thus, in a musical metaphor, the great man is the sole modulator and determiner of the key in which the conversation proceeds. It is true, that sometimes, by travelling a little beyond the question in your answer, you may enlarge the basis, so as to bring up some new train of thought which you wish to introduce, and may suggest fresh matter as effectually as if you had the liberty of more openly guiding the conversation, whether by way of question or by direct origination of a topic; but this depends on skill to improve an opening, or vigilance to seize it at the instant, and, after all, much upon accident; to say nothing of the crime, (a sort of petty treason, perhaps, or, what is it?) if you should be detected in your "improvements" and "enlargements of basis." The king might say, "Friend, I must tell my attorney general to speak with you, for I detect a kind of treason in your replies. They go too far. They include something which tempts my majesty to a notice; which is, in fact, for the long and the short of it, that you have been circumventing me half unconsciously into answering a question which has silently been insinuated byyou." Freedom of communication, unfettered movement of thought, there can be none under such a ritual, which tends violently to a Byzantine, or even to a Chinese result of freezing, as it were, all natural and healthy play of the faculties under the petrific mace of absolute ceremonial and fixed precedent. For it will hardly be objected, that the privileged condition of a few official councillors and state ministers, whose hurry and oppression of thought from public care will rarely allow them to speak on any other subject than business,canbe a remedy large enough for so large an evil. True it is, that a peculiarly frank or jovial temperament in a sovereign may do much for a season to thaw this punctilious reserve and ungenial constraint; butthatis an accident, and personal to an individual. And, on the other hand, to balance even this, it may be remarked, that, in all noble and fashionable society, where there happens to be a pride in sustaining what is deemed a goodtonein conversation, it is peculiarly aimed at, (and even artificially managed,) that no lingering or loitering upon one theme, no protracted discussion, shall be allowed. And, doubtless, as regards merely the treatment of convivial or purelysocialcommunication of ideas, (which also is a great art,) this practice is right. I admit willingly that an uncultured brute, who is detected at an elegant table in the atrocity of absolute discussion or disputation, ought to be summarily removed by a police officer; and possibly the law will warrant his being held to bail for one or two years, according to the enormity of his case. But men are not always enjoying, or seeking to enjoy, social pleasure; they seek also, and have need to seek continually, both through books and men, intellectual growth, fresh power, fresh strength, to keep themselves ahead or abreast of this moving, surging, billowing world of ours; especially in these modern times, when society revolves through so many new phases, and shifts its aspects with so much more velocity than in past ages. A king, especially of this country, needs, beyond most other men, to keep himself in a continual state of communication, as it were, by some vital andorganicsympathy, with the most essential of these changes. And yet this punctilio of etiquette, like some vicious forms of law or technical fictions grown too narrow for the age, which will not allow of cases coming before the court in a shape desired alike by the plaintiff and the defendant, is so framed as to defeat equally the wishes of a prince disposed to gather knowledge wherever he can find it, and of those who may be best fitted to give it.
For a few minutes on three other occasions, before we finally quitted Eton, I again saw the king, and always with renewed interest. He was kind to every body—condescending and affable in a degree which I am bound to remember with personal gratitude; and one thing Ihadheard of him, which even then, and much more as my mind opened to a wider compass of deeper reflection, won my respect. I have always reverenced a man of whom it could be truly said that he had once, and once only, (for more than once implies another unsoundness in the quality of the passion,) been desperately in love; in love, that is to say, in a terrific excess, so as to dally, under suitable circumstances, with the thoughts of cutting his own throat, or even (as the case might be) the throat of her whom he loved above all this world. It will be understood that I am not justifying such enormities; on the contrary, they are wrong, exceedingly wrong; but it is evident that people in general feel pretty much as I do, from the extreme sympathy with which the public always pursue the fate of any criminal who has committed a murder of this class, even though tainted (as generally it is) with jealousy, which, in itself, wherever it argues habitual mistrust, is an ignoble passion. [5]
Great passions, (do not understand me, reader, as though I meant great appetites,) passions moving in a great orbit, and transcending little regards, are always arguments of some latent nobility. There are, indeed, but few men and few women capable of great passions, or (properly speaking) of passions at all. Hartley, in his mechanism of the human mind, propagates the sensations by means of vibrations, and by miniature vibrations, which, in a Roman form for such miniatures, he termsvibratiuncles. Now, of men and women generally, parodying that terminology, we ought to say—not that they are governed by passions, or at all capable of passions, but ofpassiuncles. And thence it is that few men go, or can go, beyond a littlelove-liking, as it is called; and hence also, that, in a world where so little conformity takes place between the ideal speculations of men and the gross realities of life, where marriages are governed in so vast a proportion by convenience, prudence, self-interest,—any thing, in short, rather than deep sympathy between the parties,—and, consequently, where so many men must be crossed in their inclinations, we yet hear of so few tragic catastrophes on that account. The king, however, was certainly among the number of those who are susceptible of a deep passion, if every thing be true that is reported of him. All the world has heard that he was passionately devoted to the beautiful sister of the then Duke of Richmond. That was before his marriage; and I believe it is certain that he not only wished, but sincerely meditated, to have married her. So much is matter of notoriety. But other circumstances of the case have been sometimes reported, which imply great distraction of mind and a truly profound possession of his heart by that early passion; which, in a prince whose feelings are liable so much to the dispersing and dissipating power of endless interruption from new objects and fresh claims on the attention, coupled also with the fact that he never, but in this one case, professed any thing amounting to extravagant or frantic attachment, do seem to argue that the king was truly and passionately in love with Lady Sarah Lennox. He had ademonupon him, and was under a realpossession. If so, what a lively expression of the mixed condition of human fortunes, and not less of another truth equally affecting, viz., the dread conflicts with the will, the mighty agitations which silently and in darkness are convulsing many a heart, where, to the external eye, all is tranquil,—that this king, at the very threshold of his public career, at the very moment when he was binding about his brows the golden circle of sovereignty, when Europe watched him with interest, and the kings of the earth with envy, not one of the vulgar titles to happiness being wanting,—youth, health, a throne the most splendid on this planet, general popularity amongst a nation of freemen, and the hope which belongs to powers as yet almost untried,—that, even under these most flattering auspices, he should be called upon to make a sacrifice the most bitter of all to which human life is liable! He made it; and he might then have said to his people, "For you, and to my public duties, I have made a sacrifice which none of you would have made for me." In years long ago, I have heard a woman of rank recurring to the circumstances of Lady Sarah's first appearance at court after the king's marriage. If I recollect rightly, it occurred after that lady's own marriage with Sir Charles Bunbury. Many eyes were upon both parties at that moment,—female eyes, especially,—and the speaker did not disguise the excessive interest with which she herself observed them. Lady Sarah was not agitated, but the kingwas. He seemed anxious, sensibly trembled, changed color, andshivered, as Lady S. B. drew near. But, to quote the one single eloquent sentiment, which I remember after a lapse of thirty years, in Monk Lewis's Romantic Tales, "In this world all things pass away; blessed be Heaven, and the bitter pangs by which sometimes it is pleased to recall its wanderers, even our passions pass away!" And thus it happened that this storm also was laid asleep and forgotten, together with so many others of its kind that have been, and that shall be again, so long as man is man, and woman woman. Meantime, in justification of a passion so profound, one would be glad to think highly of the lady that inspired it; and, therefore, I heartily hope that the insults offered to her memory in the scandalous "Memoirs of the Duc de Lauzun" are mere calumnies, and records rather of his presumptuous wishes than of any actual successes. [6]
However, to leave dissertation behind me, and to resume the thread of my narrative, an incident, which about this period impressed me even more profoundly than my introduction to a royal presence, was my first visit to London.
[1] My acquaintance with Lord Westport was of some years' standing. My father, whose commercial interests led him often to Ireland, had many friends there. One of these was a country gentleman connected with the west; and at his house I first met Lord Westport.
[2] "Sir," said the emperor to a soldier who had missed the target in succession I know not how many times, (suppose we say fifteen,) "allow me to offer my congratulations on the truly admirable skill you have shown in keeping clear of the mark. Not to have hit once in so many trials, argues the most splendid talents for missing."
[3]Francewas at that time among the royal titles, the act for altering the king's style and title not having then passed. As connected with this subject, I may here mention a project (reported to have been canvassed in council at the time when that alterationdidtake place) for changing the title from king to emperor. What then occurred strikingly illustrates the general character of the British policy as to all external demonstrations of pomp and national pretension, and its strong opposition to that of France under corresponding circumstances. The principleof esse quam videri, and the carelessness about names when the thing is unaffected, generally speaking, must command praise and respect. Yet, considering how often the reputation of power becomes, for international purposes, nothing less than power itself, and that words, in many relations of human life, are emphatically things, and sometimes are so to the exclusion of the most absolute things themselves, men of all qualities being often governed by names, the policy of France seems the wiser, viz.,se faire valoir, even at the price of ostentation. But, at all events, no man is entitled to exercised that extrem candor, forbearance, and spirit of ready concessionin re aliena, and, above all,in re politica, which, on its own account, might be altogether honorable. The council might give away their own honors, but not yours and mine. On a public (or at least on a foreign) interest, it is the duty of a good citizen to be lofty, exacting, almost insolent. And, on this principle, when the ancient style and title of the kingdom fell under revision, if—as I do not deny—it was advisable to retrench all obsolete pretensions as so many memorials of a greatness that in that particular manifestation was now extinct, and therefore,pro tanto, rather presumtions of weakness than of strength as being mementoes of our losses, yet, on the other hand, all countervailing claims which had since arisen, and had far more than equiponderated the declension in that one direction, should have been then adopted into the titular heraldry of the nation. It was neither wise nor just to insult foreign nations with assumptions which no longer stood upon any basis of reality. And on that groundFrancewas, perhaps, rightly omitted. But why, when the crown was thus remoulded, and its jewelry unset, if this one pearl were to be surrendered as an ornament no longer ours, why, we may ask, were not the many and gorgeous jewels, achieved by the national wisdom and power in later times, adopted into the recomposed tiara? Upon what principle did the Romans, the wisest among the children of this world, leave so many inscriptions, as records of their power or their triumphs, upon columns, arches, temples,basilicae, or medals? A national act, a solemn and deliberate act, delivered to history, is a more imperishable monument than any made by hands; and the title, as revised, which ought to have expressed a change in the dominion simply as to the mode and form of its expansion, now remains as a false, base, abject confession of absolute contraction: once we had A, B, and C; now we have dwindled into A and B: true, most unfaithful guardian of the national honors, we had lost C, and that you were careful to remember. But we happend to have gained D, E, F,—and so downwards to Z,—all of which duly you forgot.
On this argument, it was urged at the time, in high quarters, that the new re-cast of the crown and sceptre should come out of the furnaceequallyimproved; as much for what they were authorized to claim as for what they were compelled to disclaim. And, as one mode of effecting this, it was proposed that the king should become an emperor. Some, indeed, alleged that an emperor, but its very idea, as received in the Chancery of Europe, presupposes a king paramount over vassal or tributary kings. But it is a sufficient answer to say that an emperor is a prince, united in his own person thethronesof several distinct kingdoms; and in effect we adopt that view of the case in giving the title of imperial to the parliament, or common assembly of the three kingdoms. However, the title of the prince was a matter trivial in comparison of the title of hisditio, or extent of jurisdiction. This point admits of a striking illustration: in the "Paradise Regained," Milton has given us, in close succession, three matchless pictures of civil grandeur, as exemplified in three different modes by three different states. Availing himself of the brief scriptural notice,—"The devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,"—he causes to pass, as in a solemn pageant before us, the two military empires then coexisting, of Parthia and Rome, and finally (under another idea of political greatness) the intellectual glories of Athens. From the picture of the Roman grandeur I extract, and beg the reader to weigh, the following lines:—
"Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see—atWhat conflux issuing forth or entering in;Pretors, proconsuls, to their provincesHasting, or on return in robes of state;Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power;Legions or cohorts, turns of horse and wings;Or embassies from regions far remote,In various habits on the Appian road,Or on the Emilian; some from farthest south,Syene, and where the shadow both way falls,Meroë, Nilotic isle: and, more to west,The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor Sea;From India and the Golden Chersonese,And utmost Indian isle, Taprobane,—Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed;From Gallia, Gades, and the British, west,Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, north,Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool."
With this superb picture, or abstraction of the Roman pomps and power, when ascending to their utmost altitude, confront the following representative sketch of a great English levee on some high solemnity, suppose the king's birthday: "Amongst the presentations to his majesty, we noticed Lord O. S., the governor general of India, on his departure for Bengal; Mr. U. Z., with an address from the Upper and Lower Canadas; Sir L. V., on his appointment as commander of the forces in Nova Scotia; General Sir ——, on his return from the Burmese war, ["the Golden Chersonese,"] the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet; Mr. B. Z., on his appointment to the chief justiceship at Madras; Sir R. G., the late attorney general at the Cape of Good Hope; General Y. X., on taking leave for the governorship of Ceylon, ["the utmost Indian isle, Taprobane;"] Lord F. M., the bearer of the last despatches from head quarters in Spain; Col. P., on going out as captain general of the forces in New Holland; Commodore St. L., on his return from a voyage of discovery towards the north pole; the King of Owhyhee, attended by chieftains from the other islands of that cluster; Col. M'P., on his return from the war in Ashantee, upon which occasion the gallant colonel presented the treaty and tribute from that country; Admiral ——, on his appointment to the Baltic fleet; Captain O. N., with despatches from the Red Sea, advising the destruction of the piratical armament and settlements in that quarter, as also in the Persian Gulf; Sir T. O'N., the late resident in Nepaul, to present his report of the war in that territory, and in adjacent regions—names as yet unknown in Europe; the governor of the Leeward Islands, on departing for the West Indies; various deputations with petitions, addresses, &c., from islands in remote quarters of the globe, amongst which we distinguished those from Prince Edward Island, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from, the Mauritius, from Java, from the British settlement in Terra del Fuego, from the Christian churches in the Society, Friendly, and Sandwich Islands—as well as other groups less known in the South Seas; Admiral H. A., on assuming the command of the Channel fleet; Major Gen. X. L., on resigning the lieutenant governorship of Gibraltar; Hon. G. F., on going out as secretary to the governor of Malta," &c.
This sketch, too hastily made up, is founded upon a base of a very few years;i.e., we have, in one or two instances, placed in juxtaposition, as coexistences, events separated by a few years. But if (like Milton's picture of the Roman grandeur) the abstraction had been made from a base of thirty years in extent, and had there been added to the picture (according to his precedent) the many and remote embassies to and from independent states, in all quarters of the earth, with how many more groups might the spectacle have been crowded, and especially of those who fall within that most picturesque delineation—
"Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed"!
As it is, I have noticed hardly any places but such as lie absolutely within our jurisdiction. And yet, even under that limitation, how vastly more comprehensive is the chart of British dominion than of the Roman! To this gorgeous empire, some corresponding style and title should have been adapted at the revision of the old title, and should yet be adapted.
Aproposof the proposed change in the king's title: Coleridge, on being assured that the new title of the king was to be Emperor of the British Islands and their dependencies, and on the coinImperator Britanniarum, remarked, that, in this remanufactured form, the title might be said to bejapanned; alluding to this fact, that amongstinsularsovereigns, the only one known to Christian diplomacy by the title of emperor is the Sovereign of Japan.
[4] For the sake of those who are no classical scholars, I explain: Voice and language are restored to him only to the extent ofreplying.
[5] Accordingly, Coleridge has contended, and I think with truth, that the passion of Othello isnotjealousy. So much I know by report, as theresultof a lecture which he read at the Royal Institution. His arguments I did not hear. To me it is evident that Othello's state of feeling was not that of a degrading, suspicious rivalship, but the state of perfect misery, arising out of this dilemma, the most affecting, perhaps, to contemplate of any whichcanexist, viz., the dire necessity of loving without limit one whom the heart pronounces to be unworthy of that love.
[6] That book, I am aware, is generally treated as a forgery; but internal evidence, drawn from the tone and quality of the revelations there made, will not allow me to think it altogether such. There is anabandonand carelessness in parts which mark its sincerity. Its authenticity I cannot doubt. Butthatproves nothing for the truth of the particular stories which it contains. A book of scandalous and defamatory stories, especially where the writer has had the baseness to betray the confidence reposed in his honor by women, and to boast of favors alleged to have been granted him, it is always fair to consider asipso factoa tissue of falsehoods: and on the following argument, that these are exposures which, even if true, none but the basest of men would have made. Being, therefore, on the hypothesis most favorable to his veracity, the basest of men, the author is self-denounced as vile enough to have forged the stories, and cannot complain if he should be roundly accused of doing that which he has taken pains to prove himself capable of doing. This way of arguing might be applied with fatal effect to the Duc de Lauzun's "Memoirs," supposing them written with a view to publication. But, by possibility, that was not the case. The Duc de L. terminated his profligate life, as is well known, on the scaffold, during the storms of the French revolution; and nothing in his whole career won him so much credit as the way in which he closed it; for he went to his death with a romantic carelessness, and even gayety of demeanor. His "Memoirs" were not published by himself: the publication was posthumous; and by whom authorized, or for what purpose, is not exactly known. Probably the manuscript fell into mercenary hands, and was published merely on a speculation of pecuniary gain. From some passages, however, I cannot but infer that the writer did not mean to bring it before the public, but wrote it rather as a series of private memoranda, to aid his own recollection of circumstances and dates. The Duc de Lauzun's account of his intrigue with Lady Sarah goes so far as to allege, that he rode down in disguise, from London to Sir Charles B.'s country seat, agreeably to a previous assignation, and that he was admitted, by that lady's confidential attendant, through a back staircase, at the time when Sir Charles (a fox hunter, but a man of the highest breeding and fashion) was himself at home, and occupied in the duties of hospitality.
It was a most heavenly day in May of the year (1800) when I first beheld and first entered this mighty wilderness, the city—no, not the city, but the nation—of London. Often since then, at distances of two and three hundred miles or more from this colossal emporium of men, wealth, arts, and intellectual power, have I felt the sublime expression of her enormous magnitude in one simple form of ordinary occurrence, viz., in the vast droves of cattle, suppose upon the great north roads, all with their heads directed to London, and expounding the size of the attracting body, together with the force of its attractive power, by the never-ending succession of these droves, and the remoteness from the capital of the lines upon which they were moving. A suction so powerful, felt along radii so vast, and a consciousness, at the same time, that upon other radii still more vast, both by land and by sea, the same suction is operating, night and day, summer and winter, and hurrying forever into one centre the infinite means needed for her infinite purposes, and the endless tributes to the skill or to the luxury of her endless population, crowds the imagination with a pomp to which there is nothing corresponding upon this planet, either amongst the things that have been or the things that are. Or, if any exception there is, it must be sought in ancient Rome. [1] We, upon this occasion, were in an open carriage, and, chiefly (as I imagine) to avoid the dust, we approached London by rural lanes, where any such could be found, or, at least, along by-roads, quiet and shady, collateral to the main roads. In that mode of approach we missed some features of the sublimity belonging to any of the common approaches upon a main road; we missed the whirl and the uproar, the tumult and the agitation, which continually thicken and thicken throughout the last dozen miles before you reach the suburbs. Already at three stages' distance, (say 40 miles from London,) upon some of the greatest roads, the dim presentment of some vast capital reaches you obscurely and like a misgiving. This blind sympathy with a mighty but unseen object, some vast magnetic range of Alps, in your neighborhood, continues to increase you know not now. Arrived at the last station for changing horses, Barnet, suppose, on one of the north roads, or Hounslow on the western, you no longer think (as in all other places) of naming the next stage; nobody says, on pulling up, "Horses on to London"—that would sound ludicrous; one mighty idea broods over all minds, making it impossible to suppose any other destination. Launched upon this final stage, you soon begin to feel yourself entering the stream as it were of a Norwegianmaelstrom; and the stream at length becomes the rush of a cataract. What is meant by the Latin wordtrepidatio? Not any thing peculiarly connected with panic; it belongs as much to the hurrying to and fro of a coming battle as of a coming flight; to a marriage festival as much as to a massacre;agitationis the nearest English word. Thistrepidationincreases both audibly and visibly at every half mile, pretty much as one may suppose the roar of Niagara and the thrilling of the ground to grow upon the senses in the last ten miles of approach, with the wind in its favor, until at length it would absorb and extinguish all other sounds whatsoever. Finally, for miles before you reach a suburb of London such as Islington, for instance, a last great sign and augury of the immensity which belongs to the coming metropolis forces itself upon the dullest observer, in the growing sense of his own utter insignificance. Every where else in England, you yourself, horses, carriage, attendants, (if you travel with any,) are regarded with attention, perhaps even curiosity; at all events, you are seen. But after passing the final posthouse on every avenue to London, for the latter ten or twelve miles, you become aware that you are no longer noticed: nobody sees you; nobody hears you; nobody regards you; you do not even regard yourself. In fact, how should you, at the moment of first ascertaining your own total unimportance in the sum of things?—a poor shivering unit in the aggregate of human life. Now, for the first time, whatever manner of man you were, or seemed to be, at starting, squire or "squireen," lord or lordling, and however related to that city, hamlet, or solitary house from which yesterday or to-day you slipped your cable, beyond disguise you find yourself but one wave in a total Atlantic, one plant (and a parasitical plant besides, needing alien props) in a forest of America.
These are feelings which do not belong by preference to thoughtful people—far less to people merely sentimental. No man ever was left to himself for the first time in the streets, as yet unknown, of London, but he must have been saddened and mortified, perhaps terrified, by the sense of desertion and utter loneliness which belong to his situation. No loneliness can be like that which weighs upon the heart in the centre of faces never ending, without voice or utterance for him; eyes innumerable, that have "no speculation" in their orbs whichhecan understand; and hurrying figures of men and women weaving to and fro, with no apparent purposes intelligible to a stranger, seeming like a mask of maniacs, or, oftentimes, like a pageant of phantoms. The great length of the streets in many quarters of London; the continual opening of transient glimpses into other vistas equally far stretching, going off at right angles to the one which you are traversing; and the murky atmosphere which, settling upon the remoter end of every long avenue, wraps its termination in gloom and uncertainty,—all these are circumstances aiding that sense of vastness and illimitable proportions which forever brood over the aspect of London in its interior. Much of the feeling which belongs to the outside of London, in its approaches for the last few miles, I had lost, in consequence of the stealthy route of by-roads, lying near Uxbridge and Watford, through which we crept into the suburbs. But for that reason, the more abrupt and startling had been the effect of emerging somewhere into the Edgeware Road, and soon afterwards into the very streets of London itself; throughwhatstreets, or even what quarter of London, is now totally obliterated from my mind, having perhaps never been comprehended. All that I remember is one monotonous awe and blind sense of mysterious grandeur and Babylonian confusion, which seemed to pursue and to invest the whole equipage of human life, as we moved for nearly two [2] hours through streets; sometimes brought to anchor for ten minutes or more by what is technically called a "lock," that is, a line of carriages of every description inextricably massed, and obstructing each other, far as the eye could stretch; and then, as if under an enchanter's rod, the "lock" seemed to thaw; motion spread with the fluent race of light or sound through the whole ice-bound mass, until the subtile influence reachedusalso, who were again absorbed into the great rush of flying carriages; or, at times, we turned off into some less tumultuous street, but of the same mile-long character; and, finally, drawing up about noon, we alighted at some place, which is as little within my distinct remembrance as the route by which we reached it.
For what had we come? To see London. And what were the limits within which we proposed to crowd that little feat? At five o'clock we were to dine at Porters ——, a seat of Lord Westport's grandfather; and, from the distance, it was necessary that we should leave London at half past three; so that a little more than three hours were all we had for London. Our charioteer, my friend's tutor, was summoned away from us on business until that hour; and we were left, therefore, entirely to ourselves and to our own skill in turning the time to the best account, for contriving (if such a thing were possible) to do something or other which, by any fiction of courtesy, or constructively, so as to satisfy a lawyer, or in a sense sufficient to win a wager, might be taken and received for having "seen London."
What could be done? We sat down, I remember, in a mood of despondency, to consider. The spectacles were too many by thousands;inopes nos copia fecit; our very wealth made us poor; and the choice was distracted. But which of them all could be thought general or representative enough to stand for the universe of London? We could not traverse the whole circumference of this mighty orb; that was clear; and, therefore, the next best thing was to place ourselves as much as possible in some relation to the spectacles of London, which might answer to the centre. Yet how? That sounded well and metaphysical; but what did it mean if acted upon? What was the centre of London for any purpose whatever, latitudinarian or longitudinarian, literary, social, or mercantile, geographical, astronomical, or (as Mrs. Malaprop kindly suggests) diabolical? Apparently that we should stay at our inn; for in that way we seemed best to distribute our presence equally amongst all, viz., by going to none in particular.
Three times in my life I have had my taste—that is, my sense of proportions—memorably outraged. Once was by a painting of Cape Horn, which seemed almost treasonably below its rank and office in this world, as the terminal abutment of our mightiest continent, and also the hinge, as it were, of our greatest circumnavigations—of all, in fact, which can be calledclassicalcircumnavigations. To have "doubled Cape Horn"—at one time, what a sound it had! yet how ashamed we should be if that cape were ever to be seen from the moon! A party of Englishmen, I have heard, went up Mount Aetna, during the night, to be ready for sunrise—a common practice with tourists both in Switzerland, Wales, Cumberland, &c.; but, as all must see who take the trouble to reflect, not likely to repay the trouble; seeing that every thing which offers apicture, when viewed from a station nearly horizontal, becomes a meremapto an eye placed at an elevation of 3000 feet above it; and so thought, in the sequel, the Aetna party. The sun, indeed, rose visibly, and not more apparelled in clouds than was desirable; yet so disappointed were they, and so disgusted with the sun in particular, that they unanimouslyhissedhim; though, of course, it was useless to cry "Off! off!" Here, however, the fault was in their own erroneous expectations, and not in the sun, who, doubtless, did his best. For, generally, a sunrise and a sunset ought to be seen from the valley, or at most horizontally. [3] But as to Cape Horn,that(by comparison with its position and its functions) was really a disgrace to the planet; it is not the spectator that is in faulthere, but the object itself, the Birmingham cape. For, consider, it is not only the "specular mount," keeping watch and ward over a sort of trinity of oceans, and, by all tradition, the circumnavigator's gate of entrance to the Pacific, but also it is the temple of the god Terminus for all the Americas. So that, in relation to such dignities, it seemed to me, in the drawing, a makeshift, put up by a carpenter, until the true Cape Horn should be ready; or, perhaps, a drop scene from the opera house. This was one case of disproportion: the others were—the final and ceremonial valediction of Garrick, on retiring from his profession; and the Pall Mall inauguration of George IV. on the day of his accession [4] to the throne. The utter _ir_relation, in both cases, of the audience to the scene, (audienceI say, as say we must, for the sum of the spectators in the second instance, as well as of the auditors in the first,) threw upon each a ridicule not to be effaced. It is in any case impossible for an actor to say words of farewell to those for whom he really designs his farewell. He cannot bring his true object before himself. To whom is it that he would offer his last adieus? We are told by one—who, if he loved Garrick, certainly did not love Garrick's profession, nor would even, throughhim, have paid it any undue compliment—that the retirement of this great artist had "eclipsed the gayety of nations." To nations, then, to his own generation, it was that he owed his farewell; but, of a generation, what organ is there which can sue or be sued, that can thank or be thanked? Neither by fiction nor by delegation can you bring their bodies into court. A king's audience, on the other hand,mightbe had as an authorized representative body. But, when we consider the composition of a casual and chance auditory, whether in a street or a theatre,—secondly, the small size of a modern audience, even in Drury Lane, (4500 at the most,) not by one eightieth part thecomplementof the Circus Maximus,—most of all, when we consider the want of symmetry or commensurateness, to any extended duration of time, in theactsof such an audience, which acts lie in the vanishing expressions of its vanishing emotions,—acts so essentially fugitive, even when organized into an art and a tactical system ofimbricesandbombi, (as they were at Alexandria, and afterwards at the Neapolitan and Roman theatres,) that they could not protect themselves from dying in the very moment of their birth,—laying together all these considerations, we see the incongruity of any audience, so constituted, to any purpose less evanescent than their own tenure of existence.