"Oh, if we seize with skill the coming hour,And reinvest us with the robe of power;Rule while we live, let future days transmuteTo every merit all we've charged on Bute.Let late posterity receive his name,And swell its sails with every breath of fame—Downwards as far as Time shall roll his tide,With ev'ry pendant flying, let it glide."
"Oh, if we seize with skill the coming hour,And reinvest us with the robe of power;Rule while we live, let future days transmuteTo every merit all we've charged on Bute.Let late posterity receive his name,And swell its sails with every breath of fame—Downwards as far as Time shall roll his tide,With ev'ry pendant flying, let it glide."
The rest is equally intolerable.
But Bentley was lucky in his patrons, if not in his poetry; as, in addition to a Commissionership of Lotteries, he received a pension for the lives of himself and his wife of £500 a-year! Though thus undeservedly successful in attracting the notice of the government, his more honest efforts failed with the public. He wrote two plays, both of which failed. Walpole next describes Robertson the historian in these high-coloured terms, "as sagacious and penetrating as Tacitus, with a perspicuity of Livy:" qualities which every one else knows to be directly the reverse of those which characterize Robertson. That very impudent woman, Catharine Macaulay, seems also to have been one of the objects of his literary admiration. He describes her, as being as partial in the cause of liberty as bigots to the church and royalists to tyranny, and as exerting manly strength with the gravity of a philosopher.
But Walpole is aways amusing when he gives anecdotes of passing things. The famous Brentford election finds in him its most graphic historian. The most singular carelessness was exhibited by the government on this most perilous occasion—a carelessness obviously arising from that contempt which the higher ranks of the nobility in those days were weak enough to feel for the opinion of those below them. On the very verge of an election, within five miles of London, and which must bring to a point all the exasperation of years; Camden, the chancellor, went down to Bath, and the Duke of Grafton, the prime minister, who was a great horse-racer, drove off to Newmarket. Mansfield, whom Walpole seems to have hated, and whom he represents as at "once resentful, timorous, and subtle," the three worst qualities of the heart, the nerves, and the understanding, pretended that it was the office of the chancellor to bring the outlaw (Wilkes) to justice, and did nothing. The consequence was, that the multitude were left masters of the field.
On the morning of the election; while the irresolution of the court, and the negligence of the prime minister, caused a neglect of all precautions; the populace took possession of all the turnpikes and avenues leading to the hustings by break of day, and would suffer no man to pass who did not wear in his hat a blue cockade, with "Wilkes and Number 45," on a written paper. Riots took place in the streets, and the carriage of Sir William Proctor, the opposing candidate, was demolished. The first day's poll for Wilkes was 1200, for Proctor 700, for Cooke 300. It must be remembered, that in these times the elections were capable of being prolonged from week to week, and that the first day was regarded as scarcely more than a formality. At night the West-end was in an uproar. It was not safe to pass through Piccadilly. Every house was compelled to illuminate; the windows of all which did not exhibit lights were broken; the coach-glasses of such as did not huzza for "Wilkes and liberty" were broken; and the panels of the carriages were scratched with 45! Lord Weymouth, the secretary of state, wrote to Justice Fielding for constables. Fielding answered, that they were all gone to Brentford. On this,the guards were drawn out. The mob then attacked Lord Bute's house and Lord Egmont's, but without being able to force an entrance. They compelled the Duke of Northumberland to give them liquor to drink Wilkes's health. Ladies of rank were taken out of their sedan-chairs, and ordered to join the popular cry. The lord-mayor was an anti-Wilkite—the mob attacked the Mansion-house, and broke the windows. He ordered out the trained bands; they had no effect. Six thousand weavers had risen under the Wilkite banner, and defied all resistance. Even some of the regimental drummers beat their drums for Wilkes! His force at the election was evidently to be resisted no longer. The ministerial candidate was beaten, Wilkes threw in his remaining votes for Cooke, and they came in together. The election was thus over on the second day, but the mob paraded the metropolis at night, insisting on a general illumination. The handsome Duchess of Hamilton, one of the Gunnings, who had now become quite a Butite, was determined not to illuminate. The result was, that the mob grew outrageous, broke down the outward gates with iron-crows, tore up the pavement of the street, and battered the doors and shutters for three hours; fortunately without being able to get in. The Count de Sollein, the Austrian ambassador, the most stately and ceremonious of men, was taken out of his coach by the mob, who chalked 45 on the sole of his shoe! He complained in form of the insult. Walpole says, fairly enough, "it was as difficult for the ministers to help laughing as to give him redress."
Walpole frequently alludes to the two Gunnings as the two handsomest sisters of their time. They were Irish-women, fresh-coloured, lively, and well formed, but obviously more indebted to nature than to education. Lady Coventry died young, and had the misfortune, even in her grave, of being made the subject of an epitaph by Mason, one of the most listless and languid poems of an unpoetic time. The Duchess of Hamilton survived to a considerable age, and was loaded with matrimonial honours. She first married the Duke of Hamilton. On his death, she married the Marquis of Lorn, eldest son of the Duke of Argyll, whom he succeeded in the title—thus becoming mother of the heirs of the two great rival houses of Hamilton and Argyll. While in her widowhood, she had been proposed for by the Duke of Bridgewater. Lady Coventry seems to have realized Pope's verses of a dying belle—
"And, Betty, give this cheek a little red,One would not, sure, look ugly when one's dead."
"And, Betty, give this cheek a little red,One would not, sure, look ugly when one's dead."
"Till within a few days of her death, she lay on a couch with a looking-glass in her hand. When she found her beauty, which she idolized, was quite gone, she took to her bed, and would be seen by nobody, not even by her nurse, suffering only the light of a lamp in her room."
Walpole's description of the ministry adds strikingly to the contemptuous feeling, naturally generated by their singular ill success. We must also observe, as much to the discredit of the past age as to the honour of the present; that the leading men of the day exhibited or affected a depravity of morals, which would be the ruin of any public character at the present time. Many of the scenes in high life would have been fitter for the court of Charles II., and many of the actors in those scenes ought to have been cashiered from public employment. Personal profligacy seems actually to have been regarded as a species of ornamental appendage to public character; and, except where its exposure sharpened the sting of an epigram, or gave an additional flourish to the periods of a political writer, no one seems to have conceived that the grossest offences against morality were of the nature of crime. Another scandal seems to have been frequent—intemperance in wine. Hard drinking was common in England at that period, and was even regarded as the sign of a generous spirit; but nearly all the leading politicians who died early, are described as owing their deaths to excess. Those are fortunate distinctions for the days which have followed; and the country may justly congratulate itself on the abandonment of habits, which, deeply tending to corrupt private character, renderpolitical baseness the almost inevitable result among public men.
Walpole promptly declares, that half the success of Wilkes was owing to the supineness of the ministers. He might have gone further, and fixed his charge on higher grounds. He ought to have said, that the whole was owing to the mingled treachery and profligacy which made the nation loathe the characters of public parties and public men. Walpole says, in support of his assertion—"that Lord Chatham would take no part in business; that the Duke of Grafton neglected every thing, and whenever pressed to be active threatened to resign; that the Chancellor Camden, placed between two such intractable friends, with whom he was equally discontented, avoided dipping himself further; that Conway, no longer in the Duke's confidence, and more hurt with neglect than pleased with power, stood in the same predicament; that Lord Gower thought of nothing but ingratiating himself at St James's; and though what little business was done was executed by Lord Weymouth, it required all Wood's, the secretary's, animosity to Wilkes, to stir him up to any activity. Wood even said, "that if the King should pardon Wilkes, Lord Weymouth would not sign the pardon." The chief magistrate of the city, consulting the chancellor on what he should do if Wilkes should stand for the city, and being answered that he "must consult the recorder," Harley sharply replied, "I consulted your lordship as a minister, I don't want to be told my duty."
Some of the most interesting portions of these volumes are the notes, giving brief biographical sketches of the leading men. The politics have comparatively passed away, but the characters remain; and no slight instruction is still to be derived from the progressive steps by which the individuals rose from private life to public distinction. The editor, Sir Denis la Marchant, deserves no slight credit for his efforts to give authenticity to those notices. He seems to have collected his authorities from every available source; and what he has compiled with the diligence of an editor, he has expressed with the good taste of a gentleman.
The commencement of a parliament is always looked to with curiosity, as the debut of new members. All the expectations which have been formed by favouritism, family, or faction, are then brought to the test. Parliament is an unerring tribunal, and no charlatanry can cheat its searching eye. College reputations are extinguished in a moment, the common-places of the hustings can avail no more, and the pamperings of party only hurry its favourites to more rapid decay.
Mr Phipps, the son of Lord Mulgrave, now commenced his career. By an extraordinary taste, though bred a seaman, he was so fond of quoting law, that he got the sobriquet of the "marine lawyer." His knowledge of the science (as the annotator observes) could not have been very deep, for he was then but twenty-two. But he was an evidence of the effect of indefatigable exertion. Though a dull debater, he took a share in every debate, and he appears to have taken the pains of revising his speeches for the press. Yet even under his nursing, they exhibit no traces of eloquence. His manner was inanimate, and his large and heavy figure gained him the luckless appellation of Ursa Major, (to distinguish him from his brother, who was also a member.) As if to complete the amount of his deficiencies, his voice was particularly inharmonious, or rather it was two distinct voices, the one strong and hoarse, the other weak and querulous; both of which he frequently used. On this was constructed the waggish story—that one night, having fallen into a ditch, and calling out in his shrill voice, a countryman was coming up to assist him; when Phipps calling out again in his hoarse tone, the man exclaimed—"If there are two of you in the ditch, you may help each other out!"
One of his qualities seems to have been a total insensibility to his own defects; which therefore suffered him to encounter any man, and every man, whatever might be their superiority. Thus, in his early day, his dulness constantly encountered Lord North, the most dexterous wit of his time. Thus, too, in his maturer age, he constantly thrust himself forward to meet the indignant eloquence of Fox; and seems to have been equally unconsciousthat he was ridiculed by the sarcastic pleasantry of the one, or blasted by the lofty contempt of the other. Yet, such is the value of perseverance, that this man was gradually regarded as important in the debates, that he wrought out for himself an influence in the House, and obtained finally the office of joint paymaster, one of the most lucrative under government, and a British peerage. And all this toil was undertaken by a man who had no children.
At his death, he was succeeded in his Irish title by his brother Henry, who became first lord of the admiralty, and also obtained an English peerage. The present Marquis of Normandy is his eldest son.
Parliamentary history sometimes gives valuable lessons, in exhibiting the infinite folly of parliamentary prediction. It will scarcely be believed in a day like ours, which has seen and survived the French Revolution, that the chief theme of the period, and especial terror of the opposition, was the conquest of Corsica by the French! Ministers seem to have been deterred from a war with the French monarchy, solely by the dislocated state of the cabinet; while the opposition declared, that the possession of Corsica by the French, would be "the death-blow to our influence in the Mediterranean." With Corsica in French hands, it was boldly pronounced that "France would receive an accession of power which nothing could shake; and they scarcely hesitated to say, that upon the independence of Corsica rested not merely the supremacy but the safety of England." Yet the French conquered Corsica (at a waste of money ten times worth its value to their nation, and at a criminal waste of life, both French and Corsican) without producing the slightest addition to the power of the monarchy, and with no slight disgrace to the honour of its arms. For, the Corsicans, the most savage race of the Italian blood, and accustomed to the use of weapons from their childhood, fought with the boldness of all men fighting for their property, and routed the troops of France in many a successive and desperate encounter. Still, the combat was too unequal; the whole force of a great monarchy was obviously too strong for the hope of successful resistance, and Corsica, after many a severe struggle, became a French territory. But, beyond this barren honour the war produced no fruit, except a deeper consciousness of the unsparing ambition of the monarchy, and of the recklessness with which it sacrificed all considerations of humanity and justice, to the tinsel of a military name. One fatal gift, however, Corsica made, in return to France. From it came, within a few years, the man who sealed the banishment of the Bourbons! and, tempting France by the ambition of military success, inflicted upon her the heaviest mortality, and the deepest shame known in any kingdom, since the fall of the Roman empire. Whether this were that direct retribution for innocent blood, which Providence has so often inflicted upon guilty nations; or whether it were merely one of those extraordinary casualties which circumstances make so impressive; there can be no question, that the man came from Corsica who inflicted on France the heaviest calamities that she had ever known; who, after leading her armies over Europe, to conquests which only aroused the hatred of all nations, and after wasting the blood of hundreds of thousands of her people in victories totally unproductive but of havoc; saw France twice invaded, and brought the nation under the ban of the civilized world!
France is at this moment pursuing the same course in Algiers, which was the pride of her politicians in Corsica. She is pouring out her gigantic force, to overwhelm the resistance of peasants who have no defence but their naked bravery. She will probably subdue the resistance; for what can be done by a peasantry against the disciplined force and vast resources of a great European power, applied to this single object of success? But, barbarian as the Moor and the Arab are, and comparatively helpless in the struggle, the avenger may yet come, to teach the throne of France, that there is a power higher than all thrones; a tribunal to which the blood cries out of the ground.
The death of Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury, excites a few touches ofWalpole's sarcastic pen. He says, "that his early life had shown his versatility, his latter his ambition. But hypocrisy not being parts, he rose in the church without ever making a figure in the state." So much for antithesis. There is no reason why a clergyman should make a figure in the state under any circumstances; and the less figure he made in the state, as it was then constituted, the more likely he was to be fitted for the church. But the true censure on Secker would have been, that he rose, without making a figure in any thing; that he had never produced any work worthy of notice as a divine; that he had neither eloquence in the pulpit, nor vigour with the pen; that he seems to have been at all times a man of extreme mediocrity; that his qualifications with the ministry were, his being a neutral on all the great questions of the day; and his merits with posterity were, that he possessed power without giving offence. A hundred such men might have held the highest positions of the church, without producing the slightest effect on the public mind; or might have been left in the lowest, without being entitled to accuse the injustice of fortune. His successor was Cornwallis, Bishop of Lichfield, raised to the primacy by the Duke of Grafton, who, as Walpole says, "had a friendship for the bishop's nephew, Earl Cornwallis." This seems not altogether the most sufficient reason for placing a man at the head of the Church of England, but we must take the reason such as we find it. Walpole adds, that the nomination had, however, the merit of disappointing a more unsuitable candidate, Ternet of London, whom he describes as "the most time-serving of the clergy, and sorely chagrined at missing the archiepiscopal mitre."
It was rather unlucky for the public estimate of royalty, that, at this moment of popular irritation, the young King of Denmark should have arrived in England. He had married the King's youngest sister, and making a sort of tour of Europe, he determined to visit the family of his wife. His proposal was waived by the King, who excused himself by the national confusions. But the young Dane, scarcely more than a giddy boy, and singularly self-willed, was not to be repelled; and he came. Nothing could be colder than his reception; not a royal carriage, not an officer of the court, was sent to meet him. He arrived at St James's even in a hired carriage. Neither King nor Queen was there. The only mark of attention paid to him was giving him an apartment, and supplying him and his suite with a table. Walpole observes, that this sullen treatment was as impolitic as it was inhospitable; that the Dane was then actually a pensioner of France, and, of course, it would have been wise to win him out of its hands. But the Danish king seems to have been little better than a fool; and between his frolics and his follies, he finally produced a species of revolution in his own country. All power fell into the hands of his queen, who, though of a bolder nature, seems to have been scarcely less frantic than himself. On the visit of her mother, the Princess of Wales, to Denmark, the Queen met her, at the head of a regiment, dressed in full uniform, and wearing buckskin breeches. She must have been an extraordinary figure altogether, for she had grown immensely corpulent. Court favouritism was the fashion in Denmark, and the King and Queen were equally ruled by favourites. But, in a short period, a young physician of the household managed both, obtaining peculiarly the confidence of the Queen. Scandal was not idle on this occasion, and Germany and England rang with stories of the court of Denmark. The physician was soon created a noble, and figured for a while as the prime minister, or rather sovereign of the kingdom, by the well-known title of Count Struensee. A party was formed against him by the Queen-mother, at the head of some of the nobility. The Queen was made prisoner, and died in prison. Struensee was tried as traitor, and beheaded. The King was finally incapacitated from reigning, and his son was raised to the regency. This melancholy transaction formed one of the tragedies of Europe; but it had the additional misfortune of occurring at a time when royalty had begun to sink under the incessant attacks of the revolutionists, and France,the leader of public opinion on the Continent, was filled with opinions contemptuous of all thrones.
The year 1768 exhibited France in her most humiliating position before Europe. The Duc de Choiseul was the minister—a man of wit, elegance, and accomplishment; but too frivolous to follow, if he had not been too ignorant to discover, the true sources of national greatness. His foreign policy was intrigue, and his domestic policy the favouritism of the court by administering to its vices. He raised a war between the Russians and Turks, and had the mortification of seeing hisprotégéthe Turk trampled by the armies of his rival the Czarina. Even the Corsicans had degraded the military name of France. But he had a new peril at home. Old Marshal Richelieu—who, as Walpole sarcastically observes, "had retained none of his faculties, but that last talent of a decayed Frenchman, a spirit of back-stairs intrigue"—had provided old Louis XV. with a new mistress. Of all the persons of this character who had made French royal life scandalous in the eyes of Europe, this connexion was the most scandalous. It scandalized even France. This mistress was the famous Countess du Barri—a wretched creature, originally of the very lowest condition; whose vices would have stained the very highest; and who, in the convulsions of the reign that followed, was butchered by the guillotine.
In November of this year died the Duke of Newcastle, at the age of seventy-five. He had been struck with palsy some months before, and then for the first time withdrew from public life. Walpole observes, that his life had been a proof that, "even in a free country, great abilities are not necessary to govern it." Industry, perseverance, and intrigue, gave him that duration of power "which shining talents, and the favour of the crown, could not secure to Lord Granville, nor the first rank in eloquence, or the most brilliant services, to Lord Chatham. Rashness overset Lord Granville's parts, and presumptuous impracticability Lord Chatham; while adventitious cunning repaired Newcastle's folly." Such is the explanation of one of the most curious phenomena of the time, by one of its most ingenious lookers-on. But the explanation is not sufficient. It is impossible to conceive, how mere cunning could have sustained any man for a quarter of a century in the highest ministerial rank; while that rank was contested from day to day by men of every order of ability. Since the days of Bolingbroke, there have been no examples of ministerial talent, equal to those exhibited, in both Houses, in the day of the Duke of Newcastle. Chatham was as ambitious as any man that ever lived, and full of the faculties that make ambition successful. The Butes, the Bedfords, the Hollands, the Shelburnes, exhibited every shape and shade of cabinet dexterity, of court cabal, of popular influence, and of political knowledge and reckless intrigue. Yet the Duke of Newcastle, with remarkable personal disadvantages—a ridiculous manner, an ungainly address, speech without the slightest pretension to eloquence, and the character of extreme ignorance on general subjects—preserved his power almost to the extreme verge of life; and to the last was regarded as playing a most important part in the counsels of the country. Unless we believe in magic, we must believe that this man, with all his oddity of manner, possessed some remarkable faculty, by which he saw his way clearly through difficulties impervious to more showy minds. He must have deeply discovered the means of attaching the monarch, of acting upon the legislature, and of controlling the captiousness of the people. He must have had practical qualities of a remarkable kind; and his is not the first instance, in which such qualities, in the struggles of government, bear away the prize. Thus, in later times, we have seen Lord Liverpool minister for eleven years, and holding power with a firm, yet quiet grasp to the last; with the whole strength of Lord Grey and the Whigs struggling for it in front, and George Canning, a still more dangerous enemy, watching for it in the rear.
In one of the Notes referring to the appointment of Earl Cornwallis to the vice-treasuryship of Ireland, theeditor makes a remark which ought not to pass without strong reprehension. Earl Cornwallis, towards the close of the Irish rebellion in 1798, had been made chief governor of Ireland, at the head of a large army, for the purpose of extinguishing the remnants of the rebellion, and restoring the country to the habits of peace. The task was no longer difficult, but he performed his part with dignity and moderation. He had been sent expressly for the purpose of pacifying the country, an object which would have been altogether inconsistent with measures of violence; but the editor, in telling us that his conduct exhibited sagacity and benevolence, hazards the extraordinary assertion, that "he was one of the few statesmen who inculcated the necessity of forbearance and concession in the misgoverned country!" Nothing can be more erroneous than this statement in point of principle, or more ignorant in point of fact. For the last hundred years and upwards, dating from the cessation of the war with James II., Ireland had been the object of perpetual concessions, and, if misgoverned at all, it has been such by the excess of those concessions. It is to be remembered, that in the reign of William I. the Roman Catholics were in actual alliance with France, and in actual arms against England. They were next beaten in the field, and it was the business of the conquerors to prevent their taking arms again. From this arose the penal laws. To those laws we are not friendly; because we are not friendly to any attempt at the suppression even of religious error by the force of the state. It was a political blunder, and an offence to Christian principle, at the same time; but the Papist is the last man in the world who has a right to object to penal laws; for he is the very man who would have enacted them himself against the Protestant—who always enacts them where he has the power—and, from the spirit of whose laws, the British legislature were in fact only borrowing at the moment. Yet from the time when James II. and his family began to sink into insignificance, the legislature began to relax the penal laws. Within the course of half a century, they had wholly disappeared; and thus the editor's flippant assertion, that Earl Cornwallis was one of the few statesmen who inculcated the necessity of forbearance and concession, exhibits nothing but his Whiggish ignorance on the subject. The misgovernment of Ireland, if such existed, was to be laid to the charge of neither the English minister nor the English people. The editor probably forgets, that during that whole period she was governed by her own parliament; while her progress during the second half of the 18th century was memorably rapid, and prosperous in the highest degree, through the bounties, privileges, and encouragements of every kind, which were constantly held out to her by theBritishgovernment. And that so early as the year 1780, she was rich enough to raise, equip, and support a volunteer army of nearly a hundred thousand men—a measure unexampled in Europe, and which would probably task the strength of some of the most powerful kingdoms even at this day. And all this was previous to the existence of what is called the "patriot constitution."
Walpole has the art of painting historic characters to the life; but he sadly extinguishes the romance with which our fancy so often enrobes them. We have been in the habit of hearing Pascal Paoli, the chief of the Corsicans, described as the model of a republican hero; and there can be no question, that the early resistance of the Corsicans cost the French a serious expenditure of men and money. But Walpole charges Paoli with want of military skill, and even with want of that personal intrepidity so essential to a national leader. At length, Corsican resistance being overpowered by the constant accumulation of French force, Paoli gave way, and, as Walpole classically observes, "not having fallen like Leonidas, did not despair like Cato." Paoli had been so panegyrized by Boswell's work, that he was received with almost romantic applause. The Opposition adopted him for the sake of popularity, but ministers took him out of their hands by a pension of £1000 a-year. "I saw him," says Walpole, "soon after his arrival, dangling at court. He was a man of decent deportment, andso void of any thing remarkable in his aspect, that, being asked if I knew who he was, I judged him a Scotch officer—for he was sandy complexioned and in regimentals—who was cautiously awaiting the moment of promotion." All this is in Walpole's style of fashionable impertinence; but there can be no doubt that Paoli was a brave man, and an able commander. He gave the French several severe defeats, but the contest was soon too unequal, and Paoli withdrew to this country; which was so soon after to be a shelter to the aristocracy of the country which had stained his mountains with blood.
By a singular fate, on his return to France in an early period of the Revolution, he was received with a sort of national triumph, and actually appointed lieutenant-general of Corsica by the nation which had driven him into exile. In the war which followed, Paoli, disgusted by the tyranny of French republicanism, and alarmed by the violence of the native factions, proposed to put his country under the protection of the English government. A naval and military force was sent to Corsica, and the island was annexed to the British crown. But the possession was not maintained with rational vigour. The feeble armament was found unequal to resist the popular passion for republicanism. And, from this expenditure of troops, and probably still more from the discovery that the island would be wholly useless, the force was altogether withdrawn. Paoli returned to England, where he died, having attained the advanced age of eighty. His red hair and sandy complexion are probably fatal to his character as an Italian chieftain. But if his locks were not black, his heart was bold; and if his lip wanted mustaches, his mind wanted neither sagacity nor determination.
Walpole was born for a cynic philosopher. He treats men of all ranks with equal scorn. From Wilkes to George III., he brands them all. Ministers meet no mercy at his hands. He ranges them, as the Sultan used to range heads on the spikes of the seraglio, for marks for his arrows. His history is a species of moveable panorama; the scene constantly shifting, and every scene a burlesque of the one that went before; or perhaps the more faithful similitude would be found in a volume of HB.'s ingenious caricatures, where all the likenesses are preserved, though perverted, and all the dexterity of an accomplished pencil is employed only in making its subjects ridiculous. He thus tells us:—"The Duke of Grafton was the fourth prime minister in seven years, who fell by his own fault. Lord Bute was seized with a panic, and ran away from his own victory. Grenville was undone by his insolence, by joining in the insult on the princess, and by his persecution of Lord Bute and Mackenzie. Lord Rockingham's incapacity overturnedhim; and now the Duke of Grafton destroyed a power which it had depended on himself to make as permanent as he could desire." But rash and rapid as those changes were, what were the grave intrigues of the English cabinet to theboudoirministries of France? Walpole is never so much in his element, as when he is sporting in the fussy frivolities of the Faubourg St Germain. He was much more a Frenchman than an Englishman; his love of gossip, his passion for haunting the society of talkative old women, and his delight at finding himself revelling in a region ofpetite soupers, court gallantries, and the faded indiscretions of court beauties in the wane, would have made him a rival to the courtiers of Louis XIV.
Perhaps, the world never saw, since the days of Sardanapalus, a court so corrupt, wealth so profligate, and a state of society so utterly contemptuous of even the decent affectation of virtue, as the closing years of the reign of Louis XV. A succession of profligate women ruled the king, a similar succession ruled the cabinet; lower life was a sink of corruption; the whole a romance of the most scandalous order. Madame de Pompadour, a woman whose vice had long survived her beauty, and who ruled the decrepit heart of a debauched king, had made Choiseul minister. Choiseul was the beau-ideal of a French noble of the oldrégime. His ambition was boundless, his insolence ungoverned, his caprice unrestrained, and his love of pleasurepredominant even over his love of power. "He was an open enemy, but a generous one; and had more pleasure in attaching an enemy, than in punishing him. Whether from gaiety or presumption, he was never dismayed; his vanity made him always depend on the success of his plans, and his spirits made him soon forget the miscarriage of them."
At length appeared on the tapis the memorable Madame du Barri! For three months, all the faculties of the court were absorbed in the question of her public presentation. Indulgent as the courtiers were to the habits of royal life, the notoriety of Madame du Barri's early career, startled even their flexible sense of etiquette. The ladies of the court, most of whom would have been proud to have taken her place, determined "that they would not appear at court if she should be received there." The King's daughters (who had borne the ascendant of Madame du Pompadour in their mother's life) grew outrageous at the new favourite; and the relatives of Choiseul insisted upon it, that he should resign rather than consent to the presentation. Choiseul resisted, yielded, was insulted for his resistance, and was scoffed at for his submission. He finally retired, and was ridiculed for his retirement. Du Barri triumphed. Epigrams andcalemboursblazed through Paris. Every one was a wit for the time, and every wit was a rebel. The infidel faction looked on at the general dissolution of morals with delight, as the omen of general overthrow. The Jesuits rejoiced in the hope of getting the old King into their hands, and terrifying him, if not into a proselyte, at least into a tool. Even Du Barri herself was probably not beyond their hopes; for the established career of a King's mistress was, to turndévoteon the decay of her personal attractions.
Among Choiseul's intentions was that of making war on England. There was not the slightest ground for a war. But it is a part of the etiquette of a Frenchman's life, that he must be a warrior, or must promote a war, or must dream of a war. M. Guizot is the solitary exception in our age, as M. Fleury was the solitary exception in the last; but Fleury was an ecclesiastic, and was eighty years old besides—two strong disqualifications for a conqueror. But the King was then growing old, too; his belligerent propensities were absorbed in quarrels with his provincial parliaments; his administrative faculties found sufficient employment in managing the morals of his mistresses; his private hours were occupied in pelting Du Barri with sugar-plums; and thus his days wore away without that supreme glory of the oldrégime—a general war in Europe.
The calamities of the French noblesse at the period of the Revolution, excited universal regret; and the sight of so many persons, of graceful manners and high birth, flung into the very depths of destitution in foreign lands, or destroyed by the guillotine at home, justified the sympathy of mankind. But, the secret history of that noblesse was a fearful stigma, not only on France, but on human nature. Vice may have existed to a high degree of criminality in other lands; but in no other country of Europe, or the earth, ever was vice so public, so ostentatiously forced upon the eyes of man, so completely formed into an established and essential portion of fashionable and courtly life. It was even theetiquette, that the King of France should have amistress. She was as much a part of the royal establishment as a prime minister was of the royal councils; and, as if for the purpose of offering a still more contemptuous defiance to the common decencies of life, the etiquette was, that this mistress should be amarried woman! Yet in that country the whole ritual of Popery was performed with scrupulous exactness. A vast and powerful clergy filled France; and the ceremonials of the national religion were performed continually before the court, with the most rigid formality. The King had his confessor, and, so far as we can discover, the mistress had her confessor too; the nobles attended the royal chapel, and also had their confessors. The confessional was never without royal and noble solicitors of monthly, or, at the furthest, quarterly absolution. Still, from the whole body of ecclesiastics, France heard no remonstrance against those public abominations. Their sermons,few and feeble, sometimes declaimed on the vices of the beggars of Paris, or the riots among the peasantry; but no sense of scriptural responsibility, and no natural feeling of duty, ever ventured to deprecate the vices of the nobles and the scandals of the throne.
We must give but a fragment, from Walpole'scatalogue raisonné, of this Court of Paphos. It had been the King's object to make some women of rank introduce Madame du Barri at court; and he had found considerable difficulty in this matter, not from her being a woman of no character, but on her being a woman of no birth, and whose earlier life had been spent in the lowest condition of vice. The King at last succeeded—and these are thechaperons. "There was Madame de l'Hôpital, an ancient mistress of the Prince de Soubize! The Comtesse Valentinois, of the highest birth, very rich, but very foolish; and as far from a Lucretia as Madame du Barri herself! Madame de Flavacourt was another, a suitable companion to both in virtue and understanding. She was sister tothreeofthe King's earliest mistresses, and had aimed at succeeding them! The Maréchale Duchesse de Mirpoix was the last, and a very important acquisition." Of her, Walpole simply mentions that all her talents were "drowned in such an overwhelming passion for play, that though she had long and singular credit with the King, she reduced her favour to an endless solicitation for money to pay her debts." He adds, in his keen and amusing style—"That, to obtain the post ofdame d'honneurto the Queen, she had left offred(wearing rouge,) and acteddévotion; and the very next day was seen riding with Madame de Pompadour (the King's mistress) in the latter's coach!" The editor settles the question ofhermorality, too.—"She was a woman of extraordinary wit and cleverness, but totallywithout character." She had her morals by inheritance; for she was the daughter of themistressof the Duke of Lorraine, who married her to Monsieur de Beauvan, a poor noble, and whom the duke got made a prince of the empire, by the title of De Craon. Now, all those were females of the highest rank in France, ladies of fashion, the stars of court life, and the models of national manners. Can we wonder at the retribution which cast them out into the highways of Europe? Can we wonder at the ruin of the corrupted nobility? Can we wonder at the massacre of the worldly church, which stood looking on at those vilenesses, and yet never uttered a syllable against them, if it did not even share in their excesses? The true cause for astonishment is, not in the depth of their fall, but in its delay; not in the severity of the national judgment, but in that long-suffering which held back the thunderbolt for a hundred years, and even then did not extinguish the generation at a blow!
FOOTNOTE.[33]Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, by Horace Walpole. From the MSS. Edited, with Notes, bySir D. La Marchant, Bart.London: Bentley.
[33]Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, by Horace Walpole. From the MSS. Edited, with Notes, bySir D. La Marchant, Bart.London: Bentley.
It is somewhat late, my dear, Eusebius, to refer me to my letter of August 1840, and to enquire, in your bantering way, if I have shaken hands with a ghost recently, or dreamed a dream worth telling. You have evidently been thinking upon this subject ever since I wrote to you; and I suspect you are more of a convert than you will admit. You only wish to provoke me to further evidence; but I see—through the flimsy veil of your seeming denials, and through your put-on audacity—the nervous workings of your countenance, when your imagination is kindled by the mysterious subject. Your wit and your banter are but the whistle of the clown in the dark, to keep down his rising fears. However good your story[34]may be, there have been dreams even of the numbers of lottery-tickets that have been verified. We call things coincidences and chances, because we have no name to give them, whereas they are phenomena that want a better settlement. You speak, too, of the "doctrine of chances." If chance have a doctrine, it is subject to a rule, is under calculation, arithmetic, and loses all trace at once of our idea of absolute chance. If there be chance, there is also a power over chance. The very hairs of our head, which seem to be but a chance-confusion, are yet, we are assured, all numbered—and is it less credible that their every movement is noted also? One age is the type of another; and every age, from the beginning of the world, hath had its own symbols; and not poetically only, but literally true is it, that "coming events cast their shadows before." If the "vox populi" be the "vox Dei," it has pronounced continually, in a space of above five thousand years, that there is communication between the material and immaterial worlds. So rare are the exceptions, that, speaking of mankind, we may assert that there is a universal belief amongst them of that connexion by signs, omens, dreams, visions, or ghostly presences. Many professed sceptics, who have been sceptics only in the pride of understanding, have in secret bowed down to one form or other of the superstition. Take not the word in a bad sense. It is at least the germ, thenatural germ, of religion in the human mind. It is the consciousness of a superiority not his own, of some power so immeasurably above man, that his mind cannot take it in, but accepts, as inconsiderable glimpses of it, the phenomena of nature, and the fears and misgivings of his own mind, spreading out from himself into the infinite and invisible. I am not certain, Eusebius, if it be not the spiritual part of conscience, and is to it what life is to organized matter—the mystery which gives it all its motion and beauty.
It is not my intention to repeat the substance of my former letter—I therefore pass on. You ask me if the mesmeric phenomena—which you ridicule, yet of which I believe you covet a closer investigation—are not part and parcel of the same incomprehensible farrago? I cannot answer you. It would be easy to do so were I a disciple. If the mesmeristscanestablishclairvoyance, it will certainly be upon a par with the ancient oracles. But what the philosopher La Place says, in hisEssay on Probabilities, may be worth your consideration—that "any case, however apparently incredible, if it is a recurrent case, is as much entitled to a fair valuation under the laws of induction, as if it had been more probable beforehand." If the mesmerized can project, and that apparently without effort, their minds into the minds of others—read their thoughts; if they can see and tell what is going on hundreds of miles off, on the sea and on distant lands alike; if they can at remote distancesinfluenceothers with a sense of their presence—they possess a power so very similar to that ascribed, in some extraordinary cases, to persons who, in a dying state, have declared that they have been absent and conversed with individuals dear to them in distant countries, and whose presence has been recognised at those very times by the persons so said to be visited, that I do not see how they can be referable to different original phenomena. Yet with this fact before them, supposing the facts of mesmerism, of the mind's separation from, and independence of its organic frame, is it not extraordinary that so many of this new school are, or profess themselves by their writings, materialists? I would, however, use the argument of mesmerism thus:—Mesmerism, if true, confirms the ghost and vision power, though I cannot admit that dreams, ghosts, and visions are any confirmation of mesmerism; for if mesmerism be a delusion and cheat, it may have arisen from speculating upon the other known power—as true miracles have been known to give rise to false. In cases of mesmerism, however, this shock is felt—the facts, as facts in the ordinary sense, are incredible; but then I see persons who have examined the matter very nicely, whom I have known, some intimately, for many years, of whose good sense, judgement, andveracityI will not allow myself to doubt—indeed to doubt whose veracity would be more incredible to me than the mesmeric facts themselves. Here is a conflict—a shock. Two contradictory impossibilities come together. I do not weigh in the scale at all the discovery of some cheats and pretenders; this was from the first to have been expected. In truth, the discoveries of trick and collusion are, after all, few. Not only has mesmerism been examined into by persons I respect, but practised likewise; and by one, a physician, whom I have known intimately many years, who, to his own detriment, has pursued it, and whom I have ever considered one of the most truthful persons living, and incapable of collusion, or knowingly in any way deceiving. Now, Eusebius, we cannot go into society, and pronounce persons whom we have ever respected all at once to be cheats and liars. Yet there may be some among them who will tell you that they themselves were entirely sceptical until they tried mesmerism, and found they had the power in themselves. We must then, in fairness, either acknowledge mesmerism as a power, or believe that these persons whom we respect and esteem are practised upon and deluded by others. And such would, I confess, be the solution of the difficulty, were it not that there are cases where this is next to an impossibility.
But I do not mean now, Eusebius,to discuss mesmerism,[35]further than as it does seem "a part and parcel" of that mysterious power which has been manifested in omens, dreams, and appearances. I sayseem—for if it be proved altogether false, the other mystery stands untouched by the failure—for in fact it was, thousands of years before either the discovery or practice—at least as far as we know; for some will not quite admit this, but, in their mesmeric dreaming, attribute to it the ancient oracles, and other wonders. And there are who somewhat inconsistently do this, having ridiculed and contemned as utterly false those phenomena, until they have found them hitch on to, and give a credit to, their new Mesmeric science.
But to return to the immediate subject. It has been objected againstdreams, omens, and visions, that they often occur without an object; that there is either no consequence, or a very trifling one; the knot is not "dignus vindice." Now, I am not at all staggered by this; on the contrary, it rather tends to show that there is somenaturallink by which the material and immaterial within and without ourselves may be connected; and very probably many more intimations of that connexion are given than noted. Those of thought, mental suggestions, may most commonly escape us. It is thus what we would not do of ourselves we may do in spite of ourselves. Nor do we always observe closely objects and ends. We might, were we to scrutinize, often find the completion of a dream or omen which we had considered a failure, because we looked too immediately for its fulfilment. But even where there is evidently no purpose attained, there is the less reason to suspect fabrication, which would surely commence with an object. Some very curious cases are well attested, where the persons under the impression act upon the impulse blindly, not knowing why; and suddenly, in conclusion, the whole purpose bursts upon their understandings. But I think the objection as to purpose is answered by one undoubted fact, the dream of Pilate's wife—"Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him." There is here no apparent purpose—the warning was unheeded. Yet the dream, recorded as it is and where it is, was unquestionably a dream upon the event to happen; and is not to be considered as a mere coincidence, which would have been unworthy the sacred historian, who wrote the account of it under inspiration. And this is a strong—the strongest confirmation of the inspiration of dreams, or rather, perhaps, of their significance, natural or otherwise, and with or without a purpose. So the dream of Cæsar's wife did not save Cæsar's life. And what are we to think of the whole narrative, beginning with the warning of the Ides of March? Now, Joseph's dream and Pharaoh's dream were dreams of purpose; they were prophetic, and disclosed to the understanding of Joseph. So that, with this authority of Scripture, I do not see how dreams can be set aside as of no significance. And we have the like authority for omens, and symbols, and visions—so that we must conclude the things themselves to be possible; and this many do, yet say that, with other miracles, they have long ceased to be.
Then, again, in things that by their agreement, falling in with other facts and events, move our wonder, we escape from the difficulty, as we imagine, by calling them coincidences; as if we knew what coincidences are. I do not believe they are without a purpose, any more than that seeming fatality by which little circumstances produce great events, and in ordinary life occur frequently to an apparent detriment, yet turn out to be the very hinge upon which the fortune and happiness of life depend and are established. I remember a remarkable instance of this—though it may not strictly belong to omens or coincidences; but it shows the purpose of an accident. Many years ago, a lady sent her servant—a young man about twenty years of age, and a native of that part of the country where his mistress resided—to the neighbouring town with a ring which required some alteration, to be delivered into the hands of a jeweller. The young man went the shortest way, across the fields; and coming to a little wooden bridge that crossed a small stream, he leaned against the rail, and took the ring out of its case to look at it. While doing so, it slipped out of his hand, and fell into the water. In vain he searched for it, even till it grew dark. He thought it fell into the hollow of a stump of a tree under water; but he could not find it. The time taken in the search was so long, that he feared to return and tell his story—thinking it incredible, and that he should even be suspected of having gone into evil company, and gamed it away or sold it. In this fear, he determined never to return—left wages and clothes, and fairly ran away. This seemingly great misfortune was the making of him. His intermediate history I know not; but this—that after many years' absence, either in the East orWest Indies, he returned with a very considerable fortune. He now wished to clear himself with his old mistress; ascertained that she was living, purchased a diamond ring of considerable value, which he determined to present in person, and clear his character, by telling his tale, which the credit of his present condition might testify. He took the coach to the town of ——, and from thence set out to walk the distance of a few miles. He found, I should tell you, on alighting, a gentleman who resided in the neighbourhood, who was bound for the adjacent village. They walked together; and, in conversation, this former servant, now a gentleman, with graceful manners and agreeable address, communicated the circumstance that made him leave the country abruptly, many years before. As he was telling this, they came to the very wooden bridge. "There," said he—"it was just here that I dropped the ring; and there is the very bit of old tree, into a hole of which it fell—just there." At the same time, he put down the point of his umbrella into the hole of a knot in the tree—and, drawing it up, to the astonishment of both, foundthevery ring on the ferrule of the umbrella. I need not tell the rest. But make this reflection—why was it that he did not as easily find it immediately after it had fallen in? It was an incident like one of those in Parnell's "Hermit," which, though a seeming chance, was of purpose, and most important.
Now, here is an extraordinary coincidence between a fact and a dream, or a vision, whatever it may be, which yet was of no result—I know it to be true. And you know, Eusebius, my excellent, truth-telling, worthy Mrs H——, who formerly kept a large school at ——. One morning early, the whole house was awakened by the screams of one of the pupils. She was in hysterics; and, from time to time, fainting away in an agony of distress. She said she had seen her grandfather—that he was dead, and they would bury him alive. In due time, the post brought a letter—the grandfatherwas dead. Letters were written to the friends to announce the dream or vision, and the burial was delayed in consequence. Nothing could be more natural than the fear of burying him alive in the mind of the young girl, unacquainted with death, and averse to persuade herself that the person she had seen could be really dead. Now, my dear Eusebius, you know Mrs H——, and cannot doubt the fact.
Cases of this kind are so many, and well authenticated, that one knows not where to choose.