Pray you, gentle ladies, hearkenTo a tale of ancient time:Let no doubt your bosoms darken,Love is always in his prime.Young, and fair, and gladly singingAs he did in days of yore,O'er the bright blue ocean wingingTo the sweet Idalian shore.Cupid is not dead, dear ladies!You may hear him even nowAt the early dawn of May-days,Singing underneath the bough.But beware, for he deceiveth;Tempt him not within the door,For the house that Cupid leavethShall not prosper evermore.Old Plotinus, now in glory,Hath bequeathed to us a story,Which perhaps may sound as new—And 'tis neither long nor stupid—Of a man who captured Cupid;If you please, I'll tell it you.Wandering through the forests wide,Rising from Cephisus' side,Went a stout Athenian Archon,With a vacant listless eye,Till he heard a little cry,That made him stop and hearken.From a ruined temple near,Came a voice both soft and clear,Singing in some foreign tongueSweeter strains than e'er were sung,Till the birds forbore their call,Wondering who the wight might beThat in forest minstrelsyOvercame them, one and all.Slowly went the Archon on—Peered above the broken stone—There, within the waste enclosure,On a bed of myrtle wild,Lay a little yearling child,Who smiled and sung, and sung and smiled,In innocent composure.From his chubby shoulders, wingsSprouted outwards; tender things,Hardly fledged, as are the callowNestlings of the household swallow.And the Archon, gazing there,Thought that never child so fairHad he looked on, anywhere."Whence art thou, my pretty boy?But the infant nought replied,Turning to the other sideWith an unknown song of joy."Can it be," the Archon pondered,"That some little god hath wanderedFrom his home within the skies,To a dreary spot like this?Ever welcome to the wiseSuch a rare occasion is;So within my cloak I'll fold him!"Little trouble was to hold him—Calm and still the infant lay,Smiling ever, singing ever,Till the Archon crossed the riverJust above Piræus' bay."In what place to lodge my darling!"Mused the much-bewildered sage,"He might dwell within a cageSafe as any finch or starling;But an infant god to hold,All the wires should be of gold.Ha! I see—the very thing!This will give him room to play,Yet so far restrain his wingThat he cannot fly away.Therefore come, my pretty pet,I'll put thee in my Cabinet!"Crazy was that CabinetWhen he let the Cupid in,Loosely were the joinings setBoth without it and within:You had sworn in any weatherThat it could not hold togetherLonger than a year or so.But no sooner was the godUshered to his new abode,Than he wrought a change; for, lo!Bright and fresh the place became,Renovated in its frame.With a lustre shone the woodAs it were from opal hewed;And the vases twain, that stoodOn its top, both cracked and grey,Glistened with metallic ray,As if golden jars were they.Every thing grew bright and fair,For the God of Love was there.As a bird within a cageSo that it be tended well,Careth not elsewhere to dwell;Will not leave its hermitage,Even for the wild and freeChorus of the greenwood tree—So the god, though famed for changing,Never seemed to think of ranging.Were the seasons dry or wet—Rose the sun, or did it set—Still he kept his Cabinet.And he sang so loud and clear,That the people clustered roundIn the hope that they might hearSomething of that magic sound;Though the words that Cupid sungNone could fathom, old nor young.Sometimes, listening from afar,You might catch a note of war,Like the clarion's call; and oftenWould his voice subside, and softenTo a tone of melancholy,Ending in a long-drawn note,Like that from Philomela's throat—'Twas, "Proto-proto-proto-colly!"But at last the Archon died,And another filled his place—He was a man of ancient race,But jaundiced all with bitter pride,Oppressed with jealousy and care;Though quite unfitted to excel,Whate'er the task, he could not bearTo see another do it well!No soul had he for wanton strains,Or strains indeed of any kind:To nature he was deaf and blind,His deepest thoughts were bent on drains.Yet in his ear were ever ringingThe notes the little god was singing."Peace, peace! thou restless creature—peace!I cannot bear that voice of thine—'Tis not more dulcet, sure, than mine!—From thy perpetual piping cease!Why come the people here to hearken?The asses, dolts! both dull and stupid!Why listen to a silly Cupid,Preferring him to me, their Archon?Hush, sirrah, hush! and never more,While I am here, presume to sing!"Yet still, within the mystic door,Was heard the rustling of the wing,And notes of witching melancholy,Called—"Proto-proto-proto-colly!"In wrath the furious Archon rose—"Bring levers here!" he loudly cried,"If he must sing—though Pallas knowsHis voice is tuneless as a crow's—E'en let him sit and sing outside!"They burst the door. The bird was caught,And to the open window brought—"Now get thee forth to wood or spray,Thou tiresome, little, chattering jay!"Paused the fair boy, ere yet he raisedHis wing to take his flight;And on the Archon's face he gazed,As stars look on the night.No woe was there—he only smiled,As if in secret scorn,And thus with human speech the childAddressed the nobly born,—"Farewell! You'll rue the moment yetYou drove me from your Cabinet!"He sped away. And scarce the windHad borne him o'er the garden wall,Ere a most hideous crash behindAnnounced an unexpected fall.The Cabinet was rent in twain!The wood was broken into splinters,As though for many hundred wintersIt had been dashed by wind and rain.Golden no more, the jars of clayWere dull and cracked, and dingy grey.Down fell a beam of rotten oak;The chair beneath the Archon broke;And all the furniture aroundAppeared at once to be unsound.Now have I nothing more to say!Of Cupid's entrance all beware:But if you chance to have him there,'Tis always wise to let him stay.And, ladies, do not sneer at me,Or count my words without avail;For in a little time you'll seeThereisa moral to my tale.What has been done in days of yoreMay well again be acted o'er,And other things have been upsetBy Cupid, than a Cabinet!
Pray you, gentle ladies, hearkenTo a tale of ancient time:Let no doubt your bosoms darken,Love is always in his prime.Young, and fair, and gladly singingAs he did in days of yore,O'er the bright blue ocean wingingTo the sweet Idalian shore.Cupid is not dead, dear ladies!You may hear him even nowAt the early dawn of May-days,Singing underneath the bough.But beware, for he deceiveth;Tempt him not within the door,For the house that Cupid leavethShall not prosper evermore.Old Plotinus, now in glory,Hath bequeathed to us a story,Which perhaps may sound as new—And 'tis neither long nor stupid—Of a man who captured Cupid;If you please, I'll tell it you.
Wandering through the forests wide,Rising from Cephisus' side,Went a stout Athenian Archon,With a vacant listless eye,Till he heard a little cry,That made him stop and hearken.From a ruined temple near,Came a voice both soft and clear,Singing in some foreign tongueSweeter strains than e'er were sung,Till the birds forbore their call,Wondering who the wight might beThat in forest minstrelsyOvercame them, one and all.Slowly went the Archon on—Peered above the broken stone—There, within the waste enclosure,On a bed of myrtle wild,Lay a little yearling child,Who smiled and sung, and sung and smiled,In innocent composure.From his chubby shoulders, wingsSprouted outwards; tender things,Hardly fledged, as are the callowNestlings of the household swallow.And the Archon, gazing there,Thought that never child so fairHad he looked on, anywhere.
"Whence art thou, my pretty boy?But the infant nought replied,Turning to the other sideWith an unknown song of joy."Can it be," the Archon pondered,"That some little god hath wanderedFrom his home within the skies,To a dreary spot like this?Ever welcome to the wiseSuch a rare occasion is;So within my cloak I'll fold him!"Little trouble was to hold him—Calm and still the infant lay,Smiling ever, singing ever,Till the Archon crossed the riverJust above Piræus' bay.
"In what place to lodge my darling!"Mused the much-bewildered sage,"He might dwell within a cageSafe as any finch or starling;But an infant god to hold,All the wires should be of gold.Ha! I see—the very thing!This will give him room to play,Yet so far restrain his wingThat he cannot fly away.Therefore come, my pretty pet,I'll put thee in my Cabinet!"
Crazy was that CabinetWhen he let the Cupid in,Loosely were the joinings setBoth without it and within:You had sworn in any weatherThat it could not hold togetherLonger than a year or so.But no sooner was the godUshered to his new abode,Than he wrought a change; for, lo!Bright and fresh the place became,Renovated in its frame.With a lustre shone the woodAs it were from opal hewed;And the vases twain, that stoodOn its top, both cracked and grey,Glistened with metallic ray,As if golden jars were they.Every thing grew bright and fair,For the God of Love was there.
As a bird within a cageSo that it be tended well,Careth not elsewhere to dwell;Will not leave its hermitage,Even for the wild and freeChorus of the greenwood tree—So the god, though famed for changing,Never seemed to think of ranging.Were the seasons dry or wet—Rose the sun, or did it set—Still he kept his Cabinet.
And he sang so loud and clear,That the people clustered roundIn the hope that they might hearSomething of that magic sound;Though the words that Cupid sungNone could fathom, old nor young.Sometimes, listening from afar,You might catch a note of war,Like the clarion's call; and oftenWould his voice subside, and softenTo a tone of melancholy,Ending in a long-drawn note,Like that from Philomela's throat—'Twas, "Proto-proto-proto-colly!"
But at last the Archon died,And another filled his place—He was a man of ancient race,But jaundiced all with bitter pride,Oppressed with jealousy and care;Though quite unfitted to excel,Whate'er the task, he could not bearTo see another do it well!No soul had he for wanton strains,Or strains indeed of any kind:To nature he was deaf and blind,His deepest thoughts were bent on drains.Yet in his ear were ever ringingThe notes the little god was singing.
"Peace, peace! thou restless creature—peace!I cannot bear that voice of thine—'Tis not more dulcet, sure, than mine!—From thy perpetual piping cease!Why come the people here to hearken?The asses, dolts! both dull and stupid!Why listen to a silly Cupid,Preferring him to me, their Archon?Hush, sirrah, hush! and never more,While I am here, presume to sing!"Yet still, within the mystic door,Was heard the rustling of the wing,And notes of witching melancholy,Called—"Proto-proto-proto-colly!"
In wrath the furious Archon rose—"Bring levers here!" he loudly cried,"If he must sing—though Pallas knowsHis voice is tuneless as a crow's—E'en let him sit and sing outside!"They burst the door. The bird was caught,And to the open window brought—"Now get thee forth to wood or spray,Thou tiresome, little, chattering jay!"
Paused the fair boy, ere yet he raisedHis wing to take his flight;And on the Archon's face he gazed,As stars look on the night.No woe was there—he only smiled,As if in secret scorn,And thus with human speech the childAddressed the nobly born,—"Farewell! You'll rue the moment yetYou drove me from your Cabinet!"
He sped away. And scarce the windHad borne him o'er the garden wall,Ere a most hideous crash behindAnnounced an unexpected fall.The Cabinet was rent in twain!The wood was broken into splinters,As though for many hundred wintersIt had been dashed by wind and rain.Golden no more, the jars of clayWere dull and cracked, and dingy grey.Down fell a beam of rotten oak;The chair beneath the Archon broke;And all the furniture aroundAppeared at once to be unsound.
Now have I nothing more to say!Of Cupid's entrance all beware:But if you chance to have him there,'Tis always wise to let him stay.And, ladies, do not sneer at me,Or count my words without avail;For in a little time you'll seeThereisa moral to my tale.What has been done in days of yoreMay well again be acted o'er,And other things have been upsetBy Cupid, than a Cabinet!
BY THOMAS AIRD.
"Glory of War, my heart beat time to thee,In my young day; but there—behold the end!"The Old Soldier said: 'twas by his evening fire—Winter the time: so saving, out he jerkedHis wooden leg before him. With a lookHalf comic, half pathetic, his grey headTurned down askance, the pigtail out behindStiff with attention, saying nothing more,He sat and eyed the horizontal peg.Back home the stump he drew not, till with forceDisdainful deep into the slumbering fireHe struck the feruled toe, and poking rousedA cheery blaze, to light him at his work.The unfinished skep is now upon his knee,For June top-swarmers in his garden trim:With twists of straw, and willow wattling thongs,Crooning, he wrought. The ruddy flickering firePlayed on his eye-brow shag, and thin fresh cheek,Touching his varying eye with many a gleam.His cot behind, soldierly clean and neat,Gave back the light from many a burnished point.His simple supper o'er, he reads The Book;Then loads and mounts his pipe, puffing it slow,Musing on days of yore, and battles old,And many a friend and comrade dead and gone,And vital ones, boughs of himself, cut offFrom his dispeopled side, naked and bare.Puffs short and hurried, puff on puff, betrayHis swelling heart: up starts the Man, to keepThe Woman down: forth from his door he eyesThe frosty heaven—the moon and all the stars."Peace be with hearts that watch!" thus, heaven forgot,And all its hosts, true to the veins of blood,Thoughtful his spirit runs:—"'Tis now the hourWhen the lone matron, from her cottage door,Looks for her spouse into the moonlit ways;But hears no foot abroad in all the night.Then turns she in: the tale of murder done,In former days, by the blue forest's edge,Which way he must return—why tarries he?—Comes o'er her mind; up starting quick, she goesTo be assured that she has barred her door;Then sits anew. Her little lamp of oilIs all burnt out; the wasting embers whiten;And the cat winks before the drowsy fire.What sound was that? 'Tis but her own heart beating.Up rises she again; her little onesAre all asleep, she'll go and waken them,And hear their voices in the eerie night;But yet she pauses, loth to break their rest.God send the husband and the father home!"No one looks out for me in all this world,No one have I to look for! Ah poor me!Well, well!" he murmurs meek. Turning, he locksHis lonely door, and stumps away to bed.
"Glory of War, my heart beat time to thee,In my young day; but there—behold the end!"The Old Soldier said: 'twas by his evening fire—Winter the time: so saving, out he jerkedHis wooden leg before him. With a lookHalf comic, half pathetic, his grey headTurned down askance, the pigtail out behindStiff with attention, saying nothing more,He sat and eyed the horizontal peg.Back home the stump he drew not, till with forceDisdainful deep into the slumbering fireHe struck the feruled toe, and poking rousedA cheery blaze, to light him at his work.The unfinished skep is now upon his knee,For June top-swarmers in his garden trim:With twists of straw, and willow wattling thongs,Crooning, he wrought. The ruddy flickering firePlayed on his eye-brow shag, and thin fresh cheek,Touching his varying eye with many a gleam.His cot behind, soldierly clean and neat,Gave back the light from many a burnished point.His simple supper o'er, he reads The Book;Then loads and mounts his pipe, puffing it slow,Musing on days of yore, and battles old,And many a friend and comrade dead and gone,And vital ones, boughs of himself, cut offFrom his dispeopled side, naked and bare.Puffs short and hurried, puff on puff, betrayHis swelling heart: up starts the Man, to keepThe Woman down: forth from his door he eyesThe frosty heaven—the moon and all the stars.
"Peace be with hearts that watch!" thus, heaven forgot,And all its hosts, true to the veins of blood,Thoughtful his spirit runs:—"'Tis now the hourWhen the lone matron, from her cottage door,Looks for her spouse into the moonlit ways;But hears no foot abroad in all the night.Then turns she in: the tale of murder done,In former days, by the blue forest's edge,Which way he must return—why tarries he?—Comes o'er her mind; up starting quick, she goesTo be assured that she has barred her door;Then sits anew. Her little lamp of oilIs all burnt out; the wasting embers whiten;And the cat winks before the drowsy fire.What sound was that? 'Tis but her own heart beating.Up rises she again; her little onesAre all asleep, she'll go and waken them,And hear their voices in the eerie night;But yet she pauses, loth to break their rest.God send the husband and the father home!
"No one looks out for me in all this world,No one have I to look for! Ah poor me!Well, well!" he murmurs meek. Turning, he locksHis lonely door, and stumps away to bed.
How fresh the morning meadow of the spring,Pearl-seeded with the dew: adown its path,Bored by the worms of night, the Old Soldier takesHis wonted walk, and drinks into his heartThe gush and gurgle of the cold green stream.The huddled splendour of the April noon;Glancings of rain; the mountain-tops all quickWith shadowy touches and with greening gleams;Blue bent the Bow of God; the coloured clouds,Soaked with the glory of the setting sun,—These all are his for pleasure: his the Moon,Chaste huntress, dipping, o'er the dewy hills,Her silver buskin in the dying day.The summer morn is up: the tapering treesAre all a-glitter. In his garden forthThe Old Soldado saunters: hovering onBefore him, oft upon the naked walkRests the red butterfly; now full dispread;Now, in the wanton gladsomeness of life,Half on their hinges folding up its wings;Again full spread and still: o'erhead away,Lo! now it wavers through the liquid blue.But he intent from out their straw-roofed hivesWatches his little foragers go forth,Boot on the buds to make, to suck the depthsOf honey-throated blooms, and home return,Their thighs half smothered with the yellow dust.Dibble and hoe he plies; anon he propsHis heavy-beaded plants, and visits roundHis herbs of grace: the simple flowerets hereOpen their infant buttons; there the flowersOf preference blow, the lily and the rose.Fast by his cottage door there grows an oak,Of state supreme, drawn from the centuries.Pride of the old man's heart, in many a walk.Far off he sees its top of sovereignty,And with instinctive loyalty his capSoldierly touches to the Royal Tree—King of all trees that flourish! King revered!Trafalgars lie beneath his rugged vest,And in his acorns is The Golden Age!Summer the time; thoughtful beneath his treeThe Veteran puffs his intermittent pipe,And cheats the sweltering hours; yet noting oftThe flight of bird, and exhalation farQuivering and drifting o'er the fallow field,And the great cloud rising upon the noon,The sultry smithy of the thunder-forge.Anon the weekly journal of eventsConning, he learns the doings of the world,And what it suffers—justice-loosened wrathFalling from Heaven upon unrighteous states,Famine, and plague, earthquake, and flood, and fire;Lean Sorrow tracking still the bread-blown Sin;A spirit of lies; high-handed wrong; the curseOf ignorance crass and fat stupidity;Glib demagogue tongues that sow the dragon-teethOf wars along the valleys of the earth;And maddened nations at their contre-danceOf revolutions, when each bloody hourComes staggering in beneath its load of crimes,Enough to bend the back of centuries.The sun goes down the western afternoon,Lacing the clouds with his diverging rays:Homeward the children from the village schoolCome whooping on; but aye their voices fall,As aye they turn unto the old man's door—So much they love him. He their progress notesIn learning, and has prizes for their zeal,Flowers for the girls, and fruit, hooks for the boys,Whistles, and cherry-stones; and, to maintainThe thews and sinews of our coming men,He makes them run and leap upon the green.The nodding wain has borne the harvest home,And yellowing apples spot the orchard trees:Now may you oft the Old Soldado seeStumping relieved against the evening skyAlong the ferny height—so much he lovesIts keen and wholesome air; nor less he lovesTo hear the rustling of the fallen leaves,Swept by the wind along the glittering road,As home he goes beneath the autumnal moon.Thus round the starry girdle of the yearHis spirit circles thankfully. Not grievedWhen winter comes once more, with chosen booksHe sits with Wisdom by his evening fire;Puff goes his cheerful pipe; by turns he works;And ever from his door, before he sleeps,He views the stars of night, and thinks of HimWhose simplest fiat is the birth of worlds.
How fresh the morning meadow of the spring,Pearl-seeded with the dew: adown its path,Bored by the worms of night, the Old Soldier takesHis wonted walk, and drinks into his heartThe gush and gurgle of the cold green stream.The huddled splendour of the April noon;Glancings of rain; the mountain-tops all quickWith shadowy touches and with greening gleams;Blue bent the Bow of God; the coloured clouds,Soaked with the glory of the setting sun,—These all are his for pleasure: his the Moon,Chaste huntress, dipping, o'er the dewy hills,Her silver buskin in the dying day.
The summer morn is up: the tapering treesAre all a-glitter. In his garden forthThe Old Soldado saunters: hovering onBefore him, oft upon the naked walkRests the red butterfly; now full dispread;Now, in the wanton gladsomeness of life,Half on their hinges folding up its wings;Again full spread and still: o'erhead away,Lo! now it wavers through the liquid blue.But he intent from out their straw-roofed hivesWatches his little foragers go forth,Boot on the buds to make, to suck the depthsOf honey-throated blooms, and home return,Their thighs half smothered with the yellow dust.Dibble and hoe he plies; anon he propsHis heavy-beaded plants, and visits roundHis herbs of grace: the simple flowerets hereOpen their infant buttons; there the flowersOf preference blow, the lily and the rose.
Fast by his cottage door there grows an oak,Of state supreme, drawn from the centuries.Pride of the old man's heart, in many a walk.Far off he sees its top of sovereignty,And with instinctive loyalty his capSoldierly touches to the Royal Tree—King of all trees that flourish! King revered!Trafalgars lie beneath his rugged vest,And in his acorns is The Golden Age!Summer the time; thoughtful beneath his treeThe Veteran puffs his intermittent pipe,And cheats the sweltering hours; yet noting oftThe flight of bird, and exhalation farQuivering and drifting o'er the fallow field,And the great cloud rising upon the noon,The sultry smithy of the thunder-forge.Anon the weekly journal of eventsConning, he learns the doings of the world,And what it suffers—justice-loosened wrathFalling from Heaven upon unrighteous states,Famine, and plague, earthquake, and flood, and fire;Lean Sorrow tracking still the bread-blown Sin;A spirit of lies; high-handed wrong; the curseOf ignorance crass and fat stupidity;Glib demagogue tongues that sow the dragon-teethOf wars along the valleys of the earth;And maddened nations at their contre-danceOf revolutions, when each bloody hourComes staggering in beneath its load of crimes,Enough to bend the back of centuries.
The sun goes down the western afternoon,Lacing the clouds with his diverging rays:Homeward the children from the village schoolCome whooping on; but aye their voices fall,As aye they turn unto the old man's door—So much they love him. He their progress notesIn learning, and has prizes for their zeal,Flowers for the girls, and fruit, hooks for the boys,Whistles, and cherry-stones; and, to maintainThe thews and sinews of our coming men,He makes them run and leap upon the green.
The nodding wain has borne the harvest home,And yellowing apples spot the orchard trees:Now may you oft the Old Soldado seeStumping relieved against the evening skyAlong the ferny height—so much he lovesIts keen and wholesome air; nor less he lovesTo hear the rustling of the fallen leaves,Swept by the wind along the glittering road,As home he goes beneath the autumnal moon.
Thus round the starry girdle of the yearHis spirit circles thankfully. Not grievedWhen winter comes once more, with chosen booksHe sits with Wisdom by his evening fire;Puff goes his cheerful pipe; by turns he works;And ever from his door, before he sleeps,He views the stars of night, and thinks of HimWhose simplest fiat is the birth of worlds.
Lo! yonder sea-mew seeks the inland moss:Beautiful bird! how snowy clean it showsBehind the ploughman, on a glinting day,Trooping with rooks, and farther still relievedAgainst the dark-brown mould, alighting half,Half hovering still; yet far more beautifulIts glistening sleekness, when from out the deepSudden and shy emerging on your lee,What time through breeze, and spray, and freshening brine,Your snoring ship, beneath her cloud of sail,Bends on her buried side, carried it ridesThe green curled billow and the seething froth,Turning its startled head this way and that,Half looking at you with its wild blue eye,Then moves its fluttering wings and dives anew!Smoking his pipe of peace, wearing awayThe summer eve, the old Soldado sitsBeneath his buzzing oak, and eyes the bird,With many a thought of the suggested sea.The veering gull came circling back and near:"What! nearer still?" the Veteran said, and rose,And doffed his bonnet, and held down his pipe:"Give me her message, then! O be to meHer spirit not unconscious from the deepOf how I mourn her lost! Ah! bird, you're gone.Vain dreamer I! For every night my soulKnocks at the gates of the invisible worldBut no one answers me, no little handComes out to grasp at mine. Well, all is good:Even, bird, thy heart-deceiving change of flight,To teach me patience, was ordained of old."Yes, all is ordered well. Aimless may seemThe wandering foot; even it commissioned treadsThe very lines by Providence laid down,Sure though unseen, of all-converging good.Look up, old man, and see:—Along the roadCame one in sailor's garb: his shallow hat,Of glazed and polished leather, shone like tin.A fair young damsel led him by the hand—For he was blind: and to the summer sun,Fearless and free, he held his bronzed face.An armless sleeve, pinned to his manly breast,Told he had been among the "Hearts of Oak."The damsel saw the old man of the tree,His queue of character, and wooden leg,And smiling whispered to the tar she led.Near turned, both stood. Down from her shoulder thenThe maid unslung a mandolin, and played,High singing as she played, a battle-pieceOf bursts and pauses: keeping time the while,Now furious fast, now dying slow away,His pigtail wagging with emotion deep,The Old Soldier puffed his sympathetic pipe.The minstrel ceased; he drew his leathern purse,With pension lined, and offered guerdon due."Nay," said the maiden, smiling, "for your tyeAlone I played, and for your wooden leg;Yea, but for these, the symbols of the thingsYou've done and suffered—like my father here.""Well, then, you'll taste my honey and my bread?"The Soldier said, and from his cot he broughtSeats for the strangers; him the damsel helped,Bearing the bread and honey; and they ate,The damsel serving, and she ate in turn.When various talk had closed the simple feast,The strangers rose to go: "My head! my head!"The sailor cried, and fell in sudden pangs.They bore and laid him on the Soldier's bed.Forth ran the lass, and from the neighbouring townBrought the physician; but his skill was vain,For God had touched him, and the man must die.His mind was clear: "Give me that cross, my child,That I may kiss it ere my spirit part,"He said. And from her breast the damsel drewA little cross, peculiar shaped and wrought,And gave it him. It caught the Soldier's eyeAnd when the girl received it back, he tookAnd looked at it."This cross, O dying man,Was round my daughter's neck, when in the deepShe perished from me, on that fatal nightThe 'Sphinx' was burnt, forth sailing from the Clyde.Her dying mother round the infant's neckThis holy symbol, with her blessing, hung.Friendless at home, I took my only child,Bound to the Western World, where we had friends.Scarce out of port, up flamed our ship on fire,With crowding terrors through the umbered night.O! what a shout of joy, when through the gloomThat walled us round within our glaring vault,Spectral and large, we saw the ships of help.Our boats were lowered; the first, o'ercrowded, swamped;Down to the second, as it lurched away,I flung my child: the monstrous waves went byWith backs like blood: the sudden-shifting boatIs off with one, another has my babe.I sprung to save her—all the rest is drear,Grisly confusion, till I found me laid,On some far island, in a fisher's hut.Me, as they homeward scudded past the fire,Those lonely farmers of the deep picked up,Floating away, and rubbed to vital heat;And through the fever-gulf that had me next,With simple love they brought my weary life.The shores and islands round, for lingering newsOf people saved from off that burning wreck,O! how I haunted then; but of my childNo man had heard. Hopeless, and naked poor,To war I rushed. This cot received me next;And here, I trust, my mortal chapter ends.But say, O say! how came you by this cross?"The dying man upon his arm had risen,Ere ceased the Soldier's tale: "She is thy child,Take her," he said; "and may she be to thee,As she to me has been, a daughter true,A child of good, a blessing from on high!"So saying, back he fell. Around his neckHer arms of love the sobbing damsel threw,And kissed him many a time. And then she rose,And flung herself upon the Soldier's breast—For he's her father too. And many tears,Silent, the old man rained upon her neck."O wondrous night!" the dying tar went on,"Who could have thought of this! I am content.The Lord be praised that she has found a friend,Since I must go from her! That night of fire,Our brig of war bore down upon your ship,And sent her boats to save you from the flame.Near you we could not come; so forth I swam,And to your crowded stern I fixed a rope,To take the people off. Back as I slidAlong the line, to show them how to come,A child, upheaved upon the billow top,Was borne against my breast; I snatched her up;Fast to my neck she clung; none could I findTo claim and take her: she was thus mine own.That night she wore the cross which now she wears.Why need I tell the changes of my life?In war I lost an arm, and then an eye;My other eye went out from sympathy,And home I came a blind and helpless man.But I had still one comforter, my child—My young breadwinner, too! From wake to wakeShe led me on, playing her mandolin,Which I had brought her from the south of Spain.She'll tell you all the rest when I am gone.Bury me now in your own burial-place,That still our daughter may be near my dust.And Jesus keep you both!" he said, and died.They buried him in their own burial-place.And many a flower, heart-planted by that maidAnd good Old Soldier, bloomed upon his grave.And many a requiem, when the gloaming came,The damsel played above his honoured dust.Not less, but all the more, her heart was knitUnto her own true father. He, the while,How proud was he to give her up his keys,Mistress installed of all his little stores;And introduce her to his flowers, and bees,Making the sea-green honey—all for her;And sit beside her underneath the oak,Listening the story of her bygone life.In turn she made him of her mother tell,And aye a tear dropped on her needlework;And all his wars the old campaigner told.And God was with them, and in peace and loveThey dwelt together in their happy home.
Lo! yonder sea-mew seeks the inland moss:Beautiful bird! how snowy clean it showsBehind the ploughman, on a glinting day,Trooping with rooks, and farther still relievedAgainst the dark-brown mould, alighting half,Half hovering still; yet far more beautifulIts glistening sleekness, when from out the deepSudden and shy emerging on your lee,What time through breeze, and spray, and freshening brine,Your snoring ship, beneath her cloud of sail,Bends on her buried side, carried it ridesThe green curled billow and the seething froth,Turning its startled head this way and that,Half looking at you with its wild blue eye,Then moves its fluttering wings and dives anew!
Smoking his pipe of peace, wearing awayThe summer eve, the old Soldado sitsBeneath his buzzing oak, and eyes the bird,With many a thought of the suggested sea.The veering gull came circling back and near:"What! nearer still?" the Veteran said, and rose,And doffed his bonnet, and held down his pipe:"Give me her message, then! O be to meHer spirit not unconscious from the deepOf how I mourn her lost! Ah! bird, you're gone.Vain dreamer I! For every night my soulKnocks at the gates of the invisible worldBut no one answers me, no little handComes out to grasp at mine. Well, all is good:Even, bird, thy heart-deceiving change of flight,To teach me patience, was ordained of old."
Yes, all is ordered well. Aimless may seemThe wandering foot; even it commissioned treadsThe very lines by Providence laid down,Sure though unseen, of all-converging good.Look up, old man, and see:—Along the roadCame one in sailor's garb: his shallow hat,Of glazed and polished leather, shone like tin.A fair young damsel led him by the hand—For he was blind: and to the summer sun,Fearless and free, he held his bronzed face.An armless sleeve, pinned to his manly breast,Told he had been among the "Hearts of Oak."The damsel saw the old man of the tree,His queue of character, and wooden leg,And smiling whispered to the tar she led.Near turned, both stood. Down from her shoulder thenThe maid unslung a mandolin, and played,High singing as she played, a battle-pieceOf bursts and pauses: keeping time the while,Now furious fast, now dying slow away,His pigtail wagging with emotion deep,The Old Soldier puffed his sympathetic pipe.The minstrel ceased; he drew his leathern purse,With pension lined, and offered guerdon due."Nay," said the maiden, smiling, "for your tyeAlone I played, and for your wooden leg;Yea, but for these, the symbols of the thingsYou've done and suffered—like my father here."
"Well, then, you'll taste my honey and my bread?"The Soldier said, and from his cot he broughtSeats for the strangers; him the damsel helped,Bearing the bread and honey; and they ate,The damsel serving, and she ate in turn.When various talk had closed the simple feast,The strangers rose to go: "My head! my head!"The sailor cried, and fell in sudden pangs.They bore and laid him on the Soldier's bed.Forth ran the lass, and from the neighbouring townBrought the physician; but his skill was vain,For God had touched him, and the man must die.His mind was clear: "Give me that cross, my child,That I may kiss it ere my spirit part,"He said. And from her breast the damsel drewA little cross, peculiar shaped and wrought,And gave it him. It caught the Soldier's eyeAnd when the girl received it back, he tookAnd looked at it.
"This cross, O dying man,Was round my daughter's neck, when in the deepShe perished from me, on that fatal nightThe 'Sphinx' was burnt, forth sailing from the Clyde.Her dying mother round the infant's neckThis holy symbol, with her blessing, hung.Friendless at home, I took my only child,Bound to the Western World, where we had friends.Scarce out of port, up flamed our ship on fire,With crowding terrors through the umbered night.O! what a shout of joy, when through the gloomThat walled us round within our glaring vault,Spectral and large, we saw the ships of help.Our boats were lowered; the first, o'ercrowded, swamped;Down to the second, as it lurched away,I flung my child: the monstrous waves went byWith backs like blood: the sudden-shifting boatIs off with one, another has my babe.I sprung to save her—all the rest is drear,Grisly confusion, till I found me laid,On some far island, in a fisher's hut.Me, as they homeward scudded past the fire,Those lonely farmers of the deep picked up,Floating away, and rubbed to vital heat;And through the fever-gulf that had me next,With simple love they brought my weary life.The shores and islands round, for lingering newsOf people saved from off that burning wreck,O! how I haunted then; but of my childNo man had heard. Hopeless, and naked poor,To war I rushed. This cot received me next;And here, I trust, my mortal chapter ends.But say, O say! how came you by this cross?"
The dying man upon his arm had risen,Ere ceased the Soldier's tale: "She is thy child,Take her," he said; "and may she be to thee,As she to me has been, a daughter true,A child of good, a blessing from on high!"So saying, back he fell. Around his neckHer arms of love the sobbing damsel threw,And kissed him many a time. And then she rose,And flung herself upon the Soldier's breast—For he's her father too. And many tears,Silent, the old man rained upon her neck.
"O wondrous night!" the dying tar went on,"Who could have thought of this! I am content.The Lord be praised that she has found a friend,Since I must go from her! That night of fire,Our brig of war bore down upon your ship,And sent her boats to save you from the flame.Near you we could not come; so forth I swam,And to your crowded stern I fixed a rope,To take the people off. Back as I slidAlong the line, to show them how to come,A child, upheaved upon the billow top,Was borne against my breast; I snatched her up;Fast to my neck she clung; none could I findTo claim and take her: she was thus mine own.That night she wore the cross which now she wears.Why need I tell the changes of my life?In war I lost an arm, and then an eye;My other eye went out from sympathy,And home I came a blind and helpless man.But I had still one comforter, my child—My young breadwinner, too! From wake to wakeShe led me on, playing her mandolin,Which I had brought her from the south of Spain.She'll tell you all the rest when I am gone.Bury me now in your own burial-place,That still our daughter may be near my dust.And Jesus keep you both!" he said, and died.
They buried him in their own burial-place.And many a flower, heart-planted by that maidAnd good Old Soldier, bloomed upon his grave.And many a requiem, when the gloaming came,The damsel played above his honoured dust.Not less, but all the more, her heart was knitUnto her own true father. He, the while,How proud was he to give her up his keys,Mistress installed of all his little stores;And introduce her to his flowers, and bees,Making the sea-green honey—all for her;And sit beside her underneath the oak,Listening the story of her bygone life.In turn she made him of her mother tell,And aye a tear dropped on her needlework;And all his wars the old campaigner told.And God was with them, and in peace and loveThey dwelt together in their happy home.
The fall of Napoleon completed the first drama of the historical series arising out of the French Revolution. Democratic ambition had found its natural and inevitable issue in warlike achievement; the passions of the camp had succeeded those of the forum, and the conquest of all the Continental monarchies had, for a time, apparently satiated the desires of an insatiable people. But the reaction was as violent as the action. In every warlike operation two parties are to be considered—the conquerors and the conquered. The rapacity, the insolence, the organised exactions of the French proved grievous in the extreme, and the hardship was felt as the more insupportable when the administrative powers of Napoleon gave to them the form of a regular tribute, and conducted the riches of conquered Europe, in a perennial stream, to the imperial treasury. A unanimous cry of indignation arose from every part of the Continent; a crusade commenced, in all quarters, from the experienced suffering of mankind; from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, the liberating warriors came forth, and the strength of an injured world collected by a convulsive effort at the heart, to throw off the load which had oppressed it. Securely cradled amidst the waves, England, like her immortal chief at Waterloo, had calmly awaited the hour when she might be called on to take the lead in the terrible strife. Her energy, when it arrived, rivalled her former patience in privation, her fortitude in suffering; and the one only, nation which, throughout the struggle, had been unconquered, at length stood foremost in the fight, and struck the final and decisive blow for the deliverance of the world.
But the victory of nations did not terminate the war of opinion; the triumph of armies did not end the collision of thought. France was conquered, but the principles of her Revolution were not extirpated; they had covered her own soil with mourning, but they were too flattering to the pride of the human heart to be subdued but by many ages of suffering. The lesson taught by the subjugation of her power, the double capture of her capital, was too serious to be soon forgotten by her rulers; but the agony which had been previously felt by the people, had ended with a generation which was now mouldering in its grave. It is by, the last impressions that the durable opinions of mankind are formed; and effects had here succeeded each other so rapidly, that the earlier ones were in a great measure forgotten. The conscription had caused the guillotine to be forgotten; grief for the loss of the frontier of the Rhine had obliterated that of the dissolution of the National Assembly. Men did not know that the first was the natural result of the last. There was little danger of France soon crossing the Rhine, but much of her reviving the opinions of Mirabeau and Siéyès. The first drama, where the military bore the prominent part, was ended; but the second, in which civil patriots were to be the leading characters, and vehement political passions excited, was still to commence; the Lager had terminated, but the Piccolomini was only beginning, and Wallenstein's Death had not yet commenced.
Everything conspired to render the era subsequent to the fall of Napoleon as memorable for civil changes as that era itself had been for military triumphs. Catherine of Russia had said at the commencement of the Revolution, that the only way to prevent its principles spreading, and save Europe from civil convulsion, was to engage in war, and cause the national to supersede the social passions. The experiment, after a fearful struggle, succeeded; but it succeeded only for a time. War wore itself out; a contest of twenty years' duration at once drained away the blood and exhausted the treasures of Europe. The excitement, the animation, the mingled horrors and glories of military strife, were followed by a long period of repose, during which the social passions were daily gainingstrength from the very magnitude of the contest which had preceded it. The desire for excitement continued, and the means of gratifying it had ceased: the cannon of Leipsic and Waterloo still resounded through the world, but no new combats furnished daily materials for anxiety, terror, or exultation. The nations were chained to peace by the immensity of the sacrifices made in the preceding war: all governments had suffered so much during its continuance, that, like wounded veterans, they dreaded a renewal of the fight. During the many years of constrained repose which succeeded the battle of Waterloo, the vehement excitement occasioned by the Revolutionary wars continued; but, from default of external, it turned to internal objects. Democratic came instead of military ambition; the social succeeded the national passions; the spirit was the same, but its field was changed. Meanwhile the blessed effect of long continued peace, by allowing industry in every quarter to reap its fruits in quiet, was daily adding to the strength and energy, because augmenting the resources, of the middle class, in whom these feelings are ever the strongest, because they are the first to be promoted by a change; while, in a similar proportion, the power of government was daily declining, from the necessity of providing for the interest of the debts contracted during the preceding strife, and reducing the military forces which had so long averted its dangers or achieved its triumphs.
The change in the ruling passions of mankind has clearly appeared in the annals of nations, in the thirty years which followed the fall of Napoleon. Governments have often great difficulties to contend with, but it has been not with each other, but with their subjects; many of them have been overturned, not by foreign armies, but by their own. Europe has been often on the verge of a general war, but the danger of it arose not, as in former days, from the throne, but the cottage; the persons who urged it on were not kings or their ministers, but the tribunes of the people. The chief efforts of governments in every country have been directed to the preservation of that peace which the collisions of so many interests, and the vehemence of such passions, endangered: war was repeatedly threatened, but it was so, not by sovereigns, but by the people. The sovereigns were successful; but their being so only augmented the dangers of their position, and increased the peril arising from the ardour of the social passions with which they had to contend; for every year of peace added to the strength of their opponents as much as it diminished their own.
The preservation of peace, unbroken from 1815 to 1830, was fraught with immense blessings to Europe; and, had it been properly improved, might have been so to the cause of freedom throughout the world; but it proved fatal to the dynasty of the Restoration. From necessity, as well as inclination, from the recollection of the double capture of Paris, as well as conscious inability to conduct warlike operations, Louis XVIII. remained at peace; and no monarch who does so seems likely to remain long on the French throne. Death, and extreme prudence of conduct, alone saved him from dethronement. The whole history of the Restoration, from 1815 to 1830, was that of one vast and ceaseless conspiracy against the Bourbons, existing rather in the hearts and minds than the measures and designs of men. No concessions to freedom, no moderation of government, no diminution of public burdens, could reconcile the people to a dynasty imposed on them by the stranger. One part of the people were dreaming of the past, another speculating on the future; all were dissatisfied with the present. The wars, the glories of the Empire, rose up in painful contrast to the peace and monotony of the present. Successive contractions of the elective constituency, and restrictions on the press, had no effect in diminishing the danger it excited in the minds of men, and only became, like all other concealed passions, more powerful from the difficulty of giving it expression. France was daily increasing in wealth, freedom, and material well-being, but it was as steadily declining in contentment, loyalty, and happiness—a strange combination, but such as is by no means unknown in private life,when all external appliances are favourable, but the heart is gnawed by a secret and ungratified passion. At length the general discontent rose to such a pitch that it became impossible to carry on the government; acoup d'étatwas attempted, to restore some degree of efficiency to the executive, but it was attempted by the "feeble arms of confessors and kings;" the army wavered in its duty; the Orleans family took advantage of the tumult, and the dynasty of the elder branch of the Bourbons was overthrown.
That so great an event as the overthrow of a dynasty by a sudden urban insurrection, should have produced a great impression all over the world, was to have been expected; but it could hardly have been anticipated it would have been attended by the effects with which it actually was in Great Britain. But many causes had conspired at that period to prepare the public mind in England for changes; and, what is very remarkable, these causes had arisen mainly from the magnitude of the successes with which the war had been attended. The capital which had been realised during the war had been so great, the influence of the moneyed interest had become so powerful, that the legislature became affected by their desires. The Monetary Bill of 1819, before many years had elapsed, had added 50 per cent to the value of money, and the weight of debts and taxes, and taken as much from the remuneration of industry. Hence a total change in the feelings, influences, and political relations of society. The territorial aristocracy was weakened as much as the commercial was aggrandised; small landed proprietors were everywhere ruined from the fall of prices; the magnates stood forth in increased lustre from the enhanced value of their revenues. Industry was querulous from long-continued suffering; wealth, ambitious from sudden exaltation. Political power was coveted by one class, from the excess of their riches; by another, from the depth of their misery. The emancipation of the Roman Catholics severed the last bond, that of a common religion, which had hitherto held together the different classes, and imprinted on the minds of a large and sincere class a thirst for vengeance, which overwhelmed every consideration of reason. The result of these concurring causes was that the institutions of England were essentially altered by the earthquake of 1830, and a new class elevated to supreme power by means, bloodless indeed, but scarcely less violent than the revolution which had overturned Charles X.
The revolution of 1830 elevated the middle class to the direction of affairs in France, and the Reform Bill vested the same class in effect with supreme power in the British empire. Vast effects followed this all-important change in both countries. For the first time in the history of mankind the experiment was made of vesting the electoral franchise, not in a varied and limited class, as in Old England, or in the whole citizens, as in revolutionary France or America, but in persons possessed only of a certain money qualification. The franchise was not materially changed in France, but the general arming of the National Guard, and the revolutionary origin of the new government, effectually secured attention to the wishes of the burgher aristocracy; in England they were at once vested with the command of the state, for the House of Commons was returned by a million of electors, who voted for 658 members, of whom two-thirds were the representatives of boroughs, and two-thirds of their constituents shopkeepers, or persons whom they influenced. Thence consequences of incalculable importance in both countries, and effects which have left indelible traces in the future history of mankind.
The first effect of this identity of feeling and interest, in the class thus for the first time intrusted with the practical direction of affairs in both countries, was a close political alliance between their governments, and an entire change in the Foreign policy of Great Britain. To the vehement hostility and ceaseless rivalry of four centuries succeeded an alliance sincere and cordial at the time; though, like other intimacies founded on identity of passion, not of interest, it might be doubted whether it would survive the emotions which gave itbirth. In the mean time, however, the effects of this alliance were novel, and in the highest degree important. When the lords of the earth and the sea united, no power in Europe ventured to confront them; the peace of Europe was preserved by their union. The Czar in full march towards Paris was arrested on the Vistula; he found ample employment for his arms in resisting the efforts of the Poles to restore their much-loved nationality. Austria and Prussia were too much occupied with the surveillance of the discontented in their own dominions to think of renewing the crusade of 1813; nor did they venture to do so when the forces of England were united to those of France. The consequence was that the march of revolution was unresisted in Western Europe, and an entire change effected in the institutions and dynasties on the throne in its principal continental states. The Orleans family continued firmly, and to all appearance permanently, seated on the throne of France; Belgium was revolutionised, torn from the monarchy of the Netherlands, and the Cobourg family seated on its throne: the monarchies of Spain and Portugal were overturned, and a revolutionary dynasty of queens placed on the thrones of these countries, in direct violation of the Treaty of Utrecht; while in the east of Europe the last remnants of Polish nationality were extinguished on the banks of the Vistula. Durable interests were overlooked, ancient alliances broken, long-established rivalries forgotten in the fleeting passions of the moment. Confederacies the most opposite to the lasting policy of the very nations who contracted them, were not only formed, but acted upon. Europe beheld with astonishment the arms of Prussia united with those of Russia to destroy the barrier of the Continent against the Muscovite power on the Sarmatian plains; the Leopards of England joined to the tricolor standard to wrest Antwerp from Holland, and secure the throne of the Netherlands to a son-in-law of France; and the scarlet uniforms blended with the ensigns of revolution to beat down the liberties of the Basque provinces, and prepare the heiress of Spain for the arms of a son of France, on the very theatre of Wellington's triumphs.
Novel and extraordinary as were these results of the revolution of 1830 upon the political relations of Europe, its effects upon the colonial empire of England, and, through it, upon the future destinies of the human species, were still greater and more important. To the end of the world, the consequences of the change in the policy of England will be felt in every quarter of the globe. Its first effect was to bring about the emancipation of the negroes in the West Indies. Eight hundred thousand slaves in the British colonies in that quarter of the globe received the perilous gift of unconditional freedom. For the first time in the history of mankind the experiment was made of extending the institutions of Japhet to the sons of Ham. As a natural result of so vast and sudden a change, and of the conferring of the institutions of the Anglo-Saxons upon unlettered savages, the proprietors of those noble colonies were ruined, their affections alienated, and the authority of the mother country preserved only by the terror of arms. Canada shared in the moral earthquake which shook the globe, and that noble offshoot of the empire was only preserved to Great Britain by the courage of its soldiers and the loyalty of its English and Highland citizens. Australia rapidly advanced in wealth, industry, and population during these eventful years. Every commercial crisis which paralysed industry, every social struggle which excited hope, every successful innovation which diminished security, added to the stream of hardy and enterprising emigrants who crowded to its shores; New Zealand was added to the already colossal empire of England in Oceania; and it is apparent that the foundations have been laid in a fifth hemisphere of another nation, destined to rival, perhaps eclipse, Europe itself in the career of human improvement. For the first time in the history of mankind the course of advancement ceased to be from East to West; but it was not destined to be arrested bythe Rocky Mountains; the mighty day of four thousand years was drawing to its close; but before its light was extinguished in the West, civilisation had returned to the land of its birth; and ere its orb had set in the waves of the Pacific, the sun of knowledge was illuminating the isles of the Eastern Sea.
Great and important as have been these results of the social convulsions of France and England in the first instance, they sink into insignificance compared to those which have followed the change in the commercial policy and increased stringency of the monetary laws of Great Britain. The effect of these all-important measures, from which so much was expected, and so little, save suffering, has been received, has been to augment to an extraordinary and unparalleled degree theoutwardtendency of the British people. The agricultural population, especially in Ireland, has been violently torn up from the land of its birth by woeful suffering; a famine of the thirteenth appeared amidst the population of the nineteenth century; and to this terrible but transient source of suffering has been superadded the lasting discouragement arising from the virtual closing of the market of England to Irish produce, by the inundations of grain from foreign states. Since the barriers raised by human regulations have been thrown down, the eternal laws of nature have appeared in full operation; the old and rich state can always undersell the young and poor one in manufactures, and is always under-sold by it in agricultural produce. The fate of old Rome apparently is reserved for Great Britain; the harvests of Poland, the Ukraine, and America, prostrate agriculture in the British Isles as effectually as those of Sicily, Libya, and Egypt did the old Patrimony of the Legions; and after the lapse of eighteen hundred years the same effects appear. The great cities flourish, but the country decays; the exportation of human beings and the importation of human food keep up a gainful traffic in the seaport towns; but it is every day more and more gliding into the hands of the foreigner; and while exports and imports are constantly increasing, the mainstay of national strength, the cultivation of the soil, is rapidly declining. The effects upon the strength, resources, and population of the empire, and the growth of its colonial possessions, have been equally important. Europe, before the middle of the century, beholds with astonishment Great Britain, which, at the end of the war, had been self-supporting, importing ten millions of quarters of grain, being a full fifth of the national subsistence, and a constant stream of three hundred thousand emigrants annually leaving its shores. Its inhabitants, which for four centuries had been constantly increasing, have declined a million in the last five years in the two islands, and two millions in Ireland, taken separately; but the foundations of a vast empire have been laid in the Transatlantic and Australian wilds; and the annual addition of three hundred thousand souls to the European population of the New World by immigration alone, has come almost to double the already marvellous rapidity of American increase.
While this vast transference of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic population to the embryo states of America and Australia has been going forward, the United States of America are rapidly increasing in numbers and extent of territory. The usual and fearful ambition of republican states has appeared there in more than its usual proportions. During the ten years from 1840 to 1850, the inhabitants of the United States have increased six millions: they have grown from eighteen to twenty-four millions. But the increase of its territory has been still more extraordinary: it has been extended, during the same period, from somewhat above two millions, to three million three hundred thousand square miles. A territory nine times the size of Old France has been added to the devouring Republic in ten years. The conquests of Rome in ancient, of the English in India in modern times, afford no parallel instance of rapid and unbroken increase. Everything indicates that a vast migration of the human species is going forward, and the family of Japhet in the course of being transferred from its native to its destined seats. Tothis prodigious movement it is hard to say whether the disappointed energies of democratic vigour in Europe, or the insatiable spirit of republican ambition in America, has most contributed; for the first overcame all the attachments of home, and all the endearments of kindred in a large—and that the most energetic—portion of the people in the old world; while the latter has prepared for their reception ample seats—in which a kindred tongue and institutions prevail—in the new.
While this vast and unexampled exodus of the Anglo-Saxon race, across a wider ocean than the Red Sea, and to a greater promised land than that of Canaan, has been going forward, a corresponding, and in some respects still more marvellous, increase of the Sclavonic race in the Muscovite dominions has taken place. The immense dominions and formidable power of the Czar, which had received so vast an addition from the successful termination of the contest with Napoleon, were scarcely less increased by the events of the long peace which followed. The inhuman cruelty with which the Turks prosecuted the war with the Greeks, awakened all the sympathies of the Christian world; governments were impelled by their subjects into a crusade against the Crescent; and the battle of Navarino, which, for the first time in history, beheld the flags of England, France, and Russia side by side, at once ruined the Ottoman navy, and reft the most important provinces of Greece from Turkey. The inconceivable infatuation of the Turks, and their characteristic ignorance of the strength of the enemy whom they provoked, impelled them soon after into a war with Russia; and then the immeasurable superiority which the Cross had now acquired over the Crescent at once appeared. Varna, the scene of the bloody defeat of the French chivalry by the Janizaries of Bajazet, yielded to the scientific approaches of the Russians; the barrier, hitherto insurmountable, of the Balkan, was passed by Diebitch; Adrianople fell; and the anxious intervention of the other European powers alone prevented the entire subjugation of Turkey, and the entry of the Muscovite battalions through the breach made by the cannon of Mahomet in the walls of Constantinople.
Great as were these results to the growth of Russia, of the forced and long-continued pacification of Western Europe, still more important were those which followed its intestine convulsions. Every throe of the revolutionary earthquake in France has tended to its ultimate advantage, and been attended by a great accession of territory or augmentation of influence. The Revolution of 1789 in its ultimate effects brought the Cossacks to Paris; that of 1830 extinguished the last remains of Polish nationality, and established the Muscovites in a lasting sway on the banks of the Vistula. The revolt of Ibrahim Pacha, and the victory of Koniah, which reduced the Ottoman empire to the verge of destruction, brought the Russian battalions to Scutari, and averted subjugation from a rebellious vassal, only by surrendering the keys of the Dardanelles to the Czar, and converting the Black Sea into a Russian lake. Greater still have been the results of the French Revolution of 1848 to the moral influence, and through it the real power, of Russia. Germany, torn by revolutionary passions, was soon brought into the most deplorable state of anarchy; Austria, distracted at once by a Bohemian, Italian, and Hungarian revolt, was within a hair-breadth of destruction; and the presence of 150,000 Russians on the Hungarian plains alone determined the Magyar contest in favour of Austria. Immense is the addition which this decisive move has made to the influence of Russia; no charge of the Old Guard of Napoleon at the close of the day was ever more triumphant. Russia now boasts of 66,000,000 of men within her dominions; her territories embrace a seventh of the habitable globe; and her influence is paramount from the wall of China to the banks of the Rhine.
Great as the acquisitions of the Muscovite power have been during the last thirty years, they have almost been rivalled by those of the British in India. They have fairly outstripped everything in this age of wonders; a parallel will in vain besought for them in the whole annals of the world. They do not resemble the conquests of the Romans in ancient, or of the Russians in modern times; they have not been the result of the lust of conquest, steadily and perseveringly applied to general subjugation, or the passions of democracy finding their natural vent in foreign conquest. As little were they the offspring of a vehement and turbulent spirit, similar to that which carried the French eagles to Vienna and the Kremlin. The disposition of the Anglo-Saxons, practically gain-seeking, and shunning wars as an interruption of their profits, has been a perpetual check to any such disposition—their immense distance from the scene of action on the plains of Hindostan, an effectual bar to its indulgence. India has not been governed by a race of warlike sovereigns, eager for conquest, covetous of glory; but by a company of pacific merchants, intent only on the augmentation of their profits and the diminution of their expenses. Their great cause of complaint against the Governors-General to whom have been successively intrusted the government of their vast dominions, was, that they were too prone to defensive preparations; that they did not sufficiently study the increase of these profits or the saving of these expenses. War was constantly forced upon them as a measure of necessity; repeated coalitions of the native sovereigns compelled them to draw the sword to prevent their expulsion from the peninsula. Conquest has been the condition of existence.
Yet such is the vigour of the Anglo-Saxon race, and the energy with which the successive contests were maintained by the diminutive force at the disposal of the company, that marvellous beyond all example have been the victories which they gained and the conquests which they achieved. The long period of European peace which followed the battle of Waterloo, was anything but one of repose in India. It beheld successively the final war with, and subjugation of, the Mahrattas by the genius of Lord Hastings, the overthrow of the Pindaree horsemen, the difficult subjugation of the Goorkha mountaineers; the storming of Bhurtpore, the taming of "the giant strength of Ava;" the conquest of Cabul, and fearful horrors of the Coord Cabul retreat; the subsequent gallant recovery of its capital; the conquest of Scinde, and reduction of Gwalior; the wars with the Sikhs, the desperate passages of arms at Ferozeshah and Chilianwalah, and the final triumphs of Sobraon and Goojerat. Nor was it in the peninsula of Hindostan alone that the strength of the British, when at length fairly aroused, was exerted; the vast empire of China was wrestled with at the very moment when their strength in the East was engaged in the Affghanistan expedition; and the world, which was anxiously expecting the fall of the much-envied British empire in India, beheld with astonishment, in the same DelhiGazette, the announcement of the second capture of Cabul in the heart of Asia, and the dictating of a glorious peace to the Chinese under the walls of Nankin.
While successes so great and bewildering were attending the arms of civilisation on the remote parts of the earth, a great and most disastrous convulsion was preparing in its heart. Paris, as in every age, was the centre of impulsion to the whole civilised world. Louis Philippe had a very difficult game to play, and he long played it with success; but no human ability could, with the disposition of the people, permanently maintain the government of the country. He aimed at being the Napoleon of Peace; and his great predecessor knew better than any one, and has said oftener, that he himself would have failed in the attempt. Louis Philippe owed his elevation to revolution; and he had the difficult, if not impossible, task to perform,without foreign war, of coercing its passions. Hardly was he seated on the throne, when he felt the necessity in deeds, if not in words, of disclaiming his origin. His whole reign was a continued painful and perilous conflict with the power which had created him, and at length he sank in this struggle. He had not the means of maintaining the conflict. A successful usurper, he could not appeal to traditionary influences; a revolutionary monarch, he was compelled to coerce the passions of revolution; amilitary chief, he was obliged to restrain the passions of the soldiers. They demanded war, and he was constrained to keep them at peace; they sighed for plunder, and he could only meet them with economy; they panted for glory, and his policy retained them in obscurity.
Political influence—in other words, corruption—was the only means left of carrying on the government, and that state engine was worked with great industry, and for a time with great success. But although gratification to the selfish passions must always, in the long run, be the main foundation of government, men are not entirely and for ever governed by their influence. "C'est l'imagination," said Napoleon, "qui domine le monde." All nations, and most of all the French, occasionally require aliment to the passions; and no dynasty will long maintain its sway over them which does not frequently gratify their ruling dispositions. Napoleon was so popular because he at once consulted their interests and gratified their passions; Louis Philippe the reverse, because he attended only to their interests. Great as was his influence, unbounded his patronage, immense his revenue, it yet fell short of the wants of his needy supporters: he experienced erelong the truth of the well-known saying, that every office given away made one ungrateful and three discontented. The immediate cause of his fall in February 1848 was the pusillanimity of his family, who declined to head his troops, and the weakness of his counsellors, who urged submission in presence of danger; but its remote causes were of much older date and wider extent. Government, to be lasting, must be founded either on traditionary influence, the gratification of new interests and passions, or the force of arms; and that one which has not the first will do well to rest as soon as possible on the two last.
Disastrous beyond all precedent, or what even could have been conceived, have been the effects of this new revolution in Paris on the whole Continent; and a very long period must elapse before they are obviated. The spectacle of a government, esteemed one of the strongest in Europe, and a dynasty which promised to be of lasting duration, overturned almost without resistance by an urban tumult, roused the revolutionary party everywhere to a perfect pitch of frenzy. A universal liberation from government, and restraint of any kind, was expected, and for a time attained, by the people in the principal Continental states, when a republic was again proclaimed in France; and the people, strong in their newly-acquired rights of universal suffrage, were seen electing a National Assembly, to whom the destinies of the country were to be intrusted. The effect was instantaneous and universal; the shock of the moral earthquake was felt in every part of Europe. Italy was immediately in a blaze; Piedmont joined the revolutionary crusade; and the Austrian forces, expelled from Milan, were glad to seek an asylum behind the Mincio. Venice threw off the German yoke, and proclaimed again the independence of St Mark; the Pope was driven from Rome, the Bourbons in Naples were saved only by the fidelity of their Swiss guards from destruction; Sicily was severed from their dominion, and all Italy, from the extremity of Calabria to the foot of the Alps, was arraying its forces against constituted authority, and in opposition to the sway of the Tramontane governments. The ardent and enthusiastic were everywhere in transports, and prophesied the resurrection of a great and united Roman republic from the courage of modern patriotism; the learned and experienced anticipated nothing but ruin to the cause of freedom from the transports of a people incapable of exercising its power, and unable to defend its rights.
Still more serious and formidable were the convulsions in Germany; for these were more inspired with the Teutonic love of freedom, and wielded the arm which so long had been victorious in the fields of European fame. So violent were the shocks of the revolutionary earthquake in the Fatherland, that the entire disruption of society and ruin of the national independence seemed to be threatened by its effects. Government was overturned after a violent contest in Berlin. It fell almost without a struggle,from the pusillanimity of the Emperor, in Vienna. The Prussians, especially in the great towns, entered, with the characteristic ardour of their disposition, into the career of revolution; universal suffrage was everywhere proclaimed—national guards established. The lesser states on the Rhine all followed the example of Prussia; and an assembly of delegates, from every part of the Fatherland, at Frankfort, seemed to realise for a brief period the dream of German unity and independence. But while the enthusiasts on the Rhine were speculating on the independence of their country, the enthusiasts in Vienna and Hungary were taking the most effectual steps to destroy it. A frightful civil war ensued in all the Austrian provinces, and soon acquired such strength as threatened to tear in pieces the whole of its vast dominions. No sooner was the central authority in Vienna overturned, than rebellion broke out in all the provinces. The Sclavonians revolted in Bohemia, the Lombards in Italy, the Magyars in Hungary; the close vicinity of a powerful Russian force alone restrained the Poles in Gallicia. Worse, even, because more widely felt than the passions of democracy, the animosities ofRaceburst forth with fearful violence in eastern Europe. The standard of Georgey in Hungary—whom the Austrians, distracted by civil war in all their provinces, were unable to subdue—soon attracted a large part of the indignant Poles, and nearly the whole of the warlike Magyars, to the field of battle on the banks of the Danube. Not a hope seemed to remain for the great and distracted Austrian empire. Chaos had returned; society seemed resolved into its original elements; and the chief bulwark of Europe against Moscovite domination seemed on the point of being broken up into several separate states, actuated by the most violent hatred at each other, and alike incapable, singly or together, of making head against the vast and centralised power of Russia.
The first successful stand against the deluge of revolution was made in Great Britain; and there it was withstood, not by the bayonets of the soldiers, but by the batons of the citizens. The 10th April was the Waterloo of chartist rebellion in England; a memorable proof that the institutions and traditionary influences of a free people, suited to their wants, and in harmony with their dispositions, can, in such felicitous circumstances, oppose a more successful barrier to social dangers than the most powerful military force at the command of a despotic chief. Rebellion, as usual when England is in distress, broke out in Ireland; but it terminated in ridicule, and revealed at once the ingratitude and impotence of the Celtic race in the Emerald isle. But a far more serious and bloody conflict awaited the cause of order in the streets of Paris; and society there narrowly escaped the restoration of the reign of terror and the government of Robespierre. As usual in civil convulsions, the leaders of the first successful revolt soon became insupportable to their infuriated followers; a second 10th August followed, and that much more quickly than on the first occasion—a second dethronement of the Bourbons; but it was met by very different opponents. Cavaignac and the army were not so easily beat down as Louis, deserted by all the world but his faithful Swiss Guards. The contest was long, and bloody, and, for a time, it seemed more than doubtful to which side victory would incline; but at length the cause of order prevailed. The authority of the Assembly, however, was not established till above a hundred barricades had been carried at the point of the bayonet, several thousands of the insurgents slain, and eleven thousand sentenced to transportation by the courts-martial of the victorious soldiers.
Less violent in the outset, but more disastrous far in the end, were the means by which Austria was brought through the throes of her revolutionary convulsion. It was the army, and the army alone, which in the last extremity saved the state; but, unhappily, it was not the national army alone which achieved the deliverance. So violent were the passions by which the country was torn, so great the power of the rival races and nations which contended for its mastery, that the unaided strength of the monarchywas unequal to the task of subduing them. In Prague, indeed, the firmness of Windischgratz extinguished the revolt—in Italy the consummate talents of Radetsky restored victory to the imperial standards, and drove the Piedmontese to a disgraceful peace; and in the heart of the monarchy, Vienna, after a fierce struggle, was regained by the united arms of the Bohemian and Croatian. But in Hungary the Magyars were not so easily overcome. Such was the valour of that warlike race, and such the military talents of their chiefs, that, although not numbering more than a third of the population of Hungary, and an eighth of that of the whole monarchy, it was found impracticable to subdue them without external aid. The Russians, as a matter of necessity, were called in to prevent the second capture of Vienna; a hundred and fifty thousand Moscovites ere long appeared on the Hungarian plains—numbers triumphed over valour—and Austria was saved by the sacrifice of its independence. Incalculable have been the consequences of this great and decisive movement on the part of the Czar. Not less than the capture of Paris, it has fascinated and subdued the minds of men. It has rendered him the undisputed master of the east of Europe, and led to a secret alliance, offensive and defensive, which at the convenient season will open to the Russians the road to Constantinople.
At length the moment of reaction arrived in France itself, and the country, whose vehement convulsions had overturned the institutions of so many other states, was itself doomed to undergo the stern but just law of retribution. The undisguised designs of the Socialists against property of every kind, the frequent revolts, the notorious imbecility and trifling of the National Assembly, had so discredited republican institutions, that the nation was fully prepared for a change of any kind from democratic to monarchical institutions. Louis Napoleon had the advantage of a great name, and of historical associations, which raised him by a large majority to the presidency, and of able counsellors who steered him through its difficulties; but the decisive success of thecoup d'etatof December 2nd was mainly owing to the universal contempt into which the republican rulers had fallen, and the general terror which the designs of the Socialists had excited. The nation would, perhaps, not so willingly have ranged itself under the banners of any merely military chief who promised to shelter them from the evident dangers with which society was menaced; and the vigour and fidelity of the army ensured its success. The restoration of military despotism in France in 1851, after the brief and fearful reign of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" in that everchanging country, adds another to the numerous proofs which history affords, that successful revolution, by whomsoever effected, and under all imaginable diversity of nations, race, and circumstances, can end only in the empire of the sword.
But although the dangers of revolutionary convulsion have been adjourned, at least, if not entirely removed, by the general triumph of military power on the Continent, and its entire re-establishment in France, other dangers, of an equally formidable, and perhaps still more pressing, kind, have arisen from its very success. Since the battle of Waterloo all the contests in Europe have beeninternalonly. There have been many desperate and bloody struggles, but they have not been those of nation against nation, but of class with class, or race with race. No foreign wars have desolated Europe; and the whole efforts of government in every country have been directed to moderating the warlike propensities of their subjects, and preventing the fierce animosities of nationality and race from involving the world in general conflagration. So decisively was this the characteristic of the period, and so great was the difficulty in moderating the warlike dispositions of their subjects, that it seemed that the sentiment of the poet should be reversed, and it might with truth be said—