My Dear Antony,
In the great emprise of war it must often happen that the most awful scenes of manifested human power, and the most godlike deeds of human glory, are lost to the contemporary world, and utterly unknown to succeeding generations, because they were witnessed by no man with the gift of expression who could record for after time, in adequate language, the majestic spectacle.
In the great war against Germany no great writer has yet appeared who was personally in touch as a living witness of the countless deeds of glorious valour and acts of heroic endurance that were everywhere displayed upon that immense far-stretched front.
But in the wars of former times, a whole battle could be witnessed from its beginning to its end by a single commander, and no scenes in human life could be more terrible and soul-stirring than the awful ebb and flow of a great combat in which the victory of armies and the fate of nations hung in the balance.
The battle of Albuera in the Peninsular War might easily at this date have long been forgotten had not the pen of Sir William Napier been as puissant as his sword. The battle had raged for hours, and the British were well-nigh overwhelmed; the Colonel, twenty officers, and over four hundred men out of five hundred and seventy had fallen in the 57th alone; not a third were left standing in the other regiments that had been closely engaged throughout the day. Then Cole was ordered up with his fourth division as a last hope, and this is how Sir William Napier records their advance:—
"Such a gallant line, issuing from the midst of the smoke and rapidly separating itself from the confused and broken multitude, startled the enemy's masses, then augmenting and pressing onwards as to an assured victory; they wavered, hesitated, and vomiting forth a storm of fire hastily endeavoured to enlarge their front, while a fearful discharge of grape from all their artillery whistled through the British ranks ... the English battalions, struck by the iron tempest, reeled and staggered like sinking ships; but suddenly and sternly recovering, they closed on their terrible enemies, and then was seen with what a strength and majesty the British soldier fights."In vain did Soult with voice and gesture animate his Frenchmen; in vain did the hardiest veterans, breaking from the crowded columns, sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to open out on such a fair field; in vain did the mass itself bear up, and, fiercely striving, fire indiscriminately upon friends and foes, while the horsemen hovering on the flank threatened to charge the advancing line."Nothing could stop that astonishing infantry."No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm weakened the stability of their order; their flashing eyes were bent on the dark columns in their front; their measured tread shook the ground; their dreadful volleys swept away the head of every formation; their deafening shouts overpowered the dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd as slowly, and with a horrid carnage, it was pushed by the incessant vigour of the attack to the farthest edge of the height. There the French reserve, mixing with the struggling multitude, endeavoured to restore the fight, but only augmented the irremediable disorder, and the mighty mass, giving way like a loosened cliff, went headlong down the steep; the rain flowed after in streams discoloured with blood, and eighteen hundred unwounded men, the remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill!
"Such a gallant line, issuing from the midst of the smoke and rapidly separating itself from the confused and broken multitude, startled the enemy's masses, then augmenting and pressing onwards as to an assured victory; they wavered, hesitated, and vomiting forth a storm of fire hastily endeavoured to enlarge their front, while a fearful discharge of grape from all their artillery whistled through the British ranks ... the English battalions, struck by the iron tempest, reeled and staggered like sinking ships; but suddenly and sternly recovering, they closed on their terrible enemies, and then was seen with what a strength and majesty the British soldier fights.
"In vain did Soult with voice and gesture animate his Frenchmen; in vain did the hardiest veterans, breaking from the crowded columns, sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to open out on such a fair field; in vain did the mass itself bear up, and, fiercely striving, fire indiscriminately upon friends and foes, while the horsemen hovering on the flank threatened to charge the advancing line.
"Nothing could stop that astonishing infantry.
"No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm weakened the stability of their order; their flashing eyes were bent on the dark columns in their front; their measured tread shook the ground; their dreadful volleys swept away the head of every formation; their deafening shouts overpowered the dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd as slowly, and with a horrid carnage, it was pushed by the incessant vigour of the attack to the farthest edge of the height. There the French reserve, mixing with the struggling multitude, endeavoured to restore the fight, but only augmented the irremediable disorder, and the mighty mass, giving way like a loosened cliff, went headlong down the steep; the rain flowed after in streams discoloured with blood, and eighteen hundred unwounded men, the remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill!
"The laurel is nobly won when the exhausted victor reels as he places it on his bleeding front."All that night the rain poured down, and the river and the hills and the woods resounded with the dismal clamour and groans of dying men."
"The laurel is nobly won when the exhausted victor reels as he places it on his bleeding front.
"All that night the rain poured down, and the river and the hills and the woods resounded with the dismal clamour and groans of dying men."
Sir William Napier seems intimately to have known the transience of the gratitude of nations to those who fight their battles for them. At the end of his noble history of the Peninsular War he lets the curtain fall upon the scene with solemn brevity in a single sentence, thus:—
"The British infantry embarked at Bordeaux, some for America, some for England: the cavalry, marching through France, took shipping at Boulogne. Thus the war terminated, and with it all remembrance of the Veterans' services."Yet those Veterans had won nineteen pitched battles, and innumerable combats; had made or sustained ten sieges and taken four great fortresses; had twice expelled the French from Portugal, once from Spain; had penetrated France, and killed, wounded, or captured two hundred thousand enemies—leaving of their own number, forty thousand dead, whose bones, whiten the plains and mountains of the Peninsula."
"The British infantry embarked at Bordeaux, some for America, some for England: the cavalry, marching through France, took shipping at Boulogne. Thus the war terminated, and with it all remembrance of the Veterans' services.
"Yet those Veterans had won nineteen pitched battles, and innumerable combats; had made or sustained ten sieges and taken four great fortresses; had twice expelled the French from Portugal, once from Spain; had penetrated France, and killed, wounded, or captured two hundred thousand enemies—leaving of their own number, forty thousand dead, whose bones, whiten the plains and mountains of the Peninsula."
Science and the base malignity of our latest adversaries have debased modern warfare, as waged by them, from its ancient dignity and honour; and they have conducted it so as to make it difficult to believe that from the Kaiser down to the subaltern on land and the petty officer at sea that nation can produce a single gentleman.
Your loving oldG.P.
My Dear Antony,
This letter, like the last one, is concerned with war. War brings to every man not incapacitated by age or physical defects the call of his country to fight, and if need be to die, for it. It also exposes to view the few pusillanimous young men who are satisfied to enjoy protection from the horrors of invasion and the priceless boon of personal freedom, secured to them by the self-sacrifice and valour of others, while they themselves remain snugly at home and talk of their consciences.
Patriotism such as that which in 1914 led the flower of our race to flock in countless thousands to the standards and be enrolled for battle in defence of
"This precious stone set in the silver sea,"
"This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,"
being without doubt or cavil one of the noblest emotions of the human heart, has often been the begetter of inspired prose. Our own great war has not yet produced many fine utterances, and I go back to-day to a contemporary of Sir William Napier for one of the noblest outbursts of eloquence expressive of a burning patriotism that has ever been poured forth.
Someone in the days when Wellington was alive had alluded in the House of Lords to the Irish as "aliens," and Richard Sheil, rising in the House of Commons, lifted up his voice for his country in an impassioned flight of generous eloquence.
Sir Henry Hardinge, who had been at the battle of Waterloo, happened to be seated opposite to Sheil in the House, and to him Sheil appealed with the deepest emotion to support him in his vindication of his country's valour. None will in these days deny that our fellow-citizens of Ireland who went to the war displayed a courage as firm and invincible as our own:—
"The Duke of Wellington is not, I am inclined to believe, a man of excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking, that when he heard his countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase so offensive he ought to have recalled the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. Yes, the battles, sieges, fortunes, that he has passed ought to have brought back upon him, that from the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has made his name imperishable, the Irish soldiers, with whom our armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to his glory."Whose were the athletic arms that drove their bayonets at Vimiera through those phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war before? What desperate valour climbed the steeps and filled the moats at Badajos! All! all his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory—Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuera, Toulouse, and last of all the greatest! (and here Sheil pointed to Sir Henry Hardinge across the House). Tell me, for you were there. I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast; tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance, while death fell in showers upon them, when the artillery of France, levelled with a precision of the most deadly science, played upon them, when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset—tell me if for one instant, when to hesitate for one instant was to be lost, the 'aliens' blenched!"And when at length the moment for the last and decisive movement had arrived, and the valour which had so long been wisely cheeked was at length let loose, tell me if Ireland with less heroic valour than the natives of your own glorious isle, precipitated herself upon the foe?"The blood of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in the same stream, on the same field. When the still morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together; in the same deep earth their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from Heaven upon their union in the grave."Partners in every peril—in the glory shall we not be permitted to participate, and shall we be told as a requital that we are aliens, and estranged from the noble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out?"
"The Duke of Wellington is not, I am inclined to believe, a man of excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking, that when he heard his countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase so offensive he ought to have recalled the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. Yes, the battles, sieges, fortunes, that he has passed ought to have brought back upon him, that from the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has made his name imperishable, the Irish soldiers, with whom our armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to his glory.
"Whose were the athletic arms that drove their bayonets at Vimiera through those phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of war before? What desperate valour climbed the steeps and filled the moats at Badajos! All! all his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory—Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuera, Toulouse, and last of all the greatest! (and here Sheil pointed to Sir Henry Hardinge across the House). Tell me, for you were there. I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast; tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance, while death fell in showers upon them, when the artillery of France, levelled with a precision of the most deadly science, played upon them, when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset—tell me if for one instant, when to hesitate for one instant was to be lost, the 'aliens' blenched!
"And when at length the moment for the last and decisive movement had arrived, and the valour which had so long been wisely cheeked was at length let loose, tell me if Ireland with less heroic valour than the natives of your own glorious isle, precipitated herself upon the foe?
"The blood of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in the same stream, on the same field. When the still morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together; in the same deep earth their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from Heaven upon their union in the grave.
"Partners in every peril—in the glory shall we not be permitted to participate, and shall we be told as a requital that we are aliens, and estranged from the noble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out?"
A hundred years of strife, misunderstanding, anger, estrangement, outrages, bloodshed, and murder separate us from this appealing cry wrung from the beating heart of this inspired Irishman. Is the great tragedy of England and Ireland that has sullied their annals for seven hundred years never to be brought to an end? Is there never to be for us a Lethe through which we may pass to the farther shore of forgetfulness and forgiveness of the past and reconciliation in the future?
That you may live to see it, Antony, is my hope and prayer.
Your loving oldG.P.
My Dear Antony,
I gave you in a former letter Burke's famous passage on the fate of Marie Antoinette—in some ways the most splendid of his utterances,—and I now am going to quote to you a very great passage from Thomas Carlyle on the same tragic subject.
Courageous was it of Carlyle, who must certainly have been familiar with Burke's noble ejaculation, to challenge it with emulation; but in the result we must admit that he amply justifies his temerity.
The tragic figure of the queen drawn to execution through the roaring mob inspired Carlyle with what is surely his most overwhelming product.
The august shadow of the Bible is dimly apprehended as the words ascend upwards and upwards with simple sublimity to the awful close.
Nothing he wrote in all his multitudinous volumes surpasses this astonishing outburst:—
"Beautiful Highborn that wert so foully hurled low!"For, if thy being came to thee out of old Hapsburg Dynasties, came it not also out of Heaven?Sunt lachrymæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt. Oh! is there a man's heart that thinks without pity of those long months and years of slow-wasting ignominy;—of thy birth soft-cradled, the winds of Heaven not to visit thy face too roughly, thy foot to light on softness, thy eye on splendour; and then of thy death, or hundred deaths, to which the guillotine and Fouquier Tinville's judgment was but the merciful end?"Lookthere, O man born of woman! The bloom of that fair face is wasted, the hair is grey with care; the brightness of those eyes is quenched, their lids hang drooping, the face is stony pale as of one living in death."Mean weeds which her own hand has mended attire the Queen of the World. The death-hurdle, where thou sittest pale, motionless, which only curses environ, has to stop—a people drunk with vengeance will drink it again in full draught, looking at thee there. Far as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of maniac heads, the air deaf with their triumph-yell!"The living-dead must shudder with yet one more pang; her startled blood yet again suffuses with the hue of agony that pale face, which she hides with her hands."There is, then,noheart to say, 'God pity thee'?"O think not of these: think of Him Whom thou worshippest, the Crucified—Who also treading the winepress alone, fronted sorrow still deeper, and triumphed over it, and made it holy, and built of it a Sanctuary of Sorrow for thee and all the wretched!"Thy path of thorns is nigh ended. One long last look at the Tuileries, where thy step was once so light—where thy children shall not dwell."Thy head is on the block; the axe rushes—dumb lies the world; that wild-yelling world, and all its madness, is behind thee."
"Beautiful Highborn that wert so foully hurled low!
"For, if thy being came to thee out of old Hapsburg Dynasties, came it not also out of Heaven?Sunt lachrymæ rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt. Oh! is there a man's heart that thinks without pity of those long months and years of slow-wasting ignominy;—of thy birth soft-cradled, the winds of Heaven not to visit thy face too roughly, thy foot to light on softness, thy eye on splendour; and then of thy death, or hundred deaths, to which the guillotine and Fouquier Tinville's judgment was but the merciful end?
"Lookthere, O man born of woman! The bloom of that fair face is wasted, the hair is grey with care; the brightness of those eyes is quenched, their lids hang drooping, the face is stony pale as of one living in death.
"Mean weeds which her own hand has mended attire the Queen of the World. The death-hurdle, where thou sittest pale, motionless, which only curses environ, has to stop—a people drunk with vengeance will drink it again in full draught, looking at thee there. Far as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of maniac heads, the air deaf with their triumph-yell!
"The living-dead must shudder with yet one more pang; her startled blood yet again suffuses with the hue of agony that pale face, which she hides with her hands.
"There is, then,noheart to say, 'God pity thee'?
"O think not of these: think of Him Whom thou worshippest, the Crucified—Who also treading the winepress alone, fronted sorrow still deeper, and triumphed over it, and made it holy, and built of it a Sanctuary of Sorrow for thee and all the wretched!
"Thy path of thorns is nigh ended. One long last look at the Tuileries, where thy step was once so light—where thy children shall not dwell.
"Thy head is on the block; the axe rushes—dumb lies the world; that wild-yelling world, and all its madness, is behind thee."
There is a passage in Carlyle's tempestuous narrative of the taking of the Bastille which has always seemed to me to give it the last consummate touch of greatness.
Suddenly he pauses in the turmoil and dust and wrath and madness of that tremendous conflict, and his poetic vision gazes away over peaceful France, and he exclaims:—
"O evening sun of July, how, at this hour thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out on the silent main; on balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high rouged Dames of the palace are even now dancing with double-jacketed Hussar-officers:—and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hôtel de Ville."
"O evening sun of July, how, at this hour thy beams fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far out on the silent main; on balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high rouged Dames of the palace are even now dancing with double-jacketed Hussar-officers:—and also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hôtel de Ville."
And a few sentences further on a heart of stone must be moved by what the archives of that grim prison-house revealed:—
"Old secrets come to view; and long-buried despair finds voice. Read this portion of an old letter."'If for my consolation Monseigneur would grant me, for the sake of God and the Most Blessed Trinity, that I could have news of my dear wife; were it only her name on a card, to show that she is alive! It were the greatest consolation I could receive; and I should for ever bless the greatness of Monseigneur.'"Poor prisoner, who namest thyself Queret-Demery, and hast no other history,—she is dead, that dear wife of thine, and thou art dead! Tis fifty years since thy breaking heart put this question; to be heard now first, and long heard, in the hearts of men. "
"Old secrets come to view; and long-buried despair finds voice. Read this portion of an old letter.
"'If for my consolation Monseigneur would grant me, for the sake of God and the Most Blessed Trinity, that I could have news of my dear wife; were it only her name on a card, to show that she is alive! It were the greatest consolation I could receive; and I should for ever bless the greatness of Monseigneur.'
"Poor prisoner, who namest thyself Queret-Demery, and hast no other history,—she is dead, that dear wife of thine, and thou art dead! Tis fifty years since thy breaking heart put this question; to be heard now first, and long heard, in the hearts of men. "
In the reign of Louis XV. alone, there were no less than fifteen thousandlettres de cachetissued, by which anyone could be suddenly arrested, and, without trial, and, heedless of protest, imprisoned perhaps for life in the Bastille.
In the excesses of the Reign of Terror three or four thousand persons perished. Their deaths were spectacular, and have covered with execrations their dreadful executioners.
But it is right that we should remember, Antony, the life-long agony and the unutterable despair of the victims of that remorselessly cruel system which the Revolution overthrew.
The chapter on the "Everlasting Yea," inSartor Resartus, seems to me to come nearer to the above excerpts than anything else in Carlyle, though at a perceptible distance:—
"O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see!"But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning of Creation is—Light. Till the eye have vision the whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tossed Soul, as once over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: 'Let there be Light!' Even to the greatest that has felt such moment is it not miraculous and God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely-jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deep, silent rock-foundations are built beneath, and the skyey vault, with its everlasting Luminaries, above; instead of a dark, wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed World."I, too, could now say to myself: 'Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee; out with it then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh wherein no man can work.'"
"O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see!
"But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning of Creation is—Light. Till the eye have vision the whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tossed Soul, as once over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: 'Let there be Light!' Even to the greatest that has felt such moment is it not miraculous and God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely-jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deep, silent rock-foundations are built beneath, and the skyey vault, with its everlasting Luminaries, above; instead of a dark, wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed World.
"I, too, could now say to myself: 'Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee; out with it then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh wherein no man can work.'"
There is another passage inSartor Resartuswhich I have always held in veneration, though the field labourer is not now so "hardly-entreated" as when Carlyle wrote of him:—
"Two men I honour, and no third. First the toilworn Craftsman that with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth, and makes her man's."Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue indefeasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of labour; and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on;thouart in thy duty, be out of it who may: thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread."A second man I honour, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards inward harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour are one: when we can name him artist; not earthly craftsman only, but inspired thinker, who with heaven-made implement conquers heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have light, have guidance, freedom, immortality? These two, in all their degrees, I honour; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth."Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a peasant saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of earth, like a light shining in great darkness."
"Two men I honour, and no third. First the toilworn Craftsman that with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth, and makes her man's.
"Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue indefeasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of labour; and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on;thouart in thy duty, be out of it who may: thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread.
"A second man I honour, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards inward harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour are one: when we can name him artist; not earthly craftsman only, but inspired thinker, who with heaven-made implement conquers heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have light, have guidance, freedom, immortality? These two, in all their degrees, I honour; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth.
"Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a peasant saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of earth, like a light shining in great darkness."
Sartor Resartushas long taken its place among the greatest prose works of the nineteenth century, and it is a strange commentary on this mandate to us all to "produce, produce!" to find that for eleven years Carlyle could find no publisher who would give it in book form to the world!
It is a solemn reflection to think that there may be many books of eloquence and splendour that have never seen the light of publicity. Publishers concern themselves less with what is finely written than with what will best sell; and in their defence it may be acceded that some of the masterpieces of literature have at their first appearance before the world fallen dead from the press.
The first edition of FitzGerald'sOmar Khayyám, issued at one shilling, was totally unrecognised, and copies of it might have been bought for twopence in the trays and boxes of trash on the pavement outside old bookshops!
But if once a work is published, time will with almost irresistible force place it ultimately in the station it deserves in the literature of the world.
Instant acceptance not seldom preludes final rejection. In the middle of the last century Martin Tupper'sProverbial Philosophygarnished every drawing-room table; and now, where is it?
Your loving oldG.P.
P.S.—Do not look for the passage on Marie Antoinette in theFrench Revolution, for you will not find it there, but in the "Essay of the Diamond Necklace."
My Dear Antony,
You and I once had a cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge, who, had he lived, would very certainly have left a brilliant addition to the lustre of the name he bore. He was born in 1798, and only lived forty-five years, dying when his powers were leading him to high fortune in that legal profession which so many of the family have pursued.
He was a scholar of Eton; a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge; he won the Greek and Latin Odes in 1820, and the Greek Ode again in 1821. To him, therefore, the classic spirit was inborn, and a training that omitted the study of Latin and Greek the very negation of education. He would have had something very trenchant to say of what is now known as "the modern side." He wrote a very rich and splendid prose, and it is no fond family partiality that leads me to quote to you his eloquent and precious defence of the classical languages:—
"I am not one whose lot it has been to grow old in literary retirement, devoted to classical studies with an exclusiveness which might lead to an overweening estimate of these two noble languages. Few, I will not say evil, were the days allowed to me for such pursuits; and I was constrained, still young and an unripe scholar to forego them for the duties of an active and laborious profession. They are now amusements only, however delightful and improving. For I am far from assuming to understand all their riches, all their beauty, or all their power; yet I can profoundly feel their immeasurable superiority in many important respects to all we call modern; and I would fain think that there are many even among my younger readers who can now, or will hereafter, sympathise with the expression of my ardent admiration."Greek—the shrine of the genius of the old world; as universal as our race, as individual as ourselves; of infinite flexibility, or indefatigable strength, with the complication and the distinctness of Nature herself; to which nothing was vulgar, from which nothing was excluded; speaking to the ear like Italian, speaking to the mind like English; with words like pictures, with words like the gossamer films of the summer; at once the variety and picturesqueness of Homer; the gloom and the intensity of Æschylus; not compressed to the closest by Thucydides, nor fathomed to the bottom by Plato; not sounding with all its thunders, nor lit up with all its ardours even under the Promethean touch of Demosthenes!"And Latin—the voice of empire and of war, of law and of the state, inferior to its half-parent and rival in the embodying of passion and in the distinguishing of thought, but equal to it in sustaining the measured march of history; and superior to it in the indignant declamation of moral satire; stamped with the mark of an imperial and despotising republic; rigid in its construction, parsimonious in its synonyms; reluctantly yielding to the flowery yoke of Horace, although opening glimpses of Greek-like splendour in the occasional inspirations of Lucretius; proved indeed, to the uttermost, by Cicero, and by him found wanting; yet majestic in its bareness, impressive in its conciseness; the true language of history, instinct with the spirit of nations and not with the passions of individuals; breathing the maxims of the world, and not the tenets of the schools; one and uniform in its air and spirit, whether touched by the stern and haughty Sallust, by the open and discursive Livy, by the reserved and thoughtful Tacitus."These inestimable advantages, which no modern skill can wholly counterpoise, are known and felt by the scholar alone. He has not failed, in the sweet and silent studies of his youth, to drink deep at those sacred fountains of all that is just and beautiful in human language."The thoughts and the words of the master-spirits of Greece and of Rome, are inseparably blended in his memory; a sense of their marvellous harmonies, their exquisite fitness, their consummate polish, has sunk for ever in his heart, and thence throws out light and fragrancy upon the gloom and the annoyance of his maturer years. No avocations of professional labour will make him abandon their wholesome study; in the midst of a thousand cares he will find an hour to recur to his boyish lessons—to reperuse them in the pleasurable consciousness of old associations, and in the clearness of manly judgment, and to apply them to himself and to the world with superior profit."The more extended his sphere of learning in the literature of modern Europe, the more deeply, though the more wisely, will he reverence that of classical antiquity; and in declining age, when the appetite for magazines and reviews, and the ten-times repeated trash of the day, has failed, he will retire, as it were, within a circle of school-fellow friends, and end his secular studies as he began them, with his Homer, his Horace, and his Shakespeare."
"I am not one whose lot it has been to grow old in literary retirement, devoted to classical studies with an exclusiveness which might lead to an overweening estimate of these two noble languages. Few, I will not say evil, were the days allowed to me for such pursuits; and I was constrained, still young and an unripe scholar to forego them for the duties of an active and laborious profession. They are now amusements only, however delightful and improving. For I am far from assuming to understand all their riches, all their beauty, or all their power; yet I can profoundly feel their immeasurable superiority in many important respects to all we call modern; and I would fain think that there are many even among my younger readers who can now, or will hereafter, sympathise with the expression of my ardent admiration.
"Greek—the shrine of the genius of the old world; as universal as our race, as individual as ourselves; of infinite flexibility, or indefatigable strength, with the complication and the distinctness of Nature herself; to which nothing was vulgar, from which nothing was excluded; speaking to the ear like Italian, speaking to the mind like English; with words like pictures, with words like the gossamer films of the summer; at once the variety and picturesqueness of Homer; the gloom and the intensity of Æschylus; not compressed to the closest by Thucydides, nor fathomed to the bottom by Plato; not sounding with all its thunders, nor lit up with all its ardours even under the Promethean touch of Demosthenes!
"And Latin—the voice of empire and of war, of law and of the state, inferior to its half-parent and rival in the embodying of passion and in the distinguishing of thought, but equal to it in sustaining the measured march of history; and superior to it in the indignant declamation of moral satire; stamped with the mark of an imperial and despotising republic; rigid in its construction, parsimonious in its synonyms; reluctantly yielding to the flowery yoke of Horace, although opening glimpses of Greek-like splendour in the occasional inspirations of Lucretius; proved indeed, to the uttermost, by Cicero, and by him found wanting; yet majestic in its bareness, impressive in its conciseness; the true language of history, instinct with the spirit of nations and not with the passions of individuals; breathing the maxims of the world, and not the tenets of the schools; one and uniform in its air and spirit, whether touched by the stern and haughty Sallust, by the open and discursive Livy, by the reserved and thoughtful Tacitus.
"These inestimable advantages, which no modern skill can wholly counterpoise, are known and felt by the scholar alone. He has not failed, in the sweet and silent studies of his youth, to drink deep at those sacred fountains of all that is just and beautiful in human language.
"The thoughts and the words of the master-spirits of Greece and of Rome, are inseparably blended in his memory; a sense of their marvellous harmonies, their exquisite fitness, their consummate polish, has sunk for ever in his heart, and thence throws out light and fragrancy upon the gloom and the annoyance of his maturer years. No avocations of professional labour will make him abandon their wholesome study; in the midst of a thousand cares he will find an hour to recur to his boyish lessons—to reperuse them in the pleasurable consciousness of old associations, and in the clearness of manly judgment, and to apply them to himself and to the world with superior profit.
"The more extended his sphere of learning in the literature of modern Europe, the more deeply, though the more wisely, will he reverence that of classical antiquity; and in declining age, when the appetite for magazines and reviews, and the ten-times repeated trash of the day, has failed, he will retire, as it were, within a circle of school-fellow friends, and end his secular studies as he began them, with his Homer, his Horace, and his Shakespeare."
Ah, what an echo, Antony, every word of this beautiful passage finds in my own heart, only saddened with the poignant regret that the necessary business and occupation of the passing years have dulled for me such unpolished facility, as I may once have possessed, for perusing my Homer and my Horace!
It is, indeed, rare in these days to find gentlemen as familiar as were their forebears with Latin and Greek. You, Antony, will probably find yourself as you grow up in like case with myself, but there will remain for your unending instruction and delight all the glories of English literature, to give you a taste for which these few letters of mine are written, plucking only a single flower here and there from the most wonderful garden in the world.
Your loving oldG.P.
My Dear Antony,
Cardinal Newman, of whom I shall write to-day, was the first of the great writers born in the nineteenth century, and he lived from 1801 to 1890. Besides being a master of English prose he was no mean poet; but above all else he was a man of immense personal power, which was strangely associated with a manifest saintliness which compelled diffidence from those admitted to his intimacy.
I have described him as I knew him in myMemories;[1]and now will quote to you his utterance on music and its effect upon the heart of man, which has always seemed to me too precious to leave buried in a sermon:—
"Let us take an instance, of an outward and earthly form, or economy, under which great wonders unknown seem to be typified; I mean musical sounds as they are exhibited most perfectly in instrumental harmony."There are seven notes in the scale; make them fourteen; yet what a slender outfit for so vast an enterprise! What Science brings so much out of so little? out of what poor elements does some great master in it create his new world!"Shall we say that all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere ingenuity or trick of art, like some game or fashion of the day, without reality, without meaning? We may do so; and then, perhaps, we shall also account theology to be a matter of words; yet, as there is a divinity in the theology of the Church, which those who feel cannot communicate, so is there also in the wonderful creation of sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking. To many men the very names which the Science employs are utterly incomprehensible. To speak of an idea or a subject seems to be fanciful or trifling, to speak of the views which it opens upon us to be childish extravagance; yet is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound, which is gone and perishes?"Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself? It is not so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from some higher sphere, they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound; they are echoes from our home; they are the voice of angels or the magnificat of Saints, or the living laws of Divine Governance, or the Divinic attributes; something are they besides themselves, which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter,—though mortal man, and he perhaps not otherwise distinguished above his fellows, has the gift of eliciting them."
"Let us take an instance, of an outward and earthly form, or economy, under which great wonders unknown seem to be typified; I mean musical sounds as they are exhibited most perfectly in instrumental harmony.
"There are seven notes in the scale; make them fourteen; yet what a slender outfit for so vast an enterprise! What Science brings so much out of so little? out of what poor elements does some great master in it create his new world!
"Shall we say that all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere ingenuity or trick of art, like some game or fashion of the day, without reality, without meaning? We may do so; and then, perhaps, we shall also account theology to be a matter of words; yet, as there is a divinity in the theology of the Church, which those who feel cannot communicate, so is there also in the wonderful creation of sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking. To many men the very names which the Science employs are utterly incomprehensible. To speak of an idea or a subject seems to be fanciful or trifling, to speak of the views which it opens upon us to be childish extravagance; yet is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound, which is gone and perishes?
"Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself? It is not so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from some higher sphere, they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound; they are echoes from our home; they are the voice of angels or the magnificat of Saints, or the living laws of Divine Governance, or the Divinic attributes; something are they besides themselves, which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter,—though mortal man, and he perhaps not otherwise distinguished above his fellows, has the gift of eliciting them."
Of quite another order is the Cardinal's description of a gentleman. Here there is no flight of poetical imagination, but a manifestation of felicitous intuition and penetrating insight as rare as it is convincing, and the generous wide vision of a man of the world, undimmed by the faintest trace of prejudice:—
"Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature: like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them."The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast; all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make everyone at their ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation and never wearisome."He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice."He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain because it is inevitable, to bereavement because it is irreparable, and to death because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds, who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength in trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust, he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive."Nowhere shall we find greater candour, consideration, indulgence; he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province, and its limits. If he be an unbeliever he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent; he honours the ministers of religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling which is the attendant on civilisation."Not that he may not hold a religion too, in his own way, even when he is not a Christian. In that case his religion is one of imagination and sentiment; it is the embodiment of those ideas of the sublime, majestic, and beautiful, without which there can be no large philosophy. Sometimes he acknowledges the Being of God, sometimes he invests an unknown principle or quality with the attributes of perfection. And this deduction of his reason, or creation of his fancy, he makes the occasion of such excellent thoughts, and the starting-point of so varied and systematic a teaching, that he even seems like a disciple of Christianity itself. From the very accuracy and steadiness of his logical powers, he is able to see what sentiments are consistent in those who hold any religious doctrine at all, and he appears to others to feel and to hold a whole circle of theological truths, which exist in his mind no otherwise than as a number of deductions."Such are the lineaments of the ethical character which the cultivated intellect will form apart from religious principle."
"Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature: like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them.
"The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast; all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make everyone at their ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation and never wearisome.
"He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice.
"He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain because it is inevitable, to bereavement because it is irreparable, and to death because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds, who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength in trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust, he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive.
"Nowhere shall we find greater candour, consideration, indulgence; he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province, and its limits. If he be an unbeliever he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent; he honours the ministers of religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling which is the attendant on civilisation.
"Not that he may not hold a religion too, in his own way, even when he is not a Christian. In that case his religion is one of imagination and sentiment; it is the embodiment of those ideas of the sublime, majestic, and beautiful, without which there can be no large philosophy. Sometimes he acknowledges the Being of God, sometimes he invests an unknown principle or quality with the attributes of perfection. And this deduction of his reason, or creation of his fancy, he makes the occasion of such excellent thoughts, and the starting-point of so varied and systematic a teaching, that he even seems like a disciple of Christianity itself. From the very accuracy and steadiness of his logical powers, he is able to see what sentiments are consistent in those who hold any religious doctrine at all, and he appears to others to feel and to hold a whole circle of theological truths, which exist in his mind no otherwise than as a number of deductions.
"Such are the lineaments of the ethical character which the cultivated intellect will form apart from religious principle."
Surely this is a wonderful utterance from a Cardinal of the Church of Rome, full of urbanity and the wisdom of the world.
Your loving oldG.P.
[1]
Pp. 52-57.
Pp. 52-57.
My Dear Antony,
I have in a former letter quoted a short but noble passage from Lord Macaulay on the great Lord Chatham.
But I feel that the writer who was perhaps the greatest essayist that England has ever produced must not in these letters be fobbed off with so slight a notice and quotation.
What has always seemed to me the supremest passage that flowed from his wonderful pen is to be found in his paper on Warren Hastings which appeared originally in theEdinburgh Review.
His description in that essay of the opening of the great impeachment, has given all succeeding generations a vision of one of the most majestic scenes in the whole history of man.
"There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at Westminster; but, perhaps, there never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilisation were now displayed, with every advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. The High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude."The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under Garter King-at-Arms. The judges in their vestments of state attended to give advice on points of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the Upper House as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. The junior Baron present led the way, George Eliot, Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his memorable defence of Gibraltar against the fleets and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. The grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. There were seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the House of Brunswick. There the Ambassadors of great Kings and Commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his labours in that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged repartees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire."The Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne himself, that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated also habitual self-possession and self-respect, a high and intellectual forehead, a brow pensive, but not gloomy, a mouth of inflexible decision, a face pale and worn, but serene, on which was written, as legibly as under the picture in the council-chamber at Calcutta,Mens æqua in arduis; such was the aspect with which the great Proconsul presented himself to his judges. "
"There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at Westminster; but, perhaps, there never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and to the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilisation were now displayed, with every advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. The High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude.
"The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under Garter King-at-Arms. The judges in their vestments of state attended to give advice on points of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the Upper House as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. The junior Baron present led the way, George Eliot, Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his memorable defence of Gibraltar against the fleets and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed by the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. The grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and of every art. There were seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the House of Brunswick. There the Ambassadors of great Kings and Commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his labours in that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged repartees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague. And there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.
"The Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country, had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne himself, that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated also habitual self-possession and self-respect, a high and intellectual forehead, a brow pensive, but not gloomy, a mouth of inflexible decision, a face pale and worn, but serene, on which was written, as legibly as under the picture in the council-chamber at Calcutta,Mens æqua in arduis; such was the aspect with which the great Proconsul presented himself to his judges. "
Such a scene can only find its appropriate enactment at the centre of a great empire and amid a people with an august history behind them, conscious of present magnificence and confident of future glory.
We are now far into the second century since that memorable spectacle filled to the walls the great Hall of Westminster.
What was an oligarchy permeated by a fine spirit of liberty and adorned by the sacred principle of personal freedom, has been superseded by a socialistic democracy under which personal freedom suffers frequent curtailments, and liberty is severely abridged by the mandates of trade unions, the prohibitions of urban potentates, and the usurpations of medicine men.
Under these cramping and crippling deprivations we have lost the collective sense of greatness as a race that infused every participator in the splendid pageant of such an event as the Impeachment of Warren Hastings. One has but to imagine an impeachment to-day with the dominant personages in it chosen from the strike leaders and labour delegates of the proletariat, assisted by promoted railway porters and ennobled grocers, to perceive what a distance, and down what a declivity we have travelled since those days when it was impossible for any great public function to take place without its becoming naturally and without conscious effort the occasion for a manifestation of the pomp, circumstance, and splendour inseparable from the solemn acts of a great people performed by their greatest men.
But I am one, Antony, who look forward with steadfast hope and belief to a reaction from our present vulgarity, and to a reascension of England to a greater dignity, honour, and nobleness both in its public and private life than is observable to-day.
Your loving oldG.P.
My Dear Antony,
I have not in my letters to you travelled beyond our own islands in search of great English prose, but I propose now to make one divergence from this rule and quote a very great and deservedly far-famed speech, uttered on a memorable occasion, of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States.
At the present time, I think, the name of Lincoln lies closer to the hearts of the American people than that of any other, not even excepting Washington and Hamilton. The latter, though they established American independence, remained in a personal sense English gentlemen till their death. Lincoln was born in the backwoods in rude poverty, received no education but what he acquired by his own unaided efforts, and lived and died a man of the people, the ideal type of native-born American.
He rose from the lowest to the highest position in the State, borne upwards by the simple nobility of his character, by the stainless purity of his actions, and the splendid motive of all his endeavours. His speeches and writings derive their power and distinction from no tricks of oratory, felicity of diction, or nimbleness of mind. They are the vocal results of the beatings of his great heart.
He led his people to war in the manner of a prophet of Israel; with an awful austerity, majestic, invincible, and with hand uplifted in sure appeal to the God of battles. On the field of Gettysburg, where was waged the most tremendous of all combats of the war, he came to dedicate a cemetery to the innumerable dead, and these were his few and noble words:—