Page images
PDF
EPUB

No. 814.-7 January, 1860.

CONTENTS.

PAGE.

9. Is a Triumph over China Desirable?

3. Last Voyage of Sir John Franklin, by Capt. Os

born, R.N.,

4. Cuban Literature,

5. The Lost Child-A Chinese Story,

6. Moral Strength of England,

7. France and Italy,

8. European Difficulties,.

10. To Pekin and Back Again,

Once a Week,

1. Pitt and Canning-Fifty years of Political History, Fraser's Magazine, 2. Sir James Stephen,

46

66

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Saturday Review,

11. Royal Geographical Society-Sir John Franklin, Press, 12. The Republican Court,

[ocr errors]

13. Yo-hamité Valley, California,

National Intelligencer,
Independent,

₫** *5999888588

3

22

25

37

43

48

49

50

52

53

57

62

POETRY.-Three Phases, 2. The Last Words of Juggling Jerry, 56. Back, 61. Scotch Argument for Marriage, 61. The Day of Death, 64. Dream-Nowadays, 64. Tears, 64.

The Friends to

Love's Young

SHORT ARTICLES.-Disinfectant, 21. Water Gas, Wilmington, D., 42. Steam on the Amazon, 42. The Mediterranean, 47. Symbolic Anglo-German Vocabulary, 59. An African Legend, 59. Causes of the Irregularity of Teeth, 59.

In the next number we shall begin to pubi a Story by the Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe," etc.

NEW BOOKS.

STORIES OF HENRY AND HENRIETTA. Translated from the French of Abel Dufresne. By H. B. A. Illustrated by Billings. T. O. H. P. Burnham, Boston.

APELLES AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. A Novel. By the Author of "Ernest Carroll.” T. O. H. P. Burnham, Boston.

THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER, or The Black Brothers. A Legend of Stiria. By John Ruskin, M.A. Illustrated by Richard Doyle. Mayhew & Baker, Boston.

HOW COULD HE HELP IT? or The Heart Triumphant. By A. S. Roe. Derby & Jackson, New York.

HITS AT AMERICAN THINGS, AND HINTS FOR HOME USE. By Frederic W. Sawyer. Walker, Wise, & Co., Boston.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL, SON, & CO., BOSTON.

For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually for warded free of postage.

Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six vc'umes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound. packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume.

ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers.

ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value.

THREE PHASES. PHASE I.

FAR o'er the azure depths, in which the earth Reposes now as at its primal birth, Imagination takes a daring flight,

And penetrates to realms remote and bright. Thought chases thought, and in the crowded race,

A bridge of beauty quivers over space;
An arc created in youth's golden dreams,
As fragile as the floating web which seems
A skein unravelled from an Iris-bow,
To glisten on the summer air below.
But tho' so fragile, o'er it fancies fly,"
And mock the limits of earth's boundary;
Within the furnace of the brain they burn,
And darting upward into space, return
Bright with attrition of some lustrous sphere,
Or laden with the treasures gathered there.
Or some have caught, from wing of astral breeze,
The mystic whispers of the Pleiades,
And then, deep-shadowed in youth's glances,
dwell

Those dreamy looks the painter loves so well.
But other fancies from his teeming brain,
Fly o'er the void, and ne'er come back again :
They find within that far ethereal sea,
Beauty with theirs, in strange affinity;
A force mysterious lures them to the shore,
And they are lost to youth for evermore.
But soon these visions mystical depart,
And Love assumes his throne to rule the heart;
And tho' a despot, yet his soft control,
Like sweet bells, chimes within an inner soul,
Deep, deep within, a bliss he bids arise,
And all things range themselves in melodies;
The streams of life to music's murmurs flow,
And in youth's heart there falls "love's purple
glow."

Then do emotions new exert their might,
And song translates the language of delight;
E'en as the skylark bathes her soaring wings
In balmy waves of air, and, ravished, sings
In wanton joy: so youth, with passion new,
Sends up his glad notes to the heaven's blue;
Sends up his wild notes upon pinions strong,
And scatters happiness in shreds of song.
Yes, sweetest Eoline, he sings to thee,
In accents soft as that low melody
Which evening breezes whisper in the ear
Of bending reeds, when not a sound is near.

PHASE II.

Oh man, arise, before thee lies the goal;
Arise! cast off the lethargy of soul,
Which poesy and song around thee fling;
Put by thy trembling lyre, thy harp unstring,
Bid music cease, and fold thy poet's wing:
Life is the call.

Thy manhood doth demand a sterner theme
Than beauteous phantoms of thy early dream,

[blocks in formation]

Deeply we have quaffed together,
Passion fervent, love sincere ;
But the chalice is not empty-

Some hath gone, but much is here.
In vain the world has brought us sorrow,
You have been my solace true;
Every wave of adverse fortune
Hath been bravely stemmed by you.
Ecstasy of joys departed

Leaves behind no feeble light;
Chastened love is love augmented-
There is strength in gentle might.
What tho' now a line of silver
Glistens in your raven hair?
In playful mood, with loving finger,
Time too soon hath placed it there.
At this moment, orange-blossoms

Midst your tresses seem to twine,
And their perfume lingers sweetly
Round the brow of Eoline.

Yet, dear love, 'tis twenty summers
Crown the term of wedded life,
And garlands hang all down the vista,
Placed there by a perfect wife.

-All The Year Round.

From Fraser's Magazine.

PITT AND CANNING.

FIFTY YEARS OF POLITICAL HISTORY.

How much the history of a great man is the history of a nation, how little valuable is opinion, and how invaluable genius and character, is the moral of the fifty years we now propose to review-the half century which terminated with the death of Canning.

words of a great man-haughty and arrogant words often-but haughty and arrogant be cause the speaker, in the pride of his integ rity, scorned all meanness and baseness and finesse. "I come not here armed at all points with law cases and acts of parliament, with the statute-book doubled down in dogsears, to defend the cause of liberty!" he exclaimed, with fine scorn, in answer to Grenville's argument on our right to tax the colonies. "Such are your well-known char

WE are glad that Mr. Stapleton has given us these memorials of the last of our authentic political leaders. Canning was the heir of great ancestors, and he was not unworthy of his heritage. Yet the oblivion which afflicts the great actor or the great speaker, has to the pupil of Pitt proved even more destructive than to others. Stet nominis umbra. A few brilliant trifles are all that remain of a poli-acters and abilities," he said, addressing the tician unrivalled among his contemporaries government of Lord North, "that sure I am for sagacity and vigor. Canning possessed in that any plan of reconciliation, however modperfection that clear, quick, resolute, nervous erate, wise, and feasible, must fail in your grasp which we find in Chatham, in Pitt, in hands. Who, then, can wonder that you Fox. At present, oscillating between rash- should put a negative on any measure which ness and timidity, we drift helplessly into must annihilate your power, deprive you of peace or war; then we went knowing what your emoluments, and at once reduce you to we wanted, and determining the course we that state of insignificance for which God were to follow. and nature designed you?" Again, when Lord Rockingham's administration solicited his support, "Pardon me, gentlemen," he said, bowing to them with that superb and haughty courtesy with which, more than with any other characteristic, we identify him; "confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged The great commoner is the most imposing bosom." Most of the speeches he made in figure which the last century produced. His defence of the revolted colonists are grand shadow stretches across it like the shadow of and vehement. "As an Englishman by birth a colossus. Chatham was by no means, in- and principle, I recognize to the Americans deed, a completely furnished, or well-balanced their supreme inalienable right to their prop statesman. A certain splendor and slovenli- erty-a right which they are justified to defend ness mingle in his character. His sister used till the last extremity. To maintain this printo say that her brother knew nothing accu-ciple is the common cause of the Whigs on rately except the Faery Queen. But a poli- the other side of the Atlantic and on this. tician who, in the eighteenth century, could muse with delight over the purest and most noble work of the English imagination, probably stood very much alone among his contemporaries, and must have owned certain rare and elevated virtues, and a generous and vivid genius. What his speeches were can now be at best vaguely guessed; but even yet these "shreds of unconnected eloquence" remain in their way unrivalled. They are struck with the authentic fire of the imagination of the imagination in the full sweep of excited and eloquent emotion. Half a dozen of these "luminous sentences" are almost all that continue notable to us in fifty years of political history. They are the masterful

[blocks in formation]

"Tis liberty to liberty engaged,' that they will defend themselves, their families, and their country. In this cause they are immovably allied; it is the alliance of God and nature-immutable, eternal-fixed as the firmament of heaven." The assurance which he entertained of our ultimate failure was pressed home with the earnestness of supreme conviction. "I say we must necessarily undo these violent oppressive acts; they must be repealed, you will repeal them; I pledge myself for it, that you will in the end repeal them; I stake my reputation on it; I will consent to be taken for an idiot if they are not finally repealed!" Yet he would not consent to compromise the imperial authority, nor agree to Franklin's proposal, that the king's troops should not be quartered in America without the consent of the provin

cial legislatures, and he enshrined his argu- | womanly intuition, fulfilled to the letter! ment in a noble metaphor. "Such a condi- William Pitt was indeed a thorn in Fox's tion," he exclaimed, "plucks the master side as long as he lived. feather from the eagle's wing."

It has of late become customary with certain writers to depreciate the services and the wisdom of Pitt; they admit, indeed, that he was a stately minister, gifted with copious and weighty eloquence; but they assert that he cannot be regarded as a subtle or sagacious leader, and they see in his unrivalled success only a succession of fortunate accidents. On the other hand, it is asserted in the same quarter that Fox in this very capacity was eminently distinguished; and that the reason why his labors were so seldom crowned with official recognition, is to be traced to a combination of disastrous mischances over which the most forecasting prudence could have ex

Yet Lord Chatham's career, judged of by the ordinary criterion of ministerial success, may be said to have comparatively failed. He was far oftener in opposition than in office: his own ministry was feeble: on many of the most important questions of the day the king and the nation refused to sanction his policy. But Chatham, during the four years between 1757 and 1761, when with splendid firmness and sagacity be conducted the great war against France, did what no other statesman of his age did, or could have done. For seventy years England had been a nation divided against itself. The affections of one-half of the people were fixed upon an exiled house-ercised no control. This estimate appears to sæva Pelopis domus. The spirit of active rebellion had been at length extinguished, but the old animosities still burnt on; and the winning party itself did not feel very proud of the throne it had gained for an alien and unpopular dynasty. It was Chatham who recalled the old national feeling. He made the Englishman again proud of his country. He revived the sense of patriotism, of national union, of a combined corporate life. The restoration of that spirit of loyal obedience and dutiful attachment to the state, without which, as Burke eloquently said, " your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber," was directly due to the genius and character of Lord Chatham. He was a great man, and he communicated his rare manhood to the nation. The picture of the great minister wielding the thunderbolts of war, and again, as in the old times, vindicating the authority of the English name, fired the imagination of the people, and made them come together as one man. He found England divided and dispirited: he left it united and exultant.

As the veteran gladiator was borne from the arena, two youthful athletes appeared upon it-Charles James Fox and William Pitt. Lady Holland writes to her husband in 1767-"I have been this morning with Lady Hester Pitt, and there is little William Pitt, now eight years old, and really the cleverest child I ever saw, and brought up so strietly and so proper in his behavior, that-mark my words that little boy will be a thorn in Charles' side as long as he lives." A curious

us singularly unhappy. Pitt was "a thorn" in Fox's side, no doubt; but he was so because the Whig leader recklessly left his advances open and unguarded. Fox's attacks upon Pitt always recoiled without effect: the Whig leader's impulsive and desultory genius was no match for the cool and prescient sagacity of the minister. Fox's career was a failure: Pitt's, from the very beginning, a splendid success. The prolonged authority of the son of Chatham was not an accident. What is the explanation? The nation admired the lavish gifts of the one; but it had confidence in the other. It is the triumph of character. A brief survey will make this clear.

Neither the public nor the private character of Fox was calculated to inspire the people with confidence.

He was thus im

His private life was against him. He possessed, indeed, many amiable social qualities, warm affections, a placable and forgiving disposition, a sweet and winning temper, which nothing could sour. mensely popular among his associates. But his reputation with the country was bad; and the reputation was not unjustified. His early eareer was profligate; and even his connec tion with Mrs. Armistead *—which probably did much to reclaim him-was foreign to the feelings of a strictly moral people. His father introduced him to the gaming-table at Spa before he was fourteen; and he quickly be came one of the most fierce and reckless gamblers in a gambling age. The purchase of the annuities which he had granted to cover

* Mrs. Armistead afterwards became Mrs. Fox.

his losses at play, cost Lord Holland more | had many strong and even vehement convicthan a hundred and forty thousand pounds. tions. But his conduct undoubtedly often As he mixed much in society the details of gave a color to the imputation; and he sufhis "interior" life were well known to the fered in consequence. public. He rose late, and before he had quitted his bedroom in St. James' Street was surrounded by a group of pleasant, witty, and accomplished disciples. Many men who were very famous then, and some who will be very famous forever, attended these matutinal levees. Wrapped in a "foul linen nightgown" that only partially concealed "his black and bristly person," his hair matted, and his hands unwashed, the profligate dictator marshalled the forces of the opposition, and devised the tactics of the campaign. The day he spent at Newmarket-in the evening he attacked the minister-the night was consumed at Almack's. This celebrated club in Pall-Mall had been established by himself; and within its walls, their faces muffled, their laced ruffles protected with leather-straps "such as footmen wear," the youthful aristocracy of England scattered, with a cast of the dice, the wealth which centuries had accumulated. Long after daybreak, the Whig leader once more landed in St. James' Street —that is, when he could reach home, and it was not necessary to leave him under the supper-table in what Grattan called Fox's negligent grandieur! This was terrific work -only a most vigorous and elastic constitution could have stood it. Fox, physically and intellectually, braved it with splendid impunity to his associates, the wild dissipation seemed only to add a fresher charm to his eloquence, and a keener point to his wit; but at the same time it effectually alienated the mass of the people from him.

Nor was his public life more re-assuring. The first Lord Holland was utterly destitute of principle. According to his creed, every patriot had his price, and every vote in the House of Commons could be bought. Endowed, like his son, with warm affections, and a serene and equitable temper, which he preserved to the last-("If Mr. Selwyn calls again," he said to his servant when he was dying, "let him in; if I am alive, I shall be very glad to see him; and if I am dead, he will be very glad to see me ")-he was yet utterly untrustworthy. The political latitudinarianism of the father was supposed to have descended to the son. The impression was false indeed; for Fox, especially in later life,

Gibbon has asserted that Fox was a great and sagacious leader-" Fox, who, in the conduct of a party, approved himself equal to the conduct of an empire." The words were written towards the close of the historian's life, and when ample materials for judgment were beside him. But surely no man can be regarded as a great chief whose tactics alienate his party and the people; and at the time when Gibbon wrote, the nation had lost all confidence in the wisdom and capacity of the Whig lenders, and the Whig party was divided against itself. Fox was looked upon as a reckless debauché who spent his days in drinking and gambling with the Prince of Wales. Sheridan's want of application and steadiness was universally acknowledged, and had been piquantly illustrated. "No applications,"-a notice, it was said, stuck on the door of his office during the time he was secretary to the treasury, announced" no applications can be received here on Wednesdays, nor any business done during the re mainder of the week." And when the party, with its traditional exclusiveness, could find no place for Burke in his own administration, it seemed tacitly to sanction the popular impression that his great schemes of domestic and imperial policy were impracticable. Its recent manoeuvres, moreover, had created an impression that the men were not only incompetent but unprincipled. Office was regarded as the sole object of their mercenary ambition. The tactics of the opposition-from a Whig point of view especially-were certainly for many years particularly unhappy. The junction with Lord North, the conflict of 1784, the question of the regency, and the French Revolution, were the principle events that took place between 1782 and 1792. What was Fox's conduct in relation to these events? Was it consistent with his position as the leader of the Whig party,-the party calling itself the popular? The junction with an ultra-Tory like Lord North was censured by his personal friends as "an unnatural alliance," and he himself admitted that it was “a measure which only success could justify." In 1784, the conflict was one substantially between the parliament and the people. The right to an ultimate verdict vested in the peo

« PreviousContinue »