In this fray, or rather as a sort of appendix to it, mixed Junius. We are now too well versed in controversies of higher mood-too deeply read in the principles and bearings of government-too much used to cultivated political writing, to join in the admfration which this mean and skulking incendiary extorted, even from his antagonists,-yea, even from the greatest mind of the day, Dr Johnson. It is with a sort of feeling of contempt that we look on the inquiries, whether Junius was a republican or not, well knowing that the most shallow among ourselves, who have had the benefit of the example of the French Revolution, are much better qualified to discuss the merits and demerits of republicanism, as applied to old governments, than he could be. It is with thorough scorn that we regard his spleen-affectedly personal against the King. I say affectedly personal; for it is extremely unlikely that the King ever did him a personal injury. We are now better taught than to regard his fine-drawn ironies, and lamp-smelling sarcasms, as anything but rhetorical flourishes, which never could by any chance be of practical utility to any cause, or have any other result than that of inflaming animosities, and retarding measures for the advantage of the country. But then he was of vast importance. Under Whig rule, Sir James Mackintosh confesses it in the Edinburgh Review, and, without his confession, history would assure us of the fact,-a most anxious surveillance was kept over the

press, and a most dragooning domination exercised over the mob. Junius, therefore, exhibited the novelty of a writer appealing at the same time to the educated and the populace,-as Wilkes did the phenomenon of an agitator backed by an aristocracy, and hallooed forward by a rabble.

These things were in themselves, perhaps, more irritating than injurious. In their consequences they were deadly. The noise and gabble of the newly-awakened principles in London and its neighbourhood soon spread. We were speedily to reap the fruits of their practical operation. For expenses incurred by our wars in America, it was deemed necessary to raise supplies off the people on whose behalf, and for whose benefit, these expenses had been undertaken. It was our undoubted right to do so, as right was then

understood in the world. We tried it. America, instigated by the Whigs here, resisted our demand. The Whigs only saw in this a measure originating with ministers, by the overthrow of whom they might get into place. That we should lose in the contest a great portion of our empire was nothing to them. The Americans went to war. We fought at every disadvantage au bout du monde, as old Frederick of Prussia said. As if that were not enough, every exertion made by ministers at home was thwarted with a vehemence of fury scarcely credible. Fox used to threaten Lord North with the scaffold. And for what?-Because he was doing his best (and bad was his best) to prevent a dismemberment of the empire. The theories of the Americans were trumpeted forth in all the colours of eloquence, and made popular in Europe. The besotted house of Bourbon, thinking only of the injury which they could do to England, joined in the cry, soon to be thundered forth in bloodier notes against themselves. They assisted the colonists; and we lost America;-but Mr Fox got a seat in the Cabinet.

The conduct of the war was sufficiently disgraceful to us. For that, too, in a great measure, we may thank the spread of liberal ideas. The colonists were always beaten in the field. A large portion of the population adhered to us, and we had strong parties in every town in the States. Our generals might have destroyed Washington and his army, have cut every man of them to pieces, and having so done, proceeded to have hanged unopposed every man who adhered to the declaration of independence. Why did they not do so?—I shall answer. They were afraid of home. They were afraid, if they unsparingly, as was their duty, had destroyed Washington and his two thousand runaway rebels, there would have been such an outcry at home raised against them, such a clamour of indignation at their barbarous massacre of freemen, that the ministers would not have dared to have defended them, and that they would be given up, for saving our colonies at the expense of the eternal interests of mankind. At the end of the war, too, the clamours of the Whigs drove us into making a peace, contrary to all the principles of diplomacy, by which we gave up strong-holds, defensible by

common tactics, provinces, in which we could keep up a dominant force, and waters, in which our navy rode without a rival. But it was done. The interests of the human race triumphed-we lost our colonies-and nothing could be more liberal than our conduct. It is foolish to be arguing on such things now ;-had Pitt or Percival been ministers, we should not have lost them. Need I ask those of whom he is the idol-would Buonaparte, with such a hold upon any country as we, in the year 1782, had on America, have consented to have given it up, because such paltry commanders as Cornwallis or Burgoyne had been over-reached by the despicable bush-fighters opposed to them?

This loss of the colonies was the first developement of the value which the cause of freedom all over the world, and the eternal interests of the human race, are to us. I again repeat, I am satisfied to be called a brute, an ass, if anybody so likes it, but I must say, had the illiberality of the old modus operandi prevailed in England, we, in all probability, would not have lost America-at all events, we could not have done worse than lose it under any system. It is a neat gilding of the pill to tell us it is no loss-that we are doing better with the United States as a friendly power, &c. &c. &c. I do not doubt it, but it was not so imagined by those who bawled us out of our colonies. Nor do I envy them their power and independence; I only beg leave to doubt the soundness of the policy that suffered them to be reft from us, for the sake of a handful of dirty dogmas.

I have not time for minute details, but one comes so aptly in point, that I cannot help noticing it. Every person extols Washington; he is a standing column of panegyric, even among ourselves. For my part, I see in him the enemy of England, and for my narrow, contracted, and anti-social ideas, that is enough. I see in him a man who did my country all the harm he could do it. His motives I inquire not; they are perhaps too expanding for my grovelling spirit-perhaps they are. No matter. I have no power, that I know of, of ascertaining motives. Sufficient for me to say it, he was a man who had sworn allegiance to

VOL. XVII.

George III., and broke that oath. He was a man who had accepted military office under that king, and turned the knowledge acquired in his service to. doing him all the injury in his power. In a word, he was, if he had not succeeded, A TRAITOR. I know the defences-the panegyrics, which can be sung or said on such occasions-but what I have written above is true.

Well, during the war got up by him and his friends, Arnold, for some reason-I here also waive inquiring after motives, but give any person leave to make them as base as he pleases-left the cause of those who were fighting against the king to whom he had sworn allegiance. He returned, in fact, to the side which, by the act of rebellion, he had abandoned. Now, I do not blame the successful Americans for calling him a traitor-but here, actually in this country, which he had served to the utmost of his power, you will find those who praise the conduct of Washington-our enemy-ready to heap with insult the name of Arnold

our friend. Though to me-stupid and besotted that I am-it seems hard to strike a line between the treason of Washington to George III., and that of Arnold to the Congress.

We won India in spite of liberality. We won it by tyranny and domination-and against the eternal interests of mankind. To tell, in plain language, and not in this cogging cant, we won it during the eternal clamour of falsehood and Whiggery. All other nations that I ever heard of raised statues, and reared triumphal arches to those who won them kingdoms. Clive had the honours of a parliamentary investigation; and people flattered themselves with the cheering idea that the melancholy act which closed that great man's life, was urged forward by their invectives.-Hastings had a seven years' impeachment for reward-and the Lord of India, the possessor of fabled millions, died, a few years ago, dependent for the comforts of life on the tardily-paid arrears of a petty pension. One thing has always struck me as a curious coincidence, that Burgoyne, who may be said to have lost us America, was the organ of assailing in parliament Clive, who won us India, and if you will turn over the debates of the day, you will see that Burgoyne (as

2Y

also did his party) considered himself far the greater man, beyond all doubt the more brilliant patriot.

At present the population of India is happier under us than it ever was since the days of Brama and Saraswadi. We have put down the nuisance of the petty tyrants throughout the country-we have suppressed the insolence of the marauders-we have established, as far as possible, an equal law. Yet still you will hear lingering in the continental coteries, lamentations on spoliated Rajahs, and oppressed Begums-sighs for the sorrows of the mild Tippoo, and groans over the destruction of the beneficient empire of the Moguls. At home, we are assailed with mouthings, calling on us to establish organs of sedition in our Presidencies, thereby to teach the Hindoos the eternal interests of mankind, and the necessity of putting an end to our rule over them. The Hindoos, however, not having yet learned these valuable doctrines, are happy and content. When the time comes, if it will ever come, that a Washington shall arise among them, they will be sure of sympathy here, and of finding true patriots, anxious to impede every exertion that can be made to support our authority over them.

I am not saying that these principles are not right. I have not talent for such speculations. I can only regret that they happen to have done us all the harm conceivable; and, at the same time, cannot help wondering, in my simplicity, that people of other countries-Buonaparte, for exampleutterly despise them-make their advantage by such contempt—and get lauded by the statesmen, who bristle in indignation, if a tithe of the same conduct be attempted by ourselves. For ever do I wonder at these same statesmen when they tell me that, by the pursuance of such principles, an empire is steadier and more durable,

when I reflect that one of the states, which are the constant object of their praise-Rome-contrived to get on, to rise in power, to be the mistress of the world-in consequence of the exertions of men, who, though they regarded foreign countries (Greece, &c.) much, regarded their own more, and would have laughed, ore soluto, at any philosopher of the day, who had told them that they should not humble a rival, or crush a rebellion, for fear of hurting some flimsy doctrine of general good. These men might be wrong that, I repeat, is not in my scope of argument-but they reared a great empire, and they kept it for more centuries than any of the new European powers has been solidly established.

Again, too, I own I am a little amazed when I am told that liberality, &c. &c. is the most certain plan of retaining authority, when I reflect that Spain, a weak country, retained, and that too during unsuccessful foreign wars, her colonies, larger and more populous, and I submit more illiberally governed than ours, for thirty years undisputed, after the insurrection of the North American States, in spite of their example-and that even when they attempted to cast off her yoke, she contrived to make head-and, in some places, still successfully-for more than a dozen years against them -while we, Lords of the Sea, unbroken by any war, and at the height of credit, lost, in less than seven years, colonies, mildly governed, (in comparison, at least, with the Spanish,) and by no means so extensive, or, at that time, so thickly peopled.

I want to make no inferences. I do not know how-here are facts. And in my next paper, I shall see how facts stand as to the Slave Trade and the Roman Catholics. We happen not yet to have lost Jamaica or Ireland.

THE third evening from our first visit to Halliburn church, found us reassembled near the venerable structure, preparing to complete our survey of its beautiful churchyard, and afterwards to prosecute our further scheme of visiting the ancient mansion-house of the De la Veres. The burial-ground was beautifully situated, and finely shaded by majestic trees. Its field of graves, and the intersecting paths, were in that state of neat and decent order which should ever characterize the resting-place of the dead; but it contained no object of particular interest, save that enclosed space adjoining the church, to which I alluded in my last chapter. That outer court of death! That supplement to the sepulchre of the De la Veres! It was a singular-looking burial-place! The most forlorn I ever looked upon. The more so, for being the only neglected spot in the whole churchyard-the only one upon which the grass was allowed to shoot up in rank luxuriance, intermingled with tall tufts of nettles and mallows; and one felt chill looking on those forsaken graves, as if the poor sleepers beneath them were unkindly excluded from the vaulted chambers within, the dark asylum of their kindred dead. It was a long stripe of ground, close under, and running parallel to, the chancel-wall, a projection of the building bounding it at one end, while the other and the outer side was parted off from the rest of the churchyard by a high iron railing. Within that barrier was arranged a single row, of graves-eight, I think, in number-mere turfen hillocks, undistinguished by tomb or headstone, or memorial of any kind, save one, a small mean inural tablet of the commonest stone, affixed in that part of the church-wall immediately over the eighth, and apparently the last heaped grave. But, in that poor memorial, the pride of illustrious ancestry, the last sparks of human vanity, were yet legible. The form was that of an armorial shield, though containing only a plain and simply worded inscription; but all the ingenuity of the rude sculptor had been exercised in carving out the sides of that coarse

stone into the semblance of a mantle, and it was just discernible, after some little patient investigation, that the five uncouth lumps, issuing out of a sort of basket on the top, were designed to represent an ostrich plume, surmounting a ducal coronet. And that rude mockery of the family crest had been there affixed, in contempt of heraldic fitness. The name beneath was that of a female, and the inscription ran simply,

"To the memory of

Gertrude de LA VERE, The second daughter of Reginald and Elizabeth de la Vere, Who departed this life May the 27th, 1820. Aged 79 years."

What a striking contrast suggested itself between that crumbling discoloured stone," with shapeless sculpture decked," and coarsely engraven with that simple obituary, and the polished marbles, the costly gilding, the "cunning carved work," the elaborate inscriptions, wherewith the interior of the church was emblazoned, in memory of the earlier De la Veres. Not one forgotten there-not one unrecorded, save the poor sleeper beneath that eighth grave; for, of those who tenanted the remaining seven hillocks, each had his memorial within, arranged in due succession with those of progenitors. It is true, that a wide disparity of sepulchral magnificence was apparent betwixt those later monuments and the proud tombs of the long-departed. A marble tablet, with a simple relievo-an urn, a cypress branch, or a funeral wreath,-but on each the family achievement. Such were the recently-erected monuments, and each in succession had abated a little and a little of costly decoration, till the last (that of the late Squire) was a plain square tablet of white marble, on a black ground, bearing the inscription, and underneath the arms of the deceased, not sculptured, but emblazoned in colours proper, on a very small shield slightly elevated. But that plain memorial was of marble, and neatly executed, and had been respectfully added, " in order due," to the long line of family records. Wherefore,

then, had the name of that poor female, that solitary outcast, no place amongst those of her ancestors and near kindred? Were there none left to honour the memory of the dead? to take order for the last respectful observances to the latest De la Vere? One sole survivor, the elder sister, had closed the eyes of that last being in whose veins ran the same stream that feebly circulated through her own. And she had taken order (as far as her enfeebled powers permitted,) that all due observances should be respectfully attended to, and she had bethought her-confusedly, indeed, but with tenacious adherence to ancient family custom-that something should be done"-" something should be ordered"- -some tomb, some monument, to the memory of the deceased. And thereupon the village stone-mason was called in and consulted; but the poor lady rambled strangely in her directions, so that, at last, the rustic sculptor was left almost unrestricted to the guidance of his own taste and judgment, except on one point, to which Mrs Grace steadily adhered, recurring to it as to a point d'appui, whenever her poor head lost itself in a labyrinth of perplexities. "The family crestthe coronet-the ostrich plume"-that was to be properly conspicuous. "Was not her poor dear sister a De la Vere? Almost the last-but for herself-no matter!—only—they were to be sure to leave room enough for her name under her sister's; and perhaps some one-her old steward, or the minister -would see that it was engraven there."

Thus commissioned, the village artist went proudly to work, and at last finished off, to his own entire satisfaction, the mural tablet we have seen affixed over the grave of Mrs Gertrude De la Vere. The inscription had been arranged in that concise and simple form by the rector, who, having been consulted on the subject by the aged lady, had at last prevailed over her bewildered preconception that it should be an elaborate composition-" in Latin, perhaps something alluding to their illustrious ancestors-to Sir Richard De la Vere, and the battle of Cressy." But the minister was learned man, and she was content to leave it to him-only, by her express desire, the tablet was affixed without the church, over the grave of the de

a

parted. Her motives for this request were never very clearly comprehended; only something she hinted-very distantly, for it was a tender subjectof the altered circumstances of the family-that a poor stone was all that could be afforded to the memory of its latest descendants; and "that would look poorly," she muttered to herself in a low under tone, "amongst all those grand marbles in the chancel."

It was true that the worldly prosperity of the De la Veres had been on the decline for many successive generations; and, on the decease of the last male survivor, the aged sisters, though for the lives of both left in possession of the family-mansion and its immediate dependencies, had found themselves straitened in the means of continuing the establishment on its footing of ancient respectability. But the hearts of both clung to the things, and the customs, and the fashions they had been habituated to from their earliest recollection, and they sacrificed many private comforts and indulgencies to the pardonable weakness of keeping up everything, as nearly as possible, in the same style as during the lifetime of their honoured parents, and of their late dear brother.

So, in outward appearance, little change was perceptible; and while the sisters were spared to each other, the stronger mind of the younger sustained and excited to beneficial exertions the more timid and desponding spirit of the elder sister. But when the latter was left utterly desolate, then indeed the burthens of care, of age, and infirmity, fell heavily upon her; and a terror of impending poverty (the phantom of a weak and depressed spirit, and distempered imagination) aggravated the real evils of her forlorn condition. Under the influence of these feelings, she had given her directions respecting that singular tablet consecrated to the memory of Mrs Gertrude De la Vere.

They had been, as we have seen, scrupulously attended to, and beneath her sister's name sufficient space to receive her own had been carefully left vacant. And beside her sister's grave, there was room enough for one more hillock-for one more only-to fill up the long stripe of ground appropriated to the late De la Veres. An hundred years before, that space had been railed in from the common resting-place