Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 362, December 1845

In the landscapes of other countries, the house – the habitation of man – be it farm-house or cottage – gathers, so to speak, some of the country about itself – makes itself the centre of some circle, however small. Not so in Switzerland. The hooded chalet, which even in summer speaks so plainly of winter, and stands ever prepared with its low drooping roof to shelter its eyes and ears from the snow and the wind – these dot the landscape most charmingly, but yet are lost in it; they form no group, no central point in the scene. I am thinking more particularly of the chalets in the Oberland. There is no path apparently between one and the other; the beautiful green verdure lies untrodden around them. One would say, the inhabitants found their way to them like birds to their nests. And like enough to nests they are, both in the elevation at which they are sometimes perched, and in the manner of their distribution over the scene.

However they got there, people at all events are living in them, and the farm and the dairy are carried up into I know not what altitudes. Those beautiful little tame cattle, with their short horns, and long ears, and mouse-coloured skin, with all the agility of a goat, and all the gentleness of domesticity – you meet them feeding in places where your mule looks thoughtfully to his footing. And then follows perhaps a peasant girl in her picturesque cloak made of the undressed fur of the goat and her round hat of thickly plaited straw, calling after them in that high sing-song note, which forms the basis of what is called Swiss music. This cry heard in the mountains is delightful, the voice is sustained and yet varied – being varied, it can be sustained the longer – and the high note pierces far into the distance. As a real cry of the peasant it is delightful to hear; it is appropriate to the purpose and the place. But defend my ears against that imitation of it introduced by young ladies into the Swiss songs. Swiss music in an English drawing-room – may I escape the infliction! but the Swiss peasant chanting across the mountain defiles – may I often again halt to listen to it!

But from the mountain and the cloud we must now depart. We must wend towards the plain. One very simple and consolatory thought strikes me – though we must leave the glory of the mountain, we at least take the sun with us. And the cloud too, you will add. Alas! something too much of that.

But no murmurs. We islanders, who can see the sun set on the broad ocean – had we nothing else to boast of – can never feel deserted of nature. We have our portion of her excellent gifts. I know not yet how an Italian sky, so famed for its deep and constant azure, may affect me, but I know that we have our gorgeous melancholy sunsets, to which our island tempers become singularly attuned. The cathedral splendours – the dim religious light of our vesper skies – I doubt if I would exchange them for the unmitigated glories of a southern clime.

THE SECOND PANDORA

 
Methought Prometheus, from his rock unbound,
Had with the Gods again acceptance found.
Once more he seem'd his wond'rous task to ply,
While all Olympus stood admiring by.
To high designs his heart and hands aspire,
To quicken earthly dust with heavenly fire,
Won by no fraud, but lent by liberal love,
To raise weak mortals to the realms above;
For the bright flame remembers, even on earth,
And pants to reach, the region of its birth.
A female form was now the artist's care;
Faultless in shape, and exquisitely fair.
Of more than Parian purity, the clay
Had all been leaven'd with the ethereal ray.
Deep in the heart the kindling spark began,
And far diffused through every fibre ran;
The eyes reveal'd it, and the blooming skin
Glow'd with the lovely light that shone within.
The applauding Gods confess'd the matchless sight;
The first Pandora was not half so bright;
That beauteous mischief, formed at Jove's command,
A curse to men, by Mulciber's own hand;
Whose eager haste the fatal jar to know,
Fill'd the wide world with all but hopeless woe.
But dawn of better days arose, when He,
The patient Hero, set Prometheus free,
Alcides, to whose toils the joy was given
To conquer Hell and climb the heights of Heaven.
In the fair work that now the master wrought,
The first-fruits of his liberty were brought;
The Gods receive her as a pledge of peace,
And heap their gifts and happiest auspices.
Minerva to the virgin first imparts
Her skill in woman's works and household arts;
The needle's use, the robe's embroider'd bloom,
And all the varied labours of the loom.
Calm fortitude she gave, and courage strong,
To cope with ill and triumph over wrong;
Ingenuous prudence, with prophetic sight,
And clear instinctive wisdom, ever right.
Diana brought the maid her modest mien,
Her love of fountains and the sylvan scene;
The Hours and Seasons lent each varying ray
That gilds the rolling year or changing day.
The cunning skill of Hermes nicely hung,
With subtle blandishments, her sliding tongue,
And train'd her eyes to stolen glances sweet,
And all the wiles of innocent deceit.
Phœbus attuned her ear to love the lyre,
And warm'd her fancy with poetic fire.
Nor this alone; but shared his healing art,
And robb'd his son of all the gentler part;
Taught her with soothing touch and silent tread
To hover lightly round the sick one's bed,
And promised oft to show, when medicines fail,
A woman's watchful tenderness prevail.
Next Venus and the Graces largely shed
A shower of fascinations on her head.
Each line, each look, was brighten'd and refined,
Each outward act, each movement of the mind,
Till all her charms confess the soft control,
And blend at once in one harmonious whole.
But still the Eternal Sire apart remain'd,
And Juno's bounty was not yet obtained.
The voice of Heaven's High Queen then fill'd the ear,
"A wife and mother, let the Nymph appear."
The mystic change like quick enchantment shows —
The slender lily blooms a blushing rose.
Three gentle children now, by just degrees,
Are ranged in budding beauty round her knees:
Still to her lips their looks attentive turn,
And drink instruction from its purest urn,
While o'er their eyes soft memories seem to play,
That paint a friend or father far away.
A richer charm her ripen'd form displays,
A halo round her shines with holier rays;
And if at times, a shade of pensive grace
Pass like a cloud across her earnest face,
Yet faithful tokens the glad truth impart,
That deeper happiness pervades her heart.
Jove latest spoke: "One boon remains," he said,
And bent serenely his ambrosial head;
"The last, best boon, which I alone bestow;"
Then bade the waters of Affliction flow.
The golden dream was dimm'd; a darken'd room
Scarce show'd where dire disease had shed its gloom.
A little child in death extended lay,
Still round her linger'd the departing ray.
Another pallid face appear'd, where Life
With its fell foe maintain'd a doubtful strife.
Long was the contest; changeful hopes and fears
Now sunk the Mother's soul, now dried her tears.
At last a steady line of dawning light
Show'd that her son was saved, and banish'd night.
Though sad her heart, of one fair pledge bereft,
She sees and owns the bounties Heaven hath left.
In natural drops her anguish finds relief,
And leaves the Matron beautified by grief;
While consolation, beaming from above,
Fills her with new-felt gratitude and love.
O happy He! before whose waking eyes,
So bright a vision may resplendent rise —
The New Pandora, by the Gods designed,
Not now the bane, but blessing of Mankind!
 

REIGN OF GEORGE THE THIRD. ³³

It is scarcely theoretical to say, that every century has a character of its own. The human mind is essentially progressive in Europe. The accumulations of past knowledge, experience, and impulse, are perpetually preparing changes on the face of society; and we may fairly regard every hundred years as the period maturing those changes into visible form. Thus, the fifteenth century was the age of discovery in the arts, in the powers of nature, and in the great provinces of the globe: the sixteenth exhibited the general mind under the impressions of religion – the Reformation, the German wars for liberty and faith, and the struggles of Protestantism in France. The seventeenth was the brilliant period of scientific advance, of continental literature, and of courtly pomp and power. The eighteenth was the period of politics; every court of Europe was engaged in the game of political rivalry; the European balance became the test, the labour, and the triumph of statesmanship. The negotiator was then the great instrument of public action. Diplomacy assumed a shape, and Europe was governed by despatches. The genius of Frederick the Second restored war to its early rank among the elements of national life; but brilliant as his wars were, they were subservient to the leading feature of the age. They were fought, not, like the battles of the old conquerors, for fame, but for influence – not to leave the king without an enemy, but to leave his ambassadors without an opponent – less to gain triumphs, than to ensure treaties: they all began and ended in diplomacy!

It is remarkable, that this process was exhibited in Europe alone. In the East, comprehending two-thirds of human kind, no change was made since the conquests of Mahomet. That vast convulsion, in which the nervousness of frenzy had given the effeminate spirit of the Oriental the strength of the soldier and the ambition of universal conqueror, had no sooner wrought its purpose than it passed away, leaving the general mind still more exhausted than before. The Saracen warrior sank into the peasant, and the Arab was again lost in his sands; the Turk alone survived, exhibiting splendour without wealth, and pride without power – a decaying image of Despotism, which nothing but the jealousy of the European saved from falling under the first assault. Such is the repressive strength of evil government; progress, the most salient principle of our nature, dies before it. And man, of all beings the most eager for acquirement, and the most restless under all monotony of time, place, and position, becomes like the dog or the mule, and generation after generation lives and dies with no more consciousness of the capacities of his existence, than the root which the animal devours, or the tree under which it was born.

In England, the eighteenth century was wholly political. It was a continual struggle through all the difficulties belonging to a free constitution, exposed to the full discussion of an intellectual people. Without adopting the offensive prejudice, which places the individual ability of the Englishmen in the first rank; or without doubting that nature has distributed nearly an equal share of personal ability among all European nations; we may, not unjustly, place the national mind of England in the very highest rank of general capacity – if that is the most intellectual nation, by which the public intellect is most constantly employed, in which all the great questions of society are most habitually referred to the decision of the intellect, and in which that decision is the most irresistible in its effects, no nation of Europe can stand upon equal ground with the English. For, in what other nation is the public intellect in such unwearied exercise, in such continual demand, and in such unanswerable power?

In what other nation of the world (excepting, within those few years, France; and that most imperfectly) has public opinion ever been appealed to? But, in England, to what else is there any appeal? Or, does not the foreign mind bear some resemblance to the foreign landscape – exhibiting barren though noble elevations, spots of singular though obscure beauty among its recesses, and even in its wildest scenes a capacity of culture? – while, in the mind of England, like its landscape, that culture has already laid its hand upon the soil; has crowned the hill with verdure, and clothed the vale with fertility; has run its ploughshare along the mountain side, and led the stream from its brow; has sought out every finer secret of the scene, and given the last richness of cultivation to the whole.

From the beginning of the reign of Anne, all was a contest of leading statesmen at the head of parties. Those contests exhibit great mental power, singular system, and extraordinary knowledge of the art of making vast bodies of men minister to the personal objects of avarice and ambition. But they do no honour to the moral dignity of England. All revolutions are hazardous to principle. A succession of revolutions have always extinguished even the pretence to principle. The French Revolution is not the only one which made a race of girouettes. The political life of England, from the death of Anne to the reign of George the Third, was a perpetual turning of the weathercock. Whig and Tory were the names of distinction. But their subordinates were of as many varieties of feature as the cargo of a slave-ship; the hue might be the same, but the jargon was that of Babel. It was perhaps fortunate for the imperial power of England, that while she was thus humiliating the national morality, which is the life-blood of nations; her reckless and perpetual enemy beyond the Channel had lost all means of being her antagonist. The French sceptre had fallen into the hands of a prince, who had come to the throne a debauchee; and to whom the throne seemed only a scene for the larger display of his vices. The profligacy of Louis-Quatorze had been palliated by his passion for splendour, among a dissolute people who loved splendour much, and hated profligacy little. But the vices of Louis the Fifteenth were marked by a grossness which degraded them in the eye even of popular indulgence, and prepared the nation for the overthrow of the monarchy. In this period, religion, the great purifier of national council, maintained but a struggling existence. The Puritanism of the preceding century had crushed the Church of England; and the restoration of the monarchy had given the people a saturnalia. Religion had been confounded with hypocrisy, until the people had equally confounded freedom with infidelity. The heads of the church, chosen by freethinking administrations, were chosen more for the suppleness than for the strength of their principles; and while the people were thus taught to regard churchmen as tools, and the ministers to use them as dependents, the cause of truth sank between both. The Scriptures are the life of religion. It can no more subsist in health without them, than the human frame can subsist without food; it may have the dreams of the enthusiast, or the frenzy of the monk; but, for all the substantial and safe purposes of the human heart, its life is gone for ever. It has been justly remarked, that the theological works of that day, including the sermons, might, in general, have been written if Christianity had never existed. The sermons were chiefly essays, of the dreariest kind on the most commonplace topics of morals. The habit of reading these discourses from the pulpit, a habit so fatal to all impression, speedily rendered the preachers as indifferent as their auditory; and if we were to name the period when religion had most fallen into decay in the public mind, we should pronounce it the half century which preceded the reign of George the Third.

On the subject of pulpit eloquence there are some remarks in one of the reviews of the late Sydney Smith, expressed with all the shrewdness, divested of the levity of that writer, who had keenly observed the popular sources of failure.

"The great object of modern sermons is, to hazard nothing. Their characteristic is decent debility; which alike guards their authors from ludicrous errors, and precludes them from striking beauties. Yet it is curious to consider, how a body of men so well educated as the English clergy, can distinguish themselves so little in a species of composition, to which it is their peculiar duty, as well as their ordinary habit, to attend. To solve this difficulty, it should be remembered that the eloquence of the bar and of the senate force themselves into notice, power, and wealth." He then slightly guards against the conception, that eloquence should be the sole source of preferment; or even "a common cause of preferment." But he strongly, and with great appearance of truth, attributes the want of public effect to the want of those means by which that effect is secured in every other instance.

"Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking into reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart that mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more unfortunate, than an orator delivering stale indignation, and fervour of a week old; turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in German text; reading the tropes and metaphors into which he is hurried by the ardour of his mind; and so affected, at a preconcerted line and page, that he is unable to proceed any further?"

This criticism was perfectly true of sermons forty years ago, when it was written. Times are changed since, and changed for the better. The pulpit is no longer ashamed of the doctrines of Christianity, as too harsh for the ears of a classic audience, or too familiar for the ears of the people. Still there are no rewards in the Church, for that great faculty, or rather that great combination of faculties, which commands all the honours of the senate and the bar. A clerical Demosthenes might find his triumph in the shillings of a charity sermon, but he must never hope for a Stall.

We now revert to the curious, inquisitive, and gossiping historian of the time. Walpole, fond of French manners, delighting in the easy sarcasm, and almost saucy levity, of French "Memoirs," and adopting, in all its extent, the confession, (then so fashionable on the Continent,) that the perfection of writing was to be formed in their lively persiflage, evidently modelled his "History" on the style of the Sevignés and St Simons. But he was altogether their superior. If he had been a chamberlain in the court of Louis XV., he might have been as frivolously witty, and as laughingly sarcastic, as any Frenchman who ever sat at the feet of a court mistress, or whoever looked for fame among the sallies of a petit souper. But England was an atmosphere which compelled him to a manlier course. The storms of party were not to be stemmed by a wing of gossamer. The writer had bold facts, strong principles, and the struggles of powerful minds to deal with, and their study gave him a strength not his own.

Walpole was fond of having a hero. In private life, George Selwyn was his Admirable Crichton; in public, Charles Townshend. Charles was unquestionably a man of wit. Yet his wit rather consisted in dexterity of language than in brilliancy of conception. He was also eloquent in Parliament; though his charm evidently consisted more in happiness of phrase, than in richness, variety, or vigour, of thought. On the whole, he seems to have been made to amuse rather than to impress, and to give a high conception of his general faculties than to produce either conviction by his argument, or respect by the solid qualities of his genius. Still, he must have been an extraordinary man. Walpole describes his conduct and powers, as exhibited on one of those days of sharp debate which preceded the tremendous discussions of the American war. The subject was a bill for regulating the dividends of the East India Company – the topic was extremely trite, and apparently trifling. But any perch will answer for the flight of such bird. "It was on that day," says Walpole, "and on that occasion, that Charles Townshend displayed, in a latitude beyond belief, the amazing powers of his capacity, and the no less amazing incongruities of his character." Early in the day he had opened the business, by taking on himself the examination of the Company's conduct, had made a calm speech on the subject, and even went so far as to say, "that he hoped he had atoned for the inconsiderateness of his past life, by the care which he had taken of that business." He then went home to dinner. In his absence a motion was made, which Conway, the secretary of state, not choosing to support alone, it being virtually Townshend's own measure besides, sent to hurry him back to the House. "He returned about eight in the evening, half drunk with champagne," as Walpole says, (which, however, was subsequently denied,) and more intoxicated with spirits. He then instantly rose to speak, without giving himself time to learn any thing, except that the motion had given alarm. He began by vowing that he had not been consulted on the motion – a declaration which astonished every body, there being twelve persons round him at the moment, who had been in consultation with him that very morning, and with his assistance had drawn up the motion on his own table, and who were petrified at his unparalleled effrontery. But before he sat down, he had poured forth, as Walpole says, "a torrent of wit, humour, knowledge, absurdity, vanity, and fiction, heightened by all the graces of comedy, the happiness of quotation, and the buffoonery of farce. To the purpose of the question he said not a syllable. It was a descant on the times, a picture of parties, of their leaders, their hopes, and effects. It was an encomium and a satire on himself; and when he painted the pretensions of birth, riches, connexions, favours, titles, while he effected to praise Lord Rockingham and that faction, he yet insinuated that nothing but parts like his own were qualified to preside. And while he less covertly arraigned the wild incapacity of Lord Chatham, he excited such murmurs of wonder, admiration, applause, laughter, pity, and scorn, that nothing was so true as the sentence with which he concluded – when, speaking of government, he said, that it had become what he himself had often been called – the weathercock."

Walpole exceeds even his usual measure of admiration, in speaking of this masterly piece of extravagance. "Such was the wit, abundance, and impropriety of this speech," says he, "that for some days men could talk or enquire of nothing else. 'Did you hear Charles Townshend's champagne speech,' was the universal question. The bacchanalian enthusiasm of Pindar flowed in torrents less rapid and less eloquent, and inspired less delight, than Townshend's imagery, which conveyed meaning in every sentence. It was Garrick acting extempore scenes of Congreve." He went to supper with Walpole at Conway's afterwards, where, the flood of his gaiety not being exhausted, he kept the table in a roar till two in the morning. A part of this entertainment, however, must have found his auditory in a condition as unfit for criticism as himself. Claret till "two in the morning," might easily disqualify a convivial circle from the exercise of too delicate a perception. And a part of Townshend's facetiousness on that occasion consisted in mimicking his own wife, and a woman of rank with whom he fancied himself in love. He at last gave up from mere bodily lassitude. Walpole happily enough illustrates those talents and their abuse by an allusion to those eastern tales, in which a benevolent genius endows a being with supernatural excellence on some points, while a malignant genius counteracts the gift by some qualification which perpetually baffles and perverts it. The story, however, of Charles Townshend's tipsiness is thus contradicted by a graver authority, Sir George Colebrook, in his Memoirs.

"Mr Townshend loved good living, but had not a strong stomach. He committed therefore frequent excesses, considering his constitution; which would not have been intemperance in another. He was supposed, for instance, to have made a speech in the heat of wine, when that was really not the case. It was a speech in which he treated with great levity, but with wonderful art, the characters of the Duke of Grafton and Lord Shelburne, whom, though his colleagues in office, he entertained a sovereign contempt for, and heartily wished to get rid of. He had a black riband over one of his eyes that day, having tumbled out of bed, probably in a fit of epilepsy; and this added to the impression made on his auditors that he was tipsy. Whereas, it was a speech he had meditated a great while upon, and it was only by accident that it found utterance that day. I write with certainty, because Sir George Yonge and I were the only persons who dined with him, and we had but one bottle of champagne after dinner; General Conway having repeatedly sent messengers to press his return to the House."

This brings the miracle down to the human standard, yet that standard was high, and the man who could excite this admiration, in a House which contained so great a number of eminent speakers, and which could charm the caustic spirit of Walpole into the acknowledgment that his speech "was the most singular pleasure of the kind he had ever tasted," must have been an extraordinary performance, even if his instrument was not of the highest tone of oratory. A note from the Duke of Grafton's manuscript memoirs also contradicts, on Townshend's own authority, his opinion of the "wild incapacity of Lord Chatham." The note says: —

"On the night preceding Lord Chatham's first journey to Bath, Mr Charles Townshend was for the first time summoned to the Cabinet. The business was on a general view and statement of the actual situation and interests of the various powers in Europe. Lord Chatham had taken the lead in this consideration in so masterly a manner, as to raise the admiration and desire of us all to co-operate with him in forwarding his views. Mr Townshend was particularly astonished, and owned to me, as I was carrying him in my carriage home, that Lord Chatham had just shown to us what inferior animals we were, and that as much as he had seen of him before, he did not conceive till that night his superiority to be so transcendant."

Walpole writes with habitual bitterness of the great Lord Chatham. The recollection of his early opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, seems to have made him an unfaithful historian, wherever this extraordinary man's name comes within his page; but at the period of those discussions, it seems not improbable that the vigour of Chatham's understanding had in some degree given way to the tortures of his disease. He had suffered from gout at an early period of life; and as this is a disease remarkably affected by the mind, the perpetual disturbances of a public life seem to have given it a mastery over the whole frame of the great minister. Walpole talks in unjustifiable language of his "haughty sterility of talents." But there seems to be more truth in his account of the caprices of this powerful understanding in his retirement. Walpole calls it the "reality of Lord Chatham's madness." Still, we cannot see much in those instances, beyond the temper naturally resulting from an agonizing disease. When the Pynsent estate fell to him, he removed to it, and sold his house and grounds at Hayes – "a place on which he had wasted prodigious sums, and which yet retained small traces of expense, great part having been consumed in purchasing contiguous tenements, to free himself from all neighbourhood. Much had gone in doing and undoing, and not a little in planting by torchlight, as his peremptory and impatient habits could brook no delay. Nor were those the sole circumstances which marked his caprice. His children he could not bear under the same roof, nor communications from room to room, nor whatever he thought promoted noise. A winding passage between his house and children was built with the same view. When, at the beginning of his second administration, he fixed at North End by Hampstead, he took four or five houses successively, as fast as Mr Dingley his landlord went into them, still, as he said, to ward off the houses of the neighbourhood."

Walpole relates another anecdote equally inconclusive. At Pynsent, a bleak hill bounded his view. He ordered his gardener to have it planted with evergreens. The man asked "with what sorts." He replied, "With cedars and cypresses." "Bless me, my lord," replied the gardener, "all the nurseries in this county would not furnish a hundredth part." "No matter, send for them from London: and they were brought by land carriage." Certainly, there was not much in this beyond the natural desire of every improver to shut out a disagreeable object, by putting an agreeable one in its place. His general object was the natural one of preventing all noise – a point of importance with every sufferer under a wakeful and miserable disease. His appetite was delicate and fanciful, and a succession of chickens were kept boiling and roasting at every hour, to be ready whenever he should call. He at length grew weary of his residence and, after selling Hayes, took a longing to return there. After considerable negotiation with Mr Thomas Walpole the purchaser, he obtained it again, and we hear no more of his madness.

The session was one of continual intrigues, constant exhibitions of subtlety amongst the leaders of the party, which at this distance of time are only ridiculous, and intricate discussions, which are now among the lumber of debate. Townshend, if he gained nothing else, gained the freedom of the city for his conduct on the East India and Dividend bills, for which, as Walpole says, "he deserved nothing but censure." A contemptuous epigram appeared on the occasion by "somebody a little more sagacious" – that "somebody" probably being Walpole himself:

 
"The joke of Townshend's box is little known,
Great judgment in the thing the cits have shown;
The compliment was an expedient clever,
To rid them of the like expense for ever.
Of so burlesque a choice the example sure
For city boxes must all longing cure,
The honor'd Ostracism at Athens fell,
Soon as Hyperbolus had got the shell."
 

It is scarcely possible to think that an epigram of this heavy order could have been praised by Walpole, if his criticism had not been tempered by the tenderness of paternity.