Imagens da página
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

vellously verified? was ever the presumptuous neglect of sound and rational advice, more signally brought home to an Administration? Its very head is now forced to admit that he is continually urged forward by a constant and active pressure from without," which renders it next to impossible to proceed with safety. Who introduced this pressure from without? Who gave to the fleeting fervour of the moment a lasting and destructive direction, and carved out channels by which it might permanently reach, and for ever disturb the machine of Government? The very man who now complains so piteously of its intolerable pressure what a memorable instance of poetical justice; how complete a proof of the truth of Conservative principles; how marvellous an instance of the exact accomplishment of what political sagacity had predicted; and how remarkable that the authors of that destructive measure have themselves lived and remained in power long enough to feel and lament its consequences! We have predicted fifty times that the authors of the Reform Bill would be the first to suffer from its effects; and already, from the changes which it has wrought, and is working, in society, have its ablest and most conscientious supporters, Mr Stanley, Sir James Graham, and Lord Ripon, been precipitated from the height of power,-from situations more commanding than the throne of Charles X.,-from the rule of a Colonial Empire more extensive than the dominions of Nicholas, in consequence of its operation. The rest will ultimately follow: sooner or later every member of the Cabinet who sanctioned that revolutionary measure will be overthrown by its effects; and we only hope that their fall to all may be as gentle and bloodless, as that of the high-minded and noble men who have recently made such vast sacrifices, rather than participate in the measures which it is now forcing upon the Government.

The conduct of the House of Peers since the Reform Bill passed, has been admirable in the highest degree. Courageous, without being presumptuous; able, without being ostentatious; firm, and yet mode rate; dignified, and yet conciliatory, they have contrived to get through the perils of the last two years, in a

manner which the warmest patriot could hardly have hoped when they commenced. In this prudent and truly patriotic course, we may discern the surpassing wisdom by which they have been governed, and discern the same hand which, with prophetic wisdom, traced in the lines of Torres Vedras the impregnable stronghold for British power, before the hour approached for the triumphs of Salamanca and Vittoria; and endured, with unflinching firmness, the terrible tempest of artillery and horse at Waterloo, till the moment for the last decisive British charge had arrived. Let them range themselves under the same unrivalled leader, not less great in peace than in war,-now the shield of freedom and religion in Britain, as he was long the last hope of liberty and independence to Europe,-now the Fabius, but destined, perhaps, to be the future Scipio, of civil as well as military triumph; and doomed, let us hope, finally to rescue his country from a domestic, as he has already saved it from a foreign yoke. Let them avoid all unnecessary or premature collisions; strengthen themselves, meanwhile, by all the means in their power; and above all prepare, by a cordial union and cooperation with the middling ranks of society, for the great constitutional conflict which is approaching, and be ready to advance, with deci sive effect, at the moment when he shall give the signal, to make the last constitutional effort for order, freedom, and religion. Let them rest assured, that Conservative principles are daily and hourly gaining strength in every part of the country; that they have spread so rapidly, during the last two years, among the middling ranks, that the return of a Conservative House of Commons, by an overwhelming majority, would be certain, if the election depended on the property and education of the kingdom; and that, although the Reform Bill has hitherto placed its wealth and intelligence in a fearful minority, yet the ranks of their opponents are hourly dimi nishing from the force of truth, the decline of passion, and above all, the almost unanimous adoption of true principles by the young of all the educated and respectable classes of society. Let them not be discoura

ged by the triumph of the Revolutionists in great towns, but recollect what obstacles the Conservatives have to contend with amidst their depraved population, and how dense are the fumes of ignorance, passion, and delusion, which arise amidst their crowded and corrupted constituencies. Let them fix their eyes rather on the purer atmosphere and heaven-born feelings of the country. Let them watch the change of sentiment among their tenantry, their friends, their neighbours; recollect that if the counties come right, they will bring with them a vast proportion of the small boroughs which are not infected by the vices or the contagion of manufacturing population; and above all, endeavour, by a life of beneficence and activity, and by frankly uniting with the middling

ranks of society, whether in town or country, around them, to prepare that cordial union of the wealth, rank, virtue, and talent of the State, without which no effectual resistance can be made to the portentous combination of ambition and selfishness, error and prejudice, by which it is now overwhelmed. Finally, let them recollect that passion and delusion are transient, but truth and justice are eternal; that their cause is not that of party or ambition, but of freedom and religion; that the brave know of no danger when duty callsthe good of no desertion of principle when conscience is at stake; and that the rule of conduct which, amidst every difficulty, gave to Rome the empire of the world, was the heroic maxim, Nunquam desperandum de Republica.

LETTER FROM J. C. LOUDON, ESQ. TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAzine.

Bayswater, May 23, 1834.

WITH reference to some of your observations in the article entitled "Loudon on the Education of Gardeners," in the number of Blackwood's Magazine for May, 1834, I consider it due to myself, as well as to Messrs Longman and Co. (the proprietors of the Encyclopædia of Gardening), to make the following statement:

A few weeks after the publication of the first edition of the Encyclopædia of Gardening, in the year 1822, the most objectionable of the passages which you have quoted or referred to were pointed out to me by a friend, and I immediately had cancels made of them. These cancels included eighteen pages, as will be seen by the accompanying note from the printer, signed, "T. C. Shaw."

I have ascertained from Messrs Longman, that not more than five hundred copies of the Encyclopædia of Gardening were sent out without these cancels being inserted in their proper places.

In the copy of the first edition sent herewith, you will find all the cancels inserted, and the passages marked which were altered; and I have sent No. CCXXI. of Blackwood, in which the corresponding passages, as they stood in the five hundred copies sent out before these cancels were inserted, are also marked, so that if you will take the trouble to compare the two, you may convince yourself of the fact.

In the second edition, published in April, 1824, (ten years ago,) the chapter on Education is still further altered, and it is reduced from fifteen to eleven pages a fact which can be easily ascertained from the copies on sale in the shops.

Your criticism, therefore, applies chiefly to certain passages in only five hundred copies of the first edition of a work published twelve years ago, and not to any of the subsequent editions of that work-still less to the edition now publishing, as the readers of your review might naturally be led to suppose. J. C. LOUDON.

*The edition consisted of 2500 copies.

MY COUSIN NICHOLAS.

CHAPTER IX.

THE **** mail-coach, in which I had secured myself a passage, contained also within its recesses a fat quaker, a pilot, an ailing child, and a woman afflicted with the toothach. There are times when the happy temperament of our minds, arising from the eager anticipation of some expected enjoyment, or the full gratification of some darling desire, attunes our whole soul to harmony, and renders us careless and unobservant of those minor annoyances, which, in a less joyous mood, would prove no inconsiderable drawback on our felicity; there are also times, when, from sheer intensity of mental suffering, our faculties are so entirely absorbed as to remain unaffected by their presence, and even unconscious of their existence. Neither of these was at present my lot; the irritable state of my feelings only rendered me the more alive to the miseries of my situation. The worthy member of the Society of Friends, whose ample breadth occupied somewhat more than threefourths of the seat, was my neighbour, and pinned me close up in one corner of the vehicle, without the possibility of my effecting a change of position even to avoid the direct stream of exhalation from the sailor, who faced me redolent of rum. The latter, having succeeded that morning in bringing a valuable cargo into the port of London, was now returning, by a less dangerous element, to the seaport to which he belonged, in order to wait for another job of the kind, and, previously to occupying his present berth, had stowed in rather more than his usual proportion of grog. The female, who sat by his side, was, as we soon learned from herself, the wife of an eminent cheesemonger in the Borough, going into the country on a visit to her relations; the coachman, doubtless for weighty reasons, had allowed her, although contrary to the strict letter of his regulations, to carry her son on her lap," as he was such a very little one," and the tortures I had already began to expe

VOL. XXXVI. NO. CCXXIV,

rience were soon added to in a tenfold degree by her insisting on both the windows being closed to prevent the intrusion of the night-air, which, as she averred, much increased her own complaint, and would besides give her "little dear" cold. Thus closely wedged, and in an atmosphere to be envied only by the unfortunate Englishmen once confined in the Black-hole at Calcutta, did we "roll along the turnpike road." The quaker snored, the child cried, its mother groaned, while my friend opposite, apparently insensible to all the disagreeables which so much annoyed myself, hummed "Tom Bowling," and tendered me his tobacco-box. On my declining to avail myself of his kind offer, in a tone which I laboured to render civil, he ceased his tune, and conveying a respectable portion of 'shag" to his own mouth, prepared, with the utmost composure, to accompany my sleeping partner on the right in a most sonorous duet upon the same instrument. Oh! how I hated the whole party!

[ocr errors]

For nearly an hour had I sat thus, enduring the utmost degree of compression which my frame was capable of bearing, muttering to myself, at every roll of the coach, "curses not loud but deep," and filling a situation not unlike that of a refractory culprit, whose obstinacy, in refusing to plead, has exposed him to the peine forte et dure, a method by which "the statute in that case made and provided," wisely directs that an answer shall be squeezed out of him. My mind was worked up to the highest pitch of irritation, when fortunately the coach stopped, and I perceived, at the door of a solitary public-house by the roadside, a relay with every preparation for changing horses. Eagerly did I avail myself of the opportunity afforded to exchange the confinement I endured for a state of liberty, if only for a few moments; to let down the window, open the door, and spring from the vehicle to the ground, was the work of an instant. Heed

G

less of the discomposure my abrupt secession had occasioned within, I proceeded to pace backwards and forwards by the side of the carriage, every limb revelling in its emancipation.

The night was a lovely one"The silver moon unclouded held her way

Through skies where I could count each

little star."

The air was unusually warm for the time of year, and a gentle breeze gave a tremulous motion to the checkered light of the moonshine falling through the boughs, while its balmy breathings conveyed to the sense all the rich and fragrant perfume of an English spring. The silence was broken alone by the plaintive strains of a soft and mellow voice at a little distance, chanting in a subdued and melancholy tone, which fell grateful on the ear, and harmonized delightfully with the character of the scene. What a contrast to the exhalations of toddy and tobacco, and the serenade from which I had with so much difficulty escaped!

The peaceful calm which seemed to envelope all nature, animate and inanimate, operated upon my spirits as a holy charm. My roused and angry passions were fast subsiding into a state of placidity, when the spell was rudely broken, and the sacred stillness of the night invaded by the hoarse voices of the guard and ostler, now high in oath respecting some mischance which had occurred to the materiel of the coach.

"My eyes! here's a rig!—I say, Bill, blow me if this here bar beesn't just asunders;-shew a light!"

[ocr errors]

Ey, ey, Jem, what say?-let me see; where is it ?"

"You see?-you be-; vot's the use of your seeing, spooney? shew us a light, I tell ee!"

Bill obeyed grumbling, and entered the house to procure a candle, with which he soon returned, accompanied by the coachman, who had been discussing a glass of "summut short" within doors, and now added himself to the conclave.

"Broke, do ye say?" cried the latter, advancing the lantern towards the suspected fracture; it is by gum-devilish near asunder too. This now was that c-d old mare coming down the hill; always a

kicking, a wicious old beast-Ivonder Master keeps sich warmint!' "Come, Tom," returned the guard 'it's no use to stand growling ;Bill, get us a bit o' rope, will ee? We must splice her up as well as we can till we gets to B ***" (the name of the next stage).

At this moment a human head was protruded from each window of the vehicle. The parley without had reached the ears of the personages within, already disturbed by my elopement, and, although they could not exactly gather the purport of the matter in debate, the manner in which the colloquy was carried on served to induce a suspicion that

their own interests were somehow or other implicated in the result of the conference.

"What cheer, messmates ?" asked the pilot, "she won't capsize, will she?" while the sonorous tones of the Quaker were heard from the opposite opening. Surprised into a temporary deviation from his usual mode of delivery, yet still preserving that formality of expression, which not even apprehended danger could subdue, he exclaimed with unwonted rapidity, " Friend, aileth the leathern conveniency any thing?" while the fair dispenser of currants and molasses, losing, or forgetting, her toothach in her alarm, half cried, half screamed, as the tar vacated his berth to give his assistance, "Lauk-a-daisey me! vy vot's the matter vith the shay, I vonders ?"

Finding that the arrangements necessary for the continuing our journey in safety were likely to take up some little time, and aware of the general correctness of an homely adage, “that too many cooks are apt to spoil the broth," I did not presume to encumber with my inefficient aid those whose experience in the mysteries of splicing, dove-tailing, and all the endless varieties of ligature, so much exceeded my own, an aid too which, if tendered, would, in all probability, have been rejected with contempt. Still less did I find inclined to exhibit a supererogatory gallantry in soothing the fears of the apprehensive matron, to whose grinders alarm had already restored the power of mastication. Aware, as I am, how much my character must suffer in the estimation of my female readers from the confession,

I must still honestly avow that I could not find it in my heart to utter one consoling word, or even to assist in quieting the unsavoury " Jacky," who, frightened because he saw his mother frightened, now added his yells to the harmonic combination. Indeed, my only care was to remove myself as far as possible from the sphere of their influence, so, telling the coachman that I would walk forward till he should overtake me, I proceeded leisurely on, not a little pleased at the opportunity thus afforded me of enjoying a small portion of so fine an evening, and feeling, I fear, a malignant pleasure at the retributive sufferings now inflicted on some of those who had so long kept me in purgatory. I had made but little progress in my walk, and was scarcely clear of Johnny's shrill vociferations, when the same musical and plaintive notes which had attracted my attention previously to the discovery of the accident, again caught my ear. The sounds were evidently at no great distance from me, yet seemed to recede as I approached, till, at length, they appeared to become stationary, since I manifestly gained upon them, and could even distinguish a few of the words which my invisible entertainer was singing to a wild but melancholy air. A turn of the road brought me suddenly near the person who was thus, as it seemed, venting his sorrows and complainings to the ear of night, and calling in the aid of har

mony to soothe the grief it cannot entirely tranquillize. It was the tall figure of a man that now dimly met my view; he was enveloped in a large cloak, similar to those then used by the military on service, and since in so much request among our students in law and linen-drapery. Its ample folds concealed, in a great measure, the proportions of a form of which only a confused outline could be traced beneath the shadow of a couple of tall trees that skirted the road. I could, however, distinguish that the person, whoever he might be, was of a commanding height, in spite of the unfavourableness of the attitude in which he stood, as he remained, with his back towards me, leaning over a gate, and, as I conjectured from the position of his head, gazing earnestly on the brilliant luminary which shone in mild radiance above him. As I turned the corner of the hedge which had hitherto concealed him from my sight, his song ceased. I paused for a moment as I beheld him, but was again advancing, when the recurrence of the strain checked my footsteps. Apparently absorbed in his own contemplations, he had not perceived my approach, and I was now sufficiently near to distinguish, with tolerable precision, the following couplets, which he sung to the same wild melody that had at first attracted my attention, still seeming to address himself to the shining planet on which his eyes were fixed.

SONG OF THE NIGHT WANDERER.

"There is a low and a lonely vale,
Where the silver moon shines clearly,
And thither I flew to tell my tale
To one whom I loved full dearly;

In jocund glee I bounded along,

And gaily I laugh'd, and troll'd my song;
Ŏh the Moon! the lovely Moon!
Dearer to me the light o' the Moon
Than the gaudy blaze of the flaunting noon!

"But days are gone, and years are fled,

Fled too are those hours of brightness;

And the nut-brown curls that waved on my head, Are tinged with a silvery whiteness; gone is one whom I loved full well,

And

And I heard the hollow passing-bell

As I gazed on the Moon, the cold, cold Moon!
Yet dearer still is the light of the Moon,

Oh dearer by far than the Haunting noon!

« AnteriorContinuar »