•":>2.Vrincps S L I E) R. A R. Y OF THE UN IVLRSITY Of ILLINOIS 823 7466 V ■ 1 ' '2 yy^^ ^ } Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/timonbutnotofath01timo T I M O N, BUT NOT OF ATHENS. On peut long' temps, chez notre espece, Fermei' la porte a la raison ; Mais, des qu'elle entie avec adresse, EUe reste dans la maison, Et bientot elle en est maitresse. Voltaire. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET. 1840. LONDON : BLATCH AND LAMPERT, PRINTERS, OROVE PLACE, EROMPTON. 8^^ PREFACE AND DEDICATION. Some books are written for our learning — others for our amusement — and here and there, we have one that is written for both purposes. It is with the latter that the present volumes aspire to be ranked. Children — and men and women with the minds of children — are pleased only with a plot which keeps their curiosity in play, and with adventures which apply to theu' fancy and their feelings, but which, when they come to the end, leave theu* heads no wiser, and their hearts no better than before. It is even well if they are not worse. To this class of readers these volumes are not dedicated — To whom then ? To Yor ! — provided you are among the few, that, in reading, do not consider all thought to be superfluous — but not otherwise. T I M O N, BUT NOT OF ATHENS. CHAPTER I, The earth is a melanclioly map, as delineated by our moral geographers. The world grows worse and worse — such has been the lamentation from the beginning of time, and so will it be to the end thereof. Some, indeed, there are, who will have it that the march of intellect is not a dead march ; the advancement of knowledge, they say, may be retarded, but, silently and un- seen, it works its way onward ; and will brin g VOL. 1. B 2 TIMON, BUT NOT US, sooner or later, to where we ought to be. Whether the intellectual and moral progress of mankind will keep pace with each other, is a question beyond the depth of our sagacity to fathom . Such was the substance of a remark which had been just made by Frank Delamere, in a conversation with his friend Edward Clavering, on the signs of the times. " It is a question about which there cannot be two opinions," was Clavering's reply ; " knaves and apostates — political and rehgious — are coeval with the race of man; and let wisdom make what advance it may, they will continue to multiply and replenish the earth as long as its atoms hold together." " My good Mend," said Delamere, throwing himself carelessly on the sofa, " vu'tue, in your philosophy, sits enthroned on an inaccessible pinnacle ; and man is not made to chmb such a feai'fal eminence. Lofty souls may, now and then, reach the summit, but the majority " " Will be all their lives crawling round the base," interrupted Clavering ; " except when OF ATHENS. 3 the pressure of pride, or the sting of ambition, makes them struggle for elevation ; — and when obtained, what use do they make of it but to trample the feeble under their feet ?" " The first empty tub of handsome dimen- sions, my dear Clavering, that I can procure, shall be yours," said Delamere, with his ani- mated smile ; " your handsome figure would be- come it much better than Diogenes ever did. It will be the abode of a noble spirit ; you may turn it upside down and lecture from it, as from the stronghold of freedom ; — and, forthwith, you will transform ministers into patriots, and rogues into honest men." *^ If you could inoculate me with your love of the ludicrous, I should feel inclined to make the experiment." " Nothing so easy," rejoined Delamere ; " man, as we all know, is the most pliant and improveable of all animals. See to what a state of moral perfection he has been already brought by the preaching of bishops, priests, and dea- cons, in the short space of ten centuries. This shows what may be done by a diligent and b2 4 TIMON^ BUT NOT exemplary church establishment. We^ in return, have put up our prayers for them .; and, behold, what an endowment of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding they display ! — what samples they exhibit of christian humility ! — what an indiffer- ence to the riches of this world ! — what cai'eless- ness about all that is corruptible by moth and rust ! — to what can all this be ascribed but to our weekly petitions, which keep their virtues, like the banyan tree, in a perpetual state of repro- duction ?" " You have an enviable talent of description, Delamere." " Take it, my dear Clavering, if it is worth anything, for a portion of your misanthropy." " Indeed, my dear friend, I am far from being a misanthrope. No one is more wilHng than I am to have a favourable opinion of mankind, and I take no small pains to arrive at it ; but, after all, I cannot help coming to the same con- clusion with the fisherman in Pericles. ' I marvel !' says his mate, ' how the fishes live in the sea V ' Why,' answers his companion, ^ as men do on land — the great ones eat up the little ones.' > '> OF ATHENS. 5 " He was a witty and a wise fisherman, that made the answer/' repHed Delamere. " It is a truth worthy of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. But when was it other- wise ? When did power ever practise forbear- ance, when the pubhc purse was within its reach ? For what were great offices created but as a helping hand for putting the wages of those who labour, into the pockets of those who neither toil nor spin ? A voice is now and then raised that denounces all this evil-doing ; but it is the voice of one crying in the wilderness, that never malies the world wiser. But you quarrel with the fabric of poHshed society. You have no reverence for its Corinthian capital. You love the simplicity of the Christian church, and have no taste for the curtained festoonery, the lawn sleeves, and the purple and fine linen. You dwell with emphasis on the rights of the people, but you make no account of the prerogatives of the monarch, and the rights of the mighty of the land. You pass these over as if they were the dust of the balance, or things of shadow, that had no real existence." 6 TIMON, BUT NOT " Nor have they. When I speak of popular rights, I refer to those which are common to man as man." " Have kings and nobles, then, no natural rights?" asked his friend, with well-affected astonishment. " As kings and nobles, none," replied Cla- vering. " They have duties which attach to their station, but exclusive rights they manifestly cannot have. To make this clear, we need only look to the relation of guardian and ward. The property of the ward is placed under the pro- tection of the guardian. His education, his moral wants, and whatever relates to his present happiness and his future well-being, is submitted to the same provident superintendence. To have his property duly secured — his mind fairly instructed — and his morals well trained — these are natural rights of the ward, as having their origin in natural justice. They arise out of the relative duties of the guardian, which de- volved upon him on his accepting the respon- sible office with which he is clothed. But what rights has he in the capacity of guardian ? His OF ATHENS. office is in the nature of a trust for securing the rights of another, and can give birth to none that are personal. Just so it is with the sove- reign, and with all the recognized orders and authorities in the state. The welfare of the na- tion is committed to their guardianship ; and the instant they are appointed to that trust, they are bound to the honest fulfilment of all the obliga- tions that go along with it. But to speak of a trusteeship as conferring rights, and those rights as being superior to, and separate from, those of the body for whose benefit the trust was created, is sheer sophistry." " Most unacceptable reasoning this to the rulers ' by the grace of God,' " said Delamere. " All the abuses by which nations have been oppressed," continued Clavering, " have grown out of privileges and prerogatives, which, usurped at first, have been gradually fortified, till, meeting with no efiectual resistance, they have become a part of the established order of things ; and in the progress of time they have assumed the shape and character of rights ; and whoever has ventured to bring their legitunacy 8 TIMON, BUT NOT into doubt, has been replied to by an ex-officio information, and refuted by fine and imprison- ment." " All this is true, Clavering ; I admit it in sober sadness ; and I prophesy that, before a hundred years shall have passed over your head, one of two things will happen ; either the world will be brought to think as you do, or you will cease to care for its conversion. As for me, I am of opinion with Lavater, that the laws of our nature are in the lines of our faces ; and that, as he truly says, to force a man to think and feel lil^e me, is equal to forcing him to have my exact forehead and nose. I 'wdsh, by the way, that those who framed the thirty-nine articles had been aware of this truth ; what a countless number of consciences would have been spared from overthrow, and what light would have shed itself over our learned universities !" Here a loud rap at the door sent its echoes through the hall, and the servant announced Sir Felix Clavering. The Baronet bowed T\'ith grave formality to Delamere, and shook hands in a manner scarcely less formal with his son. OF ATHE?fS. 9 Something had manifestly occurred to discom- pose his usual serenity. The cause was no other than the resolutions carried at a Marylebone meeting for the repeal of the assessed taxes, which had arrived wet from the press to the Conservative Club, of which he is a most dis- tinguished and zealous member. The Keform ministry itself had been severely taken to task. It had been shown that indignant as they had professed to be, when out of office, at the con- tinuance of these taxes beyond the war period for which they were imposed, they had not only resisted their repeal, but had caused the elective franchise to depend upon their payment within a time Hmited ; thus, at once, attacking the in- dustrious portion of the people, who were least able to struggle with the public burthens, and making those burthens the medium of defraud- ing them of their political rights. " It is monstrous," said the Baronet, " to see the revenue shattered and despoiled at the will of the mob. We want the firmness and promp- titude of the Duke at the head of the govern- ment. His summary mode of dealing with the b5 10 TIMON, BUT XOT discontented is what the time calls for. The timid and conceding policy of Lord Althorpe will bring the country to ruin." " Lord Althorpe is, I think, so far excusable," said his son, " that he has conceded nothing which he could safely refuse. He has always manifested a disposition to withhold till the surrender was unavoidable. The necessities of the people " '^ Have existed," interposed the Baronet, " and must exist under all governments ; the people must be taught to bear them ; and they will bear them when they are not goaded to resistance by the enemies of all order, that will neither eat their own bread in peace, nor let others do so." ^* Passive obedience is a small price to pay for the privilege of having bread to eat ; and they ought, therefore, to eat it with thankfulness," said Delamere, in a tone of equivocal gravity. The Baronet, without heeding the remark, or rather, without appealing to heed it, conti- nued : — ^' If we are to go on as we have been going on for these last ten years, the ruling OF ATHENS. 11 powers in the nation will be found among the leaders of political unions ; and every bearded radical will claim a voice in the dictatorship. The operative classes, from their number and combination in the large manufacturing towns, exercise an influence over the acts and delibe- rations of government, which utterly upsets our whole political system. The elements of revo- lution are everywhere at work, and the utter disappearance of that ascendancy which has hitherto kept everything in its place, will be the sure result. Kings, nobles, the mitred clergy, all the privileged functionaries of church and state, will di*ift to the wall, and ' unwashed artificers ' will be our lawgivers and our masters. This is what a radical reform will bring us to, and to nothing better." " It will be a fearful consummation," said Delamere ; '^ we seem to be, to all appearance, fast returning to the state described by Lear, in which we shall ' owe the worm no silk, the beast no hide, and the sheep no wool.'" The face of Sir Fehx assumed an ultra-serious cast, which his son observing, diverted the dis- 12 TIMON, BUT NOT course into another channel. This was Edward's first visit to his friend since he had removed to his present apartments in Stanhope Street. Delamcre had several choice pictures, which decorated his drawing-room, among which was an admirable portrait of Voltaire. It repre- sented that extraordinary man in the iron-grey- stockings which he usually wore, with a waist- coat down to his knees, and laced ruffles reaching to his fingers' ends. The eagle expression of his eye was given with admirable effect. Edward observed, " that it seemed actually to radiate the canvass ;" and spoke warmly in praise of the artist. The same object introduces very different trains of thought, according to the character and present temper of the indi^-iduals to whom it presents itself. The contemplation of Voltaire's portrait brought to the mind of Delamere the recollection of the effect produced by his writ- ings in enlightening the age in which he lived ; how much he had done towards extending that freedom of thought which had silently trained the minds of Frenchmen to manhood, and had OF ATHENS. 13 mainly influenced that revolution wliich has changed the face of the world. Edward Clavering was. viewing the portrait phrenologically. The forehead, and its intel- lectual developements, absorbed his whole atten- tion. He contemplated it as a head, forgetful at the moment of the philosopher of Ferney ; and regarded only its mental manifestations^ with reference to his favourite science. " How finely enlai-ged above the temple ! — the energy of the perceptive faculties how striking ! — and causality how full and well defined !" This was said in an under tone of soliloquy ; but with the enthusiasm, nevertheless, of a true disciple. Sir Felix did not disregard the soliloquy, but he heard it mthout a comment. The very name of Voltaii'e excited in him, at all times, a senti- ment of abhorrence. Could any feeling of hatred have been superadded to that sentiment, the pic- ture before him would have produced it. One eff'ect, however, it produced ; it gave him occa- sion to thank God that he had never read his works ; a fact which bore evidence to Iris fitness to pass judgment upon them. In truth, it was 14 TIMON, BUT NOT a rule with the Baronet never to look into the works of any writer that held opinions opposite to his own. He never exposed his creed — whether in poHtics or religion — to the danger of being shaken by the disturbance which opposite opinions might excite. He was like the tra- veller who, while moving along the passes of the Alps, treads them in silence, lest the agita- tion of the air should bring down a snow-drift that might overwhelm him. In a word, he was a faithful worshipper of the constitution in chui'ch and state, and had no toleration for any one that was not of the household. Edward, who had made an engagement with Delamere to a morning concert, now looked at his watch ; and Sir Felix, whose carriage had been waiting upwards of an hour, took his leave, to attend an appointment in Downing Street. OF ATHENS. 15 CHAPTER II. The reader will already have perceived that the mind of Sir Felix and of his son were manu- factured of different materials. A knowledge of the laws of propagation is infinitely more va- luable than an acquaintance with all the laws of poUtical economy that ever were laid down by its teachers, from Malthus to Harriet Martineau. That the infant at its birth is a plastic creature, to be moulded as we please, whether for good or evil, is about as true as that a young plant may be made to bring forth what flowers we please, whether tulips or marsh-mallows. " Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined," is a pro- verb that formerly figured in all the copy-books of our youth; and we have accordingly, most 16 TIM ON, BUT N'OT of US, grown up in the belief of it ; but there is nothing that is so apt to beguile our reason as a metaphor, which, being true in itself, we re- ceive as true in its application. The infant mind is no more to be compared in flexibility to a twig, than in firmness to a flint-stone. According as is the structure of the brain, so will be the distinc- tive character and temperament through life. Education will do much, no doubt — infinitely more, indeed, than the majority of us imagine — but it will not do everything. The teacher can only work with the instruments that are put into his hands. You may train the foal for a racer ; but if in the sinew and the muscle, the set of the shoulder and the height of the pastern — if in these, and other pre -requisites, he is not framed for it, no training can fit him for the tui-f Every sportsman that prides himself upon his stud, knows well the pains he has taken to confirm their pedigree. His first care has been to ascertain whether nature has fiu'nished the proper qualities. This point settled, he pro- ceeds to give them all the improvement of which OF ATHENS. 17 they are susceptible. He knows that the breed on both sides is everything ; and that no disci- phne will make a courser of a cart-horse. The indefatigable German can teach the bullfinch to pipe any popular air ; but the imitative faculty is ready made to his hands. No skill can make the blackbird talk like the starhng, or the spar- row warble like the woodlark. Man is, for the most part, an um-eflective, un- manageable animal, who lives chiefly for himself. His passions ripen before liis reason ; and whe- ther married or single, he cares little for the hereditary excellence of his race. He lets the tide roll in, and find what shore it may. Here and there an individual, of mature thinking, will look well to the disposition and character of the future mother of his children ; well knowing that his ofispring will bear testimony to the root they spring from. But the majority of us go on ploughing the rocks, careless as to the harvest ; and thus it is, that in the world of matrimony we have contrived to keep up, as we have done, " the reign of chaos and old night." To understand fully the character of Sir Felix 18 TIMON, BUT NOT Clavering, it is necessary to have some acquaint- ance with the stock from which he descended. We need not carry our researches very far back- - wards. His family was not one which flings its lustre far behind. Certain individuals of it had followed very successfully in Fortune's wake. His grandfather, Mr. Edward Clavering, was wealthy, and kept his coach at a time when that appendage conferred dignity, and when the ap- pearance of it excited awe in the villages for miles round. His country mansion was approached through a pair of massive iron gates, which de- livered the visitor into a fine square of turf, divided by a broad pavement, and adorned at each corner with an antique statue, which, if it did but little honour to the stone-cutter, gave the tout-ensemble an air of magnificence ; a magni- ficence which served to measure the distance be- tween the clods of the earth and '' the revered and ruptured owner ;" for unhappily both those epithets applied to him, although Mr. Canning, had he lived in that day, might have been too humane to have taunted him with their twofold application. OF ATHENS. 19 Old Squire Clavering had been, in his younger days, an inveterate fox-hunter. He had been left a widower in the sixth year of his reign. I say of his reign ; for his will, as a husband, was law. His maxim on domestic government was that he had no objection to be ruled, but he would not be overruled. This compromise secured him a strict obedience on all points upon which he thought proper to exact it. His love of festivity, and what he called good-fellowship, was extreme. He rode the best of horses, gave the best of dinners, and could boast the best of wines. These enjoyments were costly, but of this he made no account. He possessed a robust constitution, the recompense of exercise and early rising, and had reached the autumn of life without losing much of that vigour which dis- tinguished him in the green leaf. But on a sudden the sunlight was overcast. A chancery suit of thirty years' duration most unexpectedly ended in a decree in favour of his adversary. The costs, which fell upon him, in addition to the heavy advances he had made to his different solicitors — for death had summoned 20 TIMOJfl, BUT NOT away three in tlic progress of the suit — amounted to a sum far beyond his immediate abihty to discharge. His mansion and estates were advertized for sale ; but happily for his future peace, he died before they were brought to the hammer. When the executors came to balance their accounts, it was found that the lawyer's bill had barely left enough to pay his funeral expences, and the cost of his tombstone. His only son, Mr. George Clavering, was at this time pursuing his studies at the grammar school at Maidstone. Destined to the church, he was qualifying himself, in the usual way, for the cure of souls. His mental developement was not very conspicuous ; he had, however, made a tolerable proficiency in the Latin and Greek classics, than which nothing could better fit him for a teacher of righteousness. There was, moreover, another kind of knowledge in which he was extremely well versed. He was thoroughly informed as to the patrons of all the best benefices ; he knew, to a fraction, the worth of every valuable rectory in the kingdom, and in whose gift they respectively were ; there was OF ATHENS. 21 no source of clerical emolument, appertaining to tlie metropolitan clergy, with which he was un- acquainted. He had the ecclesiastical dues at his finger's ends. If his studies were not Zion- ward, they were toward the arch-diocese of Can- terbury, which, to his view, was quite as pro- mising a prospect. He bore the loss of his father with becoming resignation ; but the loss of his father's fortune — this was an event for which the world offered no consolation. That such a cloud should burst upon his devoted head, at a time too when he was so ill prepared for it, was one of those decrees of Providence to which it took his reason a long while to be reconciled. Happily he had a small property of his own, which had descended to him in right of his mother ; which, though not to be called an independence, was enough to enable him, with his flexible propensities and prudential habits, to keep his head above water. It luckily fell out that while he was thus busied in the interests of religion and learning, a Maidstone fellowship in University College became vacant, which he had the good fortune 22 TIMON, BUT KOT to obtain. Here he cultivated the goodwill of his most influential associates, whose facetious stories he always laughed at, and was never seen to gape at their twentieth repetition. Among the companions of his studies he had always contrived to find favour with those young men of rank whose parents were of most note. He had a certain camelionism in his composition which readily took the hue of all around him. He was '^ all things to all men." In addition to this, he could carve well, take off a full glass gracefully, abounded in anecdote, and was a good whist-player. These convivial quahties, which he inherited from his father, were never indulged at his own cost. If they sometimes forced him into an ex- pence not exactly squaring with his finances, this deviation into extravagance did not proceed from any forgetfulness of the rule of right. Quite the contrary. It was the result of calcu- lation and forecast. He was never so unwary as to play a losing game with his eyes open. He knew the expenditure would one day peld a handsome return in meal or in malt. His purse, OF ATHENS. 23 too, was occasionally open in tlie way of loan. If the time fi-xed for repayment passed over, the omission was made light of, and the tasselled borrower was charmed with the generosity that treated the omission as of no account. But in such instances he always knew his man, and the de- gree in which he might be accessary to his future advancement. It was an adage of the olden time, highly approved by old Lilly, ** That learning is better than house and land ;" For that — * * When house and land are gone and spent, Then learning is most excellent." Mr. George Clavering had a great respect for proverbs, but he was a matter-of-fact man. Money was with him the " one thing needful." He was not insensible to the value of learning ; but it was a pearl of no price in his estimation when compared with the exchangeable value of " house and land." His opinion was that when they were gone, all was gone ; and that learning 24 TIMON, BUT NOT counts for nothing in the three per cent. consols. There are some men whose every step in the path of life is firom flower to flower. Save in the mishap of the chancery suit, George Cla- vering might fairly be counted among the number. He had but just taken his bachelor's degree, when a Kentish fellowship most oppor- tunely fell vacant at Magdalen College ; and there being at that time no scholar in the house who was upon the county, great interest was made in his behalf, and when the day of election came, he found himself a Fellow of ^lagdalen. His virtues — which were those of a true church- man — grew with his growth; and having formed a strong friendship with a favourite nephew of the then Chancellor of the University, those virtues were in the progress of time rewarded with a deanery. An ecclesiastic, when he has risen to the rank of " the very reverend the dean," may set at naught the dissuasive of St. Paul, and take a ■wife. He put the prudential advice of the apos- tle in one scale ; and thirty thousand pounds — OF ATHENS. 25 the amount of her marriage portion, together with two advowsons — in the other. The affair was soon settled. It was quite clear that a sum 60 ample, and a church patronage so lucrative, sanctified the union with the best of canonical warrants. Time flew forward upon rainbow wings, and in his train came Love, sent, so sings the poet, " To bind The disunited tendrils of that vine Which bears the wine of life, the human heart." George Clavering had never, even in the sun- niest days of his youth, been much in danger from the fascination of the softer sex. With him a woman was " a woman ;" differing all of them from each other as one star differeth from another star in brightness, but all alike unworthy of worship. He did not make an open profession of this creed ; but he held it, as he did many other opi- nions, which he was too prudent to avow. A remark, which he one day made after some ex- cellent champagne had put him in higher spirits VOL. I. c 26 TIMON, BUT ^'0T than usual, will serve as a specimen of his no- tions on this head. One of the company, in the course of conversation, quoted Curran's quaint sentiment as to love, as expressed in a letter to a friend. He writes thus : — '' I really begin to think that the best tenure of earthly attachment is tenantcy at will. You have the use of the soil and the way -going crop ; then nothing you plant shoots so deeply but you may remove it without injury to the soil or to itself. But if the affections strike their root far into the heart, they cannot be pulled up without laceration and blood." " I perfectly coincide with Curran," said the divine, scenting the aroma of the claret, and emptying his glass. " As to faith and fondness, they are very well while they last, but they fade away Hke a vapour. AVe have outlived the age of romance ; and the fact is, that in oiu* days, though people for the most part begin with mak'wg love, they end with buying it ready made." There was more of levity in this strain of sentiment than became one in holy orders ; nor OF ATHENS. 27 would he have given vent to it but for the quick transit of the bottle, and the very familiar circle which relieved him from all restraint. It happened about this time that a Mr. Co- ningsby, a near neighbour , was attacked by an illness, which, in a consultation between the two London physicians who were expressly sent for, was pronounced to be of a most dangerous kind. Upon being sent for iipon a fifth consultation, they gave it as their opinion — which they might as well have done in the very first instance — that it was a hopeless case. They would pro- bably not have spoken so decisively, but that the state of the patient was such as to afford no chance of being called to another consultation. Their expectation was fulfilled. He died within three hours after their departure. - Mr. Coningsby had been many years a widower. He was always reputed wealthy, and that he must have been so by his style of living. There was one evidence of it within Mr. Cla- vering's own knowledge. He was patron of the rectory of E , in the coiinty of ■, of the value of twelve hundred a year. Rumour gave e2 28 TIMON, BUT NOT out that he had devised this to his only daughter, Sarah Coningsby, together with a considerable bequest, the exact amount of which had not transpired. The advowson had been purchased for his son, who was to have been presented to the beneiice when of an age to take upon him the holy order of the priesthood. He was within eight months of attaining this age, when he T^-as unhappily carried oflf by scarlet fever, just as he was about to leave Rome, where he had been resident upwards of two years ; and his remains w^ere deposited in the Protestant burial-ground in that city. If the portion which had fallen to Miss Co- ningsby, on the death of her father, was as con- siderable as the gossip of the neighbourhood announced it to be, her fail* hand was a specula- tion worth attending to. The Reverend Mr. Clavering began to turn the affair seriously in his mind. If he made up his mind to become a candidate, it would be advisable to start early, before other candidates came into the field. But there was one traditionary caution — very homely but very serviceable — that, from his OF ATHENS. 29 youth, up, he had never neglected : " Look be- fore you leap.*' He was one who never trusted to on dits, when the subject was one m which he had an interest at stake. Before entering the lists of matrimony, he thought it prudent to ascer- tain the value of the prize. It is very well for those who have le coeur jeimeet plein de fiamme, to luxuriate in the visions of a first love ; but it was otherwise with the right reverend George Clavering, who never looked but at the realities of life, and to the deceptions and disappoint- ments which encompass it. He was always for making assurance, if possible, " doubly sure ;" and he accordingly resolved to search for the will, which he knew had been proved the week before in the Prerogative Court, and thus at once settle the point, and set all doubts at rest. He repaired, therefore, without further delay to Doctor's Commons, where he found the will duly registered ; and from which, on payment of the regular fee, he procured extracts to be copied to the effect following : — " And as to, for, and concerning my said capital mansion house, called Warnford Priory, 30 TIMON, BUT NOT now in my own occupation, and the close of pas- ture, and the dove-house standing thereon ; and all the coach'houses, barns, stables, edifices, buildings, courts, yards, fish-ponds, orchards, gardens, paddocks, and pleasure-ground to the said capital messuage or mansion-house belong- ing or appertaining, I give and devise the same to my daughter, Sarah Coningsby, &c. &c. " And I do hereby give and devise unto my said daughter, Sarah Coningsby, all my advow- son, donation, and right of patronage of, in, and to the rectory and parish church of E , in the county of , &c. &c. " And I do further give, devise, and bequeath unto my said daughter, Sarah Coningsby, the sum of thirty thousand pounds, three per cent. Bank Annuities; and I do hereby order and direct that the same shall be transferred to her for her own use immediately after my decease, &c." His search at the Commons, and the satisfac- tory information that thus arose out of it, served to put an end to all uncertainty. It furnished a foundation on which to rest his faith, as sure and OF ATHENS. 31 as solid as was that upon the strength of which he had dedicated himself to the ministry. Having been on an intimate footing in Mr. Co- ningsby's household, he had no difficulties to encounter in the way of introduction. His attentive and pliant manners, combined with his being a good chess-player, had made his com- pany always a desirable acquisition to the father ; and as the father's temper, made irritable by ill- health and want of occupation, made it often a difficult task for the daughter to soothe his habi- tual impatience, she was always glad when the welcome treble knock announced the Dean. Her father became good-humoured, and the evening always passed away agreeably. There seemed to be no reason, if she found the time pass more pleasantly with the Dean when her parent was living, that she should not always do so. Miss Coningsby was not very deeply read in human nature ; it never occurred to her to enquhe of herself whether it was on her father's account or her own that she was pleased -svith his visits ; or perhaps it might be that the assiduous Dean had given her no time, since her father's interment. 32 TIMON, BUT NOT to discuss the question. He had become her daily counsellor in the arrangement of her affairs ; was present with his advice at every conference with the executors ; and as society, to a female of five -and- thirty, left alone in the world, is always desirable, his visits were found to be as acceptable as they had always been. A single life seems to place us, as it were, beyond the sphere of human sympathy ; at least the right reverend suitor had brought Miss Co- ningsby to this conviction ; for at the end of no very long period he led her to the altar, when she received the sacred blessing of matrimony ; without doubt one of the greatest blessings con- ferred upon mankind. "Within twelve months after his fair bride had " blessed a love so true," she gave to the light the present Sir Felix. This happy event, coming at so seasonable a juncture, could not fail to stimulate the loyalty of the reverend Dean, and to beget in him a more enthusiatic attachment to those in authority. Time rolled on, bringing his zeal every day nearer to its recompence. After an interval of about eigh- OF ATHENS. 33 teen years, a noble peer, formerly one of liis fellow- collegians, and in whose good graces he had ever since most assiduously kept himself, succeeded to a high office in the administration ; and having been greatly aided in his success as a candidate to represent the University of Oxford by the worthy dean's activity and influence, he applied urgently in the proper quarter, and the result was — his elevation to a bishopric. As a priest of the cathedral he became, day by day, more zealous in extending the orthodox faith. His charge to his clergy at his primary visitation, was in the same spirit with that of the renowned Dr. Horsley, who, at the same period, was Bishop of St. David's. He cau- tioned his clergy against dwelling on moral duties, as the favourite and leading topic of the pulpit discourses. He exhorted them to insist principally on what he termed " the pecuhar doctrines of revelation ;" such as the Trinity of persons in the undivided Godhead — the incarna- tion of the second person — the expiation of sin by faith in his atoning sacrifice — and the myste- c5 34 TIMON, BUT NOT rious commerce of the believer's soul with the Divine spirit — and concluded with denouncing the moralising Unitarian, and every class of Dissenters, in the sharpest spirit of intolerance. It would be superfluous to add, after this, that he was an invaluable acquisition to the prelacy. His political connexions threw him frequently in the way of the Chancellor, the " giver of all good things ;" who, in consideration of the abundant evidence he had given of his enlight- ened, liberal, and truly pious mind, advanced him, a few years afterwards, to a more lucrative see. In the clerico -political intrigues in which he was concerned, the Eight Reverend Father in God displayed an adroitness that a Metternich or a Castlereagh might have emded. His public days never failed to draw round him a full attendance of the dutiful clergy of his diocese, who lived in the light of his countenance. From the pulpit of his cathedral, whenever occasion called him into it, he enjoined, to the rich, an exemplary attendance on divine worship ; to the poor, that they should conduct themselves " lowly OF ATHENS. OO and reverently to all their betters ;" — in all things to obey " their spiritual pastors and mas- ters " in lowliness of heart ; and above all, to honour the king as the Lord's anointed ; that, in so doing, they would reap their reward on high, and their names would be written in the Book of Life. This was the essence of all his exhor- tations. As to the bishop's own name, it was written in the Red Book, which, judging by the pains he had taken to place it there — he consi- dered as the preferable reward. At this time our good mother church was in her element, and all was quiet about her. Her good gifts were in no danger from the hands of the spoiler. It was not, as in these refractory times — which seem to be prefigured by the fire and smoke and brimstone, described as issuing out of the horses' mouth in the Revelations — when men, not content with denying the infallibility of bishops and archbishops, claim to think for them- selves. Catechisms, creeds, and subscriptions,were not then, as now, stripped of all reverence, as being fitted only to perpetuate ignorance by preventing the spread of free inquiry. It is true, the glory X / 36 TIMON, BUT NOT of Diana of the Ephesians Avas even then some- what in the wane ; but still mitres were reve- renced, and church rates quietly paid. If, here and there, a voice was raised against tithes, it was " a still, small voice," with which few dared to join chorus. But now — reform seems dri\dng his ploughshare over all the sacred foundations of church and state. This comes of the march of intellect ; and where, in the end, it will march to, is out of the power of man to prophesy. The right reverend prelate, happily, did not live to witness those unholy opinions which have since scared the sacerdotal college. He brought forth the " fruits of good living " as became him ; and every passing winter had, for several yeai's, beheld his gouty foot upraised, in mitred state, upon a velvet cushion. But we live in a world in which no one can tell what a day may bring forth. Having preached a sermon before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Abbey Church of St. Peter's, Westminster, on the Friday appointed for a General Fast ; whether from joy at the congratulations he received on leaving the pulpit. OF ATHENS. 37 or from whatever cause, he diluted a plentiful meal Avitli a more than usual quantity of a vint- age from the choicest bin. Shortly after dinner he winked imperceptibly into a nap, from which he was suddenly roused by an attack of apo- plexy. The struggle was short; in less than a quarter of an hour there was a vacancy in the episcopal bench, and government had to rejoice in the dropping in of a valuable piece of pa- tronage. On the next day the following paragraph found its way into the London newspapers, and went the round of the periodical press. " It is with the deepest regret we announce to the public the much lamented death of the Right Reverend the Bishop of ■ , by which the church has sustained an irreparable loss, and religion been deprived of one of its brightest ornaments. He was ardently beloved through- out his diocese as a faithful and zealous teacher of Christianity, and deservedly esteemed by his subordinate clergy as a pattern of unajffected piety and exemplary benevolence. He preached the Fast-Sermon on Friday last at St. Peter's, 38 IIMON, BUT NOT apparently in good health ; but suddenly dropt down in a fit soon after his return home, and expired without a groan. The author of that excellent pamphlet, * The Rights of the Church Vindicated,' is the person talked of as Hkely to be appointed to the vacant see." In the course of the week following, the vacuum which the lamented Lord Bishop had left in the hierarchy was filled up, the irreparable loss to the church was repaired, and the world went on as before wdthout either missing him, or casting a thought upon his successor. Ainsi va le monde. OF ATHENS. 39 CHAPTEPv III. Felix Clavering — having the good fortune to be an only son — was put, by the death of his fathei'j in the possession of an ample fortune ; the sacred savings from the bounty of our eccle- siastical mother J always careful of her children. An abundant provision was likewise made for the widow, who received short notes of condo- lence from her most fashionable friends, expres- sive of their deep sympathy in her sorrowing. It was a trial, no doubt, hard to endure ; but it became the widow of a bishop, of all others, to resign herself to the Lord's will ; and she acted as became her. She submitted without a murmur. When the period prescribed for the denote- 40 TIMONj BUT NOT ment of grief had expired, she removed to Lon- don. The present Sir Felix Clavering, at that time, had just reached the age of nineteen : an age at which the globe is little better than a magic lantern. We see, at that season, but the unreal shadows of life ; the realities come after- wards. But a young man of fortune, when once fairly launched into the world, gets wisdom imperceptibly. It may be that it is the wisdom of the serpent ; but no matter : we live at a period in which all knowledge, of whatever kind, may be turned to account ; and where he who has it not himself, may profit by the want of it in others. It is, at all times, a hazardous step to intro • duce a youth of fortune into the seducements of a great metropolis. But Mrs. Clavering had great confidence in the domesticated habits of her son. She knew the leading tendencies of his disposition, and she felt assured that although he might be tempted occasionally into scenes of convi\ial gaiety, he had sufficient self-command to secure him from being led astray. In this opinion she did him no more than OF ATHENS. 41 justice. There was no leaven of the libertine in his composition. His failings did not lean that way ; and at the age of twenty he could sit in his study, decompounding the elements of political arithmetic, with a patience inconceiv- able. He had devoted great attention to the science of heraldry ; and knew oiF-hancl the arms and intermarriages of all the great families in the kingdom. He did not devote himself to either pursuit for itself alone ; he regarded them only in subserviency to his political views. He was never so happily employed as when ba- lancing the strength of contending parties, and speculating on the durability of an existing ad- ministration. Nothing, therefore, was to be feared from him in the way of gallantry. A mind thus absorbed hao no more thought of worshipping a mistress than of worshipping the moon. Having, ah ovo, a strong turn for observation, he had not only never been drawn aside by the frivolities of the fashionable world, but he had greatly profited by the insight into character which it afforded him, and had acquired much 42 TIMON, BUT XOT useful instruction, of which he afterwards availed himself. His acquaintance A\dth the public and parlia- mentary history of Great Britain was extensive and exact. In his father's lifetime he had pro- fitted by his exposition of it. Not to be loyal was, in his estimation, to be destitute of every good quality that befits a subject. He had an hereditary aversion to all patriots and popular leaders. Whatever had an air of public spirit savoured, with him, of sedition. He had a pro- found reverence for the rights and privileges of the aristocracy. To maintain the supremacy of the aristocratical over the popular interest he re- garded as the proper end and aim of all legiti- mate government. I have said that the political history of Great Britain was familiar to him, and it was so. But he had read it in the spirit of party, not of phi- losophy. It had never, therefore, occurred to him that the corrupt influence of the nobihty had gone on extending itself until their interests had become everything, and the interests of the public as nothing. This fact was sometimes OF ATHENS. 43 pressed upon him, when arguing with persons of opposite politics, but the common-place reply was always at hand. — We have grown up under this system to our present state of unexampled prosperity, and to risk the blessings we enjoy in search of speculative perfection, is not only the excess of rashness, but the extreme of guilt. — This style of reasoning, when the periods are well turned, has great weight. Not but that it would be just as wise to contend, that the far- mer should not clear his field from weeds, lest he should endanger the fertility of the soil. In matters of orthodoxy we must be punctual to the text, but when speaking of the Constitu- tion great latitude is allowed. You are free to praise it to any extent; you are at liberty to clothe it with all imaginable perfections, and to represent it as the sum of all that can be wished in theory, and of all that can be enjoyed in prac- tice. In doing this, you perform a most accep- table service to "the powers that be." You wiU be considered as giving the soundest proof of loyalty, and in loyalty all wisdom is included. But the moment you set about to enquire, with 44 TIMON, BUT NOT a thouglitful countenance, whether there is any misconception in all this ? — whether, peradven- ture, while all before the curtain is grave and solemn and imposing, all behind it is not the cabal, and manoeuvring, and intrigue, ** Of men conspiring to uphold their state," from that moment you count in the lists for a Radical. The watch-dogs of the party will be let loose upon you, and no stratagem will be spared to hunt you down. A good constitution contains within itself the means of its own preservation. Let it be well administered, and no libel will harm it. Disaf- fection is never generated but by the abuse of power. ]Mr. Burke, indeed, in his celebrated Reflections on the French Revolution, would fain persuade us, that that great event — the greatest in the history of empires — arose out of the hatred of a mild and paternal government. " Their resistance," says he, " was made to con- cession ; their revolt was from protection ; their blow was aimed at a hand holding out graces. OF ATHENS. 45 favours, and immunities."* Burke knew better ; and looking to the class of readers to which he addressed himself, one is surprised that he should have hazarded an assertion contradicted, not merely by the history of the Bourbons, but by the history of human nature. To return to Sir Felix Clavering. In his per- son he was tall and well-proportioned. His high -arched forehead was well contrasted with a nose strongly aquiline, and both were set off with an eye, which when animated, as it some- times was in conversation, had an intelligent and not unpleasing expression. His countenance was naturally grave, and the steadiness of fea- ture which he had acquired by habit, gave to his whole manner that air of austerity which is so repulsive in the ordinary intercourse of life. His stateliness had grown up with him from liis boy- hood; but at that period, though serious and formal, he was occasionally affable, and could laugh loud enough to be heard ; but on being created a baronet, through the favour of Lord Castlereagh, his muscles had become more rigid, * " Reflections, &c." p. 137. 46 TIMON, BUT NOT and did not relax into a smile so readily as be- fore. NotMng is so great a foe to dignity as facetiousness. Within the circle of the haut monde, jocularity is harmless, and therefore ad- missible, but to laugh at the joke of an inferior savours of democracy. If such indecorum were indulged, there would be no keeping the herd at arm's length. In justice to the Baronet, how- ever, it should be remarked, that his general deportment, though reserved, was always that of a well-bred man. There is a certain measure of respect which keeps those beneath you at due distance. He understood that measure accu- rately, and his manners never erred on that score, either in excess or defect. When the grave duties of a legislator first devolved upon him. Sir Felix was in his twenty- thhd year. He came into parliament at a time when the principles of the French Revolution were fast spreading over Europe. It was at this period that the third of those three great poli- tical parties, into which the nation has since been divided, may be said to have first come into being. The Tories, wedded to all that was or ATHENS. 47 worthless in the machinery of government, and of all that was corrupt in its management, may- be said to have come in with the Conqueror.* The Whigs were — if not practically, at least in argument — the avowed advocates of popular rights ; and when those rights were in debate, their reasoning threw, at times, a lustre over the principles of freedom, and by this the more thinking classes did not fail to profit. The Li- berals, a third party, came in with the progress of knowledge ; and, standing aloof from AVhigs and Tories, sympathized with the million. The opinions wliich they put forth, were those of reflective men, accustomed to think without prejudice, and who came up to the level of the age. They held, that all legitimate authority emanates from the people, and that those who fill the high offices of government, are respon- sible to the nation for the misuse of the authority with which they are invested. The numerical majority of a people, are neither -wise and virtuous. Their lot is labour. They * By name, they belong, historically, to the house of Stuart, and the Whigs to the house of Brunswick. 48 TIMON, BUT NOT have no leisure for those intellectaal acquire- ments which fit them even for self-government, much less for the government of others. It seems the necessary condition of our nature, that the many should be under the guardianship of the few ; but there is no moral obhgation on the many to submit to the authority assumed under this guardianship, when it is exercised in the 77 spirit of despotism. There is no law, in such case, that can make submission a duty. These sentiments are at the present day ex- tremely prevalent, and perfectly well understood. At the period we are speaking of, the country was under the dominion of Mr. Pitt, the most -"-^ arbitrary and reckless minister that ever swayed its councils, at once the dupe and the confe- derate of the aristocracy, who wasted the strength and lavished the resources of the nation with a ^ >y rashness never witnessed before or since. The privileged classes worshipped him. The men of wealth pinned their faith upon his sleeve. They lauded him to the skies, as the heaven - born minister ; never was an epithet so grossly f^') misapplied. Mr. Pitt was neither a great man, or ATHENS. 49 nor a great minister. A man of comprehensive and commanding mind, fitted to the crisis in which he was called to govern, would have found nothing to surprise him in the coming on of that revolution in France, which was destined to change the face of Europe. The seeds of it had been long in the ground — they had been ripening to the eye of every man of thought and reflection, during the entire reigns of Louis XIV. and XY. ; a period of the most degrading pro- fligacy, and the most insulting despotism that ever tried the patience of an oppressed people. All the French writers of note and authority had predicted it, in language too forcible to be disregarded, and too plain to be misunderstood. The Revolution in America had done much towards instructing all the nations of the Con- tinent, but more especially the French nation, in the pure principles of political freedom. He might have known and seen, that this long- ap- proaching crisis was ine-\dtable — that it was the sure result of that gradual change in the cha- racter of the French people, produced by the growth of wealth, intelligence, and industry. VOL. I, D 50 TIMON, BUT NOT The ignorance of infancy had ripened by de- grees into the thoughtfulness of manhood ; but the rulers, instead of keeping their eye upon this progress, and keeping pace with it, con- tinued to govern upon the old system of exaction and lettres de cachet, each thinking it would last his time, and leaving posterity to make the best of it. Had Mr. Pitt been as well read as he ought to have been in the science of government, he would have profited by the awful warning which ■ the French Revolution carried with it. He would have made England take the lead in adapting her existing institutions to the im- C'^ proved state of knowledge. Had he been the profound statesman which his servile flatterers declared him to be, he would have yielded with a good grace to that demand for reform, which it was no longer safe or politic to withold. Had he lent the mighty influence of his official station to the support of liberal principles, and to a sys- tem of government adapted to the spirit of the age, how different — how very different — would have been the condition of Great Britain at this OF ATHENS. 51 moment. Its industry would not then have been burthened with the weight of eight hun- dred millions of debt, incurred to uphold the ascendancy of the titled few, and to re-throne the race of the Bourbons. A high-minded senator would have sacrificed power and place to the interest of his country — Mr. Pitt had no such patriotism. The court was his country, and he had no other. He was no stranger to the fact, that throughout Europe, monarchy rested for support on the Church, and on the titled classes ; and he foresaw, that if existing institutions were so far reformed, as to render the principle of representation practical and effective, the power of the aristocracy and of the clergy must yield to the influence of pub- lic opinion, and state affairs must be adminis- tered on a quite different system. This, and this alone, was the revolution which he dreaded. It was to ward off this great change, that the incessant outcry against innovation was raised. The great aim of all his policy was, to keep the old system afloat ; and to the eternal stain of his name, he directed all the influence of his office, B2 • iMiwcDQlTY OF 52 TIMON, BUT NOT and all the energies of the state, to the support of existing abuses, at the very time that his country was sinking under the weight of them. The whole trim and texture of his govern- ment was financial — all its operations were governed by the machinery of the Excise and Customs. The hand of the tax-gatherer was in every man's pocket — his great test of the na- tional prosperity, was the increase of the Revenue in the current quarter, over the corresponding quarter of the last year. And in what did it end? In, national bankruptcy, and the Bank- Restriction Bill. Mr. Canning designated him, at the close of some convivial stanzas, as " the Pilot that weathered the storm." He was the very oppo- site — he was the Pilot that raised the storm, and died at last, worn out by his ineffectual attempts to outride it. OF ATHENS. 53 CHAPTER IV. Sir Felix, in the outset of his pohtical career, added to a fair portion of borough-interest, other recommendations of great weight with the minister of the day. He had received from nature an understanding which, though by no means of a high order, had been cultivated with the sole view to his political advancement. He had continued to build steadily upon that foun- dation. Horace AValpole said of himself, that from a very early period, he could never bring his mind to attend to any book that was not full of proper names ; and the Baronet had a similar feeling, but in a very different path of research. When at Oxford, a leaf of Bubb Dodington's Diary was worth, in his estimate, all the pages 54 timo:n, but not of Tacitus. The Secret Memoirs of Kings and Cabinets, to be found in the literature of France, were familiar to him. He sought with avidity every exposition of the intrigues of foreign courts, and the machinations of men high in power. There was no work in his opinion so instructive and full of interest, as the Politique de tons les Cabinets de V Europe, pendant les regnes de Louis XV, et de Louis XVI. Ham- ilton's ParHamentary Logic was his Vade mecum, and Machiavel lay always on his library table. All his connections were formed with a view to official influence. With a prepossessing per- son and plausible manner, he found no difficulty in ingratiating himself with any one whose ac- quaintance he took the pains to cultivate — he pleased, by never offisnding. Opmions opposite to his own had, for the time, his entire ac- quiescence; since he knew that to combat them, would be either to make an enemy, or to lose a friend. The severity of his principles always relaxed a little, when a dissolution of Parhament was at hand ; at this season, he put his Toryism on short allowance — he professed himself proud OF ATHENS. 55 to do homage to liis constituents. Inwardly, indeed, he had a decent share of disregard for all that belonged to them, except their vote and interest ; but outwardly his demeanour towards them, was all compliment and condescension. So to descend, was gall and wormwood ; but bitter pills must be swallowed at an election, and a Parhamentary candidate is never expected to suffer for conscience' sake. He had purchased a seat in Parliament at the market price, at that time as well understood as the price of corn, and as regular an article of traffic ; but although every one knew that a seat might be thus easily purchased, to declare it pur- chaseable was a grave offence. The truth of the assertion made it a libel, and the learned Judges never failed to find it so, when the offen- der was on the wrong side of pohtics. He was for upwards of five months in the house, with- out taking part in any debate. Constantly to be seen in his place, he was occupied in ac- quainting himself with the forms of the house. He studied the relative strength of the parties that were to join in battle— he watched the 56 TIMON, BUT NOT anxiety of tlie minister to keep off all embarras- sing questions, and tlie equal anxiety of the opposition to obtrude them into debate. He had taken his seat from the iii'st on the Minis- terial benches, but betrayed no peculiar devotion to the government; his opinions partook of what, in the language of painting, is termed " a neutral tint." He applied the remark of Dr. Johnson alike to political and personal attachments, that " he who too soon professes himself a lover, raises obstacles to his own wishes." On this principle it was, that he occasionally disregarded the entreaty of a first and second circular ; but the thii'd, backed by the pressing solicitations of the whipper-in, was sure of his attendance and his vote. The alternations of doubt thus excited had their effect. He professed to vote indepen- dently and to the best of his judgment, although it usually happened that on urgent questions, his best judgment coincided with that of the minister. This lucky coincidence never passed unobserved, and it begot after a time that per- fect good understanding, known to the initiated, which made his support of the measui*es of go- OF ATHENS. 57 vernment, a duty which he owed to his con- science and to his country. Not only did he make himself thoroughly ac- quainted with the forms of the house, but with the character and capacity of its leading mem- bers. He perceived, and he perceived it with a secret exultation, that, although inferior to the five or six veterans that took a distinguished lead, he was, nevertheless, far from defective in the main requisites of a parliamentary speaker. At this time, Mr. Fox was, as Sir Felix expressed it, "at the head of the mal- contents of Europe ;" and Mr. Burke, who had veered quite round the compass, was denounc- ing every mal- content as a regicide, and earn- ing the reward of his proselytism with a devo- tion that spurned all compromise. It was about this same period, that the letter from Buonaparte, just then become First Consul, so- liciting conciliation and peace with Great Britain, and the reply made to it by Lord Grenville, were communicated to Parliament, by a message from His INIajesty. France was in the advanced stage of her D 5 5S TIMO^''J BUT NOT republic ; and it was beginning to be pretty- generally perceived in England, tbat the "just and necessary war/' in which we were engaged, was a war commenced and carried on for the purpose of restoring the French royal family, and of keeping crowned heads upon their shoul- ders ; and which could only be accomplished by extinguishing those principles of popular govern- ment, which were fast making way into every corner of Europe. The working classes saw and felt that they were to be bent to the earth by taxes, wrung from their industry year after year, with no other object, and for no other end, than to enrich and strengthen a heartless no- bility, and to perpetuate their hereditary domi- nion over the public purse. This conviction widely extended itself, and combined with the high price of provisions at this juncture, created a general spirit of discontent. The distress, consequent on an excessive war expenditure, began to spread itself into all quarters. The calamities brought upon the country, by the ruinous impolicy of the govern- mentj were ascribed to the judgment of the OF ATHENS. 59 Almighty, upon the sins of the people ; and a General Fast was proclaimed to pacify the wrath of offended justice. This was the delusion usualfy resorted to, when impatience was at its height, in order to draw off pubhc attention from the true causes of complaint, and to make resignation a reHgious duty. The fast, and the form of prayer, were, like other forms, fulfilled and forgotten. Neither the pervading distress, nor the popular discontent, were in the least abated. Loyalists upon a full stomach, are radicals upon an empty belfy. Sedition stalked abroad ; county meetings were called, and petitions, got up by the freeholders, instructing their representatives to vote in favour of peace, piled the table of the House of Com- mons. Sir Felix saw that here was an occasion on which the value of his support would be decid- edly felt, and he accordingfy resolved to take part in the approaching debate. He was the more strongly induced to do so, from the very general condemnation, which the abrupt and haughty conciseness of Lord Grenville's note, rejecting the overture for peace, had excited. 60 TIMON, BUT NOT The greater the unpop^^larity of a minister, the greater value he puts on the service of his supporters. He accordingly devoted the whole of the preceding week to the prepara- tion of his niaiden speech. He arranged his topics in logical order, — pictured on a char- coal ground, all the evils of repubhcanism ; and descanted with becoming warmth, on that paternal solicitude for the happiness of their people, which had always distinguished the house of Bourbon. He expatiated, at due length, on the great stake which we all had in the contest ; it was a war for all that was dear to us, — our hearths, our altars, our religion as Christians, our independance as a nation, our rights as a free people, — all were at stake ; and he insisted, that not only was our own govern- ment the best, but the best- administered of all governments. We were a highly favoured nation, enjoying an inestimable and envied con- stitution, the legacy of our forefathers, purchased by their valour, cemented by their blood ; and after pressing into his service all the customary common-places, he finished, with denouncing OF ATHENS. 61 the sangiiinary excesses of the French people, the imperious tone and temper of the First Consul, and the mtriguing spirit of his prime - minister, the arch-apostate M. Talleyrand, with whom to conclude a peace, would be to destroy all the distinctions of civil society, and to entail upon this country evils unutterable. This speech, which occupied nearly two hours in the delivery, was hailed with repeated cheers from the ministerial benches; and the result satisfied Sir Felix, that he had not made a false estimate of his own powers. He had the infinite satisfaction to find himself figuring the next morning, in three-columns-and-a-half of the broad sheet. Attention was directed to it in the leading article of all the ministerial prints. Its most prominent passages were selected, and studded with compliments, every way calculated to set them off. This success could not fail greatly to advance his claims to ministerial favour. 62 timo:n, but kot CHAPTER V. The Baronet had just attained his thu*ty- second year, when he had the good fortune to ally himself to the honourable Miss Emilia Tre- vorne, the only daughter of Viscount Glen- darvon. He could not be said to have been in love, in the usual acceptation of the phrase, but EmiHa was an heiress, and he felt for her all the attachment of which his nature was suscep- tible. Mr. Burke, in his treatise " On the Sublime and Beautiful," has a chapter on " The Physical cause o/LovE." If his account of the symptoms of this passion be correct. Sir Felix must have been of a different frame-work from common mortals. " In the presence of the object be- OF ATHENS. 63 loved, the body is affected, so far as I could ob- serve," says the philosopher of Beaconsfield, " much in the following manner. The head reclines sometliing on one side ; the eye-lids are more closed than usual, and the eyes roll quietly with an inclination to the object; the mouth is a little opened, and the breath drawn slowly, with now and then a low sigh ; the whole body is composed, and the hands fall idly to the sides."* Whether these effects of this master-passion of the human mind are here truly delineated, must be left for the ladies to decide. Assuredly Sir Fehx Clavering never was affected in this manner. The passion of love is, undoubtedly, the most complex and the most curious of all the passions. It is to be found every where. All nature owns its influence, and it may be truly said to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. It is the growth of all climates, for lovers of all ranks and descriptions may be seen basking in the rays of a tropical sun ; and at the same time, like whales and wahuses, they may be found * Burke's Works, vol. i, p. 282. 64 TIMON, BUT NOT disporting amid snow-storms, and dissolving with tenderness on an iceberg. If Mr. Burke's system be the true one, love' has no greater enemies than the tincture of bark, and the sulphate of quinine. The hands — to be an index to the heart — must be nerveless ; they must "fall idly to the sides." The whole frame must be unbraced ; its fibres must be unstrung. All tonics, according to this theory, must be removed to a distance, if a suitor hopes to plead successfully, since the spirit of dehght will not dwell but with feebleness and languor. " A beautiful object presented to the sense, by caus- ing a relaxation in the body, produces," we are told, " the passion of love in the mind ; so if by any means the passion should first have its origin in the mind, a relaxation of the outward organs will as certainly ensue in a degree proportioned to the cause."* What wonderfLd secrets are hid- den in the depths of human philosophy ! Love, then, according to this account of it, has nothing to do with that exalted feehng, that " tempers or improves man's life," but is born and bred only in loose joints and flaccid muscles. * Ibid. OF ATHENS. 65 Nonsense is never so pure as when it is dis- tilled through the cranium of a metaphysician. As to the subject of love, you may always dis- cover, fi'om their commentary, that they have never read the book. In truth I doubt very much, whether any of our sex, philosophers or no philosophers, at all understand it. They talk about it, indeed, as divines talk about fate and free will ; but as to any intelligible perception of their own meaning, they have none. If a wo- man has ^' Weighty ingots, diamonds, pearls," if, " Fortune winds her in its golden arms/' then is every man desirous of winding her in his arms also. But there must be gold, or the poor, creeping lord of the creation is no idolater. Give him but the ti'easure, and she is beautiful, and he will make her heart " his home ;" but let her have no other dowry than her virtues, and the warmth of her affection, and her virgin heart may find a home where it can. The age is sadly altered ; time was when diamonds were 66 TIMON^ BUT NOT nothing, either in splendour or in value, com- pared with " The large black eyes, that fling on you a flash Of rays that say a thousand things at once." Under the old regime, there was a downright mutual affection. True lovers saw neither the heavens above them, nor the earth beneath. They saw nothing but each other, and were satisfied that nothing else was worth seeing. The bard of Avon, in his Winter's Tale, draws their picture to the life. " He says he loves my daughter ; I think so too, for never gazed the moon Upon the water, as he'U stand and read, As 'twere, my daughter's eyes ; and to be plain, I think there is not half a kiss to choose "Who loves the other best." These were times worth living in ', but, like the miracles, they have passed away. People do not now die for love as they used to do. We have no returns of the killed and wounded as formerly. True it is, that the banns of matri- mony are published as in the olden time, but we are now mere sleeping partners. There are ex- OF ATHENS. 67 ceptions, no doubt, but they are rare. Voltaire is after all much nearer the truth than Burke, when he tells us that there are so many sorts of love, that it defies all definition. ^^ II y a tant de sortes d' amour, qu'on ne salt a qiioi s^adresser pour le definirT Better is it by far, to leave it unexplained, than to degrade it into a state in which '^ the mouth is a little opened, and the eyelids more closed than usual." Let us hope that this ethereal and hallowed feeling, which beyond all others breathes the breath of heaven over the living world of man, will be honoured as well for the chastity of its source, as for the purity of its influence. Then will lips " elo- quent for truth," praise only that " Love, where passion is forgot — Love, where falsehood liveth not — Cloudless dreams in azure bowers, All the scenes of all the flowers — Heavenly, endless, bright, immortal, happy hours." Lord Glendarvon idolized his daughter. Her happiness was the subject uppermost in all his thoughts. He had marked attentively the con- 68 TIMON, BUT NOT duct of Sir Felix Clavering; he had long ob- served him moving familiarly in the circle of the high born of both sexes, without in any manner forfeiting his claims to respect. His manners seemed to stand out in broad contrast to those of the young men whom opulence and fashion made his associates. That he shone in the com- parison is certain ; and the noble Viscount con- gratulated himself on an union what would give him so exemplary a son-in-law. It would be easy so to describe the daughter of Lord Glendarvon, as to awaken in the mind of the reader a conception of angelic beauty ; but the picture would be unreal. Her beauty was not angelic ; she was " a creature of earth's mould/' and the modest colouring of truth and nature will best do her justice. At the time of her marriage, she was in her twenty- third year. Her person was finely formed. Her features, though they had nothing striking at first sight, were of that kind that mn their way to the heart without our knowing exactly how or when. Whether it was the liquid that floated in the iris of her eye, and which gave such sweetness to the OF ATHENS. 69 bland and beautiful expression of her smile ; or whether it was the kindness of manner^ and the absence of all affectation which marked her ad- dress and conversation, certain it is/ that she rarely mixed in any circle of which she was not the chief attraction. She had, however, mixed but little in the assemblies of the haut ton ; she had no dislike to company — far from it ; but the heartless intercourse of the higher orders, fur- nished few for whom she could feel a warm and sincere friendship. Not but that there are many to be found in that rank — especially among the female portion of it — whose amiable and excellent virtues well entitle them to that distinction in society which their birth and station confirm ; but the truth is, the qualities fitted to excite a rational and real esteem, are rare to be met with in any class. The evanescent enthusiasm of fondness is common enough. Every boarding- school affords samples of it in abundance. But those finer sympathies which endear two persons of the same sex to each other, occur so seldom, that to have a true friend is the lot of few. How many an affectionate and amiable female feels a 70 TIMON, BUT NOT void in her heart which she cannot fill up. There is, no doubt, some kindred being in the world, towards whom she could form a strong and lasting attachment; but, unhappily, there are few, very few minds susceptible of strong and lasting impressions. If this warmth of re- gard is rarely found among the upper ranks, it is not that they are born with more than ordinary apathy in their composition, but that their na- tural affections are spoiled by art. They are educated for display. The moral warmth of the earlier feelings is dissipated by the routine of fashionable formalities in which they live and move. They have a thousand acquaintances, but not one friend. Lord Glendarvon had for several years past withdrawn himself wholly from the affairs of public life, and had more than once since his retu'ement, declined an appointment of high offi- cial authority. Breathing, as he had done, the atmosphere of a court, he had carefully kept his daughter at a distance from it ; and except on being presented, she had never been within its precincts. She had been bred up in the old OF ATHENS. 71 family mansion, with the most indulgent ten- derness to all her wishes ; but* this tenderness had been accompanied with such a watchful training of her mind, that her disposition had been in no way spoiled by it. In the union of Sir Felix Clavering with Emilia, there was nothing of the romantic ; it was the marriage of a sensible and well-bred man, with a refined and highly accomplished female ; — not an every- day incident, it must be o-OTied ; but still an incident that had nothing in it to adorn a love-tale. True it is, however, that there were certain traits of disposition in Sir Felix, which had hitherto been kept in the shade, owing to the absence of all occasion for displaying them. His opinions on many sub- jects were essentially opposed to those of Lady Clavering ; she observed this with regret, but she observed it in silence. She scrupulously avoided every topic on which she knew his sen- timents differed from her own. Her good sense had early taught her, that in married life, aU controversy tends to spoil the temper of both, 'without changing the opinions of cither. 72 TIMON, BUT NOT The Baronet was aware of the intellectual su- periority which was known to distinguish the daughter of Lord Glendarvon ; but she was her- self so unobtrusive, and her whole deportment was so perfectly feminine, that he was never re- luctant to do homage either to the goodness of her heart, or the excellence of her understand- ing. Indeed, to do him justice, there is little doubt, that had he been born in the middle ranks of hfe, with his principles unwarped, and his faculties unfettered, he would have leaned to the opposite of those opinions, both in theology and in politics, which he so strenuously sup- ported. But in addition to a cast of mind that was hereditary, he had been bred up in a circle that owns no supremacy, but ^'in the powers that be." His habitual politeness kept him always attentive to the courtesies of private life ; but having never been in a situation to cultivate the public and social affections, he had grown up almost as destitute of them as if they made no part of his nature. Lord Glendarvon was as opposite in dispo- sition and sentiment, as if he had been^born in OF ATHENS. 73 another planet; this nobleman had shared the influence of the aristocracy, without seeking its patronage. He owed nothing to the Church, the law, or the army. He had at no time taken any part in that struggle for power and place, which is the source of all that is amiss in our laws, and oppressive in our institutions — he knew too well in what the real value of life con- sists, to place his time at the disposal of any other will than his own — he did not covet wealth for the sake of power, nor power for the sake of wealth. His property was unencumbered, and his income was such as befitted his here- ditary rank, for his family was noble when no- bility was an honour ; when the practice of creating a batch of peers to strengthen the hands of government was unknown ; and when the aristocracy of England was free from the con- tamination of servile lawyers, and the spawn of opulent stock-jobbers. Since the death of the Viscountess, there was no object here below, save his Emelia, to which he attached any abiding value. The loss of this world's wealth may be borne ; not only may we VOL. I. E 74 TIMOX, BUT NOT be reconciled to it, but if merely thrown upon our own resources, may be happier when it is gone. But a wife, the being in whom all that endears us to life is treasured up, when she is summoned away, the curtain drops upon all the blessed visions of the future. All those objects, which before were full of excitement, lose their hold upon the heart — all that before was warm and brilliant, becomes cold and colourless. It was so with Glendarvon ; he felt when he con- signed her to the grave, that his summer of Hfe was gone — its sun was set. The daughter of this nobleman was fitted to be the mother of such a son as Clavering, and such a daughter as Julia, whom we shall intro- duce to the reader by and bye. From the first dawn of their reason, she had watched carefully over both. As soon as their faculties began to ripen, she appUed herself to the giving to their kind and affectionate instincts their proper di- rection. Her language, on whatever subject she spoke to them, was simple, and suited to their comprehension; and she had found no difficulty in conveying to their youthful minds OF ATHENS. 75 the first elements of moral truth. She im- pressed them by illustrations adapted to their capacity, and which though simple, were full of interest. Her first and greatest care was, to cultivate in them the principle of benevolence, that purest of all principles, which finds its hap- piness in making others happy. She was her- self, the companion of their childish sports ; and having no example before them of cunning, ill-temper, or unkindness, the disposition of both took the training given to it by the un- spoiled feehngs of nature. Whatever were the boyish thoughts or opi- nions of young Clavering, the expression of them came promptly to his Hps. He felt that he had nothing to conceal, and he concealed nothing. As his faculties expanded, teachers were chosen, well qualified to instruct him in all the higher branches of useful learning ; but the maternal sohcitude of Lady Clavering never re- laxed, knowing as she did, how rarely the de- velopment of the moral feehngs is attended to by classical instructors. She sedulously cul- tivated in her son that rectitude of principle, e2 76 TIMON, BUT NOT which should govern his conduct in public and private life. She considered education of no value^ but as it fitted the individual for the dis- charge of those duties to society, by the ob- servance of which he can alone be of any value in the world, either to himself or to others. The result of this system of teaching was, that as he grew up, the predominant qualities of his mind were a love of justice, and an utter abhorrence of every thing like dissimulation ; his educa- tion, as we have intimated, was begun in the nursery. Lady Clavering was well aware that the mind grows, as well as the body, from in- fancy to manhood ; and that both must be watched and nurtured, from day to day, with equal care, if we expect them to arrive at a healthy state. His intellectual faculties having been suffered to unfold themselves without re- straint, and having been treated from his child- hood as a rational being, the result of this mode of treatment was, that his intellectual constitu- tion was sound ; that on all subjects he spoke what he thought — that in religion he was not, as too many of us are — the creatures of a cate- chism, but of reason and real life. OF ATHENS. 77 If education were thus conducted — if it had been so conducted in times past — how different would be the condition of society, intellectual and moral — our rational clay would not have been moulded as it has been, into all manner of fantastic and repulsive shapes. Education — as regards the full development of our reasoning faculties, and of those moral principles and feel- ings which should govern and guide us in our progress through life — as far as these are con- cerned, we are in the very infancy of knowledge. In all the branches of mechanical science, and in every department of literature, our advance- ment has of late years been great beyond ex- ample. Cheap publications have diffused this knowledge through circles into which it never before found its way. Canals, rail-roads, and steam- navigation, have well nigh annihilated space : the discoveries in chemistry within the last half century, exceed the combined acqui- sitions of all the former ages of the world. But where is our moral preeminence ? In this essential and important part of our progress, what have we to boast ? True it is, that the 78 TIMON, BUT NOT spirit of enquiry has lowered the ascendancy of the priesthood ; but is its zeal to maintain that ascendancy, one jot abated ? Are we not taught, and with a more alive zeal than ever, to hold the essence of rehgion to consist in strict and regular attendance on public worship ? Is not salvation hj faith pro- pounded and preached in every parochial church, and the habits of practical goodness left to grow up as they may ? And wherein is ihh faith to be sought ? Is it to be exemplified in that adoration of the heart, which displays itself in cultivating that dispo- sition and those principles, the habitual exercise of which leaves the soul at peace with God and with ourselves ? No. We are to consult not the will of our Maker, but the word of man. There is no road to salvation, but through the Tliirty-Nine Articles ! Does this compound of scholastic jargon contain one single moral truth ? Is one Christian precept to be found in them, from the first to the last ? Do they contain one intelligi- ble principle which instructs us in our duty here, or that prepares us for happiness here- OF ATHENS. 79 after ? No ; nor anything approaching to it. They contain nothing but the abstruse doctrines of a metaphysical divinity, upheld in the darker ages by punishing disbelief with death, and in our own times, by making the King's Attorney General, the Defender of the Faith ! How slowly has reason extended her empire in Europe ! And why ? Because she has been persecuted in every step of her progress. Kings, priests and nobles, have from the first, joined to hunt her down. The rulers of the people, in every age, have always done their utmost to keep them in darkness — mystery on politics — mystery in religion — and all this for the pur- pose of fencing out enquiry, and keeping com- mon sense at a distance. It has pleased God to endow his creatures with the faculty of reason, to enable them to distin- guish truth from falsehood; but the spread of truth is never permitted, so long as those in power have the means of suppressing it. When the church was in the heyday of her power, the word of the priest was gospel, and his will was law : the ascendant faith was then the CathoHc ; 80 ' TIMON, BUT NOT but the ambition, the rapacity, and the licen- tiousness of their clergy — and the unblushing sensualism of the creatures that successively filled the Papal Chair, and who pretended to have the keys of St. Peter, which enabled them to lock the gates of heaven against all unbe- lievers — at length raised a spirit of resistance, which ended in the downfall of their spiritual throne. So far from there being, at this period, any alliance between Church and State, they maintained a constant warfare. In England particularly, every page of its history is dis- figured with the detail of their conflicts and con- troversies ; sometimes the Papal supremacy was disowned, — at other times the thunder of the Vatican prevailed ; but the scenes of shameless hypocrisy, and reckless bloodshed, are repulsive in the extreme. Nothing is seen but the kna- very of a self- delegated priesthood, profiting by the ignorance of the people, and imposing upon their credulity ; they were bitter enemies to the progress of knowledge, knowing well, that the more the bulk of mankind were enlighten- ed, the more clearly would their craft be seen OF ATHENS. 81 thi'ougli, and the more extensively would the network of their system be exposed. Henry the Eighth was every inch a Catholic. His battle with the See of Rome, was not with its doctrines, but with its temporal power. Had not the Pope, in a fit of passionate indiscretion, pronounced sentence, denouncing his divorce from Queen Catharine, and his marriage with Anne Boleyn, no rupture between them would have taken place. Had his Holiness managed matters a httle more adroitly, and with better temper, the English tyrant would never have disputed his spiritual supremacy, and our Church would probably at this day have been Cathohc. Whoever should have cast ridicule on the consecrated wafer, would have been burnt as a heretic. Bishop Philpots would have written pamphlets in defence of transubstan- tiation ; and the Judges would have declared Cathohcism to be " part and parcel of the law of the land;" and our now orthodox Churchmen would have celebrated High Mass. E 5 82 TIMON, BUT NOT CHAPTER VI. No man could be better satisfied than was Sir Felix Clavering with the moral temperament of his son. His intellect was strong, searching, and reflective ; in temper and in manners he was everything that could be wished. But he had come to a season of life when the com- plexion of his political principles and opinions were of the first importance. The whole colour of the future depended upon them. Unhap- pily, these thoughts and opinions were not of a kind which the loyalty of Toryism could at all tolerate. They held forth no chance of his ever enlisting under the anti-popular banner. A most unaccountable sort of influence had been early exerted over his mind ; how or when, the OF ATHENS. 83 worthy Baronet could not well ascertain ; but so it was. It had been the earnest endeavour of his tutor, Mr. Markland, imperceptibly to alter all these erroneous notions, and replace them with, in his opinion, others more honour- able to himself, and better calculated to attach him to that class of society from which alone he could derive an influential and permanent re- spect. Edward Claverin^ was a very patient, but by no means a pliant, disciple. He would often yield, without assenting ; the reason of this was, that he would never be at the pains to argue any point with an adversary who he knew be- fore hand was not to be convinced. He would, for instance, no more have disputed a high Tory doctrine with Mr. Markland, than he would have contended for monarchy with an American. It would, he knew, be equally a waste of breath in either case. Mr. Markland, the eldest son of a canon of the cathedral of Oxford, was a man cast in the University mould. The basis of all his erudi- tion was classical ; the superstructure was cle- 84 TIMON, BUT NOT rical. He had mingled but little with the living world; and was, consequently, not excited by those active and stirring events which keep the intellect perpetually on the alert. We are all of us fashioned more or less by the circle into which we are born, and the cir- cumstances by which we are surrounded. It is to these that our habits of study will be adapted, and by these will all our opinions, moral and political, be framed. Mr. Markland was familiar with the writings of the early Fathers ; he had drank deep from the springs of their mystic and casuistical theology ; with this training liis ortho- doxy, as may be readily conceived, was pure and undoubting. He had studied the laws of England in the Commentaries of Sir William Blackstone, and its constitution in the pages of De Lolme. It was a perfect piece of machinery — the boast of " our beloved fatherland ;" a monument of the wisdom of our ancestors. The three estates — King, Lords, and Commons — mutually balancing each other, and thus pro- viding against an excess of power in either ; what an admirable conti'ivance ! His attachment DF ATHENS. 85 to this system was sincere, as was his fidelity towards it. But neither the one nor the other was the result of inward thought. He had never studied the principles of government as a science. He erred — where the majority of us err — in mistaking the opinions in which we are born and bred, for the deliberate convictions of our own reason. In all his notions he was supremely aristocratic. The Gamaliel at whose feet he had been brought up had so ordained it. In politics, he was the idolater of Burke. The maxim of that distinguished statesman, that " to innovate is not to reform," was, with him, a sacred and imperishable truth. The nobihty of France had been scattered abroad — her clergy had ceased to be venerated — their estates had been confiscated — the law of primogeniture had been abolished — what an awful warning ! — and all this from the love of change — from that capricious, dissatisfied feeUng, which leads to the destruction of all that is ancient and vene- rable in the institutions of man. All this was, to Mr. Markland, so much self- e\ident truth. It was the manifest tendency of 86 TtMON, BUT NOT the spirit of reform to overturn everything ; to break up all establishments, and to turn govern- ment upside-down. His poHtical creed was braced within a short compass — Monarchy is the mainstay of the world — the nobles of the land are the springs, without which all the clock-work of social order would come to a stop. Archbishops and Bishops are among the glories of Christianity ; it is under their brooding pi- nions that all the germs of holiness are hatched into life ; to their labours it is owing that the claws of Satan are shealed, and the sting of the old serpent made harmless. Such were the sentiments which imbued the mind of Mr. Markland, when, at the earnest recommendation of a dignitary of the establish- ment he was selected by the Baronet as tra- velling tutor to his son. His Greek and Latin acquirements were considerable ; his manners, though somewhat constrained, were, upon the whole, not unpleasant ; and, which is of much more importance, his morals were exemplary. His pupil had been ripening into manhood at a time when the rays of reform were beaming OF ATHENS. 87 forth on all sides, and when the doctrines put forth by its advocates were drawn into constant discussion by the resistance they encountered. Edward Clavering had no prejudices to over- come ; his mind had been early initiated into all those loftier principles, the progress of which has so much disquieted both Whigs and Tories, as they rendered the path of government very unsmooth to the one, and came into triumphant collision with the other. It was not long before Mr. Markland per- ceived — and he perceived it with real regret — that there were certain topics upon which the con- ceptions of his pupil sadly required to be recti- fied ; and he forthwith set about to inspire him with other sentiments than those which he ap- peared, unhappily, to entertain as to the nature of government, and the obligations which it en- joined. In forming this resolution he acted upon a principle of duty. He felt that it would be expected from him by the father that he should eradicate from the mind of his son opinions which ought never to have found theii* way into it. It might not be long before it would fall to 88 TIMOX, BUT JiOT his lot to discharge in parhament those public duties to his country for which his talents so well quahfied him. If called upon to embark in that great struggle which had been so long going on between the aristocracy and the people, it was of the utmost importance that he should be pre- pared to uphold the fabric of our constitution against that party styling themselves Reformers, which, if their principles were acted upon to their extent, would not leave one stone upon another. As their conversations were frequently carried on in the presence of Lady Clavering, he soon discovered, from the remarks that sometimes fell from that lady, when certain pubhc topics were incidentally touched upon, that the son was not the only one in the family whose con- version was desirable. He soon ceased to wonder, as at first he had done, how it hap- pened that Edward Clavering had imbibed such unsafe, as well as unsound ideas, on matters of high concern. However, that Lady Clavering was a woman of strong sense he knew, and to such a woman, truth, when made clearly to ap- OF ATHENS. 89 pear, would, he was sure, be irresistible. Her son too was well disposed to hear reason on whatever subject, and was not therefore likely to hold out against conviction. In thinking thus, he did justice to both; but he erred in imagining he had the weapons necessary to secure the anticipated triumph. No truth of import- ance can be made to appear to any mind — much less to such minds as he had to deal with — with- out a very searching examination of all the de- tails by which it is established. But Mr. Mark- land, though a sound scholar, and — strip him of his prejudices — a sensible man, was not a deep reasoner. He had been trained in the tenets of the old school. He had been accustomed to yield to the authority of great names ; and, con- sequently, had yet to learn, what he conceived himself in a condition to teach. It must likewise be said, to his praise, that though actuated by a very devout zeal, he had nothing about him of the spirit of intolerance. He resolved to carry on the work of conversion with that mildness which, exciting no hostihty, bids fairest for success. He persuaded himself 90 TIMON, BUT NOT that the best course would be, to touch inciden- tally upon those doctrines which were fast ob- taining a dangerous popularity ; and to introduce, in the discussion of them, such remarks as were most likely to obtain attention, and leave them either to encounter objection, or to make their own way, whichever might happen ; that by de- grees they would make their way he had no doubt. It was necessary to prepare the ground for the seed ; in due time it would bring forth fruit a hundred fold. We should here inform the reader that the character of Lady Clavering had been hitherto very imperfectly shadowed out to Mr. Markland. Circumstances had occurred to delay Edward's departure for Ms continental ti'avels, and the same circumstances were likely to delay it still longer. This interval had afforded him many occasions for remarking the soundness of her judgment when conversing on subjects of lite- rature and taste ; but as she mostly abstained from taking any part in the conversation when it turned on politics, he had not had sufficient opportunities of ascertaining decidedly as to OF ATHENS. 91 which party her opinions leaned. It was not till very recently that some observations had fallen from her which were somewhat discou- raging. She expressed herself, however, with so much dehcacy and good temper, that he ima- gined her opinions were not so decisive as in reahty they were ; and that the difficulty would not be very great of drawing her round, by de- grees, to a more correct and legitimate course of thinking. 92 TIMON, BUT NOT CHAPTER VII. The character of Sir Felix Clavering and of his son were, as the reader will have perceived, nearly the converse of each other. How this had happened may be readily accounted for. Edward had been educated by his mother ; more of her quahties had been transmitted to him than of his father's. The dispositions of both parents combined are inherited by the offspring in many cases ; but in the present instance, the intellec- tual character of the mother predominated. Had his early years been engrossed by the dead lan- guages, instead of storing up a fund of informa- tion, and giving his intellectual faculties fuU play, he would no doubt have been, at manhood, a different being. But although differently trained, OF ATHENS. 93 the basis both of his mental and moral constitu- tion would have remained the same. But his father had been too much engrossed with affairs of state to interfere with the maternal manage- ment of him, and under that management he had become what he was. That Edward's researches, moral and political, had left him wholly ignorant of party tactics, and careless of all that concerned them, was, to his father, not only a source of inexpressible regret, but of endless mortification. He had long been looking forward to a peerage as the reward of his own tried and faithful services. He had stood the brunt of several strong contests, as the ministerial candidate, at a time when parties were so nearly balanced, that every vote had its exchangeable value ; and his county influence, which was considerable, would have failed to have obtained for him anything like a majority on the poll, had not the costly but customary " ways and means " been resorted to for placing him at the head of it. He had latterly kept up this county influence chiefly with a view of transmitting it to his son. To secure this, and 94 TIMON, BUT NOT to make it available to his views, was the great object to which all his efforts were directed, and in which all his hopes were centered. Judging from the representations of Mr. Markland, there was no present prospect of his wishes being accomplished. This was the more vexatious, as he had always looked to Edward's obtaining his full dividend in the distribution of official favour. His seat in the legislature was certain, and he might make his importance felt ; his abilities being of that kind upon which the business -hke habits of a statesman might be most successftJly grafted. Now that a young man with so wide an avenue to power and distinction before him, should turn his back upon it, was to the Baronet unaccount- able. It was the more unaccountable, as he had always taken care, as much as in him lay, to keep out of his mind all those romantic notions about the moral equality of man — the greatest happiness principle — and other doctrines of the Bentham school, which, as he said, had turned the heads of so many, and had brought them to the work of reform, axe in hand, with a reck- OF ATHENS. 95 lessness of which, till now, the world had no examjDle. Aware of the destructive opinions which the last half century had set afloat, he had pulled up, as he thought, every drawbridge against the enemy ; and yet, in spite of all his watchfulness, the foe had made his way. The chances, he saw, were sadly against the upward course which he had anticipated. The state of his health, too, made it possible that the worms might call for their meal before he could possibly be baptized at the font of the aristocracy. Alas ! Death is a sad leveller. It is lamentable to think with what little ceremony he cuts up ribbons and garters, and stops the pulsation of a heart that throbs under a star. There had certainly been a sore change in the state of afiairs since the worthy Baronet had used to carouse with Dundas and the heaven-born minister at Wimbledon. They knew well, in their day, how to deal with the doctrine of political regeneration. The quiet of the borough-patrons was never then disturbed by Whig or Tory. The possessors of election influence in both parties exercised it for a 96 TIMON, BUT NOT valuable consideration. Everything has an exchangeable value. Each party sought his own gain, and the pubHc paid the cost. Every voter enlisted himself under the banner of Charles Fox or William Pitt. As for the people, it was enough that they were permitted to look on while the game was playing, without presuming to take account of the score. The interest of government — the landed interest — the commercial interest — all these were recog- nized, upheld, and acted upon. But the in- terests of the country were in the hands of chance. They were left to scuffle with corrup- tion, and make the best of it. Sir Felix loved to recur to these good old times. " I well remember," said he, the other day, in an after-dinner conversation, at which his son was present, before whom his most fre- quent topic was the danger which attends all political changes ; — " I well remember the time when the majority, seated in the House of Com- mons by the crown, the borough holders, and the peers, was 424. Ministers had then a support equal to the weight they had to sustain ; and OF ATHENS. 97 were not, as now, compelled to truckle to popular opinion at every turn of the corner. When the spirit of reform stalked abroad, as it now and then did, ministers put it down promptly, and drove it back at once to its hiding place. They bestirred themselves, too, in other ways. They bought up such a portion of the daily press as would keep the public mind from being whisked about by every wind of doctrine. The clerical magis- trates and the influential landholders of each county kept their eye steadily upon the news- papers which the innkeepers took in for the perusal of their customers. They took in an opposition paper at their peril. By this and other means they got the provincial press, in a great measure, under their control. The Attor- ney-General, too, was always on the alert ; and not only did he keep a sharp look-out, but the spies of government were always on the watch- tower. The seditious were pounced upon at a moment when they thought no eye was upon them." " It was this promptitude, at that critical junc- voL. I. y 98 TIMON, BUT NOT ture of affairs," said Mr. Markland, ^^ that saved the country." ^^ Exactly so/' continued the Baronet. " Mi- nisters did not then leave the strongholds of government at the mercy of political unions. Not but that, even in that day, there were poli- tical unions, but they were of a quite different kind. They were formed not to batter down, but to build up. Their object was to conso- lidate the strength of the state, and to crush the spirit of faction. I was myself a member of the Crown and Anchor Association, set on foot by Mr. Reeves. It was expressly instituted ' For the protection of Hberty and property against the daring attacks of Republicans and Levellers.' All the leading members of the administration were active in support of it. True Tory prin- ciples were then revered as they deserve ; and I hope yet to see the day when they will be again triumphant." The sagacious Sir Felix, notwithstanding the energy with which he expressed this hope, lamented inwardly the slender promise there was of its fulfilment. It were an idle dream OF ATHENS. 99 to expect the retui'n of those golden times when the Treasury was all in all, and the will of the First Lord was the supreme law. The boun- daries of reason and science have been, for years, visibly enlarging. The poorest of the operative- classes have now the means of knowledge within their reach ; and the better educated and more reflective among them have gained that lead and influence which superior intellect, in what- ever station, never fails to obtain. All this has been from day to day working silently on, and from day to day has forwarded that quiet revo- lution, the momentous eflfects of which are still but in their beginning. France and England rule the destiny of Europe, and all the tints and shades of character of the people of both nations have undergone a striking and permanent change. The foolisli prejudices and unworthy enmity, which were fed and fostered by their rulers on both sides, have disappeared. The people of both coun- tries perceive that theii- interests are identified, and they have become cemented, as by a bond of common union. They have become so by an f2 100 TIMON, BUT NOT understood sympathy, not declared in form nor expressed in language ; but a sympathy inspired by the deep-seated feelings of our common na- ture, which locks together, in hand and in heart, the genuine, unselfish friends of freedom and the human race. It was never by choice that the Baronet talked upon politics, for he was never desirous of dis- turbing his own quiet. He lived in the remem- brance of the past ; neither the present, nor the probable future, did he ever care to contemplate. When he did so, his sole motive was the oppor- tunity it afforded him to instil becoming sen- timents into the mind of his son, and to inspire him with a desire to become of some personal consequence in the state ; and to impress him with a due sense of the value of royal favour, and of that patronage in high places, which is the sure soiuxe of honour and preferment. Sir Felix had great command of temper ; he had played the courtier so long, and so success- fully, as to have brought all his feelings under due subordination; but his equanimity was tasked to the utmost, when, returning home from along OF ATHENS. 101 interview in Downing Street, he told Edward of the very favourable manner in which the First Lord of the Treasury had been pleased to express himself with reference to a vacancy which he had solicited in his behalf, and that he had con- cluded by saying, — " Sir Felix, be assured I estimate your services most highly, and am too happy in having it in my power to place your son in so desirable an appointment. You will have the kindness to intimate as much to him and that it only awaits his acceptance." Instead of receiving this communication with the joy expected, Edward Clavering was silent. " You are surely not hesitating about ac- cepting it ?" " No, sir," replied Edward, mildly ; " my mind is made up at once to decHne it." Sii* Felix, with a stare of consternation, stood for a few moments without reply. Recovering himself, he said, in a tone of unusual vehemence, " What ! when I have at length succeeded — and God knows the delays and disappointments I have experienced — that now, when the long sought object of my solicitude is obtained — when 102 TIMON, BUT NOT I have procured for you an official situation, not only of great emolument, but which necessarily brings you into communication with the highest departments of the government, that you should disdainfully refuse it." '^ Pardon me," said Edward, " you really do me wrong ; far from refusing it with any feehng of disdain, I consider myself highly flattered by the offer, and acknowledge with the deepest gratitude the pains taken to procure it for me ; but " " But what ? You are fond of being like no- body else ; and seem proud of disavowing your attachment and allegiance to the throne. There is a certain season of life when all this romance may be pardonable, but it is time it was over. As for that discontent with all existing institu- tions which marks the temper of the times, it arises not from a love of proper freedom, but from an impatience of all restraint. Time was when all classes were busied with then* own con- cerns, and no other ; the peasant with his plough — the artisan with his loom — the trades- man with his weights and scales. But, in these or ATHENS. 103 times, rank and wealth and privilege go for no- thing. The spirit of faction is everywhere. Every swarthy operative presumes to sit in judgment on his rulers, and to pronounce, for- sooth, that they have been ' weighed in the balance and found wanting.' And all this you approve ; and I have no doubt, when the work of destruction begins, you will willingly set your shoulder to the wheel." " Never !" said Edward, in reply ; ^' it is solely because I do not feel myself qualified for office that I would, for the present, decline it." '^ There is nothing so offensive as the pride that apes humihty," rephed the Baronet. " Humility," rejoined Edw^ard, " is a virtue which pride seldom seeks to counterfeit. For myself, I have no inclination to overthrow poli- tical systems ; nor do I even consider myself fitted to assist in working out those great changes which I see in progress. I speak what I really feel, when I say that I do not deem my mind sufficiently matured for such a task." " In other words, you do not feci yourself strong enough to assist in rooting up the ancient 104 TIMON, BUT NOT landmarks. Your creative genius is not, as yet, sufficiently ripened to frame a new system of political society, in which a philosophical mob shall govern themselves, and kings and nobles and priests be sent to the right-about." " I certainly do not conceive myself cut out for such a task," said Edward. " As to whe- ther an hereditary nobility and an established clergy are to be upset or upheld, must depend, in my opinion, upon themselves. All the ac- quired feelings and habits of society are in their favour, and it will be their fault if they cease to be respected. No people ever yet made war upon the nobly born until their dominion had become past endurance. When this happens they cannot be truly said to have been destroyed, but to have destroyed themselves." " A fine theory this," said Sir Felix, " and well fitted to gain the suffrage of the mob. " I suppose you think the time is hastening on when the rabble will be uppermost; and when you you shall give the toast of — ^ The people, the source of all legitimate power,' to a host of your own followers." OF ATHENS. 105 " I hope I am not reserved for such a des- tiny/' repHed his son, with the greatest good temper. The Baronet was not softened. " I see, sir," he added, " that your doctrines are of the new coinage. It is opinions such as yours which poison loyalty at the spring-head. The fashion now is to revile the privileges of rank and wealth as abuses not to be borne. The sweeping aside of of all that is venerable in church and state, is regarded as the only real reform ; and it is easy to see that in this there is, to your mind, nothing objectionable. You await the coming of universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and the ballot. Your patriotism will then be in its element. However, if you choose to despise honour and office, it is your own affair. As to the summary way in which parental authority is disposed of in these days, it is like everytliing else. FiHal obedience was formerly a virtue ; but it is out of date. To set at nought the wishes of a father, is now the only distinctive feature of manhood." Young Clavering, affected by this rebuke, F 5 106 TIMON, BUT NOT was about to speak, when the Baronet inter- cepted his reply by retreating with a hurried and angry step to the hbrary ; and closing the door after him, put an end to the con- ference. i#- OF ATHENS. 107 CHAPTEH VIII. When Clavering a few days afterwards called on his friend Delamere, the first topic of con- versation was his rejection of office. His friend bantered him upon the sternness of his purpose. " I have heard," said he, " of your refusal to be yoked to the INIinister's team. Eeally, my dear friend, you must prevent this mania from spreading, or I shall chance to become infected ; and such a mishap would stand sadly in the way of my preferment." "You will admit, Delamere, that indepen- dence has its price." " Yes, and so has a periwinkle. Edward, you are a dreamer of di-eams. Depend upon it, to be happy, we must take the world as we find i08 TIMOK, BUT NOT it, without examining too minutely as to what it is made of. Man is 'of the earth, earthy;' and what better can you expect from a being made from such a cross-grained material ? " "Ah! Frank, you, as I have always said, are an enviable creature ; you are always in the sunshine — always in the seventh heaven." " And what is the use of coming down from it into your scene of sad realities ? AVhen champagne is to be got, enjoy it ; when nothing but water is to be had, drink it and be thankful. That is my manual of philosophy." " And for you, individually, it may be the best," said Clavering; "but it will not do for — " " Philosophers of your cast — certainly not," interrupted Delamere. " I grant you it is a doctrine fit only for folks of common clay. En- thusiasm, in whatever cause, is capable of great sacrifices. Tombstones record the fact, and the grave holds it in remembrance. You were born in the sun-beams, and can afford to be heroic ; I am a younger brother, born with a hght heart, and with a head hardly steady enough to ba- lance it." OF ATHENS, 109 " But you have talents that would readily find a market," said Clavering, '^ if you could be persuaded to turn them to account." '^ That is just what Sir Felix would say to you." " Yes, but he would link my services to a ministry to whose politics I am hostile. If I accept a seat in parliament, which my father could readily obtain for me, it must be on con- ditions in which, I know beforehand, I cannot acquiesce. The men at present in office pursue a system which I cannot support, and follow out doctrines to which all my notions are opposed. With you it is different. All your influential connections are on the popular side, and were you inclined to get into the House — " " Which I am not," said Delamere, playfully. " My wants are braced in a short compass. I never look far behind me, and as little do I concern myself with the perspective. I re- hearse my creed, and say my catechism, and having so done, I leave it to my political pastors and masters to work out the salvation of the country." no TIMON^ BUT NOT " I, for one/' said Clavering, *^ shall never at- tempt it." " But you ought. Bred, as you have been, among ministers and men in office, and with the path to Downing Street chalked out to your footsteps, what have you to do, but to go on in your way rejoicing." " Of what use is it," said Clavering, ^' to light me the way to a shrine, at which I can never worship ?" " It will not do," rejoined Delamere, " to look too closely to les personnages of the Drama. The rulers of this world will not bear reducing to their just dimensions — theii' dignity would die away, and their dominion come to nought. There is your father, for instance : he has always moved in the invisible world ; he has trod the scene from the May-day of his age till this time, and has a perfect knowledge of what is going on, and has been going on for years, both before the curtain, and behind it. He is fa- mihar -svith all the beasts of the ark, clean and unclean. Now he would train vou into all OF ATHENS. 1 1 I truth — I mean into all political truth. — and you shut your ears." " Can I do otherwise ? You know how ill our views accord." " I do. I know that Su' Felix is neither a Washington, nor a Jefferson; such men come upon this earth once in a thousand years. You are a disciple of the new school : he is a veteran of the old. He has long stood still : you have moved along with the age. You are for a go- vernment based on the greatest happiness prin- ciple : he is for a government based in borough- patronage, and a standing army. He seeks the public good through one system : you through another. Now, what to a clear head can be clearer, than that at bottom you both agree ? " "Your logic is very seasonable." " And is it not, to a dutiful son, very con- solitary ? " " Undoubtedly," said Clavering; " and woiUd make a convert, but for the perverseness of the pupil.'' " Take my word," said Delamere, ^' the rea- 112 TIMON, BUT NOT soning was not so conclusive, that made converts of half the saints in the calendar." Clavering assented. " You are out of humour with ministers, because they give all the good things to their adherents, while the more deserving go unre- warded." *^ Well," said Clavering, " and ought not such a system to be denounced ?" " I am doubtful," replied Delamere. " St. Paul tells us, that he who does not provide for his own house is worse than an infidel. Now, if so, he must be nearly as bad who does not provide for his own side of the housed At this moment the door opened, and Mr. Melford, of fashionable notoriety, was an- nounced. On his entrance the conversation took a different turn. " WeU, Melford, you are fresh from Brookes's; is there any truth in the rumour of a change of ministry ?" asked Delamere. " On Thursday next, exeunt omnes,^' rephed the laconic Mr. Melford ; who never fatigued OF ATHENS. 113 himself with uttering a sentence of more than a dozen words in length. " Is it fixed that the present men are to go out?" enquired Clavering. " Certain," replied the informant ; '' port- feuilles preparing for surrender. Out they all go, body and goods, on Thursday." " You have a brother in the Treasury, and therefore ought to be in the secret," said Cla- vering. " But as far as my information goes, and I have it upon some authority, materials cannot be found for forming a new administra- tion ; and the King is strongly opposed to any change." " Opposed or not opposed, out they will go," was the sententious reply. " That some great change is in contemplation is likely," said Delamere ; " as a letter I had this morning from Bath, mentions that Lord Adderley set off in his travelling equipage on Satui'day, and his nephew started ofi* a few hours afterwards on horseback." " On his pone behind, post after," said Mel- ford. 114 TIMON, BUT NOT " You are always standing on the precipice of a pun," said Delamere. " He had purchased that pony the day before from Jack Patterson ; and a beauty it is, at all points/' added the other. " I knew Patterson intended to part with it when he could find a purchaser ; for he confessed to me that it was unsound." " Sound or unsound, he talked Mattingley out of sixty guineas for it." " He never talked to so much purpose in his Kfe before," said Delamere. " He is no favourite of yours, I know." " He can be no favourite, I should think, with any one," replied Delamere. " He is an eternal talker ; not that he wants for sense, but he is perpetually sliding into the discussion of abstruse subjects, on which he is only half-informed, which is to me insufferable. He is like a cock- chaffer, always buzzing between dark and light, — you never know where to find him." " He told me of his three hours' \'isit to you the other morning," said Clavering. OF ATHENS. 115 '' It was nearly the death of me," replied Delamere. " Had it killed you outright," said Melford, " we should have had a coroner's inquest ; and the verdict would have been — ' Died by the visitation of Patterson.' " " It would have been a true verdict," said Delamere, laughing. " However, to do Patterson justice, he has a fund of curious information, and knows something of everything, and of every- body. He has mixed with all classes, high and low, and delights in what the poet calls ^ the busy hum of men.' " " The busy hum of men !" repeated Melford, emphatically. '^ I am disposed to think," said Clavering, " that your emphasis gives the correct ver- sion." At this moment a note was brought in by the servant, of which Delamere, slightly apologizing, broke the seal. Having read it, he communi- cated its purport, which was, that an unguarded expression, which had dropped from in his speech of the night before, had not only given 116 TIMOX, BUT NOT offence in a certain high quarter, but had ex- cited alarm as to the views of the party of which he was the ostensible leader. The result was, that the alarm passed by, the ministers remained in office, and Downing Street was again in repose. OF ATHENS. 117 CHAPTER IX. Frank Delamere, as the reader will have remarked, was by no means an every- day cha- racter. It required to know him well to discover and to appreciate the strong good sense and sterling worth concealed beneath his apparent carelessness of manner and eccentricity of opi- nion. He was the younger son of Lord West- brook, at whose death his brother, Augustus Delamere, who had the good fortune to be born three years before Frank, stepped into the title and estates. It has been said, and said truly, that aristo- cracy has but one child. The law of primo- geniture keeps the bulk of the property in a single hand. This is of itself a great evil, as 118 TIMON, BUT NOT affecting the just claims of the remaining child- ren : it is so likewise, as affecting the interests of public freedom, because the more the pro- perty of the titled landowners is kept compact and in masses, the more readily is it appHcable to the overruHng of the people, and to the sup- port of arbitrary power. We are too far advanced in knowledge to be disputing, at this time of day, whether giving all the rich and extensive pasturage to the eldest son, and turning out all the rest of the children to feed upon the common, is an equitable adjust* ment. If Christianity is " part and parcel of the law of the land," as our judges with great gravity declare, certain it is that the law of the land is not " part and parcel " of Christianity ; for if it w^ere, primogeniture would be the law no longer. The French people did wisely to rid themselves of it at the revolution, and that riddance was one of the happiest results of it. This law is, in England, at the bottom of all the abuses of the government. It brings in the stream of corruption through a thousand channels. The eldest takes, with the estate, a OF ATHENS. 119 proportionable mass of political influence. This influence becomes the instrument wherewith to provide for younger branches. The First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exche- quer, and the heads of every government depart- ment, are besieged with applications for oflice in behalf of needy relatives, who coming, unhap- pily, into the world in the wake of the first-born, have no reliance but on the Exchequer, and no resource but in the public purse. For all the good gifts that are in the disposal of government, they " pray without ceasing ;" and, as reci- pients, they signalize themselves, in return, as in duty bound, in support of those to whom the powers of government belong. The Edinhurgh Review praises this feature of our law as if it were one of the finest in the whole system. Those who pin their faith upon that periodical cannot but regard it as among the leading principles of legislative philosophy. *' The institution, or custom of primogeniture," says the reviewer, " by giving the estate to the eldest son, forces the others to quit the home of their father, and makes them depend for their 120 TIMON, BUT NOT success in the world on the fair exercise of their talents and industry. * * * jf jq^ would have a man display all the native resources of his mind — if you would bring all his faculties and powers into full activity — you must deprive him of every adventitious existence, and render him exclusively the architect of his own fortune. * * * Security against want is, you may depend upon it, the greatest enemy to activity, and persevering and assiduous exertion ; and if the institution of primogeniture has, as is really the case, a tendency to deprive a large portion of society of this security, and to compel them to enter with vigour and energy on the great arena of ambition and enterprise, this single circumstance is sufficient to throw the balance of advantage greatly in its favour."* But while the reviewer dwells so complacently on the advantage of thus compelling the younger sons to depend for their success in the world on the fair exercise of their talents and industry, there is a previous question of some importance to be settled — which is. What is to become of * Edin. Rev. vol. xl. pp. 363 — 364, passim. OF ATHENS. 121 such of those younger sons as have no talents ; and who, moreover, having never been trained to industrious habits, have no industry to exercise ? They know little of Hfe who do not know that this will be the case with the far greater majority. Then as to the few that happen to possess talents and industry, to what employment are they to betake themselves ? Suppose there is here and there one — and there will hardly be more — that, exiled by the law of inheritance from the family mansion, shall resolve " to emerge from the depressed condition in which they are placed, and to rise to an equality with their elder brother," — to what employment are they to betake themselves ? To make a figure at the bar, is not the good fortune of one in a thousand. It requires a combination of quah- ties, natural and acquired, of the very highest order. It is, besides, the very last profession which poverty should attempt to struggle with. The church is open to him if he can be satisfied with contempt and 2iparsoncy ; but as to " talents and industry," to imagine that by the utmost exertion of them he would advance him a single VOL. I. G 122 TIMON, BUT NOT step in the way of preferment, he must be simple beyond the milkiness of infancy. That he should enter into trade, hoping through that money-getting channel " to rise to an equality with his elder brother/' the attempt is not to be thought of. So much for the younger sons. But there is an important enquiry still behind, — How are the • daughters to be dealt with ? In what vocation are they to labour ? In what profitable calling are their talents and industry to be exercised ? How does " the giving the bulk of the father's property to the eldest son " assist to make them ^' the architects of theu' own fortunes ?" They have no chance in the state lottery of prefer- ment. If to obtain a moderate independence is to be the end of their exertions, why take it from them in the heginning ? Imbued, from their birth, with aristocratic feelings, theii' great speculation is marriage ; a speculation of all others the most humiliating. In the Beggar's Opera, when Polly is asked how she proposes to to live, she answers — " Upon the industry of my Macheath ;" — a sad reliance, certainly ; but OF ATHENS. 123 mucli less mortifying, and hardly less disre- putable, than the dependance to which too many of the lovely sex in upper Hfe are driven by oui' law of exclusive inheritance. Laws should all of them have relation to the great interests of the community at large, and not to the interests of a particular class. The custom of primogeniture not only engenders un- happiness, but fosters vices that go to the very root of social and domestic hfe. It is the off- spring of feudal tyranny, and nothing but misery and mischief can flow from it. We have bad laws, that will battle for ages against the progress of intellect and the difiusion of knowledge ; but the law we are speaking of, has an enemy of a different kind to fear, and an enemy which it is becoming every day more unable to bear up against. The aristocracy cannot, surely, but be alive to the danger that is fast overtaking them ; a danger not from with- out, but from within. The insurgents will be found in their own camp. In the good old times, when the people had Httle or no voice in the direction of their own affairs, and the G 2 124 TIMON, BUT NOT borough owners bore supreme sway in the land — when Treasury jobs were so common and so constant as to be part of the regular routine in the management of public business — when pen- sions without limit were granted at the pleasure of the crown, and sinecure appointments created at home and abroad at the will of the minister — when suppUes were voted, year after year, with- out enquiry — and in the mean time all was peace in Israel — in those golden days younger brothers had a fund of poHtical patronage, for the fair division of which they could afford to wait. Their excited hopes kept them patient ; their expectations were constaiitly kept alive. They were the children of promise, and had always something to feed upon. But the tide is turned. There is no more of this quiet swimming with the stream. The waters of strife are out, and all is contention and struggle. Boroughs, which once spread their whole breadth of corruption to the sun, are consigned to schedule A ; and those who knew them, know them no more. Retrench- ment and reform are active in all quarters. Downing Street is no longer what it was. OF ATHENS. 125 . . " * The loaves and fishes,* once so high, Are gone — their oven closed, their ocean dry." This altered state of things probes the law of primogeniture to the quick. Les plus jeunes feel woefully the diiference of this great change ; and it is not in human nature that they should long sit quiet under it. Warm family feuds will sooner or later be generated, in which the ques- tion at issue will be. Shall the eldest son of the family take the estates, and leave the younger branches to encounter neglect and privation in any way they can ? He may preach to them — taking his text from the Edinburgh Review — of the blessing that it is to them to have been ex- cluded from their father's property, and com- pelled to maintain themselves " by their talents and industry." But they will insist, and very fairly, upon having an equal share of the pro- perty as a cajrital to begin with. The public voice "vvill declare in their favour, and the result will not be of long contest. Great changes are going on in the structure of society, and this will be one of them. 126 TIMONj BUT NOT CHAPTER X. Lord West brook was one of that class of persons, more numerous than it is imagined to be, who hve in a state of perpetual warfare with their own better principles. With all that ministers to the happiness of hfe in abundance, he had no real enjoyment of existence. Indif- ferent to the pleasures of the table, frugal in his general habits, and addicted personally to no pursuits that weighed heavily on his purse ; yet, owing to the expense of his second table, of a constant succession of visitors, of an excellent racing stud, and the best pack of hounds in the county, kept more for the accommodation and amusement of his friends than himself — and to the management of a steward, who was all in OF ATHENS. 127 all with the tenants, and whose accounts were never audited, it was always with difficulty that his income, ample as it was, could be made to meet the demands upon it. The great diffisrence between a small fortune and a large one is, that the one you spend upon yourself, and the other you spend upon other people. Lord Westbrook was a striking ex- ample of this truth; convivial, generous, and confiding in his nature, the lightest charge upon his own income, was himself. The great defect in his character, was want of reflection. He was perpetually acting in opposition to the dictates of his cooler reason, and yet was the first to condemn — and to condemn sincerely — his own infirmity of purpose. We are all philoso- phers by the fire-side ; but in the wide atmos- phere of the world we are, — or at least ought to be — taught charity to others, by the consciousness of what there is to forgive in ourselves. The lovely and accomplished Lady West- brook had died in child-birth of a daughter who survived her but a few hours, ilfter her death. Lord Westbrook lost all relish for the amuse- 128 TIMON, BUT NOT ments of life, and the society of the world. The pursuits which had hitherto served to occupy his mind, became distasteful to him. All con- vivial enjoyment was at an end — there was a seat empty which could not be filled — a voice unheard, which no other voice could supply — there was no one to whom he could talk of the days of other times — days full of those recollec- tions treasured up in the sanctuary of the heart, which afforded no topics of discourse but with her who shared them, and whose excellent and amiable qualities made them what they were. It is a truth painful to own, that in the higher circles of life there is no companionable society — no feelings of friendship that spring from within, that come warm from the heart, that strike upon corresponding cords in the bosom of the pure- minded and afiectionate. Lord Westbrook was not slow to discover this in his very first entrance into the world : living in a throng of visitors and a round of company, he became in time accus- tomed to the atmosphere he was born to breathe in, and never troubled himself to seek for that sincerity which he knew was not to be found. OF ATHENS. 129 save where he did find it — by his own fire-side ; at all times endeared to him by the society of her^ who after a union of thirteen years, was taken from him for ever. Though only on his eight-and-fortieth year, his frame so visibly decayed, as to make it necessary to call in a ■physician. A fever was slowly consuming him, but it was a fever which medicine could not reach. " I feel as if my heart was withered," was his expression on retiring to bed one evening rather earlier than usual. The next morning the valet knocked at his door, as was his custom, but receiving no answer, he entered. His master lay as if asleep — his manly countenance was calm — the light of life was extinguished ; the hand of death had passed over him, but so gently, as not apparently to have broken his slumber. He woke no more. A father's loss may be borne ; but to a youth of tender years the loss of a mother no love, no tenderness, no attention can supply. That is, presuming the mother to be what a mother ought to be, and such as Lady Westbrcok was — amiable, enlightened, and affectionate ; capable G 5 130 TIMON^ BUT NOT of training the youthful mind in all those prin- ciples of truth and rectitude, which, making allowance for mortal frailty, decide the charac- ter of after-life. The offspring of such a parent may wander occasionally from the right path, but will never throw off the control of reason and principle. He may lapse into error, but the early habits of his mind will never leave him. There may be moments when moral prudence may be lost sight of, but probity and honor never. — What, compared with this, is the training in schools and colleges, and churches ? Worse than nothing. Young Delamere at this period had reached his seventeenth year. His inheritance was, an excellent disposition, and an income of seven hundred per annum ; he resided chiefly with his guardian, the most confidential friend and associate of his late father. But the utmost kindness is but a bad substitute for the affec- tionate watchfulness of a parent. His young mind had been suffered to unfold itself after its own manner. He read much, but in the choice of authors he had no other guide than his o^vn OF ATHENS. 131 taste and inclinations. As he grew up to ^ manhood, however, his own good sense left no cause for regret on that score. On whatever study he was engaged, whether the subject was history, or politics, or theology, he drew his own conclusions ; he was consequently never tram- melled in the authority of foregone opinions. Being of a lively temperament and playful fancy, he usually threw off the first impressions of his mind, leaving them to be brought to the test of reason by any one who might dispute their accuracy ; not that he was frivolous or inconsiderate — far from it ; when the gravity of the subject called for it, his reasoning was clear, and his judgment sound ; but he would seldom be at the pains to maintain his opinions through any lengthened discussion. There was, however, a shrewdness in his off-hand conceptions, which made him a most acceptable companion, even to those slow and sedate thinkers, with whom he oc- casionally came in contact. There was a fresh- ness of feeling about all he said and did, which marked an entire absence of all pretension. With a handsome face and a fine figure, vanity 132 TIMON, BUT NOT had no place in him. His manners were kind and unassuming, for good sense and good tem- per — qualities which can alone form a truly well bred man — were inherent in him. Delamere was constitutionally averse to every thing like studious and sedentary application. Educated at Harrow, he went from thence to Oxford ; the result of his acquirements in both was a fair proficiency in Greek and Latin ; as to the development of his thinking powers, or the maturity of his moral feelings, he owed nothing to either. In truth, our public schools, as well as our two universities, appear to have framed their system of education literally by the precept of Pope — " Learn well to know how much need not be known." Of their success in the application of this prin- ciple we have in London and elsewhere, evidence irresistible. It is not difficult to account for this. The acquisition of real knowledge is delightful to every one. Give the pupil the information which he covets, and you will be sure to be OF ATHENS. 133 heard with attention, and to teach with effect. No one turns aside from information, whether in art, in science, in poUtics, in literature, or on any subject, be it what it may, that can be made available to the amusement of leisure, or to the purposes of life. But where the system of in- struction is destitute of interest, the pupil is at no pains to receive it, because he can apply it to no practically useful end ; we may pronounce with certainty, that the frame -work of that system is bad. This it was that had generated in Delamere those habits of desultory attention, the influence of which he often regretted. Seeing neither the immediate utility, nor the future importance of what he was taught, he had no stimulus to voluntary exertion ; the labour of regular study became irksome. Therefore it was that at his leisure hours, though he read much, he read when he pleased, and what he pleased. What would have gone far to destroy the energy of a mind less happily formed, had produced in him rather a contrary effect. It had kept alive all that independence of thought and opinion, which a more systematic and 134 TIMON^ BUT NOT authoritative training would have eiFaced. He was, moreover, an acute observer of all that was passing around him, and they must have been admirable actors whose real character escaped his discernment. Mr. Hammond, who had been his guardian, until relieved from that trust by his coming of age, aware how desirable it was that a young man of family, entering into life, should embody himself with some profession, had made many at- tempts to induce him to enter himself as a student of the Inner Temple, with a view to qualifying himself for the bar. But had his disposition been less social, and his love of ease less pre- dominant, the law was not the study that Dela- mere would have chosen. Nothing could have reconciled him to that pliable integrity, without which the highest professional abihty can have no scope for display or chance of success. He could not have hired out his talents to the first comer, and have exulted in the defeat of an honest claim by perplexing a timid witness, or misrepresenting a main fact. In truth he was in no wise cut out for the atmosphere of the Inns OF ATHE^'S. 1 35 of Court ; with his scrupulous notions of right and wrong, he might have sat in his chambers from morn till midnight, without seeing the face of an attorney, or the most distant shadow of a brief. Besides, to keep a certain number of terms, and to eat a certain number of commons, was, in his opinion, so puerile a form of admis- sion to the most responsible of all professions, that, to use his own phrase, " only those learned in the law could explain away the folly of it." " I always considered myself," said he, one day, on his guardian good-humouredly charging him with being a little refractory ; "I always con- sidered myself to have been the most dutiful of wards. Remember, I pray you, the answer which an enlightened judge once made to a friend, who requested his advice as to bringing up his son to be a special pleader. After making many en- quiries regarding the young man's fitness, he concluded with asking, ' In a word, my dear sir, can your son eat saw- dust without butter ? ' Now, being unequal to this task, I infer that I am not properly qualified. You say, that having a moderate independence, I ought to enter the 136 TIMON, BUT NOT profession, as the path to wealth and honour. Now as to wealth, whether that best of blessings would ever be mine, is a fact of which, to use the words of my Lord Eldon, ^ I entertain an ex- ceedingly grave doubt; ' and as to honour, I should, perhaps, in due time, take my seat at dinner with the masters of the Bench table, and retire to drink French wines in the parliament chamber ; but although not a great Avine- drinker, I confess I prefer Cor¥s reports to Cokeys, and would rather at any time take a lamb chop with Susannah, than dine on venison with the Elders." It was in this facetious vein that he parried all expostulation. Mr. Hammond, though he delighted in what he called ''the eccentric vivacity " of his ward, could, nevertheless, not help thinking that there was more nicety and refinement in his opinion of men and things, than the present condition of society calls for. '* A young man," he would often urge, " with- out any settled pursuit, always hangs more loosely upon the world than he ought to do. If he is known to be devoted to scientific research. OF ATHENS. 137 whether it be in astronomy, geology, chemistry, or any other, he is then regarded as one having a pursuit constantly before him, and acquires a known and fixed reputation ; but without this, he has no solid or secure path before him, and how- ever well disposed he may be, there is no saying to what temptations he may yield, or into what course of dissipation he may be betrayed." " I quite agree with you," Delamere would reply ; " but what is to be done ? I have no rod like that of the prophet, which produced water in the desert. My faculties are not fitted to explore the recesses of science. I have no pre- tensions that way. I am of opinion with Pope, that ' The proper study of mankind, is man ;' and no enquiries are to me so interesting, as those which contribute to the elucidation of his. history ; and London is the place in which he may be studied in all the varieties of his being. Here we see him as far distant as possible from the helplessness of his primitive state, — polished by arts, — pampered by luxury, — drilled and 138 TIMON, BUT NOT disciplined by fashion, in all her movements, — and encompassed, as it were, in a frame-work altogether artificial. This is one side of the picture. On the other side, we see those ap- proaching to the condition of beasts of biu'then, — sunk in poverty, — their strength worn down by excessive labour, — and themselves exhibiting a sample of our species in the lowest state of civilization. There is a middle, also, between those two extremes ; — a class of beings, indus- trious, rational, reflective, and a fair sample upon the whole — not of what the race of man ought to be, but of all that, taken in the mass, it is ever likely to become. " What valuable reflections rise up in the mind of a philosopher, while beholding the concourse of splendid equipages, that throng the streets of the west-end ; all before him, is opulence, pleasure, and enjoyment ; the most tasteful dresses, decorating the loveliest forms — " " And is this not a scene delightful to look upon y" said Mr. Hammond ; " and can any philosopher fail to be pleased with it ?" " Most pleasing, and most delightful it cer- OF ATHENS. 139 tainly is/' resumed Delamere ; " but on the other hand, what contemplations crowd in upon him, while pacing along the purHeus of St. Giles's. All the materials of human misery are scattered before him; and all the vice and poverty, out of which that misery springs, stands out in frightful relief." " Such scenes are most repulsive, I admit ; but they are the scenes which every great commercial capital present." " That remark is but too just, and there is the evil ; for it is the aspect of the population, that in every capital reads the truest and most in- structive lecture on tlie liistory of its govern- ment. If we would ascertain whether the political structure is well put together, and whether its parts are well or ill adjusted, it is here that we must examine it. It is not from the showy externals of the social edifice, that we can form any real estimate of its strength, or its usefulness. We must inspect the machinery that is at work within, and see what, upon the whole, is the practical result of its operations. It is then only, we can see how 140 TIMON, BUT NOT greatly human happiness is impaired, and trace out the causes that impair it. It is because this aspect of the population is overlooked, that all grand schemes of legislation fail in their object." " Well, but laws must be made," rejoined Mr. Hammond ; " and government must be instituted ; and by whom should any scheme of legislation be planned, but by that class of rank and wealth, qualified by their education and leisure, to take a lead in the state?" " If they were so qualified," said Delamere, " it would be well ; but the education received by the class of rank and wealth, is not of a kind which fits them for the high and responsible duties they undertake to execute. It does not prepare them for the business of civil life, — it gives them none of that knowledge required to frame the laws, or to dii-ect the counsels of the country. Living always in the upper regions, where all is sunshine, accustomed only to the soft cerulean blue of their own aristocractic sky, they imagine that the laws, which, on any par- ticular occasion it has pleased them to enact, will, necessarily, and as a matter of course, OF ATHENS. 141 produce all the eiFects which they intend. Of the thousand-and-one obstacles, which are op- posed to them, by the condition of society, and by the character of man, the majority of them know nothing. It has never entered into their consideration, that they are legislating for crea- tures of quite a different atmosphere, — for an order of beings of very different views, habits, occupations, and interests from their own. The result is that with the progress of intelligence, resistance rises up on every side. The warfare of conflicting interest begins. The wise law- givers wax wroth that their edicts, replete as they imagine them to be with the most enhght- ened pohcy, should be evaded or disobeyed. In the plenitude of their power, they proceed to enforce them by prosecutions, pains, penalties, and imprisonment." " But ought not all criminal offences against the state, to be punished by law ?" asked Mr. Hammond. " To answer this question, " replied Dela- mere, " we should first know whether the State has not itself occasioned the offences which 142 TIMON, BUT NOT the law is made to punish. Examine tlie penal code, and you will find that it has for its main object, not the protection of the people, but the protection of those in power, against the people. That it is framed, not to defend po- pular rights, but to ensure impunity to public wrongs. Our lawgivers, moreover, have yet executed but half their task, — they have pun- ished the crime, but have taken no concern about the reformation of the criminal. They seem to imagine, that pain and ignominy will produce honesty and uprightness. They make at the outset — and they never correct it — the same mistake that was made by Peter the Great, who shaved the beards of his barbarians by force, conceiving that with polished chins they would act like polished men ; and his rage was kindled, to find that they still remained as rough as before." The conversation after this became general. Delamere was evidently not in a frame of mind to be inspired with any passion for a wig and gown; and Mr. Hammond, who knew well the soundness of his principles, felt no anxiety to press the subject further. OF ATHENS. 143 CHAPTER XI. Lady Clavering had just laid down" a volume of Horace Walpole's Letters, and was listening to that beautiful canzonet of Haydn, " The season's past when first we met;" which her daughter was playing T\dth an expression ^^•hich gave it all its pathos, when a dashing equipage drew up to the door, and out of it stepped young Lord Trecastle, who presently entered the draw- ing room with that careless air which betrays a consciousness of welcome. He bowed grace- fully, — hoped he might not suspend that " con- cord of sweet sounds," which his ear had caught on ascending the staircase — was rave de joy e to set his foot again on English ground, after so 144 TIMON, BUT NOT long an estrangement, and still more enraptured to find himself once more in Harley Street. Lady Clavering and Emily expressed their pleasure at his arrival, and intimated the anxiety which his friends had felt for his return, a re- port having reached England of his being con- fined by a dangerous indisposition in Switzer- land. " Oh ! what, you heard then of my illness ; it reached you through the public papers, no doubt. To be sure it is curious how rapidly whatever relates to any person of note, goes the round of Europe. Yes ; I was taken ill while at Yevay, a spot with which your fancy must be familiar ; you have no doubt read La Nouvelle He- LOISE." " I have," replied Miss Clavering, to whom this abrupt eloquence was addressed ; " at Vevay, if I recollect right, you were in the midst of the scenery in which Rousseau has placed the actors in that interesting tale. The lovely Juha at Clarens, and the devoted St. Preux wandering amid the rocks of Maillerie, must have had all the charm of reality. You must have felt the OF ATHENS. 145 difference between the emotions excited at a dis- tance and on the spot." " I felt no emotion either way/' he replied ; " my nerves are not so finely strung. I hear some super-refined people talk of being deeply affected with this suffering and that ; but for my part, I have no feeling for miseries which I know are spun from an author's brain. These ' finer sympathies,' as thay are called, may be very delightful for aught I can tell, who never was one of the susceptibles ; but I confess I have them not, and I am quite content to be without them." " It is certainly not wise," said Miss Claver- ing, " to grieve over misfortunes which have no real existence ; but when the genius of the wri- ter is so powerful as to give to fiction all the force of reality, it is very natural that we should be affected." The young Lord made no reply : to have pur- sued the subject required a better acquaintance with the philosophy of mind than he was master of, so he prudently suffered the remark to pass without disputing its justice. VOL. I. H 146 TIMON, BUT NOT The family of this titled youth and that of Lady Clavering were distantly related. When he set out on his travels he was " The Honour- able George Valmont," but had now, after an absence of two years and a half, returned with the style and title of " Lord Trecastle ;" his elder brother having, by a fall from his horse, when leaping a high fence, so severely injured his spine, as to cause a paralysis of the lower limbs ; the accident was followed by a rapid decline, which at the end of six weeks consigned him to the grave. It was the news of this event that hastened the young peer's return. He was on his way to the Lake of Constance when the intelhgence reached him ; and he instantly bent his way homewards, in spite of some attractions which invited him to the pleasurable spot to which he was hastening, and in spite of the urgent entreaties of Mademoiselle Francine, a distinguished danseuse of the opera, who was to have been his compagnon de voyage. That the character usually descends with the coronet, was strongly evidenced in the present instance. The old lord, his father, had in his day OF ATHENS. 147 made a conspicuous figure in la grande societe ; and was in every way worthy to be the sire of such a son. His elder brother had by early excess worn down the natural strength of his constitution, and wasted all those finer sympa- thies which are the best property of manhood. Duped by all his female favourites in succes- sion, and fleeced by his male friends at every card club of which he was a member, he came at last to have no reliance on the fidelity of the one sex, or the integrity of the other. The cultiva- tion of his mind had been so little attended to, that all intellectual application, had he attempted it, would have been repulsive and painful. If he took up a newspaper, which was not often, it was not from any interest he felt in what was going on in the world, but to cast his eye over the list of promotions, and to scan the advertise- ments to see whose estates were in the market. He was a creature of such perfect apathy that a witty acquaintance once said of him, that he had been cut out of a stone quarry, and animated by a miracle. In les societes du grande monde he neverthe- H 2 148 TIMON, BUT NOT less passed for an agreeable personage ; there are so few truly estimable persons in that circle, that the defectiveness of his character attracted no particular notice. " // est peu de connais- seurs en vrai jnerite," says Helyetius, and there are few whose intercourse with the world does not verify the remark. His lordship, moreover, was by no means worse than the majority of the circle with which he associated. The Hottentots have it as a maxim that "Thought is the scourge of life." His compeers, as well as himself, were decidedly of the same opinion. They had, apparently, no other object in living, but to get rid of the tediousness of existence. The simple pleasures are inexhaustible ; but the round of excitements in which the mind has no share, satiate in time by their own intensity. Lord Trecastle's constitution, young as he was, was broken up, and sudden as was the accident which brought his days to an end, he died with the same unconcern with which he had lived. The present lord was, in the leading features of his character, the counterpart of his brother. In his unfeeling stoicism, he even improved OF ATHENS. 149 upon him ; he had likewise another gift which the other had not, or was too idle to exercise, the gift of loquacity, which his vanity — increased not a little by foreign travel — kept in constant display. ^' You seem quite recovered from you late in- disposition," said Lady Clavering, after a short pause. '' Quite ; but, by Jove, it was sharp work while it lasted. It was one of those epidemics which translate us to another world in a twink- ling. It carried off several within a very short distance from my chateau, and I more than once thought I should have made one of the party." This levity would have surprised Lady Cla- vering, if she had not been well acquainted with the family character. " We were greatly shocked," said Miss Cla- vering, " at the unhappy fate of your brother. That event," she added, emphatically, '^must have affected you. " It did," rephed the young lord. "It brought to my mind the many dangerous leaps I had so often taken myself, and I shuddered to 150 TTMON, BUT NOT think that the same accident might have hap- pened to meP Miss Clavering thought this the most com- plete specimen of apathy that could well be con- ceived. " It was certainly a most unexpected event," he continued ; " it altered my position in society prodigiously. It brought me from an almost total ecUpse into marvellous light. My brother's having thus suddenly paid the debt of nature, enabled me to pay my debts, which had run so far a-head of my income that my credit was getting to a low ebb. But the difference between reversion and possession, restored it in an in- stant. I set out on my travels with four hun- dred a year, and returned the heir to twelve thousand." " Had it been acquired in any other manner than by the sad event through which it came," said Emily, " it must have been far more accept- able." '^ Through what other manner. Miss Cla- vering, could it have come ?" asked his lordship, with the utmost sang-froid ; " and then, as to OF ATHENS. 151 grieving for any one's death, of what avail is it ? Who would grieve for mine ? Die we must, all of us ; and when our sand is run out, old Time won't turn his hour-glass for the best peer in parliament." Much more was said by his lordship on the same topic, and in the same strain, when, at the expiration of about half an hour, apologizing with an air of nonchalance for his long visit, he took his leave "He has gained very little by foreign travel," said Emily to her mother, as his carriage drove from the door. " I could not have believed that an individual so heartless existed in the world." " The class is by no means so rare as you imagine," replied Lady Clavering, " in that cir- cle of our planet which those who move in it are pleased to call, par excellence, the upper world. Many samples of the same species may be found. Lord Trecastle is only conspicuous because he is not at the pains of concealment. He is quite in- different as to the opinion of the world, and therefore walks abroad without a mask." : 152 TIMON, BUT NOT " I am sure a mask would much better become him," said Emily. " I do believe he would grieve more for the loss of his talbot dog, or one of his curricle horses, than at the death of the dearest friend he has." " He would grieve for neither," replied Lady Clavering. " He would order his coachman to get another talbot, and match the grey as nearly as possible ; and there his concern would end ; as to a friend, in the true sense of the word, he neither has nor wants one." " What a marble-hearted creature it is," said Emily. "He is moulded from very cold clay, cer- tainly," replied her mother ; "but we must make great allowance, when we remember that he is the son of Lord Trecastle, who was the very personification of apathy, and who had no care for any human being beyond the reach of his own shadow. Had he come of a different stock, and had a few of the difficulties of life to struggle with, the occasional demand upon his feelings from some quarter or other would have kept them active ; but Valmont, with a temperament OF ATHENS. 153 naturally lethargic, was born to every indul- gence ; educated at home, he was never exposed to a conflict with other minds ; the hereditary taint grew upon him. That unconcern about every thing, which a certain class of fashionables affect, is in many a mere eccentricity, but in him it is nature." There was much kindness, as well as true philosophy in this defence ; but Emily, full of youthful sensibility, deemed him quite unen- durable. To her, he appeared to have no kin- dred with humanity ; and certainly his want of feeling and sentiment did appear to sever him in a manner from his species ; but looking to the individual in connection with his race, the in- dulgent estimate of Lady Clavering was the more just of the two. The fact is, that Lord Trecastle was so com- pletely himself in all he said, as not to imagine that it could at all aifect him in the estimation of either Lady Clavering or her daughter. It is only when men act in opposition to their real character that they seek to varnish their senti- ments, or falsify their opinions. His heart was h5 154 TIMON, BUT NOT as insensible to emotion as a cobler's lapstone ; and he would not have counterfeited if he could. The often offensive feature of his character stood out in strong relief, because he never felt the necessity of seeming to be what he was not. His lordship had been gone but a few mi- nutes when Edward Clavering entered, with his friend Delamere. " Oh I you should have been a little earlier/^ exclaimed Emily ; " we have had a visit — guess from whom." " From Lord Trecastle," said Edward ; " we met him as we came through Lower Brook Street; he told us he had just left you." " Why, how three years of absence have altered him," said Miss Clavering ; " the animal is quite insufferable. He has actually not one grain of feeling in his whole composition." " He is a philosopher," repHed Delamere ; " he has taken farewell of all mortal interests, and has become that happy being whom nothing can discompose." '^ I have no patience with such insensibles," rejoined Emily ; " and I grieve to hear mamma OF ATHENS. 155 say that in the higher circles of Hfe they are not uncommon." " Mamma is right," said her brother. " If Lord Trecastle were in high office about the court, he would find his counterpart in almost every one with whom he came in contact. The texture of the material may difier, but they are all cut after the same pattern. It is with high life as with high mountains, the nearer you ap- proach the summit, the colder is the atmosphere. The Trecastles are a numerous race ; the family- likeness may be found in all the aristocracies of Europe." " Trecastle," said Delamere, " is his father's son. He is certainly not a sentimentalist ; his heart is not a material upon which you can en- grave anything. But, as a young man, he is not wanting in the accomplishments suited to his caste. Much as you may dislike him, he is extremely well received within his own circle. The poison of the serpent is not poisonous to its own species. Besides which, he has a pre- possessing exterior, with an even set of teeth ; he speaks Italian fluently, can descant on the beau- 156 TIMON, BUT NOT ties of Cherubini and Beethoven, ties his cravat after the most approved taste, and when he plays, which is not often, pays his losses with as much coolness as he receives his winnings. What more than this can be desired of mortal man ?" " He is a very gifted youth in your descrip- tion of him," said Miss Clavering ; " but you are fond of whimsical sketches, and your pencil is always at hand." " There are few of the sons of wealth and idleness," replied Delamere, " that furnish fea- tures of a much better character than my sketch of Trecastle affords. I don't expect to gather grapes from thorns. We must take men of sense ^ after their kind,' and men of fashion ' after their kind.' They differ as the bee from the butterfly. I find both in the order of nature, and there I leave them," " But then how valuable is the industry of the one," said Emily, " compared with the idle fluttering of the other." " I leave it to the moralists to make compa- risons," rejoined Delamere. OF ATHENS. 157 " The comparison would not be much to their credit," said Clavering. " We admire the beauty of the idle flutterer, and leave it to its enjoy- ment ; we praise the industry of the bee, and we rob it of its produce." " It is the common lot," said Delamere; " and the bees must not complain. It is the same with the labour of man ; the parson tithes it, the nobiHty tax it, the law fleeces it, and the whole machinery of government is contrived with the view to the gratification of those who feed and fatten upon it. How can we refuse to say * Amen ' to all this, when the practice of bishops, priests, and deacons, testifies it to be the whole duty of man ?" " It is the aristocratic scripture of the rulers in Church and State," said Clavering. " And their scriptural volume is the Court Guide," replied Delamere ; " the Bible is for us of the commons." 158 TIMON, BUT NOT CHAPTER XII. How different would the condition of man- kind have been at this day from what it is, had the faculties of the human mind been suffered to expand and take their own course ; and had the pulpits of Europe enforced the lessons of moral goodness and the essence of christian truth, instead of everlastingly echoing the ab- struse doctrines of a mysterious and controverted creed. Knowledge is in its nature progressive ; and to its empire belong all the blessings of science, and ail the charities of life. It is allied with all that is great in the character of nations, and with all that is exalted in the destinies of man. By what has its progress been opposed ? By the despotism of kings, by divine right, and OF ATHENS. 150 by the selfishness of an anointed priesthood. Rex and Pontifex have been, in all ages, the tyrants of the earth. But the most desperate by far has been the latter. In Asia, in Africa — the cradles of the human race — the ever-active enemies to the light of knowledge were the priests, profiting by the superstition, and thriving on the ignorance of mankind ; their great end and aim has ever been to keep down the spirit of rational enquiry. They knew well that rea- son, in its progress, would disown their doc- trines, and eventually destroy their supremacy. They always looked forward with terror to the day when the enslaved mind of man would break its chains. The orthodox churchmen of this day rejoice in that blight of fanaticism, which, to the disgrace and shame of England, is making such strides amongst us, and under which all moral worth, and all that is honest and upright in conduct and in character, is fast giving way to pious hypocrisy and the outward zeal of devotion. The priest was the first builder of the fabric of superstition, and was the Atlas on whose 160 TIMON, BUT NOT shoulders it was borne. The ^vise men of the East — ivise in their generation — keeping their discoveries in science a profound mystery, de- luded the multitude into a belief that the appa- rently miraculous effects which they produced, were the result of a power specially imparted to them from above. Representing themselves as the delegates of divine authority, and the fa- vourites and elect agents of heaven, it was na- tural that in an age of ignorance, they should be regarded with awe ; that the people should practise any rites which they enjoined, and receive with all the fulness of credulity, or as the phrase is, with all the fulness of faith, what- ever system of belief it suited their purpose to impose. The Breslaw of the East, when he practised those optical illusions which a conjuror in these days will perform before any audience for half- a-crown, was looked up to, in an age of dark- ness, as gifted with supernatural power; pro- fiting by those ruling passions of mankind, hope and fear, he easily exalted himself into a laiv- giver; and, clothed as he was in a peculiar OF ATHENS. 161 garment, he seemed a being of another sphere, and the terror-struck multitude bowed down be- fore him. The knowledge of those magic arts, by which the priesthood kept up the trade of imposture, was kept a profound secret. They were strictly confined by the wise men, or Magi, as they were culled, to their own descendants. The parent priest imparted it to his sons, in whose respective families it became hereditary ; a secret and symbolic language, understood only by the initiated, was invented, and in this language they communicated with each other, and pre- served the record of their mysteries; by this means their whole system of worship, and all the wealth arising out of that worship, was made subservient to the exclusive supremacy of their Order. If, as it sometimes happened, an indi- vidual, by the force of his natural talents, made such discoveries in chemical science and in na- tural philosophy, as furnished a key to the mysteries, he was straightway admitted a pupil of the craft ; a full revelation was by degrees made to him, his discoveries were added to the 162 TIMON, BUT NOT common stock ; he became, thenceforth, a chosen vessel, and shared in all the honour, riches, and dominion of the hierarchy. A people ignorant enough to believe that a class of mortals Hke themselves had power to obscure the moon, — they having predicted when it would be in eclipse, — would readily enough believe that they were in constant communica- tion with those beings, of whatever nature they might be, who presided over the stars and pla- nets. The priests, therefore, soon came to be regarded as agents in the decrees of destiny. They professed the art of divination^ or of fore- telling future events ;* this power was calcu- lated, beyond all others, to strike the mind with awe. Prodigious use was likewise made of the power of ventriloquism. The ventriloquist gave a voice to stones, and made material substances oracular. The stoutest stood appalled in the presence of one whose questions the unseen Beings of the air were heard to answer ; and who seemed to converse alike with the living * Hence the Doctors of Divinity, and the Divines of our own day. OF ATHENS. 163 and tlie dead. The multitude were prepared to invest him with all the veneration which such mighty attributes called for, and to render him all that obedience which the dread of them in- spired. Can then the dullest mind not perceive the motives by which the priesthood were actuated, in resisting the spirit of enquiry, and opposing the advancement of knowledge ? Is it not ma- nifest why the priests, of all ages of the world, and of every class, from the Brahmins of India to the Evangelicals of our own Church, have delighted to dwell on the mysteries of religion, and to preach up faith as the one thing need- ful ? And why ? Because the rules of Chris- tian duty are plain, simple, and easily u.nder- stood — they do not require the aid and explana- tion of creeds and catechisms. " Do to others as you would they should do unto you" — that Gospel precept, which in its practical application comprises the whole duty of man, may well be taught, as may all the great truths which the Scriptures have given for our learning, without the aid of archbishops, bishops, archdeacons. 164 TIMON, BUT NOT deans, canons, prebends, rectors, and the whole crowd of stipendiaries and tithe-gatherers, which go to the making up of a wealthy and worldly- minded Church establishment ; whereas, the mysteries of faith render interpreters indispen- sable. Suspended by the doctrines of a mys- tical theology, between heaven and hell, all this clerical machinery is made essential to our sal- vation. We must have spiritual guides to con- duct us through the labyrinth of conflicting opinions, and school-begotten creeds. Should the mass of mankind, in the progress of rational enquiry, persuade themselves — as in the end they assuredly will — that the true office of a Christian teacher is to implant moral feel- ings, and instill the principles of moral truth into the hearts of all, and to fit them for the faithful discharge of their duty in the stations, public or private, which they respectively fill ; mitres would soon be nothing worth, and the rich benefices which now form a provision for the younger sons of the aristocracy, would fall sadly to a discount. The above reflections formed the substance of OF ATHENS. 165 a reply written by Clavering, to a letter he had just received from his friend Delamere, who had been for some weeks on a visit at Versailles. His guardian had intimated his wish to treat for the purchase of a valuable advowson, which had been advertised, should he feel disposed to enter the Church. Delamere's epistle concluded thus : — " I have prolonged my visit longer than I in- tended ; but as I am still likely to remain here some time, I have given you an extract from a letter I yesterday received from my best of monitors, honest Mr. Hammond, who, in the warmth of his zeal for my welfare, wishes to see me qualified for Holy Orders. Between our- selves, I do not think, as the sacerdotal functions are at present exercised, that my vocation lies that way ; the complexion of the times, more- over, is not favourable to the spiritual autho- rities. The people have been long sorely out of humour with tythe levyings, and I should get as spare as Cassius, if I were confined to live upon surplice fees, and the profit of births and burials. But give me your opinion, which you well know. 166 TIMON, BUT NOT on this point, as on every other, will have great weight with me. If you think I am cut out to lecture ex cathedra, say so, and I shall sit down in good earnest to the study of the Greek and Latin fathers ; and will say to St. Augustine, thou art my father, and to the Church, thou art my mother. Counsel me, I pray, with all your gravity. I agree that if I am to be of any use on this globe, it is high time that I fitted myself for the task in some shape or other. I have turned the subject again and again in my mind ; but I always come to this conclusion, that if I am not my own master, I must be the world's slave ; and I accordingly find my love of inde- pendence strike its root deeper every hour. As to ambition, I see men so perpetually en- gaged in some foolish steeple-chase or other, that I have long since lost all leaning that way. I should hardly, I think, be tempted to enter the Chmxh, even with a prospect of Lambeth Palace in the distance. " When I shall exchange the enjoyment of the beautiful scenery before me for the gaieties of London, always to me full of dramatic in- or ATHENS. 167 terest, is uncertain — the period of my stay in this part of the world being, at present, un- decided." It was about six weeks after the receipt of the letter containing the above extract, that the political world was thrown into a ferment by that sudden and unceremonious change of ministers, which vested the premiership in Sir Robert Peel. The convulsion that might pos- sibly follow this conservative effort had filled all minds with alarm. Clavering, who had kept up a constant correspondence, wrote to his friend on this event as follows : — " My dear Edward ; " I thank you again and again for your last letter; mine, to which it was in answer, ought to have reached you earlier. It is fortunate that you did not travel to the continent to seek society, as politics is, apparently, there as here, the drug that embitters all social intercourse. Society is an instrument of many strings ; and at this moment, with us at least, they are sadly out 168 TIMON, BUT NOT of tune The abrupt dissolution of the Mel- bourne ministry, of which the French journals will have informed you, has struck most harshly on the popular feeling. In every town and country throughout the kingdom all are on the alert. What think you after this of the Con- servatives denouncing O'Connell as an agitator ? I can readily imagine the consternation with which the news will be received on the Bourse. It will produce no slight sensation at St. Peters- burg, Vienna, and Berlin; for the recall of the ducal dictator to power, is a step so utterly un- expected as to have carried dismay into every liberal circle in Europe. The Holy Alliance, however, will receive no accession of strength from this event. The new Ministry contains within itself the elements of its own dissolution. " The crisis was the very worst that could be chosen for such an experiment on the national feeling. Midnight incendiaries fatally active — not here and there a blaze kindled in a stack, the result, perhaps, of malice or of mischief — but arising, apparently from an organized system, ge- nerated by that vengeance which grows out of the OF ATHENS. 169 recklessness of despair. The posture of affairs requires the utmost prudence to deal with it ; and yet this was the moment chosen by the king to cast the Reform ministry from his councils ! This was the moment chosen to vest the govern- ment in the Duke of Wellington, whose mansion was absolutely in a state of barricade against the possible ebullition of popular feeling ! What infatuation ! "We have, at present, no ministry. The military chieftain is all in all. It has pleased him to place the government in abeyance, until Sir Robert Peel shall return from Italy. It is to be hoped the wheels of his chariot will not taiTy, as Great Britain is standing in the interval in a very perilous attitude. " Lord Durham is a tower of strength to the popular cause. His practice has never hitherto discredited his professions. My father is vio- lently displeased with him : he considers all ardent advocates of reform as men of diseased intellect. But it is but justice to ni}- father to say that he is sincere in his prejudices ; they have been to him as first truths from early youth, VOL. la 1 170 TIMON, BUT NOT and have given a colour to all his opinions. Those opinions have never changed. He may be in error as a politician^ but he has never been an apostate ; which is greater praise than can be given to nine-tenths of those who throng the circles of public life. " To those who keep themselves unspotted from the world it must seem a mystery how kings, ministers, bishops, and those filling high offices in church and state, should be the opponents of reform, when a liberal course of conduct would endear them to the nation, ensure their popu- larity, and confirm their power. It may be no mystery to those who mix much with mankind : but to all who think rightly, the impolicy of such an opposition, especially in ministers, must appear inexcusable. The rotten boroughs, for example, made them dependent upon their pro- prietors, whose votes could only be secured by distributing official appointments among them in proportion to their influence. When those boroughs were thrown into the schedule of ex- tinction, they got rid of the heavy weights which kept down their independence, and made them OF ATHENS. 171 mere instruments in other hands. They were left free to discharge their duty to the country, and to rid themselves of an overbearing domi- nation. What more can the most selfish place- man require than to continue in the enjoyment of office, and what surer pledge for that conti- nuance can they have than the stability of the ministry under which they serve ? If that strength is- based on public opinion — which under an honest and liberal government it cannot fail to be — it becomes consolidated with the strength of the empire, and the heads of it have nothing to fear. This has always appeared to me the com- mon-sense view of the subject. And yet we find ministers always clinging, heart and soul, to a miserable party system. They will not be prayed out of purgatory, even if they could. They will not be released on the terms of placing their reliance on the people. They appear to have a horror of everything in the shape of emancipation. That their private interest lies in the line of their public duty, is visible to all but themselves. Let us hope they will some day open their eyes to this truth ; they will then be i2 172 TIMON^ BUT J^OT ■united to the people by a common element ; government will be what it ought to be, and the ' despotisme legaV will come to an end. " But I hear it said — ' What, under all this high and liberal policy, is to become of the aris- tocracy as an order in the state ? — how is the weight and dignity of the peerage to be sustained if the public expenditure is to be pared down in every direction, and the influence of the land- owners over the votes of their tenants so cut away as to annihilate their directive influence in the House of Commons, and leave them no better than cyphers in the government ? ' To this my answer is short : — It is far better the peers should be cyphers in the government, than the people. It is not necessary that either should be so ; but if it comes to a debateable question, my mind is made up upon it. '' The great error of the Eeform ministry was, that with the means before them of fulfilling the glorious task they had undertaken — with the power of the nation at their back, prepared to carry them triumphantly through — with the tenure of office depending on themselves, and OF ATHENS. 173 held on the easy terms of doing what they had undertaken to do — yet with all these advantages they chose to drag on in the fetters of the lords of the soil, and to shake the confidence of the people by striving to conciliate an enemy they might safely have defied. A dissolution of par- liament is confidently talked of. My father has great misgivings as to the policy of such a mea- sure in the present excited state of the public mind. He shook his head when he heard the Duke was resolved upon it. The general opinion is, that election or no election, the new ministry cannot last. No position can be more insecure than the one in which they are placed. Like the inconstant lovers in the old song of ' Sigh no morCj ladies/ they have " One foot on sea, and one on shore;" but it is impossible they can stand long upon either. " But a truce to politics. — Have you heard of Lady Angelica's marriage ? If you have not you will be surprised — not at the fact of her marriage, but the successful wooer. All the 174 TIMON, BUT NOT world, you know, gave her to George Mortimer, and her manner towards him justified the dona- tion. No damsel could give a lover greater reason to believe that her heart was in his keep- ing'. It is true his attentions to her were not countenanced by her family ; he being a younger brother, and with no better prospect, as heir- presumptive, than succeeding to an encumbered estate, always a sad drawback upon the dignity of a title. George is on the continent, where he has been for the last four months. Whether she resented his absence, or whether she yielded in the interval to parental solicitude, backed by an offer which scarcely any female in the matri- monial market could resist — certain it is, that wliile George has been climbing rocks and moun- tains, and delighting himself with the lovely landscapes of Savoy, Lord Alburton has carried away his kingdom. His lordship is twice her age; but he has a weakly constitution, and a clear rent-roll of thirty thousand a-year. Fine specu- lations, both of them. How ^Mortimer will bear his dispossession depends upon the portion of philosophy that he may bring back ^\ith him. OF ATHENS. 175 If he does not hear of the affair till his arrival, it will come upon him like a thunderbolt ; but if, as is most hkely, the tidings have already reached him^, it is to be hoped he will extend his absence until new scenes, and new so- ciety, have taught him how much greater is the luxury of indiflference, in a case like this, than the luxury of grief. The latter may be suited to the rejected addresses ^of an enamoured poet ;' but as to the perfidy of a capricious lady- love, it is in the nature of things, and the sooner a man of sense gets rid of the memory of it the better. ^* The alliance, it seems, was soon negociated. It was not one in which many obstacles were Hkely to occur. Match-making con- stitutes a science in which parents of birth and rank, of both sexes, are early initiated. It was feared by the Countess her mother, that all the pains taken to train Angehca had been thrown away — a fear that was occasioned by her favoui*- able reception of George Mortimer, -svith whose person and manners it was very difficult not to be fascinated. But no sooner did a captive 176 TIMON, BUT NOT Lord, wealthy beyond her hopes, appear at her feet, than she gave proof that the maternal in- structions had not been ill bestowed. His Lordship pressed his suit incessantly — in season, and out of season — for six weeks ; at the end of which her hand rewarded his assiduity, and the vanquished fair one was led to the altar in tri- umph. It had been intended that the ceremony should have been performed by special Hcence from his Grace of Canterbury. But Lord Al- burton, who has a most devoted zeal for the Church of England, had some scruples as to the marriage not being solemnized within its sacred walls; and in deference to those scruples, the hymeneal fetters were rivetted in the Church of St. George's, Hanover Square. What a treasure for a philosopher would be the secret history of all the illustrious pairs whose fi\te that conse- crated edifice has fixed for ever ! What an un- folding of the character would there be of men — and of women — in high places ! What a dissec- tion of the human heart would it display ! — such a course of anatomy would be instructive to the end of time. OF ATHENS. 177 " I remember that your opinion of Angelica always was that she was a consummate coquette ; and your saying that whenever she married, her husband's name would be as conspicuous in the horn-hook, as in the Court Guide. I should hope not — there is often much levity of manner in females, which proceeds from buoyancy of spirits and lightness of heart. After marriage this sobers down into the seriousness of the matron, leaving the character none the worse. " I believe I have not yet told you that since you have been away, my mother has had her pic- ture taken. She had always been rather reluctant to sit for this purpose; but, fortunately, I met by accident with a young artist, quite unknown to fame, who was struggling to support his two orphan sisters by such employment as he could obtain in this line of his art. There needed no further persuasion than this ; she at once con- sented to sit, and the likeness that he has taken of her is admu'able. It has all the grace and spirit of Sir Thomas Lawrence, without his ima- ginative adornings, which detract so much from the fidelity of many of his portraits, however I 5 r 1 78 TIMON, BUT NOT valuable they may be as works of art. The intel- ligent expression of her countenance is touched to the life. My sister is delighted with it ; the dear girl has entreated that it may be hung up in her bed-room. You know her reverential affection for the original, and will imagine the readiness with which her wish was gratified. We hope to spread the artist's fame over a wide sur- face. His personal character is excellent. He only requires to be known ; with two or three good introductions his genius is of a kind to make its own way, and to provide for him a lasting reputation. — Adieu." OF ATHENS, 179 CHAPTER XIII. George Mortimer, the individual alluded to ill George Clavering's letter, returned from the continent, and returned bringing with him a fair portion of that philosophy which was hoped from him. To have lost the repu- tation arising from so brilliant a conquest as the daughter of Lord Gosport, had it been nothing more, was no light infliction. A flirtation might have been forgiven ; these little wanderings on the part of the gentle sex may be, and yet the heart may, in the midst of them, preserve its fidelity. They may give birth to a few pangs of jealousy, and a few more, perhaps, of resentment; but the quarrels they give rise to may be made up, and all may yet be well. But the case is 180 TIMON, BUT NOT very different when the lady has become the wife of another ; and this, too, without any pre- vious misunderstanding to countenance such per- fidy, much less to excuse it. The slumbers of the Honourable George Mortimer were broken for several nights after the news of the event had reached him. His heart-ache would have been more lasting, and less supportable, if pride had not come to his aid — he solaced himself with reflecting on the misery he had escaped. A creature graduated in the school of artifice, who could thus play the game of mercantile matri- mony, what domxCstic happiness could have fol- lowed such a union ? The warmth of aflfection could never glow in such a bosom. Her manner was bewitching — her face and her form were beautiful — these attractions it must have been that had blinded him to all her imperfections. But the bandage was now taken off — taken ofl^", fortunately, in time to save him from the fatal consequences of his own want of penetration. Such were the thoughts that swept across his mind, when he was wrapt in meditation on the frailty of the sex, and the worthless ambition OF ATHENS. IBl that had transformed his once loved Angelica into Lady Alburton. The hinge on which his whole fate would have turned, was broken ; and it was thus that he reasoned himself into thecon- vinction that it was all for the best. On querit, says La Bruyeue, comme on se console ; on n'a pas dans le coeur de quoi tou- jours pleurer et toujours aimer. It is not in the present century that young men of birth and fashion die for love. There were, moreover, in Mortimer's case some cir- cum.stances which made his sufferings more supportable. He had paid a visit to the con- tinent ; he had mingled in the society of Italian beauties of the very first water. Their radiant eyes had beamed upon him with an expressive- ness hardly to be withstood. In such society the most deep-seated passion is apt to be shaken, and at times to give way ; more especially when the object of it is on the other side the channel, and has therefore no means of counteracting the influence of present temptation. It is wonderful how imperceptibly a powerful and totally en- 182 TIMON, BUT NOT grossing attachment may be weaned when that chasm in the heart which absence creates is thus agreeably filled up. In truth, the heart of man is composed for the most part of a very soft and yielding material ; there are very few impressions upon it that are indelible. Human nature is the same in high and low — " I love Sue, and Sue loves me ; How long it may last, I cannot foresee," is the beginning of the sailor's song, in which lovers of all ranks and degrees may join chorus. It was scarcely six weeks after his arrival in London, when at a dinner party given by young Lord Trecastle, several of the liaisons, as well as the recent matrimonial alliances in high life, were discussed — amongst others that of Lord Gosport. It was atopic upon which Mortimer was somewhat sore. Some incidents not uncommon in the heau monde were narrated, but the con- versation gradually glided into another channel. Unluckily, towards evening, when after the deli- OF ATHENS. 183 cious enjoyment of the finest wines, the spirits of the party had become exhilarated, the subject which had before been dropped was renewed. Lord Trecastle was not sparing in his ridicule of Lord Gosport. Plis Lordship being a great agriculturist, some broad hints were thrown out as to his improving the breed of short horns ; and certain remarks were made upon Lady Gosport, the grossierte of which it was impos- sible to misinterpret. " The insinuation is false," said Mortimer, with a warmth of indignation that he was no longer able to suppress. These words, and the tone of them, produced a sudden silence of ex- pectation. '^ 1 do not know it to be true," repHed Lord Trecastle ; " but I firmly believe it to be so." "What authority have you for the assertion?" " I shall not be cathechised. If you feel an interest in the lady's reputation, you must take some other way of defending it." "I shall do so," rejoined Mortimer; and rising from his seat, immediately left the room. Lord Trecastle very quietly rung the bell, 184 TIMON, BUT NOT the extended tassel of which lay at his right hand. His lordship, owing to his absence from Eng- land, was quite a stranger to the fact of Mortimer having been le bien aime of Angelica, and that her marriage with Lord Gosport was the event that had occasioned his sudden appearance in Lon- don. Two or three of the company were well aware of the circumstance ; but they could not catch his eye while he was speaking, and they were too far distant to make anv intellisrible siffn that might have turned the subject. The young Lord, moreover, had done hospitable justice to the high flavour of his wines, by 's^'ay of inducing his guests to follow his example, and they had not been slow in doing so. It was not that Mortimer considered himself the guardian of Lady Gosport's honour, that the insinuations thrown out by Lord Trecastle had kiadled his resentment; it arose from the fact that his attachment towards her had not yet had suffi- cient time to efface the associations connected with it. There were certain feelings still warm at his heart, which seemed — at least in a mixed OF ATHENS. 185 company — to place her character in his keeping. He regarded it in connection with his own, and he felt the aspersion cast upon it as a personal insult. He despatched a letter to Lord Trecastle the following morning, which was replied to by his Lordship with all possible despatch. Their mutual friends endeavoured earnestly to bring the affair to an amicable termination ; but they found this by no means so easy of accomplishment as they had imagined. The high spirit of Mortimer was quickened by the nature of the offence. He was not to be soothed by any persuasion that it was unintentional — at all events, if it was so, it required an exphcit a pology, and nothing short of that would satisfy him. The cool indifference of Trecastle as to the result of the offence he had given, made the affair on his side equally difficult to deal with. Their tempers were of quite a difierent cast, and the contrast rendered both of them equally unmanageable. It was urged upon Mortimer, that Trecastle 186 TIMON, BUT NOT was wholly uninformed as to the rumour of an expected alUance between him and the lady who had given her hand to Lord Gosport ; and that therefore the remarks which fell from him, could not have been made with the slightest reference to it. " Then let him explicitly retract them," was the reply. " As fai' as regards any intended allusion to yourself, I have no doubt he will." " He must retract them as they respect Lady Gosport," said Mortimer. The substance of this conference was inti- mated to Lord Trecastle. " I owe Mortimer no ill-will," said his Lord- ship; "but I shall retract nothing. I was wholly unacquainted with the affair you speak of, and could therefore not mean to give him offence ; but as he chose to take it, he is welcome." "N^Tien any hostile meeting is in agitation, enough usually transpu'es to occasion an inter- ference on the part of the proper authorities. The parties in the present instance had no desire that the affau* should end in theii* being appre- OF ATHENS. 187 hended, and bound over in sureties to keep the peace. The result was, that within five days they were assembled punctually, at the rendezvous a la barriere des Champs Elysees. Both pistols took effect — Mortimer was slightly wounded. Lord Trecastle seriously ; but the ball being ex- tracted with less difficulty than it was at first ap- prehended, he was able at the end of five weeks to leave Paris for London, being pronounced by his surgical attendant to be out of danger. Duelling is certainly a most unchristian prac- tice, and deeply to be lamented ; but the laws which in England are enacted for its preven- tion, are most preposterously severe. The pun- ishment is more sanguinary in its spirit than the crime ; if either party is killed, both the prin- cipal and the seconds are guilty of murder. Every page of our penrd code exhibits the low price which lawyers and legislators have been accustomed to set on the value of human life. The great improvements which have been made in it within these last few years, shew the in- creasing clearness with which men think ; but amidst all the progress of knowledge and be- 188 TIMON, BUT NOT nevolence, this savage feature of our law re- mains unaltered. No man was better versed in all the mystical and metaphysical reasoning that belonged to the bench and the bar of his day, than Lord Coke ; but as to the enlightened and sound principles of social justice, you will not find them developed in any one instance through- out the whole of his Institutes. A worse oracle cannot be consulted by any one studying the science of criminal jurisprudence, either as re- gards the suppression of crime, or the punishment of it. His reasoning is of the following cast : — " If two persons quarrel over night, and appoint to fight the next day — or quarrel in the morn- ing, and agree to fight in the afternoon — or such a considerable time after, by which it may be presumed the blood was cooled ; and then they meet and fight a duel, and one kill the other ; it is murder.'''' (3 Inst. 52.) Can any doctrine be more monstrous? Such law betrays an utter ignorance of human nature. It is foun- ded upon principles utterly false, as regards both the mental and moral constitution of man. Nothing is so dangerous as metaphor, when we OF ATHENS. 189 have to deal with matter of fact. An individual born into a rank of society which, if it does not make him pecuHarly susceptible of insult, at least instils those high sentiments of honour which forbid him to submit to it — is to be ex- ecuted as a common felon, if, during the few hours that may elapse between the challenge and the meeting, '^ it may be presumed, the blood ivas cooled .*" as if the blood were like the hot water in a tea-kettle, which necessarily loses its heat, on being removed for a time to the open air ! To frame a law against duelling, demands a very wide range of reflection ; it requires that we should keep our eye steadily, not only on the natural character of man in society, but on the state and condition of society itself. If we cherish in the higher ranks that military spirit, of which courage and a high sense of honour is the essence, to class duelling with the worst of crimes, is the most insane and cruel injustice. xAll legitimate Government is instituted for the guardianship of the strong against the weak ; it is in virtue of this that it enacts a penal code, 190 TIMON, BUT NOT punishing every act of personal injury, and every invasion of private property. Whoever violates these rights, becomes the proper object of these laws, and that in proportion to the magnitude of the offence committed. Now, if in consequence of a private quarrel, a challenge is given and accepted, and the result is unhappily fatal to one of the parties; has the security of the person, or property of any one of his Majesty's subjects been enfringed, or the public safety in any way endangered ? Most assuredly not. Wherein, then, is the law justified, in putting all the sur- vivors, principals and seconds, to death ? How it may fare with them in the great day of final ac- count, the Judge of all the earth can alone de- cide ; but it is the tendency of an act to produce evil to the community, which alone brings it within the cognizance of the State. In the pre- sent case, the State avenges with death an act which brings no evil on society, and with which, therefore, in its protective capacity, it has no concern. Let the moralist use every dissuasive against the practice of duelling — let it be denounced OF ATHENS. 191 from the pulpit, as contrary alike to the spirit and to the precepts of the Gospel of peace. But in the mean time, do not by education make a crime of cowardice ; provide that the officer that puts up with a deliberate and intended insult, shall not be sent to Coventry, but shall be re- ceived in the mess-room with due honour. Study the feelings, which in a proud and spii'ited aristocracy, make the reputation of a dastard worse than death. Look to the actual condition and feelings of the society in which we live. Examine in what degree duelling is mixed up, and at it were identified, with the habits, opinions and character of the nation ; and having so done, enact a law if you can, to meet it; as it now stands, it is only worthy of that age of brutal ignorance, which gave birth to it — an age, when sorcerers were in vogue, and judges were be- lievers in witchcraft. The strongest proof of the iniquity of our law against duelling, where death ensues, is, that you cannot act upon it. If an attempt were made to carry it into effect, the best passions of the people would take part with the offender. 192 TIMON, BUT NOT Take the cases of Charles Fox and Mr. Adam — of the Duke of York and Colonel Lennox — of Canning and Lord Castlereagh — of the Duke of Wellington and Earl Winchelsea — suppose that unhappily either of these parties had chan- ced to kill his antagonist, would the survivor and their seconds have been tried for murder, condemned and executed ? AVe all know that in these cases, and many others that might be named, no such result would even have been contemplated ; the law would have been held in abevance, and the affair would have been suffer - ed to die away. It is thus that the popular complaint against the laws is justified, that they are a snare ; and that while the poor are made to suffer^ the rich go free. This of itself is a se- rious mischief. As against the seconds in any hostile meet- ing, it is still more flagrantly unjust ; they are in effect but as witnesses to the fairness of the proceeding on both sides. They endeavour to adjust the difference, if an opening for recon- ciliation presents itself; if it does not, they adopt the next best step — they take care that no unfair OF ATHENS. 193 advantage is taken by either party. It is an in- terposition of friendship that is indispensable ; and yet, if either party falls, they are accounted assassins, their lives are forfeited. And this is the law of the realm in the nineteenth century ! and in the land that has given birth to a Bentham, and a Romilly ! In a duel, the parties, both principals and seconds, are usually, in England at least, men of high honoiu", whose integrity is beyond suspicion, the ornament of the elevated circle in which they move. The act implies no degradation of character, but the reverse ; it arises from a sense of its value, that will suffer no imputation to be cast upon it : and yet if it happens that death should follow, the law by its punishment levels them with the lowest and most atrocious of felons ! Siu'ely, Parliament will not much lon- ger bear with such an anomaly ; it is an outrage on every principle of reason, and every senti- ment of justice. VOL. I. 194 TIMON, BUT NOT CHAPTER XIV. Among the intimates of Sir Felix Clavering was Lord Milverton, a peer of great landed and local interests, who could at any time send three members into the lower house, and whose in- fluence was always at the service of the Fij'st Lord of the Treasury, for the time being. He was a remnant of that party who called them- selves " the king's friends ;" and in that character his support of government was uniform, without reference to the opinions, or the policy, of the in- dividuals who were at the head of it. The wis- dom or the mischief of their measures was a point with which his loyalty had no concern. It was enough that they were the measures of OF ATHENS. 195 the king's minister, wliether that minister was Whig or Tory, to entitle them to his constant and decided support. This staunch fidelity to the court did not fail to be duly estimated in the proper quarters. Of his three sons, the elder, who was in the army, had risen rapidly to promotion, over the heads of officers who had seen years of hard service before he was born. His second son had ob- tained a excellent colonial appointment ; and the third, afflicted with an incurable deafness, added two valuable sinecures to a situation in the Ordinance department. A statute of distribu- tions could not have made a more equitable division of the public spoil, as far as the progeny of this influential peer w^as concerned. He had also a daughter ; and were it possible that females could hold office, she would, no doubt, have enjoyed some lucrative appointment. As it v>as, the merit of his consort, the beautiful Lady Milverton, had not been overlooked. She had been a favourite at Carlton House, when Carlton House was in its glory, and for a while divided the empire of the maternal Marchioness. Had k2 196 TIMOK", BUT NOT she managed with dexterity, it is believed she might have supplanted that celebrated perso- nage ; but she was of too ardent a temperament to make the sacrifice which such a triumph required. It was enough that her platonic liaison had been of a duration sufficient to entitle her to a proper support from the public purse. A pension of handsome amount had been granted to her, and this without any blush on the cheek either of the giver or the receiver. As for Lord Milverton, he was a quiet, easy, well-disposed, matter-of-fact man, but a hon- vivant withal of the first order. No French cook could excel him in compounding a sauce, or flavouring an entremet. As a husband and a father, he was all that could be desired ; that is, he had always suffered his wife to take her own way, and had always given their own way to his children. In truth. Lady IVIilverton was not of a disposition to be easily ruled, even had her Lord had a will of his own, which he had not. He was, as to her, a non-entity. Her dominion over him was unbounded — for she was much younger than himself, and intellectually, OF ATHENS. 197 much his superior. Early versed in the art de se faire aimer, it was indispensable to her very existence, that she should be an object of interest to all those in whom she deemed it worth while to produce a sensation, and which included all those within her circle, by whom, from their accomplishments, whether personal or intellectual, it gratified her vanity to be ad- mired. This had been, from her girlhood, the end and aim of all her study. She was the only daughter of the Marchioness of Derwent ; and her fond mother, who had been early left a widow, was never so pleased as when watching the delight with which all seemed to gaze upon '^ her beautiful Julia." It is therefore no won- der, that the better principles of her nature took root. Not that her moral education was neglected; — her governess gave her the usual lessons for virtuous conduct, while yet no more than six years of age. They were given in the approved form and drawn from the usual precepts — and at the end of the lessons she was taken down to the dra^ving-room to be caressed by the visitors of both sexes, as the loveliest of 198 TIMON, BUT NOT little angels, and to listen to all the superlative epithets of exaggerated admiration. It may readily be imagined, that the task of the pre- ceptress had a fate similar to that of Penelope's web — what she taught one day, was undone the next. The character of Lady Milverton grew to be what, from such a training, it might be expected to become. She had grown up with a restless desire to try the influence of her charms ; and to mark the progress and effect of that influence, was to her the soul of enjoyment. Had the cultivation of the higher qualities of the under- standing been essential towards supreme adora- tion in the society in which she was destined to move, there is little doubt but that she would have set herself in good earnest to the task of intel- lectual competitions, as both the means and the materials were within her reach, and her natural capacity well quahfied her to profit by them. But unhappily, she was born into a communion in which the mental qualities are of little account. .They were advantages which, had she possessed them, would deservedly have raised her in her OF ATHENS. 199 own esteem; but they would have had no allurement, compared with the brilliancy that lighted up her eyes, or the smile that displayed two rows of pearl. The empire of beauty is infinitely more despotic than the empire of mind; whether the slaves of the former were worth governing, was a question she had never asked herself. The homage of the gens d^ elite would have been far the more flattering ; but in them she failed to inspire it — it was only les hommes sans lumieres that were within the sphere of her attraction, and it was therefore within that circle that she studied — " To rivet, with sensation's softest tie, The kindred sympathy of human souls." But the decrees of nature are irreversible ; the most fascinating coquette must at some time or other cease to count her conquests. To die single, is to die without henejit of clergy. It was no doubt to avoid this evil that the Honor- able Miss Derwent, in one of her contemplative moods, decided that although liberty is a pre- cious thing, and the jingling of the matrimonial 200 TIMON, BUT NOT fetters sounds harsh upon the ear, yet that there was a state of wedlock in which service was perfect freedom, and which was preferable to single blessedness. This was a wise conclusion, as were all the prudent considerations which came to confirm it. The theory of this philoso- phy, however, was not so entirely her own as she imagined. The match-making tact of her lady-mother had so imperceptibly engendered these opinions in her mind, that she mistook them for the result of her own meditations. In thus calculating she did well ; at least, accord- ing to the world's notions of well-doing. Cer- tain it is, that when the once-adored beauty has got beyond the bliss of dreams, and is doomed to be numbered in her turn among " the spirits of the past," existence begins to cloy, and the consciousness that she had gathered " the last rose of summer," is full of mournful thoughts. Whether the lovely Julia did thus philosophise, I do not know. But be that as it may, after about six months of wavering and perplexity, she consented to unite herself by the slip-knot of matrimony — for in the upper world it has OF ATHENS. 201 ceased to be a chain — to the wealthy Earl of Milverton. His lordship had now had that fair hand in his possession for four-and- twenty years : whe- ther he had had the heart of its fair owner in his possession for four- and-twenty hours of that interval, would be "a deHcate investigation," and one into which we are not called upon to enter. Among females of high fashion, the in- ner chamber of the heart is a sanctuary into which the less light that is admitted the better. Twice twelve years, however, is a bridal period at the end of which, even in the brightest pla- net, the fairy visions begin to fade away ; and even the high-born are obliged to put up with the infirmities of this earth beneath, like com- mon mortals. The parade of drawing-rooms, and the pressure of crowded staircases, had lost theii* attraction ; and Lady Milverton began to find that this strangely compounded world — at least that portion of it to which she belonged — was made up for the most part of etiquette and insincerity. The lamp that is indispensable to the magic lanthorn, was gone. In fact, she 202 TIMON, BL'T NOT had become a convert to the opinion so last- ingly recorded by Solomon, — that all under the sun is vanity and vexation of spirit. By the way, it could hardly be otherwise to a monarch, who, in the heyday of his royal blood, had three hundred wives, and seven hundred concubines. All the divinity that doth " hedge a king," could not bear up against this thousand sources of vexation. While we are on this topic, we will take the liberty to hint, — without offence to monarchs be it said, — that had the royal Pluralist led a life worthy of his high station ; had he be- queathed to his subjects the example of a viv- tuous and enlightened sovereign, instead of a capricious and worn-out sensualist, the close of his life, instead of forcing from him the con- fession, that '' all was vanity under the sun," would have brought with it that peace which the world cannot give, and have made him an orna- ment to royalty, and an honour to his race. It often happens with the sons of Adam — and often, I grieve to say it, with the daughters of Eve — that when the heart has been withered, and vicious enjoyment has lost its rehsh, the OF ATHENS. 203 passions take a devotional turn. Religion is taken up as the resource against vacancy and ennui. When the body has lost its energies, the fair owner then — but not till then — begins to look after the soul. The cheerfulness flowing from a conscience of ease with itself, is the best and surestmarkof a true Christian. An innocent heart is always a happy one ; and at all periods of life an obedience to the moral precepts of the New Testament never fails to bring joy and peace to the soul. But there is a class of devotees fast spreading itself over the once " merry England," — a class daily growing in numbers and in strength — who consider the essence of religion to consist in renouncing, with a dejected countenance, all those amusements with which common mortals diversify the occu- pations of life. They assume to themselves the distinctive title of '^ serious Christians," as if a cheerful Christian were a creature that the Deity would have nothing to do with. A mournful face is, with them, a face of piety ; a light heart savours of sinfulness ; plays, music, and dancing, are to be shuimed as carnal, and fit only for 204 TIMON, BUT NOT those who live, as they phrase it, '^ without God in the world." They would have us pass through life as if it were a funeral procession, and would give us nothing but a skull and cross-bones at the end of the perspective. The more elderly of this sanctified sect are worn-out sinners whose depravity has had its day ; of the remainder, the far greater part are designing knaves, or down- right hypocrites. Their sense of enjoyment is palled, but their mind is not purified. They are, to outward appearance, all gravity ; there is no froth at the top, but the dregs are still at the bottom. They take no pleasure in the world, only because they have no pleasure in themselves. Their sanctity startles, and takes ofifence where the truly virtuous see no harm ; as the apparently straight-faced prude is the quickest in decyphering a double-entendre, and her modesty is shocked by a meaning which a pure mind would never have dreamt of. Whether it was that Lady Milverton was tired of the pomps and vanities of this wicked world, and therefore resolved to join that motley class that in the pride of their humility style OF ATHENS. 205 themselves ^' the rehgious pubhc," or whether her vanity had whispered that within a certain circle she might be looked up to as the head of that party, certain it is that in a few short months a saving change was effected ; a new star made its appearance in the evangelical hemis- phere, and a swarm of preachers, — always on the look-out for the salvation of souls — flocked to worship it. On a sudden all her tastes became spiritual — for it may be said of the stream of piety, as Sir Vicary Gibbs used to say of the statute of limi- tations, when it does begin to run it runs like wildfire — the most harmless amusements were accounted worldly, and she ceased to partake in them. They were unbefitting a sinful creature like herself, that was setting her house in order before the Lord. Her discourse soon became tinctured with the phraseology of methodism ; and scripture phrases, in season and out of season, were at her tongue's end. Theatres, cards, concerts, — what was there of divine grace in such unsatisfying pleasures ? Her more rational friends told her that enjoyed in moderation, they 206 TIMON, BUT NOT were, at least, innocent preservatives against ennui. No sucli thing — they were utterly un- suitable to diseased souls. — Gospel professors have no such remedy in their pharmacopoeia. Lord Milverton, whose mental quietude scarcely any change on the surface of society could disturb, felt himself, nevertheless, an- noyed by this extraordinary and unexpected transformation ; no metamorphosis in Ovid was to him more surprising. The society of his Lady, when permitted to enjoy it, he had always taken pleasiu^e in; and though neither greatly elevated, nor much enlightened by her conversation, still it had always enough of fashionable anecdote, and the chit-chat of the day, to make it amus- ing. But of late they had never been alone, but her discourse turned upon the lake that burnetii everlastingly, and the worm that never dies. His breakfast got cold while she was asking a blessing^ and the hot plates at dinner in vain contended with the length of the prayer ; for all must be done to the glory of God, and in the fear lest the Lord should withdraw himself. All this made a sad inroad upon his Lordship's OF ATHENS. 207 daily comfort ; and what made matters worse. Lady Milverton did not go out as formerly, and as her visitors consisted for the most part of saints, and preachers, and the assiduous atten- dants on prayer meetings, his more social friends, whose good sense and good humour had charmed away many a twitch of the gout, had one by one dropped away, and his fireside had become little better than a society of Gospel debaters, in which the minister was senior wrangler. His Lordship, to whom all this parade of piety was strained and unnatural, at first made a strenuous and bold resistance, and insisted upon the utter exclusion from his house of all the disciples and followers of methodism; but his lady received his rebukes with the dark counte- nance of a fallen angel, and as he had no respon- sive glances of terror to flash back in retui-n, he after a time gave up the contest. Happily, his feelings were not peculiarly sensitive; but his endurance would have done credit to a his/her philosophy. It is not a little singular that while there is the greatest dearth of political integrity in public 208 TIMON, BUT NOT men, and a lamentable falling-ofF in honesty and fair dealing throughout all classes connected with trade and commerce — that while fraud, and deception, and over-reaching are so prevalent as hardly to be guarded against in the most ordi- nary transactions of Hfe, — yet in the midst of all this mass of imposition and duplicity, religionism is the disease of the age. But the truth is, as Lord Byron has well expressed it, that " In these days the grand ' primum mobile' of Eng- land is cant ; cant political, cant religious, cant moral ; but always cant, multiplied through all the varieties of life. It is the fashion, and while is lasts will be too powerful for those who can exist only by taking the tone of the time. I say cant, because it is a thing of words, without the smallest influence upon human actions." This rebuke is well merited ; we have what is called " diform of worship," in our churches ; and the phrase well designates it ; but as for w the ado- ration of the heart, there never was less of it. The outside of the platter is everything ; keep that but steadily before the eye, and you are re- ceived into all serious circles as a shining light. OF ATHENS. 209 Foreigners say of us, that we are a pious, and a pill-taking nation ; and we are certainly open to the sarcasm, for no where is quackery as pro- fitable as in England ; and whether the pre- scription is for bodily ailments or the cure of souls, faith is insisted upon as the one thing needful — without it not only is salvation impos- sible, but even warts cannot be charmed away. How then can we expect sinful excrescences to disappear ? If cant and credulity go on increasing as they have done of late, the infection will become so general, that the next generation will not be able to look truth in the face. 210 TIMON, BUT NOT CHAPTER XV. What an Indian jungle is the world of politics ! The science of government, which ought by this time to be the best understood of all the sciences, is the most ill-understood, and the most complicated, that our patience has to cope with. Like rehgion, simple in its first principles, and having the essence of moral truth, and the advancement of individual hap- piness for its basis, its doctrines have got steeped in unintelligible mysteries, till at length it is perverted into an instrument of power, and is made subservient to the tyranny of kings, and the treachery of priests. Such was the observation of Clavering, as he finished the perusal of the '^ Memoires sur la OF ATHEI^S. 211 Cour de Louis XJ^," which, developes the sad depravity of the French court and nohility under the cuicien regime, — a depravity which, combined with the oppressions exercised upon the French people, was more than sufficient to raise up a nation of regicides. He was just rising from his library-table, when the smart double knock of the postman brought him the following letter from his friend Delamere : — " Paris, Rue de la Paix. " My Deak Clavering, " A thousand thanks for your very interesting epistle. I read it while stretched along a sofa, on the first floor of the Hotel des Isles Britani- ques, which by the way I leave to-morrow, for a suite of apartments at Versailles. Compared with the din and smoke of London, I seem to live in a still and transparent element. AVe are, however, sorely disquieted here, as with you, with the state of parties ; and the interests of the public are absorbed in the intrigue of opposite factions. '^The sudden removal of the Whig ministry. 212 TIMON, BUT KOT appears to us to be a monstrous enormity. The announcement reached Paris by express yester- day morning, and the sensation it produced is indescribable. The chieftainship was easily lodged in his Grace of AVaterloo ; but widi whom are the remaining appointments to be filled up? The " Citizen -King " exults in the change, as well he may ; it exactly chimes in with the whole course of his policy. There is a perfectly good understanding between the two courts — their views are congenial. " AViUiam the Fourth has, in my opinion, done good service to the cause ; he has raised the Tory-Duke to a barren eminence, from which he, and all who follow him, must speedily fall ; for never, with all his prowess, will he be able again to bring the neck of the English people under the yoke. In the mean time, the loss of office may have the eifect of converting the Whig party from the error of their ways. It may teach them to look hereafter for theu' sup- port, where alone it is to be found, in the well- earned confidence and attachment of the people. When Lepelletier, President of the parliament OF ATHENS. 213 of Parisj advised the recal of Necker,il was with this emphatic exhortation, — * Representons le peuple de peur qii'il ne se represente luimeme!^ I would have the sentence written in letters of gold over the entrance of the Commons' house of parliament ; — Let us represent the people, lest they should represent themselves. " Nothing astonishes the Parisians more than the placing the government in abeyance until the arrival of Sir Robert Peel from Italy. The world is to be in darkness, until Harlequin brings a rush-light ! We are curious to see the muster- roll of the new corps. The lively but eccentric Prince de Ligne, once raised a regiment of Jewish cavalry, to which he gave the name of Israeloioshy . In front of what troops will our Field- Marshal proclaim his plan of reform ? I suspect that when he comes to review his Toryoivsky regiment, he will not care to march them through Coventry. His wisest course would be, at once to resign the command. " The accession of the Tories to power, will put the Allied Sovereigns in high spirits. It vnW inspire the Russian and Austrian despots 214 TIMON, BUT NOT witli the hope of again seeing their subjects prostrate themselves with their faces on the earth, content to receive such laws as they, in their wisdom, shall bestow. '^ I thought I had done with politics, until I w^as waked from my trance of indifference, by this perfectly novel scene in the pohtical drama ; but I leave the players to get through their parts as they can. The spirit which actuates all parties is pretty much the same. The world is to me as a book of FaceticE ; and I amuse myself alike with the foibles of the weak, and the conceits of the wise. You must often, in a masquerade, have seen masks with faces of divided character ; what better emblem than this can there be, of the half- fools, half-knaves, that make up the great congregation of life in this unintelligible world ? " I begin to think of returning, but at present I am only beginning to tliink of it ; the air, and the climate, the people of France, are so much to my taste, that I cannot quit it without reluct- ance. A genuine Frenchman is a truly envi- able compound. There is a buoyancy of spirit OF ATHENS. 215 about him, that sets fate and fortune at defiance. Give him but his fiddle, and he dances through life to any tune that can be drawn from it. "VYe, on the other hand, are a steady, slow-going, money-getting people. From life's green spring, to its autumnal leaf, we plod our way to wealth and immortality, confiding at all times in the mercy of heaven, and the steadiness of the three-per-cent consols. " I have become almost a fixture of late in the Gallery of the Louvre. The old masters well merit the fame they have acquired. You perceive at once, without having seen the originals, that the portraits by Rubens or Vandyke are faithful likenesses. The impression that they are so, is intuitive ; and the reason I take to be this — in ideal faces, by which I mean faces sketched from fancy, there is never that accordance between the features which is to be found in nature. The eye, for instance, has a certain expression with which that of the mouth is not in unison ; now in nature, the feelings of the mind have their correspondent action throughout the counte- nance. In aU the distinguished productions of 216 TIMON, BUT NOT the Flemish, and Itahan masters, this con- sistency is remarkable, and is the secret of the powerful interest they produce. The man, and the mind of the man, is seen upon the canvass as the painter saw it ; the features all harmonize — the same tone pervades them throughout, and they are all in sympathy with the feelings out of which their prevailing expression arises. But in modern likenesses, as they are called, how often do we perceive in the eye a look of thoughtfulness, while the eye-brow betokens a steady composure, and the mouth an expression different from either. This defect I have never observed in the works of any artist of real genius. Pope tells us of a painter, who not being able to draw portraits after the life, used to paint faces at random, and look out afterwards for people whom he might persuade were like them. The devices of ingenuity are endless. How admirable was your mother's likeness ! But then her finely intelligent countenance is pe- culiarly well fitted to display the talent of an artist. As for your sister's portrait, I take it for granted it will be equally successful, because OF ATHENS. 217 no painter with a spark of genius, if he has soul or sentiment, can fail in it. " Timon left here on Friday ; he is on his way to Avignon, where he intends remaining about a week. We talked of you often, and of the circle in St. James's Square. He is, as you know, a most intelligent and delightful com- panion, and you can well imagine the void I feel in the want of his society. You may expect a letter from him soon, as he more than once reproached himself for suffering so long an interval to elapse without writing. His general health seems much improved within these last three months; but his spirits are, at times, fully as much depressed as they were before he left England. How often has it perplexed both you and me to account for this ! It is clear the cause, whatever it may be, still exists ; but I do not seek to fathom it; one is surprised the more, because he has abundant means of commandinsr all the enjoyments of life. Formed, beyond most men, to find favour in the eyes of the sex ; with the means of fortune amply at his com- mand ; and possessing a first-rate understandings VOL. I. L 218 TIMOX, BUT XOT in alliance with a most excellent heart ; what can overcloud all this brilliant sunshine is to me a mystery. '^ I one day ventured to remark, while talking of the endless varieties of character and dispo- sitions which are to be found among men, that we sometimes meet with individuals, whose minds appear to have a natural cast of pensive- ness, even while surrounded with all that should inspire gaiety and elevation. " ' Spurzheim,' he replied, ' would tell you, that they were deficient in the organ of hope, and were therefore disposed to seriousness.' " 'You are, then,' said I, ' a believer in the system of Gall and Spurzheim V " ' Yes ; there was a time when I had no faith in the science of phrenology. It was through a conversation, that I one day had with an intel- ligent German, that my attention was first turned to it as a science. I began to study it perse- veringly, and the result was, my complete con- viction that all the faculties of the mind, and all those manifestations of it which make up the moral nature of man, depend on the organisation of the brain." OF ATHENS. 219 '^ ' Did you ever read JefFery's attack upon it, in the Edinburgh Review, when the system was first rising into notice V "'Yes; the number which contained it was forwarded to me ; I read that article attentively, and I rose from the perusal of it with a lowered opinion'of the writer. The attempt at ridicule is flippant and puerile. There is no trace in it of enhghtened, or even of rational discussion. His mind is manifestly strong, excursive, and sar- castic ; but it has all the littleness of intellectual vanity, mingled with a large leaven of national pride. He felt that if Gall and Spurzheim's philosophy of the human mind was true, that of his countrymen Reed and Stuart would fall to the ground. The aim of the article in ques- tion, was not to examine the doctrines of phre- nology with reference to their truth or fallacy, but, if possible, to get the laugh against them, lest the fame of the Scotch philosophers should suffer damage. But the reviewer made no way with those who think for themselves. To them he proved nothing, but his own self-suffi- ciency ; and while the disciples of phrenology l2 220 TIMON, BUT KOT were daily multiplying both in Europe and in America, his attack upon it was thrown aside and forgotten.' '^It appeared to me, that Timon had purposely avoided pursuing the subject to which my first remark led, and with a view to which I had introduced it ; but as we were upon the present subject — a subject which, I agree with you, is among the most interesting in the whole range of philosophy — I continued it, with a view to elicit his opinions. I remarked that I had heard it objected, that it tended to fatahsm. That if we are born with a decided propensity to this or that course of conduct, the fault is not our own, and we are, consequently, not accountable beings. "^The objection,' he answered, Ms a vitally important one ; but all who are familiar with the writings of Spurzheim and Combe, must be struck with the luminous arguments by which they answer it; and the extreme clearness with which all they say upon it, is expressed. For myself, the only result that I am anxious to arrive at in the examination of any doctrine, be the subject OF ATHENS. 221 what it may, is, — Is it founded in truth, or is it not ? In theii' minor features of character, man- kind are much the same everywhere. Phreno- logy is not an indigested theory, but a science founded on practical observation. It is affirmed that an elevation or depression in different parts of the skull, occasioned by the greater or less quantity of brain, denotes certain tendencies and capacities in the mind, which influence the con- duct, disposition, and character of the individual in whom they are found. " ' This is a fact of which all are capable of judging. If upon examination, for instance, it is proved that many individuals are found, who are endowed with great facility of learning languages ; and others gifted with great musical genius ; but whose heads manifest no develope- ment testifying the existence of any organ of lan- guage or of music, in such case we should be jus- tified in considering the system as conjectural and unsupported. If, on the other hand, the mani- festation of the organs is invariably accompanied by the faculties and propensities ascribed to them, the system is then sustained by the most conclu- 222 TIMON, BUT KOT sive of all tests — the test of experiment, and by the strongest of all evidence, the e\T.dence of fact.' " You know the closeness of his reasoning on all subjects, upon which he will take the pains to reason. Not being myself a proficient dis- ciple, I was anxious to get his sentiments on a point which I had often heard strongly insisted upon by its opponents. And I proceeded to ask him, how he disposed of the objection that the science resolves itself into the system of materialism. " ^ The advocates of phrenology,' he replied, ' are not called upon to dispose of it. Let its opponents disprove the test, and refute the the evidence which confirms it. Till they have done this, they have no claim to be heard in opposition to it. Do we not all know that the disposition and temper of children differ in infancy, as much as their faces and features differ ? Some are mild and teachable, others tur- bulent and refractory ; some secretive and selfish, others open and generous. There must be a cause for this difference — the amiable and or ATHENS. 223 unainiable tendencies are as manifestly born with them, as the turn of their features, and the shape of their heads. Phrenology does not alter the fact; and whether this difference pro- ceeds from the conformation of the brain, or from any principle or law of our constitution, the reasoning, as regards the fact itself, remains the same. Let us take, for example, the organ of acquisitiveness, or the desire of acquiring property. We all know that in many, this desire exists but in a very moderate degree ; and that there are numbers, who can never be prevailed upon to take the pains necessary to acquii'e it, even though suffering under the pressure and embarrassment arising from the want of it; while others are found with such an intense and irresistible desire to possess it, that they cannot overcome their propensity to steal although in independent circumstances, and having actually no use to which they can apply what they thus fraudently obtain. How many instances do your English newspapers contain of females, moving in a circle which of itself would exempt them from all suspicion, having been 224 TIMON, BUT NOT detected in purloining articles while shopping, and have suffered exposure and disgrace, with- out having any assignable motive to the com- mission of such an act ? In every such instance, the diseased propensity to acquire — for in its excess it becomes a disease — has been indicated by the prominent developement of that portion of the brain, in which the organ of acquisitiveness is placed. The phrenologists deduce their system from actual observation. It is not con- jectural. The whole range of animal nature brings tribute to its truth. It has demonstrative evidence for its basis, and can never be over- turned. It does not involve us in the mysteries of metaphysical theory ; it places, as it were, the page of revelation open before us, and appeals to our senses with a force of conviction, that no candid mind can withstand. " * The brain,' he continued, ' is the organ of the mind. The mind is the great agent in forming the infinitely varied elements in the compound character of man. Hence, the great advantages of early education, and of that attentive moral training which bends the facul- OF ATHENS. 225 ties, as far as it is possible, to all the best pur- poses of life. We are all born with different temperaments, and our dispositions vary without end. It is the law of our nature. It is the law of the Supreme Intelhgence, which over- rules all animal life. In that conviction we must rest, for no enquiry can carry us further. ' "The conversation was continued to much greater length; and had I been a sceptic, wliich I am not, he would have converted me. "What- ever Timon says on any subject, is full of mean- ing, for he is much too grave to talk at random. We conversed till late on various topics, on which he displayed, as usual, the varied informa- tion of his strongly contemplative mind. He is, indeed, a spirit ' finely touched.' A small volume, bound, perhaps, somewhat more expensively than it deserved, lay on my writing-table. At- tracted by the binding, he took it up, and glanced his eye on the title-page. It was ' Ovid's Art of Love.' 'The art of love 1' he said, emphatically, and laid it down. There was a shghtly altered expression in his features, as if he had awakened a remembrance not willingly L 5 226 TIMON, BUT NOT recalled. I suspect that, after all, it is some affair of the heart, that gives at times such a tincture of sadness to his thoughts. As we con- tinued conversing, he was occasionally pensive ; but his whole manner was full of interest. You may read his feelings, but the subject of them no penetration can trace. We talked much of you and of your family. He sketched off your father in a few brief sentences. You know how he idolizes Lady Clavering ; but it is with the enthusiasm of a man of sense and feel- ing, in which flattery has no share. He spoke too of your sister ; his admiration of her was unqualified ; but, animated as his feehngs were, his expression of them was guarded. Not that he appeared to entertain any sentiments he would wish to conceal, but the mention of her seemed to throw his recollections strongly on the past ; and whenever that happens, he is not, for the time, himself. His fine countenance suffers for the moment a visible change ; but it is but for a moment. He masters himself, apparently, with a single effort ; but still, to one so much with him as I am, the effort is visible. He becomes, OF ATHENS. 227 I thinkj more than ever unapproachable in the way of friendship. I have, more than once, since we have been here, ventured to invite two or three of my intimate EngHsh friends, who were spending a few weeks in Paris, to meet him at dinner. He has, in no instance, objected to it; but his manner, though perfectly polished and well-bred, has yet been so distant and cere- monial, as to repel any stranger from all hope of further acquaintance. He appears on such occasions, quite a different man from what he is when we dine tete-h-tete. In a mixed party he is not unsocial. Now and then, when appealed to on any particular point, his remarks are such as to convey a high idea of his powers ; but he says no more than is necessary in giving his opinion, which done, he seems to dismiss it from his mind, looks grave, and is not to be again brought back to the subject. In spite of all this, and perhaps partly in consequence of it, there was not one of my friends, but felt an extraordinary interest in his character. " Last Thursday an incident occurred, which has much surprised me. As he was engaged 228 TIMONj BUT NOT to dine with me, I had formed a small party, consisting of the few friends of mine, whom, ex- cept Burrell, who has just arrived, he had once before met. It happened, that during the various topics that were started during the cir- culation of the bottle, allusion was made to Napoleon, and the admirable firmness Avith which he bore his adverse fortune on the rock of St. Helena. The conduct of the different crowned heads was discussed with some free- dom, and prophecies were hazarded as to the result of the present movement in Europe. Their respective majesties did not come out of the discussion with mAich honour, and our own fared no better than the rest- As each gave their honest opinion, it was not likely that roy- alty would be much flattered. You know the strong aristocratic prejudices of Burrell, not a little heightened by the lucrative appointment in the royal household, held by his near rela- tive. Sir Watkin Meredith. He insisted that George the Fourth was a distinguished excep- tion to the remarks which had been made,— launched out in praise of his courteous and OF ATHENS. 229 amiable qualities, and ended with the usual en- comium, ' that he was the first gentleman in Europe.' The indignant expression that sud- denly flashed from the eye of Timon, was of a kind I had never seen before. It was inde- scribable. " ' Are his vices to go for nothing V said the gentleman who sat opposite to Burrell. '^ ' Taceamus de Msj' said I, wishing to give a different turn to the conversation, and in which I gradually succeeded. What were the" thoughts that rushed on the mind of Timon to awaken a feeling so intense, is a question which I shall, perhaps, some day learn from him. He is not a worshipper of thrones, I know ; but he is not a man to have been betrayed into such instant emotion, without an adequate cause. Be that cause what it might, it was one that the feelings of his inmost soul were at war with. " I am half afraid to look back at the length of this letter ; but you see what it is to be the correspondent of an idler ; and yet in epistoliz- ing you at this unmerciful length, I consider myself as fulfilling the first of Christian duties ; 230 TIMON, BUT NOT I do as I would be done by. Bear this in mind when you next write^ and write soon ; for I pray you to remember, that I am cut off from all communication with my London associates, ex- cept by post. — Adieu." OF ATHENS. 231 CHAPTER XIV. The manners, sentiments, and cliaracter of the indiyiclual, who is thus introduced to the reader in Delamere's letter, were of a kind that excited a strong interest in the few who had been able to cultivate his acquaintance with success. TiMON was his travelling name only ; his real name and family were known only to a few of his most select and intimate friends. Why he had chosen, when from home, to adopt un nom em'prunte^ was not known even by them. * * A work has been recently published in France, entitled " Etudes sur les Orateurs P arliament aires ; par Timon, Paris, 1839." It is reviewed in the last September numbe of the " Quarterli/," which commences its review thus: — " TiMON is the well-known nom de guerre of M. le Vicomte 232 TIMON^ BUT NOT There was a dignified reserve about liim, sufficient to repress all forwardness of enquiry : but there was, at the same time, an openness and urbanity in his manner, which made it im- possible to press upon him any question, that could be held likely, in the slightest degree, to give him pain. One fact alone had transpired, — he had fought a duel; his adversary had fallen at the first fire, and was carried lifeless from the ground. The circumstance which had given rise to the hostile meeting, was known only to a military officer high in command, who attended him as his second, and who had been heard to say, when speaking of the aflfair, '^that it was one which made the reparation required indispensable;" de Cormenin, a remarkable man in many ways. INI. de Cor- menin is old enough to have played a part, more or less pro- minent, under each of the three last systems, or regimes; — the Empire, the Restoration, and the Revolution of July." Whether there is ivay family relationship between the Vis- count and the Timon of the pi'esent volumes, and this pecu- liar nom de guerre is assumed on this account in preference to any other, is a point which we have, at present, no means of ascertaining. OF ATHENS. 233 that the party who had tlius fallen, had once been his dearest personal friend ; one in whose honour he had a confidence unbounded; — that the injury he had received was of the deepest kind, — an injury which no apology could ex- piate, — a wound never to be healed ; but to the nature of that injury, no allusion had been made. Beyond this, nothing was known. Some years had passed away since the event took place, and the few of his friends to whom even thus much is known, most carefully abstained from any suggestion, however distant, that might recall it to memory. It was fortunate, that the affair took place abroad, where newspapers are not the intellectual diet of the day, as with us ; and where such an incident would have been the subject of a thousand on dits, and have fur- nished a fund of conjectural gossip for all the breakfast tables of the west-end. It was only three years since Delamere had become acquainted with Timon ; but the event which brought them into more immediate inti- macy, was one which, on a mind like his, was calculated to make a lasting impression. 234 TIMON, BUT NOT Delamere had passed a fortnight with Cla- vering, at Cheltenham; they were taking their departure ; when they had proceeded about two miles on their way to town, they perceived a post-chaise standing in the road, from the ap- pearance of which, it was manifest some accident had happened. One of the horses lay with his leg apparently broken. The other had seem- ingly been taken out of harness, and removed away. They stopped, and had no sooner alight- ed, than the driver of the chaise came forward from a small cottage by the side of the road, to examine the condition of the poor animal that lay panting and groaning on the ground. On enquiry from him if any one was hurt, he told them that the horses were both new to the road, that they had taken fright at a windmill, and that a labouring man passing by at the time had endeavoured to stop them, but had been kicked by one of the horses, and was otherwise severely hurt in the attempt ; and that the gen- tleman that was inside, and his servant, had assisted him into the cottage, where he lay with little hope of life. They went immediately into OF ATHENS. 235 the cottage, to see what service they could render. The first thing they did, was to have the poor man, who appeared in great agony, placed with as much gentleness as possible into their carriage, with directions to the coachman to convey him immediately to Cheltenham, and to send for the first surgeon that could be pro- cured. This being done, the carriage returned ; when they insisted upon forwarding the gentle- man himself to the Plough at Cheltenham, which they had just left, and to which, after some little entreaty, he assented. After passing upwards of two houi's at the hotel, during which time his servant arrived, the parties mutually exchanged addresses, and Clavering and Dela- mere again set ofi" for town. Timon remained only two days at Cheltenham; and the first thing he did on his return to Lon- don, was to call on each of the gentlemen, to whose politeness and humanity he felt himself so much indebted. He was introduced by Edward to Lady Clavering and his sister, who were both of them struck, not only with the remark- able manliness of his person, but with the 236 TIMON, BUT NOT nobleness of his manner. There was, however, a tincture of reserve about him, which could not be concealed, and they remarked it. He re- mained in conversation upwards of an hour ; and both agreed, on his taking leave, that they had never before seen a stranger in whose favor they were so much prepossessed. His next visit was to Delamere, whom he found reposed upon an ottoman, with that volume of Lord Byron before him, that contains The Age of Bronze. He rose on his entrance, and received him with that warm welcome which we always give to those whom we are really glad to see. " I ought to apologize," he said, smiling, *^ for being found in the attitude of an idler : how it may be with others, I don't know ; but when I am reading, my comprehension is always clearest when I am lying in a horizontal position." " It is the same with me," said Timon ; " and I have always inferred from it that the more completely the body is at rest, the less is the attention drawn off from what is immediately OF ATHENS. 237 before it ; and that we can consequently study ' better when extended at ease on a sopha, than in a sitting posture, or than standing upright." " I have heard more than one of my friends at the bar remark," said Delamere, " that the standing before a window, which admitted a strong Hght, always tended to bewilder their thoughts, when addressing the court or a jury." *'That I can readily believe," replied Timon; '^ and the cause is partly the same as that we have just been speaking of. It is observable that most persons, when wishing to collect their thoughts, instinctively shade their eyes with their hand. The mind, when called upon to reflect, must, as it were, retire within itself; but this it cannot do, while the eye is fatigued with a strong light, which precludes that concentra- tion of thought, essential to a speaker while addressing a pnblic assembly, on any subject which requires the full exercise of all his reason- ing faculties, which, if not intensely directed, are very easily disturbed." After this incidental discussion had led to some further philosophical remarks, Delamere 238 TIMON, BUT NOT enquired after the poor man, who had been left in the care of the surgeon, and whether he was Hkely to recover. *' I am glad that you have adverted to this subject," said Timon ; " as it is one upon which I was very desirous to confer with you. The poor fellow in recovering slowly ; but I am sorry to learn from the surgeon, who is a man of great skill in his profession, that the fracture of the leg is so serious, and the knee joint so much injured, that the best cure that can be effected will not prevent his being lame for life. He earns his livelihood by thatching ; and has a wife and. five children to support by his daily labour. I find from enquiry, that he is an industrious and honest creature : and I had evidence of this from the neatness of his little cottage, and the cleanliness and comfortable ap- pearance of his wife and children. I called upon the poor woman, who was quite broken-hearted at the accident that had befallen her husband, who was in his bed in a little room adjoining, and whom she only left, on being told by one of the little ones, that a gentleman wanted her. OF ATHENS. 239 The surgeon came in while I was there ; he found the fever greatly abated, and the cure going on as well as under all cii'cumstances could be ex- pected. But still the matter gives me great uneasiness, as I cannot help considering myself as being in a measure the cause of his accident. There was no urgent occasion for going to Cheltenham — it was a mere whim of the moment, — and if I had not gone, the affair never would have happened." " I think you look at the matter a little too minutely," said Delamere ; " it is impossible that, in an accident so utterly unforeseen, you can have any ground to reproach myself." '' It is not that I reproach myself — my uneasi- ness arises from another cause. Poor Roberts, for that I understand is his name, is utterly disabled, from the nature of the injury he has received, from following his trade as formerly ; which requires him to be every day mounting a ladder, and exposes him to that unavoidable straining of the muscles, which the fractured limb will never bear. Then again, he has a small garden attached to his cottage, which he 240 TIMON, BUT XOT was always digging and planting, and weeding, after his day's work was done ; and the produce of which, in fruit and vegetables, went a great way towards the payment of his rent, and the support of his family. He will never be again able to do this — his children are too young to be serviceable; and his weekly earnings no longer coming in, he cannot of course pay for hired labour, and is thus rendered utterly desti- tute. Now, I am about to entreat a great favor of you, which I am sure you are too kind to refuse. " I feel it morally incumbent on me to make some provision for this poor man and his family. It is true, I cannot blame myself for what hap- pened ; but it arose from his struggling to stop the horses, w^hen he saw that the life of some one or other, he knew not whom, was in jeopardy. I could not be at peace with myself, were I to leave him exposed to penury and want, brought upon him by an act of the highest humanity. Now I am about to proceed to Florence, in the early part of next month ; how long it may be before I re- visit England, is uncertain ; and the favor I am OF ATHENS. 241 about to ask, is, that you would permit me to deposit one hundred pounds in your hands, as the two first payments of an annuity of forty pounds a year, which it is my intention should be paid to Roberts himself during his life, and to his wife if she survives him. If I should not return before the expiration of two years, I will remit the future payments annually. I have fixed the sum at forty pounds, as I find the average of his earnings was twelve shillings a week; and estimating the profit derived from the produce of his garden-labour, I consider that sum as coming as near as possible to an equitable compensation. The surgeon's bill I have already discharged." " I shall most willingly undertake the trust imposed on me," said Delamere ; " and you may depend upon my executing it faithfully." Four years have now elapsed, and the annuity has been paid with the strictest punctuality. Roberts is able, with the help of a crutch, to walk abroad without difficulty, though inadequate to any muscular exertion. He is able to allow a little to a working-man in the neighbourhood, VOL. I. M 242 TIMON, BUT NOT for keeping up his garden, which he superintends himself with as much alacrity as ever. And neither he nor his wife, in their nightly prayers, ever forget their benefactor. OF ATHENS. 243 CHAPTER XV. There are certain actions which give a stamp to the individual character, because they mani- festly proceed from that principle of right by which we clearly see that the conduct of that individual is governed. From the incident just related, Delamere formed his judgment of Timon as correctly as if he had known him for twenty years. It was evident that he acted from that sense of moral responsibility which makes virtue a habit. He was j ast the kind of being in whom Delamere delighted. Timon, on his part, felt an equally strong impression in favour both of Delamere and Clavering. He felt that when in their company he was in the society of M 2 244 TIMON, BUT NOT honourable men ; a consciousness which in this world of impostors is very rarely possessed. Unhappily, too, there appears very little prospect that this state of things will mend. The moral atmosphere, instead of clearing up, seems to get every day more dense. The fervor of poHtical hatred is fast destroying all the genial and gene- rous sympathies of our nature. Money-mak- ing has become a concern of life ; even religion has at last become a trade, and the text is veri- fied to the letter, that *'in godliness there is great gain." Of late years the march of intellect has no doubt been rapid, but the march of roguery has overtaken it. It was after an interval of scm.e weeks that Clavering, on his return from Brighton, forwarded the following reply to his friend. — '* My dear Delamere, " The strongest proof of friendship I can give you at this distance, is in sitting thus promptly down to converse with you on paper. Occu- pied as you are daily with new society and new scenery, I fear that what is passing on this side OF ATHENS. 245 the channel will excite but little interest. I am not surprised that the sudden change of admi- nistration here should have created a strong sen- sation on the continent. Be the king's advisers who they may, they have, by supplanting the late Ministry, incurred a heavy responsibility, not only to Great Britain, but to Europe. It appears to me quite impossible that the present men can long retain the reins of power. At this moment there is no prospect of their procur- ing anything like a majority of one -third of the house, even with all the waverers which the chance of profiting by their patronage may bring over to their ranks ; and without such a majority they cannot carry on the government. The choice of a Speaker, and the amendment on the address being both carried against them, is an ominous opening of the campaign. " With your shrewd insight into character, you must have an endless source of amusement in the circles of Parisian society. They furnish, perhaps, the most curious illustrations of the philosophy of mind, that are to be found any- where. All the passions and feelings of a 246 TIMON, BUT NOT Frenchman, lead to extremes. There is rarely any thing of the juste milieu ^ either in his vir- tues, or his crimes. AYhat people are more blythe, more airy, more Hght-hearted ? — "What people, when the urgency of the occasion calls for it, are more serious, more reflective, more resolute ? I perfectly agree with you, that the plodding, thoughtful, money-getting tradesman of our Island, is a compound of gravity and the rule of three ; and that the circulation of his blood depends on the circulation of the com- modity in which he deals. But a Parisian shop- keeper can live upon little ; his great concern is to enjoy life, while life is to be enjoyed ; and in this he shews himself infinitely the wiser animal of the two. " The French nation is, at this moment, by no means so quiet at bottom, as the surface would seem to indicate. Proud of a ruler like Napo- leon, whose despotism was suited to theii* tem- per, they might be reconciled to the brilliant career of a military ruler ; but they will never submit cordially to a common-place oppressor. Louis Philippe will one day discover this to OF ATHENS. 247 his cost. There is throughout the great mass of the people a thorough hatred of the Bourbon dynasty. It wanted but a sufficient degree of good sense in the King of the French, to perceive this, and but a fair portion of common honesty to provide against it. He will be his own Mi- nister, which is the worst of all Ministries ; — he does wisely to see everything, if he can, with his own eyes ; but when he determines to do everything with his own hands, he fooHshly be- trays the incapacity he ought, above all things, to conceal. He tries to govern by force, and he fails ; he resorts to la petite finesse et les cacho- teries, and he is hated — a king loses e7i se mon- trant, beyond all men. Ignotum omne pro magnifico, should be the motto always before him, and the closer he cleaves to it the better. To rule a great nation is, in these days, no easy task : to do it efficiently, those who govern should be able truly to estimate the progress of wealth and intelligence, and the influence of that progress on the existing condition and cha- racter of the people. They should so reform the old la-s^'s and institutions of government as to 248 TIMON, BUT KOT accommodate them to the advanced state of knowledge. " It will not do to put the new wine into old bottles. It will not do to go on governing in the spirit of influence; the tools of corruption must be thrown aside — thev have done their work, and the powers that employed them have had their day. The cement of despotism will no longer hold the machinery of government to- gether. Nothing but sound and sohd materials must in future be used, if the fabric is intended to last ; and until kings and their ministers are impressed with this conviction and act upon it, there will be no security for the thrones of Eu- rope. The more the people are put out of hu- mour with the monarchy, the more will they become attached to republican forms, and the more urgently will they point to the successful experiment in the United States, at present by far the happiest portion of the civilized world. Would America ever have been what she is, vdth. an hereditary aristocracy — a law of primo- geniture — an omnivorous church establishment, and an extortionate tythe system ? AVith all OF ATHENS. 249 these political and spiritual cravings to satisfy, what would her condition be ? With all these sources of mischievous misrule to grapple with, it is clear that she would have been writh- ing under the pressure of an enormous pubHc debt, with her industry crippled, her strength wasting, and her best interests sacrificed in the squabble for power and place. "Politics is the all-engrossing topic here, and 1 suppose at Paris. The people of England and France are now so strongly connected in inte- rest, and have so perpetual and prompt an inter- course, that the acts of their respective rulers are regarded with almost equal earnestness. The community of interest has created a strong, and I hope indissoluble bond of union, between the people of both countries. The triumph of the Tory party on this side of the water, would not only be deeply injurious to the cause of liberal government, but would, in its consequences, be fatal to the repose of Eui'ope. Should that party gain the ascendancy, the battle which has long been going on, more or less openly, be- tween Hberal principles and arbitrary power, M 5 250 TIMON, BUT NOT would then be fought foot to foot. If such changes are not introduced, as will satisfy judi- cious men, that deadly struggle will speedily come ; and come when it may, it will bring with it a fearful retribution to those who provoked it. "Sir Edward Leppington is returned to Eng- land, visibly improved in health, but in other respects unaltered; except that to his natural ease and alacrity of mind, he has added all those advantages which are gained by a ten years' observation of foreign manners. Lady Koseneath still affects to turn her back upon the world, and to live amid the congregation of the faithful. The fact is, her vanity and love of excitement are diverted into a new channel, and she sets down to the score of piety, what is nothing more than an escape from the emmi of an unemployed mind. Sectarians of this gloo- my cast, live in an atmosphere of their own. We are taught by daily experience, that pride, selfishness, and vice, may abound in a heart brimful of faith ; but by turning the " outside of the platter" to the sun, they get credit for a pu- rity that lies no deeper than the surface. I say this without reference to Ladv Eosencatli, who OF ATHENS. 251 has perhaps Httle in reaUty to reproach herself with, save the common fraihies of her sex ; but the world is so full of delusion, and so many- play a false part in its masquerade, that it be- comes impossible to distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit. " Self-knowledge is rare in man, and still more rare in woman. We are educated in the midst of the fraud and knavery of all about us, and hence acquire a habit of distrust and caution ; but the gentler sex are not thus schooled. Pure themselves, they grow up without guile, and without suspicion; and thus become a ready prey to the worthless pretenders to devotion, with which this age abounds ; who, with an ex- terior of sanctity, make a profit of their mask, and fatten on the funds furnished by the credu- lity of their followers. " Towards her daughter. Lady Roseneath seems to feel as a mother ought to feel — the pathetic paleness of her cheek fills her with solicitude. Ellen is confiding, kind-hearted, and affection- ate in the extreme — she is a ghl that a parent may well doat upon ; but still this fondness is an amiable trait in Lady Roseneath, who was 252 TIMON, BUT NOT brought up to consult only her own quiet and enjoyment, and to turn reluctantly towards any object that gave her an uneasy feeling. There is nothing so fatal as vanity to maternal fond- ness. A daughter grown into womanhood, to a vain mother, is a thought that never recurs to her at her toilet, without its putting her out of humour with her looking-glass. It was, per- haps to keep this thought out of her mind, that Lady Roseneath kept Ellen so much in the back ground; but to the latter this absence, though painful, has been, upon the whole, advantageous. It has not weakened the spirit of filial affection, for that affection is a part of her nature ; she is all gentleness, and has had the good fortune to find in her private governess, a mild and amiable creature, similar in sentiment and disposition to herself, and having withal a quick discernment, and high mental accomplishments. Lady Rose- neath took her on the recommendation of my sister ; — she has contributed much to Ellen's happiness ; for without imposing on her any of those painful restraints which make a state of pupillage so irksome, she has preserved iu her OF ATHENS. 253 all that moral purity which, makes the simplicity of her manners sit well upon her. Ellen Rose- neath has happily been saved from all the cor- rupt initiation of a fashionable seminary for young ladies : her mind is well instructed, and the innocence of her heart is as fi*esh, as the beauty of her form. " English girls have been too long educated for show and dependency ; all those virtues, which in a well-born female are of native growth, are not only left untrained, but they are so inter- twined with artificial feelings, that all that is genuine and lovely in their nature, is disfigured and spoilt — the effect of this bad education goes through life with them. The character of our sex in society is moulded by the influence of women; it is in their power to make us what we ought to be ; their moral dominion might alter the condition of society; but unfortunately, they are content to go on in a state of willing subser- vience to the caprice of their male worshippers, with no solicitude beyond a rich suitor, and a handsome settlement. " I remember our friend Timon once remark- 254 TIMON, BUT NOT ing, that the sexes seemed endowed with the faculty of destroying each other's happiness. There is but too much truth in this remark ; but the world, let us hope, will grow wiser, as it grows older — compared with what, in the progress of moral truth, mankind will one day become, we are as yet but in our infancy. The blind man spoken of by Locke, fancied the colour of red resembled the sound of a trumpet. This is about the length we have arrived in the leading concerns of rehgion and government. If you call for proof, I refer you to the Protestant Church of Ireland, and to the tenets of the senior wranglers in Parliament, both Whigs and Tories. But I find myself returning impercep- tibly to politics, which warns me to bring this epistle to an end. " What Pope says of the natural world, that — ' All subsists by elemental strife !' holds equally true of the political. One thing is certain, that the reign of party is every day drawing nearer to a close. iSTo leader, be his followers who they may, can now lord it over pubhc opinion as formerl}'. — The leading Tories OF ATHENS. 255 are at present struggling on with ^ the tempest in their teeth ;' but it must be quite evident to them, by this time, that the present generation are wiser far than their sires, and that minis- terial support is no longer to be had at the market price. But Government followers must be fed ; and a prime minister is, by virtue of his office, a worker of miracles. " After this long letter, I mean to debar my- self the use of pen and ink for a month to come. Adieu." 256 TIMON, BUT NOT CHAPTER XVI. The visible indignation of Timon^ when the character of George IV. was eulogised at the dinner party, had struck Delamere very forcibly, and he felt convinced it was not excited without some adequate cause. In a conversation which occurred a few days afterwards, the circumstance was adverted to by Timon himself, who did not hesitate to account for the sudden warmth of feeling into which he had been betrayed. " Perceiving your agitation, I was glad you so far suppressed it, as to make no reply." " I take blame to myself for having betrayed any emotion at all ; but I was taken by sui'prise. The subject came up unexpectedly, and the re- OF ATHENS. ZD t collections whicli rushed to my mind, had an effect which, at the moment, I could not conceal. I mention this to account for my discomposure, not to justify it ; because I hold that in conver- sation, especially in a mixed company, every one has a right to express his real sentiments, whatever they may be, and no one of the party is privileged to take offence because they differ from his own. . Had he known the character of the personage he was speaking of as I do — if the same facts were within his knowledge as are within mine, he would, if unprejudiced, have formed a very different estimate of him. He had formed his opinion, however, on grounds satisfactory to himself, and that is as much as can be requii'ed of any man." '^ He, perhaps, adopted his opinion of that personage," said Delamere, " from report, and the favouritism of party ; — you from demonstra- tive proof." " That, I apprehend," repHed his friend, " is about the difference in the nature of our infor- mation. I consider the perfidy of George IV. towards his Queen, and his cruel and unmanly 258 TIMON, BUT NOT treatment of her from first to last, as unexampled in the history of modern depravity. His perse- cution of her was followed out by every inflic- tion that the meanest and most reckless ven- geance could suggest. Then look at the delibe- rate and savage inhumanity of that persecution ! — it began with the first hour of her marriage — it heaped wrongs and insults and mortifications upon her to the very hour of her death — and even then it was not glutted ; it tore the ornaments from her coffin, and kept up a running fight with her dead body, to the very threshold of the grave ! " He rose from his chair, and walked towards the window. After a few moments he returned, and again took his seat. ^' I know of no pei'iod in the prince's life," said Delamere, " nor, indeed, of any one public act in the course of it, in which he exhibited anything of noble or elevated feeling. But when we see the sort of training that our princes re- ceive from their youth up, can we wonder that the blood royal is the most impure blood in the nation? The studied forms of court etiquette — the external graces of manner — all that has OF ATHENS. 259 reference to rank, and pomp, and station, and the artificial accomplishments that belong to them — are taught line upon line, and precept upon precept ! But by whom, and in what manner are our princes educated for the arduous duties of the station to which they are born ? ^^"hose task is it to imbue their minds with the senti- ments and feelings fitted to their high calling, and to expand their bosoms to the reception of all that is good and great in conduct and in cha- racter? That this is utterly disregarded, is evident from their doings in the world. It is clear that their teachers have directed all their attention to externals ; that the cultivation of the higher faculties — the drawing out and cherishing all the finer sympathies of our moral nature — has made no part of heii' concern. The heir- apparent, beyond all others, is left to himself ; not for the world would his Tutor risk giving oifence by resisting his will, or thwai'ting his inclinations. He keeps his eye upon the future, and is too wise in his generation to put a spoke in the wheel of his own preferment : the result is, that all his bad propensities are connived at, 260 TIMON, BUT NOT his animal impulses are strengthened as he ripens into manhood, and his passions, fearfully predo- minant, have no habit of self-restraint to con- tend with. He has formed no estimate of the value of moral character. He does not feel it of any im- portance to obtain the regard, the sympathy, or the respect of the people whom he looks forward to govern. He is out of the reach, as he imagines, of any evil to happen from their dislike, or any benefit to be derived from their good opinion. He will be ^ king hereafter,' — their duty is obedience. Their allegiance is his by law ; whe- ther that allegiance is from the heart, is a mat- ter with which he does not concern himself. He lives in a splendid circle of parasites, admirers, and flatterers, male and female. Within this circle everything is, to him, of surpassing in- terest ; and for the opinions that may be formed of him by those beyond it, he cares no more than for the chirping of grasshoppers." " Your picture is truly drawn," said Timon : " but what an incalculable evil to a nation to be governed by a king thus educated ! How much of the prevailing profligacy and want of prin- ciple among the upper ranks of society, was OF ATHENS. 261 generated by the reign of the Prince Regent. How very few of unsullied honour, or of ge- nuine worth, were to be found among even the best of his associates. The contaminating in- fluence spread far and wide ; the same moral laxity descended to the classes beneath them, and infused itself imperceptibly among all ranks, and its effect is visible to this hour. " Were the conduct of the sovereign, and of those who more immediately surround him, marked by a sacred sense of moral obligation — were his public demeanour exemplary — w^ere he seen to stand aloof from all unworthy companion- ship — were his expenses such only as befitted his station — and were his debts conscientiously discharged, how great would be the moral in- fluence of such an example on the great body of the people ! It would operate as a species of education, and its practical result would be in- valuable. Such an exalted pattern of integrity and manhood would make vii-tue reverenced, and would keep honesty in countenance." " The benefit to society," said Delamere, " would be incalculable. It w^ould be the first 262 TIMON, BUT NOT exhibition of the kind which the world ever witnessed^ and could not fail of its effect. Tt will be a red-letter day in the Almanac whenever it comes. Futurity may perhaps have such a day in store for us, but I fear it is very far distant." " Should it ever arrive/' said Timon, " the future will present a very different appearance from the past." " At present," added Delamere, " the whole frame-work of society in England is disjointed. — The springs are overstrained, and the parts are all jarring and out of harmony. — The enjoy- ments of the wealthy are over-rated ; — they look for happiness in money, and do not find it. Women seek it in marriage, and it flies before them. — The rich give the poor no sympathy, and the poor give the rich no repose. Into what all this will settle itself, would take a wiser head than mine to prophesy." " How sad a mistake it is," said Timon, ^' to imagine that the highest ranks are the happiest ! With men to a certain extent, and in a certain sense of the w^ord, it may be so ; but with the gentler sex, it is peculiarly otherwise. Woman OF ATHENS. 263 is a lonely, unprotected creature. She is at the mercy of the ebbs and flows of the world ; and her nature is not fitted to contend with them. She looks out for some object, to which her heart can attach itself; and the endearing hours of her life are passed in the indulgence of those feelings, to which such an attachment gives birth. In those feelings it is, that all her hap- piness begins and ends. But to the high-born daughters of rank and fashion, the exquisite delight flowing from a mutual affection is, ex- cept in very rare instances, wholly unknown. All its sweet and sacred feelings are sacrificed to speculations of afliuence and splendour', and family aggrandizement : — overtures are made, terms are discussed, preliminaries adjusted, settlements prepared, and after all, the nuptuals are solemnized ; — and what is the result ?" " That the marriage-bed is of eider-down, and its pillow a pillow of thorns," replied Dela- mere. " It was too fatally thus with the poor Prin- cess of Wales," said Timon. " The whole of her wedded life was one dark day of desolation ; 264 TIMOIs', BUT NOT at no time did even one ray of brightness gleam upon it. The first and only letter she received from her royal suitor and betrothed husband, previous to their marriage, was not calculated to raise any high expectations of connubial felicity. She read it again and again, and it did not fail to give birth to most uneasy anticipa- tions ; but still there was nothing in it from which to predict the hapless fate that awaited her. She could not foresee from it, that all the purest feelings of her heart would be stung to the quick. She could not contemplate that it was in the nature of man, much less of the heir-apparent to the throne of England, to act so unfeelingly towards her as a woman, and so cruelly as a wife, as to make her future hfe one continual source of bitter agony, and painful humiliation." Timon here rose, and going to the further end of the library, he took down from an upper shelf of the book-case, a small box, covered with Russian leather, which he unlocked; and after looking over a long list of the documents it contained, all of w^hich were respectively OF ATHENS. 265 numbered and endorsed, he took from it a paper. " Here/' said he, putting the following into the hand of Delamere, " is the letter of the Prince, to which I refer. "C'est la premiere fois, ma chere Cousine, quej'ose m'addresser avous pour vous exprimer combien je me sens heureux de I'espoir flatteur de pouvoir peut-etre contribuer a votre bon- heur. Croyez, chere Princesse, qu'en m'at- tachant a vous pour le reste de mes jours, et en vous rendant heureusse, je ne ferai que combler les plus doux voux de mon cceur. C'est avec ces desirs la, en attendant que je puisse vous les exprimer de bouche que j'ai I'honneur de me souscrire, " Ma tres chere Cousine, " Votre tres afFectionne Cousin^ " Et futur epoux, " Geotige p. '' Lonches, le 23 d'Ocl. 1794."* * " It is the first time, my dear Cousin, that I have ventured to address you, to express how happy I feel myself in the VOL. I. N 266 TIMON, BUT NOT Delamere having read it attentively, laid it down on the table. He presently took it up again, and re-perused it. " It is, certainly," said he, " a rich specimen of its class. As a declaration of love, I think it is one of the most edifying on record." " It marks the man," replied Timon. " His passions were so sated, and worn down, that he could not even muster strength of expression sufficient to conceal his indifference." " It bears," said Delamere, " upon the face of it, to be the language of a lover who finds him- self obhged to say something, when he has nothing to say ; and whose gallantry can just reach far enough to dress up a phrase or two of devotion, in which his heart has no share." flattering hope of being able, perhaps, to contribute to your happiness. Believe me, my dear Princess, that in attaching myself to you for the remainder of my days, and in rendering you happy, I shall but fulfil the tenderest wishes of my heart. It is with these desires, until I can confirm them with my lips, that I have the honour to subscribe myself, " My very dear Cousin, "Your very affectionate Cousin, " And future husband, "George P. ''London Oct. 23, 1794." OF athejss. 267 "It happened too," said Timon, '^ that a very few days after she had received it, some anonymous information reached her, of a most painful nature, relative to certain female asso- ciates of the Prince, and particularly to his then existing liaison with Lady J . When she received this intelHgence, the conflict of her feelings, susceptible, affectionate, and high- spirited as she was, may be readily imagined." " Her marriage had no honey-moon, " said Delamere. " Indeed it had not," replied Timon. " The insolent harlotry of Lady J , and the neglect, insult, and mortification, which she underwent from the Prince, even during that short period of proverbial felicity, would have broken any female heart less firm than her own. Her's was not a chequered scene of existence, in which sorrow is relieved by occasional intervals of happiness; — she was made to lead a life of daily and houi'ly annoyance — annoyance of a kind which even the strongest mind finds it difficult to bear up against. When one con- siders the personal loveliness of the Princess, N 2 268 TIM ON, BUT NOT one is at a loss for language, in which to express the indignation excited by the brutal unman - liness wdth which she was treated. But the Prince was a mere sensualist. As to love — that sublime sentiment which is among the inborn feelings of our nature — he knew it not. From the first hour of his marriage, he had resolved to effect a separation ; and he took his measures accordingly." "• It is not difficult, I should think," said De- lamere, " for any husband so to conduct him- self towards his wife, as to make her desirous of living apart from him." " In common life, certainly not," replied Timon ; " but with persons standing before the world, in the exalted station which the Prince Regent and his royal consort occupied, it could not be accomplished without placing the latter in a peculiarly painful situation; a situation, which she would naturally make almost any sacrifice to avoid. After enduring for twelve months the most afflictive indignities, she wrote a letter of remonstrance to the Prince, and here is his answer to it : — of athens. 269 " Madam, *' You must allow me to answer in English your letter of this morning, as you sufficiently understand the language; because it is essen- tial to me to explain myself without any pos- sible ambiguity on the subject of the unwise, groundless, and most injurious imputation which you have thought fit to cast upon me. In the first place. Madam, I beg you to recollect, that I detailed to you the peculiar circumstances by which I must be led for some time into a course of dinners abroad, that you might not misconstrue my absence into any purposed neg- lect towards you ; and unless you are conscious that the tone you have unfortunately taken, must necessarily make your society uncomfort- able to me, you ought, in candour, to have been satisfied with the reasons I gave. As to the sentence of your letter, which intimates that I oblige you to dine tete-a-tete with Lady Jersey, I should be lost in astonishment at a statement so utterly contradictory to truth, did I not perceive, with great concern, an object in that assertion, to which I shall advert presently. 270 TIMON, BUT NOT I am more immediately called to notice the indelicate expressions which you have used towards me, in the allusion you make to Lady Jersey. Believe me, Madam, that the persons who endeavour to poison your mind with the vile calumnies which have been propagated in the world respecting Lady Jersey, are no less seriously your enemies, than mine; they hope to further their private malignant views, by fo- menting discord between you and me, at the expense of us both. What else. Madam, than ungovernable disgust in my mind, could be the consequence, were it in your power to make me meanly and dishonourably sacrifice, in the eyes of the public, a woman whom I declared to you, on your arrival, not to be my mistress, as you indecorously term her — but a friend, to whom I am attached by the strong ties of habi- tude, esteem and respect ? Were it otherwise, were my connexion with Lady J. of a diffe- rent nature, such repugnance at the idea, comes, if I may be allowed to say so, singularly fi-om you. I cannot forget that you have launched OF ATHENS. 271 out to me, in praise of another woman, whose character never would have been known to you, but through the interested or vindictive sugges- tions of designing individuals — praises, the only drift of which could be to reconcile me to a person, whose conduct I always must resent with just indignation. But let me remind you. Madam, that the intimacy of my friendship with Lady Jersey, under all the false colour which slander has given it, was perfectly known to you before you accepted my hand ; for you told me so on your arrival, reciting the particu- lars of the anonymous letters which transmitted the information to Brunswick ; and giving your- self credit, for having suppressed all mention of their purport, but to myself. This was two days before we were married. I then took the opportunity of telling you, that Lady J. was one of the oldest acquaintances I had in this country ; and that the confidence resulting from so long a friendship, had enabled her to offer advice, which contributed not a little to decide me to marriage. You will recollect. Madam, 272 TIMON, BUT NOT that you have several ladies in your family, besides Lady J., any or every of whom, it is in your power to summon, either for dinner or company, at any time. Lady Willoughby, as sister to Lady Cholmondley, you know to be likewise admitted to obey your invitation. If the choice be not more extensive, it is not my fault, but is the consequence of the etiquette existing from all times for the situation of the Princess of Wales. You know, Madam, that at times when Lady J. has not been in waiting, you have asked to dinner other of your ladies, (or, at least, always might have done so, had you pleased,) than the one which happened to be in attendance. What impeded you, or what impedes your doing so in the case of Lady J. ? I never said any thing to you, which could ever influence you to make a distinc- tion between any of your ladies, leaving it to your own taste and judgment, to regulate your society among them, as might be most gratifying to yourself. But, Madam, I much fear that the insinuation of your being forced to keep com- pany alone with Lady J. through a Jong day, OF ATHENS. 273 as you state it, was not meant for me, who must know the total want of foundation for such a representation. I am very apprehensive, that you have been inconsiderate enough to imagine that you might hereafter appeal to the copy of that letter, in order to prove to others, not so well informed, the ground you had for dissatis- faction. This I the more suspect, from the forced and insidious compliments paid to the English nation in another passage ; involving, however, a most unjustifiable charge against mc. by the contrast in which I may be supposed to stand. The strange incorrectness of your writing, and of your turn of expression, may possibly have made me misunderstand this ; but it is necessary that I should speak to the point, as I am determined to leave nothing doubtful between us. If, Madam, such a purpose has been indistinctly floating in your mind, I recom- mend to you, to ascertain to yourself exactly what result you expect from it, — what improve- ment does your situation admit, which does not depend wholly on the prudence and propriety of your own conduct ? AVe have, unfortunately, N .5 274 TIMON, BUT NOT been obliged to acknowledge to each other, that we cannot find happiness in onr union. Cir- cumstances of character and education, which it is needless to discuss, now render that impos- sible ; it then only remains, that we should make the situation as little uncomfortable to each other, as its nature will allow. It has been my studious wish to soften it in that respect to you. I have been solicitous that you should have every gratification which the nature of the times, the manners of this country, and the established customs of your rank, would admit; with a due regard, at the same time, to the pecu- niary difficulties I so cruelly, unjustly labour under. Those difficulties, undoubtedly, pre- clude you from a part of that splendour which ought to attend a princess of Wales ; but you well know, that no blame can, on that head, rest with me, or with the King, whose honourable support to me, I must always acknowledge with most grateful sensibility. However, these wishes on my part for your comfort, can in no way be so effectually counteracted, as by your attempting, — and in which you must fail — to establish an OF ATHENS. 275 interest and a comfort, irreconcileable with mine. The unfair and insidious attacks, which you seem disposed to make upon my tranquillity and welfare, must disincline me to contribute to your satisfaction and pleasure, in the degree I should desire. Let me, therefore, beg of you to make the best of a situation, unfortunate for us both ; which is only to be done by not wan- tonly creating, or magnifying, uncomfortable circumstances. I have desired Lady Chol- mondley to have the goodness to be the bearer of this letter, that she may explain any phrase to you, should there be any which you might not perfectly comprehend. I am, Madam, with great truth, " Most sincerely yours, " George P. "April 2lst, 1796." " "What think you of that epistle ?" '' That it is quite in character with the per- sonage that penned it," rephed Delamere. " He is a faithful emblem of his race." " It is such a letter," said Timon, " as could 276 TIMON, BUT NOT only proceed from a mind closed against every suggestion of honour, and every feeling of shame." " Which/' added Delamere, " is the case of most minds which have been cast in a royal mould." OF ATHENS. 277 CHAPTER XVII. What a striking contrast does the republic under Cromwell exhibit, compared with mon- archy as dispensed by the House of Hanover ! The difference has afforded, and will long continue to afford, ample food for meditation. Had the Georges but possessed the high and glorious mind of that extraordinary man, or anything approaching to it, how unlike what it is, would be the condition of England at this moment. Had they had but a tj'thc of his judgment, justness, and penetration, in what an altered position should we now have stood, as respects our relation to the whole of Eu- rope. It needs no great effort, — it requires no com- 278 TIMON, BUT NOT manding genius on the part of the ruler of a nation, to promote and protect its interests. It wants only the will, and the choice of sincere and sound advisers. But instead of this, both Church and State open all their greater and lesser batteries against every fortress of popular freedom ; and hence, that resolute and wide- spread warfare against the lords of earth, in which, to use the words of Milton, — " matters now are strained Up to the height, whether to hold or break." Cromwell, in the hey-day of his youth, with all the passions of a warm and vigorous tem- perament, and amid all the excesses which grew out of it, did, nevertheless, not neglect the studies which led to the attainment of emi- nence, and which qualified him in every way, for the high station at which he aimed. If his younger life was somewhat dissolute, it was never tarnished by any act of meanness, un- manliness, or dishonour. His gallantry was graceful and generous ; he never forgot the . OF ATHENS. '279 ennobling worth of the sex, nor the homage that was due to it. Borne away, as at times he was, by the tide of pleasure, his mind was not emasculated. He was every inch a man, which is infinitely more to his praise, than to have been "every inch a king." He was nobly born, and he did not disgrace his descent."* * " Oliver Cromwell enjoyed the advantage of being well- born, in a better sense than the word bears when it is used to signify a descent from a long line of ancestors less illustrious than their titles — men of splendid stars, and squalid hearts — men, whose heads are not of half the value of their coronets. He was descended, through his mother, from the youngest of the three sons of Alexander, Lord Stewart, of Scotland, the founder of the royal family of the Stuarts ; and Cromwell, the commoner, was three generations nearer their common progenitor, than Charles the King. Charles the First, and Cromwell's mother, were eighth covsins. The great-grand- father of Oliver Cromwell, Sir Richard Williams, adopted the name of Cromwell from his uncle, Thomas Cromwell, a great man, and a great statesman, who, though the son of a black- smith, became Earl of Essex, the prime-minister of Henry VIII, and vicar-general of England. "As regards his parents, too, Oliver Cromwell was well- bom. His father was Mr. Robert Cromwell, the second son of Sir Henry Cromwell, knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and known to the poor of his neighbourhood as the Golden Knight. Mr. Robert Cromwell, who appears to have been a worthy younger brother, with a fortune of about £ZQO per annum, 280 TIMOX, BUT NOT It was to the intellectual energy of his cha- racter, that he owed his unrivalled ascendancy. married in early life, Elizabeth, the daughter of William Steward, of the city of Ely, a young widow, with a jointure of j^'GO a year. Mr. Robert Cromwell represented the borough in one of Elizabeth's parliaments ; he sat also as a justice of the peace, and served as one of the baUifFs, when his son was an infant. As their family encreased, Mr. Cromwell and his wife had the good sense to think, that a provision for their children obtained by trade, would disgrace neither the knightly origin of the one, nor the royal descent of the other, — a wholesome democratic conviction, which the position of his parents would infuse into the breast of young Oliver. His father took up the trade of a brewer at Huntingdon. ** Oliver Cromwell had a good mother. She assisted her husband in his business. When left by the death of her hus- band, with the care of a young and numerous family, she gave dowries to five daughters, sufficient to marry them into good families ; amidst the splendours of Whitehall, her solicitudes were constant over her beloved son in his dangerous eminence ; — and when dying, she begged that she might not be interred in a royal tomb, but carried to a simple grave in some country churchyard. "Mr. Forster gives us an account of her portrait at Hinchin- brook. She wears a simple, though beautiful cardinal or cloak of velvet, clasped by a small rich jewel ; and in a white satin hood, is modestly enveloped a face with light hair, large melancholy eyes, a mouth small and sweet, yet full and firm, as the mouth of a heroine, and with a pervading expression of quiet affectionateness. In 1684, this excellent woman died at Whitehall, when ninety-four years old; and a little before her OF ATHE>:S. 281 It enabled him, singly and self-supported, to give a new standard of government to England, after sweeping a faithless despot from his throne. His legislation was of a kind which always kept the sparks of liberty alive. Never did this country obtain a higher consideration than un- der his counsels ; nor was it ever so well, or so wisely governed. Its greatness w^as his first concern ; all else was secondary. The above remarks fell from Delamere and his friend, while discussing the respective merits of monarchy and democracy — a discussion which naturally led to the subject which had been touched upon the preceding clay. " AVhen I hear the husband of the Princess Caroline praised, as the first gentleman in Europe," said Timon, " I can never resist the provocation to retort, while his intrigue with death, gave her son, then Lord Protector, her blessing, in these noble and touching words : — ' The Lord cause his face to shine upon you, and comfort you in all your adversities, and enable you to do great things for the gloiy of your most high God, and to be a rehef unto his people; — my dear son, I leave my heart with thee; — a good night.' " — Vide London and Westminster Review, for October 1839. 282 TIMON, BUT NOT Lady Jersey was matter of scandalous notoriety, he forced her society upon the princess, in a manner the most purposely offensive. The in- sult was the more unpardonable, as it was a violation of decorum from which he might so easily have abstained ; but, as she once truly said of him, ^ Rien ne lui cotlte.' " "The wrongs she suffered," said Delamere, " were of that kind which is the least endurable to woman's nature ; the heart can feel no agony equal to it." '' Here," said Timon, ^' are the letters which succeeded those you recently read." Fi'om the Prince to the Princess of Wales. " Madam, " Your letter exacts from me a few words of reply, after which, I hope, this unpleasant kind of correspondence will entirely cease. You completely misapprehend the language which you state to have been held to you at Brighton ; and again two months ago, by some mutual friends. I can comprehend the zeal, I can admit the good sense, and honest intention, of OF NEPAIJL. 283 any representations which they have sponta- neously made ; for their evident purpose was to prevent your adopting a conduct injurious to your own peace as well as to niine ; but nothing can be farther from my sentiments, than to sanction^ at any time, a statement incorrect in its application. With regard to another lady, it was impossible that I could ever have begun the discussion with you ; and to prove to you that you deceive yourself, I only recollect her name having been mentioned in any manner to occa- sion conversation thrice between us, in each of which instances, it was introduced by you ; first, when you mentioned the anonymous letter, — secondly, in the garden, when you told me a circumstance respecting Payne, which nobody could know but yourself; and lastly, in the con- versation alluded to in my last letter, which took place but a few weeks since. I am happy that you see the indelicacy of the appellation which escaped you respecting Lady Jersey ; let me beg you to recollect, that I have never intimated the most distant desire for your manifesting a partiality towards her ; my wish has always 284 TIMON, BUT NOT been, that there should not be any distinction in your behaviour to any of your ladies, unless any of them should fail in respect or personal atten- tion to you, of which I cannot but assure myself they are all equally incapable ; without such a reason, you ought to feel, that it must be at least a striking incivility to me, to show a wanton distaste towards any of the ladies whom I had, with solicitous attention to your dignity, chosen to form your household ; and if this spleen were exercised against one whom I had mentioned, to you in terms of that particular esteem and friendship which long acquaintance had estab- lished, would it not be, towards me, the most offensive and revolting conduct that could be adopted ? My boundless attachment to the Queen, both as a friend, and as a mother, must ever make me feel with uncommon gratification, the tribute of praise so justly due to her cha- racter ; let me hope, that you will take example from the amiable solicitude with which she has always studied the King's disposition, and pro- moted his comfort. This, madam, is not to be effected by irritating insinuations, or fretful com- OF ATHENS. 28.5 plaints. The sort of appeal which you have made to the Duke, and the Princess Sophia, of Gloucester, by showing your first letter, and answer, can not have any evil consequence, because they are both too much interested in the credit of the family to talk of the subject elsewhere. I have, however, told you that our situation allows no partial appeal, with any de- gree of propriety, even within my own family. Every such partial appeal must be unfaii'ly made with regard to me, because delicacy keeps me silent on some pecidiar points, which, even to youi'self, I never can communicate. I would not let any indications of those private feelings appear in a letter, the object of which is — what the tone of mine ever shall be — to moderate, and not to wound your sensations. I regret sincerely, that an etiquette, not established by me, but fixed by propriety and custom, prevents your mode of life from being more gay and amusing ; in what depends upon me to render it more comfortable, you will always find me sincerely disposed to meet any reasonable wish of yours ; but my efi'orts must be ineffectual, if, on your 286 TIMON, BUT NOT part, I do not find a disposition to be satisfied. Let me hope that this painful contest will now be closed. If you wish for more of my company, it must strike you, that the natural mode of obtaining it is, to make my own house not obnoxious to me; and you will judge whether a captious tone towards me, or indirect manage- ment against my tranquillity, are well calculated to make me feel at ease in your society. It is my sincerest wish to. live upon terms of quiet, and of friendly civility with you. I am, madam, with great truth, " Most sincerely yours, '^ George P. " Carlton House, ''April 25th, 1796." " Madam, "As Lord Cholmondely informs me that you wish I should define in ivriting, the terms upon which we are to live, I shall endeavour to ex- plain myself upon that head, with as much clearness, and with as much propriety as the nature of the subject will admit. Our inclina- OF ATHEJSS. 287 tions are not in our power ; nor should either of us be held answerable to the other, because nature has not made us suitable to each other. Tranquil and comfortable society is, however, in our power ; let our intercourse, therefore, be restricted to that, and I will distinctly subscribe to the condition which you required, through Lady Cholmondely — that, even in the event of any accident happening to my daughter, which I trust Providence in its mercy w^ill avert, I will not infringe the terms of the restriction, by pro- posing, at any period, a connexion of a more particular nature. I shall now finally close this disagreeable correspondence, trusting, that as we have completely explained ourselves to each other, the rest of our lives will be passed in uninterrupted tranquillity. "I am, Madam, " With great truth, " Very sincerely yours, ''George P. " Windsor Castle, " April 30th, 1796." 288 TIMON, BUT NOT " The delicacy of the princess, as well as the sensibility of her temperament," said Delamere, "is strongly visible in one passage of this letter. She dreaded the possible result of a capricious licentiousness, and had resolved to guard against it. The artifice of expression in which her royal husband justifies the abandonment of her, is not the least revolting feature in the affair. ' Our inchnations are not in our power !' AVhat apologist of adultery could dispute the palm with such a ' Defender of the Faith ' as this ?" •^^ It is the language of an unprincipled volup- tuary," said Timon, " who values life only as it fui'nishes the means of sensual gratification. It were bad enough if held to a discarded mistress ; but written to his wife, and the mother of his child, it is monstrous. Its tendency is to make marriage one shifting scene of prostitution." '' It is lucky," rejoined Delamere, '^ that kings are anointed with holy oil, and reign by the grace of God ; for were thrones elective, they wouldn't get a single vote. But I am straying from the subject : — the reply which the princess or ATHENS. 289 would return to such a letter as this, Avas, I have no doubt, worthy of her." " It was. She abstains from at all alluding to the private affliction which she was made to un- dergo. She wrote with simplicity and firmness, but carefully avoided all occasion of offence. Here is her answer." " Ce 6 de Mmj, 1796. " L'ayeu de votre conversation avec Lord Cholmondely, ne m' etonne, ni nc m'offens. C'etoit me confirmer ce que vous m' avez ta- citement insinue depuis une annee. Mais il y auroit apres cela, un manque de delicatesse, ou, pour mieux dire, une bassesse indigne, de me plaindre des conditions que vous vous imposez a vous meme. " Je ne vous aurois point fait de reponse si votre lettre n' etoit con9ue de maniere a faire douter, si cet arrangement vient de vous, ou de moi ; et vous S9avez que vous m'annoncez I'hon- neur. La lettre que vous m' annoncez comme la derniere, m' oblige de communiquer au Roy, comme a mon Souverain, et a mon pere, votre VOL. I. o 290 TIMON, BUT NOT aveu et mon reponse. Vous trouverez 9! incluse copie de celle que j'ecris au E-oy. Je vous en previens pour ne pas m' attirer de votre part la moindre reproche de duplicite. Comme je n' ai, dans ce moment, d' autre protecteur que sa Majeste, je m' en rapporte uniquement a lui; et si ma conducte merite son approbation, je serai, de moins en partie, consolee. " Du reste, je conserve tout la reconnoisance possible que je me trouve, par votre moyen, comme princesse de Galles, dans un situation a pouvoir me livrer sans contrainte, a une vertu chere a mon coeur — je veux dire labienfaisance. Ce sera pour moi un devoir d' agir de plus par un autre motif, s9avoir, celui de donner P ex- emple de la patience et de la resignation, dans toutes sortes d' epreuves. Rendez moi la justice des vceux pour votre bonheur, et d' etre votre bien devouee, ^'Caroline."* * "eth May, 1796. " The avowal of your conversation with Lord Cholmon- dely, neither surprises nor offends me. It does but confirm what you tacitly insinuated to me twelve months ago. But OF ATHENS. 291 " You perceive how very early after their union the prince had determined upon a sepa- ration, and had even intimated the terms upon which he intended to effect it." there would be, after that, a want of delicacy, or I should rather say, an unworthy meanness, were I to complain of con- ditions which you impose upon yourself. '* I should not have replied to your letter, had it not been couched in terms which made it doubtful whether this arrange- ment proceeded from you or from me ; and you know thait the honour of it was announced to me by yourself. " The letter which you indicate is to be the last, obliges me to communicate to the king, as my sovereign, and my father, both your avowal and my answer. You will find enclosed, a copy of my letter to the king. 1 apprise you of it, that I may not draw down upon myself, from you, the slightest reproach of duplicity. Having at this moment, no protector but his Ma- jesty, I refer myself exclusively to him, and if he approves my conduct, I shall be, at least to a certain degree, consoled : as for the rest, I feel in the highest degree grateful, at finding myself, as px-incess of Wales, in a condition, by your means, to indulge without constraint a virtue dear to my heart — I mean benevolence. It will make it also more incumbent upon me to act from another motive, that of giving an example of pa- tience and resignation under every sort of trial. " Do me the justice to believe, that I shall never cease to pray for your happiness, and to be * * Your much devoted " Caroline." o2 292 TIMON, BUT XOT " It must have been almost before the wane of the marriage -moon," said Delamere. ^' It was. The nuptials were solemnised on the eighth of April of the preceding year, 1795 ; and in this letter of May, 1 796, she expresses herself as not being surprised at the purport of his avowed conversation with Lord Cholmon- dely, inasmuch as it did but confirm what, in substance, he had intimated to her twelve months before. ^ C'etoit me confirmer ce que vous m'avez tacitement insinue depuis iine annee.^ In fact, she was treated with the most mortifying neglect, even from the very first hour of her arrival in this country. She landed from one of the royal yachts, at Greenwich Hospital, accompanied by Mrs. Harcourt, Lord Malmes- bury, and Commodore Payne, and was received on her landing, by Sir Hugh Palliser, the go- vernor, and other ofiicers, who conducted her to the governor's house, where she took tea and cofiee. Lady Jersey was the person appointed to attend her arrival with a change of dress. During her voyage, the princess wore a mushn gown, and blue satin petticoat, with a black OF ATHENS. 293 beaver hat, and blue and black feathers. The dress brought from town, was a gown of white satin, trimmed with crape, and ornamented with white feathers ; but so insolently disrespectful was Lady Jersey, that instead of being in wait- ing, as she ought to have been, she did not arrive at the governor's till an hour after the princess had arrived." " This was a foretaste of joys to come." " It gave room for sad anticipations, and her only consolation was the honest and heart-felt greetings with which she was received by the people. The whole way from Greenwich to London was Hned with rejoicing crowds, haihng her arrival with the most earnest enthusiasm. It was the devotion of the people that sustained her spirits ; but for this she could never have borne up against her afflictive and incessant per- secutions ; but ,for this, that sensitive pride which every high-minded woman feels, stung as she was to the quick, by the indignities passed upon her, would have hastened by many years the crisis which brought on her death." " This public devotion to her cause," said 294 TIMON, BUT NOT Delamere, " was honourable to the nation. I have often/' he added, " been surprised at the accuracy with which the EngUsh people, and especially the working classes, estimate the cha- racter of those in public life in whose conduct and proceedings they have an interest. All the malicious falsehoods that were chculated through- out the kingdom, by the hired agents of Carlton House, failed utterly of their effect. Their drift was seen through with a penetration that was quite extraordinary. The more charges were multiplied against her when she became queen, the more earnestly were they scouted by the people, as base and mahgnant fabrications. In- stead of lessening her in their good opinion, it made them rally round her the more closely, and with a deeper determination that she should not be sacrificed." "I have heard this discernment of character by the English populace remarked by foreigners," said Timon, "and remarked with admiration. They ascribe it to that spirit of liberty which leaves them free to discuss the acts of all public men, and to the absence of that espionage OF ATHENS. 295 which makes it dangerous, in other countries, to canvass the conduct or principles of men in power." " That it is mainly owing to that," replied Delamere, " I have no doubt : in other countries politics is forbidden ground, on which no one, at his peril, must dare to trespass : but our news- papers leave no political rumour unwhispered, and no official misdoings untold. In our manu- facturing towns, the operatives congregate in great masses ; their topics of conversation are furnished from the newspaper of the day, and all these rumours and misdoings come under discussion. In almost every knot of workmen, there is some one of shrewd perception, and strong natural sense, whose remarks are eagerly listened to, and whose opinions give a tone to the rest. One common stream of intellect runs, as it were, through the whole. They soon come to think with one mind — to act as one man ; generous emotions are imparted, or indignant feelings roused, according as the conduct of those in high office gives rise to the one or the other. Every one speaks his sentiments ; but there is an 296 TIMON, BUT l^OT influential intelligence in the few, that brings them all to the same conclusion, and upon that conclusion the judgment of the mass is formed." " You solve the problem, I think, very clearly ; not only is freedom of opinion better maintained, and more highly valued in England than under any government in Europe, but the interests of the middling and lower classes are more closely identified than in nations less as- sured of their liberties, and where the contri- vances of power keep them more widely asunder." " The circumstance," said Delamere, '' which first led me to mark the justness of the popular estimate of the characters of pubhc men, was in the unhappy affair of Lord Castlereagh. When an unpopular statesman has destroyed himself, although the act affords no indemnity for the past, it, at least, gives ^ security for the future,' and public resentment ought so far to be paci- fied ; but, in this instance, it was otherwise. During his interment in Westminster Abbey, the immense throng on the outside gave a yell of execration, which struck terror at those who OF ATHENS. 297 were attending the ceremony within its walls. This burst of feeling could not be misunderstood. It arose from a knowledge, in the lower classes, of the extent to which his power had been mis- used, and the degree in which their common interests had suffered from it, and it bore testi- mony to the force of their conviction. Death usually subdues the harsher feelings of our nature, and we suffer the man and his failings to go to the grave together. But it was not so in this case : the people knew the man, and were not to be stripped of their hatred of his memory, by the aristocratic honours with which he was in- terred, or by the high quality of the mourners that attended his hearse." "It were a wholesome lesson to those in power," said Timon, ^^ had they the wisdom to profit by it." '' It was not without its effect, depend upon it," replied Delamere. "It were well, that while " Towering in their pride of place," they should keep in mind, that however regard- o 5 298 TIMON, BUT NOT less they may be of a future retribution, they are acting under a popular surveillance, from the reach of which they cannot escape, and which passes a judgment on the living man, the record of which can never be withrawn." OF ATHENS. 299 CHAPTEH XVIII. "I SHALL rejoice if it is so/' said Sir Felix Clavering ; " but I fear there is no sucli reaction, as many of us imagine ; the people may be dissa- tisfied with the AVhigs, but I doubt if they can be brought to shake hands with the Tories." This was said at a Conservative dinner, in reply to a remark of Earl Clanmorton's. The topic of conversation was the unceremonious dismissal of the Melbourne ministry. " I think their dismissal ill-timed/' continued Sir Felix; "and that it has created a strong popular feehng in their favour. The general impression is, that strong measures of counter- reform are intended, and the effect of this im- pression is greatly against us." 300 TIMON, BUT NOT "Depend upon it," rejoined Clanmorton, " if we act, as I hope we shall do, with one heart and one mind, now is our time to effect the salvation both of the church and the state. The country is, by this time, satisfied that re- form, to the full extent promised by the Whigs, never can be carried against the determined interference of the cro\\Ti, the peers and the bishops. Talk of a government based on the choice of the people ! Can any notion be more "preposterous? Where is the power that is to keep the constitution alive, amidst the audacious rule of the mob ? — for to that it would come at last. It is always the way with your high- flown patriots ; they begin with a liberalism that embraces all the world, and end in tolerating no system but their own." " The Duke of Wellington," said a peer on the opposite side of the table, " is the man raised up by Providence to quell that revolu- tionary spirit, which is fast spreading among all classes. The time, whether well-chosen or not, is the one in which the experiment must be tried. The Radicals are getting weary of a OF ATHENS. 301 Whig administration; they are out of humour with the slowness of its movements, and are not unwilling to try a change of men. The multitude are but children, as far as sense and wisdom are concerned. Tell them they can have the moon, and they will cry out for it. Reform was a new rattle, and their ears are now tiring of the sound. They iind that the pass- ing of the Reform -bill has neither lowered the price of bread, nor given them an additional meal of butcher's-meat. This is the only reform which the rabble either covet or conceive, and they care for nothing beyond it." " I perfectly agree with you," said a noble lord on the left, " that no time could be better than the present, for the King to call Welling- ton to his councils ; all who can properly be said to represent the nation, are with us ; and as for the working-jacket fellows, the best cor- rective of their notions, is the bayonet. There is no answer, depend upon it, so intelligible to the Radicals, as a round of ball-cartridge." This pithy remark produced the applause of all who were within hearing of it. 302 TIMON, BUT NOT " What course does the Duke mean to pur- sue, in this difficult crisis ?" asked Sir Felix. ^^That is a question not easily answered^" said Clanmorton. ^^ I heard that very question put to him yesterday, when he answered, with great emphasis, — ^If one hair of my head knew what passes within my mind, I would pluck it out." '^ Spoke in the true spirit of a statesman l" exclaimed a dandy peer, twirling his mustachios. " He is the man for carrying us through the conflict. I wish — " here he paused, either not knowing exactly what he was going to say, or studying how to express it. " I'll tell you what you may wish," said a wealthy commoner, in a tone between the sar- castic and the serious — "that we had Sir Andrew Agnew here, to sing a litany for the safety of the host." This sally was received with a hearty laugh ; for in a privileged coterie, a little wit goes a great way. " Not," he continued, "but that I have great faith in the Duke. He has made the Reform OF ATHENS. 303 ministers leave theii- position ; and I am satisfied, he will not fire a shot that does not fall within their entrenchments. But, in my opinion, the removal of them has been premature ; — it takes us unprepared, and forces us to begin the game before we have sorted our cards." " If the game is not soon played out," said Sir Herbert Evelyn, a wealthy good-humoured country baronet, "the encreasing arrears of my tenantry will leave me without a card in my hand. If this "Wellington ministry stands its ground, why, perhaps, all may come right again ; if it is upset, my only resource will be to slide into the path of reform, and take my chance with the Whigs." '^ They won't receive you," said Lord Clan- morton ; " they will see the horn of the Con- servative on your forehead, and will send you back again." ''No such thing; they will gladly receive a repentant sinner. Surely," he added, laugh- ing, " those who have turned their coats till they are threadbare, will not deal severely with one who turns it for the first time." 304 TIMON, BUT NOT '' All ! but/' said Sir Felix, " consider the crime of apostacy." ''I may begin to shorten sail," replied the baronet, " without veering round. How many have I seen, who have kept together up to a certain point, and then separated east and west. Besides, as for changing opinions, have not the character and opinions of every nation in Europe changed within the last twenty years ? — verily then, a simple individual, like myself, may he allowed to clothe his politics in a new garment, if the old one don't answer its purpose. I see nothing unreasonable in this, as the world goes." Sir Herbert followed up his remarks with much amusing banter, in which he intermingled several sharp truths, not quite to the taste of some who were present. " To what extent shall we support the Wel- lington battalions in carrying on reform ?" asked a right-honourable member, helping himself, in the same breath, to a glass of Johanisberg. " Just so far," replied Lord Clanmorton, " as necessity obliges us, and no further. My ad- OF ATHENS. 305 vice is, give what you cannot safely withhold, and no more." " Watch the weather," said Sir Felix; " and when you can no longer sail against the stream, cast anchor. I reckon it a great point gained by the present change, that it will encourage the sovereigns of the continent to clip the wings of reform so close, as to put an end to its pro- gress. I look to that as the first fruits, assured as they will be of the good wishes and secret support of the British cabinet. As to the bal- ance of Europe, let it find its own level ; what we have to look to, is the balance of the aris- tocracy against the power of the people. If the latter are to be regarded as supreme, there is an end of all legitimate rule. The throne will fall, and the altar will follow it. The whole system of authority will be turned upside down; the mob will be our riders, and atheists will be our lawgivers." This prediction was awful; all present bore testimony to the truth and force of it. With Tory lords, every step of reform is the fore- runner of revolution ; and no pretensions are so 306 TIMOX, BUT NOT presumptuous, or so dangerous, as the rights of the people. The Conservatives, could they help it, would have no instrument but the army ; this is, with them, the essence of social order, and the cement of political union. It is the engine on Avhich alone they rely to preserve the security of states ; it being the only engine by which the few can mis-govern the many. The conversation turned on the reaction, which, in the opinion of all present, was gi'a- dually manifesting itself in the public mind. Sir Herbert Evelyn frankly declared, that he saw no evidence of any reaction ; and he pro- ceeded, in a style of whimsical humour, to dis- prove the possibility of it. He was fond of taking the opposite side of an argument; and to do him justice, he had generally the best of the" warfare. " If the Tory ministry become firmly seated," said the baronet, " we have strength enough to profit by our position ; but if unable to stand its ground, I fear that not a few of our sup- porters will, before long, be found missing from our ranks. Politicians are an amphibious race, and can live in the element of either party." OF ATHENS. 307 " Is there then no standard of right and wrong in politics ?" asked Sir Felix Clavering. " Yes/' replied the baronet ; " and there is a standard in Cornhill ; and the principles of party men are regulated about as much by the one as the other. I have seen many an old snake cast liis skin, in my time. Many a transformation have I witnessed from Antijacobin to Jacobin, from republican to royalist, from whig to tory. The Treasury works wonders. A touch from the talisman of a First Lord, has produced many a harlequin leap from one side of the house to the other." "Your opinions have got infected with the prevalent influenza," said Lord Clanmorton. ^' A man's sentiments often alter," replied Sir Herbert, " while his habits remain the same. I have lived all my life in the atmosphere of tory politics, and in all likelihood I shall die in it. I am too old to change ; and as Dr. Johnson said of his religious opinions, ' I have made up my faggot.' But nevertheless, I have not all that dread of reform with which some of my neighbours are inoculated. We must proceed, 308 TIMON, BUT NOT whether we will or not. We cannot stand still ; if we do, we shall be forced forward by an impetus which will carry us far beyond the point at which we might have been allowed to stop. We have not now the gross ignorance and fury of the working-classes to contend with, as in the days of machine-breaking. Then the fear of concession had wisdom in it ; there was no security but in extreme measures. In the infancy of navigation, the navigator crept along the shore ; but when knowledge and science brought the compass to his aid, he became safe and fearless in the midst of the ocean. It is the same in the infancy of government : — you must not act upon the tunid and over-cautious policy, which that period justified. Intelligence and manhood are not to be ruled by the discipUne of the rod. As society approximates to a more enhghtened state, its mode of treatment must be altered. The progress of wealth and know- ledge gradually brings all classes more nearly to a level ; and after all, there is no safe guide to the statesman, but the spirit and temper of the age." OF ATHENS. 309 " And to what will this spirit and temper bring us at last ?" said Lord Clanmorton. '^ Give the people all they want, and what shall we have left ? Reform the church — bring back short parliaments — give household suffrage, and grant the ballot — and where are we ? The peerage would speedily be cut up root and branch ; and when our influence is gone, where is legitimate government to be found ? In what shape is it to be exercised, and through what channel is it to act ? We shall be ruled, not by legitimate influence, but by numerical force. How is it possible that the whig leaders, identified as they are in interest with the landed aristocracy, can sincerely assist in giving effect to principles which would bring it to the dust? How, for instance, can they honestly advocate the voting by ballot ? A bill for that purpose was brought in a century ago — if I recollect rightly, it was in the reign of Queen Anne ; it passed the lower house, but was rejected by the Lords, and very wisely. How has our ascendancy been upheld but through the elevation of wealthy commoners to the peerage ? And how has our influence 310 TIMON, BUT ]SOT been maintained by the House of Commons, but by introducing into it the utmost possible num- ber of members allied by blood or marriage to our own order ? Reform has already proceeded too far — so far that the two Houses can no longer draw together. The elemental principle which formerly cemented us is gone; and unless we make a determined stand, all our authority under the constitution must go along with it. The aristocratic spirit which till of late we were able to infuse into the Lower House is well nigh extinct. Then if we threw out a bill, or modified it, the rejection or amendment was acquiesced in — now it is followed by a conference of the two Houses ; and the question asked out of doors is, What is to be done with the peers ? Such a state of things cannot last. Either this spirit of revolt must be crushed, or the anarchists will have it all their own way, and we must go to the wall. In short, the great question at issue is — are the peers to exist as a constitutional and recognised order in the state, or are we to throw our coronets into the Thames, and let the rabble ride uppermost ? To decide this, there or ATHENS. 311 must be a tryal by battle. It is plain to foresee that to that it must come at last. There is no other ordeal." His Lordship's last remark was not far from the truth. We live in a period of strong excitation. The public cause has to force its way through the private feuds^ and the divisions of party, which prevail in all quarters of the United Kingdom. Events are crowding on; and the whole state of society, political and commercial, is strongly convulsed. The cause of all this is not far to seek : — the principles which the whig ministry advocated in order to get into power, pledged them to changes which they never intended to make ; and to an extent of reform which they had neither the power, nor the will to effect. But in thus acting, they raised ex- pectations which no government can safely dis- appoint; and the tories must either bid as high for popularity as their rivals, or they must incur all the odium that attaches to an opposite policy, and thus render their permanent tenure of office impossible. If they attempt to put down what they consider as disorganizing prin- 312 TIMON, BUT NOT ciples, they must look in vain for the support of the great body of the people ; if, on the other hand, they give countenance to those principles, either actively or in debate, the most inlluential of their own party will desert them. It becomes a perilous experiment either way. The purposes of party cannot be combined with the public interest. They are inevitably and essentially hostile. Lord Grey was carried into office by the flood-tide of reform ; he pro- vided amply for a whole train of relatives, and soon afterwards resigned. He publicly an- nounced his determination to stand by his order ; and this domestic distribution of official appoint- ments was a sample of his sincerity. Had he resolved to stand by the nation, he would have reflected lustre on that order, instead of dis- honouring it by this most untimely abuse of his patronage. Parliament has evidently nothing like that influence over the public mind which it once possessed. It appears to have sunk, itself irre- coverably in the popular estimation ; neither is it sustained and invigorated by such men as OF ATHENS. 313 upheld its authority in former years. Eloquence seems no longer ^cultivated by our statesmen as a science. In the House of Commons there is scarcely a single speaker of deserved celebrity. Within those walls which once reverberated with the splendid oratory of Burke — of Fox — of Pitt — of Sheridan — of Wyndham — seldom is a speech now heard that has interest or animation enough to keep the hearers awake. To what is this lamentable falling-off to be ascribed? To what can it be ascribed, but to that corrupt in- fluence under which no man can hope to attain eminence by his talents^ or to arrive at prefer- ment by deserving it ? Rectitude and ability go for nothing ; — political connection is the only pathway to official patronage. Now and then, indeed, an individual forces his way upwards, by the commanding character of his mind ; but the example is rare. A truckling subser- viency is the order of the day ; this, associated with the smallest allotment of brains, will work its way more successfully than the highest of those qualities which fit them more to watch over the welfare of the nation. 314 TIMON, BUT Is'OT OF ATHENS. The government of this country has for the last half century been conducted upon a system full of discouragement to the cultivation of high and honourable principles. So far from favour- ing the developement of talent, it has stood in dread of that independent spirit with which great talents are usually associated ; and a man of this stamp has rarely been called into employ- ment, unless in cases where the services rendered by his family connections gave him an irre- sistible claim. It is not till he is dreaded as an adversary, that he is courted as an ally. When it is perceived that his sturdy patriotism is en- gendering a spirit of enquiry into abuses and mismanagement, measures are forthwith taken to stop this bold and fearless exposure. Over- tures are made — tenders of office are proffered and accepted — and henceforward the strenuous and devoted patriot adds one more to the long list of seceders, and becomes one of the stoutest defenders of the corrupt system he had denounced. END OF VOL. I. LONDON : nLATCH AND LAVPERT, PRINTEKS, GROVE PLACE, BROMPTOX. UNIVERSmr OP illinom-urbana 3 0112 056504258