Page images
PDF
EPUB

of the horse, or the coals, the boiler, and the pipes the causes of the power of steam! But there is a natural eagerness in the human mind to find out some cause or other for every apparent effect; and hence many persons, not sufficiently long-sighted to discern the potential agency of a first cause, easily lapse into the belief, which they feel necessary to their repose, that some more visible and contiguous events sufficiently account for results, with which their connexion is more immediate, and upon which their operation is more sensibly demonstrated. They forget the inadequacy of the premise in the closeness of the consequence, and examine, if they examine at all, through the wrong end of the telescope.

"It is incumbent upon every lover of his country to understand its history thoroughly and soberly, and to be able and willing to see through the intervening mists of error, and to disentangle the knots of prejudiced controversy. As no part of the English history is so deeply interesting, so no part is so fertile in opportunities and handles for misrepresentation, as the times of which I am speaking. You will never escape from delusions on one side or the other, so long as you persist in studying the external face of things only, in referring to this fact as the cause of that fact; in assuming, in other words, that because on the line of narration B precedes C, that therefore C follows from, or is originated by, B. This cum hoc, ergo propter hoc, is one of the oldest and most extended sophisms that has had its share and part in accumulating the huge mass of human error; and it is one which you must ever bear in memory, and guard against its insinuations, as you would against the approaches of a serpent. All history, especially the portion of it which we are considering, is a sea dangerous and difficult to navigate: you may paddle along the shore, indeed, with as little peril as profit; but if you venture out of sight of land, with no other guides on your way except rocks succeeding rocks, it cannot be long before your vessel is swamped in an unforeseen whirlpool, stranded on a latent bank, or dashed to atoms against the iron angle of some unknown promontory. You cannot sail freely and safely, unless your foot be on the stern, your hand on the helm, and your eye upon the compass. That compass must be Principle; and if the needle of that compass be suspended on reason, it will point for ever forwards to the magnet pole of truth, without change or variation either to the west or the east. It is remarkable that the intellectual compass was well known to the ancient historians, though the secret of the mechanical one was hidden from them;-we call ourselves more fortunate and wise; we can pass an ocean in a prefixed track; but we seem to be no longer able to escape the alternate shoals of prejudice and passion, and navigate with certainty the gulfs of controversy. Have we gained by the exchange?

[blocks in formation]

"In every European and Christian state there exist essentially two grand and master principles of Being, which not sometimes or often, but always and at all times, are silently and irresistibly operating every change that ameliorates, and every struggle that convulses, the frame of human society. These are the principle of Permanency, and the principle of Progression. Sufficient reasons may be assigned for the fact, that this observation does not hold good with regard to the Mahometan and Oriental nations. In all those numerous kingdoms formed by the primitive heroes of the armies of the Arabian prophet, there was no principle of permanency, and therefore they sank back almost as soon as they arose. They existed, and could only exist in their physical efforts of progression; when they ceased to conquer, they naturally fell to pieces. Turkey is no exception; for Turkey would long since have gone to ruin, if it had not been propped up by the rival interests of Christendom. The Turks have no independent Church; their religion and their state are identified; hence as there is no counterpoise, so is there no mutual support. This is the unchangeable essence of Unitarianism, which sharpens and narrows, concentrates and crushes, which is the most formidable of all swords, and the weakest of all shields. On the other hand, China is an instance of permanency without any progression. It would require profound consideration to detect and elucidate the reasons of the difference in the east and the west; in my opinion Christianity will be found to be at the bottom of it.

"These two distinct tendencies have each their visible exponents and representatives as distinct and peculiar. Permanency is embodied, and, as it were, actualized, in the aristocratical classes, the noblesse, the clergy in general, and the gentlemen resident upon, and drawing their resources from, landed property. In all these there is for the most part an instinctive repugnance to innovation, a dread of experiments, an indifference to the public rights, till the private and the personal come into jeopardy. Progression moves and animates the mercantile, the trading, the manufacturing, and the merely literary classes; in these last the pride of wealth gained by the individual's own labour, the irritation produced by conscious inferiority, the levelling spirit of barter, and in some cases the ardent imaginations and the theoretical reasonings of learning, operate as strongly towards alteration and change. Hence in almost all the revolutions related in history, it may be constantly seen, that the cities and towns, the receptacles of trade and intellectual intercourse, were for the reformers; whilst the country, upon the same occassion, has ever been resolute in opposing all their designs. But as on the one hand singularity, ruined fortunes, or a participation in any degree in the motives of action belonging to the other class, may probable induce a natural defender of things as they are, to go over to the

ranks of the asserters of things as they ought to be; so again it may happen that gratitude, personal connexion, habit, or accidental passion, will effect as much, or even more, in the opposite direction. The consequence of all which is, that upon these two principles coming to a struggle between themselves, it is not wonderful that the greatest and wisest and best men of the time were found ranged on opposite sides. It could not possibly be otherwise without violating the order of cause and effect; and hence you will learn the extreme folly of thinking, on that account alone, unfavourably of, or imputing evil motives to, those persons who happen to stand on that side, whichever it may be, which you justly disapprove. You will see that different persons may conscientiously take different views of the same object; that the same object may appear quite another, when examined from another quarter, and that in many instances, so far as individual integrity is concerned, both parties may be in the right. You will repress abuse or sarcasm wherever you meet them; you will investigate things fairly on either side, nor will you endure that Hampden or Falkland, Clarendon or Milton shall be calumniated or undervalued by ignorance and conceit. That man who can wish to strip one feather from the plumes, one leaf from the wreaths, which admiring posterity has placed upon the sacred heads of these great antagonists, is a fool if he knows not, is an alien if he does know, that he is tearing the purest and most brilliant gems from the union coronet of his mother country, who is no step-mother to flatter and hate, but who hath smiles of reconciliation and arms of kindness for all her great and good, though erring children. Let him take heed that in gratifying a paltry passion he do no injury or despite to her; let him force his mind, if he can, up to the sublime height on which these objects of his animosity stand, and measure himself with the least of them; his thoughts with their thoughts, his actions with their actions, his motives with their motives! If he does not blush at the comparison, he may proceed to censure! "But then "

We can afford no more room for any of the old gentleman's further remarks; in fact, we only wished to give the world a specimen of his style, and we have selected a favourable one. The substance of the extracts is too extravagant to require any comment in this age; and indeed we should be seriously concerned if we thought we were likely to do any harm by their publication. We trust there is no danger of that sort, and in that hope we release our readers.

THE ETON MONTEM.

I AM going to write a paper on Montem, and I know the peril I incur by this rash proceeding. I shall be accused of trespassing upon his local privileges by the Editor of the Windsor Express; and shall be doomed to a petrifying neglect, for opposing his civic opinions, by the Editor of the Old Times. But I defy them both. My publisher will bribe the one; and, though the other "write me down an ass," I will proclaim that Montem is to the full as wise, and a thousand times more genteel, than a Lord Mayor's show.

I entreat the reader, if a lady and under a certain age, to honour me with her arm-if a gentleman, companionable and unpresuming, to follow me closely through the crowd-and I may have the pleasure of introducing either or both of them to a knot of very agreeable fellows-brother contributors-who may beguile the toil of description, and relieve the ennui of satiated ears and exhausted eyes. Solitary sight-seeing is to me insupportable. I have not spring enough in my own thoughts to forbear yawning over the meagre text of a pageant, if it be without the variorum notes of sympathy and friendship. I trust my fair or bearded reader is of the same social turn; and that she or he will feel the full value of an introduction, on this occasion, to Messrs. Gerard Montgomery, Paterson Aymer, Reginald Holyoake, William Payne, and Archibald Frazer. The first is an old Etonian, whom to name is at once to command the admiration of all lovers of wit and poetry; the second, a devoted friend to Eton, her institutions, and her honours; the third, an enthusiastic scholar of Trinity; the fourth, an acute student of Lincoln's-inn, with a great turn for the rational and useful; and the fifth, a more cold reasoner, from the college of Aberdeen, who will not permit a grain of imagination to carry him aside from the right line of his gravity-one who eulogises beef-steaks and execrates whipt

cream.

"Salt!"" I should pay my money more cheerfully if I could understand the meaning of the custom," said Frazer. "The meaning is clear enough," replied Holyoake;" here is a show to be seen which costs the actors a pretty round sum-and the spectators do not grudge to purchase a gaze at a cheap rate, especially as their contributions are appropriated to the reward of a meritorious scholar."

VOL. I. PART I.

"But the origin of Salt-the origin," said Frazer. "Oh, never heed the origin," replied Holyoake, "I hear the band in the breakfast-room playing · Auld lang syne;' and that, Frazer, may give you a reason infinitely more melodious than any blacklettered discovery."

My fair companion, I have half-a-crown and a look of importance to carry us through the barrier of obliging constables;and, without the loss of your flounce, and (by the permission of those agreeable personages who are here with no terror of Townsend before their eyes) without a lightened pocket, we are secure spectators of a hundred red frocks and satin doublets at breakfast. What a delightful uproar! what a clatter of cups and confusion of tongues! what a mixture of the captain's pages and the College cooks! what a moving to and fro of hot tea-pots and eager eyes! what melting looks and melting ices! Surely this is worth even the broken shins that the vulgar encounter for a peep.

The breakfast done, we take our station in the College quadrangle. The captain with his retinue retires to offer his respects to the Provost at his levée ;-and Dr. Keate gathers round him in his study a few of those who, in their greatness of birth or station, in the pride of their wealth or the splendour of their talents, have not forgotten their obligations to Eton. Twelve o'clock strikes and the processsion is not yet formed. The call of the roll is not an affair of such dispatch as the eating of the rolls; and the gathering of Salt is not so easily accomplished as the spilling. Blue coats and red coats, white wands and gilt scabbards, velvet caps and silken turbans, are flitting about in wild confusion. The ladies grow weary;-with your leave, gentle reader, we will mitigate the tedium by a little chat.

"Who is that buffoon that travesties the travesty?" inquired Frazer. "Who is that old cripple alighted from his donkey-cart, who dispenses doggrel and grimaces in all the glory of plush and printed calico?"

"That, my most noble cynic," said Gerard," is a prodigious personage. Shall birth-days and coronations be recorded in immortal odes, and Montem not have its minstrel? He, Sir, is Herbertus Stockhore; who first called upon his muse in the good old days of Paul Whitehead,-run a race with Pye through all the sublimities of lyres and fires,—and is now hobbling to his grave, after having sung fourteen Montems, the only existing example of a legitimate laureate. Ask Paterson about him;—he is writing a quarto on his life and genius."

"He ascended his heaven of invention," said Paterson, "before the vulgar arts of reading and writing, which are banishing all poetry from the world, could clip his wings. He was an adventurous soldier in his boyhood; but, having addicted himself to matrimony and the muses, settled as a bricklayer's labourer at

« PreviousContinue »