Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 by Various

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"Yes," I observed. "But still a desert highly picturesque, and capable of
cultivation."

"Oh! I hope not," he answered laughingly. "The first appearance of
cultivation would put me to flight at once. Fortunately, cultivation is
almost impossible. The soil almost totally prohibits tillage, the sea air
prohibits trees, the shore prohibits trade, nothing can live here but a
fisherman or a shrimp, and thus I am secure against the invasion of all
_improvers_. W----, come here, and assist me to cure Mr Marston of his
skepticism on the absolute impossibility of our ever being surrounded by
London brick and mortar."

A man of a remarkably graceful air bowed to the call, and came towards us.

"W----," said the prince, "comfort me, by saying that no man can be
citizenized in this corner of the world."

"It is certainly highly improbable," was the answer. "And yet, when we
know John Bull's variety of tastes, and heroic contempt of money in
indulging them, such things may be. I lately found one of my country
constituents the inhabitant of a very pretty villa--which he had built,
too, for himself--in Sicily; and of all places, in the Val di Noto, the
most notorious spot in the island, or perhaps on the earth, for all kinds
of desperadoes--the very haunt of Italian smugglers, refugee Catalonians,
expert beyond all living knaves in piracy, and African renegades. Yet
there sat my honest and fat-cheeked friend, with Aetna roaring above him;
declaiming on liberty and property, as comfortably as if he could not be
shot for the tenth of a sixpence, or swept off, chattels and all, at the
nod of an Algerine. No, sir. If the whim takes the Londoner, you will have
him down here without mercy. To the three per cents nothing is
impossible."

"Well, well," said the good-humoured prince, "that cannot happen for
another hundred years; and in the mean time my prospect will never be shut
out. Let them build, or pull down the pyramids, if they will. The tide of
city wealth will never roll through this valley; the noise of city life
will never fill those quiet fields; the smoke of an insurrection of city
hovels will never mingle with the freshness of such an evening as this.
Here, at all events, I have spent half a dozen of the pleasantest years of
my existence, and here, if I should live so long, I might spend the next
fifty, notwithstanding your prophecies, W----, as far from London, except
in the mere matter of miles, as if I had fixed myself in a valley of the
Crimea."

His royal highness was clever, but he was no prophet, more than other men.
Need I say that London found him out within the tenth part of his fifty
years; instead of suffering him to escape, compelled him to build: and,
after the outlay of a quarter of a million, shut him up within his own
walls, like the giant of the Arabian tales in a bottle--His village a huge
suburb of the huge metropolis; his lawn surrounded by a circumvallation of
taverns and toyshops; the sea invisible; and the landscape scattered over
with prettinesses of architecture created by the wealth of Cheapside, and
worthy of all the caprices of all the tourists of this much travelled
world.

But simple as was the exterior of the cottage, all within was costliness,
so far as it can be united with elegance. Later days somewhat impaired the
taste of this accomplished man, and he sought in splendour what was only
to be found in grace. But here, every decoration, from the ceiling to the
floor, exhibited the simplicity of refinement. A few busts of his public
friends, a few statues of the patriots of antiquity, and a few pictures of
the great political geniuses of Europe--among which the broad forehead and
powerful eye of Machiavel were conspicuous--showed at a glance that we
were under the roof of a political personage. Even the figures in chased
silver on the table were characteristic of this taste. A Timoleon, a
Brutus, and a Themistocles, incomparably classic, stood on the plateau;
and a rapier which had belonged to Doria, and a sabre which had been worn
by Castruccio, hung on either side of the mantelpiece. The whole had a
republican tendency, but it was republicanism in gold and
silver--mother-of-pearl republicanism--the Whig principle embalmed in
Cellini chalices and porcelain of Frederic le Grand. Fortunately the
conversation did not turn upon home politics. It wandered lightly through
all the pleasanter topics of the day; slight ventilations of public
character, dexterous allusions to anecdotes which none but the initiated
could understand; and the general easy intercourse of well-bred men who
met under the roof of another well-bred man to spend a few hours as
agreeably as they could. The prince took his full share in the gaiety of
the evening; and I was surprised to find at once so remarkable a
familiarity with the classics, whose sound was scarcely out of my college
ears; and with those habits of the humbler ranks, which could have so
seldom come to his personal knowledge. To his exterior, nature had been
singularly favourable. His figure, though full, still retained all the
activity and grace of youth; his features, though by no means regular,
had a general look of manly beauty, and his smile was cordiality itself.
I have often since heard him praised for supreme elegance; but his manner
was rather that of a man of great natural good-humour, who yet felt his
own place in society, and of that degree of intelligence which qualified
him to enjoy the wit and talents of others, without suffering a sense of
inferiority. Among those at table were C---- and H----, names well known
in the circles of Devonshire House; Sir P---- F----, who struck me at
first sight by his penetrating physiognomy, and who was even then
suspected of being the author of that most brilliant of all libels,
Junius; W----, then in the flower of life, and whose subtilty and whim
might be seen in his fine forehead and volatile eyes; some others, whose
names I did not know, and among them one of low stature, but of
singularly animated features. He was evidently a military man, and of the
Sister Isle, a prime favourite with the prince and every body; and I
think a secretary in the prince's household. He had just returned from
Paris; and as French news was then the universal topic, he took an ample
share in the conversation. The name of La Fayette happening to be
mentioned, as then carrying every thing before him in France--

"I doubt his talents," said the prince.

"I more doubt his sincerity," said W----.

"I still more doubt whether this day three months he will have his head on
his shoulders," said Sir P----.

"None can doubt his present popularity," said the secretary.

"At all events," said his highness, "I cannot doubt that he has wit, which
in France was always something, and now, in the general crash of pedigree,
is the only thing. Any man who could furnish the Parsans with a _bon-mot_
a-day, would have a strong chance of succeeding to the throne in the
probable vacancy."

"A case has just occurred in point," said the secretary. "Last week La
Fayette had a quarrel with a battalion of the National Guard on the
subject of drill; they considering the manual exercise as an infringement
of the Rights of Man. The general being of the contrary opinion, a
deputation of corporals, for any thing higher would have looked too
aristocratic, waited on him at the quarters of his staff in the Place
Vendome, to demand--his immediate resignation. On further enquiry, he
ascertained that all the battalions, amounting to thirty thousand men,
were precisely of the same sentiments. Next morning happened to have been
appointed for a general review of the National Guard. La Fayette appeared
on the ground as commandant at the head of his staff, and after a gallop
along the line, suddenly alighted from his horse, and taking a musket on
his shoulder, to the utter astonishment of every body walked direct into
the centre of the line, and took post in the ranks. Of course all the
field-officers flew up to learn the reason. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'I am
tired of receiving orders as commander-in-chief, and that I may _give_
them, I have become a _private_, as you see.' The announcement was
received with a shout of merriment; and, as in France a pleasantry would
privilege a man to set fire to a church, the general was cheered on all
sides, was remounted and the citizen army, suspending the 'Rights of Man'
for the day, proceeded to march and manoeuvre according to the drill
framed by despots and kings."

"Well done, La Fayette," said the prince, "I did not think that there was
so much in him. To be sure, to have one's neck in danger--for the next
step to deposing would probably be to hang him--might sharpen a man's wits
a good deal."

"Yes," said Sir P----, "so many live by their wits in Paris, that even the
marquis of the mob might have his chance; but a bon-mot actually saved,
within these few days, one even so obnoxious as a bishop from being _sus.
per coll_. In the general system of purifying the church by hanging the
priests, the rabble of the Palais Royal seized the Bishop of Autun, and
were proceeding to treat him 'a la lanterne' as an aristocrat. It must be
owned that the lamps in Paris, swinging by ropes across the streets, offer
really a very striking suggestion for giving a final lesson in politics.
It was night, and the lamp was trimmed. They were already letting it down
for the bishop to be its successor; when he observed, with the coolness of
a spectator--'Gentlemen, if I am to take the place of that lamp, it does
not strike me that the street will be better lighted.' The whimsicality of
the idea caught them at once; a bishop for a _reverbere_ was a new idea;
they roared with laughter at the conception, and bid him go home for a
'_bon enfant_!'"

"I cannot equal the La Fayette story," said C----, "but I remember one not
unlike it, when the Duke of Rutland was Irish viceroy. Charlemont was
reviewing a brigade of his volunteers when he found a sudden stop in one
of the movements, a troop of cavalry on a flank: choosing to exhibit a
will of their own in an extraordinary way. If the brigade advanced, they
halted; if it halted, they advanced. The captain bawled in vain.
Aide-de-camp after aide-de-camp was sent to enquire the cause; they all
came back roaring with laughter. At length Charlemont, rather irritated
by the ridicule of the display, rode down the line and desired the
captain to order them to move; not a man stirred; they were as immovable
as a wall of brass. He then took the affair upon himself; and angrily
asked, 'if they meant to insult him.' 'Not a bit of it, my lord,' cried
out all the Paddies together. 'But we are not on _speaking terms_ with
the captain.'"

"How perfectly I can see Charlemont's countenance at that capital answer:
his fastidious look turning into a laugh, and the real dignity of the man
forced to give way to his national sense of ridicule. Is there any hope of
his coming over this season, C----?" asked the prince.

"Not much. He talks in his letters of England, as a man married to a
termagant might talk of his first love--hopeless regrets, inevitable
destiny, and so forth. He is bound to Ireland, and she treats him as
Catharine treated Petruchio before marriage. But he has not the whip of
Petruchio, nor perhaps the will, since the knot has been tied. He is only
one of the many elegant and accomplished Irishmen who have done just the
same--who find some strange spell in the confusions of a country full of
calamities; prefer clouds to sunshine, and complain of their choice all
their lives."

"Yes," said W----. "It is like the attempt to put a coat and trousers on
the American Indian. The hero flings them off on the first opportunity,
takes to his plumes and painted skin, and prefers being tomahawked in a
swamp to dying in a feather-bed like a gentleman!"

"Or," said the prince, "as Goldsmith so charmingly expresses it of the
Swiss--to whom, however, it is much less applicable than his own
countrymen--

'For as the babe, whom rising storms molest,
Clings but the closer to his mother's breast,
So the rude whirlwind and the tempest's roar
But bind him to his native mountains more.'"

My story next came upon the _tapis_; and the sketch of my capture by the
free-traders was listened to with polite interest.

"Very possibly I may have some irregular neighbours," was the prince's
remark. "But, it must be confessed, that I am the intruder on their
domain, not they on mine; and, if I were plundered, perhaps I should have
not much more right to complain, than a whale-catcher has of being swamped
by a blow of the tail, or a man fond of law being forced to pay a bill of
costs."

"On the contrary," said the secretary, "I give them no slight credit for
their forbearance; for the sacking of this cottage would, probably, be an
easier exploit than beating off a revenue cruiser, and the value of their
prize would be worth many a successful run. I make it a point never to go
to war with the multitude. I had a little lesson on the subject myself,
within the week, in Paris"--

An attendant here brought in a letter for the prince, which stopped the
narrative. The prince honoured the letter with a smile.

"It is from Devonshire House," said he--"a very charming woman the
Duchess; just enough of the woman to reconcile us to the wit, and just
enough of the wit to give poignancy to the woman. She laughingly says she
is growing 'heartless, harmless, and old.' What a pity that so fine a
creature should grow any of the three!"

"There is no great fear of that," observed Sir P----, "if it is to be left
to her Grace's own decision. There is no question in the world on which a
fine woman is more deliberate in coming to a conclusion."

"Well, well," said the prince; "_she_, at least, is privileged. Diamonds
never grow old."

"They may require a little resetting now and then, however," said I.

"Yes, perhaps; but it is only once in a hundred years. If they sparkle
during one generation, what can _we_ ask more? Her Grace tells me an
excellent hit--the last flash of my old friend Selwyn. It happens that
Lady ----"--another fine woman was mentioned--"has looked rather distantly
upon her former associates since her husband was created a marquis. 'I
enquired the other day,' says the duchess, 'for a particular friend of
hers, the wife of an earl.' 'I have not seen her for a long time,' was the
answer. Selwyn whispered at the moment, I dare say, long enough--she has
not seen her since the _creation_.'"

"If Selwyn," said Sir P----, "had not made such a trade of wit; if he had
not been such a palpable machine for grinding every thing into _bons-mots_;
if his distillation of the dross of common talk into the spirit of
pleasantry were less tardy and less palpable; I should have allowed him to
be"--

"What?" asked some one from the end of the table.

"Less a _bore than he was_," was the succinct answer.

"For my part," said the prince, "I think that old George was amusing to
the last. He had great observation of oddity, and, you will admit, that he
had no slight opportunities; for he was a member of, I believe, every club
for five miles round St James's. But he _was_ slow. Wit should be like a
pistol-shot; a flash and a hit, and both best when they come closest
together. Still, he was a fragment of an age gone by, and I prize him as I
should a piece of pottery from Herculaneum; its use past away, but its
colours not extinguished, and, though altogether valueless at the time,
curious as the _beau reste_ of a pipkin of antiquity."

"Sheridan," observed C----, "amounts, in my idea, to a perfect wit, at
once keen and polished; nothing of either violence or virulence--nothing
of the sabre or the saw; his weapon is the stiletto, fine as a needle, yet
it strikes home."

"_Apropos_," said the prince, "does any one know whether there is to be a
debate this evening? He was to have dined here. What can have happened to
him?"

"What always happens to him," said one of the party; "he has postponed
it. Ask Sheridan for Monday at seven, and you will have him next week on
Tuesday at eight. 'Procrastination is the thief of time,' to him more
than, I suppose, any other man living."

"At all events," said H----, "it is the only thief that Sheridan has to
fear. His present condition defies all the skill of larceny. He is
completely in the position of Horace's traveller--he might sing in a
forest of felons."

At this moment the sound of a post-chaise was heard rushing up the avenue,
and Sheridan soon made his appearance. He was received by the prince with
evident gladness, and by all the table with congratulations on his having
arrived at all. He was abundant in apologies; among the rest "his carriage
had broken down halfway--he had been compelled to spend the morning with
Charles Fox--he had been subpoenaed on the trial of one of the Scottish
conspirators--he had been summoned on a committee of a contested
election." The prince smiled sceptically enough at this succession of
causes to produce the single effect of being an hour behind-hand.

"The prince bows at every new excuse," said H---- at my side, "as Boileau
took off his hat at every plagiarism in his friend's comedy--on the score
of old acquaintance. If one word of all this is true, it may be the
breaking down of his post-chaise, and even that he probably broke down for
the sake of the excuse. Sheridan could not walk from the door to the
dinner-table without a stratagem."

I had now, for the first time, an opportunity of seeing this remarkable
man. He was then in the prime of life, his fame, and of his powers. His
countenance struck me at a glance, as the most characteristic that I had
ever seen. Fancy may do much, but I thought that I could discover in his
physiognomy every quality for which he was distinguished: the pleasantry
of the man of the world, the keen observation of the great dramatist, and
the vividness and daring of the first-rate orator. His features were fine,
but their combination was so powerfully intellectual, that, at the moment
when he turned his face to you, you felt that you were looking on a man of
the highest order of faculties. None of the leading men of his day had a
physiognomy so palpably mental. Burke's spectacled eyes told but little;
Fox, with the grand outlines of a Greek sage, had no mobility of feature;
Pitt was evidently no favourite of whatever goddess presides over beauty
at our birth. But Sheridan's countenance was the actual mirror of one of
the most glowing, versatile, and vivid minds in the world. His eyes alone
would have given expression to a face of clay. I never saw in human head
orbs so large, of so intense a black, and of such sparkling lustre. His
manners, too, were then admirable; easy without negligence, and
respectful, as the guest at a royal table, without a shadow of servility.
He also was wholly free from that affectation of epigram, which tempts a
man who cannot help knowing that his good things are recorded. He laughed,
and listened, and rambled through the common topics of the day, with all
the evidence of one enjoying the moment, and glad to contribute to its
enjoyment; and yet, in all this ease, I could see that remoter thoughts,
from time to time, passed through his mind. In the midst of our gaiety,
the contraction of his deep and noble brows showed that he was wandering
far away from the slight topics of the table; and I could imagine what he
might be, when struggling against the gigantic strength of Pitt, or
thundering against Indian tyranny before the Peerage in Westminster Hall.

I saw him long afterwards, when the promise of his day was overcast; when
the flashes of his genius were like guns of distress; and his character,
talents, and frame were alike sinking. But, ruined as he was, and
humiliated by folly as much as by misfortune, I have never been able to
regard Sheridan but as a fallen star--a star, too, of the first magnitude;
without a superior in the whole galaxy from which he fell, and with an
original brilliancy perhaps more lustrous than them all.

"Well, Sheridan, what news have you brought with you?" asked the prince.

The answer was a laugh. "Nothing, but that Downing Street has turned into
Parnassus. The astounding fact is, that Grenville has teemed, and, as the
fruits of the long vacation, has produced a Latin epigram.

'Veris risit Amor roses caducas:
Cui Ver--"Vane puer, tuine flores,
Quaeso, perpetuum manent in aevum?'"

The prince laughed. "He writes on the principle, of course, that in one's
dotage we are privileged to return to the triflings of our infancy, and
that Downing Street cannot be better employed in these days than as a
chapel of ease to Eton."

"Yet, even there, he is but a translator," said Sir P----.

"'The tenth transmitter of an idler's line,'

It is merely a _rechauffe_ of the old Italian.

'Amor volea schernir la primavera
Sulla breve durata e passegiera
Dei vaghi fiori suoi.
Ma la belle stagione a lui rispose
Forse i piacere tuoi
Vita piu lunga avran delle mie rose.'"

The prince, who, under Cyril Jackson, had acquired no trivial scholarship,
now alluded to a singular poetic production, _printed_ in 1618, which
seemed distinctly to announce the French Revolution.

'Festinat propere cursu jam temporis ordo,
Quo locus, et Franci majestas prisca, senatus,
Papa, sacerdotes, missae, simulacra, Deique
Fictitii, atque omnis superos exosa potestas,
Judicio Domini justo sublata peribunt.[A]

[Footnote A:

The time is rushing on
When France shall be undone;
And like a dream shall pass,
Pope, monarch, priest, and mass;
And vengeance shall be just,
And all her shrines be dust,
And thunder dig the grave
Of sovereign and of slave.]

"The production is certainly curious," remarked W----; "but poets always
had something of the fortune-teller; and it is striking, that in many of
the modern Italian Latinists you will find more instances of strong
declamation against Rome, and against France as its chief supporter, than
perhaps in any other authorship of Europe. Audacity was the result of
terror. All Italy reminds one of the papal palace at Avignon--the
banqueting-rooms above, the dungeons of the Inquisition below; popes and
princes feasting within sound of the rack and the scourge. The Revolution
is but the ripening of the disease; the hydrophobia which has been lurking
in the system for centuries."

"Why, then," said Sheridan, "shall we all wonder at what all expected?
France may be running mad without waiting for the moon; mad in broad day;
absolutely stripping off, not merely the royal livery, which she wore for
the last five hundred years with so much the look of a well-bred footman;
but tearing away the last coverture of the national nakedness. Well; in a
week or two of this process, she will have got rid not only of church and
king, but of laws, property, and personal freedom. But, I ask, what
business have we to interfere? If she is madder than the maddest of March
hares, she is only the less dangerous; she will probably dash out her
brains against the first wall that she cannot spring over."

"But, at least, we know that mischief is already done among ourselves.
Those French affairs are dividing our strength in the House," remarked
C----.

"What then?" quickly demanded Sheridan. "What is it to me if others have
the nightmare, while I feel my eyes open? Burke, in his dreams, may dread
the example of France; but I as little dread it as I should a fire at the
Pole. He thinks that Englishmen have such a passion for foreign
importations, that if the pestilence were raging on the other side of the
Channel, we should send for specimens. My proposition is, that the example
of France is more likely to make slaves of us than republicans."

"Is it," asked W----, "to make us

'Fly from minor tyrants to the throne?'"

"I laugh at the whole," replied Sheridan, "as a bugbear. I have no fear of
France as either a schoolmaster, or a seducer, of England. France is
lunatic, and who dreads a lunatic after his first paroxysm? Exhaustion,
disgust, decay, perhaps death, are the natural results. If there is any
peril to us, it is only from our meddling. The lunatic never revenges
himself but on his keeper. I should leave the patient to the native
doctors, or to those best of all doctors for mad nations, suffering,
shame, and time. Chain, taunt, or torment the lunatic, and he rewards you
by knocking out your brains."

"Those are not exactly the opinions of our friend Charles," observed the
prince with peculiar emphasis.

"No," was the reply. "I think for myself. Some would take the madman by
the hand, and treat him as if in possession of his senses. Burke would
gather all the dignitaries of Church and State, and treat him as a
demoniac; attempt to exorcise the evil spirit, and if it continued
intractable, solemnly excommunicate the possessed by bell, book, and
candle. But, as I do not like throwing away my trouble, I should let him
alone."

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