man.

years of politeness and general ideas | are put down in Magua Charta. We have persuaded the French to trust in despise this abstract verbiage, which human goodness and pure reason. A deprives man of all equity and respect hundred and fifty years of moral reflec- to puff him up with presumption and tion and political strife have attached theories : the Englishman to positive religion and an established constitution. Each has

“ We have not been drawn and trussed, ik his contrary dogma and his contrary a museum, with chaff and rags and

paltry bluri

order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds is enthusiasm. Neither understands and ed shreds of paper about the rights of men.' ach detests the other.

What one calls reform, the other calls destruc- Our constitution is not a fictitious con tion; what one reveres as the estab. tract, like that of Rousseau, sure to be

violated in three months, but a real lishment of right, the other curses as the overthrow of right; what seems to contract, by which, king, nobles, peo one the annihilation of superstition, and is himself held. The crown of

ple, church, every one holds the other, seems to the other the abolition of

the prince and the privilege of the morality: Never was the contrast of two spirits and two civilizations shown noble are as sacred as the land of the in clearer characters, and it was Burke peasant and the tool of the workingwho, with the superiority of a thinker the inheritance, we respect it in every

Whatever be the acquisition or and the hostility of an Englishman, took it in hand to show this to the man, and our law has but one object, French.

which is to preserve to each his propHe is indignant

at this “tragi-comick erty and his rights. farce,” which at Paris is called the re

“ We fear God; we look up with awe to generation of humanity. He denies kings; with affection to parliaments ; with duty that the contagion of such folly can

to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and

with respect to nobility." + ever poison England. He laughs at

“There is not one public man in this king. the Cockneys, who, roused by the pra- dom who does not reprobate the dishonest, pertings of democratic societies, think fidious, and cruel confiscation which the themselves on the brink of a revolu- National Assembly has been compelled to

make. Church and State are ideas in:ion:

separable in our minds. . . . Our education is “ Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a

in a manner wholly in the hands of ecclesilern make the

field ring with their importunate asticks, and in all stages, from infancy to manchink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed

hoou. They never will suffer the fixed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew escaie of the church to be converted into a penthe cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that slow, to depend on the treasury.

They those who make the noise are the only inhabi- made their church like

their nobílity, indepen. tants of the field ; that of course, they are many dent.mey can see without pain

or grudging in number; or that, after all, they are other

an archbishop precede a duke. They can see than the little shrivelled, meagre, nopping,

a Bishop Durham or a Bishop of Winchester though loud and troublesome insects of the ! in possession of ten thousand a year.” 1

We will never suffer the established Real England hates and detests the domain of cur church to be converted maxims and actions of the French into a pension, so as to place it in de. Revolution:+

pendence on the treasury. We have “ The very idea of the fabrication of a new

made our church as our king and our government is enough to fill us with disgust and nobility, independent. We are shocked hor. We wished ... to derive all we pos at your robbery-first, because it is an sess as an inher ance from our forefathers. We claim) our franchises not as the rights of outrage upon property; next, because men, but as the rights of Englishmen." I

it is an attack upon religion. We

hold that there exists no society withOur rights do not float in the air, in out belief, and we feel that, in exhaust the imagination of philosophers; they ing the source, you dry up the whole * Burke's Works, v. 165; Reflections on the stream.

We have rejected as a poisor Resolution in France.

hour.".

a

we have purged ourselves of it, whilst | more the right of insurrection which you have been saturated with it. you give them against themselves

“Who, born within the last forty years, has We believe that a constitution is a read one word of Collins,

and Toland, and Tin- trust transmitted to this generation by dal, ... and that whole race who called them the past, to be handod down to the welves Freethinkers ?" *

future, and that if a generation car. “We are Protestants, not from indifference, dispose of it as its own, it ought also biit from zeal.

" Atheism is against not only our reason, but to respect it as belonging to others cur instincts.

We hold that, “by this unprincipled hich, an established monarchy, an establish and as much, and in as many ways an

• We are resolved to keep an established facility of changing the state as often ed aristocracy, and an established democracyt there

are floating fancies and fashiona, each in the degree it exists, and in no greater.' We base our establishment upon the

the whole chain and continuity of the sentiment of right, and the sentiment commonwealth would be broken. No of right on reverence for God.

one generation could link with the In place of right and of God, whom ter than the flies of a summer.

other. Men would become little bet

We do you, Frenchmen, acknowledge as master? The sovereign people, that repudiate this meagre and coarse res is, the arbitrary inconstancy of

son, which separates a man from hla numerical majority. We deny that ties, and sees in him only the present the majority has a right to destroy a and counts him as only one head in a

which separates a man from society constitution.

flock. We despise these “metaphysics “The constitution of a country being once of an undergraduate and the mathe. settled upon some compact, tacit or expressed, matics of an exciseman,” by which you there is no power existing of force to alter it, cut up the state and man's rights ac. without the breach of the covenant, or the consent of all the parties." I

cording to square miles and numericai

unities. We have a horror of that We deny that a majority has a right to cynical coarseness by which “all the make a constitution; unanimity must decent drapery of life is to be rudely first have conferred this right on the majority. We deny that brute force but a woman, and a woman is but an

torn off," by which now a queen in is á legitimate authority, and that a animal,” † which cuts down chivalric populace is a nation. §

and religious spirit, the two crowns of " A true natural aristocracy is not a separate humanity, lu plunge them, together interest in the state or separable from it. with learning, into the popular mire, to When great multitudes act together under that be “trodden down under the hoofs of discipline of nature, I recognize the perple ;

when you separate the common sort of a sw.nish multitude." | We have a men from their proper chieftains so as to form horror of this systematic levelling them into an adverse army, I no longer know which aisorganizes civil society. Burke that venerable object called the people in such

continues thus : a disbanded race of deserters and vagabonds." We detest with all our power of hatred ject of suming a great capire into a vestry, or

“ I am satisfied bey-ud a doubt that the pro the right of tyranny which you give to a collection of vestries and of govemu them over others, and we detest still in the spirit of a parocnial administration, in * Burke's Works, v. 172 ; Reflections.

sens.iess and absurd, in any mode, or with any qualifications. I can never be convinced that

the scheme of placing the highest powers of the 1 Ibid. vi. 201 ; Appeal from the New to the state a churchwardens and constables, and Old Whigs.

otier such officers, guided by the prudence of $“ A government of five hundred country litigio attornies, and Jew brokers, and set ir attornies and obscure curates is not good for action by shameless women of the lowest conwenty-four millions of men, though it were dition, Ey keepers of hotels, taverns, and brothchoss, by eight and forty millions. . . As to els, by pert apprentices, by clerks, shop-boys, the share of power, authority, direction, which hairdressers, fiddlers, and dancers on the

+ Thid. 175

men, of useful but laborious occupations), can property and brute force. The rage of never be put into any shape that must not be execration, invective, and destruction both disgraceful and destructive."* “ If monarchy should ever obtain an entire ascendency mounted on both sides like a conflagra in France, it will probably be . . . the most tion.* It was not the collision of the completely arbitrary power that has ever ap- two governments, but of the two civili peared on earth. France will be wholly gove zations and the two doctrines. The erned by the agitators in corporations, by societies in the towns formed of directors in as

two vast machines, driven with all their signats, . . . attornies, agents, money-jobbers, momentum and velocity, met face to speculators, and adventurers, composing an face, not by chance, but by fatality. A

guoble oligarchy founded on the destruction of whole age of literature and philosophy the crown, the church, the nobility and the Adople,”

had been necessary to amass the fuel

which filled their sides, and laid down This is what Burke wrote in 1790 at the rail which guided their course. Ir the dawn of the first French Revolu- this thundering clash, amid these ebullition. I Two years after the people of tions of hissing and fiery, vapor, in Birmingham destroyed the houses of these red flames which' licked the some English democrats, and the miners boilers, and whirled with a rumbling of Wednesbury went out in a body noise upwards to the heavens, an atfrom their pits to come to the succor tentive spectator may still discover the of “ king and church.” If we compare nature and the accumulation of the one crusade with another, scared Eng. force which caused such an outburst, land was as fanatical as enthusiastic dislocated such iron plates, and strewed France. Pitt declared that they could the ground with such ruins. not "treat with a nation of atheists." $ Burke said that the war was not be. tween people and people, but between

CHAPTER IV. * Burke's Works, vi. 5; Letter to a Member of the National Assembly. 1 Ibid. v. 349; Reflections.

Addison. I“ The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please : we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk

I. congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints. • Strange chaos of levity and In this vast transformation of mind ferocity, monstrous tragi-comic scene. which occupies the whole eighteenth

After I have read the list of the persons and descriptious elected into the Tiers-Etat, century, and gives England its political nothing which they afterwards did could appear and moral standing, two eminent men astonishing. of any practical experience appear in politics and morality, both in the state, not one man was to be found. The best were only men of theory: The majority complished yet seen in England; both

accomplished writers—the most ac. was composed of practitioners in the law, active chicaners, obscure provincial advo- accredited mouthpieces of a party, cates, stewards of petty local jurisdictions, masters in the art of persuasion and country attornies, notaries, etc:".-Burke's Rea conviction ; both limited in philosophy flections, etc., v. 37 and 90. That which offends Burke, and even makes him very uneasy, was, and art, incapable of considering sen. that no representatives of the “ natural landed timents in a disinterested fashion ; interests were among the representatives of always bent on seeing in things mus. 52 Tiers-Etat. Let us give one quotation tives for approbation or blame; other mors, for really this political clairvoyance is akin to genius: “Men are qualified for civil wise differing, and even in contras! liberty in exact proportion to their disposition with one another : one happy, benevo. to put moral chains upon their own appetites. lent, beloved ; the other hated, hat

07. Society cannot exist unless a controlling ing, and most unfortunate: the one a power upon will and appetite be placed some where ; and the less of it there is within the partisan of liberty and the noblest more there must be without. It is ordained in hopes of man; the other an advocate the eternal constitution of things that men of of a retrograde party, and an eager intemperate minds cannot be free. Their pas detractor of humanity: the one meas sions forge their fetters.'

§ Pitt's Speeches, 3 vols. 1808, ii. p. 81, on ured, delicate, furnishing a model of negotiating for peace with France, Jan. 26, the most solid English qualities, per 1795. Pitt says, however, in the same speech: « God forbid that we should look on the body * Letters to a Noble Lond; Cetters on a of the people of France as atheista."-TR. Regicide Peace.

a

fected by continental culture ; the other | most affected, Claudian and Pruden unuridled and formidable, showing an tius; presently in Italy quotations will example of the harshest English in- rain from his pen; from top to bottom stincts, luxuriating without limit or in all its nooks, and under all its asrule in every kind of devastation and pects, his memory is stuffed with Latin amid every degree of despair. To verses. We see that he loves them, penetrate to the interior of this civil- scans them with delight, that a fine ization and this people, there are no cæsura charms him, that every delicacy means better than to pause and dwell touches him, that no hue of art or epon Swift and Addison.

emotion escapes him, that his literary

tact is refined, and prepared to relish II.

all the beauties of thought and expres“I have often reflected,”

sion. This inclination, too long re Steele

says of Addison, " after a night spent with allow; a man ought not to spend so

tained, is a sign of a little mind, I aim, apart from all the world, that I much time in inventing centus. AddiLad had the pleasure of conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Teroson would have done better to enlarge ence and Catullus, who had all their

his knowledge--to study Latin prosewit and nature heightened with humor, antiquity

, modern Italy, which he

writers, Greek literature, Christian more exquisite and delightful than any hardly knew. But this limited culture, other man ever possessed.” * Pope, a rival of Addison, and a bitter leaving him weaker, made him more

refined. He formed his art by study. rival, adds: “ His conversation had something in it more charming than I ing only the monuments of Latin ur. have found in any other man." These banity; he acquired a taste for the sayings express the whole talent of and artifices of style ; he became self

elegance and refinements, the triumphs Addison: his writings are conversations, masterpieces of English

urbanity contemplative correct, capable of and reason ; nearly all the details of knowing and perfecting his own his character and lífe have contributed tongue. In the designed reministo nourish this urbanity and this rea-cences, the happy allusions, the dissoning:

creet tone of his little poems, I find

beforehand At the age of seventeen we find him

many

traits of the Spectaat Oxford, studious and peaceful, loving solitary walks under the elm-ave

Leaving the university, he travelled nues, and amongst the beautiful mead.

for a long time in the two most polows on the banks of the Cherwell. and Italy. He lived at Paris, in the

ished countries in the world, France From the thorny brake of school edu- house of the ambassador, in the reg. cation he chose the only flower-a ular and brilliant society which gave withered one, doubtless, Latin verse, fashion to Europe; he visited Boileau, out one which, compared to the erudition, to the theology, to the logic of Malebranche, saw with somewhat mathe time, is still a flower. He cele licious curiosity the fine curtsies of the brates, in strophes or hexameters, the painted and affected ladies of Verpeace of Ryswick, or the system of Dr. sailles, the grace and almost stale Burnet; he composes little ingenious

civilities of the fine speakers and fino

lle was poems on a puppet-show, on the battle dancers of the other sex of the pigmies and cranes; he learns amused at the complimentary inter. to praise and jest—in Latin it is true-course of Frenchmen, and remarked but with such success, that his verses

that when a tailor accosted a shoe recommend him for the rewards of the maker, he congratulated himself on ministry, and even come to the

knowl- the honor of saluting him. In Italy he edge of Boileau. At the same time he admired the works of art, and praised imbues himself with the Latin poets ;

them in a letter,* in which the enthu. he knows them by heart, even the siasm is rather cold, but very well ex.

tor.

we

a

pressed.* He had the fine training of the world ?. He had already a song

hich is now given to young men of time ago acquired the art of fashion. higher ranks. And it was not the able poetry, I mean the correct verses, amusements of Cockneys or the racket wk'ch are complimentary, or written to of taverns which employed him. His order. In all polite society we look beroved Latin poets followed him for the adornment of though everywhere. He had read them over desire for it rare, brilliant, beautiful before setting out; he recited their dress, to distinguish it from vulgar verses in the places which they men- thoughts, and for this reason we im. tion. “I must confess, it was not one pose upon it rhyme, metre, noble ex: of the least entertainments that I met pression ; we keep for it a store ci with in travelling, to examine these select terms, verified metaphors, suit several doseriptions, as it were, upon able images, which are like an aristo the spot, and to compare the natural cratic wardrobe, in which it is ham. face of the country with the landscapes pered but must adorn itself. Men of that the poets have given us of it.” | wit are bound to make verses for it, These were the pleasures of an epicure and in a certain style, just as others in literature; there could be nothing must display their lace, and that after more literary and less pedantic than a certain pattern. Addison put on the account which he wrote on his this dress, and wore it correctly and return. I Presently this refined and easily, passing without difficulty from delicate curiosity led him to coins. one habit to a similar one, from Latin “There is a great affinity," he says, to English verse. His principal piece, “between them and poetry ;” for they The Campaign,* is an excellent model serve as a commentary upon ancient of the agreeable and classical style. authors; an effigy of the Graces makes Each verse is full, perfect in itself, a verse of Horace visible. And on with a clever antithesis, a good epithet, this subject he wrote a very agreeable or a concise picture. Countries have dialogue, choosing for personages well. noble names; Italy is Ausonia, the bred men: “all three very well versed Black Sea is the Scythian Sea; there in the politer parts of learning, and are mountains of dead, and a thunder had travelled into the most refined of eloquence sanctioned by Lucian; nations of Europe. . . . Their design pretty turns of oratorical address imwas to pass away the heat of the sum- itated from Ovid; cannons are men. mer among the fresh breezes that rise tioned in poetic periphrases, as later from the river (the Thames), and the in Delille.f The poem is an official agreeable mixture of shades and foun- and decorative amplification, like that tains in which the whole country nat- which Voltaire wrote afterwards on urally abounds.” § Then, with a gen- the battle of Fontenoy. Addison does tle and well-tempered gayety, he laughs yet better; he wrote an opera, a com at pedants who waste life in discussing edy, a much admired tragedy on the the Latin toga or sandal, but pointed death of Cato. Such writings were al. out, like a man of taste and wit, the ways, in the last century, a passport to services which coins might render to history and the arts. Was there ever

* On the victory of Blenheim, i. 63. better education for a literary man + " With foods of gore that from the vku

quished fell ""Renowned in verse, cach shady thícket The marshes stagnate and the rivers swes.

Mountains of slain, etc. ... And every stream in heavenly numbers

Rows of hollow brass,

Tube behind tube the dreadful entrana Where the smooth chisel all its force has

keep, shown,

Whilst in their wombs ten thousand thus And softened into flesh the rugged stone. • dors sleep. Here pleasing airs my ravisht soul con

Here shattered walls, like broken found With circling notes and laluyrinths of

rocks, from far sound."-Addision's Works, i. 43.

Rise up in hideous views, the guilt of war,

Whilst here the vine o'er hills of ruin - Preface to Remarks on Italy, ii.

climbs Ibid.

Industrious to conce'u great Bourboa's 0 First Dialogue on Medals, i. 435

grows,

flows.