Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 4 With a Memoir and Index

The King, who was looking about for an accomplished man to conduct the education of his natural son, the young Duke of Richmond, at length fixed on Wycherley. The poet, exulting...

“Omichund,” said Mr. Scrafton in Hindostanee, “the red treaty is a trick you are to have nothing.” Omichund fell back in {248}to the arms of his attendants. He revived; but his...

In 1694, Congreve brought out the Double Dealer, a comedy in which all the powers which had produced the Old Bachelor showed themselves, matured by time and improved by exercise...

If, indeed, the magistrate would content himself with laying his opinions and reasons before the people, and would leave the people, uncorrupted by hope or fear, to judge for th...

{351}genius to the author of Alexander’s Feast, or fine observation, rich fancy, and exquisite humour to him who imagined Will Honeycomb and Sir Roger de Coverley. He has paid p...

Mr. Courtenay {1}has long been well known to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the...

We {194}have always thought it strange that, while the history of the Spanish empire in America is familiarly known to all the nations of Europe, the great actions of our countr...

A century and a half passed away; and then came the second great rising up of the human intellect against the spiritual domination of Rome. During the two generations which foll...

Mr. Gladstone, we see, with deep regret, censures the British government in India for distributing a small sum among the Catholic priests who minister to the spiritual wants of...

But these things which, after the lapse of more than eighty years, cannot be told or read without horror, awakened neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of the savage Nabob. He...

From Clive’s third visit to India dates the purity of our Eastern empire. When he landed in Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a place to which Englishmen were sent only t...

The government of Madras, encouraged by these events, determined to send a strong detachment, under Clive, to reinforce the garrison of Trichinopoly. But {221}just at this conju...

Sir John Temple was married to a sister of the celebrated Henry Hammond, a learned and pious divine, who took the side of the King with very conspicuous zeal during the civil wa...

This controversy probably prevented Congreve from fulfilling the engagements into which he had entered with the actors. It was not till 1700 that he produced the Way of the Worl...

The plan, considered merely as a plan for the formation of a Cabinet, is so obviously inconvenient, that we cannot easily believe this to have been Temple’s chief object. The nu...

Here again we find propositions of vast sweep, and of sound so orthodox and solemn that many good people, we doubt not, have been greatly edified by it. But let us examine the w...

The transmission of orders from the Apostles to an English clergyman of the present day must have been through a very great number of intermediate persons. Now, it is probable t...

And now again the tide turned. Two violent outbreaks of religious feeling in opposite directions had given a character to the history of a whole century. Protestantism had at fi...

Nor did they, though they had become great sovereigns, therefore cease to be freebooters. They still retained the predatory habits of their forefathers. Every region which was n...

All Temple’s feelings about Irish questions were those of a colonist and a member of the dominant caste. He troubled himself as little about the welfare of the remains of the ol...

One of Sir William’s pieces, however, deserves notice, not, indeed, on account of its intrinsic merit, but on account of the light which it throws on some curious weaknesses of...

This is not the only instance in which Mr. Gladstone has shrunk in a very remarkable manner from the consequences of his own theory. If there be in the whole world a state to wh...

It was thus in France about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Lewis the Fourteenth in his old age became religious: he determined that his subjects should be religious to...

The Council was organized on the twenty-first of April, 1679; and, within a few hours, one of the fundamental principles on which it had been constructed was violated. A secret...

The revolution put an end, in a very different way, to the long contest between the King and the Parliament. From that time, the House of Commons has been predominant in the Sta...

The alliance against Holland, formidable as it was, was yet of such a nature that it could not succeed at all, unless it succeeded at once. The English Ministers could not carry...

In the mean time, the impulse which Clive had given to the administration of Bengal was constantly becoming fainter and fainter. His policy was to a great extent abandoned; the...

But it was not on moral influence alone that the Catholic Church relied. The civil sword in Spain and Italy was unsparingly employed in her support. The {325}Inquisition was arm...

“My good friend,” said Lysias, “you quite forget that the judges are to hear it only once.” The case is the same in the English parliament. It would be as idle in an orator to w...

The wealth of Clive was such as enabled him to vie with the first grandees of England. There remains proof that he had remitted more than a hundred and eighty thousand pounds th...

This memorable negotiation occupied only five days. De Witt complimented Temple in high terms on having effected in so short a time what must, under other management, have been...

In spite of this excellent advice, the Company adhered to the old system, paid low salaries, and connived at the indirect gains of the agents. The pay of a member of Council was...

Within a few months after the death of this remarkable man, his second son Charles appeared at the head of the party opposed to the American War. Charles had inherited the bodil...