Part 20

This paper presents, in fifty-four articles, duly numbered, objections to the course and policy of Fox. It was, in brief, an arraignment of that distinguished gentleman. But it was not intended for publication, at least at that time. It was transmitted to the Duke of Portland, with a letter, asking that it might not even be read at once, but that the Duke would keep it locked in the drawer of his library-table, and when a day of compulsory reflection came, then be pleased to turn to it. Communicated thus in confidence, it might have remained indefinitely, if not always, unknown to the public, locked in the ducal drawer, if the amanuensis whom Burke employed in copying it had not betrayed him. This was none other than Swift, to whom the familiar letters were addressed. Unknown to his employer, he had appropriated to himself a copy in his own handwriting, with corrections and additions by Burke, which seems to have come between the original rough draught and the final copy transmitted to the Duke of Portland. Some time afterwards, while Burke was in his last illness, feeble and failing fast, this faithless scrivener communicated this copy to an equally faithless publisher, by whom it was advertised as "Fifty-Four Articles of Impeachment against the Eight Honorable C.J. Fox." When this was seen by Mrs. Burke, she felt it her duty to keep all newspapers and letters from her husband, that he might know nothing of the treachery, at least until it was relieved so far as it could be. Dr. Lawrence and Dr. King, assisted by the affidavit of Mr. Rivington, succeeded in obtaining an injunction against the publisher on the very day when the tract appeared. But two thousand copies had already stolen abroad.

It was not until Mrs. Burke, on opening a letter from Dr. Lawrence to her husband, learned that the injunction had been obtained, that, at two o'clock in the afternoon of the 15th of February, 1797, she delivered to him his newspapers and correspondence for the past week. He was less disturbed than had been expected. "This affair does vex me," he said; "but I am not in a state of health at present to be deeply vexed at anything. Had I intended it for the public, I should have been more exact and full. Many temperaments and explanations there would have been, if ever I had had a notion that it should meet the public eye." He was justly indignant at the knavish publisher, whose conduct surpassed that of the Dublin pirates, or Edmund Curll. But he was at a loss to know how the publisher obtained a copy. He did not suppose that the Duke of Portland had given up his, and he remembered only "the rough and incorrect papers" constituting the first draught, which, it seems, Dr. Lawrence, about a year before, had paid the false Swift a guinea to deliver back. He had forgotten the intermediate copy made by Swift and corrected by himself.

This illicit publication, especially under such a title, was calculated to attract attention. Its author was dying, so that it seemed to be his last words. Pitt read it with delight, and declared it to be a model in that style of composition. But his latest biographer says of it, that "it may, perhaps, be regretted that Burke ever wrote the 'Observations on the Conduct of the Minority.' It is certainly the least pleasing of all his compositions."[A] In style, it is direct, terse, and compact, beyond any other composition of Burke's. Perhaps, as it was not intended for the public, he was less tempted to rhetorical indulgence. But the manuscript now before us exhibits the minute care with which it was executed. Here also may be traced varieties of expression, constituting the different forms which a thought assumed, not unlike the various drawings of Raffaelle for the same wonderful picture.

[Footnote A: Macknight, Vol. III. p. 532.]

But we must stop. It is only as a literary curiosity that we are now dealing with this relic.

HARVARD'S HEROES.

The stranger who enters the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral in London cannot fail to notice the superb pulpit which stands at the angle of the choir. It is composed of rare and costly marbles and other precious stones. But, beautiful and fitting as it is, its greatest value lies in the circumstance which placed it there. It is a memorial, the tribute of affection. It was erected by his surviving comrades in arms to a noble officer of the Indian army. Yet this, from its position a [Greek: ktêma es aei], is only one among numberless like monuments which the traveller in England meets at every turn. In public squares, in parish churches, in stately cathedrals,--wherever the eye of the wayfarer can be arrested, whereever the pride of country is most deeply stirred, wherever the sentiment of loyalty is consecrated by religion,--the Englishman loves to guard from oblivion the names of his honored dead. There is in this both a cause and a consequence of that intense local pride and affection by which the men of Great Britain are bound to the scenes of their early lives.

"It will never do for us to be beaten," said the Duke at Waterloo; "think what they will say of us at home!"--and this simple sentence went straight to the heart of every man who heard. What they will say at home is the prevailing thought in each young soldier's heart as he goes into his first fight. And "home" does not mean for him so much broad England as it does the little hamlet where he was born, the school where he was trained, the county in which his forefathers were honored in times gone by. He thinks of his name, henceforward linked with a glorious victory! whispered around among the groups who linger in the church-yard after the morning service. He trusts, that, if he fall nobly, there will be for him the memorial window through whose blazoned panes the sunlight will fall softly across the "squire's pew," where as a boy he knelt and worshipped, or touch with a crimson and azure gleam the marble effigies of his knightly sires recumbent on their tombs. Or he thinks of a place among the lettered names high up on the old oaken wall of the school-room at Winchester or Harrow or Westminster,--that future boys, playing where he played, shall talk of him whom they never knew as "one of ours." For he is well aware that he is making fame not for himself alone, but to be prized where he himself has been most loved and happiest.

We, in this new land of ours, have but a very faint experience of the intense working of such influences upon a people in whom the local association and sentiment are ingrained. We are but just beginning where Englishmen began eight centuries and more ago. Hence our glorifying of the past has been a little indiscriminate, and withal has sought to commemorate events more than individuals. But the last two years have taken us through one of those great periods which, in their concentrated energy, compress the work of years into days, and which mark the water-sheds of history. The United States of 1865 will be as unlike the same land in 1855 as the youth is unlike the child. Life is measured by action, not duration. The brilliant epoch of the first Persian invasion was more to Greece than its slumbering centuries under Turkish rule, and "fifty years of Europe" more "than a cycle of Cathay." We shall look back upon a past. We shall have a truly national existence. It will be but natural, as it will be most wise, that we take heed of those elements which have ever been so potent in strengthening national character. One of these has been briefly hinted at above. Yet it may be undesirable to perpetuate the memory of events in which the whole country cannot participate, which will not for the remainder of this century be thought of by one section without shame and confusion of face, and which will only tend to keep alive the sad old jealousies and hates. We shall be very loath to place our monumental columns upon the fields of Antietam and Gettysburg. We should not tolerate them upon the slopes of Manassas or the bluffs of Edwards' Ferry. When the war is ended, and the best guardian of our internal commerce is the loyalty of the returning citizens to their old allegiance, we shall do wisely to level the earthworks of Vicksburg and Port Hudson. In the city where mob-violence is crushed under the force of armed law, no one cares to keep for a day the crumbling walls and the shattered barricade, though they may have witnessed heroism as splendid as Arcola or Wagram, for they witness also to a wickedness and a terror which all would gladly forget. The only memorial that a wise and high-souled nation _can_ erect after this war will be the single monument which shall commemorate the hour of peace restored.

But while we are debarred from thus recording upon tablets more lasting than brass the story of our mournful triumphs over erring brethren, we are doubly bound in gratitude to keep green the memory of the men who have deserved well of their country in the hour of utmost need. We ought to do this also in that temper which shall look most singly to the noble end of forming heroic traditions for the youth of our future land. I know no place where this can be more fitly carried out than in New-England's foremost university. Coeval with the commonwealth itself, the starry roll of its heroes links it with all the fortunes of our history. Men who sat in the Long Parliament, and who may have seen the Battles of Worcester and Dunbar, took their early degrees upon Harvard's first Commencement-stage. Her sons fought against King Philip, were colonels and captains in the "old French War," went forth in the days of Wolfe and Amherst, and exchanged the lexicon for the musket in the eight years' struggle which gave to the Thirteen Colonies their independence. Alumni still survive who did military duty in the second war with England. The men of Harvard were with Taylor at Buena Vista, and helped Scott in his victorious march upon the Aztec capital. Of these the only record is in the annual necrology and the quaint Latin of the "Triennial."

For the young heroes who dropped the oar and took up the sword, who laid aside the gown for the sash and shoulder-strap, who, first in the bloodless triumphs of the regatta and in "capital training" for the great race of life where literary and professional fame are the prizes, went forth to venture all for honor and country, the Alma Mater surely should have a special commemoration. For her own sake, because of her high responsibility in the education of "ingenuous youth," she can do no less. I will venture to say that not a Harvard man, among all the loyal thousands of her surviving Alumni, but feels his heart beat quicker as he reads the story of her children amid their "baptism of fire." There is a notable peculiarity about this the most purely New-England of our colleges,--the continual recurrence of familiar patronymics. I take up the last semi-annual catalogue, and there among the five hundred names I can almost make out my own classmates of twenty years ago. Abbots, Bigelows, Lawrences, Masons, Russells,--they come with every Commencement-season. Some families have had for every generation in a hundred and fifty years a representative in her halls. There is a patent of nobility in this, such peerage as a republic can rightly confer, the coronet which marks the union of birth and worth. We cannot, we, the Alumni, suffer these our brothers to sleep unhonored. Those who shall come after us, who shall fill our places in dear Old Harvard, shall occupy our ancient rooms in Hollis and Massachusetts and Stoughton and Holworthy, have a right not only to count the academic wreaths which have been won in past days by their namesakes, but also to be taught the inspiring lesson of holy love of country, of highest courage and truth and soldierly virtue.

And how shall this be done? Let these few remaining lines suggest at least one plan. Harvard's chief want is a hall for her Alumni, one worthy, in architecture and convenience, of her children's fame, which Harvard Hall is not. That long, awkward room, very hot and cramped to dine in at midsummer, hotter and more cramped still for the Class-day dances, is just fit for one purpose,--the declamation-exercises of the Sophomore year. Let us have a hall fit for Commencements, for Alumni and Phi-Beta orations, for our annual dinners, worthy of the "Doctor's" poems and the "General's" speeches, with a wainscot, not of vulgar plaster, but of noble oak, against which Copley's pictures and Story's busts may properly be placed.

Then let its windows be filled, as in the glorious halls and chapels of England, with memorial glass. Let one of these, if no more, be formed, of the costliest and most perfect workmanship our art can compass, to the memory of the Heroes of Harvard. It shall be the gift of every class which counts among its members one of these. There, amid the gorgeous emblazonry, shall be read their names, their academic year, their battles.

Or, if this may not be, because our Alma Mater is still too poor or too humble to offer to her returning children such banqueting-place,--if there is no Wykcham or Waynflete or Wolsey to arch for us the high-embowed roof, let us place our memorial in the Library, along its shaded alcoves and above its broad portals. There the bright shadows shall sleep and pass with the sliding day, where the young scholars mused and studied. There the future student, as he walks, shall read as noble a lesson as he can glean from any of the groaning shelves and dusty tomes. There shall be for Harvard her _Libro d'Oro_ wherein she has written the names of her best-beloved.

Some token let us have that they are unforgotten. It was no quarrel of vulgar ambition in which they fell. It was the sacred strife for which the mother armed them when she sent them forth. For her they fought, for culture, generous learning, noble arts, for all that makes a land great and glorious, against the barbarism of anarchy and the baseness of a system founded upon wrong and oppression. We cannot, indeed, forget them while we live to come up to our annual gathering, and see the vacant places amid familiar ranks. There will then be question and reply, saddening, but proud. "He fell at Port Hudson, cheering on the forlorn hope." "He lies beneath the forest-trees of Chancellorsville." "He was slain upon the glacis of Fredericksburg." "He died in the foul prisons of Richmond." We cannot forget them, and we would fain leave the memorial of them to future generations. Their fame belongs to Harvard; for what they learned there could not be other than noble, inspiring, manly. Let Harvard make the plan, and give the call, and all of us, from our distant homes and according to our ability, will offer our gifts with gladness. Let the graduates who have leisure and taste and means, and who are still dwelling under the pleasant shades of the Cambridge elms, come together and take up the matter while love and gratitude and pride are fresh.

WHO IS ROEBUCK?

An inquiring American mind, seeking the solution of this momentous question, would naturally turn to Appleton's "New Cyclopædia," Vol. XIV., page 131. The inquiring mind would be enlightened in a somewhat bewildering manner by the description there laid down of a little animal, some of whose qualities are thus set forth in the first article on the page indicated above:--

"ROEBUCK. A small European deer of the genus _Capreolus_.... The skull has a very small, shallow suborbital pit, ... tear-bag indistinct, hoofs narrow and triangular.... The color in summer is reddish brown, in winter olive, with paler shades; inside of the ears fulvous, and a black spot at the angles of the mouth.... It is about four feet long.... The horns are used for knife-handles.... They congregate in small families, but not in herds.... From their strong scent they are easily hunted; though they frequently escape by their speed, doublings, springing to cover, and other artifices.... The roebucks are represented in North America by the Virginia deer."

Inquiring mind, not wishing for researches in the direction of Natural History, albeit the subject of parallelisms is a somewhat curious study and in special cases infinitely amusing, passes on to the next article in the Cyclopædia.

* * * * *

It is sufficiently obvious that it requires neither fame nor greatness to excite public curiosity. A notorious criminal or an unusually eccentric lunatic frequently gives rise to a larger share of newspaper-comment and general discussion than the wisest and most virtuous of mankind. It must be well remembered by those who have read Tom Taylor's Life of Haydon that a dwarf was attracting thousands to the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, while the historical painter, stung to madness by the neglect of the frivolous crowd, committed the hideous and ghastly suicide which threw a tragic darkness over the close of his strange and troubled existence. The desperate and dangerous frequently succeed in placing themselves on a bad eminence, from which they are conspicuous enough; and if to be talked of and pointed at be the sole object of their ambition, they can, of course, be congratulated on their success. Virtue may sit in humble and obscure usefulness at a thousand quiet firesides, while the work of the incendiary may be seen to spread widely, and the tumult of his mischief be heard from afar. And so any public man or politician, whose taste is so morbidly depraved and whose aim in life is so debased as to prefer notoriety to honest, useful service, may revel in the questionable enjoyment of being the especial theme of public debate and private conversation. Hence it happens that so many of our fellow-countrymen are at this moment asking the question with which we head these pages,--"Who is Roebuck?"

An unhappy culprit, who combined with an innocent taste for green peas a thievish method of acquiring their usual savory accompaniment, is reported to have been addressed by an English judge in the following felicitous terms:--"Prisoner at the bar, Providence has endowed you with health and strength, _instead of which_ you go about the country stealing ducks." Providence has endowed John Arthur Roebuck, member of the Parliament of Great Britain, with fair talents and some power of speech, _instead of which_ (to use the accurate judicial ellipsis) he goes about using violent and vulgar words of menace against those who have never offended him, and scattering firebrands as if there were no gun-powder anywhere to ignite and explode. This would be a mean and mischievous occupation for the dullest man; but for one who has proved by his very failures that he is not devoid of intellect or energy, it is a monstrous perversion of mental gifts, even if they are small.

A portion of the fiery heat of his nature may be traced, perhaps, to the fact that he was born at Madras; but as on the mother's side he is descended from the poet Tickell, the friend of Addison, it would not be altogether unreasonable to have expected in him some few of the amenities of the _literæ humaniores_. He soon, however, exchanged the torrid scenes of Oriental life for the snows of Canada, where he received his education; and when we remember what the bizarre oddities of his subsequent career have been, it might be interesting, if we had the materials for the purpose, to inquire what that education was. The British Provinces, however, were not deemed a sufficiently ample theatre of action for the energy of the capacious soul that dwelt in that not over-capacious body; and so, at the age of twenty-three, he repaired to England and commenced his studies for the profession of the law.

He was called to the bar in 1832. He had, however, by no means paid an exclusive attention to the study of the law, or his success in his profession might have been greater, and the world might have had a good lawyer instead of a bad politician. The period of his Inner-Temple student-life was a very stirring time in England. Old principles were dying out, and wrestling in death-struggle with newer and wider theories of human liberty and human progress. The young East-Indian Canadian rushed with natural impetuosity into the arena, and was one of the most reckless and noisy debating-club spouters of the day. In speaking of the Reform Bill at a meeting at a tavern in London, he said, that, if the bill did not pass, he for one should like to "wade the streets of the capital knee-deep in blood." It was consoling to reflect, even at the time, that the atrocious aspiration was mitigated by the reflection that it would not require a deluge of gore to reach the knees of such a Zacchæus as Roebuck. "Pretty wicious that for a child of six!" said the amiable Mr. Squeers on one occasion; and pretty sanguinary that, say we, for a rising little demagogue of thirty.

As England was at that time in a seething ferment of excitement, men who were unscrupulous in their language were at a premium in the political market, and the respectable constituency of the pleasant watering-place of Bath, in Somersetshire, elected the fierce little man as their representative in the Imperial Parliament. This was a great start in life for the new-fledged barrister, and, had he moderated his overweening vanity, and studied wisely, and with some self-abnegation and honest adherence to party, he might have risen to some useful position, and been saved, at least, from the indignity of fetching and carrying for the Emperor of Austria, and from the impertinence of intruding himself into the august presence of Mr. Kinglake's amiable and virtuous friend, the Emperor of France. The English nation might then possibly have pointed to his portrait in their historical gallery as that of an efficient public servant who had deserved well of his country, and he might have escaped a ludicrous immortality as the Dog Tear-'em, in the recent admirable sketch in "Punch."

But, in the words of a political song,--

"There weren't no such luck For John A. Roebuck, And he thought he would teach the whole nation That the Tories were fools, And the Whigs only tools, But Roebuck was England's salvation."

And he, according to this programme, set himself to reform the Constitution and protect the Colonies.

"Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri,"