MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. Part XX. "Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?" Shakspeare.

As my mission was but temporary, and might be attended with personal hazard, I had left Clotilde in England, much to her regret, and travelled with as small a retinue as possible; and in general by unfrequented ways, to avoid the French patroles which were already spread through the neighbourhood of the high-roads. But, at Burgos, the Spanish commandant, on the delivery of my passport, insisted so strongly on the necessity for an escort, placing the wish on a feeling of his personal responsibility, in case of my falling into the enemy's hands, that to save the seÑor's conscience, or his commission, I consented to take a few troopers, with one of his aides-de-camp, to see me in safety through the Sierra Morena.

The aide-de-camp was a character; a little meagre being, who, after a long life of idleness and half-pay, was suddenly called into service; and now figured in a staff-coat and feather. His first commission had been in the luckless expedition of Count O'Reilly against the Moors; and it had probably served him as a topic, from that time to the moment when he pledged his renown for my safe delivery into the hands of the junta of Castile. He had three leading ideas, which formed the elements of his body and soul,—his exploits in the Moorish campaign; his contempt for the monks; and his value for the talents, courage, and fame of Don Ignacio Trueno Relampago, the illustrious appellative of the little aide-de-camp himself. He talked without mercy as we rode along; and gave his opinions with all the easy conviction of an "officer on the staff," and all the freedom of the wilderness. The expedition to Africa had failed solely for want of adopting "the tactics which he would have advised;" and his public services in securing the retreat would have done honour to the Cid, or to Alexander the Great, had not "military jealousy refused to transmit them to the national ear." His opinion of Spanish politics was, that they owed their occasional mistakes solely to the culpable negligence of the war-minister "in overlooking the gallant subalterns of the national army." Spain he regarded as the natural sovereign of Europe; and, of course, of all mankind—its falling occasionally into the background being satisfactorily accounted for by the French descent of her existing dynasty, by the visible deterioration in the royal manufacture of cigars, and, more than either, "by the tardiness of military promotion." This last grievance was the sting. "If justice had been done," exclaimed the new-feathered warrior, rising in his stirrups, and waving his hand, as if he was in the act of cleaving down a Moor, "I should long since have been a general. If I had been a general, the armies of Spain would long since have been on a very different footing. Men of merit would have been placed in their proper positions; the troops would have emulated the exploits of their forefathers in the age of Ferdinand and Isabella; and, instead of receiving a king from France, we should have given her one; while, instead of seeing a French emperor carrying off our princes, as the hawk carries off pigeons, or as a gipsy picks your pocket under pretence of telling your fortune, we should have been garrisoning Paris with our battalions, and sending a viceroy to the Tuileries."

I laughed; but my ill-timed mirth had nearly cost me an "affair of honour" with the little regenerator. His hand was instantly on the hilt of his sword, and every wrinkle on his brown visage was swelling with wrath; when my better genius prevailed, He probably recollected that he was sent as my protector, and that the office would not have been fulfilled according to his instructions, by running me through the midriff. But, with all his pomposity, he had the national good-nature; and when we sat down to our chicken and bottle of Tinto in one of those delicious valleys, he was full of remorse for his burst of patriotic temper.

The day had been a continued blaze of sunshine, the road a burning sand, and the contrast of the spot where we made our halt was tempting. The scene was rich and riant, the evening lovely, and the wine good. I could have reposed there for a month, or a year, or for ever. It would have been enough to make a man turn hermit; and I instinctively gazed round, to look for the convent which "must lie" in so luxurious a site. My companion informed me that I was perfectly right in my conjecture, that spot having been the position of one of the richest brotherhoods of Spain. But its opulence had been unluckily displayed in rather too ostentatious a style in the eyes of a French brigade; who, in consequence, packed up the plate in their baggage, and, in the course of a tumult which followed with the peasantry, burned the building to the ground.

Yet, this misfortune was the source of but slight condolence on the part of my friend. He was perfectly of the new school. "They were Theatines," said he—"as bad as the Jesuits in every thing but hypocrisy—powerful, insolent, bold-faced knaves; and after their robbing me of the inheritance of my old, rich uncle, which one of those crafty padres contrived to make the old devotee give them on his death-bed, I had dry eyes for their ill luck. But, I suppose," added he, "you know their creed?" I acknowledged my ignorance. "Well, you shall hear it. It is incomparably true; though, whether written for them by Moratin or Calderon, I leave to the antiquarians." He then chanted it in the style of the monkish service, and with gesticulations, groans, and upturning of eyes, which strongly gave me the idea that he had employed his leisure, if not relieved his sense of the war-minister's neglect, by exerting his talents as the "Gracioso" of some strolling company. The troopers gathered round us, with that odd mixture of familiarity and respect which belongs to all the lower ranks of Spain; and the performer evidently acquired new spirits from the laughter of his audience, as he dashingly sang his burlesque:—

The whole performance was received with an applause which awoke the little aide-de-camp's genius to such an extent, that he volunteered to sing some stanzas of his own, immeasurably more poignant. He was in the act of filling a bumper to the "downfall of all monkery on the face of the earth," when the report of a musket was heard, and the bottle was shivered in his hand. The honour of Don Ignacio Trueno Relampago was never in greater danger, for he instantly turned much whiter than his own pocket-handkerchief: but the Spaniard is a brave fellow, after all; and seeing that I drew out my pistols, he drew his sword, ordered his troopers to mount, and prepared for battle. But, who can fight against fortune? Our horses, which had been picketed at a few yards' distance in the depth of the shade, were gone. A French battalion of tirailleurs, accidentally coming on our route, had surrounded the grove, and carried off the horses unperceived, while our gallant troopers were chorusing the songster. The sentinel left in charge of them had, of course, given way to the allurements of "sweet nature's kind restorer, balmy sleep," and awoke only to find himself in French hands. Don Ignacio would have fought a legion of fiends; but seven hundred and fifty sharpshooters were a much more unmanageable affair; and on our holding a council of war, (which never fights,) and with a whole circle of bayonets glittering at our breasts, I advised a surrender without loss of time. The troopers were already disarmed, and the Don, appealing to me as evidence that he had done all that could be required by the most punctilious valour, surrendered his sword with the grace of a hero of romance. The Frenchmen enjoyed the entire scene prodigiously, laughed a great deal, drank our healths in our own bottles, and finished by a general request that the Don would indulge them with an encore of the chant which had so tickled their ears during their advance in the wood. The Don complied, malgrÈ, bongrÈ; and at the conclusion of this feat, the French colonel, resolved not to be outdone in any thing, called on one of his subalterns for a song. The subaltern hopelessly searched his memory for its lyrical stores; but after half a dozen snatches of "chansons," and breaking down in them all, he volunteered, in despair, what he pronounced, "the most popular love-song in all Italy." Probably not a syllable of it was understood by any one present but myself; yet this did not prevent its being applauded to the skies, and pronounced one of the most brilliant specimens of Italian sensibility. It was in Latin, and a fierce attack on the Jesuits, which the young officer, a palpable philosophe, had brought with him from the symposia of the "Ecole Polytechnique:"—

The colonel of the tirailleurs was a complete specimen of the revolutionary soldier. He was a dashing figure, with a bronzed face; at least so much of it as I could discover through the most inordinate pair of mustaches ever worn by a warrior. He was ignorant of every thing on earth but his profession, and laughed at the waste of time in poring over books; his travelling-library consisting of but two—the imperial army-list, and the muster-roll of his regiment. His family recollections went no higher than his father, a cobbler in Languedoc. But he was a capital officer, and the very material for a chef-de-bataillon—rough, brave, quick, and as hardy as iron. Half a dozen scars gave evidence of his having shared the glories of France on the Rhine, the Po, and the Danube; and a cross of the Legion of Honour showed that his emperor was a different person from the object of Don Ignacio's cureless wrath, the war-minister who "made a point of neglecting all possible merit below that of a field-marshal."

The Frenchman, with all his, brusquerie, was civil enough to regret my capture, "peculiarly as it laid him under the necessity of taking me far from my route;" his regiment then making forced marches to Andalusia, to join Dupont's division; and for the purpose of secrecy, the strictest orders having been given that the prisoners which they might make in the way should be carried along with them. As I had forwarded my official papers from Galicia to Castile, and was regarded simply as an English tourist, I had no sense of personal hazard; and putting the best complexion which I could upon my misadventure, I rode along with the column over hill and dale, enjoying the various aspects of one of the most varied and picturesque countries in the world. Our marches were rapid, but chiefly by night; thus evading at once the intolerable heat of the Spanish day, and collisions with the people. We bivouacked in the shelter of woods, or in the shade of hills, during the sultry hours; and recommenced our march in the cool of the eve, with short halts, until sunrise. Then we flung ourselves again under the shelter of the trees, and enjoyed those delights of rest and appetite, which are unknown to all but to the marchers and fasters for twelve hours together.

But, on our crossing the Sierra Morena, and taking the direction of Andalusia, the scene was wholly changed. The country was like one vast field of battle. The peasants were every where in arms, villages were seen burning along the horizon, and our constant vigilance was necessary to guard against a surprise. Every soldier who lay down to rest but a few yards from the column, or who attempted to forage in the villages, was sure to be shot or stilettoed; provisions were burned before our faces; and even where we were not actually fired on, the frowns of the population showed sufficiently that the evil day was at hand. At length we reached the range of hills which surround the plain of Cordova; yet only just in time to see the army of Dupont marching out from the city gates, in the direction of Andujar. As I stood beside the colonel, I could observe, by the knitting of his brow, that the movement did not satisfy his military sagacity. "What a quantity of baggage!" he murmured: "how will it be possible to carry such a train through the country, or how to fight, with such an encumbrance embarrassing every step? Unless the Spanish generals are the greatest fools on earth, or unless Dupont has a miracle worked for him, he must either abandon three-fourths of his waggons, or be ruined."

But I was now to have a nearer interest in the expedition. The battalion had no sooner joined the army on its advance, than I was ordered to appear before the chief of the staff. The language of this officer was brief, but expressive.

"You are a spy."

"You are misinformed. I am a gentleman and an Englishman."

"Look here." He produced a copy of my letter to the junta of Castile, which some clerk in the French pay had treacherously transmitted from Madrid. "What answer have you to this?"

I flung the letter on the table.

"What right have you to require an answer? I have not come voluntarily to the quarters of the French army; I am a prisoner; I am not even in a military capacity. You would only act in conformity to the law of nations by giving me my liberty this moment; and I demand that you shall do your duty."

"I shall do it! If you have any arrangements to make, you had better lose no time; for I wait only the general's signature to my report, to have you shot." He turned on his heel. A sergeant with a couple of grenadiers entered, and I was consigned for the night to the provost-marshal. How anxiously I spent that night, I need not say. I was in the hands of violent men, exasperated by the popular resistance, and accustomed to disregard life. I braced myself up to meet my untoward catastrophe, and determined at least not to disgrace my country by helpless solicitation. I wrote a few letters, committed myself to a protection above the passions and vices of man, wrapped my cloak round me, and sank into a sound slumber.

I was aroused by a discharge of cannon, and found the camp in commotion. The Spaniards, under Reding and Castanos, had, as the colonel anticipated, fallen upon our line of march at daybreak, and cut off a large portion of the baggage-train. It had been loaded with the church-plate, and general plunder of Cordova; and the avarice of the French had obviously involved them in formidable difficulty. But, even in the universal tumult, the importance of my seizure was not forgotten; and I was ordered to the rear in charge of a guard. The action now began on all sides; the cannonade rapidly deepening on the flank and centre of the French position, and the musketry already beginning to rattle on various points of the line. From the height on which I stood, the whole scene lay beneath my eye; and nothing could have been better worth the speculation of any man—who was not under sentence of being shot as soon as the struggle was over!

I was aware of the reputation of the French general. He held a high name among the braves of the imperial army for the last ten years, and he had been foremost everywhere. In the desperate Italian campaign against the Austrians and Russians; in the victorious campaign of Austerlitz; in the sanguinary campaign of Eylau—Dupont was one of the most daring of generals of brigade. But his pillage of Cordova had roused the Spanish wrath into fury; and the effort to carry off his plunder made it impossible for him to resist a vigorous attack, even with his twenty thousand veterans. He had indulged himself in Cordova, until the broken armies of the south had found time to rally; and a force of fifty thousand men was now rushing down upon his centre. The hills, as far as the eye could range, were covered with the armed peasantry, moving like dark clouds over their sides, and descending by thousands to the field. The battle now raged furiously in the centre, and the charges of the French cavalry made fearful gaps in the Spanish battalions. At length, the rising of the dust on the right showed that a strong column was approaching, which might decide the day. My heart beat slow as I saw the tricolor floating above its bayonets. It was the advanced guard, with Dupont at its head—a force of three thousand men, which had returned rapidly on its steps, as soon as the sound of the attack had reached it. It was boldly resisted by the Swiss and Walloon brigades of the Spanish line: but the French fire was heavy, its manoeuvre was daring, and I began to fear for the fate of the day; when a loud explosion, and a hurried movement at the extreme of the French position, turned my eyes to the left wing. There the Spanish attack had swept every thing before it. Brigade after brigade was giving way, and the country was covered with scattered horsemen, infantry retiring in disorder, and broken and captured guns. The peasantry, too, had joined in the pursuit, and the wing seemed utterly ruined. To retrieve this disorder was now hopeless, for the French general had extended his line to the extraordinary length of ten miles. His baggage-train was his ruin. The whole Spanish line now advanced, shouting, and only halting at intervals to cannonade the enemy. The French returned a feeble fire, and began to retreat. But retreat was now impossible, and they must fight, or be massacred. At this moment I saw an officer, from the spot where Dupont sat on his charger surrounded by his staff, gallop between the two armies. He was met by a Spanish officer. The firing ceased. Dupont had surrendered, with all the troops in Andalusia!

I was now at liberty, and I was received by the Spanish commander-in-chief with the honours due to my mission and my country. After mutual congratulations on this most brilliant day, I expressed my wish to set off for Madrid without delay. An escort of cavalry was ordered for me, and by midnight I had left behind me the slaughter and the triumph, the noblest of Spanish fields, the immortal Baylen!

The night was singularly dark; and as the by-roads of the Peninsula are confessedly among the most original specimens of the road-making art, our attention was chiefly occupied, for the first hour, in finding our way in Indian file. At length, on the country's opening, I rode forward to the head of the troops, and addressed some questions, on our distance from the next town, to the officer. He at once pronounced my name, and my astonishment was not less than his own. In the commandant of the escort I found my gallant, though most wayward, young friend, Mariamne's lover, Lafontaine! His story was brief. In despair of removing her father's reluctance to their marriage, and wholly unable to bring over Mariamne to his own opinion, that she would act the wiser part in taking the chances of the world along with himself, he had resolved to enter the Russian or the Turkish service, or any other in which he had the speediest probability of ending his career by a bullet or a sabre-blow. The accidental rencontre of one of his relations, an officer high in the Spanish service, had led him into the Peninsula; where, as a Royalist, he was warmly received by a people devoted to their kings; and had just received a commission in the cavalry of the guard, when the French war broke out. He felt no scruples in acting as a soldier of Spain; for, with the death of Louis, he had regarded all ties as broken, and he was now a citizen of the world. I ventured to mention the name of Mariamne; and I found that, there at least, the inconstancy charged on his nation had no place. He spoke of her with eloquent tenderness, and it was evident that, with all his despair of ever seeing her again, she still held the first place in his heart. In this wandering, yet by no means painful, interchange of thoughts, we moved on for some hours; when one of the advanced troopers rode back, to tell us that he had heard shots in the distance, and other sounds of struggle. We galloped forward, and from the brow of the next hill saw flames rising from a village in the valley beneath, and a skirmish going on between some marauding troops and the peasantry. Lafontaine instantly ordered an advance; and our whole troop were soon in the centre of the village, busily employed with the pistol and sabre. The French, taken by surprise, made but a slight resistance, and, after a few random shots, ran to a neighbouring wood. But as I was looking round, to congratulate my friend on his success, I saw him, to my infinite alarm, reel in his saddle, and had only time to save him from falling to the ground.

The accommodation of the Ventas and Posadas is habitually wretched, and I demanded whether there was not a house of some hidalgo in the neighbourhood, to which the wounded officer might be carried. One of the last shots of the skirmish had struck him in the arm, and he was now fainting with pain. The house was pointed out, and we carried my unfortunate friend there, in a swoon. Even in that moment of anxiety, and with scarcely more than the first dawn to guide us, I could not help being struck with the cultivated beauty of the avenue through which we passed, and the profusion and variety of the flowers, which now began to breathe their opening incense to the dawn. The house was old, but large and handsome, and the furniture of the apartment into which we were shown, was singularly tasteful and costly. Who the owner was, was scarcely known among the bold fellows who accompanied us; but by their pointings to their foreheads, and their making the sign of the cross at every repetition of my enquiries, I was inclined to think him some escaped lunatic. I shortly, however, received a message from him, to tell me, that so soon as the crowd should be dismissed, he would visit the officer. The apartment was cleared and he came. This was a new wonder for me. It was Mordecai that entered the room. The light was still so imperfect, that for awhile he could not recognise either of us; and when I advanced to take his hand, and addressed him by his name, he started back as if he had trod upon a snake. However, his habitual presence of mind soon enabled him to answer all my enquiries, and, among the first, one for the health and happiness of his daughter. Fearful of the effects of his intelligence, whether good or evil, on the nerves of Lafontaine, who still lay on the sofa, almost invisible in the dusk, I begged to follow him to another room, and there I listened to his whole anxious history since our parting.—Mariamne had suddenly grown discontented with Poland; which to Mordecai himself had become a weary residence, from the ravages of the French war. For some reason, unaccountable to me, said the old man, she set her heart upon Spain, and had now been domiciled in this secluded spot for a year. But she was visibly fading away. She read and wrote much, and was even more attached to her harp and her flowers than ever; yet declared that she had bid farewell to the world. The father wept as he spoke, but his were the tears of sorrow rather than of anguish. They stole quietly down his cheeks, and showed that the stern and haughty spirit was subdued within him. I had not ventured to allude to Lafontaine; but the current of his own thoughts at length led to that forbidden topic. "I am afraid, Mr Marston," said he, "that I have been too harsh with my child. I looked for her alliance with some of the opulent among my own kindred; or I should have rejoiced if your regards had been fixed on her, and hers on you. And in those dreams, I forgot that the affections must choose for themselves. I had no objection to the young Frenchman, but that he was a stranger, and was poor.—Yet are not we ourselves strangers? and if he was poor, was not I rich? But all is over now; and I shall only have to follow my poor Mariamne, where I should have much rather preceded her,—to the grave."

I now requested to see Mariamne. She met me with almost a cry of joy, and with a cheek of sudden crimson; but, when the first flush passed away, her looks gave painful proof of the effect of solitude and sorrow. The rounded beauty of her cheek was gone, her eyes, once dancing with every emotion, were fixed and hollow, and her frame, once remarkable for symmetry, was thin and feeble. But, her heart was buoyant still, and when I talked of past scenes and recollections, her eye sparkled once more. Still, her manner was changed—it was softer and less capricious; her language, even her voice, was subdued; and more than once I saw a tear stealing on her eye. At length, after hearing some slight detail of her wanderings, and her fears that the troubles of Spain might drive her from a country in whose genial climate and flowery fields "she had hoped to end her days;" I incidentally asked—whether, in all her wanderings, she had heard of "my friend, Lafontaine." How impossible is it to deceive the instinct of the female heart! The look which she gave me, the searching glance of her fine eyes, which flashed with all their former lustre, and the sudden quivering of her lip, told me how deeply his image was fixed in her recollection. She saw at once that I had tidings of her lover; and she hung upon the hand which I held out to her, with breathless and beseeching anxiety. After some precautions, I revealed to her the facts—that he was as faithfully devoted to her as ever, and—that he was even under her roof!

I leave the rest of her story to be conjectured. I shall only say, that I saw her made happy; the burden taken off her spirits which had exhausted her frame; her former vivacity restored, her eye sparkling once more; and even the heart of her father cheered, and acknowledging "that there was happiness in the world, if men did not mar it for themselves." The "course of true love" had, at last, "run smooth." I was present at the marriage of Lafontaine. The trials of fortune had been of infinite service to him; they had sobered his eccentricity, taught him the value of a quiet mind, and prepared him for that manlier career which belongs to the husband and the father. I left them, thanking me in all the language of gratitude, promising to visit me in England.

---

My mission to the junta was speedily and successfully accomplished. Spain, in want of every thing but that which no subsidy could supply, a determination to die in the last intrenchment, was offered arms, ammunition, and the aid of an English army. In her pride, and yet a pride which none could blame, she professed herself able to conquer by her own intrepidity. Later experience showed her, by many a suffering, the value of England as the guide, sustainer, and example of her national strength. But Spain had still the gallant distinction of being the first nation which, as one man, dared to defy the conqueror of all the great military powers of the Continent. The sieges of Saragossa and Gerona will immortalize the courage of the Spanish soldier; the guerilla campaigns will immortalize the courage of the Spanish peasant; and the memorable confession of the French Emperor, that "Spain was his greatest error, and his ultimate ruin," is a testimonial more lasting than the proudest trophy, to the magnanimous warfare of the Peninsula.

This was the Crisis. The spirit of the whole European war now assumed a bolder, loftier, and more triumphant form. A sudden conviction filled the general heart, that the fortunes of the field were about to change. Nations which had, till then, been only emulous in prostration to the universal conqueror, now assumed the port of courage, prepared their arms, and longed to try their cause again in battle. The outcry of Spain, answered by the trumpet of England, pierced to the depths of that dungeon in which the intrigue and the power of France had laboured to inclose the continental nations. The war of the Revolution has already found historians, of eloquence and knowledge worthy of so magnificent an era of human change. But, to me, the chief interest arose from its successive developments of the European mind. The whole period was a continued awakening of faculties, hitherto almost unknown, in the great body of the people. The first burst of the Revolution, like the first use of gunpowder, had only shown the boundless force of a new element of destruction. The Spanish insurrection showed its protecting and preservative power. The tremendous energy which seemed to defy all control, was there seen effecting the highest results of national defence, and giving proof of the irresistible strength provided in the population of every land. What nation of Europe does not possess a million of men for its defence; and what invader could confront a million of men on their own soil? Let this truth be felt, and aggression becomes hopeless, and war ceases to exist among men.

For the first time in the history of war, it was discovered, that the true force of kingdoms had been mistaken—a mistake which had lasted for a thousand years; that armies were but splendid machines; and that, while they might be crushed by the impulse of machines more rapid, stronger, and more skilfully urged, nothing could crush the vigour of defence, while it was supplied by a people.

The levÉe en masse of France was but the rudest, as it was the earliest, form of the new discovery. There, terror was the moving principle. The conscription was the recruiting-officer. The guillotine was the commander who manoeuvred the generals, the troops, and the nation. Yet, the revolutionary armies differed in nothing from the monarchical, but in the superiority of their numbers, and the inferiority of their discipline.

The war of Spain was another, and a nobler advance. It was the war of a nation. In France the war was the conspiracy of a faction. In Spain the loss of the capital only inflamed the hostility of the provinces. In France the loss of the capital would have extinguished the Revolution; as it afterwards extinguished the Empire. I think that I can see the provision for a still bolder and more beneficent advance, even in those powerful developments of national capabilities. It will, perhaps, be left to other nations. Spain and France have a yoke upon their minds, which will disqualify them both from acting the nobler part of guides to Europe. Superstition contains in itself the canker of slavery; perfect freedom is essential to perfect power; and the nation which, from the cradle, prostrates itself to the priest, must retain the early flexure of its spine. The great experiment must be reserved for a nobler public mind; for a people religious without fanaticism, and free without licentiousness; honouring the wisdom of their fathers, without rejecting the wisdom of the living age; aspiring but to the ministration of universal good, and feeling that its opulence, knowledge, and grandeur are only gifts for mankind.

The system of the war was now fully established. All the feelings of England were fixed on the Peninsula, and all the politics of her statesmen and their rivals were alike guided by the course of the conflict. The prediction was gallantly fulfilled—that the French empire would there expose its flank to English intrepidity; that the breaching battery which was to open the way to Paris, would be fixed on the Pyrenees; that the true sign of conquest was the banner of England.

The battle of the Ministry was fought in Spain, and as victoriously as the battle of our army. We saw Opposition gradually throw away its arms, and gradually diminish in the popular view, until its existence was scarcely visible. Successive changes varied the cabinet, but none shook its stability. Successive ministers sank into the grave, but the ministry stood. The spirit of the nation, justly proud of its triumphs, disdained to listen to the whispers of a party, who murmured defeat with victory before their eyes; who conjured up visions of ruin, only to be rebuked by realities of triumph; and to whom the national scorn of pusillanimity, and the national rejoicing in the proudest success, could not unteach the language of despair. Perceval, the overthrower of the Foxite ministry, perished; but the political system of the cabinet remained unchanged. Castlereagh perished—Liverpool perished; but the political system still remained. The successive pilots might give up the helm, but the course of the great vessel continued the same—guided by the same science, and making her way through sunshine, and through storm, to the same point of destination.

The three successive ministers were men of high ability for government, though their character of ability exhibited the most remarkable distinctions. Perceval had been a lawyer, and had risen to the rank of attorney-general. In the House, he carried the acuteness, the logic, and even the manner, of his profession with him. Without pretending to the power of eloquence, he singularly possessed the power of conviction; without effecting changes in the theory of the constitution, he put its truths in a new light; and without a trace of bigotry, he defended, with conscientious vigour, the rights of the national religion. Sustaining a bold struggle at the head of the feeblest minority perhaps ever known in Parliament, he had shown unshaken courage and undismayed principle in the day of the Foxite supremacy. This defence was at length turned into assault, and his opponents were driven from power. His ministry was too brief for his fame. But, when he fell by the hand of a maniac, he left a universal impression on the mind of the empire, that the blow had deprived it of a great ministerial mind.

Lord Castlereagh exhibited a character of a totally different order, yet equally fitted for his time. An Irishman, he had the habitual intrepidity of his countrymen, combined with the indefatigable diligence of England. Nobly connected, and placed high in public life by that connexion, he showed himself capable of sustaining his ministerial rank by personal capacity. Careless of the style of his speeches, he was yet a grave, solid, and fully-informed debater. But it was in the council that his value to the country was most acknowledged. His conception of the rights, the influence, and the services of England, was lofty; and, when the period came for deciding on her rank in the presence of continental diplomacy, he was her chosen, and her successful, representative. His natural place was among the councils of camps, where sovereigns were the soldiers. The "march to Paris" was due to his courage; and the first fall of Napoleon was effected by the ambassador of England.

Lord Liverpool was a man equally fitted for his time. The war had triumphantly closed. But, a period of perturbed feelings and financial necessities followed. It required in the minister a combination of sound sense and practical vigour—of deference for the public feelings, yet respect for the laws—of promptitude in discovering national resources, and yet of firmness in repelling factious change. The head of the cabinet possessed those qualities. Without brilliancy, without eloquence, without accomplished literature; still, no man formed his views with a clearer intelligence; and no man pursued them with more steady determination. Perhaps disdaining the glitter of popularity, no minister, for the last half century, had been so singularly exempt from all the sarcasms of public opinion. The nation relied on his sincerity, honoured his purity of principle, and willingly confided its safety to hands which none believed capable of a stain.

But the characters of those three ministers were striking in a still higher point of view. Their qualities seem to have been expressly constructed to meet the peculiar exigency of their times. Perceval—acute, strict, and with strong religious conceptions—to meet a period, when religious laxity in the cabinet had already enfeebled the defence of the national religion. Castlereagh—stately, bold, and high-toned—to meet a period, when the fate of Europe was to be removed from cabinets to the field, and when he was to carry the will of England among assembled monarchs. Liverpool—calm, rational, and practical; the man of conscience and common sense—for the period, when the great questions of religion had been quieted, the great questions of the war had died with the war, and when the supreme difficulty of government was, to reconcile the pressure of financial exigency with the progress of the people—to invigorate the public frame without inflaming it by dangerous innovation—and to reconstruct the whole commercial constitution, without infringing on those principles which had founded the prosperity of the empire.

At length the consummation came: the French empire fell on the field by the hand of England. All the sovereigns of Europe rushed in to strip the corpse, and each carried back a portion of the spoils. But the conqueror was content with the triumph, and asked no more of glory than the liberation of mankind.

While all was public exultation for this crowning event, fortune had not neglected to reward the gentler virtues of one worthy of its noblest gifts. In my first campaign with the Prussian troops in France, I had intrusted to the care of the old domestic whom I found in the Chateau de Montauban, an escritoire and a picture, belonging to the family of Clotilde. The old man had disappeared; and I took it for granted that he had been plundered, or had died.

But one day, after my return from one of those splendid entertainments with which the Regent welcomed the Allied sovereigns, I found Clotilde deeply agitated. The picture of her relative was before her, and she was gazing at its singularly expressive and lovely countenance with intense interest.

She flew into my arms. "I have longed for your coming," said she, with glowing lips and tearful eyes, "to offer at least one proof of gratitude for years of the truest protection, and the most generous love. Michelle, the husband of my nurse, has arrived; and he tells me, that this escritoire contains the title-deeds of my family. I was resolved that you alone should open it. In the frame of that picture, in a secret drawer, is the key." The spring was touched, the key was found; and in the little chest was discovered, untouched by chance or time, the document entitling my beautiful and high-hearted wife to one of the finest possessions in France. By a singular instance of good fortune, the property had not been alienated, like so many of the estates of the noblesse; and it now lay open to the claims of the original proprietorship. I hastened to Paris. My claim was acknowledged by the returned Bourbon, and Clotilde had the delight of once more sitting under the vine and the fig-tree of her ancestors. The old domestic had made it the business of years to obtain the means of reaching England. But the war had placed obstacles in his way every where, and he devoted himself thenceforth to the guardianship of his precious deposit, as the duty of his life. He was almost pathetic, in his narration of the hazards to which it had been exposed in the perpetual convulsions of the country, and in the rejoicing with which he felt himself at last enabled to place it in the hands of its rightful mistress, the last descendant of the noble house of De Tourville.—But I had still to experience another gift of fortune.

On the evening of my birth-day, Clotilde had given a rustic fÊte to the children of her tenantry; and all were dancing in front of the chateau, with the gaiety and with the grace which nature seems to have conferred as an especial gift on even the humblest classes of France.

The day was one of the luxury of summer. The landscape before me was a rich extent of plain and hill; the fragrance of the vast gardens of the chateau as rising as the twilight approached; my infants were clustering round my knee; and in that thankfulness of heart, which is not less sincere for its not being expressed in words, I came to the conclusion, that no access of wealth, or of honours, could add to my substantial happiness at that hour.

My reverie was broken by the sound of a calÈche driving up the avenue. A courier alighted from it, who brought a letter with a black seal, addressed to me. It was from the family solicitor. My noble brother had died in Madeira; where he had gone in the hopeless attempt to recruit a frame which he had exhausted by a life of excess. In that hour, I gave him the regrets which belonged to the tie of blood. I forgot his selfishness, and forgave his alienation. I thought of him only as the remembered playfellow of my early days; and could say in heart—"Alas, my brother!" The landscape before me at last sank into night; and with feelings darkened like it, yet calm and still, I saw the closing of a day which, painful as was the cause, yet called me to new duties, gave me a stronger hold upon society, and placed me in that position which I fully believe to combine more of the true materials of happiness and honour than any other on earth—that of an opulent English nobleman.

My brother, dying childless, had devolved the family estates to me, disburdened of the results of his prodigality; but I had still much to occupy me, in restoring them from the neglect of years. The life of the member of government was now to alternate with the life of the country gentleman; and my transfer to the House of Peers gave me the comparative leisure, essential to the fulfilment of the large and liberal duties which belong to the English landholder. To cheer the country life by rational hospitality; to make friends of those whom nature had made dependents; to sustain those laws which had turned England into a garden; and to protect that "bold peasantry," who ought to be the pride, as they are the strength of their country; to excite the country gentlemen to the scientific study of the noblest of all arts, as it was the first, the cultivation of the soil; to maintain among that gallant race a high sense of their purposes, their powers, and their position; to invigorate the principles which had made them the surest defenders of the throne in its day of adversity; and to fix in their minds by example, more effectual than precept, a solemn fidelity to the faith and to the freedom of their forefathers:—these were the objects which I proposed to myself, and which the loftiest intellect, or the amplest opulence, might be well employed in attempting to fulfil.

Those objects had been placed before England, from the day when the light of the Reformation broke through the darkness of a thousand years, and her brow was first designed for the diadem. By those she was made the universal protector of Europe, in its day of fugitive princes and falling thrones; and by those alone will be erected round her, if she shall remain true to her allegiance, a wall of fire, in the days of that approaching contest which shall bring the powers of good and evil front to front, in strength and hostility unknown before, and consummate the wars of the world.

Yet with those tranquil and retired pursuits, I still took my share in the activity of public life. I was still minister, and bore my part in the discussions of the legislature. But the great questions which had once sounded in my ear, like the call to battle in the ear of the warrior, had passed away. The minds that "rode in the whirlwind, and ruled the storm," had vanished with the storm. The surge had gone down; and neither the dangers of my earlier day, nor the powers which were summoned to resist them, were to be found in the living generation. Yet, let it not be thought that I regard the mind of England as exhausted, or even as exhaustible. The only distinction between the periods is, that one gave the impulse, and that the other only continues it. When peril comes again, we shall again see the development of power. We might as well doubt the existence of lightning, because the day is serene, the sun shining, and no cloud rolls across the heaven. But when the balance of the elements demands to be restored, we shall again be dazzled by the flash, and awed by the thunder.

But time has taught me additional lessons. I have learned to see a hand, in all its clouds, which guides man and kingdoms with more than human power. In these remembrances, I have spoken but little of religion. It belongs to the chamber more than to the council; and it is less honoured than humiliated by being brought idly before men. But by that light I have been able to see, where subtler minds have been blind. The man may be bewildered by the glare of the torch in his hand, who would have found his way by trusting to the milder lustre of the stars. In the great war of our time, the greatest since the fall of the Roman empire—the war of the French Revolution—I think, that I can trace a divine protection, distinctly given to England as the champion of justice, honour, and religion. I offer but the outline of this view; but to me the proof is demonstrative.—In every instance in which France aimed an especial blow at England, that blow was retorted by an especial retribution; while her assaults on the continental kingdoms were made with triumphant impunity.

I give the examples.—The French expedition to Egypt was formed with the express object of breaking down the influence of England in the East, and ultimately subverting her Indian empire—that expedition was the first which tarnished the military renown of the Republic, cost her a fleet, and lost her an army. Of the army which Napoleon led to Egypt, not a battalion returned to Europe but as the prisoners of England!

The French invasion of Spain was a blow aimed expressly at England. Its object was the invasion of England—the Spanish war broke down the military renown of the Empire, and was pronounced by Napoleon to be the origin of his ruin!

The invasion of Russia was a blow aimed expressly at England. Its object was the extinction of English commerce in the whole sea-line of the north—that invasion was punished, by the ruin of the whole veteran army of France!

Napoleon himself at length met the troops of England. He met them with an arrogant assumption of victory—"Ah! je les tiens, ces Anglais." Never was presumption more deeply punished. This single conflict destroyed him; his laurels, his diadem, and his dynasty, were blasted together!

It is not less memorable, that during the entire Revolutionary war, France was never suffered to inflict an injury on England; with one exception—the perfidious seizure of the English travelling in the French territories under the safeguard of the Imperial passports. But this, too, had its punishment—and one of the most especial and characteristic retribution—Napoleon himself was sent to a dungeon! By a fate unheard of even among fallen princes, the man who had treacherously made prisoners of the English was himself made a prisoner, was delivered into English hands, was consigned to captivity in an English island, and died the prisoner of England!

I speak of events like these, not in the spirit of superstition, nor in the fond presumption of being an interpreter of the mysterious ways of Providence. I record them, in a full consciousness of the immeasurable distance between the intellect of man and the wisdom of the supreme Disposer. But they convey, at least to my own feelings, a confidence, a solemn security, a calm yet ardent conviction, that chance has no share in the government of the world; that the great tide of things, in its rise and fall, has laws, which, if unapproached by the feebleness of human faculties, are not the less true, vast, and imperishable; that if, like the air, the agency of that ruling and boundless authority is invisible, we may yet feel its existence in its effects, rejoice in the acknowledgment of a power which nothing can exhaust, and take to our bosoms the high consolation, that the good of man is the supreme principle of the system.

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Men actively employed in public life, are strangely apt to think that there is no progress outside their circle. But, on my return to Mortimer Castle, I found this conception amply confuted. The world had moved as rapidly in those shades, as in the centre of cabinets and courts. Time had done its work, in changing the condition of almost every human being whom I had known in my early days. The brothers and sisters, whom I had left children, were now in the full beauty of their prime; my brothers showy and stirring youths; my sisters fair and gentle girls, just reaching that period of life when the countenance and mind are in their bloom together, and the highborn woman of England is the loveliest perhaps in the world. The extravagance of my elder brother had dilapidated the provision intended for the younger branches of his house. My habits, learned in a sterner school, enabled me to retrieve their fortunes, and I thus secured a new tie to their regards. Justice is essential to all gratitude, and I found them ready to pay the tribute, to the full.

Among my first visits was one to my old friend and tutor, Vincent. I found him still resident on his living; and with spirits, on which time had wrought no change. Years had passed lightly over his head. His eye was as vivid, and his mind as active as ever. He perhaps stooped a little more, and his frame had lost something of that elasticity of step which had so often tried my young nerves in our ramblings over the hills. But he was the same cordial, animated, and high-toned being, in all his feelings, that I had seen him from the first hour. I found him in his garden, arranging, selecting, and enjoying his flower-beds with all the spirit of a horticulturist. But he apologised for what he termed, "its disorder." "For," said he, "I have lost all my gardeners." On my looking doubtful, "All my girls," said he, "are gone; all married; all wedded to one neighbour or another. Such is the way in which I have been left alone." I made my condolences on his solitude, in due form. "Yet I am not quite solitary," added the gay old man, "after all; or my solitude depends upon myself. My girls are all married to our squires, honest fellows, and some of them well enough off in the world. But I made a stipulation, that none of them should marry out of sight from the gazebo on the top of yonder hill; and when I want their company, I have only to hoist a flag. You see that I have not altogether forgotten my days of the sabre and the signal-post; my telegraph works well, and I have them all trooping over here with the regularity of a squadron."

The approach of winter made the castle a scene of increased liveliness. I had always looked with strong distaste on the habit of flying to watering-places at the season when the presence of the leading families of a county is most important to the comforts of the tenantry, and to the intelligent and social intercourse of the higher ranks. I sent a request to Lafontaine and his wife, that they should perform their "covenant," and venture to see "how English life contrived to get through the dulness of its Decembers." My request was countersigned by Clotilde, and this was irresistible. They came, and were received with a joyous welcome. They too had undergone a change. Lafontaine was graver, and was much the better for his gravity. He was now the sincere and kind-hearted being for which nature had intended him. The coxcombry of French early life had disappeared, and left behind it only that general grace and spirit which makes the maturity of a foreign life its most interesting portion. Mariamne was still more advantageously changed. Her wild vivacity was less subdued than transformed into elegance of manner; her features were still handsome, travel had given her knowledge, and her natural talents had been cultivated by the solitary hours, in which but for that cultivation she might have sunk into the grave. She had brought with her, too, another remembrance, and one of that order which produces the most powerful effect upon the whole character of woman. She had brought her first-born, a lovely infant, in which her whole soul seemed to be absorbed, and in which she already discovered more beauties and good qualities than fate or fortune had ever given to human nature. But the centre of our circle, and the admiration and love of all, sat my wife, my generous, noble, pure-spirited Clotilde. Time, too, had wrought its change on her; but it was only to give her deeper claims on the feelings of a heart which could not imagine happiness without her. The heroine had wholly disappeared, and given place to the woman; the character of resistance to the shocks and frowns of fortune, which adversity had made essential perhaps to her being, had passed away with her day of suffering. She was now soft, mild, tender, and confiding. She often reminded me of some of those plants which, when exposed to the storm, contract and diminish their form and foliage; but, when sheltered, resume their original luxuriance and loveliness. Clotilde, in the sufferings of the emigration, in the terrors of the Revolution, and in the march through the VendÉe, might have perished, but for that loftiness of soul which was awakened by the exigency of the trial. But now, surrounded with all the security of rank, and with opulence for her enjoyment, and with love to cherish her, she displayed the force of her nature only in the fondness of her affections. Thus surrounded, thus cheered, thus looked up to by beings whom I loved; what had I to ask for more? Nothing. I here close my page of life. I still vividly retain all the sense of duty, all the feeling of patriotism, and all the consciousness, that age will neither dull my heart towards those whom I have so long loved, nor shut up theirs to me. I believe in the possibility of friendship untainted by selfishness, and I am firm in the faith, of love that knows no decline. I look round me, and am serenely happy. I look above me, and am sacredly thankful.

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