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that of an union with a heart indifferent or averse? what wound so poignant as that inflicted by the icy coldness of the offered hand? "Hath honor skill in surgery?" will the notion of honor thus applied yield any medicament to the bleeding and broken heart? Viewed in relation to society, the uneasiness produced by such separations is as nothing compared with the tortures of one unhappy being, forced by these ill-considered notions to enter into an irrevocable and enduring contract with one for whom he can feel no esteem. Here are misery and anguish; this is sorrow, hopeless and immitigable. But I had not intended to have gone thus far; I fear that in introducing the matter at all, it may seem more an evidence of the garrulity of age, than the proofs of confirmed wisdom and experience.

I remain, Mr. Inspector, a very humble admirer,

***

THE REQUEST.

Bring not the bowl to me,

With sunny wreath:
Bright though the goblet be,

Its draught is death;

Let not for me the ruby face

Glow to its brim;

Who would life and sorrow chase,

Bear it to him.

Bring me not yellow gold

A miser's store:

Blood for that wealth is sold,

For worthless ore

There's blood upon its shine,
Bright though it be.

Such gold shall ne'er be mine,—

Nor heap'd for me!

Bring me not battle brand,

Pennon to wave,

Above the warrior band,

Who dare the grave.

There's no joy in warrior's toil,
'No bliss in fame,

Won by a nation's spoil,

For one bright name.

Bring me not beauty's smile-
Beauty's blue eye.

For woman's tear and guile,
Nations may sigh.

I could pray for her weal,

Weep for her woe:

Love, my heart cannot feel,
My spirit know!

I ask not back again

My childhood's hours,

When life's path was not pain,
O'ergrown with flowers.

I know my heart too well
To dream of this;
Feel its slow beatings tell
Not of such bliss.

No, this may never be ;
Yet would I crave
One magic gift of thee,
This side the grave.
All of the cloud shall fly-
My spirit bears;

Wet but my burning eye-
Bring me but-tears.

Feb. 1827.

JULIAN.

DIARY OF AN M.P.

February 5. Why should my wealthy and respected friend, the Member for Callington, feel angry at my censure of his mincing, awaw-ing, lisping utterance, and his other affectations of un-mercantile gentility-the more offensive from the contrast of his masculine understanding, manly form, bold forehead, and intelligent countenance? why not rather endeavour to be in deportment as well as station-the Parliamentary head of the British Merchants, and Parliamentary leader of the commercial interest? Alexander Baring is more than a well-informed man, he is an able man; indeed, an authority on those questions of commerce and currency which he usually discusses. He, to be sure, is not a Ricardo; against whom, by the way, he continually exhibited despicable feelings of captious jealousy; but he is, when he gives himself fair play, a clear judging, sensible man. He is never off the back of some particular hobby; and when there, never dismounts till its neck is broken or his own endangered. His hobby for 1827 is, fortifying the line of the St. Lawrence (only some 2500 miles), to protect Canada against the Yankees! His last and greatest favorite was the double standard, about the absurdest proposition ever maintained by a Political Economist, and that is, in all conscience, going far enough; as that model of gentlemen and senators, that union of all that is amiable in the English and Irish character, that unostentatiously well-informed and intrepid debater, Sir H. Parnell, demonstrated. Nothing can be clearer than the absurdity of making silver, as well as gold, a legal tender. If both be made a legal tender, it must be in a fixed ratio (twenty shillings, for example, for one sovereign); and, to be of practical use, their relative value should be invariable. Now their relative value is by no means invariable; on the contrary, is, like Dick Martin, for ever shifting. What is the consequence? all borrowers pay, or endeavour to pay, their debt in the fallen metal; and then all holders of that fallen metal melt it as fast as they can. For, let us suppose, that, from a diminution in the supply of silver, the gold sovereign becomes worth twenty-one shillings in silver, or the quantity of silver in twenty shillings becomes worth only nineteen shillings in gold. In the first case, a speculator procures a sovereign with twenty shillings,

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melts it, and sells it for twenty-one shillings; in the other, he buys silver bullion with his nineteen shillings in gold, has it coined into twenty shillings at the Mint; and, by the addition to the currency, raises the price of gold bullion to twenty-one shillings, when he procures a sovereign for twenty shillings, melts it, and sells it for twentyone shillings. Here, then, are double fluctuations; and whenever, by a change in the relative value of the metals, one of them becomes the standard of the other, the loss of the expense of the coinage, and half the metallic currency in circulation-necessarily spring from the wise proposition of the theory-abusing and "practical" Mr. Alexander Baring. Even betting at Brookes's that the Corn Laws are not brought forward for one month, though fixed for the 19th; 3 to 2 but little alteration in the proposed measure; 5 to 1 taken that Ministers will be beaten in the Lords.

and Lord

6. So Lady Georgiana Walpole has got a pearl for her other eye-a Rev. Jew Missionary, not unhappily named Wolff, a rival of Mr. in the beauty and attraction of his face and person, and of the learned Attorney-General in his devotion to the toilet. He certainly is an out-and-out saint; for his odour and sanctity are so orthodox, that sinners, like me, cannot stay within three yards of "the sweet breath" of his reverend body. I pity the Orford family sincerely; 'tis a poor joke to say, that the convert of the innocent and unselfish "nation," got the blind side of a pious (and wealthy) spinster one side of forty, and quoted such divers texts to her becoming bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, and devoting her life and fortune to the temporal and eternal happiness of the chosen people. I am particularly sorry on John Walpole's account. Mr. ***** declared years ago, before time had a Diana-ing effect on the temperament of Lady G., that she would be carried off by a Methodist parson. I wish there was a Joint Stock Matrimony Methodist Company formed; I'd take one hundred shares in it, and make more than Ricardo did by "the turn of the "market." What would Horace Walpole say ?-Amor vincit omnia.

9. House pretty full yesterday evening; shameful neglect of mourning attire. Lord P. J. Stuart, the cut of a coachman, with his buttoned-up big coat, and red table-cloth cravat, and knowing broadbrimmed tile." Nothing but Corn Laws and Catholic Emancipation. Was glad to see Sir Francis Burdett so well; a nobleminded fellow-heart in the right place, head intended to be so. At fault what course to pursue, on account of Canning's I am sorry to hear serious illness. My fat friend, Lord Nugent, in spirits; his pamphlet on Catholic Emancipation clever and gentlemanly; intends to make a great speech this time. Give the odds he's blown first heat, and does not save his distance. Philosopher Torrens sets up to be the Corn Law oracle, to be what my Staffordshire friend Littleton is on private committee legislation-the Delphie Apollo. No petition to be laid on the table till it has received the censure or approbation of the "External Corn Trade" Solon! Better for him to mind his Ipswich election; hear the long odds given readily at

White's, that he loses his place. How will the public business go on then I wonder! Hear Mr. Demosthenes John Williams's seat not the securest in the House. Great grief to the Chancellor.

10. Hare's maiden speech last night was neat and elegant. Wonder very much Hume's petition from the "starving Weavers of Blackburne" was received. Only think of its not only charging Ministers with the most corrupt and lavish expenditure of the public money, but with keeping up a large standing army "to oppress and murder their suffering fellow subjects!" Had Peel been in the House, it would have been sent to the right-about with very little ceremony. Mr. Colchester Sunday Times D. W. Harvey, is rivalling the Globe and Traveller Torrens in doing the philosopher on the Corn Laws. That fellow had the assurance to quote my Stanhope joke (in the last number of the Inspector) as one of George Colman's.

11. Mr. Huskisson "indisposed." Hear Lord Liverpool complains of a fulness in the head---a complaint not very ripe among modern Members of Parliament.

12. Met Dick Martin, yesterday, in Pall Mall; reproached him with having jostled his countryman (the Grand Duke) at the Opera, "I only wanted (said Dick) to give some of his Staff a lift, by calling "me or my son out. As to Wellington himself, I will never suppress "my contempt for his non mi ricordo hauteur towards me, who served 'him and his family when they wanted it. The Duke of York was "the truth of a good fellow---in fact a thorough-bred Irishman.

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gave me forty-one Commissions, though I was tooth and nail against him on the Catholic Question. Did you hear the answer I "gave him about the extent of my Cunnamara demesne, the King "was near being choked from laughter. Mr. Martin, said his Royal "Highness, may I ask how many acres of your estate are in the im"mediate neighbourhood of your castle?" "In truth, your Royal "Highness, I cannot tell; but this I know, that from the Lodge gate at the end of my lawn, to my house or castle at the other, is thirty long Irish miles." Heard a good thing of Dick at Brookes's, Some violent attacks of his upon his cruelty-to-animals-opponents were, at his own request, made" conspicuous" in the report of his speech. They were printed in italics. Dick, who is always courting the patronage of the reporters, went up as usual to the reporter's room and reproached him with unfair play. They reminded him of his wish to have his points "conspicuous." "Yes, but 'sblood, boys, 66 sure I did not spake in italics!"

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14. My fellow traveller Villiers Steuart's maiden speech last nightof very amphibious success. I don't think it was all out a dead failure-it was ill-timed, and tumid in its style, but still, I am sure, had some latent meaning. Peel, I am glad to say, has profited by my advice; his speech on the Duke of York was appropriately sensible and well delivered. "Tis not difficult to see that Peel will lead and command the House of Commons at no distant period. That Calcraft still at his airs and assumption of consequence. Why does not Tierney or Canning double him up for life? He was glad to see

no reduction of the navy estimates. I suppose he has a lot of relations in the navy as well as in the army, (disinterested man!) if there were, he would have felt it to be his duty to oppose it! Bless us, the fly on the chariot wheel is nothing to this.

15. A great congregation of Irish and English M. P.'s about the throne yesterday to hear Lord Lansdowne present the Catholic petition. Wellington listened with the most studied attention while the petition was being read. I watched his countenance closely; not a muscle relaxed, not a fibre changed position, or "broke the line" of his fixed resolution. What a stupid place the House of Lords is! I am not surprised at my father and Lord Grenville's aversion to it. I always feel when I am going into it, as if I were entering a chapel of ease. There is so much solemn grimace, and such an absence of our noisy strife of tongues. We would not listen to six out of the whole peers a second time in the House of Commons. The Tierney of the Lords, is Lord Holland, who certainly says a great number of good things whenever he rises, but has not the point and wit, and ten arm-hitting power, of my respected old friend: the Brougham is Lord Lansdowne, who is to the full as wordy and lengthy, but wants the stuffing of the nasal operative. Lord Darnley has the high-toned feeling of Sir Francis Burdett, without his classical intellect; and Lord Calthorpe is as whining and stupid as Lord Grey---(apropos of Gray---I find a well-meaning, but not very wise, bookseller at Liverpool condemns a friend of mine, who sent the admirable sketch of Huskisson to "The Inspector," as being a writer who ought not to be read by any one who "fears God, or respects good "people." What blasphemy some men are guilty of, when they would be most pious!-Lord Grey's eloquence is more ponderous, but less effective and polished, than Mr. Canning's; and Lord King would be rated a bore to all hearers as well as the Chancellor, were he in the Commons', instead of Lords', House of Parliament. The Joe Hume and philosophical Torrens of the house of my Lard Lauderdale, who meddles with every thing, finds fault with every measure of the Government, is never entirely right in any thing, and lays down the law on every subject upon every occasion. His lordship has read a great number of pamphlets, reviews, parliamentary reports, and is endowed with a very retentive memory; but has not studied upon general principles; and possesses a judgment by no means happy in separating the chaff from the grain. His clearest views are muddy; his ablest views mystifying; and though he has more in his head on the Corn Laws and the Currency question than any man perhaps in either House, yet, from the absence of logical arrangement, his best arguments fritter before the clear, disentangling, cogent reasoning of Lord Liverpool. His intellect may be compared to a parliamentary drag net, in which the weeds conceal almost all that is valuable in the haul. I perceive his lordship has been renovating his outer man he was a beauty before, but the new pepper-and-salt turn-out make him irresistible. Between the new coat and the dulcet tones of his voice, were he single, he would 3 K

VOL. II.

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