risking "the excesses subsequent on the revolution in France;" describing the progress and termination of that event in a passage, the following close of which, it is now to be feared, discovers the rapture of a bard rather than the prophet's inspiration. "I see that vast formidable empire descending, like the Nile, from the mountains of Æthiopia, circling with its liquid arms the gay fabrics and the spacious deserts of monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical usurpation: I see that deluge of mighty waters gradually subside into their wonted channel: I see them flow with a majestic tranquillity to the ocean, and all the traces of their former ravages obliterated by one extensive and expanding paradise of verdure, fertility, and beauty." On the subject of Mr. Burke's pension Mr. Wakefield gives him ample credit for his "political exertions in the service of his coun a Moderator in the Astronomical Schools at Cambridge, very ill qualified for his office, who was incapable of settling the debate between a resolute opponent and his respondent; and to pacify the former was accustomed to terminate the controversy by a look of complacency on the opponent and this conciliatory decision: Domine opponens! hoc fortasse rerum esse possit in quibusdam casibus, sed non in hoc casu. Probo aliter. try," as an economical reformer; and very reasonably concludes that "if any men had come forward to the parliament and the public, in a tone frank and manly, and explicit:" calling upon them" to recompense the merits of so great a man, and to provide for the repose of his declining years, in a public remuneration, sanctioned by the suffrage of his country, all parties and descriptions would have joined in their applause of a measure, apportioned with discretion, not less honourable to the donors, than the subject of it: nor would the duke of Bedford and the earl of Lauderdale have been among the last with their expressions of assent and contributions of esteem. Such were Mr. Wakefield's views of this pamphlet; of whose author he observes, in one of his miscellaneous papers, that "A mode of living, and a habit of expenditure, beyond his • "It was the clandestine management and mysterious secresy of this transaction, not unaccompanied by no unreasonable presumption of the wages of apostacy, that justly excited the generous sensations of these noble persons; sympathising in a spirit of the purest patriotism for their exhausted country, and gloriously standing forth as the advocates of œconomy; amidst the unbounded prodigalities of ministerial corruption." "Reply," p.24. income, rendered Mr. Burke the retainer of Lord Rockingham, and on the death of this nobleman some similar dependance was to be found and at last no alternative was left but servility to a ministry whom he had reviled, and obligations to men whom he despised." And now we judge, that to those in whose bosoms true patriotism is not quite extinguished, we cannot conclude our notice of this reply in any manner so interesting, as by quoting the following sketch of the "public character" of that distinguished nobleman, whom Mr. Burke attacked with "coarsenesses of phraseology not very honourable to such exquisite elegance of taste;" and yet upon whom he virtually bestowed this " high and copious panegyric, that through his remote ancestors alone, his character" was "deemed vulnerable." "In the midst of a predominant consternation, that has besotted the intellects of nobility, and perverted the organs of their mental sight, in consequence of a disposition to behold the sun of truth, broken and distorted on the troubled waters of Gallic fury; the duke of Bedford has preserved his mind in a calm of dispassionate neutrality: his feelings have continued without distemper, and his perspicacity unclouded. He, doubtless, with all the children of Virtue and Benevolence and Sensibility, has viewed with sensations of the deepest anguish, with shuddering nerves and with a bleeding heart, the ferocious atrocities of that unhappy people; atrocities unexampled, I believe, in the sanguinary register of human crimes; atrocities, on which to dwell with deliberate contemplation, were an insupportable agony of spirit. cui non conrepunt membra pavore? "But his magnanimity and discernment have conspired to instruct him, how to separate the actors from the cause; to distinguish the genuine philosophical consequences of radical reformation, from the local, national, and educational peculiarities of the reformers. He has been fortunate enough to discover, with other intelligent, unprejudiced and honest men, a variety of reasons, operative to these excesses, unconnected with the severest principles of equality; reasons not essentially inter P p❝Immure a man in the gloomy recesses of a dungeon, where, for a succession of years, no light, save the casual glimmerings of a star, or the pale glances of the moon, shall render visible the palpable darkness that environs him: tell me, will such an one be able to encounter the broad beam of day, and much less the meridian blazes of the sun, without giddiness of brain and a temporary extinction of his sight? woven with the broadest system of universal liberty." "Behold then a spectacle, viewed in all its dependencies and connections, of no ordinary grandeur. A young nobleman, of the highest rank, the most splendid ancestry, and the amplest fortune, standing aloof from nearly a universal panic of his peers, at a time when the basest arts of ministerial intrigue had deluded the public sentiment into a confusion of constitutional freedom with levelling democracy, and had made even an opposition to slaughter and devastation a source of obloquy and danger. "From the shield of ethereal temper, presented by such genuine magnanimity, such public virtue, such disinterested patriotism, even the furious lance of Mr. Burke, that flower of chivalry, the weapon of mere mortal passion, falls innoxious to the ground." postquam arma dei ad Vulcania ventum est, Mortalis mucro, glacies ceu futilis, ictu In this manner Mr. Wakefield expressed his This, if I mistake not, may be justly deemed the condition of the French at the crisis under contemplation. But a long twilight of liberty had prepared our eyes to meet the emergence of open day without dizziness and stupefaction." "Reply," p. 41. |