66 "The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expressions of unwonted admiration from the stern and hostile chancellor,22 and for a moment seemed to pierce even the resolute heart of the defendant. The ladies in the galleries, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited by the solemnity of the occasion, and perhaps not unwilling to display their taste and sensibility, were in a state of uncontrollable emotion. Handkerchiefs were pulled out; smelling bottles were handed round; hysterical sobs and screams were heard; and Mrs Sheridan was carried out in a fit. "At length the orator concluded. Raising his voice till the old arches of Irish oak resounded. 'Therefore, said he, hath it with all confidence been ordered by the Commons of Great Britain, that I impeach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanours. I impeach him in the name of the Commons' House of Parliament, whose confidence he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of the English nation, whose ancient honour he has sullied. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose rights he has trodden under foot, and whose country he has turned into a desert. Lastly, in the name of human nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the name of every age, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy and oppressor of all.' LORD MACAULAY. 1. WILBERFORCE, William, a noted English philanthropist, born at Hull, 1759, died 1833. He was devoted heart and soul to the task of suppressing the cruel and infamous slave-trade, and his efforts were at last successful. He died just as the bill for the Abolition of Slavery was passing through the House of Commons. 2. HANNAH MORE, an eminent moral writer, born 1744, died 1833. 3. IMPEACH, to cite before a court for official misconduct. 4. BENARES, a city on the Ganges, in Hindostan. The Sacred or Holy City of the Hindoos. 5. OUDE, a province in the north of India. 6. INAUGURATION, commencement. 7. BACON, Francis, Lord Bacon, born 1561, died 1626. An illustrious philosopher and statesman. James I. raised him to high honours, and finally created him Lord Chancellor in 1618. Bacon misused his high office, and was accused by the Commons of accepting bribes, and selling offices in his gift. 8. SOMERS, John, Lord Somers, born 1650, died 1716. In 1695 he was made Lord Chancellor; he was afterwards deprived of the seals of office, but was finally restored to his honours, and made President of the Council. 9. STRAFFORD, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, born 1593, died 1641. An English statesman who lived in the reign of Charles I. He was first opposed to the king's exactions, but afterwards became Charles's friend and faithful servant. Strafford was impeached and condemned to death by the Parliament; and the king, fearing for his own safety, signed the warrant; an act which he ever afterwards regretted. 10. GARTER KING-AT-ARMS, the principal herald of the Order of the Garter. 11. SERGEANTS, these were the sergeants-at-arms, officers whose duty it is to keep order, &c., in high legislative courts. 12. EMACIATED, thin; wasted. 13. PROCONSUL, the governor of a province, originally; a Roman officer who acted instead of a Consul. (Lat. pro, instead of, consul, chief magistrate.) 14. THE MANAGERS, the gentlemen appointed by the House of Commons to conduct the impeachment. 15. BURKE, a famous orator and statesman, born in Dublin, 1730, died 1797. 16. DEMOSTHENES, one of the greatest orators of ancient Greece, born at Athens, B.C. 384, died 322. 17. HYPERIDES, another celebrated Greek orator, and a friend of Demosthenes. 18. EARL GREY, father of the present earl. The statesman referred to in the text was born 1764, and died 1845. 19. POET, for sketch of the poet Cowper, see Fifth Book, p. 114. 20. THE COMPANY, the East India Company; originally, a trading company, which in 1708 obtained a charter giving them the chief governing and political power in India. This political power was transferred to the Crown in 1858. 21. PRESIDENCIES, the three great provinces of India-Bengal, Bombay, and Madras. 22. CHANCELLOR, Lord Thurlow, a political enemy and opponent of Hastings. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF HUGH MILLER. HUGH MILLER was born in the little town of Cromarty, in the North of Scotland, in the year 1802, and he died in 1856. His father, the master and owner of a small ship, was lost at sea during a terrible storm in 1807, and Hugh and his two little sisters became entirely dependent on the exertions of their widowed mother. Under these circumstances the boy received but little regular education, yet such was his love of knowledge, that he diligently read and studied every book that fell in his way; thus he acquired a considerable knowledge of history, and of many of the natural sciences, especially geology;1 to this latter study he devoted every spare moment, and all the energy and industry of his nature; and became in the course of time one of our most distinguished geologists. During fifteen years of his life he worked as a journeyman stone-mason; choosing that employment, because it gave him leisure during the winter months to pursue his beloved science. At the end of that time he received an honourable appointment in a bank in his native town, where he added to his small salary by his literary and scientific labours. His numerous books have been widely read and appreciated; from one of the best known of them, "The Old Red Sandstone," we have taken the following account of Hugh Miller's first day of labour in a stone quarry.2 MY FIRST DAY IN A STONE QUARRY. It was twenty years, last February, since I set out, a little before sunrise, to make my acquaintance with a life of labour and restraint; and I have rarely had a heavier heart than on that morning. I was but a slim, loose-jointed boy at the time, fond of the pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad awake; and, woful change! I was now going to work at one of the most disagreeable of all employments, to work in a quarry. Bating the passing uneasiness occasioned by a few gloomy anticipations, the portion of my life which had already gone by had been happy beyond the common lot. I had been a wanderer among rocks and woods, a reader of curious books, when I could get them, a gleaner of old traditionary stories; and now I was going to exchange all my day-dreams, and all my amusements, for the kind of life, in which men toil every day, that they may be enabled to eat, and eat every day, that they may be enabled to toil. The quarry, in which I wrought, lay on the southern shore of a noble inland bay, or firth, with a little clear stream on one side, and a thick fir wood on the other. It had been opened in the Old Red Sandstone of the district, and was overtopped by a huge bank of diluvial3 clay, which rose over it in some places to the height of nearly thirty feet, and which at this time was rent and shivered, wherever it presented an open front to the weather, by a recent frost. A heap of loose fragments, which had fallen from above, blocked up the face of the quarry, and my first employment was to clear them away. The friction of the shovel soon blistered my hands, but the pain was by no means very severe, and I wrought hard and willingly, that I might see how the huge strata below, which presented so firm and unbroken a frontage, were broken up and removed. Picks, and wedges, and levers, were applied by my fellow-workmen; and simple and rude as I had been accustomed to regard these implements, I found I had much to learn in the way of using them. They all proved insufficient, however, and the workmen had to bore into one of the inferior strata, and employ gunpowder. The process was new to me, and I deemed it a highly amus ing one it had the merit, too, of being attended with some such degree of danger as a boating or rock excursion, and had thus an interest independent of its novelty. 5 The fragments flew in every direction; and an immense mass of the diluvium came toppling down, bearing with it two dead birds, that in a recent storm had crept into one of the deeper fissures, to die in the shelter. I felt a deep interest in examining them. The one was a pretty cock goldfinch, with its hood of vermilion, and its wings inlaid with the golden tint, to which it owes its name, as unsoiled and smooth, as if it had been preserved in a museum. The other, a somewhat rarer bird, of the woodpecker tribe, was variegated with light blue and a greyish yellow. I was engaged in admiring the poor little things, and thinking of the contrast between the warmth and jollity of their green summer haunts, and the cold and darkness of their last retreat, when I heard our employer bidding the workmen lay by their tools. I looked up, and saw the sun sinking behind the fir wood beside us, and the long shadow of the trees stretching downwards toward the shore. This was no very formidable beginning of the course of life I had so much dreaded. To be sure my hands were a little sore, and I felt nearly as much fatigued, as if I had been climbing among the rocks; but I had wrought and been useful, and had yet enjoyed the day fully as much as usual. My first year of labour came to a close, and I found, that the amount of my happiness had not been less than in the last of my boyhood. My knowledge, too, had increased in more than the ratio of former seasons; and as I had acquired the skill of, at least, the common mechanic, I had fitted myself for independence; and the 6 |