Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844

"'The moor! the moor!' he screamed to the driver; but the latter had lost all power over the snorting steeds, who bore the fated carriage in a whizzing gallop towards the marsh. The blazing beech-tree rendered the surrounding objects fearfully distinct. Bolko could descry the figure of Auriola at the margin of the spring. Between her fingers glittered the ring, and words of lamentation issuing from her lips, dropped into the soul of Bolko and paralysed it."

"'Auriola, Auriola!' exclaimed the youth, supporting the pale and quivering Emma – 'forgive me! forgive me!'

"The Moor Maiden dropped the ring into the well, and it vanished like an unearthly flame. Auriola herself, slowly and like a mist, descended after it. She held her hand above her head, and it seemed to point to the onward-dashing carriage.

"Horror upon horror! the carriage itself began to sink into the earth – quicker and quicker.

"'We are sinking! Heaven help us!' cried the driver. Bolko burst the carriage door open, but escape was impossible. The moor had given way around him. The horses were already swallowed up in the abyss. The pale earth-crust trembled and heaved like flakes of ice upon a loosening river. It separated, and huge pieces were precipitated and hurled against each other. In a few seconds horses and carriage, bride and bridegroom, had disappeared for ever. As the moor closed over them, the hand of Auriola vanished.

"The Curse of her father was accomplished.

"On the same night, Gottmar castle was struck by lightning. It burned to the ground, and there the aged Hubert found his grave."

"THAT'S WHAT WE ARE."

 
"Careful and troubled about many things,"
(Alas! that it should be so with us still
As in the time of Martha,) I went forth
Harass'd and heartsick, with hot aching brow,
Thought fever'd, happy to escape myself.
 
 
Beauteous that bright May morning! All about
Sweet influences of earth, and air, and sky,
Harmoniously accordant. I alone,
The troubled spirit that had driven me forth,
In dissonance with that fair frame of things
So blissfully serene. God had not yet
Let fall the weight of chastening that makes dumb
The murmuring lip, and stills the rebel heart,
Ending all earthly interests, and I call'd
(O Heaven!) that incomplete experience – Grief.
 
 
It would not do. The momentary sense
Of soft refreshing coolness pass'd away;
Back came the troublous thoughts, and, all in vain,
I strove with the tormentors: All in vain,
Applied me with forced interest to peruse
Fair nature's outspread volume: All in vain,
Look'd up admiring at the dappling clouds
And depths cerulean: Even as I gazed,
The film – the earthly film obscured my vision,
And in the lower region, sore perplex'd,
Again I wander'd; and again shook off
With vex'd impatience the besetting cares,
And set me straight to gather as I walk'd
A field-flower nosegay. Plentiful the choice;
And, in few moments, of all hues I held
A glowing handful. In a few moments more
Where are they? Dropping as I went along
Unheeded on my path, and I was gone —
Wandering again in muse of thought perplex'd.
 
 
Despairingly I sought the social scene —
Sound – motion – action – intercourse of words—
Scarcely of mind – rare privilege! – We talk'd —
Oh! how we talk'd! Discuss'd and solved all questions:
Religion – morals – manners – politics —
Physics and metaphysics – books and authors —
Fashion and dress – our neighbours and ourselves.
But even as the senseless changes rang,
And I help'd ring them, in my secret soul
Grew weariness, disgust, and self-contempt;
And more disturb'd in spirit, I retraced,
More cynically sad, my homeward way.
 
 
It led me through the churchyard, and methought
There entering, as I let the iron gate
Swing to behind me, that the change was good —
The unquiet living, for the quiet dead.
And at that moment, from the old church tower
A knell resounded – "Man to his long home"
Drew near. "The mourners went about the streets;"
And there, few paces onward to the right,
Close by the pathway, was an open grave,
Not of the humbler sort, shaped newly out,
Narrow and deep in the dark mould; when closed,
To be roofed over with the living sod,
And left for all adornment (and so best)
To Nature's reverential hand. The tomb,
Made ready there for a fresh habitant,
Was that of an old family. I knew it. —
A very ancient altar-tomb, where Time
With his rough fretwork mark'd the sculptor's art
Feebly elaborate – heraldic shields
And mortuary emblems, half effaced,
Deep sunken at one end, of many names,
Graven with suitable inscriptions, each
Upon the shelving slab and sides; scarce now
Might any but an antiquarian eye
Make out a letter. Five-and-fifty years
The door of that dark dwelling had shut in
The last admitted sleeper. She, 'twas said,
Died of a broken heart – a widow'd mother
Following her only child, by violent death
Cut off untimely, and – the whisper ran —
By his own hand. The tomb was ancient then,
When they two were interr'd; and they, the first
For whom, within the memory of man,
It had been open'd; and their names fill'd up
(With sharp-cut newness mocking the old stone)
The last remaining space. And so it seem'd
The gathering was complete; the appointed number
Laid in the sleeping chamber, and seal'd up
Inviolate till the great gathering day.
The few remaining of the name dispersed —
The family fortunes dwindled – till at last
They sank into decay, and out of sight,
And out of memory; till an aged man
Pass'd by some parish very far away
To die in ours – his legal settlement —
Claim'd kindred with the long-forgotten race,
Its sole survivor, and in right thereof,
Of that affinity, to moulder with them
In the old family grave.
 
 
"A natural wish,"
Said the authorities; "and sure enough
He was of the old stock – the last descendant —
And it would cost no more to bury him
Under the old crack'd tombstone, with its scutcheons,
Than in the common ground." So, graciously,
The boon was granted, and he died content.
And now the pauper's funeral had set forth,
And the bell toll'd – not many strokes, nor long —
Pauper's allowance. He was coming home.
But while the train was yet a good way off —
The workhouse burial train – I stopp'd to look
Upon the scene before me; and methought
Oh! that some gifted painter could behold
And give duration to that living picture,
So rich in moral and pictorial beauty,
If seen arightly by the spiritual eye
As with the bodily organ!
 
 
The old tomb,
With its quaint tracery, gilded here and there
With sunlight glancing through the o'er-arching lime,
Far flinging its cool shadow, flickering light —
Our greyhair'd sexton, with his hard grey face,
(A living tombstone!) resting on his mattock
By the low portal; and just over right,
His back against the lime-tree, his thin hands
Lock'd in each other – hanging down before him
As with their own dead weight – a tall slim youth
With hollow hectic cheek, and pale parch'd lip,
And labouring breath, and eyes upon the ground
Fast rooted, as if taking measurement
Betime for his own grave. I stopp'd a moment,
Contemplating those thinkers – youth and age —
Mark'd for the sickle; as it seem'd – the unripe
To be first gather'd. Stepping forward, then,
Down to the house of death, in vague expectance,
I sent a curious, not unshrinking, gaze.
There lay the burning brain and broken heart,
Long, long at rest: and many a Thing beside
That had been life – warm, sentient, busy life —
Had hunger'd, thirsted, laugh'd, wept, hoped, and fear'd —
Hated and loved – enjoy'd and agonized.
Where of all this, was all I look'd to see?
The mass of crumbling coffins – some belike
(The undermost) with their contents crush'd in,
Flatten'd, and shapeless. Even in this damp vault,
With more completeness could the old Destroyer
Have done his darkling work? Yet lo! I look'd
Into a small square chamber, swept and clean,
Except that on one side, against the wall,
Lay a few fragments of dark rotten wood,
And a small heap of fine, rich, reddish earth
Was piled up in a corner.
 
 
"How is this?"
In stupid wonderment I ask'd myself,
And dull of apprehension. Turning, then,
To the old sexton – "Tell me, friend," I said,
"Here should be many coffins – Where are they?
And" – pointing to the earth-heap – "what is that?"
 
 
He raised his eyes to mine with a strange look
And strangely meaning smile; and I repeated —
(For not a word he spoke) – my witless question.
 
 
Then with a deep distinctness he made answer,
Distinct and slow, looking from whence I pointed,
Full in my face again, and what he said
Thrill'd through my very soul – "That's what we are!"
 
 
So I was answer'd. Sermons upon death
I had heard many. Lectures by the score
Upon life's vanities. But never words
Of mortal preacher to my heart struck home
With such convicting sense and suddenness
As that plain-spoken homily, so brief,
Of the unletter'd man.
 
 
"That's what we are!" —
Repeating after him, I murmur'd low
In deep acknowledgment, and bow'd the head
Profoundly reverential. A deep calm
Came over me, and to the inward eye
Vivid perception. Set against each other,
I saw weigh'd out the things of time and sense,
And of eternity; – and oh! how light
Look'd in that truthful hour the earthly scale!
And oh! what strength, when from the penal doom
Nature recoil'd, in His remember'd words:
"I am the Resurrection and the Life."
 
 
And other words of that Divinest Speaker
(Words to all mourners of all times address'd)
Seem'd spoken to me as I went along
In prayerful thought, slow musing on my way —
"Believe in me" – "Let not your hearts be troubled" —
And sure I could have promised in that hour,
But that I knew myself how fallible,
That never more should cross or care of this life
Disquiet or distress me. So I came,
Chasten'd in spirit, to my home again,
Composed and comforted, and cross'd the threshold
That day "a wiser, not a sadder, woman."
 

C.

EDMUND BURKE.¹⁴

Burke died in 1797, and yet, after the lapse of almost half a century, the world is eager to treasure every recollection of his name. This is the true tribute to a great man, and the only tribute which is worth the wishes of a great man. The perishable nature of all the memorials of human hands has justly been the theme of every moralist, since tombs first bore an image or an inscription. Yet, such as they are, they ought to be given; but they are all that man can give. The nobler monument must be raised by the individual himself, and must be the work of his lifetime; its guardianship must be in the hands, not of sacristans and chapters, but in those of the world; his panegyric must be found, not in the extravagance or adulation of his marble, but in the universal voice which records his career, and cherishes his name as a new stimulant of public virtue.

We have no intention of retracing the steps by which this memorable man gradually rose to so high a rank in the estimation of his own times. No history of intellectual eminence during the latter half of the nineteenth century – the most troubled, important, and productive period of human annals since the birth of the European kingdoms – can be written, without giving some testimonial to his genius in every page. But his progress was not limited to his Age. He is still progressive. While his great contemporaries have passed away, honoured indeed, and leaving magnificent proofs of their powers, in the honour and security of their country, Burke has not merely retained his position before the national eye, but has continually assumed a loftier stature, and shone with a more radiant illumination. The great politician of his day, he has become the noblest philosopher of ours. Every man who desires to know the true theory of public morals, and the actual causes which influence the rise and fall of thrones, makes his volumes a study; every man who desires to learn how the most solemn and essential truths may not merely be adorned, but invigorated, by the richest colourings of imagination, must labour to discover the secret of his composition; and every man who, born in party, desires to emancipate his mind from the egotism, bitterness, and barrenness of party, or achieve the still nobler and more difficult task of turning its evils into good, and of making it an instrument of triumph for the general cause of mankind, must measure the merits and success of his enterprise by its similarity to the struggles, the motives, and the ultimate triumph of Edmund Burke.

The present volumes contain a considerable portion of the correspondence which Burke carried on with his personal and public friends during the most stirring period of his life. The papers had been put in trust of the late French Lawrence the civilian, and brother to the late Archbishop of Cashel, with whom was combined in the trust Dr King, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, both able men and particular friends of Burke. But Lawrence, while full of the intention of giving a life of his celebrated friend, died in 1809, and the papers were bequeathed by the widow of Burke, who died in 1812, to the Bishop of Rochester, the Right Hon. W. Elliot, and Earl Fitzwilliam, for the publication of such parts as had not already appeared. This duty chiefly devolved upon Dr King, who had been made Bishop of Rochester in 1808. Personal infirmity, and that most distressing of all infirmities, decay of sight, retarded the publishing of the works; but sixteen volumes were completed. The bishop's death in 1828, put an end to all the hopes which had been long entertained, of an authentic life from his pen.

On this melancholy event, the papers came into the possession of the late Earl Fitzwilliam, from whom they devolved to the present Earl, who, with Sir Richard Bourke, a distant relative of the family, and personally intimate with Burke during the last eight years of his life, has undertaken the present collection of his letters. Those letters which required explanation have been supplied with intelligent and necessary notes, and the whole forms a singularly important publication.

Many of Burke's earliest letters were written to a Richard Shackleton, the son of a Quaker at whose school Burke with his two brothers had been placed in 1741. In 1743, he was placed in the college of Dublin, and then commenced his correspondence with Shackleton. Even those letters exhibit, at the age of little more than fifteen, the sentiments which his mature life was spent in establishing and enlarging. He says of sectaries, and this was to a sectary himself, "I assure you, I don't think near so favourably of those sectaries you mentioned, (he had just spoken of the comparative safety of virtuous heathens, who, not having known the name of Christianity, were not to be judged by its law,) many of those sectaries breaking, as they themselves confessed, for matters of indifference, and no way concerned in the only affair that is necessary, viz. salvation; and what a great crime schism is, you can't be ignorant. This, and the reasons in my last, and if you consider what will occur to yourself, together with several texts, will bring you to my way of thinking on that point. Let us endeavour to live according to the rules of the Gospel; and he that prescribed them, I hope, will consider our endeavours to please him, and assist us in our designs.

"I don't like that part of your letter, wherein you say you had the testimony of well-doing in your breast. Whenever such notions rise again, endeavour to suppress them. We should always be in no other than the state of a penitent, because the most righteous of us is no better than a sinner. Read the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican who prayed in the temple."

We next have a letter exhibiting the effect of external things on the writer's mind, and expressed with almost the picturesque power of his higher days. He tells his friend, that he will endeavour to answer his letter in good-humour, "though every thing around," he says, "conspires to excite in him a contrary disposition – the melancholy gloom of the day, the whistling winds, and the hoarse rumbling of the swollen Liffey, with a flood which, even where I write, lays close siege to our own street, not permitting any to go in or out to supply us with the necessaries of life."

After some statements of the rise of the river, he says, "It gives me pleasure to see nature in those great though terrible scenes; it fills the mind with grand ideas, and turns the soul in upon herself. This, together with the sedentary life I lead, forced some reflections on me, which perhaps would otherwise not have occurred. I considered how little man is, yet, in his own mind, how great. He is lord and master of all things, yet scarce can command any thing. What well laid, and what better executed scheme of his is there, but what a small change of nature is entirely able to defeat and abolish. If but one element happens to encroach a little upon another, what confusion may it not create in his affairs, what havoc, what destruction: the servant destined to his use, confines, menaces, and frequently destroys this mighty, this feeble lord."

One of those letters mentions his feelings on the defeat of the luckless Charles Edward, whose hopes of the British crown were extinguished by the battle of Culloden, (April 16, 1746.) "The Pretender, who gave us so much disturbance for some time past, is at length, with all his adherents, utterly defeated, and himself (as some say) taken prisoner. 'Tis strange to see how the minds of the people are in a few days changed. The very men who, but a while ago, while they were alarmed by his progress, so heartily cursed and hated those unfortunate creatures, are now all pity, and wish it could be terminated without bloodshed. I am sure I share in the general compassion. It is, indeed, melancholy to consider the state of those unhappy gentlemen who engaged in this affair, (as for the rest, they lose but their lives,) who have thrown away their lives and fortunes, and destroyed their families for ever, in what, I believe, they thought a just cause." Those sentiments exhibit the early propensity of Burke's mind to a generous dealing with political opponents. He was a Protestant, a zealous admirer of the constitution of 1688, as all Irish Protestants were in his day, whether old or young; and yet he feels an unequivocal, as it was a just compassion for the brave men, who, under an impulse of misapplied loyalty, and in obedience to a mistaken sense of duty, went headlong to their ruin, for a prince who was a Papist, and thus would have been, like his father, a most hazardous sovereign to the liberties and religion of England.

In allusion to his collegiate career, he describes himself as having taken up every successive subject, with an ardour which, however, speedily declined.

"First, I was greatly taken with natural philosophy, which, while I should have given my mind to logic, employed me incessantly, (logic forming a principal part of the first year's studies.) This I call my furor mathematicus. But this worked off as soon as I began to read it in the college. This threw me back to logic and metaphysics. Here I remained a good while, and with much pleasure, and this was my furor logicus– a disease very common in the days of ignorance, and very uncommon in these enlightened times. Next succeeded the furor historicus, which also had its day, but is now no more, being absorbed in the furor poeticus, which (as skilful physicians assure me) is difficultly cured. But doctors differ, and I don't despair of a cure." Fortunately, he at last accomplished that cure, for his early poetry gives no indications of future excellence. His prose is much more poetic, even in those early letters, than his verse. A great poet unquestionably is a great man; but Burke's greatness was to be achieved in another sphere. It is only in the visions of prophecy that we see the Lion with wings. Burke entered his name at the Middle Temple in April 1747, and went to London to keep his terms in 1750. He was now twenty-two years old, and his constitution being delicate, and apparently consumptive, he adopted, during this period of his residence in England, a habit to which he probably owed his strength of constitution in after-life. During the vacations, he spent his time in travelling about England, generally in company with a friend and relative, Mr William Burke. Though his finances were by no means narrow – his father being a man of success in his profession – Burke probably travelled the greater part of those journeys on foot. When he found an agreeable country town or village, he fixed his quarters there, leading a regular life, rising early, taking frequent exercise, and employing himself according to the inclinations of the hour. There could be no wiser use of his leisure; exercise of the frame is health of the mind, open air is life to the student, change of scene is mental vigour to an enquiring, active, and eager spirit; and thus the feeble boy invigorated himself for the most strenuous labours of the man, and laid the foundation for a career of eminent usefulness and public honour for nearly half a century of the most stirring period of the modern world.

Some of his letters touch, in his style of grave humour, on these pleasant wanderings. – "You have compared me, for my rambling disposition, to the sun. Sincerely, I can't help finding a likeness myself, for they say the sun sends down much the same influences whenever he comes into the same signs. Now I am influenced to shake off my laziness, and write to you at the same time of the year, and from the same west country I wrote my last in. Since I had your letter I have often shifted the scene. I spent part of the winter, that is the term time, in London, and part in Croydon in Surrey. About the beginning of the summer, finding myself attacked with my old complaints, I went once more to Bristol, and found the same benefit." Of his adventures at Monmouth, he says they would almost compose a novel, and of a more curious kind than is generally issued from the press. He and his relative formed the topic of the town, both while they were there and after they left it. "The most innocent scheme," said he, "they guessed, was that of fortune-hunting; and when they saw us quit the town without wives, the lower sort sagaciously judged us spies to the French king. What is much more odd is, that here my companion and I puzzled them as much as we did at Monmouth, [he was then at Turlaine in Wiltshire,] for this is a place of very great trade in making fine cloths, in which they employ a great number of hands. The first conjecture, for they could not fancy how any other sort of people could spend so much of their time at books; but finding that we receive from time to time a good many letters, they conclude us merchants. They at last began to apprehend that we were spies from Spain on their trade." Still they appeared mysterious; and the old woman in whose lodgings they lived, paid them the rather ambiguous compliment of saying, "I believe that you be gentlemen, but I ask no questions." "What makes the thing still better," says Burke, "about the same time we came hither, arrived a little parson equally a stranger; but he spent a good part of his time in shooting and other country amusements, got drunk at night, got drunk in the morning, and became intimate with every body in the village. But he surprised nobody, no questions were asked about him, because he lived like the rest of the world. But that two men should come into a strange country, and partake of none of the country diversions, seek no acquaintance, and live entirely recluse, is something so inexplicable as to puzzle the wisest heads, even that of the parish-clerk himself."

About the year 1756, Burke, still without a profession – for though he had kept his terms he was never called to the bar – began to feel the restlessness, perhaps the self-condemnation, natural to every man who feels life advancing on him without an object. He now determined to try his strength as an author, and published his Vindication of Natural Society– a pamphlet in which, adopting the showy style of Bolingbroke, but pushing his arguments to the extreme, he shows the fallacy of his principles. This work excited considerable attention at the time. The name of the author remained unknown, and the imitation was so complete, that for some time it was regarded as a posthumous work of the infidel lord. Burke, in one of his later publications, exclaims – Who now reads Bolingbroke? who ever read him through? We may be assured, at least, that one read him through; and that one was Edmund Burke. The dashing rhetoric, and headlong statements of Bolingbroke; his singular affluence of language, and his easy disregard of fact; the boundless lavishing and overflow of an excitable and glowing mind, on topics in which prejudice and passion equally hurried him onward, and which the bitter recollections of thwarted ambition made him regard as things to be trampled on, if his own fame was to survive, was incomparably transferred by Burke to his own pages. The performance produced a remarkable sensation amongst the leaders of public opinion and literature. Chesterfield pronounced it to be from the pen of Bolingbroke. Mallet, the literary lord's residuary legatee, was forced to disclaim it by public advertisement; but Mallet's credit was not of the firmest order, and his denial was scarcely believed until Burke's name, as the author, was known. But his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of the Sublime and Beautiful, brought him more unequivocal applause. His theory on this subject has been disputed, and is obviously disputable; but it was chiefly written at the age of nineteen; it has never been wholly superseded, and, for elegance of diction, has never been equaled. It brought him into immediate intercourse with all that may be called the fashion of literature – Lyttleton, Warburton, Soame Jenyns, Hume, Reynolds, Lord Bath, Johnson, the greatest though the least influential of them all, and Mrs Montague, the least but the most influential of them all. There must have been a good deal of what is called fortune in this successful introduction to the higher orders of London society; for many a work of superior intelligence and more important originality has been produced, without making its author known beyond the counter of the publisher. But what chance began his merits completed. The work was unquestionably fit for the hands of blue-stockingism; the topic was pleasing to literary romance; the very title had a charm for the species of philosophy which lounges on sofas, and talks metaphysics in the intervals of the concert or the card-table. It may surprise us, that in an age when so many manly and muscular understandings existed at the same time in London, things so infinitely trifling as conversaziones should have been endured; but conversaziones there were, and Burke's book was precisely made to their admiration. It is no dishonour to the matured abilities of this great man, that he produced a book which found its natural place on the toilet-tables, and its natural praise in the tongues of the Mrs Montagues of this world. It might have been worse; he never thought it worth his while to make it better; the theory is worth nothing, but the language is elegant; and the whole, regarded as the achievement of a youth of nineteen, does honour to the spirit of his study, and the polish of his pen.

A change was now to take place in Burke's whole career. He might have perished in poverty, notwithstanding his genius, except for the chance which introduced him to Fitzherbert, a graceful and accomplished man, who united to a high tone of fashionable life a gratification in the intercourse of intelligent society. Partly through this gentleman's interference, and partly through that of the late Earl of Charlemont, Burke was introduced to William Gerard Hamilton, who shortly after went to Ireland as secretary to the lord-lieutenant, Lord Halifax. However, this connexion, though it continued for six years, was evidently an uneasy one to Burke; and a letter written by him in the second year of his private secretaryship to Hamilton, shows how little they were fitted for cordial association. A pension of L.300 a-year was assigned to Burke as a remuneration for his services, which, however, he evidently seemed to regard in the light of a retaining fee. In consequence of this conception, and the fear of being fettered for life, Burke wrote a letter, stating that it would be necessary to give a portion of his time to publication on his own account.

"Whatever advantages," said he, "I have acquired, have been owing to some small degree of literary reputation. It would be hard to persuade me that any further services which your kindness may propose for me, or any in which my friends may co-operate with you, will not be greatly facilitated by doing something to cultivate and keep alive the same reputation. I am fully sensible that this reputation may be as much hazarded as forwarded by a new publication; but because a certain oblivion is the consequence to writers of my inferior class of an entire neglect of publication, I consider it such a risk as must sometimes be run. For this purpose some short time, at convenient intervals, and especially at the dead time of the year, it would be requisite to study and consult proper books. The matter may be very easily settled by a good understanding between ourselves, and by a discreet liberty, which I think you would not wish to restrain, or I to abuse."

However, it will be seen that Gerard Hamilton thought differently on the subject. We break off this part of the correspondence, for the purpose of introducing a fragment of that wisdom which formed so early and so promising a portion of the mind of Burke. In writing of his brother Richard to his Irish friend, he says – "Poor Dick sets off at the beginning of next week for the Granadas, [in which he had obtained a place under government.] He goes in good health and spirits, which are all but little enough to battle with a bad climate and a bad season. But it must be submitted to. Providence never intended, to much the greater part, an entire life of ease and quiet. A peaceable, honourable, and affluent decline of life must be purchased by a laborious or hazardous youth; and every day, I think more and more that it is well worth the purchase. Poverty and age suit very ill together, and a course of struggling is miserable indeed, when strength is decayed and hope gone. Turpe senex miles!"