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LORD STANHOPE'S MISCELLANIES.*

SOME men can make everything they say agreeable, and everything they write interesting. Lord Stanhope is an instance. We do not pretend to speak of him in private intercourse. In public we have listened to him with pleasure. And as a writer he comes distinctly under our description. His "Life of Condé," while it satisfies the scholar, is read by all classes with the same interest as Southey's "Life of Nelson ;" and we know that many have gone through his "Life of Pitt" (though it is in four volumes, and extends to seventeen hundred and eighty pages) with as much avidity as if it had been a popular novel.

Even his latest publication, small as it is in size, cannot be said to be

Of slender volume, and of small account.

If it only consists of a hundred and twenty pages, there is not one of them that does not contain something curious in itself, or curiously illustrative. It commences with some interesting letters of Pitt, which the possessors of his "Life" will regret had not formed part of its appendices. They may possibly appear in future editions. The first (which we consider as, perhaps, the best specimen of the great statesman's letterwriting that we possess) is to the Duke of Rutland upon the "Irish propositions" brought forward in 1785. Lord Stanhope had already shown us with what anxiety they were regarded both by Pitt and by the nobleman whom he addressed as a colleague and a friend. To himself their rejection was "a deep disappointment, a bitter mortification." It has been said by Lord Macaulay that he was "the first English minister who formed great designs for the benefit of Ireland." He had applied himself for almost a twelvemonth to their details, and, instead of attaining his object, the jealousy of both nations was excited afresh, and his own popularity for a time declined. His attempt to give freedom to the trade with Ireland was much like the attempt to give political liberty to the Neapolitans. The Irish could not then appreciate it, and even for our own mercantile classes the statesman was immeasurably in advance of his age. After a second letter on the same subject, we have others on the "Irish appointments of 1794-5." They refer to the appointment of Lord Fitzwilliam as Lord-Lieutenant, and to his strange disregard of every arrangement that had been entered into upon his taking office. Few men were so unselfish on these occasions as Mr. Pitt himself. "The task on our hands," he wrote to his colleague, Lord Westmoreland, "is difficult enough for all our joint efforts; and every sentiment of jealousy or resentment ought to be lost in a sense of its importance and urgency." If every man could thus think and feel, government would become an easy task. A republic would be as practicable, even for England, as a constitutional monarchy, and one half of our existing laws might be abolished. In the poet's single aphorism, that "we are selfish men," lie

* Miscellanies: Collected and Edited by Earl Stanhope. Murray. 1863.

and more rational institutions than

all the difficulties in the way of purer we are ever likely to possess. The next of the Miscellanies, in point of interest, are the letters which show the estimation in which Mr. Pitt was held by those with whom he came into contact in daily and constant intercourse. The foibles of a hero can as little be concealed from his valet, as the disposition of a statesman from his private secretary. They must be adepts in dissimulation who can avoid the scrutiny of either. Mr. Pitt inspired the men who thus came near him with a feeling of regard that lasted during more than the usual period of human life. Mr. Adams, who died last year at Sydenham, at a very advanced age, wrote to Lord Stanhope only two months previous: "In thinking of him, I am too apt to dwell less upon the loftier qualities of his mind, and upon the great objects to which they were successfully directed, than upon the milder virtues of his delightful disposition, and his unvarying kindness of heart; which so much endeared him to all those who knew him well, and inspired them with the warmest feelings of attachment." And he again writes: "He was surely a man whom it was quite impossible to know without loving him. During his last administration-forsaken by old friends, which he bitterly felt; with. declining health, and almost the whole weight of the government upon his own shoulders-so delightful was his temper that with all my shortcomings no harsh word or look ever escaped him, but all towards me was kindness and indulgence."

There was nothing in which the nobler qualities of his disposition were more strikingly shown than in his anxiety to obtain an adequate provision for the declining years of Burke. The great orator had often been his opponent; sometimes, as in the debates on the King's first illness, he had opposed him bitterly; but Mr. Pitt's only feeling towards his rival. was to secure him the reward which his public services for thirty years deserved. In the present volume we have a copy of the " Memorandum" in which he himself set them forth. He urges his claim upon the ground of labours in parliament unrecompensed by admission to power; upon the difference in this respect between his own position and that of Barré, or of Dunning, or of Lord Auckland; and upon the losses necessarily attendant upon that "neglect of a man's private affairs," which is the inevitable consequence of an engrossing devotion to public life. pension granted to him was sufficient for all the wants that he had then to satisfy. His letters acknowledging it have a melancholy interest. He had once had higher views. He was to have been raised to the peerage, with an adequate provision to sustain his rank. "Already"

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(Lord Stanhope tells us*) was the title chosen as Lord Beaconsfield. Already was the patent preparing. Just then it pleased Almighty God to strike the old man to the very earth by the untimely death of his beloved son, his only child. There ended Burke's whole share of earthly happiness. There ended all his dreams of earthly grandeur." His proudest hopes "lay buried in the grave."

Two pages of the volume are next occupied with the origin and etymology of the "Martello Towers," a mode of defence considered, at

* Life of Pitt, vol. ii. p. 244.

one time, as second only to our navy. We are indebted to Sir George Lewis for the explanation. When piracy (he writes to Lord Stanhope) was common in the Mediterranean, the Italians built watch-towers near the sea, and gave warning of the approach of a pirate by striking on a bell with a hammer (Martello). "Hence these towers were called Torri da Martello;" and his lordship finds this explanation confirmed by passages in Ariosto; of which we may quote the following:

E la campana martellando tocca

Onde il soccorso vien subito al porto.

(Orlando, canto x. stanza 51.)

Sir John Harrington does not seem to have understood the passage in its peculiar significance, when he translated it

For straight a watchman standing in a tower,
So high that all the hils and shore was under,
Did ring the larum-bell that present houre
He saw her fleet though distant farre asunder.
(Ed. 1607, p. 76.)

Instead of ring it should have been "hammering strike the bell." We have not Stewart Rose's translation by us.

Following this is a letter from Sir John Moore to Lady Hester Stanhope, dated November 23, 1808; about six weeks before the battle of Corunna. It is in every way of value; and its closing sentence is touchingly connected with his fate.

"Farewell," he writes, "my dear Lady Hester: if I extricate myself and those with me from our present difficulties, and if I can beat the French, I shall return to you with satisfaction; but if not, it will be better that I should never quit Spain." We well remember seeing part of the wreck of his army arrive in England. How changed from the "good spirits" and "appearance" which he describes in his letter! and yet some of them were still as gay as if only returning from a review.

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Amongst the most important of the correspondence preserved by Lord Stanhope are several letters by the late Sir Robert Peel. One of them, addressed to Lord Harrowby, immediately previous to the passing of the Reform Act, expresses an opinion that it would be better to compel the government to resort to the coup d'état of a fresh creation of peers rather than that the House of Lords should yield, against its conviction, on the second reading of the bill. This was in his days of high conservatism. "The nature of popular concessions, their tendency to propagate the necessity for further and more extensive compliances;" the loss of "all reverence and care for remaining institutions ;" and an "appetite whetted for a further feast at the expense of the Church or the Monarchy," were dangers that he afterwards regarded with less of fear. His masterly defence (at the request of Lord Stanhope) of the character of Sir Robert Walpole is a valuable paper, and written with a clearness and impartiality that show no ordinary talent for historical composition.

We have next some still more valuable communications from the Duke of Wellington. First a comparison between his own position-its advantages and difficulties-and that of the Duke of Marlborough, whom he considers as "the greatest man that ever appeared at the head of a

British army." He, at the same time, sends to Lord Stanhope a letter preserved in the French Dépôt général de la Guerre, which shows that, in 1674, the young Churchill had applied for a commission as colonel of infantry in the army of Louis XIV.; and, in a memorandum on the Moscow Retreat, he gives an opinion "that the loss of the French army under Napoleon would have been accelerated, more disastrous and disgraceful, if the season had been wet instead of having been frosty." "In truth," he adds, "the army could not in that case have moved at all in the state to which all its animals were reduced at the time."

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From these we turn to lighter subjects: to inquiries not altogether useless, as to the origin of the red uniforms of our soldiers, and the blue and buff of the Whigs. Lord Stanhope (then Lord Mahon) writes to Macaulay, Pray when was the British army for the first time clothed in red?' was the inquiry addressed to me yesterday by no less a person than the Duke of Wellington." Lord Mahon thought in the time of Charles the Second. The Duke thought it was earlier; "that Monk's troops, for example, were Redcoats." Macaulay says the Duke was right. The army of the Commonwealth wore red: and he quotes Hudibras in proof.

The uniform of the Whigs is not so easily accounted for. It was supposed, by some, to have been copied from the army of Washington; but Mr. Jared Sparks says that, on the contrary, the Revolutionists, as was much more probable, borrowed it from the Whigs. Others have traced it to a mixture of the Tory blue with the orange of William III.; and Lord Sidney Osborne thinks that the political followers of the Duke of Richmond adopted it from the uniform of the Goodwood Hunt, and that it thus became the distinguishing dress of his nephew, Charles Fox. Like many party distinctions, however, its origin cannot be very distinctly traced.

Out of consideration for the intellectual character of fallen royalty, we leave the verses by the Pretender unnoticed.

There is a short and very characteristic letter from Lord Macaulay, written on his return from his last tour in Italy; and the volume finishes with a discussion and correspondence between Sir Robert Peel, Macaulay, Lord Mahon, and Hallam, as to the question, "Were human sacrifices in use among the Romans?" Sir Robert Peel (with a knowledge of authorities that seems marvellous) rather leans to the affirmative; and the amount of learning that is brought to bear upon the controversy could have been retained by no ordinary men in the midst of very different, and often harassing, pursuits.

We might have dwelt longer upon Lord Stanhope's volume; but the subjects we have already indicated will sufficiently show that it must be estimated by a higher standard of value than the number of its

pages.

GRANVILLE DE VIGNE.

A TALE OF THE DAY.

PART THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.

I.

HOW FREEDOM CAME AT LAST.

WHEN De Vigne went back to the hotel, he found a letter from his steward, asking him to go down to Vigne, where business matters required his absolute and personal attention. He read the letter, put it down, and thought a minute over its contents. Vigne was hateful to him: he had never been there since he had quitted it on that fatal New Year's Day which had bound him to Constance Trefusis. Every association connected with it was one of keen and stinging pain, interwoven as they were with the one great irremediable mistake and misery of his life. One place, indeed, was dear and sacred to him-that one green grave under the shadowy elms, where his mother lay; but even there lingered and haunted bitter regret and vain remorse, since it was his folly, his headstrong and wilful passion, which had sent her there-the mother whom he had loved so tenderly from the early hours when, as a young boy, he had loved to lean against her knee, sitting under the very shadow of those elms that now sheltered her grave under their fostering foliage. Vigne was full of dark and bitter memories to him: he had not visited it now for eleven long years, exiled from his ancestral home by the gaunt spectre of the folly which there had first clung around his life, to bear him such after-fruits of misery. Yet now, whether Alma's love had made life bear a different colouring, he felt a vague wish and longing to see the old home where his careless childhood and his happy youth had passed; the home where so many of his forefathers had lived; the home-nearest and holiest tie of all the home where his mother had died. Alma would not be in England, whither she was coming with the Molyneux, for two days; if he should go and dwell with her in Italy or Southern France, he wished to see the old elm woods of Vigne before he left the country; he wished to see his mother's grave-his mother, the only woman that had ever loved him purely, devotedly, unselfishly, till Alma, poor child! spent all her wealth of love on him. Something impelled him to go down to Vigne as strongly as he had before loathed even the mention of revisiting it. That day he threw himself into the train, and went down to spend twenty-four hours under that roof where he had once slept the sweet, untroubled, dreamless sleep of childhood ere he knew the bitter sorrow and the delirious joys of manhood. They did not know he was coming, and there was no welcome for him (so best, he could ill have borne it, remembering how he had quitted it); there was only the flag flying from the west turret because he was returned in safety from the Crimea, and the old lodge-keeper's recognition of him as she looked into his face and burst into tears, for May-VOL. CXXVIII. NO. DIX.

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