What followed was the necessary consequence of such a state of feeling. The recollection of old grievances made the people suspicious and cruel. The fear of popular outrages produced emigrations, intrigues with foreign courts; and, finally, a. general war. Then came the barbarity of fear; the triple despotism of the clubs, the committees, and the commune; the organized anarchy, the fanatical atheism, the scheming and far-sighted madness, the butcheries of the Châtelet, and the accursed marriages of the Loire. The whole property of the nation changed hands. Its best and wisest citizens were banished or murdered. Dungeons were emptied by assassins as fast as they were filled by spies. Provinces were made desolate. Towns were unpeopled. Old things passed away. All things became new.
The paroxysm terminated. A singular train of events restored the house of Bourbon to the French throne. The exiles have returned. But they have returned as the few survivors of the deluge returned to a world in which they could recognise nothing; in which the valleys had been raised, and the mountains depressed, and the courses of the rivers changed,—in which sand and sea-weed had covered the cultivated fields and the walls of imperial cities. They have returned to seek in vain, amidst the mouldering relics of a former system, and the fermenting elements of a new creation, the traces of any remembered object. The old boundaries are obliterated. The old laws are forgotten. The old titles have become laughing-stocks. The gravity of the parliaments, and the pomp of the hierarchy; the Doctors whose disputes agitated the Sorbonne, and the embroidered multitude whose footsteps wore out the marble pavements of Versailles,—all have disappeared. The proud and voluptuous prelates who feasted on silver, and dozed amidst curtains of massy velvet, have been replaced by curates who undergo every drudgery and every humiliation for the wages of lackeys. To those gay and elegant nobles who studied military science as a fashionable accomplishment, and expected military rank as a part of their birthright, have succeeded men born in lofts and cellars; educated in the halfnaked ranks of the revolutionary armies, and raised by ferocious valour and self-taught skill, to dignities with which the coarseness of their manners and language forms a grotesque contrast. The government may amuse itself by playing at despotism, by reviving the names and aping the style of the old court—as Helenus in Epirus consoled himself for the lost magnificence of Troy, by calling his book Xanthus, and the entrance of his little capital the Seæan gate. But the law of entail is gone, and cannot be restored. The liberty of the press is established, and the feeble struggles of the Minister cannot permanently put it down. The Bastille is fallen, and can never more rise from its ruins. A few words, a few ceremonies, a few rhetorical topics, make up all that remains of that system which was founded so deeply by the policy of the house of Valois, and adorned so splendidly by the pride of Louis the Great.
Is this a romance? Or is it a faithful picture of what has lately been in a neighbouring land—of what may shortly be, within the borders of our own? Has the warning been given in vain? Have our Mannerses and Clintons so soon forgotten the fate of houses as wealthy and as noble as their own: Have they forgotten how the tender and delicate woman,—the woman who would not set her foot on the earth for tenderness and delicateness, the idol of gilded drawing-rooms, the pole-star of crowded theatres, the standard of beauty, the arbitress of fashion, the patroness of genius,—was compelled to exchange her luxurious and dignified ease for labour and dependence, the sighs of Dukes and the flattery of bowing Abbés for the insults of rude pupils and exacting mothers;—perhaps, even to draw an infamous and miserable subsistence from those charms which had been the glory of royal circles—to sell for a morsel of bread her’ reluctant caresses and her haggard smiles—to be turned over from a garret to a hospital, and from a hospital to a parish vault? Have they forgotten how the gallant and luxurious nobleman, sprung from illustrious ancestors, marked out from his cradle for the highest honours of the State and of the army, impatient of all control, exquisitely sensible of the slightest affront, with all his high spirit, his polished manners, his voluptuous habits, was reduced to request, with tears in his eyes, credit for half-a-crown,—to pass day after day in hearing the auxiliary verbs mis-recited, or the first page of Télémaque misconstrued, by petulant boys, who infested him with nicknames and caricatures, who mimicked his foreign accent, and laughed at his thread-bare coat? Have they forgotten all this? God grant that they may never remember it with unavailing self-accusation, when desolation shall have visited wealthier cities and fairer gardens;—when Manchester shall be as Lyons, and Stowe as Chantilly;—when he who now, in the pride of rank and opulence, sneers at what we have written in the bitter sincerity of our hearts, shall be thankful for a porringer of broth at the door of some Spanish convent, or shall implore some Italian money-lender to advance another pistole on his George!
THE END
INDEX
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: The 1860 six volume print set had the index for all six volumes at the end to volume six. This PG edition has the complete index for all volumes at the end of each volume.
[A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I] [J] [K] [L] [M] [N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [XYZ]
A.
A priori reasoning, [8] [9] [10] [20] [21] [59]
Abbt and abbot, difference between, [76]
Academy, character of its doctrines, [411]
Academy, French, (the), [2] [3] ; has been of no benefit to literature, [23] ; its treatment of Corneille and Voltaire, [23] [21] ; the scene of the fiercest animosities, [23]
Academy of the Floral Games, at Toulouse, [136] [137] ; Acting, Garrick's, quotation from Fielding illustrative of, i. 332; the true test of excellence in,[133]
Adam, Robert, court architect to George III., [11]
Addington, Henry, speaker of the House of Commons, [282] ; made First Lord of the Treasury, [282] ; his administration, [282] [281] ; coolness between him and Pitt, [285] [286] ; their quarrel, [287] ; his resignation, [290] [112] ; raised to the Peerage, [112] ; raised to the Peerage, [293]
Addison, Joseph, review of Miss Aikin's life of, [321] [122] ; his character, [323] [321] ; sketch of his father's life, [321] [325] ; his birth and early life, [325] [327] ; appointed to a scholarship in Magdalene College, Oxford, [327] ; his classical attainments, [327] [330] ; his Essay on the Evidences of Christianity, [330] ; his Latin poems, [331] [332] ; contributes a preface to Dryden's Georgies, [335] ; his intention to take orders frustrated. [335] ; sent by the government to the Continent, [333] ; his introduction to Boileau, [310] ; leaves Paris and proceeds to Venice, [311] [315] ; his residence in Italy, [315] [350] ; composes his Epistle to Montague (then Lord Halifax), [350] ; his prospects clouded by the death of William III., [351] ; becomes tutor to a young English traveller, [351] ; writes his Treatise on Medals, [351] ; repairs to Holland, [351] ; returns to England, [351] ; his cordial reception and introduction into the Kit Cat Club, [351] ; his pecuniary difficulties, [352] ; engaged by Godolphin to write a poem in honour of Marlborough's exploits, [351] [355] ; is appointed to a Commissionership, [355] ; merits of his "Campaign," [356] ; criticism of his Travels in Italy, [329] [359] ; his opera of Rosamond, [361] ; is made Undersecretary of State, and accompanies the Earl of Halifax to Hanover, [361] [302] ; his election to the House of Commons, [362] ; his failure as a speaker, [362] ; his popularity and talents for conversation, [365] [367] ; his timidity and constraint among strangers, [367] ; his favorite associates, [368] [371] ; becomes Chief Secretary for Ireland under Wharton, [371] ; origination of the Tatler, [373] [371] ; his characteristics as a writer, [373] [378] ; compared with Swift and Voltaire as a master of the art of ridicule, [377] [379] ; his pecuniary losses, [382] [383] ; loss of his Secretaryship, [382] ; resignation of his Fellowship, [383] ; encouragement and disappointment of his advances towards a great lad [383] ; returned to Parliament without a contest, [383] ; his Whig Examiner, [384] ; intercedes with the Tories on behalf of Ambrose Phillipps and Steele, [384] ; his discontinuance of the Tatler and commencement of the Spectator, [384] ; his part in the Spectator, [385] ; his commencement and discontinuance of the Guardian, [389] ; his Cato, [345] [390] [394] [365] [366] ; his intercourse with Pope, [394] [395] ; his concern for Steele, [396] ; begins a new series of the Spectator, [397] ; appointed secretary to the Lords Justices of the Council on the death of Queen Anne. [397] ; again appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, [399] ; his relations with Swift and Tickell, [399] [400] ; removed to the Board of Trade, [401] ; production of his Drummer, [401] ; his Freeholder, [402] ; his estrangement from Pope, [403] [404] ; his long courtship of the Countess Dowager of Warwick and union with her, [411] [412] ; takes up his abode at Holland House, [412] ; appointed Secretary of State bv Sunderland, [413] ; failure of his health, [413] [418] ; resigns his post, [413] ; receives a pension, [414] ; his estrangement from Steele and other friends, [414] [415] ; advocates the bill for limiting the number of Peers, [415] ; refutation of a calumny upon him, [417] ; intrusts his works to Tickell, and dedicates them to Greggs, [418] ; sends for Gay on his death-bed to ask his forgiveness, [418] [419] ; his death and funeral, [420] ; Tickell's eulogy on his death, [421] ; superb edition of his works, [421] ; his monument in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, [422] ; praised by Dryden, [369]
Addison, Dr. Lancelot, sketch of his life, [325] [325]
Adiaphorists, a sect of German Protestants, [7] [8]
Adultery, how represented by the Dramatists of the Restoration, [357]
Advancement of Learning, by Bacon, its publication, [383]
Æschines, his character, [193] [194]
Æschylus and the Greek Drama, [210] [229]
Afghanistan, the monarchy of, analogous to that of England in the 10th century, [29] ; bravery of its inhabitants, [23] ; the English the only army in India which could compete with them, [30] ; their devastation in India, [207]
Agricultural and manufacturing laborers, comparison of their condition, [145] [148]
Agitjari, the singer, [256]
Aiken, Miss, review of her Life of Addison, [321] [422]
Aix, its capture, [244]
Akenside, his epistle to Curio, [183]
Alcibiades, suspected of assisting at a mock celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, [49]
Aldrich, Dean, [113]
Alexander the Great compared with Clive, [297]
Altieri, his greatness, [61] ; influence of Dante upon his style, [61] [62] ; comparison between him and Cowper, [350] ; his Rosmunda contrasted with Shakspere's Lady Macbeth, [175] ; influence of Plutarch and the writers of his school upon, i. 401. [401]
Allahabad, [27]
Allegories of Johnson and Addison, [252]
Allegory, difficulty of making it interesting, [252]
Allegro and Penseroso, [215]
Alphabetical writing, the greatest of human inventions, [453] ; comparative views of its value by Plato and Bacon, [453] [454]
America, acquisitions of the Catholic Church in, [300] ; its capabilities, [301]
American Colonies, British, war with them, [57] [59] ; act for imposing stamp duties upon them, [58] [65] ; their disaffection, [76] ; revival of the dispute with them, [105] ; progress of their resistance, [106]
Anabaptists, their origin, [12]
Anacharsis, reputed contriver of the potter's wheel, [438]
Analysis, critical not applicable with exactness to poetry, [325] ; but grows more accurate as criticism improves, [321]
Anaverdy Khan, governor of tlie Carnatic, [211]
Angria, his fortress of Gheriah reduced by Clive, [228]
Anne, Queen, her political and religious inclinations, [130] ; changes in her government in 1710, [130] ; relative estimation bv the Whigs and the Tories of her reign, [133] [140] ; state of parties at her accession, v. 352, [352] [353] ; dismisses the Whigs, [381] [382] ; change in the conduct of public affairs consequent on her death, [397] ; touches Johnson for the king's evil, [173] ; her cabinet during the Seven Years' War, [410]
Antijacobin Review, (the new), vi. 405; contrasted with the Antijacobin, [400] [407]
Antioch, Grecian eloquence at, [301]
Anytus, [420]
Apostolical succession, Mr. Gladstone claims it for the Church of England, [100] ; to 178. [178]
Apprentices, negro, in the West Indies, [307] [374] [370] [378] [383]
Aquinas, Thomas, [478]
Arab fable of the Great Pyramid, [347]
Arbuthnot's Satirical Works, [377]
Archimedes, his slight estimate of his inventions, [450]
Archytas, rebuked by Plato, [449]
Arcot, Nabob of, his relations with England, [211] [219] ; his claims recognized by the English, [213]
Areopagitiea, Milton's allusion to, [204]
Argyle, Duke of, secedes from Walpole's administration, [204]
Arimant, Dryden's, [357]
Ariosto, [60]
Aristophanes, [352] ; his clouds a true picture of the change in his countrymen's character, [383]
Aristotle, his authority impaired by the Reformation, [440] ; the most profound critic of antiquity, [140] [141] ; his doctrine in regard to poetry, [40] ; the superstructure of his treatise on poetry not equal to its plan, [140]
Arithmetic, comparative estimate of, by Plato and by Bacon, [448]
Arlington, Lord, his character, [30] ; his coldness for the Triple Alliance, [37] ; his impeachment, [50]
Armies in the middle ages, how constituted, [282] [478] ; a powerful restraint on the regal power, [478] ; subsequent change in this respect, [479]
Arms, British, successes of, against the French in 1758, [244] [247]
Army, (the) control of, by Charles I., or by the Parliament, [489] ; its triumph over both, [497] ; danger of a standing army becoming an instrument of despotism, [487]
Arne, Dr., set to music Addison's opera of Rosamund, [361]
Arragon and Castile, their old institutions favorable to public liberty iii. 80. [80]
Arrian, [395]
Art of War, Machiavelli's, [306]
Arundel, Earl of, iii. [434]
Asia, Central, its people, [28]
Asiatic Society, commencement of its career under Warren Hastings, [98]
Assemblies, deliberative, [2] [40]
Assembly, National, the French, [46] [48] [68] [71] [443] [446]
Astronomy, comparative estimate of by Socrates and by Bacon, [452]
Athenian jurymen, stipend of, [33] ; note; police, name of, i. 34, [34] ; note; magistrates, name of, who took cognisance of offences against religion, i. 53, [139] ; note.; orators, essay on, [139] [157] ; oratory unequalled, [145] ; causes of its excellence, [145] ; its quality, [151] [153] [156]
Johnson's ignorance of Athenian character, [146] [418] ; intelligence of the populace, and its causes, [140] [149] ; books the least part of their education, [147] ; what it consisted in, [148] ; their knowledge necessarily defective, [148] ; and illogical from its conversational character, [149] ; eloquence, history of, [151] [153] ; when at its height, [153] [154] ; coincidence between their progress in the art of war and the art of oratory, [155] ; steps by which Athenian oratory approached to finished excellence extemporaneous with those by which its character sank, [153] ; causes of this phenomenon, [154] ; orators, in proportion as they became more expert, grew less respectable in general character, [155] ; their vast abilities, [151] ; statesmen, their decline and its causes, [155] ; ostracism, [182] ; comedies, impurity of, [182] [2] ; reprinted at the two Universities, [182] ; iii. 2. [2]
"Athenian Revels," Scenes from, [30] ; to: [54]
Athenians (the) grew more sceptical with the progress of their civilization, [383] ; the causes of their deficiencies in logical accuracy, [383] [384]
Johnson's opinion of them, [384] [418]
Athens, the most disreputable part of, i. 31, note ; favorite epithet of, i. 30, [30] ; note; her decline and its characteristics, [153] [154] Mr. Clifford's preference of Sparta over, [181] ; contrasted with Sparta, [185] [187] ; seditions in, [188] ; effect of slavery in, [181] ; her liturgic system, [190] ; period of minority in, [191] [192] ; influence of her genius upon the world, [200] [201]
Attainder, an act of, warrantable, [471]
Atterbury, Francis, life of, vi. [112] [131] ; his youth, [112] ; his defence of Luther, [113] ; appointed a royal chaplain, [113] ; his share in the controversy about the Letters of Phalaris, [115] [119] [110] ; prominent as a high-churchman, [119] [120] ; made Dean of Carlisle, [120] ; defends Sacheverell, [121] ; made Dean of Christ Church, [121] ; desires to proclaim James II., [122] ; joins the opposition, [123] ; refuses to declare for the Protestant succession, [123] ; corresponds with the Pretender, [123] [124] ; his private life, [124] [125] [129] ; reads the funeral service over the body of Addison, [124] [420] ; imprisoned for his part in the Jacobite conspiracy, [125] ; his trial and sentence, [120] [127] ; his exile, [128] [129] ; his favor with the Pretender, [129] [130] ; vindicates himself from the charge of having garbled Clarendon's history, [130] ; his death and burial, [131]
Attila, [300]
Attributes of God,subtle speculations touching them imply no high degree of intellectual culture, [303] [304] "
Aubrey, his charge of corruption against Bacon, [413]
Bacon's decision against him after his present, [430]
Augsburg, Confession of, its adoption in Sweden, [329]
Augustin, St., iv. 300. [300]
Attrungzebe, his policy, [205] [206]
Austen, Jane, notice of, [307] [308]
Austin, Sarah, her character as a translator, [299] [349]
Austria, success of her armies in the Catholic cause, [337]
Authors, their present position, [190] ; to: [197]
Avignon, the Papal Court transferred from Rome to, [312]