During his Guardianship, the country was beginning to feel the return of her former prosperity. With the spoil of the enemy he had diffused plenty over the land; the poor were protected; thieves were promptly and severely punished; cheats and liars were discouraged; and good men met the reward of their virtues. The vigilance with which he watched over the public weal was unremitting, and never for a moment gave place to any object of personal consideration. Even those duties which are often considered paramount to every other, were with him secondary to the interest of his country; for, on the death of his mother, his presence being required elsewhere, he intrusted the performance of her obsequies to his friend John Blair and a confidential servant;—which duty they discharged with becoming solemnity in the cathedral of Dunfermline. To this cemetery, it is conjectured, the fragments of his own body were secretly collated by his companions, after the barbarous and impolitic exposure had taken place. At his execution, that self-command and nobleness of soul, which formed such luminous traits in his character, never for a moment forsook him. Without deigning to breathe a murmur, either at the injustice of the tyrant who condemned, or the unhappy man who betrayed him,[81] he submitted to his fate with that becoming dignity which extorted even from his enemies expressions of unqualified admiration.
A revulsion, the natural consequence of the inhuman cruelty of Edward, and the undaunted demeanour of his victim, took place in the minds of the people of England immediately after his execution; and the story of an English[82] monk who pretended to have seen a vision of angels conducting Wallace out of purgatory with much honour, was quickly circulated, and received with pleasure, all over Britain.
The following lines, translated from the original Latin by Hume of Godscroft, are understood to have been composed some time after the execution of our illustrious patriot, by his afflicted friend and chaplain John Blair; and with this elegant and pathetic tribute of genius at the shrine of departed greatness, we shall close the present chapter:—
“Envious death, who ruins all,
Hath wrought the sad lamented fall
Of Wallace; and no more remains
Of him—than what an urn contains!
Ashes for our hero we have—
He, for his armour, a cold grave.
He left the earth—too low a state!
And by his acts o’ercame his fate.
His soul Death had not power to kill,
His noble deeds the world do fill
With lasting trophies of his name.
O! hadst thou virtue loved, or fame,
Thou could’st not have insulted so
Over a brave, betrayed, dead foe,
Edward, nor seen those limbs expos’d
To public shame—fit to be clos’d
As relics in an holy shrine.
But now the infamy is thine.
His end crowns him with glorious bays,
And stains the brightest of thy praise.”
CHAPTER XIII.
CONCLUSION.
The wisdom of the ancient Egyptians has been much celebrated, but in no respect does it appear more conspicuous than in the uses to which they applied the historical records of their country. By their laws, the hand which kept a faithful transcript of passing events, and registered with strict impartiality the transactions and characters of their kings, was removed from the knowledge and influence of those whose deeds were thus related. On the accession of every new monarch, it was part of the ceremonial to read in his presence the records of his predecessor’s reign. By this means he was apprised of the faults he ought to avoid, and admonished of the virtues it was incumbent on him to emulate; while the reflection arising from the certainty that after death his name also would be consigned over to posterity—either to receive the meed of grateful remembrance, or the impress of merited reprobation, according to his actions—operated on the royal mind as a useful and salutary restraint.
Other nations aspired to imitate the Egyptians; but national imitation is too often like that among individuals. The faults and blemishes of the original are more readily caught than its beauties and perfections. Thus, while the grossness of Egypt’s mythology was most servilely copied, one practice which gave dignity and utility to her history was entirely overlooked, and the pen of the historian, in place of being wielded by the impartial, fearless, and untrammelled friend of public virtue, was more frequently found in the hand of the needy parasite; employed in the base and degrading occupation of varnishing the enormities of the ermined tyrant, whose ambitious progress to distinction had been marked by the subversion of the rights, and the carnage of his fellow-men. This prostitution of the historic muse is not unknown among modern authors, and may be often attributed to an unworthy desire of administering to the feelings of a favourite party, or a wish to conciliate the national prejudices of their readers. Though compelled, by the general increase of knowledge, to give a more faithful narrative of facts than the writers of antiquity, when it may suit any of the purposes that have been mentioned, the subject of their biography is seldom dismissed without being made to undergo a sort of purgation in the general estimate of his character, and which is often found to be at antipodes to the actions with which it stands connected. Perhaps the annals of England cannot afford a more striking instance of this perversion of all that is valuable in historical literature, than in the portraits which some historians have drawn of Edward I.
Without attempting to delineate the character of this ambitious disturber of the peace of Britain, the writer will merely notice a few of the leading circumstances of his history, and leave the reader to discover by what curious process of literary chemistry those crudities have been made to harmonize, in order to produce so fair a display of political sagacity and kingly greatness.