[24] 'Heraclius.' The same prosodial fault affects this name as that of Alexandria. In each name the Latin i represents a Greek ei, and in that situation (viz., as a penultimate syllable) should receive the emphasis in pronunciation as well as the sound of a long i (that sound which is heard in Longinus). So again Academia, not Academia. The Greek accentuation may be doubted, but not the Roman.
[25] We have already said that Heraclius, who and whose family filled the throne of Eastern Cæsar for exactly one hundred years (611-711), consequently interesting in this way (if in no other), that he, as the reader will see by considering the limits in point of time, must have met and exhausted the first rage of the Mahometan avalanche, merits according to our estimate the title of first and noblest amongst the Oriental Cæsars. There are records or traditions of his earliest acts that we could wish otherwise. Which of us would not offend even at this day, if called upon to act under one scale of sympathies, and to be judged under another? In his own day, too painfully we say it, Heraclius could not have followed what we venture to believe the suggestions of his heart, in relation to his predecessor, because a policy had been established which made it dangerous to be merciful, and a state of public feeling which made it effeminate to pardon. First make it safe to permit a man's life, before you pronounce it ignoble to authorize his death. Strip mercy of ruin to its author, before you affirm upon a judicial punishment of death (as then it was) cruelty in the adviser or ignobility in the approver. Escaping from these painful scenes at the threshold of his public life, we find Heraclius preparing for a war, the most difficult that in any age any hero has confronted. We call him the earliest of Crusaders, because he first and literally fought for the recovery of the Cross. We call him the most prosperous of Crusaders, because he first—he last—succeeded in all that he sought, bringing back to Syria (ultimately to Constantinople) that sublime symbol of victorious Christianity which had been disgracefully lost at Jerusalem. Yet why, when comparing him not with Crusaders, but with Cæsars, do we pronounce him the noblest? Reader, which is it that is felt by a thoughtful man—supposing him called upon to select one act by preference before all others—to be the grandest act of our own Wellesley? Is it not the sagacious preparation of the lines at Torres Vedras, the self-mastery which lured the French on to their ruin, the long-suffering policy which reined up his troops till that ruin was accomplished? 'I bide my time,' was the dreadful watchword of Wellington through that great drama; in which, let us tell the French critics on Tragedy, they will find the most absolute unity of plot; for the forming of the lines as the fatal noose, the wiling back the enemy, the pursuit when the work of disorganization was perfect, all were parts of one and the same drama. If he (as another Scipio) saw another Zama, in this instance he was not our Scipio or Marcellus, but our Fabius Maximus:
'Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem.'—'Ann.' 8, 27.
Now, such was the Emperor Heraclius. He also had his avenging Zama. But, during a memorable interval of eleven years, he held back; fiercely reined up his wrath; brooded; smiled often balefully; watched in his lair; and then, when the hour had struck, let slip his armies and his thunderbolts as no Cæsar had ever done, except that one who founded the name of Cæsar.
[26] A brutal outrage on a Captain Jenkins—i.e., cutting off his ears—was the cause of a war with Spain in the reign of George II.—Ed.
XVIII. NATIONAL MANNERS AND FALSE JUDGMENT OF THEM.
Anecdotes illustrative of manners, above all of national manners, will be found on examination, in a far larger proportion than might be supposed, rank falsehoods. Malice is the secret foundation of all anecdotes in that class. The ordinary course of such falsehoods is, that first of all some stranger and alien to those feelings which have prompted a particular usage—incapable, therefore, of entering fully into its spirit or meaning—tries to exhibit its absurdity more forcibly by pushing it into an extreme or trying case. Coming himself from some gross form of Kleinstädtigkeit, where no restraints of decorum exist, and where everybody speaks to everybody, he has been utterly confounded by the English ceremony of 'introduction,' when enforced as the sine quâ non condition of personal intercourse. If England is right, then how clownishly wrong must have been his own previous circles! If England is not ridiculously fastidious, then how bestially grovelling must be the spirit of social intercourse in his own land! But no man reconciles himself to this view of things in a moment. He kicks even against his own secret convictions. He blushes with shame and anger at the thought of his own family perhaps brought suddenly into collision with polished Englishmen; he thrills with wrath at the recollection of having himself trespassed upon this code of restriction at a time when he was yet unwarned of its existence. In this temper he is little qualified to review such a regulation with reason and good sense. He seeks to make it appear ridiculous. He presses it into violent cases for which it was never intended. He supposes a case where some fellow-creature is drowning. How would an Englishman act, how could he act, even under such circumstances as these? We know, we who are blinded by no spite, that as a bar to personal communication or to any interchange of good offices under appeals so forcible as these, this law of formal presentation between the parties never did and never will operate. The whole motive to such a law gives way at once.