Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 359, September 1845

by Various

It was said that Pitt died of a broken heart, in despair of the prospects of England. The defeat of Austerlitz was pronounced his death-blow. What thoughts may cluster round the sleepless pillow, who shall tell? But no man knew England better; none had a bolder faith in her perseverance and principle; none had more broadly laid the foundations of victory in national honour. I shall never be driven into the belief that William Pitt despaired of his country.

He died in the vigour of his genius, in the proudest struggle of the empire, in the midst of the deepest trial which for a thousand years had demanded all the faculties of England. Yet, what man within human recollection had lived so long, if we are to reckon life not by the calendar but by triumphs? What minister of England, what minister of Europe, but himself, was the head of his government for three-and-twenty years? What man had attained so high an European rank? What mind had influenced so large an extent of European interests? What name was so instinctively pronounced by every nation, as the first among mankind? To have earned distinctions like these, was to have obtained all that time could give. Not half a century in years, Pitt's true age was patriarchal.

I was now but a spectator. My connexion with public life was broken off. Every name with which I had been associated was swept away; and I stood like a man flung from ship-wreck upon a shore, where every face which he met was that of a stranger. I was still in Parliament, but I felt a loathing for public exertions. From habit, I had almost identified office with the memorable men whom I had seen governing so long; and the new faces, the new declamation, and the new principles, which the ministerial change brought before me nightly, startled my feelings even less as new than as incongruous. I admitted the ability, the occasional intelligence, and perhaps even the patriotism of the cabinet; but in those reveries, (the natural refuge from a long debate,) memory so often peopled the Treasury Bench with the forms of Pitt and his distinguished coadjutors, and so completely filled my ear with his sonorous periods and high-toned principles, that when I was roused to the reality, I felt as those who have seen some great performer in one of Shakspeare's characters, until no excellence of his successor can embody the conception once more.

I retired from the tumult of London, and returned to tastes which I had never wholly forgotten; taking a small residence within a few miles of this centre of the living world, and devoting my leisure to the enjoyments of that life, which, in the purest days of man, was given to him as the happiest, "to dress the garden, and keep it." Clotilde in all her tastes joined with mine, or rather led them, with the instinctive elegance of a female mind, accomplished in every grace of education. We read, wrote, walked, talked, and pruned our rose-trees and gathered our carnations and violets, together. She had already given me those pledges, which, while they increase the anxiety, also increase the affection, of wedded life. The education of our children was a new source of interest. They were handsome and healthy. Their little sports, the growth of their young perceptions, and the freshness of their ideas, renewed to us both all the delights of society without their exhaustion; and when, after returning from a day spent in the noise and bustle of London, I reached my rustic gate, heard the cheerful voices of the little population which rushed down the flowery avenue to cling upon my neck; and stood at the door of my cottage, with my arm round the waist of my beautiful and fond wife, breathing the evening fragrance of a thousand blooms, and enjoying the cool air, and the purple glories of the sky—I often wondered why men should seek for happiness in any other scene; and felt gratitude, not the less sincere for its being calm and solemn, to the Giver of a lot so nearly approaching to human fulness of joy.

But the world rolls on, let who will slumber among its roses. The political world was awoke by a thunder-clap. Fox died. He was just six months a minister! Such is ambition, such is the world. He died, like Pitt, in the zenith of his powers, with his judgment improved and his passions mitigated, with the noblest prospects of public utility before his eyes, and the majestic responsibilities of a British minister assuming their natural rank in his capacious mind. The times, too, were darkening; and another "lodestar" was thus stricken from the national hemisphere, at the moment when the nation most wanted guidance. The lights which remained were many; but they were vague, feeble, and scattered. The "leader of the starry host" was gone.

I cannot trust myself to speak of this distinguished man; for I was no Foxite. I regarded his policy in opposition as the pleadings of a powerful advocate, with a vast retaining fee, a most comprehensive cause, and a most generous and confiding client. Popularity, popular claims, and the people, were all three made for him beyond all other men; and no advocate ever pleaded with more indefatigable zeal, or more resolute determination. But, raised to a higher position, higher qualities were demanded. Whether they might not have existed in his nature, waiting for the development of time, is the question. But time was not given. His task had hitherto been easy. It was simply to stand as a spectator on the shore, criticising the manœuvres of a stately vessel struggling with the gale. The helm was at last put into his hand; and it was then that he felt the difference between terra firma and the wild and restless element which he was now to control. But he had scarcely set his foot on the deck, when he, too, was swept away. On such brevity of trial, it is impossible to judge. Time might have matured his vigour, while it expanded his views: matchless as the leader of a party, he might then have been elevated into the acknowledged leader of a people. The singular daring, ardent sensitiveness, and popular ambition, which made him dangerous in a private station, might then have found their nobler employment, and been purified in the broad and lofty region of ministerial duty. He might have enlarged the partizan into the patriot, and, instead of being the great leader of a populace, have been ennobled into the great guide of an empire.

But the world never stands still. On the day when I returned from moralising on the vanity of life over the grave of Fox, I received a letter, a trumpet-call to the mêlée, from Mordecai. It was enthusiastic, but its enthusiasm had now taken a bolder direction. "In abandoning England," he told me, "he had abandoned all minor and personal speculations, and was now dealing with the affairs of kingdoms." This letter gave only fragments of his views; but it was easy to see that he contemplated larger results than he ventured to trust to paper.

"You must come and see me here," said he, "for it is only here that you can see me as I ever desired to be seen; or in fact, as nature made me. In your busy metropolis, I was only one of the millions who were content to make a sort of a reptile existence, creeping on the ground, and living on the chances of the day. Here I have thrown off my caterpillar life and am on the wing—a human dragon-fly, if you will, darting at a thousand different objects, enjoying the broad sunshine, and speeding through the wide air. My invincible attachment to my nation here finds its natural object; for the sons of Abraham are here a people. I am a patriarch, with my flocks and herds, my shepherds and clansmen, the sons of my tribe coming to do me honour, and my heart swelling and glowing with the prospects of national regeneration. I have around me a province to which one of your English counties would be but a sheepfold; a multitude of bold spirits, to whom your populace would be triflers; a new nation, elated by their approaching deliverance, solemnly indignant at their past oppression, and determined to shake the land to its centre, or to recover their freedom.

"You will speak of this as the vision of an old man—come to us, and you will see it a splendid reality. But observe, that I expect no miracle. I leave visions to fanatics; and while I acknowledge the Power of Powers, which rides in clouds, and moves the world by means unknown to human weakness, I look also to the human means which have their place in pushing on the wheels of the great system. The army which has broken down the strength of the Continent—the force which, like a whirlwind, has torn such tremendous chasms through the old domains of European power, and has torn up so many of the forest monarchs by the root—the French legions, the greatest instrument of human change since the Gothic invasions, are now marching direct on Poland.

"I have seen the man who is at the head of that army—the most extraordinary being whom Europe has seen for a thousand years—the crowned basilisk of France. I own, that we must beware of his fangs, of the blast of his nostrils, and the flash of his eye. He is a terrible production of nature: but he is on our side, and, even if he should be finally trampled, he will have first done our work. I have had an interview with Napoleon! it was long and animated. He spoke to me as to the chief man of my nation, and I answered him in the spirit of the chief man. He pronounced, that the general change, essential to the true government of Europe, was incapable of being effected without the aid of our people. He spoke contemptuously of the impolicy by which we had been deprived of our privileges, and declared his determination to place us on a height from which we might move the world. But it was obvious to me, that under those lofty declarations there was a burning ambition; that if we were to move the world, it was for him; and that, even then, we were not to move it for the monarch of France, but for the individual. I saw, that he was then the dreamer. Yet his dream was the extravagance of genius. In those hopeless graspings and wild aspirations, I saw ultimate defeat; but I saw also the nerve and muscle of a gigantic mind. In his pantings after immeasurable power and imperishable dominion, he utterly forgot the barrier which time throws before the proudest step of human genius; and that within a few years his head must grow grey, his blood cold, the sword be returned to its sheath, and even the sceptre fall from his withering hand. Still, in our conference, we both spoke the same language of scorn for human obstacles, of contempt for the narrowness of human views, and of our resolution to effect objects which, in many an after age, should fix the eye of the world. But he spoke of immortal things; relying on mortal conjecture and mortal power. I spoke of them on surer grounds. I felt them to be the consummation of promises which nothing can abolish; to be the offspring of power which nothing can resist. The foundation of his structures was policy, the foundation of mine was prophecy. And when his shall be scattered as the chaff of the threshing-floor, and be light as the dust of the balance; mine shall be deep as the centre, high as the heavens, and dazzling as the sun in his glory."