For the purpose of dealing in the fairest possible manner with my readers, I have looked into the various records of those events which might have escaped my memory. But I have not suffered them to bias opinions conceived long since, and conceived in the spirit of sincerity. Such is my design. It is given to the public with a perfect freedom from all party influence; with a total avoidance of all personality; with that calmness of retrospect which best becomes one who has no desire to share in the passions of the world; and with that wish of the French almanack-maker, which lies at the bottom of many a bulkier enterprise than mine—
"Je veux infiniment qu'on me lise."
1800.
January 1.—The nineteenth century has commenced with one of those events, which deserve to mark epochs. On this day the UNION Of Ireland with England has begun. The church bells are ringing, at this moment, in all quarters. Flags are flying on the various government establishments. A new Imperial flag is hoisted at the Tower, and I now hear the guns saluting it with their roar.
The last century was the era of Intrigue in politics, in war, in courts, in every thing. In England, the Revolution at the close of the Century before had extinguished the power of Despotism. Popery had perished under the heel of Protestantism. The Jacobite had fled from the face of the Williamite. The sword was seen no longer. But the strifes of party succeeded the struggles of Religion; and Parliament became the scene of those conflicts, which, in the century before, would have been fought in the field.
I strongly doubt which age exhibits the national character in a more elevated point of view. The war of Charles I. was a period of proud feeling. It was the last burst of Chivalry. Men of rank and fortune periled both from a sense of honour, and some of the noblest who fell on the royal side, were as fully convinced of the royal errors as the orators of Parliament; but their sense of honour urged them to the sacrifice, and they freely shed their blood for a King, whose faithlessness and folly were to be redeemed only by his martyrdom.
From the period of the Revolution, the character of the country had changed. Still bold, sensitive, and capable of sacrifice, it had grown more contemptuous of political romance, more clear-sighted as to public merits, and more fixed on substantial claims. The latter part of the seventeenth century had seen the worthless and treacherous Charles II. brought back by the nobles and gentry of the land in a national triumph. The middle of the eighteenth century saw the expulsion of the Pretender, a gallant and adventurous prince, whose only adherents were the Scottish chiefs, and whose most determined opponents were the whole multitude of England.
France had lost her Chivalric spirit nearly a hundred years before. It had died with Francis I. The wars of the League were wars of Chicane; Artifice in arms, Subtlety in steel coats. The profligacy of the courts of Louis Quatorze, and his successors, dissolved at once the morals and the mind of France. That great country exhibited, to the eye of Europe, the aspect of the most extravagant license, and the most rapid decay. There lay the great voluptuary, under the general gaze; like one of its feudal lords dying of his own debauch—lying helpless from infirmity, surrounded with useless pomp, and in the sight of luxuries which he could taste no more—until death came, and he was swept away from his place among men.
Germany was unknown even in Europe, but by the military struggles of Prussia and Austria. But the objects were trifling, and the result was more trifling still. Prussia gained Silesia, and Austria scarcely felt the loss, in an Empire extending from the Rhine to the Euxine. Then came peace, lassitude, and oblivion once more. But this languid century was to close with a tremendous explosion. A Belgian revolt was followed by a French Revolution. The wearisome continuance of the calm was broken up by a tornado, and when the surges subsided again, they exhibited many a wreck of thrones flung upon the shore.
What is to be the next great change? What inscription shall be written by the historian on the sepulchre of the coming hundred years? Will they exhibit the recovery of the power of opinion by Kings, or the mastery of its power by the People? Will Europe be a theatre of State intrigue, as of old, or a scene of Republican violence? It would require a prophet to pronounce the reality.