iE /WORLD, IN THE YEAR 1840. f 
 
 46 
 
 RETROSPECT 
 
 CHIEF EVENTS, CIVIL, POLITICAL, AND RELIGIOUS, 
 OF THE PAST YEAR, 
 
 IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JAMES FRASER, 215, REGENT STREET. 
 
 1841.
 
 A list of nations by the ears, 
 
 From Nova Zembla to Algiers ; 
 
 Of fights of Sultans and Pachas, 
 
 On matters worth so many straws ; 
 
 While " non-intrusion " England dabbles 
 
 In all the feuds of all the rabbles. 
 
 A list of Humbug and its heroes, 
 
 Its Thiers, Van Burens, Esparteros, 
 
 Illustrious warriors of the pen, 
 
 Like bullfrogs, roaring from their fen : 
 
 The new Napoleons of the desk, 
 
 True models of the Grand Grotesque ! 
 
 A list of crumbling Cabinets ; 
 
 Of felons packed for sea in sets ; 
 
 Of nonsense writ, and lies harangued, 
 
 By Irish patriots still unhanged ; 
 
 Pence-saving Joe's financial plan ; 
 
 The horrors of the tribe of Dan, 
 
 While Stanley's cutting-whip is plied 
 
 Upon their prostrate chieftain's hide, 
 
 And every roarer of " Kepale," 
 
 Quivers through all his length of tail ! 
 
 The last bonmot of Palmerston, 
 
 When Peel was peppering Lord John ; 
 
 Or scornful Lyndhurst, in the peers, 
 
 Was pulling Landsdowne's ass's ears. 
 
 The Throne, the Church, the Bar, the Stage, 
 
 You have their pictures in our page; 
 
 From prince to peasant, all are here, 
 
 The living harvest of the Year ! 
 
 M. W. MARTIN AND CO., PRINTERS, BARTIKTT'S BUILDINGS.
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 THE following pages originally appeared in the 
 successive numbers of the Britannia a Saturday 
 Newspaper, established for the purpose of advo- 
 cating the old and honest cause of Church and 
 State. How it has redeemed its pledge is best to 
 be known by the rank, which, in less than two 
 years, it has obtained among its contemporaries ; 
 by the approval of the chief among those whose 
 names will yet make a part of the National His- 
 tory, by the influence which its opinions pos- 
 sess among the people, and by the honorable 
 confidence of the CONSERVATISM of the Empire. 
 
 1734304
 
 A VIEW 
 
 OF 
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 
 
 THE close of the year naturally induces us to look 
 back upon its course, and the sacred season with 
 which it closes, gives a solemn and sacred colouring 
 to the retrospect. It tells us that so much of the 
 space allotted to individual life, and even to the 
 mightier existence of the world itself, has passed 
 away. It finishes with the season of Christian peace, 
 and we may well be grateful to that Providence 
 which overrules the vanities and violences of human 
 power, that it has finished also in a season of civil 
 tranquillity throughout the world. We never recollect 
 a year which began with more alarming menaces of 
 war. But all are now silent ; the standards are 
 furled; the vast armies which we saw ready to 
 spring on each other, like roused tigers, have been 
 remanded ; the dissensions of startled cabinets have 
 sunk into the quiet formalities of negotiation ; the 
 frenzy of conquest in the great military powers has
 
 2 A VIEW OF 
 
 been checked by fear or cured by reason ; Russia has 
 recalled her troops from our Indian frontier ; the 
 fleet of France has returned from the Levant; her war- 
 faction has been driven from office ; and the incen- 
 diary of her councils has been cast down with a 
 suddenness and heaviness of fall which ought to pre- 
 clude his ever rising again. The power of England, 
 however imperfectly brought into action, has been 
 developed with brilliant success ; and thus, the great 
 pacificator on principle, having been made the victor 
 in reality, has set the seal to the general bond of 
 peace. This is the true panegyric of our country. 
 None nobler can be given to a nation, than that her 
 strength is the strength of all; her aggrandisement only 
 an addition of honour to mankind, her most splen- 
 did success only an universal security, and the more 
 impregnable, lofty, and uncircumscribed her autho- 
 rity, the happier for the rights, the knowledge, and 
 the progress of every nation on the globe. At this 
 hour then, all is peace round Europe. The surge of 
 war, like the surge of the ocean, has been checked 
 and controlled by the same luminary which divides 
 the moral light from the darkness of the world. 
 
 EUROPE. 
 
 The aspect of European affairs always exhibits a 
 curious variety, and probably that variety makes it 
 only the more productive. If all was mountain or all
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 3 
 
 valley, all sunshine or all shower, what would be- 
 come of the harvest ? The plough that despaired of 
 cutting through the perpetual rocks, would be equally 
 baffled by the perpetual morass. " All is for the 
 best," says the philosopher of the French romance, 
 " in this best of all possible worlds." Voltaire laughs 
 at him, but we think that he is in the right. We 
 are Optimists. 
 
 What, after all, is the face of Europe but the face 
 of man on a larger scale ; a collection of huge fea- 
 tures, born of the same blood, fed by the same nutri- 
 tion, and filled with the same life. Each, it is true, 
 the seat of a different passion. The French perform- 
 ing the nostril fastidious, insolent, and upturned on 
 every occasion, and at every thing else among man- 
 kind. The Germans the mouth heavy, fleshy, happy 
 and harmless, so long as it is employed in eating. 
 The Spaniard the eyebrow a showy inutility, con- 
 tinually elevated with nothing to do the sign of 
 superciliousness, the very concentration of arrogance, 
 " vanitas vanitatum." The Italian the eye smit 
 with the glitter of life, tempted by gold, beauty, fine 
 clothes, and the national far niente a people of en- 
 thusiasts about maccaroni, and philosophers on cigars 
 dreaming of universal empire, while sleeping naked 
 in the streets ; and priding themselves on the fame 
 of their ancestors, and the prospects of their poste- 
 rity, while they are content with rags, fleas, and 
 alms the most self-satisfied, superb, and sunshine- 
 loving beggars in the world. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 A VIEW OF 
 
 But the year is a pantomime. What harlequinade 
 was ever half so shifting as the twelve months that 
 have just passed by ? Nothing could be more true to 
 the laws of the Stage, than the flourish of trumpets 
 which preceded the rising of the great European 
 Curtain. All was the pomp of war France in all 
 her mail ; King, peers, and people, down to the 
 gallant tailors and patriot perruquiers, who act the 
 hero in the costume of the National Guard. Germany 
 gathering her slow dukes, antiquated crown princes, 
 and stiff chamberlains, all majesty and moustache. 
 Russia, long bearded, strong and barbarous, the 
 Northern " Pantaloon," with locks of snow, but legs 
 and hands of enormous length, and capable of mak- 
 ing an enormous spring, where there was anything 
 to be got by its outre agility. 
 
 But then came the true sport of the season. 
 Monsieur Thiers was suddenly seen throwing off his 
 perriwig, armour, and embroidered waistcoat, and 
 transformed into the smallest, yet the most eccentric, 
 of Harlequins. A touch of his wand transformed 
 everything, like himself. The potentates were turned 
 into old women, armies into ombres Chinoises, and 
 the earth into the moon. Then the scene shifted to 
 London, with the Minister busy with alternate billet- 
 doux and bombardments ; then to Paris, with Louis 
 Philippe, shot at by an army of air-guns from the 
 planet Venus ; then to Vienna, with Metternich, play- 
 ing the invalid in Milanese flannel, and saturating 
 himself with Mocha coffee ; then to Russia, with Ni-
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 5 
 
 cholas sitting down to his dinner, and preparing for the 
 pleasure of cutting a capital slice of Turkey at Christ- 
 mas ; then to Constantinople, with the Sultan riding 
 a wooden horse in the seraglio, rocked by Lord 
 Ponsonby pulling its head, and the French ambassa- 
 dor pulling its tail ; then to Alexandria, with the 
 Pacha writing a letter of thanks to England for her 
 services in Syria, and training a young crocodile as a 
 present for her Majesty at Windsor. There has been 
 the suitable quantity of tinsel displayed, and gun- 
 powder expended several pasteboard fleets, one 
 or two castles battered by squibs, and, to adopt the 
 regular style of the bills, " a grand assault on the 
 batteries of a stupendous fortress ; the whole to con- 
 clude with an unrivalled explosion." So finished the 
 spectacle the gas was put out, the smoke vanished, 
 the curtain fell, the clowns, columbines, pantaloons, 
 and punchinellos retired to throw off their frippery, 
 the beef-eaters w r ere dismissed, and the audience 
 went to their homes. But politics, like theatres, 
 shut up, only to open again ; and the world is already 
 informed, that new performances of the most stirring 
 nature are in full preparation. 
 
 Yet on the whole, the prospect is encouraging. The 
 year has given striking proof, that the great lessons 
 of the revolutionary war have not been in vain. It 
 has exhibited in the ruling powers an unexpected 
 sense of the value of peace, and of the true means to 
 preserve it. The great Conservative principle the 
 balance of power, has never been so fully realized,
 
 6 A VIEW OF 
 
 since the days of that King, of " immortal memory," 
 who at once consummated the British Constitution, 
 and fought to establish the security of Europe. The 
 sullen phantoms so lately summoned by France, the 
 terrible shapes of universal War, Democracy, and 
 Anarchy, have been defied by the common sense of 
 nations, and sent back, to linger round the tomb of 
 Napoleon, if they will. Yet, if France is ever to be 
 wise, even that tomb might administer her highest 
 wisdom. What could be a more solemn rebuke to 
 the passion for conquest, than to see " to what ends 
 it may come at last ? " To see the most brilliant of 
 soldiers, the most powerful of sovereigns, the most 
 popular chieftain of the most enthusiastic nation, and 
 the most devoted army of the earth, stricken to the 
 ground, at the moment when he seemed to have risen 
 to a height beyond all human casualty ? the eagle 
 withered by a flash from the very thunder-cloud on 
 which it soared the leader of nations dragged in the 
 triumphal march of hiscaptives,become his conquerors; 
 the distributor of kingdoms bound to the limits of a 
 dungeon ; and even the restoration of his dust only 
 a more solemn acknowledgment that he had died in 
 the hands of his enemies. Peace be to him where he 
 lies ! But if France, like the old Roman king, or 
 the Greek sage, will ever listen to any deeper wisdom 
 than her own, we should send her to the tomb of 
 Napoleon ; there to consult his Genius, and hear the 
 oracle against ambition. Yet we should suggest a 
 still superior source of national wisdom to leave the
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 7 
 
 dead to bury their dead, and recognize the living 
 lessons, and follow the living steps of that Christian- 
 ity, which, combining the noblest principles of human 
 conduct with the most illustrious promises of the 
 future, meets all the wants of kings and people 
 together, and visibly leads up empires by the hand to 
 Regeneration. 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 The politics of France, from the commencement of 
 the past year, unquestionably exercised the most pow- 
 erful influence on the current of public affairs. In 
 fact, the whole disturbance of their course was the 
 work of France, and that work the restlessness of 
 one man. Every individual bears the impress of his 
 education. M. Thiers was trained a country attorney ; 
 and what he was in the provinces, with a rusty gown 
 and receiving five sous fees, he was in Paris, wearing 
 the costume of a minister, and wielding the treasury 
 of Louis Philippe. He was the country attorney 
 everywhere, and will be ; until he bequeaths his 
 bones to the Pere la Chaise, and his memory to the 
 oblivion that belongs to little men. 
 
 The country attorney must find business, or he 
 must make it. The ministry of M. Thiers found Eu- 
 rope at peace. But M. Thiers in peace, was a mouse 
 in an exhausted receiver. He might struggle and 
 climb, but he must pant and perish. Who shall blame
 
 A VIEW OF 
 
 him for biting a hole in his receiver, and letting in 
 that atmosphere in which alone he could live t Before 
 three months were past, every power of the continent 
 was mustering troops, raising loans, marching armies 
 of observation, and despatching couriers to the ends 
 of the earth, loaded with packets of hostility. The 
 country attorney congratulated himself on his per- 
 formance a suit, on the largest scale of litigation, 
 was before him kings were to be the clients, and 
 nations were to pay the damages ; while the costs 
 were not to come out of his purse, and he was to 
 have the taxing of his own bill. Nothing could be 
 more prosperous to the eye. But this world is all 
 uncertainty. The parties came to their senses ; and 
 their senses brought them to an arbitration. The 
 cause became a dropped one ; there were no costs, 
 there was no bill, there was even no little lawyer. 
 The parties, however, thought themselves compen- 
 sated, by being saved from general ruin ; and the 
 country attorney at once lost his place, his practice, 
 and was struck oif the rolls. 
 
 France is a powerful, a brave, and a brilliant coun- 
 try. But Party is her tempter ; and such it has been 
 from time immemorial. She had mobs, mobleaders, 
 and popular mischiefs ; when her tribes had nothing 
 to slay each other for, but acorns ; and nothing to 
 carry from the field of battle, but scalps. Ca3sar, 
 their conqueror, says, two thousand years 'ago, " The 
 Gauls have a faction in every village." The folly of 
 her three " glorious days of 1830," was the folly of 
 the yEdui and Sequani, of the agueish dwellers in the
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 9 
 
 swamp, and the shivering savages of the naked hill. 
 Europe desires to see France powerful, vivid, and 
 intelligent : for thus alone France can fulfil her duties 
 in the great process of general civilization. But 
 Europe will not suffer her to be a mother of banditti 
 the Bedouins of the West, ready to spring out upon 
 the peaceful traffic, and block up the common high- 
 way, of nations. She desires to see the throne of 
 France fixed on a solid foundation ; even if that be 
 of the most dazzling materials, gold, marble, or ada- 
 mant, she will neither covet nor care ; she demands 
 only that it shall be firm. But she will not suffer a 
 throne to increase its height; which in a moment may 
 topple over, and crush its neighbours. She will not 
 suffer a great government to stand upon a magazine 
 of gunpowder, which the touch of the first ruffian 
 may explode, and scatter the blazing fragments round 
 the world. 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 Germany was tranquil during the year. It is a 
 fine model of the " Vis inertia ; " when still, it seems 
 to be still for ever ; it never moves but by being 
 moved ; and then it continues in motion, from the 
 want of energy to stop. Germany thus carried on 
 a thirty years' war against, for, with, and without, 
 Protestantism. It thus carried on the seven years' 
 war of Frederic and Maria Theresa. If the two 
 sovereigns had been immortal, the war might have
 
 10 A VIEW OF 
 
 gone on to this hour. No German ever thought of 
 asking why they fought, for what, or how long. The 
 " Vis inertice " carried all on. 
 
 Germany thus fought France from 1 792 till 1815. 
 Yet in this almost quarter of a century the objects 
 of the war, the principles, the parties, everything had 
 changed. France had run through the whole round 
 of her frenzies ; was the furious child, the desperate 
 bandit, the howling maniac, and the sullen, sad, 
 nerveless slave. Yet, through the republic, the 
 democracy, and the empire, Germany fought on ; 
 always beaten, often on the point of ruin, with all her 
 capitals French head-quarters, all her kings fugitives, 
 all her princes vassals; with her Imperial head under 
 a French heel, and her most glittering diadems broken 
 up to make stars and epaulettes for the French mar- 
 shals, she still fought on. There was merit in this 
 dogged bravery, but it is not merit of the heroic 
 order. Homer compares Ajax, sullenly bearing the 
 thousand blows of the Trojans, to the immovable ass; 
 but when he describes the masters of the field, the 
 true lords of war, the Hector or the Achilles; he looks 
 to ardour, activity, and energy ; he fills his canvas 
 with colours and shapes from the magnificent and 
 resistless influences of higher nature ; the emblem of 
 his hero is the whirlwind in its strength, the thunder- 
 bolt, the " autumnal star " that fills the sky with 
 ominous fire, and shoots pestilence among the pros- 
 trate and trembling nations. 
 
 Germany is a strong-minded, strong-headed, and
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 11 
 
 strong-built nation, but it wants the ascending power 
 of character. It makes its way wonderfully well 
 along the ground, but it has never risen, nor thought 
 of rising, upon the wing. It is now quiet again, and 
 will sleep, till the next convulsion. The trumpet 
 will not rouse it ; nothing will shake it from its 
 slumber, but the earthquake which flings it out of its 
 bed. 
 
 SPAIN. 
 
 Spain, beginning the year under the civil regency 
 of the Queen, suddenly transferred the government 
 to the military regency of Espartero. Among the 
 singularities of the time, the most singular would be 
 to see Spain a Democracy the gravest, most for- 
 mal, and most indolent of nations suddenly starting 
 into the fierce absurdities of Republican France ; 
 Spain picking up the soiled and bloody raiment which 
 France threw off thirty years ago, and figuring in the 
 eyes of Europe in the double part of the mendicant 
 and the maniac. But deeper thoughts arise. Spain 
 is disqualified for freedom ; for her religion is incom- 
 patible with liberty. The slave of the priest must be 
 in spirit a slave to every shape of power : or, throw- 
 ing off the fetters of the priest, without learning the 
 subordination of pure Christianity, he must trans- 
 form abject slavery into furious licentiousness. If 
 this condition of things should arrive, the sooner
 
 12 A VIEW OF 
 
 Spain has a Dictator the better. The strait-waistcoat 
 is the discipline for the lunatic ; the lash and the fet- 
 ter for the felon. But Spain has produced no Csesar, 
 and will produce none. The magnanimous clemency 
 of the great Roman is beyond her. She will produce 
 no Cromwell; she wants the solemn determination, 
 the profound knowledge of human nature, and the 
 systematic, deliberate courage. She may have a Cata- 
 line, subtle, sanguinary, and despotic, or be bowed 
 down to an Antony, voluptuous, selfish, and prodigal. 
 The soil may produce the political tiger, or the ser- 
 pent, under the scorching heat of democracy ; but 
 the result will be its desertion by civilized life, and 
 its abandonment to moral sterility. There is no hope 
 for Spain, but in a change of religion. 
 
 Spain is undergoing repairs ; but the workmen are 
 ignorant, the nation is exhausted, and the architect 
 is a soldier ! Spain can never be repaired into a re- 
 public. The spirit of the soil is against this extra- 
 vagance. Her empire has been for three hundred 
 years a vast monastery. The fabric of her constitu- 
 tion was monkish ; her king was only the father 
 abbot, her people only the brethren and sisterhood, 
 clerical and lay. The submission of the cell, the 
 torpid regularity, the dull discipline, and the profit- 
 less indolence of the cloister, were the characteristics 
 of the nation ; as much, as if the massive walls of 
 one huge convent stretched from Cadiz to Bayonne ; 
 as if the day was never seen but through windows 
 painted with the legends of martyrdom ; as if the
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 13 
 
 cope of heaven itself was substituted by roofs flou- 
 rished with gothic tracery, and darkened with the 
 smoke and stains of lamps and altars for ages. 
 
 The present innovators may break down this fabric, 
 wilich, obsolete as it is, had its grandeur but they 
 will fail to raise even its equivalent. The world does 
 not now possess the means or the spirit for such co- 
 lossal expenditure. The time for erecting new con- 
 stitutions, and new cathedrals, is gone by. If the 
 Spaniard shall subvert the monarchy, he will live, 
 like the beggar, in some fragment of its ruins ; he 
 will turn its vaults into habitation, and share the 
 quarters of the fox and the worm in its tombs. 
 
 The change will be the worse the more complete it 
 is ; until the beggar, himself, turns into the bandit, 
 and the bandit into the savage. All mankind would 
 rejoice to see Spain rising into the true enjoyment of 
 its noble gifts of nature and mind, but she will never 
 receive that inheritance from the hands of men like 
 Espartero. He is too much on a level with his time. 
 He differs too little from the race round him the 
 loose, lazy, cigar-loving, and bombast-breathing 
 Spaniard of the nineteenth century. She wants a 
 resurrection of the sixteenth. The man who is to 
 lift up the drowned honour of Spain by the locks, 
 must have the arm that can stem the wave, and the 
 courage that can hazard life to rescue her from the 
 depths at which her virtues have disappeared from 
 the human eye. He must be a moral giant in heart 
 and in head, the son of a loftier generation, perse-
 
 14 A VIEW OF 
 
 vering and patriotic, incapable of the lower arts of 
 ambition, contemptuous of the glitter of gold, or even 
 of power, and possessing all the prouder qualities of 
 the people,, without their failings. Such only can 
 redeem the character of a fallen country ; as the 
 Greeks formed the statues of their gods and heroes 
 from a combination of all ideal excellence ; and then 
 attributed the beauty of their children to the grace 
 and grandeur of their sculpture. 
 
 SWITZERLAND. 
 
 The Swiss have spent the year in perpetual strife, 
 on the model of the war of the pigmies and cranes. 
 The subject of those contests is too obscure to be 
 discovered even by the minute curiosity of the jour- 
 nals. Like a family quarrel, the neighbourhood 
 hears its noise, but cannot discover the secret. But 
 Switzerland is one of the coldest countries of the 
 earth, and domestic quarrels may be useful, in the 
 absence of other modes of warming a frost-bitten 
 people. They have certainly found out the art of 
 disputing about straws, throwing away time, and em- 
 bittering their little lives, beyond any people at pre- 
 sent in existence. Their debates form a true carica- 
 ture of " national grievance." " Rights withheld, 
 wrongs inflicted, freedom crushed, man the slave of 
 tyranny," ring through the speeches of their patriots 
 with the vigour of mob-oratory in Ireland. They
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 15 
 
 want but the " chains of six hundred years," to com- 
 plete the furniture of the national eloquence. And 
 on the strength of this verbiage, Swiss demagogues 
 rise into village renown! But, if they are in earnest 
 about reform, let them reform their innkeepers, pro- 
 verbially the most grasping vintners in Europe. 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 Italy, during the past year, has done nothing more 
 than she has done during the last hundred. It is 
 astonishing to see, how totally this land of fame has 
 abandoned reputation, and how tranquilly the birth- 
 place of the Castruccios and Machiavellis can look 
 upon its own decay. It now resembles one of its 
 own old countesses, still talking of her youthful con- 
 quests, and wearying the world with the history of 
 her charms ; but past even the use of curls and cos- 
 metics, and resigning herself to the despair of an 
 antiquated slattern. 
 
 But Naples has attempted to make for itself a niche 
 in the history of this year. It was, like all the acts of the 
 Parthenopseans, foolish in its conception, feeble in its 
 execution, and ridiculous in its results. The Italian 
 governments attract notice, only as the Signori, their 
 singers, once acquired a voice by being as unlike 
 men as possible. The whole system is debility. Fid- 
 dlers and dancers are, with them, the shining lights 
 of the earth ; balls and operas the supreme glory of
 
 16 A VIEW OF 
 
 mankind ; billiards and billet-doux the happiest arts of 
 civilization ; and macaroni and moonshine the grand 
 essentials of existence. There is no more unaccount- 
 able problem, than that Fortune should have given 
 some of the finest portions of the earth to the most 
 trifling or most barbarous of the species that the 
 Turk should be lord of Ionia, and the Italian com- 
 mand the loveliness and vine-crowned hills of Cam- 
 pania. 
 
 Among all the vexatious absurdities of political 
 strife, the most ridiculous, and yet the most perplex- 
 ing, would be a war with Naples. What ! quarrel 
 with the country from which we get our anchovies 
 and ortolans, the donnas of the Queen's theatre, and 
 chansons innumerable ? The man who beats a woman 
 brings a stigma on himself for life, and what else 
 must be the result of striking the effeminate impu- 
 dence of Naples. 
 
 A contract for sulphur, which was given to some 
 French adventurers, in defiance of an old stipulation 
 with the English merchants, was the alleged cause of 
 quarrel. But as the Neapolitans have neither ships, 
 nor soldiers, and we were safe, for awhile, from a 
 blockade of the Thames, or a conflagration of Lon- 
 don, we attempted to appease the wrath of his minia- 
 ture majesty, patted him on the check, and sent him a 
 minister with a present of bonbons. Yet, the " sooth- 
 ing system" was never more unproductively adopted. 
 The minister, a brother of Lord Palmer ston, ex-
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 17 
 
 pressly taught by his Lordship to insinuate himself 
 into the favour of courts 
 
 " Win by a bow, and fetter with a smile," 
 
 might as well have eaten his own bonbons. Naples 
 assumed the majesty of an offended opera dancer. 
 The Lords in waiting and maids of honour were duly 
 drilled, and pledged themselves to die for their 
 country. All Europe was infinitely amused. It was 
 a better military ballet than ever had been seen in 
 the St. Carlo. " La Revolte du Harem" 1 was tame to 
 this superb ebullition of tinsel and patriotism. At 
 length a couple of English men-of-war were seen, 
 moving under easy sail, on one of the finest evenings 
 of autumn, in the direction of Capri. They had 
 been sent at the suggestion of Lord Lyndhurst, 
 one of that Opposition which was in the habit of 
 governing the Government. The effect was incom- 
 parable. War instantly " smoothed its wrinkled 
 front ;" the lords in waiting and maids of honour 
 piled their arms, and declared the campaign at an 
 end ; the English Commodore was invited to a ball ; 
 the contract was renewed ; the Court returned to 
 its natural quadrilles, and Naples luckily escaped 
 that lesson which has since been so expressively given 
 at Acre.
 
 18 A VIEW OF 
 
 TURKEY. 
 
 The condition of Turkey for the last twelve months 
 resembled the most fluctuating times of Europe. It 
 had altogether lost the Eastern character, that state 
 of gradual, dull, and steady decline which has marked 
 its career since the beginning of the century. It was 
 no longer like one of its great Asiatic swamps, quietly 
 buried under that eternal fog which at once hides 
 them from the human eye, and prohibits human 
 drainage. It was alternately swept by storm, and 
 even enlightened by sunshine each too brief to 
 effect any permanent change, but both new to the 
 mighty mass of stagnation which has so long covered 
 the lovely regions of Eastern Greece and Western 
 Asia. 
 
 From 1830 Mohammed AH had been undisputed 
 master of Egypt. Mahmoud was the dying lion, 
 and the jackals which had once, been content to fol- 
 low, and feed upon the remnants of his prey, had 
 begun to hunt for themselves. In 1832, the Pacha 
 of Egypt rushed into Syria trampled all before him 
 drove Abdallah, the Pacha of Acre, into his fortress 
 crushed him there laughed at the Sultan for 
 sending firmans against battalions and squadrons 
 marched his columns over the Libanus and when, 
 at last, Mahmoud sent his army to contest the sov-
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 19 
 
 reignty of Syria, met it on the Asiatic plains, and 
 extinguished it at a blow. 
 
 But higher powers interfered. Turkey was too 
 important to the peace of Europe to be abandoned 
 to the rapine of an invader, who, in his turn, must 
 have retreated before the first shock of Russia, leav- 
 ing Constantinople as the prize of his conqueror. 
 England, France, Austria and Prussia combined their 
 councils, and Mohammed AH was forced to abandon 
 the mighty prey, when all but in his grasp. The 
 Sultan, who had fought in vain for Syria, in the 
 plains of Asia, now fought equally in vain for Asia 
 in the Syrian hills ; the battle of Nezib annihilated 
 his last army. But he was spared the pang of know- 
 ing his defeat. He was on his death-bed, before it 
 was fought ; he was dead, before the intelligence of 
 its slaughter arrived. 
 
 Thus passed away, in the midst of national cala- 
 mity, Mahmoud the ill-starred ; a man of great views 
 and great powers, yet, in all things disastrous ; throw- 
 ing off prejudices only to plunge into misfortunes ; 
 executing bold reforms only to shake the foundations 
 of his empire ; by an effort of unexampled resolution 
 freeing his government from the incumbrance of a 
 licentious soldiery, and yet by this act only stripping 
 Turkey of its armour. In his reign he saw the two 
 horns of the Ottoman Crescent, Greece and Egypt, 
 rent away the first sign of total eclipse which had 
 come, since the day when Mohammed the Second 
 rode in at the breach of Constantinople, the whole 
 
 c 2
 
 20 A VIEW OF 
 
 career of the Sultan holding forth the moral, of the 
 uselessness of talent without prudence ; the hazard of 
 rudely assailing the old institutions of a country; and 
 the necessity of raising the national character, before 
 reforming the government of an empire. 
 
 If the dead have eyes for this world, with what 
 cloudy frowns and glances of fire must the shades of 
 his ancestors have met the ascending spirit of the 
 Sultan. 
 
 But a new crisis arose. In France, an individual 
 from the lowest ranks of political turbulence had 
 been accidentally flung up to the highest. He had 
 found himself suddenly in the presence of senates, of 
 sovereigns, of nations, before he had time to divest 
 himself of faction. He stood in the midst of a circle 
 of crowned heads, princes, and diplomatists a world 
 of court suits ; while he still wore his old mob uni- 
 form. July, 1830, was the epoch of his political 
 birth, the farthest date of his memory ; the livery of 
 Lafitte the only clothes in his wardrobe. In this 
 emergency he spoke the only language which he had 
 ever learned. The patois of the street orator poured 
 from the lips of the royal functionary. Then all 
 France was summoned to give force to his folly, and 
 all France sang the " Marseillaise." Then Europe 
 was ordered to bow down to the embroidered foot- 
 stool, on which the little Minister lifted himself up to 
 the stature of a man ; the French dock-yards rang 
 with the hammer ; the journals trumpeted the na- 
 tional wrath round the world ; armies were ordered
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 21 
 
 to move to the frontiers, fleets to cover the seas ; and 
 the Minister, pen in hand, at the head of his clerks, 
 prepared to march to the conquest of the terrestrial 
 globe. The Minister was now a Napoleon ; yet as 
 palpably superior to his original, as campaigns in the 
 portfolio are to campaigns in the field ; as building 
 castles in the air is to capturing them on earth ; and 
 as ridicule is to renown. But even this heroism was 
 short-lived. 
 
 The King had much to lose, though the Minister 
 had nothing. If the King was overthrown, he had 
 only to mount the scaffold ; if the Minister were 
 tossed out of place, he had only to return to his 
 paragraphs ; if the kingdom were invaded by the 
 roused and indignant strength of Europe, it must be 
 ruined; if the Minister were tried by a jury of pois- 
 sardes, and hanged by the majesty of the rabble, the 
 world would have only a scribbler the less ; while 
 France would probably gain a dozen pleasant bur- 
 lesques on his memory, and Europe another moral of 
 the absurdities of a parvenu. Accordingly, the Minis- 
 ter fell, and a general burst of laughter was his 
 epitaph. 
 
 But, in the interval which France employed in 
 threatening, England acted. She sent her fleet and 
 troops to execute the Quadruple Treaty left the 
 orators of France to make speeches, and the singers 
 of France to chaunt the Marseillaise and thundered 
 on the coasts of Syria. An expedition of a month 
 did the work of the deliberations of years. The
 
 22 A VIEW OF 
 
 stronghold of Syria, the renowned fortress of Acre, 
 was struck to the ground in three hours by a storm 
 from the mouths of the British cannon ; the Pacha's 
 army was compelled to treat for the abandonment of 
 the country; Alexandria was blockaded, the old 
 Pacha reduced to submission, and the war gloriously 
 at an end. 
 
 The Sultan is now master of Syria, if he has the 
 sense to govern it, or the manliness to defend it. 
 But he must tyrannize over it no longer. We look 
 for mighty changes in those countries. The Ottoman 
 must no longer be suffered, like the starving and 
 hideous dogs that prey on the corpses thrown up by 
 the Bosphorus ; to strip the flesh and muscle from the 
 body of this once great land, while we are engaged in 
 the process of resuscitation. We must do more than 
 recover Syria. We have no right to bring it to life, 
 unless we protect it from the misery that drove it to 
 despair. We must not rescue the slave, only to see 
 him loaded again with the chain. It is our duty to 
 see that the Ottoman plays the barbarian no longer 
 with the brave men who have fought by our side, and 
 shared our victory. The British musquets in their 
 hands are our mutual pledge. They will never look 
 upon them without remembering the time, the cause, 
 and the triumph. The household Gods of the Gen- 
 tile were lifeless, compared to the protecting influ- 
 ence of those arms hung on the walls of the cotta- 
 gers of Lebanon. England must redeem her pledge. 
 If the Ottoman shall ever unsheathe the scymitar, it
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 23 
 
 must be broken in his grasp ; the Turkish savage 
 must be tamed by the same hand that expelled the 
 Egyptian. 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 The history of the Cabinet during the last year has 
 been that of a party continually declining, though not 
 yet wholly undone. The successes of the Syrian 
 campain, and the result of those more dubious enter- 
 prizes which are employing our troops and ships in 
 the East, may add to their temporary existence. 
 But the Ministry, for the last five years, have been a 
 water-logged ship ; sunk to the edge of the surge, 
 though still floating ; not daring to hoist a sail, for 
 fear of being on their beam-ends at once ; nor to give 
 the rudder a turn, for fear of running on the first 
 shoal. Blown on at the mercy of every gust, the 
 decks swept by every wave, on they go, waiting on 
 chance, hoping that some help may come from 
 some stray wanderer ; and, after all, looking to the 
 mere work of time and the tide of things, to carry 
 their mastless and shattered hulk into harbour. 
 
 But no British Ministry has ever been able to live 
 on the successes of its foreign policy. Its vitality 
 depends upon the national feeling. The triumph of 
 a day glitters but for the day ; and the Roman sol- 
 dier, marching to the Capitol behind the car of his 
 victorious general, might as well think of living upon
 
 24 A VIEW OF 
 
 the laurels round his standard, or take the smoke of 
 the incense in place of his year's pay, as a British 
 Ministry draw substantial strength from any other 
 nutriment than the solid approval of the empire. 
 Even the unparalleled victories of Marlborough could 
 not sustain his Whig Ministry. It perished, with 
 France at its feet, and the world in admiration. 
 
 The reason is sufficient the true trial of a Minis- 
 try, like the true power of a people, is at home. 
 Foreign war is a showy, but distant and unsubstan- 
 tial, thing ; the splendour of a remote luminary, 
 when we want a lamp in the hand. The relief of a 
 tax, the extinction of a severe law, or the adoption of 
 one manly measure of public improvement, might be of 
 more importance than the victory which echoes from 
 " China to Peru." Still, the tree is worse than bar- 
 ren, of which we see the fruits only in the gazette 
 of the killed and wounded. We never doubt the 
 bravery of our troops. The country knows that 
 they have only to fight, and be suffered to fight, to 
 be sure of victory. But England judges of Ministers 
 by qualities beyond the lottery of foreign war. She 
 demands directness of purpose, unquestionable vi- 
 gour of conduct, and incorruptible soundness of prin- 
 ciple. She cannot tolerate hypocrisy, however for- 
 tunate ; nor give palpable helplessness credit for 
 the work of counsel and valour. She has never 
 reckoned lucky idiots among her great men. Thus, 
 the Whigs have been going down, almost from the 
 first moment of office. Their whole course has been 
 on an inclined plane.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 25 
 
 But we come to statements which set the question 
 at rest. Whig ascendancy, in our time, was the off- 
 spring of the riots of Paris, an ominous, but a cha- 
 racteristic parentage. The " Three Glorious Days" 
 inspired the long-prostrate faction with the hope of 
 power. As the sound of a storm brings out the wreck- 
 ers, the overthrow of the French dynasty brought the 
 whole body of the Whigs trooping from their dens. 
 " Down with the throne ! " was the war-hoop of 
 Paris ; " Reform ! " was the watchword here ; and, 
 in 1831, the Whigs obtained their Parliament by 
 their memorable "means to the end." In 1832 the 
 Reform Bill began its operation, and the new Parlia- 
 ment, compounded of Papist, Radical, and Whig, 
 was almost the perfection of the system. The Con- 
 servatives numbered scarcely 150 members the 
 Ministerialists upwards of 500 ! The natural result 
 exhibited itself instantly ; every part of the Consti- 
 tution was convulsed the Bishops were haughtily 
 commanded to " set their house in order" the 
 Lords were threatened with being swamped the 
 Commons were all-powerful ! 
 
 In 1 833, the chief divisions were : 
 
 For Against 
 
 On the Irish Church Bill , 317 ... 78 
 
 On the Vote of Confidence (Affairs of 
 
 Portugal) 361 ... 93 
 
 On the Irish Church Bill 274 ... 94 
 
 The working majority, 300.
 
 26 A VIEW OF 
 
 In 1834, the appropriation clause was tried, and 
 the country began to awake to the spirit of Whig- 
 gism. The two great divisions were : 
 
 For Against 
 
 Admission of Dissenters to Universities 321 ... 147 
 Irish Tithe Bill 235 ... 171 
 
 The majority at the opening of this session, 200. 
 Before the close, 150. 
 
 1835 opened with a new Parliament ; the Whigs 
 had already lost the people ; they now scarcely 
 reached a majority of 50. The great divisions of 
 1835 were: 
 
 For Against 
 On the Irish Church Bill (Appropriation 
 
 Clause) 322 ... 289 
 
 On the Irish Church Bill (Appropriation 
 
 Clause) 317 ... 282 
 
 On the Irish Corporation Bill 267 176 
 
 On the Irish Corporation Bill 262 ... 234 
 
 The Whig majority from 40 to 50. 
 
 1836. Continuance in office had added somewhat 
 to their strength. The chief divisions were : 
 
 For Against 
 
 On the Address .. 234 ... 243 
 
 On the Irish Corporation Bill 307 ... 243 
 
 On the Irish Corporation Bill 260 ... 199 
 
 On the Irish Tithe Bill 300 ... 261 
 
 The average majority, 50.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 2/ 
 
 1837- The great divisions were : 
 
 For Against 
 
 On the Irish Corporation Bill 322 ... 242 
 
 On the Church Rates Bill 273 ... 250 
 
 On the Irish Corporation Bill 302 ... 247 
 
 On the Order in Council 278 ... 242 
 
 On the Church Rate Bill 287 ... 282 
 
 On the Commission of Church Leases 319 ... 236 
 
 Thus, twice the majority of 80, but once it had 
 fallen to 5. 
 
 In 1838, the Whigs had again a House of Com- 
 mons. But their strength was sinking. The main 
 divisions of the session were : 
 
 For Against 
 
 On Foreign Policy (Lord Sandon) 316 ... 287 
 
 On Church Leases 277 241 
 
 On Church Instruction 265 ... 254 
 
 On the Irish Tithe Bill 317 ... 298 
 
 On the Irish Corporation Bill 286 ... 266 
 
 The standing majority about 30. 
 
 1839. The divisions of the session were : 
 
 For Against 
 
 On the Irish Policy 318 ... 296 
 
 On the Jamaica Bill 294 ... 289 
 
 On the Jamaica Bill 267 257 
 
 On National Education 280 ... 275 
 
 On National Education 275 ... 273 
 
 Thus, in this session, the Ministerial power was 
 constantly on the verge of extinction; for what 
 are majorities of five, ten, or even fifteen, to a Mi- 
 nistry.
 
 28 A VIEW OF 
 
 1840. The Cabinet still sank; it had long and 
 palpably lost popular confidence ; it now lost even 
 Whig arrogance and audacity ; it lost every thing 
 but office, which it was determined to keep. To the 
 abandonment of salary, no humiliation could force it. 
 When it was overthrown night after night, it clung 
 to the knees of the Opposition, and was satisfied if it 
 was spared. When lashed with indignant reprobation, 
 or pierced with more stinging ridicule, Ministers bore 
 their punishment without wincing ; and if they were 
 still but suffered to throw the cloak of office over their 
 shoulders, were ready to undergo the laceration 
 again. But the constant use of the lash either mad- 
 dens, or unmans. The Cabinet sank into the extreme 
 of timidity. Nothing but absolute necessity could 
 now force it to bring forward any substantial mea- 
 sure. It figured in routine, laboured to do nothing, 
 and was intrepid alone in resolving not to give an 
 opinion on any subject whatever. The Conservatives 
 challenged it night after night; the challenge was 
 answered only by dumb submission or smirking effron- 
 tery, or, in the phrase of Gibbon, " with a sigh or a 
 smile." The Conservatives threw down the gauntlet, 
 in a motion, " that Ministers had lost the confidence of 
 the nation." This was a question of life and death, and 
 they lived, by a bare majority of twenty-one. But, 
 more rejoiced at their escape than proud of their vic- 
 tory, they dared not fling back the gauntlet again ; 
 and, on the Chinese question, they were within ten
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 29 
 
 of Ministerial despair. The chief divisions of the 
 
 session were : 
 
 For the Against 
 
 Ministry. them. 
 
 On Sir J. Y. Butler's motion 308 ... 287 
 
 On Mr. Herries' motion 172 ... 182 
 
 On Mr. Liddell's motion 212 ... 240 
 
 On Sir J. Graham's motion 271 ... 261 
 
 On the Ludlow writ 215 ... 226 
 
 On Lord Stanley's bill 234 ... 250 
 
 On Lord Stanley's bill 298 ... 301 
 
 On Lord Stanley's bill 195 ... 206 
 
 On Lord Stanley's bill 296 ... 289 
 
 On Lord Stanley's bill 271 ... 275 
 
 On those ten great divisions. Ministers could mus- 
 ter only 2472 votes, or 247 in each, on an average ; 
 while the Opposition brought forward 25 17, or 251 
 in each, on an average. 
 
 To all practical purposes the Whig majority was 
 annihilated ! 
 
 One more view of the question. It is this their 
 progress downwards has been unceasing. Year by 
 year their majorities have declined. 
 
 1833 Majority 300 
 
 1834 Majority 150 
 
 1835 Majority 50 
 
 1836 Majority 50 
 
 1837 Majority 30 
 
 1838 Majority 30 
 
 1839 Majority 10 
 
 1840 Majority
 
 30 A VIEW OF 
 
 We are to remember, that, during all those 
 conflicts, the Whigs have been the Ministry ; 
 commanding the whole patronage of the empire ; 
 stooping to the employment of every party, and 
 every man of every party ; placarding a name at 
 the head of their firm, which ought never to be 
 dragged into the trade of politics ; and bitterly ex- 
 cluding every man, of whatever rank of talents, 
 public character, or acknowledged virtue, who did 
 not wear the brand of Whiggism, the " mark of the 
 Beast, in his right hand or on his forehead." Let it 
 be remembered, too, that they have already made 
 more Peers, than were created in the whole sixty 
 years of the reign of George the Third ; that they 
 have called, from land and water, commissionerships 
 as thick as the frogs of Pharoah, and almost as na- 
 tional a plague ; and they have had the Papist tail, 
 the Dissenter tail, and the Radical tail, trailing per- 
 petually after them ; that they have had at their call 
 the refugees, waverers, and mercenaries of all ranks ; 
 all those political condottieri who know nothing of 
 a banner but its pay ; the whole troop of political 
 Jackalls, who follow the march of party only to feed 
 upon the spoils of place ; and yet, that with all 
 this enormity of patronage, and all this use, they 
 are daily on the point of dissolution ; that, nominally 
 in office, they are utterly destitute of power ; and that 
 even of that office they are hourly approaching to the 
 end ; that like a garrison, stipulated to surrender at 
 a given time, they are now living on conditions, with
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 31 
 
 all thought of defence gone by, the breach open, the 
 battlements down, and the enemy drawn up before 
 the gate. Looking upon these things, who can doubt 
 that Whiggism is the scorn of England ! 
 
 PORTUGAL. 
 
 Portugal, during the latter half of the year, has 
 been making the experiment of a new constitution. 
 Her march of mind is the march of mobs. We have 
 wonderfully improved upon the tardiness of our an- 
 cestors. In their days, a constitution was the slowest 
 of all possible things : it now runs on with the speed 
 of an unbroken horse ; and the wild animal bolts off 
 the road, breaks his knees, and finishes his mortal 
 career in a ditch, before the trained one has passed 
 the first turnpike. Within the last ten years, Portu- 
 gal has had four constitutions, and as many insurrec- 
 tions ; the one following the other, as an essential to 
 its glory. Whatever astronomers may pretend, the 
 comet without a fiery tail, makes no figure in the he- 
 misphere. 
 
 By her last system, Portugal is freest of the free 
 (except when the rabble of Lisbon choose to settle 
 the state), her church is independent (until the popu- 
 lace shall issue an order for its confiscation), and her 
 throne inviolate (until it shall please the paupers of 
 the capital to erect in its place the smith's anvil, or 
 the cobbler's stool) . Yet, in the midst of all this good 
 fortune, the whole kingdom has been thrown into the
 
 32 A VIEW OF 
 
 most extraordinary confusion, discontent, and decay. 
 Bitter factions and roving banditti, mingled folly and 
 ferocity, public tumult, and disordered finance, are 
 gnawing the strength of a nation which once pro- 
 duced heroes and sages the Henrys and Alphonsos, 
 the great discoverers of the East and West, the con- 
 querors of India, and Lords of Brazil. Thus, the 
 worms come, when the soul has fled : factions feed, 
 when the spirit of a people has gone into " thin air." 
 Yet those transitions are dangerous. The lobster 
 casts his shell once a year ; and naturalists tell us, that 
 in his interval of nakedness, there are ten times more 
 lobsters eaten by fish, bird, and reptile, than in all 
 the rest of their existence. A new shell may cover 
 the survivors, but what comfort is there in its armour 
 to the devoured. Spain, finding Portugal in the 
 transitive state, stands ready to swallow her up. 
 Sixty thousand of the laziest and loudest-talking 
 warriors on the face of the earth have come, cigar in 
 mouth, and musket in hand, to give her the frater- 
 nal embrace, and teach her the value of a mob con- 
 stitution. 
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 We shall give but a glance at America. The last 
 " four years' king" of the States has been deposed, 
 and a new four years' King has been set up in his 
 room. The fallen dynasty swear, that they have
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 33 
 
 been driven out by corruption worse than ever made 
 an Indian drunk, and by violence worse than ever 
 robbed him of his lands ! The successful party swear, 
 that their opponents had rotted the country into a 
 moral morass, and that they were buried in their own 
 slough by the law of gravitation. 
 
 America is great in all things Europe is no "Jo- 
 seph," but the dashing rakishness of the western 
 Charles Surface astonishes the timid vices of the Old 
 World. The journals charge each side with an extra- 
 vagance of bribery, which must beggar one-half of 
 the population, to vitiate the other. What is finally to 
 become of the moral frame which, once in every 
 four years, is thus thrown into a raging epidemic ? 
 what of the brains of a people which, every four years 
 thus solicit frenzy ? what of the Constitution which, 
 after swallowing political drams for every year of the 
 four, at last concludes with a general carousal, in the 
 shape of a delirium tremens ? 
 
 Yet w T hile nine-tenths of the soil remain a desert, 
 and the democracy can throw off its steam into the 
 wilderness, the boiler may not burst. But this con- 
 dition of things was never made to last the desert 
 will be peopled. Then the public passions, stimulated 
 by the public necessities, will come into irresistible 
 action. Against a disturbing force of this order there 
 is no provision in Republics. Circumscription brings 
 it into a direct struggle with the public tranquillity. 
 The instincts of the wolf and the tiger may be suf- 
 fered, while they have the forest for their range ; but 
 
 D
 
 34 A VIEW OF 
 
 shut them up for prey or pastime within the boun- 
 daries of the village, and we shall then know the 
 work of their teeth and talons. The first moment 
 which shall see the United States forced to keep their 
 population within their own limits ; the first moment 
 when the American can no longer roam, like the 
 buffalo, through the wilderness ; but must take the 
 yoke on his neck and pay for his provender with his 
 toil, then shall we see the butting of heads and the 
 plunging of horns ! 
 
 The providential purpose of British America has 
 been, to people the wilderness. Republicanism is 
 essential to the spread of the population ; all the prin- 
 ciples of its government are centrifugal; the colli- 
 sions of party separate the mass, and establish the 
 principle of disunion. The American settles himself 
 a thousand miles off, leaves his kindred behind him, 
 and feels as much at home as if he had moved but a 
 thousand yards. This is the way to make savage 
 men, but populous nations. M. de Tocqueville ha- 
 rangues on this, like a Charlatan astonished at his own 
 wonders. 
 
 But it is when this purpose is completed, that the 
 true trial will have commenced. Political prophecy 
 may be a dream ; but the laws of nature are irrever- 
 sible. If the feeble and irregular currents of popu- 
 lar violence in a country of scarcely thirteen millions 
 are too strong for the Government even now, how 
 wildly will it be whirled, and how hopelessly shat- 
 tered, when it shall have to meet a roaring ocean of
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 35 
 
 popular will ? What must be the ruin of those feeble 
 substitutes for European institutions, those strong- 
 holds of sand and battlements of dust, those paper 
 buttresses, behind which America shelters her Govern- 
 ment, when the unlimited array of public impulses, 
 physical force without bounds, and popular supre- 
 macy without principle, is marched to their assault ? 
 In fifty years more the population of the States alone 
 may be fifty millions ; and of those, every man busied 
 in politics, feverish with faction, feeding on party, 
 breathing the heated atmosphere and drinking the 
 strong drink of political excitement, all commotion, 
 all turbulence, terror, and fire ! 
 
 Wanting a national church, a hereditary peerage, 
 and a throne, America wants all that the wisdom of 
 mankind has adopted as the great antagonist expe- 
 dients to the separation of empire. She exults in 
 their absence ; but it is the exultation of the crew in 
 throwing the ballast out of the ship ; the foolish ex- 
 ultation of the settler in the wilderness, when he dis- 
 covers a plain denuded of trees, and has to learn that 
 barrenness is his only compensation for the loss of 
 their native majesty and their protecting shade. The 
 Americans are proud of their Republicanism, recon- 
 ciled to its hazards by its exclusiveness, and con- 
 temptuous of every other nation which is not fond 
 of living on the edge of revolution, with full know- 
 ledge that the soil is undermined, and must fall in 
 before long. Thus the Neapolitans are proud of 
 their burning mountain, and look with scorn on capi- 
 
 D 2
 
 36 A VIEW OF 
 
 tals unhappily incapable of being calcined by erup- 
 tions, or buried in ashes . 
 
 THE SPANISH REPUBLICS IN SOUTH 
 AMERICA. 
 
 The Spanish Republics in South America exhibit 
 the most singular phenomena in history. They at- 
 tempted to unite Popery with freedom. The failure 
 of the experiment was worthy of its extravagance. 
 The old poetic tyranny, which bound the living to the 
 dead, was realized in the actual governments which 
 made the Popish slave a partner with the South 
 American freeman. The result has been a perpetual 
 struggle of the discordant elements, and a state of 
 barbarism, insecurity, and violence, unparalleled in 
 the world. Their Governments are perpetually rising 
 and falling, and they always rise and fall in a shower 
 of blood. There is no peaceful change ; no growth 
 of power ; like that growth of nature which insen- 
 sibly and gratefully covers the land with new pro- 
 ductiveness ; every new party succeeds only by the 
 sword ; the robes in which the new faction assumes 
 the supremacy are inevitably dyed in the blood of 
 the last possessors ; and the place of power differs 
 from the place of execution only in point of time. 
 
 ABYSSINIA. 
 
 But we have news from Abyssinia. It may vex 
 the South Americans to learn, that assassinations,
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 37 
 
 conspiracies, and revolutions may be perpetrated by 
 the African savage in as luxuriant abundance, if with 
 inferior dexterity. 
 
 The last intelligence is, that OUBIE, the King of 
 Tigre, had been poisoned by one of his generals, who, 
 being in love with one of the royal wives, had con- 
 spired with her. The crime, however, was incom- 
 plete. The King swallowed an antidote, which re- 
 stored him, and then came the time for the general 
 and the sultana to tremble. But the King was seized 
 with a caprice of mercy unheard of in the Abyssinian 
 annals. Instead of cutting off the heads of all the 
 conspirators (eight in number), he only cut off their 
 right arms, and turned them loose to beg their bread, 
 and proclaim his royal clemency. The delinquent 
 sultana was only whipped with serpent skins, shaved 
 of her ringlets, forbidden the use of cosmetics for a 
 month, and put under a regimen of the court physi- 
 cian until her taste for conspiracy should be cooled. 
 
 But in Abyssinia, as in France, the capital sets the 
 fashion in every thing. The King's brother was also 
 poisoned in his province, was restored by an antidote, 
 and immediately began to proclaim a general war. 
 He fortified the chief city of his government with 
 " forts detaches"" of mud ; and, having waited only 
 for the dry season to finish them in an enceinte con- 
 tinuee of clay, formed an alliance offensive and defen- 
 sive with RAS ALI, the King of Gondar, with whom 
 he is to invade Tigre in the Abyssinian spring, which 
 begins on the first of September. GUEBRE RAFAEL
 
 38 A VTEW OF 
 
 (a diplomatist of the deepest black) the prime minis- 
 ter of RAS ALI, has declared himself for apaix arme'e; 
 arid., having raised a battalion of pikewomen from the 
 supernumerary wives of his Majesty, has announced 
 his determination of conquering all Africa, and at 
 once driving the French on the north, and the Eng- 
 lish on the south, into the sea. This African THIERS 
 was originally a slave, was brought up as a scribe, 
 was then slipper-carrier to the Vizier, and, having 
 turned out his patron, became Prime Minister in his 
 room. He is a little man, with an enormous head, 
 wears the largest pair of spectacles in Abyssinia, and 
 talks the biggest of any negro within the tropics. 
 His knowledge of European politics is derived from 
 a French captain of a slaver ; and he, of course, re- 
 gards the " man of the Barricades," as the model of a 
 minister, and says that, between them, they might 
 conquer the globe. 
 
 After this general glance at the world we come to 
 the facts of the year in their succession. 
 
 JANUARY 1. John Frost was placed on his trial 
 at Monmouth, before a ' special Commission, on the 
 charge of High Treason. Frost had raised a Char- 
 tist insurrection among the miners and iron-w r orkers 
 in Wales ; had attacked Newport with an armed 
 force ; had fired on the royal troops ; and had been 
 taken in arms. The insurrection was undisguised,
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 39 
 
 bloody, and revolutionary ; it had been prevented 
 from covering the whole country with flame and 
 slaughter, only by the firmness of the soldiery and 
 the decision of the Mayor of Newport. The fact, the 
 treason, and the traitor were before the public, and the 
 scaffold seemed inevitable. But, to the astonishment 
 of every one, his counsel took an objection, " that 
 the prisoner had not been furnished with a copy of 
 the indictment and a list of the witnesses at the same 
 time." The trial proceeded, and Frost was found 
 guilty. But the objection was valid, and the public 
 astonishment that so fatal an error should have been 
 suffered to exist, has not yet subsided. Frost was 
 not hung, but was banished with two fellow-traitors 
 to Australia. To the fresh astonishment of the em- 
 pire, intelligence has just been received, that the 
 three traitors, instead of being even sent to work 
 out the remainder of their lives in chains, are 
 at this moment enjoying three public appointments ! 
 
 A letter from Frost to his wife, read by his son 
 at the late Chartist meeting at Bristol (January 11, 
 1841), dated Port Arthur, Van Diemen's Land, July 
 21, 1840, says "I was not sent here for what is 
 called punishment. The Governor told us repeatedly, 
 that we were not sent to Port Arthur as a punish- 
 ment, but to fill certain offices ! Williams is a super- 
 intendent at the coal mines ! Jones fills a situation at 
 the Juvenile Establishment !" And / am in the office 
 of the Commandant, that is, the Governor of Port
 
 40 A VIEW OF 
 
 Arthur ! I am acting here as clerk, and hitherto the 
 labour has not been heavy." We dare say not. There 
 are hundreds of respectable men in the colony, who 
 would be glad to have his office, and thousands 
 of respectable men at home who would be equally 
 glad. Who shall now say, that " Virtue is its own 
 reward !" 
 
 JANUARY 1. On this day, died Count Hyacinthe 
 Louis de Quelan, Archbishop of Paris, a man marked 
 for the highest stations of the Gallican church ; for he 
 was a handsome man, an accomplished courtier, and 
 knew the value of a showy sinecure with the tact 
 of a Frenchman. There was but one mistake in his 
 history : he ought to have been born a hundred and 
 fifty years ago, and figured in the reign of Louis 
 Quatorze. 
 
 In his latter years he turned to theology, and wisely 
 choosing a subject on which proof was impossible 
 and conjecture inexhaustible, he filled up his years 
 with propagating the doctrine, " that the Virgin 
 Mary was born free from original sin." As the Re- 
 volution has sponged out all theology in France, the 
 Archbishop was suffered to paddle about on the little 
 pond which he had dug for his private recreation. 
 Convincing nobody, perplexing himself, and amusing 
 the multitude, he perhaps fulfilled all that he was 
 ever designed for, and died at 62, regretted by his 
 Grace's chaplains.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 41 
 
 JANUARY 5. The tea war began. The Emperor 
 of China, after long calling the English " barbarians 
 and blockheads," now imperially called them " poi- 
 soners and pirates," and ordered them to be outlawed 
 to the end of all time. He gave a " peacock's tail 
 of honour " to Admiral Kwan, for being beaten by 
 the enemy's ships ; and a " blue button of glory " 
 to the Governor Lin, for having run away. A de- 
 cree was issued, ordering a general invasion of India, 
 to be followed by a general attack on the British 
 colonies ; for which purpose, a chief Mandarin was 
 sent to Amsterdam, to hire bum-boats ; and another 
 to seduce the French Cabinet into an alliance by sam- 
 ples of souchong ; and having done all this, the Em- 
 peror left the course of nature and the loss of tea, 
 to finish hostilities. 
 
 JANUARY 7- Died, William Hilton, a royal Aca- 
 demician, a man of ability in his profession, but 
 wanting the one great talent which constitutes emi- 
 nence originality. His pencil was correct, but not 
 brilliant vigorous, but not daring and animated, 
 but not creative. Unwisely disregarding the two 
 essentials of English popularity in his art, the study 
 of colour, and the painting of pictures not too large 
 to be bought, he reaped but little of the fruits of for- 
 tune. But he was intelligent, and accomplished, and 
 died too soon for his friends or his fame. 
 
 JANUARY 9. Died, in her 60th year, the Dowa-
 
 42 A VIEW OF 
 
 ger Marchioness of Hastings, a woman as noble in 
 her mind as in her rank ; the widow of the distin- 
 guished person so long known as the Earl of Moira, 
 a soldier of first-rate ability, holding a high rank 
 in the Senate, and one of the most sincere and 
 influential friends of George the Fourth. The lat- 
 ter days of the Marchioness were shadowed by 
 the melancholy fate of her daughter, Lady Flora 
 Hastings ; who, surrounded by the intrigues of party, 
 and having no other protection than her own inno- 
 cence, died of a broken heart, to the great sorrow of 
 the nation. Shakespeare, has written the truest 
 epitaph of the estimable and ill-used Lady Flora 
 Hastings : 
 
 " Done to death by slanderous tongues, 
 
 Was the Lady that here lies, 
 Death, in guerdon of her wrongs, 
 
 Gives her fame that never dies. 
 
 JANUARY 10. The New Penny Postage came into 
 act a contrivance to make correspondence easy 
 to the populace, who never correspond ; and cheap 
 to the ranks, who were willing to pay ; thereby de- 
 priving the nation of a million sterling a year, to 
 which no one objected, and compelling them to fill 
 up its place by taxes obnoxious to every one. It 
 had, however, the merit of putting an end to franks 
 a triple evil, by their plundering the revenue, tempt- 
 ing foolish people to scribble superfluous letters, and 
 impeding the progress of " liberality" by compelling
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 43 
 
 the " Friends of the People" to learn to write, before 
 they got into Parliament. 
 
 JANUARY 13. The American steam-boat Lexing- 
 ton blew up, destroying one hundred persons. "A 
 melancholy accident," say the journals. Most " me- 
 lancholy," we allow, but no accident. In America 
 everything is explosive ; church, state, man, multi- 
 tude, congress and constitution, sects and steam- 
 boats, all are on the high pressure principle. They 
 are all made for velocity, vapouring, and " going a- 
 head ;" all for racing and ruin. " How to get safe 
 to the journey's end" is the tardy maxim of The Old 
 World in conveyances and constitutions ; how to get 
 soon is the popular problem of The New. We must 
 admit that, in both conveyances and constitutions, 
 the old country has been lately borrowed from beyond 
 the Atlantic. But this mile -a-minute speed is not 
 natural to John Bull ; and after having broken his 
 bones the necessary number of times, he will be con- 
 tent to go on at the usual rate. Yet those catas- 
 trophes make a country known, and America must 
 seek celebrity somewhere. Thus Ireland keeps her 
 name in the mouths of mankind by faction-fights, 
 shooting magistrates, and burning houses round the 
 ears of parsons. A nation must not be defrauded 
 of its fame ; the blaze of popular renown must never 
 perish for want of faggots, no matter where they are 
 to be found.
 
 44 A VIEW OF 
 
 The American steamers run races with each other, 
 with a wager on which shall blow up first. In Eng- 
 land we are trying to emulate them with our rail- 
 roads. Still the steam boat, on the Yankee plan, has 
 evident advantages. The rail-road seldom crushes 
 more than from a dozen to twenty persons at a time. 
 The steam-boat may carry from five hundred to a 
 thousand, and, if blown up with any degree of skill, 
 may send every one of them to the crocodiles of the 
 Missisippi, or plunge them "piecemeal down the cata- 
 racts of Niagara. 
 
 JANUARY 16. The Queen opened Parliament, 
 and Parliament opened the campaign. The enemy 
 in the field was John Joseph Stockdale. The conflict 
 continued during three-fourths of the session, ending 
 in the escape of John Joseph, and the capture of the 
 two sheriffs of London ; who remained in the speak- 
 er's custody, the only trophies of the war. 
 
 JANUARY 24. The Bishop of Exeter moved the 
 House of Lords for an inquiry into the progress and 
 purposes of Socialism. Nothing ever so much asto- 
 nished Ministers as the statements of the Right Rev- 
 erend Lord. In the innocence of their souls, they 
 had fondly imagined Socialism to be simply some 
 new species of rustic game, invented to relieve the 
 pastoral ennui of the people ; and taken their pikes 
 for leaping-poles, and their ball-cartridges for squibs. 
 The Bishop's detail, that they were building chapels
 
 THE YEAR 1840. -J5 
 
 for atheism, and assembly-rooms for sedition, was 
 palpably met with all the wonder of guileless hearts 
 on the part of the Cabinet ; but the Bishop perse- 
 vered, and the Socialism was finally acknowledged 
 to be " a nuisance," and ordered to be abated. 
 
 JANUARY 27. Prince Albert's pension came be- 
 fore the House of Commons. The sum originally 
 intended for this fortunate Prince was 100,000, a 
 year. This was cut down by the Cabinet to 50,000, 
 and the fifty thousand was mulcted to 30,000 by 
 the economy of the House. 
 
 FEBRUARY 5. Padre Tomaso, a Romish friar, with 
 his servant, travelling on a mission in Syria, were 
 found murdered in Damascus. The murder was 
 charged on the fanaticism of the Jews, and the charge 
 was corroborated by the old accusations of their so- 
 lemnizing the Passover with Christian blood. The 
 Turks habitually load the Jews with every crime in 
 the calendar ; and Turkish justice, being always cruel 
 where either Jews or money are concerned, and, of 
 course, doubly so where both, they bastinadoed the 
 unfortunate people, in proportion to their means of 
 buying off the executioner. But, the eyes of Europe 
 were indignantly drawn to this atrocity, and remon- 
 strances were made by the Christian Powers, which 
 put an end to the torture. 
 
 But another work was to be done. The Jewish 
 character was to be cleared. This was not so simple
 
 46 A VIEW OF 
 
 an operation. The British Jews, with justified dis- 
 dain, rejected the charge of mixing their great Sac- 
 rifice with cannibalism, and appealed to their law for 
 the national abhorrence of the crime. Yet, on the 
 other hand, it was contended, that what could not be 
 done in the civilization of Europe, might be done in 
 the barbarism of Asia ; that there might be fanatics 
 among the Jews now, as there were rebels in other 
 times ; and that Syria might have her teachers of 
 guilty traditions, as Palestine had before ; for, though 
 idolatry was prohibited in the strongest manner to 
 their forefathers, nothing could be more notorious 
 than that ancient Israel had often nationally com- 
 mitted the crime. 
 
 To set those knotty points at rest, Sir Moses Mon- 
 tefiore (an excellent man) was sent on the part of 
 the London Jews, to purify the national character, by 
 a full inquiry into the transaction. But his diplo- 
 macy was no match for the cunning of Asia ; he was 
 blinded by the Jew, baffled by the Egyptian, bullied 
 by the Turk, and " talked over" by the Christian. 
 He travelled " from Dan to Beersheba, and found all 
 barren !" He roamed from Alexandria to Damascus, 
 and from Damascus to Constantinople ; saw a great 
 deal, talked a great deal, and paid a great deal ; bat, 
 so far as the point of clearing the character of the 
 Syrian Jews was concerned, he might as well have 
 remained in his London villa. We give him full cre- 
 dit for intention, but nothing has yet transpired in 
 the shape of acquittal ; the examination has been post-
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 47 
 
 poned ; the charge thus remains ; and, unless more 
 strenuous measures are adopted in vindication, the 
 mission of this very respectable man will be worse 
 than ineffectual. It is said, that he is to renew his 
 inquiry. We live in hope. Where he is now, we 
 know not ; if he is not bow-stringed, we presume 
 that he will come up, when everything else comes 
 up, in the Spring. We shall be glad to hear that he 
 is not slumbering already in the mummy-pits of the 
 Pacha, or preserved in the museum of his Highness 
 the brother of the Sun and Moon. 
 
 FEBRUARY 6. Lord Colchester moved for a re- 
 turn of the actual strength of the British navy; 
 which he described as utterly inadequate, riot only to 
 the objects of a great nation, whose colonial domi- 
 nions were to be protected solely by a navy ; and 
 whose national power was to be sustained essentially 
 by a navy ; but to the mere defence of the coasts of 
 England ; and this too, when all the leading powers of 
 the Continent were equipping fleets with the greatest 
 activity, and to the most alarming extent, in prospect 
 of a general war. 
 
 The ministerial reply was, that England had as 
 many ships as she wanted ! That the enemy's force 
 was on paper, and was made of pasteboard ! and that 
 there was no possible prospect of war ! But the mo- 
 tion for the return was carried, after a long debate ; 
 and then the Ministry came to their convictions.
 
 48 A VIEW OF 
 
 FEBRUARY 10. The Queen was married to Prince 
 Albert of Saxe Coburg, to which marriage, the ho- 
 nest German, his father, walked in a pair of jack- 
 boots ! 
 
 FEBRUARY 1 1 . Mr. Thomas Buncombe made his 
 motion, to exonerate Dissenters from the payment of 
 Church-rates. There are no men who better like a 
 good bargain than the Dissenters ; and the success of 
 their motion would have saved them from the un- 
 pleasant necessity of paying their debts. They plead 
 tenderness of conscience. But the founders of Chris- 
 tianity paid tribute to the Judaism which they came 
 to supersede, and to the Heathenism, which they 
 came to extinguish they paid in obedience to the 
 law of the land. The Dissenters are more tender- 
 conscienced than St. Peter and St. Paul ! The motion 
 was rejected by 117 to 62. 
 
 FEBRUARY 17- John Joseph Stockdale, having 
 commenced a fifth action against the printers of the 
 House of Commons, was declared guilty of a con- 
 tempt of the House. 
 
 FEBRUARY 18. Died, Sir Jeffery Wyattville, for 
 many years employed by George IV., in his repairs 
 and improvements of Windsor Castle. Sir Jeffery, 
 whose name was originally Wyatt, and who was a 
 relative of the celebrated architect of George III., 
 was a man of skill and learning in his profession.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 49 
 
 But royal architects are seldom distinguished, except 
 by royal favour. His principal labours were res- 
 torations of the royal palaces, and those restorations 
 might have been made with equal effect by almost 
 any hand. The King whimsically lengthened his 
 name by a foreign syllable. It added nothing to his 
 reputation, though a little to the public surprise, 
 and more to the public amusement. He died at the 
 age of 72. 
 
 FEBRUARY 19. Mr. Sergeant Talfourd made his 
 motion for the second reading of the Copyright Bill ; 
 which was carried by 59 to 29, and will be so car- 
 ried every year ; until the learned Sergeant is tired 
 of making poetical speeches upon a prosaic subject ; 
 and ascends to the Bench, or descends into the 
 grave. 
 
 No possible reason can be assigned, why the labour 
 of the intellect should not be as secure as the labour 
 of the hands ; or why a great writer might not leave 
 the product of his writings to his descendants, as well 
 as if he were a great grocer, and all his effects were 
 bags of sugar. If the great writer buys land with his 
 works, the land is transmitted from generation to ge- 
 neration ; while, if he gives only their copyright, his 
 son may be no more the better for it than if he were 
 the descendant of an idiot. What would have been 
 the opulence of the son of Shakspeare, if he had one, 
 and could have endowed him and his offspring with 
 the perpetual copyright of his plays Or is there to 
 
 E
 
 50 A VIEW OF 
 
 be no property but in acres, and nothing secure but 
 the labours of clowns and the pasturage of bullocks ? 
 But we are gravely told that this property would 
 produce a monopoly, and the monopoly restrict the 
 progress of the human mind. The true answer is, 
 that if the son of Shakspeare should refuse to give 
 his volumes to the public at a rational value, the 
 public would soon starve him into terms. But the 
 argument is a burlesque, and fit to be used by none 
 but the Humes and Warburtons of this world. 
 
 Yet, all local protection of copyright is air. The 
 learned Sergeant is but filling up a ditch, while an 
 earthquake yawns before him ; the true evil is in the 
 measureless knavery of foreigners. The London 
 publishers may be neither knavish nor illiberal ; but 
 their property and the general property of British 
 authorship, is in a constant 'state of pillage by the 
 American and continental presses. Every popular 
 volume of England is instantly pirated abroad, and 
 the operation of this piracy is not restricted to the 
 sale of either the United States or France ; it makes 
 a large source of their traffic to all the English 
 colonies in both the Eastern and Western Worlds. 
 Printing without the cost of authorship, the expense 
 of advertisements, or risk of any kind for that 
 question is settled by the previous popularity of the 
 work they can sell their piracy at a rate below all 
 competition. This iniquitous traffic actually robs 
 the author (for it robs the publisher who, alone, is to 
 remunerate him) of the whole product of his labour
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 51 
 
 beyond the narrow shores of the British Islands. 
 Yet, against this open plunder there is no protection. 
 The Legislature, which will not suffer an ounce of 
 American produce to enter a West India Island, has 
 no safeguard for the noblest produce of England, 
 the work of its genius. The only resource, then, is 
 in the moral feeling of foreigners ; their moral feel- 
 ing, with money hi the way ! 
 
 FEBRUARY 20. The Chamber of Deputies rejec- 
 ted the proposal for the Duke of Nemours' establish- 
 ment on his marriage. The motion produced a vast 
 quantity of angry discussion ; the journals pronoun- 
 cing, that they saw no reason why the King of 
 France should not provide for his children, as well 
 as any other father in the kingdom ; why every 
 additional branch of the Royal Family should be an 
 additional burden to the country ; and why the 
 richest man in France should do what a cobler in 
 the Fauxbourg St. Antoine would be ashamed to do, 
 viz, beg a public allowance for his son, when he was 
 able to support him himself. Those arguments pre- 
 vailed with the Chamber, by two hundred and twen- 
 ty-six to two hundred. The Ministers pretended to 
 be indignant, and offered their resignation ; but they 
 were easily calmed ; France laughed, the wits wrote 
 epigrams, the money w r as saved, and the King was 
 obliged to provide for his own family after all. 
 
 FEBRUARY 21. A meeting was held at Free- 
 
 E 2
 
 52 A VIEW OF 
 
 masons' Hall, to take the public opinion on the impri- 
 sonment of the Sheriffs ; but a battalion of Radicals 
 having attempted to take possession of the platform, 
 all became a specimen of Radical legislation, a full- 
 dress rehearsal of a mob Parliament, Harangues 
 were followed by hustling metaphors were ex- 
 changed for knock-down blows black eyes exhibi- 
 ted the mutual impressions made by the orators 
 and, finally, the meeting was appropriately closed by 
 the reading of the Riot Act. 
 
 FEBRUARY 25. Lord Stanley obtained leave to 
 bring in a bill, to amend the law relative to the 
 registration of voters in Ireland. Nothing could 
 be more rational, more just, or more necessary, than 
 a bill of this order. In England, voters register 
 every year ; in Ireland, they register once in eight 
 years ; and the consequence is a vast number of 
 fraudulent votes. As the qualifications, of course, 
 frequently change in so long a period, and also a 
 considerable number of the voters die, the system 
 directly acts as a temptation to bring forward repre- 
 sentatives of qualifications which exist no longer, and 
 substitutes of the dead. In England, too, a voter 
 unjustly objected to may appeal, and an individual 
 unjustly demanding the right to vote may also be 
 appealed against ; but in Ireland the latter appeal 
 does not exist, and the false voter has only to proceed 
 to the hustings, and elude justice under the sanction 
 of law. Lord Stanley's bill proposed to remedy
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 53 
 
 those monstrous abuses, by making one law for 
 Ireland and England. This, of course, raised a 
 furious clamour ; the Tail justly regarded it as the 
 commencement of a general operation for amputa- 
 ting all its joints ; The Radicals, though contemp- 
 tuous of the Tail, yet regarded it as dangerous to 
 that refuge which they are in the habit of seeking, 
 when turned out of British boroughs. But Lord 
 Stanley persevered ; and having the truth on his side, 
 having great talents to sustain it, and dreaded by the 
 O'Connellite section more than any other man in the 
 House, from their remembrance of the dexterity with 
 which he wields the scourge ; he drove his bill 
 through all obstacles, until its progress was checked 
 alone by the close of the session. 
 
 FEBRUARY 27. Ministers were again beaten. 
 The subject was Mr. Liddell's motion for an inquiry 
 into the pension of Sir John Newport. This old 
 gentleman, who had once been Chancellor of the 
 Irish Exchequer, had, at the age of seventy-five, 
 been appointed Comptroller of the English Exchequer; 
 Mr. Ellis, the original holder of the office being alive, 
 and receiving his salary of 1400 a year. The salary 
 given with the office to its second holder was 2000. 
 But Mr. Spring Rice, retiring on a peerage, and 
 receiving the Comptrollership, while both the former 
 holders were alive ; a pension of 1000 was given to 
 old Sir John. Such were the details brought before 
 Parliament. " Thus " said Mr. Liddell, " the horse,
 
 54 A VIEW OF 
 
 which formerly had enough to do in carrying one 
 rider, is now found to be long-backed enough to 
 carry three ; and the work which was once done for 
 1400 a year, now costs the country upwards of 
 4000. On a division, the motion was carried 
 by 240 to 212. 
 
 MARCH 1. In France, M. Thiers took office, as 
 President of the Council, and Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs. He had made himself important in the 
 Chamber of Deputies as the head of the French 
 Radicals. His lively and epigrammatic style of 
 speaking rendered him popular in a country where 
 to be amusing is to be everything ; and the reliance 
 which the Revolutionary party placed on a child 
 of the "Three days of July," gave him an extra- 
 ordinary influence in the Chamber. But, high situa- 
 tions are the triumph of great men, the ruin of 
 inferior men, and the. test of all. M. Thiers was 
 stronger on the first day of his Ministry than on the 
 second, and stronger on the second than on the third 
 -he had ascended by the back stairs, and he found 
 himself bewildered in the drawing-room he had 
 been thrown up, like a shell, from the mortar of the 
 Barricades ; and from the moment when he reached 
 his highest elevation, he began to descend, fell even 
 more rapidly than he rose, and buried himself where 
 he fell. 
 
 MARCH 5. The long contested question of pri- 
 vilege was closed, by the acknowledgment that the
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 55 
 
 old law was not sufficiently protective of the House 
 of Commons ; and a new bill was brought in : Ayes. 
 203 ; Noes, 54. At the same time Mr. Sheriff Evans 
 was released from custody, Mr. Sheriff Wheelton 
 having been previously released, on the certificate of 
 his physician that further confinement might en- 
 danger his life. 
 
 MARCH 7. The Irish Municipal Corporations' Bill 
 was read a third time in the House of Commons, and 
 passed by 182 to 34. 
 
 MARCH 11. A dinner was given, by the combined 
 Whigs and Radicals, to George Byng, in commemo- 
 ration of his having represented Middlesex in Parlia- 
 ment for fifty years. Mr. Byng is an amiable old 
 man, very rich, very harmless, and remarkable for a 
 simplicity astonishing at any time of life, or in any 
 age. Of all living men, he most strongly resembles 
 one of the " seven sleepers," those individuals dear to 
 romance, who having let several centuries pass over 
 their heads in slumber, suddenly awoke, and could 
 not be persuaded that they had slept more than their 
 regular twelve hours. All the world had undergone 
 a change battles had been fought, and treaties 
 made cities had been built, and thrones shaken to 
 the ground ; yet nothing could persuade the sleepers 
 that, when they walked forth, they were not walking 
 in the midst of the generation amongst whom they 
 had shut their eyes some hundreds of years before. 
 So goes forth Mr. Byug : he sees the Treasury bench
 
 56 A VIEW OF 
 
 filled with Radicals, Humeites, and O'Connellites ; 
 yet, as they call themselves Whigs, he is satisfied 
 that they are of the same class which sat there fifty 
 years ago. His notions, his doctrines, and his speeches 
 belong to a school which has utterly passed away, 
 and yet he thinks that every man round him is a 
 Whig of the days of his youth. He hears the most 
 violent language of partizanship, and actually mis- 
 takes it for the language of the Constitution sees a 
 dwarfish and frivolous race usurp the seats in which 
 men of great talents once held the supremacy ; and 
 thinks that the pigmies before his eyes are of the 
 same flesh and blood with the giants of his early 
 days. In short, he is worthy of a place in the legend, 
 and wants nothing but being a Papist, to be canon- 
 ized. 
 
 The dinner itself was a piece of diplomacy. The 
 Ministerialists, mortified to the core by the over- 
 whelming popularity of the Opposition, had long 
 determined to make an opportunity of drinking 
 their own healths, chaunting their own praises, and 
 showing, at least, that they were not afraid of the 
 sound of their own voices. But, on coming to the 
 reality of things, it was found that nobody who was 
 anybody would go to a Whig dinner ; that the party 
 was in such mauvaise odeur, that no man of rank 
 would be seen at a Whig dinner ; and that they 
 must be limited to the attendance of the Tail, who 
 are glad to dine any where ; of Joe Hume, who loves 
 cheap living ; and of that description of " working
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 57 
 
 patriots," to whom the table-spoons would form 
 equally a novelty and a speculation. Under those cir- 
 cumstances, the idea occurred of hiding the " Whig- 
 gism " altogether, and popularising^the affair, under 
 the pretext of commemorating the fifty years of sim- 
 plicity which form the public life of the'simple George 
 Byng. 
 
 The old member is too rich not to have many friends, 
 and too harmless to have any enemies ; so the affair 
 went off tolerably well, notwithstanding that Joe Hume 
 made a speech, Lord John explained himself, and the 
 " Great Agitator " was among the toasts of the even- 
 ing. But they have attempted the experiment no 
 more. It was their last ruse ; their invention was, 
 like their character, worn out ; and the good luck 
 of their escape was too fully felt, to be hazarded 
 again. 
 
 MARCH 12. The Circassians attacked the for- 
 tress of Weljaninow, and took it by storm. The 
 Circassian war deserves to be ranked as the most 
 extraordinary of modern times. In the instance of 
 other nations, though great gallantry has often been 
 shown by uncivilised tribes, yet even their means 
 have borne some proportion to the vigour of their 
 resistance ; or they were attacked by a power too 
 distant, or too much occupied with other hostilities, 
 to pour forth its whole strength upon them. But 
 the antagonist here is Russia, a name almost synony- 
 mous with boundless power ; a government systema-
 
 58 A VIEW OF 
 
 tically ambitious, and a warlike people wholly uri- 
 assailed by Europe. On the other hand, the Circas- 
 sians form a population of scarcely two millions of 
 souls, confined in a narrow and ill-cultivated country, 
 themselves divided into small tribes, still more sepa- 
 rated by local jealousies without the guidance of 
 any general government, without the appearance of 
 any one remarkable leader in the war, cut off from 
 supplies of ammunition by all the arts of Russian 
 diplomacy, and pressed by the most active vigilance 
 of Russian fleets and armies. And yet those poor 
 mountaineers have battled against the power of Rus- 
 sia for ten successive years, have cut off tens of thou- 
 sands of the Russian soldiery, have beaten them 
 whenever they have advanced into the mountains, 
 have followed them to the shore, and have even 
 taken by assault their fortresses, built with Euro- 
 pean science, and equipped with all the means of 
 European defence ; and still they boldly make head 
 against the Muscovite ? This shows what is to be 
 done by sincerity in a cause. The bold determi- 
 nation to resist, is worth fleets and armies. The 
 nations of Europe fell before Napoleon, not for 
 want of strength, but for want of sincerity; they 
 trusted to craft instead of courage; and attempted 
 to ward off the evil day by diplomacy, when 
 they should have unsheathed the sword, with a 
 determination to conquer, or die with it in their 
 hands.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 59 
 
 MARCH 15. The English Envoy presented a note 
 to the Court of Naples, demanding the dissolution of 
 the Sulphur contract entered into by the Court with 
 a company of French adventurers. The matter, 
 however, was finally settled by the only species of 
 appeal which foreigners can ever understand. After 
 long and fruitless proofs that the Neapolitans were 
 in the wrong, a detachment of the English squadron, 
 suddenly appearing before Naples, gave such con- 
 vincing evidence that the English were in the right, 
 that the new contract was instantly broken, and the 
 old one restored. This should be a lesson for our 
 negociators. Cromwell said, long ago, that the mouth 
 of a British cannon contains the only logic which 
 will ever work conviction on the continental mind ; 
 and the saying is true to this hour. 
 
 MARCH 19. Died Thomas W. Daniell, R. A ; An 
 artist, remarkable for his delineations of Indian 
 scenery, and for the astonishing industry with which 
 he must have exercised his pencil during his resi- 
 dence in Hindostan. His drawing was singularly 
 clear and graphic ; no European artist had ever 
 expressed the character of the country at once with 
 such force and such fidelity ; its rich and picturesque 
 vegetation, its vast and bold landscape, its brilliant 
 hues of earth, and its blue magnificence of sky, were 
 never before given with such truth to nature. He 
 died at the great age of 96. 
 
 MARCH 20. The Russian expedition to Khiva
 
 60 A VIEW OF 
 
 was forced to halt in the snows of the Desert, and 
 finally, to retreat to Orenberg ; with the loss of a 
 large proportion of its beasts of burthen and baggage. 
 Yet, it had met no other enemy than the elements. 
 This expedition was the most powerful that Russia 
 had ever sent into Tartary 30,000 men, with 
 a large proportion of artillery. Nominally directed 
 against the city of a little Tartar Prince, whom a few 
 regiments of Cossacks and a couple of field-pieces 
 would have swept from the face of the earth, it evi- 
 dently had larger objects in view. Khiva lies at the 
 foot of the great mountain range on whose southern 
 side spreads the British empire of Hindostan. A 
 strong Russian force, constantly kept in readiness to 
 scale that battlement, and capable of being unsus- 
 pectedly reinforced to any amount, and at any mo- 
 ment, might have keenly increased the anxieties of 
 the British Government. The habitual treachery of 
 the native Princes, the hostile spirit of the Mussul- 
 man population, and the sullen prejudices of the 
 Hindu and Mahometan priesthoods, must there find 
 a rallying point, a source of perpetual intrigue, and 
 a fund of incessant and lavish corruption. The 
 angry nature of the discussions between Russia and 
 England at that period rendered it still more probable, 
 that the expedition to Khiva was only the advanced 
 guard of an expedition to Bengal. But Nature has 
 placed barriers in the Desert, which still defy the 
 violence and the ambition of man. The expedition 
 had marched in the winter, probably, to have the ad-
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 61 
 
 vantage of surprise, and avowedly, to obviate the 
 want of water, which is severely felt when the snow 
 has given way to the sand. But winter was too 
 powerful in his own domain. The Russians, after 
 a month of struggle, were forced to give up the 
 enterprise, and rejoiced to find themselves once more 
 within the bounds of the civilized world, rude a 
 specimen as may be found of it within the walls of 
 Orenberg. The whole expedition, political, military, 
 and predatory, was utterly frost-nipt. Whether 
 General Perowsky, its projector, lost his nose, we are 
 not informed ; but he lost all the laurels which he 
 expected to plant on the summit of the Himmalaya ; 
 and his next experiment, if he is ever to renew it, we 
 presume will be made a little more in the sunshine. 
 But Russia is now our ally, most generous, cordial, 
 and confiding, of course ; and the Tartars are to be 
 suffered to be frozen in peace, the Indian frontier to 
 wear its snows untrodden by Muscovite boots, and 
 England to think herself sovereign of India, at least, 
 for another year. 
 
 MARCH 24. Died General Sir Henry Fane, late 
 commander-in-chief in India, an officer of distin- 
 guished gallantry, conduct, and experience. He had 
 landed with Wellington in Spain in 1809, borne the 
 command of a division in that war of triumphs, been 
 honoured by the thanks of Parliament, and finally, 
 on the restoration of peace in Europe, after remaining 
 for some period in England, been promoted to the
 
 G2 A VIEW OF 
 
 highest command among the dependencies of the 
 empire. He died at the age of 62. 
 
 MARCH 25. Died the Reverend Dr. Goodall, Pro- 
 vost of Eton, an amiable man, and a good scholar, 
 and by both titles fitted for the situation which he 
 had so long held as head master of one of the chief 
 classical schools of England. He died full of years, 
 aged 80. 
 
 MARCH 30. The House of Commons consented 
 to a grant of 2,000 a-year to Lord Seaton (Sir John 
 Colbourne), for his own life and that of his two next 
 heirs male ; in consideration of his services in Ca- 
 nada. The leading Liberals, as might be presumed, 
 were fertile in objections ; but the motion was car- 
 ried by 82 to 16. General Sir John Colbourne had 
 been distinguished as Colonel Colbourne in the Pe- 
 ninsular war. In Canada he crushed two insurrec- 
 tions of the Papist and Revolutionary Canadians ; 
 he repelled and punished the various attempts of the 
 American rabble to invade and rob the British pro- 
 vinces ; and he now received his title and his pension 
 with the highest approbation of both Canada and 
 England. 
 
 MARCH 30. One hundred and twenty petitions 
 against the repeal of the Corn Laws were presented 
 by the Duke of Buckingham ; and one hundred and 
 forty by the Duke of Richmond. The case is of the
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 63 
 
 clearest kind. The repeal of the Corn Laws would 
 starve the British farmer, and turn nine-tenths of the 
 fields of England into a wilderness ; would sink the 
 vast body of the agricultural labourers into actual 
 mendicancy, or madden them, by the mere pressure 
 of hunger, into insurrection ; would totally destroy 
 the landed interest, and subvert the whole condition 
 of British property, by rendering the produce of the 
 land actually valueless. It would have the further 
 eifect of making us wholly dependent for subsistence 
 on the Polish, or the American farmer in the former 
 instance, laying us at the mercy of Russia, and in the 
 latter, of the United States, in every collision of 
 public interests ; besides supplying them with every 
 disposable shilling in the country, to make war on 
 her at their will. 
 
 MARCH 30. Vincent and Edwards were sentenced 
 to imprisonment in Moiimoiith goal, for twelve and 
 fourteen months respectively, for attempts to effect a 
 change in the State. 
 
 MARCH 31. Lady Cecilia Underwood received 
 the title of Duchess of Inverness. This creation 
 was the source of considerable controversy in the 
 newspapers, doubtless very amusing to the fashionable 
 world. But, as her Ladyship is a very pretty wo- 
 man, and his Royal Highness, whatever his politics 
 may be, has never excited any real public hostillity, 
 the topic was soon suffered to sink into general ob- 
 livion.
 
 64 A VIEW OF 
 
 APRIL 3. The Russian fortress, Michael, with a 
 garrison of nearly 500 men, was gallantly stormed 
 by the Circassians. 
 
 APRIL 5. A dinner was given by the Lord Mayor 
 to the Cabinet Ministers. This was a disastrous 
 affair. The invitation ought not to have been given 
 at all, or not to have been accepted. On the part of 
 the Lord Mayor, there may have been the excuse of 
 official decorum ; but on that of the Ministers, we are 
 forced to be content with whatever apology can be 
 found in the love of turtle. The consequence, how- 
 ever, was a scene of irritation and uproar. A futile 
 and injudicious attempt to applaud the Whigs, was 
 drowned by shouts of disapprobation. The succes- 
 sive speeches of the Cabinet were strangled in their 
 birth ; and the feelings of the City, sharpened by the 
 imprisonment of the Sheriffs, were uncontrollable. 
 The Premierl ost his habitual smile ! Lord Normanby 
 shuddered ! and a blush was seen on the face of the 
 Attorney-General ! 
 
 APRIL 7- Sir James Graham moved a censure on 
 the Cabinet, with reference to the policy of the war 
 with China. The debate closed on the 9th, by a di- 
 vision : For the motion, 262 Against it, 271. 
 
 APRIL 19. The Emperor Ferdinand of Austria 
 issued a decree, confirming the amnesty promised at 
 his coronation in Milan. This was a humane mea-
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 65 
 
 sure. What are Italians good for, when they are 
 shut up in dungeons ? It is true that neither in nor 
 out of them are they good for much, beyond a can- 
 zonet ; but, though birds will sing the better for being 
 in cages, Italians will not. The idea of Italian con- 
 spiracy is ridiculous ; they are capable of no con- 
 spiracy, but on the boards of a theatre ; and hate no 
 tyrants, and love no liberty, but to the accompani- 
 ment of a full orchestra. Disorders in government 
 make no more impression on their minds, than a violin 
 is hurt in its feelings by having a bow drawn awk- 
 wardly across its strings. To inflict the habitual 
 severities of the heavy, hob-nailed, military Govern- 
 ment of Austria on such a people, would be to order a 
 nursery to drill under a Serjeant of the Guards. It is best 
 to treat all people with gentleness ; but the Italians are 
 too idle a people to move much compassion for their 
 calamities. As a nation, they have no more sensi- 
 bility than a bunch of artificial flowers ; nor more 
 capacity of advancement than one of their own finger- 
 posts ; yet they are, or have been, human beings ; 
 and, as such, ought to be indulged with the same 
 light and air which Nature gives to the lizard and the 
 fly. We cannot bear to see a whole people turned 
 into a footstool for the " rude Carinthian boor." Italy, 
 trifling as it is, is fit for better things than to be ab- 
 sorbed wholesale by the heavy Teutons of Vienna, 
 like macaroni poured down by the yard into the 
 throats of its own lazzaroni.
 
 66 A VIEW OF 
 
 APRIL 21. Died, Lord Guillamore (O'Grady), an 
 Irish lawyer, who had been chief Baron of the Ex- 
 
 * * 
 
 chequer. O'Grady was a man of considerable learn- 
 ing in his profession, but who owed his rank chiefly 
 to the favour of a much superior man, Fitzgibbon, 
 formerly Chancellor, and Earl of Clare. After going 
 through the routine of the Bar, in which he made 
 money with much rapidity ; he reached the Bench, 
 in which he still made money, but without much dis- 
 tinction. In both, he filled the place, which may be 
 filled by any man possessed of common diligence and 
 common faculties. He had eclipsed none who went 
 before, nor has left any of that reputation which 
 throws into shadow those who come behind. Such 
 men are useful, but they are no more made to be 
 regretted, than their talents are made to be missed. 
 Their place is easily filled ; and when the hearse has 
 passed by, the memory has passed along with it. Of 
 such are the generality of lawyers, and, we allow 
 it, of mankind. 
 
 APRIL 22. Died, Major-General Sir Alexander 
 Dickson. Sir Alexander was a most distinguished 
 artillery officer. Entering the service at an early 
 age, and possessing science and clearness of under- 
 standing in a remarkable degree, he made himself 
 conspicuous from the first period of his entering on 
 active service. The British Artillery is, perhaps, the 
 finest corps that the world has ever seen trained for 
 military purposes. The mechanical skill, manual
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 67 
 
 dexterity, and cool courage, for which the English- 
 man has been always celebrated, find their peculiar 
 development in this service. In the Peninsular War, 
 a war in which artillery was employed to an unexam- 
 pled extent in sieges and in the field, the superiority 
 of the British guns on all occasions was decided. 
 Their rapidity of movement in the field, and the 
 weight of their fire against fortifications, threw the 
 French artillery totally out of comparison ; alert as 
 the French are, and peculiarly proud of their use of 
 this arm. A large portion of this excellence was 
 due to the ability of Sir Alexander Dickson, who 
 commanded them during the latter years of the 
 Spanish War. He died aged sixty-one. 
 
 APRIL 27. The Duke of Nemours, the son of 
 Louis Philippe, was married to the Princess Victoria 
 of Cobourg. Does Louis Philippe intend to make 
 German the language of the Tuilleries, and to sub- 
 stitute waltzes for quadrilles? At all events, we 
 hope that all the Cobourgs are married by this time. 
 
 APRIL 30. Ariot occurred at her Majesty'sTheatre, 
 arising from the dismissal of Tamburini, a vocalist. 
 We know no more proper subject for a riot. It is 
 notorious, that the encouragement of the Signors 
 and Signoras is a matter of national importance, that 
 the salary of a foreign singer is always too low, and 
 that the hope of making a singer's fortune is well 
 worth being made the cause of hazarding the bones 
 
 F 2
 
 08 A VIEW OF 
 
 of an English audience, going to jail for an assault 
 on the constables, or setting the house on fire with 
 its own chandeliers, to bring the manager to his 
 senses. In cases of this kind, the manager is clearly 
 the only person incapable of judging how much he 
 is able to pay, and the singer the only person whose 
 estimate of his own value cannot be too high. Ac- 
 cordingly, the manager was forced to submit, and 
 Tamburini, with an increase of salary, was privileged 
 to roar to the end of the season. 
 
 APRIL 30. Lord Melbourne, in answer to the 
 Marquis of Westmeath in the House of Lords, charg- 
 ing the Cabinet with combining with O'Connell, 
 denied the charge with the greatest possible gravity 
 of countenance. We do not recollect, whether his 
 lordship denied his having ever heard the name. 
 
 MAY 1st. the Grand Duke of Hesse Darmstadt, 
 founded a new order of knighthood, which his high- 
 ness named the " Order of merit of Philip the mag- 
 nanimous." He should have told us, in honour of 
 what Philip this new peg to hang ribands and crosses 
 on, was struck into the walls of the Heralds' Col- 
 lege, whether Philip of Macedon, or Philip Egalite, 
 Louis Phillippe, or Monsieur Phillippe the grand con- 
 juror, whose cups and balls have wheedled so many 
 florins out of the purses of the Grand Monde of 
 Vienna. At all events, his highness has added one 
 more to the German orders, which already, amounted
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 69 
 
 to betweeii thirty and forty. The man is an unlucky 
 one, indeed, in Germany, who cannot show a scrap of 
 riband, or a star of the size of a sixpence, and about 
 its value, at his button hole. Yet it might be ques- 
 tioned, whether honours of this multitudinous kind 
 are honours at all ; and whether the wearers might 
 not as proudly exhibit so many square inches of gilt 
 gingerbread. 
 
 Republicanism made the French manlier for the 
 time ; and they loudly scoffed at the Germans and 
 their scraps of riband ; but Napoleon, who knew the 
 native folly of France better than themselves, gave 
 them a legion of honour, and a shower of stars. 
 There are fools, even in England, who long for those 
 absurdities, and we see proposals in the papers, every 
 three months, suggesting to government, the infinite 
 comfort that the English naval or military officer, 
 nay, that the English author or artist, would feel in 
 having a shilling's worth of silver hung by a string 
 down the breast of his coat. We have even seen a 
 late proposition for giving an order of knighthood 
 to every officer who had received pay for five and 
 twenty years, thus making the mere continuance in 
 their profession an especial merit, and turning a good 
 stomach and a sturdy frame into a claim for military 
 honours. The wisest thing that the foreign courts 
 could do, would be to cut off the ribands, and put 
 out the little twinkling stars of three-fourths of their 
 tinsel chevaliers, abolish all their orders in every ser- 
 vice, except one in each, and give that one not to
 
 70 A VIEW OF 
 
 chamberlains and charlatans, to the menials of a 
 palace, or the coxcombs of a guard-room, but to 
 brave soldiers, and to them only for some express 
 exploit. The officer who had led a forlorn hope, the 
 officer who had captured or defended a fortress, 
 the officer who had conquered in a pitched battle, 
 the bold seaman who had stormed an enemy's fort, 
 or captured a frigate, or commanded in a successful 
 action against an enemy's fleet ; those are the men 
 who should be honoured by such marks of distinction, 
 and to those alone should they be confined, if they 
 are to be worth even the trifling material of which 
 they are made. 
 
 MAY 6. The public feelings were suddenly alarmed 
 by the report that Lord William Russell was found 
 murdered in his bed. His lordship, the brother of 
 the late Duke of Bedford, was an old man, living 
 alone, and though of extremely retired habits, 
 esteemed by a large circle of society. For a con- 
 siderable time the most exact and anxious inquiry 
 was unable to detect the perpetrator of this atrocious 
 crime. At length, so many circumstances of sus- 
 picion pointed to his Swiss valet, that this person, a 
 young man named Courvoisier, was committed for 
 trial. 
 
 MAY 1 1 . The whole line of the Southampton 
 Railway was opened. A large party, headed by the 
 Directors, and comprehending M. Guizot, the French
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 71 
 
 Ambassador, some of the nobility, and many men of 
 science and commercial rank, proceeded to South- 
 ampton ; where they were conveyed in less than 
 three hours., the distance being about seventy miles. 
 This railway effects remarkable advantages for both 
 commercial purposes and those of pleasure. Leading 
 through one of the richest districts of England, and 
 thus laying open all its agricultural opulence to the 
 capital ; it also saves the merchant the whole perilous 
 and tardy transit from the Thames by the Downs, 
 and brings his goods direct to the second finest har- 
 bour of England, Portsmouth. To the citizen whose 
 object is health and recreation, it brings the sea, the 
 the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, and all the fine 
 landscape of the shores of the channel within three 
 hours of London. Such are the wonders of railway 
 travelling ; and if the accidents which have hitherto 
 formed so startling a drawback on the value of this 
 greatest of all modern discoveries, shall be effectually 
 guarded against, the railway may be justly hailed 
 not only as the most powerful of all inventions, but 
 the most productive of enjoyment, health, and utility 
 to man. 
 
 MAY 13. The Court of Queen's Bench affirmed 
 the sentence of the Ecclesiastical Court against 
 Thorogood. John Thorogood was an Essex cobbler, 
 who, feeling a peculiar delicacy of conscience on the 
 subject of paying his church-rate, resolved to die a 
 martyr. If it be true that the martyrs of old died,
 
 72 A VIEW OF 
 
 not for their shillings but for their faith ; the difference 
 only shows that modern martyrs are a more enlight- 
 ened race than the old. The result was, that the 
 Dissenters raised a thousand pounds for their martyr ; 
 a proof that there are better things in this world 
 than repairing boots and shoes in Essex. If John, 
 after this experience, ever turns cobbler again, he is 
 a much greater fool than we take him for. 
 
 MAY 14. Died, Sir William Bolland, one of the 
 Barons of the Court of Exchequer, an amiable and 
 accomplished man, a good lawyer, and an accurate 
 and elegant scholar. His taste leading him early to 
 the collection of medals, manuscripts, and other 
 sources of classical illustration, he gradually became 
 a little of a bibliomaniac, and his library contained 
 some of the most remarkable books of the earliest, 
 and of course the worst editions. But he had too much 
 good sense to wander into the extravagances of a 
 pursuit, which must be moderate, if it would not be 
 ridiculous. A few years since, in the Chancellorship 
 of his friend, Lord Lyndhurst, he was raised to the 
 Bench. He died, aged 68. 
 
 MAY 18. The llth Hussars were reviewed at 
 Brighton, by Major-General Sleigh ; an incident too 
 trivial to be remembered among the events of the 
 year, but for its consequences. After the Review, 
 the Major-General was invited to dine at the mess, 
 as is customary. The dinner was worthy of the
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 73 
 
 gallant and showy regiment ; but, towards the close, 
 the highborn optics of the Lieutenant-Colonel, Lord 
 Cardigan were startled by the apparition of a black 
 bottle ! among the elaborately cut decanters which 
 form the ornament of the table on gala days. A 
 subsequent inquiry ascertained, that the request of one 
 of the officers, Captain J. W. Reynolds, for a glass of 
 Moselle, had been the cause of introducing the fatal 
 bottle. Simple as the incident was " the apple of 
 discord" was never more dexterously thrown into the 
 midst of festivity. The affair instantly became 
 regimental. 
 
 From the remonstrance addressed to the uncon- 
 scious delinquent, grew a long melee, worth at least 
 half a campaign to the corps ; consisting of a duel, 
 a couple of challenges, a general court-martial, a 
 newspaper correspondence, a mission of the Adjutant- 
 General to explain the will of the Commander-in- 
 Chief to the regiment, and half-a-dozen rescripts of 
 the Commander-in-Chief, to explain the explanation. 
 Nor is the business concluded yet. Another quarrel 
 has grown up, to a very handsome size ; and the 
 public opinion has been so sharply expressed by the 
 newspapers, that interviews have taken place with 
 Prince Albert, who had probably thought himself 
 peculiarly lucky that his agreeable duties at Windsor 
 kept him fifty miles from Brighton. His Lordship 
 has since been put upon his trial before the House of 
 Lords, for the duel, and, on a blunder in the indict- 
 ment, acquitted.
 
 74 A VIEW OF 
 
 MAY 19. The Archbishop of Dublin brought 
 forward a motion in the House of Lords on the 
 subject of Australian transportation. 
 
 Restlessness is the tarantula of our age. Expe- 
 rience seems nothing, novelty seems everything ; 
 change is the grand principle of improvement, and 
 the more total the change the better. The system 
 of transportation has been now tried for fifty 
 years ; it has succeeded to an extraordinary degree 
 in the three great points, of relieving the mother 
 country from a multitude of desperadoes, first driven 
 to iniquity by temptation, and then compelled to 
 follow it as a trade by despair; of peopling a 
 vast desert with labourers, whose work may be 
 supplied at a cheap rate, and who can be compelled 
 to labour; and thirdly, and most important of 
 all, of giving an honest livelihood to thousands, 
 whose crime was the offspring, rather of their 
 poverty than their will ; enabling those to recover 
 character abroad who had lost it irretrievably at 
 home ; and transforming a reckless and unhappy 
 race of public criminals, into a race of decent habits, 
 industrious lives, and not seldom considerable posses- 
 sion of property. We have seen an estimate of Co- 
 lonial property in actual possession of individuals 
 who had been sent from England as convicts, and 
 who left it without a shilling ; amounting to a million 
 and a half sterling. Yet this whole system, wise, 
 beneficent, and vast as it is, is to be hazarded with 
 (extinction by the love of change. 
 
 If we hear it alleged, that transportation has lost
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 75 
 
 its terrors ; the true answer is 3 that the fault lies in 
 the mismanagement, not the principle ; that the cus- 
 tom of discharging convicts from labour, and letting 
 them lead a lounging life, or make money by trading 
 speculations, is an abuse ; and that working in chains, 
 the severities of confinement, and the impossibility of 
 a return to England (in all the more heinous cases), 
 would make transportation the reverse of an indul- 
 gence to the haters of work at home. In fact, in- 
 stead of restricting the exercise of this sentence, it 
 ought to be extended to ten times its amount. Every 
 street plunderer ; every one of that class, especially, 
 which lives by a notorious trade of petty larceny ; 
 every receiver, every member of a gang, every coiner 
 in short, every criminal who has evidently adopted 
 thieving as his " profession," should be sent to Aus- 
 tralia for life. Nothing can be better known than 
 the utterly irreclaimable nature of a thief, who has 
 become accustomed to the stimulants of his villan- 
 ous pursuit the easy robbery and the gross indul- 
 gence. In this country, we doubt, whether all our 
 penitentiaries, places of reform, treadmills, and houses 
 of correction, have reformed a dozen criminals in a 
 dozen years : we more than doubt, whether they have 
 restored a single criminal to a place in society, for 
 every hundred thousand pounds which those huge 
 establishments have cost ; while in New South Wales 
 thousands have, unquestionably, become decent, 
 industrious, and useful ; and where the parents have 
 been incorrigible, the children have grown up ser- 
 viceable members of the community. The reasons
 
 76 A VIEW OF 
 
 are in the location : there they do not suffer under 
 an indelible stigma ; there they have work ; and 
 there they have no temptation to plunder. Regard- 
 ing, as we do, the great Australian continent as a 
 special gift of Providence to England for the noblest 
 experiment of reformation ever made, we entirely 
 deprecate all rash interference of that most frivol- 
 ous of all sciences, which calls itself Economical 
 Philanthrophy. 
 
 MAY 21. Lieut.-Governor Hobson proclaimed the 
 sovereignty of England over the islands of New Zea- 
 land. Thus, a new empire in the ocean has been 
 added to the national sceptre ! and British laws, free- 
 dom, and religion ; the arts of civilized life, the vigour, 
 manliness, and integrity of British commerce; the 
 richness, variety, and power of British literature, and 
 the activity and gallantry of British soldiership, will 
 be the invaluable gifts bestowed on these fine and 
 fertile islands. It is memorable, that our country is 
 the only one whose colonists thrive ; the attempts 
 made by the other powers of Europe have been few, 
 and those few feeble ; but the colonies of England 
 spread from year to year, with a principle of growth 
 which seems incapable of a limit, and which gives 
 them less the character of national dependencies 
 than of incipient kingdoms, allied to us by the ori- 
 ginal ties of a common interest, a common faith, and 
 a common language. 
 
 Our knowledge of the capacities of New Zealand is 
 still too incomplete for detail, but it is sufficient, to
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 77 
 
 show the noble acquisition which we have made. 
 The islands were discovered by the Dutch, in 1642, 
 a time when, from the distractions in England, the 
 Dutch were the chief commercial power of Europe. 
 Tasman. the commander of their expedition to the 
 Southern Pacific, named them Staten Island, from his 
 masters, the States-General. But his examination 
 was vague, and limited to the Eastern coast, and a 
 Strait, which he entered. The growing embarrass- 
 ments of Holland checked her career of discovery, 
 and for upwards of a hundred years New Zealand 
 was forgotten. The great task of filling the world 
 with civilization, then devolved upon a country, of all 
 others the most fitted for this duty, ardent, generous, 
 and capable of uniting the largest views of human bene- 
 volence with the most successful acquirement of power. 
 George the Third, a king w r hose name will be recorded 
 for many an age, when the sanguinary honours of con- 
 querors will be their shame ; directed the attention 
 of his Government to this neglected quarter of the 
 globe, and directed it, unquestionably much more for 
 objects of philanthropy than of dominion. 
 
 In 1770, the celebrated Captain Cook visited the 
 coast of New Zealand, and ascertained that it consisted 
 of two large islands, divided by a strait nearly as 
 broad as the Channel between Dover and Calais. He 
 found the coast penetrated by bays, and those bays 
 covered with small islands, natural breakwaters 
 against the heavy billows of the Great Ocean, the
 
 78 A VIEW OF 
 
 whole evidently formed for a vast future commerce ; 
 wood and water in abundance, the plains and sides 
 of the hills covered with forests of fine trees, and the 
 rivers navigable to a considerable extent in the inte- 
 rior ; the summer generally resembling that of Eng- 
 land ; the pinnacles of the hills covered with snow in 
 winter. Of the two islands, the southern one was the 
 more mountainous ; but both islands were apparently 
 the work of those volcanoes which are in a state of 
 incessant action at the bottom of the ocean, and are 
 forming a new chain of Pacific islands, hereafter to 
 be formed into the mountains of a new continent. 
 The soil in the valleys and plains was fertile, and 
 found to be capable of rearing the chief products of 
 Europe. 
 
 In Cook's second visit, which was in 1773, he 
 made the experiment of planting our principal culi- 
 nary vegetables ; and, on returning, in four years 
 after, he found that they had perfectly succeeded ; 
 though, of course, struggling with weeds and the other 
 consequences of being totally neglected ; the poultry 
 which he had left there were now grown wild, but 
 had multiplied in a remarkable degree ; the sea and 
 the rivers abounded in fish ; and the whole country 
 seemed admirably adapted for the health, the enjoy- 
 ment, and even the opulent sustenance of man. 
 
 The natives were athletic and brave, though their 
 bravery was ferocious ; and, with a savageness which 
 went to the extreme, they devoured the prisoners
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 79 
 
 taken in their perpetual feuds. But their forms were 
 statue-like, and their understandings acute, and even 
 eager for European knowledge. 
 
 The islands lie between south latitude 34 and 48, 
 and longitude 1 66 and 1 80. Long may they flourish, 
 and be the habitation of a great people, vigorous, 
 virtuous, and happy ! 
 
 MAY 26. Mr. Villiers renewed his motion for the 
 abolition of the Corn-laws. He was again beaten, as 
 we hope he always will be, by an overwhelming ma- 
 jority 300 to 177. 
 
 Died, Admiral Sir Sydney Smith, in France, 
 
 at the age of 76. We regret nothing in the life of this 
 distinguished man, but that be spent his latter years 
 out of his own country, flattering his self-indulgence 
 by the frivolities and idleness of Paris, and so far, 
 countenancing the un-English residence of his coun- 
 trymen. 
 
 Forty years ago, Sir Sydney Smith was among the 
 most popular names of the British navy. The espe- 
 cial characteristic of his actions was brilliancy. 
 Others might fight with as much bravery, and con- 
 quer with as much success ; but there was a spirit, 
 an effect, a colour in all his exploits, which made 
 them romantic and glittering. His most trivial efforts 
 bore an exclusive impression of the adventurous. 
 Though never in command of a fleet, until the naval 
 war had nearly ceased ; arid never conducting any 
 great operation ; still his genius and it fully deserves
 
 80 A VIEW OF 
 
 the name made even the capture of an enemy's 
 sloop, or the storming of a little shore-battery, an act 
 of heroism. In command of the Diamond frigate, he 
 ranged the French coast incessantly, and took, or 
 drove on shore, everything before him ; often land- 
 ing, and, with his few seamen and marines, keeping 
 the whole western border of France in perpetual 
 alarm. 
 
 At length, in a daring attempt to capture a priva- 
 teer in the teeth of the enemy's batteries, the tide 
 left his boats aground, and he was taken prisoner. 
 His name was too well-known, not to excite fears 
 for his life in the blood-thirsty days of the Republic. 
 But, by extraordinary good fortune, he escaped from 
 the prison of the Temple in Paris, and reached the 
 ocean, where a British frigate was his fortress ; 
 and he was preserved to strike one of the heaviest 
 blows that had ever reached the heart of French 
 ambition. 
 
 With two ships he was sent in pursuit of Napo-. 
 Icon, who, with 40,000 men, and the grand fleet of 
 France, had sailed in May, 1799, for the conquest of 
 Egypt which was to be followed by the conquest of 
 Syria, of Turkey, and of the world ! The defeat of 
 this most daring and dazzling of all conceptions, was 
 accomplished by the British Commodore. He fought 
 the French for fifty days, in the breach of Acre, 
 repulsed nine assaults, hunted Napoleon across the 
 Desert, and, after forcing him to fly to Europe, 
 in the mere hopelessness of Eastern conquest, he
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 81 
 
 crowned his gallant services by receiving the capitu- 
 lation of Kleber and the French army. The capitu- 
 lation was afterwards rescinded, and the French army 
 remained ; as if for the express purpose of giving ad- 
 ditional renown to the British bayonet. But it was 
 the hand of Sir Sydney Smith that first tore the lau- 
 rels of the Republic from the standards of Napoleon, 
 and fixed them on his own. Without the steady bea- 
 con-flame of a Howe, or the towering splendour of 
 a Nelson, that pole-star of the sailor he had the 
 flash, the eccentricity, and the rapid movement of 
 a meteor, yet of a meteor whose vividness still re- 
 mains upon the eye of his countrymen. 
 
 MAY 27. Died, at Nice, Paganini ; the most ex- 
 traordinary violinist of his time ; and not only of 
 his time, but of all others, since the invention of the. 
 violin. His excellence on this first of instruments was 
 so singular, that, in all human probability, he will 
 never have a superior. This opinion has been adopted 
 by the musical world, on the ground, that the simpli- 
 city of the violin being the source of its superiority, 
 and thus no mechanical improvement being ever to be 
 expected, the supremacy of the violinist must be the 
 work of supreme sensibility, subtlety of conception, 
 and mastery of hand. It was Nature that made the 
 excellence of Paganini. She gave him intensity of 
 musical feeling, an invention always seeking the 
 sublime of his art, and the most remarkable and 
 powerful configuration of hand for all the difficulties 
 
 G
 
 82 A VIEW OF 
 
 of the scale. The violin is the favourite instrument 
 of the Italian, German, French, and English orches- 
 tras. Europe abounds in powerful violinists. Italy 
 prides herself on the taste and cantabile of her masters 
 of this fine instrument ; Germany, ill their steadiness, 
 strength, and skill ; France, in their boldness and 
 brilliancy ; England, in her adoption of the styles of 
 all. But, from the moment when Paganini com- 
 menced his musical tour of Europe, it was a tour of 
 triumph. "I have conquered everywhere!" ,was 
 his exclamation ; and it was true. In every capital, 
 he instantly took the first place in his delightful art. 
 All the professors gave way to him ; and after having 
 extinguished them as his rivals, he left them to revive 
 only as his imitators. One fact is decisive of his 
 extraordinary powers. He has filled the Italian 
 Opera House of London from the roof to the ground, 
 and held the audience in unwearied delight for the 
 whole evening, by his single performance, with only the 
 intervention of an overture or a chorus, in the inter- 
 vals while he rested. This unequalled feat was 
 undoubtedly due in some degree to his variety, his 
 eccentricity, and even to an ingenuity, approaching 
 that of his native charlatans to solos played on one 
 string, to imitations of the guitar, of the cries of ani- 
 mals, of the songs of birds, even of the shrieks of 
 witches, of everything that could occur to a capri- 
 cious and fantastic mind, gifted with the power of 
 expressing its most extravagant conceptions. 
 
 But, in the midst of this prodigal sport of science,
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 83 
 
 there were palpable evidences, from to time, of a 
 power which astonished and delighted all the sense 
 of harmony : sparkles of light in the chaos, flashes 
 from the cloud, bold and superb strains, that made 
 the mind forget the man, and even the music, 
 and feel itself wandering away into creations of its 
 own. 
 
 This is not the language of undue panegyric ; for 
 Paganini's faculty w r as unequalled, and magnificent. 
 Nothing but genius could have given new popularity 
 to an instrument which has been popular for ages, 
 developed new powers in an instrument which has 
 been the study of tens of thousands of great artists ; 
 and left a style of composition to attest his excellence, 
 which will form no school, only because it will find 
 no violinist equal to its rich, subtle, and lovely ex- 
 pression. 
 
 The exterior of a man of genius is not always cha- 
 racteristic, but Paganini looked the thing he was : 
 his countenance, though attenuated, pale, and almost 
 ghastly, yet capable of being lighted up with sudden 
 fire ; his form, though thin and debilitated, yet almost 
 graceful and commanding from the moment when he 
 took the violin in his hand. He wore his hair wild, 
 and falling on his shoulders, like the locks of one of 
 the prophets of Michael Angelo ; his whole contour 
 realizing the picture which the mind instinctively 
 forms to itself of a man whose impulses are all from 
 within ; the class of the great poet, the great painter, 
 the great composer, the man of genius in all. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 A VIEW OF 
 
 Paganini died of consumption, after acquiring a 
 large fortune by his talents aged 57. 
 
 JUNE 1. A great meeting was held at Exeter 
 Hall to discountenance the Slave Trade. No man of 
 common humanity can ever have approved of this 
 atrocious traffic ; but we doubt strongly whether any 
 man of common sense ever approved of the means 
 which have been suggested to put it down. Those 
 means had stamped their own condemnation. They 
 had utterly failed, and worse than failed ; they had 
 aggravated tenfold the miseries, the crimes, and the 
 massacres of the old Slave Trade. Let the Slave 
 Trade be put down throughout the world, we say, 
 and say most sincerely ; but let the operation be put 
 into manly hands. 
 
 JUNE 6. The Chinese sent down a squadron of 
 paper lanterns to burn the British frigates blockading 
 one of their rivers. The English sailors threw water 
 from their tea-cups on the foremost, and blew out 
 the rest with their tobacco-pipes. The Emperor of 
 China, by the advice of his Council of Mandarins, 
 immediately published a proclamation, announcing 
 that his gallant admiral had gained a great victory ; 
 that nothing was left of the frigates but charcoal ; 
 that he was on the point of sending a fleet to set 
 London, the " chief city of the barbarians," on fire ; 
 and that nothing but the compassion of the Lord 
 of the Celestial Empire prevented him from pro-
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 85 
 
 ceeding, without delay, to the conflagration of the 
 world. 
 
 JUNE 7- The King of Prussia died at Berlin, in 
 the seventieth year of his age. Frederic William was 
 one of the most singular instances of ill-fortune, fol- 
 lowed by good, in the history of Europe. No man 
 had suffered like him ; since the days when deposed 
 kings were shut up in a cloister, had their mous- 
 taches shaved off, and were turned into monks for 
 life. Coming to the throne, at a time w 7 hen the in- 
 fidel philosophy of Frederic the Second had begun to 
 corrupt the national mind, and when the forms of his 
 discipline, while they retained their rigour, had lost 
 their spirit ; he found himself at the head of a people 
 at once proud and powerless, and at the head of an 
 army at once presumptuous and inexperienced. A 
 more original mind might have adopted a new and 
 saving career, but Frederic William was forced to 
 depend on the ministers of his predecessor ; some of 
 them too old for counsel, some too ignorant, but all 
 impressed with the most extravagant ideas of the 
 influence of Prussia on the Universe. Napoleon saw 
 the national propensity to ruin, and instantly fur- 
 nished the temptation. His grand object was to 
 secure Italy to France ; but, to secure Italy, he must 
 first crush Austria, and to crush Austria, he must 
 first hoodwink Prussia. He began by offering to put 
 Frederic William in possession of Hanover. The 
 bribe was fatally accepted. He then poured his
 
 86 A VIEW OF 
 
 whole strength upon Austria, and broke her in a 
 three months' campaign ; while Prussia stood idly 
 by, looking at the downfall of the great bulwark of 
 Germany. But fearful retribution was to come. 
 The armies which had overflowed Austria, suddenly 
 turned their whole current to the north, and rushed 
 with irresistible fury upon the dominions of the asto- 
 nished Frederic William. If Austria fell in three 
 months, Prussia fell in three hours. Within a twelve- 
 month from the day when Napoleon fixed his head- 
 quarters at Vienna, he fixed them at Berlin ! The 
 Prussian defeat at Jena was the most memorable in 
 modern war ; until it was eclipsed by his own and 
 his empire's ruin on the great day of Waterloo. 
 
 After the battle of Jena ( Oct. 14th, 1806), the 
 King fled, with all his Ministers ; every fortress fell 
 instantly, the superb army was extinguished, the 
 government was dilapidated ; and Prussia, for four 
 years, was a French province, trampled in the dust 
 by the insolence of her invaders, and plundered of 
 more than twelve millions sterling ! 
 
 Yet, for this unexampled suffering there might have 
 been a higher cause than the arrogance of a con- 
 queror or the rapine of his armies. Prussia was the 
 original evil of Europe, the teacher of infidelity to 
 France, the primal tempter to that guilty knowledge 
 by which fell the throne of the Bourbon. The en- 
 couragement given by Frederic II to the Voltairists, 
 and the foulness and fanaticism of their mutual 
 hatred to Christianity, had given a fashion to
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 87 
 
 Atheism, and laid the foundation of the Republican 
 Conspiracy. France now repaid the terrible boon ; 
 she was a leper, and she brought back the leprosy, 
 with which she had been inoculated by the hands of 
 the subtle, yet short-sighted, King of Prussia, half a 
 century before. 
 
 But the late monarch was guiltless of the sins of 
 his too memorable predecessor ; and, as if in recom- 
 pence for his personal virtues, he was to be made the 
 instrument of restoring his country. On the ruin of 
 the French army in Russia (December 1812), Prussia 
 gallantly rose in arms, and had the honour of striking 
 the first blow for European freedom. In the despe- 
 rate battles, of 1813, the troops of Frederic William, 
 all volunteers, and led by the King in person, utterly 
 wiped away the disgrace of the day of Jena, and even 
 more than re-established their fame. From that 
 period, until the final triumph of Waterloo (June 1 8th, 
 1815), in which, while the British fought the battle, 
 the Prussian army, under the brave Blucher, came up 
 to crush the fugitives, and thus consummate the vic- 
 tory ; the King exhibited all the qualities of a good 
 German and a good soldier. 
 
 From the close of the war, he devoted himself with 
 equal benevolence and wisdom to the internal con- 
 cerns of his kingdom, exhibiting the sincerity of his 
 religion, alike in the protection of the Polish Jews, 
 and of the Protestant communities, which had been 
 driven into exile by the bigotry of his neighbours. 
 He died, to the universal regret of his subjects, and
 
 88 A VIEW OF 
 
 died in the calmness and confidence of one entitled 
 to look back without remorse, and forward without 
 fear. 
 
 JUNE 8. 16,000 of those public lovers of private 
 virtue, called " Temperance Societies," made a march 
 with banners and trumpets through the streets of 
 London, to the great alarm of the less virtuous, but 
 more peaceable, inhabitants ; and finished the even- 
 ing at the suburb taverns, making violent speeches, 
 inspired by " water," though of what variety, or 
 what strength, we do not take it upon ourselves to 
 determine, 
 
 JUNE 1 0. Edward Oxford, a low ruffian employed 
 in an ale-house, inflamed with a passion for publicity, 
 fired two pistols at the Queen and Prince Albert, as 
 they were driving, in an open phaeton, in the Green- 
 park. He was, of course, immediately seized ; but 
 no one having been wounded, and no balls having 
 been found, the probability is, that no balls were in 
 the pistols ; and that the whole was an impudent 
 trick of a pot-boy, weary of his trade, to make himself 
 notorious, and gain a livelihood without further trou- 
 ble. The result was, that he was tried, supposed to 
 be a lunatic, and sent to Bedlam, where he still 
 remains. 
 
 JUNE 21, Courvoisier, the Swiss valet of the late 
 unfortunate Lord William Russell, was found guilty
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 89 
 
 of his master's murder. He had confessed his crime 
 the night before to his counsel, and acknowledged 
 that he was tempted to it by the sight of some valu- 
 ables, and the expectation of being able to make his 
 escape with them to Switzerland. The old noble- 
 man had been killed in his sleep, and died without a 
 struggle. 
 
 This confession produced a question, a good deal 
 discussed by the public whether a barrister is 
 justified in defending a criminal of whose guilt he 
 is, as in this instance, 'aware ? And some blame was 
 attempted to be fixed on Mr. Phillips (Courvoisier's 
 counsel), who had made a long and eloquent defence 
 for him subsequently to his confession. But the 
 true matter to excite surprise is, that such a question 
 should have ever been asked. The culprit, when 
 once put on his trial, is to be tried on the evidence 
 alone ; his counsel is merely an instrument to mar- 
 shal that evidence, or to meet it ; whatever know- 
 ledge he may possess in private, has nothing to do 
 with the business before the court. It is for the pro- 
 secutor, to prove the guilt if he can ; it is not for the 
 counsel for the defendant either to betray his client, 
 or to abandon him, which would be virtually a be- 
 trayal. If the principle of thus making counsel a 
 party in the case were once adopted, there would be 
 an end of all confidence ; no man would ever com- 
 municate his whole case, nor thus be able to avail 
 himself of that allowable and essential principle of 
 British law, which assumes the accused as innocent
 
 90 A VIEW OF 
 
 until he is proved guilty. The counsel should not 
 pledge himself to prove innocence, where he knows 
 that there is guilt ; but it is his duty to challenge the 
 prosecutor to his proofs, and show their insufficiency 
 if he can. Mr. Phillips, in defending Courvoisier to 
 the last, showed that he understood the duty of a 
 defender ; and he did it steadily, strenously, and to 
 the honour of himself and his profession. 
 
 JUNE 22. A clause was added to the " Admiralty 
 Court Judges' Bill," by which, after the present Par- 
 liament, the Judge is to be disqualified from sitting 
 in Parliament. Sad tidings for poor Dr. Lushington, 
 but quite the reverse for his hearers. The Doctor 
 swam into public life on the swollen bladders of 
 Whiggism. The emptier a bladder is, the better, 
 where the sole object is buoyancy ; and the Doctor 
 has contrived to swim on. But his Parliamentary 
 fate is now fixed ; and there is no man within the 
 walls of the Legislature, who can be more easily 
 forgotten. 
 
 JUNE 23. Leave was obtained to bring in a bill 
 abolishing the punishment of death in all cases. As the 
 " Hon. mover" has not yet had his house ransacked, 
 his children's throats cut, or his own skull fractured 
 by housebreakers, his sagacity is entitled to believe 
 that there are no such things as robbers and mur- 
 derers in the world. We further give him credit for 
 believing, if he will, that there would be neither mur-
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 91 
 
 der nor robbery, from the moment that the " gentle- 
 men" of the highway had received a Parliamentary 
 assurance that there would be no punishment for 
 either ; and we further allow his happy credulity to 
 be quite convinced, that the existence of the gallows is 
 the only reason why crimes are ever committed. 
 But we, thinking differently on the subject, and 
 much inclined to conceive that there have been as 
 wise heads in other ages, at least, as ever prompted 
 the poetic reveries of " lawyer-philanthropists" of our 
 own ; altogether prefer appealing to villainy by the 
 only argument that it can ever comprehend its 
 fears ; and instead of trusting to the honesty of 
 thieves and the mercy of assassins, protecting our- 
 selves by the strong arm of the law. 
 
 JUNE 27. A public meeting was held at York, at 
 which 3350 w r as subscribed for the restoration of 
 the Minster. The burning of this cathedral seems a 
 favourite amusement of incendiarism in the north ; 
 yet it always perplexes us to know how such edifices 
 can be burned at all. We think, also, that the ap- 
 pointment of a watchman at a few shillings a week, 
 would be no unwise preventive, though we are by no 
 means aware whether an expedient of this order ever 
 suggested itself to the wisdom of the authorities. 
 Even in London, the Royal Exchange was burned 
 down for want of a watchman ; and though, unques- 
 tionably, about twenty pounds a year were saved by 
 this economy, a hundred and fifty thousand pounds
 
 92 A VIEW OF 
 
 will be the least expense of rebuilding the Exchange. 
 We recommend the experience of the citizens to the 
 northern Dean and Chapter. 
 
 JUNE 29. Died, at Viterbo, Lucien Bonaparte, 
 Prince of Canino. It is remarkable, that all the 
 brothers of Bonaparte have been inferior to him 
 in intellect, and superior to him in honesty. Lu- 
 cien was the only one of the family who had not 
 played the king, and yet he evidently approached 
 nearest to his celebrated brother in ability. Coming 
 to France in the early part of the Revolution, Lucien 
 rapidly advanced in the diplomatic career, acquired 
 a name in the ranks of Republicanism, and at the 
 period when Napoleon made his first campaigns in 
 Italy, was sent as ambassador to Rome. If he fleeced 
 the Pope, frightened the cardinals, and trampled on 
 the nobility, this was but the fashion of the time ; 
 he was only performing the part for which he had 
 been sent, and giving the fraternal embrace to " a 
 regenerated people." On his return to France, he 
 was summoned to act on a more important theatre. 
 His abilities soon placed him in the President's chair 
 of the Council of Five Hundred. The question now 
 became critical ; it was, simply, whether the Direc- 
 tory or Napoleon should perish ; whether the Direc- 
 tory should be reduced to their original state of 
 ciphers, or Napoleon should be conducted within the 
 next twelve hours to the guillotine. Lucien had the 
 balance in his hands, and he vigorously cast the 
 fortunes of his family into the scale.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 93 
 
 On the 19th of November, 1799, Napoleon en- 
 tered the hall where the Council of Ancients were 
 assembled at St. Cloud; and, after having fiercely 
 defended himself from the charges of intending to 
 overthrow the Republic ; retired, to perform the same 
 farce in the Council of Five Hundred. But there he 
 was received with uproar, and as he entered with four 
 grenadiers behind him, was declaimed against as a 
 second Ca3sar, come to act the dictator. Some 
 furious members of the Assembly sprang from their 
 seats, rushed upon him, and the dagger was at his 
 throat ; when General le Febvre tore him away, and 
 carried him out of the hall. Napoleon, thus repelled, 
 sent in a platoon of grenadiers, with bayonets fixed, 
 to settle the controversy. The President, whom a mo- 
 ment of indecision would have sent to the scaffold, 
 encouraged by the sight of the troops, now rose, 
 pronounced that the members who had attempted to 
 seize his brother were " traitors, purchased by the 
 guineas of Pitt ; " the platoon of grenadiers silenced 
 all reply, and Lucien proposed a decree on the spot, 
 " That General Bonaparte, and all who had assisted 
 him, deserved well of their country that the Direc- 
 tory was at an end and that the executive power 
 should be placed in the hands of three provisional 
 consuls, Bonaparte, Sieyes, and Roger Ducos." Thus 
 had Cromwell finished the democracy of England a 
 century and a half before. Napoleon soon after 
 appointed himself First Consul ; in the first instance, 
 for ten years ; then for life ; then Emperor " Thane,
 
 A VIEW OF 
 
 Cawdor, Glamis, thou hast it all : " the Macbeth of 
 a mightier stage ! 
 
 From this period Lucien stopped in his career ; at 
 the moment, too, when the most dazzling fortune 
 seemed to lie before him ; yet it is to his honour, 
 that he refused the throne which was offered to him 
 by Napoleon, on condition of divorcing his wife, and 
 marrying a princess of one of the royal houses of 
 Germany. He now led a wandering life ; at one 
 time in England, at another in Italy, and, we believe, 
 at another in America. He was sufficiently opulent 
 to have all the customary enjoyments of his rank, 
 and sufficiently wise to desire no more. He lived to 
 see the fruits of this conduct in the security, ease, 
 and respect of his career ; while his more ambitious 
 brothers were successively stripped of their dia- 
 dems, driven from their kingdoms by insurrection 
 or invading armies, and sent into long and unhappy 
 exile. 
 
 Lucien was a man of taste, but, unhappily, was 
 not of taste sufficient to discover that he was not a 
 poet. He wrote an epic, which, as nobody would 
 read in France, he sent to be translated into English, 
 with the proposal of a considerable sum for the 
 labour of the translator. After the offer was declined 
 by some of the principal litterateurs of England, it 
 fell into the hands of one who had either more lei- 
 sure, or more intrepidity. This person probably died 
 of the fatigue, for since that time we have never 
 heard his name. The book, of course, was buried in
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 95 
 
 the same tomb with the translator. Lucien was 
 about seventy when he died. 
 
 JUNE 30. Sir Robert Inglis moved for a Com- 
 mittee to inquire into the subject of providing 
 Churches adequate to the increased population. The 
 motion was lost by 149 to 168; and this with 
 Socialism in all its foulness, and Chartism in all its 
 ferocity, spreading through the land with actual 
 missionaries of infidelity haranguing in our manufac- 
 turing towns, and actual muster-rolls of rebellion 
 prepared for the establishment of a republic with 
 an armed insurrection existing in Wales within the 
 last six months and with the notorious boasts of the 
 chartists ringing in the national ear, that they had 
 a hundred and thirteen thousand men organized for 
 arms, and could have half a million when they chose 
 to call for them ! 
 
 JULY 2. Died, at Baden-Baden, Woulfe, Chief 
 Judge of the Exchequer in Ireland one of the judges 
 carried into place by the overpowering influence of 
 Irish partisanship. But little distinguished at the 
 Bar, he had no time for acquiring any distinction on 
 the Bench. Within a short period of his promotion 
 he was taken ill, and went to the German baths, from 
 which he never returned. 
 
 JULY 6. Cabrera entered France with 5,000 men, 
 and was put under arrest by order of the Govern-
 
 96 A VIEW OF 
 
 ment. Thus finished the last effort of the Carlists to 
 assert the right of the King of Spain. Cabrera was 
 a gallant officer, and his bravery and talents, and, 
 above all, his fidelity and honour, ought to endear his 
 name to Spain, as one of the redeemers of its fallen 
 soldiership. But the Spanish war was so deeply 
 characterised by ferocity on both sides, that it had 
 long been looked upon by Europe with horror. The 
 civil murders, the slaughter of prisoners in cold 
 blood, and the shooting of women and children, had 
 utterly extinguished all European sympathy in the 
 contest ; until it became regarded with no more in- 
 terest than a contest of tigers, and no less disgust 
 than a massacre of savages. All feeling for either 
 party was at length totally lost in the general desire 
 to see such atrocities terminated, on any conditions. 
 And whether Don Carlos or Christina had fled ; or 
 Espartero or Cabrera had been the inmate of a French 
 dungeon ; the only sentiment would have been one 
 of rejoicing that the war was at an end. 
 
 Nothing will retrieve the character of Spain but an 
 entire moral change. She has, for 300 years, been 
 almost totally in the background of Europe. Always 
 disastrous ; in peace suffering as much as other 
 nations in war ; in war sharing the defeats of every 
 ally, yet reaping no advantage from their successes. 
 Spain was the ox, toiling in the great European field, 
 but muzzled in the time of harvest ; the negro 
 slave of France, working in the chain of its insolent 
 taskmaster, and receiving nothing for its wages but
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 97 
 
 stripes. Yet Spain had an interval, when, maddened 
 by injuries, she rose against her oppressor, and for a 
 period, assumed the language and the arms of freedom. 
 The war of the Peninsula was formed to give a new 
 spirit to a people capable of restoration. The 
 presence of England, her valour, her probity, her 
 freedom, and her religion, were sunbeams breaking 
 through the cloud of superstition and slavery. But 
 there was a habitual resistance to renovation in the 
 popular mind. The cloud that had for ages hovered 
 over the national hemisphere was no sooner shot 
 through by those beams, than it was recruited with 
 fresh darkness and fresh contagion from the mighty 
 marsh below ; Spain was no sooner freed from the 
 presence of the foreign enemy, than she generated 
 enemies within her own bosom. She now had civil 
 war ; of all the shapes of war the most appalling, 
 degrading, and exhausting death without dignity, 
 and life without repose. For twenty-five years Spain 
 has been the continual prey of armed faction ! While 
 the most warlike nations of Europe have been in 
 quiet, she has been in perpetual disturbance, and in 
 disturbance by the power of parties and men so 
 utterly obscure, that history will never wade deep 
 enough into the darkness to recover their names. 
 Thus, in the Indian jungle, when the tiger and the 
 lion are expelled by the noisomeness of the morass, 
 the serpent is engendered there ; and when even the 
 serpent is driven away ; the scorpion, the centipede, 
 
 H
 
 98 A VIEW OF 
 
 and the mosquito take possession, arid make the soil 
 unapproachable, and their own for ever. 
 
 JULY 28. Died, the Earl of Durham, a nobleman 
 of considerable attainments, some political experience, 
 and insatiate public ambition. Beginning his career 
 under the misfortune of being a Foxite, he felt the 
 natural influence of the party, in overshadowing his 
 whole public existence. Born without the abilities 
 which enable men to be leaders in the State, and with- 
 out the judgment which makes men of mediocrity con- 
 tent with a private station, his public opportunities 
 were wasted in the perpetual struggle to get to the 
 front, and his personal enjoyments embittered by the 
 vexation of feeling himself always flung into the rear. 
 Continually thwarting his own objects, by the want 
 of faculties to see them clearly, or the want of decision 
 to follow them with perseverance, he alternately flut- 
 tered about the Cabinet, and fondled the populace ; 
 until he lost both. Too extravagant in his conceptions 
 of Reform for the craft of the Minister^ and too cold 
 for the fury of Radicalism, he was left an unhappy 
 and neutral figure between them. A more powerful, 
 or a more daring spirit might have created a third 
 party, and hurled defiance against both. A more 
 accomplished and loftier mind would have shrunk 
 alike from the contact of either, thrown himself into 
 the Conservative ranks, and by the sincerity of his 
 repentance, and the zeal of his services, atoned for 
 the errors of his former career. But Lord Durham
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 99 
 
 was not born for exploits of this order. The early 
 bonds of Whiggism had crippled him, and with the 
 loudest boasts of independence, he was uneasy with- 
 out the shackles of party. 
 
 On the expiration of the Grey Ministry a family 
 junta, to whose deathbed the nation flocked, not to 
 give their sympathy, but to rejoice over the termi- 
 nation of its existence ; not to alleviate the pangs of 
 its mortal exit, but to count its struggles, and see in 
 what impotent vexation a Whig Cabinet " can die " 
 his Lordship had an opportunity of freedom. But, the 
 Israelite, pushing on through the wilderness, and dis- 
 regarding the sterility of the plain and the ruggedness 
 of the mountain, in his march to national glory, is too 
 remote and romantic for the model of Whig states- 
 manship. The Israelite of Duke's Place is closer to 
 the character. We willingly acquit Lord Durham of 
 the mere love of emolument. But a Whig patriot is 
 an anomaly which confounds all modern experience. 
 
 His lordship joined the Melbourne Ministry ! and 
 from their hands accepted the embassy to Russia. 
 After a two years absence he returned, bringing with 
 him a Russian star and string ! The Cabinet now 
 found another employment for him (like the former, 
 as near the North Pole as they could), and made him 
 a Canadian Viceroy. But, from this office he returned 
 with a precipitation, which he threatened to explain 
 in vengeance on his injurers. The explanation never 
 came. 
 
 But party, place, and the world were now about 
 
 H 2
 
 100 A VIEW OF 
 
 to vanish alike from the Earl of Durham. The 
 passion for popularity, or the offences of power, were 
 soon to be forgotten, we shall hope, in more import- 
 ant thoughts. His health, at no time strong, sank 
 under consumption, and after lingering a while, he 
 closed his anxious life, in the Isle of Wight, regretted 
 by his friends, and at an age when the mind and 
 frame are generally in their most secure vigour, in his 
 48th year. 
 
 JULY 28 The French grand march of the remains 
 of the Mob who had fallen in July, 1 830. The French 
 turn everything into melo-drame, and evidently think 
 that the world would have been on a much better 
 construction, if it was one huge theatre, the sky a 
 grand drop-scene, the ground a proscenium, all the 
 language blank verse, and every operation of life per- 
 formed to the music of an universal orchestra : 
 
 All the world a stage, 
 
 And all the men and women in it players. 
 
 In this style of thinking, they gave an exhibition in the 
 shape of a procession, to carry the bones of the " vic- 
 tims," as they call them, of the Barricades, from 
 their old tomb to a new. If this amused the people 
 of Paris, perhaps it was as harmless an amusement as 
 any other that they could have adopted. And yet, 
 with all their love of melodrame, it is surprising, that 
 they are not aware of the near approach of a per- 
 formance of this order to the dullest of all things, a 
 dull farce. When we see the fruits of the " three days 
 of July," we should have thought that no man in
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 101 
 
 France could desire to revive their memory. Or are 
 we driven to conceive, that no Frenchman is capa- 
 ble of comprehending the change, until he sees the 
 " twenty-four forts" rising before his eyes, finds Paris 
 crowded with a garrison of 50,000 men, and hears 
 the warning of the sentinel, whenever he takes a walk 
 outside his own door? Those are the fruits, and 
 the first fruits, of his " three glorious days ;" and 
 that they will not be the last, we may assure our 
 heroic and theatric neighbours, without any rashness 
 of prediction. 
 
 AUGUST 4. The Affirmation Bill, an attempt to 
 universalize the Quaker privilege of dispensing with 
 an oath in civil and criminal cases, was rejected by 
 the Lords without the trouble of a division. 
 
 Performances of this kind do honour to the House 
 of Peers, by showing us the value of an assembly, 
 which thinks common sense a commodity of some 
 use even in legislation, and ventures to decide, that to 
 indulge one set of formal fools in a country is quite 
 enough. The Quakers have their yea and nay, let 
 them have it. 
 
 To argue with a Quaker upon this topic, or upon 
 any other, from his broadbrim down to his heels, 
 would be to rival his own absurdity. He is absurd 
 in everything. 
 
 The Quaker thinks that every colour but drab is 
 profane ; yet, the sky is blue, the earth green, and the 
 garden glows in every colour of the rainbow ; and, 
 in spite of the dogmas of George Fox, the only drab-
 
 102 A VIEW OF 
 
 coloured material on the globe is mire, and the only 
 animal that enjoys it, except the Quaker, is the pig. 
 
 The Quaker prides himself on avoiding all atten- 
 tion to the " outward man," yet he is the only man 
 alive who makes peculiarity of dress a principle ; 
 thinks a capeless coat a practical virtue ; and looks 
 upon the veritable costume of angels as composed of 
 a white beaver, a pair of brown breeches, and a pair 
 of grey stockings. 
 
 The Quaker prides himself on his simplicity of 
 speech, and therefore addresses every one as "thee 
 and thou," in the fashion of a tragedy hero ; he 
 boasts of his humility, and therefore disdains to take 
 oif his hat to any one ; and he flatters himself that 
 he is the only teller of truth on the face of the 
 earth, because he refuses to address any one as Mr. 
 (master), while he calls every one he meets, friend ! 
 
 It would be as curious a question to ask as it 
 would be an easy one to answer what must be the 
 condition of the arts, sciences, literature, and of the 
 general intelligence of the world, if all the popula- 
 tion had the misfortune to be Quakers ? What have 
 their whole drab-coloured generation ever added to 
 the knowledge, the elevation, or the elegance, of the 
 human mind ? What great painter what great 
 poet what great architect what great orator, 
 sculptor, writer, philosopher what beyond the lowest 
 mediocrity have those mice of mankind ever contri- 
 buted to the advance of oar species ? What voyage 
 of discovery was ever made, or ever will be made, 
 by a Quaker ? What profound research in nature
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 103 
 
 what salient and lofty effort of imagination what 
 vestige of an intellect, above buying and selling 
 what evidence of a soul, above the breath that en- 
 ables the clay of which he is composed, to go about 
 its business ? What fragment would have been 
 broken off from the intellectual trophies of the 
 world, if the material of the whole Quaker gene- 
 alogy had been chipped away and pulverized into the 
 dust of the high road ? What chasm would have 
 been left in the noble history of national grandeur, of 
 moral achievement, of public energy, of generous 
 self-sacrifice, of fearless devotion to the cause of the 
 country if the whole prim and pale-faced tribe had 
 been regularly conveyed from their cradles into the 
 catacombs of Egypt, and there pickled among the 
 mummies of primaeval bats and rats, and the with- 
 ered worshippers of both ; to be afterwards turned 
 into the furniture of museums, and excite the holi- 
 day laugh of the idlers of posterity ? 
 
 AUGUST 6. By an exhibition of genius beyond 
 the flight of any human being but a Frenchman, 
 Prince Louis Napoleon on this day invaded France ! 
 As the reigning King had not above half a million 
 of soldiers at his command, his new rival thought 
 it sufficient to assail him with half a hundred ; 
 one third of those, too, being invalids, another third 
 the Prince's valets, and the remainder, heroes as 
 wise as their leader. To ensure the secresy essential 
 to all great undertakings ; not a soul of the invading 
 army knew what they were to do, or where they
 
 104 A VIEW OF 
 
 were going ; but if the armament, on the whole, 
 might seem inadequate, they carried with them a talis- 
 man an assurance of irresistible victory, in a vete- 
 ran cocked-hat of Napoleon, and a pair of trowsers 
 which the Emperor had worn in his flight from 
 Waterloo ! 
 
 The invading fleet consisted of a steam-boat ; and 
 the party prepared to favour his landing was com- 
 posed of three policemen, a subaltern on half-pay, 
 and a female opera singer. The plan of operations was 
 equally bold and incomparable : it "was, to capture 
 Boulogne, turn the English sojourners there, men, 
 women, and children, into a corps of cavalry and sharp- 
 shooters, make the town a fortress of the first mag- 
 nitude, and, while the Prince despatched proclama- 
 tions, announcing to all France that he was proceed- 
 ing at the pas de charge to the Tuileries ; send the 
 steam-boat round to receive the submission of the 
 Brest fleet, or, in case of resistance, to burn it, and 
 raze the fortifications to the ground. 
 
 The plan failed ; of course only by those accidents 
 which have, in other times defeated all the efforts 
 of courage and wisdom. For instance, the English 
 could not be prevailed on to get out of their beds 
 at five in the morning ; but the policemen, being up too 
 early, had got drunk ; the subaltern had run away, 
 and the opera singer was not to be found. The 
 Prince, in this emergency, behaved like a hero, and 
 fired a pistol, which took effect in the calf of a gen- 
 darme, the only shot fired in the battle. Count 
 Montholon made one gallant effort to hoist his
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 105 
 
 pocket-handkerchief on his cane, as a rallying-point 
 to all loyal Frenchmen ; but, seeing his flag torn 
 down, and thrust into the pocket of its captor, he 
 cried, " Nous sommes trahis ! " the national cry on 
 all occasions where matters go against them ; it being 
 an utter impossibility that any Frenchman can ever 
 be beaten on fair ground. At length this illustrious 
 struggle for a throne was relinquished : no heroism 
 can contend against numbers ; and Prince Louis 
 Napoleon, surrounded by the guardians of the night, 
 was conveyed to the watchhouse. In half an hour, 
 the invasion was ended, and the gallant invaders 
 were in durance and at breakfast ; the population of 
 Boulogne flocked to see them, as they would so many 
 monkeys in a cage ; and, when the captives were 
 sent off in fetters, the town was dull for the rest of 
 the day. 
 
 AUGUST 10. A public meeting was held at Bir- 
 mingham, attended with a vast deal of haranguing ; 
 the main figure of speech being, that " Lord Palmer- 
 ston had betrayed England to Russia." The men of 
 Birmingham listened w r ith great curiosity ; but being 
 men of practical notions, and accustomed to making 
 bargains, their especial inquiry of the orators was, 
 what had his lordship got by the transaction ? On 
 this point the rumours were various, and we regret to 
 say, rather unsatisfactory. Some were of opinion that 
 the price was a barrel of herrings, cured originally 
 for the Emperor's private table ; others, that it was a 
 dozen of pocket-handkerchiefs marked with his name
 
 106 A VIEW OF 
 
 by the needle of the Empress ; others, that it was the 
 promise of a tabatiere, turned by the Grand Duke, 
 and to be sent when his lordship considered himself 
 old enough to take snuff; the more general opinion 
 being, that it was a cargo of sour krout, and the loan 
 of one of the Imperial Chamberlains, to teach him to 
 swallow it. As the question could not be answered, 
 the Birmingham men saw no further use in the 
 inquiry, and the accused nobleman was suffered to 
 remain in her Majesty's councils. 
 
 AUGUST 10. Mr. Poulett Thomson was created 
 Baron Sydenham, of Kent, and of Toronto, in Canada. 
 We moderns are rapidly beating the ancients out 
 of the field. The Colossus of Rhodes stretched his 
 legs across a little port in the Mediterranean, and 
 was thought to do great things. But here is a strip 
 of parchment that spans the ocean ; a duplicate 
 peerage, fixing one leg in Canada and the other in 
 Kent Poulett Thomson on stilts, with the Atlantic 
 flowing between ! 
 
 Canada is obtaining renown. Long charged with 
 barrenness, she will now throw up peerages with the 
 rapidity of mushrooms. Sir John Colbourne is al- 
 ready a lord (we acknowledge that he earned his title 
 by good sense and gallantry) ; the Earl of Durham 
 would inevitably have returned a Marquis, if he had 
 not returned in wrath with everybody ; and now 
 we have Poulett Thomson the avant-courier of a 
 train of lordships ; until the Canadians shall place
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 107 
 
 an embargo on the import of English Viceroys, and 
 erect a statue to M. Papineau in their new temple of 
 the constitution. 
 
 AUGUST 11. Parliament was prorogued by the 
 Queen in person. The session had been equally 
 long and unproductive the beginning occupied with 
 Mr. O'Connell, the middle with Mr. Joseph Stock- 
 dale, and the end with the melancholy statistics of 
 Mr. Joseph Hume. 
 
 AUGUST 1 1 . On this day the investigation into the 
 deaths of the unfortunate individuals killed on the 
 Hull and Selby railway closed, in a verdict of acci- 
 dental death, and a heavy deodand on the engines. 
 The frequency of those dreadful accidents has at 
 length attracted the attention of Government, and 
 a code of regulations has been drawn up for the 
 guidance of the railway companies in future. If 
 this measure had not been adopted, or if it shall 
 not be attended with effect, we strongly fear that the 
 invention and a more powerful and important one 
 has never been made will become worse than use- 
 less, sink into unpopularity, and finish in the general 
 ruin of the proprietors. It is, however, remarkable, 
 that the accidents, for the first year, were extremely 
 few ; and that even now there is scarcely an instance 
 in which they can be attributed to the actual defects 
 of the engines. There have been, we understand, 
 no accidents whatever on the Great Manchester and
 
 108 A VIEW OF 
 
 Liverpool Railway during the past year. And the 
 report of the Belgian Minister to his Government 
 states distinctly, that on the Belgian railways no 
 accident has taken place. Of course then, the cause 
 in this country must be looked for in want of care, 
 in too great rapidity of motion, and most of all in 
 the dangerous habit of sending out one engine on the 
 heels of another. The collisions thus produced have 
 been of the most alarming description, and, until the 
 whole system is rectified, the juries must persist in 
 laying on heavy deodands. 
 
 AUGUST 11. On this day his Royal Highness of 
 Sussex was commissioned to transmit the Grand Cross 
 of the Order of the Bath to Espartero ; which his Royal 
 Highness, being a peculiarly discriminating judge of 
 character, and famous for patriot phraseology, ac- 
 companied with a letter, pouring panegyric on the 
 loyalty of the Spaniard. The letter ought to have 
 been countersigned by Queen Christina, in her flight 
 across the Pyrenees ! 
 
 AUGUST 12. Twenty-seven Carlist officers were 
 shot in cold blood, on the capture of the fort del 
 Collado de Alpuente ; and this was done, when the 
 war was over, when there was no possibility of their 
 taking arms again, and when the Government, through 
 mere policy, was preparing to proclaim a general am- 
 nesty. In two days after, sixty unfortunate soldiers 
 were taken from their prison and also shot. We 
 cannot comprehend those things. It is altogether
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 109 
 
 beyond our conception, that any man can find 
 a delight in the terror, the wounds, and the dying 
 agonies of unhappy beings, deprived of all power of 
 injury, and soliciting only their lives. By whose 
 command those savage murders were committed we 
 cannot distinctly say ; but the blood will yet fall on 
 the head of the criminal. 
 
 AUGUST 15. William Foster Geach, the son-in- 
 law of Frost, the Welsh traitor, was convicted of 
 forgery to a large amount, and sentenced to transpor- 
 tation. This personage was a patriot of the first 
 water, a haranguer for universal rights, political puri- 
 fication, and reform in all and everything. He was 
 at length detected in giving his practical ideas of 
 morals ; as his father-in-law had been, in elucidating 
 his notions of allegiance. Forgery and rebellion were 
 the true reading ; and as they " were lovely in their 
 lives," so in their fates they were not divided. Yet 
 we should not be in the slightest degree surprised to 
 hear, by the next Australian papers, that the Mon- 
 mouth solicitor had been equally the subject of 
 good fortune with the Monmouth traitor ; and that 
 William Foster Geach is at this moment, like his 
 fellow-convict and father-in-law, enjoying some agree- 
 able sinecure 
 
 "All in the bosom of the southern main." 
 
 AUGUST 15. The foundation-stone of a monument 
 to the memory of Sir Walter Scott was laid in Edin-
 
 1 10 A VIEW OF 
 
 burgh. We have no heart for displays of this order. 
 Every man knows the bitter struggles which Scott 
 had to endure in his latter days, the melancholy ruin 
 of a fortune acquired by his ability, and lost by his 
 ignorance of business ; and the still more melancholy 
 ruin of his mind by the sense of his undoing. And 
 yet where was then the liberality that ought to have 
 come forward ? His countrymen are now subscribing 
 to monuments in his honour all round Scotland. Yet 
 the tenth part of the sum, if given to him in his 
 day of struggle, might have made him a happy man. 
 The mere money that will now be lavished upon 
 a pile of stone arid bronze in Edinburgh, where it 
 can be of no use to any living being but the stone- 
 cutter and the blacksmith, might have taken the 
 burthern not only from his property, but his heart. 
 But the fate of Burns was before his eyes, and before 
 those of his country ; and now those two powerful 
 minds, which their country suffered to perish alike, 
 are alike to be commemorated by national vanity, 
 taking the form of chill, tardy, and worthless na- 
 tional gratitude. 
 
 AUGUST 18. Louis Philippe attempted to come 
 round from Dieppe to Boulogne, and nourish a little 
 as a King who had a fleet, and who was not to be 
 frightened at the sea. The royal experiment was a 
 rather unlucky one. His steamer, the Veloce, was 
 nearly lost in getting out of Dieppe, out of which 
 the English steamers come every day ; made three 
 attempts to get into Boulogne, into which English
 
 THE YEAR 1840. Ill 
 
 steamers run every day ; and with all his loyal and 
 royal expectants shouting to him to land, the King, 
 after the three failures, was forced to make his experi- 
 ment at Calais, where the Veloce finally went on shore ! 
 His Majesty, however, escaped on dry ground, and 
 thenceforward proceeded to shower ribands and 
 crosses on the faithful in the capture of that model 
 of enterprise, the hare-brained rejeton of the Bona- 
 partes. 
 
 The palpable truth is, that the sea will have no- 
 thing to do with the French ; and the French, if they 
 are wise, will have nothing to do with the sea. It 
 is not their element ; it takes the curl out of their 
 ringlets, spoils their complexions, makes their taste 
 in fiddling, dancing, and diablerie totally useless, and 
 in war delights in turning their dockyards into places 
 for building English ships, and themselves into English 
 prisoners. Even in peace it takes every opportunity 
 of maltreating them. We should be sorry that so 
 clever a King as Louis Philippe had made his last bed 
 in the sands of Boulogne ; but his temerity really 
 deserved rebuke, and in future we hope that he will 
 remember the lesson, and never attempt navigation on 
 a bolder or a broader scale than that of the Seine. 
 
 AUGUST 20. Died, Otter, Bishop of Chichester. 
 Few things in general puzzle us more than the Whig 
 appointment of Bishops. We attempt to discover 
 the motives, but always in vain. The late Bishop of 
 Chichester was a very tall man, which was probably 
 the reason of his being fixed on for a pillar of the
 
 112 A VIEW OF 
 
 Church. A Bishop ought to be an eminent man ; 
 Otter was a harmless one ; and lived to be seventy- 
 two. 
 
 AUGUST 28. The City of London presented the 
 freedom of the corporation to Prince Albert. A 
 great entertainment was provided by the proverbial 
 hospitality of the citizens ; but, to their infinite alarm, 
 a rumour spread that there would be no Prince and no 
 freedom, at Guildnall ; and no dinner at the Mansion 
 House ! A negotiation took place, a compromise was 
 effected, and the Prince finally appeared at Guild- 
 hall, read his patent of incorporation, and went 
 away ; leaving much the best part of the perform- 
 ance, the dinner, behind him. However, this did not 
 prevent the givers of the feast from enjoying them- 
 selves ; they had the honest and good-natured Duke 
 of Cambridge at their table, and spent a loyal and a 
 festive evening. 
 
 SEPTEMBER 11. The British expedition under 
 Admiral Stopford appeared before Beyrout, the sea- 
 port of Damascus, and bombarded the forts erected 
 by the Egyptian army. The weight of the fire 
 rapidly demolished the works, while the town was 
 spared for the sake of the inhabitants. The enemy's 
 general, Solyman, (Colonel Selves, a Frenchman, and 
 formerly aide de-camp to Soult), was driven out, to 
 his own infinite astonishment ; and the communication 
 was opened with the mountain tribes in hostility to 
 Mehemet Ali.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. I 13 
 
 Thus commenced the series of those brilliant ex- 
 ploits which cleared the Syrian coast of all the 
 Egyptian garrisons,, defeated Ibrahim's troops in the 
 interior, reduced the Pacha of Egypt to complete 
 submission, and made a single month of warfare 
 equal in effect and in renown to the most distin- 
 guished campaigns of Europe. 
 
 SEPTEMBER 12. In consequence of a message 
 sent by Lord Cardigan to Captain Tuckett, a duel 
 was fought, in which Captain Tuckett was wounded. 
 The affair subsequently underwent a long course of 
 investigations, all ending in nothing of the chief 
 facts, there was no doubt whatever ; that a challenge 
 was given, a duel fought, and an individual so nearly 
 exposed to loss of life as to be wounded ; all were 
 admitted. Against an offence of this kind, the 
 letter of the law is strict the man who maims 
 another must be transported, the man who kills 
 another must die. But the spirit of the law, still 
 more dulcified by the spirit of the jury, always suffers 
 the criminal to escape. There is no instance within 
 memory, of a challenger's being hanged, except 
 where some actual treachery was proved against 
 him. Lord Cardigan finally removed his trial from 
 the Courts of Westminster to the House of Lords ; 
 where, Captain Tuckett having been called in one 
 part of the proceedings, by two Christian names 
 only, while, in another, he w r as called by four, an 
 objection was taken, and his lordship was declared to 
 
 i
 
 114 A VIEW OF 
 
 be "not guilty, upon their honours," accordingly. 
 We make no comments on this extraordinary affair. 
 But as the fittings up of the House of Lords for this 
 trial, are said to have cost some thousands of pounds, 
 for a ceremony of about an hour ; we hope that no 
 more lords will be tried for shooting at her Majesty's 
 subjects. 
 
 SEPTEMBER 16. The Queen Regent of Spain 
 accepted the resignation of her Ministry, annulled 
 the Ayuntamiento Bill, and appointed Espartero 
 President of the Council. This man was now master ; 
 and within a short period the Queen Regent was 
 forced to deposit her power in the hands of a party 
 whom she alike -feared and hated, and eventually to 
 abdicate the Regency, separate herself from her 
 children, and take refuge in France. Yet, unfortu- 
 nate as she is, Europe feels no sympathy for her. 
 Her reign has been one of continual civil war ; its 
 miseries have torn away the very sinews of Spain ; 
 and the result of its long intrigues and bloody 
 struggles has been, to leave the country at the mercy 
 of an army. 
 
 SEPTEMBER 18. Dost Mohammed, the expelled 
 Sovereign of Cabul, suffered a signal and final defeat 
 by a British force under Brigadier Dennie. Dost 
 Mohammed was a bold and sagacious usurper, who, 
 taking advantage of the habitual turbulence of Aff- 
 ghanistan, of the disaffection of a nation of warriors
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 115 
 
 by profession, and of the feebleness of the Monarch, 
 had seized the throne. Once in power, he turned it, 
 like had all despots, to conquest, and what he seized 
 by violence or intrigue, he retained with the haughty 
 defiance of a barbarian. At length he became so 
 dangerous to the British allies, that the Governor- 
 General was compelled to declare war. The most 
 memorable march in Indian annals brought the 
 British army, under Sir John Keane, into Affghan- 
 istan, a movement of thirteen hundred miles ! The 
 war was speedily decided. The fortress of Ghuzni, 
 pronounced by the Indians to be impregnable, and 
 even by the British engineers acknowledged to be un- 
 expectedly strong, was taken by storm, and in a 
 single night the blow was struck which decided the 
 fall of the usurper's throne. A King of the exiled 
 family was restored, and Dost Mohammed was driven 
 into Tartary. 
 
 But after spending a year in raising a force among 
 the wild mercenaries of the north, he returned, and 
 made a bold attempt to recover his authority. In 
 this he would have inevitably succeeded, if the 
 British bayonet had not presented an obstacle, al- 
 ways decisive in the affairs of India. His experience 
 would have taught him to keep aloof and trust to in- 
 trigue ; but the inferiority of the British numbers 
 probably tempted him to the attack ; and with 1 0,000 
 troops, he poured down upon the British commander 
 at the head only of 500. He was defeated, with a 
 loss greater than the whole number of his assailants, 
 
 I 2
 
 1 10 A VIEW OF 
 
 his army utterly dispersed, and, after a hopeless flight 
 into the Desert, he was reduced, either by famine 
 or despair, to surrender himself prisoner to the 
 Brigadier. 
 
 Of the policy of interfering in the disputes of 
 sovereigns, who know no art but treachery ; and of 
 attempting to teach law to nations which acknow- 
 ledge no right but that of the stronger ; there may 
 be just doubts ; but of the gallantry of the troops, 
 and the uniform superiority of the British power in 
 India, there can be but one opinion. England has 
 no rival, from the Himmalaya to Cape Comorin. 
 
 SEPTEMBER 19. Madame Laffarge, whose trial oc- 
 cupied the whole soul and eyes of France for the last 
 three months, was found guilty of poisoning her hus- 
 band, but under "extenuating circumstances," and sen- 
 tenced to the pillory and hard labour for life. What 
 " circumstances" can extenuate the palpable poisoning 
 of a lady's husband we are not able to conceive ; 
 but Madame was a very pretty woman, made " much 
 more interesting," as the journals termed it, by the 
 paleness of her confinement, arid the langour of a 
 pair of very large and very black Southern eyes ; in 
 short, a visage worthy of a heroine of romance, or 
 the favourite Sultana of his Highness the Emperor 
 of the true believers. M. Laffarge, an old usurer, 
 had married her for those black eyes, and she had 
 married him for his money. Marriages of this order 
 have taken place in other countries, but the " march
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 117 
 
 of mind," the " fire of the soul/' the noble " right 
 of doing all things by impulse," with all the other 
 fine phrases which belong to the eloquence of the 
 land of the inclinations, make a pill or a pistol the 
 ready resource of handsome young wives, who happen 
 to grow tired of ugly old husbands. As in all French 
 dramas, there was an under plot ; and what is French 
 life but a drama. There was a minor affair inter- 
 woven with the bolder action ; some robbery of 
 jewels, a sentimental correspondence, and various 
 other romantic things ; a mingling of Rousseaii and 
 Cagliastro, of the novelist and the pickpocket. But 
 this is at once too deep and too delicate for us. The 
 result of the whole was the sentence which we have 
 seen. Yet the French know the value of an " inte- 
 resting topic" too well to let it escape ; and Madame 
 is to be again brought before the tribunals, and dis- 
 cussed in the journals for as many months more. 
 
 SEPTEMBER 19. The well-known bank of the 
 Hammersleys, in Pall Mall, suddenly closed ; the al- 
 leged reason being the death of the last member of the 
 firm. This event naturally produced great alarm in the 
 depositors, and general surprise in London. The long- 
 standing, extensive dealings, and received character 
 of the bank, had given it much influence at home, 
 and more abroad. Its letters of credit issued to tra- 
 vellers, were considerably used on the Continent, 
 and their sudden stoppage must have produced for- 
 midable inconvenience to their holders.
 
 1 18 A VIEW OF 
 
 SEPTEMBER 20. The engineers marked out the 
 first lines of the proposed fortifications of Paris. This 
 day will, probably, be long referred to in the French 
 annals, as the first of a series of daring and terrible 
 experiments on the peace of Europe and the liberty 
 of France. The people will be recorded as the only 
 nation on earth, so fond of molesting and mastering 
 their neighbours, at all risks, as to be ready to dig a 
 mine under themselves in the hope of involving them 
 in the explosion ; and the king, as the only monarch 
 who could mistake public terror for public opinion, 
 and having the voice of law for his title, . would pre- 
 fer its proclamation from the mouth of cannon and 
 mortars. The still higher objection is, that it plants 
 the principle of force, where the principle of allegi- 
 ance ought alone to be found ; that, internally mak- 
 ing the capital only a vast dungeon, it externally 
 makes it a frowning and insulting menace to all Eu- 
 rope ; that with such an evidence of kingly power 
 before their eyes, the people will never be able to 
 feel confidence in the goodwill of their government ; 
 nor, with such palpable means of popular coercion, 
 will the government ever be able to distinguish be- 
 tween the fears and the feelings of the people. 
 
 SEPTEMBER 25. Died Marshal Macdonald, Duke 
 of Tarentum, at the age of 75. The Marshal was an 
 officer of distinguished ability, boldness, and experi- 
 ence. But those qualities belonged to others of the 
 French generals ; he had the more distinguishing
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 1 19 
 
 characteristic Of k "never being charged with those 
 atrocities or corruptions which stained the fame of 
 nearly all the most memorable officers of the Republic 
 and the empire. Constantly in the field, whether 
 sharing the triumphant days of Napoleon, or suffering 
 like the rest the common failures of the Imperial for- 
 tunes in the closing periods of the war, he was never 
 stigmatized with massacre, plunder, or tyranny. 
 
 No officer of the French armies had seen more 
 of war. Entering the army of the Republic at an 
 early age, he was present at nearly all the campaigns 
 on the Rhine. In the Italian campaign of Suwarrow, 
 Macdonald was one of the most active opponents of 
 that great and original warrior of the north. He 
 was finally beaten through Italy, and out of Italy, 
 but, in this he only underwent the common fate of 
 every Frenchman who fought against the Russian 
 hero. Suwarrow's tactics were a terrible novelty. 
 He combined the wild rush of the Tartar hordes 
 with the steady strength of European armies. For 
 this the French troops were unprepared. They 
 found themselves outmarched when they attempted 
 to manoeuvre, and crushed when they ventured to 
 stand. The descriptions of Suwarrow's battles are 
 the descriptions 'of massacres, the attack incessant, 
 the execution terrible, and the spirit of the op- 
 posing force utterly extinguished in the field. The 
 battles in central Italy, were days of continued 
 slaughter. The single battle of Novi utterly des- 
 troyed the army of Joubert ; the rest of the cam-
 
 120 A VIEW OF 
 
 paign against Moreau and Macdonald was a con- 
 tinued pursuit, with the sword perpetually mowing 
 down the flying battalions of France, until they 
 were driven over the Alps, and Italy was cleared of 
 every footstep of her invaders nothing remaining of 
 them but the bones, which whitened her mountains, 
 her morasses, the ramparts of her cities, and the 
 banks of her rivers. 
 
 The Italian campaigns of Napoleon were the most 
 refined application of military science ; those of 
 Suwarrow the fiery force of irresistible courage. 
 Napoleon, by the dexterity of his tactics, his variety 
 of manoeuvre, the incessant activity of his movements, 
 and the intuitive skill with which he discovered the 
 weak point of his enemy, exhibited the most dazzling 
 examples of European war. But Suwarrow's Italian 
 battles were of a character altogether distinct, and 
 altogether superior. They were less scientific than 
 startling ; assaults daring, desperate, and furious ; 
 rather bursts of vengeance than displays of soldier- 
 ship ; less a gallant struggle against a gallant enemy, 
 than an overwhelming and rapid retribution on a 
 crowd of armed criminals whose time was come. 
 The conquest, on which Napoleon, with all his genius, 
 was forced to consume two years, was achieved by 
 the great Russian in a month. If Napoleon after- 
 wards re- conquered it in a day, at Marengo, that day 
 was lost by Austrian confidence, as the country was 
 abandoned by Austrian timidity ; a mock negotiation 
 accomplished what could not have been effected by
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 121 
 
 the sword. But the first Italian campaign of Suwar- 
 row still remains unexampled an evidence of the 
 power winch may be inspired into a tardy and formal 
 national force, by a single original and daring mind. 
 Russia, neither before nor since, has produced such 
 a leader of men, and may never produce another 
 Suwarrow. 
 
 On the commencement of the German war of 1813, 
 Macdonald fought gallantly, in command of the 
 French army, in Silesia ; but his troops gave way 
 before the new-born spirit of the Prussians, led by 
 Blucher. After losing 1 5,000 men, with all his artil- 
 lery and baggage, in the retreat from the Katzbach ; 
 he was driven into France. Yet, in this defeat, he 
 only shared the fortunes of Napoleon. 
 
 On the restoration of the Royal Family he retained 
 his rank, refused to sully it by rejoining Napoleon on 
 his escape from Elba, and spent his latter years in 
 tranquillity and universal esteem. 
 
 OCTOBER 3. Prince Louis Napoleon was sen- 
 tenced, by the Court of Peers in Paris, to perpetual 
 imprisonment in a fortress, his accomplices being 
 sentenced to the same punishment for periods of 
 various lengths. This sentence does honour to the 
 leniency of the King. Louis Napoleon had forfeited 
 his life by all the laws of nations, and the natural 
 fate of his foolish associates would have consigned 
 them all to gibbets on the heights of Boulogne, 
 within twenty-four hours after their capture. But 
 on this occasion the royal ermine w r as not tinged
 
 122 A VIEW OF 
 
 with a single drop of blood. Perpetual imprison- 
 ment has a fearful sound ; yet to men of the brains 
 of Prince Louis Napoleon it is the work of mercy. 
 Hot-headed fools are dangerous to mankind, for they 
 betray other and better men into misfortunes. If 
 this Prince had not been half frantic, he would not 
 have attempted his extravagant expedition, and the 
 men whom his rashness led into ruin would not be 
 now in the dungeons of Ham. We hope, however, 
 that Montholon, a brave soldier and faithful man, 
 and led into treason only by a chivalric fidelity to the 
 remembrance of Napoleon, may not be forgotten by 
 the more active mercy of Louis Philippe. He ought 
 to be liberated. 
 
 OCTOBER 7- The King of Holland resigned his 
 throne to his son, the Prince of Orange. What has 
 romance beyond this ? At seventy years of age his 
 Majesty fell in love. The idea of his marriage was 
 startling to his family and his subjects ; and, to re- 
 lieve both, he laid down his diadem. Mark Antony 
 " lost a world for love," but he was a brilliant Italian, 
 in the vigour of life, a man of fiery passions, an Eas- 
 tern conqueror, a Western hero ; and " the love" for 
 which he lost it was the most captivating woman in 
 the world. But here we have a lover past his grand 
 climacteric ; the native of a soil covered one half the 
 year with frost, and the other with fog; a Dutchman ! 
 abandoning his crown jewels for a Dutch countess, 
 who certainly lays no claim to be a Cleopatra. A
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 123 
 
 new Ovid ought to be created, to write their Epitha- 
 lamium. 
 
 OCTOBER 12. Queen Christina abdicated the 
 Regency of Spain. It is to be hoped that his High- 
 ness, the new head of the Government, still wears 
 the Grand Cross of the Bath, sent to him by the 
 British Ministry, for his gallant fidelity to the cause 
 of the royal exile. 
 
 OCTOBER 22. M. Thiers, having blown the trum- 
 pet of war, until be could blow it no mofe, dropped 
 it out of his hands. A proposal to commence hos- 
 tilities in the Levant first startled the King ; and the 
 irrestrainable exultation of all the republicans in 
 France, crying out that they wanted nothing but a 
 war, to commence a revolution, having penetrated 
 even the walls of the Cabinet, M. Thiers, the man of 
 epigram, was Minister no more. The King immedi- 
 ately sent for Marshal Soult, Soult sent to London 
 for Guizot, and a Cabinet was formed, to the utter 
 exclusion of the smallest warrior in France. On the 
 30th of this month, Marshal Soult was appointed 
 President of the Council, with M. Guizot, Minister 
 for foreign Affairs. M. Thiers has since been con- 
 stantly busy, but as constantly baffled, glad to be em- 
 ployed by the job, but hopeless of regular wages. 
 The French caricature him, as a coachman pulled 
 down from his box, and asking leave to be allowed 
 to scramble up behind.
 
 124 A VIEW OF 
 
 The commencement of the Guizot ministry offers 
 one of the most fortunate occasions, since the fall of 
 the Empire, for restoring the true honour of France, 
 and assuring the general tranquillity of Europe. 
 M. Guizot has great supports ; for the first time in 
 the century, a vigorous king in France ; the allied 
 courts unanimous in their weariness of war ; and the 
 public opinion of nations looking forward to nobler 
 uses of human faculties than the sanguinary follies of 
 their forefathers. The French Minister commands a 
 great horizon : he stands, too, on a height, to which 
 he has neither crept by intrigue, nor been flung up 
 by faction. In his progress he had shown the powers 
 that fitted him for success ; his rank has been reached 
 by the legitimate means of superior ability; and, 
 standing, as he now does, at the summit of ministerial 
 authority, his original proportions are still kept to the 
 eye ; he has not been diminished by his elevation. 
 
 That the retiring and hitherto subordinate career 
 of M. Guizot is demonstrative of his unfitness for 
 the highest place, we cannot allow. Very powerful 
 minds may linger long in comparative obscurity. 
 We even doubt, whether the highest order of minds 
 may not rather linger in voluntary obscurity, than 
 adopt the bustling, clamorous, and profligate course 
 which, in a profligate time conducts to power. We 
 are sure, at least, that an aversion to that course is 
 the natural impulse of a man of principle ; and we 
 are equally sure, that the grand desideratum of French 
 Government at this hour is a man of principle at the 
 head of her Cabinet.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 125 
 
 OCTOBER 22. Died, Lord Holland, at Kensington. 
 The immediate illness which put an end to his Lord- 
 ship's life was sudden ; almost precluding medical 
 aid ; but his constitution had been so long undermined 
 by the gout, as to create surprise that it had held 
 together so long. 
 
 Lord Holland was the nephew of the too memor- 
 able Charles Fox, the founder of the modem Whigs, 
 a man among the most striking examples of the use- 
 lessness of great abilities undirected by common pru- 
 dence or constitutional principle. His nephew 
 followed in his track, and with the usual fate of imi- 
 tators Fox ruined his party, and Lord Holland 
 ruined its ruins. Under Fox it was a wreck, but still 
 with some semblance of the gallant vessel that it had 
 been a century before ; but Lord Holland cut it down 
 to a privateer, and, hoisting on it the Radical flag, 
 manned it with refugees. 
 
 As it was his destiny to be born a Whig, it was his 
 misfortune never to possess the vigour of mind to 
 throw off that disabling inheritance. Thus, com- 
 mencing public life a political hunchback, he limped to 
 the last ; with the most restless eagerness for office, 
 always forced to feel his own inadequacy ; and, in the 
 worst extremities of his party, able to aid them only 
 by an unintelligible protest, or an exploded pun. 
 
 Yet he had some better qualities : he was fond of 
 books and of society, and was, perhaps, the only 
 opulent man of his party who ever gave a dinner 
 without an intrigue. As a private character, he was
 
 126 A VIEW OF 
 
 amusing, easy, and, in the common sense of the word, 
 amiable. It was as a politician that he was out of his 
 element a fish always attempting to fly, and always 
 dropping on shore, heavy and helpless, and the more 
 exhausted, the more he struggled to make way. And 
 this was his account of 67 years ! 
 
 NOVEMBER 2. Died, Sir Anthony Carlisle, a man 
 of ability in his profession, which was that of a surgeon, 
 and of general acquirements in literature. He had 
 been for many years professor of anatomy to the 
 Royal Academy, an appointment, which, though of 
 no emolument, is regarded as honourable in the 
 public estimation of the individual at once for taste 
 in the fine arts, and for professional science. From 
 ill health and ill fortune, he died leaving his two daugh- 
 ters destitute of all provision. The medical men of 
 England are now preparing to erect a memorial to the 
 late Sir Astley Cooper. How much more rationally, 
 naturally, and humanely would their subscriptions be 
 employed, in administering to the wants of the impo- 
 verished daughters of Sir Anthony Carlisle, than in 
 heaping monumental vanities on the tomb of a man 
 who is charged with having made, and kept, half a 
 million of money. 
 
 NOVEMBER 3. The fortress of St. Jean d'Acre was 
 attacked and taken by the British fleet under Admi- 
 ral Stopford. This achievement has been pronounced,
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 127 
 
 by the greatest living authority of soldiership, the 
 Duke of Wellington, one of the most extraordinary ex- 
 ploits of modern warfare. Acre has been memorable 
 for its sieges from the time of the Crusades ; its local- 
 ity, by commanding the supply of corn and merchan- 
 dize to the interior of that vast region, always ren- 
 dering its possession a matter of high importance. In 
 the French invasion, it had defended itself for fifty- 
 two days of open trenches, repulsing nine assaults, 
 and finally driving Napoleon from its walls. The 
 success of this bold defiance of the first military name 
 of Europe, at the head of troops flushed b^ the con- 
 quest of Italy, was subsequently declared to have 
 broken up his project of Eastern Empire. Of Sir 
 Sydney Smith, who, at the head of the crews of his 
 two ships, Le Pompee and Le Tigre, conducted the 
 defence ; Napoleon, at St. Helena, declared " That 
 man cut asunder the chain that I would have twined 
 round the Empire of the East. He broke my spell. 
 Acre forced me to turn my face to Europe." 
 
 In the invasion of Syria by the army of Mehemet 
 Ali, in 1832, Acre cost Ibrahim an eight months' 
 siege, and then yielded only to famine. From that 
 period every opportunity of increasing its strength 
 had been employed by the sagacious and indefati- 
 gable Pacha. Its fortifications were repaired by 
 French and Italian engineers ; the ramparts were 
 mounted with nearly two hundred pieces of heavy 
 cannon ; and the garrison was augmented to six 
 thousand men, commanded by a Polish officer of dis-
 
 128 A VIEW OF 
 
 tinguished character. On the whole, the place was 
 pronounced impregnable. 
 
 On the 2nd of November, the fleet under Sir 
 Robert Stopford, consisting of nine sail, with two 
 Austrian frigates, and a Turkish line-of-battle ship, 
 appeared before Acre. The summons to the comman- 
 dant was returned with peculiar scorn. On the 3rd, 
 at three in the afternoon, the squadron opened their 
 fire. In three hours the fire of the garrison was 
 wholly beaten down ! The principal magazine blew 
 up ; and the sailors and marines were about to land 
 and storm, when it was announced that the garrison 
 had surrendered. At sunrise the allied flags were 
 waving on the ramparts, and the survivors of the 
 garrison were prisoners, to the number of four 
 thousand men. 
 
 Thus this powerful fortress was overwhelmed, 
 crushed, almost literally torn out of the ground, by a 
 British assault, within three hours. If the storm of 
 Ghuzni showed that the prowess of the British soldiers 
 was still all that it had been, the bombardment of Acre 
 shows that the British seaman is still equally the 
 warrior of Howe and Nelson. The scene is described 
 as being most magnificent during the battle, and most 
 fearful after it the fortress shattered to fragments, 
 the dwellings everywhere pierced by the balls or 
 blown up by the shells, and the loss of human life on 
 the part of the garrison dreadful ; the streets, the 
 ramparts, and the houses exhibiting in all directions 
 the most startling and melancholy instances of hu-
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 129 
 
 man suffering. We deplore those instances ; we 
 deeply regret the terrible calamities of war : no pride 
 of victory can make us forget that the unfortunate 
 beings who thus suffered were our fellow-men. But 
 we must take to ourselves the consolation, that no 
 part of those calamities was wantonly inflicted ; that 
 we have been forced into those hostilities only in 
 deference to the solemn compacts, by which, for a 
 hundred years past, we have guaranteed the safety of 
 the Turkish throne ; and that every effort had been 
 made that negociation could make, to save us from 
 the dreadful necessity of war. It is certainly not 
 from the voice of England that the words of haughty 
 defiance and reckless avidity for conquest have been 
 heard. She has deprecated and delayed ; has an- 
 swered insolent menace by generous forbearance, 
 and has returned threats of actual invasion, only by 
 new declarations of her desire for the peace of the 
 world. 
 
 But the capture of Acre will show, that if she bore 
 insult calmly, it was not from want of nerve ; as, 
 that if she sought peace, it was not from want 
 of power. We wish only that those invincible 
 heroes, the war-proclaiming journalists of Paris, with 
 M. Thiers for their trumpeter, or their buffoon, had 
 been standing on the ramparts of St. Jean d'Acre on 
 the 3rd of November : the scene would have added 
 something to their experience, if nothing to their 
 wisdom. M. Thiers, if he had not been swept where 
 braggarts are no more noisy than brave men, would 
 
 K
 
 130 A VIEW OF 
 
 have found new figures for his exhausted oratory ; 
 and his brother journalists and tools would have 
 found that it was pleasanter to traffic in taunts than 
 to face danger, and much safer to practise on English 
 contempt across the Channel, than to meet English 
 cannon on sea or shore. If the bones of their idol, 
 Napoleon, could speak, he would give them the same 
 lesson ; and it would well repay the strong absurdity 
 of their bringing back the reliques of a British pri- 
 soner, to transform them into a memorial of national 
 heroism. We hope that the warriors of the inkstand 
 will now allow England to live ! 
 
 An invidious attempt has been made, on the Con- 
 tinent, to enfeeble the splendour of this triumph, by 
 attributing the capture to the blowing up of the 
 magazine. But that event did not occur until the 
 second hour from the commencement of the attack, 
 while, in fact, the victory was gained from the first 
 broadside. Its effects were so tremendous that it 
 almost instantly overpowered the fire from the ram- 
 parts. Upwards of fifty cannon were found thrown 
 from their carriages, the ramparts torn down in large 
 masses, and all the defences bearing the evidence of 
 an irresistible discharge. But its political results 
 were the most unanswerable proofs of its eminence 
 as a feat of arms. It finished the Syrian war, and 
 with it all the intrigues, factious negociations, and 
 insolent menaces which had filled Europe during 
 the suspense of the Eastern question. It instantly 
 changed the tone of the French journalists, from the
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 131 
 
 most noisy insolence to moderation ; it reached even 
 America, just in time to prevent the eagerness of her 
 factions for robbing England, from forcing her help- 
 less government into the folly and fury of a war. 
 It strengthened the hands of the great European 
 governments against the Jacobinism that was again 
 threatening the world with bloodshed ; and it taught 
 both the friends and the enemies of our country that, 
 even after the inexperience and inaptitude of twenty- 
 five years of peace, she could still execute judgment 
 upon the disturbers of mankind. 
 
 NOVEMBER 5. The King of the French opened 
 the Session of the Chambers in person. The whole 
 garrison of Paris w r as on foot one half in the streets, 
 the other under arms in their barracks. After the 
 usual formularies had been gone through, the King, 
 in a firm voice, delivered a speech, of which the 
 more important portion is the following : 
 
 " Gentlemen Peers and Deputies, 
 
 " I have felt the necessity of assembling you round me 
 before the ordinary period of the convocation of the Cham- 
 bers. The measures which the Emperor of Austria, the 
 Queen of Great Britain, the King of Prussia, and the Em- 
 peror of Russia, have taken in concert to regulate the rela- 
 tions between the Sultan and the Pacha of Egypt, have im- 
 posed serious duties upon me. I have the dignity of my 
 country at heart, as much as its security and repose. In per- 
 severing in the moderate and conciliatory policy, of which 
 we have reaped the fruit for the last ten years, I have placed 
 
 K 2
 
 132 A VIEW OF 
 
 France in a position to face the chances which the course of 
 events in the East may produce. The extraordinary credits 
 which have been opened with this intention will be sub- 
 mitted to you, and you will appreciate the motives of them. 
 I continue to hope that the general peace will not be dis- 
 turbed. It is necessary for the general common interests of 
 Europe, the happiness of its population, and the progress of 
 civilization. I depend upon you to assist me to maintain it, 
 as I should rely upon you, if the honour of France, and the 
 rank which she holds amongst the nations, commanded us to 
 make new efforts. Peace was re-established in the north of 
 Spain, and we congratulated ourselves on that happy result. 
 We should see with pain that the evils of anarchy came to re- 
 place the evils of civil war. I have the most sincere interest 
 in Spain : may the stability of Isabella II., and of the insti- 
 tutions which ought to sustain the throne, preserve that noble 
 country from the long and grievous evils of revolutions ! " 
 
 We have here the declaration of the new French 
 Cabinet on the crisis. It is what we anticipated from 
 the manliness and good sense of the King. It de- 
 clares? what every one will admit, that the measures 
 of the Four Allies, have imposed serious duties on 
 the French Government ; " but that those serious 
 duties are, to take care that neither Europe shall be 
 disturbed by war nor France by faction, is evidently 
 the language of the explanatory paragraph which 
 follows this declaration : 
 
 " I have the dignity of my country at heart, as much as its 
 security and repose. In persevering in the moderate and 
 conciliatory policy, of which we have reaped the fruits for
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 133 
 
 the last ten years, I have placed France in a position to face 
 the chances which the course of events in the East may 
 produce/' 
 
 This is an important paragraph. By adverting to 
 the course of the last ten years, as exhibiting the 
 advantages of peace, the King identifies his whole 
 reign with the principle of peace. He establishes its 
 advantages as the best results of a government, which 
 began in 1830 ; and declares the mutual harmony of 
 nations to have been, and of course still to be, his 
 primary and persevering policy. This is even said 
 still more explicitly : 
 
 " I continue to hope that the general peace will not be dis- 
 turbed. It is necessary for the general common interests of 
 Europe, the happiness of its population, and the progress of 
 civilization." 
 
 Surely a line of conduct which is necessary to the 
 existence of the three things the common good of 
 mankind, the happiness of the respective nations, and 
 the progress of the human mind themselves the 
 supreme objects for which society was established, 
 cannot be abandoned by any Cabinet which professes 
 to have a sense of the first duties of power. This is 
 language of a totally dififerent complexion from the 
 malignant and venomous personalities of the dis- 
 placed faction. We have here none of that tirade 
 of insults to France, " injured honour," " unappease- 
 able indignities," and " incalculable wrongs," which 
 the war faction flung through France, scattering them
 
 134 
 
 like the fireworks of mischievous boys ; and scat- 
 tering them, at once with the thoughtlessness of boys, 
 and the traitorous fury of incendiaries. 
 
 NOVEMBER 7- The Sultan issued a firman, grant- 
 ing protection to the Syrian Jews, at the request of 
 the Christian Sovereigns. This event, though local, 
 may yet be but the beginning of others which are 
 destined to change the face of the world. It is 
 remarkable, to see this change occurring, in that 
 especial land which had been divinely given to their 
 forefathers ; from which their national expulsion was 
 by the divine sentence ; and to which their restoration 
 is announced by prophecy. A solemn protection 
 given to them, for the first time in Asia since the fall 
 of Jerusalem, and that protection given by the Maho- 
 metan, who was appointed for their scourge, and at 
 the demand of the Christian powers. If this be not 
 a general evidence of a great intended recovery of 
 the Israelite, it is difficult to account for such a 
 coincidence of persons, interests, and feelings. But 
 we must wait. It is only wisdom to urge neither 
 circumstances nor conclusions with precipitancy. 
 Yet if we must not anticipate the day, may we not 
 discern the dawn ? even our generation may live to 
 see mighty times. 
 
 NOVEMBER 13. The contest for the office of High 
 Steward of the University of Cambridge terminated
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 135 
 
 in the return of Lord Lyndhurst, who was elected 
 by a majority of 485 over Lord Lyttleton. 
 
 It was essential to the honour of the University 
 that the election should end as it did. We have no 
 wish to speak carelessly of Lord Lyttleton ; he has 
 exhibited a diligence in his academic studies which 
 does him credit. But, to compare him with Lord 
 Lyndhurst was too strong a burlesque. He has 
 obtained a "Craven scholarship," it is true; but 
 what is it, after all, but the prize of a boy ? How 
 many have obtained it, and how many will yet 
 obtain it, who will never obtain anything else, 
 the moment they step beyond the walls of their 
 college. If Lord Lyttleton is a mathematician, we 
 shall give him a problem : " How many dozen of 
 Craven scholars would it take to make a Lord Lynd- 
 hurst ? " We are glad of the result, even for the 
 sake of the University. One of the scoffs of men 
 of sense and the world, at all colleges, is the absurd 
 estimate which their inmates make of college dis- 
 tinctions ; their forgetting, in little local competi- 
 tions, the real struggles which confer public fame, 
 and imagining that the small prizes of the exami- 
 nation actually shine in the national eye, in short, 
 realizing the well-known story of the Senior Wrang- 
 ler, who, on coming to London, and happening to 
 visit Covent Garden theatre one night when the King 
 went there ; took it for granted that the rising of the 
 audience was intended for himself, and, in the spirit 
 of proud humility, begged of them " not to over-
 
 136 A VIEW OF 
 
 whelm him by so public a homage to his college 
 victory." With triflers of this antiquated order the 
 Lord Lyttletons may be the greatest geniuses upon 
 earth ; a " Newcastle medal " may outlive the tro- 
 phies of a Burke or a Pitt ; and a " Craven scholar- 
 ship " may eclipse the lustres of a Wellington. But 
 the University has shown, on this occasion, that she 
 is superior to those monkish senilities ; that she can 
 give honour where honour is due ; and that the 
 necessarily narrow and temporary distinctions which 
 her schools furnish to promising boys, can bear no 
 comparison with the solid claims to national honour 
 advanced by a life employed in the highest studies, 
 learning signalized by the noblest professional rank, 
 and talents which have no superior in the legislature 
 or in the land. 
 
 To place Lord Lyttleton side by side with an orator, 
 lawyer, and statesman, of the rank of Lord Lynd- 
 hurst, was really to treat him with the greatest 
 cruelty. The truth is, that we cannot conceive his 
 lordship's trivial and very transitory honours to have 
 been the actual grounds on which he was urged to 
 recommend himself to Cambridge. But the bed- 
 chamber women required a representative at the 
 University ! Who so fit, as a boy, whose politics were 
 as unstable as a shape of blancmange ; whose mother 
 was one of the bedchamber already; who had 
 accepted the Lord Lieutenancy of Worcestershire 
 from the smiling functionary by whom Mr. Owen had 
 been turned into a courtier ; and who, having 
 displayed his parliamentary nullity in one speech,
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 137 
 
 defying all mankind to know on which side he spoke; 
 is likely to give the only evidence of his wisdom by 
 never attempting another ? 
 
 This was more than a struggle of individuals, it 
 was a test of principles ; Cambridge was more on its 
 trial than either of the candidates. But its charac- 
 ter was honourably maintained ; the Conservatism 
 of the University carried the day by a majority 
 nearly double the number of votes obtained by the 
 Ministerial candidate, Lord Lyttleton. 
 
 NOVEMBER 12. An accident occurred on the Lon- 
 don and Birmingham Railway, by which two engineers 
 were killed. 
 
 The Railway is the most powerful, striking, and 
 important invention of an inventive time, capable 
 of almost infinitely adding to the conveniences of 
 private life, and of spreading mutual intercourse, 
 which is the great power of civilization, to an incal- 
 culable extent throughout the world. Yet if the 
 loss of life shall continue of this daily occurrence, 
 the use of this magnificent invention must be nuga- 
 tory to all w T ho value their limbs more than their 
 speed, and the immense sums already expended on 
 them in England will be virtually thrown away. 
 
 The railway has, in its nature, such obvious advan- 
 tages over every other mode of conveyance, in its 
 rapidity, smoothness, and comfort ; in the extent of 
 its accommodation, and even in the elegance which 
 might be added to that accommodation, as to make 
 its safety a direct national object. From its capabi-
 
 138 A VIEW OF 
 
 lity of moving the most extraordinary burdens, it 
 might convert its carriages into splendid saloons, 
 fitted up with every luxury of opulent or even of 
 princely life; it might be a moving mansion, rather 
 than a rapid coach. In time, it might be a succession 
 of rich and various apartments, with rooms for re- 
 freshment, reading, retirement, and every conceivable 
 purpose of elegant enjoyment. If this is called fan- 
 ciful, it is only what has been done already in the 
 steam-boat. It would be scarcely a greater change 
 than has been made in the ordinary American pass- 
 age, handsome as the packets were. Since the Great 
 Western and British Queen have begun to traverse 
 the Atlantic, we have in those vessels, not ships but 
 floating palaces, no narrow and simple cabins, 
 for forty or fifty cramped and uncomfortable pass- 
 engers ; but flying households of two or three hun- 
 dred people, sitting in painted and gilded saloons, 
 surrounded with every luxury of life ; and rushing 
 through the ocean with the speed of eagles. 
 
 NOVEMBER 1 5. The debates in the French Cham- 
 bers on the King's Speech closed with a large majo- 
 rity for the Soult-Guizot Cabinet. Nothing can be 
 more elucidatory of the utter hollowness of all that M. 
 Thiers has been raving and romancing, for the last 
 six months. It is acknowledged, even by his faction, 
 that he makes a miserable figure before the public. 
 
 No one can believe, that it could be the personal 
 desire of any rational minister to involve his country
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 139 
 
 in the dangers of a foreign war, dangers which would 
 inevitably have been followed by those of a civil one. 
 The natural desire of a man, who, like M. Thiers, 
 had suddenly been flung up into an elevation to which 
 he could never have climbed ; a foundling of fortune, 
 who had suddenly seized an heirship ; an obscure 
 writer, as strangely tossed above his natural position, 
 as a peasant shot up from his hovel to hang on one 
 of the horns of the moon ; must be, to enjoy his 
 height as long, which means, as quietly, as he could. 
 But the little political magician had reached the sum- 
 mit of his hopes ; and in that moment the arrogant 
 spirit which had carried him up from obscurity, de- 
 manded the fulfilment of the bond. 
 
 There are still men in France who raised the scaf- 
 fold for Louis XVI ; and who have not forgotten the 
 brilliant but bloody days of Republican supremacy. 
 They have been crushed, but theirs is the worm that 
 never dies. If the bolder rebels have been sent head- 
 less to their " place," there are those, who, like the 
 Demoniacs, that they might not be precipitated into 
 judgment, have been content to hide among the 
 swine. With those disturbers the power of evil is 
 everything; and, though driven into the political 
 wilderness, and abhorred of men, they have continued 
 to haunt the borders of society. To the old actors in 
 the great overthrow of 1 793, the shout of the mob 
 in the second and final fall of the Bourbons in 1830, 
 w r as a summons to try their chances with the populace 
 again. That the few men of sense or principle in
 
 140 A VIEW OF 
 
 France that the noble families that the sons of all 
 whose melancholy history was written on the stream- 
 ing, steps of the guillotine, must dread and deprecate 
 the return of Democracy, we perfectly feel. But it is 
 now fifty years since the day of Regicide. A new ge- 
 neration has been born. In France nature is always 
 inverted ; the fools decide for the rational, the 
 young are the councillors of the old ; Lajeune France 
 is always infallible. The child is the master of the 
 man wise without experience, intelligent without 
 thought, and learned without knowledge ; instinct is 
 the national guide. If a Royal road to learning was 
 laughed at by the ancient sage, the Republican road 
 to freedom would have satisfied him that the absur- 
 dities of human presumption are inexhaustible. He 
 would have seen a high-crowned hat and black cravat, 
 instantly comprehending the whole sublime of patriot- 
 ism ; the ragged rabble of a profligate capital turned 
 into legislators by a flourish of the pike ; and a little 
 country solicitor carried to the summit of public 
 council, with all his statesmanship acquired in pen- 
 ning paragraps for a party newspaper. 
 
 It is not to be supposed, that M. Thiers desired 
 war, or that he desired anything, but to fix himself 
 on the height to which he had been thrown up, in 
 the explosion of the monarchy ; his wish must have 
 been, to avoid every movement that could expose his 
 infirm footing to the blasts which so incessantly blow 
 round the pinnacles of power. But the party could 
 not suffer this. They had created him, and he must
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 141 
 
 do their will. Out of the clay of the streets they 
 had fabricated him into a piece of gilded pottery, 
 with the royal stamp upon it. They had found him 
 a shrivelled scribbler ; with the fumes from their 
 cauldron they had swelled him into a minister ; and 
 they were determined that their inflation should not 
 be thrown away, their official man of gas must not 
 escape beyond the length of the cordage in their hands. 
 Thus M. Thiers was compelled to be a "warrior;" 
 thus the voice of the little minister was trumpeted 
 daily through a hundred journals ; thus he was forced 
 to strut in pasteboard armour before Europe, make 
 giants, and kill them with remorseless heroism. 
 
 Under this diversity of impulse his course must, 
 of necessity, have been diverse. The rifle-ball may 
 go the more direct for the spiral of the barrel ; but 
 the path of the political pedlar, continually crossed 
 by the political highwayman, must be perpetual obli- 
 quity. What are the facts ? 
 
 Six months ago, on the accession of the Thiers' 
 Ministry, the party had exhibited the strongest dispo- 
 sition to provoke hostilities with Europe, and espe- 
 cially with England. Every journal was let loose 
 upon her, the good feeling which had hitherto been 
 cherished by growing intercourse between the two 
 countries was turned into bitterness ; and, if M. 
 Thiers did not proclaim war in the council, all his 
 friends proclaimed it in the streets. In three months 
 after, the Treaty of July 15th was signed. The 
 journals of the party turned this into the ground of
 
 142 A VIEW OF 
 
 what they had been seeking so long a national 
 quarrel. They declared, that France had been ex- 
 cluded from the Treaty, as an insult, and that, there- 
 fore, she must go to war. But it was proved, by the 
 plainest evidence, that France herself had previously 
 withdrawn from all share in the Treaty ; that she 
 had been invited to join, and had haughtly refused ; 
 and thus that the whole clamour was a party de- 
 ception. 
 
 This is the language of M. Guizot in the debate in 
 the Chambers : " The allied Governments had no 
 wish to exclude France from the Treaty of July 1 5th. 
 But France, of her own accord, had retired from the 
 conference." Those words are as conclusive as they 
 are undeniable. 
 
 But what now says M. Thiers, of the war which 
 his journals so violently urged on his country ? "I 
 had no idea of war," says he ; ee I armed to effect an 
 imposing demonstration I armed, to gain time. I 
 should not have been ready for war before next year." 
 He negotiates, too, to gain time ! But Europe was not 
 to be trifled with any longer. The throne of France 
 must have been shaken by the first collision of 
 party : and the Minister was extinguished, to save the 
 country. 
 
 France cannot live much longer without a solid 
 Constitution. Europe will not endure a government 
 of perpetual change in the central and most powerful 
 kingdom of the continent. It will not suffer a per- 
 petual laboratory of political poisons to be throw- 
 ing out its fumes on every wind, burning up every
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 143 
 
 soil in its vicinage, and blackening with its smoke the 
 furthest horizon of mankind. Without the slightest 
 wish for conquest, Europe would finally be compelled 
 to war. A general combination to suppress the 
 general disturber would be the dictate of necessity, 
 and the result must be fatal to France. Whenever 
 the thanksgiving for their triumph was to be cele- 
 brated, France would be seen bound to the horns of 
 the altar. In fact, our hopes of M. Guizot are 
 founded on the difference of his talents and career 
 from those of his predecessor. 
 
 We know the qualities of M. Thiers, and of the 
 class of whom he takes the lead ; and we have no 
 hesitation in affirming that they are cheap, common, 
 and dangerous. There is not a commune in France, 
 a borough in England, or a little convocation in any 
 State of Europe, (where any approach to freedom of 
 speech is suffered), which does not exhibit exactly the 
 same species of ability. Situation may be required, 
 circumstances must open the way, the public mind 
 must be prepared, and then inevitably comes the em- 
 bodying of the wandering spirit in some active and 
 ambitious demagogue. The gas is everywhere float- 
 ing throughout the political atmosphere, until some 
 quick practitioner collects it in his retort, and keeps 
 it ready either to illumine or to explode. There are 
 men of this restless and revolutionary caste in every 
 country, in every condition of life, and in every 
 stage of society. What want of fluent haranguers, 
 ready-made politicians, or self-sufficient statesmen, 
 was ever found in a land of faction ? Even in
 
 144 A VIEW OF 
 
 England, with all the quietude of the national cha- 
 racter, and still more, with all the keen sense of 
 ridicule which burns off the wings of presumptuous 
 vulgarity ; every village vestry has its orator, every 
 municipal corporation its political genius, and every 
 obscure club its "master mind;" which, whether 
 cobbler or " professional agitator," thinks itself quali- 
 fied to manage the world. 
 
 In France has there ever been a want of this 
 charlatan tribe since the first days of the Revolution ? 
 Has her puppet-show of politics ever stood still for 
 want of a blower of its cracked trumpet, or an 
 audience in the streets ? In the times of the old 
 Monarchy no one dreamed of the bustling, loud- 
 tongued, desperate statesmanship that was living in 
 attics and cellars, and existing by the meagre trades, 
 or by the startling impurities of the " great metro- 
 polis" of gaiety, beggary, and iniquity. Yet the 
 moment that saw the pressure of monarchy taken 
 off, saw the latent and venomous vitality of this vast 
 and reptile class of existence springing up into evil. 
 Europe beheld, with the astonishment of the tra- 
 vellers in the desert, the rabble the moral sands, 
 which had lain so long only to be trodden on, sud- 
 denly heaving into surges before the revolutionary 
 gale, and rising higher still, until they rushed in 
 columns of consuming fire. In reading Romilly's 
 letters on Switzerland, as he had known it in his 
 youth, we see characters given of public agitators, 
 the exact counterparts of those who figured in the
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 145 
 
 French National Assembly, and even in the British. 
 We have a merchant, who dictates with the haughti- 
 ness of Grey ; a village lawyer, who harangues with 
 the morbidness of Russell ; and a shopkeeper, who 
 flourishes with all the boldness, variety, and sophistry 
 of Fox himself. But their location was five hundred 
 miles from London ; the roof of the Swiss Assembly 
 was their extinguisher, and their fame was narrowed 
 to the cold and dry pages of their Whig compatriot 
 here a fate little more glorious than strangulation 
 on the spot. The Thiers school of statesmen spring 
 up like mushrooms, the moment that the first heat 
 penetrates the rank and corrupting soil. They are 
 the ready evil of all lands, the original weedy inflic- 
 tion of Nature, covering the soil with unwholesome 
 luxuriance and prickly produce ; to be kept down 
 only by useful culture, and at once punishing the 
 indolence and compelling the labour of society. The 
 generation of the Thiers politicians is infinite, and 
 everywhere ; it can no more be exhausted than frogs 
 in Holland ; but the wisdom of kings cannot be too 
 vigorously exerted in preventing the progeny of the 
 swamp from being the live stock of the soil, and 
 prohibiting the grotesque and loathsome fertility of 
 Nature from invading royal chambers, and swelling 
 into an Egyptian plague. 
 
 NOVEMBER 21. The Princess Royal of England 
 was born. 
 
 In a country like ours, the undisputed succession 
 
 L
 
 146 A VIEW OF 
 
 to the throne is a matter of the highest importance. 
 The constitution is expressly for the purpose of giving 
 every man the power of following his pursuits, unin- 
 jured by the oppression of the high, or the violence 
 of the low. The grand object is universal security. 
 The throne itself fulfils its chief value to the empire 
 in its adding to that security. When the Republi- 
 cans insolently ask, " What is the use of a hereditary 
 throne ? " the true answer is, " Its prohibiting all com- 
 petitorship." We too well know the desperate con- 
 flicts to which the disputed crown of the Roses gave 
 rise, not to regard the perpetual avoidance of similar 
 struggles as essential to national happiness. In this 
 sense, which is the highest constitutional one, we 
 congratulate the country on the Royal birth, as a 
 new pledge of national peace. We leave the hangers- 
 on of courts to use the language of sycophants, or 
 the tools of faction to calumniate royalty. 
 
 The Conservatives are neither, and we adopt the 
 expressions natural to the feelings of those who, 
 honouring the throne for its public rights, and valu- 
 ing the sitter on the throne for the performance of 
 its public duties, offer a homage whose sincerity 
 does not depend on the changes of party, and whose 
 loyalty is founded on manliness, rectitude, and free- 
 dom. 
 
 NOVEMBER 28. The King of the Netherlands 
 was inaugurated in Amsterdam, on the resignation of 
 his father.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 147 
 
 DECEMBER 6. Sir Robert Stopford sent to Me- 
 hemet Ali the ultimatum of the Four Powers, de- 
 manding the prompt submission of the Pasha, and 
 the evacuation of Syria, Adana, Candia, Arabia, and 
 the so called " Holy Cities." On the 10th, the Pasha 
 transmitted his answer of unconditional submission. 
 Thus ended the campaign of Syria, in which, brief as it 
 was, our ships and troops signalized themselves in a 
 manner worthy of the highest renown of arms. The 
 Ministerial journal elevates its crest with peculiar 
 loftiness on this subject, and asks, Where are now 
 the cavils which represented the Whigs as unfit for 
 government, the fleet as unfit for action, and every- 
 thing going wrong in Lord Palmerston's hands ? All 
 this eloquence requires but a very short answer. No 
 man ever denied that a lucky accident might fall to 
 the lot of a Whig, as well as to that of any other depen- 
 dant on fortune, that a blunderer might be occasion- 
 ally successful, or that a Cabinet, whose principle 
 consists in doing nothing, may, from time to time, 
 find their work done for them. No man doubted 
 that the habitual bravery of the English soldier and 
 sailor would achieve all that could be done by valour, 
 when the crisis came. None can exult more than the 
 Conservatives in the powerful resources which lie in 
 the mind and arm of the people, in the vigour of the 
 public character, and in that sense of national honour 
 which is the true parent of all national glory. 
 
 But this is what the Conservatives long since said 
 to the Ministers In Parliament, you are consulting 
 
 L 2
 
 148 A VIEW OF 
 
 the visages of party when you ought to be looking to 
 the nation. In the Cabinet, you are playing the 
 poltron, when you ought to be the protector of Eu- 
 rope. In your Foreign Relations, you are placing a 
 weak reliance on the art of despatching notes round 
 Europe, when you ought to be sending a fleet into 
 the Mediterranean. The Conservatives asked If 
 France, in that violence which characterises her fac- 
 tions, should rush into war to-morrow, where is our 
 Channel Fleet ? where are our regular troops, if she 
 should execute her insolent and universal threat of 
 invasion ? or are we to trust the Channel to three 
 guard-ships, or have no other resource- to meet an 
 invasion of fifty or one hundred thousand French 
 troops, than the hasty levies of our volunteers ? 
 They said, " Be ready for either contingency. Pre- 
 pare a fleet and army worthy of England. If war is 
 necessary, w r e raise no objection ; but let us be ready 
 for it. Russia has a great navy afloat ; France is 
 filling every dockyard of the Channel and Mediter- 
 ranean with ships of the first class. Why not meet 
 this dangerous preparation by some effort on the 
 defensive?" This was the language, too, of the 
 whole naval body of the country. 
 
 But what were the Ministerial answers ? Of every 
 shape but the substantial one. They denied that 
 there was any possibility of war : they denied the 
 existence of a foreign fleet. The Russian were paper 
 ships ; the French were pasteboard. Finally, we had 
 nothing more to do than to go to sleep, and let the
 
 THE YEAR 1840. J 49 
 
 superhuman vigilance of Lord Palmerston watch for 
 the safety of the empire. 
 
 The Conservatives now more urgently appealed to 
 Parliament. Lord Ingestrie's motion compelled the 
 Cabinet to act ; and half-a-dozen ships were put in 
 commission. Other motions forced a little more life 
 into them, and each time in the face of a ministerial 
 protest, that we were only frightening ourselves with 
 shadows, that the French Minister had no idea of 
 war for Egypt or anything else ; and that even if 
 there were war, we might rely on our allies for irre- 
 sistible naval succours the Conservatives forced out 
 a ship or two more. Those ships were sent to the 
 Mediterranean, and those now form the bulk of that 
 gallant fleet in whose successes we are rejoicing. 
 
 Of course, we do not charge a British Cabinet 
 with wishing ruin to the country ; but we state the 
 conduct of the Conservatives ; that their open and 
 constant demand was to see our fleets and armies 
 placed in a condition to fight successfully if they 
 were to fight at all, or to secure the continuance of 
 peace by showing ourselves prepared for even the 
 reluctant and painful alternative of hostilities. 
 
 DECEMBER 15. The body of Napoleon, brought 
 from St. Helena by the permission of the British Go- 
 vernment, was carried in a triumphal procession of 
 great pomp through Paris, and deposited in the 
 Temple of the Invalides. 
 
 The honours which France paid to the remains of
 
 150 A VIEW OF 
 
 Napoleon, after the lapse of a quarter of a century 
 from his fall, naturally revive the memory of that 
 most singular and most dazzling character of Euro- 
 pean annals. We have no hesitation in regarding 
 him as the most extraordinary being who has ap- 
 peared in government since the Roman empire, if we 
 are to estimate individual eminence by splendid ability 
 and superb fortune. 
 
 The French Revolution was a perpetual demand, 
 and a perpetual trial of all the prouder and more 
 perilous qualities of the human mind. It was a tri- 
 um phial chariot, which all men were invited to 
 ascend ; but, whirled along by steeds of such fierce- 
 ness, that all who grasped the reins were dashed 
 successively to the ground. NAPOLEON was the 
 single exception. Almost from the moment of his 
 appearing, he took and preserved the first rank. 
 
 He stands the first man of Republican France where 
 all the old impediments to personal display had been 
 equally removed before every man : the first soldier 
 of Europe, in the midst of an universal struggle for mi- 
 litary glory ; the most magnificent, lofty, and despotic 
 of sovereigns, in a land where his throne was founded 
 on the ruins of the monarchy, and upheld by the 
 multitude. 
 
 Napoleon is not to find his rival in sovereigns sub- 
 duing only the savage clanships of early Europe, or 
 coming calmly to the possession of hereditary thrones. 
 Among all the great wielders of the sword, the 
 Charlemagnes, Frederics, and Catherines, he is su-
 
 THE YEAR 1840. J51 
 
 preme : he moves in an element above them all. 
 The beneficent and generous conquerors are of a 
 higher class than either. The deliverers of their 
 country, the assertors of the rights of nations, those 
 illustrious minds which, necessarily mingling in the 
 tumults of European conflict, yet fought and con- 
 quered only for the protection of mankind the 
 Maurice, the Gustavus Adolphus, the William the 
 Third belong to another class of historic existence. 
 They more resemble, in their purposes and their 
 power, those guardian spirits of nations which, un- 
 stained themselves, perform the stern but saving 
 commands of Providence in our troubled world 
 possessed of vast means, gifted with great faculties, 
 but wholly exerting them at the summons of duty. 
 The others are like the creations of mythology the 
 Homeric deities beings of mighty strength and 
 splendour, but inflamed by human passions and cor- 
 rupted by human crimes, prone to mingle in the 
 conflicts of men, to stoop from their golden heights 
 for the feeble prizes of mortal ambition, and waste 
 their thunders on the mortal field. 
 
 In his life the matters important to posterity will 
 not be the personal incidents, so much as the circum- 
 stances of the time, their bearing on his progress, 
 and the extraordinary influence by which, after being 
 carried along the current of events for a period, he 
 suddenly became master of its course, and thence- 
 forth ruled it according to his will. Napoleon, born 
 in 1769, and, educated for the military service, had
 
 152 A VIEW OF 
 
 distinguished himself so highly at the siege of Tou- 
 lon in 1793, when he was but twenty-four, as to 
 obtain the notice of the army and the government. 
 His next scene was Paris. The attack of the armed 
 populace on the Directory compelled the trembling 
 faction in power to forget philosophy, and take re- 
 fuge behind the soldier. Napoleon was pointed out 
 by Barras. While the Directory were in instant ex- 
 pectation of being dragged to the scaffold, still wet 
 with the blood of that embodying of Jacobinism, 
 Robespierre Barras put the young Corsican at the 
 head of their troops, with the brief, but expressive 
 character " Here is an officer who is ready for any- 
 thing." That officer realized the promise ; swept 
 the armed Sections before his guns ; and the child of 
 the Revolution, like the Roman parricide, made his 
 first step to the throne, by treading on the body of 
 his parent. 
 
 But it is from 1 796 that we must date his career 
 as a soldier. French Liberty had commenced by 
 cheating all mankind. It was swindling, on the 
 largest scale ever practised on the credulity of man. 
 With the loftiest maxims of human welfare conti- 
 nually on its lips, all its invention (and it was bound- 
 less) was employed in a subtle study of the means of 
 disturbing the reason, and embittering the miseries 
 of nations. Nothing could be more pompous in its 
 structure, or richer in its decorations than the altar 
 which it erected to universal benevolence ; but the 
 incense on that altar was poison, and the flame was
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 153 
 
 kindled to blind, not to illumine. No jugglery of 
 heathenism was ever more false or foul than the 
 priestcraft of the solemn hierarchs, who ministered 
 in the white robes of philosophy at the shrine of 
 French freedom. In our day, human feelings, and the 
 respect which honourable minds desire to retain for 
 human nature, even in its lowest state, can scarcely 
 suffer us to conceive the utter falsehood, the at- 
 rocious malignity, the simple, unalloyed wicked- 
 ness which constituted the spirit of the Revolution. 
 Its especial character was blood. Like its prototype, 
 " it was a murderer from the beginning." Even in 
 its first hours it showed a thirst for slaughter, which 
 stamped its nature. The acclamations of Europe, 
 which, struck with its sudden vigour, its lofty protes- 
 tations, and the bold rapidity of its stride over the 
 wrecks of feudalism, had followed its early progress, 
 soon died away. Still it rushed on, flinging aside at 
 every step some portion of that Jesuitical mask 
 which it first wore ; hourly rending away with a more 
 contemptuous hand some fragment of those ties 
 which allied it to the common family of nations ; 
 until, at length, it stood on the steps of the throne, 
 tore down its unfortunate possessor, and with the 
 guillotine for its footstool, and the populace for its 
 ministers, seated itself in full supremacy of ruin. 
 
 From this period it assumed a new form. It had 
 hitherto been a civil evil the assassin and incendiary 
 of France a frenzied liberty preying on the nation. 
 It was thenceforth to become an European tormentor;
 
 154 A VIEW OF 
 
 a tyranny threatening or trampling on all govern 
 ments ; an iron domination, either crushing the 
 people of Europe into abject slavery, or dragging 
 them in chains to the field, to make slaves of others. 
 All had hitherto been delusion, the promise of uni- 
 versal peace and prosperity. Satan had taken the garb 
 of an angel of light. The deception had now done 
 its work, and the angel was the evil spirit again in 
 his supremacy, " a giant armed." 
 
 The limited Monarchy had first taken the shape of 
 the free Republic the Republic had now assumed 
 the darkening features of the Democracy. The 
 Democracy, possessed of absolute power at home, 
 looked for proselytism, to be repaid by plunder 
 abroad. Then arose the Propaganda. France found 
 in her contagion a new a'nd a cheaper element of war, 
 and she despatched her lepers to spread their mor- 
 tality. Revolutionary doctrines made straight the 
 way for revolutionary conquests ; and when she 
 poured forth her armies at once over Italy, Germany, 
 and the Netherlands, like streams of miasmata shoot- 
 ing from one centre, she found sovereigns and 
 subjects equally enfeebled ; Europe already at her 
 feet, its whole public strength prostrate, the whole 
 frame of society sicklied and subdued, before a hand 
 was raised to push it into the grave. 
 
 Napoleon's conquest of Italy was the most brilliant 
 triumph in the history of the Republic. The con- 
 queror rose instantly into fame. He threw a light 
 upon the nation, which reflected the lustre back upon
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 155 
 
 himself, and made him the most conspicuous soldier 
 of his country. Another change was to exhibit him 
 the uncontrolled and uncontrollable sovereign. 
 
 Pride is the grand temptation of all the higher 
 order of human minds. The passion to seize power 
 is the passion of Republics ; to retain it, of Des- 
 potisms. Napoleon, the conqueror of Italy, had 
 already reached the summit of military renown. 
 But this elevation had only showed him that there 
 was a still loftier height to be attained. The diadem 
 glittered in his eye ; yet the Republic lay, a great 
 chasm between. To give time for its filling up, he pro- 
 jected a design which exhibited at once the ambition, 
 the daring, and the recklessness, of his genius. " The 
 expedition to Egypt," said he, long afterwards, " was 
 meant for the conquest of -Syria, Asia Minor, and 
 Turkey in Europe. I would then have marched to 
 France." He would have thrown the ruins of the 
 east on the west, and on both have piled up his 
 throne. Of all the dreams of human ambition on 
 record, this was the most boundless ; and if it is ever 
 to be achieved by man, it will be by the combined 
 sagacity and daring, the inexhaustible perseverance, 
 and the burning ambition, of a spirit resembling Na- 
 poleon, in all but his fall. Throughout his whole 
 career, from this hour, he retained the idea of rang- 
 ing man into two great divisions. " The east," said 
 he, in his memorable conversation with Fox, " is one 
 great family ; the west is another. Whoever sets 
 the nations of either at war, breeds dissension in a
 
 156 A VIEW OF 
 
 family. All should be at peace with each other." 
 All in the slavery which he called peace, that all 
 might submit to the tyranny which he called empire. 
 With Napoleon, alone of all sovereigns, perpetual 
 conquest was a principle. He declared, that war 
 was essential to the government of France ; and, for 
 the first time among nations, openly proclaimed the 
 maxim, which is not yet forgotten in the restless 
 mind of his country; that power is the essential 
 object of all policy ; and territorial aggrandizement a 
 justifiable cause of war. At the head of a world of 
 slaves, France was only to be first slave. 
 
 Napoleon at the age of twenty-seven, had been 
 made Commander-in-Chief of the army of Italy. 
 Even then he had a prophetic sense of his triumphs. 
 " In twelve months," said he, " I shall be either 
 dead, or an old General." Within those twelve 
 months he fought the battles of Lodi, Castiglione, 
 and Arcola, and was the first General of Europe. 
 He lost Italy by the campaign of Egypt ; but in 1 800, 
 at the head of the Republic, as First Consul, he won 
 it back at Marengo the most perilous of his vic- 
 tories, but the most comprehensive the battle which 
 sealed the fate of the Republic, of Europe, and of 
 himself. From that day, he saw nothing between 
 him and the throne. From that field he took up his 
 diadem. 
 
 Another change was to exhibit him in a new cha- 
 racter, and Europe in new trials. Popery had long 
 corrupted continental life. Courts, cabinets, and
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 157 
 
 people were alike profligate ; and the Romish robe, 
 which had suffocated their original virtues, had melted 
 away their national vigour. The European govern- 
 ments were decrepit accumulations of power. The 
 partition of Poland, an act of enormous guilt, filled 
 the cup of wrath ; and the fierce hand of France was 
 commissioned to hold it to their lips. The world has 
 never seen an example of unconscious justice more 
 complete, more sudden, or more condign. Austria 
 was the first attacked. In 1805, her armies, which 
 had so long and so gallantly fought the Republicans, 
 were suddenly swept before the French Emperor, 
 like the harvest before the scythe. In three months, 
 she laid down her arms in Vienna I In 1806, Prus- 
 sia, the land of soldiership, the camp of the Great 
 Frederick, which had baffled France, Austria, and 
 Russia, for a succession of years, was crushed in a 
 day! In 1807, the Russian Emperor was hunted 
 into his own territories, and after the desperate 
 battles of Eylau and Friedland, was forced to sign 
 the treaty of Tilsit a treaty, which placed the 
 virtual sceptre of the Continent in the hand of the 
 conqueror. But from this moment his star was to 
 fall into eclipse. As the war of the Revolution was 
 the mightest struggle ever seen by Europe, involving 
 the highest interests, the greatest combinations of 
 power, the creation and fall of thrones, it was to be 
 made the source of a still more solemn lesson. As 
 the clouds of the early collision cleared off, a great 
 moral was to be seen emerging. The Good and Evil
 
 158 A VIEW OF 
 
 Principles became more distinct, until they engrossed 
 the field. The minor contests died away, and the 
 fate of nations was seen suspended on the issue 
 of the contest between France and England be- 
 tween France, sanguinary, seeking all things by 
 force, and contemptuous of all religion ; and Eng- 
 land, the protectress of human right, the asserter of 
 universal justice, and the worshipper of the purest 
 faith of Christianity. 
 
 If man is to be taught a belief in Providence, by 
 the strongest proof that facts can give, he must be 
 taught by the facts of this great war. It is memo- 
 rable that, during a quarter of a century of battle, 
 of continual changes of continental fortune, and of 
 her most active and unhesitating alliance with the 
 fallen thrones, England never suffered any one great 
 casualty, was never defeated in a pitch battle, never 
 lost a fleet, nor a colony that from the time when 
 the war became naval, with all the world against her, 
 she fought and triumphed in a succession of the 
 most glorious victories that when, after having 
 closed up the ocean against Napoleon, she was sum- 
 moned, in her habitual clientship of human rights, to 
 protect the rising independence of Spain, she com- 
 menced a career of conquest unbroken by a single 
 defeat, a constancy of success to which Europe has 
 no parallel, a great triumphal era of seven years, 
 a march marked by continual trophies, from the 
 shores of Portugal to the plains of the Netherlands, 
 and finishing by the twofold capture of the enemy's
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 159 
 
 capital, the extinction of their empire, and the cap- 
 tivity of the Emperor himself, until his mortal career 
 was closed. Thus lived and died Napoleon. 
 
 Never was there in human annals a more striking 
 lesson of the utter instability of fortune. Rising to 
 a sudden and unrivalled eminence, which more re- 
 minds iis of the work of some magnificent ima- 
 gination than the realities of the world ; ascend- 
 ing from the tumults and darkness of the demo- 
 cracy, like Milton's master fiend, and not unlike him 
 in his intellect, his universal power, and his fierce 
 hostility to the peace of man ; we see him, like 
 the Tempter, suddenly doomed to feel a still more 
 powerful hand to be stricken in the moment of his 
 proudest elevation to find himself the denizen of 
 darkness and the dungeon to hear 
 
 " Around a dismal universal hiss" 
 
 and while he involved all his daring and brilliant con- 
 federates in his fall, know that his ruin was but retri- 
 bution. Napoleon was the only European Sovereign 
 on record whose personal overthrow brought down 
 the whole fabric of his empire all whose princedoms 
 perished with himself the only Emperor who died 
 in the chain. 
 
 We do not say those things in a spirit of vain 
 glory, but in deep humility and solemn reverence. 
 We attribute the triumphs of England to higher 
 causes than the sword of man. We look for the
 
 160 A VIEW OF 
 
 lustre which shone round her helmet in hours when 
 all else in Europe was dark, to a nobler region than 
 is trodden even by the loftiest step of human ambi- 
 tion. But we are not thus taught merely to exult in 
 the past ; we learn to hope in the future. Having 
 discovered the true fount of all victory, we have but 
 to keep the path open to the spring, to make war 
 only in the spirit of justice, and peace only in the 
 spirit of sincerity. 
 
 The honours now paid to the remains of Napoleon 
 are a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the 
 French idea of true greatness. The character of 
 men is to be determined only by the ultimate results 
 of their actions. The spirit of Napoleon was selfish- 
 ness sometimes superb and regal sometimes dark 
 and malignant sometimes the brilliancy and bound 
 of the serpent sometimes the slime and the fang, 
 but the serpent still. His wars cost France two 
 millions of lives ; his trophies were gained only to 
 embitter defeat by their resumption ; his victories 
 only pampered the national pride, until they brought 
 the Cossacks from their deserts to parade the streets 
 of Paris. In all his triumphs over thrones, he did 
 nothing for the people. Aggrandizing his family at 
 the expense of Europe, he degraded France by a 
 continued exercise of her vassalage. If he gave her 
 provinces, he gave them exhausted by military plun- 
 der, and exhausted her revenue to supply the waste 
 of his usurpation. If he conquered, every new con- 
 quest added a link to the chain, which bound her
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 161 
 
 limbs. If Napoleon had remained on her throne to 
 this hour, France would have remained a slave ; her 
 land but a larger bastile ; her people but a conscrip- 
 tion governed by gendarmes ; her laws a theory ; 
 and her Sovereign a tyrant scoffing at the name of 
 freedom, and ruling by the scourge and the sword. 
 
 But all is now over, and unless his country is in- 
 capable of being taught, his double burial may bring 
 before her eyes a lesson against the desire of con- 
 quest, well worth all the pageant. If she will per- 
 vert his tomb into an altar from which she is to 
 propagate revolution, or light the torches of Euro- 
 pean war from his funeral pile, she must only bring 
 upon the nation the vengeance which extinguished 
 the man. But we are more willing to regard this 
 striking and stately ceremonial as a pledge of general 
 conciliation ; as a public acknowledgement that war 
 is a frenzy ; as a calm and solemn committal of the 
 principle of conquest to the grave, with the reliques 
 of the conqueror. There let them sleep, and Earth 
 begin a new career. A quarter of a century has 
 been interposed ; his generation has vanished ; we 
 are already posterity ; and, passing the true judgment 
 on his errors and his ambition, we can do justice to 
 his talents, the grandeur of his conceptions, and even 
 the fearful majesty of that march which left such 
 burning tracks on the soil of Europe. We can now 
 look upon his career as we do on the thunder-storm, 
 when it has descended to the horizon ; when the sun 
 shines again, when its roar is still, and we gaze in 
 
 M
 
 162 A VIEW OF 
 
 delight and wonder at the gigantic shapes and dazzl- 
 ing colours of its clouds, as they roll off the face of 
 Heaven. 
 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 The " view of the year " would be imperfect, with- 
 out some reference to the general advance of the 
 human intellect, in its power over nature, its increase 
 of knowledge, and its new instruments of science. 
 Our view must he brief; but it contains some objects 
 of remarkable interest to the mechanist, the astro- 
 nomer, the geologist, and the philosopher.* 
 
 MECHANISM. 
 
 The use of iron in the building of steam-ships has 
 been generally established during the year. The 
 grounds are, the durability of the vessels, the less 
 liability to accident, and the facility of their repairs. 
 In all probability, a year or two more will see the use 
 of timber for the hulls wholly discontinued. Some 
 very noble iron vessels are now at sea, and perform- 
 ing admirably. 
 
 The Archimedes lately made an experimental trip 
 
 * We have been indebted for the chief heads of this recapitu- 
 lation of science, to a very ingenious and pleasing volume, entitled 
 the " Year-book of Facts in Science and Art," published by TILT, 
 in Fleet-street, for 1841.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 163 
 
 round England, 17*22 miles in 210 hours, on an ave- 
 rage 8i miles an hour, in all states of the wind and 
 tide ; which is considered as a remarkable feat. 
 
 The Mammoth, building by the Great Western Ship 
 Company at Bristol, will measure 3,600 tons about 
 600 more than any other ship in existence. The, 
 saving of room by her being built of iron will admit 
 of her carrying coals for both the outward and home 
 voyages a matter of much importance, from the 
 inferior quality of the American coal. Her engines 
 are of 1,000 horse power. She will be enabled also to 
 carry an unusual quantity of canvas, and is expected 
 to make the passage of the Atlantic in ten days ! 
 
 An extraordinary speed has been attained by other 
 iron steamers. The Sons of the Thames, with a pair 
 of 37 horse engines, lately ran from Blackwall to 
 Gravesend (20 miles) in an hour and eleven minutes. 
 
 The Eclipse, built by Messrs. Napier, has also exhi- 
 bited singular speed. With one engine of 100 horse 
 power, she ran from Deptford to Margate (above 80 
 miles) in four hours and a half. 
 
 The Stromboli, an iron war steamer, built for ser- 
 vice in India, is a vessel of great power. She carries 
 six guns, which will send balls of .105 Ibs. weight 
 three miles point blank. Each gun weighs 65 cwts., 
 but by the ingenuity of their mounting, they are 
 worked with the ease of a carronade. 
 
 The Nemesis, a noble vessel, is the first iron steamer 
 that ever doubled the Cape. She has tw r o engines of 
 1 20 horse power, is of 650 tons burthen, carries two 
 
 M 2
 
 164 A VIEW OF 
 
 32-pounders and ten swivels, and is manned by fifty 
 seamen. Being nearly flat-bottomed, she can be 
 easily run on shore, and thus land troops without the 
 necessity of having boats. Her voyage will yet be 
 among the records of navigation. She left Ports- 
 mouth with secret orders on March 28 ; reached 
 Madeira in seven days ; then proceeded steaming and 
 sailing alternately till she reached Table Bay on 
 July 1, gallantly facing the most tempestuous season 
 of the year. Some damage sustained in those tre- 
 mendous gales, detained her for repairs at Delgoa 
 Bay three weeks. She then steered for Mozambique, 
 and finally passing through the Maldives, reached 
 Point de Galle. 
 
 RAILWAYS. 
 
 The lines of railway opened, partially opened, or 
 completed this year, amount to twenty-six. The 
 whole number of miles are about 500. 
 
 The electro-magnetic telegraph is in operation on 
 the Black wall railway. It conveys intelligence from 
 end to end of the line in three seconds ! 
 
 PRINTING. 
 
 A most benevolent use of this first of all inventions 
 has been exhibited at the Blind Asylum in Glasgow 
 a Bible for the blind. This admirable work forms
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 1 65 
 
 fifteen volumes, quarto ; the whole edition 3,500 
 volumes. The paper is printed only on one side, in 
 order to allow of the relief which makes the letter 
 sensible to the touch. The Glasgow Asylum has 
 displayed meritorious industry, it having published 
 no less than 10,000 volumes for the blind. 
 
 PAPIER MACHE. 
 
 The use of papier mache in architectural orna- 
 ments has long been known, but a Mr. Bielefeld 
 has lately brought it to an unexpected degree of 
 perfection. By the use of steam power and other 
 expedients it is rendered capable of forming almost 
 everything ornamental. It takes all shapes and 
 colours, from the boldest to the most delicate forms. 
 It covers ceilings, gallery fronts, organs, picture 
 frames, and furniture, with the most beautiful foliage, 
 flowers, arabesques, everything that can present 
 the finest forms of art or nature. 
 
 It copies the higher works of art with equal fide- 
 lity, and can finish a Venus de Medicis with the 
 rapidity of a plaster cast, of one-sixth the weight, 
 and altogether superior in beauty, durability, and 
 cheapness. It is applicable alike to the exterior 
 decoration of architecture and to the interior; it 
 resists time, weather, and decay, and is beautiful 
 in all.
 
 166 A VIEW- OF 
 
 STEAM-BRIDGE. 
 
 A striking use of the steam-engine has been 
 adopted at Portsmouth ; it is a floating-bridge, 
 seventy feet long and sixty feet wide, impelled by 
 two engines of twenty-horse power, and making the 
 passage (2,200 feet) at the speed of about 350 feet a 
 minute. The bridge draws, with all its machinery, 
 but two feet. This capital invention will naturally 
 supersede the awkward contrivances of bridges of 
 boats on the great European rivers, will not impro- 
 bably decrease the formidable expense of building 
 bridges, and must greatly facilitate communication in 
 colonies and new settlements in every part of the 
 world. 
 
 NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 * 
 
 The scientific researches into the laws, properties, 
 and influences of Terrestrial Magnetism, have as- 
 sumed a form of great importance. This great agent, 
 which has hitherto been supposed to be limited to 
 its use in the mariner's compass, now seems to be de- 
 veloping itself in every operation of nature ; the 
 temperature of the earth and air; the currents of 
 the ocean ; vegetation ; the course of the winds ; 
 possibly the circulation of the blood ; heat ; light ; 
 the formation of metallic veins ; the colour and cry- 
 stallization of precious stones ; meteors ; the aurora.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 167 
 
 The interest of the subject has so strongly excited 
 the philosophers of Europe, that it has produced the 
 first instance of a great scientific combination in 
 every quarter of the globe, for the express purpose 
 of collating the phenomena. Upwards of thirty 
 stations have been already appointed in Europe, 
 India, Africa, and America, furnished with instru- 
 ments, and prepared to register observations. The 
 result, will probably be the most important additions 
 to science, at once profound and practical. In mag- 
 netism, we evidently have possessed ourselves of one 
 of the keys of Nature. 
 
 ANIMAL CHALK. 
 
 A few years ago Professor Ehrenberg announced 
 the singular discovery, that the grains of chalk con- 
 sisted of elliptical particles, apparently crystallised. His 
 subsequent researches have enabled him to announce 
 that a large portion of all the chalk which he has ex- 
 amined in various parts of the world consists of 
 countless microscopical animalculse, hitherto un- 
 known, at the rate of ten millions in a pound of 
 chalk. His general conclusion is, that all the strata 
 of chalk in Europe are the produce of microscopic 
 animalcule. 
 
 MUSCLE VOLITANTES. 
 
 There are few studious persons, who are not ac- 
 quainted with the existence of lines and webs which
 
 168 A VIEW OF 
 
 seem to be floating in the eye, and which render them 
 uneasy, from the apprehension that they are the pre- 
 cursors of loss of sight. A paper by Sir D. Brewster 
 pronounces them wholly harmless, and gives us what 
 he declares to be their true theory : First, that in 
 persons of the purest sight, and of all ages, transpa- 
 rent filaments will frequently be found floating in the 
 vitreous humour ; that the muscce. are knots of those 
 filaments, produced by their accidentally overlapping 
 each other ; and finally, that the vitreous humour is 
 divided into cells, which prevent any bodies con- 
 tained in them from passing into other cells. If this 
 theory be true, it will be a source of great satisfac- 
 tion to thousands who look with habitual terror on 
 those floating filaments, in the dread that they will 
 finally cover the vision. 
 
 ELECTRO-MAGNETISM. 
 
 A machine has been invented by a Mr. Taylor, for 
 turning in wood, metal, or ivory, by electro-magne- 
 tism. Masses of iron are fixed in the rim of a wheel, 
 which is set in motion by the electro-magnets. The 
 effect is described as most curious. The wheel moves 
 with perfect regularity, without any apparent cause 
 of motion, the agent being wholly invisible to the 
 senses. It is presumed that this power may be aug- 
 mented to any required extent ; and if so, it might 
 be yet rendered one of the most admirable and im- 
 portant aids ever offered to man.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 169 
 
 Professor Jacobi, in a paper read to the Academy 
 of Sciences at St. Petersburg, states that he has suc- 
 ceeded, by the application of electro-magnetism to 
 machinery, in propelling a boat holding fourteen per- 
 sons, at the rate of three miles an hour, the force 
 produced being equal to five-sixths of one-horse power. 
 His instrument was a batcery of sixty-four plates. If 
 those discoveries shall be rendered practical ; steam, 
 with all its perils of fire, the expense of fuel, and the 
 wear of machinery, will be superseded. 
 
 ELECTROTYPES. 
 
 This recent and beautiful art has made striking 
 advances. A mode has been lately discovered of 
 making a copper-plate engraving without an engra- 
 ving in the first instance. It is thus done : Let the 
 subject be draw r n upon a smooth copper-plate with 
 any thick pigment insoluble in water; then expose 
 the plate to the influence of the current, when the 
 copper will gradually grow over the drawing, and the 
 electrotype, when removed, will be ready for print- 
 ing. By another process, the metal will produce the 
 drawing in basso relievo. This process obviously 
 opens an almost unlimited means of producing, not 
 merely copies of prints and pictures, but ornaments, 
 medallions, and all objects of decoration and elegance. 
 It may yet be employed in higher things why not 
 in printing ? For this process, which seems chiefly 
 due to Professor Jacobi, and which he names galvano-
 
 1/0 A VIEW OF 
 
 plastics, he has received 25,000 silver rubles from the 
 Russian Emperor, on condition of his giving a full 
 detail of his discovery to Europe. 
 
 CHEMISTRY. 
 
 A most important discovery has been lately made 
 in metallurgy, by the application of electro-chemical 
 power to gold, silver, copper, and lead. The object 
 of M. Becquerel, the operator, was to refine those 
 metals without the aid of quicksilver. This opera- 
 tion is now performed with such rapidity in the pre- 
 paratory foundry at Paris, that four pounds weight of 
 silver can be daily drawn from the ore. By this disco- 
 very, it is probable that a vast quantity of the infe- 
 rior ores of South America, too poor to pay the 
 expense of quicksilver, will be brought into use. 
 The silver ores of those countries found most difficult 
 of amalgamation, are those containing a large por- 
 tion of copper and arsenic. They are frequently 
 regarded as of so little value, that they are used as 
 ballast. The point was, to obtain, at a slight expense, 
 in separate portions, all the silver, copper, and arsenic 
 which they contained. This problem has now been 
 solved. 
 
 Russia abounds in minerals ; yet she has but few 
 silver mines, her chief produce being gold and pla- 
 tina dust, obtained by washing. Imperfect as this 
 process is, it last year produced platina to the value 
 of 800,000.
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 171 
 
 Two formidable evils have been lately overcome 
 by chemical science : the solution of muriate of zinc 
 has been found successful in resisting the dry rot ; 
 and the poisonous effects of arsenic have found a 
 complete antidote in the hydrated peroxide of iron. 
 Administered even within six hours after swallowing 
 the poison, it recovered the patient, and the peroxide 
 was found to be changed into arseniate of iron ; thus 
 establishing its claims as a specific. 
 
 THE DAGUERREOTYPE. 
 
 This discovery is evidently but the beginning of 
 more one of the desiderata, that of transferring 
 the colours of objects, is nearly attained already. In 
 France, a plate has been produced transferring the 
 red brick colour of a house. 
 
 In India, by adopting a solution of gold, various 
 tints have been produced, from a light rose colour, 
 through purple, down to black, and a green. In 
 America, by means of a lens and a heliostadt, con- 
 verging the moonbeams on a plate, a very strong im- 
 pressions was formed in half an hour. Another expe- 
 riment has given the general figure of the moon, 
 with the spots, though yet indistinct. Further ap- 
 plication of lenses and solutions will brobably give 
 maps of the moon, and of the stars, with an accuracy 
 hitherto unattained ; perhaps maps of every country 
 on earth. A station on the summit of a range of 
 mountains, or in a balloon, may yet be all that is
 
 172 A VIEW OF 
 
 necessary to map a province, the course of a river, 
 the boundaries of a colony, or the shores of the 
 ocean. 
 
 PUBLIC GARDENS. 
 
 The improvements which are gradually taking 
 place in the neighbourhood of London ought to ex- 
 cite the rivalry of our country towns. Every town, 
 and even every village in England, ought to have 
 four things for the recreation and health of the peo- 
 ple a large swimming bath, open for the refresh- 
 ment of the labourers after they return from their 
 work ; a cricket-ground ; a park and garden of a 
 few acres, for the evening walks of the people ; and 
 a ball-court, for the amusement and exercise of the 
 young. All might be easily formed by subscription, 
 and kept in order by the care of a committee of the 
 inhabitants. It would be a noble opportunity for the 
 men of fortune in their neighbourhood, to signalize 
 their practical benevolence ; the price of a couple 
 of race-horses would accomplish any one of the 
 entire. 
 
 As an example, we set before our nobility the gift 
 which Mr. Strutt, of Derby, has just made to his 
 townsmen. He has presented to trustees, for the 
 public use for ever, eleven acres of ground, which he 
 has ornamented as an arboretum. This, we admit, 
 is the costly work of a man of large means, and of 
 larger spirit ; the arboretum being composed of the
 
 THE YEAR 1840. 1?3 
 
 most rare and valuable trees, so arranged, as to form 
 a study for the visitor. It is said to have cost 16,000 
 a sum which, of course, could not be required on 
 general occasions. 
 
 Mr. Strutt, in presenting those gardens to his 
 townsmen, says, gracefully and generously, " As the 
 sun has shone brightly on me through life, it would 
 be ungrateful in me not to employ a portion of the 
 fortune which I possess, in promoting the welfare of 
 those among whom I live, and by whose industry I 
 have been aided in its acquisition." 
 
 This is the language of a Manufacturer, worthy to 
 be a Noble. We recommend it to the peerage. How 
 much manlier, more generous, and even wiser, is this 
 use of wealth, than its wild waste in gaming and rac- 
 ing, or its employment in the purchase of estate on 
 estate ; or, worst of all, its hoarding, till it amounts 
 to an enormous sum, grasped hard, until it is torn 
 from the miserable hoarder in the grave. 
 
 GEOLOGY. 
 
 A museum has been established by the Department 
 of Woods and Forests, for specimens of metalic ores, 
 ornamental marbles, building stones, and all minerals 
 produced in England, and applicable to the arts of 
 life. It will also contain models of mining machinery, 
 metallurgic results obtained from the furnace, a labo- 
 ratory, &c. A department will be assigned to agri- 
 cultural improvements and materials, clays, rocks,
 
 174 A VIEW OF 
 
 &c. A third department will contain records and 
 documents relating to all subterraneous operations. 
 Mining and civil engineering schools are also in pro- 
 gress throughout England. 
 
 The average produce of the British mines is about 
 20,000,000 sterling, of which nine millions arise 
 from coal and eight from iron. The miners in Corn- 
 wall alone amount to 28,000. 
 
 ASTRONOMY. 
 
 Professor Bessel's memorable discovery of the 
 parallax of the fixed stars, in 61 cygni, has been fol- 
 lowed up by further observations, all confirming the 
 fact of the parallax. This gives the distance of pro- 
 bably the nearest fixed star from the sun, amounting 
 to five hundred and ninety-two thousand two hun- 
 dred times the semidiameter of the earth's orbit ; or 
 five hundred and ninety-two thousand two hundred 
 times ninety-two millions of miles ! a distance that 
 absolutely overwhelms the imagination ; and yet this 
 astonishing space probably vanishes in comparison 
 with the distance of the nearest Nebula. What must 
 be the forces by which such orbs are sustained, 
 the grandeur of the purposes for which they were 
 created, the Power which created them, the sci- 
 ence which regulates their motions from age to age, 
 the conceptions of government which have assigned 
 the moral laws of those mighty regions, and which 
 combine them all in one vast plan of benevolence !
 
 THF YEAR 1840. 
 
 175 
 
 What boundless and noble contemplations must be 
 furnished in those worlds to the mind of man relieved 
 from the burden of the earth ; and to those higher in- 
 tellectual beings who administer to the Supreme will 
 throughout the universe ! 
 
 " THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD ! " 
 
 THE END. 
 
 A 000 090 399 7
 
 PRINTED BY H. W. MARTIN AND CO., 
 
 BARTLETT'S BUILDINGS.