policy pursued by the Government, and on the | Barré, attended by the Duke of Richmond and policy recommended by the Opposition. But death Lord Rockingham. Burke, Savile, and Dunning restored him to his old place in the affection of his upheld the pall. Lord Camden was conspicuous in country. Who could hear unmoved of the fall of the procession. The chief mourner was young that which had been so great, and which had stood William Pitt. After the lapse of more than so long? The circumstances, too, seemed rather to twenty-seven years, in a season as dark and perilbelong to the tragic stage than to real life. A great ous, his own shattered frame and broken heart statesman, full of years and honours, led forth to were laid, with the same pomp, in the same conthe Senate House by a son of rare hopes, and secrated mould. stricken down in full council while straining his feeble voice to rouse the drooping spirit of his country, could not but be remembered with peculiar veneration and tenderness. Detraction was overawed. The voice even of just and temperate censure was mute. Nothing was remembered but the lofty genius, the unsullied probity, the undisputed services, of him who was no more. For once, all parties agreed. A public funeral, a public monument, were eagerly voted. The debts of the deceased were paid. A provision was made for his family. The City of London requested that the remains of the great man whom she had so long loved and honoured might rest under the dome of her magnificent cathedral. But the petition came too late. Everything was already prepared for the interment in Westminster Abbey. Though men of all parties had concurred in decreeing posthumous honours to Chatham, his corpse was attended to the grave almost exclusively by opponents of the Government. The banner of the lordship of Chatham was borne by Colonel Chatham sleeps near the northern door of the church, in a spot which has ever since been appropriated to statesmen, as the other end of the same transept has long been to poets. Mansfield rests there, and the second William Pitt, and Fox, and Grattan, and Canning, and Wilberforce. In no other cemetery do so many great citizens lie within so narrow a space. High over those venerable graves towers the stately monument of Chatham, and from above, his effigy, graven by a cunning hand, seems still, with eagle face and outstretched arm, to bid England be of good cheer, and to hurl defiance at her foes. The generation which reared that memorial of him has disappeared. The time has come when the rash and indiscriminate judg ments which his contemporaries passed on his character may be calmly revised by history. And history, while for the warning of vehement high and daring natures, she notes his many errors, will yet deliberately pronounce that, among the eminent men whose bones lie near his, searcely one has left a more stainless, and none a more splendid name." TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY. ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH IN APRIL, 1786. ROBERT BURNS, born at Alloway, January 25, 1759. Son of a poor farmer. Published first in 1786, and became immediately SIR ROGER IN THE THEATRE. 183 Such is the fate of artless maid, And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Such is the fate of simple bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starred! Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, Such fate to suffering worth is given, Till, wrenched of every stay but Heaven, Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate, Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight SIR ROGER IN THE THEATRE. [JOSEPH ADDISON. See Page 79.] My friend Sir Roger de Coverley, when we last met together at the club, told me that he had a great mind to see the new tragedy with me, assuring me at the same time that he had not been at a play these twenty years. "The last I saw," said Sir Roger, "was the 'Committee,' which I should not have gone to neither, had not I been told beforehand that it was a good Church of England comedy." He then proceeded to inquire of me who this "Distressed Mother" was; and upon hearing that she was Hector's widow, he told me that her husband was a brave man, and that when he was a school-boy he had read his life at the end of the dictionary. My friend asked me in the next place, if there would not be some danger in coming home late, in case the Mohocks should be abroad. "I assure you," says he, "I thought I had fallen into their hands last night; for I observed two or three lusty black men that followed me half way up Fleet Street, and mended their pace behind me, in proportion as I put on to get away from them. You must know," continued the knight, with a smile, "I fancied they had a mind to hunt me; for I remember an honest gentleman in my neighbourhood, who was served such a trick in King Charles the Second's time, for which reason he has not ventured himself in town ever since. I might have shown them very good sport, had this been their design; for, as I am an old fox-hunter, I should have turned and dodged, and have played them a thousand tricks." Sir Roger added, "If these gentlemen had any such intention, they did not succeed very well in it; for I threw them out," says he, "at the end of Norfolk Street, where I doubled the corner, and got shelter in my lodgings before they could imagine what was become of me. However," says the knight, "if Captain Sentry will make one with us to-morrow night, and you will both of you call upon me about four o'clock, that we may be at the house before it is full, I will have my own coach in readiness to attend you." The captain, who did not fail to meet me there at the appointed hour, bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had put on the same sword which he made use of at the battle of Steenkirk. Sir Roger's servants, and among the rest my old friend the butler, had, I found, provided themselves with good oaken plants, to attend their master upon this occasion. When we had placed him in his coach, with myself at his left hand, the captain before him, and his butler at the head of his footmen in the rear, we convoyed him in safety to the playhouse, where, after having marched up the entry in good order, the captain and I went in with him, and seated him betwixt us in the pit. As soon as the house was full, and the candles lighted, my old friend stood up, and looked about him with that pleasure which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself, at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. I could not but fancy to myself, as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit, that he made a very proper centre to a tragic audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus, the knight told me that he did not believe the King of France himself had a better strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old friend's remarks, because I looked upon them as a piece of natural criticism, and was well pleased to hear him, at the conclusion of almost every scene, telling me that he could not imagine how the play would end. One while he appeared much concerned for Andromache; and a little while after as much for Hermione; and was extremely puzzled to think what would become of Pyrrhus. When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lover's importunities, he whispered me in the ear, that he was sure she would never have him; to which he added, with a more than ordinary vehemence, " You can't imagine, sir, what it is to have to do with a widow." Upon Pyrrhus his threatening to leave her, the knight shook his head 66 (Drawn by L. C. HENLEY.) and muttered to himself, Ay, do if you can." This part dwelt so much upon my friend's imagination, that at the close of the third act, as I was thinking on something else, he whispered me in my ear, "These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray," says he, "you that are a critic, is the play according to your dramatic rules, as you call them? Should your people in tragedy always talk to be understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do not know the meaning of." The fourth act very luckily began before I had time to give the old gentleman an answer. "Well," says the knight, sitting down with great satisfaction, "I suppose we are now to see Hector's ghost." He then renewed his attention, and, from time to time, fell a-praising the widow. He made, indeed. a little mistake as to one of her pages, whom at his first entering he took for Astyanax; but quickly set himself right in that particular, though, at the same time, he owned he should have been very glad to have seen the little boy, who, says he, must needs be a very fine child by the account that is given of him. As there was a very remarkable silence and stillness in the audience during the whole action, it was natural for them to take the opportunity of the intervals between the acts to express their opinion of the players, and of their respective parts. Sir Roger, hearing a cluster of them praise Orestes, struck in with them, and told them that he thought his friend Pylades was a very sensible man. As they were afterward applauding Pyrrhus, Sir Roger put in a second time: "And let me tell you," says he, "though he speaks but little, I like the old fellow in whiskers as well as any of them." Captain Sentry, seeing two or three wags who sat near us lean with an attentive ear towards Sir Roger, and fearing lest they should smoke the knight, plucked him by the elbow, and whispered something in his ear, that lasted till the opening of the fifth act. The knight was wonderfully attentive to the account which Orestes gives of Pyrrhus's death, and, at the conclusion of it, told me it was such a bloody piece of work, that he was glad it was not done upon the stage. Seeing afterward Orestes in his raving fit, he grew more than ordinarily serious, and took occasion to moralise upon an evil conscience, adding, that Orestes, in his madness, looked as if he saw something. As we were the first that came into the house, so we were the last that went out of it: being resolved to have a clear passage for our old friend, whom we did not care to venture among the justling of the crowd. Sir Roger went out fully satisfied with his entertainment, and we guarded him to his lodging in the same manner that we brought him to the playhouse. being highly pleased for my own part, not only with the performance of the excellent piece which had been presented, but with the satisfaction which it had given to the good old man. [HORACE SMITH. See Page 30.] The Court with tricks inopportune, Venting on the highest folks his Scurvy pleasantries and hoaxes. It needs some sense to play the fool, Occurred not to our jackarapes, Some sin, at last, beyond all measure, Incurred the desperate displeasure Of his serene and raging highness: Whether he twitched his most revered Or had intruded on the shyness Of the seraglio, or let fly An epigram at royalty, None knows: his sin was an occult one, Exclaimed," "Tis time to stop that breath: Thy doom is sealed, presumptuous slave! Thou stand'st condemned to certain death: Silence, base rebel! no replying! But such is my indulgence still, 24-VOL. I. CAPYS PROPHESIES TO ROMULUS THE FUTURE GREATNESS OF ROME* THINE, Roman, is the pilum: [THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. See Page 129.] Roman, the sword is thine, The even trench, the bristling mound, Which, with their laurelled train, Move slowly up the shouting streets To Jove's eternal fane. Beneath thy yoke the Volscian Shall quake thy rods to see; And the proud Samnite's heart of steel Shall yield to only thee. The Gaul shall come against thee, From the land of snow and night; Thou shalt give his fair-haired armies To the raven and the kite. The Greek shall come against thee, The huge, earth-shaking beast- With all its guards, doth standThe beast who hath between his eyes The serpent for a hand. First march the bold Epirotes, Wedged close, with shield and spear, And the ranks of false Tarentum Are glittering in the rear, The ranks of false Tarentum Like hunted sheep shall fly : In vain the bold Epirotes Shall round their standards die. And Apennine's grey vultures Shall have a noble feast On the fat and the eyes Of the huge, earth-shaking beast. Hurrah for the good weapons In a stout Roman hand! That through the thick array Of levelled spears and serried shields Hews deep its gory way! * Hurrah for the great triumph That stretches many a mile! Hurrah for the wan captives That pass in endless file! Ho! bold Epirotes, whither Hath the Red King ta'en flight? Ho! dogs of false Tarentum, Is not the gown washed white? Hurrah for the great triumph That stretches many a mile! Torn from the pheasant's wings; The goblets rough with gold, The many-coloured tablets bright With loves and wars of old; The stone that breathes and struggles, The brass that seem to speak; Such cunning they who dwell on high Have given unto the Greek! Hurrah for Manius Curius, The bravest son of Rome, Thrice in utmost need sent forth, Thrice drawn in triumph home! Weave, weave for Manius Curius The third embroidered gown! Make ready the third lofty car, And twine the third green crown! And yoke the steeds of Rosea, With necks like bended bow, And deck the bull-Mevania's bullThe bull as white as snow. Blest, and thrice blest, the Roman Who sees Rome's brightest dayWho sees that long, victorious pomp Wind down the Sacred Way, And through the bellowing forum, And round the suppliants' grove, Up to the everlasting gates Of Capitolian Jove. Then where, o'er two bright havens, By kind permission of Messrs. Longman and Co. |