Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846

Heberden wrote a great variety of Tracts on his own science; suffered no improvement in medicine, or public topic connected with general health, to escape him; cultivated his original scholarship to the last; enjoyed the friendship of the scientific world throughout his career; and enjoyed life itself to an unusual duration, dying in his ninety-first year.

The anxieties of Europe are, for a while, at least, at an end. The preliminaries of peace with France were signed on October the 1st, and yesterday the 9th, Lauriston, first aide-de-camp to Bonaparte, arrived in town. The populace were all civility to him so were the ministers. The French ambassador, Otto, immediately took him to Downing Street, where he was complimented by Lord Hawkesbury. Lauriston is a general in the Republican service, with a handsome figure, which, covered with lace, and the showy decorations of his rank, quite enchanted the multitude of gazers.

At the peace of 1782, the pleasantry of George Selwyn, on the arrival of the French ambassador, a remarkably little man, was, "That France had sent them the preliminaries of peace, by the preliminaries of an ambassador." Whatever may be the fate of the present preliminaries, the jest will not apply to the present envoy, who looks the soldier, and would evidently make a dashing hussar. His progress through the streets was, from the first, followed by acclamation. But at length it became a kind of triumph. The zeal of the rabble, (probably under good guidance, for the French employés comprehend those little arrangements perfectly,) determined on drawing the carriage. The harness was taken off, the horses enjoyed a sinecure, the coachman sat in uneasy idleness on his box, and the crowd tugged away in their best style. The procession slowly moved through the principal streets of the West End, till it reached the Foreign Office. After a pause there, for the delivery of his credentials, Lauriston went to the Admiralty, where St Vincent, the first lord, (albeit no lover of Frenchmen,) received the stranger with a good-humoured shake of the hand, and, on parting with him, made a little speech to the mob, recommending it to them "to take care and not overset the carriage."

In the evening London was illuminated, and looked as brilliant as lights and transparencies could make it. An odd incident during the day, however, showed of what tetchy materials a great populace is made. Otto, the French resident, in preparing his house for the illumination, had hung in its front a characteristic motto, in coloured lamps, consisting of the three words – "France, Concord, England." A party of sailors, who had rambled through the streets to see the preparations for the night, could not bring their tongues to relish this juxtaposition; which they read as if it were, "France conquered England." The mob gathered, and were of the same opinion. Jack began to talk loud, and to speak of the motto as a national insult. Fortunately, however, before the matter could proceed to breaking windows, or perhaps worse, some of the envoy's servants informed their master of the equivocal nature of his motto. The obnoxious word was changed accordingly, and the illumination in the evening (which was most splendid,) displayed the motto – "France – Peace – England."

The North, too, has not been without its festivities. Alexander of Russia has been crowned with all the pomp of a successor of Catherine, and the Lord of an Empire five thousand miles long, and touching almost the Tropics, and almost the Pole. Moscow, of course, was the scene. All that barbaric pomp and European luxury could combine, was to be seen in the displays of the double coronation of the Czar and Czarina. Alexander, disdaining the royal habit of being drawn in a carriage, however gilded; or remembering that he was the monarch of a nation of horsemen, King of the Tartar world, moved in the midst of his great lords and cavalry, mounted on a fine English charger, and was received every where with boundless acclamations.

The memory of kings is seldom long-lived in despotic governments. But Paul's is already extinguished, or survives only in the rejoicing of the people to have got rid of him. His nature was not ungenerous, but his caprice had become so intolerable, that his longer life would probably have seen some desperate outbreak in the Empire.

The Czar is handsome, according to Russian ideas of beauty, – tall, and well-proportioned. The people are delighted to find themselves under his authority, and the peculiar affability of his manner to the English at Moscow, is regarded as a pledge of the reconciliation of Russia to the system of our politics and our trade.

Russia, more than any other monarchy, requires a powerful, direct, and vigilant administration. The enormous extent of her territory exposes her to perpetual abuses in her provincial governments. The barbarism of a vast portion of her population, demands the whole capacity of an enlightened Sovereign, to raise it in the rank of human nature.

To this hour the question is doubtful, whether Moscow ought not to have continued the seat of government. It is true that then Russia would probably have had no Baltic fleet. But ought she ever to have had a Baltic fleet? Ought she to have attempted a maritime superiority, with sea locked up in ice for six months of the year; a territory meant for a wilderness, and incapable of becoming anything better, in which the Russian sovereigns have condemned themselves to the life of one of their own bears, cold, wild, and comfortless? All the stoves on earth cannot make a St Petersburg winter endurable by any thing but a fish or a marmozet; while Moscow offered a glorious climate, unlimited space for a capital city, a fertile country, a fine landscape, a central position for the head of an empire, with Europe in its front, and Asia at its back.

The choice of St Petersburg has probably cramped the growth of Russian power. Even Poland has only given her a desert, a kingdom scantily cultivated, scantily peopled, discontented serfdom and a broken frontier. Yet all may be for the best. Moscow, as the head of the Empire, might have made her too powerful, and Europe might have seen a Russian Gengis Khan.

The Town is ringing with an extraordinary feat of pedestrianism; the first exploit of a young Scotchman, Barclay of Ury. He had betted £5000 that he would walk ninety miles in twenty-one and a half hours, and has won, leaving an hour and seventeen minutes to spare.

Feats of this order have a value, as showing the powers of the human frame. They would otherwise be merely vulgar gambling. But if it is of importance to know the extent of the mental powers, those of the body also have their uses; and an effeminate generation would only have to prepare themselves by the exercises of this young gentleman, to be able to dispense with post-chaises and the gout. The walker is but twenty-two years old; and he has finished his exploit without any injury to his frame, and, it may be presumed, with a considerable advantage to his finances. All the "Sporting world," as they are named, were on the ground, which was a measured mile, on the road between York and Hull; lamps were erected to light the principal performer during the night. A cottage at the road-side received him for refreshment, and change of dress, at intervals. A militia regiment, which happened to be on its march from Hull, halted and filed on either side of the road, with the gallantry of sportsmen, to give him free way; and the general interest taken in this singular performance was surprising. The only drawback was the evident activity of his frame, and his power of endurance; for after the first thirty miles the betting began to be wholly in his favour, and the spirit of speculation shrunk from that period, and long before the close no bets would be taken. From daylight, multitudes thronged to the course. All the carriages, of which such numbers pass along this communication between the two great northern towns, went to the side of the road; even the mails gave way. The affair seemed national, and if the gallant pedestrian had failed, it might have been followed by a general mourning in the Ridings.

One of the great Histrionic Dynasty, Stephen Kemble, has lately amused the Town by his performance of Falstaff. He exhibited the humours of the jovial knight with skill enough to make the audiences laugh. But he was perhaps the first actor who ever played the fat knight to the life. His remarkable corpulence qualified him to play the character without stuffing. The good-humour of his visage was fully equalled by the protuberance of his stomach; and if the "totus in se teres atque rotundus" of Horace, is the poet's definition of a good man, the actor rose to the summit of human virtue. The best prologue, since the days of Garrick, ushered in this singular performance.

"A Falstaff here to-night, by nature made,Lends to your favourite bard his pond'rous aid;No man in buckram he, no stuffing gear!No feather bed, nor e'en a pillow here!But all good honest flesh, and blood, and bone,And weighing, more or less – some thirty stone.Upon the northern coast, by chance, we caught him:And hither, in a broad-wheel'd waggon, brought him;For in a chaise the varlet ne'er could enter,And no mail-coach on such a fare would venture.Blest with unwieldiness, at least his sizeWill favour find in every critic's eyes;And should his humour, and his mimic art,Bear due proportion to his outer part,As once 'twas said of Macklin in the Jew,'This is the very Falstaff Shakspeare drew.'To you, with diffidence, he bids me say,Should you approve, you may command his stay,To lie and swagger here another day.If not, to better men he'll leave his sack,And go as ballast, in a collier, back."1802

This French peace will not last. The parties to this unnatural wedlock are beginning to grumble already; and this, too, when the bans are still in every body's ears. The French, however, have begun the quarrel, by sending out a huge fleet, with 30,000 men on board, to St Domingo. This our minister regards as a daring exploit, which may finish by turning on Jamaica. The negroes are every where in exultation; for they cannot be made to believe that France intends any thing but a general emancipation; and that her expedition, however it be apparently against Touissaint, is sent for a general overthrow of the whites.

Long discussions have taken place between the two governments, all ending in the usual way. France protesting her honour, and England proclaiming her alarms; both amounting to so much paper wasted. But our West India squadron has been reinforced; and the First Consul has found employment for a daring soldiery, who cannot live in quiet; found offices for some hundreds of officials, the most petitioning and perplexing race of mankind; and found a topic for the Coffeehouses, which he naturally thinks much better employed in talking about St Domingo, than in criticising his proceedings at home.

Another source of grumbling between these two ill-assorted parties. At the very Marriage feast an apple of discord has been thrown in, and that apple is Switzerland. France will suffer but one republic, and that must be the World. The presumption of a little pigeon-house of Republics among the Alps insults her feelings; and all must run under the wing of the great Republican Eagle, or be grasped by her talons. An army has been ordered to march to Berne. The Swiss will probably resist, but they will certainly be beaten. Republics are sometimes powerful in attack; they are always feeble in defence. They are at best but a mob; and, while the mob can rush on, they may trample down opposition. But a mob, forced to the defensive, thinks of nothing but running away. The strength of a monarchy alone can bind men together for an effectual resistance. Switzerland will get the fraternal embrace, and be as much fettered as St Domingo.

Who are to be the heirs of General Claude Martin? The man never knew that he had a grandfather, and probably was as much in doubt about his heirs. What he was himself, nobody seems to know. But this man of obscurity has died worth half a million sterling! So much for India and her adventurers.

When a boy, he entered into the French service. By some chance or other he found himself in India; there offered himself to the Nabob of Lucknow, disciplined his troops, rose to the rank of commandant of the Rajah's troops, or some similar position, and amassed the half million. He was a splendid distributor, however, and has given away by his will six hundred thousand rupees – a sum large enough to buy any thing in France but the First Consul.

Francis, Duke of Bedford, has just died. The reports vary as to the cause. The general opinion is, that in playing rackets, or in some other rough exercise, he overstrained himself, and produced a return of a disease to which he had been for some years liable. The details of his death are too painful to be entered into. The first surgical assistance was brought down to Woburn. An operation was performed, which for some days gave hope, but it was too late. Mortification ensued, and he died, to the great regret of a large circle of personal friends; to the great loss of his party, which was Whig in the highest degree; and to the general sorrow of the country. He was a handsome man with a showy figure, and the manners, and, what was better, the spirit of a nobleman. He was magnificent in his household, and not less magnificent in his sense of duty as a landlord and country gentleman. He first established those great Agricultural Meetings by which the breed of British cattle was so greatly improved; Agriculture took the shape of a science, and the Agricultural interest, the true strength of a country, took its place among the pillars of the Empire.

By a sort of fashion, the leading country gentlemen always began public life as Whigs. And although the Bedford family had gone through every form of politics, from the days of their founder, Russell, under Henry the VIII., and especially in the person of the Duke of Bedford's unpopular, but able, grandfather, the Duke espoused the party of Fox with the devotion of an enthusiast.

He was thus brought into some unfortunate collisions with the bolder spirits and more practised talents of the Treasury Bench; and though, from his position in the House of Lords, secure from direct attack by the great leaders of Government, he was struck by many a shaft which he had neither the power to repel nor to return.

An unlucky piece of hardihood, in attacking the royal grant of a pension of three thousand a year to the greatest writer, philosopher, and politician of the age, Edmund Burke, provoked a rejoinder, which must have put any man to the torture. Burke's pamphlet in defence of his pension, was much less a defence than an assault. He broke into the enemy's camp at once, and "swept all there with huge two-handed sway." He traced the history of the Bedford opulence up to its origin, which he loftily pronounced to be personal sycophancy and public spoil – the plunder of the Abbeys, obtained by subserviency to a Tyrant. The eloquence of this terrible castigation unhappily embalmed the scorn. And so long as the works of this great man are read, and they will be read so long as the language endures, the honours of Francis Duke of Bedford will go down dismantled to posterity.

But his private character was amiable, and the closing hours of his career were manly. On its being announced to him that an operation was necessary, he asked only for "two hours delay to settle his affairs;" and he occupied those two hours in writing to his brothers, and to some friends. He then offered to submit to be bound, if the operators should think it necessary; but they replied, "that they relied fully on his Grace's firmness of mind." He bore the trial with remarkable fortitude. But the disorder took an unfavourable turn, and on the third day he expired.

The retirement of Pitt from the Ministry, has given his successor, Addington, the honour of making the peace. But the services of the great Master are not eclipsed by the fortunes of the follower. Addington is universally regarded as the shadow of Pitt; moving only as he moves; existing by his existence; and exhibiting merely in outline his reality. Every one believes that Pitt must return to power; and those who are inclined to think sulkily of all ministers, look upon the whole as an intrigue, to save Pitt's honour to the Irish Roman Catholics, and yet preserve his power. Those rumours have received additional strength from a grand dinner given the other day in the city, on his birthday, at which his friends mustered in great force, and his name was toasted with the most lavish panegyric. Among the rest, a song, said to be by George Rose, of whose claims to the laurel no one had ever heard before – was received with great applause. Some of its stanzas were sufficiently applicable.

"No Jacobin rites in our fêtes shall prevail,Ours the true feast of reason, the soul's social flow;Here we cherish the friend, while the patriot we hail,As true to his country – as stern to her foe.Impress'd with his worth,We indulge in our mirth,And bright shines the planet that ruled at his birth.Round the orbit of Britain, oh, long may it move,Like the satellite circling the splendours of Jove!"To the name of a Pitt, in the day of the past,Her rank 'mid the nations our country may trace;Though his statue may moulder, his memory will last,The great and the good live again in their race;Ere to time's distant day,Our marble conveyThe fame that now blooms, and will know no decay,Our fathers' example our breasts shall inspireAnd we'll honour the Son as they honour'd the Sire."

The public doubts of the peace are at length settled. A note has been sent from the Foreign Office to the Lord Mayor, announcing that the definitive treaty had been finally settled at Amiens, on the 27th of March, by the plenipotentiaries of England, France, Spain, and the Batavian Republic. The treaty, as it transpires, is the source of general cavil. It leaves to France all her conquests, while England restores every thing except Ceylon and Trinidad; the one a Dutch colony, and the other a Spanish; both powers having been our Allies at the commencement of the war. The Cape is to be given back to the Dutch; but Malta, the principal bone of contention, is to be garrisoned by a Neapolitan force, until a Maltese garrison can be raised, and the island is then to be declared independent, under the guarantee of all the great powers of Europe. The French government affected to display great reluctance to conclude even this treaty, which has thus taken six months of negotiation since the exchange of preliminaries. At one time, orders were sent for the Channel fleet to put to sea. Yet there can be no question that France desired this Peace, whether as a resting time for a fresh attack, or from the mere exhaustion of war. She had already gained every object that she could hope to obtain by arms in her present condition, and her natural policy was to secure what she had thus attained. The two grand prizes of her ambition, Egypt and the command of the Mediterranean, had been boldly aimed at, but she had lost both, and both were now evidently hopeless. Some of those straws, too, had been thrown up, which, if they show nothing else, show the direction of the wind; and there were evident signs in the almost royal pomp of the First Consul, in the appointments of officers of state for ten years, and the constituting the Consulate an office for life; in the preparations for the return of the emigrants, and in the superb receptions at the Tuilleries – that Bonaparte already contemplated the last days of the republic. To what new shape of power his ambition looks is yet only in conjecture. But he is ambitious, daring, and unscrupulous – the idol of the army, and the wonder of the people. He may shrink, like Cæsar, from the diadem, or he may assume, like Cromwell, the power of a king, without the name; but the field is open before him, and France can offer no competition.

Darwin, the author of the "Botanic Garden," has just died at the age of seventy-one. His death will leave a chasm, though one not incapable of being filled up, in our didactic poetry. His "Loves of the Plants" was a new idea, thrown into agreeable verse; and a new idea is always popular. For a while his poem obtained great celebrity: but Nature alone is permanent; and after the first surprise wore off, the quaintness of his inventions, and the minute artifice of his poetic machinery, repelled the public taste. The Linnæan system, partly indecent, and partly ridiculous, was felt to be wholly unfitted for the blazonry of versification; and his poem, the labour of years, sank into obscurity as rapidly as it had risen into distinction. It is now wholly unread, and almost wholly forgotten; yet it contains bold passages, and exhibits from time to time happiness of epithet, and harmony of language. Its subject degrades the poem; its casual allusions constitute its merit. Vegetable loves must be an absurdity in any language; but Darwin's mind was furnished with variety of knowledge, and he lavished it on his subject with Oriental profusion. He had eloquence, but he wanted feeling; knowledge, but he wanted taste; and invention, but he wanted nature. The want of any one of the three would have been dangerous to his fame as a poet, but his deficiency in the three together left him to drop into remediless oblivion.

A curious attempt hast just shown the popular opinion of ministerial honesty. The Attorney-General has prosecuted, and brought to conviction, a fellow in some low trade, who, hearing that Mr Addington was prime minister, and thinking of course that a prime minister could do all things, sent an actual offer of £2000 to him for a place in the Customs, on which he happened to set his heart. Unluckily for the applicant, he was a century too late. However those matters might have been managed a hundred years ago, less tangible means than money now rule the world. Besides, no man who knew any thing of Addington, ever attached a suspicion of the kind to him. Erskine made a speech in the defence, the best that could be made on such a subject, but not the most flattering to the vanity of his client. It was that he was a blockhead, and had no idea of the absurdity that he was committing. Among other instances of his ignorance, he said, that when he saw the subpoena served upon him, he thought that it was the appointment to his place. But even his idiotism could not save him, and the affair ended in his being sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and £100 fine.

Christie, the auctioneer, the other day, gave a happy specimen of the eloquence of the hammer. He is at the head of his trade, and sells all the remarkable things. On this occasion the Pigot diamond had come into his hands. It is a very fine brilliant, but objected to by the connoisseurs as not having sufficient depth. It was valued at £40,000. But at this sale the auctioneer could not raise its price above £9500, or guineas. He then appealed to his audience, a crowd of the fair and fashionable, —

"How unfortunate," said he, "is it, for the owners of this incomparable production, that they should have brought it into the market in a country so famed for female beauty as England! Here the charms of the sex require no such additions; here the eyes of the ladies sparkle with brilliancy which outvies all the gems of the East. In other countries this incomparable stone would be sought as a necessary aid; here it can be valued only as a splendid superfluity." The room rang with applause.

One of the heroes of Junius has just died; the veteran Wellbore Ellis, Lord Mendip. This man's whole life was spent in public employments. He was the son of an Irish bishop, whose brother – such were the curious qualities of the time – took orders in the Popish Church, followed the Pretender, and died a Popish bishop. Young Ellis, after an education at Westminster and Oxford, was brought into parliament under the Pelhams, who made him a lord of the Admiralty. Under the Newcastle administration which followed, he was appointed to the lucrative post of Irish vice-treasurer, which he held undisturbed through all the struggles of the Cabinet till the Grenville administration, when he was raised still higher, and became Secretary at War.

The Grenvilles fell; the Marquis of Rockingham brought in his friends and Ellis was superseded in his Irish office by Colonel Barré. For five unlucky years he continued in that Limbo of patriots, exclusion from place. At length, the Premiership of Lord North recalled him. He again obtained the Vice-treasurership, and in the final distress of that unpopular administration, was for a short time raised even to the Colonial Secretaryship. But North was driven from power, and all his adherents fell along with him. Rockingham, the North and Fox coalition, and Pitt, exhibited a succession of premierships, which ended in the exclusion of the whole Whig principle, in all its shapes and shades, for twenty years. Ellis was now growing old; he was rich; he had been a public man for upwards of forty years; he had been fiercely abused by the opposition writers while he continued in office, and fiercely attacked by the government writers when in opposition. He had thus his full share of all that public life furnishes to its subjects, and he seemed inclined to spend the remainder of his days in quiet. But the French Revolution came. Startled at the ruin with which its progress threatened all property, he joined that portion of the Whigs which allied itself with the great Minister. The Duke of Portland entered the cabinet, and Wellbore Ellis was raised to the peerage. There his career, not unworthily, closed; and his remaining years were given to private society, to books, of which he had a celebrated collection, and to the recollections of the Classics, of which he possessed an early mastery. He was an acute and accomplished man. The fiery indignation of Junius rather threw a light than inflicted an injury on his character. That first of political satirists spared none; and the universal nature of his attacks made men receive them, as they receive a heavy shower, falling on all alike, and drenching the whole multitude together.