Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. by Various

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* * * * *

I have always held that the life of man's mind, where man _has_ a
mind--which is not always the case--is a thing of fits and starts. I
even doubt whether any one who will take the trouble to recollect, will
not be able to put his finger on the precise periods at which new views
of every thing suddenly opened before him, and he emerged at once, if
not into new powers, at least into a new use of them. The frame may grow
like a tree; the faculties may grow as imperceptibly as the frame; but
the mind acquires that knowledge of life which forms its exercise, its
use, and perhaps its essence, by bounds and flights. This moonlight walk
with my old and honoured Mentor, was the beginning of my mental
adolescence. My manhood was still to come, and with a more severe
instructor.

As we were passing slowly through the plantations which encircled the
Castle with all the noble and profuse shelter and ornament which our
ancestors loved, a distant sound of music came on the wind. I then
remembered, for the first time, that my brother had, on that evening,
given a ball to the county, and a sudden sense of the difference of our
lots in life, came painfully over me;--the course of secure wealth and
English enjoyment, contrasted with the dependence and wandering which
must form the existence of myself, and so many thousands of younger
brothers.

I was awakened from my reverie by the voice of my companion. His face
was upturned to the cloudless sky, and he was murmuring the fine passage
in the Merchant of Venice.

"Look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins:
Such harmony is in immortal souls."

"Do you know, Charles," said he, "what changed the whole current of my
life? what, in fact, brought me back to England?" and there was a slight
pause. "What made me a Christian? It was such a night as this. As you
now know the chief part of my story, I need have no further concealment
on the subject. I had recovered from my wounds, and was preparing to set
out for Vienna, when one night a tempest blew down our tents, and left
us to trust to the open air for the hours till morning. Tempests in the
south are violent, but they are generally brief, and this gale cleared
the sky of every cloud. As I lay on the ground, and gazed on the unusual
splendour of the stars, the thought occurred to me, Why should doubts of
a future state ever come into the mind of man? Why should he hesitate
about its reality? Was it not there, before his eyes? Were not the very
regions of future existence already within the reach of one of his
senses? Why might they not yet be within the reach of all? Of course I
do not give you all the vague thoughts which passed through my mind; but
the permanence, power, and astonishing multitude of those bright worlds,
impressed themselves on me with a new force. I had known all those
matters before, but on this night I felt them. My next thoughts were of
the power, the wisdom, and the majesty of the mighty Being by whom all
this had been formed, moved, and sustained through thousands of years. I
need not follow the history of my conversion--for a conversion it was.
When I looked round me on the sleeping troops, I saw nothing but clods
of the valley--gallant beings, but as insensible to their high
inheritance as the chargers they rode. My heart moved me towards them;
and perhaps, in some instances, I succeeded in giving them my own ideas.
But Austria defies, at least, all human change. I was not a fanatic, and
I had no wish to strive with impossibilities. I sent in my resignation;
abandoned the 'pride, pomp, and circumstance' of the most tempting of
all human pursuits, and returned to England to be, what you see me now."

With this man I could have no reserves, and I freely asked his advice on
the plunge which I was about to make into that fathomless tide of good
and ill, the world. I mentioned the Church as the profession which my
mother had suggested, but for which I did not conceive either my temper
or my habits suitable.

"You are right, then, in abandoning the idea altogether," was the
answer; "and yet I know no profession more capable of fulfilling all the
objects of a vigorous mind. I am not now talking of mitres; they can
fall to but few. I speak of the prospects which it opens to all; the
power of exerting the largest influence for the highest purposes; the
possession of fame without its emptiness, and the indulgence of
knowledge without its vanity; energy turned to the most practical and
lofty uses of man; and the full feast of an ambition superior to the
tinsel of the world, and alike pure in its motives, and immeasurable in
its rewards."

"And, yet," said I, naming one or two of our clerical slumberers, "the
profession seems not to be a very disturbing one."

"Those men, was the answer, would have been slumberers at the bar, in
senates, or in the field. I may be prejudiced in favour of the choice
which I made so long since, and which I have never found reason to
repent. But I have not the slightest wish to prejudice any one in its
favour. There is no profession which more requires a peculiar mind;
contentment, with whatever consciousness of being overlooked; patience,
with whatever hopelessness of success; labour, for its own sake; and
learning, with few to share, few to admire, and fewer still to
understand."

"If my father had lived," said I, "it was his intention to have tried my
chance in diplomacy."

"Probably enough; for he had figured in that line himself. I remember
him secretary of embassy at Vienna. Perhaps you will scarcely believe,
that I, too, have had my experience on the subject? Accident once made
me an attache to our envoy at Naples. The life is an easy one. Idleness
was never more perfectly reduced to a system, than among the half dozen
functionaries to whom the interests of the British empire were entrusted
in the capital of the Lazzaroni. As the Frenchman said of the Academy,
'We had nothing to do, and we did it.'"

"Italy," said I, "is the land of pleasure, and the Lazzaroni are its
philosophers, but one cannot sleep like them in the face of day, and all
day long. Let what will come, I have no desire to be a weed on the
shore."

"No; we had our occupations; for we had the attendance on the court
days--a business of as much formality, as if the fate of mankind
depended on it. Then we had the attendance on the opera at night, a
matter nearly as tiresome. The post from England reached Naples but once
a-week, and scarcely once a month conveyed any intelligence that was
worth the postage. But, if politics were out of the question, we had
negotiation in abundance; for we carried on the whole diplomacy of the
opera-house in London, engaged _primo tenores_, and settled the rival
claims of _prima donnas_; gave our critical opinions on the merits of
dancers worthy of appearing before the British _cognoscenti_; and
dispatched poets, ballet-masters, and scene-painters, to our managers,
with an activity worthy of the purest patriotism. What think you of the
bar?"

"I have no head for its study; and no heart for its employment."

"It leads more rapidly to rank than any other profession under the sun;
profit beyond counting, and a peerage. Those are no bad things."

"Both capital, if one could be secure of them. But they take too much
time for me. I never was born to sit on the woolsack. No; if I were to
follow my own inclination, I should be a soldier."

I have already said that I have been, throughout life, a kind of
believer in omens. I have seen such a multitude of things decided by
some curious coincidence, some passing occurrence, some of those odd
trifles for which it is impossible to account, but which occur at the
instant when the mind is wavering on the balance; that I feel no wonder
at the old superstitions of guessing our destiny from the shooting of a
star, or the flight of birds. While we were rambling onward, discussing
the merits and demerits of the profession of arms, we heard the winding
of the mail-guard's horn. I sprang the fence, and waited in the road to
enquire the last news from the metropolis. It was momentous--the
Revolution had effectually broken out. Paris was in an uproar. The
king's guards had taken up arms for the people. The Bastile was stormed!

If I had hesitated before, this news decided me; not that I pretend to
have even dreamed of the tremendous changes which were to be produced in
the world by that convulsion. But it struck me as the beginning of a
time, when the lazy quietude of years was about to be broken up, and
room made for all who were inclined to exert themselves. Before we had
reached the level lawns and trim parterres which showed us the lights of
the family festivity, I had settled all the difficulties which might
impede the career of less fortunate individuals; time and chance were
managed with the adroitness of a projector; and if Bellona had been one
of the Nine Muses, my speculations could not have been more poetical.
Somewhat to my surprise, they received no check from my venerable tutor;
quite the contrary. The singular sympathy with which he listened to my
most daring and dashing conceptions, would have betrayed his early
history if I had still the knowledge to acquire. His very looks, as he
listened to my rodomontades, recurred to me, when I read, many years
after, Scott's fine description of his soldier-monk in the Lay of the
Last Minstrel:--

"Again on the knight look'd the churchman old,
And again he sigh'd heavily,
For he had himself been a warrior bold,
And fought in Spain and Italy.
And he thought on the days that were long gone by,
When his limbs were strong, and his courage was high."

* * * * *

The news from France produced a sensation throughout England totally
indescribable at the present day. Every tongue and every heart was full
of it. It offered something for every mind of the million to seize on.
Like a waterspout, such as I have seen sweeping over the bosom of the
Atlantic, half-descending from the skies, and half-ascending from the
deep; every second man whom one met gave it credit for a different
origin, some looking at the upper portion and some at the lower; while,
in the mean time, the huge phenomenon was blackening, gathering, and
rushing onward, threatening to turn all above into darkness and all
below into storm. It made the grand subject of parliamentary eloquence,
and parliament was never more eloquent; it filled the speeches of the
factious, it was hailed by the shouts of the multitude, and it disturbed
the fireside with fear and hope, with wishing and wonder. It must be
acknowledged that a vast quantity of this excitement was absolute folly;
but, at the same time, there was a sincerity in the folly which redeemed
it from ridicule. Nothing could be more evident than that this French
patriotism was as theatrical, in the countless majority of instances, as
the loves and sorrows of its stage. Yet, however the speeches might be
got by heart, or the frippery and actors hired, the _drame_ was
powerfully performed; and all Europe sat by, giving it the tribute of
its tears and its terrors. Even we of England, with all our more sober
recollections that the heroes were ragamuffins, and the heroism
imaginary, gave ourselves up to the illusion. I shall not say that I was
wiser than the rest of mankind. I liked excitement, wherever it was to
be found. The barriers to distinction were still too firmly closed
against the youngest son of an embarrassed family, not to suggest many a
wish for whatever chance might burst the gate, or blow up the rampart;
and my first effort in political life was a harangue to the rabble of
the next borough, conceived in the most Gallic style. Yet this act of
absurdity had the effect of forwarding my views more rapidly than if I
had become an aristocratic Demosthenes. My speech was so much applauded
by the mob, that they began to put its theories in practice, though with
rather more vigour than I had dreamed of. There were riots, and even
some attempts at the seizure of arms; and the noble duke, our neighbour,
had received a threatening letter, which sent him at full gallop to the
Home Secretary. A note, by no means too gentle in its tone, was
instantly despatched to my noble brother, enquiring why he did not
contrive to keep the minor branches of his family in better order, and
threatening him with the withdrawal of the county patronage. My demand
of a commission in the Guards was no longer answered by the head of our
house with astonishment at the loftiness of my expectations, and
statements of the utter emptiness of the family exchequer. The result of
his brief correspondence with Downing Street was a letter, notifying
that his majesty was pleased to accept my services in the Coldstream.

I was enraptured, and my brother was enraptured, for we had both gained
our objects. I had got rid of him and ennui. He had got rid of me, and
the displeasure of the grand dispensers of place and pension. No time
was lost in forwarding me to make my bow at the Horse Guards; and my
noble brother lost as little time in making me put my hand to a paper,
in which, for prompt payment, I relinquished one half of my legacy. But
what cared I for money? I had obtained a profession in which money was
contemptible, the only purse the military chest, and the only prize,
like Nelson's, a peerage or Westminster Abbey. The ferment did not cool
within the week, and within that period I had taken leave of half the
county, been wished laurels and aiguillettes by a hundred or a thousand
of the fairest of our country belles; and been wished a thousand miles
off by the wise matrons, to whom the sight of a "younger son without
house or land" is a nuisance, a kite among their family pigeons.

At that moment, however, all their dovecots were secure. I should not
have spent a sigh on the Venus de Medicis had she sprung from her
pedestal to enchant me. The world was open before me; and trite and
trifling objects were no more to occupy my time. I felt like one who,
after wandering all day through the depths of an American forest,
suddenly reaches its border, and sees before him the boundless prairie,
with its boundlessness still more striking, from the absence of any
distinct object on which the eye could rest. What were horses, dogs, and
country dinners, to the world of London and of life which now came in
full, and, I will own it, extravagant vision before me? The ideas which
I conceived of men and things, of my own fortunes, and the fortunate
exercise of my own powers, were of an order which, in my calmer days,
have often made me smile; yet what is the whole early life of man but a
predisposition to fever? and I was then throbbing on the fiery verge of
the disease.

I shall say but little of my first sensations on reaching London. My
eyes and ears were in full activity. But the impression upon all who
enter this mightiest of capitals for the first time, is nearly the same.
Its perpetual multitude, its incessant movement, its variety of
occupations, sights and sounds, the echo of the whole vast and sleepless
machinery of national existence, have been a thousand times the subject
of description, and always of wonder. Yet, I must acknowledge, that its
first sight repelled me. I had lived in field and forest, my society had
been among my fellows in rank; I had lived in magnificent halls, and
been surrounded by bowing attendants; and now, with my mind full of the
calm magnificence of English noble life, I felt myself flung into the
midst of a numberless, miscellaneous, noisy rabble, all rushing on
regardless of every thing but themselves, pouring through endless lines
of dingy houses; and I nothing, an atom in the confusion, a grain of
dust on the great chariot wheel of society, a lonely and obscure
struggler in the mighty current of human life, which rolled along the
sullen channels of the most cheerless, however it might be the largest,
of capitals.

For the first week, I was absolutely unable to collect my thoughts. All
that I learned was, to make my way through the principal thoroughfares,
and know the names of her chief buildings. In later days, I took a more
practical view of matters, and regarded them only as places in which the
business of the hour was to be done. But in my first view, something of
the romance and revival of my forest walks clung to me. I remember that,
when I first saw the Horse Guards, to which, of course, one of my
earliest visits was paid, I found no slight difficulty in thinking of it
as only a remarkably clownish mass of brick and stone, crowded with
clerks. To me it was the very palace of war; the spot from which the
thunderbolts of England were launched; the centre and the stronghold of
that irresistible influence with which England sways and moulds mankind.
The India House was another of my reveries. I could not think of it as
but a huge pile in a vulgar outlet of the city, as a place of porters
and messengers loitering in gloomy corridors, of busy clerks for ever
scribbling in nooks unvisited by the sun, or even of portly directors,
congregating in halls encrusted with the cobwebs of centuries. To my
eyes it was invested with the mystery and dignity of Orientalism. I
thought of the powers by which rajahs were raised and overthrown, of the
mandates which spread war and restored peace over regions wide as
Europe, and a thousand times more brilliant. I had rambling visions of
armies of elephants, superb cavalry, and chieftains covered with gold
and diamonds. As I traversed the dusky halls, I thought of the will
which pronounced the fate of kingdoms, the fallen glories of Aurengzebe,
the broken sceptre of the Mahratta, and the crushed tiara of Mysore.
Round me was the moving power of an empire, the noblest that the East
has ever seen, and which, in the act of assuming additional greatness,
by a contradiction to all the laws of extended conquest, was hourly
assuming additional stability.

And yet, and yet, are not those the true views, after all? Are the
effects to be forgotten in the instruments, or is it not the result
which forms the character of the whole? Are we to think of the dagger
which strikes the master of a throne, as only the steel in the hand of
an assassin, or as the summoner to civil war and the subversion of
thrones? Is the pen which pours political frenzy through the hearts of
living millions, or sheds the splendours of poetry over millions still
to come, to be valued only as the feather of a bird? Or is the press
itself to be remembered only as a dexterous combination of springs and
screws; or to be bowed down to as the steward of all the hidden
treasures of mind--as the breaker of intellectual chains, the avenger of
injured rights, the moral Hercules that goes forth turning the
wilderness to fertility, and smiting the monsters of the world?

But among the wonders of the time, there was one which struck me with
prodigious force, which has remained on my recollection to this hour,
and which still survives with undiminished vividness. It was the acting
of Siddons.

The stage is now almost undone. The absurd liberalism of the day has
given every corner of London a theatre, and has degraded the character
of the stage in all. By scattering the ability which still exists, it
has stripped the great theatres of the very means of representing
dramatic excellence; while, by adopting popular contrivances to obtain
temporary success, they have driven away dramatic genius in contempt or
in despair. Our stage is now condemned to be fed like a felon from the
dungeons, and, like the felon, to feel a stigma in every morsel which it
puts between its lips. It must stoop to French frivolity, or German
extravagance, and be glad to exist upon either. Yet, why should not
higher names come to its aid? Why should not the State relieve the
difficulties of a great institution, which might be made to repay its
assistance a thousand-fold? Is there nothing that could be withdrawn
from the waste of our civil lists, or the pomp of public establishments,
to reunite, to purify, and even to exalt the stage? The people _will_
have theatres. Good or evil, noble or degraded, the stage will be
demanded by the people. Is it a thing indifferent to our rulers, to
supply them with this powerful and universal excitement in its highest
degree of moral influence, or in its lowest degree of impurity; to bring
before them, with all the attractions of the drama, the memory of heroes
and sages, patriots and martyrs, or leave them to rake for the
indulgence of eye and ear in the very kennels of crime?

"They order those things better in France."

Unquestionably. The care of Government there protects the national
taste, and prevents the theatres from looking for subsistence to the
history of the highway. The vices which now haunt theatres are no more
necessary to their nature, than to the senate or the palace. Why should
not the State interpose to prevent the sale of poison on the stage, as
in the streets? Why should it not offer prizes and honours for great
tragedies and comedies, as soon as it would for a voyage to the Arctic
or Antarctic? But is dramatic genius dead in England? What, in England!
where nothing dies--where every faculty of the heart and understanding
is in the most perpetual activity--where the noblest impulses are
perpetually pushing forward to the noblest ends--where human nature
moves in all its vigour, from hour to hour, without disguise--where the
whole anatomy of the moral frame is visible, and all its weakness, and
all its wonders, are the daily spectacle of all mankind!

In giving these opinions of the powers of the stage, need I guard them
by saying, that I contemplate a higher spirit than the drama even of
Shakspeare has ever displayed--one which, to the vigour of his
characters, and the splendours of his poetry, should add a moral of
which his time was scarcely conscious? My idea would approach more
nearly the objects of the great Greek dramas, in which the first
sympathies of the people were appealed to by the most powerful
recollections of historic virtue; their national victories over the
Persian, the lofty conceptions of their Olympus, the glories of their
national power, and the prospects of their imperishable renown. I
contemplate nothing of the weakness, locality, or license, of our old
drama. I think only of a rich and lofty combination of characters above
the level of our time, thoughts belonging to that elevation, feelings
more generous, vivid, and majestic, and exploits uniting the soaring
spirit of old romance with the sustained strength of modern energy;
Greece in her brightest days of intellectual lustre, Rome in her most
heroic days of patriotism, and England in those days which are yet to
come, and which shall fill up her inheritance of glory.

Siddons was then witching the world--witching, in its more solemn sense;
for though her smile was exquisite, she might have sat for the picture
of a Sybil or a Pythoness. The stage had never seen her equal, and will
probably never see another so completely formed to command all its
influences. Yet her beauty, her acting, even her movement, were
characteristic, and their character was noble melancholy. I never saw so
mournful a countenance combined with so much beauty. Her voice, though
grand, was melancholy--her step, though superb, was melancholy; her very
smile was melancholy; and yet there was so much of living intellect in
her expression, such vast variety of passion in her look and gesture;
she so deeply awoke the feelings, or so awfully impressed the mind; thus
it was impossible to escape the spell, while she moved upon the stage.

In this language there is not the slightest exaggeration. I have seen a
whole audience burst into tears at a single tone of her voice. Her
natural conception was so fine, that the merest commonplace often
received a living spirit from her lips. I have seen a single glance from
her powerful eye hush an audience--I have seen her acting sometimes even
startle and bewilder the actors beside her. There is perhaps a genius
for every art, and hers was the genius of the stage--a faculty of
instant communication between the speaker and the hearer, some
unaccountable sympathy, the power to create which belongs to but one in
millions, and which, where it exists, lifts its possessor to the height
of the Art at once, and constitutes perfection.

It may be presumed that I saw this extraordinary being whenever it was
possible. But her _chef-d'oeuvre_, in my eyes, was the "wife of
Macbeth." The character seemed made for her, by something of that
instinct which in olden times combined the poet and the prophet in one.
It had the ardour and boldness mingled with the solemnity and mystery
that belonged to the character of her beauty.

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