Page images
PDF
EPUB

enemy to the Duke of Marlborough. They would have given her a place in the ministry, but there was no precedent for giving an office to one of her sex; so they introduced her into the cabinet. When the party with whom Mother Gin had thus allied herself seemed sure of final triumph, accidental events overthrew them, and the Whigs came in with the House of Hanover. The new government were not unwilling to give Mother Gin credit for her political influence, until the legislature, "grow"ing jealous of her power, and being apprehensive lest she should assume to "herself the sole direction of all affairs, "ecclesiastical, civil, and military, they "passed a very severe and arbitrary law [the Riot Act was passed in the first year of the reign of George I.] prohibit "ing her followers, to the number of "twelve or more, from assembling in a "riotous and tumultuous manner, under "the pain of death; which amounted to "the same thing as restraining them

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

"from assembling at all; for how would "these wise lawgivers have the people "assemble together, if they are not to do "it in a riotous and tumultuous manner? "For my part, I am at a loss to guess; "but, as this is a law which has been "proved by the ingenious authors of the "Craftsman and Fog's Journal to be

directly contrary to Magna Charta, and "in manifest violation of the liberties of "the subject, I entirely fall in with their "way of thinking, that little or no regard "ought to be had to it."

Thus oppressed, Mother Gin appeared less frequently in public affairs, except at the elections of members to Parliament. She had been a staunch Tory, and still preserved her attachment to that party; but under the government of the second George she had gradually yielded to the tide, and entered the ranks of the patriots. These, however, knew that she was not cordially with them, and this was the reason why they now sought to destroy her.

FISHERMEN-NOT OF GALILEE.

(AFTER READING A CERTAIN BOOK.)

THEY have toiled all the night, the long, weary night;
They have toiled all the night, Lord, and taken nothing:
The heavens are as brass, and all flesh seems as grass,
Death strikes with horror and life with loathing.

Walk'st Thou by the waters, the dark silent waters,
The fathomless waters that no line can plumb?
Art Thou Redeemer, or a mere schemer,

Preaching a kingdom that cannot come?

Not a word say'st Thou: no wrath betray'st Thou:
Scarcely delay'st Thou their terrors to lull;
On the shore standing, mutely commanding,

"Let down your nets!"-And they draw them up-full!

*

Jesus, Redeemer-only Redeemer!

I, a poor dreamer, lay hold upon Thee: Thy will pursuing, though no end viewing, But simply doing as Thou biddest me.

Though Thee I see not,-either light be not,

Or Thou wilt free not the scales from mine eyesI ne'er gainsay Thee, but only obey Thee; Obedience is better than sacrifice.

Though on my prison gleams no open vision,
Walking Elysian by Galilee's tide,

Unseen, I feel Thee, and death will reveal Thee:
I shall wake in Thy likeness, satisfied.

VINDICIE NAPOLEONIANE

BY EDWARD DICEY.1

THAT all philosophic history is nothing but a reproduction of the present under the garb and nomenclature of the past is, I think, a theory which might be sustained by strong arguments. We hear often of writers who are said to have thrown themselves successfully into the spirit of a bygone age; but of the justice of such a verdict there are― and can be by the nature of the caseno judges extant.

,,Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heißt, Das ist im Grund' der Herren eigner Geist, In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln.“

So Faust declared, even before he had met with Mephistopheles; and, the more men study history, the more, I think, they will become sceptical as to the possibility of ever evoking the past out of your own consciousness. And, therefore, holding this faith, or want of faith, I should have been surprised if a man, writing at our present era, had been able to produce anything which seemed even a life-like representation of that state of men's minds and thoughts and hopes and fears, nineteen centuries ago, which rendered the Roman empire first a possibility and then a fact. I once heard of a very young man who, being present at a gathering of great authorities on AngloSaxon lore, earned a reputation for

We are glad that Mr. Dicey, in this article, should express his own sentiments respecting the Emperor and his book; but we may find occasion to return to the subject.-Editor.

sagacity by remarking with perfect truth that "after all, we knew very little about the history of early Britain." A similar confession might be made with advantage about any period removed from the memory of living men. And, therefore, to my mind, it is no impeachment on the last "Life of Cæsar" to say, that the Imperial author has failed to make the era which gave birth to his hero intelligible to us. Of all nations, the one least likely to produce a faithful limner of a past period is the French. It is at once the strength and weakness of the Gallic intellect that it is so eminently self-contained. With the representative Frenchman, all knowledge, and history, and science are confined within the limits of France. As far as I could ever discover, the real cause of the exceptional study which Frenchmen. have always devoted to the history of Rome consists in a belief, whether mistaken or otherwise, that the great Republic was in some sense a prototype of France. No doubt the half Italian nature of the Buonaparte would cause the Emperor, as it caused his uncle, to regard Rome with an almost superstitious reverence; and traces of this Italian sentiment may be discerned frequently throughout the pages of the "Life of Cæsar." But, both for good and evil, the essence of this work is French; it is a book which none but a Frenchman could have written, or possibly, when it was written, could thoroughly appreciate.

[ocr errors]

Of the merits of this biography as a historical study it is not my purpose to speak. In the first place, the space I have at present at command is inadequate; in the second, this feature of the subject can only be discussed by experts in the matter of Roman history; and, in the third, if a searching criticism were required into the accuracy or inaccuracy of the statements made and the facts propounded, I am not the writer who should be selected for the task. All I desire to do in these brief comments is to point out the illustrations afforded by this remarkable work as to the theory of modern Imperialism. I see that amongst my brother reviewers it is the fashion to regard this book as a simple manifesto in favour of the Napoleonic rule. This theory I believe to be a mistaken one. Amongst men whom action has made famous, no desire is more common than that of achieving a reputation in the world of letters which shall endure beyond the memory of their lives. To be able to say, Exegi monumentum cere perennius is a wish which has agitated the heart of many a man, whose life will be always his best monument. It is impossible to read through this history of the foundation of the Roman Empire without perceiving that its author intends it to rank as a work of sterling historic value, as a book that will be read even when the Napoleons have vanished as completely as the Cæsars. If the Emperor had designed simply to vindicate his own dynasty under a Latin name, he would have chosen some more direct form of vindication, or, at least, would have treated of some one of the many phases of history which afford a closer parallel to his own era and to the part which he has taken in it. Yet, allowing all this, to his own contemporaries the chief interest of the book will reside in the glimpses afforded by it of the Imperial view of things as they are in our years of grace, not in those which date from the foundation of the eternal city. It will be for a future generation to judge of the work by its intrinsic merits. We, who are reading the writings

of a man who has made history and is still engaged in making it, must perforce look for the light it throws on the present and the future-not for that it casts upon the past. And my wish in this paper is to illustrate the moral to be drawn from those passages where the author obviously thought of France when he wrote of Rome, of the Napoleons when he wrote of the Cæsars.

The parallel between the first Napoleon and the first Cæsar seems to me to be by no means the main feature of what I may call the esoteric lesson of this latest treatise on the history of Rome. The volume just published only brings us to the triumvirate of Pompey, Crassus, and Cæsar; and the last named of the three had then scarcely commenced his attempt to overthrow the liberties of the Republic. The real object of these pages is to show that the state of Rome was such that the welfare of the community demanded a change that the forms of freedom had ceased to represent any substantial benefits, and that a saviour of society was called for urgently. A similar defence is far more applicable to the usurpation of the third Napoleon than of the first. Amongst the countless accusations brought against the founder of the Napoleonic dynasty, the one of having destroyed a stable order of liberty to erect a despotism upon its ruins has never been urged seriously. Moreover it must be admitted fairly that in the eyes of Frenchmen the Great Napoleon needs no justification. It is in England only that Napoleonic worship has never made its way. With this scepticism I find no fault; but still I could wish that as a nation we had done fuller justice to what was grand and noble in the greatest of our enemies. To any one who has lived much in foreign countries —it matters little in what portion of the civilized world-there is something absolutely astonishing in the tone which even educated Englishmen adopt when speaking of the Emperor who, in the wild words of Victor Hugo, became at last so mighty that "il gênait Dieu !" It was only the other day I saw, in the

[blocks in formation]

as if we were still in the days of Gilray, when our caricaturists depicted poor George III. as a giant holding a dwarf in his hand, fashioned after the likeness of the "Corsican adventurer "as if, like the Bourbons, we had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. In any other country, such a picture would have been self-condemned as ludicrous; in most it would have been scouted as scurrilous. The instinct of great multitudes is seldom, I think, wrong. There was little, one might have thought beforehand, to endear the memory of Napoleon to the nations whom he conquered, and whose kings he deposed; but yet, right or wrong, the conqueror of Jena and Marengo and Moscow is to the present hour the idol of popular worship throughout half the world. Go where you will, north or south, east or west, from the shores of the Black Sea to the banks of the Mississippi -enter any tavern or peasant dwellingand the chances are that, amidst the memorials of the country in which you are a traveller, you will find some rude likeness of that grand, godlike face, some picture of the scenes where the peoples' hero fought and conquered. We talk of the universality of Garibaldi's fame; it is nothing to that which Napoleon still enjoys in the memory of men, though half a century has passed since the Hundred Days ended on the field of Waterloo.

Thus in as far as the "Life of Cæsar" is meant as a vindication of the Napoleonic rule, it is designed, I conceive, far more as a vindication of its later development than of its primary one. How far it succeeds in this object, or, rather, what hints it suggests in defence thereof, is what I desire to call attention to, as fully as I can, in this brief notice.

In the first place the reader is asked throughout to assume a certain theory of fate. "If the Romans, after giving an

[ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]

public from returning to the purity of "its ancient institutions; it is because "the new events and interests of a "society in labour required other means "to satisfy them." (I am quoting, let me say once for all, from the English version, the best perhaps that could be made, though in many cases conveying the meaning of the writer but inadequately; as, for instance, in this extract, where "fatalement" is translated "by fatality.")

This passage I take to be the key-note of the history. In ordinary criticism. the argument thus shadowed forth is dismissed at once, with the comment that it is mere fatalism. Epithets, however, are not proofs. The whole theory of a providential direction of history, so commonly received amongst us, is only fatalism veiled beneath theological verbiage. No man, I think, who has ever thought upon the subject at all, but must have arrived at the conclusion that the growth and decay of institutions, the rise and decline and fall of nations, are regulated by certain laws, as fixed and as unknown as those which affect the birth, development, and suspension of animal existence. To what extent the operation of these general laws is, or can be, modified by individual action, is a problem which never can be solved till we reconcile the conflicting claims of Omniscience and free will. If fatalism means that everything is regulated by some unalterable cause, which can neither be retarded nor accelerated by individual effort, then the writer, whose aim it is to show that the world has been redeemed by : single greatness of Cæsars or Napons, is assuredly not a fatalist. All that is asserted by the words I have quoted is a belief that when the hour is come the man will not be wanting, and that the coming of the hour is in itself a vindication of the man's action.

This theory may be disputed, possibly disproved; but it is one entirely different from, if not antagonistic to, that of fatalism.

By far the greater portion, then, of this first instalment of the "Life of Cæsar" is devoted to the endeavour to prove that, in the latter days of the Roman Commonwealth, the hour had come when a saviour of society was wanted. And the manner in which this view is supported is, in itself, a masterpiece of graphic talent. It is possible that the correctness of the author's facts may be questioned, the value of his authorities disputed, and that his picture may be shown to be overcoloured. But, if we take his facts for granted, the use made of them is wonderfully skilful. The very coldness and conciseness of the style add to the effect produced. From the days of the Roman kings to those of the end of the republic, a long panorama is unrolled before us. War follows war, insurrection insurrection, and tumult tumult. We see before us a people with vast energies, high ambitions, and great destinies, agitated by constant disturbance, and the disputes of rival factions-a prey in turns to aristocratic tyranny, and demagogic anarchy, and military violence. A world distracted by the contests for supremacy at Rome; the interest of Italy sacrificed to the local jealousies of the "Caput orbis terrarum"; the Eternal City itself the scene of constant riot, and confusion, and bloodshed; a neverending war of classes; a society demoralized by wealth; an aristocracy devoid of virtue; a government which retained the form of freedom without the benefits which make freedom valuable; a decaying faith, and a longing for any change, so that it brought peace at home, and order and quiet: these are the main features in the Napoleonic picture of that era which heralded in the advent of Cæsar, when "all the forces of society, "paralysed by intestine divisions, and "powerless for good, appeared to revive "only for the purpose of throwing obsta"cles in its way," when "military glory "and eloquence, those two instruments

"of Roman power, inspired only distrust "and envy," when "the triumph of the "generals was regarded not so much as

66

a success for the republic as a source "of personal gratification." Is there not, it is intended that some should ask, much in this gloomy portrait which might be applied not inaptly to the condition of France during the period that succeeded the revolution of February, and preceded the "Coup d'État "?

So it came to pass that "Italy demanded a master." The instincts of democracy, growing more powerful with each succeeding year, taught it that "its interests are better represented by an individual than by a political body;" and the old dread of tyrants, which the senate had hitherto appealed to successfully, in order to crush the true champions of the popular cause, had lost its hold upon the people. The Gracchi, Marius, Sylla, Catiline, might each have founded "what is called the Empire," had it not been that they each represented factions, not the nation. "To establish a durable order of things "there was wanted a man, who, "raising himself above vulgar passions, "should unite in himself the essential

[ocr errors]

qualities and just ideas of each of his "predecessors, avoiding their faults as "well as their errors. To the greatness "of soul and love of the people of cer"tain tribunes, it was needful to join "the military genius of great generals, "and the strong sentiments of the "Dictator in favour of order and the hierarchy. . . . . That man was "Cæsar." If instead of Cæsar you put Napoleon III. is it not clear that such is the epitaph that the writer would desire to have written of himself by some future historian of the Second Empire? There is no attempt throughout these pages to vindicate the seizure of supreme power by any technical plea or legal subterfuge. The "salus reipublica" is the one argument that the author feels can be safely used in defence either of Cæsars or of Napoleons. "Laws," we are told, may be justly "broken when society is hurrying on

[ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »