of her extensive empire in two capacities: one, as the local legislature of this island; the other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what I call her imperial character.' (Surely Burke must have been Lord Beaconsfield after all!) My hold of the Colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron.' What a pity it was that the element of тò πɛρITTóv so often marred his practical effectiveness! The best example I know (though in that case we cannot regret the ineffectiveness) will be found in Miss Burney's diary, where she describes her emotions during the speech against Warren Hastings: His opening had struck me with the highest admiration of his powers, from the eloquence, the imagination, the fire, the diversity of expression, and the ready flow of language with which he seemed gifted in a most superior manner for any and every purpose to which rhetoric could lead. And when he came to his two narratives, when he related the particulars of those dreadful murders, he interested, he engaged, he at last overpowered me; I felt my cause lost. I could hardly keep on my seat. My eyes dreaded a single glance towards a man so accused as Mr. Hastings; I wanted to sink on the floor, that they might be saved so painful a sight. I had no hope he could clear himself; not another wish in his favour remained. But when from this narration Mr. Burke proceeded to his own comments and declamation-when the charges of rapacity, cruelty, tyranny were general, and made with all the violence of personal detestation, and continued and aggravated without any further fact or illustration, then there appeared more of study than of truth, more of invective than of justice; and, in short, so little of proof to so much of passion, that in a very short time I began to lift up my head, my seat was no longer uneasy, my eyes were indifferent which way they looked or what object caught them, and before I was myself aware of the declension of Mr. Burke's powers over my feelings, I found myself a mere spectator in a public place, and looking all around it with my opera-glass in my hand' (iv. 119). 11th. A slight bicycling accident, which for the moment reduces me to the sad case of the Cook in the Canterbury Tales' But great larm was it, as it thoughtë me, -kept me from church, and I took down the third volume of Donne's Sermons.' I went by preference to the third volume, not because it contains my favourite sermon, for that is the 76th of vol. i., with its magnificent close, but (let me confess) because my copy is printed on large paper to match the first two volumes, and is, so far as I know, in that state unique. My choice to-day justified itself by coming upon a State Sermon with which one's new-tuned loyalty proved to be in key; a sermon, moreover, containing a panegyric on the Great Queen; a fact sufficiently remarkable considering the sermon preached at St. Paul's Cross before the Council on the anniversary of James's accession. For James did not love Elizabeth, or love her praises. was 'We need not that Edict of the Senate of Rome, Ut sub titulo gratiarum agendarum; That upon pretence of thanking our Princes for that which, we say, they had done, Boni principes quæ facerent recognoscerent, good Princes should take knowledge what they were bound to do, though they had not done so yet. We need not this Circuit, nor this disguise; for God's hand hath been abundant towards us in raising Ministers of State, so qualified, and so endowed and such Princes as have fastened their friendships, and conferred their favors, upon such persons. We celebrate, seasonably, opportunely, the thankful acknowledgment of these mercies this day: This day, which God made for us, according to the pattern of his first days in the Creation; where Vesper et mane dies unus, the evening first and then the morning made up the day; for here the saddest night and the joyfullest morning, that ever the daughters of this Island saw, made up this day. Consider the tears of Richmond this night, and the joys of London at this place, at this time, in the morning; and we shall find Prophecy even in that saying of the Poet, Nocte pluit tota, showers of rain all night, of weeping for our Soveraign; and we would not be comforted, because she was not: And yet, redeunt spectacula mane, the same hearts, the same eyes, the same hands, were all directed upon recognitions, and acclamations of her successor, in the morning: And when every one of you in the City were running up and down. like Ants, with their eggs bigger than themselves, every man with his bags to seek where to hide them safely, Almighty God shed down His Spirit of Unity, and recollecting, and reposedness, and acquiescence, upon you all. In the death of that Queen, unmatchable, inimitable in her sex; that Queen, worthy, I will not say of Nestors years, I will not say of Methusalems, but worthy of Adams years if Adam had never faln; in her death we were all under one common flood and depth of tears. But the Spirit of God moved upon the face of that depth: God took pleasure, and found a savor of rest in our peaceful chearfulness, and in our joyful and confident apprehension of blessed days in His Government, whom he had prepared at first and preserved so often for us. 'As the Rule is true, Cum de Malo principe posteri tacent, manifestum est vilem facere præsentem, when men dare not speak of the vices of a Prince that is dead, it is certain that the Prince that is alive proceeds in the same vices; so the inversion of the Rule is true too, Cum de bono principe loquuntur, when men may speak freely of the virtues of a dead Prince, it is an evident argument that the present Prince practises the same vertues; for, if he did not, he would not love to hear of them. Of her, we may say (that which was well said, and therefore it were pity it should not be once truly said, for so it was not when it was first said to the Emperor Julian), nihil humile aut abjectum cogitavit, quia novit de se semper loquendum; she knew the world would talk of her after her death, and therefore she did such things all her life were worthy to be talked of' (p. 351). There have been three deans who stand out from the decanal multitude as ideal occupiers of the metropolitan stall, men at once of broad culture, fine eloquence, and passionate piety-Colet, Donne, and Church. They had much in common, despite the differences proper to their different periods, and one point especially, that though living in the heart of the great city, they pursued the fallentis semita vitæ. It was a maxim of Colet, and may well have been the maxim of his like-minded successors, Si vis divinus esse, late ut Deus. I was glad to see on my last visit to St. Paul's that Donne's monument, in which he is figured in his shroud, has been restored to the south aisle. (See Walton's Life.) By the way, I observe an appeal to men of wealth in the newspapers, bidding them come forward with subscriptions to decorate in St. Paul's what still needs decorating. The appeal is feathered with the promise to find room in the scheme of decoration for the donor's coat of arms. Certainly heraldic shields are highly decorative, but except on monuments they seem a little out of place in a cathedral. But of famous men,' as Thucydides said, 'the whole earth is a monument.' Perhaps, too, recent research has established Dame Juliana Berners's statement, that the Blessed Virgin was a Princess of Coat Armour.' And the custom is, of course, ancient and well established. Savonarola records it in one of his Lenten sermons just four centuries ago. 'How is it that if I were to say: Give me ten ducats to one in need, thou wouldst not give them; but if I tell thee: Spend a hundred for a chapel here in St. Mark, wouldst thou do it? Yes! in order to have thy coat of arms placed there. Look through all convent buildings, and thou wilt find them full of their founders' armorial bearings. I raise my head to look above a door, thinking to see a crucifix, and behold there is a shield; I raise my head again a little further on, and behold there is another shield. I don a vestment, thinking that a crucifix is painted on it; but arms have been painted even there, the better to be seen by the people.' 14th. I dined yesterday with to meet a few of his Irish friends. They had all been, as it turned out, at Trinity College together, and there is no such college for camaraderie. I am so glad you think so,' one would say, 'for your opinion on a point like that is worth having.' 'I have never forgotten,' the other would presently take occasion to remark, 'the admirable way you put that objection in Kottabos.' To the mere outsider, who had been bred but at an English university, the utmost compliment they would allow was, 'I see your meaning.' We had many anecdotes. One was of Dr. Henry, the eccentric physician and Virgilian commentator, who in his former capacity refused to charge more than a five-shilling fee, and wrote 'Strictures on the Autobiography of Dr. Cheyne,' the fashionable practitioner of the day, and in the latter wandered over Europe on foot, crossing the Alps seventeen times, in search of illustrative matter for his 'Eneidea.' On his deathbed, what troubled him was the view he had previously expressed about Dido; with his last gasp he said, 'Dido was never married to Sichæus.' Another anecdote with the right Irish flavour was of a Roman deacon sent to baptise a baby. In the cabin he could find no water, but there was a pot of tea. 'Tea,' he reasoned, 'contains water, the rest is but accident,' and proceeded to pour out a cup. But it was strong, even to blackness, so he went in search of water, and having found some watered the tea down to a more reasonable colour, christened the baby with it, and reported the VOL. III.-NO. 15, N.S. 18 circumstance, as a case of conscience, to his superior. It had not occurred to him, having found the water, to use it by itself. Other stories were donnish. One was of an undergraduate's telegram: 'I have missed my train; what shall I do? I will come by the next.' Another, of a tutor's letter of condolence sent to a bereaved parent. This was unkindly attributed to Oxford. The tutor wrote: I am sincerely grieved to hear the sad news of your son's death. But I must inform you he would have had to go down in any case, as he had failed to satisfy the examiners in classical Moderations.' One other story I may add here, as it serves to illustrate a certain disparity often noticeable between Saxon and Celtic word-values, and also the way in which Irish orators discount their own rhetoric. A Home Ruler was haranguing on English terrorism, and after drawing a horrid picture of babies speared on the points of bayonets, &c., he concluded: If that's your civilisation you may keep it. I call it most improper.' 17th. Mr. Rudyard Kipling, by the Recessional' in to-day's Times, takes his place among the prophets. His previous attempt at religious verse, the 'Hymn before Action,' in his last volume, was a decided failure, the expression being as commonplace as the sentiment. This poem is no less decided a success. The second verse is worthy of Charles Wesley, and shows signs of being inspired by his rhythms and cadences. The tumult and the shouting dies- The only false note is in the third stanza— Far-called our navies melt away, On dune and headland sinks the fire. Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! 6 To compare a festival with a nation is fantastic, and spoils the simplicity of the poem. It looks as if the navies' and the 'fire' of the first couplet were responsible for the suggestion of Tyre, and no doubt the decay of that mercantile nation has many lessons for us. But Mr. Kipling, though he probably had these in mind, does not express them, and passes them by for a prettiness fitter for some Ballade of dead cities.' The Laureate's 6 |