Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small]

HADDON HALL. HADDON HALL is situated about two miles south of the town of Bakewell, in Derbyshire, on a bold eminence which rises on the east side of the river Wye, and overlooks the pretty vale of Haddon. The park originally connected with this mansion was ploughed up and cultivated about seventy years since. The gardens consist chiefly of terraces, ranged one above another, each having a sort of stone balustrade running along it. The prospects from one or two situations are extremely beautiful, and in the vicinity of the house there is a splendid group of luxuriant old trees. The manor of Haddon became, soon after the Conquest, the property of the Avenells, by the marriage of whose co-heirs, it was divided between the families of Vernon and Basset, in the reign of Richard I.; but in the time of Henry VI. the estate had become the sole property of Sir Richard Vernon, whose last male heir, Sir George Vernon, died in the seventh year of Queen Elizabeth; a man so distinguished by his hospitality and magnificent mode of living, that he was locally called "the king of the Peak." By the marriage of one of this person's heiresses, who inherited the estate of Haddon, it came into the Manners family, in which it still remains, being the property of the Duke of Rutland.

good-natured." The one is esteemed a philosopher, the other a dupe; such is human nature's opinion of itself.

But though our rule would involve us in many erroneous decisions concerning individuals, though it would be manifestly unfair to found a sentence on the occasional irritability of the most gentle, or the transient submission of the most obstinate, we do not think that it will often be found to mislead us in passing a verdict on particular epochs in history. The idols which an age worships are perhaps better tests of its temper than are the deeds which it does; for the deeds are often done unconsciously, without full perception of their import and consequences or they are, yet more frequently, not done at all, in any real sense, by the age which has received the credit of them, but which truly has done no more than finish, or perhaps only proclaim and sanction, what was secretly effected by its predecessor. That would be an interesting history which should treat of realities and not names, of the spirit rather than the letter of great changes; which should shew the cruel tyranny of licence, and the perfect servility of

MISS STRICKLAND'S LIVES OF THE QUEENS perfect independence; which should teach how

OF ENGLAND. VOL. XI.

FIRST NOTICE.

[ocr errors]

"I JUDGE of character," said a wise and good man, "not by great actions, but by little escapes. Much truth and some falsehood would result from the indiscriminate application of such a rule, which indeed, like most other rules, seems to require the living spirit of a present and active judgment for the due administration of its dead letter. The question presented to this judgment for its decision, would of course be, whether the particular action or speech under consideration be indeed an indication of a whole state, a result of a long previous course of thought and habit of temper, or whether it be, as it not unfrequently is, in the case of individuals, an accident, depending upon some external and temporary cause. In quick observers of character, there seems to be an instinct leading almost unerringly to a due appreciation of this difference; those who lack the gift will be perpetually making blunders, and these will most probably be on the side of severity. For it is very observable, that the true practical definition of that quality which is popularly esteemed " quick discernment of character," is rather "a quick eye for faults and foibles." The man who nods significantly when some fair-seeming action is discussed, and tells you in confidence the low or petty motive from which he believes it to be derived, is quoted as a man of penetration; while he who draws your attention to an unsuspected good, or seeks to explain away an apparent evil, is dismissed with the half-contemptuous encomium, "Poor fellow he is so

a

the very same principle which in one shape was altogether intolerable, and could drive a whole nation into the fever and frenzy of rebellion, has only to change its dress in order to be welcomed with acclamation; how the king of a country must not assume a tone of authority in offering a constitution to his subjects, while the king of a people may complete unmolested his arrangements for imprisoning those subjects in their own capital, if only he does it civilly, with his hat (or does he perchance still affect the medieval mockery of a crown ?) in his hand. If, however, there be this difficulty in distinguishing the real from the ostensible in the history of an age, so that it is well-nigh impossible to arrive at a true estimate of its spirit from a careful contemplation of its events, we encounter no such obstacles to the application of the other test already named,to wit, the idol, be it a school, a sect, or an individual, which an age has worshipped. Here is something definite and tangible; here is a result which must needs bespeak an immediate and active cause-a deed which can be nothing but the development of a thought. The conviction is as irresistible as that by which, when we see the wheat in full ear, we assure ourselves that there is the grain underground. which an age enthrones, reverences, deifies, is ever the embodiment of its own secret life and thought, the idealization, so to speak, of itself; and if there be any truth in this observation, what shall we think of the age which chose for its ideal that monstrous anomaly, a woman without natural affection, undutiful as a daughter, cold and cruel as a sister, and which celebrated as the apostle of its liberties a man of brutal

That

manners, violent temper, and profligate life; one too, who was emphatically an alien in blood, language, and religion?

Miss Strickland will afford us ample matter to justify these descriptions. Apart from her manner of narration, which, however, we should be very sorry to lose, her discursive gossip (we are not using the term disrespectfully,) is a most agreeable relief from the buckram of historical costume in general; and her hearty partizanship, warm admiration and genuine disgust, springing as they do from a very laborious and minute examination of facts, are exceedingly refreshing in this age of impartiality. Toleration is a fair-seeming word, but how is it when you have so effectually established yourself in your respectable central position as to tolerate both right and wrong with a charitable indifference which gives the preference to neither? We unhesitatingly avow, that of all cants, the cant of impartiality seems to us to be the most flimsy and inconsistent. In the first place, we do not believe that the thing itself is ever to be met with; and in the second place, if it be, we can only hope that we may never be so unfortunate as to meet with it. The man who should succeed in convincing us that his heart never in any measure influenced the decisions of his head, would only prove thereby that he had no heart at all, and so, being deficient in one half, and that the more important, of spiritual organization, would be of all men the least likely to pronounce a true judgment in any case. It is perfectly amusing to see the shifts to which many modern writers are driven in order to avoid the imputation of being more disposed to one side than another. With what an affecting display of caution do they adjust the balance! -but who shall assure us that the one scale is not loaded already? If the unwary reader trust too implicitly to appearances, he may find that he has made but a sorry bargain after all. The straightforward old chronicler who told his story from beginning to end like a fairy tale, never once doubting or suffering you to doubt that the giant was in the wrong, and the prince in the right-that the one ought to be knocked on the head, and the other quietly installed in undisputed sovereignty-was, we shrewdly suspect, the safer guide of the two. You took him as you found him, a declared enemy, or a faithful ally; if he did not agree with you, well and good, you allowed for his colouring, as the phrase is, and a pretty liberal allowance you made, we have no doubt; if on the other hand he did agree with you, he was a perpetual feast. Let then a jaundiced appetite, or a stern sense of duty, (which sounds much better) induce others to drink nothing but skimmed milk if they like; we shall take leave to prefer cream, which we must needs assure them is by far the nobler diet of the two, if only they were strong enough to bear it.

;

It is a strange scene, this life of Mary of Orange; of the earth, earthy, full of unseemly sights, low thoughts, mean standards, and unworthy conflicts, very wearisome to look upon. It reminds us of Andersen's fable of the " Drop of water," wherein the multitudinous forms were seen to bite, devour, and persecute one another with the virulence of demons-and they were nothing but animalculæ after all! The total absence of elevation, the death of all greatness, the annihilation of the noble in man's nature,these are the characteristics that meet you on the surface of society. One wonders how the miserable husk held together; how the dead ashes smouldered so long, when the divine spark was withdrawn from them. The sweet memory of Mary Beatrice comes back upon us like the thought of childhood amid the turmoil of middle age; and the quiet spirits and separated lives of a Kenn and a Sancroft seem to us like the chime of church-bells sounding through the unholy tumult of a city. But we must not linger by the fountain or the fragrant garden; we must not pause in the shadow of the cloister our business is with the Actual at the farthest point of its removal from the Ideal, and to that we must betake ourselves. Yet let us indulge ourselves in a few brief extracts, which, like the background of a blue and cloudless sky, may throw the rest of the picture into bolder relief. The manner in which Archbishop Sancroft withstood the unfortunate James II., in the strength of conscience, is known to everybody; so also is his answer to Queen Mary when she sent to demand his blessing-he answered by silence, the most forcible of all rebukes; he calmly continued to pray for King James, as though no such person as his rebellious child were in existence. This was a triumphant vindication of the principle on which he had acted in his opposition to that monarch. Mary of Orange, however, might be emphatically designated as one who could not forgive; and the venerable primate was dispossessed and driven away, to make room for a successor of whom we will only say that the popular belief that he had never been baptized, has remained without controversy, he himself having treated it as a subject of ridicule. Miss Strickland writes:

"The deprived Archbishop went forth from Lambeth, taking no property but his staff and books. He had distributed all his revenues in charity, and would have been destitute if he had not inherited a little estate in Suffolk. To an ancient, but lowly residence, the place of his birth, at Fressingfield, where his ancestors had dwelt respectably from father to son for three centuries, Archbishop Sancroft retired to live on his private patrimony of fifty pounds per annum. On this modicum he subsisted for the remainder of his days, leading a holy and contented life, venerated by his contemporaries, but almost

adored by the simple country-folk of Suffolk for his replete with mighty energy, and sorely goaded by personal merits."

She proceeds to inform us that the sums which Sancroft saved out of his archiepiscopal income (by personal self-denial, for his charities were never restricted) were devoted to increasing the income of the poorer livings of the church,

seven of which he thus endowed ere he was dispossessed. Then comes the following notice :(We are culling extracts scattered throughout very different matter, in order to complete this touching history.)

"The queen signed (during her regency) warrants for the arrest of the deprived bishop of Ely, and Lord Dartmouth. The latter, soon after, died in the prison of the tower. She likewise molested the deprived primate by sending a commission to his cottage, in Suffolk, to inquire into his proceedings. One of her messengers could scarcely refrain from tears, when he found that the venerable archbishop himself came to the door when he knocked, because his only attendant, an old woman, who took care of his cottage, happened to be ill."

Do we not long, as we read, to have made Queen Mary his housemaid!-only that such service would have graced her too far. And now for the close

"The venerable Primate of England, William Sancroft, died Nov. 23, 1693, in his humble paternal cottage at Fressingfield, in Suffolk, where he led a holy, but not altogether peaceful life. Ever and anon, on the rumours of Jacobite insurrections, the queen's messengers were sent to harass the old man with inquisitions regarding his politics. The queen gained little more from her inquiries than information of his devotions, his ascetic abstemiousness, and his walks in a bowery orchard, where he spent his days in study or meditation. Death laid a welcome and gentle hand on the deprived archbishop, at the age of seventy-seven years. Far from the pomps of Lambeth, he rests beneath the humble green sod of a Suffolk churchyard. There is a tablet raised to his memory on the outside of the porch of Fressingfield church, which is still shown with pride and affection by the inhabitants of his native village."

want and impatience of dependence, Swift nevertheless resolved to swim with the current of events, and

float uppermost on the stream of politics, howsoever corrupt the surface might be. He took his farewell, in his Ode to Sancroft,' of all that was beautiful and glorious in the animus of his art, to devote himself to the foulest and fiercest phase of satire."1

This trait seems

We know how far he sank. to us painfully instructive. How many irregular and erratic minds, possessing within themselves the seeds of a nobler life than they are able to develope, have bound their faith upon a single idol, and with its dethronement perished utterly! Here, however, there was less excuse, for the idol, though dethroned, preserved its divinity untarnished: where the worshipper finds that he has been deceived, and that he was prostrating himself before a shape of clay, whose only life was the gift of his own imaginative reverence, the subsequent self-abandonment, though not, of course, justifiable, seems at least intelligible.

And now for a brief view of the age, and the persons by whom Sancroft was persecuted. Our business is with personal characters, not with political results. Let these latter be as glorious as you please, still we have a right to inquire how far the individuals who have received the credit of them deserved the halo which has thus been cast around their name; and we can scarcely be censured if, when we have ascertained the worthlessness of the individuals, we begin to question a little the value of the boons which they procured for us. Liberty is the watchword of the partizans of William and Mary. By the revolution which placed them on the throne, our civil and religious liberties (those who thus reason invariably place civil before religious) were secured. So be it. We dispute not the fact. But it is curious to notice a few of the enactments of that reign of liberty. Corporal punishment in the army was then first introduced; the horrible ordinance of blood-money, by force of which more innocent persons suffered, and more crime was sanctioned, and, so to speak, organized, than by any other modern legislative blunder, was Queen Mary's pet measure. By it a fixed sum of money was offered as a reward to every man who should succeed in the capture and conviction of a highwayman. It would be difficult to calculate the amount of perjury, and of judicial murders thereupon ensuing, which was the result of this unhappy error. One man alone, the notorious Jonathan Wild, boasted that he had received rewards for the hanging of sixtyseven highwaymen and returned convicts. Drunk“All hope and trust in the possibility of the pro-national vice of the English, dates from this enness, as being eminently and shamefully the sperity of goodness forsook him. Every vision of virtue, purity, and divine ideality which haunts the intellect of a young poet, was violently repudiated by him in criticism. Taking farewell of an animus in order to devote oneself an access of misanthropic despair. Ambitious, and

It is good that we remember a bishop who withstood two sovereigns, and died in poverty, not unworthy to be associated with the noble army of martyrs. We cannot leave this subject without noticing the effect which the fate of Sancroft had upon the powerful but utterly undisciplined mind of Swift, then first rising into vigour :

(1) Miss Strickland's metaphorical language invites a little to a phase, seems rather allegorical than otherwise, and we crave an interpreter.

« VorigeDoorgaan »