astonishment, and in peals of laugh ter the congress found itself too suddenly translated into the condition of the dog to which, in the very moment of his keenest assault upon some object of his appetites, the fiend cried out-Halt! whereupon, standing up, as he was, on his hind legs, his teeth grinning, and snarling with the fury of desire, he halted and remained petrified :-from the graspings of hope, however distant, to the necessity of weeping for a wager, the congress found the transition too abrupt and harsh. One thing was evident to all-that for a shower that was to come down at such a full gallop, for a baptism of the eyes to be performed at such a hunting pace, it was vain to think of raising up any pure water of grief: no hydraulics could effect this: yet in twenty-six minutes (four unfortunately were already gone), in one way or other, perhaps, some business might be done. "Was there ever such a cursed act," said the merchant Neupeter, "such a piece of buffoonery enjoined by any man of sense and discretion? For my part, I can't understand what the d-l it means." However, he understood thus much, that a house was by possibility floating in his purse upon a tear: and that was enough to cause a violent irritation in his lachrymal glands. Knoll, the fiscal, was screwing up, twisting, and distorting his features pretty much in the style of a poor artisan on Saturday night, whom some fellow-workman is barber-ously razoring and scraping by the light of a cobler's candle: furious was his wrath at this abuse and profanation of the title Last Will and Testament: and at one time, poor soul! he was near enough to tears-of vexation. The wily bookseller, Pasvogel, without loss of time, sate down quietly to business: he ran through a cursory retrospect of all the works any ways moving or affecting, that he had himself either published or sold on commission;-took a flying survey of the Pathetic in general: and in this way of going to work he had fair expectations that in the end he should brew something or other: as yet, however, he looked very much like a dog who is slowly licking off an emetic which the Parisian surgeon Demet has administered by smearing it on his nose: time,gentlemen, time was required for the operation. Monsieur Flitte, from Alsace, fairly danced up and down the Sessionschamber: with bursts of laughter he surveyed the rueful faces around him he confessed that he was not the richest among them; but for the whole city of Strasburg and Alsace to boot, he was not the man that could or would weep on such a merry occasion. He went on with his unseasonable laughter and indecent mirth, until Harprecht, the Police Inspector, looked at him very significantly, and said that perhaps Monsieur flattered himself that he might by means of laughter, squeeze or express the tears required from the well-known Meibomian-glands, the caruncula, &c. and might thus piratically provide himself with surreptitious rain; but in that case, he must remind him that he could no more win the day with any such secretions, than he could carry to account a course of sneezes or wilfully blowing his nose; a channel into which it was well known that very many tears, far more than were now wanted, flowed out of the eyes through the nasal duct; more indeed, by a good deal, than were ever known to flow downwards to the bottom of most pews at a funeral sermon. Monsieur Flitte of Alsace, however, protested that he was laughing out of pure fun, and for his own amusement; and, upon his honour, with no ulterior views. The inspector, on his side, being pretty well acquainted with the hopeless condition of his own dephlegmatised heart, endeavoured to force into his eyes something that might meet the occasion by staring with them wide open and in a state of rigid expansion. The morning-lecturer Flacks, look In the original, the word is Fenster-schweiss, window-sweat; i. e. (as the translator understands the passage) Monsieur Flitte was suspected of a design to swindle the company, by exhibiting his two windows streaming with spurious moisture, such as hoar frost produces on the windows when melted by the heat of the room, rather than with that genuine and unadulterated rain which Mr. Kabel demanded. 1921. ed like a Jew beggar mounted on a stallion which is running away with him: meantime, what by domestic tribulations, what by those he witnessed at his own lecture, his heart was furnished with such a promising bank of heavy laden clouds that he could easily have delivered upon the spot the main quantity of water required, had it not been for the house which floated on the top of the storm; and which, just as all was ready, came driving in with the tide, too gay and gladsome a spectacle not to banish his gloom, and thus fairly dammed up the waters. The ecclesiastical councillor,-who had become acquainted with his own nature by his long experience in preaching funeral sermons, and sermons on the new year, and knew full well that he was himself always the first person, and frequently the last, to be affected by the pathos of his own eloquence, now rose with dignified solemnity, on seeing himself and the others hanging so long by the dry rope, and addressed the chamber: -No man, he said, who had read his printed works, could fail to know that he carried a heart about him as well as other people; and a heart, he would add, that had occasion to repress such holy testimonies of its tenderness as tears, lest he should thereby draw too heavily on the sympathies and the purses of his fellowmen, rather than elaborately to provoke them by stimulants for any secondary views, or to serve an indirect purpose of his own: " this heart," said he, "has already shed tears (but they were shed secretly), for Kabel was my friend:" and, so saying, he paused for a moment and looked about him. With pleasure he observed, that all were still sitting as dry as corks: indeed, at this particular moment, when he himself by interrupting their several water-works had made them furiously angry, it might as well have been expected that crocodiles, fallowdeer, elephants, witches, or ravens, should weep for Van der Kabel, as his presumptive heirs. Among them all, Flacks was the only one who Meantime Glantz, the ecclesiasti- -ruption, he would have said: but Flacks, starting up in trouble, and with eyes at that moment overflow-f ing, threw a hasty glance around him, and said,-" with submission, gentlemen, to the best of my belief Í am weeping;" then sitting down, with great satisfaction he allowed the tears to stream down his face; that done, he soon recovered his cheerfulness and his aridity. Glantz, the councillor, thus saw the prize fished away before his eyes, those very eyes which he had already brought into an Accessit,* or inchoate state of humidity: this vexed him: and his mortification was the greater on thinking of his own pathetic exertions, and the abortive appetite for the prize which he had thus uttered in words as ineffectual as his own sermons: and, at this moment, he was ready to weep for spite-and "to weep the more because he wept in vain." "As to Flacks, a protocol was To the English reader it may be necessary to explain, that in the Continental Universities, &c. when a succession of prizes is offered, graduated according to the degrees of merit, the elliptical formula of "Accessit " denotes the second prize: and hence, where only a single prize is offered, the second degree of merit may properly be expressed by the term here used. VOL. IV. 2 Z immediately drawn up of his watery compliance with the will of Van der Kabel: and the messuage in Dog Street was knocked down to him for ever. The Mayor adjudged it to the poor devil with all his heart: indeed, this was the first occasion ever known in the principality of Haslau, on which the tears of a schoolmaster and a curate had converted themselvesnot into mere amber that incloses only a worthless insect, like the tears of the Heliades, but, like those of the goddess Freia, into heavy gold. Glantz congratulated Flacks very warmly; and observed, with a smiling air, that possibly he had himself lent him a helping hand by his pathetic address. As to the others, the separation between them and Flacks was too palpable, in the mortifying distinction of wet and dry,—to allow of any cordiality between them; and they stood aloof therefore: but they staid to hear the rest of the will, which they now awaited in a state of anxious agitation. TABLE-TALK. ON THE SPIRIT OF PARTISANSHIP. I HAVE in my time known few thorough partisans; at least on my own side of the question. I conceive, however, that the honestest and strongest-minded men have been so. In general, interest, fear, vanity, the love of contradiction, even scrupulous regard to truth and justice, come to divert them from the popular cause. It is a character that requires very opposite and almost incompatible qualities-reason and prejudice, a passionate attachment founded on an abstract idea. He who can take up a speculative question, and pursue it with the same zeal and unshaken constancy that he does his immediate interests or private animosities, he who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself, is the true partisan. I do not here speak of the bigot, or the mercenary or cowardly tool of a party. There are plenty of this description of persons (a considerable majority of the inhabitants of every country)-who are "ever strong upon the stronger side," staunch, thorough-paced sticklers for their passions and prejudices, and who stand by their party as long as their party can stand by them. I speak of those who espouse a cause from liberal motives and with liberal views, and of the obstacles that are so often found to relax their perseverance or impair their zeal. These may, I think, be reduced chiefly to the heads of obligations to friends, of vanity, or the desire of the lead and distinction, to an oversqueamish delicacy in regard to ap pearances, to fickleness of purpose, or to natural timidity and weakness of nerve. There is nothing more contemptible than party-spirit in one point of view; and yet it seems inseparable in practice from public principle. You cannot support measures unless you support men ;-you cannot carry any point or maintain any system, without acting in concert with others. In theory, it is all very well. We may refine in our distinctions, and elevate our language to what point we please. But in carrying the most sounding words and stateliest propositions into effect, we must make use of the instrumentality of men; and some of the alloy and imperfection of the means may insinuate itself into the end. If we do not go all lengths with those who are embarked with us in the same views; if we are not hearty in the defence of their interests and motives; if we are not fully in their confidence and they in ours; if we do not ingraft on the stock of public virtue the charities and sentiments of private affection and esteem; if the bustle and anxiety and irritation of the state-affairs do not kindle into the glow of friendship as well as patriotism; if we look distant, suspicious, lukewarm at one another; if we criticise, carp at, pry into the conduct of our party with watchful, jealous eyes; it is to be feared we shall play the game into the enemy's hands, and not co-operate together for the common good with all the Table-Talk. steadiness and cordiality that might be wished. On the other hand, if we lend ourselves to the foibles and weaknesses of our friends; if we suf fer ourselves to be implicated in their intrigues, their scrambles and bar gainings for place and power; if we flatter their mistakes, and not only screen them from the eyes of others but are blind to them ourselves; if we compromise a great principle in the softness of a womanish friendship; if we entangle ourselves in needless family-ties; if we sell ourselves to the vices of a patron, or become the mouth-piece and echo of a coterie; we shall be in that case slaves of a faction, not servants of the public, nor shall we long have a spark of the old Roman or the old English virtue left. Good-nature, conviviality, hospitality, habits of acquaintance and regard, favours received or conferred, spirit and eloquence to defend a friend when press ed hard upon, courtesy and good breeding, are one thing patriotism, firmness of principle, are another. The true patriot knows when to make each of these in turn give way tosor control the other, in furtherance of the common good, just as the accomplished courtier makes all other interests, friendships, cabals, resentments, reconciliations, subservient to his attachment to the person of the king. He has the welfare of his country, the cause of mankind at heart, and makes that the scale in which all other motives are weighed as in a balance. With this inward prompter, he knows when to speak and when to hold his tongue, when to temporise, and when to throw away the scabbard, when to make men of service to principles, and when to make principles the sole condition of popularity, nearly as well as if he had a title or a pension depending in reversion on his success: for it is true that "in their generation the children of this world are wiser than the children of the light." In my opinion, Charles Fox had too much of what we mean by " the milk of human kindness" to be a practical statesman, particularly in critical times, and with a cause of infinite magnitude at stake. He was too easy a friend, and too generous an enemy. He was willing to think better of those with whom he acted, 5 621 or to whom he was opposed, than they deserved. He was the creature of temperament and sympathy, and suffered his feelings to be played upon, and to get the better of his principles, which were not of the most rigid kind-not " stuff o' the conscience." With all the power of the crown, and all the strong-holds of prejudice and venality opposed to him," instead of a softness coming over the heart of a man," he should (in such a situation) have "turned to the stroke his adamantine scales that feared no discipline of human hands," and made it a struggle ad internecionem on the one side, as it was on the other. There was no place for moderation, much less for huckstering and trimming. Mr. Burke saw the thing right enough. It was a question about a principleabout the existence or extinction of human rights in the abstract. He was on the side of legitimate slavery; Mr. Fox on that of natural liberty. That was no reason he should be less bold or jealous in her defence, because he had every thing to contend against. But he made too many coalitions, too many compromises with flattery, with friendship, (to say nothing of the baits of power) not to falter and be defeated at last in the noble stand he had made for the principles of freedom. The Another sort are as much too captious and precise, as these are lax and cullible in their notions of political warfare. Their fault is an overweening egotism, as that of the former was too great a facility of temper. They will have every thing their own way to the minutest tittle, or they cannot think of giving it their sanction and support. The cause must come to them, they will not go to the cause. They stand upon their punctilio. They have a character at stake, which is dearer to them than the whole world. They have an idea of perfect truth and beauty in their own minds, the contemplation of which is a never-failing source of delight and consolation to them, Though sun and moon were in the flat sea and which they will not soil by mix- 222 wrong." They will let the lofty pillar inscribed to human liberty fall to the ground sooner than extend a finger to save it, on account of the dust and cobwebs that cling to it. It is not this great and mighty object they are thinking of all the time, but their own fantastic reputation and puny pretensions. While the world is tumbling about our ears, and the last hold of liberty, the ark containing our birth-right, the only possible barrier against barefaced tyranny, is tottering-instead of setting the engines and the mortal instruments at work to prop it, and fighting in the trenches to the last drop, they are washing their hands of all imaginary imperfections, and looking in the glass of their own vanity, with an air of heightened self-complacency. Alas! they do not foresee the fatal consequences; they have an eye only to themselves. While all the power, the prejudice, and ignorance of mankind are drawn up in deadly array against the advance of truth and justice, they owe it to themselves, forsooth! to state the naked merits of the question (heat and passion apart) and pick out all the faults of which their own party has been guilty, to fling as a make-weight into the adversary's scale of unmeasured abuse and exe cration. They will not take their ready stand by the side of him who was "the very arm and burgonet of man," and like a demi-atlas, could alone prop a declining world, because for themselves they have some objections to the individual instrument, and they think principles more important than persons. No, they think persons of more consequence than principles, and themselves most of all. They injure the principle, through the person most able to protect it. They betray the cause by not defending it as it is attacked, tooth and nail, might and main, without exception and without remorse. When every thing is at stake, dear and valuable to man, as man; when there is but the one dreadful alternative of entire loss, or final recovery of truth and freedom, it is no time to stand upon trifles and moot-points; that great object is to be secured first, and at all hazards. Entire affection scorneth nicer hands. But there is a third thing in their minds, a fanciful something which they prefer to both contending par ties. It may be so; but neither they nor we can get it. We must have one of the two things imposed upon us, not by choice but by hard necessity. "Our bane and antidote are both before us:" and if we do anything to neglect the one, we justly incur the heavy, intolerable, unredeemed penalty of the other. If our pride is stung, if we have received a blow or the lie in our own persons, we know well enough what to do: our blood is up, we have an actual feeling and object to satisfy; and we are not to be diverted from our purpose by sophistry or mere words. The quarrel is personal to ourselves; and we feel the whole stress of it, rousing every faculty and straining every nerve. But if the quarrel is general to mankind; if it is one in which the rights, freedom, hopes, and happiness of the whole world are embarked; if we see the dignity of our common nature prostrate, trampled upon and mangled before the brute image of power, this gives us little concern; our reason may disapprove, but our passions, our prejudices, are not touched; and therefore our reason, our humanity, our abstract love of right (not "screwed to the sticking place" by some paltry interest of our own) are easily satisfied with any hollow professions of good-will, or put off with vague excuses, or staggered with open defiance. We are here, where a principle only is in danger, at leisure to calculate consequences, prudently for ourselves, or favourably for others: were it a point of honour (we think the honour of human nature is not our honour, that its disgrace is not our disgrace we are not the rabble!) we should throw consideration and compassion to the dogs, and cry-" Away to Heaven respective lenity, and fireeyed fury be my conduct now!" But charity is cold. We are the dupes of the flatteries of our opponents, because we are indifferent to our own object: we stand in awe of their threats, because in the absence of passion we are tender of our persons. They beat us in courage and in intellect, because we have nothing but the common good to sharpen our faculties or goad our will; they have no less an alternative in view than |