Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, No. 359, September 1845

"The whole of the next day he was busily engaged finishing his picture of Arundel Mill and Castle. One or two of his friends who called on him saw that he was not well, but they attributed this to confinement and anxiety with his picture, which was to go in a few days to the Exhibition. In the evening he walked out for a short time on a charitable errand connected with the Artists' Benevolent Fund. He returned about nine o'clock, ate a hearty supper, and, feeling chilly, had his bed warmed – a luxury he rarely indulged in. It was his custom to read in bed; between ten and eleven he had read himself to sleep, and his candle, as usual, was removed by a servant. Soon after this, his eldest son, who had been at the theatre, returned home, and, while preparing for bed in the next room, his father awoke in great pain, and called to him. So little was Constable alarmed, however, that he at first refused to send for medical assistance. He took some rhubarb and magnesia, which produced sickness, and he drank copiously of warm water, which occasioned vomiting, but the pain increasing, he desired that Mr Michele, his near neighbour, should be sent for, who very soon attended. In the mean time Constable had fainted, his son supposing he had fallen asleep. Mr Michele instantly ordered some brandy to be brought; the bed-room of the patient was at the top of the house, the servant had to run down-stairs for it, and before it could be procured life was extinct; and within half an hour of the first attack of pain.

"A post-mortem investigation was made by Professor Partridge, in the presence of Mr George Young and Mr Michele, but, strange to say, the extreme pain Constable had suffered could only be traced to indigestion, no indications of disease were any where discovered, sufficient, in the opinion of those gentlemen, to have produced at that time a fatal result. Mr Michele, in a letter to me, describing all he had witnessed, says, 'It is barely possible that the prompt application of a stimulant might have sustained the vital principle, and induced reaction in the functions necessary to the maintenance of life.'

"Constable's eldest son was prevented from attending the funeral by an illness brought on by the painful excitement he had suffered; but the two brothers of the deceased, and a few of his most intimate friends, followed the body to Hampstead,3 where some of the gentlemen residing there, who had known Constable, voluntarily joined the procession in the churchyard. The vault which contained the remains of his wife was opened, he was laid by her side, and the inscription which he had placed on the tablet over it,

'Eheu! quam tenui e filo pendetQuidquid in vitâ maxime arridet!'

might will be applied to the loss his family and friends had now sustained. The funeral service was read by one of those friends, the Rev. T. J. Judkin, whose tears fell fast on the book as he stood by the tomb."

Mahmood the Ghazavide. 4

By B. SimmonsIHail to the morn that reignethWhere Kaff,5 since time beganAllah's eternal sentinel,Keeps watch upon the Sun;And through the realms of heaven,From his cold dwelling-place,Beholds the bright ArchangelFor ever face to face!Kaff smiles – the loosen'd morningOn Asia is unfurl'd!Sind6 flashes free, and rolls a seaOf amber down the world!Lo! how the purple thicketsAnd arbours of CashmereBeneath the kindling lustreA rosier radiance wear!Hail to the mighty MorningThat, odorously cool,Comes down the nutmeg-gardensAnd plum-groves of Cabool!Cold 'mid the dawn, o'er Ghazna,The rivall'd moon retires;As on the city spread below,Far through the sky's transparent glow,A hundred gold-roof'd temples throwTheir crescents' sparkling fires.IIThe Imam's cry in GhaznaHas died upon the air,And day's great life begins to throngEach stately street and square.The loose-robed turban'd merchants —The fur-clad mountaineers —The chiefs' brocaded elephants —The Kurdmans' group of spears —Grave men beneath the awningOf every gay bazarRanging their costly merchandise,Shawl, gem, and glittering jar —The outworn files arrivingOf some vast Caravan,With dusky men and camels tall,Before the crowded khan; —All that fills kingly citiesWith traffic, wealth, and din,Resounds, imperial Ghazna,This morn thy walls within.IIIAll praise to the First Sultan,Mahmood the Ghaznavide!His fame be like the firmament,As moveless and as wide!Mahmood, who saw before himPagoda'd Bramah fall —Twelve times he swept the orient earthFrom Bagdad to Bengal;Twelve times amid their Steppes of iceHe smote each Golden Horde7—Round the South's sultry isles twelve timesHis ships resistless pour'd;Mahmood – his tomb in GhaznaFor many an age shall showThe mighty mace with which he laidDu's hideous idol low.True soldier of the Prophet!From Somnauth's gorgeous shrineHe tore the gates of sandal-wood,The carven gates divine;He hung them vow'd, in Ghazna,To Allah's blest renown —Trophies of endless sway they tower,For unto earth's remotest hourWhat boastful man may hope the powerAgain to take them down?IVAll praise to the First Sultan,Mahmood the Ghaznavide!His wars are o'er, but not the moreHis sovereign cares subside:From morn to noontide dailyIn his superb DivanHe sits dispensing justiceAlike to man and man.What though earth heaves beneath himWith ingot, gem, and urn,Though in his halls a thousand thronesOf vanquish'd monarchs burn;Though at his footstool everFour hundred princes stay;Though in his jasper vestibulesFour hundred bloodhounds bay —Each prince's sabre haftedWith the carbuncle's gem,Each bloodhound's collar fashion'dFrom a rajah's diadem? —Though none may live beholdingThe anger of his brow,Yet his justice ever shinethTo the lofty and the low;O'er his many-nation'd empireShines his justice far and wide —All praise to the First Sultan,Mahmood the Ghaznavide!VThe morn to noon is meltingOn Ghazna's golden domes;From the Divan the suppliant crowd,The poor, the potent, and the proud,Who sought its grace with faces bow'd,Have parted for their homes.Already Sultan MahmoodHas risen from his throne,When at the Hall's far portalStands a Stranger all alone, —A man in humble vesture,But with a haughty eye;And he calls aloud, with the steadfast voiceOf one prepared to die —"Sultan! the Wrong'd and TrampledLacks time to worship thee,Stand forth, and answer to my charge,Son of Sebactagi!Stand forth!" —The brief amazementWhich shook that hall has fled —Next moment fifty falchionsFlash round the madman's head,And fifty slaves are waitingTheir sovereign's glance to slay;But dread Mahmood, with hand upraised,Has waved their swords away.Once more stands free the Stranger,Once more resounds his call —"Ho! forth, Mahmood! and hear me,Then slay me in thy hall.From Oxus to the OceanThy standards are unfurl'dThy treasury-bolts are burstingWith the plunder of the world —The maids of soft Hindostan,The vines by Yemen's Sea,But bloom to nurse the passionsOf thy savage soldiery.Yet not for them sufficethThe Captive or the Vine,If in thy peaceful subjects' homesThey cannot play the swine.Since on my native GhaznaThy smile of favour fell,How its blood, and toil, and treasureHave been thine, thou knowest well!Its Fiercest swell thine armies,Its Fairest serve thy throne,But in return hast thou not swornOur hearths should be our own?That each man's private dwelling,And each man's spouse and child,Should from thy mightiest SatrapBe safe and undefiled?Just Allah! – hear how MahmoodHis kingly oath maintains! —Amid the suburbs far awayI deemed secure my dwelling lay,Yet now two nights my lone SeraiA villain's step profanes.My bride is cursed with beauty,He comes at midnight hour,A giant form for rapine made,In harness of thy guards array'd,And, with main dint of blow and blade,He drives me from her bow'r,And bars and holds my dwellingUntil the dawning gray —Then, ere the light his face can smite,The felon slinks away.Such is the household safetyWe owe to thine and thee: —Thou'st heard me first, do now thy worst,Son of Sebactagi!"VIWhat tongue may tell the terrorThat thrill'd that chamber wide,While thus the Dust beneath his feetReviled the Ghaznavide!The listeners' breath suspended,They wait but for a word,To sweep away the worm that fretsThe pathway of their Lord.But Mahmood makes no signal;Surprise at first subdued,Then shame and anger seem'd by turnsTo root him where he stood.But as the tale proceeded,Some deadlier passion's hue,Now flushing dark, now fading wan,Across his forehead flew.And when those daring accentsHad died upon his ear,He sat him down in reverieUpon the musnud near,And in his robe he shroudedFor a space his dreadful brow;Then strongly, sternly, rose and spokeTo the Stranger far below —"At once, depart! – in silence: —And at the moment whenThe Spoiler seeks thy dwelling next,Be with Us here again."VIIThree days the domes of GhaznaHave gilded Autumn's sky —Three moonless nights of AutumnHave slowly glided by.And now the fourth deep midnightIs black upon the town,When from the palace-portals, ledBy that grim Stranger at their head,A troop, all silent as the dead,With spears, and torches flashing red,Wind towards the suburbs down.On foot they march, and midmostMahmood the GhaznavideIs marching there, his kingly airAlone not laid aside.In his fez no ruby blazeth,No diamonds clasp his vest;But a light as red is in his eye,As restless in his breast.And none who last beheld himIn his superb DivanWould deem three days could cause his cheekTo look so sunk and wan.The gates are pass'd in silence,They march with noiseless stride,'Till before a lampless dwellingStopp'd their grim and sullen guide.In a little grove of cypress,From the city-walls remote,It darkling stood: – He faced Mahmood,And pointed to the spot.The Sultan paused one momentTo ease his kaftan's band,That on his breast too tightly prest,Then motion'd with his hand: —"My mace! – put out the torches —Watch well that none may flee:Now, force the door, and shut me in,And leave the rest to me."He spoke, 'twas done; the wicketSwung wide – then closed again:Within stand Mahmood, night, and Lust —Without, his watching men.Their watch was short – a struggle —A sullen sound – a groan —A breathless interval – and forthThe Sultan comes alone.None through the pitchy darknessMight look upon his face,But they felt the storm that shook himAs he lean'd upon that mace.Back from his brow the turbooshHe push'd – then calmly said,"Re-light the torches, enter there,And bring me forth the dead."They light the torches, enter,And bring him forth the dead —A man of stalwart breadth and bone,A war-cloak round him spread.Full on the face the torchesFlash out – a sudden cry(And those who heard it ne'er will loseIts echo till they die,)A sudden cry escapethMahmood's unguarded lips,A cry as of a suffering soulRedeemed from Hell's eclipse."Oh, Allah! gracious Allah!Thy servant badly wonThis blessing to a father's heart,'Tis not – 'tis NOT my son!Fly! – tell my joy in Ghazna; —Before the night is doneLet lighted shrine and blazing streetProclaim 'tis not my son!'Tis not Massoud, the wayward,Who thus the Law defied,Yet I deem'd that none but my only sonDared set my oath aside:Though my frame grew faint from fasting,Though my soul with grief grew wild,Upon this spot I would have wrought stern justice on my child.I wrought the deed in darkness,For fear a single rayShould light his face, and from this heartPlead the Poor Man's cause away.Great Allah sees uprightlyI strive my course to run,And thus rewards his servant —This dead is not my son!"VIIIThus, through his reign of glory,Shone his JUSTICE far and wide;All praise to the First Sultan,Mahmood the Ghaznavide

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN

Part XIX"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?Have I not in the pitched battle heardLoud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"Shakspeare.

Change is the master-spirit of Europe, as permanency is of Asia. The contrast is in the nature of things. However the caprice, the genius, or the necessities, of the sitter on the throne may attempt to impress permanency on the habits of the West, or mutability on those of the East, his success must be but partial. In Europe we have a perpetual movement of minds, a moral ocean, to which tides and currents are an operation of nature. But the Caspian or the Euxine is not more defined by its limits of rock and mountain, or more inexorably separated from the general influx of the waters which roll round the world, than the Asiatic mind is from following the free course, and sharing the bold and stormy innovations, of Europe.

But the most rapid and total change within human memory, was the one which was now before my eye. I felt as some of the old alchymists might feel in their laboratories, with all their crucibles heating, all their alembics boiling, all their strange materials in full effervescence; and their eyes fixed in doubt, and perhaps in awe, on the powerful and hazardous products about to result from combinations untried before, and amalgams which might shatter the roof above their heads, or extinguish their existence by a blast of poison.

I had left Paris Democracy. I found it a Despotism. I had left it a melancholy prey to the multitude; a startling scene of alternate fury and dejection; of cries for revenge, and supplications for bread; of the tyranny of the mob, and the misery of the nation. I now found it the most striking contrast to that scene of despair; – Paris the headquarters of a military government; the Tuileries the palace of a conqueror; every sound martial; the eye dazzled every where by the spoils of the German and Italian sovereignties; the nation flushed with victory. Still, the public aspect exhibited peculiarities which interested me the more, that they could never have appeared in older times, and probably will never return. In the midst of military splendour there was a wild, haggard, and unhappy character stamped on all things. The streets of the capital had not yet felt the influence of that imperial taste which was to render it an imperial city. I saw the same shattered suburbs, the same deep, narrow, and winding streets, the same dismal lanes; in which I had witnessed so often the gatherings of the armed multitude, and which seemed made for popular commotion. Mingled with those wild wrecks and gloomy places of refuge, rather than dwellings, I saw, with their ancient ornaments, and even with their armorial bearings and gilded shields and spears not yet entirely defaced, the palaces of the noblesse and blood-royal of France, the remnants of those ten centuries of monarchy which had been powerful enough to reduce the bold tribes of the Franks to a civilized slavery, and glittering enough to make them in love with their chains. If I could have imagined, in the nineteenth century, a camp of banditti on its most showy scale – a government of Condottieri with its most famous captain at its head – every where a compilation of arms and spoils, the rude habits of the robber combined with the pomp of military triumph – I should have said that the realization was before me.

The Palais Royal was still the chief scene of all Parisian vitality. But the mob orators were to be found there no more. The walks and cafés were now crowed with bold figures, epauleted and embroidered, laughing and talking with the easy air of men who felt themselves masters, and who evidently regarded every thing round them as the furnishing of a camp. The land had now undergone its third stage of that great spell by which nations are urged and roused at the will of a few. The crosier was the first wand of the magician, then came the sceptre – we were now under the spell of the sword. I was delighted at this transformation of France, from the horrid form of popular domination to the showy supremacy of soldiership. It still had its evils. But the guillotine had disappeared. Savage hearts and sanguinary hands no longer made the laws, and executed them. Instead of the groans and execrations, the cries of rage and clamours of despair, which once echoed through all the streets, I now heard only popular songs and dances, and saw all the genuine evidences of that rejoicing with which the multitude had thrown off the most deadly of all tyrannies – its own.

The foreigner shapes every thing into the picturesque, and all his picturesque now was military. Every regiment which passed through Paris on its way from the frontier was reviewed, in front of the palace, by the First Consul; and those reviews formed the finest of all military spectacles, for each had a character and a history of its own. – The regiment which had stormed the bridge of Lodi; the regiment which had headed the assault on the tête-du-pont at Mantua; the regiment which had led the march at the passage of the St Bernard; the regiment which had formed the advance of Dessaix at Marengo – all had their separate distinctions, and were received with glowing speeches and appropriate honours by the chief of the state. The popular vanity was flattered by a perpetual pageant, and that pageant wholly different from the tinsel displays of the monarchy: no representation of legends, trivial in their origin, and ridiculous in their memory; but the revival of transactions in which every man of France felt almost a personal interest, which were the true sources of the new system of nations, and whose living actors were seen passing, hour after hour, before the national eye. All was vivid reality, where all had been false glitter in the days of the Bourbons, and all sullenness and fear in the days of the Democracy. The reality might still be rough and stern, but it was substantial, and not without its share of the superb; it had the sharpness and weight, and it had also the shining, of the sabre. But this was not all; nothing could be more subtly consecutive than the whole progress of the head of the government. In a more superstitious age, it might have been almost believed that some wizard had stood by his cradle, and sung his destiny; or that, like the greatest creation of the greatest of dramatists, he had been met in some mountain pass, or on some lonely heath, and had heard the weird sisters predicting his charmed supremacy. At this period he was palpably training the republic to the sight of a dictatorship. The return of the troops through Paris had already accustomed the populace to the sight of military power.

The movement of vast masses of men by a word, the simplicity of the great military machine, its direct obedience to the master-hand, and its tremendous strength – all were a continued lesson to the popular mind. I looked on the progress of this lesson with infinite interest; for I thought that I as about to see a new principle of government disclosed on the broadest scale – Republicanism in its most majestic aspect, giving a new development of the art of ruling men, and exhibiting a shape of domination loftier and more energetic than the world had ever yet seen. Still, I was aware of the national weaknesses. I was not without a strong suspicion of the hazard of human advance when entrusted to the caprice of any being in the form of man, and, above all, to a man who had won his way to power by arms. Yet, I thought that society had here reached a point of division; a ridge, from which the streams of power naturally took different directions; that the struggles of the democracy were but like the bursting of those monsoons which mark the distinction of seasons in the East; or the ruggedness of those regions of rock and precipice, of roaring torrent and sunless valley, through which the Alpine traveller must toil, before he can bask in the luxuriance of the Italian plain. Attached as I am in the highest degree to the principle of monarchy, and regarding it as the safest anchorage of the state, still, how was I to know that moral nature might not have her reserves of power, as well as physical; that the science of government itself might not have its undetected secrets, as well as the caverns of the earth; that the quiverings and convulsions of society at this moment, obviously alike beyond calculation and control, might not be only evidences of the same vast agencies at work, whose counterparts, in depths below the human eye, shake and rend the soil? Those were the days of speculation, and I indulged in them like the rest of the world. Every man stood, as the islander of the South Sea may stand on his shore, contemplating the conflict of fire and water, while the furnaces of the centre are forcing up the island in clouds of vapour and gusts of whirlwind. All was strange, undefined, and startling. One thing alone seemed certain; that the past régime was gone, never to return; that a great barrier had suddenly been dropped between the two sovereignties; that the living generation stood on the dividing pinnacle between the languid vices of the past system and the daring, perhaps guilty, energies of the system to come. Behind man lay the long level of wasted national faculties, emasculating superstitions, the graceful feebleness of a sensual nobility, and the superb follies of a haughty and yet helpless throne. Before him rose a realm of boundless extent, but requiring frames of vigour, and feelings undismayed by difficulty, to traverse and subdue; – a horizon of hills and clouds, where the gale blew fresh and the tempest rolled; where novel difficulties must be met at every step, but still where, if we trod at all, we must ascend at every step, where every clearing of the horizon must give us a new and more comprehensive prospect, and where every struggle with the rudeness of the soil, or the roughness of the elements, must enhance the vigour of the nerve that encountered them.

Those were dreams; yet I had not then made due allowance for the nature of the foreign mind. I was yet to learn its absence of all sober thought; its ready temptation by every trivially of the hour; its demand of extravagant excitement to rouse it into action, and its utter apathy where its passions were not bribed. I had imagined a national sovereignty, righteous, calm, and resolute, trained by the precepts of a Milton and a Locke; I found only an Italian despotism, trained by the romance of Rousseau and the scepticism of Voltaire.

Every day in the capital now had its celebration, and all exhibited the taste and talent of the First Consul; but one characteristic fête at length woke me to the true design of this extraordinary man – the inauguration of the Legion of Honour. It was the first step to the throne, and a step of incompatible daring and dexterity; it was the virtual restoration of an aristocracy, in the presence of a people who had raved with the rage of frenzy against all titles, who had torn down the coats-of-arms from the gates of the noblesse, and shattered and dug up even the marbles of their sepulchres. A new military caste – a noblesse of the sword – was now to be established. Republicanism had been already "pushed from its stool," but this was the chain which was to keep it fixed to the ground.

The ceremonial was held in the Hotel des Invalides; and all the civil pomp of the consulate was combined with all the military display. The giving of the crosses of honour called forth in succession the names of all those gallant soldiers whose exploits had rung through Europe, in the campaigns of the Alps and the Rhine. Nothing could be more in the spirit of a fine historic picture, or in the semblance of a fine drama. The first men of the French councils and armies stood, surrounded by the monuments of their ancestors in the national glory – the statues of the Condés and Turennes, whose memory formed so large a portion of the popular pride, and whose achievements so solid a record in the history of French triumph. To those high sources of sentiment, all that could be added by stately decoration and religious solemnity was given; and in the chorus of sweet voices, the sounds of martial harmony, the acclamations of the countless multitudes within and without, and the thunder of cannon, was completed the most magnificent, and yet the most ominous, of all ceremonials. It was not difficult to see, that this day was the consecration of France to absolute power, and of all her faculties to conquest. Like the Roman herald, she had put on, in the temple, the robe of defiance to all nations. She was to be from this day of devotement the nation of war. It was less visible, but not less true, that upon the field of Marengo perished the Democracy, but in that temple was sacrificed the Republic. The throne was still only in vision; but its outline was clear, and that outline was colossal.