Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844

But I soon felt how trivial are externals in comparison of genuine ability; or perhaps, how much even their repulsiveness may add to the power of genius. I had listened but a few minutes when I forgot every thing, except that a man of the highest faculties was before me; with those   faculties wrought to the highest tension by the highest subjects. Taking a line of argument, equally distinct from the leaders of the Ministry and the Opposition, he dwelt as little on the political views of England and Europe with Pitt, as he did upon the revolutionary regeneration of France and Europe with Fox. His view was wholly English; the reference of the revolutionary spirit to our own institutions. “I do not charge,” he exclaimed, turning full on the Opposition bench, “individuals with conspiracy; but I charge them with giving the sanction of their name to principles, which have in them all the germs of conspiracy. Sir, the maxim of resisting the beginnings of evil, is as sound in the concerns of nations as in the morality of individual minds. Nay, I am not sure whether mischief is not more effectually done in that incipient state, than when the evil comes full-formed. It is less perceived, and it thus destroys with impunity. The locust, before it gets its wings, destroys the crop with a still more rapacious tooth than when its armies are loading the wind.

“Honourable members have talked largely of their zeal for the constitution. Sir, I am content to follow the wisdom which judges of the faith by the works. In my humble measure, I have been a zealous worshipper of the constitution. There was a time when those honourable gentlemen and myself—and I speak of that time with the regret due to long friendship—took ‘sweet counsel together,’ and bowed before that common worship as friends. That time is past. We have since taken different paths. I have been charged with apostasy. What is my apostasy? That I have not followed the frenzy and ingratitude of the hour; that, while the most awful event in the history of human change has been transacting before us, I have not shut my ears and eyes to its moral; that I have not followed the throng into the valley, and there joined the fabricators of the new idolatry, the priesthood of the golden calf of revolution, and shared the polluted feast and the intoxicated dance; while the thunders of divine vengeance were rolling on the hill above.”

It was obvious from his manner, and his frequent return to the topic, that that charge of deserting his party had deeply wounded his generous and sensitive nature; and nothing struck me as more characteristic of his mind, than the variety and richness of his fine amplification on this subject.

“In those ranks,” said he, “I fought for nearly the half of that portion of life allotted to man; certainly for that portion of my course, in which the desires, the vigour, and the applicability of all the best parts of human nature have their fullest play. I came to it a volunteer—I fought side by side with its foremost—I shared the ‘winter of their discontent,’ as willingly as the summer of their prosperity. I took the buffets of ill fortune, and they were many, with as cheerful a countenance and as unshaken a fidelity as any man. But when I saw a new banner raised among them, blazoned with mottoes of evil, and refused to follow, who were the deserters? They or I?” As he spoke these words, he drew his otherwise rather stooping form to its full height, lifted his hand above his head, and stood like one at once demanding and defying the investigation of the empire.

The roar of applause which followed seemed to shake the very walls. He was powerfully moved; his countenance changed from its usual pallidness to strong suffusion; his hands rather tossed than waved in the air. At last I saw one of them thrust strongly into his bosom, as if the gesture was excited by some powerful recollection. “Do I speak without proof of the public hazards?” he exclaimed. “I can give you demonstration—I need invoke neither powers above nor powers below to enlighten you. I have the oracle within my hand.” The House fixed all its eyes upon him. He dropped his voice, and spoke with a faint, but clear tone which formed a remarkable contrast to his usually bold, and even harsh enunciation: “Sir,” said he, in this half-whispered voice, “before I join these gentlemen in their worship, I must know what deity presides in their temple; I must see that the incense which fumes before its altar is taken from the sacred repositories of the constitution, not the smuggled importation of foreign fabrications   of revolt—that pernicious compound of civil mischief and mad metaphysics—which, instead of consummating and purifying the sacrifice, only poisons the air. I must see something of the priest too, before I join in his aspirations; I must see that he is lawfully inducted to his office, that he is not a rebel in the garb of loyalty—a blasphemer where he professes to pray, and a traitor where he propounds allegiance.”

Fox here, evidently taking the description to himself, exhibited palpable signs of displeasure. Burke caught the expression at once, and instantly changed the whole current of his conceptions. “If,” said he, “the honourable gentleman thinks that I designate him as the high-priest of this new worship, he does me as much injustice as himself. No, no! When we shall see the Republican Pantheon thrown open, he, and such as he, will not be called to officiate at the altar. He is much more likely to be the victim. The popular ornaments, now flung so lavishly upon him, will find him no further favour, than the speedier offering on the same abhorred altar, which reeks with so much of the best blood of France.” Here a corpulent noble, peculiarly hostile to Burke, laughed contemptuously. The orator instantly turned upon him. “True,” said he, “there may be a good deal of variety in that procession. There may be the mummer as well as the priest; it may have the mountebank selling his potions, and playing his tricks, as well as the sacrificer with his axe—unless the ambition of the bloated performer should prefer to combine the offices, and be at once the butcher and the buffoon.”

The hit was felt on all sides, and the laughter was unbounded. He then rose, as was his custom, into a higher strain. “I can imagine that procession,” said he, “or rather, that triumph, of the principles of change. Like the return of the classical Bacchus from his Indian conquests, the demigod,” and he now cast a look at Fox, “secure of supremacy, exulting in his prowess, and thinking the civilized world at his feet; but not without the companionship of his trusty Silenus”—and here he turned his glance on the noble lord—“that veteran follower, whose ambition is limited to his cups, and the vigour of whose fidelity is shown only in the constancy of his intoxication; the whole procession being drawn by the wild lords of the forest and the wilderness, who, harnessed as they may be for the moment, will no sooner find their food stinted, than they will resume the natural instincts of the lion and the tiger, turn on their drivers and devour them.

“But, sir,” he exclaimed, turning to the chair, “I have higher topics, and to those I now call the attention of the representatives of England. I have alluded to the revolutionary temple. I here have its deity.” With these words, he plucked from his bosom a large dagger, held it for a moment up to the light, and then flung it at the foot of the table. The astonishment, and even the alarm, of the whole assembly was beyond description. They all started from their seats, as if assassination had stood before them in a visible shape. Some crowded round Burke, some seized the dagger, which was eventually carried to the Speaker, and became the object of universal curiosity. All was confusion for a considerable time. At length Burke, in a few words delivered in his most impressive tone, explained the phenomenon. “That dagger,” said he, “is one of thousands, perhaps of millions, which the preachers of philosophy are now forging for popular conviction. You see that by its construction it is equally fitted for the head of a pike, or for a dagger—equally serviceable in tearing down the monarchy in the field, or stabbing its friends in their chambers. You have it, at once the emblem of rebellion and assassination. Those are the arguments of the new school—those are the instruments by which the limbs of the state are to be amputated, for replacement by the inventions of the revolutionary mechanists. Those are the keys by which the locks of cabinets and councils are henceforth to be opened, and the secrets of national wealth laid bare to the rapacity of the rabble.” After this speech nothing was listened to.

The debate had been prolonged through the greater part of the night, and yet such was the interest felt in   its subject, that the streets in the neighbourhood continued crowded to the last. All the hotels and coffee-houses were filled with people waiting for the division. Groups, with lighted torches, were lingering everywhere, and passing the intelligence along, as a member happened casually to make his appearance in the course of the night; shouts and expressions of wrath alternately arose, according to the nature of the intelligence, and a species of open-air legislature was held during one of the bitterest nights of winter, with discussions as active, though perhaps not altogether so classical, as those within; yet totally free from tumult, and in the spirit of a people who live with a constant reference to the laws. The rush of the members to the porch, on the breaking up of the debate, produced a corresponding rush of the multitude. Public curiosity was roused to its wildest height—every public sentiment had its full expression; and whether the acclamation was louder when Fox’s corpulent frame was seen toiling its slow way through the pressure, or when Pitt’s slender figure and passionless face was recognised, is a question which might have perplexed the keenest investigators of popular sentiment. All was that uproar in which the Englishman delights as a portion of his freedom.

On returning to my chamber, exhausted, yet animated with a new sense of the value of existence in such a country, and of the noble faculties which she carried in her bosom, I saw a large packet on my table. I gazed on its envelope for a few moments with that strange emotion which sometimes makes us dread to open the very letter which we most desire to receive. It was obviously from Downing Street. At last I opened it. It contained my commission in the Guards!

My destiny was now fixed, and it is impossible to tell how much I felt relieved. I had spent the preceding period in such perplexing indecision, that I felt my heart withering within me. Now all was clear. My course was decided. I was in other hands than my own, and whatever might be the result, I was no longer answerable for either good or ill fortune. No human being who has not felt the trial almost the torment, of being left to decide on the conduct which may make or mar him for life, can conceive the depression into which it plunges the mind. From this I was now relieved; I was wholly free; an established routine, a vigorous profession, a regulated pursuit, and that pursuit one of the most honourable nature, was suddenly prepared for me by the enclosure upon my table. After again and again reading this simple but expressive document, I threw myself on my bed, and attempted to forget it and the world. But I could forget neither; my eyelids would not close; sleep had gone from me. After a useless effort for composure, I rose, relighted my lamp, and spent the rest of the night in writing to my relatives, to Vincent, to Mordecai, and every one to whom I felt his majesty’s sign-manual a vindication of my whole career. There was still one cloud that overhung my prospect, one gloomy and bitter remembrance: but this cloud I had neither the power nor even the wish to dispel; this remembrance was already a part of my being—to extinguish it was impossible. I resolved to cherish it as a sacred recollection, to combine it with the aspirations of my new pursuit, and render them thus still nobler; to reserve it as a treasure inaccessible to the knowledge of mankind, but to which I might return in my hours of discontent with the world, and restore my sense of the beauty of mind and form which might still exist in the shape of human nature.

Yet it may be justly supposed that I did not limit my feelings to this lonely abstraction. I spent an anxious period in making enquiries for the Maréchale, in every quarter which offered the slightest probability of discovering her abode. Though I had seen the announcement of Clotilde’s approaching marriage in the public journals, I had seen no mention of its having taken place. My search was wholly unproductive. The captivating duchess, who received me with the kindness which seemed a part of her nature, while she joined me in my praises of the “young, the lovely, and the accomplished Comtesse,” “her dearest of friends,” could tell   me nothing more than that she had left London, and she believed with an intention of visiting France. There her knowledge ceased. I learned only further, that she had grown singularly fond of solitude, was melancholy, and had no hesitation in expressing the deepest dislike to the marriage proposed by her family. My enquiry was at an end.

Hopeless as this intelligence was, it relieved me from the certainty, which would have been despair. While Clotilde remained unallied to one whom I could not avoid regarding as an uncongenial spirit, if not a hard and tyrannical master, there was, at least, the chance of happiness remaining for me in a world where every day brought changes more extraordinary than our meeting. If there should be a war, my regiment would be among the first to be employed, and France would inevitably be the first object of a British expedition. The “march to Paris” had been proclaimed by orators, exhibited in theatres, and chanted in street ballads. All before us was conquest, and distinctions of every kind that can captivate the untried soldier, glittered in all eyes. I was young, ardent, and active. My name was one known to the table at which I seated myself on my introduction to the Guards, and I was immediately on the best footing with the gallant young men of a corps which has never suffered a stain. I had even some peculiar sources of favour in their eyes. I had actually made a campaign. This was more than had been done by any man in the regiment. The Guards, always brave and always foremost as they were, had not seen a shot fired for a quarter of a century. The man who had heard bullets whistling about his ears, and had, besides, seen the realities of war on the magnificent scale of continental campaigning, possessed a superiority which was willingly acknowledged by the gallant youths round us; and every detail of that most romantic campaign, reluctantly given as it was by me, was listened to with generous interest, or manly intelligence. And I had actually learned enough, under the Duke of Brunswick, a master of tactics, to render my services useful at the moment. The discipline of the British army was not then, what it has since been, the model to Europe. The Englishman’s nature prompts him to require a reason for every thing; and there was no peculiarly strong reason for the minute toil of foreign discipline, in an army which had never been engaged since the American war. But other days were now obviously at hand, and the passion for discipline, and above all others, for the Prussian discipline, became universal. With the exaggeration common to all popular impulses, the tactics of Frederick were now regarded as the secrets of victory. That great soldier, and most crafty of men, by his private reviews, to which no stranger, even of the highest rank, was ever admitted, and by a series of mystifications, had laboured to produce this impression upon Europe, and had largely succeeded. Mankind love being cheated; and what the charlatanism of necromancy effected a thousand years ago, was now effected by the charlatanism of genius. If I had seen the Prussian troops only at Potsdam, I should probably have mistaken the truncheon for a talisman, like the rest of the world. But the field suffers no mystification. I had seen that the true secret of this great tactician, for such unquestionably he was, consisted in his rejecting the superfluities and retaining the substance; in reducing tactics to the ready application of force, and in simplifying the old and tardy manœuvres of the French and Austrian battalions, to the few expeditious and essential formations required before an enemy in the field. I was offered the adjutancy, and I accepted it rejoicingly.

In those days, by a curious anomaly, which can scarcely be believed in ours, every regiment was practically free to choose its own system of manœuvre. The natural consequence was, that no two regiments did any thing alike. To brigade the army was impossible, and every field-day was a scene of ludicrous confusion. But this freedom had the advantage, in the present instance, of allowing me to introduce that Prussian discipline which has since been made the basis of the British. It was then perfectly new, and it had all the effect of brilliant   novelty. Our parade was constantly crowded with officers of the highest grades, anxious to transmit our practice to their regiments. The king, always attached to German recollections, and who would have made as good a soldier as any of his forefathers, was frequently a spectator. The princes and nobility were constant in their attendance; and the regiment, thus stimulated, rapidly displayed all the completeness and precision of movement which to this day makes a review of the Guards the finest military spectacle of Europe.

The adjutant was not forgotten in the general applause and excitement. I was promised promotion in the most gratifying language of royalty itself, and all the glittering prospects of the most glittering of all pursuits opened before me. I still had my moments of depression. Clotilde often rose before me like a departed spirit in the solitude of my chamber, and even in the midst of public festivities, or in those balls and banquets which the nobility gave in such profusion at this period of the year. When a shape, however faintly resembling her incomparable elegance of form, passed before my eye, or a voice, in the slightest degree reminding me of her noble tones, reached my ear, I felt an irresistible pang, that, for the time, embittered all the scene around me.

But I had in no period of my life been suffered to linger in long melancholy. One night, after returning from a dinner at Devonshire House, I found a gentleman in possession of my chamber, with my fire briskly blazing, supper on the table, and every appearance of his having made himself master of the establishment. As I paused at the door, in some surprise at the ease of the proceeding, the intruder turned round, and I saw the face of my old and excellent friend Vincent. I was delighted to take the honest hand of one who was enough to redeem the character of human nature. He was full of congratulations and country news. He told me that this, his first visit to London for years, was simply to shake hands with his pupil; to hear from him his adventures; and to have the opportunity of seeing the regiment on parade. He now enjoyed all his objects together. The regiment “reminded him of the grenadiers of Maria Theresa, in the first Hungarian campaign; and all that he wished for me was, that I had seen Daun or Landohn. However, no man in this world could have every wish gratified; and he was certain that I had in me the materials of a field-marshal.”

But he had more important topics. By an accidental meeting with an old college friend, high in office, he had ascertained that an expedition for Holland had been resolved on; and that it was to take place without delay. The French army had passed the frontier, and taken the strong fortress of Breda. Williamstadt was bombarded, and must fall in a few days if not relieved. With its fall, the Seven Provinces would be thrown open. In this emergency, aid had been solicited from England.

Vincent’s country news was brief. My lordly brother was in pursuit of a neighbouring heiress; and, as a prospective remedy for matrimonial ennui, speculating on the chance of employment on some foreign embassy. Vincent himself had married one of his daughters to a neighbouring squire, whom he denominated an “unlicked cub,” but an honest man. Thus I had the knowledge of all that the country could furnish, and thus—“runs the world away.”

All now was excitement and activity. The intelligence of the French advance into the territories of our old and very helpless ally, awoke England at once. The feeble and perfectly fruitless negotiations, by which the slide from disgust into war is generally managed, had produced their effect; and France, furious for its prey, and England, steady and stubborn, for the first time were brought face to face. The summons, so long wished for, at length reached us; and the Guards were ordered for embarkation. We received it in the spirit of a jubilee. All had been prepared. And on the night before our final parade, I received my appointment to a company. Our parade, next morning, was one which I believe was never forgotten by any individual who had the good fortune to witness it. Of all the striking ceremonials which I have ever seen, it   was the most striking. The king had given notice of his intention to be present, and bid us farewell. At six o’clock, the three regiments were drawn up in front of the Horse-Guards, a body of three thousand men, and finer-looking troops never bore arms. All the avenues to the park were crowded with the multitude. Exactly at the half-hour, a rush of the people towards the parade showed that the king, always punctual, was at hand. He came, surrounded by general officers, with the Prince of Wales, then a most chivalric figure, in the uniform of his regiment of light dragoons, and the Duke of York, as a field-marshal. The enthusiasm of the troops could not be restrained, as this brilliant staff approached their line; and three cheers were given with all the zeal of honest loyalty. There are times when tears are the only substitute for speech; and the king, one of the most kindhearted of men, visibly shed tears at this reception. Another cortège now approached; they were the carriages of the queen and princesses. The scene now became almost painful. There was many a tear from royal and noble eyes—the impulse of high emotion, not of sorrow—or if tinged with the thoughts which always shade the name of war, yet undegraded by weakness. The multitude caught the feeling; the shouts subsided; and all was weeping and waving of handkerchiefs. The king put an end to this embarrassing sympathy. He rode forward, and, taking his station in the centre, gave the word to “march.” He was answered by one gallant “huzza” from the line, repeated by the thousands and tens of thousands who now moved before and around us. Our bands struck up, and, with the monarch and his sons at our head, and the queen and princesses following in their equipages, we marched through streets, crowded to the roof, echoing with acclamations, and wishing us all good fortune as we passed along, until we left the mighty metropolis behind. Even then, it was only to meet the new multitude of the country. The road to Greenwich, where we were to embark, exhibited a population as countless, enthusiastic, and full of good wishes as those with whom we had just parted. The king still rode in our front; flags, banners, and every kind of joyous testimonial met our eyes; and if ever there was a triumph before the victory, it was in that honest and generous display of the true heart of England.

The embarkation took place within a few hours; and on that night we slept on the element which Britain has so long made her field of battle. The weather was serene, and we fully enjoyed the freshness of the air, and the brightness of the view, as we rounded the coast. At the mouth of the Thames, we had met a strong squadron of the line of battle, appointed for our convoy, and bringing numerous transports with troops. Our fleet had now become extensive, and as we moved out from the land, the sight became continually more animated and exciting. The despatch of the look-out frigates, the constant change of signals, the firing of guns to regulate the sailing of the great convoy, the manœuvres of those floating castles, the seventy-fours and three-deckers, the harmony of their bands as they passed us, rushing along under a cloud of canvass, with the hum of the thousands on board—all formed one of the most heart-stirring combinations that could exist to the eye, or even to the heart of a human being.