"Two beautiful youths appeared beside me; each was winged; but the wings were hanging down and seemed ill-adapted to flight. One of them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard, looking at me frequently, said to the other, 'He is under my guardianship for the present; do not awaken him with that feather.' Methought, on hearing the whisper, I saw something like the feather on an arrow; and then the arrow itself; the whole of it, even to the point, although he carried it in such a manner that it was difficult at first to discover more than a palm's length of it; the rest of the shaft (and the whole of the barb) was behind his ankles.

"'This feather never awakens anyone,' replied he, rather petulantly, 'but it brings more of confident security, and more of cherished dreams, than you, without me, are capable of imparting.'

"'Be it so!' answered the gentler; 'none is less inclined to quarrel or dispute than am I. Many whom you have wounded grievously call upon me for succour; but so little am I disposed to thwart you, it is seldom I venture to do more for them than to whisper a few words of comfort in pa.s.sing. How many reproaches on these occasions have been cast upon me for indifference and infidelity! Nearly as many, and nearly in the same terms as upon you.'

"'Odd enough that we, O Sleep! should be thought so alike!' said Love contemptuously. 'Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance to you; the dullest have observed it.' I fancied I turned my eyes to where he was pointing, and saw at a distance the figure he designated. Meanwhile the contention went on uninterruptedly.

Sleep was slow in a.s.serting his power or his benefits. Love recapitulated them; but only that he might a.s.sert his own above them.

"Suddenly he called upon me to decide, and to choose my patron.

Under the influence, first of the one, then of the other, I sprang from repose to rapture, I alighted from rapture on repose, and knew not which was sweetest. Love was very angry with me, and declared he would cross me through the whole of my existence.

Whatever I might on other occasions have thought of his veracity, I now felt too surely that he would keep his word.

"At last, before the close of the altercation, the third Genius had advanced, and stood near us. I cannot tell you how I knew him, but I knew him to be the Genius of Death. Breathless as I was at beholding him, I soon became familiar with his features. First they seemed only calm; presently they grew contemplative; and lastly beautiful; those of the Graces themselves are less regular, less harmonious, less composed.

"Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a countenance in which there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of disdain; and cried, 'Go away!

go away! nothing that thou touchest, lives!' 'Say rather, child!'

replied the advancing form, and advancing grew loftier and statelier, 'say rather that nothing of beautiful or of glorious lives its own true life until my wing hath pa.s.sed over it.'

"Love pouted, and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger the stiff short feathers on his arrow-head, but replied not. Although he frowned worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him less and less, and scarcely looked towards him. The milder and calmer Genius, the third, in proportion as I took courage to contemplate him, regarded me with more and more complacency. He held neither flower nor arrow as the others did, but throwing back the cl.u.s.ters of dark curls that overshadowed his countenance, he presented to me his hand, openly and benignly. I shrank on looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to love him. He smiled, not without an expression of pity, at perceiving my diffidence, my timidity; for I remembered how soft was the hand of Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love's.

"By degrees I became ashamed of my ingrat.i.tude, and turning my face away, I held out my arms, and I felt my neck within his; the coolness of freshest morning breathed around; the heavens seemed to open above me, while the beautiful cheek of my deliverer rested on my head. I would now have looked for those others, but knowing my intention by my gesture, he said consolatorily, 'Sleep is on his way to the Earth, where many are calling him; but it is not to these he hastens, for every call only makes him fly further off.

Sedately and gravely as he looks, he is nearly as capricious and volatile as the more arrogant and ferocious one.'

"'And Love!' said I, 'whither is he departed? If not too late, I would propitiate and appease him.'

"'He who cannot follow me; he who cannot overtake and pa.s.s me,'

said the Genius, 'is unworthy of the name, the most glorious in earth or heaven. Look up! Love is yonder, and ready to receive thee.'

"I looked: the earth was under me: I saw only the clear blue sky, and something brighter above it."

There is something most rare and refined and precious in this vision, told as it is with a sweet serenity. But it does not touch the heart like the _aesop and Rhodope_.

Your loving old G.P.

[Footnote 1: Born 1775, died 1864.]

20

MY DEAR ANTONY,

I now come to speak of one whose fame was familiar to me as a boy--the great Lord Brougham.--for he lived till 1868. I remember that he was vehemently praised and blamed as a politician, but with such matters others have dealt; in this letter, Antony, we will concern ourselves with the glory of English prose as it poured from Lord Brougham in two of his greatest speeches.

He was an orator whose voice was uplifted throughout a long and strenuous life in condemnation of all the brutalities and oppression of his time, and to whose eloquence the triumphant cause of freedom stands for ever in deep obligation.

His great speech on Law Reform in the House of Commons, in 1828, took six hours to deliver, and the concluding pa.s.sage, which mounted to a plane of lofty declamation, displayed no sign of exhaustion, and was listened to with strained attention by an absorbed and crowded audience:--

"The course is clear before us; the race is glorious to run. You have the power of sending your name down through all times, ill.u.s.trated by deeds of higher fame, and more useful import, than ever were done within these walls.

"You saw the greatest warrior of the age--conqueror of Italy--humbler of Germany--terror of the North--saw him account all his matchless victories poor, compared with the triumph you are now in a condition to win--saw him contemn the fickleness of fortune, while, in despite of her, he could p.r.o.nounce his memorable boast, 'I shall go down to posterity with the Code in my hand!'

"You have vanquished him in the field; strive now to rival him in the sacred arts of peace! Outstrip him as a lawgiver, whom in arms you overcame! The l.u.s.tre of the Regency will be eclipsed by the more solid and enduring splendour of the Reign. The praise which false courtiers feigned for our Edwards and Harrys, the Justinians of their day, will be the just tribute of the wise and the good to that monarch under whose sway so mighty an undertaking shall be accomplished. Of a truth, the holders of sceptres are most chiefly to be envied for that they bestow the power of thus conquering, and ruling thus.

"It was the boast of Augustus--it formed part of the glare in which the perfidies of his earlier years were lost,--that he found Rome of brick, and left it of marble; a praise not unworthy a great prince, and to which the present reign also has its claims.

But how much n.o.bler will be the sovereign's boast when he shall have it to say, that he found law dear, and left it cheap; found it a sealed book--left it a living letter; found it the patrimony of the rich--left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression--left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence!

"To me, much reflecting on these things, it has always seemed a worthier honour to be the instrument of making you bestir yourselves in this high matter, than to enjoy all that office can bestow--office, of which the patronage would be an irksome enc.u.mbrance, the emoluments superfluous to one content with the rest of his industrious fellow-citizens that his own hands minister to his wants; and as for the power supposed to follow it--I have lived near half a century, and I have learned that power and place may be severed.

"But one power I do prize; that of being the advocate of my countrymen here, and their fellow-labourers elsewhere, in those things which concern the best interests of mankind. That power, I know full well, no government can give--no change take away!"

His speech on negro slavery made a deep impression upon the country, and rose towards its termination, gradually, but with ever-ascending periods, to a close of absolute majesty:--

"I regard the freedom of the negro as accomplished and sure. Why?

Because it is his right--because he has shown himself fit for it; because a pretext, or a shadow of a pretext, can no longer be devised for withholding that right from its possessor. I know that all men at this day take a part in the question, and they will no longer bear to be imposed upon, now they are well informed. My reliance is firm and unflinching upon the great change which I have witnessed--the education of the people, unfettered by party or by sect--witnessed from the beginning of its progress, I may say from the hour of its birth! Yes! It was not for a humble man like me to a.s.sist at royal births with the ill.u.s.trious Prince who condescended to grace the pageant of this opening session, or the great captain and statesman in whose presence I am now proud to speak. But with that ill.u.s.trious Prince, and with the father of the Queen, I a.s.sisted at that other birth, more conspicuous still.

With them, and with the head of the House of Russell, incomparably more ill.u.s.trious in my eyes, I watched over its cradle--I marked its growth--I rejoiced in its strength--I witnessed its maturity; I have been spared to see it ascend the very height of supreme power; directing the councils of state; accelerating every great improvement; uniting itself with every good work; propping all useful inst.i.tutions; extirpating abuses in all our inst.i.tutions; pa.s.sing the bounds of our European dominion, and in the New World, as in the Old, proclaiming that freedom is the birthright of man--that distinction of colour gives no t.i.tle to oppression--that the chains now loosened must be struck off, and even the marks they have left effaced--proclaiming this by the same eternal law of our nature which makes nations the masters of their own destiny, and which in Europe has caused every tyrant's throne to quake!

"But they need feel no alarm at the progress of light who defend a limited monarchy and support popular inst.i.tutions--who place their chiefest pride not in ruling over slaves, be they white or be they black, not in protecting the oppressor, but in wearing a const.i.tutional crown, in holding the sword of justice with the hand of mercy, in being the first citizen of a country whose air is too pure for slavery to breathe, and on whose sh.o.r.es, if the captive's foot but touch, his fetters of themselves fall off. To the resistless progress of this great principle I look with a confidence which nothing can shake; it makes all improvement certain; it makes all change safe which it produces; for none can be brought about unless it has been prepared in a cautious and salutary spirit.

"So now the fulness of time is come for at length discharging our duty to the African captive. I have demonstrated to you that everything is ordered--every previous step taken--all safe, by experience shown to be safe, for the long-desired consummation.

The time has come, the trial has been made, the hour is striking; you have no longer a pretext for hesitation, or faltering, or delay. The slave has shown, by four years' blameless behaviour, and devotion to the pursuits of peaceful industry, that he is as fit for his freedom as any English peasant, ay, or any lord whom I now address.

"I demand his rights; I demand his liberty without stint. In the name of justice and of law--in the name of reason--in the name of G.o.d, who has given you no right to work injustice; I demand that your brother be no longer trampled upon as your slave! I make my appeal to the Commons, who represent the free people of England; and I require at their hands the performance of that condition for which they paid so enormous a price--that condition which all their const.i.tuents are in breathless anxiety to see fulfilled! I appeal to this House. Hereditary judges of the first tribunal in the world--to you I appeal for justice. Patrons of all the arts that humanise mankind--under your protection I place humanity herself! To the merciful Sovereign of a free people I call aloud for mercy to the hundreds of thousands for whom half a million of her Christian sisters have cried aloud--I ask that their cry may not have risen in vain. But first I turn my eye to the throne of all justice, and devoutly humbling myself before Him who is of purer eyes than to behold such vast iniquities, I implore that the curse hovering over the head of the unjust and the oppressor be averted from us--that your hearts may be turned to mercy--and that over all the earth His will may at length be done!"

This is n.o.bly to use n.o.ble gifts; it is difficult to think ill of a man who can carry oratory for a glorious object to such heights of splendour. It may seem a duty to some to darken his character with detraction, but his inspiring words remain supreme and unsullied and will still live when such faults as may be truly laid to his charge are long forgotten. To fight for a great cause, Antony, is rightly to use great powers, and this is what Lord Brougham did with all his might.

Your loving old G.P.

21

MY DEAR ANTONY,

In the great emprise of war it must often happen that the most awful scenes of manifested human power, and the most G.o.dlike deeds of human glory, are lost to the contemporary world, and utterly unknown to succeeding generations, because they were witnessed by no man with the gift of expression who could record for after time, in adequate language, the majestic spectacle.

In the great war against Germany no great writer has yet appeared who was personally in touch as a living witness of the countless deeds of glorious valour and acts of heroic endurance that were everywhere displayed upon that immense far-stretched front.

But in the wars of former times, a whole battle could be witnessed from its beginning to its end by a single commander, and no scenes in human life could be more terrible and soul-stirring than the awful ebb and flow of a great combat in which the victory of armies and the fate of nations hung in the balance.

The battle of Albuera in the Peninsular War might easily at this date have long been forgotten had not the pen of Sir William Napier been as puissant as his sword. The battle had raged for hours, and the British were well-nigh overwhelmed; the Colonel, twenty officers, and over four hundred men out of five hundred and seventy had fallen in the 57th alone; not a third were left standing in the other regiments that had been closely engaged throughout the day. Then Cole was ordered up with his fourth division as a last hope, and this is how Sir William Napier records their advance:--

"Such a gallant line, issuing from the midst of the smoke and rapidly separating itself from the confused and broken mult.i.tude, startled the enemy's ma.s.ses, then augmenting and pressing onwards as to an a.s.sured victory; they wavered, hesitated, and vomiting forth a storm of fire hastily endeavoured to enlarge their front, while a fearful discharge of grape from all their artillery whistled through the British ranks ... the English battalions, struck by the iron tempest, reeled and staggered like sinking ships; but suddenly and sternly recovering, they closed on their terrible enemies, and then was seen with what a strength and majesty the British soldier fights.

"In vain did Soult with voice and gesture animate his Frenchmen; in vain did the hardiest veterans, breaking from the crowded columns, sacrifice their lives to gain time for the ma.s.s to open out on such a fair field; in vain did the ma.s.s itself bear up, and, fiercely striving, fire indiscriminately upon friends and foes, while the hors.e.m.e.n hovering on the flank threatened to charge the advancing line.