Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/854

830 self died, in London, in his eighty-seventh year, on the 13th January 1838, leaving behind him two daughters, Lady Frances Bankes and Lady Elizabeth Repton, and his grandson, who succeeded him. &quot; When his remains lay in state in Hamilton Place,&quot; says Lord Campbell, &quot; large numbers of all classes went to see the solemn scene; and when the funeral procession, attended by the carriages of the princes of the blood, many members of the peerage, and all the dignitaries of the law, blackened the way, dense crowds stood uncovered, respectfully gazing at it as it passed. 1 His remains were interred in the family vault in the chapel of Kingston, in Dorsetshire. The fortune whjch he left behind him exceeded in amount half a million of money. Lord Eldon was no legislator, his one aim in politics was to keep in office, and maintain things as he found them; and almost the only laws he helped to pass were laws for popular coercion. For nearly forty years he fought against every improvement in law, or in the con stitution, calling God to witness, on the smallest proposal of reform, that he foresaw from it the downfall of his country. Without any political principles, properly so called, and without interest in or knowledge of foreign affairs, he maintained himself and his party in power for an unprecedented period by his great tact, and in virtue of his two great political properties of zeal against every species of reform, and zeal against the Ilornan Catholics. To pass from his political to his judicial character is to shift to ground on which his greatness is universally acknowledged. His judgments, which have received as much praise for their accuracy as abuse for their clumsi ness and uncouthness, fill a small library. But though intimately acquainted with every nook and cranny of the English law, he never carried his studies into foreign fields, from which to enrich our legal literature ; and it must be added that against the excellence of his judgments, in too many cases, must be set off the hardships, worse than in justice, that arose from his protracted delays in pronouncing them. A consummate judge and the narrowest of politicians, he was Doubt on the bench and Promptness itself in the political arena. For literature, as for art, he had no feeling. What intervals of leisure he enjoyed from the cares of office he filled up with newspapers and the gossip of old cronies. Nor were his intimate associates men of refinement and taste ; they were rather good fellows who quietly enjoyed a good bottle and a joke ; he uniformly avoided encounters of wit with his equals. He is said to have been parsimonious, and certainly he was quicker to receive than to reciprocate hospitalities ; but his mean establishment and mode of life are explained by the retired habits of his wife, and her dislike of company. His manners were very winning and courtly, and in the circle of his immediate relatives he is said to have always been lovable and beloved. &quot; He is one,&quot; says Miss Martineau, &quot; that after times will not venerate ; but fortunately for the fame of the larger num ber of the great ones of the earth, there is a vast neutral ground between veneration and contempt.&quot; &quot; In his person,&quot; says Lord Campbell, &quot; Lord Eldon was about the middle size, his figure light and athletic, his features regular and handsome, his eye bright and full, his smile remarkably benevolent, and his whole appearance pre possessing. The advance of years rather increased than detracted from these personal advantages. As he sat on the judgment-seat, the deep thought betrayed in his fur rowed brow, the large eyebrows, overhanging eyes that seemed to regard more what was taking place within than around him, his calmnoss, that would have assumed a character of sternness but for its perfect placidity, his dignity, repose, and venerable age, tended at once to win confidence and to inspire respect (Townsend). He had a voice both sweet and deep-toned, and its effect was not injured by his Northumbrian burr, which, though strong, was entirely free from harshness and vulgarity.&quot;  EL DORADO, that is, in Spanish, The Golden,&quot; a mythical country long believed to exist in the northern part of South America. The origin of the legend has been variously explained, some supposing that the micaceous quartz in the valley of the Essequibo was mistaken for gold ore, while others find the nucleus of the story in the fact that the high-priest of Bogot t a was accustomed to sprinkle himself with gold dust, which was afterwards washed off in a neighbouring lake. It hardly ssems necessary, however, to accept either or indeed any theory of explanation : the minds of the Spanish explorers had been dazzled by the wealth of their earlier conquests, and the most brilliant imagi nation seemed to have a possibility of fulfilment. Martinez, a Spaniard, who had been set adrift on the sea, asserted that he was flung on the coast of Guiana, and conducted inland to a city called Manoa, which was governed by a king in alliance with the Incas, and lavished the precious metals on its roofs and walls. Orellana, who passed^down the Rio Napo to the valley of the Amazon in 1540, also brought back an account of a land of fabulous wealth ; and Philip von Hutten, who led an exploring party from Coro, on the coast of Caracas, during the period from 1541 to 1545, believed he had caught sight of the golden splendours of the city of his search. In spite of the failure of expedition after expedition, and notably of that undertaken in 1569 by Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada from Santa F6 de Bogota, the fable continued a potent allurement for adventurous spirits, and even in the beginning of the 17th century exerted a master-influence on the schemes of Sir Walter Raleigh. Traces of the pseudo-discoveries of Martinez and his compeers disfigured our maps till the time of Humboldt, who proved that the great lake of Parima to the east of Manoa was almost as fabulous as the city itself; and the name of El Dorado remains a permanent gain to our metaphorical vocabulary. Allusions more or less direct to the legend abound in European literatures, one of the most detailed being the well-known chapter in Voltaire s Candide.

 

