Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/266

254  and arrogant pride was the source of all his evil deeds; this natural temper was enormously nourished by a diseased frame, and again by the inferiority of the men by whom he was surrounded, for the age of Charles the First was very positively an age of mediocrities; he stood alone as not only the one great, but the one capable administrator and general of his time. No position could be more unfortunate to so haughty and ambitious a mind; it engendered a scorn and contempt of others, and an overweening conceit of his own powers. Yet, while trampling on the rights of individuals and the liberties of the people, his sole object was to strengthen the hands of the king and render the nation great and prosperous. What he achieved in Ireland, which he regarded only in the light of a conquered country, sufficiently proves this desire. Although guilty of more than one act of vengeance, he never committed one that can be stigmatized as mean, avaricious, or despicable. He never descended to wile or duplicity — never wielded less than the thunderbolt. His oppressions seldom or never touched the weak. "He loved justice for justice itself," says Radcliffe, "taking delight to free a poor man from a powerful oppressor." There was a grandeur in all he did, whether good or evil. Even Macaulay, that most brilliant but most partial of historians, than whom few writers have pronounced harsher judgment upon him or accepted more readily the blackest scandals of his enemies, cannot withhold tribute to this phase of his character: —


 * Whoever thinks of him [he writes in his "Essay on Hampden"] without thinking of those harsh dark features, ennobled by their expression into more than the majesty of an antique Jupiter; of that brow, that eye, that cheek, that lip, wherein, as in a chronicle, are written the events of many stormy and disastrous years, high enterprise accomplished, frightful dangers braved, power unsparingly exercised, suffering unshrinkingly borne; of that fixed look so full of severity, of mournful anxiety, of deep thought, of dauntless resolution, which seems at once to forbode and defy a terrible fate as it lowers on us from the living canvas of Vandyck? Even at this day the haughty earl overawes posterity as he overawed his contemporaries, and excites the same interest when arraigned before the tribunal of history which he excited at the bar of

the House of Lords.

Many noble sentiments — not the studied utterances of a Joseph Surface, but the spontaneous emanations of a lofty mind — are scattered throughout this correspondence, such as his condemnation of gaming, which he stigmatizes as "a pursuit not becoming a generous, noble heart, which will not brook such starved considerations as the greed of winning;" his recommendation of his old tutor, the Rev. Charles Greenwood, to his nephews — "I protest to God, were I in your place, I would think him the greatest and best riches I did or could possess;" and many others, several of which have been already quoted. Of the warmth of his friendship Radcliffe writes thus: —


 * Amongst all his qualities none was more eminent than his friendship, wherein he did study and delighted to excel. I lost in his death a treasure which no earthly thing can countervail, such a friend as man never within the compass of my knowledge had, so excellent a friend and so much mine. He never had anything in his possession or power which he thought too dear for his friends; he was never weary to take pains for them, or to employ the utmost of his abilities in their service. No fear, trouble or expense deterred him from speaking or doing anything which the occasions of his friends required. He was never forgetful, nor needed to be solicited to do or procure any courtesy which he thought useful for, or desired by, his friends. He spent eight years' time, besides his pains and money, in soliciting the businesses and suits of his nephews. … He did not seek friendship with all men, but, where he desired intimacy, his kindness did appear much more in effect than in words. He never failed when he did profess friendship, yet the time was when he might have secured himself from the great opposition raised against him in Parliament, if he would have consented to have done and forborne to have done some things concerning some whom he accounted his friends, which some men would not have scrupled at."

"No man," says Clarendon, quoting Plutarch, "did ever exceed him, either in doing good to his friends, or in doing mischief to his enemies, for his acts of both kinds were most notorious."

 

 From The Saturday Review.

enterprising correspondent of the Daily News has published a report which, if it is authentic, throws a curious light on the social and political state of Russia. The document purports to be the judicial record of an inquiry into the religious and communistic organization of the Nihilists. 