Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 102.djvu/428

410 would die of cancer in the stomach before he was fifty" (wilful man!):—he is made to say to the refractory Chambers (1813), "If all would now do their duty, I would be invincible in face of the enemy,"—and again, "If I had not possessed that ardent temperament of mind, I would never have raised myself to the first throne in the world." "A majority!" exclaims Charles X., "I should be sorry to gain it; I would not know what to do with it." Quoth Metternich in 1830, "I would be less alarmed if Polignac were more so." Pointing out the causes of our reverses in the American war of 1814, the historian adds, "And we will have ourselves to blame if they are again incurred." Lindley Murray's warning of the poor foreigner who transposed his wills and shalls—who would be drowned, and nobody should help him—has been lost upon Sir Archibald Alison.

Then again one is for ever lighting on some curiosity of style, in the shape of metaphor, similitude, ellipse, antithesis, &c. Napoleon, we are told, in awful capitals, was the ":" a mot more adventurous than distinct, of the Robert Montgomery order. Napoleon was surrounded by vices, "on the impulse of which he was elevated to greatness:" a somewhat novel adaptation of an "impulse." "A charge of French horsemen at Marengo placed Napoleon on the consular throne; another, of the English light dragoons on the flank of the Old Guard, hurled him to the rock of St. Helena." To the French Revolutionists, the "simple path of duty" is said to have been "insupportable." The Allied Sovereigns, when first they caught sight of Paris in 1814, "inhaled, during several minutes, the entrancing spectacle." In the American war of 1812, the striking of one of our frigates to a Yankee is thus elaborately expressed: "And the English colours were mournfully lowered to the broad pendant of their emancipated offspring,"—and a little further on the Chippewa action (1814) is called, "this unparalleled struggle [of England] with her worthy offspring." During the war with France, "a great proportion of the people had grown into existence," "and inhaled with their earliest breath an ardent desire for its success." Of the military intrigues in favour of Napoleon while at Elba,—"The inferior officers and soldiers of the army were in an especial manner the seat of this conspiracy." So great was the joy in England after the battle of Waterloo, that not only "exultation beamed in every eye," but, "spontaneous illuminations were seen in every city:"—marry, a parlous sight! The italicising of the word ghost in the following sentence is Sir Archibald's own—"It did not establish 'a throne surrounded by republican institutions,' but a republic surrounded by the ghost of monarchical institutions." No occasion for italics, one might think, to draw attention to so striking a figure. One ghost surrounding a republic!—the idea is supernatural of course, and there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy: yet who can wonder if the phrase has been styled "showman's English," in reference to the showman's formula, "There you see Lord Nelson a-dying, surrounded by Captain Hardy." Verily it needed a ghost come from the grave to do that.

Alison's quotations from foreign tongues, dead and living, are more profuse than correct. "Vive la Roi" is of course a misprint; but "Aidez-toi et le ciel t'aidera" looks like a grace beyond the printer's