Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/101

SHERIDAN sacred names to depart for a moment from this place, tho it be your peculiar residence; nor hear your names profaned by such a sacrilegious combination as that which I am now compelled to repeat! where all the fair forms of nature and art, truth and peace, policy and horror, shrink back aghast from the deleterious shade—where all existences, nefarious and vile, have sway—where we see amid black agents on one side and Middleton with Impey on the other, the great figure of the piece—characteristic in his place, aloof and independent from the puny profligacy in his train, but far from idle and inactive, turning a malignant eye on all mischief that awaits him; the multiplied apparatus of temporizing expedients and intimidating instruments, now cringing on his prey and fawning on his vengeance—now quickening the limping pace of craft, and forcing every stand that retiring nature can make to the heart; the attachments and the decorums of life; each emotion of tenderness and honor; and all the distinctions of national pride; with a long catalog of crimes and aggravations, beyond the reach of thought for human malignity to perpetrate, or human vengeance to punish; lower than perdition—blacker than despair!

It might, my lords, have been hoped, for the honor of the human heart, that the Begums were themselves exempted from a share in these sufferings, and that they had been wounded only through the sides of their ministers. The reverse of this, however, is the fact. Their 91