66 66 mania differs from all these. The patient his fame increased, and of course his income has no pleasure in mirth, company, Anacre- in the same proportion. He obtained the ontic songs, and so forth. He rarely drinks reputation of being the most successful priin society, and is often abstinent between the vate tutor ("coach or grinder" is the fits, and even shudders at wine or alcohol term) that ever defied the College of Surafter a severe attack. It is preceded by geons. great mental misery, causeless dread, sensations of sinking. It is not with boon companions that he drinks, nor for the pleasure of drinking, but it is in order to become intoxicated; and it is in haste, in solitude and gloom, that he gulps down glass after glass of any thing that will gratify this morbid craving. Bearing these distinctions in mind, the apparent inconsistency, the mixture of strength and feebleness, in Saltoun's conduct, will be understood, and the better traced to its true source. He recovered, to all appearance, completely, and for upwards of three years enjoyed perfect health. His conduct was remarkable for its regularity; his upward course in his professional career was rapid; THOSE DOGS OF ITALIANS! Grinding is a bad system," he often said to me. "A yearly examination of each pupil, by properly constituted authorities, as to the progress made would almost destroy my business, and would choke off all the blockheads and idle scamps that crowd into every profession." "It's a monotonous employment." "It would be if I always taught the same men, but I don't. My grand secret lies in this: I teach them only what is essential to pass them, and cut away any superfluous sift the lectures and books for the men, and burden on the memory without mercy; I give them the essence." He seemed so well, that I was quite satisfied; in fact, I was too glad to condemn my own theory, and believe him a cured man. Columbus kept his dog-watch not in vain; "No doubt all the people in Italy might be called And Galileo's tube dogged Dian's train. Italians,- THANKS, courteous Rupert, for the gentle gird; From Alp or Apennine, reared north or south, If "every dog," we're told, "will have his Sure Italy for hers may hope and pray. natures, Poets have ranked them o'er their fellow-crea What was the soubriquet that came most handy, whose power Found Danke shelter in his exiled hour. Nay, turning to the present from the past, Those dogs, who stoutly swam the Tyrrhene sea, With Garibaldi-grand old sea-dog he! Laughing to scorn c'en Scylla's rival bark, Scarce, here and there, one young hound run- Till in Caserta's parks and paddocks tame From The Spectator. ing maniac. But they all fail to explain the THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ENG- George III. ascended the throne at a singular crisis in the party history of England. The great Whig houses who had stood in the van of the nation during its second and successful struggle with the Stuarts, had outlived their popularity. For nearly a hundred years their sway, though temperate and on the whole wise, had been characterized by that singular infecundity which is the bane of aristocratic administrations. The party had ceased to advance, more especially in the direction of social politics. They had become too exclusive, too much inclined to believe the Revolution the end British Constitution. Less than a hundred years ago, however, our fathers looked to the royal authority as the influence it was the duty of Englishmen steadily to resist. The distrust of the crown, it is said, though it has died out among a middle class, conciliated by the virtues of the present reign, still endures in the higher ranks, growing keener and keener as we approach the throne. Lord Brougham, who understood the position of at least one king, pronounces the Constitution safe until the royal line produces a man of genius. Lord George Bentinck, Whig by instinct and tradition, though not by party connection, always avowed his dread of the influence of the throne. The Peers have once or twice muttered at what they deemed stretches of the prerogative, passed over lightly by the Commons, and have once within the present reign compelled the sovereign to recede. Lord Macaulay, shortly before his death, declared the crown was regaining power, that the throne "was a more active estate of human progress, above all, too apt to than it had been since George III." It is consider power as a right purchased by certain that the authority of the sovereign, their courage and their sacrifices. The nathough usually concealed with care, makes tion was very weary, and had the new dyitself every now and then distinctly felt, nasty shown high qualities of any one kind, more especially in foreign politics, and that it might have restored a form of government twice at least in the present reign the crown more nearly approaching to the Stuart reghas beaten strong ministers on very essen-ime. Fortunately for England, the first tial points. There are not wanting observ-two Georges, though not the brutes Mr. ers who believe that in any great conflict of Thackeray chooses to believe them, were parties the crown might assert practically, men singularly unpalatable to the English though not openly, its old supremacy. Those who entertain these ideas may well read with people. The nation, it is true, did not care a jot about the personal vices satirists so interest Mr. May's sketch of the last open eagerly attacked. A popular king might struggle of a British sovereign for personal have had a dozen mistresses as ugly as the ascendency. His first volume, though nom- Duchess of Kendal, or as fat as Madame inally covering the whole field of constitu- Walmoden, without exciting wrath among tional practice, is really directed to the elua people always careless about royal amours. cidation of this great struggle, and is in that But the nation detested the German ways, sense a most valuable contribution to Eng-tongue, and brusquerie of the new House, lish history. The story has been related in and was painfully alive to the loss of the imevery point of view, from that of Mr. Dis-perial position Marlborough's victories had raeli, who holds that the king had determined secured. Failing the kings, they endured not to be a Doge, to that of Mr. Thackeray, the Whig magnates, though with an indifferwho thinks the king apparently a blunderence, "a universal deadness" of spirit, *The Constitutional History of England, since which twice placed Whigs and dynasty in the Accession of George III. By Thomas Erskine May, C. B. Longmans. jeopardy together. The accession of a king young, frank, and English, re-created loyalty, and from that moment the power of the Whig houses began to decline. He attained them all, only to find that all were insufficient to secure to one man the personal sovereignty of the British people, and the process by which he worked out his design is the most instructive episode in constitutional history. These The occasion was favorable for the development of monarchical power, and the new monarch ascended the throne with the steady resolve to rule. He would be a king after The king, it will be remembered, wanted the ancient type, the real leader of the peo- power for himself, not for his ministers. He ple, the active as well as nominal source of could not, therefore, avail himself, except honor and advancement. The work he per- when supported by his premier, of all the ceived was a difficult one, but he brought to ministerial boroughs. He managed, it is the task some personal and many extraneous true, to filch a few seats, but, as a rule, he advantages. It is the fashion, now-a-days, was compelled to find seats pretty much like to deny him all credit for capacity, and, any other great borough dealer. The power doubtless, he was by no means the sort of of creating peerages was his only special remonarch likely to succeed in a competitive source, but, considered as an ordinary dealer, examination. He could hardly spell better his resources were still large. He had, for than Frederick the Great, disliked littera- example, certainly ten times the pecuniary teurs as much as Napoleon, and had no means of any private noble. The civil list more feeling for art than Peter the Great. alone was £800,000 a year, and though this It is nevertheless quite certain that he did, income was heavily burdened, more than single-handed, change the position of the half remained at the disposal of the king. English monarch, that if he failed to attain He was also possessed of the hereditary his own end he did crush the dominant aris- revenue of Scotland, an Irish civil list, certocracy, and that he did for sixty years se-tain duties, the droits of the crown, and the cure to himself the largest share in the revenues of Lancaster and Cornwall, amountexecutive of Great Britain. Those achieve-ing in all to at least a million more. ments are not very consistent with mental weakness, and in truth his intellect was not weak. It was only narrow, as strong minds without culture are apt to be, and this narrowness added force to a will marked from the first by the vehement intensity, which so often precedes or produces incipient insanity. His capacity was, perhaps, never more clearly demonstrated than in the means he adopted to secure his end. In his pursuit of power George III. never committed a mistake. He never once gave his opponents a fair ground to attack his prerogative, never once induced his people to transfer their dislike from him to the kingly office. No monarch has been subjected to a more searching criticism, yet, under that microscopic examination, no trace of a plan to evade or dispense with the action of the legislature has been found. The king set himself to rule, not in spite of Parliament, but through it, and to this end sought from the beginning to secure three objects: first, a following in both Houses sufficient to secure him a free choice between the two parties; secondly, a commanding influence in the election of that following; and, thirdly, a ministry willing to obey his behests. resources were husbanded with a frugality which made him the butt of the satirists, yet, in the first seventeen years of his reign, he ran in debt to the extent of eleven hundred thousand pounds, which sums were voted by the Parliament they had helped to buy. The people, unable to comprehend such expenditure and such frugality,-a king who dined on mutton, and ran in debt for a million,-affirmed that the money was squandered on Germany. Members favored an idea which screened themselves, and the king, while living on the revenue of Osnabruck, was supposed to be exhausting England for the benefit of Hanover. The money was really spent in purchasing a faction in the House of Commons, and all the patronage the king could seize was devoted to the same end. The sleepless jealousy of the country party had reduced the placemen in the House from two hundred and seventyone to sixty-nine, but there were other influences besides votes to be purchased. Offices were showered on borough owners, on powerful constituents, on the relatives of members. The secret service money was used to purchase special votes on important occasions, one treaty, for instance, costing £25,000 in one day. Lottery tickets were ficed day by day to preserve itself. The assigned to members, and the preference king never once succeeded either in arrestgiven them on loans. One loan in particu-ing or defying the national will. He scarcely lar, for £12,000,000, was issued on terms succeeded in defeating the aristocracy. Three so favorable that the nation lost a million times he was compelled to accept ministers sterling, and half the loan was assigned to he detested. Twice he was compelled to members of the House. Meanwhile the give up ministers he loved. He was beaten Peers were controlled by less dishonorable, by a London demagogue, beaten by the but more despotic means. When George printers, beaten by Parliament, over and III. ascended the throne, there were but one over again. Twice, it is true, he enjoyed a hundred and seventy-eight Peers of Parlia- full measure of power, but how? Because ment. Before he died he had added three he had selected as ministers, men (the two hundred and eighty-eight, two entire thirds Pitts) who were the idols of the nation and of the House being his own creation. the aristocracy, and whose minds completely dominated his own. After sixty years of devotion to one end, pursued with unswerving purpose, with marvellous skill, and means such as no British sovereign ever possessed, George III. left the royal power weaker than when it came into his hands. His predecessor could veto an Act, his successor could not stop the one measure on which even his hardened conscience felt a qualm. With absolute sway in one House, and some eighty votes in the other, enough to ensure him the casting voice in all disputes, what degree of political authority did the king acquire? Simply none. The power thus purchased from day to day secured him, indeed, vast influence as the dispenser of patronage, but it was an influence sacri A FEW SIMPLE REASONS AGAINST (Principally addressed to Sir Benjamin Brodie, BY THE MOTHER OF A LARGE FAMILY, AND 1. BECAUSE it injures the curtains. 2. Because it is injurious to the furniture generally. 3. Because it is not agreeable to breakfast in the room when the gentlemen have been smoking overnight. 4. Because no man's temper is the better for it the next morning. 5. Because it keeps persons up to late hours, when every respectable person ought to be in bed. 10. Because it gives extra trouble to the servants who have to clean and to ventilate the room the next morning. 11. Because how are one's daughters to get married, if the gentlemen are always locked up in a separate room paying court to their filthy pipes and cigars? 12. Because it unfits a young man, who is wedded to it, for the refining influences of female society. 13. Because it puts a stop to music, singing, flirting, and all rational enjoyments. 14. Because it is a custom originally imported from the savages. 15. Because we see the nations that smoke the 6. Because the smell haunts a man's clothes, most are mostly the stupidest, heaviest, laziest, and his beard, and his hair, and his whiskers, dreariest, dreamiest, most senseless, and worthand his whole body, for days afterwards-so less beings that encumber-like so many weeds, much so that it is positively uncomfortable some-only capable of emitting so much smoke-the times to go near him. 7. Because it is a selfish gratification that not only injures those who partake of it, but has the further effect of driving the ladies out of the room. 8. Because it is, also, an expensive habit which the ladies, not participating in its so-called enjoyments, cannot possibly have the smallest sympathy with or appreciation for. 9. Because it has the further effect of making gentlemen drink a great deal more than they otherwise would, and so weaken their purses besides ruining their constitutions, to say nothing of the many comforts and new dresses that their face of the earth. 16. Because when a man says he is going out to smoke a cigar, there's no knowing what mischief he is bent upon, or the harm the monster may be likely to get into. 17. Because it is not allowed in the Palace, or Windsor Castle, or in any respectable establishment. 18. Because the majority of husbands only do it because they know it is offensive to their wives. And a thousand other good reasons, if one only had the patience to enumerate them all. Pray did Adam smoke?-Punch. From The New Monthly Magazine. NOTWITHSTANDING the sanguine stigma indelibly branded on her name-the predominant gules of her escutcheon, rouge et noir (as it were) in one-we have always felt a sneaking kindness at the least, a sort of vexed and mortified good-will, a something of chagrined but compassionate interest, in the character of Mary Tudor. All no idle books of chivalry or romance. such productions as Amadis of Gaul, or Margalone and the Fairy Melusina, he would consign to the flames, as unrelentingly as the curate in "Don Quixote." Pyramus and Thisbe (in the Flemish) and Tirante the White (in the Spanish) are entered in his Index Prohibitorum. Lancelot de Lac, and Florice and Blanche, and ever so many more, he denounces as libri pestiferi, to be abjured Unamiable and unattractive as she so pre- by all young Christian souls. He prescribes eminently was, there was an underlying no- in their room and stead (in addition to sebility in her moral nature, such as we fail to lected portions of the Old and New Testadiscover (or are wilfully or judicially blind ments) the works of Cyprian, Jerome, Auelse) in her all-popular sister, Elizabeth. gustine, and Ambrose; Plato, Cicero, SeneMary was, at any rate, sternly sincere; and ca's Maxims, the Paraphrase of Erasmus, and she was memorably capable of two passion- the Utopia of Sir Thomas More. From his ate attachments, which, otherwise directed allowance of classical poets he does not exand controlled, might have won the world's clude the Pharsalia of Lucan, the tragedies love and admiration, instead of involving of Seneca, and elegant extracts from Horace. her in scorn and reproach,-she was even servile in her hearty devotion to the cause of her Church, and she was not only profuse but constant in her affection to a very cold, neglectful, and thankless husband. If it be true, as alleged, that a blunder is worse than a crime, then was Mary's reign worse than criminal, for it was a blunder throughout. She was not strong enough for the place. For her the post of honor would have been a private station, the more private the better. Haply she might not, in that case, and on that condition, have belied the promise of her youth, Cards, dice, and showy attire, he thinks only not worse than the pestiferous romances aforesaid. Mary is to work hard at Greek and Latin, learning the rules and exercises by heart, daily, and reading them two or three times over before going to bed. She is to converse with her tutor in Latin, and to be frequently translating English into that language. If stories or story-books or some kind she must have, they are to be exclusively historical, sacred, or classical-his only exception being the story of Griselda, which is recognized as a permissible fiction for the delectation of young folks. Griselda, Katherine. "She is young, and of a noble, modest nature; by the way, came afterwards to be considered I hope she will deserve well," * in England, by one (the Spanish) party at as Shakspeare (albeit a true Elizabethan), least, as the prototype of poor, patient, unstinted in sympathy with them both, sorely tried, and cruelly provoked Queen makes dying Katherine say of her " young daughter," when praying that the dews of heaven may fall thick in blessings on her, and, as a last request, beseeching the king not to neglect this "model of their chaste loves," but to "give her virtuous breeding," and preserve his motherless girl from the pangs of absolute orphanage. The system authorized by Vives was faithfully carried out, to Mary's life-long prejudice. Miss Strickland holds her forth as an historical example of "the noxious effect that over-education has at a very tender age," and is convinced that these precocious studies laid the foundation for her melancholy temperament and delicate health. At the same time it is observable that the young lady did not absolutely debar herself Mary had been educated according to the austere directions of that second Quintilian, as his contemporaries called him, the learned Spaniard, Ludovicus Vives, whom Katherine of recreation, and that of a questionable had desired to draw up a code of instructions for the observance of her daughter. Rigid were the rules enforced by Vives, in compliance with royal request. Mary was to read * King Henry VIII., Act IV. Sc. 2. kind. She seems to have been fond of betting, and to have lost a tidy sum now and then in certain gambling transactions. But no shadow of a stain rests on her perfect *Lives of the Queens of England, vol. v. |