The sentiment branded itself on the reputation of all the leading statesmen. "When I hear," said Lord George Germaine, "tne topic of abandoning the colonies calmly proposed, I own my astonishment; I own that I cannot comprehend the proposal; I see in it only national ruin. I own I have not that philosophic equanimity, that more than political nerve, which can contemplate without shuddering the opening of a gulf into which all that is valuable in the British empire must inevitably be merged. I must pause, I must tremble, when I stand on its edge; for it is my firm belief, that from the moment of acknowledging the independence of America, England is ruined." Lord Shelburne, a minister not celebrated for rashly giving way to his feelings, exceeded, if possible, the melancholy prophecies of Chatham and Germaine. Even when first lord of the treasury,* and with all the restrictions of official speech; he could glow on this subject, and ominously pronounce, that," in whatever year, in whatever hour, the British parliament should lose the sovereignty of the thirteen colonies the sun of England's glory was for ever set. He had hoped that there would be some reserve for national safety, if not for national honour; that a spark at least would be left, which might light us up in time to a new day. But if independence were once conceded, if parliament considered that measure to be advisable, he, for his part, must avow his belief; he foresaw, in his own mind, that England was undone!" Such was the wisdom of the wise; or rather, such was at once the blindness which could not see that the growing patronage of the colonies, if they had remained a few years longer in our hands, must have given the minister a power deadly to a free constitution; the political selfishness of arrogating to England a perpetual dominion which no authority * April, 1778. three thousand miles off could wisely administer, but which must cramp and wither the prosperity of a young continent by the burdens and institutes of an old island; and not less the ungenerous neglect, or the narrow and ungrateful disregard of those immeasurable means of strength, happiness, and national stability, which Providence has lavished on Great Britain. But we can scarcely be surprised that opinions thus inculcated by the gravest names of political council, voices that came like oracles, should have sunk deep into the popular bosom. A bitter repugnance to every act of the throne was rapidly engendered, thoughts of a general change began to be familiar, and the language of the principal members of opposition assumed a tone, at whose uncalled-for violence we can now only wonder. Dunning, though a lawyer, and at an age not likely to be inflamed by enthusiasm, the keen, cold man of jurisprudence, actually moved, in the house of commons, that the power of dissolving parliament should be taken from the crown; his motion being, that* "the parliament should not be dissolved, nor the session prorogued, until proper measures were adopted for diminishing the influence of the crown, and correcting the other evils complained of in the petitions." Fox carried his sentiments still further, and coming hot from the contact of the Corresponding Society, and full of the popular grievance of seeing a body of soldiers placed to protect the members of the house from insult, unhesitatingly declared, that "if the soldiery were to be thus let loose on the assemblages of the people, the people who attended them must go armed." Mirabeau's famous declaration in the national assembly, that "if the king desired the French deputies to retire, it must be at the point of the bayonet," the watchword of the revolution, was scarcely more defying than this menace. * April, 1780. But the better genius of England prevailed. The statesman shrank from the hideous worship of the devil of revolution. He could not pass at once from the princely banquet to the squalidness and obscene riot of the democratic carousal. He grew weary of the furious fondness and the irrational hate of the populace; his angry temperament cooled, his natural tastes were restored, and long before the close of his life, Fox was, what he had begun, the high aristocrat by habit, by association, and by nature. He still continued member for Westminster, and he made his customary periodic appeals to party. But if he wore the robes of the worship, he had abandoned the fanaticism; he no longer menaced the institutions of England with the fierce fervour of his old prophecies of evil; he no more shook against the throne the brand snatched from the revolutionary altar; he still went through the established ceremonial; but when it was done, he cast aside the vestments, and hastened to be the companion of nobles and princes again. The society at the Pavilion was remarkably attractive; no prince in Europe passed so much of his time in society expressly chosen by himself. Intelligent conversation is the great charm of man, the finest solace of intellectual labour, and the simplest yet most effectual and delightful mode of at once resting and invigorating the mind, whether wearied by study, or depressed by struggles with fortune. Next to the power of extensive benevolence, there is no privilege of princes which the wisdom of humbler life may be so justified in desiring, as their power of collecting accomplished minds from the whole range of the community. The Prince of Wales availed himself largely of this privilege. It happened that English society at this period singularly abounded with men of conspicuous ability. To his royal highness, of course, all were accessible; and though his associates were chiefly men of rank or of high political name, yet talents, grace of manners, and conversational brilliancy were the principle of selection. Frederic the Great had attempted to draw round him a circle of this kind. But he chose ill: for he chose dependants, and those Frenchmen. His own habits were querulous and supercilious; and as the fashions of royalty are quickly adopted by its associates, Frederic's coterie was in a state of perpetual warfare. Voltaire led the battle, and when he had sneered his companions out of all resistance, he fell on the monarch himself. No man in a state of perfect idleness can be satisfied with his life; and the Frenchmen had nothing to do but to quarrel, invent scandals, and yawn. Thiebault, one of the chosen dwellers in the paradise of Sans Souci, tells us, that their only occupation from morning till night was conjugating the verb s'ennuyer, through all persons, moods, and tenses. Frederic treated them like monkeys in a cage, came in from the council or the parade to amuse himself for the half-hour with looking at their tricks and their visages; then turned on his heel, left them to the eternal weariness of their prison, and went about the business of the world. The Frenchmen at last slipped, one by one, out of this gilded menagerie; ran off to Paris, the only spot where a Frenchman can live; and libelled the royal wit and infidel with a pungency and profligacy even superior to his own, until they turned the "Grand Frederic" into a public laugh in every corner of Europe beyond the lash of his drum-majors. Frederic, Prince of Wales, the grandfather of his late majesty, had also attempted to collect a familiar and literary society round him. But the attempt was a reluctant one, and it naturally failed. It was Lyttelton's suggestion as a source of popularity; and it humiliated Thomson and Mallet, by making them pensioners on an individual. Authorship, to be wor→ thy of public honour, cannot shrink too sensitively from personal protection. The past age scandalized the natural rank of genius. But a wiser, because a more dignified, feeling now prevails among men of literary name. They appeal only to the public, and honourably disdain to stoop to the degradation of any patronage below that of the people and the throne. CHAPTER VII. The Prince's Friends. THE prince's table afforded the display of men too independent by both their place in society, and their consciousness of intellectual power, to feel themselves embarrassed by the presence of superior rank. Hare, Jekyll, Fitzpatrick, Erskine, with the great parliamentary leaders, were constant guests, and the round was varied by the introduction of celebrated foreigners, and other persons capable of adding to the interest of the circle. Hare, "the Hare and many friends," as he was cailed by the clever Dutchess of Gordon, in allusion to Gay's fable and his own universal favouritism, was then at the head of conversational fame. Like Johnson's objection to Topham Beauclerk-" Sir, a man cannot dine with him and preserve his self-applause; sir, no man who gives a dinner should so overwhelm his guests"-Hare's chief fault was said to be his superabundant pleasantry; a talent which suffered nothing among his friends or enemies to escape, yet which had the rare good fortune of being pointed without ceasing to be playful. Some of the sayings of the circle are still remembered. But if they are given here in the miscella |