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: Le Sage, Gil Blas, Book 10 Chapter vii. 87
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86: Le Sage, Gil Blas, Book 10 Chapter vii.
87: “Don’t put a reformed drunk in charge of the wine-cellar”. 88: CHP I 24, 3. 89: Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, V v 177. Or the car rattling o’er the stony street; On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; [p.195] No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet— But, hark!—that heavy sound breaks in once more, As if the clouds its echo would repeat; And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! Arm! arm! it is—it is—the cannon’s opening roar! XXIII. ‘Within a windowed niche of that high hall Sate Brunswick’s fated chieftain; he did hear That sound the first amidst the festival, And caught its tone with Death’s prophetic ear; And when they smiled because he deemed it near, His heart more truly knew that peal too well Which stretch’d his father on a bloody bier, And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell: He rush’d into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell. XXIV. ‘Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago Blush’d at the praise of their own loveliness; And there were sudden partings, such as press The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs Which ne’er might be repeated; who could guess If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise? XXV. ‘And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed, The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; And the deep thunder peal on peal afar; And near, the beat of the alarming drum Roused up the soldier ere the morning star; While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering, with white lips—“The foe! they come! they come!” XXVI. ‘And wild and high the “Cameron’s Gathering” rose! The War-note of Lochiel, which Albyn’s hills Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes: How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills, Savage and shrill! but with the breath which fills Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers With the fierce native daring which instils The stirring memory of a thousand years, And Evan’s, Donald’s fame rings in each clansman’s ears! [p.196] XXVII. ‘And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, Dewy with nature’s tear-drops as they pass, Grieving, if aught inanimate e’er grieves, Over the unreturning brave —alas! Ere evening to be trodden like the grass Which now beneath them, but above shall grow In its next verdure, when this fiery mass Of living valour, rolling on the foe And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low. XXVIII. ‘Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, Last eve in Beauty’s circle proudly gay, The midnight brought the signal-sound of strife, The morn the marshalling in arms, the day Battle’s magnificently stern array! The thunder-clouds close o’er it, which when rent The earth is covered thick with other clay, Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent, Rider and horse,—friend, foe,—in one red burial blent!’ A beautiful elegiac stanza on the Honourable Major Howard, a relation of Lord Byron; and several verses in which the author contemplates the character and fall of Napoleon, close the meditations suggested by the field of Waterloo. The present situation of Buonaparte 90 ought to exempt him (unless when, as in the following pages, he is brought officially before us) from such petty warfare as we can wage. But if Lord Byron supposes that Napoleon’s fall was occasioned, or even precipitated by a ‘just habitual scorn of men and their thoughts,’ 91 too publicly and rashly expressed, or as he has termed it in a note, ‘the continued obtrusion on mankind of his want of all community of feeling with or for them,’ 92 —we conceive him to be under a material error. Far from being deficient in that necessary branch of the politician’s art, which soothes the passions and conciliates the prejudices of those whom they wish to employ as instruments, Buonaparte possessed it in exquisite perfection. He seldom missed finding the very man that was fittest for his immediate purpose; and he had, in a peculiar degree, the art of moulding him to it. It was not, then, because he despised the means necessary to gain his end that he finally fell short of attaining it, but because confiding in his stars, his fortune, and his strength, the ends which he proposed were unattainable even by the gigantic means which he possessed. But if we are to understand that the projects of Napoleon intimated, too plainly for the subsistence of his power, how little he regarded human life or human happiness in the accomplishment of his personal views, and that this conviction heated [p.197] his enemies and cooled his friends, his indeed may be called a scorn, but surely not a just scorn of his fellow-mortals. But bidding adieu to politics, that extensive gulph whose eddies draw every thing that is British into their vortex, we follow with pleasure Childe Harold’s wanderings up the enchanted valley of the Rhine:— ‘There Harold gazes on a work divine, A Blending of all beauties; streams and dells, Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine, And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells From gray, but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.’ 93 These ruins, once the shades of the robber-chivalry of the German frontier, where each free count and knight exercised within his petty domain the power of a feudal sovereign, call forth from the poet an appropriate commemoration of the exploits and character of their former owners. In a softer mood, the Pilgrim pours forth his greetings to one kind breast, 94 in whom he can yet repose his sorrows, and hope for responsive feelings. The fall of Marceau is next commemorated; and Harold, passing with a fond adieu from the Rhin-tal, plunges into the Alps, to find among their recesses scenery yet wilder, and better suited to one who sought for loneliness in order to renew ‘Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old, Ere mingling with the herd had penn’d “him” in their fold.’ 95 Download 1.07 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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