spell of the charmer." And Lady Hamilton" charmed so wisely" as to render obtuse the delicacy of his moral sense, and his feeling of social decency. Amid the bowers of Calypso, that Great Parent, whose wayward destinies he had been sent to retrieve, was for the moment forgotten; the household divinities were abandoned, among whom alone wisdom will look for happiness, and experience hope to find it; honour, the last plank of moral safety, was consumed by the fires of unchaste love; and no Mentor was at hand to purge "his darkling vision with the euphrasy of bitter counsel," or to save the heedless man from the ruin which became inevitable when it was loved. I would gladly spare my readers this afflicting recital. But the consequences of the errors and misdeeds of public men are never confined to their personal prejudice or dishonour; they involve the interests and compromise the character of their country. The disaffected Neapolitans had, previously to this period, expelled the royal family from the capital, and forcibly compelled the aged and reluctant Marquis of Caraccioli to take command of their military force. The united influence of the counsels of their venerable commander, and the terrors of the British navy, now induced the insurgents to return to their allegiance. This personal inviolability was secured by the guarantee of the British officers in command. The queen was dissatisfied with this bloodless triumph over her own subjects: she exclaimed against the encouragement which treason would receive from impunity. Her thirst of blood derived its full measure of satiety from the fatal influence of Lady Hamilton. Lord Nelson annulled the treaty. In the cabin of a British man-of-war he convened a court-martial of British officers to decide on the fate of men, over whom no law gave him jurisdiction, and whom by the laws of civilized warfare he was pledged to protect. An indecent, an unprecedented, an unnatural spectacle was now presented; in that court, under the shadow of the British flag, a female presided and examined, dictated and adjudged. From the petulance of an immodest woman, dignity of rank could look for no respect, the sanctity of age could expect no reverence. Lady Hamilton was invested with full power to wreak the implacable resentments of a little mind, and to exercise the ferocious cruelty of a weak one. She sat, and sentenced, and insulted. The venerable nobleman, with his principal companions, was hanged at the yard-arm, and their corpses, encumbered with heavy shot, consigned as a prey to the voracious tenants of the deep. The mind retires with indignant impatience from these scenes of atrocious perfidy. In company with Sir William and Lady Hamilton, Lord Nelson returned to England. On his arrival his modest and unoffending lady was unvisited, supplanted, and discarded. She who had loved him for himself; who, in his ignoble obscurity, had soothed his moments of vexation, and cheered his hours of depression; who had hailed his early successes, and sympathized with his disappointments-must now retire from that bed which she had blessed and honoured, supplanted and scorned by the wanton worshipper of her husband's fame, wealth, and honours. Wisely did the son of David pray that he might not be depressed by poverty, or tempt. ed by inordinate prosperity; and unhappily the better half of his prayer was dispersed by the idle winds. The middle station of life appears to be that which Heaven has reserved and allotted to its favourites: they are removed from the distresses and the debasing influence of indigence; and are placed below that elevation, which fills vain man with the giddy and fantastic notion that he is exempt from the rules which direct ordinary society, and the decorum which secures its members from censure and contempt. Many have been found to withstand unabashed the sharp rebuke of adversity; but perhaps the annals of society do not furnish a solitary instance in which pride has not become inordinate, and principle has not been relaxed, by the adulation and the indulgence of prosperity. For such a man the philosopher searched with a candle in noon-day: he is not to be found amid "the bowers the obtrusive crowds of common socie- dishonoured. Even in the rude shock ty-by the broad and undiscriminating of conflicting "ammirals," he often glare of sun-light; of that rare mind the turned an anxious glance from the nice proportions and retiring peculiarities beckoning hand of victory back to can be discovered only by the modest and searching light of philosophy.When we affirm that prosperity, the precious curse of Heaven, exercised its influence on the mind of Lord Nelson, we only reject his claim to the highest species of human excellence. On the triumphal tour which he made about this time thro' England, he was every where hailed, feasted, congratulated, and worshipped. But let it be recorded to the honour of the English nobility, that many of that illustrious body directed their gates to be shut against the festive cavalcade ;-their virtue was alarmed, and their pride shocked at an attempt to introduce into their domestic circle an avowed though titled concubine. During his voluptuous retirement, the parasites of the day pompously recorded the punctuality with which his lordship frequented the village church. But with every deference to the nominal and ritual religion of the day, I will venture to think he would have acted with more propriety, had he remained at home. The mockery of such devotions" the very fiend's arch mock"-mingled with the impure aspirations of his paramour, must have tended rather to scandalize the simplicity, and to shake the moral principles of an artless, admiring, and imitative people. The call of honour and his country at length dissolved this fatal charm; Lord Nelson was summoned for the last time to unfurl and defend the flag, which for Where Pleasure lay carelessly smiling at Fame." The death-shot which probed his heart, only proved the tenacity with which it clung to its object even in the agony of its last pulsation. The sound of triumph for a moment diffused over his rigid features a preternatural lustre, the twilight of setting mortality and dawn of an opening eternal day. But the laurel and the cypress were again regarded with equal indifference. That great spirit poured forth its last gasp in aspirating the name of his Enma, and in vainly commending her to the gratitude of his country. "A thousand years had braved The battle and the breeze." Lady Hamilton still divided with his country the empire of his heart. While ploughing his way onwards to victory and his doom, his time was variously employed in giving plans of battle and assurances of triumph; in composing madrigal sonnets to the praise of his absent mistress, and in uttering impotent imprecations upon the wronged and widowed woman, whose blameless existence prevented the licensed elevation of her rival to the bed which she Let a tear of sympathy and pity "brighten with verdure the grave" of departed merit, and obliterate the recollection of its errors. Let not, however, the author of those errors expect to descend into her tomb in peace or with honour. The sorrows and the injuries which she had heaped upon an injured and forlorn lady, recoiled upon Lady Hamilton with a tenfold measure of retribution. Of that meteor, which bad culminated in splendour, and admiration, and disastrous influence, the setting was amid clouds, and darkness, and tempests. The last years of Lady Hamilton's life were embittered by neglect, imprisonment, desertion, and distress. Let us humbly hope that her late repentance may have been accepted. Light be the earth on her ashes! But in the numerous instances of female genius and influence perverted from domestic life, their legitimate sphere, to public or masculine pursuits, however women may have become admirable, they have seldom been amiable; and in general it seems, that in abandoning their feminine avocations, they cannot "unsex" themselves, but carry with them into public business the little jealousies, personal vanity, and causeless timidity, which, in private, men censure and delight in ; but, which thus misplaced, expose the fair trespasser to derision, or tempt her to guilt. the mast of some great ammiral.-Milton. From La Belle Assemblee. CHRISTMAS EVE; OR, THE CONVERSION. FROM THE GERMAN. CONCLUDED FROM P. 295. THE HE people were thronging to the altar, notwithstanding all the efforts of the sacristan to prevent them; but no one could tell who this extraordinary child belonged to, nor how he became mingled with the children of the choir. At length the voice of one man was heard amidst the tumult requesting permission to come forward. The Archbishop commanded silence, that the man might be heard, who was the messenger sent by Elizabeth. He informed him of the name of the child, and of what he knew relative to the illness of bim and his mother: he was in the act of speaking when a second messenger arrived; he came to seek a priest to administer the last sacraments to a poor woman who was at the point of death. He named her-it was Elizabeth, the mother of the child who had just expired, and whom God was pleased to allow to follow him to the realms of eternal life. The Archbishop and the Duke wished to go themselves, and to bear to her the mortal remains of her son. They were preceded by officers of the church bearing wax tapers and the sacred vessels, and were followed by a multitude of people. In the midst of this numerous procession two priests carried the corpse of the child, between the Archbishop and the Duke. They arrived in this manner at the humble dwelling of Elizabeth. The messenger pointed out to them a staircase which led to the chamber of the sick person. The Archbishop requested his brother to remain by the dead body of Gottfried; he was desirous of entering alone to prepare the poor mother for this event, and to receive her confession. He found her almost expiring, between two charitable female neighbours, who, surprised at seeing the pious prelate in his habiliments of ceremony, hailed him by his name, and fell prostrate before him. He gave them his benediction, and told them to quit the room. He then ap2D ATHENEUM VOL. 7. proached the dying couch of Elizabeth, whom he had, in some degree, reanimated by his presence, and taking her joined and clay-cold hands between his, he addressed to her words of consolation and peace, and desired her to confess to him before she received the holy unction; but he was yet silent as to the death of her son, fearing that she might hasten her own before she had received the sacred rites. He helped to raise her up, and gave her some volatiles he carried about him to smell, praying God to give her time and strength sufficient to make her confession: his prayer was heard, and Elizabeth spake as follows. "I thank you, gratefully, my lord, for coming to speak comfort to my departing soul, and holding out hopes of happiness to me in a future state; and I trust you will be a protector to all that was dear to me in this existence, which I am joyful in quitting, and yet I leave behind me a beloved son! But what could I do for him in the state of languor to which I am reduced? I could not even watch over his health. On a sick-bed myself, I could not prevent his going out, and he has not returned; I shall die, perhaps, without seeing him, but if God requires from me this sacrifice it is my duty to submit. You, my lord, perhaps, will find him out, and from your known goodness I know you will be a father to my poor orphan boy. My son is eight years of age, he is named Gottfried.* He merits the name for young as he is, he loves his God and his Saviour, of whom I have unceasingly spoke to him, and whom he already knows how to address. He has never quitted me; always experiencing a languid state of health, I never went out, and my Gottfried always remained at home with me." "Excellent woman," said the Archbishop, "do not fatigue yourself by speaking of your child; there is a God The name Gottfried, signifies the peace of God. to whom he now belongs, therefore do not distress yourself, worthy parent, you will find him again; so good a child is certain of being happy. Now speak of yourself, confide to me your faults and errors. Alas! who, among humankind, is exempt from them? The God of mercy will permit me to grant you absolution. Speak to me ingenuously; if I may judge by your simple and retired life, and the good sentiments you have instilled into your son, you have but little to reproach yourself with." "Oh! too much, my lord!" said Elizabeth, lifting up her dying eyes; "a long life of penitence would not suffice to expiate my sins: and so much the more am I culpable because I could never repent having given birth to my child, who is the offspring of lawless love, and I am so much the more blameable because I never could cease to love the father of him, though he is totally undeserving of it." She paused to wipe away her tears.-"Poor deluded one!" said the prelate, as he brushed off a tear from his own eyes; thou hast already received thy punishment on earth; vengeance will fall on thy seducer, who, doubtless, has forsaken thee." "No, my lord, he has too many faults already without burthening his conscience with that; it was I who forsook him, and he knew not that he was a father." "For what reason did you forsake him? What were your motives? Was he no longer dear to you?" "O inconceivable sentiment!" exclaimed Elizabeth; "I could not esteem him and yet I adored him; but still I loved my God better, and the child of which I was about to become the mother. On my lord, the effort that it cost me to separate myself for ever from him, may, perhaps, obtain pardon for me. Oh! may he, by renouncing his errors, one day obtain his own, from that God he has so long defied, and from a brother he has so justly irritated against him; I dread to tell you his name the father of my Gottfried is Duke Otto your unhappy broth er !" Archbishop, Archbishop, "Duke Otto! O! how inconceivable are thy ways!"--Oppressed by his feelings, the prelate was silent." And I, my Lord, I cannot be unknown to you; do you remember the young Elizabeth Werner." "What! the daughter of my kind nurse; Elizabeth, who for several years I imagined had been dead! Yes, notwithstanding the alteration in your countenance, I know it now again, though overshadowed by the hand of death. Poor Elizabeth! it is thou then, whom my guilty brother.” 66 For Ah! for this once do not call him so; it was I, I alone; I loved him to idolatry; he loved me also: I was presuming enough to think that a love so pure, so sincere as mine, would have brought him back from the paths of vice and irreligion, in which I saw him bewildered. So far from avoiding him I sought every opportunity of being alone with him; and I fell, without having contributed to his conversion. two years I had indulged in the hope of effecting it. Perfidious friends had more power over him than my feeble persuasions, and they finished by completing his infidelity. I was about to become a mother-a hundred times he had promised me marriage if I brought him a son, but this son was to be educated by him! O my lord! I preferred my child's salvation; and for myself, how did I know but what be would have deluded me to believe as he did! Had not I already experienced his power and my own weakness? While there was yet time I tore myself from this peril, I quitted him, and had it given out that I was dead; I changed my name; and my Gottfried was born eight years ago, on this night, the same day as the Saviour of the world. I have consecrated him to his service, he is ignorant of almost every thing else; but on the subject of religion he is above his age. He went out, as he told me, to seek his Saviour; without doubt he is lost in some church: O deign, my lord, to let search be made for him, and if you judge him worthy to be one of the choir, and afterwards a priest, I have nothing more to wish for, and shall die content. If God will not permit me to behold him here once more, you will transmit to him, my lord, the blessings of his mother, and I shall await him in those heavenly mansions to which I trust my God will receive me." "It is him who will receive thee there," said the Archbishop, carried away by an involuntary emotion. "Happy mother! thy son is already numbered with the angels in heaven, and his end was angelic. Render thanks to heaven, Elizabeth, thou wilt soon see thy child in the arms of his father. His innocence has triumphed over the hardness of my brother's heart; it is thy son who has restored him to us, it is him, who, at this very moment, intercedes at the throne of grace for his penitent parents, and without doubt he will obtain their pardon. Elizabeth, hast thou strength sufficient to see thy Otto, reconciled to his God, and absolved by our holy church, with all that remains of your blessed son ?" Elizabeth could not speak, but she opened her arms. Her looks were cast towards heaven, and then fell on the Archbishop, expressive of the wishes of her heart. The prelate went out to prepare his brother for this trying event, he found him on his knees before the corpse of his child, drowned in tears. There are situations that it is impossible to describe. We leave what follows to the susceptible imaginations of our readers. Otto passed the night seated by the bed side of Elizabeth, who held her dead child in her arms. In the morning she fell into a gentle slumber, and waked no more in this world. Duke Otto persisted with fervour in the great work of conversion, and was as great an honour to the church as he had before been a scandal. He looked on the premature death of his child, to whom he became so attached without knowing him, as a just punishment for his sins, and humbly submitted to the dispensations of a wise and overruling Providence. From the New Monthly Magazine. ON BRITISH NOVELS AND ROMANCES. WE regard the authors of the best tenderness, than wholly to be ignorant novels and romances as among of the joy of natural tears. How many the truest benefactors of their species, are there for whom poesy has no charm, Their works have often conveyed, in the and who have derived only from romost attractive form, lessons of the mances those glimpses of disinterested deepest and most genial wisdom. But heroism, and ideal beauty, which alone we do not prize them so much in ref- "make them less forlorn," in their busy erence to their immediate aim, or any career! The good house-wife, who is individual traits of nobleness with which employed all her life in the severest they may inform the thoughts, as for drudgery, has yet some glimmerings of their general tendency to break up that a state and dignity above her station and cold and debasing selfishness with age, and some dim vision of meek, anwhich the souls of so large a portion of gelic suffering, when she thinks of the mankind are encrusted. They give to well-thumbed volume of Clarissa Hara vast class, who by no other means lowe, which she found, when a girl, in would be carried beyond the most con- some old recess, and read, with breathtracted range of emotion, an interest in less eagerness, at stolen times and mothings out of themselves, and a percep- ments of hasty joy. The care-worn tion of grandeur and of beauty, of which lawyer or politician encircled with all otherwise they might ever have lived kinds of petty anxieties, thinks of the unconscious. Pity for fictitious suffer- Arabian Nights' Entertainments, which ings is, indeed, very inferior to that he devoured in his joyful schooldays; sympathy with the universal heart of and is once more young, and innocent, man, which inspires real self-sacrifice; and happy. If the sternest puritan but it is better even to be moved by its, were acquainted with Parson A |
