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How sweetly bloomed the gay, green birk,
How rich the hawthorn's blossom,
As underneath their fragrant shade
I clasped her to my bosom!
The golden hours on angel wings
Flew o'er me and my dearie;
For dear to me, as light and life,
Was my sweet Highland Mary.

Wi' mony a vow and locked embrace
Our parting was fu' tender;
And, pledging aft to meet again,
We tore oursels asunder:

But, oh! fell death's untimely frost,

That nipt my flower sae early!
Now green's the sod, and cauld's the clay
That wraps my Highland Mary.

O pale, pale now, those rosy lips
I aft hae kissed sae fondly!

And closed for aye the sparkling glance
That dwelt on me sae kindly!

And mould'ring now in silent dust
That heart that lo'ed me dearly!
But still within my bosom's core
Shall live my Highland Mary.

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PERIOD VIII.

FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ONWARDS,

1789

LESSON 49.

Brief Historical Sketch.-In 1793 war began with France; it ended June 18, 1815. Vaccination introduced, 1796. Rebellion in Ireland put down, 1800. Union of Ireland with England, 1800. Undulatory theory of light established, 1802. Battle of Trafalgar and death of Nelson, 1805. Death of Pitt, 1806. Slave Trade abolished, 1807. Against Napoleon's Berlin decree, 1806, which made it lawful for French vessels to seize neutral vessels sailing from English ports with English merchandise, the celebrated retaliatory Orders in Council are issued, 1807, declaring France and all subject states in a state of blockade and that vessels attempting to trade with their ports may be seized. In 1807 the American Congress retaliates with the Embargo, and in 1809 prohibits intercourse with England and France till the restrictions on neutral commerce are relaxed. War declared against the U.S.in 1812, ended, 1814. Streets of London first lighted with gas, 1814. Holy Alliance formed, 1815. First steamer, the Savannah, crosses the Atlantic, 1819. George IV. comes to the throne, 1820. Roman Catholics admitted to Parliament, 1829. First Railway, from Liverpool to Manchester, 1830. Wm. IV. succeeds Geo. IV., 1830. Reform Bill, 1832. Slavery abolished in British colonies, 1833. East India trade thrown open, 1833. Great Tractarian Movement" by Newman, Pusey, and Keble begun, 1833. System of National Education begun, 1834. Victoria succeeds William IV., 1837. The Opium War with China, 1839. Penny Postage, 1840. Transportation for Crime abandoned, 1840. Ashburton Treaty respecting our N. E. boundary, 1842. Potato famine in Ireland, 1845. Treaty determining the boundary of Oregon, 1846. Corn Laws repealed, 1846. French Revolution and flight of Louis Philippe to England, 1848. Suppression of the Chartists and of Irish rebels, 1848. Peel's death, 1850. Crystal Palace Exhibition, 1851. Crimean War, 1854-5. Sepoy Mutiny in India, 1857-8. East India Co. abolished, and sovereignty of

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India transferred to the Crown, 1858. Jews admitted to Parliament, 1858. Death of Prince Albert, 1861. Civil War in the U. S., 1861-5. First Cable between Europe and America, 1866. Irish Church dis-established, 1869. Abolition of religious tests in the Universities and of purchase in the army, 1871. Alabama Claims Treaty negotiated at Wash-' ington, 1871. Tribunal of Arbitration meets at Geneva, same year, and awards for loss of ships and cargoes and for interest, $15,500,000. Victoria becomes Empress of India, 1876. Irish Land Bill, 1881.

LESSON 50.

PROSE-NOVELS.-"The interest kindled in political questions by the French Revolution showed itself in a new class of novels, and the Political stories of HOLCROFT and WILLIAM GODWIN opened a new realm to the novelist, while the latter excluded love altogether from his story of Caleb Williams. MRS. OPIE made Domestic life the sphere of her graceful and pathetic stories, 1806. MISS EDGEWORTH, in her Irish stories, gave the first impulse to the novel of National character, and, in her other tales, to the novel with a Moral purpose, 18011811. MISS AUSTEN, 1775-1817, with an exquisite touch which renders commonplace things and characters interesting from truth of description and sentiment,' produced the best stories we have of everyday English society. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion were all written between 1811 and 1817.

6

SIR WALTER SCOTT, 1771-1832, the great Enchanter, now began the long series of his novels. Men are still alive who well remember the wonder and delight of the land when Waverley, 1814, was published. In the rapidity of his work, Scott recalls the Elizabethan time. Guy Mannering, his next tale, was written in six weeks. The Bride of Lammermoor, as great in fateful pathos as Romeo and Juliet, was done in a fortnight.

His national tales, such as The Heart of Midlothian and The Antiquary, are written as if he saw directly all the char

acters and scenes, and, when he saw them, enjoyed them so much that he could not help writing them down. And the art with which this was done was so inspired that, since Shakespeare, there is nothing we can compare to it. 'All is great in the Waverley Novels,' says Goethe, 'material, effects, characters, execution.' In the vivid portraiture and dramatic telling of such tales as Kenilworth and Quentin Durward, he created the Historical Novel. His last tale of power was the Fair Maid of Perth in 1828; his last effort in 1831 was made the year before he died. He raised the whole of the literature of the novel into one of the greatest influences that bear on the human mind. The words his uncle once said to him may be applied to the work he did,-'God bless thee, Walter, my man! Thou hast risen to be great, but thou wast always good.'

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"I do not think one of his successors can compare with him for a moment in the ease and truth with which he painted not merely the life of his own time and country-seldom, indeed, that of precisely his own time-but that of days long past, and often, too, of scenes far distant. Scott needed a certain largeness of type, a strongly marked class-life, and, where it was possible, a free, out-of-doors life, for his delineations. No one could paint beggars and gipsies and wandering fiddlers and mercenary soldiers and peasants and farmers and lawyers and magistrates and preachers and courtiers and statesmen and, best of all, perhaps, queens and kings with anything like his ability. But, when it came to describing the small differences of manner, differences not due to external habits so much as to internal sentiment or education or mere domestic circumstance, he was beyond his proper field. And it was well for the world that it was so. The domestic novel, when really of the highest kind, is no doubt a perfect work of art, and an unfailing source of amusement; but it has nothing of the tonic influence, the large instructiveness, the stimulating air of Scott's historic tales.

His conception of women of his own or of a higher class was always too romantic. He hardly ventured, as it were, in his tenderness for them, to look deeply into their little weaknesses and intricacies of character. With women of an inferior class he had not this feeling. But once make a woman beautiful or in any way an object of homage to him, and Scott bowed so low before the image of her that he could not go deep

into her heart. He could no more have analyzed such a woman, as Thackeray analyzed Lady Castlewood or Amelia or Becky, or as George Eliot analyzed Rosamond Vincy, than he could have vivisected Camp or Maida1. To some extent, therefore, Scott's pictures of women remain something in the style of the miniatures of the last age-bright and beautiful beings without any special character in them. But then how living are his men, whether coarse or noble!"-Richard H. Hutton.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. SCOTT.-Lockhart Life of; D. Masson's Brit. Novelists; W. H. Prescott's Miscellanies; Bulwer's Crit. Writings; Carlyle's Essays; Eng. Men of Let. Series; L. Stephen's Hours in a Library; H. Martineau's Miscellanies; Harper's Month., vs. 26, 36, 43, and 44; N. A. Rev., v. 87, 1858; Quar. Rev., v. 124, 1868; Allibone's Crit. Dictionary.

From Scott's Guy Mannering.

This was Abel Sampson, commonly called, from his occupation as a pedagogue, Dominie Sampson. He was of low birth, but having evinced, even from his cradle, an uncommon seriousness of disposition, the poor parents were encouraged to hope that their bairn,? as they expressed it, "might wag his pow3 in a pulpit yet." With an ambitious view to such a consummation, they pinched and pared, rose early and lay down late, ate dry bread and drank cold water, to secure to Abel the means of learning. Meantime, his tall, ungainly figure, his taciturn and grave manners, and some grotesque habits of swinging his limbs and screwing his visage while reciting his task made poor Sampson the ridicule of all his school-companions. The same qualities secured him at Glasgow College a plentiful share of the same sort of notice. Half the youthful mob of "the yards" used to assemble regularly to see Dominie Sampson (for he had already attained that honorable title) descend the stairs from the Greek class, with his lexicon under his arm, his long misshapen legs sprawling abroad, and keeping awkward time to the play of his immense shoulder blades, as they raised and depressed the loose and threadbare black coat which was his constant and only wear. When he spoke, the efforts of the professor (professor of divinity, though he was) were totally inadequate to restrain the inextinguishable laughter of the students, and sometimes even to repress his own. The long, sallow visage, the goggle eyes, the huge under jaw, which appeared not to open and shut by an act of volition, but to be dropped and hoisted up again by some complicated machinery within the inner man, the harsh and dissonant voice, and the screech-owl notes to which

1 His favorite dogs.

2 Child.

3 Head.

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