CHAPTER VI.
_A Generous Action_
ANOTHER fortnight glided away, and he was still at the Castle, still theconstant and almost sole companion of May Dacre. It is breakfast; theservant is delivering the letter-bag to Mr. Dacre. Interesting moment!when you extend your hand for the billet of a mistress, and receive yourtailor's bill! How provokingly slow are most domestic chieftains in thisanxious operation! They turn the letters over and over, and upside anddown; arrange, confuse, mistake, assort; pretend, like Champollion, todecipher illegible franks, and deliver with a slight remark, which isintended as a friendly admonition, the documents of the unlucky wightwho encourages unprivileged correspondents.
A letter was delivered to Miss Dacre. She started, exclaimed, blushed,and tore it open.
'Only you, only you,' she said, extending her hand to the young Duke,'only you were capable of this!'
It was a letter from Arundel Dacre, not only written but franked by him.
It explained everything that the Duke of St. James might have told thembefore; but he preferred hearing all himself, from the delighted anddelightful lips of Miss Dacre, who read to her father her cousin'sletter.
The Duke of St. James had returned him for one of his Cornish boroughs.It appeared that Lord St. Maurice was the previous member, who hadaccepted the Chiltern Hundreds in his favour.
'You were determined to surprise, as well as delight us,' said Mr.Dacre.
'I am no admirer of mysteries,' said the Duke; 'but the fact is, inthe present case, it was not in my power to give you any positiveinformation, and I had no desire to provide you, after your latedisappointment, with new sources of anxiety. The only person I couldtake the liberty with, at so short a notice, was St. Maurice. He, youknow, is a Liberal; but he cannot forget that he is the son of a Tory,and has no great ambition to take any active part in affairs at present.I anticipated less difficulty with him than with his father. St. Mauricecan command me again when it suits him; but, I confess to you, I havebeen surprised at my uncle's kindness in this affair. I really have notdone justice to his character before, and regret it. He has behavedin the most kind-hearted and the most liberal manner, and put me underobligations which I never shall forget. He seems as desirous of servingmy friend as myself; and I assure you, sir, it would give you pleasureto know in what terms of respect he speaks of your family, andparticularly of Arundel.'
'Arundel says he shall take his seat the morning of the debate. How verynear! how admirably managed! Oh! I never shall recover my surprise anddelight! How good you are!'
'He takes his seat, then, to-morrow,' said Mr. Dacre, in a musing tone.'My letters give a rather nervous account of affairs. We are to win it,they hope, but by two only. As for the Lords, the majority againstus will, it is said, be somewhat smaller than usual. We shall nevertriumph, George, till May is M.P. for the county. Cannot you return herfor Pen Bronnock too?'
They talked, as you may suppose, of nothing else. At last Mr. Dacreremembered an appointment with his bailiff, and proposed to the Duke tojoin him, who acceded.
'And I to be left alone this morning, then!' said Miss Dacre. 'I amsure, as they say of children, I can set to nothing.'
'Come and ride with us, then!'
'An excellent idea! Let us canter over to Hauteville! I am just in thehumour for a gallop up the avenue, and feel half emancipated alreadywith a Dacre in the House! Oh! to-morrow, how nervous I shall be!'
'I will despatch Barrington, then,' said Mr. Dacre, 'and join you in tenminutes.'
'How good you are!' said Miss Dacre to the Duke. 'How can we thank youenough? What can we do for you?'
'You have thanked me enough. What have I done after all? My opportunityto serve my friends is brief. Is it wonderful that I seize theopportunity?'
'Brief! brief! Why do you always say so? Why do you talk so of leavingus?'
'My visit to you has been already too long. It must soon end, and Iremain not in England when it ceases.'
'Come and live at Hauteville, and be near us?'
He faintly smiled as he said, 'No, no; my doom is fixed. Hauteville isthe last place that I should choose for my residence, even if I remainedin England. But I hear the horses.'
The important night at length arrived, or rather the importantmessenger, who brought down, express, a report of its proceedings toCastle Dacre.
Nothing is more singular than the various success of men in the House ofCommons. Fellows who have been the oracles of coteries from theirbirth; who have gone through the regular process of gold medals,senior wranglerships, and double firsts, who have nightly sat downamid tumultuous cheering in debating societies, and can haranguewith unruffled foreheads and unfaltering voice, from one end of adinner-table to the other, who, on all occasions, have something to say,and can speak with fluency on what they know nothing about, no soonerrise in the House than their spells desert them. All their effronteryvanishes. Commonplace ideas are rendered even more uninteresting bymonotonous delivery; and keenly alive as even boobies are in thosesacred walls to the ridiculous, no one appears more thoroughly aware ofhis unexpected and astounding deficiencies than the orator himself. Heregains his seat hot and hard, sultry and stiff, with a burning cheekand an icy hand, repressing his breath lest it should give evidence ofan existence of which he is ashamed, and clenching his fist, thatthe pressure may secretly convince him that he has not as completelyannihilated his stupid body as his false reputation.
On the other hand, persons whom the women have long deplored, and themen long pitied, as having 'no manner,' who blush when you speak tothem, and blunder when they speak to you, suddenly jump up in the Housewith a self-confidence, which is only equalled by their consummateability. And so it was with Arundel Dacre. He rose the first nightthat he took his seat (a great disadvantage, of which no one was moresensible than himself), and for an hour and a half he addressed thefullest House that had long been assembled, with the self-possession ofan habitual debater. His clenching argument, and his luminous detail,might have been expected from one who had the reputation of having beena student. What was more surprising was, the withering sarcasm thatblasted like the simoom, the brilliant sallies of wit that flashed likea sabre, the gushing eddies of humour that drowned all opposition andoverwhelmed those ponderous and unwieldy arguments which the producersannounced as rocks, but which he proved to be porpoises. Never was theresuch a triumphant debut; and a peroration of genuine eloquence, becauseof genuine feeling, concluded amid the long and renewed cheers of allparties.
The truth is, Eloquence is the child of Knowledge. When a mind is full,like a wholesome river, it is also clear. Confusion and obscurity aremuch oftener the results of ignorance than of inefficiency. Few arethe men who cannot express their meaning, when the occasion demandsthe energy; as the lowest will defend their lives with acuteness,and sometimes even with eloquence. They are masters of their subject.Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mankind may supply us with facts;but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the workof our own mind. To make others feel, we must feel ourselves; and tofeel ourselves, we must be natural. This we can never be, when weare vomiting forth the dogmas of the schools. Knowledge is not a merecollection of words; and it is a delusion to suppose that thought canbe obtained by the aid of any other intellect than our own. What isrepetition, by a curious mystery ceases to be truth, even if it weretruth when it was first heard; as the shadow in a mirror, though it moveand mimic all the actions of vitality, is not life. When a man is notspeaking, or writing, from his own mind, he is as insipid company as alooking-glass.
Before a man can address a popular assembly with command, he must knowsomething of mankind; and he can know nothing of mankind without knowingsomething of himself. Self-knowledge is the property of that man whosepassions have their play, but who ponders over their results. Such a mansympathises by inspiration with his kind. He has a key to every heart.He can divine, in the flash of a single thought, all that they require,all that they wish. Such a man
speaks to their very core. All feel thata master-hand tears off the veil of cant, with which, from necessity,they have enveloped their souls; for cant is nothing more thanthe sophistry which results from attempting to account for what isunintelligible, or to defend what is improper.
Perhaps, although we use the term, we never have had oratory in England.There is an essential difference between oratory and debating. Oratoryseems an accomplishment confined to the ancients, unless the Frenchpreachers may put in their claim, and some of the Irish lawyers. Mr.Shiel's speech in Kent was a fine oration; and the boobies who tauntedhim for having got it by rote, were not aware that in doing so he onlywisely followed the example of Pericles, Demosthenes, Lysias, Isocrates,Hortensius, Cicero, Caesar, and every great orator of antiquity. Oratoryis essentially the accomplishment of antiquity: it was their mostefficient mode of communicating thought; it was their substitute forprinting.
I like a good debate; and, when a stripling, used sometimes to bestifled in the Gallery, or enjoy the easier privileges of a member'sson. I like, I say, a good debate, and have no objection to a duemixture of bores, which are a relief. I remember none of the giants offormer days; but I have heard Canning. He was a consummate rhetorician;but there seemed to me a dash of commonplace in all that he said, andfrequent indications of the absence of an original mind. To the last,he never got clear of 'Good God, sir!' and all the other hackneyedejaculations of his youthful debating clubs. The most commanding speakerthat I ever listened to is, I think, Sir Francis Burdett. I never heardhim in the House; but at an election. He was full of music, grace" anddignity, even amid all the vulgar tumult; and, unlike all mob orators,raised the taste of the populace to him, instead of lowering his own totheirs. His colleague, Mr. Hobhouse, seemed to me ill qualified for ademagogue, though he spoke with power. He is rather too elaborate, anda little heavy, but fluent, and never weak. His thoughtful andhighly-cultivated mind maintains him under all circumstances; and hisbreeding never deserts him. Sound sense comes recommended from his lipsby the language of a scholar and the urbanity of a gentleman.
Mr. Brougham, at present, reigns paramount in the House of Commons. Ithink the lawyer has spoiled the statesman. He is said to have greatpowers of sarcasm. From what I have observed there, I should think verylittle ones would be quite sufficient. Many a sneer withers in thosewalls, which would scarcely, I think, blight a currant-bush out ofthem; and I have seen the House convulsed with raillery which, in othersociety, would infallibly settle the rallier to be a bore beyond alltolerance. Even an idiot can raise a smile. They are so good-natured, orfind it so dull. Mr. Canning's badinage was the most successful, thoughI confess I have listened to few things more calculated to make a mangloomy. But the House always ran riot, taking everything for granted,and cracked their universal sides before he opened his mouth. The faultof Mr. Brougham is, that he holds no intellect at present in greatdread, and, consequently, allows himself on all occasions to run wild.Few men hazard more unphilosophical observations; but he is safe,because there is no one to notice them. On all great occasions, Mr.Brougham has come up to the mark; an infallible test of a man of genius.
I hear that Mr. Macaulay is to be returned. If he speaks half as well ashe writes, the House will be in fashion again. I fear that he is one ofthose who, like the individual whom he has most studied, will 'give upto party what was meant for mankind.'
At any rate, he must get rid of his rabidity. He writes now on allsubjects, as if he certainly intended to be a renegade, and wasdetermined to make the contrast complete.
Mr. Peel is the model of a minister, and improves as a speaker; though,like most of the rest, he is fluent without the least style. He shouldnot get so often in a passion either, or, if he do, should not get outof one so easily. His sweet apologies are cloying. His candour--hewill do well to get rid of that. He can make a present of it to Mr.Huskisson, who is a memorable instance of the value of knowledge, whichmaintains a man under all circumstances and all disadvantages, and will.
In the Lords, I admire the Duke. The readiness with which he has adoptedthe air of a debater, shows the man of genius. There is a gruff, huskysort of a downright Montaignish naivete about him, which is quaint,unusual, and tells. You plainly perceive that he is determined to be acivilian; and he is as offended if you drop a hint that he occasionallywears an uniform, as a servant on a holiday if you mention the word_livery_.
Lord Grey speaks with feeling, and is better to hear than to read,though ever strong and impressive. Lord Holland's speeches are like a_refacimento_ of all the suppressed passages in Clarendon, and thenotes in the new edition of Bishop Burnet's Memoirs: but taste throws adelicate hue over the curious medley, and the candour of a philosophicmind shows that in the library of Holland House he can sometimes ceaseto be a partisan.
One thing is clear, that a man may speak very well in the House ofCommons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are twodistinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if Ihave time, to give a specimen of both. In the Lower House Don Juan mayperhaps be our model; in the Upper House, Paradise Lost.
BOOK V [CONTINUED]