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twg_000012929300 | best society, without having, at least to ordinary eyes, anything to obtain in these ventures, beyond the triumph of seeing himself where exposure and detection would be certain to be followed by the most condign punishment. At Rome, for instance--how, I cannot say--he obtained admission to the Duc de Grammonts receptions; and at Florence, under the pretext of being a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929301 | proprietor, and a most influential one, of the Times, he breakfasted, by special invitation, with Baron Ricasoli, and had a long and most interesting conversation with him as to the conditions--of course political--on which he would consent to support Italian unity. These must have been done in pure levity; they were imaginative excursions, thrown off in the spirit of those | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929302 | fanciful variations great violinists will now and then indulge in, as though to say, Is there a path too intricate for me to thread, is there a pinnacle too fine for me to balance on? A great deal of this fellows long impunity results from the shame men feel in confessing to have been done by him. Nobody likes the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929303 | avowal, acknowledging, as it does, a certain defect in discrimination, and a natural reluctance to own to having been the dupe of one of the most barefaced and vulgar rogues in Europe. There is one circumstance in this case which might open a very curious psychological question; it is this: F.s victims have not in general been the frank, open, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929304 | free-giving, or trustful class of men; on the contrary, they have usually been close-fisted, cold, cautious people, who weigh carefully what they do, and are rarely the dupes of their own impulsiveness. F. is an Irishman, and yet his successes have been far more with English--ay, even with Scotchmen--than with his own countrymen. In part this may be accounted for | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929305 | by the fact that F. did not usually present himself as one in utter want and completely destitute; his appeal for money was generally made on the ground of some speculation that was to repay the lender; it was because he knew something to your advantage that he asked for that . He addressed himself, in consequence, to the more | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929306 | mercantile spirit of a richer community--to those, in fact, who, more conversant with trade, better understood the meaning of an investment. But there was another, and, as I take it, a stronger and less fallible ground for success. This fellow has, what all Irishmen are more or less gifted with, an immense amount of vitality, a quality which undeniably makes | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929307 | a man companionable, however little there may be to our taste in his manner, his education, or his bearing. This same vitality imparts itself marvellously to the colder temperaments of others, and gives out its own warmth to natures that never of themselves felt the glow of an impulse, or the glorious furnace-heat of a rash action. This was the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929308 | magnetism he worked with. Canny Scotchmen and shrewd Yankees--ay, even Swiss innkeepers--felt the touch of his quality. There was, or there seemed to be, a geniality in the fellow that, in its apparent contempt for all worldliness, threw men off their guard, and it would have smacked of meanness to distrust a fellow so open and unguarded. Now Paddy has | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929309 | seen a good deal of this at home, and could no more be humbugged by it than he could believe a potato to be a truffle. F. was too perfect an artist ever to perform in an Irish part to an Irish audience, and so he owes little or nothing to the land of his birth. Apart from his unquestionable | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929310 | success, which of course settles the question, I would not have called him a great performer--indeed, my astonishment has always been how he succeeded, or with whom. Dont tell me of Beresfords blunders, said the Great Duke after Albuera. Did he beat Soult? if so, he was a good officer. This mans triumphs are some twenty odd years of expensive | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929311 | living, with occasional excursions into good society. He wears broadcloth, and dines on venison, when his legitimate costume had been the striped uniform of the galleys, and his diet the black bread of a convict. The injury these men do in life is not confined to the misery their heartless frauds inflict, for the very humblest and poorest are often | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929312 | their victims: they do worse, in the way they sow distrust and suspicion of really deserving objects, in the pretext they afford the miserly man to draw closer his purse-strings, and not be imposed on; and, worst of all, in the ill repute they spread of a nation which, not attractive by the graces of manner or the charms of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929313 | a winning address, yet cherished the thought that in truthfulness and fair dealing there was not one could gainsay it. As I write, I have just heard tidings of R. N. F. One of our most distinguished travellers and discoverers, lately returning from Venice to the South, passed the night at Padua, and met there what he described as an | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929314 | Indian officer--Major Newton--who was travelling, he said, with a nephew of Lord Palmer-stons. The Major was a man fall of anecdote, and abounded in knowledge of people and places; he had apparently been everywhere with everybody, and, with a communicativeness not always met with in old soldiers, gave to the stranger a rapid sketch of his own most adventurous life. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929315 | As the evening wore on, he told too how he was waiting there for a friend, a certain N. F., who was no other than himself, the nephew of Lord Palmerston being represented by his son, an apt youth, who has already given bright promise of what his later years may develop. N. F. retired to bed at last, so | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929316 | much overcome by brandy-and-water that my informant escaped being asked for a loan, which I plainly see he would not have had the fortitude to have refused; and the following morning he started so early that N. F., wide awake as he usually is, was not vigilant enough to have anticipated. I hope these brief details, _pour servir lhistoire de | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929317 | Monsieur R. N. F._, may save some kind-hearted traveller from the designs of a thorough blackguard, and render his future machinations through the press more difficult to effect and more certain of exposure. I had scarcely finished this brief, imperfect sketch, when I read in Galignani the following:-- Swindling on the Continent.--A letter from Venice of March gives us the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929318 | following piece of information which may still be of service to some of our readers, though, from the fact with which it concludes, it would seem that the proceedings, of the party have been brought to a standstill, at least for some time. This is not, however, it may be recollected, the first occasion we have had to bring the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929319 | conduct of the individual referred to under the notice of our readers for similar practices:-- I am informed that one Mr Newton, _alias_ Neville, _alias_ Fane, and with a dozen other _aliases_, has been arrested at Padua for swindling. This ubiquitous gentleman has been travelling for some years at the expense of hotel-keepers, and other geese easily fleeced, on the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929320 | Continent In the year , Mr Neville and his two sons made their suspicious appearance at Venice, and they now, minus the younger son, have visited Padua as Mr Robert N. Newton and son, taking up their residence at the Stella dOro. They arrived without luggage and without money, both of which had been lost in the Danube; but they | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929321 | expected remittances from India! The obliging landlord lent money, purchased clothes, fed them gloriously, and contrived, between the 8th Feb. and 25th of March, to become the creditor of Newton and son for swanzig. The expenses continued, but the remittances never came. The patient landlord began to lose that virtue, and denounced these _aliases_ as swindlers. The police of Vienna, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929322 | hearing of the event, sent information that these two accommodating gentlemen had practised the victimising art for two months in December last at the Hotel Regina Inghilterre, at Pesth, run up a current account of florins, and decamped; and a hotel-keeper recognised the scamps as having re-resided at the Luna, in Venice, in , and plucked some profit from that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929323 | pale-faced moon. Mr Newtons handwriting proved him to be in one Major Fane, who had generously proposed to bring all his family, consisting of ten persons, to pass the winter at the Barbesi Hotel at Venice, if the proprietor would forward him fr., as, owing to his wifes prolonged residence at Rome and Naples, he was short of money, which, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929324 | however, he expected, would cease on the arrival of supplies from Calcutta. These gentlemen are now in durance vile, and there is no doubt but that this letter will lead to their recognition by many other victims. Let no sanguine enthusiast for the laws of property imagine, however, that this great mans career is now ended, and that R. N. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929325 | F. will no more go forth as of old to plunder and to rob. Imprisonment for debt is a grievous violation of personal liberty certainly, but it is finite; and some fine morning, when the lark is carolling high in heaven, and the bright rivulets are laughing in the gay sunlight, R. N. F. will issue from his dungeon to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929326 | taste again the sweets of liberty, and to partake once more of the fleshpots of some confiding landlord. F. is a man of great resources, doubtless. When he repeats a part, he feels the same sort of repugnance that Fechter would to giving a fiftieth representation of Hamlet, but he would bow to the necessity which a clamorous public imposes, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929327 | however his own taste might rebel against the dreariness of the task. Still, I feel assured that he will next appear in a new part. We shall hear of him--that is certain. He will be in search of a lost will, by which he would inherit millions, or a Salvator Rosa that he has been engaged to buy for the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929328 | Queen, or perhaps he will be a missionary to assist in that religious movement now observable in Italy. How dare I presume, in my narrow inventiveness, to suggest to such a master of the art as he is? I only know that, whether he comes before the world as the friend of Sir Hugh Rose, a proprietor of the Times, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929329 | the agent of Lord Palmerston, or a recent convert from Popery, he will sustain his part admirably; and that same world that he has duped, robbed, and swindled for more than a quarter of a century will still feed and clothe him--still believe in the luggage that never comes, and the remittance that will never turn up. After all, the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929330 | man must be a greater artist than I was willing to believe him to be. He must be a deep student of the human heart--not, perhaps, in its highest moods; and he must well understand how to touch certain chords which give their response in unlimited confidence and long credit. No doubt there must be some wondrous fascination in these | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929331 | changeful fortunes--these ups and downs of life--otherwise no man could have gone, as he has, for nigh thirty years, hunted, badgered, insulted, and imprisoned in almost every capital of Europe, and yet no sooner liberated than, like a giant refreshed, he again returns to his old toil, never weary wherever the bread of idleness can be eaten, and where a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929332 | lie will pay for his liquor. Talk of novel-writers--this is the great master of fiction--the man who brings the product of imagination to the real test of credibility--the actual interest of his public. Let him fail in his description, his narrative, the progress of his events, or their probability, and he is ruined at once. He must not alone arrange | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929333 | the circumstances of his story, but he must perform the hero, and that, too, as we saw lately at Padua, without any adventitious aid of dress or costume. I can fancy what a sorry figure some of our popular tale-writers would present if they had to appeal to an innkeeper with this poor story of their luggage lost in the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929334 | Danube. What a contempt the rascal must have had for Italian notions of geography, too, when he adopted a river so remote from where he stood! And yet Id swear he was as cool, as collected, and as self-sustained at that moment, as ever was Mr Gladstone in the House as he rose to move a motion of supply. Well, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929335 | he is in Padua now, doubtless dreaming of fresh conquests, and not impossibly speculating on a world whose gullibility is indeed infinite, and which actually seems to take the same pleasure in being cheated in Fact as it does in being deceived in Fiction. Who knows if the time is not coming when, instead of sending a box of new | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929336 | novels to the country, some Mr Mudie will despatch one of these R. N. F. folk by a fast train, with a line to say, A great success: his Belgian rogueries most amusing; the exploit at Madrid equal to anything in Gil Bias. GRIBLDI We had a very witty Judge in Ireland, who was not very scrupulous about giving hard | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929337 | knocks to his brothers on the bench, and who, in delivering a judgment in a cause, found that he was to give the casting-vote between his two colleagues, who were diametrically opposed to each other, and who had taken great pains to lay down the reasons for their several opinions at considerable length. It now comes to my turn, said | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929338 | he, to declare my view of this case, and fortunately I can afford to be brief. I agree with my brother B. from the irresistible force of the admirable argument of my brother M. The story occurred to me as I thought over Garibaldi and the enthusiastic reception you gave him in England; for I really felt, if it had | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929339 | not been for Carlyle, I might have been a bit of a hero-worshipper myself The grand frescoes in caricature of the popular historian have, however, given me a hearty and wholesome disgust to the whole thing; not to say that, however enthusiastic a man may feel about his idol, he must be sorely ashamed of his fellow-worshippers. Lie down with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929340 | dogs, and youll get up with fleas, says an old Irish adage; but what, in the name of all entomology, is a man to get up with who lies down with these votaries of Garibaldi? So fine a fellow, and so mangy a following, it would be hard to find. The opportunity for all the blatant balderdash of shopkeeping eloquence, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929341 | of that high Falootin style so popular over the Atlantic, of those grand-sounding periods about freedom and love of country, was not to be lost by a set of people who, in all their enthusiasm for Garibaldi, are intently bent on making themselves foreground figures in the tableau that should have been filled by himself alone. Sir Francis Burdett call | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929342 | _you_ his friend!--as well call a Bug his bedfellow! said the sturdy old yeoman, whose racy English I should like to borrow, to characterise the stupid incongruity between Garibaldi and his worshippers. It is not easy to conceive anything finer, simpler, more thoroughly unaffected, or more truly dignified, than the man himself. His noble head; his clear, honest, brown eye; | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929343 | his finely-traced mouth, beautiful as a womans, and only strung up to sternness when anything ignoble or mean had outraged him; and, last of all, his voice contains a fascination perfectly irresistible, allied, as you knew and felt these graces were, with a thoroughly pure, untarnished nature. The true measure of the man lies in the fact that, though his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929344 | life has been a series of the boldest and most daring achievements, his courage is about the very last quality uppermost in your mind when you meet him. It is of the winning softness of his look and manner, his kind thoughtfulness for others, his sincere pity for all suffering, his gentleness, his modesty, his manly sense of brotherhood with | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929345 | the very humblest of the men who have loved him, that you think: these are the traits that throw all his heroism into shadow; and all the glory of the conqueror pales before the simple virtues of the man. He never looked to more advantage than in that humble life of Caprera, where people came and went--some, old and valued | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929346 | friends, whose presence warmed up their hosts heart; others, mere passing acquaintances, or, as it might be, not even that; worshippers or curiosity-seekers--living where and how they could in that many-roomed small house; diving into the kitchen to boil their coffee; sallying out to the garden to pluck their radishes; down to the brook for a cress, or to the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929347 | seaside to catch a fish,--all more or less busy in the midst of a strange idleness; for there was not--beyond providing for the mere wants of the day--anything to be done. The soil would not yield anything. There was no cultivation outside that little garden, where the grand old soldier delved, or rested on his spade-handle as he turned his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929348 | gaze over the sea, doubtless thinking of the dear land beyond it. At dinner--and what a strange meal it was--all met, full of the little incidents of an uneventful day. The veriest trifles they were, but of interest to those who listened, and to none more than Garibaldi himself, who liked to hear who had been over to Maddalena, and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929349 | what sport they had; or whether Albanesi had taken any mullet, and who it was said he could mend the boat? and who was to paint her? Not a word was spoken of the political events of the world, and every mention of them was as rigidly excluded as though a government spy had been seated at the table. He | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929350 | rarely spoke himself, but was a good listener--not merely hearing with attention, but showing, by an occasional suggestion or a hint, how his mind speculated on the subject before him. If, however, led to speak of himself or his exploits, the unaffected ease and simplicity of the man became at once evident. Never, by any chance, would an expression escape | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929351 | him that redounded to his own share in any achievement; without any studied avoidance the matter would somehow escape, or, if accidentally touched on, be done so very lightly as to make it appear of no moment whatever. To have done one-tenth of what Garibaldi has done, a man must necessarily have thrown aside scruples which he would never have | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929352 | probably transgressed in his ordinary life. He must have been often arbitrary, and sometimes almost cruel; and yet, ask his followers, and they will tell you that punishment scarcely existed in the force under his immediate command--that the most hardened offender would have quailed more under a few stern words of reproof from the General than from a sentence that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929353 | sent him to a prison. That, to effect his purpose, he would lay hands on what he needed, not recklessly or indifferently, but thoughtfully and doubtless regretfully, we all know. I can remember an instance of this kind, related to me by a British naval officer, who himself was an actor in the scene. It was off La Plata, said | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929354 | my informant, when Garibaldi was at war with Rosas, that the frigate I commanded was on that station, as well as a small gun-brig of the Sardinian navy, whose captain never harassed his men by exercises of gunnery, and, indeed, whose ship was as free from any beat to quarters, or any sudden summons to prepare for boarders, as though | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929355 | she had been a floating chapel. Garibaldi came alongside me one day to say that he had learned the Sardinian had several tons of powder on board, with an ample supply of grape, shell, and canister, not to speak of twelve hundred stand of admirable arms. I want them all, said he; my people are fighting with staves and knives, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929356 | and we are totally out of ammunition. I want them, and he wont let me have them. He could scarcely do so, said I, seeing that they belong to his Government, and are not in _his_ hands to bestow. For that reason I must go and take them, said Garibaldi. I mean to board him this very night, and youll | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929357 | see if we do not replenish our powder-flasks. In that case, said I, I shall have to fire on you. It will be Piracy; nothing else. Youll not do so; said he, smiling. Yes, I promise you that I will. We are at peace and on good terms with Sardinia, and I cannot behave other than as a friend to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929358 | her ships of war. Theres no help for it, then, said Garibaldi, if you see the thing in that light: and good-humouredly quitted the subject, and soon after took his leave. And were you, asked I of my informant, Captain S.----were you perfectly easy after that conversation? I mean, were you fully satisfied that he would not attempt the matter | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929359 | in some other way? Never more at ease in my life. I knew my man; and that, having left me under the conviction he had abandoned the exploit, nothing on earth would have tempted him to renew it in any shape. It might be a matter of great doubt whether any greater intellectual ability would not have rather detracted from | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929360 | than increased Garibaldis power as a popular leader. I myself feel assured that the simplicity, the trustfulness, the implicit reliance on the goodness of a cause as a reason for its success, are qualities which no mere mental superiority could replace in popular estimation. It is actually Love that is the sentiment the Italians have for him; and I have | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929361 | seen them, hard-featured, ay, and hard-natured men, moved to tears as the litter on which Garibaldi lay wounded was carried down to the place of embarkation. Garibaldi has always been a thoughtful, silent, reflective man, not communicative to others, or in any way expansive; and from these qualities have come alike his successes and his failures. Of the conversations reported | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929362 | of him by writers I do not believe a syllable. He speaks very little; and, luckily for him, that little only with those on whose integrity he can rely not to repeat him. Cavour, who knew men thoroughly, and studied them just as closely as he studied events, understood at once that Garibaldi was the man he wanted. He needed | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929363 | one who should move the national heart--who, sprung from the people himself, and imbued with all the instincts of his class, should yet not dissever the cause of liberty from the cause of monarchy. To attach Garibaldi to the throne was no hard task. The King, who led the van of his army, was an idol made for such worship | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929364 | as Garibaldis. The monarch who could carry a knapsack and a heavy rifle over the cliffs of Monte Rosa from sunrise to sunset, and take his meal of hard bread before he turned in at night in a shepherds shieling, was a King after the bold buccaneers own heart. To what end inveigh against the luxuries of a court, its | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929365 | wasteful splendours, or its costly extravagance, with such an example? This strong-sinewed, big-boned, unpoetical King has been the hardest nut ever republicanism had to crack! It might be possible to overrate the services Garibaldi has rendered to Italy--it would be totally impossible to exaggerate those he has rendered the Monarchy; and out of Garibaldis devotion to Victor Emmanuel has sprung | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929366 | that hearty, honest, manly appreciation of the King which the Italians unquestionably display. A merely political head of the State, though he were gifted with the highest order of capacity, would have disappeared altogether from view in the sun-splendour of Garibaldis exploits; not so the King Victor Emmanuel, who only shone the brighter in the reflected blaze of the hero | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929367 | who was so proud to serve him. Yet for all that friendship, and all the acts that grew out of it, natural and spontaneous as they are, one great mind was needed to guide, direct, encourage, or restrain. It was Cavour who, behind the scenes, pulled all the wires; and these heroes--heroes they were too--were but his puppets. Cavour died, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929368 | and then came Aspromonte. If any other man than Garibaldi had taken the present moment to make a visit--an almost ostentatious visit--to Mazzini, it might be a grave question how far all the warm enthusiasm of this popular reception could be justified. Garibaldi is, however, the one man in Europe from whom no one expects anything but impulsive action. It | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929369 | is in the very unreflectiveness of his generosity that he is great. There has not been, I am assured, for many years back, any very close or intimate friendship between these two men; but it was quite enough that Mazzini was in trouble and difficulty, to rally to his side that brave-hearted comrade who never deserted his wounded. Nor is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929370 | there in all Garibaldis character anything finer or more exalted than the steadfast adherence he has ever shown to his early friendships. No flatteries of the great--no blandishments of courts and courtiers--none of those seductive influences which are so apt to weave themselves into a mans nature when surrounded by continual homage and admiration--not any of these have corrupted that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929371 | pure and simple heart; and there is not a presence so exalted, nor a scene of splendour so imposing, as could prevent Garibaldi from recognising with eager delight any the very humblest companion that ever shared hardship and danger beside him. To have achieved his successes, a man must of necessity have rallied around him many besides enthusiasts of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929372 | cause; he must have recruited amongst men of broken fortunes--reckless, lawless fellows, who accepted the buccaneers life as a means of wiping off old scores with that old world that would have none of them. It was not amidst the orderly, the soberly-trained, and well-to-do that he could seek for followers. And what praise is too great for him who | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929373 | could so inspire this mass, heaving with passion as it was, with his own noble sentiments, and make them feel that the work before them--a nations regeneration--was a task too high and too holy to be accomplished by unclean hands? Can any eulogy exaggerate the services of a man who could so magnetise his fellow-men as to associate them at | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929374 | once with his nobility of soul, and elevate them to a standard little short of his own? That he _did_ do this we have the proof. Pillage was almost unknown amongst the Garibaldians; and these famished, ill-clad, shoeless men marched on from battle to battle with scarcely an instance of crime that called for the interference of military law. Where | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929375 | is the General who could boast of doing as much? Where is the leader who could be bold enough to give such a pledge for his followers? Is there an army in Europe--in the world--for whom as much could be said? All honour, therefore, to the man--not whose example only, but whose very contact suggests high intent and noble action. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929376 | All honour to him who brings to a great cause, not alone the dazzling splendour of heroism, but the more enduring brightness of a pure and unsullied integrity! Such a man may be misled; he can never be corrupted. A NEW INVESTMENT. I am not so sure how far we ought to be grateful for it, but assuredly the fact | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929377 | is so, that nothing has so much tended to show the world with what little wisdom it is governed than the Telegraph. It is not merely that cabinets are no longer the sole possessors of early intelligence, though this alone was once a very great privilege; and there is no over-estimating the power conferred by the exclusive possession of a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929378 | piece of important news--a battle won or lost, the outbreak of a revolution, the overthrow of a throne--even for a few hours before it became the property of the public. The telegraph, however, is the great disenchanter. The misty uncertainty, the cloud-like indistinctness that used of old to envelop all ministerial action, converting Downing Street into a sort of Olympus, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929379 | and making a small mythology out of Precis-writers, is all gone, all dispersed. Three or four cold hard lines, thin and terse as the wire that conveyed them, are sworn enemies to all style, and especially to all the evasive cajoleries of those dissolving views of events diplomacy loves to revel in. What becomes of the graceful drapery in which | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929380 | statesmen used to clothe the great facts of the world, when a simple despatch, fifteen words, exclusive of the address, tells the whole story? and when we have read that the insurgents are triumphant everywhere, the king left the capital at four oclock, a provisional government was proclaimed this morning, and suchlike, what do we care for the sonorous periods | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929381 | in which official priestcraft chants the downfall of a dynasty? The great stronghold of statecraft was, however, Speculation--I mean that half-prophetic view of events which we always conceded to those who looked over the world from a higher window than ourselves. What has become of this now? Who so bold as to predict what, while he is yet speaking, may | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929382 | be contradicted? who is there hardy enough to forecast what the events of the last half-hour may have falsified, and five minutes more will serve to publish to the whole world? It may be amusing to read the comments of the speech or the leading article, but the despatch is the substance: and however clever the variations, the original melody | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929383 | remains unaltered. Let any one imagine to himself a five-act drama, preceded by a telegraphic intimation of all its incidents--how insupportable would the slow procession of events become after such a revelation! Up to this, Ministers performed a sort of Greek chorus, chanting in ambiguous phrase the woes that invaded those who differed from them, and the heart-corroding sorrows that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929384 | sat below the gangway. There has come an end to all this. All the dramatic devices of those days are gone, and we live in an age in which many men are their own priests, their lawyers, and their doctors, and where, certes, each man is his own prophet. These reflections have been much impressed upon me by a ramble | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929385 | I took yesterday in company with one of the most agreeable of all our diplomatists--one of those men who seem to weld into their happy natures all the qualities which make good companionship, and blend with the polished manners of a courtier the dash of an Eton boy and the deep reflectiveness of a man of the world--a man to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929386 | whom nothing comes wrong, and whom you would be puzzled to say whether he was more in his element at a cabinet council, or one of a shooting-party in the Highlands. I say, ODowd, cried he, after a pause of some time in our conversation, has it never struck you that those tall poles and wires are destined to be | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929387 | the end of both your trade and mine, and that within a very few years neither of our occupations will have a representative left? Take my word for it, said he, more solemnly, in less than ten years from the present date a penny-a-liner will be as rare as a posthorse, and a post-shay not more a curiosity than a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929388 | minister-plenipotentiary. Do you really think so? I am certain of it. People nowadays wont travel eight miles an hour, or be satisfied to hear of events ten days after theyve happened. Life is too short for all this now, and, as we cant lengthen our days, we must shorten our incidents. We are all more or less like that gentleman | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929389 | Mathews used to tell us of at Boulogne, who said to the waiter, Let me have some-thing expensive; I am only here for an hour. Have you ever thought seriously on the matter? Never, said I. You ought, then, said he. I tell you again, we are all in the same category with flint locks and wooden ships--we belong to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929390 | the past. Dont you know it? Dont you feel it? I dont like to feel it, said I, peevishly. Nonsense! cried he, laughing. Self-deception does nothing in the matter, say what one will. A modern diplomatist is only a smooth-Bore. What our own correspondent represents, I leave to your own modesty. It will be a bad day for us when | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929391 | the world comes to that knowledge, said I, gloomily. Of course it will, but theres no help for it. Old novels go to the trunkmakers; second-hand uniforms make the splendour of dignity-balls in the colonies: who is to say that there may not be a limbo for us also? At all events, I have a scheme for our transition state--a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929392 | plan I have long revolved in my mind--and theres certainly something in it. First of all realise it, as the Yankees say, that neither a government nor a public will want either of us. When the wires have told that the Grand-Duke Strong-grog-enofif was assassinated last night, or that Prince Damisseisen has divorced his wife and married a milliner, Downing | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929393 | Street and Printing-house Square will agree that all the moral reflections the events inspire can be written just as well in Piccadilly as from a palace on the Neva, or a den on the Danube. Gladstone will be the better pleased, and take another farthing off divi-divi, or some other commodity in general use and of universal appreciation. Dont you | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929394 | agree to that? I dont know. You dont know, drawled he out, in mimicry of my tone: are you so conceited about your paltry craft that you fancy the world cares for the manner of it, or that there is really any excellence in the cookery? Not a bit of it, man. We are bores both of us; and whats | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929395 | worse--far worse--we are bygones. Cant you see that when a man buys a canister of prepared beef-tea, he never asks any one to pour on the boiling water--he brews his broth for himself? This is what people do with the telegrams. They dont want you or me to come in with the kettle: besides, all tastes are not alike; one | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929396 | man may like his Bombardment of Charleston weaker; another might prefer his Polish Massacre more highly flavoured. This is purely a personal matter. How can you suit the capricious likings of the million, and of the million--for thats the worst of it--the million that dont want you? What a practical rebuke, besides, to prosy talkers and the whole long-winded race, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929397 | the sharp, short tap of the telegraph! Who would listen to a narrative of Federal finance when he has read Gold at --Chase rigged the market? Who asks for strategical reasons in presence of Almighty whipping--lost eighty thousand--Fourth Michigan skedaddled ? How graphic will description become--how laconic all comment! You will no more listen to one of the old circumlocutionary | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929398 | conversers than you would travel by the waggon, or make a voyage in a collier. How, I would ask, could the business of life go on in an age active as ours if all coinage was in copper, and vast transactions in money should be all conducted in the base metal? Imagine the great Kings of Finance counting over the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012929399 | debts of whole nations in penny-pieces, and you have at once a picture of what, until a few years ago, was our intellectual condition. How nobly Demosthenic our table-talk will be!--how grandly abrupt and forensic! There is nothing, however, over which I rejoice more than in the utter extinction of the anecdote-mongers--the insufferable monsters who related Joe Millers as personal | 60 | gutenberg |
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