NELSON. WELL hast thou done thy duty, gallant son; So are they hail'd, who better crowns have won: O let us blot thy failings with a tear, Man without pride, or hate, or fraud, or fear, Who banish'd discord, and gave peace to earth, Thine was the generous heart, though gentle, brave The will to bless, the godlike power to save: What nobler pæan can the poet raise ? A glorious life, an honourable grave, Trafalgar, and Aboukir, be thy praise! The last words of Nelson were alike worthy of the hero and of the Christian,-" I have done my duty; I thank God for it:" a just confidence and rare humility truly characteristic of the man. It is impossible to estimate too highly the services of Nelson, in destroying by his providential victories the fiery dragons of anarchy and atheism which then ravaged republican Europe: but for this illustrious agent of divine mercy we of fair Britain might now be groaning under the double yoke of foreign tyranny and religious persecution. The private faults of Nelson admit of much palliation; but even were it otherwise his public virtues were of so gigantic a growth, that the aggregate recollections of him should be unmixed goodness and glory: who, in admiring a fine forest oak, thinks for a moment of the briar at its foot? In reference to the character" man without pride," it should be remembered that Nelson's alleged foible was vanity; from pride no one could be freer; he was accessible and affable to the humblest: and even much of his imputed vanity may unstrainedly be ascribed to his proper feelings about rank and honour. Nelson's breast was not covered with stars and orders for mere show; but he loved to acknowledge a pro Р vidence in his glories, and to show his country that he valued her esteem. The expressions, " without fraud, or fear," will be admitted instantaneously in respect of a man who served every body's interest but his own, and who knew not what fear was; but the "without hate," will appear a very paradox to those who remember that our great admiral used to tell his midshipmen to "hate a Frenchman as they did the devil." This hatred however was not personal, but political; revolutionary France was Nelson's just abhorrence; yet while he hunted her navies from sea to sea, launching his destroying thunders like a wrathful Jove, he knew well, as we have already seen in Marcellus, how to pity and to spare the individual foes: no act of cruelty, no exterminating massacre, no needless bloodshed stained his bright career: that hatred was directed against an organized system of evil and terror, and, for the sole sake of good and security, against the lives of its earthly agents. Hate a revolutionist, a Danton, a Marat, a Robespierre, a Fouquier-Tinville, as the devil; for they are of their father the devil, and the lusts of their father will they do: but in the routed, the drowning, or the captive, spare, save, love even le citoyen Français. So spake Nelson in his actions. "The wooden walls of old England" were once her bulwarks by sea, and a stalwarth yeomanry her defence by land. But those halcyon times are over. Liberal policy, presuming on the absurdity of perpe tual peace, heedless of man's combative disposition, and scouting the phrase "this present evil world," has long discountenanced anything which savours of war. It is true, that, as a matter of worldly gain, it is still generously permitted; mercenaries are excusable on the ground of value received: but the puerile bubbles of exclusive patriotism, (saving always the claim of intestine disaffection,) have been long exploded. If our marine brethren of France insult us, we must bear it with fraternal humility; if a Russian navy hover about seas once our empire, we must meet them with all the courtesy of a kind Cosmopolite: in the midst of hostile preparation we must complacently look on, and hope to advance a social millennium by lulling our lion into slumber with the lamb. Meanwhile, and unto the same good end, we command that the plough-share be no more turned into the sword, nor interchangeably the spear into the pruning-hook ;-go to,-the days of strife are ended, behold! the age of gold must be brought in. It is true, the bayonet is necessary, and an universal system of constraint more than expedient,-at home; our distant liberality overlooks all nearer objects, so we give the hand of fellowship to those whom our testy fathers counted enemies, and, retributively just, treat our own household as foes: Charity begins abroad; we reserve the cutlas and the bludgeon for starving Britons. Not so was it in the better oldentimes, when the distinctions between rich and poor, high and low, were-despite our boasted levellings, marked out less invidiously; when there actually existed more true union among all ranks; when, from the proper and harmonizing principles of subjection and a regular gradation of dependence, there was more practical equality than brute force ever can attain; when the sun of kindness or of gratitude softened men into more brotherly freedom than the howling winds of riot ever can compel.-Alas, for England! her oak is cankered at the heart, the symptoms of her fall are gross upon the sight; the history of the world forewarns her dissolution, she is going the way of all nations,-" Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit." |