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upon the gospels of God, to the end that injust- | tice may prevail and the innocent be destroyed!"

Lord Brougham is also a great master of the art of ridicule, which becomes in his hands a formidable weapon. He is obviously fond of it, and uses it often with marked effect. But we are bound to say that it is never ill-natured; there is no venom in the point. The wound may pain for the moment, but it never festers. And there is often an hilarity in the satirical attack which might make even the victim himself join in the laughter of which he is the object. When the Berlin and Milan decrees of Napoleon had sealed the continent against the imports of British commerce, and we had tried to retaliate by the Orders in Council, which had the effect of stopping our American trade, and involving us in a quarrel with the United States, the Ministers advanced the argument that a substitute for our former market was found in our increasing trade with the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of South-America. In point of fact, our North-American trade had amounted to thirteen millions sterling a year, while the South-American trade was only one million. By way of illustrating the importance and magnitude of the commerce we had lost, Mr. Brougham drew an amusing picture of the raptures of joy into which Ministers would be thrown if they could command such a market any where on the

continent.

"Why, sir, only conceive an event which should give an opening in the north of Europe or the Mediterranean for but a small part of this vast bulk-some change or accident, by which a thirteenth, ay, or a thirtieth, of the enormous value of British goods could be thrown into the enemy's countries! In what transports of delight would the new President [of the Board of Trade, Mr. Rose] be flung! I verily believe he would make but one step from his mansion to his office-all Downing Street, and all Duke's Place would be in an uproar of joy. Bless me, what a scene of activity and business should we see! what Cabinets-what Boards!-What amazing conferences of Lords of Trade!-What a driving together of Ministers! What a rustling of small clerks!-What a mighty rushing of brokers!-Circulars to the manufacturing towns-harangues upon 'Change, performed by eminent naval characters triumphal processions of dollars and volunteers in St. James' Square!-Hourly deputations from the merchants-courteous and pleasing answers from the Board—a speedy im

portation into Whitehall, to a large amount, of worthy knights representing the City-a quick return cargo of licenses and hints for cargoesthe whole craft and mystery of that license trade revived, with its appropriate perjuries and frauds-new life given to the drooping firms of dealers in forgery whom I formerly extivity in the Board of Trade, and its clerksposed to you-answered by corresponding acslips of the pen worth fifteen thousand pounds *-judicious mistakes-well-considered oversights-elaborate inadvertencies.-Why, so happily constituted is the Right Honorable Gentleman's understanding, that his very blunother men; and it is no metaphor, but a literal ders are more precious than the accuracies of mercantile proposition to say, that it is better worth our while to err with him than to think rightly with the rest of mankind!"

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In a review of Lord Brougham's speeches, it would be unpardonable to omit mention of his great Oration on Parliamentary Reform-one of the most elaborate of all his efforts. But it is too well known to require more than a brief notice. Nothing but the highly-wrought state of public feeling could justify the scene at the close, when sinking on the ground beside the woolsack, the Lord Chancellor exclaimed: By all you hold most dear - by all the ties that bind every one of us to our common order and our common country, I solemnly adjure you-I warn you-I implore youyea, on my bended knees I supplicate you reject not this bill.' This is too theatrical for good taste. It reminds us of of the exaggerated manner of the Père Lacordaire in the French pulpit, or of some of the extravagant scenes which have occurred in the French revolutionary assemblies. But the genius of French oratory is essentially different from our own. Let us, however, not be understood to depreciate the eloquence of our neighbors, either in the pulpit or the tribune or at the bar. The country which has produced a Bossuet and a Massillona D'Aguesseau, a Berryer, and a Guizot, may well contend with others for the palm of excellence in speech; and it is one of the most melancholy results of the suppression of liberty in France, that her orators are dumb, and that the force of a military despotism, or the restrictions of

*Mr. Baring (afterwards Lord Ashburton) had stated in the House of Commons, that by two mistakes at one time, licenses were rendered so valuable, that he would have given that sum for them.

a jealous police, have crushed into silence the tribune which has been the scene of so many triumphs of eloquence and freedom. Quousque tandem?

The speech on Parliamentary Reform has several fine passages, but it is not, throughout, so eloquent as many others delivered by Lord Brougham. It is more in the nature of an exhaustive reply to the arguments that had been advanced in opposition to the bill by Lords Dudley, Winchelsea, Wharncliffe, Harrowby, and Caernarvon, and these were met and parried and retorted with admirable skill, The Earl of Caernarvon, in answer to the question, What Reform had the Opposition to offer if the proposed measure was rejected? had compared the Ministry to some host, who, having set before his guests an uneatable dinner with which they found fault, should ask them, "What dishes can you dress yourselves ?"-and thus Lord Brougham took up the illus

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"My noble friend says that such an answer would be very unreasonable-for he asks, ingeniously enough,How can the guests dress a dinner, especially when they have not possession of the kitchen?' But did it never strike him that the present is not the case of guests, called upon to eat a dinner-it is one of rival cooks, who want to get into our kitchen. are here all on every side cooks-a synod of cooks (to use Dr. Johnson's phrase) and nothing but cooks; for it is the very condition of our being-the bond of our employment under a common master-that none of us shall ever taste the dishes we are now dressing. The Commons may taste it; but can the Lords? We have nothing to do but propose the viands. It is therefore of primary importance, when the authority of two classes of rival artists is the main question, to inquire what are our feats severally in our common calling."

And in answer to the extreme and impossible case put by the Earl of Harrowby, of the population of an enfranchised borough of four thousand souls being all paupers, he said that he had a right to put an extreme case on the other side, to illustrate the nature of representations under the rotten borough system; and he instanced the case of the Nabob Wallajah Cawn Bahadur, who had actually his eighteen or twenty members bought with a price, and sent to look after his pecuniary interests as honest and independent members of Parliament."

"Behold," he said, "the sovereign of the Carnatic, who regards nor land, nor rank, nor connection, nor open country, nor populous city; but his eye fastens on the time-honored relics the walls of Sarum and Gatton; he arms his of departed greatness and extinct populationright hand with venerable parchments, and pointing with his left to a heap of star pagodas, too massive to be carried along, lays siege to the citadel of the Constitution, the Commons' House of Parliament, and its gates fly open to receive his well-disciplined band."

But our limits compel us to stop. We shall be glad if any thing we have said has the effect of making these speeches more generally read. We advise all who wish to qualify themselves as public speakers to study the orations of Lord Brougham. They will find them a storehouse of manly thought, of vigorous argument, and lofty eloquence upon all the great questions of his time. Few may hope to rival the orator who defeated the bill of Pains and Penalties against Queen Caroline, and snapped asunder the chain of Slavery; but none can fail to profit by the example. But above all things, let no one imagine, that without taking pains and bestowing labor, he can rise to eminence as an Orator. He may be a fluent speaker and an expert debater, but an orator he will not be, if he refuses to copy the example and follow the precepts of the great masters of the art. And of all auxiliaries to the tongue, the pen is the best. Cicero tells us, that stilus optimus et præstantissimus dicendi effector et magister; and to use his own beautiful simile, the habit of writing passages in a speech will communicate aptness and force to extempore expression, just as the vessel retains her onward way from the impetus previously given, after the stroke of the oar has ceased. Let us, however, not be misunderstood. We by no means intend to advise a habit of writing out the whole of a speech, and getting it off by heart before it is delivered. Not only does this impose too great a load upon the memory, and render the chance of a break-down almost inevitable, when, from sudden nervousness or any other cause, some passage which forms a necessary link in the chain is forgotten; but it prevents a speaker from feeling, as it were, the pulse of his audience. and varying his style and tone according to the impression which he sees is made upon

them. In most cases a written speech is a failure from this cause. But the subject matter should be beforehand well and thoroughly digested; there should be the cogitatio et commentatio insisted upon by Cicero; and in addition to this, with respect to particular passages, the assidua ac diligens scriptura. By this means the speaker will have laid up in the arsenal of his memory, a supply of weapons ready for any emergency that may arise; and it is almost a truism to say, that sentences considered beforehand in the laboratory of thought, and submitted to criticism and revision by being embodied in written composition, must be more likely to be effective than those which are thrown off hastily in the hurry of debate, when there is no time to pause for the best and most appropriate expression. But, indeed, the habit of composition will have the effect

of suggesting to the speaker, at all times, the best word and the best sentence; and will thus assist him whenever the necessity occurs for unpremeditated reply. Cicero amongst the ancients, and Lord Brougham amongst the moderns, have shown with what advantage familiarity with writing and practice in speaking mutually act and reäct upon each other.*

In conclusion, we may add, that the value of this collection of Lord Brougham's speeches is enhanced by the historical introductions written by himself, and prefixed to several of them, explaining the occasions on which they were delivered, and the subjects to which they refer. The style of these introductions is excellent-clear, vigorous, and correct-and they are in themselves a very useful contribution to the history of the nineteenth century.

From Chambers's Journal,

AN UNRAVELED

INTIMATELY Connected with the first impressions derived from Scriptural read ings and lessons, the words Babylon, Nineveh, and Assyria have been familiar to us all from early childhood. Yet, when we seriously inquire what it is we really do know respecting the history, or even geographical boundaries of ancient Assyria, we are reluctantly compelled to acknowledge our total ignorance. Profane history, it is true, records the names of three of its monarchs previous to the invasion of the Medes. We read of the Bactrian and Indian expeditions of Ninus, the wondrous. works of the masculine Semiramis, the Sybaritic splendors of the effeminate Sardanapalus; but the best judges are undecided whether we should accept these relations as history, or class them among the numberless other fables of the myth-inventing ages.

A new light, however, has lately been thrown upon this most interesting period in the world's history. Modern enterprise had scarcely discovered, ere modern ingenuity began to decipher, with what

MYSTERY.

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deciphered, though the mere style of art | representing syllables being diversely of the sculptures was not the least novel combined in different countries - was element in the strange discovery, still used over the greater part of Western there could be little doubt respecting the Asia until, as we have already observed, antiquity of the monuments, or the pur- the overthrow of the ancient Persian Empose for which they were designed. The pire by Alexander the Great. To this peculiar wedge-shaped character used in circumstance we mainly owe the very rethe inscriptions proved that the monu-markable progress lately made in deciments belonged to a period preceding the conquest of Alexander; for it was known that, after the subjugation of Western Asia by the Macedonians, the cuneiform character fell into disuse; while the custom of recording events and promulgating edicts by inscriptions on stones, was also known to be of the very highest antiquity. Need we say that the divine commands were first given to man on tablets of stone. Job, too, it will be recollected, emphatically exclaims: "Oh! that my words were now written! . . . That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!" Indeed, there could have been no less imperishable method of preserving important national records; and thus it is that the inscribed walls of palaces and rock-tablets have handed down to us, in these latter ages, the authentic history of ancient Assyria.

phering it. The Persian monarchs, previous to the conquest of Alexander ruled over all the nations using this peculiar form of writing. These consisted of three principal peoples or races. Two of them, the Persian and the Tatar, spoke a dialect not very dissimilar to that still spoken by their descendants. The language of the third, the Babylonians, including the Assyrians, was allied to the Hebrew and Arabic, and totally different from that spoken by the two former races; moreover, it has been extinct and unknown for at least two thousand years. This last was the language which the decipherers of the Assyrian monuments had to re-construct and reanimate from its equally obscure and long obsolete cuneiform characters. The first step towards the solution of so dark an enigma, was realized by the following circumstance. The The character in which these inscrip- Persian kings, when recording important tions are written has been variously events by inscriptions on stone tablets, named, according to the fancies of differ- used all the three languages spoken by ent describers. Some term it the arrow- their subjects. Thus originated the triheaded; the French, tête-à-clou, or nail-lingual inscriptions of ancient Persia, the headed; the Germans, keilförmig, equiva- tablets containing them being divided into lent to our phrase cuneiform, or wedge- three columns, each written in a different shaped; and certainly this last most language, and in the respective modificaaccurately expresses its peculiar form, tion of cuneiform peculiar to each laneach of the letters or syllables being com- guage, yet all three conveying one and posed of several distinct wedges united the same meaning. The most celebrated in certain combinations. It is considered of the trilingual inscriptions are found on probable that at first the letters were the palaces of Darius and Xerxes at Permere lines, and at a subsequent period the sepolis, over the tomb of Darius, and on wedge-form was added to them, either as the rocks of Behistan. The latter, as an embellishment, or to give them ideo- aids to deciphering the Assyrian monugraphic properties similar to the picture- ments, are the most important of any, as writing of the Egyptians. If the latter, they record the principal events in the however, were the case, all traces of their reign of Darius, and contain long lists of symbolical values are irretrievably lost. countries, cities, tribes, and kings; proper We may also add, that, like the Egyp names being the only reliable index to the tians, the Assyrians at a later period of values of the cuneiform characters. The their history possessed a cursive writing Persian version of the trilingual inscripof rounded characters, not unlike the He- tions, varying little from the modern Per brew, which was employed for written sian, having been translated, and its documents, while the cuneiform was ex-grammar and alphabet reduced to a cerclusively reserved for monumental purposes. The cuneiform character, under certain modifications the groups of characters

tainty, a clue was gained to the Assyrian version, and from thence to the monuments discovered by Mr. Layard. The clue thus obtained was followed up in de

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fiance of the most formidable obstacles. | syllables must be productive of the greatTo instance one, we may just mention est uncertainty that even the ancient that while the Persian modification of the Assyrians themselves could not have read cuneiform contains but thirty-nine signs, a writing of so vague a description, and there are no less than four hundred in the therefore the interpretations founded upon Assyrian. such a system must necessarily be fallacious. To this the decipherers replied, that experience has proved that the uncertainty arising from the variants is not so great as might be imagined. Most of the cuneiform groups having only one value, others having always the same value in the same word or phrase, so the remaining difficulties and uncertainties of reading are reduced within moderate limits. Besides, speaking practically, and taking into consideration the newness of the study, there is a fair amount of agreement between different interpreters of the Assyrian historical writings of average difficulty.

The various processes adopted to decipher the Assyrian inscriptions, from the slight clue we have just mentioned; the steps gradually made in the investigation; the going astray and the returning to, or even the accidentally hitting on, the right path; in short, all the particulars relating to this most extraordinary search in the dark, are of the highest scientific and philological interest, though utterly unsuited for the pages of a popular journal. Nor shall we presume to venture an opinion on the disputed questions respecting the original discovery of the means employed for interpreting the Assyrian cuneiform, or whether it be a Semitic language or not. It must suffice for us to say, that the names of Sir Henry Rawlinson and Dr. Hincks will ever be connected with this great triumph of our age and nation less than a triumph it can not be termed, for the investigation has been rewarded with complete success.

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But though empires rise and fall, and tongues and tribes die out and disappear, still the race of the Van Twillers never becomes extinct: there always have been, and probably ever will be, many members of the family of the doubters. Consequently, though the decipherers of the Assyrian inscriptions detected on the strangely graven tablets the names of persons, cities, and nations, in historical and geographical series, and found them mentioned in proper connection with events recorded in sacred and profane history, still the doubters, gravely shaking their heads, refused to believe in the soundness of the system by which Dr. Hincks and Sir Henry Rawlinson interpreted the mysteries of the cuneiform. Nor were the doubters without some show of reason for their unbelief. A great cause of difficulty in deciphering the cuneiform is what have been termed the variants-namely, different letters possessing the same al phabetic value, or, in other words, cuneiform groups representing a syllable, but not always the same syllable-sometimes one, and sometimes another. According ly, the doubters, not unreasonably, said that such a license in the use of letters or

The doubters, however, not being satisfied, advantage was taken of an opportunity which lately occurred to test, as closely as possible, the truth of the system of decipherment adopted by Dr. Hincks and Sir Henry Rawlinson, not only with the view of silencing the unbelievers, but also to prove that a correct basis of translation had been established, upon which other and future investigators could implicitly rely.

Her Majesty's government having sanctioned the trustees of the British Museum to publish lithographed copies of the most interesting Assyrian inscriptions, under the superintendence of Sir Henry Rawlinson; and Sir Henry having announced his intention of publishing translations of those lithographs, accompanied with transcriptions of the same into Roman letters, it occurred to Mr. Fox Talbot that a desirable opportunity was thus offered to test the truth of the system. Accordingly, in March last, Mr. Talbot prepared a translation of the first lithographed inscription, and transmitted it sealed to the Royal Asiatic Society, with a request that the Society would preserve it sealed, until Sir Henry's translation was published, and then compare the two Mr. Talbot considering that if any special agreement appeared between these two independent versions, made by two different persons, without any communication with each other, such agreement must indicate that the versions had at least truth for their basis. The inscription selected for the

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