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panied him to auctions of pictures, where the English gentry were expected to be purchasers. I was not a little surprised at his intimacy with people of the best fashion, who referred themselves to his judgment upon every picture or medal, as to an unerring standard of taste. He made very good use of my assistance upon these occasions; for, when asked his opinion, he would gravely take me aside and ask mine, shrug, look wise, return, and assure the company that he could give no opinion upon an affair of so much importance. Yet there was sometimes an occasion for a more supported assurance. I remember to have seen him, after giving his opinion that the colouring of a picture was not mellow enough, very deliberately take a brush with brown varnish, that was accidentally lying by, and rub it over the piece with great composure, before all the company, and then ask if he had not improved the tints.

When he had finished his commission in Paris, he left me strongly recommended to several men of distinction, as a person very proper for a travelling tutor, and after some time I was employed in that capacity by a gentleman who brought his ward to Paris, in order to set him forward on his tour through Europe. I was to be the young gentleman's governor, but with a proviso that he should always be permitted to govern himself. My pupil, in fact, understood the art of guiding in money concerns much better than I. He was heir to a fortune of about two hundred thousand pounds, left him by an uncle in the West Indies, and his guardians, to qualify him for the management of it, had bound him apprentice to an attorney. Thus avarice was his prevailing passion: all his questions on the road were how money might be saved; which was the least expensive course of travel; whether anything could be bought that would turn to account when disposed of again in London. Such curiosities on the way as could be seen for nothing he was ready enough to look at, but if the sight of them was to be paid for, he usually asserted that he had been told they were not worth seeing. He never paid a bill that he would not observe how amazingly expensive travelling was, and all this though he was not yet twenty-one. When arrived at Leghorn, as we took a walk to look at the port and shipping, he inquired the expense of the passage by sea home to England. This he was informed was but a trifle compared to his returning by land. He was therefore unable to withstand the temptation, so paying me the small part of my salary that was due, he took leave, and embarked with only one attendant for London.

I now therefore was left once more upon the world at large,

but then it was a thing I was used to. However, my skill in music could avail me nothing in a country where every peasant was a better musician than I; but by this time I had acquired another talent which answered my purpose as well, and this was a skill in disputation. In all the foreign universities and convents there are, upon certain days, philosophical theses maintained against every adventitious disputant, for which if the champion opposes with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a bed for one night. In this manner, therefore, I fought my way towards England, walked along from city to city, examined mankind more nearly, and, if I may so express it, saw both sides of the picture. My remarks, however, are but few: I found that monarchy was the best government for the poor to live in, and commonwealths for the rich. I found that riches in general were in every country another name for freedom, and that no man is so fond of liberty himself as not to be desirous of subjecting the will of some individuals in society to his own.

GIBBON: 1737-1794.

Conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, A.D. 1099.

GODFREY OF BOUILLON erected his standard on the first swell of Mount Calvary: to the left, as far as St. Stephen's gate, the line of attack was continued by Tancred and the two Roberts; and Count Raymond established his quarters from the citadel to the foot of Mount Sion, which was no longer included within the precincts of the city. On the fifth day, the crusaders made a general assault, in the fanatic hope of battering down the walls without engines, and of scaling them without ladders. By the dint of brutal force, they burst the first barrier, but they were driven back with shame and slaughter to the camp: the influence of vision and prophecy was deadened by the too frequent abuse of those pious stratagems; and time and labour were found to be the only means of victory. The time of the siege was indeed fulfilled in forty days, but they were forty days of calamity and anguish. A repetition of the old complaint of famine may be imputed in some degree to the voracious or disorderly appetite of the Franks but the stony soil of Jerusalem is almost destitute

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of water; the scanty springs and hasty torrents were dry in the summer season; nor was the thirst of the besiegers relieved, as in the city, by the artificial supply of cisterns and aqueducts. The circumjacent country is equally destitute of trees for the uses of shade or building; but some large beams were discovered in a cave by the crusaders: a wood near Sichem, the enchanted grove of Tasso, was cut down: the necessary timber was transported to the camp by the vigour and dexterity of Tancred; and the engines were framed by some Genoese artists, who had fortunately landed in the harbour of Jaffa. Two moveable turrets were constructed, at the expense, and in the stations, of the Duke of Lorraine and the Count of Thoulouse, and rolled forwards with devout labour, not to the most accessible, but to the most neglected, parts of the fortification. Raymond's tower was reduced to ashes by the fire of the besieged, but his colleague was more vigilant and successful; the enemies were driven by his archers from the rampart; the drawbridge was let down; and on a Friday at three in the afternoon, the day and hour of the Passion, Godfrey of Bouillon stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem. His example was followed on every side by the emulation of valour; and about four hundred and sixty years after the conquest of Omar, the holy city was rescued from the Mahometan yoke. In the pillage of public and private wealth, the adventurers had agreed to respect the exclusive property of the first occupant; and the spoils of the great mosque, seventy lamps and massy vases of gold and silver, rewarded the diligence, and displayed the generosity, of Tancred. A bloody sacrifice was offered by his mistaken votaries to the God of the Christians: resistance might provoke, but neither age nor sex could mollify, their implacable rage; they indulged themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre; and the infection of the dead bodies produced an epidemical disease. After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogue, they could still reserve a multitude of captives, whom interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare. Of these savage heroes of the Cross, Tancred alone betrayed some sentiments of compassion; yet we may praise the more selfish lenity of Raymond, who granted a capitulation and safe-conduct to the garrison of the citadel. The holy sepulchre was now free; and the bloody victors prepared to accomplish their vow. Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts, and in an humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Saviour of the world; and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption.

RICHARD B. SHERIDAN:

1751-1816.

Invective against Warren Hastings.

HAD a stranger, at this time, gone into the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowla that man, who, with a savage heart, had still great lines of character; and who, with all his ferocity in war, had still, with a cultivating hand, preserved to his country the riches which it derived from benignant skies and a prolific soil-if this stranger, ignorant of all that had happened in the short interval, and observing the wide and general devastation, and all the horrors of the scene; of plains unclothed and brown; of vegetables burned up and extinguished; of villages depopulated, and in ruins; of temples unroofed and perishing; of reservoirs broken down and dry-he would naturally inquire, What war has thus laid waste the fertile fields of this once beautiful and opulent country? what civil dissensions have happened, thus to tear asunder and separate the happy societies that once possessed those villages? -What disputed succession; what religious rage has, with unholy violence, demolished those temples, and disturbed fervent but unobtruding piety, in the exercise of its duties ?-What merciless enemy has thus spread the horrors of fire and sword?-What severe visitation of Providence has dried up the fountain, and taken from the face of the earth every vestige of verdure ?-Or, rather, what monsters have stalked over the country, tainting and poisoning, with pestiferous breath, what the voracious appetite could not devour? To such questions, what must be the answer? No wars have ravaged these lands, and depopulated these villages; no civil discords have been felt, no disputed succession, no religious rage, no merciless enemy, no affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged for the moment, cut off the sources of resuscitation, no voracious and poisoning monsters, no, all this has been accomplished by the friendship, generosity, and kindness of the English nation! They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and, lo! those are the fruits of their alliance. What, then! shall we be told, that, under such circumstances, the exasperated feelings of a whole people, thus goaded and spurred on to clamour and resistance, were excited by the poor and feeble influence of the Begums? When we hear the description of the fever, paroxysm, delirium, into which despair had thrown the natives, when, on the banks of the polluted Ganges, panting for

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death, they tore more widely open the lips of their gaping wounds, to accelerate their dissolution; and, while their blood was issuing, presented their ghastly eyes to Heaven; breathing their last and fervent prayer, that the dry earth might not be suffered to drink their blood, but that it might rise up to the throne of God, and rouse the eternal Providence to avenge the wrongs of their country-Will it be said, that this was brought about by the incantations of these Begums, in their secluded Zenana? or that they could inspire this enthusiasm and this despair into the breasts of a people who felt no grievance, and had suffered no torture? What motive, then, could have such influence in their bosom? What motive? That which nature, the common parent, plants in the bosom of man; and which, though it may be less active in the Indian than in the Englishman, is still congenial with, and makes part of his being. That feeling which tells him, that man was never made to be the property of man; but that, when, through pride and insolence of power, one human creature dares to tyrannize over another, it is a power usurped, and resistance is a duty. That feeling which tells him that all power is delegated for the good, not for the injury of the people; and that, when it is converted from the original purpose, the compact is broken, and the right is to be resumed. That principle which tells him that resistance to power usurped is not merely a duty which he owes to himself and to his neighbour, but a duty which he owes to his God, in asserting and maintaining the rank which he gave him in the creation! To that common God, who, where He gives the form of man, whatever may be the complexion, gives also the feelings and the rights of man. That principle, which neither the rudeness of ignorance can stifle, nor the enervation of refinement extinguish! That principle, which makes it base for a man to suffer when he ought to act; which, tending to preserve to the species the original designations of Providence, spurns at the arrogant distinctions of man, and vindicates the independent quality of his race.

Peroration to Sheridan's Invective against Warren Hastings.

BEFORE I Come to the last magnificent paragraph, let me call the attention of those who, possibly, think themselves capable of judging of the dignity and character of justice in this country;— let me call the attention of those who, arrogantly perhaps, presume that they understood what the features, what the duties of justice are here and in India ;-let them learn a lesson from this

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