Various

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850

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showed a new front, as often as his situation exposed a new peril. At Pharsalia, where the cavalry of Pompey was far superior to his own, he anticipated and was in full readiness for the particular manœuvre by which it was attempted to make this superiority available against himself. By a new formation of his troops he foiled the attack, and caused it to recoil upon the enemy. Had Pompey then no rejoinder ready for meeting this reply? No. His one arrow being shot, his quiver was exhausted. Without an effort at parrying any longer, the mighty game was surrendered as desperate. “Check to the king!” was heard in silent submission; and no further stratagem was invoked even in silent prayer, but the stratagem of flight. Yet Cæsar himself, objects a celebrated doctor (viz., Bishop Warburton), was reduced by his own rashness at Alexandria to a condition of peril and embarrassment not less alarming than the condition of Pompey at Pharsalia. How far this surprise might be reconcilable with Cæsar’s military credit, is a question yet undecided; but this at least is certain, that he was equal to the occasion; and, if the surprise was all but fatal, the evasion was all but miraculous. Many were the sudden surprises which Cæsar had to face before and after this – on the shores of Britain, at Marseilles, at Munda, at Thapsus – from all of which he issued triumphantly, failing only as to that final one from which he had in pure nobility of heart announced his determination to shelter himself under no precautions.

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      In support of this opinion, which we know is opposed to the popular feeling of many in the present day, we venture to quote what Miss Porter herself repeats, as said to her by Madame de Stael: “She frequently praised my revered mother for the retired manner in which she maintained her little domestic establishment, yielding her daughters to society, but not to the world.” We pray those we love, to mark the delicate and most true distinction, between “society” and the “world.” “I was set on a stage,” continued De Stael, “I was set on a stage, at a child’s age, to be listened to as a wit and worshiped for my premature judgment. I drank adulation as my soul’s nourishment, and I cannot now live without its poison; it has been my bane, never an aliment. My heart ever sighed for happiness, and I ever lost it, when I thought it approaching my grasp. I was admired, made an idol, but never beloved. I do not accuse my parents for having made this mistake, but I have not repeated it in my Albertine” (her daughter.) “She shall not

      ‘Seek for love, and fill her arms with bays.’

      I bring her up in the best society, yet in the shade.”

      2

      Miss Porter never told me she was an Irishwoman, but once she questioned me concerning my own parentage and place of birth; and upon my explaining that my mother was an English woman, my father Irish, and that I was born in Ireland, which I quitted early in life, she observed her own circumstances were very similar to mine. For my own part, I have no doubt that she was Irish by birth and by descent on the father’s side, but it will be no difficult matter to obtain direct evidence of the facts; and we hope that some Irish patriotic friend will make due inquiries on the subject. During her life, I had no idea of her connection with Ireland, or I should certainly have ascertained if my own country had a claim of which it may be justly proud.

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1

In support of this opinion, which we know is opposed to the popular feeling of many in the present day, we venture to quote what Miss Porter herself repeats, as said to her by Madame de Stael: “She frequently praised my revered mother for the retired manner in which she maintained her little domestic establishment, yielding her daughters to society, but not to the world.” We pray those we love, to mark the delicate and most true distinction, between “society” and the “world.” “I was set on a stage,” continued De Stael, “I was set on a stage, at a child’s age, to be listened to as a wit and worshiped for my premature judgment. I drank adulation as my soul’s nourishment, and I cannot now live without its poison; it has been my bane, never an aliment. My heart ever sighed for happiness, and I ever lost it, when I thought it approaching my grasp. I was admired, made an idol, but never beloved. I do not accuse my parents for having made this mistake, but I have not repeated it in my Albertine” (her daughter.) “She shall not

‘Seek for love, and fill her arms with bays.’

I bring her up in the best society, yet in the shade.”

2

Miss Porter never told me she was an Irishwoman, but once she questioned me concerning my own parentage and place of birth; and upon my explaining that my mother was an English woman, my father Irish, and that I was born in Ireland, which I quitted early in life, she observed her own circumstances were very similar to mine. For my own part, I have no doubt that she was Irish by birth and by descent on the father’s side, but it will be no difficult matter to obtain direct evidence of the facts; and we hope that some Irish patriotic friend will make due inquiries on the subject. During her life, I had no idea of her connection with Ireland, or I should certainly have ascertained if my own country had a claim of which it may be justly proud.

3

In his early days the President of the Royal Academy painted a very striking portrait of Jane Porter, as “Miranda,” and Harlowe painted her in the canoness dress of the order of St. Joachim.

4

“Feels by a secret instinct;” – A sentiment of this nature is finely expressed by Lucan in the passage beginning, “Advenisse diem,” &c. The circumstance by which Lucan chiefly defeats the grandeur and simplicities of the truth, is, the monstrous numerical exaggeration of the combatants and the killed at Pharsalia.

5

It is very evident that Dr. Arnold could not have understood the position of politics in Rome, when he allowed himself to make a favorite of Pompey. The doctor hated aristocrats as he hated the gates of Erebus. Now Pompey was not only the leader of a most selfish aristocracy, but also their tool. Secondly, as if this were not bad enough, that section of the aristocracy to which he had dedicated his services was an odious oligarchy; and to this oligarchy, again, though nominally its head, he was in effect the most submissive of tools. Cæsar, on the other hand, if a democrat in the sense of working by democratic agencies, was bending all his efforts to the reconstruction of a new, purer, and enlarged aristocracy, no longer reduced to the necessity of buying and selling the people in mere self-defense. The everlasting war of bribery, operating upon universal poverty, the internal disease of Roman society, would have been redressed by Cæsar’s measures, and was redressed according to the degree in which those measures were really brought into action. New judicatures were wanted, new judicial laws, a new aristocracy, by slow degrees a new people, and the right of suffrage exercised within new restrictions – all these things were needed for the cleansing of Rome; and that Cæsar would have accomplished this labor of Hercules was the true cause of his death. The scoundrels of the oligarchy felt their doom to be approaching. It was the just remark of Napoleon, that Brutus (but still more, we may say, Cicero), though falsely accredited as a patriot, was, in fact, the most exclusive and the most selfish of aristocrats.