His speeches are wonderfully beautiful. There is a sincerity and fervour in them that cannot be altogether from sham; he must be a hero. That esprit moqueur of which the Times is the type does the heart no good. I send you an extract from a letter about Kossuth, which will interest you. I have been patiently endeavouring to put myself in possession of his history, and to weigh the charges against him. I confess I incline strongly to the conviction that he is a true man, not without faults (who is?), but worthy of honour. After a century or two liberators and heroes are received as demigods, and numbers who affect to pronounce the names of Tell, or Wallace, or Kosciusko with enthusiasm, sneer at Kossuth. Doubtless, in the worship of him there is a vast deal that is very ignorant. The mob throw up their caps, just as Shakspeare has so wonderfully described in Coriolanus,' because others shout. But by the mob I do not mean the working classes; they have have read the whole subject of the Hungarian war long before this, and have a definite opinion upon the matter; but I mean the mob of the upper classes, who shout because others shout, and fancy themselves crazy with sublime enthusiasm, when they really know nothing of Kossuth, and are staggered when a contrary opinion is given. And I mean, on the other hand, the mob who follow the Times newspaper. I shall write seriously1 to a friend of mine, who tells me that she is wild about Kossuth; and that, in reply to some rhapsodies of hers, her uncle has written her a letter of ridicule. Now, this is really dangerous. Enthusiasm being in fashion, she writes off noble sentiments about liberty, &c., and a hue and cry against Kossuth would still it all. This is not the enthusiasm nor the affection which will bide shocks; besides, it is a most dangerous habit to character, to be able to cook up raptures whenever raptures are the rage. How is a woman ever to know what she feels or what she thinks? 1 Vide Letter cxxi. to 0 CXX. You shall have in a day or two a copy of the Record, containing an article in which I am attacked. I find it is only one out of several which I had never heard of until yesterday. They are beginning to think me of sufficient importance to be put down, and have discovered my fellow-conspirators in Archdeacon Hare, Maurice, and Donaldson, one of the first classical scholars in England, and Tennyson. Pretty good society; and to borrow an expression of poor Shelley, 'I would rather be damned with such men than saved with the Record, at least, if the penalty of such a questionable salvation was being compelled to pollute my soul with lies and slander twice a week. But how very short-sighted to fly their blind buzzard at such small game as myself! Do they not see they bring my ministry into notice or notoriety, and give to it a prominence that it might never have gained by itself? It is like Mr. Kennaway preaching against the 'Vestiges of Creation,' and Falthorp's shop being besieged in consequence with purchasers of the book. Ridiculous and contemptible as the hostility of such a paper as the Record is, it chafes me, and deepens the feeling of defiant isolation which is so undesirable. My dear CXXI. Thanks, many, for your letter. Do not write any more rhapsodies to your uncle about Kossuth. No enthusiasm will last long that is not deeply based-a few sarcastic sneers will shake it; for if it comes from following the enthusiasm of others, it will go with the coldness of others. As to Kossuth, the truth is we know very little about him; and it is very hard to get at facts. He is a man of unquestionable genius -unquestionably to a great extent sincere ; but how far he has been a selfish man, or an ambitious man, or a rash, instead of a wise man, neither you nor I can determine, as the authentic history of the Hungarian struggle is not before us. Many of his own countrymen, equally zealous with himself for the liberty of Hungary, condemn him strongly; and I do not see how we can decide by mere feeling between them. I confess that I am not satisfied with the 'all things to all men' which he has made his policy in his replies to Americans, French Red Republicans, people of Marseilles, and English constitutionalists. I suspend 'my judgment because I can see a possibility of explanation; nevertheless, I am dissatisfied, and so I see is the Examiner of last week-a staunch friend of the Hungarian cause. We shall see what ground he takes in America. I sent an interesting account of him to your mother, from an eyewitness; but I acknowledge I put little trust in speechifying; there was one— only one trait which looks like clap-trap in that letter, where he said, 'Do you applaud that? To me it seems so natural not to be ambitious.' I rejoice in the enthusiasm of the working men for him, for with them it is not a passion of three or four weeks' standing, but the result of a long-sustained interest in the Hungarian war, the details of which they read greedily while it was going on, and for which they subscribed their money. They may be wrong or right in the choice of a hero, but the enthusiasm which takes them out of themselves, and has cost them something, must do them good. I have been reading attentively such documents as I can procure respecting the Hungarian struggle and Kossuth's life. I am inclined on the whole to defend him, though by no means immaculate, and on the whole to admire him; but the less I am disposed to follow in the wake of the Times, with its hue and cry against him, the less also do I feel inclined to follow in the wake of the mob, who cook up a ninedays' fever about him. I do feel deep enthusiasm about Sir Charles Napier, because I have thoroughly studied his campaigns, know his motives, know how much he has sacrificed to principle, given up pensions, &c.; and at the same time see all his faults, after a due and fair balance of all which I conclude, he is a right noble man; and all the sneers in the world could not shake this, nor the condemnation of the East India Company, nor the neglect of Govern. ment, nor even his own eccentricities and vehemence. In reply to your question, 'Will Kossuth stir up England to support Hungary?' I reply, with all my heart, I hope not. If once the false principle of interference by one nation in another's quarrels were admitted in Europe, why should not France aid our socialists, or America aid the miserable Irish against their landlords? Each country must free itself within itself, and the freedom which comes from foreign intervention never can be real, because it cannot fit the people to use its freedom. One nation may aid another when oppressed by another; but the Hungarian question is one of their own internal constitution and internal relations to the government. England may mediate and advise, if Austria will accept her advice; but if ever she interferes with Hungary, I think she will be guilty of a grave crime--the very same crime into which France fell when she tried, by her propagandism, to revolutionise other nations, and which England so justly resented; which, too, neutralised the French Revolution, turned its glory into shame, and ended in a final failure. CXXII. Your questions about Eternity and a Future State puzzle me. Time is but (to us) the succession of ideas, long or short, as they are few or many.; and eternity, as we use the word, means nothing more than the endlessness of this succession. The distinction made by religious people between Eternity and Time is an unthinking one. Eternity seems to me a word expressive of a negation; it does but deny a termination to that mental state which we call time, for time is a subjective thing; existing that is, in us, not externally to us—a mode of our being. Do you remember that little book, 'The Stars and the Earth'? It made very comprehensible how time is merely dependent upon our limitations, and how to an unlimited being there must be no time—how, in short, the annihilation of the sense of space would be the annihilation of the idea of time. As to what our being in a future state shall be, what its enjoyments, or whether the affections here shall be those there, and whether they shall be, as here, mutable or progressive, I confess myself utterly without a clue to decide. To my mind and heart, the most satisfactory things that have been ever said on the future state are contained in the 'In Memoriam.' By the bye, the Times has attacked the poem ; allowed it much merit, but criticised severely. Part of the criticism is just, and part miserably small. The use of such antiquated words as 'Burgeon,' ' Gnarr,' may be objectionable. Be it so. Well, two words in a poem are not quite fatal to a claim of genius. The charge of irreverence is utterly false And dear as sacramental wine1 that is on things divine. The reviewer is very severe on this. But does human friendship convey no grace of God to the soul? Do holiest remembrances of God's saintliest reveal nothing of God? If they do, how exquisite here the word 'sacramental' is, as applied to them! Oh, most foolish Thunderer! Then he is very merry about the shadow waiting for the keys 'to choke me from my proper scorn,' talks of Hobbs and locks unpickable. Blind beetle ! the shadow, death, has been identified in a previous page; the reader is in possession of the metaphor. Tennyson prays that he may be hidden in this shadow from his own scorn before he -'forgets,' I think, for I have not the passage before me. The reviewer objects to the word 'cloke,' because shadows do not cloke. Nor does light clothe; but if the poor man had read 'robed in light,' he would have thought it quite correct, because it is a common expression. Another— That each who seems a separate whole Should move his rounds, and fusing all 'Of the two mysteries, the shadow with the cloke is probably the easier;' so says the reviewer, who, in this, as well as other places, evidently copies almost whole sentences from Macaulay's castigation of Robert Montgomery; but this critic is not a These lines have been altered and not improved : 'And dear to me as sacred wine,' &c.-ED. |