Chapter C: (dated From Adelaide.) (6)

This was doubtless the truth, but not the whole truth. Founding apparently on these statements, which are Lord Grange's vindication of himself, the editor of the collection of letters says--"The letters now printed must considerably impair the mystery of the reasons which led to the abduction of Lady Grange. They may be held conclusively to refute the supposition that the affair had any connexion with the political intrigues of the period." On the contrary, we cannot read the confidential portion of the correspondence without feeling that it almost conclusively establishes the fact, that the affair _had_ a "connexion with the political intrigues of the period;" and that the reason why so many people of rank and political influence aided the plot, why the removal was conducted with so much secrecy, and the place of seclusion was so remote and inaccessible, was because Lady Grange was possessed of dangerous secrets, which compromised her husband and his friends. The general tone of the letters, and their many cautious and mysterious, yet unmistakeable references to the proceedings of friends across the water, show that the judge confided to the owner of the old mansion at the foot of Bennochie some things which it would be dangerous for an enemy to know. But we shall cite just one passage, which we consider sufficient of itself to support our position. It is taken from a letter dated 22d March 1731, just ten months before his wife was seized and carried off. There is something very peculiar in the structure of the letter; and, whether in pursuit of some not very appreciable joke, or to waylay the penetration of any hostile party who, might take the liberty of opening the packet on its journey, the writer speaks of himself during the most curious and important part of it, in the third person. Talking of a very difficult and hazardous project in which he is about to be engaged, he thus passes a neat commendation on himself,--"but I am sure he never yet was frightened from what was right in itself, and his duty towards his friends, by his own trouble or danger, and he seems as little frighted now, as ever in his life." He then approaches the subject of his wife's character and intentions, like a man treading on the verge of a frightful pitfall. "I have found that, in such a case, there is no bounds set to such mischief, and it is pushed on though it should go the length of your utter ruin, _and of Tyburn itself, or the Grassmarket_,"--the one being the place where the gibbet of London, the other where that of Edinburgh stood. From such portentous associations he passes immediately to his wife and her proceedings. To make the passage more distinct, we fill up the names, of which the letter contains only the first and last letters; it will be remarked that he still assumes the third person, and that he himself is the person about to depart for London.

"Then I am told that Lady Grange is going to London. She knows nothing of _his_ going, nor is it suspected here, nor shall be till the day before he goes off, and so she cannot pretend it is to follow him. She will certainly strive to get access to Lady Mary Wortley, Lady Mar's sister, (whom she openly blesses for her opposition to our friends,) and to all where her malice may prompt her to hope she can do hurt to us. You will remember with what lying impudence she threatened Lord Grange, and many of his friends, with accusations of high treason and other capital crimes, and spoke so loud of her accusing directly by a signed information to Lord Justice-Clerk, that it came to his ears, and she was stopped by hearing he said, that, if the mad woman came to him, he would cause his footmen turn her down stairs. What effect her lies may have, where she is not so well known, and with those who, from opposition to what Lord Grange is about, may think their interest to encourage them, one cannot certainly know; but _if proper measures be not fallen on against it, the creature may prove troublesome_; at any rate, this whole affair will require a great deal of diligence, caution, and address."[24]

He talks of her as mad: and so far as passion and the thirst of vengeance make people mad, she undoubtedly was so. He speaks of her intended accusations as lies--that is, of course, a convenient expression to use towards them. But what is very clearly at the bottom of all the trepidation, and doubt, and difficulty, is, that she might be able, mad and false as she was, to get facts established which called up very ugly associations with Tyburn and the Grassmarket. A minute incident stated in the common histories of the affair, that Lady Grange planned a journey to London for the purpose of taking her accusation to the fountain-head of political power, is confirmed by this extract. It may easily be believed that, among Grange's official colleagues--some of whom had also their own secrets to keep--the lady's frantic accusations met with little encouragement. The Justice-Clerk referred to in the extract, Adam Cockburn of Ormiston, was, like Grange himself, a great professed light of the church, and what sort of interview he would have held with the furious lady, may be inferred from the character given of him by a contemporary,--"He became universally hated in Scotland, where they called him the curse of Scotland; and when ladies were at cards, playing the nine of diamonds, commonly called 'the curse of Scotland,' they called it the Justice-Clerk. He was, indeed, of a hot temper, and violent in all his measures."[25]

In the old narratives of the affair, it is stated that Grange felt his position to be the more dangerous, as some letters had been intercepted tending to inculpate him with the Jacobites on the Continent. It is singular that this should also be pretty satisfactorily proved by the present correspondence. It will be remembered that Grange was a brother of the Earl of Mar, whose prominence in the affairs of 1715 had driven him into exile. A strong attachment to this unfortunate man is, on the whole, the most pleasing feature in the character of the more cautious and more fortunate judge. It was natural that the brothers should keep up a correspondence, and quite as natural that Sir Robert Walpole should be particularly anxious to discover what they said to each other. Grange conducted some negotiations with the government for his brother's pardon and restoration, and we find him defeated in his aim, and receiving some very significant hints about the nature of his correspondence.

"Sir Robert told me in wrath that he would have nothing to do with Lord Mar, that he had dealt ill with him, and he should not have his pardon; and he would by no means give me any reason for it, but Lord Townsend did, whom they had stirred up; for he in anger told me Sir Robert had intercepted his letters to me with very odd things in them, injurious to Sir Robert and his friends.... Soon after this, Ilay, with cloudy looks, began to make insinuations of some discoveries against me too, and at length told me that Sir Robert said that he had also intercepted bad letters of mine to Lord Mar, but confessed they were not directed to Lord Mar, and neither subscribed by me nor in my hand of write, but that by the contents they knew them to be mine to Lord Mar. I answered that they might assert what they pleased of letters said to be directed to me, and which they owned I had never seen, but that I must know of letters wrote by myself, and that I ever wrote any such was a damned, villainous, malicious lie; and let Sir Robert or any else be the asserter of it, whoever did assert it, was a liar."[26]

This is a very successful outbreak of virtuous indignation, and does considerable credit to its author, as a pupil of that school of which his dear friend Lord Lovat was the undoubted head.

We cannot help considering that it is a question of some historical interest and importance whether the abduction of Lady Grange was or was not a measure adopted for political reasons, and that the letters before us, by finally deciding the question, throw an important light on the political state of Scotland in the early part of the eighteenth century. If we suppose that the lady was carried under circumstances of such profound mystery, and by the agency of some conspicuous and distinguished personages, to the distant island of St Kilda, merely because she was a lunatic who required to be in custody, we only see that many important and sagacious people were taking a very complex and cumbrous method of accomplishing what might have been done with ease; for in those days, few would have troubled themselves about the wretched woman, if her husband had chosen to keep her in any place of confinement, telling the neighbourhood that she was insane. But when we find that the Jacobite party in Scotland were powerful enough to kidnap a person obnoxious to them, and keep her for nine years in a place to which the laws of the realm and the authority of the crown nominally extended, but where their own power was the real operative authority, we have a very formidable notion of the strength and compactness of the Jacobite union during Walpole's apparently powerful ministry.

The correspondence of Lord Grange admits its reader to a species of confidential intercourse with him, which can scarcely be called agreeable. It exhibits one of the most disgusting of all the moral diseases--the rankling of the arrow of disappointment in the heart of a defeated political schemer. It is not the man of brave and bold designs baffled, or the utopian enthusiast disappointed of the fulfilment of his golden dreams, or the adherent of one absorbing political idea looking at it lying broken to pieces at his feet: in all of these there is a dash of noble and disinterested sentiment, and the politician defeated in his conflict with the world has still the consolation of an honest if mistaken heart, into which he can retire without the sting of self-reproach. But all Grange's disappointments were connected with paltry schemes of personal aggrandisement. Fawn and flatter as he might, Sir Robert Walpole, and his Scottish coadjutor Ilay, knew him and distrusted him, and, when he came to court them, gave him but fair words, and sometimes not even that. With Sir Robert he carried on an unequal war. Believing that he could scourge the minister in parliament, while he was a judge of the Court of Session, he resolved to obtain a seat, and thereupon the all-powerful minister at once checkmated him, by carrying an act to prohibit judges of the Court of Session from holding seats in the House of Commons--it was a less invidious proceeding than the dismissal of his lordship from the bench would have been, and it had the appearance of being dictated by a desire for the public good. Grange preferred the senate to the bench, and resigned his judgeship, but he never achieved political eminence. In the mean time he acquired Dr Johnson's desideratum of an honest hatred towards his enemy, and indeed hatred appears to have been the only honest ingredient in his character. He expressed it so well towards Walpole, that we must quote his confidential opinion of that mighty statesman:--

"An insolent and rapacious minister, who has kept us under
the expense of war in time of peace, yet hindered us to
fight to vindicate our trade, so grossly violated by Spanish
robberies, and when we could have put a stop to it, and
corrected them without drawing upon us the arms of any other
nation, maintained his hollow and expensive peace by ridiculous
contradictory treaties, trying us to take part in all the
quarrels of Europe, and sometimes to be on both sides, and at
the same time allowing confederacies to go on so powerful, and
which we are not of, that now when a war is breaking out we
know not where to turn us; laying plots to devour the land by
new swarms of officers of the revenue, to put the merchants'
stocks in the possession of these vermin, and trade under
their power, &c., as by that most damned excise scheme; openly
protecting the frauds and villains that plunder the stocks
and ruin multitudes, and must sink the kingdom; plundering
the revenue, and using all his art, and power, and bribes
to stop all inquiry into, or the least amendment of these
things, either by parliament or otherwise; openly ridiculing
all virtue and uprightness; enhancing all power to himself
and his brother, and suffering almost none else to do or know
anything; barefaced and avowed bribing of members of parliament
and others, and boasting of it; heaping up immense wealth to
himself and his most abject profligate creatures of both sexes,
while the public treasure and trade of the nation is ruined;
suffering and encouraging these locusts to get large bribes,
and giving considerable employment at their recommendation,
while men of merit and service, and of the best families and
interest, are neglected or abused, employing insignificant
brutes or the greatest rogues, and favouring almost none but
such; maltreating and insulting all whom his rascals and jades
complain of. But the list is too long to go through with
here."[27]

Grange thought at one time that he had great claims on Walpole, and Lord Ilay; and he seems to have very diligently performed one class of duties which politicians sometimes think sufficient to establish a claim for reward--he had been an indefatigable petitioner for ministerial favours. We have heard somewhere of a story of a political economist, who during a long walk is pestered by an Irish beggar, who asks his honour just to give him a sixpence, "for the love of God." The economist turns round to argue the matter: "I deny," says he, "that I would be showing my love to the Deity by giving an idle rascal like you money; if you can state any service you have ever done to me worth the sixpence, you shall have it."--"Why, then," says the mendicant thus appealed to, "haven't I been keeping your honour in discourse this half hour?" Such seems to have been the character of Grange's claim on the ministry--he kept them in unceasing "discourse" as a petitioner. Not that he did not profess some claims of another kind. "During all this time," he says, "I ran their errands and fought their battles in Scotland." Nor did he fail sometimes to allude to his services as a religious professor, so ill-requited, that he taunts Ilay with having "already effectually interposed for Tom (now Baron) Kennedy, who had been Queen's advocate, and obnoxious to all the Presbyterian party, _which I was not_." And how was he rewarded for all this running errands, fighting battles, and being religious enough not to be obnoxious? "Ilay showed me no countenance, and Argyle shunned to see me.... He [Ilay] never speaks nor writes to me of any business, but to shame me (as you have seen) about my own: and, these three or four years past, has visibly to all the world drawn off by degrees from all familiarity with me, and has dropped me even from his conversation about trifles or mirth. I could give you many strong instances of this." Here is an incident told with a pathos sufficient to move a whole antechamber to tears:--

"Before I came from London in November last, he bade me wait
on Sir Robert at his levee. I told him I had always done so,
but was not in the least noticed, or had so much as a smile
or a gracious nod from him. But said he, 'I promise you I'll
tell him to take particular notice of you, and to assure you of
favour, and that he will do for you: which (said his lordship)
will make my game more easy when I ask anything for you;' and
he bid me come to him that he might carry me to the levee in
his coach. This was done, and I set myself in Sir Robert's eye
in the front of the crowd that surrounded him, and Ilay was
by and looking on. Sir Robert came and went by me without the
least regard. Ilay slipt into another room; and, that I might
not wait longer in so silly a figure, I made up without being
called to the great knight; and told him I came to testify my
respect, and ask his commands for Scotland. His answer, with a
very dry look, and odd air was, 'I have nothing to say to you,
my lord. I wish you a good journey.' I saw Ilay afterwards, and
he said there was nothing in it. Sir Robert had only forgot,
and I am sure (said he) he will do for you what I desired
him."[28]

In the sequel he exclaims, "Can such usage be bore, even by the spirit of a poor mouse!"--deeming probably that its endurance by a _rat_ was quite out of the question.

It is singular enough to find from these revelations of Lord Grange's character and habits, that while he was plotting the abduction of one mad woman, he was busily engaged in attempting the release of another. Yes, as a first step, he was intending to release her; but there are a few hints, slight in themselves, but wonderfully suggestive when they are associated with his wife's history, showing us that his ultimate intention was to make a second victim. In this scheme he was defeated by a spirit less crafty but more audacious than his own--by no less renowned a person than Lady Mary Wortley Montague, whose name has already been mentioned as "openly blessed" by Lady Grange for her "opposition to our friends," meaning the Jacobites. We have among the papers the history of the baffled attempt--at least one side of the history, and, when shaken free of the dust of Grange's prolix grumblings, it is infinitely amusing. The intended victim in this instance was Lady Mar, Lady Mary's sister, the wife of Grange's brother. Lady Mar was insane, and in some shape or other committed to the guardianship of her sister. There were some pecuniary matters depending on the question of her detention or release, so vaguely hinted at that it is not easy to discover their nature. It would appear that Lady Mar was allowed by the favour of the court, and probably through the interest of her relatives, a jointure of £500 a-year over the estates which were forfeited from her husband. Lord Mar was then living in poverty abroad; and Lord Grange was inclined to think that this sum would be better administered by himself and his friends than by Lady Mary. Looking at the £500 from his own side, he of course saw Lady Mary on the other, and judged that her motives were as parallel to his own as the one jaw of a shark is to the other--so he says, "Lady Mar, they say, is quite well; and so as in common justice she can no longer be detained as a lunatic; but she is obstinately averse to appearing in chancery, that the sentence may be taken off. Her sister probably will oppose her liberty, for thereby she would lose, and Lord Mar in effect gain, £500 yearly: and the poor lady, being in her custody, and under her management, had need to be very firmly recovered, for the guardian may at present so vex, tease, and plague her, that it would turn anybody mad."[29]

It was believed that if Lady Mar were released from Lady Mary Wortley Montague's influence, means might be taken for so arranging matters that her husband should participate in her jointure. There was another matter, however, in which Grange himself had a more particular prospect of pecuniary advantage. Lady Mar appears to have had a beneficiary interest in a lease of a house in Whitehall, forming part of the royal demesne. An arrangement seems to have been made by which, during her incapacity from insanity, her own term was conveyed to her brother-in-law, Lord Grange, while he at the same time obtained a reversion of the lease in his own favour. He had, it appears, sold his whole interest in the property--both the lease he had obtained from Lady Mar's guardians and his own reversionary interest. He was now, therefore, in endeavouring to procure the release of Lady Mar, on the ground of her restoration to sanity, about to enable her to revoke the transference that had been made to him of her own share in the lease. In his own words, "On Lady Mar's being at freedom, the assignment of her lease to Lord Grange becomes void, and so does the sale he has made of it; and in that sale the lease to Lady Mar was valued at £800 sterling, which will be lost by the avoidance of it." Such is the danger; and now, in a very brief continuation of the quotation, let us observe the way in which it was to be met, for, considering who was the writer, it is really well worthy of observation. "Were Lady Mar in her freedom, _in right hands, she would ratify the bargain_, but if in her sister's, probably she will not." Such was the plot; she was to be restored to her freedom that she might be put "in right hands,"--in hands in which there was no chance of her refusing what might be demanded. But there was a lion in the way, or rather a lioness, as we shall see. Lord Grange's anticipations of Lady Wortley Montague's operations is not the least remarkable of his revelations. It is "the power within the guilty breast" working as in Eugene Aram's dream. What Lady Mary suspected it were difficult to say, but he who ventured to predict her suspicions spoke from his own guilty conscience--spoke as the kidnapper and secret imprisoner. We pray attention to the remarkable expressions with which the following quotation closes:--

"May not an artful woman impose on one in such circumstances,
and whose mind cannot yet be very firm? And this is the more to
be feared, because at the beginning of her illness the sister
said loudly, and oftener than once to Lord Grange himself,
that her husband's bad usage had turned her [Lady Mar] mad.
Supposing, then, the sister tell and persuade her to this
purpose: 'You see your husband's friends quite neglect you.
Lord Erskine, though in the place, seldom comes near you.
How easy were it for Lord Grange to have made you a visit on
hearing you are so well. Surely it became the fellow to pay you
that regard, and he would have done it had he any kindness for
you; and, if the husband had, he would have laid such commands
on his son and brother which they could not have resisted. Now,
you may get your freedom, but can you again trust yourself in
their hands? Quite separated from your father's and mother's
friends, and from your country, _locked up in Scotland or
foreign parts, and wholly in their power_, what can you expect?
Your friends here could give you no relief, and you should be
wholly at the barbarous mercy of those whose sense get not
sufficiently the better of their hatred or contempt, as to make
them carry with seeming respect to you till they get you in
their power. _What will they not do when they have you?_"[30]

Such are Lord Grange's "imaginary conversations" of Lady Mary Wortley--like many others, a more accurate reflection of the thoughts habitually dwelling in the writer's own mind, than of those of the person in whose name they are uttered. And then, in continuation, he paints the formidable effect of the imaginary pleading--"Such things to a woman so lately of a disturbed brain, constantly inculcated by so near a relation whom she only sees, and her creatures, and depends on her entirely for the time--what may they not produce? And if they have their effect, then the consequences are these: the lady being at freedom legally, but _de facto_ still under her sister's absolute government, the bargain about her jointure becomes void, and thereby she (or rather the sister) gets more by £500 sterling yearly, and our friend has nothing at all." Then follows the statement about the lease; and the meaning of the whole is, that Lady Mar, as a free woman, would be entitled to live with her sister, and dispose of her own property, unless she were put in the "right hands" to make her "ratify" any desired bargain.

The interchange of compliments between the parties, when they came to actual conflict, is extremely instructive. "She concluded with rage," says the judge, "that we were both rascals, with many other ridiculous things." But perhaps more people will think her ladyship's penetration was not more ridiculously at fault on this than on other occasions. Horace Walpole left an unfavourable testimony to her treatment of her sister, when he alluded to "the unfortunate Lady Mar, whom she treated so hardly when out of her senses." Pope caught up the same charge in the insinuation--

"Who starves a sister, or denies a debt."

Lord Grange, for his own part, has the merit, when characterising his opponent, of a coincidence with the illustrious poet--at least in the bestowal of an epithet. Every one remembers Pope's--

"Avidien and his wife, no matter which;
For him you call a dog, and her a ----."

It is satisfactory to find, on the most palpable evidence, that Lord Grange had sufficient poetical genius to supply this rhyme, though whether his poetic powers went any farther, we are unable, and perhaps no one will ever be able, to determine.

We must quote, unmutilated, one of Grange's conflicts with Avidien's wife. Though the scene be roughly described, it has an interest, from the unscrupulous vehemence of the principal actors, and the eminence of the little group, who cluster round it like a circle of casual passengers round the centre of disturbance, where the wife and the brother-bacchanalian compete, on the pavement, for the possession of some jovial reveller, whose half-clouded mind remains vibrating between the quiet comforts of home and the fierce joys of the tavern. There is something affecting in the vacillating miseries of the poor invalid--we wonder how much of the cruel contest can be true; for, that it is all true, it is impossible to believe--yet Lady Mary could be violent, and she could be hard, when she was attacked or baffled; and she had a rough and unscrupulous nature to combat with, in the historian of their warfare.

"Lady Mary, perceiving how things were like to go, did what I
was always afraid of, and could not possibly prevent: she went
in rage to her poor sister, and so swaggered and frightened
her, that she relapsed. While she was about that fine piece of
work, Lord Erskine happened to go to Lady Mar's; and in his
presence Lady Mary continued to this purpose with her sister:
'Can you pretend to be well? Don't you know you are still mad?
You shan't get out of my custody; and if Lord Grange and his
confederates bring you before Lord Chancellor, I'll make you,
in open court, in presence of the world, lay your hand on the
Gospel, and swear by Almighty God, whether you can say you are
yet well. Your salvation shall be at stake; for, remember,
perjury infers damnation--your eternal damnation.' So soon as
I was informed of this, I assured my lady (and so did others,)
that in law no such oath could be put to, her, and that Lady
Mary had only said so to fright her. But so strong was the
fright, that nothing we could say was able to set her right
again. And Lady Mary, having thus dismounted her came again
and coaxed her, and (as I found by diverse instances) strove
to give her bad impressions of her family, and everybody but
Lady Mary's sweet self. Yet next day Lady Mar went and dined
at Mr Baillie's in town, and there saw a deal of company, and
behaved very well. And Dr Arbuthnot, who, among others, saw
her there, said he thought her very well; and had not the turn
happened you will presently hear of, he and Dr Monro (son to
Mr Monro who, at the Revolution, was Principal of Edinburgh
College, and is now physician to Bedlam,) and Dr Mead, were
to have gone to her with me next day and afterwards, that
they might have vouched her condition before the chancellor.
I believed it best for me not to be at Mr Baillie's, that all
might appear as it was, free and natural, and not conducted by
any art of mine; only I went thither about seven at night, and
found her in a room with Ladies Harvey, Binning, Murray, Lady
Grizzel Baillie, and others. She was behaving decently, but
with the gravity of one that is wearied and tired. Mr Baillie
himself, and the other gentlemen and ladies, (a great many
being in the next room,) now and then joined us, and she seemed
not in anything discomposed, till the conversation turned on
her sister's late insult, which, it was visible, gave a shock
to her, and disconcerted her; and when Lady Murray and I went
home with her to Knightsbridge, she was so dumpish that she
scarcely said one word. When I went to her next day, I saw how
strongly Lady Mary's physic wrought, and dissipated her poor
returning senses. She had before urged me earnestly to proceed
faster than was fit, to get her before the chancellor, and do
everything needful for her liberation, that she might go to her
husband and family. But now she told me she would not for the
world appear before the chancellor, and that neither she nor
any other must make oath as to her recovery, (at this time,
indeed, it had been a very bold oath); and that she preferred
her soul's salvation to all things. And, among other things,
she said, what a dismal condition shall I be in if, after
all, the chancellor send me back under Mary's government; how
shall I pass my time after such an attempt? In short, she was
bambouzled, and frighted quite. But that her head was really
turned by Lady Mary's threats of damnation, farther appeared
by this instance: Lady Grizzel Baillie and Lady Murray having
gone to take leave of her, (their whole family is gone to Spa,)
when I saw her next day, she gravely told me that Lady Murray
was no more her friend, having endeavoured, when taking leave,
to deprive her of all the comfort left her--the hope of heaven.
And though (said she) I was bred to the Church of England,
and she to that of Scotland, yet merely the difference is not
so great that she must pronounce me in a state of damnation:
and she asked me seriously, what Lady Murray had said to me
about her being damned? Never in my life, madam, answered I,
did she or any London lady speak to me about salvation or
damnation; but I'm sure my Lady Murray loves you as her sister,
and heartily wishes your happiness here and hereafter. Then
she gave me a sealed letter to Lady Murray, begging me to
deliver it and bring an answer. I read it with Lady Murray.
It was long, and all expostulatory why she pronounced her to
be damned; and said many odd things. Lady Murray's answer was
the proper one--short and general, but very kind, which I
also delivered; and Lady Mar said no more to me on that head.
Before she took this turn, perceiving her so vapourish and
easily disconcerted, I would not venture to put the case wholly
on perfect recovery, but stated it also as I really thought
it--viz., recovered from all that could properly be called
lunacy, yet exceeding weak, and apt to be overturned. And I had
prepared a memorial in law on that supposition, which I was
to have laid before Mr Talbot, solicitor-general, and other
counsel, the very day she took this wrong turn; but thereupon
stopt altogether. At parting, she appeared to me as one who,
fearing to provoke a worse fate by attempting to be better, sat
down in a sort of sullen despairing, content with her present
condition, which she (justly) called misery. Thus seemed she to
be as to any sense that remained with her; but all her sense
was clouded, and, indeed, fancies which now perplexed her brain
were, like the clouds, fleeting, inconstant, and sometimes in
monstrous shapes."[31]

We have no more of this affair until the lapse of several months, when the judge, at the very moment of apparent victory, is routed by his watchful antagonist. He had obtained possession of Lady Mar--she was on her way to Scotland, "in right hands," but had not crossed the border. This was in 1733, a few months after Lady Grange had been safely conveyed to the grim solitudes of Hesker. Surely some bird of the air had whispered the matter to Lady Mary; for her measures were prompt and stern, and they draw from the baffled plotter many hard expressions and insinuations. "But on the road, she [Lady Mar] was seized by Lord Chief-Justice's warrant, procured on false affidavit of her sister Lady Mary, &c., and brought back to London--declared lunatic, and by Lord Chancellor (whose crony is Mr Wortley, Lady Mary's husband) delivered into the custody of Lady Mary, to the astonishment and offence even of all the English, (Sir Robert among the rest;) and Ilay pretended to be angry at it, yet refused to give me that relief by the king in council, which by law was undoubtedly competent."[32]

The people with whom his London connexion brought the judge in contact, display a gathering of dazzling names in the firmament of fashion and wit. Bolingbroke, Windham, and "the courtly Talbot" are casually mentioned. Grange says in passing, "I am acquainted with Chesterfield." He has something to say of "sweet Lepel," the "wife of that Lord Hervey who last winter wrote the pamphlet against Mr Pulteney, and on Mr Pulteney's answer, fought with him and was wounded." Arbuthnot, and the prince of classical collectors, Richard Mead, mix with the ordinary actors of the scene. Young Murray, not then a crown lawyer--but sufficiently distinguished for wit, eloquence, and fashionable celebrity, to have called forth the next to immortal compliments of Pope--_must_ have been one of the brilliant circle; and in the early period of his intercourse with his brother's sister-in-law, accident would be strangely against him, if he did not sometimes meet in the ordinary circle the pale distorted youth, with noble intellectual features and an eye of fire, whose war of wit and rancour with "furious Sappho" left the world uncertain whether to laugh with their fierce wit, or lament the melancholy picture of perverted genius, exhibited by a hatred so paltry yet so unquenchable.

In his autobiographical revelations, the economical old judge leaves some traces of his consciousness that his journeys from Merlyn's Wynd to Whitehall were a decided transition from the humble to the great world. He thus describes one of these journeys, in the letter already cited, in which he gratified his humour by talking of himself in the third person.

"Lord G. is now pretty well acquainted with the ways there; his
personal charges, he is sure, will be small in comparison; he
will not be in expensive companies or houses, but when business
requires it; nor at any diversion but what he finds necessary
for keeping up the cheerfulness of his own spirit, and the
health of his body. He wears plain and not fine clothes.
When there last he kept not a servant, but had a fellow at
call, to whom he gave a shilling a-day such days as he was to
be at court or among the great, and must have a footman as
necessarily as a coat on his back or a sword by his side. He
never was nice and expensive in his own eating, and less now
than ever; for this winter he has quite lost the relish of
French claret, the most expensive article in London. He is to
travel without a servant, for whom he knows not any sort of use
on the road, and only has a post-boy, whom he must have, had he
twenty servants of his own; and so he travelled last year."[33]

Strange indeed were the social extremes between which this journey lay. At the one end we see the brilliant assemblages of the most brilliant age of English fashion. The rays of the wax-lights glitter back from stars and sword-hilts, diamond buttons and spangles. Velvet coats, huge laced waistcoats, abundant hoops, spread forth their luxurious wealth--the air is rich and thick with perfumed powder--the highest in rank, and wealth, and influence are there, so are the first in genius and learning. Reverse the picture, and take the northern end of the journey. In an old dark stone house, at the end of a dismal alley, Lovat's ragged banditti throttle a shrieking woman--a guilty cavalcade passes hurriedly at night across the dark heath--next opens a dreary dungeon in a deserted feudal fortalice--a boat tosses on the bosom of the restless Atlantic--and the victim is consigned to the dreary rock, where year follows year, bringing no change with it but increasing age. The contrast is startling. Yet, when we read Lady Grange's diary and Lady Mary Wortley's letters together, they leave one doubtful whether most to shudder at the savage lawlessness of one end of the island, or the artificial vices that were growing out of a putrid civilisation in the other.

THE ROYAL PROGRESS.

Question--"What is a King?" Answer--"A monster who devours the human race." Such was a part of the catechism taught to all the children of France during the first fervour of the Revolution in 1789. "I wonder the people should die of want," said a princess during the dreadful famine of 1774; "for my part, if I was one of them, I should live on beef-steaks and porter, rather than perish." Such are the feelings with which the members of the same community, children of the same family, unhappily sometimes come to regard each other during periods of democratic excitement, or mutual estrangement. Ignorance, worked on by falsehood, and misled by ambition, is the main cause of this fatal severance. Nothing removes it so effectually as bringing them together. So natural are the feelings of loyalty to the human heart, so universally do they spring up when the falsehood which has smothered them is neutralised by the evidence of the senses, that it may be considered as one of the greatest evils which can afflict society, when circumstances occur which keep sovereigns aloof from their people, and one of the greatest blessings when they can rejoin each other. Of this, a signal example occurred on the return of the royal family of France from the fatal journey to Varennes, when Barnave, who had been sent down with Petion, as one of the most vehement and stern republicans, to bring them back to Paris, was so impressed with the philanthropic benevolence of the King, and so melted by the heroic magnanimity of the Queen, that he became thenceforward one of the most faithful defenders of the royal cause. "How often," says Thiers, in recounting this remarkable conversion, "would factions the most inveterate be reconciled, if they could meet and read each other's hearts!"

The sudden change often produced in the general mind, by the veil of ignorance and prejudice being withdrawn, which had concealed from them the real character of their rulers, is not to be ascribed merely to the lustre of royalty, or the dazzling of the public gaze by the magnificent pageants which, on such occasions, generally surround it. It arises mainly from a different cause: it is allied to the generous affections--it springs from the feelings planted by the Author of nature in the human heart, to bind society together. It is often seen most strongly when the royal pageants are the most unpretending, and the royal personages, laying aside their previous state, mingle almost without distinction, save from the superior grace of their manners, with the ordinary citizens. It is more like the irresistible gush of affection which overspreads every heart, when the members, long severed, of a once united family are reassembled; or when the prodigal returns to his father's home, only the more dear from the events which had estranged him from it.

It is sometimes said that loyalty is an instinctive principle, meant to supply the place of reason before the intellectual faculties have grown to their full strength among a people, but unnecessary, and which gradually dies out, when society, under the direction of self-government, has come to be regulated by the rational faculties. There never was a greater mistake; and every day's experience may convince us that it is not only false, but directly the reverse of the truth. The time will never come, when the aid of loyalty will not be required to bind society to its chief: and if the time should ever come that its generous influence is no longer felt, it may safely be concluded that the sun of national prosperity has set, and that a night of darkness and suffering is at hand. Mankind cannot be attached, save in a passing moment of fervour, to an abstract principle, or a vast community without a head, or something which may supply its want to the senses. The aid of individuals or localities is required to concentrate and keep alive the patriotic affections, where they are not centred on an individual sovereign. What the Acropolis was to Athens, the Capitol to Rome, St Mark's to Venice, that the sovereign is to a monarchical community, and so it will remain to the end of the world. All the fervour of the Revolution could not supply in France the want of one chief, till Napoleon concentrated the loyal affections on himself. The real enemy to loyalty is not reason, but selfishness. It dies away, not under the influence of enlarged education, but under that of augmented corruption; and till that last stage of national decay has arrived, its flame will only burn the more steadily from reason adding the fuel by which it is to be fed.

If any doubt could be entertained, by a well-informed mind, of the incalculable importance of loyalty, as the chief and often the only bond which holds society together, it would be removed by two events which have occurred in our own times,--the Moscow invasion, and the steadiness of England during the mind-quake of 1848. On the first occasion, this sacred principle defeated the mightiest armament ever assembled by the powers of intellect against the liberties of mankind; on the last, it preserved unshaken and unscathed the ark of the constitution in the British islands, amidst the deluge which had shaken the thrones of almost all the other European monarchies. In these two examples, where two states in the opposite extremes of infancy and civilisation were successively rescued from the most appalling dangers, amidst the ruins of all around them, by the influence of this noble principle, we may discern the clearest proof of its lasting influence upon man, and of the incalculable blessings it is fitted to confer, not less in the most enlightened than the most unenlightened ages of society. But for it, the social institutions of Great Britain would have been overturned on the 10th April 1848, and England, with all its education, civilisation, and habits of freedom, would have been consigned to destruction by a deluge of civilised barbarians, compared to whom, as Macaulay has well said, those that followed the standard of Attila or Alaric were humane and temperate warriors. Hence we may learn how wonderfully loyalty is _strengthened_, instead of being weakened, by the progress of knowledge and the spread of civilisation in a really free community; and what force that noble principle acquires when, to the generous enthusiasm which binds the unlettered warrior to his chief, is added the determination of freemen to defend a throne which all feel to be the keystone in the arch of the national fortunes.

It is a fortunate, perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say a providential circumstance, that a QUEEN, during the late eventful years, has been on the throne of the British empire. Had a king been there, still more one of unpopular manner or retired habits, when all the thrones of Europe were falling around us, the event might have been very different, and England, with all its glories, have been sunk in the bottomless pit of revolution. The feelings of loyalty to a Queen, especially if she is young and handsome, and unites the virtues to the graces of her sex, are very different from those which, under the most favourable circumstances, can be awakened in favour of a king. The natural gallantry of man, the feelings of chivalry, the respect due to the softer sex, are mingled in overwhelming proportions with the abstract passions of loyalty when a young and interesting woman, endowed with masculine energy, but adorned with feminine beauty, surrounded by the husband of her choice and the children of her love, is seen braving the risks and enduring the fatigues of a journey through lands recently convulsed by civil dissension, solely to win the love of her subjects, to heal the divisions of the great family of which she forms the head.

History affords numerous examples of the far greater power, in periods of intestine troubles, queens have than kings in winning the affections or calming the exasperation of their subjects. Despite all her errors, notwithstanding her faults, Queen Mary exercised a sway over a large part of her subjects which no man in similar circumstances could have done. Austria would have been crushed by the arms of France and Bavaria in 1744, but for the chivalrous loyalty which led the Hungarian nobles to exclaim in a transport of generous enthusiasm, "Moriamur pro _Rege_ nostro, Maria Theresa."

"Fair Austria spreads her mournful charms,
The Queen, the beauty, sets the world in arms."

And it is doubtful if all the fervours of the Reformation could have enabled England to withstand the assault of the Catholic league, headed by Spain in the time of Philip II., if in defence of the nation had not been joined the chivalrous loyalty of a gallant nobility to their queen, as well as the stern resolution of a Protestant people in behalf of their religion and their liberties.

But the passion of loyalty, as all other passions, requires aliment for its support. Like love, it can live on wonderfully little hope, but it absolutely requires some. A look, a smile, a word from a sovereign, doubtless go a great way; but entire and long-continued absence will chill even the warmest affections. It is on this account that royal progresses have so important an influence in knitting together the bonds which unite a people to their sovereign. They have one inestimable effect--they make them known to each other. The one sees in person the enthusiastic affection with which the sovereign is regarded by the people, the latter the parental interest with which the people are regarded by their sovereign. Prejudices, perhaps, nourished by faction or fostered by party, melt away before the simple light of truth. A few hours of mutual intercourse dispels the alienation which years of separation, and the continued efforts of guilty ambition during a generation, may have produced. The generous affections spring up unbidden, when the evidence of the senses dispels the load of falsehood by which they had been restrained. Mutual knowledge produces mutual interest; and the chances of success to subsequent efforts to bring about an estrangement are materially lessened, by the discovery of how wide had been the misapprehension which had formerly existed, and how deep the mutual affection which really dwelt in the recesses of the heart, and was now brought to light by the happy approximation of the sovereign and her people.

It was a noble spectacle to behold a young Queen, at a time when scarce a monarch in Europe was secure on his throne, setting out with her illustrious consort and family to make a royal progress through her dominions, and selecting for the first place of her visit the island which had so recently raised the standard of rebellion against her government, and for the next the city which had first in the empire responded to the cry of treason raised in Paris, on the overthrow of the throne of Louis Philippe. Nor has the result failed to correspond, even more happily than could have been hoped, to the gallant undertaking. If it be true, as is commonly reported, that our gracious sovereign said, "She went to Ireland to _make_ friends, but to the Land of Cakes to _find_ them," she must by this time have been convinced that the generous design has, in both islands, proved successful beyond what her most enthusiastic friends could have dared to hope. Who could have recognised, in the multitudes which thronged to witness her passage through Cork, Dublin, and Belfast, and the universal acclamations with which she was everywhere received by all classes of her subjects, the chief cities of an island long torn by civil dissension, and which had only a year before broken out into actual rebellion against her government? Who could have recognised in the youthful sovereign visiting the public buildings of Dublin, like a private peeress, without any of the state of a Sovereign, and chiefly interested with her royal consort in the institutions devoted to beneficence, the Head of a Government whom _The Nation_ had so long represented as callous to all the sufferings of the people? And during the magnificent spectacle of the royal progress through Glasgow, where five hundred thousand persons were assembled from that great city, and the neighbouring counties, to see their Queen--and she passed for three miles through stately structures, loaded with loyalty, under an almost continued archway of flags, amidst incessant and deafening cheers--who could have believed he was in a city in which democratic revolt had actually broken out only eighteen months before, and the walls had all been placarded, on the day when London was menaced, with treasonable proclamations, calling on the people to rise in their thousands and tens of thousands against the throne? And how blessed the contrast to the condition of Scotland when her _last Queen_ had been in that neighbourhood, and the towers of Glasgow cathedral looked down on Morton issuing from the then diminutive borough, to assail, in the immediate vicinity at Langside, the royal army headed by Mary, and drive her to exile, captivity, and death.[34]

We are not foolish enough to expect impossibilities from the Queen's visit,--how splendid and gratifying soever its circumstances may have been. We know well how many and deep-rooted are the social evils which in both islands afflict society, and we are not so simple as to imagine that they will be removed by the sight of the Sovereign, as the innocent peasants believe that all physical diseases will be cured by the royal touch. We are well aware that the impression of even the most splendid pageants is often only transitory, and that sad realities sometimes return with accumulated force after they are over, from the contrast they present to imaginative vision. Still a step, and that, too, a most important one, has been taken in the right direction. If great, and, in some respects, lasting good has been done--if evils remain, as remain they ever will, in the present complicated condition of society, and the contending interests which agitate its bosom--one evil, and that the _greatest of all_, is lessened, and that is an estrangement between the People and their Sovereign. Crimes may return; but the recurrence of the greatest of all, because it is the parent of all others--high treason--is for a time, to any extent at least, rendered impossible. The most sacred and important of all bonds, that which unites the sovereign and her subjects, has been materially strengthened. The most noble of all feelings, the disinterested affection of a people to their Queen, has been called into generous and heart-stirring action. The "unbought loyalty of men, the cheap defence of nations," is _not_ at an end. And if the effect of the Royal Visit were only that, in the greatest cities of her dominions, our gracious sovereign, in an age unusually devoted to material influences, has succeeded, by the sweetness and grace of her manners, in causing the hearts of some hundred thousands of her subjects to throb with loyal devotion, and, for a time at least, supplanted the selfish by the generous emotions--the effect is not lost to the cause of order and the moral elevation of her people.

Dies Boreales.

No. IV.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

SCENE--_The Pavilion_.

TIME--_One_ P.M.

BULLER--SEWARD--TALBOYS--NORTH.

TALBOYS.