'Tis a "great moral lesson" they are reading. Don Juan saw that microcosm on stilts, Yclept the Great World; for it is the least, Although the highest: but as swords have hilts By which their power of mischief is increased, When man in battle or in quarrel tilts, Thus the low world, north, south. or west, or cast, Must still obey the high - which is their handle, Their moon, their sun, their gas, their farthing candle. Allied Sovereigns to gratify the French people, but the sacrifice they would make would be impolitic, as it would deprive them of the opportunity of giving the French nation a great moral lesson." WELLINGTON, Paris, 1815.] 2 ["Enfin partout la bonne société régle tout."—VOLTAIRE.] The empress went to the Crimea, accompanied by the Emperor Joseph, in the year-1 forget which. [The Prince de Ligné, who accompanied Catherine in her progress through her southern provinces, in 1787, gives the following particulars:-"We have been traversing, during several days, an immense tract of deserts formerly inhabited by hostile Tartar hordes, but recovered by the arms of her Majesty, and at present ornamented from stage to stage with magnificent tents, where we are supplied with breakfast, collation, dinner, supper, and lodging; and our encampments, decorated with LI. The animals aforesaid occupied Their station: there were valets, secretaries, In other vehicles; but at his side Sat little Leila, who survived the parries He made 'gainst Cossacque sabres, in the wide Slaughter of Ismail. Though my wild Muse varies Her note, she don't forget the infant girl Whom he preserved, a pure and living pearl. LII. Poor little thing! She was as fair as docile, As rare in living beings as a fossile Man, 'midst thy mouldy mammoths, "grand Cuvier !" Ill fitted was her ignorance to jostle With this o'erwhelming world, where all must err: Don Juan loved her, and she loved him, as He was not yet quite old enough to prove Call'd brotherly affection, could not move His bosom, for he never had a sister: Ah! if he had, how much he would have miss'd her! LIV. And still less was it sensual; for besides That he was not an ancient debauchee, His youth was not the chastest that might be, LV. Just now there was no peril of temptation; Through his means and the church's might be paved. But one thing's odd, which here must be inserted, The little Turk refused to be converted. LVI. "T was strange enough she should retain the impression Through such a scene of change, and dread, and slaughter; But though three bishops told her the transgression, She show'd a great dislike to holy water; She also had no passion for confession; Perhaps she had nothing to confess :—no matter Whate'er the cause, the church made little of it— She still held out that Mahomet was a prophet. all the pomp of Asiatic splendour, present a noble military spectacle. The empress has left, in each town, presents to the amount of 100,000 roubles. Each day of rest is marked by the gift of some diamonds, by balls, by fireworks, and by illuminations extending for leagues in every direction. During the last two months I have been daily employed in throwing money out of our carriage windows, and have thus distributed the value of some millions of livres."— Lettres et Pensées.] LVII. In fact, the only Christian she could bear Was Juan; whom she seem'd to have selected A guardian green in years, a ward connected They journey'd on through Poland and through Warsaw, Famous for mines of salt and yokes of iron : Through Courland also, which that famous farce saw Which gave her dukes the graceless name of "Biron."1 'Tis the same landscape which the modern Mars saw, Who march'd to Moscow, led by Fame, the siren ! To lose by one month's frost some twenty years Of conquest, and his guard of grenadiers. LIX. Let this not seem an anti-climax : — " Oh! [clay. My guard! my old guard!"2 exclaim'd that god of Think of the Thunderer's falling down below Carotid-artery-cutting Castlereagh ! Alas! that glory should be chill'd by snow! But should we wish to warm us on our way From Poland they came on through Prussia Proper, About philosophy, pursued his jaunt To Germany, whose somewhat tardy millions LXI. And thence through Berlin, Dresden, and the like, A grey wall, a green ruin, rusty pike, Make my soul pass the equinoctial line Between the present and past worlds, and hover Upon their airy confine, half-seas-over. LXII. But Juan posted on through Manheim, Bonn, Which Drachenfels 5 frowns over like a spectre In the Empress Anne's time, Biren, her favourite, assumed the name and arms of the "Birons" of France; which families are yet extant with that of England. There are still the daughters of Courland of that name; one of them I remember seeing in England in the blessed year of the Allies (1814) the Duchess of S.-to whom the English Duchess of Somerset presented me as a namesake.-[" Ernest John Biren, become so famous by his great advancements, and his not less extraordinary reverses of fortune, was born in Courland, of a family of mean extraction. His grandfather had been head groom to James, the third Duke of Courland, and obtained from his master the present of a small estate in land. . . . In 1714, he made his appearance at St. Petersburg. and solicited the place of page to the Princess Charlotte, wife of the Tzarovitch Alexey; but being contemptuously rejected as a person of mean extraction, retired to Mittau, where he chanced to ingratiate himself with Count Bestucheff, master of the household to Anne, widow of Frederic William duke of Courland, who resided at Mittau. Being of a handsome figure and polite address, he soon gained the good-will of the duchess, and became her secretary and Of the good feudal times for ever gone, On which I have not time just now to lecture. From thence he was drawn onwards to Cologne, A city which presents to the inspector Eleven thousand maidenheads of bone, The greatest number flesh hath ever known. 6 LXIII. From thence to Holland's Hague and Helvoetsluys, The poor man's sparkling substitute for riches. Here he embark'd, and with a flowing sail At length they rose, like a white wall along I've no great cause to love that spot of earth, chief favourite. On her being declared sovereign of Russia, Anne called Biren to Petersburg, and the secretary soon became Duke of Courland, and first minister or rather despot of Russia. On the death of Anne, which happened in 1740, Biren, being declared regent, continued daily increasing his vexations and cruelties, till he was arrested, on the 18th of December, only twenty days after he had been appointed to the regency; and at the revolution that ensued he was exiled to the frozen shores of the Oby."-TOOKE.] 2 [Napoleon's exclamation at the Elysée Bourbon, June the 23d, 1815.] 3 ["Hope for a moment bade the world farewell, And freedom shriek'd when Kosciusko fell."-CAMPB.] [Immanuel Kant, the celebrated founder of a new philo sophical sect, was born at Königsberg. He died in 1804.] ["The castled crag of Drachenfels Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine," &c. — 6 St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins were still extant in 1816, and may be so yet, as much as ever. LXVIII. Would she be proud, or boast herself the free, Who is but first of slaves? The nations are In prison, but the gaoler, what is he? No less a victim to the bolt and bar. Is the poor privilege to turn the key Upon the captive, freedom? He's as far Don Juan now saw Albion's earliest beauties, Juan, though careless, young, and magnifique, And rich in rubles, diamonds, cash, and credit, Who did not limit much his bills per week, [On the tomb of the prince lies a whole-length brass figure of him, his armour with a hood of mail, and a scull cap enriched with a coronet, which had been once studded with jewels, but only the collets now remain.] 2 [Becket was assassinated in the cathedral, in 1171.] 3 [The French inscription on the Black Prince's monument is thus translated in the History of Kent: "Whoso thou be that passest by Such as thou art, sometime was I. LXXIV. The effect on Juan was of course sublime : He breathed a thousand Cressys, as he saw That casque, which never stoop'd except to Time. Even the bold Churchman's tomb excited awe, Who died in the then great attempt to climb O'er kings, who now at least must talk of law And being told it was "God's house," she said The cruel Nazarenes, who had laid low The true Believers; - and her infant brow Was bent with grief that Mahomet should resign A mosque so noble, flung like pearls to swine. LXXVI. On! on through meadows, managed like a garden, Countries of greater heat, but lesser suction, LXXVII. And when I think upon a pot of beer— But I won't weep!—and so drive on, postilions! As the smart boys spurr'd fast in their career, Juan admired these highways of free millions; A country in all senses the most dear To foreigner or native, save some silly ones, Who"kick against the pricks" just at this juncture, And for their pains get only a fresh puncture. LXXVIII. What a delightful thing's a turnpike road! LXXIX. Alas! how deeply painful is all payment! Take lives, take wives, take aught except men's purses. As Machiavel shows those in purple raiment, I little thought on the hour of death To your instructor. O'er the high hill, which looks with pride or scorn The sun went down, the smoke rose up, as from As one who, though he were not of the race, A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping, Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping On tiptoe through their sea-coal canopy; A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown On a fool's head-and there is London Town! But Juan saw not this: each wreath of smoke Are bow'd, and put the sun out like a taper, He paused-and so will I; as doth a crew 1 ["Under his proud survey the city lies, And like a mist beneath a hill doth rise, Whose state and wealth, the business and the crowd, And is, to him who rightly things esteems, Where, with like haste, tho' several ways they run, Are each the other's ruin and increase."- DENHAM.] 2 [India; America.] 3 [The Quaker lady, whose benevolent exertions have effected so great a change in the condition of the female prisoners in Newgate.] [This worthy alderman died in 1829.] ["O for a blast of that dread horn, On Koncesvalles died."-Marmion.] To mend the people's an absurdity, A jargon, a mere philanthropic din, LXXXVI. Teach them the decencies of good threescore ; Cure them of tours, hussar and highland dresses; Too dull even for the dullest of excesses, A fool whose bells have ceased to ring at all. Tell them, though it may be perhaps too late Don Juan. CANTO THE ELEVENTH. WHEN Bishop Berkeley said "there was no matter,"6 What a sublime discovery 't was to make the That all's ideal-all ourselves: I'll stake the But which I doubt extremely-thou sole prism 6 [The celebrated and ingenious Bishop of Cloyne, in his Principles of Human Knowledge," denies, without any ceremony, the existence of every kind of matter whatever; nor does he think this conclusion one that need, in any degree, "Some truths there are," says he, stagger the incredulous. "so near and obvious to the mind, that a man need only Such I take this important one open his eyes to see them. to be, that all the choir of heaven, and furniture of earth, -in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind." This deduction, however singular, was readily made from the theory of our perceptions laid down by Descartes and Mr. Locke, and at that time generally received in the world. According to that theory, we perceive nothing but ideas which are present in the mind, and which have no dependence whatever upon external things; so that we have no evidence of the existence of any thing external to our minds. Berkeley appears to have been altogether in earnest, in maintaining his scepticism concerning the existence of matter; and the more so, as he conceived this system to be highly favourable to the doctrines of religion, since it removed matter from the world, which had aiready been the strong hold of the Atheists. - SIR DAVID BREWSTER.] 224 |