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INVECTIVE AGAINST WARREN HASTINGS. 361

IF

INVECTIVE AGAINST WARREN HASTINGS.
R. B. SHERIDAN.

F, my Lords, a stranger had at this time gone into the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowlah-that prince who with a savage heart had still great lines of character, and who, with all his ferocity in war, had, with a cultivated hand, preserved to his country the wealth which it derived from benignant skies and a prolific soil-if, ignorant of all that had happened in the short interval, and observing the wide and general devastation of fields unclothed and brown; of vegetation burned up and extinguished; of villages depopulated and in ruins; of temples unroofed and perishing; of reservoirs broken down and dry,—this stranger should ask, "what has thus laid waste this beautiful and opulent land; what monstrous madness has ravaged with wide-spread war; what desolating foreign foe; what civil discords; what disputed succession; what religious zeal; what fabled monster has stalked abroad, and, with malice and mortal enmity to man, withered by the grasp of death every growth of nature and humanity, all means of delight, and each original, simple principle of bare existence?" the answer would have been, not one of these causes! No wars have ravaged these lands and depopulated these villages! No desolating foreign foe! No domestic broils! No disputed succession! No religious, super-serviceable zeal! No poisonous monster! No affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged us, cut off the sources of resuscitation! No! This damp of death is the mere effusion of British amity! We sink under the pressure of their support! We writhe under their perfidious gripe! They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo! these are the fruits of their alliance!

What then, my Lords! shall we bear to be told that, under such circumstances, the exasperated feelings of a whole people, thus spurred on to clamor and resistance, were excited by the poor and feeble influence of the Begums? After hearing the description given by an eye-witness of the paroxysm of fever and delirium into which despair threw the natives, when on the banks of the polluted Ganges, panting for breath, they tore more widely

362

THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS.

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 all 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 a part of, his being. That feeling which tells him that man was never made to be the property of man; but that, when in the pride and insolence of power, one human creature dares to tyrannize over another, it is a power usurped, and resistance is a duty. That principle which tells him that resistance to power usurped is not merely a duty which he owes to himself and to his neighbor, but a duty which he owes to his God, in asserting and maintaining the rank which he gave him in his creation-that 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 indicates the independent quality of his race.

THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS.

RITEMIUS of Herbipolis one day,

TRIT

While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray,
Alone with God, as was his pious choice,
Heard from beneath a miserable voice-

A sound that seemed of all sad things to tell,
As of a lost soul crying out of hell.

THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS.

Thereat the abbot rose, the chain whereby
His thoughts went upward broken by that cry,
And, looking from the casement, saw below
A wretched woman, with gray hair aflow,
And withered hands stretched up to him, who cried
For alms as one who might not be denied.

She cried: "For the dear love of Him who gave
His life for ours, my child from bondage save ;—
My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves
In the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit waves
Lap the white walls of Tunis!" "What I can
I give," Tritemius said—" my prayers."
"O man
Of God!" she cried, for grief had made her bold,
"Mock me not so; I ask not prayers, but gold;
Words cannot serve me, alms alone suffice;
Even while I plead, perchance my first-born dies.”

"Woman!" Tritemius answered, "from our door None go unfed; hence are we always poor.

A single soldo is our only store

Thou hast our prayers, what can we give thee more?"

"Give me," she said, "the silver candlesticks
On either side of the great crucifix;

God well may spare them on His errand sped,
Or he can give you golden ones instead."

Then said Tritemius, "Even as thy word,
Woman, so be it; and our gracious Lord,
Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice,
Pardon ine if a human soul I prize,
Above the gifts upon his altar piled!
Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child."

But his hand trembled as the holy alms
He laid within the beggar's palms;

And as she vanished down the linden shade,

He bowed his head and for forgiveness prayed.

363

364

THE DOOM OF MAC GREGOR.

So the day passed; and when the twilight came
He rose to find the chapel all aflame,

And dumb with grateful wonder to behold
Upon the altar, candlesticks of gold!

"M

THE DOOM OF MAC GREGOR.--JAMES HOGG.

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AC GREGOR! Mac Gregor! remember the foeman!
The morn rises proud on the brow of Ben Lomond;
The clans are impatient, and chide this delay;
Arise! let us haste to Glen-Lyon away!
Stern scowled the Mac Gregor, then silent and sullen,
He turned his red eye to the braes of Strath Fillan:
“Go, Malcolm, to sleep; let the clans be dismissed!
The Campbell, this night, for Mac Gregor may rest."
"Mac Gregor! Mac Gregor! our scouts have been flying,
Three days, round the hills of Mac Nab and Glen-Lyon ;
Of riding and running such tidings they bear,

We must meet them at home, else they'll quickly be here."
"The Campbell may come, as his promises bind him,
And haughty Mac Nab, with his giants behind him;
But I'm pledged, this night, to relinquish the fray,
And do what it freezes my vitals to say.

I have sworn, by the cross, by my God, by my all,
An oath which I cannot and dare not recall:
Ere the shadows of midnight fall east from the pile,
To meet with a spirit, this night, in Glen Gyle.
Last eve, in my chamber, all thoughtful and lone,
I was calling to mind a dark deed I had done,
When entered a lady, with visage so wan!
And looks such as never were fastened on man!
I knew her-O brother! I knew her too well!
Of that lady so fair, such a tale I could tell!
Despairing and mad, to futurity blind,
The present to shun, and some respite to find,
I swore, ere the shadow fell east from the pile,
To meet her alone, this night, in Glen Gyle.
She told me, and turned my chilled heart into stone,

THE DOOM OF MAC GREGOR.

That the name and renown of Mac Gregor are gone;
That the pine which for ages has shed its bright halo
Afar on the mountains of Highland Glen Falo,
Should wither and fall, ere the turn of yon moon
Smit through by the canker of hated Colquhoun;
That a feast on Mac Gregor each day should be common,
For years, to the eagles of Lenox and Lomond.
A parting embrace in one moment she gave-
Her breath was a furnace, her bosom the grave!
Then, flitting elusive, she said, with a frown,
The mighty Mac Gregor shall yet be my own."
"Mac Gregor! thy fancies are wild as the wind;
The dreams of the night have disorded thy mind!
Come, gird on thy claymore! march to the field!
Show men, and not spirits, thy buckler and shield!
Thy fantasies frightful shall quickly take wing
When loud with thy bugle Glen-Leyon shall ring!"

Like a glimpse of the moon through the storm of the night,
Mac Gregor's red eye shed one sparkle of light!

It faded-it darkened! He shuddered; he sighed :
"No! not for the universe!" low he replied.
Away went Mac Gregor, but went not alone;
To watch the dread rendezvous, Malcolm is gone.
They oared the broad Lomond, so still and serene,
And deep in its bosom, how awful the scene!
O'er mountains inverted the blue waters curled,
And rocked them on skies of a far nether world.
Not a foot was abroad on forest or hill,

No sound, save the lullaby sung by the rill.

All silent they went, for the time was approaching,
The moon the blue zenith already was touching.
Mute nature was roused in the bounds of the glen,
The wild-deer of Gairtney abandoned his den,
Fled panting away over river and isle,

Nor once turned his eye to the brook of Glen Gyle.
The fox fled in terror. The eagle awoke,
Where high he had dozed on the shelf of the rock;
Astonished, to hide, in the moonbeam he flew
And pierced the far heavens till lost in their blue.

365

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