Il n’est jamais permis de deteriorer une ame humaine pour
l’avantage des autres, ni de faire un scelerat pour le
service des honnetes gens.—ROUSSEAU.
[“It is not permitted us to degrade one single soul for the
sake of conferring advantage on others, nor to make a rogue
for the good of the honest.”]
As the reader approaches the termination of this narrative, and looks back upon the many scenes he has passed, perhaps, in the mimic representation of human life, he may find no unfaithful resemblance to the true.
As, amongst the crowd of characters jostled against each other in their course, some drop off at the first, the second, or the third stage, and leave a few only continuing to the last, while Fate chooses her agents and survivors among those whom the bystander, perchance, least noticed as the objects of her selection; and they who, haply, seemed to him, at first, among the most conspicuous as characters, sink, some abruptly, some gradually, into actors of the least importance in events; as the reader notes the same passion, in different strata, producing the most opposite qualities, and gathers from that notice some estimate of the vast perplexity in the code of morals, deemed by the shallow so plain a science; when he finds that a similar and single feeling will produce both the virtue we love and the vice we detest, the magnanimity we admire and the meanness we despise; as the feeble hands of the author force into contrast ignorance and wisdom, the affectation of philosophy and its true essence, coarseness and refinement, the lowest vulgarity of sentiment with an exaltation of feeling approaching to morbidity, the reality of virtue with the counterfeit, the glory of the Divinity with the hideousness of the Idol, sorrow and eager joy, marriage and death, tears and their young successors, smiles; as all, blent together, these varieties of life form a single yet many-coloured web, leaving us to doubt whether, in fortune the bright hue or the dark, in character the base material or the rich, predominate,—the workman of the web could almost reconcile himself to his glaring and great deficiency in art by the fond persuasion that he has, at least in his choice of tint and texture, caught something of the likeness of Nature: but he knows, to the abasement of his vanity, that these enumerated particulars of resemblance to life are common to all, even to the most unskilful of his brethren; and it is not the mere act of copying a true original, but the rare circumstance of force and accuracy in the copy, which can alone constitute a just pretension to merit, or flatter the artist with the hope of a moderate success.
The news of Lord Ulswater’s untimely death soon spread around the neighbourhood, and was conveyed to Mordaunt by the very gentleman whom that nobleman had charged with his hostile message. Algernon repaired at once to W——, to gather from Wolfe some less exaggerated account of the affray than that which the many tongues of Rumour had brought to him.
It was no difficult matter to see the precise share of blame to be attached to Wolfe; and, notwithstanding the biased account of Glumford and the strong spirit of party then existing in the country, no rational man could for a moment term the event of a sudden fray a premeditated murder, or the violence of the aggrieved the black offence of a wilful criminal. Wolfe, therefore, soon obtained a release from the confinement to which he had been at first committed; and with a temper still more exasperated by the evident disposition of his auditors to have treated him, had it been possible, with the utmost rigour, he returned to companions well calculated by their converse and bent of mind to inflame the fester of his moral constitution.
It happens generally that men very vehement in any particular opinion choose their friends, not for a general similarity of character, but in proportion to their mutual congeniality of sentiment upon that particular opinion; it happens, also, that those most audibly violent, if we may so speak, upon any opinion, moral or political, are rarely the wisest or the purest of their party. Those with whom Wolfe was intimate were men who shared none of the nobler characteristics of the republican; still less did they participate in or even comprehend the enlightened and benevolent views for which the wise and great men of that sect—a sect to which all philanthropy is, perhaps too fondly, inclined to lean—have been so conspicuously eminent. On the contrary, Wolfe’s comrades, without education and consequently without principle, had been driven to disaffection by desperate fortunes and ruined reputations acting upon minds polluted by the ignorance and hardened among the dross of the populace. But the worst can by constant intercourse corrupt the best; and the barriers of good and evil, often confused in Wolfe’s mind by the blindness of his passions, seemed, as his intercourse with these lawless and ruffian associates thickened, to be at last utterly broken down and swept away.
Unhappily too—soon after Wolfe’s return to London—the popular irritation showed itself in mobs, perhaps rather to be termed disorderly than seditious. The ministers, however, thought otherwise; the military were summoned, and much injury, resulting, it is to be hoped, from accident, not design, ensued to many of the persons assembled. Some were severely wounded by the swords of the soldiers; others maimed and trampled upon by the horses, which shared the agitation or irritability of their riders; and a few, among whom were two women and three children, lost their lives. Wolfe had been one of the crowd; and the scene, melancholy as it really was, and appearing to his temper unredeemed and inexcusable on the part of the soldiers, left on his mind a deep and burning impression of revenge. Justice (as they termed it) was demanded by strong bodies of the people upon the soldiers; but the administration, deeming it politic rather to awe than to conciliate, so far from censuring the military, approved their exertions.
From that time Wolfe appears to have resolved upon the execution of a design which he had long imperfectly and confusedly meditated.
This was no less a crime (and to him did conscientiously seem no less a virtue) than to seize a favourable opportunity for assassinating the most prominent member of the administration, and the one who, above all the rest, was the most odious to the disaffected. It must be urged, in extenuation of the atrocity of this design, that a man perpetually brooding over one scheme, which to him has become the very sustenance of existence, and which scheme, perpetually frustrated, grows desperate by disappointment, acquires a heat of morbid and oblique enthusiasm, which may be not unreasonably termed insanity; and that, at the very time Wolfe reconciled it to his conscience to commit the murder of his fellow creature, he would have moved out of his path for a worm. Assassination, indeed, seemed to him justice; and a felon’s execution the glory of martyrdom. And yet, O Fanatic, thou didst anathematize the Duellist as the Man of blood: what is the Assassin?
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