Of flowers about his feet. The forest-boughs Its prey and screamed; the striped palm-squirrel raced Book VI. TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS. LORD MACAULAY (1800-1859). [Warren Hastings was Governor-General of India from 1774 to 1785. On his return to England he was impeached by the House of Commons and tried by the House of Lords for acts of oppression and injustice. The trial was protracted from 1788 till 1795, when he was acquitted, but was obliged to pay the costs of the suit, which amounted to upwards of £70,000 sterling. The East India Company, however, indemnified him for his loss. Taine, quoting the following narrative, characterizes it as a “passage the solemnity and magnificence of which will give some idea of the grave and opulent adornments which Macaulay throws over his narrative—a sort of potent vegetation, flowers of brilliant purple, like those which are spread over every page of Paradise Lost and Childe Harold" (Hist. of Eng. Lit.).] M. On the thirteenth of February 1788 the sittings of the court commenced. There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at Westminster; but perhaps there never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the present and the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour. All the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilization were now displayed, with every advantage that could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our Constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange characters from right to left. The High Court of Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over the lord of the holy city of Benares [-a'rēs], and over the ladies of the princely house of Oude. The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William Rufus ;* the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings; the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon, and the just absolution of Somers; the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment; the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by heralds under Garter King-at-Arms. The judges, in their vestments of state, attended to give advice on points of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of the Upper House, as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. The junior baron present led the way,-George Eliott, Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his memorable defence of Gibraltar against the fleets and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed by the Duke of Norfolk, earl-marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and by the brothers and the sons of the King. Last of all came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. The gray old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were crowded by such an audience as has rarely excited the fears or emulation of an orator. There were gathered together, from all points of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous realm, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every * Westminster Hall was built by William Rufus. John (Lord) Somers in 1697 was raised to the peerage and became Lord Chancellor; but in 1700 he was removed from the Chancellorship and accused by the Commons of high crimes and misdemeanors, of which, upon trial before his peers, he was acquitted. science and every art. There were seated around the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the House of Brunswick. There the ambassadors of great kings and commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons,* in the pride of her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman Empire † thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres; and when, before a Senate which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many noble matrons. It had induced Parrs to suspend his labors in that dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure of erudition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation; but still precious, massive, and splendid. The sergeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, and bent his knee. The culprit was, indeed, not unworthy of that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country; had made laws and treaties; had sent forth armies; had set up and pulled down princes; and in his high place he had so borne himself that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except virtue. A person, small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated also habitual self-possession and self-respect; a high and intellectual forehead; a brow pensive, but not gloomy; a mouth of inflexible decision; a face pale and worn, but on which a great and well-balanced mind was legibly written ;—such formed the aspect with which the great proconsul presented himself to his judges...... The charges and answers of Hastings were first read. This ceremony occupied two whole days; and was rendered less * A celebrated tragic actress (1755-1831). + Gibbon (1737-1794). Marius, in A.D. 100, the third year of the Emperor Trajan. § Dr. Samuel Parr, celebrated for his classical acquirements and his conversational powers (1747-1825). tedious than it would otherwise have been by the silver voice of Cowper, the clerk of the court, a near relation of the amiable poet. On the third day Burke rose. Four sittings of the court were occupied by his opening speech, which was intended to be a general introduction to all the charges. With an exuberance of thought and a splendor of diction which more than satisfied the highly-raised expectations of the audience, he described the character and institutions of the natives of India, recounted the circumstances in which the Asiatic Empire of Britain had originated, and set forth the Constitution of the Company and of the English Presidencies. Having thus attempted to communicate to his hearers an idea of Eastern society as vivid as that which existed in his own mind, he proceeded to arraign the administration of Hastings as systematically conducted in defiance of morality and public law. The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expressions of unwonted admiration from all, and for a moment seemed to pierce even the resolute heart of the defendant. The ladies in the galleries, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited by the solemnity of the occasion, and perhaps not unwilling to display their taste and sensibility, were in a state of uncontrollable emotion. Handkerchiefs were pulled out; smelling-bottles were handed round; hysterical sobs and screams were heard; and Mrs. Sheridan was carried out in a fit. At length the orator concluded. Raising his voice till the old arches of Irish oak resounded— "Therefore," said he, "hath it with all confidence been ordered by the Commons of Great Britain that I impeach Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanors. I impeach him in the name of the Commons House of Parliament, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of the English Nation, whose ancient honor he has sullied. I impeach him in the name of the People of India, whose rights he has trodden under foot, and whose country he has turned into a desert. Lastly, in the name of human nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the name of every age, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy and oppressor of all !” Peview of Gleig's Memoirs of Hastings in "Edinburgh Review," Oct. 1841. LORD MACAULAY'S STYLE. EDWARD A. FREEMAN (b. 1823). I know at least what my own experience is. It is for others to judge whether I have learned of Macaulay the art of being clear; I at least learned of Macaulay the duty of trying to be clear. And I learned that in order to be clear there were two main rules to be followed. I learned from Macaulay that if I wished to be understood by others, or indeed by myself, I must avoid, not always long sentences-for long sentences may often be perfectly clear-but involved, complicated, parenthetical sentences. I learned that I must avoid sentences crowded with relatives and participles; sentences in which things are not so much directly stated as implied in some dark and puzzling fashion. I learned, also, never to be afraid of using the same word or name over and over again, if by that means anything could be added to clearness or force. Macaulay never goes on, like some writers, talking about "the former" and "the latter," "he, she, it, they," through clause after clause, while his reader has to look back to see which of several persons it is that is so darkly referred to. No doubt a pronoun, like any other word, may often be repeated with advantage, if it is perfectly clear who is meant by the word. And with Macaulay's pronouns it is always perfectly clear who is meant by them. Then as to his choice of words. Here and there I myself might perhaps think that a Romance word might well be changed for a Teutonic word. Certainly no one can charge Macaulay with what is called pedantry or purism, in a Teutonic direction, or in any direction. Still, where I might wish to change one word in Macaulay, I might wish to change ten or a hundred in most other writers. Macaulay never uses a word which, whatever might be its origin, had not really taken root in the language. He has no vulgarisms, no new-fangled or affected expressions. No man was ever so clear from the vice of thrusting in foreign words into an English sentence. In short, Macaulay never allows himself for a moment to be careless, vulgar, or slipshod. Every person and every thing is called by the right name, and no other. And because he did all this, because he wrote such clear and well-chosen English that the printer's reader himself never had to read his sentences twice over, therefore men who cannot write as he could, talk glibly of his "mannerism," and so forth. |