Page images
PDF
EPUB

women, became known to him; though, with regard to the latter, while he bowed to the supereminent genius, and revelled in the brilliant eloquence of a Staël, he personally preferred the unpretending sense, the genuine humour, the amiable and beneficent practical virtues of an Edgeworth.

Indeed every thing masculine, even though it were her sense, he held to be a derogation from the female character.

[ocr errors]

"We would forgive you," he has been known to say to the daughter of Necker, "being so much wiser than ourselves; but with such wisdom, we cannot forgive your petticoats."

As it was, however, the study of men, not women, which now engaged Tremaine's attention, it signified little under what appearance the feminine character was clothed.

It is true, his politeness in female society, never abandoned him; but his heart no longer expanded to female worth; and by degrees the avidity with which politics and war were followed all over the Continent, communicated itself to him, and his correspondence with his political friends at home was pursued with an energy not inconsiderable.

This threw him, on his return to England, into party, and, as he was in parliament, into opposition; for, besides that his connexions were most of them on that side, the minister, whether it was that

[ocr errors]

he knew not Tremaine's value, or despaired of fixing him, or that he trusted too much to his own popularity, did not také sufficient pains to acquire his support.

Tremaine, indeed, forbade all possibility of even making the attempt; for he was at pains to have it believed that he stood by himself, owned fealty to no one, and would take it as an affront to be solicited into party. It so happened, however, that he thought this independence could only be shewn by invariably voting, and frequently speaking with his vote, against every measure, good, bad, or indifferent, which the government brought forward.

[ocr errors]

The minister, a man of spirit and talents,* attacked him for this with a ridicule he could not forgive; and this drove him into the arms of opposition, as many a man had been driven before him, contrary to his original intention. In short, he fancied himself a patriot, and that he was associated with patriots; and with a profession, in which he believed himself sincere, that he would never be found in the ranks of an undiscriminating opposition, and that measures, not men, were always the object to which he looked, he yet ran breast-high into every measure, not only of opposition, but of faction itself. !

[ocr errors]

* From the dates I presume Mr. Percival is the minister alluded to.-ED.

The opposition, indeed, held out terms to him which could not be refused; for they not only practised upon his proneness to think things wrong, but upon his equally strong proneness to believe that he was born to set them right.

He caught at this, and in a little time was admitted into their councils. But though his station, his attainments, and his integrity, entitled him to a place in those councils, in other respects he soon found himself less qualified than he had supposed. Some of the leaders played double; others went farther than he intended to go with them; and some entered the opposition merely to enhance their price with the government.

As he was sincere in his wish to act up to his principle, he complied with the demands of his party to give them his voice as well as his vote; and for this in many things he was excellently qualified. For he had a very noble air, and a manner not either less interesting or less commanding from its being tinged with melancholy. His voice was both sweet and sonorous, his language polished, and his taste classical. Perhaps it was too much so; for he sometimes failed from the mere circumstance of being too anxious not to do so.

He was in fact too easily disgusted with himself, as well as with others; and was frequently not a little piqued at seeing a coarse, and even a vulgar

orator succeed in arresting the attention of the house, in consequence of the total indifference he felt as to whether he succeeded or not. It was under these circumstances, in connexion with others of a similar nature, which need not be particularized, that Tremaine had long meditated a retreat from public life. We will not, however, say that this measure would have been so soon adopted as it was, but for some peculiar mortifications and disappointments, both to his feelings and his principles, which his ill fate had destined him still to undergo.

[ocr errors]

It has been said indeed, by some, that about this time he suffered new disappointments in another "affair of the heart;" by others that he was the disappointer, and that he had used a young lady of rank-what is called ill. Of this, perhaps, more hereafter. As to the fact, it is certain, that though his heart was a sufferer, and a cruel one, it was in a manner and with a party far different from what is usually understood when an affair of the heart is mentioned; for the disappointment was with one of his own sex, and politics and friendship, not love, sustained the wound.

In a word, one of the leaders of his party, a man not only of the highest rank and attainments, but of a nature seemingly, and perhaps really, so amiable and sincere, that to enjoy his confidence, and be distinguished by his friendship, was the pride

and honour of Tremaine's life, this man failed him.

It was in one of those negociations for an arrangement of the government, which the highest power in the state fondly thought might reconcile all jarring interests, and heal the wounds of his distracted country, that a blow was given to Tremaine's best feelings, which finally sickened and disgusted him with public life. What is worse, it turned even his private friendship into bitterness, and made him renounce his confidence in man, as before he had repounced it in woman.

1

And yet, so great had been his love for this man, that he almost shed tears on discovering (as he did within a week of professions which went to the bottom of Tremaine's heart) that he had misrepresented him to the Regent, undervalued his weight and services, and coolly appropriated to an upstart flatterer that which he had actually promised to the independent Tremaine,

Let not the reader misunderstand. These were not sordid feelings. Tremaine's grief was not occasioned by the loss of a prospect of office, the emoluments of which were as nothing to him. But his heart loved the man who had deceived him. Had he been the victim of a common-place character (as indeed he was of the intrigue of a subal, tern time-serving parasite), he could have laughed

« PreviousContinue »