1631
39.357.075
17,182,936
1832
43.7!J6,255
17,344,670
1833
46,337,210
18.459,000
—yarl. Paper, 1631, No. 145 ; an.1 Finan-e Accounts, 1834.
iiffiiial value, which indicatci the qnantily man-
ufactured, had risen, between 1814 and 1832,
from £17,()00,000 to £46,000,000; the declared
value, whicli indicatc-s the ])riee received foi
it, had sunk from £20,000,000 to £18,450,000
It is not .sin prising that this extraordinary dim-
inution in the declared value of cotton gooda
exported took place at a time when so great an
increase in tlie i)roduction was going forward,
for such was the reduction in the cost of pro-
duction, by the application and improvement of
machinery, and contraction of the currency, that
the price of cotton-yarn. No. 100, which in 1786
was 38s., had sunk in 1832 to 2s. lid. ; and a
piece of calico, which in 1814 cost £1 4s. 7d.,
was selling in 1833 for 6s. 2d. ! Whoever will
consider these figures with attention, will have
no difficulty in discovering the princijjal causes
at once of the strength and weak- i uamcs'.s
ness of the British emj)ire during History of
and subsequent to ♦he War, and of J^o't"" M""""
the vast social and political changes 357'"7''arL '
which so soon after occurred in Papers, 1831,
it.' No. 145
The vast impulse given at this period to in-
dustry was not confined to the cotton
manufacture ; though it, as the great- progress
est, was the most conspicuous, and in other
has attracted most attention. In wool- tranches
en goods, cutlery, hardware, and iron, facture"'
the progress was nearly as rapid ; the
last, in particular, was in a manner a new cre-
ation in Great Britain since the peace. The
total quantity of pig-iron wrought in Great Brit-
ain, in 1814, was 350,000 tons ; in 1835 it had
risen to 1,000,000 tons.* Generally speaking,
however, it was in the useful arts only that this
extraordinary growth was perceptible ; in the
more delicate and ornamental, and those which
depended on the fine arts for their design and
beauty, we were still greatly inferior to our
Continental neighbors. Remoteness of situa-
tion, distance from the models of taste in the
remains of ancient genius, was the cause of
this inferiority. The necessity of studying
them, the value of schools of design to diffuse
and perpetuate a knowledge of their beauty and
of the principles of art, was unknown. A quar-
ter pf a century had to elapse before the nation
became sensible of its inferiority in these re-
spects, and endeavored, by the general estab-
lishment of elementary schools for the study of
the fine arts, to emancipate itself from the ne-
cessity of recurring to foreign artists for de-
signs in all the ornamental branches of manu
facture. Since that period its progress in the
fine manufactures, and the designs requisite for
them, has been great and rapid ; but at the
Great Exhibition of 1851 it was apparent that
even then an equality with foreign taste had not
yet been attained.
If the triumphs of British art and industry
have been great during this memorable period,
Iron made in Great Britain.
1796 124,000
1802 170,000
1806 250,000
1814 350,000
1823 442,000
1625 581,.S67
1828 702,584
Years.
Tons.
18.30 653,000
ia35 1,000,000
1836 1,200,000
1840 1,500,000
1847 1,999,000
1648 2.093,736
Porter's Progress of the Nation, 2G7, 269, 3d edition
Chap. V.]
HISTORY OF EUROPE.
13V
those of its genius and thoi-ght have been not
^ less remarl able, and still more last-
Brilliant eras ing. This is generally the case, aft-
in iiterature er a great and decisive national
which gener- gtruffsle : the energy and talent de-
ally succeed -^'""b - ,.-..• •
those of great veloped during Its continuance by
public dan- the urgency of the public dangers,
gers. jg directed, on their termination, to
pacific objects. Literature then assumes its
noblest character, and is directed to its most
elevated objects ; for general have superseded
mdividual desires, and the selfish passions have,
by the pressure of common danger, been for a
time extinguished by the generous. This ap-
peared — and from the same cause — both in
Greece and Rome, and in modern Europe :
the age of Pericles and Euripides immediately
succeeded that of Themistocles ; -the genius of
Cicero and Virgil illuminated the era which had
witnessed the contests of Cajsar and Pompey.
The era of Michael Angelo, Ariosto, and Tasso
threw a radiance over the expiring strife of the
Crusades ; that of Bossuet, Moliere, and Racine
over the declining glories of the Grand Mo-
narque ; that of Shakspeare, Bacon, and Milton
soon followed the fierce passions of the Refor-
mation. The period during which this trans-
cendant union exists is generally as short-lived
as it is brilliant ; and the reason, being founded
in the very causes which produced it, is of last-
ing influence. The vehement contests which
awaken and draw forth the latent powers of the
human soul are necessarily of no very long
duration : one party or another is ere long van-
quished in the strife ; and alike to the conquer-
ors and the conquered succeeds a period of con-
strained repose. It is at the commencement of
that period, when the sway of the generous pas-
sions, awakened by former common danger, is
still felt, and their direction only is changed,
that genius appears in its brightest colors, and
works destined for immortal endurance are pro-
duced. The lengthened duration either of the
prosperity consequent on success, or the humil-
.ation resulting from adverse fortune, does not
extinguish genius, but misdirects it ; in the first
case, by directing elTort to selfish objects — in
the last, by depressing it through the extinction
of hope.
Sir Walter Scott is universally considered
1 as the greatest writer of imagina-
Literary char- tion of this century ; and his repu-
atterofSir tation has been so wide-spread
Walter Scott. ^^^^ lasting, that it may reasonably
be anticipated that it will not materially decline
in Succeeding times. Like most other great
men, the direction of his genius was, in a great
degree, determined by the circumst.inces in
which he arose ; but its character was cxclu-
aively his own. He rose to manhood during the
heart-stirring conflict witli tiie I'rencii Revolu-
tion ; and his mind, naturally ardent, was early
inflamed by the patriotic and warlike feelings
which that contest naturally i)ro(iwce(l. A vol-
unteer himself in the yeomanry ranks, his ani-
mated strains induced many to follow his ex-
ample. Tlie influence of tliose circumstances
is very consjiicuous in his writings, and many
of the finest passages in his descriptions of
Flodden and Bannockburn were suggested by
the mimic warfare on Portobello Sands, near
Edinburgh, where his corps exercised. This in
some degree directed the application, but t did
not stamp the character of his genius. That
was entirely his own. Close observation of
nature, whether animated or inanimate, was
his great characteristic ; the brilliancy of fancy,
the force of imagination, were directed to cloth-
ing with sparkling colors her varied ci cations.
It is hard to say whether his genius was most
conspicuous in describing the beauties of na-
ture or delineating the passions of the heart ;
he was at once pictorial and dramatic. To this
he owes his great success — hence his world-
wide reputation. He was first known as a
poet ; but, charming as his poetic conceptions
were, they were ere long eclipsed by the wide-
spread fame of his prose romances. The nov-
els of the author of Wavcrky caused the poems
of \^'alter Scott to be for a time forgotten. But
time has re-established them in their celebrity ;
and great as is still the fame of the Scotch nov-
els, it is rivaled by the heart-stirring verses of
Marmion, the enduring charm of the Lady of the
Lake.
Sir Walter Scott commenced his career un-
der very peculiar circumstances, sin- g
gularly favorable for the portraiture peculiar
of character at difierent times and character
under diflerent aspects. Passing of his writ
much of his childhood on the banks ' " "
of the Tweed, his early fancy was kindled by the
tales of the Border chivalry ; educated in Edin-
burgh, he dreamed, in maturer years, in the
grassy vale of St. Leonard's, of the knights of
Ariosto and the siege of Jerusalem. But the
charms of poetry, the creations of romance, did
not detach his mind from the observation of
nature. Mounted on a hardy Highland pony,
he wandered over the mountains of Scotland,
observing its scenery, inhaling its beauties,
studying the character of its inhabitants. On
the mountain's brow, by the glassy lake, he en-
graved the features of the land on his recollec-
tion ; by the cottage fireside he stored his mind
with the feelings and anecdotes of the peasant-
ry ; amid the castle ruins he realized, in fancy,
the days of chivalry. The poetic temperament
of his mind threw over the pictures of memo-
ry the radiance of imagination, \\itIiout taking
away the fidelity of the recollection. Thence
the general admiration with which his works
were received. The romantic found in them
the realization of their imaginative dreams ;
the antiquarian, a reminiscence of the olden
times ; the practical, a picture of the cliaraclers
they had seen around them, and with which
they had been familiar from their infancy.
Lord Jeflrey said, in one of the early reviews
of his writings, that Scott had opened an un-
workable vein, and that no human aliility could
make the manners of the olden time |)oi)u]ar —
a strange observation in a country in which the
creations of Ariosto, the tenderness of Tasso,
charmed every successive generation of men,
and the error of which subseciucnt experience
has abundantly demonstrated.
With these great and varied i)owers Scott
might have been a most dangerf>us g
writer, if, like Voltaire, lie had di- Their ele-
rected them fo sajiping the fouiida- vaieil moral
tions of religion, or to the delinea- 'â– '""â– "^'K-''"-
tion of the degrading or licentious in character.
But the elevated strain of his mind prcscivcd
us
11I8T011V OF EUROPE.
:cha/. v.
Iiiin from siicli oontamination. It \\as on the
no'ole, whet tier in liif^li or low lifo, that his atFoc-
tions wort) lixrd ; tlio ordinary was dehncatcd
only as a sct-ofFto its lustre. Thence his en-
during fame — thence his passport to immortal-
ity. Nothing over i)ermaneiitly lloated down
the stream of time hut what was huoyant from
its oleTating tendency. The degrading, the li-
centious, the fetid, is for a time popular, and
then forgotten. Alike in delineating the man-
ners of feudal times, or the feelings of the cot-
tage, the dignity of man was ever uppermost in
his mind : he was the poet of cliivalry, but, not
less than the bard of nature, he never forgot
that
" The rank is but the guinea stamp,
Tlie mail's tlie gowii for a' that."
No man ever threw a more charming radi-
ance over the traditions of ancient times, but
none ever delineated in a nobler spirit the vir-
tues of the present ; and his discriminating eye
discovered them equally under the thatch of the
cottage as in the halls of the castle. It has
been truly said that the influence of his writings
neutralized, to a certain extent, the effect of the
Reform Bill ; but it is not less true that none
ever contributed more powerfully to that puri-
fication, witliout which all others are nugatory
— the reform of the human heart ; and perhaps
he is the only author of numerous works of fic-
tion of whom it may wnth truth be said that he
never wrote a line which, on death-bed, he could
wish recalled.
It is to his earlier writings, however, that this
JO unqualified praise applies. Warer-
The defects lej/, Guy Mannering, The Antiquary,
of his later The Bride of Lammermoor, Old Mor-
wntings. talily, are the perfection of romantic
pictures of later times ; The Abbot, Quentin Dur-
ward, and Icanhoc, of the days of chivalry. But
these rich veins were at length exhausted, and
the prolific fancy of the author diverged into
other scenes and periods in which he had not
such authentic materials to work with, and
where his graphic hand was no longer to the
same degree perceptible. Some of his later ro-
mances are so inferior to the first, that it is
difficult to believe they have been composed by
the same master spirit. It is on the earlier
novels, which delineate the manners, feelings,
and scenes of Scotland, and a few, such as Ivan-
hoe, KenUworlh, The Talisman, and Quentin Dur-
ward, which paint those of other lands, that his
fame as a writer of romance will permanently
rest ; another proof among the many which the
annals of literature afford, that it is on a faith-
ful delineation of nature that the permanent
reputation of works even of imagination must
be founded, and that the Ideal can be securely
rested on no other basis but the Ileal.*
Lord Byron is the author who, next to Sir
Walter Scott, has obtained the most
Lord Byron, wide-spread reputation in the world ;
and yet his character and the style
* Sir Walter Scott had a prodigious fund of stories and
anecdotes at command, both m regard to the olden and the
present time, which he told with infinite zest and humor;
and his conversation was always interspersed with those
strokes of delicate satire or sterling good sense which
abound in his writings. But he had not the real conver-
sational talent ; there was little interchange of ideas when
be talked : he took it nearly all to himself, and talked of
persons or old anecdotes, or charstters, net things.
of his writings diffe. so widely from those of ^H
the AVizard of the North, that it is difficult tc ^H
understand how, at the same time, they attain-
ed almost e(iual celebrity. He was not antl-
qiuirian in ideas, nor graphic in the delineation
of character. He neitlier studied the days of
chivalry in old romances, nor huivian nature in
the seclusion of the cottage. He was in an
especial manner the poet of high life. He has
often delineated the Corsairs of the Archipelago
and the maids of Greece ; but it was to please
the high-born dames of London that all his pic-
tures were drawn. Born of a noble English
family, but of a Scotch mother, and nursed amid
the mountains of Aberdeenshire, his ardent tem-
perament was first evinced in childhood by a
precocious passion for a Scottish beauty, his
poetic disposition awakened by the rnist-clad
rocks of Lochnagar. Thrown into the fashion-
able world in London at a very early age, he
soon felt that satiety which genius never fails
to experience from the excess of pleasure, and
that dissatisfaction which real greatness gen-
erally feels amid the vanities of fashion. Wea-
ried with the inanities of gay, the dissipation ol
profligate life, he sought change abroad : the
rocks of Cintra, the beauties of Cadiz, the isles
of Greece, successively rose to his view ; and
the brilliant moving panorama, seen through the
eyes of genius, produced the poem of Childe
Harold, which has rendered his name immortal.
It is on this splendid production, more than
on his metrical romances, that his 12.
reputation will ultimately rest. The His merits
success of the latter was at first pro- ^"'' defects,
digious, but it arose from a peculiarity which is
fatal to durable fame. They were so much ad-
mired, not because they were founded on nature,
but because they differed from it. Addressed
to the exclusive circles of London society, they
fell upon the high-born votaries of fashion with
the charm of novelty ; they breathed the lan-
guage of vehement passion, which was as new
to them as the voice of nature, speaking through
the dreamy soul of Rousseau, had been to the
corrupted circles of Parisian society half a cen-
tury before. As such they excited an immense
sensation, and even more than the thoughtful
and yet pictured pages of Childe Harold, raised
the author to the very pinnacle of celebrity.
But no reputation can be lasting which is not
founded on the images and feelings of nature •
singularity, affectation, caprice, if w-ielding the
powers of genius, may acquire ^ temporary
celebrity, but it will be but temporary. With
the circumstances which nursed, the fashion
which exalted it, it falls to the ground. It was
ere long discovered that his Corsairs and Sul-
tanas were all cast in one mould, and bore one ; j
image and superscription ; their passions were |l
violent and powerfully drawn, but they were all rl
the same, and bore no resemblance to the di-
versified emotions of real hfe. They were like
the trees of Vivarez or Perelle, so well known jl
to the lovers of engravings — rich, luxuriant, and .ll
charming at first sight, but characterized by de-
cided mannerism very different from the vera-
cious outlines of Claude or Salvator.
In one class of readers the dramas of Byron
have won for him a very high reputation ; in
another, Don Juan is hi ? passport to popularity.
But though characterizec by ardent genius, and
Chap. V.]
HISTORY OF EUROPE.
13d
J3 abounding with noble lines, his dra-
ins dramas niatic pieces want the elements of
and Don enduring fame. They are too wild
Juan. ^Qj. ordinary life, too extravagant for
iheatrical representation. They do not come
•lome to our hearts ; there is nothing in them
which can be enjoyed by the cottage fireside.
Applause from the humbler classes would never
begin with their performance. They are ad-
dressed to, and calculated for, minds as high-
strung and poetical as his own ; and how many
are they amid the multitude of ordinary readers I
Don Jua7i is different : there is much in it which
unhappily too powerfully rouses every breast.
But although works of fiction, in which genius
is mingled with licentiousness, often, at first, ac-
quire a very great celebrity, at least with one
sex, they labor under an insurmountable objec-
tion — they can not be the subject of conver-
sation with the other. Works of fiction are
chiefly interesting to both sexes, because they
portray the feelings by which they are attracted
to each other. When they are of such a de-
scription that neither can communicate those
feelings to the other, the great object of com-
position is lost, and lasting celebrity to the au-
thor is impossible.*
The same objection applies in an equal degree
14. to the earUer writings of TvIoore ; but
Moore as a there is a much wider acquaintance
lyric poet, y/ith the human heart in his later
poems, and a much more graphic, and therefore
touching, delineation of human feeUng than in
the Corsairs and Medoras of Byron. In some
respects he is the greatest lyric poet in the En-
glish language. Without the discursive imagin-
ation of Akenside, without the burning thoughts
of Gray, without the ardent soul of Campbell, he
has written more that comes home to the hearts
of the young and impassioned of both sexes
than any other author — if a few lines in Burns
are excepted — in the whole literature of Great
Britain. His Irish and national melodies will
be immortal ; and they will be so for this rea-
son, that they express the feelings which spring
up in the breast of every successive generation
at the most important and imaginative period
of hfe. They have the delicacy of refined life
without its fastidiousness — the warmth of nat-
ural feeling without its rudeness. He is in an
especial manner the poet of love ; but it is the
love of chivalry and romance rather than license,
and embellished with all those images and asso-
ciations with which f,-!iius in successive ages
has heightened the warmth of natural feeling.
Vast numbers of his lines are committed to
memory by the young of l)otii sexes ; their
charm is to many associated with the magic of
* It was impossible tliat a man of Lord Byron's genius
could (onvorse for any length of time without some sparks
falling ; and hi.s celebrity and rank rendered him a great
favor]le,especially of women of high rank. IJut he want-
ed nature in his ideas, and simplicity in his manner. Ho
never forgot himself, and was constantly aflecting the roue
and man of fashion, rather than the poet or literary man.
Don Juan was the picture of him in real life, much more
than any of his heroes or Corsairs. Tlie author met him
only once at Venice in 181b, when he kindly entertained
him in his hotel, and rowed him through the Grand (;anal
«nd the Lngunas to Lido in his gondola. The conversa-
tion was charming, chiefly from the historic anc'cdotes
connecird with the places which Lord liyron mentioneil ;
but the iinprcssion left on the whole was rather lowering
than cie-atiug lo that previcusly formed by the study of
b:N writii gs.
song — the smiles of beam )■; and -heir enduring
celebrity may be anticipated by the wide-spread
interest which they have already awakened.
The mind of Moore was essentially Oriental
the images and ideas of the East j^
sparkle in all his verses. His feel- His Oriental
ings were chivalrous — his soul turn, and sa-
penetrated with the refinements of *i"cai verses-
Europe ; but his thoughts were of the cloudless
skies, and resistless genii, and bewitching maids
of the land of the sun. So strong was this pro-
pensity, that it led to the composition of a poem
of which the scene and characters were entirely
laid in the East ; and Lalla Rookh remains an
enduring monument of the charm produced by
the clothing of Oriental images and adventure
with the genius and refinement of the Western
World. But though charming to persons of gen-
eral reading and varied information, it \v'i]l never
be so popular with ordinary readers as those
lyric poems which express the feelings of the
universal heart. The greatest defect of his
compositions is a vein of conceit, which, sven in
mature years, he was never able entirely to
overcome. His images are always sparkling,
often brilliant ; but they are as frequently far-
fetched, and bespeak rather the conceit of fancy
than the genuine eflusions of passion, ilis ear-
lier poems, published under the name of Little,
though often beautiful, are so licentious that
they are never now heard of but from tLe lips
of the professed votaries of pleasure. Great
part, in point vi bulk, of his poems is occupied
with subjects if a satirical cast or epheriieral
character : they will share the usual fate of such
productions ; they will expire with the manners
or characters which are satirized. There are
many Imes in the satires of Juvenal and Horace
which are in every mouth, but the u-lwlc â– poems
are read by none except school-boys, into whom
they are driven by the force of the rod. Many
persons are amused, some instructed, by the
picture of the follies of their own age, but com-
paratively few by the absurdities of those which
have preceded them ; and although few are in-
different to the scandal of their contemporaries,
fewer still take an interest in that of l heir great-
grandmothers.*
If the wide spread of his fame, and deep im
pression produced i)y his poems, is to ..
be taken as the test of excellence, Campbell-
Campbell is the greatest lyric poet his vast
of England, and second to few in the «"<1 "oble
general scale of poetic merit that *''''"'"^-
Great Britain has ever produced. With the ex-
ce|)tion of Shaks|)eare and Gray, there is no au-
thor of whom so many ideas and lines have
been riveted in the general mind of his country,
or become, as it were, household words of the
English in every land. It is not so much Iho
* The author met Moore only onco, but that was under
very intercstiiij! ciniimstances. Alter an evening iiarty
at Paris, in the Hue Mont lilanc, in I8i!l, when ho charmed
every one by his singing of his own melodies, espeiially
tho e.\quisito one on genius outslrip))iiig wealth in the
race for ladies' favor, tliey walked home togellier, and fall-
ing into very interesting conversation, walked rouinl the
Place VendOme, in constant talk for tlireo hours. They
se|iarated at three in the morning, with regret, at the foot
of the Pillar of Auslerlit/,, and never met again. Ilis con-
versation was very sparkling ; and, as it abounded in the
rapid interchange of poetical ideas, t impressed the au
thor more than the more discursive uiiU amusing ynao-
dotes of Sir Walter Scott.
(to
HISTOU V OF i:r liOPE.
[LiiAi-. V
tflidty ami hrovity ot exprrssion, th(Hi,<;h tliry
novrr wore surpassoil, wliirh have won for liiiti
this vast cold r'»y ; it is llie rlovatiou ami
moral •jrandour of his tlioujilits which have so