CHAPTER LXXX.
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?
