THE DESPOTISM OF THE AGE OF BRONZE. 9 



'» Tlie boast of story ? where the hot-brain'd youtli 



«' Who the tiara at his pleasure tore, 



"From kings of all the then discovered globe, 



" And cried, forsooth, because his arm was hanijier'd, 



"And had not room enough to do its work? 



" Alas ! how slim, dishonourably slim, 



" And cramm'd into a space we blush to name ! 



"Proud royalty ! how alter'd in thy looks! 



«' IIow blank the features, and how wan thy hue ! 



" Sou of the morning, ^;\ hither art thou gone ? 



" Where hast thou hid thy many-spangled head, 



" And the majestic menace of thine eyes, 



<• Felt from afar ?" 



When splendid talent sufTers itself to be deprived of that noble eleva- 

 tion, of which it isreasonably proud— robbed of the erectness and giantry 

 of its manhood, which is its noblest attribute, and best concomitant ; it 

 is high time the nation to which it belongs, should se^s/jecif the purity 

 of its motives, and the bent of its calamitous, if not pestiferous inclina- 

 tions. In the last reign we had some independent, many good and 

 literate men. The belles lettres are said to have flourished exceedingly. 

 The mild and unostentatious philosophy of Bentham ; the sublime fer- 

 vour of Reginald Heber : the simplicity of Crabbe ; the lofty, but 

 satanised spirit of Bvron ; the wonderful powers of Scott ; the attic 

 mind of Mackintosh ;' the patriotic purity of Can-ington ; all these, with 

 a brilliant exception or two, should seem to have been confounded by a 

 discustino- servility. It appears to us, as if the resplendent genius 

 of °man were laid prostrate at the foot of that shrine where sat the 

 Tyrant Gentleman of the age. which he manifestly disgraced, who 

 practised the duplicity and corruption of courts, without their amenity 

 of manners, and entailed upon his people the awful responsibility of 

 wars, that he might bask for a short hour beneath the sunshine of 



national glory. 



The highest praise the impartial historian can award him amounts 

 to nothin^g; nav, less than nothing. He supported the stage-trick 

 of royalty with more than usual sagacity, if not intellectual powers ; 

 but it i6 surely painful to contemplate any character more odious and 

 despicable than that of a First Magistrate having become a bloated liber- 

 tine, who, under the frown of a civil-list female, or a pluralist priest, 

 sign's the warrant for the execution of a malefactor, or the mandate that 

 is'to murder industrious citizens— lays waste a populated town or village 

 — to create in the bosoms of mothers all the agonies of despair; ia the 

 minds and appreliensions of orphans all the horrors of indescribable de- 

 solation ! < • • ir 



True courage, manlv fortitude, is ever found displaying itself on, as 

 well as round about, the throne. It has been said that " heroism" itself 

 possesses a splendour that in great measure apologises for its want of 

 moderation— or, in other words, its manifold excesses. But what ex- 

 cuse shall be urged for him who, from the giddy summits of ideal se- 

 curity, sanctions an order for the massacre of the inhabitants of bcio, 

 or impels a Castlereagh to applv the knife to his jugular vein ? 



It is well for the English nation that a " change has come o er tlie 

 shadow of its dream." William the Fourth will live and die in the 

 licarts of his people. Was " Reform" necessary ? O. 



