Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348. Various
and 1797, Lord Malmesbury was engaged in the most important negotiation of his life. The French Directory, probably for the purpose of exciting dissensions between Austria and England, made a secret proposal of peace, which led to the mission of an ambassador. But while Napoleon was pursuing his conquests in Italy, France had no actual desire of pacification. The purpose was evidently to gain time; and Lord Malmesbury, on discovering the true nature of the transaction, demanded his passports, and returned to England. It cannot be imputed to Pitt, that he was ever negligent of those who had done the state service. Lord Malmesbury had already obtained the Order of the Bath, and a barony; he was now raised to an earldom, with a viscounty, by the title of Lord Fitzharris; and it was in Pitt’s contemplation to send him once more to Paris, when his ministry was suddenly brought to a conclusion, and Mr Addington was appointed premier; by whom the peace, or rather the unlucky truce of Amiens, was made. His political life was now at an end. He had been for some time suffering under deafness, which increased so much, that he regarded it as incapacitating him from public employment; yet he still loved society, and, dividing his time between London and his seat near Henley, he passed a pleasant and cheerful time, mingling with the chief characters of the rising political generation. For the last ten years of his life, his thoughts seem to have been much directed to religious subjects; and he kept what he entitled a “self-controlling journal,” in which he registered his thoughts. We have probably reason to regret that the scrupulous delicacy of his biographer has hitherto withheld it from the public. The few sentences transcribed from it, give a strong conception of the piety and clear-headedness of the noble author. They were written within a fortnight of his death. They describe him as “having completed his 74th year, and having thus lived longer than any of his ancestors for the last two centuries; that his existence had been without any great misfortune, and without any acute disease, and that he owed all praise and thanksgiving to the Supreme Being; that the next step would probably be his last; that he was now too much exhausted, both in mind and body, to be of service to his country, but was fortunate in leaving his children well and happy; and that he now waited the Divine will with becoming resignation.”
He died without disease, and through mere exhaustion of nature, in his 75th year, in 1820, and was buried in Salisbury cathedral.
Lord Malmesbury’s reputation ranked very high in the diplomatic circles of the Continent. He was a clear-headed, well-informed, and active minister—sagacious enough to see his way through difficulties which would have perplexed inferior men, and bold enough to act according to his own opinion, where feebler minds would have ruined all, by waiting for the tardy wisdom of others. Talleyrand, a first-rate judge on such subjects, said of him, in his epigrammatic style—“I think that Lord Malmesbury was the ablest minister whom you had in his time. It was hopeless to get before him; all that could be done was to follow him close. If one let him have the last word, he contrived always to have the best of the argument.” He seems to have been a thorough Englishman in the highest sense of the word, and to have had the loftiest opinion of the power and principles of England; not from any fantastic prejudice, but from the experience of a long life, with the best opportunities of forming an unprejudiced judgment. We have already mentioned his declared opinion after living long abroad, and as a great diplomatic functionary, living under the most advantageous circumstances of foreign society; that any Englishman who, after a residence abroad, prefers the Continent to his own country, is beyond all question a man of gross and contemptible mind, and incapable of taking a “common-sense view” of the subject. We have his constant testimony, that “as there is nothing equal to England on the face of the earth, so no exertion on the part of her people can be too great in defence of her freedom and honour.” In conformity with this matured conviction, and reigning principle of his heart, he chose as the motto for his coronet—
“Ubique patriam reminisci.”2
Mr Harris’s first visit to the Continent was in 1767, when he set out on a tour to Holland, Prussia, and Poland, remaining for some time at Berlin, where he had the advantage of seeing the cleverest, though the most eccentric, of all sovereigns, Frederick the Great. A number of traits of character are given, of various degrees of force, but all expressive. The king’s chief amusement was playing on the flute, on which he performed very well for an amateur, though, compared with the professional performers, he necessarily made rather an unkingly figure. Frederick, who was afraid of nothing else, was so much afraid of failure in his flute playing, that whenever he had a new piece of music, he shut himself up in his closet some hours beforehand, to practise it; and although no one was permitted to be present at those concerts except a very few select friends, he was always observed to be remarkably nervous at the commencement. He had a fine collection of flutes, all made by the same man, and for which he paid a hundred ducats a-piece. He had an attendant whose sole office was to keep those flutes in order. During the war, when his finances were reduced to so low an ebb that he paid bad coin to every one, he took care that his flute-maker should be paid in good coin, lest, for bad money, he should give him bad flutes. Royal architecture is not always fortunate. It is observed that Louis XIV. built his famous Versailles in a swampy hollow, when he had the noble terrace of St Germain before him. Frederick built his Sans-Souci in a marshy meadow, while he had a fine hill within sight. Unhappily we have but little to boast of in the location of our modern palaces. The site of Buckingham Palace seems to have been chosen with no other object than to discover which was the superior annoyance, the smoke of steam-engines or the vapours of a swamp; and this was chosen with one of the finest possible situations within half a mile of it, in the centre of Hyde Park. Her Majesty’s palace at Brighton has been located with exactly the same curious perversion of taste; the hills to the north of that very handsome town offering one of the noblest situations that can be conceived—a fine land view, and an unobstructed sweep of the ocean: but the evil genius of building prevailed, and the palace is fixed in a gloomy bottom, from which it can be overlooked by every body, and from which nothing can be seen. Frederick, though sometimes superb in his expenses, was habitually penurious. He seems to have thought that war was the only thing on which it was worth his while to spend money. The salaries of his gentlemen and attendants were all on the narrowest scale. Lord Malmesbury observes that even the Prince of Dessau’s marriage, at which he was present, exhibited this penury. All the apartments, except those immediately used for supper or cards, were lighted with a single candle. The supper had no dessert; the wines were bad; their quantity stinted. On his asking, after dancing, for some wine and water, he was answered—“the wine is all gone, but you may have some tea;” and this was a peculiarly distinguished party. He saw the king himself directing the servants in lighting up the ball-room, and telling them where to put the candles. Whilst this operation was performing, the queen, the royal family, and the company, were waiting literally in the dark; as the king did not begin this ceremony till supper was finished, and no one dared to give orders to have it done. Frederick, when a young man, was intended for the husband of a British princess. This was a match of his mother’s construction. But the old king, who hated George II., threatened to cut off his son’s head for his presumption. The English king called the Prussian “my brother the sergeant;” the Prussian retaliated by calling the English king “my brother the dancing-master.” This hostility amounted to a mixture of the profane and the ludicrous. When the old king was seized with his mortal illness, he asked whether “it was necessary to forgive all his enemies.” On receiving the proper answer, he said to the Queen—“Dorothy, write to your brother that I forgive him all the evil that he has done me; but wait till I’m dead first.” A good repartee of Sir Andrew Mitchell on the battle of Quebec, is mentioned. “Is it true,” said the king to him, “that, after all, you have taken Quebec?” “Yes, sire,” said Sir Andrew Mitchell the envoy, “by the help of Providence.” “What!” said the king, “is Providence among your allies?” “Yes,” said the envoy, “and the only one among then who demands no subsidy.”
Sir Charles Williams wrote to one of the queen’s marshals a letter introducing Lord Essex, ludicrously finishing with—“You may be sure that it is not he who had his head cut off in the time of Elizabeth.” The marshal, not perfectly understanding this, but depending on his information, introduced him in this style to her majesty—“Madam, my Lord Essex; and I assure your majesty it is not he who was decapitated by Queen Elizabeth.”
Frederick, sending a minister
“Every where to remember his country.”