Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848. Various
ancient and now redintegrated allies. But if you abolish the British uniform, and allow the French to supersede it, what else can you expect? We want to be loyal if you will only tell us how – if not, we see nothing for it but the illumination and the ball.
Mr Cobden is pleased to be especially bitter upon the "horrid trade" of soldiering. He characterises it as barbarous and damnable, and would be rid of it at all risks. Now, setting aside the idiocy of his remarks, there is a monstrous deal of ingratitude in this language of the free-trade apostle. Had it not been for our arms, where would our market have been? If we had succumbed to France instead of humbling her at Waterloo – and we presume that Mr Cobden would have preferred the former alternative, since he thinks that the Duke should now be preaching forgiveness for the past – where would have been our trade, and where our exportations of calico? Hindostan is an acquired country, and British arms have opened up the markets of China; and are these commercial evils? Really it is throwing away language to attempt enforcing a point so clear as this. Commerce owes every thing to the exertions and protection of that military power which these purblind theorists complain of; and were our armaments abolished to-morrow, we should look round us in vain for a customer.
And pray what does the arrogant upstart mean by characterising the honourable profession of a soldier as a damnable trade? Does he intend to disgorge his contempt and contumely upon the graves of those who fell on the field of battle fighting nobly for their king and country? Are we now to be told that the names which we have written in our annals, and embalmed in our memories, are detestable and odious as those of homicides and of robbers? If it has come to this, and if public scorn is not roused to overwhelm the man who can conceive and utter such ignoble sentiments, then indeed we may believe that demoralisation has partially done its work, and that the mean ethics of Manchester are henceforward to influence the nation. Not damnable nor horrid, unless justice and freedom be so, is the profession of those who have drawn the sword in the service of Britain, and died for the maintenance of order, liberty, and religion. Other trades there are far more liable to such epithets, but with these, thank heaven! we have but little practical acquaintance. The trade of the greedy taskmaster, who rears infants for his mills, and grinds them to their task until the sinews shrivel up and the limbs are warped into early decrepitude – of him who will not recognise the existence of an imperishable soul within the tender framework of the children whom he makes the victims of his avarice – of the advocate of long hours, because thereby he may keep his human machinery under the complete control of exhaustion, – the trade of that man, we say, though it may be tolerated in a Christian land, is but one shade less horrid, and not a whit less damnable, than that of the slave-trader, who is now chuckling over his living cargoes on the African coast – cargoes for which he is indebted to the enlightened legislation of Mr Cobden and his liberal confederates! Are these the men who are to revile and traduce our army? Faugh! The leprosy of mammon is upon them, and our nature recoils from their breath.
In conclusion, let us express a fervent hope that we have heard the last of this dull and deplorable drivelling. It is to the credit of the Whigs, that, far as they have been led astray by adopting the newfangled political doctrines, rather, as we believe, for the sake of maintaining power than from any belief in their efficacy, they have declined all participation with the Manchester crew in their recent attempt to lower the position and diminish the influence of Great Britain. The chiefs of that party know full well how much we have at stake, and what a responsibility would rest upon their heads, were they to reject the advice of the great captain who has already saved his country, and who again comes forward at the close of life to warn that country of its danger. Mr Cobden likewise is furious with the public press, and charges a large portion of it for refusing to be dragged through the Manchester mire, with having abrogated their duties on this question. We apprehend that the editors of the journals to which he alludes are perfectly competent to the discharge of their duties, without submitting to the dictatorial interference of this very much over-rated and extremely shallow personage. As for the Duke of Wellington, he is not likely to suffer in health or reputation from any want of respect or veneration on the part of Mr Cobden. His fame is too bright to be polluted by such dirty missiles; and the veriest vagabond who broke the windows of Apsley House would shrink from repeating the insults which fell from the lips of the calico-printer.
In short, our impression in rising from the perusal of this notable speech, is deep surprise that such a man should ever have been made the leader of a popular party, or the representative of a fixed opinion. That it should have been so, is a reflection that cannot be flattering to many of his followers, and least of all to those who threw aside their opinions to undertake the advocacy of his. But the spell is now broken, the mask removed, and we behold the egotist, the railer, and the fanatic. Let us sum up in a few words, for the benefit of posterity, the great free-trader's opinion of the Duke of Wellington, and then take leave of the most discreditable subject which for a long time we have been called upon to notice.
Mr Cobden does not share in the general veneration for the Duke. Mr Cobden thinks that the Duke ought to preach forgiveness for Waterloo. Mr Cobden thinks that every man, possessing the ordinary feelings of humanity, must condemn the Duke for having stated that, in his opinion, the defences of the country are insufficient. Mr Cobden thinks it a lamentable spectacle that the Duke should have written such a letter. Mr Cobden hints that the Duke is a dotard, because he has ventured to express, on a military subject, an opinion contrary to that of Cobden. And Cobden further maintains, that there is not a more affectionate nor domesticated race on the face of the earth than the French.
After this we need add nothing more. Our opinion of Mr Cobden could be thoroughly expressed in a much shorter sentence.
ROMANISM IN ROME
CATECHISM IN THE MINERVA
"Occidit miseros crambe repetita magistros." – Juvenal.
"Et qui parlant beaucoup ne disent jamais rien." – Boileau.
Visitors to Rome are ofttimes puzzled and surprised at hearing the very unusual affix, della Minerva, applied to one of the Christian churches of that city; more especially when they find it also familiarly known to the common people, not so well read as their priests in the calendar of the saints, as La Sta. Minerva; but the apparent misnomer originates in an ellipsis of the full title, which runs thus, Sta. Maria sopra Minerva– the church in question having supplanted a temple formerly dedicated to Pallas, upon the ruins of which it has been reared. But though the goddess of wisdom still retains a nominal interest in the edifice, certainly, to judge from the catechetical exercises of which we are about to give a specimen, her reign is past, and there remains but the nominis umbra in lieu of it. Exorcised the church, she has been fain to accept such a humiliating asylum in the library adjoining, as inquisitorial Dominicans would be likely to afford a heathen goddess, whose proceedings they must narrowly watch. There she has the mortification of hearing, from year to year, some new relay of "gray-hair'd synods damning books unread," and, club-fashion, blackballing all her friends in order to make way for their own; just as old Pope Gregory is said to have burned a whole library of Pagan literature, that the Christian Fathers and Roman Catholic Saints might have more elbow-room; and also that, in the absence of rivals, their authority might not be disputed. "Fertur beatus Gregorius bibliothecam combussisse gentilum, quo divinæ paginæ gratior esset locus et major auctoritas et diligentia studiosior."1
At Easter-tide, those who have any curiosity on the subject may hear Bellarmine's Catechism, as it is squealed, bawled, or otherwise intonated by the young children of the different Riones, and commented on and explained for their edification by the pedagogue priest of the district. He is generally surrounded at such times by a bevy of from forty to fifty scholars, gamins or gamines as the case may be; and to work they set with such earnestness of vociferation that all Bedlam and Parnassus, raving and reciting together, could not well surpass the discord: the shrill diapason, peeling through nave and aisle, shakes the floating Baldaquino, and makes the trembling walls bellow again, furnishing an apt and lively illustration of the "convulsaque marmora clamant" of the poet.
Though we had often frequented the churches at this season, and had scores of times heard questions both asked and answered therein, yet, generally intent on the marbles or monuments