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settled on it in thick darkness. From early youth he
had been subject to fits of that strange melancholy
"which rejoiceth exceedingly and is glad when it car.
find the grave." While still a writer at Madras, he had
twice attempted to destroy himself. Business and pros
perity had produced a salutary effect on his spirits. In
India, while he was occupied by great affairs, in Eng-
land, while wealth and rank had still the charm of nov-
elty, he had borne up against his constitutional misery.
But he had now nothing to do and nothing to wish for.
His active spirit in an inactive situation drooped and
withered like a plant in an uncongenial air. The ma-
lignity with which his enemies had pursued him, the
indignity with which he had been treated by the com-
mittee, the censure, lenient as it was, which the House
of Commons had pronounced, the knowledge that he
was regarded by a large portion of his countrymen as
a cruel and perfidious tyrant, all concurred to irritate
and depress him. In the mean time his tempera
tried by acute physical suffering. During his long
dence in tropical climates, he had contracted s
painful distempers. In order to obtain ease be calle
the help of opium; and he was gradually
this treacherous ally. To the last, however, his g
Dosionally flashed through the gloom s

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he raised the siege of Patna, and annihilated the Dutch army and navy at the mouth of the Ganges, it is not improbable that the resistance of the Colonists would have been put down, and that the inevitable separation would have been deferred for a few years. But it was too late. His strong mind was fast sinking under many kinds of suffering. On the twenty-second of November, 1774, he died by his own hand. He had just completed his forty-ninth year.

In the awful close of so much prosperity and glory, the vulgar saw only a confirmation of all their prejudices; and some men of real piety and genius so far forgot the maxims both of religion and of philosophy as confidently to ascribe the mournful event to the just vengeance of God, and to the horrors of an evil conscience. It is with very different feelings that we contemplate the spectacle of a great mind ruined by the weariness of satiety, by the pangs of wounded honour, by fatal diseases, and more fatal remedies.

Clive committed great faults; and we have not attempted to disguise them. But his faults, when weighed against his merits, and viewed in connection with his temptations, do not appear to us to deprive him of his right to an honourable place in the estimation of posterity.

From his first visit to India dates the renown of the English arms in the East. Till he appeared, his countrymen were despised as mere pedlars, while the French were revered as a people formed for victory and comnand. His courage and capacity dissolved the charm. With the defence of Arcot commences that long series of Oriental triumph which closes with the fall of Ghizni. Nor must we forget that he was only twenty-five years old when he approved himself ripe for military com

mand. This is a rare if not a singular distinction. It is true that Alexander, Condé, and Charles the Twelfth, won great battles at a still earlier age; but those princes were surrounded by veteran generals of distinguished skill, to whose suggestions must be attributed the victories of the Granicus, of Rocroi, and of Narva. Clive, an inexperienced youth, had yet more experi. ence than any of those who served under him. He had to form himself, to form his officers, and to form his army. The only man, as far as we recollect, who at an equally early age ever gave equal proof of talents for war, was Napoleon Bonaparte.

From Clive's second visit to India dates the political ascendency of the English in that country. His dexterity and resolution realised, in the course of a few months, more than all the gorgeous visions which had floated before the imagination of Dupleix. Such an extent of cultivated territory, such an amount of revenue, such a multitude of subjects, was never added to the dominion of Rome by the most successful proconsul. Nor were such wealthy spoils ever borne under arches of triumph, down the Sacred Way, and through the crowded Forum, to the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The fame of those who subdued Antiochus and Tigranes grows dim when compared with the splendour of the exploits which the young English adventurer achieved at the head of an army not equal in numbers to one half of a Roman legion.

From Clive's third visit to India dates the purity of ar Eastern empire. When he landed in Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a place to which Engishren were sent only to get rich, by any means, ir he shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and unsparing war on that gigantic system of oppres

sion, extortion, and corruption. In that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame, and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice which forbids us to conceal or extenuate the faults of his earlier days cour pels us to admit that those faults were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the Company and of its servants has been taken away, if in India the yoke of foreign masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter than that of any native dynasty, if to that gang f public robbers, which formerly spread terror through the whole plain of Bengal, has succeeded a body of functionaries not more highly distinguished by ability and diligence than by integrity, disinterestedness, and public spirit, if we now see such men as Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, after leading victorious armies, after making and deposing kings, return, proud of their honourable poverty, from a land which once held out to every greedy factor the hope of boundless wealth, the praise is in no small measure due to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of conquerors. But it is found in a better list, in the list of those who have done and suffered much for the happiness of mankind. To the warrior, history will assign a place in the same rank with Lucullus and Trajan. Nor will she deny to the reformer a share of that veneration with which France cherishes the memory of Turgot, and with which the latest generations of Hindoos will contem plate the statue of Lord William Bentinck.

VON RANKE1

(Edinburgh Review, October, 1840.)

Ir is hardly necessary for us to say that this is an excellent book excellently translated. The original work of Professor Ranke is known and esteemed wherever German literature is studied, and has been found interesting even in a most inaccurate and dishonest French version. It is, indeed, the work of a mind fitted both for minute researches and for large speculations. It is written also in an admirable spirit, equally remote from levity and bigotry, serious and earnest, yet tolerant and impartial. It is, therefore, with the greatest pleasure that we now see this book take its place among the English classics. Of the translation we need only say that it is such as might be expected from the skill, the taste, and the scrupulous integrity of the accomplished lady who, as an interpreter between the mind of Germany and the mind of Britain, has already deserved so well of both countries.

The subject of this book has always appeared to us singularly interesting. How it was that Protestantism did so much, yet did no more, how it was that the

1 The Ecclesiastical and Political History of the Popes of Rome, during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. By LEOPOLD RANKE, Professor In the University of Berlin: Translated from the German, by Sarah AUSTIN. 8 vols. 8vo. London: 1840.

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