tachment and manly enduring love,--had it not survived remorse, was it
not accustomed to desertion?

Malmesbury gives us the beginning of the marriage story;--how the prince
reeled into chapel to be married; how he hiccupped out his vows of
fidelity--you know how he kept them; how he pursued the woman whom he had
married; to what a state he brought her; with what blows he struck her;
with what malignity he pursued her; what his treatment of his daughter
was; and what his own life. _He_ the first gentleman of Europe! There is
no stronger satire on the proud English society of that day, than that
they admired George.

No, thank God, we can tell of better gentlemen; and whilst our eyes turn
away, shocked, from this monstrous image of pride, vanity, weakness, they
may see in that England over which the last George pretended to reign,
some who merit indeed the title of gentlemen, some who make our hearts
beat when we hear their names, and whose memory we fondly salute when that
of yonder imperial manikin is tumbled into oblivion. I will take men of my
own profession of letters. I will take Walter Scott, who loved the king,
and who was his sword and buckler, and championed him like that brave
Highlander in his own story, who fights round his craven chief. What a
good gentleman! What a friendly soul, what a generous hand, what an
amiable life was that of the noble Sir Walter! I will take another man of
letters, whose life I admire even more,--an English worthy, doing his duty
for fifty noble years of labour, day by day storing up learning, day by
day working for scant wages, most charitable out of his small means,
bravely faithful to the calling which he had chosen, refusing to turn from
his path for popular praise or princes' favour;--I mean _Robert Southey_.
We have left his old political landmarks miles and miles behind; we
protest against his dogmatism; nay, we begin to forget it and his
politics: but I hope his life will not be forgotten, for it is sublime in
its simplicity, its energy, its honour, its affection. In the combat
between Time and Thalaba, I suspect the former destroyer has conquered.
Kehama's curse frightens very few readers now; but Southey's private
letters are worth piles of epics, and are sure to last among us, as long
as kind hearts like to sympathize with goodness and purity, and love and
upright life. "If your feelings are like mine," he writes to his wife, "I
will not go to Lisbon without you, or I w