On the other, how different is the prospect! how easy, how safe and honorable, is the path before you! The English nation declare they are grossly injured by their representatives, and solicit Your Majesty to exert your lawful prerogative and give them an opportunity of recalling a trust which they find has been scandalously abused. You are not to be told that the power of the House of Commons is not original, but delegated to them for the welfare of the people from whom they received it. A question of right arises between the constituent and the representative body. By what authority shall it be decided? Will Your Majesty interfere in a question in which you have properly no immediate concern? It would be a step equally odious and unnecessary. Shall the Lords be called upon to determine the rights and privileges of the Commons? They cannot do it without a flagrant breach of the constitution. Or will you refer it to the judges? They have often told your ancestors that the law of Parliament is above them. What party, then, remains but to leave it to the people to determine for themselves? They alone are injured, and, since there is no superior power to which the cause can be referred, they alone ought to determine. thority equal to an act of the whole legislature, and though, perhaps, not with the same motives, have strictly followed the example of the Long Parliament, which first declared the regal office useless, and soon after, with as little ceremony, dissolved the House of Lords. The same pretended power which robs an English subject of his birthright may rob an English king of his crown. In another view, the resolution of the House. of Commons, apparently not so dangerous to Your Majesty, is still more alarming to your people. Not contented with divesting one man of his right, they have arbitrarily conveyed that right to another. They have set aside a return as illegal without daring to censure those officers who were particularly apprised of Mr. Wilkes's incapacity (not only by the declaration of the House, but expressly by the writ directed to them), and who nevertheless returned him as duly elected. They have rejected the majority of votes, the only criterion by which our laws judge of the sense of the people; they have transferred the right of election from the collective to the representative body; and by these acts, taken separately or together, they have essentially altered the original constitution of the House of Commons. Versed as Your Majesty undoubtedly is in the English history, it cannot easily escape you how much I do not mean to perplex you with a tedi- it is your interest, as well as your duty, to ous argument upon a subject already so dis- prevent one of the three estates from encussed that inspiration could hardly throw a croaching upon the province of the other new light upon it. There are, however, two two or assuming the authority of them all. points of view in which it particularly im- When once they have departed from the ports Your Majesty to consider the late pro- great constitutional line by which all their ceedings of the House of Commons. By proceedings should be directed, who will andepriving a subject of his birthright they swer for their future moderation? or what have attributed to their own vote an au- assurance will they give you that when they have trampled upon their equals they will submit to a superior? Your Majesty may learn hereafter how nearly the slave and the tyrant are allied. Some of your council, more candid than the rest, admit the abandoned profligacy of the present House of Commons, but oppose their dissolution upon an opinion (I confess not very unwarrantable) that their successors would be equally at the disposal of the Treasury. I cannot persuade myself that the nation will have profited so little by experience. But if that opinion were well founded, you might then gratify our wishes at an easy rate, and appease the present clamor against your government without offering any material injury to the favorite cause of corruption. You have still an honorable part to act. The affections of your subjects may still be recovered. But before you subdue their hearts you must gain a noble victory over Discard those little personal reyour own. sentments which have too long directed your public conduct. Pardon this man* the remainder of his punishment; and if resent ment still prevails, make it (what it should have been long since) an act, not of mercy, but of contempt. He will soon fall back into his natural station-a silent senator and hardly supporting the weekly eloquence of a newspaper. The gentle breath of peace would leave him on the surface, neglected and unremoved; it is only the tempest that lifts him from his place. Without consulting your minister, call together your whole council. Let it appear to * Mr. Wilkes, who was then under confinement in the king's bench on a sentence of a fine of a thousand pounds and twenty-two months' imprisonment (from the 18th of June, 1763) for the publication of the North Briton, No. 45, and the Essay on Woman. the public that you can determine and act for yourself. Come forward to your people; lay aside the wretched formalities of a king and speak to your subjects with the spirit of a man and in the language of a gentleman. Tell them you have been fatally deceived: the acknowledgment will be no disgrace, but rather an honor to your understanding. Tell them you are determined to remove every cause of complaint against your government, that you will give your confidence to no man that does not possess the confidence of your subjects, and leave it to themselves to determine by their conduct at a future election whether or not it be in reality the general sense of the nation that their rights have been arbitrarily invaded by the present House of Commons and the constitution betrayed. They will then do justice to their representatives and to themselves. These sentiments, sir, and the style they are conveyed in, may be offensive, perhaps, because they are new to you. Accustomed to the language of courtiers, you measure their affection by the vehemence of their expressions; and when they only praise you indirectly, you admire their sincerity. But this is not a time to trifle with your fortune. They deceive you, sir, who tell you that you have many friends whose affections are founded upon a principle of personal attachment. The first foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are received and may be returned. The fortune which made you a king forbade you to have a friend; it is a law of nature which cannot be violated with impunity. The mistaken prince who looks for friendship will find a favorite, and in that favorite the ruin of his affairs. The people of England are loyal to the house of Hanover not from a vain preference of one family to another, but from a conviction that the establishment of that family was necessary to the support of their civil and religious liberties. This, sir, is a principle of allegiance equally solid and rational, fit for Englishmen to adopt and well worthy of Your Majesty's encouragement. We cannot long be deluded by nominal distinctions. The name of Stuart of itself is only contemptible; armed with the sovereign authority, their principles are formidable. The prince who imitates their conduct should be warned by their example, and while he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown should remember that, as it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another. JUNIUS. SORROW FOR THE DEPARTED. W FROM "DUST."* HEN a man is dying or just dead, it often seems to those interested in the matter that he is taken off prematurely, that he leaves his life incomplete, that his usefulness was not at an end, that he and those who were bound to him would have been the better had he survived. Death seems like a violence, a robbery, a wrong, and all the more wrongful a robbery because we are powerless to resist it or to punish it. The mother who mourns her infant, the lover who looks on the dead face of his mistress, the child who feels a dim horror at the unresponsive coldness of the hand whose every touch was love, the friend who sees the horizon of his * Published by Fords, Howard & Hulbert. own life darken and his pathway narrow at the grave of his friend,-to these it seems that an injury has been inflicted upon them the traces of which no compensation can remove. And yet, as the mind moves forward through the succession of moods and events that is called time, how speedily this wound of loss is healed! Not those who nurse their grief the longest are always the ones who loved most generously and whole-heartedly. Often there is more love of self than love of the departed in those who refuse to be comforted. By and by, as we journey on along the road of mortal existence, meeting at every step fresh scenery and new thoughts and demands for action, and knowing that for us there is no retreating, no pausing evenonly, at most, a profitless glance backward at scenes and occurrences whose sole reality now is in the growth or decay which they have wrought in our own souls,-by and by we begin to discover that the dead have not been left behind; that in such measure as we truly loved them, in that measure are they with us still, walking hand in hand with us, or shining as guides of our forecasting thoughts and strengthening our hearts in dreams and secret musings. Death, which seemed so arbitrary and reckless, is vindicated by our wiser and calmer judgment. The mortal life that seemed cut short is seen to have lasted out its fitting span; more years would have been more evil and less good, more weariness and less use. Suddenness is predicable only of material things; in the processes and passions of the spirit there is at all times just proportion and equable movement. It is outside the domain of accidents and violence. JULIAN HAWTHORNE, The battle of Lucena, between the Moors and the Spaniards, was fought on the 21st of April, 1483. The army of the Moors were almost annihilated, their king, Boabdil el Chico, made prisoner, and their brave old commander, Ali Atar, was killed; his body fell into the river Xenil and was never afterwards found. When Cidi Caleb-the solitary horseman who brought the sad news to Granada-reached the Gate of Justice of the palace of Alhambra and delivered his tidings, the Sultana Morayma uttered her plaintive lament for her brave father Ali Atar and her husband Boabdil. “She shut herself up in her mirador and gazed THE MOORISH SULTANA'S LAMENT. | Granada! the soft note of the lute no longer floats through thy moonlit streets; the sere nade is no more heard beneath thy balconies; the lively castanet is silent upon thy hills; the graceful dance of the Zambra is no more seen beneath thy bowers! Beautiful Granada! why is the Alhambra so lorn and The desolate? orange and myrtle still breathe their perfumes into its silken chambers; the nightingale still sings within its groves; its marble halls are still refreshed with the plash of fountains and the gush of limpid rills. Alas! alas! the countenance of the king no longer shines within those halls. The light of the Alhambra is set for ever! with streaming eyes upon the vega. Every object recalled the causes of her affliction. The river Xenil, which ran shining amidst groves and gardens, was the same on whose banks had perished her father, Ali Atar; before her lay the road to Loxa, by which Boabdil had departed in martial state, surrounded by the chivalry of Granada." The royal minstrels were called to comfort her, but so dejected were they that they joined in her sad strain. LAMENT OF SULTANA MORAYMA. FROM THE ARABIC. Alas! my father! the river runs smiling before me that covers thy mangled remains; who will gather them to an honored tomb, in the land of the unbeliever? And thou, O Boabdil, light of my eyes! joy of my heart! life of my life! woe the day, and woe the hour, that I saw thee depart from these walls. The road by which thou hast departed is solitary; never will it be gladdened by thy return! the mountain thou hast traversed lies like a cloud in the distance, and all beyond is darkness. THE ROYAL MINSTRELS' SONG. Beautiful Granada! how is thy glory faded! The flower of thy chivalry lies low in the land of the stranger; no longer does the Vivarrambla echo to the tramp of steed and sound of trumpet; no longer is it crowded with thy youthful nobles, gloriously arrayed for the tilt and tourney. Beautiful MUSA BEN ABEL GAZAN. This patriot of the Moors distinguished himself in defense of Granada during its siege by the Spaniards under Ferdinand. When the city capitulated in 1492, after a siege the same day. An historian says that he was never afterof eleven years, he alone refused to submit, and left Granada ward heard of, but another authority states that he met outside of the city three Spanish knights with whom he fought desperately until he was killed. When Musa heard that Ferdinand demanded the com plete surrender of the city with all the arms in possession of the citizens, "his eye flashed fire" and he replied in the following language: MUSA'S REPLY TO FERDINAND'S DEMAND. Does the Christian king think that we are old men and that staffs will suffice us? or that we are women and can be contented with distaffs? Let him know that a Moor is born to the spear and the cimetar : to career, bend the bow, and launch the javelin; deprive him of these, and you deprive him of his nature; if the Christian king desires our arms, let him come and win them. but let him win them dearly; for my part, sweeter were a grave beneath the walls of Granada, on the spot I had died to defend, than the richest couch within her palace earned by submission to the unbeliever. MUSA'S LAST SPEECH ON THE PROPOSITION Leave, my lords, this idle lamentation to helpless women and children; we are men —we have hearts, not to shed tender tears, but drops of blood. I see the spirit of the people so cast down that it is impossible to save the kingdom, yet there still remains an alternative for noble minds a glorious death. Let us die defending our liberty and avenging the woes of Granada. Our mother earth will receive her children into her bosom, safe from the chains and oppressions of the conqueror; or should any fail a sepulchre to hide his remains, he will not want a sky to cover him. Allah forbid it should be said the nobles of Granada feared to die in her defence. THE QUEEN'S ADDRESS. FROM THE CASTILIAN OF ISABELLA OF CASTILE. Alhama, which was a rich, populous and strongly fortified town in the centre of the Moorish kingdom of Granada, was captured by the Spaniards by surprise. The general opinion at a council held by Ferdinand was that it should be demolished, because it would require too large an army and cost too much money to defend it. Isabella, however, differed from the rest of the council, and the heroic words of this spirited woman and Christian queen "infused a more lofty and chivalrous spirit into the royal council. Preparations were made to maintain Alhama at all risks and expense." HAT! destroy the first fruits of our WHA victories? Abandon the first place we have wrested from the Moors? Never let us suffer such an idea to occupy our minds. It would argue fear or feebleness, and give new courage to the enemy. You talk of the toil and expense of maintaining Alhama. Did we doubt, on undertaking this war, that it was to be one of infinite cost, labor, and bloodshed? And shall we shrink from the cost the moment a victory is obtained, and the question is merely to guard or abandon its glorious trophy? Let us hear no more about the destruction of Alhama; let us maintain its walls sacred, as a stronghold granted us by Heaven in the centre of this hostile land; and let our only consideration be how to extend our conquest and capture the surrounding cities. Do not deceive yourselves, nor think the Christians will be faithful to their promises, or their king as magnanimous in conquest as he has been victorious in war. Death is the least we have to fear. It is the plundering and sacking of our city, the profanation of our mosques, the ruin of our homes, the violation of our wives and daughters, cruel oppression, bigoted intolerance, whips and SULTAN MULEY ABUL HASSAN'S RE chains, the dungeon, the fagot, and the stake -such are the miseries and indignities we shall see and suffer; at least, those groveling souls will see and suffer them who now shrink from an honorable death. For my part, by Allah, I will never witness them! Translation of WASHINGTON IRVING PLY TO FERDINAND'S DEMAND FOR TELL your sovereigns, that the kings of Granada, who used to pay tribute in money to the Castilian crown, are dead. Our mint at present coins nothing but blades of scimetars and heads of lances. |