tions and of good faith against despotism and treachery and it has been maintained with a resolution and gallantry that cannot be too warmly admired. Still, it may be embarrassed, if not its success endangered, by mixing up the question of supremacy of race over race with those national claims of the righteousness of which there can be no question. This combination tended to give Jellachich a power over the provincial inhabitants not of Croatia only, which he could not otherwise have wielded,-while it may have paved the way for the Russians, as champions of a Panslavic principle, in many quarters where their intrusion would formerly have excited the liveliest resentment. We add, in illustration of what is above said of Kossuth's energy and spirit, the following remarkable letter to Lord Palmerston, written after the failure of the Hungarian cause. KOSSUTH'S LETTER TO LORD PALMERSTON. Widdin (Turkey), Sept. 20. At this crisis the first volume of the me- | moir ends: the next, said to be already in the press, promises to describe the war of independence to which this harsh and faithless transaction gave the alarm. The drama, in-apprehended that its maintenance has been deed, is not yet played out to the end;* but while expecting the issue with the interest due to a cause with which all freemen will sympathize, we may collect from its past scenes some leading views as to the opening of the struggle. It is of course solely as a matter of history that it falls within our province, and history is bound to be impartial. In this point of view the events described in the present volume seem to lead to the following conclusions: That the Hungarian nation, as a whole, did not at first design, nor for a long time desire, to reject its Hapsburg monarch: and, further, that whatever change subsequent events might have produced under the new constitution, for a time, at least, Hungary would have taken no part against Austria in her other relations had the latter shown a sincere determination to observe the concessions which the Emperor had nominally acceded to, nor given countenance in secret to the Slavonian "rebels:"-that the Magyars, while asserting their own nationality, were not disposed to admit the claims of the Slavonian population to equal privileges; and that in disputing them at the outset they committed an errorif not an injustice. The effect of this was to throw into the arms of Austria all the Slavonian provinces: among which it is probable that the Servians, if not the Croats, were at first by no means prone to make common cause with absolutism. If, therefore, the Vienna Court was justly suspected of insincerity from the beginning, any measures that by alarming the Slavonian races tended to provoke a Panslavic union, were precisely such as a sagacious policy would have avoided. It is probable, indeed, that but for the temptation offered by the symptoms of a civil war of races in the Hungarian kingdom, Camarilla," however inclined, would not have ventured, in the then state of Europe, upon a counter-revolution. The latter being once declared, the cause of Hungary of course became the cause of liberal institu the 66 *The above was written before the arrival of the recent accounts of serious reverses, said to have been suffered by the Hungarians-of an alleged surrender of their best army, and of the disappearance of Kossuth. What consequence may ensue upon this new state of things, time alone can reveal:this, in the meanwhile, may be firmly believed, that a warlike people, determined to be free, can never be permanently enslaved. Your Excellency is no doubt already informed of the fall of my country-unhappy Hungary, assuredly worthy of a better fate. It was not prompted by the spirit of disorder, or the ambitious views of faction; it was not a revolutionary leaning which induced my native country to accept the mortal struggle maintained so gloriously, and brought, by nefarious means, to so unfortunate an end. Hungary has deserved from her kings the historical epithet of "generous nation," for she never allowed herself to be surpassed in loyalty and faithful adherence to her sovereign by any nation in the world. nu Nothing but the most revolting treachery, the most tyrannical oppression, and cruelties unheard of in the words of history-nothing but the infernal doom of annihilation to her national existence, preserved through a thousand years, through adversities so merous, were able to arouse her to oppose the fatal stroke aimed at her very life, to enable her to repulse the tyrannical assault of the ungrateful Hapsburgs, or to accept the struggle for life, honor, and liberty, forced upon her. And she has nobly fought that holy battle, in which with the aid of Almighty God she prevailed against Austria, whom we crushed to the earth, standing firm, even when attacked by the Russian giant, in the conscionsness of justice, in our hope in God, and in our hope, my lord, in the generous feeling of your great and glori ous nation, the natural supporter of justice Turkish government, whose situation I well knew how to appreciate, and therefore did not intrude on the Turkish territories without previously inquiring whether I and my companions in misfortune would be willingly received, and the protection of the Sultan granted to us. We received the assurance that we were welcome guests, and should enjoy the full protection of his Majesty the Padisha, who would rather sacrifice fifty thousand men of his own subjects, than allow one hair of our heads to be injured. Even the ambassadors of England and France, to whom I ventured in the name of humanity to appeal, were so kind as to assure me of their full sympathy. Mr. Francis Pulsky, our diplomatic agent It was only upon this assurance that we in London, has received ample information passed into the Turkish territory, and accordas to the cause of this sudden and unlooked- ing to the generous assurance we were refor change in the affairs of Hungary, and is ceived and tended on our journey, received instructed to communicate it to your Excel- in Widdin as the Sultan's guests, and treated lency, if you are graciously pleased to re-hospitably, during four weeks, whilst waiting ceive the same. It is not antipathy to Aus- from Constantinople further orders as to the tria, though so well merited at the hands of continuation of our sad journey to some disevery Hungarian, but a true conviction which tant shore. makes me say, that even Austria has lost far more by her victory, gained through Russian aid, than she would have lost in merited defeat through honorable arrangement. Fallen from her position of a first-rate power, she has now forfeited her self-consistency, and has sunk into the obedient instrument of Russian ambition and of Russian commands. Russia only has gained at this sanguinary game; she has extended and strengthened her influence in the east of Europe, and threatens already, in a fearful manner, with outstretching arms, not only the integrity, but the moral basis, of the Turkish empire. May it please you, my lord, to communicate to your Excellency a most revolting condition which the Turkish government, at the suggestion of Russia, is about to impose upon us poor homeless exiles. I, the governor of unhappy Hungary, after having, I believe, as a good citizen and honest man, fulfilled to the last my duties to my country, had no choice left me between the repose of the grave and the inexpressible anguish of expatriation. Many of my brethren in misfortune had preceded me on the Turkish territory. I followed thither in the hope that I should be permitted to pass to England, and there, under the protection of the English people -a protection never yet denied to persecuted man-allowed to repose for a while my wearied head on the hospitable shore of your happy island. But even with these views I would rather have surrendered myself to my deadliest enemy than to cause any difficulties to the His Majesty, the Sultan, was also so gracious as to give a decided negative to the inhuman pretensions of our extradition demanded by Russia and Austria. But a fresh letter from his Majesty the Czar arrived in Constantinople, and its consequence was the suggestion sent to us by an express messenger of the Turkish Government, that the Poles and Hungarians, and in particular myself, Count Casimir Batthyany, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, under my government, and the Generals Messaros and Perczel (all here), would be surrendered unless we chose to abjure the faith of our forefathers in the religion of Christ, and become Mussulmans. And thus five thousand Christians are placed in the terrible alternative either of facing the scaffold or of purchasing their lives by abandoning their faith. So low is already fallen the once mighty Turkey, that she can devise no other means to answer or evade the demands of Russia. Words fail me to qualify these astonishing suggestions, such as never have been made yet to the fallen chief of a generous nation, and could hardly have been expected in the nineteenth century. My answer does not admit of hesitation. Between death and shame the choice can neither be dubious nor difficult. Governor of Hungary, and elected to that high place by the confidence of fifteen millions of my countrymen, I know well what I owe to the honor of my country even in exile. Even as a private individual I have an honorable path to pursue. Once governor of a generous country-I leave no heritage to my children-they shall, at least, bear an unsullied name. God's will be done. I am prepared to die; but as I think this measure dishonorable and injurious to Turkey, whose interest I sincerely have at heart, and as I feel it my duty to save my companions in exile, if I can, from a degrading alternative, I have replied to the Grand Vizier in a conciliatory manner, and took also the liberty to apply to Sir Stratford Canning and General Aupich for their generous aid against this tyrannic act. In full reliance on the noble sentiments and generous principles of your Excellency, by which, as well as through your wisdom, you have secured the esteem of the civilized world, I trust to be excused in enclosing copies of my two letters to the Grand Vizier and Sir Stratford Canning. I am informed that the whole matter is a cabal against the ministry of Reschid Pacha, whose enemies would wish to force him to our extradition, in order to lower it in public estimation, and render impossible its continuance in office. It is certain that in the grand council held on the 9th and 10th of September, after a tumultuous debate, the majority of the council declared in favor of our extradition, the majority of the ministry against it. No decision was come to in consequence of the altercation which took place; but, notwithstanding, the ministry thought fit to make us the revolting suggestion I have named. This mode of solving the difficulty would not, I am convinced, save the ministry, because a protection only given in contradiction of the Sultan's generous feeling, at the price of five thousand Christians abandoning their faith, would be revolting to the whole Christian world, and prove hardly calculated to win sympathies for Turkey in the event of war with Russia, which, in the opinion of the most experienced Turkish statesmen, is approaching fast. As to my native country, Turkey does, I believe, already feel the loss of the neglected opportunity of having given to Hungary at least some moral help to enable it to check the advance of the common enemy. But it appears to me that it would be a very illadvised mode of gaining Hungarian sympathy by sending me to an Austrian scaffold, and forcing my unhappy companions to ab jure their religion, or accept the same alternative. No friends to the Turkish government would spring up from my blood shed by her broken faith, but many deadly foes. My lord, your heart will, I am sure, excuse my having called your attention to our unhappy fate, since it has now assumed political importance. Abandoned in this unsocial land by the whole world, even the first duties of humanity give us no promise of protection unless, my lord, you and your generous nation come forward to protect us. What steps it may be expedient that you should take, what we have a right to expect from the well-known generosity of England, it would be hardly fitting for me to enter on. I place my own and my companions' fate in your hands, my lord, and in the name of humanity throw myself under the protection of England. Time presses-our doom may in a few days be sealed. Allow me to make an humble personal request. I am a man, my lord, prepared to face the worst; and I can die with a free look at Heaven, as I have lived. But I am also, my lord, a husband, son, and father, my poor true-hearted wife, my children, and my noble old mother, are wandering about Hungary. They will probably soon fall into the hands of those Austrians who delight in torturing even feeble women, and with whom the innocence of childhood is no protection against persecutions. I conjure your Excellency, in the name of the Most High, to put a stop to these cruelties by your powerful mediation, and especially to accord to my wife and children an asylum on the soil of the generous English people. As to my poor-my loved and noble country-must she, too, perish for ever? Shall she, unaided, abandoned to her fate, and unavenged, be doomed to annihilation by her tyrants? Will England, once her hope, not become her consolation? The political interests of civilized Europe, so many weighty considerations respecting England herself, and chiefly the maintenance of the Ottoman empire, are too intimately bound up with the existence of Hungary for me to lose all hope. My lord, may God the Almighty for many years shield you, that you may long protect the unfortunate, and live to be the guardian of the rights of freedom and humanity. I subscribe myself, with the most perfect respect and esteem, (Signed) L. KOSSUTH. From Fraser's Magazine. CHATHAM-SHERIDAN-BURKE-FOX.* The Modern Orator. Being a Selection from the Speeches of the Earl of Chatham, Sheridan, Edmund Burke, Lord Erskine, and Charles James Fox, with Introductions and Explanatory Notes. In 2 vols. 8vo. London: Aylott & Jones, Paternoster Row. MESSRS. Aylott and Jones have established a strong claim upon the gratitude of all to whom the cause of English literature is dear. They have come forward in a very spirited manner to save from oblivion some of the brightest flowers in the whole garland of English eloquence. In The Modern Orator, compiled under their auspices, we have collected within a moderate compass, not specimens only, but the very cream of all that Chatham, Sheridan, Burke, Erskine, and Fox, ever addressed to either House of Parliament. The speeches of each statesman, moreover, are prefaced by a short sketch of his life; while explanatory notes enable the reader fully to apprehend both the general drift of the several orations that come before him, and the particular points which, in the progress of his argument, the speaker has contrived either to achieve or to miss. It is impossible to overestimate the value or importance of such a publication. While it brings within the reach of thousands, knowledge, from which, without some help of the sort, they must have been entirely shut out, it supplies the more fortunate few with a manual, easily referred to, and just sufficiently extensive to recall to their recollection whatever, in this department of literature, an educated man would be loath to forget. No doubt there are fuller biographies extant of all the great men referred to here. And the intrinsic worth of these must remain to the end of time precisely what it was when each first came under the scalpel of the critic. But experience has long ago shown, that biographies continue to be popular in an inverse ratio to their bulk; because you cannot forever keep alive the literary appetite that gulps down a couple of quartos, or half-adozen bulky octavos at the outset. Look at Tomlin's Life of Pitt, Lord Holland's Memoirs of Charles James Fox, and Moore's Messrs. Aylott and Life of Sheridan. (Who that has not pass ed his grand climacteric ever thinks of referring to these, except for a purpose?) And even Prior's Life of Burke, though comparatively a recent publication, lives but in the memory of a passing generation, and will soon take its place on the top-shelves, among the books "which no gentleman's library ought to be without." Jones have, therefore, done good service, both to the memory of the glorious dead and to the taste and political education of the living. They have embalmed, so to speak, the rich imagery, the terse argument, the glorious declamation of the former, in a shrine which, being accessible to all, has a good chance of commanding the devotion of true worshipers to the end of time; while before the living age they bring models of imitation, which, as they may be studied without fatigue, and remembered in their just proportions, so they cannot fail of giving a bias to the tastes, and strengthening the reflective powers of the young and the ardent of many generations. Chatham, Sheridan, Erskine, Burke, Foxwhat a galaxy of illustrious names! Whig though they be (with the exception, at least, of Burke, and he was a Whig at the outset), it is impossible not to feel when we come into their presence that we are indeed standing upon holy ground. But why should our spirited publishers stop there? Has not England produced another Pitt, attaining, even in his youth, to higher eminence than his father succeeded in making at mature age? Are Canning's silver tones forgotten? Has Wilberforce quite passed from men's memories? or Huskisson, or Scott, or Murray, or Thurloe? And might not passages of surpassing power and interest be culled from the speeches of still earlier statesmen, such as Hyde, Falkland, Hampden, Cecil? 1849.] CHATHAM-SHERIDAN-BURKE-FOX. Perhaps this hint of ours may not be thrown away. The firm which has dared to put forth these two volumes, cannot fail of meeting with such encouragement as shall lead to more. And then, without doubt, the same judgment and skill which have been brought to bear upon the present selection, will find scope and room enough to disport themselves on another. The first of the great men with whom The Modern Orator deals was born in St. James's parish, Westminster, on the 15th of November, 1708. His grandfather, when governor of Madras, had purchased for £20,400, a diamond, which was long considered the largest in the world; and subsequently sold it to the Regent Orleans, on account of the King of France, for £135,000. Thus enriched, he became the proprietor of a handsome estate near Lostwithiel, in Cornwall, which he bequeathed, together with a considerable portion in money, to his son Robert. Of this Robert, by Harriet Villiers, sister to the Earl of Grandison, William Pitt, afterward Earl of Chatham, was the second son. William Pitt was sent at an early age to Eton, where he greatly distinguished himself, and became a favorite both with the masters and his schoolfellows. Among the latter, he seems to have associated chiefly with George, afterward Lord Lyttleton; Henry Fox, afterward Lord Holland; and Henry Fielding. He entered Trinity College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner; but never took a degree. An attack of gout in early life induced him to quit the university, and to seek in travel through France and Italy the health which had been seriously impaired. After his return, he obtained a commission in the Blues, and in February, 1735, took his seat in the House of Commons as member for Old Sarum. He at once, and without any apparent effort, made his presence felt in the great council of the nation. A strikingly handsome figure, a dignified and graceful manner, a voice full, rich, clear, and singularly flexible, supplied all that is wanting to complete the exterior graces of an orator; and neither the style nor the matter of his speeches disappointed the expectations which these outward signs might have stirred. Butler, in his Reminiscences, says of Lord Chatham, that "his lowest whisper was distinctly heard; his middle tones were sweet, rich, and beautifully varied; when he elevated his voice to its highest pitch, the house was completely filled with the volume of the sound." His great forte, like that of his immortal son, seems to have been "invective," the force of which was much enhanced by the lightning glance of an eye which few could bear when turned upon them without shrinking. He delivered his maiden speech in parliament on the 29th of April, 1736, when Mr. Pulteney, then Paymaster of the Forces, moved an address of congratulation to George II. on the marriage of Frederick To our less courtly ears, Prince of Wales with the Princess Augusta of Saxe Gotha. there is a tone of too much adulation about this speech, which, however, the editors of And as it lauded the The Modern Orator have, with great judgment, preserved. Prince on account of his many virtues, among which dutiful obedience to his royal father was not forgotten, the royal father, who hated the royal son consumedly, never forgave the insult. The young statesman was most unceremoniously deprived of his cornetcy of Horse, and went, as in duty bound, into violent opposition. As a matter of course, the dutiful Prince of Wales took to his arms the man whom the King his father delighted not to honor. Mr. Pitt was appointed Groom of the Bedchamber to his royal highness, and forthwith took a prominent part in assailing the policy and person of Sir Robert Walpole. The first heavy blow struck by the ex-cornet at the prime minister was delivered in March, 1739, when he fiercely attacked Walpole's convention with Spain, and contributed not a little, by the force of his eloquence, to bring it into disrepute. The cabinet carried its motion, but by a majority of only twenty-eight votes-a thing quite unprecedented in the good old times of undisguised corruption; and the chief of the cabinet felt the same hour that his power was shaken. Nor is this to be wondered at. There was a vigor in Pitt's onslaught which a better cause might have found it hard to withstand; brought against the truckling of the great Whig premier, it was quite irresistible. "This convention, sir, I think from my soul, is nothing but a stipulation for national ignominy; an illusory expedient to baffle the resentment of the nation; a truce, without a suspension of hostilities on the part of Spain; on the part of England, a suspension, as to Georgia, of the first law surrender of the rights and trade of England to of nature, self-preservation and self-defence; a the mercy of plenipotentiaries; and, in this infinitely highest and most sacred point-future security, not only inadequate, but directly repug |