Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
"It becomes me to set the public right, by solemnly assuring them,
that no such idea was ever in contemplation for one moment; and
that I am at a loss to discover how the rumour originated; as, so
far from being capable of harbouring a wish to add to the
embarrassments of an unhappy and dejected people, it would be the
pride and glory of my heart, if I had the power to place such
persons in situations of responsibility, as, by their talents and
integrity, might preserve our Laws and Government and
Constitution."
The eccentricities of the unfortunate Emperor of Russia have come to
even a more rapid end than I had expected. A courier has just arrived
with the startling intelligence, that the Czar was found dead in his
chamber. The whole transaction is for the moment covered with extreme
obscurity; but it is to be feared that what the Frenchman, with equal
cleverness and wickedness, called the Russian trial by Jury, has been
acted on in this instance, and that the Russian annals have been stained
with another Imperial catastrophe.
How natural and magnificent are Shakspeare's reflections on the
anxieties that beset a crown--
"Oh, polished perturbation! golden care,
That keeps the ports of Slumber open wide
To many a watchful night: O Majesty!
When thou cost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
That scalds with safety."
If Voltaire's definition be true, that swindling is the perfection of
civilization, and that the more civilized, the more subtle we become,
England may boast of a swindler that seems to have brought the art to
its highest perfection. She is a female, not at all of the showy order,
which beguiles so many understandings through the eyes--an insignificant
and mean person, with an ordinary face, not at all exhibiting manners
superior to her appearance, yet certainly of the most superb ambition in
the art of tricking the World. Where she began her adventures first,
remains to be developed by future biography. At length she appeared in
the neighbourhood of Greenwich, and, representing herself there as an
heiress, took a handsome house, and contrived, in the usual way, to make
all the tradesmen in the neighbourhood contribute to its furnishing. By
the simplicity and plausibility of her manner, she even obtained loans
to the amount of some thousands, to set her household in motion, until
her affairs were settled. An heiress must, of course, have a carriage;
but this clever person was not content with doing things in an ordinary
way, but set up three. While her house was being prepared,--which she
ordered to be done by the first artists in their way, the walls being
painted in fresco,--she drove down to Brighton in her travelling
carriage, with four horses and two outriders. She gave an order for the
furnishing of her house to the amount of L4000, and commissioned from
Hatchett, the celebrated coachmaker, a first-rate chariot, with all
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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