Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 15
General
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 15
Literature -- Collections
Something, too, ought to be said of his individual exertions in the
details of State administration. In his earlier life, though active
and assiduous, he found leisure for elegant accomplishments, for
splendid amusements, for relaxations careless, extravagant, sometimes
questionable. As his life drew onwards, his lighter tastes
disappeared, and the whole energy of his intellect was pressed into
the business of the commonwealth. Those who have examined the printed
State papers may form some impression of his industry from the
documents which are his own composition, and the letters which he
wrote and received: but only persons who have seen the original
manuscripts, who have observed the traces of his pen in side-notes and
corrections, and the handwritings of his secretaries in diplomatic
commissions, in drafts of Acts of Parliament, in expositions and
formularies, in articles of faith, in proclamations, in the countless
multitude of documents of all sorts, secular or ecclesiastical, which
contain the real history of this extraordinary reign,--only they can
realize the extent of labor to which he sacrificed himself, and which
brought his life to a premature close. His personal faults were great,
and he shared, besides them, in the errors of his age; but far deeper
blemishes would be but as scars upon the features of a sovereign who
in trying times sustained nobly the honor of the English name, and
carried the commonwealth securely through the hardest crisis in its
history.
ON A SIDING AT A RAILWAY STATION
From 'Short Studies on Great Subjects'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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