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From The Quarterly Review.

clearest principles of international law deSIR HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS. liberately violated or cynically set aside — “WE stand" - exclaimed Burke, ad- the lust of conquest let loose; and no dressing the House of Commons in 1782- sound constitutional government discov"we stand where we have an immense erable from one end of the continent to view of what is and what is past. Clouds, the other, except in two or three small indeed, and darkness rest upon the future. States, whose individual existence would Let us, however, before we descend from not be worth a week's purchase if the this noble eminence, reflect that this struggle for warlike supremacy or tergrowth of our national prosperity has hap-ritorial aggrandisement should recompened within the short period of the life mence. of man. It has happend within sixty-eight True, he has seen England weather years. There are those alive whose mem- storm after storm: the cotton famine causory might touch the two extremities. For ing no perceptible diminution of her instance, my Lord Bathurst might remem- wealth: the Indian mutiny restoring and ber all the stages of its progress. He was confirming the prestige of her arms and in 1704 of an age, at least, to be made to the conviction of her power: the ease with comprehend such things." . . . "Fortunate which Fenianism has been kept under, man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect and cloud the setting of his day."

showing that it might be stamped out, like the cattle-plague, if England should get angry and rise in her might. He sees her now; proudly (we trust, not vainly) seChange Lord Bathurst for Sir Henry cure in her island independence, enjoying a Holland; take the seventy-one years of the greater amount of prosperity and rational present century instead of the sixty-eight freedom than ever fell to the lot of any dating from 1704, and you have a longer other people, ancient or modern. But the and more momentous period brought viv-political barometer points to "stormy: idly within the memory of one man. In there is a fearful chasm between the very 1800, Sir Henry Holland was in his twelfth rich and the very poor which widens as we year, with a mind actively awake to the gaze upon it: the war between capital and rush, stir and tumult of the times. It has labour may at any moment become insince been his lot to watch the shifting ternecine: English Socialism bears an fortunes, the alternating decline and prog- awkward resemblance to French Communress, of mighty nations and communities in ism: the republican spirit stalks abroad every quarter of the globe- to find the unabashed: we have contracted the dangerpolitical and social aspect of the civilized ous habit of estimating institutions, the world transformed three or four times most time-honoured, the most suited to over to see thrones rocking and dynas- our habits, by their cost; opinions, espeties overthrown the rise and fall of two cially destructive opinions, ripen with empires, two monarchies, and three or four startling rapidity: and considering the republics, in France - the prostration, di- green old age of the reminiscent, he may vision, revival, union, and triumph of Ger- be apostrophized in the very words of many confusion worse confounded, the Burke: "Fortunate man, he has lived to normal state of things, in Spain - the pro- see it! Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to longed struggle of nationality and civil see nothing that shall vary the prospect or liberty against foreign and spiritual domi- cloud the setting of his day." nation in Italy - the fairest provinces of America desolated in the names of freedom and humanity - Europe in arms to decide a fantastic point of military honour the

• Recollections of Past Life. By Sir Henry Hol

land, Bart., M.D., D.C.L., &c, &c., President of the Royal Institute of Great Britain, Physician in Ordinary to the Queen. London, 1872.

If unparalleled opportunities for observation, if the widest possible experience of human nature under every imaginable variety of form and influence, could qualify a man to penetrate to the occult causes and probable results of the scenes he has witnessed, of the events that have come to pass in his time, Sir Henry Holland should

66

mella, Bulow, and Drouyn de Lhuys:

be exceptionally endowed with that "mys- acquaintance of Leopold I. of Belgium betical lore" which the sunset of life gave to side the couch of the Princess Charlotte. the Scottish seer, should he be able to fore- In the spring of 1831 he was hastily sumcast the future whilst throwing a flood of moned to a house in Holles Street, and fresh light on the present and the past. found there a young man labouring under He has been everywhere: he has seen gastric fever and a lady hanging over his everything he has known everybody. bed. They turned out to be Prince Survey mankind from China to Peru!" Louis Napoleon (now ex-Emperor) and Why, he has surveyed mankind from the his mother, Queen Hortense. Besides North Pole to the South, in both hemi- royal and princely patients, he can boast spheres, in all climes, in all degrees of lati- of six Prime Ministers of England, with a tude. He has crossed the Atlantic sixteen host of Continental statesmen, including times; travelled over more than 26,000 Talleyrand, Pozzo di Borgo, Guizot, Palmiles of the American continent; made four expeditions to the East, including Cairo, Damascus, and Jerusalem; three tours in Algeria, two in Russia, two in Iceland, several in Sweden, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, and voyages without end to the Canary Isles, the West Indies, Madeira, Dalmatia &c., with (to use his own words) "other excursions which it would be useless to enumerate." He has visited, he tells us, and most of them repeatedly, every capital in Europe, and in every capital he has been drawn, as by a kind of natural fitness or affinity,

into the circle most eminent for rank, birth, genius, learning, accomplishment,

and fame.

Candide was somewhat surprised at Venice to find that he had been supping with six ex-royalties. Sir Henry Holland would think nothing of it. He has seen so much of august and illustrious personages

"Such practice cannot occur without a certain knowledge of political events, and occasional anticipation of changes not yet obvious to the public eye. Several instances of this kind come to my memory, connected chiefly with changes of Ministry at the time. I refrain from men'tioning details; nor would they now in truth have any value, save in showing how largely bodily temperament has its share with mental in the government of the world; and how many anomalous incidents of history may find possible or probable solution in the fluctuating health of the actors concerned in them. When reading the

histories of the great revolutions of the world,

as well as the biographies of eminent men, such suggestions have often occurred to me.”

We

This is a tantalizing, provoking passage; intimating that information of the most interesting kind has been withheld from (we cannot say false) notions of delicacy. know full well how largely and powerfully of kings and emperors, ex or actual bodily temperament acts upon the mind; that it would require an effort of charity how often fears of the brave and follies of or philosophy on his part not to hold them the wise may be resolved into gout, indicheap. At Rome in 1814 he was in daily gestion, or catarrh. "Our happiness,” reintercourse with Charles IV. of Spain, his marked a Turkish lady to Boswell, “deQueen, the Infante, and Godoy the pends on the way in which our blood Queen of Etruria, a Princess of Sardinia, a circulates." And so may our courage, Prince of Saxe Gotha, the ex-King of Hol- our virtue, our imagination, or our inland, Lucien Bonaparte and his wife, Car-tellect. Undeniably true is the materialdinal Fesch, Prince Poniatowski. He was ist doctrine (not necessarially leading professionally consulted by the Queen of to materialism) that a single grain of matSpain and Godoy, and was presented with ter in the sensorium, might have made a a rosary as a mark of favour by the Pope. coward of Bayard and a raving idiot of In 1818, he fell in at Spa with the Empe-Pascal. The irresolution of Napoleon

ror Alexander, the Prince and Princess of at Borodino was notoriously owing to Orange, the Duke and Duchess of Cum-stomach. According to Hoffman, who was berland, the Duke of Wellington, Lord close to the scene of action, the Emperor's Londonderry, the Duc de Richelieu, Har- coup d'ail on the third day at Dresden denberg, and Talleyrand. He made the was perceptibly impaired by the effects of

a shoulder of mutton stuffed with onions; | To live among the great as Sir Henry and the nature of the complaint which re- Holland has lived, to hold the social and duced him to comparative inactivity at intellectual position which he has held for Waterloo is the subject of a curious note sixty years, requires tact, temper, sound by M. Thiers. The collapse of the Chat- and varied knowledge, a wide range of ham Administration of 1766 was caused sympathies, liberality of thought and feelby suppressed gout. During the delivery ing, independence of tone and bearing, of the speech on the Slave Trade, to which in short, the very combination of qualities he made his celebrated reply in April, 1792, reflected in his Recollections; and it will Pitt was vomiting behind the Speaker's be found both curious and instructive to chair. It immeasurably enhances our es- trace the growth and formation of his timate of Nelson's heroism to know that character. We shall also endeavour to he was a frequent sufferer from sea-sick- compensate for his reserve by bringing ness. Mr. Croker plausibly maintained together from other sources, oral and that it was impossible to be a great man printed, some scattered traits and desulwithout being a good sleeper; his favour- tory notices of his contemporaries, which ite examples being Napoleon, Pitt, and might otherwise pass gradually into oblivWellington. ion or obscurity and be lost.

Instance upon instance, throwing light upon what Sir Henry terms the anomalous incidents of history, must be included amongst his recollections of his six premiers. He could probably account in the simplest manner, for what has hitherto seemed unaccountable: why one of them wrote that very imprudent letter which fell amongst his party like a bombshell, or another made that angry speech which precipitated his fall. It was simply because their guide, philosopher, and doctor was not called in an hour sooner, because the blue pill or colchicum was administered too late.

But he rightly, if unluckily, deems that a physician's lips should be sealed like a confessor's. Recollections and reminiscences are commonly entertaining in proportion to their indiscretion; and he is never indiscreet. He carries reticence almost to a fault, rarely indulging in even a stray anecdote; and although his impressions of celebrated persons are freely and fairly given, his conversations with them are carefully kept back. He might take to himself, without the change of a word, the imitative self-commendation of Pope :

He was born at Knutsford, on the 27th of October, 1788, of respectable parentage, as we collect from the incidental mention of the old family house of Sandlebridge, and sent to school at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he remained four years, making apparently good use of his time; for on being transferred to Dr. Estlin's school at Bristol, he was named head-boy at once, in succession to John Cam Hobhouse, the late Lord Broughton. This position required to be maintained, like the championship of England, by the fist; and he settled the difficulty by challenging two boys to fight at once. The combat never came off, but the bravado served his purpose, and tam Marte quam Mercurio might have been his well-earned motto at starting. Besides a smattering of the classics which he afterwards improved into scholarship, he received his introduction to physical science in his school days, (adsit omen!) the first chemical experiment that interested him was the effect of laughinggas.

The choice of a profession is too frequently a matter of caprice or accident. The popular and successful physician was within an ace of becoming a trader, being actually under articles to a mercantile firm at Liverpool, when his better genius interposed, and sent him to study medicine at Edinburgh, where he graduated in the autumn of 1811. Three years were yet wanting of the age required for admission