Henry North

“ The golden afternoon, the low, silvery, seaward horizon, as of wide, sleepy, game-haunted inlets and reed-smothered banks, possible site of some Venice that had never mustered, the luxury, in the mild air, of shrub and plant and blossom that the pale North can but distantly envy; something that I scarce know how to express but as the proud humility of the whole idle, easy loveliness, made even the restless analyst, for the hour, among the pious inscriptions that scarce ever belie the magniloquent clime or the inimitable tradition, feel himself really capable of the highest Carolinian pitch. ”

“ On my return to New York, at the end of February, [431] the North was cheered by some signal successes achieved in the West principally by gunboats, operating on the lines of the great rivers. The greatest results have been obtained in the capture of Fort Donaldson and Fort Henry, by Commodore Foote’s flotilla co-operating with the land forces. The possession of an absolute naval supremacy, of course, gives the North United States powerful means of annoyance and inflicting injury and destruction on the enemy ”

“ About 1555 North married Winifred, daughter of Richard, lord Rich [q. v.] , lord chancellor, and widow of Sir Henry Dudley, son of John, earl of Warwick (afterwards duke of Northumberland) . She died in 1578, after bearing him two sons, Sir John and Henry, and one daughter, Mary, who died unmarried. His elder son, Sir John [q. v.] , died before him. To his younger son, Henry, he gave the Mildenhall property, and Henry's descendants held it until 1740, when, on the death of Sir Thomas Hanmer, speaker of the House of Commons, who had inherited it from his mother, Mrs. ”

“ What does Africa,—what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; ”

“ In order to great social refinement one needs ample time or leisure to cultivate the art. And who in America [43] have been so much favored in the past with leisure as the people of the South?
In elegance and ease of personal manners perhaps no man in America excelled Henry Clay. His very style of taking snuff, and handling his snuff-box, is said to have been so elegant that, though inimitable, yet his friends and admirers, in and out of Congress, who indulged the nasal habit attempted to copy him. ”

“ I believe they can. Otherwise I would say, 'Better die freemen than live slaves.'
"Whatever course my State shall determine to pursue my faith in State supremacy and State rights will carry my sympathies with her. And, as Henry Clay, my political opponent on annexation said, when asked why he allowed his [95] son to go into the Mexican War, 'My country, right or wrong,' so I say, my State, right or wrong." ”

“ North's health began to break down soon after he became master of Trinity, and for the last four years of his life his condition became more and more deplorable. Mind and body gave way together, and after suffering from paralysis and epileptic fits, which obscured and enfeebled his intellect, he succumbed at last to apoplexy at Cambridge in April 1683, and was buried in the college chapel, where a small tablet with his initials, ‘J. N.,’ serves as his only monument. There can be no doubt that North read himself to death, and overtaxed powers which appear to have been of a high order. ”

“ In the parliament of 1626 he was prominent among the peers in opposition in the House of Lords, and was closely allied with William Fiennes, lord Saye and Sele. Lord Holland said of him in his public career, ‘he knew no man less swayed with passion, and sooner carried with reason and justice.’
Subsequently North spent much time at Kirtling, and was soon content to learn what was passing in London from the letters of his brother, Sir John North, the king's gentleman-usher. ”

“ NORTH, ROGER, second Lord North (1530–1600) , was born in 1530, probably at Kirtling in Cambridgeshire, then the home of his father Edward, first baron North [q. v.] ; Sir Thomas North [q. v.] was his youngest brother. He is supposed to have completed his education at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was early introduced by his father to the court, and appears to have entered eagerly into its amusements, especially that of tilting, in which he excelled. While still a youth, the Princess Elizabeth tied round his arm at a tournament a scarf of red silk. ”

“ North was thanked by the governor-general in council and by General Outram for ‘the readiness and resource with which he established and superintended the manufacture of Enfield rifle cartridges, a valuable service, which he rendered without any relaxation of his other duties, in the course of which he was wounded’ (medal and clasp, brevet of lieutenant-colonel, 1858, and a year's service for Lucknow) . North wrote a ‘Journal with the Army in India’ (London, 1858) , an accurate little narrative of personal observation from May 1857 to January 1858, when he was invalided home. ”

“ The coalition ministry went out of office on Fox’s India Bill in December 1783, and Lord North, who was losing his sight, then finally gave up political ambition. He played, when quite blind, a somewhat important part in the debates on the Regency Bill in 1789, and in the next year succeeded his father as earl of Guilford. He did not long survive his elevation, and died peacefully on the 5th of August 1792. It is impossible to consider Lord North a great statesman, but he was a most good-tempered and humorous member of the House of Commons. ”

“ In 1579, after the union of Utrecht, North went to the Netherlands with Sir John Norris (1547?–1597) [q. v.] , and took service as a volunteer in the cause of the provinces. He returned to England in 1580, and probably married. He may be the Mr. North who visited Poland in 1581 (Dee, Diary, p. 19) , and who, after returning in 1582, had an audience of the queen, who had been sumptuously entertained at Kirtling in 1578. He was returned M.P. for Cambridgeshire to the fifth parliament of Elizabeth in 1584. He again went to the Netherlands with Leicester and Sidney late in 1585. ”

“ North expressed a strong desire to spend the remainder of his ‘life and fortunes’ on the plantation in Guiana; but whether he ever again, for any cause, put to sea does not appear. In July 1636 Sir John North wrote that he wished his brother Roger could be captain of one of the king's ships, and in November 1637 sent him a message from court that the king desired the formation of a new company, but ‘there is a way to be thought upon first.’
During this time of suspense Roger was much at Kirtling, the home of Dudley, third baron North, and the constant resort of his brothers. ”

“ Though his political views inclined to toryism, North acted at first as a follower of his kinsman the Duke of Newcastle, at whose recommendation he was appointed a junior lord of the treasury on 2 June 1759 (Chatham Correspondence, i. 409) . He took a leading part in the proceedings against Wilkes in the House of Commons, and retired from office with the rest of his colleagues on the formation of the Rockingham ministry in July 1765. ”

“ I heard it speaking bravely from the weak lips of a friend; it is carved in the plastic heart of many a boy. No, I do not doubt the immortalities of the soul; in this community, which I have come to love so much, dwells more than one of John North's immortalities—and will continue to dwell. I, too, live more deeply because John North was here.
He was in no outward way an extraordinary man, nor was his life eventful. He was born in this neighbourhood: I saw him lying quite still this morning in the same sunny room of the same house where he first saw the light of day. ”

“ The labour that North bestowed upon the lives of his brothers was extraordinary. The life of the lord keeper was written and rewritten again and again. Defaced though the style is by the use of some unusual words, there is a certain charm about it which few readers can resist, and the ‘Lives of the Norths’ must always remain an English classic and and a prime authority for the period with which it deals. The ‘Life of Lord-keeper North’ was first issued under Montagu North's editorship in 1742. The ‘Lives’ of Sir Dudley North and Dr. John North followed in 1744. ”

“ North is on the job up at the State House. I'll admit that he isn't tactful. He's very old-fashioned in his political ideas. But he doesn't mind clamor and criticism, and he isn't afraid of the devil himself. ”

“ For some years ships sailed from Norway to Iceland, from Iceland to Greenland, and from Greenland to North America, where a Northman finally settled with about one hundred and forty men and women. Snor ́ri, the son of this brave leader, was the first European child born [29] in America. He lived to grow up, and the great sculptor Thor ́wald-sen, as well as several other noted men, claimed him as one of their ancestors.
The Northmen, however, had a very hard time in America, for they were soon attacked by the Indians, whom they called Skrae ́lings. ”

“ Already Ned had begun to readjust some of his ideas in regard to the North. It was no longer easy to believe that his father had exaggerated its beauty and its appeal, its desolation and its vastness. It was a strange thing for a man used to cities to go day upon day without seeing scarcely a village beside the sea, a single human being other than those of his own party. Here was one place, it seemed, that the hand of man had touched but lightly if at all. ”

“ The Northmen became Christians and Normans. It is not uncommon to speak of them as if they retained their Norwegian characteristics in "the pleasant land of France," and were in the habit of looking back to the home of their youth, or of their fathers, with that sort of fondness and regret which were felt by those Englishmen who founded the American nation. This is all wrong. The Northmen had left the North for the same reason that other men leave their countries,—the only reason that ever causes them to do so,—because the North did not afford them means of support. ”

“ The talent of the North is blinded, deafened, gagged with its own cotton. The North clamored loudly when the nation's treasure was removed from the United States Bank; it is almost silent at the annexation of a slave territory big as the kingdom of France, encumbered with debts, loaded with the entailment of war! Northern Governors call for soldiers; our men volunteer to fight in a most infamous war for the extension of slavery! Tell it not in Boston, whisper it not in Faneuil Hall, lest you weaken the slumbers of your fathers, and they curse you as cowards and traitors unto men! ”

“ The intruders became known as “the army,” and the appearance of “the army” in any district filled the inhabitants with terror. Our first definite story of the Northmen in England is connected with the appearance of “the army” in Yorkshire A.D. 867. We learn from the English chronicles that violent internal discord was troubling Northumbria at this time. The king of the Northumbrians was Osbert,14 but the people had risen up and expelled him, we know not for what reason,2 and had placed on the throne a man named Ælla, “not of royal blood,” who seems to have been the leader of the people. ”

“ Tested by the canons that the most judicious scholars have adopted in the investigation of all early history, we cannot doubt that the Northmen made four or five voyages to the coast of America in the last part of the tenth and the first part of the eleventh centuries; that they returned to Greenland with cargoes of grapes and timber, the latter a very valuable commodity in the markets both of Greenland and Iceland; that their abode on our shores was temporary; that they were mostly occupied in explorations, and made no preparations for establishing any permanent colony ”

“ The North, that did not fear the slave power in its prime, in the day of its political strength and patronage, when it commanded alike the nation and the mob, and for the same cruel purpose, will not be intimidated by its expiring maledictions around this capital. The North must pass this bill to vindicate its sincerity and its courage. ”

“ Archælogical remains of the Northmen abound in Greenland, all the way from Immartinek to near Cape Farewell; the existence of one such relic on the North American continent has never yet been proved. Not a single vestige of the Northmen's presence here, at all worthy of credence, has ever been found. ... The most convincing proof that the Northmen never founded a colony in America, south of Davis Strait, is furnished by the total absence of horses, cattle and other domestic animals from the soil of North America until they were brought hither by the Spanish, French and English settlers. ”

“ Exclamations of wonder and admiration were echoed 133from one to the other at some of these marvelous combinations; and it was with reluctance they turned, as the twilight deepened, from the margin of the woodland to the clear outline of the trees against the western sky. There was still room for fancy to sketch her pictures, and call up birds and beasts in that varied outline.
“This is the pleasantest afternoon of all,” cried Norman; “it is so nice for us to be by ourselves.”
“And yet you forsook me first, Norman, and, absorbed in your play, lost the first views of the Mississippi. ”