Henry Parkes

“ Some of the men at the manufactory have made me little presents, when leaving them, altogether to the amount of more than one pound—not in money, you know—but little articles of their own making, including a very beautiful ivory pocket tablet.
I hope you will enjoy health and unlocked for prosperity till you hear from me again, and till I hear from you, I have not much more time now. If any of you should ever have to come to London you cannot do better than to get lodging, if you can, at our house in Kirby-street, but I will give you another address, in case Irvines should be gone away: Mr. ”

“ I believe that the name of Henry Parkes will yet be dear to the heart of every patriotic son of Federated Australia, and that all concerning him will be very precious in their eyes. The mistakes, the errors, and the failures of the last years of his life will be wiped away as one would brush dust from a beloved dead face. ”

“ The feeling on the civil war in America is not the least perplexing manifestation of these times. So long as victory attended the rebellious slave-holders, sympathy for their cause was too active to be concealed amongst certain classes here, as well among the new families who have risen to social position by trade, as among the old Conservative proprietors. ”

“ One gets reconciled in a measure to the useless talk and little time-serving expedients of our Colonial Parliament, after viewing precisely the same kind of impulsiveness and inconsistency in the proceedings of the House of Commons. At least, we feel a sort of relief in finding that human littleness is not peculiar to Australian politicians.
Among other centres of attraction in London lately, the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science has been holding its annual meetings. The inaugural address was delivered on the evening of the 5th, in Exeter Hall, by Lord Brougham. ”

“ Lord Palmerston's Government exists by a support in the House of Commons which may crumble away at any moment. The financial reformers and radicals who sit below the Ministerial gangway are all in a state of disaffection, the Irish members for the most part are savagely hostile, while a party of men sit round Mr. Disraeli, perhaps the most compact of any in Parliament by their political sympathies and social intercourse. 'The rope of opposition is a strong one, but it is badly twisted, and the weakness of the third strand is notoriously the personal dislike of the men for their chief. ”

“ Yet I must say the House of Commons is entitled to rank among its chief virtues its tolerance of bores, notwithstanding what has been so often written of its disposition to cough and crow men down. It is scarcely possible to conceive a greater and more pretentious dunce than Sir Robert Peel, and yet the House, from some whim or other, will lustily cheer the Right Honorable baronet, even when he utters the most errant balderdash. ”

“ Never in the history of the world was called forth in so short a time an army so powerful and so highly organised, under generals so brave and so skilful, as that which is now fast replanting the flag of the Republic in the rebel States. ”

“ Let us reason as we will, we cannot free ourselves from the painful consciousness that we are about to plunge into a fratricidal war—about to vindicate our honour in the shadow of the blood-red banners of slavery. ”

“ It is hard for me to think that I have seen my dear father and mother, in all probability, for the last time, but the thought is brightened by the humiliating recollection that I have been more a burden than a help to them, and the hope that if we never meet again in this world of change, we shall in a happier and changeless one. Give my best love to them, and tell my brothers to love them, and be more dutiful to them than I have been, and give my love to my sisters, Maria and Eliza. I wish you all a very happy Christmas, though I shall not be with you on that day. ”

“ I hope none of you are unhappy at the thought of my leaving you, or will think much about me when I am gone. However I may fare on the opposite side of the globe, I do not think it can much more darken my prospects of the future. ”

“ In every city and town of England to-day the ordinary pursuits of life have been suspended. But it is not by closed shutters and doors, by habiliments of mourning, by the tolling of Church bells, and by drooping flags wreathed with crape, that the national sorrow is most touchingly expressed. You see it everywhere in the grief-burdened faces of the people. ”

“ Beloved father and mother, I feel as if they were already in their graves. A father and mother bowed down with years of affliction, and steeped in poverty and wretchedness. The very thought seems to make me unhappy for ever, when I know that half the circumference of the globe will shortly lie between us. ”

“ And the announcement of Henry Taylor's name was followed by the not very complimentary enquiry, "Who is he?" I felt myself somewhat honoured by being permitted to inform a veritable Master of Arts that Henry Taylor was the author of "Philip Van Artevelde."
I think I never saw so glorious-looking a man as Henry Taylor. His head is large and finely formed, with massy silvery hair, a long waving lock in front being quite golden. His forehead is broad and lofty, his eyes full, his cheeks inclining to florid. ”

“ The lines from Glasgow, down both banks of the Clyde, are everywhere beautiful As you travel on one side you see the train on the other, now darting in behind some severed spur of the hills, and now bursting out upon the more even shore, and ever filling its wreath of white steam behind it, as if waving an adieu to the vessels on the old historical river. ”

“ Tell our beloved mother, should this reach you while she is allowed to remain with you, that the prospect before her children in this strange country is fair for the cloudy times we live in, and assure her of our unabated affection. ”

“ In the hovels of the indigent poor, O, what a soul-sickening world is there! "The misery of the English poor," at this moment, is no hollow cry raised by a morbid humanity. It meets you in palpable shape at every turn, grinding stout earnest men and comely women in the dust. Pass through Lancashire—you see crowds of men with hunger as plain as winter daylight in every countenance—and often poor pallid creatures tottering under the rapid ravages of consumption—the ghastly messenger of relief which comes from want and a damp dwelling. ”

“ Until of late I had lived under the impression that the Americans had a deal to answer for in cherishing a bad feeling towards England, which was entirely unjustified by the disposition of the English people towards them; but a worse spirit than anything I have ever read of in America is constantly displaying itself among the factory squires and shopocrats of England, while the sympathies of the aristocracy are undisguisedly offered to the rebellious Southerners. ”

“ The railways do no more than run their fine lines through the rural landscape, making sunny banks for the flowers and shrubs most loved by the English people. Though places which have a name in history are undoubtedly visited by a larger number of strangers than formerly, I am inclined to think there are many nooks and corners of rural England which are more secluded from the world now than when the world's travellers had to journey by the common road. ”

“ It has been said that England has lost in Prince Albert the most valuable life in all the gifted ranks of her widespread population. Surely that cannot be the true estimate of the nation's loss. But she has lost the one man of rare judgment, rare sagacity, and rare humanity, whose place can never be supplied. ”

“ Throughout the provinces people generally became aware of the nation's loss as they assembled at the house of God, and from one end of England to the other the effect was one of universal visible grief, as if death had come to the doors of every family in the land. The signs of mourning have continued everywhere until today, when the body of the Prince has been consigned to the grave. Never in English history has any death, been so visibly felt by all ranks of the English people. ”

“ Still lighted by their battle-fires,
'Gainst kingly power and kingly crime,
Long struggled in the darkened time?
How in a rolling sea they stood,
Where every wave was freemen's blood,—
Shall we forget the time of strife,
When freedom's only price was life? ”

“ To my mind there is something of glaring injustice towards the men who have sprung from the people's own ranks, and of degrading fickleness of opinion in the people themselves, in this apparent neglect and mistrust of their old friends. ”

“ But it is a blessed thing to know there is another and a better world where sorrow never troubleth and the weary are at rest. Could we have been allowed to meet again, for me to have heard her bless my dear little child and listen to her mother's story of her birth, it would have been to me a happiness greater than I can ever more expect. ”

“ But to hear the purblind country journalist squeaking out his horror at the unhappy collision between the European gold-diggers and the Chinese, quite unconscious of the brutal outrages between gamekeepers and poachers which disfigure his own columns every morning, excites laughter where one might otherwise be inclined to weep. ”

“ But there were so many conflicting interests to be torn and trampled in the threatened strife between England and America, and so much danger of being precipitated upon ground foreign to all the national sympathies—so much that, while it damped all chivalry of spirit, would madden the worst passions of war—that the suspense in which the English people passed from the old to the new year was perfectly awful. The great emotion of the popular mind cannot be gathered from the jarring utterances of the public Press. ”

“ The moonlight of a milder clime
Is round me pour'd o'er scenes sublime;
But I would fly from nil earth's light
And grandeur to behold to-night
My native land!
To-morrow's sun will beauteous rise
In Australasia's summer skies ”

“ In every man's face there were the consanguineous signs of uneasiness and a confused grief, and it seemed as if the millions were all looking with the same sorrowful sternness of purpose towards the West. ”

“ The services of Prince Albert were of a kind which the intelligent mechanics of England thoroughly appreciate. Those only who have seen the stalwart workman, with a delicate sensibility mantling his toil-stained face, when men of a condition superior to his own manifest an intelligent interest in his handiwork, will be able to comprehend the fulness of the English artisan's affection for a Prince who was not only acquainted with every branch of manufacturing art, but was himself the successful improver of several of the most beautiful productions of the English workshop. ”

“ There is a very kingliness in the true type of the English mechanic. What can be more kingly than a sense of sovereignty over material nature? And this sense of innate power—the cunning of his own right hand—when subordinated to a higher sense of moral duty, gives to him a nobleness of life which many in the favoured walks of society can never approach. Thousands of such men—the flower of modern England—are scattered through England's manufactories ”

“ Where rich and poor like brothers come.
How bravely did the stripling climb,
From step to step the rugged hill:
His gaze thro' that benighted time
Fix'd on the far-off beacon still.
He faced the storm that o'er him burst,
With pride to match the proudest born:
He bore unblench'd Detraction's worst, —
Paid blow for blow, and scorn for scorn. ”

“ Why, it has proved, as only such a tremendous crisis could prove, the vital strength of democratic institutions. What monarchy ever rose up from the lap of Peace to confront so monstrous a disorder, and to suppress it with so strong a hand and with such patriotic unanimity? ”

“ There is a man now passing before my eyes well worth describing.
Imagine yourself standing by me on the deck of a small schooner lying in Sydney harbour. There is a miserable-looking old man paddling an old canoe from the Sydney side to the opposite shore. The face is unshorn, and his beard and hair are as white as snow. As his vessel glides over the sunny waters he casts his haggard countenance towards the bright blue sky above, and you hear him speaking vehemently in a jargon between French and English. Listen! You now hear him fiercely cursing God Almighty, and calling upon the devil. ”

“ I have questioned myself on this matter often and deeply, and my soul has returned one only answer—'I love her truly, passionately love her!' My imagination has often of late conjured up before me my beloved as I first knew her in the spring of womanhood, and I have listened again to her first fond words to me—me, a poor and friendless boy, to whom then none other had ever spoken fondly ”

“ A question of vast moment, but of no distinctive shape, must often intrude from the mists of the future upon the minds of political thinkers—Who is to govern England half-a-dozen years hence? The old statesmen are dying off. The next six years will make terrible havoc with the names that have been most familiar to the ears of the last two generations. As they descend into the valley of shadows, where are the men of calm strength and vigour coming up the other side of the hill, bearing the standard of either party? ”

“ Tell her and my dear father and my sisters and brothers, and my beloved wife's friends also, that, though every other feeling may be blunted by continual contact with the world, our love for them will receive new vigour from trouble and privation, from strife and sorrow. Long before you can read this I trust we shall receive a happier account from you—of health banishing all traces of sickness, and of suffering and anxiety giving place to domestic comfort and peace. ”