Cannery

“ Canning's demeanor was only what was to be expected. He was the proudest of men, and (that awful night at the Beach) she had expelled him from her presence like a schoolboy. Naturally he had been annoyed and offended--stung even into the rudeness of abandoning her in a summer-house to an entire stranger. How could you possibly wonder (unless feline) that he, great unsocial at best, had thereafter remained silent inside his fort?...
"How like a man," breathed Mrs. Heth, glancing at her watch, "to pick out this day of all others to be detained at a bank." ”

“ I should omit more trifling causes of favour, if I did not think them necessary to illustrate the character of the parties, and of the times of which I am speaking, and to show the attention which Mr. Canning, once engaged in the task of recasting our foreign policy, gave to the smallest circumstances which might facilitate it. In the ordinary acceptation of the word, he was not a courtier, or a man of the world. Living, as I have already stated, in the midst of a small clique of admirers, and little with society at large, he confined his remarkable powers of pleasing to his own set. ”

“ Canning’s reputation for wit, at this time, gained solely by his pen. Living with few, though much the fashion, who could be more charming in his own accomplished circle—when, the pleasant thought lighting up his eye, playing about his mouth, and giving an indescribable charm to his handsome countenance, he abandoned himself to the inspiration of some happy moment, and planned a practical joke, or quizzed an incorrigible bore, or related some humorous anecdote? No one’s society was so much prized by associates; no one’s talents so highly estimated by friends ”

“ The desire of sustaining it in this crisis of the terrible conflict in which we were engaged, had no doubt some influence over his conduct; but I venture to add that there are natures which, without being instigated by low and vulgar motives, have a propensity to harmonize with success. Mr. Canning’s nature was of this description. It loved the light to shine on its glittering surface; and he began to feel a sympathy for the Government, bright with the rays of anticipated fortune, which in darker moments he had shrunk from with antipathy and mistrust. ”

“ Character and policy of Canning.
The death of Canning was felt to be a national loss. In spite of every effort to render his funeral private, vast crowds attended, and Whigs and Tories joined in doing him honour. It was only the exclusive clique which, like Chatham, he had broken through which retained its enmity and regarded him to the end as a renegade adventurer. His title to greatness can scarcely be questioned. Adorned with the richest gifts of body and mind, a noble and attractive presence, overflowing wit, and a majestic eloquence, he showed himself an essentially practical statesman. ”

“ Canning instead of being particularly attached to him, this would make a great change as to Mr. Canning’s position in the Administration, and a great change as to the general character of the Administration itself. Mr. Canning, therefore, could not submit to such a change without damaging his policy and damaging himself. He was to be Cæsar or nobody; the man to lead a party, not the hack of any party that offered him the emoluments of place, without the reality of power. ”

“ After the group of illustrious men, which included the elder and the younger Pitt, Fox, Burke, and Sheridan, had disappeared from English public life, Canning was through the whole of his career the greatest Parliamentary orator and leader in England. Up to the time at which we have now arrived, he had not yet won his highest reputation as a statesman. ”

“ And how come they and their master, who lived above 2000 years before the birth of Canning and Castlereagh, to know any thing about them?
Landor.—I do not stand at trifles of congruity. Canning is the very man who has taken especial care that no strong box among us shall be without a chink at the bottom ”

“ Of all the evils of the stock-yards, the canning department is perhaps the worst. It is there that the cattle from all parts of the United States are prepared for canning. No matter how scrawny or debilitated canners are, they must go the route of their brothers and arrive ultimately at the great boiling vats, where they are steamed until they are reasonably tender. Bundles of gristle and bone melt into pulpy masses and are stirred up for the canning department. ”

“ It was an earnest undertaking, and the last he had to carry on during this session. In the meanwhile he could not fail to observe that the renown of his old adversary, Canning, was marvellously increasing; he was becoming a popular character, he was the favourite of the mob, while the firm and persevering minister who had aroused the world, and saved England, was branded with reprobation by the populace, who broke the panels of his carriage. Ought he to allow himself—he, so proud and haughty, [370] to be drawn into the wake of Canning, on the boundless waste of revolutionary ideas? ”

“ Canning's Story appeared improbable; all rested upon the Evidence of Hall: And there was given to you, against that Evidence, the Oath of Judith Natus, one not belonging to the Gipsies, and whom you have not any Reason to apprehend belonging to them; an honest Woman, Wife of an honest Labourer, who, with her Husband, lay in the very Room, in which the Girl pretended to have been confined, during the whole time of that alledged Confinement. ”

“ We all deserve to rest one day in a spot like this, deeply shaded and carpeted with moss, within sound of the Magic Falls. Here the world stops, for once,—the world, with all its pros and cons, its clear and valuable logic, of which one grows very weary. The world itself must tire sometime of its plentiful stock of common sense. Then, I christen this The World's Rest."
CHAPTER IX.
In an Orchard of the Memory
When Lord Canning and Indiana finally rejoined the others, they were made the subject of much reproval and interrogation.
"Blame me, Mrs. Bunker!" said Lord Canning. ”

“ Lord Canning folded his arms and gazed down into the impenetrable depths. "There was once a weaver. He wove a dull, gray woof—always the same gray woof. Sometimes, he would look up at the rich blue of the morning sky, then go on weaving his gray web. Sometimes, he would glance at the sunset, and marvel at the gorgeous hues of the clouds—but there was never a gleam of color in the web, that he wove—it was always the same, dull gray. ”

“ Canning felt a great responsibility. He could not tell who was guilty, and in trying to punish them or him he might disgust the good men on whom so much depended. He at once accepted an offer made by the gentlemen on board the ship to take turn about in doing duty in the tank and superintending the men engaged in paying-out the Cable. Then he caused the cablemen to be summoned at the bows, and showed them the coil and the wire. ”

“ The Ministerialists praise Canning’s speech in reply to Tierney’s motion [236] to the skies, but it is the fault of friends to overrate, for as La Harpe says somewhere, ‘On affaiblit toujours tout ce qu’on exagère.’ Canning is very lively, writes pretty verses, and has a good deal of [217] local wit, but I should suspect upon grave subjects which require depth and argument he is a très petit monsieur. The Opposition, who have not forgiven his desertion of them, exclaim at the venality of his politics. ”

“ Canning was the most brilliant orator of his day, and no less persuasive in private conversation than in public orations, gifted with an agile brain that leaped readily from one idea or one project to another, but cursed with a bitter wit which lightly aroused enduring enmities, and which, coupled with an excessive vanity, rendered him unpopular with his colleagues, and made it difficult for any one to take him seriously ”

“ The fervid eloquence of such men as Plunket, Macaulay, Brougham, and Canning—"the last of the rhetoricians"—was the fruit of many an hour of laborious thought and study. Canning especially never spared himself. He would draw up for use in the House a paper, on which were written the heads of the subjects which he intended to touch upon. ”

“ Still, if we look closely, I think we shall find that almost every one had its origin in one of two causes,—either it was a help to personal convenience, or in some way it made people more agreeable or less disagreeable to their neighbors. We have to study, and to guess a little sometimes, to make out just why it has become customary to do this or that, for the original reason has been forgotten or perhaps does not exist any longer, while the custom remains."
"I wonder," said Cannie, whose mind was still running on her own mishaps, "why people mustn't cut fish with a steel knife. ”

“ While residing in Bermuda he showed much early literary talent by editing and writing, in a hand like print, a weekly journal entitled ‘The Grouper,’ which he continued with small means for a considerable period. After his return to England he joined his mother and sister in Paris with hopes that through the interest of Mr. Canning, to whom he was related through that statesman's mother, he might obtain some appointment which would prevent the necessity of a return to his regiment, but by the death of Canning his chance of preferment came to an end. ”

“ Even George Canning—from whom one might have expected better—even he used to say, 'How well Culduff managed that commercial treaty with the Hanse Towns!' he never got over it, sir, never! You are a young fellow entering upon life—let me give you a word of counsel. Always be inferior to the man you are, for the time being, in contact with. ”

“ Among the toasts given at one of the banquets held in honour of the victory of Ayacucho, Mr. Canning’s health was drank in the following terms:—“El Sabio Ministro de Inglaterra, el primer Estadista del mundo, el Honorable George Canning, fiel amigo de la libertad! la justicia preside en sus deliberaciones; su nombre sera un motivo de placer para nostros, y para las generaciones que nos sucedan.” Translation: “The learned Minister of England, the first Statesman in the world, the Honourable George Canning, the faithful friend of liberty! justice presides in his deliberations ”

“ But he knew and, I believe, held his dear tongue for my sake."
"Tim would do anything for you, darling, in the same way as Canning would."
"Poor Mr. Canning--I mean Mr. Sargent."
"No, don't call him by his real name; he wishes to be known simply as Canning--The Shadow. He belongs to the gang and so does that Mrs. Petty who was set to watch you."
"A dreadful woman," said Lesbia, nestling, "how I disliked her. But I am sorry that Mr. Canning is wicked, George. He has been so kind."
"Kindness begets kindness," said Walker sententiously, "and I don't think Canning is so very wicked. ”

“ Bunker, who looked wonderfully well pleased considering her impatience.
"That is something new for you, Thurston. You always used to be quite punctilious in the matter of meals."
"Indeed, Uncle Nelson!"
"Lord Canning has lost his memory for the time being," explained Indiana. "He is just a trifle demented—by his own confession."
"Don't be alarmed, good people!" said Lord Canning, with a far-away look. "I belong to the harmless variety. Miss Stillwater, who is my keeper for the present, can testify to that."
"Oh yes, quite harmless! He has only one delusion. ”

“ Cool reflection at last came across while this elderly gentleman sat;
So he thought he would follow the stream and look for his cane, wig, and hat.
His head being thicker than common, o'er-balanced the rest of his fat;
And in plumped this son of a woman to follow his wig, cane, and hat.
George Canning.
SAYING NOT MEANING
Two gentlemen their appetite had fed,
When opening his toothpick-case, one said,
"It was not until lately that I knew
That anchovies on terrâ firmâ grew."
"Grow!" cried the other, "yes, they grow, indeed,
Like other fish, but not upon the land ”

“ It does not seem to us that Canning is fairly open to the charge of underhand dealing, while as to the second point they seem to have been at cross purposes—Canning referring to the interview in which the king directly charged him with the formation of a ministry, Wellington to another in which the king only asked for his advice. ”

“ He undertook and performed his very delicate task on this occasion with tact and discretion. No one, indeed, ever spoke in a less unpopular manner on an unpopular subject. Far superior to Mr. Canning, in this respect, from that calm, steady, and considerate tone which never gives offence, and which, laying aside the orator, marks the statesman, he neither attempted to excite anger, nor ridicule, nor admiration ”

“ My life was saved by miracle.”
“By canary,” said brother Michael. “Canary is the only life preserver, the true aurum potabile, the universal panacea for all diseases, thirst, and short life. Your life was saved by canary.”
“Indeed, reverend father,” said Sir Ralph, “if the young lady be half what you describe, she must be a paragon: but your commending her for valour does somewhat amaze me.”
“She can fence,” said the little friar, “and draw the long bow, and play at singlestick and quarter-staff.” ”

“ And I owe it to you, father, that I have seen the wildness of life beneath the trumpery policing we call civilization, and now I feel that I shall never be blind to it.”
“That’s all right,” said his father, “if you don’t let the wildness break up your own self-control. That’s what happened to me. Queer how clever two men can be when they understand each other. Can you lend me half-a-sovereign, and then I’ll have enough to take me over to Paris?”
René gave his father ten shillings in silver, they shook hands, the old man patting the younger’s shoulder, and they quitted the bar parlor together. ”