FORE:In Italy, on the contrary, France sustained severe losses. The Austrians, liberated from their Prussian foe by the peace of Dresden, threw strong forces into Italy, and soon made themselves masters of Milan, Guastalla, Parma, and Piacenza. On the 17th of June they gave the united French and Spaniards a heavy defeat near the last-named city, entered Genoa in September, and made preparations to pursue them into Provence.
FORE:
FORE:Some of the writers of the last period were still existing in this. Dryden was living, and wrote some of his most perfect works, as his "Fables," and his "Alexander's Feast," as well as translated Virgil after the Revolution. He was still hampered by his miserable but far more successful dramatic rivals, Shadwell and Elkanah Settle. Nathaniel Lee produced in William's time his tragedies, "The Princess of Cleves," and his "Massacre of Paris." Etherege was yet alive; Wycherley still poured out his licentious poems; and Southern wrote the greater part of his plays. His "Oronooko" and his "Fatal Marriage" were produced now, and he received such prices as astonished Dryden. Whilst "Glorious John" never obtained more than a hundred pounds for a play, Southern obtained his six or seven hundred.When the visitors entered a village, their first question was, "How many deaths?" "The hunger is upon us," was everywhere the cry; and involuntarily they found themselves regarding this hunger as they would an epidemic, looking upon starvation as a disease. In fact, as they passed along, their wonder was, not that the people died, but that they lived; and Mr. W. E. Forster, in his report, said, "I have no doubt whatever that in any other country the mortality would have been far greater; and that many lives have been[539] prolonged, perhaps saved, by the long apprenticeship to want in which the Irish peasant has been trained, and by that lovely, touching charity which prompts him to share his scanty meal with his starving neighbour. But the springs of this charity must be rapidly dried up. Like a scourge of locusts, the hunger daily sweeps over fresh districts, eating up all before it. One class after another is falling into the same abyss of ruin."
THREE:Besides the truths drawn by cross-examination from the witnesses for the slave-dealing merchants, who contended that even Sir William Dolben's Bill would nearly ruin Liverpool, Captain Parry, who had been sent by Pitt to Liverpool to examine some of the slave-ships, brought the directest proofs that the representations of these witnesses were false, and the accommodation for the slaves was most inhuman; Sir William Dolben himself had examined a slave-ship then fitting out in the Thames, and gave details which horrified the House. This Bill went to prohibit any ship carrying more than one slave to a ton of its register; the only matter in which the House gave way was that none should carry more than five slaves to every three tons, and a very few years proved that this restriction had been the greatest boon to the dealers as well as the slaves in the preservation of the living cargoes. The Bill met with some opposition in the Lords, and there Admiral Rodney and Lord Heathfield, both naturally humane men, were amongst its strongest opponents. The measure, however, passed, and received the Royal Assent on the 11th of July. Some well-meaning people thought that by legalising the freightage of slaves, England had acknowledged the lawfulness of the trade; but the advocates of the abolition made no secret of their determination to persevere, and this victory only quickened their exertions.
THREE:THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. (See p. 99.)The release of Wilkes by the Court of Common[180] Pleas was a triumph over Ministers, which, had they been wise, would have induced them to take no further notice of him. They had only made a popular demigod of him. The people, not only in London, but all over the country, celebrated his exit from the Tower with the liveliest demonstrations, especially in the cider districts, still smarting under the new tax, and where they accordingly once more paraded the jack-boot and petticoat, adding two effigiesone of Bute, dressed in a Scottish plaid and with a blue ribbon, the other no less a person than the king, led by the nose by Bute.
