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battle , brat subsided into a settled gloom . ' His arms were enfolded each in the other ; and as he marched along , wrapt in the most torturing musings on his lost empire , he espied a shepherd boy , asleep amid his flock ,
insensible to all the changes the fate of war had made his country undergo . The fallen and fugitive monarch cast on him a look which expressed the heartwrung wish , that he could exchange condition with the lowly clown , whom a few hours before he would , perhaps , have spurned from his presence , and had he opposed his progress , have
crushed him with a blow , regardless of his fete ! Absorbed in the contemplation , I said within myself , it can only be from ignorance that the humbly born and the poor can ever make the crowned monarch or the splendidly wealthy the objects of so much envious hate !"
What beauty of contrast in this portraiture ; and how appropriate the instances adduced to illustrate the subject the Christian orator had chosen to present to the minds of his auditory for their meditation on this-dire
occasion ! Sometimes , however , he broke the gloom of this train of thought , and introduced some bright and consoling rays across the darkness which hangs over the moral horizon of man ; " Thou , " did he say , "
benevolent follower of Jesus , hast perhaps placed a son of indigence in the way of gaining his honest livelihood , and joy penetrates a once withered heart . Even in the bitterness of adversity , a tender wife and smiling children will cause the brow to dilate , and the soul
to enjoy the good it still possesses : even the horrors of a prison are thus diminished—perhaps converted into sources of happiness . " The eloquent and pious preacher then entered into a more severe train
of reasoning , to expose the absurdity of the Epicurean of ancient times , and of the modern Sophist in these days of irreligion , in attributing this mixed lot of man to chance , a word used to couceal our ignorance of the true causes
of things . with exquisite judgment he here selected many of the obvious good results arising from the varied discipline by which the character of man is formed and tried in bis passage through life , and shewed that this discipline was the parent of our virtues
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and the stimulant which developed our noblest powers ^ till at length he held forth to the mental eye the Marquis of Londonderry , sinking into imbecili ty , and seeking a refuge from despair iu self-destruction .
"The public attention of Europe has lately been roused to the contem - plation of a most tremendous , appalling * event ; and has powerfully been impressed by so- awful a subject for its meditation . A man raised to the
highest offices of the state ; and when we consider the colossal grandeur of the British empire , we can scarcely dwell on a loftier station amid the glories of civilized life : a man
admitted to the counsels of haughty and potent monarchs > and taking in them a naost commanding part , commanding from the eminence to which England had attained , and of which she
sometimes made an ill use - , a man , who in the senate led a British House of Commons ; defective , indeed , as a repre sentation of the nation , yet , with all its defects , the most august deliberative assembly on the face of the globe ^ ( this man , ) in an access of melancholy madness , has raised his hand and
struck against his life ; at a moment too when he was environed with the proudest honours and most extensive influence of which a subject of England has to boast : an awful admonition this of the vanity of human
greatness I Do not the splendour of wealth , the charms of voluptuousness , the power attendant on successful high ambition , lose all their dazzlin g allurement before so unnerving an instance of greatness , shorn of all its glory ? We here contemplate a mind suddenly
losing all its powers , and falling into the desperation of madness , and determined not to survive the degradation JVhat shall we say to these things ? No doubt , had the suicide been voluntary , arguments might easily have been adduced to confound the sop histry
which might have attempted its defence : but what avails the pomp , nay even the justness of reason , to a mind % J ¦ 1 * A . in ruins , sinking into imbecility , though somewhat conscious of the t
change ? No doubt , many have cas away life from wounded vanity , disappointed ambition , a hopeless bereavement of affection ; many froin exce * wv « fear ; but then the passions mlS ^ have been reasoned with and comW-
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542 . - Item « $ * ff ^ Browne ' s Sermon on the Death
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1822, page 542, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2516/page/22/
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