blessings: but who can rely on their permanence? or that we shall not be made to pay bitterly for our zeal as partizans of England, whenever it shall suit its plans to deliver us back to our old oppressors ?" ESSAY VI. The way of ancient ordinance, though it winds, My son the road, the Human Being travels, That, on which BLESSING comes and goes, doth follow The river's course, the valley's playful windings, Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines, Honoring the holy bounds of property! There exists An higher than the warrior's excellence. WALLENSTEIN. CAPTAIN BALL'S services in Malta were honored with his sovereign's approbation, transmitted in a letter from the Secretary Dundas, and with a baronetcy. A thousand pounds* * I scarce know whether it be worth mentioning, that this sum remained undemanded till the spring of the year were at the same time directed to be paid him from the Maltese treasury. The best and most appropriate addition to the applause of his king and his country, Sir Alexander Ball found in the feelings and faithful affection of the Maltese. 1805: at which time the writer of these sketches, during an examination of the treasury accounts, observed the circumstance and noticed it to the Governor, who had suffered it to escape altogether from his memory, for the latter years at least. The value attached to the present by the receiver, must have depended on his construction of its purpose and meaning: for, in a pecuniary point of view, the sum was not a moiety of what Sir Alexander had expended from his private fortune during the blockade. His immediate appointment to the government of the island, so earnestly prayed for by the Maltese, would doubtless have furnished a less questionable proof that his services were as highly estimated by the ministry as they were graciously accepted by his sovereign. But this was withheld as long as it remained possible to doubt, whether great talents, joined to local experience, and the confidence and affection of the inhabitants, might not be dispensed with in the person entrusted with that government. Crimen ingrati animi quod magnis Ingeniis haud raro objicitur, sæpius nil aliud est quam perspicacia quædam in causam beneficii collati. See WALLENSTEIN, Part I. p. 177. The enthusiasm manifested in reverential gestures and shouts of triumph whenever their friend and deliverer appeared in public, was the utterance of a deep feeling, and in nowise the mere ebullition of animal sensibility; which is not indeed a part of the Maltese character. The truth of this observation will not be doubted by any person, who has witnessed the religious processions in honor of the favorite saints, both at Vallette and at Messina or Palermo, and who must have been struck with the contrast between the apparent apathy, or at least the perfect sobriety, of the Maltese, and the fanatical agitations of the Sicilian populace. Among the latter each man's soul seems hardly containable in his body, like a `prisoner, whose jail is on fire, flying madly from one barred outlet to another; while the former might suggest the suspicion, that their bodies were on the point of sinking into the same slumber with their understandings. But their political deliverance was a thing that came home to their hearts, and intertwined with their most empassioned recollections, personal and patriotic. To Sir Alexander Ball exclusively the Maltese themselves attributed their emancipation: on him too they rested their hopes of the future. Whenever he appeared in Vallette, the passengers on each side, through the whole length of the street stopped, and remained uncovered till he had passed: the very clamors of the market-place were hushed at his entrance, and then exchanged for shouts of joy and welcome. Even after the lapse of years he never appeared in any one of their casals,* which did not lie in the direct road between Vallette and St. Antonio, his summer residence, but the women and children, with such of the men who were not at labor in their fields, fell into ranks, and followed, or preceded him, singing the Maltese song which had been made in his honor, and It was the Governor's custom to visit every casal throughout the island once, if not twice, in the course of each summer; and during my residence there, I had the honor of being his constant, and most often, his only companion in these rides; to which I owe some of the happiest and most instructive hours of my life. In the poorest house of the most distant casal two rude paintings were sure to be found: A picture of the Virgin and Child; and a portrait of Sir Alexander Ball. |