ONE:[See larger version]The intelligence of this result was received by the public with transports of joy. London was illuminated for three successive nights; Edinburgh, Dublin, Manchester, Liverpool, and all the great towns followed the example. "For several days," says Alison, "the populace in all the cities of the empire seemed to be delirious with joy. Nothing had been seen like it before since the battle of Waterloo; nothing approaching to it after since the Reform Bill was passed." Meetings were immediately called in every direction to present addresses both to the king and queen: to the former, to congratulate him on the escape of his illustrious consort, and to call upon him to dismiss his present Ministers; and to the latter, to congratulate her on the restoration of those dignities from which she had been so long excluded. Not only public meetings of citizens and civic bodies, but trades of all kinds assembled and adopted addresses expressing their exultation at her triumph, and tendering their homage.
TWO:Napoleon dispatched Murat with his cavalry, Junot, Ney, and Davoust, in pursuit of the Russians, whom they overtook at a place called Valoutina, where a desperate battle was fought, and many men were killed on both sides; but the Russians moved off again without the loss of guns, prisoners, or baggage. Buonaparte, on proceeding to the spot, blamed Junot, imputing to him want of activity in the action, and threatening to deprive him of his command. The whole road between Smolensk and Valoutina was strewn with the dead and wounded; and as he entered the city on his return, he met whole tumbrils of amputated limbs going to be thrown away at a distance. The scene is said to have overcome even his senses, so long hardened to human suffering. On the 24th of August he marched forward to Gjatsk, where his advanced guard had halted. There he learned, to his great satisfaction, from a Frenchman long resident in Russia, that the people and the new levies, impatient of continual retreat and the ravage of their country, had demanded that Barclay de Tolly, a German, whom they imagined not sufficiently careful of Russian property and interests, should be superseded by the old general, Kutusoff, and that they should stand and fight. This was precisely what Buonaparte wanted, and the prudent De Tolly knew to be little better than madness, as it must cause a fearful loss of life, and would not rid the country of the invader, who was better left to starvation and the elements. But Alexander, though of De Tolly's opinion, gave way, and the Russians entrenched themselves on the heights of Borodino, De Tolly most magnanimously continuing to serve under Kutusoff. There, after a march of two hundred and eighty versts in seventeen days, the French came up with them; and, after a halt of two days, they attacked the Russian lines.The various triumphs in the direction of liberty of conscience evidence a sense of civil right in the community, which forced itself on the Government, rather than a sense of religion. But religion, too, was in steady growth. The Dissenters had greatly increased during this period, and amongst them the names of some of their ministers had acquired a general reputation. Robert Hall, of Leicester, and afterwards of Bristol, threw a new lustre on the Baptist community. He was the son of a Baptist minister, was at first educated by Dr. Ryland, the learned Baptist pastor of Northampton, and afterwards took his degree of M.A. at King's College, Aberdeen. He commenced his ministerial career in Bristol, and subsequently resided as minister at Leicester for twenty years. On the death of his old tutor, Dr. Ryland, he became the president of the Baptist Academy at Bristol, and pastor of Broadmead Chapel, in that town. Robert Hall was not inferior to any of the clergy of the Establishment in learning or eloquence. He was for eleven years the Baptist minister in Cambridge before removing to Leicester. In Cambridge he succeeded to a man nearly as remarkable, the celebrated Robert Robinson. At this university town he attracted the notice of some of the leading Established clergy and professors, and of the world at large, by his "Vindication of the Freedom of the Press," and his splendid sermon "On Modern Infidelity." Dr. Parr has left a testimony to the merits of Robert Hall in his will, which does honour to his liberality:"Mr. Hall has, like Jeremy Taylor, the eloquence of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the subtlety of a schoolman, the profoundness of a philosopher, and the piety of a saint." To the same body belonged the celebrated author of "Essays on the Formation of Character," John Foster, also of Bristol.
Duis bibendum diam non erat facilaisis tincidunt. Fusce leo
neque, lacinia at tempor vitae, porta at arcu. Vestibulum
varius non dui at pulvinar. Ut egestas orci in quam
sollicitudin aliquet.
