American and English Studies (Volume 2) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: EDMUND BURKE WHAT a story of the great Georgian and Victorian times might be reconstructed from the tablets in memory of former residents, which have been set up in the streets of Bath! The town has been a haunt of great men; the very air is filled yet with the shadows of the mighty. Foremost in the civic record comes the masterful Chatham, and hard after, his yet more masterful son. Then is commemorated the stay in Bath of Britain's greatest sailor, Lord Nelson,and of British soldiers who won imperishable renown in two remote continents, Lord Clive in Asia, General Wolfe in America. The town has cherished, likewise, the memories of residents of gentler fame. On the North Parade, as tablets show, dwelt Goldsmith, whom to this day, all men love, and Wordsworth, whom all admire. On the South Parade is seen a tribute to the best novelist Britain had to that time produced, Sir Walter Scott, and there is place for another to one of the greatest men of letters she ever had, Samuel Johnson. The other novelists remembered in Bath range from Henry Fielding and Jane Austen to Charles Dickens; and the poets from George Crabbe to Thomas Moore and Walter Savage Landor; while with impartial hands there have been placed tablets also for Gainsborough, the artist, Quin, the actor, and Herschel, the astronomer. And yet, in all this brilliant galaxy, the greatest,Edmund Burke, was left to the last. He was more nearly the town's own, too, than many of the others. It was in Bath that he found his devoted wife. Perhaps the most fruitful period of his great public career he spent as the representative in the House of Commons for the neighboring people of Bristol. To Bath he came repeatedly for rest and enjoyment; and came, too, when he knew the shadow of death was upon him. In the house which now has...