Alas! it never came! There was a roll in
the wave of thought, a few beautiful shells were thrown up on the
shore of literature, and then the little eddy of Tractarianism was
broken and spent, and lost in the general progress of mankind. We
touch with reverend pity the volumes without which we should scarcely
know that Young England had ever existed, and we refuse to believe
that all the enthusiasm and piety and courage of which they are the
mere ashes have wholly passed away. They have become spread over a
wide expanse of effort, and no one knows who has been graciously
affected by them. Who shall say that some distant echo of the Cherwell
harp was not sounding in the heart of Gordon when he went to his
African martyrdom? It is her adventurers, whether of the pen or of the
sword, that have made England what she is. But if every adventurer
succeeded, where would the adventure be?
The Duke of Rutland soon repeated his first little heroic expedition
into the land of verses. He published a volume of _English Ballads_;
but this has not the historical interest which makes _England's Trust_
a curiosity. He has written about Church Rates, and the Colonies, and
the Importance of Literature to Men of Business, but never again of
his reveries in Neville's Court nor of his determination to emulate
the virtues of King Charles the Martyr.
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