From the career of the military hero, let us turn to that of the Statesman. He seeks his enjoyment in the gratification of ambition, in administering the affairs of nations, and in commanding by his patronage a crowd of adherents and dependents. From its very nature, this object of pursuit is necessarily limited to a few, and those men of high intellectual capacity. There have been few in which the mirage of life has been more apparent. Cardinal Wolsey, after climbing the highest round of ambition's ladder, was in the evening of life constrained to exclaim that had he served his God as faithfully as he had done his king, He would not have abandoned him in his old age. The closing words of Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV, echoed the same sentiment. The dying hours of Cardinal Mazarin, the ambitious French statesman, were clouded with gloom and chagrin. He wandered, we are told, along his splendid picture-gallery, bidding his works of art a mournful farewell, and exclaiming, "Must I quit all these?" Necker, the celebrated minister of Louis XVI, was such a favorite with the French nation, that he was honored with this inscription on his door, "The residence of the adored minister." He was afterward compelled to secure his safety by flight from the fickle people who had honored him with almost idolatrous homage.
The career of Warren Hastings, governor-general of India, is another apt illustration of the mirage of political ambition. After tasting, for a series of years, the sweets of oriental luxury and enjoying uncontrolled authority over millions of his fellow-creatures, he was at last stripped of his power, and at a time when he reasonably anticipated honors from the hand of his sovereign, was exposed to a trial of nine years' duration, which left him deprived of the wealth he had by very equivocal means acquired.
The late Lord Melville was likewise a memorable instance of the unsatisfactory character of worldly ambition. We speak not here of the impeachment which embittered the close of his life but of the period of his unclouded political splendor. The late Sir John Sinclair had passed a few days with him at his country villa and on a new year's morning entered his apartment to offer him the customary compliments of the season. He found the statesman perusing some important documents and wished him a happy new year. On receiving the salutation, Lord Melville, after a pause, replied, "It has need to be a happier one than the last, for I scarcely remember a happy day in it." This came from the lips of a man envied by all for his greatness. "My father," says the narrator of the anecdote, "would often quote it to us as a proof of the vanity of human wishes." As a still more striking instance, however, of the cares and perplexities which haunt the path of ambition, we select as our leading illustration the celebrated WILLIAM PITT, or The Statesman.
This remarkable man was the son of a no less remarkable father, the great Earl of Chatham and was trained under his eye to public life. When a boy he displayed remarkable powers of mind and gave prognostics of future eminence. He entered Parliament a mere youth aided by everything which could encourage hopes of a brilliant career. His sovereign, the senate, and the people were alike disposed to regard him with favor for his parent's sake. His first speech confirmed their anticipations. No sooner had he delivered it than public opinion strongly declared itself, and all parties confessed that the mantle of his father had fallen upon him. At the age of twenty-four, a period when the generality of young men are discharging duties of a probationary character, he was made prime minister. He was now first in position as he was first in intellectual power among the commons of England. Let a young man dwell upon his lot, and he will be apt to think that it contained all the elements of happiness. He was emphatically the favorite of his sovereign to a degree which it had been the privilege of few before him to enjoy. He was the idol of a numerous party in the senate and of a large and influential body of supporters in the kingdom. The mightiest intellects bent before him, and the highest offices were in his patronage. Each morning, when he rose, he was entitled to assert that, in all the vast empire of England, the sun shone on no one who was in reality, however he might be in name, more powerful than himself. Add to all this the possession of youth and the prospect of length of days, and we have drawn in the world's estimation a picture containing much to envy. And yet even this was but the mirage.
It was deception as regarded his own personal enjoyment during his career of greatness. In vain should we look for any proofs of this in the biographies of Pitt, published by his political admirers, shortly after his death. There we meet chiefly a narrative of flattering success. A few years ago, however, an account of his domestic life appeared in the memoirs of the lady who had superintended the arrangements of his household. "People," said this writer, "little knew what Mr. Pitt had to do. Up at eight in the morning with people enough to see for a week. Obliged to talk all the time he was at breakfast receiving first one and then another until four o'clock. Then eating a mutton chop; hurrying off to the House, and there badgered and compelled to waste his lungs till two or three in the morning. Who could stand it? After this, heated as he was and having eaten nothing in a manner, he would sup with Dundas, Huskisson, Rose, Long, and such like, and then go to bed and get three or four hours' sleep to renew the same thing the next day, and the next. During the sitting of Parliament what a life he led! Roused from his sleep with a dispatch from Lord Melville; then down to Windsor; then, if he had half an hour to spare, trying to swallow something. Mr. Adams with a paper; Mr. Long with another. Then, with a little bottle of cordial confection in his pocket, off to the House until three or four in the morning. Then home for a hot supper for two or three hours more to talk over what was to be done next day; and wine—and wine—and wine. Scarcely up next morning, when, tat-tat-tat, twenty or thirty people, one after another, and the horses walking before the door from two till sunset, waiting for him. It was murder." Such was the private life of a prime minister, whose position was the object of envy to numbers. Alas! how little was it to be coveted.
But the life of this great man was in other respects also an exemplification of the vanity of human pursuits. "During his long career of office," says one of his warmest admirers, "he could scarcely get a gleam of success to cheer him." He was disappointed too in an attachment which he had formed to a young lady of rank and great personal attractions. Added to this, his affairs gradually became embarrassed, and he found his spirits and energies depressed by a load of debt. His weakened frame succumbed soon afterward to an attack of disease. His temper also was soured by the ingratitude which he experienced.
“All the peers," says the writer above quoted, "whom he had made deserted him, and half of those whom he had served returned his kindness by going over to his enemies.”
The final stroke at last came. A brilliant effort of his genius to crush the hydra-headed power of Napoleon was defeated by the battle of Austerlitz. Chagrined, disappointed, crowded with anxieties, this blow was too much for the statesman to bear, and he found the hand of death upon him. Had he then the consolations of Christ to rest upon? Ah, no! On his dying bed he is stated to have exclaimed, "I fear I have neglected prayer too much to make it available on a death-bed." He soon afterward died. "In the adjoining room," says a contemporary writer, "he lay a corpse in the ensuing week; and it is a singular and melancholy circumstance, resembling the stories told of William the Conqueror's deserted state at his decease, that someone in the neighborhood having sent a messenger to inquire after Mr. Pitt's state, the latter found the wicket open, then the door of the house, and walked through the rooms till he reached the bed on which the minister's body lay lifeless, the sole tenant of the mansion of which the doors a few hours before had been darkened by crowds of suitors, alike obsequious and importunate—the vultures whose instinct leads them to haunt only the carcasses of living ministers." He died in his forty-seventh year, on the anniversary of the day on which he had first entered Parliament. What a difference was there between the buoyant youth of twenty and the careworn statesman of forty-seven! Before the eyes of the one sparkled a long vista of political enjoyments and honors; before the eyes of the other were the anxieties and cares which had attended them when grasped. He had too much followed, as his object in life, unsanctified ambition, and he had found it the mirage.
“How do these events," wrote at the time Mr. Wilberforce, the friend of Pitt, "how do these events tend to illustrate the vanity of worldly greatness! Poor Pitt, I almost believe, died of a broken heart. A broken heart! What! was he like Otway, or Collins, or Chatterton, who had not so much as a needful complement of food to sustain their bodies, while the consciousness of unrewarded talents and mortified pride pressed them within, and ate out their very souls? Was he even like Suwarroff, another most useful example, basely deserted and driven into exile by the sovereign he had so long served? No; he was the highest in power and estimation in the whole kingdom—the favorite, I believe, on the whole, both of king and people. Yes, this man who died of a broken heart was First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer!”