"Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could
create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an
eloquence to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of
slavery asunder, and rule the wildness of free minds with
unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm
empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound
through its history."
Grattan died in 1820, and twenty years later, in 1844, another great
English writer, Lord Macaulay, wrote a world-famous passage upon the
great Lord Chatham in the _Edinburgh Review_:--
"Chatham sleeps near the northern door of the church, in a spot
which has ever since been appropriated to statesmen, as the other
end of the same transept has long been to poets. Mansfield rests
there, and the second William Pitt, and Fox, and Grattan, and
Canning, and Wilberforce. In no other cemetery do so many great
citizens lie within so narrow a space. High over those venerable
graves towers the stately monument of Chatham, and, from above,
his effigy, graven by a cunning hand, seems still, with eagle face
and outstretched arm, to bid England be of good cheer, and to hurl
defiance at her foes.
"The generation which reared that memorial of him has disappeared.
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