The Ontario High School Reader

THE DOWNFALL OF WOLSEY

Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,5
And,—when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening,—nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory,10
But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride
At length broke under me; and now has left me,
Weary, and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:15
I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours!
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have;20
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.—

[Enter Cromwell, and stands amazed]

Why, how now, Cromwell!

Crom. I have no power to speak, sir.

Wol. What! amaz'd
At my misfortunes? can thy spirit wonder
A great man should decline? Nay, an you weep,25
I am fall'n indeed.

Crom. How does your grace?

Wol. Why, well;
Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell.
I know myself now; and I feel within me
A peace above all earthly dignities,
A still and quiet conscience. The king has cur'd me,30
I humbly thank his grace; and from these shoulders,
These ruin'd pillars, out of pity, taken
A load would sink a navy,—too much honour:
O, 't is a burden, Cromwell, 't is a burden,
Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven!35

Crom. I am glad your grace has made that right use of it.

Wol. I hope I have: I am able now, methinks,—
Out of a fortitude of soul I feel—
To endure more miseries, and greater far,
Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer.40
What news abroad?

Crom. The heaviest, and the worst
Is your displeasure with the king.

Wol. God bless him!

Crom. The next is, that Sir Thomas More is chosen
Lord chancellor in your place.

Wol. That's somewhat sudden:
But he's a learned man. May he continue45
Long in his highness' favour, and do justice
For truth's sake, and his conscience; that his bones,
When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings,
May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on 'em!—
What more?50

Crom. That Cranmer is return'd with welcome,
Install'd Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.

Wol. That's news indeed.

Crom.        Last, that the Lady Anne,
Whom the king hath in secrecy long married,
This day was view'd in open, as his queen,55
Going to chapel; and the voice is now
Only about her coronation.

Wol. There was the weight that pull'd me down.
      O Cromwell,
The king has gone beyond me: all my glories
In that one woman I have lost for ever.60
No sun shall ever usher forth mine honours,
Or gild again the noble troops that waited
Upon my smiles. Go, get thee from me, Cromwell;
I am a poor fall'n man, unworthy now
To be thy lord and master. Seek the king;65
That sun, I pray, may never set! I have told him
What and how true thou art: he will advance thee;
Some little memory of me will stir him—
I know his noble nature—not to let
Thy hopeful service perish too. Good Cromwell,70
Neglect him not; make use now, and provide
For thine own future safety.

Crom.        O my lord,
Must I, then, leave you? must I needs forego
So good, so noble, and so true a master?
Bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron,75
With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves his lord.
The king shall have my service; but my prayers,
For ever and for ever, shall be yours.

Wol. Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear
In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me,80
Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.
Let's dry our eyes; and thus far hear me, Cromwell:
And—when I am forgotten, as I shall be,
And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention
Of me more must be heard of—say, I taught thee,85
Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory,
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,
Found thee a way, out of his wrack, to rise in;
A sure and safe one, though thy master miss'd it.
Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me.90
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't?
Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee;
Corruption wins not more than honesty.95
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,
To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not:
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
Thy God's, and truth's: then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell,
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr. Serve the king;100
And—pr'ythee lead me in:
There take an inventory of all I have,
To the last penny; 't is the king's: my robe,
And my integrity to Heaven, is all
I dare now call my own. O Cromwell, Cromwell!105
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, He would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.
Crom. Good sir, have patience.

Wol.        So I have. Farewell110
The hopes of court! my hopes in heaven do dwell.

—Shakespeare

THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND

—Robert Browning (By permission)

ADVANTAGES OF IMPERIAL FEDERATION

And that which is the supreme dignity of manhood is even more essential in the case of a nation.

What do we mean when we speak of the independence of the country? We mean something beyond price, something that is the indispensable condition of true manhood in any country, something without which a country is poor in the present and a butt for the world's scorn in the future. There are men, or things that look like men, who say that as long as we put money in our purse, nothing else counts. How that class of men must have laughed some centuries ago at a fool called William Wallace! How clearly they could point out that it was much better to be part of the richer country to the south. When they heard of the fate of the patriot, did they not serenely say: "We told you so?" Did they not in their hearts envy the false Menteath the price he got for betraying the man who acted as true sentiment bade? But, give it time, and the judgment of the world is just. Even the blind can now see whether the patriot or the so-called "practical man" did most for Scotland's advantage. Now

What has his memory been worth to Scotland! Would you estimate it in millions? Superior persons will tell me that Wallace is an anachronism. In form, yes; in spirit, never. It may be said that in the end Scotland did unite with England. Yes, but first, what a curse the union would have been if unaccompanied, as in the case of Ireland, with national self-respect! And, secondly, Canada is ready for union with the States any day on the same terms as those which Scotland got: (1) That the States accept our Queen or King as their head. (2) That we keep our own civil and criminal law and parliamentary constitution, as Scotland did. (3) That the whole Empire be included in the arrangement, as the whole of Scotland was in the union. Surely the men who are never tired of citing the case of Scotland and England as parallel to ours must admit that this is fair.

But, here comes a question that must be faced. Is it worth while preserving the independence, the unity, and dignity of Canada? There are men who, for one reason or another, doubt whether it is. They have lost faith in the country, or rather they never had any faith to lose. It is this absence of faith that is at the bottom of all their arguments and all their unrest. Now, I do not wonder that there should be men who do not share our faith. Men who were brought up in England, and who have seen and tasted the best of it; who are proud of that "dear, dear land", as Shakespeare called it, proud of its history, its roll of saints, statesmen, heroes; of its cathedrals, colleges, castles; of its present might as well as its ancient renown; and who have then come to live in Canada,—well, they naturally look with amused contempt at our raw, rough ways, our homespun legislators and log colleges, combined with lofty ambitions expressed sometimes—it must be admitted—in bunkum. I do not wonder, either, that men who have been citizens of the United States, who exult in its vast population, its vast wealth, and its boundless energy, should think it madness on our part that we are not knocking untiringly at their door for admission, and that the only explanation of our attitude that they can give is that we are "swelled heads", or "the rank and file of jingoism." But, after all, they must know that this question is not to be settled by them. It must be settled by genuine Canadians. We, like Cartier, are Canadians avant tout. Most of us have been born in the land, have buried our fathers and mothers, and some of us our children, too, in the natal soil, and above the sacred dust we have pledged ourselves to be true to their memories and to the country they loved, and to those principles of honour that are eternal! God helping, we will do so, whether strangers help or hinder! We do not think so meanly of our country that we are willing to sell it for a mess of pottage. I know Canada well, from ocean to ocean; from the rich sea pastures on the Atlantic all the way across to Vancouver and Victoria. Every province and every territory of it, I know well. I know the people, too, a people thoroughly democratic and honest to the core. I would now plainly warn those who think that there is no such thing as Canadian sentiment that they are completely mistaken. They had better not reckon without their host. The silent vote is that which tells, and though it will not talk, it will vote solid all the time for those who represent national sentiment when the national life is threatened. I am not a party man. In my day, I have voted about evenly on both sides, for when I do vote, it is after consideration of the actual issues involved at the time. Both sides therefore rightly consider me unreliable, but, perhaps, both will listen when I point out that the independent vote is increasing, and that it is the only vote worth cultivating. The true Grit or Tory will vote with his party, right or wrong. No time, therefore, need be given to him. Let the wise candidate win the men who believe that the country is higher than party, and there is, I think, only one thing that these men will not forgive—lack of faith in the country. They have no doubt that it is worth while to preserve the unity, dignity, and independence of Canada.

We are quite sure of this. Are we as sure that it is our duty to pay the price? The United States are paying three or four times our whole revenue in pensions to those who fought to keep the country united. They do not grudge this enormous price. They have besides a respectable army, and a fleet that will soon be formidable. What means do we find it necessary to use? In any trouble we simply call on the Mother Country. The present system is cheap. No! it is dear and nasty, and cannot last.

What should we do? First, let us remember what Britain has dared for us within the last two or three years. Britain would fight the rest of the world rather than the United States,—not because the Republic could hurt her seriously, not because her trade with it is five times as much as with us, but because she is proud of her own eldest child and knows that a war between mother and daughter would be a blow struck at the world's heart. Yet, for us she spoke the decisive word from which there was no drawing back. For us, once and again, because we were in the right, she dared a risk which she hated with her whole soul.

Let us show that we appreciate her attitude. Let us, at any rate, do what Australia has done—enter into a treaty, according to which we shall pay so much a year for a certain number of ships, to be on our own coasts in peace, and in war at the disposal of the Empire. That would be tantamount to saying: "You have shared our risks, we will share yours; we will pay part of the insurance that is necessary to guarantee peace; we are educating officers for the army, and we are willing to give a much needed addition to the fleet". That would be a first step toward the attainment of full citizenship. What would be the next? We could ask that our voice should be heard in some constitutional way before any war was decided on. And we would have the right standing ground from which to urge a wise system of preferential trade in the common interest. These three things are, in my opinion, connected, and I have ventured to indicate the order in which they should be taken.

Would it pay? The experience of the world proves that nothing pays in the long run but duty-doing. How can a country grow great men if it is content to be in leading-strings, and to give plausible excuses to show that that state of things is quite satisfactory?

Only by some form of Imperial Federation can the unity of the Empire be preserved.

The previous advantages to which I referred concerned Canada directly. This one may appear, to some persons, far away from us, but it is not. In another speech I may enlarge on this advantage, but suffice it to say now, that we cannot isolate ourselves from humanity. Canada ought to be dearer to us than any other part of the Empire, but none the less we must admit that the Empire is more important to the world than any of its parts, and every true man is a citizen of the world.

I will not speak to-night of what the Empire has done for us in the past, of the rich inheritance into which we have entered, and of the shame that falls on children who value lightly the honour of their family and race. Consider only the present position of affairs. The European nations are busy watching each other. Britain is detaching herself from them, understanding that she is an oceanic, colonizing, and world power, much more than a European state. The United States and Britain are the two Powers, one in essence, cradled in freedom, that have a great future before them. According to the last census, the first has a population of some fifty-four millions of whites. The census of next April will show that the other has nearly forty millions in the home islands and ten millions in the self-governing Colonies. The two Powers have thus about the same population of white men, and the two are likely to grow at the same rate.

In Britain the rate of increase will be less, but in the Colonies it will be greater than in the States during the next half century. The States will keep united. They have stamped out disunion. We have to prove that we intend to keep the Empire united; but that can be done only by giving the ten millions a gradually increasing share in common privileges and responsibilities. Surely such a work is not beyond the resources of statesmanship. For a long time decentralization was needed. Now, all the signs of the times indicate the necessity to centralize. The days of small powers are over, and modern inventions make communication easy between east and west, as well as between north and south.

If this is not done, what will certainly happen? Separation, first of one part then of another; weakness of each part and weakness all round. Think of the impetus that this would give to every force that makes for chaos among the three hundred millions over whom God in His providence has placed us. The work that the British Empire has in hand is far grander than the comparatively parochial duties with which the States are content to deal. Its problems are wider and more inspiring; yet, at the same time, the white race that alone, so far, has proved itself fit for self-government, lives by itself, instead of being commingled with a coloured race to which only nominal freedom is allowed. Any one who has lived either in South Africa or in the Southern States will understand what a free hand and what an unspeakable leverage this gives us. We need no Force Bill to ensure a free ballot in Britain, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Already our sons are taking their part in introducing civilization into Africa, under the aegis of the flag, and in preserving the Pax Britannica among the teeming millions of India and southeastern Asia, those peoples kindred to ourselves, who for centuries before had been the prey of successive spoilers. Think of the horizon that this opens up, and remember that in building a state we must think not of the present but of the future.

In a generation all the best land on this continent will have been taken up. But, thanks to the far-reaching wisdom of our fathers, the greater part of the world will be open to the trade, to the colonizing, and to the enterprise of our children. We shall not be confined to a frozen north or to a single continent. We shall take part in work that is of world-wide significance, and shall act out our belief that God loves not North America only, but the whole world. Only on conditions of the British Empire standing, can this be done. This is the ideal that we should set before us, and remember that no people has ever been a great or permanent factor in the world that was without high ideals. I know that this advantage to which I am referring is not one that can be calculated in dollars, any more than the work of a Wallace or the poems of a Shakespeare, the life of Sydney or the death of Gordon; but it is an advantage none the less for which many of us are content to struggle and, if need be, to suffer. What are we in this world for? Surely for something higher than to still the daily craving of appetite. Surely for something higher than to accumulate money, though it should be to the extent of adding million to million. Surely we are in the world for something better! Yes, we are here to think great thoughts, to do great things, to promote great ideals. This can be done only through faithfulness to the best spirit of our fathers. Society is an organism, and must preserve its continuity. It must work, too, through instruments; and the most potent, keenest, best-tried instrument on earth for preserving peace, order, liberty and righteousness, is the Empire of which we are citizens. Shall we throw away that citizenship, or shall we maintain and strengthen that Empire?

—George Monro Grant (By permission)

COLLECT FOR DOMINION DAY

—Charles G. D. Roberts (By arrangement)

ENGLAND

APPENDIX

A

EXERCISES IN VOWEL SOUNDS AND IN ARTICULATION

1. ā as in ate, fate, cave, made, glade, pale.

â as in air, fair, chair, hair, lair, pair, care, dare, bare, share, bear, fairy, compare, parent, prayer, garish, there, heir.

ă as in at, that, and, damp, glad, bade, castle, baron, barrel.

ä as in far, arm, hark, charm, march, bard, calm, palm, psalm, balm, half, alms, father, dark, wrath, path, marsh, laugh.

ȧ as in ask, grasp, fast, last, pass, past, branch, chance, dance, mast, vast, gasp, quaff, craft, staff, chant, grass, mass.

ạ as in all, talk, squall, dawn, warp, hawk, laurel, haughty, halt.

a obscure, in final medial syllables, unaccented, and closed by n, l, nt, nce, nd, s, ss, st, p or ph or ff, m, or d, as in sylvan, vacancy, mortal, loyal, valiant, guidance, husband, breakfast, gallant, ballad, etc.

ē as in me, seem, reap, weed, lean, evil, redeem.

ĕ as in met, end, spell, debt, text, jest, when, merry, America, ceremony.

ẽ (coalescent) as in her, fern, earth, mercy, verse, stern, earl, pearl, term, verge, prefer, serge, earn, early.

ī as in time, tide, mile, wine, high, size.

ĭ as in pin, grim, king, gift, this, grip.

ĩ (coalescent) as in bird, girl, fir, stir, girdle, circle, virgin, first.

ō as in note, old, spoke, pole, wrote, joke.

ŏ as in not, shot, top, odd, honest, comic, on, gone, off, often, dog, (not "dawg"), God, soft, long, song, strong, coral, orange, foreign, torrid, coronet, corridor, correlate.

ô as in corn, lord, stork, orb, form, forlorn, morn, short, adorn.

o as in word, work, worm, worry.

ȯ as in love, done, some, cover, brother, another, month, company, Monday, front, covet, wonder, sponge, smother.

ö as in do, move, who, whose, lose, prove, too, bosom.

ū as in use, pure, duke, tune, tube, blue, duty, flew, new, student, subdue, pursue, absolute, illumine, tumult, suit, during, pursuit, presume, lunacy, Tuesday, numeral.

ŭ as in us, up, but, drum, dusk, trust.

ṳ as in rude, brute, fruit, sure, true, construe, recruit.

ụ as in full, pull, put, push, cushion, bushel, pulpit, bullet.

û as in hurt, burr, cur, fur, furl, burst, purr, recur, curfew, furlong, surge, urn.

Note that ä in far and ȧ in ask are called long Italian a and short Italian a respectively. The quality of the sound is the same in each, but they differ in quantity, the latter being shorter.

The following vowels have the same sound:

ẽ (coalescent) and ĩ (coalescent);

ö as in do, ṳ as in rude, and ōō as in food;

o as in word and û as in hurt;

ȯ as in love and ŭ as in us.

After marking the vowels diacritically read the following passages, paying special attention to the vowel sounds:

2. Distinguish the sound of ū in use, pure, duke, etc.,

Read the following with special reference to these sounds:

3. Double and triple consonant endings present difficulties of articulation:—Robbed, bragged, divulged, mends, breathed, gossips, casques, barracks, depths, heights, lengths, breadths, lists, aspects, seethes, thirsteth, breathest, sheath'st, melt'st, search'st, sixths, twelfths, tests.

Read with special reference to the articulation of the final consonants: