The Sun.
London, England, 1850-09-24 00:00:00

SIR ROBERT' PEEL, HIS POR-
TRAITS, AND lIIS PAINTERS.
(From the Weekly Dispatch.)

Many characters have been drawn of Sir Robert
Peel, many pictures flamed, many busts chiselled.
Some of them bear a tolerable resemblance to what
he seemed—not one of them present the least likeness
to what he was. His nearest friends, his greatest and
least discriminating admirers, never knew, or at all
events never either disclosed or appreciated his most
valuable qualities. Their worship consisted of the
magnification into virtues of his most questionable or
most trivial accomplishments; they missed entirely,
they did not know of the existence of the higher ex-
cellencies which he really possessed. We ought not,
therefore, to be surprised that art should miss the fea-
tures which friendship and reverence failed to discern ;
or to feel disappointed that the painter should fail to
characterize that which the politician or the statesman
had only caricatured. In, truth, friend and foe seemed
resolved to spell him backwards—to turn him inside
out—to misapprehend the significancy of his being—
to take the husk for the kernel. We address many
who never saw Sir Robert Peel. We warn them
not to trust to any portrait, mental or physical,
which is presented cf him. Neither statue, minia-
ture, half-length, nor full, penetrate to the depths of
his expression. They all indicate hardness, coldness,
vain pride, worldly saroir faire. Levater would
have made no such mistake. There is a certain
cat-like aspect given to his features, of which there
was no trace in the original. There is a particular
precision in the cutting of his face, and a certain
.Jemmy-ness in his aspect, attitude, and figure, in all
the busts, statuettes, and engravings or paintings,
which have been attempted (for nothing has been
achieved) of him, which had no part in the original.
The whole "cut of his jib" was that of a plain and
thorough Englishman. He was neither a fop nor a
sloven. His clothes hung somewhat loosely on him ;
his hat slouched; his countenance thoughtful, if not
abstracted; his gait slightly removed from shambling;
his frame large, but not much filled up; his figUre
rather tall, and his limbs .slender. Nothing was fur-
ther removed from pomposity or formality than his
ordinary bearing, which was tinged only in the
slightest degree with the apparent consciousness that
his position required it as a duty, rather than that his
individuality desired for himself that acertain plain and
simple dignity should be transfused over his social at-
titude. His countonarce---;we think we see him now, we
have the very man before us—had only to be reed a
little to be liked. It was least pleasing when engaged
in the excitement of Parliamentary dialectics. But
studied in its ordinary aspect, it expressed thought-
fulness, sincerity, refinement of nature rather than of
culture, goodness of heart, an entire absence of the
capability of malignity. And this was really the
man's nature. We look back with astonishment at
the total misreading of his whole character and ac-
tions which the bitterness of foes triturated upon the
public mind, and the silence if not half acquiescence
of friends left uncontradicted. As a father, a husband
a neighbour, a friend, a private member of society,
even as a political antagonist, it would be only a nig-
gard and grudging parsimony of speech which would
stop at the epithet exemplary or praiseworthy. No
son was ever more dutiful, no father was ever more
affectionate, no husband was ever more devoted. He
spared the public purse, but lavished his own on his
relatives and friends. He never taunted, but he never
imitated a nepotist. His charity and, public-spirited
liberality were only . less remarkable than the
studied privacy with which be " did good
by stealth and blush'd to find it fame." His
acts of generosity were betrayed to the pub-
lic by the impulsive and garrulous gratitude
of the recipients--by the last letter of Hayden, and
the irrepressible reverence of Wilderspin. His very
love of art was another development of his love of
f.,.
humanity. and of his country. Be spent his money,
of on picture dealers and dead masters, but on
living artists, who were made comfortable by his pa-
tronage, arid
.on English scenes, which were com-
memorated by his liberality. You cannot find a
taunt, scarcely a sarcasm, in the whole of his volu-
minous utterance. Such was his mastery of debate,
that he could afford to dispense with the use of all the
offensive weapons of faction, and even in self-defence
to use the shield without assistance from the dagger.
In all that trying time, when friends grew cold, when
the revengeful had a charter to be bitter, when enemies
ceased to measure their malignity, and every art of
rhetoric was turned upon that one object of the hatred
of party, baited by wit, sarcasm, insinuation, ran-
corous bluster, rude jibe, and vulgar insult, it is im-
' possible to conceive a spectacle more worthy of the
veneration of mankind than the noble equanimity,
the " patient merit," the self-commanding presence of
mind which carried that great man through the most
trying circumstances of an eventful life, with an
imperturbability which was entirely removed
from callousness, and a dignity which sought no
assistance from pride, and which nothing but the
consciousness of the sacrifices which patriotism and
duty demanded could ever have sustained. Nothing
but the sordid worldliness of the age could so long
have suffered such a character to be so fatally misun-
ders'ood. We envy the grave its treasure, that it
May render back its tribute to' show him that his
countrymen in the main are worthy of him and of his
sacrifices, by being at last, from the inherent virtues
of their nature, fully alive to his own: The cant of
editorship marked with what pomposity he delivered
himself, and with how intense an egotism he exhausted
the use of the personal pronoun. But this was the
very excellence of his public character. He referred
his policy to himself, because he alone was wading to
take its full responsibilities. He was master of his
Cabinet, and therefore it was that his administration
was consistent. He left nothing to others, and there-
fore he had nothing to modify. His career was
marked by no "murder of the innocents." He ef-
fected everything he undertook, because he matured
before he attempted to accomplish it. He was
daunted by no difficulties about majorities. What
was necessary for the ends of good gpvernment he
adopted, and was ready to stand or fall by. He with-
drew no measures because he could not carry them.
He "screwed his courage to the sticking -place, and
did not fail." Where Alelbourne thought a politician
"mad to attempt to repeal the corn-laws," at the
very time he declared they ought to be repealed,
Peel insisted upon the attempt because it was un-
just to retain them. Everything about his acts,
whatever may be said of, his manner, was thorough,
hearty, complete. If a tax was bad, he took it all off.
If a criminal code was sanguinary, he made a sweep-
ing reform. If the Catholics were unjustly treated,
he would not render justice by degrees and bits, but
at once and altogether.. If the nation was in debt, he
would not put on a five per cent. or a ten per cent.
addition to the burdens of the poor, but go at once
to property and income to pay it off. If a sliding
scale was objectionable; he would have no fixed duty.
His policy filled the imagination, and satisfied the un-
derstanding. There was no cobbling, tinkering, bit-
by-bit reform about it. He governed upon principles.
He was a lawgiver, not a mere minister; a ruler, not
the mere head of a department. He first set the ex-
ample of awarding patronage to merit and fitness of
whatever party, and of hundrbds of relatives, and bound-
less opportunities, not one of the former was quartered
on the public, not one of the latter was abused to his
own purposes. In a word, raised by his blameless life
and towering abilities to the highest step in the ladder
of power to which the constitution could elevate him,
and by his personal character and solitary talents to
the pinnacle of influence in social and public opinion,
he died a commoner, was buried in private in the
country churchyard of the family parish, and en-
joined in his will his wife and children to decline the
acceptance of all the titles which royalty could bestow,
as equally above his own estimate of his deserts, and
below the greatness which has been awarded him by
his country.
Have we substituted an eulogy for an elegy—flat-
tered when we should have criticised, and engraved an
epitaph when we should have sketched a life ? Perhaps
we may—where a citizen has earned the gratitude of
his country by noble acts and great services, perhaps
the heartiness of respect somewhat runs away with
the lights and shadows of a more sober, if of a more
parsimonious discrimination. The fact is, the world
has overlooked the solid basis of this statesman's mind
and soul, and caricatured his faults where it should have
characterised his whole personality. Like all men who
are tenacious of -principles and deep in convictions,
he was slow in perceiving and long in adopting
them, because, with such a man opinions were not
speculative, to be put up in pigeon-holes till they were
wanted, but real end living, to be enforced when they
were acknowledged. His was essentially a slow mind,
without the intuitive quickness which marks most
leaders ; and this accounts for the long resistance
which he made to the admission of principles which
ultimately formed the great features of his adminis-
tration. But he never went back. ,He never cooled
down. Every step which he made was a step forward.
All his progress was towards the light. Ile did not,
like Pitt, begin life a Radical and end it a Legitimist
and Tory. Nor, when he put his hand to the plough,
did he ever look back to the pleasant fields of ease.
He was Lancashire bred; he carried its ascent to
the last, like his northern complexion, red, turning
grizzled, and his northern strength of sense and
practical sagacity. Hid he lived—but he is dead—
it is in vain to speculate—we can but conclude with
the expression of the universal feeling, that there is
no man whom England could have worse spared
than the citizen whose loss has been only not more
sincerely than justly mourned.

EXTENSION OF TUE SOUTII WALES RAILWAY.
The directors have been memorialized on this subject, but
the answer has been to the effect that until the line betwem
Gloucester and Chepstow be completed, they cannot take
any steps fur the constructing of the line from Swansea.
This decision hw caused great dissatisfaction in Carmarthen-
shire and Pembrokeshire. Proceedings have been threatened,
should the directors ultimately refuse to accede to the wishes
Of the inhabitants.