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Full text of "Monthly Magazine or British Register (of Politics, Literature and the Belles Lettres)"

THE 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE, 



BRITISH REGISTER 



OF 



LITERATURE, SCIENCES, AND THE BELLES-LETTRES. 




PRESENTED 

Netoftrfe*. -8 DEC 1948 



JANUARY TO JUNE. 
VOL. XI. 



LONDON: 

PUBLISHED BY WHITTAKER, TREACHER, AND CO V 
AVE-MARIA-LANE. 



1831. 



LONDON: 
HENRY BAYLIS, PRINTER, JOHNSOX's-COURT, FLEET-STREET, 



THE 

MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

OP 
POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES. 

VOL. XL] JANUARY, 1831. [No. 61, 

MERLIN'S PROPHECY FOR THE YEAR 1831 ! 

WIZARD ! dreaming in your cave, 

Twice ten thousand fathoms deep, 
Where the brothers of the grave 

Sit enthroned Time, Death, and Sleep ; 
Where the bones of Saxon kings 

Feed your ancient altars' blaze 
Tell me what new wonder springs, 

Wizard ! on your New Year's gaze ? 

MERLIN. 

Stranger ! leave me to my slumber 

Merlin long is sick of earth; 
Scoundrels still the soil will cumber, 

Asses still give asses birth ; 
Rogues will still be patriot praters, 

Treasury slaves still sell their wives ; 
Wigs and gowns will still hide traitors 

Polls have pensions for three lives !" 

Times are coming times are coming 

John Bull, you shall break your fast ; 
Swords are clashing, drums are drumming 

Hours of humbug ! ye are past. 
Horseguards men their backs are turning 

Pensioned beauties are undone ; 
Ministers' own wigs are burning 

Boldly, New Year ! thou'st begun. 

Hark, the bells from tower and steeple ! 

All the locusts of the State, 
All the feeders on the people, 

Must no longer dine on plate 
M.M. New Series.Voi,. XL No. 61. B 



Merlin's Prophecy for the Year 1831 ! [JAN. 

TT ^ ^ i 

Must give up their Opera-boxes, 

Must give up still prettier things- 
Soft as turtles, sly as foxes, 

Dear to men of stars and strings ! 

Down his Highness goes for ever ! 

Heartless, haughty, hollow, cold ; 
Scorn has purged Ambition's fever, 

Ridicule his tale has told. 
With him sink his slavish rabble 

Puny, pettifogging gang ! 
Fit in Treasury lies to dabble, 

Fit to cheer their Lord's harangue. 

Now, Sir Bob, farewell thy proncurs ! 

Even Bill Holmes will cut thee dead ; 
All by tricks, and none by honours, 

Even thy Treasury game has fled. 
Shelved on Opposition benches, 

Hume himself o'er thee shall crow 
Whig, prig, Russell, storm thy trenches : 

Go, where thou at last must go ! 

All ye pets in Treasury chariots ; 

All ye pampered, would-be queens 
Wives of Pilates and Iscariots, 

Twenty summers past your teens ! 
On your cheeks your calling painted, 

Battered, shattered, drunken, old 
All ye reputations tainted, 

Howl ! your hour of pride is told ! 

All ye shallow Michael Cassios, 

All ye men of aiguillettes, 
All ye genus of mustachios, 

All ye Hussar dandizettes ; 
All ye tinselled aides-de-camp, 

Proud to lick a Marshal's shoe, 
Scarlet as ye are, ere long, 

Like your Marshal, ye'll look blue. 

Ireland, " gem of land and ocean ! 

Finest pisantry on earth !" 
Wholesale dealer in commotion ! 

Soil of murder and of mirth ! 
Hack for every scoundrel's straddle, 

Every brawling beggar's dupe ; 
Dan O'Connell on thy saddle 

Anglesey upon thy croupe. 

Famed for Papists and potatoes ; 

Famed for patriots, thick and thin ; 
Crammed with Brutuses and Catos 

Every soul a Jacobin ! 



1831.] Merlin's Prophecy for I he Year 1831 ! 

Ireland's bonds shall soon be broken, 
Spite of Byng, Fitzroy, and Hill ; 

Patriot lips the words have spoken 
Blood and spoil shall have their fill. 

Sounds are on the tempest winging. 

What lias spoke them ? Wrath and shame. 
Memories start, like serpents, stinging ; 

Searching, wild, and bright, like flame. 
Europe, from thy deepest prison 

Rings a voice that earth must hear, 
When the Spirit once has risen ; 

Man ! thy day of grandeur's near ! 

Italy ! thy pangs are numbered ; 

Light shall through thy dungeons shine ; 

Many an age thy strength had slumbered 
Freedom's blaze forsook thy shrine. 

But the reign of blood and plunder 
Tremble, Austria ! shall be o'er ; 

Heaven not yet has lost the thunder- 
Gore shall yet be paid by gore. 

Poland ! long baptized in slaughter, 

To high heaven thy cry is borne, 
Though thy blood was poured like water, 

Though thy heart by wolves was torn ! 
E'en on thee a light is beaming, 

Light that summons from the grave 
Light from lance and sabre streaming, 

Poland ! thou'rt no more a slave ! 

Germany ! thou too art waking, 

Like the giant from his sleep, 
Heavily thy fetters shaking, 

Like the heavings of the deep 
Ere the storm begins to blow ; 

Like the torrent on the steep, 
Gathering ere it bursts below ! 

Who shall stand that torrent's sweep ? 

Hour of mighty retribution ! 

Who shall stand when thou art come ? 
Hour of fiery dissolution ! 

Strength a cypher, council dumb ! 
But the tempest shall be chidden, 

Earth shall shine without a stain ; 
Guilt beneath its mountains hidden, 

Man shall be himself again ! 



B2 



[ 4 ] [JAN. 



VOLAXi), VAST AND 

Poland in the beginning of the eighteenth century was one of the 
largest kingdoms of Europe. It was divided into four Grand Districts. 
1. Great Poland, bordered by Lithuania, Silesia, and Pomerania. 2. 
Little Poland, bordered by Great Poland, Silesia, Hungary, and Red 
Russia. 3. Royal Prussia, lying to the north* east of Great Poland, 
and bordered by Pomerania and Ducal Prussia, which formerly belonged 
to Poland. 4. Red Russia, bordered on the east by the Dnieper, on the 
south by the Dneister and the Crapack Mountains, on the north by 
part of Lithuania, and on the west by Little Poland. In addition to 
those was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, rather an allied principality 
than a portion of the kingdom. The Duchy furnished one third of the 
troops composing the army of the crown, and one quarter of the money 
granted for the support of the monarch. The Duchy of Courland also 
was under the protection of Poland. 

The Poles, like all other nations, claim an extravagant antiquity : but 
the first accounts of the country are from Tacitus, who probably received 
them from the vague rumours of the Roman soldiery, or the exagge- 
rated narratives of the Germans at Rome. He tells us that, however 
derived from the same general stock of the northern nations, their 
customs differed largely from those of the German tribes, the Poles 
living in a state of singular rudeness. While he gives testimony to the 
more regular habits, and even to the lofty and chivalric conceptions of 
private and public life among the Germans, to their deference for 
women, their obedience to a chief, their personal rights, and their he- 
roic faith in battle, he describes the Poles as living almost in a state of 
nature, and supporting their existence only by the chase and by plun- 
der. But as they fought on foot, and with the lance and shield, he dis- 
tinguishes them from the Scythians or Tartars, who fought on horseback. 
Tacitus speaks of this wild, but not joyless, life of the tribes of the 
desert, with the natural surprise of a man living in the central region 
of the civilized earth ; yet who perhaps often envied the naked freedom, 
where there was no Nero or Domitian, no bloody and malignant despot 
to embitter existence. " Those barbarians," says he, (f live in a state of 
liberty ; they have no idea of hope or fear ; and they prefer living in 
this manner, to cultivating the earth, and taking care of their property, 
or that of their relations and neighbours." But to this character, in 
which he probably says all that he dared say of freedom, under the 
fierce and suspicious tyranny of Rome, he adds " They have no fear 
of their fellow-creatures, nor even of the gods ; which is very extra- 
ordinary in human beings. They are not accustomed to make laws nor 
vows, because they are not accustomed to desire any thing which they 
cannot procure for themselves." 

Such is the contradictory character conjectured, rather than described, 
by the great historian ; and which, without any idle attempt of our's to 
vindicate the morals of a nation of the third century, betrays some igno- 
rance of human nature. If the Poles desired nothing from others, they 
could not be a nation of robbers. All the Gothic nations, too, had a 
singular reverence for their gods ; and their defence of them was long 
and desperate. 



J831.J Poland, Pad and Present. 5 

The great emigration of the Goths from the Baltic provinces to the 
south left their ancient possessions open to the bordering nations. The 
Poles took their share of the abandoned territory., and made themselves 
masters of the north-east portion of what was afterwards the kingdom 
of Poland. 

The first mention of this people in modern history is in the year 550, 
when they formed a government, under Leek, brother of Cracus, or Creek, 
first Duke of Bohemia, who collected the tribes, and founded a castle, 
or centre of a city. In this operation one of those omens occurred which 
paganism always looked on as the voice of fate ; the workmen found an 
eagle's nest in the wood which they were clearing away for the site of 
the fortress. The nest was called, in Sclavonic, gniazdo ; from this the 
new city was named Gnesua ; and the eagle was transferred to the ban- 
ner of Poland. 

The history of all the Gothic tribes is the same. Their first state is 
that of scattered families ; their second, that of a tribe under a military 
chieftain, elected by the suffrages of the people. The chieftain becomes 
a tyrant, or transmits his power to a feeble successor. The people then 
dethrone the race, break up the tyranny., and come back to the old 
system of free election. 

The descendants of Leek reigned a hundred years ; but the dynasty 
was then subverted, and provincial military chieftains were substituted 
for it. Twelve governors entitled Palatines, or Waiwodes (generals, from 
Woina war, and Wodz a chief), were created. But their violences dis- 
gusted the people ; and one of them, Cracus, whose conduct was an 
exception, was raised to the throne by the elective voice of the nation. 
In some years after his death his family were displaced by the Palatines, 
and a civil war followed. The Hungarians took this opportunity to 
ravage Poland, in A.D. 751; but a peasant, Przemyslas, saved his 
country. Collecting together the broken forces of Poland, he approach- 
ed the Hungarian camp as if with the intention of offering battle. 
With his barbarian courage, he mingled civilized ingenuity ; he fixed 
branches of trees on a conspicuous point of ground, which he inter- 
mixed with armed men, so ranged as to give the appearance of a large 
force, in order of battle. As soon as day broke, and the Hungarians 
perceived, as they thought, their enemy defying them to the en- 
counter, they rushed on them with contemptuous rashness. But the 
Polish post retired, exhibiting what, to the astonished Hungarians 4 
seemed a forest suddenly plucked up and moving away. Yet the view 
of Polish flight overcame the terror at the spectacle. The Hungarians 
rushed on, until they found themselves inevitably intangled in a real forest. 
The Polish leader now charged, totally routed the enemy and left not a man 
to tell the tale. But their camp still stood. Here too his ingenuity was ex- 
erted. He dexterously clothed his men in the dresses of the dead ; divi- 
ded his troops into small bodies, and sent them towards various avenues of 
the camp, as if they were Hungarians returned from the battle. The stra- 
tagem succeeded, the Poles were suffered freely to enter the Hungarian 
camp ; once within the rampart they drew their sabres, fell on their 
unprepared enemy, and slaughtered the whole remaining multitude, 
with the exception of a few fugitives, who escaped on the first onset, 
and who served the Polish cause most effectually by spreading the fame 
and terror of the national arms through all the countries on the Baltic", 



6 Poland^ Paul and Present. [\!AN. 

The conqueror could now have no competitor at home, and he was 
soon after chosen Duke of Poland. 

On his death the Palatines, those ceaseless disturbers, were again in 
arms, each struggling for the crown. To prevent the usual effusion of 
blood, an expedient was adopted which displays the Tartar origin of the 
people. The crown was to be the prize of a trial of speed on horseback. 
The trial was open to the whole body of the youth. On the day ap- 
pointed, a multitude of gallant horsemen appeared; but soon after 
starting, many of their horses fell lame ; to the astonishment of the 
spectators, more were lamed every moment. Two alone at length con- 
tended for the prize ; the whole multitude of riders had fallen behind, 
with their chargers broken down ; " Witchcraft," and " the wrath of the 
gods," were exclaimed in a thousand furious or terrified voices. But 
the two candidates still held on fiercely, and it was not till after a long 
display of the most desperate horsemanship that the conqueror, Lefzek, 
reached the goal. 

When he galloped back to lay his claim before the chieftains, and 
was on the point of being chosen, he was startled by a voice proclaim- 
ing that he had won the prize by treachery. Lefzek turned pale, but 
haughtily denying the charge, demanded to be confronted with the ac- 
cuser. The accuser was his rival in the race, who demanded that the 
horses of both should be brought into the circle. Lifting up the hoof 
of Lefzek's horse, he shewed that it was completely covered with iron. 
" Thus/' said he, " did the traitor's horse escape the treachery/' Then 
lifting up the hoof of his own horse, and shewing it also covered with 
iron, " Thus," said he, " was I enabled to follow him." While the 
assembled warriors were gazing on the discovery, the Pole grasped a 
handful of the sand, and shewing that it was full of nails, exclaimed, 
" Thus were your horses lamed. The traitor had sowed the sand with 
iron spikes, and covered his horse's hoofs that he alone might escape 
them. I saw the artifice, and shod mine that I might detect him. Now, 
choose the traitor for your king." 

Lefzek vainly attempted to defend himself. His crowd of rivals, 
doubly indignant at their defeat and the injury to their horses, rushed 
on him with drawn sabres, and he was cut to pieces on the spot. Wild 
admiration succeeded wild justice ; they raised his detector on their 
shoulders, and instantly proclaimed him king by the title of Lefzko the 
Second. 

In the reign of his successor, Lefzko the Third, the casual evils of an 
unsettled government were made perpetual by the most fatal of all insti- 
tutions. The king had a number of illegitimate sons, for whom he pro- 
vided by giving them Fiefs, held of Popiel, his heir. Those Fiefs were 
originally but manor-rights ; the people had freeholds in their lands, and 
voices in the election to the throne : but debt, usurpation, and fraud 
rapidly converted them into tyrannies, and the people into slaves. The 
institution of Fiefs, thus commencing in royal vice, ended in national ruin. 

A new revolution now raised the most celebrated dynasty of Poland 
to the throne. The son of Popiel had died, execrated by the nation for 
hereditary crimes. Poland was once more the prey of the Palatines. 
The great holders of the Fiefs crushed the people. All was misery, 
until all became indignation. The people at length remembered the 
freedom of their birthright, and, inspired with the warlike spirit of their 



1831.] Poland, Paxl and Present. 7 

Sclavonic fathers, rose in arms, disavowed the dictation of the feudal 
lords, and demanded the right of free election to the throne. The great 
nobles were awed, and the electors assembled at the city of Kruswic. 
But in their triumph they had been improvident enough to meet,, with- 
out considering how they were to provide for the subsistence of so vast 
a multitude. They must now have dispersed, or fought for their food, 
but for the wisdom of one man, Piast, an opulent inhabitant of the city. 
Knowing the rashness of popular haste, and the evils which it might 
produce, he had, with fortunate sagacity, collected large magazines of 
provision beforehand. On the first cry of famine, he threw them open 
to his countrymen. In their gratitude for a relief so unexpected, and 
their admiration of his foresight, the multitude shouted out that " they 
had found the only king worthy of Poland." The other candidates 
were forced to yield. The great feudatories, more willing to see an in- 
ferior placed above them than to see a rival made their sovereign, joined 
in the popular acclamation. The citizen Piast was proclaimed king. 
He justified the choice by singular intelligence, virtue and humanity ; 
and when, in 861, he died, left his memory adored by the people, and 
his throne to his son and to a dynasty which was not extinguished for 
five hundred years. 

In the reign of his descendant, Miecislaw, Poland was converted to 
Christianity. The king had married a Christian princess, Dambrowcka, 
the daughter of Boleslas, Duke of Bohemia; the condition demanded 
by his queen was, that he should renounce paganism. The condition 
may have been an easy one to the monarch, whose sense and manliness, 
if they knew but little of Christianity, must have long scorned the gross 
vices arid flagrant absurdities of the national superstition. He submitted 
to all the restrictions of the new faith with the zeal of a determined 
convert ; dismissed the seven partners which pagan license had given to 
the royal couch, sent an order through his realm for the demolition of all 
the idols, and, to the wonder of his people, submitting the royal person 
into the hands of a Roman monk, was baptized. 

The former religion of Poland was a modification of the same worship 
of the elements, or the powers presumed to command the fates of man, 
which was to be found in every region of the north ; and which, with 
additional and poetic elegance, was the adopted religion of Greece and 
Rome. They had their sovereign of the skies, the lord of the thunder, 
by the name of Jassem. Liada was their ruler of war. To this Jupiter 
and Mars, they added a Venus, named, less harmoniously, Dzidzielia. 
Two inseparable brothers, their Lei and ]?ollel, had the history and 
attribates of the Greek Castor and Pollux. Drie wanna was scarcely 
more different from the Greek Diana in attributes than in name. They 
had a goddess of the earth and its produce, Marzanna, their Ceres; and 
their deity of terrors, Niam, the Pluto, whose oracle at Guesna was the 
awe and inspiration of the north. They had one deity more which 
escaped Greek invention, unless it were represented by the " fatal 
sisters three," Ziwic, the " mighty and venerable," the " disposer of 
the lives of man." 

In 1370; by the death of Casimir, the crown of Poland finally past 
away from the Piast dynasty. They had already worn it for a longer 
period than any dynasty of Europe, 500 years. Casimir was one of 
those singular mixtures of truth and error, strong passions, and great 



n Poland, Pu ai and Present. [JAN. 

uncultured powers, which are tbinul among the heroes of semi-barbarian 
lite. The chief p;irt of his reign was passed in war, in which he was 
generally successful, defeating the Teutonic knights, who invaded him 
from Prussia, the Russians, and the wild tribes who were perpetually 
making irruptions into the states of their more civilized neighbours. 
Casimir was memorable for having been the first to give the Jews those 
privileges which make Poland their chief refuge to this day. After the 
loss of his first wife, Ann of Lithuania, he had married the daughter of 
the Landgrave of Hesse. But like humbler men, he had found the yoke 
matrimonial too heavy for his philosophy. His queen was a shrew, and 
in the license of the age he took the beautiful Esther, a Jewess, to supply 
her place. The Jewess, who was a woman of striking attainments as 
well as of distinguished personal attractions, obtained an unequalled 
ascendancy over the king ; he suffered her to educate his two daughters 
by her, as Jewesses, and gradually gave way to all her demands for pro- 
tection and privilege to her unfortunate people. 

But he had the higher merit of being the legislator of Poland, or 
rather the protector of those feelings by which nature tells every human 
being that he is entitled to freedom. The abuse and the reform are less 
a part of the history of Poland than of human wrong and its obvious 
remedy. 

For a long course of years the lords of the Fiefs had pronounced the 
people born on their estates to be slaves, incapable of following their own 
will, or removing from the Fief without the permission of their masters. 
Casimir, roused by the complaints of his subjects, and justly indignant 
at the usurpation, abolished those claims, and declared every farmer at 
liberty, if injured by the proprietor of the soil, to sell his property and 
go where he pleased. A formidable part of the abuse was the right 
claimed by the proprietors of giving their tenants as pledges to each other 
for their debts; which had produced the most cruel sufferings, for the 
pledge was a prisoner and an exile, perhaps for life. Casimir indig- 
nantly broke up this tissue of crime ; framed a code giving the people 
equality of right w r ith their lords, and while he made the oppressive 
nobles his enemies, gained from the nation the patriotic and immortal 
title of " King of the Farmers/' 

It had been the custom of the lords to seize the property of a tenant 
who died without children. The king declared this to be an abuse, and 
enacted that the property should go to the nearest relative. A depu- 
tation from the peasantry, who had come to lay their grievances before 
him, were asked " Who have assailed you ? were they men ?" " They 
were our landlords/' was the answer. " Then," said Casimir,, " if you 
were men too, had you no sticks nor stones ?" 

As he was without sons, he appointed his nephew Lewis, King of Hun- 
gary, his successor. The deputation of the nobles sent to convey this in- 
telligence, exhibited that free spirit of the north, which about a century 
before, on a day never to be forgotten by Englishmen, the famous 19th of 
June, 1215, had boldly extorted the great Charter from the fears of the 
bigot and tyrant John. * Lewis was compelled, as the price of his crown, 
to sign an instrument, exempting the Polish nation from all additional 
taxes,, and all pretences for royal subsidies; abolishing the old and ruin- 
ous custom of living at free choice on the people in his journeys : and 
as an effectual barrier against kingly ambition, the vice of those days of 



1830.] Poland, Past and Present. 9 

ferocity and folly, pledging the king to reimburse out of his personal 
means all the public losses produced by hostilities with his neighbours. 
The Act was signed by Lewis for himself and his successors, and was 
solemnly declared to be a fundamental law of the realm. No Act had 
ever made nearer approaches to laying the foundations of a rational 
liberty ; yet none was ever more calamitous. It wanted but a degree of 
property and civilization in the lower orders capable of applying and 
preserving it. But the nobility were still the only NATION. They 
seized all the benefits of the law, established an oligarchy, made the 
king a puppet, the people doubly slaves, the crown totally elective, and 
the nation poor and barbarous, without the virtues of poverty, or the 
redeeming boldness of barbarism. 

Lewis ascended the throne ; broke his promises ; was forced to fly from 
the kingdom ; entered into a new conciliation, for which he paid by new 
concessions, confirming the power of the noble oligarchy ; was again 
driven to Hungary, where he attempted to take his revenge, by dismem- 
bering the kingdom ; and after giving Silesia to the Marquis of Bran- 
denburgh, the fatal foundation of the subsequent claim of Prussia, gave 
some of the Polish frontier provinces bordering on Hungary, to the 
Empress Queen, the foundation of another subsequent claim. This 
guilty transaction was the ground of one of those acts of wild justice 
which are so conspicuous in the Polish history. 

At the diet held in Buda, where the grant to the empress was made, 
only fourteen Polish senators could be found to attend ; and of those but 
one, the bishop of Wadislaw, had the manliness to protest against the 
treason. He communicated the act to Granowski, the Great General of 
the kingdom, who convoked an assembly of the states, to which the 
monarch was invited. The thirteen senators had been seized in the mean 
time, were instantly beheaded, and their bodies placed round the throne, 
covered with the tapestry. 

The monarch, unacquainted with their seizure, was led to his seat in 
full solemnity. The Great General advanced, and in the name of the 
states of Poland sternly charged him with the whole catalogue of his 
offences against the constitution ; declared the compact of the diet of 
Buda null and void, and then, flinging off the tapestry, pointed to the 
ghastly circle of monitors there. " Behold/' exclaimed he to the 
startled king, " the fate of all who shall prefer slavery to freedom ! 
There lie the traitors who gave up their country to ^terve the caprices of 
their king \" 

The lesson was expressive. Lewis resolved to abandon a country in 
which right was so loud-tongued, and justice so rapid. Naming his son- 
in-law Sigismond, of Brandenburg, governor in his absence, a heir, he set 
out for Hungary once more. But, dying on his way, the nobles annulled 
the choice, and gave the throne to the Princess Hedwige, a daughter of 
the late king, on condition of her marrying according to the national 
will. 

Her marriage commenced the second famous dynasty of Poland, the 
Jagellons. Jagellon, Duke of Lithuania, was still unconverted to 
Christianity, but he had been distinguished for the intrepidity and justice 
which form the grand virtues in the eyes of early nations. The prin- 
cess selected him, and he soon distinguished himself among the princes 
of the north. With a magnanimity which seems almost incredible in 
his age, he refused the sovereignty of Bohemia, from which the people 

M.M. New Series. VOL. XL No. 61. C 



10 Poland, Vnst and Present. JAN. 

had deposed their profligate king, Wenceslas, and as the unparalleled 
achievement of northern war, broke the power of the Teutonic knights 
upon the field ; of their immense host of 150,000 men, slaying 
50,000, taking 11,000, and leaving among the dead the grand master 
and three hundred knights. 

A striking and characteristic scene, worthy of the finest ef- 
forts of the pencil, preluded the battle. Jagellon, to draw the 
enemy off some strong ground, had feigned a retreat. The knights 
looked on him as already defeated, and the grand master, in the spirit 
of his Scythian ancestors, sent him as an emblem of his fate, two 
bloody swords with a message. " Our master," said the deputies, " is 
not afraid to furnish you with arms to give you courage, for we are on 
the point of giving battle. If the ground on which you are encamped 
is too narrow for you to fight upon, we shall retire and give you room." 
The taunt only inflamed the indignation of the Polish nobles, but 
Jagellon calmly took the swords, and with a smile thanked the grand 
master for so early giving up his arms. " I receive them/' said the 
bold northern, " with rejoicing ; they are an irresistible omen. This 
day we shall be conquerors : our enemies already surrender their sabres." 
Instantly rising, he ordered the signal to be made for a general advance ; 
the army rushed on with sudden enthusiasm ; the boasted discipline of 
the knights was useless before this tide of fiery valour; their ranks were 
helplessly trampled down ; and their whole chivalry destroyed upon the 
ground. The taunt had been proudly answered. 

The affairs of Poland now became mingled, for the first time, with 
the politics of western Europe. In 1571 Segismond Augustus died, 
the last of the race of Jagellon, an honoured name, which had screened 
the follies of his successors during the long course of two hundred 
years. The vacancy of the throne was contested by a crowd of princes. 
But the dexterity and munificence of the celebrated Catharine de 
Medicis carried the election in favour of her second son, Henry Duke of 
Anjou, brother of Charles the Ninth. The diet which established this 
prince's claim, was still more memorable for the formation of the " Pacta 
Conventa/' or great written convention of the kings of Poland, by 
which they bound themselves to the commonwealth. The previous 
bond had been a tacit, or verbal, agreement to observe the laws and 
customs. But experience had produced public caution ; and by the final 
clause of the te Padta Conventa/' the king elect now declared, that " if 
he should violate any of his engagements to the nation, the oath of 
allegiance was thenceforth to be void." The crown had, until this 
period, been hereditary, liable, however, to the national rejection. 
From the era of the Pacta Conventa it became wholly elective; an 
example single among European governments, and giving warning of 
its error by the most unbroken succession of calamities in the history of 
modern nations. 

Poland was still to have a slight respite. On the vacancy after the 
death of Wadislas in 1648, Casimir, the last descendant of the Jagellon 
blood, was found in a cloister ; where he had entered the order of Jesuits. 
Popular affection placed him on the throne. He governed wisely a state 
now distracted with civil faction and religious dispute. At length grown 
weary of the sceptre, he resigned it for the crosier of the Abbot of St. 
Germain de Pres, in France ; and enjoyed in this opulent and calm 
retreat a quiet for which he had been fitted by nature, and which he 



1831.] Poland, Paul and Prcseiil. 11 

must have sought in vain among the furious spirits and clashing sabres 
that constantly surrounded and disturbed the throne of his ancestors. 

The hero of Poland, John Sobieski, the next king, fought his way to 
the crown by along series of exploits of the most consummate intrepidity 
and skill. His defeat of the Grand Vizier, Kara Mustapha, in Podolia, 
finally extinguished all rivalry, and he was placed on the throne by accla- 
mation. All his conceptions were magnificent; on the peace with the Porte, 
he sent his- ambassador with a train of seven hundred ; a number which 
offended the pride of the Turk, and gave rise to one of those pithy sar- 
casms, which enliven diplomacy. The Polish ambassador who had 
been detained for some days outside the walls of Constantinople, by his 
own haughty demand, that the Vizier should come to meet him at the 
gates, required a supply of provisions for his attendants. " Tell the 
ambassador," answered the vizier, " that if he is come to take Constanti- 
nople, he has not men enough; but if it is only to represent his master, 
lie has too many. But if he wants food, tell him that it is as easy for my 
master the Sultan to feed seven hundred Poles at the gates of the city, 
as it is to feed the seven thousand Poles who are now chained in his 
gallies." 

The ambassador was at length admitted ; and resolving to dazzle the 
Turks by a magnificence, unseen before, he ordered some of his horses 
to be shod with silver, so loosely fastened on, that the shoes were scattered 
through the streets. Some of them were immediately brought to the 
Vizier ; who smiling at the contrivance, observed, " The Infidel has 
shoes of silver for his horses, but a head of lead for himself. His repub- 
lic is too poor for this waste. He might make a better use of his 
silver at home." 

But Sobieski' s great triumph was to come. The Turkish army, strong- 
ly reinforced, made a sudden irruption into the Austrian territories ; 
swept all resistance before them, and commenced the siege of Vienna. 
The year 1683 is still recorded among the most trying times of Europe?. 
The Austrian empire seemed to be on the verge of dissolution. But the 
fall of Vienna would have been more than the expulsion of the Austrian 
family from its states; it would have been the overthrow of the barriers 
of western Europe. All crowns were already darkened by the sullen 
and terrible superiority of Mahometanism. The possession of the Aus- 
trian capital would have fixed the Turk in the most commanding position 
of Germany, Vienna would have been a second Constantinople. 

The siege was pressed with the savage fury of the Turk. The Em- 
peror and his household had fled. The citizens, assailed by famine, 
disease, and the sword, were in despair. Sobieski was now summoned, 
less by the entreaties of Austria than by the voice of the Christian 
world. At the head of the Polish cavalry, which lie had made the finest 
force of the North, he galloped to the assistance of the beleagured city, 
attacked the grand vizier in his entrenchments, totally defeated him, and 
drove the remnants of the Turkish host, which had proclaimed itself in- 
vincible, out of the Austrian dominions. No service of such an extent had 
been wrought by soldiership within memory. Vienna was one voice 
of wonder and gratitude, and when the archbishop, on the day of the 
Te Deum, ascended to preach the thanksgiving sermon, he, with an 
allusion almost justifiable, at such a moment, took for his text, 
" There was sent a man from God, whose name was John." 

The death of this celebrated man in his 7^th year, and nfter a pros- 

O 2 



12 Poland, Past and Present. [JAN, 

perous reign of twenty-three years, left Poland once more to the perils 
of a contested throne. Frederic Augustus, Elector of Saxony, at last 
was chosen. No choice could have been more disastrous. Augustus had 
promised to restore Livonia to Poland j but it was in possession of the 
Swedes, who were now rapidly rising to the highest distinction as a mili- 
tary power. Charles the Twelfth, the lion of the north, had filled his 
countrymen with his own spirit ; and the attempt to wrest Livonia from 
the first warrior of the age was visited with deadly retribution. Augustus 
had formed a league with the King of Denmark, and the Czar, Peter the 
Great a man, whose rude virtues were made to redeem the indolent and 
sullen character of his barbarian country. The Swedish king rushed 
upon the Saxon and Polish forces like a whirlwind; they were totally de- 
feated. In the next campaign, a still larger army was defeated at Clissow 
with still more dreadful slaughter. An assembly held at Warsaw, under 
Charles, now declared Augustus incapable of the crown. Charles pro- 
posed to give the sovereignty to the third son of Sobieski : but the prince 
magnanimously refused a throne which he considered the right of his 
elder brothers, both of whom were in a Saxon fortress. Starislas 
Leizinski was at this period accidentally deputed to Charles on some 
business of the senate. The king was struck with his manly appearance. 
" How can we proceed to an election," said the Deputy, (( while James 
and Constantine Sobieski are in a dungeon ?" " How can we deliver 
your Republic/' exclaimed Charles, abruptly, " if we do not elect a new 
king ?" The suggestion was followed by offering the sceptre to Stanislas, 
who was soon after., in 1705, proclaimed monarch of Poland. Charles 
now plunged furiously into Saxony, and broke the power of the Elector. 
But the caprice of war is proverbial. The Russians had been at last 
taught to fighfc even by their defeats. The ruinous battle of Pultowa 
drove Charles from the field and the throne. Stanislas fled ; Augustus was 
restored in 1710, and Poland was left to acquire strength, by a temporary 
rest, for new calamities. In the winter of 1735, Russia was delivered 
from the only enemy that had threatened her ruin Charles was killed at 
the siege of Fredericshall. 

The reign of Peter had raised Russia into an European power. 
Strength produced ambition, and the successors of Peter began to inter- 
fere closely with the policy of Poland. The death of Frederick the 
Third, in 17^4, gave the first direct opportunity of influencing the 
election, and Couut Stanislas Poniatowski, whose personal graces had 
recommended him to the empress,, and whose subserviency made him a 
fit instrument for the Russian objects, was chosen king in 1764. 
Bribes and the bayonet were his claims, yet there were times when he 
exhibited neither the dependence of a courtier nor the weakness of a 
slave. 

Anew era was now to begin in the history of Poland. Religious per- 
secution was her ruin. The Reformation had been extensively spread 
in the provinces. From an early peri-od the Polish hierarchy, devoted 
to Rome, had always exerted the most rancorous spirit against the Pro- 
testants. A succession of persecuting decrees had been made^ chiefly 
from the beginning of the 10th century. But by the general disturb- 
ances of the government, or the wisdom of the monarchs, they had 
nearly fallen into oblivion. But in the interregnum between the death 
of Frederic, and the election of Stanislas, the popish party carried in 
the convocation-diet a series of tyrannical measures, prohibiting the 



1831.] Poland, Past and Present. , 13 

Protestants, or dissidents, as they were called, from the exercise of their 
religion, and from all situations and offices under government. The 
dissidents, fearful of still more violent measures, appealed to foreign 
governments. Russia, eager to interfere, immediately marched in a 
body of troops to support their claims. A popish Confederacy, long 
celebrated after wards in the unhappy history of the kingdom, was formed 
in 1767> and from that hour Poland had scarcely an hour's respite from 
civil war. 

Poland was now ripe for ruin. In 1769, on pretence of a plague, 
the King of Prussia advanced a body of troops into Polish Prussia. The 
possession of this province had long been coveted by the wily monarch. 
Its position between his German dominions and Eastern Prussia, ren- 
dered it important. He now found the kingdom in confusion, and he 
determined to seize his prize. To make it secure, he proposed a par- 
tition to Austria and Russia ; to the Austrian emperor, at an interview 
at Niess, in Silesia, in 1769, or in the following year at Newstadt ; to 
the Empress of Russia, by an embassy of his brother Henry to St. 
Petersburg. This infamous treaty was signed at St. Petersburg in 1772. 
Stanislas had no power to resist this tyranny, but he attempted to remove 
its chief evils by giving his people a free constitution in 1791. The 
neighbourhood of freedom again brought down the wrath of Russia. 
A Russian army of 70 ; 000 men were instantly under orders. The 
Empress's brief commands were, " that the constitution should be 
abolished.'' The King of Prussia, Frederic William, provisionally 
seized Dantzic, Thorn, and a part of Great Poland. The Russian 
ambassador entered the diet with troops, and forced the assembly to 
comply with his requisitions. The "nation was indignant. Kosciusko, 
who with the nobles had fled, now returned from Leipsic, put himself at 
the head of a multitude rather than an army, defeated several bodies of 
Russians with great slaughter, reinstated the king, and was soon at the 
head of 70,000 men : with those he also repulsed the Prussian army. But 
he was suddenly attacked by Suwarrow, and after a long conflict was 
utterly defeated and taken prisoner. Suwarrow then marched against 
Warsaw, which he took by storm, murdering in the suburb of Praga 
upwards of 30,000 human beings of all ages. In 1 795 the third Par- 
tition of Poland was effected. Stanislas was sent to St. Petersburg, 
where in 1798 he died. The heroic Kosciusko was subsequently libe- 
rated by the Emperor Paul, and after residing in France up to the 
period of the allied invasion, died at Soleure, Oct. 15, 1817, in his 65th 
year; a name consecrated to eternal memory. 

For this hideous conspiracy of ambition and blood, Poland was sternly 
avenged by the French armies. Her oppressors were broken to the dust. 
From this period she began to recover. Napoleon raised her to a partial 
degree of independence. The congress of Vienna made her a kingdom 
once more, but still a Russian kingdom. The time may be at hand, 
when she shall have a really independent existence. It will depend on 
her own virtues, whether the opportunity of this great hour of change 
shall be thrown away. 

The narrative of the late insurrection is still confined to a few scat- 
tered events. On the 1st of December the Russian superintendant of the 
school for military engineers in Warsaw, where some hundreds of the 
Polish youth were educated, had the insolence to order two of the young 
officers to be corporally punished. The students instantly rose against 



14 Poland, Pasi and Present. [JAN. 

the author of the indignity, drove him out, and rushed to the quarters 
of a regiment of the native guards, calling on them to rise against the 
oppressors. The troops immediately followed the call, the spirit spread, 
the Russian soldiery were everywhere gallantly and instantly attacked 
and routed. The Grand Duke Constantine, the chief object of popular 
hatred, was assaulted in his palace at night by the troops, was wounded 
in the head, and escaped with difficulty to the suburb of Praga, at the 
opposite side of the river, where a Russian detachment had its quarters. 
A great deal of confused and, as its appears, sanguinary, fighting took 
place in Warsaw during the night, and an extraordinary number of 
Russian officers of high rank had fallen, probably surprised in 
their quarters, or exposing themselves in this desperate state of their 
affairs. By morning the citizens were masters of Warsaw, the Russians 
were either expelled or captured ; Constantine had declared his intention 
of offering no immediate resistance to the public proceedings, a burgher 
guard had been formed, a provisional government of the first nobles of 
the country installed, a general appointed, and a national call made to 
all Poles serving in the Russian, Prussian, and other foreign armies, to 
join their countrymen. Deputations had been also sent through the 
provinces, and to St. Petersburgh. And, with the winter to impede the 
advance of the Russian army, and with the spirit existing in Europe, the 
Poles contemplated a triumph over their long degradation. 

We are no lovers of revolutions. We know their almost necessary 
evil, their fearful summoning of the fiercer passions of our nature, the 
sullen, civil hatred by which brother is armed against brother, the long 
ordeal of furious licence, giddy anarchy, and promiscuous slaughter ! 
Of all this we are fully aware. The crime of the man who lets loose 
the revolutionary plague, for revenge, love of gain, or love of power, is 
beyond all measure and all atonement. 

The first revolution of France, in 1789, was an abhorred effort of an 
ambition which nothing could satiate, and nothing could purify. The 
late revolution was a thing of strong necessity, less an assault on the 
privileges of royalty, than a vindication of human nature. The people 
who could have succumbed under so base and insolent a violation of 
kingly promises, would have virtually declared themselves slaves, and 
fit for nothing but slaves. The Polish revolution is justified by every 
feeling which makes freedom of religion, person, and property dear to 
man. Poland owes no allegiance to Russia. The bayonet gave, and the 
bayonet will take away. So perish the triumph that scorns justice, and 
so rise the holy claim of man, to enjoy unfettered the being that God has 
given him. 

Nothing in history is equal in guilty and ostentatious defiance of all 
principle to the three Partitions of Poland. The pretences for the seizure 
of the Polish provinces were instantly the open ridicule of all Europe. 
But Russia, Prussia, and Austria had the power ; they scorned to wait 
for the right ; they as profligately scorned to think of the torrents of 
blood that must be poured out in the struggle by the indignant Poles. 
Thousands of gallant lives sacrificed in the field ; tens of thousands de- 
stroyed by the more bitter death of poverty, exile, the dungeon, and the 
broken heart ; the whole productive power of a mighty kingdom ex- 
tinguished for half a century ; fifteen millions of human beings with- 
drawn from the general stock of European cultivation, and branded into 
hewers of wood and drawers of water, the helots of the modern world ! 



1831.] Poland, Past and Present. 15 

were a price that the remorseless lust of dominion never stopped to 
contemplate. Its armies were ordered to march, and the fire and 
sword executed the law. 

The change of the duchy of Warsaw into a kingdom by Russia was a 
royal fraud. The name of independence had none of the realities of 
freedom. The governor was a tyrant, publicly declared to be unfit even 
for a Russian throne ! The only authority was the Russian sword. 
Every act of government emanate'd from St. Petersburg}!. The whole 
nation was in a state of surveillance. Every man who dared to utter a 
manly sentiment j every writer whose views did not perfectly coincide 
w r ith the dictates of the Russian cabinet ; every mind superior to the 
brute, was in perpetual danger of Siberia. What would be the feeling 
of England, if a doubt of the wisdom of a ministry whispered over the 
table, much more declared in a public journal, would expose the doubter 
to instant denunciation by a spy, to instant seizure by a police-officer, 
and then, without further inquiry without trial, without being con- 
fronted with the accuser to banishmeut to the farthest corner of the 
world, to a region of horrors ten thousand miles from every face that 
he had ever known ? How is it possible to wonder that men should 
feel indignant under this hideous state of being? that they should disdain 
life thus shamed and stung ? that they should rejoicingly embrace the 
first opportunity to struggle for the common rights of existence, and 
think all things better than to leave the legacy of chains to their chil- 
dren ? 

This is no fancied picture. There is not an individual under any of 
the despotic thrones of Europe, whose liberty does not depend on the 
contempt or the caprice of the monarch ; who may not be undone in a 
moment at the nod of a Minister ; who dares to utter a sentiment doubt- 
ing the wisdom or integrity of any man in power. Where is the political 
philosopher of the Continent, the profound investigator of the principles 
by which nations are made wiser and better, the generous defender of 
the privileges of the nation, the honourable and manly detector of abuses 
and errors? No w r here; or, if any where, in the dungeon. Those 
characters, by which the whole greatness of England has grown, her 
past light and strength, and on which she must rest for her noblest 
dependence in all her future days of struggle, on the Continent are all 
proscribed. How long would a man like Burke have been suffered to 
unmask the prodigality of a continental court? How long would a 
Locke have lived after developing the nakedness of the divine right of 
kings ? How soon would the dungeon have stifled the eloquence of a 
Chatham upbraiding the criminal folly of a profligate ministry ! How 
long since would every leading mind of our legislature, every public 
journal, and every vigorous and honest writer of England, have been 
silenced, or persecuted to their ruin, by the hand of power, if their lot 
had been cast on the Continent ? Hating, as we sincerely do, all unpro- 
voked violence, and deprecating all unnecessary change, it is impossible 
for us, without abandoning our human feelings, to refuse the deepest 
sympathy to the efforts of our fellow-men, in throwing off a despotism 
ruinous to every advance of nations, degrading to every faculty of the 
human mind, and hostile to every principle alike of Justice, Virtue, and 
Christianity. 

Our knowledge of the preparation of the Polish people is still imper- 
fect ; but we must believe that they would not have so daringly defied 



16 Poland, Past and Present. [JAN. 

the gigantic power of Russia without already " counting the cost." 
Hitherto all has been success. The Russian Viceroy has been expelled ; 
the Russian troops have been defeated. The armies of Russia have not 
ventured to advance. The Polish provisional government has despatched 
agents to France, and, we are told, communications have been made to 
this country. Here they will have the wishes of every honest man ! If 
the late French Revolution could justify but slight difference of opinions 
among sincere men, the Polish Revolution can justify none. It is a 
rising, not of the people against their monarch, but of the oppressed 
against the oppressor, of the native against the stranger, of the betrayed 
against the betrayer, of the slave against the tyrant ; of a nation, the 
victim of the basest treachery and the most cruel suffering in the annals 
of mankind, against the traitor, the spoiler, the remorseless author 
of their suffering. Their cause is a triumph in itself; and may the 
great Being who " hateth iniquity, and terribly judgeth the oppressor," 
shield them in the day of struggle, and give a new hope to mankind by 
the new victory of their freedom ! 



A MOORE-ISH MELODY. 

OH ! give me not unmeaning Smiles, 

Though worldly clouds may fly before them; 
But let me see the sweet blue isles 

Of radiant eyes when Tears wash o'er them. 
Though small the fount where they begin, 

They form 'tis thought in many a sonnet 
A Flood to drown our sense of sin ; 

But oh ! Love's ark still floats upon it. 

Then give me tears oh ! hide not one ; 

The best affections are but flowers, 
That faint beneath the fervid sun, 

And languish once a day for showers. 
Yet peril lurks in every gem 

For tears are worse than swords in slaughter ; 
And man is still subdued by them, 

As humming-birds are shot with water ! 



1831.J [ 17 ] 

DEFOE: HTS LIFE AND WRITINGS.* 

FEW writers have ever lived who have encountered, though in a 
somewhat limited sphere, more numerous vicissitudes, or been the 
subject of more undeserved calumny than the author of " Robinson 
Crusoe." He has touched the highest and the lowest point of honour 
and disgrace. At one time a companion of the nobility a counsellor 
of princes ; at another a man of the people, in bad odour at Court, but 
whose acquaintance was deemed an honour by the commonalty ; at a 
third, a proscribed adventurer a sort of Paine in society a 
subject for the pillory a rebel and a mark for small wits to shoot 
at ; the experience of Defoe, throughout an unusually protracted 
life, has established the fact (were any additional proof needed), that 
he who presumes to make men wiser or better than they are ; who puts 
himself forth as a reformer, whether in religion, politics, or morals, 
must make up his mind to bear in turn the abuse of all parties ; to be 
the victim of ingratitude proportioned tp the benefits he has conferred 
on society ; to be kicked spit upon and trampled under foot by the 
lowest of the low, the basest of the base ; to be cursed by those whom 
he has blessed in a word, to be anathematized and excommunicated 
of men. The way to succeed in life is to wink at the vices of the age, 
to be chary of its errors of thought and practice, to agree with it, to 
flatter it, to walk side by side with it. The world, like a man with the 
gout, cannot endure rough usage; hence those have always been in best 
repute as moralists and men of sense, who have treated it with lenity 
and forbearance. To walk with the world with an orthodox steady 
pace, neither hastening before, nor lagging behind it, is in nine cases out 
often to ensure its favour ; but to step forward, like a fugleman, from the 
ranks of society, no matter how just be one's claims to such distinction, 
is at once to rouse, first, the world's attention next, its envy and lastly, its 
bitter, inextinguishable hatred. Defoe, unfortunately, was an aspirant 
of this class. From earliest life he panted for distinction as a reformer, 
and paid the penalty of such zeal by an indiscriminate abuse of the 
age which he endeavoured to improve. But time, the great reformer 
time who sinks the falsehood, and draws forth the truth, let it lie 
deeper than ever plummet sounded has at last done him justice, and 
Defoe, so long the mere scurrilous pamphleteer, the trashy novelist 
the vulgar satirist the object of Pope's illiberal sneer " earless on 
high stood unabashed Defoe" has now, by the just award of posterity, 
taken his station in literature in the very front rank as a novelist, and 
but a few degrees below Swift as a party- writer. 

It is of this prolific author that we here intend to say a few words, 
taking for our guide Mr. Walter Wilson's late able and elaborate biogra- 

Daniel Foe or Defoe, as he chose to call himself was the son of a 
butcher, and was born in the City of London, A.D. 1661, in the Parish 
of St. Giles's Cripplegate. Both his parents were Non-conformists, and 
early in life imbued Daniel with these strict religious principles which 
gleam like a rainbow through the glooms and the clouds of his polemical 
writings. When just emerging from childhood, he was placed under 

* Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Daniel Defoe. By Walter Wilson, Esq. of 
the Inner Temple. 3 vols. Hurst, Chance, and Co. 1 830. 

M.M. New Series. VOL. XI. No. 61. D 



18 Defoe: his Life and Writings. [JAN. 

the superintendence of a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Samuel An- 
nesley an excellent man and a good scholar, to whom in after age he 
did justice in an elegy, which, however, possesses more affection than 
poetry. f< As a boy," says Mr. Wilson, " Defoe displayed those light 
and buoyant spirits, that vivacity of humour, and cheerfulness of tem- 
per, which rendered him a favourite with his companions. lie seems 
to have been a boy also of remarkable courage, a feature which strongly 
marked his future character. We are therefore not surprised that it 
led him sometimes into disputes and contests with other lads of a similar 
age ; for he was both from habit and principle an enemy to the doc- 
trine of non-resistance." 

It was during the period of his childhood that a circumstance occurred 
which strongly illustrates the character of Defoe, as also that of his 
age. During a certain portion of the reign of Charles II., when the 
nation was under alarm respecting the restoration of a Popish Govern- 
ment, young Defoe, apprehensive that the printed Bible would become 
rare, or be locked up in an unknown tongue, applied himself diligently, 
together with many other Non-conformists, night and day, to the task 
of copying it out in MS. ; nor once halted in his exertions till he had 
fairly transcribed the whole book, a feat which at that early age he 
looked on with enthusiasm, as if thereby destined to be the ark 
of his religion's safety ; and at a late period of life with satisfaction 
mixed with surprise, at the extent of his juvenile simplicity. At 
the age of fourteen, Defoe was for the first time sent from home, 
to an academy at Newington Green, under the direction of the 
Rev. Charles Morton. This was one of those schools founded by the 
Non-conformists, as substitutes for the English universities, from which 
the law had excluded them. It was conducted on principles pretty 
similar to those of the present dissenting establishments of Hackney 
and Mill-hill ; and in its course of education comprised the languages, 
logic, rhetoric, the mathematics, and philosophy. Divinity was, how- 
ever, the chief subject of tuition; the Non-conformists made every 
thing subservient to this ; hence numbers of young men were educated 
at their schools, who in after years distinguished themselves by their 
pre-eminent theological qualifications. Defoe's attainments at Newing- 
ton, though desultory, were of a superior order. He was master of five 
languages, was well acquainted with the theory and practice of the 
English Constitution, and had studied with success the mathematics, 
natural philosophy, logic, geography, and history. His knowledge 
of ecclesiastical history was also considerable, and such as subsequently 
rendered him a formidable antagonist to the established church. As his 
parents intended him for the clerical profession, he remained at Newing- 
ton the full term, that is to say, five years ; at the expiration of which 
time he returned home, and being diverted by the activity of his mind 
from entering the priesthood, turned his attention exclusively to the 
politics of the day. 

He was now about twenty-one years of age, and never did an active 
enterprising youth enter upon life at a period more pregnant with event- 
ful incidents, and more favourable for the development of political 
sagacity. Charles II., the traitor the libertine the infidel the pen- 
sioner of France and Holland was just closing a reign unredeemed by 
the slightest public or private virtue. The nation, inured to the doc- 
trine of passive obedience, slept in a state of sulky tranquillity, trampled 



1881.] Defoe: his Life and Writings. 19 

under foot by the high churchmen on the one side, and the aristocratic 
laity on the other. Public morality there was none, of public hypocrisy 
an abundance ; religion was at a discount, patriotism below par. The 
exterior forms, however, of worship were kept up with punctilious 
severity, and of persecution there was quite enough on the part of 
the high churchmen towards the dissenters to throw the Inquisition into 
the shade. The bishops, of course, were the first to " beat the drum 
ecclesiastic" of intolerance ; the magistrates followed ; the constabulary 
kept them company, passibus cequis ; till at length the whole country ; 
priest-ridden and law-ridden, as it ever has been was persuaded to 
believe, that to be a dissenter was to be a rogue, a vagabond, and 
an infidel. 

On the accession of James II. this intolerant spirit, so far from dimi- 
nishing, increased, if possible, in acerbity. James himself, though 
a bigot, was not ill-inclined towards the dissenters, whom he tacitly 
encouraged, hoping thereby to weaken the power of the church, and 
so bring forward his darling popery : but though the monarch was 
thus favourably disposed towards the dissenters, the nation's prejudices 
against them were artfully kept alive by the clergy, who. in those 
troubled times, possessed an influence over their countrymen, which it 
requires no great sagacity to foresee they can never possess again. 
Defoe was no careless observer of this reign of terror, which he 
exposed in a manner and with a spirit that soon brought down upon him, 
that most rancorous of all hatred the odium theologicum. He enlisted 
himself in the cause of the dissenters, fought their battles with intre- 
pidity, exposed the persecutions of their enemies their folly their 
madness their atrocity and was recompensed for such disinterested- 
ness by the meagre consolation, that virtue is its own reward. 

But not polemics only, politics equally engaged his attention. At the 
accession of James II., when, in return for his promise of support, the 
bishops inculcated every where the doctrines of divine right- and passive 
obedience, Defoe (then but twenty- four years of age) was among the 
first to fathom the hypocrisy of both parties. With James in parti- 
cular he was very early disgusted : he could not but perceive, that 
nothing was to be expected from the liberality or toleration of a monarch 
to whom a servile parliament, at. the very opening of his reign, was 
willing to allow two millions and a half annually without check or hin- 
drance, and whom the high churchmen supported in their pulpits as a 
direct emanation from the Deity ; and accordingly was one of the 
earliest to engage heart and soul in that ill-planned insurrection which 
terminated in the destruction of the Duke of Monmouth and his fol- 
lowers. 

It was not without difficulty that, after the disastrous battle of 
Bridgewater, Defoe escaped from the west of England, and was 
enabled to resume those commercial occupations by which he had 
hitherto creditably supported himself. The nature of his business at this 
period has been variously represented : his enemies were fond of giving 
out that he was a paltry retail shop-keeper, but it appears that he wa s 
a hose-factor, or middle man between the manufacturer and the retail 
dealer. " This agency concern," says his biographer, " he carried on 
for some years in Freeman's-court, Cornhill, from 1(385 to 1695. When 
he had been in business about two years, he judged it expedient to link 
himself more closely with his fellow citizens, and was admitted a livery- 

D 2 



20 Defoe : his Life and Writings. JAN. 

man of London on the 26th of January, 1687-8, having claimed his 
freedom by birth." 

We return to the politics of this eminent writer. After the execution 
of Monmouth, and the utter overthrow of his adherents, James II. no 
longer scrupled to avow his predilection for popery. His first plan was 
to raise some new regiments, and officer them by papists : his second, to 
import Catholic priests from the country ; and his third, to erect chapels 
and seminaries for the youth of that persuasion, and even to consecrate 
a popish bishop in his own chapel at Windsor. He published, more- 
over, a royal declaration, by virtue of which all penal and sanguinary 
laws, in matters of religion, were to be suspended, all oaths and tests to 
be suppressed, and all dissenters, whether Protestant or Catholic, to be 
held equally capable of public employments. This, at first sight, 
appeared a fine triumph for the non-conformists ; but Defoe soon pene- 
trated the hypocrisy of the declaration, that it was nothing more nor 
less than a plan to engraft popery, under the specious form of toleration, 
on the ruins of the established church. 

Readers of the present day can scarcely form an idea of the horror with 
which Protestants of ail persuasions, at this particular epoch, regarded 
the " damnable and idolatrous" doctrines of Catholicism. It was a perfect 
mania. The pope was synonimous with anti-Christ ; the mass-houses were 
Pandeemoniums ; the priests, fiends and sorcerers. Nothing was too absurd 
to obtain credence, provided it told against the papists. The Jews, during 
the dynasty of the Plantagenets, never inspired one half the horror that 
the Catholics excited throughout the brief reign of James II. Defoe, 
though tolerant and enlightened in other respects, partook largely of this 
influenza, and, much as he disapproved their conduct, yet joined zealously 
with the high-church party in their endeavours to dethrone the infa- 
tuated Stuart. Pamphlet after pamphlet appeared in rapid succession 
from his pen on this great question, for which he was courted by the 
more influential ecclesiastics, who, alarmed for the safety of their plura- 
lities, lowered their usual tone of hostility, and whispered the word of 
promise in the credulous ears of the dissenters. But Defoe was not 
duped by this specious conduct. He knew that the church would 
never condescend to tolerate those of his persuasion, and that the 
alliance now struck up between them was merely a temporary one, 
to be dissolved when the danger that threatened both equally, was 
removed. Still, as he revereneed the constitution more than he 
disrelished the high-church party, he openly espoused their cause, 
and with the aid of the seven famous bishops, succeeded in eject- 
ing the monarch. Mr. Wilson dismisses briefly the share Defoe 
bore in this great work ; it is on record, however, that his writings 
contributed in no trivial degree to accelerate its progress, and that 
he was in consequence looked on for a time as one of the lions of 
the age. 

We have mentioned the seven bishops as material agents in the 
Revolution that placed the Prince of Orange on the throne of England. 
It may therefore be supposed that we have alluded to them in the light 
of patriots. Lest any of our readers should be led away by such sup- 
position, we think it but right to state that the opposition of the bishops 
to James had its origin in the basest of all passions the love of gain. 
So long as the king presumed not to interfere with their pluralities, they 
allowed him to tax the country at pleasure, to govern without Parlia- 



1831.] Defoe : his Life and Writings. 21 

ments, to keep up a standing army. They even preached the doctrine 
of his divine authority from the pulpit, and held, among their leading 
tenets, that it was impiety to dispute his will. This was their rule of 
conduct so long as James respected their revenues. The instant, how- 
ever, that he displayed an inclination to curtail them, their lordships' self- 
interest took the alarm, and luckily chiming in with that of the 
nation, the one cheered the other along that broad high-road 
which is by courtesy called the course of patriotism but which, in 
nine out of ten cases, is nothing more nor less than the course of per- 
sonal aggrandizement till James had been expelled his throne, and both 
parties, the churchmen and the nation, had reached the goal at which they 
aimed, and secured the crown to the Prince of Orange, on the avowed 
principle of toleration. And here, on dismissing James, we cannot 
refrain from instituting a parallel between that monarch and the ex-king 
Charles the Tenth. Both were bigots, and of the gloomiest cast ; both 
were influenced by bad and interested advisers, and both fell victims 
to their superstition. The Jesuits were the ruin of James, on the same 
principle and in the same spirit that they were the ruin of Charles ; 
though the latter is a thousand degrees less defensible than the former, 
inasmuch as he was far behind his age in intellect, while James was 
neither better nor worse than the other public characters of his day. 
To complete the parallel, both kings had in early life suffered much from 
the pressure of adverse circumstances, and both had failed to derive 
wisdom or experience from such adversity. 

It may be imagined that throughout the eventful period which imme- 
diately preceded and followed the dethronement of James and the 
accession of William, Defoe's pen was not idle. He was indeed 
continually at work in the good cause, and became in consequence so 
popular with the nation, and even with the court, that he was personally 
consulted by King William on some public questions of emergency, and 
rewarded by that monarch a proof that his advice was of value with 
the place of accountant to the commissioners of the glass duty, which, 
however, he was compelled to relinquish in 1699, about four years 
subsequent to his appointment. 

" It was, probably/' says Mr. Wilson, " about this time that Defoe 
became secretary to the tile-kiln and brick-kiln works, at Tilbury, in 
Essex, an office which he is reported to have filled for some years. It 
failed, however, like many of his other projects, but was continued by 
him, on a restricted scale, after he had lost upwards of three thousand 
pounds by the speculation, till the year 1703, when the wind of his 
court-popularity shifting, the current made strong head against him, 
and he was prosecuted by the government for a libel/' Previous to this, we 
should premise, Defoe had speculated largely, and with various, but in 
the main indifferent, success in business. He had embarked with other 
partners in the Spanish and Portuguese trade, which necessarily led 
him into those countries, though at what particular period he visited 
them, cannot now be ascertained. He also had some concern in the 
trade with Holland, and was in consequence held up to ridicule by his 
enemies, as a civet-cat merchant, " though it was, probably/' says his 
biographer, " the drug rather than the animal in which he traded." 
Besides his visits to Holland, Spain, and Portugal, Defoe made an 
excursion to France, and appears to have been much struck with the 
extent, number, and magnificence of the public buildings in Paris. 



22 I)c foe : his Life and ll''ntings. JAN. 

He even penetrated (a rare occurrence with English authors in those 
days !) into Germany ; but notwithstanding the vast range and variety of 
scenery that thus came under his observation, he has left it on record 
that nothing on the continent was equal, in his opinion, to the various 
and luxuriant views by the river-side, from London to Richmond. 
" Even the country for twenty miles round Paris," says he, " cannot 
compare with it, though that indeed is a kind of prodigy." 

It is not to be supposed that a man thus desultory and miscellaneous in 
his speculations at one time a hose-factor at another a foreign merchant 
at a third a brick-maker, and throughout his life a confirmed incurable 
author an author too, be it remembered, of all work a satirist a 
pamphleteer an essayist a critic a novelist a polemic a political 
economist and (almost) a poet, at any rate an inditer of much and 
various verse ; it is not, we repeat, to be supposed, that so universal a 
genius would be over-successful in trade; and accordingly we find Defoe, 
somewhere about the year 1692 for the exact period is uncertain - 
meeting with the fate of most universal geniuses, and figuring in the 
Gazette as a bankrupt. It is but fair, however, to add, that no sooner 
was the commission taken out, at the instigation of an angry creditor, 
than it was superseded, on the petition of those to whom he was most 
indebted, and who accepted a composition on his single bond. " This 
he punctually paid by the efforts of unwearied diligence, but some of 
his creditors it is Mr. Wilson who is here speaking who had been 
thus satisfied, falling afterwards into distress themselves, Defoe volun- 
tarily paid them their whole claims, being then in rising circumstances, 
from King William's favour." The annals of literature, though they 
abound in traits of eccentric, shewy, and comprehensive generosity, yet 
seldom present us with an instance of such just principle and natural 
(not high-flown) liberality as this. The munificence of genius oftener 
affords matter for astonishment than admiration ; it is therefore with no 
little satisfaction that we have recorded this very noble and unostenta- 
tious trait of character on the part of an author, who had quite talent 
enough to entitle him (had he felt so inclined) to take out a patent 
for eccentricity, and thereby dispense with the necessity of being an 
honest man. But Defoe's heart and head (especially the former) were 
always on the right side. 

It is not known to what part of the kingdom Defoe retired when 
circumstances compelled him to render himself invisible for a time to 
his creditors. It is conjectured, that he fled to Bristol, where he 
used often to be seen walking about the streets, accoutred in the 
fashion of the times, with a full-flowing wig, lace ruffles, and a sword 
by his side. As his appearance in public, however, was restricted to 
the sabbath bailiffs having no more power on that day than fiends of 
darkness at the hallowed season of Christmas he soon became generally 
known by the name of the " Sunday Gent," and the inn, now an 
obscure pot-house, is still in existence, where he used occasionally to 
resort for the purposes of enjoying the pleasures of society, to which 
(though temperate and abstemious in his habits) he was fondly ad- 
dicted. 

It was at this period or perhaps a little later, for we have no certain 
data to direct us that Defoe rendered himself conspicuous by some 
remarks which he published on the subject of Dr. Sherlock's apostacy. 
As this divine's conduct excited considerable odium at the time, and has 






18,'U.] Defoe: his Life ami W tilings. ^3 

found an imitator at thepresent day in the person of thelateDean of Chester; 
we may perhaps be excused if we enter into a few of the particulars of 
the case. Dr. Sherlock, who was Master of the Temple, had distinguished 
himself from the first moment of his entering into holy orders, by his 
uncompromising zeal in favour of passive obedience, and the divine right 
of kings. Throughout the reign of James II. the Dr. was one of his 
staunchest supporters. His submission to the ruling powers knew no 
bounds, and his preferments bid fair to become equally unlimited, when, 
unfortunately, in the very meridian of his prosperity, a few incon- 
venient blunders, made on the part of James, brought in William^ 
and the astonished, and not a little disgusted, Master of the Temple, 
suddenly found himself holding pluralities under a monarch whom; 
according to his principles of legitimacy, and so forth, he could not 
regard otherwise than as a usurper. Under these circumstances, and 
as he had always been a clamorous polemic, he could not do less than 
refuse the oaths of supremacy to William, nor could William, in return, 
do less than deprive him of his preferments. But such martyrdom never 
entered into the Dr/s speculations. His zeal was of that peculiarly poetic 
character, which, being too high-toned for the common-place vulgarities 
of the world, shines to greater advantage in theory than practice. He 
began also to reflect that it was exceedingly unbecoming the wisdom 
and dignity of a sound divine to hesitate at swallowing a few fresh 
oaths, or recanting a few unfashionable opinions ; and accordingly, 
with a facility of digestion perfectly miraculous, the Doctor not only 
dispatched all the oaths necessary to ensure him the new monarch's 
favour, but recanted also every single word he had uttered from 
the pulpit and elsewhere on the subject of " the right divine of 
kings to govern wrong/' Not content with this wholesale recanta- 
tion, he even went further, and had actually the hardihood to defend 
his conduct in a pamphlet entitled " The Case of the Allegiance due 
to Sovereign Powers, stated and resolved according to Scripture and 
Reason, and the Principles of the Church of England ; with a more 
particular Respect to the Oath lately enjoined, of Allegiance to their 
present Majesties, King William and Queen Mary." As this pamphlet 
was in direct and impudent opposition to one which the Dr. had 
published some few years before, when James, not William, was on the 
throne, under the title of " The Case of Resistance due to Sovereign 
Powers, stated and resolved according to Scripture and to Reason/' it 
brought down upon him a whole host of enemies, and among them 
Defoe, who exposed the apostate's conduct in so stinging a manner that, 
notwithstanding Sherlock's honours and preferments, he never wholly 
recovered his mortification. 

In the present day Dr. Philpotts bids fair to become no unworthy 
successor of Dr. Sherlock, with this exception indeed, that the former's 
apostacy is incomparably the most flagrant of the two. And yet, 
for his interested conversion, the traitor has been made a bishop ! The 
appointment is an ominous one, and to those who read with learned eye 
the signs of the times, teems with hazard to the established church, of 
the majority of whose ministers, Louis XIV. formed no incorrect estimate 
when he observed, in reply to King James, who entreated him to furnish 
means for an invasion : " As for your English clergy, 1 look upon them 
much worse than the commonalty, having, not only by teaching and 
preaching, taught the people to forswear themselves, but shewn ill 



24 Defoe : his Life and Writings. [ JAN. 

examples in themselves by doing the same. They have sworn allegiance 
to you, and have since accepted of the Prince of Orange, and sworn 
allegiance to him. But let them swear what they will, and to whom 
they will, I for one will not believe them, nor put more value on their 
oaths than they do themselves, which is just nothing at all." The 
famous Bishop Burnet has borne similar testimony to the character of 
the churchmen of his own times. 

We return to Defoe. For some years after the accession of King 
William he kept himself constantly before the public, and among other 
able pamphlets, which, however, produced him more or less ill-will at 
the time, published one entitled " An Essay on Projects," in which he 
satirized the love of over-trading, which distinguished the majority of 
the London merchants. For this production, in which he discoursed 
many home truths, gave much sound advice, and endeavoured to create 
a reformation in the commercial spirit of the age, he incurred the 
odium of the vast body of English traders, who, joined with his poli- 
tical ones, were the means of wreaking on him a world of mischief. About 
the same time w r ith his notorious "Essay on Projects," appeared his 
t( Account of the Massacre of Glencoe," in which he proved to the satis- 
faction of all unprejudiced readers, but greatly to the annoyance of 
the Jacobites, that William III. was wholly guiltless of any participation 
in the atrocities in question. 

The year 1701 is a memorable one in the life of Defoe. At this 
period it was that he produced his ft Account of the Stock-Jobbing 
Elections in Parliament," and put forth certain notions on the subject of 
a reform in the House of Commons, which gained him ill-will exactly in 
proportion to their value and good sense. The members were indignant 
that a mere plebeian pamphleteer should presume to turn reformer. 
Had he possessed birth, influence, or connections, to give weight to his 
opinions, the case would have been different ; but truth from a plebeian, 
and against themselves, too, was more than the House of Commons could 
put up with, though as yet they had no means of venting their spleen on 
the ill-starred subject of their indignation. Alluding to the corruption 
of parliament, Defoe observes, that in his time there was a regular set 
of stock-jobbers in the city, who made it their business to buy and sell 
seats, and that the market price was a thousand guineas. This traffic he 
stigmatizes as fatal to our religion and liberties, and says, t( by this 
concise method parliaments are in a fair way of coming under the 
hopeful management of a few individuals." He adds, " that a hundred, 
or a hundred and fifty such members in a House would carry any vote ; 
and, if it be true, as is very rational to suppose, those who buy will 
sell, then the influence of such a number of members will be capable of 
selling our trade, our religion, our peace, our effects, our king, and 
every thing that is valuable or dear to the nation." How prophetic 
these remarks are, recent events have signally shewn, and have yet to 
shew to a still more signal extent. 

It was in the same year (1701) that Defoe made his first appearance 
in public as a poet, or rather, as a satirist, for, in his case, the two 
characters are materially different. The subject of his poem was " The 
True-born Englishman ;" and its intention was to reproach his country- 
men for abusing King William as a foreigner, and to humble their pride 
for despising some of the newly-created nobility upon the same account. 
Its success was prodigious, and brought down upon the author's head a 



1&31.J Defoe : kin Life and Writings. 25 

shower of praise and vituperation. No less than eighty thousand cheap 
copies were disposed of in the streets of London alone a success before 
which even the "Waverley novels" must hide their diminished heads and 
of editions, twenty-one were sold off within four years from the date of 
publication ! It cannot,, however, be denied, that this flattering 
reception was in many respects undeserved. As a satire the " True- 
born Englishman" possesses much vigour of thought and expres- 
sion, but is wholly deficient in ease, grace, and poetical feeling. The 
language throughout is homely, the fancy bare and meagre to a 
degree. It must be confessed, nevertheless, that Defoe is a hard hitter, 
he makes every blow tell, hits out manfully and straight-forward, and 
never once misses his man. King William, and, of course, his courtiers, 
were much pleased with the spirit and tendency of this poem, and vied 
with each other in their testimonies of good- will to the author, to whose 
satirical abilities may be applied, with peculiar propriety, Pope's phrase, 
" downright," in that well-known and often-quoted line, "As downright 
Shippen or as old Montaigne." 

The same year that gave birth to the " True-born Englishman," 
rendered Defoe equally conspicuous in a different sphere of action. 
Reverting to his favourite political topic, the corruption of the House of 
Commons, he presented an address on the subject to the speaker, 
signed " Legion," in the disguise of an old woman. In this document 
he insisted so strenuously, and with so much justice, on the necessity of 
reform, that the members took the alarm, and would at once have prose- 
cuted the writer, had not the current of public feeling run strongly in 
favour. As it was, they contented themselves with abuse and vulgar 
recrimination. 

We now come to the most eventful incident in Defoe's life. On the 
death of King William, Anne ascended the throne, at a period when the 
nation was convulsed with party-spirit, when the faction of whigs and 
tories raged with more violence than ever, and when high-church 
principles were carried to an extent wholly inconceivable in the pre- 
sent clay. Defoe, as the advocate of the dissenters, against whom 
the established church projected, and actually attempted to carry into 
execution, a war of extermination, of course resented with all the energy 
of which he was capable, this inquisitorial persecution, and, adopting the 
language of irony, exposed the bigotry of the high-churchmen in a 
pamphlet entitled the " Shortest Way with the Dissenters/' For this 
work he was eagerly pounced on by the House of Commons, brought to 
trial at the Old Bailey, convicted chiefly by the manoeuvring of the attorney- 
general (who seems to have been the prototype of that recreant whig, 
Sir James Scarlett), and condemned, to the eternal disgrace of justice, to 
stand in the pillory. 

This sentence reflected shame only on those who inflicted it. To 
Defoe it was a triumph and season of rejoicing, " for he was 
guarded," says his biographer, " to the pillory by the populace, as 
if he were about to be enthroned in a chair of state, and descended from 
it amidst the triumphant acclamations of the surrounding multitude, who, 
instead of pelting him, according to the orthodox fashion in such cases, 
protected him from the missiles of his enemies, drank his health, 
adorned the pillory with garlands, and when he descended from it, 
supplied him with all manner of refreshments." But notwithstanding 
this flattering testimonial to his public worth, his punishment, and the 

M.M. New Series. VOL. XI. No. 61. E 



26 Defoe : his Life and Writings. [JAN. 

imprisonment and fine, which formed part of it, completely ruined 
Defoe, who lost upwards of three thousand five hundred pounds a con- 
siderable sum in those days and found himself at a mature age, with a 
wife and six children, with no other resource for their support than the 
chance product of his pen. In this desperate condition, the high tory 
party, who reverenced his abilities while they dreaded his power, endea- 
voured to enlist him in their service ; but in vain, their victim was proof 
against temptation, and, wrapt up in the mantle of his integrity, bade 
defiance to the storms that howled around him. 

We must now pass over a fe w busy years, during which Defoe took 
part with his pen in almost every great question that came before the 
public, particularly in the Union with Scotland, of which he was a 
staunch and influential promoter, and which procured him the patronage 
of Harley and Godolphin, and come to a curious feature in his literary 
life, which Sir Walter Scott has lately brought, in an amusing manner, 
before the world. It seems that when Drelincourt's book, entitled 
" Consolations against the Fear of Death/' first appeared in the English 
language, the publisher was disappointed in the sale, and it being a 
heavy work, he is said to have complained to Defoe of the injury he 
was likely to sustain by it. Our veteran author asked him if he had 
blended any marvels with his piety. The bibliopolist replied in the 
negative. " Indeed !" said Defoe ; " then attend to me, and I will put you 
in a way to dispose of the work, were it as heavy to move as Olympus." 
He then sate down, and composed a tract with the following title: 
" A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal the Next Day 
after her Death to one Mrs. Bargrave, at Canterbury, the 8th of Sep- 
tember, 1705, which Apparition Recommends the Perusal of Drelin- 
court's Book of Consolations against the Fear of Death/' This tract 
was immediately appended to the work in question the public being 
then, as now, always agape for marvels and has been appended to 
every subsequent edition, of which upwards of forty have now passed 
through the English press. Sir Walter Scott, who has recorded this 
anecdote, and from whom Mr. Wilson has gleaned it, observes that it is 
one of the most ingenious specimens of book-making which have ever 
come within his knowledge. It bespeaks, indeed, ineffable self-pos- 
session and ingenuity on the part of its author, for " who but a man 
gifted with the most consummate readiness, would have thought of 
summoning a ghost from the grave, to bear witness in favour of a halting 
body of divinity ?" Who indeed ! 

The trial of the famous Dr. Sacheverell, was another occasion on 
which Defoe particularly distinguished himself. This fanatic, who had 
rendered himself notorious by boldly preaching from the pulpit the 
doctrines of non-resistance, and whose cause was upheld by all the 
high tories and churchmen in the kingdom ; who was moreover in 
extreme favour with a vast rabble, hired, of course, to shout him into 
notice, and make a lion of one whom nature intended solely for a fool, 
was attacked by Defoe in a manner more remarkable for its zeal than 
its discretion, inasmuch as it -rendered him for the time the most 
unpopular man in the kingdom. Wherever he went, whether about 
the metropolis or in the provinces, his life was in imminent danger ; 
his attempts to reform the persecuting spirit of the age were met with 
contumely and ridicule ; his character was impugned, his abilities were 
decried, his very virtues ministered against him. For every shout of 



1831.] Defoe : his Life and Writings. 27 

" Long live Sacheverell !" a counter one was raised, of " Down with 
Defoe I" Even assassination was attempted to be put in force against 
him ; so difficult, so replete with hazard is the high task to make men 
wiser or better than they are. Defoe was full a century in advance of 
his age, and he paid the penalty of such maturity in the bitter, unsparing 
abuse of his contemporaries. All parties combined to assail him. The 
whigs detested him, the Jacobites avoided him, the high tories feared 
him, and even the dissenters, in whose cause he had perilled his all, 
for whom he had gone through the ordeal of fine pillory imprison- 
ment even these for a season stood aloof from him. He was like 
Cain, branded on his forehead with a mark, that all men might avoid 
him. Time, however, did him justice: the malice of his enemies 
slowly abated ; and as the quicksands of party were perpetually shifting, 
Defoe gained more or less by such change. Still the persecutions he had 
experienced made visible inroads on his health. In the autumn of life 
he found himself without a green leaf on his boughs, his spirit blighted, 
sapless, and ready at the first keen breeze that might blow rudely on 
it, to fall a ruin to earth. Under these circumstances, in the year 1715, 
shortly after the accession of George the First to the throne, he pub- 
lished a pamphlet in defence of his whole political career, which he 
entitled " An Appeal to Honour and Justice/' Scarcely was this 
concluded, when its gifted author was struck with apoplexy, from 
which his recovery was for a long time doubtful. 

On his restoration to health, Defoe embarked in a new career, and 
amused himself with the composition of those works of fiction, some of 
which will render his name immortal. In 1719 appeared " Robinson 
Crusoe," founded on the true adventures of Alexander Selkirk, who 
but a few years before had in no ordinary degree excited public atten- 
tion ; in 1721, the " History of Moll Flanders ;" in 1722, the " Life of 
Colonel Jack," and the " History of the Great Plague in London ;" 
in 1723, " Memoirs of a Cavalier," and " Religious Courtship ;" in 1724, 
" Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress," and " A Tour through the whole 
Island of Great Britain;" and in 1726, the " Political History of the 
Devil," together with a vast variety of other miscellanies, both in prose 
and verse, of which little now is known except to the hunters after 
literary rarities. But age and infirmities were rapidly advancing 
upon Defoe, and putting a stop to the further exercise of his invention. 
Shortly after the marriage of one of his daughters, in 1729, he was 
arrested for some trivial debt, and confined in prison till the year 1730, 
which period was passed in sickness and acute mental anguish. As if 
to fill up the measure of his suffering, his very children rebelled against 
him, and on some mean pretext his son found means to deprive his aged 
and heart-broken father of what little remained to him of the world's 
wealth. This was too much for Defoe's fortitude. The principle of 
life within him, already severely tried, now quite gave way : he 
seldom spoke, was often seen in tears, or on his knees in prayer ; and 
after some months of intense mental suffering, resigned himself without 
a struggle to his fate, on the 24th of April, 1731, at the mature age of 
seventy. 

Having thus sketched the main incidents in the political life of Defoe, 
it remains to say a few words of him in that character by which he is 
best known to posterity, namely, as an author. Of his fugitive tracts, 
" thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks of Vallombrosa," on 

E 2 



23 Defoe : his Life and Writings. J.VN. 

the passing topics of the day, as the changed character of the age has 
consigned them to eternal oblivion, we shall merely observe, that 
though uninteresting to the mere reader for amusement, they teem with 
instruction for the historian, the commentator, and the divine. Viewed 
as literary compositions, they abound in spirit, irony, and occasionally 
caustic sarcasm. Their style is everywhere homely, not vulgar, clear, 
explicit, and free from rant or verbiage. In this respect they 
resemble the political writings of Swift, though they fall immea- 
surably short of them in terseness, energy, and fertility of illustration. 
In the " Dean of St. Patrick's" tracts there is ever an appearance of 
care and attention ; every point, however simply detailed, seems to be 
made the most of, every fact to be diligently elaborated and insisted 
on. With Defoe the very contrary is the case. He throws off his 
opinions on the great leading events of his day, with a carelessness and 
profusion which superior literary wealth but too commonly engenders ; 
and if he at times displays the highest and most varied excellences, such 
ebullitions are the results rather of accident than design. As a political 
writer Defoe has left behind him no one master-piece, by which he can 
be at once brought before the reader's memory. His talents are scat- 
tered over scores of volumes; felicitous passages, whether for thought, 
sentiment, humour, or fiction, must be sought in a variety of tracts, 
whose aggregate number might appal the most courageous students. 
He has written no one work like Swift's ft Public Spirit of the Whigs," 
Burke's " Reflections on the French Revolution," or Johnson's " Letter 
on the Falkland Islands," wherein that stately writer carries the power 
and dignity of the English language to its very loftiest elevation, by 
which a reader of the present day may at once form an estimate of his 
abilities. Hence his political celebrity is a dead-letter to all but histo- 
rians and antiquaries. 

But if Defoe be comparatively unknown as a politician, as a novelist 
and writer of fiction he has the rare merit of having witched all Europe. 
His inimitable " Robinson Crusoe" has been translated into every con- 
tinental language, and has even kindled the enthusiasm of the Arabs, 
as they listened outside their tents to its incidents, rendered into the 
vernacular by the skill of the traveller Burkhardt. By more discri- 
minating and fastidious judges it has been equally well received. It 
warmed the unsocial heart of Rousseau, and taught him to feel that there 
were other things in nature worthy consideration besides himself; 
relaxed the cynical frown of Johnson ; delighted Blair and Beattie ; ai?d 
in our own days has received the unqualified commendation of such 
men as Scott, Lamb, and Hazlitt. Public opinion, split into a thou- 
sand nice distinctions on other literary topics, has been unanimous on 
the subject of " Robinson Crusoe." It has received the suffrages and 
interested the feelings of all ages and grades in society, of the school- 
boy and the man, of the peer and the peasant. The reason of this is obvious. 
Crusoe is nature herself speaking in her own language on her own most 
favourite and intelligible topics. Art is no where present, she is dis- 
carded for matters of higher and more general interest. While the poet 
and the scholar appeal to the select few, Defoe throws himself abroad 
on the sympathies of the world. His subject, he feels, will bear him 
out ; the strongest instincts of humanity will plead trumpet-tongued in 
his favour. Despite the extraordinary moral and intellectual changes 
that a new fashion of society, a new mode of writing and thinking, have 



1831.] Defoe : his Life and Writings. 20 

wrought in England, " Robinson Crusoe" still retains (though partially 
dimmed) his reputation, and the reader who can unmoved peruse his 
adventures, may assure himself that the fault of such indifference lies 
with him ; Defoe is wholly guiltless. 

For ourselves, the bare recollection of this tale brings before our 
minds sympathies long since resigned, and which otherwise might 
be altogether forgotten. We remember, as though it were an event of 
yesterday, our first perusal of " Robinson Crusoe." We remember the 
sloping green in front of the grey abbey wall, where we sate thrilled with 
wonder and a vague sense of horror, at the print of the unknown 
savage's feet on the deserted island, which the solitary mariner disco- 
vered in one of his early wanderings. We remember the strong social 
sympathies that sprung up within us the birth, as it were, of a new 
and better existence as we read how from being utterly desolate, 
Robinson Crusoe gradually found himself the companion of one or 
two associates, rude indeed, and uncultivated, but men like himself, 
and therefore the fittest mates of his solitude. We remember (and 
how few tales beloved in boyhood can bear the severe scrutiny of the 
man !) the generous warmth with which we entered into the feelings of 
the sailor, as he saw his little colony including the goats, who were 
grown so tame that they would approach at his call and suffer him to 
penn them at night in their fold gradually augmenting round him, and 
at last (what an exquisite trait of nature !) following the course of nature, 
and springing up into a limited monarchy, of which he was the head. 
We remember too for no gratification is without its alloy, so true is the 
exclamation of the poet 

" Inter saluberrina culta 
Infelix lolium et steriles dominantur avenae" 

we remember the acute regret we experienced when feuds and ambitious 
feelings began to spring up within the bosom of that colony, where 
Astraea, driven from all other parts of earth, should have taken up her 
abode, and Peace sate throned as on a sepulchre. Will it be believed 
that this tale, so perfect in its descriptions so affecting in its sim- 
plicity so entirely arid incorruptibly natural was refused by almost 
every bookseller in the metropolis ? Yet strange as it may seem, this 
was actually the fact. e( Robinson Crusoe" was hawked about through 
the trade as a work of neither mark nor livelihood, and at last accepted, 
as a proof of especial condescension, by an obscure retail bookseller. 
It is singular, but not less true and we leave our readers to draw their 
own inference from the fact that almost every book of any pretensions 
to originality has been similarly neglected. " Paradise Lost" with diffi- 
culty found a publisher, while the whole trade vied with each other in 
their eagerness to procure the works of such dull mechanical writers as 
Blackmore and Glover ; " Gulliver's Travels" lay ten years in MS. for 
want of due encouragement from the booksellers ; and in our own times, 
and in a lighter branch of literature, the (e Miseries of Human Life/* 
and the still more ingenious " Rejected Addresses," were refused by the 
trade with indifference, if not contempt. To crown the list of w r orks 
thus misunderstood, Sir W. Scott has left it on record that " Waverley" 
was actually declined three several times by the acutest publisher of his 
day ; and at last ushered into the world, after it had lain twelve years 



30 Defoe : his Life and Writings. [[JAN. 

unnoticed in its author's desk, with doubt, hesitation, and indifference. 
Crciiilc postcri ! 

It was objected to " Robinson Crusoe/' on its publication, when to doubt 
its other merits was impossible, that it had no claims to originality ; that, 
in fact, it was a mere transcript of the " Adventures of Alexander 
Selkirk.'* Of all objections to books of value, none are more common, 
none more vulgar than this. True originality lies not in the mechanical 
invention of incident and circumstance else who more original than 
a high-flown startling melodramatist ? but in creating new matter for 
thought and feeling ; in exploring the untried depths of the heart ; in 
multiplying the sources of sympathy. Whoever excites a new emotion ; 
whoever strikes a chord in the world's heart never struck before ; he is 
the only inventor, the only sterling original. It is in this sense that we 
style Shakspeare for all his plots, and the ground- work of the majority 
of his characters, are borrowed a creator ; in this sense also we give 
Wordsworth, and Scott, and Hazlitt, among the moderns, credit for the 
same high attribute. To invent is to look into oneself, to draw from 
one's own heart materials for the world's sympathy. This Defoe has 
done throughout his " Robinson Crusoe." The " Adventures of Alex- 
ander Selkirk" are the mere pegs on which he has hung his painting ; 
the grouping on the canvass itself the light and shade of character and 
description the development of incident the fine tone of feeling and 
simplicity that pervades and mellows the entire composition these are 
all essentially his own. 

Of Defoe's minor works, such, for instance, as his " Singleton," 
" Moll Flanders," " Colonel Jack," &c., we shall say little, as we 
have but an imperfect recollection of them, but we cannot prae- 
termit his " History of the Plague in London," to which Professor 
Wilson has been so largely indebted in his splendid, but somewhat 
verbose dramatic poem of " The City of the Plague." Defoe's 
narrative of this awful visitation is, from first to last, as impressive a 
piece of writing as any in the annals of literature. It is superior 
to the record, by Thucydides, of the same pestilence at Athens ; because, 
though less a model of composition, less terse, less polished, less equable 
in its classical spirit, it has incomparably more nature, more feeling, a 
more rigid air of reality. Whoever has read this striking fiction (for 
fiction it really is) will allow that it is one never to be forgotten. The 
very opening, where Defoe tells us with an air of the most perfect 
unconcern, as if unconscious of what is to follow, that " towards the 
close of the summer of 1665, a report was spread throughout the parish 
that three men had died of some strange disorder in Long- Acre," excites 
curiosity, and rivets attention. But when he proceeds through the 
different phases of his narrative when he glances at the grass growing 
in the streets at the strange prodigies that harbingered the visitation 
at the death of the first man who was indubitably proved to have fallen 
a victim to the plague at the sound of the dead-cart at night, and the 
houses marked by the fatal cross and, above all, when he sketches one 
or two individual portraits, such as those of the mother and daughter 
who were found dead in each others' arms, we feel the mastery of his 
genius, and acknowledge, with mingled awe and wonder, that we are 
indeed under the spell of the necromancer. 

We have little to add. " The History of the Plague," and the " Ad- 



1831.] Defoe: his Life and Writings. 31 

ventures of Robinson Crusoe/' are the works to which Defoe is 
indebted for his immortality. As a political writer he has perished 
from among us; as a novelist his spirit yet walks the earth. His 
present biographer has done him justice in both characters; and 
has, besides, thrown so much light on the age in which Defoe 
flourished, so fully illustrated its nature, its manners, and more par- 
ticularly its moral and religious cast of thought, that we know not 
which most to admire, his power of amusement or instruction. In every 
sense of the word, even with Clarendon and Gibbon in our recollection, 
we may style Mr. Wilson a historian. His " Life and Times of Defoe" 
of that extraordinary man who exceeds Cobbett in the number and 
variety of his political tracts ; who beats Thucydides on his own Vantage 
ground ; almost equals Sir W. Scott as a novelist ; and who, in the 
aggregate amount of his works, surpasses any author that ever lived, 
having written upwards of two hundred volumes ! . Mr. Wilson's 
Memoirs of that extraordinary man are volumes that no student, nay, 
no gentleman, should be without. A library that does not possess 
them is incomplete. 



FROM Tangiers we proceeded overland to Tetuan; the distance is 
about thirty English miles, through a most luxuriant and romantic 
country. Hitherto the Moors of this place have been considered so 
untractable, that, notwithstanding the great allurements of situation,, 
Europeans could not continue their residence in this part of the country. 
In the year 1770 the Consuls withdrew from Tetuan, and fixed them- 
selves at Tangiers. Within the last few years the English have again 
succeeded in opening an intercourse with this city, by establishing a 
Mr. Price as vice-consul in this town a gentleman in whose hands 
English interests are sure to be promoted. t 

The bashaw of Tetuan is only visible to those who are disposed to pay 
for the indulgence, and will at any time gratify the curiosity of strangers 

* In continuation of the article on Tangiers, at page 543 of our last volume. 

f- It would be scarcely fair to pass over this gentleman's name with so slight a notice. 
The manner in which he conducted himself in his consulship is worthy of imitation. 
Although the only European consul in Tetuan, his attentions and services were available 
to all nations. Many were the odious disabilities against Europeans he contrived by his 
firmness to abolish. It was he who first insisted that Englishmen should not submit to 
the degradation of dismounting at the city-gates, and leading their horses through the 
town, as had hitherto been the practice. I could mention numerous instances, in which 
his humanity and good-heartedness have been equally conspicuous ; but can pay him no 
better tribute than to record the conduct of Sidi Hash Hash, the bashaw, on his depar- 
ture. So averse was this man to the sight of an English consul, that his intrigues pre- 
vented Mr. Price from commencing the duties of his office for upwards of ten months. 
In one of the bashaw's communications to the sultan on this subject, he reminds him 
" that his forefather, Sidi Mohammed el Grande, had vowed by his beard (a most sacred 
vow amongst the Moors) never to allow a Christian to set foot in Tetuan;" yet, on the 
departure of Mr. Price, three years afterwards, he addressed him in terms of the greatest 
amity, and told him that, by his conduct, he had laid the foundation of a future good 
understanding between the Moors and the Christians, whom, previous to his acquaintance, 
he had ever held in dread, and that it was now his only wish to be better acquainted with 
Englishmen. The English flag, for the first time since the year 1770, now floats on 
the Consular-house of Tetuan a sight which the population of that place thronged to 
see during several days. 



32 A Glance at Tetuan. [JAN. 

for a few loaves of sugar, or a few pounds of tea or coffee. In this 
respect he may be compared to. some strange beast kept for exhibition; 
nor is his appearance likely to dispel the idea, being dreadfully afflicted 
with the elephantiasis in both legs, so that he is confined to the range of 
his own garden. 

It was, however, a pleasing disappointment to find, by his conversa- 
tion, that he possessed a little more sentiment than his appearance would 
establish credit for. In being conducted round his garden and orchard 
of pomegranates, 1 observed, amidst a great deal of order and regularity, 
a moss-covered fountain, which had ceased to play; the patch of ground 
which environed it was uncultivated ; the shrubs and flowers grew in 
wild contrast to the care observed in every other part. On noticing this 
partial neglect, he explained " that the fountain had belonged to a 
favourite wife, who had been accustomed to drink of its waters, and to 
cultivate with her own hands the plot of ground now in such disorder, 
but the fountain should never play again, and the garden might run 
to waste, for she whom it pleased might take delight in it no more !"* 

The melancholy humour of his excellency had that day been increased 
by a request he had received from the emperor to forward a large sum of 
money to Morocco, which he could find no pretext to withhold much 
longer. In this exigency, he sent for the elders of the Jews (that never- 
failing philosopher's- stone), and politely requested to know if they 
would furnish him with a small loan. The great financier the Roths- 
child of Tetuan now stood boldly forward, and, with a courage worthy 
of his rich London relation, told the bashaw " that his brethren could 
not be expected to pay the deficiencies of his accounts with the sultan, 
especially after his excellency had so often and so ungraciously inflicted 
stripes on their backs, for which they had paid so dearly, both in coin 
and flesh, that they had now scarcely any of either to call their own." 

Such extraordinary language was naturally ill-brooked, and, at any 
other time, might have cost the offender a severe punishment ; but the 
Jews, aware of the impending disgrace of the bashaw, determined on this 
occasion to make a stand against his oppressions, and accelerate his fall 
by refusing their assistance, which they calculated would get him imme- 
diately removed from the bashalick. The governor was evidently 
labouring under great uneasiness of mind, which the numerous changes 
of his countenance betrayed ; nor could he help giving vent to his spleen 
in sundry ejaculations, during a repast of coffee, biscuits, and conserve 
of orange-flowers, which his kindness had provided for us. 

The town of Tetuan is extensive, and contains about 30,000 inhabi- 
tants. From situation, it is the most advantageous spot in the empire of 
Morocco for extending our commerce with Barbary ; but that perpetual 
obstacle in these kingdoms the sand-bars at the mouths of the river 
does not allow any vessel to enter that of Tetuan of above eighty tons 
burthen. Tetuan is in the vicinity of the beautiful mountains of Rif, 

* Another observation which my friend, the bashaw, lately made, in conversing on the 
fall of Algiers, will perhaps not be considered unamusing. . At first, hearing that this city 
had surrendered, he declared it was nothing but " mala fama evil report ; that the 
Moors were much superior to the French in point of valour." On the subsequent confirma- 
tion of the news, and the dethronement of Charles the Tenth, he, however, exclaimed 
" Al^ Dios es grande ! whilst the French took Algiers, Mahomet was asleep; but, on 
awaking, he became angry at what had been done, and in revenge drove the king of 
France from his kingdom." 



iaSl.] A Glance at Tetuan. 33 

whose miserable half-clad inhabitants are the terror of the town. The 
guards who accompanied us over the country refused to enter the 
mountains, saying, " The Rifians had, on the previous evening, forded 
the river at dusk, and had carried off' some Moorish women from a douar, 
and would most likely think we were come in search of them." 

The view southward of Tetuan reaches along a ridge of the lower 
Atlas mountains. At sight of this mighty chain, the heart throbs to trace 
the links whose delightful dyes vie with the bright hues of heaven. The 
broad expanse over which the eye runs is intersected with vineyard- 
valleys embosomed between the hills ; in the distance, the mountains 
shoot their blue heads into the skies, and close the extent of horizon. 

To the lover of field sports, this part of Barbary is a most delightful 
country ; for it is impossible to stir a step without starting game of some 
species. The Moors have no idea of shooting birds flying, and generally 
take partridges by hunting them down till they are exhausted. There is 
no obstacle to sporting here all the year round, save the respect naturally 
paid by sportsmen to the breeding season ; but the great quantity of eggs 
eaten and exported annually, shew that the Moors have no consideration of 
this sort. The wild boar, which Mussulmans are not allowed to eat, are 
here most numerous. 

Higher up the coast, towards Oran, the wild antelope and gazelle 
become plentiful ; the latter are not easily domesticated ; they never live 
long when taken from their native woodlands; the beautiful eye and 
symmetrical form, the jet-black tongue and spicy smell of this delicate 
little animal, has induced many to endeavour to transplant it, but with- 
out effect. Except in a state of nature, it is not choice of its food, and 
generally dies of indiscriminate feeding. 

During our stay here, the whole coast was a scene of extraordinary 
activity. A Genoese vessel was waiting outside the bar at the mouth of 
the river, to take a freight of pilgrims to Alexandria. Detained by 
adverse winds, the Moors had encamped themselves on the sea-beach. 
The general equipage which serves them throughout their long pilgri- 
mage (which, with the visit to Medina and Jerusalem, lasts a year), is 
seldom more than the carpets on which they sleep. Those who cannot 
afford a marquee, sling one of these carpets across a pole, like a gipsy's 
tent. A leathern scrip and a small bundle contains the remainder of their 
necessaries. 

They are generally under the command of a scherif, who regulates the 
march of the party when they land. Their method of cooking meat is 
such as to dispense with the use of many utensils. An oblong square 
hole is dug in the ground, in which a wood fire is lighted ; a stick is then 
cut of sufficient length to reach across the cavity, upon which the meat 
is stuck as on a spit, one end of which is twirled by the hand until the 
joint is well roasted. 

The force of the Mahommedan religion is perhaps in no instance so 
clearly seen, as in the number of votaries it leads to the shrine of the 
prophet at Mecca. From the peasant to the prince, all are filled with the 
same hope, the same wish of performing that pilgrimage which is to 
smooth their path to the grave, to absolve them from their sins in this 
world, and to be the means of their salvation in the next. The name of 
hadjee is to them a title of nobility, or reverence, which all are anxious to 
acquire, and to attain which they will employ the savings of whole years 
of toil. 

A great number of stragglers always join the troop of hadjees on their 

M.M. New. Series. Vol.. XL No. 61. F 



34 A Glance at Tctuan. [JAN 

route to the port of embarkation, and await the moment of the vessel's 
departure to surround and forcibly cling to its sides or rigging,, imploring 
their countrymen,, for the love of the holy prophet, not to hinder their 
pious intention of doing penance for their sins at his tomb. Too late to 
remonstrate the vessel is perhaps already under weigh the poor 
wretches must either be plunged into the waves, or admitted. 

The voyage being one of penitence, harsh feelings are seldom exercised 
towards brethren in distress. Various are the grounds upon which they 
claim the charity of their more fortunate companions. One declares he 
is a scherif,* with royal blood in his veins, and no money in his pockets ; 
one, that he has committed crimes the guilt of which must fall on the 
head of the person who repels him ; another, that he has an aged father, 
blind and leprous, whose only hope of cure is the accomplishment of the 
vow of his son all irresistible arguments, put forward at a moment they 
cannot be discussed, but which generally saddles the captain of the vessel 
with double the number of passengers he has agreed to take. 

Those alone who have witnessed a scene of encampment of hadjees, 
can form an idea of what a pilgrimage must be, or what is the confusion 
and inconvenience of this prelude to their task a sea-voyage. They 
inevitably endure all the difficulties of long and painful marches, fastings 
and toil beneath a burning sun, and which nothing but the hope inspired 
by religion could enable them to support. The fatigue of the journey 
through Arabia alone would cause Europeans to fall victims to a want of 
comforts they despise. 

A caravan sets out yearly from Morocco by land, across the desert of 
Angad, passing by Oran, Algiers, and Tripoly, where they are joined by 
all the Moors who proceed from each of these places. This, of course, 
is a much more serious undertaking, and requires still greater strength 
and fortitude to bear than those who proceed by sea to the mouth of the 
Nile. The pilgrims are likewise often obliged to fight their way through 
the deserts, as the Bedouin Arabs always reckon upon the robbery of a 
caravan as they do on a harvest. All these troubles are braved for the 
mere love of kissing a black stone, and drinking a pitcher of water at the 
well of Hagar. 

Royalty itself does not disdain to participate in the difficulties of these 
pilgrimages. It is incumbent on every one who can afford the expense 
to perform the journey to Mecca at least once in the course of his life ; 
but many who have acccumulated sins of which they repent, perform it 
several times ; its efficacy in such cases none attempt to deny ; and those 
who cannot go in person, commission others to pray for them. 

The return of the pilgrims is an event dreaded by all the European 
consuls in Barbary, who cannot persuade the Moors of the propriety of 
putting their vessels into quarantine. Neglect of this precaution has 
frequently introduced the oriental plague into Barbary, which has often 
depopulated the country, and, about fifteen years ago, carried off a great 
number of the inhabitants of this part of the coast. Amongst any other 
people but Mahommedans, the ravages of the plague might be easily 
averted ; but the Moors think it a sin to avoid any such evil. " Allah 
Aikbar ! God's will be done !" is always their cry ; and this they repeat 
whilst they steal the pestiferous clothes from the dead bodies. S. B. 

* The respect due to a schdrif is very great ; the anxiety to kiss the skirts of their gar- 
ments is such, that the Moors will steal along behind them to press the bernoos to their 
lips, or snatch a kiss of their hands. 



1831.] [ 35 J 

ST. CROIX ; A TALE OF THE DAYS OF TERROR. 

I HATE heard it asserted that England is pre-eminently distinguished 
amongst other countries for the individual eccentricity of many of its 
inhabitants ; but whether this peculiarity is attributed to the influence of 
climate,, government, or phrenological organization, I at this instant 
utterly forget, nor is the fact of much importance, as whatever the theo- 
retical cause, I deny the supposed result. Oddities, as these deformed 
combinations of human intellect are commonly called, are to be met 
with every where, and in France, not less than England, as I can attest 
from personal experience. 

Monsieur St. Croix was the very prince of the whole tribe : a strange 
compound of the misanthrope and philanthropist, the miser and the fop, 
fermented by a strong leaven of the irritability and waywardness of 
insanity. And this man dwelt, three years ago, and probably still 
dwells, in the most profound seclusion, though in a fashionable street, 
in the gayest quarter of Paris, where thousands are thronging daily 
past his abode of misery, unconscious of the existence of such a being, 
and the fair and the dissipated are hurrying after pleasure to some 
soiree, or reunion, which to their bounded vision appears the world. 

St. Croix was a man of territory ; he was the proprietor of five hotels, 
or moderately-sized houses, calculated for the accommodation of a 
single family (such as Englishmen delight to inhabit), agreeably 

situated between a court-yard and a garden in the Rue . But these 

mansions added little to their possessor's wealth, for three of them, after 
having been long uninhabited, were fast falling to ruin ; the fourth, 
which looked as desolate and forsaken as the others, was occupied by 
himself alone ; and of the fifth, by some strange chance, my family were 
the last tenants. It was one of this eccentric man's peculiarities, that 
the love of money, which would have made others eager to see their 
houses inhabited, was the cause of his preferring that they should 
crumble to decay. He detested tenants, he said, gentlemen particu- 
larly, for they were continually demanding repairs and alterations, to 
all of which, though the rain might pour in torrents through the roofs, 
and the wind whistle in at every corner, he was invariably inexorable, 
till one by one his tormentors were fairly driven from their quarters, 
and he was left in undisturbed possession of his domain. 

The gardens belonging to these deserted mansions, which were only 
divided from each other by low walls, became from that time his great 
source of amusement and occupation. I was told that, when he first 
began his labours, they were as pretty as any thing of the kind can be 
luxuriant with the vines and laburnums, lilacs, acacias, and Judah trees, 
which flourish in the very centre of Paris ; but when I knew them, his 
industry had left neither tree, nor shrub, nor blade of grass, on the 
whole territory. He boasted with delight that he had levelled every 
tree with the ground, lest their damp exhalations should injure those 
buildings which time and neglect were fast hurrying to annihilation. 
A few stunted miserable cabbages were the only green things visible 
over the irregular heaps of fresh-turned, or well-trodden earth, which 
replaced the parterres and grass-plots of former days ; but these were 
the especial objects of his care, and often have I been awakened at four 
o'clock on a summer morning, by a broken voice singing La belle 
Gabriclle at the height of its pitch, before I discovered that Monsieur 

P 2 



3(3 Monsieur St. Croix ; QJAN. 

St. Croix was, even at that early hour, busily engaged in the culture 
of the favourite vegetable, upon which he chiefly depended for nourish- 
ment. When I first beheld my musical neighbour, he was running 
backwards and forwardsjjetween the corners of the desolate garden, car- 
rying earth in a wooden spoon to refresh the roots of his wretched cab- 
bages ; and though the sun was burning with cloudless splendour in the 
sky, he wore no hat upon his highly-dressed head, whose formal curls 
and tightly-tied tail, bore record of the ancient time. These identified 
the man ; for though no servant ever set foot within his doors, though 
neither fire nor candle were ever known to illumine his dreary dwelling, 
though he had never possessed a scrap of linen for years, save one shirt, 
which he bought in the linen-market, and wore thenceforward, without 
washing, till its very existence became an airy nothing, yet, strange con- 
tradiction in human nature, he paid an annual stipend to a perruquier, 
to come every morning and dress his hair ! A brown frock coat, whose 
rags betokened its length of service, a dirty white neckcloth, most care- 
full tied, grey worsted stckings drawn tightly over a beautifully formed 
leg, with a pair of strong leather shoes, completed his costume. But 
though thus attired, it was impossible to doubt for an instant that Mon- 
sieur St. Croix was a gentleman. The stamp of nobility was upon his 
lofty brow ; and though age, or perhaps sorrow, had silvered his hair, 
it had neither bent his tall and finely-proportioned figure, nor wrinkled 
the face which in youth must have been pre-eminently handsome. 

We became intimate ; our daily conversations between my window 
and his garden appeared not less agreeable to my neighbour than to 
myself. One great reason for the kindness he invariably manifested 
towards me, and the interest he took in my welfare was, I verily believe, 
that in whatever society or place I met him, whether with a gay party 
in the Louvre, where it was his daily habit to walk in the winter, for 
the benefit of the fires which never gladdened his home, or in the 
crowded malls of the Tuileries and Boulevards, I invariably acknow- 
ledged the acquaintance of my venerable friend with a courteous salu- 
tation. 

After an acquaintance of several months, I was agreeably surprised 
by a request from the old man to visit him : an honour never antici- 
pated ; for not once in a year was a human being known to have been 
admitted into his mysterious dwelling. I was shewn into a square oak- 
floored room, with two windows looking towards the street, and two 
towards the garden. The shutters of the former were closed, and the 
cobwebs and dirt which had been accumulating for years upon the 
latter, dimmed the bright light of the glorious sky without. There 
were faded portraits of his ancestors, in flowing wigs and glittering 
breast-plates, hanging round the walls, which the recluse pointed out 
with manifest pride ; but there was one object which excited my curio- 
sity more than all the rest. Above the fire-place, suspended by a broken 
fork on one side, and a rusty nail on the other, hung a faded silk win- 
dow-curtain, and though in spite of all my hints, Monsieur St. Croix 
had forborne to raise it, I felt certain I could distinctly trace the outline 
of a large picture-frame beneath. I had been struck by the agitated 
expression of his countenance when I alluded to this curtained depart- 
ment of the wall ; and an opportunity afforded by the absence of my 
host was too tempting to be lost. I lifted a corner of the silken veil, 
and had scarcely time to perceive beneath the portrait of a young and 



1831.] a Tale of the Days of Terror. 37 

lovely female, in the dress of a Carmelite nun, whose full dark eyes as 
they met my gaze, beamed with more of tenderness than devotion, ere 
the returning footsteps of Monsieur St. Croix were audible in the pas- 
sage. I dropped the curtain, and saw it no more. 

I often discerned St. Croix afterwards as I returned home late from 
the Champs Elysees or the Boulevards, seated at an open upper window, 
upon a dirty striped pillow, reading in the moonlight ; and our conver- 
sations from his garden were continued without interruption till my 
return to England. I know not wherefore, but the old man grew 
attached to me as to a child, and to my great surprise, the day before 
my departure, I saw him hastily crossing the court of our little hotel, 
and in another moment he entered, unannounced, into the salon where 
I sat. He held a scroll of papers in his hand, but, as usual, he was 
without a hat. 

" My young friend," he said, and he smiled, though tears were in 
his eyes, " you are about to depart, and with God's pleasure I shall not 
be long here. You have been kind to a poor desolate old man, and I 
thank you. You have not mocked my infirmities like the rest of the 
world, you have been indulgent to them, though you know not their 
cause. It is time you should learn the dark events which made me 
what I am a scorn and a laughing-stock to fools. You have spoken 
with a voice of kindness to my broken spirit ; it was long since I had 
heard such tones from any human being, and they were very sweet. In 
your own land you will read these," he continued, giving me the roll of 
papers he held, and pressing both my hands convulsively between his 
as he did so ; " you will there learn the fatal tale I have not power to 
relate, which, thank God, I sometimes forget ; my mind is not what it 
was, but I have had cause for madness. I shall miss you much ; but 
it will be a pleasure to me to think that you will pity me when you 
know all, and that though you are far away, you sometimes offer up 
your prayers for a solitary and forsaken being who hath great need of 
them/' 

He then darted from my presence even more abruptly than he entered. 
It was the last time I beheld Monsieur St. Croix ; and as I have never 
since returned to Paris, I know not whether he is still in existence. The 
following narrative is extracted from his roll of papers : 

NARRATIVE OF MONSIEUR ST. CROIX. 

My father was one of the haute noblesse ; it had been better for me 
if he had been a beggar. I should never then have been a slave to the 
leaden bondage of pride ; idleness would never have nourished the seeds 
of all the evil passions which, wretched victim ! I inherited from a long 
line of corrupted ancestry ; they would have had no time to bud and 
blossom in the hot- bed of sloth ; I should have been compelled to labour 
for my daily bread ; hunger would have tamed my wandering thoughts, 
and I might have been a happy and an honest man. My father and 
mother lived as many other French couples do at the present day, and 
many more did then ; they dwelt under the same roof, met seldom, but 
with perfect politeness on both sides ; hated each other with all their 
hearts, and spoke of each other (whenever such a rare occurrence did 
take place) with the tenderest affection. Sentiment covers a multitude 
of sins. They had two sons, an elder brother and myself, who were 



38 Monsieur St. Croix ; [JAN. 

born in the first two years of their marriage, but since that time no 
prospect of a family had ever existed. 

Alphonse, the first-born, was destined for a military life, war being 
considered the only admissible profession for the eldest son of a count 
<7 /></<. I who, unluckily for myself, came into the world a year later, 
was, even before my birth, condemned to the church. In fact there 
was nothing else for me. The chief part of my father's income was 
derived from places under government, and that died with him ; his 
estates were inextricably involved by the dissipations of his youth and 
the vanity of his old age ; and at his death, it would be incumbent on 
my brother to support the family dignity. For the young count to do 
this upon nothing was as much as could reasonably be expected ; and 
my father prudently resolved to make the church provide for the rest 
of his progeny. He had more than one rich benefice in his eye, which 
he felt certain he had interest to procure ; and I was scarcely released 
from swaddling clothes before I went by the name of the little Abbe. 
To all appearance at the time, this decision gave me many advantages, 
for whilst my brother was left for many years entirely to the care of 
servants, and at length transferred to that of an ignorant tutor, who 
took care that he should learn little, but how to ride, dance, dress, and 
intrigue, I was duly instructed, by a learned churchman, in Greek, 
Latin, and theological science ; but at the time I loathed such learning, 
and it has since proved but useless furniture to an overburthened brain. 

There never existed any affection between my brother and myself, 
and as we grew older, the coldness of our childhood deepened into actual 
hate. The study of divinity had not tamed my spirit ; I was young, 
ardent, and full of hope, and the little I had seen and heard of the 
world made me think it Elysium ; perhaps the consciousness that I was 
condemned to forswear it lent it redoubled lustre. I regarded Alphonse 
as the being who doomed me to be for ever debarred from its pleasures ; 
was it wonderful then that I detested him? whilst the handsome person 
which I inherited from my mother, made me the object of his envy and 
malevolence. 

Time wore away ; but though I assumed the dress of the priesthood, 
and was subjected to all the discipline of the cloister, .my heart was not 
in the calling. I incurred penances more than a dozen times a month, 
for irreverence of manner, and absence without leave ; I was condemned 
to fast on bread and water for thirty days, oirconviction of the heinous 
offence of having written a love-lelter on the altar, and then thrown it, 
wrapped round a sous-piece, over a wall to a young lady in a garden 
adjoining the seminary ; but all this severity did but drive the flame 
inwards, to corrode my heart, and burst forth at a future period with 
renewed fury ; it could not still the imagination, which flew for ever 
from the page of learning, and the empty ceremonies of religion, to 
luxuriate in a forbidden world. I was one with whom kindness might 
have (lone much, though tyranny nothing. But the reign of my oppres- 
sors was drawing fast to a close. It was a time when a spirit of libera- 
lity and inquiry on every subject was spreading widely abroad, and the 
old, alraid of the insubordination of the young, took the very way to 
drive them to rebellion. Opinions were no longer received upon trust 
even in cloistered walls ; many like myself detested the whole system 
of hypocrisy, sloth, and superstition of which we were made abettors ; 
and my feelings had numerous participators amongst my young com- 



1831.] a Tale of the Days of Terror. 39 

panions, who thought with me, that the meanest toil in freedom would 
be preferable to the drudgery of fasting and prayer to which we were 
subjected. There was one older than ourselves in the convent, and 
better acquainted with what was passing in the world, who encouraged 
our awakened ardour for a change of things. He furnished us in secret 
with the forbidden works of Voltaire, Rousseau, and all whose daring- 
spirits were gradually arousing our nation to shake off the chains of 
superstition and despotism under which they had lain benumbed for 
centuries. I was too young and too ardent to distinguish accurately 
what was false in these productions ; but their eloquence fascinated my 
imagination, and I adopted every opinion as a truth which differed the 
most directly from all the dogmas I had been taught to believe. My 
own sacrifice to the shrine of my brother's greatness was to me sufficient 
argument in favour of equality ; and by the time the States General were 
convened at Versailles, there could not have been found in all France 
a more violent advocate of the rights of the people than Auguste St. 
Croix. Many of the clergy under the influence of the Abbe Sieyes, and, 
from a love of novelty, joined the tiers-clat, when that assumed the name 
of National Assembly ; but their zeal for liberty was soon annihi- 
lated by the seizure of the church property, and the suppression of all 
monastic establishments, on the 13th of February, 1790. It was not 
thus with myself. I felt like a slave whose chains have been miracu- 
lously struck off, or a corpse re-awakened into life and bursting from 
the imprisonment of the grave. 

My father and brother had already fallen sacrifices to the fury of the 
ancient misused dependants of their house, whilst endeavouring to save 
their castle in Franche-Compte from plunder and destruction ; and my 
mother, terrified by their fate, had escaped into Flanders. But my 
violent republican principles accorded well with the mania of the time ; 
and though I could not recover my inheritance, I had no want of friends, 
who supplied my daily necessities, until fortune should reward my 
exertions in the cause of liberty. I became a member of one of the most 
violent of the clubs, an intimate with several members of the National 
Assembly, and a constant attendant on its debates. But amidst all my 

Eolitical enthusiasm, my appetite for pleasure was undiminished ; and at 
jngth I had none to check me in its indulgence, whilst thousands emu- 
lated me in the pursuit. Men in those days appeared to live in a con- 
tinued delirium ; murder was no more to them than the phantom of a 
dream. Tumults and bloodshed were in the streets one hour, and danc- 
ing and revelry the next. Even females might be seen tripping smilingly 
with their gallants to the public walks, in the evening, over the sawdust 
sprinkled above the moist blood which had flowed from the morning's 
guillotine. It was like a time of pestilence, when men eagerly plunge 
into the wildest dissipation to forget the uncertainty of life. But no 
terror operated with me ; I was young, fearless of death, and looked on 
the revolution and its horrors as the noblest efforts of human wisdom and 
magnanimity. I loved pleasure for itself alone. 

It was a lovely summer-evening towards the end of June, when I set 
off with a party of friends, in pursuit of this delusive deity, to the little 
village of Anniere, situated below Montmartre, on the opposite si( 7 e of 
the river Seine. It was the village fete, and even the troubles of the 
times failed to interrupt these simple festivities of my countrymen. Never 
shall I forget that evening ; yet why should I say so ? I have forgotten 



40 Monsieur St. Croix ; [\!AN. 

it a thousand times, and would that I could for ever ! The sun was 
sinking bright and cloudlessly towards the western horizon as we crossed 
the broad fields of La Planchette from the Barrier Courcelle, and we lin- 
gered awhile in our little boat on the Seine, to watch its golden beams 
reflected in the -stream, and listen to the softened hum of festivities on 
its banks. It was the last time I ever experienced the consciousness of 
happiness. 

Dancing had already commenced when we reached the village-green, 
and many happy groups were seated around the space left for the rustic 
performers, sharing their bottle of indifferent wine, and knocking their 
glasses together with jovial salutations. Black eyes without number 
were levelled at my companions and myself, as soon as we pushed our 
way through the moving crowd, and they were not long in choosing 
partners for the dance. I was no lover of the pastime ; early education 
had made it awkward to me, and having no desire to exhibit before so 
large an audience, I sought amusement in the contemplation of the busy 
scene of happy faces around me. But my attention was soon entirely 
absorbed by one object. Immediately opposite to me, and surrounded 
by a group of persons, who, though dressed with republican simplicity, 
were manifestly of the highest class, sat a young female of extraordinary 
beauty : she might be about nineteen. But why should I attempt to 
describe what no language nor limner's art could ever paint ? Poor 
Claudine ! Can it be that I survive to write thus of thee ? Can it be 
that my mind can contemplate thy perfections without being lost in 
madness ? 

Yes, she was perfection ! and from the instant I beheld her, on that 
village-green, with the full light of the sinking sun irradiating her calm 
and gentle beauty, the conviction that she was so, sunk deep in my heart. 
None but a madman could ever have doubted it for an instant. 

I was like one planet-stricken from the moment I beheld her ; I could 
not remove my gaze ; the crowd and their sports became alike invisible ; 
their sounds of mirth, and the discord of their rustic music, were equally 
inaudible to my ear ; I saw only the lovely being before me ; I heard 
only the magical sweetness of her voice, when she occasionally addressed 
her companions. At length I thought she remarked my admiration ; for 
when her eyes met mine for an instant, a deep colour mounted to her 
temples, and she turned aside to speak to a gentleman near at hand. I 
would have given all I possessed at that moment, to have been him whom 
she thus addressed and smiled upon, though he was old enough to have 
been my grandfather. The jokes of my friends on my abstraction, at the 
end of the dance, first aroused me from my trance ; but it was not till 
another set was nearly formed, that I remembered the possibility of 
obtaining the goddess of my idolatry as a partner. My hatred of danc- 
ing was instantly forgotten. I advanced towards the beautiful unknown 
with a palpitating heart, and in an agitated voice requested that honour. 
I was refused with the utmost politeness ; but firmly and decidedly I 
was refused. There was nothing astonishing in this ; for she had not 
danced during the evening with any, even of her own party : but I was 
offended, irritated, and annoyed ; I was disappointed. In spite of my 
enthusiasm for liberty, the pride of my ancestry mounted in my heart, 
and I felt a haughty consciousness that if she had known who I was, I 
should not have been thus rejected, though I thought that my personal 
advantages might have exempted me from the insult. 



1831.] a Tale of the Days of Terror. 41 

By a strange chance, I was at this instant recognized by a gentleman 
who had just joined the party ; and in another moment I was formally 
introduced to Claudine, and her father, Monsieur de Langeron, the sieur 
of the village. He had known the elder members of my family well and 
long ; and an invitation to spend the remainder of the evening at his 
chateau,, whither he was just retiring with his party, was politely given, 
and joyfully accepted. His daughter said little ; but that little was 
so soft and gentle, as soon to dispel my displeasure, and her sweet smile 
was more expressive than words. Though dancing was renewed in the 
interior of the mansion, I observed she did not join in the amusement, 
nor did any one present invite her to do so. I was selfish enough no 
longer to regret it. Seated by her side, for a time I had nothing more 
to desire. The moon had replaced the glowing sun, when I recrossed 
the Seine that night; but though the calm splendour of heaven was 
unbroken by a single cloud, the tranquillity of my mind was gone. 
Thenceforward I became a daily visitor at Anniere ; but no one seemed 
to remark or regard my attentions to Claudine, though we were almost 
constantly together, and frequently alone. She had no mother ; and an 
old aunt, her only female companion, unlike most of her age and sex, 
seemed to entertain not the least suspicion of the consequences of our 
intercourse. She left us unmolested, to take long walks by the retired 
banks of the river, and to sit for hours on the terraced garden of the 
chateau. Such an intimacy added burning fuel to my passion; and as 
Claudine gradually lost her timidity in my presence, every day dis- 
closed to me the additional charms of her unsullied mind. 

Though unaware of it herself, it was impossible for me to remain long 
unconscious that she loved me with all the intensity of a first affection. 
I never uttered a syllable that I did not meet her glance of approbation ; 
I never departed that tears did not stand in her eyes, nor was met with- 
out blushes on my return. Every thought, feeling, hope, and fear of 
the unfortunate girl, were mine for ever. Selfish even in my love, I 
saw and exulted in all this before I disclosed the secret of my affection. 
We were seated on the margin of the river, nearly on the same spot 
where I landed on the first evening I beheld her, and the sun was shin- 
ing in the western sky as brightly as then, when I whispered the story 
of my passion in her ear. Her hand trembled violently in mine as she 
listened, but in vain did I beseech her to reply to my passionate decla- 
rations. She gave no answer but by tears. I entreated her by every 
tender appellation to give me some slight token of her love, but she 
neither moved nor spoke she even ceased to weep. She did not with- 
draw her hand from mine, but it grew icy chill, her head drooped upon 
her bosom, and she fell back lifeless in my arms. 

I was horror-stricken, and it was some time before I recovered suffi- 
cient presence of mind to lay her gently on the grass, whilst I brought 
water from the neighbouring river to bathe her hands and forehead. 
Slowly, and after a long interval, she revived ; but no sooner was she 
conscious that my encircling arms were around her than she shrunk 
from me with convulsive horror, and struggled to arise. She was 
too feeble to accomplish her purpose, and wildly and passionately I 
detained her, as I entreated her to disclose by what fatal chance I 
had become the object of her hatred. 

" My hatred, dear Auguste ! would that you were !" she murmured, 
in almost inaudible accents ; and then fixing her full dark eyes upon me 

M.M. New Series. VOL. XI. No. 61. G 



42 Monsieur St. Cruix ; QJAN. 

for an instant, before she buried her face in her hands, she added, in a 
voice tremulous from excess of emotion, " Is it possible you have yet to 
learn that I am a nun ?" I started as these fearful words fell dull and 
cold upon my ear, but it was long before I made any reply. Early pre- 
judices arose like phantoms before my sight ; I remembered, for the 
first time since our intercourse, that I too was bound by a sacred vow to 
celibacy, and for a time I beheld in these trammels of bigotry the fiat 
of interminable misfortune. But vows, whether sacred or profane, are 
feeble against the tempest of passion ; and when the mind is once resigned 
to its despotic influence, principles, and prejudices, are equally swept 
away by the whirlwind. I did not long yield to despair ; the new doc- 
trines I had adopted in casting aside my priest's frock, though for a 
moment forgotten in the turbulence of excited feeling, soon came to my 
assistance. According to these, Claudine and I were as free as at the 
moment of our birth to follow the guidance of the feelings which nature 
had implanted in our hearts ; and I endeavoured to convince the inno- 
cent girl, with all the fervour and eloquence of which I was master, 
that she was no longer the bride of heaven, and that her vows had 
ceased to be binding, when formally annulled by the National Assembly. 
The next day I returned again to the charge, and though she remained 
unconvinced, my vehemence silenced all opposition. I saw that she 
wavered between a sense of duty and the passionate feelings of her 
heart, and I redoubled the earnestness of my supplications. I painted 
wildly the horror and despair which awaited us should she persist in 
her resolve, and doom us to an eternal separation ; whilst I described, 
with all the enthusiasm which the joyful hope inspired, the felicity 
attending our union. Gentle being ! it was no sin of thine that thou 
clidst yield to the burning words and delirious eloquence with which I 
tempted thee to thy ruin ! mine only was the guilt, and mine alone be 
the long, the never-ending punishment. 

That night she slept not beneath her father's roof. Trembling and 
breathless with agitation, I drew her towards the brink of the river, and 
though, even at the last, she struggled faintly to return, I heeded it not, 
and lifting her on board the little bark which had borne me from the 
opposite shore, I dipped my oars in the stream and. rowed rapidly with 
the current towards St. Denis. We reached Paris before sunset, and to 
tranquillize the conscience of poor Claudine, as much as in my power, 
we were united before nightfal, by such ceremonies as the National 
Assembly had thought proper to substitute for the ancient marriage- 
rites. 

My passion thus gratified, I could, for a time at least, have been per- 
fectly happy, but I saw that Claudine was not so. She had acted under 
the influence of my overwhelming feelings, not her own, and her reason 
was never for a moment silenced. Though she complained not, she 
drooped under the sense of the mighty weight of guilt she had incurred ; 
the bloom faded from her cheek, and the roundness of her form gra- 
dually wasted away. The state of the times, and the interest which my 
necessities compelled me to take in public affairs, caused me to be fre- 
quently absent from my home ; on my return I invariably found her in 
tears. She shrunk from all society but mine, she refused to join in every 
amusement, and each day deepened a gloom which all my efforts were 
unable to dispel. 

It was about this period that a young priest, of the name of Bernis, 



1831.J a Tale of the Days of Terror. 43 

who had formerly studied in the same seminary with myself, claimed 
my protection from the persecution instituted against all his profession 
who refused to take the oaths prescribed by the Assembly. Before my 
change of principles, there had been a great intimacy between us,, and 
I still liked the man, whom I thought kind-hearted and generous, 
though I disapproved his doctrine. I did not hesitate, therefore, when 
his life was in danger to afford him a retreat even in my own house, 
where, from my well-known republican principles, he esteemed himself 
in perfect security. Domesticated under the same roof, he was of course 
much in my wife's society. With horror be it spoken, I grew jealous 
of that man. I frequently surprised him in close and earnest conversa- 
tion with Claudine. I saw that she regarded his slightest wish with 
deference, whilst I could not help imagining that her manner towards 
me became gradually more cold and estranged. There was evidently 
a violent struggle at work in her breast ; her cheek, by day, burnt with 
the hectic of fever, and by night, amidst her troubled and broken sleep, 
long sighs frequently heaved her bosom, and I more than once heard 
her murmur, in fearful accents, the names of Bernis and myself. 

Suspicion once aroused in my headstrong nature, it soon assumed the 
energy of truth ; and at length, after a night little short of the tortures 
of the damned, I arose, resolved to expel the priest from the shelter of 
my roof. As if to justify my worst imaginings, he was already gone 
and Claudine had likewise disappeared. Then did the fatal malady, 
which for successive generations had asserted its black dominion over 
my race, first take possession of my brain. I swore, I blasphemed, I 
denounced the bitterest curses against the guilty pair. Had boiling 
lead been coursing through my veins, it could not have surpassed my 
agony. But there was a method in my madness. 

When the first burst of my fury passed away, I began sedulously to 
seek out the abode of the fugitives. Step by step I traced them, as the 
blood-hound follows his prey ; but when I learnt the secret of their 
hiding-place I was satisfied. I did not intrude myself on their privacy, 
for reproaches and upbraidings would have afforded no relief to my 
overburthened soul. No ! I had a deeper, a darker, a more satisfying 
revenge in store. Coldly and calmly, as a sleep-walker, but with fiend- 
like pleasure, I went and denounced Claudine and her seducer to the 
revolutionary tribunal, as aristocrats and non-conformists. Yes, I 
delivered my innocent, my confiding, my adored Claudine, to the 
blood-thirsty vengeance of those inhuman vampires, and exulted in the 
deed! 

I have an indistinct remembrance of lingering in the street till the 
minions of the law bore her forth in their arms to the carriage which 
was to convey her, with the unfortunate Bernis, to the prison of the 
Abbey, and of struggling vainly to rescue her from their grasp ; but it 
is like the confusion of a dream. The first circumstance which I clearly 
recollect, after a fearful chasm of many days, was the receipt of a letter, 
the direction of which, though written with a trembling hand, I instantly 
recognized as my wife's writing ; and eager to snatch at anything which 
might prove the fallacy of the thoughts fast thronging on my brain, 
I tore it wildly open. It was dated from the prison to which I had 
doomed her. But though thirty years have rolled their dark current 
above my head since that hour though every word has been since then 
like the sting of a serpent to my brain -I would, even now, rather die 

G 2 



44 Monsieur St. Croix ; a Tale of the Days of Terror. f JAN. 

than transcribe it. It convinced me of her innocence and her love. 
I gathered from its details that the reproaches of Bernis had deepened 
her repentance of our unholy union ; till at length,, guided by his advice, 
she had sacrificed the best affections of her heart at the shrine of ima- 
ginary duty, and torn herself from the only being she loved to expiate 
the guilt of that affection in the seclusion of a foreign convent. Poor 
victim ! she prayed him, who had sacrificed her peace and her life to 
his diabolical passions, to use his influence to procure the liberation of 
herself and her holy director from their fearful prison. ^ 

Let me briefly pass over the narrative of that day. I started up, flew 
to the tribunal of the commune, attested the innocence of the accused ; 
and my intimacy witli the chiefs of the democrats sufficed to make my 
word a law, and procured for me without delay a warrant for the libe- 
ration of Claudine and the priest. I hurried with breathless speed along 
the streets towards their prison, but crowds at every turning impeded 
my progress. Murder was already abroad in the city. It was the 2d of 
September, 1792 that day which has fixed for ever one of the blackest 
stains on the history of my country. As I passed the prisons of the Chatelet 
and La Force, I heard the groans and supplications of the dying, ming- 
ling fearfully with the demoniac yells of an infuriated mob ; women's 
screams arose wildly on the air, and blood came flowing past me, down 
the channels of the streets. Every thing betokened that the prisons 
were burst open, and their unfortunate inhabitants massacred by 
inhuman ruffians. 

Dark and fearful were the forebodings which thronged upon my mind, 
as, on approaching the Abbey, the same sounds of tumult and murder 
burst upon my ear. I hurried on, in spite of every obstacle, with a velo- 
city which only madness could have lent me, till I reached the front of 
the building ; and there such a scene presented itself as my soul sickens 
to think on. The armed multitude of men and women of the lowest 
class resembled in their fury rather fiends than human beings but 
I heeded them not ; I sprang over the dying and the dead ; I escaped 
from the grasp of the assassin for there was yet hope that I might not 
be too late j and, though I recognized the mangled body of Bernis 
amidst a heap of slain, I relaxed nothing of my speed for my wife, my 
adored Claudine might yet survive his destruction. My suspense was soon 
at an end. Yes, I saw her, and yet I survived the sight. I saw her, 
at a little distance ; she was kneeling with clasped hands at the feet of 
an infuriated ruffian, whose weapon was already at her breast. At that 
moment she recognized my cry of agony, sprang wildly on her feet, and 
called with an imploring voice on my name. It was the last word she 
uttered. The steel struck her ere she could escape into my arms. It 

struck deeply and fatally yet well for her. But for me ! 

H.D.B. 



1831.] [ 45 ] 



LORD BROUGHAM S LOCAL COURTS. 

NOTHING but the most imperative causes can justify abrupt revolu- 
tions, political or judicial. The course of human affairs stability 
and security are valuable qualities requires, when changes must be 
made, that they be gradually made. Institutions of any considerable 
standing, get worked into the frame of society ; associations couple 
with them ; habits accommodate ; occasional inconveniences are practi- 
cally remedied or relieved, or when they grow into incumbrances, can 
generally be cut away, like other excrescences, without taking with 
them the life of the plant. It is better to make the best of human 
imperfections than to speculate upon " absolute wisdom." It is better, 
usually, to pare down superfluities, and do what you can to obviate 
defects, than to sweep away at once good and bad, and replace them by 
some new fangled structure, just to shew your architectural dexterity, 
by something which is strange to every body, and against which the very 
strangeness excites prejudice, and indisposes every body. More grave- 
ly, it is better, all allow, to bear the ills we have, than to go to others 
that we know not of; and at all events, it is safer to remove what we 
see and feel to be bad, than rashly, by slashing novelties, to incur the risk 
of creating new ones. Every one sees the evils of our Courts of Juris- 
diction, but every one, at the same time, recognizes the stuff and tex- 
ture of them to be good. Improvements might doubtless be made in 
the machinery, and more perhaps in the working of it then why should 
not these be first attempted? What is Mr. , we beg his lordship's 
pardon what is Lord Brougham and Vaux about in this matter ? Op- 
posing, in the very teeth of his own maxims, arrangements which he 
has long been urging, and trampling upon principles which none more 
than he has been forward to inculcate. But Mr. , pish ! Lord 
Brougham, is a lawyer; the yea and the nay of a question are equally 
familiar ; he is a ready scribe as well as speaker ; words cost him no- 
thing ; and there are few subjects from that of the slave-trade upon 
which he may not be quoted on both sides. " The best and most effica- 
cious plan of improvement (we quote him, or the Edinburgh Review) 
is that which does the smallest violence to the established order of things ; 
requires the least adventitious aid, or complex machinery, and as far as 
may be executes itself. It is from ignorance of this principle that the 
vulgar perpetually mistake a great scheme for a good one ; a various 
and complicated, for an efficacious one ; a shewy and ambitious piece of 
legislature, for a sound and useful law/' 

Lord Brougham, as well as others, has for years been projecting 
law reforms ; many of these reforms, as they are called, have been put 
into practice, sometimes with good, and as often perhaps with question- 
able effect ; but what is a very remarkable peculiarity, come from what 
quarter they will, they all end we must use a plain term in jobs ; not 
in reduction of courts and judges, arid expence, but in augmenting all 
law-reform is a synonyme for new law-offices. 

The increase of law-patronage of late years, accomplished, or con- 
templated, is prodigious. Not long since we had a new Chancery judge; 
more recently a whole set of judges for circuit insolvent-courts, commis- 
sioners for charities, commissioners of inquiry, secretaries, &c. An 
exchange of Welch judges for English ones, fewer in number, it is true, 



46 Lord Brough&m's T^ocal Courts. Q.TAN. 

but at a higher cost to say nothing of compensation-pensions was the 
fruit of the last session, with we know not how many projects, under the 
same auspices, for fresh offices. Among them was another equity 
judge a creation of registrars' places for younglings at the bar an 
extension of jurisdiction for bankrupt commissions from forty to eighty 
miles of town, implying of course an addition in numbers or emolu- 
ments bankrupt commissions in provincial towns, at the will of the 
chancellor more commissions, at the will again, of the chancellor, for 
the examination of witnesses; and now from the new chancellor him- 
self, the crowning blessing for this lawyer-ridden country a whole 
regiment of new judges to preside over new courts in every county town 
of the kingdom. Whig or Tory, no matter, lawyers are all alike ; ex- 
tension of professional employment, at least in the higher departments of 
the law, is the one absorbing object that fills the heads and hearts of 
every man among them. 

No matter, neither, how contradictory or incompatible the tendencies 
of these reforms for they are all reforms they create office ; in that 
they all agree ; there, there is no discrepancy. Good-natured souls, who 
are ready to confide on the virtues of all who lay claim to virtues, give 
the proposers credit for meaning all they profess ; and the blame of in- 
congruous and clashing institutions, if blame be cast any where, is 
thrown upon those who have had nothing to do with the matter. Here 
are a half hundred new courts going to be instituted, the object of which, 
it is said, is to relieve the upper courts, and that just as three of the most 
expensive class of judges have been added to these very courts, and just as 
more schemes are on the anvil for facilitating and abridging their labours. 
Here are a set of stationary courts, or courts confined to one unvarying 
circuit, just as the Welsh judges have been gotten rid of, expressly 
because they were attached to the same circuit, and so, liable to form 
slippery connections. Just, again, as arrests for debt are on the point 
of being abandoned, because the power of arrest gives encouragement 
to credit, these courts, in the expectation and avowed design of the 
author, are to accelerate the process of recovering debts, and by that 
means, so far, encourage the destructive system of credit. 

But what is the especial, or, more to the purpose, what is the alleged 
ground for the proposed change ? The overburdenings of the superior 
courts. What advantages are specifically aimed at and looked for ? 
Despatch a saving of time and money cheap justice, and justice at 
your own doors. Well, but these are good things. Thousands are said 
to abandon their rights through the dread of asserting them. Thousands 
submit to wrong, because the remedy is worse than the disease. In the 
recovery of debts, good money is often thrown after bad ; and valuable 
time is lost in the pursuit of inadequate satisfaction. Therefore, if Lord 
Brougham facilitates redress saves time and money and secures a 
remedy for grievances not now to be attained, he is a benefactor and a 
reformer in the best sense, and we hail such a measure with joy and 
gratitude. Very well, but let us not be precipitate ; to talk and do are 
two things, one of which all the world knows the Chancellor can do 
admirably, but unhappily that is no better than a shadow, if we can 
imagine such a thing out of the regions of diablerie, that has no cor- 
responding substance. Let us cast a calm, but it must be a brief, look 
at the evil and the remedy. The evil is an excess of business, and the 
expense and delay occasioned by attendance on the central courts of 



1831.] Lord Brougham's Local Courts. 47 

Westminster, and the assizes in the country. Two thirds of the causes 
that come before them no matter for nicety certainly more than 
half, are relative to sums below 50. Now these, if not in their nature, 
in their importance are too contemptible, it seems, for the superior courts, 
and cost more than they are worth to prosecute ; these, then, are to be 
turned over to resident judges, whose courts are always open are at 
every man's door where justice is retailed at a cheap rate, with de- 
spatch, and no superfluous waste of time or trouble. This is the 
remedy. 

These courts are to be put to the proof of their efficiency at first only 
in a couple of counties, but as it is confidently anticipated they will 
finally be sown over the whole country, and the apparatus in each 
county will be the same, we shall take our glance at the effect of the 
whole. And the first thing that strikes is the formidable expense of the 
machinery. Fifty for the sake of round numbers fifty of these 
judges, each at an amount, including salaries and fees, not exceeding 
2,000, as many registrars each, including, as before, salaries and fees, 
at 700, with an establishment of clerks, messengers, ushers, &c., at 
least, at as much more., will together swell to a sum not much short of 
200,000 a-year. Now this, be it observed, is proposed by a man who, 
not long ago, talked so earnestly, as of a matter of serious importance, of 
the savings attending the removal of the Welsh Judges. The 9,800, 
says he, taken from the Welsh judges, with 500 from each of the 
twelve Westminster judges, will make 15,800, which will pay the three 
new ones, who are to be thoroughly effective. The salaries of the twelve, 
however, were not clipped the three new judges were added at the full 
price the Welsh judges, who survive, have their compensation-pensions; 
and here is to be an entire addition of a sum not much short of 
200,000 for fifty new judges, as like the old Welsh ones as one pea is 
like another. Such will be the public share of the expense. That, 
however, if any real and adequate advantage resulted, might be bear- 
able, though in common equity, in the existing state of society, the liti- 
gants themselves should pay the charges of justice. The main con- 
sideration, still, is the expense to the actual litigants ; and how far that 
is likely to be reduced by the new arrangements, we shall see better, 
after we have considered, what the author lays the chief stress upon 
the expedition the despatch, in the transaction of causes which he 
regards as the best characteristic and glory of his plan. 

Now this acceleration consists in justice being brought home to the 
parties to their own doors, is the favourite phrase. But how, in the 
name of common sense, is this to be managed? There is but one judge 
to a county. But he can move about, and he is to move about. He is 
to hold his court every month eleven out of the twelve he is 
to go from town to town, to one four times in the year, to some twice, to 
others once. On the average, then, justice can be administered but 
twice in the year, and that it is already everywhere, and in town, almost 
at all times. So here is no gain whatever in point of time, and some 
loss. Now, as to the expense to the litigants, plaintiffs and defendants do 
not always live on the same spot, so that should justice be brought to the 
door of one party, the chance is very small of its being so brought to 
the other, and that is precisely the case at present. But under the 
existing system, the defendant follows the plaintiff; while under the 
new arrangements the plaintiff must follow the defendant, which is a 



48 Lord Brougham's Local Courts. [JAN. 

most serious grievance, for common experience proves the plaintiff to be 
generally in the right. Here then the plaintiff is placed in a worse con- 
dition than before, and this is called reform, and the admiration of the 
world is challenged for so ingenious an improvement ! 

We see then how expense is likely to be saved; the defendant is 
spared at the cost of the plaintiff, or in other words, in nine cases out of 
ten probably, the offender at the cost of the sufferer. Suppose the 
plaintiff to be a dry-salter in London, who has furnished articles in the 
way of his trade to a customer at Morpeth. The defendant's residence 
is within the district court of Northumberland, and the cause comes on 
for trial at Newcastle. The plaintiff, to prove his case, is obliged to carry 
from London to Newcastle his books, the person who made the entries, 
the packer, the porter who delivered the goods to the carrier, and pos- 
sibly somebody to prove the quality and value of the goods the whole 
of which expense and inconvenience might have been spared, by laying 
his action, .as he could now do, in London. Well, but if the expense 
attending the bringing up witnesses cannot be materially reduced, that 
of lawyers will be. They are on the spot, and charges of travelling are 
spared. No such thing the supposition shews the author of the plan 
knows little of the actual practice of business. Had he consulted the 
first solicitor that fell in his way, he might have learned better. The 
country attorney rarely attends the Westminster courts ; he transacts the 
whole through his London agent, and the difference of expense to the 
suitor amounts to a trifling postage. No additional fees are charged : the 
fees are shared between the tow.n and country attorney in some fixed pro- 
portion. It is as easy to act through the metropolis, as through a county 
town. In most legal matters the course and management of men of 
business has made it actually more so. The facilities, too, of convey- 
ance, now-a-da}rs, annihilates both space and time, and cheapens expense 
accordingly. But under this new and choice arrangement, how is the 
plaintiff to act who has debtors at a distance ? Why naturally he con- 
sults his attorney where his case is, where his cause of action arose, 
and his witnesses live. Must that attorney have an agent in every dis- 
trict town ? If he has not, how is he to serve notices, and to be served 
with them ? And if he has, at once the new system is worse and more 
expensive than the old, for certainly the quantity of business will 
never enable him to make the same arrangement that is now made 
between the country attorney and the central practitioner in town. 

Justice, then, accessible, prompt and cheap the promises which these 
new institutions hold out they will not be able to furnish more success- 
fully than the existing courts, especially with the curtailments sug- 
gested by the law commission, at once easy to be accomplished, and not 
likely to meet with insuperable obstructions. 

The matter must not be dismissed, however, so abruptty. Turn we 
for a moment to the business of these courts. They are intended, it 
seems, to relieve the courts of Westminster and the assize Nisi Prius j 
and, of course, whatever comes before them, comes before these district 
judges within certain circumscriptions. All actions of debt, trespass, 
or trover not exceeding 100 ; and all actions of tort, or personal 
wrongs, where the damages are not beyond 50. All actions, again, for 
breach of agreement, whether under seal or not, where damages are 
within 100 though, by consent, the court may try these to any amount 
of damages. The judges are not to anticipate an idle life, their creator 



183J.] Lord Broughams Local Courts. 49 

has cut out other work for them ; they are to be not only judges, but 
arbitrators not only arbitrators, but conciliators. Even these offices 
will not fill up their time sufficiently ; and they must occupy their spare 
hours with a little equity practice, for the recovery of legacies, &c., just 
to tax the versatility of their powers. 

Rarce aves must these new judges be ; and where in the world are 
fifty of them to be found ? But supposing them to be found, will their 
courts be acceptable, at last, to the suitors ? We say boldly they 
will not. They are inferior courts, and will inevitably share the fate 
and fortunes of other inferior courts. Such courts never have been 
respected. Courts for determining small causes involving, we mean, 
small sums are numerous enough already in this country ; but they 
are little used reluctantly resorted to and falling off in practice year 
by year. Law is cheap enough there, but, whatever may be its quality, 
nobody believes it good ; and Lord Brougham himself has told us, that 
though cheap justice is a very good thing, yet costly justice is better 
than cheap injustice; ay, and people will never believe otherwise. 
Inferior courts abound in America, and every body has heard with what 
effect. In France, too, the courts of the Juges de Paix are as thick as 
hops, and as little respected as the pied-poudre ones of our own fairs. 
It becomes disgraceful to appeal to them it is like dragging a man 
through a horsepond creditable to neither party. It is not, in short, 
in the nature of man to be satisfied with an inferior article where a 
better is attainable, or supposed to be so. Nobody buys willingly what 
is bad in his own town, when he can get the good at the same price, 
or nearly so, by sending to the capital. 

But the respectability of the new judges the rank they hold in the 
profession the very amount of income, will give weight to their deci- 
sions, will invest them with an authority that no other inferior courts 
ever before possessed, and, therefore, by no principle of sound logic can 
similar conclusions be drawn from premises so unlike. Well, then, let 
us reconsider these judges invested with the paraphernalia of superior 
authority stuck up in a bit of a room at some paltry inn. Are they 
superior in standing or station to the late Welsh judges to existing 
recorders in corporate towns to commissioners of bankruptcy, or even 
to the commissioners of insolvent courts ? No, they will not be supe- 
rior, for instance, to the Welsh judges, the best of these classes. Now 
on what ground did you get rid of them ? " Because" we quote the 
Chancellor he is always at hand among other objections " they 
never change their circuit j one, for instance, goes the Carmarthen cir- 
cuit, another the Brecon circuit, and a third the Chester circuit but 
always the same circuit. And what is the inevitable consequence? 
Why they become acquainted with the gentry, the magistrates, almost 
with the tradesmen, of each district, the very witnesses who come before 
them ; and intimately with the practitioners, whether counsel or attor- 
neys. The names, the faces, the characters, the histories, of all these 
persons are familiar to them ; and out of this too great knowledge grow 
up likings and prejudices, which never can, by any possibility, cast a 
shadow across the open, broad, and pure path of the judges of West- 
minster Hall." 

Now the new judges are precisely the Welsh judges they are run 
in the same mould ; they are eternally in the same circuit, and must be 
liable to the very same objections though some of those objections are 

M.M. New Series. Voi. XI. No. 61. H 



50 Lord Brougham's Local Courts. QJAN. 

mere sarcasms and insinuations, little applicable to the honourable men at 
whom they were levelled. But a much more serious objection will apply, 
from which the Welsh judges were most of them exempt. Most of them 
practised in the superior courts, and though we do not much admire 
seeing the same individuals, now judges, now advocates, they were at 
least familiar with the practice of those courts ; they caught the current 
tone of those courts ; they kept up with the latest decisions ; and, at all 
events, if improvements were made, they took them with them to their 
own tribunals. But the new local judge never stirs from his circuit; 
he never visits the Westminster Courts ; he has nothing to do there ; 
lie has no intercourse or communion with his brethren ; and the stock 
in trade he takes with him must last him, whether it grows stale and 
out of date and application or not. Books to be sure are accessible ; 
bifc all these judges will not be readers ; and if they were, does any 
person imagine reading reports will supply the want of personal ac- 
quaintance with the superior courts ? Few consultors of reports, we 
believe, are inclined to value them as highly as their own experience in 
courts, where they see, hear, and estimate upon the fullest grounds. 
What, in fact, gives superiority to the supreme judges of the land but 
their intercommunion their interchange of sentiments ? they consult 
each other ; one is a check upon the other, and a stimulus ; and a pro- 
gressive improvement in practical knowledge, and, above all, uniformity 
is the useful result. 

But these local judges will be the Jupiters of their own circuits; they 
will bear no rivals near their thrones, and will have none. They will 
have no one to check their decisions, and will naturally play the tyrant, 
controllable only by appeals. The inevitable and speedy consequence 
will be, that what is law in one county will not be law in another. 
The judge of Canterbury will differ from the judge of York, and each 
of them from his brother of Bristol, and neither even know of the dis- 
crepancy. Points of difference will multiply insensibly and abundantly, 
and the only remedy will be appeals ; and appeals there will doubtless 
be to such an extent, as quickly to extinguish all hope of any useful 
result from these courts. The only advantage will be, the superior 
courts will have to try the judges instead of the causes the value of 
which the country will soon estimate. 

A mighty emphasis is laid upon their efficiency as arbitrators, and 
still more as conciliators. Now arbitration, on the order of a court, is 
notoriously an unpopular expedient. To make it indeed acceptable, it 
must be the free choice of the parties. No good is likely to be accom- 
plished by adding more compulsion to what we find described, and 
justly, as a sort of mixed bully-and-coax system of tactics, by which 
judge and counsel combine to force reluctant parties to submit to the 
decision of somebody, of whom they know nothing, and in whom they 
have no confidence. But the conciliatory functions of the courts seem 
to be the favourite contrivance of the author of them. Here the judge 
is to play the adviser ; and the object is to spare the embryo litigant 
the expense of consulting an attorney. In France similar courts have 
utterly failed, and why should we expect a different effect here ? A 
French authority thus laments over the failure. " Que cette idee etait 
philosophique et salutaire de n'ouvrir Tacces des tribunaux qu'apres 
I'epuisement de toutes les voies de conciliation ! pourquoi faut-il qu'- 
une si belle institution n'ait pas produit tout le bien qu'on devait en 
attcndre, and que les effets aient si peu repondu aux esperances?" 



1831.] Lord Broughams Local Courts. 51 

But in nothing will these courts fail in point of attraction and effi- 
ciency so much as in the want of counsel of approved ability. You 
cannot have a body of intelligent counsel attending these courts ; and 
without counsel, who will regard them ? The court is constantly on 
the move ; every month the judge changes his position, and often twice ; 
for instance, he sits at Dover, and adjourns the same month to Canter- 
bury at Rochester, and adjourns to Ramsgate at Hythe, and adjourns 
to Romney. Conceive the expense of this eternal itinerancy ; no fees 
can ever meet the expense. At Maidstone, the court sits four times. 
Maidstone will, of course, be the judge's home, and there may collect 
two or three counsel, who will also travel occasionally to other towns, 
when they scent a quarry that will pay. But if a decent pleader should 
grow up among them, like country actors, he will not be content till he 
gets upon the London boards. But the fact will be, the business of the 
barrister must drop wholly into the hands of solicitors; and will the 
suitors be content with solicitors' law ? It may be as good, but they 
will not think so. The courts, in short, if they begin respectably and 
with favour, will fall off with the novelty ; they will degenerate in pub- 
lic estimation will be scouted, and every evasion will be practised to 
swell causes to an amount to entitle them to go into the superior courts. 

After all, our objection to the new arrangements, at the bottom, is, 
that they are really and truly superfluous, and this may readily be 
shewn. Supposing them to be fully effective and if they are not 
effective, why think of them for a moment ? what is to become of the 
time of the superior judges? According to the Chancellor's own data 
of the 93,375 affidavits filed in the courts in 1827, no less than 78,000 
were below 100 so that one-sixth only of the usual business would 
be left for the Westminster Courts. Again, the business at the London 
sittings, before Lord Tenterden, in 1829, four-fifths of the cases were 
for sums below 100. So that the fair inference is, that not more than 
a sixth, or at most a fifth of the business would be left for the old 
courts. But it is quite manifest, at the same time, that these old courts 
have not now more to do than they might easily manage, to the perfect 
satisfaction to the country. As to their actual business, some have too 
much perhaps, and some certainly too little. But, in the name of com- 
mon sense, why should this inequality longer exist? We know the 
immediate causes are, difference of process privileges of the solicitors 
of the courts monopoly of Serjeants, &c. ; but what is to prevent, 
where the interests of the country demand them, the sweeping away of 
every one of these impediments ? Place the three courts perfectly upon 
an equality with appeals, not to one of them, but to the whole body of 
the judges and we are quite confident, the practice of the courts 
would speedily equalize. If one were from any cause, to get a super- 
abundance of business, it would quickly be reduced, by the prospect of 
an earlier decision in the leisure court. The business would have a con- 
stant tendency to equalize counsel, who of course, must be at liberty to 
practice in all, or a favourite pleader would break in upon the natural 
adjustment. 

But such equalization will not be thought perhaps to remove the great 
evils which the local courts are established expressly to remove expense 
and delay. We are persuaded it will do both, especially when the 
charges suggested by the law commission are carried into effect (and 
really Lord R. ought to wait and see how these will operate), with some 
others that would prove equally effective. The sweeping away of the 

H 2 



52 Lord Brougham's Local Courts. [[JAN. 

rubbish of ' pleading,' and useless formalities will do wonders. What is 
done now with difficulty at Westminster, may obviously be done with 
ease, and a considerable reduction of delay and expense. And as to the 
nisi prius of. the assizes, the existing obstructions may be obviated, partly 
by a third assize, of which the chancellor himself has been an advocate, 
in favour of criminal business, and partly by a different arrangement of 
place, and an extension of time, in the circuits. Even with only two 
assizes there is little need of remands ; for why should not the courts be 
kept open till the cause-list is exhausted ? A complaint was made the 
other day in the House of Lords, that the Norfolk spring assize never 
gets but one judge, though two are of course appointed. The conse- 
quence is, naturally, that much of the business is left unheard, for the 
time is limited and every thing gives way, when that time expires. The 
chancellor answered, that if he had any influence in the matter, and 
chancellors usually had, the good people of Norfolk should have two in 
future. To be sure and not only they, but every other circuit that now 
gets only one. To be sure let the best let full use be made of the 
existing judicial machinery, and little will be left to complain of, and 
least of all, will any new court be required. 



MRS. JORDAN AND HER BIOGRAPHER.* 

THE Town is a monster. We are afraid that i all that can be said 
upon the subject. But the monster must be fed. Anecdotes, private 
histories, biographies of the weak, the wicked, the merry, or the wise, 
are its favourite food ; and it will find feeders as long as there are those 
who can make pence or popularity by the office ; and food, as long as 
there are noble lords, or fallen statesmen, royal dukes, or clever actresses, 
in the world. A part of this is according to a law of nature and must 
therefore be submitted to as to any other necessity. But a part of it 
belongs to that law by which a man sometimes thinks himself entitled to 
make money in any mode that he can ; a law which we punish in the 
case of highwaymen, the keepers of Faro-banks, quacks, and impostors of 
all kinds. The quocunque modo rem has been the code of those 
active classes from time immemorial, and they have been hanged, dun- 
geoned, and banished accordingly. We by no means desire to see the 
Biographical School extinguished, though unquestionably its prevalence 
in the present day must make many an honest man shiver at the thought 
of what is to become of him, when he falls into the hands of his friends 
a week or two after he has lost the power of bringing an action for 
defamation in this world. What is life good for, unless it be an easy 
life ? and what life can be easy while a man is perfectly convinced that 
some literary undertaker is waiting only for the moment the breath is 
out of his body to pounce upon his " Remains ;" run away with his 
tf Recollections ;" and by advertising his (< Life," the dearer part of him, 
his reputation, justify a regret that the sufferer had not adopted the 
anticipatory justice of taking his ? The whole process tends to the 
treason against human nature, of giving an additional care to the cata- 
logue of human cares. All life is at best but a field of battle, and what 
soldier goes into the battle more cheerfully by knowing that he has, in 
the rear of the line, a suttler who follows him with no other purpose 
than to make the most of him when he is down, to strip him of coat 
and waistcoat, and sell every thing saleable about him to the best bid- 

* The Life of Mrs. Jordan. By James Boaden, Esq. In 2 vols, 8vo. BulL 



1831.] Mrs. Jordan and her Biographer. 53 

der? The crime is one clearly of lese majeste, and we must so far 
denounce it as worthy of the severest penalties of Parnassus. But this 
anecdote trade does more than torment the easy part of mankind. It 
maddens the ambitious. The whole tribe of those living nuisances, the 
wits by profession, the " enliveners," the " embellishers/' the laborious 
students of the art of shining, the inveterate getters-by-heart of acci- 
dental good things, the whole prepared-impromptu, dull-brilliant, and 
pains-taking idle race, who flourish through literary dinners, and are 
announced as the lamps and lustres of conversaziones, are absolutely 
encouraged in their pernicious practices by the belief that somebody or 
other may yet embalm them in a biography ; that even at the moment 
of delivering his most obsolete absurdity, some man of the tf ever- 
pointed pencil and asses' skin" may be gleaning their words ; that their 
" Life and Sayings" may be already half way through the press, and 
that they may live in three octavo volumes with all their bons-mots in full 
verdure round them at the first blush of the " publishing season." 

But the present work lays claims to public curiosity on peculiar 
grounds, and we are sorry to be compelled to say, that it furnishes one of 
the most repulsive examples of the worst taste in those matters that even 
the avidity of the modern press has ever displayed. Mr. Boaden is a 
man of literary character, of long experience in literary history, and 
abundant in striking anecdote relative to that part of life to which 
a general interest is attached the drama. But he has here chosen 
a topic to which no interest can belong except that of a degrading desire 
for prying into the habits of high life : the subject of his Memoir is an 
unhappy woman, whose name had long since sunk into oblivion ; and 
the object of his book is still more humiliating ; the universal voice has 
pronounced that such a work could not have been produced at such a 
period but for one purpose ; the very advertisement that accounted for 
the delay of its appearance, more than hinted that it was retarded by 
the expectation of its being bought up. The author's preface speaks 
the same language, and Captain Swing himself could not commence his 
career with a more direct threat than the whole tissue of this writer's 
explanation of his motives. We have in his preface that constant 
allusion to Mrs. Jordan's private life, which was meant to startle other 
ears than those of the people. What do the public care about the private 
life of any actress ? Or who can be fairly interested in the tedious 
details of difficulties and incumbrances, or the darker story of excesses 
and follies which ought never to have existed, or existing, ought never 
to have seen the light ? But, throwing aside all consideration of the 
unhappy woman who forms the subject of these volumes, how is it 
possible that the writer should not have felt the respect due to the 
possessor of the throne ? We are as far, as British freedom can be, from 
either flattering or disguising the crimes of men in high authority. But 
this writer should have known, that when the errors are no more, it is 
idle and offensive to bring them again before the world ; that the reserve 
due to every man in private life is at least due to the throne ; and that, 
in all cases of this volunteer scandal, the writer lays himself under the 
direct imputation of being actuated by either malignant or mercenary 
motives. 

But a publication of this kind is disrespectful, not merely to those 
whom we are bound to honour, but cruel to those for whom we are 
bound to have the common sympathy due to individuals conducting 
themselves without offence in society. The surviving family of Mrs. 
Jordan ought to have been secured from the publication of details in 



54 Mrs. Jordan and her Biographer. QJAN. 

which they had no share, which they could not help, and for which, 
however painful to themselves, they can have no blame. They have an 
undoubted right to complain of the rashness or cupidity which has 
forced their history thus rudely before the world; and in the as-ertion of 
that right they will be accompanied by the feelings of every man of 
delicacy and honour in the empire. 

It is only justice to the Fitzclarence family to acknowledge that none 
have kept themselves clearer from public offence ; and that they have 
not been implicated in any of the excesses for which high connections 
and courts offer such ready temptation. But the chief fault which we 
have to find with the writer is his injury to the cause of British author- 
ship, by setting an example of that literary menace, which, however it 
may have failed in the present instance, will find imitators among 
classes destitute of even his portion of reserve, turn biography into a 
public shame, and inflict, of all others, the most fatal blow on the 
national literature. 

Having given our decided reprobation to the principles of such works 
in general, we shall now glance over the general features of the volumes. 
Mrs. Jordan was born in Ireland, about 1762, near Waterford; the 
daughter of Mrs. Bland, an actress. Her first engagement was under 
the name of Francis, at Daly's theatre in Dublin, in her sixteenth year; 
Henderson, the actor, saw her play in the Romp, at Cork, where she was 
engaged at twenty shillings a week ; and spoke so highly of her talents, 
that on her return to Dublin, her salary was raised to three guineas a 
week. Daly the manager of the theatre was a character " He was born 
in Galway, and educated in Trinity College. As a preparation for the 
course he intended to run through in life, he had fought sixteen duels in 
two years, three with the small sword, and thirteen with pistols, and he, 
I suppose, imagined like Macbeth, that he bore a charmed life, for he 
had gone through the sixteen trials of his nerve without a single wound 
or scratch of consequence. He therefore used to provoke such meet- 
ings upon any grounds, and entered the field in pea-green, embroidered, 
ruffled, and curled, as if for a very different ball, and gallantly presented 
his full front, conspicuous, finished with an elegant brooch, quite re- 
gardless how soon the labours of the toilet might soil their honours in 
the dust. In person he was remarkably handsome, and his features 
would have been agreeable, but for an inveterate and most distressing 
squint, the consciousness of which might keep his courage on the look- 
out for provocation. Like Wilkes, he must have been a very unwelcome 
adversary to meet with the sword, because the eye told the opposite party 
nothing of his intentions." 

We have then a sketch of Mrs. Abington, which has some value, as 
from the personal observation of one familiar with the stage : " Mrs. 
Abington unquestionably possessed very peculiar and hitherto unap- 
proached talent. She took more entire possession of the stage than any 
actress I have seen. The ladies of her day wore the hoop and its con- 
comitant train. Her fan exercise was really no play of fancy; 
shall I say that I have never seen it in a hand so dexterous as that of 
Mrs. Abington. She was a woman of great application; to speak as she 
did, required more thought than usually attends female study. Common 
place was not the station of Abington. She was always beyond the sur- 
face ; and seized upon the exact cadence and emphasis by which the 
point of the dialogue is enforced. Her voice was of a high pitch and 
not very powerful ; her management of it alone made it an organ. Her 
deportment is not so easily described ; more womanly than Farren, fuller 



1831.] Mrs. Jordan and her Biographer. 55 

than Younge, and far beyond the conception of modern fine ladies, Mrs. 
Abington remains in memory, as a thing for chance to restore to us 
rather than design, and revive our polite comedy at the same time." 

Mr. Boaden is mistaken here. The revival of polite comedy will not 
depend on any performer. The revival of dramatic authorship must be 
the previous discovery, and until we have polite comedy written, there 
might be fifty Abingtons playing to empty benches. At York Miss 
Francis was introduced to Tate Wilkinson, that eternal nuisance of 
every dramatic biography. The very name makes us sick, and accord- 
ingly we have a vast deal about this maudlin manager. Here she 
changed the name of Francis for Jordan, why, is not told, and nobody 
can care. At Sheffield she had a narrow escape from closing her 
labours and her fame. The beam of the stage curtain fell within a few 
feet of her, a weight sufficient to have crushed a whole stage-full of 
comedians. The opera in which this occurred had a worse fate for the 
unlucky author Pilon. He had promised to pay the composer ; the 
opera fell profitless ; the composer demanded his hire, and the author, 
pennyless, was forced to fly. 

The world has been so often called a stage, that the stage, as if entitled 
to retaliate, often exhibits a ludicrous " picture in little" of the world. 
The boards of a country theatre, with its dozen wanderers playing every 
thing from the king to the lamp-lighter, exhibit as much extravagant am- 
bition, empty rivalry, bitter vanity, and laborious nothingness, as the 
most brilliant court in existence. We have thus, en passant, the history 
of a Mrs. Smith, who ruled and grasped characters with the vigour of a 
Catherine the Second, seizing provinces from the Grand Turk. Being a 
wife, she was, from the increase of her progeny, liable to interruptions, 
which she made hazardously brief, lest a rival actress should appear in 
any of her favourite parts. Her confinement took place on the 2d of 
October in a remarkably wet season. The troop were to march on the 
13th to Sheffield, eighteen miles off. And this Thalestris was so deter- 
mined to exclude any competitor for the good graces of the Sheffield 
critics, that she began to exercise daily in a damp garden, in order to 
qualify herself for the journey. She accomplished one part of her pur- 
pose, the journey, but paid for it by a lameness in the hip, which threat- 
ened to disable her for life. The poor creature had now better have 
gone to bed ; but Mrs. Jordan must, in that case, have been her double ; 
rather than suffer this triumph, she insisted on playing in the " Clan- 
destine Marriage," hobbled through it as crippled as Lord Ogleby, and 
having achieved this point, was rendered by the effort incapable of ap- 
pearing on the stage for some months after. The personage is not of 
much historic importance, we will allow. But we presume that the 
caution was well meant, te under existing circumstances/' and will be 
attended to upon due occasion. 

Mrs. Jordan was now rising into notice, but opinions differed formi- 
dably on her powers. Dick Yates, the actor, pronounced at this period, 
of the three ornaments of the York stage, that Miss Wilkinson (after- 
wards Mrs. Mountain) was " very pleasing and promising ; Mrs. Brown 
the height of excellence; and Mrs. Jordan, merely apiece of theatrical 
mediocrity!" The Siddons herself was not much luckier in her decision; 
for, on seeing the young actress at York, in 17&5, she said, " She was 
better where she was, than to venture on the London boards/' The 
sentence is furiously slipslop, and unworthy of the utterer ; though, 
perhaps, it was modified by Tate Wilkinson, who transmits it. Of 
course Mrs. Jordan had no mercy shewn to her in her own theatre ; there, 



56 Mr*. Jordan and her Biographer. |[JAN. 

her manager was told, that " when he had lost his great treasure (his 
term for Mrs. Jordan), it would soon be turned back upon his hand, 
and it would be glad to come, if he would accept it" Siddons herself 
was not without her prophets ; and William Woodfall, who seems to 
have delighted to be busy in every thing, from politics to plays, ad- 
vised her, on her first appearance, " to keep to small theatres in the 
country, where she could be heard; she was too weak for London 
stages." The same authority had decided on Sheridan's first speech, with 
equal success, and recommended to him " to give up all expectation of 
being a public speaker, and stick to some trade in which he would not 
have to open his mouth." 

In 1785, Mrs. Jordan, by the recommendation of " a gentleman," 
Smith, was engaged at Drury-lane. Siddons was then the rage. The 
world of fashion would look at no one else. She had two benefits a year, 
which swept away all their patronage. On the benefit nights of other 
performers, the answer of the " highest world" was, ff You know we 
must go on Mrs. Siddons's night, and then we leave town immediately." 
When she did not play, no person of ton would be present ; and when 
she did, it was the etiquette for all who professed taste, to run away the 
moment the performance was over ! We are afraid all the coxcombry of 
the world was not reserved for the present age. 

Mr. Boaden's observations on his heroine's debut also shews us that in 
some things we have refined on our ancestors. She was not much 
puffed previously. The affair was not dandled with the dexterity so fa- 
miliar to our time. All was cold ; the " first authorities," even those 
admitted behind the scenes, were unprepared w r ith anything more 
predisposing than "I think she is clever." " One thing I can 
tell you, she is like nothing you have been used to." " Her laugh 
is good, but then she is, or seems to be, very nervous we shall see ;" 
concluding with that humblest of all assumptions "I am sure we 
want something." Mrs. Inchbald's account is, "that she came to town 
with no report in her favour to elevate her above a very moderate 
salary (four pounds), or to attract more than a very moderate house 
when she appeared. But here all moderation stopped. She at once 
displayed such consummate art, with such bewitching nature, such 
excellent sense, and such innocent simplicity, that her auditors were 
boundless in their plaudits, and so warm in her praises when they 
left the theatre, that their friends at home would not give credit to their 
eulogiums." This was Mrs. Jordan in the " Country Girl." a per- 
formance which we confess that we have never seen without disgust, as 
a vulgar exhibition of the most vulgar of all hoydens, an exaggeration 
of a she clown engrafted upon a she rake. Yet Mrs. Jordan's powers 
certainly made it popular, and, so far as a mere evidence of powers, 
nothing can be more decisive. Her display in male attire in the latter 
part of the play, however, greatly added to her success, for her figure 
at that period was beautiful. Mr. Boaden tells us that the "great 
painter of the age (Sir Joshua of course), pronounced it the neatest and 
most perfect in symmetry he had ever seen." Her face was expressive, 
bnt at no time handsome. Still the portrait in the front of the volume 
is, even of that face, a caricature. 

We have then a few lines on Sheridan's theatre, descriptive enough. 
He had the two wonders of the day Siddons and Jordan but his 
intolerable negligence suffered them both to weary the town with repe- 
titions of their characters. " He would undertake every thing and do 
nothing. There was a committee of proprietors who attended only to 



]83L] Mrs. Jordan and her Biographer. 57' 

the economy of the wardrobe, and they could not be tempted by all the 
eloquence of Tom King (the manager) to venture on the smallest outlay 
without the consent of Sheridan, who was always too busy either to give 
or refuse it. Thus it was that Harris, at the other house, beat him, with 
all the cards absolutely in their hands " 

One of the oddities of theatrical life is that all the leading actors origi- 
nally mistook their talents. John Kemble began in comedy, and the 
delusion lasted with him longer than with most of them ; for, to his 
dying day, he thought he could flourish in Charles Surface. Jones, the 
gayest of actors, and whose absence from the stage has left it sombre, 
began in the most formal tragedy ; Listen played Othellos and Julius 
Ccesars ; and Fawcett is here recorded as having began with Romeo a 
character which, when we recollect Fawcett's granite physiognomy, 
must have been one of the miracles of love-making. Fawcett's voice, 
which Colman compared, with the happiest accuracy, to something 
generated between the grinding of a corn-mill and the sharpening of a 
saw, must have been an incomparable illustration of 

" How silver sweet are lovers' tongues by night ! 
Like softest music to attending ears." 

But, after his Romeo exhibition, he was brought to his natural line by 
Miss Farren ; to whose Violante he played Colonel Britton, and had the 
felicity of being pronounced, by that fashionable authority, tf a very pro- 
mising young actor." Peeping Tom decided his forte, and the Hull 
audience gave their fiat to the comedian, if Peeping Tom, the most 
vulgar of grotesques, could entitle him to such fame, and Fawcett flew, 
on the breath of country applause, up to London. 

We then have a sketch of one of those only sure events in the History 
of Theatres, a conflagration. 

" I was coming across the Park, from Pimlico, on the night of the 17th 
of June, when, on turning the corner of the Queen's house, this dreadful 
conflagration burst upon my eye. It seemed as if the long lines of 
trees in the Mall were waving in an atmosphere of flame. The fire ap- 
pears to have commenced in the roof, and its demonstration to have 
commenced rather earlier than the incendiary had calculated. The 
dancers had been rehearsing a ballet on the stage that evening, and sparks 
of fire fell upon their heads, as, in great terror, they effected their escape. 
Madame Ravelli was with difficulty saved by a fireman. Madame Gui- 
mard lost a slipper ; but her feet, as they ever did, saved her. 

" There never was the least doubt that the malignity of some foreign 
miscreant had effected the destruction. The whole roof was in combus- 
tion at one moment ; a cloud of heavy smoke, for a few seconds, hung 
over the building, succeeded by a volume of flames, so fierce that they 
were felt in St. James's Square, and so bright that you might have read 
by them as at noon-day. A very excellent artist, who had been many 
years connected with the Opera House, told me, that Came vale, upon 
his death-bed, revealed the name of the incendiary. As was customary 
in those days, the Bridewell boys served their great engine, with the 
vigour of youth, and the sagacity of veterans. Burke might have come 
out of Carltori House ; he was standing before it, and anxiously directing 
the attention of the fireman to its preservation. Mr. Vanbrugh, a de- 
scendant of Sir John, was in the greatest peril of all the sufferers ; he 
had an annuity of eight hundred pounds upon the building. At the 
back of the ruins, the fire was burning fiercely, though low, at twelve 
o'clock the next day. The books of the theatre were saved, so was the 
M.M. New Series VOL. XI. No. 61. I 



58 Mrs. Jordan and her Biographer. ^JAN. 

chest, in which there were about eight hundred pounds, and this was 
nearly all that was preserved. Never was devastation more complete. 
However, Novosielsky erected on its site, a theatre really suited to its 
object, admirably calculated for sound; and afforded a magnificent refuge 
to the Drury-lane Company : which, perhaps, disposed both our ma- 
nagers to erect playhouses which were fit for nothing but Operas." 

Why did Mr. Carnevale reveal the name of the incendiary ? or did he 
manage the office himself? The present King's Theatre has had a mar- 
vellous longevity, and half-a-dozen still more marvellous escapes from 
fire in its time. 

One of Mrs. Siddons's sentiments on the difference between a town 
and a country audience is remarkable, besides being strikingly expressed. 
We should have thought the country audiences not quite so fastidious. 

" Acting Isabella, for instance, out of London, is double thefaiigiie. 
There the long and loud applause at the great points and striking situa- 
tions invigorate the system ; the time it occupies recruits the breath and 
nerve. A cold, respectful, hard audience chills and deadens an actress, 
and throws her back upon herself; while the warmth of approbation 
confirms her in the character, and she kindles with the enthusiasm she 
feels around her." 

It is a misfortune to the readers of this Memoir, as it was an infinite 
one to the unhappy subject of it, that she seems to have been educated 
with no sense whatever of that which has been called " woman's first 
virtue and her last." Her parentage was a bad example. It is not 
known whether her mother was ever married, and there seems certainly 
that she was not married at the time of her daughter's birth. That 
daughter, in the very beginning of her professional life, was charged 
with being the mistress of Daly, the Irish manager. She was subse- 
quently known on the London stage as the mother of children by Ford, 
afterwards one of the police magistrates; and, in 1792, began that royal 
connection, which, to the crime and shame of both parties, lasted for 
twenty years. It is said as if that were any palliation that Mrs. Jor- 
dan proposed to Ford to make her his wife, and that only on his refusal 
she adopted her alternative. But the whole of her conduct was in such 
utter carelessness of every pretence to female virtue, that the only way 
in which it can be mentioned is with regret that so gross and painful a 
topic should ever have been forced again upon the public. 

The town expressed great offence at her conduct on this change of 
circumstances. She wrote an Amazonian letter to the newspapers, 
which produced no effect. Her next appeal was in person to the audi- 
ence. They had hissed her in Roxalana. She came to the front of the 
stage, and assuring them upon her HONOUR (which the volume gives in 
capitals), " that she had never been absent one moment from the stage but 
through real indisposition, placed herself under the public protection." 
Different as the cause of the displeasure might be, the audience received 
the apology ; the handsome actress was a favorite, she had made a 
spirited speech, they were amused by the display, and with the consi- 
deration for the morals of the boards, gave her their applause. 

Her life henceforth was in a higher sphere. But perhaps there were 
few women who could less deserve to be envied, even in the enjoyment 
of the luxuries of her situation. By the errors and vices of some of her 
connections by her former friends, she was always kept poor, and was 
sometimes reduced to very painful difficulties. At length, on the mar- 
riage of his royal highness, she necessarily retired, and attempted the stage 



1831.] The Last Words of a Moth. 59 

for a while in the midst of the vexations of decaying powers and de- 
clining health. She finally went to France to escape some of those em- 
barrassments which appear to have strangely gathered on her, notwith- 
standing the liberal allowance from the purse of the royal duke, which 
he with great punctuality paid to the last. She died at St. Cloud, nervous 
and wretched, and alone, which she ought not to have been, while she 
had either a Son or Daughter in existence ! There is no effort which the 
natural affection and duty of children to a Mother, let her be what she 
might, should not have been made, to soothe the dying hour of this un- 
happy woman ! But poverty was not added to her evils, for, besides a 
sum of money, she had on her finger at the time of her death a diamond 
ring, worth 400. But the sooner the subject is sunk in oblivion the 
better. The name had passed away, and it ought to have slept for ever. 



THE LAST WORDS OF A MOTH. 

I BURN I die I cannot fly 

Too late, and all in vain ! 
The glow the light charmed sense and sight 

Now nought is left but pain ! 
That wicked flame, no pencil's aim, 

No pen can e'er depict on paper; 
My waltz embraced that taper waist, 

Till I am wasted like a taper. 

Worthy the brightest hours of Greece 

Was that pure fire, or so / felt it ; 
Its feeder towered in stedfast peace, 

While I believed for me it melted. 
No use in heighos ! or alacks ! 

My cure is past the power of money ; 
Too sure that form of virgin wax 

Retained the bee's sting with the honey. 

Its eye was blue, its head was cold, 

Its round neck white as lilied chalice; 
In short, a thing of faultless mould, 

Fit for a maiden empress' palace. 
So round and round I knew no better 

I fluttered, nearer to the heat ; 
Methought I saw an offered letter 

Now I but see my winding-sheet ! 

Some pearly drops fell, as for grief 

Oh, sad delusion ! ah, poor Moth ! 
I caused them not ; 'twas but a thief 

Had got within, to wrong us both. f . 
Now I am left quite in the dark, 

The light's gone out that caused my pain ; 
Let my last gaze be on that spark 

Kind breezes, blow it in again ! 

Then snuff it well, when once rekindled, 

Whoe'er about its brilliance lingers, 
But though 'twere to one flicker dwindled, 

Be careful, or you'll burn your fingers. 
It sought not me ; and though I die, 

On such bright cause I'll cast no scandal 
I fled to one who could not fly 

Then blame the Moth but not the Candle ! I. H. 

I 2 



[ 60 ] QJAN. 

MISMANAGEMENT OF THE COLONIES JAMAICA, &C.* 

IT would seem to be a very proper conclusion, that the government 
of a country which stands pre-eminent as a colonial power would, at all 
times, be anxious to maintain that pre-eminence by just and wise 
colonial laws and regulations, not founded upon theory, but practically 
adapted to the actual wants of each particular colony, so that the colonists 
might feel satisfied that their enterprise and industry were fostered and 
protected by the parent state, and that they might assuredly calculate 
upon ultimately enjoying the fruits of their labours. 

A strong feeling of this kind undoubtedly existed at the peace of 1815 ; 
and, accordingly, when Great Britain thought proper to retain many of 
the conquests made during the war, extensive capital was directed 
towards their cultivation, and, at the same time, the people of the old 
colonies naturally enough expected that their priority of settlement, and 
long tried attachment to the mother country, would entitle them to addi- 
tional indulgence, or, at least, that their local experience would not be 
derided, nor their just privileges be borne down and contemned. 

Unfortunately, however, a policy the reverse of what might have been 
expected has been adopted ; and the consequences are visible in the 
decrease of capital and decay of industry in the old colonies, accompanied 
by irritation, dissatisfaction, and discontent in all ; and it is evident that, 
unless a very different policy be speedily adopted, the entire ruin of 
our West India possessions, or their " emancipation" from the control 
of the mother country, must be the inevitable consequence. In either 
case we shall, in the downfal of our naval supremacy, the decay of our 
manufactures, and in great financial difficulties, find ample cause to 
regret the unhappy consequences of our mistaken policy. 

To enter fully into a discussion of colonial grievances would occupy 
more space than we can at present devote to the subject. We gave a 
general view of it in our Number for February, and have occasionally 
since then adverted to particular points of the case. 

Our readers are aware of the opposition which the legislature of 
Jamaica have repeatedly experienced in establishing a law to regulate 
and ameliorate the condition of the slave population of that island. 
Anxious to comply with the spirit of the regulations of parliament of 
1823, they have repeatedly made enactments approximating as nearly 
to the complete fulfilment of the wishes of the government at home, 
as they considered consistent with the safety of their persons and pro- 
perty ; but as they found it absolutely necessary to check the dangerous 
and deteriorating machinations of the Wesley an s and other sectaries, to 
whose domination they do not choose to submit, their humane regula- 
tions have been rejected at home ; and, in violation of legislative rights, 
conferred by express act of parliament, his Majesty's representatives 
have been ordered not to sanction the passing of any bill, unless it be 
framed in direct compliance with the dictum of ministers at home ! 

We need only instance, in proof of this, the disallowance of the Act 
passed by the Assembly of Jamaica in 1826, which had met the express 
approbation of his Grace the Duke of Manchester, Governor of the 
Island ; and which conferred on the slave population many privileges 
to which they were not previously entitled by law : and the recent Act, 
viz. that passed in December 1829, which, in the words of the Earl of 
Belmore, the present Governor, who approved of it, was upon the whole 
more favour able to the Slave than that of 1826 ; also peremptorily rejected 
at" home ! 

This Act, amongst a multiplicity of other humane regulations, provides 

; Parliamentary Paper. Sess. 1030. 



1831.] .Mismanagement of the Colonies Jamaica, fyc. 61 

" that all owners, proprietors,, and possessors, or, in their absence, the ma- 
nagers or overseers of slaves, shall, as much as in them lies, endeavour to 
promote the instruction of their slaves in the principles of the Christian 
religion, thereby to facilitate their conversion, and shall do their utmost 
endeavours to fit them for baptism, and cause to be baptized all such as 
they can make sensible of a duty to God and the Christian faith ; which 
ceremony the clergymen of the respective parishes are to perform when 
required, without fee or reward." " Any Slave or Slaves, who is or has 
been baptized, who may be desirous of entering into the holy state of 
matrimony, to apply to any clergyman of the Established Church to so- 
emnize such marriage, who is hereby required to perform the same 
without fee or reward" &c. 

No Sunday markets after 11 o'clock, under a penalty of 51. from free 
persons, and forfeiture of the goods exposed by Slaves. 

" Slaves to be allowed one day in every fortnight, besides holidays, 
to cultivate their grounds ;" and whereas it may happen, that on some 
plantations, &c. there may not be lands proper for the cultivation of 
provisions, or where, by reason of long continuance of dry weather, the 
Negro grounds may be rendered unproductive, then, and in that case, 
the masters, &c. do, by some other ways and means, make good and 
ample provision for all such slaves as they shall be possessed of * * 
in order that they may be properly supported and maintained, under a 
penalty of 50. 

" Every master, &c. shall, once in every year, provide and give to 
each slave they shall be possessed of, proper and sufficient clothing, to be 
approved of by the justices, &c. under a heavy penalty ; and shall be 
obliged upon oath, under forfeiture of 100. to give an account of the 
clothing so furnished ; and that the Negroes have had sufficient provi- 
sions, according to the regulation thus established/' 

By another clause, no Slave's property can be taken from him by his 
master or any other person, and the same clause enumerates " horses, 
mares, mules, asses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and goats," as a part of such 
property usually held by Slaves. 

" Any pecuniary bequest or legacy of a chattel to a slave shall be 
deemed and considered to be a legal and valid bequest or legacy;" and 
the executor or executors are bound to pay it. 

Females with six children are exempt from hard labour in the field or 
otherwise. 

Slaves who by reason of age, infirmity, or sickness, are unfit for la- 
bour, cannot be turned off, but must be properly taken care of by their 
master ; or, if manumitted, he is bound to allow them ten pounds per 
annum for their support. 

Every field-slave shall on work-days be allowed half an hour for 
breakfast, and two hours for dinner. No work to be done before Jive in the 
morning, or after seven at night, except during time of crop. 

Ample provision is carefully and anxiously made for the protection of 
slaves against cruel or unjust punishments, the penalties being fine and 
imprisonment, and in some cases the manumission of the slaves; as well 
as for the regulation of their various interests, the recovery and care of 
runaways, the regulation of workhouses, &c. " If any negro or other 
person taken to the workhouse as a runaway, shall allege himself or her- 
self to be free, a special sessions shall be held, carefully to investigate 
the case; and if it shall appear that such person is free, he shall be forth- 
with discharged." In short, by a variety of clauses the property and 
person of the slave is Carefully provided for; and in order to prevent any 



62 Mismanagement of the Colonies Jamaica, fyc. [JAN. 

dealing in slaves, it is specially provided, that if any person or persons 
shall be found travelling about from place to place, exposing or offering 
for sale any negro, mulatto, or other slave or slaves, such slaves shall be 
taken from him, and sold ; one-half of the price to go to the seizer, the 
other to the poor of the parish. " Obeah or Myal men or women, pre- 
tending to have communication with the devil and other evil spirits, and 
shall use such pretence in order to excite rebellion or other evil purposes, 
shall be severely punished." " And whereas it has been found that the 
practice of ignorant, superstitious, or designing slaves, of attempting to 
instruct others, has been attended with the most pernicious consequences, 
and even with the loss of life," slaves so teaching, without permission 
from their masters and the quarter sessions, are to be punished. 

We now come to the clauses which strike more particularly at the in- 
fluence arid extensive emoluments of the sectarian preachers ; and we 
entreat the particular attention of our readers to these clauses, and to the 
reasons assigned as rendering their enactment necessary ; because, it is 
owing to them that this humane and liberal bill has been disallowed, and 
that the present outcry has been raised against the colonists by the dis- 
appointed sectaries. " And whereas the assembling of slaves and other 
persons after dark, at places of meeting for religious purposes, has been 
found extremely dangerous, and great facilities are thereby given to the 
formation of plots and conspiracies, and the health of the slaves and other 
persons has been injured in travelling at late hours in the night ; from 
and after the commencement of this act, all such meetings between sun- 
set and sunrise be held and deemed unlawful; and any minister, or 
other person professing to be a teacher of religion, MINISTERS OF THE 
ESTABLISHED CHURCH EXCEPTED, who shall, contrary to this act, keep 
open any place of meeting between sunset and sunrise for the purpose 
aforesaid, or permit or suffer any such nightly assembly of slaves therein, 
or be present thereat," shall forfeit twenty or not exceeding fifty pounds 
for each offence, one-half to the poor, the other to the informer. 

It thus appears that no impediment whatever is thrown in the way 
of the established clergy, on whose discretion the proprietors in Jamaica 
place implicit reliance. 

The next clause enacts, that from and after the commencement of the 
act, it shall not be lawful/or any person whatsoever to demand or receive 
any money or other chattel whatsoever, from any slave or slaves within 
this island, for affording such slave or slaves religious instruction, by way 
of offering contributions, or under any pretence whatsoever, under a 
penalty of twenty pounds, to be applied as above mentioned. It is by 
this clause that the methodists and others find themselves cut off from 
these comparatively enormous emoluments derived from the poor igno- 
rant slaves in exchange for tenpenny tickets, and under various pre- 
tences ; and the proprietors justly complain that such contributions were 
carried to such an improper extent as to have become the cause of great 
poverty and discontent in the slave ; that his improvement was thereby 
retarded, his health injured, and his master's work neglected. Not con- 
tent with these emoluments the missionaries are said to have, in too 
many instances, improperly interfered between master and servant, and, 
independently of the calumnious misrepresentations sent home to this 
country, began to assume a tone and authority not warranted by their 
holy calling, nor compatible with the peace and safety of the planters. 

When we look at the state of affairs at Otaheite, and other islands in 
the Pacific,* where these men have had their own way, we cannot doubt 

* Kotzebuc's Voyage in the Years 1823, 4, 5, and 6. 



1831.] Mismanagement of the Colonies Jamaica, fyc. 63 

the propriety of this timely interference to check their indiscreet 
zeal. 

By the remaining clauses of the bill, slave evidence is to a consider- 
able extent admitted, and it only requires to be read attentively to satisfy 
every unprejudiced mind, that the assembly of Jamaica are perfectly 
desirous of going as far in complying with the wishes of the mother 
country as is consistent with their own safety and " the well being of 
the slaves themselves/' 

" I regret extremely/' says the Earl of Belmore, in transmitting this 
bill to Sir George Murray, " that one clause has been left, creating a 
more marked and invidious distinction between sectarians and ministers 
of the established church, than those which occasioned the rejection of 
the act of 1826. However," adds his lordship, " as the bill upon the 
whole is certainly more favourable to the slave than that of 1826, I COULD 
NOT FEEL MYSELF JUSTIFIED in refusing my assent to it." We would 
ask, in reference to the more il marked and invidious distinction" in 
this bill, whether the secretaries, by the whole tenor of their conduct 
since 1826, have not amply justified nay compelled the people of Jamai- 
ca to make this more marked distinction, and whether they would 
not in fact, have been justified in even adopting more severe measures? 
Sir George Murray is however of a different opinion, and expresses 
displeasure that Lord Belmore assented to this Bill, referring him to 
former positive instructions on the subject; and adds, " I can only ex- 
press the deep regret which is felt by His Majesty's Government, that 
the unfortunate introduction of the clauses to which I have referred 
(namely, those last above mentioned), should continue to deprive the 
slave population of the many advantages which the wisdom and humanity 
of the colonial legislature have proposed to confer upon them ; benefits, 
the value of which I do not the less readily acknowledge, though the 
Act, in many important respects, falls short of the measures which his 
Majesty has introduced into the Colonies, which are subject to this legis- 
lative authority in his Privy Council." 

In this singular situation the matter rests ; but it must be obvious 
to every person, of common understanding, that not only the welfare 
of the Slave (in so far, at least, as that may depend upon legis- 
lative enactments), but also that the feelings of the whole community of 
one of our oldest and most influential colonies have been egregiously out- 
raged, and their discontents augmented, by endeavours to force upon 
them unsuitable and unpalatable theories of religious toleration. 

The legislative measures which have been forced upon the Crown 
Colonies have also produced much opposition and discontent ; we fear 
they will continue, generally speaking, to be productive of more harm 
than good. The official document before us shews ample proof, that at 
least in one of the new colonies viz. Mauritius, these measures have 
been met by general opposition, and open remonstrance. 

What is at this moment passing in every part of the world, may ulti- 
mately involve this country in very serious difficulties, and should lead 
practical statesmen to a serious consideration, not only of the prudence 
and necessity of conciliating all classes of people in the empire ; but also 
of concentrating the energies of the country so that we may be ready to 
await, with confidence in our own strength and resources, the approach 
of any struggle that we may be forced to encounter. How that can be 
done by obstinately adhering to our present colonial policy is, in our 
opinion, beyond the comprehension of any sober-minded person in the 
United Kingdom. 



[ 64 ] [JAN. 



THE EPITAPH OF 1830. 

HERE lie, although shorn of their rays, 

In the family-vault of old Time, 
Three hundred and sixty -five days 

Of folly, pride, glory, and crime. 
You may mourn o'er their miseries still, 

You may dance o'er their desolate bier ; 
You may laugh, you may weep, as you will 

Eighteen-Hundred-and-Thirty lies here ! 

It brought us some good on its wings, 

Much ill has it taken away ; 
For it gave us the best of Sea-Kings, 

And darkened the Conqueror's day. 
It narrowed Corruption's dominion, 

And crushed Aristocracy's starch, 
Gave nerve to that giant, Opinion, 

And spurred up old Mind on his march. 

It drew a new line for Court-morals, 

Laid hands on the Pensioner's treasure, 
And told us we'll crown it with laurels 

Reform is a Cabinet-measure. 
It brought, to the joy of each varlet, 

Both sides of a coat into play ; 
For it stripped off the faded old Scarlet, 

And turned the court-livery Grey ! 

It set all the Sycophants sighing, 

And taught them to blush and look shy ; 
It made, though unfitted for flying, 

Proh pudor ! a Marchioness fly. 
How many it found looking big, 

Till it plucked out the feathers they wore ! 
On the woolsack it placed such a Whig 

As had ne'er graced the woolsack before. 

It brought Captain Swing in a flame, 

With his wild ghme of fright to our cost : 
While, skilled in a different game, 

Surgeon Long played a rubber and lost. 
It gratified Hunt in his thirst 

To sit as a patriot member; 
And it brought us back April the First, 

When we thought it the Ninth of November. 

And oh ! it made Freedom the Fashion 

In France who can ne'er have too much, 
And who put all the rest in a passion 

The Russians, Poles, Belgians, and Dutch ! 
Let this be the end of its story : 

May the Year that now breaks o'er its tomb, 
Have a gleam or two more of its glory, 

A shade or two less of its gloom ! 

B. 



1831. J [ 65 ] 

NOTES OF THE MONTH ON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL. 

A short time will shew whether the government are sincere in their 
promises of economy: those promises which have been so often broken, 
but which now must be and shall be kept, whoever may be minister. We 
are willing to give Lord Grey credit for his intentions, and all will go on 
well, if he shall realize them by vigorous performance. We agree per- 
fectly with the observations of the ' ' Times " on the subject. After 
mentioning that the salary of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland has been 
reduced by government from 30,000 to 20,000, that is to say, has 
been docked of one part in three, a reduction which it is only justice to 
the Duke of Northumberland to say, had been in some degree anticipated 
by himself, he having given up 7>000 a-year it proceeds to observe : 
" We do not say that this ratio, which is applicable only to salaries of 
very high amount, should be adopted in all ; but that the principle of 
diminution should be carried into effect is highly necessary ; and, above 
all, it was most gratifying to be assured by such a man as Lord Althorp, 
in the name of the government, that ' all places, whether high or low, 
were to be abolished which were held by individuals performing no 
duties.' For our own parts, in looking over those pension lists which 
have been recently brought to light, we cannot help thinking, that if 
substantial justice were dealt out to the parties therein, it appears, en- 
joying pensions, nine- tenths of them ought to be sent to the tread-mill 
for the plunder they have committed, and were intending to commit, 
upon the public purse." The truth is, that the nation will tolerate those 
plunderings no longer Mr. Horace Twiss tells us, to " pause before 
we plunge noble families into distress !" But we say, if noble families 
are to keep their nobility only by living on the public, perish their 
nobility ! What right have they to any rank above other paupers ? 
What claim have the Lady Bettys and Jennies of any titled beggar to 
the money wrung from the labours and necessities of the industrious and 
now deeply depressed people ? If they think carriages and fine clothes, 
titles and fine houses essential to their existence, let them pay for them 
out of their own purses ; if they cannot pay for them, what right have 
they to them ? or what right have they to make the people pay for them ? 
The whole affair is a gross insult to common sense; and those silken 
creatures, and their dandy brothers, aetherial and exquisite as they may 
be, must do like others, earn their bread by honest industry, or have no 
bread to eat. We have not time now to enter into that national insult 
the Pension List ! We shall return to it before long. But we warn 
Lord Grey that, upon the candour and strict sincerity of his conduct in 
extinguishing every sinecure, and cutting off every shilling, unearned by 
distinct and plain public services, and that immediately, the continuance 
of his administration must altogether depend. We must have no more 
noble paupers. If they are paupers let them descend from their fictitious 
rank, and learn the duties of their true station in society. They will 
gain a great deal by the change, in point of usefulness, lose nothing in 
point of real dignity for what can be so degrading as to live on the 
charity of the public ? and probably gain much in point of real comfort, 
for what bread is more destitute of comfort than the bread of idleness, 
even if it were eaten by the sons and daughters of a Duke ? 

But the affair will not, and cannot, be borne any longer. The House 
of Commons have already taken it up, and on the sincerity with which 

M.M. New SeriesVoi.. XI. No. 61. K 



tJfi Notes of the Month OH [JAN. 

ministers do their duty in this point, will depend their existence for six 
months to come. In the debate, on the 23d of December, " Mr. Guest 
moved that there be laid before the House the warrant, dated 5th Janu- 
ary, 1823, by which a pension of 1.200 per annum was granted to Mrs. 
Harriett Arbuthnot. He conceived that the pension granted to Mrs. 
Arbuthnot could not be defended. The next pension to which he should 
call the attention of the House was that granted to Lady Hill, of 467 12s., 
which made the total received by Sir George Hill and his lady amount 
to '7,347 a-year. A pension was granted to Earl Minto in April, 1800, 
of 938 8s. 9d., from which he had since received above 30,000 he 
(Mr. G.) was ignorant for what public services. The pensions granted 
to the family of the Grcnvilles were particularly deserving attention. Mr. 
C. Grenville, as Comptroller of Cash in the Excise, was in receipt of 
600 per annum ; he was allowed moreover 600 a-year as Receiver- 
General of Taxes at Nottingham, and had also 350 a-year as Secretary 
of the Island of Tobago. It was plain that some of these offices, if not 
all of them, must be sinecures. There were several pensions granted to 
the Cockburn family. The first bore date 1798, for 184 granted to Jean 
Cockburn. Three other members of the family had pensions of 97 
each, granted in 1791. There was also in the document laid on the 
table, a pension to Mary Penelope Bankhead, in October, 1825, for 
350 7s. 5d. What were the services for which such a pension was 
granted ? The Countess of Mornington was in receipt of a pension of 
600 a-year since 1813. He concluded by declaring, that whenever 
pensions were to be voted and placed on the civil list, which were not 
granted for some services performed to the State, he should feel it his 
duty, even if he stood alone, to vote against such fgrants. He thought 
members of that House obtaining pensions for any members of their 
family, especially for their wives, virtually vacated their seats. Mr. 
Alderman Waithman said that there were pensions granted to Jive persons 
of the members of the family of Lord Bathurst, although that nobleman 
had been long in office, holding two sinecure places, and receiving twelve 
thousand a-year. Mr. Courtenay said Lord Bathurst was appointed to 
one of his offices by his father, when Lord Chancellor !" 

Mr. Courtenay's excuse only aggravates the evil. It is the baseness of 
providing, as it is called, for their families by lordly knaves, or impudent 
beggars, that makes one of the grand sources of public plunder. Why 
should not the Lord Chancellor Bathurst have provided for his son, 
without feeding him out of the pockets of the people? We have those Bath- 
ursts, a family absolutely undistinguished by any kind of talent, or any 
kind of public service, placemen and pensioners for the last eighty years ! 
How many tens of thousands of pounds have those persons drawn from, 
the industry of the people in that time, that they forsooth might ride 
in their coaches and call themselves noble ! How long ago would they 
have been compelled to walk a foot, and perhaps take to some manual 
trade, if they had not been thus fed. There must be an end, and a 
speedy end of all this. 

The confessions of the Polignac ministers give a striking illustration 
of the old maxim of Oxenstiern. Three fourths of the public wisdom 
of the highest ranks are folly. In France the other fourth was a guilty 
love of place. Every one of the ministers seems to have perfectly known 
that he was acting contrary to his duty as an honest man. But then, 
" he must obey his king," which means in all instances, tc he must 
keep his place." If any one of those men had listened to the common 



1 83 J.] Affairs in General. 67 

dictates of conscience, he would have refused to join in the criminal 
measure, but then he must have resigned ; which seems to be an im- 
possibility, so far as it depends on the individual. The French minis- 
ters might have been turned out by their master ; but the idea of turn- 
ing themselves out, merely because conscience remonstrated against their 
staying in, was evidently a matter not to be thought of. Thus we find 
Peyronnet, Chantelauze, and the rest, with the single exception of 
Polignac, (and he refuses, apparently that he may not be obliged to 
name the king as the criminal,) profuse in their declarations, that they 
disapproved, foresaw, reprobated, regretted, and so forth ; which hav- 
ing done, they set about bringing the criminal matter into shape ; and 
put it into action : the alternative being, that if they did not share the 
guilt, they must lose their places, a sacrifice totally out of the question. 

Marmont was exactly in the same condition. Arago, a member of the 
Institute, gives us a curious view of Marmont's feelings. He says 
" On Monday the 26th of July, the day on which the fatal ordinances 
were published, the marshal came to the Institute, and seeing how 
greatly I was affected by the perusal of the Moniteur, he said, ' Well ! 
you see that the fools have pushed things on to extremities, just as I told 
you. At least, you will only have to lament such measures as a citizen 
and a good Frenchman ; but how much more am I to be pitied, I who, 
as a soldier, shall be obliged to get my head broken in the support of 
acts that I abhor, and of persons who have long seemed determined to 
give me as much annoyance as possible ?' " The idea of giving up his 
employments, was too horrid for his susceptibility. We are to recollect 
that Marmont was not simply a marshal, but a peer of France, and 
therefore entitled to a deliberative opinion. Though even as a marshal 
he had a right to refuse a service which he knew to be that of crime and 
massacre. For whatever may be the necessary submission of the private 
soldier, it is not to be supposed with common sense, that the conduct of 
a commander-in-chief is not to be regulated with reference to his per- 
sonal sense of justice. But the marshal, so delicate towards his king, 
plunged himself headlong into civil blood ; laid thousands dead for a 
punctilio, and now expects commiseration. He has found his reward 
in exile ; and can be now remembered only as a warning to men in his 
rank, that conscience is not to be insulted, and that there is nothing more 
short- sighted than a base love of power. 

The last accounts from Paris state the sentence of the ex-ministers, 
Polignac, Peyronnet, Chantelauze, and Ranville. Omitting the mere 
technicalities, it is as follows : 

" SENTENCE. ' The Court of Peers having heard the commissioners of the 
Chamber of Deputies in their arguments and conclusions, and the accused in 
their defence : 

" ' Condemns Prince de Polignac to perpetual imprisonment in the conti- 
nental territory of the kingdom; declares him deprived of his title, dignities, 
and orders ; declares him civilly dead. 

" ' Condemns Count de Peyronnet, Victor de Chantelauze, and Count 
Guernon de Ranville, to perpetual imprisonment; and declares them also 
deprived of their titles, dignities, and orders. 

" ( Condemns the Prince de Polignac, Count Peyronnet, Victor de Chan- 
telauze, and Count Guernon de Ranville personally and jointly in the costs of 
the proceedings.' " 

The populace received the account of this proceeding with great re- 
sentment, and collected in multitudes demanding the blood of the 
prisoners. But the national guard repelled them without violence, and 

K 2 



68 \utes of the Month on [_JAN. 

the king riding through Paris after dusk on the same evening, and using 
all his good sense to conciliate the people, succeeded for the time. 

When the question of the fatal year 1829 was before the legislature, 
the friends of Christianity and the constitution exclaimed to the wretched 
and apostate ministry, " Can you possibly be blind to the immediate 
consequences of the guilty measure that you are now supporting ? You 
surrender to clamour what could never have had a claim in reason, and 
to make the mischief still surer, you actually profess to surrender it to 
clamour. You declare, that you give Catholic emancipation to quell the 
agitation of Ireland, that you give it through fear of violences, that the 
time is come when it can be delayed no longer." The guilty measure 
was accomplished, and now what is the language of the Irish agitators ? 
Demanding a measure which will create civil war, destroy Protestantism 
in Ireland, make Protestant property not worth a shilling, and turn the 
whole population of Ireland into the slaves of a Roman Catholic faction , 
and which will be carried ! " Agitate more and more, my boys ; for the 
more you agitate the more you will get, and by agitation you will get as 
much as you please." This is the language of popery now. 

Every man of common sense in England exclaimed, that the first 
popish triumph over the Protestant constitution would be followed by a 
second, or by a hundred, until there was a complete dismemberment of the 
empire. The Union will be repealed. A parliament entirely popish will 
be chosen ; feelings utterly hostile to England and Protestantism will be 
the very breath and life of that parliament. England will resist the con- 
spiracy. The resistance will be met by force. Allies for Ireland will be 
sought among the popish powers of the continent. France will declare 
the principle of non-intervention as in the case of the Netherlands. 
Spanish and French gold and troops will be ready on the first emer- 
gency. The money of all popish Europe, of every province, and every 
Driest owing allegiance to popery, will be poured in to sustain what they 
will proclaim a persecution on the part of England, and a crusade on 
heir own ; and the British empire will, if not undone, be a theatre of 
blood and flame. And this was openly predicted, and will be fully borne 
out by the inevitable results of the guilty measure. We have at this 
moment Mr. O'Connell actually turning by his presence the Irish govern- 
ment into a cypher, and detailing to the maddened populace, views, 
whose expression astonishes us equally at the supineness of law, and the 
daring defiance of the speaker. On his arrival in Dublin a week since, 
he was received by all "the trades" in marching order, with banners and 
emblems ; and a concourse of all the populace, never equalled, as we are 
told, but on the entrance of the late king. 

" About six o'clock the procession reached Mr. O'Connell's house in Mer- 
rion-square ; and he addressed the assembled multitude, which amounted to 
not less than 50,000, from the balcony. After assuring 1 them that they would 
certainly achieve the repeal of the Union, he concluded as follows: 'France 
waded to liberty through blood the Poles are wading to liberty through blood 
but mark me, my friends, the shedding- of one drop of blood in Ireland would 
effectually destroy all chance of repealing the Union. I wear round my neck 
the medal of the Order of Liberators, suspended from a riband of orange and 
green. I press the Orange to my lips I press it to my heart. I have abused 
the Orangemen on my knees, in the presence of God I beg their pardon/ 
Great part of the City was illuminated, and bonfires blazed in various places." 

This is but a fragment of a speech filled with the bitterest gall against 
all that we revere. But what are we to think of his wily appeals to the 
French and Flemish revolutions ? " They both waded to liberty through 



Jh31.] Affairs in General. 09 

blood." And of course this example is not to be followed by the Irish, 
if England should refuse to give way. No, the agitator, who rode 
through the country creating an Order of Liberators, has no idea that 
blood can ever be in the thoughts of he, who deprecates all force. Doubt- 
less he would seriously deprecate his own seizure by an attorney-general. 
And so far as words go, he will study innocence. But how did the popu- 
lace understand the speech ? Why was the example of civil blood 
quoted ? why were the populace told that blood was in other countries 
the price of liberty ? 

He has since repeated the topic at one of those public meetings which 
are in direct defiance of the law, according to every conception of right 
reason. With 2,000 people for his hearers at the tavern, he tells them 
that " the repeal of the Union is a question of life and death, combining 
within itself the existence of our country as a nation involving at once 
the charities of public and private life, the support of our labouring poor, 
and the employment of our wretched artizaris ; it is one so great, so vast, 
and so important, that in it (it cannot be wondered at) all others should, 
for a time, be absorbed." He then tells them that he has no hope in the 
ministry : 

"As to Earl Grey, I declare that I have not the least confidence in him. 
He was a democrat in early life he became a lord, God know how or in 
what Whig revolution, and he now begins to talk of ' his order/ [[hear, 
hear !] He will be obliged to do something for England he must do some- 
thing for Scotland and with respect to Ireland, what does he do ? he 
threatens us with Proclamations and Algerine Acts. Earl Grey, I defy you !" 
[[cheers. 3 

What is to be done by a nation with a ministry who sends them nothing 
but acts fit for Algerine tyrants to send ? The populace are left to draw 
their own conclusion. The populace are then summoned to an universal 
call for parliamentary reform and voting by ballot. How much does the 
orator care for the purity of the English constitution ? But whatever 
may be his objects, he tells them now is their time. 

" Let it be done now ; England is rocking to its centre ; the sound of the 
approaching hurricane can he already heard ; the ground is trembling under 
their feet ; the volcano is about to burst beneath them ; the storm that has 
been raised by the intelligent mass of the English people is about to sweep 
over them. Where is the ' master-spirit' to rule that storm? That master- 
spirit is not Lord Grey, who, at such a crisis, could have the folly to threaten 
us with Proclamations and Algerine Acts." [[cheers.]] 
He then prohibits the spilling of blood : 

" In the struggle which our country is about to make for freedom, neither 
force nor violence shall be used/' 

Of course, the people, with all their Catholic emancipation, are still 
slaves, and have still to make a national struggle for freedom, which is not, 
like the " glorious struggles" of France and Belgium for freedom, to be 
one of blood. 

The people are then directed not to form conspiracies for the purpose 
of the repeal, that " question of death and life," that giver of wealth to 
the poor, and of freedom to every body. 

<f People of Ireland, hear me ; let not any possibility induce you to be 
guilty of violence, or to shed one drop of blood ; let not secret societies exist 
amongst you have nought to do with them, as you are anxious for a repeal 
of the Union. No man who loves Ireland will join in a secret society. [Tiearl^ 
Secret societies ! I excommunicate you from amongst Irishmen I proclaim 
here, that the man who belongs to one is an enemy to me and to Ireland." 
[[cheers.]] 

In all which points \ve must take the orator's word for his sincerity. 



70 Notes of the Month on QJAN. 

One thing at least is tolerably clear, that if the populace knew nothing 
of " secret societies" before, as a contrivance to carry their freedom, they 
have heard a good deal now. But who can be blind to the nature of 
the whole proceeding ? We honour the Field Marshal's sagacity too 
much to doubt that he sees the affair in its true point of view, and is at 
this moment turning his mighty mind to anew march to Downing-street. 
To be sure he has a second time declared, that he would be " mad to be 
a minister." But if he " should find the safety of the empire depending 
on his leaving his beloved retirement, he is, doubtless, too much a patriot 
to prefer his leisure to 14,000 a-year and the whole patronage of the 
realm. He will be delighted to shew how fearlessly he can encounter 
insanity again, and be mad to be minister a second, or a twentieth time. 

The age of spells may .have passed away in other matters, but it un- 
doubtedly survives in every thing connected with theatres. All the 
speculators fail ; yet when is a speculator wanting ? There have been 
but two within memory who have realized a shilling by theatres. One 
of those was the late Lewis, who carried off twenty thousand pounds, 
chiefly made by a long professional life ; but carried it off only by selling 
out of Covent Garden as soon as he could get a purchaser. The other 
was old Harris, who, however, after making a fortune, was rash enough 
to hazard it all again in the new Covent Garden, and lost it all. The 
Opera House regularly ruins a manager every two years, and has accom- 
plished its work without fail in all instances, from Handel downwards. 
Sheridan, Elliston, and Price are the modern exhibitors in the Drury 
Lane calendar. Covent Garden has dragged down every body with the 
same impartial activity. The Dublin theatre has effected the ruin of its 
managers time out of mind. It has now added another to the list. In 
the Insolvent Debtors' Court, Dublin, on Saturday, Mr. Bunn, the late 
lessee of the Hawkin's-street Theatre in that city, was brought up on his 
petition, and, some explanation having been entered into, the chief com- 
missioner declared that Mr. Bunri had conducted the theatre in a fair and 
honourable manner, and he was therefore discharged from the claims of 
his creditors. A Mr. Calcraft, an actor, has taken the theatre, and we 
only hope he will not follow the fates of his predecessors. Yet if he 
should, he will be certain to have half a dozen followers in every sense 
of the word. The reason is undiscoverable by us, and we must leave it 
to the curious in human eccentricity. 

The performances at the winter theatres, however, are improving. Peake's 
Chancery Suit at Covent Garden, which rather shews that he is capable 
of something above farce, than^that he has yet accomplished it, has re- 
commenced. Abbot having recovered his legs, has supplanted Mr. 
Bennet, who has been so often triumphant in the " Freyschutz," that he 
seems perpetually carrying on a physiognomical dialogue with Lucifer. 
He is certainly a very formidable lover. Abbot can at least smile, which 
luckily goes a great way with the ladies, for Mr. Peake has certainly 
not indulged him with any fascination in the way of eloquence. But 
there is a vigour about the comedy which does promise well. The cha- 
racters of the country squire and the old servant are both disagreeable 
specimens of human nature. But they may have their originals, and 
they are, at least, not the wearisome copies of the clown and the dotard 
that so constantly encumber our stage. They are well performed, almost 
too well, by Bartley and Blan chard. 

But a vocal debutante, with the provincial name of Inverarity, has 
greatly added to the popular attractions of this theatre. Expectation 



1831.] Affair* in General. 71 

was considerably alive to the appearance of a substitute for Miss Paton, 
and it was fully answered. Her debut was one of the most successful 
witnessed for many years. She has a fine, clear, and flexible soprano 
voice, of an extensive compass, and the articulation of her notes is 
remarkably distinct. Her musical education has evidently been formed 
in the Italian school, though we understand her studies were completed 
in Scotland. With the advantages of a fine voice, and considerable 
powers of execution, Miss Inverarity possesses those of a handsome 
figure and an agreeable countenance. Her motions and gestures were 
deficient in ease, but this was probably occasioned by the embarrassment 
of a first appearance. 

There is often a singular contradiction between the speeches and the 
actions of governments. All the Continental powers are declaring that 
nothing was ever so complete as their amity, yet all are raising every 
soldier and buying up every horse, musquet and cannon, that they can 
lay their hands on. Austria is sending her 120,000 men into Italy. 
Prussia is mounting 20,000 cavalry. Russia is moving her half million, 
and rousing her wild men and her deserts to the sound of the drum. 
France declares in the meekest spirit that she will have 300,000 men on 
foot in three months, and will in the mean time continue drilling a mil- 
lion and half of national guards. But of all those deprecatory powers, 
not one deprecated the idea of stirring a soldier, or burthening herself 
with additional expences so much as England. Yet, in the very teeth 
of the declaration, we have the following. " The regiments of the line 
are about to be filled up to their establishments of 7^0 men per regi- 
ment, which will produce an addition to the army of about 10,000 men. 
The increase of vigilance rendered necessary by the aspect of affairs, or 
rather the existence of strong excitement at home and abroad, both real 
and artificial, is quite sufficient to account for this addition to the dis- 
posable force of the country." We confess that this raises our surprise. 
We have already an immense standing army, no less than 81,000 men, 
besides the whole establishment of ordnance, commissariat, hospitals, 
half-pay, invalids, &c. &c. the whole amounting to the revenue of a Con- 
tinental kingdom ; and to this we are called on now to add 10,000 men. 
No distinct ground has been assigned, but it is hinted that the popular 
disturbances and the state of the Continent alike require it. To this we 
answer without hesitation that, for the popular -disturbances the true 
force is a yeomanry, and that ten regiments of the guards, horse and 
foot, would not be as efficacious in putting down the night gatherings of 
a populace, as a thousand stout yeomanry cavalry raised in the district. 
In the next place we say, that the 10,000 men will be altogether trivial, 
on the great scale of European war. The fact is, that our whole mili- 
tary system is an error. Our diplomatists and ministers have been of 
late years dazzled by the whiskers and epaulettes of the loungers about 
the foreign courts, until they are all army mad! But the true force of 
England is her FLEET ! an arm in which no foreigner can ever rival her, 
which belongs to her almost exclusively, and which, without the uncon- 
stitutional and hazardous effect which the presence of a standing army 
always produces, does ten times the work at a tenth of the expense. 

But we are told, Ireland is to be kept in order. We answer; it was 
kept in order before by the militia and yeomanry, safe forces, which 
costing infinitely less than the standing army, are infinitely more suited 
to the ideas of Englishmen. But we have the West Indies to watch. 
If the negroes are turbulent, there is no force adequate to the service 
but a West-Indian militia, which the planters could easily raise, and 
which, by being inured to the climate, would outlast twenty of our bat- 



72 Notes of the Month on [JAN. 

talions. If they are to be defended from an enemy, it must be by a 
Fleet. They are always to be fought for by Sea, and the conqueror will 
have the islands. 

On the continent we can do nothing in competition with the enormous 
armies of France, Russia, and Austria on their own ground. The 
Peninsula was a case entirely by itself ; and when we shall have such 
a case again, we may raise such another army. We shall have time 
enough to make our preparations, if we keep the mastery of the Sea ! 
Yet let us hear. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, "in the motion 
he was about to make, thought the best course he could pursue 
was to state the supplies he intended to require, and then to set forth 
the ways and means. The vote he required was, on account of the army 
7,450,000, for the navy 5,594,000, for the ordnance 169,500, and 
for the miscellaneous expenditure 1,930,000, making in the whole 
16,950,000," out of nearly seventeen millions of money, an astounding 
sum at any time ; and above all times, in the midst of peace, we have 
here nearly eleven millions for the army ; for, almost the whole, under 
the heads of ordnance, miscellaneous services, &c., goes to the army. 
And this too, when ministers are declaring on all occasions the principle 
of non-intervention ! The additional 10,000 men will cost upwards of 
half a million a year, or the interest of about twelve millions sterling ! 
And yet, for what conceivable purpose ? Is it fright at the rick-burners, 
or at the speeches of Mr. O'Connell, or at a rebellion in the moon ? We 
long to know the reason, deep as it may be in the cabinet bosom. 

The harangues and lectures of the itinerant teachers of law and liberty 
are undoubtedly among the chief sources of the present desperate acts of 
the peasantry. At the Sussex Assizes we have the thing declared in so 
many words : 

" The first prisoner was Thomas Goodman, who was convicted for having 
set fire to a barn belonging to Mr. Watts, at Battle, on the 3rd of December. 
Within one month after this fire, no fewer than eight followed in rapid suc- 
cession. The prisoner, on leaving the bar, confessed the justice of his senr 
tence. He said that he set fire to the stack with a pipe and common matches. 
He also acknowledged to being the incendiary who set fire to some corn stacks 
a few days before, and for which a reward had been offered for the discovery 
of the offender. He said he was so stirred up by the words of Cobbett that his 
brain was nearly turned, and that he was under the impression that nothing 
but the destruction of property by fire at night would effect that species of 
revolution, the necessity of which was so strongly enforced l)y Mr. Cobbett in his 
lecture delivered at Battle. The following are the words of the prisoner, with 
reference to Cobbett, as taken down : e I, Thomas Goodman, never should af 
thought of dotting aney sutch thing if Mr. Cobbet had never given aney lactures i 
believe that their never would bean aney fires or mob in Battle nor maney other 
places if he never had given aney lactures at all." 

Cobbett makes, what he thinks a reply to this charge, by saying that 
the fires began before he lectured at Battle. He asserts, " that the fires 
began in East Kent, where he had not been for years, and extended into 
West Kent three months before he delivered his lectures in it; and that 
he everywhere used his best endeavours to dissuade the people from 
having recourse to violence." But the itinerant does himself serious in- 
justice, if he thinks that he can do no mischief where he is not seen. 
Do not his lectures spread through the country in all kinds of ways ? Is 
not his Register propagated with effect through the counties ? Has he 
not desperately denounced property ? We know his " love of order," 
and honour it like his friend, the Irish agitator's. 



1831.] Affairs in General 73 

Easily dried as our tears are for the Wellington tribe of trimmers, yet 
we wish that one of their officers could have been retained,, Lord Low- 
ther. What Mr. Agar Ellis may do in his room, can yet only be con- 
jecture. But we must give Lord Lowther credit for having done a great 
deal for the appearance of the metropolis. The Strand improvements 
are admirable ; and if we had any of the old Roman gratitude in us, we 
should give some of those improvements his name. Any simple memo- 
rial might answer the purpose, and we sincerely think that some record 
of the kind ought to remind us of one, who has to the extent of his power 
been a public benefactor. 

The labour of the office has been greater than those unaccustomed to 
such matters would conceive. The commissioners mention that in their 
last report they stated that they had purchased, for the purpose of these 
improvements, the freehold of one hundred and ninety-eight houses and 
buildings, and the interests of leaseholders and occupiers in three hun- 
dred and forty -two houses, besides acquiring by exchange six freehold 
houses ; and add, they have now to state that they have since pur- 
chased two hundred and ^fifty-nine freehold houses and buildings, and 
the interests of leaseholders and occupiers in one hundred houses, besides 
obtaining by exchange twenty-seven freehold houses. They further 
state that they had also agreed for, but not completed, the purchases of 
sixteen freehold houses, and leaseholders' and occupiers' interests in 
fifty-one houses. And by exchange twenty-seven freehold houses and 
one leasehold house. And out of this immense mass of ruins, they have 
changed one of the most unsightly and inconvenient streets of London, into 
one of the handsomest, so far as their means have gone. A matter of 
not less praise is the economy with which this great object has been ac- 
complished. Every man, who, for his sins, meddles in building, knows 
that it has no equal for expense and delay, or that it finds its only rival 
in a Chancery suit. But the Strand buildings have, in the first instance, 
been erected with extraordinary expedition, and in the next, at an ex- 
traordinarily low rate. This long range of very shewy street has actually 
cost the public but 300,000 ! The whole expense of the improvements, 
then, in progress, according to an account presented March 1829, was 
estimated at 1,147,313 ; but the available or expected means to meet 
that expenditure were 852,111. leaving a deficiency of only 300,000. 
To meet that deficiency, and to expedite the completion of the purchases 
further required, in addition to the 400,000 (included in the 852,111) 
borrowed from the Exchequer Bill Loan Commissioners the Woods 
and Forests' Commissioners borrowed a further sum of 300,000 of the 
Equitable Assurance Company, at 3 10*. per cent, per annum, repay- 
able by instalments within seventeen years. It is further stated that the 
whole sum actually received for the purpose of these improvements, to 
the time of making up the accounts, amounted to 962,548, and the 
payments made, to 880,254 and that they believed that the estimate 
of March 1829 (1,147,313) would not be exceeded. We wish that 
we could have had the same tale to tell of the Pimlico palace, which 
after the expenditure of a million sterling ! is now a tenement only for 
the bats and owls ; and which will probably never be inhabited by 
royalty. The eternal repairs of Windsor Castle are another drain, which 
has sucked in twice the amount of the Strand improvements within these 
three years ; and which, so far as the royal residence is concerned, 
seems to be much in the same condition with the Pimlico palace. But the 

M.M. New Series. VOL. XI. No. 61. L 



74 Notes of the Month on [JAN. 

proverb of the " ill wind" is not without its verification in those mat- 
ters. The king, 'tis true, resides in St. James's and the Pavilion. But 
the Castle and the Pimlico affair are only the more comfortable habita- 
tions for footmen, housekeepers, and stewards, until they shall be applied 
as chambers to the convenience of the young widows or dashing dow- 
agers of the court. In the mean time they will make pleasant sinecures 
for the architects, and thus contribute to the encouragement of the 
national genius, and the liberal expenditure of the national guineas. 

JEKYLLIANA. Some one observed, that probably the Russian Em- 
peror might be deterred from attacking Poland by the fear of insurrec- 
tion in his army. 

" Well he may," said the barrister. " It is all over with them all, if 
revolt extends from the Poles to the Line." 

Long experience has convinced us that of all rare things, the rarest 
axe facts, facts of any kind, and from any quarter whatever. Raleigh's 
old' contempt for historical facts made him, as all the world knows, throw 
his papers into the fire. Horace Walpole was prohibited by his father 
from reading history to him, " for you know," said the old politician, 
" that it cannot be true." Thus we have been perplexed during the last 
month by the theatrical/ad, that Madame Vestris and Miss Foote, had 
taken the Olympic Theatre, in partnership ; though it was not declared 
how many anonymous partners, with heavier purses than usually fall to 
the lot even of female charms, were engaged in the speculation. But it was 
stated as afact, that the two fair ones were allied, and were determined 
to draw together ; which, to their attractions must be as easy as it might 
be difficult for their rivalry ; that the house was to have a new name in 
consequence, and be called LA BELLE ALLIANCE; that Braham, Jones, 
and all the stars that have withdrawn their light from the great thea- 
tres were to form a constellation in the little, and that the back streets 
of the Strand were henceforth to be the west end of the theatrical world, 
the focus of all theatric fashion, the spot, to which when a nobleman got 
into his carriage at St. Stephen's, or at the door of the Clarendon, his 
coachman drove by instinct ; a general congress of all wits above ten 
thousand a year all peers under sixty all noble beauties in their teens, 
and all noble mothers with meditations deep in matrimony. To those 
facts, the whole tribunal of the London journals would have sworn. 
Yet where are they now ? 

It was an undeniable fact a week ago, that, Mr. C. Kemble had taken 
the Tottenham-street Theatre, at an additional rent of 800 per annum, 
for the purpose of putting down the starring system at the minors. The 
fact is, however, that it has been let to Mr. Macfarren, on lease for 21 
years, at 1,000 a year ; who is at this moment engaged in projecting 
extensive alterations and improvements of the building, and who hopes 
to re-open about the end of next month, newly decorated, with new 
pieces, a new company, formed of the principal talent now in the mar- 
ket, and with very superior patronage, of course. What will be the 
next fact ? 

The Africans are not celebrated for their brains, yet they have a touch 
of acuteness, that sometimes serves them just as well. The European 
kings send the Emperor of Morocco envoys and consuls. The Em- 
peror of Morocco never returns any thing of the kind. He sends back 



1831.] A flairs in General. 75 

birds and beasts in exchange. A large cargo of those effective royal re- 
presentatives,, which touched at Gibraltar, on their mission to their 
respective courts, consisted of a hyaena, for the Emperor of Austria ; a 
brown wolf from Mount Atlas, for Nicholas : a royal tiger from the 
Zahara, for the Sultan ; a blue-rumped baboon for Don Miguel ; an 
urus, or bull from the Berber country, for William of England; a 
Fezzan calf, of the largest size, for William of Holland ; a bubo, or 
great-horned owl, for the king of Spain ; a grey panther for the king of 
Prussia ; an Arab charger for Louis Philip ; an antelope for Charles 
Dix ; and a whole wilderness of monkies, to be distributed impartially 
among the minor princes of Germany. 

The British Consul at Tangiera has, we presume, not yet informed 
his sable majesty of the late principal occurrences in London, or he 
would have honoured Sir Charles Hunter by a present of a white jack- 
ass ; unless, perhaps, he may have heard that the military baronet has 
been provided with a donkey already sufficiently conspicuous for civic 
chivalry. 

Now that the ministers have come back from the elections, we must, 
as Shakspeare says, " have a touch of their quality." We direct their 
attention to the following paragraph in one of the newspapers : " We 
have been informed that the salary of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles 
Rowan, the Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, is two thou- 
sand five hundred pounds per annum, with the addition of a large house, 
in Whitehall-place, coals, candles, &c." If these things be so, we call on 
Lord Grey to do himself credit and the nation justice, by abating the 
nuisance without further delay. Colonel Charles Rowan might have 
made a very proper appendage to the military gentleman, who hitherto 
grasped at all ministerial power in England with an avidity which was 
not merely unexampled, but of a quality for which we leave others to 
find the name. But of him and his ministry we have got rid ; he has 
been broken down, and broken down by that hand, which, thank 
Heaven, has hitherto never struck a blow in vain, and which has been 
for ages the security of England against personal' vanity, however mad- 
dened by official success, or military hatred of freedom, however hardened 
by military habits ; the nation smote him, and he fell never to rise again. 

The winter, which has set in with some severity among ourselves, will 
probably stop the progress of the cholera, or new Russian plague, through 
Germany ; and yet the Russian accounts do not seem to authorize any 
sanguine hope of its cessation in the provinces surrounding Moscow. 
They have already had two months of snow, and the deaths are still 
going on, though perhaps in some degree diminished. No subject can 
be of more anxious importance ; yet the foreign governments appear to 
have paid little attention to it, and we are still without any authentic 
details. In the first place, the nature of the disorder is undetermined. 
It is not ascertained whether it be the Indian cholera, or merely a vio- 
lent fever produced by some sudden heat of the summer in the southern 
provinces of Russia, and propagated and envenomed by the carelessness 
and the gross food and habits of the people, who in those provinces 
differ little from barbarians. Some conceive it to be a contagion from 
the Turkish frontiers, or, more probably, arising from the seeds of that 
plague which the Russian armies found in their Turkish campaign, and 

L2 



76 Notes of the Month on [JAN. 

carried with them on their return into their southern cantonments. To 
this moment there is even no decision whether it is contagious or epi- 
demic. 

Humboldt has attempted a narrative of its progress. He conceives it 
to have begun in 1818 in Bombay, from which it passed, in 1819, to 
the Mauritius and Madagascar; at Bassora it was first felt in 1821. It 
then traversed Syria, where it apparently decayed during three years, 
though in the mean time it had ravaged the whole northern border of 
Africa. In 1823, it was felt on the coasts of the Caspian; and with 
peculiar mortality at Astracan. In 1829, it was felt in Persia, from 
which it came into Georgia, where in one city of 50,000 people but 
8,000 survived. In 1830, it was felt again at Astracan, in the month of 
July, when it destroyed 21,000 people, with almost the entire of the 
officers of government. From this it spread among the Cossacks of the 
Don,, and finally reached Moscow. Here it was peculiarly formidable ; 
it seemed to defy medicine, and the computation was, that one in three 
of the attacked died. The Russian settlements on the Black Sea could 
scarcely hope to escape, and it had appeared with great violence at 
Odessa. It was also said to have stretched to the neighbourhood of 
Constantinople. 

In this narrative a great deal is probably fanciful, and in that spirit 
of theory and classification which makes Humboldt, and all his country- 
men, such extremely doubtful authorities on physical questions. He 
has evidently pressed all the periodic disorders of those hot and un- 
healthy countries into the service, and has regimented them under the 
name of cholera. We must wait until some Englishmen of science, 
and what is of no less importance, of accuracy, shall have examined the 
disease on the spot. From the cordons which Austria is forming on the 
borders of Gallicia, we must presume that the disorder is contagious; 
for every one knows the absurdity of resisting the cholera by muskets 
and bayonets. But if contagious, which it in all probability is, and 
caught from the Turks, we cannot take too immediate precautions 
against this new visitation of the plague, of all diseases the most hideous, 
and which, if once suffered to make its way over Germany, will inevi- 
tably spread over the whole extent of the continent. By preventing its 
entrance at our seaports, we may be safe ; but, for this national pur- 
pose, too great vigilance cannot be exerted, nor too great attention 
paid to every advance which it may make on the continent. 

There can be doubt that a great deal of the distress of the peasantry, 
and, in consequence, a great deal of their insubordination, have arisen 
from their want of any thing which might be called a stake in the land. 
The old custom of providing the labourer with ground, however trifling 
its extent might be, gave him a feeling that he belonged to the country, 
and had duties to fulfil as an Englishman. But the grasping and short- 
sighted system of refusing land to the cottager, while it was thrown into 
large farms, and men were displaced for sheep, necessarily produced a 
total alienation in the men thus thrown out, and we can have nothing 
new to learn in the intelligence, that they looked on these masters as 
their enemies. By this system, the whole labouring population would 
in a few years have perished, or become a loose mob, roving from place 
to place for employment, or, when employment failed, for plunder, 
and inclined to take a part in every public disorder. On this system 



1831.] , Affairs in General 77 

the labourer, when his day's work was done, would have had no refuge 
but the alehouse, or some miserable lodging, where, without comforts or 
any other association but with men in his own situation, equally discon- 
tented, equally without connection with the land, and equally exposed 
to the suggestions of every low tempter, whether poacher, smuggler, or 
incendiary ; in time the rebel would have found him fit for his pur- 
pose, and* we might see this body, which forms the strength of the British 
population, converted into the readiest instrument of public ruin. 

But what a striking difference there must be in the habits, as there is 
in the condition, of the labourer returning, after his day's work on his 
master's grounds, to a little holding of his own, where the hours be- 
tween his regular employment and his going to rest may be given to 
some labour in his own little portion of ground, and where every hour 
not merely employs him healthfully, but is turned to eventual benefit. 
The difference is actually as broad as between the honest, kind-hearted, 
and virtuous peasant, and the sullen, brutal, and vicious serf; between 
the industrious labourer of old times, and the Captain Swing of the 
present. We are glad to see that the cottage system is beginning to be 
adopted ; and we are scarcely less pleased to see that its commence- 
ment has been made, and peculiarly sanctioned, by an English prelate. 
It is only justice to the Bishop of Bath and Wells to acknowledge, that 
from him the idea has derived its chief and earliest support ; that he 
has allotted gardens, of about half an acre each, or in some instances 
more, to the cottages of his labourers. The plan is so obviously good, 
that it is almost unnecessary to say it has succeeded. The example has 
been followed. The Earl of Roseberry, with a view to better the con- 
dition of the cottagers on his estate at Postwick, Plumstead, and Sax- 
lingham, twenty-three in number, has allotted half an acre to each in 
addition to what they previously occupied. The truth is, that a new 
principle of treatment must be adopted to the people by their superiors. 
A landlord must no longer consider his tenantry merely as machines 
working for his profit, and to be disposed of in whatever way that profit 
can be most expeditiously made. This infamous and inhuman system 
originally began in the Highlands, where the old tenants of the lairds, 
the poor peasantry, whom it should have been the pride and honour of 
their masters to encourage, civilize, and make happy, were driven like 
brutes from the soil on which their fathers had lived from time imme- 
morial, to which all their natural feelings were bound, and of which, in 
the eye of Heaven, and of man where man was not the slave of Mam- 
mon they were as justly entitled to the undisturbed possession as their 
cruel masters. We have not now to learn that avarice is a blinding 
passion as well as a base and criminal one. But a stronger proof of its 
blindness cannot be asked than in the results of this odious monopoly 
in both Scotland and England. In Scotland, the old tenantry, driven 
away in bitterness and disgust to find a refuge in the colonies, have been 
succeeded by a population which scorns those masters ; and the masters 
themselves have, in a crowd of instances, decayed away, and seen their 
hereditary estates given into the hands of strangers and manufacturers. 
In England, the extinction of the cottage holdings and the property of 
the labourers, has been followed by the scourge of the poor rates, and 
that scourge by the more direct one of agricultural insurrection, roh- 
beries, and burnings. 

The only cure for this tremendous evil is an instant return to the old 



78 Notes of the Month on [JAN. 

principles of country life. The landlord must be taught to feel that his 
tenantry are as much entitled to life as himself, and that he is in the eye 
of Heaven but a steward of his property ; that good nature and humanity 
to his people are not only virtue, but wisdom and that no man, let his 
number of sheep or bullocks be what they may, can more truly do his 
duty to himself or his country than he who is the means of fostering a 
body of industrious, honest, and contented human beings. Beeves may 
be good, but we cannot help thinking that man is of more importance ; 
and that even if the adoption of the humane system should compel the 
landlord to keep a hunter the less, or drink port in place of claret, he 
would be sufficiently recompensed by the knowledge that a hundred or 
a thousand human beings looked up to him with gratitude for his pro- 
tection, and with the honest zeal in his service, and the genuine devoted- 
ness, that once made the feeling of the English tenant for his landlord. 
Even as mere matter of profit, there can be no doubt that the more 
numerous the tenantry the more productive the soil, and, of course, the 
more profitable to its proprietor. But there should be a higher feeling; 
a man invested with the power of doing so much good as a great Eng- 
lish landlord can, ought to feel that the power was an actual demand upon 
his benevolence, that he was as accountable for his use of this exten- 
sive means of making his fellow men comfortable and contented as any 
other depository of power, and that of all the pleasant sights of earth, 
the pleasantest is the happy human countenance. 

As to the electioneering patriots, the tenants who offer themselves for 
sale to the highest bidder, no matter who he may be ; the sooner the 
landlord gets rid of them the better. The landlord is only an abetter 
of their corruption, who suffers those sellers of themselves for filthy 
lucre to remain on his estate. Of those slaves of a bribe we are not 
speaking, but of the genuine, uncorrupted tenantry, who are at once the 
pride of an estate, and would as much disdain the abominations of elec- 
tion barter and sale as the highest mind in the land. 

Jekyll is alive again. On being told that during the greater part of 
Lord Brougham's eloquent oration upon the state of the law on Thurs- 
day night, in the House of Lords, the Duke of Wellington evinced his 
taste for the noble and learned Lord's elocution, and his interest in the 
subject, by enjoying a sound nap, "Ay," said Jekyll, " no wonder ; 
the man was near taking a Nap. in the battle of Waterloo/' 
. At Salisbury, every person lately named to serve the office of Mayor 
had paid a fine rather than take the duty. " Well," said the witty bar- 
rister, " I see no more that can be done. I am afraid it would be 
impossible to refine them." 

At a recent sale by auction, a virtuoso had a lot knocked down to him, 
consisting of a tooth of the unfortunate James, Earl of Derwentwater, 
a fragment of his bloody linen, and a nail taken out of his coffin. 
" There," said Jekyll, " is a genuine instance of the true antiquarian 
passion, a rage tooth and nail. " 

Her Majesty has expressed her intention of appointing the Scotch Greys 
to be her escort during their Majesties' projected visit to Scotland in 
the ensuing year. " Why not ? " said Jekyll, " when the English Greys 
have got hold of the king, why should not the Scotch Greys have the 
queen ?" 



1831.] Affairs m General 79 

That elegant affair the " prize ring" is, we greatly fear, on the wane. 
What would the ghost of Mr. Windham say to this sign of the downfal 
of England ? A paragraph in the Old Bailey annals stated a few days 
ago, that Richard Curtis, "the pet of the fancy," was indicted for 
assaulting, on the 8th of October, William Allen, known as " Jack the 
Painter," and stealing from his person five sovereigns. Mr. Charles 
Phillips made an objection to the indictment, with which the Court 
agreed, and " the pet of the fancy" was discharged, upon his own recog- 
nizance, in the sum of 400., to answer this charge at the next sessions. 
Joshua Hudson, who now figures with an Ex to his name, and is 
Ex-pugilist, as Parkins was Ex-sheriff, and as the Right Honourable 
Sir Robert Blifil Peel is Ex-minister, whom may the stars long preserve 
in the same condition, is also under a cloud. In short, the whole warlike 
establishment is fallen from its high estate, and we shall probably not 
hear of its revival until some new " Game Chicken" or " Nonpareil," 
starts from the multitude to " witch the world with noble pummelling." 
Even Jackson, the athlete, seems " a gone" champion ; his arms are as 
brawny as ever, and the circumference of his calf is undiminished ; but 
the man looks as mystified as Lord Aberdeen himself; and even Lord 
Burghersh, whistling his own opera as he walks down Regent-street, 
smiles not in a more melancholy manner. " Othello's occupation's gone." 

Yet Jackson was a shrewd fellow in his prime ; and his hint to a 
gallant Marquis is worthy even of our record. The Marquis, following 
the bent of his genius, had practised for some years under the pugilist, 
until at last he was informed that he had succeeded in the only study 
which he ever attempted, and that his education was complete. " Well 
but, Jackson," said the noble eleve, t( have you told me every thing ? is 
there not something else, in the way of secret, that I have yet to learn?" 
" Why, my lord, there is one, and I shall tell it to you in confidence. 
Never fight any body in earnest, or you will be d mnably licked." 



The multitude of country Tories are in alarm at the reforming threats 
of the Greys. But the town Tories know better, and keep their souls 
in peace. Reform sleepeth, and will enjoy a long slumber, for reasons 
as well known to the Russells, the Devonshires, and all the great Whig 
Lords, as to ourselves. Brougham is forcibly fixed where he will have 
other things to do than make shewy speeches on such perplexing topics ; 
and the matter is perfectly safe for the present. In fact, it is so quiet, 
that we should not be surprised to find the Tories calling out for a 
change, and demanding why the infinite scandals of the elections should 
be overlooked by the legislature. The " Times" says, " the committee on 
the Evesharn election have turned out the sitting members Lord Ken- 
nedy, eldest son of Lord Cassilis ; and Sir Charles Cockerell, a large 
dealer in money ; declaring that they have both been guilty of bribery 
guilty of tempting a number of their fellow-subjects to betray a high 
constitutional trust, and to disgrace themselves and the House of Com- 
mons, and bring shame upon the order to which the noble and wealthy 
personages so (most justly) dismissed from their seats, had hitherto been 
considered as belonging. But we hope, that as one sort of retribution 
has been already administered to the noble lord and the wealthy banker, 
another and even more signal example will be made of the base commu- 
nity upon whom they exercised their corruption namely, by disfran- 



80 Notes of the Month on [JAN. 

chising the borough of Evesham forever. A hint to this effect was 
given by the chairman, Mr. Clive." In this suggestion we must heartily 
coincide. If the " free and independents" of any borough are found 
turning their " most sweet voices" into the current coin of the realm, 
we can discover no possible reason why the laws against bribery and 
corruption should not lay their gripe on every knave of them. So much 
for the boroughs ! 

But if the tales from Liverpool be true, that ancient and loyal town 
should take its share in the benefits of public justice ; and thus the open 
town go hand in hand with the flagellation of the close borough. Our 
clever contemporary, John Bull, has made up his mind on this point ; 
and decides that in the recent Liverpool election " we have had exhi- 
bited to us the practical advantages of giving the elective franchise to 
large and populous towns we have obtained a new, strong, and striking 
proof of the excellence of that system, which proposes to prevent cor- 
ruption by increasing the number of voters." He is a little in error in 
his theory of corruption. Because, the close boroughs having always 
exhibited instances of the purchase of the votes by wholesale, cannot 
well be surpassed by the purchase of votes in retail ; and the chance 
is in favour of the larger number, as the fifty t( free and independent 
consciences" may come within the reach of along purse, while the largest 
might find a difficulty in the purchase of five thousand. We allow that, 
even to this limit, Liverpool seems to have formed a brilliant exception. 
Our contemporary says " In Liverpool, during this extraordinary con- 
test, money was openly offered for votes so open, indeed, were the 
advances, that they were actually made in the open street; free and 
independent electors were driven in droves often to the hustings, and at 
last a regular market-price was established for their voices and con- 
sciences. By all means, let us transfer the right of voting from some 
iniquitous small place, where the influence of some high and honourable 
person perhaps prevails, to Manchester or Birmingham, so that these 
populous towns may speedily enjoy the benefit of bribery and corrup- 
tion, and exhibit in their streets and markets the splendid traffic which 
has been carrying on in the Lancashire metropolis." 

If those things be true, we ask, where does the cat-o' -nine-tails sleep ? 
The thing is iniquitous; and a part of the crime will undoubtedly be visited 
on the ministers who shall let this abomination go unpunished. It is fur- 
ther said that the purchase was as publicly made as at an auction ; that 
the price of a voter rose as regularly in the market as the price of sugars 
after a West Indian hurricane, or of teas on the news of a quarrel between 
the Company's supercargo and the Mandarin of Canton ; that it finally 
advanced to seventy pounds a head ; that to avoid the penalty which 
every man of those honest persons was conscious he was incurring, the 
purchase was made through a wall, the seller standing at one side and 
the buyer at another ; that the whole purchase amounted to 70,000 ; 
and that Mr. Ewart was thus declared to be chosen by the " free, pure, 
unprejudiced, unpurchased, and unpurchaseable" votes of the freemen 
of Liverpool ! Again, we say, let Lord Grey look to this ! We may be 
told that the rival candidate has exhibited no intention of disputing the 
claim ; and with good reason, if he had done the same thing ; for both 
must be equally thrown out. But is there no man of sufficient patriotism 
in Liverpool to demand, in the name of justice, that the matter shall be 
inquired into ? Any man in the town may prefer a petition, and thus 



1831.] Ajg airs in General. 81 

compel the notice of the House of Commons. Or is there no member 
of the House of Commons who will, on the plain knowledge of the case, 
bring it forward, and demand that justice shall be done, that the 
decency, at least, of election, if the purity is hopeless, shall be regarded ; 
that the most precious interests of England and freedom shall not be at 
the mercy of a set of electors, for whose conduct every man of sense can 
find the name ; and that in a day when the governments of the earth 
are about to undergo an ordeal of fire and sword, and when nothing will 
be suffered to stand that has not the public good for its foundation ; 
the constitution of the British empire shall not be sacrificed to the basest 
and most repulsive venality. 

Of course we give the story as it has reached us. The statements 
have been openly made, have passed without a denial, are still repeated 
without the diminution of a single feature of the criminality ; and we 
ask, is nothing further to be done? Again, we say, that upon an over- 
sight of this kind has depended in other times the fate of an administra- 
tion. Look to this, Lord Grey ! 

In our last number we laughed at the clamours of the little mathe- 
maticians of the Royal Society and the largest of them is little for 
ribbons and orders. The public agreed with us, as it always does with 
the right side. We asked, in the first place, is there a man of eminent 
science among the whole body ? We are not now talking of the com- 
pilers, the hunters out of the old mathematical papers in the library, 
the adders of a screw to this machine, or a pin to the other. But is 
there among them all any individual who has made any serious and 
actual addition to human knowledge? We care not for " correctors of 
logarithms," balancers of " pendulums on a new principle," dry reckoners 
of stars, polishers of the specula of telescopes, nor even for inventors of 
a new method of baking tobacco pipes. We leave them to their record 
to the ages to come. But, for our souls, we cannot prevail on ourselves 
to worship them in the present generation. Is there any one of them 
all in the class of Davy, or of Olbers, or even of Struve, or of any of the 
men who either in the past generation or the present, have pushed us 
forward a single step in the progress of the human mind ? Not one. 
We are not to be answered by Cambridge reputations, those ephemera 
which never survive a journey to London, and which seldom live 
beyond the atmosphere of their own class-rooms. But we talk of those 
vigorous acquisitions in science, which increase the permanent stock of 
knowledge, and point the direct way to new command over the king- 
doms of nature. We do not blame the living race of the Society's 
mathematicians for not making those discoveries, for they are rare in 
any age, and the men who make them must be rare. But we blame 
them for being at once querulous, and assuming in their demand of 
public distinctions, which, if they are to be given to science at all, are 
due only to such men. Nothing is more fatal to the true honours of 
science than lavishing puolic distinctions on mediocrity. But it is 
a fallacy to suppose that such distinctions are in any case the natural 
or advisable reward. What is a pension ? A bounty from the state 
purse, often so ill applied among us, that a pensioner is generally con- 
sidered as not much better than a state pauper ! Such things may be 
necessary to keep the German or the Frenchman alive in countries 
where there is no public. But in England, where every thing that can 

M.M. New Series- VOL. XI. No. 01. M 



82 Notes of the Month on [JAN. 

be of actual use, is converted to use by the national necessity, the fact of 
a man's being in want of a pension is an evidence of either his being a 
man of mediocrity in his science, or of his pursuing some fantasies which 
cannot be converted to human use, or of his being a slave and beggar 
by nature, and willing to eat the bread of a menial. A man of honour- 
able spirit, the only spirit for greatness in science as well as in public 
life, would disdain this palming himself upon the public charity ! 

In the next place, as to knighthood and ribbons, where can be the 
honour of science in things that every levee-day sees hung over the 
necks of sheriffs and aldermen, country fellows coming up with an 
address from a corporation of clowns, the worshipful chairmen of the 
corporations of barbers, tailors, and music-masters, and the whole crowd 
ejiisdemfarmce ? When old Herschell first went to court, with the frip- 
pery of the " Royal Guelphic Order" round his neck, was there any 
addition in this bauble to the honours of the discoverer of the Georgium 
Sidus ? Or was he more exalted or abased by finding that this court 
honour had placed him in the same class of chivalry with the mob of 
Hanoverian grooms of the bedchamber, secretaries of the stables, tra- 
velling doctors, and the illustrious obscure of the Royal University of 
Gottingen ? We have no doubt that the great astronomer would have 
shewn his good sense in declining this childish reward, and been 
remembered with more respect in his grave, if he had gone down to it 
as plain Herschell. 

We entirely deprecate this foolish passion for baubles, which we have 
borrowed of late years from our giddy neighbours, but which once 
formed the scorn of the manly mind of Britain. The only instance 
which can redeem their use, is their being given for some direct service. 
The Waterloo medal is a trophy, because it was given to none but those 
brave men who were on the spot, and helped to win the last great day of 
continental war. But if the Waterloo medal were the badge of an order, 
given to men of various professions and countries, who " of the division 
of a battle knew no more than a spinster," the medal would soon sink 
into a burlesque. The true principle of conferring these honours is 
specific service. The companionships and knighthoods of the Bath have 
already become ridiculous from their being lavished on general service, 
which is equivalent to none. If it were given to no man but him who 
had captured an enemy's ship, led the assault of a fortress, or performed 
some one distinct and memorable exploit in the war, the badge would 
express an actual distinction. But now it is given to one man, for hav- 
ing been in one quarter of the world for so many years ; to another, for 
having been lieutenant-colonel for so many more ; to another, because it 
had been given to somebody else until the badge is worth no more than 
a button ! 

We see proposals in the newspapers, from old ranters of the military 
clubs, for an Order " to comprehend all officers of a certain standing ;" 
so that every fool who may have contrived to sleep through fifteen or 
twenty years in the army, is to shine forth upon the world a Chevalier ! 
But this nonsense would only make Orders more empty. In France, 
every third man has a bit of blue or red ribbon sticking to his button- 
hole. Who thinks the more of this knightly rabble for it ? The bit of 
ribbon is nothing but the sign of the wearer's folly. But if these things 
are ridiculous even among the class of society which has been always led 
by shew, how infinitely trifling must this be among men of real know- 



1831.] Affairs in General. 83 

ledge ! How childish must a man like Watt think himself become, when, 
turning from his own stupendous invention of the steam-engine, he 
could feel flattered by looking at his figure in the glass, decorated with 
half a yard of taffeta, with a crown's- worth of silver at the end of it, and 
the permission of Rouge King at Arms to call himself Sir James ? Pro- 
motion of Science, indeed ! Promotion of fiddlers and tailors, if they 
will. But Science has a knighthood of its own, to which neither favour 
nor fiction can elevate pretenders. If it choose to solicit the petty distinc- 
tions that can be given by the ribbon- weaver, it only degrades itself, 
throws away the original honours which are reserved for its exclusive 
possession, and shews that it is consciously unworthy of the name ! 

If we had more respect for the An ti- Slavery politicians than we can 
bring ourselves to feel, it would be prodigiously diminished by their 
incessant attempts to make (C the ladies" ridiculous. We speak of the 
" politicians ;" for we fully believe that there are many well-intentioned 
people involved in these restless applications. Our aversion is for the 
demure gentlemen who turn these honest people into instruments for 
purposes as worldly as ever passed through the brain of a Treasury 
whipper-in. But their efforts to make the women of England parties in 
their pious roguery, are intolerable; and while we declare that a "fe- 
male president, treasurer, and secretary" are a combination of monstro- 
sities in our eyes, hardly less startling than the three heads of Cerberus, 
yet this offensive foolery is urged, on in every village where half a dozen 
spinsters can be conglomerated over their tea ; they fancy themselves 
into public characters, and in due time forth comes an address, painted 
by the last pupil of the drawing-school, aud pinned up in silver paper 
by the dowager-saint of the sisterhood. Thus we learn that " the peti- 
tion to the Queen from the ladies of Derby, praying her Majesty to 
extend her influence to procure the abolition of slavery in our colonies, 
has received about 1,200 signature. The petition is beautifully written, 
and enclosed between two richly-embossed card-boards. One of them 
is ornamented by the figure of a liberated female slave, in Indian ink, 
exquisitely executed by a young lady of that town." They ought to be 
put on short allowance of rouge and flirtation for the next six months. 

Signs of the Times. The noble persons who voted so vigorously for 
the popish question are now beginning to awake. O'Connell's Anti- 
Union system is making them tremble already for their acres ; and we 
shall soon see Mr. George Robins, or some equally eloquent man of the 
trade, distributing the Irish lands of these noble politicians : ex. gr. " The 
Duke of Devonshire intends to dispose of the Sir Walter Raleigh estates, 
which he holds in this country. We are much pleased with his Grace's 
determination, and we hope his example will be speedily followed by all 
the other Irish absentees/' So be it. 

Let our men of peace say what they will, Russia is clearly determined 
to let nothing go on in Europe without her interference. The story of 
the Polish insurrection, whether true or false, will serve its purpose, 
when it has collected two or three hundred thousand gallant savages on 
the western frontiers, ready to march in the direction of Berlin, Belgium, 
or, if the Emperor Francis should be frigid on the occasion, in the road 
to Vienna, any one of which they might reach in a month. 

M 2 



84 Notes of the Month on [JAN 

It is the business of Russia to make war ; for war is the business of all 
semi-barbarous nations. It is the policy of Russia to plunge Western 
Europe into war, that she may make prize of Constantinople ; and it is 
the personal interest of the Czar to keep his bearded heroes at war some- 
where or other ; for idleness is in Russia the mother of revolutions. And 
as every man's own throat has a right to figure extensively in his general 
calculations, the Czar may naturally prefer having the Grand Turk at 
his feet, to having the head taken off his own shoulders. 

But the grand temptation to war is, the possession of power, as the 
next temptation is the knowledge of security. Russia has both, beyond 
any empire ever known. Her empire is almost boundless, and who can 
follow her into the deserts that spread over half a world ? 

In one of the foreign scientific journals there is a calculation, accord- 
ing to which the Russian empire exceeds the terra firma in the moon by 
123,885 square leagues. The diameter of the moon is 893 leagues, con- 
sequently the surface 2,505,261 square leagues. If in the moon, as in 
our earth, the fluid part, which we call sea, covers two-thirds of the 
surface, only 835,087 square miles remain for the terra firma. Now, 
according to the calculations made in the year 1818, the Russian empire 
extends over a surface of 958,972 square leagues, the possessions in 
America included, consequently the excess remains as above stated. 
According to another calculation, the Russian empire extends over 174 Q 
of longitude, and 36^ Q of latitude. It contains about 2-19th parts of 
the terra firma, the 14th part of our hemisphere, and the 28th part of our 
earth. Its population is about 45,271,469 souls ; one million of savages, 
and 340,000 noblemen, not included. 

Pope says, " Your true no meaning puzzles more than wit." But he 
would have expressed a more intelligible, and a more important truth, if 
he had said, that your well-meaning fools do much more mischief than 
could be expected from the merest malice. All those people are reli- 
gionists, that is twaddlers, who make religion their chief twaddle, who 
drink their tea to a text, and play the habitual fooleries of their foolish 
lives with visages worthy of a martyr, and phrases fit for nothing but a 
mad disciple of Joanna Southcote, or Robert Brothers. Idiots, must 
they not be conscious that they are throwing disgrace on scripture, and 
teaching men to burlesque religion. Of what calibre must be the Clap- 
hamite author and distributors of such stuff as the following? 

" RADICAL REFORM. 

" The corruption which so generally prevails in this country loudly 
proclaims the necessity of an entire and radical reform ; and it is 
certainly the duty of every man to promote it to the utmost of his 
power. 

" An old writer has said, ' That if every man would sweep before 
his own door, the city would soon be swept :' and if every radical 
reformer will commence the work at home, a national reformation of the 
best kind must follow. 

" And, perhaps, there is room for a reform in your own conduct, 
my reader ! You hate slavery, and are you the slave of sin ? You 
complain of taxes, and do you, to gratify your lusts, tax your time, 
money, health, and character ? You detest tyranny, and do you act 
the part of a tyrant to your wife and children ? No wonder, then, you 
call for a radical reform there is one needed. < For the wrath of 



1831.] Affairs in General. 85 

God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteous- 
ness of men,' of every rank, and because ' of such wickedness the land 
mourneth.' 

" Then fly from the slavery and drudgery of sin : its pleasures are 
but for a season ; its wages is Death. Look to the Redeemer of men, 
he can deliver you from your worst oppressors ; and ' if the Son make 
you free, ye shall be FREE INDEED.' John viii. 36." 



We have no doubt that every profession might furnish a " library" of 
its own. This is the day of professional recollections, and of libraries. 
If we have a family library, why not a church library, a law, a medical, 
an antiquarian, an architectural, and above all, a military and naval ; 
all those works not being restricted to the mere didastic of the sciences ; 
but comprehending biographies, anecdotes, curious details of the pro- 
gress of their respective classes of men and things, &c. " The Military 
Bijou," by John Shipp, so well known for his original and curious auto- 
biography, would make an excellent volume in a " soldier's library." 
Some passages of it are extremely interesting, for those are fragments of 
the writer's personal experience. And there are sketches of character, and 
descriptions of things, written with a pleasant quaintness, that reminds 
us of some of the oddities of Swift. For instance, in the description of 
an aide-de-camp's duties 

" When carrying orders, let your eye be directed to the very point 
aimed at. You have nothing to do with the flying shots, if they have 
nothing to do with you. If you should lose your horse, travel on foot. 
If you should lose a leg, you must hop on one. If you should lose both, 
you must try how you can travel on the other extremity. But should 
you lose your head, you had better stop, for you cannot deliver a verbal 
message. Should an aide-de-camp have a sealed message, and find his 
escape from the enemy quite impossible, it is better that he should eat 
the written command, then that the enemy should digest it. 

" The Blackhole. Lonely as this place is, you may have company, not 
very select, however, being of the lower grade ; bats, bugs, rats, mice, 
&c. Then sometimes you have visitors, but some of them certainly not 
of the most agreeable kind, although frequently of your own making ; 
the head-ache, the heart-ache, the cramp, gnawing of conscience, the 
blue devils. There are, with all those evils, benefits the most essential 
and salutary. It is a fine place for reflection in sound and sober minds. 
Temperance is taught there ; no excess of liquor, no immoderate use of 
food, all your meals are on the most studied economy, no superfluities, 
no second and third courses, no dessert, but one plain, solid, whole- 
some dish bread ! There is one thing in which there is a superabun- 
dance, sparkling, pure water. 

" During one of the engagements I was in, with the 87th regiment, 
the bugler was ordered to sound a retreat. The bugler replied, * I 
never learnt it, your honour/ ' And why?' said the captain. < Please 
your honour/ was the answer, ' the boys told me it would be of no 
use/ 

" An Irish soldier, who was in the Duke of York's retreat from Dun- 
kirk, being asked how they retreated, replied, ' Sure we did not retreat 
at all, at all/ f Well,' said the gentleman, ' how did you get to your 
shipping ?' ' Why, by an eschellon movement, sideways ! ' ' 

Many of the little sketches of weapons, &c. are lively. " Musket. 



86 Notes of the Month on [JAN. 

Brown bess. It is the soldier's best and dearest friend his great and 
sure peace-maker between him and his foes. They seldom quarrel, 
save at times when she misses fire ; but which is not intentional, but 
from the damps of night, &c. 

" The Bayonet. This little offspring of faithful Bessy is adapted to 
many uses, it is a good disputant, very pointed and sharp in argument, 
and often finds its way to the heart. It is also a good spit to roast a 
steak on, a fork, a candlestick, a poker, and a potatoe-digger. 

f< The Fife. Little shrill notes that summon brave soldiers to fight, 
and in time of peace, that lead the maidens to foot it on the light fan- 
tastic toes of conviviality ; the merry hornpipe. The little instrument 
has other uses as a pot-ladle, to stir up the heterogeneous soup ; to 
make puddings, pies and bread. 

" The Drum. This is not only ornamental, but exceedingly useful. 
It bears the boasted crown of England, and the rampant lion. Its sonor- 
ous roll strikes terror into the bosom of the foe. Besides, it is a good 
seat, a good table, used sometimes for sucking pigs, turkies, geese, 
ducks, fowls, and it has been known to contain a child, * born on the 
crimson plain of war.' " 

If the present style of thinking goes on for a few years longer, the 
Asiatics will be the only nations honoured by kingship. The monar- 
chies of Europe will be commonwealths ; the kings, presidents ; and the 
lords, commons. It will then be worth while to send to India for an 
example of monarchy, as we once sent to her for science, and in later 
years for money and muslin. His majesty of Ava, brother of him of 
" the golden foot/' is a fine specimen at least of the pomp ; and the em- 
bassy of Major Burney (who however, we hope, is not on the 12,000 a 
year scale) teems with gold stuffs, formal speeches, scymetars, and 
ceremonial. The major was obliged to wait at the youn dau, or Royal 
Court-house, until the princes and great officers had entered the palace 
in state, during which time refreshments were served up in gold uten- 
sils. The princes were carried in gilt litters, with eight or ten gilt 
umbrellas held over each of them, preceded by musicians, gold censers, 
elephants, &c. The shoes were discarded at the steps of the Hall of 
Audience, and the envoy and his suite were seated immediately in front 
of the throne ; after a few minutes a rumbling sound, like that of dis- 
tant thunder, was heard, when a folding gilt door was thrown open, and 
the king, most richly attired, made his appearance. His majesty had 
on a gold crown, and a fine gold flowered gown, richly beset with 
jewels. All the courtiers, c. prostrated themselves and prayed. The 
embassy took off their hats and bowed ; the appointed Burmese officer 
then read aloud the letter from the governor-general, and a list of the 
presents. The king inquired after the health of the governor-general, 
if the seasons were favourable, and if they had had refreshing rains at 
Calcutta ? To which suitable answers were returned ; shortly after his 
majesty retired, and the folding door was closed. The embassy left the 
palace soon after. They were amused for a few minutes at the palace- 
yard with feats of tumblers, rope-dancers, &c. and returned in the same 
state home. 

In the confusion of the continent, Algiers has been forgotten. If 
British interests are likely to be injured by the French retention of this 
burning territory, we must regret it. But it will require more proof 



J83L] Affairs in General 87 

than we have at present of the fact. The French are just the people to 
make something of those savages. They teach them to dance, curl their 
moustaches, and lounge in opera-boxes. If the Saracens grow sulky, 
they send a brigade of six-pounders to convert them without delay, and 
the thing is done ; the savages ride out, flourish their scymetars, and 
swear by the beard of the prophet to sweep the infidels from the face of 
the earth. The French commence a fire of round and grape, follow it 
up with the bayonet, and in two days their aides-de-camp are riding full 
gallop back to Algiers, with news that the general and his staff are giving 
a ball and supper in the Harem. The last news says : 

" ALGIERS, Nor. 25. 

" The taking of Mediah, the residence of the Bey of Titery, and the 
submission of that Bey, will complete the pacification of the whole 
regency. In the battle before Blida we had 30 men wounded. In that 
which has just taken place in Mediah we had 100 hors de combat." 

Thus the French have conquered a kingdom as large as Spain, with as 
fine a climate, and commanding the entrance to that land of terrors and 
treasures, the central region of Africa. They are going on a la Franqaise 
in all points. They have compelled the Moors to clean their streets, and 
do not despair of making them wash their shirts and faces in time. 
They have run up a central avenue through Algiers, and ventilated the 
town. They have slain the mongrels that infested the streets, and 
reduced an establishment of dunghills as venerable as Mahomet. They 
have built an Opera-house, ordering the wealthy Moors to put down 
their names on the box-list, and subscribe, as becomes patrons of the fine 
arts. They have arranged a circle of private boxes in this theatre, to 
which the ladies of the several Harems have keys, and where they listen 
to Italian songs, learn to be delighted with the romantic loves of Europe, 
and turn over a leaf in human nature, which no Algerine Houri ever 
turned before. A detachment of dancing-masters has been brigaded for 
the service, and modistes "from Paris " are rapidly opening shops in the 
" Grande Rue Royale." The ladies are, as might be expected, in rap- 
tures with the change, and go out shopping with the air of an elegante 
of the Fauxbourg St. Germain. Galignani daily communicates to the 
Algerine coffee-houses the news of a world of which they hitherto knew 
no more than of the news of the dog-star. All is gaiety, gesticulation, 
and the march of intellect. If a great three-tailed bashaw feels disposed 
to express the slightest dislike of the new regime, they order him to be 
shaved, dispossess him of his turban, pipe, and scymetar, and send him 
to learn the manual exercise under one of their Serjeants. The remedy 
is infallible. In twelve hours a revolution is effected in all his opinions; 
he learns the French art of looking delighted under all circumstances, 
and returns from the drill a changed man. The offending Mauritanian 
is disciplined out of him, and the parade has inducted him into the march 
of mind for the rest of his days. The French are distilling brandy from 
sea- weed ; are teaching buffaloes to draw their cabriolets, have already 
formed a subscription pack of tiger hounds ; and, except that they are 
scorched to a cinder, with the more serious evils that they must wait a 
week for the Paris news, and have not yet been able to prevail on Potier 
and Mademoiselle Du Fay to join their theatre, are as happy as sultans. 

The town has been prodigiously perplexed with questions of the 
oddest and most impudent kind within the last week. We give a few 



88 Notes of the Month on Affairs in General. [JAN. 

of them, like conundrums in the Almanacks, soliciting answers from our 
ff ingenious correspondents." 

Quaere. Who is the very confidential confidant of the late King, who 
has been so often and so keenly examined before the Privy Council 
lately ? 

What is the amount of the last three checks signed by the late King, 
and to whom were they paid ? 

Why did the Marchioness and her husband order post-horses with 
such expedition, and what sudden illness made them discover that no 
climate but a foreign one would suit their health ? 

Why has the Lord Chancellor discarded his wig of office and adopted 
the scratch, or is it in compliment to Jeffery's nationality ? 

Why has Lord Glentworth been made Governor of New South 

Wales in place of General Darling ? Or why has Lady 's darling 

been thus transported in exchange for a gentleman who was nobody's 
darling but his own ? 

Why has Colonel Fitzclarence vacated the Adjutant-Generalship ? 

Who is to have the Munster peerage ? 

What is to become of the continental Kings in the next twelvemonth ? 

What is His Grace of Wellington at present ? 

Who is Captain Swing ? 

The revival of Lord Byron's rtfacciamento, of Miss Lee's rifacciamento 
of the German story of Werner, has offered Macready an opportunity of 
giving the world some variety in his performance. The tragedy was 
good for nothing in the closet, and is, of course, good for nothing on 
the stage. But this is no fault of Macready. He shews that he has 
powers which have scarcely yet been appreciated. Out of the hardness 
and dryness of Werner he produced effects unusual to the modern stage. 
He has not a single passage of character to utter, he has not even a 
single striking sentiment, and yet wherever he appeared he produced 
strong effect. The truth is, the man has earnestness a quality essential 
above all others to the stage. He has energy ; and this, we will con- 
fess, has done wonders even with the dull, and dreamy story, repulsive 
characters, and common-place language of " Werner." We are glad to 
see Macready once more in his place on the stage, and only wish 
him a writer equal to his powers. 

Another performer on the London stage deserves a larger scope than 
she has hitherto found. Miss E. Tree's performance of the " Jealous 
Lady," in the little French farce, is so admirable, that it ought to teach 
the manager of Covent-garden what a treasure he has in his hands. We 
must not exhibit our gallantry too vividly in the praise even of a lady's 
looks ; but it is only just to say that in this actress he has one of the 
most graceful representatives of female grace, elegance, and animation 
that the stage has seen for many years. Is she yet unequal to Lady 
Teazle, to Mrs. Oakley, or to any heroine of the higher comedy ? We 
think not ; and that if well supported by the other characters, she would 
add greatly to the popularity of the house. In the minor comedy, the 
only kind which she has hitherto tried, she has no equal. Her Mrs. 
Mordaunt is capital, and her Swedish Queen, the young Christine, 
glowing with passion and beauty, is among the most finished and 
delightful performances on the stage. 



1831.] [ 89 ] 

MONTHLY 11EVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN. 



Life and Correspondence of Admiral 
Lord Rodney, by Major- General Mundy. 
2 vols. 8vo. Till the publication of Lord 
Collingwood's Letters the public cer- 
tainly had no adequate conception of the 
manly character and executive powers 
of that excellent and amiable person, 
and the same may be said of Rodney. 
The Correspondence now published by 
General Mundy (who married a daughter 
of Lord Rodney) shews the naval hero 
in a very favourable light. In the 
common estimate he was a daring, de- 
cisive sort of man, with a good deal of 
fanfarinade about him, and of an over- 
weening spirit, which prompted him to 
kick at all control, and trample upon 
authority. Something of this wild and 
impetuous character is visible in the 
correspondence, but in general he ap- 
pears rather the resolute, steady, tho- 
rough-bred sailor, austere in aspect and 
manner, and rigid in enforcing orders. 
More sensitive than Collingwood, the 
curb, especially of the Admiralty, was 
intolerable to him. Like Nelson, he was 
ready, on slight occasions, to break into 
complaint, and, like him, too prompt to 
take the bit in his teeth, and run at his 
own speed, and in his own direction. He 
had the full confidence of the sailors, but 
not the affections of his officers. Nelson 
was familiar and attached them ; while 
Rodney was stern and severe, and frown- 
ed all malcontents into obedience. He 
won nothing by his smiles. Indiscreet 
and imprudent in the management of 
his domestic affairs, he was in frequent 
embarrassment, which seems to have 
sharpened the annoyances he felt at 
Avhat he was too apt to regard as neglect 
and inadequate reward. Too frank and 
free-speaking also, he made enemies just 
where he wanted friends, and looked to 
a seat in parliament as his only security 
for proper treatment from the Admi- 
ralty, liodney was descended from a 
younger branch of a very old family, 
and well connected. His father, origi- 
nally in the army, had the command of 
the yacht which conveyed George I. 
to and from the continent, which led to 
the king's becoming his baptismal spon- 
sor. Young liodney was educated at 
Harrow, and went to sea at twelve years 
of age, with a letter of service from the 
king the last that was granted. There 
is some mistake in this the king had 
been dead three years. At the age of 
twenty-four he was in command of a 
sixty-four, and seems to have been con- 
stantly employed. Six years afterwards 
he was presented to George II., who 
observed, he did not know he had so 
young a captain in his navy. Upon 
which Lord Anson expressed a wish 

M.M. New Series VOL. XL No. 61. 



that his majesty had a hundred such ; 
and the king, notwithstanding his igno- 
rance, with all due courtesy wished so 
too. Under the auspices of Mr. Pitt, 
who knew his valour, he was confiden- 
tially and actively engaged during the 
war in Louisiana, at the attack on Havre, 
and in the West Indies ; and at this 
period commences the correspondence 
which supplies almost the whole ma- 
terials of the volumes, with occasional 
linking by the editor, liodney was 
seldom in luck in his appointments, 
though he was never long without them. 
After the peace of 1763 he was made 
governor of Greenwich ; and in 1771 
appointed to the Jamaica station, but 
compelled to resign Greenwich, though 
many of his predecessors had held the 
office in conjunction with similar com- 
mands. On that station he continued 
four years, and looked forward confi- 
dently to the governorship of Jamaica ; 
but in the vacancy, he was not only dis- 
appointed, but even recalled. This in- 
dignity he attributed to Lord Sandwich, 
and di'd not easily forget. He was now 
laid upon the shelf. Fond of company, 
and well received in society, Sir George 
soon got into pecuniary difficulties, 
though General Mundy denies that he 
was ruined, as has been reported, where 
so many were stripped, at the Duchess of 
Bedford's. He was, however, obliged 
to withdraw from his creditors, and re- 
tire to Paris. In the American war, 
when the French joined the Americans, 
he solicited employment by letter in 
vain, and his embarrassments precluded 
personal application ; till finally, the 
Mareschal de Biron forced a loan upon 
him, and he obtained an appointment 
at the king's urgency, though Lord 
Sandwich was ready enough, upon Rod- 
ney's successes, to claim the whole merit 
of selecting so distinguished an officer. 
He had scarcely lost sight of the Chan- 
nel at the beginning of 1780, when 
he captured several of the Spanish 
ships ; and a few months afterwards en- 
countered the French fleet, where, being 
ill seconded by his captains, his victory 
was far short of his expectation. In his 
correspondence he attributed their be- 
haviour to political faction, and the sup- 
pressed passages in his dispatches are 
now published. Before, however, his 
final defeat of Count de Grasse, he had 
conciliated their good will, or frightened 
them into obedience, for on that occasion 
he commended without exception every 
officer under his command. About a 
month before this decisive victory, the 
change of administration had taken place, 
and before the news of his victory reach- 
ed home, an order had been sent out for 
N 



90 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[JAN. 



his recal. He came home accordingly, 
and a peerage and a pension we r e grudg- 
ingly given him. He had the year 
before captured the island of Eustatius, 
the spoils of Avhich amounted to two 
millions, but which appears to have be- 
nefited him but little. He lived till 1702, 
and died poor. Rodney went heart and 
soul into the American Avar. Pirates 
and rebels are perpetually at his pen's 
end : just as Nelson detested the very 
name, sight, and visage of a Frenchman. 
He had spent much of his time in the 
AVest Indies, but never saw any thing 
but kindness on the part of the planters, 
and apparently believed there really 
Avas nothing, e'ven then, but kindness ; 
of course, in his situation, he saw no- 
thing of the interior. 

Life of Titian, by James Nortlicote^ 
Esq., R.A. 2 vote. 8 wo Mr. North- 
cote's Life of Titian is but a dull per- 
formance, though no doubt presenting as 
full an account as can now be recovered 
of the artist. As a narrative, it is not 
sufficiently, scarcely at all, concentrat- 
edthe interest is broken in upon not 
only by sketches of cotemporary artists, 
which can be borne with, but even with 
the story of his sitters, which cannot. 
A A r ery considerable portion of the vo- 
lumes is occupied Avith the letters of 
Aretino, his friend, and those of Vasari, 
his biographer not often upon matters 
of close connection Avith Titian, and still 
less on subjects of any general^ value. 
Some seventy pages are filled with let- 
ters and papers relative to Michael An- 
gelo ; but Avhat have they to do Avith 
Titian? and finally, Avhen the life is 
got through, it begins again, under the 
head of " Illustrations from Ridolfi, Ti- 
cozzi, and others" all which should of 
course have been worked into the gene- ( 
ral narrative in point of fact, much of 
it is, and Avith that the compiler might 
have been content. This, however, re- 
fers to the construction of the book, and 
certainly does no great credit to his 
grand adviser our friend Hazlitt. But 
though as a composition as a piece of 
elaborate biography, it is but an unat- 
tractive concern, all that is to be learnt 
of Titian's external history may be 
found in it, and, moreover, we have a 
very competent estimate of his Avorks 
a general, and that a sound judgment, 
but yet more defective, that is, less on 
each" picture than we naturally looked 
for from so accomplished an artist, and 
a gentleman, too, not backward in ex- 
pressing his sentiments, though they 
should chance to conflict with those of 
others. On the Avhole, we are disap- 
pointed, though generally concurring 
heartily with his opinions wherever he 
has developed them. 

Titian's was a life of unusual extent 



born, it should seem, not later than 
1480, he lived till 1576, and then died 
of the plague. He was a native of a 
village near Friuli, Avithin the bounda- 
ries of Venice, and spent by far the 
greatest part of his days in Venice it 
was always his home. Though within 
so short a distance of Rome, he never 
visited that capital till 1545, and then 
only upon a professional invitation by 
Cardinal Farnese. Fifteen years before 
he had, through his friend Aretino, got 
himself introduced to Charles V. when 
at Bologna; and soon after his return 
from Rome, he Avas summoned into Ger- 
many by the Emperor, and subsequently 
went into Spain. By Charles he was 
always treated Avith the highest distinc- 
tion, and finally made a count of the 
empire. At the conclusion of a sitting 
he had been painted twice before by 
Titian " This," said Charles, u is the 
third time I have triumphed over 
death ;" and every body has heard of 
his rebuff to the courtiers, Avho grudged 
his attentions to Titian" I can make 
a hundred lords, but not one Titian." 
Even Philip Avas courteous to the art- 
ist ; and both Charles and his son it 
seems handled the pencil with some fa- 
cility. Titian painted to the last leav- 
ing several pictures unfinished, and pro- 
bably painted a greater number, to say 
nothing of their merit, than any painter 
on record. His pictures in Spain form, 
alone, a large and magnificent collection. 
Titian's jealousy of his brother artists, 
the existence of which can scarcely be 
disputed, began very early, and seems, 
amidst' all his celebrity, never to have 
left him. He soon gave up his school 
he could not bear the advances of his 
pupils. Tintoret so far outstripped his 
fellow-disciples, that Titian grew alarm- 
ed, and actually expelled him. Any rival 
painter who got a job in A r enice was 
sure to incur his enmity ; and he 
would even resort to intrigue to sup- 
plant him, or get him dismissed. Por- 
denone Avas obliged or affected to be^ 
so to guard against the violence of 
Titian, and paint his frescoes in the 
cloisters of St. Stephen, with his sword 
drawn by his side. " Such," observes 
Nortlicote, " Avas not the character of 
Raphael or of Michael Angelo; and it 
Avas to this difference of character that 
we probably owe the superior grandeur 
and refinement of their ideal concep- 
tions. Every man's yenius pays a tax to 
his vices." 

Titian had rubbed on in his youth 
a good deal without instruction, and the 
little he obtained he soon laboured to 
get rid of. He was consequently some- 
what defective in point of drawing ; but 
though he might have superiors in that 
respect, he Avas not, as all must see who 
look at his pictures with an eye of iutclli- 



1831.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



91 



gence, a colourist only. Mengs and Bar- 
ry speak of him as absolutely knowing 
nothing of the matter; " but had either 
of them," says Northcote, " been equal 
to him in this respect, it would have 
been their highest merit." 

Among other matters not very closely 
connected with Titian in these volumes, 
is Northcote's discussion on- the encour- 
agement of art in England and Italy. 
It was interest alone that was the cause 
of their rise in Italy, and not a love of 
the arts in that people more than in 
any other country. And could the fine 
arts in England, by any contrivance, be 
brought to aid the power of the govern- 
ment as much as the rotten boroughs, 
we should see them patronized to such 
a degree as would quickly cause them 
to mount to the highest heaven of in- 
vention. It is surprising, Northcote 
adds with a degree of justice which 
nobody who knows anything about the 
matter will deny 

It is surprising how partial every nation, ex- 
cept our own, is to their artists; a Dutchman 
will prefer the high finish of his Alieris and Ge- 
rard Dow, his Ostade and Berghem ; the Fleming 
will celebrate his Rubens and Vandyke, Teniers 
and Rembrandt; the Frenchman will boast of 
Iris Le Brim, Le Sneur, Bourdon, and dispute the 
merit of his Poussin even with Raphael ; while 
the Italian looks on them all with contempt. And 
even in Italy, every province contends for the pre- 
cedence of its own school against that of all 
others, whilst the Englishman is pleased with 
every thing that is not the production of Eng- 
land. 

Musical Memoirs, by W. T. Parke. 
2 vols. \2rno. Parke, the younger, (he 
had an elder brother of some celebrity 
for the same instrument) was forty years 
principal oboe player at Covent Garden, 
and in his very childhood connected with 
the stag 2 as a soprano singer. Music is 
of course all the world to him, and he 
sees nothing in it but singers, players, 
and their patrons. Endless as memoirs 
of the stage have been of late, the gene- 
ral purveyor and publisher of these mat- 
ters detected an opening for another set 
the musical folks had not perhaps had 
their share of distinction, and the soft 
" persuaders" of the bibliopolist tempted 
Mr. Parke to supply the deficiency. His 
Memoirs are more strictly annals, and 
contain, for the most part, little beyond 
the successions of popular vocal and in- 



of Sheridan, Foote, Hook, Colman, and 
Kemble's best and worst. 

The first piece, in which Parke him- 
self assisted, was Garrick's "Christmas 
Tale," in 1775. The hero vows, recita- 
tively 

By my shield and my sword ; 
By the chaplet which circles my brow; 
By a Knight's sacred word, 
Whatever you ask, 
How dreadful the task, 
To perform before Heaven I vow. 

" What do you think of that ?" ex- 
claimed Garrick, in ecstacies, at the re- 
hearsal, to all about him. " What do 
you think of it, Cross ?" " Why, I 
think," replies Cross, " it is the best 
singing affidavit I ever heard." Gar- 
rick looked blue, and never smiled again 
upon Cross, who was apt, as Touchstone 
has it, not to be aware of his own wit 
till he broke his shins against it. 

Your foreigners blunder out facts now 
and then. Salomon, the violin-player, 
taught the late king, when Prince of 
Wales. " Well, Mr. Salomon," in- 
quired the royal pupil one day, " how 
do I get on ?" " Pleash your High- 
ness," said Salomon, brimful of syco- 
phancy, " der are tre stages of music ; 
first, der is pick out, read notes, count 
time, &c., not play at all. Second, der 
is plav, but play very bad out of time, 
out of tune noting at all. Now, your 
highness has just got into de second 
stage." 

Parke himself was in the prince's ser- 
vice, as well as his brother. At the 
settling of the prince's debts, the bro- 
ther's demand, amounting to 500., was 
discharged, with a deduction of ten per 
cent., to which all demands were sub- 
jected ; but Parke himself withheld his 
claim, thinking it, as he himself states, 
more delicate, and that the ruling mo- 
tive of course he should ultimately lose 
nothing by his superfine delicacy. But 
creditors have notoriously the longest 
memories, and Parke the prince pos- 
sibly never heard of his " dutiful mark 
of respect" never received any mark 
of his favour, princely or royal that is, 
he never got paid ; " but in spite of this 
neglect, he felt no diminution," he says, 
" of his warm attachment, and at his 
death shed tears, as sincere as those of 
any of his cotemporaries." When will 
there be an end of this sort of fudge ? - 



strumental performers from the days of it has long ceased to dupe any body. 
Tiavi^i'o ^mv.-.oTOrtT.at-;! ,). f fko, Giardini, it seems, was not admitted 

of Cumberland's table. 



Handel's commemoration down to the 
current season, besprinkled, sometimes 
profusely, with the floating puns and 
repartees, that fill the atmosphere of 
the green-room, and have been repeated 
over and over again till we are thorough- 
ly weary of them. The least Mr. Parke 
could have done, or his patron have di- 
rected, was to read the books of his pre- 
decessors, and spared us the rechaufiees 



to the Duke 

No,- 

It was reserved for His Royal Highness, George, 
Prince of Wales, through his liberality and con- 
descension to burst the barrier which had kept 
the arts at a chilling distance ; and through its 
hitherto impervious portal, to admit some talented 
men to the high distinction of sitting at his royal 
table. 
N 2 



Monthly Review of Littrtilnrc, 



[JAN. 



And the prince })robably remembered 
his folly upon more than one ocasion 
and especially when, at a private con- 
cert of his own, after treating Rossini 
with the highest distinctions, he pressed 
for another piece by way of finale to the 
evening's entertainment, Rossini made 
his bow with" I think we have had 
enough for one night." And this to the 
man who paid for his fiddling. 

Parke " lets the cat out of the bag" on 
the subject of encores. We have only 
room for the forcers. 

The Kind's Theatre commenced for the season 
on the 18th of December with Mozart's comic 
opera, " Le Nozze di Figaro," in which Madame 
Bellochi sang admirably. The house that night 
was remarkably thin '; indeed the most numerous 
part of the audience were the forcers, viz those 
dependants of the principal singers who are ad- 
mitted with orders to set the applause and the 
encores going. These people, however, are some- 
times necessary, as the following fact will show : 
At Covent Garden Theatre, some few years back, 
John Kemble, then stage-manager, had got up 
one of the Roman plays of Shakspeare, the first 
representation of which he came into the orchestra 
to witness, and sat next to me. Although the 
language was beautiful, and admirably delivered, 
yet the apathy of the audience was such, that the 
actors could not obtain a sign of approbation. 
This, he observed, was intolerable; therefore to 
a succeeding speech he gently tapped his stick on 
the floor, which was followed by the hands of a 
tew of the audience. This he repeated occasion- 
ally, increasing the force each time, till the au- 
dience at length gave the actors loud and general 
applause. "There, Mr. Parke," said he to me, 
" you seethe use of a forcer." 

In 17^3, Dr. Arne had sixty guineas 
for his Artaxerxes ; in 1781, Shield 
had forty for Rosina; in 1791, Storace 
1000. for The Siege of Belgrade; and, 
in 1804, Braham as many guineas for 
"The English Fleet." These matters 
are returning apparently to old prices 
not so, however, those of foreign singers 
they have increased, are increasing, 
and ought to be diminished, as Dunning 
said of the influence of the crown. Be- 
fore the close of the Opera in 1738, Nico- 
lini had 800 guineas for a season ; Sene- 
sini, 1,500 ; and Farenilli built a temple 
on his return to Italy, dedicated to Eng- 
lish follv. In Parke's time, Pacchie- 
rotti retired with ,20,000. ; Marchesi, 
in three seasons, with 10,000 ; Mara, 
Banti, Billington (more than half an 
Italian), each out-salaried the other; 
Catalani, in 1814, had 3,000. and two 
benefits ; and Pasta, 4,500., with a be- 
nefit insured at 1000. Parke has no 
doubt native talent now quite equals 
foreign he has heard foreigners to 
justify Benedict's "If I had a dog 
howled so, I'd hang him." 

Alluding to Braham's money. making 
spirit, he tells a story of a child of his 
to shew how the passion of grasping is 



burnt into the race of singers from their 
birth 

A gentleman, who was in the habit of visiting 
at the house of that iidmired singer, informed me 
(as an admirable trait in a child then only five 
years old) that he one day asked Brabam's little 
boy to sing him a song, which the infant said he 
would do if he would pay him for it. "Well, 
my little dear," said the gentleman, " how much 
do you ask for one?" " Sixpence," replied the 
child. " Oh," said the other, " can't you sing 
me one for less?''- "No," said the urchin, " I can't 
take less for one ; but I'll sing you three for a 
shilling." 

The Arrow and the Rose, with other 
Poems, by William Kennedy. Here is 
some manly versification, with a spice of 
humour and satire, though the tale upon 
which much of it is spent is of the ro- 
mantic caste. Charles IX- of France, 
with his precious mother, Catherine de 
Medicis, on their way to Bayonne stop- 
ped at Nerac, to pay a visit 

To the good lady of Navarre, 
Whose son was then arising star ; 
Ere to Bayonne they pass'd, to gain 
Through gloomy Alva fresh from Spain, 
The newest scourge to lash mankind, 
For not submitting to seem blind. 
Catherine, a true devotee 
Of pious house of Medici, 
Joined in the frolics of the court, 
Like sanctity bewitched by sport; 
Her maids of honour played sad tricks 
On handsome Gascon heretics. 

Among the festivities was an archery- 
match, at which young Henry, then a 
lad of sixteen, distinguished himself as a 
shot. Charles, as became a king, made 
but bungling work; but the Duke of 
Guise contested the prize with Henry. 
They had each of them cleft an orange. 

Harry liked little to divide 
The garland with Parisian pride, 
And failing at the time to find 
An orange suited to his mind, 
Begged from a blushing country maid 
A red rose in her bosom laid. 
Poor girl! it was not in her power 
From such a youth to save the flower! 
The prize was his triumphantly 
He fixed it on a neighbouring tree 
His bonnet doff 'd, and cleared his brow, 
While beauty whispered note him now ! 
A moment, and the sweet rose shivered 
Beneath the shaft that in it quivered. 
He bore the arrow and its crest, 

The wounded flower to the fair, 
The pressure of whose virgin breast 

It late seemed proud to bear 
Shrinking, she wished herself away, 
As the young prince, with bearing gay 
And gallant speech, before her bent, 
Like victor at a tournament 
" Damsel! accept again" he said 
' With this steel stalk, thy favourite, dead ! 
Unwept it perished for there glows 
On thy soft cheek a lovelier rose." 



1831.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



This was Fleurette, the gardener's 
daughter, with whom some hint-cent 
flirtation followed. Henry turned gar- 
dener, neglected his studies, and AVRS 
dispatched to Bayome out of harm's 
way. There, among gayer scenes, he 
soon forgot Fleurette ; but her feelings 
were not so transient. On his return, 
the first glimpse poor Fleurette got of 
her royal lover was when he was toying 
with a beautiful wanton of the court. 
Recalled to his recollections, he makes 
poor Fleurette a visit, urges an inter- 
view at the old spot : and when he comes, 
he finds a letter, which bade him by the 
fountain seek her 

To the fountain he led on, 

To the b.isin cut in stone . 

He hath plunged into the water, 

In his arms he hath caught her 

He supports her on the bank, 

Shading back her tresses dank ; 

Printing fast the frenzied kiss 

On a cheek no longer his, &c. 
The Present State of Australia, by R. 
Dawson, Esq. Inundated with books 
about Australia as we have been of late, 
scarcely any of them notice the natives. 
The subject is a point of interest with 
none of them ; and one might suppose 
the continent almost bare of inhabitants, 
if it were not previously a known fact, 
that they have been met with on almost 
every part of the coast, and in the inte- 
rior, as far as it has been visited. The 
truth is, the greater portion of those 
who communicate on the subject of 
Australia are connected with Sidney, 
and know nothing of the natives, except 
from seeing a few now and then prowl- 
ing in the streets in a state of the most 
deplorable misery. Mr. Dawson hap- 
pily supplies the deficiency. The study 
of human nature in its wild and untu- 
tored state, he confesses, is his hobby, 
and certainly few men have had more 
opportunities, or made a better use of 
them than himself. He visited Austra- 
lia as the chief agent of the Australian 
Agricultural Company, accompanied by 
seventy or eighty persons men, wo- 
men, and children and some hundreds 
of Merino sheep, to colonize the grant 
of a million of acres taken by the Com- 
pany. He pitched his tent at Port 
Stephen's, about 120 miles north of Sid- 
ney by water, but considerably more 
over the hills, and spent three years in 
prosecuting the Company's views suc- 
cessfully upon the whole, though baffled 
by interested persons, arid finally com- 
pelled to abandon the concern. He has 
published his complaints in a separate 
pamphlet, and abstains almost wholly 
from the annoying subject in the vo- 
lume before us. This is dedicated main- 
ly to his intercourse with the natives, 
and very ample materials he furnishes 
for a full estimate of them. Though 



neglecting, entirely, nothing that is re- 
lative to Australia, this, the condition 
and character of the natives, is the prin- 
cipal topic. 

Among his official duties, the first was 
that of choosing the spot for the Com- 
pany's grant, which induced the neces- 
sity' of exploring the country to a con- 
sid'erable extent, and this again brought 
him in contact with many tribes of the 
natives besides those who were in con- 
stant attendance on them, and may be 
said to be in his service. At Port Ste- 
phen's, too, the natives mingled with 
the colonists, and, to the number of two 
or three hundred sometimes, were ex- 
ceedingly useful to the new settlers. 
Mr Dawson found them generally do- 
cile, fond of being employed, proud of 
being trusted, and faithful to their en- 
gagements but disliking restraint. 
They were like children, and only to be 
governed like children ; and, like chil- 
dren too, more impressible by kindness 
than severity. He ate, drank, and 
danced with them made no invidious 
distinctions treated them ostensibly as 
the whites employed them trusted 
them kept his word to the letter and 
protected them from insults and inju- 
ries. His influence over them was un- 
bounded. But with all this, Mr. Dawson 
has no hopes of their being reclaimed to 
the habits of society they are happy as 
they are their wants are few, and, in 
a climate so bland, readily supplied. 
Their contact with the colonists is pro- 
ductive of nothing but mischief. The 
colonists, and the convicts, will treat 
them with scorn, and, with people sin- 
gularly sensitive, this prompts to re- 
venge. They cannot, again, resist 
spirits. Over their appetites indeed 
they have little control ; they will stuff 
kangaroo till they can absolutely swal- 
low no more, which of course indisposes 
them to exertion, and disables them. 

" What a set of lazy beggars they 
are," said one of the w'hite men to his 
companions. " Ah !" said another, " one 
white man is worth a dozen of them." 
This is just the language which is fre- 
quently held by ignorant and bigoted 
people, even of a different class and 
higher pretensions. They forget we 
are all creatures of habit. " Until men 
learn," adds Mr. Dawson, " to distin- 
guish between the force of habit and 
what they call the nature of the people, it 
is in vain to expect fair play for beings 
whom they imagine they have a right to 
speak of, and to treat as brutes, because 
they do not act like Europeans, and ma- 
nifest an unwillingness to yield up a life 
of liberty in such a climate," &c. The 
natives will stay with the whites only 
so long as the novelty lasts, and their 
situation is rendered agreeable. Can 
more than this be expected ? 



1)4 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[JAN, 



Nowhere have savages been found so 
independent. They appear to have 1:0 
chieftains no mention was ever made 
of one. "Each tribe is divided into in- 
dependent families, which inhabit in 
common a district within certain limits, 
gv iK-rally not exceeding above ten or 
twelve miles on any side. The num- 
bers of each tribe vary very much, be- 
ing greater on the coast, where they 
sometimes amount to two or three hun- 
dred ; " and I have known them," says 
Mr. Dawson, " in other quarters not to 
exceed a hundred." They have been 
charged with cannibalism ; but Mr. 
Dawson's inquiries and experience did 
not confirm this report. The natives 
who mingle with the whites know our 
feelings on this point, and generally 
charge their enemies with it but that 
is, apparently, to increase the odium. 
When pressed closely, though persist- 
ing in tne charge, they end with " all 
black pellow been say so, massa." It 
has been said, also, they eat dogs in a 
state of putridity, and drink stagnant 
water ; but Mr. Dawson never saw them 
eat flesh of any kind uncooked, though 
not to the state which we call done ; 
and as to putrid kangaroos, he has seen 
them reject them with looks and ges- 
tures of abhorrence the same with fish, 
dead on the shore. Of a Deity, in one 
sense of the term, Mr. Dawson, with all 
his inquiries, could not discover they 
have any conception. Of a Devil, or evil 
spirit of the woods, they have one, called 
Coen, who sometimes steals the natives, 
find carries them into the woods and 
kills them. What becomes of them 
when they die ? Go to' England, and 
come back white. When Mr. Dawson 
told there was a .900^ spirit as well as a 
bad, and that he controlled the bad 
one, and protected them and their wives 
and children tc No, massa, no nossing 
at all about it nossing at all about it." 
Thunder and lightning they attribute 
to the same bad spirit, who was angry, 
and came to frighten them. When the 
Storm abated, they tossed up their heads, 
and hooted at the dispersing clouds, and 
clapped their hands, exclaiming " black 
pellow tend him away toon, massa." 

We recommend Mr. Dawson's book 
very heartily to our readers, in full con- 
fidence that they will find it full of 
interest. 

The Sea-Kings, by the Author of " The 
Fall of Nineveh.'" 3 vols. I2mo. Lite- 
rature becomes one vast ocean of ro- 
mance it assimilates and absorbs every 
topic. First or last it is the resort, or 
the refuge, of scribblers of all classes. 
It is the field where the tyro fleshes his 
sword, and where the veteran finally 
sheathes it. And, after all, novel-writing 
is the surest card that can be played. If 



you can but get hold of a popular pub- 
lisher, you are sure to be read by some- 
body, and the chance is not small of be- 
ing so by every body. The poet finds 
he may write till his fingers and his 
heart ache nobody reads"; while pub- 
lishers shrink at the sight, and well they 
may, for nobody buys. There is, in 
short, too large a" stock already on hand, 
and good poetry, unluckily, never wears 
out. For any more to find a market, it 
must not only be as good as the old, 
but be fresh in material, and new in the 
fashion of its texture : mere refacci- 
menti, and amplifications of the old, 
will not take or sell ; and what else is 
the mass of current poetry ? The au- 
thor of The Fall of Nineveh two goodly 
volumes of versification of splendid and 
gorgeous description a congeries of bat- 
tles and jousts, of feasts and festivals 
with pieces, nevertheless, of pathos and 
energy, which at a more propitious pe- 
riod, or rather when things of the sort 
were newer and scarcer, would have 
borne him up on the wings of immortali- 
ty now wisely betakes himself, as every 
body else does, who must write or die, 
to romance. He has chosen the histo- 
rical, and there he is wise too, for it 
saves, or it helps invention. In the re- 
gions of history, a frame-work is always 
at hand ready-made, and there are few 
who cannot, rough or smooth, fill up an 
outline. 

The period selected by the author of 
The Fall of Nineveh, is the age of Al- 
fred, and the main event his defeat of 
Guthrun, with the expulsion of the Sea- 
kings from his hereditary kingdom of 
Wessex. With these Sea-kings the 
Danish chiefs the reader of English 
history was first familiarized, we be- 
lieve, by Mr. Sharon Turner. Our po- 
pular historians scarcely notice anything 
before the Normans. 'The sons of Kiut- 
yer, a furious sea-king, who had been 
barbarously murdered by Ella of Nor- 
thumberland, ravaged almost the whole 
country, in revenge for the death of 
their father. A party, headed by Hub- 
bo, one of them, burnt Croyland-abbey, 
and massacred old and young a scene in 
which the boy Edmund, the future hero 
of the piece, makes his frrst appearance. 
The 'child is father of the man,' and op- 
poses his capture with a desperate cour- 
age, that shews what he will prove, and 
the stock he springs from, for he turns 
out to be the nephew of Alfred ; but 
that nobody knows, except an elderly 
monk, who passes for his parent. The 
brave little hero is rescued from the 
brutal Plubbo by Sidroc, another sea- 
king, a little more human ; but in vain 
are all the fondlings and coaxings of the 
queen and young princess, nothing can 
conciliate him, and he finally escapes 
into the woods. There, by good lucK, 



1831.J 



and Foreign. 



he finds the old monk, who now convevs 
him to a priory in the west, where lie 
pursues his education. In the neigh- 
bourhood lie, in time, makes the ac- 
quaintance of two formidable Thanes, 
and with one is all but domiciliated. 
As he grows up, being a very fine fel- 
low, he excites the jealousy of the son 
of one of his friends, an unlicked and 
malignant cub, who plots his ruin ; but 
in the meanwhile, he wins the affections 
of the other Thane's daughter. Both 
events are equally untoward for he 
loses the friendship of both his patrons, 
and is driven to prowl over the country 
in search of adventures and his bread. 
Thus roaming, however, he has the high 
good fortune to fall in with Alfred, then 
himself at hide-and-seek at the cottage, 
where, as every body knows, he burnt 
the good-woman's cakes. Alfred takes 
to the youth mightily, discovers him- 
self ami his present projects, and dis- 
patches him on confidential messages to 
the queen at Glastonbury. While Al- 
fred is quietly collecting his friends, 
news arrives of Hubbo's invasion in the 
neighbourhood of Exeter, and Edmund 
is again confidentially employed to visit 
the enemy's camp before Exeter. In 
an action which follows a sally from the 
garrison, Edmund has the satisfaction of 
killing Hubbo, his old mortal enemy, in 
fair fight, and the still greater one of 
rescuing Sidroc, his old friend, and also 
the queen and the princess, though not 
without considerable risk, and even some 
imputation on his loyalty. He, how- 
ever, ventures every thing to accom- 
plish his purpose, and resolves to trust 
to Alfred's generous construction of the 
act. In full confidence that Alfred will 
listen to his justification, he pushes for- 
ward with all speed, and arrives just in 
time to take part in the decisive battle 
with Guthrun, where he again performs 
prodigies of valour. On the field, to 
his pleasure, he is welcomed by Alfred, 
and, to his surprise, by all his old ac- 
quaintance, even by the father of his 
lovely Elfreda for the secret is out ; 
he is known to be Alfred's nephew, and 
nobody of course has a word of blame or 
reproach to cast at him. 

The tale wants interest miserably ; 
but the details are often admirably 
told; nor are there any very recog- 
nizable blunders in point of manners, 
costumes, or facts. The author makes 
a gallant and a successful defence, 
on historical grounds, of King Alfred, 
against certain historians who have 
flippantly talked of his early inert- 
ness. But this is just the part, though 
a good deal laboured, that nobody will 
read nothing of the sort is ever" read 
in a story, and writers might as well 
save their labour. 



The Progress of Society, ly tlie late Ro- 
bert Hamilton, LL.D., <c., of Aberdeen. 
Dr. Hamilton, the professor of mathe- 
matics at the Mareschal College for forty 
years, who died a year or two ago in his 
}J7th year though of some celebrity in 
his own circle ana among his own pupils, 
and as remarkable latterly for his habitu- 
al fits of mental absence as for his learn- 
ing, can scarcely be regarded as known 
to the public by any thing but his work 
on the National Debt and Sinking Fund 
a work which, though anticipated in 
all its useful points some time before by 
Cobbett, and before him by Paine, yet, 
coming from a more respectable quarter, 
made a deep impression upon the public, 
and, what has been all in all in this coun- 
try, upon the aristocratic portion of that 
public. The publication before us The 
Progress of Society conveys nothing 
new, in fact or in principle, but still 
consists of some manly and sensible 
sketches of the doctor's opinions on a 
number of topics usually classed under 
the head of political economy. The cha- 
racteristics of the volume are plainness 
and independence with less of system 
than one expects from a Scotch profes- 
sor, and a greater reliance upon common 
sense on the glance of natural shrewd- 
ness cast through the mazes of puzzled 
discussions. Among the most remark- 
able is his chapter on Itent, in which he 
discusses what is usually, we believe, 
considered as llicardo's doctrine, en- 
forced by Mill and Macculloch, but 
which was originally propounded by 
Dr. Anderson of Edinburgh, some years 
before either of them wrote at all. Ac- 
cording to these same learned Thebans, 
all mathematicians or as bad bad, 
we mean, for any deduction not depend- 
ing wholly upon figures rent is the 
sheer result of the difference of quality 
in lands. The worst land in cultivation 
governs the whole, and that affords no 
rent. All of superior quality furnishes 
some, and in proportion to its supe- 
riority. The worst land in cultivation 
just clears its expences ; and of the rest, 
the difference between the expences and 
the produce is rent. Of course, if all 
lands were of equal fertility, there would 
be no rent at all. But, in fact, differ- 
ence of quality constitutes only one ele- 
ment of the rent ; the whole depends 
upon numerous considerations. The pro- 
position, however, of the economists 
includes all, while the proof includes 
only a part. The rational view of the 
question is, that rent is the portion of 
the produce paid by the cultivator to 
the owner for the use of the land, which 
is always as much as the landlord can 
force the tenant to pay without ruining 
the land ; and this seems to be Dr. 
Hamilton's conclusion. 



Mu)ilh/y Keviwv oj 'Literature, 



[.TAN. 



A much more interesting conoid -ra- 
tion, however, at this moment is, that 
besides the landlord and his tenant, 
there is a third party to be taken into 
the account the labourer. He cannot, 
Avith any justice, be left out, and under 
the existing poor laws, he must not be 
left out, though both landlord and tenant 
might wish to exclude him. Things 
cannot longer be left to themselves ; the 
landlord has given up the labourer to 
the tenant ; but it is his duty, and to 
stimulate him to the discharge of it, he 
finds it now to be his interest to pro- 
tect the labourer \vho cannot help him- 
self but by violence, and to leave the 
tenant Avho can to his own remedies. 
Jf the tenant can no longer control and 
grind the labourer, he Avill demand and 
force a reduction of rent. Oh ! crv the 
economists, you can do nothing; If la- 
bour abounds, it must be cheap ; and the 
loAvest labourer must be in the lowest 
condition. That may be true but that 
lowest condition must not be one of 
starvation ; and more must and Avill be 
yielded up by both landlord and tenant. 

But, after all, labour does not in rea- 
lity superabound to the extent alleged. 
Much of the evil is traceable to the 
enormous size of farms, and the want of 
capital in one person's hands for high 
or even common farming. The conse- 
quence is, fewer labourers are employed. 
If farms of a thousand acres Avere split 
into five of two hundred each, compe- 
tent capitals would readily be found for 
each, where one for the whole cannot ; 
and double the number of labourers 
Avould be profitably employed. 

On the question of tithes, which Dr. 
Hamilton discusses at length, he is not 
so sound, because he is not so well in- 
formed. He was a Scotchman, and 
knew nothing about English tithing, 
and books are of little use in practical 
matters of any kind. He concludes 
" tithes fall on the proprietors chiefly, 
if not entirely." This is never Avholly 
true, because tithes are taken on the 
produce, and not on the rent. Besides, 
if it Avere true with respect to great 
tithes, it cannot be with the small tithes 
equally annoying. Most of the land 
is cultivated by farmers, by tenants we 
mean ; and none get land g'ratis. Itent 
forms an item in the expense of cultiva- 
tion, and so does tithe ; and both must 
be paid, Avith the rest of the expences, 
by the consumer. If the land be tithe- 
free, the tenant pays more rent, and still 
the consumer gains nothing; nor when 
titheable does the landlord suffer. 

The chapters on Distribution and 
Equalization of Wealth - Population 
Paper Currency Commerce, are all 
well discussed, and remarkable for dis- 
tinctness in the statements. 



Family Llnrttni -- //;/< '.;/' Ilntce, lj;j 
Major F. U. jfca<f In nolhiug h:;:> our 
acquaintance with facts augmented more 
remarkably than Avith respect to the ha- 
bits of foreign countries. Half a century 
ago, only, any extraordinary occurrence 
Avas set down without ceremony as a 
traveller's tale; and such a caricature 
as Munchausen was relished as an ad- 
mirable satire called for by the licence 
of travellers, and calculated to check 
their intolerable indulgences. To such 
a pitch had grown this distrust begun 
Avith reason, but ending with none 
that but few had pluck enough to tell 
of facts at once novel and singular ; 
Dr. Shaw was afraid to tell the 
AA'orld boldly in his narrative, that he 
had seen M'oors eat lions' flesh, though 
he ventured to hint at the matter in his 
appendix. But none perhaps since the 
days of Mendez Pinto, and he proves 
not to have been a " liar of the mag- 
nitude" Shakspeare makes him fared 
worse than Bruce. He had visited a 
strange country quite unknown to 
Englishmen he had many extraordi- 
nary things to tell he was of too bold, 
perhaps of too vaunting a spirit, to with- 
hold any of his wonders he dared the 
world's laugh of ignorance, and Avas uni- 
versally scouted. Dr. Johnson froAvned 
(this must have been at the reports of 
Bruce's confidents) ; Peter Pindar mock- 
ed, and multitudes of others Avho had ne- 
ver left the chimney corner, joined in the 
general derision. Even later, many who 
from their own experience might have 
known better, retained their home pre- 
judices, and laboured to confirm, what 
they were of themselves all but able 
effectually to confute. Lord Valentia, 
on his return to India, coming up the 
lied Sea, stopped at the port of Masuah 
even he cavilled about Bruce's want oi 
correctness, and doubted if he had ever 
been down to the Straits of Babelman- 
del ; while his OAvn Captain, Avho might 
be supposed to be as good a judge of the 
matter, adopted Bruce's observations, 
because he had uniformly found them 
correct. By the aid of his telescopes, 
Lord Valencia descried the mountains of 
Abyssinia, and upon the strength of this 
distant vieAv, announced in the\itle-page 
of his book his traA^els in Abyssinia, 
and had the temerity to question Bruce's 
veracity. Mr. Salt, his secretary, it is 
true, made tAvo attempts to reach the 
capital of Abyssinia, but did not get 
more than half way ; and even he, to 
please his superior apparently, sneers 
at Bruce's " falsehood and exaggera- 
tion ;" and though subsequent informa- 
tion substantiated Bruce in numerous 
particulars, he never had the manliness 
to justify the man he had helped to 
calumniate. Clarke, Belzoni, and the 



1831.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



97 



officers of Sir David Baird's expedition, 
with many others, recently, bear testi- 
mony to Bntce*s correctness on the Red 
Sea, tend within the sphere of their ob- 
servation. Into the heart of Abyssinia 
nobody has penetrated but Pearce, the 
sailor, and Coffin, a boy in Lord Va- 
lentia's service. Pearce returned to 
Cairo in 1818, and wrote an account, 
drawn up under the auspices of his old 
patron, and printed in the Transactions 
of the Literary Society at Bombay. 
Coffin returned to London only about 
three years ago, and has been in com- 
munication with Major Head ; and both 
Pearce and Coffin confirm many of 
the more extraordinary circumstances. 
Others were of a nature not to occur to 
every body not to say that changes in 
forty or fifty years may occur there as 
well as here. 

Major F. B. Head of galloping no- 
toriety along the Pampas of South Ame- 
rica has compressed the contents of 
Bruce's seven quartos within the com- 
pass of one of Mr. Murray's nice little 
volumes something stouter than usual 
and has entered zealously into a de- 
fence of Bruce's general veracity. The 
man was manifestly high-spirited, and 
above the paltry lies attributed to him. 
Major Head himself is no'stranger to 
foreign and tropical scenes ; and the bet- 
ter able to estimate the descriptions of 
others. He has made a very agreeable 
narrative, and one fit to be put into any 
body's hands Bruce himself was not 
fastidious. Though not very precise 
ourselves in matters of mere language, 
we must protest against Major Head's 
freedoms he is much too familiar he 
indulges occasionally in the colloquial, 
till his phrases are sheer slang, and his 
sentiments the flippancy of a boy. A tra- 
veller and a soldier is not required to be 
intimate with literary history, but if he 
does venture into such quarters, he should 
make due inquiries before he enters 
he should reconnoitre at least. John- 
son, it is very well known, translated Lo- 
bo the Jesuit's Travels into Abyssinia, 
very early in life, and in the preface, he 
commends Lobo, ore rotundo, for his mo- 
dest and unaffected narrative 'he meets 
with no Basilisks that destroy with their 
eyes ; his crocodiles devour their prey 
without tears, and his cataracts fall from 
the rocks without deafening the neigh- 
bouring inhabitants.' These, Major 
Head tells us, these round rigmarole 
phrases were rolled against Bruce ; 
but Bruce's books were not published 
till after Johnson's death, and Johnson 
wrote his preface fifty years before, with 
a very different class of travellers in his 
eye. 

Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., 
R.A., by William Hazlitt. This is as 
MM. New Series VOL. XI. No. 61. 



amusing a volume as anything of the 
kind since Boswell's, and shews either 
how much better Northcote can talk 
than write, or what a capital reporter 
Hazlitt made it is one of the best 
things he ever accomplished. The con- 
versations are between Northcote and 
Hazlitt, where Northcote plays first 
fiddle ; and though Hazlitt occasionally 
puts forward his own sentiments, always 
worth attending to, he is for the most 
part either listener or pumper. Of 
course they are the pith .of the talk, 
but the mode of reporting gives them 
an air of literal reality; even when dis- 
cussions occur, they 'are obviously col- 
loquial, and not beyond the extempore 
effusions of intelligent men, of frank 
habits, and a free tongue. Painting, 
literature, and character, form the sta- 
ple ; but there occurs much of another 
caste the results of a long life in the 
world the maxims of his personal ex- 
perience. Northcote takes a tone of 
superiority, to which his age entitles 
him ; but every thing he says is stamped 
sterling by good sense, directness of 
purpose, and a love of plain-speaking. 
We had marked some passages by way 
of specimen of the manner, and as a 
taste of the quality ; but they will tell 
better each in its place ; and to the book 
we refer any reader whose curiosity we 
may have excited. 

Constable's Miscellany. War of Inde- 
pendence in Greece. Vol. I. By Thomas 
Keightley, Esq. Events of nearer in- 
terest, and affecting larger masses of 
people, for the last few months, have 
thrown the Greeks and their affairs com- 
pletelv into the shade. Scarcely a syl- 
lable lias been heard about them since 
Prince Leopold with other prospects in 
view, perhaps refused a sceptre which 
the Greeks would never have allowed him 
to wield, and which the president must 
desire to retain in his own keeping. Nor 
will Capo find it difficult, we take it, to 
deter any future competitor. The Eu- 
ropean powers are little likely to enforce 
their orders with their swords they 
will have occasion for them elsewhere 
and the Turks have not vigour enough 
to seize the tempting opportunity pre- 
sented by the times, for recovering their 
authority- The struggle for command 
will thus be confined to the Greeks them- 
selves. In the meanwhile the War of 
Independence is over, and any body may 
write its history. Abundance of mate- 
rials is afloat in the writings of English, 
French, and Greeks, and sonje common 
sense is all that is wanted to balance 
opposing biases and conflicting state- 
ments. Information is yet attainable 
from living sources, and many obstacles 
are now removed, which some time ago 
stood in the wav of a fair estimate of the 

O 



98 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[JAN. 



whole affair. The conduct and charac- 
ters of 'the chief agents may be readily 
measured. The hotter patrons of the 
Greeks have long since cooled, and the 
Turks on their side, since they could not 
maintain their own authority, have lost 
most of their admirers. More than one 
writer is engaged in the task, and those, 
too, personally acquainted with the 
scene Mr. Keightly is not ; but he is 
beforehand with his' volume. Whether 
he will keep possession of the field the 
merits of his competitors will determine. 
It will not be easy to surpass him in 
industry, as to the collecting of mate- 
rials ; rior difficult to class them with 
more effect. It is true, that though the 
field of action was small, the forces em- 
ployed were widely scattered the 
points of activity numerous and little 
connected the chiefs independent and 
transient and at no time was there a 
commander -in-chief to concentrate the 
interest ; but, nevertheless, there must 
be fewer details and more general views, 
if the historian of the war expects to be 
read. The attention is distracted me- 
mory confounded one impression is 
driven out by another for the want of more 
skilful linking. At the present rate of 
march, too, the thing will be intermin- 
able. The explosion commenced only 
in March, 1821, and the narrative ad- 
vances scarcely beyond the capture of 
Tripolitza in the following October. 
Too large a portion of the volume is 
occupied with the story of Ali Pasha, 
and especially his conquest of the Sou- 
liotes a very interesting tale, and well 
told, but what has it to do with the 
Greek war ? It was not till the very 
last year of his atrocious reign when 
the revolt had already begun that Ali 
allied himself with the Greeks and such 
were his own embarrassments, that he 
can scarcely be said to have had any in- 
fluence on the fortunes of the war. Mr. 
Keightley's account of the attempt of 
1770 encouraged by the Russians, and 
basely abandoned by them is more to 
the purpose. The condition of the 
Greek population under the tyranny of 
the Turks ; the formation, again, of the 
Hetairia a society instituted among 
the more cultivated Greeks for the re- 
covery of independence the story of its 
leading members the state also of the is- 
lands engaged in the carrying trade of the 
Mediterranean through the revolution- 
ary wars of France these all are pro- 
perly preparatory matters, and are, in 
general, well described. The first year 
of the war was, doubtless, the most 
active ; and it will probably be found 
easier to concatenate the events of the 
succeeding campaigns, to the unques- 
tionable improvement of the work in 
point of effect. If the writer desires to 
be read, he must take a tetter measure 



of his readers' patience their powers 
of endurance. Classing events, too, is 
one thing stringing tliein, like beads, 
another ; the first is history, the other 
memoir-writing. 

Since the notice, above, of 'Mr. Keight- 
ley's first volume was written, the se- 
cond has been published, in which, to 
the sacrifice of all proportion in the de- 
tails, he completes his History of the 
War. Nearly up to the fall of Misso- 
longhi he prosecutes the subject in the 
spirit of his first volume, leading the 
reader a dance round all points of the 
compass by sea and by land fighting,de- 
bating, plotting, in eternal alternations 
and plunging from one topic to ano- 
ther in contempt of all concatenation. 
Too many names by half are introduced 
both of places and persons, but espe- 
cially of persons. The very subalterns 
are all enumerated, when, of course, the 
attention should be fixed upon the lead- 
ing and influential personages, and the 
more prominent events. From the fall 
of Missolonghi compelled plainly by 
the circumscription of his pages and the 
commands of his employers every thing 
is suddenly all huddled together, and 
wound up with some rambling rhetoric 
about Mr. Canning and his classics. Yet, 
generally, the writer's judgment shewn 
in the selection of authorities, and the 
estimate he forms on characters and 
events is sound enough ; but, unlucki- 
Iv, he began to write before he had 
digested his materials He had no bird's 
eye view of the whole, or he would have 
better discerned the points, and con- 
nected the events. There would have 
been something like a stream, and now 
there is nothing but broken rills and 
isolated pools. 

Constable' 1 s Miscellany, Vols. 57, 58, and 
59. These volumes of Constable's Mis- 
cellany are filled with Bourienne's Me- 
moirs of Bonaparte the character of 
which is generally, we believe, estimated 
as highly to the very fullest as they 
deserve. A great parade has been made 
by the author's friends, and especially 
publishers, who are, by the way, the 
great misleaders of the literary world 
about this Bourienne's extraordinary 
opportunities of information, and with 
some reason as to certain periods in Na- 
poleon's earlier career. But it is not 
sufficiently borne in mind that Bouri- 
enne never even saw him but twice after 
his dismissal in 1802. He was employed, 
it is true, afterwards but that was at 
Hamburgh, and his very correspon- 
dence was, of course, wholly with the 
minister. Yet no difference is obser- 
vable in Bourienne's tone from the 
beginning to the end he is as well 
informed at one period as at another 
as peremptory as to what could be only 



Domestic and Foreign. 



99 



hearsay, as about his own personal 
knowledge. We have already had a 
translation, and the name of the new 
translator cannot, that we know of, have 
any weight. Assurances, however, are 
given in the preface of extensive re- 
searches on the part of Mr. M ernes, 
employed in comparing the statements 
of the last volume, especially with the 
evidence to be obtained from the works 
of others, and with information col- 
lected, in many instances, on the spot. 
Much fuss is made about these re- 
searches they are even assigned as the 
ground of some unusual delay in the 
periodical publication. " Such investi- 
gations require time ;" doubtless, they 
do, and the common result of such re- 
searches is something beyond a general 
assurance a bare testimony, that 
" never was a more veracious historian 
than Bourienne." The translation is 
not at all superior to the old one, which 
by mere chance we happened to read 
it is even fuller of Gallicisms and mis- 
conceptions. Liberties, too, are taken 
with the original text by both parties, 
which, of course, depreciates the value 
of both. The reader, who recurs to 
translations, requires, like a judge in a 
court of justice, the writer's sentiments, 
his ii'hole sentiments, and nothing but his 
sentiments ; and we are quite sure 
neither translation will answer these 
demands. 

Edinburgh Cabinet Library. VoL I. 
Competition in book-making, as Paine 
said of paper money, is strength in the 
beginning, and weakness in the end. It 
begets a few good articles to begin with, 
but by overstocking the market, quickly 
terminates in monopolies, and monopo- 
lies, of course, in idleness and deterio- 
ration. All these libraries, as the 
publishers style them, can never find a 
market. Murray, and Lardner, and 
Constable, have got possession the rest 
must go. The first volume of the 
Edinburgh presents a fair sketch of the 
different attempts that have been made 
to traverse the Polar Seas, from the 
days of poor Sir Hugh Willoughby to our 
own but not superior, and scarcely 
equal, to a similar sketch in the Cabinet 
Cyclopaedia perhaps, however, by the 
same Hugh Murray. He seems to hold 
a patent for the execution of these sub- 
jectshe is every where, with his name 
or without it. Two Scotch professors of 
authority discuss the climate and geo- 
logy of the polar regions, and Hugh 
Murray has had his own chapter on 
zoology overhauled by some other 
doughty professor so that the volume 
is quite a pic-nic concern. Too many 
cooks, they say, spoil the broth, and we 
are sure both the climate and the geo- 
logy are defective for want of data, or 



to prosecute the metaphor, of ingre- 
dients. The volume is handsomely ^ot 
up; and the series is to be occupied 
solely with realities, in contradiction to 
works of fiction, on which the editor 
sarcastically includes history and bio- 
graphy, and especially that of statesmen, 
or we misunderstand the prospectus. 
The publishers do not .subject them- 
selves to the mechanical necessity base 
mechanics of a monthly periodical 
issue. We scarcely expect to hear of 
them again. 

By the way, it grows late to hope for 
Captain lioss's return this season. 

Family Library. Dramatic Series. 
Vol. II. After a long delay not occa- 
sioned, apparently, by any arduous la- 
bours on the part of the editor we have 
a second volume of Massinger, embrac- 
ing the Duke of Milan, the City Ma- 
dam, and the Picture, with but little 
mutilation, together with a couple of 
acts of the Unnatural Combat, and a 
scene or two of the Roman Actor. The 
Unnatural Combat is curtailed, " as 
notwithstanding very forcible and elo- 
quent passages, the tenor of the inci- 
dents is offensive and disgusting, and 
every reader of good taste and feeling 
will be thankful for being spared the pevu- 
sal of them" which is a sort of Irish con- 
ception, for it, in fact, implies a perusal , 
and if it did not, cannot readers be suf- 
fered to judge for themselves^ and throw 
the book aside, when the subject really 
gives offence and disgust ? The Roman 
Actor is still more curtailed of its pro- 
portions, and with less reason "the 
main plot is unpleasing, and the piece 
has the air of detached scenes," and so 
the editor resolved to give it the reality, 
and print scarcely one-fifth of it. Ac- 
cording to the original prospectus, in. 
decorum and the sense of the word is 
specific enough was to be the sole ground 
of omission ; but now the offensive, the 
disgusting, the unpleasing, and even the 
unskilful, all very indefinite terms, are 
new causes for clipping. By the way, 
the editor must have been napping when 
he suffered a passage in the Picture, 
page 356, to be reprinted it is as coarse 
as" any thing that has been cut out. 
The few notes are generally Gifford's. 
The editor gives one of his own upon 
the word petard thus, "i. 0., an engine, 
containing gunpowder, used in blowing 
up towns ." In the same speech occurs 
basiliscos, which is left unnoticed, though 
certainly a term less familiar than pe- 
tard ; it is better to be silent than to 
blunder. 

Divines of the Church of England, by 
Isaac Barrow Of all the indefatigable 
men our literary annals can furnisn, 
none ever came near to Isaac Barrow. 



100 



Monthly Review of Literature. 



[JAN. 



But the most remarkable point about 
him was the elasticity of his intellect. 
It is a perfect marvel that his imagi- 
nation was not smothered beneath the 
mass and weight of his acquisitions 
had he studied others less, and trusted 
more to his own resources, he had been 
a Milton. Though dying at forty- 
seven, he was successively eminent, 
among eminent cotemporaries, as a 
scholar (in the university sense), a ma- 
thematician, a theologian. He has left 
proofs of extensive acquirement in each 
department, though making no disco- 
veries, nor in any shape enlarging the 
borders of science, system, or criticism. 
Of his command of the Latin language, 
his communications to his college, dur- 
ing his tour, which extended to Con- 
stantinople, in prose and verse, afford 
ample testimony; and as to Greek, he 
was appointed professor, on the special 
recommendation of the very learned 
Duport, who had been driven from the 
office for political reasons, and might 
have been replaced at the Restoration. 



publis 

tion of Euclid, and a volume on Optics, 
which was not quite useless to Newton. 
Of his theology, the dissertation on po- 
pery is evidence enough ; it attests his 
labour, if not his skill, in polemics ; 
while his sermons are still read for their 
eloquence by those who care nothing for 
the topics, nor the spirit which ani- 
mated their excellent, and amiable, and 
harmless author. Charles called him an 
unfair preacher, for he left nothing for 
any body else to say which marks, hap- 
pily enough, the wit of the speaker, and 
the peculiarity of the preacher. 

Born in 1630, of a good family, on 
both sides, though his father was a man 
of business in the City, Barrow was 
educated at the Charter-house, Felsted, 
and Trinity, Cambridge, of which he 
became a fellow, immediately after tak- 
ing his bachelor's degree. After spend- 
ing some years on the continent, with 
very straitened means, he returned to 
England at the Restoration, when he 
took orders was successively Greek and 
mathematical professor ; and, in 1G72, 
master of his college a situation which 
he held but five years with a modesty 
and moderation singularlv contrasted 
with Bentley, whose contentious pro- 
pensities have so recently been brought 
to our notice by Bishop Monk's intelli- 
gent biography. Barrow was wholly a 
man of letters, and his sermons by 
which he is now best known have more 
of the speculations of a recluse than 
knowledge of life and manners. He 
talks rather of what may by possibility 
judging from given characteristics of 
men influence mankind, than what no- 



toriously does what men of experience 
expect to meet with, and rarely miss. 
He is rather amu ing and amazing than 
useful clever and dazzling than pre- 
cise or skilful the target is filled with 
his arrows, but few or none will be found 
in the bull's eye, or indeed very near 
it. 

The Classical Library, Vols. X. and 
XI. Of this cheap, and, beyond all 
cavil, useful series of translations of the 
classics, one of the volumes before us 
contains Pindar and Anacreon new ver- 
sions of them. Of the former volumes 
the translations were old ones, and we 
have been disposed to grumble at some 
of them, not at their not being the best 
possible, but at their not being the best 
attainable. This was strictly the_ case 
with Herodotus. Beloe's is a pitiful 
performance it is full of misapprehen- 
sions. Beloe had what is called Greek 
enough, that is, he could construe his 
author so far as his lexicon enabled him, 
but he had not brains to comprehend 
him. He had no notion of simplicity, 
and wanted common sense to catch the 
meaning of a man eminent for the pos- 
session of that valuable quality. If he 
even got scent of his author, he was 
always in danger of losing it in chace of 
a phrase. Isaac Taylor's version, pub- 
lished two or three years ago, would 
have been an ornament to the series ; 
he has generally caught the plain sense 
of Herodotus, and for the most part 
conveyed it successfully and forcibly, 
without any of the frippery of superflu- 
ous verbiage. 

Mr. Wheelwright's Pindar is obvi- 
ously superior to West's, and is indeed, 
upon the whole, as effective as any ver- 
sion is ever likely to be, though it is 
easy to conceive a better. He has fol- 
lowed the example set by Heber in an 
ode or two, in rejecting the form of 
strophes and antistrophes, and breaking 
the whole into paragraphs. The pre- 
vailing fault is mcumbrance of words. 
More terseness of phrase, and vivacity 
of manner would have brought the ver- 
sion nearer the characteristics of the 
original. But every thing is against a 
successful version of Pindar. The very 
topics find no sympathy in the poetical 
associations of Englishmen. No racing 
in the world can ennoble sentiment or 
illustrate morals. Steeds and drivers 
are unused among us to the stilted eulo- 
giums of ancient days ; nor uncoupled 
with divinities, as they are with us, 
can they sustain the solemnity of even 
serious description. The first half-dozen 
lines is a fair specimen. The original is 
Water is the best (liquor, apparently), 
and gold is as conspicuous among noble 
wealth (metals) as glowing fire in the 
night (darkness). 



1831.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



101 



itely the degree of expansion, the tour- 
ure, and unluckily the languor of the 



Water with purest virtue flow* ; 
And as the fires' resplendant litfht 
Dispels the murky gloom of ni)s r ht, 
The meaner treasures of the mine 
With undistinguished lustre shine, 
Where gold irradiate glows. 

These few lines measure pretty accu- 
rat 
nure, 
whole. 

Anacreon's pieces are short, and 
better submit to a paraphrastic ver- 
sion. Mr. Bourne is often felicitous 
enough. 

The eleventh volume contains a por- 
tion of Tacitus a reprint of Murphy's 
translation certainly one of the most 
readable versions of a Latin author we 
have. Hejfgenerally hits the sense, but 
he does it mainly by doubling the 
phrases, and certainly nobody ever got 
over difficulties with more dexterity. 

Serious Poems, comprising the Church- 
yard, Village Sabbath, Deluge, fyc., by 
Mrs. Thomas. This is a neat collection 
of moral and reflective poems, written, 



we are assured in a very unpretending 
preface, for the amusement and instruc- 
tion of the author's family, and without 
any view to publication. It will be 
readily imagined that in compositions 
originating in such a feeling, a more 
than usual amount of carelessness must 
be discerned ; we accordingly find in 
this volume passages which would have 
been much improved by a little thought 
and labour, and lines that would cer- 
tainly have pleased us better if the mu- 
sic had been attended to as well as the 
moral. The principal point, however, 
in works designed in a great measure, as 
this is, for the perusal of the young, is 
to be unexceptionable in point of feeling 
and sentiment ; and here Mrs. Thomas 
exhibits no want of care or correctness, 
having scrupulously omitted every thing 
that could offend the taste of the most 
fastidious reader. The longer poems, 
such as the Deluge, &c., are evidently 
the first productions of a pious and well- 
intentioned mind some of the miscel- 
laneous pieces are upon lighter subjects, 
and may be more generally approved. 



FINE ARTS' PUBLICATIONS. 



THE ANNUALS. 

WE have already touched upon the 
beauties and they are many of the 
embellishments of the French Keepsake 
and the Talisman , and we need only 
refer to them again by saying, that as 
they now lie beneath our eyes, inter- 
secting the gilt leaves of these elegant 
volumes, and enveloped in all the charms 
of green and crimson silk associated on 
the one hand with the best and brightest 
names of modern French literature 
and on the other with some of the most 
sparkling productions of our own we 
cannot help relishing them a great deal 
better than when they first courted our 
glances in a portfolio. The literature 
and the embellishments shed a mutual 

Xupon each other. To the French 
ing we would willingly, were it 
possible, devote a more extended space ; 
it has no inconsiderable portion of the 
lighter graces of song and sentiment, 
mixed occasionally with more solid pre- 
tensions. In many respects it is supe- 
rior to most of our own ; and our coun- 
trymen or rather, as it is upon the 
ladies, that the annuals must chiefly 
rely for justice, our countrywomen 
will best evince their taste and libera- 
lity by shewing that they are not slow 
to appreciate those of their sprightly and 
fascinating neighbours. With respect 
to the Talisman, we are at a loss 
to discover the trickery which some 
critics have detected, in collecting 



the most favoured pieces, in prose 
and verse, from obscure or forgot- 
ten quarters, and bringing them toge- 
ther in one bright cluster. Many a 
sketch, many a scrap of verse have we 
wished to possess though we scarcely 
felt tempted perhaps to buy the volume 
that contained one solitary treasure, and 
nothing else that we cared for. The 
trickery is at least acknowledged, both 
in the advertisement and the preface, so 
that the purchaser is cheated with his 
eyes open. Mrs. Watts has executed 
her task very tastefully. There is to us 
much that is new even among the selec- 
tions ; and if there are one or two pieces 
that are too good to have been forgot- 
ten, we cannot surely be displeased at 
seeing them once more in such a shape 
as this such as the pleasantries from 
the Indicator , and others equally fami- 
liar to us. It would have been as well 
if the original papers had been particu- 
larized but as long as the path be a 
pleasant one, we shall never stay to ask 
ourselves whether we have trodden it 
before ; or if we do, we shall not be less 
delighted with it upon that account. 

The first of the comic annuals hap- 
pens to be the last of them this year. 
Mr. Hood has however at length made 
his appearance, to the great delight no 
doubt of the lovers of good old jokes, 
and a few intolerable new ones. In say- 
ing that he has nothing to apprehend 
from his rivals, we say but nttle for 



102 



Fine Arts 1 Publications. 



[JAN. 



him and, indeed, after all, little can be 
said. The volume, with three or four 
very good points, and twice that number 
of passable ones, presents many that are 
lamentably poor. A considerable part 
of the effect of some of his previous cuts 
consisted in the extreme badness of them 
they were neither works of art nor 
any thing else ; but they are growing 
somewhat better and, consequently, 
worse. Of course we have laughed over 
several of them such as the Eagle 
Assurance, the Step Father, London 
Fashions for November, and (loud and 
continued laughter here) Kirk White- 
winch is a fancy portrait of the poet, 
the features formed of the Gothic win- 
dows of a church, with an ivy wig. 
Of the literature, several of the smart 
things are in the preface; the Parish 
Revolution contains some eccentricities, 
bordering upon nonsense ; and Domestic 
Asides, not very new in idea, is hu- 
morously executed. The best thing of 
all, perhaps, is the Ode to N. A.Vigors, 
Esq., which is full of point of a peculiar 
kind. But we must turn from these to 
ask Mr. Hood whether he can possibly 
have mistaken the idea of " Picking 
your way" which represents a fellow 
hooking another's eye out with a pick- 
axe as he passes for fun ? By what asso- 
ciation of ideas are agony and amuse- 
ment so frequently identified in his 
mind ? We should also be doing Mr. 
Hood an injustice if we were not to ex- 
press our disgust at another engraving 
" Going it at five knots an hour" 
which exhibits five very comical look- 
ing criminals suspended from a gallows, 
kicking and struggling of course in the 
most facetious and good-humoured way 
in the world. We have seen few in- 
stances of so depraved a taste, and can 
only entertain the charitable surmise 
that the author was reduced to the very 
dregs of his invention, and had no re- 
source but to be either dull or disgust- 
ing. He has chosen the greater of the 
two evils. 

The only name we find in this volume 
besides the editor's is that of Miss Isa- 
bel Hill, who has contributed a " May 
Day Vision" worthy of the day. Mr. 
Hood, however, has had assistance in 
his cuts, which he has not thought pro- 
per to acknowledge. The original of 
the vignette on the title-page The 
Merry Thought we happened to see 
some time ago, treated in a spirit so di- 
rectly similar, as to induce us to regard 
it as something more than a mere coin- 
cidence of ideas. To be sure, this is 
one onlv out of fifty ; but it is an evi- 
dence, if we are correct in our suspi- 
cion, of the same principle in Mr. Hood 
which he complains of mother people. 

The Bengal literati, in order to keep 
up with the spirit of the times, have 



produced an Annual of their own. It is 
edited by Mr. D. 1,. Richardson ; who in 
his preface intimates that as India has 
not the advantage of the presence of any 
professional engraver, " the embellish- 
ments of the volume are the friendly 
contributions of amateurs." We must 
take the editor's word for their being 
" far from deficient in taste and spirit" 
the volume before us not happening 
to contain an engraving. The list of 
contributors is rather numerous, and 
comprises several names, besides the 
editor's, that are not unknown, if they 
cannot boast of being very distinguished 
at home. The volume is an interesting 
one even to us at Calcutta it must have 
created a sensation. In poiut of type 
and paper the annual does credit to tne 
Indian press, and is altogether " as well 
as could be expected." Some of the 
poetry is of a superior character. The 
" Scenes of the Seven Ages" is, as far as 
we are aware, an original conception, 
and in many passages is spiritedly exe- 
cuted. The Sketch of British Indian 
Literature is interesting; and several 
other papers would do honour to a work 
that had laboured less under disadvan- 
tages of all kinds for in addition to 
other deficiencies, the volume has been 
brought forth in haste. We can con- 
gratulate the English circle at Bengal 
upon the talent that exists in it, and are 
glad to see that there are such " livers 
out of Britain." 

Affection's Offering for 1831, is a pretty 
little volume for the young a book, as 
it is called, " for all seasons." It is 
adorned with wood-cuts, and promises 
some tempting prizes for essays upon 
certain subjects, to be written by little 
authors under sixteen. This, we be- 
lieve, has already been attended with 
useful effects. The literature of the 
volume is of a pleasing and appropriate 
character, by writers whose pens have 
frequently yielded both amusement and 
instruction to the young mind. At the 
head of the list are the names of Mrs. 
Hall and Mrs. Opie. 

Sketches in Italy, drau-n on Stone by 
W. Linton. This work, handsomely 
" got up," will comprise twelve folio 
numbers, each of which is to contain 
eight drawings, or fac-similes of the 
sketches made by Mr. Linton during 
his recent tour. The number, amount- 
ing to nearly a hundred, as well as the 
size, of these sketches, will thus admit of 
a complete series of all the most pictu- 
resque and interesting views that Ita- 
lian landscape can supply. They will 
be selected from various parts of the 
Piedmont the Milanese, Roman and 
Venetian States Tuscan}', and Naples. 

The artist refers to the unaffected 
style of execution in the pencil sketches 



1831.] 

of Claude, Wilson, and Gainsborough, 
in contradistinction to what is called 
" high finish :" and observes that having 
adopted a similar style, the most effi- 
cient means are afforded of imitating his 
sketches, by drawing in lines mi stone 
with the lithographic chalk. This plan 
he has rendered to a considerable extent 
successful ; though we fear that there 
are many even among those who are not 
infected with a false taste for finish, that 
will think these sketches somewhat too 
slight or too coarse to admit of the re- 
quisite effect. Mr. Linton's observa- 
tions are worth looking at but we must 
look to his drawings. The views, we 
have no doubt, are well selected, and are 
in detail faithful copies of what the art- 
ist saw and admired in nature ; but ta- 
ken as a whole, they do not convey to 
our minds an adequate idea of the va- 
riety, loveliness, and luxuriance of 
Italian scenery. They are in parts bold 
and characteristic but the effect is not 
entire. They are too cold in short too 
sketchy. We like Lugano, San Mar- 
tino, Tivoli, and Subiaco, in preference 
to one or two of the others rather per- 
haps with reference to the scenes them- 
selves than to any superiority iu point of 
execution, which is throughout clever ; 
but, as we have hinted, calculated ra- 
ther to please the lover of this species 
of art, than to delight the enamoured 
eye of the student of nature. 

What a ludicrous contrast to these 
sketches are Mr. Cruikshank's new ones 
twelve of them illustrative of Sir 
Walter Scott's Demonology and Witch- 
craft. Cruikshank's store of extrava- 
gance is inexhaustible; he never fails 
to throw his humour into some new 
shape or situation, whatever his subject 
may be. His last sketches are thus as 
original as the first. Whatever he sends 
forth, we despair of ever again seeing 
anything so irresistible and we never 
do, till he publishes something else. 
These are excellent, and are worthy ac- 
companiments for Sir Walter. The 
" Corps de Ballet" a gentleman haunt- 
ed by his furniture, the backs of his 
fashionable chairs taking the semblance 
of heads, the chairs themselves dancing 
about, and the whole room rolling in a 
superabundance of horrors this is su- 
perb. The Spectre Skeleton looking 
over the doctor's shoulder, at the foot of 
the sick man's bed, comes up to the sub- 
ject. Elfin Tricks, and the Persecuted 
Butler, are as good. Black John and 
the Witches is even better ; the group 
of hags is appallingly ludicrous. And 
the Witches' Frolic is equal to it, with 
the huge undefined figure of the fiend 
rolling in the water, and the witches 
sailing in their sieves, some on the 
waves, some in the air. The book is al- 



Fine Arts 1 Publications. 



103 



most too cheap ; it is an amusement for 
a long Christmas evening. 

One of the most interesting ornitho- 
logical works that have hitherto appear- 
ea to illustrate a most important depart- 
ment of zoological science a publica- 
tion which promises to become as valu- 
able in science as it is beautiful in art 
is A Century of Birds from the Himalaya 
Mountains* hitherto unfigured, by John 
Gould, A.L.S. The work will comprise 
twenty folio numbers, each of these num- 
bers containing four or five plates, but 
invariably five birds in most instances, 
the size of life. Here, then, are a hun- 
dred birds, inhabitants of the unexplored 
districts of the great mountain-chain of 
Central Asia, all of them probably in- 
troduced for the first time into this 
country, certainly for the first time fi- 
gured, and many of them interesting as 
connecting groups, or exhibiting affini- 
ties where none have hitherto existed. 
Such a circumstance as this must tend 
to make the work valuable in a scientific 
point of view ; and as productions of 
art, these drawings equal, perhaps ex- 
ceed, all ornithological illustrations that 
we have yet seen. It is remarkable in- 
deed how little, until within these few 
years, science has been indebted to art. 
In these figures upon stone, brilliantly 
coloured, we find the two excellences 
combined accuracy and fidelity in pre- 
serving not only the general character 
of the bird, but its more minute though 
not less important characteristics ; and, 
united to this, all the beauty, freedom, 
and finish of drawing that are indispen- 
sable to an adequate and satisfactory 
representation of nature. Of the five 
figures that compose the first number, 
the Tragopan Hastingsii named after 
Lord Hastings is unquestionably the 
most splendid in point of colouring; but 
it will scarcely be found more attractive 
than the delicate plumage of the beauti- 
ful jay, or the quiet dignity of the owl 
who is sitting, enveloped in his soft 
feathery robe, with a gravity worthy of 
his wisdom, and looks as much like a 
Lord High Chancellor as if the branch 
that supports him were the woolsack. 
The white-crested pheasant (Phasianus 
albo cristatus}, of which we have been 
favoured with a specimen, intended for 
the ensuing number, seems almost supe- 
rior to these. They are drawn, of course 
from nature, by E. Gould. Descriptions 
of the subjects illustrated will be sup- 
plied by Mr. Vigors, the Secretary of 
the Zoological Society. 

The twentieth number of the Spirit of 
the Plays of Shakspeare is devoted to the 
second and third parts of Henry the 
Sixth ; the second affording eleven, and 
the third eight subjects for illustration. 
They evince the same degree of spirit, 



104 



Fine Arts' Publications. 



[JAN. 



knowledge, and discrimination in the 
choice of subject, that has characterized 
the work from its commencement ; and 
to artists and lovers of art, they will 
prove, no doubt, at least as interesting 
as any of the preceding illustrations. 
The Shaksperian student, however, in 
addition to the comparative want of at- 
traction in the general character of 
these plavs, and in many of the points 
selected for embellishment, will find the 
same deficiencies in all. The fault of 
them is, that they are not Shaksperian ; 
nor does it seem possible to convey any 
thing resembling the spirit of Shakspeare 
in any set of outlines however excellent 
in execution. Mr. Howard might as 
well hope to paint the rainbow with a 
single colour, or to afford an idea of the 
beauties of a country by exhibiting a 
map of it. We admit that several of the 
designs are spirited and tasteful, and 
have little doubt that there is a consider- 
able number of persons to whom they 
will prove acceptable and interesting. 
Our own sense, however, of the wonders 
of the great poet of human nature leads 
us to regard most of the illustrations of 
his works that we have seen, as common- 
place and contemptible. It is surpris- 
ing, among such a multitude of attempts, 
how few have succeeded ; and how much 
yet remains to be done in a field open 
to all. 

Another number the eighth of the 
Landscape Illustrations of Waverley, has 
appeared; we can only describe it by 
saying that it is ecjual to its fellows. 
When so much care is employed in the 
production of a uniformity of beauty, it 
is seldom that we can point out one view 
that surpasses the rest. Dumbarton 
Castle, by Roberts, and Inverary Pier, 
by Daniell the one from the Heart of 
Mid Lothian, the other from the Le- 

gend of Montrose are the most spark - 
ng. Thev are all from the graver of 
E. Finden." 



Of the twentieth number of the Na-> 
tlonal Portrait Gallery, the three engrav- 
ings are the late Duke of Kent, the 
present Earl of Harewood, and the late 
Archdeacon Nares. The Duke of Kent's 
portrait, by Scriven, from Sir William 
Beechey's picture, is bold and charac- 
teristic ; and that of Archdeacon Nares 
is worthy of its pious arid excellent sub- 
ject. 

The fourth part of this highly in- 
teresting and beautiful work contains, 
like its precursors, three engravings. 
Perawa, by I. S. Cotman and W. Le 
Petit, is an extremely brilliant and 
sunny view of a fine picturesque old 
fort. The Caves of Ellora, by G. Cat- 
termole and W. Woolnoth, is, though 
sweetly engraved, somewhat deficient 
in effect as a view of those architectural 
singularities. Shuhur, by W. Purser 
and P. Heath, is a scene of extraordi- 
nary beauty ; the castellated buildings, 
touched with a broad bright light, the 
clear unruffled water enveloped in deep 
shadow the banks, and those that are 
upon them all are beautiful, and form 
a most delightful view, at once quiet 
and animated, simple and luxuriant. 

We close our list with Tlie Cypress 
Wreath for an Infant's Grave a beauti- 
ful little volume, addressing itself prin- 
cipally to the sympathies oi' mothers on 
the loss of infant children. It comes in, 
among the numerous embellished books 
which the season has produced, like a 
moral commentary on their pride and 
pleasures. Perhaps the cheerful bind- 
ing hardly prepares us for what is to fol- 
low; or rather the piety which per- 
vades these pages is too entirely mingled 
with mournful feelings, and its clouds 
and tears are not sufficiently relieved 
by the light of hope and cheerfulness. 
There are one or two essay? by the 
editor, the Rev. John Bruce; and the 
poetry consists of selections from various 
moral and religious writers. 



WORKS IN THE PRESS AND NEW PUBLICATIONS, 



We are informed that Mr. Thomas 
Campbell has entirely withdrawn him- 
self from the editorship of the New 
Monthly Magazine. 



WORKS 



THE PRESS. 



The following are in a course of 
preparation : 

By Thomas Moore, Esq. : The Life 
and Death of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. 

By the Bishop of Chester : Lectures, 
practical and expository, on the Gospels 
of Matthew and Mark. 

Vegetable Cookery; with an intro- 



duction, recommending abstinence from 
animal food and intoxicating liquors. 

By Col. Napier : The third volume 
of his History of the Peninsular War. 

By the Rev. Wm. Phelps : The His- 
tory and Antiquities of Somersetshire. 

Voyage to the Pacific and Behring's 
Straits. 

By Wm. Godwin, Esq. : Essays on 
the faculties and economy of the Mind. 

By Walter Crum, of Glasgow : An 
Inquiry into the Theory of Colours, 
with reference to the Newtonian Doc- 
trine. 

Reflections on the causes which have 



1831.] 



List of New Works. 



105 



overturned that self-elected vestry of 
St. Marylebone. 

By the author of the Castilian, c. : 
A Spanish tale, to be entitled, the In- 
cognito, or Sins and Peccadillos. 

Thoughts on Reform, by an M. P. 

Remarks on the Representative Sys- 
tem in Parliament, with a glance' at 
those Acts in the Statute Book supposed 
to have their origin in corruption. 

By Professor Me. Cullock : A theore- 
tical and practical Dictionary of Com- 
merce and Commercial Navigation. 

By the author of Select Female 
Biography : Annals of My Village, a 
Calendar of Nature for every month in 
the year. 

By the same author : Surveys of the 
Animal Kingdom, and Sacred Melodies, 
suggested by natural objects. 

The Spirit of Don Quixote ; with 
coloured engravings. 

By dipt. Thomas White, R.N. : Na- 
val Researches ; or a candid inquiry into 
the conduct of Admirals Byron, Graves, 
Hood, and Rodney, in the actions of 
Grenada, Chesapeak, St. Christopher's, 
and. 9th and 12th of April, 1782. 

By the author of the Prophetic Mes- 
senger : A volume to be called Ra- 
phael's Witch ; with illustrations. 

By W. Dunkin : The History and 
Antiquities of Bicester; with an inquiry 
into the history of the Roman Station at 
Alchester. 

By the Rev. Richard Lee, B.A, : An 
Analysis of Archbishop Seeker's Lec- 
tures on the Church Catechism. 

By J. L. Drummond, M. D. : Letters 
to a Young Naturalist. 

By the Rev. Humphrey Lloyd, F.T. 
C.D. : A Treatise on Optics ; "the first 
volume containing the theory of un- 
polarized light. 

By Mr. Jones Quain : Two Lectures 
on the Study of Anatomy and Physio- 
logy- 

By Mr. Rowbotham : A course of 
Lessons in French Literature, on the 
plan of his German Lessons. 

By William Woolley, Esq. : A Col- 
lection of Statutes relating to the town 
of Kingston-upon-Hull. 



LIST OF NEW WORKS. 

POLITICAL. 

Minutes of Evidence and Report 
taken before the Select Committees of 
both Houses of Parliament on the Af- 
fairs of the East India Company. 2 vols 
8vo. 2. 2s. 

Cases and Remedies of Pauperism. 
By the Rt. Hon. R. Wilmot Horton. 
8vo. 12s 

Patroni Ecclesiarum, a list of Patrons 
of Church Dignities, &c. Roval 8vo. 
18s. 
M.M. New Series. .VOL. XI. No. 01. 



A Letter to the Earl of Wilton, on a 
Graduated Property and Income Tax ; 
and a Plan of Parliamentary Reform. 
By an Englishman. 8vo. 2s. 

An Attempt to prove that Lord Chat- 
ham was Junius. By John Swinden. 
8vo. 3s 6d. 

A Country Rector's Address to his 
Parishioners at the close of the twenty- 
fifth Year of his Residence among them. 

BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. 

Dr. Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, 
Vol. XIII. ; being the History of the 
Western World, Vol. I. United States 
of America. 6s. 

Romance of History. Third series. 
Romantic Annals of France. 3 vols. 
1. 11s. 6d. 

Lingard's England, Vol. VTII. 4to. 
35s. ; same in 8vo. 2 vols. 24s. 

Nicolas's Observations on Historical 
Literature. 8vo. 7s. Gd. 

Household Book of Elizabeth of York. 
8vo. 21s. 

Anecdotes of Napoleon. 3 vols. 18mo. 
9s. 

Constable's Miscellany, Vols. 60 and 
61 History of the War of Indepen- 
dence in Greece. 7s. Vol. 62 History 
of Peru. 3s. 6d. 

The History of the First Revolution 
in France, from 1787 to 1802. By John 
Bell, Esq. 8vo. 12s. 

A Narrative of the Peninsular Cam- 
paigns, from 1808 to 1814. By Major 
Leith Hay. 2 vols. 12mo. 21s. 

Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece ; 
containing an Account of the Military 
and Political Events in 1823 and fol- 
lowing Years. By Julius Mullingen. 
8vo. 

The History of Chivalry. ByG.P.R. 
James, Esq. "l2mo. 5s. 

Murray's Family Library, Vol. 18 
The Life of Bruce, the African Travel- 
ler. By Major Head. 5s. 

The Political Life of the Right Hon. 
George Canning. By Augustus Gran- 
ville Stapleton. 3 vols. 8vo. 36s. 

The Life and Correspondence of Ad- 
miral Rodney. 2 vols. 8vo. 24s. 

Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and 
Correspondence of James Currie, M.D. 
Edited by his Son, W. Currie. 2 vols. 
8vo. 

The Life of Mrs. Jordan. By James 
Boaden. 2 vols. 8vo. 28s. 

The Scottish Gael; or Celtic Man- 
ners, as preserved among the High- 
landers in Scotland. By James Logan. 
2 vols. 8vo. 30s. 

POETRY. 

Beauties of the Mind. By Charles 
Swain. 12mo. 6s. 

Poems. By Mrs. I. S. Prowse. 12mo. 
6s. 

Serious Poems. By Mrs. Thomas. 6s. 

High -met tied Racer; with designs 
by Geo. Cruikshank. Is. 6d. 

P 



106 



List of New Works. 



[JAN. 



RELIGION, MORALS, &C. 

The Literary Policy of'the Church of 
Rome. Bv the Rev. Joseph Mendham. 
8vo. lOs.Cd. 

The Law of the Sabbath, Religious 
and Political. By Josiah Condei. 8vo. 
2s. 6d. 

Harrison's Protestant Instructor. 8vo. 
5s. 6d. 

A Manual of the Rudiments of Theo- 
logy. By the Rev. J. B. Smith. 12mo. 
9s.* 

The Errors of Romanism traced to 
their Origin in Human Nature. By 
Richard Whately, D.D. 8vo. 10s. 6d. 

Travels and Researches of Eminent 
English Missionaries, including an His- 
torical Sketch of the Progress of Mis- 
sions of late Years. By Andrew Picken. 
12mo. 7s. 6d. 

Trial of the Unitarians. 8vo. 8s. 

Morrison's Counsels to Sunday 
School Teachers. 32mo. Is. 

Practical Lectures on the Historical 
Books of the Old Testament. By the 
Rev. Henrv Lindsay. 2 vols. 12mo. 
10s. 

Sermons on various Subjects and Oc- 
casions. By the Rev. W. Jones, of 
Nay land. 2 vols. 8vo. 21s. Now first 
published. 

Sermons on the Sacraments and Sab- 
bath. By the Rev. Mr. James. 8vo. 
8s. 6d. 

The Book of Isaiah, translated from 
the Hebrew text of Van der Hooght. 
By the Rev. John James. 12mo. 5s. 

Sermons at the Temple Church. By 
the Rev. Mr. Rowlatt, 8vo. 12s. 

Massillon's Select Sermons, frcm the 
French. By II. Morris. 8vo. 10s. 6d. 

SCHOOL AND JUVENILE BOOKS. 

A New Complete Greek Gradus, or 
Poetical Lexicon of the Greek Lan- 
guage. By Edward Maltby, D.D. 8vo. 
24s. 

A Grammar of the German Language. 
By C. F. Becker, M.D. 8vo. 8s. 6d. 

Key to the Rev. Dr. Butler's Latin 
Praxis. 8vo. 6s. 

Art of Correspondence in English and 
French. 2 vols. 18mo. 5s. 6d. 

General System of Mercantile Book- 
keeping. By L. Morrison. 4to. 10s. 6d. 

Rask's Anglo-Saxon Grammar. By 
Thorpe. 8vo. 15s. 6d. 

Juvenile Encyclopaedia, Vol. I. 
Voyages, &c. 18mo. 3s. 6d. 

Little Library. By the late Isaac 
Taylor. Vol. Ill The Forest gene- 
rally. 3s. 6d. 

Tales of a Grandfather ; being Stories 
taken from the History of France. By 
Sir Walter Scott, Bart. 3 small vols. 
with plates, uniform with Tales from 
Scottish History. 10s. fid. 

Strawberry-Hill and its Inmates ; an 
instructive Book for Children. 18mo. 
2s. 6d. half-bound. 



Ringlbergius on Study. Translated 
by G. B. Evap. 12mo. *4s. 

NOVELS AND TALES. 

Letters from a Peruvian, in English. 
3s. 

An Only Love; a Narrative. By the 
author of My Early Days. 12mo. 

Pen Tamar; or the Historv of an 
Old Maid. By the late Mrs." H. M. 
Bowdler. 8vo. 10s. Cs. 

Classical Cullings and Fugitive Ga- 
therings. 

Hood's Comic Annual for 1831. 12s. 

Affection's Offering ; a book for all 
seasons. 18mo. 4s. 

Fortune's Reverses, or the Young 
Bernese ; from the French of Mdme. 
Julie de la Faye. By Elizabeth Bowles. 

2 vols. 18mo. 7s. fid. 

The Military Bijou ; being the Glean- 
ings of Thirty-three Years' active Ser- 
vice. By John Shipp. 2 vols. 12mo. 
15s. 

The Persian Adventurer; forming a 
Sequel to the Kuzzilbash. By James 
Frazer. 3 vols. 1. Us. 6d. 

Stories of American Life, by Ame- 
rican Writers. Edited bv Mary Russell 
Mitford. 3 vols. 12mor l.lls.Gd. 

The Vizier's Son, or the Adventures 
of a Mogul. 3 vols. 24s. 

Exiles of Palestine. By John Carnes. 

3 vols. 1. lls.Cd. 

Warvay of the World ; a Novel. 3 
vols. post 8vo. \. Us. 6d. 

Undine ; a Romance. Translated 
from the German. 12mo. 5s. 6d. 

The Talba, or Moor of Portugal ; a 
Romance. By Mrs. Bray. 3 vols. 27s. 

MEDICAL AND CHEMICAL. 

The Female's Medical Adviser ; with 
Observations on the Treatment of the 
Diseases of Children. By Archibald 
M. Adams, M,D. 8vo. 9s. 

Estimate of the Value of Vaccination 
as a security against Small Pox, and the 
danger of encouraging the Inoculation 
of the latter. By Samuel Plumbe. 
3s. 6d. 

Elements of Pathology and Practice 
of Physic. By John Mackintosh, M. D . 
Vol. II. 8vo. 14s. 

Cases Illustrative of the Efficacy of 
various Medicines administered by In- 
halation in Pulmonary Consumption. 
By Sir Charles Scudamore, M.D. 8vo. 

Leach's Selections from Gregory's 
Conspectus and Celsus. 18mo. 7s- 
MUSICAL. 

The Cadeau; or Cottage Lyrics for 
1831. 4to. 12s. 

Love's Offering, or Songs for Happy 
Hours ; a new Musical Annual. Imp. 
4to. 12s. 

Apollo's Gift, or Musical Souvenir. 
4to. 16s. 

New System for Learning and Ac- 
quiring Extraordinary Facility on all 
Musical Instruments. 10s. Gd. 



1831.] 



List of Patents. 



107 



MISCELLANEOUS. 

A Century of Birds, from the Hima- 
laya Mountains. By John Gould, 
A.LS. Parti. 4to. 12s. 

The System of the World, by M. le 
Marquis de Laplace. Translated by 
the Rev. H.H. Harte, Fellow of Tri- 
nity College, Dublin. 2 vols. 8vo. 24s. 

Transactions of the Plymouth Insti- 
tution. Royal 8vo. 15s. 

Nichols, Priestley, and Walker's new 
Map of the Inland Navigation, Canals, 
and Rail-Roads. By J. Walker. Ac- 
companied by a Book of Reference, 
compiled by Joseph Priestley. Six 
Sheets, 3. 3s. Book of Reference, 4to. 
2. 2s. in boards. 



Annual Peerage for 1831. 2 vols. 28s. 

East India Register for 1831. 10s. 

Green's British Merchants' Assistant. 
Royal 8vo. 1. 11s. 6d. 

Time's Telescope for 1831. 12mo. 
9s. 

A new mode of Ventilating Hospitals, 
Ships, Prisons, &c. By George Haw- 
thorn, M.D. 8vo. 2s. Gd. 

A Visit to the Zoological Gardens. 
12mo. 6s. 

Hobler's familiar Exercises between 
an Attorney and his Articled Clerk. 
12mo. 3s. 6d, 

Wickstead's Exchequer of Plea Costs. 
12mo. 3s. 6d. 



PATENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL INVENTIONS. 



New Patents sealed in November, 1830. 

To Henry Calvert, Lincoln, gentle- 
man, for an improvement in the mode 
of making saddles so as to avoid the 
danger and inconvenience occasioned by 
their slipping forward. 26th October; 
2 months. 

To Jeffrey Shores, Blackwall, Mid- 
dlesex, boat builder and shipsmith, for 
an improvement or improvements on 
tackle and other hooks which he deno- 
minates u the Self-relieving Hooks." 
1st November; 2 months. 

To John Collinge, Lambeth, Surrey, 
engineer, for an improvement or im- 
provements on the apparatus used for 
hanging or suspending the rudders of 
ships or vessels of different descriptions. 
1st November; 6 months. 

To Benjamin Cook, Birmingham, 
Warwick, brass-founder, for an improved 
method of making a neb or nebs, slot or 
shells, or hollow cylinders of copper, 
brass, or other metals for printing ca- 
licoes, muslins, cloths, silks, and other 
articles. 4th November ; 6 months. 

To Lewis Aubrey, Two Waters, 
Herts, engineer, for inventing certain 
improvements in cutting paper. 4th 
November ; 6 months. 

To John Bowler, Castle-street, South- 
wark, Surrey, hat manufacturer, for 
certain improvements in machinery em- 
ployed in the process of dying hats. 
4th November ; 2 months. 

To Joel Benedict Nott, Esq., Schenec- 
lady, New York, but now of Bury-street, 
St.* James's, Middlesex, for certain im- 
provements in the construction of a fur- 
nace or furnaces for generating heat and 
in the apparatus for the application of 
heat to various useful purposes. 4th 
November ; 6 months. 

To Thomas Bramley, gentleman, and 
Robert Parker, lieutenant in the Royal 
Navy, both of Mousley Priory, Surrey, 



for certain improvements on locomotive 
and other carriages, or machines appli- 
cable to rail and other roads, which in%. 
provements, or part or parts thereof, 
are also applicable to moving bodies on 
water and working other machinery. 
4th November ; 6 months. 

To Alexander Bell, Chapel - place, 
Southwark, engineer, for certain im- 
provements in machinery for removing 
wool or hairs from skins. 4th Novem- 
ber ; 6 months. 

To Augustus Whiting Gillet, Birm- 
ingham, Warwick, merchant, for an im- 
provement in the construction and 
application of wheels to carriages of 
pleasure, or of burden, or to machines 
for moving heavy bodies. 4th Novem- 
ber ; 2 months. 

To George Givinett Bompas, Esq., 
M.D. of Fishponds, near Bristol, for an 
improved method of preserving copper 
and other metals from corrosion or 
oxidation 4th November ; 6 months. 

To Joseph Gibbs, Esq., of Crayford, 
Kent, for improvements in evaporating 
fluids, applicable to various purposes. 
6th November; 6 months. 

To John Hall, the younger, of Dart- 
ford, Kent, engineer, for a machine upon 
a new and improved construction for the 
manufacture of paper. 9th November ; 
6 months. 

To George Minter, of Princes-street, 
Soho, Middlesex, upholsterer, cabinet 
and chair manufacturer, for an improve- 
ment in the construction, making, or 
manufacturing of chairs. 9th Novem- 
ber ; 2 months. 

To Henry Pratt, of Bilson, Stafford, 
miller, for certain improvements in the 
making and manufacturing of quarries, 
applicable to kilns for drying wheat, 
malt, and other grain, and to various 
other purposes. llth November; 6 
months. 

To Sir Thomas Cochrane, Knt, com- 

T> fi 



108 



Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 



[JAN. 



monly called Lord Cochrane, of llegent- 
street, Middlesex, for an improved 
rotary engine, to be impelled by steam, 
and which may be also rendered appli- 
cable to other purposes. llth Novem- 
ber ; 6 months. 

To Charles Stuart Cochrane, Esq., 
of Great George-street, Westminster, 
for certain improvements in the prepar- 
ing and spinning of cashmere wool. 
13th November ; C months. 

To John Tyrrell, Esq., barrister-at- 
law, of St. Leonard's, Devon, for a me- 
thod and apparatus for setting sums for 
the purpose of teaching some of the 
rules of arithmetic. 13th November ; 
6 months. 

To Thomas Sands, Liverpool, mer- 



chant, for certain improvements in 
spinning machines. 18th November ; 6 
months. 



List of Patents which having been granted 
in the month of December, 1816, expire 
in the present month of December, 1830 : 

10. Richard Wright, London, for an 
improved method of constructing and pro- 
pelling ships. 

14. William Dean, Manchester, /or 
an improved machinery for leading calico 
or cloth previous to glazing. 

19. Samuel Brown, London, and 
Philip Thomas, Liverpool, for an im- 
proved method of manufacturing chains, 
chain-cables, fyc. 



BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS. 



GENERAL VANDAMME. 

Vandamme, Count of Unebourg, a dis- 
tinguished officer of the revolution, whose 
death recently occurred, was the son of an 
apothecary of Cassel, in the department of 
the north, where he was born on the 5th of 
November, 1771- Having entered the army 
at an early period of life, the inflexible 
courage which he displayed, obtained for 
him an unusually rapid advancement. He 
was placed at the head of a light troop, 
which received the complimentary desig- 
nation of the Chasseurs of Mont Cassel. 
In 1793, he was with the army of the 
north ; and, in the course of the three 
succeeding campaigns, he acquired great 
distinction at the commencement of the 
campaign of 1797, he commanded the 
advanced guard, with which he sustained 
the attack of the enemy, while the grand 
body of the army effected the passage of 
the Rhine. On this occasion, his horse 
was killed under him. 

In 1799, Vandamme was appointed 
General of Division, and he received the 
command of the left wing of the army of 
the Danube. He afterwards passed into 
Holland, under the orders of General 
Brune, then at the head of the French 
army in that country, and assisted in van- 
quishing the Anglo-Russian forces, under 
the Duke of York, at Alkmaer. For a time, 
his wounds and his fatigues having im- 
posed on him the necessity of quiet, he 
retired to his native town. However, in 
April, 1800, he returned; took the com- 
mand of a division of the army of the 
Rhine, and acquired new glory, at the pas- 
sage of that river between Stein and SchafF- 
hausen, and on various other occasions. 
From Buonaparte, at that time first consul, 
he received several marks of distinction, 
and was named grand officer of the Legion 
of Honour. With the command of the 
Wurtemburg troops against the Austrians, 
in the campaign of 1809, he obtained the 
decoration of the grand cross of Wurtem- 



berg. In many instances particularly at 
the battle of Urfar, where he completely 
routed three columns of Austrian troops 
he greatly distinguished himself. 

In 1811, General Vandamme was ap- 
pointed President of the Electoral College 
of Hazebruk. Serious misunderstandings 
between him and Jerome Buonaparte pre- 
vented his having any command in the 
expeditions against Russia, in 1812. He 
was disgraced, and ordered to retire to 
Cassel. However, in February, 1813, he 
was called to the command of a division of 
troops. On the 25th of August he made 
himself master of Pirna and Hohendorf ; 
and, on the 29th, he passed the great chain 
of the mountains of Bohemia, and marched 
upon Kulm, where he found 10,000 Russians 
commanded by General Osterman. He 
fought with his accustomed bravery ; but 
General Count Keish de Nollendorf de- 
bouched by the mountains and fell upon 
his rear he found himself assailed at all 
points he lost the whole of his artillery 
and 6,000 troops and was himself taken 
prisoner. Pie was, in consequence, marched 
to Moscow and Wralka, to the north of 
Kasan, and within twenty leagues of Siberia. 
In other respects, also, he was treated with 
ungenerous severity, the Grand Duke Con- 
stantine having deprived him of his sword, 
which had been returned to him by order 
of the Emperor Alexander himself. 

At the battle of Leipsic, in 1813, he 
sustained a reverse from his old opponent, 
General Kleist. It was not until the first 
of September, 1814, that he again reached 
France. In Paris, he was the object of 
personal insult from various quarters. At 
length, he was ordered, by the minister of 
war, to quit the capital within twenty- four 
hours; and, accordingly, on the 20th of 
March, 1815, he was found in the repose of 
private life. 

When the news arrived of Buonaparte's 
landing from Elba, General Vandamme 
made a tender of his services to Louis 



1831.] 



Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 



109 



XVIII. They were not accepted. Afte* 
the king had left Paris, Vandamme re- 
paired thither, and presented himself before 
Napoleon, who made him a peer of France, 
and commandant of the second division of 
the army. Subsequently, in June, 1815, 
he commanded the third corps cTarmte, 
under General Grouchy, whose conduct 
became the object of heavy suspicion and 
censure. Vandamme, however, was emi- 
nently successful at the attack of Wavres, 
after the battle of Fleurus, and his troops 
were in actual pursuit, ^Vhen intelligence 
reached him of the defeat of Buonaparte at 
Waterloo. The tables thus turned, he was 
in danger of being crushed by superior 
numbers ; but with excellent conduct, he 
effected his retreat, sustaining scarcely any 
loss. General Vandamme occupied Mont- 
rouge, Meudon, Vanvres, and Issey. Some 
of the generals offered him the command of 
the army, which he declined, and afterwards 
retired behind the Loire. There he 
mounted the white cockade, and exhorted 
his troops to submission. 

The ordonnance of January 17th, 1816, 
having obliged General Vandamme to quit 
France, he retired to Ghent, the birth-place 
of his wife. Afterwards, he resided on his 
own beautiful estate at Cassel ; where, a few 
years since, he erected an asylum for old 
men, and restored several tracts of land to 
husbandry purposes in that neighbourhood, 
by the construction of dykes. Latterly, 
General Vandamme's residence was again 
at Ghent. About three weeks previously to 
his death, and shortly before the commence- 
ment of the revolution of 1830, he went to 
France for the purpose of exercising his 
rights as an elector. 

ADMIRAL SIR C. M. POLE. 

Sir Charles Morice Pole, Bart., of Al- 
denham Abbey, Herts., Admiral of the 
Red Squadron, and Knight Grand Cross of 
the Bath, was a member of the noble house 
of Pole, baronets of Shute, in the county of 
Devon. His grandfather, the Rev. Carolus 
Pole, rector of St. Breoek, in Cornwall, was 
the fourth son of Sir John Pole, third 
baronet of Shute, by Anne, youngest 
daughter of Sir William Morice, Secretary 
of State to Charles II. His father, Regi- 
nald Pole, Esq., of Stoke Damorrell, in 
Devonshire, married Anne, second daugh- 
ter of John Francis Buller, Esq., of Mervell, 
in Cornwall. By this marriage Sir C. M. 
Pole was the second son. His elder brother, 
Reginald Pole, who assumed the additional 
surname of Carew, in compliance with the 
will of Sir Coventry Carew, of Anthony, in 
Cornwall, who filled the office of Under 
Secretary of State for the Home Depart- 
ment, during Mr. Addington's adminis- 
tration. 

Charles Morice Pole was born on the 
18th of January, 1757 ; and, having been 
educated at the Royal Naval Academy, at 
Portsmouth, he entered the naval service 



of his country. Through the various sub- 
ordinate ranks of that service, he passed 
with great credit : he was a lieutenant 
early, and a post captain in 1770' During 
the American war, he commanded a frigate, 
in which, by the capture of numerous valu- 
able prizes, and by other services, he greatly 
distinguished himself. 

In 1792, Captain Pole married Henriette, 
daughter of John Goddard, Esq., of Wood- 
ford Hall, Essex, and niece of the wealthy 
Henry Hope, Esq., of Amsterdam ; who, 
on his death, left Sir Charles a noble 
legacy, and a large fortune to each of his 
two daughters, Henrietta Maria Sarah, and 
Anna Maria. Of these, the elder was mar- 
ried, in 1821, to William Stuart, Esq., 
only son of his Grace the late Hon. and 
most Rev. William, Archbishop of Armagh, 
and grandson of John, Earl of Bute. 

In 1795, Captain Pole was promoted to 
the rank of Rear-Admiral ; in 1801, to be 
a Vice-Admiral, and, in 1805, to be Ad- 
miral of the Red. In consideration of his 
professional services as much, perhaps, in 
consequence of his high ministerial and 
other connections he was, on the 12th of 
September, 1801, advanced to the dignity 
of a baronet. In 1803, he was brought into 
parliament for the borough of Newark, in 
Nottinghamshire; and, in 180G, during 
Earl St. Vincent's presidency at the Ad- 
miralty Boards, he was one of the junior 
lords. He was then appointed president of 
a board to reform the naval expenditure, 
and he brought in, and carried through par- 
liament a bill to remove the chest at Chat- 
ham, (an institution and fund for the relief 
of wounded seamen,) to Greenwich ; a 
measure of great importance to the navy. 
In 1807 and 1808, Sir Charles was member 
of parliament for Plymouth ; and, after- 
wards, he sat for Yarmouth, in the Isle of 
Wight. On the establishment of his pre- 
sent Majesty's household, as Duke of Cla- 
rence, Sir Charles Pole was appointed one 
of the grooms of the bed-chamber to His 
Royal Highness ; an office whjch he con- 
tinued to hold till the accession of Wil- 
liam IV., when he was appointed Equerry 
to his Majesty, and immediately afterwards, 
naval Aide-de-Camp to the King, and 
Master of the Robes, vice Lord Mount- 
charles. 

Of these honours, Sir C. M. Pole had 
but a brief enjoyment. He died on the 
Cth of September, at his seat, Aldenham 
Abbey, in the 74th year of his age. 



LADY THURLOW. 

Mary Catherine, Lady Thurlow, died at 
Southampton, on the 28th of September, 
having survived her husband, Edward, 
second Baron Thurlow, only about fifteen 
months. This lady remembered by many 
of our readers as Miss Bolton, an actress of 
no mean celebrity was the eldest daughter 
of Mr. James Richard Bolton, a wine-mer- 
chant, if we forget not, somewhere not far 



110 



biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons* 



[JAN. 



from the theatres. She was born about the 
year 1 789 ; and, having received a musical 
education under Mr. Lanza, she sang with 
much success at the Hanover-square and 
Willis's Rooms' concerts. It is said that, 
when at the age of seventeen, she made her 
first appearance on the stage (October 8, 
1 806), she had witnessed only five drama- 
tic performances ; three during her child- 
hood, and two in the winter of 1805. Mr. 
Lanza introduced her to Mr. Kemble and 
Mr. Harris ; and the character selected for 
her dtbut was Polly, in the Beggar's Opera. 
In this she was brilliantly successful ; the 
piece was repeated many times during the 
season; Love in a Village was revived, 
specially .for the purpose of introducing her 
to the public in that opera ; and, in many 
other pieces, she was received with equal 
favour. 

Miss Bolton retained her station with 
eclat, for seven years ; when, after a court- 
ship of some length, she was married to 
Lord Thurlow, at" the church of St. Mar- 
tin's in the Fields, on the \ 3th of Novem- 
ber 1813. It has been stated that, previ- 
ously to her marriage, she obtained from 
Lord Thurlow an annuity for her father 
and mother, to whom she was deeply and 
affectionately attached. Lady Thurlow ap- 
pears to have been one of the very few 
actresses who, having by marriage been 
elevated to the peerage, have proved them- 
selves capable of sustaining a high charac- 
ter in private equally as in public life. We 
have never heard her mentioned but in 
terms of respect as a pattern of conjugal 
duty and domestic happiness. Her lady- 
ship has left three sons ; of whom, Edward 
Thomas, the eldest, succeeded to the family 
title and estates, on the death of his father, 
June 4, 1829. 

LORD BLAXTYRE. 

The Right Hon. Robert Walter Stewart, 
Lord Blantyre, of the county of Lanark, 
who accidentally lost his life during the 
disorders at Brussels, in September last, 
was of a branch of the ancient and noble 
family of Stewart, or Stuart, Dukes of 
Lenox. His lordship was a major-general 
in the army, and a knight companion of the 
order of the Bath. He was also lord-lieu- 
tenant of the county of Renfrew. This no- 
bleman was born on the 10th of June, 
1775; and he succeeded his father, Alex- 
ander, tenth Lord Blantyre, on the 5th of 
November, 1783. His lordship was bred 
to the army, into which he entered young. 
He served in the Duke of York's expedi- 
tion to Holland, in 1 799 ; in Egypt as aide- 
de-camp to General Stuart, in 1801 ; in 
the expedition to Pomerania and Zealand, 
in 1807 ; and with the Duke of Wellington 
in the Peninsular war, in 1809. 

Lord Blantyre married, on the 26th of 
February, 1813, Frances, second daughter 
of the Hon. John Rodney, of the Island of 
Ceylon (son of Admiral Sir George, first 



Lord Rodney, K.B.), by his first wife, by 
the Lady Catherine Nugent, sister of the 
late Earl of Westmeath. A sister of Lady 
Blantyre is married to the Hon. Major- 
General Patrick Stewart, next brother to 
her late husband. Lady Blantyre is also 
half-sister to Lady George Lennox, and to 
Miss Eliza Rodney. By this marriage 
Lord Blantyre has left a son, George, his 
successor, bom in 1818, and a family of 
seven or eight other children. 

His lordship had been some time residing 
at Brussels, where, from a local accident, he 
was confined to his chamber. To obtain a 
view of the proceedings of the mob in their 
attack upon the town, he unfortunately 
chanced to put his head out- of the window 
of the hotel whence he had just before 
removed a maid-servant and was instantly 
shot. There does not, however, appear to 
be any ground for the belief in the report 
that he was the victim of assassination. 
His lordship was a man of high reputation 
of quiet, domestic habits, and was greatly 
beloved. 

THE DUKE OF ATHOL. 

His Grace, John Murray, Duke, Marquis 
and Earl of Athol ; Marquis and Earl of 
Tullibardin ; Earl of Strathsay and Stra- 
therdale ; Viscount Glenalmond, Balquhi- 
c r ir, and Glenlyon ; Baron Murray, of Tul- 
libardin ; Lord Belvemere and Gask, in 
North Britain ; Earl Strange, Baron 
Strange, and Baron Murray, of Stanley, in 
the county of Gloucester, in the Peerage of 
the United Kingdom ; K. T. ; F. R. S. ; 
Lord Lieutenant and Hereditary Sheriff of 
the county of Perth ; Captain-General and 
Governor of the Isle of Man ; was the Re- 
presentative of the family of Murray, which 
derives its origin from John de Moravia, 
Sheriff of Perthshire in the year 1219. 
William, grandson of John de Moravia, 
was one of the Magnates Scotice sum- 
moned to Berwick by King Edward I., in 
1292 ; and, by marriage with Ann, daughter 
of Malin, Seneschal of Strathan, he acquired 
the lands of Tullibardin, of which his des- 
cendants were nominated Barons. In 1736 
the absolute sovereignty of the Isle of Man 
devolved upon James, second Duke of 
Athol, as the heir of the Stanley family, 
to which it had been granted by King 
Henry IV. in 1406. By his nephew and 
successor, John, third Duke of Athol, and 
father of the late Duke, to whom this no- 
tice refers, the sovereignty of the Isle of 
Man was transferred to the British govern- 
ment for the sum of 70,000 ; the family, 
however, reserving their landed interest, 
with the patronage of the bishopric, and 
other ecclesiastical benefices, on payment of 
the annual sum of 101. 15s. lid. and 
rendering two falcons to the Kings and 
Queens of England upon the days of their 
coronation. 

His Grace, the late Duke, was born on 
the 30th of June, 1755 ; he succeeded to 



1831.] 



Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 



Ill 



the Scottish honours of his family, at the 
decease of his father, on the 5th of Novem- 
ber, 1774 ; he obtained the English earl- 
dom of Strange, and Barony of Murray, of 
Stanley, by creation on the 18th of Au- 
gusr, 1780; and he inherited the Barony 
of Strange, at the decease of his mother, 
who was Baroness of Strange in her own 
right, in 1805. His mother was the Lady 
Charlotte Murray, only daughter of James, 
second Duke of Athol. His Grace mar- 
ried, on the 26th of December, 1774, Jane, 
eldest daughter of Charles, ninth Lord 
Cathcart, by whom he had two sons and 
three daughters. His eldest son, John, 
born in 1778, has for some years been an 
inmate of a lunatic asylum, at Kilbourne, 
a circumstance which proved a source of 
deep and permanent affliction to his father. 
His malady is said to have originated in a 
brain fever, consequent on imprudent bath- 
ing. From the unhappy state of his intel- 
lect, his brother, James, born in 1782, 
supersedes him, by virtue of an act of par- 
liament, and succeeds to the family honours 
and estates, as fifth Duke of Athol, &c. 
This nobleman married, in 1810, the Lady 
Emily Frances Percy, sister of the present 
Duke of Northumberland ; and, in 1821, 
he was created Baron Glenlyon,of Glenlyon, 
in the county of Perth. The Duke's eldest 
daughter, Charlotte, was married, first, to 
the late Sir John Menzies, Bart. ; secondly, 
to Rear-Admiral Adam Drummond, of 
Meginch : his second daughter, Amelia 
Sophia, is married to Viscount Strathallan ; 
and his third, Elizabeth, to Sir Evan John 
Macgregor Murray, Bart. His Grace's 
first wife dying in 1790, he married in 
1704, Margery, eldest daughter of James, 
sixteenth Lord Forbes, and relict of 
Macleod, by whom he had several children, 
all now deceased. 



For thirty-six years the Duke of Athol 
had enjoyed the office of Lord Lieutenant 
of his county ; in which, too, the greater 
part of his life had been spent. As a 
spirited and enterprising landed proprietor, 
his loss there will be deeply felt. His 
Grace died at his seat, Athol House, Dun- 
keld, Perthshire, on the 29th of September. 
His funeral took place on the 18th of Octo- 
ber, in a manner strictly private, and void 
of ostentatious ceremony. According to his 
express wish, his body was deposited hi a 
coffin made of one of his own larch trees, 
without any covering, but highly polished 
and varnished, that thus another trial might 
be given of the durability of his favourite 
timber. The funeral service was read by 
the Bishop of Rochester ; and a mournful 
procession, consisting of the members of 
the family, and the immediate relations and 
friends of the deceased, conveyed his re- 
mains to the burial-place of his fathers. 

ADMIRAL SIR JOHN NICHOLLS, K.C.B. 

This officer, born in 1758, died early in 
September, at his residence in Somerset- 
shire. According to the custom formerly 
prevalent with those who had interest, he 
entered the service in his childhood ; and, 
after passing through all the respective gra- 
dations of rank, he was made Post-Captain 
in 1788. In the war that broke out after 
the commencement of the French Revolu- 
tion, he, in 1793, commanded the Royal 
Sovereign, of 100 guns, at that time bear- 
ing the flag of Admiral Lord Graves ; in 
1807, he commanded the Marlborough, of 
74 guns ; in 1810 he was made Rear- 
Admiral; in 1820, K.C.B. ; in 1825, Vice- 
Admiral of the Blue ; and in 1830, Ad- 
miral of the White. He was some time 
Comptroller of the Navy. 



MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 

AT this season of the year, our Correspondents have little to communicate on 
the ordinary occupations of husbandry ; their letters at the present turbulent 
crisis, are filled with very different, indeed, disheartening subjects, with the con- 
solation, however, that a stop has at length been put to the horrible devastations 
which have prevailed almost throughout" the country, and that great numbers of 
misguided and revengeful delinquents have been apprehended. In those fortunate 
districts which escaped the dreadful visitations, among which Herts, as in other 
respects, formerly adverted to, stands most memorably and creditably prominent, 
the arrears of cultivation have been completed in a style considerably superior to 
expectation for times like the present ; in those most subjected to the recent 
calamities, so much cannot be expected, and great interruption must have there 
been experienced to the completion of the year's business, as well as derangement 
and deterioration of the prospects of the year ensuing. The wheats in the southern 
and forward counties, are generally above ground, and upon dry and wholesome 
soils, have as fine and promising an appearance as could possibly be expected, upon 
lands in their notoriously neglected state. Our late letters make no further men- 
tion of the slug, the forwardest wheats probably getting beyond its powers, and a 
frost of some length will prove the only radical remedy. It was stated in our 
last, that the kindliness of the season had induced many farmers to extend their 
breadth of wheat. We have since been informed, in fact, several instances have 
come under our own observation, that many others have been deterred from risk- 
ing a wheat crop on part of their lands, both from the unfortunate experience of 
their two last crops, and the deplorably foul and exhausted state of the soil, much 



112 Agricultural Report. [JAN. 

of which it will be to their obvious advantage to throw out of culture. Wheat 
continues to rise gradually at market, and the quantity of home grown is gene- 
rally small ; so premature and erroneous was the public calculation on the late 
crop. In the poor land counties, little has been hitherto threshed, beyond the 
demand for seed, and the surplus, which want of money must soon bring to 
market, is reported to be low to a disheartening degree ; a still advancing price 
must be expected. Thus the country can ill afford the waste and destruction 
which has been made. Barley, though a defective crop, is heavy of sale, as are 
oats from their superior plenty. Pulse hold their price, with an inclination to 
advance. Wheat seed has been fortunately got in, throughout the great corn 
county of Norfolk, where the superior culture of the dibble has prevailed to a great 
extent: subject, however, to (the usual disadvantage of that mode,) insufficient 
clearing of the soil from weeds, which can only be effected through wide 
rows. 

The markets for store cattle are on the advance, and good wedders and ewes 
but the markets have been glutted with ordinary and unsound mutton : of the 
latter, lots have been burned in Smithfield. Great complaints from Wales, of the 
low prices of stock, where pigs of six months are selling at four or five shillings 
each. The price of store stock has been there calculated throughout the summer 
and autumn, at forty per cent., in proportion, below the price of corn. Gene- 
rally, however, in the country, complaints are made that fat stock has produced 
no profit, and that the prospect for winter feeding is discouraging. Horses for 
saddle and quick draught, are lower than during many years past. Wool continues 
rather on the decline, the buyers in the first months of its revival, having so 
amply stocked themselves. It will probably start again in the spring. The 
whole duty on hops for the present year, amounts to 153,125 18s. 6d. The trade 
continues very dull, with little or no change in the price. The thirty-second 
anniversary of the London Cattle Show has just passed. The exhibition consisted 
of the usual articles, and the only novelty which occurred, were the extension of 
it to four days, and the distribution of gold and silver medals. Except on the 
last day, it was not so numerously attended as formerly; and, for some years past, 
few men of rank have been seen there. 

Public opinion has gone generally against the farmers, whose complaints formerly 
were not deemed just ; but their justice has been of late too pointedly proved ! 
Their losses have been progressive from year to year ; their returns, instead of 
affording them a living, being inadequate to the expences of culture, and the 
payment of rent, tithes, poors' rates, and taxes. These must undoubtedly be 
reduced, and that to a considerable extent, before British farming can flourish as 
heretofore. This necessity, ultimately pressing on the landlords, will compel 
their votes for the lowest p'ossible reduction of taxes. Tithes seem to present the 
greatest difficulty ; no mode of commutation hitherto proposed, appearing to be 
satisfactory, and tl 



the general opinion for their entire abolition gradually gaining 
ground. A letter, however, has lately appeared in the County Chronicle, with 
the averment that the farmer profits from forty to cent, per cent., by the 
present tithing system ; yet with such notable acquisitions the farmer cannot 
live. 

Never were complaints better grounded, or more truly affecting, than those of 
the agricultural labourers. They have been oppressed, neglected, starved, in a 
land of superabundance, flowing from their own labour. But whatever the farmers 
may have to answer for originally, it has been obviously out of their power, of 
late, to increase labourers' wages, or even afford employment for the numbers 
depending upon it. This can only be effected by the landlords and the legis- 
lature. 

It is revolting to find a considerable part of the public, safe and comfortable at 
home by their fire-sides, defending the conduct of the peasantry, since it must l>e t 
productive ultimately of public benefit thus, as of old, the end sanctifies the 
means. The cry against threshing machines is hollow and absurd ; were farming 
productive, the tenantry would be able to employ a fair complement of labourers, 
and yet keep their machines, since threshing with the flail is by no means a 
favourite branch of labour with the husbandmen. In reality, to talk of the disuse 
of machinery in this manufacturing country, is to talk without book. 

But it is satisfactory to conclude, that effective measures are in operation, for 
ameliorating the condition of the whole body of the peasantry. ^ 

Smi&fteldE&iS, 3s. to 4s. Mutton, 2s, lOd. to 4s. 6d Veal, 4s. 6d. to 5s. Cd. 

Pork, 3s. 8d. to 5s. Hough fat, 2s. lOd. 

Corn Exchange. Wheat, 56s. to 76s. Barley, 28s. to 53s Oats, 19s. to 32. 

London 41b. loaf, lOd Hay, 45s. to 105s. Clover ditto, 50s. to 110s. Straw, 
30s. to 36s. 

. Coals in the Pool, 30s. to 42s per chaldron. 
Middlesex, Dec. 20th. 



1331.] [ 113 ] 



MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT. 



SUGAR.* A general and extensive demand for Muscavadoes continued during 
the last week ; extensive purchases would have taken place, but owing to a short 
supply of the qualities most in demand, which were strong for refining and very 
low brown, the prices were, 6d. to Is. per cwt. higher ; estimated sales, 3,300 hhds. 
and tierces. The stock of West Indian Sugars is now 40,064 hhds. and tierces, being 
4,606 less than last year. The delivery of West India Sugars last week was, 
3,275 hhds. and tierces, being, 341 more than last year; the delivery of Mauritius 
last week, 3,003 bags, being 560 more than the corresponding week of 1829 ; the 
market is firm at the improvement we have stated. Good new Sugars brought 
forward have sold freely. The refined market Was more firm last week ; no brown 
lumps offered under 62s. ; they have been selling at 61s. and 61s. 6d. ; nearly all 
the lumps are cleared off the market. The prices of refined free on board are now 
2s. or 3s. lower than last year, 62s. readily realized for low lumps from the great 
improvement in the Sugar Market ; Mauritius and East India Sugars have com- 
manded a profit, Is. or Is. 6d. per cwt. ; Siam Sugar sold at the advance of Is. 
per cwt. 

COFFEE. The public Sales of Coffee last week, were confined to small par- 
cels of Jamaica, Demerara, and Berbice ; a few lots of Jamaica ordinary sold, Is. 
and 2s. higher ; the demand for foreign Coffee has been general and extensive ; 
about 1,700 bags Brazil, sold chiefly at 33s. and 34s.; parcels of St. Domingo, 
32s. 6d., and Cheribon at the same price. The Coffee Market is unvaried. 

RUM, BRANDY, HOLLANDS. The demand for Rum continued general and 
extensive last week ; nearly 1,200 puncheons have been sold at a further advance 
of ^ to Id. per gallon ; in Jamaica Rum there are no sales. Brandy and Geneva 
are neglected. 

HEMP, FLAX, AND TALLOW. The Tallow Market continues firmly advancing, 
the late imports are on the most extensive scale. Flax is firm, Hemp a shade 
lower. 

Course of Foreign Exchange. Amsterdam, 12. 1. Rotterdam, 12. |. Hamburgh, 

13. 13. Altona, 13. 13^. Paris, 25. 35 Bordeaux, 25. 70 Frankfort, 15. 0. 

Petersburg, 10. 0. Vienna, 109. Trieste, 109. Madrid, 36. ^. Cadiz, 
36. Oi Bilboa, 36. 0|. Barcelona, 36. 0. Seville, 36. 0^. Gibraltar, 47- 0|. 
Leghorn, 47. 0^. Genoa, 25. 75. Venice, 46. 0. Malta, 48. O^. Naples, 39.0. 
Palermo, 118. 0. Lisbon, 45. 0. Oporto, 45. . Rio Janeiro, 18. 0. Bahia, 
25. 0. Dublin, 1. OJ. Cork, 1. 04. 

Bullion per Oz. Portugal Gold in Coin, 0. Os. Od. Foreign Gold in Bars 
3. 17s. 9d. New Doubloons, 0. Os. Od. New Dollars, 0. 4s. 9id. Silver in 
Bars (standard), 0. Os. Od. 

Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Stock Companies, at the Office of 
WOLFE, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhill. Birmingham CANAL, (\ sh.) 284J. 
Coventry, 850/. Ellesmere and Chester, 73/. Grand Junction, 2457 Kennet and 
Avon, 25J/. -Leeds and Liverpool, 395J.--Oxfbrd, 500/.~Regent's, 18/. Trent and 
Mersey, (\ sh.) 600/. Warwick and Birmingham, 280/. London DOCKS (Stock) 
67 i/. West India (Stock), 170/. East London WATER WORKS, 120/. Grand 
Junction, OO/ West Middlesex, 76/. Alliance British and Foreign INSURANCE, 
8J/. Globe, OOW. Guardian, 251. Hope Life, 5fJ. Imperial Fire, OOO/. GAS- 
LIGHT Westminster, chartered Company, 54/. City, 19 1/.- British, 1| dis 
Leeds, 195/. 



M.M. NeiD Series. -VOL. XL No. 61. 



C 



[JAN. 



ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES, 

Announced from November 23d, to December 22d, 1830, in the London Gazette. 



BANKRUPTCIES SUPERSEDED. 

J. Lee, Brighton, victualler. 

J. E. Rose, Bath, linen-draper. 

J. Kinsr, Lamb's Conduit-street, draper. 

J. F. Pan-is, Maula Hill, brick-maker. 

H. J. Torrington, Battle-bridge-wharf, builder. 

P. Shadrack, Brighton, plumber. 

W. Locke, Pury-street, Edmunds, innkeeper. 

BANKRUPTCIES. 

[This Month 140.] 
Solicitors' Names are in Parentheses. 

Atkinson, J., Cock -lane, brass-founder. (Norton, 
Jewin-street. 

Andrews, J. N., Northampton, victualler, (Vin- 
cent, Temple ; Cooke, Northampton. 

Adron, W. and C., St. Pancras, stone-masons. 
(Philby, Charlotte-street. 

Ardenne, R. H., Southwark, cabinet-maker. 
(Dover, Great Winchester-street. 

Allen, S., Stratford, coal-merchant. (Hilleary, 
Stratford. 

Alewvn, J., Fenchurch-street, merchant. (King, 
Token-house-yard . 

Bayes, W., Gainsburgh, iron-founder. (Dawson 
and Co., New Boswell-court ; Codd and Co., 
Gainsburgh. 

Bell, M., Great Surrey-street, victualler. (Nind 
and Co., Tlirogmorton-street. 

Bed ford, T., Wantage, post- horse-master. (Hague, 
Nelson -square. 

Bray, W. F., Liverpool-street, builder. (Atkins, 
Fox Ordinary-court. 

Bedford, 1)., London-wall, victualler. (Parnell, 
Spitaltields. 

Boone.G., Well?, innholdcr. (Blake, Palsgrave- 
place ; Lax, Wells. 

Briscoe, R., Manchester, shopkeeper. (Alding- 
ton and Co., Bedford-row : Dean, Manchester. 

Bell, H., Crown-court, Threadnecdle-street, mer- 
chant. (Nind and Co., Throgmorton-street. 

Brown, J., Old Kent-road, victualler. (Young 
and Co., Blackman-street. 

Bragg, J., Harrington, shipowner. (Norris and 
Co., John-street; Wilson, Liverpool. 

Bragg, J., Aketon, Spofforth, York, bleacher. 
(Dawson and Co., New Boswell-court; Gill, 
Knaresborough. 

Bricknell, J. P. A., Exeter, haberdasher. (Ad- 
lington and Co., Bedford-row ; Furlong, Exeter. 

Brooks, T., jun., Hunter-street, music-seller. 
(Aston, Old Broad-street. 

Bristow, W., Lambeth, baker. (Hill, Alderman- 
bury. 

Boot, J., Nottingham, bleacher. (Kniield, Gray's, 
inn ; Eufield and Son, Nottingham. 

Beddall, J. and P., High Holborn, carpenters. 
(Williams, Aifred-placo. 

Bagley, !>., Sedgeley, pig iron-maker. (Barber, 
Fetter-lane. 

Brooks. T., Manchester, haberdasher. (Hurd 
and Co., Temple ; Booth and Co., Manchester. 

Cansdell, W., Bishop.gate -street, auctioneer. 
(Towne, Broad-street-buildings. 

Chapman, R., Islington, builder. (Ashley, Old- 
street-road. 

Colson, H., Clapton, coach-proprielor. (Randall, 
Bank-chambers. 

Collett, H., Cheltenham, grocer. (Bousfield, 
Chatham-plate; Winferbotham, Cheltenham. 

Cullingford, R., Marylehone - lane, victualler. 
(Smith, Basinghall-strcet. 

Clarkson, J., Kinpston-upon-Hull, airent. (Rush- 
worth, Symond's-inn ; Brown, Kingston-upon- 
Hull. 

Cope, H., Mile-end-road, cattle-dealer. (Darke, 
Red Lion-square. 

Corden, W. J., Manchester, warehouseman. 
(Hindmarsh and Son, 3Ianchester, and Crescent, 
Jewin-strect. 



Cope, H. Barnet, tailor. (Bousfield, Chatham- 
place. 

Cross, R., Manchester, publican. (Adlingtoa 
and Co., Bedford-row; Morris and Co., Man- 
chester. 

Dickins, W., jun., Northampton, tailor. (Vin- 
cent, Temple ; Cooke, Northampton. 
Delves, R., Tunbridge Wells, lodging-house- 
keeper. (Burfoot, Temple ; Sprott, Tunbridge 
Wells. 
Drysdale, J., Wapping, ship-chandler. (Dods, 

Northumberland-street. 
Dayus.H., Southwark, engineer. (Briggs, Lin- 

coln's-inn-tields. 

Donald, J., Hayton, cattle-salesman. (Chisholme 
and Co., Lincoln's-inn-fields ; Fisher and Son, 
Cockertnouth. 
Emden, S.,Bncklersbury, merchant. (Bourdillon, 

Winchester-street. 

Earl, J., Hackney, cheesemonger. (Dods, North- 
umberland-street. 

Fielding, J. and J., Catterall, calico-printers. 
(Ellis and Co., Chancery-lane; Dixon and Co., 
Preston ; Brackenbury, Manchester. 

Fossick, S., Mumford-court, Milk-street, ware- 
houseman, and Gracechurch-street, umbrella- 
manufacturer. (Holt, Threadneedle-street. 

Friend, E. A., Cambridge, livery-stable-keeper. 
(Robinson and Sons, Half-moon-street ; Robin- 
son, Cambridge. 

Fogg, J., Manchester.surgeon. (Willettand Co., 
Essex-street ; Babb, Manchester. 

Fenn, W. H.. Old Change, tea-dealer. (Starling, 
Leicester-square. 

Garraway, J , Batheaston, baker (Williams and 
Co., Lincoln's-inn-iields ; Mochey, Bath. 

Gamble, J. and T., Kidd, Sutton-in-Holderness, 
wood-sawyers. (Rosser and Son, Gray's-inn ; 
England and Co., Hull. 

Glover, S., Poitland-road, bricklayer, (Chester, 
Newfngton. 

Glover, J., Wigan, draper. (Armstrong, Staple- 
inn ; Grimshaw and Co., Wigan. 

Kodsoll, W., jun., South-Ash, paper - maker. 
(Davies, Devonshire-square. 

Hebeit, H., Lcman-street, wine-merchant. (Holt, 
Threadneedlp-slreet. 

Holland, T., Birmingham, japanner. (Burfoot, 
Temple ; Page, Birmingham. 

Harrison, H., Manchester, merchant. (Adlington 
and Co., Bedford-row; Houghton and Co., 
Liverpool. 

Harrold, E., Wolverhampton, cotton-spinner. 
(Austen and Co., Gray's-inn ; Palmer, Coleshil!. 

Humfrey, J., Manningtree, wine - merchant. 
(Bromley, Gray's-inn ; Notcutt, Ipswich. 

Henn, A. H., Holborn, hatter. (Heard, Greut 
Prescot-street. 

Hodsoll,J., Farringham, miller. (Fox and Co., 
Fred crick's- place. 

Hayden, W., Oxford-street, haberdasher. (Gar- 
grave, Buckingdam-street. 

Husail, J., Lawrence-lane, tea-dealer. (Hill and 
Co., Gray's-inn. 

Hawes, R. B. and C. Smith, Walvvorth, builders. 
(Watson and Son, Bouverie-street. 

He.ldon, J. and H., Lambeth, linen-drapers. 
(Jones, Sise-lane. 

Hall, H. B., Minories and Bow, merchant. (Ja- 
cobs, Crosby-square. 

Jenkins, J., Marsbneld, dealer. (Evans and Co., 
Gray's-inn; Perkins, Bristol. 

Joseph, A., Penzance, flour-dealer. (Price and 
Co., Lincoln's-inn ; Emonds, Penzance. 

Jackson, D. and P., Manchester, carvers and 
gilders, (Makinson and Co., Temple. 

Johnson, L., York, linendraper. (VVilson, South- 
ampton-street ; Payne and Co., Leeds. 

Kettel, G., Tunbridge Wells, corn - dealer. 
Brou^h, Fleet-street. 

Kctel, C., Tunbridge Wells, brewer. (Davie*, 
Devonshire square. 



1831.] 



List of Bankrupts . 



115 



Knight, C., Basinghall-Btreet, dealer. (Fisher, 

Wai brook. 
Kelly, T., Liverpool, grocer. (Willet and Co., 

Essex-street. 

Killam, W., Kirton-in-Lindsey, victualler. (Eyre 
and Co., Gray's- inn ; Nicholson and Co.,Glam- 
lord Brings. 

Lock, H. A. U., Lower Thames-street, Custom- 
house agent. (Gregory, Clement's-inn. 
Larkaii, S. Greenwich, victualler. (Gamlen and 

Co., Furnival's-inn. 
Laing, J., Collcgdean, and Stanmore, graziers. 

(Crosse, Surrey-street. 
Lewis, J., Tenby, draper. (Blower, Lincoln's- 

inn-fields ; .Daniels, Gregory, and Co., Bristol. 
Langf'ord, J., Dorrington grove, and Poolquay, 
farmer. (Clark and Co., Lincoln's-inn-fields ; 
Williams, Shrewsbury. 
Marshall, J., Dartford, paper - mould - maker. 

(Richardson and Co., Bedford-row. 
Matthews, J., Bristol and Bath, picture dealer. 

(Jones, Crosby-square. 

IVioody, G., Lincoln, coach-maker. (Ellis andCo., 
Chancery-land ; Bromehead and Son, Lincoln. 
Mumford, S., Stanstead - street, corn - dealer. 
(Taylor and Co., Temple; Foster, jun., Cam- 
bridge. 

Muston, P. I., and T. P. Barlow, Austin-friars, 
commission-merchants. (Swain and Co., Fre- 
derick's- place. 

Manley, T., Wentworth-street, merchant. (Gre- 
gory, King's-anns-yard 
Mackenzie, W., Regent-street, wine-merchant. 

(Wolston, Furnival's inn 

Malyon, J., Old Kent-road, pawnbroker. (Wat- 
son and Sons, Bouverie-street 
May, J., Fenchurch-strect, victualler. (Hailstone, 

Lyon's-inn 

Neil, W., Rowsey, brick burner. (Roc, 'Temple- 
chambers ; Footner, Romsey 
Nokes, W., Rotherhithe, medicine-vender. (Bull, 

Holies-street 
Nicoll, J., Liverpool, sail-maker. (Tavlor and 

Co., Temple 
OMham, M., Stock-port, innkeeper. (Milne and 

Co., Temple; Wood, Bullock Smithy 
Owen, W., Speke, farmer. (Norris and Co., John- 
street ; Toulmin, Liverpool 
Pronchett, C. P., Jewry -street, iron-founder. 

(Haddan and Co., Angel-court 
Pongerard, F v , Fenchurch-street, merchant. (Not- 

tey, Thanet-place 

Parkin, J., Sheffield, fender-manufacturer. (Tat- 

tershall, Temple; Tattershall and Co., Sheffield. 

Preece, T., Lyecourt, Hereford, farmer. (Smith, 

Basinghall-street ; Coates and Co., Leominster 

Peskett, G., Peckham, surgeon. (Thornbury, 

Chancery-lane. 

Pluminer, J., and W.Wilson, Fenchurch-street, 
merchants. CLeblanc and Co., New Bridge- 
street. 
P.idley, W., Tetford, brewer. (Eyre and Co., 

Gray's-inn ; Selwood.Horneastle. 
Paare, W., Clerkenwell, victualler. (Willis, 

Sloane-square. 

Parkin, J., E. R. Thomas, and J. D. Walford, 
Fenchurch-street, brokers. (Keavsey and Co., 
Lothbury. 

Price, G., Chippen Campden, coal - merchant. 
(Sharpe and Co., Old Jewry ; Willdns and Co., 
Bourton-on-the-Water. 

Prior, W., Charlotte-street and Tottenham-court- 
road, brewer. (Aldridge and Co., Lincoln's- 
inn. 
Price, J., Manchester, paper-dealer, (Milne and 

Co., Temple ; Bent, Manchester. 
Rayner, J., Clerkenwell, iron-founder. (Wathen, 
Gray's-inn. 



Rinder, H., Leeds, victualler. (Strangewayes and 

Co.,Barnard's-Jnn ; Robinson, Leeds. 
Renriv, J. H., Threadneedle-street, merchant. 

(Oliverson and Co., Frederic-place 
Shacklefoni, P., Andover, draper. (Evans and 

Co., Gray's-inn. 

Spittle, J., Francis-street, horse-dealer. (Rey- 
nolds, Golden-square. 

Shipman, R., Mansfield, grocer. (Parsons, Mans- 
field. 
Sindrey.W., Fish-street-hill, victualler. (Birket 

and Co , Cloak-lane. 
Shirreff, M. A., Mount-street, milliner. (Dufour, 

Old Mihnan-street. 
Smith, G. B., Bristol, corn-factor. (White, Ljn- 

coln's-inn ; Bevan and Co., Bristol. 
Sweetapple, B. and T., Godalming, paper-manu- 
^ facturers. (Pontifex, St. Andrew's-court 
Scbofield, W., Clerkenweil-close, silver-spnon- 
manufacturer. (Templer and Shearman, Great 
Tower-street. 
Smith, B., jun., Birmingham, factor. (Adlington 

and Co., Bedford-row. 

Shaw, J. and J. Wood, Dukinfield, cotton-spin- 
ners. Hampson, Manchester. 
Seaman, J., Tooting, brewer. (Capes, Gray's- 
inn. 

Scholes, J., J. Broughton, and R. Scholes, Sad- 
dle worth, calico-printers. (Adlington and Co., 
Bedford-row; Morris and Co., Manchester. 
Taylor, J., St. George's-fields, cheesemonger. 

(Wright, Little Aylie street. 
Taylor, J., Green-Arbour -court, type-founder. 

(Gadsden, Fnrnival's-inn. 

Thomson, G. and H., and J, Clarke, Liverpool, 
merchants. (31 akinson and Co., Temple ; Ogden, 
Manchester. 
Tristram, W., Willenhall, butcher, (Hunt, 

Craven-street ; Willirn and Son, Bilston. 
Timms, S., Ashby-de-la-Zouch, confectioner. 
(Austen and Co., Gray's-inn ; Green, Ashby- 
de-la-Zouch. 
Thompson, R., Leeds, grocer. (Atkinson and Co., 

Leeds. 

Thick, T., Camden-town, plasterer. (Gwle, Iron- 
monger .lane. 

Tfrpin, J. and A. G., Doncaster, coach-makers. 

(Galsworthy, Cook's-court ; Heaton, Doncaster. 

Tillman, J.,Exmouth, glazier. (Tiileard and Co., 

Old Jewry. 
Upton, G., Queen-street, cheapside, colourmaH. 

(Tucker, Bank-chambers. 

Varley, J., Manchester, machine-maker. (Back, 
Gray's-inn; Winterbottom and Co., Heaton- 
Norris. 
Whare, J., Leeds, hatter. (Shaw, Ely-place ; 

Richardson, Hull. 

Watkinson, J., Manchester, warehouseman. (Per- 
kins and Co., Gray's-inn ; Lewtas, Manchester. 
Whit.bourn, D., Darkhouse - lane, fishmonger. 

(Hailstone, Lyon's-inn. 
Wills, J. H..Bath, baker. (Williams, Gray's-inn ; 

Watts and Son, Bath. 

Willder, J., Birmingham, victualler. (Clarko 
and Co., Lincoln's-inn-n'elds ; Colmore, Bir- 
mingham. 
Whereat, J., Romsey, ironmonger. (Sandys and 

Sons, Crane-court; Holmes, Romsoy. 
Walker, J., Portsmouth, merchant. (i3urt, Mitre- 

street. 
Webb, S., Reading, builder. (Eyre and Co., 

Gray's-inn ; Whateley, Reading- 
Wilkinson, G. C., Bristol, confectioner. (Poola 
and Co., Gray's-inn ; Cornish and Son, Bristol. 
Wernham, G., 'Wallingford, victualler. (White, 

Lincoln's-inn ; Hedges, Wallingford. 
Walters, J., Worcester, shoe-maker. (Hamilton 
and Co., Southampton-street. 



ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS. 



Rev. T. Grantham, to the "Rectory of 
Barmborough, Sussex. Rev. C. j". C. 
Bulteel, to the Vicarage of Holbeeton, 
Diocese of Exeter. Rev. F. H. Pare, 



to the Vicarage of Cranborne, Dorset. 
Rev. H. P. AVilloughby, to the Rectory 
of Marsh Baldon, Oxon. Rev. C. 
Richards. Jun , to the Rectory of Chale, 
Q 2 



116 



Ecclesiastical Preferments,, 



[JAN. 



Isle of Wight. Rev. T. Morgan, to the 
Parish Church of Walterstone, Here- 
ford, and Old Castle, Monmouth. Rev. 

C. M. Mount, to the Prebend of 
Coombe, Wells Cathedral. Rev. T. H. 
Humphreys, to the Rectory and Vica- 
rage of. St. Mary's, Tenby, Pembroke. 
Rev. R. Wrottesley, to the Rectory of 
Himley, Stafford. Rev. C. Smear, to 
the Rectory of Sudburn cum Capella de 
Orford, Suffolk. Rev. R. H. Chapman, 
to the Rectory of Kirkby Wiske, York. 
Rev. R. Metcalf, to be Minister of 
the Parish of Sunk Island, York. Rev. 

D. G. Norris, to4he Vicarage of Kessing- 
land, Suffolk. Rev. W. D. Thring, to 
the Vicarage of Fisherton, Delamere. 
Rev. J. Parsons, to the Vicarage of 
Sherborne, Dorset. Rev. C. Buck, to 
the Rectory of St. Stephen's, Bristol. 
Rev. H. Clissold, to the Rectory of 
Chelmondiston, Suffolk. Rev.F. Faith- 
ful, to the Rectory of Headley, Surrey. 
Rev. E. Richardson, to the perpetual 
Curacy of St. George, Kendal Rev. T. 
J. Theabald, to the Rectory of Nunny, 
Somerset. Rev. R. B. Buckle, to the 
Rectory of Moreton, Somerset. Rev. 
J. Smith, to a Prebendal Stall, St. Paul's 
Cathedral. Rev. F. Cunningham, to the 
Vicarage of Lowestoff, Suffolk. Rev. J. 
Lubbock, to the Vicarage of Potter 
Heigham, Norfolk. Rev. E. J. How> 
man, to the Rectory of Gunthorpe cum 
Bale. Rev. E. Hill, to the perpetual 
Curacy of Hindley, Lancashire. Rev. 
R. Robinson, to the Evening Lecture- 



ship of Wolverhampton Collegiate 
Church. Rev. W. Le Poer French, to 
a vacant Stall, and Living of Cleon, 
Leitrim. Rev. M. Geary, to the Vicar- 
age of Sherborne, Dorset. Rev. C. Tur- 
ner, to the Rectory of Eastham, with 
the Chapelries of Hanley William, Han- 
ley Chime, and Oreleton, Worcester. 
Rev. G. Burmester, to the Rectory of 
Little Oakley, Essex. Rev. W. K. Fer- 
gusson, to the Rectory of Belaugh, Nor- 
folk. Rev. C. Codd, to the Rectory of 
Clay next the Sea. Rev. T. W. Gage, to 
theVicarage of HighamFerrers, and Rev. 
R. A. Hannaford, to the Vicarage of Ir- 
thingborough, Northampton. Rev. S. 
H. Alderson, to be Chaplain to the Lord 
Chancellor. Rev. T. Evans, to be a 
Minor Canon of Gloucester Cathedral. 
Rev. J. W. King, to be Chaplain to 
the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Rev. 
J. Aspinall, to the Curacy of St. Luke, 
Liverpool. Rev.W. Seaton, to the Rec- 
tory of Lampeter Velprey, Pembroke. 
Rev. R. A. Arnold, to the Rectory of 
Ellough, Suffolk. Rev. E. Bullen, to 
the Rectory of Eastwell, Leicester. 
Rev. J. Bredin, to the Precentorship of 
Leighton, Rectory of Nunney, Ireland. 
Rev. A. Colley, to the Rectory of 
Tullamoy, Ireland Rev. S. B. Ward, 
to the Rectory of Teffbnt Evias, Wilts. 
Rev. O. Sergeant, to be Chaplain to 
the Marquis of Stafford. Rev. J. Cle- 
mentson, to the Vicarage of Wolvey, 
Warwick. Rev. W. L. Townsend, to 
the Living of Alderton, Gloucester. 



CHRONOLOGY, MARRIAGES, DEATHS, ETC. 



CHRONOLOGY, 
Dec. 5. Report made to his Majesty 
of seven prisoners convicted at the last 
Admiralty Sessions, when two were or- 
dered for execution. 

8. Nearly 8,000 of the Societies of 
Trades, headed by their delegates, went 
in grand procession, with several bands 
of music, and a variety of emblematical 
banners, to present a humble and loyal 
address to. his Majesty, which was most 
graciously received ; it was signed by 
upwards of 37,000 mechanics. 

9. Sessions commenced at the Old 
Bailey. 

. Chancellor of Exchequer stated in 
House of Commons that the present go- 
vernment were inimical to plurality of 
offices in the church, and they had de- 
termined not to issue the ad commendum 
on Dr. Philpotts' appointment. 

. His Royal Highness the Duke of 
Sussex took the chair as President of the 
Royal Society. He thanked them for 
the great honour they had conferred 
upon him in electing him president, and 
assured them that he should use everv 



endeavour in his power, not only to ad- 
vance the interests of science and of 
the society, but also of every individual 
member, who should be alike welcome 
to him, and his house should be thrown 
open, alternately on the forenoons and 
evenings of Wednesdays, for the recep- 
tion of the Fellows and men of science. 

. Common Council of City of Lon- 
don voted rescinding the inscription on 
the Monument reflecting on the Roman 
Catholics. 

11. Motion made in House of Com- 
mons by Chancellor of Exchequer, for 
Accounts " of the population of each 
city and borough in England now re- 
turning members to Parliament, to be 
prepared from the parliamentary Census 
of 1821 Of the population of each city 
and town in England, not now returning 
members to parliament, which amounted 
in 1821 to 10,000 or upwards Of the 
population of each county in England 
and Scotland, to be prepared from the 
same census. A similar return of the 
population of each royal burgh in Scot- 
land, now sharing in the return of a 



1831.] 



Chronology. 



117 



member to parliament, and each city not 
so sharing, the population of which in 
1821 exceeded 8,000." 

13. Chancellor of Exchequer said in 
House of Commons that his Majesty's 
ministers were determined, whenever 
they had the power to do so, to abolish 
offices which had no duty attached to 
them. " Thank God !" he exclaimed, 
" the time at which this country could be 
governed by patronage is past" ! ! ! 

15. Seventh Anniversary of London 
Mechanics' Institution held, and very 
numerously attended. The Lord Mayor 
was present, and lit. Hon .R. Wilmot 
Horton promised the Institution a Series 
of lectures on statistics and political 
economy, especially as affecting the con- 
dition and interests of the operative and 
labouring classes. 

At a meeting of the Freeholders of 
Middlesex held' at Hackney, resolu- 
tions were unanimously passed on the 
alarming state of the country, distress 
of the working classes, oppressive 
weight of taxation, defective state of the 
representation of the people in Parlia- 
ment, and petitions founded thereon 
were voted to both Houses of Parlia- 
ment. Mr. Byng, member for the coun- 
ty, said, " sinecures should be abolished, 
and the children of the aristocracy should 
not be any longer quartered on the pub- 
lic." 

16. Two convicts executed at Execu- 
tion Dock for piracy. 

. Sessions terminated at the Old 
Bailey, when 1 5 pi*isoners received sen- 
tence of death : a considerable number 
were transported and imprisoned for va- 
rious periods. 

. The Duke of Northumberland in- 
troduced to the King at the levee, on 
returning from the Lord Lieutenancy 
of Ireland. 

22. Lecture delivered at the Mecha- 
nics' Institution, London, by the Rt. 
Hon. It. AVilmot Horton, on the state of 
the Country and its Taxation. He was 
attended by several noblemen and gen- 
tlemen. 

23. Parliament adjourned to Feb. 3, 
1831. 

. News arrived from Paris of the 
condemnation of the Ministers of the 
late King Charles X. to perpetual im- 
prisonment, 

. Papers ordered in House of Com- 



mons for explanation of the Sinecures, 
unmerited Pensions, &c. &c. 

MARRIAGES. 

Hon. and Rev. John Vernon (brother 
to Lord Vernon), to Frances Barbara, 
second daughter of T. Duncombe, esq 
H. W. Chichester, esq., to Miss Isabella 
Manners Sutton, daughter of the late 
Archbishop of Canterbury. Patrick 
Persse Fitzpatrick, esq., commissioner 
of Excise in Ireland, to Margaret, third 
daughter of J. Godmar, esq. Lord 
Louth, to Miss Anna Maria Roche; 
they were married at Sto. George's, Ha- 
nover-square, by the Bishop ot London, 
and previously, according to the Roman 
Catholic church, by Prince Charles 
Abbe de Broglie. Earl of Jermyn, el- 
dest son of the Marquis of Bristol, to 
Lady C. Manners, daughter of the Duke 
of Rutland. Hon. G. Anson, second son 
of late Lord Anson, to Hon. Isabella 
Elizabeth Annabella, third daughter of 
fhe late Lord Forrester. J. B. Tre- 
vanion, esq. to Susannah, second daugh- 
ter of Sir Francis Burdett, Bart Rev. 
C. H. John Mildmay, brother to Sir H. 
St. J. Mildmay, Bart., to Hon. Caroline 
Waldegrave, youngest daughter of the 
late Admiral Lord Badstock. Capt. A. 
Wathen, to Lady Elizabeth Jane Leslie, 
youngest daughter of the Earl of Rothes. 

DEATHS. 

At his seat at Castle Bernard, the Earl 
of Bandon. Admiral Robert Montagu. 
Alderman Crowder, late Lord Mayor 
of London ; and J. Peshlier Crowder, 
esq., his brother, two days previous. 
Lord Henley, 70. Hon. Hugh Elliot, 
80, formerly governor of Madras ; he 
has left nineteen children. The Dow- 
ager Lady Lushington. Amelia, widow 
of the late Admiral Sir R. Calder. 
Rear Admiral Stiles, 7^. Lieut. Col. 
Barton, 2d Life Guards. Very Rev. 
E. Mellish, Rector of East Tuddenham, 
Vicar of Honingham, and Dean of Here- 
ford. At Misterton, R. Astley, esq. 87. 

DEATHS ABROAD. 
At Rome, His Holiness Francois Xa- 
vier Castiglione, Pope Pius VIII. At 
Paris, Mr. Benjamin Constant, 65, 
member of the Chamber of Deputies. 
At Nice, Mrs. Kelly, of Castle Kelly; 
and Sir Robert Williams, Bart., M.P. 



MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES. 



NORTHUMBERLAND. At a nu- 
merous and highly respebtable meeting 
of the inhabitants of NeAvcastle-upon- 
Tyne and its vicinity, held in the Guild- 
hall, December 21st, the Mayor in the 
Chair, it was Resolved, amongst other 



resolutions " That to the imperfect 
state of the representation are mainly 
to be ascribed the excessive evils with 
which the country is afflicted ; among 
which we may enumerate unjust mo- 
nopolies oppressive and vexatious laws 



118 



Provincial Occurrences : Yorkhire, Norfolk, fyc. [JAN. 

pay great attention to the Natural His- 
tory, Natural Philosophy, and Minera- 
logy of the county ; and to collect, if 
possible, portraits of all eminent men of 
the county. 



and a most profligate waste of the 
public money ; forming a train of evils, 
threatening, in their consequences, to 
involve in distress and ruin every class 
of the community." 

YORKSHIRE. A meeting was held 
at Leeds, on Tuesday evening last, of 
the labouring classes, when it was deter- 
mined to form a junction with the " Na- 
tional Union" among all trades, the ob- 
ject of which was to prevent, by every 
legal means, any further reduction of 
wages. Resolutions were passed to the 
effect that the general distress among 
the working classes is attributable to un- 
necessary reduction of wages ; that the 
remedy lay in national unions for the 
.protection of labour and independence 
of working "people; and that a new 
weekly paper be established, that the 
poor might be certain of seeing their real 
situation truly represented. This " Na- 
tional Union" already consists of 100,000 
workmen, and its funds amount to a con- 
siderable sum. Leeds Intelligencer, Dec. 
9. 

At a recent meeting of the inhabitants 
of Dewsbury and the neighbourhood, se- 
veral Resolutions were unanimously 
passed for Reform in Parliament ; the 
following is the 3d Resolution " That, 
without stating instances of wasteful 
profligacy more determined in their cha- 
racter, this meeting cannot but have no- 
ticed a statement made in the House of 
Commons, that 210 placemen receive 
annually among them nearly 1,000,000. 
of the public money, which sum is equi- 
valent (as this meeting may be admitted 
to suppose each labourer to have a wife 
and two children) to what is allowed for 
the sustenance of 217,000 individuals for 
for the same space of time, or one place- 
man receiving annually so much of the 
public money as is paid as wages in the 
disturbed districts to 216 working men 
and their families, amounting to nearly 
1,000 persons!!! 

NORFOLK. By the Abstract of 
Receipts and Disbursements of the trea- 
surer of this country, from Midsummer 
1829 to Midsummer 1830, it appears 
that the sum of 19,873. 3s. 5d. was col- 
lected and expended, almost the whole 
of it, in criminal jurisprudence, prisons, 
&c., and the Lunatic Asylum buildings 
and repairs ; the cost of 'the latter was 
upwards of .3,000. county bridges not 
quite 400. for burying dead bodies 
washed on the shore, 25. 3s. 

The sixth annual meeting of the 
subscribers to the Norfolk and Norwich 
Museum has recently taken place, when 
the report was made, and ordered to be 
printed ; many valuable donations have 
been received'in the different branches 
of Natural History. It was suggested 
at the dinner held on the occasion, to 



A large fish, of the genus Delphinus, 
has been taken by six fishermen at Lynn, 
having grounded itself on the sands ; it 
required six horses to drag it on shore 
its length was 22 feet its circumfe- 
rence 13. 

WORCESTERSHIRE. By the 

treasurer of the public stock of this 
county's abstract amount of receipts and 
expenditure, from Michaelmas sessions 
1829 to Michaelmas sessions 1830, it ap- 
pears that the sum of 9,164. 8s. 5d. was 
collected and expended 8,000. of 
which was wanted for jails, prisoners, 
prosecutions, transports, clerk of the 
peace, vagrants, lunatics, and coroners 
6. 10s. was only required for repairing 
the county bridges. 

LANCASHIRE. Dec. 4. The Pla- 
net locomotive engine took the first load 
of merchandize which has passed along 
the Railway from Liverpool to Man- 
chester. The train consisted of 18 wag- 
gons, containing 135 bags and bales of 
American cotton, 200 barrels of flour, 63 
sacks of oatmeal, and 34 sacks of malt, 
weighing altogether 51 tons 11 cwt. 1 qr. 
To this must be added the weight of the 
waggons and oil-cloths, viz. 23 tons 8 
cwt. 3 qrs. ; the tender, water, and fuel, 
4 tons ; and of fifteen persons upon the 
train, 1 ton making a total weight of 
exactly eighty tons, exclusive of engine 
(6 tons). The journey was performed 
in 2 hours and 54 minutes, including 3 
stoppages of 5 minutes each for oiling, 
watering, and taking in fuel ; under the 
disadvantages also of an adverse wind, 
and of a great additional friction in the 
wheels and axles, owing to their being 
entirely new. The train was assisted 
up the Rainhill inclined plane, by other 
engines, at the rate of 9 miles an hour, 
and descended the Sutton inclined plane 
at the rate of 1C| miles an hour. The 
average rate on the other parts of the 
road was 12^ miles an hour, the greatest 
speed on the level being 15!j miles an 
hour, which was maintained for a mile 
or two at different periods of the jour- 
ney. Plans for no less than fourteen 
rail-roads, all more or less within the 
limits of the county of Lancaster, have 
last week been deposited in the office of 
the clerk of the peace, in Preston. 

At a meeting of the rate-payers, re- 
cently held at Liverpool, it was unani- 
mously resolved, " That the town ard 
immediate vicinity of Liverpool com- 
prise a population of about 180,000 souls. 
That the number of burgesses who polled 
at the late election, including out-voters, 
was 4401, consisting principally of per- 



1831.] 



Hampshire, Warwickshire, Herefordshire, fyc. 



sons dependent for support on their 
daily wages, and, therefore, from their 
station in life, liable to be actuated by 
every variety of undue influence, while 
nine-tenths oJthe substantial household- 
ers have no voice in the election of their 
representativ2s. That the continuance 
of such flagrant abuses in the system of 
representation, in an age and country ce- 
lebrated for liberal views and free insti- 
tutions, is an outrage on the common- 
sense of mankind, and a lamentable in- 
stance of the difficulty of getting rid of 
enormities, however gross, when sanc- 
tioned by time and blended with the 
question of alleged municipal rights and 
immunities." 

HAMPSHIRE. The general annual 
statement of the Portsmouth and Port- 
sea Savings' Bank, made up to the 20th 
November 1830, shews the amount of 
receipts to that period to be 79,363. 
19s. 4d. ; the number of depositors, 
1,673 ; charitable societies, 7 ; and 
friendly societies, 20. 

The inhabitants of Gosport and Ports- 
mouth, at separate meetings, have pe- 
titioned parliament for a reform in the 
representation of the people, a reduction 
of the public burden, by uncompromising 
economy, and a diminution or abolition 
of those taxes which press on the mid- 
dling and labouring classes. And " The 
humble Petition of the Owners and Occu- 
piers of Land and Tithe, of Hambledon, 
to the House of Commons, sheAveth, 
That the labourers, who have for many 
years been reduced to a state too misera- 
ble for Honest and Laborious Men to 
bear, have now, being unable to endure 
their sufferings longer, risen and de- 
manded an augmentation of wages ; that 
the farmers are unable to comply with 
their demand without utter ruin to them- 
selves, because the heavy taxes on the 
necessaries of life take from them the 
means of paying adequate wages : they 
therefore pray for the repeal of those 
taxes. 

At Winchester assizes several prison- 
ers have been convicted of arson and 
destruction of agricultural property. 

WARWICKSHIRE. The exhibi- 
tion of the works of modern artists at 
Birmingham is closed. The number of 
season tickets sold, we understand, ex- 
ceeded 900 ; and the total receipts, inde- 
pendent of Sir Robert Peel's donation 
of 100., amounted to 840. 10s. 6d. 
The exhibition has supported the pre- 
vious high pretensions of the Society of 
Arts. The conversaziones have been 
eagerly and numerously attended, and 
have tended not a little to advance the 
general popularity of the institution. 

HEREFORDSHIRE. ~ Hereford 
County Meeting. A meeting of the ma- 
gistrates of this county was held at the 



119 



Shire-hall, Hereford, on Saturday last, 
by desire of Earl Somers, the Lord Lieu- 
tenant, and the precautionary measures 
recommended by government were then 
unanimously adopted. It was, however, 
expressly stated by the assembled ma- 
gistrates, that no act of outrage or vio- 
lence was apprehended, the people of the 
county appearing to be animated by the 
best feelings and the most peaceable dis- 
position. 

The 31st exhibition of the Ross Hor- 
ticultural Society took place Decem- 
ber 1, and notwithstanding the wea- 
ther was not very favourable, there was 
a large attendance of subscribers and 
their friends. Previous to the opening 
of the show-room, the annual meeting 
was held at the Swan hotel, when the 
present officers were re-elected for the 
year ensuing. The grand stand was 
extremely well coloured with all the 
varieties of hardy evergreens, and being 
well mixed with chrysanthemums of 
various colours, the effect was pleasing 
and generally admired. The long table 
contained upwards of 200 plates of the 
choicest apples and pears, and consider- 
ing the scarcity of fruit this season, the 
quantity exhibited was truly surprising. 
The chrysanthemums were in fine trusses 
of bloom, and nearly every known va- 
riety graced the exhibition. The num- 
ber of specimens ticketed and entered 
amounted to 434, and the evening sale 
of unremoved fruits amounted to 3. 
7s. 7d. 

SOMERSETSHIRE. The inhabi- 
tants of Creech St. Michael, North Pe- 
therton, and vicinity, following the ex- 
ample of the Freeholders of Devon, have 
lost no time in addressing the House of 
Commons on the important subject of 
Parliamentary Reform, in consequence 
of the numerous and very heavy bur- 
dens which have fallen on the people by 
Misrepresentation in the Commons' 
House of Parliament. 1. As to inordi- 
nate Taxation to support a standing 
army in the time of Peace, and for the 
needless purpose of supporting Sinecu- 
rists and others, who hold Unmerited 
Pensions. 2. As to the severe, and, at 
present, almost overwhelming pressure 
of Tithes, both Lay and Ecclesiastic, 
upon the depressed and overburdened 
Agriculturist. 3. As to the Abuses that 
exist in our Courts of Law and Equitv, 
and whereby the Poor Man is entirely 
shut out from any fair competition with 
the Rich -And, lastly, they earnestly 
call attention to that upon which hinge's 
the whole, and without which all other 
minor alterations will be of little or no 
avail namely, a full, fair, and free 
Representation of the ' Whole' of c the 
People,' in the Commons' House of 
Parliament." Somersetshire Gazette. 



120 



Provincial Occurrences : Dorsetshire, Kent, fyc. 



[JAN. 



DORSETSHIRE. The inhabitants 
of the island of Portland have returned 
thanks to his Majesty for his donation 
of 25. per annum, granted from his 
private purse, towards supporting a 
surgeon on the island so long as he re- 
sides there, and the Dispensary remains 
on its present footing. 

KENT Three convicts tried by the 
Commission, have suffered the last pe- 
nalty of the law at Maidstone for burn- 
ing agricultural property. 

SUSSEX. Several prisoners have 
been convicted at the winter assizes, 
held at Lewes, for setting fire to barns, 
ricks, &c. One miserable object con- 
fessed having set fire to five different 
places out of eight that happened near 
Battle. 

SURREY. A meeting has been held 
at Croydon of the freeholders of the 
county, when resolutions were unani- 
mously voted for a reform of Parliament, 
and for the disfranchisement of the four 
rotten boroughs of Haselmere, Reigate, 
Gatton, and Bletchingley, and for trans- 
ferring the elective franchise to eight of 
the most largely populated and unre- 
presented towns and hundreds in the 
county, also for a reduction of taxation. 

CHESHIRE. The Spinners work- 
ing in the 52 mills at Ashton-under- 
Line all left their employment on Sa- 
turday, and the mills are at a stand. The 
men who have thus turned out for ad- 
vance of wages, with the women, chil- 
dren, and others dependent upon them, 
amount to about 20,000 persons. The 
distress in which the district will be 
plunged by this event will consequently 
be exceedingly severe, particularly at 
this inclement season. Macclesjield 'Cou- 
rier, Dec. 18. 

The Stockport paper says, " The men 
parade every day with music and flags ; 
and there is no doubt that many hun- 
dreds of fire-arms and other weapons are 
in their possession, as they are occasion- 
ally partially displayed. Some of 
the flags are tri-coloured, and bear the 
following inscriptions: 'He that lead- 
eth into captivity shall be led into cap- 
tivity.' ' He that killeth b}' the sword 
shall also be killed by the sword.' ' A 
living for our labour, or no labour at all.' 
' The labour of a nation is the wealth 
of a nation.' 4 Free Trade.' ' Liberty 
or the Sword,' &c. &c." 

WALES Dec. 13 A meeting of 

the county of Montgomery, the High 
Sheriff in the chair, was held at Welsh 
Pool, when several resolutions were en- 
tered into for Reform in the Parliamen- 
tary Representation, for Rigid Economy 
in Public Expenditure, and for Abolition 
of Improper Pensions, and Useless 



Places. ' It is only by the adoption of 
such measures," says one of the resolu- 
tions, u that the loyalty of the people 
can be retained, the durability of the 
constitution ensured, and the peace 
and happiness of the kingdom pre- 
served." Petitions to Parliament were 
passed ; that to House of Lords to be 
presented by Lord Chancellor, and that 
to House of Commons by Chancellor of 
Exchequer. Shrewsbury Chronicle. 

SCOTLAND. The inhabits of Edin- 
burgh have unanimously voted, in an 
assembly held recently in the Assembly 
Rooms, petitions to Parliament for Le- 
gislative Reform, " praying for such an 
extension as may include a fair propor- 
tion of the Property and Intelligence of 
Scotland !" The Merchant Company 
have also passed resolutions to the same 
effect, as have also the inhabitants of 
Leith while theTown Council of Edin- 
burgh have voted the following resolu- 
tions, carried by 21 voices against 10 
" That while it appears to the Town 
Council of Edinburgh that the Constitu- 
tion under which we live has been the 
most perfect that any country has ever 
been blessed with, yet there can be no 
doubt that, from the length of its endur- 
ance, abuses may have crept in, and al- 
terations unsuitable to the present time 
may have been made on it ; but as his 
Majesty's Ministers have pledged them- 
selves to amend and renovate such parts 
of the Constitution and Representation 
as may stand in need of it, Resolved, 
that under such circumstances, and until 
they are made acquainted with the de- 
tails of the reform to be brought forward 
in Parliament, it behoves the Town 
Council to delay taking any further steps 
on this difficult and important question." 

IRELAND. An extraordinary case 
was lately brought before the Court of 
King's Bench, Dublin. Counsel applied 
on the part of a female, named Jane Dar- 
ley, for the renewal of an order which 
had been granted by the Court for her 
discharge from the custody of the City 
Marshal, in which prison she had been 
confined for the extraordinary period of 
thirty four years, for a debt of no more 
than eleven pounds!!! Her creditor and 
his attorney, and all parties interested 
in the debt, had been dead for a consi- 
derable period. The Court inquired why 
its former order had not been acted on. 
Counsel replied, that the Marshal had 
refused to liberate her until she dis- 
charged certain claims for fees and rents 
he had on her. The Court said, if the 
officer of the prison had a right to detain 
her, they should not interfere. Counsel 
agreed to receive a conditional order to 
be served on the Marshal, who might 
then shew cause. She has since been 
liberated. Dublin Morning Register. 



THE 

MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

OF 

POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES. 



VOL. XL] FEBRUARY, 1831. . [No. 62. 



EUROPE AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE YEAR 1831. 

THE past year exhibited a state of affairs unexampled since the fall of 
the Roman empire the supremacy of the multitude ! The origin of all the 
modern dominations of Europe was in the power of the armed people. 
The northern tribes who broke down the Roman empire were a populace, 
warlike, yet but half-armed, and accustomed to obey princes and chief- 
tains, yet possessed of rights which made them almost independent of 
authority. They fell upon the tottering mass of the Roman empire with 
a weight which crushed it ; and from the ruins they raised kingdoms 
and principalities, in which the sovereign was little more than the chief 
magistrate, and the government little more than a republic of soldiers. 

In 1 830, the French returned nearly to the model of their ancestors in 
the sixth century ; by an insurrection of the armed multitude, overthrew 
the monarchy ; and established a sovereignty in its stead, in which the 
governor is but the chief magistrate, and the form of the government is, 
in all but name, republican. 

The example of this powerful and leading people rapidly produced 
imitators. The people of Brussels mastered the government, defeated 
its forces, and, establishing the independence of Belgium, fully declared 
their right to a separate government, a new-modeled constitution, and 
the choice of a king. 

The next demand of those popular rights was in Switzerland. A 
peasant army rose, marched into Berne, and obtained all their demands. 
The facility of their success has made their insurrection obscure ; but the 
principle of the exertion of popular power to obtain popular rights was 
amply established. 

The flame now spread to the north ; and, on the 29th of November, 
the people of Warsaw rose, drove out the Russian garrison, formed a 
government, and declared the independence of Poland. In the minor 
German States, the popular spirit not less displayed itself. The people 
rose in Brunswick, expelled their Duke on the ground of personal inju- 
ries, and have since finally given over his authority to his brother. The 
same effervescence exhibited in several of the other principalities, without 
proceeding to the same length, produced, at least, promises of constitu- 
tional rights, which, if not performed, will, in all probability, produce 

M. M. New Series. Voi. XL No. 62. R 



122 Europe at the Commencement of the Year 1831. [[FEB. 

revolutions. Even in England, a new and angry feeling had begun to 
spread. The abettors of popular violence, excited by the success of the 
French and Belgian insurrections, became more daring, A blind and 
fierce system of outrage was put in practice; and the breaking of 
machines, and the burning of farm-yards, menaced the destruction of 
agriculture. 

A new year is before us ; and it may exceed human sagacity to anti- 
cipate the nature of the changes which shall occur before its close. But 
some extraordinary changes in the condition of the continental govern- 
ments must be apprehended. In England strong in her constitution, 
in her position, in the power of her middle class, and the consciousness 
of all wise and honourable men, that the principles of the monarchy can- 
not be changed for the better we have no reason to fear revolution. But 
it is possible that a multitude of the abuses, which time or corruption 
has drawn round the government, will be tolerated no longer. 

The first object which stings the public feeling is, of course, the 
Public Expenditure. England is taxed to ten times the amount of any 
other European State. It has been computed that, in one shape or other, 
every article which belongs to the support, the civilization, or the 
enjoyment of life, contributes three-fourths of its value to the State ; that, 
in fact, every tax-paying individual in England pays 75. out of every 
100. of his income ! The question is loudly asked why, with the pro- 
ductive soil, the temperate climate, and the singularly advantageous 
geographical position of England, are the means of life more difficult to 
be provided here than in any other country of Europe ? why the same 
quantity of bread which costs one penny in France but fifteen miles from 
England should in England cost three ? why all the other necessaries 
of life are in the same proportion? why the labourer on the Continent 
lives in comfort and plenty, while the English labourer lives in penury, 
and is driven to poaching, smuggling, and the parish ? why the incomes 
of the great landholders, the church, and the farmers, are all sinking, 
and yet no other class is the richer ? 

The general answer assigned to those queries is the inordinate taxation 
which goes to support the inordinate expenditure of Government. - The 
public investigation is now turned keenly on the ways in which the 
national property is expended ; and the strongest anxiety is already 
directed to the measures to which Parliament is pledged on the subject 
of retrenchment. A topic of peculiar offence is the Pension-List. The 
crowd of names which that document exhibits as sharing the public 
money, has been already severely investigated, and will be brought into 
inquiry with still more unsparing determination. The popular writers 
demand, by what service to the State, or personal virtue, or meritorious 
claim of any kind on the public, have three-fourths of those pensioners 
been fixed upon the national purse? They state that, in a crowd of 
instances, the only grounds which they can even conjecture are of a 
kind which it is not consistent with decorum to name. In other instances, 
they find the families of men who had long enjoyed highly lucrative 
employments, and who, though with the most obvious means of pro- 
viding for the decent subsistence of their families, preferred leading a 
life of show and extravagance, living up to the last shilling of their 
income, and then fastening their wives and children upon the State. 
Others, who, having not even the claim of such service, contrived, 
merely by some private interest, to secure this provision, and thus sup- 
port individuals in rank and luxury, whose natural place, whatever their 



1831.] Europe at the Commencement of the Year 1831. 123 

titles may be, would be in the humblest ranks of society, and whose 
bread must be earned by the far honester labour of their own hands. 

Other objects of investigation must be the Sinecures, Pluralities^ and 
Reversions. It is stated that the Privy Council receive, on an average, 
5,000. per annum each, or the enormous total of upwards of 000,000. 
a year ! that, of course, many of those individuals hold two, three, or 
four places ; that the land is eaten up with sinecurism ; and that, on 
this system, the worthless branches of noble families, the dependents of 
ministers, and the general brood of the idle and useless, are fed out of 
the earnings of the people. 

It is obvious, however, that these charges fall entirely short of strik- 
ing at the Constitution ; that they merely advert to abuses, and leave the 
principles untouched ; that the British Constitution is still the first object 
of political homage ; and that even the most violent advocates for public 
change declare that their views are directed, not to the overthrow, but 
to the greater activity and supremacy of the Constitution. 

The state of property, as it refers to Agriculture, the Church, Manu- 
factures, and Commerce, presents some new and anxious aspects. 
Throughout England, the agricultural interests are in a state of de- 
pression. Rents have generally fallen, or been voluntarily lowered. 
The poor-rates have increased ; labour is failing ; and the agricultural 
population is either in open riot, or latent discontent. The most singular 
feature in all this, is the utter difficulty of ascertaining its cause. None 
of the great casualties of nations famine, war, sudden loss of market for 
manufactures or produce, have occurred ; yet, undoubtedly, the crisis is 
now more severe than at any former period. The political economists have, 
of course, all failed in discovering either cause or remedy. The theory 
of one is, that the distress is owing to the return to a circulation in coin ; 
but that return is now half-a-dozen years old, and it is totally impossible 
to perceive how, by giving the extraordinary power to coin, to every 
man who chose to call himself a banker, any end could follow except 
that which has followed in every instance of the experiment an infi- 
nite quantity of fraud, of baseless speculation, of loss among the poor, 
of forgery and its consequent loss of life among the wretched people 
tempted by the facility of the practice, and as a result of the whole 
a trembling credit, which the first accident would throw into universal 
bankruptcy. 

As matters proceed now, every man who has value can obtain gold ; 
the circulation is unchecked by any paucity of the precious metals, and 
the only sufferers on the subject are the country dealer in paper, which 
he can now no more manufacture into pounds, and millions of pounds, 
on his sole credit, which has so often proved not worth sixpence ; or 
the speculator without capital, who is ready to embark in any des- 
perate enterprize, and borrow at any interest, in the hope of realizing 
something or other in the chances of the world. We are told, too, that 
the restricted issues of the country bankers, by preventing the farmers 
from being able to obtain notes by mortgaging their crops for the time, 
prevent them from keeping back their produce until the season of the 
highest prices. But why should the farmers, or any other men, be aided 
to keep up the market thus artificially, and extract an inordinate price 
from the public necessities, by the help of fictitious money?* Thus, 

* Somo remarks on this subject, from an intelligent correspondent, will be found at 
p. 164. 

R 2 



124 Europe al the Commencement of the Year 1831. CFsB. 

according to the advocates for the one-pound note, public prosperity is 
to depend on two fictions paper-money, without funds and a mono- 
poly price for corn. This is evidently against common-sense and the 
nature of things ; and the cause must be sought elsewhere. 

The true cause of the public pressure is, beyond all doubt, the Taxation. 
No nation was ever exposed to such tremendous imposts. The taxes 
of England amount to not much less than seventy millions sterling 
a-year ! Twenty millions to the government; twenty to the local expen- 
diture, poor-rates, highways, watching, lighting, c. &c. ; and nearly 
thirty millions to the interest of the national debt. We are to recollect 
too, that this enormous sum is paid by a population of twelve millions, of 
whom one half are females, and about one half of the remainder infants 
and old people, classes from whose labour little can be raised ; in other 
words, that about three millions of men pay upwards of twenty pounds 
sterling each ! In America the taxation is nine shillings and threepence 
a-head ! We certainly pay rather high for our privilege in living at 
this side of the Atlantic. 

This frightful taxation must be diminished within reasonable bounds 
by some means or other ; the fact is beyond all dispute. The people of 
England cannot be rationally expected by any government to see them- 
selves reduced to extremity by enormous imposts, for the vanity, the 
improvidence, or the vice of others, let them bear what name they 
may. It is monstrous to conceive, that about two hundred individuals, 
three-fourths of whom are almost totally unknown as public servants, 
and of whom not one fiftieth ever performed any service to the State 
worth fifty pounds, should yearly be suffered to draw from the exigencies 
of the country upwards of 600,000 ! 

It is monstrous that for fifteen years of Peace, and with the most 
constant assurances from the Throne that there was not the slightest 
probability of War with any power of Europe, * we should have been 
keeping up an army of upwards of 100,000 men ! and paying for them 
at three times the rate of any European power besides ; namely, eight 
millions a year ! To the advocates of this most unwise expenditure we 
unhesitatingly say, that this support of a standing army is among the 
most extraordinary instances in which a people of common sense have 
ever suffered themselves to be misled. 

In all countries a standing army is a declared evil. On the continent 
the only result of the system has been to inspire kingdoms with mutual 
jealousy, make military habits supersede those of all the purer, more 
healthy, and more productive classes of society ; set a coxcomb with a 
pair of epaulettes above the man of science, the merchant, the scholar, 
the agriculturist, above every body who has any better employment 
than strutting in moustaches and a laced coat. It prompts princely 
cupidity to aggression on the neighbouring states, just as when every 
man wore a sword, every word produced a deadly quarrel. It im- 
poverishes the nation, and, after all, when the time of Invasion comes, 
the only period in which it can be important for any people to have an 
army, it is generally found inefficient, and the true defence of the 
country is found in the multitude who have never received a shilling of 
pay, and whose natural intrepidity serves their country better than all 
the drilling and parading of their coxcomb hussars, lancers, life-guards, 
and the whole haughty and costly crowd of encumbrances of tlie land. 
But in England, with her Cliffs for an insurmountable rampart, and the 



1831.] Europe at the Commencement of the Year 1831. 125 

Sea for an impassable ditch ; with the most compact and vigorous popu- 
lation on earth to man this mighty fortress ; with Fleets for her outposts, 
invincible by human force ; with the power of sending a force on the 
wings of the wind to attack any kingdom of the earth on the most 
vulnerable side ; what necessity can we have for a Standing Army ? 
When all our colonies are fatal to European life, ho r shall the pretext 
be advanced, that we require this army for our colonial possessions ? It 
is notorious that a militia raised in the colonies, of men seasoned to the 
climate, and acquainted with the habits of the natives, and the face of 
the country, is the only description of force that common sense would 
think of using. The hideous mortality of the British troops in the 
West Indies should have long since taught us, on the mere ground of 
humanity, the senselessness of giving the defence of the West Indies to 
the raw recruits of England. 

We are not to be told that the state of Ireland requires a standing army. 
Our answer is, that the Irish yeomanry would be more than equal to put 
down any papist insurrection ; that it put down a papist insurrection be- 
fore ; and that from its cheapness, its constitutional nature, and its adap- 
tation to the circumstances of Ireland, it is of all forces the fittest to 
put down Irish disturbance. To advert to other points. 

The burnings have been repressed for the moment in some degree; 
but they have not been put an end to. The capital condemnations have 
neither deterred the incendiaries, nor detected the principals. It seems 
unquestionable that there are some individuals, at least, of wealth, be- 
hind the curtain, and neither public justice nor private security will be 
attained until those criminals, tenfold more guilty than their wretched 
tools, shall have fallen into the hands of the law. The state of Ireland 
is the next that forces itself on our contemplation. That country exhibits 
a scene which must make the members of the late ministry cover them- 
selves with sackcloth and ashes, if they were capable of either shame or 
repentance. The " healing measure," the " measure of unanimity," the 
" infallible conciliation," has turned out to be a firebrand, as every 
friend of the protestant religion and constitution told the Duke of Wel- 
lington, Sir Robert Peel, and the rest of the Cabinet. They were told 
as distinctly as words could tell them, " You are blindly holding out a 
premium by this Emancipation, to a gang of disturbers, who live by 
disturbance ; youi measure is actually alienating the whole respectable 
portion of Ireland, taking the sword out of the hand of the protestant, 
and stimulating the rude passions, and brute ambition of every low mob- 
hunter, broken-down political gamester, and characterless hanger-on upon 
the skirts of life in Ireland. Do you expect to conciliate such men as the 
Irish demagogues by concession ? You might as well extinguish a mid- 
night conflagration by thrusting fuel into the hand of the incendiary. 
You might as well turn the robber or the cut-throat into an honest 
man, by shewing him gold, or throwing the object of his hatred and 
revenge into his power \" 

But we find it next to impossible to give any man credit for the sim- 
plicity of believing that this measure would produce any fruits, but 
those which it is producing at this hour. Ignorant as ministers might 
be, we could not imagine them ignorant enough for that. Yet on what 
grounds the offence was committed, we will not even conjecture. The 
mystery is one of bosoms that we disdain to fathom. There let it lie, 
among the dreams of baffled politicians : and lie only to embitter the re- 



]2(J Europe at the Commencement of the Year 1831. [[FEB. 

flections of men driven out of power by national scorn. But, for this 
blunder, if to them it were a blunder, we are paying severely now ; 
and well may we execrate the " Measure," which has caused a state of 
Ireland, unexampled in the history even of Irish turbulence, and which 
will speedily, unless changed by some interposition little short of miracu- 
lous, cover the land with civil blood. 

Yet in the midst of all this regret, it is scarcely possible to suppress a 
bitter and contemptuous joy at the recompence which the crowd of Irish 
Protestant abettors of the party are undergoing clay by day. We now 
see the popularity-hunters trembling at the work of their own hands, 
attempting to put down by their silly signatures the fierce spirit which 
they raised by their own miserable partizanship, and scoffed at for the 
attempt. We see the whole tribe turned into cyphers. The Viceroy 
received in silence, or in sneers, by the mob, to " conciliate" whose 
huzzas this personage stooped to the flattery of the populace ; and we 
see him treated with the most insolent defiance by the leader of that 
populace. We well remember his letter to Dr. Curtis, telling the papists 
to " agitate, agitate, agitate ;" and we contemptuously exult that the in- 
dividual who dared to utter this advice, is now compelled to witness the 
result of this "agitation." But, enough of such triflers. A sterner 
time is coming. To repel the? storm is now all but impossible, at all 
events it will never be repelled by weak counsels, nor feeble instruments. 
The fate of kingdoms is not to be averted by such means as reside in the 
hearts and heads of the present administrators of Ireland. 

Their arrest of O'Connell betrays the tardiness of their sense of their 
situation. They have not ventured to seize the disturber on the ground 
which would be intelligible to all men, that of conspiring to rouse the 
populace against the'" Incorporation" of England and Ireland, a portion 
of the Constitution as distinctly declared by law to be irrevocable, as the 
establishment of a house of peers, or the throne. But they have 
dwindled down the charge into a legal subtlety, which will be sure to 
sink under them before a jury ; and the defeat of this frivolous attempt 
will only inspirit the disturbance, and place the disturber beyond all 
control. " Evading a proclamation !" what is this, but what O'Connell 
has declared it to be, " giving no opportunity for the proclamation to seize 
on him ?" The very words imply that he has not come within the grasp 
of the proclamation ; and he is now to be seized, in virtue of that pro- 
hibition which he is acknowledged not to have violated. But the error 
lies even deeper. By making O'Connell's crime to be against a procla- 
mation of a Viceroy, and not against the Constitution of the Empire, it 
makes the charge degenerate at once into a squabble with an official, 
whose own w r ords are on record, advising " agitation." It opposes 
O'Connell, not to the majesty of British justice and the established rights 
of the empire, but to a viceroy who scribbled an actual exhortation to 
the populace to " agitate ;" and to a secretary whose parliamentary 
harangues were directed against the spirit of the acts which he is now 
promulgating with his pen. To the principles of the governors, let them 
throw in the principles of Lord Plunkett, and we shall see how the scale 
will vibrate. But the contest will be one of mere person. The crime 
against the Constitution will be merged in the contest with the indi- 
vidual ; it will be altogether an affair of character ; and no man will care 
a straw how it is decided. But this state of things cannot last; popular 
fury will not be calmed by thq flimsy contrivances of lawyers. The 



1031.] Kin-ope at the Commencement, of the Year 1831. 127 

first spark will awaken the whole mass of combustibles into a flame, and 
the flame will sweep the land. 

The aspect of the Continent is calculated to excite the strongest anxiety 
in every mind that feels peace to be essential to the good of nations. 
France, at all times the prime-mover of the Continent, is gradually 
sinking from its monarchical attitude. Every hour gives some new 
evidence of the growing force of Republicanism. Lafayette's abandon- 
ment of the king, and his open declaration that he is dissatisfied with 
the royal measures, on the ground that they are not sufficiently repub- 
lican ; the rapid changes in the cabinet, all tending to Republicanism ; 
the haughty and domineering spirit of the populace, who palpably 
consider themselves as the ruling power of France ; and the fiery 
generation of clubs in the capital and in the provinces, holding doctrines 
directly subversive of royal authority, all combine to predict the 
erection of a great Republic in the centre of Europe. 

The Republicanism of Belgium is still triumphant. Belgium, secretly 
sustained by France, has wrested the recognition of its independence 
from the European powers ; and is, like France, propagating its 
principles through the entire extent of Europe. Touching the dominions 
of Prussia in so many points, the influence is already felt there, and 
the Prussian troops are kept perpetually in readiness for the field, the 
Prussian court is kept in constant alarm ; and the most trivial squabble 
of the populace throws the whole government into tremors. 

Even in the Hanoverian territory the revolutionary spirit has broke 
out. On the 8th, 9th, and 10th of January, a crowd of the citizens 
and students of Gottingen, arming themselves as a Burgher guard, 
rushed through the streets, and demanded a " New Constitution/' The 
Duke of Cambridge was sent for, and his arrival was alone awaited, to 
decide the complexion of this extravagant proceeding. 

The cause of Poland is still undecided. The people are enthusiastic, 
but powerless against the gigantic force of Russia. The Czar's mani- 
festo leaves no hope of reconciliation, and he has directed upon this 
most unhappy and long injured of all countries, an army to which, 
humanly speaking, it can offer no resistance. But a formidable obstacle 
has already interposed, in the season; whose singular mildness has 
hitherto checked the movement of the Russian troops. The roads are 
rivers of sleet and mire, the country is a deluge, the artillery and 
waggons are fixed to the ground, and the campaign, which would have 
been favoured by the keenest violence of winter, has been hitherto 
defeated by a softness like that of spring. 

Another obstacle, whose name itself strikes terror, is reported to 
have arisen to repel the invader. The Cholera ! is said to have dis- 
played itself in the Russian cantonments. This dreaduil disease, acting 
upon the crowded population of a Russian camp, would speedily 
unstring all the sinews of war. But we may well tremble for all 
Europe, at the announcement of an enemy that, if the sword slew its 
thousands, would slay its ten thousands. 

Negociations on the Polish affairs have been already announced by 
the French minister at war. French officers have already taken service 
in the Polish levies, the popular feeling of France is eagerly turned on 
Polish liberty, and it can scarcely be doubted that if the invasion be 
deferred for a few months more, or if the Poles are able to resist for a 



128 En raps at the Commencement of the Year 1831. [FKB. 

while the impression of the Russian armies, they will receive direct 
assistance from France. 

But, whatever direction may be given to the Continent, one fact 
is unquestionable -that no year, since the commencement of the first 
French revolution, ever opened with such universal preparations for 
War. France is already forming immense camps on her frontiers, and 
raising her regular force to nearly half a million of men. Austria is 
arming new levies, remounting her cavalry, and sending troops by the 
ten thousand into Italy. The Piedmontaise army is to be instantly 
raised to 130,000 men. Poland is, naturally, exerting all her strength, 
and ordering every man into the field. Russia has ordered a levy through- 
out her whole empire. Every manufactory of arms in Europe rings day 
and night with the note of preparation. Every Cabinet is holding 
anxious deliberations. Every continental king is alarmed for his throne. 
Of all the powers of Europe, the only ones who seem to be beyond 
the sphere of this terror, are Sultan Mahmoud, and our own Monarch. 
Yet the Sultan is incessantly labouring to reinvigorate the national 
strength, and prepare, by the full development of the remaining ener- 
gies of Moslemism, for the storm of war which hangs over him from the 
North. Our country is still a fortunate exception. Yet, if we can have 
no fear of foreign conquest, nor of domestic revolution, we have our 
trials too, and we shall see them deepen from day to day, unless the old 
spirit of England return, and we meet the evil by that fearless determi- 
nation to extinguish abuses, to purify the conduct of public affairs, and 
at all risks to do our duty, without which the fate of all governments 
tells us there is no substantial power. 



TO A LADY, READING. 

OH ! while polluted lips impart 

High virtue's maxims, boasts, professions, 
Which wake no echoes in the heart, 

And leave on our's but cold impressions, 
While in thy life a model shines, 

Of all that's innocent and holy, 
AH nature prompts, and truth refines, 

In mind so wise, in heart so lowly ; 

'Tis strange to hear thee breathe the names 

Of faults which thy pure soul is scorning ; 
Such zeal thy blest example claims, 

We scarce require, from thee, such warning. 
Wanderers, who long to find the right, 

Need but be told thine own sweet story ; 
And none but fiends, who fear the light, 

Would cast one shadow on thy glory. 

I who on none, save thee, e'er gazed 

With envy daring not, nor deigning 
Still love thee more than I have praised, 

Feel more than are thy flatterers feigning. 
Speak what thou wilt, our smiles and tears 

" Chast'riing, by pity and by terror" 
And Heaven preserve thy future years, 

As free from sorrow as from error! I- H. 



1831.] [ 129 ] 

ANECDOTES OF BRAZIL. 

ONE thing above all others which extends our acquaintance with hu- 
man affairs, and enlarges and enlightens the mind what most eminently 
distinguishes the present age from every other, is the facility of loco- 
motion. As little is thought now-a-days of circumnavigating the globe, 
as was formerly of travelling to the northern extremity of our island. In 
fact, no one can pretend to the rank of a traveller who has not either 
pic-nicked at the foot of the Pyramids., climbed the heaven-kissing peaks 
of the Himalaya range, hunted the ostrich on the Pampas, or listened to 
the deafening roar of Niagara. With what ineffable contempt will this 
superb locomotive creature look down on his fellow, who merely tours 
over the European Continent, dreaming away his life amidst the frivolities 
of its numerous capitals, but deriving no more information of men and 
manners than what strikes his organs of vision through the windows of 
his well-padded travelling- carriage ! Who would now, with a grain of 
the odi profanum vulgus in his composition, condescend to ascend 
Mont Blanc, vulgarized as it has lately been by the profanation of 
Cockney footsteps ! The exclusive has now literally nothing left but a 
voyage to the North Pole, or an attempt to discover the course of the 
mysterious Niger. 

The country that, more than any other, has engaged the attention of 
mankind in our day, is South America. We do not say that the 
people of this continent are either, on account of their character or their 
actual achievements, the most interesting 011 the face of the globe ; but, 
in their accidental position, they unquestionably are so. Their grand 
experiment in government and social regeneration ; their trial in their 
voyage onwards to a mighty fulfilment, or a still mightier failure, we 
cannot but feel places them as no other nation is, for concentrating on 
them the gaze of a liberal and philosophical curiosity. 

So far back as the days of old Montaigne and Montesquieu, the inde- 
pendence of the Spanish- American colonies was a political problem, the 
solution of which had occupied the attention of speculative politicians ; 
while of late years the revolution which had taken place in men's minds 
on the subject of colonies, had enabled the practical statesman to demon- 
strate the event with mathematical certainty. The boundless extent of 
these magnificent colonies the colossal proportions of .their natural fea- 
tures their riches, real or fabulous added to the romantic halo shed 
around them by the history of their early conquest had, in every age 
since their first discovery powerfully inflamed the imagination of men, 
and generated a wild and chimerical spirit of adventure. It is not, there- 
fore, singular that, at the earliest dawn of independence in the Western 
World, men of every rank and denomination should have looked towards 
it as an extended field, for the development of some long-cherished 
scheme of daring ambition, or all-grasping avarice. 

The martial spirits of Europe, whose sphere of action had been nar- 
rowed by the setting of the sun of Napoleon, flocked in crowds to the 
patriot standards. The speculative politician dreamed that the moment 
for the realization of his Utopia was at length arrived. It was, however, 
in the mercantile world that the vibrations of the chord excitement was 
felt with the most powerful effect. The Spanish El Dorado, so long 
closed to the other nations of the world by the singular system of colo- 
nial policy of the mother-country, was at length brought within the 
M.M. New Series. Vol. XI. No. 62. S 



130 Anecdotes of Brazil. [[FEB. 

grasp of British enterprise; and, in the blind infatuation of the moment, 
they wildly imagined that the dream of poetry and romance the golden 
age was about to be substantially realized in the nineteenth century. 

It is easy, I am aware, to reason after an event ; for the causes and 
effects being then developed, there remains only to place them in their 
juxtaposition to arrive at the wished-for result. The history of this 
singular period, unparalleled in the annals of human folly, will be 
pointed at by the future historian as a faro on the ocean-rocks of time 
a salutary warning to after ages. As a climax to this mania, there 
was wanting but the formation of a company, whose object was, Titan- 
like, to scale heaven by piling the huge mass of Cotapayi on the giant 
Chimborazo. 

But the illusion has passed away. This fata morgana of the mind, 
like its prototype in the natural world, after dazzling the imagination 
with its fantastic imagery, has disappeared. Spanish- America, the sub- 
ject of so many magnificent aspirations and conceptions, has proved a 
failure. A fearful reaction has been felt through every gradation of 
life. The soldier found there a grave the merchant, ruin ; while the 
political projector has heard the death-knell of his hopes in the words of 
the master-spirit of the revolution : " After twenty years' struggle," 
said the Liberator Bolivar, " we have obtained our independence, but 
at the sacrifice of every thing else !" 

While the tide of public attention was setting with headlong current 
towards Spanish-America, Brazil in whatever point we view her 
indisputably the most valuable and important part of this vast continent, 
attracted to itself none of the capital or enterprise so prodigally lavished 
on the sister colonies. This may, in some measure, be accounted for 
from the barrenness of her early history, and the absence of all that 
could gratify the high-seasoned and romantic taste of the present age. 
What the sagacious mind of the great Pombal was unable to carry into 
execution, the terror of Napoleon's arms finally accomplished. Threat- 
ened with the fate of the Spanish monarchy, the house of Braganza 
transferred the seat of their empire from Portugal to their extensive 
transatlantic dominion. Although our commercial relations with Brazil 
have, ever since this event, been on a most extensive and important 
scale, it is really singular how little we yet know of the interior of this 
beautiful country. Thinly s