II mmm ■Him mm mm fflffl Hun HUH P MB M HH "mill mm VlHi ^ '\ •V V' V * 9 : .f<\ ^p, ^ * £ ^ W & v S v -%- V*' V '*>. . CV V % / *. >- * V »> ^ ■\ ^ r >- ^ ■*« y C' ■*> .- «.* <<. <\V J.- c V' if j v ♦ (V. a, ®^H t THEIR BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE. £&. EXTRAORDINARY MEN TUKIK IWljoob anb (L : ;irlii pfe, By WILLIAM RUSSELL, Esq. Ktttn numerous portraits 8c IZlIustratilJC Sngfafrfngs. LONDON: INGRAM, COOKE, AND CO. AM) ALL BOOKSELLER. 1853. ^ LIST OF BIOGRAPHIES. PAGE Michael Angelo 9 Martin Luther IS Shakspere 27 Oliver Cromwell 41 Moliere 51 Blaise Pascal .... - 57 The Duke of Marlborough 69 Peter the Great 78 Franklin ' . . 89 Mirabeau 104 Mozart 116 Sir Samuel Romilly 127 Nelson 142 Robert Burns 158 Sir Thomas Lawrence 175 Wilkie 1S5 Napoleon Bonaparte 195 Lord Byron 211 The Duke of Wellington 22S Sir Robert Peel 244 Louis Philippe 259 Dr. William Ellery Channing 279 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE 11 Michael Angelo studying the stars Luther meeting with womanly sympathy from the wife of Conrad . . 23 William Shakspere courting Anne Hathaway 38 Fight between Oliver Cromwell and Prince Charles, (afterwards Charles I.) 48 Moliere at Church Pascal drawing geometrical figures on the floor of his room 63 Marlborough soliciting a commission from the Duke of York .... 72 Peter the Great finding a sanctuary S4 Franklin's first visit to Philadelphia 97 Mirabeau giving the old man the hat 110 Mozart discovered composing a concerto 119 Samuel Romilly reading his translation of Virgil 13i Nelson floating his ships at school 146 Burns taking the sun's altitude 1 _ Sir Thomas Lawrence painting the farmers' portraits 176 Wilkie presenting his sketches to the Secretary of the Edinburgh Academy 190 Napoleon and his school-fellows' escape to Brienne fair through a breach made in the wall Byron watching Miss Chaworth dancing 225 Wellington at school .... 2oo Sir Robert Peel repeating sermons to his father 252 Untractableness of Louis Philippe 26 - Dr. Channing's kindliness of disposition exhibited 2S3 PREFACE. Biographies of extraordinary boys, who were never anything but extraordinary boys, — pale blossoms which attracted admiration and commanded sympathy, solely because they were prematurely disclosed, — are numerous and minute enough; but the young morning of a great life, whose frequently dull and menacing clouds, or faint pencillings of radiant light, have been dissipated or eclipsed by its noon- tide splendour, has been, in the majority of cases, slightingly glanced at by historiographers of the extraordinary men who have made their names famous in the world. Yet the earlier portion of the lives of such men, albeit they had not then fought great battles, or wrested mighty world-changing secrets from nature's jealous custody, — although their dramas, poems, songs, paintings, statues, were as yet but vague and dim perceptions of the noble and beautiful in spiritual and material being, — must have been in every instance a greatly influencing one, whether for good or evil, — without the careful study of which, an accurate appreciation of the hero's man-life can hardly be attained. The following brief, unpretending sketches, therefore, of the boyhood of a few only of the extraordinary men who have left deep and en- during traces in the memory of mankind, if effecting little VU1 PREFACE. towards supplying the deficiency in this branch of biogra- phical literature, may at least serve to indicate the large- ness of the void, if any, by the manifest inadequacy of the attempt to fill it up, and possibly suggest to future historic portrait-painters that^ the true expression of the moral features they would delineate can never be precisely attained unless the shadow-light, if such a phrase is permissible, of boyhood be permitted to fall over, and temper and define the dazzling and often distorting lustre of virile achieve- ment. Several famous names have been omitted from this volume, not alone from limitation of space, but that their boyhood is an entire blank in their life histories, — a sin of omission with which, it must be admitted, late biographers are much less chargeable than former or earlier ones ; — and a defect all the more to be regretted, that in almost eveiy case it may fairly be presumed, — -judging from modern expe- rience, — that the stains and shadows which defile and dim not a few of the coronals of genius, would, in the eyes of a just charity, be greatly attenuated, if they did not wholly dis- appear, had the imperious influences by which they were stamped upon the mind, when most flexile and impression- able, been faithfully recorded. This, at least, is my belief, and in the spirit of that faith I have written the subjoined memoirs of men whom the inherent force of a great intel- lect, or the accident of position and circumstance, have raised to lofty places in the Temple of Fame. W. R. London, May, 1853. (fefmrtittarg fife MICHAEL ANGELO. TI/TICHAEL ANGELO BTJONAROTTI, sculptor of tlie -"-*- Moses, painter of Tlie Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, and architect of the Cupola of St. Peter's, Rome, was born on the Gth of March, 1474, at the castle of Caprese, in Tuscany, of parents so illustrious in descent and alliances, — their ancestors were Counts of Canossa, and imperial blood flowed in their veins, — that when their son evinced, as he early did, a desire to follow the path traced for him by the dawniug light of the brilliant powers, which in their noon of strength achieved the magnificent works just enumerated, they vehe- mently objected to his taking such a course, insisting that B 10 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. the highest artistic fame would but stain and degrade the escutcheon of then princely race, — a princely race now only remembered because Michael Angelo the great epic artist chanced to be numbered amongst them. The instinct of genius in the young noble's breast, stimu- lated and nourished by occasional companionship in the studies of Francesco Granacci, a pupil of the brothers Ghir- landia, professors of painting and design in Florence, was too powerful to be overcome by appeals to the vulgar vanity of birth, or the less illusive dreams of worthy ambition, and his father, Ludovico di Leonardo Buonarotti, essayed as a last resource, we are told, what virtue there might be in the oracular vaticinations of astrological science, — a potent in- fluence in those days, by the way — to dissuade his son from persisting in the plebeian pursuits for which he displayed so provoking an aptitude and liking. With this view he caused the young Michael's horoscope to be calculated and drawn, which, when carefully prepared, set forth, in the usual jargon of such documents, that by the combination, conjunction, and opposition of the planets which ruled his birth — Jupiter, Mercury, and Yenus, promised power, riches and fortunate love, with lengthened occupancy of the house of life, but were opposed by the malign influence of Mars, which in this instance indicated struggle, danger, and un- timely death. These meanings were simplified in the weird commentary which followed upon those starry aspects, by which it plainly appeared that Mars, relatively to Michael Angelo Buonarotti, signified undignified endeavour — any laborious exertion unusual for nobles to engage in ; whatever pursuit, in fact, had a tendency to diverge from the primrose path of life illumined and gilded by the mild yet mighty in- fluences of Yenus, Mercury, and Jupiter. MICHAEL AXGELO. 11 Michael Angelo possessed the faculties of reverence and wonder in a high degree — had it not been so the marvels of his artist-life could not have been accomplished — and this formidable horoscope having been placed in his hands when he was but just turned of thirteen years of age, it is not surprising that his unripe judgment was momentarily im- posed upon, and that he retired to his turret chamber in the Castle, hi a state of great agitation and distress. Night arrayed in the cloudless silver sheen and dazzling diadem oi b 2 12 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. stars she wears in southern climes, surprised him, whilst still irresolutely pondering the fateful horoscope, and invited him to come and look forth with his own eyes upon the jnanet- scroll, wherein it was said his destiny was written. He did so j and presently perceiving that of the ruling heavenly "bodies he had been reading of, Mars alone, and in unusual splendour, was visible — he forthwith, so runneth the story — determined to walk for the future by the light of the hero- star, whithersoever it might lead him ! Possibly this is only a fanciful mode of describing the young Michael's victorious resistance to his father's counsel — that he should prefer a life of inglorious courtly ease to one of laborious endeavour; but, be this as it may, it is cer- tain that the active opposition of Ludovico Buonarotti to his son's adoption of the profession of a painter, was overcome by 1488, in the April of which year Michael Angelo was placed for three years in the studio of Doininico and David Ghir- landia, by whom he was received without a premium, a clear proof that his artistic power had been already observed, and in some degree appreciated, by men whose opinion was of value in the matter. The expectations formed by these masters of then distinguished pupil, high as they might have been, were more than realized. They had soon nothing to teach him — as was quite manifest from his picture in oil, of Saint Antony beaten by devils — imps of every imaginable shape, attitude, and character — completed before half the stipulated three years had elapsed. He had ever been of a devout turn of mind, and was now accustomed to spend many hours in the Chapel del Carmine, of Florence, alternately copying or studying the pictures there by Masaccio, and kneeling in prayer on the outer steps of the sanctuary, or before the statue of a saint, for inspiration in his art, and MICHAEL ANGELO. 13 grace to consecrate its exercise to the glory of God and Holy Church. His immense superiority to the other students, and his religious cast of mind, whilst exciting the admiration and sympathy of the generous and pious-minded amongst them, aroused in the breasts of others the bitterest hatred and ridicule. One of these, of the name of Torregiano, a rude scoffer and dull pupil, displayed a rancorous malignity towards Michael Angelo, which a retort of the youthful artist exasperated beyond control. Torregiano broke in upon some remarks regarding the brilliant future which in all pro- bability awaited the painter of Saint Antony's temptation, by coarsely observing that, " Buonarotti had no doubt a sym- pathetic talent for the accurate delineation of whatever was obscene and horrible." "You are mistaken," rejoined Mi- chael Angelo, with an unmoved quietude of manner, which added to the force and keenness of the sarcasm. " You are mistaken. There is one subject which no genius for the obscene and horrible could adequately portray — that of an atheist mother teaching her child to lisp blasphemy and atheism." A fierce blow on the face, the mark of which Michael Angelo carried to his grave, was the reply to this taunt, and it was with difficulty that Torregiano was pre- vented from resorting to still greater violence. The indig- nation excited by this outrage was so great tliat Torregiano was ultimately compelled to leave Florence, in avoidance of a greater penalty. The munificent Lorenzo de Medici about this time opened extensive gardens and pleasure grounds to the citizens of Florence, which he furnished with statues, busts, bas-reliefs, and other antique sculptures. Thither Michael Angelo, im- mediately the stipulated term with the brothers Ghirlandia had expired, constantly resorted, and a passionate enthusiasm 14 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. for modelling figures in clay superseded for a time his devo- tion to palette and pencils. One day he found the dilapidated figure of a fawn thrown by as a thing of slight value, and the fancy seized him of opening the animal's mouth, and giving the face a comic expression, as of a human being laughing. Lorenzo de Medici heard of this odd transformation, and hastened to examine the young sculptor's coup d'essai with the chisel. He saw at a glance the indications of sculptural genius which the execution of the droll idea displayed, but contented himself with saying somewhat coldly, " Yery well, indeed, my young friend, but there is nevertheless one great fault in your work. Your fawn seems to be an old one, and yet it has all its teeth, which you know is never the case, after a certain age." Michael Angelo, nettled perhaps by Lorenzo's frigid manner, exclaimed with some heat, — " That defect is soon remedied," and instantly struck out several of the fawn's teeth with his mallet and chisel. Lorenzo smiled and passed]on, but the next da}>- gave unequivocal proof of his appreciation of the impatient Michael's genius, by requesting his father to resign him wholly to the care of the family of the Medici, who would charge themselves with his further education and advancement. This request was instantly acceded to by Leonardo Buonarotti, and Michael Angelo devoted [himself with renewed zeal to perfect himself as a sculptor. The astonishing progress he made, evidenced by the early production of the bas-relief of the Centaurs, was interrupted by the death of his Mend and patron, Lorenzo de Medici, whose loss to Florence and the arts was ill sup- plied by his brother Pietro, a volatile debauchee, who cared for little but sensuous gratifications and pursuits. As if in mockery of an art which he was incapable of appreciating, he employed Michael Angelo in modelling statues of snow, — a illCHAEL ANGELO. 15 senseless caprice which induced the enthusiastic artist to accept a commission from the prior of the conventual church of the Holy Spirit at Florence, to paint two pictures of the crucifixion for that edifice. A labour of reverent love this proved to the pious painter, the guiding maxim of whose life appears to have been the sentiment which trembled from his lips, at the moment of death, in his eighty-ninth year : — " In your passage through life, bear always in mind the sufferings of Christ." He worked at the pictures in the church, and in order that the figures might be as life-like, — or rather, death- like as possible, he obtained permission of the prior to have the coffins of the newly-buried opened and placed beside him during the night, — an appalling expedient, certainly, — but enabling him to reproduce with terrible effect, not the mortal pallor only, but the anatomy of death visible in the relaxation and repose of muscle exhibited by a corpse. Soon after finishing tins work, Michael Angel o quitted Florence for the first time, and executed two statues at Bologna for the Dominican church there, and thenceforth became rapidly famous in the world. Those night studies in the convent church must, no doubt, have aided in perfecting the anatomical accuracy which marks the after productions of Michael Angelo, both in painting and statuary; and one plainly enough perceives the early footsteps of this astonishing genius, in the giant career which, in sculpture, reached from the bas-relief of the Cen- taurs, to the lofty and serene grandeur of the Moses — in painting, from St. Antony beaten by devils, to the Last Judgment. But we peruse his youth in vain for a prelimi- nary indication of the stupendous architectural power, which, finding Saint Peter's to consist of the huge, fragmentary, partially developed conceptions of two preceding architects, 16 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. Branorarte and San Gallo, fused the apparently incongruous details into a majestic whole, harmonized, and crowned by the magnificent Cupola, which would alone suffice for the glory of a life ! It is not surprising that, under the circum- stances, Catholic legends should assert that the design for Saint Peter's was furnished to Michael Angelo by the Arch- angel whose name he received in baptism. — But there is another marvel, a very inferior one, no doubt, but still a marvel, achieved by the artist's seemingly instinctive sagacity, inasmuch as he certainly had no preceptor in the art of mili- tary engineering, that ean hardly be imputed to direct celes- tial agency, namely, the fortifications of Florence, which in a time of danger the unanimous and undoubting voices of his fellow-citizens called upon the painter — the sculptor — the architect, forthwith to construct ! He accepted the task, and performed it, according to the paramount testimony of Yauban, with entire success, both in principle and detail. Michael Angelo, moreover, composed a large quantity of rhymed and measured verse ; but he could only incarnate Poetry in form and colour, — not in words, for which im- measurably higher and much rarer faculties are required. Michael Angelo was contemporary with Martin Luther, having come into the world some nine years before, and left it long after the great Reformer. There is, too, a diverse coincidence, so to speak, in the lives of these two celebrated men, which may be worth remarking, inasmuch that whilst Martin Luther was shaking the spiritual temple of Borne to its foundations, Michael Angelo was raising aloft its material type, in unrivalled magnificence and majesty. For this great service to the Papacy, he refused to receive the slightest pecuniary recompence • the noble aspirations which we have seen decided him, at an early age, to realize, in MICHAEL ASTGELO. IT opposition to his father's wishes, the fabled choice of Her- cules, sustained by the fervent, if in form mistaken, piety, which breathed in the boy-prayers offered up in the Chapel del Carmine, at Florence, having proved their own exceeding great reward, by enabling him to inscribe upon the tablet which records the few imperishable names of earth, that of Michael Angelo Buonarotti. MARTIN LUTHER. II /TARTIN LUTHER, a name which breaks upon the ear -*-'-*- like the distant booming of a signal cannon, or of a rising sea — so intimately is it associated with impressions of a great conflict — of a mighty rising up of nations against powers and dominions hoary with prescriptive reverence — of the breaking down of strongholds presumedly rock-based, and reaching to the heavens— derives this illustration only from the reliable facts known of the great Reformer's boyhood; that they clearly show that the stormy and dangerous career which he entered upon in mature life was unsought for, undesired by him, and solely prompted by a suddenly awakened, imperious sense of duty — strengthened and aided, no doubt, by an MARTIN LUTHER. 19 instinctive consciousness of vast mental energy, and an inflexible bravery of will, which no peril could disturb, no obstacle, however giant-like and apparently insuperable, bend or turn aside. As frequently happens with individuals in whose history mankind take the deepest interest, the exact place and date of Luther's birth have been a subject of eager controversy; nay, the correct orthography of his name is still in dispute — he himself writing it indifferently as Luther, Luder, Lother. His own statement, moreover, as to where he was born is undoubtedly an error. " I am a peasant's son," he writes, " and my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all pea- sants. My father went to Mansfield, got employment in the mines there, and there I was born. That I should ever take the degree of Bachelor of Arts seemed not to be in the stars. How must I have surprised people by turning monk, and then again by changing the brown cap for another 1 By so doing I occasioned real grief and trouble to my father. Afterwards I went to loggers with the pope, married a run- away nun, and had a family. "Who foresaw this in the stars 1 Who could have told my career beforehand ?" No one, assuredly: the career of Luther, though doubtless written in the heavens, cast no prophetic shadow upon earth, and it is quite vain to look for serpents strangled in the cradle of the spiritual Hercules ; but inquiry has enabled the historiographer of his life-revealed destiny to ascertain that Martin Luther was born at Eisleben, when his mother was on her way to Mansfield. The date of his birth, though dis- puted by certain astrological opponents of the Reformation, who will] have it that it took place on the 22nd of October 1483 — in order to connect it with some sinister conjunction of five planets in that day or night \ but for which skyey 20 EXTRAORDINARY MEET. influences it would appear Tetzel would never Lave preached indulgences, nor Luther been roused to denounce them — really occurred on the 10th of November, 1483 — nearly three weeks subsequent to the heretical council held by the five stars. The actual circumstances surrounding the birth of Luther are, however, noteworthy and interesting. His father, Hans (John) Luther, was bom and grew to manhood at Mcerk, a Saxon village near Eisenach. He was a poor miuer, and married the daughter of a lawyer of needy condition there. Her name was Gretha (Margaret), and she was a native of Neustadt in Franconia, where her family had previously resided. Hans Luther had the misfortune, it is said, acciden- tally to kill a man whilst at work in a meadow — an incident which rests upon slight authority, and if true, may involve no imputation upon the involuntary homicide. Be this cir- cumstance, however, an invention or a verity, it is certain that Hans and Gretha Luther quitted Mcerk hurriedly in the winter of 1483, on foot, albeit Gretha was near her confine- ment. The purpose of Hans Luther, which he happily suc- ceeded in, was to obtain employment in the mines at Mans- field ; but his wife, overcome by fatigue and anxiety, could reach no further than Eisleben, where she was delivered of her sen, Martin, at about eleven o'clock, Melancthon assures us, upon the authority of the mother herself, on the evening of the 10th November, 1483. As soon as it was possible to do so, the wife proceeded to Mansfield, where her son was baptised, — and hence, doubtless, Luther's misapprehension as to his place of birth. "Very industrious, worthy people were the poor miner Hans Luther and his wife. Spite of their extreme poverty, they contrived to keep their son at school, stimulated thereto, it is fan to presume, by the glancing forth of some sparkles of the MARTIX LUTHER. 21 fiery intellect which was thereafter to set Europe in a blaze. They were assisted in this by one Dame Ursula, the widow of John Scheiveicken, who hoped the promising talents of the boy might one day be dedicated to the service of Holy Church, as indeed they were, though not precisely in the mode which the good dame would probably have chosen. Luther's education commenced essentially at Magdeburgh, a place which faintly glimmers in the memory of the world as the prison-fortress of Baron Trenck and General Lafayette. Thence he was transferred to Eisenach, in Thuringia, and finally to Erfurth, and while studying for the law in the University there, what seemed a direct call from God him- self summoned him to a conventual life, and the office of the priesthood. All that Luther's parents could spare from their scanty earnings, helped by the contributions of Dame Ursula, ill suf- ficed to defray the cost of his maintenance at school — slight in English estimation as that would appear. Like other similarly-situated German students of the time, he was accus- tomed to perambulate the streets of Magdeburgh, singing hymns and songs, interrupted, whenever a sympathising ear was likely to be reached, by cries of Panem propter? Deum (Bread for God's sake). Luther's love of music, like all other emotions that welled up from that fiercely pulsating heart, was a passion. " Music," he says, " is the art of the prophet, the only one which, like theology, can calm the trouble of the soul, and put the devil to flight." He had, moreover, a fine ear and pleasing voice, and his taste for the divine art was no doubt, in some degree, quickened by the means it afforded of improving his chance of obtaining Panem propter Deum. He learned to play the flute, and touched the lute also with considerable skill. " Bread-Music," he used to call Ins dis- 22 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. plays in singing and instrumentation; — very frequently unsuccessful ones. Upon one occasion, whilst at Eisenach, he sallied forth with his lute, after having passed many hours without food, with the inspiriting hope that the influence of the bright day, shed down from the deep blue cloudless heavens, might dispose his hearers to sympathy and kindness. He was grievously mistaken. Hour after hour the future Apostle of the Reformation exerted both voice and fingers, — now soaring upon the winged harmonies of a Laudati, or an Alma; and therein unsuccessful, gliding gently down to the sweet sadness of a psalm, or the love breathings of a soul, touched by a more earthly devotion : — vain alike were can- ticle, psalm, and song ; and it seemed that on that particular day, the quiring of the cherubim must have failed to. move the purse-strings of the deaf-eared burghers of Eisenach. As a last effort, Martin wandered forth to the suburbs of the city, only to encounter the same ill success, and at one house of more pretentious aspect than others, a dog was loosed to drive away the unfortunate minstrel. Eainting with hunger, indignant, footsore, utterly disconsolate, Luther, after feebly tottering to some distance from the inhospitable mansion, threw himself upon a rustic bench, beneath tall shadowing elms in front of a cottage, and burst into passionate sobbing expression of the emotions of his soul, in the broken melody of an interpretative song. Conrad, the master of the cottage, was absent, but his wife was fortunately at home, and listened with womanly sympathy to the plaintive strains of the suffering student, whom she forthwith invited to enter the cottage, where he was plentifully regaled with such coarse but abundant fare as it contained. Luther never forgot this act of kindness, and frequently alluded to the circumstance in after life, as if he believed it to have been a special inter- MARTIN LUTHER. 23 position of Heaven in his favour. The good woman, like Luther himself at the time, was a Roman Catholic, and it seems, followed the Reformer in his change of faith, supposing that she was the occupant of the cottage, when, some twenty years subsequently to her charitable entertainment of the distressed minstrel, the sentence, " men have entertained angels unawares," was carved over the door-way. Though Luther chanced to meet with a beneficent spirit on this occasion, he was not always so fortunate in similar extremities, if we may 24 EXTEAOEDINAKY MEN. believe the story of a garrulous monk, Steingel, a fierce denouncer of the pestilent " Heresiarch." " In the year 1501," writes this veracious chronicler, "just before the Heresiarch, Luther, went to Erfurth, he was wandering in a forest, hungry in belly, and disturbed in mind, and presently throw- ing himself upon a bank, bemoaned his hard fate with loud and piteous lamentings, forgetful that a pater or an ave would have stood him in better stead. At this moment Sathanas appeared suddenly before the Heresiarch, not in his own natural bodily likeness, as he did afterwards, when he and Luther were better acquainted, but in the semblance of a beautiful child, with fair skin, blue eyes, and golden hair, and tendered his helpmate that was to be, a large apple, which, upon eagerly snatching and eating thereof, he foraid to be of delicious flavour, and affording marvellous nourishment, and, what should have warned him of the devilish device, did not diminish, in size, though he ate his fill thereof ! ' How do you feel now?' asked Sathanas, speaking by the voice of the child. ( Proud as an emperor, strong as a lion,' replied the Heresiarch. ' Methinks I could break down this tree ;' and thereupon striving at a mighty oak tree, wherefrom, however, he could only shake down with all his force a few dead leaves and withered branches. ' The fruit,' said the fiend's voice, 'contains the essence and principle of self-confidence and pride, and is a sovereign cure for all faintness of body and humility of spirit. It will last as long as you desire it, and will never lose its virtue.' Having said this, the child, that is, the devil, vanished into the air, of which he is the prince, and it was by continually eating of the accursed fruit so given him, that the Heresiarch nourished his pride, and hardened his heart against the warnings and counsels of holy men." This narrative of Steingel's, is rather a favourable MAETIX LTJTHES. 25 specimen of the thousand and one stories circulated, ay, and believed by tens of thousands of simple people to this day of Luther. One intimation it contains is, at all events, correct; — that Martin Luther left Eisenach for Erfurth in 1501, where his mode of life appears to have resembled his previous one, — intensely studious, by fits and starts, — moody, — rest- less, except when under the influence of music or wine, — and latterly, a strong devotional bias, untinged by the slightest doubt relative to the dogmas of the Church of Rome or the attributes of the papacy, vividly manifested itself. His man- ners, albeit, were still boisterous, noisy, roystering, like most students of his age, — and whoso had seen him in the third week of Lent, 1503, swaggering on his road homewards, accoutred with a hunting knife and a sword that was perpetually getting between his legs, and shouting, singing, gesticulating with gleeful rollicking mirth, could hardly have imagined they were looking upon one destined to shake the papal throne to its foundation, and rend away some of the brightest jewels of the triple crown. Yet was the hand of time already close upon the signal- hour whose thunder-stroke was to rouse Luther from the vacant dreams of boyhood to the perception of his allotted life-task — dim and clouded for awhile with the lingering im- pressions of his youth-slumber, but gradually brightening till its giant reach and lofty significance stood out full and clear in the great Future. That he was approaching a crisis of some kind in his life appears to have for some time strongly impressed his imagination ; his law-studies had been thrown aside ; the light literature in which he had always taken plea- sure palled upon his fancy, and except in bodily exercise, and the practice of music, he found no respite from the disquietude by which his mind was haunted. At last the turning-point c 26 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. of life was reached. He was standing in a field with a fellow- student on a bright day of summer, July 17, 1505, discoursing of life, death, and judgment to come — seeking by reasoning to lighten somewhat to themselves the burthen of the mystery of existence and futurity, when suddenly thunder rolled in the previously unclouded sky, and the next moment Luther's companion was struck dead, at his side, by lightning ! The awe-stricken survivor uttered a loud cry — a cry which was a thanksgiving, and vow to Saint Anne, — so instinctively and entirely. Catholic still was he, — that he would immedi- ately turn a Monk ! When the first consternation caused by this terrible inci- dent had subsided, Luther did not in the slightest degree waver in his purpose. He passed the earlier part of the evening as usual with his friends, and at about 9 o'clock withdrew to a convent of Augustine Monks at Erfurth — his sole wealth a Plautus and a Yirgil. The monastic vows were pronounced by the zealous neophyte after the usual interval of probation, though much against the wishes and advice of his father, Hans Luther, who was not for a long time reconciled to the irrevocable step — as it then appeared to be — which his son persisted in taking. A copy of the New Testament came into the young Monk's hands soon afterwards, and the cloistered seclusion of the Augustine Convent became from that hour the birth- womb of the Reformation. SHAKSPERE. CJUNLIGHT falls upon the paper with this transcendant ^ name ; the atmosphere pulsates and sparkles with a fresher, more radiant light, and as by the wave of an enchanter's wand the scene is changed to a fairy-like land peopled with undying habitants, gifted, immortally, with eloquence which a seraph might stoop to hear, wit and humour to shake the dullest earth-clod with convulsive merriment, — pathos to melt with sympathy the flintiest of human hearts. Undying, did I say? Not only are they exempt from the slightest taint of mor- tality, but, like Swedenborg's fabled angels, they become positively younger, brighter, — of more buoyant, vigorous life as the years flit past them. There is the Lady Beatrice, whose silvery laugh rings joyously from yonder glade, — it is c 2 28 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. more than thirty years since I first knew that lady, and I solemnly affirm — but thousands of others will tell you the same thing — that she is livelier, wittier, more delightful, youthful, beautiful, every time one sees and hears her. It is the same with. Rosalind, who is seldom far off, when I at least meet with Beatrice; they are, I fancy, sisters, or at all events very nearly related. Like all the other denizens of this enchanted land, they will appear at your wish, and in such passage of their lives as you may choose, — Rosalind in her forest dress or wedding tires — Juliet in the balcony, or at the tomb, — Hamlet with the ghost upon the battlements, or cleaving his mother's heart in twain with dagger-speech, — Lady Macbeth with the queen's look which makes one's heart leap as she turns from the messenger who has just announced the approach of Duncan, or, when wring- ing her crimson hands in the sleep-conscious agony of a despair unutterable ; — yes, that is glorious Sir John ; no one can mistake that voice, though he did injure it in singing anthems some three hundred years ago; and he has as keen a relish, for sack, too, as ever, spite of his vows of amendment and determination not to be d d for never a king's son in Christendom. Ah ! my friend, this is the only true and great and constant world. No fear of encountering here changed looks and speech — frowns usurping the place of smiles, — no apprehension that the celestial goddess of to-day shall to- morrow be proved, by some detestable revelation, to have long been no better than she ought to be ! Even of the bad — the Iagos, Shylocks, the very worst is known — they medi- tate no new villanies ; neither shall rare Bottom be ( trans- lated' otherwise than you wot of, nor divine Isabel be required to plead with seraph eloquence for the life of more than one weak, sinful brother ! Who would not wish to dwell for ever SHAKSPERE. 29 in such a -world? and assuredly slight cause for wonder is there that it should be thronged with such hourly-increasing multitudes, not of the Anglo-Saxon race alone, millions of whom are dwellers by the setting sun, but by the great Ger- manic and Scandinavian races; ay, and of late the modern Gauls muster here by tens of thousands. This multitudinous affluence has been no doubt in some degree increased by the riddance at last, with much difficulty effected, of the show- men who infested the place, some of them wearing right- reverend, and learned wigs and gowns, who were perpetually bawling out some absurd impertinence or other as to what should or should not be admired, — whom sought after and whom avoided. Expostulation or argument was thrown away upon those fellows; and they were only at last driven off, or silenced, by the inextinguishable peals of involuntary laughter which latterly arose whenever they ventured to open their lips. Our German relatives, who are tremendous laughers when they once begin, were of great service in this matter. But here comes honest Dogberry with the watch, whose duty it is to apprehend all " vagrom men f you and I had therefore better retire for awhile; and see, it is only closing the magic volume in my hand, and we are forthwith upon the dull, common earth again ! The earth whereon Shakspere passed his brief mundane existence, and left such slight impress of his merely mortal footsteps, that according to some of his historiographers all that is positively known of William Shakspere is, that he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, went to London in early man- hood, wrote plays, and greatly prospered there, and finally returned to die, a wealthy man, in his native place. This is, no doubt, an incorrect statement, at present, but not likely long to remain so, if the perverse ingenuity of enthusiastic 30 EXTRAORDINARY MEN'. biographers be permitted unchallenged to argue and refine away every fact which does not precisely chime with then- own notions of what Shakspere's youth and Shakspere's parentage should have been, and to substitute their own fancies for less picturesque realities. One important circum- stance is at all events beyond dispute : The parish register proves that William Shakspere, son of John Shakspere — c Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere? was baptised on the 26th of April, 1564, though, whether according to tradi- tionary belief the child was then precisely three days old, having beeii born, — in Henley-street it is thought — on the 23rd of the said month, remains a vexed and insoluble ques- tion. John Shakspere, it is moreover indisputable, married Mary Arden, and here we begin to ascend to quite respect- able, almost dignified ancestry : — which Mary Arden was the daughter of Robert Arden, of "Wellingcote, who was the son of a groom of the chamber to Henry the 7th — which groom of the chamber was nephew of Sir John Arden, groom of the body to the same monarch ; l so that by his mother's side,' writes Mr. De Quincy, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, — 'Shakspere was an authentic gentleman' — a circumstance which, it should seem, redounds greatly to the honour of the author of Hamlet. Plebeian and irreverent critics have, however, not only presumed contemptuously to ignore this pedigree, but to assert that the mother of Shakspere could not read — a manifest slander, the very name, Mary Arden, being, as Mr. Charles Knight remarks, in the graceful volume which he calls a Biography of Shakspere, redolent of poetry — and the supposition, consequently, that its possessor was unable to read, becomes a transparent, self-evident absurdity. John Shakspere is a less manageable individuality than his wife. Ancient gossips of Stratford, questioned not very long SHAKSPERE. 31 after William Shakspere's death, reported that the father of the poet had been engaged in the business of a butcher, of a wool-dealer, and of a glover. They, however, it seems, did not know what they were talking about, — the butcher-im- putation especially has been savagely spurned at, and, so to speak, kicked out of the controversy, and with it poor Dr. Farmer, whose inference from the magnificent passage in Hamlet, — " Our indiscretions sometimes serve us well When our deep plots do fail ; and this should teach us There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Hough-hew them how we will," — that the poet, when writing it must have been thinking of the time when he used to shape his father's skewers, brought, from its countenance of the butcher tradition, a storni of abusive ridicule about the learned commentator's ears, which the sublime silliness of the criticism of itself would never have excited. That John Shakspere dealt in wool and gloves was for a long time reluctantly acquiesced in, but it having been ascer- tained that he became possessed of a small quantity of land in right of his wife, the newer and more acceptable belief is, that John Shakspere was in fact what we should now call " a gentleman farmer," cultivating his own land, — clipping, and of course selling his own wool, — and, it may be, disposing of a sheep's carcase— wholesale — now and then. At any rate it is cer- tain that in the year 1568 — his son being then in his fourteenth year — John Shakspere must have been in tolerably pros- perous circumstances, as he was then elected chief bailiff of Stratford. Unfortunately, the municipal archives from which this gratifying fact has been extracted, furnish others of a less agreeable character. One of the rolls is subscribed 32 EXTKAORDINARY MEN. by seventeen persons, ten aldermen and seven burgesses, seven of whom only were able to write their names,-— the rest, amongst whom is John Shakspere. having affixed their marks to the document ! This at the first blush would appear decisive as to the worthy bailiff's skill in calligraphy — but it is not so, — very far from it, indeed, as the mark, which has some resemblance to a pair of compasses, might have been a symbolic sign, intended to give additional weight and emphasis to his signature ! It is besides urged, that the notion of John Shakspere being unable to write, and Mary Shakspere to read, must be discarded, inasmuch as the author of the article " Shakspere," in the Penny Cyclopaedia, emphatically remarks, — "A great deal of what would else ap- pear miraculous " in the poet's writings, excite a " reasonable admiration" only when one finds that the author was " a well- nurtured child of gentle blood." The meaning of which I pre- sume to be that, admitting Shakspere's father and mother possessed themselves, and gave their son a decent education, and that moreover he, the son, was descended on the mater- nal side from the grooms of the body and bed-chamber previously mentioned, the production of the Macbeth, Ham- let, Lear, cease to appear miraculous, and excite a reasonable admiration only. Other incidents in connexion with John Shakspere gleam out of the musty legal records of the town. He had, — it is but faintly questioned, — become embarrassed in his affairs, and in 1586, a process of debt against John Shakspere was returned by the sheriff, endorsed " Nulla Bond," that is, he had been able to find nothing whereon to levy execution. But this John Shakspere, it is roundly affirmed, must have been a shoemaker of that name residing at Stratford, who it appears had previously received relief as a pauper, — a fact of very doubtful significance, — for men do SHAKSPERE. 33 not usually issue costly processes of debt against confessed paupers. The said records further show that John Shakspere, at about the same time, had incurred the penalties set forth in the act against Popish recusants by not attending church, at least once each month. It cannot be denied, that in this instance the real John Shakspere is meant ; but the plain inference suggested by the record is combated by the entirely unsup- ported assumption, that the contumacious absence from church was owing to John Shakspere and his wife being further advanced than the rulers of the land in the way of spiritual reformation, with a leaning towards Puritanism, — an inclina- tion which, at all events, they utterly failed in impressing upon their son. It may appear presumptuous to offer an opinion adverse to the dicta of such masters in critical bio- graphy, still it may be permissible very modestly to avow a belief, that the old Shaksperian traditions are in the main trustworthy : — That John and Mary Shakspere were honest, worthy folk, though deficient in elementary education, — that the husband bravely fought the battle of life, at one time with success, latterly with ill-fortune, — till assisted by his son, — in the various occupations of butcher, wool-dealer, glover, and perhaps as cultivator in a small way, for unlucky traders are prone to essay many vocations. That John and Mary Shakspere were Catholic recusants it is folly to deny; as much so, as to dispute that the poet himself, though certainly not a Roman Catholic, in a dogmatic or intellectual sense, — as Pascal was for instance, — was strongly imbued with the purer, nobler influences of that form of Christianity, in proof of which, it is only necessary to cite the names of Friar Lawrence and saintly Isabel. It may also be safely affirmed, that Mary Shakspere had no more notion that her son was, through her, " an authentic gentleman," in the groom of the bed-chamber meaning of the term, than that he was heir to 34 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. the crown of England. Really, but for positive evidence to the contrary, one would hardly suppose it possible that sane men could imagine that even a direct lineal descent from the Plantagenets could add one ray to the glory of being the mother of Shakspere. The baptismal register already quoted, records the only im- portant and reliable fact in the boy-history of the poet that meets us for several years. That he was sent to the free grammar-school of Stratford is generally assumed, and with some likelihood of truth, though not a particle of evidence can be adduced in proof thereof. The school was governed at the time by Thomas Hunt and Thomas Jenkins, and a remark by one of the before quoted biographers will meet with unhesitating concurrency, — that the said Thomas Hunt and Thomas Jenkins, " did not at any rate spoil his (Shakspere's) marvellous intellect." An unquestionable verity, no doubt, and at the same time, aboutjas awkward a compliment to the managers of a free grammar-school as one can conceive. The grand visit of Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle occurred when Shakspere was in his eleventh year, and there can be little doubt that he, like other denizens of Stratford, was present, as far as the commonalty might be present, at the regal festivities ; but surely Mr. Charles Knight's intima- tion that the dolphin-devices exhibited on that occasion, might have suggested the lines in the Midsummer Night's Dream, in which Oberon reminds Puck of when they heard — " A mermaid on a dolphin's back, Utter such dulcet and melodious breath That the rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid's music " — though not coarsely offensive, like Dr. Farmer's skewer SHAKSPEBE. 35 commentary, is scarcely less far-fetched and puerile. The annual fair at Stratford, — the numerous travellers constantly journeying north and southward through the town, must, it is further argued, have supplied the future dramatist with studies of character of which he subsequently availed him- self; and thus his marvellous plays are supposed to be in some measure accounted for; — the secret of his genius, partially, at least, revealed, — an assumption reinforced by the authority of Dr. Johnson, who sententiously observes, that Shakspere, like other mortals, could only report of what he had learned. There is only a very slight degree of truth in this sounding dictum. Shakspere in his highest attributes was not a copyist of life, but a creator of new modes and forms of being. Nobody ever saw or heard a Lady Macbeth, a Lear, a Hamlet, a Beatrice, Mercutio, Falstaff, in the actual world. They are incarnations of the creative poet's own life and faculties, — his imagination, wit, energy, elo- quence, tenderness, passion, moulded by wondrous dramatic art into exquisitely appropriate and natural expression, whether it be a hero or a child, — a woman or a warrior, — : a demon or a saint that speaks and acts. All therefore that Shakspere could acquire by observation of mankind was, the power of manifesting himself intelligibly to his human audience. But this is too tritely obvious to require further illustration. Even in the kindred but inferior arts of sculp- ture and painting, wherein the artist's thought can only be revealed through mechanical media requiring years of labour and patience to master, he only is a creative genius whose originals are conceived and matured in his own brain ; and it will, nevertheless, not be denied that the Venus de Medicis, the Moses, the Saint Paul, are exquisitely natural ! But though it be vain and ridiculous to grope amidst the 36 EXTEAOEDINARY MEN. scenes of Shakspere's youth or manhood, for the originals or suggestions even of his clowns, fools, shepherds ; his Autolycus, Perdita, William, much less his higher creations, it is not the less certain that the influences to which his early life was exposed — the beautiful rurality encompassing Strat- ford, with its solitary woods, and grassy lanes, and silvered streams — the near and picturesque cities of Warwick and Coventry — the feudal grandeur of Kenilworth — the monastic ruins of Evesham — the primitive and thoroughly English manners of the people amongst whom his youth was passed, must have vividly coloured and impressed the general tone and character of his mind. His hearty sympathy with country life and country sports is abundantly testified in his writings; and if he did not, and it is now angrily asserted that he did not, poach Sir Thomas Lucy's deer, it was cer- tainly from no want of knowledge of how a hart of grease might be successfully dealt with. Nothing irritates Shak- spere's recent biographers so much as to intimate the faintest credence of the poet having despoiled the lord of Charlecote of his venison. It has been ascertained that Sir Thomas Lucy had no enclosed park, — and hence, by a rather violent inference, that he could have had no deer, — which, if ad- mitted, unquestionably demolishes the deer-poaching tradition, root and branch. As to the Reverend R. Davis, who, living about a century after the poet's death, dared to reproduce the vile traditionary scandal, according to which, young Shakspere " was very much given to all unluckiness in •stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had him oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native county to his great advance- ment f he, the Reverend Davis, is unanimously devoted to the infernal gods without benefit of clergy, as a reckless SHAKSPEKE. 37 slanderer, whose depravity of mind and stupidly-malignant hatred of intellectual greatness, puts him out of the pale of civilized society! The whippings and imprisonments are no doubt apocryphal, false, but the deer-poaching tradition is not so easily criticised or explained away, and therein, — no moral offence being, as everybody knows, imputable in the matter, — as well as with respect to other incidents in the youthful life of Shakspere, I hold that it is wiser and safer to be guided by the old lamps than by the new ones. In November, 1582, we again alight from aerial discursions upon tangible and solid ground, in the plainly recorded event of a day, the 26th of the aforesaid month, which, moreover, leads us back with equal certitude to the earlier autumn of the year, about the close of August, at which beguiling season of the year, when the summer beauty of the earth reveals the first rude touches of decay, and the sighs of the frail and tremulous leaves are sadly eloquent of the fleeting mutability of life and joy and beauty, William Shakspere was strolling with Anne Hathaway through the grassy lanes and fields about Shottery, a pleasant village distant only about a mile from Stratford. " Sweet Anne," as might easily be read in the gleaming depths of her delighted eyes by the bright light of the harvest moon, wondering, as she drank in the honey of his music vows, if it could indeed be her — her very self, to whom they were addressed. Anne Hathaway was some years older than her poet-lover, but looking, one might be safely sworn, as country maidens often do, much younger than her age, and fresh, charming, fragrant withal as the streams and woods and flowers amidst which young Shakspere found and wooed her. As before stated, the 26th of No- vember, 1582, supplies an indisputable fact in Shakspere's youthful histoiy. There was considerable excitement on that EXTRAORDINARY MEN. clay in the farmstead at Shottery, the home of Anne Hath- away and her parents, soon however calmed down by the execution of a marriage bond between "William Shakspere and the daughter of the house, to which the two farmer-bondsmen, by the way, being unable to write, affixed their marks. After once asking in church only the contracted couple were united in the bonds of holy matrimony, and before the end of the following May, much too soon, Anne presented her husband with a daughter — Susannah Shakspere. Not long afterwards SHAKSPERE. 39 the youthful father, he had just entered his 20th year, left Stratford for London. It was two years subsequently to this, in 1585, that Hamet and Judith, twins, Shakspere's only other children, were born. Mr. De Quincy, it may not be amiss to notice, indulges in speculations with regard to Shakspere's marriage, which one is glad to find rest upon no other evidence than the forced and arbitrary application of some passages in the poet's writings. Mr. De Quincy would have us believe that Shakspere was inveigled into an unfor- tunate liaison by an artful girl — woman rather; and albeit that his sense of honour compelled him to marry the beguil- ing temptress, she neither possessed his affection nor esteem. Happily, I repeat, there is not the slightest proof of this, and it would require very positive evidence to set aside the pre- cisely opposite presumption, were there no other, raised by the remarkable bequest in the poet's will to his wife, other- wise amply provided for by her legal thirds, of the brown bed. Without considering the matter too curiously, we may hold this beyond all reasonable question, the brown bed was that in which Shakspere saw his first-born child smiling in its mother-nurse's arms. A man regarding his wife with cold indifference, personal aversion, resentful disgust, as Mr. De Quincy intimates, might perhaps bequeath her a carriage, plate, jewellery, an estate even, but the brown bed never ! That Shakspere, on his arrival in London, held horses for a time at the doors of the theatre, according to ancient rumour, is fiercely denied by writers who are determined to discard every anecdote which would seem to connect the poet with meanness, or servility of personal condition, and the reason given in this instance for their disbelief — that till Shakspere had himself created a drama which attracted men of fortune and education to the theatre, such places were 40 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. frequented only by the rabble of society, who, in those days at least, did not ride horses, appears incontrovertible. For- tunately it is beyond cavil or. dispute that Shakspere rapidly attained to favour, eminence, and fortune at the capital and court of England, and was enabled to retire at a comparatively early age to his beloved Stratford, and there close his earthly life in peace, prosperity, and honour, after enriching mankind, and especially the Anglo-Saxon nations, with an inheritance of unspeakable magnificence and value — with thoughts that are the breath-utterances which are the household words of millions upon millions of Englishmen — of those alike which inhabit the vast western and southern continents, and the dwellers in the old northern island home of the teeminsr o race. " Possessed of the Bible and Shakspere," remarked the Earl of Carlisle a short time since in addressing the members of a mechanics' institution, "a man may be said to be above the world f — an unchallengeable verity as applied to man's spiritual intellectuality, of which the essential needs para- mountry require, apart from the sacred writings, of which this is not the place to speak, but the volume of the great Poet of Humanity, wherein all emotions, desires, passions — love, hate, terror, remorse, ambition, — whatever thrills the pulse, fires the blood, or stirs the unfathomable depths of the wondrous human soul, — except contempt for the humble and the un- happy — except scorn of the lowly and the helpless — find their simplest, sublimest, gentlest, most terrific, truest, happiest, and infinitely varied expression, traced in lines of living, imperishable light. OLIVER CROMWELL. rpHE literary partisans of the Restoration appear to have -*- felt no scruple in gratifying their patrons with any number of boldly-inventive fables relative to the early life of this able and distinguished, if fanatical and usurping, soldier and statesman. According to them, he whose stern menace arrested the persecution of the Yaudois by the princes of Piedmont, was hand-in-glove with the devil from his childhood ; the fiery and sagacious commander who disconcerted the tactics, and overthrew the armies of every royalist general — Prince Rupert inclusive — that had the misfortune to encounter him ; the politician who penned or dictated the letters, speeches and dispatches recently collated by Mr. Carlyle, was 42 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. a bom dullard, as well as villain and buffoon, whose history, from the cradle to the grave, was unredeemed by the faintest indication of genius, intellect, or humanity ! The coarse daubing of those mercenary limners, exposed of late years to the keen atmosphere of a searching criticism, has, however, fallen off in flakes, and if the image of the boy-Cromwell in the national mind is still somewhat smirched and stained by the impressions left by the crumbling lamp-black with which it was so lavishly encrusted, its true lineaments and character can now be discerned with sufficient accuracy to satisfy us that it is at all events no vulgar, merely brutal spirit, that gleams forth from beneath the massive forehead — that speaks more clearly than in words, by the firmly-closed, flexible lips ; and we are enabled at once to, instinctively as it were, recognise one of those faces upon which a great life early dawns and glasses itself. The birth and lineage of Oliver Cromwell have taxed the ingenuity of both eulogists and detractors. According to the latter gentlemen he was simply a brewer, and descended from a blacksmith. Others, and amongst them, the author of Paradise Lost, run riot in a contrary direction. " Cromwell," writes Milton, " was of noble and illustrious family. The name was formerly famous in the state when well governed by kings, and more famous for orthodox religion, then first restored or established amongst us." This passage refers, of course, to Thomas Cromwell, son of "Walter Cromwell, a" blacksmith of Putney, the successor of Wolsey in ministerial power, enriched and created Earl of Essex, by Henry the Eighth, for his zeal in the destruction of monasteries, and finally beheaded by that amiable monarch. A sister of this Earl of Essex, handsomely dowered with church-lands, married one Morgan Williams, of Glamorganshire, who afterwards assumed the name of Crom- CROMWELL. 43 well, and settled at Hitchinbrook, near Huntingdon. Robert Cromwell, the second son of Sir Henry Cromwell, the grandson of Morgan Williams, and the sister of the decapitated Earl of Essex, married Elizabeth Steward, sister of Sir Thomas Stew- ard, and remotely allied, it is said, to the Scottish royal family. The issue of this marriage was five daughters, and a son, Oliver Cronrwell, the future Protector, who was born at Huntingdon on the 25th of April, 1599. Robert Crom- well, the father, possessed an income of about three hundred, a-year, and his wife had a jointure of sixty pounds a-year. There is a picture of this excellent woman still preserved at Hitchinbrook, which represents her to be a person somewhat above the middle height, and having large, mild, pensive eyes, a finely chiseled mouth, and clear lustrous forehead, mantled with bright hair ; the whole countenance lit up and harmon- ised by the sweetest expression imaginable. Oliver loved and honoured this admirable mother, and was in return tenderly beloved by her j and this fact alone might sufficiently refute much of the ribald calumny heaped upon his youth. Whatever may be thought of the noble and illustrious descent claimed for Oliver Cromwell on the father's side, there can be no doubt that the combined energy of the three races, — English, Scotch, and Welsh, — was strikingly manifested in both his physical and mental organization. A boisterous, pugnacious child and boy he is said to have been, and no doubt was ; delighting in rough sports, coarse, prac- tical jests, and daring adventures, — orchard-breaking among the rest, for which rather frequent offence, " satisfaction" was relentlessly " taken out of his hide," by his father. In one of his scamperings about the country, he chanced to tumble into a river, but was happily fished out by the Rev. Mr. Johnson, curate of Connington, much to that loyal person's d2 44 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. after regret, if lie was sincere in his reply to Colonel Crom- well, who when passing through Huntingdon at the head of his Ironsides, recognised the reverend gentleman, and spoke of the service he had rendered him approaching to forty years previously. " I remember the circumstance well," replied the zealous royalist ; " arid I wish I had let you drown, rather than see you here in arms against your king;" whereupon the rebel- colonel smiled good-naturedly, and went on his way. The daring frolicksome humour of the boy supplied the germ of a story related upon " high and credible authority," to have taken place during his infancy. His grandfather, Sir Henry Cromwell, had sent for the child; and to the amaze- ment and consternation of everybody who witnessed it, when near the house at Hitchinbrook, a monkey leapt upon the cradle, seized Oliver, and scampered with him over the leads and roof of the mansion. The servants ran out with beds and blankets to catch the child if it should fall, or be thrown down, — a needless precaution, had they known all. It was no monkey that was dandling and chattering with little Noll, but the fiend, in the likeness of one, who had hit upon this extraordinary expedient for giving Master Oliver his first lesson in the devilish arts of treason and king-killing, which accomplished, the semblant monkey safely redeposited the child in its cradle. The foundation of this anecdote was, that Oliver, when about seven years of age, chased a monkey over the roof of his grandfather's house, to the great terror of the spectators, who momently expected him to fall headlong and break his neck. He was two years older when the same fearless temperament displayed itself, in conjunction with a higher, nobler quality. One of his mischievous school-boy I ranks, possibly robbing an orchard of a hatful of apples. CROMWELL. 45 brought on him the displeasure of his mother, who, her hus- band being from home, inflicted a severe caning upon the delinquent, and sent him to bed early in the evening. Oliver was still fiercely sobbing with rage and pain, when a servant entering the bed-room upon some errand, happened to say that Mrs. Cromwell had gone out on a visit to a sick friend, and intended returning alone by a road across fields, a dis- tance of two or three miles. The moment the servant was gone and the door closed, the boy sprang out of bed, hastily dressed himself, got down in some way from a window into the back-yard unobserved, or the domestics would have stopped him, possessed himself of a light spade, and sped off in the direction Mrs. Cromwell was expected. He had traversed two-thirds of the distance, when he met his mother. " There — there is a savage bull," said the still sob- bing and excited boy, in reply to Mrs. Cromwell's exclamation of surprise, "in the field I have just passed, placed there I knew to day, and I — I thought he might run at your red cardinal, and so I slipped out and came." The mother kissed her son, and proudly escorted by the dreadless boy, passed the fierce brute, who intently regarded them, in safety. Numberless instances are related, all clearly showing that young Oliver was a born regicide, thoroughly resolved to one day behead the future King Charles, albeit that prince, his elder brother being yet alive, was not even heir-apparent to the crown, and seat himself upon the vacated throne. Lord Clarendon himself vouches for the supernatural agency which prompted the boy's soaring ambition, all the circumstances connected with which were, his lordship states, the subject of common talk long before the commencement of the troubles, which might otherwise, perhaps, have suggested the impious prophecies. Young Cromwell was, it seems, lying awake in 46 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. bed, when the curtains were slowly drawn aside, and a gigantic figure, with the aspect of a woman, looked in upon the boy, and told him : " he would be the greatest man in England." Oliver immediately informed Mr. ."Robert Crom- well of the high destiny awaiting his son, and was " soundly flogged " for his dutiful pains ; and upon communicating the circumstance to his maternal uncle, Sir T. Steward, that gentleman solemnly admonished his nephew that it was traitorous to entertain such thoughts. It was this satanic visitation, further states my Lord Clarendon, which hindered Cromwell from accepting the crown when it was pressed upon his acceptance by the council of officers : " I should be the greatest man in England," muttered the Protector, as he reluctantly put aside the glittering bauble, " but he did not say I should be king," — a clear admission, by the way, in the use of the masculine pronoun, that Cromwell knew perfectly well who the prophetic shape was, though appearing in the guise of a woman; and moreover proof of a considerable forbearance on the Protector's part in refusing to convict his ancient friend, as he might easily have done, of want of fore- sight. This was the more generous, as Oliver, when a pupil of Dr. Beard's, at the Huntingdon free-school, manifested a decided predilection for the crown, which, according to Lord Clarendon, he, in deference to infernal prophecy, ultimately refused. As is frequently the case in large scholastic establish- ments, a kind of dramatic entertainment was enacted by the principal pupils of the Huntingdon free-school, called " The Contest of the Five Senses for the Croivn of Superiority." Cromwell enacted the part of Tactus, or Feeling, and in order to have an opportunity of crowning himself, extemporised, we are told, some "mighty majestical words," not to be found in his part, — an accusation, it may be remarked, in CKOMWELL. 47 passing, somewhat at variance with the common one of dul- ness and stupidity. The " mighty majestical words " were, however, not Oliver's, but those of the writer of the piece, and essential to its action : Enter Tactus (sohis). Tactus. Roses and bays pack hence ; this crown and robes My brows and body circles and invests. How gallantly it fits me. Sure the slave Measured my head that wrought this coronet. My blood's ennobled, and I am transformed Unto the sacred nature of a king. These lines, delivered with brave emphasis, were much applauded by the audience, and shrewdly remembered after- wards, as another presumptive proof, if any were wanting, of Oliver's early compact with the devil, and the treason they had hatched together. The story of Oliver having given Prince Charles, when Duke of York, a bloody nose, has a likelihood of truth. Sir Henry Cromwell was a devoted loyalist, whom James the First sometimes visited. Upon one of these occasions, Sir Henry is said to have sent for his little grandson to play ■with the royal children. Oliver and Prince Charles quar- relled over their sports, and of course Prince Charles, who was a weakly boy, had the worst of it in the encounter which followed. On the 23rd of April, 1616, two days only before his seven- teenth birth-day, Oliver Cromwell entered Sussex College, Cambridge, where, however, he was not destined to remain long, his mother having recalled him to Huntingdon, at his father's death, in the following year. He passed with' super- ficial observers at the University, for a mere blustering roysterer, much more fitted to attain celebrity at quarter- ■48 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. staff, cudgel playing, foot-ball, et cetera, than by higher aims and pursuits. Milton thus admits and excuses his want of bookish application: — "It did not become that hand to wax soft in literary ease which was to be inured to the use of arms, and hardened with asperity ; that right arm to be softly wrapped up amongst the nocturnal birds of Athens, by which thunderbolts were soon afterwards to be hurled among the eagles which emulate the sun." Not long after his father's death, Oliver went to London, and ate his terms in Lincoln's Inn. His implacable revilers iiisist that during his stay there and intermediate visit to Huntingdon, he was remarkable only for excesses of every kind — drinking, gaming, " kissing every girl he met," knocking in the barrel- CROMWELL. 4:9 heads of defenceless ale-wives, and never paying for the good liquor scandalously wasted or given away : and yet, so trans- parently inconsistent with itself is unreasoning prejudice, that these same scribes declare, that the Oliver Cromwell whom they thus described was from early boyhood regarded by everybody in Huntingdon and its neighbourhood, as one born to achieve greatness, to soar high above his fellows, should chance or fate afford him the slightest opportunity of doing so ! — An anticipation echoed thereafter by his kinsman, John Hampden, in his frequently-quoted reply to Digby : — " That sloven as you esteem him, is Mr. Oliver Cromwell, the member for Huntingdon, and if we should ever, which God forbid, come to a rupture with the king, will be the greatest man in England." It is easy to trace through all the tissue of folly and misrepresentation by which the boy-life of a great, though far from perfect man, has been obscured and distorted, the germ and growth of those remarkable qualities, resolute will, indomitable energy, clear, masculine intellect, lofty patriotism, disdain of conventionalism, which in after years raised their possessor to supreme- power ; and if the devotional fervour, first kindled in the youthful Oliver's mind by the Bible-teachings of his mother, subsequently flamed into fanaticism — the evil is in a great degree attributable to the persecuting intolerance of the monarchs under whose sway he grew to manhood, — for hardly a day could have passed without tidings reaching him of some cruel or despotic act — some fresh outrage upon sufferers for conscience sake, — some new encroachment upon the ancient vital liberties of the country. He had not long passed his twenty-first birth-day when he married (August 22d, 1620) Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir John Bourchier, a relative of Hampden's, thenceforth putting resolutely aside all boyish follies, he, to use Mil- 50 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. ton's expression, "nomished his soul in silence," against the time, which he never doubted must arrive when a brave determined stand would be made against the galling and oppressive yoke by which it was sought to bend the spirit of the English and Scottish peoples into submission to arbitrary rule in both civil and religious government. MOLIERE. HHHE real name of this eminent and facile dramatist, -*- eulogised by Boileau, as — " Ce rare et fameux esprit, dont la fertile veine, Ignore en ecrivant, le travail et la peine." was Jean Baptiste Poquelin — that of Moliere having been assumed by him when he made choice of the stage as a pro- fession. He was born on the 15th of January, 1622, and was consequently the contemporary of Corneille and Racine. M. de Voltaire says, he accomplished for comedy what those poets did for tragedy; a criticism far from conrplinientary, by-the-way, to the author of Tartuffe and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, how highly soever we may admire the stately, 52 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. b>rilliant, and tender verses of those great writers in the Cid Phedre, Britannicus, and other of their dramatic poems, — though certainly not so absurd a judgment as the prince of mockers, and well-nigh feeblest of dramatists, pronounced, when he expressed surprise that a nation which possessed so magnificent a tragedy as Mr. Addison's Cato, could tolerate the Macbeth and Lear of Shakspere. Moliere, to give him the name by which he is world-known, was of very humble birth, albeit he was not, as formerly supposed, a stray waif of one of the Dames de la Halle, and exposed therein to the chance discovery and compassion of the passers by. His parents were upholsterers, and he was born, it has been pretty well ascertained, in the Rue St. Honore, Paris, at which time his father held the post of valet-upholsterer to the King of France ; that is, he had to attend his majesty on his journeys, or whenever else his services were required, to arrange the draperies, curtains, &c, of the king's apartments ; and some- times, it appears, to make the royal bed. Young Moliere was destined, in the fulness of time, to succeed his father as king's valet-upholsterer (valet-tapissier), and with that view care- fully instructed in the business, and little else ; for at the age of fourteen he could barely read, write, and cast simple accounts ; and his knowledge of the world he was thereafter so graphically to portray was chiefly limited to the occupants or visitors of his father's workshop, and the priests and wor- shippers at the church to which his mother, a pious woman, n6e Marie Cresse, used to convey him every Sunday morning to hear mass, and every Sunday evening to sing vespers. His keen faculty of observation was early manifested, as well as a considerable power of mimicry, indulgence wherein — more especially when at the expense of the clergy, frequently cost him dear. " Concois-tu, Lisette," said the future painter of MOLIEHE. 53 ( 1 III ■!i V !j'| ■ ■ i Tartuffe, as soon as he had dried his eyes, and cleared his voice, addressing a serving-girl employed in the workshop, " Congois tu, Lisette, pourquoi Ton s'enrage si fiirieusement quand on me voit faire le Pretre ?" " Asseverement T replied Lisette ; " tu le fais trop bien." The business to which he was apparently doomed was much disliked by the boy, and it was rendered unendurable by his grandfather taking him to see the theatrical performances at the Hotel Bour- gogne, at the time Belle-Rose, Gros-Gillaume and Tnrlnpin, all of course stage names, were performing there. It was no longer possible after one or two visits to the theatre, to induce Jean Baptiste, either by threat or persuasion, cuffs or kind- 54 EXTRAOEDINARY MEN. ness, to attend to his work ; and his grandfather, swayed by the boy's pleadings and M. Pocquelin's angry remonstrances, got him admitted as out-scholar to the College of Clermont, afterwards that of Louis le Grand, then under the direction of the Jesuits, with the avowed hope of making his promising grandson a great man. Moliere remained five years at this college, and ever afterwards spoke in high terms of his spiritual preceptors, though he certainly did not gain much in religious orthodoxy by their teachings. This, however, was not their fault; his marked superiority over other boys of his age having procured him not only the friendship and patronage of the Prince of Conti, brother of the great Conde, as he is called, and other influential personages, but early introduced him to the damaging society of Gassendi, a somewhat cele- brated person, who affected the office of moderator between the ancient and modern physical theories in dispute between the believers in Aristotle and the disciples of Galileo and Descartes, — sometimes siding with the one party and some- times with the other. The baleful, varnished cynicism by which the great majority of the upper ranks of French society were more or less infected was openly avowed and defended by Gassendi's coterie, and he himself was zealous to indoctrinate young Moliere amongst others, with the revived and fashionable philosophy of Epicurus. One of Moliere's fellow pupils was Brenier the traveller, who used to charm- ingly divert Mademoiselle De l'Enclos with his illustrative proofs that all man and womankind, high or low, of what- ever race, clime, or religion, were all " Swiss," that is pur- chaseable, like himself, like Mademoiselle, like Cardinal Richelieu, like everybody, in fact, without exception. The* children of Loyola must not therefore be blamed for Moliere's scepticism, supposing the imputation to be fairly applied^ MOLIEKE. 55 which is rendered somewhat doubtful by the fact that his last moments were, at his own request, attended and consoled by two Sisters of Charity, whom he had been in the habit of receiving into his house for many years on their annual visits to Paris during Lent to collect alms. In 1640, Moliere was obliged, in consequence of his father's illness, to attend Louis the XIII. as valet-upholsterer to Narbonne; and on his return he witnessed the execution of Cinq-Mars and his unfortunate friend De Thou ; a spectacle which is said to have done much to convince him that the philosophy which teaches that man's highest good is to eat, drink, and sleep, as comfortably as may be without regard to others' welfare, whilst it is yet possible to do so, is the only sound and sensible one. The young man's vocation in life was still undecided ; his father pronounced for upholstering, some of his friends for the law, which he studied for a short time at Orleans, but the strong inclination for the stage which had possessed and dominated him since he first visited the Hotel Bourgogne with his maternal uncle, finally prevailed, and he perma- nently associated himself with a company of comedians, comprising the two brothers Bejart, their sister Madeline, and Dupare, otherwise Gros-Rene, and not long afterwards commenced his greatly successful career as a dramatist. The unhappy influences by which Moliere's youth was encom- passed projected a baleful shadow as we now perceive over his whole after life, which, in all but the display of his manners-painting power, was a vain, illusory, and abortive one. The lynx-eyed observer of the follies of others, the author of UEcole des Maris, espoused, at the age of forty, a pretty actress of sixteen, who took upon herself to illustrate and defend the Epicurean philosophy of self-indulgence, in a very bold and candid manner, coolly replying when taxed by 56 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. her half-distracted and indignant husband with her manifest partiality for M. Lauzan, that he was mistaken, as it was M. Guille she preferred. The last striking commentary upon the teachings to which his boyhood had been exposed, and which he had at last learned to execrate, was supplied during his last hours, which would have been untended, uncheered by human sympathy, but for the ministering presence of two humble Sisters of Mercy, whose mission was dictated by the spirit of self-sacrifice. It may be permitted, in concluding this brief notice of the early years of the great French dramatist, to remark that his genius was pre-eminently a reflective, not a creative one. He could place a Precieuse Ridicule of the Hotel Rambouillet, or a Tartuffe admirably en scene, and the life-like resemblance would be instantly acknowledged. Even his exaggerations of character, as in the Malade Imaginaire, are so humorously effective, so artistically contrived, that one does not for a time perceive that it is a caricature, not a genuine portrait, which challenges applause and admiration. To do this unquestionably requires dramatic talent of a high order; but he who possesses it, in even so eminent a degree as did Moliere, can no more be compared with him who created Rosalind, Beatrice, and Mercutio, than Sir T. Lawrence to Haffaelle, or the accurate carver of Mr. Jones' head in wood or stone, to him who modelled the head of the Apollo. Yet, immeasurably inferior, withal, as Moliere's comic portraitures are to the creations of Shakspere, it is certain that he has no rival in French dramatic writing, nor, as regards the comedy of manners, in perhaps that of any other country. BLAISE PASCAL. T)LAISE PASCAL, the name of one of the most divinely- -*-' gifted men that ever trod the earth to enlighten, elevate, and guide it ; in whom the love of truth for its own sake was a consuming passion, whose too-brief life was a manifestation ot the harmoniously-combined powers of reason and faith in their highest and purest development, was bom in Auvergne, France, on the 19th of June, 1623. He was extremely for- tunate in his parentage. His father, M. Etienne Pascal, was President of the Court of Aides in that province, and was held in great esteem, not only as a citizen and magistrate, but as a man of science, and especially a sound mathematician. His wife, every way worthy of her husband, died when Blaise, the youngest but one of three children, and the only boy, was in his fourth year. Already at that tender age, the restless inquisitive intellect of the child was awake, and stirred E 58 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. uneasily. He had been removed against his will from the death-chamber, and when next seen by his father, he was gazing with wet gleaming eyes at the stuffed figure of a bird that had belonged to him, which he held in his hand. " Father," exclaimed the child, with quiet earnestness, the instant M. Pascal entered the room: "what is death?" The answer is not given. The blow which had just fallen was keenly felt by Etienne Pascal, his union with Antoinette Begon having been one of mutual and tenderest affection ; and according to the testimony of his daughter, Madame Perier, the brief day of Ms married life was unchequered by a pass- ing cloud. The death of his wife no doubt confirmed and hastened the intention of M. Pascal to retire from private life, and devote his time and energies to the education of his family, — chiefly that of Blaise, his son, in whom he had not failed to discern unmistakeable indications of extraordinary mental power, which in the father s opinion required for its ultimate sound and vigorous development, to be checked for a time, and not stimulated into precocious effort. With this prime object in view, M. Etienne Pascal sold his office of President of the Court of Aides to his brother, and removed in 1631 with his young family to Paris. The first half of the seventeenth century was a great epoch in the history of the exact sciences, as well as in that of the more speculative opinions which agitate and divide mankind. The Reforma- tion had shaken other besides Papal superstitions; mere authority in science as well as religion, however weighty and imposing, found itself scanned in all directions by keen eyes undazzled by the halo of revered antiquity, before which men had been so long contented to bow down with unquestioning submission. Galileo had practically disproved one of Aris- totle's axiomatic propositions on the speed of falling bodies; PASCAL. 59 his telescope had confirmed the Copernican theory of the motion of the earth and planets, and was enabling Kepler, not indeed to legislate for the starry orbs, — as a frequently quoted hyperbolical extravagance expresses it, — but to ascertain the laws by which they are controlled in their orbits, — not the principle, so to speak, of those laws, that was reserved for a greater than Kepler, — Sir Isaac Newton. Torricelli, — after Galileo, — was questioning experimentally the soundness of another Aristotelian dogma, — "that nature abhors a vacuum," — which, if it did not solve, was made to silence so many troublesome questions and objections, — a venerable fallacy which it was reserved for him whose brilliant boyhood we are about to sketch, to thoroughly explode, by proving that air had weight not long after Torricelli's death in 164G, had left the question still in dispute. Altogether, it was a time of mental agitative inquiry. The fountains of the great deep of prescription and authority were broken up, and innumer- able theories, for the most part utterly fantastical and absurd, some with a few scintillations of verity, overlaid with a dense mass of folly and error, and a few, luminous and buoyant with imperishable truth, floated upon the surface of the pregnant waters. The study of Geometry, the key to the exact sciences, was naturally, at such a time, zealously cultivated, and by few more ardently than Etienne Pascal, who, emancipated from business, and an enthusiastic mathe- matician, gladly associated himself with a number of superior men of like bent of mind, — Carcari, Le Pailleur, Roberval, Mydorge, Mersenne and others, the nucleus of the Academie des Sciences, incorporated by royal charter in 1656, who frequently assembled at his house to compare notes, and talk over the discoveries, real and fabulous, in the regions of science, which the not very long previously invented faculty e 2 60 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. of swift, silent, ubiquitous speech, — the printing press,— was disseminating through the world. The young Blaise, meanwhile, was undergoing the course of education prescribed by his father — namely, the study of the Greek and Latin classics, in the original — and polite literature generally, ancient and modern, with a view to form his taste upon correct and elegant models, and fill his mind with images of beauty, tenderness and grace, before permitting him to engage in the severer intellectual pursuits, for which he evidently pined, as might a half-conscious youth- ful giant, condemned to weave chaplets for the victors in an assault upon some citadel of mysterious strength, the con- fused din and tumult of which he hears afar off, but may not mingle in, though feeling instinctively that his true place is in the foremost ranks of the combatants — not there, idling amidst girls and flowers. Constantly, when his father's scientific friends met together, would the boy creep into the room, and seating himself as much as possible out of the way of observation, listen with rapt attention to their conversa- tion, of which he could comprehend only the general purport — that they were questioning nature of her most jealously- guarded secrets, and endeavouring to eliminate the truth from the mass of broken and often seemingly contradictory replies they had severally received. The excited state of the boy's inquisitive mind constantly revealed itself. "What are you doing with that plate, Blaise ?" exclaimed his elder sister, upon one occasion. " You surely are not trying to break it ?" " No — no," replied the brother, " but notice, Gibberte, when I strike the plate with a knife, it rings, hark ! — and when I grasp it with my hand thus, the sound ceases. "Why is that, I wonder ?" A question or doubt once suggested to his mind, there could be no rest or quiet forhim PASCAL. 61 till it was resolved, and from this moment — he was in his tenth year — may be dated the process of experimental rea- soning, embodied in his Treatise upon Sound, perfect as far as it went, which he completed about three years afterwards. But the study which he most ardently longed to pursue, was that of geometry, and his incessant questioning at last deter- mined his father not even to speak on the subject in his presence or hearing; nor permit him to be for an instant where it was discoursed upon by others. He also took care that his son should have access to no books which treated even incidentally of the science. " When, Blaise, you are sufficiently grounded in the Greek and Latin classics," he said, " you shall receive instruction in the exact sciences, but not till then." "Tell me, at least," exclaimed his son, " what this wonderful geometry is — what it means — proves — whither it leads !" " It treats," replied M. Pascal, " of the properties of figures and the relations between the several dimensions that compose them." " Yes," said the boy, " I know, or at least I suppose that, but surely geometry means something else — something more — some Ah, well!" he added, checking himself, "this Greek and Latin once finished, I shall begin to learn something." The vehement impulse of Blaise Pascal's mind to attach itself only to that which was demonstratively true, weakened for a time his admiration of eloquence and poetry, and it was only from anxiety to avoid giving pain to his father, that he resolutely persevered in the prescribed studies — an act of filial submission amply recom- pensed in after years, when the ardent zeal of the consum- mate mathematician to ascertain the properties and conditions of the material, visible world, had been superseded by the loftier aim of the spiritual philosopher to penetrate the im- 62 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. palpable, immaterial secret of the universe — involving the Life of God and the immortality of man. No doubt the innate force, the subtle energy of his piercing intellect might have been apparent as now, in the deathless " Thoughts,'' had those studies been neglected ; but the exquisite sim- plicity of style in which they are clothed ; — the quiet grace and charm shed over them by a fancy chastened and refined by early familiarity with the masters of composition, must, to some extent, have been wanting, and the Pensees de Pascal, been deprived, not of power, it may be, but certainly of some part of their attractiveness. Blaise Pascal's place of study was a large, unfurnished room — save for a table and two chairs, where his father, who was a model of accuracy and method, entered only at stated times ; and the instant the lad had mastered his tasks and there was no fear of interruption, he was deep " in the pro- perties of figures," and drawing with a piece of charcoal on the floor the lines and circles which should reproduce and demonstrate the problem figured in his brain. This went on till past his eleventh birth-day, when his father unexpectedly entered the room, and caught the eager geometer at his labour of love. " What are you doing there, Blaise ?" asked M. Pascal, as his son, confused, and blushing, rose hastily from his recumbent position. ""What are you doing there, Blaise ?" Blaise could not have told him in technical terms — for he was unacquainted with them, — what he had achieved, or was on the point of achieving, for there is some doubt upon this point ; but the father saw at a glance that the figures on the floor were the demonstration, or closely approximating to it, of Euclid's thirty-second proposition. The sister of Blaise, Madame Perier, says her brother had just, indistinctly, as it were ; perceived the true theorem when PASCAL. 65 surprised by his father. Be this as it may, M. Etienne Pascal saw enough to literally frighten him — (il etoit epouvante, writes Madame Perier) — and breathlessly ques- tioned his son as to how or where he had acquired his know- ledge. Blaise, whose intellect had not perhaps been more severely tasked at reaching in his twelfth year, unassisted by books or oral instruction, the thirty-second proposition in Euclid than that of an ordinary boy of the same age might have been in achieving a kite, could hardly comprehend his father's excitement, and explained that he had arrived so far, if far it were, by experimental essays, forward, backward, forwards again, as.gleamings of knowledge broke in upon 64 EXTRAORDINARY MEN". liim by dint of unwearied meditation upon " the properties of figures." M. Pascal left the house hastily, sought some of his scientific friends, and requested them to accompany him to the studio of " a born geometer." Those friends, like M. Pascal himself, could thoroughly appreciate the astounding fact so unexpectedly revealed, and it was determined by acclamation that no further hindrance should be offered to the boy's scientific predilections ; and from that time he was liberally supplied with every requisite necessary for the pro- secution of his chosen pursuit. He was also invited to attend the meetings of his father's friends, where, though habitually an absorbed and eager listener, he would at times throw a sudden glance of light upon the discussion which startled the scientific veterans almost as much as had the charcoal figures on the floor. His progress was now marvellously rapid. He was only sixteen when he produced his famous paper upon conic sections, in which all that Apollonius of Perga had established in this branch of geometry, and whereon the fame of the successor to Archimedes chiefly rests, was deduced from one single proposition, illustrated by four hundred corollaries ; and this without the aid of the algebraic formula which Descartes subsequently elaborated for the simplification of mathematical calculations. This astonishing performance was submitted to Descartes himself, who could not be persuaded that it was the production of a lad in his sixteenth year, and persisted in believing or affecting to be- lieve that Pascal senior, or some one of his friends, was the author of the paper. It was only the after mathematical eminence of the man, that effectually rebuked Descartes' scepticism as to the extraordinary powers of the boy. At the time Blaise Pascal was meditating upon " conic sections" his father, by one of those caprices of power against PASCAL. 65 which the most inoffensive blameless life is no surety in countries despotically governed, was compelled to flee from his home, and seek refuge and concealment in Auvergne. The circumstances were these : — It was the year 1638, just after the termination of the war with England, which had so damaged the finances of the French Court, that, amongst other measures devised by Chancellor Seguier, for replenish- ing the royal coffers, the screw was vigorously applied to the Rentiers of the H6tel-de-Ville. This always extremely unplea- sant operation of course excited great indignation amongst the sufferers, who were, however, wise enough to digest their wrath as they best could in silence. Unfortunately, one of the Rentiers was an intimate acquaintance of M. Etienne Pascal ; and that gentleman, not satisfied with quietly sym- pathising with his friend, was so imprudent as to openly proclaim his opinion of Chancellor Siguier's oppressive con- duct. This was not to be borne ; and upon complaint to Cardinal Richelieu a lettre de cachet forthwith issued, author- izing the imprisonment of M. Pascal in the Bastille. Timely notice of what was going on fortunately reached the intended victim ; and he, as we have stated, fled to Auvergne. Madame la Duchesse d'Aiquillon, who well knew and esteemed the Pascal family, after exhausting all ordinary expedients for procuring the recal of the mandate of im- prisonment, hit upon an ingenious and happily successful device for propitiating the all-powerful cardinal, and re- storing M. Pascal to his family. She had a new dramatic piece, called Tyrannic Love {V Amour Tyrannique), put in rehearsal, with the intention of having it played before his eminence, who, a playwright in a small way himself, was extremely partial to dramatic representations. The duchess had selected the most interesting part in the piece for Jacque- 00 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. line Pascal, the youngest sister of Blaise, a girl of charming personal appearance and graceful manners. Gibberte, the elder sister, at first objected to Jacqueline contributing in any way to the gratification of her father's oppressor ; but the calmer judgment of her brother, and the persuasions of the duchess, overcame her scruples, and Jacqueline undertook the part, which she played with such natural grace and effect that the cardinal was delighted ; and on the duchess present- ing Jacqueline to him after the performance, he embraced the young girl with the greatest kindness, and asked her if there was any favour he could render her. " Yes," replied Jacqueline, bursting into tears; "yes, give us back our father !" After the first few moments of surprise, and a brief explanation by the duchess, the cardinal graciously promised compliance with Jacqueline's request ; the lettre de cachet was cancelled, and M. Pascal restored to his home. The cardinal's interest in the family, first excited by the grace and comeliness of Jacqueline, and increased by what he heard of the remarkable powers so early manifested by her brother, caused him to offer their father the post of Intendant of Rouen, in Normandy, which M. Pascal was mainly induced :to accept in order that he might be enabled to ensure his brilliantly gifted son the life of leisure necessary to the full development of his nascent genius. On M. Pascal taking possession of his new appointment, he intrusted the calcula- tions which formed part of the business of the office to his son, whose fertile brain at once conceived the joossibility of inventing a machine which should of itself perform all the required operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. After months of labour, and the construction of at least fifty models in wood, ivory, and copper, the task, in principle, was successfully accomplished. The machine, PASCAL. 67 which consisted of a number of cylinders studded with columns of figures, turned by wheelwork, performed the task required of it, excited at the time, enthusiastic admiration, and was subsequently presented to Queen Christina of Swe- den. But the complex delicacy of the apparatus, and the great facilities for calculation given by the invention of the logarithms, combined to render it practically valueless ; and like a similar contrivance by Leibnitz, and another, in our own day, by Babbage, Pascal's arithmetical machine was at once a marvel and a folly — an evidence of wondrous mechan- ical genius, and the futile tasks on which it sometimes wastes its energies. The after scientific achievements of Blaise Pascal, which have invested his name with imperishable lustre, belong to the history of his manhood; but I cannot close this brief chronicle of his earlier years without remarking that the fer- vent faith in the truths of Christianity which induced him, in the very noon of his intellectual vigour and scientific fame, to calmly put aside all pursuits which tended to divert his mind from the contemplation of the unspeakable hereafter, which coloured and dominated all his thoughts — was kindled in his boyhood, becoming only brighter, clearer, as the years brought knowledge and wisdom. Especially the rare faculty in one so marvellously gifted with high-reaching, self-sufficing intellect, that clearly discerned, through all the dazzling illu- sions of mental pride, the exact point which passing, reason, till then a steadfast, guiding light, changes to a misleading meteor, luring him who follows it to abysmal labyrinths wherein he finds no rest, or end, — " in wandering mazes lost." He was but eighteen when, in reply to a remark on the in- compatibility of reason with revelation, he gave utterance to the remark reproduced in such various lights and aspects in 68 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. his ' Thoughts :' — " Ay, as you say, reason confounds revela- tion; but then creation,— existence confounds reason. Ask reason what it has to say of an eternity gone past — of the interminability of space : and yet existence, a past eternity, interminability of space, are self-evident facts ! True, reason is a truth and power in her own domain, — beyond it, a false- hood and a juggle." In fact, every attribute of character which marked his maturity was but the continuous develop- ment of qualities which grew with him from his earliest youth, — the stupendous intellect united with the humblest, simplest faith, — the playful sparkling wit, the polished subtle sarcasm, restrained only by kindliness and generosity of mind, — the passionate devotion to truth ; — in all things the child was emphatically the Father of the man, ay, even the mor- bid asceticism which threw a gloom over his last days was but the diseased development of what in his boyhood had been abnegation of his own wishes — unhesitating self-sacrifice, if the happiness of others might be advanced thereby. THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. npHERE is no part of the history of his country which an -"- Englishman, jealous for its honour, would so gladly blot out as the annals of the Restoration. National calamity in. its worst shapes, — famine, pestilence, the loss of battle, suc- cessful invasion by the Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman, meet us in the earlier portions of the chequered volume ; but the dark shadows there, are relieved by brilliant lights, whilst in the restored Stuart's reign the leaves when not stained with innocent and noble blood, are grimed with grossest pro- fligacy. Such names as Oates, Scroggs, Jefferys, alternating with those of Buckingham, Rochester, Lady Castlemaine, the Duchess of Portsmouth, and others of a like odour; the charming catalogue fitly headed and graced by the crowned pensioner of France, calling himself Charles, King of Eng- land, and his equally unprincipled and despotic brother, James. Apart from the list of the victims of that unhappy 70 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. period, there is scarcely one historic name which is not more or less tainted with its slime, — and few more disastrously so than that of the distinguished military chieftain whose name heads this brief memoir, — the youth of whom, moulded in that hot-bed of corruption was fatally impressed with a venal bias which dwarfed and disfigured his great achievements, and has rendered the biography of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, victor of Ramilies and Blenheim, one of the saddest and most painful lessons upon record. The Churchills, or Courcelles ? as the name was formerly written, came in like the Slys, with the Conqueror, and appear to have been of eminence amongst the followers of the Duke of Normandy, inasmuch as Roger de Courcelles is set down in Doinesday Booh as the possessor of lordships in "Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, and Salop. The name does not, however, reappear in the annals of the kingdom with any especial splendour, till the intermarriage of the family with the Drakes of Devonshire, Sir Winstone Churchill having espoused towards the middle of the seventeenth century, a daughter of Sir John Drake of Ashe, Devonshire, by whom he had issue, Winstone, John, and Arabella Churchill, — John, the second son, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, having been born at his grandfather's house on the 24th of June, 1650, and baptized by the Rev. Matthew Drake, rector of the parish of Ashe, on the 28th of the same month. Sir Winstone Churchill obtained at the Restoration a subordinate office at Court, and was the author of a political history of slight merit called Divi Britannia, but his pecuniary resources had withal become very attenuated, — the lordships of Roger de Courcelles having slipped, as lordships often will, from the family's grasp long before. Winstone Churchill died early, and John was consequently heir to his father's possessions, but of such in- MARLBOROUGH. 71 considerable value was that contingency deemed, that it was constantly impressed upon the handsome boy and his beauti- ful sister Arabella, that their advancement in the world must entirely depend upon the favour they might acquire with the influential people of the Court. A favourable opening for success in the suggested mode of life was procured, by John becoming page to the Duke of York, and Arabella, maid of honour to the Duchess. John Churchill's education, such as it was, had been chiefly obtained at St. Paul's School, then presided over by a gentleman of the euphonious name of Dr. Crumlepolm. Whilst there, the military bent of the boy's mind was displayed, according to the following circum- stantial testimony, which, however, is rendered somewhat doubtful by the fact, that the Duke of Marlborough's know- ledge of Latin was of the slenderest kind, — by his partiality, though any thing but bookishly inclined, for the study of Vegetius de Re MUitari. " From this very book," writes the Rev. Mr. North, rector of Colyton, " from this very book, John Churchill, scholar of this school, afterwards the cele- brated Duke of Marlborough, first learnt the elements of the art of war, as was told to me, George North, on Saint Paul's day, 1714-5, by an old clergyman, who said he was a con- temporary scholar, was then well acquainted with him, and frequently saw him read it. This I testify to be true. G. North, Rector of Colyton." At all events the young man's scholastic studies, civil or military, were neither severe nor protracted, inasmuch as he was an ensign in the Foot Guards before he was sixteen years of age. The commission was the gift of the Duke of York, to whom he had for some time been page of honour, and has been erroneously atributed to the influence of his sister Arabella with his royal highness — an imputation which seems 72 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. to be unfounded, that young lady not having then become the Duke's mistress. The favour was apparently obtained by the bold solicitation of John Churchill himself, who having been present with the Duke of York, at a review of the two regiments of Guards, was so fascinated with the pomp and circumstance of war as there displayed, that upon returning to the palace he threw himself at James's feet, and vehemently solicited a commission in one of the royal regiments. His request was granted, all the more readily, according to the scandalous gossip of the time, that the suit of the singularly handsome page was supported by the influence of the Duchess of York. This anecdote, or at least the inference suggested by it, is, there can be little doubt, a calumny; but it is quite MAKLBOKOUGH. 73 certain that another and quite as influential a lady was so dazzled by the young soldier's appearance in his new uniform that she presented hi™ with a gift of extraordinary munifi- cence. This we have upon the direct and positive authority of Lord Chesterfield. " The Duchess of Cleveland," writes his lord- ship, " was so struck by the beautiful figure of young Churchill when an ensign of the Guards, that she gave him five thou- sand pounds, with which he bought an annuity for his life of five hundred a-year of my grandfather Halifax." Such an expensive Lothario, it must have occurred to the Duchess of Cleveland's patrons, would be much better, less expensively, at any rate, employed in making conquests of the Moors, instead of the ladies of the court, for Ensign Churchill was forthwith shipped off to Africa, to assist in defending Tangiers against the desultory attacks of the Arabs. Arrived there the juvenile officer quickly showed that he was no mere parade holiday soldier, by volunteering in every enterprise which bore the inviting aspect of danger, and promised glory, renown. He was cool, too, as he was daring and adven- turous ; and well for him that he was, especially upon one occasion, when he found himself on a sudden most un- pleasantly circumstanced. He had wandered forth, one brilliant moonlit night, for what purpose does not appear, by a circuitous route, to a considerable distance from the lines, and was returning when he came plump upon a rather numerous party of Moors, when least thinking or desirous of such a rencontre. The Moors were busy with their supper, and before they could get to their feet or their arms, Ensign Churchill was already at a considerable distance, and speed- ing along at a rate which rendered foot pursuit — and the broken rocky ground precluded the use of horses — hopeless. There was, however, a rocky ledge on the other side F 74 EXT&AOKDINARY HEN. of a deep chasm, which separated hira from the Moors, which he must pass, where their guns could easily reach him. Thither the Moors tunmltuously hurried, so that there seemed nothing for it but that the gallant ensign must run the gauntlet past a score of bullets discharged from point-blank distance at his handsome person. The situation was a dismal one, and when clearly ascertained caused the young officer to pause in somewhat anxious doubt, as to what under the circumstances had best be done. He had been pursued in a direct line by one Moor, who had started instantly in chase, thinking, of course, to be followed by some of his countrymen, but that not being the case, the instant the Englishman halted he halted also, incident unwil- lingness to encounter the chase single-handed. To give him confidence, Ensign Churchill lowered the point of his sword, and bowed his head in token of surrender. This not suc- ceeding, he threw his sword on the ground, pulled out his watch, and held it temptingly up in the glittering moonlight, at the same time falling upon his knees and laying his fore- head in the dust, in token of absolute submission. The Moor, unable to resist the temptation, came quickly up, placed his foot exultingly upon the prostrate Englishman's neck, held out his hand for the proffered watch, and the next moment was sprawling on his back ! To disarm and secure the astounded Moor, and make him thoroughly comprehend, notwithstanding the ensign's deficiency in the Moorish tongue, that any attempt at disturbing the arrangement about to be carried into effect would be incontinently followed by his being hurled down the precipice along the narrow ledge whereof, commanded by the guns of the Moors, it was necessary to pass. This clone, Ensign Churchill mounted the Moor upon his back, taking care to carry him in such a way MAP.L30EGUGH. 75 that the bullets of the young man's friends must necessarily- pass through his body, before reaching his own more precious person. Thus panoplied, Ensign Churchill boldly presented himself before the opening in the rocks, and safely passed it, though almost stunned by the yells of his friend on his back, shrieking to his countrymen not to fire, for the love of Allah, and the fierce execrations of the baffled Arabs, mingled, however, with bursts of half-angry laughter. The ravine passed, Ensign Churchill liberated the Moor, and hastened on to rejoin his friends, and did not again on any pretence venture forth in search of African night adventures. Handsome Churchill was not long condemned to banish- ment in Africa. The Duke of York recalled him, and for a long time he was permitted to bask in the smiles of the fair and facile ladies of the court, and save money by their lavish liberality in the way of presents. It was not long either before his sister, the beautiful Arabella Churchill, was promoted from the service of the Duchess to that of the Duke of York, and flaunted it openly as the recognised mistress of His Royal Highness. Ensign Churchill, mean- while becoming, as was but just, Captain Churchill, — and subsequently, through the same influence, reaching higher grades in the service. The love of military adventure burned with equal ardour in his bosom, — as his chivalrous ambition and the love of money, and he gladly made a campaign under Turenne and Conde, in Germany. At the siege of Nieniugen, '-the handsome Englishman" greatly distinguished himself by his dashing bravery, conjoined with cool imperturbable skill and judgment. Turenne formed a high opinion of his military capabilities, and in consequence of his report, the King of France openly complimented Captain Churchill in the face of the troops. The Marshal, f 2 76 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. once, with a want of consideration unusual with him, put the personal daring of his foreign favourite to a severe test, and for an inadequate object. A French Lieutenant-Colonel had been driven out of a post during the siege of Nimeguen, and he alleged in excuse that it was impossible for any one to have maintained it with the force he commanded. " I will wager a supper and a dozen of claret," rejoined Turenne, " that the handsome Englishman will retake it with half the number." The wager was accepted ; Captain Churchill, in- formed of what was expected of him, selected his men at once, retook the post, and maintained it till relieved by another officer. He soon afterwards returned to England. It is another amongst the inconsistencies of this strangely- compounded soldier, — a man of the most heroic and the meanest impulses, — of soaring ambition and grovelling pro- pensities, that he was capable of the fervent passion with which portionless Sarah Jennings, — one of two beautiful sisters, — the eldest of whom became Duchess of Richmond, — the daughters of Mr. Jennings of Sandridge, near St. Albans, — inspired him. The Earl of Lindsay was a rival suitor, but Churchill carried off the prize, and spite of the lady's tartar tongue, it is morally certain, that but for Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that name would not have acquired the lustre which attaches to it, dimmed as it is by the great Duke's defects of character, the more to be regretted, because associated with high and noble qualities. There is one man in English history between whom and the Duke of Marlborough there is in many respects a striking resemblance, though their powerful minds were cast in entirely different moulds, and their pursuits were of a totally opposite character, — Lord Chancellor Bacon. In both grandeur of intellect was dwarfed and sullied by mean, ignoble cravings, — the one plundered the MARLBOROUGH. 77 suitors of his court, — the other, the soldiers upon whose blood he had been floated to victory and fortune. Bacon was corrupted by the vanities of the court of the first James, — Marlborough corrupted by the example of the second ; and both have left a name as imperishable as the genius by which it was illustrated. PETER THE GREAT. A BOUT the same time that the memorable struggle be- -^*- tweeu Charles and the Long Parliament was taking place in England, the Romanoffs had begun to erect an auto- cratic throne upon the crumbling ruins of the heterogeneous, disjointed feudalism of Muscovy, thereby clearing the way, and initiating, in some sort unconsciously, the subsequent advance of the Russian power to its present influential posi- tion, territorial as well as political, in Europe. At the acces- sion of Alexius, the second of the Romanoffs, and father .' of Peter I., usually styled the Great, the government of Muscovy was little better than a ferocious anarchy, dominated and varied from time to time by the unscrupulous use of the knout and the capricious violence of the Strelitz, a privileged militia, much resembling the Turkish janissaries, about 20,000 of whom kept Moscow in a state of chronic perturbation PETER THE GREAT. 79 and dismay. Alexius did much to evoke something like order from out this chaos. The landed Boyards who claimed and exercised unquestioned power — to the taking away of life — over their serfs, were in some measure restrained in their lawless violence, and brought under subjection to the Czar's authority, — the courts of justice ceased grossly and audaciously to prostitute the functions they were professedly instituted to administer, — the first two vessels of the Russian commercial marine were built ; and had his life been longer spared, it is probable that Alexius would have reduced the Strelitz to submission by means less ruthless and sanguinary than were subsequently had recourse to by his celebrated son. The growing interest felt by the new race of Czars in the politics of Europe, was evidenced by the special embassy which Alexius sent to this country to congratulate Charles II. upon his restoration to the British throne; albeit Clarendon's suggestion of furthering the intercourse between the two nations by a treaty of commerce was not entertained by Alexius, he, like nearly all persons groping in the twilight of economical science, believing that to sell without buying is the true secret of commercial enterprise and success. Peter I., who was three years old when his father died, had literally to fight his way, by force and policy, to the throne of almost wholly barbarian Russia. Alexius was twice married, and each time had selected his bride in ac- cordance with the traditional policy and practice of the Czars. That policy and practice consisted in the avoidance of foreign alliances, and the assembling together by proclamation, at Moscow, of the most beautiful damsels in Russia — no matter for their social rank, whether peasant or princely, — from whom the future Czarina was selected by the Imperial bachelor or widower as the case might be. Alexius espoused, 80 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. in first nuptials, a daughter of the Boyard, Milonafskoi, by whom he had two sods and six daughters. Fedor and Ivan, the sons, were stunted, weakly children, — the first only phy- sically, but Ivan was both mentally and physically dwarfed and decrepit. Of the daughters only one has left a name in history, — 'not traced in lustrous characters, though in this, as in all similar cases, it is well to bear in mind that her story has been written by the literary parasites of her successful competitor and antagonist. This lady's name was Sophia, a person of remarkable beauty, imperious, daring will, and high-reaching ambition. Soon after the decease of the first Czarina, Alexius again married, his choice this time falling upon Natalie Nariskkin, who bore him two children, one the world-famous Peter, the other a daughter, baptized Natalie after her mother. This second marriage threw the Milonafskoi family into the shade, from which however they instantly emerged upon the Czar Alexius' death, headed and championed by the Princess Sophia, who, although, even then, vehemently ambitious of the sceptre for herself, had the prudence to claim it for her brother Fedor, who it was abundantly clear would not long even ostensibly wield it himself, — nor bequeath it to a progeny of his own. Alexius had designated the infant robust son of Natalie Narishkin as his successor, but Sophia's success in gaining over the Strelitz, and the populace of Moscow, partly by the fascination of her beauty, — in its most attractive aspect, rainbowed and pearled with tears, — partly by a judicious scattering of slight gifts and splendid promises — dispelled the widowed Czarina's hope of realizing the dying wishes of her husband, and Fedor ascended the Muscovite throne (1676), without encountering serious opposition, — the actual government of his dominions being intrusted almost PETER THE GREAT. 81 as a matter of necessity, to his capable and aspiring sister. This vicarious rule lasted till 1682, — six years only, when the death of Fedor compelled the Princess Sophia to play a more daring game, if she would not see the intoxicating cup of supreme power dashed from her lips for ever. She conse- quently put forth a claim to the throne as the oldest daughter of Alexius by his first marriage, who, it was maintained, succeeded of right to the sceptre in default of competent heirs male in the same family ; a condition of things, Fedor being dead, and Ivan notoriously imbecile, that now existed. The commander of the Strelitz, Prince Kovanskoi, was easily gained over to this theory of regal succession by smiles and promises, and the soldiers and Moscow rabble, excited by the harangues and largesses of the Princess, — infuriated by brandy, and a dark rumour industriously propagated that Fedor had been poisoned by a foreign physician at the instigation of the Narishkins, broke into open violence. Every person suspected of favouring the Narishkin party, that could be met with, was ruthlessly massacred, and it was not loDg before the motley rabble surged tumultuously in the direction of the "palace where the Czarina Natalie and her son Peter, then about nine years old, awaited with feverish anxiety the course and issue of the sudden insurrection, which it seemed almost equally hopeless to strive to flee from as to resist. Repeated messages to Sophia for military aid were evasively replied to by assurances that no harm was contemplated by the naturally exasperated people, towards the widow and son of the Czar Alexius j it being an essential point with Sophia, whilst contriving the death of the boy Peter, whose existence she felt was incompatible with her permanent supremacy, to keep apparently aloof from any participation in a deed which would be sure to breed remorse 82 EXTRAOKDINAItY MEN. in the minds of the very people by whom she hoped it would be perpetrated. Peter — boy — child almost that he was, pas- sionately urged his mother not to wait there in dependence upon the assurances of that "jezebel Sophia till the knife was actually at their throats," but to flee at once as the only chance of avoiding death. Natalie still hesitated, when the din and tumult of actual assault convinced her alike of the imminence of the peril, and the necessity of instant flight if she hoped to elude it. She left the palace with her son by a private passage in its rear, both hurriedly disguised, and hastened with the speed of fear, on foot, towards the convent of the Trinity, at a considerable distance from Moscow, the chief pope, or, as we should say, abbot of which was a Narishkin partizan. The stubborn defence of the palace alone could render the escape of the Czarina and her son possible, and in this their relatives and servants did not fail them. After the outer gates were forced, the staircase leading to the apartments in which the leaders of the insurgents supposed the boy-prince and his mother still were was disputed with unquailing resolution by Natalie's two brothers and the domestics, and it was over their dead bodies that the furious Strelitz at last rushed into the interior rooms in eager quest of their prince victim, — only to find them empty, — the fiercely-sought prize escaped their murderous clutch. Parties of soldiers were as quickly as possible dispatched to scour the roads leading from Moscow, one of the most active and numerous of which tracked the Czarina and her son, in the direction of the convent of the Trinity. The terrified mother and her boy had left the roar and tumult of the city far behind, and were debating whether the lights in the distance, which, from the undulating wood- dotted intervening country, now shone out in fast-increasing PETER THE GREAT. 83 brightness, — and anon vanished in the thick darkness, were or were not the convent lights, — Peter insisting they were, and that the across-field course they had taken by his persuasion, had saved them several versts of road, when the hurrying tramp and shoutings of soldiers in the not far off distance warned them, that fainting, exhausted as they were, life could only be preserved by renewed and in- creased exertion. The pursuers had been thrown out by the unusual direction taken at the instance of the young prince, and there might yet be time enough to reach the haven of a, but after all precarious, doubtful security. They succeeded in doing so, and the reverend fathers gathered around them with sympathetic terror ; for how, upon so sudden a demand, should they be able to ensure the princely fugitives even a temporary refuge from their eager, unscrupulous foes ! As they yet talked bewilderedly, the clamorous uproar at the outer gate apprised them of the arrival of the Strelitz. Maternal love inspired Natalie with a happy thought. "With the aid of one of the popes (priests), she lifted her son upon the high altar, placing him by the side, and under the immediate guardianship as it were, of the sacred and mysterious host. She had scarcely done so, when the Strelitz rushed up the aisles of the convent church, and fiercely demanded the boy Peter Narishkin. " Behold him !" replied the Superior; " he is there with God !" A sense of religious awe, — or of super- stitious reverence, as the reader pleases, — rebuked the drunken violence of the soldiers. They became instantly silent, — aghast, — panic stricken by the imexpected, imposing sight, and the accompanying words of the priest. One, however, more reckless, or less impressionable than his fellows, rushed forward after a few moments' pause into the sanctuary, and raised his sword to cut down the prince where he stood. The 84 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. blow was so feebly aimed, that one of the priests easily caught the man's arm and thrust him back, saying as he did so, " Not in this place." The panic- terror of the soldiery might not perhaps have lasted very long, but fortunately, when at its highest, the gallop of horse was heard as if approaching, and the Superior with admirable presence of mind exclaimed — " Ah ! here at last come our friends. Let the enemies of God and the Czar tremble." In another minute the convent PETER THE GREAT. 85 was cleared of the Strelitz, and the most terrible crisis ever encountered by Peter the First had happily passed away. The Narishkin interest, though surprised, and for a brief space defeated and dismayed by Sophia's measures, took heart and rallied as soon as it was known that the young prince and his mother were in safety ; and the partially baffled prin- cess was ultimately fain to content herself with the title and attributes of regent, her imbecile brother Ivan being pro- claimed Czar, and Peter associated with him in a nominal authority, — Sophia's regency to terminate on Peter's attaining his majority. Ivan's accession took place on the 7th of June, 1682. But temporary power was only valued by the regent as affording means and opportunity of rendering it permanent. She married Ivan to a young person entirely devoted to herself, of the name of Soltikof, — an utter mockery of the sacrament, it was well known, — notwithstanding which, the pregnancy of the nominal wife of the Czar was, though a considerable time afterwards, audaciously proclaimed. This iniquitous device appears to have been intended by the prin- cess regent as a contingent plea for prolonging her regent al authority in the event of again failing to rid herself of Peter. Direct, open violence could not, especially too soon after what had recently occurred, be safely resorted to for the accomplishment of this paramount purpose. The reputation, moreover, for precocious sagacity, extraordinary vigour as well of body as mind, which, thanks to the busy whisperings of the Narishkin party, Peter was acquiring with the people, rendered him all the more dangerous, and at the same time, suggested a mode of dealing with him, highly characteristic of this wily, unscrupulous princess. General Baseville, said to be a Scotchman, who had previously superintended Peter's 8G EXTRAORDINARY MEX. education, was dismissed, and a compliant tool of the regent's appointed in his stead. The youthful prince was next domi- ciled at an obscure village considerably distant from Moscow, and gradually surrounded with from about eighty to a hundred of the most profligate young Russians that could be raked together. " Amusers" they were called, and their well-under- stood mission was to entice Peter into the love and practice of the grosser and corrupting vices — drunkenness especially — with the view, of course, to destroy alike the prince's intellect and health. The regent had not taken the true measure of the intellect she would have dwarfed and ruined. Instead of the amusers seducing the Prince into habits of folly and intemperance, he beguiled them into a liking for manly sports and martial exercises. His revenue was considerable, and he was inde- fatigable in his efforts quietly to organize and discipline a small but effective force which might at an emergency, not difficult to foresee, stand him in good stead. The "Amusers" foianed the nucleus of this force, and Peter displayed in its formation the same spirit of practical example and self- application, which induced him at a subsequent period to work with his own hands in the dockyards of Holland. He first took rank only as a private ; rose by such gradations of command as indisputable efficiency in his duties warranted; and in the construction of mimic fortifications, dug, shovelled, and wheeled barrow-loads of earth with a zeal and alacrity that never slackened. About this time, also, he attached to his person and service. Le Port and Gordon — the first a Genevese, originally intended for commercial pursuits, but of a far too adventurous and mercurial a temperament to settle down into peaceful, prosaic life — the other a sedately sagacious Scotch soldier, intent upon pushing his fortunes in a country PETER THE GREAT. 87 offering peculiar advantages at that time to such men as he and Le Fort. The counsel of these two gentlemen was of great service to the young Czar-expectant, and it was to them he was afterwards indebted for his admirable foreign troops, recruited in a large degree by Huguenots, driven from the continent by the revocation of the edict of Nantz, and Scots- men, whom the troubles consequent upon James's expulsion from the British throne had compelled into exile. Meanwhile, the princess-regent, who appears to have been utterly disdainful of Peter's playing-at-soldiers' propensity, as she deemed it, had other obstacles in her path to sweep away. Prince Kovanskoi, the commander of the Strelitz, incensed that she should exhibit more favour towards Gallitzin, a minister of state under Fedor, than to himself, insolently demanded, by way of satisfaction for past slights and neglect, that Sophia should marry his son to one of her sisters. The regent's reply to this proposal, was an order for the arrest of Prince Kovanskoi ; and notwithstanding a fierce but abortive insurrection of a considerable number of the Strelitz in his favour — during which, by the way, Sophia took refuge in the convent of the Trinity with Ivan — he was beheaded, and the revolt severely repressed. In the very flush and glow of this success, Sophia heard of Peter's marriage, — he being in his 17th year, — with the daughter of Colonel Lapuchee. " Heirs to the throne," replied the Prince, to Sophia's angry and menacing expostu- lation, " are likely to be numerous, and my children ought to have a chance with the rest." He alluded to the reported pregnancy of Ivan's wife. There was dauger in this auda- cious boy, and the regent's remorseless courage grew with the provocation to its exercise. At a magnificent ceremonial of the Greek Church in the Easter week, at which it had been. 88 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. customary for the czar to attend, Peter, as Ivan was too ill to be present, insisted upon his right to be there as his repre- sentative. Sophia haughtily objected to the prince's demand, and attended herself, not as regent merely, — but openly, ostentatiously assuming the demeanour and attributes of a crowned empress of Russia. There could be no longer peace or truce between the rival potentates, and the regent once more essayed her former arts with the lately-humbled Strelitz — again succeeded, — partially at all events, and about a thousand of the soldiery marched to seize Peter, who had again taken refuge at the convent of the Trinity. The licentious habits of the Strelitz had proved as fatal to their courage as to their discipline, and upon finding the convent strongly fortified and garrisoned, they forthwith abandoned the enterprise, and returned in confusion and dismay to Moscow. A movement in that city by the Narishkin party, vigorously seconded by the boy-prince and his trained retainers, ensued, and the not long delayed result was, the enforced retirement of the Princess Sophia to a nunnery; the banishment of Gallitzin, with the magnificent pension of three copecks (half-pence) per diem, and the installation of Peter the First (Oct. 4th, 1689), as czar of all the Russias. As might, under favouring circumstances, have been expected, the iron-willed, self-reliant, practically-inclined, clear-headed boy, nurtured amidst violence, and in constant peril from the machinations of fierce and implacable ene- mies, dilated and hardened as the years passed on, into the imperious, indefatigable, keen-visioned, ruthless benefactor and despot of the country he ruled, scourged and reformed. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. npHERE are few lives more pleasant to contemplate than -*- that of Benjamin Franklin, chiefly, no donbt, that it presents no very abrupt and startling effects, and that ordi- nary mortals, who look to the biographies of eminent men for practical lessons in the philosophy which teaches by in- dividual examples, are not dismayed quite as much as they are dazzled, by discovering that the success of the hero of the narrative has mainly resulted from the display of a marvellous intellectual power, possessed by a very slight per-centage of mankind, or an extraordinary conjunction of favouring cir- cumstances which none but fools will calculate upon meeting with in their own experience. A journeyman printer, the son of humble parents, endowed with no more of what is un- derstood by the term genius than falls to the lot of thousands of men who live and die in obscurity, is seen to attain a good G 90 EXTRAORDINARY UK position iii business, an eminent one in political society, and a highly respectable name in science and literature, by the aid alone of strong, clear common sense, combined with in- tegrity, temperance, and persevering industry. It is quite true that but for the American revolution Dr. Franklin would not have been the ambassador of the United States at the Court of France; but his enduring reputation does not rest upon his achievements as a politician, — and there can be little question that his worldly position, in a substantial sense, would have been improved, — his rank, as a man of science, a much higher one, — and that he might perhaps have won for himself a bright and lasting wreath in the fields of literature in place of the few stray and perishing blossoms which he had leisure to gather there, had not imperious cir- cumstances compelled him to involve himself in the stormy struggles of jwlitical warfare. Hence it is that the example of Franklin is of wider application, of more practical efficacy, than the history of more brilliant heroes of biography affords, and certainly, in no part of that life-lesson is the moral which it points more clearly indicated than in its earlier chapters. Benjamin Franklin, the youngest son and youngest child save two of a family of seventeen children, thirteen of whom grew up to man and womanhood, was born on the 6th of January, 1706, at Boston, New England, whither his father, Josiah Franklin, had emigrated with his first wife and three children, from Northamptonshire, in 16S-5. Benjamin's mother, espoused in second nuptials by his father, was Abiah Folger, daaghter of Peter Folger, one of the earlier settlers in New England, and according to the testimony of the Reverend Cotton Mather, u a godly and learned Englishman/' who had rendered himself obnoxious to the ruling power- in the colony by his denunciations, with both tongue and pen, FEAXKLIX. 91 of their cruel intolerance towards dissidents from, their own mode of faith and worship. As a matter of course he was branded as a slanderous libeller, an imputation which he took in great dudgeon, and replied to in some verses which show that if, as Dr. Franklin remarks, his own passionate abhor- rence of persecution was inherited from his maternal grand- father, the rhyming faculty with which he was gifted mnnt have been derived from some other source : — "Because to be a libeller, I hate it with my heart. From Sherborne town where now I dwell, My name I do put here ; Without offence, your real friend, It is Peter Folger." Franklin traces, not without some degree of pride, his ancestry on hi3 father's side to the time when the name was that of a numerous and independent class of English yeomanry. It was retained as a personal patronynie, with thirty free- hold acres near Ecton. Northamptonshire, which had remained, probably, in the family for 300 years, when a female cousin of the doctor's, who married one Fisher, sold the estate to a Mr. Isted. Before, however, this occurred, the father of Benjamin Franklin was settled, and moderately prospering in Boston, as a chandler and soap boiler ; the business of dyeing, which he com- menced with, not then succeeding well in America. He was a fairly-educated and naturally shrewd intelligent man ; could draw prettily, and play with some skill on the violin ; and withal, it would seem, was somewhat of a humourist. — It was his expressed intention to devote Benjamin as a propitiatory tythe-oifering to the service of the church : with which view he kept the boy at a grammar school, till he was eight years old, and encouraged his uncle and godfather, Benjamin — a worthy man, who had concocted two large quarto volumes g2 92 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. of manuscript poetry, which, but for the stolid inappreciation of English and American publishers, would have delighted mankind — to devote his literary talents to the preparation of a large number of sermons. So that his nephew and god- child might start in his clerical career with a good stock of ready-made eloquence and sound divinity. Suddenly dis- covering, however, that the cost of a college education for his son was much beyond his means, Mr. Josiah Franklin transferred Benjamin to a common school, kept by a Mr. Brownwell, and soon after he was ten years old enlisted his services in the soap-boiling business ; an occupation which the boy greatly disliked, partly from his strong predilection for the life of a sailor — long before embraced by one of his elder brothers — which ever presents itself in an enticing if delusive aspect to the bold spirited younkers of a sea-port town, with its exciting panorama of ships sailing away with favouring winds, and returning, richly-laden with the produce of far- off mysterious lands beyond the sea. The lad had already self-qualified himself, to some extent, for the profession which had taken such strong hold of his imagination, by learning to swim well and confidently, and exercising himself in boat management. But fate and his father proved adverse to his wishes, and it was determined he should be a landsman and a mechanic, though in what particular branch of handicraft was for some time undecided. His cousin, Samuel, son of Uncle Ben, who had commenced business as a cutler, demanded an apprentice fee of such unkinsmanlike magnitude that the intention of binding him to that business was necessarily abandoned, and a possibility of being permitted to fight the battle of life amongst the whales of the Arctic seas again loomed doubtfully in the distance. His educa- tion, meanwhile, though he was no longer at school, pro- FRANKLIN. 93 gressed favourably. The very common boy-propensity to devour books was, in his case, accompanied by a much rarer craving to digest and thoroughly master what he read ; and there is one part of the boy's home nurture which demands especial notice on account of the paramount influence it exercised over his subsequent fortunes. A cultivated, sensi- tive palate was about the worst accomplishment, in his father's opinion, which persons having to push their own rough way in the world could be plagued with — an axiom in domestic economics which the daily task of providing food for fifteen hearty feeders, including himself and wife, had no doubt a powerful tendency to reinforce and confirm ; and he consequently never made himself, nor permitted others to make, the slightest remark commendatory or otherwise, upon the food placed before them ; savoury or unsavoury, ill or well cooked, half raw, dried up, done to a turn or bubble — no comment was allowed ; and such in this, as in all other life-practices, was the effect of habit, that Dr. Franklin declares he had not the slightest choice or taste in matters of eating or drinking, and that five minutes after he had dined, it required a considerable effort of memory to recall to mind what he had partaken of — a deficiency of gastronomical appre- ciation which a Frenchman would no doubt hold to be sig- nificant of a lamentably low state of civilization, but which nevertheless, proved to be the key-stone of Benjamin Frank- lin's elevation in the social scale. In 1717 Benjamin's much older brother Josiah, returned from England with presses and types, and commenced busi- ness in Boston as a master printer, and received Benjamin as an in-door apprentice. The boy's sea-dreams being thus finally dissipated, he manfully resigned himself to the thence- forth inevitable fact, and addressed himself to the acquire 94 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. inent of the printer's craft with zealous industry. It was not long, moreover, before he hit upon a novel mode of increasing his brother's business, and at the same time ven- tilating, in some slight degree, his own secret ambition of authorship. He wrote two ballads — one woful, called the Light House Tragedy, in which the untimely deaths of Captain Wetherlake and his two daughters were rhymingly set forth. The other was triumphal, and celebrative of the recent capture and death of Blackbeard, a notorious pirate. These were composed and sent to press; and the author, at his master-brother's suggestion, hawked and cried them about the streets of Boston. Blackbeard had a tremendous run, but the more doleful ditty went off less briskly. Franklin senior appears to have been a good deal scandalized at this proceeding, not so much that his son should hawk, but write ballads — rhyming and rags being inseparably con- nected with each other in the worthy man's mind, and he solemnly warned the young literary aspirant against indul- gence in such a beggar-breeding propensity, Benjamin's love of reading, meanwhile, continued unabated ; and in order to procure books, he offered his brother to board himself for 7ialfth.e money, which his meals were reckoned to cost. This was readily agreed to, and thanks to the want of a distin- guishiug palate, as well as to the vegetarian doctrine he had derived from the perusal of a book by Mr. Tyan, who demonstrated to the lad's entire conviction the sinfulness and cruelty of killing and devouring beasts, birds, and fishes, which had quite as much right to live as their slayers and eaters, he saved a full moiety of the half-allowance paid him by his brother, and his library began sensibly to increase. At about the same time he formed an intimate acquaintance with a young man named Collins, a clerk in the post-office, FRANKLIN. 95 and of congenial bookish and controversial taste and tem- perament, but not, as it subsequently proved, associated as with young Franklin, with sterling principle and habits of self-denial. In 1720, the elder brother ventured to start a newspaper, though strongly warned of the folly of such an undertaking by the wise greybeards of the city, who urged that America could never support two newspapers ; the one already established being quite, indeed more than sufficient to supply the political literature of that continent. The project was, however, persisted in, and the Boston Gazette nourished for a time reasonably well, the original matter being supplied by amateur writers, whose politics accorded with those of the paper, amongst whom Benjamin Franklin was eagerly desi- rous to try his 'prentice hand; but being quite aware that a prophet has little chance of honourable recognition by his own family, he disguised 'his hand, and slipped the paper containing his first leading article under the office door over- night, that being, it should seem, the ordinary mode of for- warding contributions to the editor. The paper was read, approved, and published, and thenceforth the writer became a regular, though still anonymous, contributor to the columns of the Boston Gazette, till an unlooked-for crisis in the journal's affairs entirely changed his position with regard to it. The House of Assembly took offence at some strictures inserted in the paper — the proprietor Avas arrested upon the warrant of Mr. Speaker — sentenced to one month's imprisonment, and ordered to discontinue the publication of his journal. This Napoleonic mode of dealing with the press, could only be evaded, it was thought, by publishing the paper in Benjamin Franklin's name, instead of that of the still real proprietor, and, in'order to guard against unpleasant contingencies, the 96 EXTRAORDINARY MEET, lad's indentures were formally cancelled, the understanding being that this merely nominal release was not to affect, in the slightest degree, the mutual relations of the master and apprentice. A slight acquaintance with the rough side of human nature, even in its best samples, would have sufficed to fore- cast the consequences. The master, far from abating one jot of his authority, rather increased its weight, as if to assure himself that he had not parted with it, whilst the sense of legal enfranchisement simmering on the boy's brain, rendered him doubly impatient of his brother's peremptory and harsh control. Endless quarrels and bickerings ensued, in which the father usually, it appears, sided with the elder brother, and ultimately Benjamin resolutely broke with his brother, — sold his books, and with the proceeds, contrived, aided by his friend Collins, who represented to the master of a trading sloop that he was fleeing from the consequences of an imprudent amour, — to smuggle himself off to New York. He had not reached his 18th birth-day, when he cast himself thus foolishly upon the world, and after vainly seeking em- ployment in the last-named city, landed at Philadelphia, one hundred miles further south, after encountering various hardships in quest of the same object, with one dollar and a few copper coins in his pocket, — and moreover hungry, tired, dirty and miserable. It was Sunday morning, and his first care was to seek a baker's shop, where he purchased three penny loaves, — and as he strolled through the streets, munching one of them, and his pockets distended with dirty stockings and shirts, — his attention was immediately arrested by a Miss Read, who, standing at the door of her father's shop, eyed with a sort of compassionate curiosity the deso- late looking vagrant — the more conspicuous from contrast FRANKLIN. 97 with the passing streams of church and chapel attired, church and chapel seeking citizens, — profoundly unconscious, we may- be sure, that she was looking upon the individual whom it was written should be her future husband. Franklin at last found his way into a Quaker's meeting-house, the unbroken silence of which, to him, novel devotion, speedily lulled him to sleep, which continued undisturbed, till a rather rough shake by the shoulder, and the words, " It is time, friend, thou wert gone," made him aware that the morning service had concluded. He procured precarious employment for the time, with an original, of the name of Keymer, who refused to shave, in deference to the Mosaic injunction,— 98 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. " Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard/' and as soon as might be, after the arrival of his box of clothes enabled him to make a decent appearance, sought for and obtained lodgings at the house where he had observed, on the first morning of his arrival in Philadelphia, a gentle female coun- tenance, not since forgotten. He very quickly obtained the good opinion of both the father and daughter, and many months had not elapsed, before it was tacitly understood that Miss Head was to be Mrs. Franklin, when the time arrived for prudently taking upon themselves the vows and liabilities of marriage. The young runaway had, moreover, the misfortune, as it proved, to attract the notice of Sir "William Keith, governor of the colony, and a man of some governmental talent, who was exceedingly fond of parading his patronage of promising young men. Franklin was invited to dine at an hotel once or twice, with his Excellency and Colonel French, vastly to the astonishment and admiration of Keymer and other Philadelphians to whom Sir William's character was unknown, and his Excellency vehemently insisted that a young man of such nice discretion and remark- able abilities ought to be established in business on his own account, without delay. He offered to write in this sense to his protege's father, and it was finally agreed that Ben- jamin Franklin should be the bearer of the flattering missive to Boston. The notice, highly-favourable opinion, and pro- fuse promises of substantial patronage of a gentleman in Sir W. Keith's official position, must have thrown Franklin's mind somewhat off its balance, or with his knowledge of his father's character, he would scarcely have undertaken such an entirely hopeless journey. An excusable feeling of vanity must, no doubt, have also aided in inducing him to visit FKJLN'KLltf. 99 Boston, upon this occasion. He had left that city in a skulking disreputable manner, well-nigh destitute of money, and with a very doubtful prospect of procuring employment. He would return thither after a few months' absence only, — it was now only April, 1724, — with a diploma, so to speak, of ability and conduct from a baronet, holding high and official rank, — he had recently purchased a new suit of clothes and a silver watch, and had, moreover, thanks to his abstemious self-denying habits, six or seven pounds in his pocket ! The temptation, apart from any hope of inducing his father to establish him in business, was, in truth, irre- sistible I Sir William Keith's condescendent suggestions did not in the slightest degree dazzle or disturb Mr. Franklin s steady judgment. To saddle a youngster of eighteen with the cares and responsibilities of business, woidd be he pronounced utterly preposterous, and he would not trouble himself so much as to argue Sir William's proposition. At the same time he was pleased to find that his son had attracted the notice of so influential a personage as he naturally supposed the baronet to be, but in the same breath which enunciated his satisfac- tion in this respect, the cautious, solid-minded father emphati- cally impressed upon the young man, that if, as people seemed to suppose, he really did possess ability of a literary kind, he must be above all things careful to avoid lampooning and libelling, as utterly fatal to permauent success in life. Poetry or rhyming should also, he observed, be sedulously avoided by men desirous of making way in the world. The ostensible purpose of his journey thus peremptorily disposed of, Beujamin Franklin determined upon returning to Phila- delphia without loss of time ; but first paid a swaggering sort of visit to his brother's printing office, — dilated to the 100 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. men there uj>on the higher wages and greater advantages in all respects obtainable at Philadelphia, and upon being asked for a trifle wherewith to drink his health, picked out a dollar from a handful of silver and tossed it with careless gracious- ness to the petitioners for drink. The brother, who was present and maintained a sullen silence whilst this boyish display was going on, complained bitterly to their father afterwards, that Benjamin had designedly insulted him before his workpeople. '-And you, who could do this," said Mr. Franklin, again addressing his younger son, " are, I have been assured, fit to be a master yourself. I have now less opinion than before of Sir William Keith's judgment, — and it was not previously a high one." "A man is taken by the words of his mouth," says the proverb, and this is especially true of words of vanity and boastfulness, as young Franklin was ere long fain to acknow- ledge in sorrow and bitterness. His glowing estimates of the superior advantages offered by Pennsylvania over Boston, to aspiring spirits, determined his old friend Collins to throw up his situation, sell his books, and accompany his governor- patronized friend to the not very distant land of promise. Possibly no other evil might have befallen Franklin from this imprudent step which his vain talk had induced Collins to adopt, than the annoyance, for a time, of a troublesome and not over-creditable companion, had not the vessel in which they embarked touched at Ehode Island, where Frank- lin's sea-faring brother had recently settled, in whose house they met with a Mr. Vernon, who requested Benjamin Franklin to receive a debt of thirty-five pounds, due to him from a person in Philadelphia, and remit it as soon as he could securely do so, but not before. Franklin received the money and put it by till he could forward it to Mr. Yernon FKANKLIN. 101 by a safe hand. His own necessities, however urgent, would not, we may be sure, have tempted him to abuse the confi- dence of his brother's friend, but Collins, who held to him by the strong tie of former obligation, inasmuch as he had assisted him from Boston when he, for the first time, left that city, could find no employment, gradually abandoned himself to drink, and before he shipped himself off for the "West Indies, which he did at last, had borrowed, under vehement protestations of repayment before any inconvenience could be felt, a great part of Mr. Vernon's money. This was a sad affair; and Dr. Franklin frequently referred to it in after years as the chief error of his life. And one cannot help thinking, though he himself does not intimate so much, that the hourly dread of being peremptorily called upon to refund the money, induced him to lend a willing ear to the prepos- terous proposal of Sir William Keith, suggested no doubt by a desire to rid himself of the presence of a person to whom he had made promises he had neither the means nor the inten- tion of fulfilling, — that he, Franklin, should go himself to England, and purchase with the aid of the letters of credit with which Sir William would furnish him, the necessary presses, types, et cetera, for establishing himself as a printer in Philadelphia without his father's assistance. Surely but for an anxious desire of getting out of the way till he could repay Vernon's money, the young man's prompt reply would have been that the necessary materials could be procured from England with sufficient letters of credit, without the necessity of personally crossing and recrossing the Atlantic for that purpose. At all events he acquiesced in Sir William Keith's deliberately deceptive proposition, spite of the doubts sug- gested by Mr. Read, — the tearful misgivings of his fair daughter, and embarked for England, He had no sooner 102 EXTRAORDINARY KEff. reached London than he found that the pretended letters of introduction and credit were not even written by Sir "William Keith j though had he written them they would not have "been one whit less worthless than as actually subscribed. Friendless, almost moneyless. — owing a considerable and Tery ugly debt, nearly four thousand miles distant from his home, from any body that knew or cared for him. he would seem to be in a position anything but favourable for a bold, hopeful effort after fortune. And yet, reader, from this moment, the young man whom we are now leaving as he enters in a fusiian jacket and apron the printing-office of Mr. Palmer, in Bartholomew-close, where he has fortunately obtained work, continued steadily to advance in wealth, knowledge, and worldly consideration — attained eminence in America, — became a distinguished member of the principal scientific societies of Europe, — earned for himself the some- what grandiloquent title of " playmate of the lightning," by his kite- experiment in proof of the identity of lightning with the electric fluid, artificially elicited on earth. — and is the same individual, then become stout, and somewhat gouty, his sense of taste having been for a long time previously cul- tivated to a power of delicate discernment — who in February, 1778, was seen in one of the state apartments of Versailles, habited in a court suit of Manchester spotted velvet, and chairing with Louis XVI. and his ministers upon the con- sequences likely to accrue from the treaty of alliance offen- sive and defensive against Great Britain, which he had just concluded with France, and subscribed and sealed as the accredited ambassador and minister plenipotentiary of the United States. The historic image of Benjamin Franklin, does not so vividly impress the mind as the grander, more colossal fraxklix. 103 figures which, instinct with the glory of brilliant genius, star- stud the vista of the dim past — but its paler, less dazzling light, is — we may be permitted to repeat — a more hopeful and cheering one to the masses of mankind, for it shines upon a path to eminence which it requires no seraph's wing, — no transcendant mental power — to oversweep or climb, — nothing but the qualities, prudently but courageously ex- ercised, which he himself possessed, — a clear intellect, — firm purpose, — self-denial, — energetic labour, — and perhaps the moral of his life is all the more pertinent and instructive, inasmuch that he stumbled heavily upon the threshold of his career, and recovered himself unaided save by God and his own brave honesty of will. MIRABEAXJ. npHE tumultuous and menacing scenes of French history ■*- which closely followed the convocation of the States- general, reveal one lofty, commanding figure standing out in bold relief from the crowd of mediocrities which he dwarfs and shadows. That towering figure is Gabriel Honore Riquetti, count of Mirabeau, who by sheer force of an energetic intellect, sustained by indomitable will, — by immense power of life, is Madame de StaeTs expression, — dominated for a time the at last aroused and vengeful passions of a people, who for centuries had writhed hopelessly beneath the hoofe of one of the blindest, crudest tyrannies that ever afflicted humanity. So absolute appeared his sway over that fierce democracy, as to raise a hope that the unhappy monarch who, blameless himself, had succeeded to so vast a heritage of hate, might, if aided by the triumphant orator, — whose rampant MIKABEAU. 105 democracy it was not very difficult to perceive, had but slight root in either his instincts or affections, — be successful in calming the popular hurricane by the sacrifice only of the despotic attributes of his hereditary crown, retaining as much of substantial authority as would suffice to rescue the people from the machinations of unscrupulous demagogues, and shield them from the consequences of their own excesses. An utterly absurd illusion tins no doubt appears to be, viewed by the light of subsequent events, but it was never- theless widely entertained at the time, and not' entirely dissipated, when upon the first hint that the eloquent tribune was disposed to further a reconcilement of the court and nation, the purveyors of news to the Paris populace, well appreciating the tastes for which they catered, made every street and lane of the capital vocal with their eagerly caught up and echoed announcement of u Grand traldson du Comte cle Mirabeau" against the as yet formally unproclaimed but not the less real sovereign populace. Death, sudden and unlooked-for, alone saved the previously popular idol from perishing in the revolutionary vortex, and moreover, by snatch- ing him from the theatre of his brilliant triumphs, before they had been sensibly dimmed by the shadow of a near and inevitable future, left his memory invested with a halo of success, winch but a few more weeks or months of life must have utterly dissipated. It may be said, indeed, that almost the entire fame of Mirabeau, as an orator and statesman,' has died into a tradition, surviving as it chiefly does in the echoes of the contemporaneous plaudits with which his harangues were greeted, — for assuredly the speeches and writings that have come down to us, very feebly vindicate the reputation which attaches to his name. Albeit that testimony, knowing as we do who some of his applauding contemporaries were, taken in H 106 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. conjunction with the record of his youthful days, — tom r blotted, and imperfect as it is, suffices to evidence a mighty intellect, and a native nobleness of disposition, that under healthy guidance and example might have been attempered to pure and lofty issues, and have bequeathed to posterity a name precious alike to the lovers of the simply true and beautiful, and the more numerous idolators of commanding power and self-sustained supremacy. The Eiquettis were of Italian origin, and of patrician rank in Florence, where they resided till 1269, when Azza Eiquetti was banished with other leading Ghibellines from Tuscan y. Azza Eiquetti betook himself to Marseilles, purchased the Mirabeau estate in the Aucinity of that city, and took up his permanent residence there. The wealth brought by the family froni Italy, and the talents of its successive representa- tives in war, dijDloniacy, intrigue, and the kindred arts of sycophancy and dissimulation, which smooth the road to dis- tinction at absolute courts, not only forced itself into the ranks of the French noblesse, but managed to acquire great influence with the possessors of sovereign power, whether kings, mistresses, or ministers, and no one of them appears to have stood higher in court favour than Victor Mirabeau, the Friend of Man, and father of the Mirabeau, the memoir of whose early life is now before the reader. In the single article of lettres de cachet — royal licences to imprison obnoxious individuals at pleasure, — Victor, Count or Marquis de Mirabeau, obtained no less than fifty-four, at different times, of Louis the XYth., or of the royal mistresses. It is right, however, to state, that there were limits under the legitimate monarchy of France, to the issue of those delightful missives, even to a noble of such high standing as M. de Mirabeau; the last lettre de cachet which he applied for MIRABEAU. 107 having been granted under protest by the minister, that as it was the fifty-fourth, there really could be no more granted, however unwilling his majesty might be to disoblige so loyal and distinguished an applicant. The title of Friend of Man was assumed by M. de Mirabeau, and confirmed by the philosophic savans of Paris, in virtue of his being the author of seventy or eighty volumes, entitled " Ephemerides" and " Legons Economiques" — a mass of dreary verbiage, for the most part foul as slime, weak as water-bubbles, in which all that is in any way clear is that, in the opinion of the Friend of Man, there is neither God nor heaven ; and the only hope, even on earth, for the especial object of the author's anxious friendship, is in the more economical arrangement and pro- visioning of the styes and troughs appropriated to the human animal. The publication of these consolatory and elevating disquisitions obtained for M. de Mirabeau, as they deserved to do, the friendship of Du Quesnay, the con- descendent patronage of Madame de Pompadour, and con- sequently enlarged privileges in the matter of lettres de cachet, and other influential court influence in affairs relative to his wife and son, of which it will be necessary presently to speak. The Friend of Man, in the gross or aggregate, had an un- conquerable dislike of women, as wives and daughters, yet being desirous withal of a male heir to his name and possessions, as well as of such additional wealth as an eligible bride might bring him, married the youthful Marie Genevieve de Yassen, Mar- quise de Saule-Bceuf, on the 9th of March, 1749, who brought him a dowry of 50,000 francs per annum. Shortly before this union he had purchased a small estate at Bignon, not far from Sens, where he domiciled his wife ; and for his own especial delectation he hired a large hotel in Paris, where he h2 108 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. for the future chiefly resided with his mistress, Eleonore le Pailly, a handsome girl, previously a housemaid in the esta- blishment, who so enthralled the philosophic Friend of Man, that he was thenceforth a mere puppet in her hands, and she no doubt sedulously fanned the flame of demoniacal hatred which M. de Mirabeau socm came to entertain towards his wife and son. That son, Gabriel Honore de Biquetti, was bom on the 11th February, 1750, — a child with an immense head, twisted foot, two molar teeth, and tongue-tied. He early manifested intense energy, and when only a month old is said to have fought his nurse. At three years of age he caught a violent small-pox, and his mother, anxious to soothe the anguish of her child, plastered his face with quack ointments, the effects of which the father, in a letter to the boy's uncle, M. le Bailli Mirabeau, thus pithily describes : "Your nephew is as ugly as the devil." An utterly wretched household was that in which young Mirabeau was condemned to pass his boyhood. The cruelties, frequently extending to personal violence, suffered by his mother from her husband, the Friend of Man, gave rise to a mutually exasperating suit at law, which resulted, after fifteen years of litigation, in the courts being obliged, from very shame, patronized as M. de Mirabeau was in influential quarters, to pronounce the sentence of sepa- ration which the unhappy wife prayed for. As to his son, the sole half-contemptuous interest which M. de Mirabeau appeared to feel with respect to him was, that the " wolf's cub," his favourite paternal phrase, should become an econo- mist after his own fashion and example, for which purpose a M. Poisson was intrusted with his education. The boy proved singularly quick and apt at studies which harmonized with his own tastes and bent of mind, but stubbornly rebel- MIRABEAU. 109 lious against being crammed with the Ephemerides and Economiques, so that he was very seldom out of punishment. A lad, however, of generous impulses, that would have greatly- repaid a wise and gentle training. It was dangerous, when he was five or six years old, to speak disrespectfully or slight- ingly of Madame de Mirabeau in his presence, it being certain that the weapon nearest at hand, whether a poker, candlestick, or glass bottle, would be instantly hurled at the head of the offender, whoever he or she might be. The boy also very frequently subjected himself to severe chastisement for pur- loining food and articles of clothing, to bestow upon starving and ragged wretches driven from his father's door, — not certainly commendable actions in themselves, but evincing native courage and generosity of mind. He was about nine, when he competed for a new hat in a riurning match upon the grounds of the Due de Nivernois, and won it easily against numerous and much older competitors. When the prize was handed to him he took his own hat, much the best of the two, and clapped it upon the bare head of an old man standing by, saying as he did so, " Here, friend, do you take this. I have only one head, and cannot therefore wear two hats." This act of boyish benevolence threw the Due de JSTivernois into an ecstasy of admiration. " Your son appeared to me at that moment," he wrote to the father, "to be the emperor of the world." Christianity — religion, rarely mentioned in young Mirabeau's hearing, except accompanied with a sneer, was, quite naturally, the butt of his earliest sarcasm, and numerous instances are related of his precocity in scepticism. He was "confirmed" at his mother's instance by a Cardinal, and a conversation which took place shortly after- wards curiously illustrates his fitness for the rite. A question arose as to what was possible or impossible, and the noble 110 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. and reverend company finally agreed that a stick with one end only was an impossibility. "And what, my lord Cardinal," exclaimed young Mirabeau, "is a miracle but a stick with only one end 1 " Poorly as this flippant remark speaks for the boy's logical acumen — Mirabeau, by the way, never became remarkable as a sequential reasoner — his brilliant firework declamation did not require and would in fact have been vexatiously damped and hampered by the necessities of logic ; — still the retort upon the Cardinal is quite decisive as to the character and quality of the fountain at which the nascent intellect of young Mirabeau drank of the knowledge of good and eviL At seventeen he quitted the unhappy domicile at Bignon MIRABEAU. Ill — home it could not be called — to study for the profession of arms in a military school at Paris, presided over by the Abbe Choquet. The dissipations of the capital engaged his time and attention much more than military studies, and chancing to lose forty louis at one coup in a gaming house, which debt of " honour " could not be liquidated without his father's assistance, he forthwith applied to that gentleman by letter for the required sum, delicately intimating at the same time that dispatch in the transmission of the money was desirable. M. de Mirabeau was of course furiously wrath at his son's culpable extravagance, and returned for answer that he would not advance him a sou. He added by way of post- scriptum, at the dictation of Mademoiselle le Pailly, that the next time such an application was made it would be replied to by a lettre de cachet, which would effectually bridle such licentious courses ! Ultimately the money was supplied by the imprudent gamester's mother; and after running the gauntlet, with more or less of good and evil fortune, through numerous amatory as well as pecuniary scrapes, Gabriel Honore Riquetti de Mirabeau was sent to join the regiment de Royal-Comtois, commanded by Colonel the Marquis of Lambert, as attache, under the name of Pierre Buffieres, his father remaining constant to the opinion that a "wolf's cub," incapable of appreciating the Ephemerides and Econo- miques, must inevitably bring scandal and disgrace upon the honoured names of Biquetti or Mirabeau, if permitted to assume either of them. The young attache's usual luck fol- lowed him to Saintes. The marquis-colonel of the regiment happened to be courting the pretty daughter of an archer there, and Pierre Buffieres, ugly as he was, had the insolent good fortune to supplant his commanding officer in the dam- sel's good graces. The colonel, to revenge himself upon the 112 • EXTRAORDINARY MEN. impertinent cadet, had his likeness cleverly caricatured and handed about amongst the officers of the regiment, a dastardly expedient which so exasperated Mirabeau that he fled to Paris, and sought refuge and protection of the Due de Nivernois. His request was refused, and he was forcibly sent back to Saintes, and there subjected to a short imprison- ment for breach of military discipline. Shortly after this, Mirabeau pere so effectually exerted his court influence as to get his detested son imprisoned in the isle of Rhe, with the firm intention, avowed to Bailli Mirabeau, of shipping him off at the first opportunity to Surinam, the most pestilential colony then known, in the hope " of never again beholding him upon the horizon." This fatherly project fell through. Young Mirabeau was liberated after a few months' confine- ment, and his first exploit after being set at liberty was to fight a duel with a man whom he met and quarrelled with in a cafe at Rochelle. He next served with his regiment during one campaign in Corsica, but becoming disgusted with the plundering, firing, massacreing incident to war, he quitted the service and returned to France. It was certainly from no deficiency in personal courage that Mirabeau's dislike of the military profession arose. His comrades, who had fre- quently seen him in action, upon being questioned as to his cha- racter and bearing, replied, " Why, he is a lad confoundedly active ; and then he has the wit of three hundred thousand devils, and is moreover a right brave fellow." His avowed reasons for abandoning the service were thus set forth : — " Regular, standing armies never have been and never will be good for anything but to establish and maintain absolute authority ; and as I am not one of those mercenaries who know only the person from whom they receive their pay, forgetting that pay comes from the people, and who fly at MIRABEAU. US the orders of hini whom they call roaster, not reflecting that they thereby risk reducing themselves from soldiers in uniform to servants in, livery — the service did not suit me.'* Bailli Mirabeau had meanwhile become much softened to- wards his nephew, of whom he emphatically pronounced — "that for wit the devil had not so much, and that he had the stuff for a naval or military commander — a pope — chancellor, anything he chose." The father and son, however, continued to regard each other with mutual hostility, and after suffering another and much longer imprisonment, young Mirabeau escaped beyond the jurisdiction of his father's illustrious patrons, and did not again come within the range of their power till a change of times in France enabled him to do so in safety. Mirabeau, the orator and statesman, was the natural deve- lopment of the youth Mirabeau, under the pre-cited con- ditions of education and example — which is saying that he was brilliant, impetuous, — bold to rashness, — swayed alter- nately by noble and unworthy impulses, — energetic, well- intentioned, and patriotic, — and destitute alike of convic- tions, of conscience, and of a distinct settled purpose. The factitious life which this eminent person derived from the noxious moral atmosphere in which he had the misfortune to be born and nurtured, animated and falsified his last moments. His death, of which so much admiration has been expressed, was self-evidently a show-scene, — a part studied and acted with a view to applause, — though to be heard only when the actor would be insensible to such incense, — a con- tingency of slight weight in such circumstances, inasmuch as it is impossible for a sentient being to realize his own anni- hilation. " Come and support the ablest head in France," he said to one of the by-standers. At another moment, 114 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. looking towards the setting sun, he exclaimed, " If that is not God, it is his cousin-german." Then followed : — " That Pitt is a minister who makes war by .preparations : had I lived, I think I should have given him some trouble." Dr. Cabanis having informed him that all hope of life must be abandoned, he said, after the first tremor caused by the shock had subsided, " I shall die then, my friend, you say, to-day. Well, since I am at that point, there is but one course to take, which is to be perfumed, to be crowned, surrounded with flowers, in order to enter agreeably into the sleep from which there is no awaking." He then requested the phy- sicians, Cabanis and Petit, to hasten his end by opium, — poison in short, — none knowing better than he did, for his mind was perfectly clear to the last, that compliance with his wish, — law not having yet been abolished by the revo- lution, — would render them liable to an indictment for murder. Of course they declined, as he well knew they would, to place themselves in such a predicament, and he again and again repeated the request, — in writing, after he had become speechless, — his indomitable will enabling him to keep up the telling imposition of careless indifference to the last ! Solemn insincerities at such a time are surely very repulsive, whether prompted by the pride of religious fanati- cism, or the arrogance of bigoted unbelief. The tidings of Mirabeau's death rekindled his fast ex- piring popularity to a temporary flame. Presently a ru- mour flew from mouth to mouth, that the great orator's death had been hastened by the administering of opium, — : no matter that it was done at his own request, — and till the post-mortem examination of the body, instantly and clamorously demanded by the populace, had demonstrated the falsehood of the accusation, Drs. Cabanis and Petit looked MIRABEAU. 115 exceedingly like popular candidates for the honours of the guillotine. Mirabeau was decreed a public funeral by acclamation. It was ordered that he should repose in the old church of Sainte Genevieve, by the side of Descartes, till the new one of the same name, to be especially revived and dedicated to the great men of France, by their grateful country, (Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnoissante), was ready to receive him. A magnificent cortege followed the body to St. Genevieve's, where it remained till the night of the 21st September, 1794, when, as if it was pre-doomed that the popular tribune's history should point a moral from even beyond the tomb, the coffin was rudely exhumed — carted oft by official ruffians, and flung into a hole in the cemetery of Sainte Catherine, in the faubourg St. Marcel, the burial-place of executed criminals — and left without a sign or mark to distinguish it from the surrounding felon- , graves. MOZAET. T IFE and melody were twin-born with this great com- -*-■ poser, grew together in infancy and youth, and to the last remained so inseparably intertwined and blended, that the hand of Death, untimely raised to strike down that still young and beauteous life, was accompanied as it fell by their mutual requiem, breathed forth in the prophetic, dying har- monies of the companion song-spirit. Almost invariably fatal to length of days is the precocious development of a great spiritual power, and marvellous as were the achieve- ments of Mozart, as a child and boy, one cannot but feel that such premature successes are dearly purchased by the sacrifice of a single day of the mature life of one whose ardent genius, if judiciously checked rather than unnaturally stimulated in his earlier years, would not, in all human probability, have so soon outworn its tenement of clay. MOZART. 117 A certificate of baptism, subscribed by Leopold Compreeht, chaplain to his highness the Prince-Bishop of Salsbourgh, obtained at the instance of the Honourable Daines Bar- rington, F.B.S., in order to the clearing up of some niigivings entertained by that gentleman as to the real age of the boy- musician, then exhibiting (1764) in London, sets forth that " John Chrysostomus "Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart, the law- ful son of Leopold Mozart and of Anna Maria, his lawful wife, whose maiden name was Pertlen, was baptised in the afore- said city on the 17th of January, 1756, his godfather being Gottlieb Pergmayr, merchant of Salsbourg." This child was the seventh and last born of his parents, whose previous offspring, with the exception of one daughter, Anna Maria, four years Wolfgang's senior, died in their infancy. Leopold Mozart was second master of the Prince-Bishop's Chapel ( Vize Kapellmeister) and a musician of considerable local repute, both as a violin player and teacher of musical composition. He was a somewhat austere, — perhaps the j uster phrase might be a sternly- firm man, ruling his house- hold, wife included, with perfect equity, no doubt, and un- bending strictness. He had also a strong money-bias, not to say avarice, and was moreover a fervently religious man. Woferl and Mannerl, to use the household names of the brother and sister, inherited the temperament and disposition of their mother, — a very beautiful woman it is said. Woferl especially, from his earliest days, was one of the gentlest, most affectionate, loveable of children. Ever, as soon as he could lisp the words, his first impulse upon the entrance of strangers was to totter towards them, and ask with his beseeching eyes as earnestly as with his tongue if they loved him; — " Do you love me?" — and if the question was replied to coldly or indifferently, he instantly burst into tears. He 118 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. was three years old when his father began teaching Mannerl the harpsichord, and at once throwing aside his playthings, he became entirely absorbed by his sister's lessons and prac- tice. Whenever he found himself alone, he eagerly ran over the keys of the instrument in search of " thirds," which when found, excited his boisterous glee. This went on for some months, till at last his father, half-jestingly, gave him some easy lessons on the harpsichord, — such as minuets, each of which, to the teacher's delighted amazement, Woferl perfectly acquired in about half an hour. The germ of a capacity for numbers was also displayed by the child at this early age, — the walls of his bed-room being repeatedly found covered with figures and calculations of some difficulty ; — it is quite possible, therefore/ that under other circumstances he might have become a superior mathematician. Leopold Mozart at length made aware of his son's extraordinary musical aptitude, took care that he should practise unremittingly at the harpsichord, with the avowed intention of exhibiting him, as early as might be, at the chief capitals of Europe. Till Woferl's sixth year, however, the father only recognised in his son a singularly fine and quick ear, and marvellous facility of execution; — the child's intellectual progress in the art, not manifesting itself till he was of that age, and then very startlingly. Woferl, who had received no instruction in musical composition, save what he might have gathered by listening to Leopold Mozart's teaching of others, conceived the idea of a concerto for the harpsichord, mentally elaborated it, and seizing a sheet of music paper when no one was present, forthwith began writing it out. In his eager flurry, Woferl plunged his pen every time it required refilling, up to the feather in the ink, and smudged out the huge blot which immediately fell on the paper, with his finger. Leo- MOZART. 119 :£'&& ' 2>old, accompanied by a friend, surprised the excited and impatient boy just before the stained and blotted manuscript was finished. " What are you writing and crying about, "Woferl?" asked the father. " A concerto for the harpsichord," replied the child, " but it is not quite finished, and so badly written." " A concerto for the harpsichord, you little monkey 1" replied Leopold Mozart, with a derisive laugh. " That is charming, upon my word. But come, let us see this wonderful concerto." The mocking smile upon the father's countenance changed to an expression of profound astonishment, as he slowly discerned through all the scratch- ings and blottings of the manuscript, not alone the idea of the concerto, but that it was written in strict accordance with 120 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. the rules of composition, and faulty only in being exceedingly difficult of execution. From this moment Leopold Mozart no longer hesitated to challenge the admiration of courtly and influential circles in behalf of his prodigy of a son, and the spring of the same year, 1762, saw him, accompanied by both his children, — Mannerl herself being a superior per- former on the harpsichord, — at Munich, where they were kindly received by the Elector of Bavaria. This is about all that is known of the debut at Munich, and a few months afterwards they visited Vienna, carrying with them influen- tial introductions to the imperial court, in which distinguished circle little Woferl quickly became an admired favourite, thanks in a great degree to the partiality of the Emperor Francis I., and the Empress-dowager Maria Theresa, who appear to have been as much pleased with the amiable vivacity of the child as surprised by his precocious musical genius. An incident, trifling in itself, related of this visit, is worth reproducing, not only because it shows the favour in which " the little sorcerer," as he was usually called, was held at the Austrian court, but in being connected with a person- age whose tragic fortunes impart a touching interest to the slightest event of her life. Woferl, unaccustomed to the polished palace floors, fell down and hurt himself slightly, whilst crossing one of the apartments in company of the two arch-duchesses, daughters of Maria Theresa. One of the young ladies laughed and passed on, but the other helped Woferl upon his legs again, and gently consoled him for his mishap. " You are a good girl," said the little fellow, check- ing his tears, " and I should like to marry you when I am a man." " And to what, pray," said Maria Theresa, taking Woferl on. her knee the first time she saw him after this magnanimous declaration, " is the arch-duchess indebted for MOZART. 121 the flattering wish you have expressed regarding her?" " To gratitude," replied WoferL " She helped and consoled me ; the other was too proud to do so." The sympathizing arch- duchess was Maria Antoinette, the martyred queen of France. Paris was the next capital city visited by the Mozarts, and there Woferl's success was, if possible, even more decided than at Yienna. M. Grimm, secretary to the Duke of Orleans, wrote with enthusiasm of his performances. " I was present," he says, " when the astonishing child was asked by a lady if he could accompany her in an Italian song, which she would sing from memoiy, without looking at her. The boy in- stantly seated himself at the piano, and accompanied the melody with almost entire precision, and on its repetition he played the air with his right hand and struck the bass with his left with undeviating exactness. The song was repeated some ten or a dozen times, and each time the accompani- ment varied in character." Both the children were much petted by Louis XY. and the queen of France, Woferl more particularly, who, upon one occasion, was permitted to eat off her majesty's plate whilst she translated his prattle to the king. The boy's affectionate kindliness of disposition, as dis- played in his perpetual " Do you love me!" was, however, rudely repulsed by Madame de Pompadour. " What !" cried Woferl, regarding the great lady with indignant surprise, " not kiss me, who have sat upon the knee and been kissed by an empress?" During this sojourn at Paris, Woferl com- posed four sonatas for the harpsichord, with ad libitum violin accompaniments: these were published as the work of " Joannes Wolfgang Mozart, Compositeur et Maitre de Musique, age de 7 ans." Guineas, albeit, in the estimation of Mozart senior, were much more desirable than mere glory, and in 176£, he arrived i 122 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. with his children in London, the only place in continental opinion and experience where those desirable commodities are in sufficient quantity obtainable. George III. and Queen Charlotte warmly patronized the boy-musician ; and a suc- cession of profitable concerts^ extending over a space of a twelvemonth, amply realized Leopold Mozart's pecuniary anticipations, The Honourable Daines Barrington, amongst others, was so astonished at Woferl's performances, particu- larly his being able to play a manuscript duet at sight, that he, having first satisfied himself by the certificate of baptism, previously quoted, that Woferl was really only eight years old, sent a memoir entitled, " An account of a very remark- able Young Musician," to the Royal Society, by whom it was published in the sixtieth volume of the Philosophical Trans- actions. The testimony of Dr. Burney is of more value and authority. "Young Mozart's invention," says the Doctor^ " taste, modulation, and execution, in extemporaneous playing, were such as few professors attain at forty." The following incident reveals a higher capability than a power of facile execution : — One evening, in the presence of a considerable number of musical professors and others, Woferl took, at hap-hazard, a piece of music from a heap of the instrumental parts of some of Handel's songs. It chanced to be a bass, and with that guide only he at once recomposed the full piece, extemporising, at the same time, a charming and appro- priate melody. "The original melody," it is added, "the mature work of a great composer, would hardly have gained in comparison with the boy's instant improvisation. Bach, the younger, who happened to be present, was so overcome with admiration and surprise that he burst into tears, caught Woferl in his arms, and kissed him with passionate enthusiasm.'* MOZAKT. 123 From England the traveller passed over to Holland at the pressing invitation of the sister of the Prince of Orange, where Woferl fell seriously ill ; the first overt indication of the fatal effect upon his health likely to ensue from such early and constant tension of the brain. Mannerl was also affected, but less severely, and thanks to the best medical skill and assiduous nursing, they were both after a while en- abled to resume their exhausting avocations. They gave two concerts at Amsterdam, in Lent, the apparent impropriety, in a religious sense, of such performances during that peni- tential season, being excused, according to the advertise- ments, inasmuch " that the marvellous faculties of the two children could only, in displaying themselves, tend to the glory of God by whom they were created." Soon after the return of the family to Salsbourgh, where they were welcomed with the noisy gratulations which ever attend those whom kings and queens delight to honour, a new surprise awaited Leopold Mozart, evincing, if reported with good faith, the possession of a large amount of secre- tiveness by Woferl, in addition to his other remarkable qualities. The anecdote is thus told : — Mozart senior, gave instructions in musical compositions to a violinist named Wenzl, who called one evening with six trios of his own writing to try over with his teacher. Wenzl was to play the first, Schactner, whom he had brought with him, the second violin, and Leopold Mozart the bass. They were about to commence, when Woferl offered to play the second violin, remarking that it required no teaching, nor much previous practice, to be enabled to do that. Leopold Mozart, angry at what he deemed an unbecoming pleasantry, ordered his son to leave the room. Presently, however, he readmitted him, at the request of his visitors, and told him he might, if i 2 124 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. lie could, play a second violin, provided it was done so softly that no one could hear him. The trio began, and a dozen bars had hardly been played, when Schactner put down his violin in utter astonishment at the correctly beautiful play- ing of Woferl, who, it was asserted, had never received a lesson, nor himself studied this, the most difficult of all instruments. He next played first violin throughout the whole six trios, and though his fingering was of the oddest, the tone, time and expression were said to be perfect. We have also to remark that at about this period of his life Woferl must have completely conquered his antipathy to the trumpet, the sound of which, some years previously, almost threw him into convulsions, as before again leaving Salsbourg, he composed a duet for the violin and piano, with a trumpet obligato. In 1766, the Mozart s were again in Paris, and in the autumn of the following year, at Vienna, where a feeling of jealous ill-will on the part of the musical profession pre vailed to such an extent as to prevent the performance of an opera, " La Finta Simplice" which Woferl had composed, and other- wise so damaged his prestige and reputation, that his father bitterly complained of the entire loss in a money-sense, of their fourteen months' stay in the Austrian capital. A mass, however, composed at the Emperor's command, was performed at the Church of the Orphans, and was well received. The Mozarts made, during this visit, the acquaintance of Mesmer, the apostle of animal magnetism, by whom Woferl was warmly admired and patronized. Immediately on quitting Vienna, young Mozart earnestly addressed himself to the study of his art, as illustrated by the writings of the great Italian as well as German composers ; and in 1770 paid his first visit to the classic land of harmony MOZART. 125 and song. Upon presenting himself before the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna, the President Martini said, in reply to his request of admission : " We have heard that you are a prodigy for your age, that you play the piano exceedingly well, and read at sight with facility. It is much ; but here more is required ; and I propose a question to you, in the form of a fugue theme." Woferl instantly rendered it with unhesitating accuracy — extemporizing all the developments of the fugue after the strictest rules. The tribunal was delighted, and the president warmly congratulated the young aspirant upon his success. Some time afterwards the Academy of Music at Naples gave him, as a test, a Roman Antiphon to arrange in four parts — he remaining the while locked up alone : in half an hour, the task was completed. About this time, a remarkable and frequently-quoted instance of his astonishing musical memory occurred. He arrived at Rome on the 11th of April, 1770, in Holy Week, and on the Wednesday went to the Sistine chapel, where he heard a Miserere by Allegri. It had been rigorously forbidden by superior authority to give or permit any one to take a copy of this piece, but Mozart, who was greatly struck therewith, brought the whole of it away in his brain, wrote it out imme- diately he reached home, and on the following Friday betook himself again to the chapel, with the score in his hat, to cor- rect any mistakes he might have made. Two days after- wards (Easter Sunday) he played the famous Miserere before Saloceti, the chapel-master, who could scarcely believe his eyes or ears — thoroughly assured as he was that no copy of the piece could by possibility have been obtained without his knowledge. Rightly to appreciate this astonishing act of memory, it is necessary to bear in mind that the Miserere con- sisted of twelve verses divided between two distinct choirs, — 126 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. the first division being in five, the second in four parts, the whole intermingled with solos, &c., and sung alternately by the two choirs, which, at the last verse, joined — thus forming a composition of nine distinct parts ! On afterwards com- paring the original score with Mozart's transcript, not the slightest difference was found to exist. Mozart remained eighteen months in Italy — during which his reputation, both as an executionist and composer, steadily increased in brilliancy. His first acted opera, Mithridates, King of Pontus, was played twenty nights in succession at Milan, a success for which he was no doubt in some degree indebted to the splendid singing of the prima donna, Madame Bemasconi. Upon his return to Salsbourgh, the Prince-bishop conferred upon him the post of director of the orchestra (concei't-meister), and he remained at home, incessantly engaged in study and practice, till summoned, at the close of 1774, by his great patroness, the Empress Maria Theresa, to compose a serenade in celebration of the marriage of the Archduke Ferdi- nand with the Princess of Modena. The work was entirely suc- cessful; and when, on the 14th of January, 1775, the curtain fell upon L a Bella finta Guardinera, the show boy-life of Wolf- gang Mozart may be said to have finally terminated, and his brilliant manhood to commence — a brief, and, withal, a mourn- ful one, spite of that meteoric splendour, and though soothed and tranquillized by the affectionate solicitude of a beloved wife. The lamp of life, early excited to unnatural consuming brightness by the breath of courtly applause, nickered on till his thirty-fifth year only, and expired with the concluding accents of the magnificent strain of requiem which would alone suffice to stamp with immortality the name of Mozart. SIR S. ROMILLY. rpHE modest simplicity combined with a certain degree of -*- despondent pensiveness which characterises Sir Samuel Romilly could hardly have been more strikingly displayed than by the opening passage of his own Autobiography, which he there announces to be a brief memoir " of the life of one who never achieved anything memorable, who will probably leave no posterity, and the memory of which is therefore likely to survive him only till the last of a few remaining and affectionate friends shall have followed him to the grave." This was written in August, 1796, when he was in his fortieth year, about eighteen months previous to his 128 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. marriage, and just as lie was entering upon the threshold, as it were, of the beneficent career which has shed a lustre upon his memory, daily becoming purer, clearer, brighter in that improved advancing public opinion, by which so many sparkling bubble reputations, contemporary with the less showy pretensions of the zealous and high-minded law- reformer, have been made to collapse and disappear. The anticipation of descending childless to the tomb proved as groundless as the fear that he would achieve no lasting memorial of his life. Like Benedict, when he said he should die a bachelor, he did not think he should live to be married — nor indeed " that there existed in the world such a woman as dear Anne Garbet," the eldest daughter of Mr. Garbet, of Knill Court, Herefordshire, "whom he had the supreme happiness of making his wife" on the 3rd of January, 1798. The bridegroom, having been born on the 1st of March, 1757, was, consequently approaching his forty-second year; but, comparatively late in life as that was to enter for the first time into the holy estate of matrimony, there can be no doubt that the union was on both sides one of disinterested, ardent affection. Sir Samuel, after several years of wedded life, penned the following testimony to the mental and personal attributes of Lady Romilly : — " The most excellent of wives; a woman in whom a strong understanding, the noblest and most elevated sentiments, and the most courageous virtue, are united to the warmest affection, and to the utmost delicacy of mind and tenderness of heart; and all these intellectual perfections are graced and adorned by the most splendid beauty that human eyes ever beheld." The catas- trophe of Sir Samuel Romilly's life gave proof, sad but incon- testable, that these expressions were not mere uxorious compliments — lip-flatteries — but the irrepressible swellings KOMILLY. 129 forth of the concentrated tenderness of one of the gentlest, kindliest hearts that ever throbbed in mortal bosom — and one, too, that from his earliest to his latest years was ever tremulously sensitive to the still sad music of humanity, however fallen, sin-spotted, desecrated, might be the temple not made with hands, from which the plaint of sorrow or of suffering issued. Conscientiousness and amiability appear to have been here- ditary in Sir Samuel's family, and it would be difficult to point to a nobler descent than his, albeit he could only trace his ancestry as far back as his great grandfather, whose only son, moreover, kept a shop in Hoxton Old Town, London. The great grandfather was proprietor of a small estate near Montpellier, France, who having embraced the faith of the Reformation, continued with disloyal audacity to worship God after the manner approved of by his own conscience after the revocation of the Nantz Edict of Toleration by the Most Christian King Louis XIV.; but necessarily, — as he did not choose to expose himself to the pains and penalties devised by that just and pious monarch for the protection of Christianity, — in the seclusion of Iris own house, and the pre- sence of his family only. This covert protest against the right of the State to dictate laws to conscience did not suit the more impassioned temperament of the timid dissident's only son, who at the age of seventeen proceeded to Geneva for the sole purpose of receiving the sacrament according to the reformed ritual in the face of day. Whilst there, the young man's zeal was kindled to intensest name by the fiery eloquence of the celebrated Saurin, and forthwith determining to abandon home, kindred, country, inheritance, rather than crouch beneath the bondage ot spiritual despotism, he em- barked for England, where he had not long arrived when he 130 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. commenced business in Hoxton Old Town as a wax-bleacher. He subsequently espoused Judith de Monsallier, the daughter of a French refugee like himself, whose sister, Elizabeth, mar- ried a Mr. Fludyer, and became, in the fulness of time, mother of Sir Samuel Fludyer, alderman and lord mayor of London, and moreover godfather to the distinguished subject of this memoir. The wax-bleaching concern was not a prosperous one ; chiefly because its proprietor was one of those facile- tempered, unsuspecting, generous men who cannot say "No," and who therefore never succeed in affairs which require the exercise of caution, distrust, and firmness. Still, the con- stant remittances which he received from France postponed the evil day of reckoning till after his father's death, and even then he might not only have rescued himself, which he would have thought a slight matter, — but his wife and eight children from the abyss of poverty, into which they must else be plunged by a formal recantation of the Protestant faith, the sole condition precedent to his being placed in legal possession of the paternal estate to which he was of course the direct and immediate heir. He refused to do so ; the property passed to the next of kin ; the disinherited son became bankrupt, and died not long afterwards of impo- verished circumstances, — a ruined home, and the anxieties attaching to a dependent family of four sons and four daughters, at the early age of forty-nine. His young- est son Joseph sank beneath the sorrow and despair caused by the death of his father, whom he soon followed to the grave. The wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and friends were not wanting to the bereaved family. The remaining sons were Stephen, Isaac, and Peter, the last named of whom, the father of Sir Samuel Romilly, was bound apprentice to a ROMILLY. 131 jeweller of the name of La Fosse, carrying on business in Broad Street, city of London. "Whilst serving his time he became attached to the sister of Garnault, a fellow apprentice, and like himself of French extraction. For a season the course of true love, contrary to ordinary experience, appeared to run smoothly enough in the direction of the marriage- haven, but presently it turned awry as usual, and as soon as his apprentice -term was concluded, Peter Romilly left England for France, worked for several years at his trade in Paris, visited Montpellier, and looked at the estate which the religious scruples of his father had handed over to a more orthodox proprietor, — returned to London, married Made- moiselle Garnault, with whose family he had become reconciled, and set up in business in the city as a master jeweller. His trade was a thriving one, as far as returns went, which ultimately reached as high as from twenty to thirty thousand pounds a year, but he had inherited his father's easiness of disposition, which, combined with the harassment consequent upon the continuous ill-health of Mrs. Romilly, and the death of five children in their infancy, led to an absorption of the profits, which, but for a fortunate windfall, to be presently further spoken of, might have had ruinous results. The sixth child, which did not pass away so early as its tiny predecessors, left a perennial tradition in the family of an angel child gifted with wondrous beauty and other extraordinary per- fections. Mr. Romilly used to awake her of a morning with the music of his flute, and the deep gloom which overcast his mind, when like the others she sank into the death-slumber from which no cunning melody of earth might rouse her, was only gradually lightened and dissipated by the subsequent births of three children, respectively christened Thomas, Catherine, and Samuel, who gave promise of more vigorous- 132 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. life. That this fair promise might have the better chance of fulfilment, Mr. Romilly determined upon securing them the benefit of pure country air, for which purpose he took lodgings in the then rural suburb of Marylebone, whither the family accordingly removed. The result showed the wisdom of the expedient. Thomas, Catherine, and Samuel, who grew up to virile health, and even Mrs. Eomilly, spite of advanced years, rallied in the bracing atmosphere of High-street, Marylebone, — at a country-house wherein the family were in subsequent years permanently located. Maternal superintendence of the children had been neces- sarily, from Mrs. Bomilly's constant ill-health, confided to a Mrs. Margaret Facquier, a relative who had been domiciled with the family, from soon after the marriage of its master and mistress. Sir Samuel speaks of her with great respect, but not with the warm affection he expresses towards Mary Evans, a servant for whom when a child he seems to have felt an extraordinary attachment. ""I remember," he writes, "having frequently, unperceived by her, kissed the clothes she wore ;" and an intimation that she would probably leave the family to dwell with relatives of her own, threw him into an agony of affliction. It will be found that this feeling was ineradicable from a mind wonderfully tenacious of all early impressions, and not the less so when of a disturbing and painful character. An old woman employed occasionally about the house used to inflame his imagination and excite his fears by stories about witches, devils, and apparitions. " The images of terror," he wrote, when he was a barrister of long standing, "the images of terror with which those tales were filled, infested my imagination long after I had dis- carded all belief in the tales themselves, and in the notions on which they were built ; and even now, although I have been accustomed for many years to pass my evenings and ROMILLY. 133 nights in solitude, and without even a servant sleeping in my chambers, I must with some shame confess that they are sometimes very unwelcome intruders upon my thoughts. I often recollect, and never without shuddering, a story which in my earliest childhood I overheard as I lay in bed, related by an old woman, of a servant murdering his master, and particularly that part of it where the murderer, with a knife in his hand, had crept in the dead of night to the side of the bed in which his master lay asleep, and when, as by a momentary compunction, he was hesitating before he executed his bloody purpose, he on a sudden heard a deep hollow voice whispering close to his ear * that he should accomplish his design ! ' But it was not merely such extravagant stories as this which disturbed my peace ; as terrible an impression was made upon me by relations of murders and acts of cruelty. The prints which I found in the Book of Martyrs, and the Newgate Calendar, have cost me many sleepless nights. My dreams, too, reproduced the hideous images which haunted my imagination by day. I thought myself present at executions, murders, and scenes of blood ; and I have often laid in bed agitated by my terrors, equally afraid of remaining awake in the dark, and of falling asleep to encounter the horrors of my dreams." Evil and distressing as were these frightful impressions as regards Sir Samuel Homilly himself, there can be no question that they must have stimulated in some degree, and perhaps unconsciously, his vehement efforts to purge the Euglish statutes of their bloody enactments ; and that consequently the abominable old woman, and the engravers of the detestable prints were so far, unwitting criminal law reformers. Samuel Romilly's school education was by no means of a superior kind. He was sent to a day-school kept by a French refugee of the name of Flach, whose only mode of inculcating 134 EXTRAORDINARY MEN*. i, . i i?, a love of knowledge appears to have been a remorseless use of the rod. A Scotchman of the name of Paterson, who kept a school in Bury-street, Saint James's, taught the brothers Latin, and so well and speedily did Samuel imagine himself to have mastered that language, that he was not yet sixteen when he determined upon favouring the world with a new and superior translation of Virgil, duly measured and rhymed into English poetry. When the important manuscript was tolerably advanced, the blushing candidate for poetical fame read the completed portions to Mrs. Facquier, his sister, brother, and Randolph Greenway, — of whom presently, — who unanimously pronounced his version to be far superior to that ROMILLY. 135 of Dryden, and decisive, moreover, of the translator's power to produce a magnificent and original Epic poem. Sir Samuel incidentally remarks that he broke himself of his ardent love of rhyming before he reached his nineteenth year, having, it may be presumed, by that time ascertained that a facility for tagging rhymes together is no more an indication of poetic power, than successfully putting a company of soldiers through their drill is evidence of the possession of great military genius. Samuel Romilly finally left school at about the age of four- teen, and during the two following years was employed in his father's business; — very distasteful to him with his strong persuasion that he was capable of achieving a great name in the literature which was his constant solace and delight. He must, however, have devoted himself, in conjunction with his brother, to the jewellery trade, unless, indeed, he preferred a vacant stool, strongly pressed upon him, in his relative and godfather Sir Samuel Fludyer's counting house, had it not been for the sudden falling in of a legacy amounting in the gross to £15,000, bequeathed in varying portions to the family by Mr. De la Haye, a relative of Mrs. Romilly's. Thomas and Samuel were left £2000 each, their sister, Catherine, £3000, and £8000 to Mr. and Mrs. Romilly, and Mrs. Facquier, with remainder to the younger legatees in equal proportions. Samuel's two thousand pounds could not, it was thought, be turned to better account than by reserving it for the purchase of a sworn chancery clerkship in the office of the Six Clerks, an ancient confederacy entitled, in former good old times, by patent to plunder, almost ad libitum, the crazed or unfortunate people who voluntarily sought, or were ruthlessly dragged into the bottomless pit of Chancery. The indispensable preliminary to this investment in equity was 136 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. to article Samuel Romilly to one of the sworn clerks, an arrangement carried into effect with little difficulty, and the young man became the pupil of Mr. Michael Lally, a worthy person it seems, though one of the Six Clerks. The necessary routine attendance for a few hours only in the day, did not much interfere with the home-avocations of the young clerk, — a home which, happily for his future fame, was peopled with gentle and elevating memories, companion- ships, examples, associations, and almost all of them more- over, tinged with a certain thoughtful sadness, as by the breath of mortality. The child whose seraph-beauty and perfections were a household reminiscence has been already spoken of, and Mr. Romilly himself, besides delightiDg in music, in the collection of fine prints and other illustra- tions of art within his means, was a man of a singularly benevolent and sympathizing disposition. One instance of his active and comprehensive charity may be quoted here, because establishing a remarkable resemblance between him and his celebrated son. He had noticed during several bitter winter evenings a wretched, lost creature, usually intoxicated, crouch- ing down with a child in her arms, upon the stone steps of his or of his neighbours' doors, and he felt it impossible to sit in peace in the light and warmth and cheerfulness of his own dwelling, whilst that outcast mother and her child were ex- posed to the inclemency of the" weather. It was useless to bestow money upon the miserable woman, which would be immediately squandered for drink, — and Mr. Romilly opened a negotiation with her, which resulted, not in saving the mother, that was past hoping for, but in permanently rescuing the unfortunate child from misery and ruin. The love with which this gentle-minded father was regarded by his children was of the tenderest kind,— in Samuel, filial affection was a ROMLLLY. 137 passion. The dread knowledge of the grave brought by the passing years, affected him chiefly — himself being so young, and immortal as all boys practically, though not in theory, esteem themselves — as foreshadowing the death of his father; and one night when witnessing the representation of Zaire at Drury Lane Theatre, he suddenly burst into an ecstasy of grief and tears, which nothing that was passing on the stage, as those who know the play will easily understand, — had a ten- dency to excite, but simply because the thought flashed upon him that, at no distant day, his father's hair would be as white, his frame as feeble, as Lusignan's! Other softening, purifying influences had their dwelling place in the country- house at High-street, Marylebone, which became the perma- nent residence of the family, and Mr. Romilly's place of business, soon after the receipt of Mr. De la Haye's legacy. Two fair cousins, the orphan daughters of uncle Isaac, took shelter there, and the eldest, whose fascinating beauty and grace Sir Samuel writes of in a way which makes his long bachelorship perfectly comprehensible, — at once subjugated the heart of Thomas Romilly, to whom she was ultimately married. And there was developing itself the while in this charming family circle a tragic romance, which it is usually supposed exists only upon the shelves of circulating libraries- Randolph Greenway, of whom mention has been already made, was an apprentice of Mr. Romilly, but treated by the entire family upon a footing of perfect equality, and affectionate confidence. This young man conceived a vehement passion for Catherine Romilly, but of so reserved, so undemonstrative a temper was he, that no one suspected his secret, — unless it might be the young lady herself, who could hardly, one would suppose, have failed to divine it. Be this as it may, Randolph Greenway made one faint, awkward attempt at a K 138 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. declaration, and finding that not responded to, relapsed into silence and despondency. A relative had bequeathed him five hundred a-year in landed property, permitting him to have done with business, and he invited Mr. Roniilly to visit him with his family, at his new residence in Oxfordshire. The invitation was accepted, and Mr. Roniilly congratulated him upon the appearance of his house, its fittings, furniture, et cetera. "Yes," replied the nervous lover, "yes, sir; it wants nothing but a mistress." Mr. Komilly not happening to comprehend or to follow up this very lucid revelation, Ran- dolph Greenway concluded that the proposition he imagined himself to have very plainly made was distasteful, and forbore to iterate it. This was an entirely erroneous conclusion in all respects, Catherine Romilly being at that time perfectly disengaged in her affections, and as she felt great esteem for the young man in common with her family, and the match being otherwise an eligible one, the probability was that if he had given his wishes intelligible expression, they would have been favourably received by both father and daughter. The favourable opportunity was, however, soon past. M. Roget, a young, amiable, and eloquent Genevese divine, who had recently succeeded to the vacant pulpit of the French Chapel, where the Romilly family usually worshipped, became attached to Catherine, by whom his addresses were accepted, and they were after no very long delay united in marriage. Before, however, the union took place, Randolph Green- way had revealed his passion to the brothers, though even then, in some sort, involuntarily. The three had been passing the evening at the house of a friend, and Greenway, it was noticed, drank an unusual quantity of wine, which, strangely enough, seemed to take no effect upon him, neither exhilarating his spirits, clouding his brain, ROMILLY. 139 nor confusing his speech. He walked a part of the way homeward with the young Romillys, stopped suddenly, sank upon the step of a doorway, and as if a strong dam had given way, gave bursting utterance to the tumultuous agony of grief and despair by which he was convulsed and torn. Samuel Komilly was greatly surprised and shocked, and with his brother strove to sooth their terribly agitated friend, by suggesting that time has a balm for all such sorrows, acute as may be the temporary pain. It did not in this instance prove so. Greenway obtained a commission in the Oxfordshire militia, just then embodied, in the hope that military occupation might wean his mind from dwelling on the irredeemable past. A vain hope ! the commission was quickly thrown up ; the unfortunate gentleman hurried from place to place with the unpurposed speed and fury of a maniac, and it was not long before Samuel Romilly was summoned to the death-bed of his young friend at Calais, who was dying there, as it proved, of delirious fever, brought on by unrequited love for Catherine Romilly, — by that time Mrs. E.oget, and soon to be a widow. The foregoing incidents have been dwelt upon at greater length than they might otherwise have been, forasmuch as they tended unmistakably to form the just, sensitive, self-sacrificing character of one whom the world chiefly knows as the legislator, by the light of whose great example it has been long the pride and glory of more modern law- givers to walk and guide themselves. What else remains to be narrated of his youthful life-experience will not oc- cupy us long. He declined, upon the expiration of his articles with Mr. Michael Lally, to purchase a chancery clerkship, one reason being that he feared the withdrawal of the £2,000, necessary for doing so might have been inconve- k 2 140 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. iiient to his father, in whose business it had been invested ; and another probably was, that the more active and high- reaching profession of a barrister had greater attractions for hhn, than the spider-like routine of a chancery parchment office. He was called to the bar by the Society of Gray's- Inn, and as he was early inclined to agree with Montes- quieu's estimate of the relative criminality of mankind when he says, — " II n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette a l'examen toutes ses actions et toutes les pensees qui ne soit pendable dix fois dans sa vie," it is not surprising that the utterly bar- barous state of the English criminal law should have arrested his instant and fixed attention immediately he came prac- tically in contact with it. Not less absurd and ineffective than sanguinary and inhuman were those merciless decrees of death, — death equally to him who robbed a man of sixpence or of his life, — who stole his coat or polluted and murdered his child, — carried off a copper-kettle from his house, or fired it in the night, and burnt the sleeping inmates in their beds. That this cruel, heartless, indiscriminating barbarity no longer stains and encumbers the British statutes is mainly owing to the ceaseless, unwearied efforts of Sir Samuel Komilly, in days when to question the wisdom of our ances- tors, with reference to their blood-remedies for crime, was to encounter a mass of misrepresentation and obloquy which the present generation can form but a very inadequate conception of. Honoured be his name and memory. He Jias long since passed from the scene of his humanising, Christian labours, but his deeds survive, and form a chaplet of pure and changeless lustre, but the more invulnerable to the power of oblivion or decay for the cypress which mingles inextricably woven with the fadeless laurel and the palm ! KOiULLY. 141 There is one circumstance, trifling in itself, perhaps, which so strongly illustrates the indelibility of Samuel Romilly's early recollections, — especially recollections of experienced kiodness, that it cannot be omitted, limited as our space may be. Mary Evans, his father's servant, married a man of the name of Bickers, and fell into needy circumstances. Appli- cation was made to young Mr. Romilly for pecuniary assist- ance, soon after he was called to the bar. As he could not afford to allow them an independent maintenance, effectual help in this way proved difficult, impossible, in fact, and the young barrister determined, though with much and natural reluctance, to employ Mary Evans' husband as his clerk ; and a very sorry, awkward, tormenting, almost useless clerk he, as Mr. Romilly anticipated, proved to be. He was invete- rately addicted to brandy, and when in his cups, which was not seldom, only more fluent than usual upon religious topics. He professed to be a Methodist, keeping Mr. Eomilly in a perpetual fever of anxiety when on circuit, lest the man should do or say something that would cover both himself and his master with ridicule, a catastrophe which, in a mitigated degree, was of frequent occurrence. Bickers, notwithstanding, kept his clerkship till he died. NELSON. UNDOUBTEDLY the most touching circumstance in connexion with the magnificent funeral of the Duke of Wellington, and one which will be freshly remembered when the gorgeous pageantry of the procession is forgotten, was, that the remains of the illustrious Field Marshal were borne in that imposing state to repose by the honouring and honoured dust of Nelson, — of the great Admiral upon whose pale brow the crowning wreath of victory had been placed by the consecrating hand of Death. That final companionship is not confined to the tombs of those true heroes. They are inseparably associated in the national mind, in equality of admiration and esteem, not perhaps in equality of sympathy, — of affection. It could hardly be so. The heroic sailor did not live to bask in the sunshine of the fame he had achieved NELSON. 143 to wear during a prolonged and triumphant life the honours which his great deeds had won ; and for this reason, chiefly, it is that Nelson — Nelson dying at Trafalgar — the wasted, mutilated frame, the pallid death face crowned and circled by the glory of his last immortal signal — excites in the breasts of his countrymen a warmer, a more throbbing sympathy than even the illustrious soldier whose achievements are written as with a sunbeam upon the brilliant historic page which records the liberation of Europe from the iron thraldom of a conqueror, whose apeish shadow in the present day suffices to darken the future, and chills the hopes of the well-wishers to continental freedom and true progress. The very childhood of Nelson appeals to the sympathetic admiration of his countrymen. The fifth son and sixtli child of the Reverend Edmund Nelson, Rector of Burnham-Thorpe, Norfolk, and Catherine his wife, who in all had a family of eleven children, eight of whom survived their mother, the young Horatio, a weakly boy moreover, would have had but slight chance of writing his name upon the heroic annals of Ins country but for the compassionate generosity of his maternal uncle, Captain Suckling, R.N., who, upon the death of his sister, offered to provide for one of the boys she had left, as soon as he himself got appointed to a ship, and the selected youngster was ready to try his fortune at sea. Mrs. Nelson died in 1767, when Horatio, who was born on the 29th of September, 1758, was in his ninth year only, but he appears to have at once and instinctively appropriated Captain Suckling's offer, inasmuch that, upon reading in a county newspaper three years afterwards (1770) that Captain Suckling was appointed to the " Raisonnable," hastily fitting out at Chatham, for the purpose of assisting to bring Spain to reason in the matter of the Falkland Islands dispute, he 144 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. instantly, and as a thing of course, asked his brother William, who was eighteen months his senior, to write immediately to their father, who happened to be at Bath at the time, in order that Captain Suckling might be informed without delay that his nephew Horatio, having reached the ripe maturity of 12 years, was ready to assist in doing battle against the Spaniards the moment he might be permitted to do so. The reply of Captain Suckling to the Reverend Mr. Nelson's intimation was a consenting, but not very complimentary one as regarded the future Admiral. u What," he wrote, "has poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he above all the rest should be sent to rough it at sea 1 But let him come, and the first time we go into action a cannon ball may knock off his head and provide for him at once." This last paragraph was no doubt intended to deter the slight boy, whose ague- weakened frame Captain Suckling could only have observed, from encountering the hazards and hardships of a sea-life ; though anything less likely to shake Horatio Nelson's resolu- tion could hardly be imagined, and this the Uncle-Captain would have known had he been aware of the emulative, fearless, daring spirit of his feebly-framed nephew, ever prompting him to lead in all boyish enterprises that involved danger and promised distinction. The anecdotes which have come down to us relative to Nelson's school-days very faintly embody the characteristics of hardihood combined with gentleness, by which his boy- companions (amongst whom was Captain Manby, the in- ventor of the life-saving apparatus in cases of shipwreck) were universally and vividly impressed. They are, however, worth reproducing as indices, though slight ones, of the fire there- after destined to blaze forth in the avenging lightnings of the Nile, the Baltic, Trafalgar. When a mere child, he is said NELSON. 145 to have stolen off birds'-nesting, in company with, a cow- boy, and great was the alarm of the family, chiefly from "knowing there were numerous gipsies in the neighbourhood, as hour after hour passed away in vain quest of the missing urchin. At last, he was found quietly seated on the bank of a stream which he could not cross. " I wonder," exclaimed his angry grandmamma, the moment she saw him, " I wonder fear, if not hunger, did not drive you home." " Fear, grand- mamma !" replied the child, " I never saw fear : who is he P It is right to mention, as the fact is with much emphasis insisted upon by Nelson's biographers, as if it could add a new ray to the admiral's glory, that this grandmamma was the eldest sister of Sir Robert Walpole, of ministerial memory, and that the second Lord Walpole was Horatio's sponsor at the baptismal font. But, to resume the early current of a life which created its own nobility : — The child's school, to which he was first sent was at Downham, and kept by a man of the name of Noakes, in the market-place of which quiet village young Nelson might be seen whenever opportu- nity offered, working away, in his little green coat, at the pump, till, by the help of his schoolfellows, a sufficient pond was made, upon which he delighted to launch paper-sail knife- cut ships, previously prepared for such experimental navi- gation. "William Patman, a shoemaker of the place, has given us an anecdote illustrative of the compassionate kindli- ness of Nelson's disposition. The shoemaker had a pet-lamb, which was accustomed to pass familiarly in and out of his shop ; Nelson had the misfortune to jam the animal between the door and the door-post, " and the little fellow's grief and lamentation," said Patman, " for the pain he had unwittingly inflicted, was excessive, and for a long time uncontrollable." When somewhat older, Horatio was sent with his brother 146 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. William to a more considerable school at North Walsham. It was there the pear-tree exploit occurred. There was, it appears, a fine-bearing pear-tree in the garden belonging to the establishment, the fruit of which had, from time imme- morial, to the present race of scholars, been the boys' lawful perquisites. One fine day, however, just as the fruit was ripening, it was announced that the pears were for the future to be kept sacred to the master's use and enjoyment. This arbitrary appropriation of the common property naturally excited the fierce, though suppressed indignation of the scholars ; and after much discussion upon the best mode of getting possession of the forbidden fruit, it was unanimously resolved that the only plan offering a chance of success was, NELSON. 147 for one of the boys to be let down into the tree by a rope in the night, from the common bed-room window, which chanced to be rightly situated for the purpose, and, his mission accom- plished, of course quietly drawn up again with his full pear- sack. The scheme was an admirable one, only, as often happens with admirable schemes, an apparently insuperable difficulty, which nobody had thought of, presented itself at the very moment of execution. One after another, the entire council of juvenile plotters, after a nervous glance at the situation — that is, the outer darkness, the tree indistinctly visible far below, the slight dangling rope, of which the inner end was valiantly grasped by numerous volunteers for the task of letting anybody but themselves out of the window — declined the honour of the dangerous descent. After all had refused, Horatio Nelson, who had taken no previous interest in the matter, volunteered the venture, went out of the window with unhesitating alacrity, and slid safely down into the tree. The spoil was quickly secured, and the daring boy pulled, with considerable difficulty, safely up again with his booty. Nelson would have none of the pears, and said, as he jumped into bed again, " I only did it because you were all afraid to venture." The two Nelsons were still at this school, when a servant arrived, one cold and dark spring morning (1778), before either of them was up, with a summons for Horatio to join the " Raisonnable," off Chatham, forthwith. The else de- lighted boy's only grief was parting with his brother, but the tears of youth are quickly dried, and the young midshipman expectant accompanied his father to London in exuberant spirits. The Rev. Mr. Nelson, having so far convoyed his son to his destination, sent him on alone by the Chatham stage, by which he was in due time safely set down in that 148 EXTRAOEDINARY MEN. ancient port. But the poor little fellow — he was in his twelfth year only — could not get taken off to the ship : — perhaps he had not been trusted with any money, or only after the fashion of Mrs. Primrose to her daughters, with a strict injunction not to spend it; and he was roaming about the quay, cold and disconsolate, when an officer who knew his uncle observed him, and having heard his story, gave him some refreshment and a boat-passage to the ship. Even there, his position was hardly mended. Captain Suckling was not on board ; nobody had heard that his nephew was expected to join the " Raisonnable," and " it was not," said Nelson, " till the second day, that somebody took compassion upon me I" Spain wisely settled the Falkland Islands controversy, with- out waiting for the arbitrement of line-of-battle ships, and after remaining a few months only in the " Raisonnable," Nelson, in order to advance himself in. the science of seaman- ship, entered on board an outward-bound merchant- vessel, commanded by Mr. John Rathbone, who had formerly served as a petty officer, under Captain Suckling, in the " Dread- nought." Mr. Rathbone was a disappointed man, who had contracted a virulent prejudice against the king's naval service, with which he contiived so thoroughly to inoculate young Nelson, that the lad upon his return to England mani- fested an utter detestation of the royal navy ; and a saying, popular at the time amongst seaman, " Aft the most honour, forward the better men," was often on his lips. The voyage had, at all events, greatly benefited him in one essential respect, having made him, according to his own and others' report, "a practical seaman" — sea-boy would be the fitter word ; and certainly not the least marvellous achievement of his career of marvels must be considered his attainment of NELSON. 149 professional efficiency in so short a time, and at such an age. Captain Suckling received him on board the " Triumph/' of seventy- four guns, then a guard-ship in the Medway, and gradually reconciled him to the service by allowing him to go in the cutter and deck-boat, from Chatham to the Tower of London, and down the Swim to the North Foreland, and thereby practise himself in taki rig soundings and other boat- work, the knowledge of which greatly availed him in after life. Kelson remained in the " Triumph" about two years, the first fourteen months as captain's servant, the remainder of the time as a rated midshipman. Utterly weary, at last, of the monotonous uneventful duties of a guard-ship, he pre- vailed upon his uncle to solicit Captain Lutwidge, of the " Carcass," brig of war, to receive him as his coxswain, hoys being forbidden by an admiralty order to volunteer for service in the expedition to which the " Carcass" belonged, the destination of which was towards the North Pole, in the hope of realizing that ignus fatuus of navigation, a practical passage from the Arctic to the Pacific ocean. Captain Lutwidge acceded to his friend's request ; the " Racehorse" and "Carcass" sailed, and by the beginning of July, 1773, were frozen in at about latitude 79° 5CY and 9° 44' east longitude, amidst ice upwards of twelve feet in thickness. The efforts required to extricate the vessels, and the harassing and perilous duties incident thereto, brought young Nelsons hardihood, energy and resource into conspicuous play ; and upon one occasion, but for his prompt daring, when in command of one of the "Carcass's" boats, — a great charge for such a youngster, — in hastening to the rescue of the crew of one of the "Racehorse" boats, in imminent danger from the furious attack of a large number of enraged Walruses, some twenty of the " Racehorse's" crew would infallibly have 150 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. lost the number of their mess. One night, as he was pacing the deck, at about mid-watch, of the still frozen-up " Carcass," a huge white bear, distinctly visible in the bright moonlight, trotted, a considerable distance off, past the ship. The temptation was irresistible; Nelson prevailed upon a young comrade to accompany him, and quietly arming them- selves with muskets, they slipped over the side, and were off in eager chase of Master Bruin. Presently a thick fog came on which completely hid the mad-cap adventurers from view, and Captain Lutwidge, upon being informed of what had happened, was not only angry but seriously alarmed for the boys' safety. About half-past three o'clock the fog rose, and they were seen in actual conflict with the bear, who, tired apparently of the dodging chase he had so long endured, seemed disposed to fight it out, there and then. Captain Lutwidge immediately signalled the boys to return; Nelson's comrade obeyed, and called upon him to do the same ; but orders to retire from danger were as little to his taste then as in after years, and he as coolly ignored Captain Lutwidge's signal as he subsequently did that of Admiral Hyde Parker. His musket had just flashed in the pan, and he was in the act of poising the weapon by the barrel, as he called out to his retreating friend, "O, never mind the signal. Let me only get a blow at this devil with the butt-end of the musket, and we shall have him." A fissure in the ice baffled the lad's effort to close with the enraged brute ; and fortunately so, or, slight and lathy as Nelson was, the bear might have break- fasted much more daintily than usual that morning. Captain Lutwidge, seeing the imminent peril the rash boy had placed himself in, caused a heavy gun to be fired, which frightened the bear, and he made off at his best speed; whereupon Nelson slowly, and with some misgivings anent his reception, NELSON. 151 returned to the ship. " How dared you leave the ship with- out leave," demanded the angry captain, "and not return when I signalled you to do so 1 ?" " I wished to kill the bear that I might send the skin to my father," replied the future victor of the Nile. The prime object of the expedition having been perforce abandoned, the "Racehorse," to which Nelson was trans- ferred, sailed to the East Indies. During the voyage out, Captain Farmer rated him as midshipman, upon the recom- mendation of the master, who had noticed the sedulous, un- shrinking perseverance with which he kept watch and watch. He remained eighteen months knocking about from port to port, and station to station, in India, from Bengal to Bus- sorah ; and, reduced at last to a skeleton by incessant exertion and the deleterious effect of the climate, was invalided and sent home in the " Dolphin," Captain Sir Edward Hughes. At this period of his life a restless, morbid depression, almost despair, fastened upon and weighed down his ordinarily buoyant spirits. He feared that want of patronage in high quarters, in conjunction with an enfeebled frame, would prevent him from ever rising in the profession, and he was almost tempted to abandon it. Light at last broke through these gloomy fancies : he could at all events be a hero — serve his country zealously, even if unrewarded for that ser- vice, save by the proud consciousness of having rendered it. Prom the moment this thought burst, " a radiant orb was always suspended in his mind's eye," bright, as we now com- prehend, with the prophetic glory of the future, and the clouds of doubt and sinister foreboding exhaled and passed away for ever. After serving as acting second lieutenant in the " Worcester," 64 _guns, Captain Mark Kobinson, Nelson passed his examination on the 9th of April, 1777, for the 152 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. grade of lieutenant. His uncle. Captain Suckling, was pre- sident of the tribunal, but did not mention bis relationship to the young officer till he had passed. " I did not wish the younker to be favoured," said Captain Suckling, in reply to an expression of surprise by one of the members of the board. " I felt assured that he would pass a good examination, and you see I have not been disappointed." The new lieutenant was appointed, on the following day, second of the " Lowes- toffe," of 32 guns, which frigate captured a few days after she was at sea an American letter of marque, but there was such a furious sea on, that the first lieutenant, who was sent to take possession of her, returned without having effected his object. " Have I no officer," angrily exclaimed Captain Lockyer, " who can board the prize V The master stepped forward, but was promptly stopped by Lieutenant Nelson. ? It's my turn now, if you please : if / can't do it, it will be yours." Nelson did it, as it was certain that if not drowned in the attempt he would, albeit his first possession of the j>rize was very brief and unsatisfactory, the sea not only lifting the " Lowestoffe's " boat clean on board the letter of marque, but out of her again on the opposite side. After the " Lowestoffe " reached Jamaica, the duties of the frigate were much too slow for such a restless youngster as Nelson, — he had not yet attained his nineteenth birth-day, — and he obtained the command of the "Little Lucy," a schooner attached to the u Lowestoffe," in which he was very successful against the American privateers that infested those seas. He also served for a short spell as first lieutenant of the " Bristol," Admiral Sir Peter Parker's flag-ship, from which he was transferred (1778) to the command of the "Bagdad," brig of war, employed to protect the Bay of Honduras and the Mosquito shore from the Americans and their allies, a KELSON. 153 duty which he very efficiently performed. The high estima- tion in which the youthful sailor was thus early held may be gathered from the fact that, in anticipation of a menaced attack upon Jamaica by an overwhelming French force assembled at St. Domingo, under Count d'Estaing, he was appointed to the command of Fort Charles, at Port-Royal, one of the most important of the island defences. Count d'Estaing, for some unexplained reason, did not attempt the threatened descent, and Nelson's jocular warning to his family, " that perhaps they would hear of his learning French," had no chance of realisation. The assigned limits of this memoir forbid us to follow this single and ardent-minded hero's career little farther than the ill-concerted, disastrous expedition to the Gulf of Mexico, in 1780. The purpose was to effect a settlement in Central America in the vicinity of the San Juan River and the great Lake of Nicaragua, by which it is fed. The San Juan is now ascended by light draught steamers, convey- ing passengers to the gold regions of California ; but in 1780, no European had attempted to pass up the river since the days of the Buccaneers ; and the concocters of the enter- prise were utterly ignorant of the locality, the nature of the climate, and of everything else essential in such a case to be known. The strict duty of Nelson, who commanded the " Hitchinbrook" sloop of war, was to assist at and protect the disembarkation of the troops ; but his fiery energy could not be confined within technical routine limits. He landed 200 soldiers on the Island of Borromeo, at the mouth of the San Juan, in order to capture a fort there, — put himself at the head of his sailors, dashed headlong upon the fortifica- tion, lost both his shoes in the slimy mud by which it was sur- rounded, and as he said boarded the batteiy in his stockings, L 154 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. and carried it before the military commander had settled in his own mind the proper mode of attack. This preliminary object effected, the next thing to be done was to ascend the river, and attack a castle numerously garrisoned by Spaniards, seventy miles from the mouth of the river, and about thirty from the Nicaraguan lake. The heat of the weather was intense, — the river consequently unusually shallow along many of its reaches, and it was frequently necessary to march through the matted forest, on the banks of the stream, swarming with venomous reptile life; the sailors dragging the boats after them. One poor fellow, bitten by a serpent, which leapt upon him as he passed beneath the branch of a tree, died in a few minutes, and was a mass of corruption before he could be removed. Nelson himself escaped a similar fate, by what the friendly Indians who accompa- nied the English force deemed to be a miraculous inter- position of Providence. He was sleeping in his hammock, which was slung between two trees, and just as day was breaking, an Indian observed a monitory lizard pass and repass over his face. The watcher instantly summoned one or two of his fellow Indians with a silent gesture ; the bed-clothes were lifted carefully off the still slumbering sailor. Closely nestled at his feet they found one of the deadliest serpents of South America, just in the act of awakening. It was killed ; and from that moment the Indians regarded Nelson as one who bore a charmed life. Arrived at the Spanish castle, Nelson's counsel was to as- sault and carry it at once, and he promised to do it in ten minutes, if he could have the command of the troops. His advice was rejected, the castle was invested according to rule, and ten precious days were wasted by his superior officer. In truth, according to the testimony of Captain Poison, of the XELSOX. 155 60th regiment, the young naval officer was the life and soul of the enterprise. "I want words," wrote Captain Poison, the surviving officer in command, " to express the obligations I owe that gentleman ; he was the first in every service, whether by night or day. There was scarcely a gun fired but was pointed by him or Lieutenant Despard, the chief engineer." The Spaniard was easily enough mastered, not so the climate-pestilence, especially at that season of the year. The sailors and soldiers perished like sheep attacked by murrain. The " Hitchinbrook's" complement of men was 200, of these 87 were smitten down in one night, and of the whole 200, only ten ultimately survived ! The crews of the transports all died, and the ships drifted with the tide on shore ; in fact, out of 1800 men, of which the expedition was in all composed, only 380 returned to Ja- maica. Of these Nelson was one, an escape from else inevi- table death which he owed to being appointed in the place of Captain Glover, one of the victims, to the command of the " Janus" frigate, ordered to set sail immediately for Jamaica, with intelligence of the disastrous issue of the expedition. As it was, Nelson was carried on shore at Port Royal in a cot, and but for the kind nursing and attentions of Lady Parker whilst he remained there, and the anxious unwearying soli- citude of Captain Cornwallis, of the " Lion," by which ship he was sent home by Sir Peter Parker ; it was ever his own firm conviction that he could not have recovered. A few months' residence at Bath so far restored him to health, that he applied to be placed again in active service ; a re- quest immediately fulfilled by his appointment to the " Al- bemarle," a merchant ship captured from the French, and mounted with 28 guns, in which he was ordered, in his still delicate condition, upon a cruise to the North Sea. 156 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. There was nothing to be effected in those latitudes, even if the " Albemarle" had been a ship worthy of her com- mander, instead of being so crank and over-masted, as to be perpetually upon the point of capsizing, and withal, so slow a tub, except when running before the wind, that Nelson used to declare her former owners had taught her by some art, which practice had made them perfect in, how to run away, and that only. This was in the days of the Armed Neutrality, and on the " Albemarle's" arrival off Elsineur, an official gentleman came on board to make formal inquiry as to the character, nationality, force, &c, of the ship. " This is the King of England's ship," curtly replied the yoimg captain, " and you can count her guns as you go -over the side." At his next visit to Elsineur there were other and more fatally significant questions to be asked and answered. The fratricidal struggle with America soon after terminated, and Nelson, in common with the great majority of England's sea officers, retired into comparative obscurity, till the war growing out of the French He volution recalled him to the service of his country. The deeds of the great Admiral in that Titanic contest are engraved upon the hearts of his countrymen and require no mention here, but the significance of the bright dawn of this great life would be but poorly and partially revealed unless there be permitted to fall upon it some rays of the sunset glory which it presaged and mirrored. The heroism of Nelson, it will have been remarked, was from his earliest youth the heroism of self-sacrifice, — of single- hearted, fervent, thoroughly unselfish devotion to his country: there was no alloy of caste, pride, or exclusiveness about it; and hence it came to pass, that his own ardent, glowing en- thusiasm kindled a like flame in the breasts of all who came NELSON. 157 within the range of his great example — the cabin boy equally with the post captain, — so that at last the sole anxiety of his warfare, which when done oil was done, was to bring England, naval England, into close death-grips with her foes. Restless, angry, perturbed, sleepless, whilst this was doubtful, — whilst it was possible that the enemy of his nation might elude his search, avoid the combat ; no sooner did the near closing of the hostile fleets show that hand-to-hand decisive battle was inevitable, than the clouded eye brightened, the furrowed brow grew clear, and the previously disturbed and irate admiral became calm as infancy, confident as truth, — " took bread and anointed himself," had consideration for the deco- rations of his toilet, and the display of his ribbands, crosses, stars, — for was not his task achieved, and he, no longer a leader struggling with a foe, but the chief guest and spectator at an assured triumph of his country's arms, — the victor in a battle not yet recorded but already won? That this was true of Nelson no one can dispute, — more true of him than of any other man I at least have ever heard, or read of. Such men never die till the country which gave them birth has perished ; and we may, spite of alarmists and panic- mongers, confidently rely that Nelson's last signal flying from the mast-heads of the English battle-line in any future con- test, will be followed by a hurricane of fire that, with right on our side, shall wither up the mightiest force which the banded despots of the world could hope to array against the last, and it were impious to doubt, invulnerable bulwark of the liberties of Europe. ROBERT BURNS. rjlHE life-story of the peasant-poet of Scotland is one that -*- seldom fails to excite a painful sympathy in cultivated and generous minds, and astonishment, almost indignation is feit that the wealthy and influential of his contemporary countrymen should have looked on with indifference at the sad spectacle of a being so greatly gifted, treading with bleeding, lacerated feet, the rugged and thorny road of poverty from the cradle to the tomb, when so slight an exertion on their part would have raised him to a position of leisure, ease, and competence. This feeling, which we con- stantly hear expressed, is, no doubt, a natural and amiable one, and apparently assumes that a wayward, impassioned BURNS. 159 child of impulse, might, by wise guidance and substantial help, have been transformed to a decorous, staid, well-to-do man of the world, without any fear that the ' light from heaven' by which he was unfortunately led astray would be thereby sensibly deadened or obscured, much less extinguished. Hardly so, we cannot help suspecting ; it is just possible that another unit might, by such charitable solicitude, have been added to the tens of thousands of forgotten respectabilities, of which there has never been any lack in Scotland or else- where, but not without mortal peril to the Robert Burns now dwelling with us in radiant, immortal life — the familiar and ennobling guest alike of the cottage and the palace. God is not so unregardful of his noblest creations as to place them where the mission for which he has especially and divinely gifted them could not be fulfilled, and we may be sure it was necessary to the full revealment of the powers of the mighty spirit-harp which we call Robert Burns, that it should be exposed to all impulses of soul and sense — the stern touch of poverty, — the maddening play of passion, — the indignant sweep of ireful scorn, ay, and the burning pulses of remorse. But that the chords were sometimes struck by the iron hand of adversity, — the lines to the Mountain Daisy, — the Mouse, — the ' Man's a Man for a' that,' would not, it may be feared, be now household harmonies in the dwellings of the Anglo- Saxon race ; the dainty touch of a decorous conventionalism could scarcely have elicited ' Holy Willie's Prayer,' and ' The Address to the De'il,' — from ease-loosened, dusty strings, and what but the fiery fingers of passionate, self-accusing grief could have produced the sobbing agony of the invocation to < Mary in Heaven !' Let us, therefore, instead of lamenting that Robert Burns was not changed into something else by a pension or other 160 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. money-metempsychosis, and having regard to the poet- crown of stars, which diadems the brow of the immortal, rather than to the tattered and coarse apparel of the plough- man or the ganger, long since resolved, like the earth which he also once wore about him, to the elements, strive to ascer- tain in what respect his earlier hours of life preluded or gave promise of its brief but glorious day, — perfectly satisfied that in so doing we shall not render ourselves justly obnoxious to any charge of sentimental indifference towards the man Burns, inasmuch as nothing can be more certain than that if he himself could have had but one day's experience of the calm, decorous, prosperous, tideless life, many of his admirers think should have been assured to him, he would have flown back with eagerness to the sighs, the tears, the sorrows, joys, the tumultuous delights which have rendered him immortal. Nearly a century ago "William Burns, or Burness, the name is spelt both ways, originally from Kincardineshire, in the north of Scotland, afterwards of Edinburgh, settled down as a gardener, near Ayr, his last employer being Mr. Craw- ford, of Doon-Side. At Alloway, near the bridge of Doon, "William Burns rented about seven acres of laud, with the intention of folio wiug the business of a nurseryman, but first built a mud or clay cottage with his own hands thereon, consisting of one floor only, divided into two compartments — a sitting-room and kitchen, the bed place, an enclosed one, being in the latter division of the cottage. When it is said that this 'William Burns was the original of the patriarchal sire in the " Cotter's Saturday Night," though " his lyart haffets" (gray temples) were as yet un whitened by time and hardship, it is almost unnecessary to add that he was a high-principled, superior man, and moreover, writes his great son, " one who thoroughly understood men, their manners and their ways," BURNS. 161 and remarkable "for stubborn, ungainly integrity, and un- governable irascibility of temper." William Burns had met Agnes Brown at Maybole fair, the daughter of a penurious Carrick farmer, but since his second marriage living, drudging rather, at her grandmother's. Agnes was at this time five or six and twenty years of age, and her pleasant manners, "fine complexion and beautiful dark eyes," effected such a sudden and decisive revolution in the mind of William Burns, who was some ten years her senior, that on his return home, he forthwith burnt a love-missive addressed, but not luckily forwarded, to another damsel, who had before slightly caught his fancy, and thenceforth became the avowed suitor of Agnes Brown. Her circumstances were humbler even than his own, and she had not received the slightest education in a school sense — she could not even read—but was withal rarely gifted with cheerful placidity of temper, housewifely, industrious habits, and a sweet voice for Scottish songs and ballads, which she sang with much feeling and taste. It was for the reception of Agnes Brown that William Burns had built his lime-washed cottage, to which he brought her, a newly- wedded bride, in December, 1757, and there was born, on the 25th of January, 1759, their eldest son, the now world-famous Bobert Burns — the first-born of a rather numerous family. Robert was not sent to school till he was in his sixth year, but the mind-nurture which influenced him through life began with the sweet ballad-strains, by which he was rocked to sleep in his mother's arms, and the warlock, ghost, fairy, dragon stories, and songs of an old woman of the name of Betty Davidson, a distant relative by marriage of Mrs. Burns, the impression made by which upon his childish imagination was never, he says, effaced. The poet resembled 162 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. his father neither in temperament, taste, mode of thought, nor faith, but he was deeply indebted to him for a mechanical education — reading, writing, grammar — a slight knowledge of French, less of Latin, (but this was of his own procure- ment,) and some lessons in elementary mathematics — far superior as a whole to what is usually acquired by the children of parents in William Burns's rank of life. Robert first went to a small school about a mile distant from his home, and not long subsequently he and his brother Gilbert received instruction in reading, writing, and English grammar from a clever young teacher of the name of Murdoch, who had temporarily fixed his abode near them. In 1766 William Burns removed to Mount Oliphant, distant about two miles from his cottage, where he had taken the lease of a farm on such disadvantageous terms, — the wretched quality of the land considered, " the poorest soil in Scotland," writes Gilbert Burns, " I know of in a state of cultivation," — as to induce a doubt that he really understood men and their ways so perfectly as his son imagined he did. The twelve years which the family passed at Mount Oliphant was one ceaseless, bitter struggle for bare existence, which could hardly be obtained by the most strenuous and exhausting toil, frequently unsustained by a sufficiently generous diet, in which husband, wife, sons, and daughters were alike com- pelled to join. "My brother," says Gilbert, "at the age of thirteen, assisted in threshing the crop of corn, and at fifteen was the principal labourer on the farm, for we had no hired servant, male or female." During the last ten years of this painful period, the education of his children was superin- tended by William Burns himself, except when Robert and his brother were sent for one quarter, weeks about, to a school between two and three miles off, at Dalrymple, for BURNS. 163 the improvement of their writing, and three weeks' tuition which the poet received from his former preceptor, Mr. John Murdoch, who had been recently appointed to a school at Ayr. These three weeks, if Mr. Murdoch's statement is to "be taken quite literally, effected a marvellous progress in Robert's education. The first week sufficed for " the revision of his English Grammar," and during the remaining two, Mr. Murdoch, who was himself, Gilbert says, learning French at the time, imparted that language with such success to his pupil, " that," writes the teacher, " about the second week of our studying the French language, we began to read a few of the adventures of Telemachus in Fenelon's own words." The duties of the harvest field deprived Mr. Murdoch of his " apt pupil and agreeable companion," but he did not immediately lose sight of him, as he frequently availed himself of the Saturday half-holiday to walk over to Mount Oliphant with one or two intellectual friends, in order to afford "good William Burns a mental feast," — Robert assisting thereat, — concocted, it would seem, in a very salad-like fashion, "of solid reasoning, sensible remark, and a due seasoning of jocu- larity, so nicely blended as to render it palatable to all parties." A very worthy man withal, Mr. John Murdoch, notwithstanding a natural spice of pedantry, appears to have been. " He was a principal means," says Gilbert, " of my brother's improvement, and continued for some years a re- spected and useful teacher at Ayr, till one evening that he had been overtaken in liquor he happened to speak somewhat disrespectfully of Dr. Dalrymple, the parish minister, who had not paid him that attention to which he thought him- self entitled. In Ayr he might as well have spoken blas- phemy, and he found it proper to give up his appointment." The frank-spoken Dominie proceeded to London, where he 164 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. vegetated as a teacher of the French language, — Talleyrand, it is said, took lessons in English of him, — till the ripe age of seventy-seven. His memory, however, must, in some respects, have failed him long previously, inasmuch as his notice of the poet contains the following passage : " Gilbert always appeared to me to possess a more lively imagination, and to be more of the wit, than Robert. I attempted to teach them a little church music. Here they were left far behind by all the rest of the school. Robert's ear, in particular, was remarkably dull and his voice untunable." His voice untunable, it may be ; but Robert Burns's ear dull, and at the age of thirteen, is simply an impossibility. Mr. Robinson, a writing master of Ayr, and Mr. Murdoch's particular friend, " observing the facility," writes the younger brother, "with which Robert had acquired the French language, suggested that he should teach himself Latin," whereupon the poet purchased forthwith the rudi- ments of that tongue, and addressed himself to the task, alto- gether unsuccessfully • chiefly it seems, that the charming eye of Nelly Kilpatrick, his first sweetheart, just then began to initiate him in the rudiments of a more captivating language, — and Love and Latin proved, as frequently happens, irreconcileable. It will be necessary presently to revert to the earliest bulletin of Burns's master-passion, but first it will be well to refer to and sum up the poet's book- opportunities and acquirements. His father had, beside the ordinary school-books, procured, by loan or purchase, for his children's use, " Stackhouse's History of the Bible," a " Geo- graphical Grammar," " a Treatise on Physico-Theology," and another on the same subject, with a different title, " The Wonders of God in the Works of Creation." From other sources, Burns obtained at different periods, " The Spectator," BURNS. 165 "Pope's Works/' a few of Shakspere's plays, some odd volumes of Kichardson's and Smollett's novels, " Locke on the Human Understanding," " Hervey's Meditations," "Allan Ramsay's "Works," " a Collection of English Sougs," a volume of "'Model-Letters," and several books of " Dogmatic The- ology," " Original Sin," &c. " Two other books," he himself says, " the first I ever read in private, were the ' Life of Hannibal,' and the 'Life of Sir William Wallace/ and they gave me more pleasure than any two books I have read since." The first, which was lent him by Mr. Murdoch, fired his young blood with military ardour, — the other, "the rhymed life of Sir William Wallace," which he obtained of the blacksmith who shod his father's horses, — Nelly Fitzpatrick's father, — left an impression on his mind which greatly influenced his poet-life, and may be traced in some of its highest inspirations. In this history, there are some lines referring to a circumstance in the life of the heroic chieftain, in connexion with Leglen Wood, Ayrshire : — " Syne to the Leglen wood when it was late To make a silent and a sure retreat." " I chose," says the poet, "a fine summer Sunday, the only day my life allowed, and walked half a dozen miles, to pay my respects to the Leglen Wood, with as much enthusiasm as ever pilgrim did to Loretto, and as I explored every den and dell where I could suppose my heroic countryman to have lodged, I recollect that my heart glowed with a wish to be able to make a song on him, in some measure equal to his merits." A bold aspiration, and plainly indicative of an instinctive consciousness of latent poetic genius, which, indeed, is rarely kindled to a flame, save by the love of country or of woman. In the instance of the Scottish poet, 166 EXTHAOEDINARY MEN. both, influences combined to produce that result, and this brings us back to " Handsome Nell," whom, whilst his eyes were still wet and his pulse throbbing with sorrowful emo- tion for the fate of Scotland's martyred hero, he met in his father's harvest field, — and at once boy -love — " Warm, blushing, strong, Keen-shivering, shot his nerves along," associating itself with, and dominating the for a time feebler passion of the youthful patriot. " You know," wrote Burns, when in his 28th year, to Dr. Moore, "you know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn, my partner was a bewitching creature, who altogether unwittingly to herself initiated me in that delicious passion which I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below. * * * * How she caught the contagion I cannot tell, as I never expressly said I loved her : indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her when returning in the evening from our labours, why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Eolian harp, and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious rattan when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Amongst her other love- inspiring qualities, she sang sweetly, and it was her favourite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme." There are few of us who have not at one time of our lives felt this bewildering, poetic exaltation, though not with the same intensity as Burns, for young love is ever accompanied on his first visit with an Apollo, though usually a dumb one j and it is only upon more familiar acquaintance that he ever comes alone, or with Hymen shyly lurking behind in the distance. The nascent poet felt there was a BURXS. 167 new heaven and a new earth opening npo-n him ; that the snn shone with a brighter glory, the silver stars shed down a purer, softer radiance, — the flowers exhaled more fragrant perfume, the birds a sweeter melody ; but expression was yet denied to the love-aroused poetic faculty, and all that even Robert Burns could do in the way of uttering " the wild enthusiasm of passion," to quote his own words, "which to this hour," he goes on to say, "I never recollect but my heart melts and my blood sallies at the remembrance, was a song of seven poor verses inscribed to Handsome Nell," of which the best is this — " As bonnie lasses I hae seen, And mony full as braw, But for a modest, gracefu' mien, The like I never saw." Handsome Nell was not however destined long to moDO- polise a heart that the slightest spark from a young woman's eyes would, at any time, set on fire with a new flame ; and in 1777 the Burns family removed from Mount Oliphant to a farm at Lochlea, — a distance of about ten miles, and a somewhat but not much more hopeful undertaking than that froin which the lapse of twelve wearing years had relieved them, the land being high-rented for the time, and William Burns, now prematurely aged and bowed down by severe labour and anxiety for his family, unpossessed of the means requisite for successfully farming one hundred and thirty acres of land. For a time, however, the family found themselves in easier circumstances, and the days and evenings of Robert Burns were passed in active, strenuous work on the farm, and in wooing in prose and verse, in all innocence, up to at least his 23rd year, every decent-looking maiden of the neigh- bourhood that would listen to him. Beauty in the damsel 168 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. was not at all an indispensable requisite for calling forth the admiration of one whose imagination could discern — " Helen's beauty :"n a brow of Egypt." Neither did the maiden's rank, whether mistress or ser- vant, a farmer's daughter or his drudge, at all influence his affections. He would just as lieve walk half a dozen miles after work of an evening to court a farm servant lass, usually seated side by side, in a barn or other building, as he would the best dowered damsel in the county. The lover- poet, too, was by this time beginning to find his voice, not at once in great power and volume, but clear and melodious as a silver bell. Witness a few verses addressed about this time to " My Nannie O'," Nannie being, it may be fairly concluded, in opposition to some faint evidence to the con- trary, a generic name for the entire class of idols before whom he was everlastingly burning incense, rather than appropriate to only one especial divinity : — " The westlin wind blaws loud and shrill, The night's baith mirk and rainy 0, But I'll get my plaid, and out I'll steal, And owre the hills to Nannie 0. My Nannie's charming, sweet and young ; Nae artful wiles to win ye, ; May ill befa' the flattering tongue That wad beguile my Nannie 0. Her face is fair, her heart is true, As spotless as she's bonnie 0, The opening gowan wet wi' dew, Nae purer is than Xannie 0. A country lad is my degree, And few there be that ken me 0, But what care I how few they be ? I'm welcome aye to Nannie 0. BURNS. 169 My riches a*s ray pennie fee, And I maun guide it cannie 0, But warld's gear ne'er troubles me, My thoughts are a' my Nannie 0." In his seventeenth year he attended a dancing school, in opposition, he states regretfully, to Mr. Bums' wishes, and to this act of disobedience he attributes " the sort of dislike" his father thenceforth manifested towards him, which was one cause of the dissipation which marked his succeeding years. This u dissipation" could only be so spoken of, when con- trasted with the rigid discipline and sobriety of Scottish country life in those days. His temper, moreover, was invariably kind and gentle, and if his brother Gilbert spoke with harshness to a youthful help on the farm within his hearing, he would instantly interfere with — " mon, ye're no for young folk," followed by some kind words in atonement for Gilbert's severity. At nineteen, Robert was sent to school at Kirkoswald, on the shore of the Firth of Clyde, kept by one Hugh Rodger, a teacher of geometry and land surveying. During his brief stay there, he mingled some- times with the rough smuggling gentry that infested the coast, and learnt to fill his glass, and mix without fear in a drunken squabble. His studies were brought suddenly to a close one fine day, by a fresh love-craze. This time it was Peggy Thomson, who lived next door to the school. Happen- ing to go into the garden at the back of the house about noon with a dial in his hand to take the sun's altitude, he encountered the far brighter eyes of that celestial maiden, by which he was incontinently struck with raving, but, as ever, temporary madness. " It was vain," he says, " to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I stayed, I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal M 170 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. out to meet her, and the two last nights of my stay in the- country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless." Fortunately he brought away from the shores of Clyde more durable impres- sions than Margaret Thomson's beauty imprinted on his brain; and amongst others, that of Douglas Graham, the- tenant of the farm at Shanter, and the original of that glorious " Tarn/' whose night-ride would have had such a disastrous termination but for noble Maggie, whose desperate leap across the brook — BURNS. 171 " Brought off her master hale, But left behind her own gray tail." Robert Burns was now upon the verge of early manhood, and the story of his boy-youtli cannot be extended further than a brief glance at the prominent incidents of the imme- diately succeeding years may embrace. Some time after his return to Lochlea, he became attached to a young woman of the name of Ellison Begbie, the daughter of a small farmer, but at the time living as a servant with a family on the banks of the Cessnock. This young person he formally solicited in marriage through the medium of several laboured and entirely passionless letters, which one can only suppose Burns to have written, by dint of determinedly wrenching himself down to the dead level of the model-letters he had previously studied. Ellison Begbie refused the offer of the poet's hand ; for what precise reason does not appear, — but it was done, another dreadfully elaborate epistle acknowledges "in the politest language of refusal, — still it was peremp- tory; — you were sorry you could not make me a return, but you wish me, what without you I never can obtain, — you wish me all kind of happiness." Who could suppose now, that this freezingly-spasmodic tenderness was the composi- tion of a brain in which " Green grow the rashes O," was already sparkling into song? Burns by this time had become a freemason, and a " keen one" it is added, — an institution which would necessarily interest him greatly by its unsecta- rian, philanthropic character ; and his matrimonial penchant still continuing, he bethought himself of turning flax-dresser, in partnership with another person, at the sea-port town or village of Irvine, as affording a better chance of bettering his condition in the world than poorly-requited farm labour. The flax-dressing scheme, however, turned out ill, — Burns' m2 172 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. partner, something very like a rascal, though the details are not given, and the poet suffered besides whilst at Irvine from nervous depression, — very severely so indeed, if some expressions in a letter to his father, dated " Irvine, Decem- ber 27th, 1781," are to betaken seriously: — "I am quite transported that ere long, very soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the pains arid uneasinesses and disquietudes of this weary life, for I assure you I am heartily tired of it, and if I do not very much deceive myself, I would contentedly and gladly resign it." It is consolatory to be able to read this gloomy letter by the light of the burning flax-dressing establishment, which caught fire just four clear days after the epistle was penned, (January the 1st,) during a roystering carouse, of which the poet was of course the life and soul. In truth, Robert Burns was one of the most variable as well as impressionable of human beings, — sun-light and shadow, mirth and melancholy, smiles and tears, passed over and obscured or brightened the clear mirror of his soul with ceaseless rapidity, — nay, Mr. Hobert Chambers, the latest and by far the most successful of his editors, clearly shows, by an ingeniougly-woven chain of circumstances, that the " Ode to Mary in Heaven," and the bacchanalian song of the " "Whistle," were composed within a short period of each other ! On the 1 3th of February, 1784, the worthy, sorely-tried, brave "William. Burns died, "just saved," writes his son, u from the horrors of a jail by a consumption, which, after two years' promises, kindly stepped in and carried him away to where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." Bobert was in the death-chamber with his sister (afterwards Mrs. Begg) when his father expired. The dying- man strove to speak some words of consolation to his bitterly- BURNS. 178 weeping daughter, mingled with warnings against sin, which come with such force from one — especially a parent — about to depart for ever. Presently, he added, that there was one of his children whose future conduct he was apprehensive of. This sentence was repeated, and the second time Robert, who was standing at some distance from the bed-side, heard it, and exclaimed in a broken voice, " Oh, Father, is it me you mean?" "Yes," was the reply, and the heart-stricken son turned away towards the window, sobbing convulsively in am agony of self-upbraiding grief. "William Burns, we may be permitted to say, with all reverence for a pure-minded, high- principled, long-suffering man, was scarcely fitted to pass judgment upon the failings or frailties of his greatly-gifted son. What these were in number and degree he might, indeed, compute with sufficient accuracy, but he could not estimate the force of the fervid impulses which in hundreds of instances had, in all probability, been successfully resisted. The manhood of the poet's life is chiefly written in his glorious songs, of which, up to this period, there had appeared. a few light sparkling gushes only. But his early years had been passed amidst the peasant-life of Scotland, which it was his mission to depict in all its varied lights and shadows, — its hardships, consolations, sufferings, joys — its sternly devotional spirit so apt to be abused by zealot-seeming hypocrites, its stubborn, enthusiastic patriotism, its self-sacrificing hardihood of endurance in any cause believed to be that of Bight and Justice. With every phase of Scottish country life and manners the youth of Burns being thus thoroughly familiar, he was enabled to fuse and mould them by the fire of his genius into immortal forms of truth and beauty. And he has had his reward in the highest, only guerdon which a true poet claims or values, — one which he doubtingly 174 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. hoped for when the spirit of poesy first stirred within him: — " Even then a wish (I mind its power) — A wish that to my latest hour Shall strongly fill my breast ; That I for poor auld Scotland's sake Some useful plan or beuk could make, Or sing a song at least." A pious aspiration abundantly fulfilled, for not only in his more immediately native country, but in England, which, as regards Burns, may be called Southern Scotland, he has sung and will continue to sing the songs of the entire people, at merry-meetings, at lovers' trysts, at bridal feasts, at the partings and re-assemblage of friends; and there is one trumpet- lyric of his, needless to be named, which, though not printed in the army or navy lists, or set forth in any ordnance return, is nevertheless a greater and more effective national defence than many thousands of regimented men ; and would prove on the day, should it ever come, that Scotland or Scotland's queen were seriously menaced by foreign aggression, a wall of living fire around the land consecrated, defended, and glorified by the poet's genius. SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE. TN the winter evenings of 1775, a notable exhibition used -*- very frequently to take place in the large smoking room of the Black Blear Inn, Devizes, — always, if it was market- day evening, and the room consequently crowded with jolly- faced, lusty-looking agriculturists, comfortably enjoying them- selves over hot brandy and water, and the agreeable rise in prices occasioned by the war recently broken out with, the American colonies. At a sufficient pause or lull in the buzz of conversation, produced perhaps by a more than commonly emphatic opinion upon farming probabilities, or those attaching to the rebel Washington, — whether he would be shot, have his head chopped off in America, or be brought over sea to be hanged at Tyburn, — the landlord, a middle- aged genteel looking man, with a cleverish expression of face, 176 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. who had been fidgeting in and out of the room half a dozen times during the last quarter of an hour, would say with sudden decision : " ]STow, gentlemen, I will, if you please, introduce my son to your notice:" Before any answer could be returned, the door was thrown open, and a charming little boy, nicely attired, and about six years of age, waiting just outside with his mother or sister, caught up in the landlord's arms, and swiftly deposited upon a table reserved for that purpose at one end of the apartment. This done, the father usually went on to say, " Now, gentlemen, here's my son. "What do you say ? Shall he recite from the poets, or shall he take the portrait of either of you 1 Admirable in both LAWRENCE. 177 capacities, I assure you, gentlemen, though it's not perhaps for me to say so." The most desirable as well as the most frequent response to this appeal, from the good-natured farmers who had not yet seen themselves framed and glazed in water colours, was an order for a portrait, which would only add two or three shillings to the drinking score, of not much moment, as prices ruled, — but if any one did make a request for poetry, "Lycidas" perhaps, a favourite piece of the child's, would be recited in the sweetest voice in the world, and with remarkable feeling and effect. A likeness he could dash off in a few minutes, and these displays were very profitable in a small way to the father-exhibitor. Well, reader, the sweet-voiced, bright-eyed, handsome little boy exposed upon a table in the smoking-room of a public- house, was he whose name heads this article — the future Sir Thomas Lawrence, president of the Hoyal Academy, and the most illustrious of modern portrait painters. It was only lately that his father had fallen so low in the world as to be compelled, as it were, to eke out the insufficient profits of his trade by such means. The young boy was born in Bristol on the 4th of May, 1769, within a stone's throw of Southey's birth-place, and was the youngest of a family of sixteen children, all of whom expired in their infancy save himself and two girls. His father, of the same baptismal name, Thomas, was about the most unsuitable man in England in the matter of a business or profession, inasmuch that educated as an attorney he had failed of success not only in the law, but as editor, poet, actor, declaimer, customs' officer, and farmer, all of which avocations he had tried in succession; and now the Black Bear, Devizes, famous to this day for keeping its owner well up in the world, was clearly incapable of resisting the downward tendency of Mr. Lawrence to the 178 EXTRAORDINARY MEN". mire and slough of debt and insolvency. It was Destiny, he used to say; the fatal sisters were alone responsible for his embarrassments, in equity, though not, unfortunately, in law ; but be this as it may, Fate or Destiny had, at all events, at last awarded him compensation for any inevitable mishaps that might have befallen him, in the genius and filial love of his admirable son. There are few evils in the world that are not accompanied or followed by some degree of com- pensating good, and in this instance we shall find that the intense anxiety felt by Sir T. Lawrence from his earliest youth, to brighten the darkening future of his father, to pro- vide handsomely for his beloved mother and sisters, was, even more than the impulsive prompting of his genius, the spur which pricked him on to eminence, and enabled him to over- take and secure fortune. His mother's maiden name was Lucy Read, and she was, it is said, distantly related to the house of Powis. Young Lawrence, there can be no doubt whatever, was a very extraordinary boy. Garrick, when visiting the West of England, used to take pleasure in hearing him recite dramatic and other pieces, and repeatedly exclaimed after hearing him declaim a newly-learnt speech, "Bravely done, Tommy! Now which I wonder will you be, an actor or a painter?" This half-jocosely put question was a serious, much-meditated one for the boy himself, and was, we shall find, at last decided by a ruse of his father's, wisely no doubt, in contravention of his own wishes. Prince Hoare, also, who heard him recite " Lycidas" at Devizes, and saw eyes and hands of his drawing whilst there, spoke in the highest terms both of his declamatory and pictorial powers. Fuseli, indeed, declared that the eyes shown to him were equal to any of Titian's. The Honourable Mr. Barrington remarked as fol- LAWKENCE. 179 lows upon the marvellous boy at Devizes : — " I cannot pass unnoticed a Master Lawrence at Devizes : this boy, who is not more than ten years and a half old (February, 1780), copies historical pictures in a masterly style. In seven minutes he took a likeness, and he reads blank verse exceed- ingly well." The sole aid in his art which Master Lawrence had yet received, with the exception of Rogers's "Lives of Foreign Painters," lent him by the Rev. Mr. Kent, with the benevolent purpose "of opening his mind," was a view he was permitted to have of the pictures at Corsham House, a seat of the Methuen family. His father, in reply to a friendly expostulation of the Rev. Mr. Kent's, to the effect that a son of such remarkable promise ought at any sacrifice to be placed under proper instructors, said, with a super- cilious smile, that " heritors of genius like his son, were their own best and all-sufficing instructors." This, it will be gleaned from one or two kindred instances, was not mere stupidity alone — a less excusable state of mind, in all likelihood, having prompted, partly at least, the absurd remark ; but Mr. Lawrence, at the same time condescendingly agreed that his son might perhaps learn something by a glance at the old masters. Master Lawrence consequently visited the Corsham House Gallery ; and his exclamation, when gazing upon a "Rubens" in the collection, "Ah! I shall never be able to paint like that !" was, perhaps the truest indication he had yet given of his power to attain rank in an art, perfection, or more correctly, eminence in which must assuredly be dis- cerned and appreciated before it can be approached, much less surpassed. True genius, however, is inflamed, excited, not dismayed, subdued, by its accurate perception of the dis- tance, great as that may be, intervening between its posses- sor and the goal to which he aspires ; it is the dullard and 180 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. the impostor only who will have it that their little is the real lofty, their mediocrity true magnificence j and after sleeping over what he had seen, Master Lawrence set him- self manfully to reproduce, as well as he was able, the " Peter denying Christ," and other pictures he had been impressed with. His success in this entrance-hall, so to speak, to the vestibule of creative art, the Hon. Mr. Barrington, as we have seen, thought highly of. The enthusiastic boy-artist was about eleven years old only when his fathers final break-down at the Black Bear brought him into more prominent notice as the only available card left in the hands of that hapless player at the game of life. He was first taken by his father to Oxford, where his money- success as a portrait painter was unequivocal. Still more for- tunate than even that — his patrons were dignitaries, or other- wise in the first ranks of society, — a fact which precediDg him, and industriously blown about at Bath, opened every door to him in that city worth opening. His Bath success was a furore. Mr. Hoare gave him. private lessons in crayons for the honour of doing so : his charge for a likeness in water-colours or crayons rose quickly from one to two guineas, and even at that price there was no end to ladies, habited in the fashion of the day — a red jacket, with hat and feather, coming to sit to, and chat with the wonderful, and at the same time singularly handsome boy-painter. Sir Henry Harpur was so convinced of his artistical capabilities that he offered to advance a thousand pounds to enable him to study in Italy ; but Mr. Lawrence, the father, instantly decided against Sir Henry's proposition — repeating his former folly, that genius like his son's required neither models nor masters. The truth, no doubt was, that his real objection to Sir Henry's offer was, that its acceptance would necessarily deprive himself and LAWRENCE. 181 family of the son's present, and, for an indefinite period, future earnings, and might not therefore be listened to. And his son had no wish that it should be entertained. His gains already enabled him to bring his mother to Bath, and sup- port her creditably there ; to place his sisters at excellent boarding schools — what then, to such a son and brother as Thomas Lawrence, had Italy to offer worth wishing for, at the risk, however slight, of perilling those present priceless blessings ! His oil-portrait of Mrs. Siddons as Zara, (Voltaire's Zaire) was engraved and much admired ; and altogether his fame lifted him so swiftly and triumphantly aloft, that his view presently embraced the London Society of Arts, to whom he sent a copy on glass of the Transfiguration. As, however, it had been finished two years previous to being sent, the society's rules precluded its exhibition, but to con- sole him in some degree for the disappointment, he was pre- sented with a silver palette and five guineas, as a testimony of the society's appreciation of his talents. This was abun- dant proof to everybody in Bath that London was impa- tiently awaiting his presence there, and thither it was finally determined he should proceed, but before the time for doing so arrived, a conflict arose in the young artist's mind — suggested in soni3 degree no doubt by the recollection of Garrick's encomiums — as to whether he might not succeed in the world even better as an actor than as a painter. The sums, it will be remembered, that Mrs. Siddons was receiving in those days were enormous, far beyond the scale of remune- ration that Thomas Lawrence could then have dreamed of ever obtaining by the help of his palette and pencils. This consideration, helped with a very exalted opinion of his own histrionic powers, must have weighed considerably with him, 182 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. and it was fortunate his father perceived and comprehended the danger of the course his son was inclined to pursue, and took prompt and effective measures for knocking the half- matured project on the head. An arrangement was made with Bernard, an actor, and Palmer, the manager of the Bath company, the result of which was, that Bernard sug- gested a private, duet-sort of rehearsal of " Venice Preserved" to the young artist, who was to personate Jaffier, a part he greatly affected, whilst Bernard, holding the book in his hand, would be anybody — Belvidera, Priuli, Pierre — as occasion required, and prompter throughout. The rehearsal took place, as agreed ; and Jaffier went on very well till he says in a scene with Priuli — " I brought her — gave her to your despairing arms — Indeed you thanked me, but " — but — but — Jaffier stuck hopelessly at " but ;" the prompter wouldn't help him with a syllable, and for the life of him he couldn't remember what it was old Priuli did, or left undone after civilly thanking him; and amidst his stammering " buts," in bounced his father and Palmer, the Batb manager, laughing obstreperously, and both thoroughly agreed, a deci- sion presently endorsed by Bernard, that as an actor, he would never be worth his salt; " You play Jaffier, Tom!" cried his father ; " hang me if I think they'd let you murder a conspirator." The verdict being unanimous, and apparently honest, Master Lawrence resigned himself to forego his hope of Thespian honours, though with much doubting reluctance. " I still believe," were his concluding words, " that if I had kept well to study I might have succeeded on the stage, and I should then have been able to assist my family much earlier and more effectually than I have been able to do as yet." LA WHENCE. 183 This thought, the well-being and advancement of his family — of his mother and sisters especially — would seem never to have been absent from his mind: it was perpetually casting up, whatever might be the subject matter of his conversation. Thomas Lawrence was seventeen when he arrived in London, and engaged handsome apartments in Leicester Fields. He had wisely taken Salisbury in his way, and his pockets were well lined with the sums he had levied upon all the Sarum folk that could afford to see themselves in crayons. A cursory survey of the state of his art in the metropolis, convinced him of ultimate success, and he immediately wrote to request his mother to leave Bath at once, and come to London. That she might not fear or hesitate to do so, he wrote, " Except Sir Joshua, for the painting of a head, i would risk my reputation against any other painter in London." His mother came, and on the 13th September, 1787, he attended the Academy as a student for the first time, and by his drawings of the " Fighting Gladiator" and the " Apollo Belvidere," soon distanced in that branch of art, all competition. Some time afterwards, he waited upon the president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, with a portrait of himself, in oil. The president was, for the moment, engaged with another student, who was pertinaciously defending his work from the criticism of Sir Joshua. The president listened to the young man's vindication of his picture, with a raised brow and curling lip, and directly it was concluded, turned to the new comer with — " Now let me see what you have brought." " Ah," said Sir Joshua, after a minute and close inspection of the picture. " You think the sentiment fine, the colour natural, no doubt. You have been looking at the old masters, I see ; but I say study nature, young man, study nature." 18 J: EXTRAORDINARY MEET. Whether this advice was unreservedly adopted, and suc- cessfully earned out by him to whom it was addressed or not, is beside the scope and purpose of this paper. Enough to record here that Thomas Lawrence became president of the Royal Academy, and the most celebrated, sought after, and highly remunerated portrait painter of modern times ; and that Sir Thomas Lawrence was as dutiful, tender and affectionate a son and brother as the handsome little boy first introduced to the reader upon a table in the farmers' smoking room at the Black Bear Inn, Devizes. WILKIE. rpHE diary of the Reverend David Y/ilkie, when minister -*- of the Kirk of Scotland at Cults, Fifeshire, contains a list of marriages, deaths and births, following each other in such swift succession as to read like a passage copied from the Registrar-General's book of doom. The reverend gentle- man's first wife was an aunt of the present Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, his marriage with whom he thus records : " October 18, 1 7 7 G . Married this day to one of the most beautiful women in Fife, Mary Campbell, sister of George Campbell, one of the ministers of Cupar." Little more than three months had flitted past, when the bride was borne off by another and resistless wooer — Death ! " February 8th, 1777. This day my beloved wife departed this life ; ill of a fever attended by consumption ; an evil 186 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. the most afflicting I have ever met with." Time, however, we find, was not long, with the assistance of Miss Peggy "Wilkie, in coming to the bereaved mourner's relief: — "November 3rd, 1778. This day married to Miss Peggy Wilkie, a third cousin, in Edinburgh." Again, and almost as speedily as before, the bridal flowers changed to a cypress wreath : — "March 28th, 1780. This day my most indulgent wife departed this life, after being delivered of a still-born child." Nothing dismayed by this matrimonial ill-fortune, and happily chancing to meet with a young damsel of equal courage, — young enough to be his daughter the gossips of Cults sneeringly whispered among themselves, — the reverend divine was again a suitor and a bridegroom : — " October 4th, 1781. This day married to Miss Isabella Lister, daughter of Mr. James Lister, farmer, of Pitlessie Hill." And a very admirable wife Miss Isabella Lister, youthful as she might be, proved, making the bare one hundred pounds a year, which was all of earthly riches her husband possessed for the sustain- ment and nurture of the inmates of his manse, perform the ordinary work of two hundred : a precious wifely accomplish- ment, under almost any circumstances, but especially so when a household increases so rapidly as the Reverend Mr. Wilkie's now did, the following being the third birth entry in his diary : — "November 18th, 1785. This day, at about five in the evening, Bell was delivered of a son, who, on the 4th of December, was baptized David, after myself," A great announcement, though not so recognised till some twenty years afterwards, and quite sufficient of itself to overthrow Dr. Primsose's Monogamist theory, inasmuch that had not the Reverend Mr. Wilkie been of a totally opposite marriage- creed to that so vehemently maintained by the excellent Vicar of Wakefield, it is quite clear the world would still be WILKIE. 187 without "The Village Politicians,"— "The Rent-Day;'— "The Chelsea Pensioners," — " Knox Preaching before the Lords of the Council," and other gems of art, which, once seen, are a life-treasure to the beholder. A dull, unpromising boy, this silent, reserved bringer of light from celestial fountains, was for a time, pronounced to be by the herd of observers, who have ever such stolid, unswerving faith in their own keen ac- curacy of vision, high above their sphere as may be the object towards which it is directed, albeit they can truly discern nothing even in the familiar material universe by which they are encompassed, save what the heritors of genius reveal to them in the poetry of words or colours. The Dominie of the parish-school at Pitlessie sorrowfully reported that David Wilkie was much fonder of drawing than of reading, could paint better than he could write, and, moreover, appeared quite incapable of mastering the subtleties of orthography and grammar. Whatever truth there might have been in these reproaches whilst David Wilkie remained under the tuition of James Ditson,it ceased quickly after his removal, in 1797, to the school at Kettle, presided over by Dr. Strachan, since Bishop of Toronto, as far as the acquirement of the ordinary school accomplishments were concerned, though his pictorial propensities continued to display them- selves, both in season and out of season, as freely as before. He would lie for hours upon the grass watching the play of the sunbeams, or by the margin of a stream drawing figures on the sand ; at other times appearing never to weary of gazing in at the door of a smithy, in eager observation of the flame-coloured interior, with its swart inmates, and bright, deep masses of light and shadow. His sketches of men, women, boys, girls, horses, dogs, in chalk, pencil, and ink, were innumerable, and drawn upon every possible surface — w 2 188 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. floors, walls, doors, slates, books — anything, in fact, that happened to be near at hand, and available ; and it was early- noticed that beggars, soldiers, children at play, were especially favourite subjects with him. There was not a barefooted urchin in the parish school, whose likeness he had not taken; and often when Dr. Strachan was examining or lec- turing his attentive pupils, he would suddenly miss David Wilkie, who, struck by some humorous peculiarity of ex- pression in the face of a boy, or it might be in that of the master himself — for David was, in this particular, no respecter of persons — had dived down behind his school-fellows to transfer the impression, whilst it was yet vivid in his mind, to a slate or the margin of a printed book, if nothing better might be had. Nay, the very elders of the kirk, douce, honest men, could never be sure that when most abstracted from earthly thoughts and doings, they were not figuring irreverently in the fly-leaf of a service-book, or worse, being ink-drawn upon the panels of the school -pew, to the utter ruin of the pupils' gravity, and consequent scandal of the congregation. These rude portraits are said to have been striking as likenesses, not so much in accuracy of outline as in the successful portrayal of the character of the face at the particular moment indicated ; so that recognition of the truth- fulness of the delineation was usually accompanied by an ex- planatory remark, as — " Eh, but that's blate Jamie Andrews, in a swither about his lesson !" Or — "There's deaf Elder sure enough; singin' away after ither folk have done lang syne." Notwithstanding, however, that the nascent per- ceptive genius of young Wilkie fastened, with instinctive power, upon traits of humour and eccentricity, it was early manifest that its appreciative grasp reached loftier attributes of human character. Stories, for instance, of the Covenantal WILKIE. 189 wars, with their heroic figures gloomily relieved against the dark, tumultuous back-ground, would at all times compel his rapt attention, stir his brain with emotions of pride, pity, grief and indignation, long after the telling of the tale was done, and quicken into life the spirit of historic painting strong if latent there. In addition to the artistic predispositions exhibited by David Wilkie, he simultaneously displayed remarkable mecha- nical aptitude, which might, perhaps, have developed into inventive genius but for the boy's stronger passion to become a painter, frequently busying himself as he did with new models for wind and water mills, machines for winnowing corn, and other contrivances of a like nature, so that when the time came for deciding upon his future walk in life, it was gravely doubted whether he might not be likelier to make a figure in the world as a machinist than a pictorial artist. Happily Mrs. Wilkie, in whose eyes her son's sketches were of course miracles of art, sympathised with his passionate ambition to become a great painter, and the Earl of Leven's good offices having been obtained for procuring him admission to the Trustees' Academy of Edinburgh, — an institution founded for the purpose of affording gratuitous instruction in drawing and painting to young men of promise, chiefly with a view to national progress in manufacturing design, — David was dispatched to the Scottish metropolis iti November 1799, armed with his portfolio of sketches and an introductory letter from Lord Leven to the secretary of the Academy, a Mr. George Thompson. This gentleman read the letter, and looked at the sketches, next very attentively at the candidate for participation in the privileges of the Academy, — a tall, thin, pale, raw, loutish-looking lad, in Mr. Thompson's judgment, — notwithstanding his keen blue eyes and certain 190 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. If lines of quiet humour about the mouth, the indications whereof the prosaic secretary was as blind to as to those of the sketches, in which he saw nothing but very incorrect drawing. He decided that the young man's application for admission to the Academy must be refused, and dismissed poor Wilkie with a positive intimation that he should reply in that sense to the Earl of Leven's letter. This was a terrible blow to the aspiring boy, who returned to his humble lodging in Nicholson- street, in a state of painful agitation, which however gradually subsided as confidence in the firm- ness of Lord Leven came back to his mind, who, he after a while felt sure from various circumstances anxiously recalled WILKIE. 191 to memory, would prefer his own judgment to that of the secretary of the Academy, of which his lordship was the most influential patron and trustee. And so it proved ; the reply to Mr. Thompson's letter to the Earl being a peremptory order to admit David Wilkie as a pupil of the Academy forthwith, a direction which the secretary had no option hut to comply with. It was in reference to Lord Leven's decisive action upon this occasion, that Sir David Wilkie exclaimed in after life, in reply to some observation relative to the general evil effect of patronage in connexion with institutional facilities, — " Say nothing to me against patronage : it was patronage made me what I am!" An exaggeration no doubt, but clearly shewing the importance which the great painter attached to his having obtained admission to the Edinburgh Academy, — as well as his grateful remembrance of a long since conferred obligation. The master's chair at this time was filled by John Graham, who painted the death of General Frazer, — and one of the fellow-pupils of Wilkie was the late Sir William Allan, Limner to the Queen of Scotland, whose "Battle of Waterloo" hangs by the side of " The Chelsea Pensioners," at Apsley House. The resolute tenacity of Wilkie's character when applying himself to a cherished pursuit, was soon made evident. He had determined to do or die in his struggle for the painter's crown, and he permitted himself no respite from incessant toil, till he had thoroughly mastered the mechanics of his art, except it might be an hour to practise now and then on Ins violin, — or a brief communion with " The Gentle Shepherd," almost the only book except his Bible he ever opened. His progress was consequently very rapid, though a proof thereof, — a foot in red chalk copied from the antique, — which he sent to his father, was no wise so considered by the 192 EXTRAORDINARY WES. good folk of Cults, who, spite of the wilful youth's irreverent practice of sketching ministers and elders at times when they were thinking of any thing else than sitting or standing for their portraits, were always speering for news of "our Davie." " That a foot !" exclaimed the spokesman of a knot of village cognoscenti, after a lengthened examination of the red chalk drawing — " That a foot ! It's mair like a fluke than a foot;" and it appeared to be generally agreed that the Edinbro' bodies were misguiding the lad instead of helping him forward in his studies. The first academical distinction for which Wilkie competed, was offered for the best pictorial . embodiment of certain scenes in Macbeth; and though he missed the prize, his head of Lady Macduff's son was greatly praised. But genius, strengthened by labour and courage, is sure sooner or later to overtake success, and in 1803, David "Wilkie triumphantly carried off the chief prize — ten guineas — offered by the Academy by his " Calisto at the Bath of Diana;" the first rough outline of which obtained at the sale of the deceased artist's sketches the sum of forty-six pounds seven shillings. Having acquired all the knowledge obtainable at the Edinburgh Academy, "Wilkie, in 1804, returned to Cults, and abode for a time at his father's house, but not allowing, if he could help it, a single day to pass without adding some- thing to his artistic treasures, — village folk on their reverent way to kirk on the sabbath morn, — a group of disputatious polemics canvassing the merits of the sermon between the services, — or the more varied scenes presented by Pitlessie fair, and the like haunts of rural revelry. He obtained considerable local patronage, but at length the enthusiastic prophecies of friends aiding his own strong consciousness of artistic power, he determined upon proceeding to London, and measuring himself with the Athletse who had already WILKIE. 193 won fame and fortune in that decisive arena. He arrived in London on the 20th of May, 1805, at the age of about nineteen years and six months, with two or three letters of introduction, and a very small sum of money in his pockets ; but rich in capacity and willingness for perseverant toil, — the disciplined cunning of his hand, and, as it speedily proved, numerous delightful images of life, sparkling in his brain. He first took lodgings in Aldgate, but a few hours' experience of London sufficed to convince him that he had not located himself in a very eligible quarter of the metropolis, and he removed with as little delay as possible to No. 8, Norton- street, Portland-row; in a little back room of which house the obscure, unfriended artist set resolutely to work, and presently " The Tillage Politicians " grew into life beneath his creative fingers. Lord Mansfield saw the picture before completion, and agreed to purchase it for fifteen guineas, Wilkie reserving the right to send it . for exhibition to the Koyal Academy previous to its passing into his lordship's possession. This, in a pecuniary point of view, was an im- provident bargain on Wilkie's part, two persons having subsequently offered him much larger sums for the picture — one of them ultimately bidding as high as one hundred pounds. Greatly vexed at having given away his picture, as it now appeared that he had, Wilkie informed Lord Mansfield of the offers made to him; whereupon his lordship, first insisting that it should be acknowledged the bargain was a legal and binding one, voluntarily doubled the price he had agreed for, and gave Wilkie a cheque for thirty guineas. The exhibition of " The Village Politicians" was a veritable triumph for the young painter. His diligently-cultivated powers had enabled him to reach the front rank of his profes- sion at a single bound, and thenceforth his artist-life was a 194 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. continuous success, — embellished by fortune, rank, royal and aristocratic countenance and favour — until premature decay, ending in the burial at sea, pointed, as in every other life- catastrophe, the moral of all human tales, — the nothingness, the vanity of human existence, but for the promised immor- tality which a lofty genius may be said to prefigure and anticipate on earth. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. THE youth of Napoleon Bonaparte must ever be an inte- resting study, alike to the politician and philosopher, as offering the only means of obtaining some knowledge, slight or imperfect as it may be, of the true character of that diversely estimated soldier and statesman, ere success and power had moulded, hardened, strengthened and depraved it. Becent events, in a neighbouring country, have attached a new interest to such an investigation, by demonstrating, as they apparently do, that there was more of vital grandeur in Napoleon's life, than the vast majority of Englishmen accre- dited him with, inasmuch as it seems hardly credible that a highly-civilized nation should eagerly prostrate themselves, in what certainly looks like abject humiliation, before the newly-gilt and varnished image of a mere conqueror, — 196 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. It appears incredible, — especially when it is seen that those enthusiastic worshippers of the memory of Napoleon cast into the altar-flames kindled in his honour alike their own most precious possessions, and the sacred inheritance of their children, — the priceless immunities of personal freedom, liberty of speech, of pen, of thought, as far as possible, — the frank confidence of friendship, — the sanctities of family intercourse and unreserve ! Or is perchance that hypothesis the true one, according to which the apparent greatness — true greatness is meant — of Napoleon Bonaparte exists only when viewed through the magnifying mirage created by the breath of a people whose adoration of their hero is simply a mode of offering incense to their own vanity 1 A hard question, that time alone can fully answer, but which a brief glance at his early years may throw some light upon. The Bonaparte family is of Italian origin, and indisputably noble. The name was only erased from the. " Golden Book" of Treviso when, in consequence of their connexion with the Ghibelline party, they were driven from Tuscany, and took refuge in Corsica, where they were immediately enrolled in the ranks of the island nobility. Charles Bonaparte, the father of the French emperor, received a legal education at Pisa, and he is reported of as a handsome, intelligent, patri- otic gentleman, and warmly attached friend and comrade of General Paoli, whose heroic defence of Corsica against the troops of France, to which the island had been basely sold by the Genoese, was not the less glorious for having failed before the overwhelming odds by which he was opposed. Charles Bonaparte married Letitia Ramoline, the half-sister, on the mother's side, of Cardinal Fesch. She was a beautiful BONAPARTE. 197 and accomplished woman, gracefully feminine in manners and appearance, and possessed, moreover, of so brave and ener- getic a spirit, that she was constantly by her husband's side, on horseback, whenever danger, in which he might be in- volved, had to be confronted. Madame Bonaparte was the mother of five sons and three daughters, and was still in the prime of life when her husband died, at Montpelier, France, on the 24th of February, 1785, of the painful disease, schirrus in the stomach, which terminated the life of his cele- brated son. That son thus wrote in after years of his father's death, — with what sincerity of feeling we shall presently be able to judge : — "I was quietly pursuing my studies, when my father was struggling against the violence of a painful malady. He died, and I had not the consolation to close his eyes. That sad duty was reserved for Joseph, who acquitted himself of it with all the duty of an affectionate son." Napoleon Bonaparte was in his 1 6th year when his father died, he having been born on the loth of August, 1769, at the family residence in Ajaccio, which forms one side of a court leading out of the Rue Chalet. The active and healthy temperament of Madame Bonaparte may be judged of by the fact, that on the morning of Napoleon's birth she walked to the cathedral of Ajaccio to hear mass, — the 15th of August being the day set apart for celebrating the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, — one of the highest festivals of the Roman Catholic church, — and immediately after her hurried return home was delivered of the future emperor on a couch, over which a piece of tapestry was hastily thrown, representing — but this is an imperial fable — the heroes of the Iliad. A man-child at all events, and one of vigorous promise was born, and but a few years had glided past when dull eyes might have 198 EXTRAORDINARY MEET. discerned by the young Napoleon's magnificently developed forehead, penetrative glance, inflexible, saturnine will and tem- perament, a concentration of latent powers that if life and opportunity gave leave would make themselves felt in what- ever sphere of action their possessor was destined to play his part in the world. Very early, too, the boy's native bent of mind openly displayed itself. "In my infancy," remarks Napoleon himself, " I was noisy and quarrelsome, and feared nobody. I beat one, scratched another, and made myself formidable to all." As time swept on, this inherent passion for dominancy through, the influence of fear, — his worship of force, of which he was destined to become, perhaps, the most colossal impersonation the world has ever seen, — developed itself in various ways, the most obviously-significant indica- tion being perhaps, that his favourite plaything was a brass cannon weighing thirty French pounds, still preserved in Ajaccio, as a striking and emblematical memento of the youth and early studies of the great Napoleon. Corsica had been officially annexed to France in the June previous to Napo- leon's birth, and hence, it is said, he was born a Frenchman; just as much so as a Portuguese, born at Lisbon a day after the French emperor's proclamation that the house of Bra- ganza had ceased to reign, and that Portugal was thenceforth annexed to king Joseph's dominions was a Spaniard, — no more; and this, too, was Napoleon's own opinion, as is shown by the following extracts from a letter addressed to General Paoli, from "Auxomme en Bourgogne," before there appeared a chance that the young artillery officer's legal character of Frenchman might assist him in moulding the revolutionary lava into crowns and sceptres for himself and family : — "General : I was born when our country was perishing : 30,000 French- men vomited on our coasts, drowning the throne of liberty in BONAPARTE. 199 streams of blood, — such was the odious spectacle which first presented itself to my sight. The cries of the dying, the groans of the oppressed, the tears of despair, were the companions of my infancy I at one time indulged a hope that I should he able to go to London to express to you the sen- timents you have given birth to in my bosom, and to con- verse together on the misfortunes of our country ; but the distance is an obstacle: the day will perhaps arrive when I shall be able to overcome it." The flame of indignant patriotism throbbed fiercely, there can be no doubt, in the veins of the boy Napoleon. There is still shown in Corsica, about a mile from Ajaccio on the road to the Sanguiniere, the dilapidated remains of the stone entrance of a villa that belonged to Cardinal Fesch, and was used as a summer residence by Madame Bonaparte and family, in the grounds of which was an isolated granite rock with a cave-like opening, shrouded by wild olive, cactus, and almond trees, which acquired the name of Napoleon's Grotto, from the sombre lad's habit of shutting himself up therein with his cannon to muse over the con- quest and subjugation of his country, so frequently and vividly dilated upon in his hearing by his mother, who had herself, as previously intimated, taken part in the sanguinary struggle to maintain its independence. Love of country, in its true and lofty sense, was, in fact, only extinguished in Napoleon's breast by the all-mastering force of personal ambition. His father, M. Charles Bonaparte, had intended to share Paoli's exile, but was persuaded to adopt the more prudent course of remaining where he was, by the advice of his uncle Lucien Bonaparte, an Archdeacon of the Cathedral of Ajaccio — a politic compliance which was not long after- wards rewarded by Louis XVI., upon the recommendation of Count Marbceuf, the French Governor of Corsica, by the 200 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. appointment of M. Charles Bonaparte to the office of Asses- sor to the supreme tribunal of Ajaccio. This sacrifice of duty to interest was subsequently referred to by Napoleon in indignant terms. " Paoli," he passionately exclaimed, upon one occasion, at Brienne, in reply to a depreciatory remark upon the Corsican patriot, " Paoli was a great man ; he loved his country ; and never will I forgive my father, who had been his adjutant, for having concurred in the union of Corsica with France. He should have followed Paoli's fortune, and have fallen with him." At another time, when chafed by the taunts of some of the pupils upon his foreign complexion and accent, he said to Bourienne, with rageful emphasis, " Ah, I will do thy Frenchmen all the harm it may be ever in my power to inflict." These quotations, brief as they are, abundantly suffice to prove that Napoleon's love of France, of which one hears so much, descended upon him with his general's epaulettes. At the age of nine years eight months and five days, Napoleon Bonaparte entered the Royal Military School at Brienne, through the interest of Count Marbceuf, whose good offices, constantly exerted in behalf of the family, were attributed by the scandal manufacturers of the day to an improper intimacy between the Count and Madame Bona- parte ; an imputation as false and infamous as the contem- porary slanders by like evil tongues concerning the hapless Marie Antoinette. Napoleon remained five years five months and twenty-seven days at Brienne ; and his personal appearance and demeanour whilst there have been described as follows, by men who wrote from personal knowledge : — " Napoleon Bonaparte was remarked for the colour of his complexion, his foreign accent, his piercing interrogative looks, and by the tone of his conversation with his masters BONAPARTE. 201 and comrades, in which there was always a certain degree of harshness. He was not of a loving disposition. . . The young Napoleon was reserved, had a few friends and no intimates, but when he chose exerted considerable influence over his comrades." M. de Keralso, inspector of the 12th military school, made, in October 1784, the following official report of his person, conduct, acquirements and capabilities, to the cen- tral military school at Paris, whither Napoleon was shortly afterwards transferred. With the exception of the passages we have taken the liberty to print in italics, the report was no doubt, as far as it went, a faithful one. " M. de Bona- parte, born August loth, 1769, height 4-ft. 10-in. 10-lines, finished his fourth course, of good constitution, excellent health, of submissive character, and regular conduct : has been always distinguished for application to the mathematics. He is tolerably well acquainted with history and geography : he is deficient in the ornamental branches, and in Latin. He will make an excellent sailor" Napoleon had obtained the mathematical prize, in which science he was instructed by Perrault: — Pichegru was a monitor in the same class, but M. de Keralso forgot to men- tion, or was perhaps unaware, that besides being deficient in the ornamental branches and Latin, Bonaparte had never been able to master the spelling and grammar of the French language. It may be that Napoleon's failure in the loftier and more humanizing of educational studies should be attri- buted to the fact that they were taught by the Monks of the order of St. Thavies de Paul, under whose general superin- tendence the Brience school was placed, and who were not celebrated for their attainments in polite literature. Be this as it may, it is not the less certain that Napoleon's appre- ciation of authorial ability, of vigour and beauty of style, was o 202 EXTRAORDINARY HEN. throughout his life of the dullest kiud, as witness his admira- tion of Macpherson's " Ossian," which he deemed to be sub- lime poetry, and the turgid tawdriness of his own orders of the day, addresses to his soldiers, and despatches — so wofully in contrast with the severe, nervous simplicity of those of the Duke of Wellington. . The military aptitude and predisposition of Napoleon con- tinued vividly to manifest themselves. The frequently quoted incident of the snow batteries occurred during the winter of 1783-4, when an unusual fall of snow prevented Napoleon from taking his usual solitary meditative walks. A game of mimic war might, he thought, prove an agreeable relief to the tedium and noisy monotony of the hall in which the pupils could alone take exercise, and at his suggestion the snow bastions were erected, assailed, defended selon les regies during ten days, — he commanding the assaulting party, — by which time stones and gravel having gradually superseded the use of snow missiles, the play, fast becoming much too earnest, was peremptorily put an end to. At another time, when the rumour had spread that the monks did not intend permitting the pupils to visit the annual fair held in the neighbourhood of Brienne, Napoleon advised as a precau- tionary measure that the garden wall should be secretly undermined. This was done in such a manner that when the day arrived, and the monks and masters having securely locked in the impatient pupils, were gravely sermonizing upon the evil consequences of permitting youth to attend fairs, a mass of wall fell suddenly in, disclosing a huge gap through which the exultant boys disappeared beyond recall, before their astounded superiors thoroughly comprehended what had happened. Once, too, it chanced that young Bonaparte, for some infraction of school discipline, was ex- BONAPAKTE. 203 cae eluded from the students' table, and compelled to wear a penitential dress. The compressed but fiery rage of the proud boy was so violent as to bring on a severe nervous attack, • notwithstanding that his mathematical tutor, Per- rault, perceiving the terrible effect of the punishment upon his remarkable pupil, begged him off before the allotted period of penance was nearly expired. Napoleon left Brienne for the central Paris school in Oc- tober, 1784, not, it should seem, to the very poignant regret of the authorities he quitted, nor to the extreme delight of their Paris confreres when they became better acquainted with their new acquisition. A note by the sous-principal describes o 2 204 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. liim as " a domineering, imperious, headstrong boy." He was perpetually remonstrating against the laxity of discipline and the expensive habits tolerated at the school. An extract from a memorial to M. Berton will show the spirit of those remonstrances and the tone in which they were urged: — " Since the King's pupils (les eleves du Roi) are all of them poor gentlemen destined for the military profession, should they not be really, essentially educated to that end? Accus- tomed to a sober life, to be rigidly scrupulous in conduct and appearance, they would become robust, would be able to sup- port the inclemency of seasons, the fatigues of war, and inspire respect and a blind devotion in the soldiers placed under their command." So rude a censor, and a mere boy, too, was as speedily as possible got rid of j his examination was hastened, pronounced extremely satisfactory, and he was presented, Sept., 1785, with his commission of second lieutenant in the regiment of La Fere, or First of the Artillery. His father died in the previous February, and Napoleon would have had no difficulty in obtaining leave to visit him had he been so minded, nor is it likely that the expense of a journey from Paris to Montpelier and back again could have been an insurmountable obstacle, as his great uncle, Lucien Bonaparte, the archdeacon of the cathedral of Ajaccio, made him an allowance at this time, continued till he obtained his captain's commission, of twelve hundred francs (forty-eight pounds) per annum. The regiment of La Fere was quartered at Valence, where it was promptly joined by the juvenile lieutenant, whose military duties, however, did not entirely engross his time and meditations, for in 1786 he competed for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons for the best essay on the Abbe" Raynal's question : — " What are the principles and institutions by application of which mankind BONAPARTE. 205 can be raised to the highest pitch of happiness?" Napoleon gained the prize, against what competitors does not appear ; but in after years, when Talleyrand, having obtained the manuscript from the archives of the academy, presented it to the Emperor, his Imperial Majesty, after glancing at a line or two only, threw it with an expressive shrug of disdain on the fire. A very appropriate fate there can be little doubt, though it did obtain the academical prize; Raynal's ques- tion being in itself an utter absurdity, and Napoleon, even in his riper years, one of the most illogical reasoners upon matters of theory that ever meddled with the science of dialectics. In proof of this it is sufficient to refer to the marvellously absurd propositions which, according to his own statements at St. Helena, he vainly endeavoured to persuade the juries, consuls, and lawyers whom he had commissioned to draw up the codes which bear his name, to embody in those famous instruments. In 1789-90, during a part of which latter year he was on leave in Corsica, he commenced what was intended to be a political, civil, and military history of that island. It was never published, nor indeed finished, though some negotiations were entered into with Mr. Joly, a bookseller, of Dole, with a view to its printing and publication. It is probable that his still flaming Corsican patriotism, of which this projected history is another proof, prevented him from joining actively, as he otherwise might have done, in the revolutionary movement which was shaking old France to its foundations ; albeit, we have it in his own words, that he was from the first with the " patriots," and the honest reason of his being so: — "I might have adhered to the king had I been a general; being a subaltern I joined the patriots 1" He felt, however, very slight personal respect towards the general mob of patriots, for happening to be dining with 206 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. Bourienne, at a restaurateur's, in the Rue St. Honore, Paris, when about five or six thousand of them rushed past shouting and cursing towards the Tuilleries, he sprang up and made after them, exclaiming to his companion, — " Suivons cette canaille la? He thus witnessed the brutal humiliation of Louis XVI., in being compelled to put on the bonnet rouge, and drink the nation's health at the bidding of the ruffians in whose power he had weakly placed himself. Bonaparte's surprise and indignation were unbounded, " Che Coglione /" he exclaimed to Bourienne, " why did they admit that rabble ? They should have swept away five or six hundred of them with cannon, and the rest would be running still." He was, moreover, thoroughly convinced from that moment that the unfortunate monarch was a doomed man. To return, how- ever, to the young Napoleon's more personal history. In 1791, his ire was greatly excited against one Butafuco, a major-general, and representative of the Corsican nobility in the French National Assembly, against whom he forthwith launched a furious pamphlet, in which it was made to appear that the major-general had corruptly betrayed the interests confided to his care. One hundred copies of this pamphlet were sent to Corsica, where it had the honour of being adopted and re-published by the Patriotic Society of Ajaccio. Although written in Napoleon's usual spasmodic, out-of-breath style, yet as offering the very best specimen of his literary efforts extant, a rather lengthened quotation may be accept- able. The concluding vocative paragraph contains, by the way, a curious assemblage of names to be addressed by Napoleon Bonaparte : — " Sir, — From Bonafacio to Cape Cossa, from Ajaccio to Bastia, there is one chorus of imprecation against you. Your friends keep out of sight, your relations disown you, and even the man of reflection who does not BONAPARTE. 207 allow himself to be swayed by popular opinion is for once led away by the general effervescence. But what have you done? What are the crimes to justify such universal indignation, such complete desertion ? This, Sir, is what I wish to inquire into in the course of a little discussion with you." It appears, however, that there was no need of inquiry; the major- general's iniquity having been already published in very striking type, — so, at least, says the ferocious pamphleteer : — " The history of your life, since the time at least when you appeared upon the stage of public affairs, is well known. Its principal features are drawn in letters of blood!" After lacerating the culprit till there is really no spot on which to lay an additional lash that is not already streaming with gore, the unappeased young Corsican contrives to vary the infliction by assailing the wretched major-general through his wife, after this fashion : — " And you, respectable unhappy woman, whose youth, beauty, and innocence were vilely prostituted, does your pure and chaste heart beat under a hand so criminal? In those moments in which nature gives an alarm to love — in those moments you press to your heart, you become iden- tified with the cold and selfish man who has never deviated from his character, and who in the course of nearly sixty years has never known anything but the care of his own interests, an instinctive love of destruction, the most infamous avarice, the base pleasures of sense. By and by the glare of honours, the trappings of riches will disappear ; you will be loaded with general contempt. "Will you seek in the bosom of him who is the author of your woes, a consolation indis- pensable to your gentle and affectionate mind ? Will you endeavour to find in his eyes tears to mingle with yours? Alas! if you surprise him in tears they will be those of remorse ; if his bosom heave, it will be with the convulsions 20S EXTRAORDINARY MEN. of the wretch who dies abhorring nature, himself and the hand that guides him ! Lameth ! O Robespierre ! O Petion ! O Volney ! O Mirabeau ! O Baviere ! Lafayette ! this is the man who dares to seat himself by your side! Dripping with the blood of his brethren, stained by every sort of vice, he presents himself with confidence in the dress of a general, the reward of his crimes !" Such effusions as these diminish one's surprise at the aver- sion Napoleon I. manifested towards literature and literary people, he could hardly have endured to look them in the face. Happily, too, for the young officer of artillery, his advancement in life did not depend upon his pen, nor upon the higher attributes of intellect, but simply upon an unusual mastery of the mathesis which teaches how overwhelming numbers may be with the greatest rapidity and certainty directed and concentrated upon a given point. Supreme knowledge, no doubt, as the world goes, or at least, has hitherto gone ; and in 1792, Lieutenant Bonaparte accom- plished his second step in the only path where such a power could be profitably available ; he having in that year obtained a captain's commission by priority, in the regiment of Gre- noble. Promotion and patriotism, it is grievous to be obliged to add, agreed ill with each other, and as usual, the weaker power gave way in the struggle. The Convention placed a large reward upon the now aged and venerable Paoli's head, who was defending his country as zealously against Robespierre's myrmidons as he did against the armies of Louis XVI.; and Captain Bonaparte, in the interest of democracy — liberty, of course, — they were his polar stars, — fought against Paoli ■ and Corsica ! Admiral Truguet landed a large force upon the island, and Captain Bonaparte was despatched from Bastia, with orders if possible to sur- BONAPARTE. 209 prise Ajaccio, ids native city. He landed a portion of his forces in the Gulf from the frigate placed at his service, captured the Torre de Capitello, nearly facing the town, but being immediately invested by the Corsican forces, he was compelled to re-embark with precipitation upon the return of the frigate, after having blown up the Torre de Capitello. Shortly after this the Bonaparte family were banished from Corsica, and the mother of Napoleon, with two of her daughters, took refuge at Marseilles. Not long afterwards Fate summoned Napoleon Bonaparte to Toulon, and there caught him in the resistless and tumul- tuous tide by which he was floated, whirled on to empire and to exile. In these pages we do not accompany him thither, and have only to remark in conclusion, how very singularly, ominously, the youth of this extraordinary man prefigures, not perhaps the catastrophe, but at all events the views and pur- poses of his life, and the means, — Force ! Fear ! by which he alone sought their accomplishment. The glory and grandeur of France, it is clearly manifest, only grew precious in his eyes when they became synonymous with his own; and even the national vanity, which he regarded as a prime element of Force, was carefully cultivated but in one direction, — that which tended to swell his own pride. " The cries of the dying," he exclaimed, in his letter to General Paoli, " the groans of the oppressed, the tears of despair, were the com- panions of my infancy." Ay, and history will be compelled to add, the remorseless multiplication of those cries, those groans, those tears, was the chief occupation, and constituted what men call the fame of his manhood. Much more might be said, did not the long agony of Saint Helena, borne with no more fortitude than the school-boy penance at Brienne, sorrowfully entreat silence ; and awaken in the coldest 210 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. breast, a compassionate sympathy for the fallen Emperor, which it may be doubted he ever felt for one human being — save himself. " Posterity will do me justice," were his frequent exclamations as the night of Death gradually over- grew and darkened the sad gloom of captivity. " Posterity will do me justice !" There can be no question but it will ; neither, spite of ephemeral appearances to the contrary, is there any doubt that the posterity which will pronounce that final and irreversible decree of justice, is very near at hand. It may be as well to mention that no document quoted in this paper was derived from the wonderful contents of the sealed box, which so wonderfully came to light some dozen years ago, containing numberless manuscripts and note books written by the deceased Emperor, when a lieutenant of artil- lery, which showed that he had contrived to master every kind of knowledge, with the exception of grammar and orthography, — and every variety of composition — epic, his- toric, romantic, pastoral, critical, scientific and statistic. One of the geographical common-place books, concludes with an unfinished, and certainly very remarkable sentence in Lieu- tenant Bonaparte's own hand, thus : — " Sainte Helene, petite He ." To which had there been added, " ou je mourrai le 6 Mai, 1821," the fabrication would not have been one whit more palpable nor more audacious. -e^^gggS^^- LORD BYRON. I" ORD BYRON'S notorious pride of birth was, there can -" be no doubt, a perfectly legitimate one, according to the received definition of the kind of ancestry which entitles an individual to boast of being descended from them. The Byrons, or Burens, are mentioned in Domesday Book ; they fought at Cressy; again, with Richmond against Richard at Bosworth Field. Harry VIII. presented them with the abbey and lands of Newstead, Nottinghamshire, and Charles I. created the head of the family, Baron Byron, of Rochdale, Lancashire ; in gratitude for which honour the Byrons fought valiantly on the monarch's side, at Marston Moor, and other battles of the time, and fortunately escaped unscathed, or at 212 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. all events with life, from the unrespecting swords of the par- liamentarians. The wide gap in the genealogy of the race, from Edward III. to Henry VII., the facile imagination of their poet- descendant had no difficulty in partially filling up, from a slight hint afforded by a number of dimly- visible Saracenic looking figures, painted upon some old panels in one of the chambers of Newstead Abbey. Several of the unchronicled chiefs of the family were, he decided, crusaders who had led their vassals to Palestine and perished there ; and this painted scrap of domestic history, in which a female of fine eastern features is conspicuous, recorded some traditional episode of the war against the Paynim — the rescue, probably, of the lady from death, or other extreme peril, by the half-extin- guished Byrons by her side. Plain, prosaic Mr. Gait, how- ever, bluntly asserts the painting to be neither more nor less than a representation of the story of Susanna and the Elders, executed, it may be reasonably supposed, for the delec- tation of some devout abbot of ISTewstead, desirous of having the punishment which follows such evil courses constantly before his eyes. Be this as it may, it is quite certain that the line of Byron does not improve as it draws nearer to our own time, and the figures in the procession become visible by the common light of day, instead of through the heraldic mist which, often charitably, intercepts and subdues the glory of great barons, to the more fastidious taste of the present generation. Two, especially, of the latest of the race, the immediate predecessors of him whose genius has conferred an undesirable immortality upon their else long since forgotten names, are a bitter commentary upon the pride of birth, when solely founded upon the fiat of the Heralds' College j — a matter only touched upon here, because without doing so, it is impossible fairly to appreciate the late Lord Byron's boyhood, BYRON. 213 or the after life of which that boyhood was the forecast shadow — impossible to comprehend how thoroughly adverse were the influences which surrounded him in his earlier years to the wise government and genial development of a natu- rally noble and generous, but wilful, capricious, and impulsive temperament and disposition. t Let us take the period of 1784, four years previous to the noble poet's birth. The fifth Lord Byron was then living in grim seclusion, at Newstead Abbey, which, in contempt or disregard of the interest of the apparent heir — a grandson — he permitted to fall to wasteful ruin. In 1765, this lord had been tried by his peers for the wilful murder of his neighbour and kinsman, Mr. Chaworth, of Annesley Hall, and acquitted of the charge ; a verdict which the opinions of those most familiar with the precedent and accompanying circumstances of the case did not ratify. The duel, as it was called, took place suddenly, in a kind of chance-medley, but there had been bad blood between the parties, and, justly or unjustly, Mr. Chaworth was held by the whole country-side to have been purposely taken at a disadvantage, and unfairly slain. Finding himself looked upon in this agreeable light by his neighbours and former friends, the homicide lord passed the remainder of his life in solitary gloom, each passing year leaving him more and more selfishly eccentric, morose, and unapproachable. His nephew, Captain Byron, was a hand- some, fashionable man of the world : a successful roue, who had accomplished the brilliant achievement of seducing the Marchioness of Carmarthen, with whom he eloped to the con- tinent, and whom on the passing of a divorce bill at the instance of the frail lady's husband, he married — the only honourable act known of Captain Byron ; although one can hardly believe that there were not some unspoken of redeem- .214 EXTRAORDINAEY MEN". ing points in his life, which might, if repeated, weigh against the testimony of his recorded deeds. The re-married divorcee died, after giving birth to a daughter, Augusta Byron, subsequently Mrs. Col. Leigh ; and Captain Byron had once more, as he believed, an opportunity of extricating himself from the abyss of debt in which he was involved, by the help of some confiding heiress, whose hand his handsome person and glozing speech might enable him to obtain. The unfortunate lady in whose favour he ultimately decided, as fulfilling the necessary conditions, was Catherine Gordon, " a short, fat person," of high Scottish lineage, and, much more to the purpose in Captain Byron's opinion, possessed in bank-shares, fishing rights and landed property, of a hand- some fortune. Her father, Mr. Gordon, of Gight, was a descendant of Sir William Gordon, the third son of the Earl of Huntley, by the daughter of James I., — the blood conse- quently, on both sides was of the purest and highest quality. Captain Byron's addresses were immediately successful, and the marriage took place — not, however, before the bride had been over and over again warned of the wretched fate that must inevitably await her as the wife of such a man ; but when was the glittering mirage of a love-gilded future spread before the eyes of a fond, trustful woman by a master in the .art, sensibly disturbed, much less dissipated, by advice, however earnest, eloquent, or disinterested? An utterly unblest union it indeed proved — resulting even worse than the old Scottish ballad, quoted by Mr. Moore, predicted : — " where are ye gaen, bonny Miss Gordon, O where are ye gaen sae bonny and braw? Te're married, ye're married wi' Johnny Byron, To squander the lands o' Gight awa'." But a brief season elapsed before the lands o' Gight, bank- shares, fishing rights, were indeed squandered, and all that BYKON. 21 remained of the bride's once ample income was an annuity of .£150, and the reversion of £1,112, upon the death of her grandmother. In 1786, the year after marriage, the ill-mated couple went over to France, whence Mrs. Byron returned alone in the autumn of 1787, and took lodgings in Holies- street, Cavendish-square, London, where George Gordon Byron, the future lord and poet, was born on the 22nd of January, 1788. At the baptism of the child, one of whose feet had been accidentally twisted at the moment of birth, the Duke of Gordon, and Colonel Duff of Feterosso, appeared as sponsors. Early in 1790, Mrs. Byron removed to Scotland, where she was joined by her husband, for there was still a chance that something more might be wrung out of the poor pittance left his wife for the maintenance of herself and son, and for a short time they lived together in Queen-street, Aberdeen. Captain Byron next took apartments for himself, in the same street, and after having induced Mrs. Byron to encumber herself with debt on his account to the amount of £300, the interest of which sum reduced her income to £135 a year, he finally quitted her, passed over to Yalenciennes, and died there in 1791. When to this brief notice of the home in which the future poet was born and cradled, it is added that Mrs. Byron, though much more sinned against than sinning, was an ill-educated, violent-tempered person, with more than the ordinary pride of high lineage, and none of the graces of manner with which it is usually accompanied, the chances in such a home-atmosphere of the favourable develop- ment of a child of high gifts and impressionable volcanic temperament, may in some degree be estimated, as well as the powerful reasons which the late Lord Byron had for pluming himself upon his birth. Yet let us not be induced 216 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. by compassion for a noble spirit so grievously misplaced to pass too harsh a judgment upon a grossly-wronged and outraged woman. She dearly loved her son withal, and her son, spite of the bitter and contemptuous terms in which he sometimes addressed and spoke of her, loved his mother. The expression of her fondness was as vehement and passion- ate as that of her rage and fury. At one moment he was " a lame brat," the next he was bid never to forget " that he might be a lord;" now, in her "hurricane rages" she would heap blows and curses upon him, — and immediately after, melting into fondness, half stifle him with kisses, and vow " that his eyes were as beautiful as his father's." Amid such scenes, in actual poverty, and a shadowy-coronet constantly dangling before his eyes, becoming more distinct in his sixth year, when the grandson of the homicide lord died at Corsica, the subject of tins memoir passed those early years which stamp impressions seldom effaced by the wear and tear of the roughest after-life, much less by the silken pressure of an idle, self-indulgent one. When five years of age, he was sent to a day-school in Aberdeen kept by a man of the name of Bower, where he barely achieved in a twelvemonth the knowledge of his letters, the cost whereof was precisely one pound, five shillings per quarter. He was then placed under the Reverend Mr. Ross, a Scottish clergyman, who taught him to read ; Mr. Paterson, the son of his mother's shoemaker, initiating him in the rudiments of Latin ; and soon after intelligence arrived that by the death of the grand- son he had become presumptive heir of an ancient English barony, he was admitted to the Free Grammar School of Aberdeen, where he still remained when by the death of the old lord, on the 19th of May, 1798, the long-coveted coronet descended upon his boy-brow, he then being in his eleventh BYRON. 217 year. "Mother," lie half-breathlessly exclaimed as lie ran into her room in the first blush and excitement of his new dignity, " Mother, do you see any difference, — do I look like a lord 1 ?" The next day at school the proud thought glowing in his brain found a different expression. Upon the boys* names being read over, his own was called as Dominus Byron, the usual reply, " A dsum," would not come, — was choked in the tide of conflicting emotions that welled up from his swelling heart, — and he burst into a passion of tears. The Earl of Carlisle, a distant relative of the young lord on the Gordon side, consented to act as his guardian, and Mrs. Byron, having sold her furniture by public auction, realizing thereby the magnificent sum of seventy pounds odd, left Aberdeen with her son, to take possession of Newstead Abbey. As if fortune was now determined to make thorough amends for previous disfavour, his Majesty George III. affiliated Mrs. Byron about this time to the pockets of the British people, by royal patent, securing her three hundred pounds per annum, payable from the public treasury. Before following the exultant mother and son to Newstead it is necessary to jot down the indications of character mani- fested by young Byron during his residence at Aberdeen. The distortion of his foot, occasioning a slight lameness, appears to have made from his earliest days of consciousness a painful impression on his mind, sometimes displayed in out- spoken passion, as when a lady meeting him in the street with his nurse said, " What a pretty boy, and what a pity he has such a foot." He shook his child's whip at her, and exclaimed with a passion of tears — " Dinna — dinna speak of it;" whilst upon other occasions, the same morbid feeling vented itself in jocular bitterness, — as when, seizing the arm of a boy lamer than himself, he exclaimed to his mother and p 218 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. others within hearing, " Come and see the two laddies with the two club feet, ganging up the Broad-street." His " silent rages," to use the phrase he himself applied to the tempests of pent-up passion that could not vent themselves in words, though clearly enough revealed by his swollen veins, stone-pale face, and flashing eyes, relieved themselves by strange acts at times. In one of these fits of wordless fury, he one day, when the merest child, upon being blamed for soiling his frock, tore it with his tiny hands deliberately to rags. When about six or seven years of age, he himself relates that it was necessary to wrench a knife from him by force which he had turned against his own breast ; and there is still pre- served at Aberdeen, as a precious relic, the saucer which he bit a piece out of when under the influence of these " silent rages." Yet amidst all the fierceness of temper and obdurate defiance of his mother's menaces, and often actual violence, he was easily led by kind and gentle words. For this we have the authority of Mary Gray, his nurse, for whom he always expressed great regard, and who was strongly attached to him ; and many years afterwards, when he was approach- ing manhood, Dr. Pigot, who observed him closely, confirmed Mary Gray's testimony. — "Few people understand Byron, but I know that he has a naturally kind and feeling heart, and that there is not a particle of malice in his composition." Mary Gray used to read the Bible to him, the Psalms especially, the 1st and 23rd of which, she induced him to learn by heart; and long afterwards, in mature life, he attributed the delight he had in reading the Old, not the New Testament, to those readings of Mary Gray's in 1796. Other impressions of the same year retained a lasting hold of his mind. He accompanied his mother to the Highlands in the neighbourhood of Ballater, about forty miles up the Dee BYROtf. 219 from Aberdeen, and was greatly struck by the magnificent scenery thereabout, particularly Lochin-y-gair, towering with his dark diadem of clouds above the giant mountains crowd- ing upwards in endless perspective towards the Linn of Dee; and when upon a short visit at his godfather's, Colonel Buff of Feterosso, he became desperately enamoured of the " clear white brow, dark brown hair, and hazel eyes of Mary Duff" — a child of about his own age, which was eight. His mother's servant, whom, not being able to write sufficiently well him- self, he tormented into penning love-missives in his name to the adorable Mary, thought him crazy; and well she might, especially after witnessing the behaviour and conversation of the two sweethearts in the children's apartment; the boy expressing bis violent admiration of the girl, and she, at every pause he made to take breath, tinning compassionately to her younger sister Helen, and regretting that she too had not an admirer, an article so much superior to the doll she was so apparently contented with ! Lord Byron recurs in his letters to this singular passage in his boyhood, to express his utter inability to account upon any rational hypothesis for his violent admiration at such an age of a child like himself. " How very odd," he writes, " that I should have been so devotedly fond of that girl;" and he graphically describes the resuscitation of the sentiment after it had lain dormant in his mind for upwards of eight years. " Oh Byron," said his mother one day, when he was in his seventeenth year, " I have a letter from Edinburgh, and your old sweetheart, Mary Duff, is married." At hearing this, her son burst into a paroxysm of tears and frenzied grief, which so alarmed Mrs. Byron, that she took care not again to mention Mary Duff's name in his presence. The explanation of all this is perhaps less difficult than his lordship imagined. The emotions p 2 220 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. excited in his mind by the solemn music of the Psalms, — the magnificent Highland scenery, — and the clear brow, dark brown hair, and hazel eyes of Mary Duff, are all referable to the same source — a strong newly-awakened sense of beauty, — the beauty of harmony, colour, expression, — the dawn of the poetic faculty — " That from without all lovely things we see, Extracts emotions beautiful and new," emotions entirely apart from the fervid selfishness of passion, in the ordinary sense of the word. His frenzied behaviour when Mrs. Byron unexpectedly announced the young lady's marriage, is ascribable to another cause. At that very time his heart was darkened with the shadow of the only woman, Miss Chaworth, for whom throughout his life he felt deep, genuine, fervent love, in its true power and meaning ; and the fear, changing hourly to certainty, that " even now she loved another," must have been throbbing painfully in his brain, when the sudden tidings of one whom he had loved, or thought he had, having been united to another, echoed, imaged, embodied that fear ; and what his heart fore- boded, not that which his ear heard, betrayed itself in an agony of passionate despair. This at least seems to be a rational solution of what else would be an utterly inexplicable psycho- logical phenomenon. In glancing over the days passed at Aberdeen, Lord Byron remarks that he especially remem- bered the old bridge near that city, and its mysterious inscription — "Brig o' Balgownie, wight is thy wa', "V\T ae wife's son, and a mare's ae foal Down shalt thou fa'," which it would appear made him dread to cross it, albeit BYRON. 221 once fairly thereon, he would hang with childish delight over the parapet, gazing into the swift stream beneath. He was certainly "a wife's ae son," bnt not being mounted upon "a mare's ae foal," the fear seems rather an unreasonable one, and was probably an affectation or an after-thought. It should be added that his lordship exhibited much boxing pugnacity at the Aberdeen Free Grammar-school, thrashing most boys of his own size, and that his pride of peerage exhibited itself whilst there in many ways — a growing pro- pensity, which not long afterwards obtained for him the sobriquet of "The Old English Baron," from his constant iteration of the immense superiority of an ancient lordship over a new creatiom In fact, the extreme liberalism, the elaborate contempt of Britain and the British aristocracy, displayed in many of Lord Byron's writings, were thoroughly unreal, — the grossest shams ever tricked out in gorgeous verse. Newstead Abbey, upon the arrival there of Mrs. Byron and the little boy from Aberdeen — the phrase latterly employed by the deceased lord when speaking of his pre- sumptive heir — accompanied by Mary Gray, was found to be in a sad state of dilapidation, and lodgings were taken in Nottingham, where a quack of the name of Lavender tor- tured the young peer's foot to no purpose, till the Earl of Carlisle suggested that Dr. Baillie should be consulted ; for which purpose chiefly, Mrs. Byron at once removed to London ; and the skilful treatment of the unfortunate limb so far succeeded that Lord Byron wrote in great exultation to Mary Gray's sister, who had been his first nurse, to announce " that he had at last got a common boot on." His lordship, soon after his arrival in London, was placed with Dr. Glennie, of Dulwich, a judicious teachei, whose efforts to 222 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. remedy his pupil's defective education were marred by Mrs. Byron's capricious interference, spite of the Earl of Carlisle's repeated remonstrances, who, finding it useless to contend with such a self-willed violent person, threw up the guardian- ship in disgust. In 1802, Byron went to Harrow, which he says he hated, where he acquired the reputation of a bold, roystering boy, the head of all rows against the townspeople and masters, and eager and industrious enough in the acquirement of knowledge, except what was taught in the settled curriculum of the school. He had an especial talent for oratory — declamation rather — but no one suspected him. of the slightest genius for poetry, and his first English verse- exercises, the translation of a chorus from the " Prometheus " of Eschylus, was received with marked coldness by the head- master, Dr. Drury. Lord Byron's Harrow reminiscences include the late Sir B. Peel, and suggest a comparison between his own attainments and those of that distinguished individual. "There were always great hopes of Peel, amongst us all, masters and scholars, and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar he was greatly my superior; as a de- claimer and actor, I was reckoned at least his equal; as a schoolboy out of school, I was always in scrapes, he never; and in school he always knew his lesson, I rarely ; but when I knew it, I knew it nearly as well. In general information, history, &c, I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my standing." There is an anecdote connecting the same names, and not related by his lordship, though highly honour- able to him. It must have occurred soon after his arrival at Harrow, at which time he was in his fourteenth year. A brutal fellow, whose name is not given, claimed the privilege of fagging little Peel, who resisted, but was beaten into sub- mission, and that he might not be tempted to rebel again, BYRON. 223 his tyrant inflicted a kind of bastinado upon the inner fleshy part of his victim's arm, twisting the limb as he did so in such a way as to cause the greatest amount of pain possible. Byron stood by, but feeling it would be useless to attempt fighting the burly brute, asked with tears in his eyes, and a blush of rage upon his cheeks, how many stripes Peel's tor- mentor intended to inflict. " Why, you little rascal, what is that to you?" was the reply. « Because," said Byron, " if you please, I will take half." In 1801, Byron's school vacation was passed with his mother at Cheltenham; in 1802 they were at Bath; in 1804 at Nottingham; and in 1806 at Southwell. At Cheltenham the distant view of the Malvern hills revived in his mind with augmented intensity the enthusiastic wonder and delight first awakened by the mountain scenery of the Highlands; and oddly enough the Mary Duff mania revived at about the same time also, more warmly-coloured than its predecessor. This time it was his cousin Miss Parker's " dark eyes, long eye-lashes, completely Greek cast of face and figure, looking as if made out of a rainbow, all beauty and peace," that tem- porarily excited his fancy, caused "his first dash into poetry," and hindered him for several weeks from "eating, sleeping, or resting." This feeling subsided long before the charming being who called it forth passed from earth, about eighteen months afterwards. Miss Parker died of consumption. His half-sister, Augusta Byron, told him that upon his name being suddenly mentioned in the presence of the dying girl, " she coloured through the paleness of mortality," — a proof to him that his beautiful cousin had reciprocated his boy- fancy. At Bath he accompanied his mother to masquerades and other scenes of fashionable dissipation; and 1803-4 wit- nessed the commencement, progress, and catastrophe of his 224 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. acquaintance with Miss Mary Anne Chaworth. His mother had taken lodgings at Nottingham, but Lord Grey de Ruthven, to whom Newstead Abbey was let, had always an apartment kept ready for him, and he usually slept there after passing the day at Annesley Hall, walking about the grounds in dreamy reverie, or shooting at a target, except when, attracted by the sound of the piano, he would steal into the music-room, and sit gazing with wet, gleaming eyes at Miss Chaworth — especially when the beloved voice gave melodious utterance to the plaint of unrequited love in the ballad of "Poor Mary Ann." Mr. Moore suggests that the name accounts for Byron's partiality, but was it not rather the sentiment of the ballad echoing his own misgivings — " He she loved her passion slighted, Broken all the vows he plighted — Therefore, life no more delighted," which constituted its chief and enthralling charm? Miss Chaworth was eighteen years of age at this time, — that is, a woman, — and Byron sixteen only, — a mere boy in age and appearance, however precociously virile in sentiment and passion, and it is not at all surprising, therefore, that his shy, dreamy, inarticulate, though entirely unmistakable manifes- tations of devotion, excited the young lady's mirth, and in- duced her to amuse herself by sporting with a feeling which she no doubt imagined could have neither root nor per- manence. Byron formed one of a party, including Miss Chaworth and her cousin, in an excursion to Castleton and Matlock. He has described one of the incidents of this pleasure-trip thus : — " A. cavern in Derbyshire I had to cross, in a boat in which two people only could lie down, a stream which flows under a rock so close upon the water that the boat had to be pushed on by a ferryman, who stooped BYRON. 225 m m the while. The companion of my transit was M. A. C, with whom I had been long in love, and never told it, though she had discovered it without. I recollect my sensations, but I cannot describe them, and it is as well." In the summer evenings at Matlock, they had dances on the greensward ; an exercise in which Miss Chaworth excelled and greatly de- lighted, but whereon her lame boy-lover could only gaze, as he sat apart from the gay revellers, in moody bitterness and dejection. Not long after returning to Annesley Hall he overheard the gay-spirited beautiful girl say, in reply to a remark from her maid — " Do you think I care anything for 226 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. that lame boy ?" The bite of a serpent, the stroke of a dagger, could not have occasioned a more terrible shock, than this contemptuous comment upon his aspirations, barbed too by a jeer at the deformity which had ever been the cankering curse of his existence. Night as it was, he ran bareheaded from the house in a state of distraction, and did not pause till he reached Newstead Abbey, where in the silence and dark- ness of his chamber he could give free course to the tumult of rage, mortification, and despair by which he was convulsed and maddened. A day or two restored his outward calm, and when he took his final leave of her K who was the star- light of his boyhood," he said, with not more than ordinarily- betraying emotion — ■ I suppose when I see you again you will be Mrs. Chaworth f — it being, it would appear, the cus- tom in Nottinghamshire fbr the husband to assume the wife's name during the first months of married life. " I hope so," was the gay reply — a hope realized the following year, when she married Mr. Musters. " Byron," said Ms mother, when the intelligence reached her in 1805, " I have news for you." " Well, what news ?" " Take out your handkerchief, first." " Pshaw !" " Take out your handkerchief, I say." He did so, to humour her. " Well, then, Miss Chaworth is married." He became deadly pale for a moment, and a strange ex- pression gleamed in his eyes; but after an instant or two he said, " Is that all f " That all !" echoed the mother, " why, my God, Byron, I expected you would have been over- whelmed with grief." Mrs. Byron was not a very acute observer. The outward expression of anguish had been fore- stalled by the passion of tears into which he had been sur- prised a few months previously by Mary Duffs marriage ; and he was upon his guard now. In 1805, Lord Byron left Harrow for Cambridge TJniver- BYRON. 227 m sity, passing the vacation both of that and the following year at Southwell. The quarrel between the mother and son had become more envenomed, outrageous than ever. Dishes, cups, glasses, were the least formidable missiles wielded by the lady in her hurricane rages; a poker being quite as readily made use of, if at hand. To such a pitch of rage had they at one time exasperated each other by mutual taunts and revilings, that they both sought the village apothecary — Mrs. Byron to cau- tion him not to sell her son poison, and the son to give the same warning with respect to his mother ! The years of Lord Byron's boyhood may now be said to have terminated. " One of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life," he writes, " was to feel that I was no longer a boy." The publication of the " Hours of Idleness," and the mocking criticism of the volume by the " Edinburgh Review," had the effect of suddenly developing his lordship's fierce poetic fervour and keen sarcastic powers, and thenceforth his life was a prolonged duel with society, against which he ceased not during life to launch the arrows of his eloquent melancholy scorn. The evil influences of his early life, imperfectly portrayed in this brief notice — unchecked pride, distempered passion, the bitterness of un- requited affection — projected their baleful shadow over his whole existence ; and a mighty genius, that in happier circum- stances might have illumined and blessed the world with light from heaven, has served only to dazzle and mislead mankind by meteoric flashes of lurid fire — the trace of which is too often marked by ashes, desolation, nun, and moral death ! THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. rpHE circumstances attendant upon the birth of this illus- -*- trious soldier on the 1st of May, 1769, at Dangan Castle, county of Meath, Ireland, at which date, and where, there ean be no reasonable doubt, notwithstanding certain plausi- bilities to the contrary, the Duke of "Wellington was born, were hardly of a nature to suggest that a very brilliant future awaited the newly-arrived stranger. The castle, a roughly- "built, poorly-furnished stronghold of a previous and much ruder age, belonged only nominally to the child's father, Garret, the second Earl of Mornington, who had long since encumbered the family estates, not very extensive when they came into his possession, beyond all reasonable hope of extri- cation ; the title, which in this country stands a young man in excellent stead of a fortune, by enabling him to wed one, WELLINGTON. 229 was already bespoken by Richard Wellesley, or Wesley, as the name was then written, a healthy elder brother; and even the snug little borough of Trim, a constitutional heir- loom of the family's, which might be turned to good account in the Irish parliamentary market, would of course also fall to the lot of the said Richard till the demise of his father, the present Earl, called him to the Upper House. The military profession, that unfailing resource in happier times of the younger branches of noble families, moreover presented just then an extremely doleful prospect, it being the almost universal conviction that the glorious peace concluded some six years previously had closed the Temple of War, for a century to come at least. In truth, if Ave look at the actual circumstances of the time, at the apparent condition of the world, in the hero-producing year 1769, it will be seen that the confident predictions of the peace- prophets of that day were, upon the whole, very reasonably based. The English States of America, relieved of the dangerous and exasperating presence of their long-time pugnacious neighbours, the French, were still brimful of loyalty to the parent country, whose arms had mainly brought about that desirable consummation. France was dancing, singing, boasting, bowing, with her usual vivacity, grace, and sprightliness beneath the time- consecrated regime of the elder Bourbons; the successes of Clive had dissipated the peril which at one time appeared to menace the peaceful pursuits and modest establishments of English merchants trading to India; the '45, experience clearly proved, had finally disposed of the Stuart dynastic danger, — in short, it was manifest to everybody except a few rusty-brained, old-world fanatics, that the elements of inter- national hatred and strife which had so long clouded the political horizon were dispersed, or in rapid process of be- 230 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. coming so, and the long pined for day of universal brother- hood and peace, in which men should beat their swords into ploughshares, their spears into pruning hooks, and not learn war any more, was at length dawning upon mankind with brightest promise. The future of this child, this Arthur Wellesley, therefore, would appear to have been somewhat of the dismalest, unless, indeed, he should prove of a serious turn of mind, in which case Trim might perhaps help him to a rectory, with a bishopric within approachable distance. Not long, alas, did the wisdom of men and ministers permit the philanthropic dreamers of the world to indulge in the beatific visions they had conjured up. Arthur Wellesley had but just passed his sixth birth-day when the echoes of Bunker's Hill came booming over the Atlantic to proclaim that an unjustly-attempted impost of threepence per pound upon tea had sufficed to rekindle the fires of national strife, and create new opportunities for the exercise and sustenance of that military chivalry which a great orator has assured us is not only the chief defence of nations — a quite debateable proposition — but the nurse of every manly sentiment and heroic enterprise. A French poet says, "Napoleon Bona- parte leapt exultingly in his mother's womb at the sound of the cannon which proclaimed the annexation of Corsica to France." If this be true, it is plain that, supposing Arthur Wellesley to have been gifted ever so inferiorly to his great rival with prophetic sympathy, the Plantagenet blood flowing in his veins must have been instantly kindled to a flame as the preluding signal of the giant strife it was his destiny to wrestle down, (it was the flaming brand caught from the American conflagration which exploded mined and volcanic France,) pealed over the waters from the Western hemi- sphere ! At all events we knov^, that about this time, Lord WELLINGTON. 231 and Lady Mornington arrived at the satisfactory conclusion that the military profession was not, after all, such a hopeless one as it had been represented, and that a pair of epaulettes would consequently be a sufficient as well as an easily obtain- able provision for lithe, combative, plain, — Lady Morning- ton's accustomed expression was a more decided one, — little Arthur. The blood of the Plantagenefcs is at any rate no fiction, whether informed by prophetic instinct or not, as gentlemen versed in genealogies, and who it should seem do not think the greatness achieved by the stern, sagacious, heroic warrior, sufficient for his glory, unless gilded by the prestige of royalty, have distinctly proved. They demonstrate the Duke of Wellington to be a blood-relative, — a distant one, no doubt, of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, — by descent from King Henry I., surnamed Longshanks. The evidence appears satisfactory, and further that the intermediate links of the long chain of light descending down are almost all Irish. They hold together as follows : — Lady Elizabeth Plantagenet, youngest child of Edward I., became Countess of Hereford, and her daughter married the first Earl of Ormonde, Pierce ; the eighth Earl of Ormonde's daughter, Helen Butler, es- poused Donogh, second Earl of Thomond, and had issue, Lady Margaret O'Brien, who became the wife of Dermod, Lord Inchiquin ; the honourable Mary O'Brien, daughter of the fifth Lord Inchiquin, married Michael Boyle, Archbishop of Armagh, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, by whom she had a daughter, Eleanor Boyle, who married the Right Honour- able "William Hill, M.P., and was grandmother of Anthony Hill, first Viscount Dungannon, whose daughter Anne, Countess of Mornington, was the mother of Arthur, Duke of Wellington ! 232 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. The Saxon lineage of the great Duke, shews poorly by the side of this Hibernian ancestral roll, and, worse than all, cannot be clearly traced beyond the Colleys or Cowleys of Rutlandshire, of whom two brothers, Robert and Walter Colley or Cowley, migrated to the county Kilkenny, in the reign of Henry VIII. Those clever gentlemen first managed to secure the clerkship of the crown for their joint lives, and subsequently Robert obtained the Mastership of the Rolls, and Walter the office of Solicitor-general. A descendant of these astute lawyers succeeded by will to the property of the Wellesleys or Wesleys of Dangan Castle, with which family the Cowleys were previously connected by marriage, assumed their name, and was created by George II., Earl of Mornington. As if to bring the comparative shabbiness of the English line into more prominent relief, an enthusiastic delver amidst collateral issues turned up Colley Cibber, whom he calls " the eminent dramatist and poet," amongst the Rutlandshire Colleys, and forthwith dispatched the gratifying intelligence to the " Times" newspaper, that Colley Cibber, the hero of the " Dunciad," and " Poet," who communicated an odour to the laureate wreath, which it will require many Words- worths and Tennysons thoroughly to dispel, was ancestrally associated with the Duke of Wellington and Prince of Waterloo ! The duke's own opinion of the value of all or any such industrious researches in his honour, would probably have been pretty much the same as that expressed by Napoleon Bonaparte's brusque reproof of the Austrian genea- logists, who had suddenly made the important discovery that the proposed son-in-law of their emperor was descended from Rodolph of Hapsburgh, through some of the princes of Treviso; — "Bah!" exclaimed Napoleon, "my patent of no- bility dates from the battle of Monte Notte !" WELLINGTON. 233 Passing from heraldic speculations to sober biographic verity, we find that the Duke's immediate progenitors, the first and second Earls of Mornington, were both distinguished for musical ability. His grandfather, the first earl, played the violin admirably ; and the son, his grace's father, not only attained very early proficiency upon the same instru- ment, but became a composer of skill and taste, of which the lasting popularity of the glee, " Here in cool Grot," is perhaps more conclusive evidence than the degree of Doctor of Music conferred upon his lordship by the University of Dublin. The Duke of Wellington inherited his father and grandfather's love of harmony, though not the capability of producing it ; as his constant attendance at Her Majesty's Theatre, and muni- ficent patronage of musical festivals, concerts, oratorios, &c, sufficiently prove. Literature — English literature, more especially, does not appear to have been cultivated or cared for by the Mornington family — except, perhaps, by Richard, afterwards Marquis Wellesley — but as to the Duke himself, there is irresistible evidence in his Despatches, vigorously as they are written, that his education in respect of high-class English literature was entirely neglected, or that he himself had an insuperable aversion to such studies. M. Capefigue has remarked, that the word " glory" is never used in the " Wellington Despatches," whilst that of " duty" is of constant occurrence; a very complimentary discoveiy, though not intendedly so on the part of the Frenchman ; and it is not the less true and remarkable, though not at all complimentary, that you may search those volumes in vain, not alone for quotations from the great English writers, but for any turn of thought or expression indicative of any, the most super- ficial, acquaintance with them. The Duke's style is unques- tionably an admirable one — lucid, terse, full ; and the Des- Q 234 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. patches, witli insignificant exceptions, are models of military composition, that irresistibly impress the reader with a lively sense of the Duke's vigorous sagacity, astonishing prescience in all matters connected with the writer's professional duties, and stern, resolute will and firmness ; but not one passage whereof, can withal be remembered without a special exertion to do so; and for the simple reason that it is only the intel- lect that is addressed, — imagination, sentiment, by which alone memory is, without effort, made prisoner, never ! Nelson was the reverse of the Duke in this respect ; and because he was so, his great signal is as far removed in its sublime sim- plicity from the cold propriety of Wellington's orders of the day, as from the stilted fustian of Bonaparte's. The names of the Duke of Wellington's home preceptors, if he had any, which is not likely, have not been preserved, and at the age of ten he was at the Rev. Mr. Ganer's school at Chelsea, where, says the " British and Foreign Review," published in 1840, Arthur Wellesley, unlike boys of his age, was never seen to play, but generally came lagging out of the school- room into the playground ; in the centre of which was a large walnut-tree, against which he used to lounge and lean, observing his schoolfellows who were playing a variety of games around him. If any boy played unfairly, Arthur quickly gave intelligence to those engaged in the game : on the delinquent being turned out, it was generally wished that he should supply his place, but nothing conld induce him to do so : when beset by a party of five or six, he would fight with the utmost courage and determination until he freed himself from their grasp ; he would then retire again to his tree, and look about him as quiet, dejected, and observant as he had been before." There is a sentimental air about this anecdote which sadly WELLINGTON. 235 takes away from its credibility ; and another which relates to a slightly subsequent period in the Duke's boy-life, whilst it satisfactorily disposes of the "quiet, dejected, observant," fiction, is marred by the embellishments that have evidently been tacked for effect to the authentic story of a stout fight for marbles : — " Arthur Wellesley, and his elder brother, afterwards the Marquis of Wellesley, passed much of their boyhood at Brynkinhalt, in North "Wales. Whilst there they chanced one day to meet a playfellow, David Evans, Q 2 236 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. and his sister, returning from school. Arthur Wellesley challenged David Evans to a game at marbles, which was accepted, and the sister walked on. She had not gone far when her brother shouted lustily for her to come back to his assistance, as Arthur Wellesley, he said, had cheated him out of his marbles, and refused to give them up. The girl instantly returned, sided with her brother, and both fiercely assaulted the alleged wrongful possessor of the marbles. Arthur Wellesley was about twelve, the girl ten, and her brother two years younger; and Richard Wellesley per- formed the part of spectator of the fight, of which Arthur soon had the worst, and was fain to hand over the marbles and beat a hasty retreat, with tears in his eyes." This may be all true enough, with the exception of the tears, which, however, are not so absurd an invention as another statement of this "authoritative" anecdote, to the effect that the Marquis Wellesley found time whilst Governor-General of India to write to David Evans " reminding him of their games in boy- hood." That the Duke himself as the writer goes on to state, when passing through Denbighshire in 181o, inquired at Brynkinhalt for David Evans, and recognised him as his old playfellow, has a greater smack of likelihood about it ; and it is moreover declared that both the victors, David and his valiant sister, in this the Duke's first recorded battle, are still living at Brynkinhalt. The Earl of Mornington died at Kensington on the 22nd of May, 1781, and with the consent of her son the new lord, Lady Mornington, a woman of energy and resource, took upon herself the sole and active superintendence of the terribly embarrassed pecuniary affairs of the family. Arthur Wellesley not long afterwards accompanied his elder brother to Eton, where he did not very long remain, nor greatly distinguish WELLINGTON. 237 himself, not having passed the fifth form when he left. A practical jest of some humour played off upon Lady Dungannon during the Eton holidays, has been attributed to the Duke, though we suspect its paternity was exclusively Lord Mornington's. Both the brothers, it appears, were invited to pass their holidays with Lady Dungannon, who was residing in Shropshire, and it was agreed by way of producing an agreeable sensation in her ladyship's mind, to inform her that their sister Anne had run off with a footman. Lady Dungannon was of course terribly shocked, but the boys entreated her not to divulge the unfortunate occurrence, as it was possible their sister might be overtaken and brought back again. Lady Dungannon promised compliance, but found herself unable, upon paying a visit to Mrs. Mytton, an intimate friend and neighbour, immediately afterwards, to confine the sad intelligence to her own bosom ; and on her return she threw her juvenile visitors into convulsions of merriment by gravely exclaiming, " Ah, my dear boys, ill- news travels apace. Will you believe it ? Mrs. Mytton knows already all about poor Anne ! " An incident which shews the future Field Marshal in a clearer and more genuine aspect, inasmuch as it reveals a glimpse of the unyielding patriotism and soldierly spirit of hardihood and daring by which his after life was distinguished occurred about the same time. News of the surrender of the British army under Lord Cornwallis, at York Town, to the combined American and French forces commanded by Washington, had reached England, and amongst the nume- rous rumours and on dits published by the newspapers in connexion with that humiliating event, was one subsequently confirmed by Colonel Tarleton, — one of the most enterprising and successful officers employed in the King's service during 238 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. the American war of independence, — that lie, Colonel Tarleton, had offered, previous to the surrender, to break through the beleaguering force and join Sir Henry Clinton, whose delay in hastening to the relief of the troops in York Town appeared unaccountable, if Lord Cornwallis would grant him two thousand men only. The colonel's request was not complied with, and a day or two afterwards the surrender was accomplished. Lord Mornington found his brother one morning looking very pale and excited, with a newspaper contaiuing this intelligence crumpled in his hand by the vehemence of hik emotion. " It's quite true, Morning- ton," exclaimed Arthur Wellesley, the moment he saw his brother : " Tarleton, had he been allowed, would have spared us the disgrace of the York Town capitulation ! " At the close of the war with the United States and their European allies, Lady Mornington proceeded on a short tour to the continent, taking her family with her, with the excep- tion of Lord Mornington, who had quitted Eton for the University of Oxford. Arthur Wellesley, who was sup- posed to have acquired as much book-education as a soldier stood in need of, special studies, in those days, not being con- sidered essential, in England, as a qualification for the mili- tary profession, accompanied his mother with the rest, to France, for it should seem no other purpose regarding him except as helping to pass away the time as agreeably as possible, till he obtained a commission. Fortunately, the pleasure-party passed by Angers, in the department of the Maine and Loire, France, where the military college of Douay, a sister establishment to that of Brienne, was situated. The mathematical and artillery section of the school was under the direction of Pignerol, an experienced officer, and Lady WELLIXGTOX. 239 MorDington having upon inquiry ascertained the terms for board and instruction to be within compass of her very slender means, the earnest wish of Arthur Wellesley to become a student of the establishment was, with some reluc- tance, acceded to. He was placed for two years under the care of Pignerol, and the carriage party proceeded on their pleasure trip. All that is known of Arthur Wellesley at Douay is, that he was a decorous, tractable, pains-taking young man, and diligent in acquiring a minute acquain- tance with the practical details of the profession he had chosen, more than in studying its theory. At the end of the stipulated term, he returned to England ; it would appear, somewhat unexpectedly to Lady Mornington, whose first intimation that he had left France, was the decisive one of seeing him at the Haymarket theatre, causing her ladyship to exclaim, almost angrily, " I do believe there is my ugly boy, Arthur." No time was lost in applying for a commission, for which, as a matter of course, the brother of the Earl of Mornington, and as it was now agreed in family council, the representative of the borough of Trim, in the Irish parliament, at the earliest possible moment, had not long to wait, and Arthur Wel- esley was gazetted ensign in the 73rd regiment, on the 7th March, 1787, — he being then within about two months of his eighteenth birth-day. His promotion was unusually rapid, and it was not long before he was captain in the 58th regiment, aid-de-camp to the Earl of Westmoreland, lord- lieutenant of Ireland, member of parliament for Trim, (1790,) and grievously in debt — not, indeed, to any ruinous amount, for his habits could hardly be called extravagant ones, — but more than his captain's pay, which was his only pecuniary 240 EXTRAORDINARY HEX. resource, would enable him very easily to liquidate. Neither his mother nor Lord Mornington could render him any efficient aid, and he might have been put to considerable in- convenience, but for the voluntary assistance tendered by a boot-maker, on Lower Ormonde Quay, Dublin, where he lodged. The proffered loan was thankfully accepted, repaid as speedily as possible, and as soon as Captain Wellesley's parliamentary influence could be brought to bear, the lender's generous confidence was rewarded by the bestowal of a lucra- tive situation upon his son. Captain Wellesley, member of parliament for Trim, is described as " a ruddy-faced, juvenile-looking person," dressed in a scarlet uniform, with very large epaulettes. " His address," remarks Sir Jonah Barrington, " was unpo- lished j he spoke occasionally, and never with success, and con- veyed no promise of the unparalleled celebrity he afterwards obtained." As the unparalleled celebrity Sir Jonah alludes to, was neither legislative nor oratorical, it is difficult to understand how it could possibly have been presaged by the most brilliant parliamentary display. As to the juvenile member's political opinions, they belonged, like the borough for which he sat, to the family, — and as regarded parlia- mentary reform, were, and very naturally, of a decidedly un- compromising kind. Captain Wellesley parenthetically ex- pressed them with great energy of tone and manner, upon the occasion of presenting a petition in favour of some relaxation of the penal statutes in force against Roman Catholics, which he believed might, to a certain extent, be safely conceded. A previous speaker had mixed up the question of Irish parliamentary reform, quite pertinently there can be no doubt, with that of Irish emancipation, a dangerous asso- WELLINGTON. 241 ciation, which the member for Trim warmly rebuked. " Should that question," (of reform in parliament) exclaimed Captain Wellesley, "be introduced, I would strenuously oppose it." Forty years afterwards, the Duke of Wellington repeated the same sentiment with equally decisive emphasis — the Duke's consistency of opinion upon that important subject cannot therefore be gainsaid, however much its policy and wisdom may be disputed. Happily for Arthur Wellesley's fame, it was not long before he was summoned to a more fitting arena for the exer- cise of the rare faculties with which nature had bountifully gifted him, than the floor of the Irish House of Commons. Before, however, leaving Ireland as Lieutenant-colonel of the 33rd regiment, — so swift had been his ascent in military rank, — to enter upon the career in which he was to win immortal renown, he took the precaution, though not pressed, or liable to be pressed by legal process, to provide for the payment in full of his debts in all eventualities. To this end he executed a deed assigning to Mr. Dillon, woollen draper, of Parliament-street, Dublin, as much of his profes- sional income as he could possibly spare, in trust, for equal distribution amongst his creditors, till their claims were dis- charged with interest ; and at the same time insuring his life in the capital sum of his debts. Mr. Dillon willingly accepted the trust, faithfully fulfilled it, and Lieutenant-colonel Wellesley, to use his own expression, embarked for Holland " with a clear conscience." Albeit the Duke of Wellington was greatly favoured by the accident of aristocratic connexion and influence, his start in life, it will have been seen, was beset with difficulties that might have permanently discouraged ordinary men j and al- 242 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. though it may be that but for his brother's occupancy of the influential position of Governor-general of India, opportu- nities of distinguishing himself would not have been so readily obtained, it is still manifest, that under any conceivable cir- cumstances, a man of such prompt] energy and resource, of such sleepless industry, clear penetration, resolute, unshrink- ing will, politically masked by an impassive, marble exterior, must have made himself felt, sooner or later, and decisively, wherever the destiny of nations was to be decided by the sword or by diplomacy. A magnificent general there can be no doubt, amongst sane men, that he was : in every attribute that goes to the formation of one unsurpassed if not un- rivalled, — sudden, impetuous, fierce as flame if an essential purpose might be thereby advanced, — and on the contrary, motionless, immoveable, refusing tempting battle, patient, deaf as iron to taunts of timidity or want of enterprise, did his long-meditated, unswerving game require such apparent inaction. No question, it may not moreover be inap- propriate to remark in conclusion, — no question that there were very many great occasions in the Duke's great life, to which only commanding military genius was equal, — but it is wonderful to observe, as any one easily may for himself, by only a cursory examination of the Despatches, what immense results in the aggregate were obtained by the Duke, solely in virtue of the habits which he had sedulously culti- vated from his boyhood, — early rising, strict attention to details, — taking nothing ascertainable for granted, — unflag- ing industry, and silence, except when speech was necessary, or certainly harmless. " I will take care to be here punc- tually at five to-morrow morning," said the architect of New London Bridge, in acceptance of the Duke's request that he WELLINGTON. 243 would meet him at that hour on the following morning. " Say a quarter before five," replied the Duke with a quiet smile ; " I owe all I have achieved to being ready a quarter of an hour before it was deemed necessary to be so ; and I learned that lesson when a boy." SIR ROBERT PEEL. HI HE sure refuge which ib has so long been the privilege -*- and glory of this country to afford men fleeing from the spiritual and temporal despotism of the continent has been in many ways abundantly rewarded ; and not the least of the material benefits derived from that wise and generous policy was the introduction into England, not long after the revoca- tion of the Edict of Kantz had rendered France an unsafe abode for those of her children who were too honest and courageous to surrender their consciences into the keeping of the State, of greatly improved methods in the art of calico printing, the rapid development of which branch of industry, from but the other day in the life of nations, is one of the most notable facts of an age of marvellous industries. PEEL. 245 Some families from the south, of France associated and esta- blished themselves upon the banks of the Thames, and by the processes they had invented or improved, produced printed stuffs which commanded a very high relative price in the market ; and as a matter of course set numerous active brains at work to discover the mode or modes by which those grace- ful and ingenious designs were effected and multiplied with such ready, unexceptionable exactness. Failure and disap- pointment, as might be expected, attended the first gropings of English experimentalists in search of the golden and jealously-guarded secret of the foreigners, and amongst the earliest of those who by force of ability and perseverance were ultimately successful, not in pirating the processes of the French establishment, but in printing calico with a skill, economy, and expedition, which finally drove the fabrics of the Thames printing-works out of the market, was a Mr. Peel, of Fish-lane, Blackburn, Lancashire, a reputedly- crotchetty person, and projector of a score or two of broken- down experiments in mechanics and chemistry, who, wise men said, had much better devote his attention to the culti- vation of his small farm in the neighbourhood of the town, than be perpetually throwing away time and money in the search after new-fangled schemes and devices. Mr. Peel was, however, not a man to be deterred by failures, however fre- quent and exasperating, from following out any new whim or project which chanced to flit across his scheming brain, and the new art of calico printing appears to have very early taken firm hold of his mind. His first successful experiment was a " Parsley Leaf," which he engraved upon a pewter plate, and transferred in colour to a piece of cloth; Mrs. Milton, a next door neighbour, performing the calendering process with a flat smoothing iron, the experimentalist 246 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. having chosen to make the venture in the temporary absence of his family, who had witnessed the falling through of so many abortive schemes. An essential condition of commer- cial success in addition to a sharply-defined, vivid impression of the pattern was, that the mordent used should so bite in the colours, that they would resist the dissolving action of soap and water : in this, too, it was found, the experiment had succeeded to admiration, and Parsley Peel, as he was afterwards called, exclaimed, with a shout of exultation, that " he was a made man." No time was lost in turning this great success to account ; the farm and stock were disposed of, and weaving and printing works on a small scale erected at Brookside, near Blackburn, where Mr. Peel's energy, skill, and perseverance, reinforced by the zeal and industry of his three sons, speedily laid the foundation of the splendid fortunes of the Peel family. Mr. Peel was constant in his efforts to perfect the mechanical processes of his art ; and readily adopted all new and promising methods which the inventive genius of the country — once thoroughly aroused to the importance of the new industry, for such essentially it was — soon placed at his service ; and he was the first, it is said, to recognise and avail himself of the advantages offered by the cylindrical carding machine. It was noticed that Robert, the third and youngest son, and esteemed the most practical and earnest-minded of them all, evinced, soon after attaining his majority, a marked in- clination to spend such leisure as was permissible at the house of his mother's brother, Mr. Haworth, near Bury, and it was not very long before he sought an opportunity of re- spectfully suggesting to his family that the works of Brook- side, flourishing as they were, could hardly be so extended as PEEL. 247 to suffice for the eligible placement in life of all the sons, and that for himself he should prefer taking his chance in an independent position, if his father would assist him in that object. In fact, his uncle, Mr. Haworth, had intro- duced him to Mr. Yates, whom they had all formerly known as the landlord of the " Black Bull, 1 ' Blackburn, who had lately erected print-works on the Irwell, but had succeeded very poorly as yet, for want of practical knowledge of the business. Mr. Yates would, he, Robert Peel, had reason to know, admit him as a partner, and success, in that case, both believed to be certain. Much hilarity followed this announcement, which was, nevertheless, finally acquiesced in, and soon afterwards Robert Peel set off for Bury, entered into partnership with Mr. Yates, and by his skill, activity, and judgment, the firm of Yates and Peel speedily acquired a high degree of prosperity. Advertisements for skilled and unskilled workpeople of both sexes were placarded over the country, and very soon waggon-loads of paupers and children were amongst the numerous arrivals which came pouring into Bury, in search of the sudden El Dorado that had sprung up in its neighbourhood. Cotton-spinning and weaving were added to calico-printing, — the entire process of the cotton manufacture, in fact, from the pod to the piece, from the bale to the ball-dress, was carried on upon a vast scale, first at the Irwell works, and afterwards at Burton- upon-Trent, and Tamworth, by Robert Peel himself, who, moreover, had in the mean time espoused Miss Yates, the eldest daughter of the senior partner, a circumstance, the anticipation of which no doubt caused the hilarity at Brook- side, when the youngest son first proposed leaving the pater- nal roof, in search of fortune, and requiring a word or two in this place. 248 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. The remarkable prosperity of the works at Brookside, aiding the general mania just then prevalent for embark- ing in the calico-printing business, in which it was believed a man possessed of some capital, and who had his head properly screwed on, could hardly fail of realizing a splendid fortune, had induced Mr. Yates to dispose of the " Black Bull," and invest the whole of his means in the Irwell printing works. The sp3culation would, however, as did many others of a like kind, have proved a dismal one, but for the subtile influence from which cotton mills are no more exempt than cottages. Robert Peel, upon calling on Mr. Yates, in company with his uncle, Mr. Haworth, met there with the graceful little girl he had often noticed playing about the Black Bull Inn, Blackburn, so wonderfully im- proved in both person and mind, that he at once mentally determined that she should be the wedded partner of that future greatness, which he had for a long time felt, or affected a presentiment he was determined to achieve. When the time came for asking the lady's consent to this long-since foregone conclusion, she proved nothing loth to share Mr. Robert Peel's already prosperous fortunes. They were married amidst much jubilation ; and on the 8th of July, 1788, Mrs. Peel gave birth, at a cottage near Chamber- Hall, Bury, which was just then under repair, to a son, the Robert Peel whose name is now a household- word in every English home. Prom childhood, Robert Peel was destined by his father to be a statesman, after the pattern and example of Mr. Pitt ; or rather, to speak correctly, after the pattern and example of the father's interpretation of Mr. Pitt's career and policy, — a very different matter. This early aspiration for the future political greatness of his eldest born was naively expressed, PEEL. 249 by the first Sir Robert Peel, in the House of Commons, just before his distinguished son rose (1819) to move his celebrated currency resolutions, and acknowledge with the heroic candour natural to him that the notions with which his mind had been previously indoctrinated, more extended experience and a closer study of the subject had convinced him were untenable. " I have mentioned," said the elder Sir Robert, who spoke with sorrow, not anger, of his son's resolute self- emancipation from one of the strong prejudices in which he had been sedulously nursed and trained, " I have mentioned the name of Mr. Pitt. My own impression is certainly a strong one in favour of that great man. All of us have some bias, and I always thought him the first man of the country. I well remember, when the near and dear relative (his son) I have alluded to was a child, I observed to some friends that the man who discharged his duty to his country in the manner Mr. Pitt had done was the man of all the world the most to be admired, most to be imitated; and I thought at that moment that if my life and that of my dear relative should be spared, I would some day present him to his coimtry to follow in the same path." The sincerity of this garrulous gossip may not be questioned, but the honour- able baronet was not sufficiently far-sighted to discern the true and essential direction of Mr. Pitt's gigantic footsteps, — ■ mistaking as he did that great minister's temporary and necessity-compelled aberration from the course he would fain have pursued, for its chosen and permanent direction, — much less to guide his son aright in that perilous, lofty, and ambi- tious path. Indeed, in one very essential point the first Sir Robert Peel differed openly and entirely from Mr. Pitt, — that of the repression of the slave-trade, which the patriotic baronet held to be, in conjunction with inconvertible paper- 250 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. money, essential to the prosperity of the British people, and the maintenance of the British throne and constitution. The currency maxims in which he educated his son were those of Mr. Yansittart, and his own — (he published a pamphlet entitled "The National Debt, a National Blessing") — not Mr. Pitt's ; and the intolerance which he untiringly inculcated with reference to the admission of Catholics to equality of civil privilege, was of Lord Eldon's school, and entirely opposed to the liberal views upon that point of Chatham's celebrated son. In nothing, in fact, did the first Sir Robert Peel comprehend or resemble Mr. Pitt, save in his ardent, enthusiastic, indomitable pride and love of country, and earnest devotion to what he believed to be the truth, — which great attributes, powerfully developed in his son, ultimately sufficed, as the world knows, to wither up and annihilate the educational prejudices with which they were for a time asso- ciated and obscured. Within the narrow circle of those prejudices did the well- intentioned baronet confine as strictly as child and boy nur- ture might, the generous and plastic intellect of his son. The extravagant influences of the menacing, unquiet time, strengthened those home-teachings. The war with France, which, whatever may be said of its origin, had become, when young Robert Peel was capable of appreciating the position of the country, an implacable, uncompromising- struggle for national existence ; and it is a remarkable fact that the unquailing, stubborn opponents of French con- tinental domination, who persisted, never abating for an instant one jot of heart or hope in foretelling that war's ^triumphal issue — by which result, to use Lord Eldon's signi- ficant expression, " England gained all that she had not lost,'* were chiefly to be found amongst the high-flying Protestant PEEL. 251 ascendancy, " last ditch and last guinea" class of politicians to which the elder Sir Robert Peel belonged. He had, in fact, obtained (1797) his baronetcy — the first step on the road of titled distinctions leading to the peerage which he was sanguine his son, if not himself, would reach — by the munificent subscription of <£10,000 to the Patriotic Fund, set on foot to aid the government in carrying on the war with vigour and resolution, and other services in a like spirit, such as the raising and organizing the Bury "Volunteers, to whom Master Robert Peel, when about thirteen years old, was intro- duced in the full uniform of a lieutenant, unattached, by his exulting father, the colonel, in a spirited speech, which was received with great applause, the more fervently hearty, perhaps, that the peroration consisted, essentially, of an invi- tation to dine, as the guests of the orator, at the principal inn, immediately after the arduous duties of the field were con- cluded. Robert Peel was intrusted with the toast of " No Surrender !" which appears to have had reference, in this instance, to the negotiations which ended in the truce of Amiens, and acquitted himself in a way that elicited a tornado of approbation, huskily joined in by the gratified father, who could only ejaculate brokenly in reply to the numerous handshaking congratulations of his friends, — " Yes — yes, thank you — thank you — an English boy — an English boy — to the back bone, you may depend." Practical Sir Robert had long before this clearly discerned, with those shrewd eyes of his — limited and earthward as their range might be — the immense power which the ability to address public assemblies effectively confers in this country on its possessor, and had anxiously cultivated that faculty in his son from a very early age ; not by causing him to acquire merely declamatory skill in recitation, that is taught at every e 2 252 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. ^Jl principal school, is easily acquired, if no physical disqualifica- tion exist, and is of very slight world-service. Sir Robert per- sonally exercised his son in marking the points and pith of a speech or discourse ; made him repeat, in his own language, the substance of what he had heard ; and when differing from the argument that had been used, reply to it, parentheti- cally, as he went on ; accustoming him, in short, to think tipon Ms legs, and give facile unlaboured expression to his PEEL. 255 thoughts as they arose naturally in his mind. This practice commenced by Sir Robert engaging the boy attentively to mark the Sunday morning's sermon, as much as possible, men- tally, and making notes only of the sequence of the discourse and argument, which he had afterwards to repeat, recomposing the sermon, and delivering it with appropriate emphasis and action, whilst standing before his father in the library, or, in fine weather in a retired part of the grounds of Chamber Hall. To this admirable discipline for an ambitious orator the late Sir Robert Peel was no doubt much indebted for the unaffected ease and grace of his manner and attitude, as well as for the astonishing readiness and facility of his replies, in which not the slightest opening presented by a previous adverse orator was forgotten or left unassailed by the brilliant arrows of an argumentative acumen never surpassed, and but seldom equalled. The invincible attachment to truth to which the Duke of Wellington, himself one of the truthfulest of men, bore such emphatic testimony in the House of Lords, a few days after the untimely death of his right honourable friend and col- league — " My Lords, in the whole course of my acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel, I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had a more lively confidence," — characterised in an equal degree young Robert Peel, not merely in disdainful avoidance of expressing falsehood, but in open, voluntary con- fession of any wrong, neglect, or error of which he might have been guilty. The rapidity and ease with which he mas- tered the mechanics of education, — grammar, arithmetic, languages, &c, — gave earnest of the success he subsequently achieved at Harrow and Oxford; and it may be mentioned as a proof of the young man's native sagacity and clear- sightedness in detecting the true character of social cobwebs, 254 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. however speciously coloured, to which he was not authorita- tively blinded, so to speak, by filial affection and reverence, that Mr. Robert Owen, who was upon somewhat intimate terms with his father, arising from similarity of views to a certain trifling extent with regard to infant labour in factories, whilst entertaining a favourable opinion of the Baronet's general sagacity, formed a decidedly low estimate of the intellectual capacity of his eldest son. It would have been strange had he not done so, inasmuch that it could hardly be possible that some gleams of the keen intellect which, when only partially freed from parental and educational mystification, tore the pompous fallacies of parliamentary currency-doctors to shreds and tatters, should not have re- vealed to the dullest, least observant eyes its irreconcilable antagonism with the feeble anility of a mind which had dis- covered a panacea for all human ills, in the governments of the earth driving its inhabitants into communistic parallelo- grams, and banishing Faith from amongst them. Robert Peel at Harrow has been partially depicted by his form-fellow Lord Byron, who, in remarking upon " Peel, the orator and statesman that is, or is to be, of whom they all, master and scholars had great hopes," admits that the said Peel was his lordship's superior as a scholar, equal to him as a declaimer, but in general information inferior to the noble lord, an assertion which, viewed by the light of the subsequent careers of the celebrated and distinguished Peer and Com- moner, seems about as vain-glorious a self-trumpeting as one often meets with. His lordship's condescendent air, too, when writing of such a man is not a little amusing, and was,, perhaps, unconsciously influenced by the habitual tone which in those days was held, by the scions of hereditary nobility, with regard to the offspring of the cotton parvenus who were PEEL. 255 beginning to settle down upon the ancient seats of learning like a cloud. This exclusive haughtiness of feeling was early marked and understood by Robert Peel, and gradually in- duced in him the cold, unfamiliar, almost repellant reserved- ness of manner, forbidding familiarity, which, first adopted as a defensive expedient, grew at last to a habit never put off in his intercourse with official colleagues, especially when of a higher social rank than his own, and only entirely thrown aside when in the presence of his family, of a tried and close friend like the Duke of Wellington, or when offering a help- ing hand, accompanied by kindliest words, to the struggling or unfortunate child of genius. From Harrow, Robert Peel went to the University of Oxford, where he distanced all com- petitors, though amongst them were Mr. Gilbert, afterwards Vice-chancellor of the University, — Hampden, since Regius Professor of Divinity, and Archbishop Whately, obtaining, when he took his degree, double first-class honours, first in classics and first in mathematics — the only time in the history of the University that such a triumph had been achieved. The political party then dominant were not unobservant of the brilliant promise manifested by " Pitt the younger," as Robert Peel, in consequence of his father's garrulous indiscre- tions, confidentially as we have seen communicated in later life to the House of Commons, began to be called in certain coteries. He would, they saw, bring genius, eloquence, industry, fresh enthusiasm to a cause seldom more in need of such aids, and care was taken to bind him by influences which have almost irresistible potency over generous natures to the chariot wheels of the Tory and Orange parties. He was returned immediately he was eligible to sit in Parliament for the borough of Cashel ; his first speech, an eloquent and 256 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. prophetic denunciation of Bonaparte by the way, was uproar- iously applauded by the habitues of the Treasury benches, and more substantially rewarded by the offer of the under-secre- taryship of the colonies, by the minister, Mr. Perceval, which he accepted, not long afterwards exchanging it for the chief secretaryship of Ireland, whose Orange magnates courted, nattered, feted, toasted the young official in the most extrava- gant fashion. Orange Peel they delighted to call him, — and even his squeamish prudishness, as it was deemed, in refusing to participate in the orgies of Dublin Castle, was excused in consideration of his presumedly intractable and unswerving adherence to the good old constitutional creed symbolized in the shibboleth of the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of King William III., by whom these islands were happily rescued from popery, slavery, brass money, and wooden shoes. It was at this period of Robert Peel's life that his some- what ludicrous quarrel with Mr. O'Oonnell occurred. The Irish agitator, who had taken in high dudgeon some expres- sions uttered by the Irish secretary in the House of Commons retorted by saying, that the raw, red-headed stripling squeezed out of the workings of a cotton factory, known as Orange Peel, would not have dared utter to his, Mr. O'Connell's, face what he had stated in the safe security of the House of Com- mons. This imputation upon his courage, the youthful secretary replied to by a challenge, which was accepted by Mr. O'Connell ; but that gentleman's wife, having received a hint of what was going on, caused her husband to be arrested and bound over to keep the peace towards all the king's lieges in Ireland. It was next arranged at Mr. Peel's instance that the duel should take place out of the country, and the Irish secretary passed safely over to Ostend for that purpose. Mr. O'Connell was not so fortunate. He journeyed PEEL. 257 by way of London, and when he arrived there, was ai'rested by a warrant from Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough, and bound over to keep the peace towards every body, at all times, and in all places. It was in reference to this duel manque, that Lord Norbury delivered himself of a once much quoted jest. " I am afraid, my lord," said Mr. O'Connell, who was arguing a matter of importance in one of the four courts before that judge, who appeared purposely inattentive, — " I am afraid your lordship does not apprehend me." " Oh yes, quite so !" quickly rejoined the judge in bitter jest ; " and indeed nobody is more easily apprehended than Mr. O'Connell, when lie wishes to be!"" An opportunity of forging and riveting the final link which should bind young Peel for ever to the school of politics in which he had been sedulously trained, soon occurred, and was eagerly seized upon with that view. The representation of the University of Oxford became vacant, and although Mr. Canning's long services on the same side would seem to have entitled him to the prize — one which he had always ardently coveted — his claims were, in some sort, contemptuously ignored by the chiefs of the party in favour of Robert Peel, upon whom the honour, entirely unsolicited, was conferred by acclamation. There was no longer any apprehension felt that this young and vigorous champion — sprung from the people, and certain to be more effective, therefore, in defending exclusive privi- lege — would ever suffer himself to be seduced into the deceitful paths of moderation and liberality, and for some time the harmony of the ranks of intolerance was undis- turbed. Gradually, however, the most astute and keen-eyed of the party began to see that their leader and champion worked uneasily in the glittering fetters by which he had 258 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. been bound, and which sure enough at last, and one by one, were cast off and trampled beneath his feet — personal emi- nence and power — patronage almost without limit— the leadership of a great and triumphant party, and finally the Premiership of Great Britain ! Death surprised him, not, it may be said, untimely, for his public life-task closed with that, his last and greatest immolation of self, to what the voice of Truth, which he had ever willingly obeyed when distinctly heard, proclaimed to be his duty, and he expired amidst the yet frantic Babel-hubbub with which the crown- ing act of his political existence had been received ; a brief, unworthy clamour, long since rebuked into silence by the myriad voice of a nation in grateful repetition of the trumpet sentence which history had already inscribed upon the stain- less monumental memory of Robert Peel :■ — " He has left a name which will be ever remembered with expressions of good-will in the abodes of those of his countrymen whose lot it is to labour and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because no longer leavened by a sense of injustice." LOUIS PHILIPPE. THE opinion which now appears to be generally entertained of a monarch whose firm rectitude and super-human sagacity were the theme but a few years since of so many eloquent tongues and pens, may perhaps be the true one, — that Louis Philippe, after all, was a man without convictions, who held that to be right which promised to be successful, whose vaunted wisdom was at best an agile adroitness in dealing with or eluding present and ordinary circumstances, and utterly without elevation to foresee an adverse and for- midable future, or energy to grapple with it when it came ; but a prince born in the purple, and reared in the go-cart of a spurious liberalism, contemned by the loyalty of his country because of his restless proximity to a throne already 260 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. shaken by the democracy upon whose shoulders alone he could hope to reach it, and instinctively distrusted by that democracy for the same reason, and who, moreover, had the misfortune to be educated by sentimental Madame De Genlis, after the mode suggested by Rousseau's u Emilie," should be excused and forgiven much. It may be that a prince of great originality and vigour of intellect and strength of pur- pose, might have obtained firm footing amidst the shifting sands by which the heir of Egalite was environed, upon the strong piles of his own resolute will, but this was utterly beyond the power of a mind like that of Louis Philippe, — flexile, ready, adaptive, keen, but not far-reaching ; quick- witted, but not wise, such a man so placed must almost needs have been alternately the weed and foam of the vexed ocean of circumstances upon which he was cast — never wholly engulfed, and borrowing ephemeral elevation and brightness from the motion of the capricious elements by which he was alike sustained and controlled. To have issued triumphant or blameless from such a position required either a hero or a saint, and as Louis Philippe, although by no means deficient in personal courage, or in the ordinary mora- lities of society, was assuredly neither the one nor the other, whatever of folly, incompetency, weakness, error, may be discerned in his chequered history, — especially during the first twenty years of that life of vicissitudes — ought not in fairness to be severely judged, save by those who are themselves conscious of possessing the heroic or saintly qualities that would have carried them victoriously through the arduous conflict, — a limitation which must ensure an enormous majo- rity of charitable suffrages for the youthful career of which the following is a brief and faint, but faithful outline. Not only does the contrastive Rembrandt colouring which LOUIS PHILIPPE. 261 pervades the history of Louis Philippe, early display itself, but the antagonistic polemics of friends and enemies which distort and obscure almost every important incident of his life meet us at its very threshold. He was the eldest son, writes the courtly historiographer of the Orleans family, of Louis-Philippe Joseph d'Orleans and Louise Marie Adelaide de Bourbon, daughter of the Due de Penthievre, and was born at the Palais Boyal, Paris, on the 6th of October, 1773, named Due de Valois, and baptised three days afterwards by the Priest- Almoner of the household, in the presence of his father, mother, and two valets, though not christened till his thirteenth year, when the sponsors were Louis XVL, aud his Queen Marie Antoinette. There are grave reasons for questioning the authenticity of this pretender's birth, respond the fanatics of the elder Bourbon party, who lend eager cre- dence to any imputation — the fouler, the more acceptable — upon the character of a Duke of Orleans who could vote with the regicides of the convention for the death of Louis XVI. The child of which the Duchess of Orleans was deli- vered on the 6th of October, 1773, was a girl, which, without the knowledge of its mother, was exchanged at its birth for a boy, the son of one Chiappani, a jailer of Modigliana, a village of the Apennines. Tins strange allegation was actively sustained in 1823-4, after, it is well to note, Louis Philippe, then Duke of Orleans, and sole surviving son of Egalite, had mortally offended the partisans of the elder Bourbons by propagating doubts of the reality of the widowed. Duchess de Berri's accouchement of a son, the present Henry V. of the legitimists; and quite a plausible prima-facie case was made out in its support. The Duke and Duchess of Orleans, it appears, were travelling in the neighbourhood of the Apen- nines, in 1773, the lady at the time being in delicate health ; 262 EXTKAOEDIJTAEY MEN. and the Duke, who already contemplated the succession to the throne with a wistful and evil eye, was extremely anxious for a male child, and a healthier one than his duchess was likely to give birth to. An arrangement was accordingly entered into by him with Chiappani, to the effect that if the jailer's wife, a fine healthy woman, who looked to be confined a few days earlier than the duchess, should give birth to a son, it was to be forthwith brought to Paris and exchanged for the Bourbon offspring, if either a female or a weakly boy. The duchess having given birth to a daughter, and Madame Chiappani to a robust son, the infamous bargain was consum- mated, and the genuine child of the house of Orleans sent off by its tiger-hearted father to tend goats in the Apennines ! In support of this charming story, a lady known as Maria Stella Petronilla, by marriage Baronne de Steinberg, nee Joinville, suddenly appeared and claimed to be the daughter for whom Chiappanfs son, Louis Philippe, had been substi- tuted; armed, moreover, with a solemn record or judgment of the august tribunal de Paenza, dated May 29, 1824, — how obtained, Heaven, the lady, and the legitimists know best, — in vindication of the story substantially as just related. The matter created some star in Paris, and Louis Philippe was said to be much annoyed thereat, but as the Baronne de Steinberg proved to be unmistakably mad in other respects than her claim of Bourbon descent, the affair fell through, albeit to this day a legitimist, pur sang, believes in the verity of the Baronne's narrative as firmly as that Henry V. has an indefeasible right to govern the French nation after the good old fashion of the ancie?i regime ! The Due de Yalois was not, however, the only son of Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orleans and his duchess. Two others were born to them, — the Dues de Montpensier and de LOUIS PHILIPPE. 263 Beaujolais, and two princesses, one of whom, Marie Adelaide, it will be remembered, died a short time only previous to her brother's dethronement and exile. The education of the Due de Valois was for the first eight years of his life directed by the Chevalier Bonard, but the progress made was so little satisfactory, that the Duke, his father, determined to place him and his brothers under the educational control of Madame la Comtesse de Genlis, who had already the prin- cesses under her charge at the Chateau de Belle Chasse, situate in the garden of the convent of that name, to which it com- municated by a covered way. Madame de Genlis appears to have been at first somewhat startled by the Duke's proposal, but after a few moments' reflection, doubts of her own powers adequately to discharge such important functions entirely vanished; and being, in addition, exceedingly desirous of training up men children after the Rousseau model, she accepted his highness's offer, and the King's con- sent having been given to the arrangement, — cheerfully, says Madame de Genlis, — with pain and reluctance, writes the Chevalier Bonard, who was extremely indiguant at being so unceremoniously superseded, and by a woman too! Madame entered at once upon her duties as " governor," not governess, of the Orleans children, for a salary of twelve thousand francs per annum, — apartments, board, &c, and a promise of the " cordon bleu" when her mission was accomplished. The Lady-governor had almost a virgin soil to cultivate in the minds of the young princes, wherein nothing but a few coarse weeds, which it took even her skilful and vigorous hand much time and pains to eradicate, had as yet taken root and germinated. "They knew nothing," Madame writes; " and M. le Due de Valois, who was eight years old, displayed an unheard-of want of application. I began by a 264 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. few lectures on history, but instead of listening, he stretched himself and yawned, and I was strangely surprised at the first lecture to see him loll back in the sofa whenever we were seated, and place his feet upon the table before us." M. le Due de Yalois was immediately placed en penitence, in chastisement of so gross an exhibition of ill-breeding and tasteless indifference to the lady-lecturer's historical disquisi- tions, and from that moment, finding he was under a more stringent discipline than that of the Chevalier Bonard, he quietly submitted to Madame's " firm but reasonable rule," and began to make way with his studies. He was instructed by competent masters in Greek, Latin, German, English, Italian, Mathematics, and Drawing ; and by the Countess herself, in French, Mythology, History, Geography, Botany, and Natural History. In addition to these branches of learning, Madame de Genlis insisted that, in accordance with her adopted theory, the Due de Yalois and his brothers should be rendered practical architects, carpenters, gardeners, surgeons, and apothecaries, she herself undertaking to preside over the study and manipulation of the drugs, which she called instructing her pupils in chemistry. The Due de Yalois, now Due de Chartres, became by dint of incessant practice upon the servants, who vainly remonstrated against such a detest- able addition to their duties, tolerably adroit at opening a vein, and, with the most amiable intentions in the world, he broke the jaw of a boy who was suffering from tooth-ache, by way of practice in the science of dental surgery. In brick-laying and building generally, the young Duke obtained considerable success, but it was as carpenters that he and his brother, the Due de Montpensier, best vindicated Madame's educational theory, and earned her warmest commendation. Upon the occasion of the marriage of a poor peasant-girl, LOUIS PHILIPPE. 265 the two princes presented her with a large wardrobe and a chest of drawers of walnut wood, expressly manufactured by themselves, to aid her in commencing housekeeping. Speeches by the royal carpenters of course accompanied the gift, and •were humbly acknowledged by the rustic recipient, greatly to the glorification of the enchanted " governor," who exult- ingly remarked, that the Archbishop of Cambrai had indi- cated in his " Telemachus" no such efficient education for the dauphin of France, as she had decided upon, and triumph- antly carried into practice with the Orleans princes. ■ s 266 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. The success of Madame de Genlis had, in fact, but one drawback, according to her own report, which for a time was a very wearisome one, — that of exciting the too pas- sionate attachment of the Due de Chartres towards his pre- ceptress. " II s'attachoit passion^ment a moi," writes the lady, who, being somewhat over a quarter of a century the boy's senior, remonstrated with him upon the excessive folly of having no eyes, no ears, no attention for any one else when she was present'; or as Madame more quaintly expressed it, "for putting himself always in her pocket" (se mettre toujours dans ma poche). These reproofs merely diminished, as was of course intended, the exterior manifestations of her pupil's regard, but in nothing diminished its intensity, and we shall find that long afterwards, when presented with a civic crown in reward of a really meritorious act, he forth- with despatched a leaf thereof not to his mother or sister, but to Madame, " for without you what should I have been 1" which leaf Madame preserved with religious care amongst her " relics of the heart." In evident allusion to the admiration in which she was regarded by both the Due d'Orleans and De Chartres, the countess, when visiting, accompanied by her pupil, the tomb of Diana of Poictiers, at Anet, exclaimed in her most affecting and impressive manner — "Happy woman ! She was beloved alike by the father and the son." Interfused with the sickly sentimentality with which Madame de Genlis garnished the motley education of the princes, was the far more subtle and dangerous, because not so certain to be outgrown, sceptical, mock-liberalism which the Due de Chartres imbibed from the conversation and example of his father, and the political accomplices who were aided by him in perverting the justifiable revolt of the French people against the hoary despotism which thought to bind the LOUIS PHILIPPE. 267 eighteenth century, in the worn and rusty chains forged in the dark ages of the world, to a maniacal insurrection, sub- versive of all authority, divine or human, except that of their own unreasoning and sanguinary caprice. The intriguing and ambitious temper of Louis Philippe Joseph d' Orleans, and consequent affectation of political liberality, were strength- ened by personal resentment against Louis XVI. for having refused to create him an admiral, in recompence of the dis- tinguished bravery he was said to have displayed hi the com- mand of a French ship of the line in the running fight with the van of the British fleet under Keppel, — an engage- ment without results, but which the French commander announced to be a glorious victory. — or at all events, it would have been one, after the hypothetical fashion in which M. Thiers and other historians of his nation prove that the British land and sea victories should, according to all ride, have been defeats, but for certain unfortunate contingencies, which certainly never ought to, but somehow or other always do, provokingly occur. So persistent and barefaced did the disloyal manoeuvres of the Duke of Orleans at length become, that his Majesty suggested to his Boyal Highness, in 1787, that it would be prudent for him to absent himself from France for a while ; and the Duke came over to England. During this temporary exile, the Duchess, who was greatly dissatisfied with the De Genlis mode of educating her children, might, perhaps, have regained some portion of her just authority over them, but for her husband's direction that, during his absence, Madame should take her pupils on a tour through the French provinces. This arrangement was carried into effect, and the Orleans family, accompanied, as was anticipated, during the first portion of the journey only by the Duchess, whose health could not support the fatigue s 2 268 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. of travelling, visited, under the superintendence of the Countess de Genlis, Spa, Brittany, and Normandy in succes- sion. This excursion was intended as a sort of political demonstration on the part of the Orleanist faction, and, thanks to the fervid unction with which the Due de Chartres played the part of an enthusiastic lover of freedom, and the captivating speeches, full of resonant clap-traps upon that exhaustless theme, composed by Madame de Genlis, and carefully got by heart and declaimed by young Louis Philippe, was not an unsuccessful one. At the launching of a ship at St. Yalery, a small port of Brittany, of which, after the fashion of Catholic countries, the Due de Chartres was god- father, and his sister, Marie Adelaide, godmother, the sub- ject-matter was the freedom of the seas and liberty of com- merce, relieved by graceful allusions to the maritime services of the orator's father ; the same, when addressing the muni- cipality at Havre de Grace ; but the most taking display occurred at Mont St. Michel, in Normandy, on the summit of which stood a state-prison-convent, dedicated to the arch- angel of that name. The ascent, as described by the lady-governor, was a toilsome and fatiguing one, but the purpose to be achieved amply compensated the labour of accomplishing it. The military garrison of the convent-fortress had been long since withdrawn, and only monks and some prisoners for debt inhabited it at the period of this unexpected visit. The prior was very assiduous in conducting the royal party and the considerable number of provincial notabilities that accom- panied them over the building, and when he intimated that the party had seen all, the Due de Chartres asked in a tone of surprise where then was the terrible iron cage in which the kings of France used to imprison their unhappy victims ? LOUIS PHILIPPE. 26 The prior replied that it was a cage of wood, not of iron, and immediately led the way to the dismal cell where it was kept. It was in this horrible prison, which did not permit the sufferer either to stand upright or lie at length, that the grand monarque, as the base parasites of Louis XIV. were accustomed to style that tyrannous, remorseless king, impri- soned a Dutch editor, by whom his vanity had been ruffled, for seventeen years, when death put an end to his tortures. The moment the Due de Chartres cast his eyes upon this terrific instrument of Bourbon despotism, " a noble and generous rage swelled his breast," and in a brief, emphatic address he proposed that it should be at once destroyed. The monks, though anxious not to offend their princely visitors, hesitated at giving the necessary permission for a few minutes, chiefly, they said, because of the loss of the gratuities which the convent porter received for exhibiting the cage to persons curious in such objects. The ardour of the Due de Chartres, seconded by the entreaties of Madame de Genlis, and the vociferous approbation of the numerous spectators, could not be withstood ; the porter, it was intimated, could charge for showing where the cage had been ; and everything being at length in readiness, a sharp axe was placed in the Due de Chartres' hand, his youthful highness, after a stirring address which filled the eyes of the bystanders with tears of indignant rage, struck the first blow, and Louis XIY.'s horrible machine was in a few minutes hewn in pieces amidst the loud shouts of every one present, monks included, so contagious is the effect of a generous impulse, or what has the appearance of one, upon the least impressionable natures! In 1830, and a few days only after Louis Philippe had vaulted from the Paris barri- cades into the vacated throne of France, a deputation from L'70 EXTKAO?J)IXA?.Y MOSS. town of Avranehes, arrived in Paris to congratulate the n-king npon his accession, reminded him in their com- plimentary address of the desi ruction of the Mont St. Michel cage : " I thank you." replied the monarch, with entire stea- diness of tone and countenance, " I thank you for k:.~ recalled to my mind what I hare always regarded as one of the happiest circumstances in my lite. In that act I gave p»roof of my unchanging love of liberty, and of the hatred of despotism with which the sight of that terrible rock inspired me." The provincial progress at length over, Madame de Genlis and her pupils returned to Paris, and — alternately residing at the Palais Poyal in that city, and Bainey, Belle-Chasse. and Saint Leu — resumed their educational pursuits. One mode of amusement and instruction sanctioned by the Countess was the acting of plays, by herself, the Orleans children, and such visitors as chanced to be available for that purpose. They were thus engaged at Saint Leu when a breathless messenger arrived with the fateful intelligence that the people of Paris were preparing to attack the Bastile ! This was on the 14th of July, 1 789, and a shout of exultation greeted the announce- ment from every Orleanist present, one of whom was so eager to participate the anticipated triumph of the populace, that he could not wait to change his theatrical dress, but hurried off at once, and joined the insurgent and enthusias- tic crowd in the character of Polyphemus. Madame de Genlis, accompanied by the Dues de Chartres and Montpen- sier, was not long behind, and the three witnessed the attack and destruction of the hoary sepulchre of broken hearts, from Beauniarchaiss garden-terrace on the boulevard Saint Antoine. The Due de Chartres watched the progress of the gallant struggle with the deepest interest — shouting and hallooing LOUIS PHILIPPE. 271 with fierce excitement as the success of the attack became more and more imminent, and the furious assailants pressed tumultuously onward, amidst deafening cries of " A bas la Bastile !"— " Yive le Due d'Orleans !"— " Yive la liberte !"— towards an assured and for ever memorable victory. As soon as the conflict had terminated, Madame de Genlis conducted the two young princes to the Palais Royal, and there also the Due de Chartres displayed his exultation at the popular triumph in a marked and vehement manner. Despotism had, he said, received a blow, from which it was impossible it should ever recover, and a constitutional monarchy like that of England — the dream of Mirabeau — was thenceforth an irreversible fact in France. The tumultuous and fast crimsoning tide of revolution soon swept past that great landmark, carrying everybody onward — bongre, malgre — in its resistless current ; and at Passy the two boy-dukes, with their unavoidable lady- governor, witnessed a procession defile past, the character of which revealed the doom of the French monarch, however constitutionalised, as clearly to discerning eyes as when the chief captive in the train was finally delivered into the hands of Sampson on the Place de la Revolution — it was the mob- and-pike enforced removal of the yet nominal king from Versailles to Paris ; and first there passed before the applaud- ing dukes and their equally excited and sillier preceptress, the national guards, commanded by well-meaning, indecisive Lafayette, who still cherished the delusion — daily however with less and less confidence — that the free institutions which he had seen in tranquil and efficient operation in America, and which, rooted in the habits, traditions, and faith of tho English settlers there, had been practically in force amongst them since the first day the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the 272 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. rock at New Plymouth, could be transferred and adapted to a people cradled and reared in the brutifying atmo- sphere of an irresponsible divine-right despotism, by a few- sounding proclamations, philosophic dissertations upon the rights of man and the concession of universal suffrage in the election of the members of the National Assembly. Immediately following the civic guards, marched a striking illustration of such amiable theories — a tumultuous band of ruffians', bearing upon their pike-points the heads of the gardes-du-corps who had been slain for presuming to de- fend the privacy of the king's palace. Next in that funeral procession of the old royalty of France moved on in their carriage-prisons, Louis XVI., his queen, brother, sister, and children, and the sad cortege was closed by the deputation of one hundred members of the National Assembly, sent to invite the monarch to take up his permanent abode in his good city of Paris. The Due de Chartres, it was noticed with approbation or disgust, according to the observer's political creed, was incessant in his applause during the whole time the motley array was passing ; and was occasionally rewarded for his exertions by hearing now and then a stray "Vive le Due d'Orleans" — " Vive le Due de Chartres" — faintly mingle with the fierce shouts of " A Paris" — " Vive la Nation" — and spite of Lafayette's entreaties and unheeded menaces, the ominous death-cry, frequently repeated, of " A bas l'Autri- chienne 1" This compelled removal of the king to Paris had been preceded, the reader will remember, and was no doubt some- what hastened, by the ill-advised banquet given to the gardes- du-corps, at which, in the excitement of wine, and the sud- den and unexpected entrance of the beautiful Marie Antoi- nette, the assembled guests had torn off and trampled under foot the national cockade, and given frantic expression to their LOUIS PHILIPPE. 273 enthusiasm, as the king and queen passed down their ranks, in vociferously singing the chivalric and loyal song — " Richard ! mon Roi ! Tout l'univers t'abandonne." This audacious but surely excusable folly of the Gardes- du-corps was, as a matter of course, violently denounced in the National Assembly, and, equally of course, in the then temper of the Paris populace, the most intemperate speakers were the most heartily applauded in the people's tribune, and by none of its occupants more vehemently than by the Due de Chartres. So prominently conspicuous, indeed, were the manifestations he indulged in, that two royalist members called the attention of the president to his conduct, the only effect of which was, according to Louis Philippe's own account of the matter in his journal, to induce the young prince to continue his noisy demonstrations more vehemently than before, and steadily to stare down at the same time the royalist deputies through his lorgnette. In fact the efforts of the Orleans family to maintain them- selves conspicuously in the front ranks of the revolution were multifarious and incessant. On the 9th of February, 1790, the three brothers, Chartres, Montpensier, and Beaujolais, decked out by their father in the uniform of the National Guard, presented themselves before the president of the St. Roch district of Paris, and requested to take the civic oath. The Due de Chartres, who by that time was between sixteen and seventeen years of age, was of course the spokesman of the occasion, and in reply to the formal questions of the pre- sident, made a speech " full of grace and fervour," which the bystanders greatly applauded. Excited, perhaps, by the cheers his eloquence had elicited, the Due de Chartres, upon being presented with his certificate of civism, in which, as 274 EXTRAORDINARY HEN. well as in the president's registry, his not yet abolished titles were duly set forth, he drew his pen across them all, except the "noble and touching" one of "citizen of Paris," thus con- siderably anticipating, as far as himself was concerned, the "night of sacrifices," otherwise "the day of dupes," in the National Assembly. These strange antics in a prince were in a manner crowned by his initiation, at his own reiterated request, into the Club of Jacobins, on the 2d of November, 1790. He thus records the circumstance in his Journal : " I had dined at Mousseaux, and on the morrow, my father, who had heard of my anxiety to be admitted a member of the Jacobins, requested M. de Sillery to propose me. I was received yesterday, and very much applauded." This step was strongly opposed by the Duchess of Orleans, who was of opinion that if, as the Countess de Genlis asserted, — the education of the Due de Chartres by the way, as far as that lady was concerned, had by this time terminated, — it was essential that the young Louis Philippe should learn to make speeches " as they did in England," some other mode could be devised for the attain- ment of that end than by associating himself with the fero- cious Jacobins. Her objections were, however, as we have seen, overruled, or rather set at nought; and her ardent son accepted, in order more strongly to mark his superiority to and contempt for adventitious claims to pre-eminence, the humble office of apparitor or door-keeper of the Jacobins, the chief duties of which were to open and close the doors, and keep dogs and other disturbers or intruders away. He did not, however, lack promotion for any great length of time, having been about a month after his initiation appointed secretary of "the committee of presentations." His zeal, indeed, in the cause of democratic equality deserved all the LOUIS PHILIPPE. 27.5 favour which the Jacobins could shew him. He could only endure the company at the Palais Royal on the 18th Dec. 1700, for a very short time, their conversation was so offensive in its aristocratic pleasantries ; and on the 5th January, the successful representation of a long-since forgotten drama, entitled " Despotism Overturned" (Despotisme Benverse), threw him into ecstasies. The audience crowned the author, and the Due de Chartres could not rest till he had seen the man of patriotic genius, and warmly embraced him, with tears ! One or two patches of common sense sparkle here and there amidst the dull waste of his Journal. Here is one : " January 13th, 1791, — I went yesterday to the Assembly, where they were discussing the tobacco question ; that is to say, if you should be permitted or not to be master of your own field ; for, can there be anything more unjust than to say to a man — e this field is your property, but you shall only sow such and such things in it ; and 1 shall have the right to come into your grounds — into your house, to see if you have planted any tobacco — to see if you have any concealed on your premises"? No Frenchman ought to be subjected to such an inquisition." At length one of the sweeping reforms decreed by the National Assembly reached M. le Due de Chartres personally. All colonels absent from their regiments were ordered to join forthwith, and as he had been, by the grace of Louis XVI., a colonel of dragoons from the day of his birth, he was obliged immediately to leave Paris for Vendome, where the regiment was stationed. Arrived there, he lost no time in visiting the club of Jacobins, affiliated to the parent confederation in Paris, and on the 7th August, 1791, made the following speech there in reference to the decree passed on the previously mentioned night of sacrifices, or day of dupes : " You are, no doubt, my friends, informed of the 276 EXTRAORDINARY HEN. decree which suppresses all distinctions and all privileges. I hope you have rendered me the justice to believe that I am too much the friend of equality not to have applauded that decree with transport. I have then abandoned, at the instant, and with the greatest pleasure, those frivolous marks of dis- tinction to which there has been for so long a time attached a consideration due only to merit, and which in the future will alone obtain it. Just as much as I disdained distinctions which I derived from chance and birth, shall I be proud of those which I trust to obtain by meriting them." Great applause of course followed this speech, and the honours of the sitting were unanimously awarded to Colonel Philippe, — -fits Ugalite, — as the new member was thenceforth self- designated. Colonel Philippe was fortunate enough to obtain one of the rewards of merit not long afterwards, by rescuing with the help of his coloured servant Edward, a M. Sivret from drowning. He describes the incident with natural exultation in a letter to Madame de Genlis, from which we gather that he had been reading Pope, Metastasio, and Rousseau, when feeling somewhat drowsy, he went out to bathe, and at some risk, it seems, to his own life, saved that of M. Sivret. In his journal he calls it the happiest day of his existence, con- gratulates himself that he was born under a happy star, and goes to bed well contented. For this action, the municipality of Vendome presented him with a civic crown at a public audience, a leaf of which he sent off immediately as a souvenir to his dear friend the Countess, without whom he would have been nothing. The crown itself was left behind when the regiment quitted Vendome, but in 1824, when Louis Philippe, become Duke of Orleans, was restored to his hereditary station and estates, a clever gentleman, of the LOUIS PHILIPPE. 277 name of Musset Bathay, suddenly discovered it or pretended to do so, in a corn-loft, — had it regilt and varnished, and despatched it, carefully packed up, to his Highness of Orleans. But the charm and romance of the thing were past. The Duke was not thinking of gilt pasteboard crowns, and all that M. Musset Bathay obtained in requital of his crafty discovery, after indefatigably reminding Louis Philippe during several months of the interesting relic he had been the honoured means of rescuing from destruction, was a snuff-box, with the Duke's cypher, not in diamonds, engraved upon the lid, whereupon M. Musset Bathay, it is said, instantly transferred his allegiance to the elder legitimate branch of the House of Bourbon, and became one of its most furious partisans. The advance of the Duke of Brunswick against France gave Colonel Philippe an opportunity of displaying his per- sonal courage and military zeal in defence of the republic. He does not appear to have been at all moved by the horrible scenes enacting in Paris. He was made Lieutenant-general in September, 1792, the month in which his aunt, the beau- tiful Princess de Lamballe, with many hundreds of others, was massacred by the Paris populace; the representative commissioners having reported " that he had excellent dispo- sitions." Louis Philippe had chanced to be on duty as a national guard at the Tuileries, when the king was brought back from Yarennes, and he is said, upon " legitimate" autho- rity, to have exhibited a cruel and unworthy exultation when the unfortunate monarch passed by on his way to the Temple prison. It is very difficult to believe this, and impossible to credit another allegation of the same party, that he aided Danton in persuading his father to vote for the death of the king. He was no doubt present during the monarch's mock 278 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. trial, in the strangers' tribune, but his own solemn and often- repeated asseveration that he was innocent of the slightest complicity with the Duke's crime, must be accepted for truth in the absence of anything like impartial evidence to the contrary. The cannonade of Valmy, and the slight victory of Je- mappes, did not enable Dumouriez and his zealous and active lieutenant, Louis Philippe, to win over the army to the re- storation of a quasi monarchy in the House of Orleans, and both at last had a narrow escape from their own troops, in getting across the frontiers into Germany. Louis Philippe reached the Austrian camp, and had an interview with the Archduke Charles, by whom he was very coldly received, and presently finding himself in a great strait for want of money, he accepted the situation of mathematical tutor, for which he was but imperfectly fitted, in the college of Pechinau, in the canton of the Grisons, Switzerland, in the name of Chabaud, and at a salary of fourteen thousand francs per annum. He did not remain there very long, and as soon as he could obtain the necessary funds from his relations, he embarked, October, 1795, from Hamburgh, on his travels to the north of Europe, and subsequently to America. Louis Philippe, as king, supplies the interpretation of his youthful declamations in favour of liberty and equality, which he who runs may read, — and certainly requiring no glossary of mine or of others for its accurate comprehension. W£T~ DR. CHAINING. f\F the numerous kindred voices which reach us from ^ across the Atlantic, breathing the same essential spirit as our more immediately own guides and leaders in the con- stant and triumphal, though checked and impeded march of the English race, to the moral conquest of the manifold tyrannies which enchain the minds and manacle the limbs of so large a portion of the great human family, there is none which speaks with a truer, heartier tone, which appeals with greater power to our higher and nobler sympathies than that of William Ellery Charming ; — and it is pleasant to find one's self, after groping amidst the mires and mean- 280 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. nesses from out of which many of the extraordinary men of the world have attained a lofty position in the self- deceptive estimation of the multitude, in the presence of a life, the first of whose divinely-written pages are pure and beautiful, and distinguished only from the remainder of the volume by the fainter illumination of the intellect, which, in gradually developing splendour, irradiates the later pages. The parentage of this distinguished man was a fortunate and honouring one. His father, a descendant of John Channing, of Dorsetshire, who early settled in New England, was a friend of Washington's, and therefore one of the stout and faithful men whose valiant and successful resistance to the illegal domination of the British G-overnment has been as fruitful in blessings to the land of their forefathers as to that of their adoption. He married Lucy Ellery, in 1773, by whom he had a numerous family, "William Ellery Channing, the third child having been born at Newport, Rhode Island, on the 7th April, 1780. In 1777, Mr. Channing was appointed attorney-general of his native state, and subse- quently he became United States district attorney for Rhode Island, both of which offices he held to his death, and dis- charged with efficiency and honour. Lucy Ellery, the wife, had, however, more to do with the training of the family than her busily occupied husband, and she appears to have been admirably fitted for the task, both by a quick impulsive temperament, and the keen grasp of a shrewd penetrating intellect. Small in person, but full of energy and enthu- siasm,. — true in thought, speech and deed, — judging of things, persons and events as they were, and speaking of them by their right names, — she was, out of her family, perhaps more respected, and in some instances, feared, than loved. " Her affection," writes her son, " was without illusion even CHANGING. 281 as regarded her own children. She recognised unerringly, -and with delight, fairness, honesty, genuine uprightness, and shrank as by instinct from every thing specious, — the fac- titious in character and the plausible in manner." To the example of such a mother there can be no doubt William Ellery Channing was greatly indebted for the direct, un- swerving singleness of mind and purpose by which his life was distinguished ; and in other respects, her influence on the future of her children was not less permanent and bene- ficial. She was so strict a disciplinarian in her household, that even in the matter of food she permitted the indulgence of no likings, dislikings, or fantasies whatever, accustoming her family to be content with such homely fare as the close economy which the duty of providing for nine boys and girls obliged her to enforce ; and as in the case of another illus- trious American, Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Channing himself attributed in no slight degree the eminence he attained to having had no exigent or luxurious table-tastes to indulge in and gratify. The only part of his father's character or opinions to which William Ellery Channing reverted with pain, was his seeming indifference to African slavery, a subject upon which the son could neither speak nor write, save in terms of unmitigated abhorrence ; and he held such indifference to be more especially wrong in one whose chief pride it was to have helped in the vindication of his own freedom and that of the white inhabitants of his country from the merely political thraldom of the British Govern- ment. Mr. Channing had several slaves, whom he certainly treated with the sedate, dignitied kindness habitual with him; but their degradation from the dignity of human beings to the brute condition of slave-chattels seemed never to cross his mind, or at any rate did not perceptibly disturb T 282 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. his conscience, nor strike him in the least by the ludicrous- commentary presented by such a state of things to his own fervid and eloquent assertion of the indefeasible right of every man to the blessings of freedom and self-government. At her husband's death in 1773, Mrs. Channing, to the great joy of her son, at once gave the slaves their freedom. Both parents appear to have entertained a strong presenti- ment of William Ellery's future eminence. " We expect much from our son William," Mrs. Channing, though by no means used to complimentary speeches, one day remarked; and the never-forgotten words, overheard by the boy, were ever afterwards a spur to renewed exertion whenever the spirit of the man grew faint and weary. He was a hand- some boy, "with brilliant eyes, ruddy cheeks, and bright brown hair ;" but his mental advantages were not quite so early disclosed. He had been placed, upon leaving the woman's school at which he had acquired the first rudiments of education, at Mr. Rogers's seminary in Newport, where his progress was not for a time considered entirely satisfactory. " Come, William," exclaimed a clerk in his father's office, after witnessing a jobation inflicted upon the lad for hi& naptitude to the study of the dead languages, — " Come, William, they say you're a fool, but I know better. Bring me your grammar, and I'll soon teach you Latin." This apparent dulness was not long in wearing off, but cliaracter was much earlier developed in the boy than the faculty of acquiring words and otherwise mastering the mechanics of education. This was notably observable in regard to his. detestation of every form and species of oppression and cruelty and his lofty sense of the dignity of human nature, and more especially of the sacredness of woman. " Thank G-od," he writes, " I can say I never killed a bird ;" and he goes on to CHANNING. 283 relate an anecdote which places his tender-kindliness of dis- position in a very striking light. He found a nest of newly- hatched birds in his father's field ; there was no down even upon them, and they opened their tiny bills as if in suppli- cation for food. This he eagerly supplied, visiting them regularly immediately school was over ; and they were almost ready to fly, when he one day found them all killed, and the nest and grass red with their blood. The mother was perched upon a tree, the father upon a wall, and the child's imagina- tion was so excited by the idea that they reproached him for t 2 284 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. the slaughter of their little ones, and that he could never make them understand he was innocent of the cruel deed, that he burst into a passion of tears, and it was weeks before he recovered his tranquillity of mind, and ceased to be haunted by the accusing looks of the parent-birds. Flogging of boys in school he held in detestation, not from any dread of it on his own account, but for the indignity which, in his view, it inflicted upon humanity. * "What ! strike a man I " was the indignant exclamation which broke from him in after life, in rebuke of the use of the whip in the punishment of slaves; and he frequently quoted with admiration an illustration, as he called it, " of a great heart in combination with small power," of a little boy at school striving to shield a much bigger one in his arms. The only time young Channing was known to fight, was upon hearing of a much stouter lad than himself having beaten one a great deal weaker and smaller, whereupon he incontinently sought out the big bully, and soundly thrashed him in his turn. Some idea of his early and chivalric reverence for women may be derived from what he himself remarked in reply to an observation relative to the delight and admiration he had been expressing for a young girl who had just left the room. "She brings to mind," says the doctor, " the days of her mother, when I saw her steal softly out of the school unnoticed by the mistress, and watched her skip down the street, her bright hair floating in the wind, and looking, oh so beautiful! as she laughed gaily at the less successful companions she had left behind. I have a clearer notion of the bliss of a seraph in heaven now, than I had then of the joyous spirit which buoyed up that young form." At the age of twelve, William Ellery Channing was sent to New London to prepare for college under the care and instruction of his uncle, the Reverend Henry Channing, CHANGING. 285 and in 1794, the year subsequent to his father's decease, he entered Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he graduated with distinguished success, and left it thoroughly accomplished for the great battle of life, in which he was eager to engage, though in what capacity he was as yet unde- termined. In politics he had early recovered from the first fever of admiration which the French revolution excited in America; and when at college, he was the constant and eloquent denouncer of French systems, French opinions, French propagandisms. He induced the students to join in an address of gratulation to President Adams, the repre- sentative and champion of the federal anti-Gallican party; and the oration with which he closed his academical career was an impetuous denunciation of the doctrines of the French republicans, which he said " were diseasing the imagi- nation and unsettling the minds of men everywhere." It is, however, in the peculiar and precocious development of the religious element in William Ellery Channing's charac- ter, that interest chiefly attaches in his early life. Of his peculiar views of the doctrines of Christianity I can have nothing to say, but assuredly few men have been more deeply imbued than he, with what most men understand by the essential spirit of the religion of sorrow, of faith, and love. His father was the main pillar of a religious society in New- port, Rhode Island; his mother and aunt were very pious women; family worship was a daily and never neglected practice ; and the lad himself acquired, by his fondness for preaching to any knot of hearers he could persuade to listen to him, the title of " the little minister." The eloquent con- versation of Dr. Stiles, afterwards president of Yale college, who sometimes visited at his father's house, greatly impressed him, as did the more homely predications of Father Thurston, 286 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. a Baptist minister, a cooper, and so steadfast a disciple of tem- perance, that although hogsheads and barrels were in great request for ships engaged in the whaling trade, he refused to supply them with any thing but pails. The original and inquisitive intellect of the boy, however, could not be per- manently restrained by the formulas of orthodoxy, dictated by authority, however respected and venerable; and a cir- cumstance occurred in his ninth year, which in its results revealed the distance that already mentally separated him from prevalent religious opinion. He went with his father to hear a famous preacher, whose discourse was fearfully elo- quent of the unutterable agony awaiting sinners in the next world. Little Channing was horror-struck, and it seemed to him that persons must be insane to waste one moment of a fleeting life in any other effort than assuring themselves against so tremendous a doom. Upon coming out of chapel, some one observed to his father, who readily agreed in the remark, " that it was sound doctrine they had been listening to!" "It's all true then," groaned the boy, but whilst riding home in the chaise, he eagerly watched his father's counte- nance and manner, in the hope of discovering some intimation that a figurative meaning attached to the minister's denun- ciations. By and by his father whistled ; a flush of hope warmed the sickness of the boy's heart, and when upon arriving home, his father took up a newspaper and began to read it as coolly and calmly as ever, an immense black load seemed to lift itself from the son's mind, and the literality of the famous preacher's exposition ceased to bewilder and distress him. This searching, and for a time restless spirit of inquiry, led "William Ellery Channing, as his years ripened, into various paths of theoretic philosophy. Locke, Reid, Hume, CHAINING. 287 Priestley, and Price, were alternately his unsatisfactory preceptors, with the exception of Price, who rescued him from the more transparent of the Locke fallacies, by opening up a glimpse of the transcendental philosophy of Kant, in the " German Expositor." Thenceforth Channing always wrote the words, Love, Right, &c. with a capital. The circumstances attending, not his intellectual credence of the truths of Christianity, but his perception of their individual application to himself, were interesting. He was taking a quiet walk across meadows, with " Hutchinson on Self-sacrifice " in his hand, and occasionally looking up to gaze at the Brooklyn hills in the distance, when suddenly, he says, it flashed upon him that those two words, Self- sacrifice, comprised the whole heart of the mystery, and thenceforth they formed " the fountain light of all his days, the master light of all his seeing." A vivid gleam is thrown upon his devotion to the ideality of women, by its instantly occurring to him that he should immediately confide the emotions winch agitated him, by letter, to his cousin, Ruth Gibbs, many years afterwards his wife, — but after partly accomplishing the task, the fear of incurring ridicule stayed his hand, and the letter remained unfinished. From this moment there was no longer any pause or hesi- tation in the life-career of Charming, and, turning neither to the right nor to the left, he pressed forward in what he con- sidered to be the path of duty, encountering and fearlessly opposing himself, during its progress, to injustice, selfishness, oppression, in whichever of their Proteus shapes they pre- sented themselves, and that too with a success and power that have immortalized his name. He sank to his final rest, tran- quilly as a wearied child, on the 2nd of October, 1842, in the full possession of his faculties, and in perfect faith and peace. 288 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. The Sermon on the Mount had been read to him, and he whispered, upon unveiling for the last time his clear calm eyes, " that he had received many messages from the spirit." The day was drawing to a close ; and as the light faded, he motioned that the window-curtain should be withdrawn. This was done, and he continued to gaze over the far- stretching woods, meadows and valleys, towards the setting sun, which, from his purple and crimson clad throne, em- braced the landscape with a golden smile, — and so gazing, William Ellery Channing fell asleep. INDEX. ANGELO, MICHAEL. His birth and parentage, 9 — His early genius, 10 — His intimacy with Francesco Granacci, 10 — His horoscope cast, to dissuade him from painting, 10 — Commences his studies with Dominico and David Ghirlandia, 12 — His partiality for devotional subjects, 12 — His reply to Torregiano, 13 — Frequents Lorenzo de Medici's gardens, 13 — His experiment with a sculptured fawn, 14 — He is taken under Lorenzo de Medici's protection, 14 — Proceeds to Florence, and thence to Bologna, 15 — Finishes the church of St. Peter at Rome, 16 — Builds fortifications at Florence, 16. BONAPARTE, NAPOLEON. The Bonaparte family, driven from Tuscany, take refuge in Corsica, IOC — Charles Bonaparte, the father of Napoleon, and Letitia Eamolina, his heroic wife, 196, 197 — Napoleon's birth at Ajaccio, 19S — Early indication of great mental power and indomitable will, 19S — His favourite plaything a cannon, 19S— Napoleon, a Frenchman by birth, 19S — His letterto Paoli, 199 — Napoleon's grotto, 199 — His attachment to Paoli, and hatred of Frenchmen, 200— He enters the military school of Brienne, 200 — His personal appearance, 200, 201 — M. de Keralso's report on Napoleon, 201 — Napoleon's military aptitude and predisposition, 202 — The snow fortifi- cations, 202 — The undermining of the wall, 202 — Napoleon leaves Brienne for Paris in 17S4, 203 — He enters the regiment of La Fere, as second lieutenant in 17S5, 204 — Napoleon's illogical mode of reasoning, 205 — He commences a "History of Corsica," 205 — His contempt of the mob, 290 INDEX. 206 — His ferocious pamphlet against Butafuco, 20G— 208 — He obtains a captaincy in the regiment of Grenoble, 208 — He fights against Corsica and Paoli, 208, 209 — He is summoned to Toulon, 209 — Summary of his cha- racter, 209, 210. JBURNS, ROBERT. Neglected genius,158, 159 — William Burns tbe Kincardineshire gardener, 160 — His high moral character, 160, 161 — His wife, Agnes Brown, 161 — Birth of Robert Burns, in 1759, 161 — His early acquaintance with ballads by means of his mother and Betty Davidson, 161 — His education, 162 — Removal of the family to Mount Oliphant, 162 — Burns, a farm labourer, 162 — He studies French with Mr. John Murdoch, 163 — His fruitless attempt to learn Latin, 164 — Nelly Kilpatrick, 164, 166 — Burns' books, 164, 165 — Departure for Lochlea, 167— Burns' talent for lovemaking, 167, 16S — He attends a dancing school, 169 — Kirkoswald and Peggy Thompson, 169, 170 — Ellinor Begbie, 171— Burns becomes a freemason, 171 — He turns flax-dresser, 171 — Death of his father, 172, ^173— Burns's genius, 173, 174. 3YRON, LORD. Byron's illustrious ancestors, 211 — Their martial deeds, 211, 212 — Byron's grandfather tried for murder and acquitted, 213 — Captain Byron and the Marchioness of Carmarthen, 213, 214 — Captain Byron's marriage with Augusta Gordon, 214 — Byron's birth in Holies-street, January 22nd, 1788, 215 — Captain Byron's heartless conduct, 215 — Byron's unhappy childhood, 216 — Sent to school at Aberdeen,216 — Studies with Mr. Boss andMr. Pater- son, 216 — Admitted into the Free Grammar School of Aberdeen, 216 — Suc- ceeds to the title, 216, 217 — His exultation, 217 — Goes to reside with his mother atNewstead Abbey, 217 — Mrs. Byron receives a pension from George IH., 217 — Byron's regret at his lameness, 217, 218 — His fits of silent passion, 218 — His nurse Mary Gray, and Dr. Pigot, 2 IS — His childish love for JIary Duff, 219 — His real attachment to Miss Chaworth, 220 — His pugnacious disposition at school, 221 — Dilapidated condition of Newstead Abbey, 221 — Byron's lameness partially cured, 221 — Byron at Harrow, 222 — His recol- lections of Sir R. Peel, 222 — His stay at Cheltenham in 1S01, 223 — Miss Parker, 223— Byron's love for Miss Chaworth, 223, 226 — His rage at her indifference, 226 — His departure for Cambridge, 227 — Quarrels with his mother, 227. INDEX. 291 CHANN1NG, DR. Character of Charming, 279, 2S0 — His parentage, 280 — Channing's mother, 280, 281 — His abhorrence of slavery, 281 — His early schooling at Mr. Rogers's in Newport, 282 — His apparent inaptitude for learning, 2S2 — Hie detestation of cruelty and oppression, 2 S3 — He enters Harvard Col- lege, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 284 — Graduates with honours, 284 — His religious views, 284,285 — His mind awakened by a sermon, 285 — His phi- losophic readings, 286— His death in 1S42, 287. CROMWELL, OLIVER. Fables circulated relative to Cromwell's early life, 41 — His birth and lineage, 42 — Milton's opinion on the subject, 42 — Cromwell's father allied to the Scottish royal family, 43 — His birth at Huntingdon, 43 — His mother's portrait at Hitchinbrook, 43 — His early character, boisterous and pugnacious, 43 — Saved from drowning by the Rev. Mr. Johnson, 43 — Anecdote of Cromwell and the monkey, 44 — Cromwell and his mother, 44 — Instances related to prove Cromwell a born regicide, 45 — Lord Clarendon's belief that his ambition was stimulated by supernatural agency, 45 — Dramatic entertainment at Huntingdon free school, and Cromwell's ambition, 46 — His pugilistic encounter with Prince Charles, 47 — He enters Sussex College, Cambridge, in April 1616, 47 — Returns to Huntingdon the following year, 47 — His character at the University, 48 — Milton's defence of his want of application, 48 — Proceeds to London, 4S — Assertions of revilers concerning his depraved character, 49 — John Hampden's opinion of Cromwell, 49 — His marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Bourchier, 49. FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN. Franklin's humble origin contrasted with his subsequent high position, 89, 90— His birth in 1706, 90 — His mother, Abiah Folger, 90, 91 — His ancestry, 91 — His education at a grammar-school, and at Mr. Brownwell's 91, 92 — Sent to a soap-boiler's, 92 — Economy of his father's household, 93 — Franklin apprenticed to a printer, 93 — His first attempts at authorship, 94 — His love of reading, 94 — His brother's newspaper scheme, 95 — The pro- prietor arrested and imprisoned, 95 — Franklin's quarrel with his brother and flight to New York and Philadelphia, 96 — Lodges at Mr. Read's house, 98 — Sir TV. Keith and his patronage, 9S — Franklin's visit to Boston, 9S, 99 INDEX. — His return to Philadelphia with Collins, 100 — Mr. Yemon's money, 100, 101 — Sir William Keith's delusive proposition, 101 — Franklin departs for England, 101 — Discovers Keith's duplicity, 102 — Obtains employment of Mr. Palmer, 102 — Reflections on Franklin's character, 102, 103. LAWRENCE, SIR THOMAS. Lawrence's first performances in art, in his father's taproom, 175, 177 — His birth at Bristol in 1769, 177— His father's repeated failures, 177, 178 — Early manifestations of extraordinary genius, 17S — His visits to Corsbam House, 179 — His talent at copying pictures, ISO — Barrington's opinion of him, 180, 181 — He is taken by his father to Oxford and to Bath, ISO— His success, ISO — His painting of Mrs. Siddons, as " Zara," 181 — His desire to become an actor, 181, 182 — His father's stratagem of a " Rehearsal," 182 — He arrives in London, 183 — Attends the Academy as a student, 1S3 — His first interview with Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1S3 — His subsequent success and fame, 184. LOUIS PHILIPPE. Character of Louis Philippe, 259, 260 — His birth and baptism, 261 — Slanders circulated by the elder Bourbon party concerning his birth, 261, 262 — His early education under Chevalier Bonard, and subsequently under Madame de Genlis, 263, 264 — His attempts at surgery, 264 — Louis Philippe Egalite, and his affectation of political liberality, 2 6 7 — His tem- porary exile, 267 — Tour of the Princes through Spain, Brittany, and Normandy, 268 — Great display of patriotism at Mont St. Michel, in Nor- mandy, 268, 269— Demolition of the Wooden Cage, 269— Destruction of the Bastile, 270, 271 — Removal of Louis XVI. from Versailles to Paris, 271 — The Banquet to the " Gardes du Corps," 273 — Louis Philippe and his Brothers take the Civic Oath, 273 — He joins the Jacobins' Club, 274 — His Journal, 275 — He is required to rejoin his Regiment at Vendome, 275 — Saves a man from drowning, 276 — Is presented with a civic crown, 276, 277 — Created a Lieutenant-General in Sept. 1792, 277 — He escapes from France, 278 — Becomes mathematical tutor at Rechinau in Switzerland, 278 — Embarks for the north of Europe, 278. LUTHER, MARTIN. Born of peasant parents, at Eisleben, November 10th, 1483, 19 — Baptised at Mansfield, sent to school at Mansfield, then at Magdeburgh, INDEX. 293 Eisenach, and Erfurth, 21 — Dame Ursula Scheiveicken, 21 — His love for music, 21 — Sings in the streets for bread, 21, 22 — His necessitous condition, 22 — Assisted by Conrad's wife, 22 — Steingel's story of Luther's adventure at Erfurth, 24 — Quits Eisenach for Erfurthin 1501, 25 — His character, and rude, boisterous manner, 25 — His determination to become a monk, 26 — Enters a convent at Erfurth, 2G — procures a copy of the New Testament, 2G. MARLBOROUGH, THE DUKE OF. National calamities at the period of the Restoration, G9 — Ancestry of John Churchill, 70 — His birth, and baptism by Matthew Drake, 70 — He becomes page to the Duke of York, 71 — His education at St. Paul's school, 71 — His partiality for the study of " Yegetius de re Militari," 71 — Obtains from the Duke of York an ensigncy in the foot guards, 71— The Duchess of Cleveland's partiality for him, 73 — He embarks for Africa to assist in the defence of Tangiers, 73 — His exploits during the campaign, 73 — Recalled by the Duke of York, 75 — His sister becomes the Duke of York's mistress, 75 — Churchill's promotion, 75 — He distinguishes himself at the siege of Niemugen, 75 — Turenne's wager, 7G — Reflections on his character, 7G — His marriage with Sarah Jennings, 76 — Similarity of his character with that of Bacon, 7G, 77. MIRABEAU. Mirabeau's power over the passions of the French, 104 — Hopes enter- tained that he would effect a reconciliation between Louis XYI. and his people, 105 — Patrician rank of the Riquetti family, 10C — Azza Riquetti's banishment from Tuscany in 1269, 106 — Victor Mirabeau, the "friend of man," father of the orator, 10C— His court influence, 106— His "Epheme- rides," and "Lecons Economiques" — Victor Mirabeau's marriage with Marie Cenevieve de Vassen, 107 — His mistress Eleonore le Pailly, 108 — Mirabeau's early days, 108 — His ugliness increased by a fit of the small- pox, 1 OS— Ill-treatment of his mother by her husband, 10 S— Mirabeau's tutor, M. Poisson, 10S — Mirabeau's energy and warm-heartedness, 109 — His charitable disposition, 109— Neglect of religious culture, 109— His confirmation, 109, 110— Goes to Taris to a military school, 111 — Indulges in gambling and dissipation, 111— His father's threat, 111 — He joins the regiment of Royal Comtois, 111— Successfully rivals the colonel, 111, 112 294 INDEX. — Imprisoned at Rhe by his father's means, 172 — He proceeds to Corsica, 112 — Quits the service in disgust, 112, 113 — Mirabeau's ill-regulated mind, 113 — His death, 113, 114— His last words, 114— His funeral, 115. MOLIERE, JEAN-BAPTISTE POQUELIN DE. His birth, 51 — Voltaire's criticism on his works, 51 — His parents upholsterers in the Rue St. Honore, 52 — He becomes "valet tapissier " to Louis XIII., 52 — His powers of observation and mimicry, 52, 53 — His grandfather takes him to the theatrical performances at the Hotel Bourgogne, 53 — Effect of these visits on his future career, 54 — Sent to the College of Clermont, thence to the Jesuits' College, 54 — He obtains the patronage of the Prince of Conti, and is introduced to Gassendi, 54 — His friendship with Brenier, 54 — His supposed scepticism, 54 — He attends Louis XIV. to Karbonne, and witnesses the execution of Cinq Mars, and de Thou, 55 — Joins a company of comedians, 55 — His unfortunate marriage, 55 — Remarks on the genius and writings of Moliere, 56. MOZART. Reflections on precocious development of mental power, 116 — Mozart's certificate of baptism, 117 — His father, " Vize-Kapellmeister" of the prince-bishop's chapel, a musician of some repute, 117 — Mozart's affec- tionate disposition during childhood, 117 — His early musical education and extraordinary capacity for music and mathematics, US — His first concerto for the harpsichord, IIS, 119 — He is taken by his father to Munich and Vienna, 120 — Mozart and Marie Antoinette, 120, 121 — He is taken to Paris, 121 — M. Grimm's account of his performance, 121 — Mozart's reply to Madame de Pompadour, 121 — His compositions at the age of seven, 121 — His visit to London in 1764, 121, 122 — Daines Barrington's "account" of him, published in the "Philosophical Transactions," 122 — Bach's admiration of his talent, 122 — Visits Holland, 123 — His illness, 123 — His return to Salsbourg, 123 — Mozart's performance on the violin, 123, 124 — His first opera, " La Finta Simplice," 124 — Becomes a member of the Philharmonic Academies of Bologna and Naples, 125 — His extraordinarily retentive memory, 125 — The "Miserere" by Allegri, 125— His opera " Mithridates, King of Pontus," 126 — His opera "La Bella Finta Guardinera,"126 — His early decease, 126. index. 295 NELSON. Parallel between Nelson and Wellington, 142 — Nelson's childhood, his weakly constitution, 143 — Obtains a naval appointment through Captain Suckling, 143 — Suckling's reply to the letter of Nelson's father, 144— Anecdotes of Nelson's school -days, his fearless disposition, 144,145 — The "pear-tree exploit," 146, 147 — Nelson summoned to join the " Raisonnable" off Chatham, 177S, 147 — His disconsolate condition on board, 14S — Nelson enters the merchant service, 148 — Is received on board the " Triumph" guardship, 149 — Goes on a voyage of discovery in the "Carcass," 149 — Nelson's adventure with the " Polar Bear," 150, 151 — Sent home invalided in the "Dolphin," 151 — His despondency, and subsequent resolution, 151 — Serves as acting lieutenant in the " Worcester," 151 — Passes his examina- tion, 152 — Is appointed to the "Lowestoffe," 152 — Boards a prize in a storm, 152 — He obtains the command of the "Little Lucy," 152 — Is ap- pointed to the " Bagdad," and placed in command of Fort Charles, 153 — The disastrous expedition to the Gulf of Mexico in 1780, 153, 154 — Nelson's escape from a serpent, 154 — His activity and energy, 155 — Fearful mor- tality, 155 — Nelson's return to Jamaica, 155 — He is appointed to the "Albemarle ;" his unselfish devotion to Ins country, 150, 157. PASCAL, BLAISE. His birth at Auvergne, 57 — Death of his mother, 57 — His father retires from his profession to superintend the education of Blaise, 58 — Questions agitated during Pascal's boyhood, 58, 59 — His education, 60 — His intelli- gence and acute mental powers, 60 — His anxiety to study geometry, 61 — Pascal's study, 62 — He is discovered by his father drawing geometrical figures with charcoal, 62, 63 — Begins to study geometry systematically, 64 — His paper on conic sections, 64 — Descartes' incredulity respecting his performance, 64 — Pascal's father compelled to flee to Auvergne, 65 — The reason of his flight, 65 — The Duchess d ' Aiquillon's scheme for his pardon, 65, 6G — Pascal's calculating machine, 66, 67 — Remarks on the character of Pascal, 67, 6S— His "Thoughts," 68. PEEL, SIR ROBERT. Mr. Peel, of Fishland, Blackburn, and his schemes for printing calico, 245, 246 — He erects weaving and printing works, at Brookside, near Blackburn, 246 — Robert Peel enters into partnership with Yates, and esta- 2% INDEX. blishes works for calico-printing, cotton spinning and weaving, 247— Mar- riage of R. Peel with Miss Yates, 247— Birth of Sir Robert Peel, 248— His father's admiration of Pitt, 249 — The Bury Volunteers, 251 — Sir Robert's early training at declamation, 252, 253 — Wellington's opinion of Peel's truthfulness, 253 — Byron's vain-glorious estimate of Peel's abilities, 254, 255 — His brilliant career at Oxford, 255 — Enters Parliament for the Borough of Cashel, 256 — Accepts the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland, 256 — Quarrel with O'Connell, 256 — He is returned for Oxford, 257— Conclud- ing remarks, 258. PETER THE GREAT. State of Muscovy at the period of Peter's birth, 78 — The Boyards and their despotic sway, 79 — Peter's birth, 79 — His father's two marriages, SO — His sister Sophia and her regency, SO, 81 — Death of his brother Fedor, and intrigues of Sophia, 81 — Danger of Peter and his mother the Czarina Natalie, 81, 82 — Their flight, S2, S3 — Natalie's happy expedient, 83 — Renewal of Sophia's regency, 85 — Intrigues of the Princess Sophia, 86 — Energy and sagacity of Peter, 86 — His intimacy with LeFort and Gordon, 86 — His marriage, 87— Sophia's usurpation and defeat, 88. ROMILLY, SIR S. Romilly's autobiography, 127 — his marriage with Anne Garbet, in 1798, 128 — Lady Romilly's character, as described by her husband, 128 — Sir S. Romilly's ancestry, 129 — His grandfather, a French Protestant under Louis XIV., emigrates to London, 130 — Becomes a wax-bleacher and dies in poverty, J 30 — Romilly's father apprenticed to a jeweller, 131 — Marries Mademoiselle Garnault, and commences business in London, 131 — Domestic bereavements, 131 — Removal to Marylebone, 132 — Romilly's first years, 132 — His attachment to Mary Evans, 132 — His mind disturbed by ghost stories and tales of murder, 132, 133 — His first schooling at Flach's, 133 — His translation of Virgil, 134, 135 — He leaves school, and follows his father's business, 135' — A legacy devoted to the purchase of a sworn Chancery clerkship, 135 — He becomes the pupil of Michael Lally, 136 — Benevolence and charity of Romilly's father, 136 — Samuel's filial affection and pensive disposition, 137 — Randolph Greenway and his attachment, 137, 138 — Catherine Romilly marries M. Roget, 138 — Death of Greenway, 139 — Romilly is called to the bar, 140 — His exertions to reform the criminal code, 140— His kindness to Mary Evans and her husband, 141. INDEX. 297 SHAKSPERE, WILLIAM. The genius of Shakspere, 28, 29 — Diversity of characters in his plays 28 — Fallacies concerning his life, 29 — His baptism, 30 — His mother a descendant of Sir John Arden, 30 — Disputes concerning his father's pro- fession, 30, 31 — Dr. Farmer's criticism, 31 — Shakspere's father chief bailiff of Stratford in 1568, 31 — Becomes reduced in circumstances, 32 — Incurs penalties by not attending church, 33 — Shakspere educated at the Free Grammar School of Stratford, 34 — Queen Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth Castle, 34 — Johnson's dictum concerning Shakspere, 35 — Shakspere's crea- tive faculty, 35 — His sympathy with country life, 36 — Sir Thomas Lucy's deer, 36 — R. Davis's opinion of Shakspere's poaching propensities, 36 — Falls in love with Anne Hathaway at Shottery, 37 — Marries her, 3S — His daughter Susannah born, 3S — Leaves Stratford for London, 39 — Birth of his twin children, Hamet and Judith, 39 — De Quincy's remarks on Shakspere's marriage, 39 — "The brown bed," 39 — Shakspere's humble occupation on reaching London, 40 — He attains to eminence and fortune, 40 — Concluding remarks on his works, 40. WELLINGTON. Wellington's birth at Dungan Castle in Ireland, 228 — Prospect of con- tinued peace in 1769 — Breaking out of the American War, 230 — Welling- ton's Plantagenet blood, 231 — His descent from King Henry I., 231 — His Saxon genealogy, 232 — Musical talent of the Earls of Mornington, 233 — Wellington's English education neglected, 233 — His school days at Mr. Ganer's, at Chelsea, 234, 2 35— The fight for marbles, 236— Death of the Earl of Mornington, 23fi — Wellington at Eton, 237 — Trick played upon Lady Dungannon, 237 — Wellington's patriotism and soldierly spirit, 238, 239 — He studies for two years at Douay College, Angers, 238, 239 — Obtains an ensign's commission, 239 — His debts, and the shoemaker's loan, 239, 240 — His speeches in Parliament, 240, 241 — He embarks for Holland, 241 — Reflections on Wellington's character, 241, 242. WILKIE. 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