!ft>"'t ■.,',' f ' ' ' ' , . ' ' ' ' . i mrmniibMm mmm \m ;pa. '^ryt iitij; ;f ;i ms} " 'lW'««;l'1"'■■ mm' ■ 1 ^ ^^HEZ H^ >■ F t ^rrif^^^^^H' ■ [wL-ift M£'"''^^^^^^V ' vOT- »• m <7 2D L ^'H W^ %-| i mJISv him Kl i lis 3^3 pKfflUwtf n Ml J i;;;::^ 1^ UUL ^ Qm^ SrlffE f^^P'ifl KrtKpijjSj pli b^^ ([p^ll p^ ^Mflr auSfifexl ■> J 1 / EXTRAORDINARY MEN: THEIK lOgjjaab aiib ^arliT fife. By WILLIAM RUSSELL, Esq. 32Riti) numerous portraits §r Ellustratibc lEngiabinas. NETT EDITION, REVISED AND AUGMENTED. LONDON : G. ROUTLEDGE & CO., FARRINGDON STREET. NE"VY YOEK : 18, BEEKMAN STREET. 1856. * « • • • •. • '•!.•. • • • t • • '.• ^drMr&arj ^eit, THEIR BOYHOOD AND EARLY LIFE. Digitized by the Internet Arciiive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/extraordinarymenOOrussrich PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The indulgent favour with wliich this book has been received as evidenced by the sale of seven thousand copies in little more than half seven months, enables me much earlier than I could have anticipated to revise the first impression, and pre- sent the reader with three additional youth-histories — those of Richter, Sheridan, and Cobbett. I have before remarked, in a few prefatory sentences, that the earlier portion of the lives of extraordinary men, albeit they had not yet fought great battles, nor wrested mighty world-changing secrets from Nature's jealous custody, although their poems, dramas, songs, paintings, stetues, were as yet but vague and dim perceptions of the noble and the beautiful in spiritual and material being, must, in the great majority of instances, have been a greatly influencing one, and it appeared to me, that this truth would be more strikingly illustrated by a consi- derable number of such examples being grouped together, however imperfectly it might be done, than when scattered through voluminous biographies, wherein the dawnings of ,1 KJ 4 ^^ ?■> VHl PREFACE. remarkable power must necessarily be obscured by the splendour of acHeved success. It was further suggested that an advantage, in the same direction, would be obtained by the contrastive indications of the after relative permanent position attained in the world's great Statue-gallery, pre- sented in the home and other teachings, to which, amongst others, Pascal and IVIirabeau, Bums and Byron, Bomilly and Cobbett, Louis Philippe and Sir Bobert Peel, were in early life exposed; and to the soundness of these views and opinions, the success of these brief, tmambitious sketches, is, I have no doubt, to be wholly attributed. W. R London, October, 1853. LIST OF BIOGRAPHIES. PAGB Michael Angelo ••••• 9 Martin Luther ...«••••• 17 Shakspere ....••••.••••26 Oliver Cromwell 41 Moli^re 49 Blaise Pascal ......55 The Duke of Marlborough 67 Peter the Great 76 Franklin 87 Mirabeau 102 Mozart 114 Sir Samuel Eomilly • . , . 125 Nelson 142 Bobert Bums 16 Sir Thomas Lawrence 178 Wilkie 188 Napoleon Bonaparte . 198 Lord Byron 214 The Duke of Wellington 228 Su- Eobert Peel . . . • 244 Louis Philippe •• 259 Dr. WiUiam EUery Channing 282 WilHam Cobbett 292 Sheridan 309 Jean Paul Richter 323 ILLUSTRATIONS. FAQB Michael Angelo studying the stars #.... 11 Luther meeting with womanly sympathy from the wife of Conrad . . 22 William Shakspere courting Anne Hathaway 37 Fight between Oliver Cromwell and Prince Charles (afterwards Charles I.) 47 Moliere at Church 51 Pascal drawing geometrical figures on the floor of his room 61 Marlborough soliciting a commission from the Duke of York ..... 70 Peter the Great finding a sanctuary 82 Franklin's first visit to Philadelphia •••••. 95 Mirabeau giving the old man the hat •••.108 Mozart discovered composing a concerto 117 Samuel Romilly reading his translation of Virgil 132 Nelson attacking the bear 146 Bums taking the sun's altitude 173 Sir Thomas Lawrence painting the farmers' portraits 179 Wilkie presenting his sketches to the Secretary of the Edinburgh Academy 193 Napoleon and his school-fellows' escape to Brienne fair through a breach made in the waU 206 Byron watching Miss Chaworth dance 225 Wellington at school 235 Sir Robert Peel repeating sermons to his father 256 Untractableness of Louis Philippe 269 Dr. Channing's kindliness of disposition exhibited 286 Cobbett resolves to seek his fortune ....,.,, 297 Sheridan's stolen interview with Miss Linley , , , , 320 Jean Paul Bichter's death 333 ^.i^tra0riilulrg Pint. MICHAEL ANGELO. ll/jriCHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTTT, sculptor of the •^^-'- Moses^ painter of the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, and architect of the Cupola of St. Peter's, Rome, was born on the 6th 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 dawning 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 10 EXTKAORDINARY MEN. the highest artistic fame would but stain and degrade the escutcheon of their princely race, — a princely race now only remembered because IVIichael 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 comjDanionship 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 courtly 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 bii'th — Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, 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 Venus, Mercury, and Jupiter. MICHAEL ANGELO. 11 'itm'K^t- ■■■, I,. !■ !,■!•.:. .". Ml,, ^^}f^M^^M^^^^^< Micliael Angelo possessed fhe faculties of reverence and wonder in lii2;li deo^-ee — 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, in a state of great agitation and distress. Night, arrayed in the cloudless silver sheen and dazzling diadem of b2 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 uj)on the planet- scroll, whereon it was said his destiny was written. He did so ; 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 oioposition of Ludovico Buonarotti to his son's adoption of the profession of a painter, was overcome by 1488, in the April of v/hich year Michael Angelo was j^laced for three years in the studio of Dominico 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 their 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 iu prayer on the outer steps of the sanctuary, or before the statue of a saint, for inspii-ation in his art, and MICHAEL ANGELO. 13 grace to consecrate its exercise to tlie 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 exasjDcrated 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, wdth 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 horiible could adequately portray — that of an atheist mother teacliing her child to lisp blasphemy and atheism." A fierce blow on the face, the mark of which ISIichael 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 that Torregiano was ultimately compelled to leave Florence, in avoidance of a gi'eater 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 MEX. for modelling figures in clay superseded for a time his devo- tion to palette and pencils. One day lie found the dilaf)idated 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 coujy d'essai with the chisel. He saw at a glance the indications of sculptural genius which the execution of the droll idea disjolayed, but contented himself with saying somewhat coldly, " Very well, indeed, my young friend, but there is nevertheless one gTeat faidt 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 day 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 friend 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 li tie 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 MICHAEL ANGELO. 15 senseless caprice wliich 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 sufierings 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 oj)ened and placed beside him during the night, — an appalling expedient, — ^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 this work, Michael Angelo 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 sculptm-e, reached from the bas-relief of the Gen- tarn's, 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 EXTRAOKDIXARY MEN. Bramante and San Gallo, fused the apparently incongnious 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 fiu'nished 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 intuitive sagacity, for he certainly had no preceptor in the art of military engineering, that can hardly be imputed to dii-ect celestial agency, namely, the fortifications of Florence, which in a time of danger the imanimous 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 Vauban, 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 much higher and 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, inasmuch that whilst Martin Luther was shaking the spiritual temple of Kome to its foundations, Michael Angelo was raising aloft its material type, in umivalled magnificence and majesty. MARTIN LUTHER. ll/rARTIN 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 — streng-thened and aided, no doubt, by an 18 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. instinctive consciousness of vast mental energy, and an inflexible braveiy 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 bii-th have been a subject of eager controversy; nay, the correct orthography of his name is still in dispute — he himself waiting it indifferently as Luther, Luder, Lother. His own statement, moreover, as to where he was bom 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, mid there I was horn. That I should ever take the degi'ee of Bachelor of Arts seemed not to be in the stars. How must I have surprised people by tm^ning monk, and then again by changing the brown cap for another ? 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 '? Who could have told my career beforehand V 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 certaiQ 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 MARTIN LUTHER. 19 influences it would appear Tetzel would never have 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 bii'th of Luther are, however, noteworthy and interesting. His father, Hans (John) Luther, was born and grew to manhood at Moerk, a Saxon village near Eisenach. He was a poor miner, 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 Moerk hurriedly in the winter of 1483, on foot, albeit Gretha was near her con- finement. The purpose of Hans Luther, which he succeeded in, was to obtain employment in the mines at Mansfield ; but his mfe, overcome by fatigue and anxiety, could reach no further than Eisleben, where she was delivered of her son, 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. Yery industrious, worthy people were the poor miner Hans Luther and his v/ife. Spite of their extreme poverty, they contrived to keep their son at school, stimulated thereto, it is fair to presume, by the glancing forth of some spatkles of the 20 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. fiery intellect whicli was thereafter to set Europe in a blaze. They were assisted in this by one Dame Ui'sula, 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, internipted, whenever a sympathising ear was likely to be reached, by cries of Panem iwoi^ter Deum (Bread for God's sake). Luther's love of music, like all other emotions that welled up from that fiercely pulsating heaii;, 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 afibrded of improving his chance of obtaining Panem inoptcr Deum. He learned to play the flute, and touched the lute also with considerable skill. " Bread-Music," he used to call his dis- MARTIN LUTHER. 21 plays in singing and instrumentation; — very frequently unsuccessful ones. Upon one occasion, wliilst at Eisenach, he sallied foii;h 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 giievously mistaken. Hour after hoiu' the future Apostle of the Reformation exerted both voice and fingers, — now soaring upon the winged harmonies of a Laudate, 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 was 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. Fainting 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- 22 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. '^^ ^ ?f ^H f>V'A ie^' *^''< v>.. .m . ^^ 1/ r- ^r*jl>t^<^'^ position of Heayen in his favour. The good woman, Hive Luther himself at the time, was a Koman 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 entertaimnent of the distressed minstrel, the sentence, "men have entei-tained 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 MAKTIX LUTHER. 23 believe tlie story of a garrulous monk, Steingel, a fierce denouncer of the pestilent " Heresiarcli." " 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 distirrbed 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 found to be of delicious flavour, and affording marvellous nourishment, and, what should have warned him of the devilish de\dce, did not diminish in size, though he ate his fill thereof ! ' How do you feel now V 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 Avas 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 favoui^able 24" EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 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, strildngly manifested itself. His manners, 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 per- petually 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 di-eams of boyhood to the perception of his allotted life-task — dim and clouded for awhile with the linsferinsf 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 liis life appears to have for some time strongly impressed his imagination; his law-studies had been thrown aside ; the light literatui-e in which he had always taken plea- sui-e 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 MAKTIN LUTHEE, 25 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 futuiity, 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 immediately turn Monk ! "VAHien 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 Aug-ustine Monks at Erfiui;h — 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 iiTevocable 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 Eeformation. SHAKSPEKE. QXJNLIGHT falls upon the paper with this transcendant ^ name ; the atmosphere sparkles with a fresher, more radiant lustre, and we are denizens at will of an enchanted land peopled with undying habitants, gifted, — immortallj, with eloquence of wisdom which a seraph might stoop to hear, wit and himiour to shake the dullest eai-th-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 mortality, but, like Swedenborg's fabled angels, they become positively younger, brighter, — of more buoyant, vigorous life as the years flit past them. And that divine eloquence of wisdom is as inexhaustible as it is luminous and sublimej constantly SHAKSPERE. 27 yielding iingnessed-of gems of thought to the reverent and attentive listener ; that wit and humour never ceasing in its bounding, joyous play, to reach and sound new chords of mirth ; that pathos to draw forth unsuspected fountain tears from the parched and barren depths of the most world- withered soul. But the reader requires not to be reminded of these trite truths, being, doubtless, her or himself one of the houi'ly-increasing multitudes who throng that spirit- realm, not of the Anglo-Saxon race alone, millions of whom are dwellers by the setting-sun, but of the great Germanic and Scandinavian nations ; ay, and of late the modern Gauls muster here by tens of thousands. This immeasurable 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 doctorial wigs and gowns, who were perpetually baAvling out some absurd impertinence or other as to what should or should not be admired, — who sought after and who avoided. Expostulation or argument was thrown away upon those gentlemen; and they were only at last driven off, or silenced, by the inextinguishable peals of in- voluntary 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 ;" 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 c 2 28 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. tliat is positively known of "William Shakspere is, tkat lie was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, went to London in early manhood, wrote plays, greatly prospered there, and finally retm^ned to die, a wealthy man, in liis native place. This is, no doubt, an incorrect statement, at present, but not likely long to remain so, if the perverse ingenuity of enthusiastic biogi'aphers be permitted unchallenged to argue and refine away every fact which does not precisely chime with their own notions of what Shakspere's youth and Shakspere's parentage sJwuld have been, and to substitute their own fancies for less picturesque realities. One important circum- stance is at all events beyond disj)ute : The parish register proves that William Shakspere, son of John Shakspere — * Gulielmus filius Johannes Shahsjoere,' was baptised on the 26th of April, 1564, though, whether accoixling to tradi- tionary belief the child was then precisely three days old, having been born, — in Henley-street it is said — on the 23 rd of the said month, remains a vexed and insoluble question. John Shakspere, it is moreover indisputable, married Mary Arden — and here we begin to ascend to quite respectable, almost dignified ancestry ; — which Mary Ai'den was the daughter of Robert Arden, of Wellingcote, who was the son of a groom of the chamber to Hemy the 7th — which groom of the chamber was nephew of Sir John Arden, groom of the body to the same monarch ; ' so that by his mother's side,' writes Mr. De Quincy, in the Encyclopcedia Britannica, — Shakspere was an authentic gentleman' — a cii'cumstance which, it should seem, redounds greatly to the honour of the author of Hamlet. Plebeian critics have, however, not only presumed 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 INIr. Charles Knight SHAKSPERE. * 29 remarks, in the graceful voliune wHcli he calls a Biography of Shakspere, redolent of poetry, — ^the supposition, there- fore, that its possessor was unable to read, becoming a transparent, self-evident absurdity. John Shakspere is a less manageable individuality than his wife. Ancient gossips of Stratford, questioned not very long 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 talk- ing about ; — the butcher-imputation especially has been savagely spurned at, and, so to speak, kicked out of the con^ troversy, and with it poor Dr. Farmer, whose inference from the magnificent passage in Haimlet, — *' 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, Rough-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 offensive tradition a storm 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 certain that in the year 1568 — his son being then 30 EXTRAOEDIXARY MEN". in his fourtli year — John Shakspere must have been in toler- ably prosperous 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 sub- scribed by seventeen persons, ten aldermen and seven bui^- gesses, seven of whom only were able to write their names, — the rest, amongst whom is John Shakspere, having affixed their marhs to the document ! This at the first blush would appear decisive as to the worthy bailiff's skill in caligi^aphy — 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 crucial signature ! It is besides urged, that the notion of John Shakspere being unable to wiite, and Mary Shakspere to read, must be discarded, inasmuch as the author of the article " Shakspere," in the Penny Cyclo- pcedia, emphatically remarks that "a gi'eat deal of what would else appear mii-aculous" in the poet's writings, excites a "reasonable admiration only" when one finds that the author was " a well-nurtured child of gentle blood ;" the meaning of which I presume to be that, suj^posing Shakspere's father and mother possessed themselves, and gave theu' son a decent education, and that moreover he, the son, was de- scended on the maternal side from the grooms of the body and bed-chamber j^reviously mentioned, the Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear, cease to appear miraculous, and excite a reasonable admii^ation 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. 31 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 sigTiificance, — for men do 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 in each month. It cannot be denied, that in this instance the real John Shakspere is meant; but the plain inference suggested by the record combated by the entirely unsuf)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 inclination which, at all events, they utterly failed in im- pressing upon their son. It may appear presimiptuous to offer an opinion adverse to the dicta of such masters in critical biography, 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 32 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. not a Koman 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 whereof, 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 gToom of the bed-chamber meaning of the term, than that he was heir to the crown of England. Keally, but for positive evidence to the contrary, one would hardly suppose it possible that sane men should 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 important 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 presumption 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, and at the same time, about as 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 festi- vities ; but surely Mr. Charles Knight's intimation that the dolphin-devices exhibited on that occasion, might have sug- SHAKSPERE. 33 gested the lines in the Midsummer NigMs Dreamy in which Oberon reminds Puck of when they heard — " A mermaid on a dolpliin'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. Fanner's skewer commentary, is scarcely less far-fetched and puerile. The annual fair at Stratford, — the nimierous 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 not daguerreotypes, but incarnations of the creative poet's own life and faculties, — his imagination, wit, energy, eloquence, tenderness, passion, moulded by won- drous dramatic art into new and exquisitely natural expres- sion, whether it be a hero or a child, — a woman or a warrior, — a demon or a saint that speaks or acts. Almost all, there- fore, that Shakspere could acquire by observation of mankind was, the power of manifesting himself intelligibly to his human audience. Even in the kindred but inferior arts of 34 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. sculpture 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 scenes of Shakspere's youth or manhood, for the originals or suggestions even of his clowns, fools, shepherds; of 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 encomjDassing Strat- ford, "svith 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 wi'itings; 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 iiTitates 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 poacliing tradition root and branch. As to the Reverend K. Davis, who, living SHAKSPERE. ' 35 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 whipped and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly his native county to his great ad- vancement ;" he, the Keverend Davis, is unanimously devoted to the infernal gods without benefit of clergy, as a reckless slanderer, whose depravity of mind and stupidly-malignant hatred of intellectual greatness should have put him out of the pale of civilized society! The whippings and impri- sonments are no doubt apocryphal, but the deer-poaching tradition is not so easily criticised or explained away, and therein, — no great moral off"ence being, as everybody knows, imputable in the matter, — as well as with resj)ect 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 2Gth 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, 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 36 EXTRAORDIXAP.Y MEN". 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 foimd and wooed her. As before stated, the 26th of No- vember, 1582, supplies an indisputable fact in Shakspere's youthful history. There was considerable excitement on that day 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 people 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 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 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 unfortunate liaison by an artful girl — woman rather ; and albeit that his sense of honour compelled him to marry the beguiling temptress, she neither possessed his affection nor esteem. Haj^pily, I say, there is not the slightest proof of this, and it would require very positive evidence to set aside the precisely opposite SHAKSPErvE. presumption, were there no other, raised by tlie remarkable bequest in the poet's will to his wife, otherwise amply pro- vided for by her legal thirds, of the "second-best bed." "Without considering the matter too curiously, we may hold beyond all reasonable question, that this bed was that in which Shakspere saw his fii'st-born child smiling in its mother-nurse's arms. A man resardino: his wife with cold indifference, personal aversion, resentful disgust, as IMr. De Quincy intimates, might perhaps bequeath her a carriage, plate, jewellery, an estate even, but the bridal bed never! 38 EXTEAORDINAPvY MEN. This is not tlie only instance by many in wliicli Sclilegel's suggestion that that prolific mine of misapprehension, the Sonnets, might be turned to account in the construction of a biography of Shakspere, has been rashly acted upon. Sir Walter Scott, who in his novel of Kenilworth makes Raleigh discom^se rapturously of "Wild Will's" plays some twenty years before they were written, in the same work puts the following sentences into the mouth of Sussex : — " He (Shak- sj^ere) is a stout man at quarter-staif and single falchon, though, T am told, a halting felloio ; and he stood a rough fight, they say, with the ranger of old Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote, when he broke his deer-j)ark and kissed his keeper's daughter." The stout man at quarter-stafi' and single falchon, at the time this is sujDposed to have been spoken, was barely eleven years old; and the phrase, "a halting fellow," endorsing Capell's suggestion, is founded solely upon so obviously a figurative use of the words " made lame," and "lameness," in the 38th and 39th Sonnets, that it would have seemed almost impossible for the most perverse ingenuity to twist them into a confession of the poet's per- sonal deformity. Coleridge coincided mainly in opinion with De Quincy relative to Anne Hathaway, with the addition that she was " ill favoured j" his authority being nothing of more value than some imaginary sonnet-allusions ; whilst Oldys, working previously in the same quarry, ex- tracted therefrom proof that the 93rd Sonnet "was addi*essed by Shakspere to his beautiful wife on some suspicion of her infidelity !" It is not after all so very far from these wild guesses to the announcement by a mad barrister-lec- turer in London a few years since — that Shakspere's plays were written by Catholic monks — a circumstance accounting, in the lecturer's opinion, for the distaste, according to him, SHAKSPERE. . 39 •with -whicli a large number of the Protestant clergy regard them! 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 fortime and education to the theatre, such places were 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. " 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." ^^%S)®4l^ CLIYEE CEOIvRYELL. npHE 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 wdth the devil from his child- hood; the fiery and sagacious commander who disconcerted the tactics, and overthrew the armies of every royalist general — Prince Eupert inclusive — that had the misfortune to encounter him; the politician who penned or dictated the letters, speeches, and despatches recently collated by jMr. CROMWELL. 41 Carlyle, was a bom dullard, as well as villain and buffooD, whose history, from the cradle to the grave, was unredeemed by the faiatest indication of genius, intellect, or himianity ! The coarse daubing of those mercenary limners, exposed of late years to the keen atmosphere of a searching criticism, has 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, flexile lipsj and we are enabled at once to 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 WilUams, of Glamorganshire, who afterwards assumed the name of Crom- D 42 EXTEAORDINAKY MEN. •well, and settled at HitcHnbrook, near Huntingdon. Robert Cromwell, the second son of Sir Hemy Cromwell, the gi-and- son of Morgan Williams and the sister of the decapitated Earl of Essex, married Elizabeth Steward, sister of Sir Thomas Steward, and remotely allied, it is said, to the Scottish royal family. The issue of this marriage was five daughters, and a son, Oliver Cromwell, the future Protector, who was bom at Huntingdon on the 25th of April, 1599. Robert Cromwell, 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 ; 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 ofience, " satisfaction" was relentlessly " taken out of his hide," by his father. In one of his scamperings about the countiy, he chanced to tumble into a river, but was happily fished out by the Rev. IMr. Johnson, curate of Connington, much to that loyal person's CROMWELL. 43 after regret, if lie was sincere in his reply to Colonel Crom- well, who, when passing through Huntingdon at the head of liis 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 ; " and 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 frolicsome himiour of the boy supplied the germ of a story related upon " high and credible authority,'* to have taken place during his infancy. His gi-andfather. 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 pranks, possibly robbing an orchard of a hatful of apples, D 2 44 EXTRAORDINAHY HEX. brought on liim 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, hapj^ened 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 wiudow into the back-yard unobservd, or the domestics would have stopped him, possessed himself of a light spade, and sped off in the direction Mrs. Cromw^ell was expected. He had traversed two-thirds of the distance, when he met his mother. *-' There — there is a savage bull," said the still sobbing 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, which intently regarded them, in safety. Numberless instances are related, all clearly sho^dng that young Oliver was a bom 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 thi'one. 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 CKOMWELL. 45 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 I\Ir. 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 esta- blishments, a kind of dramatic entertainment was enacted by the principal pupils of the Huntingdon free-school, called '* Lingua ; or the Combat of the Tongue and the Five Senses for the Crown 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 accusar- 46 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. tion, it may be remarked; in passing, somewhat at variance with the common one of dullness 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 {solus). Tactus. Eoses 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. !RIy 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 smack 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- CPvOMWELL. 47 staff, cudgel-playing, foot-ball, et cetera, tlian 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 ia Lincoln's Inn. His implacable revilers insist that duriug his stay there, he was remarkable only for excesses of every kiad ; and yet, so inconsistent with itself is imreasoning prejudice that these same scribes declare, that the Oliver Cromwer 48. EXTEA.OEDINARY MEN. whom tliey tlius describe was from early boytiood 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 ruptiu^e with the king, Tvill be the gTeatest man in England." It is easy to trace through all the misre- presentation by which the boy-life of a great, though far from perfect man, has been distorted, the germ and gro^i;h of those remarkable qualities, indomitable energy, clear, mas- culine intellect, which in after years raised their possessor to supreme power; and if the devotional fervour, fii'st kindled in the youthful Oliver's miud 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 gi'ew to manhood, — for hardly a day could have passed without tidings reaching him of some cruel or despotic act — some fresh outrage upon suf- ferers for conscience sake. He had not long passed his twenty- first birth-day when he married (Aug. 22nd, 1620) Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir John Boiu'chier, a relative of Hampden's, and thenceforth putting resolutely aside all boyish follies, he, to use Milton's expression, " notirished his great soul in silence," against the time, wliich 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. rpHE real name of this eminent and facile dramatist; ± eulogised by Boileau, as- " Ce rare et fameiix esprit, dont la fertile veine, Ignore en ecrivant, le travail et la peine," ■was Jean Baptiste Pocquelin — that of Moliere having been assumed by him when he made choice of the stage as a profession. 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 complimentary to the author of Tartuffe and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, how highly soever we may admii-e the stately, brilliant, 50 EXTEAORDINAKY MEN. and tender verses of those great writers in the Cid, Pliedre, 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 magni- ficent 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 Dairies 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 Kjxig 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. " Con9ois-tu, Lisette," said the future painter of MOLIERE. 51 lujAiliii!' -^:^%''w^\ I'arivffe, as soon as lie had dried his eyes, and cleared his voice, addressing a sewing-girl employed in the workshop, " Congois-tu, Lisette, pourquoi Ton s'enrage si furiensement quand on me voit faire le Pretre?" " Assurement !" 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-Guillaume, and Turlupin, 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, culi's or kind- EXTRAORDINARY MEN. ness, to attend to his work; and his grandfather, stimulated 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, Avith the avowed hoj^e 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 afiected 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 so charmingly divert Mademoiselle De I'Enclos with his illus- trative proofs that all man and womankind, high or low, of whatever race, clime, or religion, were all " Swiss," that is, purchaseable, 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, su2:)posing the imputation to be fairly applied, MOLIERE. 53 wMcli is rendered somewhat doubtful by the fact tliat 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 theu' 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 Thirteenth as valet-upholsterer to Narbonne ; and on his return he witnessed the execution of Cinq-Mars and his unfor- tunate 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 Be] art, their sister Madeline, and Duparc, otherwise Gros-Bene, 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 VEcole 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 54 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 Frecieuse Ridicule of the Hotel Kambouillet, or a Tartuffe, admirably en scene, and the life-like resemblance would be instantly acknowledged. Even his exaggerations of character, as in the Mcdade Imaginai/re, 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 Falstaff, Dogberry, or Mercutio, than Sir T. Lawi-ence to Rafiaelle, 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 di^amatic writing, nor, as regards the comedy of manners, in perhaps that of any other coimtry. ■^^^^g:^i^*-o- BLAISE PASCAL. "OLAISE PASCAL, one of the most divinely-giffced men •^^ that ever trod the earth to enlighten, elevate, and guide it ; in whom the love of truth for its own sake was a con- suming passion, whose too-brief life was a manifestation of 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 56 EXTRAOEDINARY MEN. nueasilj. He had been removed against his will from the death-chamber, and when next seen by his father, he was gazing with suffused, 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 his married life was unchequered by a pass- ing cloud. The death of his wife no doubt confii'med and hastened the intention of M. Pascal to retire from public 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, 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 wliich 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 reverend antiquity, before which men had been so long contented to bow do^vn with unquestioning submission. Galileo had practically disproved one of Aris- totle's axiomatic propositions on the speed of falling bodies; PASCAL. 57 his telescope had confirmed the Copemican 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, a triumph 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 has weight, not long after Torricelli's death, in 1646, 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 indestructible 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 58 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. of swift, silent, ubiquitous speech, — tlie 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 literatm^e 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 strengi-h, 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 pui-port — 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 liis mind, there could be no rest or quiet for him PASCAL. 59 till it was resolved, and from this moment — be was in Ms 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 com- pose them." " Yes," said the boy, " I know, or at least I sup- pose that, but surely geometry means something else — some- thing more — some Ah, well !" he added, checking himself, " this Greek and Latin once finished, I shall begin to learn something." The strong 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 recompensed in after years, when the ardent zeal of the consummate mathema- tician to ascertain the properties and conditions of the ma- terial, visible world, had been superseded by the loftier aim of the spiritual philosopher to penetrate the impalpable E 2 60 EXTEAOEDIXARY MEN. secret of the universe — involving the Life of God and the immortality of man. No djoubt 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 simplicity of style in which they are clothed; the quiet gi^ace and charm shed over them by a fancy chastened and refined by early familiarity with the masters of com^DOsition, must, to some extent, have been wanting, and the Fensees 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 v/ere, perceived the true theorem when surprised by his PASCAL. 61 ppMm^^ father. Be this as it may, M. Etienne Pascal saw enough to literally frighten him (il etoit epouvante, writes Madame Perier) — and breathlessly questioned his son as to how or where he had acquired his knowledge. Blaise, whose intel- lect 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 ordi- nary 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 expe- rimental essays, forward, backward, forward again, as gleamings of knowledge broke in upon him by. dint of un- 62 EXTKAOEDINARY MEN. wearied 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 unexpect- edly revealed, and it was determined by acclamation that no further hindrance should be ofiered to the boy's scientific predilections ; and from that time he was liberally supplied with every requisite necessary for the prosecution 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 j^aper 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 hundi-ed corollaries; and this without the aid of the algebraic formula which Des- cartes subsequently elaborated for the simplification of mathe- matical calculations. This astonishing performance was sub- mitted to Descartes himself, who could not be persuaded that it was the production of a lad in his sixteenth year, and per- sisted in believing or affecting to believe 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 extraordi- nary 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. 63 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'Aiguillon, 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 restor- ing M. Pascal to his family. She had a new dramatic piece, called Tyrannic Love {UAmowr 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 Jacqueline Pascal, the 64 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. youngest sister of Blaise, a girl of charming personal appear- ance and graceful manners. Gibberte, tbe 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 presenting 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 sm^prise, and a brief explanation by the duchess, the cardinal graciously promised compliance with Jacqueline's request ; the lettre de cachet Avas 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 ensm'e 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 possibility 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 accompKshed. The machine, PASCAL. 65 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 Cliristina 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 enerodes. The after scientific achievements of Blaise Pascal, which have invested his name with so great a lustre, belong to the history of his manhood; but I cannot close this brief chro- nicle of his earlier years without remarking that the fervent 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 that 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 intel- lect, that clearly discerned, thix)ugh all the dazzling illusions 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 incompati- bility of reason with revelation, he gave utterance to the remark reproduced in such various lights and aspects in his 66 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. " Thouglits :" — " Ay, as you say, reason confounds revelation ; but then creation, existence, confound reason. Ask reason what it has to say of an eternity gone past — of the inter- minability of space : and yet existence, a past eternity, inter- minability of space, are self-evident facts ! True, reason is a truth and power in her own domain, but 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 ardent devotion to truth ; — in all things the child was emphatically the Father of the man, ay, even the morbid asceticism which threw a gloom over his last days vras 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. v^-<^- THE DUKE OF MARLBOEOUGH. rpHERE 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 gi*imed with gTOssest pro- fligacy. Such names as Gates, Scroggs, Jeffreys, alternate with those of Buckingham, Rochester, Lady Castlemaine, the Duchess of Portsmouth, and others of a like odour; the charming catalog-ue being fitly headed and gi-aced by the crowned pensioner of France, calling himself Charles, King of England, and his equally unprincipled and despotic 68 EJvTEAOrtDINARY MEN. brother, James. Apart from the list of the victims of that unhappy period, there is scarcely one historic name which is not more or less tainted with its slime, and few more disas- trously 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 stained 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 Koger de Courcelles is set down in Domesday Book as the possessor of lordships in Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, and Salop. The name does not, however, reappear in the annals of the kingdom 'wdth 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 Aj-abella 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 subordi- nate 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 Corn-cell es having slipped, as lordships often MAHLBOEOUGH. 69 will, from the family's gi^asp long before. Winstone Chm-cliill died early, and John was consequently heir to his f.ither's possessions, but of such inconsiderable value was that con- tingency deemed, that it was constantly impressed upon the handsome boy and his beautiful 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 gen- tleman of the euphonious name of Dr. Crumlepolm. "Whilst there, the military bent of the boy's mind was displayed, according to the following circumstantial testimony, which, however, is rendered somewhat doubtful by the fact, that the Duke of Marlborough's knowledge of Latin was of the slen- derest kind, — by his pai'tiality, though any thing but bookishly inclined, for the study of Vegetius de Re Militari. " From this very book," writes the Rev. Mr. North, rector of Colyton, " from this very book, John Churchill, scholar of this school, afterwards the celebrated 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 clergy- man, who said he was a contemporary scholar, was then well acquainted with him, and fi'equently saw him read it. This 1 testify to be true. G. North, Rector of Colyton." At all events the yoimg man's scholastic studies, civil or military, were neither severe nor protracted, for 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 70 EXirvAOr.DINAKY MEN. I -H been eiToneouslj attributed to the influence of his sister Arabella with his royal highness — an imputation which seems 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 earnestly solicited a commission in one of the roval re^fiments. His request was granted, all the more readily, according to the scandalous gossip of the time, that the suit of the singulai'ly handsome page was supported by the influence of the Duchess mahlborough. 71 " of York. This anecdote, or at least the inference suggested by it, is, there can be little doubt, a calumny ; but it is quite certain that another and quite as influential a lady was so dazzled by the yoiing soldier's appearance in his new uniform that she presented him with a gift of extraordinary munifi- cence. This we have upon the dii-ect and positive authority of Lord Chesterfield. " The Duchess of Cleveland," wiites his lordship, "was so struck by the beautiful figure of young Chm-chill when an ensign of the Guards, that she gave him five thousand 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 or 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 unplea- santly circumstanced. He had wandered forth, one brilliant moonlight night for what purpose does not appear, by a cir- cuitous 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 Chiu-chill was already at a considerable distance, and speed- ing along at a rate which rendered foot pursuit — and the 72 EXTRAORDINABY MEN. broken rocky ground precluded the use of horses — hopeless. There was^ however, a rocky ledge on the other side of a deep chasm, which separated him from the Moors, which he must pass, where their guns could easily reach him. Thither the Moors tumultuously huiTied, 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 Tinder 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 in- stant the Englishman halted he halted also, in evident 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 naiTOW ledge whereof, commanded by the guns of the JMoors, it w^as MARLBOROUGH. 73 necessary to pass. This done, Ensign Churcliill mounted tlie Moor upon his back, taking care to carry him in such a way that the bullets of the young man's friends must necessarily pass through the Moor's 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 adven- tures. Handsome Chui'chill 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 pro- moted from the service of the Duchess to that of the Duke of York, and flaup.ted it openly as the recognised mistress of his Royal Highness; Ensign Churchill meanwhile be- coming, as was but just. Captain Churchill, — and subse- quently, 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 Holland. At the siege of Nimeguen " the handsome Englishman" greatly distinguished himself by his dashing bravery, conjoined with cool imperturbable skill and judgment. Turenne formed a high opinion of his F 74 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. military capabilities, and in consequence of his report, tlie King of France openly complimented Captain Churckill in the face of the troops. The Marshal once, with a want of consideration unusual with him, put the personal daring of his foreign favoui'ite 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 hand- some Englishman will retake it with half the number." The wager was accepted; Captain Churchill, informed of what was expected of him, selected his men at once, retook the post, and maintained it till relieved by another officer. He not very long 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 sistei"s, — the eldest of whom became Duchess of Richmond, — the daughters of jSIr. 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 gi'eat 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 Marl- borough there is in many respects a striking resemblance, though their powerful minds w^ere cast in entirely different MAKLBOROUGH. 75 moulds, and their pursuits were of a totally opposite charac- ter, — Lord Chancellor Bacon. In both, grandeur of intellect was dwarfed and sullied by mean, ignoble cravings : the one plundered the 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 by the example of the second; and both have left a name immortalised by the genius which at once illustrates and brands it. f2 PETER THE GREAT. A BOUT tlie same time that tlie memorable struggle be tween Charles and the Long Parliament was taking A place in England, the German Romanoffs had begun to erect an autocratic throne upon the crumbling ruins of the 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 L, usually styled the Great, the government of Muscovy was little better than a ferocious anarchy, dominated and varied from time to time by the unsci^ipulous use of the knout and the capricious violence of the Strelitz, a privileged militia, much resembling the Tiu'kish janissaries, about 10,000 of whom kept Moscow in a state of chronic perturbation PETER THE GREAT. 77 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 measui^e restrained in their lawless violence, and brought under subjection to the Czai-'s authority, — the coiu-ts 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 Eui'oj)e, 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 intercoui'se between the two nations by a treaty of commerce was not entertained by Alexius, he, like nearly all persons gToping 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, 78 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. in first nuptials, a daughter of the Boyard, IMiloflafskoi, by whom he had two sons 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 Narishkin, who bore him two children, one the world-famous Peter, the other a daughter, baptized Natalie, after her mother. This second marriage threw the Miloflafskoi 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 gaioing over the Strelitz and the populace of Moscow, partly by the fascination of her beauty, 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 as a matter of necessity, to his capable and aspiring sister. PETER THE GREAT. 79 Tliis 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 long 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. Kepeated messages to Sophia for military aid were evasively replied to by assm-ances that no harm was contemplated by the naturally exasperated people, towards the widow and son of the Czar Alexius ; 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 in the minds of the very people by whom she hoped it would 80 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. be perpetrated. Peter — boy — cliild almost that lie 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 huiTiedly 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 jDartizan. 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-j^rince 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 fimous 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 mui'derous clutch. Parties of soldiers were as quickly as possible despatched to scoui' the roads leading from Moscow, one of the most active and numerous of wliich tracked the Czarina and her son in the dii'ection of the convent of the Trinity. The terrified mother and her boy had left the roar and tiunult of the city far behind, and were debating whether the lights in the distance, wliich, from the undulating wood- dotted intervening countiy, now shone out in fast-increasing brightness, — and anon vanished in the thick darkness, PETER THE GREAT. 81 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 thro^Ti 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 inspii^ed 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 unexpected, 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 blow was so feebly aimed, that one of the priests easily caught 82 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. the man's arm and tlinist liim back, saying as lie 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 was cleared of the Strelitz, and the most terrible crisis ever encountered by Feter the First had passed away. PETER THE GREAT. 83 The Narislikin interest, thougli 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 baflSed princess was ultimately fain to content herself with the title and attributes of regent, her imbecile brother Ivan being proclaimed 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 regental 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, unscruptdous princess. G eneral Basseville, said to be a Scotchman, who had previously superintended Peter's education, was dismissed, and a compliant tool of the regent's appointed in his stead. The youthful prince was next domi- 84 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. ciled at an obscure villaoje considerably distant from Moscow, and gradually suiTOunded 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 coiTupting vices — drunkenness especially — with the view, of course, to destroy alike the prince's intellect and health. The regent had not taken the true measm^e of the intellect she would have debased 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" formed 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 constiTiction 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 Fort and Gordon — the first a Genevese, originally intended for commercial pursuits, but of far too adventurous and mercuiial a temperament to settle down into peaceful, prosaic life — the other a sedately sagacious Scotch soldier, intent upon pushing his fortunes in a country offering peculiar advantages at that time to such men as he and Le Fort. The counsel of these two gentlemen was of PETER THE GREAT. 85 great service to the young Czar-expectant, and it was to tliem 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 — obliging Sophia to take 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 danger 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 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- 86 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. 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 StreHtz — again succeeded, — partially at all events, and about a thousand of the soldiery marched to seize Peter, who had again sought shelter 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. '-^^^f^^^^©^Q)&^^v^ BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. rpHEUE are few lives more pleasant to contemplate than -*- that of Benjamin Franklin, chiefly, no doubt, 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 indi- vidual 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 under- stood 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 8S EXTRAORDINARY MEN. position in business, an eminent one in political society, and a highly respectable name in science and literatui^e, by the aid alone of strong, clear common sense, combined with integrity, 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 literatui'e in place of the few stray and perishing blossoms which he had leisure to gather there, had not imperious cii'- cumstances compelled him to involve himself in the stormy struggles of political 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 afibrds, 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 gTew 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 16S5. Benjamin's mother, espoused in second nuptials by his father, was Abiah Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the earlier settlers in New England, and according to the testimony of the Reverend Cotton Mather, " a godly and learned Englishman," who had rendered liimself obnoxious to the ruling powers in the colony by his denunciations, with both tongue and pen, FRANKLIN. 89 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 must 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 his father's side to the time when the name was that of a numerous and independent class of English yeo- manry. It was retained as a personal patronyme, with thirty freehold 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 commenced 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-offering 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 G 90 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. quarto volumes of manuscript poetry, whicli, but for tlie stolid inappreciation of English and American publishers, %yould have delighted mankind — to devote his literary talents to the preparation of a large number of sermons, so that his nephev/ and godchild might start in his clerical career with a good stock of ready-made eloquence and sound divinity. Suddenly discovering, 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 favoiu'ing winds, and returning richly-laden with the produce of far- off mysterious lands beyond the sea. The lad had abeady 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 magni- tude 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, j^i'O- FRANKLIN. 91 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 sen- sitive 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 ^ith — 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 efiect of habit, that Dr. Franklin declares he had not the slightest choice or taste in matters of eatinsr or drinking, and that five minutes after he had dined, it required a considerable effort of memory to recall to mind v/hat he had partaken of — a deficiency of gastronomical appreciation which a Frenchman would no doubt hold to be significant of a lamentably low state of civilization, but which nevertheless proved to be the key-stone of Benjamin Franklin's elevation in the social scale. In 1717, Benjamin's much older brother, Josiah, returned from England with presses and types, and commenced business 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 thenceforth inevitable fact, and addressed himself to the acquirement g2 92 EXTEAOFtDINAEY MEN. of the printer's craft with zealous industry. It was not long, moreover, before he hit upon a novel mode of in- creasing 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, as lorite 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 procui-e books, he offered his brother to board himself for half the money which his meals were reckoned to cost. This was readily agreed to, and thanks to the want of a distin- guishing 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 devoimng 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. 93 and of conscenial bookish and controversial taste and tern- 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 sach 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 flourished 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 desirous 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 tYie BostonGazette, till an unlooked-for crisis in the journal's afifairs entirely changed his position with regard to it. The House of Assembly took offence at some strictures inserted in the paper — the proprietor was 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 94 EXTRAORDINARY HEX. lad's indentui'es 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 natiu'e, 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 in 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 eighteenth birth-day, when he cast himself thus foolishly upon the world, and after vainly seeking employment 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 dii-ty stockings and shirts, — his attention was immediately arrested by a Miss Head, who, standing at the door of her father's shop, eyed with a sort of comj)assionate ciuiosity the deso- late looking vagrant — the more conspicuous from contrast' Fr.ANKLIX. 95 with, tlie passing streams of chuicli and cliapel attired, churcli and chapel seeking citizens, — profoundly unconscious, we Ktay be sure, that she was looking upon the individual whom it was written should be her future husband. Franldin 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, — 96 . EXTRAORDINARY MEN. *' Tliou shalt not mar the comers of tliy 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 Kead 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 w'hom Sir William's character was unknown, and his Excellency vehemently insisted that a yoimg man of such nice discretion and remark- able abilities ought to be established in business, on his own account, without delay. He offered to Avrite in this sense to his protege's father, and it was finally agreed that Ben- iamin Franklin should be the bearer of the flattering missive to Boston. The notice, highly-favom-able opinion, and pro- fuse promises of substantial patronage of a gentleman in Sir W. Keith's ofiicial position, must have thrown Franklin's mind somewhat off its balance, or, with his knowledge of his father's character, he woiUd scarcely have imdertaken such an entirely hopeless journey. An excusable feeling of vanity must, no doubt, have also aided in inducing him to visit FRANKLIN. 97 Boston upon tliis occasion. He had left tliat 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. Sir "William Keith's condescendant 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 would 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 satisfaction in this respect, the cautious, solid-minded father emphatically 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 permanent success in life. Poetry or rhyming should also, he observed, be sedulously avoided by men desii'ous of making way in the world. The ostensible purpose of his journey thus peremp- torily disposed of, Benjamin Franklin determined upon returning to Philadelphia without loss of time ; but first paid a swaggering sort of visit to his brother's printing office, — D8 ESTRAOEBINARY MUX. dilated to tlie men there ui^on the higher wages and greatei 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, a ad tossed it Vvdth careless graciousness to the petitioners for drink. The brother, who was present and maintained a sullen silence whilst tliis boyish display was going on, complained bitterl^^ to their lather afterwards, that Benjamin had designedly insulted liim before his w*orkpeople. " 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 judg- ment, — 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 veiy distant land of promise. Possibly no other evil might have befallen Franklin from this imprudent step wliicli 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 Rhode Island, where Franklin's sea-faring brother had recently settled, in whose house they met with a Mr. Yernon, who requested Benjamin Franklin to receive a debt of thirty-fi.ve poimds, due to him from a person in Philadelphia, and remit it as soon as he could seciu-ely do so, but not before. Franklin received the money, and put it by till he could forward it to Mr. Yernon FRANKLIN. 99 by a safe hand. His own necessities, hov/ever 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 ofi* for the West Indies, which he did at last, had borrowed, under confident protestations of repayment before any inconvenience could be felt, a great part of Mr. Vernon's money. This was a sad afiair; 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 Sh- 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 intention 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 Yemen's money, the young man's prompt reply would have been that the necessaiy materials could be procured from England with sufiicient 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 suggested by Mr. Read, — the tearful misgivings of his fair daughter, and embarked for England. He had no sooner 100 EXTRAORDINARY IIEX. reached London than he found that the pretended letters oi introduction and credit were not even written by Sir William Keith ; though had he wi'itten them they would not have been one whit less worthless than as actually subscribed. Friendless, almost moneyless, — owing a considerable and very ugly debt, nearly four thousand miles distant from his home, Irom 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 fustian 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 chatting with Louis XYI. 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 strikingly impress the mind as the grander, more colossal F3ANKLIN. 101 figures wHch, 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 exercised, 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, from his having stumbled heavily upon the thi'eshold of his career, and re- covered himself unaided save by God and his own brave honesty of wiLL MIRABEAU. THE tumultuous and menacing scenes of French history wliicli 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 fig*ui'e 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 Stael's expression, — dominated for a time the at last aroused and vengeful passions of a people, who for centuries had writhed hopelessly beneath the hoofs 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 himselfj had succeeded to so vast a heritage of hate, might, if aided by the triumphant orator, — whose rampant MIRABEAU. 103 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 allusion this 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 " Grande trahison du Comte de Miraheau" 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, which 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 do^vn 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 104 EXTRAOEDINARY MEN. in conjunction with the record of his youthful days, — torn, 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 idolaters of commanding power and self-sustained supremacy. The Eiquettis, originally spelt Arighetti, were of Italian origin, and of patrician rank in Florence, where they resided till 1269, when Azza Kiquetti was banished with other Ghi- bellines from Tuscany. Azza Riquetti betook himself to Marseilles, pui'chased the Mirabeau estate in the vicinity of that city, and took up his permanent residence there. The wealth brought by the family from Italy, and the talents of its successive representatives in commerce, war, diplomacy intrigue, and the kindred arts of sycophancy and dissimula- tion, which smooth the road to distinction 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 Fifteenth, 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 cacJiet MIRABEAU. 105 which he applied for 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 " Uphemerides" and " Leqons 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 JNIan, it is very doubtful if there is either God or 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 provisioning of the styes and troughs appropriated to the human animal. This is my own, and, I believe, the general impression of the tone and tendency of the Marquis de Mirabeau's writings ; albeit Mr. Carlyle, characterizes as "diluted Catholicism," wha1>- ever that may mean, the halting and confused allusions to a Supreme Being, and a doubtful hereafter, thinly scattered through the huge waste of blotted paper, adding that the devotional aspect of the Friend of Man is an odd and per- plexing one, — " very singular in his attitude here." The publication of these consolatory and elevating disquisitions obtained for M. de IVIirabeau, as they deserved to do, the friendship of Du Quesnay, the condescendant patronage of Madame de Pompadour, and consequently enlarged privileges in the matter of lettres de cacliet, and other important court influence in matters 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 H 106 EXTEAOKDINASY MEN, desirous witlial 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 Marquise de Saule-Boeuf, on the 9th of March, 1749, who brought him a dowry of 50,000 francs per annum. Shortly before this union he had jDurchased a small estate at Bignon, not far from Sens, where he domiciled liis wife; and for his own especial delectation he hired a large hotel in Paris, where he for the future chiefly resided with his mistress, Eleonore le Pailly, a handsome girl, previously a housemaid in the establishment, 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 soon came to entertain towards his wife and son. That son, Gabriel Honore de Riquetti, 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 eflfects of which the father, in a letter to the boy's imcie, 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 coui-ts being obliged, from very shame, patronized as M. de Mirabeau was in influential quarters, to pronounce the sentence of sepa- MIEABEAU. 107 ration wMcli tlie unhappy wife prayed for. As to Ms son, tlie sole half-contemptuous interest which M. de Mii-abeau appeared to feel with respect to him was, that the " wolfs cub," his favourite paternal phrase, should became 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 rebellious against being crammed with the Ephemerides and Legons Econo- miques, so that he was very seldom out of punishment. He was 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 ofiender, 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 running 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 Nivernois into an ecstasy of admiration. "Your son appeared to me at that moment," he wrote to the father, " t u2 108 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. ~%xWr\T' m^mr-^ be tlie emperor of tlie world." Cliristianity — religion, rarely jaentioned 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 afterwards curiously illustrates his fitness for the rite. A question arose as to what was possible or impossible, and the noble 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?" Poorly as this flippant remark spealis for the boy's logical acumen — Mirabeau, by the way, MIRABEAU. 109 never became remarkable as a sequential reasoner — bis brilliant firework declamation did not require and would in fact bave been vexatiously damped and hampered by the necessities of logic; — still the retort upon tlie Cardinal is quite decisive as to the character and quality of the fountain at which the nascent intellect of young Mirabeau drank of the knowledcje of sood and evil. At seventeen he quitted the unhappy domicile at Bignon — home it could not be called — to study for the profession of arms in a military school at Paris, presided over by the Abb6 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 despatch in the transmission of the money was desirable. M. de Mirabeau was of course furiously wi-oth at his son's cul,pable 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 E-iquetti de Mirabeau was sent to join the regiment de E.oyal-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 Lerons 110 EXTRACRDIXARY MEN. Economiques, must inevitably bring scandal and disgrace upon the honoured names of Riquetti or Mirabeau, if per- mitted to assume either of them. The young attache's usual luck followed 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 damsel's good graces. The colonel, to revenge himself upon the impertinent cadet, had his likeness cleverly carica- tured 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 w^as 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 Phe, with the firm intention, avowed to Bailli Mirabeau, of shipping him off at the first opportunity to Surinam, the most pestilent 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 Pochelle. He next served with his regiment during one campaign in Corsica, but becoming disgiisted A\-ith the plundering, firing, massacring incident to war, he quitted the service and returned to France. It was certainly from no deficiency in personal coui-age 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 character and bearing, replied, "Why, he is a lad confoundedly MIRABEAU. Ill active j 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 the orders of him whom they call master, 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 stufi" 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 suffer- ing another and much longer imprisonment, young Mirabeau chiefly dwelt, not creditably, beyond the jurisdiction ot his father's illustrious patrons, seldom caring to come mthin 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 112 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. moments. His death, of wHcli 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, looking towards the setting sun, he exclaimed, " If that is not God, it is his cousin-german." Then followed: — "That Pitt is a minister Avho 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 revolu- tion — 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 fanaticism, or the arro- gance of bigoted unbelief. MIRABEAU. 113 The tidings of Mirabeau's death rekindled his fast expiring popularity to a temporary flame. Presently a rumour 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-miortem exa- mination of the body, instantly and clamorously demanded by the populace, had demonstrated the falsehood of the accu- sation, Drs. Cabanis and Petit looked 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 Saint 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, {A.UX grands hovimes 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 off 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- 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 pro- bability, have so soon outworn its tenement of clay. MOZART. 115 A certificate of baptism, subscribed by Leopold Compreclit, chaplain to his higliness, the Prince-Bisliop of Salsbourgt, obtained at the instance of the Honourable Daines Bar- rington, F.R.S., in order to the clearing up of some misgivings 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 baptized in the afore- said city on the 17th of January, 1756, his godfather being Gottlieb Pergmayr, merchant of Salsbourg." Tliis child was the seventh and last bom of his parents, v/hose 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 juster 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, most 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 vdth 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 116 EXTRAORDIXARY MEN. was three years old when his father began teaching INIannerl 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 progTess in the art not manifesting itself till he was of that age, and then very startlingly. Woferl, who had received no instiaiction 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, W^oferl 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. ■■■:""';?.ii''';'HM. ^m'UM:-'!i:h': j: :-.i ^i';': pold, accompanied by a friend, surprised tlie excited and impatient boy just before the stained and blotted manuscript was finislied. "What are you writing and crying about, Woferl 1" 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 !" 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 118 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 liis cliildren, — 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 wliich distinguished circle little ^\^oferl 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 gii'l," 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 MOZAET. 119 the flattering -wish you have expressed regarding her?" " To gratitude," replied ^Voferl. " She helped and consoled me; the other was too proud to do so." The sympathising archduchess was Marie Antoinette, the martyred queen of France. Paris was the next capital city visited by the Mozarts, and there Yf oferl's success was, if possible, even more decided than at Vienna. 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 memory, 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- m.ent 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 displayed 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 120 EXTRAOHDINARY MEX. much more desirable than mere glory, and in 1764, he arrived 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 E-oyal 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 plapng, 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 ap- propriate 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 improvization. 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 wild enthusiasm." MOZART. 121 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 enabled to resume their exhausting avocations. They gave two concerts at Amsterdam, in Lent, the apparent impro- priety, in a religious sense, of such performances during that penitential season, being excused, according to the adver- tisements, 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 composition 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, anory 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 122 EXTKAORDINAEY MEN. he 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 playing 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 Salsbourgh, he composed a duet for the violin and piano, with a trumpet obligato. In 1766, the Mozarts 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 prevailed to such an extent as to prevent the performance of an opera, La Finta Simplece, 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 MOZAET. 123 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 weU, 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 v/as delighted, and the president warmly congratulated the young aspirant upon his success. Not long afterwards, the Academy of Music at Naples gave him, as a test, a Koman 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, wi'ote 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 correct any mistakes he might have made. Two days after- wards (Easter Sunday) he played the famous Miserere before Salaceti, 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. Pightly 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, — i2 124 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. the first division being in five, the second in four parts, the ■whole intermingled with solos, ttc., 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, and the Pope conferred upon him the Order of the Golden Spur. Upon his return to Salsbourgh, the Prince-bishop conferred upon him the post of director of the orchestra [concert-meister), and he remained at home, inces- santly 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 Ferdinand with the Princess of Modena. The work was entirely successful; and when, on the 14th of January, 1775, the curtain fell upon his opera-buffa of La Finta Giardiniera, the show-boy life of Wolfgang Mozart may be said to have finally terminated, and his brilliant manhood to commence — a brief, and, withal, a mournful, harassing one, spite of that meteoric splendour,' and though soothed and tranquillized by the affectionate solicitude of a beloved wife, Constance Weber, an accomplished actress, whose hand, first refused to him, was won by the display of magnificent genius in his opera of Idomeneo, a work written by the light and under the inspiration of that supreme hope. The lamp of lile, early excited to imnatural brightness by the breath of courtly applause, flickered 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. n^HE modest simplicity combined with a certain degree of despondent pensiveness, ■which characterized 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 fe^ remaininsf 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 126 EXTEAOEDINARY MEN. marriage, and just as he was entering upon tlie threshold, 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 pre- tensions of the zealous and high-minded law -reformer, have been made to collapse and disappear. Happily, 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 bridegTOom, 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 fii^st 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 wellings KOMTLLY. 127 forth of tlie 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 XI Y. ; 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 his 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 flame by the fiery eloquence of the celebrated Saurin, and forthwith determining to abandon home, kindred, country, inheritance, rather than crouch beneath the bondage of spiritual despotism, he em- barked for England, where he had not long arrived when he 128 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 Sii' 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 liis 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 foi-ty-nine. His youngest 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. 1 29 jeweller of tlie name of La Fosse, carrying on business in Broad Street, city of London. ^V^hilst 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 liigh 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 wdndfall, 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 \v4th 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 130 EXTRAORDINAKY MEN. life. That this fair promise might have the better chance of fulfilment, Mr. Romilly determined upon seciu'ing them the benefit of pure country air, for wliich 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. E-omilly, 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. Romilly'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 afiection 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 KOinLLT. 131 been accustomed for many years to pass my evenings and 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 earhest 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 1' But it was not merely such extravagant stories as this which distin-bed 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." E^il and distressing as were these frightful impressions, as regards Sir Samuel Romilly himself, there can be no question that they must have stimulated in some degree, and perhaps unconsciously, his imtiring efforts to purge the English statutes of their bloody enactments j 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 132 EXTHAORDIXARY ilEN. superior kind. He was sent to a day-scliool kept by a French refugee of the name of Flach, whose only mode of inculcating 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 Yirgil, 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 vrhom presently, — who EOMILLY. 133 unanimously pronounced his version to be far superior to that 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 rhjTuing 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 comj^any of soldiers through their driU is evidence of the possession of great military genius. Samuel Romilly finally left school at about the age pt lour- teen, and during the two following years was employed in his fathers 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. RomiUy'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 ofiice 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 134 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. indispensable preliminary to tLis investment in equity was 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 delighting in music, in the collection of fine j^i^ints, and other illustrations of art within his means, was a man of a singularly benevo- lent and sympathizing disposition. One instance of his active and comprehensive charity may be quoted here, because establishing a remarkable resemblance betv/een him and his celebrated son. He had noticed during several bitter winter evenings a wretched, lost creature, usually intoxicated, crouching 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 exposed 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 vdth. which this gentle-minded father was regarded by his children EOMILLY. 1 35 was of the tenderest kind, — in Samuel, filial affection was a 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, v/hich became the perma- nent residence of the family, and !Mr. Ilomilly's place of business, soon after the receipt of Mr. de la Haye's legacy. Two fair cousins, the orphan daughter 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. Kandolph Greenway, of whom mention has been already made, was an apprentice of Mr. E-omilly, but treated by the entire family upon a footing of perfect equality and affec- tionate confidence. This young man conceived a vehement passion for Catherine Romilly, but of so reserved, so unde- monstrative 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 136 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. as it may, Randolph Greenway made one faint, awkward attempt at a declaration, and finding that not responded to, relapsed into silence and despondency. A relative had bequeathed him five hundred a-year in landed property, per- mitting him to have done with business, and he invited Mr. Romilly to visit him with his family, at his new residence in Oxfordshire. The invitation was accepted, and Mr. Romilly congratulated him upon the appearance of his house, its fit- tings, furniture, et cetera. " Yes," replied the nervous lover, " yes, sir ; it wants nothing but a mistress." Mr. Romilly not happening to comprehend or to follow up this very lucid revelation, Randolph Greenway concluded that the proposi- tion he imagined himself to have very plainly made was dis- tasteftd, and forbore to iterate it. This was an entirely erroneous conclusion in all respects, Catherine Romilly being at that time perfectly disengaged in her afiections, and as she felt great esteem for the young man, in common with her family, and the match was otherwise an eligible one, the pro- bability was that if he had given his wishes intelligible expres- sion, they would have been favourably received by both father and daughter. The favourable opportunity was, unhappily for the bashful lover, 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 Greenway 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 KOMILLY. 137 enougli, seemed to take no effect upon him, neither exhila- rating his spirits, clouding his brain, nor confusing his speech. He walked a part of the way homewards with the young Homillys, stopped suddenly, sank upon the step of a doorway, and as if a strong dam had given way, gave bursting utterance to the overwhelming agony of grief and despair by which he was convulsed and torn. Samuel Romilly was greatly surprised and shocked, and with his brother strove to soothe 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 tliis 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 thi'own up ; the unfortunate gentle- man hurried from place to place with the unpurposed speed and fuiy 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. Roget, 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 138 EXTKAORDINARY MEN. the .£2000 necessary for doing so might have been inconve- nient 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 him, 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 inchned to agree with INIontes- quieu's estimate of the relative criminality of mankind when he says, — " II n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette a I'examen toutes ses actions et tout ses pensees qui ne soit pendable dix fois dans sa vie," it is not surprising that the utterly barbarous state of the English criminal law should have an-ested his instant and fixed attention immediately he came practically in contact with it. Not less absurd and inef- fective 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, indiscri m \ nating' barbarity no longer stains and encumbers the British statutes is mainly owing to the ceaseless, unwearied efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly, in days when to question the wisdom of our ancestors, 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 has 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 aurel and the palm I EOMILLT. 139 There is one circumstance, trifling in itself, perhaps, which so strongly illustrates the indelibility of Samuel Romilly's early recollections, — especially recollections of experienced kindness, 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. Eomilly 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, and kept Mr. Romilly 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, held his clerkship till he died. k:2 KELSOK. TTNDOUBTEDLY the most toucliiiig circumstance in ^ connexion with the magnificent funeral of the Duke of V\"ellington, 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 Kelson, — 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 afiection. It could hardly be so. The heroic sailor did not live to bask in the sunshine of the fame he had achieved, NELSON. 141 to "wear dimng a prolonged and triumphant life the honours which his gTeat 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 sixth child of the Reverend Edmund Nelson, Rector of Burnham-Thorpe, Norfolk, and Catherine his wife, who in all had a family ot 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 his 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 fortime 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 " Raisonable," hastily fitting out at Chatham, for the purpose of assisting to bring Spain to reason in the matter of the Falkland Islands dispute, he 142 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. instantly, and as a thing of course, asked his brother William, who was eighteen montlis 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 twelve years, was ready to assist in doing battle against the Spaniard the moment he might be permitted to do so. The reply of Captain Suckling to the Reverend j\Ir. Nelson's intimation was a consenting, but not very complimentary one as regarded the futm^e Admiral. " What," he wrote, " haa poor Horatio done, who is so weak, that he above all the rest should be sent to rough it at sea? But let him come, and the first time we go into action a cannon ball may knock off his head and provide for liim 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 reso- lution could hardly be imagined, and this the uncle-captain would have kno^\Ti had he been aware of the emulative, fearless, daring spii-it 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. 143 to have stolen off birds'-nesting in company -with a cow- boy, and gi'eat was the alarm of the family, chiefly from knowing there were numerous gipsies in the neighbourhood. 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?" It is right to mention, as the fact is with much emphasis insisted upon by Kelson's biographers, as if it could add some- thing to the Admiral's fame, 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 cliild's school to which he was first sent was at Downham, and kejDt by a man of the name of Noakes, in the market-place of wliich quiet village young Nelson might be seen, whenever oppor- tunity 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 navigation. William Patman, a shoemaker of the place, has given us an anecdote illustrative of the compassionate kind- liness 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 144 EXTKAOEDINAKY MEN. "William to a more considerable school at Nortli "Walsliam. It was there the pear-tree exploit occuiTed. 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 perquisite. 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 Reverend Mr. Jones the master's use and enjoyment. This arbitrary apjoropriation of the common property naturally excited the fierce, though sup- pressed 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 oifering a chance of success was, for one of the boys to be let down into the tree in the night, from the common bed-room window, which chanced to be rightly situated for the purpose, and, his mission accomplished, 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, pre- sented 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 dangling tied and twisted bed sheets, of which the inner end was valiantly grasped by numerous volunteers for the task of letting any- body 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 NELSOX, 14 5 pulled, vdth considerable difficulty, safely up again wdth his booty. Nelson would have none of the pears, and said, as he jumped into bed again, " I only did it because you Avere 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 " Eaisonable," off Chatham, forthwith. The else delighted boy's only giief was parting with his brother, but the tears of youth are quickly diied, and the young midship- man expectant accompanied his father to London in exuberant spirits. The Reverend 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 ancient port. Eut 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 fasliion 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 "'vho 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 " Eaisonable," and " it was not," said Nelson, " till the second day, that somebody took compassion upon me !" Spain wisely settled the Falkland Islands controversy without waiting for the arbitrement of line-of-battle ships, and after remaining a few months onlv in the " Eaisonable," Nelson, in order to advance himself in the science of seaman- ship, entered on board an outward-bound merchant-vessel, 146 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. commanded by Mr. John KathLone, who had formerly served as a petty officer tinder 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 contrived 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 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 Swin to the North Foreland, and thereby practise himself in taking soundings and other boat- work, the knowledge of which greatly availed him in after- life. Nelson 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-sliip, he prevailed 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 NELSON. 147 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° 5Q' 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 Nelson's 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 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, which, tired apparently of the dodging chase it had so long endured, seemed disposed to fight it out, there and then. Captain Ludwidge 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 us EXTRAORDINARY MEN. as in after years, and lie 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, " Oh, 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 efibrt to close with the enraged bnite ; 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, thereby frighten- ing the bear, which made off at its best speed ; whereupon NELSON. 149 iN'elson slowly, and with some misgivings anent his reception, returned to the ship. " How dared you leave the ship %vith- out leave," demanded the angiy captain, " and not return when I signalled you to do so ?" " 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 ships returned to England, and were paid ofi'. The " Seahorse," of twenty guns, to which Nelson was trans- ferred, was fitting at the time for a distant voyage, and not long afterwards sailed to the East Indies. During the voyage out, Captain Farmer rated him as midshipman, upon the recommendation of the master, who had noticed the sedu- lous, unshrinking 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 Bussorah; 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 James Pigot, by the considerate kindness of Admiral 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 service, save by the proud consciousness of having rendered it. From the moment of this thought-burst, "a radiant orb was always suspended in his mind's eye," bright, as we now comprehend, with the prophetic glory of the 150 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 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 Robinson, who used to say "he felt as easy if young Nelson was upon deck, as when the most experienced of his officei's commanded the watch," the zealous midshipman passed his examination on the 8th of April, 1777, for the grade of lieutenant. His uncle, Captain Suckling, was president of the tribunal, but did not mention his relation- ship 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 examina- tion, and you see I have not been disappointed." The new lieutenant was appointed, on the following day, second of the " LowestofFe," 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 efiected his object. "Have I no officer," angrily exclaimed Captain Lockyer, "who can board the prize?" 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 posses- sion of the prize 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 NELSOX. 151 scliooner attacliecl to the " Lowestoffe," in wliich he was very successful against the American privateers that infested those seas. He also served successively as thirds second, and first lieutenant of the " Bristol," Admiral Sir Peter Parker's flag- ship, chiefly ofi Cape Francois, from which he was transferred (December, 1778) to the command of the "Bagdad," brig of war, employed to protect the Bay ol Honduras and the IMosquito shore from the Americans and their allies, a duty which he very efficiently performed. The high estimation 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 realization. The assigned limits of this memoir forbid us to follow this single and ardent-minded hero's career much beyond 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 Piver and the great Lake of Nicaragua, by which it is fed. The San Juan is now ascended by light-draught steamers, conveying pas- sengers 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 concoctors of the enterprise 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 " Hitchin- 152 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. brook " sloop of war, was to assist at and protect tlie disem- barkation of the troops; but his fiery energy could not be confined within technical routine limits. He landed 200 soldiers on the island of Borromeo, some distance up the San Juan, in order to capture a fort there, — put himself at the head of his sailors, dashed headlong upon the fortification, lost both his shoes in the slimy mud by w^hich it was sur- rounded, and, as he said, hoarded the battery in his stockings, and carried it before the military commander had settled in his own mind the proper mode of attack. This preliminary object efiected, 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 shal- low along many of its reaches, and it was frequently neces- sary 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 serjDent, 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 accompanied the English force deemed to be a miraculous interjDosition of Providence. He was sleeping in his ham- mock, 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, and the bed-clothes were lifted carefully ofi" 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. XELSON. 153 It -was killed ; and from that moment tlie Indians regarded Nelson as one who bore a charmed life. Arrived at the Spanish castle, Nelson's counsel was to assault 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 thus wasted by the commanding officer. In truth, according to the testimony of Major Poison himself, the young naval officer was the life and soul of the enterprise. "I want words," wrote Major Poison, the senior officer in command, " to express the obligations I owe that gentleman; he was the first in every service, whe- ther by night or day. There was scarcely a gun fired but was pointed by him or Lieutenant Despard, the chief engi- neer." The Spaniard was easily enough mastered, though the assailants for some time principally subsisted upon the broth of boiled monkeys; 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 sur- vived. 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 Jamaica. Of these Nelson was one, an escape from else inevitable 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 anxiou? L 154 EXTRAORDINARY MEW. unwearying solicitude of Captain Cornwallis, of the " Lion," by wliich ship he was sent home by Sir Peter Parker, it was ever his own firm conviction that he could not have reco- vered. A few months' residence at Bath so far restored him to health, that he applied to be placed again in active sei'vice ; a request immediately fulfilled by his appointment to the " Albemarle," 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. 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 young 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. With one or two passages strongly illustrative of the 6hild- like simplicity, the generous humanity, combined with un- quailing resolution, and especially of the extreme suscepti- bility to female fascination which characterized Nelson, I close the illuminated volume of his early career. After passing a winter in the North Sea, the "Albemarle" re- turned to England; and, as soon as some necessary repairs KELSOK 155 were completed, sailed with a convoy to Lower Canada, On the 2nd of July, the " Albemarle" arrived at the Isle of Bee, in the St. Lawrence, and the next day but one left on a cruise along the United States coast, where Nelson captured the American schooner " Harmony," of New Plymouth, Nathaniel Carver, (a descendant of one of the Pilgrims,) master and owner, latest from Cape Cod, and deeply laden with fish, which, with the vessel, was Carver's sole wealth. Nelson requested the despairing man to act as pilot in navi- gating the " Albemarle" clear of the shoals about Boston Bay. Carver did so ; and Nelson remarking " that it was not the custom of English seamen to be ungrateful," restored him his vessel and cargo, and at the same time gave him a paper which would prevent his recapture by any other British cruiser he might chance thereafter to fall in with : — " These are to certify that T took the schooner ' Harmony,' of New Plymouth, Nathaniel Carver master, belonging to New Plymouth, but on account of his good services have given up his vessel again. His Majesty's ship 'Albemarle,' this 17th of August, 1782. — Horatio Nelson." The " Albemarle" next visited Quebec, where Nelson's fierce antipathy to the revolted Americans was subjected to a much severer test by the grace and beauty of a young Yii'ginian damsel who chanced to be on a visit at the house of his inti- mate friend, an English gentleman of the name of Davidson. Loyalty struggled desperately with Love in Nelson's inflam- mable bosom, and Loyalty, strengthened by Mr. Davidson's remonstrances, setting forth the certain ruin to his profes- sional prospects, which, in the then state of English official opinion, must be consequent upon his marriage with the fair, outspoken " rebel," so far prevailed, that Nelson took leave of his charmer without any distinct declaration of the l2 15 Q EXTRAORDINARY MEN. passion she had inspired, and went on board the "Albe- marle," then moored at some distance down the river from Quebec, and just ready for sea. Mr. Davidson, gravely doubting the firmness of his friend, was the next morning early at the beach, anxiously watching for the "Albemarle's" getting under way, instead of which welcome sight he pre- sently saw Nelson returning in his barge, arrayed in full dress, and presenting the same remarkable appearance as that which so forcibly struck the Duke of Clarence, then a mid- shipman of the " Barfleur," when, two or three months after- wards, Nelson presented himself on board the flag ship to pay his respects to Lord Hood. " The merest boy of a captain," remarked his Royal Highness, " I ever saw. His dress, too, was remarkable : he had on a full laced uniform ; his lanky hair was tied in a stiff Hessian tail of extraordi- nary length, and the old-fashioned flajDS of his waistcoat added to the general oddness of his appearance," Mr. David- son saw at once what this toilet of ceremony portended, and Nelson's instant and frank avowal confirmed his apprehen- sions. " I tell you," he said, " that I cannot leave Quebec wdthout first laying my hand and fortune at the feet of her to whom you know I am entirely devoted." Mr. Davidson was a man of resource, as well as quick perception, and in- stead of vainly arguing the matter with his friend, he boldly asserted that the young lady had left Quebec the previous evening for the States, and that he, Nelson, could not there- fore ruin himself, if he would. This was conclusive; and Nelson returned to his ship, which soon afterwards dropj)ed down the river. At the conclusion of the war Nelson paid a visit to France, visiting Calais, Montreuil, Abbeville, and St. Omer, at which last-named place he remained a considerable time, NELSON. 157 and requested his friends to direct their letter to Monsieur Nelson — two words in stranger conjunction than these it would be difficult to meet with ; but they were so used by himself — "Direct, a Monsieur Nelson, chez Madame Lamourie, St. Omer en Artois." Whilst residing at Madame Lamourie's, Nelson fell desperately in love once more, with a Miss Andrews, the daughter of an English clergyman, tempo- rarily resident, like himself, at St. Omer, an attachment which had no matrimonial result, on accoimt of the unpro- mising fortunes — in a pecuniary sense — of the youthful half- pay officer. It was not, however, very long before these successive heart-quakes were brought to a termination for a time, by the catastrophe of marriage with an amiable and charming Creole lady, whom the death of her husband, Dr. Nisbet, physician to the Island of Nevis, had left a widow and a mother whilst not yet eighteen. His acquaintance with the future Lady Nelson arose out of the following circumstances. He was appointed, in 1784, being then little more than twenty-five years of age, to the command of the Boreas frigate, ordered to the Leeward Islands of the West Indies. At that time, the Americans choosing to forget that in casting off their allegiance to Great Britain they had ceased to be entitled to the privileges of British colonists, persisted in endeavouring to retain the virtual monopoly, which they had long enjoyed, of the West India trade. The inhabitants of the islands supported this pretension, and admirals, go- vernors, and customs officers, influenced hj the %vislies and entreaties of the colonists, agreed that there was nothing in the English Navigation Acts forbidding foreigners to trade with the British colonies ; and, above all, that a boy- captain in the navy was not entitled to enforce his interpre- 158 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. ta4iion of a doubtful statute by cannon-balls. Nelson, how- ever, " tliougli no lawyer," had not the slightest doubt upon the subject; and having first given due notice to all concerned, — governors, customs-officers, and American skippers, — "that he should stand no nonsense," seized, without further cere- mony, every American vessel he could lay hold of, — a peremptory proceeding which brought a hornet's nest about his ears. Actions at law were forthwith commenced against him in the Island courts for damages to the extent of 40,000?., for which sum, but for the safe protection of his frigate, he would have been immediately arrested ; " and the admiral. Sir Richard Hughes," wrote Nelson, " stood neuter in the matter, though his flag was flying in the road." This was not surprising, for Nelson had disobeyed Sir R. Hughes's positive orders, not to interfere with the American vessels, — an act of daring insubordination which Nelson justified by saying, "that his choice lay between disobeying orders and disobeying acts of parliament;" but would, nevertheless, have led to his being immediately super- seded and tried by court martial, but that the admiral, upon mentioning the matter to the captain of his flag-ship, was told that all the officers of the squadron believed he had sent Captain Nelson illegal orders, and were therefore not quite sure that he was bound to obey them. Not long afterwards despatches from home endorsed Nelson's interpretation of the law, and much to his angry surprise, the thanks of the Admiralty were given to Sir Richard Hughes, and the officers under his command — Nelson's name not being men- tioned — for their activity and zeal in protecting British commerce ! The president of Nevis, Mr. Herbert, who sided with Nelson throughout the dispute, was Mrs. Nisbet's uncle, upon whom Nelson called one morning at an unusually NELSON. 159 early hour. Mr. Herbert hastened, half-dressed, to receive his important visitor, and on his return to finish his toilet, exclaimed, addressing his wife, " Good God ! if I didn't find that great little man, of whom everybody is afraid, playing under the dininor-table with Mrs. Nisbet's child." The next time Captain Nelson called on Mr. Herbert, the young widow had an opportunity of thanking him for his notice of her little boy. Nelson was vanquished at once; and "dearest Fanny" forthwith installed supreme idol of his heart — or fancy; for which happiness he writes, in one of his early love-letters, " I daily thank God, who ordained that I should be attached to you. He has, I firmly believe, intended it as a blessing to me, and I am well assured you will not dis- appoint his beneficent intentions." Captain Horatio Nelson was married to Frances Herbert Nisbet on the 11th of March, 1787. The fratricidal struggle with America terminated, and hostilities with any other country not being thought pro- bable for a long time to come, Nelson, in common with the great majority of England's sea officers, retired into com- parative obscurity, till the war growing out of the French Kevolution 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 briojht 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, fer- vent, thoroughly -unselfish devotion to his country : there was no alloy of caste, pride, or exclusiveness about it; and 160 EXTEAORDINARY MEN. hence it came to pass, that his own ardent, glowing en- thusiasm kindled a like flame in the breasts of all who came 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 done all was done, w^as 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 ribands, crosses, stars, — for was not his task achieved, and he, no longer a leader struggling "wdth a foe, but the chief guest and sjDectator at an assured triumph of his country's arms, — the victor in a battle sure to be won because certain to be fought. 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 futui'e contest, will be followed by a hurricane of fire that 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. THE 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 felt that the wealthy and influential of his contemporary countrymen should have looked on with indifierence 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 feelings which we con- stantly hear expressed, is, no doubt, a natural and amiable one, and apparently assumes that a wayward, impassioned 162 EXTRAORDINARY MEN cliild of impulse, might, by vdse 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 led astray would be thereby sen- sibly 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 INIouse, — 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 EUENS. 163 « 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 ploughman or the ganger, strive to ascertain 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 indif- ference towards the man Burns, for nothing can be more certain than that if he himself could have had but one day's experi- ence of the calm, decorous, prosperous, tideless life, many of his admirere 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 Bumess, the name is spelt both ways, originally from Kincardinshire, 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 land, with the intention of following 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 Bums was the original of the patriarchal sire in the " Cottar's Saturday Night," though " his lyart haffets" (grey temples) were as yet unwhitened by time and hardship, it is almost unnecessary to add that he was a high-principled, superior man, and moreover, writes his gTeat son, " one who thoroughly understood men, their manners and their ways," and remarkable " for stubborn, ungainly integiity, and un- 164 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. governable irascibility of temper." At Maybole fair, William Burns had met Agnes Brown the daughter of a penurious Carrick farmer, but since his second marriage living, drudging rather, at her gi-andmother's. Agnes was at this time five or six and twenty years of age, and her pleasant manners, " fine comj^lexion 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 retm-n 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 cii'cumstances 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, theii' eldest son, the now world-famous Bobert Burns — the first-born of a rather numerous family. Bobert was not sent to school till he was in his sixth year, but the mind-nurtui'e 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 his father neither in temperament, taste, mode of thought, nor BURNS. 1 65 faith, but he was deejDly indebted to him for a mechanical education — reading, writing, grammar — a slight knowledge of French, less of Latin, (but this was of his o\vn procure- ment,) and some lessons in elementary mathematics — far superior as a whole to what is usually acquii^ed by the children of parents in William Burns's rank of life. Kobert 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 fixe^ his abode near them. In 17 66 William Barns 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, in which husband, wife, sons, and daughters were alike compelled to join, frequently unsustained by a sufficiently generous diet, " My brother," says Gilbert, " at the age of thirteen, assisted in thrashing the crop of com, and at fifteen was the principal labourer on the farm, for we had no hii^ed servant, male or female." During the last ten years of this painful period, the education of his children was superin- tended by William Bm-ns himself, except when Robert and his brother were sent for one quarter, weeks about, to a school between two and three miles ofi", at Dalrymple, for the improvement of their writing, and three weeks' tuition 166 EXTKAORDINARY MEN. wliicli 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 sufiiced 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 Mr. John Murdoch, not- withstanding 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 himself entitled. In Ayi' he might as well have spoken blasphemy, and he found it proper to give up his appointment." The frank-spoken Dominie proceeded to London, where he vege- tated as a teacher of the French language, — Talleyrand, it is BURNS. 167 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, for 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 tlie 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 lan- guage, suggested that he should teach himself Latin," where- upon the poet purchased forthwith the rudiments of that tongue, and addressed himself to the task, altogether unsuc- cessfully; chiefly, it seems, that the charming eyes of NeUy 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 this earliest mani- festation of Burns's master-passion, but first it wiU 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 " Geographical Gram- mar," "a Treatise on Physico-Theology," and another on the same subject, with a diflferent title, " The Wonders of God in the Works of Creation." From other sources. Bums obtained at difierent periods, " The Spectator," " Pope's Works," a few of Shakspere's plays, some odd volumes of Richardson's and 168 EXTRAOR-DIXARY MEX. Smollett's novels, " Locke on the Human Understandino:," "Hervey's Meditations," "Allan Eamsay's Works," "a Col- lection of English Songs," a volume of " Model Letters," and several books of dogmatic theology upon Original Sin, (fee. " 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 Kilpatrick'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, both influences combined to produce that result, and this brings us back to " Handsome Nell," whom, whilst his eyes BURNS. 169 were still wet and his pulse tlirobbing 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 Bums, 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, if not with the same intensity as Bums, for young love is ever accom- panied on his first visit by an Apollo, though usually a dumb one; and it is only upon more familiar acquaintance that he comes alone, or with Hymen shyly lurking in the distance. The nascent poet felt there was a new heaven and a new earth opening upon him; that the sun shone with a brighter 170 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 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 mono- polise a heart that the slightest spark from a young woman's eyes would, at any time, set on fire with a new flame. In 1777 the Bums 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 from which the lapse of twelve wearing years had relieved them, the land being high-rented for the time, and William Bums, 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 them- selves in easier circumstances, and the days and evenings of Hobert Bums were passed in active, strenuous work on the farm, and in wooing in prose and verse, in all innocence, up to at least his twenty-third year, every decent-looking maiden of the neighbourhood that woidd listen to him. Beauty in the damsel was not, however, at all an indispensable BURNS. 171 requisite for calling forth the admiration of one whude imagination could discern — ** Helen's beauty in 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 0," 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 O, 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 O. Her face is fair, her heart is true. As spotless as she's bonnie ; The opening gowan wat wi' dew, Nae purer is than Nannie 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 O m2 172 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. My riches a's my penny 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 seventeentli year lie attended a dancing-scliool, in opposition, lie states regretfully, to Mr. Bui-ns' 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 "dissipation" could only be so spoken of, when con- trasted with the rigid discipline and sobriety of Scottish countiy 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, Eobert was sent to school at Kirkoswald, on the shores of the Firth of Clyde, kept by one Hugh Eodger, 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. Hap- jDening 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 BURNS. 173 steal 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 im- pressions 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 " Tam," whose night-ride would have had such a disastrous termination but for noble Maggie, whose desperate leap across the brook — 17^ EXTRAORDINARY MEN. *' Brought off her master hale. But left behind her ain gray tail. " Kobert Bums was now upon the verge of early manhood, and the story of his boy-youth cannot be extended further than a brief glance at the prominent incidents 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 farmerj 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 Bums 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 freezing, spasmodic tenderness was the compo- sition 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 contiQuiDg, he bethought himself of turning flax-dresser, in partnership with another person, at the seaport town or village of Irvine, as afibrding a better chance of bettering his condition in the world than poorly-requited farm-labour. The flax-dressing scheme, however, turned out ill, — Burns' BURNS. 175 partner was 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 be taken seriously: — "I am quite transported that ere long, very soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the pains and uneasinesses and disquietudes ot 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 Ufe and soul. In truth, Hobert 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. Robert Chambers, the latest and by far the most successful of his editors, clearly shows, by an ingeniously-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 13th of February, 1784, the worthy, sorely-tried, brave "William Bums died, "just saved," writes his son, " 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." Robert 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- 176 EXTKAORDINARY MEN. "weeping daughter, mingled with warnings against sin, wLicli come with such force from one — especially if a parent — about to depart for ever. Presently, he added, that there was one of his children whose future conduct he was appre- hensive of This sentence was repeated, and the second time Robert, who was standing at some distance from the bedside, heard it, and exclaimed in a broken voice, " Oh, Father, is it me you meanf " Yes," was the reply, and the heart- stricken son turned away towards the window, sobbing con- vulsively in an 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 those 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 success- fully 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, j oys, — 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 BUKNS. 177 whicli a true poet claims or values, — one wMcli he doubtingly hoped for when the spiiit of poesj first stirred within him : — *' Even then a wish (I mind its power) — A wish that to my latest hour Will strongly heave 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 efiective national defence than many thousands of regimented men ; and would prove on the day, should it ever come, that Scot- land or Scotland's queen were seriously menaced by foreign aggTession, a wall of living fira around the land defended, consecrated, glorified by the poet's genius. SIE, THOMAS LAWRENCE. TN the winter evenings of 1775-6, a notable exhibition used -*- very frequently to take place in the large smoking room of the Black Bear Inn, Devizes, — always, if it was market-day evening, and the room consequently crowded with jolly-faced,, lusty-looking agriculturists, comfortably enjoying themselves over hot brandy and water, and the agreeable rise in prices occasioned by the war that had 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 fanning probabilities, or those attach- ing 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, LAWKENCE 179 wiio 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 : " Now, 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, was 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? Admirable 180 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. in both, 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 colom-s, 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 Royal 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 bom in Bristol on the 4th of May, 1769, within a stone's throw of Southey's birth-j^lace, 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 LA^YRENCE. 181 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 Head, and she was, it is said, distantly related to the house of Powis, better known as that of Clive, its founder. 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 V^ 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, 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 showTi to him were equal to any of Titian's. The Honourable Mr. Barrington remarked as fol- 182 EXTRAOEDIXARY MEN. lows upon tlie marvellous boy at Devizes: — "I cannot pass unnoticed a Master La^^'rence 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 j 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 by its accurate perception of the distance, great as that may be, intervening between its possessor and the goal to which he aspires; it is the dullard and the LAWEENCE. 183 impostor only "wlio will have it tliat their little is the real lofty, their mediocrity true magnificence; and after sleeiiing 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, of the temple 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 father s 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, preceding him, and industriously blown about at Bath, opened to him every door worth opening in that city. 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 artistic 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 true reason no doubt of his real objection to Sir Henry's offer was, that its acceptance would necessarily deprive himself and 184 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 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 wisliing for, at the risk, however slight, of perilling those present priceless blessings ! His oil-portrait of Mrs. Siddons as Zara, (Yoltaire'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 console him in some degree for the disappointment, he was presented with a silver palette and five guineas, as a testimony of the society's appreciation of his talents. This was abundant proof to everybody in Bath that London was impatiently 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 yoimg artist's mind — suggested in some 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 remuneration that Thomas Lawrence could tlien have dreamed of ever obtaining by the help of his palette and pencils. This consideration, assisted by a very exalted opinion of his own histrionic powers, must have weighed considerably with him, and it was fortunate his LAWRENCE. 185 father perceived and comprehended the danger of the conrse 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 suggested a private, duet-sort of rehearsal of " Yenice Preserved " in which the young artist 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 "UT.th 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 Bath 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, Toml" 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.'^ This thought, the well-being and advancement of his family 186 EXTRAOKDmARY MEN. — of his motiier and sisters especially — would seem never to liave 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 criti- cism 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 conckided, 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 natiu-e." LAWRENCE. 187 Wlietlier this advice was unreservedly adopted, and suc- cessfully carried 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. n2 WILKIE. THE diary of the Reverend David "Wilkie, wlien minister of the Kirk of Scotland at Cutts, 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, 1776. 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 WILKIE. 189 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, though not quite so 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 Cutts 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 sustainment and nurture of the inmates of his manse, perform the ordinary work of two hundred: a precious wifely accomplishment, under almost any circumstances, but especially so when a household in- creases so rapidly as the Reverend Mr. Wilkie's now did, the following being the third biii:h 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. Primrose's Monogamist theory, for had not the Reverend Mr. Wilkie been of a totally opposite marriage-creed to that so fiercely maintained by the excellent Yicar of Wakefield, 190 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. it is quite clear the world would still be without "The Village PoUticians,"— "The Eent-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 accuracy 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, more- over, 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 was concerned, though his pictorial propensities continued to display themselves, 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 obser- vation 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 WILKIE. 191 ink, were innumerable, and drawn upon every possible surface — 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 lecturing his attentive pupils, he would suddenly miss David Wilkie, who, struck by some humorous peculiarity of expres- sion in the face of a boy, or it might be in that of the master himself — for David was, in this particular, no respecter oi persons — had dived down behind his school-fellows to trans- fer 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 pencil-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 truthfulness of the delineation was usually accompanied by an explanatory remark, as — "Eh, but that's blate Jamie Andrews, in a s wither 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 192 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. of human character. Stories, for instance, of the Covenantal wars, mth 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 spii'it of historic painting strong if latent there. In addition to the artistic predisposition 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 j)assion 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 Edinbui'gh, — 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 in ISTovember 1799, armed with his portfolio of sketches and an introductory letter from Lord Leven to the secretary of the Academy, a Mr. George Thomson. 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. Thomsons WILKLE. 193 illjl!ii;u- i fcft^^l^;:^''! judgment, — notwithstanding his keen blue eyes and certain lines of quiet humour about the mouth-, the indications whereof the piosaic 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 Nicolson-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 194 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. while felt sure from various circumstances anxiously recalled 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. Thomson'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 but 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 showing 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 his 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, — WILKIE. 195 which he sent to his father, was no wise so considered by the good folk of Cutts, whoj spite of the wilful youth's irreverent practice of sketching ministers and elders at times when they were thinking of anything 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 Sbjlukethsm 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 Cutts, 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 feir, 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 196 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. and measuring himself with the Athletae who had already 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 Village 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 Poyal 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 pictui-e — 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 Yillasre Politicians" was a veritable triumph for the young painter. His diligently-cultivated powers had enabled him to reach the front rank of his profes- WILKIE. 197 sion at a single bound, and thenceforth his artist-life "was a 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 prefigTU'e 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. Recent 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 ac- credit 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, — of a BONAPARTE. 199 selfish, reckless, remorseless player for fame and fortune, with human lives for dice, — 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 per- sonal 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 — triLe 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 vamty? A hard question, that time alone can fully answer, but which a brief glance at his early years may thi'ow 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 GhibelUne 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, patrotic 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 RamoHne, the half-sister, on the mother's side, of Cardinal Fesch. She was a beautiful 200 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. and accomplished -woinan, gracefully feminine in manners and appearance, and possessed, moreover, of so brave and energetic a spirit, that she was constantly by her husband's side, on horseback, whenever danger, in which he might be involved, 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 celebrated 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 con- solation 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 sixteenth year when his father died, he having been bom on the 15th 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 bom, and but a few years had glided past when dull eyes might have BONAPARTE. 201 discerned by the young Napoleon's magnificently developed forehead, penetrative glance, inflexible, satiarnine will and temperament, a concentration of latent powers that if life and opportunity gave leave would make themselves felt in whatever sphere of action their possessor was destined to play his part in the world. Yery 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 myseK formidable to all." As time swept on, this inherent passion for dominancy through the influence of fear, — this worship of force, of which he was destined to become one of the most colossal impersonations 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 ojfficially 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 Frenchmen vomited on our coasts, disowning the throne of O 202 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. liberty in 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 be able to go to London to express to you the sentiments you have given birth to in my bosom, and to converse 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 conquest 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 afterwards rewarded by Louis XYI., upon the recommendation of Count Marbceuf, the French Governor of BONAPARTE. 203 Corsica, by tlie appointment of M. Charles Bonaparte to the office of Assessor to the supreme tribunal of Ajaccio. This sacrifice of duty to interest was subsequently referj-ed to by Napoleon in indignant terms. " Paoli," he passionately ex- claimed, upon one occasion, at Brienne, in reply to a depre- ciatory 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 quo- tations, 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, Na^^oleon Bonaparte entered the Boyal IMilitary School at Brienne, thi^ough the interest of Coimt Marboeuf, whose good offices, constantly exerted in behalf of the family, were attri- buted by the scandal manufacturers of the day to an im- proper intimacy between the Count and Madame Bonaparte; an imputation as false and infamous as the contemporary 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 * It is one of the worst traits of Napoleon's character, that this admirable mother was treated by him, after he attained supreme power, with what, tinder the circumstances, must be characterised as disdainful neglect. Few persons had less influence with the Emperor of the French than Madame Mere. o2 204 EXTRAORDINARY MEN". 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 and comrades, in which there was always a certain degree of harshness. He was not of a loving disposition. . . The yoimg l!«J"apoleon was reserved, had 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 central 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 Bonaparte, bom August 15th, 1769, height 4-ft. 10-in. 10-lines, finished his fourth course, of good constitution, excellent health, of suh- inissive character, and regular conduct : has been always dis" tinguished 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 BONAPARTE. 205 order of St. Vincent de Paul, under whose general superin- tendence tlie Brienne scliool was placed, and who were not celehrated for their attainments in polite literature. Be this as it may, it is not the less certain that Napoleon's apprecia- tion of authorial ability, of vigour and beauty of style, was throuo-hout his life of the dullest kind, as witness his admi- ration of Macpherson's " Ossian," which he deemed to be sublime poetry, and the turgid tawdriness of his own orders of the day, addi-esses to his soldiers, — and his 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 strongly 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 sug- gestion the snow bastions were erected, assailed, defended selon les regies during ten days, — he commanding the assault, ing party, — by which time stones and gravel having gradu- ally 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 precautionary 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 ha\ing securely locked in the impatient pupils, were f^ravely sermonizing upon the evil consequences of permit- 20G EXTRAORDINARY MEN. ting youth to attend fairs, a mass of wall fell suddenly in, disclosing a huge gap through which the exultant hoys dis- appeared 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 excluded from the students' table, and com- pelled 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, Perrault, perceiving the terrible effect of the punishment upon his remarkable pupil, begged him off before the allotted period of penance was nearly expired. Kapoleon left Brienne for the central Paris school in BONAPARTE. 207 October, 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 him as "a domineering, imperious, head- strong 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 pro- fession, should they be not really, essentially educated to that end? Accustomed to a sober life, to be rigidly scrupulous in conduct and appearance, they would become robust, would be able to support 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; his examina- tion 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 Ai-tillery. 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 Yalence, where it was promptly joined by the juvenile lieutenant, whose military duties, however, did not entirely 208 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. engross Ms time and meditations, for in 1786 he competed for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons for the best essay on the Abbe Kaynal's question: — "What are the principles and institutions by application of which mankind 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 question being in itself an utter absurdity, and -N'apoleon, 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 juris- consults 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 made some progress with what was intended to be a political, civil, and military history of that island. It was never published, nor indeed finished, though negotiations were entered into with Mr. Joly, a book- seller, of Dol, 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 BONAPARTE. 209 his being so: — "I miglit have adhered to the king had I been a general; being a subaltern, T joined the patriots!" He felt, however, very slight personal respect towards the general mob of patriots, for happening to be dining with BoTirienne, 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 canmlle la /" He thus witnessed the brutal humiliation of Louis XYI., in being compelled to put on the bonnet rouge, and drink the nation's health at the biddins: of the ruffians in whose power he had weakly placed himself. Bonaparte's surprise and indignation were unbounded, " Che Coglione r he exclaimed to Bourienne, " why did they admit that rabble ? They shoidd 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, however, 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 corruj^tly 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 leng-thened quotation may be accept- able. The concluding vocative paragi'aph contains, by the way, a curious assemblage of names to be addressed by 210 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 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 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 ah^eady 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 drp^wn in letters of blood!" After lacerating the culprit till there is really no spot on vrhich 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 yoxu* 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- BONAPARTE. 211 pensable to your gentle and affectionate mind? Will you endeavour to find iu 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 of the wretch who dies abhorring nature, himself, and the hand that guides him ! O Lameth ! O Robespierre ! O Petion ! O Yolney ! O Mirabeau ! O Barrere ! O 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, one would think, have endured to look them in the face. Happily 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 accomplished 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 Grenoble. 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 Bobespierre's myrmidons as he did against the armies of Louis XYI. ; and Captain Bonaparte, in the interest of 212 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. democracy, and liberty, of course, — they were his polar stars, — -fouglit against Paoli and Corsica ! Admiral Trug-uet landed a large force upon the island, and Captain Bonaparte was despatched from Bastia, with orders if possilole to sur- prise Ajaccio, his 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 u]Don 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 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 purposes of his life, and the means, — Force ! Fear ! by which he alone sought their accomj^lishment. The glory and gTandeur 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 exclaims, 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 BONAPARTE. 213 what men call tlie glory of his manhood. Much more might be said, did not the long agony of St. Helena, borne with no more fortitude than the school-boy penance at Brienne, sorro^vfully entreat silence, and awaken in the coldest breast, a comj)assionate sympathy for the fallen Emperor, ■which it may be doubted if he ever felt for one human being — save himself. "Posterity will do me justice," was his frequent exclamation 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 has been 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 lieu- tenant of artillery, which showed that he had contrived to master every kind of knowledge, with the exception of gram- mar and orthography, — and every variety of composition — epic, historic, romantic, pastoral, critical, scientific and sta- tistic. One of the geographical common-place books, con- cludes with an unfinished, and certainly very remarkable sentence in Lieutenant Bonaparte's own hand, thus : — "JSainte Helene, petite He ." To which had there been added, "oil je mourrai le 6 Mai, 1821," the fabrication would not have been one whit more palpable or more audacious, LORD BYROK T ORD BYRON'S notorious pride of birtli was, there can "^ be no doubt, a perfectly legitimate one, according to tbe 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 Doomsday Book; they fought at Cressy ; again, with Richmond against Richard at Bosworth Field. Harry YIIL 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 imscathed, or at BYRON. 215 all events with life, from the unrespecting swords of the par- liamentarians. T he 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 fig-ures, 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 Pajmim — 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 rej^resentation of the story of Susanna and the Elders, executed, it may be reasonably supposed, for the especial de- lectation of some devout abbot of Newstead, desirous of having the punishment which follows such evil courses con- stantly 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; — a matter only touched upon here, because without doing so, it is impossible fairly to appreciate the late Lord Byron's boyhood, 216 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. or tlie after life of which that bovhood 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 naturally noble and generous, but wilful, capricious, and impulsive temperament and disposition. 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. Cha worth, 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 continent, 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 sonie unspoken of redeem- BYRON. 217 ir»g 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. Colonel 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 Huntly, 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, how- ever earnest, eloquent, or disinterested % An utterly unblest union it indeed proved — resulting even worse than the old Scottish ballad, quoted by Mr. Moore, predicted : — "O where are ye gaen, bonny Miss Gordon, where are ge gaen sae bonny and braw ? Ye've married, ye've married wi' Johnny Byron, To squander the lands o' Gight awa'." But a brief season elapsed before the lands o' Gight, bank- P 218 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. shares, fishing rights, were indeed squandered, and all that remained of the bride's once ample income was an annuity of £150, and the reversion of .£1112, upon the death of her gTandmother. 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 Duflf of Feterosso, appeared as sponsors. Early in 1790, IVIrs. 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. E}Ton 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 Valenciennes, 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. BjTon, 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 volcanic temperament may in some degree be estimated, as well as the powerful reasons which the late Lord Eyi"on had for pluming himself upon his BYRON. 219 birtli. Yet let us not be induced by compassion for a gifted 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 fond- ness was as violent 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, becom- ing more distinct in his sixth year, when the grandson of the homicide lord died in Corsica, the subject of this 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 Aber- deen, 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 ; being at the rate of 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, initiated him in the rudiments of Latin; and intelligence arriving soon after that by the death of the grandson 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 p 2 220 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. "Upon his boy-brow, he then being in his eleventh year. " Mother," he half-breathlessly exclaimed, as he 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?" 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, '■^ Adsum^' would not come, — was choked in the tide of conflicting emotions that rose up fi'om 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 magTiificent sum. of seventy pounds odd, left Aberdeen with her son, to take possession of Newstead Abbey. As if fortune was 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 poimds per annimi, 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, mth 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 BYRON. 221 of a boy lamer tlian himself, lie exclaimed to his mother and others within hearing, " Come and see the twa laddies with the twa club feet, ganging up 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 fuiy, 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 easUy 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 delio'ht he had in readinof 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 222 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. the neiglibourliood of Ballater, about forty miles up the Dee 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 Duff 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 his violent admiration of the girl, and she, at every pause he made to take breath, tiu^ning 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 apparently so contented with ! Lord Byron recui^s 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 Duffs name in his presence. The explanation of all this is perhaps BYRON. 223 less difficult than liis lordship imagined The emotions 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', Wi' ae wife's son, and a mare's ae foai Down shalt thou fa'," which it would appear made him dread to cross it, albeit 224 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 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," but 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 creation. 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 phi-ase 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 pijrpose chiefly, Mrs. Byron at once removed to London; and the skilfid 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 teacher, whose efforts to EYROX, 225 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 cuniculimi 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- exercise, the translation of a chorus from the Prometheus of Eschylus, was received with marked coldness by the head- master. Dr. DiTiry, Lord Byi^on's HaiTOW reminiscences include the late Sir R. 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, 226 EXTRAOEDINARY SIEN. 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 strijDes 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 channing 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 coloiu'ed 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 witnessed the commencement, progress, and catastrophe of his- BYROX. 227 acquaintance witli Miss Mary Anne Clia-worth. His mother had taken lodgings at Nottingham, but Lord Grey de E-uthven, 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 troubled, 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 echoinoj his own mis^iv- in»s- *' 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 unmistakeable mani- festations of devotion, excited the young lady's mirth, and induced her to amuse herself by sporting with a feeling which she no doubt imagined could have neither root nor permanence. 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 : — " 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 228 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. to be pushed on by a ferryman, who stooped 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 dis- covered 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 gi-eatly delighted, 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 BYRON. 229 maid — " Do you think I care anything for 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 ^N'ewstead Abbey, where in the silence and darkness of his chamber he could give free course to the tempest 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 " 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 ;" — it being, it would appear, the cus- tom in Nottinghamshire for 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 his mother, when the intelligence reached her, in 1805, " I have news for you." "Well, what news'?" "Take out your handkerchief, first." " Pshaw 1" " Take out your handkerchief, I say." He did so to humour her. " Well, then. Miss Chawoi*th is married." He became deadly pale for a moment, and a strange expres- sion flashed in his eyes; but after an instant or two he said, "Is that alU" "That all!" echoed the mother, "why, my God, Byron, I expected you would have been overwhelmed with grief" JNIrs. Byron was not a very acute observer. The outward expression of anguish had been forestalled by the agony of tears into which he had been surprised a few months previously by Mary Duff's marriage; and he was upon his guard now. 230 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. In 1805, Lord Byron left Harrow for Cambridge Univer- 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 re- vilings, that they both sought the village apothecary — IMrs. Byron to caution him not to sell her son poison, and the son to give the same v/arning with respect to his mother ! The years of Lord Barron's boyhood may now be said to have terminated. " One of the deadliest and heaviest feelinsrs of my life," he wi-ites, " 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 dm^ing life to launch the arrows of his lofty, melancholy scorn. The evil influences of his early life, imperfectly portrayed in this brief notice — unchecked pride, distempered passion, the bitterness of uni-equited affection — projected their baleful shadow over his whole existence; and a mighty genius, that in hapjoier circumstances 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, ruin, 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 can be no reasonable doubt, notwithstanding certain j^lausi- bilities to the contraiy, the Duke of Wellington was bom, were hardly of a nature to suggest that a very brilliant futui-e 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 Morning-ton, 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, 232 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 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 we 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 consum- mation. 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- WELLINGTON. 233 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 tui'n 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 pliilanthropic 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 Bimker'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 chivahy which a great orator has assured us is not only the cheap defence of nations — a quite debateable proposition — ^but the nurse of every manly sentiment and heroic enterprise. A French poet says, Na2)oleon 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 conflagi-ation which exploded mined and volcanic France,) pealed over the waters from the western hemi- sphere ! At all events we know, that about this time, Lord 234 EXTRAORDINARY MEa. and Lady Momington arrived at tlie satisfactory conclusion tliat 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 Plantagenets 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 stem, 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 Edward L, sumamed 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: the eighth Earl of Ormonde's daughter, Helen Butler, espoused 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 ! WELLINGTON. " 235 Tlae Saxon lineage of the great Duke shows 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 CoUey or Cowley, migrated to the county Kilkenny, in the reign of Henry YIII. 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 despatched the gratifying intelligence to the newspapers, that CoUey Cibber, the hero of the " Dunciad," and " Poet," who communicated an odour to the laureate wreath which it will require many Wordsworths and Tennysons thoroughly to dispel, was ancestrally asso- ciated with the Duke of Wellington and Prince of Waterloo ! The Duke's own opinion of the value of all or any such in- dustrious researches in his honour, would probably have been pretty much the same as that expressed by Napoleon Bona- parte's brusque reproof of the Austrian genealogists, 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 ; — " Rah 1" exclaimed Napoleon, " my patent of nobility dates from the battle of Monte Notte !" q2 236 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. Passing from heraldic speculations to sober biographic verity, we find that the Duke's immediate progenitors, the first and second Earls of Momington, were both distinguished for musical ability. His grandfather, the first earl, played the violin admii-ably; 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 e\'idence 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 mmii- ficent patronage of musical festivals, concerts, oratorios, ^hich 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, 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 meantime espoused Miss Yates, the eldest daughter of the senior ))artner, a circumstance, the anticipation of which no doubt caused the hilarity at Brookside, when the youngest son first proposed leaving the paternal roof in search of fortune, and requiring a word or two in this place. The remarkable prosperity of the works at Brookside, ' PEEL. 251 aiding the general mania just tlien prevalent for embarking in the calico-printing business, in "wliich it was believed a man possessed of some capital, and who had his head pro- perly 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 speculation would, however, as did many others of a like kind, have proved a losing 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 aflfected, a presentiment he was destined 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. Bobert 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. From childhood Robert Peel was destined by his father to be a statesman, after the pattern and example of INIr. 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 by the first Sir Robert Peel, in the House of Commons, just k2 252 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. before his distingiiislied son rose (1819) to move his celebrated curi'ency resolutions, and acknowledge with the heroic can- dour 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 country 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 Pobert 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- money, essential to the prosperity of the British people, and PEEL. 253 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, powerftdly 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 nurture might, the generous and plastic intellect of his son. The extrinsic influences of the menacing, unquiet time, strengthened those home-teachings. The war with France, whatever may be said of its origin, had become, when young Robert Peel was capable of appreciating the position of the country, an implacable, uncomjDromising struggle for national existence; and it is an unquestionable 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 ascendancy, " last ditch and last guinea" class of politicians 254 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. to wliich 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 which gallant corps Master Robert Peel, when about thirteen years old, was introduced in the fall uniform of a lieutenant, unat- tached, 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 invitation to dine, as the guests of the orator, at the prin- cipal inn, immediately after the arduous duties of the field were concluded. Robert Peel was intrusted with the toast of " No Surrender !" wliich 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 wliich the ability to address public assemblies efiectively confers in this country on its possessor, and had anxiously cultivated that faculty in his son ft'om a very early age ; not by causing him to acquire merely declamatory skill in recitation which is taught at every principal school, is easily acquired, if no physical dis- PEEL. 255 . . /6^i 0^^^ qualification exist, and is of very sliglit world-service. Sir Kobert personally 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 diifering from the argument that had been used, reply to it, parenthetically, as he went on ; accustoming him, in short, to think upon his legs, and give facile unlaboured ex- pression to his thoughts as they arose naturally in his mind. 256 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. This practice commenced by Sir Robert engaging the boy attentively to mark the Sunday morning's sermon, as much as possible, mentally, and making notes only on the sequence of the discourse and argument, which he had afterwards to repeat, recomposing the sermon, and delivering it with ap- propriate 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 remarkable ease and grace of his manner and attitude, as well as for the astonishing readi- ness and facility of his replies, in which not the slightest opening presented by a previous adverse orator was for- gotten or left unassailed by the brilliant arrows of an argu- mentative acumen never surpassed, and but seldom equalled. The invincible attachment to truth to which the Duke of Wellington, himself one of the truthfiilest 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 degi-ee young Robert Peel, not merely in disdainful avoidance of expressing falsehood, but in open, voluntary confession of any wrong, neglect, or error of which he might have been guilty. The rapidity and ease with which he mastered 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, however speciously coloured, to which he was not authorita- PEEL. 257 tively blinded, so to speak, by filial afi"ection and reverence, that Mr. Kobert 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, since 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 the world. 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 Peer and Commoner, 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 oflT- spring of the cotton parvenus who were beginning to settle down upon the ancient seats of learning like a cloud. This 258 EXTRAOEDINAEY MEN. exclusive hauglitiness of feeling was early marked and under- stood by E-obert Peel, and gradually induced in bim the cold, unfamiliar, almost repellant reservedness of manner, forbid- ding 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 helping hand, ac- companied by kindliest words, to the struggling or unfortu- nate child of genius. From Harrow, Robert Peel went to the University of Oxford, where he distanced all competitors, though amongst them were INIr. Gilbert, afterwards Vice- chancellor of the University, — Hampden, since Pegius Pro- fessor of Divinity, and Archbishop Whately, obtaining, when he took his degi-ee, 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 indis- cretions, 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 prophetic denunciation of Bonaparte by the way, was uproar- iously applauded by the habitues of the Treasury benches, and PEEL. 259 more substantially rewarded by the offer of the under-secre- taryship of tbe colonies, by the minister, Mr. Perceval, which he accepted, not long afterwards exchanging it for the chief secretaryship of Ireland, whose Orange magnates courted, flattered, 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 Eobert Peel's life that his some- what ludicrous quarrel with Mr. O'Connell occurred. The great 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 by way of London, and when he arrived there, was arrested 260 EXTRAORDINARY MEX. by a warrant from Lord Cliief 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 Tiianque, 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 Jie wishes to he r 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 chiefe of the party in favour of Kobert Peel, upon whom the honoui', entirely unsolicited, was conferred bv 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 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 been bound, and which, as the world knows, were at last, and one PEEL. 261 by one, 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 dictates of an imquailing patriotism proclaimed to be his duty, and he expired amidst the yet frantic Babel-hubbub with which the crowning act of his political existence had been received ; a brief, unworthy clamour, long since rebuked into silence by the myriad voices of a nation in grateful re- petition of the magnificent epitaph which history has indelibly inscribed upon the stainless monumental memory of Bobert 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 earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter be- cause no longer leavened by a sense of injustice." ), y^^-.^^^-r^^^Uf'j^S^k -c^^^-^:^^ LOUIS PHILIPPE. rp HE opinion whicli now appears to be generally entertained -^ of a monarch, whose firm rectitude and superhuman 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 bom 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 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 263 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 " Emile," should be excused and forgiven much. It may be that a prince of great originality and ■vdgour of intellect and strength of pur- pose, might have obtained firm footing amidst the shifting sands by which the heir of Egalite was en-vdroned, 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 circimastances upon wliich 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 Philij)pe, 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 them- selves 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 sufirages for the youthful career of which the following is a brief and faint, but faithful outline. Not only does the contrastive Rembrandt colouring which 264 EXTRAOKDINARY MEN. 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 bom at the Palais Royal, 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 XVI., and 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 XVL The cliild of which the Duchess of Orleans was delivered 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. This 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-fade 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; LOUIS PHILIPPE. 235 and the Duke, wlio already contemplated tlie 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 first nuptials Lady Newborough, by second, Baronne Steinberg, suddenly appeared, and claimed to be the daughter for whom Chiappani's son, Louis Philippe, had been substituted ; armed, moreover, with a solemn record or judgment of the august tribunal de Faenza, 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 stir in Paris, and Louis Philippe was said to be much annoyed thereat, but as the Baronne Steinberg, nee Joinville, proved to be unmis- takably mad in other respects than her claim of Bourbon descent, the affair fell through, albeit to this day a legitimist, pjLT 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 ancien regime ! The Due de Yalois was not the only son of Louis Philippe Joseph d'Orleans and his duchess. Two others were born to s 266 EXTHAORDINARY MEN. them, — the Dues de Montpensier and de Beaujolais, and two princesses, one of whom, Marie Adelaide, it will be remem- bered, died a short time only previous to her brother's de- thronement and exile. The education of the Due de Valois was for the first eight years of his life directed by the Cheva- lier 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 princesses under her charge at the Chateau de Belle Chasse, situate in the garden of the convent of that name, to which it communicated by a covered way. Madame de Genlis appears to have been at first some- what 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 Bousseau model, she accepted his highness's offer, and the King's consent having been given to the arrangement, — cheerfully, says Madame de Genlis, — with pain and re- luctance, writes the Chevalier Bonard, who was extremely indignant 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 fi-ancs per annum, — apartments, board, &c., and a promise of the " cordon bleu'' when her mission should be 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 Yalois, who was eight years old, LOriS PHILIPPE. 267 displayed an unlieard-of want of application. I began by a few lectures on history, but instead of listening, lie 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 Valois was immediately placed en penitence, in chastisement of so gross an exhibition ot ill-breeding and tasteless indifference to the lady-lecturer's historical disquisi- tions, and from that moment, finding he was under a more s 2 268 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 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, sur- geons, 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 Valois, by this time Due de Chartres, became, by dint of incessant practice upon the servants, who vainly remonstrated against such a detestable 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, 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 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 269 dauphin of France, as she had decided upon, and triumph- antly carried into practice with the Orleans princes. 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 passionement 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 IMadame more quaintly expressed it, " for putting himself always in my 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 afifected its intensity, and we shall find that long afterwards, when presented with a civic crown in rev^^ard of a reallv 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?" 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 270 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. him in perverting the justifiable revolt of the French people against the hoary despotism which thought to bind the 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 in 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 reasoning by which M. Thiers and other historians of his nation prove that the British land and sea victories should, according to all rule, 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 Royal Highness, in 1787, that it would be prudent for him to absent himself from France for awhile; 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 ref]fained 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 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 271 was anticipated, during the first portion of the journey only by the Duchess, whose health could not support the fatigue 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 272 EXTRAOEDINARY MEN". surprise, where tlien was the terrible iron cage in wMcli the kings of France used to imprison their unhappy victims? 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 honible 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 tyi^annous, 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, stinick the first blow, and Louis XIV.'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 natm^es ! In 1830, and a few days LOUIS PHILIPPE. 273 only after Louis Philippe had vaulted from the Paris barri- cades into the vacated throne of France, a deputation from the town of Avranches, arrived in Paris to congratulate the citizen-king upon his accession, reminded him in their com- plimentary address of the destruction of the Mont St. Michel cage : " I thank you," replied the monarch, with entire stea- diness of tone and countenance, "I thank you for having recalled to my mind what I have always regarded as one of the happiest circumstances in my life. In that act I gave proof 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, IMadame de Genlis and her pupils returned to Paris, and — alternately residing at the Palais Poyal in that city, and Rainey, 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 enojaged at Saint Leu when a breathless messeno:er arrived with the fateful intelligence that the people of Paris were preparing to attack the Bastile ! This was on the 1 4th of July, 1789, 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 di'ess, but hurried oflf at once, and joined the insurgent and enthu- siastic 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 Beaumarchais' garden-terrace on the boulevard Saint Antoine. 27-4 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. The Due de Cliartres watclied tlie progress of tlie gallant struggle with the deepest interest — shouting and hallooing 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 !"— "Vive la libertel" 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 ostentatious 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 turbid and fast crimsoning tide of revolution soon swept past that great landmark, carrying ever}'^body onward • — hongre, malgre — in its resistless current; and at Passy the two boy-dukes, wdth their unavoidable lady-governor, wit- nessed a procession defile past, the character of which revealed the doom of the French monarchy, however constitution- alised, 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 applauding 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 the LOUIS PHILIPPE. 275 Englisli settlers there, tad been practically in force amongst them since the first day the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the 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 striMng illustration of such amiable theories — a riotous 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 XYL, his queen, brother, sister, and children, and the sad cortege was closed by the deputation of one hundred members of the National Assembly, who had concurred with the mob in inviting 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, accord- ing 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" — "Yive la Nation" — and spite of Lafayette's entreaties and unheeded menaces, the ominous death-cry, frequently repeated, of " A bas T Autrichienne !" 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 by the gardes- du-corps, at which, in the excitement of wine, and the sud- 276 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 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 enthusiasm, as the king and queen passed down their ranks, in vociferously singing the chivalric and loyal song — " O Richard ! mon Roi ! Tout Tunivers t'abandonne." This audacious but surely, in some degree, excusable folly of the gardes-du-corps was, as a matter of coui'se, \'iolently denounced in the National Assembly, and, equally of course, in the then temper of the populace, the most intemperate speakers were the most heartily applauded in the people's tribune, and by none of its occupants more zealously 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 con- spicuously 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. Koch 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 fervoui*," which the LOUIS PHILIPPE. 277 bystanders greatly applauded. Excited, perhaps, by tlie cbeers his eloquence had elicited, the Due de Chartres, upon being presented with his certificate of civism, in which, as 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. 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, 278 EXTKAORDINARY MEN. having been about a montli after his initiation appointed secretary of "the committee of presentations." His zeal, indeed, in the cause of democratic equality deserved all the favour which the Jacobins could show him. He could only endure the company at the Palais Royal on the 18th Dec. 1790, for a very short time, their conversation was so offen- sive 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 — ' tliis field is your property, but you shall only sow such and such things in it ; and I shall have the right to come into your gi'ounds — 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 refonns 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, LOUIS PHILIPPE. 279 made tlie 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 decree wliich suppresses all distinctions and all privileges. I hope you have rendered me the justice to believe that T am too much the friend of equality not to have applauded that decree with transpoi-t. 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 wliich 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, — fils Egalite — 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 drowninof. 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 Yendome 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 280 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. the regiment quitted Vendome, but in 1824, wlien Louis Philippe, become Duke of Orleans, was restored to bis hereditary station and estates, a clever gentleman, of the name of Musset Bathay, suddenly discovered it, or pretended to have done 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. Mussat 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. Mussat 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 coui-age 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 Varennes, 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 LOUIS PHILIPPE. 281 credit another allegation of tlie same party, tliat 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 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 frontier 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 Rechinau, in the canton of the Grisons, Switzerland, in the name of Chabaud, and at a salary of fourteen hundred francs per annum. He did not remain there very long, and as soon as he could obtain the necessary funds from his relatives, 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. DE. CHANNING. r\F tlie numerous kindred voices whicli 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 EUery Channing ; — and it is pleasant to find one's self, after gi-oping amidst the mires and mean- CHANNING. 283 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 Kew 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 Government has been as fruitful in blessings to the land of their forefathers as to that of their adoption. He married Lucy EUeiy, 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 enthu- siastic temperament, and the keen grasp of a shrewd pene- trating intellect. Small in person, but full of energy and enthusiasm, — 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 T 2 2c 4 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. as regarded her own children. She recognised unerringly, and with delight, fairness, honesty, genuine uprightness, and shrank as by instinct from everything specious, — the fac- titious in character and the plausible in manner." To the example of such a mother there can be no doubt William Elleiy Channing was gTeatly 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 EUery 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 esjoecially 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, dignified 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 distin-b CHAINING. 285 his conscience, or 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 blessing-s 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 pre- sentiment 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 IVIr. 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 his inaptitude 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 oi 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 God," he writes, " I can say I never killed a bird ;" and he goes on to 286 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. ^^ relate an anecdote whicli 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 CHANGING, 287 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 flood of tears, and it was weeks before he recovered his tranquillitj 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 /" was the indiofnant 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 Chan n in g 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," said 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 wliich 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, 288 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. 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 un- determined. 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 propagandism. He induced the students to join in an address of gratulation to President Adams, the represen- tative 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 imaginations, and unsettling the minds of men everywhere." It is, however, in the peculiar and precocious development of the religious element in William EUery 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, CHANNING. 289 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 anything 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 discom'se 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 efiort 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 EUery Channing, as his years ripened, into various paths of theoretic philosophy. Locke, Beid, Hume, Priestley, 290 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. and Price, were alternately liis unsatisfactory preceptors, with, the exception of Price, who rescued him from the more trans- parent of the Locke fallacies, by opening up a glimpse of the transcendental philosophy of which Kant is the chief expo- sitor. 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 occa- sionally looking up to gaze at the Brooklyn hills in the dis- tance, 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 woman, by its instantly occurring to him that he should immediately confide the emotions which agitated him, by letter, to his cousin, Kuth 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 Channing, 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 Protean 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. The Sermon on the Mount had been read to liim, and he CHANNING. 291 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 cloud throne, em- braced the landscape with a golden smile, — and so gazing, William Ellery Channing fell asleep. WILLIAM COBBETT. T ATE in tlie evening of the 18tli of June, 1837, and -*-^ during a somewhat di'owsy debate, a rumour suddenly circulated amongst the members of the House of Commons, which appeared to excite considerable interest, judging from the buzz of exclamation and comment that immediately arose^ partially extinguishing the oratory of the honourable gentleman on his legs, and only stilled, after repeated calls to order by Mr. Speaker. Presently some dozen members from both sides of the House, amongst whom were Sir J. Graham and Mr. O'Connell, left their seats and came below the bar, where they for a few moments conversed in tones sufficiently loud to enable the occupants of the Speaker's gallery to catch a few stray sentences, such as — " I didn't know he was COBBETT. 293 seriously ill." " A remarkable man," " Great power of invective." " Upwards of seventy, I should say/' and so on. The excitement, such as it was, did not long endui-e ; the House soon calmed down to its ordinary business aspect, the members below the bar resumed their places, and the debate proceeded. After a while the door-keeper of the gallery, who had been ea,s:erly questioned, reported that Cobbett, the member for Oldham, was dead! And this sudden termi- nation of the stormy eventful career of a man who, by sheer force of a vigorous intellect, had been during the prime years of a long life a power in the state, elicited in the assembly asfainst which his heaviest blows had been directed, and wherein he had at last conquered a seat, no more than the slight passing emotion just described! Vanity of vanities ! all is vanity ! and especially that of self-seeking, ambitious politicians ! William Cobbett had compassed the great ob- ject of his life, a seat in Parliament, to feel not only that it had been too late achieved for any useful purpose within his ability to accomplish, but, spite of the suggestions of an audacious egotism, that in the noon of his mental and bodily vigour he would have been no match, in that arena, for the Grahams, Palmerstons, Peels, he had for so long, and with such facility, annihilated once, or oftener in each week — upon paper; — a faculty largely shared, by the way, by a numerous class of writers, hardly equal, one may venture to say, in ability to William Cobbett. This singularly gifted man has now been dead but about sixteen years, and already the dust of oblivion has gathered thickly over writings which he himself, echoed by thousands of his countrymen, proclaimed to be instinct with wisdom, — immortal as truth : a ludicrous misapprehension it is now seen, and foretold, I think with sufficient clearness, in his youth-history. The reader shall judge. 294 EXTRAORDINAKY MEN. William Cobbett was born near Famliam, Suirey, on the 9th of March, 1766, at a small cottage on the border of the Wey, — now or lately the " Jolly Farmers" public-house. His father was a small tenant farmer, who managed, by dint of unremitting labour and close economy, to keep the wolf from his door, and give his children such education as a cheap dame's school and his own evening teachings could supply, in the way of reading, writing, and arithmetic; studies wherein his son William would have made swifter progress than he did, but for his early fondness for out-of-door country pastimes and pursuits. Mr. Cobbett in some degree resembled his son in the antagonistic vindictive wilfulness of tempera- ment and disposition, by which the latter was unhappily distinguished in after life, ever prompting him to hurtle with the insolence of success in whatever guise it crossed his path, whether that of a triumphant republic, or the intellect or wealth-created aristocracy of his own country. The lad was in his tenth year only when the sometime smouldering dis- putes between the English states of America and the mother country burst into flame; and of course the great mass of the British people sided with the British government. Not so Cobbett senior : who persisted that the revolt of the colonists was not only justifiable, but worthy of all admiration, — heroic: and he would never permit success to the king's troops to be drank in his house, not even when in the flush of argumentative victory, and after a hearty draught in recompence of his own triumphant eloquence, he handed the half-emptied ale mug to his discomfited opponent, a Scotch gardener, in service close by, who used frequently to drop in of an evening, to champion the royal cause, for the pleasure of being mercilessly floored by the sturdy advocate of the States, and of tasting the victor's home-brewed ale. William COBBETT. 295 Cobbett was sometimes taken by bis father tc the great sheep fair at Weyhill, and upon one of these occasions it happened that just as they were seated at the farmers' dinner a Gazette Extraordinary, containing intelligence of the capture of Long Island by the king's forces, was brought into the room and read aloud by the chairman, amidst the uproarious hurrahs of the company, with the exception of Mr. Cobbett, who in- dignantly withdrew with his son, and one or two gniests of Whig politics, to another room, where the health of General Washington, and success to the American arms, was drank with rival enthusiasm. It thus happened that in young Cobbett's home-world, the cause of the colonists w^as in the ascendant, and the boy's pugnacious antagonism led him by natural sequence, not so much to sympathize with the dis- comfited Scotchman and the royalist side, as to silently oppose himself to the always victorious debater, — and exer- cise his mind by unspoken argumentation that would, he flattered himself, have thoroughly turned the tables against his father, had he dared to give them utterance. Early developed too, under other aspects, was the sorely sensitive self-esteem to which his matiu'e life chiefly owed its strength and weakness, — its passing triumphs and ultimate defeat. He greatly delighted in fox-hunting, — that is, he was always, if possible, present at the meet of the hounds, watched eagerly for E-eynard's breaking cover, and as much as a swift runner might, participated, at favourable opportunities, in the hunt. One day that he w^as thus amusing himself, a gentleman accused him of having misled the huntsman by false informa- tion, and cut him brutally over the head and shoulders with his riding whip. The boy neither cried nor asked for mercy, but it was ill-hunting in that neighboui'hood for a long time afterwards. Young Cobbett would walk or run miles to 296 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. traverse tlie scent witli a red herring, fastened beneath his trousers and trailing on the ground; and the fierce joy- he felt at seeing the pack thrown out; to the bitter annoy- ance of the enthusiastic fox-hunter who had causelessly assaulted him, gave warmth and graphic force to his recital of the circumstance fifty years after its occurrence. William Cobbett's indignation was, however, rarely kindled against the country gentry, — meaning thereby ancient country gentry. True, they were far above him in the social scale, but then, unlike many of the objects of his immitigable rancour, — " crucifying Jews," — " unbaptized, buttonless Quakers," — " rag rooks" (bankers), — and ".cotton lords/' they had not, starting from about the same point as himself, 2oassed him in the race ol life. Fond as William Cobbett was of the country, its sports and occupations, his impatient, mounting spirit, as he grew in years, fretted to escape from the obscure drudgery of a farm labourer ; and a visit he paid to a relative near Ports- mouth, when in his sixteenth year, increased his desire to mingle with the busy, enterprising world, to a passion. The sea, and especially the fleet at Spithead, — the visible embodi- ment and illustration of the glorious naval traditions with which the very air of England, in its most secluded inland spots, is vocal, greatly excited his imagination ; and he forth- with took boat for the " Pegasus" man-of-war, and earnestly requested Captain Berkley, her commander, to enter his name in the ship's books. Captain Berkley considerately counselled the raw country lad to reflect well upon the irre- vocable step he wished to take, assuring him, at the same time, with a look and emphasis which made the applicant's smooth cheeks burn with blushes, that " he had better be tied to a girl he did not like than to Miss Roper,''' — a cant COBBETT. 297 name at tliat time for the sea service. William Cobbett stamm.ered out that it was not about a girl he had left, or was desirous of leaving home ; but the Captain was not to be moved, and an application to Port Admiral Evans meet- ing with the like ill-success, the rustic candidate for naval glory, perforce^ returned to the plough. Not, however, for long. He had promised to escort three girls to Guildford fair, and had been for some time awaiting them at a turn of the turnpike-road, dressed in his Sunday clothes, and with all the money he possessed in the world, about a pound in silver in his pocket, when the London stage came up was swiftly passing ; the lad, yielding to the sudden temptation, hailed the coachman, — there was a vacant place outside, and in another minute, William Cobbett was on his 298 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. way to the metropolis. Travelling was slow and costly in those days, and when he alighted, late next morning, at the Saracen's Head, Ludgate Hill, all the coin remaining to him was one solitary half-crown ! He had, fortunately, interested a fellow-passenger — a hop-merchant of South wark, — who, having, by dint of much questioning, ascertained the destitute and unhoused condition of the lad, earnestly persuaded him to return home, and ofiered to defray the necessary charges of his doing so. "William Cobbett would not return, come what might, to be mocked at as he would be for a discon- tented, faint-hearted fool, unfit alike for the world he pined for, and that from which he had pretended boldly to break loose from! Unable to subdue the lad's obstinacy, the pitying hop-merchant took him to his own home, and, ere many days had passed, procured him a situation as copying clerk to an attorney of the name of Edmonds. " A misero^ble exchange," soon began mentally to murmur the headstrong truant. " A miserable exchange — this dingy dog-hole, where one must often light candles in mid-day, and that ugly, ferocious old laundress, for green fields, leafy, chirruping woods, and the young rosy lasses I was to have beau'd to the fair, when I ran off in chace of this accursed fortune. But go back I wont : I'll die first." He did not swerve in determination, and eight weary months were passed at that painful drudgery, — the more so to him that he did not write a free hand, and from his lack of skill in spelling had to copy letter by letter. He was at last enabled to escape from one species of thraldom to a worse. Taking his usual Sunday walk in St. James's Park, he was attracted by a large placard, calling the atten- tion of young men of enterprise and mettle to the fortunate chance just then offered them of acquiring honour, glory, and a settled position in life, by enlisting in the distinguished COBBETT. 299 corps of Royal Marines at Chatham. Young Cobbett's sea predilections instantly revived in his mind, and that Sunday night was the last he slept at the dingy chambers of the law- scrivener. The next day he slipped quietly off to Chatham, met with a sympathizing serjeant, to whom he imparted his desire to enlist in the Royal Marines, took the king's shilling, and found he had enlisted in the 54th Regiment of Foot; a captain whereof, observing, as he was pleased to say, that the young recruit was a smart fellow for his age, warmly congratulated him upon his escape from the clutches cf those amphibious Marines to the distinguished ranks of the 54th, wherein, if he was desirous of glory, he would be sure of enough to satisfy the ambition of half a dozen rea- sonable young men. There was no help for it; William Cobbett entered upon his soldier-duties with alacrity, and thanks to the slight education he had received, he was soon advanced to the rank of corporal. The regiment remained about a twelvemonth at Chatham, whence it embarked for Nova Scotia, and after no great delay was permanently bar- racked in New Brunswick. From the day of his enlistment, at which time he was little more than seventeen, William Cobbett devoted every hour he could spare to the perfect acquirement of those branches of educational learning, which he deemed essential or important — namely, writing, reading, orthogi-aphy, grammar, and the French language. His progress was rapid, and though he could never converse with ease or fluency in the French tongue, he thoroughly succeeded in acquii-ing a bookish mastery of that language. He was very temperate in his habits, rose rapidly to the rank of ser- jeant-major, and was so good an economist, that in five years he had saved one hundred and fifty guineas, — of which more anon, — the produce chiefly of clerk-work performed for the u 2 ,300 rXTRAORDINARY MEN. quarter-master and pay-serjeants. It was in New Erunswick that he met with the future Mrs. Cobbett, the young and pretty daughter of a serjeant-major of Artillery, quartered at no great distance from the 54th. A reserved, but no doubt quite intelligible wooing ensued, till a sight of the maiden very early one bitterly cold winter morning, sur- prised the enraptured lover into an immediate and open avowal of his affection. He had risen earlier than usual, and although the snow lay deep upon the ground, set off upon some errand connected with his military duties, by a path which led past the Artillery barracks. The outer door of the serjeant-major's quarters was open, and by the light which streamed forth upon the cold, dark night, William Cobbett descried the damsel of his thoughts, in the act of scrubbing out a washing tub ! " That's the girl for me !" exclaimed the delighted young man, and the betrothment of the pair was from that hour an acknowledged fact; but not, it was at the same time clearly understood, to be followed by marriage till the aspiring bridegi'oom-elect was no longer subject "to the hectoring voice of command," but free to push his way through the world, by the energy of an intellect which its possessor already believed to be equal, if not supe- rior, to that of any other man of woman born. Had his mental horizon been extended by ever so slight an acquain- tance with the classic writings of his o^ti or of other countries, bringing within his range of vision a few only of the intellectual giants of the past, that fatal vanity might perhaps have been rebuked, and subdued to a more correct and modest appreciation of himself; but those were studies for which through life he ever manifested an absurd contempt. The power of expressing himself in vigorous, idiomatic English was with him the be-all and the end-all of COEBETT. 301 essential educational accomplisliment, notwithstanding that he condescended to teach himself French, it being, as we all know, one of the amusing insanities of his ripe age, that a nation which did not speak English could hardly be expected to make a great figure in the world, and was after all en- titled to very slight respect. The English sailor who could not, for the life of him, comprehend how the service could be carried on in a ship where they called the foremast a " mat de devant," was, in that particular, scarcely a caricature of William Cobbett. The contracted couple were soon afterwards separated. The artillery was ordered home, and it was probable the 54th regiment would remain some years longer in British America. William Cobbett had parted with his promised wife, and though the last person in the world to indulge in mawkish sentimentality, he was disturbed and annoyed by the thought that, upon arriving in England she would be obliged to engage in service, be subject to the commands and caprices of masters and mistresses ; and it suddenly occurred to him that his painfully-saved hoard of 150 guineas could not be more usefully employed than in shielding her from such a hard necessity. The thought had no sooner flashed upon his mind than he hastened to realize it. He carefully packed up the gold in a sealed parcel, containing a note, in which he urged her to make free use of the money for her indejjendent sup- port, as he should be able to earn plenty more by the time he rejoined her in England. This parcel he sent by a sure hand on board the ship in which she was already embarked, with instructions not to deliver it till the vessel was under sail, thus rendering it impossible for her to refuse acceptance of the gift. None but a sincerely-loving and vigorous minded young man would have been capable of such an act as that. 302 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. It was in 1791, three years subsequently, tliat Serjeant- Major Cobbett arrived with his regiment at Portsmouth, and as quickly as possible obtained his discharge from the service, accompanied by a certificate of high character from the commanding officer. This essential preliminary con- cluded, William Cobbett hastened to "Woolwich, where he found his betrothed in the service of a Captain Brissac, as maid of all work. After the first gi-eetings had subsided, this admirable young woman placed in her sweetheart's hands the whole of his money untouched, just as she had received it. They were soon afterwards married, and now there occurs a somewhat puzzling and obscure passage in William Cob- bett's early history. He addressed a letter to the Horse Guards demanding a court-martial upon four officers of the 54th regiment, for malversation of stores, and making false returns, pledging himself very solemnly to substantiate the accusation. The inquiry was ordered, the inculpated officers with the exception of the lieutenant-colonel, who had died in the interim, were in attendance, but no accuser presented himself. The court adjourned to afibrd time for compelling Cobbett's appearance, but he, in the mean time, had hastily left the country with his wife for France, and the court, on re-assembling, honourably acquitted the accused officers. Various explanations have been hazarded relative to Cobbett's share in this affair. One is, that he was bribed to keep out of the way, an imputation which has no ground of probability, either in his own character, or the circumstances of the case. Another is, that the accusation was wilfully false and mali- cious, and that he slu'unk from the danger of judicially preferring it. Perhaps the likelier solution would be, that Cobbett had deceived himself as to the criminality of the COBBETT. 303 officers, or at all events as to his power of establishing it by legal evidence, and preferred leaving England, with the pre- viously decided purpose of settling in America, to being convicted either of error or want of judgment. It was the great blot in Cobbett's character that he never would, under any circumstances, acknowledge he had done wrong, nor forgive any one whom he had injured, or who had in the slightest manner woimded his own self-love. This was in March, 1792, and Cobbett afterwards professed himself to have been well pleased with the manners and sentiments of the French people with whom he came in contact during his brief visit to that country, "except those who were blasted with the principles of the revolution ;" and he was about to jiroceed on to Paris when news reached him "that the king was dethroned and his guards massacred," whereupon loyal and conservative William Cobbett shook the revolutionary dust from off his feet, and hastened to Havre de Grace, where he embarked for New York. The period of Cobbett's arrival in the United States was an unquiet and menacing one for the young transatlantic republic. A large majority of the town populations were inflamed with enthusiasm for the new order of things arising, or which seemed to be arising in France, and were eager to make common cause with that country in the war already imminent with Great Britain, whose yoke they had them- selves but recently cast off after a protracted struggle, the wounds whereof were yet unhealed, and in which America had been assisted by France. The actual breaking out of the war greatly inflamed this Gallic ardoiu', and but for the authority and firmness of Washington, — whose popularity in the Atlantic cities suffered a total eclipse during the preva- lence of the mania, — the United States and Great Britain 304 EXTRAORDINARY MEN". ■would have been irretrieval)ly committed to hostilities -witli each other. William Cobbett's monarchical and English prejudices were sui-e to be roused by the clamour and turmoil going on around him, and his instinct of antagonism was, moreover, sharpened by a too close acquaintance with the high-flying leadei's of the Democrats, as the partisans of the French alliance styled themselves Demagoguism, especially of the glossier, superfine kind, would not show to advantage on its seamy side when exposed to the microscopic scrutiny of such a man as Cobbett; and the arrival of a Unitarian doctor and preacher from England giving occasion for a vast quantity of magniloquent speechifying, fluently abusive of the country from which the voluntary exile had taken wing to the land of liberty, caused the whilom Surrey plough-boy's accumulated bile to overflow in a torrent of blistering ridicule entitled, '' Tartufle Detected ; or Observations upon a Kecent Arrival — by Peter Porcupine." The bitter personalities, — the fierce, truculent, sledge-hammer, and withal humorous abuse of Democracies and Democrats, Republics and Rejoub- licans, in this and other brochures, created a gi^eat sensation, and the audacious writer was furiously assailed not only by the newspaper organs of the Democratic party, but by pamphlets out of number in the same interest. It was in the nature of Cobbett to exult in those proofs of the effect of his blows, and writing to his father he joyously exclaimed, "You little thought when you used to send me a-field Avith a bottle of beer strung round my neck that I should ever have four books written against me in a sinsrle week." Peter Porcu- pine's industry kept pace with that of his exasperated antagonists, and out came in quick succession, " A Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats," "Second part of Tartuffe Detected," <' Plam English,'^ " Prospect from the Congi-ess Gallery," " A COBBETT. 305 KUck for a Eite," "Second Part of a Bone to Gnaw," and others of like title and flavour. Thomas Paine, it seems, spoke in a half-patronizing, half-slighting way of Peter Porcupine, and he, naturally irritated that Thomas Paine should affect to look intellectually down upon William Cobbett, retaliated upon the man whose bones he afterwards brought to Eui'ope as precious relics, by the following witless as well as savage paragraph in "Peter Porcupine's Last ^Yill and Testament in favour of the Democrats," — " Tom Paine, I bequeath a strong hempen collar as the only legacy I can think of that is worthy of him, as well as best adapted to render his death in some degree as infamous as his life." Cobbett had very speedily quarrelled with two of his printers, one for addressing him as " My lad," the other for presuming to promise, that he, Cobbett, would write something extra caustic for the next number of the " Prospect from the Con- gress Gallery ;" and soon the popular outcry waxed so fierce against him that the booksellers were afraid to expose his productions for sale ; — fresh matter of cause for gibing taunts upon Republican liberty of the press; — as if all absolutisms, whether regal, aristocratic, mob, or majority absolutisms, do not mean by liberty of the press, liberty to publish only what is pleasing to the dominant power! The bookseller-blockade did not succeed in starving indomitable Peter Porcupine into relinquishing the contest ; he managed to get his pamphlets secretly printed, and opened, himself, a bookselling shop in Second-street, Philadelphia. Still further to infuriate his friends, the Democrats, he ornamented his shop- window with the best prints he could procure of kings, queens, bishops, peers, &c,, in contrast with vile daubs of Franklin and Marat, M'Kean and Ankerstrom, Pobespierre and Jefferson placed in insulting companionship. Defiance so outrageous to the 306 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. feelings of a whole people was sure to bring ruin upon the offender, and the publication of a very harmless libel upon a Dr. Rush furnished the means of vensreance : Dr. Rush brought his action for damages — the suit was hurried forwards, the jury awarded 5000 dollars to the plaintiff, instant exe- cution was applied for, granted, and William Cobbett's stock in trade and furniture were sold under the sheriff. The only course now open to the beggared author and bookseller was to take ship as speedily as possible for England. He did so and thanks to the Anti-Gallican fervour of the Porcupine pamphlets, he was received by the great body of influential Tories, amongst whom Mr. Wyndham, member for Bucking- hamshire was especially prominent and zealous, with great favour. Means were afforded him of opening a bookselling establishment in Pall-mall, over the front of which the Bible, Crown, and Mitre were conspicuously displayed, and his de- nunciations of " French principles " daily increased in fer- vency and power. Mr. Wyndham declared in the House of Commons that William Cobbett deserved that a statue of gold should be erected in his honour : Mr. Pitt, on the con- trary, not only declined endorsing those praises, but peremp- torily refused to receive Mr Wyndham's protege. Quite enough that to induce impulsive, self-willed William Cobbett to cast his ultra-Tory creed to the winds, and set himself fiercely to champion the precisely opposite school of politics, nothing doubtinsf in his blind self-confidence that he should be able to uplift down-trodden English Radicalism, and pedestal it, crowned with victory, upon the prostrate power of the minions of the monarchy by whom he had been insulted. The " Political Register " was forthwith started, and its readers were both surprised and amused to find that the un- sparing invective, savagely-humorous sarcasm, expressed in a COBBETT. 307 style unsurpassed in its clear, masculine energy, were as efiec- tually wielded against princes and parliaments, borough-lords and cotton-lords, as when directed against the democracies of America and France. Cobbett's long combative, erratic, inconsequent, wasted man-life, at which, in these pages, we can only advertently glance, had now commenced. It closed politically when in hesitating redemption of his oft-repeated pledge " to pull down Peel," as soon as he should obtain a seat in parliament, he placed a notice in the book of the reformed House of Commons, that he should, on a given day, move an humble address to his Majesty, praying him to strike the name of Sir Robert Peel out of his list of privy councillors, for having been chiefly instrumental in passing the resump- tion of cash-payments bills (1819) through parliament. The motion came on in due course, and the honourable member for Oldham found himself face to face with the " Sir Robert Peel, Baronet and cotton spinner," who he had so often assured his readers was in the habit of locking himself up in his private room when he read the " Political Register," that no one might witness the shame and confusion with which it covered him. Poor Cobbett ! He was a child in that warfare, caught in the practised grasp of a giant, by whom he was maimed, crushed, had the very life trampled out of him, except so much as sufficed to complain, feebly of the severity of the punishment and the mode of its infliction. The lesson came too late; had he received it in early manhood it might perhaps have disabused him of the capital error upon which his life was wrecked — that of an absurd estimate of his own powers, compared with those of other men. The politician was no more, but the man, Cobbett, sur\4ved that terrible passage of arms some five years, having died on the 18th of June, 1837, at a small farm in Surrey, aged 71 years. 308 EXTPtAORDINARY HEN. A few words more only : Let us not forget that the huge, decaying heap of rancorous personality, absurd finance, and exploded prophecy, beneath the superincumbent weight of which the reputation of William Cobbett is fast crumbKng into dust, contains many precious gems of descriptive eloquence, — passages of surpassing humour, — and above all lightning invective, hurled against those who in his day ground the faces of the poor, that make the reader's heart leap with sympathetic indignation. He was, moreover, constant in his desire to elevate the condition of the peasant-class from which he sprimg, — not in an educational direction, — William Cobbett cared little for their being taught much more than their farm and house duties, — '' better to eat bacon than read Bacon," he used to say, in his rough, trenchant style, — but in a physical, " plenty of woollen clothes and to eat and to drink" sense. He was also an attached husband, a kind father, a helpful neigh- bour and master, wanting only, to the healthy and beneficent action of his high gifts, those highest ones of humility and self-knowledge, which teach "■ prudent, cautious SELF-CONTKOL, Is Wisdom's root," and in no career more needed than in that of politics. v^ SHERIDAN. "piCHARD BEINSLEY BUTLEE SHERIDAN, the -*"*^ eminent dramatist, orator, and wit, was born at No. 12, Dorset-street, Dublin, on the 18th of September, 1751. Scholastic, histrionic, and literary talent, though not of a very high degree, was hereditary in the family; Mr. Thomas Sheridan, the boy's father, being an actor and professor of elocution; his mother, Frances Chamberlaine, — whom her husband fell in love with for the ability she displayed in a controversial pamphlet anent the politics of Dublin-theatre, — a very amiable person, and authoress of Nourjahad, Sid- ney Biddulph, and one or two unacted or forgotten plays ; and his grandfather, the Dr. Sheridan, a scholarly gentleman, acquainted with Dean Swift. Richard had an elder brother, 310 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. Charles, wlio ultimately settled down in a comfortable nook of the Irish State Establishment, and two sisters, one of whom is still remembered by a remnant of the reading public as Mrs. Lefanu. All the cliildren gave early, and it was believed, decisive indications of superior genius, except E-ichard, who, the Kev. Mr. Whyte, at whose school in Grafton-street, Dublin, the two boys were placed, candidly assured Mrs. Sheridan, was the most incorrigible dunce he had ever met with, extensive as his ex]:)erience in that respect had been. Certainly he could not spell the com- monest words when he was transferred in his twelfth year from the Dublin school to Harrow. In the same year (1762) Mr. Sheridan found it, for pressing reasons, expedient to pass over with his wife and daughters to France, where he continued to reside till the death of Mrs. Sheridan, in 1766, when he returned to England. The sole support of the family during these four years, was a pension of 200^. a-year from the Crown. It is certain, therefore, that the young Sheridans could not have been very plentifully supplied with money, or the equivalents deemed essential at Harrow, — and thence, perhaps, the early development in a mind so facile and sanguine as that of Richard Sheridan, of the unfortunate propensity to seek means of present indulgence at the cost of futui'e ruinous involvement, as well as the fostering of a habit of tuft-hunting, — of partly-unconscious, but not less real, parasitical subserviency to rank and riches, which in after life induced him to abandon opinions and friends in deference to " the gracious Prince and Master," who at the last moment, when his services were no longer required or available, so well rewarded the sacrifice incurred in his princely behalf. Kichard Sheridan's application to the routine of scholastic acquii'ement was almost as desultory SHERIDAN. 311 and unfruitful at Harrow as it had been at Dublin, though he contrived to deceive Dr. Parr, one of the masters of the school, into a belief that he was really better grounded in Latin classics than he appeared to be ; which erudite gentle- man, moreover, testified very many years afterwards, that he. Dr. Parr, had not failed "to discern vestiges of superior intellect" in the seemingly unpromising pupil — a phrase which appears rather applicable to the premature old age of Sheridan than to his youth. On Mr. Sheridan and his daughters comins: to reside in London, Charles and Richard left Harrow to reside under the paternal roof, where they received instruction in Latin and mathematics from a Mr. Lewis Kerr, with no very beneficial result as far as the younger brother was concerned, who also successfully resisted an attempt to teach him French. It is likely, however, that some flashes of the sparkling fancy and oratorical power subsequently developed in his plays and speeches, must have inspired his father with the opinion, or hope at all events, that he was tolerably sure of winning a position for himself in the world without the aid of a defined pursuit or pro- fession, since no serious efibrt was made to give him one. As evidently he himself participated that hope or confidence, and further believed that, spite of educational deficiencies, the thorny and perilous path of literature was that by which he should be enabled to attain eminence. His intimate Harrow-school friend, Haled, since then gone to Oxford, cherished the same faith and purpose, and the two youths earnestly pondered the mode by which they might most strikingly display their genius to the world, and employ their mental gifts in the acquirement of gold and fame. After much cogitation and intercommunication by letters, they determined to first essay their powers in the lowlier 312 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. literary walk of translation before attempting to scale loftier heights, and an English version of the Epistle of Aristoene- tius, was determined upon. In the first glow of this brilliant thought their imaginations — Sheridan's especially — kindled into such fervency of anticipative triumph, that 200^. at the very least was to be cleared by the first edition. — "And the united ages of both of us," wrote Haled, in ecstatic gratulation of himself and friend, " not yet thirty- eight '" This ardent enthusiasm gradually cooled to zero as the dull irksome task drew its slow length along, intermi- nably delayed by Richard Sheridan's already rooted habit of procrastination, of never doing anything to-day that could possibly be adjourned till the morrow; and the period of advantageous publication, if it had ever arrived, having passed away, the scheme fell through. Next, a monthly magazine was projected by the two friends; and probabilities of circulation, the cost of printing, paper, &c, -:^iil-!iiii;i'ji;nviiiil!!'"il!!^y% family differences being at last smootlied away, Eliza Linley, spinster, and Ricliard Brinsley Butler Sheridan, bachelor, were, in 1773, again united in holy wedlock, this time by special licence, — a union of talent and beauty strikingly illus- trated in our day by the three grand-daughters of the faith- ful pair. Lady Dufferin, Lady Seymour, and the Honourable Caroline Norton. The bride and bridesrroom withdrew for a time to the retirement of a cottage near Great Burnham, Essex, and subsequently rented a house in Orchard-street, Portman- square. All the fortune tliey possessed — Sheridan refusing to permit his wife to reappear in public, a decision which Boswell informs us was applauded by Dr. Johnson — consisted SHERIDAN. 321 of the 3000?. settled upon Miss Linley by Mr. Long. That gone, or nearly so, the necessity for exertion of some kind was imperative, and in January, 1778, Sheridan produced his comedy of the Rivals, which, after the first night, was played with entire success. His path in life was now decided, and in these pages we can barely register the turnpike-gates through which he afterwards passed to eminence, insolvency, ruin, death! His success as a dramatist introduced him to Garrick, of whom, in con- junction with Mr. Linley and Dr. Ford, he purchased seven fourteenth shares in Drury-lane Theatre. How he obtained the price of his own two fourteenths, £10,000, which he paid down, he would never explain. Mr. Moore sugforests that some of his aristocratic friends lent him the money, — a most unlikely supposition : a more probable one is that it was voluntarily presented to Miss Linley's husband, by the generous, unforgetting old man, dreaming life away down in Wiltshire. Not long afterwards he entered parlia- ment as member for the borough of Stafibrd, and associated himself with the Whig party, whom he afterwards abandoned upon the Regency question, seduced by the smiles of "his gracious prince and master." In 1792, — long previously, the irreparable misfoi-tune of his life had overtaken him, the death, at Bristol, by consumption, of his in every respect admirable wife. In 1795, he espoused Miss Ogle, daughter of the Dean of Winchester, and thence to the destruction by fire of Drury Lane Theatre, by which the utter ruin of his afiairs was made palpable to his creditors and the world, there is not much to notice. In 1815 he was thrown out of the repre- sentation of Stafford. This was the crowning blow, for no longer privileged from the rude grasp of the law, he was arrested in the spring of the following year, and held in 322 EXTRAORDINAKY MEN. durance for several days at a sptinging house in Tooke's-court> Cursitor-street, Cliancery-lane. His healtli now rapidly failed, and misfortunes thickened over him even more swiftly than did the shadows of approaching death. " They are going," he wrote to Mr. Rogers, from Saville Row, Burlington Gardens^ on May 15th, 1816, " to put the carpets out of window, break into Mrs. Sheridan's room, and take me — for God's sake let me see you." One hundred and fifty pounds relieved him from this extremity — for a brief space only. Two or three weeks afterwards he was arrested in his bed, and the sheriff's officer would have carried him off in his blankets, but for the interposition of Dr. Bain, who warned him that immediate death might be the result. At last, on the 7 th of July, 1816, — that fell Serjeant, Death, effectually superseded all other claims, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan passed away to where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. The funeral was a splendid one. The pall-bearers and mourners comprised the Lord Bishop of London, four dukes, of whom two (York and Sussex) were of the blood-royal, — two marquises, ten earls, nine barons, the Lord Mayor, Mr. Canning, and Mr. Wellesley Pole. " England is a famous place," muttered the sarcastic Frenchman, as the train swept past, " for a man of letters to die in." The carriage of the Prince Regent was not there. That perhaps might have been considered too gross a mockery. At the very moment the corps© of Sheridan was thus ostentatiously borne to the grave, many precious memorials of his vacant home, — amongst them, the portrait of his first wife, and the cup prsented him by the electors of Stafford, were in the possession of Mr. Harrison, the pawnbroker, of Wardour- street, Soho. Reader, does the moral of the tale need pointing'? JEAN PAUL EICIITER. RIGIIT in tlie heart of Bavarian Germany is a mountain region, "wliicli lifts itself skyward with such rugged insu- lating abruptness that passers-by and dwellers in the plains more frequently speak of it as the Island Mountain than by the name given it in maps of sufficiently minute topography to notice its existence, — that of Fichtelgebirge, or Pine Mountain. A veiy primitive people dwell there, rarely broken in upon by the outer world, which in no great num- bers flit past its base on their way to and from the cities of Bavaria and Saxony. No history have those mountain dwellers, save the supreme one written on their grave-stones ; but romance is necessarily an element in the common life of men and women, — especially of German men and women 324 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. whose daily avocations are in the solemn pine-woods, peopled immemorially with benignant and malicious sprites ; — or delving far beneath the surface of the mountain, in mines of tin and iron, haunted, as the traditions of the Fichtelgebirge abundantly testify, by gnomes of marvellous shape and power. Very poor, too, in a money sense, is the mountain population; there are few stone houses in the three villages of Bayreuth, Wonseidel, and Ega ; the dwellings of the better class being chiefly straw-thatched huts of one storey, built of pine logs, coarsely plastered on the outside, and within hung with rude implements of agricultural, sylvan, or mining labour. Their sole literature is, or was, religious homilies, read to, not by, them; and so entirely barbarous were they in the autumn of the year 1763, — at which period a scene was passing in one of those rude interiors to which I am about to call the attention of the reader, — that as yet they were but doubtfully informed of the conclusion of the great seven years war, though the last man slain therein had died six months previously; and I doubt, moreover, that they were sufficiently advanced to have ever fully comprehended and appreciated the origin and motives of that strife. Yet had He who has launched and controls innumerable worlds through boundless space, looked in his infinite sympathy upon this inglorious sand-speck in his universe of stars and suns, and kindled there a divine lamp that will cheer and bless the world with perennial radiance when seven years wars, their victories, defeats, heroes, and victims have passed utterly away from the memory of mankind. This especial God-gifb, as the birth of Jean Paul Richter cannot but be esteemed, took place on the 21st March, 1763, in one of those pine-log huts, not far from Bayreuth, but higher up the mountain, of which village his father, John Christian Bichter, was under- JEAN PAUL RICHTER. 325 pastor and organist. Jean Paul was the first-born living child of his parents, " there having gone before him a being that on the earth was only a shadow, and began, perhaps, its life in the light of another world without having discerned the light of this ;" and now, in the month of October, in Jean Paul's birth- year, his grandfather, from ISTeustadt on the Culm, had come to die in his son's mountain-home, at the ripe age of 76. A long, valiant, and steadfast pilgrimage was thus closing ; " and they still show you in Neustadt a bench behind the organ where he knelt on Sundays, and a cave he made for himself in what is called the Little Culm, where he went to pray." The old man held three minor church offices there, — inferior cures of souls, — averaging in all to the grasping pluralist nearly fifteen pounds a year. He was passing peacefully away when the bystanders bethought them, and said, " Let the old Jacob lay his hand upon the child and bless him." A smile, as of faint sunlight, or the first ray of the new dawn breaking upon the dying patriarch, showed that the request was heard and understood; "and," writes Jean Paul, "I was held into the bed of death, and he laid his hand upon my head. Thou good old grandfather ! Often have I thought of thy hand blessing as it grew colder, when fate led me out of dark hours into clearer ; and already can I believe in thy blessing in this material world, whose life, foundation, and essence is spirit." The impression which this incident made upon the child's sensitive mind, like all other influences that coloured and moulded his earlier years, was an indelible one. Of his father, who died whilst he was still very young, he writes with reverential pride and tenderness, especially of his high spirituality, and capacity for and love of music, adding, — " Thank God, I never saw in my father a trace of selfishness. He has stripped off his own garments to clothe the poor; the 326 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. bread of bond-peasants he cut mucli more bountifully tban lie could afford; and he sent the schoolmaster of Joditz a meal every day, spite of his o-vvn poverty." His mother's maiden name was Kosina Kuper ; she was the daughter of a prosperous cloth-weaver of Hof, and had been won to an imprudent marriage — in a worldly sense — by her husband's "zealous preaching." By no means intellectually gifted, and deficient even in prudential, housewifely knowledge, she was still so loved of her son, that he exclaims, with exulting reference to her, " Unhappy must be that man for whom his own mother has not made all mothei-s venerable." The very poverty in which Jean Paul's youth was steeped he converted, by the alchemy of a brave and constant spirit, into a source of power and after life success, — a victory thus quaintly illustrated: — "What is poverty that a man should wince under it? The pain is but that of piercing a girl's ear, and you hang jewels in the wo\m.d." That poverty was hardly sensibly lessened when at the age of two years he left the Pine Mountain for Joditz, where his father had been appointed pastor, with a slight increase of salary. Here Jean Paul went to a public school for some time; but one of the bigger boys having maliciously cut him over the knuckles with a knife his father would allow him to go there no more, and thenceforth super- intended his education himself. This — the sundering of his school companionships — was a great grief to the boy, though his studies were perhaps more effectually prosecuted at home than they could have been at the poor school from which he had been taken. His father was anxious early to accomplish him in the dialectics of dogmatic theology, in which he did not well succeed, — it being impossible to confine Jean Paul's overleaping spirit within the prescribed bounds of orthodox investigation. He, however, made raj^id progi^ess JEAN PAUL RICHTER. 327 in his classic studies, — the acquirement of the dead languages, — and he was barely ten years old, when that ecstatic phase of his boy-life, — his love, — adoration rather, of the blue-eyed peasant maiden, Augustina, — came and passed like a brief vision of heaven, which, when vanished, left ineffaceable im- pressions of seraph-bliss upon his mind. Her occupation — that of driving cows to the meadows — gave, he says, " a charm of memory to the cow-bell, which caused it ever after to sound from the high, distant Alps of childhood, like wind-harj)s from afar off, so mellowed into loveliness by distance that I wept with pleasure and regi-et." Of this same maiden he writes, in his charming autobiography, — " There swelled in my heart as I looked at her a love inexpressible in sweetness, seemingly inexhaustible ; a gushing of the heart, a heavenly annihilation, and dissolving of the whole being into her eyes. She said not a word to the enchanted boy, nor he to her ; had she but wafted a smile to the poor lad, he had passed from earth to heaven." Twenty years afterwards he met this " saint of his church and heart, so faded and bent," that he hardly reco- gnised her. The change, we may be sure, was not only in Augustina, destructive as peasant life in Germany and elsewhere may be to womanly charms, but also in his own disenchanted vision. Other earth-clouds quickly over- grew and darkened the bright romance of Jean Paul's spiritual youth. His father suffered greatly from bodily pain, — much more from the chilling apprehension, foresha- dowed by the accumulating pressure of petty debts, that actual privation must at last fall upon his family. The sumptuary laws enforced in his household in the hope, daily lessening, that he might thereby fight his way out of pecuniary difficulties, were nevertheless of a very stringent kind ; — bnt unavailingly so, even with the help afforded by good dame 328 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. Kuper, wlio ever, whilst Jean Paul, at liis weekly visit to Hof, was talking to his gi^andfather behind his weaving loom, was busy packing his basket with provisions, and dainties for the chikken. Sickness both of mind and body increased upon the sorely tried pastor, after his removal, in Jean Paul's fourteenth year, to Schwarzenbach, though his poor stipend was thereby slightly increased ; his debts having by that time developed into law-processes, and he soon fell into utter despondency. "When he came out of his own room at Christ- mas amongst his children to distribute the Christ-kind Gifts, his countenance seemed in the light of the festive apartment as if covered with a mourning veil, expressive of his own sad experience of a world, which those children's dreams were at that moment peopling with fairy hopes and ministering spirits of the blessed. Jean Paul was in his sixteenth year when his father died ; and he' then, with the help of the kind-hearted cloth-maker of Hof, obtained admission to the gymnasium of that town ; his grandfather, moreover, undertaking to provide him with board, lodging, and raiment, as long as he remained there. Whilst at Hof, an amusing instance occurred of his speculative daring in dogmatic theology, and also affording proof of the decay of the child-like simplicity of faith which had made his first communion seem to him as the opening of the gate of heaven. The second master, wishing to give— after the manner of more ambitious establishments — a dialectic tone to the school exercises, proposed that a certain church dogma should be discussed 'pro and con by two of the pupils, and selected Richter to take the sceptical side of the argument. Ignorant or heedless that such tom^nays are understood to be fencing matches only with bated foils, not combats a Voutrance with sharp swords, young Pichter pushed JEAN PAUL EICHTER. 329 his antagonist with such fierce, nnrespecting vigour, that the master quickly found himself obliged to descend into the controversial arena in aid of the orthodox disputant, to meet, alas ! with no better fortune, so that he was at length fain to shield himself behind his authority of master from the audacious pupil's blows, and end the contest by a per- emptory — " Silence, Sirrah !" At that time, to quote Rich- ter's self-description, " his soul was without a temple in the world ;*" and as yet, his subsequent glowing faith " that an- other era will succeed this dark one, when man will awaken from his lofty dreams and find his dreams still there, and that nothing has gone save his sleep," had not kindled its lamp in the tomb of a dead formalism. From Hof, the so often illusive visions that tempt am- bitious students to stake success in life upon the achievement of literary fame prompted him to seek admittance to the University of Leipsic, his chief dependence till that goal should be reached, being the patronage which talents such as his must — the schoolmasters at Hof certified— be sure to command at that seat of learning. The more tangible favour of the cloth-weaver availed him better, though but for a time, the death of the old man, following upon that of his wife, soon closing that source of help. Madame Richter was, it is true, left sole legatee of her deceased parents' sub- stance, but the numerous disappointed relatives instituted — upon the dog-in-the-manger principle — so many vexatious and expensive law-suits, that the litigated property swiftly passed into the lawyers' pockets, and poor dame Richter had soon nothing to depend upon for her own sujDport but the scanty ciTimbs obtainable by incessant industry with her sj)in n ing- wheel . In this extremity Jean Paul made haste to complete the Y 330 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. manuscript of a book entitled " Clr<5nrandisclie Processe" (Greenland Law-suits); but when achieved, the publishers of Leipsic would have none of it. The few amongst them who condescended to glance at the work pronounced it worthless — meaning thereby, unsaleable ; and poor Richter, deeply involved in bread and milk scores, literally without soles to his boots, and altogether falling into a terrible state of looped and windowed raggedness, was disconsolately medi- tating beside an emberless stove one bitterly cold morning the dreary aspect of the present and future, when the post brought a letter from M. Yoss, a publisher of Berlin, to whom he had last forwarded the often-rejected manuscript. M. Yoss would publish the book, and give the author fifteen louis d'or for the copyright thereof. Fifteen louis d'or ! He, Jean Paul Pichter, master at will of that incredible sum ! — he feared he must be dreaming ; and over and over again he read the waving lines, in dread that the blinding tears that fell upon them might have distorted or obscured their true purport. It was true, however — fifteen louis d'or — and the book to be out by the approaching Leipsic fair ; and Richter, resolutely calming himself, sat down and wrote to his mother of his great success, adding, that now his literary future was assured, he should come and abide with her at Hof, whilst sedulously applying himself to the composition of more gold-producing books. Madame Pichter, whose spinning-gains rarely exceeded about two shillings, in English money, per week, was equally overjoyed as her son, and so lifted up with prideful confidence in his genius, that she sug- gested in her reply, " that as he had written a book, perhaps he might be soon able to write a sermon !" Well, Jean Paul (this Frenchili cation of his baptismal names was, by the way, his ?wm de j^lurtie for many years) went home to JEAN PAUL KICHTER. 331 Hof, and set earnestly to "work. And very painful, up-liill work it for a long time proved to be, spite of the gleam of promise shed over his hopes by the fifteen louis d'or. The " Greenland Law-Suits" fell still-born from the press, and nobody, not even adventurous M. Yoss, would have aught to do with his next work — " Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren" (Selections from the Papers of the Devil). He had, besides, grievously shocked the respectable burghers of Hof, by cut- ting off his pig-tail, wearing his hair cut close, and habiting himself altogether in a free and easy style — ^in English fashion, he called it — insufferably offensive to the sticklers for German costume. So much so, indeed, that having hired a sort of hut or cabin, with a few yards of garden ground for the sake of a little fresh air, near the rural retreat of one of the Hof magnates, that gentleman complained bitterly to Jean Paul's landlord that " such a character as that" had been permitted to intrude upon the quietude and decorum of a magister's suburban retreat ! A negotiation ensued, which ended in a compromise, Richter covenanting to decamp, upon condition that the great man agreed to pay half of the six months' rent for which he, Richter, was liable. Jean Paul nevertheless toiled on undauntedly at his books, in a corner of the room where his mother washed, ironed, cooked, and spun ; he obtained some teaching, and at last his writings had the good fortune to attract the admiration of the young Princesses of Weimar. The morning clouds of life ex- haled at once in the sunshine of the Weimar Court, and thenceforth Richter's literaiy career was a sufficiently pros- perous one. He married Charlotte Maier, the daughter of an eminent physician at Berlin ; had three children, and finally settled in the town of Baii-euth. The tranquil even- 332 EXTRAORDINARY MEN. ing of his life was suddenly overcast with gloom, mental as well as physical, cheered only by the reliance prophesied hy and for himself, — " When in your last hour all facvilty in the broken spirit shall fade away and die into inanity — thought, imagination, eli'ort, enjoyment, then at last will the Night-Flower of Belief alone continue blooming, and re- fresh with its perfumes the last darkness." In 1821, Rich- ter's only son died ; and on the self-same day, and whilst still reeling with the blow, he began his work on the " Im- mortality of the Soul," in eager vindication, if we may so speak, of the justice of God, certain to be consummated in the future, all-reconciling world. The for some time growing weakness of his eyes re- sulted at last in absolute blindness — total eclipse ; and it was soon evident that the springs of phj'sical life had hope- lessly given way, whilst the soul-power as manifestly in- creased in vitality and effulgence. " I shall die," he said, with a spirit-smile as bright as if the rayless eyes were still the clear windows of the mind, " I shall die without having seen Switzerland or the Ocean ; but the Ocean of Eternity I shall not fail to see." On the 14th of November, 1825, he was seated in his wheel-chair, and had been extemporising, as was his wont, but more feelingly as to touch, uj)on the piano- forte. A friend brought him some flowers. " My beautiful flowers — my lovely flowers," murmured Kichter, brokenly. It was about noon ; but presently he said, " It is time to go to rest." Without undeceiving him as to the hour, he was wheeled into the adjoining apartment and j)laced in bed. He seemed to fall gradually asleep, " his countenance be- coming every moment more heavenly, but as cold as marble to the touch, and as the tears of his wife fell on it, he re- mained immovable." At last his breathing became less regu- JEAN PAUL RICHTER. 333 lar, but Ills features always calm — more celestial. A slight tremour passed over his face ; the physician said — " That is death," and all was quiet. Jean Paul Richter was buried by torch-light, and his unfinished manuscript on the " Immortality of the Soul" was borne upon his coffin to the grave, over which the students of the Hof Gymnasium sang Klopstock's Hymn, " Thou shalt arise, my soul." Richter is perhaps best known in this country by his " Dead Christ," that appalling fiction, of which, as he said, the purpose must be the excuse, wherein the ghastly creed of Atheism is, so to speak, embodied, made to live in blank, nameless, bewildering shape and horror. And it is not 334 EXTRAORDINARY MEN likely that lie will ever become popular with us. His novels, as they are called — " Hesperus," " Titan," &c. — have no plot, no enchaining story ; and his works generally, amounting in all to about a huncbed volumes, are destitute of that glossi- ness of surface which attracts so numerous a class of readers desirous chiefly of ascertaining by a rapid glance what the author has of novelty to communicate, and especially im- patient of being themselves led or spurred into new, often perplexing, and always uncomfortable, speculations. Rich- ter's are, in fact, suggestive books, full of beautiful leading thoughts, adapted to perform for his readers, in a minor and modified sense, that which the passage in the " Tempest" ending with — " We are such stuff As dreams are inade of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep," did for Eichter himself, " creating in me," he says, ** whole volumes." ^^-t