THE LIBRARY 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
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 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 1820 TO 1890 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 W. J. LINTON 
 
 LAWRENCE AND BULLEN 
 
 16, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 
 1894 
 
 [All rights reserved]
 
 Copyright, 1894, by Charles Scribner's Sons, 
 for the United States of America. 
 
 Printed by Berwick & Smith, 
 Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 tf£ 
 
 17 
 
 Us A 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. — Earliest Recollections; Stratford; Death 
 of George III. ; Queen Caroline ; Hone and Cruik- 
 shank ; Press Gangs ; State Lotteries ; Copper Coin- 
 age ; Cheap Illustrated Serials ; Scott's Poems and 
 Novels ; School Days ; Wanstead House ... 1 
 
 Chapter , II. — Apprenticeship ; Dulwich College ; The 
 Picture Gallery; The Cruikshanks ; Hood; Henry 
 Hunt ; Old London Bridge ; City Sights ; Richard 
 Carlile ; Jonathan Wooler ; Popular Grievances ; 
 Fairs 8 
 
 Chapter III. — Church Services; Landor; Carlton House ; 
 First Perversion ; My First Friend ; W. J. Huggins, 
 Marine Painter to William IV. ; Duncan ; Wade ; 
 Home ......... 16 
 
 Chapter IV. — W. J. Fox; South-wood Smith; Eliza 
 Flower ; Sarah Flower Adams ; W. B. Adams ; Wat- 
 son ; Hetherington; The Poor Man's Guardian ; Move- 
 ment for a Free Press ; Hey wood ; Moore ; Hibbert 24 
 
 Chapter V. — The People's Charter ; Major Cart-wright ; 
 The London Working Men's Association ; Crown and 
 Anchor Conference ; The Chartist Convention ; O'Con- 
 nor; Spies; The Odd Felloiv ; Hetherington; Watson 32 
 
 Chapter VI. — Lovett and Collins ; Cooper ; Bronterre 
 O'Brien; O'Connor; Outbreak in Wales; Frost; Pro- 
 test against Death Punishment ; Carlyle ; Fairfield 
 
 Festival ; Leigh Hunt 40 
 
 iii 
 
 f A
 
 i v CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter VII. — The Howitts ; Tennyson ; The Toyn- 
 bees ; Mazzini ; Worcell ; Stolzman ; The Bandieras ; 
 Letter Opening at the Post Office ; Carlisle Election . 48 
 
 Chapter VIII. — Partnership with John Orrin Smith; 
 Artists and Work; Illustrated London News ; Ingram; 
 Punch; Jerrold; Leech; The Doyles; Lady Morgan 55 
 
 Chapter IX. — William and David Scott ; Wells; Sibson 61 
 
 Chapter X. — Bennoch & Twentyman ; Haydon; Mead- 
 ows ; Henning ; Other Artist Friends ; Hall's Book 
 of Ballads ; The National, a Library for the People; 
 Mutual Instruction Society ; Chartist Meetings ; In- 
 stitute of the Fine Arts 71 
 
 Chapter XL — Ebenezer Jones ; Our Visit to the Lake 
 Country ; A Tour in Scotland ; London Life again ; 
 Prosecutions for Blasphemy; Has lam ; Shelley; A 
 Characteristic Incident ; The Queen's Bench Prison ; 
 Powell; Poebuck; Thomas 79 
 
 Chapter XII. — Hugh Williams; Pebeccaand her Daugh- 
 ters ; With Sibson in Wales ; Travel Pisks ; St. Ives ; 
 Boulogne ; Miteside ; Brantwood . . . .89 
 
 Chapter XIII. — The Peoples' International League ; The 
 Three Days of February ; Congratulatory Address to 
 France ; With Mazzini in Paris ; George Sand ; Lamen- 
 nais ; The Cause of the People . . . . .98 
 
 Chapter XIV. — A Day with the Irish ; Writing in the 
 Irish Nation; Charles Gavan Duffy: Conversations 
 with Carlyle; Carlyle and Duffy on Linton; Misrep- 
 resentations of Mazzini ; Carlyle's Worth . . . 107 
 
 Chapter XV. — Leigh Hunt and His Family; On The 
 Spectator; Going to Miteside; The Leader; Thornton 
 Hunt ; G. H Lewes ; Larken ; W. E. Forster ; Minter 
 Morgan ; Lausanne ; Mazzini ; Herzen ; Lamennais ; 
 Forbes ; George Combe ; Robert Owen . . . 116
 
 CONTENTS V 
 
 TAGE 
 
 Chapter XVI. — The English Republic; The Plaint of 
 Freedom; Walter Savage Landor; Duffy; Carlyle; 
 Joseph Cowen ; Other Helpers ; Deceased British 
 Painters and other Work; Moxon; Visitors and 
 Friends ; Physicians ....... 124 
 
 Chapter XVII. — My Possessions ; Stolzman; To the Top 
 
 of Scawfell ........ 132 
 
 Chapter XVIII. — The Poles at Liverpool; Meeting at 
 
 Hanover Square ; Herzen ; Bakounine . . . 138 
 
 Chapter XIX. — Worcell ; Mazzini ; American Sympa- 
 thy; Grant 148 
 
 Chapter XX. — Norwood ; Colonel Reid ; Babbage ; Slo- 
 man ; Cobden ; O'Connell ; Frances Wright ; Owen ; 
 Landor; Browning; Oastler ; Paxton; Place; Per- 
 ronet Thompson; P. A. Taylor; Hickson; Ebenezer 
 Elliott ; George Dawson ; F. W. Newman ; J. H. 
 Newman ; Epps ; Bowring ; Dickens ; Holyoake ; 
 Bradlaugh 155 
 
 *& j 
 
 Chapter XXI. — Ruskin ; John Forster; Robson; Der- 
 went Coleridge; Wordsworth; Dr. Davy; Harriet 
 Martineau; Mrs. Millner Gibson; Mediums; Dupotet; 
 Kossuth; Medici; Ronge ; The Hills; Mrs. Craik; 
 Dobell ; Rossetti ; Swinburne ; Barmby ; Thorn ; The 
 Chartist Epic; Robert Montgomery; Lover; G. S. 
 Phillips ; Hughes ; Mayne Reid .... 166 
 
 Chapter XXII. — Millais and other Artists ; The Foggos; 
 Wornum; Sibson ; Tom Landseer; George Cruik- 
 shank ; Tennyson ; Orsini ; Kiallmark ; Richard 
 Lane ; Flatou ; Garth Wilkinson ; Gilchrist ; Linnell ; 
 Sykes . 176 
 
 Chapter XXIII. — Alfred Stevens ; Young Mitchell ; 
 
 Wehnert ; The Wellington Monument . . .183
 
 VI CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter XXIV. — Garibaldi in Sicily ; The British Le- 
 gion ; Captain de Rohan 189 
 
 Chapter XXV. — The Theatres; Charles Kemble; Mac- 
 ready ; Braham ; Pasta ; Grisi and Mario ; Lablache ; 
 Staudigl; Schroeder Devrient ; The Keeleys ; Mrs. 
 Nesbit; Mrs. Glover; Ellen Tree; Vestris; Tyrone 
 Power ; Charlotte Cushman ; Jefferson ; Edwin 
 Booth ; Modjeska ; Amateur Acting ; Barnard Greg- 
 ory 194 
 
 Chapter XXVI. — George Francis Train; Bunker Hill; 
 Herbert Spencer ; Voyage to New York ; Cooper In- 
 stitute; Peter Cooper; A. S. Hewitt; Dr. Rinimer; 
 Frank Leslie; Squier; Cluseret ; Pelletier; Aaron 
 Powell; Wendell Phillips; The Fosters; Theodore 
 Parker ; Edmund Davis ; Kentucky Lands ; Colonisa- 
 tion in Montana ; Frederick Douglas ; Negro Bones . 202 
 
 Chapter XXVII. — American Poets ; Bryant ; Stedman ; 
 Stoddard; Mrs. Stoddard; Bayard Taylor; Lowell; 
 Longfellow ; Whittier ; Emerson ; Alcott ; Whitman ; 
 Mrs. Howe; Anthony; Bret Harte ; Whipple; Fre- 
 mont; Agassiz; Other Notables; Tilden; Madame 
 Blavatsky ; A. T. Stewart ; Cespedes and Cuba ; Gen- 
 eral Butler ; Sumner ; Anderson ; Adams ; Page . 213 
 
 Chapter XXVIII. — Late Years ; British Museum ; Aus- 
 tin Dobson; Excursions; Paris and Oxford; B. F. 
 , Stevens ; Closing words 225
 
 RECOLLECTIONS
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Earliest Recollections ; Stratford ; Death of George HI. ; Queen 
 Caroline ; Hone and Cruikshank ; Press Gangs ; State Lotteries ; 
 Copper Coinage ; Cheap Illustrated Serials ; Scott's Poems and 
 Novels; School Days ; Wanstead House. 
 
 Some vague remembrance I still have of the 
 house in which I was born (December 7, 1812) and 
 in which I lived till I was five years old : one of 
 a row of private houses, " Ireland's Row ' in the 
 Mile-End Road, at the east end of London, close 
 to Charrington's brewery, — a brewery I believe still 
 prosperously existing. The house was in the parish 
 of Stepney, the parish for all folk born at sea. My 
 real recollections begin with 1820, the year in which 
 George III. ceased to be nominal king of England. 
 My family was then living at Stratford, some four 
 miles out of what was distinctly London in those 
 days : not Chaucer's " Stratford atte Bowe," where 
 the prioress learned French (which is now only 
 Bow), but a continuation distinguished of old as 
 Long Stratford, one of the fords for folk to " dance 
 over my Lady Lea," fords bridged over in my time 
 
 13 1
 
 2 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 by, I think, four bridges between Old Bow Church 
 and Stratford proper, now a busy railroad centre 
 then a straggling hamlet of the parish of West Ham, 
 where in old time had been an abbey, and connected 
 with it one of the largest and handsomest churches 
 in England. Early in 1820 I was one evening 
 walking with my father in our garden, a garden 
 in which we showed with pride two almost unknown 
 vegetables, rhubarb (American " pie-plant") and sea- 
 kail, when we heard the far sound of a deep-toned 
 bell. It was the great bell of St. Paul's Cathedral, 
 only used on the most solemn of State occasions. 
 My father spoke : " The old king is dead." 
 
 Next I recollect being in the City, on a visit to 
 some relations, and seeing daily the processions of 
 the city companies (the old-time guilds) passing 
 through the streets with banners and bands of 
 music on their way westward to Hammersmith to 
 present their loyal addresses to Queen Caroline, 
 who, denied her place at court, was there living. 
 For her, if only out of censorious disrespect for the 
 royal husband who rejected her, public sympathy 
 was very strongly evoked. It did not even need 
 her acquittal by the packed and partial tribunal to 
 which she was shamefully dragged by the sovereign 
 profligate to make all that was liberal in England 
 take part with her against him. The queen's cause 
 was also taken advantage of as an anti-governmental 
 policy, calling forth William Hone's political pasqui- 
 nades, in illustration of which the genius of George
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 6 
 
 Cruikshank first made its appearance. Shelley's 
 (Edipus Tyrannus (Swellfoot the Tyrant, alias 
 gouty George IV.) had its impulse in the same 
 conflict. My father was what was then called 
 " a Queen's Man," and of course took in Hone's 
 pamphlets, — The House that Jack built, The Man 
 in the Moon, The Political Showman, The Queens 
 Matrimonial Ladder, and several others. Some of 
 them, relics of old days, are before me now ; fierce 
 but clever, the cuts by Cruikshank not unworthy 
 of his after fame. I can not charge my memory with 
 any observation of them in that childish period of 
 my life ; but I must have seen them whether then 
 interested or not. 
 
 Not long afterwards was the queen's funeral: 
 on the 7th of June in that year 1820. It was said 
 that she died heart-broken at her disappointment in 
 not beinsr able to obtain admittance to Westminster 
 Abbey, to there insist on her right of coronation as 
 undivorced queen. Refusing her even a grave in 
 England, her body was ordered to be conveyed to 
 Brunswick to be buried there among her own kin- 
 folk. An attempt was made to smuggle the removal 
 through the by-streets of London, but the people 
 barred the way and forced the cortege through the 
 principal thoroughfares. Two, there may have been 
 three, mourning coaches, escorted by a few mud- 
 bespattered horse-guards, the " Oxford Blues," 
 formed the funeral procession as it passed through 
 Stratford, passing my father's door, on the way to
 
 4 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 the port of Harwich. It was the shabbiest notable 
 funeral I ever saw. Very different had been the 
 funeral of Nelson, on which occasion my father as 
 a volunteer kept on Ludgate Hill the way of the 
 solemn procession to St. Paul's, where under the 
 central dome the greatest English admiral since 
 Blake was buried with the utmost honour that 
 could be rendered to the victorious and heroic 
 sailor. Yet even in those days of naval glory, and 
 for many years after, the "common sailor" was 
 arbitrarily and forcibly impressed into the service. 
 I have heard my father tell of the butchers of 
 Whitechapel (an East London street of butchers' 
 shops) turning out armed with their long knives 
 to resist the cutlasses of the press-gangs, who called 
 all fish which they could haul into their nets. 
 
 Some few years later than 1820, and for many 
 years earlier, there was the demoralising craze of 
 State lotteries. The contractors for the sale of 
 tickets competed furiously, touting in the streets by 
 thrusting their circulars into the hands of the pas- 
 sengers, rich or poor, old or young. Boy-like, I was 
 pleased to collect these lottery bills, many of them 
 pictorial, well-drawn, and fairly engraved. I believe 
 that Branston, the wood-engraver, Bewick's contem- 
 porary, and, as an engraver, his worthy rival, 
 coming from Bath to London in 1799, had his first 
 employment on the cuts of these bills. I think this 
 lottery mania did not outlast my boyhood. Another 
 of my boyish collections was of the remains of a
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 5 
 
 copper coinage of the time of the war against Napo- 
 leon, when money was so scarce that " brass buttons 
 passed current," and large manufacturers coined 
 copper " tokens ' for the use of their workmen, 
 of course only in their mutual dealings. Some of 
 these tokens were admirably designed and executed, 
 and I had a large number of them. 
 
 Of school-days, three years under the Rev. Dr. 
 Burford at Stratford, there is not much to say. 
 They were the first days of cheap, sometimes illus- 
 trated, serial publications : the Portfolio, a harm- 
 less paper, — the respectable Mirror, published by 
 Limbird in the Strand, and edited, if not at first, 
 yet later, by John Timbs, afterwards editor of the 
 Illustrated London News, — Endless Entertainment, 
 Legends of Horror, the Neivgate Calendar, and 
 others : affording much amusement, if not very val- 
 uable instruction, to the young. Lord Brougham's 
 Society "for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" 
 had not yet glimmered above the horizon, and the 
 Messrs. Chambers were not. Among my early 
 readings were Scott's Lady of the Lake, Marmion, 
 Rokeby, and the Lord of the Isles, in the first grand 
 quarto editions ; books given me to heighten my seat 
 as I wrote my Latin exercises at home ; books in 
 lonely opportunities to be lifted from under me for 
 the pleasanter reading. After a serious illness I read 
 in bed some of Scott's novels, one of the volumes of 
 Rob Hoy in manuscript, page for page written out 
 by Mr. Crick, the Stratford Circulating Librarian,
 
 6 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 to make good the set of three volumes sold at a 
 guinea and a half, the usual price of novels before 
 the advent of Mudie. 
 
 A very quiet village was Stratford then, its lower 
 parts periodically overflowed by the Lea waters. Our 
 basement kitchen might have three feet of flood in 
 it. I have seen the ground floor of the Blue Boar 
 Inn under water to nearly the edge of the table- 
 tops. People living on the marshes could at such 
 times only leave or get to their houses by boats ; 
 and in one part of the London road, the great high- 
 way out of London eastward, the road at such times 
 would be impassable for foot-passengers. 
 
 Between two and three miles from Stratford, 
 bordering upon Epping — more properly Hainault 
 — Forest, which then extended from Wanstead and 
 Walthamstow through Woodford and Loughton to 
 Epping, was Wanstead Park, the property of Tylney 
 Long Pole Wellesley (I trust I have the names cor- 
 rectly), a nephew of the Duke of Wellington, and 
 one of the fastest of the fast livers of that gorgeous 
 Georgian era. The park, with its noble avenues of 
 trees, its lake, and heronry, was a favourite resort 
 of us school-boys on half-holidays. Wanstead 
 House, in the park, said to be nearly if not quite 
 the largest private house in England, I saw but 
 once, a magnificent building well worthy of the 
 Earl of Leicester, and to have had Queen Elizabeth 
 as guest. Here Sir Philip Sidney wrote his masque, 
 the Lady of the May, on occasion of Her Majesty's
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 7 
 
 visit in 1578. Here, too, during a season of her 
 displeasure, Sir Walter Raleigh seems to have been 
 rusticated, if we may attribute to him the " Hermit's 
 Song," in one of Dowland's Song-Boohs. A lovely 
 place was the park till most of the trees were cut 
 down, and a right princely mansion was Wanstead 
 House, despoiled to pay a gambler's debts. 
 
 In these school-days but one small incident may 
 bear recalling : our school's excitement at hearing 
 of a new pupil at a rival establishment in Stratford, 
 in the person of a son of Fauntleroy, the banker 
 recently hanged for forgery.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Apprenticeship ; Dulwich College ; The Picture Gallery ; The Cruik- 
 shanks ; Hood; Henry Hunt; Old London Bridge; City Sights; 
 Jonathan Wooler ; Richard Carlile ; Popular Grievances ; Fairs. 
 
 In 1828, having taken lessons in some sort of 
 drawing, and therefore being fondly supposed to 
 have an artistic inclination, I was apprenticed 
 to Mr. George Wilmot Bonner, wood-engraver, a 
 nephew and pupil of Branston, and went to live 
 with the Bonner family for six years at Kennington, 
 a suburb of London on the Surrey side. Bonner was 
 a clever artist, and a good master, making his pupils 
 learn and do everything connected with their work, 
 even to sawing up a box-wood log and planing and 
 smoothing the rounds of wood to fit them to receive 
 the drawings. For these we might also sometimes 
 have to make the sketches and draw them on the 
 wood for our own engraving. It was good artistic 
 training. I recollect being sent up the Thames side 
 to sketch the "Red House" at Battersea (a noted 
 house for matches of pigeon-shooting) and the old 
 wooden bridges between Battersea and Chelsea (only 
 lately removed) and between Putney and Fulham. 
 In that time of learning, too, I worked occasionally 
 in the fifteenth century mode of wood-work, with 
 a knife instead of a graver, on cuts for placards for 
 
 8
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 9 
 
 Ducrow, the manager of Astley's Amphitheatre, the 
 one horse-circus in London, in the Westminster- 
 Bridge Road. 
 
 From our workroom window at the back and top 
 of No. 12 Canterbury Row, Kennington, we looked 
 over gardens and fields to the Surrey Zoological 
 Gardens, to which the menagerie of Exeter Change 
 in the Strand was about that time removed. The 
 Surrey Gardens during these my 'prentice days had 
 been laid out and opened as a rival to the Zoological 
 Gardens in the Regent's Park. 
 
 From Kennington through Camberwell to Dulwich 
 was then a pleasant walk, after passing Camberwell 
 through country fields, a walk I often took, as I had 
 the fortune to be acquainted with one of the Fellows 
 of Dulwich College, and so was sometimes allowed 
 to spend a Sunday there, rambling in the large Col- 
 lege garden, or for hours alone in the most pleasant 
 of picture-galleries attached to the College. The 
 College had been founded and endowed by Edward 
 Alleyn, an actor of Elizabethan days, as an alms- 
 house for six poor bachelor curates of the Church 
 of England : the master and warden to be always of 
 the same name as the founder. At the time I went 
 there, this much-abused " charity ' was ground- 
 landlord of more than a mile every way from the 
 College ; and, as the letter of the founder's will was 
 still the only rule, the master, warden, and other 
 four " poor curates ' lived in clover. One of them 
 held also two livings somewhere in the country, with
 
 10 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 perhaps two poor curates to do his duty there. Under 
 the Fellows' private rooms dwelt, serving them as 
 janitors, as many poor men, whose ordered pittance 
 had not increased with the property ; and a sort of 
 free school for a few village boys was also kept up. 
 Dining together in the common hall, when they 
 preferred that to their own luxurious chambers, 
 these Fellows fared sumptuously, waited on like 
 princes. There was " divine service ' on Sundays 
 in the College chapel (adorned with a large picture 
 by Giulio Romano), one or other of the Fellows 
 officiating, one as organist ; but else the College was 
 but a palace of drones. Since then, parliamentary 
 interference has, in this as in many other like cases, 
 compelled a more reasonable application of the 
 funds of the endowment. I could even at the time 
 of my visiting perceive the wrongfulness of the 
 abuse ; but as a visitor I cared mainly, perhaps 
 only, for the beautiful picture-gallery, with its 
 Murillos and Rembrandts, a Titian, a Guido, a 
 Wouvermans, a Gainsborough, a Reynolds (the 
 places in which they hung I can still remember), 
 and many more, all of which I generally had quite 
 to myself except for a few minutes when noticeable 
 visitors coming out of the chapel were shown round. 
 The gallery is still there, one of the sights for stran- 
 gers in London. 
 
 Not many men of note came within my vision 
 during these my 'prentice days. One was Robert 
 Cruikshank, who made drawings for Cumberland's
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 11 
 
 British TJieatre, as new plays came out at the the- 
 atres. The drawings were always engraved by 
 Bonner. The many volumes of plays were the 
 principal part of the small library accessible to me. 
 Robert Cruikshank was far from being the equal 
 of his famous brother ; but, being the elder, claimed 
 the right of being Mister Cruikshank ; and George 
 had to assert himself as artistically the " real Simon 
 Pure," an assertion afterwards mistaken for a state- 
 ment that it was his real name and Cruikshank a 
 pseudonym : so the reader is gravely informed in 
 a German biographical dictionary, the biographer 
 only too ready to grasp at every information. 
 
 Hood I saw at his chambers in the Adelphi when 
 I went to fetch his drawings for his Comic Annual, 
 queer pen-and-ink drawings to be cut in fac-simile, 
 some by myself. I recall him only as a spare man 
 of fair stature, grave but not ungenial. But I most 
 regarded his tools. Beside pencil and pen there lay 
 on his desk an old graver, a reminiscence of his 
 early time as an engraver in copper, a penknife, 
 and a nail, with which it appeared he cut or scraped 
 out any wrong line in his drawing. One other nota- 
 ble man I once saw was Henry Hunt, "the radical," 
 with a white chimney-pot hat, his obnoxious sign of 
 radicalism, in a waggon on his way to take the chair 
 at a political meeting on Kennington Common, a 
 great place for public meetings until prudently 
 converted into a " park ' for the more innocent 
 amusement of the populace.
 
 12 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 A thing to be remembered was the first passing 
 over New London Bridge, between Southwark (" the 
 Borough ") and the City (I mind not the exact date 
 of its building — between 1828 and 1831), and look- 
 ing down on the old bridge by the side of the new 
 and many feet below it, the old bridge with its wide 
 wooden abutments to the piers, and on each side of 
 the roadway the half-cupola niches with seats, in 
 which one could hear a conversation in the niche 
 on the opposite side, the like of what was to be 
 heard in the " Whispering Gallery " round the inside 
 of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. Another City 
 wonder, still happily existing, outliving Temple Bar, 
 the last of the City Gates, was the Giant Gog, with 
 his fellow-giant Magog, standing in Guildhall, each 
 in a high niche, from which, according to the vera- 
 cious legend, they came down to dinner every day 
 when they heard the clock strike one. In the Guild- 
 hall too, so I was informed, was a pillar with a 
 cavity called "Little Ease," in which refractory 
 apprentices were confined. City of London appren- 
 tices, it must be understood, of which I was one, 
 being as matter of form " bound " to an elder half- 
 brother, to entitle me to the freedom of the Scrive- 
 ners' Company (the Guild to which Milton belonged) 
 after clue years of nominal service. Never wanting 
 to open a shop in the City precincts, I never took up 
 my "freedom." Of course I was acquainted with 
 the bas-relief of a boy on a basket, marking the 
 highest ground in London, in Pannier Alley, close
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 13 
 
 by St. Paul's ; and with " London Stone," some 
 three feet of the top of which is, I believe, still 
 visible near the Cannon Street Railway Station, 
 the stone really some twenty feet high, the ground 
 raised since the old Romans set it on their Watling 
 Street, their highway through the country. I may 
 note also yet another City wonder, since removed, 
 in front of old St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street ; 
 two life-sized figures which, one on each side of a 
 bell, struck the hours. Not very far from opposite, 
 about that time, or it may have been later, I think 
 at the corner of Bouverie Street, was Richard Car- 
 lile's shop, over which, in an upper window, stood 
 two life-sized figures — "the Devil and a Bishop," 
 cheek by jowl, scandalising the pious passers-by. 
 Carlile had followed in the wake of Jonathan Wooler 
 (editor of the Black Dwarf) and Hone, as publisher 
 of proscribed books, Palmer's Principles of Nature, 
 Paine' s Age of Reason, and other such, for which 
 wickedness he suffered under different sentences 
 nine years of imprisonment. It was the heyday 
 of governmental prosecutions for " seditious " speak- 
 ing or publishing and "blasphemy," in which the 
 Government was not always successful. On one 
 occasion Carlile took advantage of the law that a 
 full report of a trial was permissible, and read in 
 his defence the whole of Paine's Age of Reason ; so 
 legally procuring repetition of the offence for which 
 he was indicted, and for which he was sentenced 
 to three years' imprisonment in Dorchester Gaol.
 
 14 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Popular objections to things as they were had 
 not much of "sweetness and light," but were some- 
 times as harsh and unseemly as their provocation. 
 Two low fellows parading London streets of an even- 
 ing as parson and clerk, mouthing out a ribald 
 parody of the "Form of Common Prayer," did not 
 betoken much popular respect for either Church or 
 State ; but there was ground for bitter feeling and 
 disrespect among the lower orders, kept lower, when 
 Dorchester labourers were imprisoned for too plainly 
 avowed discontent at four shillings a week as the 
 support for a family ; when men were sent to prison 
 for " unlawfully assembling on a Sunday ; " when for 
 the mere selling of an unstamped newspaper men 
 and women were also punished with incarceration. 
 But of this I shall have to speak when I tell of my 
 friends Watson and Hetherington. As an appren- 
 tice I might not take part in any public matter ; 
 but I wore the badge of the National Association at 
 the passing of the Reform Bill, and had learned 
 to feel an interest in public affairs. 
 
 These were days of yearly fairs : Bow Fair, where 
 while yet a child I was taken, to be disgusted with 
 the ugliness of wax-work ; Camberwell Fair, to 
 which I went in 'prentice time ; and " Bartlemy ' 
 (Bartholomew) Fair, held near St. Bartholomew's 
 Hospital, in Smithfield : permitted gatherings these 
 of unruly crowds, for whom was provided the rough- 
 est kind of amusement, theatrical and other, coarse, 
 vulgar, and obscene, to suit the lowest tastes. I
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 15 
 
 can not recollect how it was that one night, after 
 my apprenticeship, I found myself in a low public 
 house near Smithfield, thence following a riotous 
 crowd which at midnight proceeded, shouting and 
 knocking at doors, to " proclaim the Fair " (to be 
 opened next day by proclamation of the lord mayor) 
 as a proceeding necessary to maintain the charter. 
 
 All these fairs, with many more throughout the 
 country, were held by charters of different kings, 
 and in old days had met conveniences of trade ; 
 becoming, however, at last mere disorderly nuisances, 
 a disgrace to even the rough " civilisation ' of the 
 early part of the nineteenth century. Bartholomew 
 Fair, in the heart of the City, was the worst of these, 
 unless indeed its grossnesses of vice could have been 
 surpassed by those of Greenwich, held in Greenwich 
 Park behind the Sailors' Hospital, — of which gross- 
 nesses old Francis Place (the radical Westminster 
 tailor whose political influence placed Burdett and 
 Hobhouse in Parliament) told me tales, of the days 
 when he was young and manners were yet more 
 rough and indecent.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Church Services ; Landor ; Carlton House ; First Perversion ; My 
 First Friend ; W. J. Huggins, Marine Painter to William IV. ; 
 Duncan ; Wade ; Home. 
 
 FPtOM my father, the first Englishman of his race 
 (his father was an Aberdeen ship-carpenter who 
 settled in London as a builder, with fair pretension 
 also to be called an architect), I perhaps inherited 
 some tendency to radicalism ; certainly not from 
 my mother, who, my father not interfering, brought 
 up myself and a younger brother and two sisters 
 in the tenets of the Church of England, her utmost 
 show of tolerance to send us small children on wet 
 Sundays, when it was not fit for us to walk the 
 more than a mile to our parish church at West 
 Ham, to a small Methodist chapel, only a few doors 
 from home, which we called " Mamma's Little Meet- 
 ins;." I do not remember that she ever went there 
 with us. Too young to be impressed with the Thirty- 
 nine Articles, I was none the less endoctrinated in 
 the Athanasian Creed and the special church services, 
 of course including those in commemoration of the 
 " Blessed Martyr," Charles I., and the happy restora- 
 tion of his worthy son ; and so fairly trained through 
 all the ceremonials of the church as by law estab- 
 
 1G
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 17 
 
 lished. Excellent those commemorative services for 
 the two Charleses if, as Walter Savage Landor ob- 
 served, each could be changed for the other ! After 
 all, though England was not a gainer politically or 
 morally by the accession of her easy-going crowned 
 libertine, yet (as even a clergyman of the Estab- 
 lished Church, J. Woodfall Ebsworth, the good vicar 
 of Molash, Kent, once remarked to me) he had one 
 saving grace, "he was not such a liar as his father." 
 Perhaps to teach me some additional reverence for 
 the contemporary loyalty, which, mean as it was, 
 was not without blind loyal Avorshipers, I was once 
 taken by a family friend, who had been a page of the 
 Prince Regent, to see the state apartments in Carlton 
 House, which had been one of the Regent's palaces, 
 then standing on the side of St. James' Park, at the 
 foot of Waterloo Place, where now are the steps 
 into the park and the column on which is the statue 
 of the Duke of York, the king's brother, so elevated, 
 it was wickedly said, " to be out of the reach of his 
 creditors." 
 
 My first perversion may have come from a fellow- 
 engraver, a young man from Stockton-on-Tees, who 
 sat beside me during the last two years of my ap- 
 prenticeship, and who was what, in those days, was 
 not reputable — that is, he was an Unitarian, and so 
 "not a Christian" in the estimation of the pious 
 according to law. There was nothing else against 
 him, and he showed considerable talent as an en- 
 graver. But I owed more of free thought to a 
 
 c
 
 18 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 friend a few years older than myself, a stock-bro- 
 ker's clerk and also organist at two city churches, 
 with whom, between the services, at our lunch in an 
 else untenanted office, I read Voltaire's PhilosojiMcal 
 Dictionary. He, I suppose, would have been called 
 worse than Unitarian, an " infidel." Certainly a 
 non-conformist, though in no way aggressive or ob- 
 trusive ; but to be such, however inoffensively, was 
 enough for him to be shut from his respectable 
 father's house, and to have his mother and sisters 
 forbidden to speak to him if by chance they met 
 him in the street. To me, in my recollection of 
 him, he seems to have been the most beautifully 
 natured man I have ever known, almost womanly 
 in his delicacy of aspect and gentleness of manner, 
 yet with a keen masculine intellect and firmness of 
 character and will. Opposed and hindered in every 
 way by his father, — not a bad man, but a bigot, — 
 he at last emigrated to Australia, as a clerk in one 
 of the first Australian banks. There he died. He 
 was more than a brother to me, and his memory is 
 still very dear. My first acquaintance with him 
 was near the end of my apprenticeship. I knew 
 him as the friend of Edward Duncan, the talented 
 water-colour painter, at that time an aqua-tint en- 
 graver, engraving portraits of horses and of ships, 
 from paintings by his father-in-law, W. J. Huggins, 
 Marine Painter to his Majesty King William IV. 
 Very different the artist's position at that time from 
 what it has become since. Huggins lived where no
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 19 
 
 fairly successful artist would think of living now, in 
 Leadenhall Street, not far from opposite to the East 
 India House, in a narrow house, only two small 
 rooms on a floor, the ground floor a shop, kept by 
 his son for the sale of engravings from paintings by 
 the father, of portraits of ships, and where they could 
 be seen by East India captains, for whom, in general, 
 they were painted. Above the shop were parlour 
 and kitchen ; over them the bedrooms, and at top 
 the painting-room, where the painter, a jolly, fat, 
 good-natured fellow, who had been ship's cook in the 
 same vessel in which Stanfield was a cabin-boy, 
 smoked his pipe and drank his all-water grog, of 
 which he would jocosely offer a share to his visitors ; 
 and where, on the drugget flooring of the room, he 
 would chalk the positions of the several vessels in a 
 naval action. For he was not a mere ship-portrait 
 painter, but did higher things, painted for the king 
 three large pictures of the Battle of Navarino, which 
 his Marine Majesty would come to see in progress, 
 for all the shop and the climb up steep and narrow 
 stairs. Huggins was a kind and instructive friend 
 to me, and his son-in-law, Edward Duncan, was my 
 good friend for many after years, until his death. 
 
 Toward the close of my apprenticeship, I became 
 acquainted with Thomas Wade and his friend Rich- 
 ard Hengist Home. Wade, the author of a volume of 
 thoughtful and imaginative poems, Mundi et Cordis 
 Carmina, published in 1835, of a play, The Jew of 
 Arragon, brought out by Charles Kemble (in which
 
 20 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Fanny Kemble, afterwards Mrs. Butler, played the 
 heroine), and of other poems. He (Wade) should 
 have made a high mark in literature, but under 
 pressure of some money difficulties, betook himself 
 to Jersey, a sort of debtors' Alsatia in those days, 
 and there obtained a living by editing a weekly 
 newspaper. There he died, leaving MSS. of verse, 
 in the hands of Mr. Buxton Forman, yet unpub- 
 lished. 
 
 Home, in 1835, had already published his fine 
 tragedy of Cosmo de Medici, in five acts, and The 
 Death of Marloive, in one act, works with more of 
 the vigorous character and high poetic quality of 
 the Elizabethan dramatists than anything that has 
 been written since the Elizabethan days. Somewhat 
 later he brought out a noble epic poem, Orion, 
 which, in a freak to prove that the age did not 
 care for poetry, he issued at the price of one 
 farthing. His publisher would not let me have a 
 second farthing's worth. He proved his case : the 
 sale was small. I think years afterwards there 
 might have been some additional small demand for 
 the book when published at five shillings. A prose 
 work, — an Exposition of the False Medium, the 
 Barriers betiveen If en of Genius and the Public, — a 
 fierce onslaught on the publishers' Reader and the 
 Reviewers, did not help him to a too friendly critical 
 appreciation. And his work was very unequal. A 
 Life of Napoleon was hardly more than a wordy 
 enlargement of that by Hazlitt; and an imaginary
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 21 
 
 Life of Van Ambitrg, the Lion-Tamer, and papers 
 unsigned in the Monthly Repository under the 
 editorship of W. J. Fox, and for a short time of 
 Leigh Hunt, only showed his clever versatility. 
 Gregory VII., a five-act tragedy, deserved a lofty 
 place ; but very much of later work, despite notable 
 exceptions, did not reach the same height. A man 
 of indubitable genius, he yet wanted that one ele- 
 ment of genius, humour. Still he merited far more 
 than he had of contemporary appreciation, and very 
 much of his verse may rank with the very best of 
 that of the nineteenth century poets. A remarkable 
 man also in other respects ; small in stature, but 
 with a grand head, beautiful in young days when he 
 was a cadet at Woolwich, serving afterwards in the 
 war for Mexican independence, for which service 
 he, up to the time of his death, drew a small an- 
 nuity; he was also one of the sub-commissioners 
 appointed to inquire into the condition of women 
 and children in our mines, horrible enough to 
 demand inquiry ; he lectured, in 1847, on Italy, 
 when, with Mazzini's aid, the People's International 
 League strove to stir the public mind in favour 
 of Italian freedom ; had command later, when in 
 Australia (where he went with William Howitt), 
 of the escort of gold from the mines ; and also 
 sat in the Australian legislature. Coming back to 
 England after several years, he continued to write, 
 sometimes with his old vigour ; his last work, Sith- 
 ron the Star-stricken, worthy of his best days.
 
 22 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 He was a musician, played well on the guitar, and 
 sang well. I was in England at the end of 1882, 
 and during the following year, and half of 1884 ; 
 and, our acquaintanceship resumed, spent many 
 evenings with the old man at his lodgings in Nor- 
 thumberland Street, Marylebone. Through the two 
 winters he would cook our dinner at the stove in 
 his sitting-room, priding himself on his cooking 
 (he was very much of an epicure, an epicurean in 
 his life), and we ate on what room was left by books 
 and letters on a little round table before the fire. 
 He had always good wine, supplied by an admiring 
 friend, and we sat and talked of books or of his 
 Australian life. He was proud of showing how 
 strong, in spite of his years (his dated with the 
 century), his physique still was ; and one evening 
 he showed me his bare foot, that I might see he was 
 really web-footed. He had taken several prizes 
 for swimming ; on one occasion had been thrown 
 into the water hands and feet tied, to prove that 
 merely touching the end of a straw could keep a 
 man afloat, — of course he did not need the straw. 
 After reaching the " threescore years and ten," he 
 leaped from the pier at Eastbourne to give a lesson 
 in swimming. One evening I found him not in his 
 usual spirits. He had been dining out the evening 
 before, and I thought there had been some impru- 
 dent excess. A day or two later he was in bed with 
 gastric fever, and only recovered sufficiently to go 
 for change of air to the sea at Margate, where after
 
 EECOLLECTIONS 23 
 
 a few days he died. We buried the old man there, 
 though it had been his wish to be laid near Charles 
 Lamb at Edmonton. I am not sure that he had known 
 Lamb, though it may have been. Hazlitt he had 
 known, and, I believe, had nursed in his last sick- 
 ness. I always think of Home as one who ought 
 to have been great, he came so near it in his work, 
 in the greatness and nobility of his best writings.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 W. J. Fox ; South wood Smith ; Eliza Flower ; Sarah Flower Adams ; 
 W. B. Adams ; Watson ; Hetherington ; The Poor Man's Guar- 
 dian ; Movement for a Free Press ; Heywood ; Moore ; Hibbert. 
 
 Iisr 1837, Wade was living, with his mother and 
 sisters, in Great Quebec Street, Montague Square. 
 He had just given up editing the Bell's Neiv Weekly 
 Messenger, a liberal newspaper. On Sunday evenings 
 he gave receptions, when there would be music by 
 Mrs. Briclgman (distinguished as a fine pianiste, 
 afterwards the wife of Wade), and where I would 
 meet Home, Douglas Jerrold, W. J. Fox (the elo- 
 quent Unitarian preacher), Dr. Southwood Smith (one 
 of Bentham's executors, and physician to the Jews' 
 and fever hospitals), Margaret Gillies (the miniature 
 painter), and her sister Mary (a writer of the Mary 
 Howitt class, and a most amiable woman), and others. 
 We had good music and, I dare to say, good talk, to 
 which I listened. After this I was a frequent visitor 
 in Fox's house, there becoming acquainted with Eliza 
 Flower, the musical composer, and her sister, the au- 
 thor of the hymn " Nearer, my God ! to Thee," the 
 wife of William Bridges Adams, one of our best civil 
 engineers, a man held in high esteem in his profes- 
 sion, and also for his most unselfish and wide philan- 
 
 24
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 25 
 
 thropy. He, his wife, and her sister, became my 
 intimate and dearest friends. 
 
 Eliza Flower's music, Hymns and Anthems, was 
 the music at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, the 
 church of an advanced section of religious Unita- 
 rians, the followers of William Johnson Fox, a 
 man whose eloquence drew all the best of the liberal 
 notabilities, — such men as John Stuart Mill and 
 Disraeli — to listen to him. The musical services, 
 too, at the chapel sought a high religious ground, the 
 Hymns and Anthems consisting of selections from 
 Scripture and from old divines and poets, set by 
 Eliza Flower to worthy music of notable originality 
 and excellence. Some of the hymns were by Fox 
 himself ; others by Sarah Flower Adams, who should 
 also be remembered for a very noble tragic " dra- 
 matic poem," Vivia Perpetua, of similar subject but 
 very different treatment to Massinger's Virgin Mar- 
 tyr. The sisters were two of the most beautiful 
 women of their day, daughters of Benjamin Flower, 
 editor of the Cambridge Intelligencer, the earliest of 
 our liberal newspapers. They had been friends of 
 Browning in his young manhood, — the first to rec- 
 ognize and call attention to his genius. To me their 
 friendship, a love as of two elder sisters, too soon 
 to be interrupted by their death (that of Eliza 
 Flower in December, 1846, and of Mrs. Adams in 
 1848, a year and a half later), was indeed a liberal 
 education. With their love and feelino; for music 
 and pictorial art, and their high poetic thought,
 
 26 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 they were such women in their purity, intelligence, 
 and high-souled enthusiasm, as Shelley might have 
 sung as fitted to redeem a world by their very 
 presence. 
 
 Fox ought to have been the leader, as well as a 
 great teacher, of the people. I think he was only 
 prevented by a physique which made him inactive. 
 He was a short, stout man, with a grand head and 
 fine eyes, — the most poetic and rich-languaged of 
 all great speakers I have heard, only not so classic 
 as Wendell Phillips. He was afterwards Member of 
 Parliament for Oldham. He was also, in private, a 
 good verse-improvisatore. 
 
 I owed very much to the influence of Fox. Be- 
 fore I knew him personally, hearing lectures by him, 
 and reading Shelley's Queen Mob and Lamennais' 
 Words of a Believer {Paroles d'un Croyani), had 
 stirred me with the passion of Reform. Passing to 
 the city from the Lower Road, Islington, where, the 
 days of pupilage over, I was living in 1835-6, I 
 would look into a bookseller's shop, a few doors 
 from Bunhill Fields (John Bunyan's burial-place), 
 in the City Road, Finsbury, to buy Roebuck's 
 Pamphlets (parliamentary critiques), or Volney's 
 Puins of Empire and Lectures on History, or 
 Frances Wright's Few Days at Athens, or the works 
 of Godwin, Paine, or Robert Dale Owen : all of 
 them the neat and cheap publications of James 
 Watson, in 1835 just out of prison for selling an 
 unstamped newspaper, — a man whose evident sin-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 27 
 
 cerity and quiet earnestness led me into conversation 
 concerning the books he sold, and on other matters 
 also. With him began my first acquaintance with 
 Chartism, a movement of no small importance, how- 
 ever little now is thought or known of it, which 
 arose out of the action of Henry Hetherington, a 
 London printer. His fight for a free press should 
 first be spoken of. 
 
 In 1831, and after, with the " reforming '' Whigs 
 in power, it still remained illegal, so declared by the 
 government administrators, to give political knowl- 
 edge to the people : illegal ipso facto, to render the 
 giving impossible. There was a four-penny stamp 
 on every periodical publication that gave news. 
 Caution money was required before a newspaper 
 could be issued, in order that, in case of conviction 
 for anything which could be construed as offensive 
 to the government, the fine might be at hand. There 
 was also a tax upon every advertisement, and a duty 
 upon paper. To contend against such a state of things, 
 this printer Hetherington, after several vain attempts 
 to evade the law, began the publication of the Poor 
 Mans Guardian, a weekly paper for the people, 
 " established contrary to law, which will contain 
 (in the words of the prohibitory Act, here in italic) 
 news, intelligence, occurrences, and remarks and obser- 
 vations thereon, tending decidedly to excite hatred and 
 contempt of the government and constitution of the 
 tyranny of this country as by law established, and also 
 to vilify the abuses of religion ; and will be printed
 
 28 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 in the United Kingdom for sale and published 
 periodically (every Saturday) at intervals not exceed- 
 ing twenty-six days, and not exceeding two sheets ; and 
 will be published for a less sum than sixpence (to wit, 
 the sum of one penny) exclusive of the duty imposed 
 by the 38 Geo. III., cap. 78, and 60 Geo. III., c. 9, 
 or any other acts whatsoever." 
 
 For selling a single copy of such a paper, proof 
 given before a magistrate was deemed to be sufficient 
 for conviction ; and during three years and a half, 
 more than five hundred men and women were under 
 magisterial sentences imprisoned for various periods ; 
 Hetherington himself twice for six months. Still he 
 persevered, and at last succeeded in forcing a trial 
 in the Court of Exchequer before Lord Lyndhurst 
 and a special jury, when the Guardian was declared 
 to be a " strictly legal publication." Of course there 
 was no redress for the more than five hundred per- 
 sons who had suffered illegally. 
 
 Among the imprisoned was Abel Heywood, a 
 bookseller of Manchester and wholesale agent for 
 the Guardian, so a fair target for prosecution. He 
 took his prison degree, paid his fines, and went on 
 selling the paper. Then the authorities seized the 
 papers in the hands of the carriers, and various 
 devices had to be resorted to in order that they 
 might circulate in safety. Some packed with shoes, 
 some with chests of tea, some otherwise, the pro- 
 hibited goods were sent through the country, and 
 their sale was continued until the reduction of the
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 29 
 
 duty, as was expected, destroyed their monopoly of 
 cheapness. But by this time the Guardian had been 
 made the foundation of a business, which Heywood's 
 ability and perseverance enlarged, until he, de- 
 nounced in these early days as " seditious," became, 
 without change of principles or political conduct, an 
 influential and well-to-do citizen, mayor of Man- 
 chester, and might have represented Manchester in 
 Parliament had he cared to do so. To his second 
 wife, a woman of some wealth, we owe the erection 
 in Manchester of the first statue of Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 Watson, Hetherington's closest friend, the son of 
 a Yorkshire day-labourer, his mother a very intelli- 
 gent and energetic woman, had his three prison 
 services : the first of twelve months for selling 
 Palmer's Principles of Nature in Carlile's shop (he 
 had come to London from Malton in Yorkshire to 
 volunteer as shopman for Carlile, Carlile and his 
 wife being both in prison, she under a two years' 
 sentence), then twice, six months each time, for sell- 
 ing the Guardian. Such had been English freedom 
 under the infamous Castlereagh administration in 
 the reign of George IV., and such it remained under 
 liberal Whig rule after the passing of the Reform 
 Bill, a measure only meaned, in later words of 
 Richard Cobclen, to " garrison our present institu- 
 tions " against the rising democracy. 
 
 The popularity of the cheap unstamped papers 
 injuring the sale of the stamped higher-priced, com- 
 pelled them also to join in the agitation against the
 
 30 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 stamp ; and the consequence of their cooperation 
 was the reduction of the tax from fourpence to one 
 penny, which Mr. Hume rightly called the worst 
 penny of the lot. This reduction, as anticipated, 
 ruined the unstamped. But the reduction did not 
 stop the agitation. The " Society for the Repeal of 
 all the Taxes on Knowledge " took up the question, 
 and after thirteen years of incessant action (the com- 
 mittee met 473 times) forced the government to 
 give up not only the remaining penny stamp on 
 every paper, but also the tax on advertisements and 
 that on the manufacture of paper. Most active in 
 this later movement was the indefatigable chairman, 
 Richard Moore, a wood-carver, who was happily 
 married to a niece of Watson, and who was in close 
 fellowship with Watson in all his public life. A 
 man singularly modest and quietly persistent was 
 Moore, for more than forty years among the fore- 
 most in all the liberal movements of that time ; a 
 leading elector in the most radical borough of Fins- 
 bury, returning Wakley and Duncombe to Parlia- 
 ment, in active sympathy with the cause of Poland 
 and that of Italy, and enjoying the esteem and 
 friendship of leading politicians, of those even whose 
 views were not so far-going as his own. It was 
 fairly written of him at his death in 1878, that "all 
 the prominent English Radicals and liberal Exiles 
 he could reckon among his friends . . . the purity 
 of his life was only equalled by his disinterestedness 
 . . . there was something singularly earnest, gentle,
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 31 
 
 and chivalrous in his character." This man 1 am 
 proud to speak of as my friend. 
 
 Another man, before I leave the story of the un- 
 stamped, must not be left unmentioned, though I 
 only knew him by report : Julian Hibbert, the treas- 
 urer and " chief prop " of the Victim Fund during 
 the battle for the Poor Mans Guardian. For the 
 victims of the government prosecutions were not left 
 uncared for. Hibbert was, I believe, brought up as 
 a Catholic, a man of "good family," education, and 
 some wealth, who identified himself with the political 
 and free-thinking movements which had then to 
 encounter disrepute and obloquy, — a man whose 
 portrait (now before me) reminds me of Shelley, who 
 seems, indeed, to have been a prose Shelley, with the 
 same gentleness of nature and chivalrous zeal against 
 wrong. He died in 1834.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The People's Charter ; Major Cartwright ; The London Working 
 Men's Association ; Crown and Anchor Conference ; The Chartist 
 Convention ; O'Connor ; Spies ; The Odd Fellow ; Hetherington ; 
 Watson. 
 
 The " People's Charter " was an endeavour to 
 carry out the principles of Major John Cartwright, 
 who, born in 1740 and dying in 1824, is noteworthy, 
 in the words beneath his statue in Burton Crescent, 
 London, as " the firm, consistent, and persevering 
 advocate of universal suffrage," and reform in Par- 
 liament : principles which, though they had been 
 accepted, were not insisted on by Earl Grey in his 
 Reform Bill. The immediate movement for the Char- 
 ter grew out of a document prepared by Hethering- 
 ton in 1831, which originated the "National Union 
 of the Working Classes," — "to collect and organise 
 a peaceful and open expression of public opinion " 
 (so superseding the secret societies of the time), " and 
 to obtain an effectual reform in Parliament," instead 
 of the partial reform which was all that was attain- 
 able by the Whig Reform Bill. The National Union 
 of the Working Classes was, after much good educa- 
 tional work, disturbed, and, to a great extent, dis- 
 placed by the trades unions ; but a section still sought 
 to continue the political action by the formation in 
 
 32
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 33 
 
 1836 of the "London Working Men's Association," 
 an association whose published addresses called forth 
 the admiration of even so fastidious a literary critic 
 as Leigh Hunt. In February, 1837, this association 
 convened a public meeting at the Crown and Anchor 
 Tavern in the Strand, out-door meetings being illegal 
 and two attempts having been stopped by the Reform 
 Government. A petition to the House of Commons 
 for universal suffrage and better ordering of elec- 
 tions, adopted at that meeting, was placed in the 
 hands of John Arthur Roebuck, M. P. for Sheffield, 
 for presentation to the House ; and the association 
 towards its support requested a conference with those 
 members of the reformed House who professed lib- 
 eral principles. Eight answered : Colonel Perronet 
 Thompson, Joseph Hume, Charles Hindley, Daniel 
 O'Connell, Dr. Bowring, John Temple Leader, Wil- 
 liam Sherman Crawford, and Benjamin Hawes ; all, 
 except Hawes, after two nights' discussion, accepting 
 the principles of the association. O'Connell dodged, 
 had a scheme of his own, but, that not approved of, 
 agreed to the course of the association, not honestly, 
 as afterwards appeared. 
 
 Resolutions were adopted, pledging the above- 
 named members, Hawes excepted, to support the 
 petition to be presented by Roebuck, and to support 
 and vote for a bill to be brought into the House of 
 Commons " embodying the principles of universal suf- 
 frage, equal representation, free selection of represen- 
 tatives without reference to property, the ballot, and
 
 34 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 short Parliaments of fixed duration, the limit not to 
 exceed three years " ; and appointing a committee of 
 twelve to draw up the bill. The committee consisted 
 of six Members of Parliament, — Thompson, Craw- 
 ford, Leader, Roebuck, Hindley, and O'Connell ; and 
 six members of the Working Men's Association, — 
 Henry Hetherington, John Cleave, James Watson 
 (three booksellers), Richard Moore (carver), William 
 Lovett (cabinet-maker), and Henry Vincent (journey- 
 man printer). Roebuck and Lovett were to draft the 
 bill ; but, owing to Roebuck's parliamentary engage- 
 ments, the work was really done by Lovett, with Roe- 
 buck's legal advice. This was the " People's Charter," 
 first published on the 8th of May, 1838, accepted at 
 large public meetings in Glasgow and Birmingham, 
 and in London at an important public meeting in Pal- 
 ace Yard, Westminster, called by the high bailiff on 
 the requisition of a large number of influential citizens. 
 One of the speakers I saw and heard at this meeting 
 was Ebenezer Elliott, the " Corn-Law Rhymer." 
 
 A Convention of fifty-five persons, elected by show 
 of hands at public meetings throughout the country 
 of, it was said, three millions of persons, sat in 
 London in the following year, to consider of the 
 means to obtain the charter; and, having placed a 
 petition with 1,228,000 signatures in the hands of 
 Mr. Atwood, M. P. for Birmingham, for presentation 
 to Parliament, transferred their sittings to Birming- 
 ham, and then dispersed to hold meetings through- 
 out the country. The petition was presented and
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 35 
 
 rejected by the Reformed House of Commons, by 
 235 votes against 46. Thereupon followed hot and 
 angry talk, chiefly by Feargus O'Connor (formerly a 
 follower of O'Connell), who, in his Northern Star, a 
 newspaper published at Leeds, and assuming to be 
 the organ of the Chartists (in reality only of the 
 unwiser section who prided themselves on the 
 advocacy of physical force), broke up the coherence 
 and the morale of the party and, aided by arbitrary 
 arrests and imprisonments for " seditious " speaking, 
 much of it provoked by government spies, caused at 
 last an insane attempt at insurrection in South 
 Wales. After that came disheartening, lukewarm- 
 ness, with intermittent bluster, indifference, and so 
 an end to all hopes of popular success. 
 
 How spies were employed to worm themselves 
 into the Chartist movement, to incite to outbreaks 
 or at least to intemperate language which the 
 Government could construe as seditious, was exposed 
 before Parliament by Cobbett, while Member for 
 Oldham. He proved that one Popay and other spies 
 were employed by the police with the knowledge of 
 the Government, and paid out of the Secret Service 
 money. This Popay joined the Union of the 
 Working Classes, winning confidence by his profes- 
 sions and activity, attending the class meetings in 
 order to report them, suggesting and even drawing 
 up resolutions of a violent character, and urging the 
 procuring of arms with a view to open rebellion. 
 An extract from Cobbett's report of the evidence,
 
 36 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 laid before the Select Committee of the House of 
 Commons, will give some idea of the man and of the 
 system. 
 
 " Your Committee request the House first to cast their eyes 
 over the ten months' deeds of this most indefatigable and 
 unrelenting spy; to survey the circle of his exploits from 
 the Borough Town Hall to Blackheath, and from Copenhagen 
 House to Finsbury Square ; to behold him dancing with the 
 wife of the man whom he had denounced in his reports, and, 
 standing on a tomb-stone, writing down and then reporting 
 the words uttered over the grave of a departed reformer 
 (Thelwall's speech at Hardy's grave in Bunhill Fields burial- 
 ground) ; to trace him going from meeting to meeting, and 
 from group to group, collecting matter for accusation in the 
 night, and going regularly in the morning bearing the fruits 
 of his perfidy to his immediate employer, to be by him con- 
 veyed to the Government ; to follow him into the houses of 
 John B. Young and Mr. Sturgis, and there see his wife and 
 children relieved and fed and warmed and cherished, and then 
 look at one of his written reports and see him describe Young's 
 Union class as armed to a man, and at another see him de- 
 scribe Mr. Sturgis as the teacher of a doctrine that ' fitted 
 man for the worst offences'; and see Lord Melbourne writing 
 on the back of this report that 'it is not unimportant and 
 ought not to be lost sight of.' . . . Your Committee request 
 the House to cast their eyes over these ten months of the life 
 of this man, and then consider whether it is possible for a 
 Government to preserve the affections of a frank and confid- 
 ing people, unless it at once, in the most unequivocal manner, 
 give proof of its resolution to put an end, and forever, to a 
 system which could have created such a monster in human 
 shape." 
 
 Under such a system it could be no matter for 
 wonder, that for hasty, if not intemperate speaking, 
 always "seditious," four hundred and forty-three
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 37 
 
 " Chartists " were imprisoned for different periods in 
 1839 and 1840. 
 
 Yet that Chartist agitation, mere bootless talk as 
 it may be considered, was the fair outstarting and 
 the sure promise of all political gain which has 
 since accrued to the working classes. And the 
 first movers in it were men worthy to be held in 
 honourable remembrance. Most of them I knew per- 
 sonally, and was in close fellowship with them always. 
 Hetherington, Watson, and Moore, were my intimate 
 friends ; Lovett I knew well ; Cleave not so well ; 
 and Vincent I only recall as an enthusiastic and able 
 speaker, whose outspokenness was not always wise. 
 He paid in prison for the unwisdom. 
 
 Hetherington was a leader of men, a ready and 
 effective speaker, plain, pathetic, humorous, or sar- 
 castic, as occasion required ; a bold thinker and a 
 good organizer, prompt, energetic, earnest, and de- 
 voted. As a printer, publisher, and news-agent, he 
 might have become a rich man, but his time was 
 only too ungrudgingly given to the public service, 
 which he would not neglect even when his atten- 
 tion to it might be at the risk of his own business. 
 I knew him well, for more than a year, from April, 
 1841, to August, 1842, editing for him one of his 
 unstamped papers, the Odd Fellow, so entitled 
 because it chronicled the proceedings of the " Odd 
 Fellows," at that time and since an extensive 
 benefit society. In this paper I wrote weekly 
 political leading articles, much verse, chiefly politi-
 
 38 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 cal, and criticisms of plays, books, etc. Among the 
 criticisms were a laudatory review of Dickens' Old 
 Curiosity Shop, and one on the first performance of 
 Gerald Griffin's Gisipjms, brought out by Macready 
 at Drury Lane Theatre, a production notable not 
 only on account of the play itself, but also for the 
 novel appropriateness of the setting of the drama 
 in its scenery and accessories, such unusual ordering 
 due to Macready, who repeated the same appropriate- 
 ness, an example to all scenic propriety since, in the 
 production of Leigh Hunt's Legend of Florence, a 
 play, though well performed, too refined and purely 
 beautiful for general appreciation. I was present at 
 the first performance of that also. 
 
 My editorship bringing me into such constant 
 communication with Hetherington, I was well able 
 to judge of the character of the man. Popular 
 among the better portion of the Chartist party, not 
 unpopular even with those to whose policy and con- 
 duct he was opposed, I found him to be one for 
 whom I could not but have a sincere respect and 
 very warm regard. 
 
 Watson was of the old Puritan type of our great 
 Cromwellian time, such a man as Ireton, simply 
 wise, serious, and most earnest ; a good, not a great 
 speaker, his speeches of few words, but always clear 
 and to the purpose ; a brave specimen of the intelli- 
 gent and honest English workman. I think of him 
 always as a workman, for his life seemed to show that 
 the ideal he had before him was what an English
 
 EECOLLECTIONS 39 
 
 workman ought to be ; and though he kept a booksel- 
 ler's shop, he was in no sense a tradesman — a buyer 
 and seller merely for gain. His publishing was only 
 of works for the benefit of his fellows. He was a man 
 whom his most violent opponents could not but 
 respect for his integrity and calm, manly self-posses- 
 sion under all circumstances ; essentially a religious 
 man, a believer in duty, though he bowed in neither 
 church nor chapel, and only gave an honestly indus- 
 trious life for freedom of thought and speech, his 
 whole course a commentary on the words of Milton : 
 " Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to 
 argue freely according to conscience above all liber- 
 ties." He was my close and dear friend for thirty- 
 seven years ; until his death.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Lovett and Collins ; Cooper; Bronterre O'Brien; O'Connor; Out- 
 break in Wales ; Frost ; Protest against Death Punishment ; Car- 
 lyle ; Fairfield Festival ; Leigh Hunt. 
 
 Of Richard Moore, my friend, too, for the like 
 period, I have already written. Lovett was the 
 gentlest of agitators, a mild, peace-loving man, 
 whom nothing but a deep sense of sympathy with 
 and duty toward the wronged could have dragged 
 into public life. His chief ambition, apparent in the 
 later evening of his day when the Chartist move- 
 ment was at an end, would have been to do good 
 work as an efficient school-teacher. Yet he, too, 
 encountering oppression, had his share of punish- 
 ment, sentenced, with John Collins, a fellow-mem- 
 ber of the Chartist Convention, to twelve months' 
 imprisonment in Warwick gaol for having signed 
 (Lovett as secretary) and printed the resolution of 
 the Convention then sitting at Birmingham (it was 
 only taken to be printed by Collins), a temperate 
 and manly protest of the Convention against a 
 brutal attack by the police upon the people assem- 
 bled peaceably in their usual place of meeting, the 
 Bull Ring at Birmingham. This police outrage pro- 
 voked a riot, which was all the Government wanted 
 
 40
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 41 
 
 as giving a colour for farther proceedings. From 
 the 25th of July, 1839, to the same date in 1840, 
 the two Chartists remained in gaol, most harshly 
 treated. 
 
 On the 3d of August, 1840, a public dinner, to 
 congratulate the offenders on their liberation, was 
 given at the White Conduit House, Mr. Wakley, 
 surgeon and coroner, the editor of the Lancet, and 
 M. P. for Finsbury, in the chair, and his fellow-mem- 
 ber, Mr. Duncombe, also present. More than a thou- 
 sand persons attended. At this dinner I met and 
 was introduced to a tall, stalwart Frenchman, God- 
 frey Cavaignac, the chief of the French Republicans, 
 the brother of the unrepublican general who put 
 down the Paris insurrection of June, 1848. 
 
 Thomas Cooper, the poet-shoemaker, was a man 
 of a very different character from Lovett ; impul- 
 sive, hot-headed, and, I doubt not, in his early ut- 
 terances, sufficiently careless of his words to be 
 considered "seditious," and so promoted to two 
 years in prison, where in Spenserian stanzas he 
 wrote his " prison rhyme," the Purgatory of Sui- 
 cides, a long poem, remarkable if only for being 
 produced under prison difficulties, but also as evinc- 
 ing much thoughtful reading, and not without pas- 
 sages of true poetic beauty. When he came out of 
 prison, the rarity of such a performance gave him 
 a certain notoriety and importance. He came to 
 London, and there took an active part in the 
 Chartist movement, more especially in the endeav-
 
 42 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 our at its revival, when new hopes arose with the 
 February days of France. Chartism at an end, he 
 became an itinerant preacher, I think in the Baptist 
 connection. A simple-hearted, good man, quick- 
 tempered and enthusiastic, he was an eloquent 
 orator and a good writer. His Letters to Working 
 Men are of excellent sense, and in plain, earnest, 
 vigorous English, reminding one of, and worthy of 
 comparison with, the best writing of Cobbett. His 
 Autobiography is a notable book. Kindly natured, 
 though easy to take offence, the offence was soon 
 forgiven. He was trying, on one occasion, to per- 
 suade me to join some " League of Universal Broth- 
 erhood," when I answered : " Cooper ! I know only 
 two of the Brothers, yourself and Howitt (a man as 
 warm-tempered as Cooper), and I am not tempted to 
 be a third." I once said of him that he would be an 
 excellent cooperator if the cooper were in two syl- 
 lables. It was too severe to fairly characterise the 
 man. He died, very deservedly respected, so late as 
 1892, in the eighty-seventh year of his age. Among 
 the Chartist crowd, I would also select for notice 
 James Bronterre O'Brien, an Irishman, perhaps the 
 cleverest man of our party, and a forcible speaker. 
 
 The Chartist movement was a people's protest 
 against the misgovernment of an oligarchy. It but 
 followed the example set by the middle classes in 
 their struggle for the Reform Bill ; and at first was 
 even more closely within legal limits, superseding by 
 open speech the dangerous growl of secret societies.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 43 
 
 But when Feargus O'Connor, a man of probably 
 quite honest intentions, but of little fibre and impol- 
 itic, through the influence of the wide circulation of 
 his paper, the Northern Star, became prominent as 
 a leader, the course was changed. The Star helped 
 and encouraged fierce and foolish talk of what might 
 be done by force. This led, at the close of 1839, to 
 an outbreak in Wales, with the purpose of liberating 
 Vincent from Monmouth gaol, in prison there for 
 too plain speaking : an ill-advised and ill-planned 
 outbreak, easily put down, for which the leader, 
 John Frost (up to that time a man of quiet respecta- 
 bility as a linen-draper, a magistrate, and mayor of 
 Newport), was, with two others, Zephaniah Williams 
 and Jones, sentenced to death. While they were in 
 prison awaiting their trial, I, then living at Wood- 
 ford, some eight miles from London, had a visit from 
 Watson to tell me that one of the rebels, who had 
 been put in prison chiefly that he might be used as a 
 witness against Frost, had escaped and was then in 
 London, at Hetherington's. Would I give him 
 refuge and take care of him ? Of course I would. 
 So he came, little more than a lad (and a nice lad), 
 and stayed with me until the trial was over, not 
 then having much to fear, on account of his youth. 
 
 When news came that the death-sentence of the 
 three men was really to be carried out, and that the 
 gallows was being erected, it was in the little sitting- 
 room behind Watson's shop in the City Road that 
 we copied out a petition for reprieve, to which the
 
 44 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 subscriptions received in not many hours became so 
 numerous that the government was fain to send the 
 announcement of a stay of the death-sentence to 
 Hetherington's more prominent place of business in 
 the Strand, to be there exhibited to allay the 
 popular excitement. The sentence of death was 
 commuted to transportation for life. Frost was 
 allowed after some forty years to return to England. 
 Jones and Williams, I believe, died abroad. 
 
 I thought then to make the opportunity available 
 for an influential protest against death-punishment ; 
 and consulted Dr. Southwood Smith, Dr. Birkbeck 
 (the founder of the first Mechanics' Institute), and 
 Fox. Fox sent me to Birkbeck for him to draw up 
 the protest. Birkbeck sent me back to Fox. He 
 still hesitating, I wrote the protest myself, and 
 approved by Birkbeck, went on my way, calling first 
 upon Carlyle. I had never seen him, and had no 
 introduction except my purpose. He received me 
 well, talked with me, but would not sign the protest, 
 which included Frost. " No ! " he said, " he respected 
 the Quaker principle, but force must be met by 
 force ; who took the sword must expect to perish by 
 the sword," or words to that effect. Then he spoke 
 of the men, — " Poor Frost ! " and tears were in his 
 eyes ; "but I am sorry for him." From him I went 
 to his neighbour, Leigh Hunt, who received me with 
 most kindly warmth and unhesitatingly gave me his 
 signature. Yet as I went away, I thought there 
 was something in the manner of Carlyle's refusal
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 45 
 
 which touched me more closely than even Hunt's 
 prompt acquiescence. There was a deep-heartedness 
 in it, in which I have kept faith, despite all harsh- 
 nesses of utterance : which, I think, have not justly 
 characterised him. One other thing of later hap- 
 pening may also show his better depth, when not 
 disturbed by dyspepsia. A young German had 
 become a member of a queer society or community, 
 raw vegetarians and else, located at Alcott House, 
 on Ham Common, near Richmond on Thames. I 
 know not whether it had been founded by Alcott, 
 Emerson's friend and neighbour at Concord, Massa- 
 chusetts, or only established in admiration of his 
 eccentricity. The ways of the society were very 
 much out of the common ; but one morning the 
 young German went beyond them. He was found 
 in the garden digging " mit nodings on." The poor 
 fellow was crazy, crazier than the community could 
 stand. Carlyle took charge of the stranger in his 
 own house until friends in Germany could have care 
 of him. Many hard words may be forgiven for such 
 a generously gentle act. 
 
 Only twice after my visit to ask for his signature 
 had I the good fortune to see Carlyle. Once, not 
 long afterwards, at a festival given to my friend 
 William Bridges Adams by his workmen at his 
 railway-carriage building works, the Fairfield works 
 at Bow, when Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle, Mazzini, 
 Miss Hays (the first English translator of George 
 Sand), Lady Duff Gordon, Dr. Stewart, Miss Jews-
 
 46 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 bury, myself and others, were guests. Carlyle spoke 
 on the occasion. " Might they always understand 
 industry and service as something more than mere 
 marketable commodities, and might no fool or 
 coward or liar ever be among them ! ' (I quote 
 from a report I gave to the Peoples Journal.) I had 
 not much talk with Carlyle ; but more with his wife, 
 with whom I was much pleased. I recollect her 
 speaking of her childhood, of the times when she 
 was made a scholar and would rather have had a 
 doll. Once later, when Emerson was in England 
 and lectured at Exeter Hall (a grand lecture on 
 " Home," of which I have lost sight), I came out 
 from the lecture with Carlyle and Adams, and 
 walked some way along the Strand with them. 
 
 My visit to Leigh Hunt was only the first of 
 many to that most delightful of old men. I got at 
 last to be treated almost as one of the family, spend- 
 ing freely my evenings with them when I would, 
 listening to Hunt's pleasantly wise talk, while Mrs. 
 Hunt (a stout, genial, motherly woman, of whom no 
 one could have supposed that in her young days 
 she was threatened with consumption) peeled wal- 
 nuts for me. How well I remember one evening 
 when I was privileged to dine with Hunt and Eliza 
 Flower and Fox, at Fox's house in Queen Square, 
 Westminster, — only the four of us, and the two 
 men talking of the Old Dramatists, to which we 
 other two were content to be listeners. I walked 
 from the Square with Hunt to his house in Ed-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 47 
 
 wardes Square, Kensington, he rinding something to 
 say of every notable house on our way, and was 
 taken in with him. Late as it was, he sat down 
 to his beloved piano, playing among other things 
 Purcell's "Halcyon Days," from the King Arthur. 
 It was an evening never to be forgotten, of which I 
 fain would have notes, to speak more fully.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Howitts ; Tennyson ; The Toynbees ; Mazzini ; "VVorcell ; Stolz- 
 man ; The Bandieras ; Letter Opening at the Post Office ; Carlisle 
 Election. 
 
 It may have been some years later that I knew the 
 Howitts, when I knew them living at Upper Clap- 
 ton, beyond Hackney. Howitt was a square, stur- 
 dily built, but not large, Quaker, who, when out, 
 generally carried a big stick : the type of the 
 Quaker who would not take up arms, but who, when 
 the ship on which he was a passenger was boarded 
 by an enemy, held out his hands against one of the 
 boarders with the quiet remark, " Friend ! thee 
 hath no business here," and pushed him off. Wil- 
 liam Howitt' s inoffensive stick might have come 
 into play under such warranty. I think he was 
 not a quarrelsome man, though quick-tempered, and 
 he could be angry at opposition. Mrs. Howitt was 
 the gentle, primitive Quakeress, a comely woman, 
 good, and very kindly. Her writings seem to reflect 
 her nature. It was a great pleasure to me, many 
 years after I supposed I must have passed out of 
 remembrance, to receive a most cordial letter from 
 her, then an aged woman living in Switzerland, in 
 answer to a request for leave to print in England 
 some of her poems. At the Howitts' house in 
 
 48
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 49 
 
 Upper Clapton I once breakfasted with Alfred 
 Tennyson, not much impressed by his appearance, 
 speech, or manner. 
 
 Friends of Wade were the two brothers Toynbee, 
 George, a literary man who died young, and Joseph, 
 afterwards eminent as an aurist, the father of 
 Arthur Toynbee, whose memory is kept alive by 
 " Toynbee Hall." George was one of the first ac- 
 quaintances made in England by Mazzini, and to Maz- 
 zini I was introduced by Joseph. In 1841 Mazzini 
 established at No. 5 Greville Street, Hatton Garden, 
 a free school for the poor Italians in London, most 
 of them the wretched organ-grinders and hawkers 
 of plaster casts. Here Joseph Toynbee, with Mazzini 
 himself, and a few of his Italian refugee friends, 
 taught nightly, with lectures on Sunday evenings. 
 Pistrucci, a remarkable improvisatore, brother of a 
 clever medallist in the Mint, was director and also 
 a teacher here. And here one night I met, at one of 
 the school meetings, a little plain Yankee woman, 
 Margaret Fuller, plain, but interesting and attrac- 
 tive, whose speech was earnest and to the purpose. 
 I had some after correspondence with her from 
 Italy. 
 
 Mazzini introduced me to two Polish friends, 
 refugees and exiles like himself, Stanislas Worcell 
 and Karl Stolzman. Worcell, a Count of Volhynia, 
 had been the owner of large estates, which he for- 
 feited on account of his prominent share in the 
 Polish insurrection of 1830. He raised a troop on
 
 50 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 his own lands, fought his way into Warsaw, and 
 sat there in the Polish Senate. He was a man of 
 middle height, of noble presence, and of most re- 
 markable culture and intelligence, the chief of the 
 Democratic party in the Polish Emigration, although 
 nearly related to the royal Czartoryskis. In the 
 course of years, with very much intercourse with 
 him, I became as intimate with him as with Mazzini. 
 I might say even more intimate. He was a man to 
 revere and love, a saintly martyr, a true hero, a wise 
 philosopher, and a man whose knowledge seemed to 
 be unbounded. He was Mazzini's closest friend. 
 Stolzman, a tall, stalwart man of military bearing, 
 was an old soldier, who in his youth had served 
 under Napoleon. Returning to Poland after the 
 Imperial fall, he, as an artillery officer, did good 
 service in the defence of Warsaw, for which, by 
 General Bern, famous afterwards in the Hungarian 
 War, he was promoted to the rank of colonel. 
 Meeting with Mazzini in Switzerland, he aided in 
 the formation of the Society of " Young Europe," 
 founded by Mazzini to bring together the Republi- 
 cans of the different countries. 
 
 In 1844, letters from abroad to Mazzini and 
 Stolzman were opened at the English General 
 Post-Office in London. Of course they were in 
 correspondence with Italian and Polish patriots. 
 Lord Aberdeen was then the English Foreign Secre- 
 tary, and Sir James Graham was Home Secretary. 
 Some unimportant letters from Lovett and myself
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 51 
 
 to Mazzini were also opened. These various letters 
 were not only opened, but were afterwards resealed 
 and delivered as if they had not been meddled with. 
 At this time two young Italians, officers in the 
 Austro-Italian Navy, Attilio and Emilio Bandiera, 
 the sons of a vice-admiral in the Austrian service, 
 were planning an Italian insurrection, from which 
 Mazzini was endeavouring to dissuade them as in- 
 opportune. Information, stolen in the English Post- 
 Office, from their letters to him, was given by Lord 
 Aberdeen to the Austrian ambassador, which infor- 
 mation was made use of to decoy the Bandieras into 
 a vain attempt on Calabria, where with seven com- 
 panions they were stalked down, taken prisoners, and 
 shot to death. 
 
 At first we were only aware of letters being 
 delayed ; and only by accident found out that they 
 were opened and resealed (at that time it was still 
 the custom to seal letters with wax). Then we 
 learned the method : which was to take an impres- 
 sion of the seal, then carefully to break it, and 
 afterwards, first slightly heating the surface of the 
 wax, to press the counterfeit stamp precisely as it 
 had been done before, so that there was no altera- 
 tion of position, nor outward appearance of any kind 
 to show that the seal had been tampered with. But 
 they could not prevent the breakage of a hair or slip 
 of paper placed under the seal as a means of detec- 
 tion ; and the heating of the wax was only on the 
 surface just enough to take the new impression,
 
 52 THKEESCOKE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 leaving the main underbody of the seal broken. 
 This I discovered by happening to keep a letter 
 loose in my pocket for a couple of days, when the 
 surface-joined seal sundered and revealed the proced- 
 ure. We also obtained exact information from a 
 subordinate in the Post-Office. 
 
 Then I took the matter to Thomas Slingsby Dun- 
 combe, the radical member of Parliament for Fins- 
 bury, a man chivalrously prompt to notice any 
 political grievance. At first he would not believe 
 me, but when convinced, gave himself heartily to the 
 exposure by bringing it before the House of Com- 
 mons. After much official evasion and shuffling and 
 opposition on the part of the government, Dun- 
 combe obtained from the Commons the appointment 
 of a Select Committee of Inquiry (himself not named 
 on it and the inquiry secret) ; and Lord Radnor 
 obtained a similar committee from the House of 
 Lords. The reports of the two committees (that of 
 the Lords sitting later and so fuller) did not agree, 
 each reporting only what they supposed to have been 
 discovered by us. We knew more, but were not 
 called to produce our evidence. On occasion of the 
 debate in the, Commons, Duncombe got the admis- 
 sion of Mazzini and myself to the floor of the House, 
 and I heard Shiel (harsh-voiced but eloquent), Wak- 
 ley, and Macaulay, in denunciation of the outrage. 
 A full account of the parliamentary proceedings and 
 of the whole affair is given by my friend, Dr. Lons- 
 dale of Carlisle, in his life of Sir James Graham in
 
 EECOLLECTIONS 53 
 
 the Wo?*t7iies of Cumberland, published by Routleclge 
 in 1868. Public feeling for a time ran high. Punch 
 caricatured Graham as Paul Pry at the Post-Office ; 
 Leech drew a pictorial parody of Mulready's design 
 for the Post-Office envelopes, with Graham for prin- 
 cipal figure in place of Britannia ; letters were 
 posted with "not to be Grahamed" on the outside; 
 indignant public meetings were held ; but after a 
 while, as there was no personal interest involved, 
 the excitement died out. But Graham's share in 
 the business was not forgotten. 
 
 Some years after this, while living in the Lake 
 Country at Brantwood, beside Coniston Water, I 
 went to Carlisle to meet my friend Mr. Joseph 
 Cowen from Newcastle ; Carlisle a sort of half-way 
 for each of us. We spent a night together, and 
 separated next day. But it was the eve of an elec- 
 tion, and Sir James Graham was a candidate, and 
 we happened to visit the Working Men's Association ; 
 so it was immediately assumed that I could only be 
 in Carlisle to annoy Sir James by reviving the old 
 Post-Office scandal, there, perhaps, as a tool of the 
 Tory party to oppose him. Surely I had no thought 
 of being a candidate for parliamentary honour or of 
 interfering with the election, but the disgrace of the 
 esjnonnage had clung to him. After all, not Graham, 
 who suffered most as cat's paw, but Aberdeen, who 
 had passed on the stolen information to Austria, 
 was the worse offender.
 
 54 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 The story of the Bandieras, of their patriotism, 
 their betrayal, and their fate, I heard from Mazzini's 
 own lips, as he walked with me in the forest on one 
 of his visits to me at Woodford.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Partnership with John Orrin Smith ; Artists and Work ; Illustrated 
 London Neics ; Ingram; Punch; Jerrold; Leech; the Doyles; 
 Lady Morgan. 
 
 In 1842 I became the partner of John Orrin 
 Smith, a good and eminently successful engraver in 
 wood, for whom I had worked for several years, 
 and so, leaving Woodford, came to live again in 
 London ; first in Judd Street, Brunswick Square, and 
 then at 85 Hatton-Garden, Holborn ; after a little 
 while taking my family back to Woodford, retain- 
 ing 85 Hatton-Garden as my place of business. My 
 connection with Smith brought me among the artists 
 whose drawings, with the help of a dozen or so of 
 pupils and journeymen, we engraved. Chief of 
 these artists, still retaining the popularity he had 
 gained almost immediately when, Bewick's favourite 
 pupil, he came to London from Newcastle, was Wil- 
 liam Harvey, most prolific of draftsmen, most amia- 
 ble of men. Him I had known before I joined with 
 Smith. Through Smith I knew Kenny Meadows, 
 then completing an Illustrated Shaksjiere, and also 
 drawing the Heads of the Peojile, a clever series of 
 character heads for which the letter-press was writ- 
 ten by Douglas Jerrold, Home, Laman Blanchard, 
 
 55
 
 56 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Dickens, and others. The editor of the Illustrated 
 Shaksjjere was Stanton the chess-player, a tall, hand- 
 some, genial man, whom I knew slightly. We also 
 engraved John Gilbert's drawings for an edition of 
 Coivper, the most careful and, I think, almost the 
 best, although the earliest of Gilbert's numerous 
 works. He had not then begun to draw for the 
 Illustrated London Neivs. For the Bell's Life in 
 London, a weekly sporting newspaper, we engraved 
 outline portraits of horses, the winners of the Ascot, 
 Epsom, and Goodwood races, drawn by Herring, the 
 animal painter ; and other few illustrations — once 
 a whole side of the paper, on occasion of the birth 
 of the Prince of Wales. In the editor's room one 
 day I had the honour of meeting a well-mannered, 
 rather mild-looking man, over six feet in height, Mr. 
 Winter, the landlord of a respectable public house in 
 Holborn, who in his younger days had been known 
 as Tom Spring, the champion pugilist of England. 
 John Leech's first drawings were submitted to us, 
 and found ready appreciation. 
 
 For the Illustrated London News, after its first 
 year, Smith & Linton did a great amount of work, 
 from drawings by Harvey, Meadows, Gilbert, Dun- 
 can, Doclgson, Leitch, and other artists ; and copies 
 of pictures by the old masters, and paintings in the 
 annual exhibitions of the Eoyal Academy and the 
 two Water-Colour Galleries. A very remarkable 
 man was the proprietor of the News, Herbert In- 
 gram, a Lincolnshire printer, who, having made
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 57 
 
 some money by the sale of " Parr's Life Pills " (the 
 recipe of Dr. Snaith of Boston), came to London 
 and met with a projector named Marriott, from 
 whom he obtained the idea of an illustrated paper. 
 He found a good publisher, Joseph Clayton, the 
 publisher of the Spectator, at that time the most 
 important and best of weekly newspapers in Lon- 
 don ; and the News was soon a success. Ingram 
 was a curious character : uneducated, without liter- 
 ary ability or knowledge or appreciation of Art (ask- 
 ing me once if I had leave from Guido to copy his 
 "Aurora"), he seemed about the last man to be the 
 conductor of an illustrated paper ; but he had a kind 
 of intuitive faculty of judging what would please 
 the ordinary public, a perception of that which 
 seemed never to fail. And he was enterprising and 
 liberal. The paper was well edited, at first by John 
 Timbs, who had been editor of the Mirror, a good 
 book-worm and a man of much general infor- 
 mation, and afterwards by Charles Mackay, the 
 very popular poet. Stanton contributed the chess- 
 column, and the management was promptly ready 
 in engaging the best draftsmen on wood, in which 
 Smith & Linton, and afterwards Linton alone, were 
 able to be of considerable service. The paper had 
 the good fortune to meet a public want, and also by 
 its conduct deserved its great success. 
 
 Very different was the beginning of Punch, which 
 was suggested by the Figaro in London, a smaller 
 sheet, edited by Gilbert a-Becket and illustrated by
 
 58 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Seymour ; for Punch started with a galaxy of talent, 
 literary and artistic, since unequalled, — Douglas 
 Jerrold, Mark Lemon, Thackeray, Henry May hew, 
 Albert Smith, Leigh, (Hood came later), Leech, Ten- 
 niel, Richard Doyle, and Cruikshank. Most of these 
 men I knew more or less. Jerrold I knew best, a 
 little keen-faced man, bowed by rheumatism, the 
 consequence of early privations. I have heard of 
 him and a companion in early days, Laman Blan- 
 chard, afterwards known as a poet and wit, and, 
 I think, editor of the Court Journal, sitting in their 
 poverty and despair on a doorstep, meditating sui- 
 cide. Once, coming from Heme Bay to London by 
 steamboat, I saw Jerrold lifted on board in a chair, 
 where, for the few hours' voyage, he sat movelessly, 
 in pain, and fearful of anything coming near to 
 touch him. Rheumatism, like gout, is not a good 
 teacher of amiability ; nevertheless I believe, for all 
 the sometime cynicism of his sarcastic witticisms, 
 that Jerrold was a kindly natured man, as melan- 
 choly Hood most certainly was. But even in the 
 days of his late prosperity all was not smooth with 
 Jerrold. He had many drags upon him. One, I 
 fancied, was Henry Mayhew, a clever man about 
 town, the author of London Labour and the London 
 Poor, who married Jerrold's daughter, a girl not 
 half his own age. Jerrold's wife's brother, Ham- 
 mond, was lessee of the little Strand Theatre, at 
 which Jerrold played the hero in his own charming 
 little drama, The Painter of Ghent. I have spoken
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 59 
 
 of Laman Blanchard. I only recollect his brilliant 
 eyes and witty talk, once for a few hours in his com- 
 pany with Orrin Smith at the original Mulberry 
 Club, before the club was made notable by Dickens. 
 Albert Smith, the famous showman, began life as 
 a dentist. I remember him when he was hoping 
 for a practice in Percy Street, Tottenham Court 
 Road. Tenniel was a tall, handsome, gentlemanly 
 fellow, blind of one eye, which had been injured in 
 fencing. Thackeray would sometimes drop in at 
 85 Hatton-Garden, and I came to know more of 
 him and his kind-heartedness and generosities later. 
 Leech, too, was tall, slight, and very handsome, and 
 gentlemanly in his nature and deportment. His 
 father had been proprietor of the " London," or 
 "City of London" (I forget which of the two tav- 
 erns and' hotels), in Bishopsgate Street ; and young 
 Leech, when his artistic talent first appeared, was a 
 medical student. 
 
 While I was living in Judd Street, I was one night 
 roused from my bed by a policeman who came to say 
 
 that a Mr. (I forget the name, but it was one 
 
 I did not know) had been taken to the neighbouring 
 police station and wished to see me. I went there 
 and found Leech. It appeared that he and Leigh, 
 going along the streets, perhaps returning from the 
 weekly meeting of the contributors to Punch, had 
 somehow jostled a stranger off the pavement, and 
 there had been rough words and talk of assault, end- 
 ing in Leech and Leigh being taken up. Leech was 
 
 •
 
 60 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 sober, Leigh not. So Leigh had to remain in " dur- 
 ance vile " while Leech returned with me, and we sat 
 up until his friend had recovered sufficiently to be 
 bailed out. They had to appear in court next day, 
 and to suffer some small fine for the small offence. 
 " Like a leech ? Sir ! ' : remarked the police ser- 
 geant, recognising his man for all his assumed name 
 as he saw him drawing on his thumb-nail. Leech's 
 marvellous talent in portrayal of character was a 
 natural gift. He had no academical education, but 
 learned and grew by practice. His drawing, except 
 his dainty little bits of landscape background, was 
 never good ; but his hand never failed in rendering 
 vividly what his eyes saw. Richard Doyle I do not 
 personally recollect ; but I knew his eldest brother, 
 James, also an artist, though of less original talent. 
 There were three brothers, James, Henry, and Rich- 
 ard. Once, at a conversazione given by the Institute 
 of Fine Arts at the " Thatched House " in St. James' 
 Street, I saw the elder Doyle, their father, the famous 
 caricaturist " H. B.," whose lithographs deserve to be 
 prized if only for the admirable portraits in them — 
 the very best portraits of men of the period. At the 
 same conversazione I was introduced to Lady Mor- 
 gan, a little wizened old woman.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 William and David Scott ; Wells ; Sibson. 
 
 William Bell Scott I first knew in 1841. I 
 may say at that date began our friendship, a friend- 
 ship which happily lasted until his death in 1890. 
 He was a son of Robert Scott of Edinburgh, an excel- 
 lent landscape engraver in copper, after the delicate 
 and expressive manner, and with much of the quality, 
 of Milton, whose Irish and other views, but little 
 known, are of the best engraving ever done. My 
 friend, a year older than myself, was a tall, broad- 
 shouldered man, with a handsome face surmounted 
 in young days by a fall of black hair (the whole of 
 which he lost while yet in middle age), thoughtfully 
 serious and rather reserved, but yet genial and 
 attractive, throughout his early life looking older 
 than his years. Poet and artist, he had come south 
 in 1837 to seek his fortune ; and in 1843 competed 
 for the prize for the best cartoons, in the exhibition 
 in Westminster Hall of the designs for pictures to be 
 placed in the new Houses of Parliament. Though he 
 obtained neither prize nor commission, and though 
 his cartoon of the "Picts attacking the Roman Wall " 
 was not so academically strong as some of the rival 
 cartoons, it merited more consideration than most as 
 
 61
 
 62 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 a fine subject, well thought, well composed, and well 
 drawn. It may, however, have led to his appoint- 
 ment as master of the School of Design at Newcastle- 
 on-Tyne, in which capacity he continued, a very effi- 
 cient and successful teacher, for many years, returning 
 to London in 1864 on a pension for good service and 
 as examiner of the drawings of the pupils at South 
 Kensington. 
 
 A fertile designer, an excellent etcher and drafts- 
 man on wood, a good painter, an accomplished artist 
 who, in his painting, only fell short of greatness, 
 his most important work was a series of pictures on 
 Northumbrian history on the walls of the hall of 
 Sir Walter Trevelyan's house at Wallington. He 
 also painted the story of the King's Quair (the poem 
 written by King James the First of Scotland, during 
 his imprisonment at Windsor) on the wall of a circu- 
 lar staircase at Penkill Castle, near Girvan in Ayr- 
 shire, some twenty miles from Ayr, the ancestral 
 home of Spencer Boyd, with his sister, the last of a 
 family not unknown in Scottish history. Among his 
 etchings deserving of especial notice are those from 
 his brother David's and his own designs for Bunyan's 
 Pilgrims Progress, published by the Fullartons • of 
 Edinburgh, and a series of selections from his 
 brother's works published by the Art Union of Glas- 
 gow. His writings were many and of more than 
 ordinary worth ; a memoir of his brother David, the 
 greater Scottish painter, accounts and criticisms of 
 the " Little Masters," a Life of Purer, various other
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 63 
 
 manuals on Art, and poems, one the Year of the 
 World, a philosophical poem of which Emerson spoke 
 to me admiringly. A handsome volume, published 
 in 1875, with etchings by Alma Tadema and Scott 
 himself, containing " Ballads, Studies from Nature, 
 Sonnets," etc., ranks high, though neither popular 
 nor well known, among the verse-work of the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 David Scott, an elder brother of William, I knew 
 also, but not so intimately ; visiting him in Edin- 
 burgh, and once visited by him on occasion of his 
 being in London to see his brother. I was then 
 living by the forest-side at Woodford. Two coaches 
 ran between the city and Woodford. By the first, 
 one Sunday morning, came David Scott to spend the 
 day with me. By the second came an unexpected 
 visitor, Charles Wells, in youth a friend of Keats, 
 in emulation of whom he had written a quite-for- 
 gotten drama of Joseph and his Brethren. Two men 
 differing more in outer appearance and in nature 
 could hardly have been brought together, both men 
 of mark. Scott, tall, severely handsome, but with a 
 melancholy expression, the sadness of a high-soaring 
 and disappointed artist ; Wells, under the average 
 height, spare and wiry, alert, looking as if he might 
 be a fox-hunting sportsman ; Scott, a poet, his art 
 held by him as an apostleship ; Wells, not more 
 poetically enthusiastic in delivery than in appear- 
 ance. For myself, I was at that time chiefly pos- 
 sessed by political fervour, in which neither of my
 
 64 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 visitors had any interest. How we three could pass 
 an agreeable day together I now hardly imagine, yet 
 I recall it as a notably pleasant time till my two 
 guests departed together in the evening. This must 
 have been in 1846. 
 
 I had become acquainted with Wells in 1845 
 through reprinting some of his Stories after Nature, 
 a little book I had picked up at a book-stall in 1842, 
 and which had charmed me with its originality and 
 freshness. In 1845 I was editing the Illustrated 
 Family Journal, a weekly melange of Tales, Essays, 
 and Verse, and in the latter half of the same year, 
 I succeeded Douglas Jerrold as editor of the Illu- 
 minated Magazine, a monthly issue of the same 
 character. In both these magazines I printed some 
 of Wells' Stories. How he, then living in Brittany, 
 got sight of the reprint, must, I think, have been 
 through the younger Hazlitt, with whom he was 
 in some way connected by marriage. He (Wells) 
 wrote to me, thanking me for having used them, 
 and sent me two other stories in manuscript. One, 
 Claribel, I printed ; the second I returned, and have 
 ever since regretted that I did so. It was power- 
 fully written, but too gruesome for a popular serial : 
 the story of a man discovering his wife with her 
 lover, shutting them up together to starve to death, 
 and years afterwards opening the closed chamber 
 to contemplate his revenge. So, as I have said, 
 when in England he came to see me, and was very 
 friendly, giving me a copy of the Joseph and his
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 65 
 
 Brethren, published, if unsuccessful bringing out can 
 be called publishing, two years after the death of 
 Keats, under the pseudonym of H. L. Howard. 
 
 Both of Wells' books I lent to Dante Rossetti, 
 who much admired them and talked of illustrating 
 the Stories for my engraving ; the project, however, 
 fell through. Except for the reprints of the few 
 Stories in the two magazines, until the republica- 
 tion of Joseph and his Brethren, with a preface by 
 Swinburne, in 1876, Wells remained unknown, only 
 heard of by the mention of his name in 1877 in a 
 scarcely noticed sonnet by Keats, — "To a friend 
 who sent me some roses " ; his name again, followed 
 by a line, "whose genius sleeps for its applause," 
 and an admiring note to justify the line, in Wade's 
 Contention of Death and Love, in 1837, and some 
 later praiseful words by Rossetti in a supplementary 
 chapter to Gilchrist's Life of Blake. So buried in 
 neglect was the work of one who, in the words of 
 so capable a critic as Swinburne, " will some day 
 be acknowledged anion sf the memorable men of the 
 second great period in our poetry." A strange 
 fight against oblivion has been the fate of Wells. 
 I dare to claim some share in the endeavours at an 
 honourable rescue. I lost sight of the man when, 
 after a short stay in London, he returned to Brittany. 
 The Stories after Nature were reprinted in 1891, by 
 Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen, with a few prefatory 
 words by myself. 
 
 David Scott I knew afterwards at his home in
 
 66 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Edinburgh, when, on a visit to my friends the Ful- 
 lartons, the publishers. I found time to visit him and 
 see his pictures in his own studio, too many of them 
 there unsold and unprized ; for he also, although the 
 President of the Scottish Academy, had not in life 
 the full meed of appreciation, little known indeed 
 south of the Tweed. A great man every way was 
 David Scott, one of three or four men who attracted 
 Emerson when in England, and whom Emerson cared 
 to recollect. One of his best works is a half-length 
 portrait of Emerson, now in America, in the Public 
 Library of Concord, Massachusetts. His great pict- 
 ure of " Vasco de Gama encountering the Spirit of 
 the Cape " is in the Trinity House of Leith. Even 
 now his multifarious work is chiefly known by his 
 brother's loving Memoir, and by engravings from 
 his pictures, great as his work was, the greatest of 
 Scottish Art, great in the wide scope of his imagina- 
 tive power and, to those who know his pictures, in 
 masterful accomplishment. In the words of Mar- 
 garet Fuller, one saw in him "a man, an artist, 
 severe and antique in spirit ; he seemed burdened 
 by the sorrows of aspiration, yet very calm, as secure 
 in the justice of Fate." He died in 1849. A 
 memoir of considerable length in the Art Journal 
 was printed, with my name to it ; what I had written 
 much cut down by the unscrupulous editor, Mr. S. C. 
 Hall, apparently only because praise of the dead, 
 even without direct comparison, might seem to de- 
 tract from the merits of the living.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 67 
 
 Hall, who sat to Punch for Pecksniff, a truer like- 
 ness than that which Dickens unfairly and unhand- 
 somely attempted to fasten on Leigh Hunt, acted as 
 unworthily as toward me with a notice which was 
 sent to him by W. B. Scott of another artist to whom 
 Scott and myself were much attached, and of whom 
 we were proud, Thomas Sibson, a young man of 
 great promise and some excellent performance, now 
 utterly unknown. He was the younger son of a 
 Cumberland farmer, an elder son, Francis, when I 
 first knew him, being house-surgeon at Nottingham 
 Hospital. Afterwards he was Physician to the 
 Consumptive Hospital in London. Thomas had 
 been placed with an uncle in a mercantile house 
 at Manchester, but enthusiastic for Art, and surely 
 feeling his own genius, he started moneyless and on 
 foot to London to become an artist. There, I know 
 not how, he dropped on Wornum, a young painter 
 trying his hand ambitiously on big unnoticed pict- 
 ures ; a man, however, of much culture, and in due 
 time the Keeper of the National Gallery. He met 
 also with W. B. Scott, who took frankly to him, and 
 at whose house, Scott and I already close friends, 
 I first saw him and became attached to him. A 
 tall, spare, not handsome youth he was, looking like 
 a sinewy countryman, yet soon showing symptoms 
 of a consumptive tendency ; earnest, quick, and 
 quaint and humorous, attractive and winning, and 
 thorough in devotion to his art. His first work of 
 importance was a series of etchings, designs in illus-
 
 68 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 tration of Dickens' Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby 
 Budge, by a long way the best illustrations of 
 Dickens' Works (I speak of them from present 
 knowledge, corroborative of earlier perception), but 
 the publication, a weekly issue without the text, 
 was not successful pecuniarily. Then he began for 
 me illustrations for a History of England, which my 
 young ambition projected as a desirable work, in 
 which the social life of the English people should be 
 dominant, and its epochs so distinguished, instead 
 of by the reigns of Kings. For this he made for 
 my engraving many drawings of a size for an octavo 
 page, admirably designed and drawn. Not satisfied 
 with them, he cancelled them all, and resumed his 
 work on a larger scale. 
 
 Every Thursday, the day of sending in my weekly 
 engraving for the Illustrated London Neivs (which 
 gave me a half-holiday, after probably late sitting up 
 the night before), he would come to meet me, and 
 we would ramble together, with much talk of Art, 
 through the Kentish Town fields (all built over now) 
 to Hampstead Heath, dining at "Jack Straw's," 
 the Heath hotel, and finishing the day with a pipe 
 at Scott's house in Kentish Town. His genius was 
 so apparent that, with the outfit provided by some 
 friends, he betook himself to Germany to place him- 
 self as a pupil in Kaulbach's school. Arrived at 
 Munich, he found that the school had been given up ; 
 but the master received him with kindness, examined 
 his drawings, and with the generosity of one of the
 
 EECOLLECTIONS 69 
 
 Old Masters took him as a pupil free of all charge. 
 With Kaulbach in Munich, working well, he re- 
 mained for a year or more, returning to England 
 only to find that as his art progressed his health was 
 failing. He came to live with me, soon too weak 
 for serious study. I used to bring him, when he 
 became too feeble for continued walking, gatherings 
 of wild flowers, rose, briony, folk's glove, and others, 
 of which he would draw in pencil large masterly 
 cartoons. Some of these, when I came to America, 
 I gave to my friend Dr. Rimmer, at that time 
 master of the free drawing school at the Cooper 
 Institute in New York, thinking so to make them 
 useful. They were admirably drawn. At last he 
 had to cease from even such comparatively easy 
 work, and the only chance for his life appeared to 
 be a voyage to the Mediterranean. A ship was 
 found for him ; one sailing to Odessa from New- 
 castle-on-Tyne, and I accompanied him to Newcastle, 
 staying, till the ship was ready, with friends of the 
 captain at Blaydon House, then the residence of Mr. 
 Carr, who had been rmvyor of Newcastle. We left 
 Newcastle one evening, ominously scraping the Bar 
 as we went down the Tyne, and next day had a 
 rough passage, and on the following morning a fog, 
 in which our ship struck on Filey Brig, an outlying 
 reef of rocks some seven miles from Scarborough on 
 the Yorkshire coast. We got safely on shore after 
 a few hours, and two days later I took my poor 
 friend by easy journeys to his brother at Notting-
 
 TO THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 ham. Some little while afterwards he was carried 
 to Malta, only to die there before many weeks had 
 passed. He gave promise of becoming a master 
 painter had he lived, and so industriously observant 
 was he that he left a collection of fourteen hundred 
 sketches, in a volume now in the Print Room of the 
 British Museum, beside the few designs for our 
 History, excellent both in conception and in execu- 
 tion ; designs in my possession, I regret to say, yet 
 unpublished.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Bennoch & Twentyman ; Haydon ; Meadows ; Henning ; Other 
 Artist Friends; Hall's Booh of Ballads ; The National, & Library 
 for the People ; Mutual Instruction Society ; Chartist Meetings ; 
 Institute of the Fine Arts. 
 
 Sibson's going to Malta was helped by the gener- 
 oshVy of a friend, Mr. Richard Twentyman, of the 
 firm of Bennoch & Twentyman, silk agents, and 
 wholesale dealers in gimp, of Wood Street, Cheap- 
 side. Francis Bennoch was something of a minor 
 Scottish poet, and Twentyman, by the loan of pict- 
 ures to copy, was the helper and encourager of the 
 youthful aspirations of Holman Hunt, whose father 
 was in the employ of, I believe, a neighbour mer- 
 chant in Wood Street. There was a story of Twenty- 
 man, soon after the beginning of Hunt's pictures 
 obtaining notice, seeing the father, and being met, 
 on inquiry as to the son's progress, with the naive 
 remark, " 0, Mr. Twentyman ! that pre-Raphaeli- 
 tism is a grand invention." Bennoch and Twenty- 
 man were liberal men, and at their daily luncheon 
 in the house, artists were specially welcome. There 
 I met Haydon, some of whose smaller pictures be- 
 longed to Bennoch, one I well remember of the 
 " Death-Cart, carrying victims to the place of exe- 
 cution " during the French Revolution, — only a 
 
 71
 
 72 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 sketch in oil, but finer than anything else I can 
 recall of Haydon's. He was a sturdy-looking man, 
 not a little self-assertive. I once heard him lecture 
 eloquently on Art ; and I take it that he was a 
 better lecturer and critic than a painter, his pictures 
 not wanting in force but exaggerated in form. We 
 owe to him the first appreciation of the Phidian 
 Marbles brought to England by Lord Elgin. Speak- 
 ing of these, I am reminded of small copies of the 
 frieze, with restoration of the mutilated parts, cut in 
 slate, for casting in plaster, by John Henning, a 
 Scottish sculptor of real genius. There was a long 
 series of the Parthenon and Phygalian, some forty 
 feet in all, about three inches in height, clone with 
 excellent accuracy, wonderfully strong and delicate. 
 He gave me a set of them. He was a keen, ener- 
 getic Scot, of average height, with a noble head. 
 He died, I believe, aged over ninety, of cancer in 
 his face. A son of the old man, John, had much of 
 the father's genius, but turned it to no account. 
 A second son, Archibald, was a fair and prolific 
 draftsman on wood. A daughter was the wife of 
 Kenny Meadows. 
 
 With Meadows I had much association, engraving 
 many of his drawings for his Shakspere and the 
 Heads of the People : a witty man, with some inven- 
 tive talent, but a poor draftsman, having had little 
 artistic education, brought up, one might say, on 
 Finden's Book of Beauty, and the like wishy-washi- 
 ness. I would often spend an evening at his house,
 
 EECOLLECTIONS 73 
 
 or he would come to mine. There would be inter- 
 change of visits with Scott and Duncan. W. Leighton 
 Leitch, the landscape painter (the "man with the 
 itch," as Jerrold called him — he was a Scotchman — 
 to distinguish him from John Leech), Dodgson, Top- 
 ham, Franklin, were also of those who were my 
 visitors and friends. Some I knew through their 
 having to draw for me for the Illustrated London 
 News ; some, the great copper-engravers, John Pye, 
 Lupton, Willmore, and Edward Finden, as fellow- 
 members of the Artists' Annuity Fund ; some, Young 
 Mitchell (afterwards master of the Sheffield Art 
 School), my close, dear friend Edward Wehnert (the 
 water-colour painter), George Raphael Ward, the 
 last of our great mezzotint engravers (the son of 
 James Ward, R.A., disregarded as a poor painter in 
 my young days, painting almost to the age of ninety, 
 but after his death found to have been in his prime 
 one of our greatest painters of landscape and ani- 
 mals), J. P. Knight (the genial Secretary of the 
 Royal Academy), — these I knew as members of the 
 Institute of Fine Arts, formed in 1846, at which, at 
 our rooms in Great Marlborough Street, I used to 
 join them at meetings of the council. Such connec- 
 tion with Art, added to my necessary business asso- 
 ciations, made me more or less personally acquainted 
 with artists. Among the principal not yet mentioned, 
 I may name George Lance, the fruit-painter (only a 
 fruit-painter, but of whom I have heard Haydon 
 speak as one of the very few good figure draftsmen at
 
 74 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 that time in England, a man universally liked, whose 
 quaint manner seemed of the Charles Lamb kind) ; 
 John Gilbert, a pupil of Lance; Archer, Lance's 
 brother-in-law, and Hine (two good archaeologists) ; 
 Tenniel ; George Cruikshank ; the younger Pickers- 
 gill ; Richard Dadd (a talented and most amiable 
 young painter, who went out of his mind, and in a 
 paroxysm killed his father) ; Von Hoist (an eccentric, 
 clever German) ; Mclan (a fierce Scotch Catholic) ; 
 Fahey (the Secretary of the New Water-Colour So- 
 ciety) ; Henry Warren (the President of the same) ; 
 Elmore, Frost, and Hart (Royal Academicians) . 
 
 Many of these men, Scott, Sibson, Franklin, Mead- 
 ows, Von Hoist, Dadd, Mclan, and perhaps others, 
 engaged with Smith & Linton on Hall's Book of 
 British Ballads, for some time attended the recep- 
 tions given by Hall and his amiable and clever wife, 
 Mrs. S. C. Hall, the Irish writer, at their house in 
 Brompton, " the Rosery' : (which some of us after- 
 wards irreverently called the Roguery), where we 
 were entertained with small talk and smaller Mar- 
 sala, the flavour of which we, coming out together, 
 generally corrected with a more pleasant potency at 
 the nearest tavern. The Book of Ballads was an 
 unfortunate investment, as the publication was not 
 successful, and the failure left some of us unpaid. 
 Smith & Linton lost largely. 
 
 The years of my London life, from 1838 to 1848, 
 were busy years. In 1838 I was a reader in the old 
 Reading Room at the British Museum, for several
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 75 
 
 months a close student while preparing for the issue 
 of a cheap weekly publication, which, as " A Library 
 for the Peojrfe," I hoped might supply the working 
 classes with political and other information not open 
 to them with their limited means for purchase and 
 time for study, and scarcely to be printed under the 
 laws then gagging the press. I asked Watson to 
 publish for me, at my own expense. At first he 
 tried to dissuade me from it, as likely to lead me 
 into trouble personally as well as pecuniarily ; but 
 when he found me determined, he accepted and 
 heartily helped. Six months exhausted my means. 
 Settling with him, I noticed that he had not charged 
 for folding the weekly sheets, or for folding and 
 stitching a considerable number of monthly parts, 
 the circulation having been much more than I had 
 reason to expect, though not covering cost. No ! he 
 told me, he had been sure that I could only be a 
 loser by the publication ; and he and his wife "had 
 done the whole of the work," a generous service not 
 to be forgotten. In return I wrote for him a Life of 
 Paine, which for a number of years had a continuous 
 sale. About the same time I translated from the 
 French Paine's Address for the Abolition of Royalty, 
 its first appearance in English. 
 
 When I became a partner with Orrin Smith in 
 1842, I of course gave up the editorship of Hether- 
 ington's Odd-Fellow ; but I was not asked to give 
 up my interest in political matters, though often by 
 one artist friend or another remonstrated with for
 
 76 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 the impolicy of my open association with chartists 
 and the like. Indeed, by highly respectable and 
 most pious folk Chartism was considered vulgar and 
 disreputable. Certainly I lost friends, some good 
 friends, dear to me, and whose friendship might have 
 been valuable, by my independent action. After 
 Smith's death in 1843, which left on my hands the 
 charge of a large business and the support of two 
 families, my own and his, I began to feel the un- 
 toward consequences. One man, a low church pub- 
 lisher, told me plainly that he could not avail himself 
 of engraving, however well done, by a man of such 
 principles. Living later at Woodford, I came daily 
 to my place of business at 85 Hatton-Garden, Lon- 
 don, by the Woodford coach, returning by the same 
 conveyance. My companions outside the coach were 
 city men, bankers, and the like, whose residences 
 were on the forest side. It was very long before I 
 had so much as a " Good-morning" from them. The 
 only offence I gave my neighbours was that I opposed 
 the church-rates, and was known to be a chartist 
 (as such an advocate for admitting low people to the 
 suffrage), and that I had helped to establish a 
 " Mutual Instruction Society " among the working- 
 men of Walthamstow, a village separated from 
 Woodford by a strip of the forest. It was for this 
 Society that on one occasion I became a veritable 
 stump-orator. The Society was originated at a meet- 
 ing to hear two missionaries from the Chartist Con- 
 vention sitting in London ; and in consequence of the
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 77 
 
 political colour so given, when the next meeting, the 
 first of the Society, was to be held, the few men 
 gathered together found that they were not to be ad- 
 mitted anywhere. We therefore held our first meet- 
 ing in an open part of the forest, and I had to speak 
 from the stump of a felled tree. We afterwards 
 obtained a place of meeting on protesting that we 
 had no illegal intentions. I there gave my first lect- 
 ure — Against Death-punishment; and for the sake 
 of the funds of the Society, engaged in a three-nights' 
 discussion with a pious temperance preacher, who did 
 not compliment me. 
 
 In London I was continually a speaker at char- 
 tist meetings, and an active worker for the cause ; 
 writing and lecturing, without profit to myself, and, 
 as before said, with some damage to my business. 
 Conducting a large engraving establishment, some- 
 times as many as twenty journeymen and pupils in 
 my employ, whose work I superintended and with 
 whom I worked, my public political action as well 
 as my position on the Council of the Institute of 
 Fine Arts interfered with my time. I did what I 
 could to make up for this by many nights remaining 
 in town, working at my engraving after returning 
 from the Institute or from a public meeting or lect- 
 ure. I was much helped by the exceptionally good 
 work done by my people and by profitable employ- 
 ment for the Illustrated London News. The News 
 folk at last thought it mis-lit suit them better to have 
 an engraving establishment exclusively for their own
 
 78 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 use; and, with that view, stopped employing me, 
 one by one drew oft' my workmen, and so broke up 
 my business. Partly in consequence of this, and 
 partly for sake of the health of my family, my term 
 of partnership with Orrin Smith and of responsi- 
 bility to his family being ended, in the spring of 
 1849 I left London to reside at " Miteside," near 
 Ravenglass, on the Cumberland coast.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Ebenezer Jones ; Our Visit to the Lake Country ; A Tour in Scot- 
 land; London Life again; Prosecutions for Blasphemy; Haslam; 
 Shelley; A Characteristic Incident; The Queen's Bench Prison; 
 Powell; Roebuck; Thomas. 
 
 I had fallen in love with our beautiful mountain 
 land in a hasty ramble through it two, it may have 
 been three, years before with a poet friend, Ebenezer 
 Jones, a clerk in a tea-dealer's house, who had 
 ventured to indulge in dreams of poetic fame. A 
 true poet he was, if not a great one, the author 
 of a volume, Studies of Sensation and Event, pub- 
 lished in 1843, very characteristic of the young 
 man's impressionable nature, his impulsiveness and 
 sense of beauty, but which utterly failed of public 
 appreciation. I was much attached to him, and 
 we had frequent companionship during years in 
 London following 1841. Our Lake Country ramble, 
 the first visit to that beautiful district, is also a 
 thing to be remembered. Here I may repeat some 
 few words from Reminiscences of my friend prefixed 
 to a reprint of his poems in 1879. 
 
 I was writing of our journey to the Lakes, a 
 week's holiday there from London work. " How 
 well to this day I can retrace our steps and recall 
 the pleasant, bright companionship, that, like the 
 
 79
 
 80 THREESCOEE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 sparkle in wine, made that pleasure-draught but 
 more enjoyable ; our delight in the moonlight walk 
 from the Windermere Station by the Lakeside to 
 Ambleside, that loveliest five miles in all England ; 
 our next day's climb (the track missed) over the 
 Stake Pass, after bathing under the fells in a pool 
 at the head of Langdale ; how we lingered, dallying 
 with our joy, on the mountain tops till night came 
 on, a cloudy night of late September, after a day of 
 autumn glory, overtaking us before we could reach 
 the Borrowdale road ; how, unable even to grope 
 our way, we lay down together on the stones to 
 sleep, and awakened by rain, crept under an over- 
 hanging rock, and cold and hungry, smoked our 
 pipes and talked till the dawning light enabled us 
 to find a path to Stonethwaite ; how we sat in a 
 cottage porch to await the rising of the inmates and 
 welcome a breakfast of bad corfee and mutton-ham 
 so salt that it scarified our mouths. No grave- 
 minded man was either of the pair who went laugh- 
 ing and singing, if somewhat limping, on their way ; 
 nor was there much disposition to gravity two even- 
 ings later when, after supper, at the little Fish Inn 
 at Buttermere, we amused ourselves with improvis- 
 ing verses (certainly never printed) not exactly in 
 
 honour of 
 
 < William Marshall, William Marshall, 
 
 Cotton-Spinner of Leeds.' 
 
 Verses of mere rhythmical extravagance in proper 
 poetic execration of the factory-owning plutocrat
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 81 
 
 who had the impudence to possess the one grand 
 house in pastoral Buttermere. Full capacity for 
 enjoyment, whether of his senses or his intellectual 
 faculties, characterised the man in his day of health : 
 delighted with all he saw, from the rugged bleakness 
 of Wastdale to the pastoral repose of Buttermere, 
 enjoying equally a row on Crummoch Water and 
 our evening walk beside the golden woods to 
 Keswick. This was Ebenezer Jones, the City Clerk, 
 not too much disappointed at a literary failure 
 before his heart was saddened (by domestic infelici- 
 ties) and his health destroyed." The man was of 
 the type of Alcibiades, but with an idea of duty 
 which the Greek had not, which made him heroic in 
 a time of severe martyrdom ending only with his 
 death from consumption, in 1860, aged forty years. 
 Beside his poetry he wrote also a very vigorous 
 pamphlet during the Irish famine time, on the Land 
 Monopoly. 
 
 His week's holiday over, Jones returned to 
 London, in order that a fellow-clerk in the same 
 house might take his turn at recreation. This 
 young man went with a friend into Scotland, and 
 four or five days later, the two were found dead on 
 a hillside, having, as Jones and I had earlier, lost 
 their way and laid down to sleep in the cold air. 
 On parting from Jones, I, too, went on to Scotland, 
 having a week's tour mapped out for me by my 
 friend Leitch, the landscape painter. I parted from 
 Jones at Penrith, and took train thence to Glasgow,
 
 82 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 and the following morning left the busy city, taking 
 the steamer down the Clyde to Dumbarton, going 
 thence by coach to Loch Lomond. Up the western 
 side of the Lake to Glen Crow, a little way along 
 the Glen, I came at eventide upon a rude shanty 
 tenanted apparently by only two small children, a 
 girl nine or ten years old, and a younger boy. 
 Father had come in tired from the field, and was 
 abed; mother had gone to fetch home the kye. 
 There was a small neat off-room where I could 
 sleep; and the little lassie boiled for me a trout, 
 fresh caught from the beck, which with rye bread 
 and whiskey made me a capital late dinner, or 
 rather supper. After a good meal I went down to 
 the byre to make acquaintance with the mother, a 
 bonnie peasant woman busy with the beasts. Then 
 the whiskey was potent, and I thought it best to 
 retire to my "prophet's chamber," where I slept 
 soundly till late next morning, getting up then with 
 a decided preference for tea. After breakfast I had 
 my twelve miles' walk through the Glen, and through 
 a powerful Scotch mist, to an inn by the side of 
 Loch Long, where I dried myself before the great 
 kitchen fire and was glad of another whiskey and of 
 a plate of hot kail-brose offered me from the 
 servants' table, to the evident disgust of the incom- 
 ing landlady at a gentleman so misbehaving. But 
 an offer of hot kail-brose was not to be despised on 
 a wet day, when the traveler had yet another twelve 
 miles to walk round the head of Loch Long and the
 
 EECOLLECTIONS 83 
 
 head of Loch Fyne before the clay's tramp was over 
 and he could rest in his landlord's dry clothes and 
 enjoy Loch Fyne fresh herrings (the best of herrings 
 known) and a little more of whiskey at Inverary. 
 
 Next day it did not rain, but was gloomy ; fit 
 weather for the Inverary woods and dark Loch Awe. 
 From Loch Awe is one long glen, returning eastward 
 to the head of Loch Lomond. Nearly through the 
 glen, but I knew not how near, I came upon a rough- 
 looking fellow sitting by the roadside. He got up 
 as I was passing him and walked on by my side. I 
 did not like his look, and still less liked his halting 
 behind me every minute to kick a stone out of the 
 road. Some miles on we met a couple of fellows as 
 rough as himself. They had some words in Gaelic 
 with my companion, and the three stepped on with 
 me. I thought it prudent then to wish them good 
 evening and to hasten on ahead, with considerable 
 haste so soon as I turned a corner and was out of 
 their sight ; and I was not sorry when I reached an 
 inn where I put up for the night. Next clay I 
 walked by the western side of Loch Lomond to oppo- 
 site Inversnaid. I was wondering how to get there 
 when I fell in with a gentlemanly middle-aged man 
 sauntering on the road, who told me I must light 
 a fire on the beach and the smoke would be answered 
 by a boat from the opposite shore. He took me 
 into a two-roomed cottage in which he lived, the 
 sitting-room lined with books as if he was some 
 retired collegian playing recluse for the nonce, gave
 
 84 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 me matches, and showed me where to make my 
 signal. Some children there helped me to gather 
 sticks and, the fire lighted, there was quickly a boat 
 across the lake. From Inversnaid next morning I 
 had two pleasant young tourists with me over the 
 fell to the head of Loch Katrine and down its east- 
 ern side to Lochs Achray and Vennachar. From 
 there it was good road traveling to Callander and 
 Stirling. Thence I went to Edinburgh to David 
 Scott. 
 
 I go back to earlier happenings during my London 
 life. I find it impossible in these Recollections to 
 keep to strict chronological order. In 1841, when 
 the Government visited its political opponents, the 
 leaders of the working classes, with indictments for 
 "blasphemy" (the pretext on this occasion the mere 
 sale, among other miscellaneous publications, of an 
 intemperate book by one Haslam, Letters to the 
 Clergy, so pushed into notoriety), Hey wood, the first 
 prosecuted, advised retaliation upon Government par- 
 tisans, that goose and gander might be served with 
 the same sauce ; and Hetherington, also indicted, 
 took up the fight in London by indicting simultane- 
 ously four metropolitan booksellers of most unim- 
 peachable respectability for the same disreputable 
 offence, inasmuch as they had " published or exposed 
 for sale the blasphemous and seditious ' : works of 
 one Percy Bysshe Shelley, containing notably his 
 Queen Mab, for which already, indeed many years 
 before, William Clark had incurred and suffered the
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 85 
 
 vengeance of offended law. We knew, of course, 
 that the Shelley volume (the first complete edition 
 of his poems) would only be well advertised by the 
 prosecution, we had no desire that it should be other- 
 wise ; but if social obloquy and punishment for a 
 conviction for "blasphemy' 1 were to be so used 
 against political opponents, we deemed it politic that 
 boomerang-like they should return to plague their 
 employers. Conviction was sure : law like physic 
 always obedient to precedent. Our purpose was to 
 prevent the trial of Hetherington or to affect his 
 sentence. The first object was defeated. Hether- 
 ington' s trial was prompt, while one or other of the 
 counter-indicted attempted to evade trial by buying 
 off our indispensable witness to the sale of the books, 
 a compositor in Hetherington' s employ, a former 
 apprentice. They also got their trials postponed, 
 seeing Watson and myself in daily attendance at the 
 Court, as if we were fully prepared. 
 
 An incident in connection with this prosecution 
 may help to show what manner of men were these 
 " seditious " ones, stigmatised as stirrers up of strife, 
 as of old, it is said, were certain other men, not 
 unlike them, in Athens and Ephesus and elsewhere. 
 Hetherington had determined not to pay a fine ; 
 "they might take it out of his bones," — not so 
 courtly an expression, yet of the same spirit as brave 
 Sir John Eliot's defiance to Charles I. This later 
 martyr had also his possessions, a shop, and books, 
 and presses, and other printing material, besides
 
 86 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 household stuff. Once before all his belong-insrs had 
 been swept away; he would be craftier now. A 
 few days before the trial I was with him calling 
 upon the London agent of an old good friend, 
 Hugh Williams, a Caermarthen lawyer. The agent 
 had instructions to give to Hetherington a sufficient 
 sum to buy his property. It was given without so 
 much as an acknowledgment. Then Hetherino;ton 
 passed the money into the hands of one of his 
 shopmen, Thomas Powell, who thereupon bought the 
 property duly valued by a sworn broker to legalise 
 the sale ; and Hetherington, returning his friend's 
 loan, went penniless into Court to meet the worst 
 that could be inflicted. He defended himself with 
 much eloquence and moderation, in spite of a bitter 
 and unfairly personal attack of the prosecutor, Attor- 
 ney-General Campbell (Lord Campbell afterwards) ; 
 was complimented by Denman, then Chief Justice, 
 and sentenced to the lightest punishment on record 
 (the lightness, it may be, motived by the still threat- 
 ened trials to follow), six weeks in a debtors' prison, 
 that of the Queen's Bench, without a fine. Visiting 
 him there was my only acquaintance with the inside 
 of a prison, which I did not always feel sure of escap- 
 ing. It was a not uncomfortable prison, with capital 
 tennis grounds. 
 
 When he came out, we were still looking for the 
 missing witness. One day, walking together, Heth- 
 erington and Watson came upon him ; and their 
 moral influence was sufficient to outweigh the induce-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 87 
 
 merit which had first captured him. He came into 
 Court, gave evidence ; and Moxon, the publisher of 
 the incriminated book, the first to be tried, was, not- 
 withstanding the eloquent pleading of Talfourd, found 
 guilty. There was no escaping the jaws of Prece- 
 dent. It remained only for the prosecutors to call the 
 convicted " blasphemer " up for judgment, which of 
 course was never done, personal animosity or revenge 
 (Hetherington now out of prison) being beside the 
 question ; nor was farther proceeding taken against 
 the other indicted "blasphemers," Frazer, Richard- 
 son, and Saunders of the firm of Saunders & Otley. 
 We had gained enough. Prosecutions for blasphemy 
 were estopped. I think there has since been only 
 one, with foolish wilfulness provoked for the sake of 
 personal notoriety. 
 
 It need hardly be said that Powell handed back 
 the property when Hetherington came out of prison. 
 He, Powell, a Welshman (Hetherington, I think, was 
 also Welsh), graduating in patriotism, had had his 
 twelve months' gaol lessons, suffering for hasty 
 words used in preventing an outbreak ; such a man 
 clearly more dangerous than a mere mob-inciter. 
 After the failure of Chartism he was active in orsran- 
 ising a colonisation-party to South America. That 
 too failed. He died a few years later in Trinidad. 
 
 It was at this time I made personal acquaintance 
 with John Arthur Roebuck, the member for Sheffield, 
 unpopular because of his endorsement of the New 
 Poor Law, a staunch radical still, a man of influence
 
 88 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 in Parliament as a powerful and uncompromising 
 speaker. He had undertaken for Hetherington to 
 move an arrest of judgment, so that there should be 
 some prolongation of the defence, and more of pub- 
 lic attention insured for it. Calling to confer with 
 him about it, I found him disinclined to take a part. 
 He judged that it would be impolitic, that it would 
 be taken as an aggravation of the offence. Finding 
 him of such an opinion, and deciding that anything 
 like a speech in mitigation or as a plea for mercy 
 would be far from our purpose, I took away his 
 brief (the motion for arrest of judgment was to be 
 on the next day) and placed it in the hands of a 
 younger and less known barrister, Ralph Thomas, 
 who spent the night in preparing his speech, and 
 spoke well to the question. Of course all we desired 
 was the prolongation and addition to the defence : 
 a second defence, in fact.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Hugh Williams ; Rebecca and Her Daughters ; With Sibson in Wales ; 
 Travel Risks ; St. Ives ; Boulogne ; Miteside ; Brantwood. 
 
 Hugh Williams, the Caermarthen lawyer, a man 
 of large business till he lost favour by his defence of 
 poor men, was some little while after these Shelley 
 prosecutions the instigator and undiscovered leader 
 of the " Rebecca Movement," the one successful 
 uprising in England since the Great Rebellion. It 
 seems that power was vested in the local magistracy, 
 or arrogated by them, to impose tolls on the high- 
 roads, and not only on the highroads, but even on 
 by-ways to their own personal advantage. So great 
 a grievance had this become in Caermarthenshire 
 that the farming people at last secretly organised 
 themselves and, masked and otherwise disguised, 
 mostly as women, passed at night through the 
 county, smashing the toll-gates and sometimes 
 destroying the houses of the toll-collectors. The 
 band was known as " Rebecca and her daughters," 
 some Scriptural warrant being found for the name. 
 Soldiers were sent into the district ; but their inter- 
 ference was rendered of no avail by the universal 
 sympathy with the movement and the clannishness 
 
 89
 
 90 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 of the Welsh peasantry. " Going to catch Becky ? " 
 •would be tauntingly sung out by the boys at the 
 soldiers setting forth to stop some threatened out- 
 rage, misled, the attack being always elsewhere. I 
 learned from Powell of Williams being concerned, 
 and going for a holiday, and asked by the Illustrated 
 London JSTeivs to look out for anything worth pict- 
 uring in the paper, I went directly to Caermarthen 
 to visit Williams, whom I had met in London and 
 knew both as a good chartist and as a friend of 
 Hetherington. I dined with him one evening, and 
 he sent me off: to Pontyberem, some seven miles 
 away, where next day was to be a gathering in 
 favour of universal suffrage, a step beyond the toll- 
 gate movement, which Williams from the first had 
 meant as a preparation for farther political action. 
 The meeting was held on a hill, attended by some 
 thousands, a local magistrate placed in the chair, 
 the chair in a cart, and all proceeded quietly and 
 fairly. Going thence to a little inn in the neigh- 
 bouring village, where I suppose Williams met his 
 associates, he procured a horse for me, and we rode 
 together to Caermarthen, where the same night I 
 sent off a report to the Morning Chronicle, at that 
 time the one liberal daily paper in London. Walk- 
 ing out with Williams next day, he owned that the 
 Rebecca movement, so far unobstructed, was at an 
 end. A numerous body of police had been drafted 
 into the district and, scattered everywhere to watch 
 individuals, secret action could no longer be main-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 91 
 
 tained. Up to that time the Welshmen, with their 
 usual tenacious fidelity to each other under all cir- 
 cumstances, had baulked every endeavour to trace 
 the persons concerned. The movement was success- 
 ful : the tolls were not reimposed. Williams' sister 
 was the wife of Richard Cobden. " That was our 
 bad uncle," said one of Cobden's daughters to me, 
 many years afterwards, when I told her of my 
 acquaintance with him. 
 
 I have spoken of my ramble through the Lake 
 Country with Ebenezer Jones. That was not my 
 first mountain experience. My first was with 
 Thomas Sibson, before he went to Germany, I think 
 in 1842. Taking train one morning from London 
 to Birmingham, we walked thence the fifteen miles 
 to Wolverhampton, through the " Black Country," 
 black enough with coal and coal smoke everywhere 
 until night-fall, when the innumerable fires burst 
 forth, making our walk to seem almost like a pas- 
 sage through Hell. We slept at Wolverhampton, 
 went by rail next morning to Liverpool, and the 
 following morning by steamboat, I think, to Rhyll, 
 and on foot to Abergeley. Then we set off for a 
 walk along the northern Welsh coast, past where 
 Llandudno now is, then not even projected, and 
 under the wild out-jutting rock of Penman Mawr on 
 the road to Bangor. It was a bright sunny morning, 
 numerous larks in the air singing in chorus with the 
 bass of the waves coming up the shore beneath them. 
 Some way far on our road it came on to rain, and
 
 92 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 we found shelter in a toll-house. There sat a 
 woman, the noblest form I ever saw, the living 
 Milo Venus, or at least a Roman empress, paring 
 turnips. I know we outstayed the necessity of the 
 shower in admiring contemplation of the pseudo- 
 empress ; and ended our day's inarch, so shortened, 
 at Aber, some miles short of our proper intention at 
 Bangor. To Bangor next day and to the Menai 
 Suspension Bridge, the wonder of the time, across 
 the Straits to the Isle of Anglesea. Under the 
 Bridge we bathed, then went on it ; then returned 
 through Bangor, taking, as we supposed, the road to 
 Llanberris. Late in the afternoon we learned that 
 there was a stiff bit of mountain range between us 
 and our destination. This we ventured to cross, 
 having our pathless direction by compass. After 
 severe climbing, severer because it was our first 
 experience, we reached the top only as darkness 
 came on, so dark before we began to descend the 
 other side that we could not see each other. We 
 did not dare to stay on the top, so had to try the 
 descent, letting ourselves slide, where it was too 
 steep to walk, and guiding ourselves by the sound of 
 many little waterfalls, which of course we avoided. 
 At last we reached the bottom, found ourselves 
 against a stone wall, and following it caught a 
 perception of a white horse, and presently stumbled 
 up against a cottage. To our knocking the door 
 was opened by a young girl holding a light, with her 
 black hair hanging below her waist. She started
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 93 
 
 back, and an older man, we supposed her father, 
 appeared, seemed to recognise us as belated travellers, 
 and civilly piloted us into the road and to our inn. 
 We were so tired that we were glad to lean on him, 
 one on either side. Fortunately we had kept our 
 right direction, and so were within a few hundred 
 yards of the one little inn of Llanberris Pass, the 
 "Vryneck Arms," where after a reviving dose of 
 whiskey, we had our sodden boots pulled off, and 
 hastened to bed, sitting up in bed to finish the day 
 with ham and eggs, and probably more whiskey. 
 
 The next day, both of us suffering, Sibson from 
 rheumatism, I from stiffness, we had to rest, only 
 shambling a little way to Llanberris Lake. Another 
 day, and we took the road through the Pass, the 
 wildest and ruggedest in the country, so ruggedly 
 precipitous we would not have ventured up in day- 
 light where we came down in the darkness ; and 
 made, if I mistake not, a three clays' journey, by 
 Cor wen, and Bettws-y-coed (for its beauty for many 
 years a favourite resort of artists), and the Vale 
 of Llangollen, to Shrewsbury. There we parted, 
 Sibson going across the country to his brother at 
 Nottingham, and I making for Monmouth, within a 
 few miles of which I hoped to find the house of the 
 young friend whom I had taken care of during 
 Frost's trial, to whom I had promised a visit. A few 
 miles out of Shrewsbury I fell lame (most likely I 
 had strained myself on the mountain), and, instead 
 of walking as I had intended, was glad of the coach
 
 94 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 to Hereford, and again next morning to Monmouth, 
 landing there at breakfast time with, after feeing the 
 coachman, a shilling in my pocket. Some previous 
 experience had taught me to go to the best hotel. 
 So I walked boldly into the " Monmouth Arms," 
 and said I wanted a gig to carry me to Black- 
 wood. Well, Blackwood was more than a few — it 
 was forty miles from Monmouth. They could take 
 me to Pontypool, where there would be no difficulty 
 in getting farther conveyance. Indeed there would. 
 " I have no money, so unless you can send me all 
 the way I can not even have breakfast." Though 
 how I, still a little lame, was to walk forty miles 
 with only a shilling for food, I did not exactly see. 
 A very little hesitation, and (I suppose they were 
 not unaccustomed to the dilemmas of tourists) they 
 would take me all the way. I had a splendid break- 
 fast; the charge for that and the fee to waiter, for 
 the gig and driver, and even the toll-gates, set down 
 in my bill (and they did not overcharge me) ; and I 
 went on my forty miles' ride on a bright summer day 
 through one of the loveliest counties in England, 
 reaching my friend's house in time for an early din- 
 ner, taken out of pawn, and welcomed. I stayed 
 some days with him, returning to London by way of 
 Bristol. 
 
 I had a careless habit, perhaps excusable in an 
 artist, of going to the very end of my tether on such 
 excursions. One Sunday evening I found myself at 
 St. Ives, on the far end of the northern coast of
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 95 
 
 Cornwall, a great place for the pilchard fishery. But 
 though after paying my inn-bill next morning my 
 purse held but five shillings, I knew the date of a 
 steamer from Bristol and was not afraid. As it 
 happened, so making me sure, the sea was rough 
 enough to prevent the ship from coming in, and 
 passengers went to her in boats. The steward only 
 came round for fares after the boats had left. At 
 Bristol I gave my watch as security while I went 
 ashore for money, having been this time wise enough 
 to leave money there as I went on my round : a round 
 to Exeter, Torquay, Plymouth, Falmouth, St. Ives, 
 and back. At Exeter I had the fortune to arrive on 
 an evening when the Devon Madrigal Society was 
 dining there, and took up my quarters at the same 
 hotel. Of good vocal music I have heard much, but 
 nothing ever pleased me like the old English madri- 
 gals. Once on a visit to London I stayed some weeks 
 at the house of a lady who before her marriage was 
 known as Miss Thornton, the best of ballad singers. 
 Her husband was musical, a friend living with them 
 a musician also, and a fourth friend came in almost 
 every evening to join them in madrigal singing. 
 
 To return to my travel-risks. One was on returning 
 from Paris by diligence to Boulogne. The diligence 
 should have reached Boulogne in time for the English 
 steamboat, but did not get in till the boat had gone. 
 It was noon, and I had to wait till next morning, 
 with but little more money than would carry me 
 through to London. The surplus was just enough
 
 96 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 to pay for a night's lodging, and only a few sous 
 beyond for not much bread and some pears, on which 
 I had to subsist till I got to London next day, going 
 breakfastless from Boulogne to London. The pre- 
 vious afternoon I could only ramble about Boulogne. 
 How I hated the place, not interesting under the 
 best of circumstances. 
 
 Yet another time, this time deceived by distance, I 
 had a similar fortune. I had come from London to 
 Miteside to arrange for some repairs to the house I 
 was about to live in. The distance from there to 
 Kendal, where I would get the train to London, I 
 understood to be about twenty-five miles. It was 
 late when I left the house, and I had only covered 
 some fifteen miles over the fells to Broughton by dark. 
 I went into the little inn, had bread and cheese and 
 beer, and asked for a bed. Having no luggage, they 
 looked askance at me, possibly took me for a tramp, 
 and were not inclined to harbour me. Only by my 
 persistence, and showing determination to remain, 
 they were at last overcome. I learned that I had 
 still a twenty-five-mile walk across the fells to Ken- 
 dal, and had to start before daylight. It was in 
 February. A little way out of the town I found my 
 feet sore ; in fact, the skin was off my toes of both 
 feet. And it was a cold and stormy day, wind and 
 rain, and sometimes snow upon the ground, and the 
 way rough and often steep. Again I had but a 
 shilling beyond my railway fare : it gave me bread 
 and cheese, once stopping to rest, and a glass of whis-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 97 
 
 key at a second halting-place. I appreciated in that 
 day's journey what a sore-footed beggar, weary and 
 wet through, might suffer. But I reached Kendal 
 in time for the South train, and was in London next 
 morning, very thankful to a fellow-passenger who 
 gave me a sup of whiskey to keep out the cold. It 
 was more than a few days before I had any pleasure 
 in walking again. 
 
 At " Miteside" (the river Mite, a little stream com- 
 ing out from the back of the Wast-water Screes) I 
 lived for three years, barring occasional visits to 
 London, until my landlord wanted the house for 
 himself, when I found a home at Brantwood on the 
 eastern side of Coniston Water, some nine or ten 
 miles from Ambleside, a house under Furness Fells, in 
 Monk Coniston, so called because the land had been 
 part of the domain of the Cistercian Monks of Furness 
 Abbey (Church Coniston village was on the western 
 side of the lake). The manorial right had fallen to 
 the Buccleughs at the time of the dissolution of the 
 Monasteries ; and to the Duke of Buccleugh, my 
 portion of the land being copyhold, I paid a yearly 
 fine of one shilling and three half-pence, to have 
 my title recorded in the manorial books when after 
 a year's tenancy I was enabled by the help of mort- 
 gage-money to buy the estate, — a fairly large house 
 and ten acres of copse-wood steeply rising up the 
 fell. I sold it to Ruskin years afterwards when I 
 found I was likely to remain in America.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The People's International League ; The Three Days of February ; 
 Congratulatory Address to France ; With Mazzini in Paris ; 
 George Sand; Laniennais; The Cause of the People. 
 
 In London, in 1847, at the instigation of Mazzini, 
 and informed by him, the " Peoples' International 
 League " was founded, with the following objects : — 
 
 " To enlighten the British public as to the political condi- 
 tion and relations of foreign countries ; 
 
 "To disseminate the principles of national freedom and 
 progress ; 
 
 " To embody and manifest an efficient public opinion in 
 favour of the right of every people to self-government and the 
 maintenance of their own nationality ; 
 
 "To promote a good understanding between the peoples of 
 all countries." 
 
 How necessary such an association was simply as 
 a means of public enlightenment may be understood 
 when even the Spectator, the highest priced and most 
 thoughtful newspaper at that time in England, a 
 paper which had as contributors such men as Carlyle, 
 Stuart Mill, Bridges Adams, and Colonel Thompson, 
 depended altogether for foreign information on the 
 Journal des Debats, whose columns were closed to 
 all popular movements in Europe. Mazzini's views 
 in projecting the League may be given in his own 
 
 98
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 99 
 
 words (not without interest even at the present time) 
 in the address, which (with the exception of a wordy 
 and unnecessary introduction by Mr. Philip Harwood) 
 was from the draft prepared by him, a draft in his 
 own handwriting, which I copied. 
 He wrote : — 
 
 "In the division of Europe among the several powers at 
 the Congress of Vienna an immense error, not to say a great 
 iniquity, was committed. The natural peculiarities of charac- 
 ter, the indications of different destinies, the diverse natural 
 tendencies of various peoples (deducible from their languages, 
 creeds, habits, historical traditions, and geographical positions) 
 were altogether overlooked or disregarded. Questions of the 
 balance of power, of imaginary equalities, calculated by 
 ciphers representing square miles or millions of men, not 
 human ideas, human wants, human tendencies, were the con- 
 siderations that decided the partition of Europe. It was a 
 hurried, an ill-advised, and improvident work, concocted on 
 the one hand by Powers that had nothing in view but their 
 own despotic interests and aggrandisement, on the other by 
 politicians looking no farther than their own time, seeking 
 only for present peace, frightened at and weary of the convul- 
 sions through which Europe had just passed, and without faith 
 in the future, — men anxious merely to reconstitute the old 
 system which Napoleon had broken down, and who had given 
 neither time nor sympathy to the study of those vital elements 
 out of which a new system might be constructed, and upon 
 which alone permanent peace and progression can be estab- 
 lished. . . . The question now at issue throughout Europe, at 
 the bottom of all European movements, is the question of 
 nationality, of national rights and duties." 
 
 The League was initiated at a public meeting held 
 on Wednesday, April 28, 1847, at the " Crown and 
 Anchor " tavern in the Strand (the usual place for
 
 100 
 
 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 such meetings), Dr. Bowring, M.P., in the chair. 
 The Council appointed at the meeting for the 
 ensuing year were : — 
 
 Mr. W. Bridges Adams. 
 
 — W. H. Ashurst. 
 
 — Goodwin Barmby. 
 Dr. Bowring, M.P. 
 
 Mr. William Carpenter. 
 
 — Thomas Cooper. 
 
 — William dimming. 
 
 — T. S. Buncombe, M.P. 
 Dr. Epps. 
 
 Mr. W. J. Fox. 
 
 — S. M. Hawkes. 
 
 — Thornton Hunt. 
 
 Mr. Douglas Jerrold. 
 
 — W. J. Linton. 
 
 — Richard Moore. 
 
 — T. Humphreys Parry. 
 
 — William Shaen. 
 
 — James Stansfeld. 
 
 — P. A. Taylor. 
 
 — P. A. Taylor, Jun. 
 
 — Richard Taylor. 
 
 — Joseph Toynbee. 
 
 — Henry Vincent. 
 
 — James Watson. 
 
 Messrs. Ashurst, Hawkes, Parry, Shaen, and Stans- 
 feld were all young lawyers professing sympathy 
 with the chartist movement, some of them practis- 
 ing public speaking at chartist meetings, — Parry, 
 Stansfeld, and P. A. Taylor, Jim., being afterwards 
 in Parliament ; Richard Taylor was a Common 
 Councillor of London, one of the old-fashioned 
 school of educated printers, a man who edited a 
 reprint of Home Tooke's Diversions of Purley ; 
 Carpenter, a literary man, had preceded Hether- 
 ino-ton in endeavours to break through the laws 
 against the Press. Of other members I speak else- 
 where. I acted as Honorary Secretary, and at my 
 house, 85 Hatton-Garden, was the office of the 
 Association, where the meetings of the Council 
 were held. Usually these meetings were also at-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 101 
 
 tended by Mazzini, who would wait afterwards for 
 a friendly talk with me over a glass of rum and 
 water : rum, the one liquor from our West Indian 
 possessions peculiar to England, and prized for its 
 strangeness, as it seems to me, by all foreigners. 
 
 On the 15th of November, 1847, the League 
 reported proceedings to that date to a public meet- 
 ing of nearly fifteen hundred persons, held at the 
 " Crown and Anchor," to give farther publicity to 
 the views and intentions for the advancement of 
 the objects of the Association. Dr. Bowring, M.P., 
 was in the chair. The speakers were Colonel 
 Thompson, M.P., Mr. P. A. Taylor, Jun., Mr. George 
 Thompson, M.P. (the Abolitionist orator), and Mr. 
 Linton. 
 
 The Eeport of Proceedings showed that the 
 Address of the League (with a circular requesting 
 cooperation) had been sent to the Members of both 
 Houses of Parliament, to the entire Press of Great 
 Britain and Ireland, to a large number of public 
 institutions, political and literary, and to several 
 thousand individuals, including many foreigners 
 resident in England. It was favourably noticed 
 and occasionally reprinted by a number of the 
 British and of the Continental Press : anions; the 
 latter, — in France, the National, the Reforme, and 
 the Democratie Bacifique, besides provincial jour- 
 nals ; in Belgium, the Brussels German Gazette ; in 
 Germany, the Bremer Gazette, the Frankfort Jour- 
 nal, the Berlin Gazette, the Upper Rhenish Gazette ;
 
 102 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 in Italy, the Alba of Florence ; in Switzerland, the 
 Helvetie of Berne, the National Gazette of Basle, 
 the Nouvelliste Vaudois, the Narrator of St. Gall, the 
 Review of Geneva. Many of these journals gave 
 repeated notices. 
 
 The address had been translated into French, 
 Spanish, German, Italian, and Polish. Other mani- 
 festations of strong sympathy came from many parts 
 of the Continent ; and in Switzerland the formation 
 of the League was celebrated by public demonstra- 
 tions in Berne, Lausanne, Basle, and Geneva ; and 
 responded to by resolutions of several Swiss associa- 
 tions to support and join. 
 
 The Council had also published a pamphlet, written 
 by Mazzini, on the question of the " Sonderbund " 
 (the attempt to separate the Catholic Cantons from 
 the Confederation) then agitating Switzerland. This 
 had been distributed among the four hundred mem- 
 bers of the League, the Press, the Members of the 
 House of Commons, and a number of public institu- 
 tions. It had been translated into French and Ger- 
 man, and its statements approved by most of the 
 Swiss journals. Beyond this the Council of the 
 League had been active in establishing communica- 
 tions with the principal cities of the Continent for 
 the purpose of obtaining correct and ready informa- 
 tion on all important questions. Seventeen lectures 
 also had been delivered in London upon the political 
 condition of Italy and Switzerland, by Mr. R. H. 
 Home, Mr. Thomas Cooper, and Mr. W. J. Linton.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 103 
 
 So much good work was accomplished by the 
 League, and the work continued until the revolu- 
 tionary events in Europe beginning with the Febru- 
 ary days in Paris, and the departure of Mazzini (the 
 informing spirit of the League) for Italy, stayed 
 proceedings ; some of the Council seeming to think 
 farther action unnecessary, others becoming indiffer- 
 ent. The last action was a congratulatory address 
 to the Provisional Government of France. 
 
 The revolution in France in February, 1848, called 
 forth the hearty sympathy of the working classes in 
 England, of the chartists especially, they seeing in 
 it a prospect of reinvigorating the chartist move- 
 ment, which during some years had degenerated 
 into a mere succession of desultory and purposeless 
 speechifying. At a meeting called within a few 
 hours of receiving the news of the Paris victory, Mr. 
 J. D. Collett (the active secretary of the Association 
 for the Abolition of the Taxes on Knowledge) and 
 myself were deputed to carry the first address of 
 congratulation, from working men in London, to the 
 Provisional Government. We traveled to Paris in 
 company with Mazzini ; and, Collett returning 
 almost immediately to England, I remained for 
 more than a week, sharing lodgings with Mazzini. 
 While there I had the opportunity through his intro- 
 duction of an interview with "George Sand," a hand- 
 some matronly woman, from whom afterwards I had 
 authorisation to translate her works, — a project 
 which circumstances prevented my carrying out.
 
 104 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Through Mazzini also I came to know the venerable 
 Abbe Lamennais, whom I had admired in younger 
 days as the author of Les Paroles oVun Croyant. 
 He had already begun a daily paper, Le Peuple 
 Constituant, to teach the true principles of republi- 
 canism and, if possible, to help in guiding the course 
 of public conduct in accordance therewith. Had his 
 advice been taken, Lamartine's non-intervention 
 manifesto had not betrayed the republican hopes of 
 Poland, Italy, and the rest of Europe, and the 
 terrible insurrection of June, of the Parisian working 
 class, cheated by promises of vague and impracti- 
 cable socialist theories, might have been avoided. I 
 had a cordial reception from the old Abbe (he knew 
 me by my translation, years before, of his Modern 
 Slavery — UEsclavage Moderne), a small, spare, 
 worn man, physically weak, and poorly circum- 
 stanced, who was editing his paper in the one bare 
 room in which he lived in the Rue Jacob ; in spite of 
 age and weakness fervent and energetic, a man truly 
 of the stuff of which heroes and saints were made, 
 if ever there was one. On one evening; I went to 
 see him he was out, and I waited for his return, on 
 the stairs, talking with a lad who served him in cir- 
 culating the paper. It needed not many words to 
 tell me how this man whom the Pope feared and 
 anathematised (" We damn forever this book of small 
 size but huge depravity " — such the papal interdict 
 on his Words of a Believer) could, nevertheless, be 
 reverenced and loved. He gave me his paper, and
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 105 
 
 continued to send it to me in London until its sup- 
 pression by General Cavaignac on occasion of the 
 insurrection in June : Lamennais' sympathies, if not 
 approving their action, being with the Insurgents. 
 True to the people, when he died the little he had to 
 leave was left to none who had taken part against 
 them in those unhappy days. 
 
 Very strange at that time was the appearance of 
 Paris ; the barricades not all cleared away ; before 
 public buildings cannon, watched by lads of the 
 Garde Mobile ; the ante-rooms of the Hotel de Ville, 
 where the Provisional Government held its sittings, 
 guarded by men in blouses, the place having the 
 aspect of a mediaeval incomplete revolt ; and strange 
 and strangely impressive the funeral procession of 
 those who had fallen in the Three Days, as from the 
 balcony of the Cafe du Grand Balcon I saw it 
 defiling along the Boulevard through the crowding 
 masses of Parisians, the Provisional Government on 
 foot as chief mourners, the roadway kept, not by 
 soldiers or police, but by a single tri-colour ribbon ; 
 every regimental or other band taking part, one 
 playing the " Marseillaise " and the next the song of 
 the luckless Girondins — " Mourir pour la patrie" 
 even in that day of solemn triumph sounding like an 
 ill omen. For already it was plain that French 
 policy was separated from the nascent republican 
 hopes of revolutionary Europe. 
 
 Returning from Paris, with hope of reviving our 
 chartist agitation, I began the publishing of the
 
 106 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Cause of the People, a weekly newspaper, nominally 
 edited by myself and Gr. J. Holyoake, but for which 
 Holyoake did nothing. At that date the Isle of 
 Man, as well as the Channel Islands (Guernsey, Jer- 
 sey, Alderney, and Sark), was exempt from duties 
 imposed on the mainland ; and taking advantage of 
 this exemption, newspapers, which in all the country 
 else passed through the post for a certain number of 
 days free in virtue of the penny stamp upon them, 
 passed freely without a stamp from these islands. 
 So I had my paper printed and published in Doug- 
 las, in the Isle of Man, sending there the copy for 
 the eight pages, and having the bulk of the printed 
 matter sent through the post to my publisher in 
 London (Watson), the single papers to be by him 
 reposted free. My venture lasted but nine weeks. 
 After that, it may be to prevent a wider use of the 
 precedent, the exceptional privileges of the islands I 
 have named were withdrawn. Duties also, on brandy, 
 tobacco, etc., from which they had been exempt, were, 
 I think, now imposed on them as upon the rest of the 
 community.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A Day with the Irish; Writing in the Nation ; Charles Gavan Duffy; 
 Conversations with Carlyle; Carlyle and Duffy on Linton; Mis- 
 representations of Mazzini ; Carlyle's Worth. 
 
 Referring to Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's Conver- 
 sations with Carlyle, 1892, it seems that it was in 
 1845 he (Duffy), a young Irish friend named Pigott, 
 and another Irishman, paid a visit to Carlyle. It is 
 likely, therefore, that it was in that year (though I 
 had thought it was not so early) that I made per- 
 sonal acquaintance with Duffy, breakfasting by invi- 
 tation with him and Meagher (" Thomas Meagher of 
 the Sword ") at their hotel in the Haymarket. If 
 this date be correct, I had already written for the 
 Irish patriotic paper, the Nation. Mrs. Carlyle's 
 description of Duffy, by him reported, is amusing. 
 " With the coarsest of human faces, decidedly as like 
 a horse's as a man's, he is one of the people I should 
 get to think beautiful, there is so much of the power 
 both of intellect and passion in his physiognomy." 
 I agree with the intellect and passion, saying rather 
 earnestness, but not with the coarseness or horse- 
 likeness. My own impression was of a good-looking 
 if not handsome, capable and honest man, to whom 
 I was attracted as one fit to be a leader of men, and 
 
 107
 
 108 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 one whom I could trust. In Meagher, a taller and 
 more personable man, I was not so much interested. 
 He struck me as a self-assured, clever but rather 
 raw collegian. He was in a fume at not having had 
 his letters delivered to him, some of them having 
 lain in the hotel office, his Celtic pronunciation of 
 his own name differing from the English sound of 
 Meagher, which even Landor used as rhyming with 
 eager. I recollect that after breakfast I went with 
 them to call on the young Pigott, whom Mrs. Carlyle 
 also describes : " a handsome youth," she says, " of 
 the romantic cast, pale-faced, with dark eyes and 
 hair, and an 'Emancipation of the Species' melan- 
 choly," of whom she was disposed to predict that in 
 case of an insurrection in Ireland he would " rise to 
 be a Robespierre of some sort," sure some day to be 
 beheaded. I should rather have likened him to the 
 enthusiast St. Just. I never knew of him after that 
 day till I saw mention of him in the Conversations 
 of having become a successful advocate at the Indian 
 Bar. With the four of us that evening dined Wm. 
 Smith O'Brien, a tall, courtly gentleman of most 
 prepossessing appearance and manner, a man, as 
 shown in all his conduct, sincere to devotedness, 
 chivalrous to very quixotism. 
 
 Some while after this I was to have met Duffy in 
 London, wishful to confer with him in order to 
 obtain some friendly cooperation of the Young Ire- 
 land party, with the remnant of the chartists, and 
 with such " moderate reformers" as might be avail-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 109 
 
 able ; he was prevented from coming over from 
 Ireland at the time appointed, and another oppor- 
 tunity did not occur. From the time I met him, as 
 here related, I wrote in the Nation much verse over 
 the pseudonym of "Spartacus" (the name I had 
 used from my first writing in Hetherington's Odd 
 Fellow), and over my own name occasional prose, 
 chiefly on points in which I differed from the Irish 
 party; specially (not so differing, I think) in 1847, 
 in advocacy of " the right of the Irish people to the 
 whole land of Ireland," and proposing the imposi- 
 tion of a tax of so much an acre, superseding all 
 other taxation, for the prevention of another famine. 
 In this I antedated the writing of Mr. Henry George. 
 When Duffy came out of prison in 1849, he asked 
 me to join on the staff of the Nation. I refused 
 only because I wished to remain a free lance. It 
 was well. He had, when talking with me in Eng- 
 land, demurred to my association with Mazzini, 
 whose anti-papal course was not acceptable to the 
 Nation, and who became the object of personal 
 attacks which I could not but resent. I replied to 
 them very bitterly, not more bitterly, I think even 
 now, than they deserved, but with perhaps mi- 
 needed acrimony, too much for me to remain as a 
 contributor to the paper. So we were sundered. 
 Only four or five years ago came a letter to me from 
 Nice, where Sir Charles Gavan Duffy was residing, 
 couched in friendliest terms, ignoring all the offence 
 which surely he had been warranted in keeping up.
 
 110 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 It was a generosity which revived all the regard of 
 old time, and renewed my respect for the character 
 of the man. 
 
 Carlyle in 1849 had written to Duffy, among 
 other bits of advice : " Also do not much mind 
 Linton, who is a well-enough meaning but, I fear, 
 extremely windy creature, of the Louis Blanc, 
 George Sand, etc., species." On this Duffy com- 
 ments as follows, and I am proud both of the higher 
 appreciation and of the more than kindly feeling 
 which prompted his remarks. 
 
 " Carlyle never saw Mr. Linton" [at that time he had twice 
 seen me] "and misunderstood him, I think. W. J. Linton, 
 the well-known wood-engraver (and who, judging him by the 
 illustrations of one of his own poems, was also an artist of 
 profuse fancy and skilful pencil), was less a French republican 
 of the school of George Sand and Louis Blanc, than an English 
 republican of the school of Milton and Cromwell, to which 
 Carlyle himself may be said to have belonged. Like many 
 gifted young Englishmen of the time, he found himself drawn 
 toward the Nation, and contributed to it largely in prose and 
 verse. The prose was, for the most part, controversial, justi- 
 fying or illustrating opinions on which he differed with the 
 editor; the poetry was incitements toward a generous and 
 lofty nationality. I was delighted at the time, and still recall 
 with pleasure the pictures he drew of the future we aimed to 
 create." (Conversations with Carlyle, pp. 132-3.) 
 
 Before laying aside Sir Charles' book, I may note, 
 there chronicled, some other hasty and misleading 
 judgments of both Carlyle and his wife. " I asked 
 him " (writes Duffy) " about the party of Young 
 Italy and its leader. Mazzini, he said, 'was a
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 111 
 
 diminutive, dark-visaged little fellow with bright 
 black eyes.' Not dark-visaged for an Italian ; and 
 ' diminutive ' hardly describes a man certainly not 
 less than five feet and seven inches in height. But 
 he may have been looked down upon by the tall 
 Scotchman." 
 
 Carlyle went on to say : " Mazzini was a perfectly honour- 
 able and true man, but possessed by wild and fanciful theories 
 borrowed from the French Republicans. He believed in 
 George Sand and that sort of cattle, and was altogether unac- 
 quainted with the true relation of things in this world. The 
 best thing that had ever befallen him was the opening of his 
 letters by Sir James Graham; he was little known in London 
 before that transaction ; known in fact to few people except 
 the circle in Cheyne Row. But afterwards he had innumer- 
 able dinner invitations, and got subscriptions up and down 
 London for his Italian schools and other undertakings. 
 
 " (Diary, 1854.) I spoke to Mrs. Carlyle of Mazzini, whose 
 name just then was a good deal in the papers. She said his 
 character, which was generous and self-devoted, was greatly 
 spoiled by a spirit of intrigue. He was always thinking what 
 advantage he could get out of every occurrence. 
 
 " ' Advantage for his cause ? ' I queried. 
 
 " Yes ! advantage for his cause, she said ; but by methods 
 such a man should scorn. It was he who planned the dinner 
 of revolutionists at the American Consul's lately, which got 
 the American Ambassador into such a scrape. The Consul, 
 a young American — Saunders was probably his name — 
 pestered Mazzini to dine with him. He would only consent 
 on condition that Garibaldi, Kossuth, Ledru Rollin, and the 
 rest were invited. An old Pole, it was said, had to borrow a 
 sovereign to get his uniform out of pawn. Mazzini expected 
 great results in Italy and Hungary from the false interpreta- 
 tion which would be put on this dinner with an American official. 
 ... In fact it was all a stage play, which Mazzini expected 
 to produce the effect of a sincere and serious transaction.
 
 112 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 " I said I had supposed him too grave and proud for any- 
 thing like a trick. She said he was certainly grave and digni- 
 fied, but he sometimes uttered trivial sentimentalities with 
 this air of gravity and dignity in a way that was intensely 
 comic. He was entirely engrossed in his purpose, however, 
 while one of his brother triumvirs, a successor of Bienzi in 
 the government of Borne, actually wrote to London to say 
 that the Westminster Review need not despair of an article he 
 had promised, he would send it with the delay of a month or 
 two. This was a national tribune pour rire." (Conversations, 
 pp. 109-11.) 
 
 I note so much (no doubt fairly reported by Duffy), 
 not by any means wishing to attack the Carlyles, but 
 in justice to Mazzini, here seen in an altogether false 
 light through their prejudiced eyes. " That sort of 
 cattle " may mark the value of the judgment of the 
 fanciful historian, or rather dramatist, of the French 
 Revolution. Mazzini did justice to the noble and 
 high purpose of George Sand's writings, believed in 
 her genius and the nobility of her nature; but he 
 did not share her political theories nor in any way 
 borrowed from French Republicanism. " A perfectly 
 honourable and true man," " innumerable dinner 
 invitations" and the getting of subscriptions for his 
 Italian cause (the u other undertakings") might be 
 no disparagement, though certainly he was far less 
 a diner out than Carlyle himself. 
 
 Carlyle would have given to Duffy a truer impres- 
 sion of Mazzini had he but referred him to Carlyle's 
 Letter to the Times in 1844, a letter containing 
 the following : —
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 113 
 
 " I have had the honour to know M. Mazzini for a series of 
 years, and whatever I may think of his practical insight and 
 skill in worldly affairs, I can, with great freedom, testify to all 
 men that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius 
 and virtue, a man of sterling veracity, humanity, and noble- 
 ness of mind, one of those rare men, numerable, unfortunately, 
 but as units in this world, who are called to be martyr souls ; 
 who in silence, piously in their daily life, understand and prac- 
 tise what is meant by that." 
 
 This is the real Mazzini, as Carlyle then knew him, 
 and the character but little accords with that of one 
 " greatly spoiled by a spirit of intrigue," " using 
 methods a man should scorn," " planning a stage 
 play " to produce a false impression, and uttering 
 " trivial sentimentalities in a way that was in- 
 tensely comic." But the worth of Mrs. Carlyle's 
 judgment may be estimated by the uncalled for 
 sneer at the Pole who " had to borrow a sovereign 
 to get his uniform out of pawn " (there was no such 
 Pole at the dinner), and the sneer at one of Mazzini's 
 "brother triumvirs" (which could only mean Saffi), 
 for writing to the Westminster Review concerning 
 the delay of a promised article. Saffi was closely 
 with Mazzini during that heroic defence of Rome, 
 and certainly was not " a tribune pour rive." He 
 was so well esteemed in England that when exiled 
 he was given a professorship at Oxford, where prob- 
 ably he wrote to and for the Wist minster Hevieiv. 
 The dinner at the American Consul's was not 
 "planned by Mazzini." Only he refused to accept 
 it merely as a personal compliment, as other than
 
 114 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 a mark of American sympathy with the European 
 Republicans, little knowing how scant such sym- 
 pathy was, how bound was the generous " Republic ' 
 to the selfish and cowardly policy of not entangling 
 itself with dutiful alliances. 
 
 Untrustworthy as historian or as a judge of men, 
 the man who can find no more descriptive epithet for 
 Robespierre than " sea-green," or for Marat than 
 " dog-leech," and who could defend Governor Eyre's 
 Jamaica Massacre (in which he had the unfortunate 
 backing of Tennyson and Kingsley), and (quoting his 
 own words, incorrect as regards Mazzini) " utterly 
 unacquainted with the true relation of things in 
 this world," I still regard admiringly the author of 
 Sartor Resartus, of Past and Present, and of Hero- 
 Worship : books which did immense good, coming at 
 a time in which they were expressly wanted, stirring 
 young souls with higher aims than were deducible 
 from socialistic materialisms, or from the Manchester 
 morality of a generation of Whig utilitarians. Very 
 great, I take it, was the service done by Carlyle's 
 earlier books to the young men of that day. giving 
 to them an ennobling gospel, for which England 
 may well hold the Sage of Chelsea in continued 
 reverence. He led the young aristocracy to a clearer 
 perception of the condition of the country and to 
 some recognition of their duties as an aristocracy. 
 He was really the founder of the Disraelitish " Young 
 England" party, a party I would not discredit, though 
 it was not the young England I hoped to see.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 Leigh Hunt and his Family ; On the Spectator ; Going to Miteside ; 
 The Leader ; Thornton Hunt ; G. H. Lewes ; Larken ; W. E. Forster ; 
 Minter Morgan ; Lausanne ; Mazzini ; Herzen ; Lamennais ; Forbes ; 
 George Combe ; Robert Owen. 
 
 Knowing Leigh Hunt, I also knew his family. 
 Hunt had, as so many men of his time also had, im- 
 bibed the negative principles of the Frenchmen of 
 1789. To be free meaned to dispute the justice of 
 established law and to igmore the worth of tradition. 
 This should be borne in mind in judging such men as 
 Shelley, Hunt, and others. The lawlessness of Self- 
 will as a rightful rebellion against the despotism of 
 Authority came to be considered almost as a duty, at 
 least a necessity of courageous free thought. With 
 men of high natures and innate nobleness, their own 
 consciences and wills might be sufficient rulers. 
 Hunt, a man of amiable disposition, good and pure, a 
 Bayard sans pair and sans reproche, had his conduct 
 little affected by "free" thinking. At worst it left 
 him with a childish carelessness of pecuniary obliga- 
 tions, and also to a considerable disregard of miscon- 
 struction. He went on his quiet, pleasurable way, 
 never outraging Mrs. Grundy in his private life, not 
 unconcerned at world-wrongs, speaking honestly but 
 with kindness of all men, and fairly earning his 
 
 115
 
 116 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 reputation as "the gentlest of the wise." But his 
 family, perhaps spoiled by his easiness, inherited that 
 easiness rather than the chivalrousness which had 
 kept him free from blame. He had eight children, 
 sons and daughters. Of his daughters, Florimel, the 
 eldest, Mrs. Grliddon, was a handsome woman ; Julia, 
 the second daughter, a petite and pretty coquette ; 
 Jacintha, whom her father used to call "monkey- 
 face," was the good wife of one of my pupils who, 
 forsaking engraving, got his living by literature. Of 
 two of the sons, Percy and Henry, government clerks, 
 I knew but little, nor cared to know more. It was 
 perhaps when seeking to get an appointment for one 
 of them that, it was said, Leigh Hunt and Sheridan 
 Knowles (the dramatist) met on the steps of the 
 Government Office and Hunt made way for Knowles, 
 who was on a like errand, to enter first, with the 
 remark that there might be only place for one. 
 John Hunt, the eldest son, though a man not with- 
 out brains, may have had some mental weakness to 
 excuse his conduct. After breakfasting with a friend, 
 he would borrow a book and pledge it at the nearest 
 pawnbroker's ; he would try to borrow money in his 
 father's name from his father's friends, on one awk- 
 ward occasion the father being; in the house at which 
 he called ; such like tricks were not infrequent. Vin- 
 cent, the youngest, was a very lovable fellow ; for 
 some time employed by me, he wrote for the Illus- 
 trated Family Journal short, graceful sketches of 
 wild flowers, somewhat in the style of the father and
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 117 
 
 possibly helped by him. A weak repeat of his father, 
 gentle but without moral fibre, he died almost before 
 reaching manhood. Thornton, the second son, I 
 knew best, a man rather below average height, de- 
 serving rather than his sister the name of " monkey- 
 face," but bright, clever, and very winning, a man 
 in spite of his physiognomy who had his way with 
 women ; far too much so, it was notorious, with the 
 pretty wife of his friend George Henry Lewes, the 
 two men only quarreling over the expense of the 
 double family. Thornton asserted his belief in com- 
 munistic principles, and in self-will as sufficient law. 
 I note him as an instance of what such a man may 
 be in spite of kindly and generous impulses, in spite 
 of great sincerity and straightforwardness, for which 
 traits I could not but like him before I knew him so 
 thoroughly as to lose respect for him. 
 
 One instance of real kind-heartedness I may give. 
 He was editor, under the proprietor and manager, 
 Rintoul, of the Sjyectator, a newspaper which, in the 
 words of Carlyle, was at that time " the best article 
 of the kind to be found anywhere in England." 
 One day Thornton interrupted my engraving at 
 Hatton-Garden with a request that I would leave 
 it and come to him, to be for a short time sub-editor 
 with him, in order to keep the place open for a 
 young friend who had been in that capacity and who 
 had fallen sick. I went, partly to oblige Thornton, 
 partly for the sake of the sick man, with whom I had 
 some acquaintance, and partly because I thought, as
 
 118 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 the call upon my time was only for a few hours on 
 certain days, that it might be worth while to learn 
 something of the management of such a paper. So 
 I took my place for three weeks. At the end of the 
 time Rintoul asked me to dine with him and insisted 
 on paying me for my service, assuring me that the 
 young man now recovered should receive his salary 
 as if he had not been absent. This must have been 
 early in 1849, as during my brief sub-editorship I 
 wrote for the Spectator a notice of David Scott, who 
 died on the 5th of March in that year. 
 
 In May, 1849, I went to Cumberland, sending my 
 household goods by sea to Whitehaven, and taking 
 my family by steamer (a stormy voyage of nearly 
 three days) to Newcastle ; thence across the country 
 by rail to Carlisle and Whitehaven ; and from White- 
 haven the sixteen or more miles to my new dwelling- 
 place at " Miteside " by carriage, as the house was 
 some way off the rail line between Whitehaven and 
 Ravenglass. Near Gosforth we had a view of Scaw- 
 fell and the surrounding mountains at the head of 
 Wast-water, some four or five miles from our road. 
 It was a bright Spring day, the road-sides were lined 
 with primroses, in the distance were the dark grey 
 mountains, and between them and the sunlit prim- 
 roses was a fleeting snow-shower. We found our 
 packages of household goods awaiting us, and with 
 them a parcel of reindeer tongues sent by a friend in 
 Newcastle. Bread and milk we got from a farm- 
 house almost adjoining our own ; tired out, we slept
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 119 
 
 that night on the floor ; and so fairly started on an 
 economical but not too hard life in the strange land. 
 We had a square walled garden on an island in the 
 little river Mite, almost under a line of fells, and 
 from the front of the house we should have seen the 
 sea but for an intervening rise of ground. Raven- 
 glass, about three miles from us, where the White- 
 haven railway then terminated, was our nearest 
 town, or rather village ; here was the confluence of 
 the Mite and Irt, in which latter stream the Romans 
 fished for the pearl-mussel. I rested here, doing 
 such little engraving as came to me from London, 
 and enjoying the wild beauty of the country. But I 
 was soon called back to London. Some correspond- 
 ence with Thornton Hunt resulted in our projecting 
 a weekly newspaper, the Leader. We found a paper- 
 maker and a printer to give help ; W. E. Forster 
 (afterwards Secretary for Ireland) took shares in the 
 venture ; we had also help from Minter Morgan, a 
 friend of Robert Owen, a man of means who busied 
 himself with a mild sort of socialistic scheme to es- 
 tablish " Happy Villages " under the auspices of the 
 parochial clergy ; but the principal funds were con- 
 tributed by the Rev. Edmund Larken, a friend of 
 Hunt and a "Christian Socialist" of the stamp of 
 Maurice and Kingsley. Larken had married a 
 daughter of Lord Monson, and his rectory was pleas- 
 antly situated in his father-in-law's park at Burton, 
 three miles from Lincoln. 
 
 My purpose was to make the Leader at once an
 
 120 THREESCOKE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 organ of the European Republicans and the centre of 
 an English republican party after the manner of the 
 National and lief or me in Paris. So, mindful of even 
 the Spectator s insufficient information as regarded 
 European views and happenings, before beginning 
 the newspaper I went to Lausanne, where I expected 
 to find Mazzini, in Switzerland since the fall of 
 Rome, hoping through him to obtain trustworthy 
 foreign correspondents. This was in February, 1850. 
 
 1 had snow the whole way traveling from Dijon to 
 Geneva by the malle-poste, with one companion, in a 
 sort of unwheeled cab acting as a sledge. A splen- 
 did sight was the rosy dawn lighting the snow as we 
 crossed the Jura Alps, a passage sometimes cut 
 through the snow for us. I reached Geneva about 
 
 2 p.m., after a twenty-fours' travel from Dijon, and 
 went to bed ; but before I was asleep was ordered 
 out by a buxom chambermaid, so that the bed might 
 be properly made ; got up at 10 p.m. to a breakfast 
 or dinner or supper (it might be called either), of 
 twenty dishes, and at midnight left Geneva by dili- 
 gence for Lausanne, arriving there at about 6 next 
 morning. My hotel was opposite to where the 
 diligence stopped. I breakfasted, and when day- 
 light came sauntered through the streets. Presently 
 my glance rested on another saunterer, whom I 
 guessed to be an Italian. I accosted him, got into 
 some sort of half-understood conversation with him, 
 and at last won so much upon his confidence as to 
 learn where I might hear of Mazzini. There I went,
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 121 
 
 only to be told that a letter could be forwarded to 
 him, which sent, in an hour I had an appointment 
 to see him. I spent a week in Lausanne, daily with 
 him and Saffi, who was in the same house. There 
 were many Italian and French refugees in the city, 
 Felix Pyat among the French, who seemed to me 
 much inferior in appearance and bearing to the 
 Italians. When I came away, I had for com- 
 panion an Englishman, Colonel Hugh Forbes, who 
 had come out of Rome with Garibaldi, and who, when 
 Garibaldi divided his forces, had commanded one 
 division. I brought away letters from Mazzini, and 
 tracts to be distributed in Paris. The tracts were 
 bound together in a thick volume with a title-page 
 of one of Gioberti's unobjectionable works. When 
 at the frontier, we were ordered out of the diligence 
 for examination, I left the volume open at the 
 title-page on my seat, and it escaped suspicion. At 
 Lyons we breakfasted, and thence went on to Paris, 
 where we spent the next day. Here I had the hap- 
 piness of a cordial meeting with dear old Lamennais 
 (not to be seen again), and a welcome from Herzen, 
 the Russian friend to whom Mazzini had given me 
 an introduction, and of whom I shall have to speak 
 again. Most of the day else we passed in the com- 
 pany of Madame Bourdillon Nassy (whom I had 
 known in England as Eliza Ashurst, an early trans- 
 lator of some of George Sand's novels) and her hus- 
 band. By them I was introduced to Maria Weston 
 Chapman, American and Abolitionist, a very beauti-
 
 122 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 fill woman. Forbes and I dined with the Nassys, 
 and left Paris by the evening train for Calais. At 
 Calais it was a dark and stormy night, the pier was 
 being repaired, and the English steamer could not 
 put in to it. I scrambled down the side of the pier 
 into a boat ; but Forbes was not quick enough in fol- 
 lowing me ; and the boat was full and went off 
 without him. It was pitch-dark, the sea rough, the 
 boatmen were saying their prayers ; and I had some 
 fear that, unable to find the steamer, we might have to 
 go back, and not without danger. But at length we 
 reached a black mass, which was our ship. Forbes 
 was left behind ; and no other steamer crossed the 
 channel for forty-eight hours, the weather being so 
 bad. I got safely to London, and reported to Lar- 
 ken at the Rectory, resting there pleasantly for 
 some days. Forbes crossed so soon as the weather 
 allowed ; but I did not see him, as he left England 
 for America directly. He afterwards returned to 
 Europe, to take part in Garibaldi's Sicilian expedi- 
 tion. 
 
 The Leader was started : Hunt as principal editor 
 and manager, Lewes as literary editor, myself taking 
 the place of editor for foreign matters, and Ballan- 
 tyne for English. Ballantyne had been on the Man- 
 chester Examiner. He and I worked together, and 
 very agreeably ; but I had soon to find that Hunt's 
 and Lewes' sympathies with the republican party 
 were not to be depended on, that they merely wanted 
 to exploit the connection for the commercial advan-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 123 
 
 tage of the paper. After a few weeks I gave up my 
 position. I recollect but one meeting toward the 
 formation of a party, and but one person of any 
 prominence at that — George Combe, who gave us an 
 amusing account of Robert Owen's impracticability 
 at his American colony, " New Harmony." Coler- 
 idge's button-holding Lamb till Lamb cut off the but- 
 ton and left him to discourse to that, was but a type 
 of Owen's never-ending and never-varying speech. 
 On occasion of the first meeting at New Harmony, 
 his oration had to be interrupted with the important 
 question, " Pardon me, Mr. Owen, but I would ask if 
 any here can milk a cow ? If so, let them hold up 
 their hands, for the cows can not wait for oratory." 
 I had plenty of opportunity for observing this as 
 characteristic of Owen, a most dry and unimagina- 
 tive creature, who, like his son, Robert Dale (whom 
 I afterwards met in New York, a man far cleverer 
 and in every way more capable than the father), fin- 
 ished not unnaturally with a blind subservience to 
 "spiritualism." Extremes meet. 
 
 So much for the Leader, which led nowhither, 
 under the capricious direction of Hunt and Lewes, 
 running, like Leigh Hunt's Irishman's pig, " up all 
 manner of streets." Disappointed in it, and feeling 
 that my republican friends had also cause for disap- 
 pointment, I undertook a work which occupied me 
 for nearly five years, the publication of the English 
 Republic.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The English Republic ; The Plaint of Freedom ; Walter Savage Landor ; 
 Duffy ; Carlyle ; Joseph Cowen ; Other Helpers ; Deceased British 
 Painters and other Work ; Moxon ; Visitors and Friends ; Phy- 
 sicians. 
 
 My object, plainly avowed, in bringing out the 
 English Republic was " to explain Republican Princi- 
 ples, to record Republican Progress, and to establish 
 a Republican Party in England." The record of 
 progress would of course include notices of republi- 
 can happenings everywhere. My work began with 
 1851, a monthly magazine, at first printed at Leeds, 
 in the hope of there taking up some of the subscrib- 
 ers to the Present Age, a serious, liberal magazine 
 edited by Dr. F. R. Lees, the head of the Temperance 
 agitation. The expected advantage on both sides 
 not arriving, the Present Age was discontinued and 
 I went on with my own venture, still printing at 
 Leeds, my publisher in London my old friend James 
 Watson. At the same time I pursued my engraving, 
 such as I could have at that distance from London, 
 both for support of my family and to pay for my 
 republican endeavour. I was also writing for the 
 Nation, chiefly " rhymes and reasons " concerning 
 the one great Irish difficulty, the Land Question; 
 and in 1852 I printed at Newcastle and put out 
 
 124
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 125 
 
 anonymously (why so it would be hard to say, unless 
 it was that I doubted my own ability for writing so 
 serious a work) a long poem, T7ie Plaint of Freedom, 
 of which I gave away the whole edition of three 
 hundred. I had many satisfactory acknowledg- 
 ments, the best from Walter Savage Landor, to 
 whom I was indebted for occasional writing in the 
 English Republic. Before he knew the poem was 
 mine, he wrote the following lines, which I may dare 
 to quote (I had dedicated the poem " to the memory 
 of Milton," with farther notice of him) : — 
 
 "To the Author of the Plaint op Freedom. 
 
 "Praiser of Milton! worthy of his praise! 
 How shall I name thee ? Art thou yet unnamed ? 
 While verses flourish hanging overhead 
 In looser tendrils than stern husbandry 
 May well approve, on thee shall none descend? 
 At Milton's hallow'd name thy hymn august 
 Sounds as the largest bell from Minster tower. 
 I ponder, and in time may dare to praise; 
 Milton had done it ; Milton would have graspt 
 Thy hand amid his darkness, and with more 
 Impatient pertinacity because 
 He heard the voice and could not see the face." 
 
 He sent me the lines later (when he knew the 
 poem was mine) with his volume, The Last Fruit of 
 an Old Tree, and with a letter, which I am proud 
 enough to subjoin : — 
 
 " Bath, Nov. 8, 1852. 
 " My Dear Sir. 
 
 " This morning I send to you by railway my new volume. 
 I left a quantity of writing to the disposal of Mr. Porster, and
 
 126 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 I regret that he has not inserted lines I addrest to you. I 
 was not aware of this until the volume was bound and sent to 
 me. If there is anything in the volume which your pure and 
 exquisite taste approves, I shall be more gratified than by all 
 the Reviewers and Magazine-men, even if any of them (which 
 is improbable) should commend it. 
 
 " Very truly yours, 
 
 "W. S. Landor." 
 
 He printed the lines afterwards in 1858, in the 
 Dry Sticks, fagoted by W. S. Landor, his last 
 book. 
 
 In 1853 he sent rne his volume, the Imaginary 
 Conversations of Greeks and Romans (republished 
 in that year by Moxon) with the nattering ascrip- 
 tion : — 
 
 " W. S. Landor to W. J. Linton, 
 A true patriot and a true poet, 
 Characters almost equally rare." 
 
 Surely encouragement enough was this for a lone 
 endeavourer, beside the cordial help of Mazzini and 
 his fellow-republicans, and the warm and friendly 
 reception I had from Duffy in the Irish Nation. 
 Carlyle, too, would sometimes acknowledge the 
 copies of the Republic (which I regularly sent to 
 him) with not unfriendly characteristic growl, which 
 did not disconcert but rather amused me from a 
 man so averse to windiness, so ready to preach the 
 worthlessness of words. Why waste my energy in 
 useless speech ? — was the one burden of his remon- 
 strances, and he would not have cared had I 
 pleaded the influence of his example. Like him, I
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 127 
 
 was bound to speak, without the warrant of his 
 genius, but with a more prophetic hope. I failed. 
 Some words may yet have echoes. Some few feeble 
 attempts at republican association of a few working- 
 men, in response to a plan of action from which I 
 looked for results, showed me that I might teach, 
 but might not lead. I stood almost alone. One 
 man, a young lawyer at Eastbourne, now residing 
 at Matlock, Derbyshire, whose friendship I have 
 kept ever since, sent me ten pounds to help me in 
 my work, — the only money subscribed to me except 
 by Joseph Cowen, who helped me generously and 
 largely until I had to abandon my work. In the 
 writing he had no part. 
 
 In 1852 and 1853 the Hejmblic was issued in four- 
 page weekly tracts, bound together for monthly 
 parts, still printed at Leeds. In the spring of 1852 
 I removed to Brantwood, and in 1854 resumed the 
 monthly issue, by then having printing press and 
 types, and registering myself as a printer, without 
 which my printing material was liable to seizure 
 and confiscation by the authorities. At Brantwood 
 I had the assistance of three young men from Chel- 
 tenham, who came across the country to offer them- 
 selves at my service, at any wage that I could 
 afford them. Two were printers, and the third was 
 a gardener. They were zealous and efficient helpers. 
 When, in April, 1855, 1 had to give up the endeavour 
 (it had never reached a paying point, and of the few 
 hundreds printed many were distributed freely in the
 
 128 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 hope of propagandism), my three men had to leave 
 me : one went back to Cheltenham, his native place, 
 resumed printing there, and established a printing- 
 office noteworthy for its excellent work ; one found 
 employment for a time in London, and has now for 
 many years been the editor of the weekly edition 
 of Mr. Cowen's Newcastle Chronicle ; one returned 
 to gardening and has been long in the employment 
 of a gentleman in the neighbourhood of London : all 
 fairly well doing, all to this day my attached and 
 esteemed friends, none ever complaining of lost time 
 at Brant wood. Their names, not among the candi- 
 dates for notoriety, are written on my heart. 
 
 At Brantwood, as at Miteside, my literary work 
 being unremunerative, I continued my engraving, 
 fortunate in being engaged by the Art Union of 
 London to execute a series of cuts after the works of 
 Deceased British Painters, some from my own draw- 
 ings. I had also occasional work for the Illustrated 
 London Neios, and some from drawings by Rossetti, 
 Millais, Stanfield, Creswick, and others, for Moxon's 
 edition of Tennyson's Poems. And here I may 
 record a piece of generous kindness, not, so far as 
 my own experience went, too common among pub- 
 lishers. It was at Brantwood ; and I was one clay 
 standing at an outer gate, when, unexpected, I saw 
 Moxon coming. I had such illness in my house that 
 I could not even ask him to come in, but stood at the 
 gate to answer his inquiry as to the progress of his 
 work. I was in arrear and could give no definite
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 129 
 
 promise of performance. He was considerately 
 indulgent, wished me good morning and turned 
 away ; then, a few paces gone, turned back to say, 
 with kindly hesitation, that he knew artists were not 
 a moneyed race, and under present circumstances 
 would I allow him to act as a friend, offering me a 
 ten-pound note which, he said, was more than he 
 would want for the little time he was traveling 
 through the Lake Country. I gratefully took the 
 advanced payment. 
 
 Poor Moxon ! his book, owing to the war between 
 North and South in America, which disappointed 
 him of a large sale, was a failure ; and the failure, I 
 believe, ruined his business. He was one of those 
 publishers who are patrons of literature, taking in- 
 terest in his books, and so — associated with their 
 authors — a publisher worthy of honour. 
 
 Half a mile or but a little more to the railway, by 
 boat across the Lake (to Coniston Hall, once the seat 
 of Sidney's sister, Ben Jonson's Countess of Pem- 
 broke), or a three miles' walk round the Waterhead, 
 my engraving went by rail from Church Coniston at 
 7 p.m., to be delivered in London as soon as houses 
 of business were open next morning, so that I was 
 hardly out of the way for those publishers who still 
 knew me and valued what I did. Nor was I alto- 
 gether without visitors and friends ; Mr. Gibson, our 
 valued Coniston and Hawkshead doctor (Hawks- 
 head, where Wordsworth went to school in the 
 grammar school there, four miles from Coniston, at
 
 130 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 the head of Esthwaite Water), Dr. Lonsdale of Car- 
 lisle, our neighbours the Misses Romney (two maiden 
 ladies, grand-daughters of the painter), Harriet Mar- 
 tineau, Dr. Lees, Wm. Bridges Adams, Richard Tyas 
 (an old lawyer friend of many years), Joseph Cowen, 
 Wm. Bell Scott, Edward Wehnert, Duncan, and some 
 others. Harriet Martineau lived at Ambleside, ten 
 miles from us, not too far to be visited or to visit us. 
 Lees and other friends from a distance were intro- 
 duced to our mountains, and for entertainment had 
 rambles over them. Lees, a determined teetotaler 
 and, I think, the most learned of the race, was free 
 enough not to disallow our stopping at a country inn 
 after a long tramp ; and confessed, to my asking, 
 that it would be of little use to lecture against 
 whiskey in that moist realm of meres and waters. 
 Duncan, the most accurate of draftsmen, whose true 
 realism stood him in the place of imagination, once 
 spent a week with me tracking the River Ducldon 
 from the sea to its mountain source, taking sketches 
 which we hoped might turn to account as illustra- 
 tions to Wordsworth's Sonnets on the Ducldon ; but, 
 when we came to consider poems and sketches 
 together, we found that the Sonnets, ecclesiastical 
 and other, were pure Wordsworth, and might as well 
 have been written on any other river. Then in time 
 of need Dr. Lietch of Keswick would come thirty 
 miles to give his unfee'd service ; and good Dr. Brown 
 of Blaydon-on-Tyne came across the country, a day's 
 journey, on the same generous errand, — so keeping
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 131 
 
 up the medical tradition I had learned in London, 
 where, when I had scarlet fever, three doctors stood 
 together at my bedside, Toynbee, the Quaker Dr. 
 Hodgkin, and Southwood Smith, the last attending 
 me through my illness. I never paid a physician's 
 fee in England. Only on Dr. Sibson I had some 
 claim for sake of his brother, my artist friend ; and 
 the doctor honoured my claim by gratuitous advice 
 to any one I chose to send to him. In one man so 
 sent he became so interested that for years after- 
 wards, until his patient's death, Sibson was at his 
 service whenever required. I may be grateful and 
 proud for such services, yet I do not take all the 
 credit to myself, but recognise them as fair instances 
 of the generosity of the medical profession in England 
 toward artists and literary men.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 My Possessions ; Stolzman ; To the Top of Scawfell. 
 
 At Brantwood I rented a garden between the 
 house and the Lake, and had another small garden 
 patch, with bees, reached by steps to above the 
 height of the house. From this patch was a view 
 across the Lake to the " Old Man " and Coniston 
 Crags under Wetherlam ; and from the lower gar- 
 den we looked up the Lake to Helvellyn. I had the 
 use of a horse, and kept two cows, a pig, pigeons, 
 and poultry (an occasional pheasant would breakfast 
 with my chickens), and some twenty sheep ; my 
 cows pasturing in two fields between the house and 
 Lake (two fields rented with the garden), my sheep 
 feeding on the fell, which rose some three or four 
 hundred feet steeply, directly behind the house, the 
 side of the fell covered with copse wood, young oak, 
 and hazel. On one part, not so brant (i.e., steep), 
 I felled the larger oak, barked it (much with my 
 own hands), and sold the bark; then, perhaps for 
 the first time ever done, had an acre or more 
 ploughed, and corn and garden stuff raised upon it. 
 My sheep-feeding on the fell above entitled me, 
 when the common land between Coniston Water and 
 
 132
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 133 
 
 Esthwaite Water was enclosed, to an apportion- 
 ment of six acres, mostly covered with heather and 
 juniper, so that I had sixteen acres instead of ten to 
 sell to Ruskin. 
 
 I knew every mountain pass in the square of the 
 Lake Country, some thirty miles each way ; and 
 many were the rambles, of a day or of two, three, 
 four, or more clays, through the country, with friend, 
 or friends, or alone. It was a life worth having. My 
 Polish friend Stolzman came in 1852 to live with 
 me, and helped to teach my three boys. He was 
 with me till 1854 ; then, ailing, went for change to 
 the sea, at Haverhill, under Black Combe. He had 
 just been elected to the Polish Central Democratic 
 Committee, and was anxious to recover some strength 
 for his work in that, and for a possible return to 
 Poland, if England, in the war then threatened, could 
 be wise enough to attack Russia in the North. At 
 Haverhill he had a paralytic fit, and in three hours 
 was dead. I reached his side only in time to see 
 him buried in the little churchyard of Millom, the 
 incumbent of which, waiting my arrival, had chari- 
 tably made the funeral arrangements. For ten years 
 I knew Stolzman. I have known none more worthy 
 of friendship and honour than the old soldier exile. 
 
 That life in the North was indeed worth living, 
 though heavy sorrow came to me there, which caused 
 my return to London after my discontinuance of the 
 English Republic in 1855. 
 
 One day's excursion, well recollected, may be
 
 134 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 worth recording here from memoranda written at 
 the time : the excursion, however, not taken while 
 I was living at Brantwood, but on occasion of revisit- 
 ing the country some years afterwards. I had gone 
 with some friends from Keswick to Buttermere, and 
 they left me at Buttermere, where I slept. Next 
 day, it is a fair June day, the twentieth of the month, 
 crossing over Honistar Pass, where the slate quarries 
 are, I reach, soon after noon, little Seathwaite, on 
 the near side of the Borrowdale road. After the 
 best meal I can get, bread and cheese and milk, I 
 take it into my head that I will pass midsummer eve 
 on the top of Scawfell, the highest ground in Eng- 
 land. I go over Stockley Bridge, and follow the 
 beck, up the gorge, taking a bath on my way. It 
 is steep climbing for some hours, occasionally looking 
 back over the length of Borrowdale for a distant 
 view of Derwent Water and the line of Skiddaw 
 and Blencathra ; and, as I rise higher, catching sight 
 of Langclale Pikes, bright and glowing as they pierce 
 into the sunshine. Then, rounding Great End, a 
 bulwark of Scawfell, a long shoulder is before me, in 
 front of which is Scawfell itself, to my left a sea of 
 mountains, to my right Great Gable gradually lost, 
 as I advance, in the shadow of the End. I reach 
 the top of the shoulder to find that the End has 
 slipped away, leaving me to climb an empty sleeve 
 in which he was laughing; at me ; and the End is 
 as far off as ever, and Scawfell top seeming at 
 greater distance. Another steep climb, with right
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 135 
 
 below me a seemingly bottomless pit ; but a little 
 farther on a green platform rises in the pit, in the 
 middle of which is Sty Head Tarn, shining like an 
 emerald. A quarter of a mile of scrambling over a 
 sea of rocks; and then Scawfell looks nearer, but 
 bigger and more formidable than ever. As I pro- 
 ceed he grows, ever more and more gigantic, till I 
 am at the very foot of his own shoulder (as an Irish- 
 man might say, and very correctly). Before attempt- 
 ing that last climb, I look over the lower heights, 
 and see a lake of gold, Ennerdale "Water, lying in 
 the grey, formless mist beyond them. Then I begin 
 to ascend the shoulder, up steep, loose stones, digging 
 places for my feet as I mount, not without fear of 
 bringing down upon me an avalanche of slates and 
 boulders. At last I am on the summit, still among 
 the stones, but with one patch of golden moss among 
 them, which I pass to the pole like a flag-staff on 
 the topmost height of the Pike, and of all England. 
 On the broad platform are some broken walls, the 
 remains of huts built for the Ordnance Surveyors ; I 
 choose one with part of a chimney in it, the walls 
 nearly as high as my head, and prepare to take my 
 rest so half sheltered. The distances are growing 
 dim, lost in haze ; but before sunset some clearing 
 brings out far Derwent Water (or is it farther 
 Bassenthwaite Water ?) in full brightness ; to my 
 right "Windermere lights up ; the sea is behind me ; 
 and the passing sunlight glances warmly on the pile 
 of stones on which the pole is set, and on the ruined
 
 136 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 walls of my chamber, till the sun sinks, leaving long 
 bars of crimson and gold, and a tender mellow glory 
 over everything. One last look at the flag-staff 
 where it stands alone against the pure sky, the young 
 crescent moon, clear as crystal, rising in the pale after- 
 glow of the sunset ; then, as the stars come out one 
 by one, I lie down in my half-chimnied room, against 
 a broken wall, and watch the white clouds floating 
 silently over me till I fall asleep in the lingering 
 twilight. Awaking, the stars are gone ; all is a dead 
 mist ; I see only the grey walls, and hear the winds 
 careering overhead. By and by the mist thins 
 enough to show the light of the sun's path as he 
 travels northward, yet far from dawn. That light 
 never leaves the sky all night, only for a time lost in 
 the mist. The expanse of mist changes to slight misty 
 clouds rapidly driven across the sky, rather mists in 
 motion than anything in shape of cloud; the light 
 in the horizon extends eastward and increases ; some 
 faint tinge of scarcely colour comes into it, ripening 
 to the vague colouring of a sea-shell, to a faint red, 
 to reddish gold, to golden brown, to golden red, to 
 deeper red, and pure gold. The mountain-tops ap- 
 pear in grey, slowly warming to a greenish tone in 
 the nearer ones, the distance still grey. Northward 
 the line of cloud in which the sun had set extends 
 itself in long bars, becoming more distinct, darker, 
 and seeming nearer. Out of this line comes a little 
 black cloud, coming nearer, nearer, and then suddenly 
 melting away. The mountains beyond Windermere
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 137 
 
 lie in long lines of grey, with mist between, and be- 
 hind their ranges. Behind the mist rise strange 
 black, heavy monsters, coming close in their blackness 
 through the intervening mass of mist miles away, 
 sometimes like a herd of buffaloes leaping over one 
 another, sometimes one gigantic beast about to tum- 
 ble over the wall. Higher in the western sky are 
 great wind-formed feathers. Then the dawn grows 
 light, colours are more distinct, the sky is streaked 
 and golden. It is still misty over Skiddaw and the 
 Ions; cloud-arms threaten to travel eastward and hide 
 the sunrise ; and behind me clouds are sweeping up 
 from the near sea. Afraid of being lost in the mists, 
 I begin to descend. But a little way down, the 
 great ball of fire bursts out for one glorious moment, 
 purpling the dark crags and making the clouds rosy 
 and coppery, then losing itself in the crimson clouds 
 above. I hasten down the opposite way to that I 
 had climbed, to Wastdale Head, breakfast there, and 
 mid driving rain make my way over Sty Head Pass, 
 the wildest pass of the English mountains, to Bor- 
 rowdale, and through Borrowdale to Derwent Water 
 and Keswick.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 The Poles at Liverpool; Meeting at Hanover Square; Herzen; 
 
 Bakounine. 
 
 It was in 1849 that the Hungarian war for free- 
 dom came to an unhappy end, through the insolent 
 intervention of Russia aided by the treachery of Gor- 
 gey, the Hungarian General ; and Kossuth, with the 
 last hopes of patriotism, took refuge under the hospi- 
 tality of the Sultan. In March, 1851 (I was then 
 living at Miteside), two hundred and sixty-one of 
 these men, the remnant of the Polish Legion which 
 had fought under General Wysocki, the last of 1034 
 who had taken refuge in Turkey in 1849, arrived at 
 Liverpool from Kutayeh. There were two hundred 
 and forty-seven Poles : the rest were of different na- 
 tionalities, nine of them Hungarians. On reaching 
 the Mersey their vessel was boarded by a Mr. Diosy, 
 a Hungarian and emigration agent, deputed by the 
 Literary Society of the Friends of Poland, with the 
 object of persuading the refugees to accept a free 
 passage to America, offered them by the British Gov- 
 ernment as the best means of getting rid of them. 
 The Poles, already in communication with their 
 countryman Mr. Worcell, the chief of the Polish 
 Emigration, refused to be so deported. Worcell had 
 
 138
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 139 
 
 come from London to meet them, and I had joined 
 him to be of what service I could to him and them. 
 I tried to make interest for them, and called upon 
 Robertson Gladstone, James Martineau, and other 
 prominent men in Liverpool, but without effect. We 
 then appealed to a public meeting ; with difficulty 
 found an " influential ' ! ' chairman, and put the case 
 before the meeting of nearly all working-men. In 
 spite of some " respectable ' : opposition, in spite of 
 false statements circulated through the Liverpool 
 Press, the meeting was successful ; volunteers, work- 
 ing-men, came forward offering individual help : one 
 man would take to his home and care for one of the 
 refugees ; another man would take one more, and a 
 committee was formed for farther combined efforts. 
 At first the strangers were lodged in a house 
 allowed them by the Authorities ; but they were 
 quickly informed that they would be ejected unless 
 they accepted the Government terms. On the 12th 
 of March, two days after our public meeting (they 
 only landed on the 4th) they were accordingly turned 
 into the streets. One generous man, Mr. Peter 
 Stewart, a Liverpool merchant, was found to get 
 them admission to an unused soap-factory, or they 
 had been houseless. My poor friend Worcell was 
 too feeble from sickness to do more than direct, and 
 I had to act for him, with the aid of a young Pole, 
 who spoke French but could not speak or understand 
 English. The soap-factory was in a back street in 
 Liverpool, the room large enough, but quite bare, up
 
 140 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 a narrow flight of stairs. A. rough crowd surrounded 
 the door at the foot of the stairs as two hundred and 
 thirty men passed in. An active friend, a Liverpool 
 man, and an old chartist, got them a supply of straw, 
 but there was no water in the place. I appealed to 
 the crowd. "What will you pay?' : "Nothing!' 
 explaining the circumstances, " and you must bring 
 your own pails." " I will " — said one woman in the 
 crowd. " I will " — said another. So we got water 
 enough, allowing the bringers to go up-stairs to look 
 at. the strangers, which seemed to be considered a 
 reward. At midnight, before leaving for home, I 
 took a last look at the two hundred and thirty lying 
 in rows on the floor, with one sentinel walking to 
 and fro among them, so that no one should come in. 
 So I left them to the action of the Committee on the 
 morrow. Mr. Stewart sent them £50 and gifts of 
 vegetables ; biscuit, owing to a short voyage from 
 Kutayeh, they had in plenty, which we stored in a 
 Temperance Hotel, kept by a political sympathiser. 
 Of this biscuit the Custom House (the very officers 
 ashamed of what they had to do) took as duty ten 
 per cent, weighing it on the quay as it was landed. 
 Never was I more ashamed of my country than when 
 I stood upon that quay, and had to place a cordon of 
 men to prevent the poor starvelings, Irish and others, 
 about the docks, from also stealing their percentage. 
 As the biscuit was being uncarted at the hotel, I 
 noticed two villainous-looking fellows hanging about, 
 evidently with intent to steal anything in their way.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 141 
 
 I asked them wheat they were there for, and had of 
 course a rough and saucy answer. I told them in 
 few words who and what the refugees were, and how, 
 unable to speak English, they were in a worse condi- 
 tion than any Englishmen could be ; and my two 
 villains replied that I need not be afraid of them, 
 and walked down the street with me to ask farther 
 questions. 
 
 Our Liverpool Committee worked well ; other 
 Committees were formed elsewhere ; the Poles were 
 gradually drafted to different parts of the country, 
 some obtaining employment of one sort, some of an- 
 other. They waited in vain for another chance for 
 Polish service ; and all may not eventually have re- 
 mained in England ; but I never heard complaint of 
 any one of them, and with some I had opportunities 
 for personal knowledge and personal regard. 
 
 But I was ashamed of the influential " liberals " 
 of Liverpool, and ashamed, not for the first time, of 
 the then " liberal " government of England. Two 
 years later, these dispersed patriots should have been 
 wanted for the Crimean War. 
 
 The promise of war, again giving hope to Poland, 
 brought together the refugees in London, to a public 
 meeting at the Hanover Square Rooms, on the 29th 
 of November, 1853, to celebrate the thirty-third 
 anniversary of the Polish Insurrection. It was the 
 first open recognition of English republicanism in 
 accord with European ; and the first public gather- 
 ing of representatives of European nationalities in
 
 142 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Poland's name and their own to demand help from 
 England, and to proclaim on English soil the neces- 
 sity of a new campaign against the unholy Alliance 
 of Kings. Mr. Worcell, as chief of the Polish Central 
 Committee, took the chair. He was too feeble to 
 speak, and I had to read for him the Address of the 
 Committee in English, also read by others in Polish 
 and French. Then Herzen spoke for Russia and 
 Russian sympathy with Poland. He was followed 
 by me, and then by Dr. Arnold Ruge, the German 
 member of the European Committee, speaking in 
 German. Dr. Paul Darasz, the brother of Albert 
 Darasz (but lately dead, who had been one of the 
 first members of Mazzini's European Committee), 
 spoke in French ; and Dr. Ronay, a Hungarian, 
 addressed the English part of the audience in their 
 own tongue, and then, turning to the Poles and Hun- 
 garians, spoke to them in Latin. Then two letters 
 were read from Mazzini, who was too ill to be able 
 to attend the meeting : one in English, one in 
 French read by Colonel Pianciani, who also added 
 his own speech in French. Thomas Cooper said a 
 few words for English working-men ; Ledru Rollin 
 was eloquent in French ; and the proceedings closed 
 in English from a Pole, M. Staniewicz. It was a 
 large and enthusiastic meeting, an anticipatory pro- 
 test against the mismanagement of that unhappy 
 and useless Crimean War, and notable as a promise 
 of alliance of the peoples, some day yet perhaps to 
 result in action, however unnoticed then.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 143 
 
 Something I may here say of the men who took 
 part in the meeting. Of Worcell I have already 
 spoken, and shall have to speak again. Dr. Paul 
 Darasz was a Polish physician, who escaped from a 
 Russian prison to England to join his brother Albert, 
 then dying from consumption. Albert Darasz, born 
 at Warsaw in 1808, and distinguished in the Polish 
 Insurrection of 1830, had been in exile one of the 
 most active of the Polish Democrats. Expelled from 
 France because concerned in Ledru Rollin's mani- 
 festation against Louis Napoleon's attack on Rome, 
 he came to London, there joining Mazzini on the 
 Central European Committee, and there dying on 
 the 19th of September, 1852. Arnold Ruge, another 
 exile, who had been of the party of Struve and 
 Hecker and Robert Blum, the republican party in 
 the unfortunate Frankfort Parliament, lived many 
 years in England, a man of literary ability and 
 very much respected. Dr. Ronay, a small, slight 
 man, with the look of a clergyman, I knew only 
 as a Hungarian refugee. Pianciani, a tall man of 
 soldierly bearing, with a face scarred by gunpowder, 
 was one of the most faithful and devoted of the Maz- 
 zinians. He fell, I believe, some years later, in one of 
 the many attempts for Italian freedom. Ledru Rollin, 
 the eloquent parliamentarian, but true beyond any par- 
 liamentarism, is too well known to need words of mine. 
 M. Staniewicz, an old Polish insurrectionist of 1830, 
 had since 1831 been resident in England. Of Alex- 
 ander Herzen, the Russian, there is more to be said.
 
 144 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 High-born, of a family in the highest social posi- 
 tion, the boy Herzen entered the University of Mos- 
 cow, there to hear the unforgotten name of Pestel, 
 and among the youth of the University to dream of 
 some yet possible change in Russia, — to dream of 
 it and perhaps to talk with some want of reserve. 
 When only just of age, in 1834, he was arrested (as 
 Mazzini and so many others were in the despotic 
 countries of Europe) on the all-sufficient suspicion of 
 having a patriotic disposition, and after nearly a 
 year's imprisonment was sentenced to banishment to 
 the eastern confines of Russia, there to be employed 
 in a government office, under the eyes of the police : 
 to be so kept out of mischief, and perhaps recovered 
 from the threatened error of his way. The office, 
 using his own words, " was worse than the prison." 
 However, he fulfilled his duties there and, found to 
 have exceptional talent, was at length given some 
 sort of promotion, and after a time allowed to 
 approach the neighbourhood of Moscow, still under 
 the surveillance of the police. With some personal 
 liberty he stole a visit to Moscow, where he married 
 a cousin to whom he had been engaged before his 
 banishment; and in 1839, his father being wealthy 
 and influential, he got leave to go to Petersburg, and 
 to be tempted with a place in the office for the Min- 
 ister for Home Affairs. 
 
 Again he seems to have been not careful enough 
 in speech ; and now with a remarkable mixture of 
 threat and bribe, he was given the office of Council-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 145 
 
 lor to the Regency of Novgorod, and ordered to his 
 duties there, still watched by the police. Powerful 
 friends at last obtained leave for him to resign and 
 return to Moscow. This was in 1842. By his father's 
 death he now became a rich man, and appeared to be 
 content with a studious life. Years passed in vain 
 endeavours of friends at Court to gain permission for 
 him to travel; and it was only in 1847 that, on 
 account of his wife's health, he was given a passport 
 that he might visit the German baths. Once across 
 the Russian frontier, he was free, and refused to 
 return. The Tzar would have confiscated his estates 
 but was estopped, Herzen's first care having been to 
 sell them to one Rothschild for an annuity. 
 
 With Mazzini's introduction, I had made Herzen's 
 acquaintance in Paris in 1850. In 1852 he came to 
 England and we became friends. He came to London 
 in order to found, with the help of his Polish com- 
 patriots, a free Russian Press. He was already 
 favourably known by an important work written in 
 French, On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas 
 in Russia. Hearty assistance was rendered him by 
 the Poles, who had already their printing office in 
 London, and with their propagandist help also his 
 first serial paper, the Kolokol (the Alarm Bell), and 
 later the Polar Star (a name recalling a former pub- 
 lication by Ryleieff and Bestoujeff, the companions 
 of Pestel) were spread throughout Russia, reaching 
 even to the palace of the Tzar. Herzen was the one 
 rich man of the knot of European revolutionists at
 
 146 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 that time in London. For some time he lived in a 
 pleasant country mansion, Elmfield House, at Ted- 
 dington, by the side of the Thames. I remember being 
 there on the day the news came of the death of the 
 Tzar Nicholas. The rooms were crowded with politi- 
 cal friends, Russians, Poles, Frenchmen, Germans, 
 Italians, and English, all sharing in Herzen's joy, 
 which was unbounded and almost savage. Later, in 
 1857, he and I, with Ledru Rollin and Mazzini, were 
 fellow-mourners at the grave of Worcell, Mazzini' s 
 dearest friend, dear also to all who came within his 
 sphere. There, when the coffin had to be carried 
 from the chapel to the grave, Herzen rose from his 
 seat, tears falling down his cheeks, and took his place 
 as one of the bearers. It was at once a token of affec- 
 tion for his friend, and of homage to the patriot Pole. 
 
 In person Herzen was short of stature, stoutly built, 
 in his last days inclined to corpulence, with a grand 
 head, long chestnut hair and beard, small, luminous 
 eyes, and rather ruddy complexion. Suave in his 
 manner, courteous, but with an intense power of 
 irony, witty, choice as well as ready in speech, clear, 
 concise, and impressive, he was a subtle and profound 
 thinker, with all the passionate nature of the "bar- 
 barian," yet generous and humane. He died at Paris 
 on the 21st of January, 1870, leaving a son, since 
 become a physician, and two younger daughters of 
 whom he was passionately fond. 
 
 I knew him well, having the opportunity of much 
 personal and friendly intercourse with him. He
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 147 
 
 wrote for me on Russia, in my English Republic. 
 He was helpful always to the refugees in England, 
 to the Poles as much as to his own countrymen ; in- 
 timate with Mazzini and Worcell and other chiefs of 
 exile. Hospitable, and taking pleasure in society, he 
 was a good conversationalist, with a frank and pleas- 
 ant manner. At his table I met Bakounine, the 
 "anarchist," a man to be honoured for his endeav- 
 ours to bring about a rapprochement between the 
 Poles and Russians, an object which Herzen also had 
 much at heart. Bakounine was one of the patriots 
 of '48, on the barricades at Dresden. After the 
 republican failure in that year, he suffered two years 
 in a Saxon prison, then some time in an Austrian, 
 and then, given up by Austria to Russia, was lost for 
 years in a Russian casemate. It was reported that he 
 had been chained by the neck, and that he had died in 
 his prison. But he had been sent to Siberia, whence 
 he escaped to China and passed from there through 
 America to England. I found him a strong-looking 
 man over six feet in height, cheerful and humorous, 
 laughing heartily when I told him of my having 
 written of his life and death.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Worcell ; Mazzini ; American Sympathy ; Grant. 
 
 Of Worcell I have written elsewhere {European 
 Republicans, Laurence & Bullen, London, 1892). 
 Here Herzen may speak for me. " He was a Saint, 
 and this word best expresses his dominant characteris- 
 tic. All that most strikes us in the Legends of the 
 Saints we find in him : trait for trait, with more of 
 love, with a more human element. Of a nature emi- 
 nently religious, his genius was logically wide-sighted, 
 but at the same time delicately subtle. Highly en- 
 dowed with the faculty of abstract reasoning, he 
 naturally became a profound mathematician. His 
 active and ardent mind, however, stopped not at 
 geometry and astronomy, but studied in turn all the 
 natural sciences. His erudition was prodigious. 
 Speaking, not only well but elegantly, French, Eng- 
 lish, and German, he was thoroughly acquainted with 
 modern literature. I often addressed myself to him 
 as a living cyclopedia. Conscientious in everything, 
 if he afterwards thought that he had been wrong, he 
 would next day write in correction. This mass of 
 varied knowledge, with a reflection of that certain 
 mysticism which we always meet with in the Polish 
 poets, gave a peculiar originality to his conversation 
 
 148
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 149 
 
 and to his way of looking at things. And all this, 
 science and mysticism, history and mathematics, was 
 only on the lower plane of his life. Above all was 
 his religion, the thought of his whole existence, his 
 faith in Poland. His whole soul was there, having 
 sacrificed to that cause his home happiness, his for- 
 tune, his entire life. He laboured twenty-six years, 
 in exile for the organisation of the Republican party 
 in the Polish Emigration. Overwhelmed with misfor- 
 tunes, privations, maladies, he was day and night at 
 his work, with that calm serenity, that resigned gen- 
 tleness, that candid simplicity, which a faith not to 
 be shaken gives to a great heart. No one ever heard 
 a single plaint from his mouth." 
 
 I quote from Herzen's Polar Star, preferring the 
 words of a man not more intimate with Worcell than 
 T myself was, but better qualified to appreciate him 
 completely. My own recollections entirely confirm 
 Herzen's account. 
 
 Poor, always poor, hardly supported by irregular 
 remittances from friends in Poland, his scanty means 
 shared with his yet needier compatriots, I was, while 
 in London, too sadly aware of his poverty and cogni- 
 zant of his generosity and devotedness. He was a 
 constant sufferer from asthma, and I do not recollect 
 ever seeing him at ease, except on one day, when, 
 some political object calling him from London, he 
 came to see his friend Stolzman and myself at Conis- 
 ton. There, with some difficulty getting him on the 
 fell at the back of my house, resting on the height,
 
 150 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 revived by the pure air, he said that he felt like a 
 new man. But weak or sick or in pain he was al- 
 ways ready, at any personal inconvenience, at any 
 risk, to meet the continual calls upon him for advice 
 or exertion, calls from the whole body of the Polish 
 refugees, who looked to him as a wise father. On 
 the same ground I learned to love him, loving him 
 and loved by him to his death, on the 3d of Feb- 
 ruary, 1857. 
 
 With the Polish refugees in London, with Mazzini 
 and Ledru Rollin and P. A. Taylor, Jun., the Mem- 
 ber of Parliament for Leicester (Worcell's good 
 friend), I followed to his grave in Highgate Ceme- 
 tery, the grave in which Darasz had been laid four 
 years before. Ledru Rollin and Taylor spoke over it. 
 His epitaph (from which alone I learn his age — I 
 thought he had been much older), with that of Darasz, 
 for a contemplated monument, is before me in the 
 handwriting of Kossuth. 
 
 Hie requiescit 
 quidquid mortale est 
 
 ALBERTI DARASZ 
 
 Exercitus Poloniensis Litenentis 
 
 ex ordine "virtuti militari" equitis 
 
 qui 
 
 natus anno Christi MDCCCVIII die Augusti XIX 
 
 vita decessit exsul 
 
 anno MDCCCLII.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 151 
 
 Item 
 Stanislas Worcell 
 
 qui 
 
 anno MDCCXCIX natus 
 
 ad Conventus Poloniae anno illo nostro 
 
 MDCCCXXXI publice legatus 
 
 pari fato exsul 
 
 anno MDCCCLVII die III Februarii 
 
 mortuus est 
 
 Uterque 
 
 patriae amore ardens 
 
 laboris pervicax populo devotus 
 
 in aliena quamvis arnica terra 
 
 viris delectis Poloniensium 
 
 multos annos praesidens 
 
 pro plebe populoque 
 
 Summoe libertati consulebat 
 
 Talibus Viris 
 
 propter excelsas ipsorum virtutes 
 
 propter merita ac labores 
 
 publica causa susceptos 
 
 socii eorundem exsules 
 
 necnon pluribus e gentibus 
 
 Jurium Poloniae suffragatores 
 
 sumptu communi 
 
 hie monumentuni 
 
 struxere 
 
 Of Mazzini there is little need to speak. His 
 great career, his genius, his deeds, and his worth, are 
 written on the scroll of History in characters which 
 even the inventive pen of Detraction can not now be-
 
 152 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 little. He stands, as I believe, the greatest man in 
 this nineteenth century, none greater in the years of 
 Time, the Prophet of the Future. What remains for 
 me to speak of is simply the recollections of his per- 
 sonality and of my own relations with him. I never 
 found change in him, except the change of increased 
 warmth in a growing friendship. His conversation 
 during the five years from 1843 to 1848, the years 
 in which I was oftenest with him, was always frank 
 and wise. On whatever subject he spoke, political, 
 social, or literary (English literature included), there 
 was always something to be learned from him. His 
 greeting was invariably warm and cheerful, his 
 manner that of an affectionate friend, whether in 
 general company, in his own chamber, or in my 
 house among my children. Of children he was fond. 
 Well I recollect one night leaving with him his 
 Italian School at Greville Street, Hatton-Garden, 
 when he lifted in his arms the tired child of an 
 Italian workman, and carried the boy as he would a 
 friend's son. Not merely a leader, even of the great 
 cause of Italian Freedom, his heart was tender 
 toward all sufferers, his disposition compassionate, 
 the disposition of a man who loved. He came to me 
 once with tears in his eyes, telling me of his friend 
 Stolzman, whom he had found starving, because the 
 old soldier would not even of him ask help, knowing 
 the many claims upon him of his Italians. He was 
 a man who had not only the faculty of loving, but 
 also the faculty of inspiring love. Few came under
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 153 
 
 his magnetic influence without becoming attached to 
 him ; even those who were unable to comprehend his 
 highest thoughts. Many served him for his own sake, 
 though they might not fully appreciate his faith or 
 feel any real deep interest in his purposes. 
 
 Even in America he was not without sympathisers. 
 A young Polish friend, coming to the States, enlisted 
 friends who promised to form for him an Italian 
 party. When I came to America at the end of 1866, 
 Mazzini charged me to bring them together for some 
 reality of active help, and to explain his principles 
 and views. Some of these men were dead, some I 
 spoke with. I need not name them here. They 
 had cooled ; they saw nothing to be done, they were 
 too scattered and isolated to be of use. Perhaps I 
 myself did not sufficiently persevere, was not strenu- 
 ously urgent ; but the Italian party melted away, 
 like snow on a warm morning, even as the interest 
 evoked by Kossuth in both England and America 
 had also vanished without effect. There were but 
 few exceptions. Introduced by Wendell Phillips to 
 General Rawlings, then War Secretary, very cordially 
 received by him, and by him taken to Grant, I had 
 the opportunity of speaking with, I ought rather to 
 say of speaking to, the President ; was met with 
 enough courtesy, and listened to, but with no appear- 
 ance of interest or understanding ; and came out 
 grieved and disheartened. Certainly there was no 
 help for European Republicanism in democratic Amer- 
 ica : the utmost stretch of sympathy in the United
 
 154 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 States (still I own to some few noble exceptions) 
 producing only occasional cheers for the eloquent 
 orator and a certain tolerance for unfortunate 
 refugees. Enough of a bootless complaint !
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Norwood; Colonel Reid; Babbage; Sloman; Cobden; O'Connell; 
 Frances Wright ; Owen ; Landor ; Browning ; Oastler ; Paxton ; 
 Place ; Perronet Thompson ; P. A. Taylor ; Hickson ; Ebenezer 
 Elliott ; George Dawson ; F. W. Newman ; J. H. Newman ; Epps ; 
 Bowring ; Dickens ; Holyoake ; Bradlaugh. 
 
 I return to earlier recollections. Norwood I knew 
 before the Crystal Palace was thought of, where in- 
 deed was a wood, a rare place for the entomologist, 
 where in my boyish days I made collections of butter- 
 flies, dragon-flies and beetles. Of many men and women 
 crossing my path in maturer years, who came " like 
 shadows " and so departed, I can recall the names, 
 but little more. For Colonel Reid, a gaunt Scotch- 
 man, the author of the Law of Storms, a work which 
 antedated the work of Maury, I did the first engrav- 
 ing on my own account, cuts of wrecks and wind- 
 driven ships, designed by Duncan. With a strange 
 sort of unusual fitness for place, Reid became the gover- 
 nor of the " vexed Bermoothes." Babbage, of the 
 Calculating Machine, I saw once at a Conversazione 
 of the Graphic Club, held at the London University. 
 I thought he looked like a man to be always at war 
 with the Italian organists. Sloman, a Jew composer, 
 and a popular singer, I have heard and talked with 
 at Evans' in Covent-Garden, like the " Cider Cel- 
 
 155
 
 156 THREESCOKE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 lars " a rare place for drink and song in late hours 
 after the theatres. Very late out of Evans' it was a 
 sight to watch the country waggons coming in with 
 vegetables to the early market : a sight worth wait- 
 ing: for. Cobden and O'Connell I have heard at 
 the Corn Law League in Covent-Garden Theatre. 
 There was no chance of hearing them in the Borough 
 of Finsbury, where they would have been met by 
 the chartist cry of " Manhood Suffrage and political 
 freedom even before cheap bread ! ' Foresti, Silvio 
 Pellico's fellow-prisoner at Spielberg, after his release, 
 wrote to me from America. They said that his first 
 inquiry on coming out of Spielberg was concerning 
 Mazzini. Frances Wright (Madame d'Arusmont), the 
 author of A Few Days at Athens, one of Owen's 
 New Harmony people, a rather handsome woman 
 who had the look of being six feet high, I heard 
 lecture on her return from America, and I occasion- 
 ally met her. Robert Owen, too, I would sometimes 
 meet. There was no magnetic influence from him, a 
 man of one idea, unpoetic, without a spark of imagi- 
 nation, very wearisome in his singular capacity for 
 reiteration. 
 
 Landor I never saw, though I had many friendly 
 letters from him, contributions also to my English 
 Pejmblic, and to Pen and Pencil, a weekly illus- 
 trated newspaper which had a brief existence of a 
 few weeks under my editing and art management, 
 in 1854 or 1855. When, resolute not to pay the 
 damages cast against him in a trial for libel, a libel
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 157 
 
 which the quick-tempered old poet ought not to have 
 uttered, although indeed it was not uncalled for, 
 Landor sold off all he had and quitted England to 
 end his days in Italy, he left in my hands a pile of 
 leaflets to be distributed in justification of his action. 
 It was really a repetition of the libel, and, thinking 
 such a course unworthy of so great a man, I burned 
 the leaflets, every one. Some while after he sent to 
 Browning, as a present for me, a large picture he 
 supposed to be by Michael Angelo. Landor at one 
 time had a large collection of pictures, supposed to 
 be genuine, but seldom if ever of any worth. This 
 " Angelo " might be of that sort. I called on 
 Browning (the only time I ever saw him) to look at 
 and to speak about the picture. It was a " Last 
 Judgment," a poor and very unpleasant composition, 
 too large and too unpleasant to be hung in a private 
 house, a gift as of a white elephant, neither to be 
 accepted nor refused. I got out of the difficulty by 
 Browning; telling; me that the old man had no right 
 to give it, as all his " belongings " really belonged to 
 his brother, Robert Landor, on whom Walter Savage 
 was living;. So Browning; took charg;e of the ele- 
 pliant and relieved me. 
 
 Richard Oastler I once met in Hethering;ton's 
 shop ; a tall, burly, Yorkshire man, with strangely 
 protruding eyes, a stout Tory, but stronger as a 
 factory-reformer. Rowland Hill, to whom we owe 
 the penny postage, I spoke with once, on some news- 
 paper business. With Sir Joseph Paxton, of the
 
 158 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Crystal Palace, who had been the Duke of Devon- 
 shire's head-gardener at Chatsworth, I once also had 
 an interview. It was to obtain his interest and help 
 for, I believe, Pen and Pencil. He received me 
 courteously, but could afford me at most a few 
 minutes, pointing to the clock on the chimney-piece 
 against which he stood ; then detained me nearly an 
 hour to tell me of his heavy losses on the Daily News 
 and the useless expense of Dickens' editorship of 
 that paper. Francis Place, the Westminster tailor 
 who returned two members to Parliament, for he 
 was a power in Westminster, and Sir Francis Bur- 
 dett and John Cam Hobhouse both owed their elec- 
 tion to his influence, a fierce Malthusian with a large 
 family, was an old man when I knew him. I used 
 to consult him when I wanted advice as to getting 
 up a public meeting. Colonel Perronet Thompson 
 was the first public speaker I ever heard, it was at a 
 Polish meeting. I came to know him in the Peoples' 
 International League. It was only in quite his later 
 days that he was made a General. His radical prin- 
 ciples stood in his way, though he had been Governor 
 of Sierra Leone. I have understood that he had ex- 
 pended more than £30,000 in advocacy of liberal 
 measures. As proprietor and editor of the Westmin- 
 ster Review in its best days, he was one of the earliest 
 and most important promoters of the agitation against 
 the Corn Laws. I recollect, as far back as in the 
 time of my apprenticeship, a cut in the Westminster 
 Review in sharp illustration of the effect of those
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 159 
 
 laws, drawn by Thomas Landseer and engraved by 
 Bonner, a cut of a cage of monkeys, every monkey 
 struggling to get his neighbour's food from the 
 trough in front of them. A widely accomplished 
 man was the Colonel ; his five volumes of Political 
 Exercises (which he gave me), mainly reprints from 
 the Eeview, are among the best of political writings 
 that I know. P. A. Taylor, with whom also I was 
 acquainted, the father of the Member of Parliament, 
 of the firm of Courtauld, Taylor, & Courtauld, silk- 
 manufacturers, was also one of the first Anti-Corn- 
 Law men. Thompson, Taylor, and W. E. Hickson 
 (who succeeded Thompson as proprietor of the West- 
 minster), with Ebenezer Elliott, the " Corn-Law 
 Rhymer," deserve to rank in that movement as 
 precursors and preparers of the way of Bright and 
 Cobden. 
 
 For George Dawson, the popular lecturer and 
 preacher, I wrote a series of leaders in his newspaper, 
 the Birmingham Journal. A fluent and good orator, 
 though not great, I used to think his manner had 
 been too much affected by his early education as 
 show-boy at prize-exhibitions of his father's school. 
 He was not an original thinker, but did very good 
 work in popularising Carlyle, and in general politics, 
 always frankly at the public service, with or without 
 pay. Another good man on the popular side was 
 Francis William Newman, the brother of the Cardi- 
 nal, not a man of the same high genius, but a man 
 of culture and fine thought, with excellent sympa-
 
 160 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 thies and intentions, but, as it seemed to me, hesitat- 
 ing in action and always appearing to doubt if his 
 accepted course had been really right in politics. 
 He, I used to think, ought to have stooped under the 
 yoke of the Roman Church, and John Henry to have 
 stood upright as a leader of progress, which he might 
 have been. Good also, and always prompt on the 
 public ground, was Dr. John Epps, a homoeopathic 
 physician, whose father, having made a fortune by 
 what the French call charcuterie, sent his eldest son 
 John to College. We spoke laughingly, not, however, 
 with disrespect, of him as the " Homoeopathic Napo- 
 leon," his stature and figure and accustomed posture 
 reminding one of the " Little Corporal." He was a 
 ready, if not an eloquent speaker, too often mixing 
 the hygienic with the political, a plain, sound teacher 
 whose heart was in his speech, a good and sincere 
 liberal. Dr. Bo wring was another man to be depended 
 on in any proceedings toward reform. I saw him 
 often on public questions, once breakfasted with him 
 at his house in Queen Square, Westminster, and had 
 pleasant meeting with him, after his return from 
 China. There was a little of the Girondist, of the 
 pedagogue about him, and I have no faith in his 
 too facile translations ; but he was a good citizen 
 and a man to be respected. 
 
 I had not the same respect for Charles Dickens. 
 For all his genius as a novelist, I have always 
 thought that his real vocation was as an actor of low 
 comedy, much as the world might have lost by such
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 161 
 
 a change. Warm-hearted and sentimental, but not 
 unselfish, he was not the gentleman. There was no 
 grace of manner, no soul of nobility in him. When 
 he and Wilkie Collins and Wills (the editor of House- 
 hold Words) went out, taking Dickens' doctor with 
 them, to eat " the most expensive dinner they could 
 get," it was an action that marked the Amphytrion 
 of the feast, if not the others also. It is an unpleas- 
 ant anecdote, but it was told me by the doctor him- 
 self, who had to prescribe for all three next day. 
 The doctor's fees of course would be reckoned as part 
 of the expensiveness of the dinner. Other things I 
 knew of Dickens make me rate him as far inferior as 
 a man (indeed I would also place him as a writer) to 
 Thackeray. I knew two of Dickens' uncles, both 
 named Barrow : the one a draftsman on wood, who 
 did much work for me, the other, who had been in 
 India, a literary man and editor of an unsuccessful 
 paper, the Mirror of Parliament, projected and pro- 
 vided for by Spottiswood, the Queen's Printer. Spot- 
 tiswoocl was also proprietor of the Pictorial Times, 
 an opposition to the Illustrated London News, and 
 Barrow introduced me to him, as he wanted some 
 change and improvement in the paper. I was offered 
 a partnership as artistic editor, but had to decline 
 the offer, as I did not feel that under the proposed 
 agreement I should be free in my department. Not 
 long afterwards I heard that the paper had been 
 given up after a loss of £10,000. The copyright 
 was bought by Ingrain for £100. 
 
 M
 
 162 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Of two men with whom I had relations, George 
 Jacob Holyoake and Charles Bradlaugh, I must now 
 speak, that I may not be thought afraid to do so : 
 not afraid, but indeed unwilling so far as concerns 
 Holyoake, with whom for some years I had close 
 connection. He began his public life by a foolish 
 provocation of prosecution for blasphemy, thereby 
 gaining such credit and notoriety as might be due 
 to the "Last Martyr for Atheism." With such 
 object in view, the martyrdom was of small account; 
 but, taken as only the rash impulsiveness of an over- 
 earnest young man, it gave him admittance to the 
 ranks of lovers of free thought. So welcomed and 
 made much of, he worked himself up to be the leader 
 of a party, the party of those who considered free- 
 thought and disbelief to be synonymous terms, who 
 may indeed be likened to the bird which, escaping 
 from its cage, perches on the next tree, not knowing 
 how nor caring to attempt a farther flight, and 
 whose monotonous song is merely the contented 
 inane reiteration of " I am free." Looking back 
 upon Holyoake 's work, I can give no better account 
 of it so far as free thought was concerned. But 
 independently of that, he had place among us for 
 his adhesion to the principles of the Charter, and 
 for some aidance in the cooperative endeavours of 
 the time : not by any means of the importance 
 which he now claims for himself. And he was 
 liked as a kindly-natured, amiable man. So he 
 made his way, a poor speaker, though not wanting
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 163 
 
 words, not so much leading or swaying an audience 
 as expressing what it desired to hear, and therefore 
 popular, — the mouthpiece of a party that only 
 wanted to be encouraged on its predetermined road. 
 Looking back, I find in his writing in his paper — 
 the Reasoner — little of original thought or sound 
 reasoning. Half-educated and weak, he never grew. 
 Yet after a time he was dissatisfied. Staying in my 
 house at Miteside for some days, seeing his state of 
 doubtfulness, I counseled him to make his condition 
 of health an excuse for discontinuing the Reasoner 
 for a few weeks, to give him time to seriously sift 
 his own mind. " If," I said, "you find yourself still 
 convinced of the righteousness and usefulness of 
 your course, you have sufficient hold on your 
 followers to resume work, all the better for your 
 rest ; if, on the other hand, you find your path is 
 really tending nowhere, be brave enough to abandon 
 it, and apply your future differently!" He did not 
 follow my advice, but long afterwards said that he 
 wished he had. 
 
 In fact, he was getting weary of the poor reitera- 
 tion of Atheism, the word standing between him 
 and friends who could not recognise him openly 
 under such a garment. So at last he doffed the 
 unseemliness and put on what seemed the more 
 respectable garb of " Secularism," rather a vague 
 term which did not too exactly describe his still-con- 
 tinued nibblings at religious theories and wranglings 
 upon theological formulas. I began to find him
 
 164 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 inconsistent and slippery ; and when, as it seemed 
 to me, he was also false to the popular cause, and 
 only self-seeking, I parted from him, not without 
 harsh words which even now, rereading them, I can 
 not honestly call back or soften. 
 
 Bradlaugh was a very different man. Sturdy and 
 conscientious, meaning all he said, and never afraid 
 to say what he meant. I had little sympathy with 
 his irreligious opinions, nor do I know that there 
 was more than occasional agreement between us on 
 political grounds. But I had never any reason to 
 do other than respect him. I take it that sheer 
 want of the imaginative faculty was at the base of 
 his theory of disbelief. It was not in his nature to 
 believe, certainly not in the supernatural. But it 
 was in his nature to take an active part in what lay 
 around him, and to stoutly contend against whatever 
 he thought wrong in theory or practice ; and he was 
 true to his nature, whether as iconoclast or reformer. 
 There seemed an indication of something else in his 
 affection for the companion of his early days, James 
 Thomson, the poet (true poet) of the City of Dread- 
 ful Night, and in Thomson's affection for him. Cer- 
 tainly it should be said that this indefatigable 
 iconoclast was a kindly-natured man, as one may be 
 even if a born fighter. And he was a man who 
 made the best of himself ; to whom, I would say, 
 self-culture, if only to train him for the fight (and 
 who shall dare even so to narrow his motives ?) was 
 felt as a duty. Unlike the man of whom I have
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 165 
 
 just spoken, there was growth in him. I had not 
 heard him for years when, being in England, I was 
 asked by an American friend to take him to hear a 
 lecture by Bradlaugh. We went, were much pleased 
 with the lecturer, and for myself, I was surprised at 
 a notable improvement in both oratory and manner. 
 Had he lived, I believe he would have made a 
 distinguished record as Member of Parliament, — 
 courageous, persistent, indomitable, and of strict 
 integrity. So I judge him, differing to to coelo from 
 him on the ground of life and action.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Ruskin ; John Forster ; Robson ; Derwent Coleridge ; Wordsworth ; 
 Dr. Davy; Harriet Martineau; Mrs. Millner Gibson; Mediums; 
 Dupotet ; Kossuth; Medici; Ronge ; The Hills; Mrs. Craik; 
 Dobell ; Rossetti ; Swinburne ; Barmby ; Thom ; The Chartist 
 Epic ; Robert Montgomery ; Lover ; G. S. Phillips ; Hughes ; 
 Mayne Reid. 
 
 I can keep no sort of order in these reminiscences. 
 Ruskin I saw but once, then by appointment in the 
 shop of Ellis, the bookseller, in King Street, Covent- 
 Garden : a very pleasant meeting. The purchase of 
 Brantwood was pleasantly arranged in a couple of 
 letters. But I knew of him not only through my 
 admiration for his writings (admiring him as The 
 Poet, beyond all verse-makers of his time, and for 
 the keen political insight of his at first so much mis- 
 understood book, Unto TJds Last), but farther as a 
 man of the noblest nature. I knew from W. B. 
 Scott, very friendly with him until differing views of 
 artistic teaching (at the Workingmen's College and 
 elsewhere) sundered them, of his great life and gen- 
 erosities. Scott, no doubt, was right on the Art 
 question. Forster of the Examiner, whom Thornton 
 Hunt labeled as the " Beadle of the Universe " on 
 account of his pomposity, I met only at a conversa- 
 zione ; but I wrote occasionally in the Examiner ; 
 
 on one occasion a whole page of review with transla- 
 te
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 167 
 
 tions of Victor Hugo's Chatiments, for which my 
 only honorarium was a note of admiration from Lan- 
 dor, and Hugo's photograph sent to me by the great 
 Frenchman. Of Forster's Life of Sir John Eliot I 
 possess a copy given me by my friend John Robson, 
 the printer of the book, a printer not only excellent 
 in his own art, but a man of various accomplish- 
 ments, a Greek and Latin scholar, not unacquainted 
 with Hebrew, and a collaborator with Dyce in the 
 preparation of Dyce's edition of Shakspere. With 
 the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, the brother of Hartley, 
 I once spent a delightful day at Keswick and walking 
 over Blencathra (Saddleback, from its form), the 
 nearest mountain to Skiddaw. He appeared to me a 
 sensible, well-informed, genial, and liberal clergyman, 
 hardly deserving to be girded at by Carlyle because 
 he was too wise a man not to get on better in the 
 world than his brother or his father. But the get- 
 ting on in the world was itself the offence to Carlyle. 
 (Duffy's Conversations, p. 60.) Wordsworth, though 
 I lived in the Lake Country, I never saw. Miteside 
 was far away from Rydale across the mountains, and 
 he died in 1850, before I had come within his reach 
 from Brantwood. Perhaps I had not cared to visit 
 him, not sure how he might receive the Chartist and 
 Republican, for I could not forget what I had been 
 told by Margaret Gillies, the miniature-painter, who 
 was staying at Rydale to take Wordsworth's portrait 
 when the news came of Frost's reprieve : that the old 
 Northman stamped his foot with vexation and rage.
 
 168 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Professor Wilson was much oftener talked of than 
 Wordsworth, and was evidently much more in the 
 hearts and remembrance of the Lake folk. So, 
 indeed, was poor Hartley Coleridge. They were 
 before my time, as certainly was Sir Humphrey 
 Davy ; but I dined once at the Swan at Grasmere, 
 in company with my good Coniston doctor, Mr. Gib- 
 son, with Sir Humphrey's brother, Dr. Davy, at a 
 doctors' dinner. 
 
 At Brantwood I was near enough to Ambleside to 
 visit Harriet Martineau, and to be visited by her. 
 Plain and, judging from her portraits, far from pre- 
 possessing in her young days, she had become with 
 age a good-looking, comely, interesting old lady, very 
 deaf, but cheerful and eager for news, which she did 
 not always catch correctly. With all her manly self- 
 dependence and strict intentional honesty, with all 
 her credit for practical common sense, she was as 
 much a poet at heart as her brother, the Rev. James ; 
 a romancer even in the region of economical facts, 
 even in those hard Poor Law Tales, when under Lord 
 Brougham she was preparing to prove the necessity 
 for the Poor Law Amendment Act, that crowning 
 harshness of Whig rule. She has never had justice 
 done to her on this ground of romance. It matters 
 little: if she did find Cumberland cheeses so hard 
 that they struck fire as they rolled down the rocks, 
 and the peasant girls indulging in an excess of 
 jewelry, we are still justified in esteeming her as a 
 true and brave woman. Another grand woman I had
 
 EECOLLECTIONS 169 
 
 the honour of knowing was Mrs. Millner Gibson, a 
 staunch Liberal, her house a centre and place of ren- 
 dezvous for Liberals, a firm friend of Mazzini and 
 Italian freedom. She, too, like Harriet Martineau, 
 had her weak spot of credence for some things not 
 " dreamed of in your philosophy." At the next house 
 to hers, that of Dr. Ashburner, by Hyde Park Corner, 
 I was with her at a reception given to that chief 
 of humbugs, the American medium, Foster. Various 
 were his tricks, but none convincing to the unpre- 
 pared. Going from the exhibition-room into another, 
 I there saw Mrs. Gibson, Sir Emerson Tennant, and 
 a third person, watching a round table that, with its 
 legs in the air, was expected to lift itself and turn 
 over to a normal position. I did not wait to see the 
 accomplishment. Another fraud even more trans- 
 parent than Foster was a Mrs. Marshall, a rather low- 
 lived medium and table-rapper, who allowed you to 
 look under the table because there was " nothing but 
 wacancy there." She gave me messages from a dead 
 (never-living) brother, whose name I led to ; and was 
 plainly disposed to be fooled by or to fool her visitors 
 to the top of their bent. Once, many years before, 
 I had been present at a seance given by the French 
 magnetist, the Baron Dupotet, when the power of 
 magnetic passes was fairly exhibited on two young 
 girls, Dupotet' s patients. Unless my recollection 
 deceives me, there were present Mrs. Trollope and 
 a deaf son, his deafness apparently lost while under 
 the magnetic influence.
 
 170 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Kossuth's oratory I never heard, but with my 
 friend Worcell I spent some hours with him one 
 morning, and was pleased with his suavity and bright 
 conversation. Medici, a tall, handsome, soldierly- 
 looking man, one of the heroes of the defence of 
 Rome, afterwards under Victor Emmanuel Governor 
 of Sicily, I had met at an evening reception in London. 
 Thiers, a mean old clothes-man in appearance, passed 
 me once at the entrance of the Chamber of Deputies 
 in Paris, followed immediately by General Cavaignac. 
 I could not repress a wish that the tall, grim soldier 
 would pick up the historic liar and fling the noisome 
 thing to the ground. Not even for Louis Napoleon 
 have I felt more abhorrence than for Thiers, the 
 woman-massacrer in those sadly mistaken days of the 
 Commune. Johannes Ronge, a sort of mild Luther, 
 I knew slightly. He spent some time at the house 
 of my friend Scott in Newcastle ; and sorely grieved 
 the heart of Mrs. Scott's mother, as the old lady her- 
 self told me, by his excessive addiction to cold water, 
 hanging out his wet sheets of a morning to dry on 
 the rail at the stair-top. A worthy enough man, 
 well meaning, but with far too high an opinion of his 
 own importance in the world's work. His wife ap- 
 peared to be a sensible and estimable woman. She 
 kept at one time a kindergarten in London. Mrs. 
 Hill, a daughter of Dr. Southwood Smith, the wife 
 of the editor of an extreme free-thought paper at 
 Wisbeach, the Star in the East, I knew well; and 
 knew also, when they were children, her five daugh-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 171 
 
 ters, five or six. One of them was Octavia Hill, 
 since prominent in good work. Another married a 
 son of G. H. Lewes. 
 
 With Dinah Muloch, afterwards Mrs. Craik, I was 
 also well acquainted, an over-tall and in younger 
 days somewhat spindly woman, not beautiful, but 
 good, the goodness flavouring all her writings. At 
 her house at Hampstead I met Sidney Dobell, a 
 pleasant, gentlemanly young fellow, the author of 
 Balder. Once at Dante Rossetti's rooms in Chatham 
 Place, by Blackfriar's Bridge, I think in 1861, I met 
 Swinburne, then a young man, but looking like a 
 boy, and with a boyish manner, jumping about as he 
 became excited in speaking, yet interesting and at- 
 tractive. For Rossetti I had great regard, though I 
 saw not much of him. He seemed to me to be rather 
 an Italian than an Englishman ; an Italian of the 
 time of the Medici, not without thoughts and super- 
 stitions of that period, a man of genius both in art 
 and literature ; one, however, hindering the other, the 
 literary preponderating, and by which he will be best 
 recollected. His poems will surely last ; and there 
 are no finer translations extant than his from the 
 Italian, of " Dante and his Circle" I find him fully 
 and fairly noticed in the Autobiographical Notes of 
 W. B. Scott ; so fully that I need not attempt addition 
 to his record. Powerful, subtle, and highly imagina- 
 tive, Rossetti's poems are the very antithesis of those 
 of Charles Mackay, whom I knew, of Eliza Cook, 
 whom I never met, or of Martin Farquhar Tupper, to
 
 172 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 whom I was introduced at the opening of Mudie's 
 Lending Library, and whom I might have passed as 
 a most respectable grocer and possible churchwarden. 
 More poetic than Tapper, not only in appearance, 
 was Goodwyn Barmby, who in his callow days was 
 a very earnest itinerant all-on-his-own-hook preacher 
 of a sort of socialism ; but who, after much well-borne 
 buffeting, settled down as a quiet and respectable 
 Unitarian minister at Pontefact, in Yorkshire, where 
 he married for his second wife the daughter of the 
 Governor of the Gaol. We were always friendly, and 
 he came across the country to visit me at Brantwood, 
 and to show how little he had changed except in 
 outer clerical appearance. He offered me the use of 
 his pulpit ; but I never had the opportunity of ac- 
 cepting his offer. Truly a poet, albeit in a small 
 Burns-diluted way, was poor Willie Thorn, an Inver- 
 urie weaver, a little man with a club-foot, who was 
 seduced to come on a poetic pilgrimage to London, 
 somewhere about 1844, meeting there at first with 
 much congratulation, public dinners, pattings on the 
 back, and kindness, from Dickens, the Howitts, Fox, 
 Eliza Cook, and others, but with no success in his search 
 for literary employment, for which indeed he had little 
 capacity. That a poor untaught weaver should have 
 written so well, was his sole recommendation. An 
 amiable, weak man, he met with much personal 
 favour ; but what could be done with him or for him ? 
 Disappointed, with the help of Fox, who was a good 
 friend to him, and at whose house I first met him, he
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 173 
 
 returned to Scotland to die outside of the gates of 
 Fame. Friendly patronage could do no more. 
 
 Such ineffectual fostering brings before me the 
 name of Capel Lofft, the patron of Kirke White ! A 
 nephew of Lofft, of the same name (I believe he was 
 a barrister in Gray's Inn), wrote and printed an 
 " epic " poem. The poem being " Chartist," I suppose 
 was the occasion of my hearing of it, and I asked for 
 and obtained a copy. It was a strange jumble of 
 blank, very blank, verse and rhyme : the speeches 
 being rhyme, the descriptive portions in unrhymed 
 lengths. The story was of an imaginary attempt 
 at revolution in England, headed by one "Ernest," a 
 young enthusiast whose part was that of " King 
 Arthur come again," and who, winning one battle 
 against the opponent nobles, in the moment of vic- 
 tory disappears, Arthur like, when the successful 
 rebels would proclaim him king : the whole story 
 reading like a romance of the German " Peasants' 
 War," with a more fortunate but most unlikely re- 
 sult. Hardly had the book appeared, and been 
 noticed not unfavourably by the Quarterly Revieio, 
 when the author, fearing it was too potent an incite- 
 ment to rebellion, called in all the copies and with- 
 drew from the notoriety he had begun to provoke. 
 Fox, unable to get a copy, asked to borrow mine. 
 When I handed it to him he remarked, " Do not expect 
 to have this back again ! I have lost so many books 
 by lending, that now I never think of returning those 
 I borrow. I lent some volumes to Southwood Smith.
 
 174 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 He never returned them, but one day when I was din- 
 ing with him, he pointed them out to me in his library, 
 and bade me notice how well he had had them bound." 
 Of course, so warned, I had my book back in due time. 
 I have never seen another copy. It is one of the 
 curiosities of literature. 
 
 The Rev. Robert Montgomery, the author of Satan, 
 once consulted me concerning the illustrating of 
 another of his great poems, Woman. He was a 
 handsome and popular clergyman, full of words, but 
 his poetic gift perhaps fairly to be estimated from 
 some lines in The Real DeviVs Walk, a rather lengthy 
 imitation of Coleridge's. Montgomery meets the Devil 
 in Piccadilly ; and they pass without greeting, for 
 
 "Montgomery knew nothing of Satan, 
 Though Satan knew Montgomery." 
 
 Lover, a poorer Moore, not so prolific, but perhaps 
 more genuine, I once heard sing one of his songs — 
 " What would you do ? Love ! " to his own accompani- 
 ment. He struck me only as a pleasant little man of 
 society, of not much weight. Not at all a man of society 
 was G. S. Phillips, with whom I spent some hours in 
 Hucldersfield, where he was Secretary to a Mechanics' 
 Institute. I knew him from his writing some fresh and 
 brightly clever articles on Sherwood Forest in Lees' 
 Present Age, in which he wrote over the pseudonym 
 of " January Searle." He was a tall, good-looking, 
 earnest, or rather impulsive man, who would, I 
 should think, make friends quickly and perhaps not
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 175 
 
 keep them. Scott, hearing something of him, wrote 
 to invite him to Newcastle. He meaned to take him 
 to some philosophical meeting; but the appointed 
 evening arrived, and no Phillips. Too late for the 
 meeting came a brief note to say that he, Phillips, 
 had found a pleasant fellow-traveler on the train, 
 and they two were enjoying themselves at the Turk's 
 Head, or other Newcastle hotel, and would Scott 
 join them there ? I knew no more of him till he 
 called upon me in New York. I did not care to keep 
 up the accmaintance. He had taken to drink, and 
 the last I heard of him was of his being in an asylum. 
 Hughes, the author of Tom Broivns Schooldays, I 
 used to see while engraving Richard Doyle's designs 
 tor Scouring the White Horse, for Macmillan. Mayne 
 Reid I met once at the office of the Illustrated 
 London News.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Millais and other Artists ; The Foggos ; Wornum ; Sibson ; Tom 
 Landseer; George Cruikshank ; Tennyson; Orsini ; Kiallmark; 
 Richard Lane ; Flatou ; Garth Wilkinson ; Gilchrist ; Linnell ; 
 Sykes. 
 
 To continue the catalogue of names of those whom 
 I have known, more or less, before I left London for 
 the North, or while I was living in the North, or at 
 a time of some few years when I was seeking to 
 establish myself again in London, I may add to the 
 list already given of artist acquaintances or friends — 
 Millais, whom I recollect as a young Apollo, supremely 
 handsome ; Whistler, always eccentric ; Boughton ; 
 Madox Brown ; Munro, Durham, and Patric Park, 
 three sculptors; E. M. Ward, and his wife, also a 
 painter and not inferior to her husband (she was the 
 daughter of G. R. Ward, the mezzotint engraver) ; 
 the two brothers Foggo, George and James, two 
 gaunt Scotchmen, painters of large unsuccessful his- 
 torical figure subjects, long since gone out of sight. 
 One of the brothers, I forget which, had a habit of 
 twitching or wriggling his nose, a habit also notice- 
 able in another gaunt Scotchman, Lord Brougham. 
 It was said that this Foggo and his lordship were 
 once opponent speakers at a public meeting, and the 
 noses of the two men, alike in general personal 
 
 176
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 177 
 
 appearance, wagged against each other, to the great 
 amusement of the beholders. I only knew the 
 Foggos, worthy men, I believe, if not successful 
 painters, as rather captious members of the Insti- 
 tute of Fine Arts, at which we were often in col- 
 lision. Wornum, Scott's and Sibson's friend, I also 
 knew there. For a meeting of the Institute in the 
 Rooms of the Society of Arts, Wornum had pre- 
 pared a lecture on "Roman Coins"; but when the 
 hour came was too modest or wanting in self-con- 
 fidence to deliver it. As a member of the Council, 
 it fell to me to deliver it for him. At another 
 similar meeting I read a paper on Thomas Sibson, 
 then recently dead, a paper partly my own, partly 
 by Scott, and I then exhibited his designs for the 
 History of England, the only time they have been 
 seen in public. 
 
 Tom Landseer, the engraver, I recollect as a short, 
 broad-shouldered, deaf man, the eldest, and, to my 
 thinking, the most talented of the three Landseer 
 brothers, his Monkey ana, or " Men in Miniature," 
 only etchings as they were, and his other etchings 
 of animals, evincing more originality and vigour of 
 drawing than is to be seen in the excellently painted 
 pictures of the more famous Sir Edwin, the Sir 
 Thomas Lawrence of animal life. 
 
 George Cruikshank was a well-built, good-looking, 
 good-natured, impulsive man, a bluff speaker who 
 could call a spade a spade. I had had a dispute 
 with a publisher as to my charge for engraving one 
 
 N
 
 178 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 of Cruikshank's drawings, and it was thought that 
 I might be influenced by a remark that Mr. Cruik- 
 shank deemed my price too high. I replied that it 
 was no business of his ; but the next time I saw him 
 I asked him why he had so interfered. " My dear 
 Linton," was his answer, "the publisher is a liar." 
 Once at the Artists' Annuity Fund, a society to 
 which we both belonged, a meeting was held to 
 consider the expulsion of a defaulting officer. In 
 the midst of a discussion as to whether the defaulter 
 should be prosecuted, Cruikshank entered the room. 
 He had heard nothing of what had passed, but when 
 he caught the drift of the argument, his pity for the 
 delinquent, a man we had all liked as well as trusted, 
 led him to protest against the intended action. 
 " We must not be hard on the poor man, and as to 
 thinking him without means of defence, how did we 
 know he was not supplied with our own moneys?" 
 The general laugh did not disconcert him. It was 
 as innocently uttered as the comment of the man at 
 the Tichbourne trial — " He didn't care whether he 
 was Sir Roger or not, but he could not bear to see a 
 poor man robbed of his rights." In his later years 
 Cruikshank was a rigid teetotaler, devoting his 
 artistic power to the advocacy of temperance. It 
 was not unfairly said that it was time for him to 
 abstain, as he certainly had enjoyed a full man's 
 share of drink. 
 
 During my ownership of Brantwood, but while I 
 was resident in London, Tennyson was for a sum-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 179 
 
 mer at Coniston, with his family occupying "Tent 
 Lodge," near the Waterhead, the house in which 
 usually lived the Misses Romney. Tennyson was 
 reported to have had a cross chalked on the gate, 
 that he might not miss it at night under the dark 
 tree-shadows. While I was living at Brantwood, a 
 visit to Joseph Cowen at Blaydon made me ac- 
 quainted with Orsini, at Cowen' s, after his escape 
 from an Austrian prison. A fine-looking man, hand- 
 some, energetic, and pleasant in manner, I heard 
 him lecture on Italy at the Blaydon Mechanics' Insti- 
 tute, and saw him again at my temporary lodging in 
 London. He called on me there to take leave, with 
 one Dr. Bernard, a French socialist, whom I knew to 
 be an extremist. I seemed to forebode some unlucky 
 adventure, little however supposing what were his 
 intentions. I take it, that his plan of action was 
 motived not by any care not to endanger himself, 
 but by a propensity to cleverness. A brave man, 
 thoroughly in earnest, he was not above a certain 
 hankering for applause. Returned to London, I had 
 pleasant intimacy with the Kiallmarks, near neigh- 
 bours : Mr. Kiallmark, a most amiable man, an ac- 
 complished musician and improvisatore on the piano, 
 the son of a Danish composer. I was also on friendly 
 terms with the family of Richard Lane, the brother 
 of Edward Lane, the Egyptologist. Richard Lane 
 was an excellent etcher, and known also for his litho- 
 graphic portraits from the painting of Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence. The eldest of Lane's three fair daughters,
 
 180 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 a charming woman, was a first-rate flower-painter, 
 her talent perhaps inherited from Gainsborough, to 
 whom, either on the father's or the mother's side, 
 she was related. Woolner I once saw, in his studio. 
 Dining with Alexander Johnston, a painter after the 
 fashion of Wilkie, I met a picture dealer named 
 Flatou, who to his knowledge of pictures added a 
 rare faculty of mimicry, and who was also a ventri- 
 loquist. He entertained us at dinner with admirable 
 specimens of various English dialects, and afterwards, 
 taking his seat in the next room, gave a conversation 
 between two lovers from Fra Diavolo, a piece then 
 being acted at Fechter's Theatre, imitating Fechter's 
 peculiar accent ; and on coining into the drawing- 
 room amused us with ventriloquism. He had the 
 wisdom, or it may have been from real love of Art, 
 to insist on having the oil sketches of pictures he 
 bought, and the sketches he kept for himself, a beau- 
 tiful collection in his own house. It was told of 
 him, that one day going into the country for a first 
 view of some artist's pictures, he telegraphed for a 
 carriage to take him to the artist's house at some dis- 
 tance from the station. At the station he found that 
 a rival dealer already occupied the only conveyance, 
 and refused to give up his place. So they drove 
 together to the artist's house, where Flatou was first 
 to alight, sending in his card as " Mr. Flatou and 
 friend." The friend did not get sight of the pictures 
 till Flatou had made his way. 
 
 I have visited at the house of Marston, the play-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 181 
 
 wright, the father of Philip Bourke Marston, the 
 blind poet ; and at that of De Morgan, the actuary, 
 whose wife was a spiritualist, and had a craze of 
 stones being thrown at her by the spirits as she 
 passed a certain house. Dr. Garth Wilkinson, the 
 amiable physician, I knew well. A Sweclenborgian, 
 he too had a touch of the spiritualist malady, which 
 brought out a volume of inspired poems, outside the 
 ordinary laws of poetic form. I had to thank him 
 for an introduction to Emerson, who, when in Eng- 
 land, had been attracted by him. With Gilchrist I 
 worked on his Life of Blake, having to get up the 
 illustrations. So one Sunday I went with Gilchrist 
 to see Linnell at his house near Red Hill. The old 
 man gave us dinner in a large, barely-furnished room 
 at a long deal table — deal or oak, at which he and 
 his wife and daughter and two of his three sons sat 
 down at irregular intervals of time and place ; and 
 after dinner we were shown his Blake treasures, his 
 portrait of Blake, the original drawings for the Book 
 of Job, proof impressions of the plates, and Blake's 
 designs for Dante, — taking care not to leave us 
 alone with any. The Dante designs, some mere 
 scrawls, some highly finished and coloured, were 
 drawn in a large book, which Linnell had given to 
 Blake that he might make use of it in his last sick- 
 ness, during which Linnell had provided for him. It 
 had the look of a speculation, a purpose of being 
 repaid for services to the poor friend ; but it did not 
 appear that Linnell had ever attempted to make a
 
 182 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 profit of them, but kept them as valued mementos 
 only. A strange, dry, withered old man was the 
 painter, quaint in speech, with strange utterance of 
 strange opinions, a man who might have admired 
 Blake as much for his literary incoherences as for 
 his artistic imagination. Beginning life as a picture 
 cleaner and repairer, he had risen to be a great painter 
 and fairly successful. He had built himself a house 
 on a high ridge of the Surrey country, overlooking 
 an extensive weald. The site was so commanding 
 that some one suggested (it was during talk of a 
 French invasion) that the house would certainly be 
 taken as the headquarters of the French General. 
 " They can't do it, sir ! ' very positively answered 
 Linnell, " they can't do it ! it's against the law." 
 
 One man very worthy of love and admiration 
 whom I came to know in these later London days 
 was Godfrey Sykes, Alfred Stevens' favourite pupil 
 at Sheffield, the best of the artists employed at South 
 Kensington Museum and School of Art, highly es- 
 teemed there, but starved on a low salary until, his 
 health failing, the fear of losing him aroused a wiser 
 and more careful generosity. It was too late to save 
 him from dying of consumption. A man of genius, 
 bright, witty, delicately handsome, and of most affec- 
 tionate nature, it was a pleasure, not unmixed with 
 the sadness of anxious fear, to know him for a few, 
 too few years. In his art he had followed worthily 
 in the steps of " the master," as Stevens was always 
 lovingly styled by him.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Alfred Stevens ; Young Mitchell ; Wehnert ; The Wellington Monu- 
 ment. 
 
 Alfred Stevens, the designer and maker of the 
 Monument to the Duke of Wellington in St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, was my very dear friend. Born at Bland- 
 ford in Dorsetshire in 1817, his father a decorative 
 and heraldic painter, he almost before he had passed 
 from childhood displayed a passionate love and more 
 than aptitude for Art ; and that fortunately recog- 
 nised by a neighbouring clergyman, the Hon. and 
 Rev. Samuel Best, he was through that gentleman's 
 interest sent at the age of sixteen to travel and 
 educate himself in Italy. There he remained, study- 
 ing incessantly, for nine years, somewhile at Naples, 
 sometimes at Florence, copying frescoes in the 
 churches and convents, so many that he would say 
 he thought he had copied everything ; then copying 
 Titian's pictures ; then working for Thorwaldsen, 
 who had a great regard for him. Returning to 
 England in 1842, his first employment was as one 
 of the masters in the Government School of Design 
 at Somerset House, a position he held efficiently for 
 four years, during that time also making his mag- 
 nificent design for the doorway of the Jermyn Street 
 
 183
 
 184 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 School of Mines, a design worthy of comparison with 
 the celebrated gates of Ghiberti. Later on, in 1848 
 or '49, he went to Sheffield as designer to the iron 
 works of Messrs. Hoole & Robson. While there 
 he greatly assisted, if only with advice, his friend, 
 Mr. Young Mitchell in the School of Design. God- 
 frey Sykes, John Gamble, Reuben Townroe, learned 
 of him there, all afterwards holding positions at 
 South Kensington, all looking to him as their mas- 
 ter. Not that Young Mitchell was inefficient ; but 
 the higher influence was also appreciated. Mitchell, 
 with whom I had been allied in the Institute of Fine 
 Arts, before he had the appointment to Sheffield, 
 had introduced me to Stevens, and before I went 
 northward we had become close friends. He would 
 come and sit beside me when in after hours I sat 
 engraving in one of my work-rooms at 85 Hatton- 
 Garclen. He was back again in London, after 
 rather less than three years in Sheffield, and I was 
 often with him during occasional visits to the South. 
 In 1855 I came back to live in London, and after 
 that I saw more of him. Myself and Edward 
 Wehnert (the water-colour painter) were, I think, his 
 closest friends ; we, with Elmore and Penrose, almost 
 his only visitors at the house on Haverstock Hill, 
 rising toward Hampstead, where he was preparing 
 for his great work on the Monument and also for 
 Mr. Holford's commission for a chimney-piece in 
 Dorchester House, Holford's mansion in Park Lane. 
 Not only the chimney-piece (which alone Stevens
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 185 
 
 lived to execute), but the whole room and its furni- 
 ture were to have been of Stevens' design. En- 
 grossed with his work, he never went into society. 
 It was difficult to drag him out even to dine with his 
 friend Wehnert's family, a brother and three sisters 
 all fond of him; and having called on him with 
 Wehnert to take him to dinner, I have known him 
 turn back, when as the door was opened he saw an 
 extra hat in the hall, with, " Wehnert ! I forgot," 
 — that there was something to prevent his stay; 
 and we had almost to force him in. Not that he 
 was averse to or unfit for conversation ; it was only 
 the shyness of a man who did not care to make new 
 friends. Incessantly at his work, I have gone in upon 
 him at ten o'clock in the morning : " What, break- 
 fasting so late as this ? Stevens ! " " My dear fellow, 
 I breakfasted at four o'clock." He would come in to 
 dinner in the next house, a house in which he lived, 
 adjoining his studio and opening from it ; and before 
 the dinner was placed on the table would be carving 
 on a book-case or the edge of a sideboard. The only 
 relaxation he took was a few days' voyage in a west 
 country friend's yacht, the sea greatly enjoyed by 
 him. A day at South Kensington with him and 
 Sykes and Wehnert, to see the Raffaele Cartoons, 
 removed there from the obscurity of Hampton Court 
 to a sufficient light, is one of my pleasantest remem- 
 brances. The Hogarths were the only pictures we 
 cared to look at afterwards. Another pleasant day 
 was when we went together to see the boat-race, and
 
 186 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 after seeing it walked through acres (it seemed miles) 
 of wall-flowers from Barnes to Richmond, where we 
 dined, coming back to Haverstock Hill in the late 
 evening. Many happy times at his house, at my 
 own, at the Wehnerts', and at the house of Sykes, 
 should also have place among my recollections. Not 
 a great, but a good talker, with much to talk of, — 
 Italy and Art, — he was a desirable companion. And 
 beyond all delight of companionship was the appre- 
 ciation of his greatness as an artist and the simple 
 worth of the man. 
 
 Putting out of question the special excellences 
 of our few great men, he stands forth as the most 
 thoroughly accomplished artist we have ever had in 
 England. As a sculptor, with a knowledge also of 
 architecture and of the sculptor's relation to that, 
 we have no one to equal him. As a painter, good in 
 drawing, in composition, and in colour, he did enough 
 to show that he would have taken a highest place, 
 had his attention been more confined to that. His 
 few portraits were fine. His designs for iron- work 
 and pottery, and of general decoration, had a wide 
 range and were of remarkable excellence His motto, 
 — "I know but of one art," — a motto borrowed from 
 Michael Angelo, characterised his whole work, in 
 which, for all its variety, there was nothing careless 
 or inferior or unworthy of his powers. He was so 
 thoroughly conscientious in his art, so thoroughly 
 conscious, too, of what was good, that though a sure 
 and rapid worker, he was not easily satisfied. This
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 187 
 
 almost fastidiousness prevented a business-like punc- 
 tuality in the performance of his commissions, and 
 was the cause of considerable friction with his em- 
 ployers on the Monument, the Commissioners of the 
 Board of Works, the governmental money-providers. 
 So he was worried by delay in payments ; and when 
 from too close application to work his health gave 
 way, the worry became greater. It helped indeed 
 to kill him. Other annoyances he had in the poor 
 place given in the Cathedral to the Monument, and 
 in the absurd objection of Dean Millman (the legal 
 custodian of the Cathedral) to the completion of the 
 Monument as originally designed with an equestrian 
 statue of the Duke at the top. From a slight attack 
 of paralysis in 1873 he recovered sufficiently to bring 
 his work virtually to completion ; but on the 30th of 
 April, 1875, an attack of apoplexy stayed the artist's 
 hand. 
 
 In person Stevens was rather below the average 
 height, squarely built, showing considerable strength ; 
 once remarkably proved in Sheffield, where, attacked 
 from behind by a garrotter, he stooped and flung the 
 fellow over his head, only shaking himself as a dog 
 might when, a few minutes later, he entered a friend's 
 house and quietly told of the transaction. His head 
 was large, his face, while I knew him, clean-shaved, 
 his features were expressive, he had keen eyes, a 
 sensitive mouth, and a general look of cheerful calm 
 strength and goodness. He was neat in his person 
 for all the usual carelessness of an artist, and in his
 
 188 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 dress looking like and often taken for a Catholic 
 priest. Gentle in his heart and in his demeanour, 
 and, though conscious of his own ability, in no way 
 self-assertive, he was a man to be both loved and 
 admired, It is something to know that, however 
 undervalued in his life, his reputation has been 
 steadily growing since his death.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Garibaldi in Sicily ; The British Legion ; Captain de Rohan. 
 
 In 1860, when Garibaldi was gone upon his 
 Sicilian expedition (planned by Mazzini, and suc- 
 cessfully begun by Rosalino Pilo, who fell in the 
 moment of victory as Garibaldi landed to pursue the 
 work), word came to friends of Italy in England that 
 it were well if we could send out an English contin- 
 gent, to give help and to prove our sympathy. A 
 Committee, of which I was a member, was quickly 
 formed, and measures were promptly taken to enrol 
 volunteers for what was called an Excursion to 
 Sicily, so called to keep clear of proved illegality, 
 and so not to compel the interference of the Govern- 
 ment. We were not interfered with, and soon had 
 a gathering, a gathering of a strange crowd, earnest 
 men, men with selfish ends, men of good repute and 
 not so good, the sort of mixture in all such enter- 
 prises. Our work was mainly forwarded by a staunch 
 Mazzinian, Captain De Rohan, a native of Jersey, 
 who had made his mark in South America fighting 
 for Peruvian independence, and who, like Garibaldi 
 and so many of the Italian patriots, had returned to 
 Europe for the cause of Italy. De Rohan had already 
 from his own means chartered the three steamships 
 
 189
 
 190 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 which took Garibaldi's force to Sicily ; the " Wash- 
 ington," the " Franklin," and the " Oregon." He 
 helped us in the purchase of arms and organising, 
 with advice and money, and as friend and agent of 
 Garibaldi took general charge of the Expedition. In 
 twenty-three days we had enrolled and were ready 
 to despatch a thousand men, armed and equipped. 
 I went with the main body of them by a night train 
 to Harwich, where a steamer was provided to carry 
 them to Sicily. The first action on reaching Har- 
 wich was to hold a court-martial on one of the 
 officers, a " Major " Hicks, of whom we had received 
 most unsatisfactory accounts. He was dismissed, 
 and in an altercation forcibly ejected from De 
 Rohan's room by an American who was with De 
 Rohan. Hicks then took out a warrant for assault, 
 thinking to detain the expedition long enough to 
 compel the Government to take notice of our pro- 
 ceedings. The American sought refuge on board 
 our steamer. I was the only member of the Com- 
 mittee at Harwich except the Secretary, Mr. G. J. 
 Holyoake, who had gone to bed tired after his night's 
 journey, so I had to take command of the steamer, 
 sending Hicks' baggage ashore and refusing to let 
 him come on board to search for the American. The 
 policeman he brought alongside with him might 
 come on board, but he might not, and the policeman 
 not knowing the man, his quest would be in vain. 
 The captain recognised me as master, and would take 
 no orders but from me. There was a Government
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 191 
 
 vessel in the harbour, but the captain of that was 
 friendly with us, and when later in the day he came 
 with Hicks I was willing to let the "Major" come 
 on board to hunt for his man, by that time safely 
 stowed away. In the afternoon De Rohan had to 
 appear before the local magistrate, who imposed a 
 fine of five shillings and came on board with us to 
 supper and to talk of the Expedition. Late at night 
 I went ashore again, to meet any men of the Legion 
 who might have been delayed. One of those arriv- 
 ing was a Welsh parson who wanted to go as army 
 chaplain, and was terribly disappointed when I told 
 him there was no place for him. Letters came from 
 the London Committee, which, our secretary being in 
 bed, it was my business to read. One of them was 
 from Sicily, appointing Hicks to the command of the 
 Lesion. I know not what interest he could have 
 
 o 
 
 made to obtain this. I put the letter in my pocket, 
 and going on board again waited till everybody had 
 retired except De Rohan, then handed the letter to 
 him. We kept our counsel. He appointed a military 
 officer who was among those enrolled to the command 
 of the Legion, and the next morning, the Legion 
 fairly started, we left them, he to travel overland to 
 reach Sicily before the expedition, I to report to the 
 Committee, with whom I found a duplicate of the 
 letter with Hicks' appointment, of course too late to 
 be acted upon. Our judgment of the man had been 
 right. The next I heard of him was his appearance 
 in a police-court on some not creditable charge.
 
 192 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 " Ghrato in buoni servigi prestati dal Cap™ De 
 Rohan alia causa Italiana nelle campagne di Napoli 
 
 6 SlClha ' " G. Garibaldi," 
 
 was the Liberator's acknowledgment of De Rohan's 
 services. The Legion arrived in Sicily too late to 
 be much needed, except as an expression of British 
 sympathy, but its behaviour was good and it was 
 honourably reported. 
 
 Intimate with Mazzini, and devoted to him, De 
 Rohan was his trusted envoy with Victor Emmanuel, 
 whose respect and personal regard for Mazzini were 
 very great, and who might have been influenced by 
 him could there have been any escape from the 
 influence of Cavour, whom the King for personal 
 reasons held in dislike. " Je deteste mon metier" 
 the King said once to De Rohan ; and on another 
 occasion showed him "the only money I ever 
 earned," money given to his majesty for some help 
 rendered by him on one of his hunting excursions, 
 when his dress had prevented his recognition. 
 
 I first met De Rohan on the Committee for this 
 Sicilian Expedition. I admired him much, a distin- 
 guished-looking man, tall, well built, handsome, and 
 possessing great strength, the beau-ideal of a sea 
 king. We got to be very intimate ; and years later 
 he lived for months with me here at Hamden by 
 New Haven. His business in the States was, being 
 a naturalised American, to persuade the Government 
 through Mr. Marsh, who was then American Minis-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 193 
 
 ter at Rome, to press the Italian Government for 
 payment of the three steamships chartered by De 
 Rohan for Garibaldi's use, the said steamships hav- 
 ing been drafted into the Italian navy. Time and 
 patience were worn out in the delays and indiffer- 
 ence of diplomacy, and no result obtained. The 
 man who had generously given of his means, disap- 
 pointed and weary, was not diplomatic ; at last, on 
 a visit to Rome, he personally offended the Italian 
 Minister, and all chance of redress was lost. De 
 Rohan died in poverty at Washington, and his three 
 ships have not been paid for. 
 
 o
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 The Theatres ; Charles Kemble ; Macready ; Braham ; Pasta ; Grisi 
 and Mario ; Lablache ; Straudigl ; Schroeder Devrient ; The 
 Keeleys ; Mrs. Nesbitt ; Mrs. Glover ; Ellen Tree ; Vestris ; Tyrone 
 Power; Charlotte Cushman ; Jefferson; Edwin Booth; Modjeska; 
 Amateur Acting ; Barnard Gregory. 
 
 In my young days I was very fond of the theatre, 
 not objecting to stint myself otherwise so as to 
 afford the pleasure of witnessing a good dramatic 
 performance or hearing a good singer. A week to 
 be particularly remembered was one in which I went 
 five nights to Covent-Garden to see the last acting 
 of Charles Kemble in his best characters — Hamlet, 
 Falconbridge in King John, Mark Antony in Julius 
 CcBsar, Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, and Benedick 
 in Much Ado about Nothing. I have seen other 
 actors in these parts, from Macready to Irving, and 
 in America Edwin Booth ; but the acting of Kemble, 
 old as he then was, has seemed to me to be unsur- 
 passed by any, my judgment perhaps influenced by 
 the recollection of my young enthusiasm. Braham, 
 old also, I heard once ; and Pasta once ; not in their 
 prime, but still great. Grisi and her husband Mario 
 I heard often, and beside their worth as singers re- 
 member that they were good Italians, friends of 
 patriotism and Mazzini. Great Lablache also I well 
 
 194
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 195 
 
 remember, and Staudigl in Der Freischutz, and 
 Madame Schroeder Devrient, heard once in Die Zau- 
 berflote, and Adelaide Kemble in Norma. For the 
 ballet I did not care. It seems to me that I never 
 saw dancing worthy of the name, except that of 
 Taglioni, none others that I thought graceful. Hers 
 was the poetry of motion. During the time that I 
 was editor of Hetherington's paper I had admission 
 to several theatres. On the free list at Drury Lane 
 under the management of Macready, I had only to 
 sign my name to go in, for the whole of a play, or 
 for half an hour or so as might please me. Acis 
 and Galatea and Purcell's King Arthur were re- 
 peated pleasures, not only for sake of the music, 
 but the drop scene to Acis and Galatea was one of 
 Stanfield's masterpieces, aided by the illusion of the 
 sea ripples coming up the beach ; and in the King 
 Arthur it was worth noting that by the simple 
 arrangement of the army sufficiently occupying the 
 stage to give time for returns from behind the 
 scenes to follow on, there was the fair appearance 
 of an army of thousands. It was but the adapta- 
 tion of an old story of two men of equal height, 
 and cloaked to appear alike, engaging a coach on 
 a foggy night (a London fog), and when the coach j 
 stopped having both doors open, so that the first 
 coming out had time to go behind the coach and 
 reenter while the second leisurely descended, the 
 first then passing out as a third occupant, the sec- 
 ond in the same way appearing as a fourth, and the
 
 196 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 game continued till the poor driver thought his 
 coach was haunted. It was perhaps the first time 
 so very obvious an expedient was used on the stage, 
 and it was very effective in the place of the three 
 or four soidiers, " drum and colours," to be supposed 
 an army. Macready was great in these scenic pro- 
 prieties. Great also as an actor, but rather from 
 close and wise study than from such fire of nat- 
 ural genius as must have marked the elder Kean. 
 His Hamlet, his King John, his Lear, Shylock, Mac- 
 beth, Brutus and Julius Caesar, Othello, and Bene- 
 dick, were all excellent, if not at the topmost height. 
 Certainly his Romeo was not equal to that of Edwin 
 Booth, nor to that of Charlotte Cushman, who was 
 the best Romeo I ever saw, though she startled us 
 on her first appearance in the character in London, 
 by her likeness to Macready. She gave me some 
 friendly introductions when I came to America in 
 1866. Liston I can almost recall to sight, and John 
 Reeve also, an admirable comic actor, sober or 
 drunk, always master of himself before the foot- 
 lights, though unsoberly not fit to appear the minute 
 before. Admirable actors, too, were little Keeley 
 and his wife, she a singer also, good in both capaci- 
 ties. I remember her especially as the Blind Girl 
 of Portici, in Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii. 
 Then there was the bewitching Madame Vestris, the 
 daughter of the famous engraver Bartolozzi, not 
 beautiful, but fascinating, a fine actress and charm- 
 ing singer, great in her fairy tale Easter extrava-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 197 
 
 ganzas, and as great with the beautiful Mrs. Nesbitt 
 in the School for Scandal, with Charles Matthews as 
 Charles Surface. There was acting in those days, — 
 the acting of Farren, and Harley, and Buckstone, 
 and Miss P. Horton, who played the Fool in Lear, 
 Mrs. Glover, Ellen Tree, Helen Faucit, and little 
 Miss Poole, the most cat-like White Cat in one of 
 Vestris' extravaganzas; and that most accomplished 
 of Irishmen, Tyrone Power, who was drowned in 
 the " President " ! The only actor I have ever seen 
 to compare with him for thorough identification 
 with his impersonation is Joseph Jefferson in the 
 part of Rip Van Winkle. But in America I have 
 had little opportunity, and not the same enthusiasm, 
 for keeping up my love of the drama. Chiefly to 
 be noted by me in these later days is Edwin Booth, 
 whom I had the honour and pleasure of seeing occa- 
 sionally both on and off the stage, free of his theatre 
 during his first performances in the one built by 
 him in New York, free to speak with him behind 
 the scenes, and meeting him sometimes at the Cen- 
 tury Club in New York ; a fine actor, a worthy gen- 
 tleman, and an agreeable and attractive man. 
 
 The great Polish actress Madame Modjeska I saw 
 but once on the stage ; but I prize among my corre- 
 spondence a letter from her thanking me for a number 
 of the Century Magazine, which I sent to her because 
 in an article on European Republicans it chronicled 
 some of her compatriots. 
 
 Her letter is worth here giving :
 
 198 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 New York, Jan. 20, 1888. 
 Dear Mb. Linton : 
 
 I thank you most sincerely for the honour and kindness 
 you have done to me in sending me a copy of The Century 
 containing your beautiful article. 
 
 I should like to express to you equally my gratitude for the 
 interest you take in the country of my birth and my heart, 
 and for all the work you have done in its behalf ; but words 
 would only be idle. . . Poland has not many friends now ; there 
 is no political capital to be made nowadays by raising one's 
 voice in her favour. Few friends, but true ones, does our cause 
 count abroad, and the only reward for them to which we may 
 point is the realisation of the hope you expressed in your let- 
 ter, — the resurrection of Poland, in which our belief shall last 
 as long as our belief in God, and in the final victory of right 
 over might, of good over evil. 
 
 Please accept my deep felt regards, and believe me, 
 
 Respectfully yours, 
 Helena Modjeska. 
 
 Here I may tell how I narrowly escaped making 
 my own debut on the boards. Not that I presumed 
 on any vocation that way, or that I had any ambition 
 for histrionic fame. But the Institute of Fine Arts 
 had projected an amateur performance at the St. 
 James' Theatre, for some art-benefit, the intended 
 performers to be members of the Institute. I forget 
 what the principal play was to be, but there was in 
 it a Yorkshire character which was appropriated to 
 Topham (the water-colour painter), a Yorkshireman 
 and likely, as was afterwards proved, to play the part 
 successfully ; but the afterpiece was to be Bombastes 
 Furioso, — Franklin, a tall, personable Irishman, who 
 affected a visage like that of Charles L, with a beard 
 shaped accordingly, was to be the King, — and I,
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 199 
 
 then slight and womanly-looking, with little whisker 
 and no beard or moustache, was cast for Glumdalca, 
 the one female character. I would look the part well 
 enough, the speeches were not difficult, and I might 
 manage the one song. However, in the course of 
 discussion a dissension occurred. Cruikshank would 
 have the acting broadly comic. Franklin and I in- 
 sisted that as a burlesque it should be treated with 
 perfect seriousness and in high heroic fashion. We 
 were out-voted and so relinquished our parts. I think 
 mine was taken by a professional actress. Cruik- 
 shank had great applause for his buffoonery, and the 
 success of the whole performance set the example of 
 similar amateur theatricals, in which Dickens after- 
 wards took the lead. 
 
 One other theatrical matter of a very different 
 kind I may here speak of. On a certain morning 
 London streets were placarded with the following 
 
 notice : — 
 
 "GENTLEMEN" OF LONDON! 
 
 " Mr. Barnard Gregory, the editor of the Satirist, will appear 
 to-night at Covent-Garden Theatre, in the character of 
 
 Hamlet." 
 
 The placard had been put out by the Punch con- 
 tributors, the object sufficiently obvious : to oppose 
 Gregory, who was notorious as a rascally blackmailer. 
 John Leech called on me in the morning to tell me 
 of their purpose and to ask me to go. Of course I 
 went, and took a friend with me ; and we got for- 
 ward seats in the pit. Looking round, I saw a lot of
 
 200 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 rough, fellows who, I concluded, were no doubt hired 
 as claqueurs for Gregory, and was not without fear 
 of a fierce conflict. The curtain drew up, and the 
 action of the play began in all serenity ; but so soon 
 as Hamlet made his appearance an outcry, a burst of 
 execration, rose so suddenly, and was so general, that 
 one saw at once no opposition could make head 
 against it. Hisses and hootings, cries of " Off ! off ! — 
 Blackguard ! scoundrel ! ' and the like were hurled 
 at the actor ; and the whole performance was stopped. 
 Nothing was thrown except the storm of vociferation. 
 Gregory faced it awhile, undauntedly impudent, then 
 tried to make his voice heard in protest, but it was 
 drowned in the roar of indignation. I was but three 
 seats from the orchestra, and I could not hear a sylla- 
 ble of his speech though I saw his lips move. At 
 length he gave in, and as the curtain came down he 
 seemed to cower and crouch beneath. Then the 
 manager came forward to withdraw the piece, and 
 the conspirators went out to moisten their parched 
 throats. Leech was hoarse for days. Lynch law, as 
 it was, it was well deserved, though the man was, it 
 was said, a promising actor. I forget what play was 
 substituted, for a little while opposed by the minority 
 who had come to support the Hamlet ; but they had to 
 give in, and the evening finished quietly. 
 
 One of those most active in the storm was the 
 Duke of Brunswick, who had been grossly assailed 
 in the Satirist. He had taken a stage box, from 
 which he acted as fugleman to a party he had
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 201 
 
 organised throughout the house, so giving us most 
 unexpected help. Gregory brought an action against 
 him for conspiracy. Jem Mace, a pugilist and pub- 
 lican living in the neighbourhood of the theatre, 
 was, there was no doubt, one of those hired by the 
 Duke, and prominently active. He was summoned 
 as a witness, and did not deny the part he had 
 taken, but denied having been hired for the con- 
 spiracy. He was asked : " What made you active 
 in such a matter? what interest had you in it?" 
 His interest, he replied, in public morality ; he 
 could not help protesting against such a man dis- 
 gracing the stage — his words not these exactly, 
 but to such purpose. The judge complimented him, 
 and said he was glad to find so much public spirit in 
 the parish in which he had his own residence.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 George Francis Train ; Bunker Hill ; Herbert Spencer ; Voyage to 
 New York ; Cooper Institute ; Peter Cooper ; A. S. Hewitt ; Dr. 
 Simmer ; Frank Leslie ; Squier ; Cluseret ; Pelletier ; Aaron 
 Powell ; Wendell Phillips ; The Fosters ; Theodore Parker ; 
 Edmund Davis ; Kentucky Lands ; Colonisation in Montana ; 
 Frederick Douglas ; Negro Bones. 
 
 George Francis Train I met in London. He 
 was busy with endeavour to have cars employed on 
 tramways in London streets. They became general 
 enough in after time, but Train's immediate success 
 was stopped by his running athwart some parochial 
 interests which he did not care to consider. He 
 used to invite " twelve live men " to breakfast with 
 him on Sunday. I somehow got included in the 
 invitations, but I did not go. I went however, once, 
 to a midday public breakfast to meet some fifty or 
 sixty men, most of them newspaper men or other- 
 wise connected with literature, to commemorate the 
 anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill. Every 
 one was expected to make a brief speech, not to 
 exceed five minutes ; and Train of course looked for 
 sympathy with the North in the terrible fight then 
 proceeding. I am sorry to say the company almost 
 all had good words only for the South. A brother 
 of Rudolph Lehman, the painter, and I were the 
 
 202
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 203 
 
 only two who spoke heartily for the North. [It was 
 in such manner and from such men that the impres- 
 sion arose in America that the English people were 
 in favour of the South, — an impression very far 
 from correct : the feeling of the English people was 
 not with the South. Even in the factory districts, 
 where the operatives were starving, out of work 
 because the supply of cotton was stopped, a public 
 meeting could not be had to express sympathy with 
 the slaveholders.] The speeches over, Train, as host, 
 summed up, with no ill-taste or ill-feeling, very 
 fairly rating his guests ; then, turning pleasantly to 
 those remaining gathered round one table, impro- 
 vised in verse on each name in turn, finishing every 
 stanza with a popular American chorus. It was 
 very clever, and well done. 
 
 Afterwards I met him in America. I was to 
 breakfast with my friend De Rohan at the Fifth 
 Avenue Hotel, and entering the breakfast-room, we 
 stumbled upon Train, who was just finishing his 
 meal. He knew De Rohan and promptly laid hold 
 of us, insisting that we should breakfast with or 
 beside him. We soon had a group of listening 
 waiters at our end of the table. Train was then 
 posing as a candidate for the Presidency, and told 
 us he was to lecture somewhere (I forget where) in 
 Broadway that evening — his hundredth, or hundred 
 and odd, lecture, canvassing for his election. Hav- 
 ing nothing better to do in the evening, I went to 
 the meeting. lie spoke fluently and well, though
 
 204 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 with not much in his words. He had the platform 
 to himself. During his speech he went to one end 
 of the platform and, taking hold of his nose with 
 one hand, ran across the platform to the other end, 
 saying : " Let my nose alone ! That," he added, 
 " is the Democratic Party ! ' Then, taking his nose 
 with the other hand, he ran back : " You, too, let my 
 nose alone ! That is the Republican Party. I don't 
 mean to be led by the nose by either." Another 
 time, after some sentiment, he said : " There's my 
 friend Mr. Linton who will agree with that." Fort- 
 unately, he did not point at me ; so I was able to 
 turn round to see where his friend Linton might be 
 sitting, and so escaped notice. The audience had to 
 wait to shake hands with the "future President" as 
 they went out. 
 
 Herbert Spencer, after his visit to America, was 
 my fellow- voyager to England. I had pleasant talks 
 with him, rather from him, when he was well enough 
 to be on deck. He appeared to me a very full man, 
 full of knowledge and sure of it, and not anxious for 
 more from me, even if I had had it at his command, 
 but I had not even on wood-engraving. I was more 
 attracted to his friend, Mr. Lott, a Derby stock- 
 broker, who had special care of him, at whose house 
 in the neighbourhood of Derby I afterwards spent a 
 glad evening and a morning. 
 
 In 1866 I had little occupation in England, and 
 thought the opportunity good to see the new country, 
 with no fixed intention of remaining. So in Novem-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 205 
 
 ber of that year I crossed the ocean to New York, 
 with nothing before me except a commission to write 
 some letters of my American impressions for the 
 Manchester Examiner, and with a few introductions 
 from Dr. Wilkinson, Miss Cushman, my old friend 
 Wehnert, and Mazzini. I was also strongly com- 
 mended to the Temperance Party (though not belong- 
 ing to them) by my friend Dr. Lees, the president of 
 the party in England ; and I had business introduc- 
 tions from the Fullartons of Edinburgh, who had a 
 business in New York before the war. These I had 
 no occasion to use. Wehnert's letter took me to 
 Dr. Rimmer, the master of the School of Design at 
 the Cooper Institute. This brought me to acquaint- 
 ance with Mr. Cooper, the philanthropic and vener- 
 able founder of the Institute, and with his son-in-law, 
 Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, whose goodness I gratefully 
 remember. They induced me to undertake for a 
 time the teaching of the Wood Engraving Class at 
 the Institute. Thought kindly of by the men of my 
 profession, I had a supper given me by the Society 
 of Wood Engravers, and was almost immediately 
 taken hold of by Frank Leslie to work for his Illus- 
 trated News, and afterwards engaged by him to con- 
 duct the pictorial portion. 
 
 My welcome seemed a sufficient reason for my con- 
 templating a longer stay in the States. I had only 
 thought of remaining so long as might be necessary 
 to organise a party for Italy, and to see something of 
 the people and the country. But the object of these
 
 206 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 recollections is not to speak of myself, but to tell 
 what little I can of the more remarkable personages 
 whom I have known, and of events in which I have 
 been concerned or with which I have been connected. 
 Of the remarkable men, surely Peter Cooper was one. 
 Not deferring to do good work by legacies, he, after 
 making a fortune by his industry, nearly ruined him- 
 self in building and endowing the Institute, a reading- 
 room and free schools for the working classes of New 
 York City, asking only to have it remembered as the 
 gift of " Peter Cooper, Mechanic, of New York." 
 Both Mr. Cooper and Mr. Hewitt and their families 
 were more than kind to me from my first acquaint- 
 ance with them. 
 
 Dr. Rimmer, a notable man, was also very promptly 
 my good friend. A good physician, and in good 
 practice, the bent of his natural disposition took him 
 to Art. Without model he sculptured in granite 
 a life-sized head of St. Stephen ; and afterwards 
 executed a figure of a Dying Gladiator, so admirably 
 that, when it was exhibited in Paris, it was at first 
 declared to be modeled from life, but was indeed of 
 too heroic size for that. As a teacher he was excel- 
 lent, both in his school and as a lecturer, and on the 
 black-board. A Swedenborgian and a poet, I had 
 much pleasant and cordial intercourse with him, at 
 the school, and among his family, at his and my own 
 lodgings in New York, and once for a few days at 
 his house in Chelsea, by Boston. He died within a 
 couple of years of my coming to America.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 207 
 
 " Frank Leslie," — the name he took in America, — 
 an English engraver, who had come, many years be- 
 fore, to the States, and after hard and persistent 
 effort had succeeded in establishing a weekly illus- 
 trated newspaper in rivalry of Harper's, was also 
 very kind to me and made me welcome to his house, 
 in which Mr. and Mrs. Squier were living with him. 
 Mrs. Squier, a beautiful and clever woman, was after- 
 wards divorced from Squier, married Leslie, and since 
 his death has conducted the paper. Leslie was a 
 man ill-spoken of because for years he had been 
 struggling and impecunious ; but he had his good 
 points, — some love of Art, though not an artist, and 
 much kindness and generosity when he had means. 
 I gave up my position on his paper after a brief hold- 
 ing because he also undertook another paper of a 
 character I did not choose to be connected with. 
 Ephraim G. Squier was a man who ought to have 
 earned a good repute, a man of ability and abundant 
 energy, who had been a great traveler in Peru, and 
 whose conversation, when I could be alone with him 
 and get him to talk of Peru, was very entertaining. 
 Softening of the brain spoiled what should have been 
 a life of much accomplishment. 
 
 My purpose to aid, if possible, the cause of Italy, 
 and my known sympathy with the Abolitionist 
 Party, brought me in contact with many men : with 
 Cluseret and Pelletier on republican ground, with 
 Aaron Powell and Wendell Phillips and the Fosters 
 and Edmund Davis and others of the anti-slavery
 
 208 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 people. General Cluseret, a big Frenchman, with 
 some talent as an artist, was much ill-spoken of in 
 the New York Tribune, in other American papers, 
 and in the Fortnighty Review in England, for his 
 connection with the Fenians, but chiefly for being 
 concerned with the Paris Commune, which the Trib- 
 une took special pains to confuse with Communism. 
 Knowing him personally in New York, and with 
 some tracking of his after course, I have no reason 
 to think of him as other than a brave, earnest, chiv- 
 alrous, and perhaps somewhat too hot-headed and 
 self-opinionated republican, true to his party, if not 
 always what I might think wise in his course. 
 Claude Pelletier, by profession a printer, of Lyons, 
 who had been member for Lyons in the French Con- 
 stituent Assembly, in the brief republican interreg- 
 num after the Revolution of '48, the friend of Pierre 
 Leroux and Ledru Rollin, was exiled from France by 
 the Empire. After some sojourn in England he came 
 to New York. For a living he engaged himself as a 
 cook at a restaurant, and so occupied himself till he 
 had saved money enough to bring his wife and two 
 sons over, and to go into business as an artificial 
 florist. A good republican, good in himself, well- 
 informed, indeed of wide knowledge, an excellent 
 writer, he left, only part printed, when he died, a 
 Dictionary of Socialism after the method of Voltaire's 
 Philosophical Dictionary. He was also author of a 
 revolutionary drama — Le Savetier de Messine (the 
 Cobbler of Messina) — of considerable merit.
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 209 
 
 Cluseret and Pelletier I knew from the time of my 
 arrival ; Aaron Powell, the editor of the Anti-Slavery 
 Standard, also, and from my first knowledge of him 
 he only grew in my esteem as one of the most single- 
 hearted and liberal-minded men I have ever met 
 with : a liberal Quaker, and liberal albeit in his prac- 
 tice a strict temperance man, with a gentle-natured 
 wife worthy of him. He introduced me to Wendell 
 Phillips at one of the many meetings which were 
 still being held continuously, in order to make sure 
 that the emancipation of the coloured people should 
 be fairly carried out. At this particular meeting 
 Phillips had to take the chair, and asked me to wait 
 till after the meeting he came out of the committee- 
 room. I did so. He came out with friends around 
 him, warmly grasped my hand and held it as we 
 went down the steps at the entrance of the hall, then 
 leading; me to dinner with him at the St. Denis 
 Hotel. The same heartiness always greeted me 
 whenever we met, whether at a public meeting 
 where, more than once, I had the honour of speak- 
 ing from the same platform, or at the gatherings of 
 the Radical Club at the Rev. Mr. Sargent's in Bos- 
 ton, or in his own house when I called upon him. 
 A man with a commanding presence, dignified in 
 manner, with a frank look, and a benignant smiling 
 mouth, from which one would no more expect sar- 
 casm or invective than lightning from the clear sky. 
 Fierce indeed could be his denunciations of wrong, 
 the utterances of a Jove, but a Jove who could be
 
 210 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 jovial, in all the familiar meaning of that word. I 
 have heard no orator with such various power, lan- 
 guage so ready and so choice, calm and convincing 
 in argument, or overwhelming all opposition with 
 the torrent of his vehement passion. His opponents 
 must have admired him ; his friends could not help 
 but love him. I was proud of the distinction of 
 finding myself counted among the last. 
 
 Theodore Parker must have been a man of the 
 same stamp. I only knew him by his printed ser- 
 mons, some of which he sent to me in England. 
 Some I reprinted. When he passed through London 
 on his way to Italy, a brief while before his death, I 
 missed seeing him by half an hour, to my great 
 regret. Garrison, also, I never saw ; but I had some 
 correspondence with him through and in the Liber- 
 ator, which before I left England he used to send 
 to me. 
 
 Among the best of the Abolitionist Party that I 
 knew were Abby Kelly Foster and Stephen Foster, 
 her husband : Mrs. Foster a little, frail-looking 
 woman, but full of energy and the calmness of a 
 never-failing courage. At a certain meeting at 
 which I was present, her tall, more impulsive hus- 
 band insisted on pressing a motion for some question 
 of woman's rights which, considering the purpose of 
 the meeting, was quite out of order. Impatient at 
 his persistency, I thought to myself, that some 
 woman would answer him. At last he sat down, 
 and it was his wife who rose to reply. Very quietly,
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 211 
 
 with better logic, she put him fairly out of court. 
 But it was done with perfectly good taste and kindly, 
 womanly feeling, the most satisfactory setting down 
 that could be, whether for matter or manner, and 
 the good husband, in spite of his opinion, must have 
 been pleased with as well as proud of her. Once at 
 a lecture upon Abraham Lincoln, given by Emerson 
 at the Radical Club in Boston, his praise of Lincoln 
 seemed to me too exclusive, and, as each of the audi- 
 ence was asked to make some brief comment on the 
 lecture, I ventured to suggest that John Brown 
 should have place of honour beside the President. 
 Mr. Foster, who spoke next, supported me. Among 
 these best of American nobles whom I have known 
 I must not forget Robert Purvis of Philadelphia, a 
 man of dignified bearing, though with, I believe, 
 negro blood in his veins, as handsome and aristo- 
 cratic in appearance as the Irish patriot, Wm. 
 Smith O'Brien, and of as chivalrous a character. 
 Neither must I forget Edmund Davis, also of Phila- 
 delphia, the husband of a daughter of Lucretia Mott. 
 I had to know a great deal of him, being at one 
 time his agent in London, endeavouring to procure a 
 purchaser for a hundred thousand acres of land in 
 Kentucky, between the Cumberland River and the 
 Tennessee border, near to Cumberland Gap, in the 
 Cumberland Mountains, where some day may be a 
 great central city. With an artist friend and a 
 young engineer, I went there to report, especially on 
 the coal, and spent a week or more prospecting the
 
 212 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 land, camping out where we could. I was led to 
 undertake the agency for Davis from being baulked 
 in a scheme for bringing out an English colony 
 (which I hoped to make a republican nucleus) to 
 Montana, — baulked by the failure of Jay Cooke and 
 consequent deferral of the North Pacific Railroad. 
 
 Frederick Douglas, the coloured orator, a natural 
 orator, I heard once at a meeting in New York. 
 Several other coloured men, estimable, if not so not- 
 able, I have become acquainted with at public meet- 
 ings and in private ; and learned from them to 
 believe in the possibility of their race yet playing a 
 part in the world's history, outgrowing the disquali- 
 fications natural or consequent on generations of 
 slavery. I was once at a coloured ball at Washing- 
 ton, and could observe no difference but that of 
 colour from the balls of society of the best of our 
 middle classes. I have hope of the race, notwith- 
 standing the judgment of a very gentlemanly and I 
 doubt not competent Southern editor, who assured 
 me that the negro's configuration, even to his bones, 
 is anatomically different from that of the white man, 
 a creature indeed differing so essentially that, if Mr. 
 Darwin's theory be right, he must have proceeded 
 from a very inferior ape.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 American Poets ; Bryant ; Stedman ; Stoddard ; Mrs. Stoddard ; 
 Bayard Taylor ; Lowell ; Longfellow ; Whittier ; Emerson ; Alcott ; 
 Whitman ; Mrs. Howe ; Anthony ; Bret Harte ; Whipple ; Fre- 
 mont; Agassiz ; Other Notables; Tilden ; Madame Blavatsky; 
 A. T. Stewart; Cespedes and Cuba ; General Butler; Sumner; 
 Anderson ; Adams ; Page. 
 
 With the poets of America I have had very pleas- 
 ant opportunities. Bryant was President of the 
 Century Club, the best of clubs in New York or any- 
 where (though I did not please Sir Richard Temple 
 by saying so when we encountered on our voyage to 
 England), of which I had the honour and gratifica- 
 tion of becoming a member almost immediately after 
 my arrival in New York. Richard Henry Stoddard 
 and Edmund Clarence Stedman, also members of the 
 Century, have been from soon after my arrival in 
 America to this day my valued friends ; Stoddard, 
 indeed, a very close, I may sa}^ an intimate, friend, 
 with whom I never fail to spend as much as possible 
 of my time whenever I have occasion to visit New 
 York, for meetings of the Century or otherwise. 
 Stoddard I believe to be the highest poetic genius 
 now living in America, his work always good, always 
 of the very highest character. His wife, Mrs. Eliz- 
 abeth Barstow Stoddard, has not written much verse, 
 but what she has written would not be unworthy of 
 
 213
 
 214 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 her husband, and she is known as a clever novelist. 
 Their friendship counts among my great gains. Bay- 
 ard Taylor I met frequently at the Club. To Lowell 
 I was introduced at the University Press, in Cam- 
 bridge, Massachusetts, and had pleasant words from 
 him afterwards. Longfellow, whom I met at the 
 same most excellent of printing offices, then con- 
 ducted by Welch, Bigelow & Co., took me home with 
 him to his house in Cambridge, and gave me very 
 cordial welcome. Whittier I met at the Sargents' 
 (Mr. Sargent was the clergyman who first dared to 
 admit Theodore Parker to his pulpit ; and he and his 
 wife were the centre of the abolitionists and other 
 liberal people in Boston). I had a letter from Whit- 
 tier when for an American anthology (which I was 
 editing with Stoddard) I wrote to him to ask the 
 date of his birth : a letter from him strangely con- 
 tradicting the generally, I may say the universally, 
 received belief in the date of that day. He wrote 
 to me : — 
 
 "Bear Camp River House, 
 
 " West Ossipee, N. H. 
 "My Dear Sir: « 13, 9 mo., 1875. 
 
 " My birthday was the very last of the year 1807. 
 
 " I remember with pleasure meeting thee at the Kadical Club 
 meeting at Mr. Sargent's some two or three years ago. 
 
 "I am stopping here for a month at a pleasant old inn among 
 the mountains, in the hope to recruit my health. The weather 
 is delightful. We seem both engaged somewhat similarly. 
 I am making a small collection of English & American Poets 
 of the last 3 centuries. 
 
 " Very truly thy friend, 
 
 "J. G. Whittier."
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 215 
 
 To Emerson I brought an introduction from Dr. 
 Garth Wilkinson. I was in the back room of the 
 book-store of Messrs. Ticknor & Fields, Boston (who 
 as publishers held much the same position with the 
 American poets as Moxon held with English, and at 
 whose daily lunch one met the best of literary men 
 in Boston), when Emerson came into the store. Mr. 
 Ticknor asked me — Would I like to see him? 
 " Most certainly ; also I had a letter for him." He 
 came in, read the letter (the introduction which Dr. 
 Wilkinson had given me), shook hands with me, and 
 asked — Was I staying in Boston ? If so, I must 
 come out to Concord next day to dine with him. I 
 regretted that I could not do so, as I had already an 
 engagement for the morrow, and at Concord. "With 
 whom ? " I told him with the Austens (Mrs. Austen, 
 a novelist of considerable repute, but lately dead, 
 whom I had met and admired at New York). "You 
 will dine then with me." I found my friends next 
 day engaged to take me with them to Emerson's. 
 He and Mrs. Emerson and their daughter Ellen were 
 all very cordial and attentive. Emerson showed me 
 his several photographs of Carlyle, and spoke to me 
 of my friends the Scotts, David and William, speak- 
 ing admiringly of William's poem, the Year of the 
 Wo?id, on account of its unwonted truth to Indian 
 thought and theosophy. He inquired for the author 
 cf some paper in Punch, which had interested him ; 
 and there was some talk about printers' blunders. 
 He said they were not always in the wrong. He
 
 216 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 had an instance when once he had used the expres- 
 sion, " going up a declivity." His printer suggested 
 "acclivity." Said Emerson, "I did not know the 
 word, and I had thought that if I could go down a 
 declivity I could also go up." His printer, Mr. Bige- 
 low, of the University Press, told me afterwards the 
 same story as an instance of Emerson's receptive- 
 ness. The next time I was in Concord of course I 
 called. The family were all away. I offered my card 
 to the Irish servant. " And what will I be doing 
 with this ? " she asked as she looked at it. I said, 
 " Give it to Mr. Emerson when he comes home ! ' 
 " I guess I'll give it to Miss Ellen." " I dare say that 
 will do," I rejoined. There was no assumption of style 
 about the Emerson family ; they were simply well- 
 bred, cultured gentlefolk, not fashionable people. In 
 his later days Emerson's voice failed him for lecturing, 
 and still later and more entirely his memory of 
 words. His hesitation for the right word had to be 
 met by guesses. At Longfellow's grave, having to 
 speak of him, very touching was the failure — "Our 
 dear friend, whose name at this moment I can not 
 recall." At Concord I saw and spoke with Bronson 
 Alcott, a strange, mystical, gentle old philosopher, 
 very gracious, very wordy, rather incomprehensible. 
 I have some vague remembrance of having, very 
 early in England, met a tall, slight, gentle dreamer, 
 Charles Lane, a somewhile partner and associate of 
 Alcott. 
 
 Walt Whitman I first saw at his desk in the Treas-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 217 
 
 ury at Washington. Afterwards I called on him at 
 his home (his brother's house) in Camden, over the 
 river from Philadelphia. And I had some friendly 
 correspondence and interchange of writings with him. 
 I liked the man much, a fine-natured, good-hearted, 
 big fellow, who must have been handsome in young 
 days (as indeed an early portrait shows him) ; a true 
 poet who could not write poetry, much of wilfulness 
 accounting for his neglect of form, perhaps as fatal a 
 mistake in a poet as in a painter. He was great, 
 and greatly esteemed, as a volunteer nurse with the 
 armies of the North during the war. They say that 
 a regiment once presented arms to him in recognition 
 of his honourable service and benevolent ministra- 
 tions ; and that Lincoln especially pointed him out 
 for his noble work. 
 
 Of many other notabilities, more or less notable, I 
 can only speak as having met them a few times, or it 
 might be only once, without much impress from them. 
 Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, the author of the Battle 
 Hymn of the Republic, the best war-lyric of the time 
 of the conflict between North and South, the wife of 
 Dr. Howe, the good physician of the deaf and dumb, 
 I met occasionally in Boston. Aldrich, poet, I used 
 to meet in Boston at the house of my friend Anthony, 
 a brother!} 7 brother wood-engraver. At his house, 
 too, I dined once with Bret Harte and with Whipple, 
 the clever essayist. I spoke with General Fremont 
 once on the floor of the House of Representatives at 
 Washington ; Agassiz I heard lecture in New York ;
 
 218 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes I met once at the Century ; 
 John Fiske I at times met there, and Clarence King, 
 and Professors Peirce and Pumpelly, and the Rev. 
 Robert Collyer, and many others of equal estimation : 
 among them the most genial of Irishmen, Chief 
 Justice Daly, whom 1 may call my friend. Tilclen 
 one evening came out with me from Peter Cooper's. 
 His house in Gramercy Park (next to that now occu- 
 pied by the Players' Club) was close by, and, though 
 late at night, he took me in to show me certain 
 books in his library. Madame Blavatsky and the 
 dry-goods millionnaire, A. T. Stewart, I happened once 
 to catch sight of in the studio of Le Clear, who was 
 painting Stewart's portrait. One sight of Madame 
 was enough, a fat, vulgar-looking woman, not, one 
 could not help thinking, at all likely to be mistaken 
 for a prophetess, no sibyl but a veritable old witch, 
 with nothing venerable about her. There is a story 
 of a Jew who, putting his son to school, was so par- 
 ticular in his directions that it could not but be re- 
 marked that he had said nothing about the lad's 
 religious instruction. Reminded of it, he replied, 
 " Well, I think a North of Ireland Presbyterian is 
 the man to make most money, bring him up to that." 
 Stewart was a North of Ireland Presbyterian of that 
 stamp. When he began business in New York, he 
 had to put up his own shutters at night and carry 
 home his own parcels of goods sold during the day, 
 not even keeping an errand-boy. When he had his 
 two immense white marble dry-goods stores, whole-
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 219 
 
 sale and retail, and his marble palace on Fifth 
 Avenue, it is said that he still coveted the business 
 of small traders in the poorer districts. He looked 
 the character. Surely it was a sort of poetic justice 
 that ordered the stealing of his body, so to prevent 
 his burial in the costly cenotaph he had built for 
 himself. Of good-natured Horace Greeley, the " self- 
 made man who worshiped his Creator," I had only a 
 passing glimpse one day as he rushed out of the 
 Tribune Office to catch a street-car. 
 
 General Ben Butler and the great Massachusetts 
 Senator, Charles Sumner, I saw and spoke with at 
 sundry times. Cespedes' brave attempt for the free- 
 dom of Cuba, for its deliverance from Spain and for 
 the emancipation of the slaves, had a promise of 
 success. And perhaps had not failed had Grant 
 conceded belligerent rights, as he had promised to 
 Rawlings. Rawlings dead, the promise was not kept. 
 This was but a little while after my arrival in Amer- 
 ica. I was led to interest myself in the Cuban 
 struggle by Cluseret and another republican friend, 
 Dr. Basora, a physician practising in New York. 
 Basora was born in one of the West Indian Islands, 
 his father a slaveholder there. When the father 
 died, he left a large estate ; but the son, then a young 
 man, disdained to hold his fellow-men in bondage, and 
 refused his inheritance. He was active in the Cuban 
 cause. Strongly sympathising, I gave what help I 
 could by writing for it ; and when they wanted an 
 American General, I was asked to see General Butler
 
 220 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 and get him to name a man good for the purpose. 
 Butler gave me an introduction to one whom he 
 recommended as a brave and daring and capable man, 
 who had served under him. I called upon the man 
 in Boston, and found him to be, instead of the 
 expected fierce, grim warrior, a quiet-looking, smooth- 
 faced, gentlemanly man, who "regretted," and 
 seemed sincerely to regret, that he had settled down 
 since the war as a man of peace, begun business as a 
 lawyer, and could not be disturbed again. Butler, 
 who was very courteous to me and obliging, was a 
 man to remember : not tall but portly, with a mag- 
 nificent head which, if you were looking down from 
 the gallery to the House of Representatives, at Wash- 
 ington, you would be attracted to, not merely for its 
 baldness, but as the head of certainly a man of intel- 
 lect and ability. He had a good face, too, in spite of 
 a curious obliquity in one eye, concerning which a 
 good story is told. He was cross-examining a wit- 
 ness, and browbeating him. The culmination of his 
 repeated questions was "Will you look me in the 
 eye and swear to this? " " In which eye ? General ! ' : 
 was the retort. Butler had bitter enemies, not un- 
 deserved if reports be true that he was not only harsh 
 as military governor at New Orleans, but that he 
 was also extortionate, making no scruple of feathering 
 his nest in the conquered city. Yet there was the 
 praise for him that while he was in command there, 
 New Orleans, owing to his sanatory strictness, was 
 free from yellow fever. Sumner, a large, handsome
 
 KECOLLECTIONS 221 
 
 man, with courteous manner, I had also to see 
 on some Cuban business, and was very graciously 
 received. His home in Washington was like a 
 museum, full of statuettes and rare engravings. 
 
 So many artists were members of the Century 
 Club that I soon had a wide artistic acquaintance. 
 A closer brotherhood among artists appears to me 
 to obtain in New York than in London ; and the 
 generous feeling was liberally extended to myself. I 
 helped in founding the Society of Painters in Water- 
 colour in New York ; was admitted as an Associate 
 of the National Academy of Design, and in due time 
 was elected a full member. It might seem invidious 
 to name individuals among those whom I knew 
 when first here, twenty-seven years ago, many since 
 dead, and those of to-day whom I may still call 
 friends, but I may signalise two of the gone, because 
 men of my own profession as engravers, and both 
 men of mark, — Anderson and Adams. 
 
 Alexander Anderson, born in 1775, is worthy of 
 notice as the first engraver in wood in the United 
 States of America. His father being a copper-plate 
 printer, the boy became acquainted with Hogarth's 
 and other prints, and soon had an ambition to try 
 his own hand. He was only twelve years old when 
 he got a silversmith to roll out some copper cents ; 
 then he himself made a graver of the back spring 
 of a pocket-knife, and so started as an amateur 
 engraver in copper. After a while, a blacksmith 
 made some tools for him, and he began to engrave
 
 222 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 in relief little cuts of ships, houses, and the like, for 
 newspaper advertisements, becoming known for such 
 work and earning money by it. His father, how- 
 ever, having little faith in the business, placed him 
 with a physician, and, at the age of twenty, he was 
 licensed to practise on his own account, and for 
 three years did practise with considerable distinction. 
 In 1798 the yellow fever was in New York, and 
 Anderson's wife and infant son, his father and 
 mother, his brother, and some other kin-folk, fell 
 victims to it. With no heart left for an active life, 
 he retired into the quiet seclusion of an engraver's 
 work, which, indeed, he had never entirely aban- 
 doned. The early delight became his solace, his 
 sole occupation, and, industriously followed, both in 
 incised work and relief, in copper and type-metal, 
 and afterwards in wood, gave him a living and 
 reputation. In 1802 he undertook the reproduction 
 of Bewick's Quadrupeds, three hundred cuts for an 
 American edition. They were admirable copies, 
 only reversed. Other engravings by him, most of 
 them copies from English work, are of equal fidelity, 
 though he had no genius in design and even as an 
 engraver was hardly to be called great. The esteem 
 of his contemporaries was shown by his election as 
 an honorary member of the National Academy of 
 Design in New York, in 1843. I visited him at 
 Williamsburg in 1867, soon after my first coming 
 to America, and found him a hale old man of ninety- 
 two, with his graver in his hand, pleasing himself
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 223 
 
 with being still at work. I believe he was " at 
 work " to within a few days of his death, on the 
 17th of January, 1870, in the ninety-fifth year of 
 his age. 
 
 Joseph Alexander Adams, born in 1803, came to 
 meet me at a supper given to me on occasion of my 
 arrival in New York at the end of 1866, by the 
 Society of Wood Engravers. I had the pleasure of 
 meeting him occasionally afterwards, and also had 
 correspondence with him, enabling me to give account 
 of his life and works in my History of Wood Engrav- 
 ing in America, published by Estes & Lauriat, Boston, 
 in 1882. I had also from him the friendly gift of 
 a number of his best proofs now safely preserved in 
 the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston, Mass. Self- 
 taught in engraving like Anderson, he was likewise a 
 careful art-student, sufficiently accomplished to be 
 elected an Associate of the National Academy of 
 Design, though when I there inquired concerning 
 him I could learn nothing of him. Having with- 
 drawn from Art, his name had somehow been dropped 
 from the Academical list. I recollect seeing his 
 work even during my own apprenticeship. He w r as 
 in England in 1831, and already could show work 
 which might fairly compare with the best of a similar 
 character of our great engraver, John Thompson. 
 Here in America he was most known for sixteen 
 hundred engravings from drawings by J. G. Chap- 
 man, in Harper's Bible (1843), which, however, are 
 nearly all the work of his pupils. The profits of
 
 224 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 that book gave him means for travel and a com- 
 petence for life. He spent nearly eight years in 
 Europe, and returning home, gave up Art and 
 applied himself to scientific pursuits. Adams' most 
 excellent hand-press is of his invention. 
 
 One other name, that of William Page, sometime 
 President of the National Academy of Design, must 
 yet be chronicled, not only because of the esteem in 
 which his memory is held by his fellow-artists and 
 my own admiration of the painter's art, in which he 
 was singularly great, but also out of love of the man 
 for his rich and generous nature. I had the happi- 
 ness of being very much in his company and in very 
 close friendship with him, and I regretted his death 
 as I would that of a very dear elder brother.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 Late Years; British Museum; Austin Dobson ; Excursions; Paris 
 and Oxford ; B. F. Stevens ; Closing Words. 
 
 In very latest years, during several visits to Eng- 
 land, I had the satisfaction of adding new friends to 
 the friends of old time still living. Among the old 
 were my oldest friend, W. B. Scott, who during my 
 last visit was sick at Penkill Castle in Ayrshire ; my 
 good old physician and friend, Dr. Philip Brown, still 
 in practice at Blaydon but residing near by, at Wylam 
 on Tyne ; my three Brantwood helpers on the English 
 Republic, all holding affectionately to me ; my old 
 pupil, "Walter Crane ; other old pupils, and several of 
 my fellow-engravers, who retained their old regard, 
 notably two who sat beside me in days of apprentice- 
 ship. I may call an old friend Dr. George Bullen, 
 the genial and ever courteous keeper of the Printed 
 Books at the British Museum, as I had reason to 
 know him in very early days when I was a reader at 
 the Library ; but in later visits had to know more of 
 him, and to be more and more indebted to him for 
 his unstinted help. For such help also I had to be 
 indebted to Dr. Garnett, who on Dr. Bullen's retire- 
 ment took his place in the Museum. As principals 
 
 q 225
 
 226 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 there I can but speak prominently of them ; but the 
 same friendly help was rendered me through many 
 years by Mr. Reid, keeper of the Prints, and after- 
 wards by Professor Colvin, who succeeded him ; and 
 indeed by every one connected with the Museum, 
 Library, and Print Room during the years in which I 
 was engaged in researches for The Masters of Wood 
 Engraving, or for a collection of English Verse (pub- 
 lished in five volumes by Messrs. Scribner of New 
 York), for which my friend, R. H. Stoddard, wrote 
 the Introductions in each volume. The English 
 Verse brought me into some correspondence, for 
 leave to publish in England, with Browning, Swin- 
 burne, Buchanan, and other English poets. Buchanan 
 I met once at the Century in New York. Arthur J. 
 Munby I met at Scott's, before Scott left Chelsea for 
 Ayrshire, and I had the pleasure of meeting him sev- 
 eral times beside. I had the pleasure, too, of friendly 
 intercourse with Austin Dobson, whose charming 
 verse and prose reflect the cheerful, genial nature of 
 the man. Here I can not resist the temptation to 
 insert some lines by him, written on the fly-leaf of 
 his Thomas Bewick and his Pupils, which he sent to 
 me in 1884, dedicating the book to me as " Engraver 
 and Poet, the steadfast apostle of Bewick's white 
 line " : 
 
 " Not white thy graver's path alone ; 
 May the sweet Muse with whitest stone 
 Mark all thy days to come, and still 
 Delay thee on Parnassus Hill. 
 
 "Austin Dobson."
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 227 
 
 The white line refers of course to the peculiar 
 method of engraving followed by Bewick and his best 
 pupils, Clennell and Nesbit, and which, my life 
 through, I have sought to maintain as the only 
 artistic method of engraving in wood. 
 
 I was in England at the end of 1867, and went to 
 Paris to the Exposition; again in England in 1872-3 ; 
 again in the latter part of 1882, during 1883 and 
 the first half of 1884, and again at the close of 1887, 
 through the whole of 1888 and 1889, and to the end 
 of May, 1890. During these last two visits I made 
 several excursions, twice for a few days' stay with 
 my friend W. J. Hennessy, the American painter, at 
 St. Germain, near Paris, and during my last visit 
 twice for a few days with W. B. Scott, in Ayrshire ; 
 once to my Brantwood printer at Cheltenham ; once 
 to my good old Dr. Brown at Wylam ; once to Earl 
 Spencer's library at Althorp, near Northampton ; 
 twice to Oxford, for the first time with my friend 
 Arthur Bullen, the able editor of Elizabethan Lyrics, 
 the son of Dr. Bullen of the Museum, the second as 
 the guest of Mr. C. J. Firth, each time having the 
 opportunity of seeing the old halls, more than once 
 dining in hall. " See Venice and die ! ' says the 
 proverb, and an Englishman should not die without 
 some acquaintance with the venerable beauty of 
 Oxford. 
 
 Coming to England in 1882, 1 brought an intro- 
 duction from Mrs. Page, the wife of the painter, to 
 her two Vermont brothers, Henry Stevens, the Bible
 
 228 THREESCORE AND TEN YEARS 
 
 bibliographer, and Benjamin Franklin Stevens, the 
 Despatch Agent of the United States in London. 
 By both (Mr. Henry is since dead) I was most 
 friendlily received. More than ordinary friendliness 
 I had from Mr. B. F. Stevens when I again came to 
 England in October, 1887. For some months I was 
 his gnest at his home in Surbiton, and to his wise 
 counsel and generous help I owe the being able to 
 produce and bring out the work for which I had 
 been for many years preparing material, and which 
 resumes all I would care to say on my own art, — 
 Tlie Masters of Wood Engraving . Probably it is for 
 this book that the neighbouring (in New Haven) 
 University of Yale has honoured me by conferring 
 on me the degree of Master of Arts. 
 
 During twenty-seven years, since I first came to 
 America, I have had constant experience of kindly 
 regard for me as an Englishman, not merely on per- 
 sonal grounds, and rejoicingly I seem to perceive 
 everywhere a growing attachment to the Old Coun- 
 try, which I believe to be heartily reciprocated. I 
 close these recollections, not at all written as an 
 autobiography, with the hope that I may not be 
 without some influence, however small, in promoting 
 this good feeling between the two peoples, whose 
 good understanding and close alliance is of so much 
 importance to the world's welfare and progress. I 
 would fain hope that I have not failed to do what 
 little lay in my power as a man's duty toward the 
 land I have so long lived in, though loyalty to the
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 229 
 
 place of my birth has forbidden lny becoming an 
 American citizen. In young days I believed that an 
 Englishman was bound to help not only toward the 
 freedom and welfare of his own country, but toward 
 the freedom and welfare of the world. I have not 
 lost that belief, nor given up my faith that repub- 
 licanism has yet to be the universal rule, the republi- 
 canism not merely of a mere unkingliness or of 
 democratic and anarchical self-seeking, but the only 
 true republicanism of a generous recognition of 
 equality of rights and the fraternal exercise of 
 religious duty. 
 
 Hamden by New Haven, Conn., U. S. A. 
 Feb. 20, 1894.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Acis and Galatea, 195. 
 Adams (J. A.), 223, 224. 
 
 (Sarah F.), 24, 25. 
 
 (W. Bridges), 24, 45, 46, 110. 
 Address for the Abolition of 
 
 Royalty, 75. 
 Address to French Provisional 
 
 Government, 103. 
 Agassiz ("Louis), 217. 
 Alcott (Bionson), 45, 216. 
 Alcott House, 45. 
 Aldrich (T. B.), 217. 
 Amateur Theatricals, 198. 
 American Sympathy, 114, 153. 
 Anderson (Alexander), 221, 222. 
 Anthony (A. V. S.), 217. 
 Apprenticeship, 8 to 14. 
 Art Journal (The), 66. 
 Astley's Amphitheatre, 9. 
 At Harwich, 190, 191. 
 Atwood (Thomas), 34. 
 
 Babbage (Charles), 155. 
 Bakounine (M.), 147. 
 Bandiera Brothers, 51, 54. 
 Barmby (Goodwyn), 100, 172. 
 Barrow, 161. 
 Basora (Dr.), 219. 
 Bell's Life in London, 56. 
 Bennoch (F.), 71. 
 Birkbeck (Dr.), 44. 
 Birmingham Bull Ring, 40. 
 Blake (William), 181. 
 Blanchard (Laman), 55, 59. 
 
 Blavatsky (Madame), 218. 
 
 Boat-race, 185, 186. 
 
 Bombastes Furioso, 198. 
 
 Bonner (G. W.), 8. 
 
 Book of Ballads (The), 74. 
 
 Booth (Edwin), 196, 197. 
 
 Bowring (Dr.), 100, 101, 160. 
 
 Bradlaugh (Charles), 164, 165. 
 
 Braham, 194. 
 
 Brantwood, 97, 127, 128, 131, 132. 
 
 British Museum, 74, 225, 226. 
 
 Brown (Dr.), 130, 225, 227. 
 
 Browning (R.), 157. 
 
 Bryant (W. C), 213. 
 
 Bullen (Dr.), 225. 
 
 (A. H.), 227. 
 Bunker Hill, 202, 203. 
 Butler (General), 219, 220. 
 
 Carlile's shop, 13. 
 Carlisle election, 53. 
 Carlton House, 17. 
 Carlyle (Mrs.), 45, 107, 108, 111, 
 113. 
 
 (Thomas), 44, 45, 46, 110, 111, 
 113, 126, 167. 
 
 on Linton, 110. 
 
 on Mazzini, 111, 113. 
 Carlyle's worth, 114. 
 Cartwright (Major), 32. 
 Cavaignac (General), 105, 170. 
 
 (Godfrey), 41. 
 Cespedes, 219. 
 Chapman (Maria Weston), 121. 
 
 231
 
 232 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chartist Convention, 34, 40. 
 
 Movement, 42, 43. 
 Church Services, 16. 
 City Companies, 2. 
 City Sights, 12, 13. 
 Cleave (John), 34, 37. 
 Cluseret (General), 207, 208, 219. 
 Cobbett (William), 35, 36. 
 Cobden (Richard), 29, 91, 156, 159. 
 Coleridge (Rev. Derwent), 167. 
 
 (Hartley), 168. 
 Collins (John), 40. 
 Colvin (Sidney), 226. 
 Combe (George), 123. 
 Coniston, 97, 129, 131, 132. 
 Consul's dinner, 111, 113. 
 Cooper (Peter), 205, 206. 
 
 (Thomas), 41, 42, 100, 102, 142. 
 Copper coinage, 5. 
 Cosmo de' Medici, 20. 
 Covent Garden, 156. 
 Cowen (Joseph), 53, 127, 128, 130. 
 Craik (Mrs.), 171. 
 Crawford (W. S.), 33, 34. 
 Cromwell Statue, 29. 
 Cruikshank (George), 2, 3, 11, 58, 
 74, 177, 178. 
 
 (Robert), 10, 11. 
 Cuba, 219. 
 Cushman (Charlotte), 196. 
 
 Dadd (Richard), 74. 
 
 Darasz (Albert), 142, 143, 146. 
 
 (Paul), 142, 143. 
 Davis (Edmund), 211. 
 Davy (Dr.), 168. 
 Dawson (George), 159. 
 Death of Marlowe, 20. 
 Death-Punishment, 44, 77. 
 Deceased British Painters, 128. 
 De Rohan (William), 189 to 192. 
 Devrient (Madame), 195. 
 Dickens (Charles), 37, 56, 160, 161. 
 
 Dinner at White Conduit House, 
 
 41. 
 Dobell (Sidney), 171. 
 Dobson (Austin), 226. 
 Dodgson (George), 56, 73. 
 Dorchester Labourers, 14. 
 Douglas (Frederick), 212. 
 Doyle (James), 60. 
 
 (Richard), 58, 60. 
 Ducrow (Andrew), 9. 
 Duddon River, 130. 
 Duffy (Sir C. G.), 107 to 110, 126. 
 Dulwich College, 9, 10. 
 Duncan (Edward), 18, 19, 56, 130, 
 
 155. 
 Duncombe (T. S.), 30, 41, 52, 100. 
 Dupotet (Baron), 169. 
 
 Ebsworth (Rev. J. W.), 17 
 Elliott (Ebenezer), 34, 159. 
 Emerson (R. W.), 45, 46, 215, 216. 
 English Republic (The), 123 to 
 
 128. 
 Epps (Dr.), 100, 16a 
 Ernest, 173. 
 
 Fairs, 14. 
 
 Fairfield Festival, 45. 
 
 Figaro in London, 57. 
 
 First perversion, 17. 
 
 Flatou, 180. 
 
 Flower (Benjamin), 25. 
 
 (Eliza), 24, 25, 46. 
 Foggo (George and James), 176. 
 Forbes (Colonel), 121, 122. 
 Foresti, 156. 
 Forster (John), 166, 167. 
 
 (W. E.), 119. 
 Foster (Abby Kelly), 210, 211. 
 
 (Stephen), 210, 211. 
 Fox (W. J.), 21, 24, 25, 26, 44, 
 
 46, 100, 173. 
 Franklin (John), 73, 74. 
 Fremont (General), 217.
 
 INDEX 
 
 233 
 
 French Revolution, 103. 
 Frost (John), 43, 44, 167. 
 Fuller (Margaret), 49. 
 
 Garibaldi, 121, 189, 192. 
 Garnett (Dr. R.), 225. 
 Garrison (W. L.), 210. 
 George III., 1, 2. 
 German biography, 11. 
 Gibson (Mrs. Millner), 169. 
 Gilbert (John), 56, 74. 
 Gilchrist (Alexander), 181. 
 Gillies (Margaret), 24, 167. 
 
 (Mary), 24. 
 Gog and Magog, 12. 
 Graham (Sir James), 50 to 53. 
 Grant (General), 153. 
 Gregory (Barnard), 199, 200, 201. 
 Gregory VIL, 21. 
 Griffin (Gerald), 38. 
 Grisi (Madame), 194. 
 Guardian (The Poor Man's), 26 
 
 to 31. 
 Guido's Aurora, 57. 
 
 Hainault Forest, 6. 
 "H. B.," 60. 
 Halcyon Days, 47. 
 Half (S. C), 66, 67, 74. 
 
 (Mrs. S. C), 74. 
 Hanover Square Meeting, 141, 
 
 142, 143. 
 Harte (Bret), 217. 
 Harvey (William), 55. 
 Hawes (Benjamin), 33. 
 Hawkshead, 129. 
 Haydon (B. R.), 71, 72, 73. 
 Henning (John), 72. 
 Herring, 56. 
 
 Herzen (Alexander), 121. 
 Hetherington (II.), 27, 34, 37, 38, 
 
 44, 84 to 87. 
 Hewitt (Abram S.), 205. 
 Heywood (Abel), 28, 29, 84. 
 
 Hibbert (Julian), 31. 
 Hickson (W. E.), 159. 
 Hill (Mrs.), 170. 
 
 (Octavia), 171. 
 
 (Rowland), 157. 
 Hindley (Charles), 33. 
 Holmes (O. W.), 218. 
 Holyoake (G. J.), 106, 162, 163, 
 
 164, 190. 
 Hone (William), 2, 3, 13. 
 Hood (T.), 11, 58. 
 Horne (R. H.), 19, 20 to 24, 55, 
 
 102. 
 Howe (Mrs.), 217. 
 Ilowitt (Mary), 48. 
 
 (William), 21, 42, 48. 
 Huggins (W. J.), 18, 19. 
 Hughes (T.), 175. 
 Hume (Joseph), 30, 33. 
 Hunt (Henry), 11. 
 
 (Holman), 71. 
 
 (Leigh), 21, 38, 44, 45, 46, 67, 
 115. 
 
 (Thornton), 100, 117, 119, 122, 
 123. 
 
 Illustrated London News (The), 
 
 56, 73, 128. 
 Illustrated Serials, 5. 
 Ingram (Herbert), 56, 57. 
 Institute of Fine Arts, 73, 77. 
 Italian school, 49. 
 
 Jefferson (Joseph), 107. 
 Jerrold (Douglas), 55, 58, 100. 
 Jones (Ebenezer), 79, 80, 81. 
 
 Kaulbach, 68, 69. 
 Keeleys (The), 196. 
 Kemble (Charles), 194. 
 Kentucky Land, 211. 
 Kiallmark (George), 179. 
 Knight (J. P.), 73. 
 Knowles (Sheridan), 116. 
 Kossuth, 138, 150, 151, 153, 170.
 
 234 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lablache, 194. 
 
 Lamennais, 26, 104, 105, 121. 
 
 Lance (George), 73. 
 
 Landor (W. S.), 17, 124 to 126, 
 
 156, 157. 
 Landseer (T.), 177. 
 Lane (Charles), 216. 
 
 (Richard), 179. 
 Larken (Rev. E.), 119, 122. 
 Lausanne, 120, 121. 
 Laws against the Press, 27, 28. 
 Leader (The), 119, 122, 123. 
 Leader (John Temple), 33, 34. 
 Ledru Rollin, 142, 143, 146, 150. 
 Leech (John), 56, 58, 59, 60. 
 Lees (Dr. F. R.), 124, 139. 
 Legend of Florence, 38. 
 Leigh (Percival), 58, 59, 60. 
 Leitch (W. L.), 56, 73, 81. 
 Leslie (Frank), 205, 207. 
 Letter-Opening, 50 to 53. 
 Lewes (G. H.), 117, 122, 123. 
 Lietch (Dr.), 130. 
 Linnell (John), 181, 182. 
 Little Ease, 12. 
 Lloft (Capel), 173. 
 London Bridge, 12. 
 London Stone, 13. 
 London Working Men's Associa- 
 tion, 32 to 34. 
 Longfellow (H. W.), 214. 
 Lott (Edward), 204. 
 Lotteries, 4. 
 Lover (S.), 174. 
 
 Lovett (William), 34, 37, 40, 50. 
 Lowell (J. R.), 214. 
 
 Macaulay (T. B.), 52. 
 Mace (Jem), 201. 
 Mackay (Charles), 57, 171. 
 Macready (W. C), 38, 195, 196. 
 Martineau (Harriet), 168, 169. 
 (Rev. James), 139. 
 
 Matthews (Charles), 197. 
 Mayhew (Henry), 58. 
 Mazzini, 49 to 52, 98, 101, 103 ? 
 142 to 147, 151, 152,153,189. 
 Meadows (Kenny), 55, 56, 72. 
 Meagher's Letters, 108. 
 Medical Friends, 130, 131. 
 Medici (Colonel), 170. 
 Mediums, 169. 
 Millais (J. E.), 176. 
 Misrepresentations, 110 to 114. 
 Mitchell (Young), 73, 184. 
 Miteside, 78, 97, 118, 119. 
 Modjeska (Madame), 197, 198. 
 Monmouth Arms, 94. 
 Montgomery (Rev. R.), 174. 
 Moore (Richard), 30, 34, 37, 100- 
 Morgan (Lady), 60. 
 
 (Minter), 119. 
 Moxon (Edward), 87, 128, 129. 
 Mulready, 53. 
 Munby (A. J.), 226. 
 Mutual Instruction Society, 76. 
 
 Nation (The), 107, 124. 
 National (The, A Library for the 
 
 People), 75. 
 National Union of the Working 
 
 Classes, 32. 
 Nelson's Funeral, 4. 
 Nesbitt (Mrs.), 197. 
 Newman (F. W.) 159, 160. 
 
 J. H.), 160. 
 Northern Star (The), 35. 
 
 Oastler (Richard), 157. 
 O'Brien (Bronterre), 42. 
 
 (William Smith), 108, 211. 
 O'Connell (Daniel), 33, 34, 156. 
 O'Connor (Feargus), 35, 43. 
 Odd-Fellow (The), 37, 75. 
 Orion, 20
 
 INDEX 
 
 235 
 
 Orsini, 179. 
 Owen (Robert), 119. 
 (Robert Dale), 26. 
 
 Page (William), 224. 
 Paine, 13, 26, 75. 
 Pannier Alley, 12. 
 Paris in 1848, 105. 
 Parker (Theodore), 210. 
 Paroles d'un Croyant, 26, 104. 
 Partnership with Orrin Smith, 55. 
 Pasta (Madame), 194. 
 Paul Pry in Punch, 53. 
 Paxton (Sir Joseph), 157, 158. 
 Pearl Fishery, 119. 
 Pelletier (Claude), 207, 208. 
 People's Charter, 32 to 37, 42, 43. 
 Peoples' International League, 98 
 
 to 103. 
 Phillips (G. S.), 174. 
 
 (Wendell), 26, 207, 209, 210. 
 Pianciani (Colonel), 142, 143. 
 Pictorial Times (The), 101. 
 Pilo (Rosalino), 189. 
 Pistrucci, 49. 
 Place (Francis), 15, 158. 
 Plaint of Freedom (The), 124 to 
 
 126. 
 Poles at Liverpool, 138 to 141. 
 Popay, 35, 36. 
 Popular Grievances, 14. 
 Powell (Aaron), 209, 211. 
 
 (Thomas), 86, 87. 
 Power (Tyrone), 197. 
 Press Gangs, 4. 
 Printers' Errors, 215, 216. 
 Printing in Isle of Man, 106. 
 Prosecutions for Blasphemy, 84 
 
 to 89. 
 Punch, 53, 57. 
 Purvis (R.), 211. 
 
 Queen's Bench Prison, 86. 
 
 Queen Caroline, 2. 
 Queen's Funeral, 3. 
 
 Raleigh (Sir Walter), 7. 
 Rawlings (General), 153. 
 Rebecca Riots, 89 to 91. 
 Reid (Colonel), 155. 
 Rimmer (Dr.), 69, 205, 206. 
 Rintoul, 117, 118. 
 Robson (John), 167. 
 Roebuck (J. A.), 26, 34, 87, 88. 
 Romney (Misses), 130. 
 Ronay (Dr.), 142. 
 Ronge (Johannes), 170. 
 Rossetti (D. G.), 65, 171. 
 Ruge (Arnold), 142, 143. 
 Ruskin (John), 166. 
 
 Sam (Aurelio), 113, 121. 
 
 Sand (Madame), 103. 
 
 Scawfell Top, 134 to 137. 
 
 School Days, 5, 6, 7. 
 
 Scott (David), 63, 65, 66, 84, 118. 
 
 (William Bell), 61, 62, 63, 67, 
 68, 166, 171, 177, 225, 227. 
 Sea-green and Dog-Leech, 114. 
 Shelley, 3, 26, 115. 
 Shelley Prosecutions, 84, 85, 87. 
 Shiel (Lalor), 52. 
 Sibson (Thomas), 67 to 71, 91, 
 
 92, 93, 177. 
 Sicilian Expedition, 189 to 193. 
 Sidney (Sir Philip), 6. 
 Simon Pure, 11. 
 Sithron the Star-stricken, 21. 
 Sloman, 155. 
 Smith (Albert), 58, 59. 
 
 (John Orrin), 55, 75, 78. 
 
 (Dr. Southwood), 44, 131, 171, 
 173. 
 Snaith (Dr.), 57. 
 Snow and Primroses, 118. 
 South Place Chapel, 25.
 
 236 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Spartacus, 109. 
 
 Spectator (The), 117, 118, 120. 
 
 Spencer (Herbert), 201. 
 
 Spies, 35. 
 
 Spring (Tom), 56. 
 
 Squier (E. G.), 207. 
 
 Staniewicz (M.), 142, 143. 
 
 Stanton (Howard), 56. 
 
 Staudigl, 195. 
 
 Stedman (E. C), 213. 
 
 Stevens (Alfred), 182 to 188. 
 
 (B. F.), 228. 
 
 (Henry), 227. 
 Stewart (Peter), 139, 140. 
 Stoddard (R. H.), 213, 226. 
 Stolzman (Karl), 49, 50, 133. 
 Stratford, 1, 2. 
 Stump oratory, 76, 77. 
 Sumner (Charles), 219, 220. 
 Swinburne (A. C), 65, 171. 
 Sykes (Godfrey), 182. 
 
 Taylor (Bayard), 214. 
 
 (Peter A.), 100, 101, 159. 
 Tenniel (John), 58, 59. 
 Tennyson (Alfred), 49, 179. 
 Thackeray (W. M.), 58, 59. 
 Theatres, 194. 
 Thiers, 170. 
 Thorn (William), 172. 
 Thomas (Ralph), 88. 
 Thompson (Colonel), 33, 34, 101, 
 158, 159. 
 
 (George), 101. 
 Thomson (James), 164. 
 Tilden (S.), 218. 
 Timbs (John), 57. 
 Tour in Cumberland, 79 to 81. 
 
 Scotland, 81 to 84. 
 
 Wales, 91 to 94. 
 Toynbee (George), 49. 
 
 (Joseph), 49, 131. 
 Tracts for Paris, 121. 
 
 Trades' Unions, 32. 
 
 Train (George Francis), 202, 203, 
 
 204. 
 Travel Risks, 94 to 97. 
 Tupper (M. F.), 171, 172. 
 Twentyman (R.), 71. 
 
 Vestris (Madame), 196, 197. 
 Victor Emmanuel, 192. 
 Vincent (H.), 34, 37, 43. 
 Vivia Perpetua, 25. 
 Volney, 26. 
 Voltaire, 18. 
 
 Wade (Thomas), 19, 20, 21, 24, 65. 
 Wakley, 30, 41, 52. 
 Wanstead House, 6. 
 Ward (G. R.), 73, 176. 
 
 (James), 73. 
 Watson (James), 26, 29, 34, 37. 
 
 38, 75, 124. 
 Wehnert (E. H.), 73, 130. 
 Wellington Monument, 183, 187. 
 Wells (Charles), 63, 64, 65. 
 West Ham, 2, 16. 
 Westminster Review (The), 159. 
 Whitechapel Butchers, 4. 
 Whitman (Walt), 216, 217. 
 Whittier (J. G.), 214. 
 Wilkinson (Dr. Garth), 181. 
 Williams (Hugh), 86, 89. 
 
 (Zephaniah), 43, 44. 
 Woodford, 6, 55, 76. 
 Wooler (Jonathan), 13. 
 Worcell (Stanislas), 49, 50, 138, 
 
 139, 142, 146 to 151. 
 Wordsworth, 130, 167, 168. 
 Wornum (R. N.), 67, 177. 
 Wright (Frances), 26, 156. 
 
 Young England, 114. 
 
 Zoological Gardens, 9. 
 
 
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