UC-NRLF PRIVATE LIBRARY OF -( CHARLES A. KOFOip. ^ No.?. 5.7 Cost.CTs. GIFT OF . } BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES BT SAMUEL SMILES New York AMERICAN BOOK EXCHANGE 76-4 Broadway 1881 e^ ^\o^ NOTE. The first edition of this work appeared in 1860; and as the bio- graphical sketches of persons then living have of course become incomplete and inadequate, they have been omitted in the present issue. CONTENTS PAGS Jamus Watt ....•..•• 6 RoBEET Stephenson .•«.'...• 41 Db. Abnold • . • • 62 Hugh Milleb . . « . • . • « • 61 Francis Jeffeey ..••••«.• 73 EbENEZEE ELIilOTT . . , , . . ■ • .81 Geobge Boeeow , 87 John J^mes Audubon ,..•••.. 98 William Macgillivbat •••.,.. 115 John Steeling ..••••••, 124 Leigh Hunt . . , . . • • • . • 134 Haetley Coleeidge •••«•••• 144 Db. Kttto ...;.••... 151 Edqae Allan Pok ...•••.. 157 Theodoee Hook" 165 Db. Andeew Combs . 178 Robeet Nicoll • • . 186 Saeah Maegaeet Fulleb 196 Saeah Maetin ...,.•.., 209 247487 JAMES WATT. THE inventor of the steam-engine, now so extensively applied to production in all the arts of industry, is entitled to be regarded as one of the most extraordinary men who has ever lived. Steam is the very Hercules of modern mythology. In the manufactures of Great Britain alone, the power which it exercises is estimated to be equal to the manual labor of four hundred millions of men, or more than double the number of males supposed to inhabit the globe. Steam has become the universal lord. It impels ships in everj' sea, and drags tram-loads of passengers and mer- chandise in all lands. It pumps water, drives mills, hammers iron, prints books and newspapers, and works in a thousand ways with an arm that never tires. All this marvelous and indescribable power has flowed from the invention of one man, the subject of the following memoir. James Watt was born at Greenock on the Clyde, on the 19th of January, 1736. His parents were of the middle class, — honest, industrious people, with a character for probity which had de- scended to them from their " forbears," and was the proudest inher- itance of the family. James Watt was thus emphatically well-born. His grandfather was a teacher of navigation and mathematics in the village of Cartsdyke, now part of Greenock, and dignified himself with the name of " Professor." But as Oartsdyke was as yet only a humble collection of thatched hovels, and the shipping of the Clyde was confined principally to fishing-boats, the probability is, that his lessons in navigation were of a very humble order. He was, how- ever, a dignitary of the place, being Bailie of the Barony, as well as one^f the parish elders. His son, James Watt, the father of the engineer, settled at Greenock as a carpenter and builder. Greenock was then little better than a fishing-village, consisting of a single row of thatched cottages lying parallel with the sandy beach of the 6 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. Frith of Clyde. The baautifnl chore, broken by the long, narrow sea-lochs running far away among the Argyleshire hills, and now fringed with villages, villas, and mansions, was then as lonely as Glencoe ; and the waters of the Frith, now daily plashed by the paddles of almost innumerable Clyde steamers, were as yet undis- turbed, save by the passing of an occasional Highland cobble. The prosperity of Greenock was greatly promoted by Sir John Shaw, the feudal superior, who succeeded in obtaining from the British Parliament, what the Scottish Parliament previous to the Union had refused, the privilege of constructing a harbor. Ships began after 1740 to frequent the pier, and then Mr. Watt added ship-carpen- tering and dealing in ships' stores to his other pursuits. He him- self held shares in ships, and engaged in several foreign mercantile ventures, some of which turned out ill, and involved him in embar- rassments. A great deal of miscellaneous work was executed on his premises, — household furniture and ship's carpentry, — chairs and tables, figure-heads and capstans, blocks, pumps, gun-carriages, and dead-eyes. The first crane erected on the Grenock pier, for tho convenience of the Virginia tobacco-shops, was supplied from his stores. He even undertook to repair ships* compasses, as well as the commoner sort of nautical instruments then in use. These mr. l- tifarious occupations were the result of the smallness of the placo, while the business of a single calling w^as yet too limited to yield u competence. That Mr. Watt was a man of rej^ute in his locality is shown by his having been elected one of the trustees to manage the funds of the borough in 1741, when Sir John Shaw divested himself of his feudal rights, and made them over to the inhabitants. Mr. Watt subsequently held office as town-treasurer, and as a bailie or magistrate. Agnes Muirhead, the bailie's wife, and the mother of James Watt, was long remembered in the place as an intelligent woman, bounti- fully gifted with graces of person as well as of mind and heart. She was of a somewhat dignified appearance ; and it was said that she aifected a superior style of living to her neighbors. One of these, long after, spoke of her as **a braw, braw woman, none like her nowadays," and commented on the extraordinary fact of her having on one occasion no fewer than **two lighted candles on the table at the same time " ! The bailie's braw wife was, perhaps, the only lady in Greenock who then dressed a-la-mode~the petticoat worn over a hoop, and curiously tucked up behind, with a towering head-dress over ber powdered hair. This pretentious dame, as she appeared, probably did no more than adapt her mode of living to Mr. Watt's circumstances, which seem to have enabled him to adopt a more generous style than was usual in small Scottish towns, where the people were for the most part very j^oor, and accustomed to slender fare. From childhood, James Watt was of an extremely fragile constitu- JAMES WATT, 7 tion, requiring the tenderest nurture. Unable to join in the rude play of healthy children, and confined almost entirely to the house, he acquired a shrinking sensitiveness which little fitted him for the rough battle of life ; and when he was sent to the town school it caused him many painful trials. His mother had already taught him reading, and his father a little writing and arithmetic. His very sports proved lessons to him. His mother, to amuse him, encouraged him to draw with a pencil upon paper, or with chalk upon the floor, and he was supplied with a tew tools from the carpenter's shop, which he soon learned to handle with con- siderable expertness. The mechanical dexterity he acquired was the foundation upon which he built the speculations to which he owes his glory, nor without this manual training is there the least likelihood that he would have become the improver and almost the creator of the steam-engine. Mrs. Watt exercised an influence no less beneficial on the formation of his moral character ; her gentle nature, strong good sense, and earnest, unobtrusive piety, strongly impressing themselves upon his young mind and heart. Nor w^ero his parents without their reward ; for as he grew up to manhood he repaid their anxious care with warm aifection. Mrs. Watt was accus- tomed to say that the loss of her only daughter, which she had felt so severely, had been fully made up to her by the dutiful attentions of her son. From an early period he was subject to violent headaches, which confined him to his room for weeks together. It is in such casen as his that indications of precocity are generally observed, and parents would be less pleased at their appearance did they know that they are generally the symptoms of disease. Several remarkable instances of this precocity are related of Watt. On one occasion, when he was bending over a marble hearth, with a piece of chalk in his hand, a friend of his father said, *' You ought to send that boy to a public school, and not allow him to trifle away his time at home." ** Look how my child is occupied," replied the father, *' before you condemn him." Though only six years of age, he was trying to solve a problem in geometry. On another occasion, he was reproved by Mrs. Muirhead, his aunt, for his indolence at the tea-table. ** James Watt," said the worthy lady, **I never sav/ such an idle boy as you are ; take a book, or employ yourself usefully ; for the last hour you have not spoken one word, but taken off the lid of that kettle and put it on again, holding now a cup, and now a silver spoon, over the steam, watching how it rises from the spout, catching and counting the drops it falls into ; are you not ashamed of spending your time in that way ?" In the view of M. Arago, "the little James before the tea-kettle becomes the mighty engineer preparing the discoveries which were to immortalize him." In our opinion, the judgment of tho aunt was the truest. There is no reason to suppose that the mind of little James was occupied with 8 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. philosophical considerations on the condensation of steam. This is an after-thought borrowed from his subsequent discoveries. Nothing is commoner than for children to be amused with such phenomena, in the same way that they will form air-bubbles in a cup of tea, and watch them sailing over the surface till they burst ; and the proba- bility is that little James was quite as idle as he seemed. At school, where a parrot-power of learning what is set down in the lesson-book is the chief element of success, "Watt's independent observation and reflection did not enable him to distinguish him- Kelf, and he was even considered dull and backward for his age. — He shone as little in the playground as in the class. The timid and sensitive boy found himself completely out of place in the midst of the boisterous juvenile republic. Against the tyranny of the elders he was helpless; their wild play was completely distasteful to him; he could not join in their sports, nor roam with them along the beach, nor take part in their hazardous exploits in the harbor. Accordingly, they showered upon him contemptuous epithets; and, the school be- ing composed of both sexes, the girls joined in the laugh. Contin- ual ailments, however, prevented his attendance for weeks together. "When not yet fourteen, he was taken by his mother for change of air to some relatives at Glasgow, then a quiet place, without a sin- gle long chimney, somewhat resembling a rural market-town of the present day. He proved so wakeful during his visit, and so disposed to indulge in that story-telling which even Sir Walter Scott could admire at a late period of his life, that IVIrs. Watt was entreated to take him home. " I can no longer bear the excitement in which he keeps me,'* said Mrs. Campbell; '* I am worn out for want of sleep." Every evening, before our usual hour of retiring to rest, he adroitly contrives to engage me in conversation, then begins some striking tale, and, whether it is humorous or pathetic, the interest is so over- powering, that all the family listen to him with breathless attention; hour after hour strikes unheeded, but the next morning I feel quite exhausted. You must really take home your son." His taste for fiction never left him ; and to the close of his days he took delight in reading a novel. James Watt, having finished his education at the grammar-school of his native town, received no further instruction. As with all dis- tinguished men, his extensive after-acquirements in science and literature were entirely the result of his own self culture. Towards the end of his school career his strength seems to have grown; his progress was more rapid and decided ; and before ho left he had taken the lead of his class. But his best education was gathered from the conversation of his parents. Almost every cottage, indeed, in Scotland, is a training-ground for their future men. How much of the unwritten and traditionary history which kindles the Scotch- man's nationality, and tells upon his future life, is gleaned at his humble fireside ! Moreover, the library shelf of Watt's home con- JAMES AVAl^. 8 tained well-thumbed volumes of Boston, Bunyan, and "The Clond of Witnesses," with Harry the Rhymer's " Life of Wallace," and old ballads tattered by frequent use. These he devoured greedily, and re-read them until he had most of them by heart. During holiday times, he indulged in rambles along the Clyde, sometimes crossing to the north shore, and strolling up the Gare Loch and Holy Loch, and even as far as Ben Lomond itself. He was of a solitary disposition, and loved to wander by himself at night amidst the wooded pleasure-grounds which surrounded the old man- sion-house overlooking the town, watching through trees the mys- terious movements of the stars.-^ He became fascinated by the won- ders of astronomy, and was stimulated to inquire into the^ sciences by the nautical instruments which he found amongst his father's ship-stores. It was a peculiarity which characterized him through life, that he could not look upon any instrument or machine without being seized with a determination to unravel its mystery, and mas- ter the rationale of its uses. Before he was fifteen, he had twice gone through, with great attention, S'Gravesande's Elements of Natural Philosophy, which belonged to his father. He performed many chemical experiments, and even contrived to make an electrical ma- chine, much to the marvel of those who felt its shocks. Like most invalids, he read eagerly such books on medicine as came in his way. He went so far as to practice dissection; and on one occasion he was found carrying oflf the head of a child who had died of some uncommon disease, *' He told his son," says Mr. Muirhead, *'that, had he been able to bear the sight of the sufferings of patients, he would have been a surgeon." In his rambles, his love of wild- flowers and plants lured him on to the study of botany. Ever ob- servant of the aspects of nature, the violent upheavings of the moun- tain ranges on the northern shore of Loch Lomond next directed his attention to mineralogy. He devoured all the works which fell in his way; and on a friend advising him to be less indiscriminate, he replied, "1 have never yet read a book, or conversed with a com- panion, without gaining information, instruction, or amusement." This was no answer to the admonition of his friend, who merely recommended him to bestow upon the best books the time he de- voted to the worse. But the appetite for knowledge in inquisitive minds is, during youth, when curiosity is fresh and unslaked, too insatiable to be fastidious, and the volume which gets the prefer- ence is usually the first which comes in the way. Watt was not a mere bookworm. In his solitary walks through the country, he would enter the cottages of the peasantry, gather their local traditions, and impart to them information of a similar kind from his own ample stores. Fishing, which suited the tran- quil character of his nature, was his single sport. When unable to i-Amblc for the purpose, he could still indulge the pursuit while standing in his father's yard, which was .open to the sea. and the 10 BRIEF BIOGRAPfflES, water of snfficient depth, at high tide, to enable yessels of fifty or sixty tons to lie alongside. Watt, as we have seen, had learnt the use of his hands, a highly serviceable branch of education, though not taaght at schools or colleges. He could ply his tools with considerable dexterity, and he was often employed in the carpenter's shop in making miniature cranes, pulleys, pumps, and capstans. He could work in metal, and a punch-ladle of his manufacture, formed out of a large silver coin, is still preserved. His father had originally intended him to follow his ovvn business of a merchant, but having sustained several heavy losses about this time, — one of his ships havinG^ foundered at sea, — and observing the strong bias of his son towards mechanical pursuits, he determined to send him to Glasgow, to learn the trade of a mathematical-instrument maker. In 1754, when he was in his eighteenth year, he accordingly set out for Glasgow, which was as diS'erent from the Glasgow of 18G0 as it is possible to imagine. Little did he dream, when he entered it a poor prentice lad, what it was afterwards to become, through the result of his individual labors. Not a steam engine or a steamboat then distutbed the quiet of the town. There was a little quay on the Broomielaw, partly covered with broom ; and this quay was fitted with a solitary crane, for which there was but small use, as boats of more than six tons could not ascend the Clyde. Often not a single masted vessel was to be seen in the river. The chief mag- nates of the place were the tobacco-merchants and the Professors of the College. Next to tobacco, the i^rincipal trade of the town with foreign countries was in grindstones, coals, and fish, — Glas- gow herrings being in great repute. Inconsiderable though Glasgow was at the middle of last century, it was the only place in Scotland which exhibited signs of industrial prosperity. About the middle of last century Scotland was a poor and haggard country. Nothing could be more dreary than those Lowland districts which now perhaps exhibit the finest agriculture in the world. Wheat was so rare a plant, that a field of eight acres within a mile of Edinburgh attracted the attention of the whole neighborhood. Even in the Lothians, Roxburgh, the Lan- arkshire, little was to be seen but arid, bleak moors and quaking bogs, with occasional patches of uninclosed and ill-cultivated land . Where manure was used, it was carried to the field on the back of the crofter's wife ; the crops were carried to market on the back of the plow-horse, and occasionally on the backs of the crofter and his family. The country was without roads, and between the towns there were onl}^ rough tracks across moors. Goods were conveyed from place to place on pack-horses. The trade between Glasgow and Edinburgh was conducted in the same rude way ; and when carriers were established, the time occupied going and coming be- tween Edinburgh ^n to it, far at a T^niversity meeting in Jua^, 1760, a r^ JAMES WATT, 17 Bolution was pas?ecl to allow Mr. Anderson "to lay out a sum not exceeding two pounds sterling to recover the steam-engine from Mr. Sisson, instrument maker, at London." In 1763 this clumsy little engine, destined to become so famous, was put in the hands of "Watt. The boiler was somewhat smaller than an ordinary tea-kettle, the cylinder two inches in diameter, and the mathematical-instru- ment maker merely regarded it as **a fine plaything." When, how- ever, he had repaired the machine and set it to work, he found that the boiler, though apparently sufficiently large, could not supply steam fast enough, and only a few strokes of the piston could be se- cured. The fire under it was stimulated by blowing, and more steam was produced, but still the machine would not work prop- erly. Exactly at the point where another man would have aban- doned the task in despair, the mind of Watt became thoroughly roused. *• Everything." says Professor Robison, " was to him the beginning of a new and serious study; and we knew he would not quit it till he had either discovered its insignificance, or had made something out of it. " Thus it happened with the phenomenon pre- Hented'by the model of the steam-engine. He endeavored to ascertain from books by what means he was to remedy the defects; and when books failed to aid him, he commenced a course of experiments, and resolved to work out the probelm himself. In the course of his in- quiries he came upon a fact which more than any other led his mind into the train of thought which at last conducted him to the inven- tion of which the results were destined to prove so stupendous. This fact was the existence of latent heat. But before we go on to state his proceedings, it is necessary to describe the condition at which the steam-engine had arrived w^hen his investigations com- menced. Steam had not then become a common mechanical power. The sole use to which it was applied was to pump water from mines. A beam, moving upon a center, had affixed to it a chain, which was attached to the piston of the pump ; to the other end of it a chain, which was attached to a piston that fitted a cylinder. It was by driving this latter piston up and down the cylinder that the pump was worked. To communicate the necessary movement to the piston, the steam generated in a boiler was admitted to the bottom of the cylinder, forcing out the air through a valve and by its pressure upon the under side of the piston counter balancing the pressure of the atmosphere upon its upper side. The piston, thus placed between two equal and two opposite forces, was then drawn wp to the top of the cylinder by the greater v/eight of the pump-gear at the opposite extremity of the beam. The steam, so far, only dis- charged the office which was performed by the air it displaced ; but if the air had been allowed to remain, the piston once at the top of the cylinder could not have been returned, being pressed as much by th^ atmosphere underneath aff by the atmosphere above it. 'lUio 18 BRIEF BIOGrwAPHIES. Bteam, on the contrary, could be conden , by injecting coKl water through the bottom of the cylinder. This caused a vucuvim below the piston, which was now unsupported, and descended by the pressure of the atmosphere upon its uj^per surfacr\ When the piston reached the bottom, the steam was again let in, and the pro- cess was repeated. This was the machine in use when "Watt was pursuing the investi- gations into which he was led by the litttle model of the Newcomen engine. Among other experiments, "he constructed a boiler which showed, by inspection, the quaDtity of water evaporated in a given time, and thereby ascertained the quantity of steam used in every stroke of the engine." He was astonished to discover that a small quantity of water, in the form of steam, heated a Icmje quantity of water injected into the cylinder for the purpose of cooling it ; and upon further examination, he ascertained that steam heated six times its weight of w^ell-water to 212^, which was the temperature of the steam itself. Unable to understand so remarkable a circumstance, he mentioned it to Dr. Black, w^ho then expounded to him the theory of latent heat, which this great chemist had already taught his pupils, unknown to Watt. This vast amount of heat stored up in steam, and not indicated by the thermometer, involved a propor- tionate consumption of coals. When Watt learned that w^ater, in its conversion into vapor, became such a reservoir of heat, he was more than ever bent upon economizing it, striving, with the same quantity of fuel, at once to augment its production and diminish its waste. "He greatly improved the boiler," says Professor E-obison, ** by increasing the surface to which the fire was applied ; he made flues through the middle of the water, and made his boiler of wood, as a worse conductor of heat than the brick-work which surrounds common furnaces. He cased the cylinder and all the conducting- pipesin materials which conducted heat very slowly ; he even made them of wood." But none of these contrivances were effectual ; for it turned out that the chief expenditure of steam, and consequently of fuel, was in the re-heating the cylinder after it had been cooled by the injection of the cold water. Nearly four-fifths of the whole steam employed was condensed on its first admission, before the surplus could act upon the piston. Watt therefore came to the con- clusion, that, to make a perfect steam-engine, it was necessary that the cylinder should be always as hot as the steam that entered it ; but it was equally necessary that the steam should be condensed when the piston descended, — nay, that it should be cooled down below 100*^, or a considerable amount of vapor would be cfiven off, which would resist the descent of the piston and diminish the engine.* The two conditions seemed quite incompatible. The * Since the more the pressure upon the water is diminished, the lower the temperature at which it boils, water at any temperature less than loo*" gives off vapor in the vacuum ot the cylinder. JAMES WATT. 19 cylinder was never to be at a less temperattire than 212^, and yet at each descent of the piston it was to be less than 100^. *' He continued," he says, "to grope in the dark, misled by many an ignis fatuus." At length, as he was taking a walk one Sunday afternoon, in the spring of 1765, the solution of the problem sud- denly flashed upon his mind. As steam w^as an elastic vapor, it would expand and rush into a previously exhausted space. He had only to produce a vacuum in a separate vessel; and open a communication between the vessel and the cylinder of the steam- engine at the moment when the piston was required to descend, and the steam would disseminate itself and become divided between the cylinder and the adjoining vessel. But as this vessel would be kept cold by an injection of water, the steam would be annihilated as fast as it entered, which would cause a fresh outflow of the remaining steam in the cylinder till nearly the v/hole of it was condensed without the cylinder itself being chilled in the operation. An air- pump, worked by the steam-engine, would pump from the subsidiary vessel the heated water, air, and vapor, accumulated by the con- densing process. Great and prolific ideas are almost always simple. What seems impossible at the outset appears so obvious when it is effected, that we are prone to marvel that it did not force itself at once upon the mind. Late in life. Watt, with his accustomed mo- desty, declared his belief that, if he has excelled, it had been by chance, and the neglect of others. But mankind has been more just to him than he had been to himself. There was no accident in the discovery. It had been the result of close and continuous study, and the idea of the separate condenser, v^hich flashed upon him in ft moment, and filled him with rapture, was merely the last step of a long journey, — a step which could not have been taken unless the previous road had been traversed. The steam in Newcomen's engine was only employed to produce a vacuum. The working power of the engine was in the down stroke, which was effected by the pressure of the air upon the piston ; hence it is now usual to call it the atmospheric engine. Watt per- ceived that the air v/hich followed the piston down the cylinder would cool the latter, and that steam would be wasted in reheating it. To effect a further saving, he resolved "to put an air-tight cover upon the cylinder, with a hole and stuffing-box for the piston- rod to slide through, and to admit steam above the piston, to act upon it instead of the atmosphere." When the steam had done its duty in driving down the piston, a communication was opened between the upper and lower part of the cylinder, and the same steam, distributing itself equally in both compartments, sufficed to restore equilibrium. The piston was now drawn up by the weight of the pump-gear, the steam beneath it was then condensed to leave a vacuum, and a fresh jet of steam from the boiler was let in above the piston, and forced it again to the bottom of the cylinder. From 20 BKIEF biographies; an atmosphmc it had thns become a true steam-engine, and with a much greater economy of steam than when the air did half the duty. But it was not only important to keep the air from flowing down the inside of the cylinder. The air which circulated without cooled the metal, and condensed a portion of the steam within. This Watt proposed to remedy by a second cylinder, surrounding the first, with an interval between the two which was to be kept full of steam. *'When once," ho says, "the idea of separate condensation was started, all these improvements followed as corollaries in quic^k suc- cession, so that in the course of one or two days the invention was thus far complete in my mind." But although the engine was complete in his mind, it cost Watt many long and laborious years before he could perfect it in execu- tion. One source of delay was the numerous expedients which sprung up in his fertile mind, ** which," he said, "his want of experience in the practice of mechanics in great flattered him would prove more commodious than his matured experience had shown them to be. Experimental knowledge is of slow ^owth, and he tried too many fruitless experiments on such variations." One of his chief difficulties was to find mechanics to make his large models for him. The beautiful metal workmanship which has been called into being by his own invention did not then exist. The only available hands in Glasgow were the blacksmiths and tinners, — little capable of constructing articles out of their ordinary walk. He accordingly hired a small work-shop in a back street of the town, where he might himself erect a working model, with the aid of his assistant, John Gardiner. His mind, as may be supposed, was absorbed in the desire to realize his beautiful conception. **I am at present," he wrote to his friend Dr. Lind, "quite barren on every other article, my whole thoughts being bent on this machine." The first model, on account of the bad construction of the larger parts, was only partially successful, and then a second and bigger model was com- menced in August, 1765. In October it was at work ; but the machine leaked in all directions, and the piston proved not steam- tight. To secure a nice-fitting piston, with the indifferent work- manship of that day, taxed his inp:enuity to the utmost. At so low an ebb was the art of making cylinders, that the one he employed was not bored but hammered, the collective mechanical skill of Glasgoxv being then unequal to the casting and boring of a cylinder of the simplest kind. In the Newcomen engine a little water was poured upon the upper surface of the piston, and filled up tiie inter- stices between the piston and the cylinder. But when Watt employed steam to drive down the piston, he was deprived of tliis resource ; for the water and the steam could not coexist. Even if he had retained the agency of the air above, the drip of water from the crevices into the lower part of the cylinder would have been incompatible with keeping the surface hot and dry, and, by turning JAMES WATT. «t into vapor as it fell upon the heated metal, it would have impaired the vacuum during the descent of the piston. To add to Watt's troubles, while he was busied with his model, the tinner, who was his leading mechanic, died. **My old white-iron man is deadj" he wrote to 6r. Roebuck in December, — an almost irreparable loss ! By the addition of collars of varnished cloth the piston was made steam-tight, and the machine went cleverly and successfully on trials, at a pressure of ten to fourteen pounds on the square inch. Thus inch by inch Watt battled down difficulty, held good the ground he had gained, verified the expectations he had formed, and placed the advantages of the invention, to his own mind, beyond the reach of doubt. Watt's means were small, and there were no capitalists in Glas- gow likely to take up the steam-engine. Commercial enterprise had scarcely begun, or was still confined to the trade in tobacco. To give a fair trial to the new apparatus would involve an expendi- ture of several thousand pounds ; and who on the spot could be ex- pected to invest so large a sum in trying a machine so entirely new, and depending for its success on physical principles very im- perfectly understood ? But he had not far to go for an associate. "Most fortunately," says Professor Robison, *♦ there was in the neighborhood such a person as he wished — Dr. Roebuck, a gentle- man of very uncommon knowledge in all the branches of civil en- gineering, familiarly acquainted with the steam-engine, of which he employed several in his collieries, and deeply interested in this improvement. He was also well accustomed to great enterprises, of an undaunted spirit, not scared by difficulties, nor a niggard of expense." He was born at Sheffield in 1718, and practiced as a physician at Birmingham with distinguished success, had made many improvements in various manufacturing arts, and was now engaged in the double task of carrj^ing on iron-works at Carron and sinking coal-mines at Borrowstoness. As early as August, 1765, Watt was in full correspondence with Roebuck on the subject of the engine. No partnership was entered into till 1778 ; but it is evident, from the nature of Watt's letters, that Roebuck took the greatest interest in the project, and had probably pledged himself to engage in it if the experiments prom- ised success. In November, Watt sent detailed drawings of a cov- ered cylinder and piston to be cast at the Carron works. Though the cylinder was the best that could be made there, it was so iil- bored as to be useless. The piston-rod was constructed at Glas- gow, under his own supervision ; and when it was completed, he was afraid to send it in a cart, lest the work-people should see it, which would "occasion speculation." *'I believe," he added, "it will be best to send it in a box." These precautions would seem to have been dictated by a fear of piracy. The necessity of acting by stealth increased the difficulties arising from the clumsiness and in- 22 BRIEF BIOGEAPHIES. experience of the mechanics. There is a gap in the correspondence of Watt with Roebuck from May, 1766, to January, 1768, and we hear no more of this piston-rod or of its worthless cylinder. Some- thing, however, must have occurred in the interval to inspire Roe- buck with confidence, for, in 1767, he undertook to pay a debt of £1,000 which Watt had contracted in prosecuting his project, to provide the money for the further experiments, and to pay for. the patents. In return for this outlay ho was to have two-thirds of the property in the invention. In April, 1768, Watt made trial of a new model. The result was not altogether satisfactory. Roebuck, in reply to the announce- ment, asked Watt to meet him at Kilsythe, a place about half-way between Carron and Glasgow, and talk the matter over. " I would," says Watt, in his answer, "with all my heart, wait upon you on Friday, but am far from being well, and the fatigue of the ride would disable me from doing anything for three or four daj' s ; be- sides, I hope by that time to have a more successful trial, without which I cannot have peace in my mind to enjoy anything." After vfirious contrivances, a trial which he made on the 24th of May answered to his heart's content. •* I intend,'* he wrote, to Dr. Roe- buck, **to have the pleasure of seeing you at Kinneil on Saturday or Friday. I sincerely wish you joy of this successful result, and hope it will make you some return for the obligation I ever will re- main under to you." Kinneil House, where Watt hastened to pay his visit of congratulation to Dr. Roebuck, was a singular old edifice, a former country seat of the Dukes of Hamilton, finely situated on the shores of the Forth, with large apartments and stately staircases, and an external style of architecture which resembles the old French chateau. The mansion has become rich in classical asso- ciations, having been inhabited, since Roebuck's time, by Dugald Stewart, who wrote in it his •* Philosophy of the human Mind." There he was visited by Wilkie, the painter, when in search of sub- jects for his pictures, and Dugald Stewart found for him, in an old farm-house in the neighborhood, the cradle-chimney which is in- troduced in tlie "Penny Wedding." But none of these names can stand by the side of that of Watt, and the first thought at Kinneil, of every one who is familiar with his history, would be of the memorable day when he rode over in exultation to Dr. Roebuck to wish him joy of the success of the steam-engine. His date of tri- nm]:')h was, however, premature. He had yet to suffer many sicken- ing delays, and many bitter disappointments ; for though he had contrived to get his model executed with fair precision, the skill was still wanting for'inanufacturing the parts in their lull size with the requisite nicety, and his present conquest was succeeded by discomfiture. The model went so well that it was now determined to take out a patent, and in August, 1768, Watt went to London for the pur- JALIES WATT. 23 pose. After transacting bia business be proceeded bom© by way of fcirmingbam, then tbe best school of mechanics in England. He here saw his future partner, Mr. Boulton, for the first time, and they at once conceived for each other a hearty regard. Mr. Boul- ton, in particular, was strongly impressed both by the character and genius of Watt. They had much conversation respecting the engine, and it cheered its inventor that the sagacious and practical Birmingham manufacturer augured well of its success. Watt seems, however, to have been seized with low spirits on his return to Glas- gow ; his heart probably aching with anxiety for his family, whom it was hard to maintain upon hojpe so often deferred. The more san- guine Doctor was elated with the good working of the model, and he was impatient to put the invention in practice. " You are let- ting," he wrote to Watt, October 30, 1768, "the most active part of your life insensibly glide away. A day, a moment, ought not to be lost. And you should not suffer your thoughts to be diverted by any other object, or even improvement of this, but only the speediest and most effectual manner of executing one of a proper size, according to your present ideas." This was an allusion to the fresh expedients which were always starting up in Watt's brain, and which appeared endlessly to protract the consummation of the work ; but it was by never resting satisfied with imperfect devices that he attained to perfection, Long after, when a noble Lord was ex- pressing his admiration at his great achievement. Watt replied, "The public only look at my success, and not on the intermediate failures and uncouth constructions which have served as steps to climb to the top of the ladder." As to the lethargy of which Koe- buck spoke, it was merely the temporary reaction of a mind strained and wearied with long-continued application to a single subject. The patent w^as dated January 5, 1769, a year also memorable as that in which Arkwright took out the patent for his spinning- machine, and Watt by the law had four months in which to prepare his specifications. To render it as perfect as possible, he com- menced a series of fresh experiments, and all his spare hours were devoted to making various trials of pipe-condensers and drum con- densers, — trying to contrive new methods of securing tightness of the piston, and devising steam-jackets to prevent the waste of iieat, — inventing oil-pumps, gauge-pumps, and exhausting-cylind- ersi, — loading valves, beams, and cranks. He commenced at Kinneil the construction of a steam-engine on ■a larger scale than he had yet attempted. It had been originally in- tended t^ erect it in the small town of Borrowstoness; but as he wished to avoid dis-pl-ay, being determined, as he said, "not to puff," he put it up in an o.uthouse at Kinneil, close by the burnside in the glen, wheire there msiS abundance of water and secure privacy. The materials were brought; partly from Glasgow and partly from Carron, where the cyliJider haa ibeeu cast. Th« process of erection was U BRIEF BIOGBAPHIES. tedious, for the mechanics were unnsed to the -v^brk. Watt was oc- casionally compelled to be absent on other business, and he gener- ally on his return found the men at a stand-still, not knowinj^ what to do next. As the engine neared completion "his anxiety for his approaching doom kept him from sleep," for his fears, he says, were at least equal to his hopes. The whole was finished in September, 1769, and proved a *'clumsy job." One of his new contrivances did not work well; and the cylinder, having been badly cast, w^s almost useless. Watt again was grievously depressed. ** It is a sad thing," he wrote to his friend, Dr. Small of Birmingham, in March, 1770, *'for a man to have his all hanging by a single string. If I had wherewithal to pay the loss, I don't think I should so much fear a failure; but I cannot bear the thought of other people becoming losers by my scheme, and I have the happy disposition of always painting the worst." His poverty was already compelling him to relinquish his experiments for employment of more pecuniary profit Watt had married bis cousin, Miss" Miller, in July, 1764. His ex- penses were thus enlarged almost at the very moment when his invention began to fill his mind, and distracted his attention from his ordinary calling. His increasing family led him before long to seek employment as a land-surveyor, or, as it was called in Scotland, a " land-louper." Much of his business was of the class which now belongs to the civil engineer, and in 1767 he laid out a small canal to unite the rivers Forth and Clyde. There was a rival scheme, cheaper and more direct, which was espoused by the celebrated Smeaton, and Watt had to answer before a Committee of the House of Commons to defend his plan. *' I think," he wrote to Mrs. Watt, Aprils, 1767, "I shall not long to have anything to do with the House of Commons again: I never saw so many wrong-headed people on all sides gathered together." The fact that they decided against him had probably its share in producing this opinion of their wrong- headedness. In April, 1769, when he was busily engaged in erecting the Kir- neil engines, he heard that a linen-draper in London, of the name of Moore, had plagiarized his invention, and the reflections which this drew forth from him is an evidence of the settled despondency which clouded his mind, and even cramped his faculties. I have resolved, unless these things that I have now brought to some per- fection reward me for the time and money I have lost on them. If I can resist it, to Invent no more. Indeed, I am not near so capable as I once was; I find that I ain not the same person that I was four years ago, when I In- vented tlie fire-engine, and foresaw, even hefore I made a model, almost every circumstance that has since occurred. I was at that time spurred on by the alluring hope of placing myself above want, without being obliged to have much'dealing with mankind, to whom I have always been a dupe. The neces- sary experience in great * was wanting; in acquiring which I have met with * The expression '*in^reat" means machines unon a lafge scale, Instead of the small models with which his experimeats liaii b^ea mad^. JAMES WATT. 25 m^ny disappointments. I must have sunk under the burden ot them If I had not been supported by the friendship of Dr. Koebuck. I have now brought the engine near a conclusion, j'-^t I am not In Idea nearer that rest I wished for than I was four years ago. However, I am resolved to do all I can to carry on this business, and If it does not thrive with me I will lay aside the burden I cannot carry. Of all things in life there is nothing more foolish THAN INVENTING. It is nevertheless a remarliable proof of his indefatigable persever- ance in his favorite pursuit, that at this very time, when apparently sunk in the depths of gloom, he learned German for the sole purpose of getting at the contents of a curious book, the '* Theatrum Machi- narum " of Leupold, which just then fell into his hands, and which contained an account of the machines, furnaces, methods of working, profits, etc., of the mines in the Upper Hartz. His instructor on the occasion was a Swiss dyer settled in Glasgow. With the similar object of gaining access to untranslated books in French and Italian, — then the great depositories of mechanical and engineering knowl- edge, — Watt had already mastered both these languages. Mrs. Watt had on one occasion written to him, "If the engine will not do, something else will : never despair." The engine did not do for the present, and he was compelled to continue his surveying. Instead of laying aside one burden he was constrained to add a second. In September, 1769, just when he tried the Kinneil engine, he was employed in examining the Clyde with a view to improve the navigation,— for the river was still so shallow as to prevent boats of more than ten tons burden ascending to the Broomielaw. Watt made his report, but no steps were taken to execute his suggestions until several years later, when the commencement was made of a series of improvements, which have resulted in the conversion of the Clyde from a pleasant trouting-stream into one of the busiest navigable highways in Europe. I would not have meddled with It, he wrote to Dr. Small, had I been certain of bringing the engine to bear ; but I cannot, on an uncertainty, refuse any Eiece of business that offers. I have refused some common fire-engines,* ecause they must have taken up my attention so as to hinder my going on TiTlth my own. However, if I cannot make it answer soon, I shall certainly undertake the next that offers, for I cannot afford to trifle away my whole life, which God knows may not be long. Not that I think myself a proper hand for keeping men to their duty; but I must use my endeavor to make myself square with the world if I can, though I much fear I never shall. "To-day," he again wrote to Dr. Small on the 31st of January, 1770, *• I enter in the thirty-fifth year of my life, and I think I have hardly * The fire-engine was the name given in those days to the atmospheric engines of Newcomen. Watt says elsewhere that ♦♦ he was concerned In making some," but whether previous or subsequent to this letter of September 90, 1760, does not appear. . ._ _ . . . 28 BKIEF BIOGItAPHIES, done thirty-five pence worth of good in the world; but I cannot help it." The people of Glasgow decided upon making a canal for coal traf- fic to the collieries atMonkland, in Lanarkshire; **and having," says Watt, ** conceived a much higher idea of my abilities than they merit, they resolved to encourage a man that lived among them rather than a stranger." He made the survey in 17G9, and the air and exercise acted like a cordial upon him. " The time," he wrote to Dr. Small, January 3, 1770, ** has not been thrown away, for the vaguing (wan- dering) about the country, and bodily fatigue, have given me health and spirits beyond what I commonly enjoy at this dreary season, though they would still thole amends (bear improvement). Hire yourself to somebody for a plowman, — it will cure ennui." He made another siirvey of a canal from Perth to Cupar in the spring of 1770, with a less favorable result. The weather was inclement, and the wind and snow and cold brought back his low spirits and ill health. When the Act for the Monkland Canal was obtained, he was invited to superintend the execution of it, and "had to select " whether to go on with the experiments on the engine, the event of which was uncertain, or to embrace an honorable and perhaps profit- able employment." His necessities decided him. ♦* I had a wife and children, and saw myself growing gray without having any set- tled way of providing for them." He determined, however, not to drop the engine, but to proceed with it the first spare moments he could find. In December, 1770, he made a report to Dr. Small of his experience in canal-making, and it was not very favorable. His constant headaches continued, but in other respects he had gained in vigor of mind and body. "I find myself more strong, more resolute, less lazy, less confused than I was when I began it." His pecuniary affairs were alone more prosperous. '* Supposing the engine to stand good for itself, I am able to pay all my debts, and some little thing more, so that I hope in time to be on a par with the world." But there was a dark side to the picture. His life was one of vexation, fatigue, hunger, wet, and cold. The quiet and secluded habits of his early life did not fit him for the out-door work of the engineer. He was timid and reserved, and wanted that rough strength, — that navvy sort of character, — which enables a man to deal with rude laborers. He was nervously fearful lest his want of experience should betray him into scrapes, and lead to impositions on the part of the workmen. He hated higgling, and declared that he would rather **face a loaded cannon than settle an account or make a bargain." He acted as survej^or, engineer, superintendent and treasurer, with only the assistance of one clerk; and had been "cheated," he said, "by undertakers, and was unlucky enough to know it." His men were so inexperienced; that he had to watch the execution of every piece of work that was out of the common track. Yet, with all this, "the work done was slovenly, the work- JAMES WATT. 27 men bad, and ha himself not sufficiently strict.'* The defect which he charged on himself was merely the want of training and expe- rience in the laborer j Vv^hen Telford afterwards went into the High- lands to construct the Caledonian Canal, he encountered the same difficulty. The men were unable to make use of the most ordinary tools; they had no steadiness in their labor; and they had to be taught, and drilled, and watched like children at school. In fact, every great undertaking in engineering maybe regarded in the light of a working academy in which men are trained to the skillful use of tools and the habitof persistent industry; and the Scotch laborers were only then passing through the elementary discipline. Watt determined he would not continue a slave to this hateful employ- ment. He was willing to act as engineer, but not as manager, and said he would have nothing to do " with workmen, cash, or work- men's accounts." His superintendence of the Monkland Canal, for which he received a salary of £200 a year, lasted from June, 1770, to December, 1772. Before that period had expired, a commercial crisis had arrived; and Dr. Koebuck, whose unremunerative speculations had already brought him to the verge of ruin, was unable to weather the storm\ All the anxieties of Watt were revived, and more for Koebuck than for himself. But an extract from his letter to Dr. Small, on the 30th of August, 1772, will best speak his sentiments: — I pursued my experiments till I found that the expense and loss of time lying wholly upon me, through the distress of Dr. Koehuck's situation, turned out to he a burden greater than i could support, and not having con- quered all the difficulties that lay In the way of the execution, I was obhged lor a time to abandon the project. iSince that time I have been able to extricate myself from some part of my private debts, but am by no means yet in a situation to be the principal in so considerable an undertaking. Ihe Doctor s affairs, being yet far from being reinstated, give me little hope of help from that quarter : In the mean time the time of the patent is running on. It is a matter of great vexation to me that the Doctor should be out so great a sum upon this affair, while he has otherwise such pressing occasion for the money. 1 find myself unable to give him such help as his situation requires; and what Uttle l can do for him is purchased by denying myself the conveniences of life my situation requires, or by remaining in debt where it galls me to the bone to owe. He repeated in November, that nothing gave him so much pain as having entangled Dr. Roebuck m the scheme, and that he would willingly have resigned all prospect of profit to himself, provided his associate could have been indemnified. He regarded the con- siderable sum which he had sunk on his own part, ''as money spent upon his education," and looked for scarce any other recompense "for the anxiety and ruin in which the engine had involved him." These are the sentiments of a mind of sensitive honof, as well as scrupulous integrity. In the issue, the embarrassments of Koebuck proved the making of the steam-engine and of Watt 28 BKIEF BIOGRAPHIES. The association of Watt with Dr. Roebuck was in many respects fortunate, for the latter possessed the qualities in which the former was deficient. •* I find myself," Watt wrote, **oig; of my sphere when I have anything to do with mankind ; it is enough for an engineer to force Nature, and to bear the vexation of her getting the better of him. Give me a survey to make, and I think you will have credit of me ; set me to contrive a machine, and I will exert myself." To invent was Watt's faculty ; to push an invention was entirely con- trary to his temperament. Not only was he averse lo business, but he was easily depressed by little obstructions, and alarmed at unforeseen expense. Roebuck, on the contrary, was sanguine, adventurous, and energetic. The disposition of Watt to despond under difiiculties, and his painful diffidence in himself, were fre- quent subjects of friendly merriment at Kinneil House ; and Mrs. Roebuck said one evening : ** Jamie is a queer lad, and without the Doctor his invention would have been lost ; but Dr. Roebuck won't let it perish." Watt always acknowledged the debt he owed him, and declared he had been to him ''a most sincere and generous friend." The alliance, however, was not without its drawbacks. The exten- sive undertakings of Dr. Roebuck absorbed both his capital and his time. He was unable to pay, according to the terms of his engage- ment, the expenses of the patent, and Watt had to borrow the money from Dr. Black. His coal and iron- works required incessant super- intendence, and the management of the business connected with the steam-engine chiefly devolved upon Watt, who said he "was incapable of it from his natural inactivity, and want of health and resolution." When he passed through Birmingham on his way from London, in October, 1768, Mr. Bouiton, who then knew nothing of Watt's agree- ment with Roebuck, oftered to be concerned in the speculation. This gave "great joy" to Watt, and he wished Dr. Roebuck to con- sent. But the latter " grew more tenacious of the project the nearer it approached to certainty," and he only proposed to Bouiton to allow him a share in the engine for the counties of Warwick, Stafford, and Derby. The letter which Bouiton wrote to Watt upon the occa- sion (Feb. 7, 1769) shows how clearly he saw what was required to render the invention available : — I was excited by two motives to offer you my assistance,— wlilch were, love of you, and love of a money-getting, Ingenious project. 1 presumed ih-dt your engine would require money, very accurate workmanship, and exten- sive correspondence, to make it turn out to the hest advantage ; and that the best means of keeping up the reputation, and doing the mventlon justice, would be to keep the executive part out of the hands of the multitude of empirical engineers, who, from Ignorance, want of experience, and want of necessary convenience, would be very liable to produce bad and inaccurate workmanship,— ail which deficiencies would affect the reputation of the Invention. 'I'o remedy which, and to produce the most profit, my idea was to settle a manufactory near to ray own, oy the side of our canal, where I would erect all the conveniences necessary for the completion of engrlnes, and from JAXIES WATT. 29 whlcli manufacrtory we would serve all tlie world with engines or all sizes. By these means, and your assistance, we would engage and Instruct some excellent workmen, who (with more excellent tools than would he worth any man's while to procure for one single engine) could execute the invention twenty per cent cheaper than it would be otherwise executed, and witli as great a difference of accuracy as there is between the blacksmith and the mathematical-instrument maker. It would not be worth my while to make for three counties only; but I flad it very well worth my while to make for all the world. This was precisely the plan which was ultimately adopted. Watt, when he read it, must have been more than ever urgent to have Boulton for a coadjutor, and he again, in September, 1769, pressed upon Roebuck the wisdom of admitting him into the partnership. In November, Roebuck proposed to make over a third of the patent to Mr. Boulton or Dr. Small for any sum, not less than £1,000, which they should think reasonable, after the experiments on the engine were finished. They were to take their final resolution at the end of a year ; but though they assented to the terms, no agreement seems to have been made at the conclusion of the twelve- month ; and it was not till ruin drove Roebuck to sell his share, that the bargain was struck. Then he transferred his entire prop- erty in the patent to Mr. Boulton in the latter half of 1773, in con- sideration of being released from a debt of £630, and receiving the first £1,000 of profit from the engine. ** My heart bleeds for his situation," Watt wrote to Boulton, "and I can do nothing to help him. I stuck by him till I have much hurt myself. I can do so no longer ; my family calls for my care to provide for them. Yet, if I have, I cannot see the Doctor in want, which I am afraid will soon be the case." The situation of this able, upright, and enter- prising man, who deserved a better fate, was not, in the opinion of his assignees, rendered worse by the sale of his share in the steam- engine, for they did not value it at a single farthing. Even Watt said that Boulton had got one bad debt in exchange for another. This was the turning-point in Watt's fortunes. It was the imper- fect workmanship, and ineffective superintendence, which had caused' the failure of so many experiments, and the wise and vig- orous management of Mr. Boulton was soon to show the engine in its true powers. But^ before Watt enjoyed this triumph, he had another bitter cup to drink. He was suddenly summoned to Glasgow in the autumn 'of 1773, when on a survey of the Caledonian Canal, by intelligence of the illness of his wife. The journey was dreary, through a country without roads. **An incessant rain," said he, '*kept me for three days as wet as water could make me ; I could hardly preserve my journal book." On reaching home he found his wife had died in childbed. She had struggled with him through poverty, had often cheered his fainting spirit when borne down by doubt, perplexity, and dis- appointment ; and often afterwards he paused on the threshold of 30 BRIEF BIOGEAPHIES. his house, unable to summon courage to enter the room where he was never more to meet " the comfort of his life," *• Yet this mis- fortune," he wrote to Small, *' might have fallen upon me when I had less ability to bear it, and my poor childen might have been left suppliants to the mercy of the wide world. I know that grief has its period ; but I have much to suffer first." ** None of the many trying calamities," he said, fifteen years afterwards, "to which human nature is subjected, bears harder or longer on a thinking mind than that grief which arises from the loss of friends. But, like other evils, it must be endured with patience. The most pow- erful remedy is to apply to business or amusements which call the ' mind from its sorrows aud prevent it from preying on itself. In the fullness of our grief we are apt to think that allowing ourselves to pursue objects which may turn our minds from the object it is but too much occupied with, is like a kind of insult or want of affection for the deceased, but we do not then argue fairly ; our duty to the departed has come to a period, but our duty to our living family, to ourselves, and to the world, still subsists, and the sooner we can bring ourselves to attend to it the more meritorious. Upon these wise sentiments he endeavored, though not veiy successfully, to act. To work was in some degree within the power of his will, but to regain the elasticity of the mind was beyond the reach of self- control. *• Man's life, you say," he wrote to Dr. Small, in Decem- ber, 1773, " must be spent either in labor or ennui ; mine is spent in both. I am heart-sick of this country ; I am indolent to excess, and, what alarms me most, I grow stupider. My memory fails me so as often totally to forget occurrences of not very ancient dates. I see myself condemned to a life of business ; nothing can be more disagreeable to me ; I tremble when I hear the name of a man I have any transactions to settle with. The engineering business is not a vigorous plant ; we are in general very poorly paid. This last year my whole gains do not exceed £200." But the darkest hour, it is said, is nearest the dawn. Watt had passed through a long night, and a gleam of sunshine was at hand. He was urged to pro- ceed to Birmingham to superintend the manufacture of his engines, one of which was nearly completed. He arrived at Birmingham in the summer of 1774, and in December he wrote to his father, now an old man, still resident at Greenock : " The business I am here about has turned out rather successful ; that is to say, that the fire- engine I have invented is now going, and answers much better than any other that has yet been made, and I expect that the invention will be very beneficial to me." Such was Watt's modest announce- ment of the practical success of the greatest invention of the eight- eenth century ! His partner, who proved himself such an able second, had the rare quality of a first-rato man of business. Mr. Boulton was not a mere JAMES WATT. $1 bnyer and seller, but a great designer, contriver, and organizer. His own original trade was that of a manufacturer of plated goods, ormolu, and works in steel. He subsequently turned his attention to improving themachinery for coining, and attained, saysM. Arago, to such rapidity and perfection of execution, that he was employed by the British Government to recoin the whole copper specie of *^the kingdom. His methods were established, under his superintend- ence, in several mints abroad, as well as in the National Mint of England. With a keen eye for details, he combined a large and comprehensive grasp of intellect. Whilst his senses were so acute that, sitting in his office at Soho, he could at once detect the slightest derangement in the machinery of his vast establishment, his pov/er of imagination enabled him to look along extensive lines of possible action throughout Europe, America, and the Indies. He was equally skillful in the fabrication of a button and in the establishment of the motive power that was to revolutionize the industrial operations of the world. In short, he was a man of various gifts, nicely balanced and proportioned, — the best of tradesmen, a patron of art and science, the friend of philosophers and statesmen. With all his independent titles to distinction, he esteemed the steam-engine of his friend the pride of his establishment. Once, when he was in the company of Sir Walter Scott, he said, in reply to some remark : '* That's like the old saying. In every corner of the world you will find a Scot, a rat, and a Newcastle grindstone." This touched the national spirit of the novelist, and he retorted, ** You should have added, and a Brum- magem button." ** We make something better in Birmingham than buttons," replied Boulton,— ** w^e make steam-engines ;" and when he next met Scott, he showed that he had not forgiven the disparag- ing remark. Boswell, who visited Soho in 1776, shortly after the manufacture of steam-engines had been commenced there, was struck by the vastness and contrivance of the machinery. **I shall never forget," he says, *'Mr. Boulton's expression to me, when sur- veying the works : ' I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have, — POWER.' *' ** He had," continues Boswell, "about seven hun- dred people at work. I contemplated him as an iron chieftain ; and he seemed to be a father of his tribe. One of the men came to him complaining grievously of his landlord for having distrained his foods. * Your landlord is in the right, Smith,' said Boulton ; *but '11 tell you what, — tind you a friend who will lay down one-half of your rent, and I'll lay "down the other, and you shall have your goods again.' " Mrs. Schimmel-Penninck, a native of Birmingham, gives, in her autobiography, a lively description of his person. *' He was tall, and of a noble appearance ; his temperament was sanguine, with that slight mixture of the phlegmatic which imparts calmness and dignity; his manners were eminently open and cordial; he took the lead in conversations, and, with a social heart, had a grandiose manner like that arising from position, wealth, and habitual com- 3a BRIEF BIOaRAPHIES. inandL. He went among his people like a monarch bestowing largess. " Not long after Watt settled at Birmingham, he married hisseo* ond wife, Miss Macgregor, the daughter of a citizen of Glasgow. The precise date of the marriage is not stated by Mr. Muirhead, but it seems to have been in 1776, and at any rate took place too early to render possible an incident told by Mrs. Schimmel-Penninck, that when Watt was mourning the loss of his nrst wife, Miss Macgregor — then a girl, according to the story, three or Ibur years old — ** came up to his knee, and looking in his face, begged him not to grieve, foi she would be his little wife, and make him happy." This lady waf a thrifty Scotch housewife, and such was her passion for cleanli- ness, that she taught her pet dogs to wipe their feet upon the door- mat. Her propensity was carried to a pitch which often fretted her son by the restraints it imposed; and once when a lady apolo* gized to him for the confusion in which he found her house, he exclaimed, *.' I love dirt .'" But Mrs. Watt was a partner worthy oi her husband, and with the revival of his domestic felicity, and surrounded by all the appliances for perfecting his steam-engine, he was for a brief space in a happier position than he had enjoyed for many years past. The mechanics of Birmingham were the chief workers in metal in England. The best tools and arms of the kingdom had been man- ufactured there almost from time immemorial, and the artisans possessed an aptitude for skilled manipulation which had descended to them from their fathers, like an inheritance. Watt, as we have seen, had found to his sorrow that there was no such class of work- men in Scotland. The consequence was, that the very first engine erected at Soho was a greater triumph than all that Watt had pre- viously been able to accomplish. Some of the most valuable cop- per mines in Cornwall had been drowned out ; Boulton immedi- ately wrote to the miners, and informed them of the success of the new invention. A deputation of Cornish miners went down to Birmingham to look at the engine. There could be no doubt as to its efficiency, but it was dear, and it was some time before any orders were given, Boulton saw that, to produce any large result, he must himself supply the capital, and he entered into an arrange- ment with the miners; by which he agreed to be at the whole cost, provided he was allowed as royalty one-third of the value of the ascer- tained saving of coal, as compared with Nevvcomen's best engine. The bargain having been struck, Watt went into Cornwall to super- intend the work. The impression produced by one of the earliest en- gines he erected is thus described in one of his letters to Mr. Boulton: "The velocity, violence, magnitude, and horrible noise of the engine, give unusual satisfaction to all beholders, believers or not. I have once or twice trimmed the engine to end its strokes gently and make less noise ; but Mr. cannot sleep unless it seems quite JA^IES WATT. 3'3 furions, so I have left it to the engineman. And, by the by, the noise seems to convey great ideas of its power to the ignorant, who seem to be no more taken with modest merit in an engine than in a man." Whilst in Cornwall Watt, whose mechanical ingenuity was inexhaustible, invented a counter to ascertain the saving effected. It was attached to the main beam and marked the number of strokes, which was the measure of the payment. The register, which was c(5ntrived to keep the record for an entire year, was inclosed in a locked box, and thus fraud was prevented. It was shortly found that the saving of coal by the new engine was nearly three-foutths of the whole quantity formerly consumed, or equal to an annual saving on the Chacewater engine of £7,200. Such a result did not failto tell, and orders for engines soon came in at Soho ; but the capital invested by Mr. Bouiton amounted to some £47,000, before &ny profits began to be derived from their sale. As some years had been expended in unremunerative experiments one of the first necessities, when it was apparent that the engine could be made to answer, was to obtain an extension of the patent, and in 1775 an Act of Parliament was passed to preserve the rights of the i)atentees till the year 1800, in consideration of the great utility of the invention, and the trouble and expense incurred in complet- ing it. It was long before it yielded any return. In 1780 Watt and Bouiton were still out of pocket, and in 1783 they had not realized a profit. But the extension of the patent gave a stimulus to the busy brain of the inventor; and he continued to devise improve- ment upon improvement. The application of the powers of steam to give a rotatory motion to mills, had from the first formed the sub- ject of his particular attention, and in his patent of 1769 he described a method of producing continued movement in one direction, which Mr, Bouiton proposed to employ for working boats along the canals. A continuous movement of machinery had indeed to some extent been secured by the use of the steam-engine, which was employed to pump up water, the fall of which turned water-wheels in the-usual way. But Watt's object was to efi'ect this by the direct action of the, engine itself, and thus to supersede, in a great measure, the use of water, as well as of animal power. This he at length accomplished by contrivances which are embodied in the patents he took out be- tween the years 1781 and 1785. Among other devices, these patents include the rotatory motion of the sun and planet- wheels, the ex- pansive principle of working steam, the doable engine, the parall.l motion, the smokeless farnace, and the governor, — the whole form-, ing a series of beautiful inventions, combining the results of phil- osophical research and mechanical ingenuity to an extent, we be- lieve, without a parallel in modern times. The idea of the double-acting engine occurred to Watt in 1767, but he kept it back in consequence of the difficulty "he had encoun- tered in teaching others the construction and use of the single engine B(;OGR>ractical, and the close experience of life which he invariably iicquires, is more favorable to his growth as a man, emphatically Hpeaking, than the training which is afforded by any other condition oi life. And the array of great names which he cites in support of his statement is certainly a large one. Nor is the condition of the h/erage v/ ell-paid operative at all , so dolorous, according to Hugh Miller, as many modern writers would have it. *-I worked as an operative mason," says he, "for fifteen years,-— ho inconsiderable portion of the more active part of a man's lifj; but the time was not altogether lost. I enjoyed in those years fully the average amount of happiness, and learned to know more of the Scottish people than 13 generally known. Let mo add, that from the close of the first year in which I wrought as a journeyman, until I took final leave of the mallet and chisel, I never knew what it was to want a shilling: that my two uncles,my grand father, and the mason with whom I served my apprenticeship — all worldng-men — had had a similar experience; I HUGK MILLEK. and that it was the experience of my father also. I cannot doubt that deserving mechanics may, in exceptional cases, be exposed to want; but I can as little doubt that the cases are exceptional, and that much of the suffering of the class is a consequence either of improvidence on the part of the completely skilled, or of a course of trifling during4he term of apprenticeship, — quite as common as trifling at school,— that always lands those who indulge in it in the hapless position of the inferior workman." There is much honest truth in this observation. At the same time, it is clear that the circumstances under which Hugii Miller was brought up and educated are not enjoyed by all workmen, — are, indeed, experienced by comparatively few. In the first place, his parentage was good, his father and mother were a self-helping, honest, intelligent pair, in humble circumstances, but yet compara- tively comfortable. Thus his Barly education was not neglected. His relations were sober, industrious, and "God-fearing," as they say in the north. His uncles were not his least notable instructors. One of them was a close observer of nature, and in some sort a sci- entific man, possessed of a small but good library of books. Then Hugh Miller's own constitution was happily framed. As one of his companions once said to him, *'Ah, Miller, you have stamina in you, and will force your way ; but I want strength ; the world will never hear of me." It is the stamina which Hugh Miller possessed by nature, that were born in him, and w-ere carefull}^ nurtured by his parents, that enabled him as a working-man to rise, while thou- sands would have sunk or merely plodded on through life in the humble station in which they were born. And this difference in stamina and other circumstances is not sufficiently taken into ac- count by Hugh Miller in the course of the interesting, and, on the whole, exceedingly profitable remarks, which he makes in his auto- biography on the condition of the laboring poor. We can afford, in our brief space, to give only a very rapid outline of Hugh Miller's fifteen 3-ears' life as a workman, lie worked away in the quarry for some time,- losing many of his finger-nails by bruises and accidents, growing fast, but gradually growing stronger, and obtaining a fair knowledge of his craft as a stone-hewer. He was early subjected to the temptation which besets most young workmen, — that of drink. But he resisted it bravelj^ His own account of it is worthy pf extract : — When overwrought, and In my denressed moods, I learned to regard the ardent splrtts of the dram-shop fis hij^ti luxuries ; they gave lis-litne^s and energy to both body and mind, and substituted for a state of dullne-ss and gloom one of exhilaration and enjoyment. IJsquehhne was simply happiness doled out by the glass, and sold by the gill. The drinking usaares of the pro- fession In which I labored were at this time many ; when a foundation was laid the workmen were treated to drink; they were treated to drink when' the walls were leveled for laying the Joists ; they were treated to drink when the building was finished ; they were treated to diink when an apprentici^. 68 BRIEF BIOGKAPHIES. joined the squad ; treated to drink when his * apron was washed ' ; treated to drink when his ' time was out ' ; and occasionally they learned to treat one anotlier to drink. In laying down the foundation stone of one of the larger houses built this year by Uncle David and his partner, the workmen had a royal ' founding pint,' and two whole glasses of the whisky came to my share A full-grown man would not nave deemed a gill of usquebhaean overdose, but it was considerably too much forme; and av hen the party broke up, and I got home to my books, I found, as i opened the pages of a favorite author, the letters dancing before my eyes, and that 1 could no longer liiasier tiie sense. 1 have the volume at present before me. a small edition of the Essays of J>acon. a gooideal worn at tlie corners by the friction of the pocket, for of Bacon I never tired. The condition Into which I had brought myself was. I felt, one of degradation. I had sunk, by my own act, for vhe time, to a lower level of IntolUgence than that on which it was my privilege to ba placed , and though the state could have been no very favorable one for forming a resolution, I In that liour determined that 1 should never again sac- rifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking usage ; and, with God's help, 1 was enabled to hold my determination. A young working mason, reading Bacon's Essays in his by -hours, must certainly bo regarded as a remarkable man ; but not less n- markable is the exhibition of moral energy and noble self-denial in tho instance wa have cited. It was while working as a mason's apprentice, that the lower Old Eed Sandstone along the Bay of Cromarty presented itself to his notice; and his curiosity was excited and kept alive by the infinite organic remains, principally of old and extinct species of fishes, ferns, ammonites, whi«h lay revealed along the coasts by the wash- ings of waves, or were exposed by the stroke of his mason's hammer. He never lost sight of this subject; went on accumulating observa- tions and comparing formations, until at length, when no longer a working mason, many years afterwards, he gave to the world his highly interesting work on the Old Red Sandstone, which at once established his reputation as an accomplished scientific geologist. But this work was the fruit of long years of patient observation and research. As he modestly states in his autobiography, 'Hheonly merit to which I lay claim in the case is that of patient research,— a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpass me; and this humble fixculty of patience, when rightly developed, may lead to more extraordinary developments of idea than even genius itself." And he adds how he deciphered the divine ideas in the mechanism and framework of creatures in the second stage of vertebrate existence. • , But it was long before Hugh Miller accumulated his extensive geo- logical observations, and acquired that self-culture which enabled him to shape them into proper form. Pie went on diligently work- ing at his trade, but always observing and always reelecting. He says he could not avoid being an observer; and that the necessity which made him a mason, made him also a geologist. In the winter months, during which mason-work is generally superseded in coun- try* places, ho occupied his time with reading, sometimes with HUGH MILLES. 69 visiting country friends, — persons of an intelligent caste,— and often he strolled away amongst old Scandinavian ruins and Piodsh forts, speculating about their origin and history. He made good use of his leisure. And when spring came round again, he would set out into the Highlands, to work at building and hewing jobs with a squad of other masons, — working hard, and living chieiiy on oatmeal brose. Some of the descriptions given by him of life in the remote High- land districts are extremely graphic and picturesque, and have all the charm of entire novelty. The kind of accommodation which he experienced may be inferred from the observation made by a High- land laird to his uncle James, as to the use of a crazy old building left standing beside a group of neat modern offices. •* He found it of great convenience," he said, "every time his speculations brought a drove of pigs, or a squad of masons, that way." This sort of life and its surrounding circumstances were not of a poetical cast; yet the yonth was now about the poetizing age, and during his solitary rambles after his day's work, by the banks of the Conon, he medi- tated poetry, aud began to make verses. He would sometimes write them out upon his mason's kit. while the rain was dropping through the roof of the apartment upon the paper on which he wrote. It was a rough life of poetical musing, yet he always contrived to mix up a high degree of intellectual exercise and enjoyment with what- ever manual labor he was employed upon; and this, after all, is one of the secrets of a happy life. While observilig scenery and natural history, he also seems to have very closely observed the characters of his fellow-workmen, and he gives us vivid and life-like portaits of some of the more remarkable of them in his Autobiography. There were some rough and occasionally very wicked fellows among his fellow-workmen, but he had strength of character, and sufficient inbred sound principle, to withstand their contamination. He was also proud, — and pride in its proper place is an excellent thing, — particularly that sort of pride which makes a man revolt from doing a mean action, or anything which would bring discredit on the family. This is the sort of true nobility which serves poor men in good stead sometimes, and it certainly served Hugh Miller well. His apprenticeship ended, he "took jobs" for himself, — built a cottaf^e for his Aunt Jenny, which still stands, and after that went out working as journeyman -mason. In his spare hours, he was improv- ing himself by the study of practical geometry, and made none the worse a mason on that account . While engaged in helping to build a mansion on the western coast of Ross-shire, he extended his geologi- cal and botanical observations, noting all that was remarkable in the formation of the district. He also drew his inferences from the condition of the people, — being very much struck, above other things, with the remarkably contented state of the Celtic popu- lation, although living in filth and misery. On this he shrewdly observes; "it was one of the palpable characteristics of our Scottish 70 BRIEF BIOGBAPHIES. Highlanders, for at least the first thirty years of the century, that they were contented enough, as a people, to tind more to pity than to envy in the condition of their Lowland neighbors; and I remem- ber that at this time, and for years after, I used to deem the trait a good one. I have now, however my doubts on. the subject, and am not quiet sure whether a content so gener:d as to be national may not, in certain circumstances, be rather a vice than a virtue. It is certainly no virtue, when it has the effect of arresting either indi- viduals or peoples in their course of development ; and is periously allied to great suffering, when tlie men who exemplify it are so thoroughly happy amid the mediocrities of the present that they fail to make j)ro vision for the contingencies of the future." Trade becoming slack in the North, Hugh Miller took ship for Edinburgh, where building was going briskly oq (in 1824), to seek for employment there as a stone-hewer. « He succeeded, and lived as a workman at Niddry, in the neighborhood of the city, for some time ; pursuing at the same time his geological observations in a new field, Niddry being located on the carboniferous system. Here also he met with an entirely new class of men, — the colliers, — many of whom, strange to say, had been horn slaves; the manumission of the Scotch colliers having been effected in comparatively modern times, — as late as the year 1775 I So that, after all, Scotland is not bO very far ahead of the serfdom of Russia. Returning to the North again, Miller next began business for himself in a small way, as a hewer of tombstones for the good folks of Cromarty. This change of employment was necessary, in conse- quence of the hewer's disease, caused by inhaling stone- dust, which settles in the lungs, and generally leads to rapid consumption, afflicting him with its premonitory symptoms. The strength of his constitution happily enabled him to throw off the malady, but bis lungs never fairly recovered their former vigor. Work not being very plentiful, he wrote poems, some of which appeared in the news- papers; and in course of time a small collection of these pieces was published by subscription. He very soon, however, gave up poetry writing, finding that his humble accomplishment of verse was too narrow to contain his thinking ; so next time he wrote a book it was in prose, and vigorous prose too, far better than his verse. But Miller had meanwhile been doing what was better than either cut- ting tombstones or writing poetry : he had been building up his character^ and thereby securing the respect of all who knew him. So that, when a branch of the Commercial Bank was opened iu Cromarty, and the manager cast about him to make selection of an accountant, whom should he pitch upon but Hugh Miller, the stone- mason? This was certainly a most extraordinary selection ; but why was it made? Simply because of the excellence of the man's character, He had proved himself a true and a thoroughly excel- lent and trustworthy man in a humble capacity of life, and the HUGH MILLER 71 inference was, that he would carry the samo principles of concliict into another and higher sphere of action. Hugh Miller hesitated to accept the office, having but little knowledge of accounts, and no experience in book-keeping ; but the manager knew his pluck and determined* perseverance in mastering whatever he undertook; above all, he harl confidence in his character, and he would i:>ot take a denial. So Hugh Miller was sent to Edinburgh to learn his nev/ lousiness at the head bank. Throughout life Miller seems to have invariably put his con- science into his wovk. Speaking of the old man with whom he served his apprenticeship as a mason, he savs : **/Je made conscience if every stor.e fie laid. It was remarked in the place, that the walls built by Uncle David never bulged nor fell ; and no aj)prentice nor journeyman of his, was permitted, under any plea, to make 'slight work.'" And one of his own Uncle James's instruction to him on one occasion was, ''In all your dealings, give your neighbor the cast of ike bauk, — 'good measure, heaped up and running over,*— and you will not lose by it in the end." These lessons were worth far more than what is often taught in schools, and Hugh Miller seems to have framed his own conduct in life on the excellent moral teaching which they conveyed. Speaking of his own career as a workman, when on the eve of quitting it, he says : *'I do think I acted up to my uncle's maxim ; and that, without injuring my brother workmen by lowering their prices. I never yet charged an employer for a piece of work that, fairly measured and valued, would not be rated at a slightly higher sum than that at which it stood in my account." Although he gained some fame in his locality by his poems, and still more by his "Letters on the Herring Fisheries of Scotland,** he was not, as many self-raised men are, spoiled by the praise which his works called forth. "There is,'* he says, " no more fatal error into which a working-man of a literary turn can fall, than the mis- take of deeming himself too good for his humble employments ; and yet it is a mistake as common as it is fatal. I had already seen several poor wrecked mechanics, who, believing themselves to be poets, and regarding the manual occupation by which they could alone live in independence as beneath them, had become in conse- quence little better than mendicants, — too good to work for their bread, but not too good virtually to beg it ; and looking upon them as beacons of warning, I determined that, with God's help, I should give their error a wide offing, and never associate the idea of mean- ness with an honest calling, or deem myself too good to be indepen- dent." Full of this manly and robust spirit, Hugh Miller pursued his career of stone-hewing by day, and prose composition when the day's work was done, until he entered upon his new vocation ot banker's accountant. He showed his self-denial, too, in waiting for a wife until ho could afford to keep one in respectable comfort, — 72 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. his engagement lasting over five years, before he was in a position to fulfill his promise. And then he married, wisely and happily. At Edinburgh, by dint of perseverance and application, Mr. Miller shortly mastered his new business, and thtn returned to Cromarty, where he was installed in office. His "Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland" were published about the same time, and were well received ; and in his leisure hours ha proceeded to prepare his most important work, on **The Old Rjd Sandstone." He also con- tributed to the "Border Tales," and other periodicals. The Free- Church movement drew him out as a polemical writer : and his Letter t) Lord Brougham on the Scotch Church Controversy excited BO much attention, tliat the leaders of the movement in Edinburgh invited him to undertake the editing of the Witness newspaper, the organ of the Free-Church party. He accepted the invitation, and continued to hold the editorship until his death, in 1856. The circumstances connected with his decease were of a most distressing character. On entering his room one morning, he was found lying dead, shot through the body, and under circumstances which left no doubt that he had died by his own hand. He had for some time been closely applying himself to the completion of his " Testimony of the Rocks," without rest or relaxation, or due atten- tion to his physical health. Under these circumstances, overwork oi the br:iin speedily began to tell upon him. He could not sleep, — if he lay down and dozed, it was only to wake in a start, his head filled with imaginary horrors; and in one of these fits of his disease he put an end to his life; — a warning to all brain-workers, that the powers of the human constitution may be strained until they break, and that even the best and strongest mind cannot dispense with the due observance of the laws which regulate the physical constitution of man. FRANCIS JEFFREY. * SOME thirty years since, we happened to visit the High Courts of Ssssion, held in Edinburgh, in the purlieus of the old Scotch Parliament-House. These are the chief law courts of Scotland ; and though they are always objects of interest to a visitor, they were perhaps more so at that time than they are now, in consequence of their being then professionally frequented by several men of world- wide reputation. We remember well the striking entrance to those courts; they occupy one side of a square, opposite to the old cathedral church of St. Giles's, where Jenny Geddes initiated the great Rebellion of two centuries back, by hurling her "cutty-stool" at the head of the officiating bishop, on his proposing to read the collect for the day. •*Diel colic the wame o* thee!" shouted Jenny, as she hurled her stool at the bishop; and from that point the Revolution began. John Knox, at an earlier period, used to deliver his thrilling harangues in the same church; and in the space now forming the square — which was used as a cemetery previous to the Reformation— the mortal remains of that undaunted reformer were laid; of whom the Regent Murray said, as he was lowered into his grave, "There lies one who never feared the face of man." Another portion of the square was formerly occupied by the old jail or Tolbooth of Edinburgh, celebrated throughout the world by Scott's novel of "The Heart of Mid-Lothian." * But it had been demolished some years before the period of our visit. Entering the courts by a door in the southwest corner of the square, and crossing a spacious vestibule, we passed through a pair of folding doors, and found ourselves in the famous Tarliament- * A popular orator from the Soutti once greatly disturbed the complacency of an Edlnburffh audience, by addrefesinfi: them as ** Men of the Heart of M.ld- Lothlaa'M 74 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES House. It is a noble hall, upwards of one hundred and twenty feet long, and about fifty wide. Its lofty roof is oak, arched with gilt pendants, in the style of Westminster Hall. This was the place in which the Scottish Parliament held its sittings for about seventy years previous to the Union. It was in a bustle, as it usually is during the sittings of the court, with advocates promenading in their wigs and gowns; writers {Anglice, solicitors), with their blue and red bags crammed with bundles of legal documents, scudding hither and thither; litigants, with anxious countenances, collected in groups, anxiously discussing the progress of their "case;" whilst above the din and hum which tilled the hall there occasionally rose the loud voice of the criers, summoning the counsel in the different causes to appear before their lordships. All the courts open into this hall, and we entered one of these; we think it was the Justiciary Court. Wd have no recollection of the cause that was being tried ; some petty horse-warranty affair or other, about which a great deal of clever sarcasm and eloquence was dis- played. But though we have forgotten the cause that was tried, we have not forgotten the pleader. He rose immediately after his burly opponent had seated himself, — Patrick Robertson, for a long time the wit of the Parliament-House, — the author of a book of poems, jDublished a few years ago, full of gravity, but without poetry, — afterwards Lord Robertson. The advocate who rose to reply was a man the very opposite in feature, form, and temperament to Patrick Robertson. A little, slender, dark-eyed man, of a highly intellectual appearance; his head was small, — indeed, the opponents of phre- nology have asserted that his head was so small, that it was enough of itself to overthrow that science, — but then it was exquisitely formed, the organs were beautifully balanced, the bulk of the brain lay over the forehead, and the outline was such as to give one the impression of the finest possible organization. He wore no wig; and his black hair was brushed straight up from his beautiful fore- head. When he rose to his feet, the hum of the court was stilled into silence ; and one who accompanied us said, •• I'ou see that little man there going to speak ? " ** Yes." •♦ That's Feancis Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh Review." And Jeffrey went on with his speech in a high-keyed, sharp, clear, and acute strain, not rising into eloquence, but running on in a smart and copious, yet somewhat precise, man- ner : indeed, one might have denominated his style of speech and of arpjument as a little finical; yet it was unusually complete and highly finished, like everything else that he did. But there was in the same court that day one whose reputation and whose genius infinitely tninscended Jeffrey's, great though these may have been. Sitting immediately under the Lord Presi- dent, at the clerk's table, were two men, one on each side, — the clerks of the Court ©f Session. ''You see that man at the table FRANCIS JEFFREY. 75 there,—- the one with the white hair and the overhanging brow?, , **Yes, I see two; they have both white hair, and are both heavy- browed. " * ' Yes ; but I mean the one to the Lord President's right, — immediately before Patrick Robertson there." "The one with his head stooping over his papers, writing?" "Yes: see, he is now rising up, and going across the room." ** I see him, — surely I know that face ; I must have seen the man before." "You may have seen the portrait of him often enough,— it is Sir Walter Scott ! " In a moment we recognized the Great Wizard of the North, whose magi- cal pen had quickened into life the long dead and buried past, and created shapes of magical beauty by the aid of his wonderful fancy, — the greatest literary celebrity of the age ! His face, as we saw it then, presented but few indications of those remarkable intel- lectual powers, which might almost be said to blaze in the features of Jeffrey. It was heavy, solid, lourd, and homely, — somewhat like the face of a country-br.ed farmer's man, grown old in harness, and rather " back " with his rent. He limped across the court to one of the advocates or writers to the signet, to whom he delivered a paper, and then returned to his seat. The terrible crash of Sir Walter Scott's fortunes had occurred, through the failure of his publisher, but a few years before ; and here was the hard-working man, still toiling at his post of clerk of court during the day, — to enter upon his laborious literary labors on returning home, — all with the view of desperately retrieving the loss of his fortune nnd estate. One other man we may mention, — then a comparatively young advocate in good business. His eye, of all his features, struck us the most. Never did we see a more beautiful, piercing eye before. Keen, black, and penetrating, it seemed to look through you. Once afterwards, we encountered the eye in Princes' Street, and recog- nized the man on the instant. It was Henry Cockburn, the author of the "Life of Jeffrey." He had the look of a man of genius ; and was long afterwards known as a highly acute and able lawyer. But he had never before done anything in literature that we know of, until he wrote the life of his friend Jeffrey ; yet we mistake much if it do not take its place among the best standard biographies of our time. We should not be surprised if, like Boswell's Johnson, it were read when the books of the author whose life is commemorated are allowed to lie on the shelf. Not that there is any vivid interest in Jeffrey's life ; happy and prosperous people have usually little history. Life flows on in a smooth current; everything succeeds with them ; they gather wealth and fame with years, and die full of honors, which are recorded on a mausoleum. But certainly there was about the life of Jeffrey — even independently of the literary merits of Lord Cockburn's j^or- traiture of him, much that is instructive, interesting, and delightful. Jeffrey was a man full of bonhomie. He was an honest minded, independent man ; a most industrious, hard-working, and persever- 76 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. nnt man ; and, withal, a genuinely lovinnr man. But above all, he was the founder of the "Edinburgh Review." This was the great event of his life. By means of that eminently able organ of opinion, he elevated criticism into a magistrature. He invested it with dig- nity, and administered it liice a judge, according to certain laws. He became an oracle of taste in poetry, literature, and art. He did not merely follow the literary fashion of the day, but he directed it, and for many years presided over the highest critical organ in the country. Yet it will be confessed, that, if we look into the collected edition of his works, they have comparatively little interest for us. Even the most effective criticism is necessarily of an ephemeral char- acter. Like a thrilling Parliamentary speech, its chief interest con- sists in its appropriateness to the time, the circumstances, and the audience to whom it is addressed. At best, literary criticism is but a clever and discriminating judgment upon books. The books so criticised are now either dead and forgotten, or they have secured a footing, and live on independent of all criticism. Yet criticism is not without its value, as Jeffrey and his fellow laborers amply proved. The leading incidents of Francis Jeffrey's life are soon told. He was born in Charles street, George's square, in the old town of Edinburgh, on the 22d of October, 1773. His father was a depute clerk, in the Court of Session. His mother was an amiable, intelli- gent woman, who died when Francis was but a boy. The youth was educated at the Edinburgh High School, where he remained for six years. Here is an incident of his boyhood : — " One day in the winter of 1786-87, he was standing in the high street, staring at a man whose appearance struck him ; a person standing at a shop door tapped him on the shoulder, and said, *Ay, laddie! ye may weel look at that man! that's Robebt Burns.' He never saw Burns again. From Edinburgh High School, Jeffrey proceeded to Glasgow Uni- versity where he studied with distinction during two sessions. In the Historical and Critical Club, he astonished the members by the force and acuteness of his rriiicisws on the essays submitted for discussion. Thus early did the peculiar bent of his mind display itself. He worked very hard, — was a systematic student, — took copi- ous notes, cast into his own forms of expression, of all the lectures, — and read largely on all subjects. He returned to Edinburgh, and attended the law classes there in the | two sessions of 1789-91, still studying and composing essays on various subjects, but chiefly on life and its philosophy. "It w\is about this time (1790 or 1791) that he had the honor of assisting to carry the biographer of Johnson, in a state of great intox- ication, to bed. For this he was rewarded next morning by Mr. Bos- well, who had learned who his bearers had been, clapping his head, and telling him that he was a very promising lad, and that, 'If you go on as you've begun, yon may live to be a Bozzy yourself yet." FRANCIS JEFFREY. T7 He next went to Oxford to study, and remained there for a season, but he never entered fully into the life of the place, and evidently detested it. He did not find a single genial companion. He says of the meetings of the students, ** O these l>lank parties ! — the quint- essence of insipidity, — the conversation dying from lip to lip, — every countenance lengthening and obscuring in the shade of mutual lassitude, — the stifled yawn contending with the affected smile on every cheek, — and the languor and stupidity of the party gathering and thickening every instant, by the mutual contagion of embar- rassment and disgust In the name of heaven, what do such be- ings conceive to be the order and use of societ}^ ? To them, it is no source of enjoyment ; and there cannot be a more complete abuse of time, mind, and fruit." He detests the law, too. "This law," he says, "is vile work. I wish I hadj)een born a piper." There was only one thing that he hoped to learn at Oxford, and that was the English pronunciation. And he certainly succeeded in acquiring it after a sort, but he never spoke it as an Englishman is wont to do. As Lord Holland said of him afterwards,. **he lost the broad Scotch at Oxford, but he gained only the narrow Eivjllsh in its place. He returned to Edinburgh in July, 1792, and again attended the law lectures there. He joined the Speculative Society, then num- bering among its active members many afterwards highly celebrated men, — Scott, Brougham, Grant (afterwards Lord Glenelg), Petty (afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne), Francis Horner, and others. Jeffrey distinguished himself by several admirable papers which he read before the society ; and also by the part which he took in the dis- cussions. But, like many susceptible young minds, at this time, he was haunted by fits of despondency. He could not take the world by storm : few knew that he lived. How was he to distin- guish himself? He would be (X PoeL' Writing to his sister about this time, he said, ^*Iieel I shall never be a great man, unless it be as a Poet! " But afterwards he says more calmly, *'My poetry does not improve ; I think it is growing worse every week. If I could find the heart to abandon it, I believe I should be the better for it." He nevertheless went on writing tragedies, love poems, sonnets, odes, and such like ; but they never saw the light. Once, indeed, he went so far as to leave a poem with a bookseller, to be published, — and fled to the country ; but finding some obstacle had occurred, he returned, recovered the manuscript, — rejoicing that he had been saved, — and never repeated so perilous an experiment. In 1794, Jeffrey was called to the Scotch bar. The times were sick and out of joint. The French Revolution was afoot, and its violence tended to drive some men sternly back upon the past, and to impel others wildly forward into the future. Some took a middlo course ; and, while they discountenanced all violent change, sought after constitutional progress and social improvement. To this mid- dle party, Jeffrey early attached himself. He joined himself to the 78 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. Whigs, thongh to do so at that day was t<> erect a lofty barrier in the way of his own success. Yet he did so, courageously and reso- lutely ; and he held to his course. He had several noble allies ; among whom may be named Brougham, Homer, and Erksine (the brother of the Lord Chancellor). At the bar, Jeffrey got on very slowly. Very few fees came in, and these were chiefly from his father's connections. He began to despair o^ success, and even went to London with the object of becoming a literary ** grub." He was furnished with letters to authors, newspaper editors, and pub- lishers. But, fortunately, they received him coldly, and he returned to Edinburgh to reoccupy himself with essay writing, translating from the Greek, and waiting for clients. The clients did not come yet, and he began seriously to despair of ever achieving success in Lis profession. *'I cannot help," he wrote at this time, "looking upon a slow, obscure, and philosophical starvation at the Scotch bar, as a destiny not to be submitted to. There are some moments when I think I could sell myself to the minister or to the devil, in order to- get above these necessities." He also entertained the idea of tryiufi the English bar, or going out to India, like so many other yomg Scotchmen of his day. . He had now been five years at the bar, and could not yet, as the country saying goes, '* make saut to his kail." In the seventh year of his practice, he says, "My profession has never yet brought me £100 a year." But this is the history of nearly all young men in their first ascent of the steeps of professional enterprise. Yet Jeffrey's poor prospects did not prevent him falling in love with a girl as poor as himself, and he married her. The young lady was, however, of good family: she was the daughter of Dr. Nelson, Professor of Church History at St. Andrew's. The young pair set- tled down in Baccleuch Place, in the Old Town; and thebiograp)ier informs us that "his own study was only made comfortable at the cost of £7 185. ; the banqueting-hall rose to £13 8.9. ; and the draw- ing-room actually rose to £22 195." He made a careful inventory of all the costs of furnishing, which is still preserved. But his marriage seemed to have been the starting-point of Jef- frey's success. He devoted himself sedulously to his profession. Clients appeared in greater numbers; he began to be looked upon as a rising man; and when once the ball is fairly set a-roUing, it goes on comparatively easy. Shortly after, the famous Edinburgh Review was projected by himself and Sydney Smith, though the merit of suggesting the work is undoubtedly due to the latter. Syd- ney Smith's account of its origin is this: "One day we happened to meet in the eighth or ninth story, or flat, in Buccleuch Place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed that we should set up a review; this was acceded to with acclamation. I was appointed editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to ^^i FUANCIS JEFFBEY. it the first number of the Edinburgh Review." But Jeffrey's apt- ness for editorial work, his peculiar critical ability, together with the fact of his being the only settled man of the lot permanently located* in Edinburgh, soon led to his undertaking the entire control of the lleview, and furnishing the principal part of the writing. The first number of the Edinburgh lieview appeared in October, 1802. and the eliect produced by it was almost electrical. It was so bold, SQ novel, so spirited and able, -so unlike anything of the kind that had heretofore appeared, — that its success from the first was decided. It afforded a gratifying proof of the existence of liberal feeling in a part of the country where before one dull, dead uniform level of slavish obsequiency had prevailed. It gave a voice to the dormant feeling of independence w^hioh nevertheless slill survived. The effect upon public opinion was most wholesome, and the influ- ence of the Reviev went on increasing from year to year. Horner, Sydney Smith, and Brougham soon left Edinburgh for England, to enter upon public life; but Jeffrey stood by the Review, and con- tinued ils main-stay. When Horner left Edinburgh, he made a present of his bar wig to Jefirey, who "hoped that in time it would attract fees " besides admiration. But Jeffrej^ never liked to wear a wig, and" soon abandoned it for his own fine black hair. Among the greatest bores which he experienced wa*! attending Scotch appeals in the House of Lorda in London, when he had to sit under a great load of serge and horsehair, perhaps in the very height of the dog-days! His practice increased, while his fama in connection with the Review spread his name abroad. His severe handling of many of the writers of the day, brought down upon him a good deal of bitter speech, — such as Lord Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Review- ers." His severe review of Moore's lascivious love poems brought him into collision with that gentleman, and an innocuous duel was* the consequence ; but after that they remained warm friends. There was little of interest in Jeifrey's life for many years after this occur- rence. It flowed on in an equable and widenin:^ current of steady prosperity. His wife died in 1805, and was sincerely lamented by him. The letter which he wrote to his brother on the occasion is exceedingly beautiful,— full of affectionate and deep feeling for the departed. " I took no interest," he says, "in anything which had not some reference to her. I had no enjoyment away from her, except in thinking what I should have to tell or to show her on my return; and I have never returned to her, after half a day's absence, without feeling my hea t throb and my eye brighten with all the ardor and anxiety of a youthful passion. All the exertions I ever made in the world were for her sake entirely. You know how indolent I was by nature, and how regardless of reputation and fortune; but it was a delight to me to lay these things at the feet of my darling, and to invest her with some portion of the distinction she deserved, and to increase the pride and yanity she felt for hex W BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. husband, by accunmlating these public tests of his merit. She had 80 lively a relish for life, too, and bo unquenchable and unbroken a liope in the midst of protracted illness and languor, that the stroke which cut it off forever appears equally cruel and unnatural. Though familiar with sickness, she seemed to h.ive nothing to do with death. She always recovered so rapidly, and was so cheerful and affectionate and playful, that it scarcely entered into my imagination that there could be one sickness from which she would not recover." But Jeffrey did not remain single. A few years after, in 1813, we fincl him on his way to the United States, to bring home his second wife, — a grand-niece of the famous John Wilkes. He wooed and won her, and an admirable wife she made him. There are only a few other prominent landmarks in Jeffrey's career, which we would note in the midst of his prosperous life. In 1820 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasf^ow, and delivered a noble speech on his installation. In 1829 he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, a post of high honor in the pro- fession. On being eh^cted, he gave up the editorship of the Review, after superintending it for a period of twenty-seven years. In 1830 the Whigs came into office, and Jeffrey was appointed Lord Advo- cate, — the first law officer of the Crown for Scotland. This w;t3 the height of hits ambition. He could only climb a step higher, which he did a few years later, when he was made a judge, and died Lord Jeffrey, in Januar3% 1850. His friend and fellow-judge has admirably depicted Jeffrey as he lived, — in his homo life, which was beautiful, and in his public career, which was honorable, useful, anurple, russet, and brown, with just enough of green to give that perfect autumnal tint, so beautifully pictorial, but impossible to, paint in words. The beech-nuts were dropping from the tree^,^ ^nd r f^TtLt EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 83 crackled under foot, and a rich, damp smell rose from the decaying leaves by the road-side. After a short walk through a lovely, undu- lating country, from the Darfield station of the North Midland Eail- wa5% along one of the old Roman roads, so common in that part of Yorkshire, and which leads into the famous Watling Street, near the town of Pontefract, we reached the village of Old Houghton, at the south end of which stands the curious Old Hall, — an interesting relic of Middle-Age antiquity. Its fantastic gable-end, projecting windows, quaint doorway, diamond "quarrels," and its great size looming up in the twilight, with the well-known repute which the houHe bears of being "haunted," made us regard it with a strange, awe-like feeling; it seemed like a thing not of this every-day world; indeed, the place breathes the very atmosphere of the olden time, and a host of associations connected with a most interesting period of old English history are called up by its appearance. It reminds one of the fantastic old Tabard, in Dickens's "Barnaby Euclge" (we think it is) ; and the resemblance is strengthened by the fact of this Old Hall being now converted into a modern public-house, the inscription of "Licensed to be drunk on the premises," etc., being legibly written on a sign-board over the fantastic old porch. "To what base uses," alas! do our old country-houses come at last ! Being open to the public, we entered; and there we found a lot of the village laborers, ploughmen, and delvers, engaged, in a boxed-off corner of the Old Squire's Hall, drinking their Saturday night's quota of beer, amidst a cloud of tobacco-smoke; while the mistress of the place, seated at the tap in another corner of the apartment, was dealing out her potations to all comers and purchasers. A huge black deer's head and antlers projected from the wall, near the door, evidently part of the antique furniture of the place; and we had a glimpse of a fine broad stone staircase, winding up in one of the deep bays of the hall, leading to the state apartments above. Though strongly tempted to seek a night's lodging in this haunted house, as well as to explore the mysteries of the interior, we resisted the desire, and set forward on our journey to the more inviting house of the poet. We reached Hargate Hill, the house and home of Ebenezer Elliott, in the dusk of the autumn evening. There was just light enough to enable us to perceive that it was situated on a pleasant height, near the hill-top, commanding an extensive prospect of the undulating and finely-wooded country towards the south; on the north stretched away an extensive tract of moorland, covered with gorse-bushes. A nicely-kept flower-garden and grass-plot lay before the door, with some of the last of the year's roees still in bloom. We had a cordial welcome from the poet, his wife, and two interesting daughters, — the other members of his large family being settled in life for them- selves,— two sons, clergymen, in the West Indies, two in SheflSeld, and others elBewhere. 'Elliott iookod the wan invalid that he wa?. 84 BRIEF BIOGRAPmES. pale and thin; and his hair was nearly white. Age had deeply marked his features since last we saw him; and, instead of the iron- framed, firm voiced man we had seen and heard in Palace Yard, London, some eleven j^ears before, and in his own town of Sheffield at a more recent date, he now seemed a comparatively wealt and feeble old man. An anxious expression of face indicated that he had suffered much acute pain, — which indeed was the case. After he had got rid of that subject, and begun to converse about more general topics, his countenance brightened up, and, under the stim- ulus of delightful converse, he became, as it were, a new man. With all his physical weakness, we found that his heart beat as warm and true as ever to the cause of human kind. The old strugglss of his life were passed in review, and fought over again; and he displayed the same zeal and entertained the same strong faith in the old cause which he had rhymed about so long before it seized hold of the public mind. He mentioned, what 1 had not before known, that the 8'ieffield Anti-Corn-Law Association was the first to start the system of operations afterwards adopted by the League, and that they first employed Paulton as a publiclecturer; buttoCobden he gave the praise of having poi)ularized the cause, knocked it into the public head by dint of sheer hard work and strong practical sense, and to Oobden he still looked as the great leader of the day,— one of the most advanced and influential minds of his time. The patriotic struggle in Hungary had enlisted his warmest sympathies; and he spoke of Kossuth as "cast in the mold of the greatest heroes of antiquity." Of the Russian Emperor he spoke as *' that tremendous villain, Nicholas," and ho believed him to be so infatuated by his success in Hungary, that he would not know where to stop, but v/ould rush blindly to his ruin. The conversation then led towards his occupations in this remote country spot, whither he had retreated from the busy throng of men, and the engrossing }3nrsuits and anxieties of business. Here he said he had given himself up to meditation aud thought ; nor liad he been idle with his pen either, having a volume of prose and poetry nearly ready for publication. Strange to say, he spoke of his prose as the better part of his writings, and, as he himself thought, much superior to his poetry. But he is not the first instance of a great writer who has been in error as to the com- parative value of his own works. On that question the world, and especially posterity, will pronounce the true verdict. He spoke with great interest of the beautiful scenery of the neigh- borhood, which had been a source to him of immense joy and delight ; of the two great old oaks, near the old Roman road, about a mile to the north, under the shad e of which the Wapontake formerly assembled, and in the hollow of one of which, in more recent times, Nevison the highwayman used to take shelter, but it was burnt down in spite, after his execution, by a band of gypsies; of the I fflori EBENEZEB ELLIOTT. 85 -pflorions wooded conntry whicla stretched to the south, — Wentworth, Wharncliffe, Conisborough, and the line scenery of the Dearne and the Don ; of the many traditions which still lingered about the neighborhood, and which, he said, some Walter Scott, could ho gather them up before they died away, would make glow again with life and beauty. "Did you see," he observed, "that curious Old Hall on your way up? The terrible despot Wentworth, Lord Strafford, married his third wife from that very house, and afterwards lived in it for Rome time ; and no wonder it is rumored among the country folks as •haunted;* for if it be true that unquiet, perpetual spirits have power to wander over the earth, alter the body to which they had been bound is dead, his could never endure the peaceful rest of the grave. After Wentworth's death it became the property of Sir Yv'iiliam Rhodes, a stout Presbyterian and Parliamentarian. "When the great civil war broke out, Bhodes took the field with his ten- antry, on the side of the Parliament, and the first encounter between the two parties is said to have taken place only a few miles to the north of Old Houghton. While Rhodes was at Tadcaster with Sir Thomas Fairfax, Captain Grey (an ancestor of the present Earl Grey), at the head of a body of about three hundred Royalist horse, attacked the Old Hall, and, there being only some thirty servants left to defend it, took the place and set fire to it, destroying all that would burn. But Cromwell rode down the cavaliers with his plowmen at Marston Moor, not very far from here either, and then Rhodes built the little chapel that you would still see standing apart at the west end of the Hall, and established a godly Presby- terian divine to minister there ; forming a road from thence to Driffield, about three miles off, to enable the inhabitants of that place to reach it by a short and convenient*route. I forget how it happened," he continued, "I believe it was by marriage, — but so it was that the estate fell into the possession, in these later days, of Moncktown Milnes, to whom it now belongs. But as Monk" Pry- stone was preferred as a family residence, and was in a more thriv- ing neighborhood, the chief part of the land about was sold to other proprietors, and only some three holdings were retained, in virtue of which Mr. Milnes continues lord of the manor, and is entitled to his third share of the moor or waste lands in the neighborhood, which may be reclaimed under Inclosure Acts. But the Old Hall has been dismantled, and all the fine old furniture and tapestry and paintings have been removed down to the new house at Monk Fry stone." And then the conversation turned upon Monckton Milnes, his fine poetry, and his "Life of Keats," — on Keats, of whom Elliott sjDoke in terms of glowing eulogy as that great " resurectionized Greek," — on Southey, who had so kind proffered his services in advancing the interests of Elliott's two sons, the clergymen, whose 86 BRIEF BIOGBAPHIES. livings he obtained for them, — on Carlyle, whom he admired as ono of the greatest of living poets, though writing not in rhyme,— and on Longfellow, whose *'Evangeline'' he had not yet seen, but longed to read. And thus'the evening stole on with delightful converse in the heart of that quiet, happy family, the listeners recking not that the lips of the eloquent speaker would soon be moist with the dews of death. Shortly after the date of this visit, we sent the poet a copy of "Evangeline," of which he observed, in a letter written after a delightful perusal of it : ** Longfellow is indeed a poet, and he has done what 1 deemed an impossibility, — he has written English hexameters, giving our mighty lyre a new string ! When Tennyson dies, he should read 'Evangeline* to Homer." Poor Elliott ! That task, if a possible one, be now his ! We cannot better conclude this brief sketch than by giving the last lines which Elliott wrote, while autumn was yet lingering round his dwelling, and the appearance of the robin red-breast near the door augured the approach of winter. They were written at the request of the poet's daughter (who was married only about a fort- night before his death), to the air of "'Tis time this heart should be unmoved " : — Thy notes, sweet Robin, soft as dew, Heard soon or lat^e, are dear tx) me ; To music I could hid adieu, But not to thee. . When from my eyes this life-full throng Has past away no more to be ; Then, Autumn's primrose, Robin's song, Keturn to me. GEORGE BORROW. INCE the publication of "The Bible in Spain," a singularly interesting and fascinating book, few English writers have ex- cited so deep a personal interest as George Borrow, — Grypsy George, — Don Giorgio, — the Gypsy Hogarth. The writer projected BO much of himself into that book, as well as into his "Gypsies of Spain," his first published work, and gave us such delightful glim]Dses of his own life and experience, as keenly to whet our curi- osity, and make us eagerly long to know more about him. Here was a traveling missionary of the Bible Society, who knew all about gypsy life and lingo, was familiar with the lowest haunts of field thieves and mendicants, and up to all their gibberish ; a horse-sorcerer and whisperer, a student of pugilism under Thurtell, and himself no mean practioneria **the noble art of self-defense," but withal a man of the most varied gifts and accomplishments,— a philologist or "word-master," knowing nearly every language in Europe and the East, — a racy and original writer, with the force- of Cobbett and the learning of Parr, — the translator of the Bible,, or parts of it, into Mantchou, Basque, Eommaney, or Gypsy-ton>:ue, and many other languages, and of old Danish ballads into English, a person of fascinating conversation and of powerful eloquence. Fancy these varied gifts embodied in a man standing six feet two in his stocking-soles, his frame one of iron, his daring and intrepidity unmatched, and you have placed before your mind's eye George Borrow, the Bible missionary, — the Gypsy Hogarth, — the emissary of Exeter Hall, — the quondam pupil of Thurtell,— Lavengro, the Word -master ! One wishes to know much of this extraordinary being. What is his history? What has been his life ? It must be full of novel ex- periences, the like of which was never before written. Well, he has written a book called "Lavengro," in which he proposes to satisfy the puV)lic curiosity about himself, and to illustrate his biography as •* Scholar, Gypsy, and Priest." The book, however, is not all 81 88 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. fact ; it is fact mixed liberally with fiction, — a kind of poetic rhap- sody ; and yet it contains many graphic pictures of real, life,-^iife little known of, such as exists to this day among the by-lanes and on the moors of England. One thing is obvious, the book is thor- oughly original, like all Mr. Borrow has written. It smells of the gr3 3:i lanes and breezy downs, — of the field and the tent ; and his characters bear the tan of the sun and tbo marks of the weather upon their faces. The book is not written as a practiced book- maker would write it ; it is not pruned down to suit current tastes. Borrow throws into it whatever he has picked up on the high-ways and by-ways, garnishing it up with his own imaginative spicery ad libitum, and there you have it, — "Lavengro ; the Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest ! " But the work is not yet completed, seeing that he has only as yet treated us to the two former parts of the character ; "The Priest " is yet to come, and then we shall see how it happened that Exeter Hall was enabled to secure the services of this gifted missionary. From his childhood George Borrow was a wanderer, and doubt- less his early associations and experiences gave their color to his fu- ture life. His father was a captain of militia about the beginning of the present century, when the principal garrison duties of the country were performed by that force. The regiment was constantly moving about from place to place, and thus England, Scotland, and Ireland passed as a panorama before the eyes of the militia officer's son. He was born at East Dereham, in Norfolk, when the regiment was lying there in 1803. Borrow claims the honor of gentle birth, for his father was a Cornish gentillatre, and by his mother he wa-? descended from an old Huguenot family, who were driven out of France at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and, like many other of their countrymen, settled down in the neighborhood of Norwich. Borrow the elder was a man of courage, and though never in battle, he fought with his fists, and vanquished "Big Ben Brain," in Hyde Park, a feat of which his son thinks highly, and the more so, as Big Ben Brain, four months after the event, **wa3 champion of England, having vanquished the heroic Johnson. Honor to Brain, who, at the end of four other months, worn out by the dreadful blows which he had received in his many combats, ex- pired in the arms of my father, who read the Bible to him in his later moments, — Big Ben Brain." Such are the son's own words in his autobiographic "Lavengro." Borrow had one brother older than himself, an artist, a pupil of Haydon, the historical painter. He died abroad in comparative vouth, but after he had given promise of excellency in his profession. This elder brother was the father's favorite; for George, when a child, was moody and reserved, — a lover of nooks and retired corners, shunning society, and sitting for hours together with his head upon hiii breast. But the family were constantly wandering and shifting GEORGE BORKOW. 8^ aboijt, following the quarters of the regimeiit, sometimes living in barracks, sometimes in lodgings, and bometimes in camp. At a place called Pett, in Sussex, they thus lived under canvas walls;, and here tlie lirst snake-charming incident in the child's life occurred : '•It happened that my brother and rnyselfwere playing one even- ing in a sandy lane, in the neighborhood of this Pett camp; our mother was at'^a slight distance. All of a sudden a bright yellow, and, to my inf intine eye, beautiful and glorious object, made its ai^pearance at the tojD of the bank from between the thick quickset, and, glidingdown, began to move across the lane to the other side, like a line of golden light. Uttering a cry of pleasure, I sprang forward, and seized it nearly by the middle. A strange sensation oi numbing coldness seemed to pervade my whole arm, which surprised me the more, as the object, to the eye, appeared so warm and sunlike. I did not drop it, however, but, holding it up, looked at it intently, as its head dangled about a foot from my hand. It made no resistance; I felt not even the slightest struggle; but now my brother began to Bcream and shriek like one possessed. * O mother, mother ! ' said he, * the viper! my brother has a viper in his hand! ' He then, like one frantic, made an effort to snatch the creature away from me. The viper now hissed amain, and raised its head, in which were eyes like hot coals, menacing, not myself, but my brother. I dropped my captive, for I saw my mother running towards me; and the reptile, after standing for a moment nearly erect, and still hissint^ furiously, made off, and disappeared. The whole scene is now before me as vividly as if it occurred yesterday, — the gorgeous viper, my poor, dear, frantic brother, my agitated parent, and a frightened hen clucldng under the bushes, — and yet I v/as not three years old." Borrow cites this as an instance of the power which some persons I>ossess of exercising an inherent power or fascination — call it mes- meric, if you will — over certain creatures; and he afterwards cites instances of the same kind, or the taming of wild horses by the utterance of words or whispers, or by certain movements, which seemed to have power over them. Thus the family wandered , through Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent. At Hythe, the sight of a huge Danish skull, the headpiece of some mighty old Scandinavian pirate, lying in the old penthouse adjoining the village church, struck the boy's imagination with awe; and, like the apparition of the viper in the sandy lane, it dwelt in bis mind, affording copious food for thought and wonder. ''An indefinable curiosity for all that is connected with the Danish race began to pervade me; and if, long after, when I became a student, I devoted myself, with peculiar zest, to Danish lore, and the acquire- ment of the old Norse and its dialects, I can only explain the matter by the early impression received fit Hythe from the tale of the old sexton beneath the penthouse, and the sight of the huge Danish fikuil."' 90 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. Borrow's acquaintance with books began with the most fasci- nating of all boys' books, — and which has preserved its popularity undiminished far more than a hundred years, and, while boys's nature remains as now, will hold a hip:h place in English literature, — the entrancing, fascinating, deliji^htful ''Robinson Crusoe." He afterwards fell in with another almost equally interesting book, by th8 same writer, "Moll Flanders," which an old apple-woman on London Bridge lent him to read while he sat behind her stall there; but "llobinson" exercised by far the greatest influence on his mind, and probably helped in no slight degree, to give a direction to his after career. His child- wanderings continued ; Winchester, Norman's Cross near Peterborough (where French j^risoners were then kept\ and many other places, passed before liis eyes. At Norman's Cross when he was seven years of age, he met with a serpent-charmer ; the man was catching vipers among the woods, and the boy accompanied him in his wanderings, learning from him his art of catching vipers. When the old man left the neighborhood, he made the boy a present of one of those reptiles, which he had tamed, and rendered quite harmless by removing the fangs. Three years passed at Norman's Cross, during which the boy learned Lilly's Latin grammar. Then the regiment removed towards the north, halting, for a time, first in one town and then in another, — in Yorkshire, in Northumberland, and then beyond the Tweed, at Edinburgh, where the regiment was quartered in the Castle, standing high upon its crag, overlooking all the other honsea in that interesting city. Here he was initiated into the boy-lii'e of Edinburgh, — the *• bickers" on the North Loch and along tlie Castle Kill, between the New Town and the Old, already immortalized by Bir Walter Scott. He entered a pupil in the High School, and gathered, before he left, some further acquaintance with Latin and other tongues. Oddly enough, one of the cronies whom he picked up when residing in the Castle, or engaged in "bickers" on the face of tlie crag, was l3avid Haggart, then a drummer-boy, afterwards the most notorious of Scotch criminals, and hanged for murdering the jailer at Dumfries, in a desperate attempt to escape. But Borrow's sympathi« s are so entirely with the criminal and Gj'^psy clnss, that he does not hesitate to compare Ha.<:rgait with Tamerlane !— the only difference being that "Tamerlane was a heathen, and acted accord- ing to the lights of his country, — he was a robber while all around were robbers, whereas Haggart"— then after a strange euloginm of the "strange deeds" of Haggart, he concludes, "Thou mightest | have been better employed, David ! but peace be with thee, I repeat, and the Almighty's grace and pardon ! " Two years passed in Edinburgh, during which time the young ' Borrow acquired, to his father's horror, the unmistakable dialect of "the High School callant." Then they left; the militia corpa» GEORGE BORROW. 91 returned to England, and were disbanded. Another year passed in quiet life ; 1815 arrived, and Napoleon's return from Elba again Ithrew the whole islo into consternation. The militia were raise. 1 anew, and though the French were quelled, disturbances were threatened in Ireland, and thither the corps with which Borrow's Ixither, and now his eldest brother, were connected, were shipped from a port in Essex, and landed at Cork, in Ireland, in the autumn of the year above named. Up the country they went ; it became wilder as they proceeded, — the people along the road-sides, with whom the soldiers jested in the patois of East Anglia, answered them in a rough, guttural language, strange and wild. The soldiers stared at each other, and were silent. It was Irish-Celtic that the people spoke, and soon, when the regiment got settled in quarters, young Borrow set to work, and learned it from one of his school-fel~ lows, taking lessons in Irish from him in exchange for a pack of cards. Borrow's brother having been sent up to the country with a small detachment of men, the younger brother went to visit him in his quarters, — crossed the bogs, passed many old ruined castles far up on the heights, on many of which "the curse of Cromwell " fell. He was overtaken by a snow-storm when crossing a bog, and had I nearly been d.evoured by a wild smuggler and his dog, when a fev/ I words of Irish uttered by him at once cleared his road. At length ' he reached his brother, in a wild out-of-the-way place, •the offi- cer's" apartments being in a a kind of hay-loft, reached by a ladder. Young Borrow now learned to ride ; and it is delightful to hear him when he breaks out in praise of horse-flesh. One morning a horse is led out by a soldier, that the youth might "give him a breath- ing :" he thus describes the horse : **The cob was led forth ; what a tremendous creature ! I had frequently seen him before, and w^ondered at him : he was barely fifteen hands, but he had the girth of a metropolitan dray-hor.se ; his head was small in comparison with his immense neck, which curved down nobly to his wide back ;, his chest was broad and fine, and his shoulders models of symmetry and strength. He stood well and powerfully upon his legvS, which were somewhat short. In a word, he was a gallant specimen of the genuine Irish cob, a species at one time not uncommon, but at the present day nearly extinct." He mounted, and the horse set off, the youth on its bare back. In two hours he made the circuit of the Devil's Mountain, and was returning along the road bathed with perspiration, but screaming with delight,— the cob laughing in his quiet, equine way, scattering foam and pebbles to the left and right, and trotting at the rate of sixteen miles an hour. Hear his enthusiasm on the subject of the First Eide !— *• 0, that ride ! that first ride ! most truly it was an epoch in my 92 • imiEF BIOGRAPHIES. existence, and I still look back to it with feelings of longing and regret. People may talk of first love— it is a very agreeable event, I dare say, — but give me the flush, and triumph, and glorious sweat of a first ride, like mine on the mighty cob ! My whole frame was sliaken, it it true ; and during one long week I could hardly move foot or hand, but what of that? by that one trial I had become free, as I may say, of the whole equine species. No more fatigue, no more stiffness of joints, after the first ride round the Devil's Hill on the cob." His passion for horses seems almost equal, indeed, to his passion for boxiug, for Bibles, for languages, and for Gypsy life. His sense of physical life is intense ; and wherever muscular energy has full play, he seem to be in his native element. Afterwards, when in the middle of one of his sermons at Cordova (tfee his *• Gypsies of Spain") it occurs to him that the breed of horses of that ancient city is first-rate, and off he goes at full gallop, like a hunter who hears a horn, into a masterly sketch of the Andalusian Arab, and how to groom him ! But one day, while in Ireland, an ac ddc-nt occurred which introduced him to his first lesson in "horse-whis- pering : " *'By good luck a small village was at hand, at the entrance of which was a large shed, from which proceeded a most furious noise of hammering. Leading the cob by the bridle, I entered boldly. *Shoe this horse, and do it quickly, a-goup:h,' said I to a wild, grimy figure of a man, whom I found alone, fashioning a piece of iron. ** • Arrigod yuit?' said the fellow, desisting from his work, and staring at me, ** ' O, yes ; I have money,* said I, *and of the best,' and I pulled out an English shilling. *'*Tabhair chugam?' said the smith, stretching out his grimy hand. " ' No, I sha'n't,* said I ; * some people are glad to get their money when their work is done.' •'The fellow hammered a little longer, and then proceeded to shoe the cob, after having first surveyed it with attention. He per- formed his job rather roughly, and more than once appeared to give the animal unnecessary pain, frequently making use of loud and boisterous words. By the time the work was done, the creature was in a state of high excitement, and plunged and tore. The smith stood at a short' distance, seeming to enjoy the irritation of the ani- mal, and showing, in a remarkable manner, a huge fang, which projected from the under jaw of a very wry mouth. " * You deserve better handling,' said I, as I went up to the cob, and fondled it ; whereupon it whinnied, and attempted to touch my face with its nose. " 'Are ye not afraid of that beast?' said the smith, showing his fang ; 'arrah ! it's vicious that he looks.' GEOEGE BOltEOW. &3 •* 'It's afc you, then ; I don't fear him ;' and thereupon I passed nnder the horse, between its hind legs. V^m* * And is that all you can do, agrah? * said the smith. I^B^* *No,' said I, *I can ride him.' «* * Ye can ride him ; and what else, agrah?' ** *I can leap him over a six-foo'^ wall,' said I. '* * 0\ er a wall ; and what more, agrah ? * " * Nothing more,' said I ; *what more would you have?' ***Can you do this, agrah?' said the smith; and he uttered a word, which I had never heard before, in a sharp, pungent tone. The effect upon myself was somewhat extraordinary, a strange thrill ran through me ; but with regard to the cob it was terrible ; the an- imal forthwith became like one mad, and reared and kicked with the utmost desperution. " *Can you do that, agrah?' said the smith. ** 'What is it?' said I, retreating ; * I never saw the horse so oe- fore.' *' 'Go between his hind legs, agrah,* said the smith, — *his hinder legs ; ' and he again showed his fang. *' 'I dare not,' said I ; *he would kill me.' *• 'He would kill ye ! r.nd how do ye know that, agrah?* " 'I feel he w^ould,' said I ; * something tells me so.' " * And it tells ye truth, agrah ; but it's a fine beast, and it's a pity to see him in such a state ; lo agam airt leigeas ;' and here he mat- tered another word, in a voice singularly modified, but sweet anl almost plaintive. The effect of it was almost instantaneous as that of the other, but how different ! the animal lost all its fury, and be- came at once calm and gentle. The smith went up to it, coaxed and patted it, making use of various sounds of equal endearment ; then turning to me, and holding out once more the grimy hand, he said, * And now ye will be giving me the Sassanach tenpence, agrah I ' " But at length the militia were all disbanded, and the Borrows re- turned to England, where they settled down at Norwich. The two boys were now growing up, and the elder was put to study painting; the second, George, was still at his books and rambles. His thoughts were in the fields, but he learned French, Italian, and German. His spare hours w^ere spent in fishing or shooting, and sometimes in the practice of the "noble art of self-defense." One day, wh(^n at- tending the horse-fair at Norwich, attracted thither by the sight of the fine animals which he so much admired, he fell in with the son of the Gypsy man he had before met in the lane at Norman's Cross, and shortly after he followed him to his tent beyond the moor. The father and mother, described in our previous extract, had by this time been "bitchadoy pawdel," that ist "banished beyond seas for crime," and their son, Jasper Pentulengro, now the Pharaoh of the Gypsies, had to shift for himself. From this time Borrow's inter- course with the wandering Gypsies was frequent ; he accompanied 94 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. them to ftirs, l.?arned their language, acquired the art of horse- Bhoeing, familiarized himself with their ways of living, — uiuch to the horror of his parents, who were disgusted with his loose and wandering habits. But the boy was now fast growing up into the man, and something must be done to break him into the ways of civilized liie; Iiis father accordingly cast about for him, and at length succeeded in getting the young man articled to a lawyer in Norwich. But he hated the drudgery of the desk, and made no progress in the study of the law. Blackstonewas neglected for Danish ballads and Welsh poems. "He made the grossest blunders in his business, and his master wished to get rid of him; but time sped on, and he remained, alternating his studies of Ab Gwilym by readings of the lifeof MooreCnrew, "the King of the Beggars," and Murray and Latroon's histories of illus- trious robbers and highwaymen. Then a celebrated fjght would come off in the neighborhood, and be sure our youth was present there. Extraordinary it is, how Borrow, the misnionarj^ should be the one man living to eulogize this pastime in his books ! but he docs it, both in his *• Gypsies in Sj^ain " and in **Lavongro." In both he tolls us how Thurtell, the murderer, taug'iit him the use of **th6 gloves"; and there is ono famous fight, which he has described in glowing language in both these books, which was got up by Thurtell and Gypsy Will, the latter his instructor in hoise-riding. •*I have known the timo," he says, "when a pugilistic encounter between two noted champions was almost considered in the light of a national affair; when tens of thousands of individuals, high and low, meditated and brooded upon it, the fust thing in the morning and the last at night, until the great event was decided. But the time is past, and many people will say, Thank God that it is; all I have to say is,- that the French still live on the other side of the water, and are still casting their eyes hiiherward; and that, in the days of pugilism, it was no vain boast to say, that one Englishman was a match for two of t' otlier race; at present it would be a vain boast to say so, for these are not the days of pugilism." And again he says; "What a bold and viL,'orous aspect pugilisra wore at that time ! and the great Ijattlo was just then coming off; the day had been decided upon, and the sj^ot, a convenient distance from the old town;— and to the old town were now flocking the bruisers of England, men of tremendous renown. Let no one sneer at the bruisers of England; what were the gladiators of Rome, or the buil-fighters of Sjiain in its palmiest days, compared to England's bruisers ? Pity that corrugation should have crept in amongst them, — but of that I wish not to speak; let us still hope that a spark of the old reliifion, ofickick ihcy irere tkepTiesis, still lingers in the hearts of Englisimien." No, Mr. Borrow, the glories of pugilism, like those of dueling, bull-baiting, and bull-running, have all departed, and yet England stands v>'here it did; nay. we are even strongly of I GEOBGE BORROW. 95 opinion that the English race, instead of retrograding thereby, has achieved an unquestionable moral advancement. But we willingly pass over this part of Mr. Borrow's confessions, which, though racily , written, have a very unhealthful tendency. At length Borrow's father dies; his articles have expired, and he is thrown u])oii the world on his own resources. He went to London, like most young men full of themselves and yet wanting help. He packed up his translations of the Danish ballads, and of Ab Gwilym's Welsh poetry, and sought for a publisher on his arrival in London. Of course he failed, but he got an introduction to Sir Richard Phil- lips, and through his instrumentality Borrow obtained some task- Vv^ork from a publisher, though the remuneration derived from it w:is so trifling that he could scarcely subsist. He compiled livts of highwaymen and criminals, and at length, when reduced to his last shilling, wrote a story, which enabled him to raise sufficient cash to quit the metropolis, which he did on the instant, and started on a pedestrian excursion through the country. His life in London occuj^ies the second volume of "Lavengro; " it seems spun out, and reads heavy, — very inferior in interest to the first volume, which contains the cream of the book. In the country he falls in with a disconsolate tinker, who has been driven off his beat by the *• Flam- ing Tinman," a gigantic and brutal ruffian. "Lavengro'' buys the tinker's horse, cart, and equipment, and enters upon a life of savage freedom, many parts of which are most graphically depicted. At length he falls in with the ** Flaming Tinman,'* and a desperate fight takes place between them; he vanquishes the tinman, and gains also one of the tinman's two wives, who remains with him in the Mum- per's Dingle, where they encamp; and here **Lavengro" ends. He does not tell us whether his encounter with the *♦ Flaming Tinman," or his knowlegde of gypsy and hedge life*, had anything to do with his after career ; or how it was that he became a Bible society's agent ; probably he may tell us something more of that by and by. In the meantime we may add what we know of his public history in connection with the Bible society, who, in engaging him, possibly had an eye more to the end than the means. Specimens of his ** Kaempe Viser," from the Danish, were printed at his native place, Norwich, in 1825, and, shortly after, he was selected by the Bible society to introduce the Scriptures into Russia. He resided there for several years, during which time he mastered its language, the Sclavonian, and its Gypsy dialects. He then prepared an edition of the entire Testament in the Tartar Mantchou, which was published at St. Petersburg, in 1835, in eight volumes. It was at St. Petersburg that he published versions into English from thirty languages. In the meantime he had been in France, where he was a spectator, if not an actor, in the Revolution of the Barricades. Then he went to Non^'ay, crossed into Russia again, sojourned among the Tartars, 96 BEIEF lilOGKAPHIES. amonoj the Turks, the Bohemians, passed into Spain, from thence into Barbary, — in short, the sole of his foot has never rested; his course has been more erratic than that of any Gypsy, far more eccentric than that of his brother missionary, Dr. Wolff, the wander- ing Jew. In his •* Bible in Spain" occurs the following passage, which flashes a light upon his remarkably varied history: ** I had returned from a walk in the countr3% on a glorious sun- shiny morningof the Andalusian winter, and was directing my steps towards my lodging. As I was passing by the portal of a large gloomy bouse near the gate of Xeres, two individuals, -dressed in zamarras, emerged from the archway, and were about to cross my path, when one, looking in my face, suddenly started back, exclaim- ing in the purest and most melodious French, *WhatdoIsee? if my eyes do not deceive me, it is himself Yes, the very same, as I saw him first at Bayonne; then, longBubsequentl3% beneath the brick wall at Novogorod; then beside the Bosphorus; and last, at — at — O my r3spcctable and cherished friend, where was it that I had last the felicity of seeing your well-remembered and most remarkable physiognomy? * ''Myself. — *It was in the south of Ireland, if I mistake not ; was it not there that I introduced you to the sorcerer who tamed the savage horses by a single whisper into their ear? But tell me, what brings you to Spain and Andalusia, — the last place where I should have expected to find you?' *' Baron Taylor. — 'And wherefore, my most respectable B ? Is not Spain the land of the arts; and is not Andalusia of all Spain that portion which has produced the noblest monuments of artistic excellence and inspiration ? But first allow me to introduce you to your c®mpatriot, my dear Monsieur W ,' turning to his com- panion (an English gentleman, from whom, and from his family, I subsequently experienced unbounded kindness and hospitality on various occasions and at different periods, at Seville\ * allow me to introduce to you my most cherished and respectable friend; one who is better acquainted with Gypsy ways than the Chef de Boh^miens i Triana; one who is an expert whisperer and horse-sorcerer; an(J who, to his honor I say it, can wield hammer and tongs, and handle a horse-shoe with the best of the smiths amongst the Alpujarras of Granada.'" From his great knowledge of languages, physical energies, and extraordinary intrepidity, it will be clear enough that Mr. Borrow was not ill adapted for the dangerous mission on which he was engaged; indeed, he seems to have been pointed out as the very man for the work. It is not child's play to go into foreign coun- tries, such as Kussia and Sixain, and distribute Bibles. Fortunately for liis success in Spain, the country was in a state of great disorder and turbulence at the time of his mission there, so that his move- ments were not so much watched as they would otherwise have been; GEOBGE BOIIKOW. 97 yet, as it was, he became familiar with the interiors of half the jails in the Peninsula. There he cultivated his acquaintance vvith the Gypsies and other yagabond races, and gathered new words for his Kommany vocabulary .• While in Spain, however, he did more than cultivate Rommany and distribute Bibles; he brought out Bishop Scio's version of the New Testament in Spanish; he translated St. Luke into the Gypsy language, and edited the same in Basque, — one of tiie ianguaj^e^ most difficult of attainment, because it has no literature; it has other difficulties, for it is hard to learn, — and the Basque people tell a story of the Devil (who does not lack abilities) having been detained among them seven years trying to learn the language, which he at last gave up in despair, having only been able to learn three words. Humboldt also tried to learn it, with no better success than his pre- decessor. But no difficulty was too great for Borrow to overcome; he acquired the Basque, thus vindicating his claim to the title of **Lavengro," or word-master. If any of our readers should happen not yet to have read "The Bible in Spain, " we advise them to read it forthwith. Though irregu- lar, without plan or order, it is a thoroughly racy, graphic, and vigorous book, full of interest, honest, and straightforward, and without any cant or affectation in it; indeed, the man's prominent quality is honesty, otherwise we should never have seen anything of that strong love of pugilism, horsemanship, Gypsy life, and physical daring of all kinds, of which his books are full. He is a Bible Harry Lorrequer, — a missionary Bampfj^lde Moore Carew, — an Exeter Hall bruiser, — a polyglot wandering Gypsy. Fancy these incongruities, — and yet George Borrow is the man who embodies them in his one extraordinary person 1 JECOOBAPHIES 3 AUDUBON THE ORNITHOLOGIST. THE great naturalist of America, John James Audubon, left be- hind him, in his "Birds of America" and *'Ornitholo;j:ical Biography," a magnificent monument of his labors, which through life were devoted to the illustration of the natural history of his native country. His grand work on the Biography of Birds is quite unequaled for the close observation of the habits of birds and animals which it displays, its glowing pictures of American scenery, and the enthusiastic love of nature which breathes throughout its pages. The sunshine and the open air, the dense shade of the forest, and the boundless undulations of the prairies, the roar of the sea beating against the rock-ribbed shore, the soli- tary wilderness of the Upper Arkansas, the savannas of the South, the beautiful Ohio, the vast Mississippi, and the green steeps of the AUeghanies, — all were as familiar to Audubon as his own home. The love of birds, of flowers, of animals,— the desire to study their habits in their native retreats, — haunted him like a passion from his earliest years, and he devoted almost his entire life to the pursuit. He was born to competence, of French parents settled in Amer- ica, in the state of Pennsylvania, — a beautiful green undulating country, watered by fine rivers, and full of lovely scenery. ** When I had hardly yet learned to walk," says he, in his autobiography prefixed to his work, '*the productions of nature that lay spread all around were constantly pointed out to me. They soon became my playmates ; and before myideas were sufficiently formed to ena- ble me'to estimate the difference between the azure tints of the sky and the emerald hue of the bright foliage, I felt that an intimacy • 9S AUDUBON THE ORNITHOLOGIST. 99 with them, not consisting of friendship merely, but bordering on frenzy^ must accompany my steps through life ; and now, more than ever, am I persuaded of the power of those early impressions. They laid such hold of me, that, when removed from the woods, the prairies, and the broolis, or shut up trom the view of the wide At- lantic, I experienced none of those pleasures most congenial to my mind. None but aerial companions suited my fancy. No roof seemed so secure to me as that formed of the dense foliage under which the feathered tribes were seen to resort, or the caves and fis- sures of the massy rocks to which the dark-winged cormorant and the curlew retired to rest, or to protect themselves from the fury of the tempest." Audubon seems to have inherited this intense love of nature from his lather, who eagerly encouraged the boy's tastes, procured birds and flowers for him, pointed out their elegant movements, told him of their haunts and habits, their migrations, changes of livery, and so on, — feeding the boy's mind with vivid pleasure and stimulating his quick sense of enjoyment. As he grew up towards manhood, these tastes grew stronger within him, and he longed to go forth amid the forests and prairies of America to survey the native wild birds in their magnificent haunts. But, meanwhile, he learned to draw ; he painted birds and flowers, and acquired a facility of de- lineation of their forms, attitudes, and plumage. Of course he only reached this through many failures and defeats ; but he was labori- ous and full of love for his pursuit, and in such a case ultimate suc- cess is certain. His education was greatly advanced by a residence in France, thither he was sent to receive his school education, returning to America at the age of seventeen. In Paris, he had the advantage of studying under the great David. He revisited the woods of the New "World with fresh ardor and increased enthusiasm. His father gave him a fine estat-e on the banks of the Schuylkill ; and amidst its beautiful woodlands, its extensive fields, its hills crowned with ever- greens, he pursued his delightful studies. Another object about the same time excited his passion, and he soon rejoiced in the name of husband. But though Audubon loved his wife most fondly, his first ardent love had been given to nature. It was his genius and destiny, which he could not resist, and he was drawn on towards it in spite of himself. He engaged, however, in various branches of commerce, none of which succeeded with him, his mind being preoccupied by his favorite study. His friends called him **fool," — all excepting his wife and children. At last, irritated by the remarks of relatives and otliers, he broke entirely away from the pursuits of trade, and gave himself up wholly to natural history. He ransacked the woods, the lakes, the prairies, and the shores of the Atlantic, spending years away from his home and family. His object, at first, was not 100 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. to become a writer ; but simply to indnlcje a passion, — to enjoy the sight of nature. It was Charles Lucian i3onaparte, an accomplished naturalist, who first incited him to arrange his beautiful drawings in a form for publication, and to enter upon his grand work, "The Birds of America." He now explored over and over again the woods and the prairies, the lakes, the rivers, and the sea-shore, with this object in view ; but when he had heaped together a mass of infor- mation, and collected a large number of drawings an untoward accident occurred to his collection, which we cannot help relating in his own words : **I left the village of Henderson, in Kentucky, situated on the banks of the Ohio, where I resided for several years, to proceed to Philadelj^hia on business. I looked to all my drawings (ten hun- dred in number) before my departure, placed them carefully in a box, and gave them in charge to a relative with injunctions to sco that no injury happened to them. My absence was of several months; and when I returned, after havinc; enjoyed the pleasures of home for a few days, 1 inquired after my box, and what I was pleased to call my treasure. The box was produced, and opened, but, reader, feel for me,— a*pair of Norway rats had taken possession of the whole, and had reared a young family amongst the gnawed bits of paper, which, but a few months ago had represented nearly a thousand inhabitants of the air ! The burning heat which instantly rushed through my brain was too great to be endured, without affect- ing the whole of my nervous system. 1 Bh-pt not for several nights, and the days passed like days of oblivion, until the animal powers being recalled into action, through the strength of my constitution, I took up my gun, my note-book, and my pencils, and went forth to the woods as gayly as if nothing had happened. I felt pleased that I might now make much better drawings than before, and ere a period not exceeding three years had elapsed, I had my portfolio filled again." While you read Audubon's books, you feel that you are in the society of no ordinary naturalist. Everything he notes down is the result of his own observation. Nature, not books, has been his teacher. You feel the fresh air blowing in your facp, sc^nt the odor of the prairie -flowers and the autumn-woods, and hear the roar of the surf along the sea-shore. He takes you into the squatter's hut in the lonely swamp, where you listen to the story of the wood-cutter's life, and sally out in tho'nighttohunt the cougar ; or he lannoliesyou on the Ohio in a light skiff, v>^here he paints for you in glowing words the rich autumnal tints decorating the shores of that queen of rivers, — every tree hung with long and flov/ing festoons of different species of vines, many loaded with clustered fruits of varied bril- liancy, their rich bronzed carmine mingling beautifully with the yellow foliage predominating over the green leaves, — gliding down the river, under the rich and glowing sky which characterizes what AUDUBON THE OBNiT|?;OLOai^T. ,' f ,', \ ipl is called the "Indian summer," and reminding you of the delicious description in Longfellow's "Evangeline :" Kow tJtirougli rushing chutes, among" gTeen Islands, wliere, plum-Uke, Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with the current. Then emerged into broad lagoons, where silvery sandbars Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling waves oi' their margin, Shining with snow-white plumes, large Hocks of pelicans w^aded. Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs o£ the cypress Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid- air Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient cathedrals. Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow-soray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such Hoods of delirious music. That the whole air, and the woods, and the waves, seemed silent to listen. In one of his excursions on the Ohio, Audubon was accompanied by his wife and eldest son, then an infant; and they floated on from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, sleeping and living in the boat, under the Indian summer sun and the mellowed beauty of the moon, skirt- ing the delicious shores, so picturesqug and lovely at that autumn season, gliding along the stream, and meeting with no other ripple of the water than that formed by the propulsion of the boat. The margins of the river were at that time (for this voyage took place about forty years ago) abundantly supplied with game, and occa- sionally the party landed at night on the green shore; a few gun- shots procured a wild turkey or grouse, or a blue-winged teal; a fire was struck up, and a comfortable repast secured ; after which the family again proceeded quietly on their way down stream. The following is only one of the many lovely pictures sketched by Audu- bon of this enchanting sail, which probably Longfellow had in his eye when he penned the charming description in his "Evangeline." " As night came, sinking in darkness the broader portions of the river, our minds became affected by strong emotions, and wandered far beyond the present moments. The tinkling of the bells told us that the cattle which bore them were gently roving from valley to valley in search of food, or returning to their distant homes. The hooting of the great owl, or the muffled noise of its wings as it sailed smoothly over the stream, were matters of interest to us; so was the sound of the boatman's horn, as it came more and more softly from afar. ^ When daylight returned, many songsters burst forth with echoing notes, more and more mellow to the listening ear. Here and there the lonely cabin of a squatter struck the eye, giving note of commencing civilization. The crossing of the stream by a deer foretold how soon the hills would bo covered with snow.'' The scene is greatly changed since then. The shores are inhabited ; the woods are mainly cleared away; the great herds of elk, deer, and buffalo have ceased to exist; villages, farms, and towns margin the Ohio ; hundreds of steamboats are plying up and down the river, by 10^ BBIKF 'BlOGllAPHIES. night and by day; and thousands of British and American emi- grants have settled down, in ail directions, to the pursuits of agri- culture and commerce, where only forty years ago was heard the hoot of the owl, the cry of the whip-poor-will, and the sharp stroke of the squatter's axe. Or, he takes you into the Great Pine Swamp, like a "mass of darkness," the ground overgrown by laurels and pines of all sorts; he has his gun and note-book in hand, and soon you have the wood- thrush, wild turke^^s, pheasants, and grouse lying at his leet, with the drawings of w^hich he enriches his portfolio; or j'ou are listening to his host, while he reads by the log fire the glorious poetry of Burns. A^'ain, you are with him on the wild prairie, treading some old Indian track, amid brilliant flowers and long grass, the favrns and their dams gamboling along his path, and across boundless tracts of rich lands as yet almost untrodden . by the foot of the white man, and then only by the Canadian trappers or Indian missionaries. Or he is on the banks of the Missis- sippi, where the great magnolia shoots up its majestic trunk, crowned with evergreen leaves, and decorated with a thousand beautiful flowers, that perfume the air around ; where the forests and fields are adorned with blossoms of every hue ; where tke golden orange ornaments the gardens and the groves; where the white- flowered Stuartia and innumerable vines festoon the dense foliage of the 'magnificent woods, shedding on the vernal breeze the perfume of their clustered flowers; there, by the side of deep streams, or tinder the dense foliage, he watches by night the mocking-bird, the whip-poor-will, the yellow-'throat, the humming-bird, and the thou- sand beautiful songsters of that delicious land. Then a crevasse, or sudden irruption of the swollen Mississippi, occurs, and forth- with he is floating over the submerged lands of the interior, nature all silent and melancholy, unless when the mournful bleating of the hemmed-in deer reaches the ear, or the dismal scream of an eagle or a raven is heard, as the bird rises from the carcass on which it had been allaying its appetite. How gloriously Audubon paints the eagle of his native land ! The American white-headed eagle, that haunts the Mississippi, stands sculptured before your eyes in his book. See ! he takes wing, and there you have him w^hirling up into the air as a noble swan comes in sight, and now there is the screaming pursuit and the fatal struggle. "Now is the moment to witness the display of the eagle's powers. He glides through the air like a falling star, and, like a flash of lightning, comes upon the timorous quarry, which now, in agony and despair, seeks by various maneuvers, to elude the grasp of his cruel talons. It mounts, doubles, and willingly would plunge into the stream, were it not prevented by the eagle, which, long pos- sessed of the knowledge that by such a stratagem the swan might Al'DUBON THE ORNITHOLOGIST. 103 escape him, forces it to remain in the air, by attempting to strilie it with his talons from beneath. The hope of escape is soon given up by the swan. It has already become much w^eakened, and its strength fails at the sight of tlie courage and swiftness of its antag- onist. Its last gasp is about to escape, when the ferocious eagle strikes with his talons the under side of its wing, and, with unre- sisted power, forces the bird to fall in a slanting direction uj^on the nearest shore." Then we have the same bird on the Atlantic shore in pursuit of the fish-hawk. *' Perched on some tall summit, in view of the ocean, or of some watercourse, he watches every motion of the osprey while on wing. When the latter rises from the water with a fish in its grasp, forth rushes the eagle in pursuit. He mounts above the fish- hawk, and threatens it by actions w^ell understood, when the latter, fearing perhaps that his life is in danger, drops its prey. In an instant the eagle, accurately estimating the rapid descent of the fisb, closes his wings, follows it witli the swiftness of thought,. and the next moment grasps it. The prize is carried off in silence to the woods and assists in feeding the ever-hungry brood of the eagle." But Audubon did not like the white-headed eagle, no more than did Franklin, who, in common with the ornithologist, regretted its adoption as the emblem of America, because of its voracity, its cow- ardice, and its thievish propensities. Audubon's favorite amocg the eagles of America was the great eagle or " The Bird of "Washington," as he named it. He first saw this grand bird when on a trading voyage with a Canadian, on the Up[)er Mississippi, and his delight was such that he says, ''Not even Herschel when he discovered the planet that bears his name, could have experienced more rapturous feelings." But the bird had soon iiown over the heads of the party and became lost in the distance. Three years elapsed before he sav/ another specimen ; and then it was when engaged in collecting cray-fish on one of the flats whicli border and divide Green Eiver, in Kentucky, near its junction with the Ohio, that he discerned, up among the high cliffs wbich there follow the windings of the river, the marks of an eagle's nest. Climbing his way towards it, he lay in wait for the parent : two hours elapsed, and then the loud hissing of two young eagles in the nest announced the approach of the old bird, which drew near and dropped in among them a fine fish. "I had a perfect view," he says, "of the noble bird as ho held himself to tbe edging rock, hanging like the barn, bank, or social swallow, his tail spread, and his wings partly BO. In a few minutes the other parent joined her mate, and from the difference in size (the female of rapacious birds being much larger) we knew this to be the mother bird. She also had brought a fish, but, more cautious than her mate, she glanced her quick and piercing eye around, and instantly perceived that her abode had been discovered. She dropped her prey, with a loud shriek commu- 104 BEIEF BIOGRAPHIES. nicated the alarm to her mate, and, hovering with him over our heads, kept \ip a growling cry, to intimidate us from our suspected design. This watchful solicitude I have ever found peculiar to the female ; must I be understood to speak only of birds V " Two years more passed in fruitless efforts to secure a specimen of this rare bird; but at last he was so fortunate as to shoot one; and then gave it the name it bears, ** The Bird of Washington," the noblest bird of its genus in the States. "Why he so named the bird he thus explains : "To those who may be curious to know my rea- sons, I can only say, that, as the New World gave me birth and lib- erty, the great man who insured its independence is next to my heart. He had a nobility of miud and a generosity of soul such as are seldom possessed. He was br.^vo, so is the eagle; like it, too, he was the terror of his foes; and iiis fame, extending from pole to pole, resembles the majestic Boarings of the mightiest of the feath- ered tribes. If America has reason to be proud of her Washington, BO has she to be proud of her Great Eagle." In the course of his extensive wanderings, Audubon experienced all sorts of adventures. Once he was witiiin an inch of his life in a solitary squatter's hut in one of the wide prairies of the ui:)per Mississippi; in one of the extensive swamps of the Choctaw terri- tory ill the state of Mississippi, he joined in the hunt of a ferocious cougar or paijifer (panther) w^hich had been the destruction of the flocks in that neighborliood; in the Banem of Kentucky he was once surprised by an earthquake, the ground rising and falling un- der his terrified horse like the ruffled v/ a ters of a lake; he becam.e familiar with storms and hurricanes, v/hich only afforded new sub- jects for his graphic pen; he joined in the Kentucky hunting sports, or with the Indian expeditions on the far j^x'airie; he witnessed the astounding flights of wild pigeons in countless multitudes, lasting for whole days in succession, so that ''the air was literally filled with pigeons, the light of noonday obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots not unlike melting flakes of snow, and the con- tinued buzzing of the millions of wings had a tendency to lull the senses to repose," — one of these enormous flocks extending, it is estimated by Audubon, over a space of not less than 180 miles; then he is on the trail of the deer or the buffalo in the hunting- grounds of the Far West, he misses his way, and lies down for the night in the copse under the clear sky, or takes shelter with a trap- per, where he is always welcome; then he is in the Gulf of Mexico, spending weeks togetTher in the pursuit of birds, or observing their haunts and habits; then he is in the thick of a bear -hunt. Such is the rapid succession of objects that passes before you in the first volume of the "Birds of America," interspersed with delicious de- scriptions of such birds as the mocking-bird, whip-poor-will, hum- ming-bird, wood-thrush, and other warblers of the forest. Iii his description of the wood-thrush, which he confesses to be AUDUBON THE OBNITHOI/ GIST. 105 liis *' greatest favorite of the feathered tribes," you see somethiDg of the hardships to which he exposed himself by the enthusiasm with - which he followed his exciting pursuit.. **Hovr often J' he says, " has it revived my drooping spirits when I have listened to its wild notes in the forest, after passing a restless night in my slender shed, so feebly secured against the violence of tlie storm as to show me the futility of my best efforts to rekindle my little fire, whose uncertain and vacillating light had gradually died away under the destruct- ive weight of the dense torrents of rain that seemed to involve the heavens and the earth in one mass of fearful murkiness, save when the red streaks of the flashing thunderbolt burst on the dazzled eye, and, glancing along the huge trunk of the stateliest and noblest tree in the immediate neighborhood, were instantly followed by an uproar of crackling, crashing, and deafening sounds, rolling their volumes in tumultuous eddies far and near, as if to silence the very breathings of the unformed thought. How often, after such a night, when far from my dear home, and deprived of the presence of those nearest and dearest to my heart, wearied, hungry, drenched, and so lonely and desolate as almost to question myself why I was thus situated ; v/hen I have seen the fruits of my labors on the eve of being destroyed, as the water collected in a stream, rushed through my little camp, and forced me stand erect, shivering in a cold fit, like that of a severe ague ; when I have been obliged to wait with the patience of a martyr for the return of day, trying in vain to destroy the tormenting mosquitoes, silently counting over the years of my youth, doubting, perhaps, if ever again I should return to my home, and embrace my family , — how often, as the first glimpses of morning gleamed doubtfully amongst the dusky masses of the forest- trees, has there come upon my ear, thrilling along the sensitive ' cords which connect that organ with the heart, the delightful music of this harbinger of day ; and how fervently, on such occasions, have I blessed the Being who formed the wood-thrush, and placed it in those solitary forests, as if to console me amidst my privations, to cheer my depressed mind, and to make me feel, as I did, that never ought man to despair, whatever may be his situation, as he can never be certain that aid and deliverance are not at hand." After many years of persevering toil, when he had collected a rich treasure of original drawings of the birds of America, many of which up to that time were altogether unknown, and had never been described, Audubon proceeded to the then two chief cities of the States, Philadelphia and New York, and endeavored to find a publisher. Ho sought for one in vain ! Some said his book would never sell, others that his drawings could neverbe engraved. Au- dubon v/as of a resolute spirit, and had learned to brave all manner of difficulties in the pine-woods and the prairies, and he determined that he would find ia publisher. America was not the world ; he would carry his collections to Europe, and try and find a publisher there. 106 ^ BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. He came to Englaml in 1827, and was welcomed v/ith open arms. Many yet remember the glowing enthusiasm of the "American Woodsman," and tho ardent eloquence of his descriptions of the glorious rivers, the wide prairies, the magnificent vegetation, and the ornithological treasures of his native country. **A11 mankind love a lover," and here was one of the most ardent, kindling all hearts with a generous glow. His drawings were exhibited and greatly admired. From Liverpool, where he landed, he proceeded to Scotland, the land of Burns, for he "longed to see the men and scenes immortalized by his fervid strains." He reached Edinburgh, and was "received as a brother '* by the mos.t distinguished scientific and literary men of that metropolis. There he found a publisher in. Adam Black, with Lizars for his engraver. The first number of his magniticent illustrations appeared in, 1825, and the first com- plete volume of the *• Ornithological Biography '* in 1831. The work was received with general laudations. Nothing of the kind equal to it in riveting interest had appeared before; and it still stands un- rivaled. He proposed to devote the remainder of his life to the completion of )iis work. Sixteen years was the time he had esti- mated as required for the preparation and production of the whole. Observing on the time remaining for its completion, he says : "After all, it will be less than the jperiod frequently given by many persons to the maturation of certain wines placed in their cellars." It is not thus that men generally write nowadays, post-haste and at railroad speed. Audubon's object was to do his work — one work — thoroughly and well, so as to leave nothing to be desired after it; and he has done it gloriously. In the introduction to his third volume, published in 1835, ho said: **Ten years have now elapsed since the first number of my 'Illustrations of the Birds of America' made its appearance. At that period, I calculated that the engravers would take sixteen years in accomplishing their task; and this I announced in my prospec- tus, and talked of to my friends." At that time, there was not a single individual who encouraged him to proceed; they all called him "rash," advised him to abandon his plans, disi)ose of his drawings, and give up the project. When he delivered the first drawings to the engraver, he had not a single subscriber; but he had deiermined on success, and he persevered. " To will is to do," says the maxim, and it was Audubon's. "My heart was nerved," he says, "and my reliance on that Power on whom all must depend brought bright anticipations of success. I worked early and late, and glad I was to perceive that the more I labored the more I im- proved." Subscribers at length supported him, and encouraged him, when they saw he was bent on success, and at the end of some four years of great anxiety, his engraver, Mr. Havell, presented him with the first volume of his "Birds of America." In the interval he made several voyages l^etween the United States AUDUBON THE OrvNITHOLOGIST. 107 and England, pursuing his ornithological observations there, and superintending his publication here. In 1823 he visited the illus- trious Cuvier at Paris. He spent the winter in England, and went out to the States in April, 1829. ''With what pleasure," he says, '•did I gaze on each setting sun, as it sank in the far distant west I With what delight did I mark the first wandering American bird that hovered over the waters! and how joyous were my feelings when I saw a pilot on our deck ! I leaped on the shore, scoured the woods of the Middle States, and reached Louisiana in the end of November.** Louisiana was one of his favorite localities for tho Rtudy of birds; and Audubon often lingered there. In his descrip- tion of the ** great blue heron " and other birds which frequent that state, he shows how familiar he is with its luxuriant swamps. •*Imagine, if you can," he says, **an area of some hundred acres overgrown with huge cypress-trees, — the trunks of which, rising to a height of perhaps fifty feet before they send off a branch, spring from the midst of the c\irk muddy waters. Their broad tops, placed close together wit'i interlaced branches, seem intent on sep- arating the heavens from the earth. Beneath their dark canopy scarcely a stray sunbeam ever makes its way; the mire is covered with fallen logs, on which grow matted grasses and lichens, and the deeper parts with nympheal and other aquatic plants. The Congo- snake and water-moccasin glide before you as they seek to elude your sight; hundreds of turtles drop, as if shot, from the floating trunks of the fallen trees, from which also the sullen alligator plunges into the dismal pool. The air is pregnant with pestilence, but alive with mosquitoes and other insects. The croaking of the frogs, joined with the hoarse cries of the anhingas and the screams of the herons, forms fit music for such a scene. Standing knee-deep in the mire, you discharge your gun at one of the numerous birds that are brooding high overhead, when immediately such a deafen- ing noise arises, that, if you have a companion with you, it were quite useless to speak to him. Tho frightened birds cross each other in their flight; the young attempting to secure themselves, some of them lose their hold and fall into the water with a splash; a shower of leaflets whirls downwards from the tree-tops, and you are glad to make your retreat from such a place. " Accompanied by his wife, Audubon left New Orleans in January, 1830, proceeded to New York, and from thence again to England, where he arrived to receive a diploma from the Royal Society, which he esteemed as a great honor conferred on an American woodsman, ileturning to the States in 1831, he took with him two assistants, his work assuming an importance not before dreamed of. The American government now aided him, and he was provided with letters of pro- tection along the frontiers, which proved valuable helps. His chief field of investigation this year was Florida, — full of interest and novelty to the ornithologist. It was, comparatively, a new field and 108 BRIEF BIOGE^iPHIES. Audubon explored it with his nsnal enthnsiasra. There, along the reef-bound coast about Key West, and among the islets of coral that everywhere rise from the surface of the ocean like gigantic water- lilies, ho cruised in his bark, often under a burning sun, pushing for miles over soapy flats, tormented by myriads of insects, but eager to procure some new heron, the possession of which would at once compensate him for all his toils. There, in these native haunts, he studied the habits of the sandpiper and the cormorant, and scoured the billows after the fulmar and the frigate-bird. There, along the shore, among its luxuriant fringe of flowers, plants, and trees, georgeously luxuriant, he followed after birds nearly all of which were new to him, and which filled him with boundless delight. On the east coast of Florida, he was surprised and delighted at the wild orange-groves through which his steps often led him; the rich perfume of the blossoms, the golden hue of the fruits that hung on every twig and lay scattered on the ground, and the deep green of the glossy leaves which sometimes half concealed the golden fruit. Audubon used sometimes to pass through orange-groves of this kind a fall mile in extent, quenching his thirst with the luscious fruit, an 1 delighted at the rich variety of life with which the woods were filled. Having received letters from the Secretaries of the Navy and Treasury of the United States to the commanding otlicers of the vessels of war and of the reserve service, directing them to afford assistance to Audubon in his labors, ho on one occasion embarked at St. Augustine, in the schooner Spark, for St. John's River, a little to tlie north. He now studied, amid their haunts along the coast, the snowy pelican, cormorants, sea-eagles, and blue herons; and sailed for one hundred miles up the river, between banks swarming with alligators, where he landed and made familiar acquaintance with beautiful humming-birds, and the other frequenters of the groves and thickets in that tropical region. Here is an ugly phase of the naturalist's life : ** Alligators were extremely abundant, and the heads of the fishes which they had snapped off lay floating around on the dark waters. A rifle-bullet was now and then sent through the eye of one of the largest, which, with a tremendous splash of its tail, expired. One morning we saw a monstrous fellow lying on the shore. I was de- sirous of obtaining him, to make an accurate drawing of his head, and, accompanied by my assistant and two of the sailors, proceeded cautiously towards him. When within a few yards, one of us fired and sent through his side an ounce ball, which tore open a holc> large enough to receive a man's hand. He slowly raised his head, bent himself upwards, opened his huge jaws, swung his tail to and fro, rose on his legs, blew in a frightful manner, and fell to the earth. My assistant leaped on shore, and, contrary to my injunc- t-nns, caught hold of the animal's tail; when the alligator, awaking AUDUBOX TPIE OPtNITHOLOGIST. 109 from its trance, with a last effort crawled slowly towards the water, and plunged heavily into it. Had he once thought of flourishing his tremendous weapon, there might have been an end of his assail- ant's life; but he fortunately went in peace to his grave, where we left him, as the water was too deep. The same morning another of equal size was observed swimming directly for the bows of our ves- ) sel, attracted by the gentle rippling of the water there. One of the ^ officers, who had watched him, fired and scattered his brains tnrough the air, when he trembled and rolled at a fearful rate, blowing all the while most furiously. The river was bloody for yards round; but although the monster passed close by the vessel, we could not secure him, and after a while he sank to the bottom." At other times, Audubon was carried out beyond the coral reef which surrounds the Floridan coast, to the Keys, or islands stand- in*^ out a little to sea. These were covered with rich vegetation, and full of life. The shores were also swarming with crabs and shell- fish of all kinds. ** One of my companions thrust himself into the tangled groves that covered all but the beautiful coral beach that in a continued line bordered the island, while others gazed on the glov/ing and diversified hues of the curious inhabitants of the deep. i saw one rush into the limpid element to seize on a crab, that, with claws extended upwards, awaited his opponent, as if determined not to give way. A loud voice called him back to the land, for sharks are as abundant along those shores as pebbles, and the hun- gry prowlers could not have got a more dainty dinner." Flamin- goes, ibises, pelicans, cormorants, and herons frequent those islands in vast numbers, and turtles and sea-cov/s bask along their shores. The party landed at night on the Indian Key, where they were kindly welcomed; and v/hile the dance and the song v/ere going on around him, Audubon, his head filled with his pursuit, sat sketch- ing the birds that he had seen, and filling up his notes respecting the objects witnessed in the course of the day. Thus it is that his descriptions have so strong and fresh a flavor of nature, and that to read them is like being present at the scenes he so graphically de- picts. After supper, the lights were put out, the captain returned to his vessel, and the ornithologist, with his young men, "slept in • light swinging hammocks under the leaves of the piazza." It was the end of April, when the nights are short there and the days long; 80, anxious to turn every moment to account, they were all on board again at three o'clock next morning, and proceeded outwards to sea. He thus briefly describes a sunrise on one of those early April mornings : "The gentle sea-breeze glided over the flowing tide, the horizon was clear, and all was silent save the loni^ breakers that rushed over the distant reefs. As we were jDroceeding towards some Keys seldom visited by man, the sun rose from the bosom of the Vv\aters with a burst of glory that flashed on my soul the idea of that Power which 110 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. called into existence so magnificent an object. The moon, thin and pale, as if ashamed to show her feeble light, concealed herself in the dim west. The surface of the waters shone in its tremulous smoothness, and the deep blue of the clear beams was pure as the world that lies beyond them. The heron flew heavily towards the land, like the glutton retiring at daybreak, with well-lined paunch, from the house of some wealthy patron of good cheer. The night- heron and the owl, fearful of day, with hurried flight sought safety in the recesses of the deepest swamps; while the gulls and terns, ever eheerful, gamboled over the waters, exulting in the prospect of abundance. I also exulted in hope; my whole frame seemed to ex- pand; and our sturdy crew showed, by their merry faces, that nature had charms for them too. How much of beauty and joy is lost to those who never view the rising of the sun, and of whose waking existence the best half is nocturnal ! " They landed on Sandy Island, which lies about six miles from the extreme point of South Florida, stretching away down into the Gulf of Mexico; they laid themselves down in the sand to sleep, the waters almost bathing their feet; the boat lay at their side, like a whale reposing on a mud-bank. Birds in myriads fed around them, — ibises, godwits, herons, fish-crows, and frigate pelicans. Having explored the island, and shot a number of birds, they proceeded back to land through the tortuous channels among the reefs, and were caught by one of those sudden hurricanes which so often sweep across the seas. And here is Audubon's picture of the storm : ** We were not more than a cable's length from the shore, when, with imperative voice, the pilot said to us ; * Sit quite still, gentle- men, for I should not like to lose j'ou overboard just now; the boat can't upset, my word for that, if you but sit still. Here you have it ! * Persons who have never witnessed hurricanes such as not unfre- quently desolate the sunny climates of the south, can scarcely form an idea of their terrific grandeur. One would think that, not con- tent with laying waste all on land, it must needs sweep the waters of the shallows quite dry to quench its thirst. No respite for an instant does it aflbrd to the objects within the reach of its furious current. Like the scythe of the destroying angel, it cuts everything by the roots, as it were, with the careless ease of the experienced mower. Each of its revolving sweeps collects a heap that might be likened to the full sheaf which the husbandman flings by his side. On it goes, with a wildness and fury that are indescribable; and when at last its frightful blasts have ceased. Nature, weeping and disconsolate, is left bereaved of her beauteous ofispring. In some instances even a full century is required before, with all her power- ful energies, she can repair her loss. The planter has not only lost his mansion, his crops, and his flocks, but he has to clear his lands anew, covered and entangled as they are with the trunks and branches of trees that are everywhere strewn. The bark, overtaken AUDUBON THE OBNITHOLOGLST. Ill l>y the storm, is cast on tlie lee-shore, and, if any are left to witness the fatal results, they are the • wreckers * alone, who, with inward delight, gaze upon the melancholy spectacle. Our light bark shiv- ered like a leaf the instant the blast reached her sides. We thought she had gone over, but the next instant she was on the shore. And now, in contemplation of the sublime and awful storm, I gazed around me. The waters drifted like snow, the tough mangroves hid their tops amid their roots, and the loud roaring of the waves driven among them blended with the howl of the tempest. It was not rain that fell; the masses of water flew in a horizontal direction, and when a part of my body was exposed, I felt as if a smart blow had been given to it. But enough ! — in half an hour it was over. The pure blue sky once more embellished the heavens, and although it was now quite night, v/e considered our situation a good one. The crew and some of the party spent the night in the boat. The pilot, myself, and one of my assistants, took to the heart of the mangroves, and having found high land, we made a fire as well as we could, spread a tarpauling, and, fixing our insect bars over us, soon forgot in sleep the horrors that had surrounded us." Audubon returned to Charleston with a store of rich prizes for his work, and from thence proceeded to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, greatly enjoying the lavish hospitality of the last-named city. Then he proceeded, still on his industrious explorations, to Moose Island, in the Bay of Fundy (situated between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick), w^here he continued to extend his observa- tions on altogether different classes of birds from those in the South. He afterwards explored New Brunswick and Maine, increasing his collections, and returned to Boston, where he was a witness to the melancholy death of the great Spurzheim, the phrenologist. He was himself seized with illness, the result of close application to hia work, but he soon after resolved to set out again in quest of fresh materials for his pencil and pen. This time, it was the grand, rocky coasts of Labrador, haunted by innumerable sea-birds, that attracted him. At Eastport, in Maine, he chartered a beautiful and fast-sailing schooner, the Bipley, and set sail, with several friends, on his delightful voyage. He passed out of the port under a salute of honor from the guns of the fort, and of the revenue-cutter at anchor in the bay. Touching islandrj in the St. Lawrence Gulf^ each haunted by its peculiar tribes of birds, a heavy gale came on, and the vessel sped away, under reefed sails, to the coast of Labrador. Masses of drifting ice and snow, filling every nook and cove of the rugged shores, came in sight; they neared the coast at the place called the * 'American Harbor," and there Audubon landed. Large patches of unmelted snow dappled the face of the wild country ; vegetation had scarcely yet com- menced; the chilliness of the air w^as still penetrating ; the absence of trees, the'barren aspect of all around, the somber mantle of the 112 BPvIEF BIOGRAPHIES. mountainous distance that hung along the horizon, excited meLin- choly feelings. But hist! what is that? It is the song of th«.< thrush, — the first sound that meets Audubon's ear, — and the delight- ful associations it called up at once reconciled him to the comparo-- tive miseries of the locality, so different from the glowing luxuri- ance of Florida and his favorite Louisiana. Robins, hopping about amid the blossoms of the dogwood; black-poll warblers, and numer- ous other birds, some of them entirely new, began to appear; and soon Audubon was fully absorbed in his delightful pursuit. The Bipley sailed further north, and entered the harbor of Little Maca- tina, of which this is his description : *'It was the middle of July: the weather was mild, and very pleasant ; our vessel made her way, under a smart breeze, through a very narrow passage, bej'ond which we found ourselves in a small, circular basin of water, haviog an extent of seven or eight acres. It was so surrounded by high, abrupt, and rugged rocks, that, as I glanced around, I could find no apter comparison for our situation than that of a nut-shell at the bottom of a basin. The dark shad- ows that overspread the waters, and the mournful silence of the surrounding desert, sombered our otherwise glad feelings into a state of awe. The scenery was grand and melancholy. On one side hung over our heads, in stupendous masses, a rock several hundred feet high, the fissures of which might to some have looked like the mouths of a huge, undefined monster. Here and there a few dwarf pines were stuck, as if by magic, to this enormous mass of granite; in a gap of the cliff, the brood of a pair of grim ravens shrunk from our sight, and the gulls, one after another, began to wend their way overhead towards the middle of the quiet pool, as the furling of the sails was accompanied by the glad cries of the sailors. The remark- able land-beacons erected in that country to guide vessels into the harbor, looked like so many figures of gigantic stature, formed from the large blocks that lay on every hill around. A low valley, in which meandered a rivulet, opened at a distance to the view. The remains of a deserted camp of seal-catchers was easily traced from our deck, and as easily could we perceive the innate tendency of man to mischief, in the charred and crumbling ruins of the dwarf- pine forests. But the harbor was so safe and commodious, that, be- fore we left it t(>find shelter in another, we had cause to be thankful for its friendly protection." Thus coasting along Labrador, peeping into its bays and inlets. — through bogs, and ice, and fishing-smacks, pursuing their vocations, — landing here and there along the coast, and penetrating into the interior, — the summer of 1833 passed joyously and profitably. Audubon enriched his portfolio with drawings of new birds, and hig note-book with numerous fine descriptions of Labrador coast-life and scenery. He describes cod-fishing in glowing colors; devotes a chapter each to the **eggers of Labrador," and the ** squatters of AUDUBON THE OE,NITHOLOaiST. 113 Labrador;" and enlivens his details of the natural history, haunts, and habits of birds by a thousand interesting adventures and rellec- tions. He makes you feel the enthusiasm he felt himself, and shares with you the delight he experienced in the course of his cruisinga and journeyings. He returned to the States in autnmn, touching at Ne%yfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and thence on to Boston. '* One day only was spent there, when the husband was in the arms of his wife, who, with equal tenderness, embraced his beloved child." For Audubon's eldest son had accompanied him in this last-named voyage. Subscribers to the "Birvis of America " now increased; friends multiplied in all quarters; and he proceeded again to England to superintend the continued publication of his work. There he ex- tended his friendships and enlarged his knov/ledge, comparing his experience with that of the greatest authorities in natural history. His third volume of *' Ornithological Biogoraphy " was published ia 1835; and in it he gives a graphic sketch of an interview he had with Thomas Bewick, the famous wood-engraver and naturalist, at New- castle-on-Tyne. This volume is quite equal in interest to the Srst two and greatly added to his reputation as a writer. In it he de- scribes birds of North and South, of Labrador and Florida, of tha Great Pine Forest of Pennsylvania, and of the svv^amps along the Mississippi, with marvelous picturesque power and fidelity. He returned to the States in 1836, again to pursue his studies; again he visited the western coast of Florida, and sailed through the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans; then explored the coast of Texas to the Bay of Galveston, traveled across Texas, and returned again to New Or- leans. Crossing the countr}'' by Mobile, Pensacola, and Augusta, he again reached Charleston, and thence northwards by Washington to New York. He embarked again for England in 1837, v/here new honors and diplomas awaited him, bringing out his fourth volume of ''Ornithological Biography" at the end of 183S. He was now sixty-three years of age, but, speaking of himself, he observed: *' 'j'ho adventures and vicissitudes which have fallen to my lot, instead of tending to diminish the fervid enthusiasm of my nature, have im- parted a toughness to my bodily constitution, naturally strong, and to my mind, naturally buoyant, an elasticity such as to assure me that, though somewhat old, and considerably denuded in the frontal region, I could yet perform on foot a journey of any length, were I sure that I should thereby add materially to our knowledge of the ever-interesting creatures which have for so long a time occu- pied my thoughts by day, and filled my dreams with pleasant im- ages." In the following year, 1839, he published his fifth and last volume, and was then as full of hope and life as ever. His only re- gret, in parting with his readers, was that he could not transfer to them the whole of the practical knowledge which he had acquired during so many years of enthusiastic devotion to the study of nature. 114 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. "Amid the tall grass," said he, *• of the far-extended prairies of the West, in the solemn gusts of the North, on the heights of the mid- land mountains, by the shores of the boundless ocean, and on the bosom of the vast lakes and magnificent rivers, have I sought to search out the things which have been hidden since the creation of this wondrous world, or seen only by the naked Indian, who has, for "unknown ages, dwelt in the gorgeous but melancholy wilderness. Who is the stranger to my own dear country that can form an ade- quate conception of its primeval woods, — of the glory of those columnar trunks that for centuries have waved in the breeze and resisted the shock of the tempest, — of the vast bays of our Atlantic coasts, replenished by thousands of streams, differing in magnitude as differ the stars that sparkle in the expanse of the pure heavens, — of the density of aspect in our Western plains, our sandy Southern shores, interspersed with reedy swamps, and the cliffs that protect our Eastern coasts,— of the rapid currents of the Mexican Gulf, and the rushing tide-streams of the Bay of Fundy, — of our ocean lakes, our mighty rivers, our thundering cataracts, our majestic mountains, rearing their snowj- heads into the calmest regions of the clear cold sky ? Would that I could delineate the varied features of that loved land!" As he lived, so he died, full of love for nature. He went on ob- serving, comparing, and noting down his experience, to the last. On the 27th of January, 1851, at his home in New York, at the ad- vanced age of seventy-six, **the American woodsman," to use his own words in one of his volumes, "wrapped himself in his blanket, closed his eyes, tind fell asleep. " WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAY. ENGLAND has as yet produced no naturalist so distinguish ed as Audubon in his particular department of science. Wilson, the Paisley weaver, published an admirable work on the birds of America, and, having settled in that country, he came to be re- garded as an American rather than as a British writer. Macgilli- vray, perhaps, stands at the head of English writers on British birds. His history is similar to that of many other ardent devotees of sci- ence and art. His early life was a long and arduous struggle with diificulties, poverty, and neglect; and it was only towards the close of his career, when he had completed the last volume of his admir- able work, that he saw the clouds which had obscured his early fortunes clearing away and revealing the bright sky and sunshine beyond, — but, alas ! the success came too late: his constitution had given way in the ardor of the pursuit, and the self-devoted man of science sank lamented into an early grave. William Macgillivray was born at Aberdeen, the son of compara- tively poor parents, who nevertheless found the means of sending him to the University of his native town, in which he took the de- gree of Master of Arts. It was his intention to take out a medical degree, and he served an apprenticeship to a physician with this view; but his means were too limited, and his love of natural history too ardent, to allow him to follow the profession as a means of sup- port. He accordingly sought for a situation which should at the same time enable him to subsist and to pursue his favorite pursuit. Such a situation presented itself in 1823, when he accepted the appointment of assistant and secretary to the Eegius Professor of Natural History, and Keeper of the Museum, of the Edinburgh University. The collection of natural history at that place is one of peculiar excellence, and he was enabled to pursue his studies there with increased zest and profit;— not, however, as regarded his purse, for the office was by no means lucrative; but, having the charge of this fine collection, he was enabled to devote hid time ex- 116 116 BBIEF BIOGRAPHIEa clusively to the study of scientific ornithology dnring the "winter, v/hilst during the summer vacation he made long excursions in the country in order to investigate and record the habits of British birds. He was afterwards appointed Conservator to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons at Edinburgh, where we have often seen him diligently poring over, dissecting, and preparing the specimens which, from time to time, were added to that line collec- tion. It was while officiating in the latter capacity that he wrote the first three volumes of his elaborate work. His spare time w^as also occupied in the preparation of numerous other works on natural history, some of them of standard excellence; by which he was en- abled to eke out the means of comfortable subsistence. Mr. Macgillivray was a man of indefatigable industry, of singular order and method in his habits, a strict economist of time, every moment of which he turned to useful account. Although he studif d and wrote upon many subjects,— zoology, geology, botany, mollusca, physiology, agriculture, the feeding of cattle, soils and subsoils, — ornithology was always his favorite pursuit. He accompanied Audu- bon in most of his ornithological rambles in Scotland, and doubt- less imbibed some portion of the ardent enthusiasm with which the American literally burned. Mr. Macgillivray wrote the descriptions of the species, and of the alimentary and respiratory organs, for Audubon's work. His own "British Birds" reminds us in many }>arts of the enthusiasm of Audubon, and of the grocen of that writer's style. Like him, Macgillivray used to watch the birds of which he was in search by night and day. "Wrapped in his plaid, lie would lie down upon the open moor or on the hill-side, waiting the approach of morning to see the feathered tribes start up and meet "the sun, to dart after their prey, or to feed their impatient brood. We remember one such night spent by him on the side of the Lammermoor hills, described in one of his early works, which is full of descriptive beauty, as well as of sound information upon the subject in hand. There is another similar description of a night spent by him among the mountains of Braemar. He had been in search of the gray ptarmigan, whose haunts and habits he was en- gaged in studying at the time, and had traced the river Dee far up to its sources among the hills, where all traces of the stream became lost: clouds began to gather; nevertheless he pressed on towards the hill-top, until at length he found himself on the summit of a mag- nificent precipice, several hundred feet high, and at least half a mile in length. "The scene,'* he says, "that now presented itself to my view was the most splendid that I had then seen. All around rose mountains beyond mountains, whose granite ridges, rugged and tempest-beaten, furrowed by deep ravines worn by the torrents, gradually became dimmer as they receded, until at length on the verge of the horizon they were blended with the clouds or stood abrupt against the clear sky. A solemn stillness pervaded all WILLIAM MACGILLIYRAY. 117 nature; no living creature was to be seen: the dusky wreaths of vapor rolled majestically over the dark valleys, and clung to the craggy summits of the everlasting hills. A melancholy, pleasing, iu comprehensible feeling creeps over the soul when the lone wan- derer contemplates the vast, the solemn, the solitary scene, over which savage grandeur and sterility preside. "The summits of the loftier mountains, Cairngorm on the one hand, Ben-na-muic-dui and Benvotran on the other, and Loch-na-gar on the south, were covered with mist; but the clouds had rolled westward from Ben-na-buird, on which I stood, leaving its summit entirely free. The beams of the setting sun burst in masses of light here and there through the openings in the clouds, which exhibited a hundred varying shades. There, over the ridges of yon brown and torrent-worn mountain, hangs a vast mass of livid vapor, gor- geously glowing with deep crimson along all its lower-fringed margin. Here the white shroud that clings to the peaked summits assumes on its western side a delicate hue, like that of the petals of the pale-red rose. Far away to the north glooms a murky cloud, in which the spirits of the storm are mustering their strength, and pre- paring the forked lightnings, which at midnight they will fling over the valley of the Spey." The traveler, seeing night coming on, struck into a corry, down which a small mountixin streamlet rushed; and having reached the bottom of the slope, he began to run, starting the ptarmigans from their seats and the does from their lair. It became quite dark; still he went on walking for two hours, but all traces of the path became lost, and he groped his way amid blocks of granite, ten miles at least from any human habitation, and •* with no better cheer in my wallet, " he says, "than a quarter of a cake of barley and a few crumbs of cheese, which a shepherd had given me. Before I resolved to halt for the night, I had, unfortunately, jDroceeded so far up the glen that I had left behind me the region of heath, so that I could not procure enough for a bed. Pulling some grass and moss, however, I spread it in a sheltered place, and after some time succeeded in falling into a sort of slumber. About midnight I looked up on the moon and stars that were at times covered by the masses of vapor that rolled along the summits of the mountains, which, with their tremendous precipices, completely surrounded the hollow in which I cowered, like a ptarmigan in the hill-corry. Behind me, in the west, and at the head of the glen, was a lofty mass enveloj)ed in clouds; on the right a pyramidal rock, and beside it a peak of less elevation; on the left a ridge from the great mountain, terminating below in a dark conical prominence; and straight before me, in the east, at the distance apparently of a mile, another vast mass. Find- ing myself cold, although the weather was mild, I got up and made me a couch of larger stones, grass, and a little short heath; unloosed my pack, covered one of my extremities with a nightcap, and thrust 118 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. a pair of dry stockings on the other, ate a portion of my scanty store, drank two or three glasses of water from a neighboring rill, placed myself in an easy posture, and fell asleep. About sunrise I awoke, fresh, but feeble; ascended the glen; passed through a magnificent corry, composed of vast rooks of granite; ascended the steep with great difficulty, and at length .gained the summit of the mountain, which was covered with light gray mist that rolled rapidly along the ridges. As the clouds cleared away at intervals, and the sun shone upon the scene, I obtained a view of the glen in which I had passed the night, the corry, the opposite hills, and a blue lake before me. The stream which I had followed I traced to two large foun- tains, from each of which I took a glassful, which I quaffed to the health of my best friends. *• Descending from this summit, I wandered over a high moor, came upon the brink of rocks that bounded a deep valley, in which was a black lake; proceeded over the unknown region of alternate bogs and cra^^s; raised several flocks of gray ptarmigans, and, at length, by following a ravine, entered one of the valleys of the Spey, near the mouth of which I saw a water-ouzel. It was not until noon that I reached a hut, in which I procured some milk. In the even- ing, at Kingussie, I examined the ample store of plants that I had collected in crossing the Grampians, and refreshed myself with a long sleep in a more comfortable bed than one of the granite slabs with a little grass and heather spread over them." Macgillivray's description of the golden eagle of the highlands, in its eloquence, reminds one of the splendid descriptions of his friend Audubon. We can only give a few brief extracts. "The golden eagle is not seen to advantage in the menagerie of a zoological society, nor when fettered on the smooth lawn of an aris- tocratic mansion, or perched on the rockwork of a nursery-garden ; nor can his habits be well described by a cockney ornithologist, whose proper province it is to concoct systems, * work out' analo- gies, and give names to skins that have come from foreign lands carefully packed in boxes lined with tin. Far away among the brown hills of Albyn is thy dwelling-place, chief of the rocky glen ! On the crumbling crag of red granite — that tower of the fissured precipices of Loch-na-gar — thou hast reposed in safety. The croak of the raven has broken thy slumbers, and thou gatherest up thy huge wings, smoothest thy feathers on thy sides, and preparest to launch into the aerial ocean. ^ Bird of the desert, solitary though thou art, and hateful to the sight of many of thy fellow-creatures, thine must be a happy life ! No lord hast thou to bend thy stub- born soul to his will, no cares corrode thy heart ; seldom does fear chill thy free spirit, for the windy tempest and the thick sleet can- not injure thee, and the lightnings may flash around thee, and the thunders shake the everlasting hills, without rousing thee from thy dreamy repose. WILLIAM MACGILLIVRAT. 119 **See how the sunshine brightens the yellow tint of his head and neck, until it shines almost like gold ! There he stands, nearly erect, with his tail depressed, his large wings half raised by his side, his neck stretched out, and his eye glistening as he glances around. Like other robbers of the desert, he has a noble aspect, an imperative mien, a look of proud defiance; but his nobility has a dash of churlishness, and his falconship a vulturine tinge. Still he is a noble bird, powerful, independent, proud, and ferocious ; re- gardless of the weal or woe of others, and intent solely on the grat- ification of his own appetite; without generosity, without honor; bold against the defenseless, but ever ready to sneak from danger. Such is his nobility, about which men have so raved. Suddenly he raises his wings, for he has heard the whistle of the shepherd in the corry; and bending forward, he springs into the air. O that this pencil of mine were a musket charged with buckshot,! Hardly do those vigorous flaps serve at first to prevent his descent; but now, curving upwards, he glides majestically along. As he passes the corner of that buttressed and battlemented crag, forth rush two ravens from their nest, croaking fiercely. While one flies above him the other steals beneath, and they essay to strike him, but dare not, for they have an instinctive knowledge of the power of his grasp ; and after following him a little way they return to their home, vainly exulting in the thought of having driven him from their neighbor- hood. Bent on a far journey, he advances in a direct course, flap- ping his great wings at regular intervals, then shooting along with- out seeming to move them. *' Over the moors he sweeps, at the height of two or three hundred feet, bending his course to either side, his wings wide spread, his neck and feet retracted, now beating the air, and again sailing smoothly along. Suddenly he stops, poises himself for a moment, but recovers himself without reaching the ground. The objects of his regards, a golden plover, which he had espied on her nest, has eluded him, and he cares not to pursue it. Now he ascends a little, wheels in short curves, — presently rushes down headlong, — assumes the horizontal position, — when close to the ground, prevents his being dashed against it by expanding his wings and tail, — thrusts forth his talons, and, grasping a poor terrified ptarmigan that sits cowering among the gray lichen, squeezes it to death, raises his head exultingly, emits a clear, shrill cry, and, springing from the ground, pursues his journey. **In passing a tali cliff that overhangs a small lake, he is assailed by a fierce peregrine falcon, which darts and plunges at him as if determined to deprive him of his booty, or drive him headlong to the ground. This proves a more dangerous foe than the raven, and the eagle screams, yelps, and throws himself into postures of defi- ance; but at length the hawk, seeing the tyrant is not bent on plun- dering his nest, leaves him to pursue his course unmolested. Over 120 BKIEF BIOGBAPHIE55. woods and green fields and scattered hamlets speeds the eagle; and now he enters the long valley of the Dee, near the upper end c>f which is dimly seen through the thin gray mist the rock of his nest. About a mile from it he meets his mate, who has been abroad on a similar errand, and is returning with a white hare in her talons. They congratulate each other with loud yelping cries, which rouse the drowsy shepherd on the strath below, who, mindful of the lambs carried o'i' in spring-time, sends after them his malediction. Now they reach their nest, and are greeted by their young with loud clamor." His descriptions of the haunts of the wild birds of the North are full of picturesque beauty. Those of the grouse, the ptarmigan, the merlin, are full of memorable pictures, and here is a brief sketch of the haunts of the common snipe, which recalls many delightful associations. "Beautiful are those green woods that hang upon the craggy sides of the fern-clad hills, where the heath-fowl threads its way among the tufts of brown heath, and the cuckoo sings his ever-pleasing notes as he balances him?elf on the gray stone, vibrat- ing his fan-like tail. Now I listen to the simple song of the moun- tain blackbird, warbled by the quiet lake that spreads its glittering bosom to the sun, winding far away among the mountains, amid whose rocky glens wander the wild deer, tossing their an tiered heads on high as they snuff the breeze tainted with the odor of the slow-paced shepherd and his faithful dog. In that recess, formed by two moss-clad slabs of mica-slate, the lively wren jerks up its little tail, and chits its merry note, as it recalls its straggling young ones that have wandered among the bushes. From the sedgy slope, sprinkled with white cotton-grass, comes the shrill cry of the solitary curlew; and there, high over the heath, wings his meandering way the joyous snipe, giddy with excess of unalloyed happiness. "There another has sprung from among the yellow-flowered marigolds that profusely cover the marsh, tjpwards slantingly, on rapidly vibrating wings, he shoots, uttering the while his shrill, two-noted cry. Tissick, tissick, quoth the snipe, as he leaves the bog. Now in silence he wends his way, until at length, having reached the height of perhaps a thousand feet, he zigzags along, emitting a louder and shriller cry of zoo-zee, zoo-zee, zoo-zee; which over, varying his action, he descends on quivering pinions, curving towards the earth with surprising speed, while from the rapid beats of his wing the tremulous air gives to the ear what at first seems the voice of distant thunder. This noise some have likened to the bleating of a goat at a distance on the hill-side, and thus have named our bird the Air-goat and Air-bleater." In his latter volumes, the naturalist gives many admirable de- scriptions of the haunts of sea-birds along the rock-bound shores of his native Highlands. He loves to paint the coast of the lonely Hebrides, where he often resorted in the summer months to watch WILLL4M MAOGILLIVRAY. 121 find study the divers and plungers of tlie sea. Here, for instance, is a [)ictiire of the gray heron on a Highland coast : "The cold blasts of the north sweep along the ruffled surface of the lake, over whose deep waters frown the rugged crags of rusty gneiss, having their crevices sprinkled with tufts of withered herbage, and their summits covered with stunted birches and alders. The deso- late hills around are partially covered with snow, the pastures are drenched with the rains, the brown torrents scum the heathy slopes, and the little birds have long ceased to enliven those deserted thick- ets with their gentle songs. Margining the waters, extends a long muddy beach, over which are scattered blocks of stone, partially clothed with dusky and olivaceous weeds. Here and there a gull floats buoyantly in the shallows; some oyster-catchers repose on a gravel-bank, their bills buried among their plumage; and there, on that low shelf, is perched a solitary heron, like a monument of list- less indolence,— a bird petrified in its slumber. At another time, when the tide has retired, you may find it wandering, with slow and careful tread, among the little pools, and by the sides of the rocks, in search of small fishes and crabs; but, unless you are bent on watching it, you will find more amusement in observing the lively tringas and turnstones, ever in rapid motion ; for the heron is a dall and lazy bird, or at least he seems to be such; and even if you draw near, he rises in so listless a manner, that you think it a hard task for him to unfold his large wings and heavily beat the air, until h.3 has fairly raised himself. Bat now he floats away, lightly, though with slow flapping, screams his harsh cry, and tries to soar to some distant place, where he may remain unmolested by the prying naturalist. "Perhaps you may wonder at finding him in so cold and desolate a place as this dull sea-creek on the most northern coast of Scot- land, and that, too, in the very midst of v/inter; but the heron courts not society, and seems to care as little as any one for the cold. W-ere you to betake yourself to the other extremity of the island, where the scenery is of a very different character, and the inlands swarm with ducks and gulls there, too, you would find the heron, unaltered in manners, slow in his movements, careful and patient, ever hungry and ever lean; for even when in best condition, he never attains the plumpness that gives you the idea of a comfortable existence." In 1841 Mr. Macgillivray was appointed by the Crown to the Pro- fessorship of Natural History in Marischal College, Aberdeen, solely on account of his acknowledged merit, for he had no interest what- ever; and the zeal, abilitj^ and success v/ith which he discharged his duties amply justified the nomination. He was an admirable lecturer, — clear, simple, and methodical, laboring to lajj" securelj'' the foundations of knowledge in the minds of his pupils. He im- bued them with the love of science, and communicated to them — as overy successful lecturer cannot fail to do — a portion of his own en- tliasiasm. 12a BKIEF BiOGiiAPHIEtS. In -the autumn of 1850 he made an excursion to Braemar, with the intention of writing an account of the natiiral history of Balmoral (.which was ready for publication at the time of his death); and he afterwards extended his excursion to the central region of the Gram- pians, in pursuit of the materials for another work. The ft\tigue and exposure which he underwent on this occasion seriously affected his health; and he removed to Torquay, in Devon, in hopes of re- newed vigor. But he never rallied. A severe calamity befell him while in Devon, through the sudden death of his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached. Nevertheless, he went on steadily with his work, which even his seriously impaired health would not permit him to interrupt. We can conceive him in such a state to have written the following passage, which appears in the preface to his last work, published in the week of his death: "As the wounded bird seeks some quiet retreat, where, freed from the persecution of the pitiless fowler, it may pass the time of its anguish in forgetfulness of the outer world, so have I, assailed by disease, betaken myself to a sheltered nook, where, unannoyed by the piercing blasts of the North Sea, I had been led to hope that my life might be protracted beyond the most dangerous season of the year. It is thus that I issue from Devonshire the prest-nt volume, which, however, contains no observations of mine made there, the scenes of my labors being in distant parts of the country. "It is well that the observations from which these descriptions have been prepared, were made many years ago, when I was full of enthusiasm, and enjoyed the blessings of health, and freedom from engrossing public duties ; for I am persuaded that now I should be in some respects less qualified for the task, — more, how- ever, from the failure of physical than of mental power. Here, on the rocky promontory, I shiver in the breeze, which, to my companion, is but cool and bracing. The east wind ruffles the sea, and im- pels the little waves to the shores of the beautiful bay, which pre- sents alternate cliffs of. red sandstone and beaches of yellow sand, backed by undulated heights and gentle acclivities, slowly rising to the not distant horizon ; fields and woods, with villages and scattered villas, forming— not wild nor altogether tame — a pleasing landscape, which, in its summer and autumnal garniture of grass and corn, and sylvan verdure; orchard blossom and fruit, tangled fencebank, and furze-clad common, will be beautiful indeed to the lover of nature. Then, the balmy breezes from the west and south will waft health to the reviving invalid. At present, the cold vernal gales sweep along the Channel, conveying to its haven the extended fleet of boats that render Bircham, on the opposite horn of the bay, one of the most celebrated of the southern fishing- stations of England. High over the waters, here and there, a soli- tary gull slowly advances against the breeze, or shoots athwart, or, with a beautiful gliding motion sweeps down the aerial current. WILLIAM HACGILLIVICAY. 12:) At tbe entrance to Torquay are assembled many birds of the -same kind, which, by their hovering near the surface, their varied evolu- tions, and mingling cries, indicate a shoal, probably of atherines or sprats. On that little pyramidal rock, projecting from the water, repose two dusky cormorants ; and far away, in the direc- tion of Portland Island, a gannet, well known by its peculiar flight, winnows its exploring way, and plunges headlong into the deep." And, speaking of the conclusion of his great work, on the last page, he says of it : — "Commenced in hope, and carried on with zeal, though ended in sorrow and sickness, I can look upon my work without much ro gard to the opinions which contemporary writers may form of it, assured that what is useful in it will not be forgotten, and knowing that already it has had a beneficial effect on many of the present, and will more powerfully influence the next, generation of our home ornithologists. I had been led to think that I had occasion- ally been somewhat rude, or at least blunt, in my criticisms ; but I do not perceive wherein I have much erred in that respect, and I feel no inclination to apologize. I have been honest and sincere in my endeavors to promote the truth. With death, apparently not distant before my eyes, I am pleased to think that I have not counte- nanced error through fear or favor ; neither have I in any case modified my statements so as to endeavor thereby to conceal or palliate my faults. Though I might have accomplished more, I am thankiul for having been permitted to add very considerably to the knowledge previously obtained of a very pleasant subject. If I have not very frequently indulged in reflections on the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as suggested by even my imperfect understanding of his wonderful works, it is not because I have not ever been sensible of the relation between the Creator and his crea- tures, nor because my chief enjoyment when wandering among the hills and vallej^s, exploring the rugged shores of the ocean, or searching the cultivated fields, has not been in a sense of His presence. * To Him who alone doeth great wonders ' be all the glory and praise. Reader, farewell ! " Mr. Macgillivray was able to return to Aberdeen — to die. He expired on the 5th of Seplember, 1852, at the age of fifty-six, leav- ing a large family behind him, for whom he had been unable (through the slenderness of his means throughout life) to make any provision. His eldest son, however, had already distinguished himself as a naturalist, having been emj^loyed by the late Earl of Derby to accompany the expedition sent by him round the world; and he was subsequently appointed Government Naturalist on board the Rattlesnake, to complete the exploration of the Eastern Archipelago and Southern Pacific. We may, therefore, expect to have considerable accessions to our knowledge of the natural his- tory of these interesting regions from his already experienced pen. JOHN STERLING. A paxd-like, spirit, beautUul and swift JOHN STERLING seems to have been one of those beautiful natures that carry about with them a charm to captivate all be- holders. They are full of young genius, fall of promise, full of enthusiasm; and seem to be on the high road towards honor, fam(\ and glory, when suddenly their career is cut short by death, and their friends are left lamenting. Just such another character was Charles Pemberton, — a man of somewhat kindred genius to Sterling, — who had done comparatively little, but had excited great hopes among a circle of ardent friends and admirers, whom he had riveted to him by certain indefinable personal and intellectual charmn; when he was stricken down by death, and, like Sterling, left only a few scattered "Remains" to be judged by. Poor Keats, too, died just as he had given to the world the promise of one of its greatest men, but not before he had sent down into the future str tins of un- dyintr poesy. Shelley, too ! What a loss was there ! What glorious promise of a man did he not offer ! Bat the names of the great, who have died in youth,' are more than can be told: as Shelley sang, The good die first. While they whose hearts ai*e dry as summer's dust Burn to their socket. But what of Sterling ? What did he do ? What has he left as a legacy to us bywhich to know and remember him ? We have now two lives of him, written by two of his many inti- mate friends and devoted admirers, — Archdeacon Hare and Thomas Carlyle. That two such men should have written a life of Sterling would argue of itself something in his character and career more than ordinary. Archdeacon Hare's came first: his work was in two volumes, containing the collected Essays and Tales of John Stc^rling, with a memoir of his life. On reading that life, interesting and 134 JOHN STEALING. 125 beautiful though it was, one could not help feeling that there was a good deal remaining untold, and that the tone adopted in speaking of John Sterling's opinions on religious subjects was unnecessarily apologetic. It seems to has^e been this circumstance which has drawn forth the life by Carlyle. *' Archdeacon Hare," says Carlyle, "takes up Sterling as a clergyman merely. Sterling, I find, was a curate for exactly eight months. But he was a man, and had rela- tion to the universe for eight and thirty years; and it is in this latter character, to which all the others were but features and transitory hues, that we wish to know him. His battle with hereditary church- formulas was severe; but it was by no means his one battle with things inherited, nor indeed his chief battle; neither, according to my observation of what it was, is it successfully delineated or sum- med up in this book." And so Carlyle determined to give his por- traiture of his deceased friend. Sterling was born at Kaimes Castle, in the island of Bute, Scotland, in 1806, of Irish parents, who were both of Scotch extraction. The mother v^^as somewhat proud of being a descendant of Wallace, tha Scottish hero. Edward Sterling, the father, pursued farming; he ' had been a militia captain, and took to it as a calling, by way of helping out the family means. From Bute he removed to Llan- blethian, in Glamorganshire, in 1809. Here the young Sterling's childhood was nurtured amid forms of wild and romantic beauty. But his father, the captain, was an ardent-minded, active man, and could ill confine himself to the small details of Welsh farming. His thoughts were abroad. He corresponded with newspapers. He wrote a pamphlet. He sent letters to the Times, signed *'Yetu3," which were afterwards thought worthy of being collected and re- printed. The captain went further. He left his farm in Wales, and proceeded to Paris, with the object of acting as foreign correspond- ent for the Times newspaper. His fiimily accompanied him to Paris, where they stayed some eight months, until the sudden return of Napoleon from Elba, when they had to decamp to England on the instant. Captain Sterling returned to London, where he settled; and before long became a very notorious, if not a distinguished, per- sonage. His connection with the Times newspaper grew closer; until at length he became extensively known as "The Thunderer," and was publicly lashed by O'Connell in that character; Sterling, on his part, returning the great ^agitator's compliments with full in- terest. The boy was schooled in London, and grew up as boys like him will grow; he was quick, clever, cheerful, gallant, generous, self-willed, and rather ditficult to manage. From a little letter of his to his mother, which has been preserved, written when he was twelve jesixs old, it appears that he "ran away" from his home at Blackheath, to Dover. The cause was some slight or indignity put upon him which he could not bear. But he was brought home, and, like other 126 BBIEF BIOGIiAPHIES. child's "slights," it was soon forgotten. As a boy, he was a great reader in the promiscuous line; reading EdiD burgh He views, and cart-loads of novels. At sixteen he was sent to Glasgow University, where he lived with some of his mother's relations. Then, at nine- teen, he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had for his tutor Julius Hare, the archdeacon, one of his biographers. Though not an exact scholar. Sterling became well and extensively read, possessing great facilities of assimilation for all kinds of mental diet. His studies were irregular and discursive, but extensive and encyclopasdic. At Cambridge he was brought into friendly connec- tion with Frederick Maurice, Richard Trench, John Kemble, Charles Buller, Monckton Milnes, and others, who were afterwards in life his fast friends. Sterling was a frequent and a brilliant speaker at the Union Club; and already began to exhibit strong '^lladicar' leanings, displaying no small daring in his attacks upon established ideas and things. It was Sterling's intention to take a degree in law at Cambridge, but, like many other of his intentions, it came to nothing ; and after a two years* residence, his university life ended. What to do next? He has grown into manhood, and must have a ** profession." What is it to be ? Is it to be the taw, or the Church ? or is he to enter the career of trade, and make money in it, thereby to secure *' the temporary hallelujah of flunkeys." His " Radical " notions gave him a deep aversion to the pursuit of the law ; and as for the church, at that time, it was clear that his leanings were not that way. The true career for Sterling, in Carlyle's opinion, was Parlia- ment, and it was possibly with some such ultimate design in view that Sterling engaged himself as secretary to a public association of gentlemen, got up for the purpose of opening the trade to India. But the association did not live long, and the secretaryship lapsed. One other course remained open for Sterling,— the career of lit- erature, — and he plunged into it. Joining his friend Maurice, the copyright of the AthenaGum (which Silk Buckingham had some time before established) was purchased ; and there he printed his first literary effusions, — crude, imperfect, yet singularly beautiful and attractive papers, as, for instance, "The Lycian Painter," contain- ing seeds of great promise. Yet, as Carlyle observes, **a grand melancholy is the prevailing impression they leave ; partly as if, while the surface was so blooming and opulent, the heart of them was still vacant, sad and cold. The writer's heart is indeed still too vacant, except of beautiful shadows and reflexes and resonances ; and is far from joyful, though it wears commonly a smile." He himself used afterwards to speak oftbisashis "period of darkness." The Athenfeum did not prosper in Sterling's hands. He did not understand commercial management, which is absolutely necessary for the success even of a literary journal, ^o the Athenseum was transferred to other hands, under which it throve vigorously. But JOHN STEilLil^tG. 127 the Athenfieum had introduced Sterling into the literary life of London, which tended to confirm him in his pursuit. Among the celebrities with whom he now had familiar intercourse was Coleridge, whose home at Highgate Hill he often visited, and there he listened to that eloquent talker playing the magician with his auditors, — "a dusky, sublime character, who sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma, whispering strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon." The influence which Coleridge exer- cised upon the religious thinking of his day was unquestionably great, dreamy and speculative though he was ; but whether it will survive, whether the religious life of the world will be advanced in any way by Coleridge's lofty musings, is matter of great doubt to many ; because, glorious though the rumbling of his sonorous voice was, you too often felt that it died away in sound, leaving no solid, appreciable, practicable, intelligible meaning behind it. But on this wide question we shall not enter. Certain it was that Sterling, notwithstanding his '* Kadical " notions, was for the time deeply influenced by his intercourse with Coleridge, and by what Carlyle calls his "thrice-refined pabulum of transcendental moon- shine." This sufficiently appears in the novel of "Arthur Con- ingsby," which Sterling wrote in 1830, — his only prose book. About this time. Sterling deeply interested himself in the fate of some poor Spanish emigres, driven out of their own country by some revolution there, and then vegetating about Somer's Town and frequently beating with their feet the pavement in Euston Square. Their chief was General Torrijos, with whom Sterling had become intimate, and in whose fortunes he took a warm interest. Torrijos was zealous in the cause of his country ; he would effect alandiug, revolutionize and liberalize Spain; but he wanted money. Sterling was interested by the romance of the thing, an4 he also warmly sympathized with the sentiments of the old general. He proceeded to raise money among his friends ; money was collected ; arms were bought ; a ship was provided by Lieutenant Boyd, an Irish- man; the ship was in the Thames, taking in its armament, when, lo ! the police suddenly appeared on board, and the vessel was seized and its stores confiscated. Torrijos, Boyd, and some others, did afterwards manage to land in Spain ; where they met with an exceedingly tragical ending. But something else issued from this Spanish misadventure, of interest to Sterling. He had become acquainted with the Misses Barton, the daughters of Lieutenant-General Barton, of the Life Guards, — very delightful young ladies. He seems to have excited something more than merely friendly feelings in Susannah's bosom; for when he went to take leave of her, to e ubark in the projected Spanish invasion, a scene occurred from which it appeared clear that he had won the girl's heart, and then marriage was the result 128 BRIEF BIOGRAPfflES. But scarcely was lie married ere he fell serionsly ill,— so ill that he lay utterly prostrate for weeks, and his life was long despaired of. His career after this was a constant alternation of health and illness, ram- pant good spirits and prostrate feebleness. His lungs were affected, and consumption began to show indications of its coming. The doctors, however, gave hopes of him, — on'y it was necessary he should remove to a warmer climate. His family had inherited a valuable property in the West Indies, at St, Vincent, whither ho went to reside in 1831, and remained in that beautiful island, under the hot Kun of the tropics, for about fifteen months, returning to Engl:ind greatly improved in health, From thence he went to Bonn, in Germany, where he met with his old friend and quondam tutor, the Rev. Julius Hare, and with him Sterling had much serious talk on religious matters. Still under the influence of the ColeridgeanMews which had been working within him at St. Vincent and since," Sterling expressed to Mr. Hare a wish to enter the church as a minister, which Mr. Hare ** strongly urged" him to do, offering to appoint him to his own curacy at Herstmonceux, which was then vacant. Shortly after, he returned to England, was ordained deacon at Chichester in 1834, and was appointed curate immediately after, entering earnestly on the duties of that calling. He occasionally preached in the metropolis, and Carlyle described his appearance on two of such occasions: '• It was in some new college chapel in Somerset ITonse ; a very quiet small place, the audience student-looking youths, with a few elder peoj^le, perhaps mostly friends of the preacher's. The dis- course, delivered with a grave sonorous composure, and far sur- passing in talent the usual run of sermons, had withal an air of human veracity, as I still recollect, and bespoke dignity and piety of mind ; but gave me the impression rather of artistic excellence than of unction or inspiration in that kind. Sterling returned with us to Chelsea that day ; and in tho afternoon we went on the Thames Putney-ward together, we two with my wife ; under the sunny skies, on the quiet water, and with copious, cheery talk, the remembrance of which is still present enough to me. "This was properly my only specimen of Sterling's preaching. Another time, late in the same auf.umn, I did indeed attend him one evening to some church in the City, — a big church behind Cheap- side, * built by Wren,' as he carefully informed me ; — but there, in my wearied mood, the chief subject of reflection was the almost total vacancy of the place, and how an eloquent soul was preaching to mere lamps and prayer-books ; and of tho sermon I retain no image. It came up in the way of banter, if he ever urged the duty of * Church extension,' which already he very seldom did, and at length never, what a specimen we once had of bright lamps, gilt 2^rayer-books, baize-lined pews, Wren-Built architecture ; and how. JOHN STERLING. 129 in almosfe all directions, you might have fired a mnsket through the church, and hit no Christian life, A terrible outlook, indeed, for the apostolic laborer in the brick-and-mortar line ! " For reasons which Archdeacon Hare does not clearly state, but which Carlyle in a rather mystical way indicates, Sterling left his curacy at Herstmoneeux, and removed to London, where he took a house at Bayswater. At this time he was, in personal appearance, thin and careless-looking, — his eyes kindly, but restless in their glances, — his features animated and brilliant when talking, — and he was always full of bright speech and argument. He did not give you the idea of ill-health; indeed, his life seemed to be bounding, and full of vitality; his whole being was usually in full play; — it was his vehemence and rapidity of life which struck one on first seeing him. Carlyle says, that he wore holes in the outer case of his body by this restless vitality, which could not otherwise find vent. He seems now to have been in the thick of doubts and mental discussions, — probing the foundations of his faith, — and, it is to be suspected, losing one by one the pillars on which it had rested. It is a terrible '* valley of the shadow of death," this which so many young minds have to pass through in these days of restless inquiry into all sub- jects, — religious, social, and political. As Shelley writes, — Ifi have erred, there was no joy in error. But pain and insult, and unrest and terror. Sterling's views began to diverge more and more from those for- merly held by him, yet this never interfered with a single one of his friendships. Tolerant and charitable, there was an agreement to differ; and certainly it is better for men to differ openly and honestly, than hypocritically to agree and conform, — even for ^'peace's sake.** And why should men quarrel about such matters, respecting which no one man can have more positive or certain loiowledge than any other man ? Says Tennyson; What am 1 7 An Infant crying in the night: An infant crying: for the light : And with no language but a cry I Sterling read many German books at this time, such as Tholuck and Schleiermacher, from which he diverged into Goethe and Jean Paul Richter. But his health was still delicate, and a residence in the south of France was determined on. He reached .Bordeaux, and while there worked at various literary enterprises. Poetry occupied his attention, and he there wrote ' * The Sexton's Daughter; " he also stored up a number of notes and memo- randa respecting Montaigne, whose old country-house he visited, BIOGnAPHIES 4 laOl BUIEF BIOGRAPHIES. and these shortly after appeared, in a very able article from his pen, in the London and Westminster Review. After a year's stay, he re- turned to England, and occupied himself in writing occasional arti- cles for Blackwood's Magazine. His health being still delicate, he wintered at Madeira in 1837; speaking of it in one of his letters, he says that, ** as a temporary refuge, a niche in an old ruin, where ono is sheltered from the shower, the place has great merit." He con- tinued writing papers for Blackwood, of which the best was "The Onyx Ring." Wilson early recognized Sterling's merit as a writer, and lavished great praise upon him in his editorial comments, in- deed, he seems to have possessed the gift of literary improvising to a great extent. He was a swift genius : Carlyle likened him to "sheet-lightning." He had an incredible facility of labor, flashing with most piercing glance into a subject, and throwing his thoughts upon it together upon paper with remarkable felicity, brilliancy, and general excellence. While at Madeira Sterling busied himself with reading Goethe, of whom he gives the following striking opin- ion, in many respects true: "There must, I tliink, have been some prodigious defect in his mind, to let him hold such views as his about women and some other things; and in another respect, I find so much coldness and hollowness as to the highest truths, and feel 80 strongly that the heaven he looks up to is but a vault (f ice, — that these two indications, leading to the same conclusion, go far to con- vince me he was a profouudlj' immoral and irreligious spirit, with as rare faculties of intelligence as ever belonged to any one." His health improved by !dadeira, he returned to England, still fragile, but radiant with cheerfulness; "botli his activity and his composure he bore with him, through all weathers, to the final close; and on the whole, right manfully he walked his wild, stern way to- wards the goal, and like a Roman wrappediiis mantle round bim when he fell." He went on writing for Blackwood, contributing the "Hymns of a Hermit," " Crystals from a Cavern," "Thoughts and Images," and other papers of this sort. Then he engaged as con- tributor to the London and Westminster Review, for which he wrote several fiifb papers. The raw winter air of England proving too much for his weak lungs, he went abroad again, — this time to Italy, — where he reveled in its picture-galleries and collections of fine art. He did not like t!ie religious aspect of things there, and spoke freely about it. He was home again in 1839, considerably improved in health ; but still he continued to lead a nomadic life, for the sake of his health. Now at Hastings, then at Clifton; and again he had to fly before worse symptoms than had yet shown themselves, — spitting of blood and such like, — taking flight late in the season for Madeiru. But when he reached Ealmputh, the weather was so rough that ho could not set sail; so he rested there for the winter, the mild climate suiting his feeble lungs better than Clifton had done. By this time, during his residence in the last-named place, he had written hia fine JOHN STEHLING. 131 paper on " Carlyle," for the Westminster Review, and also published a little volume of poems, containing some noble pieces. Carlyle speaks in rather a slighting strain of poetry in general, and has a strong dislike to what he calls the "fiddling talent." •' Why sing,'* he asks, " your bits of thoughts, if you can contrive to speak them? By your thought, not by your mode of delivering it, you must live or die.'* Besides, he denies to Sterling that indispensable quality of successful poetr3% — depth of /ime; his verses "had a monotonous rub-a-dub, instead ot tune: no trace of music deeper than that of a well-beaten drum." But let any one read Sterling's "DaBdalus," and they will be satisfied of his tunefuless, as well as his true poetic feeling. We know no verses fuller of music in every line. These are a few stanzas: Wall for D03dalus, all that is fairest. All ttiat Is tuneful in air or wave I Shapes whose beauty is truest and rarest. Haunt with your lamps and spells his grave. Statues, hend your heads in sorrow, Ye that glance 'mid ruins old, That know not a past, nor expect a morrow, On many a moonUt Grecian wold ! By sculptured cave, and speal:ing river, ^ I'hee, JJcedalus, oft the nymphs recall ; "'he leaves, vnth a sound of winter, quiver, Mm-mur thy name, and murmuring fall. Ever thy phantoms arise before us, Our loftier brothers, but. one in blood; By bed and table tliey lord it o'er us, With looks of beauty and words of good. The volume of poems, however, -attracted no notice ; yet Sterling labored on, determined to conquer success." He met with some de- lightful friends at Falmouth, among others, with John Stuart Mill and an intelligent Quaker family, — the Foxes, — with whom he spent many haj^py hours. In the following spring he was by his own hearth again at Clifton, now engaged on a long poem called '* The Election," which was published; he had also commenced his tragjdy, of "Strafford,*' when he went to winter at Torquay. Tims ho journeyed flying about from place to place for life. Then to Fal- mouth again, where he delivered an excellent lecture on "The Worth of knowledge," before the Polytechnic Institution of that place. Soon after, he wtis off to Naples and the sunny south, his health still demanding warmth. He was home again in 18i3 ; and one day, while helping one of the servants to lift a heavj?- table, he v/as seized with sudden hemorrhage, and for long lay dangerously ill. By dint of careful nursing, he recovered, but the sc^eds of death must have been planted in him by this time. This year his 132 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. mother died, and in a few days after his beloved wife, — terrible blows to him. But weak and worn as ho was, he bore up manfuUj^ making no vain repinings, and with pious valor fronting the future. He had six children left to his charge, and he felt the responsibility deeply. Fabnouth, associated as it now was in his mind with calamity and sorrow, he could endure no longer; so he purchased a house at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, and removed thither at once. Sterling visited London for the last time in 1813, when Carlyle dined with him. "I remember it," says he, *'as one of the saddest of dinners ; though Sterling talked copiously, and our friends — Theodore Parker one of them — were pleasant and dis- tinguished men. All was so haggard in one's memory, and half consciously in one's anticipations ; sad, as if one had been dining in a ruin, in the crypt of a mausoleum." Carlyle saw Sterling afterwards at his apartments in town, and the following is the conclusion of his last interview with him : **We parted before long ; bed-time for invalids being come, ho es- corted me down certain carpeted back-stairs, and would not be forbidden ; we took leave under the dim skies ; and, alas ! little as I then dreamed of it, this, so far as I can calculate, must have been the last time I ever saw hinl in the world. Soltly fis a commoa evening, the last > 148 BKIEF BIOGPcAPniES. scTire beer-shop. When, after one of these -wanderings, he retraced his steps home by himself, he would hang about the house at the end of the street, not having the courage to enter, until some mes- senger, sent out to watch for his return, would lead him back,— often in a pitiable state. All this was very lamentable; and what is the more extraordinary, during this time his brain was teeming with fancy, with poet's dreams, with beautiful thoughts, such as an angel of purity might have entertained. Never, periiaps, was there a life more utterly at variance with his thoughts than that of Hartley Coleridge. It was so to the end. He deplored his habits, but did not change them. He lamented his indolence, but would not work. His poetry breathed aspirations after purity, but his life remained impure and groveling. And yet he was beloved by all, — loved because of his amiability, his inoffensiveness, his almost helplessness. He re- mained (to use his own words) Yet to the last a nigged wrinkled thing. To which young sweetness did delight to cling. Children doted on Hartley Coleridge, — himself a child. Nature in him appeared reversed; for in his infancy he was a man in the maturity of Lis fancy, and in his advanced years he was as a help- less child among men, — a child with gray hairs, for his head early became silver-white, though the gray hairs bro^lght no wisdom with them. And yet his literary culture was great; his knowledge of books was immense; and the elegant manner in which he would dilate upon lofty themes charmed all hearers. In the aspect of nature, his converse was like that of a god. The only after incidents that occurred worthy of note in Hartley Coleridge's life were his temporary occupation as a schoolmaster at Sedburgh, and his appearance as'a contributor to Woxon's edition of some of the older British poets, — for which, after great procrasti- nation, he wrote the introduction to the works of Massinger. A simi- lar introduction to the works of Ford was committed to him, and was in hand for years, but he had not sufiicient industry nor appli- cation to complete it. But he occasionally contributed a paper to Blackwood's Magazine, when the fit of writing came upon him. A collection of these articles, with his *• Marginalia," written by him in books while reading them, has recently been published. Such is a brief outline of this blurred and blotted life. A few months before his death, he wrote the following lines in a copy of his poems, alluding to his intention of publishing another volume, which he had bound himself under bond to furnish, and, we have been informed, had even been paid for, but which was never fur- nished. The lines are entitled H \EJrLEY COLERIDGE. U9 FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER. O \TOtul impotence of weak resolve, Kecorded rashly to ttie Wiiter s shame ! Days puss away, and lime s large orbs revolve And every day beholds me still Lhe same ; Till oft-neglected purpose loses aim, And hope becomes a flat unheeded He, And conscience, weary with the work of blame, In seeming slumber droops her wistful eye, As if she would I'esign her unregarded ministry. It only remains to note the death of this poor fellow-being. It occurred on the 6th of Januar3% 1849, when in his fifty-third year. ♦♦He died the death of a strong man, his bodily frame being of the finest construction, and capable of great endurance." The following incident relative to Wordsworth is related in the biography by Hartley Coleridge's brother : "The day following Hartley's death, "Wordsworth walked over with me to Grasmere, to the churchyard, — a plain inclosure of the olden time, surrounding the old village church, in which lay the remains of his wife's sister, his nephew, and his beloved daughter. Here, having desired the sexton to measure out the ground for his own and Mrs. Wordsworth's grave, he bade him measure out the space of a third grave, for my .brother, immediately beyond. ♦• 'When I lifted up my eyes from my daughter's grave,' he ex- claimed, ♦ he was standing there ! ' pointing to the spot where my brother had stood on the sorrowful occasion to which lie alluded. Then, turning to the sexton, he said, ' Keep the ground for us, — we are old people, and it cannot be for long.' "In the grave thus marked out my brother's remains were laid on the following Thursday, and in little more than a twelvemonth his venerable and venerated friend was brought to occupy his own. They lie in the southeast angle of the churchyard, not far from a group of trees, with the little beck, that feeds the lake with its clear water, murmuring by their side. Around them are the quiet moun- tains It was a winter s day when my brother was carried to his last home, cold, but fine, as I noted at the time, with a few slight scuds of sleet aud gleams of sunshine,* one of which greeted us as we entered Grasmere, and another smiled brightly through the church window. May it rest upon his memory ! " We can add nothing to this. The recital is very touching, and is done throughout with the extremest delicacy and grace by his brother, who would lovingly palliate the errors of the departed. He sleeps well by Wordsworth's side, Wordsworth having been the model of all his poetry, and standing to him instead of a father through the greater part of his unhappy life. Hartley Coleridge's poetry reminds the reader of Wordsworth in nearly every line, though it is Wordsworth diluted ; and at its best, 150 BKIEF BIOGKAPHIES. the Lake poetry cannot bear ranch dilution. Excepting in the son- nets which relate to his own personal nnhappiness, the poems sound like the echoes of other poets, rather than welling warm from the vv liter's own heart. And though, in the personal sonnets referred to, }ie paints his purposeless lite and blighted career in terse and poetic language, it were perhaps better that they had not been writ- ten at all. His poems addressed to childhood are perhaps the most charming things in the collection. For poor Hartley loved children, and they returned his lo\ e. He loved women, too, but at a distance; and his despondency at his own want of personal attractions for them is a frequent theme of his poetry. Tiie melancholy history of Hartley Coleridge is not without its moral. Jt was perhaps his misfortune to be the son of a poet, who gave little heed to the healthy training of his children. The child's endowment of fancy, though a rare one, proved only a source of un- happiness in after-life, having been cultivated, as it was, to the entire disregard of those other practical qualities which fit a man for useful intercourse with the world. Living in a state of dreaminess and abstraction, his mind became unnerved, and his manly powers fatally imi^aired. He indulged in poetic thought rather as an effem- inate luxury than as a means of self-culture or a relaxation from the severer toils and duties of life. He was, however, fully aware of the wrongness of his course, as appears from his numerous melancholy plaints in stanza and sonnets. But he made no effort at self-help ; he met adversity and temptation half-way, and laid himself down at their feet, a willing victim. Though we ought to be tolerant of the frail- ties of genius, we cannot overlook its sins and follies, which are but too often seized upon as excuses for excess by those who are less gifted. We must bear in mind that high powers are committed to man for noble uses, — that from him to whom much is given much shall bo required, — that however poetic may be a man's thoughts, he is not thereby absolved from the observance of the practical virtues of life, or from living soberly, jDurely, and religiously ; on the con- trary, the man of high thinkings is expected to live thus daily, and to make his life the practical record of his thoughts. Though there were many things to love about Hartley Coleridge, we trust his sad career may not be without its lesson and its warning to others. DR. KITTO. NOT long since, -we were attracted by the annonncement In a second-hand book catalogue, of "Essays and Letters, by Dr. Kitto, written in a Workhouse." As one of the celebrities of the day, the editor of the " Pictorial Bible," "Cyclopjedia of Bibli- cal Literature," and many other highly important works, which have obtained an extensive circulation, and are greatly prized, we could not but feel interested in this little book, and purchased it accord- ingly. It has proved full of curious interest, and from it we learned, that, besides having endured from an early age the serious privation of hearing, the author has also suffered the lot of poverty, and, by dint of gallant perseverance and manly courage, he w^as enabled to rise above and triumph over both privations. It is indeed true that Dr. Kitto's first book was "written in a workhouse." And we must here tell the reader something of his early history. The father of Dr. Kitto was a working mason at Plymouth, whither he had been' attracted by the demand for labor- era of all descriptions at that place, about the early part of the pres- ent century. John Kitto was born there in 1804. In his youth he received very little school education, though he learned to read, and had already taken some interest in books, when the serious acci- dent occurred which deprived him of his hearing. At that time his parents were in very distressed circumstances, and, though little more than twelve years of age, the boy was employed by his father to help him as a laborer, in carrying stones, mortar, and such like. One day in February, 1817, when stepping from the ladder to the roof of a house undergoing repair in Batter street, the little lad, with a load of slates on his head, lost his balance, and, falling back, was precipitated from a height of thirty-five feet into the paved court below 1 1(^1 152 BBIEF BIOGEAPHIES, Dr. Kitto Las himself given a most vivid account of the details of the accident in the interesting work by him, on **The Lost Senses, — Deafness," some time since published by Charles Knight. "Of what followed," says he, *' I know nothing. For ctfie moment, indeed, I awoke from that deathlike state, and then found tliat my father attended by a crowd of people, was bearing me homeward in his arms ; but I had then no recollection of what had happened, and at once relapsed into a state of unconsciousness. "In this state I remained for a fortnight, as I afterwards learned. These days were a blank in my life; I could never briug any recol- lections to bear upon them; and when I awoke one morning to con- sciousness, it was as from anight of sleep. I saw that it was at least two hours later than my usual time of rising, snd marveled thati had been suffered to sleep so late. I attempted to spring up in bed, and was astonished to find that I could not even move. The utter pros- tration of my strength subdued all curiosity within me. I e:xperi- enced no pain, but I felt that I was weak; I saw that I was treated as an invalid, and acquiesced in my condition, though some time passed — more time than the reader would imagine— before I could piece together my broken recollections, so as to comprehend it. " I was very slow in learning that my hearing was entirely gone. The unusual stillness of all things was grateful to me in my utter ex- haustion; and if, in this half-awakened state, a thought of the mat- ter entered my mind, I ascribed it to the unusual care and success of my friendsin preserving silence around me. I saw them talking, indeed, to one another, and thought that out of regard to my feeble condition, they spoke m whispers, because I heard them not. The truth was revealed to me in consequence of my solicitude about a book ("Kirby's Wonderful Magazine") which had much interested mo on the day of my fall I asked for this book with much earnest- ness, and was answered by signs which I could not comprehend. " • Why do you not speak?' I cried; *pray let me have the book.' •* This seemed to create some confusion; and at length some one, more clever than the rest, hit upon the happy expedient of writing upon a slate, that the book had been reclaimed by the owner, and that I could not in my weak state be allowed to read. ** *But,* said I, in great astonishment, * why do you write to me, why not speak ? Speak, speak! ' "Those who stood around the bed exchanged significant looks of concern, and the writer soon displayed upon his slate the awful words, * You are deaf.' " Various remedies were tried, but without avail. Some serious or- ganic injury had been done to the auditory nerve by the fall, and hearing was never restored; poor Kitto remained stone-deaf. The boy, thus thrown upon himself, devoted his spare time— his time was now all spare time — to reading. Books gradually became a source of interest to him, and he soon exhausted the small stocks DR. KITTO. 153 of his neighbors. Books were then much rarer than now, and read- ing was regarded as an occult art, in which few persons of the working class could venture to indulge. The cirqum stances of Kitto's parents still continued very poor. This, with other sources of domestic disquietude, rendered his po- sition for some years very unfortunate. At length, in 1819, about two years from the date of his accident, on an application for relief from the guardians of the poor of Plymouth, young Kitto was taken from his parents and placed among the boys of the workhouse. There he was instructed in the art of shoemaking, with the view of enabling him thus to obtain his livelihood, JHe was afterward bound apprentice to a poor shoemaker in the town, where his posi- tion was very miserable; so much so, that an inquiry as to the ap- prentice's treatment w^as instituted before the magistrates, the result of which was that they discharged Kitto from his apprentice- ship, and he was returned to the workhouse, where he continued his shoemaking. He found a warm friend in Mr. Bernard, the clerk to the guardians, and also in Mr. Nugent, the master of the school. From these gentlemen he obtained loans of books, mostly of a religious character. He remained in the workhouse about four years; his deafness condemned him to solitude; for, deprived of speech and hearing, he had not the means of forming friends among his companions, such as they were. At the same time, it is possible enough that his isolation from the other occupants of the workhouse may have preserved his purity, and encouraged him to cultivate his iDtellectual powers to a greater extent than he might otherwise have been disposed to do. Thrown almost exclusively upon his visual per- ceptions, he enjoyed with an intensity of delight the beautiful face of nature, — the sun, the moon, the stars, and the glories of earth. In after life he said: "I must not refuse to acknowledge that, when I have beheld the moon 'walking in brightness,' my heart has been * secretly enticed' into feelings having perhaps a nearer approach to the old idolatries than I should like to ascertain. I mention this because, at this distant day, I have no recoUecton of earlier emotions connected with the beautiful than those of which the moon was the object. How often, some two or three years after my affliction, did 1 not wander forth upon the hills, for no other purpose in the world than to enjoy and feed upon the emotions connected with the sense of the beautiful in nature. It gladdened me, it filled my heart, I knew' not why or how, in view *the great and wide sea,' the wooded mountain, and even the silent town under that pale radiance; and not less to follow the course of the luminary over the clear sky, or to trace its shaded pathway among and behind the clouds." An exquisitely keen perception of the beautiful in trees was of somewhat later development, as Plymouth, being by the sea-side, is not favorable to the growth of oaks, and had noth- 154 BRIEF BIOGEAPHIES. ing to boast of but a few rows of good elms. Another great source of enjoyment with him, at that early period, was to wander about the printsellers' and picture-framers* windows, and learn the pictures by heart, watching anxiously from day to day for the cleaning out of the windows, that he might enjoy the luxury of a new display of prints and frontispieces. He scoured the whole neighborhood with this view, going over to Devonport, which he divided into districts and visited periodically, for the purpose of exploring the windows in each, with leisurely enjoyment at each visit. A young man so peculiarly circumstanced, and with such tastes, could not remain altogether overlooked; and he was so fortunate as to attract the notice of two worthy gentlemen, who, when he had reached the age of about twenty years, used every exertion to be- friend him. One of these was Mr. Harvey, a member of the Society of Friends, well known as an accomplished mathamaticinn, who supplied young Kitto with books of a superior quality to anything be had before had access to. Mr. Harvey, when one day in a book- seller's shop, saw a lad of mean appearance enter, and begin writing a communication to the master on a slip of paper. On inquiry, ho found him to be a deaf workhouse boy, distinguished by his desire for reading and thirst for knowledge of all kinds; and that he had come to borrow a book which the bookseller had promised to lend him. Inquiries were made about him, interest was excited in his behalf, and a subscription was raised for his benefit. He was sup- plied with books, paper, and pens, to enable him to pursue his literary occupations; and in a short time, having secured the notice of Mr. Nettleton, one of tlie proprietors of the Plymouth Journal, and also a guardian of the poor, several of his productions appeared in the columns of that journal. The case of the poor lad became the subject of general conversation in the town; several gentlemen associated themselyes together as the guardians of the youth; after which Kitto was removed from the workhouse, and obtained per- mission to read at the public library. A selection of his writings, chiefly written in the workhouse, was shortly afterward published by subscription, and the young man found himself in the fair way of advancement. He made rapid progress in learning, acquiring a knowledge of Hebrew and other languages, which he imparted to pupils whom he shortly after obtained, the sons of a gentleman into whose house he was taken as tutor. He read largely on all subjects, but his early bias toward theological literature clung to him, and ho soon acquired an extensive and profound knowledge of scriptural and sacred lore. At length he was enabled to turn his stores of learning to rich account, in his Pictorial Bible and Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, which many of our readers may have seen. In his day, Dr. Kitto has also been an extensive traveler; having been in Palestine, in Egypt, in the Morea, in Kussia, and in many coun- tries of Europe. . _ DR. KITTO. 156 "For many years," he says, "I had no views towards literature beyond the instruction and solace of my own mind; and under these views, and in the absence of other mental stimulants, the pursuit of it eventually became a passion which devoured all others. I take no merit for the industry and application with which I pursued this obiect,— none for the ingenious contrivances by which I sought to shorten the hours of needful rest, that I might have the more time for making myself acquainted with the minds of other men. The reward was great and immediate, and I was only preferring the grat- itication which seemed to me the highest. Nevertheless, now that I am in fact another being, having but slight connection — excepting in so far as * the child is the father to the man * — with my former self ; now that much has become a business which was then simply a joy ; and now that I am gotten old in experiences, if not in years, — ■ it does somewhat move me to look back upon that poor and deaf boy, in his utter loneliness, devoting himself to objects in which none around him could sympathize, and to pursuits which none could even understand. There was a time— by far the most dreary in that portion of my career — when an employment was found for me [it was when he was apprenticed to the shoemaker,] to which I pro- ceeded about six o'clock in the morning, and from which I returned not until about (ten at night. I murmured not at this, for I knew that life had grosser duties than those to which I would gladly have devoted all my hours; and I dreamed not that a life of literary oc- cupations might be within the reach of my hopes. This was, however, a terrible time for me, as it lelt me so little leisure for what had be- come my sole enjoyment, if not my sole good. I submitted ; I acqui- esced; I tried hard to be happy; but it would not do ; my heart gave way, notwithstanding my manful struggles to keep it up, and I was very thoroughly miserable. Twelve hours I could have borne. I have tried it, and know that the leisure which twelve hours might have left would have satisfied me ; but sixteen hours , and often eighteen^ out of the twenty-four, was d than I could bear. To come home weary and sleepy, and then . ve only for mental sustenance the moments which by self-imposed tortures, could be torn from need- ful rest, was a sore trial ; and now that I look back upon this time, the amount of study which I did, under these circumstances, con- trive to get through, amazes and confounds me, notwithstanding that my habits of application remain to this day strong and vigorous. "In the state to which I have thus referred, I suffered much wrong; and the fact that, young as I then was, my pen became the instru- ment of redressing that wrong, and of ameliorating the more afflict- ive part of my condition was among the first circumstances which revealed to me the secret of the strength which I had, unknown to myself, acquired. The flood of light which then broke in upon me not only gave distinctness of purpose to what had before been little 156 BRIEF BIOGBAPHIES. more than dark and uncertain gropings ; but also, from that time, the motive to my exertions became more mixed than it had been. My ardor and perseverance were not lessened ; and the pure love of knowledge, for its own sake, would still have carried mo on ; but other inliuences, the influences which supply the impulse to most human pursuits, did supervene, and gave the sanction of the judg- ment to the course which the instincts of mental necessity had pre- viously dictated. I had, in fact, learned the secret, 'that knowledge is power ; and if, as is said all power is sweet, then, surely, that> power which knowledge gives is, of all others, the sweetest." In conclusion, we may add, that Dr. Kitto continued to lead a happy anda useful life, cheered by the faces of children around his table, — though alas ! he could not hear their voices. He resided until his death, in 1854, in the beautiful environs of London, that he might he within sight of old trees, "withont 'which his heart could scarcely be satisfied. Indeed, with such love and veneration did he regard them, that the felling of a noble tree caused him the deepest emotion. But he delighted in the faces of men, too, and nothing gave him greater delight than to walk or drive through the crowded thoroughfares of the metropolis. In this respect he resembled the amiable Charles Lamb, to whom the crowd of Fleet Street was more delightful than all the hills and lakes of Westmoreland. "How often,'' said Dr. Kitto, "at the end of a day's hard toil, have I thrown myself into an omnibus, and gone into town, for no other purpose in the world than to have a walk from Charing Cross to St. Paul's on the one hand, or to the top of Regent Street on the other ; or from the top of Tottenham Court Road to the Post-officcj. I know not "whether I liked this best in summer or in winter. I could seldom afford myself this indulgence but for one or two evenings a week, when I could manage to bring my day's studies to a close an hour or so earlier than usual. In summer there is daylight, and I could better enjoy the picture-shops and the street incidents, and might diverge so far as to pass through Covent Garden, and luxuriate among the finest fruits and most beautiful flowers in the world. And in winter it might be doubted whether the glory of the shops, lighted up with gas, was not a sufficient counterbalance for the absence of daylight. Perhaps * both are best,' as the children say ; and yield the same kind of grateful change as the alternation of the seasons, ofters." Thus, what we, who have our hearing entire, regard as a great calamity, in Dr. Kitto ceased to be regarded as such. The condition became natural to him, and his sweet temper and steady habits of industry enabled him to pass through life honorably and usefully. His life was a noble and valuable lesson to all young men. EDGAR ALLAN POE. RICHTER, writing from Weimar, whither he had gone to see, eye to eye, the great men with whose fame all Europe was ringing, said: ** On the second day T threw away my foolish prejudices about great authors; they are like other people. Here, every one knows that they are like the earth, which looks from a distance, from heaven, like a shining moon; but when the foot is upon it, it is found to be made of Paris mud (bouede parish." Alas ! it is so. Those lofty gods whom we have worshiped and bowed down before, — those gilted' children of genius whose eyes gazed eagerly ipto the unseen, and penetrated its depth far beyond our ken, — when we approach them closer, and know them more in- timately, become stripped of their halo glory. We find that they are but men, — fallible, frail, and erring, — tempest-tosed by passion and desire, — stumbling and halt, and often blind and decrepit. We worship no more. Tlie earth which seen from a distance, looks a beautiful moon, when the foot is on it, is but rocks, clods, and •'Paris mud !'' Sad is the impression left on the mind by reading the brief records some of these -unhai^py children of genius;" gifted, but unfiappy; loftily endowed, but fitful and capricious; with the aspirations of an angel, but the low appetites of a brute; daringly speculative, but grovelingly sensual ;-such, in a few words, was the life of Elgar Allan Poc: a being fall of misery, but all beaten out upon his own anvil; a man gifted as few are, but without faijh or devotion, and without any earnest purpose in life. You have read his "Raven." You see the gloom and (Jespair of that unhappy vouth's life written there. What a dismal, tragic, remorseful transcript it is ! — the croaking raven, bird of ill omen, perched above its masters chamber-door, responding with his dole- ful •* Nevermore " to all his deep questions and impatient feelings : 15T 158 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. '• Prophet," said I, "thing of evil l Prophet still, if bird or devil I Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted. On this home by horror haunted,— tell me truly, I Implore, Is there— IS there balm In GUead ? Tell me, tell me, I Implore I'» Quoth the raven,—** ^levermore l" •• Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend !" I shrieked, upstart- ing: " Oet thee back into the tempest, and the Night's Plutonian shore I Leave no black plume as a token or that lie thy soul hath spoken I Leave my loneliness unbroken ! quit the bust above my door ! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door r* Quoth the raven,— "Nevermore !" And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still !s sitting, On the pallid bust of Pallas, Just above my chamber-door : And his eyes have all the seeming of a demoQS that Is dreaming. And the lampligtit o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the lloor ; And my soul from out the shadow that lies lloatlnGr on the floor, Shall be lifted— nevermore I By this light, read the following brief record of the poet's blurred and blotted life. Edgar Allan Poe was born at Baltimore, in 1811, of an old and re- spectablo family. His father was a lawyer, but having become en- amored of an English actress, he married her, and followed her profession for some years, until his death, which shortly followed. Poe's mother died about the same time, and three children were left destitute. But a wealthy gentleman, named Allan, who had no children of his own, adopted Edgar, it was understood with the in- tention of leaving him his heir. In 1816 Mr. Allan took the boy to England with him, and placed him in a boarding-school at Stoko Newington, near London, where he remained some four or five years, under the Rev. Dr. Bransby, returning to America in 1822. It will be obvious that the circumstances of Poe's early life were very unfavorable to his healthy moral devcloprapnt. Deprived of the blessings of maternal nurture, without a home, brought up among«6trangers, there is little cause ta wonder at the subsequent heartlessness towards others which he displayed, and the excesses in which lie indulged. Returned to America, he entered the Uni- versity of Charlottesville, in Virginia, in 1825. Unfortunately, the Btudents of that University were then distinguished for their disso- luteness and their excesses in many ways; and Edgar Poe was cno of the most reckless of his class. Although his talents were such as to enable him to master with ease the most difficult studies, and to take the highest honors of his year, his habits of gambling, int'^m- perance, and general dissii)atiou v»'ere such as to cause his expul- sion from the University. EDGAR ALLAN POE. 159 Mr. AUao, his benefactor, had made him a liberal allowance; but Poe neverthcleRS ran deeply into debt, chiefly to his gambling friends; and when his drafts were presented to Mr. Allan for pay- ment, he declined to honor them; on which Poe wrote him an abu- sive letter, left his house, abandoned his half-formed plans of life, and suddenly left the country to take part as a volunteer, like Byron, in the Greek Revolution. But he never reached Greece. Whither he wandered, Heaven knows. Nothing was heard of him until, after the lapse of a year, the American Minister at St. Peterburgh was one morning summoned to save him from the penalties incurred in a drunken debauch over night. Through the Minister's intercession, he was set at liberty and enabled to return to the United States. His friend, Mr. Allan, was still willing to assist him, and, at his request, Poe was entered as scholar in the Military Academy at West Point; but again his dissipated habits displayed themselves. He neglected his duties and disobeyed orders, on which he was cashiered, and once more returned to Mr. Allan's house, who was etill ready to receive him and treat him as a son. But a circumstance shortly occurred which finally broke the connection between the two. Mr. Allan married a second time, and the lady was considerably his junior. Poe quarreled with her, and, it is said, ridiculed Allan. The lady's friends have averred that the real cause of the rupture was, that Poe made disgraceful overtures to the young wife, which throws another dark stain upon his character. Whatever the real cause ma^f have been, certain it is, that he was now expelled from his patron's house in anger, and when Mr. Allan died, some years after, he left nothing to Poe. The young man had in the meanwhile published a small volume of poetry, when he was not more than eighteen years of age. This was very favorably received, and a little perseverance might have enabled*^ him to maintain himself creditably as a literary man. But in one of his hasty andreckless fits, he enlisted as a private soldier. He was recognized by some of his old fellow-students at West Point, and they made efforts to obtain him a commission, which promised to be successful; but, fitful in everything, before the result of their kind application could be known, he deserted ! We next find Poo a successful competitor for certain prizes offered by the proprietor of the Baltimore Visitor for the best story and the best poem. Poe competed for both, and gained both. The author was sent for, and made his appearance in due time. He was in a state of the utmost destitution, pnle, ghastly, and filthy. His seedy frock-coat, buttoned up to his throat, concealed the absence of a shirt, and his dilapidated boots disclosed his want of stockings^ Mr. Kennedy, the author of "Horseshoe Kobinson," who was the adjudicator of the prize, took an immediate interest in the young man, then only twenty-two years old ; and accompanied him to a clothing-store, where he provided him with a respectable suit, v/ith 160 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. changes of linen, and, after taking a bath, Poo once more appeared in the restored guirje of a gentleman. Mr. Kennedy further used his influence in obtaining for Poe some literary employment, and he was shortly engaged as joint edi- tor of the Southern Literary Messenger, published at Richmond. He was now a literary man, living by his pen. The literary pro- fession i:! an honorable one, even noble, inasmuch as it is identified with intellectual culture and high manly gifts. The literary man exercises much power in the world. He lielps to form the opinions of other men; indeed, he makes public opinion. All other powers have in modern times become weaker, while this has been wnxing stronger from day to day. Kings are being superseded by books, priests by magazines, and diplomatists by newspapers. Perhaps bookmen and editors now wield more intellectual power than all the other crafts combined. Literary men have taken the place of iho feudal barons, and the pen has become the ruling instrument in- stead of the sword. The man of letters is nn altogther modern product, the like of whom was unknown to former ages. Never, before the last century, was there any cla.ss of men in society who made a profession of thinking for others, or wlio earned a subsis- tence by writing and publishing their thoughts in books and journals. Soldiers, law-givers, and priests may have taken up the j)en to write and give an account of their lives and times, or have written books of philosophy or meditation, but never before has there been a special class of men who made it their sole business and profession to write for the general public. The question has been discussed whether this purely professional literary life is compatible with the simple and straightforward duties of a man. His position is certainly very different from that of the great non-professional writers of former times, — the Homers, Shakcspearos, Miltons, J^ossuets, Pascals, Bacons, Fene- lons; these wrote to satisfy an earnest desire, in answer to some strong inward call, —to do a certain work, though not for money, — that was not their main work, — but to fulfill a dutj', — it might lie, to fill up a vacant hour. Modern literary men may, however, have no s! ecial, distinct, or well-defined call to write; with them it is a business, a calling, a cr.ift, self-chosen. They write that they maj^ live. There may be no sense of responsibility as to what they write; and the gift may thus be abused as well as used. To enter upon what is called a "literary career," may even be a merely instinc- tive and irrational act, performed without deliberation, the choice being determined by tr.ste rather than by reliection. In other pro- fessions experience and character are required; but in this profes- sion they are not regarded as at all requisite. The literary man may be dissolute, spendthrift, without any business habits or any moral stamina; and yet he may succeed as a public writer. This must be regarded as a curious f^^aturo of the literary character. EDGAll ALLAN PCS, 161 . Here we have Edgar Poe installed at twenty-two avS a public teacher through the medium of the press; a young man incompe- tent lo manage a small store, unable to manage himself, and yet a jjubiio writer. Not many months pass before he lapses into his old habits of drunkenness. Fatal bottle ! What manifold curses have been poured from that narrow neck of thine ! Poe fell a victim like thousands more. For a- whole week he was drunk and unable to write; then he was dismissed. Next followed entreaties, interces- sions, pleadings, j^rofessions of abstinence for the future from the fatal bottle. He was taken back for a time; but the habit had be- come rooted; the character was formed, and, the demon had wound his fetters about the doomed man. Finally dismissed from his sit- uation, he went from Richmond to Baltimore, and thence to Phil?.- delphia, w^here he proceeded to lead the life of a literary ** man about town." It was while he resided at Philadelphia, in 1839, that Poe pub- lished his two volumes of ** Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabes- que." These tales exhibit extraordinary metaphysical acuteness, and an imagination which delights to dwell in the shadowy con- fines of human experience, among the abodes of crime, gloom, and horror. They exhibit a subtle power of analysis, land a minuteness of detail and refinement of reasoning remarkable in so young a writer. He anatomizea mystery, and gives to the most incredible inventions a wonderful air of reality. ' While Poe was engaged in writing these striking tales, he was pursuing his old round of dissipation. To his other imprudences he had added that of marrying, — the most imprudent thing a de- termined drunkard can do. For, instead of one miserable person, there are two, following in whose wake are usually a train of little miseries, at length becoming agonies, eating into a man's flesh as it were fire, — that is, if he have any sense of responsibility still surviv- ing within him. The woman Poe married was his cousin, Virginia Clemm, amiable and loveh% but poor and gentle, quite unfitted to master the now headstrong passion of her husband for drink. Poe managed to eke out a slender living for himself and wife by writing for the magazines and the newspapers. For a time it seemed that h© would reform; he wrote to one friend that he had quite •'overcome the seduction and dangerous besetment'* of drink, and to another, that he had become a *' model of temperance." But shortly after, he agavi fell off as before into his old habits, and for weeks was regardless of everything but the ways and means of sat- isfying his morbid and insatiable appetite for drink. All this shows how little intellectual power avails without moral goodness, and of how small worth is genius without the common work-a-day elements of sober, manly character. For it is life, not scripture, that avails, — character, not literary talents, that brings a man hap- piness, and tells on the betterment of the world at large. BlOGIiAPUIRS 6 162 BEIEF BIOGRAPHIES. Poe conld appreciate the glorious thoughts contained in books, yet he failed to apply their precepts of wisdom. He could rejoice in hia own thoughts, but had not learned to respect his own life. His mind was full of riches, yet, wanting in moral good, he remain- ed poor and without resources. His life did not embrace duty, but pleasure. Intoxicated with essences and perfumes, he neglected wisdom, which is the true balm of life. Poor unfortunate, thus worthlessly eating and drinking out of the sacred vessels of know- ledge ! Many and poignant must have been the distresses suffered by pool? Poe in the dreary and miserable state in which he lived, — distress not only about money and worldly well-being, but about God and duty. Then followed new catastrophes, family disasters, domestic misery, — teaching him, if he would but learn, the same lessons of duty, but of which, through life, he seemed to be alto- gether ignorant. Man cannot lead an egotistic and selfish life with- out buffering. For life, from time to time, tells him that he is not alone, and that he owes much to those of his own blood and house- hold. Love itself, smiling and celestial love, in such a case, be- comes a source of torments and calamities to him. The brave only, live through this state; the heartless despair, utter loud cries of re- volt, blaspheme, and precipitate themselves into extreme courses. Their originality and genius may astonish the world, but originali- ty is nothing unless it includes the realities of life; they are but dreamers, unless poets, they also do the daily living of true men. But you are a poet ! Well, show me the practical issue of knowledge and beauty in your life and character. Unless you do, I say you have adopted the profession merely to indulge in the luxury and fascin- ation of thinking, — not so much to discover and propagate truth as to gratify your own selfish tastes. We wish there had been no more thsui this in Poe*s case; but there was positive dishonor in the course of life he pursued. While admitted into the confidence of Mr. Burton, proprietor of the Gen- tleman^s Magazine, at Philadelphia, at the very time that he was neglecting his own proper work of writing for the Magazine, he was nevertheless engaged in preparing the prospectus of a new rival monthly, and obtaining transcripts of his employer's subscription and account books, to be used in a scheme for supplanting his per- iodical. Of course, on this scurvy trick being discovered, Poe was at once dismissed; but only to start a rival Graham's Magazine, with which he was connected for a year and half, leavinof it, as usual, be- cause of his drunken habits. Wiiile writing in Graham's Magazine, Poe published several of his finest tales, and some of his most tren- chant criticisms. These last ware disfigured, however, by a tone of morbid bitterness, such as a man who misconducts himself towards the world so often affects. In his capacity of critic, Poe not nnfre- ■quently assumed an air of bitter sarcasm, and made the air blatant vith his cries of rage and his implacable anathemas. Burton, hia EI>GAK ALLAK PCE. 165 former employer, often expostulated with bim because of the havoc which he did upon the books of rival authors, and tried to tame down hie severity to a moderate tone, but without avail. In 184-1 Poe removed to New York, where he published his won- derful poem, "The L'aven," — perhaps the Very finest and most oripinal single poem of its kind that America has yet produced. It indicates a most wayward and subtle genius. It takes you captive by its gloom}% weird power. Of his other poems, "Annabel Lee" and "The Haunted Palace" are especially beautiful. But the radi- ance which they give forth is lurid; and the fire which they contain scorches, but does not warm. As in his "Haunted Palace," we Through the red-lltten windows s?e8 Vast forms, that move fantastically, To a discordant melody , While, like a ghastly rapid river. Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever And laugh— hut smile no more. At New York, Poe was admitted into the best literary circles, and might have made for himself a position of influence, had he pos- sessed ordinary good conduct. But his usual failing again betrayed him. What was worse, he was poisoned in his principles : indeed, he had no principles. He was false, and a coward. Take this in- stance : he had borrowed fifty dollars from a lady, on a promise given by him that he would return the money in a»few days. He did not return it; and was then asked for a written acknowledgment of the debt; his answer was a denial that he had ever borrowed the money, accompanied with a threat, that, if the lady said anything more about the subject, he would publish a correspondence of hers, of an infamous character, which would blast her forever. Of course, there was no such correspondence in existence; but when Poe heard that the lady's brother wa.s in search of him for the purpose of obtaining the satisfaction considered necessary in such cases, he sent a friend to him with a humble apology and retraction, and an excuse tiiathe had been "out of his mind at the time." His habits of intoxication increased, and his pecuniary difficulties, as might Jiave been expected, became more urgent. Often, after a long-continued debauch, he was without the ordinary necessaries of life. His wife, and mother-in-law, who were dependent upon his exertions for their means of living, went a-begging for help. Not improbably, the distress which his wife suffered from the irregular- ity of her husband's career, and the frequent privations which she endured, had something to do with causing the illness from which she eventually died. A number of friends voluntarily contributed towards the support of the distressed family when their case became known through the newspapers, but the help came too late to be of any service to Mrs. Poe. 164 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. In 1848 Poe delivered a public lecture on the Cosmogony of the Universe, — an extraordinary rhapsody, very imaginative, but quiio unscientiiic. His object v^^as to raise money for the purpose of establishing a monthly magazine, and we believe several numbers were published; but his unsteady habits soon proved its ruin. Ka also quarreled with the editors of the principal magazines lor which he had formerly written, and made enemies all round. About the Bame time, he formed the acquaintance of one of the most brilliant w:omen of New England, sought her hand, arid the day of marriage was fixed. They were not married, and the breaking of the engai^e- ment affords ai striking illustration of his character. His biographer thus relates the circumstances connected with it: *'Poe said to a female acquaintance in New York, who congratu- lated him upon the prospect of his union with a person of so much genius and so many virtues, * It is a mistake; I am not going to be married.' * Why, Mr. Poe, I understand that the banns have been published ! * 'I cannot help what you have heard, my dear madam, but, mark me, I shall not marry her ! * He left town the same even- ing, and the next day was reeling through the streets of the city which was the lady's home ; and in the evening that should have been the evening before the bridal, in his drunkenness he committed at her house such outrages as made necessary a summons of the police." He pursued a course of reckless dissipation for some time, after which he went to Virginia, on means raised from the charity of his few remaining friends. *He delivered some lectures there; then he joined a temperance society, and professed a determination to re- form his evil habits. But it was too late; his bad genius prevailed over all his better resolutions. Again he contracted an engagement to marry a lady whom he had known in his youth, and returned to New York to fulfill a literary engagement, and prepare for his mar- riage. In a tavern he casually met some of his old acquaintances, who invitod him to drink. He drank until he was deplorably drunk. He was afterwards found in the streets, insane and dying, and was carried to the public hospital, in which he expired on the 7th of October, 1849, in his thirty-eighth year. Thus miserably perished another of the most gifted of earth's sons. "What a torn record of a life it is ! more sorrowful by far than that of our own Otway or Chatterton. Alternately a seraph and a brute, — an inspired poet and a groveling sensualist, — a prophet and a drunk- ard,— his biography unfolds a tale of mingled admiration and hor- ror, such as has been told of very few literary men. It is painful to think of it : but it is right that such a history should be known, were it only as a beacon to warn susceptible youth from the horrible fescination of drink, which lures so many to their destruction. THEODORE HOOK. THE unhappy career of Edgar A. Poe is not without its counter- part in English literary biography. Johnson, in his painful memoir of Savage, has told a similar story of genius and mis- fortune, or rather genius and misconduct ; for it is a mistake to suppose that the possession of genius in any -w&y conduces to mis- fortune, except through the misconduct of its possessor. Poetry and- a garret used at one time to be identified; but life in a garret may be as noble as life in a palace, and a great deal purer. As Sir Walter Kaleigh once wrote in the little dungeon in the Tower, still pointed out as the place of his confinement, My mind to me a kingdom is I It is the mind that makes the man, and not the place, — call it a hovel, a garret, or a palace,— in which the body lives. Even Johnson has summed up the ills of the scholar's life in these words: ** Toil, envj^ want, the patron, and the jail." But Johnson, doubtless, bitterly remembered the day v/hen he signed himself Impraiisus, or Dinner- less, and received the anonymous alms of a pair of shoes. Johnson must have been in one of his ungenial moods when he penned those bitter words. The fate of Chatterton, also, was a hapless one. Proud, impulsive, ardent, and full of genius, like Poe, his career was short, unhappy, and mournfully concluded. Tliat of Otway, the author of '* Venice Preserved," who perished for want of bread, also springs to mind, Kor are other equally mournful examples a-wanting, which it would be painful to relate. These instances are apt to be dwelt upon too much, and cited from time to time as illustrations of the unhappy lot of genius; whereas they are merely exceptional cases, not at all characteristic of literary men in general. 166 166 BEIEF BIOGBAPHIES. Poets and authors are often charged with being improTident, fts a rule. But are there no improvident lawyers, divines, merchants, and shopkeepers? The case of Theophilus Gibber is sometimes cited, who begged a guinea and spent it on a dish of ortolans; and perhaps of poor Goldsmith, who, when preserved from a jail by the money received for "The Vicar of Wakefield," forthwith cele- brated the circumstance by a jollification with his landlady. But authors have their weaknesses and their frailties, like other men ; and some of them are drunken, and some improvident, as other men are. As a class, however, they are neither generally improv- ident nor out at elbows. But we are usually disposed to think much more of the "calamities of authors" than we do of the calam- ities of other men. A hundred bankers might break, and ten thousand merchants ruin themselves by tKeir improvidence, but none would think it worth their while to record such events in books; nor, except as a mere matter of news for living men, would any one care to read of such occurrences. But how different in the case of a poet? Biographers eagerly seize the minutest matter of detail in the history of a man of genius. Johnson tells us the story of Savage, Southey rel'ites the career of Chatterton, Cun- ningham recounts the life of Burns, and every tittle of their history is carefully gathered up and published for the information of con- temporary and future readers. The late Thomas Hood, in one of his prose works, little known, well observed that: ** Literary men, as a body, will bear comparison in point of con- duct with any other class. It must not be forgotten that they are subjected to an ordeal quite peculiar, and scarcely milder than the Inquisition. The lives of literary men are proverbially barren of incident, and consequently the most trivial particulars, the most private affairs, are unceremoniously worked up, to furnish matter for their bald biographies. Accordingly, as soon as an author is defunct, his character is submitted to a sort of Egyptian prst moi-tem trial; or rather, a moral inquest with Paul Pry for the coroner, and a judge of assize, a commissioner of bankrupts, a Jew broker, a Methodist parson, a dramatic licenser, a dancing-mascer, a master of the ceremonies, a rat-catcher, a bone-collector, a parish clerk, a schoolmaster, and a reviewer for a jury. It is the province of these personages to rummage, ransack, scrape together, rake up, ferret out, sniff, detect, analyze, and appraise, all particulars of the birth, parentage, and education, life, character, and behavior, breed- ing, accomplishments, opinions, and literary performances of the departed. Secret drawers are searched, private and confidential letters published, manuscripts intended for the fire are set up in type, tavern-bills and washing-bills are compared with their receipts, copies of writs re-copied, inventories taken of effects, wardrobe ticked off by the tailor's accounts, bygone toys of youth—billets-doux, THEODOBE HOOK. 167 snnff-boxes, canes— exhibited,— discarded hobby-horses are trotted out, — perhaps even a dissecting surgeon is called in to draw up a minute report of the state of the corpse and its viscera; in short, nothing is spared that can make an item for the clerk to insert in his memoir. Outrageous as it may seem, this is scarcely an exaggera- tion. For example, who will dare to say that we do not know at this very hour more of Goldsmith's affairs than he ever did him- self? It is rather wonderful than otherwise, that the literary char- acter should shine out as it does after such a severe scrutiny." ^ It is not enough, however, that literary men will bear comparison in point of conduct with any other class. We think the public are entitled to expect more than this; and to apply to them the words, *' Of those to whom much is given, much shall be required." They are men of the highest culture, and ought to be men of the highest char- acter. As influencing the minds and morals of our readers, - and the world is daily looldng more and more to the books which men of genius write, for instruction, — they ought to cultivate in them- selves a high standard of character, — the very highest standard of character,— in order that those who study and contemplate them in their books may be lifted and lighted up by their example. At all events we think the public are not over-exacting when they require that the great gifts with which the leading minds among men have been endowed shall not be prostituted for unworthy purposes, nor employed for merely selfish and venial ends. Genius is a great gift, and ought to be used wisely and uprightly for the elevation of the moral character and the advancement of the intelligence of the world at large. If not so employed, genius and talent may be a curse to their possessor, and not a blessing to others, — they may even be a fountain of bitterness and woe, spreading moral poison throughout society. We do not say that Theodore Hook was an author of this latter class; but we do think that a perusal of his life, as written by one of his own friendi and admirers,* cannot fail to leave on the reader's mind the impression, that here was a man gifted with the finest powers, in whom genius proved a traitor to itself, and false to its high mission. With shining abilities, a line intellect, sparkling wit, and great capacity for work. Hook seemed to have no higher ambi- tion in life than to sit as an ornament at the tables of the great, — to buzz about their candles, and cousume himself for their merriment and diversion. In the houses cff titled men, who kept fine company and gave great dinners, he did but play the part of the licensed wit and jester, — wearing the livery of his entertainers, not on his per- son, indeed, but in his soul; bartering the birthright of his superior intellect for a mess of pottage, — as Douglas Jerrold has said, " a mess of pottage served up at a lord's table in a lord's platter." ♦ Theodore Hook : a SketclL Murray. 168 BKIEF biographies; Theodore Hook was the son of a musical composer of some note in his day, and born in Bedford Square, London, in 1788. He had an only brother, James, who afterwards became Dean of Worcester, and whose son, Dr. Hook, Dean of Chichester, survives to do honor to the talents and reputation of the family. Theodore was, in early life, petted by his father, who re^'arded him as a prodigy. He was sent to school at Harrow, wiiere he was the school-fellow of Byron and Peel, though not in the same form. But on the death of his mother, Mr. Hook took the boy from school, partly because he found his society an amusing Rolaoe, an 1 also because he had discovered that h'e could turn the youth's precocious talents to profitable ac- count. Already, at the age of fourteen, Theodore could play expertly on the pinno, and sing pathetic as wcdl as comic songs with remarkable expression. One evening he enchanted the father especially by singing, to his own accompaniment, two new ballads, one grave and one gay. Whence the airs, — whence the words? It turned out that the verses and the music were both Theodore's own! Here was a mine for the vet'^ran artist to work ! Hitherto he had been forced to borrow his words: now the whole manufacture might be done at home. So young Hook was taken into partnership with his father, at the age of sixteen; and straightway became a preco- cious man, admired of musicians and players, the friends and boon companions of his father. Several of his songs "took" on the stag?, and he became the pet of the green-room. Night after night he hung about the theaters, with the privilege of admission before the curtain and behind it. Popular actors laughed at his jokes, and pretty actresses would have their bouquets handed to them by nobody but Theodore. An effort was made by his brother— then advancing in the Church — to have the youth r?niovc'd from this atmosphere of dissipation and frivolity; and, at his urgent remonstrance, Theodore was enter- ed a student at Oxford. But he carried his spirit of rebellious frolic with him. When the Vice-Chancellor, noticing his boyish appear- ance, said, "You seem very young, sir; are you prepared to sign the Thirty-nine Articles ?" **0 yes, sir," briskly answered Theodore, — ** quite ready,— for^V, if you please !" The dignitary shut the book; the brother apologized, the boy looked contrite, the articles were duly signed, and the young scape-grace matriculated at Alma Mtiter. He was not yet to reside at Oxford,liowfiver, but returned to Lon- doa to go through a }>rescribed course of readitig. Under his father's eye, however, no serious study could go fonvard; besides, the youth's head was full of farce. At sixteen, he began to write vaudevilles for the stafT^ the music adapted to which was supplied by his father. These trifles succeeded, and the clever boy became a great- er green-room pet man ever. He thus made the acquaintance of Mathews an I Listen, for whom he wrote farces. Hook was not over particular about the sources from whence he cribbed his "])oints;" THEODOllE HOOK. 1 G<) borrowing unscrupulously from all quarters. In the course of four years, he wrote more than ten plays, which had a considerable run at the time, though they are now all but forgotten. Two of them have, nevertheless, been recently revived, namely, "Exchange no Robbery," and "Killing no Murder." Had he gone on writing plays, he would certainly have established a reputation as a first- rate farce-writer. But, in his volatile humor, he must needs try novels; and forthwith, at twenty years old, he wrote * ' Musgrave," — a novel of ridiculous sentimentality, but sparkling and clever: yet it was a failure. About the same time, his life was a succession of boisterous buffooneries, of which his *' Gilbert Gurney" may be regarded as a pretty faithful record. Unquestionably, Hook wrote that novel chieily from personal recollections ; it is virtually his autobiography ; and in his diary when speaking of its progress, he uses the words, "working at my life." Hook often used to tell the story — which he gives in detail in " Gilbert Gurney " — of Mathews and himself, when one day rowing to liichmond, being suddenly smitten by the sight of a placard at the foot of a Barnes garden. — ''No body permitted io land here — Offen- dei's prosecuted with the idnwst rigor of the Laic.'" The pair instantly disembarked on the forbidden paradise; the fishing-line was conver- ted into a surveyor's measuring-tape; the wags paced to and fro on the beautiful lawn, — Hook, the surveyor, with his book and pencil in hand,— Mathews the clerk, with the cord and walking-stick, both soon pinned into the exquisite turf. Then suddenly opened the parlor-window of the mansion above, and forth stepped, in bluster- ing ire, a napkined alderman, who advanced with what haste he could against the intruders on his paradise. The comedians stood cool, and scarcely condescended to reply to his indignant inquiries. At length oozed out the gradual announcement of their being the agents of a New Canal Company, settling where the new cut was to cross the old gentleman's pleasure-ground. Their regret was ex- treme at having ** to perform so disagreeable a duty," but public in- terests must be regarded. Then came the alderman's suggestion that the pair had better "walk in and talk the matter over;" their reluctant acquiescence, — "had only a quarter of an hour to spare, — feared that it was of no use" their endeavoring to avoid the beau- tiful spot, — the new cut must come through the grounds. However, in they went; the turkey was just served, an excellent dinner fol- lowed, washed down with madeira, champagne, claret, and so on. At length the good fare produced its effect,— the projected branch of the canal was reconsidered, — the city knight's arguments were ac- knowledged to be more and more weighty. " Really," says the alder- man, "this cut must be given up; but one bottle more, dear gentle- men." ^ At last when it was getting dark — they were eight miles from Westminster Bridge— Hook burst out into song, and narrated in ex- tempore verse th^ whole transaction, winding up with — 170 BRIEF BIOGBAPHIES, And we ^eatly approve of your fare. Your cellar's as pilme as your cook. And tills clerk here is Mathews the player, And my name, sir, is— Theodore Hook 1 " The adventure forms the subject of a capital chapter in "Gilbert Gurney," which many of our readers may have read. But the maddest of Hook's tricks was that known as the "Bemers Street Hoax," which happened in 1809, as follows: Walking down Berners Street, one day, Hook's companion (probably Mathews) called his attention to*^ a particularly neat and modest house, the residence — as was inferred from the door-plate -of some decent shop- keeper's widow. "I'll lay you a guiniMi," said Theodore, "that in one week that nice quiet dwelling shall be tho most famous in all London." The bet was taken, and in the course of four or five days. Hook had written and posted ojie thousand letters, an- nexing orders to tradesmen of every sort within the bills of mar- tality, all to be executed on one particular day, and as nearly as pos- sible at one fixed hour. From ' ' wagons of coals and potatoes, to books, prints, feathers, ices, jellies, and cranberry tarts," nothinp:in any way whatever available to any humnn being but was commanded from scores of rival dealers, scattered all over the city, from Wapping to Lambeth, from Whitechapel to Paddington. It can only be feebly imagined what the crash and jam and tumult of that day was. Hook had provided himself with a lodging nearly opposite tho fated house, where, with a couple of trusty allies, he watched the progress of the melodrama. The mayor and his chaplain arrived, — invited there to take the death-bed confession of a peculating com- mon-councilman. There also came the Governor of the Bank, the Chairman of the East India Company, the Lord Chief Justice, and the Prime Minister, — above all, there came his Grace the Archbishop cf Canterbury, and His Royal Highness 'the Com- mander-in-Chief. These all obeyed the summons, for every pious and patriotic feeling had been most movingly appealed to. They could not all reach Berners Street, however, — the avenues leading to it being jammed up with drays, carts, and carriages, all pressing on to the solitary widow's house; but certainly the Duke of York's military punctuality and crimson liveries brought him to tho point of attack before the poor woman's astonishment had risen to terror and despair. Most fierce were the growlings of doctors and sur- geons, scores of whom had been cheated of valuable hours. Attor- neys, teachers of every kind, male and female, hair-dressers, tailors, popular preachers, Parliamentary philanthropists, had been alike victimized. There was an awful smashing of glass, china, harpsi- chords, and coach-panels. Many a horse fell, never to rise again. Beer-barrels and wine-barrels were overturned and exhausted with impunity amidst the press of countless multitudes. It was a great day for the pickpockets: and a great godsend to the newspapers. THEODOUE PIOOK. 171 Then arose many a fervent hue and cry for the detection of the wholesale deceiver and destroyer. Though in Hook's own theatrical world he was instantly suspected, no sign escaped either him or hia confidants. He found it convenient to be laid up a week or two by a severe fit of illness, and then promoted reoonvalescence by a few weeks' country tour. He revisited Oxford, and professed an inten- tion of commencing his residence there. But the storm blew over, and Hook returned with tranquillity to the green-room. This was followed by other tricks and hoaxes,, in one of which he made Romeo Coates his victim. These may be found detailed at some length in " Gilbert Gurney," and in Mrs. Mathews's Memoirs of her husband, who was usually Hook's accomplice in such kinds of mis- chief. One of Hook's extraordinary talents— which amounted in him to almost a genius — was his gift of singing, improvised songs on the spur of the moment, while under the influence of excited convivial feelings. He would sit down to the piano-forte, and, quite unhesi- tatingly, compose a verse upon every person in the room, full of the most pointed wit, and with the truest rhyme, gathering up, as he proceeded, every incident of the evening, and working up the whole into ft brilliant song. He would often, like John Parry, sport with operatic measures, in which he would triumph over every variety of meter and complication of stanza. But John Parry's exhibitions are carefully studied, whereas Hook's happiest effects were spon- taneous and unpremeditated. The effect he produced on such occasions was almost marvelous. Sheridan frequently witnessed these exhibitions, and declared that he could not have believed such power possible, had he not witnessed it. Of course, Hook was usually stimulated by wine or punch when he ventured on such ex- ploits; and it is recorded, that during one of his songs, at which Coleridge was present, every pane in the room window was riddled by the glasses flung through them by the guests, the host crowning the bacchanalian riot by demolishing the chandelier with his goblet. Hook's fame as a wit, a jester, a talker, and an improvisatore singer, shortly reached aristocratic circles; and he was invited to their houses to make sport for them. Sheridan mentioned him to the Marchioness of Hertford as a most amusing fellow, and he was shortly after called upon to display his musical and metrical facility in her ladyship's presence; which he did. He was called, in like manner, to minister to the amusement of the Sybarite Prince Regent at a supper in Manchester Square, and he so delighted his Royal Highness, that, on leaving the room, he said, ** Mr. Hook I must see you and hear you again." Hook was only too glad to play merry- andrew to the Prince; and, after a few similar evenings, his Royal Highness was so good as to make inquiry about Hook's position, when, finding he was without a profession or fixed income of any sort, he signified his opinion that "something must be done for 172 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. Hook/' As the -word of the Prince was equivalent to a law, and quiet jobs were easily done in those days, Hook's promotion fol- - lowed as a matter of course. Ho was almost immediately after ap- pointed Accountant-General and Treasurer to tlie Colony of tlie il.iuritiuB, with an income of £2,000 a year. Hook had no knowl- edge of accounts; but he had the Prince Kegent's good word, and that was enough. He stayed five years in the Mauritius, paying no attention to the duties of his office, living in great style, a leading man on the turf, the very prince of Mauritian hospitality. But it canio to a sad end. In March, 1818, Hook was arrested, while sup- ping at a friend's house, and dragged, by torchlight, through crowded streets, to the common prison of the town, on a charge of embezzling the public moneys in the colonial treasury to a largo amount ! From thence he was conveyed to England, tried before the law officers of the crown, and brought in as defaulter to the ex- tent of £12,0o0. This debt he never paid; though his earninp;s by his pen, for many years after, were very large. Into the merits of the case against Hook we shall not here enter; but as the govern- ment which brought him to book was friendly to him, and under the influences of many of his personal friends, we must presume the fluirges to have been well founded. The most favorable view of is case that can be taken is this: that 5o»?ie5od!/ embezzled the >ionial moneys; but as Hook had no knowledge of accounts, and ircly took any concern in the treasury business, spending his 2,000 a vear in the manner of a gentlemanly sinecurist, the colonial lands were ** mumbled away," and Hook, being the responsible party, was saddled with the blame. On reaching London again, to wait the issue of the government in- vestigation, he was set at liberty, on the Attorney-Gerieral's report. lUat there was no api)nrent ground for a criminal procedure; and the case was treated as one of defalcation and civil prosecution only. In order to live in the meanwhile, Hook had recourse to his ever- ready pen. First, he wrote for magazines and newspapers; then he tried a shilling magazine, called The Arcadian, of which only a f . w numbers were issued, when the publisher lost heart In 1820, Sir Walter Scott accidentally met Hook at a dinner-party at Daniel Terry's, and was delighted, as everybody could not help being, with Hook's brilliant conversation. Hook, notwithstanding the affair of his colonial defalcations, and the prosecution of him by the Audit Board, still held his **good old Tory '* views of politics; and grate- fully remembered his personal obligations to the Prince llegent, now the reigning monarch. He was consequently violently opposed to the pretensions and partisans of Queen Caroline. The strong color of his politics induced Scott to mention Hook to a gentleman who shortly after applied to him to recommend an editor for a newspaper about to be established. To this circumstance his con- nection with the famous •* John Bull" is probably to oe attributed. THEOBOEE KOOH. 173" At all events, the Jolm Bull shortly after came out, with Hook for its editor. But he preserved his incognito carefully for many years; which was the more necessary in consequence of the thick cloud which still hung over his moral character in connection with his colonial affair. Hook threw himself with great fury into the ranks of the Georgites, and published many violent squibs against Queen Caroline and her friends, which excited a storm of popular indig- nation. The John Bull was generally admitted to be the most powerful, unscrupulous, and violent advocate of the king's cause; whether it was the better for the advocacy, we shall not here venture to determine. The paper was well supported with money, — as was surmised, from ** headquarters;** and for some years Hook's in- come from the John Bull alone, amounted to as much as £2,000 a year. At length it began to ooze out that Hook was the editor of the John Bull. Though furnishing nearly the whole of the articles and squibs which appeared in it, he at once indignantly denied the imputation in a letter, **the editor," in which he disclaimed and disavowed all connection with the paper. But, by slow degrees, the truth came out and at last all was known. The John Bull was de- nounced by many as a reckless," "venomous," ** malignant," "lying " publication; and by others it was defended as a "spirited," "courageous," "loyal," and "admirable" defender of the church, crown, and constitution. In 1823 Hook was arrested for the sum of £12,000, which the authorities had finally decided that he stood indebted to the pub- lic exchequer. He was then confined in a sheriffs house in Shire Lane, — a miserable, squalid neighborhood. He remained there for several months, during which his health seriously suffered. While shut up in Shire Lane he made the acquaintance of Dr. William Maginn, who had recently comBOver from Ireland, a liter- ary adventurer, but had fallen into the sheriff's officer's ciistody. It was a lucky meeting for both, however, as Maginn j) roved of great assistance to Hook, in furnishing the requisite amount of " spicy" copy for the columns of the John Bull. Hook was transferred to the rules of the King's Bench, where he remained for a year, and afterwards succeeded in getting liberated ; but was told distinctly that the debt must hang over him until every farthing was paid. He then took a cottage at Putney, and re-entered society again. He had for companion here a young woman whom he ought to have married ; that he did not — that he left upon the heads of his innocent offspring by her a stigma and a stain in the eyes of the Vv^orld — vras only, we regret to say, too much in keeping with the character and career of the reckless, unscrupulous, and feeble-conscienced Theo- dore Hook. While living in his apartments at Temple Place, wiihin the rules of the King's J3ench, Hook had begun his career as a novelist. His first series of " Sayings and Doings" was very successful, and yield- 174 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. ed'.him a profit "of £2,000. JThe second and third series were equally Buccessful. His other novels, entitled "Maxwell," **The Parson's Daughter," "Love and Pride, " were also successful, and paid him well. In 1836 he became the editor of the New Monthly Maga- zine, in which he published "Gilbert Gurney " (perhaps the raciest of all his novels, being chiefly drawn from his own personal expe- riences), and afterwards " Gurney Married," ** Jack Brag," "Births, Deaths, and Marriages," ** Precepts and Practice, "and " Fathers and Sons." These were all collected and republished afterwards in sep- arate forms. The number of these works, — thirty-eight volumes, — which he wrote within sixteen years, at the time when he was editor and almost sole writer for a newspaper, and for several years the conductor of a Magazine, argue a by no means idle disposition. Indeed, Hook worked very hard; the pity is that he worked to so little purpose, and tJiat he squandered the money with which he ought to have paid his debts (and he himself admitted that he was in justice responsible for £9,000) in vying with fashionable people to keep up appearances, and live a worthless life of dissipation, frivolity, and burlesque "bon ton." For many years Hook must have been earning from £4,000 to £5,000 a year by his pen, and yet he was always poor ! How did he spend his earnings ? JiCt the ifriend who has written the sketch of him in the Quarterly Review explain the secret: "In 1827 (after leaving his house at Putney) he took a higher flight. He became the tenant of a house in Cleveland Row, — on the edge, therefore, of what, in one of his novels, he describes as the •real London, — the space between Pall Mall on the south, and Pic- cadilly on the north, St. James's Street on the west, and the Opera House to the east.* The residence was handsome, and, to persotis ignorant of his domestic arrangements, appeared extravagantly too large for his purpose; we have since heard of it as inhabited by a nobleman of distinction. He was admitted a member of diverse clubs; shone the first attraction of their House dinners; and, in such as allowed of play, he might commonly be seen in the course of his protracted evening. Presently he began to receive invitations to great houses in the country, and, for week after week, often traveled ifrom one to another such scene, to all outward appearance in the style of an idler of high condition. In a word, he had soon entangled himself with habits and connections which implied much curtailment of the time for labor at the desk, and a course of expenditure more than sufficient to swallow all the profits of what remained. To the upper world he was visible solely as the jocund convivialist of the club, — the brilliant wit of the lordly banquet, — the lion of the crowded as- Bombly,— the star of a Christmas or Easter ])arty in a rural palace,— the unfailing stage-manager, prompter, author, and occasionally ex- cellent comic actor, of the private theatricals, atwhiclj noble guards- men were the valets, and lovely peeresses the soubrettes." I theodoue hook. 17s Thus did the brilliant Hook flutter like a dazzled moth around the burning taper of aristocracy, scorching his wings, and at length sinking destroj'^ed by the seductive blaze, when he was at once swept away as some unsightly object. It was a feverish, miserable, unhealthy life, with scarcely a re- deeming feature in it. To make up for the time devoted by him to the amusement of aristocratic circles, and to raise the money wherewithal to carry on this brilliant dissipation, as well as to relieve himself of the pressure of his more urgent pecuniary embar- rassments. Hook worked day and night when at his own house, often under the influence of stimulants, and thus increased the nervous agonies of a frame prematurely "wasted and exhausted. Meanwhile he was pressed by his publisher, into whose debt he had fallen ; and publishers, in such a case, are exacting, like everybody else in similar circumstances. Debts — debts — forever debts — accum- ulated about Hook, each debt a grinning phantom, mocking at hiui even in the midst of his gayest pleasures. * 'Little did his fine friends know at what tear and wear.of life he was devoting his even- ings to their amusement. The ministrants of pleasure with whom they measured him were almost all as idle as themselves, — elegant, accomplished men, easy in circumstances, with ] eisure at command, who drove to the rendezvous after a morning divided between vol- uptuous lounging in a library chair and healthful exercise out of doors. But he came forth, at hest^ from a long day of labor at hLi writing-desk, after his faculties had been kept on the stretch, — feel- ing, passion, thought, fancy, excitable nerves, suicidal brain, all worked, perhaps well-nigh exhausted, — compelled, since he came at all, to disappoint by silence, or to eeek the support of tempting stimulants in his new career of exertion. And we may guess what must have been the effect on his mind of the consciousness, while seated among the revelers of a princely saloon, that next morning must be, not given to the mere toil of the pen, but divided between scenes in the back- shops of three or four eager, irritated booksell- ers, and weary prowlings through the dens of city usurers for the means of discounting this long bill,* staving off that attorney's threat; not less commonly — even more urgqptly — of liquidating a debt of honor to the grandee, or some of the smiling satellites of his pomp. ** There is recorded (in his diary) in more than usual detail, one winter visit at the seat of a nobleman of almost unequaled wealth (Marquis of Hertford ?), evidently particularly fond of Hook, and always mentioned in terms of real gratitude, — even affection. Hero was adarge company, including some of the very highest names in England; the party seem to have remained together for more than a fortnight, or, if one went, the place was filled immediately by another not less distinguished by the advantages of birth and for- tune ; Hook's is the only untitled name, except a led captain and cliapiain or twa, and some miss«s of musical celebrity. What 176 BKIEF BIOGKAPHIES. a struggle lie lias to maintain ! Every Thursday he mn^.t meet tlio printer of the John Bull to arrange the paper for Saturday 'b im- pression. While the rest are shooting or hunting, he clears his head as well as he can, and steals a few hours to write his articles. When they go to bed on Wednesday night, he smuggles himself into a post-chaise, and is carried fifty miles across the country, to some appointed Blue Boar, or Crooked Billet. Thursday morning is spent in overhauling correspondence,— in all the details of the editorship. He, with hard driving, gets back to the neighborhood of the castle when the dressing-bell is ringing. Mr. Hook's servant has intimated that his master is slightly indisposed; he enters the gate as if from a short walk in the wood ; in half an hour, behold him answering placidly the inquiries of the ladies, — his headache fortunately gone at last, -^quite ready for the turtle and champagne, — puns rattle like a hail-shower, — *that dear Theodore' had never been more brilliant. At a decorous hour the great lord and his graver guests retire; it is supposed that the evening is over, — that the house is shut up. But Hook is qu;irtered in a long bach- elor's gallery, with half-a-dozen bachi lors of far different cali- ber. One of them, a dashing young earl, proposes what tlio diary calls 'something comfortable* in his dressing-room. Hook, after his sleepless night and busy day, hesitates, — but is ])er- Buaded. The broiled bones are attended by more champagntj, Roman punch, hot brandy and water, finally; for there are plenty of butlers and grooms of the chamber ready to minister to the de- lights of the distant gallery, ever productive of fees to man and maid. The end is, that they play deep, and that Theodore loses a great deal more money than what he had brought with him from town, or knows how to come at if he were there. But he rise:, next morning with a swimming, bewildered head, and, as the fumes disperse, perceives that he must write instantly for money. No difficulty is to be made; the fashionable tailor (alias, merciless Jew) to whom he discloses the case, must on any terms remit a hundred pounds by return of post. It is accomplished, — the debt is discharged. Thursday comes found again, and again he escapes to meet the printer. This time the printer brings a payment of salary with him, and Hook drives back to the castle in great glee. Exactly the same scene occurs a night or two afterward. The salary all gees. When the time comes for him at last to leave his splendid friend, he finds that he has lost a fortnight as respects a book that must be finished within a month or six weeks; and that what with traveling expenses hither and thither (he has to defray the printer's, too), and losses at play to silken coxcombs, — who considered him an admira- ble jack-pudding, and also as an invaluable pigeon, since he drains his glass as well as fills it, — he has throvm away more money than he could have earned by the labor of three months in his own room at Fulham. But then the rumble of the green chariot is seen vreil- THEODOKE HOOIL 177 stocked with pheasants and hares, as it pauses in passing through town at Crockford's, the Carlton, or the Athensenm ; and as often as the Morning Post alluded to the nobler peers Christmas court, Mr. Theodore Hook's name closed the paragraph of 'fashionable in- telligence. ' " Bat at last the end of all came, and the poor jester and bon-yiant strutted olf the stage. To the last, even when positively ill, he could not refuse an invitation to dine with titled people. To the last, — padded-up old man,— he tried to be effervescent and gay. Ke died in August, 1841, and the play was ended. SoDie may call such a life as this a tragedy, and a painful one it seems. To look at it now, there appears little genuine mirth in it; the laughter was all hollow. As for the noble and titled friends for whom Hook had made so much merriment during his unhapjjy life, they let him die overburdened with debt, and go to his grave unwept and unattended. They did nothing for his children, — it is true they were such as the respectable world usually disown; and they did not, so far as we know, pla-e a stone over the grave in which their jester was laid to sleep. Notwithstanding Theodore Hook's naturally brilliant powers^ — his sagacity, his humor, his genius, — we fear that the v»^r- diet of 'his survivors and of posterity will be, that here was the life of a greatly gifted man worse than wasted. DR. ANDREW COMBE. THE life of Andrew Combe was qniet and nnostentatious. It was chiefly occupied by the investigations and labors incident to the calling v/hich he had chosen, — that of medicine; — a profession which, when followed successfully, leaves comparatively little leisure for the indulgence of literary tastes. Yet we do not ex- aggerate when we say, that there are few writers who have effected greater practical good, and done more to beneficially affect the moral and physical well-being of mankind, than the subject of this memoir. He was one of the first writers who directed public attention to the subject of physiology, in connection with health and education. There had, indeed, been no want of writers on physiology previous to this time; but they addressed themselves mainly to the professional mind; and their books w^ere, for the most part, no full of technical phrases, that, so far as the public was con- cerned, they might as well have been written in an unknovrn tongue. As Dr. Combe grew up towards manhood, and acquired habits of independent observation, he perceived that the majority of men and women were, for the most part, living in habitual vio- lation of the laws of health, and thus bringing upon them debility, disease, premature decay, and death; not to speak of generations unborn, on whom the penalty of neglect or violation of the physi- ological laws inevitably descends. He conceived the idea of in- structing the people in those laws, in a simple and intelligible manner, and in language divested of technical terms. And there are words enough in the English tongue in which to utter common sense to common people upon such subjects as air, exercise, diet, cleanliness, and so on, as affecting the healthy lives of human beings, without drawing so largely as had been customary upou Greek and Latin terminology for the purpoiie. 17S * i ''"-'' DR. A]sDT^,EW COMBE. 179 Dr. Combe's first book, on " The Principles of Physiology applied to the Preservation of Health, and to the Improvement of Physical and Mental Education," was written in this rational and common- sense style. In that work Dr. Combe appealed to the ordinary, average understandings of men. He explained the laws which regulate the physical life, — the conditions necessary for the healthy action of the various functions of the systt m ; and directed par- ticular attention to those habits and practices which were in viola- tion of the natural laws, pointing out the necessity for amendment in various ways, in a cogent, persuasive, and perspicuous manner. "We remember very well the appearance of the book in question. It excited comparatively small attention at first, — the subject was unusual, and up to that time deemed so unattractive. People were afraid then, as they often are now, to look into their own physical system, and learn something of its working. There is alarm to many minds, in the thought of the heart beating, and the lungs blowing, and the arteries contracting upon their red blood. The consideration of such subjects used formerly to be regarded as strictly professional: and people were for the most part satisfied to leave health, and all that concerned it, to the exclusive charge of "the doctors." And, truth to say, medical men were disposed to regard the publication of Dr. Combe's "Physiology*' as somewhat "infra dig. ; for it looked like a revealing of the secrets of the pro- fession before the eyes of the general public. But all such feeling has long since disappeared, and medical men now find that they have in the readers of good works on popular physiology mors in- telligent patients to deal with, — more able to co-operate with them in their attempts to subdue disease and restore the bodily functions to health, — than when they have mere blank ignorance and blind prejudice to encounter. Where there is not sound information, there will always be found prejudice enough, — the most difficult of all things to contend against. It is not improbable, also, that to the growing popular knowledge of physiological conditions we are, in a great measure, to attribute the improvement in the medical profession which has taken place of late years. For medical men are the better for knowing that, in order to make good their influence and to advance as a profession, they must keep well ahead of the intelligence of their employers. Everybody knows that questions of health, — as affecting the sanitary condition of towns, — are among the leading questions of this day; and we cannot help attributing much of the active concern which now exists among legislators, philanthropists, and all public-spirited men, for the improvement of the physical condition of the people, to the impulse given to the subject by the publication of Dr. Combe's admirable books. Dr. Combe was himself a serious sufferer through neglect of the laws of physical health; and it was probably this circumstance which .early directed his attention to the subject, and induced him 180 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. .to give it the prominency which he did in nearly all his published . v/orks. Ho was the fifteenth child of respectable parents, living in Edinburgh: his father was a brewer at Livingston's Yards, a suburb of the Old Town, situated nearly under the southwest angle of Edinburgh Castle rock. Seventeen children in all were born to the Combes in that place; but the neighborhood abounded with ofifen- sive pools and ditches, the noxious influence of which (in conjunction with defective ventilation in small or over-crowded sleeping apart- ments) must have been a potent cause of the disease and early mor- tality which prevailed in the family. Very few of the seventeen children grew up to adult years; and although the parents, who were of robust constitution, lived to an old age, those of the chil- dren who survived grew up with feeble constitutions, and, in Andrew's case, containing within them the seeds of serious disease. Kor was the mental discipline of the children of a much healthier land. As an illustration, George Combe, in the life of his brother, recently published, gives the following picture of the Sabbath, as spent in a Scotch family: "The gate of the brewery was locked, and all except the most nocessarj^ work was suspended. The children rose at eight, break- fasted at nine, and were taken to the West .Church at eleven. The forenoon service lasted till one. There was a lunch between one and two. The afternoon's service lasted from two till four. They Ihen dined; and after dinner, portions of the Psalms and of the Shorter Catechism with the 'Proofs* were prescribed to be learned by ]icart. Afte'r these had been repeated, tea was served. Next the children sat round a table and read the Bible aloud, each a verse in turn, till a chapter for every reader had been completed. After this, sermons or other pious works were read till nine o'clock, when supper was served, after which all retired to rest. Jaded and ex- hausted in brain and body as the children were by the performance of heavy tasks at school during six days of the week, these Sundays were no days of rest to them." From a private school, Andrew Combe proceeded to the high Kchool, and then he was placed apprentice to an Edinburgh sur- geon. He was singularly obstinate in connection with his entry upon his profession. Although he had chosen to be **a doctor," when finally asked •* what he would be," his answer in the vernacu- lar Scotch was, "I'll no be naething." He would give no further answer; and after all kinds of "fieechin" and persuading were tried, he at length had to be carried by force out of the house, to begin his professional career. His father and brother George, alter- wards his biographer, with a younger brother, James, performed this remarkable duty. George thus describes the scene. A consultation was now helrl as to what was to be done; and again it was resolved that Andrew should not be allowed to con- quer, seeing that he Btill assigned no reason lor his resistance. DK. ANDREW COMBE, ' 181 He was, therefore, lifted from the ground ; he refused to stand; but his father supported one shoulder, George carried the other, and his younger brother, James, pushed him on behind; and in this fashion he was carried from the house, through the brewery, and sev- eral hundred yards along tho high road, before he placed a foot on the ground. His elder brother John, observing what was passing, anxiously inquired, "What's the matter?'* James replied, "We are taking Andrew to the doctor.*' "To the doctor! what's the matter with him, — is he ill, James ? " " O, not at all, — we are taking him to make him a doctor*" ' At last, Andrew's sense of shame pre- vailed, and he walked quietly. His father and George accompa- nied him to Mr. Johnson's house ; Andrew was introduced and received, and his father left him. George inquired what had passed in Mr. Johnson's presence. "Nothing particular," replied his father; **only my conscience smote me when Mr. Johnson * hoped that Andrew had come quite willingly !* I replied, thati had given hi^ a solemn promise that, if he did not like the profession after a tvial, he should be at liberty to leave it." "Quite right,' said Mr. Johnson; and Andrew was conducted to the laboratory. Andrew returned to Mr. Johnson's the next morning without being asked to do so; and to the day of his death he was fond of his profession. In a touching letter to George, written nearly thirty years after the above event, he thanked him cordially for having been instru- mental in sending him to a liberal j)rofession; and he confesses that he really "wished and meant to be a doctor," notwithstanding his absurd way of showing his willingness. Always ready; as both he and his brother were, to account for everything phrenoiogically, he attributed the resistance on the occasion to wit and secretiveness. "I recollect well," he says in the letter referred to, "that my habit- ual phrase was, *ril no be naething.' This was universally con- strued to mean, *I'll be naething.* The true meaning I had in view was what the words bore. *I will be something^' and the clew to the riddle was, that my wit was tickled at school by the rule that * two negatives make an affirmative,' and I was diverted with the mysti- fication their use and literal truth produced in this instance. In no one instance did mortal man or woman hear me say seriously {if ever) *Tl\ be naething.' All this is as clear to me as of yesterday's occurrence, and the double entendre was a source of internal chuck- ling to me. You may say. Why, then, so unwilling to go to Mr. John^^on's? That is a natural question, and touches upon another feature altogether. I was a dour [stubborn] boy, when not taken in the right way, and for a time nothing would then move me. Once committed, I resolved not to yield, and hence the laughable extrav- aganza which ensued." At the age of fifteen, Andrew Combe went to live with his elder brother George, who, in 1812, began priicticing as writer to the Signet. This was an advantage to Andrew, in point of health, and 132 BBIEP BIOGRAPHIES. was a convenience to him in attending his place of business, and also the medical lectures in the University. In his letters to his brother, written in alter life, Andrew often referred with regret to the neglect of ventilation, ablution, and bathing, in his father's family; to which he attributed the premature deaths of the greater number, and impaired constitutions of the few who survived. "Our parents," he said in one letter, •* erred from sheer ignorance; but what are we to think of the mechanical and tradesman-like views of a medical man who could see all the causes of disease ex- isting, and producing these results year after year, without its ever occurring to him that it was part of his solemn duty to warn his employers, and try to remedy the evil? All parties were anxious to cure the disease, but no one sought to remove its cause; and yet so entirely were the causes within the control of reason and knowl- edge, that my conviction has long been complete, that, if we had been properly treated from infancy, we should, even with the con- stitutions we possessed at birth, have survived in health and active usefulness to a good old age, unless cut off by some acute disease." But nearly all medical men were alike empirical in those days. They merely attacked the symptoms which presented themselves; and when these were overcome, their task was accomplished. That medical men are now so careful in directing their measures toward the prevention as well as the cure of disease, we have to thank Dr. Combe, Edwin Chadwick, and other popular writers and laborers in the cause of public health. At the early age of nineteen, Andrew Combe passed at Surgeons* Hall. He used afterwards to say, that it would have better for him had he been then only commencing his studies. Shortly iifter, Dr. Spurzheim, the phrenologist, visited Edinburgh, and attracted many ardent admirers, of whom George Combe, then a young man, short- ly became one. Andrew, like most of the medical men of the day, was at first disposed to laugh at the new science; but before many years had passed, he too became an ardent disciple of Dr. Spurz- heim. He afterwards attributed much of the improvement of his mind and character to his study of this science, and to the practical application of its principles to his own case. In 1817 he went to Paris, where he studied under Dupuytren, Alibert, Esquirol, Richerand, and other celebrated men. He also cultivated the frendship of Dr. Spurzheim, and pursued his observations and studies in xjhrenology. From Paris he proceeded with a friend on a walking tour through Switzerland and the north of Italy. Disregarding the laws of health, he injured his delicate constitution by exposure, irregular diet, and over-fatigue; and on his return to Edinburgh, shortly after, he was seized with a serious illness, the beginning of long-continued lung disease. He removed for a season to the south of England, and then proceeded to Italy, wintering at Leghorn. There his cough left him, and he regained his health and strength so far as to be t n- I Bit. ANDKEY/ COMBE, 183 abled to practice for a time as a physician among the English in that town and Pisa. Beturning to Edinburgh in 1823, he regularly set- tled down in that city as a medical practitioner. In this profession he was very Buccessfui. His quiet manner, suavity, and kindness, good sense, attention, professional abilities, and gentlemanly demeanor, secured him many friends; and he won them to his heart by his truthful candor, and by the manner in which he sought to obtain their intelligent co-operation in the re- medial measures which he thought proper to employ. He deemed it as much a part of his duty to instruct his patients as to the con- ditions which regulate the healthy action of the bodily organs, as to administer drugs to them for the purpose of curing tiieir immediate ailments. But he found great obstacles in his way, in consequence of the previous ignorance of most people — even those considered well educated — as to the simplest laws which regulate the animal economy. Hence he very early felt the necessity of improving this department of elementary instruction; and with that view he set about composing his works on popular physiology. His first appear- jince as an author was in the pages of the Phrenological Journal, — an excellent periodical now defunct. To the subject of phrenology he devoted considerable attention, and soon became known as one of its ablest defenders. Some of his friends told him that he would injure his professional standing and connection by the prominency of his advocacy of the new views; but he persevered, nevertheless, ♦* firmly trusting in the sustaining power of truth;" and he after- wards found that, instead of bein^ professioiialiy injured, ho was greatly benefited by the labor which he bestowed upon the study and exposition of the science. To phrenology he attributed, in a great measure, the direction of his attention to the subject of hygi- enic principles ; and after his mind had been fairly opened to the importance of those principles, he not only reduced them to practice in his own personal habits, but labored to disseminate a knowledge of them among the public generally. In the midst of the arduous duties of his ^profession. Dr. Combe was more than once under the necessity of leaving home and going abroad for the benefit of his health. Disease had fixed upon his lungs, and he felt that his life could only be preserved by removing to a milder air. He traveled to Paris, to Orleans, to Nantes, to Lyons, to Naples, to Bome, returning rather improved, but with his lungs full of tubercles. For many years his life hung as by a thread, and it was by his careful observance of the laws of health that he was enabled to survive. In his work on ** The Principles of Physiology," speaking of the advantages experienced in his own person of paying implicit obedience to the physiological la\vs, he says: " Had he not been fully aware of the gravity of his own situa- tion, and from previous knowledge of the admirable adaptation of the physiological laws to carry on the machinery of life, disposed to m BRIEF BIOGKAPHIES. place implicit reliance on the snperior advantages of fulfilling them, as the direct dictates of Divine Wisdom, he would never have been able to persevere in the course chalked out for him, with that ready and long-enduring regularity and cheerfulness which have contributed so much to their successful fulfillment and results. And, therefore, he feels himself entitled to call upon those who, impatient at the slowness of their progress, are apt after a time to disregard all restrictions, to take a sounder view of their true position, to make themselves acquainted with the real dictates of the organic laws; and having done so, to yield them full, implicit, and persevering obedience, in the certain assurance that they will reap their reward in renewed health, if recovery be still possible; and if not, that they will thereby obtain more peace of mind ^nd bodily ease than by any other means which they can use.'* • Dr. Combo's first published book was on " Phrenology applied to the Treatment of Insanity." It was given to the world in 1831, and proved very successful, being soon out of print. His second book was on "The Principles of Physiology,'* some chapters of which were first published in the Phrenological Journal. This book was published in 1834. Among the booksellers it was regarded with aversion. It was one of the successful books which booksellers sometimes reject. Tho first edition, of 750 copies, and a second edition, of 1,000 copies, both printed at the author's expense, were sold otf ; when Dr. Combe offered to dispose of the copyright to John Murray, without naming terms. Mr. Murray, and all the other London publishers who were applied to, declined to have anything to do with the purchase of the copyright; and the author W^mt on piiblishing the book at his own expense. We need scarcely say that the book had a great run: about 30,000 copies were sold in England, besides numerous editions in the United States. Although Dr. Combe was enabled at intervals to resume his prac- tice in Edinburgh, he found it necessary to leave it from time to time for the benefits of a Continental residence; until, in 183(3, he was induced to accept the appointment of physician to the King of the Belgians, believing that a residence at Brussels might possibly suit his constitution. But his health again gave way on reaching Brussels, and he was shortly under the necessity of giving up the appointment, — preservincj, however, the honorary office of consult- ing physician to the Belgian Court. During the leisure which the cessation from professional pursuits afibrded him, he prepared his next work, on '-The Physiology of Digestion," another highly sue- ' cessful book. And in 1810 appeared his last work, on *'The Physiological and Moral Management of Infancy." All these books have had a large circulation in England and in America, besides having been translated and circulated largely in Continental coun- tries. In 1841 Dr. Combe was agaia attacked with hsemoptysis, ordis- r DB. ANDREW COMBE, 185 charge of blood from the lungs, and fell into a state of gradual and Bteady decline. As he himself said, *' I believe I am going slowly and pjently down hilV* He continued, however, to live for several years. In 1842 and 1843, he paid two visits to Madeira, and spent* some time in Italy ; and in the two following years he was enabled to travel about, a pallid invalid, taking a deep interest meanwhile in all use- ful public and social movements. His judgment seemed to grow stronger, and Ids insight into men and things clearer, as his bodily powers decayed. On all topics connected with education, as his correspondence shows, he took an especially lively interest. In 1847 he made a voyage to New York, chiefly for the purpose of visi- ting his brother William, who had long been settled in the States; bub the heat of the climate proved too trying for his enfeebled con- stitution, and he almost immediately took ship again for England. The last literary labor in which he occupied himself was thorough- ly characteristic of the man. V/hilein the States, he had b*e:?n sick- ened by the accounts of the ravages which the ship-fever had made among the poor Irish of emigrants, and he determined to bringthe whole^ubject before the public in an article in the Times. Writing to a corn merchant in Liverpool, on his return home, for information as to the regulations of emigrant ships, he said :^ "I have not yet regained either my ordinary health or power of thinking, and, con- sequently, find "writing rather heavy work; but my spirit is moved by the horrible details from Quebec and New York, and I cannot rest iciihoid domg something in the matter.'* The letter in which this pass- age occurred was the last that Dr. Combe wrote. His article had meanwhile been hastily prepared, and it appeared in the Times of the 17th of September, 1847, occupying nearly three columns of that paper. He was interrupted, even while he was writing it, by a severe attack of the diarrhea, from which he died, after a few days' illness, on the 9th of August, 1847. His dying hours were peaceful, and the last words he uttered, when he could scarcely articulate, were, ** Happy, happy !" Such is a brief outline of the life of an eminently useful man, who, without the aid of any brilliant qualities, and merely by the exer- cise of industry, good sense, and well-cultivated moral feelings, was enabled to effect alargeamonnt of good during his lifetime, and bene- ficially to influence the condition of mankind, it may be for genera- tionsto come. ROBERT NICOLL. THE name of Robert Nicoll will always take high rank among the poets of Scotland. He was one of the many illustrious Scotchmen who have risen up to adorn the lot of toil, and re- flect honor on the class from which they have sprung,— the labori- ous and hard-working peasantry of their laud. NicoU, like Burns, was a man of whom those who live in the poor men's huts may well be" proud. They declare, from day to day, that intellect is of no class, but that even in abodes of the deepest poverty there are warm hearts and noble minds, wanting but the opportunity and the cir- cumstances to enable them to take their place as honorable and zealous laborers in the work of human improvement and Christian progress. The life of Robert Nicoll was not one of much variety of incident. It was, alas! brought to an early close; for he died almost ere ho had reached manhood. But in his short allotted span, it is not too much to say, that he lived more than most men have done who- reach their three-score-y ears-and-ten. He was born^of hard-working j God-fearing parents, in the year 1814, at the little Village of TuUie- belton, situated near the foot of the Grampian Hills, in Perthshire. At an early period of his life, his father had rented the small farm of Ordie-braes; but having been unsuccessful in his farming, and falling behind with his rent, his home was broken up by the laird, the farm-stock was sold off by public roup ; and the poor man was reduced to the rank of a common day-laborer. Robert was the second of a family of seven children, six sons and one daughter, the ** sister Margaret" of whem the poet afterward spoke and wrote so affectionately. Out of the bare weekly income of a day-laborer, there was not, as might be inferred, much to spare for schooling. But the mother was an intelligent, active woman, and assiduously devoted herself to the culture of her children. She taught them to read, and gave them daily lessons in the Assem- bly's Catechism; so that before being sent to school, which they all were in due course, this good and prudent mother had laid the foundations in them of a sound moral and religious education, 166 ROBERT NICOLL. 1S7 "My mother,** says Nicoll, in one of his letters, "in her early y.ars, was an ardent book-woman. When she became poor, her time was too precious to admit of its being spent in reading, and I generally read to her while she was working; for she took care that the children should not want education." Robert's subsequent instruction at school included the common branches of reading, writing, and accounts; the remainder of his education was his own work. He became a voracious reader, L\y-. ing half the parish under contribution for books. A circulating li- brary was got up in the neighboring village of Auchtergaven ; which ti.e lad managed to connect himself with, and his mind became stored apace. Robert, like the rest of the children, when he became big enough and old enough, was sent out to field-work, to contribute by the aid of his slender gains towards the common store. At seven he was sent to the herding of cattle, an occupation, by the way, in which many distinguished Scotchmen — Burns, James Ferguson, Mungo Park, Dr. Murray (the Orientalist), and James Hogg— spent their early years. In winter Nicoll attended the school with his "fee." When occupied in herding, the boy had always a book for his companion ; and he read going to his work and returning from it. While engaged in this humble vocation he read most of the Waverley novels. At a future period of his life, he says, ** I can yet look back with no common feelings on the wood in which, while herd- ing, I read Kenilworth." Probably the perusal of that beautiful fic- tion never gave a purer pleasure, even in the stately halls of rank and fashion, than it gave the poor herd-boy in the wood at TuUiebelton. When twelve years of ago, Robert was taken from the herding, and went to work in the garden of a neighboring proprietor. Shortly after, when about thirteen, he began to scribble his thoughts, and to string rhymes together. About this time also, as one of his inti- mate friends has told us, he passed through a strange phasis of be- ing. He was in the practice of relating to his companions the most wonderful and incredible stories as facts, — stories that matched the wonders of the Arabian Tales, — and evidencing the inordinate as- cendency at that time of his imagination over the other faculties of mind. The tales and novel literature, which, in common with ail other kinds of books, he devoured with avidity, probably tended to the development of this disease (for such it really seemed to be) in his young and excitable nature. As for the verses which he then wrote, they were not at all such as satisfied himself; for, despairing of ever being able to write the English language correctly, he gath- ered all his papers together and made a bonfire of them, resolving to write no more ** poetry" for the present. He became, however, the local correspondent of a provincial newspaper circulating in the district, furnishing it with weekly paragraphs and scraps of news, on the state of the weather, crops, etc. His return for this 1«S BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. service was an occasional copy of the paper, and the consequence attendant on being the ** correspondent*' of the village. But an- other person was atterwards found more to the liking of the editor of the pa^Der, and Robert, to his chagrin, lost his prohtiess post. Nicoll's next change was an important one to him. He left his native hamlet and went into the world of active life. At the age ot seventeen he was bound apprentice to a grocer and wine-mercnant in Perth. There he came in contact with business, and activity, and opinion. The time was stirring with agitation. The Reform movement had passedover the face of the country like a tornado, raising millions of minds to action. The exciting eSfects of the agi- tation on the intellects and 8ym[)athies of the youth of that day are still remembered; and few there were who did not feel more or less influenced by them. The excitable mind of Nic jU was one of the first to be influenced; he burned to distinguish himself as a warrior on the people's side; he had longings inhnite after popular enlarge- ment, enfranchisement, and happiness. His thoughts shortly found vent in verse, and ho became a poet. He joined a debating-society, and made speeches. Every spare moment of his time was devoted to self-improvement, — to the study of grammar, to the reading of works on political economy, and to politics in all Iheir forms. In the course of one summer, he several times read through with atten- tion Smith's Wealth of Nations, not improbably with an eye to some future employment on the newspaper press. He also read Milton, Locke, andBentham, and devoured with avidity all other books that he could lay hands on. The debating-society with which he was connected4)roposed to start a periodical, and NicoU undertook to. write a tale for the first number. The periodical did not appear, and the tale was sent to Johnstone's Edinburgh Magazine, where it was published under the title of ** Jessie Ogilvy,"to the no small joy of the writer. It decided Nicoll's vocation,— it determined him to be an author. He proclaimed his Radicalism, — his resolution to "stand by his order,"that of ••themany. His letters to his rela- tives, about this time, are lull of political allusions. He was work- ing very hard, too,— attending in his mistress's shop, from seven in the morning till nine at night, and* afterwards sitting up to read and write ; rising early in the morning, and going forth to the North Inch by five o'clock, to write or to reiip until the hour of shop-opening. At the same time he was living on the poorest possible diet, — literally on bread and cheese, and water, — that he might de- vote every possible farthing of his small gains to the purposes of mental improvement. Few constitutions can stand such intense labor and privation with impunity; and there is little doubt but Nicoll was even then undermining his health, and sowing the seeds of the malady which in BO short a time after was to bring him to his grave. But he was eager to distinguish himself in the field of letters, though but a poor liOBERT NICOLL. 189 stop-lad; and, more, than all, he was ambitions to be independent, and have the means of aiding his mother in her humble exertions for a living; never losing sight of the comfort and welftire of that first and fastest of his friends. At length, however; his health be- came seriously impaired, so much so, that his Perth apprenticeship was abruptly brought to a close, and he was sent home bj his mis- tress to be nursed by his mother at Ordie Braes, — not, however, be- fore he had contributed another Badical story, entitled "The Zin- garo," a poem on **Bessy Bell and Mary Gray," and an article on "The Life and times of John Milton, ' to Johnstone's Edinbur^ji Magazine, xin old friend and schoolfellow, who saw him in the course of his visit to his mother's house, thus speaks of-him at tho time: "iiobert's city life had not spoiled him. His acquaintanca with men and books had improved his mind without chilling hi^^ heart. At this time he was full of joy and hope. A bright literary life stretched before him. His conversation was gay and sparkling, and rushed forth like a stream that flows through flowery summer vales." His health soon became re-established, and he then paid a visit to Edinburgh, during the period of the Grey Festival, -and there met his kind friend Mrs. Johnstone, William Tuit, Robert Chambers, Bobert GilfiUan, and others known in the literary world, by ail of whom he was treated with kindness and hospitality. His search f >r literary employment, however, which was tlie main cause of his visit to Edinburgh, was in vain, and he returned home disappointed, though not hopeless. He was about twenty when he went to Dundee, there to start a email circulating library. The project was not very successful; but while he kept it going, he worked harder than ever at literary im- provement. He now wrote his Lyrics and Poems, which, on their publication, were extremely well received by the press. He also wrote for the liberal newspapers of the town, delivered lectures, made speeches, and extended his knowledge of men and society. In a letter to a friend, written in February, 1836, he says: **No wonder I am busy. -I am at this moment writing poetrj''; I have al- most half a volume of a novel written; I have to attend the meetings of the Kinloch Monument Committe; attend my shop; write some half-dozen articles a week for the Advertiser; and, to crown all, I have fallen in love." At last, however, finding the library to be a losing concern, he made it entirely over to the partner who had en- joined him, and quitted Dundee, with the intention of seeking out some literary employment by which he might live. The Dundee speculation had involved Nicoll, and through him his mother, in debt, though to only a small amount. This debt weighed heavily on his mind, and he thus opened his heart in a highly characteristic letter to his parent about it; ** This money of M's [a friend who had lent him a few pounds to commence business with] lt)0 BRIEF BIOGRAPmES. haugs like a millstone about my neck. If I had it paid, I would never borrow again from mortal man. But do not mistake me, mother; I am not one of those men who faint and falter in the great battle of life. God has given me too strong a heart for that. I look upon earth as a place where every man is set to struggle, and to work, that he may be made humble and pure-hearted, and fit for ttiat better land for which earth is a preparation, — to which earth is the gate. Cowardly is that man who bows before the storm of life, — who runs not the needful race manfull}^ and with a cheerful heart. If men would but consider how little of real evil there is in all the ills of which they are so much afraid, — poverty included, — there would be more virtue and happiness, and less world and mammon worship on earth than there is. I think, mother, that to me Las been given talent; and if so, that talent was given to make it useful to man. To man it cannot be made a source of happiness unless it be cultivated; and cultivated it cannot be unless, I think, little [here some words are obliterated]; and much and well of purifying and enlightening the soul. This is my philosophy ; and its motto is, Despair, thy name Is written on The roll of common men. Half the unhappiness of life springs from looking back to 'griefs which are past, and forward with fear to the future. That is not my way. I am determined never to bend to the storm that is coming, and never to look back on it after it has passed. Fear not for me, dear mother.; for I feel myself daily growing firmer, and more hope- ful in spirit. 'I'he more I think and reflect,— and thinking, instead of reading is now my occupation, — I feel that, whether I be growing richer or not, I am growing a wiser man, which is far better. Pain, poverty, and all the other wild beasts of life which so affright others, I am BO bold as to think I could look in the face without shrinking, without losing respect for myself, faith in man's high destinies, and trust in God. There is a point which it costs much mental toil and struggling to gain, but which, when once gained, a man can look down from, as a traveler from a lofty mountain, on storms raging below, while he is walking in sunshine. That I have yet gained this point in life, I will not say, but I feel myself daily nearer it." About the end of the year 1836, NicoU succeeded, through the kind assistance of Mr. Tait, of Edinburgh, in obtaining an appoint- ment as editor of an English newspaper, the Leeds Times. This was the kind of occupation for which he had longed; and he entered upon the arduous labors of his office with great spirit. During his year and a half of editorship his mind seemed to be on fire; and on the occasion of a Parliamentary contest in the town in which the paper was published, he wrote in a style which to some seemed borde'ring on frenzy. He neither gave nor took quarter* The man KOBEET NICOLL. 191 ^ho went not so far aa he did in political opinion was regarded by him as an enemy, and denounced accordingly. He dealt about his blows with almost savage violence. This novel and daring style, however, attracted attention to the paper, and its circulation rapidly increased, sometimes at the rate of two or three hundred a week. One can scarcely believe that the tender-hearted poet and the fierce political partisan were one and the same person, or that he who had so touchingly written I dare not scorn the meanest thing That on the earth doth crawl should have held up his political opponents, in the words of another poet, To grinning" scorn a sacrifice. And endless Infamy. But such inconsistencies are, we believe, reconcilable in the men- tal histories of ardent and impetuous men. Doubtless, had NicoU lived, we should have found his sympathies becoming more enlarged, and embracing other classes besides those of only one form of polit- ical creed. One of his friends once asked him why, like Elliott, he did not write political poetry. His reply was ho could not : when writing politics, he could be as wildsiS he chose; he felt a vehement desire, a feeling amounting almost to a wish, for vengeance upon the oppressor; but when he turned to poetry, a softening influence came over him, and he could be bitter no longer. His literary labors while in Leeds were enormous. He was not satisfied with writing from four to five columns weekly for the paper; but he was engaged at the same time in writing a long poem, a novel, and in furnishing leading articles for a new Sheffield news- paper. In the midst of this tremendous labor, he found time to go down to Dundee to get married to the young woman with whom he had fallen in love. The comfort of his home was thus increased, though his labors continued as before. They soon told upon his health. The clear and ruddy complexion of the youth grew pallid; the erect, manly gait became stooping; the firm step faltered; the lustrous eye dimmed; and health gave place to debility: the worm of disease was already at his heart and gnawing away his vitals. His cough, which had never entirely left him since his illness, brought on by self-imposed privation and study while at Perth, again ap- peared in an ag^avated form; his breath grew short and thick; his cheeks became shrunken ; and the hectic flush which rarely deceives, soon made its appearance. He appeared as if suddenly to grow old ; his shoulders became contracted; he appeared to wither up, and the sap of life to shrink from his veins. Need we detail the melancholy progress of a disease which is, in this country, the annual fate of thousands? 192 BiUEF BIOGPtAPBIES. As NicoU's illness increased, he expressed an anxious desire to see Ills mother, and she was informed of it accordingly. She was very poor, and little able to afford an expensive journey to Yorkshire by coach; nevertheless she contrived to pay the visit to her son. After- wards, when a friend inquired how she had been able to incur the expense, as poor Robert was in no condition to assist her even to the extent of the coach fare, her simple but noble reply was, ** Indeed, Mr. , I shore for the siller." The true woman, worthy mother 3f so worthy a son, earned as a reaper the means of honestly and in- dependently fulfilling her boy's dying wish, and the ardent desire of her own loving heart. So soon as she set eyes on him on her arrival at Leeds, she felt at once that his days were numbered. It almost seemed as if, while the body of the poet decayed, his mind grew more active and excitable, and tliat, as the physical powers become more weakened, his sense of sympathy became more keen. .When he engaged in conversation upon a subject which he loved, — upon human progress, the amelioration of the lot of the poor, the emancipation of mind, — he seemed as one inspired. Usually quiet and reserved, he would on such occasions work himself into a state of the greatest excitement. His breast heaved, his whole frame was agitated, and while bespoke, his large lustrous eyes beamed with unwonted fire. His wife feared such outbursts, which were followed by sleepless nights and the aggravation of his complaint. Throughout the whole progress of his disease, down to the time when he left Leeds. NicoU did not fail to produce his usual weekly quota of literary labor. They little know, who have not learned from experience, what pains and anxieties, what sorrows and cares, lie hid under the columns of a daily or weekly newspaper. No galley-slave at the oar tugs harder for life than the man who writes in newspapers for the indiKpensable of daily bread. The press is ever at his heels, crying, *• Give, give ! " and well or ill, gay or sad, the editor must supply the usual complement of ** leading article.'* The last articles poor Nicoll wrote for the paper were prepared whilst he sat up in bed, propped about by pillows. A friend en- tered justas he had finished them, andfoundhim in a state of high excitement; the veins on his forehead were turgid and his eyes bloodshot; his whole frame quivered, and the perspiration streamed from him. He had produced a pile of blotted and blurred manu- script, written in his usual energetic manner. It was immediately after sent to press. These were the last leaders he wrote. They were shortly after followed by a short address to the readers of the paper, in which he took a short but affectionate farewell of them, stating that he went •* to try the effect of his native air, as a last chance for life." AIniost at the moment of his departure from Leeds, an incident occurred which must have been exceedingly aff^^eiing to Nicoll, as EGBERT NICOLL. 193 it was to those who witnessed it. Ebenezer Elliott, the ** Corn-Law Rhymer," who entertained an enthusiastic admiration for the young poet, had gone over from Sheffield to deliver a short course of tec- ttires to the Leeds Literary institution, and promised himself the pleasure of a kindly interview with Robert NicoU. On inquiring about him, after the delivery of his first lecture, ho was distressed to learn the Bad state to which he was reduced. **No words," saj'-s Elliott, in his letter to the writer of this memoir, "can express the pain I felt when informed, on my return to my inn, that he was dy- ing, and that if I would see him I must reach his dwelling before eight o'clock next morning, at which hour he would depart by rail- way for Edinburgh, in the hope that his native air might restore him. I was five minutes too late to see him at his house, but I followed him to the station, where about a minute before the train started he was pointed out to me in one of the carriages, seated, I believe, between his wife and his mother. I stood on the step of the carriage and told him my name. He gasped — they all three wept; but I heard not his voice." The invalid reached Newhaven, near Leith, sick, exhausted, dis- tressed, and dying. Ho was received under the hospitable roof of Mrs. Johnstone, his early friend, who tended him as if he had been her ov/n child. Other friends gathered around him, and contrib- uted to smooth his dying couch. It was not the least of NicoU's distresses, that towards his latter end he was tort,ured by the hor- rors of destitution; not so much for himself as for those who were dependent on him for their daily bread. A generous gift of £50 was forwarded by Sir William Molesworth, but Nicoil did not live to enjoy the bounty; in a few days after, he breathed his last in the arms of his wife. The remains of Robert Nicoil rest in a narrow spot in Newhaven churchyard. No stone marks his resting-place ; only a small green mound that has been watered by the tears of the loved he has left behind him. On that spot the eye of God dwells ; and around the precincts of the poet's grave, the memories of friends still hover with a fond and melancholy regret. Robert Nicoil was no ordinary man; Ebenezer Elliott has said of him, *' Burns at hi^i age had done nothing like him." His poetry is the very soul of pathos, tenderness, and sublimity. We might al- most style him the Scottish Keats; though he was much more real and lifelike, and more definite in his aims and purposes, than Eeats was. There is a truthful earnestness in the poetry of Nicoil, which CO »ies home to the universal heart. Especially does he give utter- ance to that deep poetry which lives in the heart, and murmurs in the lot of the poor man. He knew and felt it all, and found for it a voice in his exquisite Uvrics. These have truth written on their very front;— as Nicoil said truly to a friend, "I have written my heart in my poems; and rude, unfinished, and hasty as they are, it can be read there." BIOGBAPH1E3 7 194 BHIEF BIOGRAPHIES. "We ape lowly,*' "The Ha' Bible," "The Hero," " The Bursting of the Chain," "I dare not scorn," and numerous other pieces which might be named, are inferior to few things of their kind in the English language. "The Ha* Bible " is perhaps not unworthy to take rank with "The Cotter's Saturday Night" of Robert Burns. Itis as follows : THE HA' BIBLB. Clilef of the Household Gods Which hallow Scotland's lowly cottage homes I While looking on thy signs, I'hat speak, though dumb, deep thought upon me cornea,— With glad yet solemu dreams my heart is stirred, Like Childhood's when it hears the carol of a bird I The Mountains old and hoar,— The chalnless Winds,— the Streams so pure and tree,— The (iod-enameled nowers,— The waving forest,— the eternal Sea,— The Eagle floating o'er the mountain's brow,— Are Teachers all ; but oh ! they are not such as thou 1 O, I could worship thee I Thou art a gift a God of love might give ; For Love and Hope and Joy In thy Almighty-written pages live!— The Slave who reads shall never crouch again ; For, mind-inspired by thee, he bursts his feeble chain t God I Tnto Thee I kneel. And thank Thee I 1 hou unto my native land- Yea, to the outspread Earth— Hast stretched in love Thy Everlasting hand. And Thou hast given Eart^ and Sea and Air,— Yea, all that heart can ask of Good and Pure and Fair I And, Father, Thou hast spread Betore men's eyes tlils c'harter of the Free, That all Thy Book might read, And Justice love, and Truth and Liberty. The Gift was unto Men,— the Giver God ! [Thou Slavel it stamps thee Man,— go spurn thy weary load. Thou doubly precious Book ! Unto thy light what doth not Scotland owe ?— Thou teachest Age to die, And Youth In Truth unsullied up to grow I In lowly homes a Comforter art thou,— A sunbeam sent from God,— an Everlasting bow I O'er thy broad ample page How many dim and aged eyes have pored? Eow many hearts o'er thee In silence deep and holy have adored 7 How many Mothers, by their Infants' bed Thy Holy, Blessed, Pure, Child-loving words have read I ROBEKT KICOLL. 195 And o'er tliee soft young: hands Have oft in truthful plighted Love been Joined. And thou to wedded hearts Hast been a bond,~an altar of the mind I— Above all kingly power or kinglv law May Scotland reverence aye the Bible of the Ha Ml SARAH MARGARET FULLER. FEW women of her time have created alivey.er interest through- out the literary world than Margaret Fuller, of Boston, iias done. The tragio circumstances connected with her death, which involved at the same time the destruction of her husband and child, have served to deepen that interest; and therefore it istliat the memoirs of her life and labors, edited by Emerson and Ellery Channing, havebeen hailed in England as among the most welcome books which have coma across the Atlantic for many a day. Margaret Fuller had not dono much as a writer; but she had given great promise of what she could do. Her "Woman in the Nine- teenth Century,'* and a collection of papers on Literature and Art, originally published in the American periodical called '*The Dial," with the book entitled ** A Summer on the Lakes," include her principal writings, and even these are of a comparatively frag- mentary character ; it was chiefly through her remarkable gilts of conversation that she was known and admired among her con- temporaries; it was to this that her great influence among them wag attributable ; and, like John Sterling, Charles Pemberton, and others of kindred gifts, the wonder to many who never came within the reach of her personal influence is how to account for the literary reputation she had achieved, upon a basement of writings 80 slender and so incomplete. It was the individual influence, the magnetic attraction, which she exercised over the minds witnin her reach, which accounts for the whole. From early years Margaret Fuller was regarded as a kind of pro- digy. Her father, Mr. Timothy Fuller, who was a lawyer and a representative of Massachusetts in Congress, from 1817 to 1825, devo- ted great pains —far too great pains — to the intellectual culture of the little girl. Her brain was unmercifully taxed, to the serious In- 196 SAEAH MAEGARET FULLER. 197 jury of her health. In after-life she compared herself to the poor changeling, who turned from the door of her adopted home, sat down on a stone, and so pitied herself that she wept. The poor girl was kept up late at her tasks, and went to bed with stimulated brain and nerves, unable to sleep. She was haunted by spectral illusions, nightmares, and horrid dreams; while by day she suQered from headaches, weakness and nervous affections of all kinds. In short, Margaret Fuller had no natural childhood. Her mind did not grow, — it was forced. Thoughts did not come to her, — they were thrust into her. A child should expand in the sun, but this dear little victim was put under a glass frame, and plied with all manner of artificial heat. She was fed, not on "milk for babes," but on the strongest of meat. Thus Margaret Fuller leaped into precocious maturity. She was petted and praised as a "prodigy." She lived among books. — read Latin at six years old, and was early familiar with Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, Then she went on to Greek. At eight years of age de- voured Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Moliere ! Her world was books. A child without toys, without romps, without laughter ; but with abundant nightmare and sick-headaches ! The wonder is, that this monstrously unnatural system of forced intellectual culture did not kill outright! "I. complained of my head," she said -afterwards; •*for a sense of dullness and suffocation, if not pain, was there con- stantly." She had nervous fevers, convulsions, and so on; but she lived through it all, and was plunged into still deeper studies. After a course of boarding-school, she returned home at fifteen to devote herself to Ariosto, Helvetius, Sismondi, Brown's Philosophy, De Stael, Epictetus, Bacine, Castilian Ballads, Locke, Byron, Sir Wil- liam Temple, Rousseau, and a host of other learned writers! Conceive a girl of fifteen immersed in all this farrago of litera- ture and philosophy ! She had an eye to politics, too; an din her letters to friends notices the accession of Duke Nicholas, and its ef- fect on the Holy Alliance and the liberties of Europe ! Thon she goes through a course of the Italian poets, accompanied by her sick- headache. She lies in bed one afternoon, from dinner till tea, •* reading Bammohun Roy's book, and framing dialogues aloud on every argument beneath the sun." She had her dreams of the af- fections, too,— indulging largely in sentimentality and romance, as most young girls will do. She adored the moon,— fell in love with other girls, and dreamed often the other subject uppermost in most growing girls* minds. This wonderfully cultivated child, as might be expected, ran some risk of being spoiled. She was herself brilliant, and sought eq^ual brilliancy in others. She had no patience with mediocrity, and re- garded it with feelings akin to contempt. But this unaniiable feel- ing she gradually unlearned, as greater experience and lar:[:jcr-heart- edness taught her wisdom,— a kind of wisdom, by the way, which 198 BBIEF BIOGRAPHIES. 13 not foTincl in books. The multitude regarded her, at this time, as rather haughty and supercilious, — fond of saying clever and sarcas- tic things at their expense, — and also as very inquisitive and anxious to "read characters." But it is hard to repress or dwarf the loving nature of a woman. She was always longing for affection, for sympa- thy, for confidence, among her more valued friends. 8he wished to be •'comprehended,"— she looked on herself as a *'femme incomprise," as the French term it. Even her sarcasm was akin to love. She w\a8 always making new confidants, and drawing out their heart-secrets, as she revealed her own. The family removed from Cambridgeport, where she was bom, to Cambridge, where they remained till 1833, when they went to reside at Groton. Margaret had by this time written verses which friends deemed worthy of publication, and several appeared. But her spirit and soul, which gave such living power to her conversation, usually evaporated in the attempt to commit her thoughts to writing. Of this she often complains. "After all," she says in one of her letters, ** this writing is mighty dead. O for my dear old Greeks, who tcULed everything ! Again she said : " Conversation is my natural element. I need to be called out, and never think alone without imagining Bome companion. Whether this be nature, or the force of circun:)- stances, I know not; it is my habit, and bespeaks a second rate mind." But she was a splendid talker;— a New England Corinne, — an im- provisatrice of unrivaled powers. Her writings give no idea of her powers of "speech, — of the brilliancy with which she would strike a vein of happy thought, and bring it to the daylight. ~ Her talk was decidedly masculine, critical, common-sense, full of ideas, yet withal, graceful and sparkling. She is said to have had a kind of prophetic insight into characters, and drew out, by a strong attractive power in herself, as by a moral magnet, all their best gifts to the light. "She was," says one friend, "like a moral Paganini : she played always on a single string, drawing from each its peculiar music, — bringing wild beauty from the slender wire no less than from the deep-sounding harpstring." In 1832 she was busy with German literature, and read Goethe, Tieck, Korner, and Schiller. The thought and beauty of these works filled her mind and fascinated her imagination. She also went through "Plato's Dialogues.'* She began to have infinite longings for something unknown and unattainable, and gave vent to her feelings in such thoughts as this : "1 shut Goethe's 'Second Residence in Rome,' with an earnest desire to live as he did,— always to have some engrossing object of pursuit. I sympathize deeply with a mind in tiiat state. While mine is being used up by ounces, I wish pailfals might be poured into it. lam dejected and uneasy when I see no results from my daily existence, but I am suffocated and lost when I have not the' bright feeling of progression." SAEAH MARGARET FULLER. 199 But slio was always full of projects, which remained such. She meditated writing ** six historical tragedies, the plans of three of which are quite perfect." She had also "a favorite plan'' of a series of tales illustrative of Hebrew history. She also meditated writing a life of Goethe. She tried her hand on the tragedies. Alas ! what a vast difference is there, she confesses, between conception and execution! She proceeded, as Coleridge calls it, **to take an account of her stock," but fell back again almost in despair. **With me," she says, "it has ended in the most humiliating sense of poverty ; and only just enough pride is left to keep your poor friend off the parish." But in this confession you will find the germs of deep wisdom. She now, more than ever, felt the need of self-culture. ** Shall I ever be fit for anything," she asked, **till I have absalutely re-educated my- self? Am I, can I make myself, fit to write an account of half a cen- tury of the existence of one of the master-spirits of this world ? It seems as if I had been very arrogant to dare to think of it." She nevertheless proceeded to accumulate materials for the life of Goethe, which, however, was never written. Yet often would the woman come uppermost ? She longed to possess a home for her heart. Capable of ardent love, her affections were thrown back upon herself, to become stagnant, and for a while to grow bitter there. She could not help feeling how empty and worthless were all the attainments and triumphs of mere intellect. A woman's heart must be satisfied, else there is no true, deep happiness of repose for her. She longed to be loved as a woman^ rather than as a mere human being. What woman does not? The lamentation that she was not so loved broke out bitterly from time to time. She knew that she was not beautiful; and, conceal her chagrin as she might, she felt the defect keenly. There was weakness in this, but she could not master it. In her journal is a bitter sentence on this topic, the meaning of which cannot be misunderstood. She is commenting on the character of Mignon, by Goetho: "Of a disposition that requires the most refined, the most exalted tenderness, without charms to inspire it, poor Mignon ! fear not the transition through death; no penal fires can have in store worse torments than thou art familiar with al- ready." Again she writes, in the month of May: "When all things are blossoming, it seems so strange not to blossom too, — that the quick thought within cannot remold its tenement. Man is the slowest aloe, and I am such a shabby plant of coarse tissue. I bate not to be beautiful, when all around is so." She writes elsewhere: " I know the deep yearnings of the heart, and the bafflings of time will be felt again; and then I shall long for some dear hand to hold. But I shall never forget that my curse is nothing, compared with those who have entered into these relations, but not made them real ; who only seem husbands, wives, and friends." But she endeavors to force herself to feel content: "I have no child; but 200 BHIEF BI0aEjU?HIE3. now, as I look on these lovely children of a human birth, what low and neutralizing cares they bring with them to the mother ! The children of the Sluse come quicker, and have not on them the taint of eartlily corruption." Alas ! It is evidently a poor attempt at self- comfort. Her personal appearance may be noted. A florid complexion, with a tendency to robustness, of which sKe was painfully conscious, and endeavored to compress by artificial methods, which did addi- tional injury to her alieady wretched health. Eather under the middle size, with fair complexion, and strong, fair hair. She was near-sighted, from constant reading when a child, and peered oddly, incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids with great rapidity. She spoke through the nose. From her passionate worship of Beau- ty in all things, perhaps she dwelt with the more bitterness on her own personal short-comings. The first impression on meeting her was not agreeable; but continued intercourse made many fast friends and ardent admirers, — that is, intellectual admirers. An early at- tack of illness destroyed the fineness of her complexion. •• My own vanity," she said of this, "was severely wounded;but I recovered, and made up mind to be bright and ugly. I think I may say, I never loved. I but see my possible life reflected in the clouds. The bridal spirit of many a spirit, when first it was wed, I have shared, but said adieu before the wine was poured out at the banquet." The Fuller family removed to Groton in 1833, and two years after Margaret's father died suddenly of cholera. He left no will behind him; there was little property to will, — only enough to maintain the widow and educate the children. Margaret was thrown into fresh lamentations, — wished she had been a man, in order to take charge of the family ; but she *' always hated the din of such affairs." About this time she had made the acquaintance of Miss Martineau, then in the States, and clung to her as an "intellectual guide," hoping to be ** comprehended" by her. She had strongly desired to accom- pany Miss Martineau back to England, but the sad turn in the fami- ly affairs compelled her to give up the project; and she went to Bos- ton instead, to teach Latin, Italian, and French, in Mr. Alcott's school. She afterwards went to teach, as principal, in another school at Providence. She still read tremendously, — almost living upon books, and tormented by a "terrible feeling in the head." She had a "distressing weight on the top of the brain," and seem- ingly was "able to think with only the lower part of the head." "All my propensities," she once said " have a tendency to make my head worse; it is a bad head, — as bad as if I were a great man." Amid all this bodily pain and disease, she suffered moral agony, — heartache for long days and weeks, — and on self-examination, she was further " shocked to find how vague and superficial is all my knowledge." Some may say there is a degree of affectation in all this; but it is the fate of the over-cultivated, without any solid basia SAEAH MARGARET FULLER. 201 of wisdom ; they are ever longing after further revelations, greater light, — to pry into the unseen, to aim after the unattainable. Hence profound regrets and life-long lamentations. The circlet which adorns the brow of genius, though it may glitter before the gazer's eye, has spiked thorns for the brow of her who wears it, and the wounds they make bleed inwards. Poor Margaret ! Emerson's memoir of his intercourse with Margaret Fuller is by far the most interesting part of the volume. He was repelled by her at first, being a man rather given to silence; but she gradually won upon him as upon others, and her bright speech at length reached his heart. He met her first in the society of Miss Martineau, and often afterward in the company of others, and alone. He was struck by the night side of her nature; — her speculations in my- thology and demonology; in French Socialism ; her belief in the ruling influence of planets; her sympathy with sortilege; her no- tions as to the taiismanic influence of gems; and her altogether mystic apprehensions. She was strangely affected by dreams, was a somnambul^, was always full of presentiments. In short, as Emer- son says, "there was somewhat alittlepagan about her." She found no rest for the sole of her restless foot, except in music, of which she was a passionate lover. Take a few instances of her strange meditations. *• When first I met with the name Leila," she said, " I knew from the very look and sound, it was music; I knew that it meant night, — night, which brings out stars as sorrow brings out truths." Later on, she wrote: *'My days at Milan were not un- marked. 1 have known some happy hours, but they all lead to sor- row, and not only the cups of wine, but of milk, seem drugged with poison for me. It does not seem to be my fault, this destiny. I do not court these things, — they come. I am a poor magnet, with power to be wounded by the bodies I attract. But Emerson, like everybody else, was especially attracted by Margaret's powers of conversation. "She wore her circle of friends, as a necklace of diamonds about her neck. The confidences given her were their best, and she held to them. She was an active, in- spiring correspondent, and all the art, the thought, and the noble- ness in New England seemed at that moment related to her, and she to it. Persons were her game, especially if marked by fortune, or character, or success; to such was she sent. She addressed them with a hardihood, — almost a haughty assurance, — queen-like. She drew her companions to surprising confessions. She was the wed- ding-guest to whom the long-pent story must be told ; and they were not less struck, on reflection, at the suddenness of the friend- ship which had established, in one day, new and permanent cove- nants. She extorted the secret of life, which cannot be told without setting mind and heart in aglow; and thus had the best of those she saw; the test of her eloquence was its range. It told on children and on old people; on men of the world, and on sainted maids. 202 BKEEF BIOGKAPHIES. She could hold them all by the honey tongae. The Concord stage- coachman distinguished her by his respect; and the chambermaid was pretty sure to confide to her, on the second day, her homely romance." But she lived fast. In society she was alwaj^s on the stretch. She was in jubilant spirits in the morning and ended the day with nervous headache, whose spasms produced total prostra- tion. She was the victim of disease and pain. *' She read and wrote in bed, and believed she could understand anything better when she was ill. Pain acted like a girdle, to give tension to her pow- ers." Her enjoyment consisted of brief but intense moments. The rest was a void. Emerson says: ** When I found she lived at a rate BO much faster than mine, and which was violent compared with mine, I foreboded a rash and painful crisis, and had a feeling as if a voice had said. Stand from under! as if, a little farther on, this destiny was threatened with jars and reverses, which no friendship could avert or console." There was one very prominent feature in Margaret Fuller, which she could never conceal, and that was her intense individuality, — some would call it self-esteem : she was always thoroughly possessed by herself. She could not hide the "moiai^ainous me," as Emerson calls it. In enumerating the merits of some one, she would say, "He appreciates me." In the coolest way, she boasted, "I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intel- lect comparable to my own." She idealized herself as a queen, and dwelt upon the idea that she was not her parents' child, but a Euro- pean princess confided to their care. **I take my natural position always," she said to a friend; "and the more I see, the more I feel that it is regal. Without throne, scepter, or guards, still a queen.'* In all this there was exhibited a very strong leaning towards a weak side. Yet, at other times, she was strongly conscious of her imperfec- tions. She was impatient of her weakness in production. "I feel within myself," she said, "an immense force, but I cannot bring it out." Notwithstanding her "arrogant talk," as Emerson called it, and her ambition to play the Mirabeau among her friends, she felt her defect in creative power. Her numerous works remained projects. She was the victim of Lord Bacon's idols of the cave. She was a genius of impulse, but wanted the patience to elaborate. *' How can I ever write," she asked, "with this impatience of detail? I shall never be an artist; I have no patient love of execution; I am delighted with my sketch; but if I try to finish it I am chilled. Never was there a great sculptor who did not love to chip the. mar- ble." And then she attributed her inability to sex. Speaking of the life of thought, she said: '*W^omen, under any circumstinces, can scarce do more than dip the foot in this broad and deep river; they have not strength to contend with the current. It is easy for women to be heroic in action ; but when it comes to interrogating God, the SAK AH MARGARET FULLER. 203 universe, the sotil, and, above all, trying to live above their own hearts, they dart down to their nest like so many larks, and if they cannot find them, fret like the French Corinne." A little later she says: *' I shall write better, but never, I think, so well as I talk; for then I feel inspired. The means are pleasant; my voice excites me, my pen never. I want force to be either a genius or a character." She had, however, a genuine fund of practical benevolence about her. She visited the prisons and penitentiaries on many occasions, for the purpose of restoring to new life and virtue the poor, degraded women confined there. Behind all her wit, there was always a fountain of woman's tears ready to flow. She had a passionate love' of truth, and ardent thirst for it. " In the chamber of death I pray- ed in early years, * Give me Truth; cheat me by no illusion.* O, the granting of this prayer is sometimes terrible to me ! I walk on the burning plowshares, and they sear my feet. Yet nothing but Truth will do." And she might be said almost to worship beauty, — in art, in literature, in music. "Dear Beauty!" she would say, *'where, where, amid these morasses and pine-barrens, shall we make thee a temple? where find a Greek to guard it, — clear-eyed, deep- thoughted, and delicate enough to appreciate the relations and gra- dations which nature always observes ? " We can only notice very *^briefly the remaining leading events in Margaret Fuller's life. There was not much dramatic character in them, except towards their close. The student's story is generally a quiet one ; it is an afifair of private life, of personal intimacies and friendships. She went on teaching young ladies, conducting con- versation-classes, and occasionally making translations from the German for the booksellers. The translation of Eckermann's "Con- versations with Goethe*' was by her, as also that of the " Letters of Gunderode and Bettine." In 1843 she traveled into Michigan, and "^ shortly afterwards published her "Summer on the Lakes." She then became a writer for "The Dial," an able Boston review, chiefly sup- ported by Emerson, Brownson, and a few more of the "Transcend- ental writers of America. There she reviewed German and English books, and first published "The Great Lawsuit, or Woman in the Nineteenth Century," an eloquent expression of discontent at the social position of woman. Her criticisms of American books were not relished and often gave great offense. The other critics said of her, that she thought thift books, like brown stout, were improved by the motion of a ship, and that she would praise nothing unless it had been imported from abroad. She certainly gave a less hearty recognition to merit in American than in German or English books. Afterwards, she went to New York, to perform an engagement on Mr. Horace Greeley's newspaper, the New York Tribune. But she had a contempt for newspaper writing, saying of it : " What a vul- garity there seems in this writing for the multitude ! We know not yet, have not made ourselves known, to a single soul, and shall we address those still moro unknown ? " 204 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. The deep secret of her heart again and again comes uppermost in her communications to her bosom friends. A living female writer has said, that, though few may confess it, the human heart may- know peace, content, serene endurance, and even thankfulness ; but it never does and never can know happiness, the sense of complete, full-rounded bliss, except in the joy of a happy love. The most ardent attachment of woman for others of their own sex cannot sup- ply the want. Margaret Fuller tried this, but it failed, as you may see from her repeated complaints. *'Pray for me," she said, '*that I may have a little peace, — some green and floweiy spot amid which my thoughts mayresi; yet not upon fallacy, but upon something genuine. / am deeply homesick^ yet relieve is that home ? If not on earth, why should we look to heaven ? I would fain truly live wher- ever I must abide, and bear with full energy on Hiy lot, whatever it is. Yet my hand is often languid, and my heart is slow. I would be gone; but whither? I know not. If I cannot make this spot of ground yield the corn and roses, famine must be my lot forever and ever, surely." 'lUis is the dart within the heart, as well as I can tell it : ** At moments the music of the universe, which daily I am up- held by hearing, seems to stop. I fall like a bird when the sun is eclipsed, not looking for such darkness. The sense of my individ- ual law— that lamp of life— flickers. I am repelled in what is most natural to me. I feel as, when a suffering child, I would go and lie with m}^ face to the ground, to sob away my little life." "Once again I am willing to take up the cross of loneliness, llesolvos are idle, but the anjj^uish of my soul has been deep. It will not be easy to pro- fane life by rhetoric." In a pathetic prayer, found among her pa- pers, she says : •' / am weary at' thinlcinq, I suflfer great fatigue from livinsf. O God, take me ! Take me wholly. It is not that I repine, my Father, but I sink from want of rest, and none will shelter me. Thou knowest it all. Bathe me in the living waters of thy love." Thus the consciousness of an unfulfilled destiny hung over the poor suflTerer, and she could not escape from it ; she felt as if des- tined to tread the wine-press of life alone. To hear the occasional plaintive tone of sorrow in her thought and speech, Mr. Channing beautifully says, was ' like the wail of an iEolian harp, heard at in- tervals from some upper window." And amid all this smothered agony of the heart, disease was constantly preying on her. Head- ache, rooted in one spot, — fixed between the eyebrows,- till it grew real torture. The black and white guardians, depicted on Etruscan monuments, were always fighting for her life. In the midst of beautiful dreams, the "great vulture would come, and fix his iron talons on the brain," — a state of physical health which was not mended by her habit of drinking strong potations of tea and coffee in almost limitless quantities. At length, in search of health, Margaret resolved to accomplisli her long-meditated, darling enterprise, of a voyage to Europe;— to SAKAH MATtGAIlET FULLER. 205 the Old T/orld, where her thoughts lived — to England, France, Germany, and Home. She left New York in the summer of 1846, in the Uambriay and on reaching England sent home many delightful, though rapid, sketches of the people she had seen, and the places she had visited. These letters are, to us, the most delightful part of the volumes; perhaps because she speaks of people who are so much better known to us than her American contemporaries. In England and Scotland, she saw Wordsworth, De Quincey, Dr. Chal- mers, Andrew Combe, the Howitts, Dr. Southwood Smith, and, above all, Carlyle, of whom she gives an admirable sketch, drawn to the life. In England, also, she first formed an acquaintance with Mazzini, which she afterwards renewed, amid most interesting circumstances, at Rome, during the tumult of the siege. At Paris she made the personal acquaintance of George Sand, of whom she gives a lifelike description, and saw many other notorieties of that time. But she longed to be at Rome ; and sped southward. She seems im- mediately to have plunged into the political life of the city. But her means were cramped, and she longed for a little money." Yet what she had, she was always ready to give away to those who were more in need than herself. "Nothing less than two or three years," she says, * free from care and forced labor would heal my hurts, and renew my life-blood at its source. Since destiny will not grant me that I hope she will not leave me long in the world, for I am tired of keeping myself up in the water without corks, and without strength to swim. I should like to go to sleep and be born again into a state where my young life should not be prematurely taxed.** All the great events of 1847 and 1848 occurred while Margaret Fuller remained in the Eternal City. She was there when the Poj)e took the initiative in the reforms of that convulsed period; witnessed the rejoicings and the enthusiasm of the people; then the reaction, the tumult, the insurrection, and the war. Amidst all this excite- ment, she is **weary." **The shifting scenes entertain poorly. I want some scenes of natural beauty; and, imperfect as love is, I want human beings to love, as I suffocate without." Then came the en- thusiastic entrance of Gioberti into Rome, then Mazzini, then en- sued the fighting. Margaret looked down from her window on the terrible battle before St. Angelo, between the Romans and the French. Mazzini found her out of her lodgings, and had her ap- pointed by the ** Roman Commisison for the succor of the Wounded" to the charge of the hospital of the Fata-Bene Fratelli. She there busied herself as a nurse of those heroic wounded, — the flower of the Italian youth. But the French entered, and she had to fly. **I cannot tell you," she writes, '^what I endured in leaving Rome; abandoning the wounded soldiers ; knowing that there is no provision made for them, when they rise from the beds where they have been thrown by a noble courage, where they have suffered with a noblo 206 BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. patience. Some of the poorer men, who rise bereft even of the right arm, — and one having lost both the right arm and the right leg, — I could have provided for with a Bmall sum. Could I have sold my hair, or blood from my arm, I would have done it. These poor men are left helpless, in the power of a mean and vindictive foe. You felt so oppressed in the slave states ; imagine what I felt at seeing all the noblest youth, all the genius of this dear land, again enslaved." So the battle was lost ! Margaret Fuller fled from Rome to her child at Rieti. Her child? yes. She had married ! The dream of her life had ended, and she was now a wife and a mother. But in this sweet, new relationship, she enjoyed but a brief term of happiness. Her connection with Count Ossoli arose out of an accidental meeting with him in the church of St. Peter's, after vesper service. He wait- ed upon her to her dwelling; returned; cultivated her acquaintance; offered her his hand, and was refused. But Ossoli was a Liberal, and moved in the midst of the strife. He had frequent opportunities of seeing Margaret, pressed his suit, and was finally accepted. There did not seem to bo much in common between them. He was con- Kiderably her junior; but he loved her sincerly, and that was enough for her. The marriage was kept secret for a time, because the Marquis's property might have gone from him at once, had his marriage with a Protestant become known while the ecclesiastical influence was paramount at Rome. But when the Liberal cause had suS'ered de- feat, there was no longer any need of concealment. Ossoli had lost all; and the marriage was. confessed. Margaret had left her child in safety at Rieti, to watch over her husband, who was at Rome, en- gaged in the defense of the city against the French; and we have seen how she was engaged while there. She returned to her child, whom she found ill, and half starved; but her maternal care made all right again. Writing to her mother, she said: '* The immense gain to me is my relation with the child. I thought the mother's heart lived within me before, but it did not; I knew nothing about it." **He is to me a source of ineffable joy, — far purer, deeper, than anything I ever felt before, — like what Nature had sometimes given, but more intimate, more sweet. He loves me very much; his little heart clings to mine." Margaret is at length happy; but how brief the time it lasted ! The poor Marquis, with his wife and child, must leave Florence, where they for a brief time resided after their flight from Rome; and they resolved to embark for the United States in May, 1850. Writ- ing beforehand, she said: *'I have a vague expectation of some cri- sis, — I know not what. But it has long seemed that in the year 1850 I should stand on a plateau in the ascent of life, where I should be allowed to pause for a while, and take more clear and commanding views than ever before. Yet my life proceeds as regularly as the SARAH MARGAEET FULLER. 207 fates of a Greek tragedy, and I can but accept the pages as they turn." And at the close of a letter to her mother, she said: *'/hope "we shall be able to pass some time together yet in this world. But if God decrees otherwise, — here and hereafter, my dearest mother, lam your loving child, Margaret." Ossoli had never been at sea before, and he had an undefined dread of it. A fortune-teller, when he was a boy, had uttered a singular prophecy of him, and warned him to *• beware of the sea." The omens prove true. Everything went ainiss on the ill-fated voyage. The captain sickened and died of small-pox. The disease then seized the child, Angelino, whose life was long despaired of. But he recovered, and the coast of America drew nigh. On the eve of the landing, a heavy gale arose, and the ship struck on Fire Island Beach, on the Long Island shore. "At the first jar, the passengers, knowing but too well its fatal import, sprang from their berths. Then came the cry of * Cut away,' followed hj the crash of falling timbers, and the thunder of the seas, as they broke across the deck. In a moment more the cabin skylight was dashed in pieces by the breakers, and the spray, pour- ing down like a cataract, put out the lights; while the cabin-door was wrenched from its fastenings, and the waves swept in and out. One scream— one only — was heard from Margaret's state-room ; and Sumner and Mrs. Hasty, meeting in the cabin, clasped hands, with these few but touching words: * We must die.' *Let us die calmly, then.' *I hope so, Mrs. Hasty,* It was in the gray dusk, and amid the awful tumult, that the companions in miaJfortune met. The side of the cabin to the leeward had already settled under water; and furniture, trunks, and fragments of the skylight were floating to and fro, while the inclined position of the floor made it difficult to stand; and every sea, as it broke over the bulwarks, splashed in through the open roof. The windward cabin-wall, however, still yielding partial shelter, and against it, seated side by side, half-leaning backwards, with feet braced upon the long table, they awaited what next should come. At first, Nino, alarmed at the uproar, the dark- ness, and the rushing water, while shivering with the wet, cried passionately; but soon his mother, wrapping him in such garments as were at hand, and folding him to her bosom, sang him to sleep. Celeste, too, was in an agony of terror, till Ossoli, with soothing words, and a long and fervent prayer, restored her to self-control and trust. Then calmly they rested, side by side, exchanging kindly partings, and sending messages to friends , if any should survive to be their bearer." A long night of agony passed, and] at last the tragedy drew to a close : •• It was now past three o'clock, and as, with the rising tide, the gale swelled once more to its former violence, the remnants of the bark fast yielded to the resistless waves. The cabin went by the 208 BRIEF BIOGEAPHIEa board, the after-parts broke up, and the stem settled out of sight Soon, too, the forecastle was tilled with water, and the helpless little band were driven to the decl^, where they clustered round the fore- mast. Presently, even this frail support was loosened from the hull, and rose and fell with every billow. It was plain to all that the final moment drew swiftly nigh. Of the four seamen who still Btood by the passengers, three were as efficient as any among the crew of the Llizaheth. These were the steward, carpenter and cook. The fourth was an old sailor, v/ho, broken down by hardship and sickness, was going home to die. These men were once again per- suading Margaret, Ossoli, and Celeste, to try the planks, which they still held ready in the lee ^of the ship ; and the steward by whom Nino was so much beloved, had just taken the little fellow in his arms, with the pledge that he would save him or die, when a sea struck the forecastle, and the foremast fell, carrying with it the deck and all upon it. The steward and Angelino were washed upon the beach, both dead, though warm, some twenty minutes after. The cook and carpenter were thrown far upon the foremast, and saved themselves by swimming. Celeste and Ossoli caught for a moment by the rigging, but the next wave swallowed them up. Margaret sank at once. When last seen, she had been seated at the foot of the foremast, still clad in her white night-dress, with her hair fallen loose upon her shoulders. It was over, — that twelve hours* com- munion, face to face, with death ! It was over ! and the prayer was granted, *that Ossoli, Angelino, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be bf ief ! * •'The only one of Margaret's [treasures which reached the shore was the lifeless form of little Angelino. When the body, stripped of every rag by the waves, was rescued from the surf, a sailor took it reverently in his arms, and, wrapping it in his neckcloth, bore it to the nearest house. There, when washed, and dressed in a child's frock found in Margaret's trunk, it was laid upon a bed ; and as the rescued seamen gathered round their late playfellow and pet, there were few dry eyes in the circle. The next day, borne upon their shoulders in a chest, it was buried in a hollow among the sand-hills." And thus terribly ended the tragedy of Margaret Fuller's life. SARAH MARTIN. AMONG the distinguished women in the humble ranks of so- ciety, who have pursued a loving, hopeful, benevolent, and beautiful way through life, the name of Sarah Martin will long be remembered. Not many of such women come into the full light of the world's eye. Quiet and silence beiit their lot. The best of their labors are done in secret, and are never noised abroad. Often the most beautiful traits of a woman's character are confided but to one dear breast, and lie treasured there. There are compara- tively few women who display the sparkling brilliancy of a Mar- garet Fuller, and whose names are noised abroad like hers on the wings of fame. But the number of women is very great who silently pursue their duty in thankfnlness, who labor on, — each in their lit- tle home circle, — training the minds of growing youth for active life, molding future men and women for society and for each other, imbuing them with right principles, impenetrating their hearts with the spirit of love, and thus actively helping to carry forward the whole world towards good. But we hear comparatively little of the labors of ti;ue-hearted women in this quiet sphere. The genuine mother, wife, or daughter is good, but not famous. And she can dis- pense with the fame, for the doing of the good is its own exceeding great reward. Very few women step beyond the boundaries of home and seek a larger sphere of usefulness. Indeed, the home is sufficient sphere for the woman who would do her work nobly and truly there. Still, there are the helpless to be helped, and when generous women have been found among the helpers, why should not we rejoice in their good works, and cherish their memory? Sarah Martin was one of such,— a kind of Elizabeth Fry, in a humbler sphere. She was born at^Caister, a village about three miles from Yarmouth, in the year 1791. Both her parents, jv'ho were very poor people, died when she was but a child; and the little orphan was left to bo brought up under the care of her poor grandmother. The girl ob- 209 210 BEIEF BIOGrwAPHIES. tained such education as the village school could afford. — which was not much, — and then she was sent to Yarmouth for a year, tQ learn sewing and dressmaking in a very small way. She afterwards used to walk from Caister to Yarmouth and back again daily, which she continued for many years, earning a slender livelihood by go- ing out to famjlies as an assistant dressmaker at a shilling a day. It happened that, in the year 1819, a woman was committed to the Yarmouth jail for the unnatural crime of cruelly beating and ill- using her own child. Sarah Martin was at this time eight-and- twenty years of age, and the report of the above crime, which was the subject of talk about the town, made a strong impression on her mind. She had often, before this, on passing the gloomy walls of the borough jail, felt an urgent desire to visit the inmates pent up there, without sympathy, and often without hope. She wished to read the Scriptures to them, and bring them back lovingly — were it yet possible — to the society against whose laws they had offended. Think of this gentle, unlovely, ungifted, poor young woman taking up with such an idea ! Y^et it took in her, and grew within her. At length she could not resist the impulse to visit the wretched inmates of the Yarmouth jail. So one day she passed into the dark porch with a throbbing heart, and knocked for admission. The keeper of the jail appeared. In her gentle low voice, she mentioned the cruel mother's name, and asked permission to see her. The jailer re- fused. There was "a lion in the way," — some excuse or other, as is usual in such cases. But Sarah Martin persisted. She returned; and at the second application she wa* admitted. Sarah Martin afterwards related the manner of her reception in the jail. The culprit mother stood before her. She was •* surprised at the sight of a stranger." **V/hen I told her," says Sarah Martin, *' the motive of my visit, her guilt, her need of God's mercy, etc., she burst into tears, and thanked me!'* Those tears and thanks shaped the whole course of Sarah Martin's subsequent life. A year or two before this time Mrs. Fry had visited the prisoners in Newgate, and possibly the rumor of her labors in this field may have in some measure influenced Sarah Martin's mind ; but of tliis we are not certain. Sarah Martin herself stated that, as early as the year 1810 (several years before Mrs. Fry's visit to Newgate), her mind had been turned to the subject of prison visitation, and she had then felt a strong desire to visit the poor prisoners in Yarmouth jail, to read the Scriptures to them. These two tender-hearted women may, therefore, have been working at tife same time, in the same sphere of Christian work, entirely unconscious of each other's labors. However this may be, the merit of Sarah Martin can- not be detracted from. She labored alone, without any aid from influential quarters: she had no persuasive eloquence, and had scarcely received any education; she was a poor seamstress, main- taining herself by her needle, and carried on her visitation of i SAKAH MARTIN. 211 , the prisoners in secret, without any one vaunting her praises : in- deed, this was the last thing she dreamed of. Is there not, in this simple picture of a humble woman thus devoting her leisure hours to the comfort and improvement of outcasts, much that is truly noble and heroic ? Sarah Martin continued her visits to the Yarmouth* jail. From one she went to another prisoner, reading to them and conversing with them, from which- siEie went on'to instructing them in reading and writing. She constituted herself a schoolmistress for the crim- inals, giving up a day in the week for this purpose, and thus trench- ing on her slender means of living. *' I thought it right," she says, *Ho give up a day in the week from dressmaking to serve the loris- oners. This regularly given, with many an additional one, was not felt as a pecuniary loss, but was ever followed with abundant sat- isfaction, for the blessing of God \^ as upon me." She next formed a Sunday service in the jail, for reading of the Scriptures, joining in the worship as a hearer. For three years she went on in this quiet course of visitation, until, as her views enlarged, she introduced other ameliorative plans for the benefit of the prison- ers. One week, in 1823, she received from two gentlemen dona- tions of ten shillings each for prison charity. With this she bought materials for baby-clothes, cut them out, and set the females to work. The work, when sold, enabled her to buy other materials and thus the industrial education of the prisoners was secured ; Sarah Mar- tin teaching those to sew and knit who had not before learned to do so. The profits derived from tlie sale of the articles were placed together in a fund, and divided amongst the prisoners on their leav- ing the jail to coram ence life again in the outer world. She, in the same way, taught the men to make straw hats, men's and boys' caps, groy cotton shirts, and even patchwork, — anything to keep them out of idleness, and from preying upon their own thoughts. Some also she taught to copy little pictures, with the same object, in which several of the prisoners took great delight. A little later on, she formed a fund out of the prisoners' earnings, which she applied to the furnishing of work to prisoners upon their discharge; "affording me," she says, "the advantage of observing their conduct at the same time." Thus did humble Sarah Martin, long before the attention of pub- lic men had been directed to the subject of prison discipline, bring a complete sj^stem to maturity in the jail of Yarmouth. It will be observed that she had thus included visitation, moral and religious instruction, intellectual culture, industrial training, employment during prison hours, and employment after discharge. While learned men at a distance, were philosophically discussing these knotty points, here was a poor seamstress at Yarmouth, who in a quiet, simple and unostentatious manner had practically settled ^em all ! ^^' 212 BEIEF BIOGKAPHIES. In 1826 Sarah Martin's grandmother died, and left her an annual income often or twelve pounds. She now removed from Caister to Yarmouth, where she occupied two rooms in an obscure part of the town; and from that time devoted herself with increased energy to her philanthropic labors in the jail. A benevolent lady in Yarmouth, in order to allow her some rest from her sewing, gave her one day in the week to herself, by paying her the same on that day as if she had been engaged in dressmaking. "With that assistance, and a few quarterly subscriptions of two shillings and sixpence each, for Bibles, Testaments, tracts, and books for distribution, she went on, devot- ing every available moment of her life to her great purpose. But her dressmaking business— always a very fickle trade, and at best a yery poor one —now began to fall off, and at length almost entirely disappeared. The question arose, Was she to suspend her benevo- lent labors, in order to devote herself singly to the recovery of her business ? She never wavered for a moment in her decision. In her own words, ** I had counted the cost, and my mind was made np. If, whilst imparting truth to others, I became exposed to tem- poral want, the privation so momentary to an individual would not admit of comparison with following the Lord, in thus administer- ing to others." Therefore did this noble, self-sacrificing woman go straightforward on her road of persevering usefulness. She now devoted six or seven hours in every day to her superin- tendence over the prisoners, converting what would otlierwise have been a scene of dissolute idleness into a hive of industry and order. Newly-admitted prisoners were sotnetimes refractory and unman- ageable, an 1 refused to take advantage of Sarah Martin's instructions. But her persistent gentleness invariably won their acquiescence, and they would come to her and beg to be allowed to take their part in the general course. Men old in years and in crime, pert London pickpockets, depraved boys, and dissolute sailors, profligate women, smugglers, poachers, the promiscuous horde of criminals which usually fill the jail of a seaport and county town, — all bent them- selves before the benign influence of this good woman; and under her eyes they might be seen striving, for the first time in their lives, to hold a pen, or master the characters in a penny primer. She en- tered into their confidences, watched, wept, prayed, and felt for all by turns; she strengthened their good resolutions, encouraged the hopeless, and sedulously endeavored to put all, and hold all, in the right road to amendment. What was the nature of the religious instruction given by her to the prisoners may be gathered from Captain Williams's account of it, as given in the "Second Eeport of the Inspector of Prisons" for the year 1836: "Sunday, November 29, 1835. — Attended divine service in the morning at the prison. The male prisoners only were assembled. A female resident in town officiated ; her voice was exceedingly me- SARAH MARTIN. 213 lodious, her delivery emphatic, and her enunciation extremely dis- tinct. The service was the Liturgy of the Church of England; two Psalms were sung by the whole of the prisoners, and extremely well, — much better than I have frequently heard in our best-appointed churches. A written discourse, of her own composition, waa read by her; it was of a jDurely moral tendency, involving no doctrinal points, and admirably suited to the hearers. During the perforni- auce of the service, the prisoners paid the profoundest attention and the most marked respect; and, as far as it was possible to judge, ap- peared to take a devout interest. Evening service was read by her, afterwards, to the female prisoners." Afterwards, in 1837, she gave up the labor of writing out her ad- dresses, and addressed the prisoners extemporaneously, in a simple, feeling manner, on the duties of life, on the connection between sin and sorrow on the one hand, and between goodness and happi- ness on the other, and inviting her fallen auditors to enter the great door of mercy which was ever wide open to receive them. These simple but earnest addresses were attended, it is said, by very beneficial results; and many of the prisoners were wont to thank her, with tears, for the now views of life, its duties and responsibili- ties, which she had opened up to them. As a writer in the Edin- burgh Review has observed, in commenting on Sarah Martin's jail sermons: "The cold, labored eloquence which boy-bachelors are authorized by custom and constituted authority to inflict upon us; the dry husks and chips of divinity which they bring forth from the dark recesses of the theology (as it called) of the fathers, or of the Middle Ages, sink into utter worthlessness by the side of the jail addresses of this poor, uneducated seamstress." But Sarah Martin was not satisfied merely with laboring among the prisoners in the jail at Yarmouth, She also attended in the evenings at the workhouse, where she formed and superintended a large school* and afterward, when that school had boen handed over to proper teachers, she devoted the hours so released to the forma- tion and superintendence of a school for factory-girls, which was held in the capacious chancel of the old Church of 5St. Nicholas, And after the labors connected with the class were over, she would remain among the girls for the purpose of friendly intercourse with them, which was often worth more than all the class lessons. There were personal communications with this one and with that, private advice to one, some kindly inquiry to make of another, some domestic history to be imparted by a third; for she was looked up to by these girls as a counselor and friend, as well as schoolmis- tress. She had often visits also to pay to their homes; in one there would be sickness, in another misfortune or bereavement; and every- where was the good, benevolent creature made welcome. Then, lastly, she would return to her own poor, solitary apartments late at night, after her long day's labor of love. There was no cheerful, 214 BRIEF BIOGRAPEIES. ready-lit fire to greet her there, but only an empty, locked-np house, to which sho merely returned to sleep. She did all her own work, kindled her own fires, made her own bed, cooked her own meals. F(ir she went on living upon her miserable pittance in a state of almost absolute poverty, and yet of total ujiconcern as to her tem- poral support. Friends supplied her occasionally with the neces- saries of life, but she usually gave away a considerable portion of these to people more destitute than herself. She was now growing old; and the borough authorities at Yar- mouth, who knew very well that her self-imposed labors saved them the expense of a schoolmaster and chaplain (which they were now bound by law to appoint) made a proposal of an annual salary of £12 a year ! This miserable renumeration was, moreover, made in a manner coarsely ofi'ensive to the shrinkingly sensitive woman ; for she had preserved a delicacy and pure-mindedness throughout her life-long labors which, very probabl3% these Yarmouth bloatera could not comprehend. She shrank from becoming the salaried official of the corpomtion, and bartering for money those labors which had throughout boen labors of love. **Hero lies the objection," she sairl, "which oppresses me: I have found voluntary instruction, on my part, to have been attended with great advantage; and I am apprehensive that, in receiving payment, my labors may be less acceptable. I fear, also, that my mind would be fettered hy pecuniary payment, and the whole work upset. To try the experiment, which might injure the thing I live and breathe for, seems like applying a knife to your child's throat to know if it will cut Were you so angry," she is writing in answer to the wife of one of the magistrates, who said she and her husband would "feel anp^ry and hurt*' if Sarah Martin did not ac- cept the proposal, — "were you so angry as that I could not meet you, a merciful God and a good conscience would preserve my peace; when, if I ventured on what I believed would be prejudicial to the prisoners, God would frown upon me, and my conscience too, and these would follow me everywhere. As for my circumstances, I have not a wish ungratified, and am more than content." But the jail committee savagely intimated to the high-sonled woman: *'If we permit you to visit the j^rison, you must submit to our terms ;" so she had no alternative but to give up her noble la! bors altogether, which she would not do, or receive the miserable pittance of a ** salary" w^hich they proffered her. And for two more years she lived on, in the receipt of her official salary of £12 per annum, — the acknowledgment of the Yarmouth Corporation for her services as jail chaplain and schoolmaster ! In the winter of 1842, when she had reached her fifty-second year, her health began seriously to fail, but she nevei-theless continued her daily visits to the jail, — "the home." she says, *' of my first in- terest and pleasure," — until the 171^ of Apsil, 1343, when she ceased SARAH MARTIN. 216 her visits. She was now thoroughly disabled; but her mind beam- ed out with unusual brilliancy, like the flickering taper before it finally expires. She resumed the exercise of a talent which she had occasionally practiced during her few moments of leisure, — that of , writing sacred poetry. In one of these, speaking of herself on her sick-bed, she says: — I seemed to lie So near the heavenly portals bright, I catch the streaming rays that fly From eternity s own light. Her song was always full of praise and gratitude. As artistic creations, they may not excite admiration in this highly critical age; but never were verses written truer In spirit, or fuller of Christian love. Her whole life was a noble poem, — full also of true practical wisdom. Her life was a glorious comment upon her own words: The high desire that others may be blest Savors of Heaven. She struggled against fatal disease for many months, suflfering great agony, which was partially relieved by opiates. Her end drew nigh. She asked her nurse for an opiate to still her racking torture. The nurse told her that she thought the time of her departure had come. Clasping her hands, the dying Sister of Mercy exclaimed, "Thank God ! thank God ! " And these were her last words. She died on the 15th of October, 1843, and was buried at Caister, by the side of her grandmother. A small tombstone, bearing a simple in- scription written by herself, marks her resting-place; and, though the tablet is silent as to her virtues, they will not be forgotten: Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom In the dust. THB END. ^4*^ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW Books not returned on time are subject to a fine of 50c per volume after the third day overdue, increasing to $1.00 per volume after the sixth day. Books not in demand may be renewed if application is made before expiration of loan period. JAN 26 1947 Sll8y52L| MAR 513So^-i^nf APR 1 1998 •