66

of the North was that of a ship carrying passengers tempest tossed, and while the sailors were laboring, and the captain and officers directing, some grumblers would come up from among the passengers and say, "You are all the time working to save the ship, but you don't care to save the passengers." I should like to know how you would save the passengers so well as by taking care of the ship. (At this point the Chairman read to the meeting the telegram relative to the seizure of the rams at Liverpool. The effect was startling; the whole audience rose to their feet, while cheer after cheer was given.)

Mr. Beecher continued, Allow me to say of the conduct of the colored people, our citizens (for in New York colored people vote, as they do also in Massachusetts and in several other Northern States, Mr. Wharncliffe -Lord Wharncliffe, I beg his pardon-to the contrary notwithstanding), that it is a subject of universal remark that no men on either side have carried themselves more gallantly, more bravely, than the colored regiments that have been fighting for their government and their liberty. My own youngest brother is colonel of one of those regiments, and from him I learn many of the most interesting facts concerning them. The son of one of the most estimable and endeared of my friends in my congregation was the colonel of that regiment that charged at Fort Wagner. He fell at the head of his men-hundreds fell

and that if it came to the citation of facts | deavor to the perfection of liberty over all whether North or South were the most guilty our continent (loud cheers). The condition in this matter, there could be no question, I think, before any honorable tribunal, any jury, any deliberative body, that the decision will be that the South, from beginning to end, for the sake of slavery, has been aggressive, and the North patient. Since the war broke out, the North has been more and more coming upon the high ground of moral principle, until now the Government has taken ground for emancipation, and has issued its Proclamation of Emancipation (groans and counter cheers, and a voice, "Go home." There was at this point an outrageous interruption from a person in the gallery, who was removed). It has been said very often in my hearing, and oftener I have read it since I have been in England-the last reading I had of it was from the pen of Lord Brougham (hisses, and cries of Chair, Chair," and disorder, which continuing for some time, Mr. Beecher sat down. When it had somewhat subsided, he continued). It is said that the North is fighting for the Union, and not for the emancipation of the African. Why are we fighting for the Union, but because we believe that the Union and its Government administered now by Northern men will work out the emancipation of every living being (loud cheering). If it be meant that the North went into this war with the immediate object of the emancipation of the slaves, it never professed to do it; but it went into war for the Union with the distinct understanding on both sides that if the Union was maintained slavery could not live long (cheers). Do you suppose that it is wise to separate the interest of the slave from the interest of the other people on the continent, and to inaugurate a policy which took in him alone? He has got to stand or fall with all of us (hear, hear), and the only sound policy for the North is that policy which shall be for the benefit of the North, of the South, of the blacks, and of the whites (cheers), and we hold that the maintenance of the Union-the fundamental principles which are contained in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that this is the way to secure to the African ultimately his best rights and his best estate. So that in this way the North did come into this conflict with the prayer, the hope, rather than, I had almost said, the expectation, that God would bless their en

and when inquest was made for his body, it was reported by the men in the fort that he had been buried with his niggers; and on his gravestone yet it shall be written, "The man that dared to lead the poor and the oppressed out of their oppression died with them and for them, and was buried with them" (cheers). On the Mississippi the conduct of the colored regiments is so good that, although many of the officers who command them are Southern men, and until recently had the strongest Southern prejudices, those prejudices are almost entirely broken down, and there is no difficulty whatever in finding officers, Northern or Southern, to take command of just as many of these regiments as can be raised. It is an honorable testimony to the good conduct and courage of these longabused men, whom God is now bringing by the Red Sea of war out the land of Egypt.

and into the land of promise (cheers). I meeting of inquiry" (renewed laughter). have said that it would give me great pleasure It will give me great pleasure, as a gentleto answer any courteous questions that might men, to receive questions from any gentleman be proposed to me. If I cannot answer them, (hear, hear), and to give such reply as is in I will do the next best thing-tell you so my power. (hear). The length to which this meeting has been protracted, and the very great conviction that I seem to have wrought by my remarks on this Pentecostal occasion in yonder Gentile crowd (loud laughter) admonish me that we had better open some kind of

(The reverend gentleman remained standing for a few moments, as if to give the opportunity of interrogation but no one rising to question him, he sat down amid great cheers. The speech lasted nearly two and a quarter hours.)

4

THE GUEST AT THE GUARDS' BALL. "WHAT am I doing here, with my ribs so blank and bare?"

What business is it of yours, under corsage and berthe to stare?

"What am I doing here with my tibia and thighbone clean?"

Who are you dares push your question past the bounds of crinoline?

You don't mean to say the skull peeps out under wreaths of the rose full-blown?

Or that the rouge isn't thick enough to hide the sigmoid bone?

Have you no consideration—no proper feeling at all,-

To annoy people by reminding them that Death

is at the ball?

I'm at home in the up-stairs dormitory, where
the sleep lies heavy as lead;
Snug-isn't it?-each six feet of space with its
sleepers, two to a bed.

They come up from the country so gamesome, so
fresh, and full of glee;

At first sight of this pale face of mine they'll have nothing to say to me.

They're not aware 'tis my place to sit among the young ladies still;

But the weaker ones soon draw to me; they're very often ill.

From The Quarterly Review. 1. The Works of Thomas Hood. 7 vols. Edited, with Notes, by his Son. London, 1862.

2. Hood's Own, First and Second London, 1862.

3. Memorials of Thomas Hood. London, 1860.

Series.

2 vols.

land; but in this instance the old saying, that one Scotsman will be sure to introduce another, was not verified, Thomas Hood being as unlike a Scotsman as possible. His grandmother was an Armstrong; and he used to say in joke that he was descended from two notorious thieves, Robin Hood and Johnnie Armstrong. The genius of Cockneydom, Ir depends greatly on a man's physical however, was the ruling power in mixing the health and animal spirits whether he shall be elements of his nature. He would have been of a large, calm, outward-looking nature and all the richer for a little of the ruddy health objective mind, or shall be a brooding sub- of Robin, and the hardihood of the renowned jective being, whose vision is introverted, and Borderer. But Cockney he was doomed to whose temperament is too irritable to allow be; and we cannot help thinking that the full time for maturing the larger births of lit-"Song of the Shirt" could only have been erature. The great humorists, as a rule, written by one who entered deeply into Lonwere men of overflowing animal spirits. They have, as the term suggests, more moisture of the bodily temperament; the unction of mirth, and the wine of gladness. Such are the Chaucers, Ben Jonsons, and Fieldings, the Molières and Rabelais. But the small, thin men, with little flesh and blood, the Popes, Voltaires, and Hoods, rarely reach this perfect joyousness of feeling. On the contrary, they feel naked to the least breath of the world, as though they were one live sensitive nerve of self, and the slightest touch erects the pens like porcupines' quills. That a man with a powerful frame and robust health may, even in a time like ours, reach the corpulent Brobdignagian humor of the older writers, we have had ample proof in John Wilson, whose life was so opulent, and laugh so hearty, that he could shake off all the cobwebs of our miserable self-consciousness. That which would pierce the little men to their vitals he took as a mere tickling of his cuticle. Those things which are as the mighty blows of Thor's hammer to others only seemed to make him look up and say with Skrymir," There must be sparrows roosting in this tree, I think; what is that they have dropped?"

don life, so as to feel instinctively how it went with the poorest poor who dwell high up the dark and rickety staircases, seeing the stars through the rents of the roof; to whom spring only comes in the plant or flower on the window-sill; the gleam of sunshine on the wing of a swallow darting by, or the warble of an imprisoned skylark. Only a dweller in London who knows how the poor live, could fathom the indescribable yearning of the fevered body and pent-up soul for one breath of the country air and boundless space; to cool the feet in the sweet green grass, and the fingers among its wild flowers; to freshen the poor worn eyes with a look at the glad green world of pleasant leaves, waving woods, and blue heaven bending over all.

Hood took cheerfully enough to his birthplace, and thought if local prejudices were worth anything the balance ought to be in favor of the capital. He would as lief have been a native of London as of Stoke Pogis, and considered the Dragon of Bow Church or Gresham's Grasshopper as good a terrestrial sign to be born under as the dunghill cock on a village steeple. He thought a literary man might exult that he first saw the light-or perhaps the fog-in the same metropolis as It is a very noticeable feature in Hood's Milton, Gray, De Foe, Pope, Byron, Lamb, character that, with even worse health than and other town-born authors, "whose fame Pope's, he was of a most sweet temper; and has nevertheless triumphed over the Bills of no amount of pain and buffeting could turn Mortality." So in their goodly company he him into one of the wasps of wit. But to cheerfully took up his livery, especially as read his nature and appreciate his works, we Cockneyism, properly so called, appeared to must turn to his life. him to be limited to no particular locality or Thomas Hood by birth was a genuine Cock-station in life. It is likewise worthy of reney. He was born May 23d, 1799, in the mark, that Hood owes a whole class of huPoultry, London; therefore within the sound morous character to the streets of London. of Bow bells. His father was a native of Scot- The "Lost Child" is a type of what we mean.

In this the nature and language are strictly was articled to his uncle, Mr Sands, the enCockney. The cooped-up maternal agony graver, nor how long he labored at the art grows garrulous beyond measure; and so all which first taught him how to etch his own rules of verse are violated in order that ample funny fancies. expression may be given to the grief. The result is a long lugubrious patter; tragedy and farce blending in a burlesque such as Mr. Robson alone could do justice to.

His

He speaks of having sat at a desk in some commercial office, but he was not destined to become a winner of the "Ledger," his race being cut short at starting; this he commuHood's father was a man of literary taste; nicates in strictly business language. had written a couple of novels, and was one appetite failed, and its principal creditor, the of the firm of Vernor and Hood which pub-stomach, received only an ounce in the pound. lished the poems of Bloomfield and Kirke In the phraseology of the "Price Current," White. James, the eldest boy, likewise had it was expected that he must "subunit to a literary predilections. His mother, we are decline." The doctors declared that by sittold, was somewhat startled to find a note-book ting so much on the counting-house stool he which appeared to contain some secret con- was hatching a whole brood of complaints. fession of hopeless love, the good lady not So he was ordered to abstain from “ashes, knowing that her son had been translating bristles, and Petersburg yellow candle, and to Petrarch. Thus Thomas Hood had, as he indulge in a more generous diet." Change said, a dash of ink in his blood, which soon of air, too, was imperatively prescribed. Acbecame manifest in an inkling for authorship. cordingly, Hood was shipped off to visit some He was a shy, quiet child, exceedingly sensi- relatives in Dundee. As soon as they set eyes tive, and delicate in health; fond of making on him they did what they could to send him his little observations with continual humor back again. He had come to the wrong peoas he sat silently watching, with noticing ple in search of health. Hood, however, deeyes, the main stream of life passing by. One termined on stopping in Dundee. The air of of his earliest artistic efforts was a great suc- Scotland did him so much good. One of its cess, although not exactly in the way he had results was a belief that although Scotland anticipated. He smoked a terrific-looking might not produce the first man in the world, demon on the bedroom ceiling with a candle, it would undoubtedly be a Scotsman who intending to frighten his brother on going to would live on as the Last Man. To estimate bed; but forgetting all about it, he was him- his position at this time, alone in a strange self the victim, and found it no joke. place, hanging on his own hook, he tells us to imagine a boy of fifteen at the Nore, as it were, of life, thus left dependent on his own pilotage for a safe voyage to the Isle of Man! How he was occupied in Dundee we are not clearly informed; but his first appearance in print was in the "Dundee Advertiser;" his next in the "Dundee Magazine;" and he tells us with modest triumph and pardonable pride, that the respective editors published his writings without charging anything for insertion. This he considered success enough to make him sell himself body and soul, after the German fashion, to that minor Mephistophiles the Printer's Devil. Not but what he served some years' apprenticeship before the Imp in question became really his Famil liar. As with all literary naturals, he drifted rather than plunged into authorship.

Disease and death were carly and frequent visitors to the Hood family. James, the elder brother, was soon carried off. The father died suddenly, leaving the widow with her little ones but poorly provided for. The wife soon followed her husband. Hood's sister Anne did not survive the mother very long, both dying of consumption. It was on the death of this sister that Hood wrote his tender and touching little poem called the

"Death-bed."

The mother while living had given her son what education she could command. He acquired French, and became a pretty good classical scholar. In his "attempt on his own life" he speaks of winning a prize for Latin without knowing the Latin for prize. But he had a capable teacher after he left the school at which this happened, and his witty renderings from Latin authors were well known to his friends in after-life. We do not make out the precise date at which Thomas Hood

In the year 1821 Hood returned to London, and was engaged to assist the editor of the London Magazine, leaving the engraver's business for that purpose. Here was a legit

imate opening, and he "jumped at it, à la | Ocean of literature in a storm-flooding all, Grimaldi, head foremost, and was speedily the floor, table, and chairs-billows of books behind the scenes." So delighted was he, tossing, tumbling, surging open. On such that he would receive a revise from the fore-occasions I have willingly listened by the man of the printers as a "proof of his re- hour whilst the philosopher, standing with gard; forgave him all his slips," and really his eyes fixed on one side of the room, seemed thought that printers' devils were not so to be less speaking than reading from a black as they are painted. But, he tells us, handwriting on the wall!"" was in "Our Con

his " topgallant-glory

tributors."

tales are out of his own head, is asked if he is a tadpole. M.'s Ode on the Martyrs who were burnt in the rain of Queen Mary is original, but wants fire."

The Lion's Head" of the London MagHow he used to look forward to azine was the first mask of Momus put on by Elia and backward for Hazlitt, and all round Thomas Hood. His punning propensity breaks for Edward Herbert; and "how I used to out in humorous Answers to Correspondents. look up to Allan Cunningham," who was "W. is informed that his Night' is too formed by Nature tall enough to "snatch a long, for the moon rises twice in it. The grace beyond the reach of Art." Hood has Essay on Agricultural Distress' would given us a pleasant lifelike sketch of Charles only increase it. B. is surely humming. Lamb, with his fine head on a small spare H. B.'s Sonnet to the Rising Sun' is susbody; his intellectual face full of wiry lines, pected of being written for a Lark. W.'s and lurking quips and cranks of physiog-Tears of Sensibility" had better be dropped. nomy; brown, bright eyes, quick in turning The Echo' will not answer. T., who says his as those of birds,-looking sharp enough to pick up pins and needles. The hesitation in his speech continually relieved by some happy turn of thought which seemed to have been thus naturally waited for. Shy with stran- Amongst Hood's early contributions to the gers, but instantly alight with a welcome London we find the lovely ballad of "Fair smile of womanly sweetness for his friends. Inez " and the poem of " Lycus the Centaur." At Lamb's he met with Coleridge, the "full- This latter poem was a favorite with Hartley bodied poet, with his waving white hair and Coleridge, who thought it absolutely unique his benign face, round, ruddy, and unfur- in its line, and such as no man except Hood rowed as a holy friar's." Hood heard the glo- could have written. The measure, which has rious talker at times when he was in the key a gallop appropriate to the subject, is a diffiwhich Lamb called "C in alt.," far above cult one to tell a story in. Yet the poem the line of the listener's comprehension. He contains some powerful descriptions, and has made marvellous music nevertheless; and not had justice done to it. Here, for examHood felt as though he were carried" spiral-ple, is a striking picture of the bestialized ling up to heaven by a whirlwind intertwisted victims of Circe's horrible charms as another with sunbeams, giddy and dazzled, and had human being, newly doomed, comes amongst then been rained down again with a shower them with the likeness they have lost :of mundane stocks and stones that battered out of me all recollection of what I had heard and what I had seen." Here, too, was poor Clare, in his bright grass-colored coat and yellow waistcoat, "shining verdantly from out the grave-colored suits like a patch of turnips amidst stubble and fallow." Lamb sometimes bantering him on certain "Clareobscurities" in his verses, and anon talking so gravely, towards midnight, that Clare would cry "Dal!" (a clarified d-n) " if it isn't like a dead man preaching out of his coffin!" De Quincey also was one of the writers for the London; and Hood often saw the small, calm philosopher “at home, quite at home, in the midst of a German

They were mournfully gentle, and grouped for

relief,

All foes in their skin, but all friends in their grief;

The Leopard was there-baby-mild in its feat

ure;

And the Tiger, black-barred, with the gaze of

a creature

That knew gentle pity; the bristled-backed
Boar,

His innocent tusks stained with mulberry gore;
And the laughing Hyena-but laughing no

more:

And the Snake, not with magical orbs to devise

Strange Death, but with woman's attraction of

eyes;

The tall ugly Ape, that still bore a dim shine
Thro' his hairy eclipse of a manhood divine: