an end; and it went on to 136. So Lord Al

cordingly the question was put. The Speaker been when Mr. Buxton's friendships were said, I think the noes have it. Never shall 1 Irish, and among the highest and purest forget the tone in which his solitary voice re- classes of Irishmen-he now received and plied, No, sir.' The noes must go forth, welcomed the alliance of Mr. O'Connell, said the Speaker, and all the House appeared to who gave an energetic support' (p. 261). troop out. Those within were counted, and amounted to ninety. This was a minority far With such advisers the petition-manufacture beyond our expectations, and from fifty upwards, could not but reach a splendid deve opmy heart beat higher at every number. I went ment. Mr. Buxton brags of all the women round to the other side of the ventilator to see in his house being busy with "tureens of them coming in. How my heart fell as they paste" and "every thing in proportion,' reached 88, 89, 90, 91, and the string still not at the petitions "like feather beds," &c. &c. thorp's amendment was carried. At 2 o'clock in (p. 321). Mr. Buxton invites "members the morning it was over, and for the first time of the Established Church, together with my father came up to see us in the ventilator. I the principal dissenting bodies, to unite in soon saw that it was almost too sore a subject to setting apart the 16th of January as a day touch upon; he was so wounded at having vex- of prayer on the subject of slavery ;"--and ed all his friends. Mr. would not speak to finally, he invites the anti-slavery societies him after it was over, so angry was he; and for from Cornwall to Caithness "to choose days after when my father came home, he used delegates," and send them up to hold “a to mention, with real pain, somebody or other who would not return his bow. On Friday, Dr. Congress in London," to watch the proceedExeter Hall was Lushington came here and cheered him, saying ings of Parliament. Well, that minority was a great victory."p. 292.

opened. This was the last turn of the screw. The Government surrenders-and in due course of nature the House of Lords

In a few days Lord Althorp said to Mr.surrenders too. Macaulay, "That division of Buxton's has "On Tuesday, the 20th" (August, 1833), writes settled the Slavery question.' "The Govern- Miss Buxton, "was the third reading in the ment, after a decent little pause, undertook Lords. Dr. Lushington came in afterwards, unthe question, and Buxton considered himself expectedly to dinner; he seemed very much as virtually Emeritus. But no further pleased with the events of the session, which he examination in cooler blood once more discussed in the most lively manner. Lord Alstaggered the ministry-they faltered-thorp said to him in the House a few days ago, they began to split hairs at last they ga- too great for any individuals in this House. I Well! you and Buxton have wielded a power thered courage and signified that they found hope we shall never see such another instance.' it impossible to take the initiative. On this Among other incidents, it was mentioned that one Lord Howick retired from office; he had day, in the House of Lords, Lord Grey went up committed himself too deeply for retraction. to my father to speak to him. The Duke of Then Buxton understood the case-then at Wellington said, I see what the influence is, last, sick at heart of "Whiggery and Red under which you are; and if that individual is to have more power than Lords and Commons both, Tapery," he gave the signal for " a decisive we may as well give up the bill. All the Commovement of the religious public." Meetmons' ministers who were standing there were ing follows meeting-wherever any man highly entertained.”—p. 336. guilty of official or colonial experience arises, he is roared and hooted down. The "Highly entertained!" The only won"Women of Britain" are appealed to- der is that ministers capable of smiling at 72,000 of them sign (who asks what?) in a such a moment had preserved spirit enough week. The day had been, and no distant day, to stand up even then for some compensawhen Mr. Buxton, already in Parliament, tion to the planters. We confess it also said to his old uncle, "I quite agree with you strikes us as wonderful under all the cirin reprobating the Radicals: I am persuaded cumstances of the case, considering the that their object is the subversion of the eager craft and the furious imbecility that Constitution and of religion," (p. 82)-but surrounded Buxton out of doors, the pain now the Radicals were not to be despised- and anxiety which the Whig vacillations they were too happy to co-operate in any had cost him, and the general contempt crusade against property, especially pro- amidst which they alone by their felicitous perty for which the government appeared idiosyncrasy could have smiled-it does to have any lingering feeling of respect strike us, we say, as wonderful that Buxton in any crusade against any law-against any at that moment stood firm as to the comauthority but that of noise. The time had pensation; and though he did so by no

means on high grounds-since, wholly over-citement that chequer his story, we should looking the history of British legislation, he think it rash, in not a few cases, to draw still denied that the planters could have the line between fervor and fever. any "moral claim;"-never gave the slight- Meanwhile the man who had triumphed

est attention to the facts that the slave" over Lords and Commons "must needs be trade was begun and fostered by express even in the worldly world something of authority of the Government-that the what that world calls a lion. Mr. Buxton planters earnestly desired to have it stop- has his share in its curiosity and even enped long before Wilberforce was heard of, gouement, and real Quakers seldom disdain because, as they justly said, till it was to taste of that cup when proffered. This stopped they never could set about the affords some entertaining episodes to break civilization of their own black people with the increasing sombreness of the closing the least chance of success-and that all chapters. Not the worst is a dinner at Ham these movements of the planters were House, that uncontaminated antique, the treated with contempt by the Government favorite residence of the Duke of Lauder-though all this be true, and though, dale-still left, outside and inside, as he moreover, Buxton was greatly influenced inhabited and as Horace Walpole described by fantastic anticipations, to which he it--which the gay visitors of Richmond clung with the blindest pertinacity in spite hill can scarce catch a glimpse of, when the of all the warnings of all the knowing- coeval groves about are in full leaf--by far with all these deductions it is still just to the most curious of the many interesting old praise him for it was entirely due to him places near the metropolis. Here in those and a very few friends of his, men of pro- days lived the Duke's descendant, the late perty and of business, engaged in the ex- Countess of Dysart, herself as venerable a terior agitation, that the Government and relic as any she had in her keeping; and the nation were saved the irredeemable dis- here it was her fancy to assemble on sumgrace the utter moral ruin-of an abrupt mer Saturdays as picturesque mixtures of and unmitigated revolutionary confiscation. fashion, finery, and notoriety in all its shapes Mr. Buxton had clung, we have said, to and shades, as ever diverted the languos of fantastic anticipations; he had never parted any Castle of Indolence. Here Mr. Buxton with his belief that, as soon as they ceased was introduced one day---we think we could to be slaves," the negroes would go to work guess by whom---and though the day seen s for wages" (p. 189). He also still held by not to have been a first-rate one, for he f 1 the apprentice clause as an essential and in- on no conglomeration of prime ministers separable part of the emancipation scheme. and quack-doctors, bishops and baptists, acBut on this point, as on all the rest, he tresses and duchesses, Turk_ambassadors was to be confuted,--and that speedily. and Carbonari, yet, as a great London brewHe had carried his squeezing experiment to er, he was in good luck for it seems that a successful issue, but the instruments he he then for the first time met in society the used were beyond his permanent control: most illustrious of modern Israelites :the one exertion for which we have been "We yesterday dined at Ham House: and allowing him credit seems to have exhaustvery amusing it was. Rothschild told us his ed his means of check, and with them every life and adventures. He was the third son of chance of pause was gone. But, indeed, the banker at Frankfort. There was not,' he when we consider the low grounds on which said, room enough for us all in that city. he himself defended that insulated resist-I dealt in English goods. One great trader ance, it may seem idle to wonder that, his came there, who had the market to himself: he effort over, the glowing masses told on him was quite t e great man and did us a favor if as his reason, when he was comparatively and he refused to show me his patterns. he sold us goods. Somehow I offended him, This reasonable, had never told upon them. was on a Tuesday; I said to my father, I will When compelled in London to trans- go to England.' I could speak nothing but act business" with responsible ministers, German. On the Thursday I started; the nearer he was never-the hesitations and mis- I got to England the cheaper goods were. As givings here faithfully and most curiously soon as I got to Manchester I laid out all my d. tailed show it-the same man that his money, things were so cheap; and I made good I soon found that there were three Exeter-Hall audiences found in him. Then profit. the atmosphere was unmixed: his fanaticism manufacturing. I said to the manufacturer, I profits-the raw material, the dyeing, and the recovered its Quaker-heat; and in truth, when we see the physical symptoms of ex-1

66

Collective Edition of Letters, v. 273.

will supply you with materials and die, and you supply me with manufactured goods.' So I got three profits instead of one, and I could sell goods cheaper than anybody. In a short time I made my 20,000l. into 60,000l. My success all turned on one maxim. I said, I can do what another man can, and so I am a match for the man with the patterns, and for all the rest of them! Another advantage I had. I was an off-hand man. I made a bargain at once. When I was settled in London the East India Company had 800,000 lbs. of gold to sell. I went to the sale and bought it all. I knew the Duke of Wellington must have it. I had bought a great many of his bills at a discount. The Government sent for me and said they must have it. When they had got it, they did not know how to get it to Portugal. I undertook all that, and I sent it through France; and that was the best business I ever did."

"Another maxim, on which he seemed to place great reliance, was, never to have anything to do with an unlucky place or an unlucky man. I have seen, said he, many clever men, very clever men, who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well; but fate is against them; they cannot get on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do good to me? By aid of these maxims he has acquired three millions of money.

"I hope,' said 'that your children are not too fond of money and business, to the exclusion of more important things. I am sure you would not wish that.' Rothschild-I am sure I should wish that. I wish them to give mind, and soul, and heart, and body, and every thing to business; that is the way to be happy Stick to one business, young man,' said he to Edward; stick to your brewery, and you may be the great brewer of London. Be a brewer, and a banker, and a merchant, and a manufacturer, and you will soon be in the Gazette. One of my neighbors is a very ill-tempered man; he tries to vex me, and has built a great place for swine close to my walk. So, when I go out, I hear first, grunt, grunt, squeak, squeak; but this does me no harm. I am always in good humor. Sometimes to amuse myself I give a beggar a guinea. He thinks it is a mistake, and for fear I should find it out, off he runs as hard as he can. I advise you to give a beggar a guinea sometimes-it is very amusing."-p. 343.

that, notwithstanding all his long and distinguished services as representative of Weymouth, he should have no chance of being returned again, unless he chose "to open public-houses, and lend money (a gentle name for bribery) to the extent of £1,000." (p. 422.) He therefore declined the poll.

We e suppose that, the farniente of the negro being secure, his natural sense of the horrors of beer and bribery among hard-worked Britons resumed its sway. On this occasion, he says, he had an interview with an official dignitary (name left blank), who "said more about the regret of the Government than he (Buxton) would like to repeat. (p. 423.) Amiable Government! He adds that he had encies-however, he bowed them all offoffers from a score of more liberal constitu. and he never entered Parliament again. But he had got too much in the habit of out-of-doors agitation to keep long away from that; and undeterred by the daily accumulating evidences that the measure squeezed from the Whigs was to turn out, as an economical and political one, most disastrous, others from the same guilery were successively advocated with the same boldness of miscalculation, and carried through by the same ever-ready machinery. The details of the minor experiments may be left to these Memoirs; those of the great crowning adventure-the organization of a society for the final suppression of the

slave-trade between Africa and whatever lies on the western side of the Atlantic, with and mainly through the establishment of a grand "capital and citadel of Christianity, civilization, and legitimate industry and commerce in the centre of the African continent"-the buoyant rapture with which this scheme was received, the eager and lavish supplies of the Government, the countenance afforded by royalty, the brilliant start of the expedition, its absurd progress and calamitous ending-all these circumstances were brought under review in our last Number (article Friends of the African).

The reader will not fail to note the way in which Mr. Buxton records the old Jew's In June, 1840, soon after the "glorious superstition about "men of luck;" nor, we meeting" in Exeter Hall, at which, by think, to commend the use Lord Ellen- Lord Melbourne's advice, Prince Albert borough made of other things in this letter presided over the inauguration of the "Afon the night of May 25th, 1848, in the rican Civilization Association," Lord John Lords' debate on the Russell and Roth-Russell conveyed to Mr. Buxton her Maschild Jew Bill. A capital patriarch for a jesty's gracious intentions of elevating him tribe of English senators! to the baronetcy; which honor he, (6 after On the eve of the general election in a little hesitation," accepted from the gra1837, Mr. Buxton found reason to believe | titude of the "regretting" Whigs. This

distinction came to him, it would seem, at a moment of collapse---the equipment of the Niger fleet had cost him extraordinary labor)---for he (p. 524) complains that "his listlessness reaches even to his two pet pursuits, negroes and partridges "---(it would have sounded better and been more true to say partridges and planters): but he assumed for the motto to his knightly escutcheon the last five syllables of the text, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might" and we hope the title gratified himself, besides flattering (which was of course the object) his anti-pompand-vanity associates.

tidings of the Niger Expedition. His health, which had been undermined before, became gradually more feeble, and he could no longer bear any sustained mental exertion, especially if atman, the law of whose nature it was to be at tended by any sense of responsibility. To a work with head, hand, and heart, it was no slight trial to be thus prematurely laid aside. He was only fifty-five years of age, but already the evening was come of his day of ceaseless toil, nor was its close brightened by the beams of success and joy. When unconscious that he was observed, he would at times utter such load. groans as if his heart were sinking beneath its scribed by South, which runs out in voice.' But his grief was not of that kind deHe rarely spoke of the Expedition-to Captain He soon recovered his sporting ardor--- Bird Allen's death he could scarcely allude at for one of the next letters was chiefly on the all; but his grave demeanor, his worn, pale merits of a new shooting pony, by name face, the abstraction of his manner, and the inAbraham, who "is fond of porter, and pre-pity poor Africa'-these showed too well the tense fervor of his supplications that God would fers ours. "" He spent the winter of 1840-1 at Rome and Naples, and his journal is poignancy of his feelings."—p. 553. largely diversified with anecdotes of boar- Sir Fowell survived for three years after hunting---which he confesses rather put him this-but they were melancholy years: his out of conceit with the tamer diversions of energies dwindled-he could hardly sit Norfolk. He also, however, gave attention Abraham long enough to fill a very modest to the prisons of both states; nor was he bag-and though while he was at all able to without curiosity for their antiquities, leave home he was very ready to attend any though he seems to have had little or none for meetings connected with the African cause, their picture-galleries. His sketch of Pom- and as his son says, ' while candidly admitpeii is readable even after Lord Dudley's. ting the ruin of his own scheme, cherished On his return in autumn, he went to see hopes that the same great end might be aca daughter married in Scotland, and then complished in some other and better way' visited several renowned preserves in the (p. 553)-we do not suppose that readHighlands---among others Lord Breadal-ers of the book, or even of our imperfect bane's at the Black Mount, where he made summary, will doubt that the blow of that his debût as a deer stalker. He felt anx-grand disappointment was more than he ious to make an appropriate return; and a could bear. Nor will many of them confound cousin of his being then in Norway, re- his case with that of a mere politician whose quested him to collect a flock of capercail- calculations and predictions have been put zies. This was set about by a new 66 move- to the test and failed. ment of the religious public "---namely, by pages back, in reference to a different subWe quoted, several getting a score of the mountain clergy to ject, some paragraphs from his diary, in offer rewards for so many cocks and hens which he records the minuteness of his prayfrom the pulpit after sermon. However, ers, and the assurance he felt that, with rare cocks and hens were procured---Sir Fowell's exceptions, his petitions had been answered game-keeper went to Norway, and thence with favor. He says that he "offered up his carried them in safety to Taymouth---and prayers for everything tha teoncerned him" thus we owe to the new brewing baronet the (p. 197); and-whether or not he had his restoration of the feathered giant of the private Collects for the 12th of August, the Grampian forests. The birds have so mul- 1st of October, &c.-there can be no doubt tiplied that they are again game, and Sir that he includes the least of African inciFowell's son was complimented with being dents among the "things that concerned invited to shoot the first capercailzie when him."-Moreover he was not free from a her Majesty honored the Marquis with a superstition that had, we thought, died out visit two or three years ago. long before his day he evidently made a practice of opening his Bible, in moments of emergence and anxiety, on the principle of the Sortes Virgiliana. What then must have been his misgivings when the crushing ca

But now came heavy tidings. Let the affectionate biographer speak :

It may well be conceived with what anguish Sir Fowell Buxton received the melancholy

any

The Works of Alexander Pope, Esquire. By W. Roscoe, Esq. A New Edition. In eight vols. London, 1847.

EVERY great classic in our native lan- age, expose an immoderate craving for guage should from time to time be reviewed glittering effects from contrasts too harsh anew; and especially if he belongs in any to be natural, too sudden to be durable, considerable extent to that section of the and too fantastic to be harmonious. Το literature which connects itself with man meet this vicious taste, from which (as from ners; and if his reputation originally, or any diffusive taste) it is vain to look for his style of composition, is likely to have perfect immunity in any writer lying immebeen much influenced by the transient fash-diately under its beams, Pope sacrificed in ion of his own age. The withdrawal, for one mode of composition, the simplicities instance, from a dramatic poet, or a satirist, of nature and sincerity; and had he pracof any false lustre which he has owed to tised no other mode, we repeat that now he his momentary connexion with what we may must have descended from his pedestal. call the personalities of a fleeting genera- To some extent he is degraded even as it tion. or of any undue shelter to his errors is; for the reader cannot avoid whispering which may have gathered round them from to himself what quality of thinking must political bias, or from intellectual infirmities that be which allies itself so naturally (as amongst his partizans, will sometimes se- will be shown) with distortions of fact or riously modify, after a century or so. the of philosophic truth? But, had his whole fairest original appreciation of a fine writer. writings been of that same cast, he must A window, composed of Claude Lorraine have been degraded altogether, and a star glasses, spreads over the landscape outside would have fallen from our English galaxy a disturbing effect, which not the most of poets. practised eye can evade. The idola theatri We mention this particular case as a affect us all. No man escapes he contagion reason generally for renewing by intervals from his contemporary bystanders. And the examination of great writers, and libthe reader may see further on, that, had erating the verdict of their contemporaries Pope been merely a satiric poet, he must in from the casual disturbances to which every these times have laid down much of the age is liable in its judgments and in its splendor which surrounds him in our tra- tastes. As books mul iply to an unmanditional estimate of his merit. Such a re-ageable excess, selection becomes more and nunciation would be a forfeit--not always more a necessity for readers, and the power to errors in himself-but sometimes to er-of selection more and more a desperate rors in that state of English society, which problem for the busy part of readers. The forced the ablest writer into a collusion possibility of selecting wisely is becoming with its own meretricious tastes. Th continually more hopeless, as the necessity an ithetical prose "characters," as they for selection is becoming continually more were technically termed, which circulated crying. Exactly as the growing weight of amongst the aristocracy in the early part books overlays and stifles the power of comof the last century, the style of the dia-parison, pari passu is the call for comparison logue in such comedy as was then popular, the more clamorous; and thus arises a duty, and much of the occasional poetry in that correspondingly more urgent, of searching