Nov. 1860.]

LITERATURE, THE SCIENCES, AND THE ARTS.

of such men as George Fox. He warns the more loudly, exhorts the more earnestly, and admonishes all sorts and conditions of all sorts of evils and shortcomings. He has a warning word for everybody, and never fails to speak it. He is offended by all evils and all evil sounds, especially by that of any church-bell which may be ringing people into a steeplehouse. He denounces it as a mere market bell, to gather people together that the priest may set forth his wares for sale. As he walks towards Nottingham one Sunday morning, "the sound of the church-going bell" not only gives him no pleasure, but his "inward monitor" tells him that he must go yonder and cry against the temple and the worshippers in it. Some priests with whom he is walking know nothing of this monition, and think him in a very meditative frame of mind, in which delusion they show him into the church, and into a pew. No sooner had the priest taken his text, and begun to preach, than George begins to preach also. The congregation are amazed, the constables are sent for, and the unexpected preacher is carried off to prison.

Some time afterwards the head sheriff, John Reckless, led George out of prison into his own house, when his wife, meeting the prisoner in the hall, takes him by the hand, exclaiming, "Salvation is come to our house." George is now lodged in the sheriff's house, where great meetings are held, and much good is done. The sheriff himself is wonderfully affected, and as he was one day walking in the house with George, in his slippers, suddenly exclaims, "I must go into the market and furnish repentance to the people." No sooner declared than done. In his slippers he proceeds to the market-place, and through several streets besides, preaching to the people, and exhorting them to repent. When the assizes came on, George was to have been brought before the judge, but the sheriff's men being tardy in fetching him, before he arrived the judge had risen, and the prisoner is sent back to prison, where he suffered much annoyance, until put under protection of a body of soldiers. How long he was kept a prisoner does not appear, but he was no sooner at liberty than he began to travel and trouble the authorities as before. "Many great and wonderful things," says he, were wrought by the heavenly power in those days; for the Lord made bare his omnipotent arm, and manifested his power, to the astonishment of many, by his healing virtue, whereof many have been delivered of sins, very great infirmities, and the devils were made subject through his name. Particular instances might be given, beyond what this unbelieving age is able to receive or bear." The present age is equally unbelieving, though sometimes grossly credulous.

66

But if his age could not bear much, Fox himself had to bear a great deal. In a steeple-house at Mansfield, the congrega. tion would not give him a moment's hearing, but did give him a sound and severe beating. They rose upon him in great rage, beat him with their hands, Bibles, and sticks, struck him down, and almost stifled and smothered him. They then dragged him forth while he was scarcely able to stand, and put him in the stocks, where he was forced to sit some hours, while the people came about him with horsewhips, threatening to scourge him. Though taken before a magistrate and discharged, he could hardly escape from the mob, who waylaid him and stoned him till he was scarcely able to stand. Nor was it without great difficulty that he escaped from the town. Proceeding to Derby, he continued his public interruptions, and was committed, with a comrade, to the house of correction for six months, as a blasphemer.

not voluntarily enlist: but in vain; George would not be, and
would not be compelled to become, a soldier. Nothing was
"This sort of
to be done with this "pestilent fellow" but to turn him out
of gaol about the beginning of winter, in the year 1651,
after he had been a prisoner almost a year.
man is a very troublesome prisoner, and better at liberty
People began to find this out everywhere, even in cathe-
than in stocks or cells."
dralized Lichfield, where, deeply scandalized by the sight of
three steeple-house spires, George seems to have gone into a
frenzy. The spires were like gigantic thorns in his side,
piersing even through leathern clothes, and goading him to
madness. While at a distance from the town the fit seizes
him, and away he scampers from his companions, in a straight
line, over hedges and ditches, till he comes to a field where are
some shepherds. Here he puts off his shoes, and, winter as
it was then, stands still for a time. He then hastens to the
loud voice, "Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield!" In the
city, and when in it goes up and down the streets crying in a
market-place, and on the market-day, he repeats his denun-
ciation. The people suffered him to cry aloud without harm
George did not
or hindrance, and he soon departed. The meaning of all this
was, that in the Emperor Diocletian's time a thousand
Christians were martyred in Lichfield.
Crying aloud in steeple-houses and against them seems to
himself make up the thousand and one.
have been his self-imposed mission at that period. Some-
times he alarmed the people, sometimes they alarmed him.
After resting all night supperless under a haystack, during
rain and snow, about three days before Christmas, the next
day he enters York Minster. Admonishing the people after
At Tickhill he was beaten by the
service, they hurried him out and threw him down the steps.
Through different towns he proceeded, meeting with very
indifferent treatment.
clerk with a heavy Bible till the blood gushed from his
nostrils, and he was afterwards dragged out of the place by
the mob and thrown over a hedge. He lost his hat on this
occasion, and had to travel without it seven or eight miles, to
the next town.

Persecution does not always deter men, but sometimes
exercises a remarkably attractive influence. So George Fox
now began to find followers, who went forth to preach his
maltreatments might be made out of Fox's journals and
doctrines. A wearisome list of disappointments and severe
those of his friends. In truth, he was well used to being
one occasion he stretched out his arms among the multitude
buffeted, or, more plainly, beaten and kicked, until at last on
and cried, "Strike again! here are my arms, my head, and
my cheeks!" The uncouth wretches took him at his word, so
that when he examined his person in the evening he found
that his body and arms were yellow, black, and blue, with
the blows which he had received. It should have been appa.
rent by this time that he was as tough as his leathern
breeches, and that people might just as well beat them as his
"One thing this true history teaches,
Persecution never reaches
body for all the compliance they might get out of him.,
Even through stout leathern breeches.
"Be your treatment e'er so rough,→
Buffet, beat, and kick and cuff,-
Mind is made of sternest stuff.
"When the will of man is strong,
Be he right or be ho wrong,

Force is lighter than a feather;
This the moral of our tale,
Violence will ne'er prevail,

And there nothing is like leather!"

It was about this time that he and his followers began to be designated Quakers, probably from the report of the The number of preachers following George Fox now began magistrate who committed him to the house of correction, where the keeper began to quake at George's exhortations, and, entering his room, exclaimed with emotion, "I have been to increase, for, good and indifferent, they amounted to twentyas a lion against you, but now I come like a lamb!" Per-five. At the hands of the mob they fared about as badly as mission was granted to the prisoner to walk out a mile, and their leader. Solomon Eccles was not void of understanding, he afterwards learned that magistrates and keepers had hoped but, as a friendly historian admits, of all shame and fear. he would walk two, for they were sadly plagued about him. Originally a musician, he was so skilful that he could gain by He might easily have got out and away had he been civil and teaching not less than two hundred pounds a year. But he pliable, but, true to his purpose, he would always exhort and heard George Fox's voice and abandoned his music. wait when he was expected to be silent, or to woo his liberty. might have sold his instruments and music books for a good At length the magistrates, in order to get rid of him, deter-sum, but conceiving them to be injurious things, he laid them mined upon pressing him for a soldier, seeing that he would on a pile of wood on Tower-hill, and set fire to them a

He

Nov. 1860.1

LITERATURE, THE SCIENCES, AND THE ARTS.

Hastings, he visits Margaret Fell. Both are committed to | tive vitality will become weaker in proportion as individual
prison for refusing to take the oaths of allegiance. They virtue extends and adorns the members of society at large.
suffer much, Margaret is sentenced, and George removed Quakerism will, in all probability, continue to decline, not so
from Lancaster to Scarborough Castle, where the wretched much because men do not and will not believe in George Fox,
After a year's as because they will believe in One whom George Fox always
state of the prison sorely troubles him.
confinement there, he is released by the king's order, resumes strove to follow, however much he may at times have mis-
his travels, visits Ireland, returns, and does at last make an taken Him.
affirmation, of a peculiar kind, in a dingy meeting-house, in
a long street named Broadmead, Bristol. There he marries
Margaret Fell. Both had long been "moved" to this step,

and now it was taken.

George is now moved to visit the plantations in America, and sets sail for the Downs on July 12th, 1670, accompanied by about a dozen of the most eminent Friends. He arrives at last in New England, introduces Quakerism there, returns to Old England, and writes to his wife to join him at Bristol. He cannot keep long in any one place, so sets out travelling again, and soon finds his way once more into prison, only getting out by reason of errors in the indictment.

Now he visits Holland, returns, and writes grave letters to everybody of eminence, such as the King of Poland, the Grand Turk, and the Dey of Algiers. In 1684 he felt drawings in the spirit" to pay another visit to Holland. He goes, and returns again to England. Upon repeated applications respecting such Quakers as were still in prison, the king, in 1686, issued an order for the relcase of all prisoners confined for conscience' sake,-an event which carried great joy among the Friends, and which they celebrated by a large meeting in London in the early part of the year. Some, however, refusing to pay tithes, still remained in prison.

After such and so many labours and persecutions, it was well that George should see something like the happy meeting just alluded to, and it was well that he saw it then, or he had not seen it at all. Debility soon afterwards obliged him to relinquish his labours; he grew gradually weaker and weaker, till, on the evening of the 13th of November, 1690, he died, in great tranquillity, at the house of a Quaker named Henry Gouldney, in White Hart-court, having addressed a congregation in the early part of the day at the meeting-house in Gracechurch-street.

Such is the history in brief, and in its salient features, of a His present remarkable enthusiast, if not a madman. biographer calls him the latter, we prefer the former term. Persecutions might have maddened George Fox, but the persecutors were madmen. We say not a word of or against his doctrines; let those who hold them defend and justify them. We take not the clerical stand-point, we speak only of the historical and the philosophical. That the "Friends" themselves have been found, and are in most instances, estimable and amiable people, no one can deny; still less will it be forgotten that benevolence and philanthropy have prominently and largely distinguished many of their members. But as a religious body they are confessedly declining and decaying. They have offered prizes and published prize essays on this matter; but the prize essayists do not seem to us always to penetrate into the true causes of their decline and decay. The fact is, Quakerism has had its day, and has performed its office. Without referring to doctrinal peculiarities, it is enough to say, broadly, that successive generations cannot be expected to manifest the same enthusiasm and distinctiveness as their predecessors. The primitive bond, so strong for its newness, so unstretched by the small numbers it enclosed, weakened and became lax in proportion to its antiquity and Fraternity, so strong in a class and a persecuted sect, becomes less warm as isolation ceases, and as the interests of general society make themselves felt. Early convocations and traditions are no longer enchantments for the many. Altered position in relation to outward society implies, if not altered relations, at least, altered aspects and interests. Distance, haze, and indistinctness obscure the portraiture of the primitive founder. Youth cannot easily be moulded into an older and absolute type. Comparison is suggestive of defects as well as restraints. George Fox may be venerated and yet not strictly followed. Benevolence and philanthropy save the Society of Friends from utter inanition. Their individual virtues strengthen their collective vitality, but it requires no prophet to prognosticate that their collec

usage.

CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.*

THE parti-coloured china plate which has for a quarter of a
century or so done duty as a card-basket on the table of a
fashionable literary lady must have brought many strange
names into unexpected juxta-position; an authoress,—in
spite of Mr. Thackeray's vehement protest against the word,—
auctor if you will, but auctrix, never,—and the threat of
Dr. Birch's advent to swish away the error,-an authoress,—
the word has taken root in the language,-must often number
upon her lists of friends many very antagonistic, antithetical
people. For, as Sir John Pringle cleverly said to Boswell,
anxious to establish friendly relations between the knight and
the great doctor, "It is not in friendship as in mathematics,
where two things each equal to a third are equal between
themselves. You agree with Johnson as a middle quality,
and you agree with me as a middle quality; but Johnson and
I should not agree."

It does not absolutely follow that because we like our
friends therefore we like our friend's friends. Romeo and
Tybalt would not one whit vary in their personal objections
then as guests at the table of their common friend, Escalus,
to each other, although they might happen to meet now and
Prince of Verona. Yet, knowing all this, it is impossible to
repress a sense of oddness and incongruity in the group-
ing of the names to be found in the volumes before us, and a
certain wonderment in regard to the lady who, by an ac-
quaintance with both, links together Mrs. Shelley and the
Rev. John Montesquieu Bellew, Tyrone Power and Mr. Valpy,
Dr. Kitchener and the Duke of Wellington, Edmund Kean
and the Rev. Frederick Robertson; and who places the late
Doubtless the Johnsonian system of "keeping friendship in
Lady Blessington in a manner en rapport with Mr. Spurgeon!
constant repair, lest we find ourselves alone as we advance
in life," has been followed in these cases; only it does occur to
one that the friendships may have now and then been repaired
something after the manner in which windows are occasionally
mended,-by the substitution of paste and brown paper for
plate glass.

The lady who here records her views of her contemporaries informs her readers that they are indebted for the book to a suggestion made to her,-it is not stated by whom,-that, the position and pursuits of her father having brought her "from early childhood in communication with many eminent persons, and circumstances in after life having done the same," her reminiscences of these might possess interest, and For this last deserve preservation. But she disclaims all intention of making her book biographical or critical, or of enhancing the attractiveness of her pages by extracts from, or copies of, the correspondence of the persons portrayed. limitation, indeed, there seems good reason " from the fact,"to quote the preface,-" that, having very early in life seen most miserable, almost fatal, consequences result from keeping letters, I adopted a rule, to which ever since I have steadily adhered, of destroying all I received as soon as read, except such as had exclusive reference to business matters." So that as it forms part of the writer's plan to refrain from all comment on lives and writings, there would seem to remain very little beyond the personal appearance of her friends to relate, which accounts in a great measure for the painstaking catalogue to be found in the book of the colours "The merit (if any) of eyes and hair, the shapes of noses, the proportions of figures, etc., and generally the rather feminine notions of what constitute "traits of character." of the subsequent portraits consists in their rigid and most scrupulous fidelity to truth. Each person is represented with all the lights and shades of their character, and I have sought

Traits of Character. Being Twenty-five Years' Literary and Personal Reco lections. By a Contemporary. 2 vols., 350 pp. each, price 21s. London: Hurs and Blackett.

to bring their individualities to the mental vision of the reader as they really appeared to the writer." So the preface sets forth the purpose of the work. And further on, when there is a danger of the reader becoming alarmed at the prevailing tone of panegyric, we find the following caution:"It may be said that I have spoken with uniform favour of all. This arises from the fact that I have purposely selected those from amongst the eminent persons I have known, whom intimate acquaintanceship showed me were entitled to praise for private worth, as well as being renowned for remarkable talent. I might have done otherwise," etc. "I do not wish these pages to be the vehicle of censure, detraction, or any uncharitableness. The task would be quite uncongenial to my nature. Let those to whom the world is content to bow down, and whom it worships as idols, be idols to them still. Not mine the task, ever ungracious,"-and so on.

With the assurance, therefore, that we are only going to be introduced to quite proper people, let us pass down the gallery of portraits.

was

Let us pass to an actor on a different scene. When Alexander Dumas's melodrama of "Kean" first produced in Paris, considerable amusement was excited in London by the fact of the hero being "discovered," to use the stage word, sitting at a table drinking eau sucré,-a meeker refreshment than it was thought the great tragedian often indulged in. However, in the portrait here presented there is almost authority for the incident. Our lady-sketcher introduces us to Kean's dressing-room at Drury Lane, half an hour before his going on as Othello. He was standing "at a little round table, on which was placed a very unpretending tea-equipage for a single person,-a small teapot, a large cup and saucer, and a little white plate, on which there was one biscuit of the class called buttered." And there is no hint of the teapot having been perverted to the containing of stronger drink than tea, although such a thing has happened on some occasions. The actor's dresser was arranging on chairs ready for use the turban, the white and silver tunic, and the yataghan of the Moor of Venice. "He was a quiet, unpretending, almost shy man." He was short; "his brow very fine, his mouth and chin well defined and good, and the whole face flashing with intellect and feeling. We all thought

was peculiar and captivating. "I never saw," writes the lady, "in my life but three persons,-a lady friend at Madrid, Edward Irving, and Edmund Kean,--to whose features the transforming potency of a smile imparted such a complete and all but talismanic change of expression!" And the actor favoured the lady with instruction when she undertook the part of Juliana at certain private theatricals, rehearsing with her the scenes with the Duke Aranza, interrupting her with cries of "Excellent!" "Very good indeed!" and "That will do capitally!" She witnessed a rehearsal of Othello, but was sadly disappointed to find the actor gabbling through the part as fast as he could, twirling about the while his brown silk umbrella. She prefers Charles Kean's Hamlet to his father's, and thinks his greatest parts were Othello, Shylock, and Sir Giles Overreach. Kean himself deemed his Othello and Richard II. far superior to his more popular Richard III., though he used to say laughingly, "it was that had brought him fame and fortune, and he was much obliged to the public for liking it as they did." He sang very sweetly, but could seldom be persuaded to distinguish himself in this way.

This very tall gentleman, "quite, I believe, six feet high," with hands and feet so remarkably well shaped and small for one "of his height and development;" with eyes 'very fine, large, dark, and luminous;" with broad forehead, and well-him very handsome. And then his eyes," etc., and his smile marked eyebrows, "sufficiently defined without being too much so;" with profuse iron gray hair and noble head,"there is something cynical about his mouth though his lips are full," even should it break into a smile, you cannot help fearing that a sneer will mar and mingle with it ;" with pale, dark complexion, "only boasting, and then but slightly, the tinge of celestial rosy red,' under some strong excitement," this gentleman,—you will note his white neckcloth,we find upon reference to the catalogue to be the Rev. John Montesquieu Bellew, whilom chaplain of St. John's, Calcutta, then preacher at St. Philip's, Waterloo-place, and now of St. John's Wood. "You look at him, and you see before you a man upon whom the impress of intellectuality is so palpably and unmistakably stamped, that, while gazing on his broad brow, you accept unhesitatingly the belief in that mental ascendency which even his enemies are compelled to admit his possession of, and it seems only an inevitable consequence that success has been the result of any pursuit or path in life to which he chose to dedicate the bounteous gifts which nature has endowed him with." So our guide. In spite of his gray locks, "probably occasioned by his residence in India, which to a certain extent has also shattered his health," the preacher is only thirty-eight years of age, and he is very gentlemanly and inartificial. The lady is anxious to insist on this last characteristic as the result of her own experience, for she has heard him charged with vanity and conceit! Can such things be?

Mr. Bellew, it seems, is a great lover of children. "He has four sweet little ones of his own to expend his exuberance of love upon; and never were children objects of tenderer, more ceaseless, and fonder solicitude than are these to him." He is also fond of music, both vocal and instrumental, and assists at all the great musical festivals celebrated in London and its suburbs. "But for the prejudice," writes the author, "which denounces as an 'enormity' the presence of a clergyman within the walls of an opera or playhouse, I doubt not he would be a frequent visitant at the former." "I am no playgoer myself, but I do think that a most unjust interdict which excludes a man from the recreation of the theatre because he happens to be in holy orders, when a visit there accords with his tastes and inclinations; and I think those congregations who insist on such abstinence on the part of their pastors take a very selfish, bigoted, and sectarian view of the subject." After this, Mr. Bellew will perhaps not object to show himself at the Adelphi. His reading, we are told, is even more successful than his preaching, and he possesses a voice of an exquisite pathos, which tells favourably upon the collections. At the time of the sermons in aid of the sufferers from the Indian mutiny, he drew from his congregation at St. Philip's a larger sum than was obtained by any other preacher, with the exception of Mr. Spurgeon at the Crystal Palace. We are favoured with various specimens of his discourses, in which it appears to us considerable allowance has been made for what riflemen call "windage," to say nothing of wordiness.

Let us now halt before a very different person,-the "cook's oracle," the concoctor of that now-forgotten culinary treasure, "Dr. Kitchener's Zest," since eclipsed by other, if not better, sauces. He was originally educated for the medical profession, but the ladle and stew-pan possessed greater charms for him than the pestle and mortar. Beyond the science of cooking, he had yet another love, namely, for "improvements in the structure and manufacture of telescopes." He lived in Warren-street, Fitzroy-square, and was famed for the exquisite little luncheons which he would give now and then to some chosen few of his friends: -escolloped oysters, of most delicate preparation, and cheese toasted upon some recherché principle, with now and then an invention,-discovery rather,— of some new charm in cooking. At the top of his house was a monster telescope, and he regularly gave soirées, expressly for its exhibition and use, when the moon was at the full. "Come, and you will then judge," quoth the doctor, "whether I have said too much of my gigantic pet," as he called it. A tall, gaunt, awkward figure, with a halt in his gait from paralysis, a loss of sight in one of his eyes from the same cause, the defect concealed very much by his spectacles,-complexion "dark, but not unhealthy looking; his features good, and the expression of his face indicating shrewdness of mind combined with kindliness of heart;" a coat of strange cut, long gaiters buttoned up to his knees, and a low-crowned, broadbrimmed, napless hat;—such was the personal aspect of the doctor. "Time was," writes our author, "if a man's outward appearance had anything of singularity or oddity which distinguished him from his fellow-men, that the charitable world at once decided that he must be an author!" "But the march of intellect has exploded this." "The two handsomest men by far whom I have the pleasure of numbering amongst my friends are both literary men of high standing and eminence, their toilettes likewise unexceptionable." Happy literary men!

"

The reader may be interested in knowing that the lady to whom Mr. Spurgeon was united, in 1856, was "Miss Susannah Thompson, daughter of Mr. Thompson, of Falcon-square;' that the chapel in which the nuptials were celebrated was crowded to excess, and that two thousand persons remained outside who were unable to gain admission, while a detachment of police was in attendance to preserve order. We learn, too, that the little volume which has Mr. Spurgeon's name affixed to it, entitled Smooth Stones taken from Ancient Brooks, a collection from the writings and sayings of the | puritan preacher Thomas Brooks, was really in greater part compiled by Mrs. Spurgeon,-a little piece of bookmaking business on the part of the worthy Baptist minister which is perhaps open to exception.

The doctor's soirées commenced at nine o'clock, and termi-him in private life without a mingled affection and reverence nated punctually at eleven. When that hour arrived, he for his character." would point with smiling significance to the clock, as a hint to his guests to take their departure. His rooms were very simply furnished, and he accompanied his invitations to women with the admonition, "Be quiet in your millinery; let me have no finery." The entertainments were of a conversazione character. No cards, no supper, "but refreshments of an inexpensive character were handed frequently about during the evening." Music was introduced towards the close of the entertainments, and many performers of eminence rendered their assistance; amongst others, Braham, "a short, rather stout, good-looking man, with an unmistakably Hebrew cast of countenance. He was, as is often the case with members of his persuasion, most prodigiously over-dressed, with an amount of jewellery about him in the way of rings, studs, chains, etc., quite dazzling to the beholder." He was often accompanied by his wife, "an immensely stout woman, with a very sweet face." The doctor had recently set the Lord's prayer to music, and Braham was asked to sing and play it. "He did so, and gave it by his faultless execution a charm which inherently it did not possess, for it was a poor, meagre, inharmonious composition." Sinclair, who was then a favourite singer, gave 'Pray, Goody,' an air which by his sweet singing he had invested with a popularity much greater than it deserved. At the special request of the doctor he sung with Braham some duets, but he was not in good health or voice; he was just mourning a child to whom he was devotedly attached. In reference to its death he made the affecting remark, that he would gladly walk blind and barefoot through the world to bring him back to life.'"

After being told that all the popular preachers of the day are short men, with the exception of Mr. Bellew and Dr. Cumming (!), we are introduced to the "modern Whitfield," Mr. Charles Hadden Spurgeon, who is described as "short, and for his years, bulky; his features petite, his teeth good, his face round, one would call it chubby, but then we associate colour generally in connexion with that expression, and he is very pale. His hair is black, not in very great quantity; his forehead is good; his eyes are very dark, very bright, and very expressive. The whole cast and character of his countenance indicates truthfully the good man he is, but it scarcely gives warranty of the genius he possesses; benevolence and sweetness are more prominently stamped on every lineament than intellectuality; his voice is one of extraordinary strength and compass," etc. His habits, we informed, are simple and frugal enough. His congregation allow him a salary of £1,000 a year. "He would not accept more." Out of this sum "he sets aside £600 a year for the support of eleven young men, whom he clothes, educates, and maintains entirely, and who are destined for the ministry." The balance supports himself and family, and "the expense of the carriage, so indispensable (!) for him to keep, is defrayed by his friends.".

are

Mr. Spurgeon "is not an advocate for dancing." We believe he objects to men and women dancing together; yet we find that he is extremely fond of music,-that "he sings himself sweetly;" but though his wife is an admirable pianiste, he rarely, "from conscientious motives, indulges in Lis favourite taste." He is the father of twin children, boys, one, we are happy to learn," the miniature resemblance of himself; the other of his wife." The intelligence that he had become a father was communicated to him in the pulpit. "He offered a prayer of praise and thanksgiving on the occasion, and gave out the appropriate hymn,

"Though less than others I deserve,

Yet God has given me more." "

Our sketcher's acquaintance with Mr. Sheridan Knowles was probably some time previous to that gentleman's removal from the stage to the pulpit, for we find him described as very jovial, perhaps a trifle too much so," making a speech of "a rollicking, boisterous, after-supper character;" there is a suspicion, too, "that he must have indulged a wee bit too freely in stimulants," for "his speech was full of blarney;" "but there was wit and fun enough to make us all laugh heartily." It is fair to add, however, that these characteristics seem to refer only to his conduct on one occasion, and, indeed, it is not clear that the lady had many opportunities of cultivating his acquaintance. With Mr. Tyrone Power her intercourse appears to have been even more limited. She encountered the graceful Irish actor at a pic-nic party, when,

poising a tempting and delicate limb of a fowl upon his fork," he made the remarkable inquiry, "Will you allow me to offer you this wing?" And that is all that our authoress has to record of him.

Mr. Abraham John Valpy, the printer, son of the Rev. Dr. Valpy, we learn " was very gentlemanly in his appearance, and from his habit of always dressing in black was frequently mistaken for a clergyman,"-a singular fact! His hair was black, "in sufficient quantity for becomingness;" dark eyes,—

beaming and lustrous eyes,"-" fresh and healthy complexion," etc. He had a hobby for phonetic spelling, and to the last wrote notes in the wonderful orthography of the phonetic school; enigmatical enough to conventional spellers, as the specimen will show :

"As I lurn from Sissil (Cecil) that u arr verry bizzy, I shal not kaul to-day as I pruposed."

Henry Augustus Viscount Dillon, it is stated, was in appearance a model patrician, six feet in height, tall and well proportioned; with large blue eyes, aquiline nose,-" and," writes his admirer, "the most beautiful mouth I ever saw possessed by a man,-it ought to have been given to a woman, such tenderness and amiability was there in the expression. He said he was considered so like the royal dukes of England belonging to that period, that people used to touch their hats to him as he passed through the streets, believing him to be a scion of royalty. I think it was paying them an immense compliment!"

Lord Dillon's specialty, it seems, was a fondness for "oddities." One of these was his friend John Varley, the landscape painter, who told fortunes, and was an adept at reading the stars. He attended, by request, at the houses of many of the nobility, and "ruled the planets," and calculated nativities. "The wife of a late lord chancellor consulted him as an oracle." He took a fancy to our sketcher, and predicted one or two peculiarities in her after career, "which were literally and remarkably verified." "Had I scrupulously attended to his predictions," comes the naïve remark, “and not treated them as I did with scepticism and ridicule, the greatest calamities of my life would have been averted!" He believed in the malefic influence of numbers on the desti.

It is a pleasant sight, we are told, to see Mr. Spurgeon at home. He lays aside all seriousness, "and with the natural buoyancy of his years, and the in-dwelling peace and content-nies of individuals. "I confess myself to entertain the superment of his soul, becomes almost exuberant in his gaiety, rushes up to his wife with 'Come, Susy, give me a kiss,' and taking the two three-years-old twin babies resting in her lap, tosses them with his strong arms one by one in the air, whilst their shouts of infantine delight show their entire approval and appreciation of the pastime. None can know

stition that each person has a peculiar number which proves evil to him." We have here a "trait of character" of the lady herself, a glimpse of whom, in curious lights, crosses now and then some of the other portraitures.

Does the reader desire more of this not very nutritious literary food,-these scraps and cuttings of character and