be maintained and taught, and that their stances of those trials had not tested the subjects may be well ruled and governed true defects in his moral constitution. by good and just laws; and to provide Like all princes of the Plantagenet blood, and care for them that all things neces- he was a person of a most intense and sary for them may be plenteous; and that imperious will. His impulses, in general, the people and commonweal may in- nobly directed, had never known contracrease; and to defend them from oppres- diction; and late in life, when his chasion and invasion, as well within the racter was formed, he was forced into realm as without; and to see that justice collision with difficulties with which the be administered unto them indifferently; experience of discipline had not fitted and to hear benignly all their complaints; him to contend. Education had done and to show towards them, although they much for him, but his nature required offend, fatherly pity. And, finally, so more correction than his position had to correct them that be evil, that they permitted, whilst unbroken prosperity had yet rather save them than lose them, and early independence of control had if it were not for respect of justice, and been his most serious misfortune. He maintenance of peace and good order in had capacity, if his training had been the commonweal.' equal to it, to be one of the greatest of men. With all his faults about him, he was still, perhaps, the greatest of his contemporaries; and the man best able of all living Englishmen to govern England, had he not been set to do it by the conditions of his birth.—History of England. These principles do really appear to have determined Henry's conduct in his earlier years. He had more than once been tried with insurrection, which he had soothed down without bloodshed, and extinguished in forgiveness; and London long recollected the great scene which followed "evil May-day," 1517, when the apprentices were brought down to Westminster Hall to receive their par [CHARLES FITZHUGH.] SIR ROBERT PEEL. dons. There had been a dangerous riot THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF in the streets, which might have provoked a mild government to severity; but the king contented himself with punishing the five ringleaders, and four hundred other prisoners, after being paraded down the streets in white shirts, with halters round their necks, were dismissed with an admonition, Wolsey weeping as he pronounced it. IT was the peculiar misfortune of this great statesman, when considered simply as a private individual-but perhaps it was an advantage for his country, when he is considered in his public capacitythat he began life under the auspices of a party, with which his heart and his intelIt is certain that if he had died before lect had less sympathy the older and the divorce was mooted, Henry VIII., more experienced he became. The bulk like that Roman emperor said by Tacitus of the members of that aristocratic party, to have been consensu omnium dignus submitting, perhaps unwillingly, to the imperii nisi imperasset, would have been leadership of a man of plebeian extracconsidered by posterity as formed by tion, and not possessing either his intellect Providence for the conduct of the Refor- or his conscientiousness, or, as individuals, mation, and his loss would have been the responsibility which attached to him, deplored as a perpetual calamity. We could not change opinions at his commust allow him, therefore, the benefit of mand, or on his example; and the cry of his past career, and be careful to re-treason which they raised was rendered member it, when interpreting his later more virulent by allusions to his birth. actions. Not many men would have Even in the very height of his power and borne themselves through the same trials fame, there were not wanting men who with the same integrity; but the circum-submitted to his leadership in despite of themselves;—who sneered at, while they followed him-affected to patronize him, at the very time that their position and fate were in his hands, and who could no more have stirred in politics without him, than a ship could have directed its own course. But in every change of opinion, it was not the violent plucking out of the fruit of his mind, and the arbitrary substitution of an alien produce, of which he could be accused. It was the natural ripening of the seeds of a slow but steady conviction; and those who complained of, and were deceived by it, had themselves to blame for their want of penetration in not foreseeing the inevitable result. In his famous speech on the passing of the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act-a measure in which his convictions, as regards the mere theory, do not appear to have been so matured as on the great question of the commercial intercourse of nations he explained himself in a manner, which, if it did not conciliate the prejudiced of his own party, was not his excuse, but his glory, in the estimation of the practical men of his age and country. “I have,” said he, "for years attempted to maintain the exclusion of Roman Catholics from Parliament and the high offices of the State. I do not think it was an unnatural or an unreasonable struggle. I resign it in consequence of the conviction that it can no longer be advantageously maintained, from believing that these are not adequate materials or sufficient instruments for its effectual and permanent continuance. I yield, therefore, to a moral necessity which I cannot control, being unwilling to push resistance to a point which might endanger the establishments that I wish to defend." On the question of the repeal of the Corn Laws, in which he stood in a position to himself painfully similar to that which he occupied on the question of Catholic Emancipation, the part which he acted was even in a higher degree useful to his country. Though he broke up a party, he saved a nation. Though he attracted to his own defenceless head the lightnings of the bitterest political storm that ever raged in any country, he rendered those lightnings harmless against the State. He offered up his feelings, his friendships, his very heart, as a man, when he sacrificed his party; but in knowing that he prevented a violent revolution, in which all the best interests of the country might have been wrecked, he had his reward, both as a man and a citizen. Throughout his career, he may be said to have acted the pre-eminently useful part of a breakwater against the floods of democratic change The men who commenced the struggle for Roman Catholic Emancipation, and for the repeal of the Corn Laws, were men before their time; and, had those great questions been carried without the opposition which they encountered, they might, perhaps, have been carried in vain, or carried only that a future time might see their re-enactment. His resistance ripened public opinion, and his own; and when both had simultaneously arrived at maturity, he yielded at the very moment when to refuse would have been madness, and when to yield was to conquer. His wise resistance until the point when resistance became foolish, and his wise concession, when not to have conceded would have been perilous or fatal, enabled him to do for those great causes what their professed friends could never have done without his aid. Whilst his political opponents were too often mere men of theory, he was the man, not of theory, but of practice—a man who was sometimes upon a wrong track, but who always steadily kept marching to a right one-a man who was always pressing forward, but never too hastily-and who never once, in any change of opinion, changed without long, patient, earnest, and honest consideration. No man knew better than Sir Robert Peel how evanescent and worthless a thing was the applause of the mob; and at the same time, no man more ardently longed for applause than he did. Yet it must be said, that he looked far beyond the loud voices and the clapping of hands of to-day. He looked, like "mighty Verulam,"-a man whose greatness he almost equalled, and whose virtues he far excelled, -to foreign nations, and Το to posterity, to confirm the verdict of his had no superior, and but few equals. own time, if it should happen to be expound and to persuade were his favorite favourable; or to reverse it, if it should tasks; and when he put forth his strength happen to be against him. As regards in either department, it was very dense foreign nations, his wish was abundantly ignorance indeed that could not, or would gratified before he died. His was the not, be enlightened, and very obstinate name that represented alike the common prejudice that would not be convinced. sense, the business tact, and the enlight- On some rare occasions in his Parlia ened statesmanship of England. Europe mentary life, he soared beyond the useful rang with his fame; and nations who cleverness, which was the general characnever heard of his rivals or his enemies, teristic of his style of debate, into the were familiar with his actions, and re- higher regions of eloquence and feeling; spected England in his person. But and some passages in his celebrated though he valued the approval of foreign oration of 1846, when he retired from nations as the verdict of contemporaries office, and took a final farewell of its who could judge coolly and impartially anxieties and responsibilities, will bear upon matters upon which there was too comparison with the most noted displays much heat among his countrymen at of British oratory. The private and dohome to permit them to judge impartially mestic virtues of this great statesman -a fair page in the history of his country were not much known, until death rewas the dearest object of his ambition; moved the veil from his secret history, and although we, his contemporaries, and men could speak out, who had living amid the suffocating dust of the yet hitherto remained silent for fear of the un-ended conflicts in which he was a accusation of flattery or misconception. leader, are not entitled to speak for those His own family, and the circle of his more who shall come after us, and who shall immediate friends, loved him with a see more clearly than we can; we do not depth of affection and respect which could run any great risk of committing an error only have been prompted by his kindliwhen we assert, that the unborn historian, ness and virtues. He was considered a who shall write the full and impartial cold man ; but, like many others against history of the first half of the nineteenth whom the same objection is raised, the century in Great Britain, will find in civil coldness was in the manner, and not in life no purer or higher reputation to the mind. He was timid and shy in wellidentify with it, than that of Sir Robert doing, and concealed his real enthusiasm Peel. of character under a thin mask, which true and intimate judges could easily draw aside, but which, to the outer and distant public, remained impenetrable. He was a kind friend, and an unostentatious but liberal patron of merit in whatever walk of intellectual eminence it was displayed; and, during his later years more especially, he showed an appreciation of literature, and of the claims of literary men,-who in their life and conduct respected themselves and their high calling as much as he thought they ought to be respected,which augured favorably of his discrimination, and his power to read the signs of the times in which he lived. Even in the midst of the thickest turmoil of politics and of business, he always found leisure to attend to every reasonable, and indeed As an orator, Sir Robert Peel cannot be placed in the highest rank. His was not the eloquence that could arouse the passions of a multitude; or that, having aroused them like an angry sea, could say to them, "Peace, be still." He could not govern an impulsive crowd, or awe an impatient senate by his winged words, or hurl the thunderbolts of oratory, like the Jupiters of the Forum, or the Market Place; but what he wanted in this impetuous vigour, he supplied by his logical power, his patient research, his exhaustive argument, his disarming candour, and his thorough mastery of his subject. As an orator, he was surpassed by many of his contemporaries both in and out of Parliament; but as a debater, he was never in a hurry; he took everything coolly and philosophically-and neglected nothing-not even the impertinent requests of people who had no right to intrude upon his attention. Misery never sued to him in vain; and his generous conduct towards the painter Haydonaccidentally disclosed to the world by a short and grateful record in the diary of the unhappy man, which was made public at the coroner's inquest upon his body, and which forced a tribute of admiration wherever it was made known, was but one instance out of many in which his secret generosity and kindly feeling were exerted towards the unfortunate. His conduct towards the poet Southey, in a time of affliction, and towards many others still living, whose names may therefore not be mentioned, was of the same character, and combined generosity with delicacy. A judicious patron of literature and the arts; an exemplary citizen; an elegant scholar; a good and humane man, unsullied in his life and morals; and a statesman who loved truth and his country better than the applause of men, and who, in times of difficulty and danger, strengthened the institutions and preserved the internal peace and security of his native land, when less judgment and firmness might have imperilled or lost them all; such, in few words, is the character of Sir Robert Peel. His fame will grow purer with the lapse of time, and shine-where he wished it-among the brightest names of British history. Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel, 1852. [SAMUEL SMILES.] GEORGE STEPHENSON AT DRAYTON. THOUGH mainly an engineer, he was also a daring thinker on many scientific questions; and there was scarcely a subject of speculation, or a department of recondite science, on which he had not employed his faculties in such a way as to have formed large and original views. 66 At Drayton the conversation often turned upon such topics, and Mr. Stephenson freely joined in it. On one occasion, an animated discussion took place between himself and Dr. Buckland on one of his favourite theories as to the formation of coal. But the result was, that Dr. Buckland, a much greater master of tonguefence than Stephenson, completely silenced him. Next morning before breakfast, when he was walking in the grounds deeply pondering, Sir William Follett came up and asked what he was thinking about? Why, Sir William, I am thinking over that argument I had with Buckland last night. I know I am right, and that if I had only the command of words which he has, I'd have beaten him." “Let me know all about it," said Sir William, "and I'll see what I can do for you." The two sat down in an arbour, where the astute lawyer made himself thoroughly acquainted with the points of the case; entering into it with all the zeal of an advocate about to plead the dearest interests of his client. After he had mastered the subject, Sir William rose up, rubbing his hands with glee, and said: "Now I am ready for him." Sir Robert Peel was made acquainted with the plot, and adroitly introduced the subject of the controversy after dinner. The result was, that in the argument which followed, the man of science was overcome by the man of law; and Sir William Follett had at all points the mastery over Dr. Buckland. "What do you say, Mr. Stephenson?" asked Sir Robert, laughing. “Why," said he, "I will only say this, that of all the powers above and under the earth, there seems to me to be no power so great as the gift of the gab." One day at dinner, during the same visit, a scientific lady asked him the question, "Mr. Stephenson, what do you consider the most powerful force in nature?" "Oh!" said he, in a gallant spirit, "I will soon answer that question: it is the eye of a woman for the man who loves her; for if a woman look with affection on a young man, and he should go to the uttermost ends of the earth, the recollection of that look will bring him back; there is no 66 other force in nature that could do that." thing else," said the engineer; "it is light One Sunday, when the party had just bottled up in the earth for tens of thoureturned from church, they were standing sands of years-light, absorbed by plants together on the terrace near the hall, and and vegetables, being necessary for the observed in the distance a railway train condensation of carbon during the proflashing along, throwing behind it a long cess of their growth, if it be not carbon line of white steam. Now, Buckland," in another form-and now, after being said Mr. Stephenson, "I have a poser for buried in the earth for long ages in fields you. Can you tell me what is the power of coal, that latent light is again brought that is driving that train?" Well," forth and liberated, made to work, as in said the other, "I suppose it is one of that locomotive, for great human puryour big engines." But what drives poses." The idea was certainly a most the engine?" "Oh, very likely a canny striking and original one like a flash of Newcastle driver." "What do you say light, it illuminated in an instant an entire to the light of the sun?" "How can field of science.-Life of George Stephenthat be?" asked the doctor. "It is no- son. 66 SECTION IV. NARRATIVE. CONFESSION. [ABRAHAM COWLEY. 1615-1667.] A POET'S It is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself; it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader's ears to hear anything of praise from him. There is no danger from me of offending him in this kind; neither my mind, nor my body, nor my fortune, allow me any materials for that vanity. It is sufficient, for my own contentment, that they have preserved me from being scandalous, or remarkable on the defective side. But, besides that, I shall here speak of myself only in relation to the subject of these precedent discourses, and shall be likelier thereby to fall into the contempt, than rise up to the estimation of most people. As far as my memory can return back into my past life, before I knew, or was capable of guessing, what the world, or glories, or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave a secret bent of aversion from them as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves, and inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holidays, and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then, too, so much an enemy to constraint, that my masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encouragements, to learn without book, the common rules of grammar, in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. I was even then acquainted with the poets: and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them, which stamped first, or rather engraved the characters in me. They were like letters cut in the bark of a young tree, which, with the tree, still grow proportionably. But, how this love came to be produced in me |