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he is said to have written some rhyme while in his nursery. He published in 1820, "Poems written between Thirteen and Fifteen;" and in 1826 he issued a volume of miscellaneous poems, and his first novel, "Falkland," appeared the next year. This was followed in rapid succession by "Pelham," "The Disowned," "Devereux," "Paul Clifford," Eugene Aram," and "Godolphin." In these, his earliest works, there were exhibited considerable power of observation, a lively fancy, no small share of sarcasm, and extensive information; but they were disfigured by an air of foppishness, by occasional unsteadiness of moral purpose, and frequent digressions into the unmeaning æsthetical commonplaces of the German philosophers; and the author's knowledge of life and character was evidently limited to a few phases and one or two classes. His "Last Days of Pompeii," and "Rienzi," were more vigorous, and more healthy in their tone. Time has wonderfully developed his excellences, and corrected his faults; and his last three novels, "The Caxtons," "My Novel," and "What will he do with it?" are worthy to rank with any works of fiction in the language. In them he has taken Sterne as his model: between the first mentioned, indeed, and "Tristram Shandy," the resemblance is obvious and striking, both in the structure of the work, and in the characters of the two interesting humorists, Mr Caxton and his brother, who figure so prominently in “The Caxtons." Sir Edward is also a distinguished parliamentary orator. Some of his poems possess no ordinary merit, and his "Lady of Lyons" is one of the most popular dramas which this generation has produced.

1. UNCLE JACK.-("THE CAXTONS.")

What con

You never saw a more charming man than Uncle Jack. All plump people are more popular than thin people. There is something jovial and pleasant in the sight of a round face! spiracy could succeed when its head was a lean and hungry-looking fellow like Cassius? If the Roman patriots had had Uncle Jack amongst them, perhaps they would never have furnished a tragedy to Shakspere. Uncle Jack was as plump as a partridge-not unwieldy, not corpulent, not obese, not vast (which Cicero objects to in an orator), but every crevice comfortably filled up. Like the ocean, "Time wrote no wrinkles on his glassy (or brassy) brow." His natural lines were all upward curves, his smile most ingratiating, his eye so frank; even his trick of rubbing his clean, well-fed, English-looking hands, had something about it coaxing and débonnaire, something that actually decoyed you into trusting your money into hands so prepossessing. Indeed, to him might be fully applied the expression, "He had his soul's seat in his finger-ends." The critics observe, that few men have ever united in equal perfection the imaginative with the scientific faculties. Happy he,” exclaims Schiller," who combines the enthusiast's warmth with the worldly man's light"-light and warmth, Uncle Jack had them both. He was a perfect symphony of bewitching enthusiasm and convincing

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calculation. Dicæopolis in his "Acharnenses," in presenting a gentleman called Nicharchus to the audience, observes:-" He is small, I confess, but there is nothing lost in him: all is knave that is not fool." Parodying the equivocal compliment, I may say, that though Uncle Jack was no giant, there was nothing lost in him. Whatever was not philanthropy was arithmetic, and whatever was not arithmetic was philanthropy. He would have been equally dear to Howard and to Cocker. Uncle Jack was comely, too, clear-skinned and florid, had a little mouth, with good teeth, wore no whiskers, shaved his beard as close as if it were one of his grand national companies; his hair, once somewhat sandy, was now rather greyish, which increased the respectability of his appearance; and he wore it flat at the sides, and raised in a peak at the top; his organs of constructiveness and identity were pronounced by Mr Squills to be prodigious, and those freely-developed bumps gave great breadth to his forehead. Well-shaped, too, was Uncle Jack, about five feet eight, the proper height for an active man of business. He wore a black coat, but to make the nap look the fresher, he had given it the relief of gilt buttons, on which were wrought a small crown and anchor; at a distance this button looked like the king's button, and gave him the air of one who has a place about court. He always wore a white neckcloth without starch, a frill, and a diamond pin; which last furnished him with observations upon certain mines of Mexico, which he had a great but hitherto unsatisfied desire of seeing worked by a Grand National United Britons Company. His waistcoat of a morning was pale buff-of an evening, embroidered velvet; wherewith were connected sundry schemes of an "association for the improvement of native manufactures." His trousers, matutinally, were of the colour vulgarly called "blotting paper;" and he never wore boots, which, he said, unfitted a man for exercise, but short drab gaiters and squaretoed shoes. His watch-chain was garnished with a vast number of seals; each seal, indeed, represented the device of some defunct company, and they might be said to resemble the scalps of the slain, worn by the aboriginal Iroquois, concerning whom, indeed, he had once entertained philanthropic designs, compounded of conversion to Christianity on the principles of the English Episcopal Church, and of an advantageous exchange of beaver skins for Bibles, brandy, and gunpowder.

2. VANCE AND LIONEL AT THE COUNTRY FAIR.(" WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?")

It was a summer fair in one of the prettiest villages in Surrey. The main street was lined with booths, abounding in toys, gleaming crockery, gay ribbons, and gilded gingerbread. Farther on, where the street widened into the ample village-green, rose the more pretending fabrics which lodged the attractive forms of the Mermaid, the Norfolk Giant, the Pig-faced Lady, the Spotted

Boy, and the Calf with Two Heads; while high over even these edifices, and occupying the most conspicuous vantage-ground, a lofty stage promised to rural play-goers the "Grand Melo-dramatic Performance of the Remorseless Baron and the Bandit's Child." Music, lively if artless, resounded on every side; drums, fifes, penny-whistles, cat-calls, and a hand-organ played by a dark foreigner, from the height of whose shoulder a cynical but observant monkey eyed the hubbub and cracked his nuts.

It was now sunset-the throng at the fullest-an animated joyous scene. The day had been sultry; no clouds were to be seen, except low on the western horizon, where they stretched in lengthened ridges of gold and purple, like the border-land between earth and sky. The tall elms on the green were still, save, near the great stage, one or two, upon which had climbed young urchins, whose laughing faces peered forth, here and there, from the foliage trembling under their restless movements. Amidst the crowd, as it streamed saunteringly along, were two spectators strangers to the place, as was notably proved by the attention they excited, and the broad jokes their dress and appearance provoked from the rustic wits, jokes which they took with amused good-humour, and sometimes retaliated with a zest which had already made them very popular personages; indeed, there was that about them which propitiated liking. They were young, and the freshness of enjoyment was so visible in their faces, that it begot a sympathy, and wherever they went, other faces brightened around them.

One of the two whom we have thus individualised was of that enviable age, ranging from five-and-twenty to seven-and-twenty, in which, if a man cannot contrive to make life very pleasant, pitiable, indeed, must be the state of his digestive organs. But you might see by this gentleman's countenance that if there were many like him, it would be a worse world for the doctors. His cheek, though not highly coloured, was yet ruddy and clear; his hazel eyes were lively and keen; his hair, which escaped in loose clusters from a jean shooting-cap set jauntily on a well-shaped head, was of that deep sunny auburn rarely seen but in persons of vigorous and hardy temperament. He was good-looking on the whole, and would have deserved the more flattering epithet of handsome, but for his nose, which was what the French call "a nose in the air” -not a nose supercilious, not a nose provocative, as such noses mostly are, but a nose decidedly in earnest to make the best of itself and of things in general-a nose that would push its way up in life, but so pleasantly, that the most irritable fingers would never itch to lay hold of it. With such a nose a man might play the violoncello, marry for love, or even write poetry, and yet not go to the dogs. Never would he stick in the mud so long as he followed that nose in the air!

By the help of that nose this gentleman wore a black velveteen jacket of foreign cut; a moustache and imperial (then much rarer in England than they have been since the siege of Sebastopol); and

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yet left you perfectly convinced that he was an honest Englishman, who had not only no designs on your pocket, but would not be easily duped by any designs upon his own.

The companion of the personage thus sketched might be some where about seventeen; but his gait, his air, his little vigorous frame, showed a manliness at variance with the boyish bloom of his face. He struck the eye much more than his elder comrade. Not that he was regularly handsome-far from it; yet it is no paradox to say he was beautiful; at least, few indeed were the women who would not have called him so. His hair, long, like his friend's, was of a dark chestnut, with gold gleaming through it where the su fell, inclining to curl, and singularly soft and silken in its texture, His large, clear, dark-blue happy eyes were fringed with long ebon lashes, and set under brows which already wore the expression of intellectual power, and, better still, of frank courage and open loyalty. His complexion was fair and somewhat pale, and his lips, in laughing, showed teeth exquisitely white and even. But though his profile was clearly cut, it was far from the Greek ideal; and he wanted the height of stature which is usually considered essential to the personal pretensions of the male sex. Without being posi= tively short, he was still under middle height, and, from the compact development of his proportions, seemed already to have attained his full growth. His dress, though not foreign, like his comrade's, was peculiar :--a broad-brimmed straw-hat, with a wide blue ribbon; shirt collar turned down, leaving the throat bare; a dark green jacket of thinner material than cloth; white trousers and waistcoat completed his costume. He looked like a mother's darling--perhaps he was one.

3. HAMPTON COURT PALACE,

They neared that stately palace, rich in associations of storm and splendour. The grand cardinal-the iron-clad protector, Dutch William, of the immortal memory, whom we try so hard to like, and, in spite of the great Whig historian, that Titian of English prose, can only frigidly respect. Hard task for us Britons to like a Dutchman who dethrones his father-in-law and drinks schnaps. Prejudice certainly; but so it is. Harder still to like Dutch Wil liam's unfilial Fran! Like Queen Mary! I could as soon like Queen Goneril! Romance flies from the prosperous phlegmatic Anens; flies from his plump Lavinia, his trusty Achates," Bentinck; flies to follow the poor deserted fugitive, Stuart, with all his sins upon his head. Kings have no rights divine, except when de posed and fallen; they are then invested with the awe that belongs to each solemn image of mortal vicissitude-- vicissitude that startles the Epicurean, and strikes from his careless lyre the notes that attest à God! Some proud shadow chases another from the throne of Cyrus, and Horace hears in the thunder the rush of Diespiter, and identifies Providence with the fortune that snatches off the

diadem in her whirring swoop. But fronts discrowned take a new majesty to generous natures ;-in all sleek prosperity there is something commonplace-in all grand adversity, something royal.

The boat shot to the shore; the young people landed, and entered the arch of the desolate palace. They gazed on the great hall and the presence-chambers, and the long suite of rooms, with faded portraits-Vance as an artist, Lionel as an enthusiastic well-read boy, Sophy as a wondering, bewildered, ignorant child. And then they emerged into the noble garden, with its regal trees.

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XX. LORD MACAULAY.

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over

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, in 1800. He is the son of Zachary Macaulay, so well known for his exertions in abolishing the slave-trade, and grandson of the Mr Macaulay whom Boswell and Johnson have celebrated in their Tours." He was educated at Cambridge, where he highly distinguished himself; and at an early age he became one of the contributors to "Knight's Magazine," an able periodical, which was unfortunately discontinued. His first article in the "Edinburgh Review"-that on Milton-appeared in 1825, and its merits were at once admitted; its style was indeed highly-coloured and somewhat extravagant; loaded," as he himself subsequently admitted, "with gaudy and ungraceful ornament;" but its faults were such as to make more conspicuous the luxuriance of the author's genius. The essay on Milton was followed by a long series of articles on subjects connected with history, literature, and politics, all characterized by the same extensive knowledge, the same sound judgment, and the same gorgeous flow of eloquence, gradually chastened by experience, and deprived of superfluous ornament, but gaining in power what was lost in words. In 1830 Macaulay became a member of the House of Commons, and one of the most important defenders of the principles of the Liberal party. He subsequently received a legal appointment in Calcutta, to which we owe some of his finest articles in the "Edinburgh Review," those on Clive and Hastings. On his return he was elected member for Edinburgh, and in the various Liberal administrations he served as a Cabinet Minister. In 1856 his health obliged him to withdraw from public life, and the year after, with the consent of all parties, he was raised to the peerage as the foremost literary man of the day.

In 1842 Macaulay appeared as a poet: his "Lays of Ancient Rome" were expected with some curiosity, and more than realized the most sanguine anticipations of his warmest admirers. Their vigour and energy, their simple structure, their picturesque description, their rapid action, their nervous language, combined with the innumerable associations connected with the subject to render the "Lays" one of the most popular volumes of verse which our century has produced. Macaulay's fame, however, will rest on his "History." This work was originally intended to embrace the period between the accession of James II. and the French Revolution; but from the minuteness

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