the allied sovereigns and the ambassadors of the great powers visited England in 1814, there was a ruinous round of festivities at Devonshire House and elsewhere. These festivi

ties seem to have suggested a banquet at White's, when the rage for betting was at its height in the club. The

member who devised the most costly

dish was to dine at the expense of the others. On that occasion Alvanley's extravagance proved economy, for he won the sweep and dined for nothing. On another, he was seriously out of pocket. He had been invited by his friend Mr. Anson to a water party on the Thames; and, Anson being even less thoughtful than himself, he found on inquiry that the important matter of the refreshments had been forgotten. He undertook at once to see to that, gave a restaurateur a free hand, and had to owe a bill for two hundred guineas. That induces us to believe a story which, though thoroughly well authenticated, might otherwise appear incredible. When his pecuniary affairs had become gravely embarrassed, Charles Greville, who was an excellent man of business, volunteered to make an arrangement with the creditors. He congratulated Alvanley on the balancesheet being better than he had supposed. "Oh, by the way," said Alvanley, meeting him next day, "apropos to those accounts, I had quite forgotten a debt of fifty-five thousand pounds." All things considered, and though he came into more than one succession which he dissipated, it is marvellous that he could keep his head so long above water, and leave his heir some two thousand pounds a year. For it is needless to repeat that he never grudged himself anything, yet it was not his doom to die in the King's Bench. Scott, in the journal of his cruise to the Northern Isles, mentions an Orkney clergyman who, when impeached before the General Assembly for drunkenness, admitted that he drank as other gentlemen did. Alvanley might have said the same about his gambling, though there, as in everything else, he drained the cup of dissipation to the

dregs. No man in his position could have shunned the réunions at Crockford's. Other times, other manners! In the beginning of the century the polite hell which was run by the enriched exfishmonger was the resort of all that was most distinguished or renowned in Europe. He had founded a club of which he was the proprietor. Disraeli

in "Sybil" has painted to the life the

scene in the rooms, on the eve of the

Derby, when Rat-trap was favorite and Caravan was fancied. He and Lytton represented letters in that select gathering of rank, station, and dissipation. Foreign ambassadors met there, as a matter of course, on common ground. There were Talleyrand, Pozzo di Borgo, Metternich and Alava; the Duke of Wellington, though no gambler like old Blücher, not unfrequently graced it with his presence. But Alvanley is acknowledged by all his contemporaries to have been the life and soul of that brilliant society. The place suited him and his habits. The old fishmonger who presided was the shrewdest of men, though the better part of the million he

is said to have amassed in a second-rate

hell was subsequently lost in unlucky speculations. He sat in a corner, keeping the accounts, watching to make advances on satisfactory security, and Alvanley had frequent dealings with him. The old spider knew his business and

was

limed his webs. Ude had been secured as chef of the establishment. The most sumptuous of suppers was served gratis to all comers, and the undeniable contents of the cellars were at call. A man of honor, as he could not pay, bound to play. Alvanley, like his royal friend the regent, was a man of fine and almost phenomenal appetite. However he might have dined he was ever ready to sup, and when cibo vinoque semi-gravatus, he was only too willing to discharge the score, in accordance with the expectations of the establishment. He adjourned to the hazard table, and was scarcely more fortunate there than Stephen Fox, of whom Genera Fitzpatrick sang:Whenever he touches the cards or the box, Away fly the guineas of this Mr. Fox. Then, sooner or later, he had recourse to the usurers.

Doubtless those convivial suppers, not unfrequently repeatedly renewed in the course of the night, did much to lay the seeds of the gout, to which he latterly became a martyr. But Alvanley, who was the most indolent and the most active of men, did far more to fight it off than most of his afflicted acquaintances. Sometimes, after the evening's play at Crockford's or White's, he would stumble half-asleep into a chariot, and be jolted as fast as four posters could take him down to some meet in the shires where his horses were standing. The man of many tastes and of manifold supremacy was as much a dictator at Melton as in the clubs of St. James's. He was one of the members of the famous Old Club at Melton, limited to four on account of the cramped bedroom accommodation. He figures conspicuously in "Nimrod's" quarterly article on "The Chase." He was a heavy weight, and grew heavier yearly, yet he was always well forward in the first flight. Admirably mounted, he grudged no money for his hunters, which he could afford the better that he never paid ready cash. When some one asked what he had given for a horse he was riding, he answered carelessly and characteristically, "I believe I owe 300l. for him." When the game little bay hunter broke down under the straight-going provincial gentleman whom "Nimrod" most gratuitously christened "Snob," Snob looks wistfully after the field drawing away from him, deploring that he can neither go so fast nor so long as that heavy Tom Maxse and the heavier Lord Alvanley. When they have to fly the flooded Whissendine, and Bulkeley shouts that it will be a bumper after last night's rain, Alvanley exclaims in answer, "So much the better; I like a bumper at all times." Who can doubt that the epicure's most blissful hours of enjoyment were when, mud-stained and glorious, having been in at the death, and after bath and toilette, he sat down to the recherché dinner at the club, to discuss the doings of the day, from the soup and the sherry, through champagne to the claret? By the way, Nimrod makes him perpetuate what must certainly have been a solecism in a man of his perfect breeding. Having

noticed "Snob" and admired his riding, he accosts him one afternoon with "Perhaps you would like to dine with me to-day?" We are sure the invitation would have been worded more courteously. "Snob" "never sat down to a better dressed dinner," which we can well believe; but we do not believe that the subject of hunting was never once alluded to except when an order was given to ask for a gentleman who had come to grief. But, indeed, "Nimrod" contradicts himself in his account of a previous entertainment.

Alvanley's rare appearances in the House of Lords made his best friends regret that he did not take an active part in politics. He showed himself a good and effective speaker, with an exceptional knowledge of Irish politics, on which he wrote a very able pamphlet. An awkward question he put to Lord Melbourne led to the memorable duel with Morgan O'Connell. The question irritated O'Connell père, and, with his customary truculent coarseness, he denounced Alvanley in the Commons as a bloated buffoon. As usual, there was some truth in it to give sting to the invective; but in any case the insult must have been followed by a challenge. The agitator declined to come out, and Alvanley threatened personal chastisement. Thereupon Morgan took up the glove on his father's behalf, in a letter characterized by his father's scurrility. They met to exchange sundry shots and to part scatheless, but without any apology. Alvanley observed afterwards, "What a clumsy fellow O'Connell must be to miss such a fat fellow as I am! He ought to practise at a haystack to get his hand in." He gave the hackney coachman a guinea for driving him from Wormwood Scrubs, when the grateful jarvey said it was too much. "I don't pay you for taking me there," rejoined Alvanley, "but for bringing me back."

We said that Alvanley, although in remarks he knew would be repeated he fell into the cynical fashion of the day, was in reality a warm-hearted man and a staunch friend. And by those who could judge people most perspicuously he was regarded as anything but a shallow trifler. With the Duke of Welling

ton, for example, he was on so familiar a footing that his Grace frequently consulted him on the politics of the day, and confided to him how much he felt hurt by the treatment of the ministry. Seizing the opportunity with his accustomed tact, he never hesitated to exert his influence for friends in need. His habitual correspondent, Raikes, had lost the greater part of his fortune, and was desirous of some government appointment. Raikes notes in his journals in 1841: "This morning I received a most kind letter from Alvanley, which shows a friendship and zeal for my interests seldom seen in these selfish days." The letter ran: "I wrote to the duke to say I had spoken to Aberdeen, and to beg him to support my application. I enclose his kind answer, which will give you pleasure." There is a most feeling letter describing the death of the Duke of Beaufort, and the excellent advice given on the duke's deathbed to young Lord Worcester. The mention of the Beaufort family reminds one of a characteristic reminiscence. Alvanley, who was a constant visitor at Badminton, was in the habit of reading in bed, and generally neglected to blow out the candles. So a servant was always told off upon duty in the passage, to see that the lights were properly extinguished. By the way, apropos to his good-nature, among the many sayings generally attributed to him there is one we confidently dismiss as spurious. When Gunter of the Dragoon Guards was out with the king's staghounds and exclaimed on the hotness of his fretting horse, some one said, "Ice him, Gunter, ice him!" We believe it was the colonel of Gunter's regiment, who had no great liking for him; but assuredly Alvanley was incapable of so rude a personalism. Fond as he was of the flags of Pall Mall and the pastures of the Midlands, he had travelled much and had made many friends among the most distinguished foreigners. Talleyrand, Metternich, and Prince Woronzoff, whom he frequently visited in the Crimea, were among his familiar intimates. In passing, we may note a good anecdote he used to tell of Talleyrand—one of the happiest examples of Talleyrand's searching sarcasm. Some one said be

fore him that Chateaubriand complained he was growing deaf. Talleyrand remarked, "Il se croit sourd, parce qu'il n'entend plus parler de lui." Alvanley, with his rare facility in tongues, was as successful in Paris, Berlin, or St. Petersburg as in London. Although the world and society were his natural element, with his many resources and interests he did not dislike occasional solitude. He travelled alone for months in the East, and the summer of 1839 was spent in a villeggiatura at Castellamare. Even there, however, the best company was assembled round his table, and the luxury of his little dinners astonished the frugal Neapolitans. His chief grievance was the heavy duties imposed on imported clothes. Though we may be sure that his wardrobe was well supplied, there were regular consignments from his tailors in London, for he was about as fastidious a dresser as Brummell, if he gave less time to the toilette. He returned with Raikes to England by way of Rome. Not only as an accomplished cicerone had he done all the honors of Vesuvius, Pompeii, and Herculaneum, of Posilippo and the Neapolitan museums, but during their short sojourn in the Eternal City he toiled as indefatigably at sightseeing as any American tourist.

In the following year he went to travel in Syria, that he might judge for himself of the political condition of the Lebanon, which was causing much anxiety to the Western powers, and threatened serious European complications. His letters to Raikes, written in great detail, are admirable specimens of lucid exposition, and it is interesting to compare them with the pictures Disraeli has left in "Tancred." Both of those keen and gifted observers estimated the situation from a very similar point of view. We should like to quote a letter from Smyrna at length, to do justice to the writer in his most thoughtful mood. But as that is out of the question, we merely extract some passages to show how ardently the sympathies of the "fashionable cynic" were excited by the sufferings of the people. under the merciless exactions of the Egyptian invader:—

"Before going further, I should detail to you that the government of Mehemet Ali is the most tyrannical and oppressive that ever existed. From the second cataract on the Nile to the frontiers of Syria, the wretched people are ground to the earth. . . . You never go among them but you are stunned by the complaints and shocked by the misery of the inhabitants. Their universal prayer is that some Christian power will take possession of the country and save them from this horrible tyranny. The land pays eighty per cent. of its produce to the pacha. If a village has been rated at two hundred male peasants for the capitation, and only forty remain in consequence of the others having been carried off by the conscription, these forty pay the same taxes as the two hundred would have done, and if, after selling everything that they possess, and in some cases their children, for that purpose, their means and power quite fail, they are inevitably put to the torture; if they hide themselves, their wives are submitted to it in order to make them discover their retreat."

In the course of his travels the prince of gourmands must have had to rough it continually, and often put up with hard fare and short commons, although he never makes any allusion to that. Like the duke's dandy soldiers in the Peninsula, he could resign himself cheerfully to the inevitable. But he does say something of various exciting adventures. By the irony of fate, the bestdressed man in London had all his wardrobe stolen from his tent one night, and he retreated upon Beyrout to refit. Returning to the mountain, on another occasion he was mobbed by peasants, who insisted on pillaging his Arab cook, but "as I was well armed, and the peasants had only sticks, I effected the retrograde movement with success, and arrived at a place under the orders of a jolly old sheikh, who immediately sent my persecutors to the right-about."

We suspect that these travels in the East, and a subsequent visit to Prince Woronzoff, were dictated in some measure by necessity or motives of prudence. Alvanley, although he had come better off than many of his old companions,

was paying the penalty of the careless viveur. The host of unpaid creditors was clamoring, and, moreover, it was impossible for him to live cheaply in England, for he must live up to his reputaton. His wanderings in the Lebanon were the more venturesome that he was suffering severely from his gastronomic indulgences. Already he had frequent attacks of gout; he writes in 1845 that he was enduring martyrdom. Yet in the intervals between the paroxysms of pain his spirits were still buoyant as ever, and the wit and reminiscences of perhaps the most sparkling raconteur in England flowed as freely and as genially as before. He died at Brighton in 1849. Latterly he had been under a dark financial cloud, and had been constrained to contract his expenditure and to retrench in his hospitable habits. For years he had fallen behind in the running, if latterly he had not altogether dropped out of it. Yet few men probably have been more sincerely and generally regretted in a world where real friendship is rare, and where the death of to-day is forgotten on the morrow. Possibly selfishness had no slight part in the sorrow, for he left a blank it was impossible to fill.

A. I. SHAND.

From The London Times. SCOTTISH LITERATURE.1

it is a singular fact that, within a comparatively brief number of months, I have had my attention directed to no less than four ceremonials connected with great literary men, and all these were Scotsmen. There was the Burns celebration of last July; there was the most interesting ceremony which took place in London, at which I was present, in which the memory of Carlyle was the subject dealt with in connection with the acquisition of the house in which he lived, in perpetual memory of the work which he did for literature;

1 Address by the Right Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, at Dumfries, Scotland. Aug. 24, on the oc casion of his presentation with the freedom of the city.

there was the Stevenson meeting in Glasgow, at which, unluckily, I could not be present, although I earnestly desired to be; and there was the meeting connected with the memorial put up to Sir Walter Scott in Westminster Abbey, a meeting in which I had the great honor of taking part. Now these four names, which have thus within a very brief space come up in this public manner for public recognition before different audiences in the United Kingdom, were, as I have said, all Scotsmen, were, in a manner, all men who were not only Scotsmen by birth, but Scotsmen to the core-by learning, by education, by love of their country. I do not suppose that four such different geniuses could be found in the literature of any country. Of all these four men without doubt the one who, I will not say is the greatest-for these comparisons are impossible-but the one who is the nearest to the hearts of the great mass of our fellow countrymen, is Robert Burns. Of course, as I have just said, it is difficult to make comparisons between two such diverse geniuses with any hope of arriving at a fruitful result; and, indeed, Stevenson has been too recently taken from us for even the hardiest critic to venture to prophesy the exact position which he is destined ultimately to occupy in the literary history of this country. But I think, however, we may say of him that he was a man of the finest and most delicate imagination, and that he wielded in the service of that imagination a style which for grace, for suppleness, for its power of being at once turned to any purpose which the author desired, has seldom been matched-in my judgment it has hardly been equalled-by any writer, English or Scotch. With regard to Carlyle it would, perhaps, be absurd to expect that the historian and the philosopher should be as much understood by the great mass of mankind as a poet or a writer of romance, and indeed I do not feel myself sufficiently of the straitest sect of that great man's admirers to be able to speak worthily of him here. I hold that only those who can admire

fully and freely are competent critics of great genius, and that Carlyle was a great genius-that Carlyle had in him a force and originality of nature which enabled him to speak to two generations of his countrymen with a power and a force on some of the deepest and most important subjects which can interest us-that Carlyle could do that as perhaps no man has been able to do it, is a fact which, whether we admire Carlyle or do not admire him, we must acknowledge as honest historians he succeeded in doing. But if we can hardly expect that the author of "Sartor Resartus" and of the "French Revolution" should be a popular favorite and a popular friend in the same sense that Burns was and is a popular friend, the case is not so easy when we come to Sir Walter Scott. For Sir Walter Scott was not only one of the greatest men of letters that have ever lived in any country, but he was also one of the best and most lovable of men who ever adorned any society; and as time goes on, so far from his fame becoming dimmed or the knowledge of him becoming the property only of the few. it seems to me, so far as I can judge. that he is more likely to defy the ravages of time than almost any other of the writers who have adorned the present century. And yet, ladies and gentlemen, holding that opinion I return to what I said at the beginning of these remarks-that of the four great Scotsmen thus recently celebrated, all of whom wrote and lived within a little more than the last one hundred years, Burns, the first in time of the four, is the one who at this moment holds the first place also in the hearts of the great mass of Scotsmen.

I suppose that if we all set to work to account for this phenomenon we should find that, like most other phenomena, more than one cause contributes to it. It seems to me, indeed, that not only does Robert Burns hold a peculiar and unique position in the minds of Scotsmen and many Scotsmen of letters, but that he holds a unique position, so far as I understand the matter, if we survey the whole field of modern