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HUGH MILLER
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Hugh Miller (1802-56): Scottish stone mason, self-taught
geologist, writer and newspaper editor.
A Calotype by David Octavius Hill and
Robert Adamson, 1843. Picture Wikipedia. |
MEN may learn much that is
good from each other's lives,—especially from good men's lives. Men
who live in our daily sight, as well as men who have lived before us, and
handed down illustrious examples for our imitation, are the most valuable
practical teachers. For it is not mere literature that makes men,—it
is real, practical life, that chiefly moulds our nature, enables us to
work out our own education, and to build up our own character.
HUGH
MILLER has very strikingly worked out
this idea in his admirable autobiography, entitled, "My Schools and
Schoolmasters." It is extremely interesting, even fascinating, as a book;
but it is more than an ordinary book,—it might almost be called an
institution. It is the history of the formation of a truly noble and
independent character in the humblest condition of life,—the condition in
which a large mass of the people of this country are born and brought up;
and it teaches all, but especially poor men, what it is in the power of
each to accomplish for himself. The life of Hugh Miller is full of
lessons of self-help and self-respect, and shows the efficacy of these in
working out for a man an honourable competence and a solid reputation. It
may not be that every man has the thew and sinew, the large brain and
heart, of a Hugh Miller,—for there is much in what we may call the breed
of a man, the defect of which no mere educational advantages can supply;
but every man can at least do much, by the help of such examples as his,
to elevate himself, and build up his moral and intellectual character on a
solid foundation.
We have spoken of the breed of a man. In Hugh Miller we have an
embodiment of that most vigorous and energetic element of English national
life,—the Norwegian and Danish. In times long, long ago, the daring and
desperate pirates of these nations swarmed along the eastern coasts. In
England they were resisted by force of arms, for the prize of England's
crown was a rich one; yet, by dint of numbers, valour, and bravery, they
made good their footing in England, and even governed the eastern part of
it by their own kings until the time of Alfred the Great. And to this day
the Danish element amongst the population of the east and northeast of
England is by far the prevailing one. But in Scotland it was different.
They never reigned there; but they settled and planted all the eastern
coasts. The land was poor and thinly peopled; and the Scottish kings and
chiefs were too weak—generally too much occupied by intestine broils—to
molest or dispossess them. Then these Danes and Norwegians led a
seafaring life, were sailors and fishermen, which the native Scots were
not. So they settled down in all the bays and bights along the coast of
Scotland, and took entire possession of the Orkneys, Shetland, and Western
Isles, the Shetlands having been held by the crown of Denmark down to a
comparatively recent period. They never amalgamated with the Scotch
Highlanders; and to this day they speak a different language, and follow
different pursuits. The Highlander was a hunter, a herdsman, a warrior,
and fished in the fresh waters only. The descendants of the Norwegians,
or the Lowlanders, as they came to be called, followed the sea, fished in
salt waters, cultivated the soil, and engaged in trade and commerce.
Hence the marked difference between the population of the town of
Cromarty—where Hugh Miller was born, in 1802—and the population only a few
miles inland; the townspeople speaking Lowland Scotch, and being dependent
for their subsistence mainly on the sea,—the others speaking Gaelic, and
living solely, upon the land.
These Norwegian colonists of Cromarty held in their blood the very same
piratical propensities which characterized their forefathers who followed
the Vikings. Hugh Miller first saw the light in a long, low-built house,
built by his great-grandfather, John Feddes, "one of the last of the
buccaneers;" this cottage having been built, as Hugh Miller himself says
he has every reason to believe, with "Spanish gold." All his ancestors
were sailors and seafaring men; when boys they had taken to the water as
naturally as ducklings. Traditions of adventures by sea were rife in the
family. Of his grand-uncles, one had sailed round the world with Anson,
had assisted in burning Paeta, and in boarding the Manilla galleon;
another, a handsome and powerful man, perished at sea in a storm; and his
grandfather was dashed overboard by the jib-boom of his little vessel when
entering the Cromarty Firth, and never rose again. The son of this last,
Hugh Miller's father, was sent into the country by his mother to work upon
a farm, thus to rescue him, if possible, from the hereditary fate of the
family. But it was of no use. The propensity for the salt water, the
very instinct of the breed, was too powerful within him. He left the
farm, went to sea, became a man-of-war's man, was in the battle with the
Dutch off the Dogger Bank, sailed all over the world, then took "French
leave" of the royal navy, returned to Cromarty with money enough to buy a
sloop and engage in trade on his own account. But this vessel was one
stormy night knocked to pieces on the bar of Findhorn, the master and his
men escaping with difficulty; then another vessel was fitted out by him,
by the help of his friends, and in this he was trading from place to place
when Hugh Miller was born.
What a vivid picture of sea-life, as seen from the shore at least, do
we obtain from the early chapters of Miller's life! "I retain," says he,
"a vivid recollection of the joy which used to light up the household on
my father's arrival, and how I learned to distinguish for myself his sloop
when in the offing, by the two slim stripes of white that ran along her
sides, and her two square topsails." But a terrible calamity—though an
ordinary one in sea-life—suddenly plunged the sailor's family in grief;
and he, too, was gathered to the same grave in which so many of his
ancestors lay,—the deep ocean. A terrible storm overtook his vessel near
Peterhead; numbers of ships were lost along the coast; vessel after vessel
came ashore, and the beach was strewn with wrecks and dead bodies, but no
remnant of either the ship or bodies of Miller and his crew was ever cast
up. It was supposed that the little sloop, heavily laden, and labouring
in a mountainous sea, must have started a plank and foundered. Hugh
Miller was but a child at the time, having only completed his fifth year.
The following remarkable "appearance," very much in Mrs. Crowe's way, made
a strong impression upon him at the time. The house-door had blown open,
in the gray of evening, and the boy was sent by his mother to shut it.
"Day had not wholly disappeared, but it was fast posting on to night,
and a gray haze spread a neutral tint of dimness over every more distant
object, but left the nearer ones comparatively distinct, when I saw at the
open door, within less than a yard of my breast, as plainly as ever I saw
anything, a dissevered hand and arm stretched towards me. Hand and arm
were apparently those of a female: they bore a livid and sodden
appearance; and directly fronting me, where the body ought to have been,
there was only blank, transparent space, through which I could see the dim
forms of the objects beyond. I was fearfully startled, and ran shrieking
to my mother, telling what I had seen; and the house-girl, whom she next
sent to shut the door, affected by my terror, also returned frightened,
and said that she, too, had seen the woman's hand; which, however, did not
seem to be the case. And finally, my mother going to the door, saw
nothing, though she appeared much impressed by the extremeness of my
terror, and the minuteness of my description. communicate the story as it
lies fixed in my memory, without attempting to explain it: its coincidence
with the probable time of my father's death, seems at least curious."
The little boy longed for his father's return, and continued to gaze
across the deep, watching for the sloop with its two stripes of white
along the sides. Every morning he went wandering about the little
harbour, to examine the vessels which had come in during the night; and he
continued to look out across the Moray Forth long after anybody else had
ceased to hope. But months and years passed, and the white stripes and
square topsails of his father's sloop he never saw again. The boy was
the son of a sailor's widow, and so grew up, in sight of the sea, and with
the same love of it that characterized his father. But he was sent to
school; first to a dame school, where he learnt his letters; he then
worked his way through the Catechism, the Proverbs, and the New Testament
and emerged into the golden region of "Sinbad the Sailor," "Jack the
Giant-Killer," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Aladdin and the Wonderful
Lamp." Other books followed,—the Pilgrim's Progress, Cook's and Anson's
Voyages, and Blind Harry the Rhymer's History of Wallace; which first
awoke within him a strong feeling of Scottish patriotism. And thus his
childhood grew, on proper child-like nourishment. His uncles were men of
solid sense and sound judgment, though uncultured by scholastic
education. One was a local antiquary, by trade a working harness-maker;
the other was of a strong religious turn: he was a working cartwright, and
in early life had been a sailor, engaged in nearly all Nelson's famous
battles. The examples and the conversation of these men were for the
growing boy worth any quantity of school primers: he learnt from them far
more than mere books could teach him.
But his school education was not neglected either.
From the dame's school he was transferred to the town's grammar school,
where, amidst about one hundred and fifty other boys and girls, he
received his real school education. But it did not amount to much.
There, however, the boy learnt life,—to hold his own,—to try his powers
with other boys,—physically and morally, as well as scholastically.
The school brought out the stuff that was in him in many ways, but the
mere book-learning was about the least part of the instruction.
The school-house looked out on the beach, fronting the opening of the
Frith, and not a boat or a ship could pass in or out of the harbour of
Cromarty without the boys seeing it. They knew the rig of every craft,
and could draw them on their slates. Boats unloaded their glittering
cargoes on the beach, where the process of gutting afterwards went busily
on; and to add to the bustle, there was a large killing-place for pigs not
thirty yards from the school door, "where from eighty to a hundred pigs
used sometimes to die for the general good in a single day; and it was a
great matter to hear, at occasional intervals, the roar of death rising
high over the general murmur within, or to be told by some comrade,
returned from his five minutes' leave of absence, that a hero of a pig had
taken three blows of a hatchet ere it fell, and that, even after its
subjection to the sticking process, it had got hold of Jock Keddie's hand
in its mouth, and almost smashed his thumb." Certainly it is not in every
grammar-school that such lessons as these are taught.
Miller was put to Latin, but made little progress in it,—his master
had no method, and the boy was too fond of telling stories to his
schoolfellows in school hours to make much progress. Cock-fighting was a
school practice in those days, apparently the master having a perquisite
of two-pence for every cock that was entered by the boys on the days of the
yearly fight. But Miller had no love for this sport, although he paid his
entry money with the rest. In the mean time his miscellaneous reading
extended, and he gathered pickings of odd knowledge from all sorts of odd
quarters,— from workmen, carpenters, fishermen and sailors, old women,
and, above all, from the old boulders strewed along the shores of the
Cromarty Frith. With a big hammer, which had belonged to his
great-grandfather, John Feddes, the buccaneer, the boy went about chipping
the stones, and thus early accumulating specimens of mica, porphyry,
garnet, and such like, exhibiting them to his uncle Alexander, and other
admiring relations. Often, too, he had a day in woods to visit his
uncle, when working as a sawyer,—his trade of cartwright having, failed.
And there, too, the boy's attention was excited by the peculiar geological
curiosities which lay in his way. While searching among the stones and
rocks on the beach, he was sometimes asked, in humble irony, by the farm
servants who came to load their carts with sea-weed, whether he "was
gettin' siller in the stanes," but was so unlucky as never to be able to
answer their question in the affirmative. Uncle Sandy seems to have been
a close observer of nature, and in his humble way had his theories of
ancient sea beaches, the flood, and the formation of the world, which he
duly imparted to the wondering youth. Together they explored caves,
roamed the beach for crabs and lobsters, whose habits Uncle Sandy could
well describe; he also knew all about moths and butterflies, spiders, and
bees,—in short, was a born natural-history man, so that the boy regarded
him in the light of a professor, and, doubtless, thus early obtained from
him the bias toward his future studies.
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A Calotype by Hill and Adamson (ca.
1843-47). |
There was the usual number of hair-breadth
escapes in Miller's boy-life. One of them, when he and a companion had
got cooped up in a sea cave, and could not return because of the tide,
reminds us of the exciting scene described in Scott's Antiquary. There
were school-boy tricks, and schoolboy rambles, mischief-making in
companionship with other boys, of whom he was often the leader. Left very
much to himself, he was becoming a big, wild, insubordinate boy; and it
became obvious that the time was now come when Hugh Miller must enter that
world-wide school in which toil and hardship are the severe but noble
masters. After a severe fight and wrestling-match with his schoolmaster,
he left school, avenging himself for his defeat by penning and sending by
the teacher, that very night, a copy of satiric verses, entitled "The
Pedagogue," which occasioned a good deal of merriment in the place.
His boyhood over, and his school training ended, Hugh Miller must now
face the world of toil. His uncles were most anxious that he should
become a minister; and were even willing to pay his college expenses,
though the labour of their hands formed their only wealth. The youth,
however, had conscientious objections: he did not feel called to the
work; and the uncles, confessing that he was right, gave up their point.
Hugh was accordingly apprenticed to the trade of his choice,—that of a
working stone-mason; and he began his labouring career in a quarry
looking out upon the Cromarty Firth. This quarry proved one of his best
schools. The remarkable geological formations which it displayed awakened
his curiosity. The bar of deep-red stone beneath, and the bar of pale-red
clay above, were noted by the young quarryman, who, even in such
unpromising subjects, found matter for observation and reflection. Where
other men saw nothing, he detected analogies, differences, and
peculiarities, which set him a-thinking. He simply kept his eyes and his
mind open; was sober, diligent, and persevering; and this was the secret
of his intellectual growth.
Hugh Miller takes a cheerful view of the lot of labour. While others
groan because they have to work hard for their bread, he says that work is
full of pleasure, of profit, and of materials for self-improvement. He
holds that honest labour is the best of all teachers, and that the school
of toil is the best and noblest of all schools, save only the Christian
one,—a school in which the ability of being useful is imparted, and the
spirit of independence communicated, and the habit of persevering effort
acquired. He is even of opinion that the training of the mechanic, by the
exercise which it gives to his observant faculties, from his daily
dealings with things actual and practical, and the close experience of
life which he invariably acquires, is more favourable to his growth as a
Man, emphatically speaking, than the training which is afforded by any
other condition of life. And the array of great names which he cites in
support of his statement is certainly a large one. Nor is the condition
of the average well-paid operative at all so dolorous, according to Hugh
Miller, as many modern writers would have it to be. "I worked as an
operative mason," says he, "for fifteen years,—no inconsiderable portion
of the more active part of a man's life; but the time was not altogether
lost. I enjoyed in those years fully the average amount of happiness, and
learned to know more of the Scottish people than is generally known. Let
me add, that from the close of the first year in which I wrought as a
journeyman, until I took final leave of the mallet and chisel, I never
knew what it was to want a shilling; that my two uncles, my grandfather,
and the mason with whom I served my apprenticeship—all working-men—had had
a similar experience; and that it was the experience of my father also. I
cannot doubt that deserving mechanics may, in exceptional cases, be
exposed to want; but I can as little doubt that the cases are exceptional,
and that much of the suffering of the class is a consequence either of
improvidence on the part of the completely skilled, or of a course of
trifling during the term of apprenticeship,—quite as common as trifling at
school,—that always lands those who indulge in it in the hapless position
of the inferior workman."
There is much honest truth in this observation. At the same time, it
is clear that the circumstances under which Hugh Miller was brought up and
educated are not enjoyed by all workmen,—are, indeed, experienced by
comparatively few. In the first place, his parentage was good, his father
and mother were a self-helping, honest, intelligent pair, in humble
circumstances, but yet comparatively comfortable. Thus his early
education was not neglected. His relations were sober, industrious, and
"God-fearing," as they say in the north. His uncles were not his least
notable instructors. One of them was a close observer of nature, and in
some sort a scientific man, possessed of a small but good library of
books. Then Hugh Miller's own constitution was happily trained. As one
of his companions once said to him, "Ah, Miller, you have stamina in you,
and will force your way; but I want strength; the world will never hear
of me." It is the stamina which Hugh Miller possessed by nature, that
were born in him, and were carefully nurtured by his parents, that enabled
him as a working-man to rise, while thousands would have sunk or merely
plodded on through life in the humble station in which they were born.
And this difference in stamina and other circumstances is not sufficiently
taken into account by Hugh Miller in the course of the interesting, and,
on the whole, exceedingly profitable remarks, which he makes in his
autobiography on the condition of the labouring poor.
We can afford, in our brief space, to give only a very rapid outline
of Hugh Miller's fifteen years' life as a workman. He worked away in the
quarry for some time, losing many of his finger-nails by bruises and
accidents, growing fast, but gradually growing stronger, and obtaining a
fair knowledge of his craft as a stone-hewer. He was early subjected to
the temptation which besets most young workmen,—that of drink. But he
resisted it bravely. His own account of it is worthy of extract:—
"When overwrought, and in my depressed moods, I learned to regard the
ardent spirits of the dram-shop as high luxuries; they gave lightness and
energy to both body and mind, and substituted for a state of dulness and
gloom one of exhilaration and enjoyment. Usquebhae was simply happiness
doled out by the glass, and sold by the gill. The drinking usages of the
profession in which I laboured were at this time many; when a foundation
was laid, the workmen were treated to drink; they were treated to drink
when the walls were levelled for laying the joists; they were treated to
drink when the building was finished; they were treated to drink when an
apprentice joined the squad; treated to drink when his 'apron was washed;'
treated to drink when his ' time was out;' and occasionally they learnt to
treat one another to drink. In laying down the foundation stone of one of
the larger houses built this year by Uncle David and his partner, the
workmen had a royal 'founding-pint,' and two whole glasses of the whiskey
came to my share. A full-grown man would not have deemed a gill of
usquebhae an overdose, but it was considerably too much for me; and when
the party broke up, and I got home to my books, I found, as I opened the
pages of a favourite author, the letters dancing before my eyes, and that
I could no longer master the sense. I have the volume at present before
me, a small edition of the Essays of Bacon, a good deal worn at the
corners by the friction of the pocket, for of Bacon I never tired. The
condition into which I had brought myself was, I felt, one of
degradation. I had sunk, by my own act, for the time, to a lower level of
intelligence than that on which it was my privilege to be placed; and
though the state could have been no very favourable one for forming a
resolution, I in that hour determined that I should never again
sacrifice my capacity of intellectual enjoyment to a drinking usage; and,
with God's help, I was enabled to hold my determination."
A young working mason, reading Bacon's Essays in his by-hours, must
certainly be regarded as a remarkable man; but not less remarkable is the
exhibition of moral energy and noble self-denial in the instance we have
cited.
It was while working as a mason's apprentice, that the lower Old Red
Sandstone along the Bay of Cromarty presented itself to his notice; and
his curiosity was excited and kept alive by the infinite organic remains,
principally of old and extinct species of fishes, ferns, and ammonites,
which lay revealed along the coasts by the washings of waves, or were
exposed by the stroke of his mason's hammer. He never lost sight of this
subject; went on accumulating observations and comparing formations, until
at length, when no longer a working mason, many years afterwards, he gave
to the world his highly interesting work on the Old Red Sandstone, which
at once established his reputation as an accomplished scientific
geologist. But this work was the fruit of long years of patient
observation and research. As he modestly states in his autobiography,
"the only merit to which I lay claim in the case is that of patient
research, —a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpass me; and
this humble faculty of patience, when rightly developed, may lead to more
extraordinary developments of idea than even genius itself." And he adds
how he deciphered the divine ideas in the mechanism and framework of
creatures in the second stage of vertebrate existence.
But it was long before Hugh Miller accumulated his extensive
geological observations, and acquired that self-culture which enabled him
to shape them into proper form. He went on diligently working at his
trade, but always observing and always reflecting. He says he could not
avoid being an observer; and that the necessity which made him a mason,
made him also a geologist. In the winter months, during which mason-work
is generally superseded in country places, he occupied his time with
reading, sometimes with visiting country friends,—persons of an
intelligent caste,—and often he strolled away amongst old Scandinavian
ruins and Pictish forts, speculating about their origin and history. He
made good use of his leisure. And when spring came round again, he would
set out into the Highlands, to work at building and hewing jobs with a
squad of other masons,—working hard, and living chiefly on oatmeal brose.
Some of the descriptions given by him of life in the remote Highland
districts are extremely graphic and picturesque, and have all the charm of
entire novelty. The kind of accommodation which he experienced may be
inferred from the observation made by a Highland laird to his uncle James,
as to the use of a crazy old building left standing beside a group of neat
modern offices. "He found it of great convenience," he said, "every time
his speculations brought a drove of pigs, or a squad of masons, that
way." This sort of life and its surrounding circumstances were not of a
poetical cast; yet the youth was now about the poetizing age, and during
his solitary rambles after his day's work, by the banks of the Conon, he
meditated poetry, and began to make verses. He would sometimes write
them out upon his mason's kit, while the rain was dropping through the
roof of the apartment upon the paper on which he wrote. It was a rough
life of poetic musing, yet he always contrived to mix up a high degree of
intellectual exercise and enjoyment with whatever manual labour he was
employed upon; and this, after all, is one of the secrets of a happy
life. While observing scenery and natural history, he also seems to have
very closely observed the characters of his fellow workmen, and he gives
us vivid and life-like portraits of some of the more remarkable of them in
his Autobiography. There were some rough and occasionally very wicked
fellows among his fellow-workmen, but he had strength of character, and
sufficient inbred sound principle, to withstand their contamination. He
was also proud,—and pride in its proper place is an excellent
thing,—particularly that sort of pride which makes a man revolt from doing
a mean action, or anything which would bring discredit on the, family.
This is the sort of true nobility which serves poor men in good stead
sometimes, and it certainly served Hugh Miller well.
His apprenticeship ended, he "took jobs" for himself,—built a cottage
for his Aunt Jenny, which still stands, and after that went out working as
journeyman-mason. In his spare hours, he was improving himself by the
study of practical geometry, and made none the worse a mason on that
account. While engaged in helping to build a mansion on the western coast
of Ross-shire, he extended his geological and botanical observations,
noting all that was remarkable in the formation of the district. He also
drew his inferences from the condition of the people,—being very much
struck, above other things, with the remarkably contented state of the
Celtic population, although living in filth and misery. On this he
shrewdly observes: "It was one of the palpable characteristics of our
Scottish Highlanders, for at least the first thirty years of the century,
that they were contented enough, as a people; to find more to pity than to
envy in the condition of their Lowland neighbours; and I remember that at
this time, and for years after, I used to deem the trait a good one. I
have now, however, my doubts on the subject, and am not quite sure whether
a content so general as to be national may not, in certain circumstances,
be rather a vice than a virtue. It is certainly no virtue, when it has
the effect of arresting either individuals or peoples in their course of
development; and is perilously allied to great suffering, when the men who
exemplify it are so thoroughly happy amid the mediocrities of the present
that they fail to make provision for the contingencies of the future."
Trade becoming slack in the North, Hugh Miller took ship for
Edinburgh, where building was going briskly on (in 1824), to seek for
employment there as a stone-hewer. He succeeded, and lived as a workman
at Niddry, in the neighbourhood of the city, for some time; pursuing at
the same time his geological observations in a new field, Niddry being
located on the carboniferous system. Here also he met with an entirely
new class of men,—the colliers,—many of whom, strange to say, had been
born slaves; the manumission of the Scotch colliers having been
effected in comparatively modern times,—as late as the year 1775! So
that, after all, Scotland is not so very far ahead of the serfdom of
Russia.
Returning to the North again, Miller next began business for himself
in a small way, as a hewer of tombstones for the good folks of Cromarty.
This change of employment was necessary, in consequence of the hewer's
disease, caused by inhaling stone-dust, which settles in the lungs, and
generally leads to rapid consumption, afflicting him with its premonitory
symptoms. The strength of his constitution happily enabled him to throw
off the malady, but his lungs never fairly recovered their former vigour.
Work not being very plentiful, he wrote poems, some of which appeared in
the newspapers; and in course of time a small collection of these pieces
was published by subscription. He very soon, however, gave up poetry
writing, finding that his humble accomplishment of verse was too narrow to
contain his thinking; so next time he wrote a book it was in prose, and
vigorous prose too, far better than his verse. But Miller had meanwhile
been doing what was better than either cutting tombstones or writing
poetry: he had been building up his character, and thereby securing the
respect of all who knew him. So that, when a branch of the Commercial Bank
was opened in Cromarty, and the manager cast about him to make selection
of an accountant, whom should he pitch upon but Hugh Miller, the
stone-mason? This was certainly a most extraordinary selection; but why
was it made? Simply because of the excellence of the man's character. He
had proved himself a true and a thoroughly excellent and trustworthy man
in a humble, capacity of life; and the inference was, that he would carry
the same principles of conduct into another and higher sphere of action.
Hugh Miller hesitated to accept the office, having but little knowledge of
accounts, and no experience in book-keeping; but the manager knew his
pluck and determined perseverance in mastering whatever he undertook;
above all, he had confidence in his character, and he would not take a
denial. So Hugh Miller was sent to Edinburgh to learn his new business at
the head bank.
Throughout life, Miller seems to have invariably put his conscience
into his work. Speaking of the old man with whom he served his
apprenticeship as a mason, he says: "He made conscience of every stone
he laid. It was remarked in the place, that the walls built by Uncle
David never bulged nor fell; and no apprentice nor journeyman of his was
permitted, on any plea, to make 'slight work.'" And one of his own
Uncle James's instructions to him on one occasion was, "In all your
dealings, give your neighbour the cast of the baulk,—'good measure,
heaped up and running over,'—and you will not lose by it in the end."
These lessons were worth far more than what is often taught in schools,
and Hugh Miller seems to have framed his own conduct in life on the
excellent moral teaching which they conveyed. Speaking of his own career
as a workman, when on the eve of quitting it, he says: "I do think I acted
up to my uncle's maxim; and that, without injuring my brother workmen by
lowering their prices. I never yet charged an employer for a piece of
work that, fairly measured and valued, would not be rated at a slightly
higher sum than that at which it stood in my account."
Although he gained some fame in his locality by his poems, and still
more by his "Letters on the Herring Fisheries of Scotland," he was not, as
many self-raised men are, spoilt by the praise which his works called
forth. "There is," he says, "no more fatal error into which a working-man
of a literary turn can fall, than the mistake of deeming himself too good
for his humble employments; and yet it is a mistake as common as it is
fatal. I had already seen several poor wrecked mechanics, who, believing
themselves to be poets, and regarding the manual occupation by which they
could alone live in independence as beneath them, had become in
consequence little better than mendicants,—too good to work for their
bread, but not too good virtually to beg it; and looking upon them as
beacons of warning, I determined that, with God's help, I should give
their error a wide offing, and never associate the idea of meanness with
an honest calling, or deem myself too good to be independent." Full of
this manly and robust spirit, Hugh Miller pursued his career of
stone-hewing by day, and prose composition when the day's work was done,
until he entered upon his new vocation of banker's accountant. He showed
his self-denial, too, in waiting for a wife until he could afford to keep
one in respectable comfort,—his engagement lasting over five years,
before he was in a position to fulfil his promise. And then he married,
wisely and happily.
At Edinburgh, by dint of perseverance and application, Mr. Miller
shortly mastered his new business, and then returned to Cromarty, where he
was installed in office. His "Scenes and Legends of the North of
Scotland" were published about the same time, and were well received; and
in his leisure hours he proceeded to prepare his most important work, on
"The Old Red Sandstone." He also contributed to the "Border Tales," and
other periodicals. The Free-Church movement drew him out as a polemical
writer: and his Letter to Lord Brougham on the Scotch Church Controversy
excited so much attention, that the leaders of the movement in Edinburgh
invited him to undertake the editing of the Witness newspaper, the organ
of the Free-Church party. He accepted the invitation, and continued to
hold the editorship until his death, in 1856.
The circumstances connected with his decease were of a most
distressing character. On entering his room one morning, he was found
lying dead, shot through the body, and under circumstances which left no
doubt that he had died by his own hand. He had for some time been closely
applying himself to the completion of his "Testimony of the Rocks,"
without rest or relaxation, or due attention to his physical health.
Under these circumstances, overwork of the brain speedily began to tell
upon him. He could not sleep,—if he lay down and dozed, it was only to
wake in a start, his head filled with imaginary horrors; and in one of
these fits of his disease he put an end to his life;—a warning to all
brainworkers, that the powers of the human constitution may be strained
until they break, and that even the best and strongest mind cannot
dispense with the due observance of the laws which regulate the physical
constitution of man.
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Extract from Miller's obituary in
THE TIMES, 29 Dec 1856. |
――――♦――――
RICHARD COBDEN.
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Richard Cobden (1804-65),
Manufacturer, Radical and Liberal statesman. |
RICHARD
COBDEN was born on the 3d of June, 1804, at
Dunford farm-house, near Medhurst, a village in Sussex, far from the
noise and bustle of towns. When a little boy, he tended his father's
sheep in the fields, and helped to do the usual work of the farm as he
grew older. His grandfather, who was head bailiff of Medhurst, carried
on business as a maltster there, and he is still spoken of by the old
people in the village as "Maltster Cobden." The family must have been
long settled in the neighbourhood, "Cobden's Lane" and "Cobden's Farm"
being still remembered places. Indeed, many of these old English farmers
have a very ancient ancestry,—older than the Norman Conquest; for when
the Normans came, the Cobdens, and such as they, were already settled
cultivators of the soil. Richard Cobden, however, cares little about
ancestry, and thinks mainly of the duties which each man owes to the
generation in which he lives, and of the manner in which he performs
them.
Maltster Cobden did not succeed in life; and his son, Richard's father,
eventually gave up farming, when the old house at Dunford was pulled
down, and the family left the neighbourhood. Richard had meanwhile
acquired the very slenderest possible rudiments of education, when he
was sent to be employed as a boy in a London warehouse extensively
engaged in the cotton-print trade. He there drudged his way upward from
the lowest point, training himself in habits of industry, as well as in
self-culture. He was very diligent, very observant, and very well
conducted. In a properly-managed house of business, promotion in such
cases follows as a matter of course; and Richard Cobden was gradually
advanced from the lowest towards the highest offices in the firm.
Circumstances occurred which led his employers to send him into the
North of England, as traveller for the firm; and then it was that he
made his first acquaintance with Manchester. He observed the abundant
opportunities which the district presented for business, and the scope
which it afforded for enterprise and energy; and he determined, when the
opportunity should offer, to begin there on his own account. Two of his
fellow-servants, Messrs. Sherroff and Foster, shortly after offered to
join him, and in a few years we find them engaged in a calico-printing
business at Sabden, in the neighbourhood of Clitheroe, in Lancashire. The firm prospered, and subsequently Cobden separated from his first
partners, and began the same business on a larger scale, in company with
his elder brother, at Chorley, also in Lancashire.
Meanwhile Richard settled in Manchester, and conducted the warehouse
branch of the business there. The Cobden prints became celebrated for
their taste, as well as quality; they competed successfully with the
best quality of London goods, and soon fetched the highest prices in the
market. An instance of their success may be incidentally mentioned. A
gentleman who happened to visit Mr. Cobden's warehouse in Manchester
was there favoured with the sight of some new printed muslin of a
peculiar pattern, about three days before they were issued to the
public. In less than a week from the day these dresses were despatched
from the warehouse, the same gentleman was at Chichester, and, walking
in the direction of Goodwood, he met some ladies of the Duke of
Richmond's family wearing the identical prints; and, in a few days
after, the same gentleman was at Windsor, and saw the Queen walking on
the slopes wearing a dress of the same kind,—so instantly did the
"Cobden prints" take the lead in the fashionable world. For Mr. Cobden
studied public taste, as he has since studied public opinion, and he
rarely, if ever, made a speculation (and this branch of trade is always
exceedingly precarious and hazardous) in which he was not completely
successful. He had, indeed, been so successful as a man of business at
the time when the Anti-Corn-Law agitation commenced, that, had he
retired then, he could have done so with a saved capital of about
£60,000.
Mr. Cobden was not for some time known in connection with public affairs
in Manchester. He was too modest and retiring to take a prominent part
in the strife of politics, however much he may have felt interested in
public questions. One of the first movements to which he gave himself
was the overthrowing of the old lord-of-the-manor government of
Manchester, and its constitution as a municipal borough, under its
present charter; and we may incidentally mention, that one of the first
members of the Manchester Council was "Mr. Alderman Cobden." He also
appeared, on several occasions, as the advocate of public education free
from sectarian bias, and made several public appearances as a supporter
of the British and Foreign Society's schools.
He was also mainly instrumental in establishing the Manchester Athenæum,
an institution for the intellectual recreation and improvement of young
men chiefly belonging to the mercantile class. His project met with
considerable opposition from the slow-going old merchants of the place;
and many years after, at the meeting of a country Mechanics' Institute,
he thus alluded to the subject.
"It has," said he,
"been objected, that the poor may be too much
educated. But you may just as well be afraid of all the poor riding
about in coaches and four, or playing the piano, as fear that they will
be too well educated. Admitting that it would be unwise to educate the
poor as well as the rich are educated,—admitting it for argument's
sake,—there are two great, and I fear wholly insuperable obstacles, to
that state of things ever arriving; the one is the want of time, the
other the want of means. So long as these obstacles exist, the rich need
be in no fear that the poor will be better educated than they are. I
remember waiting on a person holding this doctrine in Manchester about
sixteen years ago, where I and others were engaged in the work of
starting the Manchester Athenæum. I was employed in waiting upon the
principal merchants, manufacturers, and tradesmen of the town, asking
for subscriptions with that object. One gentleman met me with this
objection: 'I think the people are a good deal too much educated
already. I don't think we shall be safe if they are to be educated any
more; and our property will be in danger if this goes on.' I met him by
putting to him this question: 'Will you tell me in what period of the
world's history you would rather have lived than the present, in order
to have had your vast fortune safer than it is now?' Well, he could not
answer me. I urged him to point out the period he would have selected:
'Would you have preferred the last reign, or the reign before, or the
reign of George I., or the reign of Queen Anne, or that of Queen
Elizabeth, in order to have lived in greater security both as regards
your person and property?' Why, he could not tell me. And so I answered
my own question by saying: 'You would be much safer if you lived thirty
or forty years hence; but not if you were to go back to any time,
however remote.' This is the tendency of those institutions; and yet
people are to be found who charge against them that they produce
disaffection, disloyalty, and revolution. Now, disloyalty and revolution
come to the people from misgovernment; and misgovernment is more likely
to be attempted upon an ignorant than upon an educated people. We have
been well told that 'oppression makes wise men mad.' And I remember
this being very well applied by a man who was lecturing upon the Corn
Laws at Bury,—a man perhaps not highly educated, yet by no means
destitute of shrewdness. The lecturer said, 'Oppression makes wise men
mad. If it maks "wise men mad," what mun it do wi' fooils then?' I
think, gentlemen, you will agree with the inference which the lecturer
left his auditory to draw, that whatever effect misgovernment or
oppression had upon wise men, it must produce worse and more disastrous
effects when the ignorant and the fools come to deal with it. Therefore,
you cannot do a worse thing than to encourage ignorance."
Such is an illustration of the homely yet forcible style in which Mr.
Cobden is accustomed to fix important truths in the minds of the
audiences he addresses.
It was not until the year 1835—when he made a visit to Turkey and the
East, partly with an eye to business—that Mr. Cobden became known beyond
the bounds of his own district as a keen observer and an original
thinker. The result of this visit was the publication of the pamphlet
entitled "England, Ireland, and America, by a Manchester Manufacturer." In that little work, we find almost the whole policy of Mr. Cobden
foreshadowed. Peace, retrenchment, non-intervention, and free trade were
there his first watchwords, and he did not abandon them. He held that
what England should do was, not to occupy herself with what Russia could
or would do in the East, but to abolish the Corn Laws, stick to trade
and commerce, and refuse to meddle with questions of foreign politics,
in which, his opinion was, England could do no good, but might work
infinite mischief. The idea of a Free-Trade Association, such as was
afterwards adopted by the Anti-Corn-Law League, seems, even at that
early period, to have occurred to the mind of Mr. Cobden.
"Here let us observe," said he, in the pamphlet referred to,
"that it
is worthy of surprise how little progress has been made in the study of
that science of which Adam Smith was, more than half a century ago, the
great luminary. We regret that no society has been formed for the
purpose of disseminating a knowledge of the just principles of trade. Whilst agriculture can boast almost as many associations as there are
British counties, whilst every city in the kingdom contains its
botanical, phrenological, or mechanics' institutions, and these again
possess their periodical journals, (and not merely these, for even war
sends forth its United Service Magazine,) we possess no association of
traders, united together for the common object of enlightening the world
upon a question so little understood, and so loaded with obloquy, as
free trade. We have our Banksian, our Linnæan, our Hunterian societies;
and why should not at least our greatest commercial and manufacturing
towns possess their Smithian societies, devoted to the purposes of
promulgating the beneficent truths of the 'Wealth of Nations'? Such
institutions, by promoting a correspondence with similar societies, that
could probably be organized abroad, (for it is our example in questions
affecting commerce that strangers follow,) might contribute to the
spread of liberal and just views of political science, and thus tend to
ameliorate the restrictive policy of foreign governments, through the
legitimate influence of the opinions of its people. Nor would such
societies be fruitless at home. Prizes might be offered for the best
essays on the corn question; or lecturers might be sent to enlighten the
agriculturists, and to invite discussion upon a subject so difficult,
and of such paramount importance to all."
The views, thus enunciated in 1835, Mr. Cobden consistently pursued in
his after career; and his last public act has been an effort to
ameliorate the restrictive policy of the government of England's nearest
neighbour, France,—with what good result yet remains to be seen. But we
anticipate.
From this time forward Mr. Cobden was regarded as a leading public man
in Manchester. His judgment was sought after and valued; his eminent
business talent was fully recognized; and he was usually invited to take
part in any public movements of importance affecting the interests of
the district. Yet he never thrust himself on the attention of his
fellow-citizens; rather shunning than courting the public applause. Modesty, diffidence, and an entire absence of vanity and jealousy, have
throughout distinguished his career as a public man. In 1837 he was
invited to stand as a candidate for the borough of Stockport, but on a
contest his opponent was returned by a majority of votes. It was
probably better that he remained out of Parliament at the time,
otherwise the organization and conduct of the Anti-Corn-Law League might
not have been so successful as in his hands it subsequently proved to
be. The beginning of this celebrated movement was comparatively
insignificant. One Dr. Birney—who was never afterwards heard
of—advertised a lecture against the Corn Laws in the Bolton Theatre, on
the 4th of August, 1838, but his performance was so unsatisfactory that
he was hissed off the stage; on which a gentleman named Paulton, who was
sitting in one of the boxes, rushed forward to save the flying Doctor. He himself undertook to deliver the lecture, and did so. Next week, and
the next again, he called the people together on the same subject; and
the movement was thus born. Mr. Paulton next gave his lectures at
Manchester and Leeds, at which latter town we heard them, at the end of
1838, delivered before a very small and comparatively indifferent
audience. In the meantime a small number of persons at Manchester
formed themselves into a Committee, and raised a fund in five-shilling
subscriptions to support the movement. The Manchester Chamber of
Commerce met on the 13th of December, 1838, to discuss a motion of which
notice had been given, relative to petitioning Parliament for a total
repeal of the Corn Laws; and at that meeting Mr. Cobden took a bold and
decided part as the advocate of the measure, and he submitted a petition
which was carried by a great majority. Larger subscriptions were raised;
lecturers were sent out from Manchester to all parts of the kingdom;
convocations of leading men were held in various towns; a special organ,
the Anti-Bread-Tax Circular, was started to record progress and
chronicle facts; and a Free-Trade Hall, capable of accommodating immense
meetings, was erected on the site of the field of Peterloo, [p.109] to
give force and energy to the movement. The League had by this time also
got its name. At a meeting of three hundred delegates held in London
about the beginning of 1839, when Mr. Cobden spoke of the Hanseatic
League, and asked those present "why they should not have a League of
the towns of England against the aristocracy who ruled them, ruined
their trade, and had just refused them a hearing," some one called out,
"An Anti-Corn-Law League!" Mr. Cobden continued, "Yes! An Anti- Corn-Law
League!" And thus the name was given.
Though the League and its proceedings gave rise to much discussion in
the public press and in Parliament, the number of those who actively
directed the movement was at first very small, and their position
comparatively insignificant. Mr. Cobden himself thus described the early
days of the League to the writer of this memoir in 1841:—
"The work," said he,
"has been done by a very few,—so few that we have
been the laughing-stock even of ourselves, as we sat and chuckled over
the splutter we were making in the name of The League. You have not an
idea how insignificant a body the working members of the League really
comprise. Still we worked. When we could not hold public meetings, we
got up little hole-and-corner meetings. Two years and a half ago we
called a public meeting; the Chartist leaders attacked us on the
platform at the head of their deluded followers. We were nearly the
victims of physical force. I lost my hat, and all but had my head split
with the leg of a stool. In retaliation for this, we deluged the town
with short tracts printed for the purpose. We called meetings of each
trade, and held conferences with them at their own lodges. We found
ready listeners and many secret allies, even amongst the Chartists. We
resolutely abstained from discussing the Charter or any other party
question. We stuck to our subject; and the right-minded amongst the
working-men gave us credit for being in earnest, which is all that is
necessary to secure the confidence of the people. Our strength grew, and
the result is that we can now hold a public meeting at any moment. We
shall work on in Manchester; there is much that remains to be done. Why
do I go over our exploits? Not for egotistical display,—we have done no
more than our duty,—but simply to give you the assurance that everything
may be done in Leeds and elsewhere by working perseveringly in the cause
of Corn-Law Repeal."
In this earnest spirit did Richard Cobden labour for many years,
Manchester being the centre of a series of operations which radiated
therefrom unto the remotest districts of Britain. It is impossible to
describe the extent of his labours in connection with this great
movement,—correspondence with the leaders of public opinion,
encouragement to the desponding, help to the weak, and stimulus to the
inert,—everywhere was his pen and voice at work. At public meetings he
was put in the front rank, for he never put himself there. But, as he
said, he was always ready to fill up any gap. His enthusiastic belief in
the economical truths which he advocated bore him up in the face of
overwhelming opposition;—he hoped against hope, and was resolute when
others were full of despair. Yet even he was not without his moments of
private doubt and fear. Writing in November, 1841, he said:—
"I am told from all sides, that unless we do something, and
strike a blow, we shall lose confidence. What can we do? There is always
danger of being made ridiculous by showing one's teeth before one is
able to bite. If we were to attempt a coup, and it were to fail like
the Chartist holiday, we should be laughed at forever. Should some
practical measures not be speedily carried, they will come too late,—and what rational man can say that we are in a fair way for doing
anything very soon? Still, what more can we do, than what we are doing? At least, we are not standing in the way of a more hopeful movement; for
of the three questions that now agitate the people,—Repeal of Corn Law,
Repeal of Union, and Charter,—I can't help thinking that our question
stands in the place of the favourite in the public mind. Bad is the
prospect even of the best; but so long as there is no better to which to
resign the course, we must work away with whip and spur, keeping our
head steadily towards the far-distant winning-post."
Usually, however, Mr. Cobden was much more sanguine in his
anticipations, and never allowed any exertions to flag for want of
encouragement and stimulus on his part.
At length Mr. Cobden was sent to Parliament to carry forward there the
advocacy of the Repeal. In 1840 he was invited to stand for Manchester,
but declined to do so, on the ground that he was not to be allowed to
enter Parliament a free man; the committee who waited on him having
represented the expediency of letting principle be subservient to party
arrangements,—a thing to which Mr. Cobden declared that his conscience
would never allow him to give his assent. But the Whig government, which
he was expected to support, having fallen to pieces, and Peel having
been made minister to maintain the Corn Laws, the ground was now clear,
and Mr. Cobden offered himself again at Stockport, and this time he was
returned.
Many were the predictions of his political enemies, that his appearance
in Parliament would be a failure. Cobden was now to "find his level." The poor farmer's son could never lift up his head amongst the proud
lords of the soil, and dare to measure his strength with them, nor would
his have been the first popular reputation of which St. Stephen's had
been the death. But Cobden was not a mere popular spouter. He had been
admirably disciplined by business, by reading, and by reflection; he
was an apt and fluent speaker, full of treasured information; above all,
he possessed great moral courage and earnestness, and deep-rooted
convictions. Such a man was sure of making himself heard by any
audience. The following is Mr. Bright's account of Cobden's first
appearance in Parliament:—
"Mr. Cobden," said he,
"entered the House of Commons in the year 1841,
two years before I became a member of that house. I believe I was in the
gallery on the night when he made his first speech. I happened to sit
close to a gentleman, not now living,—Mr. Horace Twiss,—who had once
himself been a member of the House, but who was then occupied in the
gallery, writing the Parliamentary summary of the proceedings which were
published morning after morning in the columns of the Times newspaper. Mr. Cobden had a certain reputation when he went into Parliament, from
the course he had taken before the public in connection with the Corn
Law out of doors. There was great interest as to his first speech, and
the position he would take in the House. Horace Twiss was a Tory of the
old school. He appeared to have the greatest possible horror of anybody
who was a manufacturer or calico-printer coming down into that assembly
to teach our senators wisdom. As the speech went on I watched his
countenance and heard his observations, and when Mr. Cobden sat down he
threw it off with a careless gesture, and said, 'Nothing in him; he is
only a barker.'"
In his first speech, as in his last, Mr. Cobden's object was to
convince. He never strove to triumph, but to persuade. The things he
said might be disagreeable, but he must say them quietly, winningly,
and at length persuasively. He secured the ear of the House, and
steadily made his position good. The Anti-Corn-Law movement came to be
recognized as a great fact, even within the walls of Parliament. It made
its way there steadily, as well as throughout the country; and at
length, in 1846, the long and arduous struggle was brought to a
close,—Sir Robert Peel proclaiming that the person to whom the honour of
the triumph was mainly due was Richard Cobden.
We believe that Mr. Cobden was influenced by no narrow political motives
in his great enterprise to secure freedom of trade for England with the
nations of the world. It was not a mere money question with him, but one
of ultimate human happiness and civilization. While he has a keen eye to
the actual necessities of living men, he has also his eye directed
towards the future, and sees in the consummation of the measure for
which he so zealously laboured, the triumph of peace, and the prevalence
of social happiness. "I believe," said he, at a public meeting in
Manchester, "that the physical gain will be the smallest gain to
humanity from its success. I see in free trade that which shall act on
the moral world as the law of gravitation in the universe,—drawing men
together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race and creed and language,
and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace. I believe that the desire
and the motive for large and mighty empires, for gigantic armies and
great navies, for those materials which are used for the destruction of
life and the desolation of the rewards of labour, will die away. I
believe that such things will cease to be necessary, or to be used, when
man becomes one family, and freely exchanges the fruits of his labour
with his brother man." Mr. Cobden, we believe, sees as clearly as most
thinking men, that the struggle for free commerce is only part of a
struggle for a still larger freedom; and that beyond the question of
political economy there is also the great problem of social economy to
be solved,—how the means of happiness are to be the most equitably
distributed for the well-being of those who produce them.
On the fall of Peel's government, Lord John Russell communicated to Mr.
Cobden his intention of offering him a seat in the new Cabinet; but,
fearing lest the position should interfere with his independence of
speech and action, Cobden declined the offer. As a relief from the
turmoil of public life, he proceeded to make a tour on the Continent,
which was intended to be a holiday; but the ovations which he received
during his journey made it rather appear the mission of a propagandist. During his absence, the largest constituency in England—that of the West
Riding of York—spontaneously elected him as their representative; and he
accepted the honour. One of the things which most struck him while abroad
was the hosts of armed men, withdrawn from industry, who were kept up in
every Continental nation,—men in the prime of life, assembled in immense
armies, for the purpose of watching each other across their respective
frontiers,—millions of idle soldiers, eating off the very head of
industry, breeding future revolutions and convulsions, if not bringing
political perdition upon the great states of Europe. He saw too, that,
in consequence of this vast armature of the Continental nations, England
was, in a measure, compelled to maintain a similar attitude; and,
desirous of abating the evil, he appealed to public opinion, and
strongly pleaded for a general national disarmament. A Peace Society was
formed, and convocations were held in London, Paris, Brussels, and
Berlin; but we need scarcely say that the movement was followed by no
practical results, for Europe now bristles with bayonets more than ever,
and all the European governments are sedulously arming their subjects
with Enfields, Minies, and needle-guns, one of the chief topics of the
day being the discussion of the respective merits of rifled cannon of
recent invention. Yet Mr. Cobden was right; and when reaction sets
in,—as set in again it assuredly will,—the truth and the elevated
consistency of his views will not fail to be extensively recognized. The
unpopularity, however, of Mr. Cobden's advocacy of peace principles,
more especially in connection with the Russian war, lost him his seat in
Parliament; and it was not until during his absence on a visit to
America, in 1859, that he was returned without opposition for the
borough of Rochdale.
During Mr. Cobden's almost exclusive devotion to the cause of Free Trade
for so many years, his extensive business was necessarily neglected, and
when he proceeded to take stock at the close of the agitation which
ended in the repeal of the Corn Laws, he found he was scarcely square
with the world. The nation whom he had served so well generously came
forward to his assistance at this juncture, and a subscription of £70,000 was raised, which enabled him to pay off his debts, and to return
to his little estate at Medhurst, which was purchased with a portion of
the fund. The greater part of the remainder was unhappily invested by
his friends in Illinois Central Bonds, and there it remained
unproductive. A subsequent voluntary subscription has since been raised
by his friends, and already amounts to about £40,000, which we trust Mr.
Cobden will long live to enjoy. Unquestionably the same amount of energy
and devotedness applied to business, which Mr. Cobden gave to the cause
of Free Trade, could not have failed to build up for him a gigantic
fortune; and it is only right that so beneficent a worker should not
suffer the loss of his fortune, through his devotion to a great public
cause.
Take him all in all, Mr. Cobden is a man of rare intelligence, of
unswerving industry, and of spotless integrity. In qualities of head and
heart, we believe him to be excelled by few men. His conscientiousness
is of the highest order. Though he has had much political enmity to
encounter, no one has ever charged him with doing a mean thing, or
prostituting the great power he unquestionably wielded to subserve any
personal or selfish end. His eloquence—or rather his persuasiveness—is
remarkable. He practises none of the graces of the orator. His style is
simple, almost homely, but thoroughly logical and convincing; and his
matter is full always of facts. He emphatically hits the nail on the
head, clinching it at both sides. In person he is pale, lean, and wiry,
of melancholic features; and his voice is thin, and sounds somewhat
nasal. Yet, with these personal disadvantages, the influence which he
exercises as a speaker is something extraordinary. We believe the secret
to lie in his immense fund of common sense, his great practical sagacity
and shrewdness, his evident honesty of purpose and earnest
straightforwardness, and, at the same time, the clearness and simplicity
of speech which enables him to bring his reasonings and his facts
completely home to the judgment, and appeal so powerfully to the silent
judge in every man's bosom. It matters not what description of audience
he addresses,—be they members of Parliament, Manchester manufacturers,
Stockport operatives, or Sussex ploughmen,—he invariably secures and
rivets their attention. He thoroughly knows the men he addresses; he
adapts himself to them; he enters into their very minds and hearts; he
carries them along with him entirely; and thus achieves triumphs as
great as if he were the most accomplished of orators.
――――♦――――
SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.
FEW living writers
have done more, or achieved a higher standing in his own peculiar line
of literature, than Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has done. That he has been
a very hard worker, his numerous works bear ample witness. When Sir
Walter Scott died, Bulwer at once succeeded him in the living and
hopeful interest of the readers of fiction, and he has since retained
his supremacy over all writers of the same school.
But not only has he succeeded as a novelist; he has been equally
successful as a dramatist. For, is not "The Lady of Lyons" the most
popular of modern plays? What modern drama is to be compared with it in
point of attraction and living interest? It may be open to the
strictures of the critic, but it has been unequivocally successful,
unprecedentedly productive to managers, and in the hands of a good
company it is really an exceedingly beautiful play.
But Bulwer has done more than this. He has written a History, which may
take its place on the same shelves with Gibbon and Arnold and Grote. His
"Athens, its Rise and Fall," has extorted praise from all quarters, and
is a noble historical work, though but a fragment. In this department of
literature Bulwer has succeeded where even Scott failed; for the History
of Napoleon of the latter will be forgotten, while his Waverley and
Ivanhoe will continue the delight of thousands.
Bulwer's success has been equally marked in other
literary directions. He has written essays which might take their
place beside the choicest specimens of Charles Lamb or Leigh Hunt.
His leading articles in newspapers, and his reviews in the monthlies and
quarterlies, have been mistaken for the productions of the most elegant
living writers. His political pamphlet, published on the death of
Earl Spencer, was one of the most brilliant productions of its kind.
His poems, also, have been eminently successful; and many of
them are beautiful in a high degree. Let any one read his "Lay of
the Beacon," and say if Bulwer is not entitled to be called a successful
poet, as well as a successful novelist, a successful dramatist, and a
successful historian.
Now, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton must unquestionably have worked
hard to achieve success in these several paths of literature. On
the score of mere industry, there are few, if any, living English
writers who have produced so much, and none who have produced so much of
the same quality. And when you consider that he was born to
comparative ease, and did not need to work so hard, it will be admitted,
we think, that his industry is entitled to all the greater praise.
Riches are quite as great a hindrance to intellectual labour as poverty
can be; their temptations are difficult to be forborne, and they are
often not resisted. To hunt, and shoot, and live at ease,—to
frequent operas, and clubs, and Almack's, enjoying the variety of London
sight-seeing, morning calls, and Parliamentary small-talk, during "the
season," and then off to the country mansion, with its well-stocked
preserves and its thousand delightful pleasures, alternated with a few
months on the Scotch moors, or a run across the Continent, to Venice or
Rome,—all this is excessively attractive, and is not by any means
calculated to make a man "scorn delights and live laborious days."
And yet by Bulwer these pleasures, all within his reach, were
to a great extent necessarily forborne, when he assumed the position and
pursued the career of a literary man. Though he did not require to
do so, he yet volunteered to work hard; doubtless he must have taken a
high pleasure in the work, otherwise we should have seen much less of
him as an author than we have done. Indeed, all his sympathies
seem to be literary, as his labours mainly are. His society is
literary, and his public acts are identified with literature. One
of his earliest Parliamentary efforts was to obtain an Act enabling
dramatic authors to receive benefit from the acting of their plays in
provincial theatres, which formerly they were unable to do. He
also aided in the reduction of the stamp duty on newspapers, and in the
improvement of the law of copyright. And recently, we have seen
him co-operating with a body of dramatists, artists, and literary men,
in the philanthropic effort to establish a Guild of Literature and Art,
in the shape of a Life Insurance Company, connected with other admirable
arrangements, by which the independence and comfort of literary men and
women in advanced years will be secured.
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton (1803-73):
English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician.
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton is the younger son of the late
General Bulwer of Heydon Hall, in the county of Norfolk. His elder
brother, Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, the author of "The Monarchy and Middle
Classes of France," was for some time English Ambassador at Madrid,—he
is now Ambassador at Washington,—and inherits the paternal family
estate. Sir Edward, on the death of his mother, in 1843, succeeded
to the estate of Knebworth, of which she was heiress, and then he
assumed the final name of Lytton. The literary talent of the
family seems to come mainly from the mother's side. Her father was
a great scholar, the first Hebraist of his day, and above Porson himself
in the judgment of Dr. Parr. He wrote dramas in Hebrew, but he
neglected his estates, which were fast going to decay under the care of
stewards, when Mrs. Bulwer, his daughter, whose husband died and left
her a young widow, went back to reside at Knebworth, with her family.
She was a woman of great energy, and at once employed herself in the
improvement of the Knebworth estate, and the preservation of what
remained of the old hall. In a beautiful paper, contained in the
volume of essays called "The Student," Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton says,
the old manorial seat was formerly of vast extent, "built round a
quadrangle at different periods, from the date of the second crusade to
that of the reign of Elizabeth. It was in so ruinous a condition
when my mother came to its possession, that three sides of it were
obliged to be pulled down; the fourth, yet remaining, is in itself a
house larger than most in the country, and still contains the old oak
hall, with its lofty ceiling and raised music-gallery. The park
has something of the character of Penshurst; and its venerable avenues,
which slope from the house down the gradual acclivity, giving wide views
of the opposite hills, crowned with cottages and spires, impart to the
scene that peculiarly English, half-stately and wholly cultivated
character, upon which the poets of Elizabeth's day so much loved to
linger."
"In this old place," Sir Edward says, "the happiest days of
my childhood glided away." In the course of his writings, he shows
a tender regard for his mother, who educated him here, and he delights
to acknowledge the deep obligations under which he lay to her, by the
direction she gave to his taste and studies, and the beneficial
influence which she exercised upon his character in early life. In
the beautiful dedication of his collected works to his mother, he says:
"Left yet young, with no ordinary accomplishments and gifts, the sole
guardian of your sons, to them you devoted the best years of your useful
and spotless life; and any success it be their fate to attain in the
paths they have severally chosen, would have its principal sweetness in
the thought that such success was the reward of one whose hand aided
every struggle, and whose heart sympathized with every care. From
your graceful and accomplished taste I early learned that affection for
literature which has exercised so large an influence over the pursuits
of my life; and you who were my first guide were my earliest critic."
The boy began to write verses when five or six years old,
which shows that early taste or early direction must have guided his
hand. Alluding to the gentle and polished verses of his mother, in
the dedication referred to, he says, "It was those easy lessons, far
more than the harsher rudiments learned subsequently in schools, that
taught me to admire and to imitate." And he adds to this a
reverential acknowledgment of the qualities, compared with which all
literary accomplishments are poor: "Happy, while I borrowed from your
taste, could I have found it not more difficult to imitate your
virtues,—your spirit of action and extended benevolence, your cheerful
piety, your considerate justice, your kindly charity,—and all the
qualities that brighten a nature more free from the thought of self than
any it has been my lot to meet with." One of the last works of her
old age was the erection and endowment of an almshouse for the widows of
the poor, which she just lived to complete, an example which her son is
nobly imitating in the Guild of Literature and Art, which he is now
exerting himself to establish.
Bulwer's first appearance before the public was in the
character of a poet. At Cambridge, where he studied, he was the
successful competitor for the prize poem of his year; and shortly after,
in 1826, he published his first book, bearing the juvenile title of
"Weeds and Wild-Flowers." In the year following, he published
"O'Neil, or the Rebel," a poetical tale, after the manner of Byron's
"Corsair." It resembled the verse of Byron, without the poetry.
The wings of the young writer were scarcely fledged yet, and it took him
many efforts before he could rise above the imitative and commonplace.
"Falkland," his first novel, published in the same year (1827), was also
a failure: it was decidedly Byronesque, and, but for the author's
subsequent celebrity, would soon have been utterly forgotten. He
himself became ashamed of it, and refused to include it in his collected
works since issued, characterizing it as "the crude and passionate
performance of a mere boy, which I sincerely regret, and would willingly
retract." It was passionate and sentimental, to an extent that
even went beyond the tastes of the circulating library, and so it died.
But Bulwer was made of the right stuff, and he worked on, determined to
succeed. He laboured pen in hand, was incessantly industrious,
read prodigiously (as his writings show), and from failure went
courageously onward to success.
"Pelham" followed "Falkland" within a year, and it succeeded.
It was an immense improvement on its predecessor. Though betraying
occasional stiffness, it was on the whole a remarkably clever book; and
before many months passed, a second edition was called for. As in
"Falkland" he had assumed the sentimentalist, so in "Pelham" he assumed
the mere heartless worldling and man of fashion. But the picture
was powerfully drawn, and it proved irresistibly attractive, as the
result showed. "The Disowned" was sent to the press immediately
after the publication of "Pelham," and came out at the end of 1828; and
next year "Devereux" appeared, a still more finished performance; but
both works still displaying the enthusiasm and inexperience of a
comparatively young writer. "Devereux" showed that he had been
reading largely in the interval of his labours, for some admirable
portraits of the wits of Bolingbroke's time pass across its pages.
In 1830, another novel proceeded from the same fertile pen,
and this time it was "Paul Clifford;" a novel that has been more praised
and abused by turns than any other of his works. Whatever may be
said of the taste which induced him to choose a highwayman for his
hero,—and Bulwer puts forward a plea in justification of his choice,
namely, that he wanted to expose the errors of our vicious system of
prison discipline, and also to show that vulgar vice was in no respect
essentially different from fashionable vice,—whatever may be said of
this, there can be no doubt as to the skill with which the plot is
contrived, the brilliancy of the dialogue, and the intense interest of
the story as a whole.
In 1831, still hankering after poetic fame, he published "The
Siamese Twins," a satire on fashion, London life, travellers,
politicians, and such like; but the public did not yet award him the
poetic wreath. Later on in the same year, still working away as a
novelist, he brought out his fine novel of "Eugene Aram," one of the
most highly-finished of his works. His early interest had been
excited in the history of Eugene Aram [p.123]
from the circumstance of his having, when a teacher, during his
residence at Lynn, visited at his grandfather's house at Heydon, and
given lessons to the younger members of the family there. He
proceeded to investigate the floating history of the man, collected
anecdotes from the neighbourhood as to his life and manners, and these
he weaved into the beautiful and affecting romance of the above name.
In the female characters of this work he surpassed himself.
Indeed, he has not in any succeeding work equalled the delineation of
the noble Madeline, with which her sister Ellinor is so gracefully and
tenderly contrasted. The publication of this work placed him in
the first rank as a novelist; and his talents and genius as a writer of
fiction stood confessed by even the most captious critic.
Campbell having vacated the editorship of the New Monthly
Magazine, Bulwer undertook the office; and to the columns of that
periodical he contributed some of his most effective papers. These
have since been collected and published under the title of "The
Student;" and there are some of the essays that, for beauty and elegance
of thought and language, we would not exchange for any others in English
literature. The paper entitled "The New Phædo" is certainly one of
the most touching things we ever read.
The author's diligence continued unabated. In 1833
appeared his "England and the English;" a work unique of its kind, full
of racy criticisms, and, though tinged with prejudice, still a valuable
and able work. "The Pilgrims of the Rhine" next came out; the
greater part of which was written in the course of a pleasant excursion
made up the Rhine, in the company of his brother Henry, some years
before. "The Last Days of Pompeii" came next, in 1834; "Rienzi" in
1835, at the steady rate of a novel yearly; exhibiting an amount of
industry not often surpassed even by purely professional writers.
It is scarcely necessary that we should do more than name the
titles of his other numerous novels. "Maltravers" and "Alice" were
his next; two delightful works, containing some exquisite portraiture of
character. "Alice Darvil" is a fine creation, though not, in our
opinion, equal to his "Madeline" in "Eugene Aram." "The original
conception of Alice," he says, in the preface to the edition of 1840,
"is taken from real life, from a person I never saw but twice, and then
she was no longer young; but her whole history made a deep impression on
me." Bulwer, in the same preface, warns the reader not to confound
him with the hero of the story,—with whom some German critic had
absurdly identified him. But, from the style in which these novels
are written, we confess it is difficult to detach the author from his
hero, or to believe that it is any other character than his own that he
is delineating. This is peculiarly the case with "Pelham" and
"Devereux."
The next published work was his "Athens," which had occupied
him for some time; a work exhibiting fine taste, extensive learning, and
elaborate research; and in the same year he continued his novel
publications, which he seemed to throw off like an annual exuvia,—this
year it was "Leila, or the Seige of Granada," and "Calderon the
Courtier." "Night and Morning" succeeded; then "Zanoni,"
originally published as "Zicci" in the Monthly Chronicle, a
clever periodical, with whose projection and editing Bulwer had, we
believe, something to do. "Eva and other Poems" appeared next;
then "The Last of the Barons," in which he announced that he took his
final leave of the public as a novel-writer. But he could not hold
his hand; for shortly after he wrote "Lucretia," the worst of his books,
and which ought never to have been published. Still there was no
decay of powers,—his recent admirable works, "The Caxtons," "My Novel,"
and "What will he do with it?" originally published in Blackwood's
Magazine, showing that he is still in the very maturity of his
powers. "My Novel" may indeed be pronounced the masterpiece of
this great writer.
There are some other of his works which we have not yet
named. "The New Timon," his best poem, was published anonymously
some years ago, and "took the town by storm." "Godolphin," a fine
romance, also published anonymously, at once acquired a popularity equal
to that of any other of his works. There was also his excellent
translation of the "Poems and Ballads of Schiller," a work deserving of
very high praise. "The Lady of Lyons," produced anonymously, at
once leapt into the highest favour, and was pronounced the best drama of
the day. His drama of "Richelieu" is a grander work, full of power
and energy; and those who enjoyed the pleasure of seeing Macready in the
character of the old Cardinal, will never forget him. "Money," and
the "Duchesse de la Valliere "(his first play), have great merits; but
are inferior as respects their acting qualities. His last play,
"Not so Bad as we Seem," contains some clever writing, and highly
effective situations, though not by any means equal in interest to some
of his earlier productions.
To be a great and successful author was not, however, enough
to satisfy the honourable ambition of Bulwer. For he has recently
appeared before the public in another capacity,—that of Orator,—and on
two of such occasions,—at Edinburgh and at Leeds,—if he has not borne
away the palm from all living competitors, he has at least delivered
orations which for force, brilliancy, and truth axe of the very highest
class of platform eloquence.
The art of oratory has been gradually declining in Britain.
If we look to the legislature, the pulpit, the bar, or the lecture-room,
we find that there are few, if any, of the performers there who can with
truth be described as distinguished orators. Your successful
Parliamentary debater need not necessarily be eloquent. Lord John
Russell is not; neither is Graham, Palmerston, nor Disraeli. They
possess all the requisite skill in Parliamentary fencing,—are
well-informed and full of facts,—can bring their arguments out in the
most elaborate and telling style; and they are entirely successful as
Parliamentary debaters. But they do not pretend to be orators; if
they did, they would probably be laughed down,—at least, a young member
would.
The oratory of the pulpit has fallen off still more.
One need only read the dreary platitudes which are published in sermons
to see how low pulpit eloquence has fallen in our days. The
Times has spoken of preachers generally as a class of men who
possess the privilege of talking drivel on the grandest and most
inspiring of all conceivable themes. The Rev. Sidney Smith held
that the characteristic of modern sermons is "decent debility."
"Pulpit discourses," he says, "have insensibly dwindled from speaking to
reading,—a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of
eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart that
mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more
ludicrous than an orator delivering stale indignation and fervour of a
week old; turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in
German text; reading the tropes and apostrophes into which he is hurried
by the ardour of his mind; and so affected at a preconcerted line and
page, that he is unable to proceed any further!"
The oratory of the bar is also at a low ebb. We cannot
call to mind any living orator in that line,—no one to compare with what
Brougham, or Denman, or Plunkett, or Shiel, or O'Connell was. The
bar has now become careful, precise, painstaking, and fully informed; it
has ceased to be oratorical. It is English, and aims to be
practical. It is clever at making out a case, and can carry
through a piece of special pleading as well as at any period of its
history. But go into any of the law courts, and you will find that
it is not eloquent.
The oratory of the lecture-room and of the public platform is
worst of all. There is no want of words, indeed; but of ideas
worth remembering there is the greatest scarcity. Energetic
commonplaces, pompous platitudes, are the resources of the Stump Orator.
The conjurer who draws endless yards of ribbons out of his mouth is
nothing to him. He can run on for an hour, without stopping to
spit, or cough, or blow his nose, in an endless stream of talk. He
may know nothing of his subject; that is not necessary. But he can
talk; he is possessed with the gift of continuous speech; and the man is
regarded by his fellows with wonder, and, strange to say, in many cases
with envy.
The gift of oratory is nevertheless a great gift; and when
employed by a man of large intellect and generous feelings, it may be
employed for the noblest purposes. Among the Greeks and Romans
oratory was regarded as one of the highest arts. For the orator
combined in himself the journalist, the debater, the critic, and the
preacher, all in one. There were no books, nor newspapers, nor
reviews in those days. The assembled crowds learnt their opinions,
knowledge, and philosophy from the speeches of their orators. In
the portico, the forum, the garden, and the assembly, the Greeks stood
face to face with their great men, and drank in their living thoughts as
they fell warm from their lips. It is our newspapers, and books,
and reviews, that have tended to dull the oratory of modern times; for
the mere speaker has ceased to exercise that exclusive ascendency over
the minds of the masses, which he did in the times that preceded the
invention of printing. Nevertheless, oratory, as we have said, is
a true and noble art still; and we are as ready to hail the true orator,
as the true poet, painter, or dramatist.
Oratory is the art of moving or convincing others by spoken
words. Different people require different modes of address,
according to their temperament. The style of oratory that is
calculated to excite the enthusiasm of Frenchmen would often appear
simply ludicrous to Englishmen. Frenchmen admire manner,
Englishmen matter; the former love style, the latter facts and things.
The French orator is all action; the English orator stands comparatively
motionless, sometimes finding a refuge for his hands in his
breeches-pockets. Frenchmen will scarcely listen to a long speech,
while Englishmen will patiently sit out a speech of two hours long.
The temperament of the two people is essentially different, and hence
the different styles of French and English oratory. The Irish—half
Celtic and half Saxon, as the Irish people are—is a happy mixture of
both; and we owe to Ireland our greatest orators,—Burke, Sheridan,
Grattan, Plunkett, Flood, Curran, and O'Connell.
Then, oratory must adapt itself to its audience in all
countries. A speech addressed to the legislature will be one
thing, and a speech addressed to the common people quite another.
In the former case, the speaker has to be precise, logical,
demonstrative; in the latter, he must be striking, natural, and hearty.
The connection of ideas rather than of words, bold figures, rapid
emotions, earnestness, and fire,—these always avail the most when
addressed to the public assembly, in all countries. Appeal to
their common feelings, to their love of honour, to their pride of class,
to their patriotism, to their liberties, and their history, and the
orator will soon have firm hold of their heartstrings. Therein he
shows his skill and his power. And in these respects, we have no
hesitation in avowing that Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, in his two noble
speeches some time since delivered at Edinburgh and Leeds, has shown
himself to be possessed of high powers as an orator.
Of his personal appearance we need say little; for in the
true orator all personal peculiarities are soon forgotten. He is
somewhat tall, and very spare, almost attenuated. He has a fine
head and face, of which the portrait by Maclise gives a good
representation. His nose is large, sharp, and prominent,
fulfilling Napoleon's requirement of a man with a large nose for great
enterprises. His action in speaking is good, though not perfect.
Sometimes it is a little "wild," as when he draws back his head and slim
body, and extends his arms, making one feel uncomfortable lest he should
lose balance and upset. His voice is good,—strong, but not
musical; and perhaps he is wanting in that delicate inflection of
tone,—that variety, and light and shade, which the great orator is so
careful to cultivate. Had Bulwer's practice been greater,
doubtless he would have remedied such defects; for we must not forget
that his life has been that of a student and a literary man, rather than
of a man of action and public enterprise.
Leaving the manner of his speeches, we come to the matter of
them; and here we have nothing but praise to offer. In composition
they are perfect. They are varied, picturesque, graphic, moving,
exciting, instructive, and always interesting. The riveted
attention of the hearer never flags for a moment. At his great
oration, delivered before the Associated Societies of the Edinburgh
University, he was most happy in his opening sentence, in which he
struck the chord of the nation's heart. The audience was Scotch,
and amongst them were some of the greatest living men in Scotland.
The effect of these introductory words may therefore well be imagined:—
"I may well feel overcome by the kindness with which you
receive me, for I cannot disentangle my earliest recollections from my
sense of intellectual obligation to the genius of Scotland. The
first poets who charmed me from play in the half-holidays of school were
Campbell and Scott; the first historians who clothed for me with life
the shadows of the past, were Robertson and Hume; the first philosopher
who, by the grace of his attractive style, lured me on to the analysis
of the human mind, was Dugald Stewart; and the first novel that I bought
with my own money, and hid under my pillow, was the 'Roderick Random' of
Smollett." (Applause.) "So, when later, in a long vacation
from my studies at Cambridge, I learned the love for active adventure,
and contracted the habit of self-reliance by solitary excursions on
foot, my staff in my hand and my knapsack on my shoulders, it was
towards Scotland that I instinctively bent my way, as if to the
nursery-ground from which had been wafted to my mind the first germ of
those fertile and fair ideas, which, after they have come to flower upon
their native soil, return to seed, and are carried by the winds we know
not whither, calling up endless diversities of the same plant, according
to the climate and the ground to which they are borne by chance."
(Applause.) "Gentlemen, this day I revisited, with Professor
Ayton, the spot in which, a mere lad, obscure and alone, I remember to
have stood one starlight night in the streets of Edinburgh, gazing
across what was then a deep ravine, upon the picturesque outlines of the
Old Town, all the associations which make Scotland so dear to romance,
and so sacred to learning, rushing over me in tumultuous pleasure; her
stormy history,—her enchanting legends,—wild tales of witchcraft and
fairy land,—of headlong chivalry and tragic love,—all contrasting, yet
all uniting, with the renown of schools famous for patient erudition and
tranquil science. I remember how I then wished that I could have
found some tie in parentage or blood to connect me with the great people
in whose capital I stood a stranger." (Cheers.) "That tie
which birth denied to me, my humble labours, and your generous kindness,
have at last bestowed; and the former stranger in your streets stands
today in this crowded hall, proud to identify his own career with the
hopes and aspirations of the youth of Scotland." (Cheers.)
This is beautifully said, and must have caused a thrill in
the breasts of his audience, kindling, as with an electric flash, the "perfervidum
ingenium Scotorum." Passing in review the great literary men
of Scotland, with a delicate and exquisite compliment to the absent
Professor Wilson, ("Christopher North,") since deceased, he proceeded to
discourse most eloquently upon the subject of Greek and Roman
literature, and the proper methods of studying them, winding up with a
most thrilling appeal to the spirit of national patriotism, in which he
must again have effectually roused the Scottish heart.
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton's speech at Leeds was only the
complement to that delivered at Edinburgh. It was less learnèd,
but equally philosophical; more varied, and, if possible, more
interesting. The audience was the best that Leeds could give
him,—not mechanics or working-people, certainly, but the most highly
educated ladies and gentlemen of that large manufacturing town. At
Edinburgh he had addressed scholars, students, and professors; here he
addressed himself to "youths and mature men of every age, engaged in
active, practical pursuits, snatching at such learning as books may give
in the intervals of recreation or repose. Knowledge there is the
task-work; knowledge here is the holiday. But in both these
communities, in the quiet university and in the busy manufacturing town,
I find," said he, "the same grand idea: I mean the recognition of
Intelligence as the supreme arbiter of all those questions which, a
century ago, were either settled by force or stifled by those prejudices
which are even stronger than law." Then he proceeded to survey the
civilization of the world in past and in modern times, defending the
too-often-sneered-at wisdom of our ancestors, whose intellect "has left
us writers whom we may strive to emulate, but can never hope to surpass;
a political constitution which we may enlarge or repair, but which we
can never, perhaps, altogether change for the better; and an empire on
which it is said that the sun never sets, though it commenced from these
small northern islands, on which," said he, "I am sorry to say, the sun
seldom condescends to shine." But he did equal justice to the
character of the age in which we live, to the progress made in all the
industrial arts, to the milder spirit of humanity which distinguishes
modem times when compared with the old, and to the constructive spirit
which is at work in all our institutions. Passing in review the
three great races who now lead the civilization of the world, the
Germans, the French, and the English,—he tested the elements of their
respective greatness, finding in the German greater discipline, and in
the Englishman greater freedom; while the Frenchman, being impulsive,
and too little imbued with the spirit of religion, is headlong in his
reforms and fanatical in his revolutions. The English, though
worse educated in schools, possess, according to the orator, a far
better life-education, such as fits them for doing the work and acting
the part of freemen. "It seems," said he, "that there are two
kinds of education: there is one I call life-education, which we acquire
at home, in the streets, in the marketplace, behind the counter, the
loom, the plough,—the education we acquire from life; and this I call
life-education: there is, also, what I call school-education,—the
education we acquire from books. In the first kind of
education—life-education—we are far in advance of all countries in the
ancient quarters of the globe; but it appears we are behind some
countries in school education. You, as Englishmen, will never consent to
let this be so. You axe Englishmen, and I am sure will never consent to
be beaten by any country whatever. Let us, then, put our shoulders to
the wheel, and see that we are here also in our proper place in the
world." Bulwer's pride as an Englishman will not admit of his yielding
the palm to any other nation; and this pride embraces Englishmen of all
classes and ranks, democratic as well as aristocratic. "I am here," said
he,
"not only as the member of a class which must always have
the deepest sympathy with every department of intellectual labour,—I
mean the class of authors,—but I am here also as a member of another
class, which is supposed to be less acceptable in manufacturing towns: I
am one of the agricultural vampires; I am guilty of being a country
gentleman, and even a county member; still, somehow or other, I feel
quite at home here. Now, shall I tell you the truth? I dare
say you and I may differ upon many political questions, but upon this
neutral ground I am sure—no matter what books I had written—you would
not be so kind to me, nor I feel so much at my ease with you, unless by
this time we had both discovered that we have got sound English hearts;
and that, though we may quarrel as to the mode of doing it, still we are
all equally resolved to keep this England of ours the foremost country
in the world. In a free state, it will happen that every class
will strive to press forward what it conceives, rightly or erroneously,
its own claims and interests; but in proportion as we instruct all, each
will, in time, acquire its due share of influence; and, far from that
hypocritical cowardice which often makes a man throw over in one
assembly the class which he is bound to advocate in another, I own to
you, wherever I look I see so much merit in every division of our
people, that, whatever class I had been born and reared in, of that
class I should have been justly proud. There is not a class of
which I should not have said,' I belong to those who made England
great.' If I had been born a peasant, let me be but self-taught
and self-risen, and I would not have changed my brotherhood with Burns
for the pedigree of a Howard. If I had been born a mechanic or
manufacturer, for allow me to class together the employer and employed,
they fulfil the same mission, and their interests ought to be the
same,—I say, if I had been born one of these, I should have said, 'Mine
is the class which puts nations themselves into the great factory of
civilization. Mine is the class which has never yet been
established in any land but what it has made the poor state rich, and
the small state mighty.' If I had been born a trader, the very
humblest of that order, I should have boasted proudly of the solid
foundation of public opinion and of national virtues which rest upon the
spirit and energy, upon the integrity and fair-dealing, by which that
great section of our middle class have given a tone and character to our
whole people. Why, we have been called a nation of shopkeepers,
and shopkeepers we are whenever we keep a debtor and creditor account
with other nations, scrupulously paying our debts to the last farthing,
and keeping our national engagements with punctuality and good faith.
But it is owing much to the high spirit and to the sense of honour which
characterizes the British trader, that the word 'gentleman' has become a
title peculiar to us,—not, as in other countries, resting only upon
pedigrees and coats of arms, but embracing all who unite gentleness with
manhood. And nation of shopkeepers though we be, yet we all, from
the duke in his robes to the workman in his blouse, become a nation of
gentlemen whenever some haughty foreigner touches our common honour,
whenever some paltry sentiment in the lips of princes rouses our
generous scorn, or whenever some chivalrous action or noble thought
ennobles the sons of peasants. If I had been told that the habits
of trade made men niggardly and selfish, I should have pointed to the
hospitals, to the charities, to the educational institutions which cover
the land, and which have been mainly founded or largely endowed by the
munificence of traders. If I had been told that there was
something in trade which stinted the higher or more poetical faculty, I
should have pointed to the long list of philosophers, divines, and poets
that have sprung from the ranks of trade; and, not to cite minor names,
I should have said, 'It is we who share with agriculture the glory of
producing the wool-stapler's son, who rules over the intellectual
universe under the name of Shakespeare.' This pride of class I
should have felt, let me only be born an Englishman, whether as peasant,
mechanic, manufacturer, or tradesman; but being born and reared amongst
those who derive their subsistence from the land, I am not less proud
that I belong to that great section of our countrymen from whom have
proceeded so large a proportion of those who have helped to found that
union of liberty and intellect which binds together the audience I
survey. From whom came the great poets, Chaucer and Gower, Spenser
and Dryden, and Byron and Scott? From whom came the great pioneers
of science, Worcester and Cavendish, Boyle and Bacon? From whom
came so large a number of the heroes and patriots who, in all the grand
epochs of constitutional progress,—from the first charter wrung from
Norman tyrants, from the first resistance made to the Roman pontiffs,
down to the law by which Camden (the son of a country squire) achieved
the liberty of the Press,—down to the Reform Bill, by which Russell,
Grey; and Stanley, and Lambton connected Leeds forever with the genius
of Macaulay—have furnished liberty with illustrious chiefs, and not less
with beloved martyrs? Out of that class of country gentlemen came
the Hampden who died upon the field, and Sydney who perished on the
scaffold."
This is a noble and truly eloquent passage, going right to
the heart of every Englishman; and delivered, as it was, with fire and
energy, in the Music Hall at Leeds, it left an impression on the minds
of his audience, of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton's power as a true orator,
which will not soon be effaced.
It will be observed that, in this rapid sketch, we have
described a career full of hard work; the more honourable to Sir Edward,
as he is rich, and in the enjoyment of ease and competence. But he
prefers to be laborious and perseverant; he is a man full purpose and
earnestness; he works for the love of work, as well as because he
desires the good of others. Though he is not a very real writer,
his writings, taken as a whole, have a highly beneficial tendency: they
are humanizing, invigorating, and improving. By dint of study and
labour he has achieved his success. His merit as a writer and an
orator is all his own, and is infinitely superior to that transmitted
merit which attaches to a man's far-back ancestry having fought at Crecy
or Agincourt. And, most probably, posterity will yet speak of Sir
Edward Bulwer Lytton with far greater admiration than if he had
distinguished himself at Waterloo or Sobraon.
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