To plunge into the infection of hospitals; to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, and to attend to the neglected. Burke

he spirit of the philosophy of antiquity offers a striking contrast to that of the present age in the tendency of the latter to diffuse itself among the people. In the whole range of scientific or demonstrable knowledge which has been grasped by human intelligence, we have now nothing approaching to the old Esoteric and Exoteric doctrine. With results at least as brilliant as those which have distinguished any former age, the instruments of induction and experiment continue to be used to extend the boundaries of knowledge; but that which no former age has witnessed is the energy which is now put forth to make the doctrines of science known and to reach the masses how to apply them to their advantage. The men at present in possession of the key of knowledge, value it chiefly as it enables them to unlock treasures for universal diffusion, and estimate their own claim to distinction and honour by the measure in which they have enriched the world. This spirit is strongly exemplified in the writings of Dr. Southwood Smith, and the course of his public life. By nature and education he seems to have been formed rather for the retirement and contemplation of the study, than the active business of the world. The bent of his mind led him at an unusually early age to the investigation of the range of subjects that relate more or less directly to intellectual and moral philosophy; and, as not unfrequently happens, the efforts of those around him, to give to his pursuits a widely different direction only increased his love for those studies.

Having determined on the practice of medicine as a profession, Dr. Southwood Smith found in the sciences which now demanded his attention and still more in the structure and functions of organized beings, studies congenial to his taste, and for which his previous intellectual pursuits and habits had prepared him. The contemplation of the wonderful processes which constitute life, the exquisite mechanism, as far as that mechanism can be traced by which they are performed, the surprising adjustments and harmonies by which in a creature like man such diverse and opposite actions are brought into relation with each other and made to work in subserviency and co-operation, and the Divine object of all - the communication of sensation and intelligence as the inlets and instruments of happiness, afforded the highest satisfaction to his mind. But this beautiful world, into whose intimate workings his eye now searched, presented itself to his view as a demonstration that the Creative Power is infinite in goodness, and seemed to afford, as if from the essential elements and profoundest depths of nature, a proof of His love. Under these impressions, he wrote, in 1814, during the intervals of his college studies, the 'Divine Government', a work which at once brought him into notice and established his reputation as an original eloquent writer. It has now gone through many editions, and has been widely circulated, and read with the deepest interest by persons of all classes and creeds; there is nothing sectarian in it; dealing only with great and universal principles, it comprehends humanity and in some respects indeed the whole sensitive and organic creation. The style is singularly lucid; its tone is earnest, rising frequently into strains of touching and pathetic eloquence; a heartfelt conviction of the truth of every thought that is put into words breathes throughout the whole, and a buoyant and youthful spirit pervades it, imparting to it a charm which so rivets the attention of the reader as to render him in many instances unable to put down the book till finished, as if he had been engaged in an exciting novel. Had the work been written at a maturer age, some of this charm must have vanished, and given place to a deeper consciousness of the woe and pain that mingle with the joys of the present state. But as it is, it has been no unimportant instrument in the hands of those among whom it has chanced to fall, in keeping distinctly before the view the greater happiness, as an end, to the attainment of which the direct and only means must often be pain. Many instances are on record of the solace it has communicated to the mourner, and the hope it has inspired in the mind when on the brink of despair. While divines of the Church have read and expressed their approbation of it, it has attracted the attention of some of the most distinguished poets of the day: Byron and Moore have recorded their admiration of it, and it appears to have been the constant companion of Crabbe, and to have soothed and brightened his last moments.

After the completion of his medical terms, Dr. Southwood Smith spent several years in the practice of his profession at a provincial town in the west of England, near his place of birth, and in the midst of a small but highly cultivated and affectionate circle of friends, devoting himself with unabated ardour to his favourite studies. On his removal to London, he attached himself to one of the great metropolitan hospitals, that he might enlarge his experience in his profession. He was soon appointed physician to the Eastern Dispensary, and in a few years afterwards, to the London Fever Hospital. Called upon by the latter appointment to treat on so large a scale one of the most formidable diseases which the physician has to encounter, he applied himself to its study with a zeal not to be abated by two attacks of the malady in his own person, so severe that his life on each occasion was despaired of. The result of several years' laborious investigation is given in his 'Treatise on Fever', which was at once pronounced to be 'one of the most able of the philosophical works that have aided the advancement of the science of medicine during the last half century'; and its reputation has risen with time. It has had a wide circulation on the Continent, over India and in America, in the mediecal schools of which it has become a textbook, while in this country high medical authority has pronounced it to be 'the best work on fever that ever flowed from the pen of physician in any age or country'.

Dr. Southwood Smith assisted in the formation of the Westminster Review, and wrote the article on 'Education' in the first number. For many years he was a regular contributor, and it was here that his paper on the state of the Anatomical Schools first appeared, which attracted so much attention that it was reprinted in form of a pamphlet, under the title of 'The Use of the Dead for the Living'. In this form it passed through several editions, and a copy was sent to every member of both houses of Parliament. The evils that must necessarily result to the country by withholding from the medical profession the means of obtaining anatomical and physiological knowledge were so clearly pointed out in this pamphlet, and the perils inseparable from the permission of such a class as the resurrection-men (the most horrible results of which were soon afterwards actually realized), so forcibly depicted, while at the same time a remedy adequate to meet the difficulties of the case was suggested and explained, that the Legislature was induced to take up the subject, and after appointing a Committee of Inquiry, to pass the existing law, which has put an effectual stop to the trade of body-snatching and the horrible crime of Barking; but, unfortunately, from a defect in the Act, the anatomical schools are often placed, though quite unnecessarily, in a state of considerable embarrassment.

Dr. Smith laboured with equal earnestness, but less success, to obtain a revision of the present regulations concerning quarantine, which he regards as unworthy of a country that has made any progress in science, having their origin in ignorance and superstition worthy of the Middle Ages; aiming at an object which is altogether chimerical, and which, if it had any real existence, would be just as much beyond human power as the control of the force and direction of the winds. Yet these regulations are still allowed grievously to embarrass commerce, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds annually.

The articles on 'Physiology and Medicine' in the early numbers of the Penny Cyclopedia are from the pen of this author, and the success of the treatise on 'Animal Physiology', written at the request of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, suggested the idea of treating this subject in a still more elaborate and comprehenseive manner, and led to the publication of the 'Philosophy of Health'. The first words of the introduction to this work thus express the comprehensive nature of the subject which it embraces: -


The two volumes already published, aim at establishing a series of general rules for health (the word 'health' being applied in its widest sense), by popularly explaining the nature of the substances of which the physical part of man is compounded; describing the various structures and organs of the body, and the different functions they perform; and deducing thence the laws which the creature is enjoined by the principles of its creation to obey. This is merely the basis of a higher philosophy, which rising from the physical, shall, in regular sequence, proceed to the mental, trace their mutual relation and dependence, and endeavour to deduce from the exposition of this nature of each - as far as their nature can be comprehended by mortal intelligence - the rules for the utmost development and progression of both.

The first volume comprises a most interesting view of life in all organized bodies, commencing from an imperceptible germ, and ascending from the lichen on the rock, to man himself. The distinction between the two great divisions of organized life, between that which only grows - the organic, and that which not only grows, but moves and feels - the animal superadded to the organic - is traced with the hand of a master. Equally masterly is the rapid view of the means adopted to render voluntary motion possible; the complication of structure requisite to that one faculty; the apparatus constructed to produce sensation; the elevation of every faculty down to the lowest, by the addition of each higher faculty; the indispensable necessity and uses of pain not only to health, but to life itself; and the indication of the processes by which nature trains the mind to perceive and think. The concluding passage of this portion of the work is one of remarkable power, in which a general view is exhibited of the physiological progress of a human being, from its first appearance in the embryo state, until the final extinction of life, and the subjection of the inanimate body to the material laws which are to decompose it. Expositions of the function of circulation, digestion, and nutrition follow, equally characterized by fullness, clearness, and conciseness.

The style of this work is distinguished by terseness and simplicity; it would be difficult to find a useless word, and very few epithets are employed, as though the number and variety of ideas to be imparted rendered condensation essential: in the arrangment there is great precision, subject after subject arising gradually and naturally. Few technical terms are employed, and a full explanation is given to those which are introduced. A perfect command of the subject is evinced throughout: and its exposition is at once profound and simple, calculated alike to instruct the ignorant, and by the striking nature of the description and the novelty of their applications, to interest even those to whom the facts are not new. Much of the matter contained in these volumes is original, and even that which is taken out of the common treasury of science is disposed in a new manner, and exhibited in new relations of great interest and importance. Scattered phenomena which might be culled out of various works on Anatomy, Physiology, and Mental Philosophy, are here brought together and systematized; displayed as a series, traced from their germs, and followed onwards to their highest manifestations; arranged so as to show their relation to one another, and their influence one on the other, thence deducing the means of developing the united powers towards their utmost point of progression.

Many felicitous instances of scientific generalization and of eloquent description and appeal might be referred to in exemplification. It has been well said by a philosophical reviewer, that the '"Natural History of Death", as a composition, has much of that singular and melancholy beauty wherewith a painter of genius would invest the personification of mortality'. The following appeal to mothers as been compared to the fervid eloquence of Rousseau, which aroused women to a sense of the physical obligations of the maternal character; but here the earnest call is for mental and moral exertion: -


This earnest passage at once serves to give an idea of the style of the work and to explain one of its chief aims: and with it the present short account of the 'Philosophy of Health' must conclude, but not before a hope has been expressed that an undertaking so important and so well begun, will not much longer be left unfinished.

Dr. Southwood Smith was the friend and physician of Bentham. The venerable and unaffected philanthropist, fully appreciating the importance of anatomical science, and lamenting the prejudice against dissection, gave his own body to Dr. Smith, charging him to devote it to the ordinary purposes of science. His friend fulfilled his desire, and delivered the first lecture over the body - with a clear and unfaltering voice, but with a face as white as that of the dead philosopher before him. Alive, so cheerful and serene - serene for ever now and nothing more. The lecture was delivered on June 9, 1832, in the Webb-street School of Anatomy. Dr. Smith availed himself of the occasion, and his biographer has made this lecture the concluding part of the Memoir which has been prefixed to the uniform edition of Bentham's works just published. The head and face were preserved by a peculiar process, but the latter being found painful in expression, is covered with a wax mask admirably executed and a correct likeness. The skeleton also was preserved; and the whole clothed in the ordinary dress worn by the philosopher (according to his own express desire), presenting him as nearly as possible as he was while living. Seated smiling in a large mahogany case with a glass front, the homely figure, with its long snow-white hair, broad-brimmed hat, and thick ash-plant walking-stick, resides with Dr. Southwood Smith, and may be seen by any one who takes an interest in the writings and character of Jeremy Bentham.

                    See also http://www.sijmen.nl/filo/bentham.html

Lord Ashley, the eldest son of the Earl of Shaftsbury and member for Dorsertshire, commenced his career in that cuse with which his public life has become identified, by undertaking the charge of Mr Sadler's Factory Bill in the House of Commons. The invention of the spinning-jenny and the power-loom not only altered the whole process of manufactures, but withdrew the operatives from their own dwellings, and collected them in numbers in great buildings called Factories. The invention of machinery was attended with another result: it created a demand for the comparatively inexpensive labour of children, their small fingers being found best adapted to  to work in combination with it. Very young children, of both sexes, were therefore employed in great numbers, together with adult labourers, and as their servants, and were moreover compelle to work the same number of hours, whether those amounted to twelve, fourteen, or sixteen, or even all night. It was alleged that children of tender ages placed under these unnatural circumstances were grievously and irreparably injured in their physical constitution; that they were cruelly treated by their taskmasters; that their morals were early corrupted; that they were growing up in a state of absolute ignorance. It was universaly admitted that the efforts which the Legislature had hitherto made for their protection had failed, and every existing enactment become a dead letter. It was in this state of things that Lord Ashley, in 1833, took charge of Mr Sadler's Bill, the object of which was to limit the hours of work, of all under eighteen, in Factories, to ten hours daily. This was met by the objection that such a measure must necessarily put the same limit on the labour of adults. A Commission was accordingly appointed; first to ascertain the facts of the case as regarded the children, and, secondly, to inquire whether it would not be practicable to devise a measure for the protection of children without interfering with the liberty of all the operatives. Fifteen Commissioners were appointed and divided into five sections, each consisting of three Commissioners (two civil and one medical) and of these Mr Thomas Tooke, Mr Chadwick, and Dr Southwood smith, formed the Central Board, to direct the inquiry and report the result. Their report was:  -

The Factory Act of 1833 was founded on this Report. and four Inspectors and a considerable number of Sub-Inspectors were appointed to enforce obedience to its enactments. The results are highly important.

The existing Act, which fixes the youngest age at which children can be employed, and the extent of their hours of labour, and which requires education as a condition of employment, is (unlike its predecessors) obeyed; and although the clause in the Bill prepared by the Commissioners providing for the erection of schools and the payment of teachers, was struck out in the House of Lords on the motion of the Earl of Shaftsbury, Lord Ashley's father, yet with all its imperfections the present Act has led to an amelioration in the treatment and an improvement in the physical condition and moral character of this vast juvenile population, such as was never before effected by an Act of Parliament; while the benefits resulting from it to all parties, the employers no less than the employed, are not only rapidly multiplying and extending, but are becoming more and more the subjects of general acknowledgement and gratulation. There is reason to believe that the total number employed in factory labour in the United Kingdom is little short of 1,000,000.*

________

*From a Return furnished by Mr Saunders, one of the Factory Inspectors, it appears that in his district alone, which is by no means one of the largest, the total number employed in Factory labour is 106,509. Among these there are 45.958 young persons and children coming under the regulations of the Factory Act. It appears, further, that while there were before the present Act, as far as the Inspector could learn, only two schools in his whole district, at which about 200 children may have been educated, the actual number at present attending schools is 9,316. The Factory Act has diminished the number of young children, as operatives, and increased that of adults.

_________

New fields of labour had opened to Lord Ashley at every step of his progress. He had already earned the honourable designation of the general guardian of the children of the poor, as the Lord Chancellor is of the children of the rich. He was satisfied that there were oppressions and sufferings of an aggravated character, and on a large scale, in occupations widely different from those of the factory, and which required investigation the more because the places of work, in which some of the most important of these employments are carried on, are widely inacessible to the public. The apprehension inseperable from a mind, at once earnest and diffident, that he should fail to elicit the truth, and to place it so strongly before the public and the legislature, as to command grievance, was strongly marked in the opening of his speech on August 4, 1840, for the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry into the Employment of Children in Mines, Collieries, and other occupations not regulated by the Factory Acts.

'It is, Sir', said he, 'with feelings somewhat akin to despair that I now rise to bring before the House, the motion of which I have given notice. I cannot but entertain misgivings, that I shall not be able to bring under the attention of the House this subject, which has now occupied so large a portion of my public life, and which are concentrated in one hour, the labours of years. I have long contemplated this effort which I am now making; I had long resolved that, so soon as I could see the Factory children, as it were, safe in harbour, I would undertake a new task . . . I am now endeavouring to obtain an inquiry into the actual circumstances and condition of another large part of our juvenile population . . . I wish,' continued he, 'to preserve and cherish the physical energies of these poor children, and to cultivate and improve their moral part, both of which, be they taken seperately or conjointly, are essential to the peace, security, and progress of the empire . . . It is instructive to observe, how we compel, as it were, vice and misery with one hand, and endeavour to repress them with the other; but the whole course of our manufacturing system tends to these results; you engage children from their earliest and tenderest years in these long, painful, and destructive occupations; when they have approached to manhood, they have outgrown their employments, and they are turned upon the world without moral, without professional education; the business they have learned, avails them nothing; to what can they turn their hands for a maintenance? - the children, for instance, who have been taught to make pins, having reached fourteen or fifteen years of age, are unfit to make pins any longer; to procure an honest livelihood then becomes to them almost impossible; the governors of prisons will tell you, the relieving-officers will tell you, that the vicious resort to plunder and prostitution; the rest sink down into a hopeless pauperism. I desire to remove these spectacles of suffering and oppression from the eyes of the poorer classes, or at least to ascertain if we can do so; these things perplex the peaceable, and exasperate the discontented; they have a tendency to render capital odious, for wealth is known to them only by its oppressions; they judge of it by what they see immediately around them; they know but little beyond their own narrow sphere; they do not extend their view over the whole surface of the land, and so perceive and understand the compensating advantages that wealth and property bestow on the community at large. Sir, with so much ignorance on one side, and so much oppression on the other, I have never wondered what perilous errors and bitter hatreds have prevailed; but I have wondered much, and been very thankful that they have prevailed so little.'

Lord Ashley concluded by declaring that it was his object to appeal to, and excite public opinion, 'for where we cannot legislate,' said he, 'we may exhort; and laws may fail where example will succeed'.

This appeal, distinguished throughout by an earnest simplicity of language, was answered by the cordial support of the Government, and the immediate appointment of a Commission of Inquiry, consisting of a Board of Commissioners, whose office it was to visit the districts and t report thereon. The field of inquiry prescribed by the terms of the Commission, comprehended the mines and collieries of the United Kingdom, and all trades and manufactures whatever in which children work together in numbers, not included under the Factories Regulation Act. The mass of evidence sent up to the Central Board from twenty gentlemen, working day and night, in different parts f the country, with the utmost energy and without intermission for many consecutive months, speaks for itself. Fortunately, the commissioners were men of energy practised in business. The Chairman, Mr Thomas Tooke, who had held the same situation in the Factory Commission, possessed the confidence of the commercial and manufacturing portion of the country. Mr Horner,
_________

From the Wikipedia:

Leonard Horner (January 17, 1785 – March 5, 1864), Scottish geologist, brother of Francis Horner, was born in Edinburgh.

Horner was a 'radical educational reformer' who was involved in the establishment of University College School. His father, John Horner, was a linen merchant in Edinburgh, and Leonard, the third and youngest son, entered the university of Edinburgh in 1799. There in the course of the next four years he studied chemistry and mineralogy, and gained a love of geology from Playfairs Illustrations of the ilullonian Theory. At the age of nineteen he became a partner in a branch of his father's business, and went to London. In 1808 he joined the newly formed Geological Society of London and two years later was elected one of the secretaries. Throughout his long life he was ardently devoted to the welfare of the society; he was elected president in 1846 and again in 1860. In 1811 he read his first paper On the Mineralogy of the Malvern Hills (Trans. Geol. Soc. vol. i.) and subsequently communicated other papers on the Brine-springs at Droitwich, and the Geology of the S.W. part of Somersetshire. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1813. In 1815 he returned to Edinburgh to take personal superintendence of his business, and while there (1821) he was instrumental in founding the Edinburgh School of Arts 101 the instruction of mechanics, and he was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Academy. In 1827 he was invited to London to become warden of the London University, an office which he held for four years; he then resided at Bonn for two years and pursued the study of minerals and rocks, communicating to the Geological Society on his return a paper on the Geology of the Environs of Bonn, and another On the Quantity of Solic Matter suspended in the Water of the Rhine. In 1833 he was appointed one of the commissioners to inquire into the employment of children in the factories of Great Britain, and he was subsequently selected as one of the inspectors. In later years he devoted much attention to the geological history of thi alluvial lands of Egypt; and in 1843 he published his Life of his brother Francis. He died in London on the 5th of March 1864. See Memoir of Leonard Horner, by Katherine M Lyell (1890) (privately printed).

He was to have been buried beside his wife in Florence's 'English' Cemetery and the inscription on her tombstone states this, his own grave space next to hers having been purchased by the family for this purpose.
__________

and Mr Saunders, two of the Factory Inspectors, had already spent many years in pursuing investigations analogous to those which were now to be made; and Dr. Southwood Smith was qualified as a physiologist and physician, to appreciate the influence of early labour on the physical and moral condition of children. But the very extent and completeness of the evidence transmitted to the Central Board, would have caused its failure as an instrument of legislation, but for the manner in which it was decided to deal with it. The subject was divided into two parts, Mines and Manufactures. The mines were subdivided into collieries and metallic mines, and the manufactures into the larger branches of industry, such as metal.wares, earthenware, glass-making, lace-making, hosiery, calico-printing, paper-making, weaving, &c.

Those who have closely examined the two small volumes, into which compass are compressed and admirably arranged the main facts contained in the enormous folios, can alone appreciate the amount of labour involved in this undertaking, and will not fail to recognize in the lucid order and condensed style, the hand of Dr. Southwood Smith, on whom this portion of the labours of the Commission principally devolved. He did not shrink from the task, though nearly every minute of the day was absorbed by a fatiguing profession, sustained through the long hours taken from rest and sleep, by the conviction that the usefulness of this work would afford a heart-felt compensation for its labor. The anticipation was fully realized. When the Report on Mines was laid on the table of the House, astonishment and horror were universal. No such outrages on humanity had been discovered since the disclosure of the treatment of Negro slaves. It was truly said that this Report resembled a volume of travels in a remote and barbarous country, so little had been previously known of the state of things it described. Dark passages to seams of coal, scarcely thirty inches in height, not larger than a good-sized drain, through which children of both sexes, and of all ages, from seven years old and upwards, toiled for twelve hours daily, and sometimes more, obliged to crawl on 'all-fours', dragging after them loaded corves or carts, fastened to their bodies by a belt, a chain passing between the legs; - infants of four, five, and six years old, carried down on their parents' knees to keep the air-doors, sitting in a little niche scooped out in the coal, for twelve hours daily, along, in total darkness, except when the corves, lighted by their solitary candle, passed along, and some of them during the winter never seeing the light of day, except on Sunday; - girls and women hewing coals like men, and by the side of men; - girls and woman clothed in nothing more than loose trousers, and these often in rags, working side by side with men in a state of utter nudity; - girls of tender age carrying on their backs along unrailed roads, often over their ankles, and sometimes up to their knees in water, burdens of coal, weighing from 3/4 cwt to 3 cwt, from the bottom of the mine to the bank, up steep ladders, the height ascended and the distance along the roads added together, exceeding the height of St Paul's Cathedral'; married women, and women about to become mothers, dragging or bearing on their shoulders similar enormous loads, up to the very moment when forced to leave this 'horse-work' to be 'drawn up' to give birth to their helpless offspring, - themselves as helpless - at the pit's-mouth, and sometimes even in the pit itself; - boys of seven and eight years old, bound, till the age of twenty-one, apprentices to the colliers, receiving until that age, as the reward for their labour, nothing but food, clothing, and lodging, working side by side with young men of their own age, free labourers, the latter receiving men's wages; - boys employed at the steam-engines for letting down and drawing up the work-people; - ropes employed for this service obviously and acknowledgedly unsafe; - accidents of a fearful nature constantly occurring; - the most ordinary precautions to guard against danger neglected; a collier's chances of immunity from mortal peril being about equal to those of a soldier on the field of battle - for all this neither the legislature nor the public were at all prepared, nor were they better prepared for the last two conclusions deduced by the Commissioners, as the result of the whole body of evidence, namely: -


When on June 7, 1842, Lord Ashley moved for leave to bring in a Bill, founded on this Report, there was an unusually large attendance of members. After expressing his warm acknowledgements to the late Administration, 'not only for the Commission which they gave, but for the Commissioners whom they appointed, gentlemen who had performed the duties assigned them with unrivalled skill, fidelity and zeal,' he proceeded in an elaborate speech, listened to throughout by a silent and deeply attentive House, to detail the most important points of the physical miseries and the moral deterioration of large classes of the community, that the motion was granted without a dissentient voice. Members on every side vied with each other in cordial assent and sympathy with the measure. The contemporary press echoed the tone; the manner of the speech was deservedly eulogized for its freedom from all sickly sentimentalities, useless recriminations, and philanthropic clap-traps; for the way in which the startling and impressive facts of the case were simply stated and lucidly arranged, and in which each was made to bear upon the nature and necessity of the projected remedy, while blessings were invoked in the name of humanity, on the man by whom this was done and done so well. 'The laurels of party', it was truly declared, 'were worthless, compared with the wreath due to this generous enterprise.'

Lord Ashley's Bill proposed a total exclusion of girls and women from the labour of mines and collieries; a total prohibition of male children from this labour, no boy being allowed to descend into a mine, for the purpose of performing any kind of work therein, under thirteen years of age; a total prohibition of apprenticeship to this labour, and a provision that no person, other than a man between twenty-one and fifty years of age, shall have charge of the machinery by which the work-people are let down and drawn up the shafts.

The history of the mutilated progress of this Bill through both Houses, has now to be recorded.

The first point was unanimously acceded to in the Commons; the second was altered by the substitution of the age of ten, for that of thirteen; the concession, however, being neutralized as far as was practicable, by the provision, that no boy under thirteen should work on any two successive days; the third was materially altered by the addition of the word 'underground', thus allowing the collier to take apprentices provided he worked them on the surface; the fourth was altered by omitting the limitation to fifty, thus permitting the lives of all who work in mines, to be placed in the hands of aged and decrepit men.

Thus changed, each change, it will be observed, being directly against the interest and safety of the work-people, the Bill passed the Commons. In the House of Lords, the whole measure was met with a spirit of hostility as unexpected as it was unanimous, and alas! successful. It had been forgotten that the mines and collieries of the kingdom belong, with very few exceptions, to the great landed proprietors - the same noble lords who had now to decide on the fate of the Bill. For some time it was impossible to get any member of that noble House to take any charge of the business. At length, Lord Devon, from a feeling of shame to which so many had showed themselves insensible, volunteered to do what he could to conduct the Bill through its perilous course. In this noble House, even the prohibition to work female children, and married women, and women about to become mothers, was murmured at, but no member ventured to propose an alteration of this part of the measure. the clause prohibiting apprentceship was expunged, saving that a provision was retained that no apprenticeship should be contracted under ten years of age, nor for a longer period than eight years. The clause limiting the labour of boys under thirteen to alternate days, was expunged. And the clause regulating the age of the persons that work the machinery for conveying the work-people up and down the shafts, which the Commons had altered on the one hand so as to permit decrepit men to perform this office, the Lords now altered on the other, so as to entrust it to boys.

Early in the following Session, the commissioners presented their second Report on Trades and Manufactuers, drawn up on the same elaborate plan, written with the same clearness and calmness, and exhibiting in some respects a still more melancholy, though not so startling a picture of the condition of large classes of our industrial population. It discloses in its full extent the mischief done to the former Bill by the expulsion of the clause prohibiting apprenticeship; for it proves that the oppressions and cruelties perpetrated under this legal sanction in mines and collieries, is even exceeded in some trades and manufactures. The words of the Report relative to this subject, ought to sink deep into the mind and heart of the country. After stating that in some trades, more especially those requiring skilled workmen, apprentices are bound by legal indentures usually at the age of fourteen, and for a term of seven years, the Commissioners continue: -

The Report on Wolverhampton states, that 'within the last four years five hundred and eight-four males and females, all under age, have been committed to Stafford jail for breach of contract'. The following passage concerning the treatment of the children, completes the picture: -

Wolverhampton, it will be remembered, is the centre of the iron manufactures in South Staffordshire, and the words of this Report in their simple conciseness, lay bare a state of things, which, that it should exists at this day, just as if no Commission had been established, and no facts made known to the public, in the centre of a country which calls itself civilized, is an outrage to humanity. The descriptions of this district exhibit scenes of actual misery among the children, far surpassing the inventions of fiction. Here, in the busy workshops, the Assistant-Commissioner saw the poor apprentice boys at their daily labour; their anxious faces, looking three times their age, on deformed and stunted bodies, showing no trace of the beauty and gladness of childhood or youth: their thin hands and long fingers toiling at the vice for twelve, fourteen, sixteen, sometimes more hours out of the twenty-four; yet with all their toil, clothed in rags, shivering with cold, half-starved or fed on offal, beaten, kicked, abused, struck with locks, bars, hammers, or other heavy tools, burnt with showers of sparks from red-hot irons, pulled by the hair and ears till be the blood ran down, and in vain imploring for mercy; - and all this is going on now.

Why should it go on? Apprenticeship is not an order of Nature. It is an arrangement, good in itself, made by the law, and the law should therefore regulate it beneficently. The necessity of interfering between parents and children has been admitted, and in some degree acted upon in the factories, mines, and collieries. It is equally necessary in trades and manufactures; and much more is it necessary to interfere between masters and apprentices. The natural instinct has even still some power. The mothers do carry their over-toiled children to their beds when they are too tired to crawl to them, - but no one cares for the wretched apprentice. He may lie down and die when his 'long day's work' is done, and his master can get another, and a sovereign besides, at the workhouse.

It is difficult to make an abridgement of the concise and graphic descriptions given in these Reports of the physical and moral condition of the persons employed in the various branches of industry included in the inquiry; and it is the less necessary, because the means of information are placed within the reach of all; an octavor volume* having been published by direction of  the
_____________

* 'Physical and Moral Conditions of the Children and Young Persons employed in Mines and Manufactures. Illustrated by extracts from the Reports of the Commissioners' - London: Published for her Majesty's Stationery Office, by J.W. Parker, West Strand. 1843.
_____________

 Government, at the desire of the House of Commons, containing verbatim the most important portions of the Reports. The individuals composing these classes are to be numbered not by thousands, but by millions; yet what is the weighed, the solemn verdict given by this Commission as to their moral condition? Every word has been deeply considered - and should so be read. The Commissioners say, in their general conclusion: -

The details forming the basis of these general statements, - which are cold abstractions, necessarily incapable of presenting the living action and passion of the countless individuals from whom they are derived, - exhibit a degree of widespread ignorance, vice, and suffering, for the disclosure of which the country was wholly unprepared. For this national moral evil there is no remedy but a national education; and the prsentation of the Report was followed, on the part of Lord Ashley, by a motion for 'A Moral and Religious Education of the Working Classes'. He sustained his motion by a speech, in which, after expressing his heartfelt thanks to the Commissioners for 'an exercise of talent and vigour never surpassed by any public servants', he gave a comprehensive, massive, and most impressive summary of the results of their labours. Few who were in the House on that night will ever forget the effect produced when, urging on his audience to consider the rapid progress of time, and the appalling rapidity with which a child of nine years of age, abandoned to himself, and to companions like himself, is added to the ranks of viciousness, misery, and disorder in manhod, he turned from the Speaker, and looking round on those of his own order, exclaimed - 'You call these poor people improvident and immoral, and so they are; but that improvidence and immorality are the results of our neglect, and, in some measure, of our example. Declare this night that you will enter on a novel and a better course - that you will seek their temporal through their eternal welfare - and the blessing of God will rest upon your endeavours; and, perhaps, the oldest among you may live to enjoy for himself and for his children the opening day of the immortal, because the moral glories of the British Empire.'

This appeal was met on the part of the Secretary of State for the Home Deparment, Sir James Graham, by the answer that he had matured a plan which might be regarded as the first effort of Government to introduce a national system of education. There were unquestionably elements of good in the education clauses, particularly as they were altered in the course of debate, and they might have formed the basis of institutions expanding and improving by experience, until they were put in harmony with the feelings, and became adequate to the wants of the people; but, unfortunately, whatever may have been the real intentions of the Minister, the announcement of his plan had the effect of exciting in a violent degree the sectarian animosities of the people; and after having arrayed from one end of the kingdom to another in desperate conflict Churchman against Dissenter, and Dissenter against Churchman, and different sections of each against all the rest, terminated, not only in the loss of any measure for education, but in the defeat of the amendment of the Factory Act, to which the Minister had attached his scheme of National Education. Consequently, the evils resulting from ignorance, remain as before. The Factory Act will, however, be amended. Government announced on February 6, the intention of limiting the labour of children, under thirteen, to six hours daily.

But although the opportunity of making a nationl provision for education has for the present been lost, yet the exposure of the total inadequacy of existing institutions for the intellectual and moral training of the people, has not been without a useful result. Within the space of a few months after the publication of the Reports of the 'Children's Employment Commission', and immediately after the failure of the Government plan of education, the friends of the Established Church raised in voluntary contributions an educational fund amounting to nerly £200,000; and one denomination of Dissenters (the Independents) at their first meeting, subscribed towards a similar fund upwards of £17,000, and pledged themselves to use their utmost exertions to increse this sum to £100,000 in the space of five years. The Methodists also have pledged themselves to raise £200,000 in seven years, and found 700 schools; other bodies of Dissenters have followed in the same track; so that the people have already put to shame the 'National Grant of £30,000', the utmost amount ever yet voted by Parliament for the education of the country - a sum scarcely sufficient to defray the expense of one convict ship, or to maintain for a year one single prison!

The two commissions on which Dr Southwood Smith has been engaged, have unavoidably turned his mind away from the speculative studies which at one period occupied him more exclusively, and have converted him from a thinker into a worker. Circumstances connected with his profession had long forced upon his observation the wretched state of the dwellings of the poor, and this disease, suffering, and death produced by the noxious exhalations that arise from the unsewered, undrained, and uncleansed localities into which their houses are crowded. 'Nature', said he, 'with her burning sun, her stilled and pent-up wind, her stagnant and teeming marsh, manufactures plague on a large and fearful scale: poverty in her hut, covered with her rags, surrounded with her filth, striving with all her might to keep out the pure air, and to increase the heat, imitates nature but too successfully; the the process and the product are the same, the only difference is in the magnitude of the result'. In the year 1837, this result was produced in certain of the metropolitan districts to such an unusual extent as to attract the attention of the Poor Law commissioners. They requested Drs Southwood Smith, Arnott and Kay to investigate the cause. The districts assigned to Dr Smith were Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, and he adopted the plan of writing a ltieral description of what he saw in his tour over these unknown regions. Of the many pictures of squalid wretchedness presented, the following may serve as specimens: -


Of St John Street, a close and densely populated place, in which malignant fever has prevailed in almost every house, he says: -


These descriptions can only be compared to Howard's account of the 'State of Prisons', fifty years ago. The jail fever was then a recognized and prevalent disease; it is now only a subject of history. So may the typhus fever of London be fifty years hence. It requires only an enlightened legislature to order, and efficient officers to enforce known remedies.

The impression produced by the entire Report, portions of which have now been extracted, led to the motion made by the Bishop of London, in the Session of 1839, for an extension of the inquiry into the state of other towns in the United Kingdom. Early in the following Session (1840), Mr Slaney obtained a Select Committee of the House of Commons for inquiring into the 'Health of Towns'. Dr Southwood Smith was the first witness examined before this Committee, who largely quote his 'valuable evidence' in their Report, and refer the legislatiure to the important paper which he furnished to them, entitled 'Abstract of a Report on the prevalence of Fever in Twenty Metropolitan Unions during the year 1838', which they reprinted in their Appendix.

The urgency of the case had now attracted the notice of Government, and in particular had impressed the noble Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Marquis of Normanby;
____________________
From the Wikipedia:

Constantine Henry Phipps, 1st Marquess of Normanby KG GCB GCH (May 15, 1797 – July 28, 1863) was a politician and author of the United Kingdom. He was the son of Henry Phipps, 1st Earl of Mulgrave (1755–1831) and great-grandson of Sir Constantine Henry Phipps (1656–1723). He studied at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was the second President of the Cambridge Union Society, then sat for the family borough of Scarborough when he attained his majority. However after dissenting from the family politics, such as by speaking in favour of Catholic emancipation, he resigned his seat and lived in Italy for two years. On his return in 1822 he was elected for Higham Ferrers and made a considerable reputation by political pamphlets and by his speeches in the house. He was returned for Malton at the general election of 1826, becoming a supporter of Canning. He was already known as a writer of romantic tales, The English in Italy (1825); in the same year he made his appearance as a novelist with Matilda, and in 1828 he produced another novel, Yes and No. He succeeded his father as earl of Mulgrave in 1831. He was sent out as Governor of Jamaica and was afterwards appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1835–1839). He was created the first marquess of Normanby on June 25, 1838, and held successively the offices of colonial secretary and home secretary in the last years of Lord Melbourne’s ministry. While Colonial Secretary, he wrote a letter of instructions to William Hobson, in which the government's policy for the sovereignty of New Zealand was set out. From 1846 to 1852 he was ambassador at Paris, to and from 1854-1858 minister at Florence. The publication in 1857 of a journal kept in Paris during the stormy times of 1848 (A Year of Revolution), brought him into violent controversy with Louis Blanc, and he came into conflict with Lord Palmerston and Mr Gladstone, after his retirement from the public service, on questions of French and Italian policy. He died in London on July 28, 1863. He had married in 1818 the daughter of Thomas Henry Liddell, 1st Baron Ravensworth, and was succeeded as marquess by his son George.

Thus he knew the Brownings, who were in Florence from 1846-1861. While Southwood Smith, visiting his daugher Emily, Mazzini's friend, in Florence in 1856, would likely have renewed his friendship with Normanby.

____________

but like many others, being unable to dismiss a doubt whether there were not some exaggerations in these descriptions, he resolved to verify their correctness by a personal inspection of the districts in question. He accordingly accompanied Dr Southwood Smith in a visit to Whitechapel and Bethnal Green, and was so deeply affected by what he saw, that he declared his instant conviction, that 'so far from any exaggeration having crept into the descriptions which had been given, they had not conveyed to his mind an adequate idea of the truth'; as indeed no words can do. Lord Ashley afterwards performed the same painful round in company with Dr Smith, and expressed himself in a similar manner.*
___________

*These statements are strictly authentic. They went privately, and unattended, into the most squalid and hideous abodes of filth, and misery, and vice, and might well express themselves strongly in public after what they witnessed. H.
___________

In the Session of 1841, Lord Normanby introduced into Parliament his Bill for the 'Drainage of Buildings'; and in his speech on moving the second reading of the Bill on February 12, he acknowledged the services of Dr. Southwood Smith, in the following terms. 'I cannot allude to them', he said, 'without at once expressing my obligations to that indefatigably benevolent gentleman for much useful information which I have derived from him, with whom I have had the satisfaction of much personal communication on this subject'. The principal provisions of this Bill regarded the drainage of houses, the regulation of the width of lanes and alleys, and the form and conveniences of dwellings. The bishop of London warmly supported the measure: - 'As presiding over the spiritual interests of the metropolis, he felt deeply interested in a Bill which he was satisfied would so materially affect them: and being thoroughly convinced that the physical condition of the poor was intimately connected with their moral and religious state, and the two exerted a mutual influence upon each other, he thankfully hailed the present measure as the first step towards an elevation of that class of the community in the scale of social comfort and order'. Lord Ellenborough followed in the same spirit: - 'It is idle,' said he, 'to build churches, to erect school-houses, and to employ clergymen and schoolmasters, if we do no more. Our first object should be to improve the physical condition of the poor labourer, - to place him in a position in which he can acquire self-respect; above all things to give him a home'.

But before this measure had passed, there was a dissolution of Parliament, and a change in the administration. The present ministers have appointed a Commission of Inquiry into the state of large towns and populous districts, with a view, chiefly, to report on remedies; which remedies, however, notwithstanding the urgency of the case are still delayed. In an extended examination before these Commissioners Dr Southwood Smith states that the disease formerly described by him, still continues, and with increasing virulence; that a new epidemic is now ravaging the metropolis, far more extensive and fatal than the preceding; that the poorer classes in their neglected districts, are still exposed to causes of disease, suffering, and death which are peculiar to them, and the malignant influence of which is steady, unceasing, and sure. His words are too terrible to need any comment: -

In conclusion, Dr Smith enforced in earnest language, the consideration that this whole class of evils is remediable; that it does not belong to that description of evil which is mingled with good in the conditions of our being, but to that much larger sum of suffering, which is the consequence of our own ignorance and apathy; -

Dr Smith is now engaged with Lord Ashley and other influential and benevolent men, in the formation of an Association for improving the dwellings of the industrious classes, by the erection of comfortable, cleanly, well-drained and ventilated houses, to be let to families in sets of rooms, with an ample supply of water on each floor; a fair return for the capital invested being secured. Eleemosynary relief forms no part of the undertaking, as tending to destroy the independence of those whom it is designed to benefit. The association has fully matured its plans, and will endeavour practically to show by model-houses what may be done by combination to lessen the expensiveness of the dwellings of the poor, and to increase their healthfulness and comforts.

Though the sanatary conditions of the working classes has been the especial object of Dr Southwood Smith of late years, he has not forgotten the wants of the middle classes in the season of sickness. These are not at first sight so obvious; but there are circumstances which have never been sufficiently considered, that place many, whose station in life removes them above the evils of poverty, in a worse condition when overtaken by disease than the poor who can obtain admission into the hospitals. Numbers of the middle classes annually leave their homes and families and flock to London, as to a common centre, to find employment, or to complete their education. Others resort to it from distant parts of the country for medical or surgical advice. Strangers and foreigners constantly visit it. When attacked by disease - a close and comfortless lodging in a noisy street, with no better attendance than the already overtasked servant of all work, or a landlady, who begins to dread infection, or the non-payment of her rent, - is the lot of many a delicately minded and sensitive person in the pain of fever or inflammation, with all the desolation of the feeling of absence from home and friends.

Out of a sympathy with such sufferers, arose in Dr Smith's mind the idea of founding an institution on the principles of the great clubs, arranged with every requisite for a place of abode in sickness, and provided with regular medical officers and nurses; the principle of admission being, as in the case of the clubs, a certain yearly subscription, and a fixed weekly payment during residence in it. Such institutions are not uncommon on the continent, though, until the present time, none have existed in this country. That originated by Dr Southwood Smith, under the name of the 'Sanatorium', was opened in March, 1842, at Devonshire Place House in the New Road. the house is well calculated for an experimental attempt, but is not sufficiently large to carry out the purposes which he contemplated. These would extend to suites of rooms, kept at a regular temperature for consumptive cases, and to a separate building for fever cases, which are now totally excluded. It appears only to want greater publicity to attain its full scope of usefulness; but unless supported by the class for whom it is designed it cannot be maintained at all. that such a club is certain to be well supported at some period not far distance, we can plainly see; but the attempt may be premature. Its founder - deriving no personal advantage from the design, but devoting much time and labour to its advancement - has rested its claim to public support simply on the ground, that, as when the middle and higher classes combine to found public schools and colleges, and to build and endow churches, they solicit the contributions of the rich and benevolent because no new thing, however excellent in itself, or however affluent in the means of securing its ultimate independence and prosperity, can be set on foot without some capital; so this institution appeals to the public for assistance, to enable it to mitigate suffering, to shorten the duration of disease, and to save life. The Bank of England, and the large and influential merchants' houses have seen the good of the undertking, and have contributed largely to promote it; nor should we omit to notice in particular the strenuous exertions of Mr Thomas Chapman, the Chairman of the Sanatorium Committee.

Amidst his many arduous and apparently endless labours, some words of encouragement should be addressed to Dr Southwood smith, who in his private station devotes himself to the diffusion of philosophical truth, and to the instruction of the people in some of the most practically interesting and least understood parts of knowledge. He has described for them the wonderful structures that form the outward and visible machinery of life, and the still more wonderful results of its action - the processes that constitute the vital functions. He has shown the brighter portion of the height and depth of our human nature in the Sources of Happiness, and has proved that 'in the entire range of the sentient creation, without a single exception, the higher the organized structure, the greater the enjoyment to which it ministers and in which it terminates'. He has so expounded the philosophy of Pain, as to communicate to the mourning and desponding, heart and hope, and has taught in the noblest sense the uses of adversity. He has still to deduce from the action of physical agents on living structures the laws of health, and to expound the intellectual and moral constitution based on the physical and growing out of it; without a knowledge of which, neither the mother nor the educator can avoid the most pernicious errors, nor ultimately reach their goal. There are minds and hearts that thank him for what he has already accomplished, and that anxiously await the completion of his work.

By his public labours Dr Smith has awakened the attention of the people at large, and of the legislature, to those physical causes of suffering, disease, and premature death, which, while they afflict the whole community, press with peculiar severity on the poorer classes; and has shown not only that these causes are removable, but the means by which human wisdom and energy may certainly succeed in removing them And he is peculiarly fitted to render services to the community on this important subject, in consequence of his intimate acquaintnce with that dreadful train of diseases which are entailed on humanity by our inattention to removing the causes of the febrile poison.

Lord Ashley is yet young, and few men have before them a more noble, or more successul career. He has proved that he possesses the qualities requisite for the performance of the mission to which he has felt the vocation. He is not only intellectual, but possessed of the greatest industry, perseverance, and confidence in his cause, yet diffident of himself from the very depth of his feeling concerning it; not wanting in firmness, yet candid and conciliating, and though earnest even to enthusiasm, tempering and directing the impulses of zeal by a sober and sound judgement. His singleness of purpose, his unquestioned sincerity and honesty, his diligence in collecting facts, his careful sifting, lucid arrangement, and concise and candid exposiiton of them, and his plain unaffected language and unpretending address, have secured him the deeply respectful attention even of the House of Commons. Sustained in his appeals to that difficult assembly by the profound consciousness that the cause he advocates must engage on its side the sympathies of our common humanity, on which he throws himself with a generous confidence, he often produces the highest results of eloquence. He has already calmed the fears of the capitalists; conciliated the Government; engaged the co-operation of the Legislature; placed under the protection of the Law the children of the factories; placed under the protection of the Law the still more helpless children doomed to the mines and collieries; and to the female children and women, heretofore confined therein, he has said - 'You are free, and shall do the work of beasts in the attitude of beasts, no more'. Lord Ashley has still to emancipate apprentices; to obtain a general registration of accidents; to improve the localities and dwellings of the poor; and to give the compensating benefit of education to those whose early years are spent in labour. Because the first attempts to accomplish these great objects have failed, let no evasions, obstacles, delays, discourage him, not let him -

                                                Bate a jot, -
   Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
   Right onward.

Ages shall honor, in their hearts enshrined, thee,
SOUTHWOOD SMITH, Physician of Mankind
Bringer of Air, Light, Health into the home
Of the rich Poor of happier years to come.

                                         Let his page,
Which charms the chosen Spirits of the Age,
Fold itself up for a serener clime
Of years to come, and find its recompense
In that just expectation.
                                         Shelley

alter Landor, when a Rugby boy, was famous, among other feats of strength and skill, for the wonderful precision with which he used a cast-net; and he was not often disposed to ask permission of the owners of thos ponds or streams that suited his morning's fancy. One day a farmer suddenly came down upon him; and ordered him to desist, and give up his net. Whereupon Landor instantly cast his net over the farmer's head; caught him; entangled him; overthrew him; and when he was exhausted, addressed the enraged and discomfited face beneath the meshes, till the farmer promised to behave discreetly. The pride that resented a show of intimidation, the prudence that instantly foresaw the only means of superseding punishment, and the promptitude of will and action, are sufficiently conspicuous. The wilful energy and self-dependent force of character displayed by Walter Landor as a boy, and accompanied by physical power and activity, all of which were continued through manhood, and probably have been so, to a great extent, even up to the present time, have exerted an influence upon his genius of a very peculiar kind: - a genius healthy, but the healthfulness not always well applied - resolute, in a lionlike sense, but not intellectually concentrated and continuous: and seeming to be capable of mastering all things except its own wilful impulses.

Mr Landor is a man of genius and learning, who stands in a position unlike that of any other eminent individual of his time. He has received no apparent influence from any one of his contemporaries; nor have they or the public received any apparent influence from him. The absence of any fixed and definite influence upon the public is actually as it seems; but that he has exercised a considerable influence upon the minds of many of his contemporaries is inevitable, because so fine a spirit could never have passed through any competent medium without communicating its electric forces, although from the very fineness of its elements, the effect, like the cause, has been of too subtle a nature to leave a tangible or visible impress.

To all these causes combined is attributable the singular fact, that although Walter Savage Landor has been before the public as an author during the last fifty years, his genius seldom denied, but long since generally recognized, and his present position admissibly in that of the highest rank of authors - and no man higher - there has never been any philosophical and critical estimate of his powers. Admired he has often been abundantly, but the admiration has only been supported by 'extract', or by an off-hand opinion. The present paper does not pretend to supply this great deficiency in our critical literature; it will attempt to do no more than 'open up' the discussion.

Walter Landor, when at Rugby school, was a leader in all things, yet who did not associate with his schoolfellows - the infallible sign of a strong and original character and course through life. He was conspicuous there for his resistance to every species of tyranny, either of the masters and their rules, or the boys and their system of making fags, which things he resolutely opposed 'against all odds'; and he was, at the same time, considered arrogant and overbearing in his own conduct. He was almost equally famous for riding out of bounds, boxing, leaping, net-casting, stone-throwing, and for making Greek and Latin verses. Many of these verses were repeated at Rugby forty years after he had left the school. The 'master', however, studiously slighted him so long, that when at last the token was given of appreciation of certain Latin verses, the indignant young classic being obliged to copy them out fairly in the 'play-book', added a few more, commencing with, -

Haec sunt malorum pessima carminum
Quot Landor unquam scripsit; at accipe
Quae Tarquini servas cloacam,
Unde tuum, dea flava nomen, &

From Rugby to Trinity College, Oxford, was the next remove of Walter Savage Landor. He was 'rusticated' for firing off a gun in the quadrangle; but as he never intended to take a degree, he did not return. He left Oxford - let all the juvenile entities who have taken up facile pens of judgement about Mr Landor during the last ten years, tremble as they read, and 'doubt their own abilities' - in the summer of 1793, when he put forth a small volume of poems. They were published by Cadell, and it will not be thought very surprising that the first poems of a young man, at that time quite unknown to the world, should in the lapse of fifty years have become out of print. His next performances may, with sufficient trouble, be obtained. They are the poems of 'Gebir', Chrysaor', the 'Phoeacans', &c, and the very high encomiums passed upon 'Gebir' by Southey, with whom Landor was not acquainted till some twelve years afterwards, were accounted as sufficient fame by their author. Southey's eulogy of the poem appeared in the Critical Review, to the great anger of Gifford, whose translation of 'Juvenal' was by no means so much praised in the same number. One of the most strikingly characteristic facts in connexion with Mr Landor is, that while he has declared his own doubts as to whether Nature intended him for a poet, 'because he could never please himself by anything he ever did of that kind', it must be perfectly evident to everybody who knows his writings, that he never took the least pains to please the public. The consequences were almost inevitable.

After leaving Trinity, Mr. Landor passed some months in London, leanring Italian and avoiding all society; he then retired to Swansea, where he wrote 'Gebir' - lived in comparative solitude - made love - and was happy.

The 'attitude' in which the critical literati of the time received the poem of 'Gebir', was very much the same as though such a work had never been published. A well-written critique, however, did appear as one exception, in a northern provincial paper, in which Mr Landor was compared, in certain respects, with Goethe; another we have also seen, which was full of grandly eloquent and just expressions of appreciation - printed, we believe, in Aberdeen, within two years since, and signed G.G.; - but the earliest was written by Southey, as previously stated. No doubt Mr Landor has read the latter, but it is his habit (and one more common among authors of original genius than is at all suspected) never to read critiques upon himself. His feeling towards this department of literature may be estimated by his offer of a hot penny roll and a pint of stout, for breakfast (!) to any critic wh could write one of his Imaginary Conversations - an indigestible pleasantry which horribly enraged more than one critic of the time. Of 'Gebir', however, Coleridge was accustomed to speak in terms of great praise; till one day he herd Southey speak of it with equal admiration, after which Coleridge altered his mind - 'he did not admire it - he must have been mistaken'.

A few biographical memoranda of Mr Landor will be found interesting, previous to offering some remarks on his genius and works. During the time he was studying Italian in London, after leaving Trinity, his godfather, General Powell, was anxious that he should enter the army, for which he seemed peculiarly adapted, excepting that he entertained republican principles which 'would not do there'. This proposal being negatived, his father offered to allow him £400 per annum, if he would adopt the law and reside in the Temple; but declared that he would allow him but little more than one-third of that sum, if he refused. Of course Walter Landor well knew that he might have enjoyed a gay London life with £400 per annum, in the Temple, and neglected the law, as, here and there, a young gentleman of the Temple is apt to do; he, however, preferred to avoid false pretences, accepted the smaller income, and studied Italian.

Mr Landor wrote verses in Italian at this period, which were not very good, yet not perhaps worse than Milton's. The poetry of Italy did not captivate his more severely classical taste at first; he says it seemed to him 'like the juice of grapes and melons left on yesterday's plate'. He had just been reading Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Pindar. But his opinion was altered directly he read Dante, which he did not do till some years afterwards.

That his uncle was not so far wrong in thinking Landor well suited to a military life, the following anecdote will serve to attest. - At the breaking out of the Spanish war against the French, he was the first Englishman who landed in Spain. He raised a few troops at his own expense and conducted them from Corunna to Aguilar, the head quarters of Gen. Blake, Viceroy of Gallicia. For this he received the thanks of the Supreme Junta in the Madrid Gazette, together with an acknowledgement of the donation of 20,000 reals from Mr Landor. He returned the letters and documents, with his commission, to Don Pedro Cevallos, on the subversion of the Constitution by Ferdinand - telling Don Pedro that he was willing to aid a people in their assertion of its liberties against the antagonist of Europe, but that he could have nothing to do with a perjuror and traitor.

Mr Landor went to Paris in the beginning of the century, where he witnessed the ceremony of Napoleon being made Consul for life, amidst the acclamations of multitudes. He subsequently saw the detrhoned and deserted Emperor pass through Tours on his way to embark, as he intended, for America. Napoleon was attended only by a single servant, and descended at the Prefecture, unrecognized by anybody except Landor. The people of Tours were most hostile to Napoleon; Landor had always felt a hatred towards him, and now he had but to point one finger at him, and it would have done what all the artillery of twenty years of war had failed to do. The people would have torn him to pieces. Need it be said Landor was too 'good a hater', and too noble a man, to avail himself of such an opportunity. He held his breath, and let the hero pass. Perhaps, after all, there was no need of any of this hatred on the part of Mr Landor, who, in common with many other excessively wilful men, was probably as much exasperated at Napoleon's commanding successes, as at his falling off from pure republican principles. Howbeit, Landor's great hatred, and yet 'greater' forbearance are hereby chronicled.



In 1806, Mr Landor sold several estates in Warwickshire which had been in his family nearly seven hundred years, and purchased Lantony and Comjoy in Monmouthshire, where he laid out nearly £70,000. Here he made extensive improvements, giving employment daily, for many years, to between twenty and thirty labourers in building and planting. He made a road at his own expense, of eight miles long, and planted and fenced half a million trees. The infamous behaviour of some tenants caused him to leave country. At this time, he had a million more trees all ready to plant, which, as he observed, 'were lost to the country by driving me from it. I may speak of their utility, if I must not of my own'. The two chief offenders were brothers who rented farms of Mr Landor to the amount of £1,500 per annum, and were to introduce an improved system of Suffolk husbandry. Mr Landor got no rent from them, but all manner of atrocious annoyances. They even rooted up his trees, and destroyed whole plantations. They paid nobody. When neighbours and workpeople applied for money, Mr Landor says, 'they were referred to the Devil, with their wives and families, while these brothers had their two bottles of wine upon the table. As for the Suffolk system of agriculture, wheat was sown upon the last of May, and cabbages for winter food were planted in August or September. Mr Landor eventually remained master of the field, and drove his tormentors across the seas; but so great was his disgust at these circumstances that he resolved to leave England. Beofre his departure he cause his house, which had cost him some £8,000, to be taken down, that his son might never have the chance of similar vexations in that place.

In 1811, Mr Landor married Julia, the daughter of J. Tuillier de Malaperte, descendant and representative of the Baron de Neuve-ville, first gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles the Eighth. He went to reside in Italy in 1815, and during several years occupied the Palazzo Medici, in Florence. Subsequently he purchased the beautiful and romantic villa of Count Gherardesca at Fiesole, with its gardens and farms, scarcely a quarter of an hour's walk from the ancient villa of Lorenzo de' Medici, and resided there many years in comparative solitude.



Of the difference between the partialities of the public, and the eventual judgements of the people; between a deeply-founded fame and an ephemeral interest, few more striking examples will perhaps be discovered in future years than in the solitary course of Walter Savage Landor amidst the various 'lights of his day'. He has incontestably displayed original genius as a writer; the highest critical faculty - that sympathy with genius and knowledge which can only result from imagination and generous love of truth - and also a fine scholarship in the spirit as well as the letter of classical attainments. But the public, tacitly, has denied his claims, or worse - admitted them with total indifference, - letting fall from its benumbed fingers, work after work, not because any one ventured to say, or perhaps even to think, the books were unworthy, but because the hands were cold. A writer of original genius may be popular in his lifetime, as sometimes occurs, by means of certain talents and tacts comprehended in his genius; by the aid of startling novelties, or by broad and general effects; and by the excitement of adventitious circumstances; - on which ground is to be worked the problem of Lord Byron's extensive popularity with the very same daily and yearly reading public that made mocks and mows at Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Shelley, and Keats. But, as a general rule, the originality of a man, say and do what he may, is necessarily in itself an argument against his rapid popularity. In the case of Mr Landor, however, other causes than the originality of his faculty have opposed his favour with the public. He has the most select audiences perhaps, - the fittest, fewest, - of any distinguished author of the day; and this of his choice. 'Give me', he said in one of his prefaces, 'ten accomplished men for readers, and I am content'; - and the event does not by any means so far as we could desire, outstrip the modesty, or despair, or disdain, of this aspiration. He writes criticism for critics, and poetry for poets: his drama, when he is dramatic, will suppose neither pit nor gallery, not critics, nor dramatic laws. He is not a publican among poets - he does not sell his Amreeta cups upon the highway.He delivers them rather with the dignity of a giver, to ticketed persons; analysing their flavour and fragrance with a learned delicacy, and an appeal to the esoteric. His very spelling of English is uncommon and theoretic. He has a vein of humour which by its own nature is pecularly subtle and evasive; he therefore refines upon it, by his art, in order to prevent anybody discovering it without a grave, solicitous, and courtly approach, which is unspeakably ridiculous to all the parties concerned, and which no doubt the author secretly enjoys. And as if poetry were not, in English, a sufficiently unpopular dead languages, he has had recourse to writing poetry in Latin; with dissertations on the Latin tongue, to fence it out doubly from the populace. 'Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo'.

Whether Mr Landor writes Latin or English, poetry or prose, he does it all with a certain artistic composure, as if he knew what he was doing, and respected the cunning of his right hand. At times he displays an equal respect for his wilfulness. In poetry, his 'Gebir', the 'Phocaeans' and some other performances take a high classic rank. He can put out extraordinary power both in description and situation; but the vitality, comprehended in the power, does not overflow along the inferior portions of the work, so as to sustain them to the level of the reader's continued attention. the poet rather builds up to his own elevations than carries them out and on: and the reader passes from admiration to admiration, by separate estates or shocks, and not by a continuity of interest through the intervals of emotion. Thus it happens that his best dramatic works, -those, the impression of which on the mind is most definite and excellent, - are fragmentary; and that his complete dramas are nt often read through twice, even by readers who applaud them, but for the sake of a particular act or scene.

A remark should be made on Mr Landor's blank verse, in which the poems just named, and several others are written. It is the very best of the regular syllable class, the versification of 'numbers', as they have been characteristically called by the schools. His blank verse is not only the most regular that ever was written, but it is the most sweet, and far less monotonous than we should expect of a musical system which excluded occasional discords. It has all the effect of the most melodious rhyming heroic verse: indeed, it often gives the impression of elegiac verses in rhyme. As blank verse it is a very bad model. There is more freedom in his dramatic verse, and always the purest style.

His dramatic works (except the compact little scenes entitled 'Pentalogia', which are admirable) are written upon an essentially undramatic principle; or, more probably, on no principle at all. Mr Landor well knows 'all the laws', and they seem to provoke his will to be lawless. In this species of drama-looking composition he displays at times the finest passion, the most pure and perfect style of dramatic dialogue, and an intensity of mental movements, with their invisible, undeclared, yet necessarily tragic results.ì; all of which  proves him to possess the most wonderful three-fourths of a great dramatic genius which ever appeared in the world. But the fourth part is certainly wanting by way of making good his ground to the eyes, and ears, and understanding of the masses. In his Andrea of Hungary the action does not commence till the last scene of the third act; and is not continued in the first scene of the fourth! Instead of the expected continuation, after all this patience, the confounded reader has his breath taken away by the sauntering entrance of Boccaccio - the novelist - accompanied by Fiametta, who having nothing whatever to do with the drama, the former sings her little song! This extremely free-and-easy style of treading the boards is so very new and delightful that it excites the idea of continuing the scene by the introduction of the Genius of the Drama, with a paper speech coming out of his mouth, on which is inscribed the Laws of Concentration and Continuity, the Laws of Progressive action and the Art of construction. To whom, Enter the Author, with a cast-net. He makes his cast to admiration; trips up the heels of the Genius of the Drama, and leaves it sprawling. It is his own doing.

In whatever Mr Landor writes, his power, when he puts it forth, is of the first order. He is classical in the highest sense. His conceptions stand out, clearly cut and fine, in a magnitude and nobility as far as possible removed from the small and sickly vagueness common to this century of letters. If he seems obscure at times, it is from no infirmity or inadequacy of thought or word, but from extreme concentration, and involution in brevity - for a short string can be tied in a knot, as well as a long one. He cen be tender, as the strong can best be; and his pathos, when it comes, is profound. His descriptions are full and startling; his thoughts, self-produced and bold; and he has the art of taking a commonplace under a new aspect, and of leaving the Roman brick, marble. In marble indeed, he seems to work: for there is an angularity in the workmanship, whether of prose or verse, which the very exquisiteness of the polish renders more conspicuous. You may complain too of hearing the chisel: but after all, you applaud the work - it is a work well done. The elaboration produces no sense of heaviness, - the severity of the outline does not militate against beauty; - if it is cold, it is also noble - if not impulsive, it is suggestive. As a writer of Latin poems, he ranks with our most successful scholars and poets; having less harmony and majesty than Milton had, - when he aspired to the species of 'Life in Death',  - but more variety and majesty of utterance. Mr Landor's English prose writings possess most of the characteristics of his poetry: only they are more perfect in their class. His 'Pericles and Aspasia', and 'Pentameron' are books for the world and for all time, whenever the world and time shall come to their senses about them: complete in beauty of sentiment and subtlety of criticism. His general style is highly scholastic and elegant, - his sentences have articulations, if such an expression may be permitted, of very excellent proportions. And, abounding in striking images and thoughts, he is remarkable for making clear the ground around them, and for lifting them, like statues to pedestals, where they may be seen most distinctly, and strike with the most enduring though often the most gradual impression. This is the case both in his prose works and his poetry. It is more conspicuously true of some of his smaller poems, which for quiet classic grace and tenderness, and exquisite care in their polish, may best be compared with beautiful cameos and vases of the antique.

Two works should be mentioned - one of which is only known to a few among his admirers, and the other not at all. Neither of them were published, and though printed they were very little circulated. The first is entitled, 'Poems from the Arabic and Persian'. They pretended to be translations, but were written by Landor for the pleasure of misleading certain orientalists and other leanred men. In this he succeeded, and for the first time in the known history of such hoaxes, not to the discredit of the credulous, for the poems are extremely beautiful, and breathe the true oriental spirit throughout. They are ornate in fancy, - graceful, and full of unaffected tenderness. They were printed in 1800, with many extremely erudite notes; in writing which, the author, no doubt, laughed very much to himself at the critical labour and searching they would excite. The other production is called 'A Satire upon Satirists, and Admonition to Detractors', printed in 1836. It contins many just indignations, terrible denunciations, and cleaving blows against those who used not many years since to make a rabid crusade upon all genius; but the satire occasionally makes attacks upon some who do not deserve to be so harshly treated by a brother author: and we cannot but rejoice that this satire (in its present state) has not been published.

Mr Landor's wit and humour are of a very original kind, as previously remarked. Perhaps in none of his writings does their peculiarity occur so continuously as in a series of Letters, entitled 'High and Low Life in Italy'. Every sarcasm, irony, jest, or touch of humour, is secreted beneath the skin of each tingling member of his sentences. His wit and his humour are alike covered up amidst various things, apparently intended to lead the reader astray, as certain birds are wont to do when you approach the nests that contain their broods. Or, the main jests and knotty points of a paragraph are planed down to the smooth level of the rest of the sentences, so that the reader may walk over them without knowing anything of the matter. All this may be natural to his genius; it may also result from pride, or perversity. So far from seeking the public, his genius has displayed a sort f apathy, if not antipathy, to popularity; therefore, the public must court it, if they would enjoy it; to possess yourself of his wit you must scrutinize; to be let into the secret of his humour you must advance 'pointing the toe'. such are the impressions derivable from Mr Landor's writings. In private social intercourse nothing of the kind is apparent, and there are few men whose conversation is more unaffected, namely, pleasing, and instructive.

The imagination of Mr Landor is richly graphic, classical and subtly refined. In portraying a character, his imagination identifies itself with the mentality and with the emotions of its inner being, and all those idiosyncracies which may be said to exist between a man and himself., but with which few, if anybody else, have any business. In other respects, most of his characters - especially those of his own invention - might live, think, move, and have their being in space, so little does their author trouble himself with their corporeal conditions. Whether it be that their author feels his own physique so strongly that it does not ocur to him that any one else can need such a thing - he will find all that for them - or that it is the habit of his genius to abstract itself from corporeal realities (partly from the perverse love a man continually has of being his own 'opposite'), and ascend into a more subtle element of existence, - certain it is that many of his characters are totally without material or definite form; appear to live nowhere, and upon nothing, and to be very independent agents, to whom the practical action seldom or never occurs. 'They think, therefore they are'. They feel, and know (they are apt too often to knw as much as their author) therefore they are characters. But they are usually without bodily substance; and such form as they seem to have, is an abstraction which plays round them, but might go off in air at any time, and the loss be scarcely apparent. The designs of his larger works, as wholes, are also deficient in compactness of form, precision of outline, and condensation. They often seem wild, not at all intellectually, but from ungoverned will. It is difficult not to arrive at conclusions of this kind - though different minds will, of course, see differently - after a careful study of the dramas of Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, and Fra Rupert; the Pericles and Aspasia, the Pentemeron and Pentalogia, &c. The very title of the 'Imaginary Conversations' gives a strong foretaste of Mr Landor's predominating ideality, and dismissal of mortal bonds and conditions. The extraordinary production last named are as thoguh their author had been rarified while listening to the conversation, or th double soliloquies, of august Shades; all of which he had carefully written down on resuming his corporeality, and where his memory failed him he had supllied the deficiency with some sterling stuff of his own. The Landorean 'peeps' seen through these ethereal dialogues and soliloquies of the mighty dead, are seldom to be mistaken; and though hardly at times in accordance with their company, are seldom unworthy of the highest.

As a partial exception to some of the foregoing remarks should be mentioned the 'Examination of William Shakespeare before Sir thomas Lucy, Knt. touching Deer-stealing'. Of all the thousands of books that have been issued from the press about Shakespeare, this one of Mr Landor's is by far the most admirable. It is worth them all. There is the high-water mark of genius upon every page, lit by as true a sun as ever the ocean mirrored. Perfect and inimitable from beginning to end, that it has not become the most popular of all the books relating to Shakespeare, is only to be accounted for by some perversity or dullness of the public. The book is, certainly, not read. There is great love and reading bestowed upon every cant about Shakespeare, and much interst has been shown in all the hoaxes. Perhaps the public thought this book was authentic.


In an age of criticism like this, when to 'take' a position over a man and his work is supposed to include proportionable superior powers of judgement, though not one discovery, argument, or searching remark, be adduced in proof; when analysis is publicly understood to mean everything that can be done for the attainment of a correct estimate, and the very term, alone, of synthesis looks pedantic and outre; and when any anonymous young man may gravely seat himself, in the fancy of his unknowing readers, far above an author who may have published works - of genius, learning, or knowledge and experience, at the very period that his We Judge was perhaps learning to write at school, - it is only becming in an attempt like that of the present paper, to disclaim all assumption of finality of judgement upon a noble veteran of establisehd genius, concerning whom there has never yet been one philosophically elaborated criticism. To be the first to 'break ground' upon the broad lands of the the authors of characters and scenes from real life, is often rather a perilous undertaking for any known critic who values his reputation; but to unlock the secret chambers of an ethereal inventiveness, and pronounce at once upon its contents, would only manifest the most short-sighted presumption. Simply to have unlocked such chambers for the entrance of others, were task enough for one contemporary.

Any sincere and mature opinions of the master of an art are always valuable, and not the less so when commenting upon established reputations, or those about which a contest still exists. We may thus be shaken in our faith, or confirmed in it. Mr Landor's mode of expressing his opinion often amounts to appealing to an inner sense for a corroboration of the truth. He says, in a letter to a friend, 'I found the "Faery Queen" the most delightful book in the world to fall asleep upon by the seaside. Geoffrey Chaucer always kept me wide awake, and beat at a distance all other English poets but Shakespeare and Milton. In many places Keats approaches him'. After remarking on the faults and occasional affectations discoverable in two or three of the earliest poems of that true and beautiful genius, Mr Landor adds that he considers 'no poet (always excepting Shakespeare) displays so many happy expressions, or so vivid a fancy as Keats. A few hours in the Paecile with the Tragedians would have made him all he wanted - majestically sedate. I wonder if any remorse has overtaken his murderers'.

Mr Landor is not at all the product of the present age; he scarcely belongs to it; he has no direct influence upon it: but he has been an influence to some of its best teachers, and to some of the most refined illustrators of its vigorous spirit. For the rest - for the duty, the taste, or the favour of posterity - when a succession of publics shall have slowly accumulated a residuum of 'golden opinions' in the shape of pure admiring verdicts of competent minds, then only, if ever, will he attain his just estimation in the not altogether impartial roll of Fame. If ever? - the words fell from the pen - and the manly voice of him to whom they were applied, seems to call from his own clear altitude, 'Let the words remain'. For in the temple of posterity there have hitherto always appeared some immortalities which had better have burnt out, while some great works, or names, or both, have been suffered to drift away into oblivion. That such is likely to be the fate of the writings of Walter Savage Landor, nobody can for a moment believe; but were it so destined, and he could foresee the result, one can imagine his taking a secret pleasure in this resolution of his works into their primitive elements.

No sooner did the Housekeeper see them than she ran out of the room in great haste, and immediately returned with a pot of holy water and a bunch of hyssop, and said, 'Signor Licentiate, take this and sprinkle the room, lest some enchanter, of the many these books abound with, should enchant us, in revenge for what we intend to do in banishing them out of the world!' The Priest smiled at the Housekeeper's simplicity, and ordered the Barber to reach him the books, one by one, that they might see what they treated of; for, perhaps they might find some that did not deserve to be chastized by fire.                                                                                             Don Quixote

As one who drinks from a charmed cup
  Of foaming and sparkling and murmuring wine
Which a mighty Enchantress, filling up,
  Invites to love with her lips divine.
                                          Shelley

he latter lady, or 'fair shade' - whicever she may be - is not known personally, to anybody, we had almost said; but her poetry is known to a highly intellectual class, and she 'lives' in constant correspondence with many of the most eminent persons of the time. When, however, we consider the many strange and ingenious conjectures that are made in after years concerning authors who appeared but little among their contemporaries, of of whose biography little is actually known, we should not be in the least surprised, could we lift up our ear out of our grave a century hence, to hear some learned Thebans expressing shrewd doubts as to whether such an individual as Miss E.B. Barrett had ever really existed. Letters and notes, and exquisite English lyrics, and perhaps a few elegant Latin verses, and spirited translations from Aeschylus, might all be discovered under that name; but this would not prove that such a lady had ever dwelt among us. Certain admirable and erudite prose articles on the 'Greek Chrsitian Poets' might likewise be ascertained by the exhumations of sundry private letters and documents, touching periodical literature, to have been from the hand of that same 'Valerian'; but neither the poetry, nor the prose, not the delightfully gossiping notes to fair freinds, not the frank correspondence with scholars, such as Lady Jane Grey might have written to Roger Ascham - no, not even if the great-grandson of some learned Jewish doctor could show a note in Hebrew (quite a likely thing really to be extant), with the same signature, darkly translated by four letters, - nay, though he should display as a relic treasured in his family, the very pen, with its oblique Hebraic nib, that wrote it - not any one, nor all of those things coud be sufficient to demonstrate the fact that such a lady had really adorned the present century.

In such chiaroscuro, therefore, as circumstances permit, we will endeavour to offer sufficient grounds for our reader's belief, to the end that posterity may at least have the best authorities and precedents we can furnish. Confined entirely to her own apartment, and almost hermetically sealed, in consequence of some extremely delicate state of health, the poetess of whom we write is scarcely seen by any but her own family. But though thus separated from the world - and often, during many weeks at a time, in darkness almost equal to that of night, Miss Barrett has yet found means by extraordinary inherent energies to develope her inward nature; to give vent to the soul in a successful struggle with its destiny while on earth; and to attain and master more knowledge and accomplishments than are usually within the power of those of either sex who possess every adventitious opportunity, as well as health and industry. Five years of this imprisonment she has now endured, not with vain repinings, though deeply conscious of the loss of external nature's beauty; but with resignation, with patience, with cheerfulness, and generous sympathies towards the world without; - with indefatigable 'work' by thought, by book, by the pen, and with devout faith, and adoration, and a high and hopeful waiting for the time when this mortal frame 'putteth on immortality'.

The period when a strong prejudice existed against learned ladies and 'blues' has gone by, some time since; yet in case any elderly objections may still exist on this score, or that some even of the most liberal-minded readers may entertain a degree of doubt as to whether a certain austere exclusiveness and ungenial pedantry might infuse a slight tinge into the character of ladies possessing Miss Barrett's attainments, a few words may be added to prevent erroneous impressions on this score. Probably no living individual has a more extensive and diffuse acquaintance with literature - that of the present day inclusive - than Miss Barrett. Although she has read Plato, in the oriiginal, from beginning to end, and the Hebrew Bible from Genesis to Malachi (nor suffered her course to be stopped by the Chaldean), yet there is probably not a single good romance of the most romantic kind in whose marvellous and impossibile scene she has not delighted, over the fortunes of whose immaculate or incredible heroes and heroines she has not wept; not a clever novel or fanciful sketch of our own day, over the brightest pages of which she has not smiled inwardly, or laughed outright, just as their authors themselves could have desired. All of this, our readers may be assured, that we believe to be as strictly authentic as the very existence of the lady in question, although, as we have already confessed, we have no absolute knowledge of this fact. But lest the reader should exclaim, 'Then, after all, there really may be no such person!' we should bear witness to having been shown a letter of Miss Mitford's to a friend, from which it was plainly to be inferred that she had actually seen and conversed with her. The date has unfortunately escaped us.