expecting him. This confusion arose from his having recourse to his memorandum of his horse's hire, and, finding that he had actually hired it and rode to his curacy on the preceding Sunday, he was quite satisfied that he had performed divine service on the same day, and that his attendance was not required on the following one. As to his visiting engagements, the same unreflecting habits of mind were for ever involving him in most absurd mistakes. He had received a card to dine with the late excellent Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Sutton, who was then Bishop of Norwich. Careless into what hole or corner he threw his invitations, he soon lost sight of the card, and forgot it altogether. A year revolved, when on wiping the dust from some papers he had stuck on the glass over his chimney, the Bishop's invitation for a certain day of the month (he did not think of the year one instant) stared him full in the face, and taking it for granted, that it was a recent one, he dressed himself on the appointed day and proceeded to the palace. But his diocesan was in London, a circumstance of which, though a matter of some notoriety to the clergy of the diocese, he was quite unconscious; and he returned dinnerless home. These and other anecdotes characteristic of the singleness of his nature, and the entire abstraction of his mind, furnished the club with unfailing amusement-nor did these habitudes, which were constitutional and inwrought into his nature, render him a less valuable member of the rare collection of human eccentricities, that were to be found in that club in much higher perfection than in any similar association, with which it has been my lot to become acquainted. But this little gallery of portraits would be sadly imperfect, if an oddity who afforded infinite amusement at that good-humoured board, were to be passed by uncommemorated. This person was an extensive cloth-merchant, and to that occupation united the kindred one of tailor. By strict economy and attention to business, he had saved a considerable sum, and had risen into municipal consequence, being one of the aldermen of the corporation. Altogether, there could not be found a more curious specimen of provincial singularity. He was at once food for good-humoured mirth and philosophical speculation. Dr. Sayers, who had the art of drawing him out, made as much of him as Sir Astley Cooper would have done of an anatomical preparation, and handed him about just as that able lecturer would have handed a physiological lusus, equally rare and eccentric; and this he did with so much address, and with a gentleness of manner, that so completely negatived every symptom of satire, that the creature himself was amused and delighted with the farcical exhibition of his own absurdities. Nature too, in the outward composition of this singular being, seemed to have been slyly amusing herself at his expense. She had given him a good face and good features; but they were overshadowed by a most miraculous organ of a nose, so deformed and misshapen as to destroy the whole effect of a countenance in other respects not amiss. It was like a brick-kiln in the midst of a tolerably picturesque landscape, blotting out all by one overwhelming deformity. His stature was below the ordinary standard, but, as soon as he attained civic distinction, he added a cubit to it, by a strut, which, if not dignified, was at least meant to be so. In middle age, when his business allowed him a few leisure-hours for 2 F Nov.-VOL. XXIII, NO. XCV. reading, he betook himself to the study of modern history; and that he might have the whole chain of events unbroken in his mind, he would not look at the journals of the day, thinking, by close application, to overtake the existing conjuncture in the regular course of his studies. He had thus become, to a certain degree, conversant with that portion of European transactions that preceded the French revolution; but when that event took place, he was considerably in arrears, having got no farther than the Seven Years' War. His conversation turned upon nothing but what he had been reading; and the warm interest he expressed in the by-gone controversies and politics of so many years back, contrasted strikingly with the strong anxiety every body else was feeling amidst the eventful scenes that were actually passing before them. Thus, when the attention of the whole town hung in fearful suspense on the progress of Dumourier or Clairfait, our worthy tailor was still lingering in the camp of the great Frederic, or following in breathless perturbation the fortunes of the high-minded Maria Theresa of Austria; and so late even as the disastrous day of Ulm, when every one viewed with awe the cloud that blackened the horizon of human liberty, and every tongue was execrating the treachery of Mack, his sympathies were wholly absorbed in the disgraceful treaty of Closterseven, and his execrations vented upon its authors without stint or mercy. The awkward contretems into which he was perpetually slipping, by blending the topics and passions of half a century ago with what was actually going on under his nose, became so ridiculous, that a friend advised him to pay somewhat more attention to the present state of Europe. He received the advice with great good-humour, and immediately repaired to the city-library, where he remembered to have seen a volume entitled "The Present State of Europe." It was, in fact, an old book, published forty years before; but he was quite satisfied by its title that it was the very thing he wanted, to give him a correct knowledge of what was actually going on, and applied to it with great ardour. His conversation by this means became still more ridiculous; and somebody at the club having observed that the French had taken Ypres, and were pushing on to Bergen-op-zoom, it happened that he had been reading, the same morning, of the invasion of the Low Countries by Louis the Fourteenth. The coincidence of the names confirmed his hallucination, and he recapitulated the whole of that celebrated campaign, to the infinite annoyance of all, taking it all the while for granted that he was setting them right as to the exact state of things in the Netherlands at the time he was speaking. They used to tell some odd anecdotes of the overflowings of his historical lore, whilst he was in the act of measuring a customer for a suit of clothes. On one of these occasions, a plain matter-of-fact citizen being under his hands, the tailor could not refrain from inflicting upon him some of the Duke of Marlborough's exploits, a subject of which he was greatly enamoured. "The Imperialists," said he, " hung in their rear.- Pray how would you like your breeches?"" Full,” replied the other; "but don't let them hang in the rear."- "Prince Eugene came up," pursued the historical tailor, "in close column.-And how will you have your buttons ?"-"It is the same to me," said the customer-" in close column, if that is the wear."-"Ah!" continued the indefatigable man of tape and buckram, you can't guess how much 66 blood and ammunition it cost the Duke to gain Malplacquet;" a word to which he gave a peculiarly broad Norfolk pronunciation. "More fool he then," replied the other, who thought that he was talking of a Norwich Aspasia, of most acquiescing dispositions-" More fool he, in making such a fuss about gaining Moll Plackett-why there is not a soldier in his regiment that would have given more than a shilling and a glass of rum for her at any time." But this civic oddity was chiefly entertaining, as being a remarkable illustration of the old quarrel between theory and practice. For in his historical studies, he unwittingly imbibed the popular passions of the periods he was reading about; so that, retrospectively, he was a staunch Whig, and a warm patriot, in the utmost intensity of those designations; whilst, in fact, he was the most thorough-going of what was then called the Church and King party, and boiled over with the frothy fervour of the troublesome and noisy loyalty of the day. He was, in short, a personification of Burke's admirable remark upon the historical patriotism; which, after discharging its virtuous bile on King John, or Henry the Eighth, sits down with appetite to the coarsest job of modern corruption. For instance, he entered fully into the popular heats that prevailed during the American war, and seemed inspired with the plebeian passions of Wilkes and Beckford, denouncing general warrants, and the prosecutions of Woodfall and Almon, whilst, with a ludicrous inconsistency, as a Norwich Alderman, he was committing to prison every drunken vagabond who d--d the King-the very King, of whose infatuation with regard to America he was wont to indulge in expressions of abuse much more rancorous. So strange a combination of retrospective sedition and practical loyalty, raised at the club, as I have been told, unbounded mirth at the expense of the worthy alderman. But the animal had an acute, instinctive sense of his own interest; for he obtained a lucrative clothing contract by his loyalty, and died a knight, having carried up a foolish address in 1794. Sayers, in allusion to the man's historical whiggism, and regard to his own interests, said that B― was like a boatman, who, though he looked backwards, was sure to row onward. It is time, however, to return to our London Clubs. "To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new." The rest of the passage embodies much fine sense and deep philosophy. "We are very uncorrupt, and tolerably enlightened judges of past ages, where no passions deceive, and the whole train of circumstances, from the trifling cause to the tragical event, is set before us. Few are the partizans of departed tyranny, and to be a Whig on the business of a hundred years ago, is very consistent with every advan tage of present servility."-Thoughts on the Present Discontents, 1772. GYPSIES. dar'a to ports WHETHER from India's burning plains, ↑ ar to moitelor Or wild Bohemia's domains, Your steps were first directed ;- Whose stream, like Nile's, for ever runs Arabs of Europe. Gypsy race! Your Eastern manners, garb, and face None, none but you can now be styled Ye sole freebooters of the wood Since Adam Bell and Robin Hood: Kept every where asunder From other tribes;-King, Church, and State To freedom, sloth, and plunder, Your forest-camp-the forms one sees The ragged donkies grazing, O'er my young mind strange terrors threw : A more exalted notion Of Gypsy life, nor can I yet Gaze on your tents, and quite forget My former deep emotion.— For "auld lang syne" I'll not maltreat Come thou, too, black-eyed lass, and try 'Tis yours, I know, to draw at will And Plutus to importune;- And both may laugh at fortune. D'ISRAELI'S COMMENTARIES. HISTORY, by the tone with which most people speak of it, must, in their minds, exist as a sort of abstraction-a matter, in the creation of which nothing mortal was concerned, and with which neither accumulation of materials, nor inquiry, nor research, had any thing to do-a something, in fact, descended from the skies ready cut and dried; or, if really constructed in the world below the moon, the work of absolute philosophy, unbiassed by human perversions-of infallible sages, before whose eyes the views of men are all unrolled, and from whose searching glance no counsels of theirs are hid ;-but the vaguer feeling, doubtless, is the more prevalent one, that history is a something scarcely inferior in importance to revelation itself, and not at all so in authority-in reality, a second gospel, differing only from what is exclusively so entitled, because it is supposed to relate to political matters, and the affairs of this life solely, whereas the first refers wholly to religious ones, and is wholly confined to the next world. The intelligence it conveys is as little to be controverted, and the instruction equally valuable. We need only observe the solemnity and urgency with which parents, and pastors, and masters, and all that are in authority over us, inculcate the study of history upon the rising generation, to be convinced it is contemplated, at the very least, as the sine qua non of existence; and, accordingly, every body, we see, goes to it, doggedly, as to a duty, which is neither relieved by the prospect of pleasure, nor coupled with any useful, or even any distinct object. History must be read-read-with what view, or for what advantage, nobody points out, and few define to themselves. It must be supposed to work its own effects irresistibly; and so it surely must, if it work any. The only conceivable utility in studying the records of times gone by, is to add to the sum of our experience; and the use of that experience is to guide and cheer us through the complexities of existing circumstances. All wisdom proceeds on the bold supposition that nature is uniform-that the same passions exist in every sound frame, and are excitable by the same occurrences; and hence alone it is that there is room for conjecture, inference, calculation-prophecy. But bare names, naked facts, cold generalities, unconnected circumstances-how are they capable of working this or any kind of utility? To be made serviceable to us, we must see the links of human operations-we must understand the motives-we must draw off the veil that hangs over the workings of the individual, before we can estimate the worth of his actions, or judge of their wisdom, or determine how well or ill he fixed upon his ends, measured his means and employed them, and executed his final aims. Knowing something of these matters, facts grow up into the importance of personal experience, and co-operate with our own actual knowledge-add to our materials-our wisdom, and lift us above ourselves-qualify us to guide our fellows, and lead their judgments, and point their actions. No reading in the world, we verily believe-speaking with reference to what are regarded as legitimate histories—is so little instructive—is so little, besides, from any quality, inviting-so impossible to pursue with any steadiness-so little calculated to rouse the intellect, or even to keep the physical senses awake. And how comes this about? Plainly from the dry, cursory, unparticularizing, contracted, and contracting style with which they are all delivered. Some may say, from want of materials. No, there is no such want with respect to really important periods. Of modern times especially -the last two hundred and fifty years-materials abound. Authentic sources of information are thrown open daily. The truth is, too much is compressed within a given compass. The writer's main object is to furnish a flowing narrative-to pursue generalities only-to shun digressions, for fear the reader should lose the thread of the story, or the story itself become too Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First, King of England. By I. D'Israeli. 2 vols. 8vo. |