Will miss his punctual presence at their state- cross. But I, a jester, what have I to do Of reverence for duty; where he saw He followed where she pointed; right ahead and career of Sir Robert Peel-which, if reconsidered by the writer, would probably be amended. The Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill was carried by the Duke of Wellington against his own opinion of its moral and abstract propriety; but the repeal With greatness or the grave? The man and theme of the corn-laws was carried by Sir Robert Peel in The comment of my page may ill beseem: deference to his own strong and earnest convic- So be it-yet not less do I pay tribute true. tions of the wisdom and necessity of the measure For that in him to which I would bow down -convictions gradually formed by profound study Comes not of honors heaped upon his head, of the subject, and, when formed, carried out at a Comes not of orders on his breast cutspreadsacrifice of party ties and ancient friendships, and Nor yet of captain's nor of councillor's renown. in the face of a howl of execration from men of his It is that all his life example shows own caste and social position which would have utterly daunted any statesman not endowed with the purest, the noblest, and the most heroic moral resolution. M. Lemoine has yet to learn the martyrdom which Sir Robert Peel endured for his opinions. In all other respects, however, the arUnheeding what might sweep across his path, tícle is of very high merit-acute and candid, with The cannon's volley, or the people's wrath; quaint and pungent points very neatly put, and No hope, howe'er forlorn, but at her call he led. altogether with a pleasant spirit and savor which are most characteristic of the accomplished writer. Hard as a blade so tempered needs must be, And, sometimes, scant of courtesy, as one At the entreaty of many British residents in Paris, M. Lemoine has rewritten his essay in English-Not wide in range of thought, nor deep of subtlety; Whose life has dealt with stern things to be done, and, with the exception of here and there a slightly unidiomatic phrase, very excellent English it is. As the flood of literary and political discussion about the career and character of the duke began to subside, the question of his funeral presented itself to the public mind, and numberless were the proposals and suggestions which overflowed the columns of the press. The lying-instate was the first matter discussed, and Westminster-hall was the favorite spot indicated. A procession, upon a scale including all the members of both Houses of Parliament, was also strongly recommended. Indeed, there were no bounds to the extent to which some letter and pamphlet writers seemed disposed to go. At length, after nearly six weeks of irregular discussion, the cabinet appeared to have suddenly changed its mind as to consulting the Legislature on the arrangements of the funeral; and official announcements were made, settling the main points, and were shortly followed by others fixing the date and propounding the details of the ceremonial to be observed. There is doubtless room for difference of opinion on various features of the plan which has been adopted; but it is generally acknowledged that the government have, to the best of their ability, organized the most elaborate and splendid public interment which a nation ever bestowed upon its most illustrious servants or its truest sons. Of most distrustful; sparing in discourse; But not repelled when offered; and we knew That underneath the armor of his breast Were springs of tenderness-all quick to flow their nest. For fifty of its eighty years and four His life has been before us; who but knew Well he bore his load of years, His sternness and his softness English both; Here we draw our biography to a close. What follows is the contemporary description and record of the closing scene of all; and to that deeply in- Great captain-noble heart! Hail to thee, and fareteresting narrative we now commend the reader. [See Living Age, No. 451.] well! From the Boston Post. WEBSTER. WELLINGTON. From Punch. ALL bring their tribute to his name-from her And furnace-fires of strife—with hideous clang Courts have a seemly sorrow for such loss; GONE! and the world may never hear again Gone! and the helm that in thy Roman hands Drove the stout vessel through the blinding storm, Gone! we are like old men whose infant eyes A PLAGIARISM BY DISRAELI. THE London wits are making themselves merry over the discovery that the remarks made by Disraeli in the House of Commons, on the death of the Duke of Wellington, were stolen from a speech of Thiers on the death of Marshal St. Cyr. The London News says: 66 Embalmed, therefore, in the Curiosities of Disraeli the Father, we find the names and deeds of Gemell Carreri, George Psalmanazar, Lauder, Annius of Viterbo, Macpherson, and the great literary Jew impostor, Benjamin of Todela. Of such men our author discourses at some length, and with much gusto-amusing his readers by ously to illustrate his theme. But all his inmany ingenious scraps and facts gleaned industristances illustrate rather dishonest literary monomanias than degrading literary thefts. When a new edition of the "Curiosities of Lit In his "Curiosities of Literature," Mr. Disraeli senior tells us :-"Some authors have practised singular impositions upon the public," and he then goes on to quote the case of Varillas, the French historian, who enjoyed for some time a great erature" is required to satisfy the cravings of pubreputation in his country" as "a writer who had lic appetite for such knowledge rechauffée, we may ponetrated the inmost recesses of the Cabinet." But, alas for Varillas and his reputation! other expect to find within the book another illustration scholars proved him to be a plagiarist and an in- of the least favorable portion of the subject that genious literary forger, "and the public were un-lor of the Exchequer, should not happen again to is, if Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, our present Chanceldeceived." be the editor of the publication. The illustration we refer to occurs in the Globe of last evening, and runs as follows: formed the House of Commons last night, that "It may possibly be true, as Mr. Disraeli infortune favors those who are at once inventive and The father of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer further declares that a large volume might be written on literary impostors," and their modes of deception-and he dilates upon the fact that "we have had both forgers and purloiners, as well as other more obvious impostors, in our republic of letters." Mr. Izaak Disraeli's chief in-patient.' As to invention, the less perhaps that stances, however, relate rather to the class of liter-we say of that, the better. But few will dispute ary forgers than to literary thieves-rather to the the Chancellor of the Exchequer's claim to the constructive impostors than to those whom blunt Sam Johnson describes in his dictionary as "bookstealers or book-thieves who father another man's works upon themselves-thieves in literature who steal the thoughts of others." praise of extraordinary patience, when they recollect his exposition of the military character in last night's oration on the late Duke of Wellington, and compare it with the original in the following: PARALLEL PASSAGES. It is not that a great general must be an engineer geographer-learned in human nature-adroit in the management of men-that he must be able to fulfil the highest duty of a minister of state, and then to descend to the humblest office of a commissary and a clerk; but he has to display all this knowledge and to exercise all those duties at the same time, and under extraordinary circumstances. At every moment he has to think of the eve and of the morrow of his flank and of his rear-he has to calculate at the same time the state of the weather and the moral qualities of men; and all those elements that are perpetually changing he has to combine, sometimes under overwhelming heat, sometimes under overpowering cold-oftentimes in famine, and frequently amidst the roar of artillery. (Hear, hear.) Behind all these circumstances there is ever present the image of his country, and the dreadful alternative whether that country is to welcome him with laurel or with cypress. (Hear, hear.) Yet those images he must dismiss from his mind, for the general must not only think, but think with the rapidity of lightning; for on a moment more or less depends the fate of the most beautiful combination-and a moment more or less is a question of glory or of shame. (Hear, hear.) Unquestionably, sir, all this may be done in an ordinary manner, by an ordinary man, as every day of our lives we see that ordinary men may be successful ministers of state, successful authors, and successful speakers-but to do all this with genius is sublime. (Hear, hear.) To be able to think with vigor, with depth, and with clearness in the recesses of the cabinet, is a great intellectual demonstration; but to think with equal vigor, clearness and depth, amidst the noise of bullets, appears to me the loftiest exercise and the most complete triumph of human faculties, (Cheers.)-Mr. Disraeli on the Duke of Wellington, 1852 An engineer, a geographer, a man of the world, a metaphysician, knowing men, knowing how to govern them, an administrator in great things, a clerk in small-all these things it is necessary to be, but these are as yet nothing. All this vast knowledge must be exercised on the instant, in the midst of extraordinary circumstances. At every moment you may think of the yesterday and the morrow; of your flank and of your rear. Calculate at the same time on the atmosphere and on the temper of your men; and all these elements, so various and so diverse, which are ceaselessly changing and renewed, you must combine in the midst of cold, heat, hunger, bullets. Farther off, and behind them, is the spectacle of your country, with laurel or with cypress. But all these images and ideas must be banished and set aside, for you must think, and think quicklyone minute too much, and the fairest combination has lost its opportunity, and, instead of glory, it is shame which awaits you. All this undoubtedly is compatible with mediocrity, like every other profession; one can also be a middling poet, a middling orator, a middling author; but this done with genius is sublime. To think in the quiet of one's cabinet clearly, strongly, nobly, this undoubtedly is great; but to think as clearly, as strongly, as nobly, in the midst of carnage and fire, is the most perfect exercise of the human faculties.-M. Thiers on the Marshal Gouvion de St. Cyr, 1829, quoted in the Morning Chronicle of July 1, 1848. "We will not add a word to diminish the effect and vulgar theft. Even while the Chancellor of that must attend the bare notice of this impudent! the Exchequer was in the act of speaking, many of his audience must have been struck by the studied falsetto of his tone, the meretricious glitter of his rhetoric, the utter absence of that "broad and genial warmth which, as one might have thought, would have risen, unbidden, to the lips of the eulogist of Wellington. Felix opportunitate mortis. At least the duke was spared witnessing this ignominy. The Duke of Wellington had experienced the vicissitudes of either fortune, and his calamities were occasionally scarcely less conspicuous than the homage which he ultimately secured. He was pelted by a mob. He braved the dagger of Cantillon. The wretched Capefigue even accused him of peculation. But surely it was the last refinement of insult that his funeral oration, pronounced by the official chief of the English Parliament, should be stolen word for word from a trashy panegyric on a second-rate French Marshal. Kathay; a Cruise in the China Seas. By W. JUST the thing to slip into your pocket as you take your seat in the morning train for Albany or Boston. A pleasant book to dream over during the long day, the changing of the car-wheels keeping up a running accompaniment to your rapid thoughts. There is always a charm in narratives of voyages in the Indian seas. The mind leaps over the book into warm and sunny imaginings of a sail among innumerable dark-green spice islands, with bright skies and crimson birds, and canoes paddled by handsome and scantily-clad natives, bringing fruits, flowers, and fantastic shells. Mr. Macaulay can do more than excite us to a voyage in the dream ocean. He met with some marked adventures which are well described. We quote a specimen BLOWING UP OF A PORTUGUESE FRIGATE. Our anchorage in the Typa was the same we had occupied on our first visit, and was very eligible, being protected by the Typa island from the sea. Upon the point of this island nearest to us stood a fort named after the island; and a little more than a cable's length from our moorings lay the Portuguese frigate, Donna Maria Segunda, of thirty-eight guns, commanded by Captain Francisco d'Assis e Silva. Affairs had been pursuing their usual routine, when, upon the evening of the twenty-eighth of October, a boat boarded us from the frigate, under charge of an officer, who brought an invitation from Captain D'Assis to join with him on the twenty-ninth in the celebration of the birth-day of the king consort of Portugal, upon which occasion it was his intention to dress his ship, and fire a national salute at meridian. Of course an assent was given; and accordingly at eight o'clock the next morning, everything having been previously prepared, we broke stops with the frigate, and, thus bedecked, both vessels made a gallant show. guns, and a shock communicated as though we had received their contents. had fired into us. At The water was forced through the air-ports, splashed over the spar-deck, and dashed down the hatches. The first and general impression was that the frigate could be distinguished, for we were completely envelOn rushing upon deck, nothing oped in a dense cloud of flame and smoke. For a minute or two nothing could be determined. length an old quartermaster sung out, "The frigate has blown up!" I ascended the poop, and looking towards her moorings, saw all that remained of the Donna Maria Segunda"-a part of her stern-frame just above the water, and burning. Where once had pointed her tall spars, so proudly decked with the flags of all nations, no trace remained. She was the most complete wreck that could be imagined. The water was covered for acres with her fragments, and her masts and spars were shivered to splinters. Our boats were instantly alongside the wreck, and took from it, and picked out of the water, ten persons in all, of whom two were Chinamen. Amongst these was the young officer who boarded us the previous evening, with the invitation to join in the celebration -a fine-looking man. He had been drawn from under the capstan, which had been blown aft-was horribly mutilated, and had doubtless nearly all his bones broken, besides sustaining internal injuries. He died like a hero upon our quarter-deck, without a groan. The crew of the Donna Maria was said to have been composed of two hundred and forty souls; but there were some sick in the hospital at Macao, and a few absent on leave and duty. They had, however, some Chinese on board, not mustered as the crew, carpenters, and other artisans, and some prisoners from a French bark, the " Chili." I consider the number killed by this catastrophe may be fairly set down as two hundred! The commandant, d'Assis, perished with his vessel. His body was found two days after, dragging astern, he having been blown through the stern port and caught in a sail. His remains were carried to Macao, and buried with military honors, our officers assisting at the ceremony. His son, a young aspirantè, or midshipman, was ashore at the time. A lieutenant was in charge of the "Typa Fort," and the surgeon in Macao, at their hospital. The other officers were principally on board the frigate. Our commander, with others, had received an invitation to dine on board, but the time had been fortunately postponed. At the precise moment of the explosion on board the "Donna Maria," we were probably as near as it would have been possible to have been in our relative moorings, lying broadside on, but a little astern of her; our starboard battery could have been brought to bear a point forward of the beam; and this very proximity was doubtless the cause of our escaping serious injury. Two of her heavy guns passed entirely over us, clearing our royal masts, and falling into the water about twenty feet on our port beam. Our main deck awning was spotted, as if a shower of blood had passed over it. Some shot, pieces of lead, fragments of spars, and the brains and entrails of the sufferers were lodged in the tops, and other parts of our ship. The gig was stove, but her keeper escaped We had dressed perpendicularly, whilst she had without injury; another boat-keeper was not so forher flags fore and aft, running up to her flying jib-tunate, an iron bolt striking him on the knee, and boom from the water, and down to the gaff on her maiming him for life. mizzen. The frigate had been newly painted, and looked upon this occasion exceedingly well, her neat appearance being the subject of general remark. We lay thus, side by side, until meridian, when she fired a well-timed salute, in which we joined; and everything remained quiet, until about twenty minutes past two, when a report was heard resembling the discharge of a whole broad-side of double-shotted A gun carriage was thrown past us into the fort, breaking through the roof, and falling directly in the place where an officer had been seated writing but a few moments before. After the explosion a number of smaller ones took place, and then the remains of the ill-fated frigate burned to the water's edge. Her magazine was said to have contained eighteen thousand pounds of powder. Three hundred barrels of sixty pounds each, for which orders came out in a few days later, to be stowed in the magazine in Macao, and the frigate to proceed to Lisbon. The disaster was attributed to design. The gunner was said to have fired the magazine for revenge. It was said that, only a few days previous, he had been severely reprimanded by the captain, for some neglect of duty, and that the captain had pulled his beard. Afterwards he told his messmates that he could not survive such an indignity, that he was an old man, and had not long to live, but when he died, others should die too. This is the way the Portuguese account for the loss of the vessel and her crew. Out of all those picked up, but one survived! Our own escape can only be attributed to the protecting hand of that Providence, without whose knowledge not even the smallest sparrow can fall to the ground unnoticed. ANECDOTE OF WEBSTER. JUST before he died, and after his recovery was despaired of, one of his physicians approached his bed-side, and asked how he found himself. "I feel like the Jackdaw in the Church Steeple," was the strange reply. The physician withdrew sadly from the bedside to another part of the room, where some members of the family were standing together, and, shaking his head, confessed his apprehensions that the brain of the dying statesman was affected, that the stately oak was perishing at the top. He could see no method in the answer which his question had received. One of the ladies present, who knew Mr. Webster better, did not believe his mind was wandering, and, quietly stepping to the bed-side, asked him what he meant by saying he felt like the Jackdaw in the Church Steeple. "Why Cowper; don't you remember?" was the reply. She did remember Cowper's delightful translation of one of Vincent Bourne's little poems, entitled The Jackdaw. I send you a copy of the verses, which some of your readers may have forgotten or never read, that they may perceive the perfect fitness and point of the reply: THE JACKDAW. There is a bird, who, by his coat, Above the steeple shines a plate, From what point blows the weather. Fond of the speculative height, Secure and at his ease. You think, no doubt, he sits and muses Or troubles it at all. He sees that this great round a-bout, Church, army, physic, law, And says what says he?-Caw! Thrice happy bird! I too, have seen Much of the vanities of men ; And, sick of having seen 'em, Would cheerfully these limbs resign For such a pair of wings as thine, And such a head between 'em. Mr. MACAULAY's address to the constituency of Edinburgh has attracted attention as well from its eloquence as political tone. (It may be remembered that the distinguished gentleman is just recovering from an illness which it was feared would prove fatal.) He professes himself unable to foresee from the language held by the members of the government what their conduct will be on the subject of Protection; but he thinks he can predict that the reform effected by Sir Robert Peel is safe. Personally he (Macaulay) is earnest in favor of Free Trade, and is prepared to go further towards universal suffrage than he once thought it possible he should. He says: "I tell you, that in those Colonies which have been planted by our race-and when I say Colonies, I speak as well of those which have separated from us as those which still remain united to us-you know that in our Colonies the condition of the laboring man has long been far more prosperous than in any part of the old world. Everywhere the desert is receding before the advancement of the flood of human life and civilization; and in the mean time those who are left behind find abundance, and never endure those privations, which, in old countries, too often befall the laboring classes. And why has not the condition of our laborers been equally fortunate? Simply, as I believe, on account of the great distance which separates our country from the new, unoccupied, and uncultivated fertile part of the world, and on account of the expense of traversing that distance. "Science, however, is abridged, and is abridging that distance; science has diminished and is dimin ishing that expense. Already New Zealand is nearer for all practical purposes than New England was to the Puritans, who fled thither from the tyranny of Laud. Already the coasts of North America, Halifax, Boston, and New York, are nearer to England than, within the memory of persons now living, the Island of Skye and the county of Donegal were to London. Already emigration is beginning, if I rightly understand, to produce the same effect here which it has produced on the Atlantic States of the Union. And do not imagine that our countryman who goes abroad is altogether lost to us. Even if he go from under the dominion and protection of the English flag, and settle himself among a kindred people, still he is not altogether lost to us, for, under the benignant system of free trade, he will still remain bound to us by close ties. [Cheers.] If he ceases to be a neighbor, he is still a benefactor and a customer. Go where he may, if you will but uphold that system inviolate, it is for us that he is turning the forests into corn-fields on the banks of the Mississippi; it is for us he is tending his sheep and preparing his fleece in the heart of Australia; and in the mean time it is from us he receives the commodities which are produced with vast advantage in an old society, where great masses of capital are accumulated. His candlesticks, and his pots and pans come from Birmingham; his knives from Sheffield; the light cotton jacket which he wears in summer comes from Manchester; and the good cloth coat which he wears in winter comes from Leeds; and in return he sends us back what he produces in what was once a wilderness-the good flour out of which is made the large loaf which the Englishman divides among his children." [Cheers.] At this point the speaker was unable to proceed, from exhaustion. From the Christian Observer. the same mental and moral atmosphere. By his situation, his calling, his ever-recurring occupa tions, his domestic habits, and, perhaps, by the narrowness of his means, he finds himself separated to a great degree from the world of action and of stirring thought. He withdraws in a great measure from what is called general society, and, in so doing, escapes many snares and worldly distractions, and much waste of time; but also loses many points of contact with the minds of others, and the movements of the world, by which thought might have received an impulse, and the faculties A FEW WORDS FOR COUNTRY CLERGYMEN. "I HOPE," said my college tutor, as he finished sharpening his pen-knife on a small whetstone, "I hope that you will not let the edge get blunt." The tutor was speaking, not of the knife in his hand, which only supplied him with his metaphor, but of the mind and intellect of his auditor. "It is quite painful,” he continued," to see how many men, when they go down to their curacies, and get into a country life, seem to lose the brightness and the keenness of their minds; rust accumu-of the mind been stimulated. Among those with lates, which is never wiped away; no exercises are encountered which may sharpen the edge of thought. The intellectual interest is dulled, and the intellectual powers are blunted." To this effect were the observations made some fifteen years ago, as we stood conversing in the orielwindow which overlooked the college gardens; and, as it seems to me, they were not made with-time to read. The fact is, that his several calls of out reason. whom he associates, there are probably few whose intercourse can have any effect of the kind; and the persons by whom his attention as a pastor is usually engaged are at a dead level of education and intelligence, very far below his own. Books are a refuge for him; but somehow or other, whenever we meet him, he tells us that he has no duty do not seem absolutely to require it; and some domestic or parochial occupation is always at hand, to fill up the few hours contained within the circle of a day. The mind, not being turned by circumstances or the influence of others into any particular line of study or inquiry, is slow to select any for itself; so the grave books on the study shelves still stand waiting (they may be I imagine that many of your readers are country clergymen, as, indeed, I am one myself; and, far from thinking that I shall appear uncivil, I fully expect that they will in general agree with me in thinking that there is abundant ground for such observations as I have here repeated. I know, and they know, how much there is in our position and course of life which tends to dim the bright-opened at any time); and the few publications of ness and blunt the edge of our mental faculties. the day, which a book-club may place on the table If a hint upon the subject should supply in any of the sitting-room, have to be sent on," before quarter a warning and a stimulus, I think a service they are half read. Yet the daily duties of the will be rendered, not only to the individual, and to pastoral calling are themselves, it may be thought, the society in which he may mingle, but to the sufficient exercises, and task the powers of the cause to which he has consecrated his powers and mind. To a certain extent it is so; and yet even his life. I look upon the matter thus: We have these come often to be performed with little effort, devoted our faculties, our energies, our powers of and but faintly rouse the energies of the mind. mind, whatever they are, to the highest and At first, to write a sermon, to minister to a sick noblest of all objects, the maintenance and exten-person, to converse with a cottager, to teach in a sion of the kingdom of Christ and of God; and it, school, were undertakings for which the mind was therefore, surely becomes a matter of conscience, obliged to rouse itself in earnest and prepare that what we have thus devoted should be worth itself, as for a work of novelty and difficulty. But, something; that the contribution should be as as time goes on, the man gets into the habit of it, valuable, and the instrument as efficient, as we and he may be heard, again and again, saying the can manage to make it. This, of course, is the same things in the same way. He seems to find meaning of the education which is required, and little opportunity for speaking wisdom among of the previous mental exercises through which it those that are perfect," and sees before him a is necessary to pass. But it is when those pre-people who have need that one teach them again liminary exercises are completed, that our own which be the first principles of the oracles of God." responsibility more distinctly begins. I cannot Nothing seems very urgently to call upon him to help thinking that, in regard to the special point extend his range of thought, or gain deeper views which I have in view, that responsibility is often of the meaning of Scripture. The same great little felt. truths have not yet penetrated the dulness of the Let us note the ordinary career of the country peasant mind, and require to be again and again clergyman, and observe the influence of his posi-instilled. The mind too readily yields to the tion and life, and the manner in which it tells upon the mind. A man goes down, as it is called, into the country, takes his curacy, and in due time gets his living, marries and settles. I am not supposing one of those painful cases, which, alas! are too often witnessed, in which the sacred profession is united with an evidently worldly life; but one of those which, we are thankful to believe, are far more common, that of a quiet, serious, estimable, and pious man, desirous of serving God in his own place and calling, and being of use in this evil world. Accordingly, he addicts himself to the work of his parish, his services, his poor people, his schools. Still, as the weeks and years go round, he revolves in the same narrow circle, and treads the same round of oft-repeated duties. He sees the same faces, and grows habituated to temptation, and Saturday-made sermons reproduce the same bold outlines of truth, with the same associations of ideas and language, betraying the absence of real pains and conscientious exertion of the mental powers. Then the private intercourse with the souls of others has a continual tendency to narrow itself into one beaten track. There are certain people who seem to have a special claim upon their minister, and to lie waiting in his way. He gets into the regular habit of reading to old So-and-so, and old So-and-so never dies; and when the sick have been visited, and the people who expect notice have received it, it is found that the allotted time has been expended. Hence, a limited class of minds, and those the most friendly in their dispositions or the most feeble from their circumstances, come gradually to absorb the attention, |