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UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.

THE
GALLERY OF PORTRAITS:
WITH
MEMOIRS.
VOLUME VI.

LONDON:

CHARLES KNIGHT, 22, LUDGATE-STREET.

1836.

[PRICE ONE GUINEA, BOUND IN CLOTH.]

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,

Duke-Street, Lambeth.

PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES
CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME.

Engraved by Posselwhite.
RALEIGH.
From a Picture in the Collection of the Duchess of Dorset.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

RALEIGH.

Very little is known concerning the youth of Sir Walter Raleigh. He was a younger son, descended of an ancient family, and was born at a farm called Hayes, near the mouth of the river Otter, in Devonshire, in the year 1552. He went to Oriel College, Oxford, at an early age, and gained high praise for the quickness and precocity of his talents. In 1569 he began his military career in the civil wars of France, as a volunteer in the Protestant cause. It is conjectured that he remained in France for more than six years, and returned to England in 1576. Soon after, he repaired to the Netherlands, and served as a volunteer against the Spaniards. In such schools, and under such leaders as Coligni and the Prince of Orange, Raleigh’s natural aptitude for political and military science received the best nurture: but he was soon drawn from the war in Holland by a pursuit which had captivated his imagination from an early age—the prosecution of discovery in the New World. In conjunction with his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a man of courage and ability, and a skilful sailor, he made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a colony in North America. Returning home in 1579, he immediately entered the Queen’s army in Ireland, and served with good esteem for personal courage and professional skill, until the suppression of the rebellion in that country. He owed his introduction to court, and the personal favour of Elizabeth, as is traditionally reported, to a fortunate and well-improved accident, which is too familiar to need repetition here. It is probable, however, that his name and talents were not unknown, for we find him employed almost immediately in certain matters of diplomacy.

Among the cares and pleasures of a courtier’s life, Raleigh preserved his zeal for American discovery. He applied his own resources to the fitting out of another expedition in 1583, under command of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, which proved more unfortunate than the former one: two out of five vessels returned home in consequence of sickness, and two were wrecked, including that in which the admiral sailed; and the only result of the enterprise was the taking possession of Newfoundland in the name of England. Still Raleigh’s desire for American adventure was not damped. The Continent northward of the Gulf of Florida was at this time unknown. But Raleigh, upon careful study of the best authorities, had concluded that there was good reason for believing that a considerable tract of land did exist in that quarter; and with the assent of the Queen in council, from whom he obtained letters patent, granting to himself and his heirs, under certain reservations, property in such countries as he should discover, with a right to provide for their protection and administration, he fitted out two ships, which sailed in April, 1584. The first land which they made was an island named Okakoke, running parallel to the coast of North Carolina. They were well received by the natives, and returned to England in the following autumn highly pleased. Nor was less satisfaction felt by Raleigh, or even by the Queen, who conferred on him the honour of knighthood, a title which was then in high esteem, inasmuch as it was bestowed by that wise princess with a most frugal and just discrimination. She also gave him a very lucrative mark of favour, in the shape of a patent for licensing the selling of wine throughout the kingdom; and she directed that the new country, in allusion to herself, should be called Virginia. Raleigh did not think it politic, perhaps was not allowed, to quit the court to take charge in person of his undertaking; and those to whom he intrusted the difficult task of directing the infant colony appear to have been unequal to their office. It is not necessary to pursue the history of an enterprise which proved unsuccessful, and in which Sir Walter personally bore no share. He showed his earnestness by fitting out several expeditions, which must have been a heavy drain upon his fortune. But he is said to have derived immense wealth from prizes captured from the Spaniards; and we may here observe that the lavish magnificence in dress, especially in jewels, for which Raleigh was remarkable, even in the gorgeous court of Elizabeth (his state dress is said to have been enriched with jewels to the value of £60,000), may be considered less as an extravagance, than as a safe and portable investment of treasure. A mind less active might have found employment more than enough in the variety of occupations which pressed upon it at home. He possessed a large estate, granted out of forfeited lands, in Ireland; but this was always a source rather of expense than of profit, until, in 1601, he sold it to the Earl of Cork. He was Seneschal of the Duchies of Cornwall and Exeter, and held the wardenship of the Stannaries; and in 1586, as well as formerly in 1584, we find that he possessed a seat in parliament. In 1587, the formidable preparation of the Spanish Armada withdrew the mind of Raleigh, as of all Englishmen, from objects of minor importance, to the defence of their country. He was a member of the council of war directed to prepare a general scheme of defence, and held the office of Lieutenant-General of Cornwall, in addition to the charge of the Isle of Portland: but as on this occasion he possessed no naval command, he was not actively engaged in the destruction of that mighty armament. In 1589 he served as a volunteer in the expedition of Norris and Drake to Portugal, of which some account has been given in the life of the latter. Nor were his labours unrewarded even in that unfortunate enterprise; for he captured several prizes, and received the present of a gold chain from the Queen, in testimony of her approbation of his conduct.

Soon after these events, Raleigh retired to his Irish property, being driven from court, according to some authorities, by the enmity of the Earl of Essex, then a young man just rising into favour. He there renewed a former intimacy with the poet Spenser, who, like himself, had been rewarded with a grant of land out of forfeited estates, and then resided at Kilcolman Castle. Spenser has celebrated the return of his friend in the beautiful pastoral, ‘Colin Clout’s come home again;’ and in that, and various passages of his works, has made honourable mention of the highly poetic spirit which enabled the ‘Shepherd of the Ocean,’ as he is there denominated, to appreciate the merit of the ‘Fairy Queen,’ and led him to promote the publication of it by every means in his power. The loss of Raleigh’s court-favour, if such there were, could not have been of long duration on this occasion. But he incurred more serious displeasure in consequence of a private marriage contracted with Elizabeth Throgmorton, one of the Queen’s maids of honour, a lady of beauty and accomplishments, who proved her worth and fidelity in the long train of misfortunes which beset the latter years of Raleigh’s life. In consequence of this intrigue, he was committed to the Tower. One or two amusing anecdotes are related of the devices which he employed to obtain forgiveness, by working on that vanity which was the Queen’s chief foible. He succeeded in appeasing his indignant mistress so far as to procure his release; and about the same time, in 1594, she granted to him the valuable manor of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire: but though she requited his services, she still forbade his appearance at court, where he now held the office of Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard. Raleigh was peculiarly fitted to adorn a court by his imposing person, the graceful magnificence of his taste and habits, the elegance of his manners, and the interest of his conversation. These accomplishments were sure passports to the favour of Elizabeth; and he improved to the utmost the constant opportunities of intercourse with her which his post afforded, insomuch that, except the Earls of Leicester and Essex, no one ever seems to have stood higher in her graces. But Elizabeth’s jealousy on the subject of her favourites’ marriages is well known, and her anger was lasting, in proportion to the value which she set on the incense of Raleigh’s flattery. He retired, on his disgrace, to his new estate, in the improvement and embellishment of which he felt great interest. But though deeply alive to the beauties of nature, he had been too long trained to a life of ambition and adventure to rest contented in the tranquil routine of a country life; and during this period of seclusion, he again turned his thoughts to his favourite subject of American adventure, and laid the scheme of his first expedition to Guiana, in search of the celebrated El Dorado, the fabled seat of inexhaustible wealth. Having fitted out, with the assistance of other private persons, a considerable fleet, Raleigh sailed from Plymouth, February 6, 1595. He left his ships in the mouth of the river Orinoco, and sailed 400 miles into the interior in boats. It is to be recorded to his honour, that he treated the Indians with great kindness; which, contrasted with the savage conduct of the Spaniards, raised so friendly a feeling towards him, that for years his return was eagerly expected, and at length was hailed with delight. The hardships of the undertaking, and the natural advantages of the country which he explored, are eloquently described in his own account of the ‘Discovery of Guiana.’ But the setting in of the rainy season rendered it necessary to return, without having reached the promised land of wealth; and Raleigh reaped no other fruit of his adventure than a certain quantity of geographical knowledge, and a full conviction of the importance of colonizing and taking possession of the newly-discovered region. This continued through life to be his favourite scheme; but neither Elizabeth nor her successor could be induced to view it in the same favourable light.

On reaching England, he found the Queen still unappeased; nor was he suffered to appear at court: and he complains in pathetic terms of the cold return with which his perils and losses were requited. But he was invested with a high command in the expedition of 1596, by which the Spanish fleet was destroyed in the harbour of Cadiz; and to his judgment and temper in overruling the faulty schemes proposed by others the success of that enterprise was chiefly due. Indeed his services were perhaps too important, and too justly appreciated by the public, for his own interests: for the great and general praise bestowed on him on this occasion tended to confirm a jealousy of long standing on the part of the commander-in-chief, the Earl of Essex; and it was probably owing to that favourite’s influence, that Raleigh was still forbidden the Queen’s presence. Essex, and the Secretary of State, Sir Robert Cecil, regarded each other with mutual distrust and dislike. Cecil and Raleigh were connected by ties of common interest, and, as the latter supposed, of friendship. Still Raleigh found the interest of the minister too weak to serve his purpose, while the interest of the favourite was employed against him; and, as the only method of effecting his own restoration to the Queen’s favour, he undertook to work a reconciliation between these two powerful rivals. In this he succeeded, to the great admiration of all spectators; and the fruit of his policy was seen in his re-admission to the execution of his official duties at court, June 1, 1597. In the following August he was appointed Rear Admiral in the expedition called the Island Voyage, of which Essex held the chief command. The slight successes which were obtained were again due to the military talents of Raleigh; the main objects of the voyage were lost through the Earl’s inexperience.

From this time to the death of the Queen, Raleigh enjoyed an uninterrupted course of favour. The ancient enmity between Essex and himself was indeed renewed, and that with increased rancour; but the indiscretions of the favourite had greatly weakened his influence. Raleigh and Cecil spared no pains to undermine him, and were in fact the chief workers of his ruin. This is perhaps the most unamiable passage in Raleigh’s life; and the only excuse to be pleaded for him is, the determined enmity of that unfortunate nobleman. This fault, however, brought a slow but severe punishment with it; for the death of Essex dissolved the tie which held together Cecil and himself. Neither could be content to act second to the other; and Raleigh’s high reputation, and versatile as well as profound abilities, might well alarm the secretary for his own supremacy. The latter took the surest way of establishing his power prospectively. Elizabeth was now old: Cecil took no steps to diminish the high esteem in which she held Sir Walter Raleigh, but he secretly laboured to prejudice her successor against him, and he succeeded to his wish. Very soon after the accession of James I., Raleigh’s post of captain of the guard was taken from him; and his patent of wines was revoked, though not without a nominal compensation being made. To complete his ruin, it was contrived to involve him in a charge of treason. Most writers have concurred in speaking of this passage of history as inexplicable: it is the opinion of the last historian of Raleigh, Mr. Tytler, that he has found sufficient evidence for regarding the whole plot as a device of Cecil, and he has supported this opinion by cogent arguments. Lord Cobham, a violent and ambitious but weak man, had engaged in private dealings with the Spanish ambassador, which brought him under the suspicion of the government. By a device of Cecil’s (we here follow the account of Mr. Tytler) he was induced, in a fit of anger, and in the belief that Raleigh had given information against him, to accuse Sir Walter himself of being privy to a conspiracy against the government. This charge Cobham retracted, confirmed, and retracted again, behaving in so equivocal a manner, that no reliance whatever can be placed on any of his assertions. But as the King was afraid of Raleigh as much as the secretary hated him, this vague charge, unsupported by other evidence, was made sufficient to commit him to the Tower; and, after being plied with private examinations, in which nothing criminal could be elicited, he was brought to trial, November 17, 1603. For an account of that memorable scene we shall refer to Mr. Jardine’s ‘Criminal Trials,’ vol. i. It is reported to have been said by one of the judges who presided over it, on his death-bed, that “the justice of England had never been so degraded and injured as by the condemnation of Sir Walter Raleigh.” The behaviour of the victim himself was the object of universal admiration, for the tempered mixture of patience and noble spirit with which he bore the oppressive measure dealt to him. He had before been unpopular; but it was recorded by an eye-witness that “he behaved himself so worthily, so wisely, and so temperately, that in half a day the mind of all the company was changed from the extremest hate to the extremest pity.”

The sentence of death thus unfairly and disgracefully obtained was not immediately carried into execution. James was not satisfied with the evidence adduced on the trial; and believing at the same time that Raleigh had been plotting against him, he set his royal wit to dive into the mystery. Of the singular scene which our British Solomon devised it is not necessary to speak, since Raleigh was not an actor in it. But as no more evidence could be obtained against him even by the King’s sagacity, he was reprieved, and remanded to the Tower, where the next twelve years of his life were spent in confinement. Fortunately, he had never ceased to cultivate literature with a zeal not often found in the soldier and politician, and he now beguiled the tedium of his lot by an entire devotion to those studies which before had only served to diversify his more active and engrossing pursuits. Of his poetical talents we have already made short mention: to the end of life he continued the practice of pouring out his mind in verse, and there are several well-known and beautiful pieces expressive of his feelings in prison, and in the anticipation of immediate death, especially ‘The Lie,’ and the beautiful little poem called ‘The Pilgrimage.’ He also possessed a strong turn for mathematics, and studied them with much success in the society and under the guidance of his friend Thomas Hariot, one of the most accomplished mathematicians of the age. Chemistry was another favourite pursuit in which, according to the standard of his contemporaries, he made great progress. But the most important occupation of his imprisonment was the composition of his ‘History of the World.’ Notwithstanding the quaintness of the style and the discursive manner in which the subject is treated, it is impossible to read this volume without admiring the wonderful extent of the author’s reading, not only in history, but in philosophy, theology, and even the ponderous and untempting stores of Rabbinical learning. Many of the chapters relate to subjects which few persons would expect to find in a history of the world; yet these will often be found among the most interesting and characteristic portions of the book; and its deep learning is relieved and set off by passages of genuine eloquence, which display to the best advantage the author’s rich imagination and grasp of mind. The work extends from the Creation to the end of the second Macedonian war. Raleigh meant to bring it down to modern times; but the untimely death of Henry Prince of Wales, for whose use it was composed, deprived him of the spirit to proceed with so laborious an undertaking. He enjoyed the confidence of that generous youth in a remarkable degree, and maintained a close correspondence with him on civil, military, and naval subjects. Several discourses on these topics, addressed to the Prince, will be found in the editions of Raleigh’s works. Henry repaid these services with sincere friendship and admiration; and we may presume that his adviser looked forward to that friendship, not only for a cessation of misfortune, but for a more brilliant period of favour and power than he had yet enjoyed. Fortunately, however, this calamity was preceded by the death of his arch-enemy, Cecil; and through the mediation of the Duke of Buckingham, employed in consideration of 1500l. paid to his uncles, Sir William, Sir John, and Sir Edward Villiers, Raleigh was released from the Tower in March, 1615; and obtained permission to follow up his long-cherished scheme of establishing a colony in Guiana and working a gold mine, of which he had ascertained the existence and situation.

The terms on which this licence was granted are remarkable. He was not pardoned, but merely let loose on the engagement of his friends, the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, that he should return to England. Neither did James contribute to the expense of the undertaking, though it was stipulated that he was to receive a fifth part of the bullion imported. The necessary funds were provided out of the wreck of Raleigh’s fortune (his estate of Sherborne had been forfeited) and by those private adventurers who were willing to risk something in reliance on his experience and judgment. A fleet of fourteen sail was thus provided, and Raleigh, by letters under the privy seal, was appointed commander-in-chief and governor of the intended colony. He relied, it is said, on the full powers granted him by this commission as necessarily including a remission of all past offences, and therefore neglected to sue out a formal pardon, which at this period probably would hardly have been denied him. The results of this disastrous voyage must be shortly given. Raleigh sailed March 28, 1617, and reached the coast of Guiana in November following. Being himself disabled by sickness from proceeding farther, he dispatched a party to the mine under the command of Captain Keymis, an officer who had served in the former voyage to Guiana. But during the interval which had elapsed since Raleigh’s first discovery of that country, the Spaniards had extended their settlements into it, and in particular had built a town called Santa Thome, in the immediate neighbourhood of the mine in question. James, with his usual duplicity, while he authorised the expedition, revealed every particular connected with it to the Spanish ambassador. The English, therefore, were expected in the Orinoco, and preparation had been made for repelling them by force. Keymis and his men were unexpectedly attacked by the garrison of Santa Thome, and a sharp contest ensued, in which the English gained the advantage, and burnt the town. In this action Raleigh’s eldest son was killed. The Spaniards still occupied the passes to the mine, and after an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge them, Keymis abandoned the enterprize, and returned to the ships. Raleigh’s correspondence expresses in affecting terms his grief and indignation at this double misfortune; the loss of a brave and promising son, and the destruction of the hopes which he had founded on this long-cherished adventure. On his return to England, he found himself marked out for a victim to appease the resentment of the Spanish court, to which he had long been an object of fear and hatred. He quietly surrendered himself to Sir Lewis Stukeley, who was sent to Plymouth to arrest him, and commenced the journey to London under his charge. But his mind fluctuated between the desire to confront his enemies, and a sense of the hopelessness of obtaining justice, and he was at last entrapped by the artifices of the emissaries of government who surrounded him into an attempt to escape, in which he was arrested and committed to close custody in the Tower. Here his conversation and correspondence were narrowly watched, in the hopes that a treasonable understanding with the French government, from which he had received the offer of an asylum in France, might be established against him. His conduct abroad had already been closely scrutinized, in the hope of finding some act of piracy, or unauthorized aggression against Spain, for which he might be brought to trial. Both these hopes failing, and his death, in compliment to Spain, being resolved on, it was determined to carry into effect the sentence passed fifteen years before, from which he had never been legally released; and a warrant was accordingly issued to the judges, requiring them to order execution. The case was a novel one, and threw that learned body into some perplexity. They determined, however, that after so long an interval execution could not be granted without allowing the prisoner the opportunity of pleading against it; and Raleigh was therefore brought to the bar of the Court of King’s Bench, October 28, 1618. The record of his conviction having been read, he was asked whether he could urge any thing why the sentence should not be carried into effect. He insisted on the nature of his late commission, and on that plea being overruled, submitted with his usual calmness and dignity. The execution, with indecent haste, was ordered to take place on the following morning. In this last stage of life, his greatness of mind shone with even more than its usual lustre. Calm, and fearless without bravado, his behaviour and speech expressed the piety and resignation of a Christian with the habitual coolness of one who has braved death too often to shrink at its approach. The accounts of his deportment on the scaffold effectually refute the charges of irreligion and atheism which some writers have brought against him, unless we make up our minds to believe him an accomplished hypocrite. He spoke at considerable length, and his dying words have been faithfully reported. They contain a denial of all the serious offences laid to his charge, and express his forgiveness of those even who had betrayed him under the mask of friendship. After delivering this address and spending some time in prayer, he laid his head on the block, and breathing a short private prayer, gave the signal to the executioner. Not being immediately obeyed, he partially raised his head, and said, “What dost thou fear? Strike, man!” and underwent the fatal blow without shrinking or alteration of position. He died in his sixty-sixth year.

Raleigh sat in several parliaments, and took an active part in the business of the house. His speeches, preserved in the Journals, are said by Mr. Tytler to be remarkable for an originality and freedom of thought far in advance of the time. His expression was varied and animated, and his powers of conversation remarkable. His person was dignified and handsome, and he excelled in bodily accomplishments and martial exercises. He was very fond of paintings, and of music; and, in literature as in art, he possessed a cultivated and correct taste. He was one of those rare men who seem qualified to excel in all pursuits alike; and his talents were set off by an extraordinary laboriousness, and capacity of application. As a navigator, soldier, statesman, and historian, his name is intimately and honourably linked with one of the most brilliant periods of British history.

The works of Oldys, Birch, Cayley, Mrs. Thompson, and Mr. Tytler, may be consulted concerning this remarkable person. The life of the last-named gentleman, published in the ‘Edinburgh Cabinet Library,’ is the most recent; and the industry of the author has enabled him to gain a clue to some points which before had been imperfectly understood. A list of Raleigh’s numerous works is given in the ‘Biographia Britannica.’ They will be found collected in eight volumes, in the Oxford edition of 1829. Several of his MSS. are preserved in the British Museum.

[Sir Walter Raleigh in the Tower.]

Engraved by E. Scriven.
JENNER.
From a Print engraved and coloured by J. R. Smith in the possession of the late John Ring Esq^r.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

JENNER.

Edward, the third son of the Rev. Stephen Jenner, was born May 17, 1749, in the vicarage-house of Berkeley in Gloucestershire, of which parish his father, a man of independent fortune, and of a family long established and esteemed in that neighbourhood, was incumbent. At the death of that parent in 1754, the care of Edward Jenner’s education devolved upon his eldest brother, Stephen, who succeeded to the living of Berkeley, and faithfully and affectionately discharged the duties of a father towards him.

He began at a very early age to give tokens of that fondness and aptitude for the study of natural history, which first directed the choice of his profession; and afterwards led him, by steps which may be easily traced, to the discovery of a method of securing the constitution against the small-pox, by a remedy so mild as to be scarcely an inconvenience, yet so effectual as almost to have extinguished that disease in some countries where it has been energetically used.

Having finished his school education and fixed upon a profession, Jenner was apprenticed at the usual age to Mr. Ludlow, a surgeon practising at Sodbury near Bristol; and in 1770, when nearly twenty-one, he came to London, and put himself under the tuition of John Hunter, in whose house he lived for two years, as much in the capacity of a friend as in that of a pupil, with great advantage to his professional studies. The intimacy between these two eminent men was very close and cordial, and subsisted till Hunter’s sudden death in 1793. It is attested by many letters from Mr. Hunter, which Jenner carefully preserved; his own were probably destroyed with the rest of Hunter’s papers by the late Sir Everard Home. Their correspondence relates chiefly to facts and experiments in natural history.

The success with which Jenner had already pursued his studies, and the respect entertained for his talents by his illustrious instructor at a period when their intercourse was yet in its infancy, may be gathered from his being selected in 1771, on the recommendation of Mr. Hunter, to arrange the collections in natural history which had been made by Sir Joseph Banks in his voyage round the world with Captain Cook, then just completed. Jenner acquitted himself so well of this charge, that he was offered, though little more than twenty-two years of age, the situation of naturalist to the second expedition under the command of Captain Cook, which sailed in 1772. This was a flattering proposal to so young a man, and consonant to Jenner’s ruling tastes; nevertheless he declined it. It is fortunate for mankind that he chose the laborious seclusion of a country practice in preference to aiming at distinction and wealth; for in no other sphere could he have found opportunities of pursuing his discovery of vaccination through all the perplexities in which his early researches into that subject involved him. Indeed, it is probable that considerations of this kind, independently of his fondness for a country life, had their weight with him in the choice; for the idea had already taken strong hold of his naturally sanguine feelings and quick apprehension, that he was furnished with a clue which might lead him to a result of the highest importance to mankind.

It may be added here that a few years after this time he declined a very lucrative situation in India, as well as a much more tempting proposal from Mr. Hunter, in 1775, to join him in a project for establishing in London a school of natural history, including medicine, of which Jenner was to undertake the anatomical department.

Having determined to settle in the country, and being amply provided with the requisite knowledge, Jenner established himself as a general practitioner at Berkeley. Here he speedily acquired a profitable and extensive practice; so much so, indeed, that finding his health giving way, he was obliged to limit himself to the practice of medicine alone; for which purpose he purchased, as it was then customary, the degree of doctor at St. Andrew’s in 1792.

But he not only attained at an early age to a high degree of professional reputation, but won the affectionate esteem of all with whom he associated. It is related of him that his friends were in the habit of joining in his daily professional rides, often of considerable extent, for the sake of his agreeable and instructive conversation; and that when any of them were ill, he would sometimes make their houses the head-quarters of his practice for the time being, and remain in close attendance upon them till their recovery.

Music, the lighter kinds of literature, both as a reader and occasionally as an author, and the innocent recreations of society, which no one enjoyed more keenly than himself, were the means by which Jenner lightened the burden of his professional labours; but his chief amusement was natural history, including geology, a science then in its infancy, for the study of which his position in the vale of Gloucester afforded ample opportunity, the neighbourhood abounding with fossil remains, and exhibiting a great variety of terrestrial structure. Towards subjects of this nature he was led, not only by his original bias, but by his correspondence with Hunter, Banks, and Parry.

In 1778 he formed a medical society, which held its periodical meetings at Rodborough, for the purpose of communicating professional information and promoting a friendly feeling among the members. In furtherance of these objects, Jenner contributed several important and original papers, the substance of which is now embodied in medical science, without his property in them being generally known. Among these were essays on the nature and causes of Angina Pectoris, on a peculiar disease of the heart occurring in acute rheumatism, and on several of the more severe affections of the eye. He also belonged to another medical society, meeting at Alveston near Bristol, to the members of which, who were men of congenial dispositions with his own, he was personally much attached. Upon one topic, however, they did not agree; for it is said that he was in the habit of enlarging so frequently upon his favourite speculation of the cow-pox, that the subject was at length proscribed, and he was jestingly forbidden to renew it on pain of expulsion. This club was for many years a source of much enjoyment and advantage to him, and we may suppose that he was a very principal contributor to the diversion of the other members; for it ceased to exist in 1789, when other objects began to engross the time that he could spare from his practice. In March of the previous year, at the age of thirty-seven, he married Miss Catharine Kingscote, by whom he had several children. The choice appears to have been a very fortunate one for his domestic happiness.

In 1786 he had communicated to Mr. Hunter, in the form of an essay, the result of several years’ careful observation of the singular habits of the cuckoo, till then a mystery to naturalists. It was presented by Mr. Hunter to the Royal Society, and was printed entire in their Transactions in 1789, having been returned to Jenner in the mean time, in order that he might record some additional facts which he had ascertained. This tract has been considered as a very masterly performance, and was the occasion of the author being elected to the fellowship of the Royal Society. It is not a little remarkable that Mr. Hunter, like Jenner’s friends at Alveston, thought so doubtfully of his views on the subject of vaccination, that he cautioned him against publishing them, lest they should interfere with the fame he had acquired in the learned world by his ‘Essay on the Cuckoo.’ But the event proved that the caution, though well meant, was unnecessary. Jenner was not more disposed than his gifted master to admit any conclusion on merely collateral grounds, that might be put to the test of experiment. This, however, was too new and important a matter to be lightly or prematurely hazarded; and Jenner waited long and patiently for an opportunity of thus testing his opinions, losing in the mean time no occasion of collecting additional information. The idea, thus watchfully and laboriously improved, was first excited in his mind while he was an apprentice at Sodbury, by a remark accidentally dropped by a young countrywoman in his master’s surgery, who, overhearing a conversation about the small-pox, observed that she had no fear of catching that disease as she had taken the cow-pox. Jenner, who was always alive to any subject connected with natural history, was induced to make more particular inquiries into this complaint, of which he had never heard before; and the answers he received were such as to suggest the probability of substituting it with advantage for the inoculated small-pox. Of this theory he never lost sight till he established it on the clearest evidence, and with it his unrivalled claim to the perpetual gratitude of mankind.

The cow-pox is a disease of the eruptive kind, which is sometimes extensively prevalent among cattle in large dairy countries where they are herded together in numbers, but often disappears for a long time together. Though commonly mild, it is occasionally so severe as to terminate fatally; and it is believed, on strong grounds, to have been at different times even pestilential among them, and as such, to have been mentioned by various writers on rural economy, ancient and modern, as well as in medical and other histories. It is generally, however, a very mild disorder, appearing on the udder of the cow, at first in the form of vesicles much resembling those of small-pox; and it is sometimes, as in the instance which first attracted the attention of Jenner, communicated to the hands of milkers. In such cases, an eruption of similar vesicles takes place on the hands and arms, not without much swelling and inflammation, and occasionally with fever and disturbance of the health for some days. It has never been known to prove fatal when thus communicated, or to have left any unpleasant effects behind it, except a few indented marks in the situation occupied by the pustules. It is not communicable, like small-pox in the human subject, by the effluvia; but the matter, or lymph as it is called, contained in the vesicles, must be actually inserted under the skin, or applied to a raw or an absorbing surface. But the most important of its peculiarities is the security it affords against the infection of small-pox. This property was well known among the agricultural classes in the grazing districts before the time of Jenner, and it has been stated that individuals among them had turned their knowledge of it to account for the protection of their families, by inoculating them with the vaccine disease. But this circumstance, alleged on very scanty evidence by those who were opposed to Jenner’s claims, cannot lessen the merit of his independent discovery, of which each step was communicated in succession to a numerous circle of medical friends, and is recorded in the most authentic form. His reputation is, on the other hand, enhanced by the fact that, although the immunity conferred by the casual disease in milkers had frequently come under the notice of medical men from their failing in such persons to produce the small-pox by inoculation, yet the idea of introducing the disease of an animal into the human frame was so little in consonance with any former practice, that Jenner was the first among his brethren to conjecture that cow-pox, as the milder disease, might advantageously supersede the inoculated small-pox; and that, as the latter is rendered less virulent by inoculation, so the former introduced in the same way might be milder than the casual complaint, and yet retain its protecting power. He had even communicated this conjecture to Hunter, himself no mean innovator in medicine, so early as the year 1770; and Mr. Hunter was for many years in the habit of mentioning it in his public lectures coupled with Jenner’s name: but the proposed substitution was so distasteful, or appeared of such questionable propriety, that it obtained no favourable notice till it was forced by the inventor on the public attention, thirty years after it had first attracted his own.

It would be interesting to enter into a detail of the progress of Jenner’s discovery and of its introduction into general use, as well as to show its inestimable value to society by a reference to statistical facts. This, however, can only be done here in a very cursory manner.

The way in which the idea was first suggested to him has been already mentioned. After his return to Berkeley from London, he pursued the subject with great patience and sagacity for many years. In the course of these preliminary inquiries he found reason to believe that of several kinds of vesicular disease in the cow, but one had the property of securing from the small-pox, and that one exclusively, or at least with the greatest certainty, in its first stage. He also ascertained that the horse is subject to an eruption of similar vesicles, apparently arising without infection, and popularly known by the name of the grease. The matter issuing from these is sometimes conveyed to the cow by milkers engaged in farriery; and Jenner conceived it to be the original and only source of cow-pox among the herds. The opinion is not generally held at present to its full extent; but experiments by himself and others since the publication of his Inquiry have proved a fact much disputed at the time, that he was right in believing the diseases to be identical, whatever may be their origin.

It may be mentioned as a curious circumstance, that the first lymph transmitted in an active state to British India in 1802 by Dr. De Carro of Vienna, long the only source of vaccination in that country, had been furnished to him by Dr. Sacco of Milan, from genuine vesicles produced by direct inoculation from the horse, without passing through the cow; an intervention which, till about that period, Jenner had continued to think essential to the production of the true disease in man.

In addition to these and other curious results, laboriously collected during a period of twenty-six years, Dr. Jenner at length arrived at a rational conviction of the safety of the experiment he meditated, from observing the invariable harmlessness of the disease when casually taken: he determined therefore to put his long-cherished idea to the trial on the first opportunity.

This offered on the 14th of May, 1796, the anniversary of which is still kept as a festival at Berlin. On that day he inoculated a boy of the name of Phipps in the arm, from a pustule on the hand of a young woman who was infected by her master’s cows. The boy went favourably through the disease. On the 1st of July he was inoculated for the small-pox, and, as Jenner had predicted, without effect.

The feelings of the sanguine philanthropist may be conceived. They cannot be better described than they have been by himself in the following terms. “While the vaccine discovery was progressive, the joy I felt at the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities, blended with the fond hope of enjoying independence and domestic peace and happiness, was often so excessive, that in pursuing my favourite subject among the meadows, I have sometimes found myself in a reverie. It is pleasant to me to recollect that these reflections always ended in devout acknowledgments to that Being from whom this and all other mercies flow.”

During the next two years many other equally successful trials were made; and at length the discovery was published to the world in June, 1798, in a quarto pamphlet of seventy pages, which had been previously subjected to the most rigorous criticism and revision by a few chosen friends who met for that purpose at the house of Thomas Westfaling, Esq., at Rudhall, near Ross. It is entitled ‘An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ; a disease discovered in some of the Western Counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the Cow-pox.’ The pamphlet is enriched with the detail of sixteen cases of the casual, and seven of the inoculated disease, the latter including the case of one of the author’s sons; and with coloured drawings of the appearances in both.

The style of this pamphlet, as well as of others which succeeded it from Jenner’s pen in the course of a few years, is remarkably modest, and admirable in all respects, which probably contributed much to the early favour it received. The facts were such as to defy contradiction, and the conclusions so just and mature, that the experience of nearly forty years has been able to add little more than its seal of confirmation to them. The few errors that have been detected relate chiefly to the degree of protection afforded by the cow-pox, which Jenner affirmed to be perfect: it is now however believed to be incomplete, perhaps in three instances out of every hundred; that small proportionate number passing, in general after the lapse of some years, through a very mild and modified small-pox, in which the per-centage of fatal cases is certainly not more, and probably much less, than five; being not more than three in 2000 of all vaccinated persons, while the rate of mortality even in inoculated small-pox is one in fifty, or forty in 2000. It should be borne in mind that small-pox itself sometimes occurs a second time even in a severe and fatal form, as in the case of Louis XV. Some constitutional peculiarity is probably the occasion of both these anomalies; and this supposition will also account for the often-observed fact, that small-pox after vaccination commonly affects several members of the same family almost simultaneously, thus giving an appearance of failure in a proportion much greater than the truth.

Another position advanced by Jenner in this pamphlet is too remarkable to be passed over. After stating his belief that the cow-pox originates from the horse in the way already mentioned, he proceeds to suggest that the small-pox may have been itself originally morbid matter of the same kind, aggravated into a malignant and contagious form by accidental circumstances. But this opinion, though plausible, is not considered by any means as established.

Favourably as his work was received, the author, who had come to London partly to superintend the publication, was unable to obtain an opportunity of displaying the disease in that city, which had been the chief object of his visit; and returned, much disappointed, to Cheltenham, where he now frequently resided, in the middle of July. He left, however, some vaccine lymph with Mr. Cline, who was the first surgeon in London that ventured to make a trial of it. The complete success of the experiment, which was publicly performed, so strongly interested the profession, that the new practice became quickly popular, in spite of a warm though partial opposition, which was put down in the summer of 1799 by a manifesto expressive of confidence in its efficacy and safety, signed by seventy-three of the most eminent medical men in the metropolis. In the same year some unfortunate occurrences took place in consequence of Dr. Woodville, the physician of the Small-pox Hospital, having incautiously used and distributed matter from persons whom he had inoculated with small-pox a few days after vaccination, before it had taken a sufficient hold. The mongrel lymph thus produced sometimes occasioned one, sometimes the other disease; their effects were confounded; and some deaths which ensued, as well as a general eruption of the skin which took place in many instances, were attributed to the cow-pox. This and other mistakes would probably have much retarded the general adoption of vaccination, but for the promptitude of Jenner to discover and expose the source of the error.

In 1802 a parliamentary inquiry into the value of the new method of preventing small-pox, including Jenner’s claim to the discovery of it, was instituted, and a grant was voted to him of 10,000l. In 1807 he received an additional vote of 20,000l., which, considering that he had been the instrument of saving in England alone at least 45,000 lives annually, will seem by no means an extravagant mark of national gratitude and respect.

In 1803 the Royal Jennerian Society, for the encouragement of vaccination, was established in London under the superintendence of Dr. Jenner. In 1808 this society was merged by his advice in the National Vaccine Establishment, which still continues to dispense the blessings of the antidote at the public charge.

The growing interest in the public mind in favour of vaccination was of course everywhere extended to its author, who, in spite of several unworthy cabals, and attempts to deprive him of the credit of a discovery peculiarly his own, was received among all ranks with the highest distinction at home, and also gratified with various continental honours. If he had thought fit to settle in London, he might undoubtedly have secured wealth in proportion to his reputation; but he preferred the quiet enjoyment of rural life and domestic happiness. His death took place at Berkeley, from a sudden attack of apoplexy, in February, 1823, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. The latter years of his life were spent between Berkeley and Cheltenham, and in occasional visits to London, in the zealous prosecution of his favourite subjects of research, and successful endeavours to diffuse the blessings of his discovery more widely in his own and other lands.

In England, however, these have not been so extensively felt as in some other countries where the form of government has given facilities for the enforcement of vaccination. The small-pox consequently prevails to a considerable extent in this country, and especially in London. Yet the annual number of deaths from small-pox within the bills of mortality is at present under 700; the largest number in one year since the general practice of vaccination having been 1299, in 1825. A century ago, when the population certainly did not reach half its present amount, the yearly average was 2000, the maximum being in 1796, when the mortality swelled to 3549. That this decrease is wholly due to vaccination cannot be doubted; the advantage, however, is partly indirect, and has arisen from the discontinuance of the practice of inoculating for the small-pox, which afforded security to individuals, but increased the general mortality by keeping alive a constant source of infection. But the most striking examples of the advantage derived from vaccination are to be found on the continent. Thus at Berlin, where the average annual amount of deaths from small-pox was 472 for the twenty years previous to 1802, and 1646 died in 1801, the mortality so speedily diminished after the enforcement of vaccination by law, that in 1821 and 1822 there was only one death in each year. These and similar instances which might be adduced from other countries, seem almost to warrant us in adopting the sanguine expectation of Jenner, that by means of his discovery this disgusting and dreadful malady, from which not four in a hundred of the human race wholly escaped, and which destroyed a tenth part of all that were born, and disfigured where it did not destroy, may yet be swept from the face of the earth.

The best books of reference on the subjects of this memoir are ‘Baron’s Life of Jenner,’ ‘Moore’s History of the Cow-pox,’ Dr. Gregory’s admirable articles in the ‘Encyclopædia of Medicine,’ and the reports of various parliamentary committees, especially those of 1802 and 1833.

MASKELYNE.

Nevil Maskelyne was born in London, October 6, 1732. He was educated at Westminster, and in time proceeded to Catherine Hall, Cambridge, from whence he migrated to Trinity College. He took the degree of Bachelor of Arts, with honours, in the year 1754. In 1755, he was ordained to a curacy near London. He had previously turned his attention to astronomy, to which he was led by the solar eclipse of 1748; and he now formed an acquaintance with Bradley, an astronomer of unequalled merit, whether in discovery or practical excellence in observation, whom he assisted in calculating his table of refractions. It is no wonder that, under such instruction, Maskelyne should have distinguished himself afterwards as an observer. From this period (A.D. 1750) Delambre dates the commencement of really good observations.

In 1758 Maskelyne was elected Fellow of his college; in 1759 he became Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1761 he went to St. Helena, to observe the transit of Venus, and also to collect such observations as might, if possible, enable him to detect the parallax of the fixed stars. He failed in both objects; in the first from cloudy weather, in the second from faulty instruments, as he supposed, though the quantity in question is so small that its existence has not yet been detected; but he was enabled to correct the principal errors of those instruments in a considerable degree, and also to make very good observations on various other points. In his voyage out and home he applied himself to perfect the method of observing lunar distances, and deducing the longitude from them. In 1764 he sailed to Barbadoes, to make a trial of Harrison’s time-keeper; and in 1765 he was appointed Astronomer Royal, on the decease of Mr. Bliss. He was then only thirty-three years of age, and had enjoyed a rapid career of celebrity. He had published enough in the ‘British Mariner’s Guide,’ A.D. 1763, to require honourable mention of his name and methods in every work of navigation.

Engraved by E. Scriven.
MASKELYNE.
From the original Picture by Vanderburgh in the possession of the Royal Society.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

As soon as he had obtained the post of Astronomer Royal, he began to call the attention of the Commissioners of Longitude to the practicability of the method of lunar distances, and proposed to them to establish a Nautical Almanac, which should contain such an ephemeris of the moon’s path as would make the object in view attainable. The memorial on this subject was presented February 9, 1765, and the evidence of various officers of the East India Company’s service was taken as to the success of the method. The lunar tables of Mayer furnished the proposed materials for the moon’s places; and upon the adoption of the scheme of Maskelyne, a parliamentary reward of 3000l. was given to Mayer’s widow. To Maskelyne we are thus indebted for a work which has more than any other contributed to the advancement of navigation, in the removal of the great difficulty of finding the longitude. It is true that this first effort could hardly then be expected to give the longitude within a degree; but this was a great improvement, when it is considered that the reckoning of a ship might be out several degrees, and that chronometers had not yet been introduced. But the ‘Nautical Almanac’ must be considered as a work addressed to astronomers as well as seamen, from its earliest commencement. Maskelyne saw the importance of saving the observer the trouble and risk of error which would attend his reductions without such assistance, and contemplated the continual improvement of the lunar tables. It is not one of the least obligations which astronomical science owes to Maskelyne, that since his time a very slender portion of mathematical knowledge will enable a diligent observer to turn his means to good account in the promotion of sidereal and even of planetary astronomy. Without saying that the observer, as such, is employed about the highest department of the science, or in any way recommending the lover of observation to stop his career at that point, we may remind him that, with the assistance of an ephemeris, such as the ‘Nautical Almanac’ of Maskelyne did, still more as that of the present day, he can never want the means of turning his amusements to useful purpose.

The first Nautical Almanac was published in 1767, and was continued by Maskelyne to the end of his life. The requisite tables, intended to accompany that work, were first published by him in 1781.

With the exception of attending the meetings of the Royal Society, Maskelyne hardly ever quitted his observatory. His life is therefore difficult to describe, except by its results. But in 1772 he went to Scotland, to pursue his celebrated experiment for the discovery of the earth’s density. The Newtonian doctrine of attraction, in the general form, that all matter attracts all other matter, could hardly be said to be finally established, except as a point of strong probability. That a planet, considered as a whole, attracts a planet, might be thought to be demonstrated, but there was no proof of matter being the agent of attraction upon matter, on the earth, except in the case of magnetised or electrified bodies. The notion that the attraction of a mountain, if it existed, would cause a slight deviation of the plumb-line, which should be perceptible in its effect on the observed position of the stars, had been entertained, and the effect even suspected, but without being reduced to absolute proof. To give an idea of the minuteness of the angle of deviation which was to be looked for, we may state that a pendulum ten thousand inches long, vibrating through an angle of ten seconds, would only move through half an inch at the end farthest from the point of suspension, and that ten seconds was, as it turned out, nearly double of the angle in question. Maskelyne chose the mountain Schehallien, in Perthshire, as the scene of his operations. By observing well-known stars with an instrument depending on a plumb-line, both north and south of the mountain, he determined the difference of latitude of two stations, subject of course to an error if the plumb-line were affected in its position by the attraction of the mountain. He then measured the difference of latitude of his stations by a trigonometrical survey, which gave their relative position by a method independent of the plumb-line and its errors. He thus found that his north and south plumb-lines were inclined to each other at an angle of about eleven seconds and a half more than they should have been from their difference of position on the earth, and that the direction of their inclination was towards the mountain. He deduced his results from those among his observations which he considered as the best, being about one out of ten of the whole; but it is much to his credit as an observer, that Baron Zach afterwards found that all his observations, good and bad, gave the same average result as those he had selected. Zach also established the same fact by his observations in the neighbourhood of Marseilles, namely, that the vicinity of a mountain affects the level, which was the instrument he used, and not the plumb-line.

The labour of deducing an approximation to the earth’s mean density was undertaken by Dr. Hutton. By getting the best possible estimate of the materials of which Schehallien is composed, and comparing what we must call the weight of the plumb-line towards the mountain with its weight towards the earth, it appeared that the mean density of the latter is about five times that of water. This, considered as a numerical approximation, alone and unsupported, would have been worth little, owing to the doubt which must have existed as to the correctness of the estimation of the mountain’s density. It would prove that there was attraction in the mountain, but would give no very great probability to the value of the earth’s density, as deduced. But a few years afterwards Cavendish made an experiment, with the same object, and by an entirely different method. By producing oscillations in leaden balls by means of other leaden balls, and by a process of reasoning wholly free from astronomical data, he inferred that the mean density of the earth was five and a-half times that of water. The experiment of Cavendish was published in 1798. It is much to be wished that the experiments of Cavendish should be repeated on a larger scale: but the expense of the apparatus will probably deter individuals from the attempt.

The Schehallien experiment was carried on under many difficulties and privations; and its successful result places its author in the list of those who first opened the road to the determination of a fundamental element of the solar system. But brilliant as it must appear, it is by no means the most useful of Maskelyne’s labours. Excepting Bradley, he may almost be called the first who systematically directed his efforts to the attainment of the minutest accuracy in astronomical observation. His celebrated catalogue, A.D. 1790, consisted only of thirty-six of the principal stars, but the places of these, especially in right ascension, were determined with a degree of precision which was then believed to be hardly attainable. The means by which he accomplished his objects, such as taking the nearest tenth of a second instead of the nearest second, or half second, of time in his transit observations, the practice of uniformly observing all the wires of the instrument, instead of one; the introduction of the movable eye-piece, by which the several wires could all be viewed directly, instead of obliquely, and many little things of the kind, are the indications of a man who was familiar above his contemporaries with the sources of error, and who had formed at once a bold estimate of the extent to which they might be avoided, and a correct view of the means of doing it. It is difficult to say what portion of the present improved spirit of observation in these points may be attributed to Maskelyne, but it certainly was not small. Delambre, who knew at least as well as any man of his time what had been done and was doing, and who was never profuse of praise, as his ‘History of Astronomy’ amply demonstrates, pays him the following compliment in the memoir which he contributed to the ‘Biographie Universelle:’—“Maskelyne était en correspondance avec tous les astronomes de l’Europe, qu’il considérait comme ses frères, et qui, de leur côté, le respectaient comme un doyen, dont les travaux leur avaient été éminemment utiles.”

We have spoken, in the life of Harrison, of the controversy about the merits of the time-piece of the latter. As Astronomer Royal, Maskelyne was the official investigator of the rates of those instruments, and both in the case of Harrison, and in that of Mudge, his decisions underwent printed attacks, which he answered. Without entering into the merits of these questions, since all the grave accusations which were brought against him have fallen harmless, we shall only state, that Maskelyne’s answers are full of documents, and free from passion; both very favourable symptoms.

Dr. Maskelyne held church preferment from his college, and was besides in possession of an easy fortune. He died Feb. 9, 1811, leaving behind him an unblemished personal reputation, and a character for scientific utility of the first order. He left behind him much evidence of his utility in the labours and character of the assistants whom he formed; all of whom, says Lalande, were useful astronomers. The late Dr. Brinkley, Bishop of Cloyne, who added the reputation of a distinguished mathematician to that of an eminent observer, was for sometime one of his pupils in the practical part of the science.

[Schehallien.]

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.
HOBBES.
From a Picture by Dobson in the possession of The Royal Society.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

HOBBES.

When Thomas Hobbes was eighty-four years of age he composed an amusing account of his own fortunes in Latin hexameter and pentameter verses; and in these it is mentioned that his birth was premature, owing to the terror occasioned to his mother by a false report of the approach of the Spanish fleet. To this accident he humorously ascribes his patriotic zeal and the peacefulness of his disposition. We quote from a translation made by a contemporary hand, which in elegance of expression is on a par with the original.

“And hereupon it was, my mother dear

Did bring forth twins at once, both me, and Fear.

For this my country’s foes I e’er did hate,

With calm Peace and my Muse associate.”

It was at Malmsbury, on the 5th of April, 1588, that this very singular man was thus called into an existence, which was continued, in perpetual activity, for ninety-one years.

One of the earliest efforts of his talents was to translate the Medea of Euripides into Latin iambics. At the age of fourteen, he commenced his more serious labours at Magdalen College, Oxford; and employed five years there in the study of logic and Aristotle’s Physics. Immediately afterwards he entered into the family of William Cavendish, Baron Hardwick, subsequently Earl of Devonshire, and became tutor to his eldest son. The companion alike of his sports and his studies, Hobbes presently acquired the affection of his pupil and the confidence of the family; and the two young men (for they were of the same age) set out together to travel in France and Italy.

A free intercourse with the learned men of other countries enlarged the mind of Hobbes, and opened new channels to his investigation. And it appears, in the first instance, that when he beheld the contempt in which the subjects of his academical industry were generally held, he turned from them to the more diligent study of Greek and Latin. Nor was it his object alone to become master of the languages, but also to meditate on the invaluable records of the history and the wisdom of the ancients. He employed his leisure hours in the translation of Thucydides; and he published it in the year 1628, to the end (says his contemporary biographer), that the absurdities of the democratical Athenians might become known to his own fellow-citizens. This was the first of his publications; and it may have been that perhaps to which, in later life, he attached the least importance. Yet has it so fallen out, that after a lapse of two long centuries of slowly progressive knowledge and wisdom, his other works are for the most part consigned to the shelves of the profound and curious student, while the “Translation of Thucydides” is familiar to the acquaintance and respect of every scholar.

It is related that Hobbes, while yet a youth, was present at an assembly of several eminent men of letters, when one of them asked, in a contemptuous manner, And what is sensation? No one attempted to make any reply; and the question was thus silently acknowledged to be inscrutable. This piqued his curiosity and his pride; for he was astonished that those, who through their pretensions to wisdom so despised others, should be ignorant of the nature of their own senses. Accordingly he directed his deepest attention to that inquiry. The first result of his meditation was this position: that if all things were at rest, they would part with all their qualities. Hence, in his mind, it followed, that all the principles of natural science, including the senses of all animated things and all bodily affections, depended on the varieties of motion; and to these, rather than to any inherent or occult qualities, he referred all the phenomena of physics.

This his system of physics is amply developed in the first section (De Corpore) of his book of the ‘Elements of Philosophy;’ which failed not to gain him a celebrity more than proportionate to the number of his proselytes. For many admired his ingenuity who did not adopt his conclusions. In conjunction with these pursuits, Hobbes engaged with zeal in the study of mathematics. He flattered himself that he had discovered how to square the circle, and published several treatises in relation to that celebrated problem, which at the time gained for him considerable reputation. In 1647 he was appointed mathematical tutor to the Prince of Wales. He engaged in a long mathematical controversy with Dr. Wallis, of which an amusing account will be found in D’Israeli’s ‘Quarrels of Authors,’ vol. 3. Wallis, however, was an adversary entirely above Hobbes’ strength in this department of science.

If Hobbes had confined his exertions to the pursuits of classical literature and physical philosophy, he would have spent a more peaceful, and therefore to him a happier, existence. But in the tumultuous times in which he lived, with a mind habituated to deep investigations, it was scarcely possible that he should do otherwise than fix his attention on the political phenomena which were passing before him, and endeavour to trace their causes and solve their difficulties. After a residence of three years in England, he returned to Paris in 1640, and enjoyed the society of some of the distinguished men who were collected around Cardinal Richelieu. There he wrote his first political work, the book De Cive, which he published in 1646. He then proceeded to compose a much more elaborate treatise on the same subject, which he published in England in the year 1651; this was his Leviathan—a name associated with that of Hobbes in the mind of every reader, though the peculiar principles which are embodied under it are now known to few. Suffice it here to say, that the object of this work was to give a decided support to the monarchical institution: to show that there could be no safety without peace, no peace without a strong government; that arms and money were the elements which alone could give that strength; that even arms will scarcely avail to this end, unless placed in a single hand, or if opposed (as is the case in religious dissension), by motives and principles which do not terminate in this world.

Political researches in that age necessarily involved theological, or at least ecclesiastical, principles; and Hobbes had not feared to denounce some of the antient usurpations of the clergy, and to pronounce religious concord to be absolutely essential to the civil happiness of a people: and while he broached some principles not well pleasing to the pretensions of the hierarchy of the day, he advanced others which were thought to end, by no violent interpretation, in absolute infidelity. Accordingly, the theologians assailed him from every quarter; and his work, while it divided learned laymen, some of whom thought it a marvel of political genius, others a dangerous and unseemly monster, was condemned by the unanimous indignation of the ecclesiastical body. The churchmen of Rome united in hostility with those of England against doctrines which were dangerous to the common prerogatives of the whole order, if not to the integrity of religion itself. The latter, being more closely attacked, were more violent in their enmity. They denounced the opinions as false and heretical; and the divines of Cambridge went so far as publicly to stigmatize the author as an atheist. Besides this, he did not even escape the charges of being ill disposed to royalty, and a disguised adversary to the party of the king. These calumnies (such at least he constantly asserted both to be,) deprived him of the patronage of the Court, and seemed at one time even to have endangered his personal safety; insomuch that, under the Commonwealth, he found it expedient to escape from his enemies at Paris, and take refuge among those, whose enmity he had rather deserved, the republicans of England. He escaped however the fate, so common to men of moderation in violent times, of being persecuted by both parties; and only sustained the animosity of that which he had intended to serve.

Hobbes was a decided Episcopalian. He studied in all matters to conform both to the doctrines and the ceremonies of the church established; and avoided, even with a feeling of dislike, the conventicles of the Puritans. Still less did he incline, on the other hand, to the Roman Catholic faith. During a dangerous illness, which he suffered with great firmness at Paris, when he was supposed to be on the point of death, an intimate friend, named Mersenne, a learned Franciscan, approached him with spiritual consolation, and pressed him to depart in communion with the Roman church. Hobbes calmly replied, “Father, I have long ago considered all those matters well, and it would trouble me to reconsider them now. You can entertain me on some more agreeable subject. When did you see Gassendi?”

Yet neither his unmoved adhesion to Protestantism, nor even his affection for episcopal government, could disarm the wrath of the theologians, who continued to wage an unsparing warfare against him, and to inflict on his reputation, and even on his fortunes, such mischief as they were able. On the other hand, his singular qualities and talents failed not to procure him many powerful protectors; and he stood so balanced (says his biographer) between his friends and his enemies, that the former were just strong enough to prevent his destruction, the latter to obstruct his advancement. So that he continued, with a mighty reputation and a slender fortune, to remain, even to the end of his days, under the same noble patronage, under which his first distinctions had been acquired.

But in this comparative obscurity he was consoled by the society of the learned, the courtesy of the great, and the admiration of almost all men. Among his personal friends or acquaintances were numbered Francis Bacon of Verulam, Ben Jonson (who is said to have revised his Translation of Thucydides), the astronomer Galileo, the antiquarian Selden, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Harvey, physician to Charles I., Des Cartes, Gassendi; and his praises were celebrated by the contemporary muse of Cowley. He was sought by distinguished foreigners who visited England, even nobles and ambassadors; especially by Cosmo de’ Medici, then Prince, afterwards Duke of Tuscany, who offered him ample proofs of his esteem; and there were many among his own compatriots who received his opinions with respect, if not with favour.

During the long period of his declining life, Hobbes is related to have pursued with most assiduity his studies in natural philosophy; but the publications of his old age (if we except the Decameron Physiologicum, published in 1676) rather indicate a return to his earliest tastes, which inclined, we are told, to history and poetry. At the age of about 80, he wrote, in English, the Behemoth, or History of the Civil Wars between Charles and the Parliament; besides a long Latin poem on the origin and increase of the pontifical power. At about 86, he translated the Odyssey into English verse, and the Iliad at 87: and he persevered for the four following years, which were his last, in the same peaceful course of literary recreation. A list of his works, forty-two in number, is given in Chalmers’ ‘Biographical Dictionary:’ the great majority of them are forgotten.

He died towards the end of the year 1679, and was buried at Hault-Bucknall, close by the grave of his faithful patroness, the Countess of Devonshire. Respecting his personal character and conversation it is recorded, that he was agreeable and courteous in his familiar intercourse with all, those alone excepted who approached him for the mere purpose of disputation: and these he treated with more severity than was necessary. Above all things, he detested theological controversy, and always strove to turn his hearers away from it to the exercise of piety and the practice of Christian morality. His favourite authors were Homer, Virgil, Thucydides, and Euclid: but his reading was not extensive; as he thought the careful meditation on a few good works more profitable to the understanding than a more abundant draught of indiscriminate learning; and was fond of saying upon this subject, that if he read as much as others he should be as ignorant as they were. He persisted in a life of celibacy, that he might be able to pursue his studies with the less interruption. In his disposition he was generous and charitable; but his means were scanty: for even at the end of his life he had little else but two small pensions, the one from the family of Devon, the other from the king.

RAPHAEL.

Raffaello Sanzio, the greatest of painters, was born in 1483 at Urbino, where the house in which he passed the first years of his life is still preserved, consecrated by a suitable inscription. His first teacher was his father, Giovanni Sanzio, a painter who, allowing for the technical imperfections of the time, was perhaps entitled to more praise than Vasari has awarded him; the evidence of the remaining works of this master has indeed led his recent biographer, Pungileoni, to conclude that he was in many essential points equal to the best of his contemporaries, and that his feeling for expression may have had no unimportant influence on the genius he was destined to instruct. An interesting altar-piece by the elder Sanzio still exists at Urbino, in the church of S. Francesco, representing the Madonna with St. Francis and other saints: the members of the painter’s family are introduced, and among them the infant Raphael kneels by his mother’s side.

Engraved by J. Thomson.
RAFFAELLE.
From a Miniature copy of the original Picture in the Gallery at Florence. In the Possession of the Rev^d. Horace Cholmondeley Kingston House, Dorchester.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

The silence of the historians of art as to the claims of Giovanni Sanzio is less surprising than their omitting to notice the importance of his city and province at the period in question. The duchy of Urbino, at the close of the fifteenth century, could boast, as Sismondi justly remarks, a population as warlike, and a court as lettered and polished as any in Italy. The hereditary dukes of the ancient family of Montefeltro ranked high among the captains of the age, and among the distinguished patrons of science. Federigo da Montefeltro, who died a few months before the birth of Raphael, had employed the talents of some of the best painters of Italy, and of other countries, to adorn his capital. Among the native artists, Fra Carnevale was one of the earliest who attempted perspective; and to him, or at least to his works, Bramante, as well as Raphael, may have been indebted for a knowledge of the rudiments of architecture; Pietro della Francesca, whose compositions on mathematics and geometry enriched the ducal library, was domiciliated with Giovanni Sanzio; Lucian, a painter and architect of Dalmatia, superintended for a time the building of the castle; but the most remarkable guest was Justus van Ghent, called by the Italians Giusto da Guanto; a considerable work painted by him contained portraits of the Duke Federigo and his successor Guid’ Ubaldo, under whose auspices again the talents of the celebrated Luca Signorelli were put in requisition. Pictures by most of these artists probably still exist at Urbino, and undoubtedly were seen and studied by Raphael in his early youth. Among the first reputed works of the great artist himself, which are preserved in his native city, may be mentioned a Madonna, originally painted on the wall in his father’s house, and a holy family on wood in the church of S. Andrea.

It is difficult to fix with precision the time when Raphael first studied under Perugino; but if, as Rumohr supposes, that painter only settled finally at Perugia about 1500, his distinguished scholar must have joined him at the age of sixteen or seventeen, and not some years earlier, as has been generally assumed. Even at this age it is sufficiently wonderful that the scholar should have been fitted to select the best qualities in his master’s style, and indeed very soon to improve upon them.

Besides the works which his native city contained, Raphael doubtless had had opportunities of seeing the productions of Andrea Luigi di Assisi, called Ingegno, of Niccolò di Fuligno, and other painters of the school of Umbria. Their robust style of colour, which was somewhat modified by Perugino and Pinturicchio, is occasionally to be traced in Raphael’s early works. There was another quality which Perugino, in his best time, possessed in common with other painters of his province, and which may be said generally to characterize the school of Umbria. This was an intensity of expression in sacred subjects indicating a deep religious feeling; and it is so striking in the best productions of the artist last named, that it has been considered sufficient of itself to prove the orthodoxy of his creed, which Vasari had called in question. The impulse was probably derived from Assisi, where some of the earliest Italian masters had left specimens of their powers, and the source was the doctrine of St. Francis. The history and legends of this saint (who died in 1226), frequently exercised the pencil of the early Italians, even to the danger of causing Bible subjects to be neglected, from the time of Giotto to that of Angelico da Fiesole: but the chief influence on the school above-mentioned is apparent rather in the treatment than in the subject; it is to be recognised in a certain subdued earnestness of expression, allied to the severe tenets of the saint of Assisi, and exhibiting religion rather in its suffering than in its triumphant character. This tendency received an additional impulse from the works which Taddeo di Bartolo of Siena had left in Perugia and other parts of Umbria early in the fifteenth century. The painters most remarkable for the quality alluded to were Niccolò Alunno, called Niccolò di Fuligno, and Pietro Perugino; but the same feeling had extended itself to Francia in Bologna. The taste of the Florentine painters on the other hand, with the single exception of Angelico da Fiesole, had long taken another direction: their pictures of this time abound in portraits; the saints and Madonnas of the school, those for instance of Domenico Ghirlandajo, seem to have been taken from common nature, and are seldom inspired with that sanctity of expression so frequent and so remarkable in the painters above-named. In later times, the painters of the various Italian schools, who were supposed to copy nature with too little selection, were called naturalisti, and, at the period alluded to, Florence may be considered comparatively the seat of this kind of imitation; a tendency greatly owing, it appears, to the introduction of early Flemish pictures, in which portraits were frequent, and in which the back-ground and accessories were treated with an attention new to the Italian painters.

Thus it cannot but be considered among the greatest of Raphael’s advantages, that he had opportunities of studying in both the schools alluded to; and in both, he of all men knew or felt what was fittest to be imitated. The depth and fervour of expression which he imbibed from the masters he first contemplated, and which he never relinquished, was improved and enlivened by the accurate study of the forms and varieties of nature to which the Florentines were devoted: again, before Raphael arrived in Florence, Lionardo da Vinci had laid the foundation of that profound anatomical knowledge, the only true means of representing action, which was afterwards carried to its greatest results in the works of Michael Angelo. The celebrated Cartoons of both these great designers were the object of study and admiration in Florence at the time Raphael resided there, although they were not completed quite so soon as might be inferred from a passage in Vasari. The importance of considering and accounting for the earliest tendency of Raphael’s feeling, will be apparent when we remember that it reappeared in his later, and even in his latest, works. The Dispute of the Sacrament, his altar-pieces, and even the Cartoons, are not Florentine in their taste, but are rather allied to the school from which he derived his first impressions.

From 1500, or perhaps a little earlier, to 1504–5, Raphael was employed at Perugia, or at Città di Castello (a township midway between Perugia and Urbino); his works in the latter place must, however, have been executed after he became a pupil of Perugino, as they clearly evince an imitation of that painter’s manner. An altar-piece, originally in the church of S. Niccola di Tolentino, at Città di Castello, is now in the Vatican; a Crucifixion from the church of S. Domenico, in the same place, is in the Fesch collection at Rome; and the celebrated Marriage of the Virgin, from the church of S. Francesco, is at Milan. The last, which was copied almost without alteration from a painting of Perugino, has the date 1504, and immediately precedes Raphael’s first visit to Florence.

The works done by Raphael in Perugia were much more numerous, to say nothing of his assistance in pictures which pass for Perugino’s. Among his own may be mentioned an Assumption of the Virgin, now in the Vatican, as well as another picture of the same subject begun by Raphael, but finished, not till after his death, by his scholars. The fresco, in the cloister of S. Severo, at Perugia, which resembles the upper part of the Disputa (to be hereafter mentioned), has the date 1505; the lower part was finished by Perugino when very old, after Raphael’s death. The style of this fresco bespeaks an acquaintance with higher examples of art than Perugia contained; it was probably done after a first visit to Florence. The interesting picture at Blenheim, mentioned by Vasari as having been painted for the chapel Degli Ansidei, in the church De’ Servi at Perugia, has the date 1505; it may be considered to be the last example of Raphael’s imitation of Perugino, and to mark the transition from that imitation to the Florentine manner.

While Raphael was studying at Perugia, Pinturicchio, a native of that place, and an assistant of Perugino, was employed to paint some subjects relating to the Life of Pius II., in the library, now the sacristy, of the Duomo at Siena. Vasari relates, not without contradicting himself in the separate lives of Raphael and Pinturicchio, that the latter availed himself of his young friend’s skill in composition, in engaging him to design the whole series of subjects; he further adds, that Raphael accompanied Pinturicchio to Siena, but left him to proceed to Florence, in order to see the Cartoons of Michael Angelo and Lionardo da Vinci. The works in the sacristy at Siena appear to have been done before the death of Pius III., in 1503: at that time the Cartoons in question were not completed (M. Angelo’s was not finished and publicly shown before 1506, Vinci’s not much earlier); and as we have before seen, Raphael was employed at Città di Castello in 1504, probably before he had seen Florence at all. It is however certain that Raphael made some designs for Pinturicchio, since two small compositions, almost identical with the frescoes at Siena, and other separate studies by his hand exist, although various reasons, too long to adduce here, render it extremely improbable that he was ever employed at Siena. The vast number of works which this great man executed in his very short life, make it sufficiently difficult to assign time enough for the production of those that are undoubted.

The amiable character, as well as the extraordinary talents of Raphael, soon procured him the notice and admiration of the Florentine artists. Among his chief friends were Taddeo Gaddi (in return for whose hospitality he probably painted the Madonna del Gran Duca and the Madonna Tempi), Ridolfo Ghirlandajo, and Fra Bartolommeo. It would be impossible here to give a list of the works which he executed during his residence in Florence from 1504–5 to 1508, when we find him in Rome. Some pictures were left unfinished at the time of his departure for that city, and were completed by Ridolfo Ghirlandajo. A picture sent to Siena, by some supposed the Giardiniera, now at Paris, but more probably the Lanti Madonna, was among these, as well as the Madonna painted for the Dei family: an accurate critic, Rumohr, even supposes that the celebrated entombment done for Perugia, which is now in the Borghese palace in Rome, was completed from Raphael’s designs by Ridolfo Ghirlandajo. The number of Madonnas, portraits, and altar-pieces produced in the three or four years of Raphael’s residence in Florence, must of necessity lead to the conclusion that the repetitions of these works, which all pretend to originality, must have been done by his imitators. Again Vasari states, not without some probability, that Raphael visited his native place, and painted several works there for the Duke Guid’ Ubaldo, during the short time above-mentioned: and Malvasia, in his account of the Bolognese school, enumerates various works which were unknown even to Vasari.

Meanwhile Raphael reaped all the improvement which the sight of the excellent works of art in Florence was calculated to communicate. The inspection of the works of Michael Angelo and Lionardo da Vinci enlarged his knowledge of form and his execution, while the inventions of the earlier Florentine masters were diligently examined and remembered; yet it is here important to remark, that he never imitated even the highest examples alluded to, as he had imitated the first models from which he studied. This is naturally to be accounted for in some degree by the greater docility of earlier youth; but as so much has been said of the inspiration which Raphael caught from Michael Angelo, in Florence from a sight of the Cartoons, and in Rome from that of the ceiling of the Capella Sistina, it is necessary to remember that a direct imitation of Michael Angelo is no where to be traced in Raphael, and that he seemed desirous rather of exhibiting his own feeling as distinct from that of the great Florentine master, than of aiming at that master’s style.

From 1508 to 1520, the year of his death, Raphael resided in Rome. Vasari relates that Bramante, the architect of Julius II., being from the same city with Raphael and distantly related to him, had recommended him to the Pope, as qualified to paint in fresco certain rooms of the Vatican; but it was more probably Raphael’s great reputation, now second to none, which was the real cause of the Pope’s notice, although Bramante may have been the medium of communication. To the honour of Julius it should be remembered, that he had discernment enough to fix in every instance on the best artists of his age, and he left no means unemployed, sometimes even to an indulgence at variance with the haughtiness of his character, to secure their best efforts in his service.

At no period of Raphael’s laborious life were his exertions greater than during the reign of Julius II., that is, till 1513, the year of that pontiff’s death. The room called the Camera della Segnatura, where the great artist began to work, was evidently planned by him as one design, and its four walls were appropriated to four comprehensive subjects,—theology, philosophy, poetry, and jurisprudence. The ceiling is occupied with single figures and subjects forming part of the same scheme. The subject of Theology, commonly called the Disputa, was begun the first, and the right hand of the upper part was first painted. This is evident from a certain inexperience in the mechanical process of fresco painting, which is found to disappear even in the same work. Six of these vast subjects, besides other works, were executed between 1508 and 1513, and the two last, the Miracle of Bolsena and the Heliodorus, are unsurpassed in colour, as well as in every other excellence fitted for the subject and dimensions. For richness and force of local colour these two works have often been compared to those of Titian; it should be added that they are earlier in date than the finest oil pictures of Titian, and that they are decidedly superior in colour to the frescoes by that master in Padua. The supposition of Rumohr, that Giorgione may have seen and profited by these specimens, is, however, not to be reconciled with the date of that painter’s death. The impatience of the character of Julius, who was bent on the speedy prosecution of this undertaking, makes it probable that some works attributed by Vasari to this period were executed later. The portrait of Julius, that of Bindo Altoviti, the musician in the Sciarra palace, the Madonna di Fuligno, the Madonna della Sedia, and the Vision of Ezekiel, belong however to this time. The St. Cecilia, begun in 1513, was not sent to Bologna till some years afterwards. In the last, the assistance of subordinate hands is evident; and the variety of works in which Raphael was employed under Leo X. made this practice of intrusting the execution of his designs to others more and more necessary. Unfortunately, his grand works, the frescoes of the Vatican, with the exception of two excellent specimens, the Attila and the Liberation of Peter (painted immediately after the accession of Leo), were completed very much in this way by his scholars. Even the Incendio del Borgo, so remarkable for its invention and composition, has but few traces of his own hand in the execution. The frescoes of the Vatican have often been described as exhibiting one comprehensive plan as to their meaning, but it is well known that the subjects of the Attila and the Liberation of Peter were suggested by incidents in the life of Leo, and consequently that they could not have been thought of before the accession of that pope. Of all these works the Attila is justly considered to be the most perfect example of fresco painting, and to exhibit the greatest command over the material; though produced after the death of Julius, it may be regarded as the noblest result of that impulse which the pontiff’s energy had communicated to Raphael. The character of Leo X., as a protector of art, has been perhaps sometimes too favourably represented. More educated than his predecessor, he loved the refinement which the arts and letters imparted to his court; but he had no deep interest, like Julius, in inciting such men as Raphael and Michael Angelo to do their utmost under his auspices. Whether from the indifference of Leo, or from his neglecting, as Vasari hints, to discharge his pecuniary debts to Raphael, we soon find the painter employed in various other works, and the remaining frescoes of the Vatican bear evidence of the frequent employment of other hands. Many works of minor importance in the same palace were entirely executed by his assistants.

The celebrated Cartoons were designs for tapestries, of which more than twenty of various sizes are preserved in the Vatican. The Cartoons, it may be inferred, were equally numerous, but seven only, now fit Hampton Court, remain entire. A portion of another was bequeathed by the late Prince Hoare to the Foundling Hospital, where it is now to be seen. These works owed their existence to the Pope’s love of magnificence rather than to a true taste for art; but although destined for a merely ornamental purpose, some of the designs are among the very finest of Raphael’s inventions, and a few may have been, at least in part, executed by his hand. The Ananias, the Charge to Peter, the Paul and Barnabas at Lystra, and the Paul preaching at Athens, are generally considered to have the greatest pretensions to this additional interest. The fine portrait of Leo with the Cardinals de’ Medici and de’ Rossi completes the list of larger works undertaken for the Pope, but the many designs by Raphael from classical or mythological subjects may be supposed to have been also made at the suggestion of the pontiff. In obedience to his wishes, Raphael undertook the inspection of the ancient Roman monuments, and superintended the improvements of St. Peter’s. Among the numerous and extensive works done for other employers may be mentioned the Sybils in the Chiesa della Pace, the frescoes from Apuleius’s story of Cupid and Psyche in the palace of Agostino Chigi, called the Farnesina, where the so-called Galatea was the beginning of another Cyclus from the same fable, the Madonna del Pesce, the Madonna di S. Sisto, and the Spasimo di Sicilia. Many a palace in the neighbourhood of Rome still exhibits remains of frescoes for which Raphael at least furnished the designs; and his own Casino, near the more modern Villa Borghese, may retain traces of his hand, but it is now fast falling to decay. A long list of portraits might be added to the above works, together with many interesting designs in architecture, and even some productions in sculpture. In reviewing the amazing number of works attributed to Raphael, it must not however be forgotten that many are his only in the invention, and some pictures that bear his name may have been even designed as well as finished by his imitators. The Flemish copies of Raphael are frequent, and are to be detected, among other indications, by their extreme smoothness; the contemporary imitations, especially those of the earlier style of the master, by Domenico Alfani and Vincenzo di S. Geminiano, are much less easily distinguished. The question respecting the Urbino earthenware may be considered to have been set at rest by Passeri (Storia delle pitture in Maiolica di Pesaro e di altri luoghi della Provincia Metaurense). From this inquiry, it appears, first, that the art of painting this ware had not arrived at perfection till twenty years after Raphael’s death: and secondly, that about that time Guid’ Ubaldo II. (della Rovere) collected engravings after Raphael, and even original designs by him, and had them copied in the Urbino manufactory. Battista Franco at one time superintended the execution, and one of the artists was called Raffaello del Colle; his name may perhaps occasionally be inscribed on the Urbino ware, but the initials O. F. (Orazio Fontana) are the most frequent.

The Transfiguration was the last oil picture of importance on which Raphael was employed; it was unfinished at his death, and was afterwards completed, together with various other works, by his scholars. The last and worst misstatement of Vasari cannot be passed over, for unfortunately, none of the biographer’s mistakes have been oftener repeated than that which ascribes the death of this great man to the indulgence of his passion for the Fornarina. Cardinal Antonelli was in possession of an original document, first published by Cancellieri, which assigns a different, and a much more probable, cause for Raphael’s death; it thus concludes,—“Life in him (Raphael) seemed to inform a most fragile bodily structure, for he was all mind; and moreover, his physical forces were much impaired by the extraordinary exertions he had gone through, and which it is wonderful to think he could have made in so short a life. Being then in a very delicate state of health, he received orders one day while at the Farnesina to repair to the court; not to lose time, he ran all the way to the Vatican, and arrived there heated and breathless; there the sudden chill of the vast rooms, where he was obliged to stand long consulting on the alterations of St. Peter’s, checked the perspiration, and he was presently seized with an indisposition. On his return home, he was attacked with a fever, which ended in his death.” Raphael was born and died on Good Friday. Some of his biographers have hence, through an oversight, asserted that he lived exactly thirty-seven years. He was born March 28, 1483, and died April 6, 1520. He was buried in the Pantheon, now the church of Sta. Maria ad Martyres, in a niche or chapel which he had himself endowed. His remains have been lately found there.

Quatremère de Quincy’s ‘Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de Rafael, etc. Paris, 1824,’ has been improved and superseded by the notes to the Italian translation of Longhena, Milan, 1829. Pungileoni, the author of the ‘Elogio Storico di Giovanni Santi, Urbino, 1822,’ has been long employed in preparing a life of Raphael. The observations of Rumohr, in the third volume of his ‘Italienische Forschungen, Berlin, 1831,’ are original and valuable. A few interesting facts will be found in Fea’s ‘Notizie intorno Raffaele Sanzio, Rome 1822.’ The author, however, fails to prove the regularity of Leo’s payments to Raphael, since the latest document concerning the frescoes in the Stanze has the date 1514.

The engraving is from a miniature after the portrait by Raphael himself, in his first manner, cut from the stucco of a wall at Urbino, which forms the chief attraction of the Camera di’ ritratti at Florence. The head engraved by Morghen, and so generally known, represents the features of Bindo Altoviti, which do not even resemble in a single point those of Raphael. The notion arose solely from a passage in Vasari’s Lives:—‘E a Bindo Altoviti fece il ritratto suo;’ for Bindo Altoviti he did his portrait (not his own): these words were distorted by the Editor Bottari in a marginal note; but the error has been decisively exposed by Missirini and others, whose account is every where received in Italy. Nor does it appear that the Tuscans in general fell into the mistake, for the portrait now given, and not, as Bottari asserts, the Altoviti portrait, is engraved in the Museum Florentinum.

[Death of Ananias.]

KNOX.

John Knox was born in East Lothian, in 1505, probably at the village of Gifford, but, according to some accounts, at the small town of Haddington, in the grammar-school of which he received the rudiments of his education. His parents were of humble rank, but sufficiently removed from want to support their son at the University of St. Andrew’s, which Knox entered about the year 1524. He passed with credit through his academical course, and took orders at the age of twenty-five, if not sooner. In his theological reading, he was led by curiosity to examine the works of ancient authors quoted by the scholastic divines. These gave him new views of religion, and led him on to the perusal of the scriptures themselves. The change in his opinions appears to have commenced about 1535. It led him to recommend to others, as well as to practise, a more rational course of study than that prescribed by the ancient usage of the University. This innovation brought him under suspicion of being attached to the principles of the Reformation, which was making secret progress in Scotland: and, having ventured to censure the corruptions which prevailed in the Church, he found it expedient to quit St. Andrew’s in 1542, and return to the south of Scotland, where he openly avowed his adherence to the Reformed doctrines.

Engraved by B. Holl.
JOHN KNOX.
From a Picture in the possession of Lord Somerville.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

Having cut himself off from the emoluments of the Established Church, Knox engaged as tutor in the family of Douglas of Langniddrie, a gentleman of East Lothian. As a man of known ability, and as a priest, he was especially obnoxious to the hierarchy; and it is said that Archbishop Beatoun sought his life by private assassination, as well as openly under colour of the law. At Easter, 1547, Knox, with many other Protestants, took refuge in the castle of St. Andrew’s, which was seized and held, after the archbishop’s murder, by the band of conspirators who had done the deed. He here continued his usual course of instruction to his pupils, combined with public reading and explanation of the scriptures to those who sought his assistance. His talents pointed him out as a fitting person for the ministry; but he was very reluctant to devote himself to that important charge, and was only induced to do so, after a severe internal struggle, by a solemn call from the minister and the assembled congregation. He distinguished himself during his short abode at St. Andrew’s by zeal, boldness, and success in preaching. But in the following July the castle surrendered; and, by a scandalous violation of the articles of capitulation, the garrison were made prisoners of war, and subjected to great and unusual ill-treatment. Knox, with many others, was placed in a French galley, and compelled to labour like a slave at the oar. His health was greatly injured by the hardships which he underwent in that worst of prisons; but his spirit rose triumphant over suffering. During this period he committed to writing an abstract of the doctrines which he had preached, which he found means to convey to his friends in Scotland, with an earnest exhortation to persevere in the faith through persecution and trial. He obtained liberty in February, 1549, but by what means is not precisely known.

At that time, under the direction of Cranmer, and with the zealous concurrence of the young King Edward VI., the Reformation in England was advancing with rapid pace. Knox repaired thither, as to the safest harbour; and in the dearth of able and earnest preachers which then existed, he found at once a welcome and active employment. The north was appointed to be the scene of his usefulness, and he continued to preach there, living chiefly at Berwick and Newcastle, till the end of 1552. He was then summoned to London, to appear before the Privy Council on a frivolous charge, of which he was honourably acquitted. The King was anxious to secure his services to the English Church, and caused the living of All Hallows, in London, and even a bishopric, to be offered him. But Knox had conscientious scruples to some points of the English establishment. He continued, however, to preach, itinerating through the country, until, after the accession of Mary, the exercise of the Protestant religion was forbidden by act of parliament, December 20, 1553. Shortly afterwards he yielded to the importunity of his friends, and consulted his own safety by retiring to France. Previous to his departure, he solemnised his marriage with Miss Bowes, a Yorkshire lady of good family, to whom he had been some time engaged.

Knox took up his abode in the first instance at Dieppe, but he soon went to Geneva, and there made acquaintance with Calvin, whom he loved and venerated, and followed more closely than any others of the fathers of the Reformation in his views both of doctrine and ecclesiastical discipline. Towards the close of 1554 he was invited by a congregation of English exiles resident at Frankfort to become one of their pastors. Internal discords, chiefly concerning the ritual and matters of ceremonial observance, in which, notwithstanding the severe and uncomplying temper usually ascribed to him, no blame seems justly due to Knox, soon forced him to quit this charge, and he returned to Geneva; where he spent more than a year in a learned leisure, peculiarly grateful to him after the troubled life which he had led so long. But in August, 1555, moved by the favourable aspect of the time, and by the entreaties of his family, from whom he had now been separated near two years, he returned to Scotland, and was surprised and rejoiced at the extraordinary avidity with which his preaching was attended. He visited various districts, both north and south, and won over two noblemen, who became eminent supporters of the Reformation, the heir-apparent of the earldom of Argyle, and Lord James Stuart, afterwards Earl of Murray. But in the middle of these successful labours he received a call from an English congregation at Geneva to become their pastor; and he appears to have felt it a duty to comply with their request. It would seem more consonant to his character to have remained in Scotland, to watch over the seed which he had sown, and that his own country had the most pressing claim upon his services. But the whole tenor of his life warrants the belief that he was actuated by no unworthy or selfish motives; and in the absence of definite information, some insight into the nature of his feelings may probably be gained from a letter addressed to some friends in Edinburgh, in March, 1557. “Assure of that, that whenever a greater number among you shall call upon me than now hath bound me to serve them, by His grace it shall not be the fear of punishment, neither yet of the death temporal, that shall impede my coming to you.” He quitted Scotland in July, 1556.

During this absence Knox maintained a frequent correspondence with his brethren in Scotland, and both by exhortation and by his advice upon difficult questions submitted to his judgment, was still of material service in keeping alive their spirit. Two of his works composed during this period require mention; his share in the English translation of the Scriptures, commonly called the ‘Geneva Bible,’ and the ‘Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous Regimen of Women,’ a treatise expressly directed against the government of Mary of England, but containing a bold and unqualified enunciation of the principle, that to admit a woman to sovereignty is contrary to nature, justice, and the revealed will of God. In January, 1559, at the invitation of the leading persons of the Protestant congregation, he again returned to Scotland. Matters at this time were drawing to a crisis. The Queen Regent, after temporising while the support of a large and powerful party was essential to her, had thrown off disguise, and openly avowed her determination to use force for the suppression of heresy: while the leading Protestants avowed as plainly their resolution of protecting their preachers; and becoming more and more sensible of their own increasing strength, resolved to abolish the Roman, and set up the Reformed method of worship in those places to which their influence or feudal power extended. St. Andrew’s was fixed on for the commencement of the experiment; and under the protection of the Earl of Argyle and Lord James Stuart, Prior of St. Andrew’s, Knox, who on his landing had been proclaimed a rebel and outlaw, undertook to preach publicly in the cathedral of that city. The archbishop sent word that he should be fired upon if he ventured to appear in the pulpit, and as that prelate was supported by a stronger force than the retinue of the Protestant noblemen, they thought it best that he should abstain at this time from thus exposing his life. Knox remained firm to his purpose. After reminding them that he had first preached the Gospel in that church, of the sufferings of his captivity, and of the confident hope which he had expressed to many that he should again perform his high mission in that same church, he besought them not to stand in the way when Providence had brought him to the spot. The archbishop’s proved to be an empty threat. Knox preached for four successive days without interruption, and with such effect, that the magistrates and the inhabitants agreed to set up the reformed worship in their town; the monasteries were destroyed, and the churches stripped of images and pictures. Both parties now rose in arms. During the contest which ensued, Knox was a chief agent in conducting the correspondence between Elizabeth and the Lords of the Congregation. The task suited neither his profession nor his character, and he rejoiced when he was relieved from it. In July, 1560, a treaty was concluded with the King and Queen of France, by which the administration of the Queen Regent was terminated; and in August a parliament was convoked, which abolished the papal jurisdiction, prohibited the celebration of mass, and rescinded the laws enacted against Protestant worship.

From the persecuted and endangered teacher of a proscribed religion, Knox had now become, not indeed the head, but a leader and venerated father of an Established Church. He was at once appointed the Protestant minister of Edinburgh, and his influence ceased not to be felt from this time forward in all things connected with the Church, and in many particulars of civil policy. Still his anxieties were far from an end. Many things threatened and impeded the infant Church. Far from acquiescing in the recent acts of the parliament, the young King and Queen of France were bent on putting down the rebellion, as they termed it, in Scotland by force of arms. The death of Francis put an end to that danger; but another, no less serious, was opened by the arrival of Mary in August, 1561, to assume her paternal sovereignty, with a fixed determination of reviving the supremacy of the religion in which she had been brought up, and to which she was devotedly attached. There were also two subjects upon which Knox felt peculiarly anxious, and in which he was thwarted by the lukewarmness, as he considered it, of the legislature,—the establishment of a strict and efficacious system of church discipline, and the entire devotion of the wealth of the Catholic priesthood to the promotion of education, and the maintenance of the true religion. In both these points he was thwarted by the indifference or interestedness of the nobility, who had possessed themselves, to a large amount, of the lands and tithes formerly enjoyed by monasteries.

It soon became evident that the Queen disliked and feared Knox. She regarded his ‘Blast against the Regimen of Women’ as an attack upon her own right to the throne; and this is not surprising, though Knox always declared that book to be levelled solely against the late Queen of England, and professed his perfect readiness to submit to Mary’s authority in all things lawful, and to wave all discussion or allusion to the obnoxious tenet. His freedom of speech in the pulpit was another constant source of offence; and it is not to be denied that, although the feelings of that age warranted a greater latitude than would now be tolerated in a teacher of religion, his energetic and severe temper led him to use violent and indiscreet language in speaking of public men and public things. For Mary herself he prayed in terms which, however fitting for a minister to employ towards one of his flock whom he regarded to be in deadly and pernicious error, a queen could hardly be expected to endure from a subject without anger. Accordingly, he was several times summoned to her presence, to apologise or answer for his conduct. The narrations of these interviews are very interesting: they show the ascendancy which he had gained over the haughty spirit of the Queen, and at the same time exonerate him from the charge urged by her apologists of having treated her with personal disrespect, and even brutality. He expressed uncourtly opinions in plain and severe language; farther than this he neither violated the courtesy due from man to woman, nor the respect due from a subject to a superior. In addition to the causes of offence already specified, he had remonstrated, from her first landing, against the toleration of the mass in her own chapel. And at a later time, he spoke so freely concerning the probable consequence to the Reformed Church from her marrying a Papist, that in reprimanding and remonstrating with him she burst into a passion of tears. He remained unmoved, protesting that he saw her Majesty’s tears with reluctance, but was constrained, since he had given her no just ground of offence, rather to sustain her tears than to hurt his conscience, and betray the commonwealth through his silence. This interview is one of the things upon which Mr. Hume has sought to raise a prejudice against the reformer in his partial account of this period.

Many of the nobility who had aided in the establishment of the Reformation, gained over either by the fascination of Mary’s beauty and manners, or by the still more cogent appeal of personal interest, were far from seconding Knox’s efforts, or partaking in his apprehensions. The Earl of Murray was so far won over to adopt a temporising and conciliatory policy, that a quarrel ensued in 1563 between him and Knox, which lasted for two years, until quenched, as Knox expresses it, by the water of affliction. Maitland of Lethington, once an active Reformer, a man of powerful and versatile talents, who was now made Secretary of State, openly espoused the Queen’s wishes. In the summer of 1563, Knox was involved in a charge of high treason, for having addressed a circular to the chief Protestant gentlemen, requesting them to attend the trial of two persons accused of having created a riot at the Queen’s chapel. It appears that he held an especial commission from the General Assembly to summon such meetings, when occasion seemed to him to require them. Upon this charge of treasonably convoking the lieges, he was brought before the privy council. Murray and Maitland were earnest to persuade him into submission and acknowledgment of error. Knox, however, with his usual firmness and uprightness, refused positively to confess a fault when he was conscious of none, and defended himself with so much power, that by the voice of a majority of the council he was declared free of all blame.

In March, 1564, more than three years after the death of his first wife, Knox was again married to a daughter of Lord Ochiltree, a zealous Protestant. Throughout that year and the following, he continued to preach as usual. Meanwhile, the Protestant establishment, though confirmed by the parliament, remained still unrecognised by the Queen, whose hasty marriage to Lord Henry Darnley in July, 1565, increased the alarm with which her conduct had already inspired the Reformers. But early in the following year, when Mary, in conjunction with her uncles of the House of Lorrain, had planned the formal re-establishment of Catholicism, her dissensions with her husband led to the assassination of Rizzio, and in rapid succession to the murder of Darnley, her marriage with Bothwell, and the train of events which ended in her formal deposition and the coronation of her infant son James VI. It is denied that Knox was privy to the assassination of Rizzio, and the tenor of his actions warrants us in disbelieving that he would have been an accomplice in any deed of blood; but after that event, he spoke of it in terms of satisfaction, indiscreet, liable to perversion, and unbecoming a Christian preacher. The Queen’s resentment for this and other reasons became so warm against him, that it was judged proper for him to retire from Edinburgh. He preached at the coronation of James VI. After Mary was made prisoner and confined at Lochleven, he, in common with most of the ministers and the great body of the people, insisted strongly on the duty of bringing her to trial for the crimes of murder and adultery, and of inflicting capital punishment if her guilt were proved.

During the short regency of Murray, Knox had the satisfaction, not only of being freed from the personal disquietudes which had been his portion almost through life, but of seeing the interests of the Church, if not maintained to the full extent which he could wish, at least treated with respect, and advocated as far as the crooked course of state-policy would permit. The murder of that distinguished nobleman, January 23, 1570, affected Knox doubly, as the premature decease of a loved and esteemed friend, and as a public calamity to church and state.

In the following October he suffered a slight fit of apoplexy, from which however he soon recovered so far as to resume his Sunday preachings. But the troubled times which followed on the death of the Regent Murray denied to him in Edinburgh that repose which his infirmities demanded, and in May, 1571, he was reluctantly induced to retire from his ministry and again to seek a refuge in St. Andrew’s. Nor was his residence in that city one of peace or ease, for he was troubled by a party favourable to the Queen’s interests, especially by that Archibald Hamilton who afterwards apostatised to the Roman Catholic Church and became his bitter calumniator; and he was placed in opposition to the Regent Morton with respect to the filling up of vacant bishoprics and the disposal of church property, which, far from being applied to the maintenance of religion and the diffusion of education, was still in great measure monopolised by the nobility. In August, 1572, his health being rapidly declining, he returned to Edinburgh at the earnest request of his congregation, who longed to hear his voice in the pulpit once more. He felt death to be nigh at hand, and was above all things anxious to witness the appointment of a zealous and able successor to the important station in the ministry which he filled. This was done to his satisfaction. On Sunday, November 9, he preached and presided at the installation of his successor, James Lawson, and he never after quitted his own house. He sickened on the 11th, and expired November 24, 1572, after a fortnight’s illness, in which he displayed unmixed tranquillity, and assured trust in a happy futurity, through the promises of the Gospel which he had preached. It is the more necessary to state this, because his calumniators dared to assert that his death was accompanied by horrid prodigies, and visible marks of divine reprobation. The same tales have been related of Luther and Calvin.

Knox’s moral character we may safely pronounce to have been unblemished, notwithstanding the outrageous charges of dissolute conversation which have been brought by some writers against him,—calumnies equally levelled against Beza, Calvin, and other fathers of the Reformation, and which bear their own refutation in their extravagance. As a preacher, he was energetic and effective, and uncommonly powerful in awakening the negligent or the hardened conscience. As a Reformer and leader of the Church, he was fitted for the stormy times and the turbulent and resolute people among whom his lot was cast, by the very qualities which have been made a reproach to him in a more polished age, and by a less zealous generation. He was possessed of strong natural talents, and a determined will which shunned neither danger nor labour. He was of middle age when he began the study of Greek, and it was still later in life when he acquired the Hebrew language,—tasks of no small difficulty when we consider the harassed and laborious tenor of his life. No considerations of temporising prudence could seduce him into the compromise of an important principle; no thought of personal danger could make him shrink when called to confront it. His deep sense and resolute discharge of duty, coupled with a natural fire and impetuosity of temper, sometimes led him into severity. But that his disposition was deeply affectionate is proved by his private correspondence; and that his severity proceeded from no acerbity of temper may be inferred from his having employed his powerful influence as a mediator for those who had borne arms against his party, and from his having never used it to avenge an injury. The best apology for his occasional harshness is that contained in the words of his own dying address to the elders of his church as quoted by Dr. M’Crie. “I know that many have frequently complained, and do still loudly complain, of my too great severity; but God knows that my mind was always void of hatred to the persons of those against whom I thundered the severest judgments. I cannot deny but that I felt the greatest abhorrence at the sins in which they indulged; but still I kept this one thing in view, that, if possible, I might gain them to the Lord. What influenced me to utter whatever the Lord put into my mouth so boldly, and without respect of persons, was a reverential fear of my God, who called and of His grace appointed me to be a steward of divine mysteries, and a belief that He will demand an account of the manner in which I have discharged the trust committed to me, when I shall at last stand before His tribunal.”

A list of Knox’s printed works, nineteen in number, is given by Dr. M’Crie at the end of his notes. They consist chiefly of short religious pieces, exhortations, and sermons. In addition to those more important books which we have already noticed, his ‘History of the Church of Scotland’ requires mention. The best edition is that printed at Edinburgh in 1732, which contains a life of the author, the ‘Regimen of Women,’ and some other pieces. Dr. M’Crie’s admirable ‘Life of Knox’ will direct the reader to the original sources of the history of this period.

[Knox’s House in the Canongate, Edinburgh.]

Engraved by W. Holl.
ADAM SMITH.
From a Medallion executed in the life time of A. Smith, by Tafsiel.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

A. SMITH.

Adam Smith was born June 5, 1723, at Kirkaldy, in the county of Fife, where his father held the place of comptroller of the customs. Being a posthumous and only child, he became the sole object of his widowed mother’s tenderness and solicitude; and this was increased by the delicacy of his constitution. Upon her devolved the sole charge of his education; and the value of her care may be estimated from the uninterrupted harmony and deep mutual affection which united them, unchilled, to the end of life. He was remarkable for his love of reading and the excellence of his memory, even at the early age when she first placed him at the grammar-school of Kirkaldy, where he won the affection of his companions by his amiable disposition, though the weakness of his frame hindered him from joining in their sports.

At the age of fourteen he was sent to the University of Glasgow, from which, at the end of three years, he was removed to Baliol College, Oxford, in order to qualify himself for taking orders in the English Church. Mathematics and natural philosophy seem to have been his favourite pursuits at Glasgow; but at Oxford he devoted all his leisure hours to belles-lettres, and the moral and political sciences. Among these political economy cannot be reckoned; for at that period it was unknown even in name: still, in such studies, and by the sedulous improvement of his understanding, he was laying the foundations of his immortal work. He remained seven years at Oxford, without conceiving, as may be inferred from some passages in the ‘Wealth of Nations,’ any high respect for the system of education then pursued in the University; and, having given up all thoughts of taking orders, he returned to his mother’s house at Kirkaldy, and devoted himself entirely to literature and science. In 1748 he removed to Edinburgh, where, under Lord Kames’s patronage, he delivered a course of lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres. These were never published; and, with other papers, were destroyed by Smith a short time before his death. Dr. Blair, in the well-known course which he delivered ten years afterwards on the same subject, acknowledges how greatly he was indebted to his predecessor, and how largely he had borrowed from him.

In 1751 Mr. Smith was elected Professor of Logic in the University of Glasgow, and in the following year he was transferred to the chair of Moral Philosophy, which he filled during thirteen years. The following account of his lectures is given by Professor Millar. “His course of lectures on this subject was divided into four parts. The first contained natural theology, in which he considered the proofs of the being and attributes of God, and those principles of the human mind upon which religion is founded. The second comprehended ethics, strictly so called, and consisted chiefly of the doctrines which he afterwards published in his ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments.’ In the third part he treated more at length of that branch of morality which relates to justice, and which, being susceptible of precise and accurate rules, is for that reason capable of a full and particular explanation.... In the last part of his lectures he examined those political regulations which are founded, not on the principle of justice, but on that of expediency, and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power, and the prosperity of a state. Under this view, he considered the political institutions relating to commerce, to finances, to ecclesiastical and military establishments. What he delivered on these subjects contained the substance of the work he afterwards published under the title of ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.’”

“There was no situation in which the abilities of Dr. Smith appeared to greater advantage than as a professor. In delivering his lectures, he trusted almost entirely to extemporary elocution. His manner, though not graceful, was plain and unaffected; and as he seemed to be always interested in the subject, he never failed to interest his hearers. Each discourse consisted of several distinct propositions, which he successively endeavoured to prove and to illustrate. These propositions, when announced in general terms, had, from their extent, not unfrequently something of the air of a paradox. In his attempts to explain them, he often appeared at first not to be sufficiently possessed of the subject, and spoke with some hesitation. As he advanced, however, the matter seemed to crowd upon him, his manner became warm and animated, and his expression easy and fluent. In points susceptible of controversy, you could easily discern that he secretly conceived an opposition to his opinions, and that he was led upon this account to support them with greater energy and vehemence. By the fulness and variety of his illustrations, the subject gradually swelled in his hands, and acquired a dimension which, without a tedious repetition of the same views, was calculated to seize the attention of his audience, and to afford them pleasure as well as instruction in following the same object through all the diversity of shades and aspects in which it was presented, and afterwards in tracing it backwards to that original proposition or general truth from which this beautiful train of speculation had proceeded.”

“His reputation as a professor was accordingly raised very high, and a multitude of students from a great distance resorted to the University merely upon his account. Those branches of science which he taught became fashionable at this place, and his opinions were the chief topics of discussion in clubs and literary societies. Even the small peculiarities in his pronunciation or manner of speaking became frequently the objects of imitation.”

Smith published his ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’ in 1759. The fundamental principle of this work, we use the summary of Mr. Macculloch, is that “sympathy forms the real foundation of morals; that we do not immediately approve or disapprove of any given action, when we have become acquainted with the intention of the agent and the consequences of what he has done, but that we previously enter, by means of that sympathetic affection which is natural to us, into the feelings of the agent, and those to whom the action relates; that having considered all the motives and passions by which the agent was actuated, we pronounce, with respect to the propriety or impropriety of the action, according as we sympathise or not with him; while we pronounce, with respect to the merit or demerit of the action, according as we sympathise with the gratitude or resentment of those who were its objects; and that we necessarily judge of our own conduct by comparing it with such maxims and rules as we have deduced from observations previously made on the conduct of others.” This theory, ingenious as it is, is generally abandoned as untenable. Dr. Brown has argued, and the objection seems fatal, that though sympathy may diffuse, it cannot originate moral sentiments: at the same time he bears the strongest testimony to the literary merits and moral tendency of the work.

In 1763 Smith received from the University of Glasgow the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, and he was offered, and accepted, the situation of travelling tutor to the young Duke of Buccleugh. His long residence in the populous and manufacturing metropolis of western Scotland had enabled him to collect a rich hoard of materials for the great work he had in view; and this new appointment changed the method, rather than interrupted the course, of his studies. It afforded him the means of examining the habits, institutions, and condition of man under new forms, and in new countries, and he observed with his natural acuteness and sagacity the influence of locality, of climate, and of government. He no doubt derived considerable advantage from the society of the distinguished men with whom he associated at Paris; among these, Turgot, D’Alembert, Helvetius, Marmontel, Morellet, Rochefoucauld, and Quesnay, were his intimate friends. So highly did he appreciate the talents of the last-named person as an economist, that he had intended, had Quesnay lived, to have acknowledged the debt he owed him by dedicating to him his own great work on the ‘Wealth of Nations.’

Having spent two years on the Continent, Dr. Smith returned to England with his pupil, and soon after joined his mother at Kirkaldy, where he resided for about ten years almost entirely in seclusion, occupied in the prosecution of his great work. It was published in 1776; and few books have ever been given to the world tending more directly to destroy the prejudices, develop the powers, and promote the happiness of mankind. But the world at that time was not clear-sighted enough to appreciate its merits. Dr. Smith however had the gratification to see that, during fifteen years which elapsed between its publication and his death, it had produced a considerable effect upon public opinion, and that the eyes of men were beginning to be opened upon an object of such importance to human happiness. In this country at least Dr. Smith was the creator of the science of political economy, for he had only a chaos of materials from which to form it. Some defects may be discovered in his arrangement, and some errors detected in the principles as laid down by him; for it is hardly given to human intellect, that the originator of a science should also carry it to perfection. But Smith established the foundation upon which all future superstructures must rest; and the labours of Ricardo, Malthus, and some now living, eminent as they are, instead of superseding their predecessor do but enhance his merit. With all the progress which liberty of every kind has made since his time, no one has maintained the freedom of industry in all its bearings more forcibly than himself. The theories of rent, and of population, seem to be the only important branches of the science, as it now stands, which had escaped his observation.

In 1778 Dr. Smith was appointed Commissioner of the Customs for Scotland. The duties of his office obliged him to quit London, where he had resided for two years subsequent to the publication of the ‘Wealth of Nations,’ and where his society had been courted by the most distinguished characters; and he took up his abode in Edinburgh, accompanied by his aged mother. In 1787 he was elected Rector of the University of Glasgow; a compliment which gave him great pleasure, as he was much attached to that body, and grateful for the services it had rendered him in his youth, and the honours it had conferred on him at a more advanced age.

His mother died in 1784, and his grief on this occasion is supposed to have injured his health, and his constitution, which had never been robust, began to give way. He suffered another severe privation in the death of his cousin, Miss Douglas, who had managed his household for many years, since the infirmities of his parent had disqualified her for that employment. He survived Miss Douglas only two years, and died in 1790 of a tedious and painful illness, which he bore with patience and resignation.

Adam Smith’s private character is thus summed up by his friend Mr. Dugald Stewart: “The more delicate and characteristical features of his mind it is perhaps impossible to trace. That there were many peculiarities both in his manners and in his intellectual habits was manifest to the most superficial observer; but, although to those who knew him, these peculiarities detracted nothing from the respect which his abilities commanded; and although, to his intimate friends, they added an inexpressible charm to his conversation, while they displayed in the most interesting light the artless simplicity of his heart, yet it would require a very skilful pencil to present them to the public eye. He was certainly not fitted for the general commerce of the world, or for the business of active life. The comprehensive speculations with which he had been occupied from his youth, and the variety of materials which his own inventions continually supplied to his thoughts, rendered him habitually inattentive to familiar objects and to common occurrences; and he frequently exhibited instances of absence which had scarcely been surpassed by the fancy of La Bruyère. Even in company he was apt to be engrossed with his studies, and appeared, at times, by the motion of his lips, as well as by his looks and gestures, to be in the fervour of composition. I have often however been struck, at the distance of years, with his accurate memory of the most trifling particulars; and am inclined to believe, from this and some other circumstances, that he possessed a power, not perhaps uncommon among absent men, of recollecting, in consequence of subsequent efforts of reflection, many occurrences which, at the time when they happened, did not seem to have sensibly attracted his notice.

“To the defect now mentioned, it was probably owing, in part, that he did not fall in easily with the common dialogue of conversation, and that he was somewhat apt to convey his own ideas in the form of a lecture. When he did so however, it never proceeded from a wish to engross the discourse, or gratify his vanity. His own inclination disposed him so strongly to enjoy in silence the gaiety of those around him, that his friends were often led to concert little schemes, in order to engage him in the discussions most likely to interest him. Nor do I think I shall be accused of going too far, when I say that he was scarcely ever known to start a new topic himself, or to appear unprepared upon those topics that were introduced by others. Indeed, his conversation was never more amusing than when he gave a loose to his genius, upon the very few branches of knowledge of which he only possessed the outlines.

“In his external form and appearance there was nothing uncommon. When perfectly at ease, and when warmed with conversation, his gestures were animated, and not ungraceful; and in the society of those he loved, his features were often brightened with a smile of inexpressible benignity.... He never sat for his picture, but the medallion by Tassie conveys an exact idea of his profile, and of the general expression of his countenance.” It is from this that our portrait of him is engraved.

To those of Smith’s works of which we have already spoken, we have to add two articles in a short-lived periodical publication, called the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ for 1755, containing a review of Johnson’s Dictionary, and a letter on the state of literature in the different countries of Europe; an ‘Essay on the Formation of Languages;’ and Essays, published after his death by his desire, with an account of his life and writings prefixed, by Dugald Stewart, on the Principles which lead and direct Philosophical Inquiries; on the nature of the Imitation practised in the Imitative Arts; on the affinity between certain English and Italian verses; and on the External Senses. To that account of his life we may refer for an able analysis of his most important writings, as well as to the memoir prefixed to Mr. Macculloch’s edition of the ‘Wealth of Nations,’ from which this sketch is principally taken.

Engraved by T. Woolnoth.
CALVIN.
From a Print engraved by C. Dankertz.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

CALVIN.

John Cauvin (afterwards called Calvin) was born of humble parents, his father following the trade of a cooper, at Noyon in Picardy, July 10, 1509. He was intended in the first instance for the profession of the church, and two benefices were already set apart for him, when, at a very early age, from what motive is not exactly known, his destination was suddenly changed, and he was sent, first to Orleans and then to Bourges, to learn under distinguished teachers the science of jurisprudence. He is said to have made great proficiency in that study; but nevertheless, he found leisure to cultivate other talents, and made himself acquainted with Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac, during his residence at Bourges. His natural inclination seems ever to have bent him towards those pursuits to which his earliest attention was directed; and though he never attended the schools of theology, nor had at any time any public master in that science, yet his thoughts were never far away from it; and the time which he could spare from his professional labours was employed on subjects bearing more or less directly upon religion.

Thus it was, that he failed not to take part in the discussions, which arose in France during his early years, respecting the principles of the Reformation; and it may be, that his happy escape from theological tuition made him more disposed to embrace them. It is certain that his opposition to the Church of Rome became very soon notorious, and made him, young as he was, an object of jealousy to some of its powerful adherents. Even the moderate Erasmus viewed his aspiring talents and determined character with some undefined apprehension; and he is related (after a conversation with Calvin at Strasbourg) to have remarked to Bucer, who had presented him,—“I see in that young man the seeds of a dangerous pest, which will some day throw great disorder into the Church.” The weak and wavering character of Erasmus renders it difficult for us to understand what sort of disorder it was that he anticipated, or what exactly was the Church on which the apprehended mischief was to fall. In 1535 Calvin published his great work, the ‘Christian Institute,’ which was intended as a sort of confession of faith of the French reformers, in answer to the calumnies which confounded them with the frantic Anabaptists of Germany.

In 1536, finding that his person was no longer secure in France, Calvin determined to retire into Germany, and was compelled by accident to pass through Geneva. He found this city in a state of extreme confusion. The civil government was popular, and in those days tumultuous: the ecclesiastical had been entirely dissolved by the departure of the bishops and clergy on the triumph of the Reformation, and only such laws existed as the individual influence of the pastors was able to impose upon their several flocks. It was a tempting field for spiritual ambition, and Calvin was readily persuaded to enter into it. He decided to remain at Geneva, and forthwith opened a theological school.

In the very year following his arrival, he formed the design of introducing into his adopted country a regular system of ecclesiastical polity. He assembled the people; and, not without much opposition, prevailed on them at length to bind themselves by oath; first, that they would not again, on any consideration, ever submit to the dominion of Rome; secondly, that they would render obedience to a certain code of ecclesiastical laws, which he and his colleagues had drawn up for them. Some writers do not expressly mention that this second proposition was accepted by the people—if accepted, it was immediately violated: and as Calvin and his clerical coadjutors (who were only two in number) refused with firmness to administer the holy communion to such as rejected the condition, the people, not yet prepared to endure that bondage, banished the spiritual legislators from the city, in April, 1538.

Calvin retired to Strasbourg, where he renewed his intimacy with Bucer, and became more and more distinguished for his talents and learning. He was present at the Conferences of Worms and Ratisbon, where he gained additional reputation. He founded a French reformed church at Strasbourg, and obtained a theological chair in that city; at the same time, he continued in communication with Geneva, and in expressions of unabated affection for his former adherents. Meanwhile, the disorders which had prevailed in that city were in no manner alleviated by his exile, and a strong reaction gradually took place in his favour; insomuch, that, in the year 1541, there being a vacancy in the ministry, the senate and the assembly of the people proclaimed with equal vehemence their wish for the return of Calvin. “We will have Calvin, that good and learned man, Christ’s minister.” “This,” says Calvin, Epist. 24, “when I understood, I could not choose but praise God; nor was I able to judge otherwise, than that this was the Lord’s doing; and that it was marvellous in our eyes; and that the stone which the builders refused was now made the head of the corner.”

It was on September 13th that he returned from his exile in the pride of spiritual triumph; and he began, without any loss of time, while the feelings of all classes were yet warm in his favour, to establish that rigid form of ecclesiastical discipline which he may formerly have meditated, but which he did not fully propound till now. He proposed to institute a standing court (the Consistory), consisting of all the ministers of religion, who were to be perpetual members, and also of twice the same number of laymen to be chosen annually. To these he committed the charge of public morality, with power to determine all kinds of ecclesiastical causes; with authority to convene, control, and punish, even with excommunication, whomsoever they might think deserving. It was in vain that many advanced objections to this scheme: that they urged the despotic character of this court; the certainty too, that the perpetual judges, though fewer in number, would in fact predominate over a majority annually elected; and that Calvin, through his power over the clergy, would be master of the decisions of the whole tribunal. He persisted inflexibly; and since there now remained with the people of Geneva only the choice of receiving his laws or sending him once more into exile, they acquiesced reluctantly in the former determination. On the 20th of November, in the same year (1541), the Presbytery was established at Geneva.

Maimbourg, in his ‘History of Calvinism,’ has remarked that, from this time forward, Calvin became, not pontiff only, but also caliph, of Geneva; since the unbounded influence which he possessed in the Consistory extended to the council, and no important state-affair was transacted without his advice or approbation. At the same time, he enlarged the limits of his spiritual power, and made it felt in every quarter of Europe. In France most especially he was regarded personally as the head of the Reformed Church; he composed a liturgy for its use; and, secured from persecution by his residence and dignity, he gave laws, by his writings and his emissaries, to the scattered congregations of Reformers. The fruits of his unwearied industry were everywhere in their hands. His Institute, and his learned Expositions of Scripture, were substantial foundations of spiritual authority; and he became to his Church what the “Master of the Sentences,”—almost what Augustin himself—had been to the Church of Rome. And he did the Reformed Church an essential service by procuring the establishment of the academy, or university of Geneva; which was long the principal nursery of Presbyterian ministers, and which was the chief instrument of communicating to the citizens of its little state, that general mental culture and love of literature for which they have been remarkable.

The peculiarities of his religious opinions are known to all our readers; nor indeed, at any rate, have we space, in this brief outline of the Life of the Reformer, so to detail his tenets as to avoid the chance of misconception, either by his followers or his adversaries. We shall, therefore, proceed to another subject, respecting which there will be little difference, either as to the facts themselves, or the judgment to be formed of them—we mean that darkest act of his life, which being, as far as we learn, unatoned and unrepented, throws so deep a shadow over all the rest, as almost to make us question his sincerity in any good principle, or his capability of any righteous purpose.

A Spaniard, named Servetus, born at Villa Nueva, in Aragon, in the same year with Calvin, had been long engaged in a correspondence with the latter, which had finally degenerated into angry and abusive controversy. He had been educated as a physician, and had acquired great credit in his profession; when, in an evil hour, he entered the field of theological controversy, and professed without fear, and defended without modification, the Unitarian doctrine; adding to it some obscure and fanciful notions, peculiar, we believe, to his own imagination. He published very early in life ‘Seven Books concerning the Errors of the Trinity,’ and he continued in the same principles until the year 1553, when he put forth (at Vienne, in Dauphiné), a work entitled ‘The Restoration of Christianity, &c.,’ in further confirmation of his views.

Now it is very true, that the propagation of these opinions by a professed Reformer was at that crisis a matter of great scandal, and perhaps even of some danger to the cause of the Reformation. It was felt as such by some of the leading Reformers. Zuinglius and Œcolampadius eagerly disclaimed the error of Servetus. “Our Church will be very ill spoken of,” said the latter in a letter to Bucer, “unless our divines make it their business to cry him down.” And had they been contented to proclaim their dissent from his doctrine, or to assail it by reasonable argument, they would have done no more than their duty to their own communion absolutely demanded of them.

But Calvin was not a man who would argue where he could command, or persuade where he could overthrow. Full of vehemence and bitterness, inflexible and relentless, he was prepared to adopt and to justify extreme measures, wheresoever they answered his purpose best. He was animated by the pride, intolerance, and cruelty of the Church of Rome, and he planted and nourished those evil passions in his little Consistory at Geneva.

Servetus, having escaped from confinement at Vienne, and flying for refuge to Naples, was driven by evil destiny, or his own infatuation, to Geneva. Here he strove to conceal himself, till he should be enabled to proceed on his journey; but he was quickly discovered by Calvin, and immediately cast into prison. This was in the summer of 1553. Presently followed the formality of his trial; and when we read the numerous articles of impeachment, and observe the language in which they are couched;—when we peruse the humble petitions which he addressed to the “Syndics and Council,” praying only that an advocate might be granted him, which prayer was haughtily refused;—when we perceive the misrepresentations of his doctrine, and the offensive terms of his condemnation, we appear to be carried back again to the Halls of Constance, and to be witnessing the fall of Huss and Jerome beneath their Roman Catholic oppressors. So true it is (as Grotius had sufficient reason to say), “that the Spirit of Antichrist did appear at Geneva as well as at Rome.”

But the magistrates of this Republic did not venture completely to execute the will of Calvin, without first consulting the other Protestant cities of Switzerland; namely, Zurich, Berne, Bâsle, and Schaffhausen. The answers returned by these all indicated very great anxiety for the extinction of the heresy, without however expressly demanding the blood of the heretic. The people of Zurich were the most violent: and the answer of their “Pastors, Readers, and Ministers,” which is praised and preserved by Calvin, is worthy of the communion from which they had so lately seceded. As soon as these communications reached Geneva, Servetus was immediately condemned to death (on the 26th of October, 1553), and was executed on the day following.

There is extant a letter written by Calvin to his friend and brother-minister, William Farel (dated the 26th), which announces that the fatal sentence had been passed, and would be executed on the morrow. It is only remarkable for the cold conciseness and heartless indifference of its expressions. Not a single word indicates any feeling of compassion or repugnance. And as the work of persecution was carried on without mercy, and completed without pity, so likewise was it recollected without remorse; and the Protestant Republican Minister of Christ continued for some years afterwards to insult with abusive epithets the memory of his victim.

Soon after the death of Servetus, Calvin published a vindication of his proceedings, in which he defended, without any compromise, the principle on which he had acted. It is entitled, “A Faithful Exposition and short Refutation of the Errors of Servetus, wherein it is shown that heretics should be restrained by the power of the sword.” His friend and biographer Beza also put forth a work “On the propriety of punishing Heretics by the Civil authority.” Thus Calvin not only indulged his own malevolent humour, but also sought to establish among the avowed principles of his own Church the duty of exterminating all who might happen to differ from it.

He lived eleven years longer; and expired at Geneva on the 27th of May, 1564; having maintained his authority to the end of his life, without acquiring any of the affection of those about him. Neither of these circumstances need surprise us, for it was his character to awe, to command, and to repel. Fearless, inflexible, morose, and imperious; he neither courted any one, nor yielded to any one, nor conciliated any one. Yet he was sensible of, and seemingly contrite for, his defects of temper; for he writes to Bucer: “I have not had harder contests with my vices, which are great and many, than with my impatience. I have not yet been able to subdue that savage brute.” His talents were extremely powerful, both for literature and for business. His profound and various learning acquired for him the general respect which it deserved. He was active and indefatigable; he slept little, and was remarkable for his abstemious habits. With a heart inflated and embittered with spiritual pride, he affected a perfect simplicity of manner; and professed, and may indeed have felt, a consummate contempt for the ordinary objects of human ambition. Besides this, he was far removed from the besetting vice of common minds, by which even noble qualities are so frequently degraded—avarice. He neither loved money for itself, nor grasped at it for its uses; and at his death, the whole amount of his property, including his library, did not exceed, at the lowest statement, one hundred and twenty-five crowns, at the highest, three hundred.

We may thus readily understand how it was that Calvin acquired, through the mere force of personal character thrown into favourable circumstances, power almost uncontrolled over a state of which he was not so much as a native, and considerable influence besides over the spiritual condition of Europe—power and influence, of which deep traces still exist both in the country which adopted him, and in others where he was only known by his writings and his doctrines. His doctrines still divide the Christian world; but that ecclesiastical principle, which called in the authority of the sword for their defence, has been long and indignantly disclaimed by all his followers.

The best clue to the real character of Calvin will be found in his letters. Many accounts of his life, as well as of his doctrines and writings, exist; but they are mostly influenced by party feeling. The earliest is that of his friend Beza; it is said however not to be strictly accurate even as to the facts of Calvin’s life before 1549, when the author became acquainted with him, and it is of course a panegyric.

MANSFIELD

The first Earl of Mansfield was a younger son of a noble house in Scotland, which he raised to higher rank by his own brilliant talents and successful industry.

William Murray was the eleventh child of David, Viscount Stormont, and was born at Perth, March 2, 1704. He received his education at Westminster School and Christchurch College, Oxford, where he gained distinction by the elegance of his scholarship. He took his degree of M.A. in June, 1730, and was called to the bar in the Michaelmas term following: the interval he employed in travelling in France and Italy. At an early age he gained the friendship of Pope, who in several passages has borne testimony to the grace, eloquence, rising fame, and attractive social accomplishments of the young lawyer. In 1737, in consequence of the sudden illness of his leader, who was seized with a fit in court, Mr. Murray had to undertake, at an hour’s notice, the duty of senior counsel, in the cause of Cibber v. Sloper. From his success on this occasion he was wont to date the origin of his fortune. “Business,” he said, “poured in upon me on all sides; and from a few hundred pounds a year I fortunately found myself, in every subsequent year, in possession of thousands.” In the same year he was retained by the corporation of Edinburgh in the memorable transactions which arose out of the Porteous riot; and his exertions to preserve their privileges were subsequently acknowledged by the gift of the freedom of the city in a gold box. November 20, 1738, Mr. Murray was married to Lady Elizabeth Finch, daughter of the Earl of Winchelsea, a lady who, in addition to rank and fortune, possessed those more valuable qualities which rendered their married life, through near half a century, one of harmony and domestic happiness.

Mr. Murray was appointed Solicitor-General in 1742, and took his seat in parliament, for the first time, as member for Boroughbridge.

Engraved by W. Holl.
LORD MANSFIELD.
From the original Picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds in the Possession of Lord Mansfield.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

For many years, during which he held office under the Pelham administration, he was recognized in the House of Commons as one of the ablest supporters of government; and he was frequently opposed in the outset of his career to Mr. Pitt, who, after the elevation of both to the upper house, bore this high testimony, among others, to Murray’s weight as a speaker. “No man is better acquainted with his abilities and learning, nor has a greater respect for them, than I have. I have had the pleasure of sitting with him in the other house, and always listened to him with attention. I have not lost a word of what he said, nor did I ever.” In his official station, he necessarily took a prominent part in the prosecution of the rebel lords, especially at the trial of Lord Lovat in 1747; and his eloquence was set off by his fairness towards the prisoner, whose concern in the rebellion was indeed too evident to admit of hesitation on the part of his judges. We may follow up the history of his legal advancement by briefly stating that, in 1754, he was appointed Attorney-General, and, in 1756, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and, at the same time, raised to the peerage, by the title of Baron Mansfield. It is said that the Duke of Newcastle was extremely unwilling to consent to the removal of his most powerful supporter from the Commons, but was forced to comply by the threat that, if he refused, Murray would no longer act as Attorney-General.

Lord Mansfield’s private life appears for the most part to have been passed in tranquil prosperity, which afforded no incidents for the biographer to dwell on; at least the published records of him are nearly confined to his exertions as an advocate, his speeches in parliament, and reports on the important cases which he adjudicated. It will be sufficient here to mention those events by which Lord Mansfield is connected with the public history of England, and to make a few general observations on his character as a lawyer and a judge.

In 1763, the legality of what were called general warrants, not directed against persons by name specifically, but generally against any person or persons supposed to be guilty of a certain act, was mooted, in consequence of a secretary of state’s warrant to apprehend the “authors, printers and publishers” of the celebrated No. 45 of the ‘North Briton.’ Wilkes, being apprehended by virtue of this warrant, was discharged by Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, when brought up before that court by writ of habeas corpus. The question came before Lord Mansfield in a different form. An action of trespass was brought in the court of Common Pleas against the messengers who executed the warrant, and a verdict was given for the plaintiff. A bill of exceptions against Chief Justice Pratt’s directions to the jury was tendered, in pursuance of which the question was again argued before Lord Mansfield, who coincided with his brother chief in holding the instrument illegal under which the defendants had acted. Since this decision, general warrants have been disused.

In 1768, Wilkes, then at the height of his popularity, returned to England, and applied for a reversal of his outlawry. The excitement of his partisans broke out both in riots and in indecent attempts to intimidate the judges before whom the point was to be argued. Lord Mansfield pronounced for the reversal upon the ground of a technical informality, which the Court held fatal to the process; but in his elaborate judgment he took care strongly to censure the seditious efforts which had been made to influence the court, and to impress on his auditors that the apparently trifling objection on which the judgment turned was fatal in law, and could not have been passed over in any other case. This speech has been much admired; nor is it easy to overrate its beauties as a composition: it lies open, however, to the objection of being too theatrical. After overruling the objections made by the defendant’s counsel, it rises into eloquent declamation against the attacks of the press, and the threats of the mob; and, at the moment when all seems ripe for a contrary decision, proceeds to grant the thing so loudly clamoured for. He may safely contemn danger who does not expose himself to it; and it would on this occasion have been more dignified to make less parade of independence.

Lord Mansfield’s view of the law of libel exposed him to much obloquy. He was a resolute assertor of the doctrine that juries were to judge of the fact only, not of the law, or rather of the question, libel or no libel. A prerogative lawyer on the bench, he was a supporter of Tory principles in parliament. He strenuously maintained the right of the British legislature to tax America, and was the advocate, though he probably would not have been the adviser, of those measures which led to the American revolution; for the temper of his mind seems to have been cautious and somewhat timid, and his political conduct was swayed by an habitual moderation, which sometimes prevented his accession to the more violent measures of his party. His course was consistent with what we may suppose to have been his early prejudices, for he came of a Jacobite family; and it was made a matter of accusation against him, while Attorney-General (most unfairly revived by Junius), that, as a schoolboy, he had been known to drink Jacobite toasts. The charge, if true, was too trivial to merit further notice than George II. bestowed upon it: “Whatever they were while they were Westminster boys, they are now my very good friends.” At the same time he was a steady advocate of religious toleration, both on the bench and in the House of Lords. This he showed in 1768, on occasion of the prosecution of a Roman Catholic priest by a common informer, in his strict dealing with the penal laws enacted against that class of men; and in assigning his reasons for admitting a Quaker’s evidence on affirmation in certain cases. And the Dissenters in general, and especially of the city of London, were much indebted to his support in the House of Lords in 1767, for the abolition of that mean and oppressive custom by which they were fined for refusing to serve the office of sheriff, being at the same time subject to legal penalties if they accepted it. Lord Mansfield’s exposition of the iniquity of this practice was unsparing and conclusive.

The unprecedentedly-long period during which Lord Mansfield presided in the King’s Bench is one of considerable importance in the history of British jurisprudence; indeed, the multiplicity of his decisions during a period of thirty-four years could not fail materially to affect the law relating both to commercial and other property, especially in a country so rapidly increasing in wealth, and in which new cases were continually arising out of the ever-changing state of society. By a large body of his admirers, a class including the majority of the nation, he was regarded with almost unlimited admiration; but several of his important judgments have since been overruled; and we probably shall not err in stating it as the general opinion of well-informed persons in the present day, that, indecent and virulent as is Junius’s attack on him as a judge, there is a solid foundation for the charge that he was more prone to enlarge the power of the crown than to protect the liberty of the subject, and more willingly referred to the Roman law and the law of nations than to Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights. But the charge of introducing equitable doctrines into the common law must be received with much more caution. He may have gone too far in his favourite scheme of introducing more enlarged and liberal views than had prevailed before his time; he may have neglected former authorities, and introduced too great laxity in the interpretation of the law; but, dangerous as such licence is, lest, in the uncertainty of law, a greater evil be incurred than by the occasional commission of an essential injustice, yet we must look with complacency on that alleged tendency to relax the strict rigour of law in favour of substantial justice, which seems to have consisted chiefly in a disposition to admit evidence when mere technical disqualification, and not essential unfitness, was urged against it; and rather to let right prevail than give the victory to wrong by rigid adherence to the technicalities of the law. His feelings may be illustrated by a playful saying of his own to Garrick. “A judge on the bench is now and then in your whimsical situation between Tragedy and Comedy; inclination drawing one way, and a long string of precedents the other.” It is certain that to him we owe all that our mercantile law has of system, and of consistency with the principles which govern the practice of other nations. It is no less true that the remedies generally afforded by our courts of law have become much more beneficial, since he enlarged and moulded actions originally of an equitable nature to suit cases to which proceedings in equity are very ill adapted. Nor is it too much to assert that under him the science of law assumed the form of a liberal study.

It is hardly necessary to reply to the graver charges of moral guilt adduced by the able and unscrupulous author to whom we have referred. The spirit in which they are conceived may be estimated from the unmeasured vituperation of the Scotch in general, which forms the opening of the forty-first letter of Junius, addressed to Lord Mansfield. His lordship’s knowledge of English law has been impugned; his innovations upon its doctrines have been censured; his application and extension of its principles have been questioned; and his constitutional doctrines have been often and justly condemned; but we do not believe that his honesty has been seriously doubted, since the violence of party animosity has ceased to inflame men’s passions and pervert their judgment.

Our knowledge of Lord Mansfield’s private history is very limited. His life however seems to have been spent in happiness and tranquillity, until the riots of 1780, in which his house, with its contents, was destroyed. Beside a valuable property in books, pictures, and furniture, he sustained that loss which, to a literary man, is irreparable,—the collected manuscripts of a laborious life. He bore this heavy calamity with honourable fortitude, and declined to accept of pecuniary compensation. To the application of government he returned this answer: “I think it does not become me to claim or expect reparation from the state. I have made up my mind to my misfortune as I ought, with this consolation, that it came from those whose object manifestly was general confusion and destruction at home, in addition to a dangerous and complicated war abroad. If I should lay before you any account or computation of the pecuniary damage I have sustained, it might seem a claim or expectation of being indemnified.” Shortly afterwards he appeared in the House of Lords, to justify the strong measures by which the riots had been quelled. “It was wonderful,” says Bishop Newton in his ‘Life and Anecdotes,’ “after such a shock as he had received, that he could so soon summon his faculties as to make one of the finest and ablest speeches that ever was heard in parliament, to justify the legality of the late proceedings on the part of government, to demonstrate that no royal prerogative had been exerted, no martial law had been exercised, nothing had been done but what every man, civil or military, had a right to do in the like cases. ‘I speak not from books,’ he said, ‘for books I have none;’ having been all consumed in the fire. The effects of his speech were the admiration and conviction of all who heard him, and put an end to the debate without division. Lord Mansfield never appeared greater in any action of his life.” No particular cause connected with the frenzy of the time can be assigned for this attack on the Chief Justice; he had not been active in supporting the measures for the relief of the Catholics, which produced this remarkable ebullition of folly and wickedness. But when once riot is afoot, the causes which have first stirred up men’s minds are readily forgotten; and the violence of party abuse with which Lord Mansfield had been assailed, and the unpopularity of the government, in which he was supposed to exercise a principal though secret influence, are sufficient to account for this calamity.

In 1776, Lord Mansfield, at his own request, was raised to the dignity of an earl. He had no children, and his object was to raise the rank of his paternal family in the person of his nephew Lord Stormont, to whom the succession was secured. In 1784, he was compelled to absent himself from his judicial duties for a season, and spent some time, with considerable benefit to his health, at Tunbridge Wells. He returned to his judicial employment and continued to exercise it with unclouded intellect, being only prevented by bodily infirmity from attending the court during the last year and a half that he held the office. In 1788 he resigned it, at the advanced age of eighty-four, having presided in the court of King’s Bench for the unprecedented period of thirty-two years, and being still in possession of a share of health and power of enjoyment which seldom fall to the lot of so advanced an age. He retained the perfect possession of his faculties until within a week of his death, which took place March 18, 1794, in the ninetieth year of his age.

In the case of this, as of many other eminent men, we may regret that so few particulars of their every-day manners have been preserved. In the relations of private life his conduct was exemplary; and the amenity of his manners, the playfulness of his wit, and his admirable qualifications as a companion, secured the affection of those who enjoyed his society. His talents as a speaker were set off by a graceful and attractive person, and a remarkably harmonious voice; qualifications greatly conducing to good delivery, which it is said he was in the habit of improving in youth, by sedulous cultivation under the direction of Pope.

A gentleman (Mr. Baillie), who had been deeply indebted to Lord Mansfield’s professional abilities, bequeathed 1500l. to erect a monument to his memory. The commission was entrusted to worthy hands, for it was given to Flaxman. A sketch of his work forms the vignette to this memoir.

The ‘Life of the Earl of Mansfield,’ by Mr. Halliday, is the only biographical account of this eminent lawyer which we know to exist. It is too manifestly panegyrical, and, as has been intimated, contains a very meagre account of the private history of its noble subject. It is mainly occupied by reports of Lord Mansfield’s speeches and judgments, and must therefore be chiefly acceptable to legal readers.

[Monument of Lord Mansfield in Westminster Abbey.]

Engraved by E. Scriven.
BRADLEY.
From the original Picture by Richardson in the possession of the Royal Society.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

BRADLEY.

Of all men who have combined both astronomical theory and practice, Bradley is one of the most remarkable. In this respect, we must assign to him the first place in English history; and if we were disposed to add, in that of the world, we are convinced that no country would pretend to offer more than one candidate to dispute his claim.

James Bradley[^[1]] was born in March 1692–3, at Sherbourn in Gloucestershire. He was educated at the Grammar School of Northleach, and admitted of Baliol College, Oxford, in March 1710–11, where he proceeded to the degrees of B.A. and M.A. in the years 1714 and 1717 respectively. His mother’s brother was James Pound (deceased 1724), rector of Wanstead in Essex, and known as an observer, particularly by the observations which he furnished to Newton, as described in the Principia. With him Bradley spent much of his younger life, and was his assistant in his astronomical pursuits; and some observations of 1718–19 on double stars are in good accordance with the relative motions which have been since established in the case of those bodies. His tables of Jupiter’s satellites, on which he was employed at the same time, show that he had detected the greater part of the inequalities in their motions which have since been observed.

[1]. The facts here given are entirely taken from the searching account of Bradley given by Professor Rigaud in his “Miscellaneous Works, &c., of James Bradley, Oxford, 1832.”

In 1718 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society; in 1719 he was ordained to the vicarage of Bridstow, in Monmouthshire; in the following year he received a sinecure preferment. But in 1721 he resigned these livings, on obtaining the Savilian professorship of Astronomy at Oxford, the holder of which, by the statutes, must not have any benefice. To finish what we may call the gazette of his life, he was engaged in observation (with what results we shall presently see) both at Kew and Wanstead till 1732, when he went to reside at Oxford, having since 1729 given yearly courses of lectures on Experimental Philosophy. In 1742 he was appointed to succeed Halley as Astronomer Royal, and he held this appointment for the remainder of his life. In the same year he obtained the degree of D.D. In 1752, having refused the living of Greenwich, because he thought the duty of a pastor to be incompatible with his other studies and necessary engagements, he was presented with a pension of 250l. The last observation made by him in the observatory is dated Sept. 1, 1761; and he died July 13, 1762, at Chalford in Gloucestershire, having been afflicted by various diseases for several years, and particularly by a depression of spirits, arising from the fear lest he should survive his faculties. He married in 1744, and left one daughter, who died at Greenwich in 1812.

There are now no lineal descendants of Bradley. Most of his writings, which were few in number, were published in the Philosophical Transactions. His personal merits are proved by the number of his friends, and the warmth with which they endeavoured to serve him when occasion arose, as well as by the strength of the testimonies which those who survived bore to his reputation as a man and a member of society.

We have much abridged the preceding account, in order to make room for a popular exposition of his two great discoveries—the aberration of light, and the nutation of the earth’s axis. If we were to blot these discoveries out of his life, there would remain an ample stock of useful labours, fully sufficient to justify us in stating that Bradley was unequalled as an observer, and of no mean character as a philosopher. But for the latter we must refer the reader to the excellent account from which our facts have been taken, or to any history of astronomy.

The parallax of the fixed stars had been long a subject of inquiry. If a body describe a circle, and a spectator on that body be unconscious of his own motion, all other bodies will appear to describe circles parallel to that of the spectator’s motion, and, absolutely speaking, equal to it; consequently, the greater the distance of the body from the spectator, the smaller will its apparent annual motion be; and it will not be circular, because the projection of the circle upon the apparent sphere of the heavens will foreshorten, and cause it to appear oval. If we suppose a star to describe an oval in the course of a year, the consequence will be that it will pass the spectator’s meridian sometimes before a star in the centre of the oval, sometimes after it; sometimes nearer to the pole of the heavens, and sometimes more distant; and the nature of the motion of this kind which would arise from parallax can be mathematically deduced. If the star be so distant that the oval is too small to be detected by measurement (which is hitherto the case with the fixed stars), then no alteration of place will be perceived on this account; but if an oval large enough to be observed be described in the course of a year, then the test of the phenomenon arising from the earth’s motion in its orbit is as follows:—Imagine a plane always passing through the centre of the sun, the centre of the earth, and the centre of the oval described by the star, then the place of the star in its oval must be in that plane; or draw the shortest distance on the globe from the centre of the oval to the sun, and the star will be on the point of the oval which lies in that distance.

In and before the time of Bradley, the refraction of light was not well determined, which would throw a doubt over any observations made to detect small quantities, unless the star which furnished them were situated in that part of the observer’s heaven in which there is no refraction, or next to none, that is, in or near his zenith. For the purpose of measuring annual parallax, therefore, stars had always been chosen which passed very nearly over the spot of observation, and instruments called zenith sectors (now almost out of use) were employed, which measured small angles of the meridian near the zenith, the latter point being ascertained by a plumb-line. Mr. Molyneux, a friend of Bradley, and a wealthy man, had caused the celebrated Graham to erect a large instrument of this kind at his house in Kew, afterwards the palace. Bradley and Molyneux observed with this instrument the star γ in the Dragon, which passed nearly through the zenith of that place, in December 1725. The star was found to pass the meridian more and more to the south of the zenith, until the following March, when it was about twenty seconds (about the sixty-five thousandth part of the whole circuit of the heavens) lower than at first. It was afterwards traced back again to its first position in the following December, allowing for the precession of the equinoxes. Other stars were examined in the same way, and the result was, that all stars were found to describe small[^[2]] ovals in the course of the year. But on comparing the situations of the stars in their small orbits with the corresponding places of the sun, it was evident that the cause of the phenomenon could not be the change of place arising from the orbital motion of the earth. Various hypotheses proposed by Bradley were found insufficient. In 1727 he erected a zenith sector for himself at Wanstead; and by further observations, and using different stars, he came at length to this fact, that instead of the star being in the place which annual parallax would give it, it was always in the position which it should have had a quarter of a year later: or that if the observer could measure the oval with sufficient exactness, and were to find the time of the year from the star, on the supposition of annual parallax being the cause of the star’s orbit, he would suppose himself in March instead of December, and so on.

[2]. The original memorandum of Bradley, on the first night on which a decided result had been obtained, was accidentally found among his papers. There is a fac-simile of it in Professor Rigaud’s work.

That the phenomenon then had a regular connexion with the place of the earth was evident; but it was not that sort of connexion arising from the mere change of place of the earth. It is related[^[3]] that he was led to the true explanation by observing that the vane at the top of a boat’s mast changed its direction a little whenever the boat was put about, and made to go in a contrary direction; and that on his remarking that it was curious the wind should shift every time the boat was put about, he was assured by the boatmen that the same thing always happened. Be this as it may, he proposed to the Royal Society, in 1728, his beautiful explanation of the annual motion which he had observed in the stars; namely, that it is caused by the alteration in the apparent direction of the rays of light, arising from the earth being in motion. Suppose a stream of bullets fired into a carriage in motion, in a line perpendicular to its side, and so directed as to hit the middle of the first window, but not with sufficient velocity to reach any part of the second window. It is plain that they will strike the hinder pannel, which the motion of the carriage brings forward, and that to passengers in the inside the direction of the stream will appear to be from the middle of the window at which it enters to the opposite hinder pannel: whereas, had the carriage been at rest, it would have appeared to pass through the centre of both windows. And to make the stream really pass through both windows it must, if the carriage be in motion, be directed through the nearer window towards the foremost pannel on the other side. A ray of light is in the same situation with regard to the spectator, both as to the diurnal and the annual motion of the earth. The former gives an insensible aberration only; the latter, one which though small is sensible. The smallness of the latter aberration arises from the velocity of light being more than ten thousand times that of the earth in its orbit. And it must be remembered that the motion of light was not an hypothesis, invented to form the basis of Bradley’s explanation, but was ascertained before his time, by Römer, from a phenomenon of an entirely different nature; namely, the retardation observed in the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites, as the planet moved from the earth. The absolute deduction of the laws of aberration was completed by Bradley.

[3]. Professor Rigaud gives this story on the authority of ‘Dr. Thomson’s History of the Royal Society,’ in which work we find no authority cited for it. We cannot find it in any other place, but are credibly informed that it rests on good traditional evidence.

The other great discovery of Bradley, namely, the nutation, or oscillatory motion of the earth’s axis, was completed in 1747. In his Wanstead observations he had observed some minute discrepancies, which at that time might be attributed to errors of observation; but after he was able to clear the apparent place of a star from the effects of aberration, the field became open to consider and assign the laws of smaller variations. By continual observation, he found a small irregularity in the places of the stars, depending upon the position of the moon’s node. Newton had already shown it to be a consequence of gravitation, that the sun must produce a small oscillation in the earth’s axis: Bradley showed that a larger oscillation must arise from the moon, and be completed in the course of a revolution, not of the moon, but of the point where her orbit cuts the ecliptic. This discovery is therefore not of so original a character as the last, since astronomers had for some time been in the habit of trying to reconcile every discrepancy which they observed by supposing a nutation; but to Bradley belongs the merit of discovering that small irregularity which really can be reconciled to such a supposition, and its physical causes. The easiest way of conceiving the effect of nutation is as follows:—The precession of the equinoxes, discovered by Hipparchus, has this effect, that the fixed stars, so called, appear to move round the pole of the ecliptic, at the rate of a revolution in about 26,000 years. Instead of a star, let a small oval describe the same course, and let the star in the mean while move round that oval in the course of nineteen years. The motion thus obtained will represent the combined effect of precession and nutation.

To these discoveries of Bradley we owe, as Delambre observes, the accuracy of modern astronomy. It must be remarked, that no individual, whose previous labours have caused public opinion to point him out as most fit for the part of Astronomer Royal, has ever been passed over when occasion occurred, from the time of Flamsteed to that at which we write. It is the fair reward of such a course, that the reputation which each successive occupant brought to that position should be considered as appertaining to him in the public capacity which it gained for him; and this being granted, it may be truly said that there is no institution in the world which has, upon the whole, done so much towards the advancement of correct astronomy as the Observatory of Greenwich.

[Observatory at Greenwich.]

Engraved by W. Holl.
MELANCTHON.
From an Engraving by Albert Durer
1526.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

MELANCTHON.

Philip was the son of a respectable engineer named Schwartzerde, that is, Black-earth, a name which he Grecised at a very early age, as soon as his literary tastes and talents began to display themselves,—assuming, in compliance with the suggestion of his distinguished kinsman Reuchlin or Capnio, and according to the fashion of the age, the classical synonyme of Melancthon. He was born at Bretten, a place near Wittemberg, February 16, 1497. He commenced his studies at Heidelberg in 1509; and after three years was removed to Tubingen, where he remained till 1518. These circumstances are in this instance not undeserving of notice, because Melancthon gave from his very boyhood abundant proofs of an active and brilliant genius, and acquired some juvenile distinctions which have been recorded by grave historians, and have acquired him a place among the ‘Enfans Célèbres’ of Baillet. During his residence at Tubingen he gave public lectures on Virgil, Terence, Cicero, and Livy, while he was pursuing with equal ardour his biblical studies; and he had leisure besides to furnish assistance to Reuchlin in his dangerous contests with the monks, and to direct the operations of a printing-press. The course of learning and genius, when neither darkened by early prejudice nor perverted by personal interests, ever points to liberality and virtue. In the case of Melancthon this tendency was doubtless confirmed by the near spectacle of monastic oppression and bigotry; and thus we cannot question that he had imbibed, even before his departure from Tubingen, the principles which enlightened his subsequent career, and which throw the brightest glory upon his memory.

In 1518 (at the age of twenty-one) he was raised to the Professorship of Greek in the University of Wittemberg. The moment was critical. Luther, who occupied the theological chair in the same University, had just published his ‘Ninety-five Propositions against the Abuse of Indulgences,’ and was entering step by step into a contest with the Vatican. He was in possession of great personal authority; he was older by fourteen years, and was endowed with a far more commanding spirit, than his brother professor; and thus, in that intimacy which local circumstances and similarity of sentiments immediately cemented between these two eminent persons, the ascendancy was naturally assumed by Luther, and maintained to the end of his life. Melancthon was scarcely established at Wittemberg when he addressed to the Reformer some very flattering expressions of admiration, couched in indifferent Greek iambics; and in the year following he attended him to the public disputations which he held with Eckius on the supremacy of the Pope. Here he first beheld the strife into which he was destined presently to enter, and learned the distasteful rudiments of theological controversy.

Two years afterwards, when certain of the opinions of Luther were violently attacked by the Faculty of Paris, Melancthon interposed to defend their author, to repel some vain charges which were brought against him, and to ridicule the pride and ignorance of the doctors of the Sorbonne. About the same time he engaged in the more delicate question respecting the celibacy of the clergy, and opposed the Popish practice with much zeal and learning. This was a subject which he had always nearest his heart, and, in the discussions to which it led, he surpassed even Luther in the earnestness of his argument; and he at least had no personal interest in the decision, as he never took orders.

In 1528 it was determined to impose a uniform rule of doctrine and discipline upon the ministers of the Reformed churches; and the office of composing it was assigned to Melancthon. He published, in eighteen chapters, an ‘Instruction to the Pastors of the Electorate of Saxony,’ in which he made the first formal exposition of the doctrinal system of the Reformers. The work was promulgated with the approbation of Luther; and the article concerning the bodily presence in the Eucharist conveyed the opinion of the master rather than that of the disciple. Yet were there other points so moderately treated and set forth in so mild and compromising a temper, as sufficiently to mark Melancthon as the author of the document; and so strong was the impression produced upon the Roman Catholics themselves by its character and spirit, that many considered it the composition of a disguised friend; and Faber even ventured to make personal overtures to the composer, and to hold forth the advantages that he might hope to attain by a seasonable return to the bosom of the Apostolic Church.

The Diet of Augsburg was summoned soon afterwards, and it assembled in 1530, for the reconciliation of all differences. This being at least the professed object of both parties, it was desirable that the conferences should be conducted by men of moderation, disposed to soften the subjects of dissension, and to mitigate by temper and manner the bitterness of controversy. For this delicate office Luther was entirely disqualified, whereas the reputation of Melancthon presented precisely the qualities that seemed to be required; the management of the negotiations was accordingly confided to him. But not without the near superintendence of Luther. The latter was resident close at hand, he was in perpetual communication with his disciple, and influenced most of his proceedings; and, at least during the earlier period of the conferences, he not only suggested the matter, but even authorised the form, of the official documents.

It was thus that the ‘Confession of Augsbourg’ was composed; and we observe on its very surface thus much of the spirit of conciliation, that of its twenty-eight chapters twenty-one were devoted to the exposition of the opinions of the Reformers, while seven only were directed against the tenets of their adversaries. In the tedious and perplexing negotiations that followed, some concessions were privately proposed by Melancthon, which could scarcely have been sanctioned by Luther, as they were inconsistent with the principles of the Reformation and the independence of the Reformers. In some letters written towards the conclusion of the Diet, he acknowledged in the strongest terms the authority of the Roman Church, and all its hierarchy; he asserted that there was positively no doctrinal difference between the parties; that the whole dispute turned on matters of discipline and practice; and that, if the Pope would grant only a provisional toleration on the two points of the double communion and the marriage of the clergy, it would not be difficult to remove all other differences, not excepting that respecting the mass. “Concede,” he says to the Pope’s legate, “or pretend to concede those two points, and we will submit to the bishops; and if some slight differences shall still remain between the two parties, they will not occasion any breach of union, because there is no difference on any point of faith, and they will be governed by the same bishops; and these bishops, having once recovered their authority, will be able in process of time to correct defects which must now of necessity be tolerated.” On this occasion Melancthon took counsel of Erasmus rather than of Luther. It was his object at any rate to prevent the war with which the Protestants were threatened, and from which he may have expected their destruction. But the perfect and almost unconditional submission to the Roman hierarchy, which he proposed as the only alternative, would have accomplished the same purpose much more certainly; and Protestant writers have observed, that the bitterest enemy of the Reformation could have suggested no more effectual or insidious method of subverting it, than that which was so warmly pressed upon the Roman Catholics by Melancthon himself. Luther was indignant when he heard of these proceedings; he strongly urged Melancthon to break off the negotiations, and to abide by the Confession. Indeed, it appears that these degrading concessions to avowed enemies produced, as is ever the case, no other effect than to increase their pride and exalt their expectations, and so lead them to demand still more unworthy conditions, and a still more abject humiliation.

Howbeit, the reputation of Melancthon was raised by the address which he displayed during these deliberations; and the variety of his talents and the extent of his erudition became more generally known and more candidly acknowledged. The modesty of his character, the moderation of his temper, the urbanity of his manners, his flexible and accommodating mind, recommended him to the regard of all, and especially to the patronage of the great. He was considered as the peace-maker of the age. All who had any hopes of composing the existing dissensions and preventing the necessity of absolute schism placed their trust in the mildness of his expedients. The service which he had endeavoured to render to the Emperor was sought by the two other powerful monarchs of that time. Francis I. invited him to France in 1535, to reconcile the growing differences of his subjects; and even Henry VIII. expressed a desire for his presence and his counsels; but the Elector could not be persuaded to consent to his departure from Saxony.

In 1541 he held a public disputation with Eckius at Worms, which lasted three days. The conference was subsequently removed to Ratisbon, and continued, with pacific professions and polemic arguments, during the same year, with no other result than an expressed understanding that both parties should refer their claims to a general council, and abide by its decision.

In the meantime, as the Popes showed great reluctance to summon any such Council, unless it should assemble in Italy and deliberate under their immediate superintendence, and as the Reformers constantly refused to submit to so manifest a compromise of their claims, it seemed likely that some time might elapse before the disputants should have any opportunity of making their appeal. Wherefore the emperor, not brooking this delay, and willing by some provisional measure to introduce immediate harmony between the parties, published in 1548 a formulary of temporary concord, under the name of the Interim. It proclaimed the conditions of peace, which were to be binding only till the decision of the general council. The conditions were extremely advantageous, as might well have been expected, to the Roman Catholic claims. Nevertheless, they gave complete satisfaction to neither party, and only animated to farther arrogance the spirit of those whom they favoured.

The Interim was promulgated at the Diet held at Augsbourg, and it was followed by a long succession of conferences, which were carried on at Leipzig and in other places, under the Protestant auspices of Maurice of Saxony. Here was an excellent field for the talents and character of Melancthon. All the public documents of the Protestants were composed by him. All the acuteness of his reason, all the graces of his style, all the resources of his learning were brought into light and action; and much that he wrote in censure of the Interim was written with force and truth. But here, as on former occasions, the effects of his genius were marred by the very moderation of his principles, and the practical result of his labours was not beneficial to the cause which he intended to serve. For in this instance he not only did not conciliate the enemies to whom he made too large concessions, but he excited distrust and offence among his friends; and these feelings were presently exasperated into absolute schism.

On the death of Luther, two years before these conferences, the foremost place among the reformers had unquestionably devolved upon Melancthon. He had deserved that eminence by his various endowments, and his uninterrupted exertions: yet was he not the character most fitted to occupy it at that crisis. His incurable thirst for universal esteem and regard; his perpetual anxiety to soothe his enemies and soften the bigotry of the hierarchy, frequently seduced him into unworthy compromises, which lowered his own cause, without obtaining either advantage or respect from his adversaries. It is not thus that the ferocity of intolerance can be disarmed. The lust of religious domination cannot be satisfied by soothing words, or appeased by any exercise of religious charity. It is too blind to imagine any motive for the moderation of an enemy, except the consciousness of weakness. It is too greedy to accept any partial concession, except as a pledge of still farther humiliation, to end in absolute submission. It can be successfully opposed only by the same unbending resolution which itself displays, tempered by a calmer judgment and animated by a more righteous purpose.

The general principle by which the controversial writings of Melancthon at this time were guided was this—that there were certain essentials which admitted of no compromise; but that the Interim might be received as a rule, in respect to things which were indifferent. Hence arose the necessary inquiry, what could properly be termed indifferent. It was the object of Melancthon to extend their number, so as to include as many as possible of the points in dispute, and narrow the held of contention with the Roman Catholics. In the pursuance of this charitable design he did not foresee—first, that he would not advance thereby a single step towards the conciliation of their animosity—next, that he would sow amongst the Reformers themselves the seeds of intestine discord: but so, unhappily, it proved; and the feeble expedient which was intended to repel the danger from without, multiplied that danger by introducing schism and disorder within.

Indeed, we can scarcely wonder that it was so: for we find that among the matters to be accounted indifferent, and under that name conceded, Melancthon ventured to place the doctrine of justification by faith alone; the necessity of good works to eternal salvation; the number of the sacraments; the jurisdiction claimed by the pope and the bishops; extreme unction; and the observance of certain religious festivals, and several superstitious rites and ceremonies. It was not possible that the more intimate associates of Luther—the men who had struggled by his side, who were devoted to his person and his memory, who inherited his opinions and his principles, and who were animated by some portion of his zeal—should stand by in silence, and permit some of the dearest objects of their own struggles and the vigils of their master to be offered up to the foe by the irresolute hand of Melancthon. Accordingly, a numerous party rose, who disclaimed his principles and rejected his authority. At their head was Illyricus Flacius, a fierce polemic, who possessed the intemperance without the genius of Luther. The contest commonly known as the Adiaphoristic Controversy broke out with great fury; it presently extended its character so as to embrace various collateral points; and the Roman Catholics were once more edified by the welcome spectacle of Protestant dissension.

Melancthon held his last fruitless conference with the Roman Catholics at Worms in the year 1557; and he died three years afterwards, at the age of 63, the same age that had been attained by Luther. His ashes were deposited at Wittemberg, in the same church with those of his master; a circumstance which is thus simply commemorated in his epitaph:

Hic invicte tuus Collega, Luthere, Melancthon

Non procul a tumulo conditur ipse tuo.

Ut pin doctrinæ concordia junxerat ambos,

Sic sacer amborum jungit his ossa locus.

Some days before his death, while it was manifest that his end was fast approaching, Melancthon wrote on a scrap of paper some of the reasons which reconciled him to the prospect of his departure. Among them were these—that he should see God and the Son of God; that he should comprehend some mysteries which he was unable to penetrate on earth, such as these:—why it is that we are created such as we are? what was the union of the two natures in Jesus Christ? that he should sin no more; that he should no longer be exposed to vexations; and that he should escape from the rage of the theologians. We need no better proof than this how his peaceable spirit had been tortured during the decline of life by those interminable quarrels, which were entirely repugnant to his temper, and yet were perpetually forced upon him, and which even his own lenity had seemingly tended to augment. And it is even probable that the theologians from whose rage it was his especial hope to be delivered were those who had risen up last against him, and with whom his differences were as nothing compared to the points on which they were agreed, his brother reformers. For being in this respect unfortunate, that his endeavours to conciliate the affections of all parties had been requited by the contempt and insults of all, he was yet more peculiarly unhappy, that the blackest contumely and the bitterest insults proceeded from the dissentients of his own. Thus situated, after forty years of incessant exertions to reform, and at the same time to unite, the Christian world, when he beheld discord multiplied, and its fruits ripening in the very bosom of the Reformation; when he compared his own principles and his own conscience with the taunts which were cast against him; when he discovered how vain had been his mission of conciliation, and how ungrateful a task it was to throw oil upon the waters of theological controversy; when he reflected how much time and forbearance he had wasted in this hopeless attempt,—he could scarcely avoid the unwelcome suspicion that his life had been, in some degree, spent in vain, and that in one of the dearest objects of his continual endeavours he had altogether failed.

The reason was, that the extreme mildness of his own disposition blinded him to the very nature of religious contests, and inspired him with amiable hopes which could not possibly be realized. He may have been a better man than Luther; he may even have been a wiser; he had as great acuteness; he had more learning and a purer and more perspicuous style; he had a more charitable temper; he had a more candid mind; and his love for justice and truth forbade him to reject without due consideration even the argument of an adversary. He was qualified to preside as a judge in the forum of theological litigation; yet was he not well fitted for that which he was called upon to discharge, the office of an advocate. He saw too much, for he saw both sides of the question; his very knowledge, acting upon his natural modesty, made him diffident. He balanced, he reflected, he doubted; and he became, through that very virtue, a tame sectarian and a feeble partisan.

But his literary talents were of the highest order, and were directed with great success to almost all the departments of learning. He composed abridgments of all the branches of philosophy, which continued long in use among the students of Germany, and purified the liberal arts from the dross which was mixed up with them. And it was thus that he would have purified religion; and as he had introduced the one reformation without violence, so he thought to accomplish the other without schism. But he comprehended not the character of the Roman Catholic priesthood, nor could he conceive the tenacity and the passion with which men, in other respects reasonable and respectable, will cling to the interests, the prejudices, the abuses, the very vices, which are associated with their profession. It was an easy matter to him to confound the superstitious rites and tenets of Rome by his profound learning and eloquent arguments; but it was another and a far different task to deal with the offended feelings of an implacable hierarchy. And thus it is, that while we admire his various acquirements and eminent literary talents, and praise the moderation of his charitable temper, we remark the wisdom of that Providence which entrusted the arduous commencement of the work of reformation to firmer and ruder hands than his.

Melancthon’s printed works are very numerous. The most complete edition of them is that of Wittemberg, in 1680,3, in four volumes folio.

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.
WILLIAM PITT.
From a Picture by Hoppner in the possession of the Publisher.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

PITT.

The observations made at the beginning of our memoir of Mr. Burke (vol. iii. p. 33) apply with greater force to Mr. Pitt, on account both of the more recent date of his death, and of the more important influence which he exercised over our national welfare. We shall therefore lay before the reader a very succinct account of this celebrated statesman, endeavouring not to colour it by the introduction of our own opinions, and avoiding any statements that can reasonably be controverted. There can be no doubt as to Mr. Pitt’s title to a place in this work; but it is not here that those who have their opinion still to form as to his character and policy should seek for the materials to do so.

William Pitt, the second son of the first Earl of Chatham, was born at Hayes in Kent, May 28, 1759. He suffered much and frequently from ill health until he had nearly reached the age of manhood; and his delicacy of constitution prevented his reading for honours at Pembroke College, Cambridge, of which he became a resident member at the age of fourteen. He therefore took the honorary degree of M.A., to which his birth entitled him, in 1776. His private tutor and biographer, the late Bishop of Winchester, has borne testimony to Mr. Pitt’s proficiency in scholarship at the time when he commenced his residence, and to his diligent study of the ancient languages, of mathematics, and of modern literature, during the long period of seven years which he spent at Cambridge. His illustrious father was not slow to perceive and appreciate this early promise; and the few letters which are extant, addressed by Lord Chatham to his son, contain a most pleasing picture of parental affection, confidence, and esteem.

Mr. Pitt was called to the bar June 12, 1780, and went the western circuit in that year and the following. In January, 1781, he was brought into parliament by Sir James Lowther, for the borough of Appleby. He made his maiden speech in support of Mr. Burke’s bill for the reform of the civil list; and this being in great measure in reply to former speakers, and therefore evidently not premeditated, produced the greater effect, and amply satisfied public expectation, which had been highly raised by his hereditary fame and reputed talents. Young as he was, he took a leading part in denouncing the impolicy and injustice of the American war, then drawing to its close, and in effecting the downfall of Lord North’s administration, which occurred in March, 1782. In the Rockingham administration, which followed, he bore no office: not that his talents were held cheap, for he was offered several important places; but he had already determined, as he declared soon afterwards, never to accept any office without a seat in the cabinet. He gave his support, however, to the measures of government; and, with a determination which he manifested again at a later period, of securing his independence, he continued, notwithstanding his brilliant prospects in public life, his professional attendance at Westminster Hall. During this session he distinguished himself as an advocate of parliamentary reform by supporting three measures upon the subject: a motion, made by himself, for a committee to examine into the state of representation of the Commons; a bill for shortening the duration of parliaments; and a bill for the prevention of bribery, and the diminution of expense at elections. These, not being supported by government, were all thrown out.

The death of the Marquis of Rockingham, July 1, 1782, led to the appointment of the Earl of Shelburne as prime-minister, and to Mr. Fox’s retirement from office. Mr. Pitt, at the age of twenty-three, was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. As a strong opposition was expected in the next session of parliament, it became desirable to effect a junction, if possible, with one of the adverse parties. Against acting in concert with Lord North, Mr. Pitt had formed an unchangeable determination; and the negotiation with Mr. Fox was stopped in the outset by that gentleman’s resolution not to act under Lord Shelburne. Thus two of the three principal parties into which the House of Commons was then divided were shut out of office during the continuance of the existing administration; and a strong motive was given them to unite, even against all probability, considering the virulent hostility which had long existed between their leaders. Mr. Fox and Lord North however did form their celebrated Coalition; and, in spite of its unpopularity, had strength enough to turn out the Shelburne ministry in the spring of 1783. Mr. Pitt, while in office, introduced a bill for promoting economy, and removing many gross abuses in various departments of the public service. This, after passing the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords.

The King, it is well known, was exceedingly averse to the re-admission of Mr. Fox into office. He pressed the task of forming an administration upon Mr. Pitt, who, being convinced that no effective support could be hoped for, at that time, either in parliament or from the expression of public opinion, steadily refused the offer. The coalition ministry therefore came into power. In the session of 1783 Mr. Pitt again introduced the question of parliamentary reform, in the shape of three resolutions, which provided that one hundred members should be added to those returned by the counties and the metropolis, and that all boroughs should be disfranchised where a majority of voters had been proved guilty of corruption. These resolutions were rejected.

On the meeting of parliament in November, Mr. Fox brought forward his celebrated India Bill. It was quickly carried through the lower house, but was thrown out in the upper, partly through the personal influence exerted by the King; and on the next day, December 18, Mr. Fox and Lord North received their dismissal. Mr. Pitt did not now hesitate to take his place at the head of government. He felt himself in a much stronger position than at the close of the Shelburne administration. He foresaw that the India Bill would become unpopular, though as yet little outcry had been made against it, and he resolved, with a courage, ability, and penetration, which those who condemn his conduct most strongly cannot deny, to assume office in the teeth of a majority of the House of Commons, and to hold it in spite of the majorities continually arrayed against him. Nor, though strongly urged, would he resort to a dissolution; knowing that such a measure would be fatal unless the new parliament should prove much more favourable to him than the existing one, being aware that Mr. Fox’s popularity, though shaken by the coalition, was not overthrown, and trusting to the growing unpopularity of the India Bill to dispose the nation more favourably to his own administration. It was therefore resolved to continue the sitting parliament; and the house adjourned on the 26th of December to the 12th of January. During the recess Mr. Pitt gained the applause of all parties by his disinterestedness in giving the valuable sinecure of Clerk of the Pells to Colonel Barré, on condition of his resigning a pension of 3000l. a year; thus effecting a saving to the country of that amount.

On the 12th the new ministry was twice left in a minority, once of thirty-nine, the second time of fifty-four. This not inducing them to resign, a series of motions was made to compel them to do so. It was never ventured however to stop the supplies. Between January 12 and March 8, fourteen motions, besides those which passed without a division, were carried against the ministers with various but on the whole decreasing majorities, the last only by a majority of one. This ended the struggle. The minister saw that the time was now come when a dissolution was likely to tell in his favour, and it took place accordingly, March 25.

He was now returned for the University of Cambridge. In the ensuing session his attention was principally engaged by the Westminster scrutiny, the state of the revenue, and the affairs of India. In the first he took a part which widened the breach between Mr. Fox and himself; and he had the mortification of being exposed to the charge that he cherished personal animosity against his illustrious antagonist, and of being deserted by many of his usual adherents, and finally left in a minority, March 3, 1785, when the scrutiny was ended by a vote of the house. Lord Hood and Mr. Fox were then returned. In his financial measures Mr. Pitt had eminent success. By economy, by resolutely facing the difficulties of the question, and, no doubt, by the assistance of that general prosperity, agricultural as well as commercial, which was beginning to succeed the depression of the American war, the revenue, which at his accession to office was considerably below the expenditure, was improved so much as, by the spring of 1786, to afford the promise of a million surplus. This was devoted to the formation of an effective sinking-fund. Mr. Pitt prided himself on this more than any other of his measures, and resisted all temptation to encroach upon it even during the pressing difficulties of the latter years of his administration. The merit of having devised the scheme was claimed by Dr. Price: be this as it may, the principal merit, that of having rigidly carried it into execution, is Pitt’s. Later authorities have denied the advantage of the system altogether. The India Bill, the other leading measure of this session, differed from Mr. Fox’s chiefly in these important points, that the members of the Board of Control, like other members of administration, were removable at pleasure, and that nearly all the patronage of India was left in the hands of the Board of Directors. In 1785, for the last time, Mr. Pitt again brought forward the subject of parliamentary reform. His plan was to transfer the members of thirty-six decayed boroughs to the metropolis and to various counties, and as other boroughs decayed, to give their franchises to populous and increasing towns. But the boroughs being regarded, in the words of his biographer, as “a species of valuable property and private inheritance, the voluntary surrender of their rights was not to be expected without an adequate consideration.” This was not treated as a government measure, and was rejected by a large majority.

The other passages of most importance in Mr. Pitt’s political life, before the French Revolution, were his decided support of the impeachment of Warren Hastings, though without going the whole length of Mr. Burke and other opposition members, in 1786, and the conclusion of a commercial treaty with France on a more liberal footing than had yet been contemplated by the countries; the successful opposition which he made to the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, in 1787, notwithstanding the support he had received from the Dissenters a few years before; his conduct on the Regency Bill, in opposition to the ill-advised assertion of Mr. Fox, that the Prince of Wales was entitled as a matter of right to the full possession of the powers of royalty, as sole Regent, in 1788–9; and his support of the abolition of the Slave Trade, for which he spoke and voted, but without making it a ministerial question. Indeed, in consequence of Mr. Wilberforce’s illness, Pitt was the first to bring that national disgrace and crime under the notice of the house, and he exerted his best eloquence in favour of its immediate abolition, and against the temporising course which was adopted.

It does not appear that in the beginning of the French Revolution Mr. Pitt anticipated any bad consequences to Great Britain, or that he expected or wished to be led into that protracted war, which, though ultimately triumphant, involved us in imminent danger, enormous expense, and a debt still pressing us to the ground. At least, in opening his budget in 1792, he spoke with more than usual confidence of the favourable prospects of the revenue, and prognosticated many years of peace. At the same time he was already impressed with suspicion and fear of those in England who regarded with complacency the dawning of the Revolution; and in the same session he declared himself opposed to the introduction of Mr. Grey’s motion for reform in parliament, on the express ground that men’s minds were in a state of fermentation, which rendered any innovation inexpedient and dangerous. But the events of the summer and autumn changed Mr. Pitt’s views more widely. After the deposition of Louis XVI., on the 10th of August, the British minister at Paris was recalled; and as soon as the news of that unhappy sovereign’s death reached England, the French minister in London was ordered to quit the kingdom. War was declared by France, February 1, 1793. We do not attempt to compress the history of that eventful period into these pages. The policy of our government was to make the sea the scene of our chief exertions, and our fleets were victorious in every quarter of the globe. By land the conduct of the war was most unsuccessful. We were indeed cautious of risking our own troops on the continent; but the national wealth was profusely spent in subsidizing other nations, in combining alliances against France, which one after another proved utterly unable to withstand the energy of the French government and the talent of the republican generals, and in trifling expeditions, injurious if they failed, and useless if successful. Meanwhile the enormous expenditure of the day caused a corresponding increase of the public burdens, and, as was foreboded, a ruinous accession to the public debt. A large party, who were far from joining with those that would willingly have made England the subject of an experiment similar to the one going on in France, denied both the necessity and the expediency of the contest in which we were engaged; party spirit reached a frantic height; and these men, as sincere friends to their country as those who most strenuously supported the arbitrary measures of government, were denounced, and confounded with the small minority really hostile to domestic order. And no doubt the oppressive conduct of the administration drove many persons to extremes, which, in cooler moments and under a more equitable policy, they would not have countenanced. Then came the trials of Muir and Palmer in Scotland, in 1793, of Hardy and Horne Tooke in 1794, the Alien Bill, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and other measures calculated, in the language of the times, to prevent the spread of revolutionary principles, for which the minister was hailed by one party as the saviour of his country from anarchy, and denounced by another as a pillar of despotism, an enemy to the free constitution of his country, a deserter from the principles of his youth, and a persecutor of those associates who still adhered to them. Increased discontent was met by increased severity; and, after the insults offered to the King’s person as he proceeded to open the session of parliament in 1796, the famous bills, for the prevention of seditious meetings and for the better security of his Majesty’s person and government, commonly called the Pitt and Grenville Acts, were introduced and carried, not without the utmost indignation and the most determined opposition by all means short of forcible resistance, both within the walls of parliament and without.

Mr. Fox and the other chief members of opposition, finding their utmost efforts unsuccessful, seceded openly from the House of Commons when the Seditious Meetings Bill went into committee. Meanwhile the country was beset by the most serious difficulties. The drain of specie produced by our subsidies to foreign powers, the large advances required from the Bank by government, and the disposition to hoard money produced by the fear of invasion and of domestic anarchy, gave reason to apprehend that the Bank would be unable to meet its engagements; and in 1797 it was relieved by the Restriction Act from the obligation of paying cash in exchange for its notes. In the same year the mutiny at the Nore broke out; and in 1798 the rebellion in Ireland made a most formidable addition to the dangers and distresses of the nation. Meanwhile our exertions had been powerless to check the victorious arms of France on the continent of Europe, and a strong desire for peace was felt by many who had been Mr. Pitt’s staunch supporters, and advocates of the revolutionary war. This led to his retirement from office in 1801, unless that event is rather to be ascribed to the King’s fixed determination not to grant the Irish Catholics that full relief, which had been held out as one inducement to procure the consent of Ireland to the Act of Union. It is to Mr. Pitt that the merit of carrying through that important measure is due; a measure which would probably have been attended with much more beneficial results if the policy of its author with respect to Catholic Emancipation had been adopted. But even the importance of the object is insufficient to justify, and can only palliate, the corrupt means which were used in gaining the assent of the Irish parliament to the Union, which was very unpopular with the Irish nation.

Mr. Pitt resigned his office in February, 1801, and was succeeded by Mr. Addington, who concluded the peace of Amiens in 1802, the preliminaries having been signed the autumn before. Mr. Pitt defended the conditions of this treaty when attacked in parliament, therein taking a different part from several of his late colleagues. But his retirement in the first instance was regarded as not much more than nominal, and he was generally thought to be the adviser of the ministry after he ceased to belong to it. This state of affairs however was short-lived. His support gradually subsided, first into coldness, then into avowed disapprobation, and finally into hostility not less decided than that of the regular opposition. In the early part of 1804, after the lapse of twenty years of violent hostility, Pitt and Fox were again seen speaking and voting on the same side. A fruitless attempt was made by the ministry to procure the accession of the former; and as it became clear that the existing government could not stand, and as the lapse of time and change in affairs had removed many of the most irreconcileable grounds of party variance, a strong hope was felt that an administration, uniting the best talents and most powerful interests of the country, might be formed by the junction of the three parties represented by Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, and Lord Grenville. This hope appears to have been defeated by the King’s personal objections to admit Mr. Fox to office. It is asserted by Mr. Rose that Mr. Pitt used his utmost endeavours to overcome that prejudice, “conceiving a strong government as important to the public welfare, and as calculated to call forth the united talents as well as the utmost resources of the empire; in which endeavour he persisted till within a few months of his death.” Unfortunately for his own fame, and probably for the interests of the country, he did not think fit to make this union of parties a condition of his own return to office. Lord Grenville, his relation, friend, and coadjutor, refused to become a member of an exclusive ministry, and Mr. Pitt took his station at the head of a cabinet singularly deficient in men of commanding talent, and more than half composed of Mr. Addington’s colleagues. The disappointment of the nation was great; but the late period of the session (he was gazetted First Lord of the Treasury May 12) was of material service in enabling him to face the difficulties of his position; and he employed the autumn in seeking to gain strength by forming an alliance with some other party. Lord Grenville however proved firm in his resolution not to accept office while Mr. Fox was excluded; and the minister, assuredly with deep mortification, was compelled to make overtures of reconciliation to Mr. Addington, who was created Viscount Sidmouth, and appointed President of the Council in January, 1805. This alliance after all proved inefficient to strengthen the government, while it was fruitful in jealousies, which led to Lord Sidmouth’s speedy retirement from office in July; and in the same session the dismissal, and ultimately the impeachment, of his old and valued friend and ablest coadjutor, Mr. Dundas, now created Viscount Melville, added another and a still more distressing embarrassment to those by which the minister was already beset.

On his return to office Mr. Pitt had again recourse to his former policy of raising up continental alliances against France; and he succeeded in uniting Austria and Russia in the confederacy which was crushed by the decisive battle of Austerlitz, December 2, 1805. At this time his constitution was rapidly giving way, exhausted by a life of excessive labour, which he sought to relieve by the immoderate use of wine, a habit first induced by the original defects in his constitution. In December he was ordered by his physicians to Bath, but he received no benefit from the change of place, and returned to his residence at Putney by slow stages. He expired January 23, 1805.

In addition to his other offices, Mr. Pitt held the sinecure of Warden of the Cinque Ports, worth about 3000l. per annum, which, unsolicited, was bestowed on him by the King in 1792, as a mark of personal esteem. But the pressure of public business left no time for the regulation of his domestic affairs, and, notwithstanding his large income, he expended his small patrimonial estate, and died deeply involved in debt. The parliament was not slow to acknowledge his long services. His remains were interred at the public expense; a monument was erected to him in Westminster Abbey; 40,000l. were voted to discharge his debts; and, in conformity to his dying request, a pension of 1500l. was conferred on his nieces, daughters of the Earl of Stanhope.

We abstain, for the reasons already assigned, from attempting to give a summary of Mr. Pitt’s qualifications and merits as a statesman, but it is a debt of justice to bear testimony to his unimpeached integrity in all pecuniary affairs. As a speaker he possessed extraordinary powers; clear, fluent, and singularly correct in his diction, unimpassioned, and seldom rising into flights of eloquence, he was always ready to profit by the indiscretions of an opponent, and his sarcasm was of the most cutting and effective kind. His argumentative powers were of a high order, and the clearness and precision of his mind fitted him admirably for those minute financial statements which formed an important part of his official duties. His voice, though wanting in variety, was sonorous and impressive in an extraordinary degree; his action, though awkward and ungainly at first sight, was not unpleasing, nor unsuited to his discourse. In the relations of private life his character was unexceptionable. “With a manner somewhat reserved and distant, in what might be termed his public deportment, no man was ever better qualified to gain, or more successful in fixing, the attachment of his friends, than Mr. Pitt. They saw all the powerful energies of his character softened into the most perfect complacency and sweetness of disposition in the circles of private life, the pleasures of which no one more enjoyed, or more agreeably promoted, where the paramount duties he conceived himself to owe to the public admitted of his mixing in them; that indignant severity with which he met and subdued what he considered unfounded opposition, that keenness of sarcasm with which he repelled and withered (as it might be said) the powers of most of his assailants in debate, were exchanged, in the society of his intimate friends, for a kindness of heart, a gentleness of demeanour, and a playfulness of good humour, which none ever witnessed without interest, or participated without delight.” Such is the testimony borne to Mr. Pitt’s social qualities by his intimate and attached friend, the Hon. George Rose, in his “Brief Examination into the Increase of the Revenue, &c. of Great Britain, during Mr. Pitt’s administration.”

[Statue of Mr. Pitt, by Chantrey, in Hanover Square.]

Engraved by J. Posselwhite.
WESLEY.
From a Print engraved by J. Fittler, after a Miniature Painted by J. Barry.
Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

WESLEY.

Samuel Wesley, whose mother was a niece of Thomas Fuller, the church historian, was in his earliest years thrown by family circumstances among the party of the dissenters; but he abandoned them in disgust, and entered at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1684. He afterwards obtained the livings of Epworth and Wroote, in Lincolnshire; and at the former of those places, June 17, 1703, was born his second son John. Six years afterwards, the house was set on fire by some refractory parishioners, and the boy was forgotten in the first confusion. He was presently discovered at a window, and by great exertion rescued at the very moment which promised to be his last. John Wesley saw the hand of Providence in this preservation, and made it in after life a subject of reflection and gratitude.

At the age of seventeen he was removed from the Charterhouse School, where he had made some proficiency, to Christchurch, Oxford; and the reputation by which he was then distinguished was that of a skilful logician and acute disputant. He was destined for the Church; and when the time for ordination arrived, after some faint scruples which he professed respecting the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed and the supposed Calvinistic tendency discoverable in the Articles had been removed, he entered into orders; and, as the book which had especially excited him on the most serious meditation to undertake that office was Jeremy Taylor’s ‘Rules of Holy Living and Dying,’ so was it with the deepest earnestness that his resolution was taken, and with a fixed determination to dedicate his life and his death, his whole thoughts, feelings and energies, to the service of God. Accordingly, in the selection of his acquaintance, he avoided all who did not embrace his principles; and having now obtained a fellowship at Lincoln College, he had the means of assembling round him a little society of religious friends or disciples, over whom his superior talents and piety gave him a natural influence. These, through their strict and methodical manner of living, acquired from their fellow-students the appellation of Methodists,—a name derived from the schools of ancient science, and thus destined, through its capricious application by a few thoughtless boys, to designate a large and vital portion of the Christian world.

About this time Wesley entered upon his parochial duties as his father’s curate at Epworth[^[4]], and presently afterwards, on the approaching death of that respectable person, he was strongly urged by his family to obtain, as he probably might have done, the next presentation for himself. Had he yielded to their solicitations, he might have passed his days in humble and peaceful obscurity; but his mind was too large for the limits of a country parish, and he already felt that he was intended to serve his Maker in a larger field. So, evading the arguments and withstanding the entreaties of his friends, he went back to reside for a while upon his fellowship at Oxford.

[4]. It was, strictly speaking, during this his absence from Oxford that his little society then (of which the leading member was his younger brother Charles) acquired the name of Methodist.

In the year 1735 he engaged in the more public exercise of the ministry in the character of a missionary. He set sail for the new colony of Georgia in America; he had the countenance of the civil authorities, and the object which he principally professed was the conversion of the Indians. His habits at this period were deeply tinged with ascetism. In his extreme self-denial and mortification, in respect to diet, clothing, and the ordinary comforts of life, he affected a more than monastic austerity, and realized the tales of eremitical fanaticism. He even declaimed against the study of classical authors, and discouraged, as sinful, any application to profane literature. And the extravagance of his zeal took a direction, such indeed as might be expected from his birth and education, but ill adapted to recommend him to the affections of the colonists. He adhered, with the obstinacy of a bigot, to the rubric of the Church; he refused to administer baptism except by immersion; he withheld the communion from a pious dissenter, unless he should first consent to be rebaptized; he declined to perform the burial service over another; and while he was exciting much enmity by this excessive strictness, he formed an indiscreet, though innocent, connexion with a young woman named Sophia Causton, which led him into difficulty, and occasioned, after some ludicrous and some very serious scenes, his sudden and not very creditable departure from America.

He remained there a year and nine months without making, so far as we learn, a single attempt to introduce Christianity among the Indians. He alleged that the Indians had expressed no wish for conversion; and if his conscience was indeed thus easily satisfied, he was yet very far removed from Christian perfection. Thus much indeed he certainly appears to have learnt from this first experiment on his own powers, that he was not yet qualified for the office of missionary; for he felt that he, who would have converted others, was not yet converted himself.

Wesley had sailed to America in the society of some Moravian missionaries, whose exalted piety had wrought deeply on his feelings, and given them some influence over his conduct. On his return to England, while he was already impressed with some sense of his own unworthiness, he became closely connected with Peter Boehler, a man of talents and authority, and a Moravian. Through his instructions Wesley became thoroughly convinced of his own unbelief, and began to pray, with all the ardour of his enthusiastic soul, for an instantaneous conversion. It was not long before he believed that this blessing was vouchsafed to him. On the evening of the 24th of May, 1738, as one of a society in Aldersgate Street was reading in his presence Luther’s ‘Preface to the Epistle to the Romans,’—“About a quarter before nine,” says Wesley, “while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed; I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” Howbeit, when he returned home, he had still some more struggles with the evil one, and was again buffeted by temptations; but he was now triumphant through earnest prayer. “And herein,” he adds, “I found the difference between this and my former state chiefly to consist. I was striving, yea fighting, with all my might under the law, as well as under grace; but then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered; now I am always conqueror.” This is justly considered as a remarkable day in the history of methodism; and Wesley himself attached so much importance to the change that had been wrought in him, that he scrupled not to proclaim, to the great scandal of some of his unregenerate friends, that he had never been a Christian until then.

His first act after his conversion was to set out on a visit to the celebrated Moravian colony, established under the patronage of Count Zinzendorf, at Herrnhut in Lusatia. There he employed a fortnight in examining the doctrines and discipline of that sect, and then returned, as he went, on foot. “I would gladly have spent my life here; but my Master calling me to labour in another part of the vineyard, I was constrained to take my leave of this happy place.” Yet he perceived clearly enough the imperfections in their method; and his intercourse with their noble patron was not such as to flatter the ambition, or even the independence, of his character. But he had acquired a knowledge of their system, and was thus qualified to apply to his own purposes any part of it which might hereafter serve them.

Wesley returned from his visit to Germany burning with religious enthusiasm, and presently entered into the path which Whitefield, his friend and disciple, had opened for him. The latter, who was a few years younger than Wesley, and like him educated at Oxford, and in orders, had begun a short time before to address the people in the open air, at Kingswood near Bristol. Wesley, after some little hesitation, proceeding from his respect for ecclesiastical practice and discipline, followed his example, and commenced his field-preaching in the same place. Here was the first indication of any approach to a separation from the Church, and thus in fact were laid the foundations of the sect of Methodists; yet such was not the design, perhaps, of either of its founders,—certainly not of Wesley. His scheme, if indeed he had then proposed to himself any fixed scheme, was rather to awaken the spirit of religion slumbering within the Church,—to revive the dying embers of vital Christianity,—to infuse into the languid system new life and energy,—to place before the eyes of the people the essentials of their faith, and to rouse their religious instructors to a proper view of their profession and sense of their duty. It was rather an order than a sect that he designed to found; an order subsidiary to the Church, in rivalry indeed with the ancient branches of the Establishment, but filled with no hostile spirit, and having no final object but its regeneration. Such as were the Mendicants in respect to the Roman Church; severe in their reproaches against the indolence and degeneracy of the clergy, whether regular or secular; severe in their own professions, and for a season in their piety and practice too; making their earnest appeals to the lower classes, and turning their influence with them to their own aggrandizement; yet so far removed from schism, so far from harbouring any ill designs against the papacy, as to be the warmest zealots of the Vatican, and the most faithful ministers of all its projects:—such (so far as the change in civil and ecclesiastical principles would permit) the disciples of Wesley were probably designed to have become, in respect to the English Church, by the original intention of their master. At any rate, it was certain that the emulation, which he could not fail to rouse, would in the end be serviceable to the interests of true religion; and it is very possible that, in the depth of his enthusiasm, he held every other consideration to be entirely subordinate to this.

The first effects of his public preaching have not been surpassed by any thing that we read in the history of fanaticism. On one occasion, as he was inculcating the doctrine of universal redemption, “immediately one, and another, and another, sank to the earth; they dropped down on every side as thunderstruck.” Sometimes, as he began to preach, numbers of his believers fell into violent fits and lay struggling in convulsions around him. At other times his voice was lost amidst the groans and cries of his distracted hearers. Wesley encouraged the storm which he had raised; he shared the fanaticism which he imparted; and in these deplorable spectacles of human imbecility he saw nothing but the hand of God confirming by miraculous interposition the holiness of his mission.

But however elated the preacher might be by these spiritual triumphs, however confident in the immediate aid and favour of God, he did not neglect such human means as occurred to him for securing and advancing his conquests. At a very early period he divided his followers at Bristol into male and female bands, for purposes of mutual confession and prayer, in imitation of one part of the Moravian discipline. The establishment of love feasts was equally early. Presently Friday was set apart by him for prayer and fasting; and a house was erected (likewise at Bristol) for the meeting of his disciples. Things were already advancing towards schism. The directors of the church discouraged the extravagance of the teacher, and pitied the madness of the people. Many clergymen, with praiseworthy discretion, refused their pulpits to men who might turn them to such strange purposes. And this gave a pretext to Wesley for seeking means of instructing the people independent of the Church.

In the mean time he discovered that there were differences between himself and those with whom he had hitherto been most closely connected—differences the more difficult to reconcile, because they concerned points of doctrine—the one with the Moravians, the other with Whitefield and his followers. For the arrangement of the former, Count Zinzendorf came in person to England, and had some conferences with Wesley—but he no longer found in him a timid disciple, or obsequious admirer. Wesley defended fearlessly the opinions which he professed, concerning Christian perfection and the means of grace; and as no concession was possible on the other side, the controversy ended in an entire and final breach between him and the Moravians. The dispute with Whitefield, occasioned by the predestinarian doctrines now nakedly advanced by him, was conducted with considerable bitterness, and came to a similar termination. Not that the separation was in this case so complete as to preclude a temporary reconciliation, which was effected some years afterwards; but the difference was clearly proved to be real and irreconcileable; and the permanent division of methodism may in fact be dated from the year 1740.

From this time Wesley, having shaken off two connexions which had embarrassed more than they had strengthened him, became the sole head and mover of a considerable religious party: and he immediately applied his talents to give it organization and perpetuity. He divided his followers into classes, each under the direction of a leader. He caused pecuniary contributions to be collected from the individuals composing those classes, so as to establish a permanent fund for the support of his society, bearing an exact proportion to the number of its members. He appointed itinerant preachers, and instructed them to preach in the open air, under the plea that they were excluded from the pulpits of the Church. And lastly and reluctantly,—for he still retained much affection for that Church, and could not be blind to the consequences of the measure,—he committed the office of preaching to laymen. In the first instance, indeed, he conceded to them no more than the privilege of expounding the Gospel; but seeing how soon they deviated from exposition into preaching, he thought it wiser at once to acknowledge the latter as a part of his system, and thus acquire the power of preventing, as far as might be, its abuse. These men were, for the most part, humbly born and ill educated. But their zeal supplied, in popular estimation, the place of learning; and their habits of poverty enabled them to endure the privations incident to the missionary of a new sect. Thus were their labours attended with great success; and this was essentially promoted by a very sage provision of Wesley, that no confession of faith should be required on admission into his community. The door was thus open to all mankind. The new member was never called upon to secede from the body to which he had previously belonged. He might bear what denomination he chose among the visible members of Christ’s Church, so long as he renounced his vices and his pleasures, and engaged with a regenerate heart in the work of his salvation.

At this time (about 1742) Wesley and his disciples attained that degree of importance, which qualified them to become objects of persecution. It was among the lower classes that they had thrown the torch of fanaticism, and it was from the same that the outrages which now assailed them proceeded. On two or three occasions the person of the master himself was in some danger from popular fury; and it may perhaps have been preserved by his singular presence of mind, and the awe which he knew how to inspire into his fellow creatures. But these violent eruptions of indignation, as they were founded on no semblance of reason, and opposed by the civil authorities, were partial and of short duration; and as the rumours of them were much exaggerated at the time, their influence, as far as they had any, was probably favorable to the progress of methodism. Some calumnies that were raised against Wesley from more respectable quarters, touching his tendency to papacy and his disaffection to the reigning dynasty, arising from entire misunderstanding or pure malevolence, were immediately repelled, and speedily silenced and forgotten.

In the year 1744 Wesley invited his brother Charles, four other clergymen who co-operated with him, and four of his lay-preachers to a Conference: this was the origin of the assembly or council, which was afterwards held annually, and became the governing body, for the regulation of the general affairs of the society. Four years subsequently, a school was opened at Kingswood, for the education chiefly of the sons of the preachers. In the extreme severity of some of the rules which he imposed on this establishment, Wesley seems to have been guided by an ambitious design to set apart his own people from the rest of the community, rather than by the common principles of education, or the common feelings of nature. And so jealous was he of any other influence being exerted on his children, that they were not allowed to be absent from the school, not even for a day, from their first admission till their final removal from it. Notwithstanding however the peculiarity and, as he thought, the purity of his system, he met with many difficulties and reverses, in his first attempts to place it on a permanent foundation.

We may pass over the circumstances of his unfortunate marriage, which ended, after a few months of discord and vexation, in a hasty but final separation. His wife, after proving herself his foulest slanderer and bitterest enemy, presently deserted him. “Non eam reliqui (says Wesley)—non dimisi—non revocabo.” “I have not left her—I have not put her away—I will not recall her.” The same calmness of temper and perfect self-possession, which so remarkably distinguished him in his public proceedings, seem not to have abandoned him even in the more pressing severity of his domestic trials.

Neither have we space to notice the controversies which he carried on with two of the most eminent divines of his time, bishops Lavington and Warburton; since Wesley, though engaged in dispute with the prelates of the Church, and very frequent and bitter in the reproaches which he cast against its ministers, still adhered to its communion, and had yet committed no act declaratory of absolute independence. But later in life he advanced farther towards schism. First of all, as he did not assume for his lay-preachers the power of administering the sacrament, he caused several to be ordained by one Erasmus, a Greek Bishop of Arcadia—thus evading the spiritual authority, which he could not contest, and which he did not yet venture to dispense with. But this was a feeble resource, unworthy of his courage, and unavailing to his purposes. A stronger measure followed. His disciples were very numerous in America, and it was desirable to send out to them a head, invested with the highest spiritual authority. Dr. Coke, an “evangelical” clergyman, was selected for that office, and Wesley took upon himself to invest him with the requisite dignity. These letters of ordination are dated September 2, 1784, and announce in substance, that Wesley thought himself providentially called, at that time, to set apart some persons for the work of the ministry in America; and therefore, under the protection of Almighty God, and with a single eye to his glory, had that day set apart, as a superintendent, by the imposition of his hands and prayer, Thomas Coke, a doctor of civil law, and a presbyter of the Church of England.

In this affair, it was weak in Wesley to plead (as he did) a seasonable conviction, that in the true primitive Church the order of bishop and presbyter were one and the same—for if Wesley exercised as presbyter episcopal authority, so, under the same plea, might Dr. Coke have exercised it, without any imposition of Wesley’s hands. This was a shallow pretence, which could scarcely have deceived himself. The fact was, that Wesley, now acting as the sole head of a separate religious party, assumed the prerogatives of the highest ecclesiastical dignity; and resolved that all the privileges of his ministers should emanate from himself. This is properly considered as a second important epoch in the history of methodism.

Wesley was then eighty-one years old, and he lived for seven years longer, in the perfect enjoyment of his health and exercise of his faculties, almost to the very end. He died March 2, 1791: leaving no property, except the copyright and current editions of his works, which he bequeathed for the use of the connexion. The whole number of his followers, at the time of his decease, is stated at about 135,000, of whom more than 57,600 were Americans. In the United Kingdoms, his principal success had been in some of the large towns in England and in Ireland. But he complains of the coldness with which his preaching was, for the most part, received by the agricultural classes generally, and by the entire Scotch nation—facts which may however be accounted for, without supposing any religious obduracy either in the one or the other.

Thus did Wesley live to fix and consolidate, by the calmer deliberation of his later years, the effects, which might otherwise have been transient, of his early enthusiasm. It required many talents, as well as many virtues, to accomplish this—and Wesley was abundantly endowed with both. The natural ardour and eagerness of his character was moderated by great sagacity and calm judgment, a conciliating and forgiving temper. If he loved power, he did not covet money; but bestowed all that he had upon the poor. Doubtless his original object was simply to awaken the dormant spirit of vital Christianity; and if spiritual ambition, fomented by the general discouragement which he received from the clergy, seduced him too readily—though reluctantly and in opposition to his own professions, and even to his own intentions—into what did in fact amount to schism; yet the breach is not even now irreparable, if only his better spirit shall preside in the councils of his disciples, and be met with a kindred feeling of religious moderation by the directors of the Established Church.

[Monument to Wesley in the Chapel in the City Road.]

Dr. CARTWRIGHT.

The incident which immediately led to the invention of the power-loom is best related in the words of the inventor himself. “Happening to be at Matlock in the summer of 1784, I fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation turned on Arkwright’s spinning machinery. One of the company observed, that as soon as Arkwright’s patent expired, so many mills would be erected, and so much cotton spun, that hands never could be found to weave it. To this observation I replied, that Arkwright must then set his wits to work to invent a weaving mill. This brought on a conversation on the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable; and in defence of their opinion, they adduced arguments which I certainly was incompetent to answer, or even to comprehend, being totally ignorant of the subject, having never at that time seen a person weave. I controverted however the impracticability of the thing.” Looms driven by power had been constructed before, but they had not been made to answer; and it is probable, from the circumstances of Dr. Cartwright’s life, that he had never heard of them: at all events the idea thus suggested to him did not lie dormant. Before the following April, he had constructed his first power-loom; and he took out his last weaving patent Aug. 1, 1787. Mechanical spinning therefore was the parent of mechanical weaving. Without the former, the latter would have been needless; without the latter, the former would have been incomplete. Every stage of the cotton manufacture, from the cleaning of the raw wool to the formation of a perfect web, may be, and in many establishments is, now carried on under the same roof, and by the moving power of the same engine. The name of Dr. Cartwright should follow that of Sir Richard Arkwright in the list of our national benefactors; though at present it is far less known to the world at large. It was long indeed before Cartwright’s merits were appreciated, and they failed to obtain for him the wealth and distinction which the creation of the factory system secured to Arkwright. The utility of the power-loom is now acknowledged, and its sphere appears to be rapidly enlarging. But it is still limited even in the cotton, and much more in the silk and woollen manufactures; and it is not unreasonable to expect that, as prejudices give way, and fresh refinements render the machine susceptible of more general, not to say universal, application, the art of weaving by mechanism, as formerly of spinning, may give an impulse to our trade, of which we now see the beginning, but cannot conjecture the end.

Engraved by J. Thomson.
D^R. CARTWRIGHT.
From a Picture in the possession of Miss Cartwright.
Under the Superintendance of the Society of the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

Edmund Cartwright was the fourth son of William Cartwright, Esq., of Marnham in Nottinghamshire, a gentleman whose family had been long established in the county, and had suffered considerably in its fortune by adherence to the cause of Charles I. in the civil war. He was born April 24, 1743; and at the school of Wakefield, and at University College, Oxford, received the education usually bestowed upon young men destined for the clerical profession. At an early age he manifested a taste for poetic composition; but though he had printed some short pieces anonymously, his name was not given to the public, until the appearance, in 1770, of ‘Armenia and Elvira,’ a legendary poem, which became so popular that it passed through seven editions in little more than a year. He also published, about the same period, the ‘Prince of Peace,’ and ‘Sonnets to Eminent Men.’ In 1774 he became a contributor to the Monthly Review, in which he continued to write for ten years.

We have not ascertained the date of his taking orders, of his election to a fellowship at Magdalen College, or of his vacating that fellowship by marriage. The degree of D.D. he took in 1806. For some years after his marriage he resided, first on his living at Brampton in Derbyshire, and afterwards at Goadby-Marwood in Leicestershire; where the hours which were not devoted to the duties of his calling were chiefly employed in literary pursuits.

Hitherto Mr. Cartwright’s private life had been that of a retired country clergyman, varied only by his correspondence with literary friends. From his family connexions, and the esteem in which he was held by some who had power to advance him, his prospects in the church were favourable; and he had good reason to believe, that if he had confined himself to the line of life in which he had been educated, and in which he was then advancing, he would have attained a more ample provision in his profession, than it was his lot to acquire by the exercise of his mechanical talent. The existence of such a talent in his own mind had been wholly unknown even to himself, until he was upwards of forty years of age, when the circumstance which has been above narrated called it into action, and caused a change in the whole tenor of his life. In his first attempts he had to contend with the difficulties which usually beset genius without experience. “As I had never before turned my thoughts to anything mechanical, either in theory or practice, nor had even seen a loom at work, or knew anything of its construction, you will readily believe that my first loom was a most rude piece of machinery. The warp was placed perpendicularly; the reed fell with the weight of at least half a hundred weight, and the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a Congreve rocket. In short, it required the strength of two powerful men to work the machine at a slow rate, and only for a short time.” This, as we have seen, was in 1785: he also applied his talents to effecting the substitution of machinery for manual labour in combing wool, and took out his first patent on this subject in April 1790.

The following anecdotes we quote from the ‘Pursuit of Knowledge,’ vol. ii.; we believe them to rest upon the best authority. “Dr. Cartwright’s children still remember often seeing their father about this time walking to and fro apparently in deep meditation, and occasionally throwing his arms from side to side; on which they used to be told that he was thinking of weaving and throwing the shuttle. From the moment indeed when his attention was first turned to the invention of the power-loom, mechanical contrivance became the grand occupying subject of his thoughts. With that sanguineness of disposition which seems to be almost a necessary part of the character of an inventor, he looked on difficulties, when he met with them in any of his attempts, as only affording his genius occasion for a more distinguished triumph: nor did he allow even repeated failures for a moment to dishearten him. Some time after he had brought his first loom to perfection, a manufacturer, who had called upon him to see it at work, after expressing his admiration of the ingenuity displayed in it, remarked, that wonderful as was Mr. Cartwright’s mechanical skill, there was one thing that would effectually baffle him, namely the weaving of patterns in checks, or in other words, the combining in the same web, of a pattern, or fancy figure, with the crossing colours which constitute the check. Mr. Cartwright made no reply to this observation at the time; but some weeks after, on receiving a second visit from the same person, he had the pleasure of showing him a piece of muslin of the description mentioned, beautifully executed by machinery. The man is said to have been so much astonished, that he roundly declared his conviction that some agency more than human must have been called in on the occasion.”

The prejudices and opposition which Dr. Cartwright’s invention encountered from the manufacturers, stood greatly in the way of any general adoption of his loom during the period of his patent rights. Other causes, however, were concerned in this. A mill, containing five hundred of his looms, was burnt down almost immediately after its erection. He engaged in a concern for manufacturing with power-looms at Doncaster; but this proved unsuccessful. And it is not improbable, though we have not found it expressly stated, that the machine itself was not at this time able to compete, in respect of economy and beauty of workmanship, with hand labour: for during the period of his exclusive rights, two or three other persons took out patents for power-looms, without being able to make them answer. But about the year 1801, in which his patent expired, he had the pleasure of finding that his invention was coming into use to a very considerable extent; and the mortification of seeing others reap the fruit of his unrequited ingenuity. The increased demand during the war for English cotton goods, with the necessity for working up at home the cotton yarn which had hitherto been exported to the Continent, had given an impulse to the manufacture favourable to the introduction of machinery; and at the same time the power-loom was rendered much more economical by a very ingenious method, invented by Mr. Radcliffe of Stockport, about 1804, of dressing or sizing the warp, before it was placed in the loom. A cotton manufacturer of Stockport, named Horrocks, took out a patent for another power-loom in 1803. He failed; but his loom, with various modifications, is that which has now come into general use.

The following estimate, taken from ‘Baines’s History of the Cotton Manufacture,’ of the number of power-looms in Britain at various periods, though literal exactness in such a matter is unattainable, affords probably a tolerably correct measure of the rapid multiplication of these engines.