"Why there sits that bird of ill-omen," said Wiskerless, "that heartless villain Silvertale." And true enough there sat Silvertale, in a neat barouche, emblazoned with the bloody hand and the Knowsley arms; a seizure from some spendthrift baronet, who was then moralising in Boulogne, and Mrs. Silvertale, a coarse-featured, masculine woman, with a Jewish cast of countenance, and Tortillard and Miss Silvertale, flounced and furbelowed in all the combined colours of the rainbow, with geranium hair, and a sallow, plain complexion, resembling a badly-boiled chicken in hue. Silvertale in his shop and Silvertale at Ascot races were two very different people, as Cuffy, the negro tailor, launching forth sedition in St. Giles's, would be a very different person from Cuffy, Lord-Protector of England, In his shop, Silvertale was arrogant, boasting, and overbearing; away from it, he was mild, gentle, nay even a sycophant ; but under either exterior, a horrid little demon was working at his heart, with its Machiavellian arts of amassing ingots at the price of soul and body. Miss Silvertale, in all the maiden playfulness of coquetry, parried the nonchalant look of Cornet Wiskerless, as he leisurely lounged up to the carriage; but the plain young lady's complexion turned to a bright saffron, and her parasol was raised with an indignant toss, as that officer exclaimed to her revered sire," Well, Silvertale, so you have murdered Lord Frederick Poynings: another score against you, old boy, in the book of fate," and with a contemptuous turn of the heel, joined his party. * VI. FOUR sinister-looking men, at the hour of midnight, hurried along the dirty, splashy streets of London, in a good jog-trot, carrying a simple bier, on which rested a plain deal coffin, and entering the retired cemetery of * carelessly dropped their burden by a newlydug grave, near which stood a fat, red-faced clergyman, and a grayheaded old sexton, prepared to read the last sad obsequies of the dead. A young and beautiful girl, in deep mourning, leading a lovely boy, of some four summers, whose auburn ringlets hung in profusion down his back, and a liveried groom-boy, were the sole mourners to those earthly remains, borne to their "low-delved tomb." During the first part of the service the mourners preserved a stolid silence, broken only by the low and smothered sob, indicating true and fervent sorrow, until the priest delivered the impressive words of "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," and the hard, flinty pebbles rattled on the coffin, when the female, her feelings-like the thawed torrent, which bursts every opposing barrier-vanquished their restrains, and, in a paroxysm of grief, she threw herself upon the green turf, tore with frenzied hands her unconfined tresses, and bathed the narrow house of death with scalding tears. The groom-boy gave vent to his grief in a cataract of sobs, and blubbered forth, "He-he-e-should-ne-ne-ver—' -"sob, sob, sob, "no -o-ne-ver-get-such-a-a-master-a- -a-gain-” sob, sob, sob-"shouldn't-he-e-e— sob, sob, "like to have-e- -e-e Mister Shoemaker in a quiet-corr-ne-r-r for-fi-ve minutes," sob, sob, "wouldn't he-e-e punch his head that-was-was-all-ll," sob, sob, while the poor little child turned his dark expressive eyes on the servant, and clung to him for protection, the tears coursing down his little cheeks, partly from cold and partly because his mother wept. And thus ended the career of the once favoured, courted, Lord Frederick Poynings! Slain by his own hand-his requiem sung on a drag-his corpse seized by his creditor and sold for dissection-(in a Christian country forsooth! a deed surely worthy of the dark ages of barbarism) his coffin borne by hirelings, and unattended by his professed friends, who had shared his patrimony and fetes! Two mourners, and two only, witnessed the closing scene-his loving mistress-his faithful servant! Thus died Lord Frederick Poynings! Naturally good-natured, he became a victim to the fierce Juggernaut of society; his main object to please soon became a habit, and the habit a vice-his end-the gambler's. As sure as the first taste of opium of the Eastern drinker leads to a delirious death, so surely does the first touch of the card by a vacillant man lead to gambling, and gambling to destruction! And thus died Lord Frederick Poynings! neglected, already forgotten! possessing many excellent qualities and virtues, but destitute of one, the most essential-true moral courage--without which we are as nothing, unable to withstand the temptations of the world, which assail us in every form and at every step. VII. It was a clear fine morning in January, with a southerly wind and a few fleecy clouds quietly sailing over the blue firmament that Sir William Woolsey, arrayed in all the habiliments of the chace, was despatching a breakfast, which our Gallic neighbours would certainly have designated un déjeuner à la fourchette. Sir William had forsworn the turf. There is a something called "cannyism" implanted in the breast of every Yorkshireman and Scotchman, which opens their eyes to any imposition endeavoured to be palmed upon them, especially as regards money matters. From what causes it arises, or for what reason it is there, is quite irrelative to our subject; that there it is, is an undoubted fact, as certain as, that the love of country is stronger in the mountainous tribes, or the sublimity of loyal devotion greatest among the rural peasantry of La Vendée. Sir William and ourselves were quickly in the saddle, and in full gallop to Pillmoor, a favourite meet of the York and Ainsty fox hounds; where, on our arrival, the thoroughbred hack was delivered over to a smart pad groom, who had been carrying on a colloquy with another pad-groom relative to the servant's-hall beer, and the merits of their respective masters' studs, and we, transferred to a muscular, well-turned hunter. "Yoi-in! yoi-in! yey! my little darlings! Hark to Sweetlips!" exclaimed the huntsman. "Have a care, Modesty! Mo-des-ty!" "Tally ho! gone away!" shouted the first whipper-in, as a thoroughson of old "Cæsar" broke from the sylvan cover. Few moments of tremulous anxiety or excitement are greater than the re-echoing view holloa. Horse and man are alike actuated by the same emotions; their heart's blood bubbles, the trembling flanks of the horse, the straining eyeballs of the men tell but too plainly that both are eager for the chace. "For-ard!" was cried, and with a simultaneous spring the seven first flight men went crash at the yawning bullfinch. Forward they go, in an ecstacy of excitement. Forward-but let us pause, kind reader, for we are now trespassing on the rights of the Nimrods of the sporting periodicals. Suffice it to say, the "who-o-op" was given upon the Hambleton Hills to an audience of not more than six individuals out of a field of a hundred or more-among which honourable number-in at the death-we found ourselves. "Pretty sharp work, Sir William," said an old yeoman, in a longskirted scarlet coat and mahogany tops, mopping his jolly rubicund face. "These hills are rum'uns. Nothing but blood and muscle live to-day, none of your bang-tailed weeds." "True, true," replied Sir William, as he took a bird's-eye view of the vale beneath, where one man was endeavouring to catch his horse, another was lassoing his out of a bog; this one performing a sort of pantomimic posture on his head, for no visible amusement or emolument to himself; while that was busily engaged opening a vein of his hunter, by which attempt he quickly settled the point of life and death by cutting an artery. Well, you are a nice fellow," said Captain Devereux, when Sir William returned to his house, on the day in question, "you ask a fellow for dinner-six sharp-and here you keep him an hour and a half-half-past seven." My dear fellow, in England, or rather Yorkshire, the chace is an excuse for any dilatoriness," replied Sir William. "Gad, sir! I would not marry a girl who would not accept of the chace as a sufficient apology for any unpunctuality on my part. However, we have had a capital run, found at Pillmoor, and, be gad, killed on the Hambleton training-ground." * "Those are nice tops' of yours," said pulled off our noble selves. Devereux, as Sir William "These are your's," replied Sir William, "they cut me most terribly over the instep." "Thank you; it is all fish that comes to the net," said Devereux. And we found ourselves, some few months after, in all our shining lustre and beauty, standing in an officer's room at the Royal Barracks, Dublin. Quite a Yorkshireman's sentiment!" exclaims a gentle reader. Granted, ladye faire,-it is. BEATTIE'S LIFE OF CAMPBELL.* THE life of such a man as Campbell does not present much variety of incident and fortunes, excepting such as are of a strictly private and domestic nature. As the gifts of his genius (rich and rare as they were) were freely bestowed upon the public, that life may be truly said to be contained in his works. And in that point of view, Mr. Cyrus Redding's elaborate "Life and Reminiscences," as published in the New Monthly, especially in that which concerns the poet's connexion with the same magazine, and the epoch of his most arduous literary engagements, is perhaps the most pleasing biography that could be given: it is certainly that with which the public ought to be best satisfied. But there is in this, as in other cases, a yearning for more-an intuitive inquisitiveness into the cause of success, and the mode in which that success was achieved; and, above all, a deep and heartfelt interest in the most ordinary details of existence of a person whose works we admire, and whose writings have been able to excite the highest and the best sympathies of our nature. To portray such, can only be done by those to whom such a task would be a labour of love; and such it is pre-eminently shown to be by the noble monuments to Campbell's memory, penned by his friend, his counsellor, his physician, and his literary executor, Dr. William Beattie. But while it is true that Campbell's life presents few striking incidents or achievements out of the domain of literature, that his dawning successes at college, his brilliant entrance into the world, secured to him by his first great performance-his German tour-his editorship of the New Monthly-his exertions in the cause of Greece, of Poland, and of education at home-his lectures, and his trip to Africa, constitute nearly all the more prominent features of his life-it is not on that account that it ought to be said, especially by any one having pretensions to literary taste or judgment, that the record of his years is at once barren and trivial. The life of Thomas Campbell, as narrated by both his biographers, Dr. Beattie and Mr. Redding, displays some of the finest qualities of human nature. As a boy, he shone pre-eminent for a fine ambition, untinctured by envy or malice, for his gallantry (witness his saving a life at Greenock), and for his generous spirit and warm friendships; as a man, he was no less distinguished by traits of the most noble character. He was true to his domestic ties, affectionately and perseveringly generous to his poorer relatives, assiduous in his studies, zealous in the cause of literature, ardent in that of education, liberty, and patriotism, and largely gifted with man's most divine attributes a ready head and heart. It was not Campbell's weaknesses that won, or secured to him so many lasting friendships; it was that, amidst all the errors and follies attendant upon a generous uncalculating disposition, the brightest metal still ever lay at the core; and like the sunshine that illumines a tear, it made itself seen and felt amid darkening sorrow and vexation. Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell. Edited by William Beattie, M.D., one of his Executors. 3 vols. Moxon. The record of such a life cannot, therefore, be said to be barren or trivial so long as there is honour in privacy and virtue without publicity. If the active performance of our social duties, the honourable fulfilment of the tasks imposed upon us by position in life and by our calling here below, are to count as nothing by the side of those phantoms of Fame's "air dress'd goddess," pursued through each flitting scene-gifts of a "babbling girl"-then, indeed, is all that ought most to be sought after, and most prized when attained, an honest name and an honourable life, a mere bauble, and the goodly list of those who have shed lustre upon their intellectual supremacy by the dignity of their occupations and the simplicity of their social life, may be at once erased from our memories. As a child, Thomas Campbell was lively and well-favoured, rather of a delicate than of a robust constitution, with beautiful expressive features, and a remarkable precocity of intellect. He was of a playful disposition, easily amused by others, and so inquisitive that he found amusement and information in every thing that fell in his way. These features in his character stood prominent throughout his career. at eight years of age he was transferred from the care of an intellectual and ballad-loving mother to that of Mr. Alison, master of the grammarschool of Glasgow, he was not only soon at the head of his class—a position which he invariably maintained-but he was also a general favourite with his schoolfellows. Dr. Beattie traces the first feelings of poesy to a brief residence on the banks of the river Cart, to which the boy was consigned at this early period of his life, from illness brought on by too close application. A little poem on the Seasons, beginning, Oh joyful Spring, thy cheerful days prolong (The feathered songsters thus begin the song), But ah! she runs, she runs along too fast, When is recorded as one of his very first attempts at poetry, one of the first tangible proofs that the "magic of nature breathed on his mind." At twelve years of age, young Campbell was a proficient in Latin and Greek, and his memory was stored with the finest passages of Horace and Virgil. If we are to believe Dr. Beattie, this precocious youth would declaim with great fluency, at the evening fire-side, in the languages of Greece and Rome; and although his audience, generally his mother and sisters, were not the most attentive listeners on those occasions, his relish for the ancient masters of the art was so keen, that he never imagined their sublime sentiments could be heard with indifference by any human being. Certain it is that his translations from the Greek commenced with his fourth year at the grammar-school, and there seems little doubt that he felt at that early time that enthusiastic admiration of the old Hellenic poets, which accompanied him through life, and which undoubtedly tended much to render him the most purely correct and classical poet of his age. This early enthusiasm (Dr. Beattie adds) which the study of the Greek poets had kindled in the mind of Campbell, while a boy at school and college, appeared to strengthen with his growth, and literally became part of himself, long before he had reached the full measure of his intellectual maturity. Even in the latter stage of life, when the fever of politics had subsided, and original composition was almost abandoned, the gigantic structures of the Greek drama were still floating in airy vision before his eyes. And I then remarked, in his case, the |