to accent the voice of the general joy. This shows that, after all, men have some heart, some gratitude-that, in the words of Shakspeare, the "great soul of the world is just." And it must, we think, have astonished Mr. Hunt and his friends themselves; for we are convinced that, till of late, they were not aware of the full interest which the age had in his fortunes, and of the full pride which it felt in his genius and his fame.

We were delighted, lastly, with the candor and discrimination discovered in the selection of the objects for this act of national munificence. Of the merits of Hood

say more? If he had been a mere punster, like Jekyll; a mere curious and clever combination of divine and diner-out, like Sydney Smith; a mere heartless and witty bon vivant, like Hooke-an age which is rapidly becoming sincere, and which, as an earnest man may be known in his very laughter, is discovering its earnestness in its very picture-books and jest-books, would not have so eagerly sought a pension for his family. It was not gratitude simply for so much tickling pleasure received; it was not merely admiration for his genius; but it was a sense, caught almost by instinct, of the purity of his purpose-the humanity of his nature-and of the martyrdom which that humanity inflicted on him; not to speak of the sacrifices of soul to popular effects, of taste and tendency to necessity

formed. And whatever of such roots of bitterness do still remain spring from whatever remains of the old degradation and contempt to which authors were subjected Not very long ago, they were first classed with wild beasts, and then wonder was expressed that they bit and devoured each other. In proportion as they have been permitted to rise in the scale of respectability, have their unseemly jarrings died away, showing very clearly that the quarrels of authors have sprung from their calamities, and that of course, when the cause is removed, the effect must expire with it. We were pleased, too, to observe the power which public opinion has acquired in wrench--having spoken so recently—why need we ing from hands, however reluctant, the good things of the state. How generally and indignantly was this expressed at the bare rumors that the family of Hood were to be cast desolate upon the world! And how fast was that "hope deferred," which so long sickened the heart of poor Leigh Hunt, beginning to produce a very different feeling in the breast of the public, who are every year becoming more and more alive to the obligations which they owe him! Such murmurs, not loud but deep, were not lost upon the ears of Government, who, even were their seat in office securer than it is, would not be safe in defying any distinct or general demand from the vox populi. Accordingly it was granted, and the grant has given all but universal delight. We happened to be the first next to Mr. Hunt and his family, to learn the fact; we spread it, of course, as widely as we could; and throughout a long journey, and in intercourse with every variety of class, found it to excite unmingled" satisfaction. Literary men clapped their hands for joy. Clerical men expressed their gratification in a style calmer, but as sincere. Commercial men, who had never probably read a line of his writings, but were familiar with him as a national name, were overjoyed. Politicians, who read no poetry, and knew Hunt only as the quondam-martyr in the liberal cause, felt it to be a triumph of their principles. The admirers of his genius, all of whom regard him as their personal friend, were as happy as if a pension had been presented to themselves. The press, we find, both Tory and Liberal, has since taken up a similar note. And although we have heard one or two mutterings of dissatisfaction, yet they have been so low, so stifled, and, altogether, so few and so contemptible, as only to serve

which his circumstances extorted from him-that made Hood such a favorite with the public. Every man that had read so much as his "Song of the Shirt," or his Bridge of Sighs," felt himself in debt to their author, and rejoiced at whatever was done, whether through private contribution or through the public funds, to discharge even a fractionary part of what could never in whole be defrayed.

The claims of Dr. Chalmers were of a kind which still more commended themselves to the general mind and feelings. And yet we protest against a disposition we observe in many quarters to speak slightingly of the deserts of literary men when compared with those of clergymen. We look upon this as a mere vulgar Scotch prejudice. Let both be rated at their proper value. Literary men, though belonging to the real clerus, do not make such high pretensions as the clergy, and are not to be tried by so severe a standard. They do not save souls professionally; but, surely, they enlighten

intellects, and they cheer hearts. They do pared to him, was a gloomy monk; Irving, not visit the sick in person; but they send an intense maniac. In power, both were in their vicarious monthly or weekly mes- probably superior, but not in that managesengers, to enliven and console the forgot- ment of power-that turning of it to practen and the solitary, the widow and the tical purposes, which doubles its momenorphan. Theirs is not the loud oracular tum and worth-and still less in that genial thunder; but theirs is often a still small element in which his power was bathed. voice, winning a gentle and irresistible way And yet we cannot say that we grieved for into the heart of the community. If they the departure of this princely man; we lead not always the great outward move- have felt more at the fall of an aged leaf, ments of society, they create and direct at the breaking of a hoary wave on the an under-current which is becoming even shore at the close of a summer's day-his mightier than they. And, though the pul- work was so evidently over, and his destipit be still the throne of Scotland (and ny closed. But our minds in rapid, yet long may it so continue!) yet dim must be lingering review, went over the history of the eyes which discern not that in England, his life, and the character of his mind, as and in many other countries, the Press is of one living and nowise lost. What was the real ruler, and the best way to check his meaning, and whence his power, were and wisely to regulate it is not, surely, by questions that came upon us with strange underrating those who wield its power. Let urgency? And we felt that the following it not be forgotten, too, that while clergy- words best conveyed our ideas, and constimen are by rank counted gentlemen, and tuted the epitaph we should inscribe on his therein secured against insult, and endowed tombstone. Not a great theologian, though with much influence, it is, or was, other-possessed of vivid ideas on theology-not a wise with literary men; that while the re- man of science, though widely acquainted muneration of clergymen is, generally, stat- with many branches of science-not a phied and secure, that of litterateurs is most losopher, though possessing much of the fluctuating and uncertain; and that thus spirit of philosophy-hardly a man of gethere is the less reason for sacrificing the nius, for such a subtle idealizing faculty as claims of the one on the altar of the other, Jeremy Taylor for instance, or of great or of wondering that Government is con- poets, was not his-but one, whose high siderate enough to recognise and honor talent and energy, inflamed through the both. For our parts (and we surely may force of their own motion, and burst out speak without prejudice) we prefer the into the conflagrations of eloquence-a Song of the Shirt," or some of Hunt's Christian orator unequalled-one in whom little papers in the "Indicator," to thou-emotive sympathy with the spirit of the age sands of the sermons which every morning-with the Scottish people with the poor sees published, and which no eve sees around him-with all that was lovely and bought or read. of good report, was the ruling elementIn saying this, we are so far from wishing but for which, all his varied powers and to derogate from the name of Chalmers, that we mean to make it an opportunity for indicating what was, perhaps, his highest praise that he combined, more entirely than any man of the period, the characteristics of the man of letters and science, and of the great preacher and divine. In this point, what recent name of the Christian world can we weigh beside his, and not find it wanting? With more elegance, more We were fortunate enough-when recentacuteness, more wit, and more high wrought ly in England-to track his course in more and dazzling finish and point, Hall was yet places than one. We heard of him in the a small and narrow soul compared to Chal- parlor of the author of "Sartor Resartus" mers; he wanted his width-his warm-whom he had-uninvited, unexpected, but heartedness-his profound and generous not unwelcome-visited. They had met sympathies; and his eloquence, when print- twenty years before, and had parted mutued, looks like a taper beside a furnace-it ally estranged, if not disgusted. They met is well-trimmed, brilliant, pointed, but not recently, and parted after some hours' ina broad or consuming fire. Foster, com- tercourse, mutually delighted.

attainments would have only rendered him a younger and less agile brother of Brougham, but which, possessed, made him the man of a country and of an age-made him lead great hosts and gain great victoriesand acquire for himself a reputation as enviable and as unenvied (save by the very Pariahs of party) as ever was won by uninspired man.

We can

fancy their meeting like that of two rivers | went from his foes. It is easy for those -one broad, rapid, clear, and sunny-the whose worst sufferings in life have been the other still, gloomy, and profound-both head-aches of excess, or the flea-bites of chanting their own song-the one a loud, village scandal, to talk contemptuously of yet irregular" thunder psalm;" the other the soreness of a man, who for years stood a wilder, lower, and more mystic melody. on the pillory of public opinion, and had to Two spirits more earnest-two more in es- sustain not merely the mud artillery of the sential points at one--and two more influ- base and the mean, but the fiery and orient ential over the rising minds of the age-did shafts of men of kindred genius, whom cirnot breathe. They met-they interchanged cumstances and fate had ranged as archers thoughts, like the shields of Diomede and against him, and who must have felt to those Glaucus they parted to meet no more on bright but mis-directed missiles much as earth, for the one was bound for eternity, the struck eagle does to the dart, feathered and had only time to look in and make with her own plumage, which lays her low. peace with a kindred spirit, ere he went his The trample of Satyrs and other obscene way. We need not remind our readers, things he might have endured; but to be that Dr. Chalmers had, in an article on patient under the tread of such demigods as "Morell's Philosophy," taken occasion to Byron, Wilson, Moore, and Lockhart, hic pass a glowing panegyric on Thomas Carlyle, labor, hoc opus fuit. Yet all this he has and that this suitably paved the way for survived, and this itself proves him postheir last meeting. sessed of no common powers, to say the least, of endurance, and we trust we may add, of forgiveness and charity too.

We heard of him again, in the house of the gentleman just named, Mr. Morell, and sat, so it chanced, in the chair, where We glory in Hunt's pension, not merely for two hours he had discussed divers grave for his sake, but for the sake of a class of and high subjects, with that accomplished men of whom he is the last living representyoung philosopher. He promised, we un- ative. Now may the injured shades of derstand, to arrange matters for getting Hazlitt, Shelley, and Keats, deem themMr. Morell to deliver a course of lectures selves in some measure appeased. These in Edinburgh during the ensuing season. all, as well as Hunt, had their errors; they We trust that the spirited directors of the all needed counsel, and, instead of counsel, New Philosophical Institution there will do received proscription-murder-under the themselves the honor of adopting and car-judicial forms of criticism. They asked rying into effect Dr. Chalmers's generous for bread, and received a stone, not over proposal.

their graves, but in their foreheads. They sought liberty to sing, and what is rarely denied to the veriest ballad-singer was refused to them; their mouths were closed with a shower of cinders and mud. Men swore at them as blasphemers, and cursed them in the name of the Blessed. Hunt alone has lived to find the late remorse of love, so long exhibited by the public, at length sanctioned and sealed by the signet of power.

To return, however, to Leigh Hunt. The thought of his pension suggests still more pleasing emotions than do the others. He is alive, and long may he live to taste the bounty of his sovereign. He has long ago most honorably won the prize that has at last accrued to him-won it, not merely by his literary merit; this great, as it is (for he is already a British classic-he has been before the public for nearly fifty years as a poet, journalist, critic, essayist, and trans- We were never more fortunate than in lator, and, apart from his political writings, the time when we called on this amiable and is the author of forty separate volumes), is distinguished person. He had newly reperhaps his least merit-he has won it still ceived the notice of his pension. His apmore by the consistency of his political ca-pearance fully verified what we had said of reer-by the kindliness and generosity of his him years ago. He is a grey-haired boy, nature-and by the savage injustice of the whose heart can never grow old. He retreatment that he underwent, both as a lite-ceived us with as much cordiality as if we rary man and as a politician. When some- had been old friends. He spoke, in the times disposed to think him too sensitive flurry of his heart, as if this pension would even to the criticism of his friends, and too now be to him "riches fineless," and smiled jealous of his established reputation, we when we compared him to a school-boy, always modify our judgment when we re- who imagines that his first shilling can span member the victimization which he under-the round of all conceivable enjoyments.

After a grasp of his hand, with which ours was long warm, and a pat on the shoulder, which said, not in English nor Latin, but in the natural language of all mankind, Perge Puer, our friend and we left, uncertain which of us most to love the dear old man, to whom we must now bid farewell by his full name-James Henry Leigh Hunt.

He showed us Lord John Russell's letter,, it had conferred-we shall never forget our and expatiated on the delicacy and kind- emotions, and shall surely mark Thursday, ness which it discovered. He spoke, during the 24th of June, with a white stone. the short time we were with him, on various subjects, in a gay, lively, discursive style. His conversation is a winding, wimpling, sparkling stream, whereas that of Carlyle, which we had listened to a few evenings before, is a river of lava, red, right onward, and irresistible. Among other things about his friend Shelley, he mentioned that he had translated all the works of Spinoza, and While writing the above, our attention that this translation was still extant. He has been called to a sensible paper in a rereceived us in his library, which, as usually cent Spectator on the Pension Fund. In happens, forms a true index of the man. it the writer proposes the establishment of Its shelves are radiant with the best belles- a new and larger fund, to be administered lettres of every country and age. It is a by the sovereign, solely as the executive and room, the very sweat of which you imagine responsible officer of the nation. We fear will be poetry. Green leaves look in at its the public is not quite ripe for such a meawindow, and a divine gush of sunshine half sure. We are sure that even if it were seamed them with gold. It seemed as if adopted, the fund would still require to be in that favored room the "milder day" strictly and jealously watched. Who, pray, had begun. All things were in fine keep-is to instruct the Crown in the choice of ing the old young poet, grey hairs on his head, but youth in his eyes and hand-the shelves laden with spirit-the sunny daythe leaves fluttering without, as if stirred with secret and half-born delight, to be recognised and renewed when their dream of being blossoms into being itself-the letter lying on the table, unconscious of the joy

the proper objects of such a charity? Till such a fund be formed-and the present certainly is scandalously limited-we call again upon the public and the press to guard it like the apples of the Hesperides, and to see sternly to it, that none but men of the true "Seed-royal" be permitted to share its sparing and precious bounty.

From the New Monthly Magazine.

A GREYBEARD'S GOSSIP ABOUT HIS LITERARY ACQUAINTANCE AND LITERARY MEN.

Anecdotes of the late Charles Mathews, the Comedian-The Poet Campbell, his Vanity as an Author rebuked by a pious Shoemaker; Malicious Pleasantry in Ridicule of his Slowness in Composition; his Philanthropic Exertions for Human Improvement; his deep Dejection at their occasional Failure; the Picture of the Gipsy Girl; a Fit of Hypochondria; his Library in Victoria-square; his burial in Westminster Abbey.

MATHEWS.

Or the late Charles Mathews, the comedian, one of the most entertaining members of Hill's Sydenham company, my memory retains few, if any, gleanings which have not already been given to the public, in the full and delightful Biography written by his widow. This lady, whom to know is to esteem, I am proud to reckon among my literary acquaintance, and gladly do I avail myself of this opportunity to waft to her all cordial good wishes from my "loopholes of retreat," as well as to express a hope that she may give to the world another volume of those Anecdotes of Actors,"

and "Desultory Recollections," of which her store is so copious, and which none can narrate so pleasantly. The matchless power of mimicry possessed by Charles Mathews, far from being confined to mere vocal flexibility, extended to the mind, look, and manner of the original; so that the hearer was not less surprised by his intuition into character than by a copy of every external manifestation so faithful and minute, that you seemed to behold a temporary metempsychosis. He was, indeed,

Proteus for shape and mocking-bird for tongue. To possess such an unfailing source of mer

riment is a perilous temptation to its abuse; His many bodily infirmities, and more but he was too polite and kind-hearted to especially the sad accident that lamed him give unnecessary pain to any one, and know- for life, had tended to irritate a temper ing his mirth-provoking weapon to be irre- which his extreme sensitiveness sometimes sistible, wielded it charily and considerate-rendered touchy, though his nature was ally. Properly jealous of his great conver-ways kind and genial. Among his little sational talent, in which few men exceeded prandial peculiarities was a vehement objechim, I have known him resist every solici-tion to mock-turtle soup, on account of tation to mimetic display, especially in some unwholesome ingredients with which, great houses, if he had any reason to sus- as he asserted, it was usually thickened. pect that he had been invited, like Samson, Once I met him at a party where several to make sport for the Philistine lords. So servants in succession having offered him a well was he aware that "a jest's prosperity plate of his "pet abhorrence," he at length lies in the ear of him who hears it," that lost his patience, uttered an angry "No, I an evidently uncongenial company would tell you!" and petulantly tossing up his seal his mouth for a whole evening; while elbow at the same time, upset a portion of to an audience that could appreciate and the rejected compound upon his sleeve. Next laugh heartily at his waggery, he would day I again encountered him at dinner, pour forth its inexhaustible stores without when he related what had occurred, exclaimsolicitation or stint. ing, "I am delighted beyond measure that my coat is spoiled; I have locked it up; I wouldn't have it cleaned for twenty pounds; call to-morrow, and I'll show you the sleeve; it stands of itself, stiff as the arm of a statue. You wouldn't believe me when I told you, on good authority, that the lawyers sold all their old parchments to the pastry-cooks, to make some villanous stuff called glaize or gelatine, or in plain English glue, out of which they manufacture jelly, or sell it to our poisoning cooks, who put it into their mock-turtle, ' to make the gruel thick and slab.""

"I have heard of a man eating his own words," said James Smith, "but if your statement be true, a man may unconsciously have eaten his own hand and deeds."

This was eminently the case at our Noctes Sydenhamica., where every boon companion could salute his brother guest with "Hey, fellow, well met ;" where all gravity was prohibited; where each guest was sure to understand a joke when he heard it; whither every one came with a full determination to laugh and drown care. Small was the chance of escape for the luckless wight who presented any peculiarity which Mathews could seize and parody; what then must have been the predicament of our host, who was all peculiarity; who was considered fair game by all guests; and who was thus run down, like Actæon, by his own merry dogs? And yet the subject of this cursory notice, however prompt and voluble in general, was apt to lose his readiness at any unexpected encountering. On He may, he may!" cried Mathews. my return from the continent, after an ab- "Egad, my friend, I thank you for the hint, sence of three years, I ran over to Worthing, it explains all about my confounded indiwhere he was then acting, to pay him a gestion. Doubtless I have some other man's visit, when, after the first hearty salutation will in my stomach, which renders it so inand an expression of surprise, he looked subordinate to my own will; I myself love confused, and seemed quite at a loss what roast pork and plum-pudding, but this alien to say next. To relieve his embarrassment will, transferred from some lawyer's office I asked after our old friend of Sydenham, to my intestines, will not allow me to dithe simple mention of whose name operat- gest them. You have heard of the fellow ing as a sort of charm, he instantly mim-with a bad asthma who exclaimed, 'If once icked his voice and manner, his guttural I can get this troublesome breath out of my "Pooh, pooh," and prodigious exaggerations, running on without a moment's pause, until he had given me a most amusing account of all our old fellow Symposiarchs. It might have been said, without a catachresis, that he became himself again as soon as he had thrown himself into another; he recovered his presence of mind by assuming that of an absent party.

body, I'll take good care it shall never get in again;' and I may well say the same of this parchment usurper who has taken possession of my stomach. How he got there is the wonder, for years have elapsed since I swallowed glue-I mean jelly or mockturtle."

Grievously was he annoyed by the lateness of the dinners, whereby people con