50,000l. Acting upon the instructions of the House, Messrs. Hansard declined to plead. A jury assessed the damages at 6007.; and the Court directed the sheriffs of London to recover the sum, from the property of the printers. They endeavored to obtain delay, but Stockdale had nothing to do either with their convenience or the constitutional question, and wanted his money. The sheriffs made a levy, and on the 16th December, 1839, to avoid the embarrassment of a public sale, the amount was paid. The sheriffs, Evans and Wheelton, were more annoyed regarding the allocation of these funds than other persons usually are even to obtain money. They were willing to pay them over to Stockdale, but the House of Commons threatened to commit them; or they were willing to retain them, but Lord Denman threatened them with imprisonment for contempt. They were deliberating on this choice of evils when the Commons seized them on the 20th January, 1840, for levying on their publishers goods. Lord Denman issued a writ of habeas corpus, by which he had the pleasure of an interview with the sheriffs, but they returned to confinement. Stockdale was next imprisoned by the House, and his attorney followed; but he progressed with his actions, and on the 17th February the fifth of the series was pending. Public opinion favored the judge more than the representatives; but on the 5th March Lord John Russell introduced a Bill, to confer on Parliamentary papers exemption from the libel law, and by retrospective clauses to release Messrs. Hansard from the cases current. Lord Denman and other peers endea vored to amend the Bill so as to prevent the publication of libels on private individuals, but the amendment would have vitiated the entire Act, and was therefore rejected while the measure was carried. The merits of the dispute were never fully discussed. "Much might be said on both sides." The Chief Justice occupied high grounds. He considered his Court the last refuge of popular liberty. The Commons, with equal firmness, alleged that the representatives of the people could more satisfactorily than any other power grant their freedom. One thing may be admitted, that in reports of Parliamentary evidence, as in the speeches of members, private individuals can be very grossly libelled, without any redress. Lord Denman sought to prevent this wrong without a remedy, but his object was impracticable, unless by infringing Parliamentary privileges, and it was defeated. He presided at the last public trial of a Peer, when Lord Cardigan went through that mockery of justice for wounding Captain Harvey Tuckett in a duel. The presiding judge was grave and solemn, but the business otherwise was a satire on justice. The celebrated review on appeals of O'Connell's trial brought out the only partizan opinion with which Lord Denman was chargeable, in any great political case, on the Bench. Mr. O'Connell and his friends were tried by a jury, consisting of gentlemen who made great exertions to escape the responsibility. After they were impanelled, the traversers and their counsel employed all artifices that ingenuity could suggest, to prolong the proceedings. Upon the twentyfifth day a verdict of guilty was returned. But the indictment had been divided into eleven counts-each of which contained different charges; and the jury, upon oath, anxious to be precise, divided the various matters in each count, discharging the prisoners from some, and finding others proved. Mr. O'Connell and his friends were sentenced to a heavy fine, and a moderate imprisonment. The case was taken, by appeal, before the judges, and finally found its way to the peers, who reversed the judgment. The Law lords alone voted on the appeal, namely, Brougham against, Campbell, Cottenham, and Denman for; but Lord Denman, in delivering his judgment, lowered himself from the Bench to the Bar, and insisted that the proceedings, if maintained, would reduce trial by jury to "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. This end had been very nearly accomplished by proceedings anterior to, and pending, the trial. An honest verdict could only be returned at the risk of personal danger. An individual called on the wife of one juryman on the day before the close of the trial, and offered a widow's cap for sale, saying, it will be wanted if O'Connell be found guilty. The business of the jurymen was greatly neglected during the proceedings. They became for many years proscribed men. They were insulted in the streets, and in danger of their lives, while their finding was an act of moral courage, of which the three peers who dissented from the opinions of the subordinate and younger judges were innocent; for Denman, even in the Queen's case, was supported by popular applause. Trial by jury was, is, has been, and ever will be, "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare" in Ireland, because unanimity is requisite to a verdict there as in England. Political trials CONSUMPTION OF LIFE DURING THE REIGN OF NICHOLAS.-The consumption of human life during the reign of the Emperor Nicholas has been enormous. He has carried on war with the Circassians uninterruptedly for 28 years, at an annual cost of 20,000 lives on the Russian side alone, making a grand total of nearly 600,000 Russians who have perished in 'attempting to subdue the independence of Circassia. In the two campaigns against Persia, as in the Hungarian campaign and the two Polish campaigns of 1831-32, there are not sufficient data to enable me to form a correct estimate of the Russian loss, which was, however, in the Persian and Polish wars Turkey of 1828-29, 300,000 fell, of whom, however, 50,000 perished by the plague. The loss of the Russians, in various ways. since the entry of the Danubian Principalities, is understood at 30,000. In these calculations it should be borne in mind that no estimate is attempted to be made of the sacrifice of human life on the side of those who fought for their liberties against the aggressions of Russia. If this calculation were attempted, it is probable that the result would prove that neither Julius Cæsar, nor Alexander, nor even Tamerlane, has been a greater scourge to the human race than the present Emperor Nicholas.-The Emperors From the Quarterly Review. SAMUEL FOOTE, THE HUMORIST.* Few things are in their nature so fleeting as a joker's reputation. Within a generation it lives and dies. The jest may survive, but the jester is forgotten, and it is wit that flies unclaimed of any man; or, more frequently; jest and jester both have passed away, and darkness has swallowed up the fireworks altogether. And this perhaps is better than to outlive liking, even in so trumpery a matter as a broad grin. Horace Walpole has told us how much Lord Leicester suffered who had such a run in George the First's reign, when, having retired for a few years, he returned to town with a new generation, recommenced his old routine, and was taken for a driveller; and one would not choose to have been that universally popular wit of the reign of Charles the First, who, according to Sir Wil.ljam Temple, was found to be an intolerable bore at the court of Charles the Second. wit and perpetual joking, this is a fault which has not much chance of remedy. Of the three books whose title-pages are transcribed at the head of this article, the reader may candidly be told that it is not our intention to say anything. What we are going to write is suggested by what we have not found in them. In the first, an ingenious Frenchman, and noted Anglo-maniac, reveals the discoveries he has made of eccentric Englishmen, from Swift to Charles Lamb. In the second, a contemporary English humorist, himself of no small distinction, eloquently discourses of his illustrious predecessors from Addison to Goldsmith, and passes upon them the third, a young and deserving writer, some hasty and many subtle sentences. In whose cleverness would be not less relished if a little less familiar and self-satisfied in tone, takes in hand the whole subject of But it is not simply that this kind of repu- Satire and Satirists, dismisses Q. Horatius tation has small value or duration in itself, Flaccus with the same easy decision as Mr. but that it lowers any higher claim in its pos- Punch, and is as much at home with Juvenal sessor. Laughter runs a losing race against and George Buchanan as with Thomas the decencies and decorums; and even Swift, Moore and Theodore Hook. Yet in these when he would have taken his proper place three successive volumes-full of English on the topmost round of the ladder, was heroes, of eccentricity, humor, and satire, tripped up by the "Tale of a Tub." So much there is One name altogether omitted which the weaker his chances, whose laughter has might have stood as the type of all; being dealt with what partakes itself of the transi-that of an Englishman as eccentric, humorous, tory; who has turned it against the accidents and follies of life; who has connected it with the obtrusive peculiarities of character, as much as with its substance and realities; and who must therefore look to be himself not always fairly associated with the trivialities he has singled out for scorn. In life, and in books, it is the same. It is wonderful how seldom men of great social repute have been permitted to enjoy any other; and there is written wisdom of old date to this day unappreciated, because of the laughing and light exterior it presents to us. In an age of little and satirical as any this nation has bred. To the absent figure in the procession, therefore, we are about to turn aside to offer tribute. and to show its claims to have been reWe propose to speak of that forgotten name; membered, even though it now be little more than a name. It was once both a terrible and a delightful reality. It expressed a bitterness of sarcasm and ridicule unexampled in England; and a vivacity, intelligence, and gaiety, a ready and unfailing humor, to which a parallel could scarcely be found among the choicest wits of France. It was the name of a man so popular and diffused, that it would be difficult to say to what class of his countrymen he gave the greatest amount of amusement; it was the name of a man also more dreaded, than any since his who laid the princes of Europe -stricken contribution, and to | your house, and then bring you on a public eat Turk himself offered hush-stage; who will entertain you at his house, Foote was a man of wonderful for the very purpose of bringing you on s Garrick," and the most en- a public stage. Sir, he does not make mpanion I have ever known." fools of his company: they whom he exrdly a public man in England," poses are fools already; he only brings them "who has not entered Mr. into action." The same opinion he expressed e with an aching heart, under more gravely in another conversation, when, sion of seeing himself laughed admitting Foote's humor, and his singular if ever one person," says Tate talent for exhibiting character, he qualipossessed the talents of pleasing fied it not as a talent but as a vice, such other, Mr. Foote was the man.' as other men abstain from ;* and described Ford," writes Horace Walpole, it to be not comedy, which exhibits the chaè be not checked, we shall have racter of a species, but farce, which exelf, on its return from Boston, hibits individuals. Be this hasty or delibehe Haymarket." Such and so rate, false or true, the imputation conveyed the emotions once inspired by by it follows Foote still, and gathers bulk now lost command alike over as it rolls. When Sir Walter Scott speaks 1 our enjoyments; and whose of him, it is as an unprincipled satirist, ought even worthy of mention, who, while he affected to be the terror of iming to be popular, among the vice and folly, was only anxious to extort d Satirists of the eighteenth forbearance-money from the timid, or to fill his theatre at the indiscriminate expense of friends and enemies, virtuous or vicious, who presented foibles capable of being turned into ridicule. When Mr. Macaulay speaks of him it is as a man whose mimicry was exquisitely ludicrous, but all caricature; and who could take off only some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr, or an Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. If we had absolute faith in any of these judgments, this article would not have been begun. inted at one reason for such forut that is not all. He who a folly as it flies, may have no e the folly he lays low; but as not so limited. He proposed well as to amuse, his countryote what he believed to be well as what he knew to be ghed freely at what he thought others, but he aspired also to should be admirable and enown. "My scenes," he said n, "have been collected from e, and are applicable to none o, through consciousness, are a self-application. To that edy directs not her aim, her hot in the air; for by what n, no man will be amended." not been admitted, however. is now named, it is as a satirist s, not as an observer of chaas a writer whose reputashed, with the personalities e it zest; it is as a comedian vely addressed himself to the is theatre, that posterity has o decline having any business h him. om some ridicule poured out at e, Boswell complained to Johnhost had made fools of his s met by a sarcasm bitter as "Why, Sir, when you go to do not go to see a saint: you an who will be entertained at A careful examination of Foote's writings has satisfied us that they are not unworthy of a very high place in literature, though not perhaps in all respects the place he would have claimed; and it is worth remark that in defending them he has himself anticipated Mr. Macaulay's illustration. He declines to introduce upon the scene a lady from the north, with the true Newcastle burr in her throat; he recognizes no subject for ridicule. in the accidental unhappiness of a national brogue, for which a man is no more to be held accountable than for the color of his hair but he sees the true object and occasion for satire where all true satirists have found it, namely, in all kinds of affectation or pretence; in whatever assumes to be what it is not, or strives to be what it cannot. That he did not uniformly remember this, is with regret to be admitted, seeing the effect it has had upon his reputation; but it is not in his writings that his most marked deviations from it are discoverable. For it is not because real characters are there occasionally introduced, that the verdict is at once to pass against him. Vanbrugh's Miss Jenny, was a certain Derbyshire Miss Lowe; Cibber's Lady Grace, was Lady Betty Cecil; Farquhar's Justice Balance, was a well-known Mr. Beverley; and Molière, who struck the fashions and humors of his age into forms that are immortal, has perpetuated with them the vices and foibles of many a living contemporary. In all these cases, the question still remains whether the individual folly or vice, obtruding itself on the public, may not so far represent a general defect, as to justify public satire for the sake of the warning it more widely conveys. It will not do to confine ridicule exclusively to folly and vice, and to refrain, in case of need, from laying the lash on the knave and the fool. But such reasonable opportunities are extremely rare; and it even more rarely happens that what is thus strictly personal in satire, does not also involve individual injustice and wrong. It is, beyond doubt, no small ground for distrust of its virtues, that the public should be always so eager to welcome it. No one has expressed this more happily than Foote himself, when levelling his blow at Churchill, he makes his publisher, Mr. Puff, object to a poem full of praise: Why, who the devil will give money to be told that Mr. Such-a-one is a wiser or better man than himself? No, no; 'tis quite and clean out of na ture. A good sousing satire, now, well-powdered with personal pepper, and seasoned with the spirit of party, that demolishes a conspicuous character, and sinks him below our own level-there, there, we are pleased; there we chuckle and grin, and toss the half-crown on the counter. Unhappily this was his own case not less; for he, too, had to provide pleasure for those who went to chuckle and grin, and toss their half-crowns at the pay-place of the Haymarket. And it was in serving up the dish for this purpose, rather than in first preparing it; it was in the powdering and peppering for the table, rather than in the composition and cooking; in a word, it was less by the deliberate intention of the writer than by the ready mimicry and humorous impromptu of the actor, that Foote gave mortal offence to so many of his countrymen, did irreparable wrong very often to the least offending, began himself to pay the penalty in suffering before he died, and is paying the penalty still in character and fame. It is this which explains any difference to be noted between the claims put forth by himself, and the verdict recorded by his contemporaries. The writings we shall shortly introduce to the reader would little avail, in themselves, to account for the mixed emotions they inspired. That which gave them terror, has of course long departed from them; but by reviving so much of it as description may tamely exhibit, and by connecting with Foote's personal career some idea of the overflowing abundance and extravagance of his humor, it is possible that their laughter and wit may win back some part of the appreciation they have lost, and a fair explanation be supplied not only of the genius of this remarkable man, and of the peculiar influence he exerted while he lived, but of the causes which have intercepted his due possession and ungrudged enjoyment of the Estate that wits inherit after death. The strength and predominance of Foote's humor lay in its readiness. Whatever the call that might be made upon it, there it was. Other men were humorous as the occasion rose to them, but to him the occasion was never wanting. Others might be foiled or disabled by the lucky stroke of an adversary, but he took only the quicker rebound from what would have laid them prostrate. To put him out was not possible. He was talking away one evening, at the dinner-table of a man of rank, when, at the point of one of his best stories, one of the party interrupted him suddenly with an air of most considerate apology, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Foote, but your handkerchief is half out of your pocket." "Thank you, Sir," said Foote, replacing it; "you know the company better than I do:" and finished his joke. At one of Macklin's absurd Lectures on the Ancients, the lecturer was solemnly composing himself to begin when a buz of laughter from where Foote stood ran through the room, and Macklin, thinking to throw the laugher off his guard, and effectually for that night disarm his ridicule, turned to him with this question, in his most severe and pompous manner. "Well, Sir, you seem to be very merry there, but do you know what I am going to say, now?" " No, Sir," at once replied Foote, "pray do you?" One night at his friend Delaval's, when the glass had been circulating freely, one of the party would suddenly have fixed a quarrel upon him for |