seem to have "a difference," will be found es- | all momentous changes of the world have been sentially the same to all, and will enrich the being of each and all.

produced by individual greatness, so all popular and free institutions can only be rendered There is one advantage which I may justly and kept vital by individual energies-a result boast over both my predecessors in this office, which nothing can even threaten but that most -that of being privileged to announce to you insidious form of indolence which is called a state of prosperity far more advanced and modesty and self-distrust; a result against more confirmed than that which either could which not only the welfare of this great town, develop. The fairest prophecies which Mr. and of each stranger who comes to Manchester, Dickens put forth, in the inspiration of the and who may now hope to find beneath the time, in the year 1843, have been amply ful- shelter of your roof a great intellectual home, filled-the eloquent exhortations of Mr. D'Is- but also the exigencies of the time in which raeli, in 1844, have been met by noble re- we live, plead with solemn voices!-They sponses. From a state of depression, which, remind you that existence has become almost four or five years ago, had reduced the number a different thing since it began with some of of members nearly to 400, and steeped the in-us. It then justified its old similitude of a stitution in difficulty, it is now so elevated journey; it quickened with intellect into a that, as to life members, you number 133 of march; it is now whirling with science and those who have made the best of all possible speculation into a flight. Space is contracted investments, because the returns are sure and and shrivelled up like a scroll; time disdains certain, and the rewards at once palpable and its old relations to distance; the intervals fair, which thus greet your life governors upon between the "flighty purpose" and the deed these happy anniversaries; you have of pay-through which thought might lazily spread out ing members no fewer than 2500-with an in- its attenuated films, are almost annihilated; come of £4000 a year-with a debt annihi-and the national mind must either glow with lated, with the exception of that on mortgage, and with good hope even that this encumbrance may be soon swept away, and of informing the Courts of Bankruptcy, which I understand have taken shelter beneath your roof, that it will soon be time for them to look out for a more appropriate home. Before I entered this room, I confess I was inclined to wonder how these great effects had been achieved; I knew they had been principally accomplished by the great exertions, the sacrifices scarcely less than heroic, of some few members of your society, who had taken its interest deeply to heart; but now, when I see the scene before me, so graced and adorned as it is, I certainly need be surprised at no energies which have been put forth,-I can wonder at no results that have been attained. Those exertions, however, permit me to remind you, having been of extraordinary character, you can scarcely hope to be renewed. You must look for the welfare of this institution to its younger members. To them I speak when I say, "To you its destinies are confided; on you, if not its existence, yet its progress and its glory depend; for its happiest success will not arise mainly from emancipated revenues, or the admiring sympathy of strangers, or even from a scheme remarkably liberal and comprehensive, adapted to all, and embracing the feelings of all; nor yet in laws admirably framed, to preserve and support its proportion and order; but it is by the vigorous efforts of yourselves perpetually renewing spirit and life in its forms-without which their very perfection will be dangerous, because, while presenting the fairest shows, they may, with less violence of apparent and startling transition, cease to be realities, and, instead of a great arena of intellectual exertion, may become only the abode of intellectual enjoy ment and luxury-fair, admirable, graceful still; but the moving and elevating impulse of a vast population no more!-I know I wrong you in deprecating such a result as possible; a result I only imagine, to remind you that, as

generous excitement, or waste in fitful fever.
How important then is it, that throughout our
land-but more especially here where all the
greatest of the material instruments have their
triumphant home-almost that of the alchemist
the spiritual agencies should be quickened
into kindred activity; that the few minutes of
leisure and repose which may be left us should,
by the succession of those "thoughts which
wander through eternity," become hours of
that true time which is dialled in heaven; that
to a mind winged for distant scenes, conver-
sant with the society of the great of all ages,
and warmed by sympathy to embrace the vast
interests of its species, the few hours in which
the space between London and Manchester is
now traversed-nay the little hour in which it
may soon be flashed over-shall have an in-
tellectual duration equal to the old, legitimate,
six days' journey of our fathers; while thought,
no longer feebly circling in vapid dream, but
impelled right onward with divine energy,
shall not only outspeed the realized miracles
of steam, but the divinest visions of atmo-
spheric prophecy, and still keep "the start of
the majestic world." Mr. Canning once
boasted of his South American policy, that he
had "called a new world into existence to
redress the balance of the old;" be it your
nobler endeavour to preserve the balance even
between the world within us and the world
without us-not vainly seeking to retard the
life of action, but to make it steady by con-
templation's immortal freightage.
In your
course,-members of the Manchester Athe-
næum,-society at large may watch, and I
believe will mark, the clear indications both
of its progress and its safety. While the soli-
tary leisure of the clerk, of the shopman, of
the apprentice, of the overseer, as well as of
the worker in all departments of labours, from
the highest to the lowest, shall be gladdened,
at will, by those companions to whom the
"serene creators of immortal things," in verse
and prose, have given him perpetual intro-
duction, and who will never weary, or betray

or forsake him;-while the voluntary toils of | thundered as the watchwords of unnumbered associated labour and study shall nourish struggles for power are now fast waning into among you friendships, not like the slight alli- history, it is too much to hope, perhaps to ances of idle pleasure, to vanish with the hour desire, until the education of mankind shall they gladdened, but to endure through life with more nearly approach its completion, that the products of the industry which fed them; strong differences of opinion and feeling while in those high casuistries which your should cease to agitate the scenes on which most ambitious discussions shall engender, the freemen are called to discharge political duties. ardent reasoner shall recognise here the beat- But the mind of the staunchest partisan, exings of the soul against the bars of its clay panded by the knowledge and embellished by tenement, and gather even from the mortal the graces which your Athenæum nurtures, impediments that confound and baffle it, assu- will find its own chosen range of political rance that it is winged to soar into an ampler associations dignified-the weapons of its warand diviner ether than invests his earthly heri- fare not blunted, but ornamented and embossed tage; while the mind and heart of Manchester, and, instead of cherishing an ignorant atturning the very alloy and dross of its condi-tachment to a symbol, a name, or a ribbon, tion to noble uses, even as its mechanists transmute the coarsest substances to flame and speed, shall expand beyond the busy confines of its manufactures and commerce to listen to the harmonies of the universe;-while, vindicating the power of the soul to be its own place, it shall draw within the narrow and dingy walls to which duty may confine the body, scenes touched with colours more fair and lovely than "ever were by sea or land," or trace in each sullen mass of dense and hovering vapour,

"A forked mountain, a blue promontory, With trees upon 't that nod into the world, And mock our eyes with air;"

expressed in vulgar rage, infuriated by intemperance to madness, blindly violating the charities of life, and disturbing sometimes its holiest domestic affections-it shall grow calm in the assertion of principle, disdain the suggestions of expediency, even as those of corruption, and partake of the refinement which distance lends, while "with large discourse looking before and after," he expands his prospect to the dim horizon of human hopes, and seeks his incentives and examples in the tragic pictures of history. A politician thus instructed and ennobled, who adopts the course which most inclines to the conservation of establishments, will not support the objects of his devotion with a mere obstinate adherence, while it shall give the last and noblest proof of chiefly because they oppose barriers to the the superiority of spirit over matter by com- aims of his opponents, but will learn to revere manding, by its own naked force, as by an en- in them the grandeur of their antiquity, the chanter's wand, the presence of those shapes human affections they have sheltered and nur of beauty and power which have hitherto nurtured, the human experiences which mantle tured the imagination in the solitude and still-round them, and the inward spirit which has ness of their realities;-while the glory of such institutions shall illumine the fiercest rapids of commercial life with those consecrating gleams which shall disclose in every small mirror of smooth water which its tumultuous eddies may circle, a steady reflection of some fair and peaceful image of earthly loveliness, or some glory of cloud or sky, preserving amidst the most passionate impulses of earth some traces of the serenity of heaven;-then may we exult as the chariot of humanity flies onward with safety in its speed,-for we shall discover, like Ezekiel of old, in prophetic vision, the spirit

in its wheels!

There is yet one other aspect in which I would contemplate your association before I enter on the more delightful part of my dutythat in which success is certain-the soliciting for you the addresses of distinguished men, some of them attached to your welfare as well by local ties as by general sympathy, others gladly attending on your invitation, who feel your cause to be their cause, the cause of their generation and of the future. It is that in which its influences will be perceived, not merely banishing from this one night's eminence, raised above the level of common life, and devoted by knowledge to kindness, all sense of political differences, but softening, gracing, and ennobling the spirit of party itself as long as it must continue active. For although party's out-worn moulds have been shivered, and names which have flashed and

rendered them vital; while he who pants for important political changes will no longer anticipate, in the removal of those things which he honestly regards as obstacles to the advancement of his species, a mere dead level, or a vast expanse redeemed only from vacancy by the cold diagrams of theory, but will hail the dawning years as thronged by visions of peaceful happiness; and, as all great senti ments, like all great passions, however opposite may be their superficial aspects, have their secret affinities, so may these champions and representatives of conflicting parties, at the very height of the excitation produced by the energy of their struggle, break on a sense of kindred, if not of their creeds, at least of their memories and their hopes-embrace the past and the future in one glorious instant, conscious, at once, of those ancient anticipations with which the youth of the past was inspired, when the point we have attained was faintly discerned at the verge of its horizon by the intensest vision of its philosophy, and grasp ing and embracing the genial idea of the future as richest in the ever-accumulating past which time prepares for its treasure. Then shall they join in hailing, as now we hail from this neutral eminence, the gradual awakening of individual man of every class, colour, and clime, to a full consciousness of the loftiness of his origin, the majesty of his duties, the glories of his destiny. Then shall they rejoice with us in the assurance that, as he con

quers the yet desert regions of the earth which was given him to be replenished and subdued, the same magic by which you are here enabled to let in on the densest population the air and feeling of mountain solitude, will, in turn, breathe through the opening wilderness the genial refinements of old society; that, as the forest yields to his stout heart and sturdy arm, the dominion of imagination and fancy will extend before him, their powers investing the glades he opens with poetic visions, shedding the purple light of love through thickets and groves till then unthreaded, and touching the extremest hills, when first disclosed to the human eye, with the old familiar hues of Christian hope and joy. Then, in the remotest

conquests of civilization, shall new Athenæums arise, framed on your model-vocal with your language-inspired with your hopes-to echo back the congratulations which shall be wafted to them even from this place, on each succeeding anniversary, if not by yourselves, by your children and your children's children, and yet more remote descendants, and to bless the names of those who, amidst the toils, the cares, and the excitements of a season of transition and struggle, rescued the golden hours of the youth around them from debasing pleasures and more debasing sloth, and enabled them to set to the world, in a great crisis of its moral condition, this glorious example of intellectual courage and progress.*

LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL.

[QUARTERLY REVIEW, DEC. 1844.]

THE remarkable success which has attended thus appreciated, vividly suggests the rememthe publication of Mr. Twiss's Life of Lord brance of a kindred instance of industry, Chancellor Eldon is a striking proof of the worth, and success-less prominently placed deep and enduring interest which attaches to before the world, because less intimately assothe character it develops. More than six ciated with its contests and its changes, but years had then elapsed since Lord Eldon's not less crowned with emolument and honour, death, and many more since he ceased to dig- and hardly less fertile of instruction-that of nify the highest seat of British Justice-or to Lord Eldon's elder brother, Lord Stowell; and influence, except by the weight of reputation if each life is worthy of separate contemplaand age, the discussions and the conflicts of tion, both are attended with additional interest the busy world. The principal incidents of his when considered as springing from one source, life were too well known to leave room for the and fostered in the same nurture. That two gratification of curiosity-the political scenes sons of a reputable tradesman in a provincial in which he moved had passed from the arena town at the extremity of England, devoting of living things without having reached an their powers to different branches of the same historical distance-and yet the sale of these profession, should attain the highest honours three massive volumes has exceeded that of which could be achieved in the course which any similar work within our recollection. each had chosen-and that each, after attainThis success has not, we think, been height- ing an age far beyond that usually allotted to ened by the courtly revelations and piquant man, should leave, with a magnificent fortune, anecdotes with which the work is diversified-a name indestructibly associated with the desome of which, indeed, so far impair its effect partment in which his work was performedas to suggest the wish we expressed for their is a moral phenomenon not worthy only of excision-but has arisen purely from the inte- national pride, but of respectful scrutiny. rest excited by a vigorous, honest, and affec- This similarity in the results of the labours tionate delineation of the character and the of these two brothers is rendered more refortunes of a great Englishman of sturdy na-markable by the points of strong difference ture, by a hand peculiarly fitted for its office. This remarkable career, thus depicted and

*TO SERJEANT TALFOURD, On reading his Address to the Manchester Athenæum.

BY EDWARD KENEALY.

O'er the white urn that held the sacred heart
Of
great Isocrates of old, was placed
The marble image of a Syren, graced
With all the loveliness of Grecian art;
Emblem of eloquence, whose music sweet

Won the whole world by its enchanting spells;
Oh, with what type shall we our Talfourd greet?
What Image shall pourtray the spirit that dwells
Within his soul? An angel from the skies
Beaming celestial beauty from his eyes-
The olden Syren sang but to deceive,

To lure mankind to death her voice was given;
But thine, dear Talfourd, thy bright words enweave
Immortal truths that guide to God and Heaven.

between their intellectual qualities and tastes, as developed in their mature years: inviting us to inquire what faculties were inherent in their youth; how far they were affected by early education; how far varied by the circumstances of their history.

The incidents of Lord Stowell's life, not supplying materials for voluminous biography, are laboriously collected and admirably detailed in an Essay in the "Law Magazine," apparently from the pen which, in a series of papers, seemed to have done enough for Lord Eldon's fame, until Mr. Twiss proved how much more might be achieved by happier opportunity and larger scope. Fortunately, however, the intellectual triumphs of the elder

Scott were of a nature capable of preserva- customary severities made more sweet-had tion as they will be found recorded entire in the same influence at first as at last: no fathe Reports of his judicial decisions, of which vour was shown to the youth of one genera Dr. Haggard's form the most interesting spe- tion more than to that of one degree over ancimen, as they relate to a class of cases in other; and the results seem to have been which manners and affections are frequently equally uniform-the insurance of that "holy involved, and were corrected by the judge him- habit of obedience," which is not only the self with sedulous nicety. It is a subject of most wholesome, but the happiest state of deep regret that his Lectures on History, boyhood; and of a life-long affection to the which he delivered at Oxford from the Chair veteran distributor of justice and praise, which of the Camden Professorship, have hitherto the modern instructor-who, instead of the been withheld from the world. Of these lec- master, governing by old rules, is the instru tures Dr. Parr writes :-" To these discourses, ment of new theories-can never hope to enwhich, when delivered before an academical joy. Each of these celebrated pupils of Mr. audience, captivated the young and interested Moises delighted in the opportunity which the old-which are argumentative without for- after-life afforded him of acknowledging his mality, and brilliant without gaudiness-and obligations to this excellent person; and each in which the happiest selection of topics was testified his gratitude in a manner appropriate united with the most luminous arrangement to his position, and perhaps characteristic of of matter-it cannot be unsafe for me to pay his nature: Lord Eldon, by the substantial the tribute of my praise, because every hearer promotion of their schoolmaster, till the good was an admirer, and every admirer will be a old man declined all worldly favours, and then witness." The writer of the article in the by transferring them to his son; and Lord "Law Magazine" confirms a rumour we have Stowell, by contributing to his monument an elsewhere heard, that "a copy of those lec- inscription of graceful and just praise, extures, transcribed with all the care and accu- pressed in Latin, which Dr. Parr might envy. racy which their noble author was accustomed to bestow on his labours, exists in manuscript;" and we cordially join in this hope "that no false delicacy will prevent their publication," as we feel assured that they will gratify a similar curiosity to that which Gibbon expressed, and justify even Dr. Parr's architectural praise. It would be interesting, for a different reason, to recover the Essay by which the younger Scott, when scarcely twentyone years of age, obtained the prize of English Composition at Oxford-"On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Foreign Travel," a subject far removed from his experience, alien from his studies, and which, therefore, would seem to have owed its success either to the ingenuity of its suggestions, or the graces of its style. As, in after-life, the essayist was never distinguished for felicity of expression or fertility of illustration, and acquired a style not only destitute of ornament, but unwieldy and ponderous, this youthful success suggests the question-Whether, in devoting all his powers to the study of the law, he crushed the faculty of graceful composition with so violent an effort, that Nature, in revenge, made his ear dull to the music of language, and involved, though she did not darken his wisest words?

Among the lawyers who have emerged from that rank which the honest coal-fitter of Newcastle adorned, few have enjoyed, like his sons, the blessings of an education completed at one of our old English Universities. Many youths of such parentage, by means equally honourable to their own ambition and indus try, have worked and cut their way through the impediments of fortune to forensic eminence-perhaps acquiring, from the difficulties with which they have struggled, nerve and courage for the painful controversies in which they aspired to mingle-and deriving from the varieties of "many-coloured life" with which they were personally conversant, "a learned spirit of human dealing," which they were able forcibly and happily to apply to the sudden exigencies of their professional career. But no such advantages can supply, however they may sometimes compensate for, the want of that protective influence, extended over opening manhood, which, superseding the restraints of school by a more generous and appropriate discipline, delays the fever and turmoil of life for a few of life's happiest years-which presents to yet unworldly ambi tion the achievements of praise and fame, before it is compelled to seek the lower rewards The school-day annals of the brothers dis- of fortune-which, amidst the flutterings of close no trace of difference between them: expectation and beneath the uncertain gleams unless the statement of their various recollec- of fancy, lays the deep and sure foundation of tions of the Sunday sermon-William gives a principle to be cemented in the mind amidst lucid detail of its substance, and John an ex- pliant affections-and which blends the veneact detail of portions-may be so regarded: ration for ancient things with the aspirations which may scarcely be, when it is recollected of hope and the quickenings of joy. The that if they were required to perform the ex- youth who, quitting school, has been initiated ercise at the same time, there was a difference at once into the perplexities of the law as in their ages of six years. That interval-practised in the most respectable attorney's long as a section of school-boy life-implies, office, or immersed amidst its more refined however, no variety in the system of their education: for Mr. Moises, the master of the ancient grammar-school of their native town, one of the best" of the old leven," admitted no innovations: the stern requisition-the unspared rod-the hearty commendation, which

technicalities in the chambers of an eminent pleader, will acquire an earlier aptitude in some points of practical routine and pigeon-hole knowledge; but, unless gifted with some rare felicity of nature, will be less prepared for the systematic acquisition of legal learning, than