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longed to the first, is made evident by the fact, that whilst at this distance of time, we can trace his name in no less than seven embassies; the knights and other persons of rank who accompanied him, are in no two cases the same. It was he who did what was to be done; they who, in all their bravery, looked as though they were doing it. Lastly, we may state of this squire as proving the extraordinary estimation in which his public services were held by three successive sovereigns, that having during the troubled period of the second Richard fallen into some neglect and distress, one of the very first acts of the king who deposed him-Bolingbroke, performed only a few days after his accession to the throne, was the conferring of a handsome pension upon this squire, who never rose beyond that rank, probably on account of some aristocratic prejudices connected with his birth and family. "Ah, I warrant you he was no poet."

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"He was, what you desiderate, emphatically a man of action and business; at once clear-sighted, prudent, brave. There was another man, some two centuries later, scarcely less distinguished for his political ability. At a time when Ireland was perhaps in a more chaotic state than at any other period of its history, rife as that is in perennial seasons of disturbance, he was appointed by one of the wisest of sovereigns, Elizabeth, to the office of secretary to the lord-deputy, who was then about to go over to Ireland. While in that country, he not only fulfilled the duties of his secretaryship, but fought in person against the troops that had been sent by the pope to aid the Irish Catholics. He also wrote a masterly account of the state of the country; and fulfilled altogether the duties entrusted to him with so much ability, that Elizabeth nominated him Sheriff of Cork,. not long before the close of his Irish career."

"One may safely swear, too, he was not a poet."

"I shall mention only one man more, though others there are I should be glad to speak of, had I time and opportunity. This man lived at a period when the most gigantic political revolution ever effected in England took place, and was accompanied by one of the most awful of spectacles-the public execution of a king by his subjects, for treason to the cause of good government. Monarchy was swept away, and a commonwealth declared. Through all Europe, men stood aghast with wonder, not unmixed in many a princely heart with horror and alarm. It was most important to the Cause' that these feelings should be allayed;

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and while the motives of the chief actors in the sublime tragedy should be uncompromisingly told, that other nations should be relieved from any apprehensions or jealousies that might have been excited. Above all, when peaceable and honourable means failed to secure amity, it was indispensable to show that the republic would compel the respect that might be otherwise denied. What a time then for a man to undertake the office of Foreign Secretary of State! But the man I have referred to did undertake it when offered. And the result was that, in an almost incredibly short space of time, the name of England stood higher throughout Europe than it had ever done before; and foreigners, it has been noticed, came as much to see Cromwell's famous secretary as himself. These three then, I presume, belong to the class of men you admire, and whom you would not have displaced by mere romance writers or poets?"

"No doubt no doubt; who were they?"

"Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton; comprising three out of the four greatest and most imaginative of English poets. And as to the fourth, William Shakspere, though no opportunity offered of a political life, he was so thoroughly a man of business as to make a fortune in his private one. need not be surprised, my matter-of-fact friend. What is poetry, after all, but the Soul of Fact? I begin to think the Chinese right."

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But what on earth would become of our aristocracy under such circumstances?"

"You mean the aristocracy of wealth and names. Why those who were really worthy of their position would speedily distinguish themselves in the ranks of the true aristocracy of talent; as to the rest, the prospect certainly would not be very hopeful, if we may take China again as our exemplar. The imperial relatives are there allotted a brilliant yellow girdle, with certain small revenues. "The last British Embassy had a specimen of their conduct and manners at Yuen-mingyuen, as well as of the little ceremony with which they were occasionally treated. When they crowded, with a childish and uncivil curiosity, upon the English party, the principal person among the mandarins seized a whip, and not satisfied with using that alone, actually kicked out the mob of yellow girdles." Davis' China.

But if the treatment of men of letters and learning in England

be as remarkable for its absurdity as for its flagrant injustice, they themselves must remember that, as the creators and guiders of public opinion, they maintain, if they do not actually make, the very wrongs from which they suffer. Were they as a body just to themselves, no one could be unjust to them. Never did any class possess greater power, or use it to so little purpose for their own mental, moral, or personal elevation.

The chief cause of this is, we think, to be found in their want of union. They have no esprit de corps-no standard of opinion among them, calculated to instil something of the lofty aim and earnest love of truth and goodness, that actuate the higher minds, into those of the lower. Literature is in consequence made a trade of. And a very peculiar feature of the case is, that those who most degrade the vocation generally in the eyes of the world, are precisely the men who are the least sensitive to the inevitable consequences. Thus, for instance, party writers, in their zeal to blacken each other, evidently forget that the world will be apt to say, as it looks on, "Well, gentlemen, of course you know best ;". and accept their portraits of each other without further scruple. So also with that pettiest of party tricks-omission or colouring of unfavourable facts, undue prominence to the favourable; men of sense soon perceive that to obtain anything like a correct view of these facts, they must look at the accounts of both sides; so, whilst the partisans are faneying they are deceiving the public by their transparent cheats, that public is in fact amusing itself at their expense, and losing every particle of respect for the talents displayed, in contempt of the impudent dishonesty to which they are made subservient. But all this while the real sufferer is the independent and impartial journalist, who refuses to attack a man personally because of his opinions, and who is content to allow facts to appear in their own naked guise, satisfied that they must ultimately square with his views, if his views are right, and who is quite prepared to renounce them if they are wrong. Such a man feels keenly the disrespect that his unworthier fellows have caused to be attached to the vocation; he is hampered in a thousand ways by the obstacles they have raised in the path. Men are doubting him, when they should be listening with the deepest attention to the wisdom he is able to impart.

And this, in reference to one department of literature, may be fairly taken as an illustration of the whole. Everywhere may be seen the greatest possible discrepancy between the aims, and cha

racters, and personal positions of those who all belong to one common pursuit.

But if, for the purposes above indicated, union were desirable, one might have supposed that for another object it would have been long since found indispensable. How many cases of pecumiary distress occur in the republic of letters, the annals of the Literary Fund will show us; but of the quality of those cases we learn no particulars; it being the characteristic of that admirable institution to adapt its modes of benevolence to the feelings of the objects of it, and, therefore, strictly to conceal names. But when we are told publicly of the state that a man like Banim was in during his lifetime, and of the state in which Hood left his family at his death, we may judge how much private misery must exist in connection with the men who have diffused so much enjoyment and instruction. And what have the men of letters and learning in England done for themselves, under these circumstances? Alas, it must be said,-Nothing! Artists, actors-even the "improvident" actors, lawyers, clergymen, in short, every professional body has its "funds," to which, in cases of necessity, a man may fall back, with as much conviction of his right to do so, as he would open his own coffers, for he has helped to provide those funds; but the literary men have no fund, except-we blush to say it-a charitable one.

True, the richer and more generous members of the order contribute to that charity; but why do they not also establish a society that shall be based upon a more dignified principle; and which shall exert an infinitely more powerful influence. What comparison can there be between the receipt of ten, twenty, or thirty pounds, once, twice, or thrice in a life-time, and which can only be asked or given under circumstances of extreme distress, with the thirty shillings a week, medicine, and medical advice, secured by each of the two Artist's Funds during illness, a respectable annuity after a certain age, and the allowance of such sums of money at death, as are amply sufficient for honourable burial? Surely there are some among our eminent men of letters, who will take up this matter, and redeem the order from the stigma that such recklessness, not to say want of strict principle, inflicts upon it. And when a Union even for that limited object has taken place, there can be little doubt the higher objects will in due progress of time be also obtained.

It will be seen that we place little reliance upon state pensions, or upon any great things the great men of the world can do,

to raise the position of Men of Letters. They can and must raise themselves. They must unite. Let the standard of union then be unfurled, and if a leader be indispensable, let old Chaucer

their literary and illustrious Father-the Founder of English literature-be the man. If he be dead in the body, his spirit lives; and if we mistake not, is about to enter upon a career of higher activity than ever. And as we must have a motto too, the glorious poet, whom some learned simpletons have fancied to be obsolete, gives us this from the conclusion of his portrait of the Clerk-the Man of Letters of the fourteenth century :

"Not a word spake* he, more than was need;
And that was said in form and reverence,
And short and quick, and full of high sentence.
Sounding in moral virtue was his speech,
And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach."

J. S.

"CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME."

ALL the world, in the village of Sturton-le-Steeple, had said so, before the time of old Dorothy Pyecroft; but Dorothy did not join all the world in saying so. Sturton is a homely little place, situate in the pleasant shire of Nottingham, and lying within a couple of miles of the Trent, and old Lincolnshire; and its church steeple forms a pretty object in the landscape which you view from the hills above Gainsboro'. Dorothy Pyecroft, from the time that she was a child but the height of a table, went to Gainsboro'market with butter, eggs, or poultry, as regularly as Tuesday returned in each week; for the hearty old dame used commonly to boast that she had never known what it was to have a day's illness in her life, although, at the season we are beginning to gossip about, she was full threescore and ten. It was a bonny sight to see the dame go tripping o'er the charming lea which spreads its flowery riches from Sturton-le-Steeple to the banks of noble Trent, by four of the clock on a gay summer's morning, with the clean milking pail under her arm, that was bare to the elbow. You would have thought, at a distance, she had been some blithe maiden in her teens. And then the cheerful and clear tone in

* Or, wrote he.

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