The Press. — London, England, 1857-08-08 00:00:00

Til E PRE SS, AUGUST 8, 1857. the following anecdote. Some years previously to his own death an old housekeeper at Windsor Castle, who had held that situation for near half a century, died very much regretted by the Royal Family and the whole establish• wilt. On that occasion he sent for his chaplain, Sumner, now 13ishop of Winchester, and urged him to improve the feeling excited! in the household by the occurrence into a religious admonition: he concluded by saying that he wished him to preach an appropriate sermon in the chapel on the following Sunday, and requested that he would take the following text, "Be ye also ready." The sermon was preached accordingly. The following mot from Sheridan is excel lent. It is in the light, playful style of graceful satire. Mr. itaikes relates of George IV. There is no doubt that for several years before his death, whether from early indulgence in luxury, or from a malady inherent in his family, his mind would occasionally wander, and many anecdotes have been current of the un fortunate impressions under which he laboured. After the glorious termination of the long continental war in ISM by the battle of Waterloo, it would not perhaps be unpardonable vanity in him to have thought that the Eng. fish nation had mainly contributed to this great event ; but he certainly at tim- , s in conversation arrogated to himself, personally, the glory of subduing Napoleon's power, and giving peace to the world. It was upon one of these assumptions being reported to the sarcastic Sheridan that he archly remarked, " That is all well enough, but what he particularly piques himself upon is the last productive harvest." There are a few stories of Pitt Amongst the squibs against him Mr. Raikes preserves one that has often made us laugh : One vulgar paper gave the following character of him in Dog Latin :—lVarcarryontssirous, tazgatherissimus, vinum guzzleando potentisaimus, prettygirlibus, indifferentiasi• MII3, et films hitchte damnatissimus." Of Talleyrand, also, there are some envious particulars preserved here; and the best por trait of him we ever saw is reprinted by Mr. Itailies from the columns of the Morning Post in 1838. It thus commences : Talleyrand i 3 certainly the most extraordinary being of his kind the world has produced since the creation. Take him in his physical conformation alone, and think of his having outlived so long all the great and good of his time. Talleyrand was born lame, and his limbs are fastened to his trunk by an iron apparatus, on which he strikes ever and anon his gigantic cane, to the great dismay of those who see him for the first time—an awe not diminished by the look of his piercing grey eyes, peering through his shaggy eyebrows bis unearthly face, marked with deep stains, covered partly by his shock of extraordi nary hair, partly by his enormous muslin cravat, which supports a large protruding lip drawn over his upper lip, with a cynical expression no painting could render; add to this apparatus of terror his dead silence, broken occa sionally by the most sepulchral guttural monosyllables. Talleyrand's pulse, which rolls a stream of enormous volume, intermits and pauses at every sixth neat. This he constantly points out triumphantly as a rest of nature, giving him at once a superiority over other men. Thus, he says, all the missing pulsations are added to the sum total of those of his whole life, and his longevity and strength appear to support this extraordinary theory. He likewise asserts that it is this which enables him to do without sleep. Nature, says he, sleeps and recruits her self at every intermission of my pulse. And indeed you see him time after time rise at three o'clock in the morn ing from the whist table, then return home and often wake up one of his secretaries to keep him company or to talk of business. At four he will go to bed, sitting nearly bolt upright in his bed, with innumerable nightcaps on his head to keep it warm, as he said, and feed his intellect with blood, but in fact to prevent bis injuring the seat of knowledge if he tumbles on the ground ; and he sits upright from his ten dency to apoplexy, which would no doubt seize him if perfectly recumbent. We may remember the newspapers stating he was found a few years ago, his head having dropped from his pillow, so drowned in blood that no feature was to be seen. We must stop here, though we should like to take out some more extracts. We should wish to have remarked upon some of Mr Greville's letters, but as they were written in confidence we shall not criticise them. Our citations will show the general character of these volumes. Essays contributed to Blackwood's Magazine. By the Rev. John Eagles, Author of " The Sketcher." London: Blackwoods. THESE essays display a remarkable combina tion of shrewd sagacity and ge►►ial sentiment. They remind us in turn both of Professor Wilson and Mr. Washington Irving. They lack indeed the stormy splendour of the first, and the delicate fancy of the second writer ; but the sound common sense which ran through all the lucubrations of Christopher North, snit that peculiar kindliness of dispo sition which distinguishes the American essay ist, are both met together in the pages of Mr. Eagles. Earnestness has at the present day 777 become a cant word, and, as wo might expect, true earnestness is proportionably rare. With this virtue Mr. Eagles is happily endowed. His investigations of imposture are conducted in an honest spirit; nor is ho ever carried away by the torrent of his own invective till he has written things which his own juigment condemns, but which, owing to their point and brilliancy, he has not the heart to eli- minate. This, the peculiar snare of periodical writers, Mr. Eagles has luckily escaped, and the reader may be sure of meeting with nothing in his pages which has not been well weighed and carefully ve►ified The first two essays are in the shape of letters to a friend about to take holy orders, and contain a sensible and humorous account of the difficulties and embarrassments which await the young curate on his first assumption of parochial duties. Few of our clerical readers will fail to recognise the truth of the following picture : I have often noted R difference in the sympathy with the dying in the rich and in the poor. With the former, there is generally great caution used that the sick should not think themselves going; if it is to be discovered, it is rather in a more delicate attention, a more affectionate look, which the sick cannot at all times distinguish from the ordinary manner. The poor, on the contrary, tell the sick at once, and without any circumlocution, that they never will get over it. Is is that the shock is less to the poor, that they have fewer objects in this world for which life might be desirable? But this is sometimes dangerous. I was once going to visit a poor woman, and met the parish surgeon, and inquired for his patient. He told me the room was full of friends and neighbours, all telling her she couldn't last long; and, said he, " I make no doubt she will not, for she is sinking, because she thinks she is dying; yet I see no other reason why she should, and I could not get one to leave the room." I entered ; my authority had a better effect. I turned all but one out of the room, and then addressed the woman, who was ap parently exhausted and speechless. I told her exactly what the surgeon had said, and that she would not die, but be restored to her children and husband. The woman positively started, raised herself in bed, and said, with an energy of which I did not think her capable, " What ! am I not dying? shan't I die?—No' then thank the Lord, I shan't die." I gave strict orders that none should be admitted—and the woman did recover, and has often thanked me for having saved her life. Clergymen should be aware of this propensity in the poor, that, when mis- chievous, they may counteract it. The curious half-Pagan customs, and the ex traordinary ignorance and credulity still to be met with in remote country places, have found an observant recorder in Mr. Eagles, and to many a rural clergyman these papers will seem little more than a register of his own ex perience. The next paper from which we shall quote is that upon Thackeray's " Lecture on Swift." None can say that the reviewer here does scant justice to Mr. Thackeray's powers. But, after all, the living can defend themselves— the dead can not ; and we have read no essay in the volume with more pleasure and appro val than this kind and generous vindication of libelled genius : We wish you had written an essay, and not read a lecture. You would have been both less hard and leas tender—for, in truth, your tender passages in this " Life of Swift" are very well to the purpose to catch your audience, but they are nihil ad rem. And your appeal to the " pure and tender bosoms," all against poor Swift, as a detestabl e cannibal—how in his " Modest Proposal " "he rages against children," and " enters the nursery with the tread and gaiety of an ogre ;" how he thought the " loving and having children " an " unreasonableness," and " love and marriage " a " folly," because in his Lilliputian kingdom the State removed children from their parents and edu cated them ; and you wind up your appeal so lovingly, so charmingly, so devotedly, so insinuatingly to your fair audience, upon the blessings of conjugal love and philce progenitiveness, that yoU must be the dearest of lecturers, the pet of families, the destroyer of ogres ; and, as to that monster Swift, the very children should cry out, as they do in " The Children in the Wood," " Kill him again, Mr. Thackeray." And this you did, knowing all the while that " The Modest Proposal " was a patriotic and political satire—one of real kindness to the people, whose children he supposes, in the depth of his feeling and his satire and bitter irony, the Government should encourage the getting rid of, rather than, in defiance of all his (the Dean's) schemes for the benefit of Ireland, they should he made a burden to their parents and miserable them selves. All this you knew very well : it was shabby and shameful of you by your mere eloquence to make this grave irony appear or be felt as a reality and a cruelty, and tack on to it an importation from Lilliput of a State edict. as if it were one in Swift's mind with " The Modest Proposal." Yes, you knew, the while these your words were awakening detestation of a very great sham—all nonsen pass current but through the knew how the witty Earl Batty loved children about him, as • have done, received Swift's " A man who has nine children if Swift, you were oratorising ?use—stuff—that would never e stamp of lectureship. You thurst, a kind father with his goodnaturedly as you should henevolentlyintended satire. _ adagio ' tildren to feed," says Lord For this fete he had invited Grisi and Lablache, and the other Italian singers, to amuse his royal guests, end ordered a separate table to be prepared for them. When Grisi arrived, he asked her at what hour she liked to dine. She replied, Oh, at your hour, and when your dine ;" and seeing what she expected, he was so goodnatured that he complied. The consequence was, that she chose to fancy herself part of the company, and would only now and then get up to sing. Mr. Raikes saw Thistlewood and some of his gang hung. They died, with one exception, in an irreligious mood. One of the criminals, a black man, was very devout, and when Mr. Raikes mentioned his case to the late Marquis of Hertford, the latter said, " He was right. You should never give away a chance." Of Sir William Knighton we are told : Sir W. Knighton died lately in London. He was oriabially placed by his parents, who were of humble origin, as apprentice to an apothecary at Tavistock, and afterwards practised obscurely in London. In 1810 he accompanied Lord IVellesley to Spain, who on his return from that mission requested his Majesty, the late King, then Prince of Wales, to app.iint Knighton one of his physicians. In this capacity he became very intimate with Colonel Macmahon, and was finally named his executor. Among the papers which thus came into his possession were some of a very delicate nature relating to the private affairs of George IV., particularly about Queen Caroline and the late Lady Jersey. He instantly carried those documents to Carlton house, and placed them at once, without comment or condition, in the hands of the rightful owner. The Prince Regent, struck with the im• portance of the benefit, appointed Knighton to an impor tent office in the Duchy of Cornwall, afterwards made him a Baronet, and then Grand Cross of the Guelph. The full tide of prosperity now opened upon him, and after Sir B. Bloomfield had been raised to the peerage, and sent as Minister to Sweden, he succeeded him as pri• vate secretary and privy purse, appointments which he retained till the death of George IV. He was a constant inmate of Cailton•house and of Windsor Castle, possessing the entire confidence of his Sovereign, who latterly lived in great privacy, surrounded by his household, and only a few occasional visitors. He was, as might be expected, the devoted friend of Lady —, and though never sus pected of having used his interest at Court for any great objects of personal aggrandisement, he was believed privy to that extraordinary appropriation of above :100,0(,01., which was sold out of the Stocks a very few days before the death of his royal master. It was always supposed that this sum had been given at once to that lady, but the fact of the sale was currently known at the time, and no trace of the money afterwards appeared. I have myself heard the Duke of Wellington say that when sent tor by express on the demise of the Kin. he, in quality of executor, in spected all the papers, &c., at Windsor, and did not find sufficient money in the royal escrutoire even to pay the post horses of the different expresses. Sir W. Knighton died possessed of a very large fortune, partly acquired by his original profession, and partly perhaps by that political information which had been used fur the same purpose by his predecessor Macmahon. Colonel Macmahon was for a time paralysed in his right arm, and Knighton was recom mended as an assistant secretary by Lord Wellesley. We have put in italics a line in the last sentence of the foregoing extract, and several persons about the Stock Exchange arc quite competent to illustrate it. The time has not yet come for telling all Knighton's extraordinary story to the world, and Mr. Raikes evidently did not know much of it Possibly the Mr. C— alluded to by Mr. Raikes will reveal it all in his memoirs of his own times Of the death of George IV. we read : No man clung to life with greater eagerness than George IV., or was more unwilling to hear from those about him any hint or suspicion of his apparent decay. When confined to his room, and his case had become evidently hopeless, he still telt the vital stamina so strong in hint that he would not believe his own danger ; he talked of preparations for the approaching Ascot races, which he would attend in person, and showed a confidence in his recovery, which all around him knew to be impossible. On the 27th of May, 1830, prayers were ordered to be read in the churches for the restoration of the King's health ; and though the work of death was gradually approaching, the most contradictory accounts were con• stantly circulated of his real state. At length the awful moment arrived. He went to bed, without any particular symptom, on the night of the 25th of June, but at three o'clock in the morning he seemed to awake in great agitation, and called for assistance. Sir Wathen who was in attendance, came to his bedside, and at his request helped to raise him from his bed. He then ex claimed, " Watty, what is this? It is death ! They have deceived me !" and in that situation, without a struggle, expired. This differs from the account which we have received, but it corroborates the writer in the New Quarterly Review. The following anec dote would have roused the ire of the late Mr Douglas Jerrold, and Mr. Thackeray still lives : The temptations in his exalted situation to a life of indulgence were numerous; but he was not without a proper sense of religions feeling, as may be inferred from