The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-02-26 00:00:00

LORD GEORGE GORDON'S RIOTS.

When I was a lad, I recollect seeing a whole cartful of young
girls, in dresses of various colours, on their way to be executed
at Tyburn. They had all been condemned, on one indictment,
for having bein concerned in (that is, perhaps, for having been
spectators of) the burning of some houses during Lord George
Gordon's riots. It was quite horrible.—Greville was present
at one of the trials consequent on those riots, and heard several
boys sentenced, to their own excessive amazement, to be
hanged. " Never," said Greville with great naïveti," did I
see boys cry so."

Such scenes as the above were sufficient to arouse
the indignation and awake the pity of all right-minded
men, and were without doubt instrumental in bringing
about that reaction in public sentiment which causes
the philanthropist in some degree to sympathise with
the criminal rather than with his victim.

Anecdotes of various quality form the staple of the
book ; and of these it may be well to give a few
selected here and there, without any attempt at con-
tinuity or arrangement.
Of the Duke's (Wellington's) perfect coolness on the most
trying occasions, Colonel Gurwood gave me this instance. He
was once in great danger of being drowned at sea. It was
bed-time, when the captain of the vessel came to him, and
said, "It will soon be all over with us."—" Very well,"
answered the Duke, " then.l shall not take off my boots."
It is curious how fashion changes pronunciation. In my
youth everybody said "Lonnon," not London :" Fox said
Lonnon" to the last ; and so did Crowe. The now fashiona-
ble pronunciation of several words is to me at least very offen-
sive : " contemplate" is bad enough; but " balcony" makes
me sick.

To all letters soliciting his subscription to anything,
Erskine had a regular form of reply, viz., " Sir, I feel much
honoured by your application to me, and I beg to subscribe"—
here the reader had to turn over the leaf, " myself your very
obedient servant," &c.
Humphrey Howarth, the surgeon, was called out, and made
his appearance in the field stark naked, to the astonishment
of the challenger, who asked him what he meant. " I know,"
said H., " that if any part of the clothing is carried into the
body by a gunshot wound, festering ensues ; and therefore I
have met you thus." His antagonist declared that fighting
with a man in purls naturalibus would be quite ridiculous ;
and accordingly they parted without further discussion.
Lord Alvanley, on returning home after his duel with young
O'Connell, gave a guinea to the hackney-coachman who had
driven him out and brought him back. The man, surprised
at the largeness of the sum, said, "My Lord, I only took you
to —," Alvanley interrupted him, " My friend, the guinea is
for bringing me back, not for taking me out."
Lord Seafortb, who was born deaf and dumb, was to dine
one day with Lord Melville. Just before the time of the com-
pany's arrival, Lady Melville sent into the drawing-room a
lady of her acquaintance, who could talk with her fingers to
dumb people, that she might receive Lord Seaforth. Pre-
sently Lord Guilford entered the room ; and the lady, taking
him for Lord Seaforth, began to ply her fingers very nimbly ;
Lord Guilford did the same ; and they had been carrying on a
conversation in this manner for about ten minutes, when
lady Melville joined them. Her female friend immediately
said, "Well, I have been talking away to this dumb man."—
"Dumb !" cried Lord Guilford ; " bless me, I thought you
were dumb." I told this story (which is perfectly true) to
Mathews; and he said that he could make an excellent use of
it at one of his evening entertainments ; but I know not if
ever he did.

A friend' of mine in Portland-place has a wife who inflicts
upon him every season two or three immense evening parties.
At one of those parties he was standing in a very forlorn con-
dition, leaning against the chimney-piece, when a gentleman,
coming up to him, said, " Sir, as neither of us is acquainted
with any of the people here, I think we had best go home."

In this volume, Mr. Rogers and his friends, through
the instrumentality of the reporting editor, are made
to tell a good deal of what they know concerning every-
body who is or has been anybody.

I once dined at Mr. Stone's (at Hackney) with Fox, Sheridan,
Talleyrand, Madame de Gerais, Pamela, and some other cele-
brated persons of the time. A natural son of Fox, a dumb
boy (who was the very image of his father, and who died a few
years after, when about the ageof fifteen) was also there, having
come, for the occasion, from Braidwood's Academy. To him
Fox almost entirely confined his attention, conversing with
him by the fingers ; and their eyes glistened as they looked at
each other. Talleyrand remarked to me, "how strange it was,
to dine in company with the first orator in Europe, and only
see him talk with his fingers !"—That day I offended Madame
de Geniis by praising the "Contes Moraux" of Marmontel,
with whom she had quarrelled violently. At a dinner party,
where I was, Fox met Aikin. "I am greatly pleased with
your Miscellaneous Pieces,' Mr. Aikin," said Fox (alluding to
the volume written partly by Aikin, and partly by his sister,
Mrs. Barbauld).—Aikin bowed.—" I particularly admire," con-
tinued Fox, "your essay Against Inconsistency in our Ex-
pectations.' " That," replied Aikin, "is my sister's."—" I
like much," resumed Fox, " your essay ' On Monastic Institu-
tions.' "—" That," answered Aikin, "is also my sister's." Fox
thought it best to say no more about the book. I was present
at a dinner-party given by William Smith in Westminster,
when Fox would not take the slightest notice of Horne Tooke,
—would not look at him, nor seem to hear any of the good
things he said. It was the most painful scene of the kind I
was ever witness to, except what occurred at my own house,
when the Duke of Wellington treated Lord Holland much in
the same way.
The annexed anecdote of Horne Tooke is illustrative.
in a high degree of the art of

- -
CURRYING WITS d. POISONED coma.
Tooke went to Italy as tutor to a young man of fortune, who
was subject to fits of insanity, and who consequently would
sometimes occasion much alarm at inns during the middle of
the night.—While residing at Genoa, they formed an acquaint-
ance with an Italian family of distinction, by whom they were
introduced to the best society of the place. Tooke attached
himself to a lady of great beauty, becoming her cavalier ser-
vente, and attending her everywhere. After some weeks, at a
large evening party, he was astonished to find that the lady
would not speak to him, and that the rest of the company
avoided conversation with him. " Now," said Tooke, " what
do you imagine was the cause of this ? Why, they had dis-
covered that I was a Protestant clergyman ! But I was re-
solved not to be brow-beaten ; and I made myself so agreeable,
that, before the party broke up, we were all again on the very
best terms; some of them even waited on me home, with
music, in a sort of triumph." Soon after Tooke had left Genoa,
he heard that another traveller, who was following the same
route, had been assassinated. This unfortunate traveller was
mistaken for Tooke, on whom, in consequence of his intrigue
with the lady at Genoa, the blow had been intended to fall.
As a matter of course, any such collection of anec-
dotes would be very imperfect without the introduction
of AoYalty,-and care has been taken to provide against
any such omission, as may be seen from the following

PORTRAIT OP TRH DU RR OP YORE. ..
The Duke of York told me that Dr. Cyril Jackson most
Conscientiously did his duty as tutor to him and his brother,

the Prince of Wales. "Jackson," said the Duke, "used to
have a silver pencil-case in his hand while we were at our
lessons ; and he has frequently given us such luocks with it
upon our foreheads, that the blood followed them." I have
often heard the Duke relate how he and hia-brother George,
when young men, were robbed by footpads on Hay Hill.
They had dined that day at Devonshire House, had
then gone home to lay aside their court-dresses, and
afterwards proceeded to a house of a certain description
in the neighbourhood of Berkeley-square. They were re-
turning from it in a hackney coach, late at night, when
some footpads stopped them on Hay Hill, and carried off their
purses, watches, .&c. In his earlier days, the Duke of York
was most exact in paying all his debts of honour. One night
at Brookes's, while he was playing at cards, he said to Lord
Thanet, who was about to go home to bed, "Lord Thanet, is our
betting still to ,continue ?" " Yes, sir, certainly," was the re-
ply : and next morning Lord Thanet found iC1,500 left for him
at Brookes's by the Duke. But gradually he became less par-
ticular in such matters; and at last he mould quietly pocket
the winnings of the night from Lord Robert Spencer, though
he owed Lord Robert about five thousand pounds. I have
several times stayed at Oatlands with the Duke and Duchess
of York—both of them most amiable and agreeable persons.
We were generally a company of about fifteen ; and our being
invited to remain there ` another day' sometimes depended on
the ability of our royal host and hostess to raise sufficient
money for our entertainment. We used to have all sorts of
ridiculous "fun" as we roamed about the grounds. The
Duchess kept (besides a number of dogs, for which there was
a regular burial-place) a collection of monkeys, each of which
had its own pole, with a house at top. ,One of the visitors
(whose name I forget) would single out a particular monkey,
and play to it on the fiddle with such fury and perseverance,
that the poor animal, half-distracted, would at last take re-
fuge in the arms of Lord Alvanley. Monk Lewis was a great
favourite at Oaklands. One day after dinner, as the Duchess
was leaving the room, she whispered something into Lewis's
ear. He was much affected, his eyes filling with tears. We
asked what was the matter. "Oh," replied Lewis, "the
Duchess spoke so very kindly to me 1"—" My dear fellow,"
said Colonel Armstrong, " pray don't cry ; I daresay she didn't
mean it."

If the Rogers portion of this volume be questionable
in its taste and teaching, that portion of it which relates
to Porson is utterly unjustifiable, if not even wicked.
The anecdotes related concerning this great scholar
are invariably of a character to detract from his fame.
His burly, strong, rough-and-ready common sense is
invariably contrasted with his besetting sin of drunken-
ness—his scholarly attainments dashed by insinuations
of poverty and squalor. As illustrations, take the
following