The Express.
London, England, 1851-06-13 00:00:00

MR. TRACICERAY'S LECTURES.

Mr. Thaekeray delivered the third of his series of
lectures yesterday, to an audience more numerous and dis-
tinguished than ever. The humorist he dealt with this
time was Sir Richard Steele, Addison's friend and fellow-
labourer in the Spectator." Steele is less known and read
now a-days than any of his famous contemporaries. His come-
dic' are grown as obscure as his predecessor poor Otway's
almost—which is saying a good deal. His lustre as an
essayist has been outshone by that of Addison. Satin his own
style of writing he is unrivalled ; and his peculiar cha-
racter and his strange history made him a very good
subject for Mr. Thackeray's lectures—lectures, be it noted,
not so much intended to be literary as social—discourses of
social philosophy. Yesterday's one was a kind of sermon,
as picturesque as a historical novel—a charitable sermon on
a loveable sinner.
Ile began by showing us that such • being as a perfect
man would be, to us, intolerable, and, as regarded himself,
• kind of anomaly. He would have no joy, because no
sorrow; no repentance, because incapable of fault. He
could not, as perfectly wise, love one person more
than another; he would have no higher emotion when
on the mountain than on the plain. Our faults were our
conditions of existence. From our pain came our pleasure.
So much we derived from what we called, for instance, our
selfishness! We did not love people for their virtues only;
nobody's dearest friends were the greatest and highest
people he knew. Why did the father like his little Tommy
better than other people's childrm—his lay cleverer school-
fellows ? This variety of sentiments he referred to what
may bo called our selfishness. The deduction he drew
from this opening was the propriety of a charitable
construction of men's shortcomings. lio asked sympathy
with Dick Steele as one of the most kind.hearted of men.
So fond was that man of seeing happiness everywhere about
him that in his old age, wizen, havingoutlived wife, fortune,
fame, and almost everything but his good heart, be was
living down in Wales on the remnant of a property, he
used to have the people of the village dancing before him,
and give a gown to the best performer. It was beautiful
to think of such • life ending in such • calm, glorious
sunset.

Ile now reviewed this chequered career. Steele was the
son of an Irish gentleman, and was sent an orphan to the
Charter-house School. There Addison was his head boy.
Perhaps there was nobody of all the great men one met in
life that ever inspired one with such wonder and reverence
as one's head boy at school; Steele had Addison for his
head boy for life—loved and reverenced him from first to
last. In all probability Dicky Steele at the school was the
most good-(or-nothing amiable little fellow there—contract.
ing pecuniary liabilities with sellers of lollipops, and borrow-
ing money from every boy who had any to lend. All this
might be presumed from his subsequent proceed-
ings and also his castigation, perhaps by the
very instrument of torture which he (the lecturer) had (as
an amateur) some time since inspected. Steele went to
Oxford; left it without taking a degree; became a private
in the Guards, and got a commission; became Captain
Steele, and had places and various great successes. But he
laboured under a fatal incapability of taking care of himself
or anything.
The various scenes in Steele's life Mr. Thackeray left and
returned to at intervals, as suited his reflections. He
alluded with much humour to the " Christian
Hero." Steele used to be laughed at while en-
gaged on this pious and edifying performance ; and,
indeed," said Mr. Thackeray, with his satirical
turireti, " a theologian in liquor is not a very respectable
object!" Then Dicky was always in debt; he fitted up a
house very elegantly for a wife whom he adored, but the
Landlord could not get his rent. Having failed in keeping
up one establishment, the worthy man and moral teacher
opened *still finer one in Bloomsbury-square. There he
gave high loyal entertainments; and on one occasion,
having been carried home and taken up stairs by the
chairmen, insisted on politely accompanying them to
the door, after which be at last went to bed.
He had of coarse fits of great penitence. But the worst was
that besides other duns—Duty and Virtue had to knock
at Disk y Steele's door and go away finding it in vain.
Mr. Thackeray particularised Steele's letters with em-
Most of our epistolary remains, he remarked, frum
Cicero's to Walpole's, were written with an obvious eye to
posterity. Steele's were clearly genuine private letters, in-
tended only for the eye of the person to whom they were
sent.

In his literary capacity Steele was to be considered as the
founder of that style of sentimental humour which delighted
us in Yorick, in the Cartons and in little Dombey. Mr.
Thackeray quoted a delightful passage, in which he de-
scribes his going into the room where his father's body lay,
as a child, and meeting his mother there. And he took
occasion to compare him here with Swift and Addison. He
showed how when Swift inspired terror and melancholy,
and stamped with disdain—when Addison, too, was sad in
his different way—Steele's lesson was human love and pity.
These were what A. gathered from the contemplation of
the mysteries of the grave and the future.
Mr. Thackeray drew, in conclusion, a satirical and face-
tious picture of the manners of fashionable people in that
time, founded on Swift's "Polite Conversation," &c. He
concluded the lecture—perhaps the most philosophical he
has yet delivered—by calling for a sympathetic considera-
tion of Steele ; a kindly view of one of the kindest-hearted
men that ever lived.

The lecture was heard with great attention and applause.

PADDLE-BOX VERSUS SCREW.—A correspondent
says :—" As some tossiderable interest is now felt as to the
relative advantages of the paddle-boa and screw steamers,
some attention woo paid to the voyage of the Singapore,
piddle-box steamer, which left Southampton on the 17th
May last with troops and specie for the Cape. Three drys
after, the Sir Robert Peel, screw steamer, left Plymouth
with the Cape mails; and on the announcement in the
Daily New of Monday that the Singapore had reached the
Cape an anxiety was felt to know on what day she arrived.
It now appears that she arrived on the 24th April, three
days before the Sir Robert Peel arrived. She was de-
tained eight days at Sierra Leone coaling, owing to her
calling there not being anticipated. The Sir Robert Peel was
detained at Sierra Leone only one day. It is evident there-
fore that the paddlwbox beat the screw 13 days in a voyage
of 6,700 milts It mast be considered, however, that the Sir
Robert Peel is inferior to the steamers which it is purposed
to run on the Caps line ; and, on the other hand, it mustbe
remembered that the Singapore was crammed with troops,
which mast have rather impeded her speed. The Singa-
pore is a altar boat to the Ganges, which has just made
each a splendid ran from Alexandria."