The Express.
London, England, 1858-11-12 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 12, 1858.

LITERATURE.

Sixty Years' Gloaming, from Life'. Horoost. By
Joan Baown, Proprietor of the University Bil-
liard-rooms, Cambridge. Willis and Botheran.
This is a genuine autobiography. It is precisely
the book a man who in his time has played many
parts and has been tolerably successful in life would
writs had he the requisite time and ability. We
have so many antohiographies—especially from
Amsrioa—which are evidently not genuine, that we
must note as one merit of this book that it is
honestly what it professes to be. Of course our
author is on good terms with himself. From one
end of the book to the other—from the portrait in
the first page, of a neat, cheerful old gentleman, sit-
ting very mush at ease in a well-furnished library,
signed " Your humble servant, John Brown," to the
very last vignette, which favours the world with a
eight of " Brown's Billiard Rooms, Racquet Courts,
&c."—it is evident the writer dwells fondly on his
career, and is pardonably vain of his encore and
really, when we read how dark was the morn-
ing of his life, it is somewhat wonderfnl that he did
not go to the bad, as most poor *Lk &sand that he
was saved and made a man of after all. The faults
of the book are fewer than its merits. It gives us a
vivid idea of the struggles and the wretchedness of the
labouriag cisme, and it sketches in the most lora-
We =SUM agate of things which we trust now no
longer exists. His experiences whilst a soldier, and
then a sailor, are very valuable, and show what we
at length have come to learn, that amongst men as
amongst other animals more can be done by kindness
than by fear. On many matters Mr. Brown exhi-
bits a prudent reserve. Here are no revelations of
college life ; no tales told out of school ; nothing as
to University magnates which the world outside can
get hold of and turn into scandal. Yet Mr. Brown
was a townsman of Cambridge long before the ques-
tion of University Reform was broached and carried.
That questionable appendage to Cambridge, Barn-
well, was the spot where our author was born. His
father kept a public-house, and died young, leaving
his widow to struggle with the world and sup-
port her family as best she could. For a time
he and him brother were employed by the drovers
who frequented the house; but the toil was too
great, and our author soon grew disgusted with
his vocation. He was then apprenticed to a canting
shoemaker, whom he abhorred, and with whom,
after a month's imprisonment for absconding, he
parted. He then came to London, and, lodged
with another of the same craft—and an honoured
craft it is, and many are the great thinkers and
scholars ithas turned out—he learned tostudy and love
Shakspeare and Milton and the rest of our English
classics. Just as he is getting on he is compelled to
strike, and, after pawning his books, and clothes, and
tools, he enlists for a soldier. On one occasion he re-
ceived from the sergeant-major a slap on the cheek,
a degradation which he could not brook, and accord-
ingly deserted. He is now picked up by some
strolling actors, amongst whom he shines as a bright
particular star. When the company breaks up, he
and another offer themselves as seamen. We were
at war then, and their services were gladly accepted.
The glimpse we get of the atrocious system then
adopted for manning the navy is perfectly horrible.
We quote Mr. Brown's narrative of

TOO VICTIM OP • NSW GANG.
As we stood looking over the side of the vessel, an eight-
cared caner palled alongside ; •oat of which, with some am-
calty, the boat's crew hauled up a young man whose head
was bound up with a handkeaddef saturated with blood,
the ortolan fold still trickling down his cheek ea to ths
bosom of his shirt. A surgeon wee soon in attendance, who
dressed the sufferer's wounds and administered restoratives
which brought him to his mama. Oh what an agonising
scene followed. The poor fellow rave like a maniac; they
could &comely keep him from jumping overboard ; he called
In yak for his brothers to aid him I. this betake. NM* of
Weary ; he bewailed his mother and sisters, and his beloved
" Mary," to whom he was to have bons married on the
morrow. Never did I see a poor fellow in such a state of
distraction; be kept on raving and crying until exhausted,
and then lay a.bbing like • child lusts nurse's arms, and
mooed so piteously it would have melted a heart of Mane.
In this prostrate elate the sailors took him down the hatch-
way ; and we also, being ordered below, were served by a
black boy with scam three-water grog and herd biscuits
along with some rank stuff rolled butter, which, if put to its
proper me, ought to hem served for oat/mane.
Our inhumanity does not seem to have been con-
fined to our own people. It was perfectly impartial.
At Chatham we had stowed away some 700

FLINCH PILISONE/U1 or wit,

--.....
Oa board our bulk were about 700 French prisoners, the
most lively and animated be had ever seen. It would
be impossible for me to describe their various occupations
mid amusements; there wale tailors, shoemakers, muff
manufacturers, buoy box makers, domino and card maker*,
sad other artists in great profueion. They even exercised
their ingenuity so tar as to make 6& notes; for which a poor
fellow was hanged on the little island opposite Chatham
lines, who had given one to a marine to pass when going
ashore on leave Their amusements were various ; suck as
inualbsword, broad-sword, single-stick. quarter•sieff. cud.,
dominoes, fiddling, dewing, gymnastic.,—ln truth every
kind of game that their inventive genius could augpst.
Some of them poor fellows bad been in prison nine or ten
years, and could speak English like natives. It was truly
wonderfulto witness men bearing captivity with snob
buoyancy of spirits. Their food was not of first-rate quality,
the brown bread was very coarse and by no means sweet to
the taste ; the beef generally was miserably lean, such as sa
Englishmen would consider unwholesome; the salt fish I
believe was generally pretty pod. However, as they were
nearly all versed in the art of esekery, they made dialose of
which few Englishmen would have any conception.
Agreet many of these captives were officers, who had
been at Stilton and other inland primes, bat having bolded
their parole, were now confined on board these prison-thips,
sad strictly guarded night and day. It was not very un-
common for them to cut a hole through the ship's side just
above the water-line, and swim for their liberty; in attempt-
ing which. Imeever, they were generally drowned, or shot,
or stuck feat in the mud, and, being captured, were punished
as the commander directed. The prisoners were always
driven below before sunset, end the hatchways secured by
strong iron bare; so that there was no chance of their getting
a breath of fresh air till they were let on deck in the morning.
The hatches were then unlocked, and such a horrible sickly
stench lamed from below, as no person could conceive who
bed not Mt its eff-cis. Just fancy 790 human Wisp
crowded together between decks, with no ventilation but
small crom-bar holes, and some even of these blocked up to
keep out the cold. I can only say they bore their suffermgs
with amazing fortitude; they were indeed laughing philoso-
phers, yet seemed to a man attached to Napoleon and their
country.
Cruelty was the order of the day. Brown's captain
was a strict disciplinarian, and ruled by fear alone.
The crew, however, was what might be considered
a tolerably happy one. One of the midshipmen,
and an especial favourite of Brown's, was one Vag-
horn, the son of a butcher at Chatham— a man to
whom the nation is in debt even to this day for the
Overland Route. There was a good deal of flogging,
and Mr. Brown condemns it its Coto as a practice de-
grading alike to the offioers and men. In one case
reported by Mr. Brown, of a young man of good
family, as smart a sailor as ever went aloft, who had
run from home upon some slight family misunder-
standing, the effect of a flogging was insanity and
untimely death. flometimes---and it is no wonder—
the men took

I once heard of • horrible revenge token upon • petty
°Sow, who wee constantly in the habit of reporting men and
getting them dogged. The mesa to which he belonged was
chasing • privateer, • fast sailer which had captured several
English merchantmen ; end on this occasion, in order to get
the ship into good sailing Mm, renting@ butded with eighteen
pond shot had been slung la different parts. One of thews
wee over the main hatchway ; and so the man in gueetion
wee descending in the deed of night, this heavy weight
of metal was let down upon his heed, crushing bun like •
spider.
There was smother tale too, current in my time, of a man
who had become desperate in compasses of being flogged
at the instigation of some boy-midshipman. He vowed to be
✓emesed—and • dreadful revenge he took; for one day,
when Me wind was blowing great guns, and the sea rolling
=animism high, he wised the lad in hie arms, and (brag
close to the gangway) jumped overboard eiiti hi., ere a
weal could Interfere to prevent the acoomplialunent of the
heerid dart Hansen aid wee sot further available, se no
best Gould live is inch a res. _

drown himself was dogged for some trivial
armee, and he tells ns at ems distance of time —" I
still feel the scorching degradation as plainly as
when I was branded with it in my coun-
try's name." Ws are not surprised when
we read that he attempted to mos
I ateenate, however, which was was sad

he stayed on board his ship till she was paid off
when pesos was made, and the great Napoleon
was a prisoner and a gazing-stock in Plymouth
Bound. The chief interest of our author's narrative,
as far as the general reader is concerned, ends here.
When he becomes a landsman we have more shoe-
making, more acting, and finally the establishment
ci the billiard-rooms, and in this direction great mo-
an. Towards the close John Brown grows some-
what feeble and garrulous. We are sorry to learn
that in returning from the Manchester Exhibition
he was so sleepy as in any way to inconvenienos the
wsitting next to him. We regret to find that upon
ing at King's-eross " I was suddenly seized with
what appeared to me to be English cholera ;" and we
opine that in taking a osb and driving off to the
abode of a relative in the City-road, he adopted the
proper course, and did what most men under similar
circumstances would have done; but these are inci-
dents that might safely have been omitted. Of the
lives of great men we thankfully swept the most
trifling particulars, but after all Mr. Brown, though
he has produced an entertaining autobiography, is
not exactly a great man.