The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-12 00:00:00

LITERATURE,

A National Benefactor's Autobiography.
Passages of a Working Life during llatf-a Century.
By Charles Knight. Vols, 1. and U. Bradbury
and Evans.

Beginning life as a publisher and bookseller, the
writer of this manly and charming autobiography
saes long since assumed to himself a yet more re-
cognisable position, and in his instance it is one
of very considerable eminence, as a man of letters.
Charles Knight we know no•w-a-days far more as
a mate of letters than as a publisher and bookseller.
Regarded in the latter capacity he is to be seen
only, as it were, in perspective. It seems to be a long
while now since he kept a printing establishment
at Windsor and a bookshop in Pall Mall. We have
to look beck beyond a considerable interval even to
recognise him as he was when he had his name issued
from the press, across his own counter in Ludgate-
hilltat the bottom far more frequently than at about
tile middle of many a popular and widely circulating
publication. Yet further back, he has here intro-
duced himself to us at the very commencement of
these ingenuous memorials of bis Life—a life, let us
say at once, as honourable from first to last as it
has been laborious throughout—beyond the open-
ing of this present century, we there behold him
as he appears to himself in his own retrospec-
tive glance as among the earliest of his
personal recollections —we there behold him
yonder dwindled down, as it were, by a mere
effort of distance into the appearance of a little
child in a white frock and a black sash I A half•
orphaned child, then but very recently bereft of his
young mother, and as, by a natural consequence of
that event, fairl-1 idolised by the poor sorrow-
stricken wide ever his father—a Windsor tradesman,
more not'xeable as a bookworm than as a bookseller.
Between that far-off period and the present hour
stretch back the years described in this truthful and
Graceful autobiography. The interval—as will be
found, indeed, to have been pretty clearly intimated
here upon our author's title-page—the goodly in-
terval extending between the Now and lhen being
mane up of fully Half-aaCentury of a genuine
Working Life—led off, that half century of a Work-
ing Life, by a " Prelude of Early Recollections." The
result of it ail being—what is here most interestingly
related by Mr Knignt himself, but what we as among
those numerous and grateful admirers of his,whom he
has for years been helping so largely to benefit by his
labours—knew to a great extent before any of these
memorials appeared, knew, that is to say, from the
mere facts and fruits of those very labours them-
selves. For, applying here that happy phrase of
Wordsworth's about the child being father of the
Ulan, may we not put it thus—that the little child
in the white frock and the black sash has developed
into a man sufficiently noteworthy to be entitled,
as we have here eagerly and gladly entitled him at
the commencement of these remarks, namely, us "A
National Benefactor ?" Is be not so ? Answer this,
—any number that may anywhere be found of
really intelligent and educated Englishmen! For,
in point of tact, in simplest truth, what are among
the many conspicuous titles to our gratitude, towards
. Charles Knight as a Popular 13 naefector ? He
has done more practical good service than
any other English Worker that could be
named in furthering the great cause of
Popular Education. He has done single-handed
among Eugiistimen in this cause, in the interests
of this cause, in its general and comprehensive deve-
lopment, what William and Robert Chambers have
done together among Scototimen. And—without
being in any way invidious while saying so—we
would here add that Charles Knight has, in simple
matter of fact, done yet more than those two emie '
neat popular publishers of Edinburgh. The com-
parison between the two houses, between that of
the Englishman and that of the Scotchmeo, has
been originated, not by ourselves, but by one of
our contemporaries. Tnerefore it is that,
without any imputation of appearing invidious
while doing so, we may here strenuously protest,
as we feel constrained in fact to do, out of a mere
sense of justice, we may here strenuously protest
against any pre-eminence being accorded
~to
Robert Chambers over Charles Knight. They
are worthy rivals, they are worthy contemporaries ;
but, if their names must be brought thus into di-
rect comparison, pre-eminence ought rather, to our
mind, to be accorded, not as one of our contem-
poraries has accorded it, to the reputed author
of the '•Vestiges of Creation," bur, on the contrary,
to Charles Knight, to that " good grey head," to
that honest right hand from which have emanated
other nobler works, either wholly original or
thoroughly and laboriously edited, worts far and
away beyond any deistical geological speculation
upon cosmogony that ever was written For, has
not Charles Knight taken his place recog-
nisably—among the Historians of England ?
—among the Commentators on Shakspere ?
among the most luminous of our National
Encyclorrolists ?—among the most skilled Topo.
graphers of London ?—besides squandering broad.
cast over the land during fully one quarter of a
century all those seeds of truth, scientific, artistic,
and literary—seeds of truth Sown by him as the
Pubtisher, as the Editor, as the Worker, in behalf
and by the authority of the Society for the affusion
of Useful Knowledge ? Tu him we are indebted for
that famous Penny Magazine that was the pioneer
and forerunner of all our cheap and wholesome, of
all our instructive and entertaining periodical
pablioations. Upwards •of thirty years ago the
" Penny Magazine," under the direction of Charles
Knight, enjoyed (in 1832) an average circulation of
200,000 ! Yet, as Mr. Knight has himself been
enabled to say now of that famous periodical, " in
it there has never been a single sentence that could
linflame a vicious appetite, and not a paragraph that
could minister to prej uaices and superstitions, which
a few years since were common ; there have been no
excitements for thelovers of the marvellous, no tattle
or abuse for the gratification of a diseased taste for
personality, and above all, no party politics." No
wonder that in the following year the marvellous
success achieved by the Penny Magazine induced
a man of Mr. Knight's enterprise to embark
upon even so gigantic an undertaking as the
publication (begun in 1833) of the Penny
cyclopacdia. Upon the labours of Charles Knight
however, as Publisher, as Editor, as Author, it
were superfluous here to expatiate. They are known
intimately and they are honoured accordingly. His
"Pictorial Stiakspere" is among the very noblest
editions of the greatest of our national poets, the
greatest of all poets. His " London" is the most
comprehensive work upon the metropolis of Enga
laud, of the British Empire, of the World. His
"Shilling Library" will always " hold its own
among cheap and popular repertories of
that character. His "history of England"
—utterly mistaken though we ourselves deem so
very many among its views to be—is more intensely
national, is more thoroughly popular, is more corn •
pletely a History of England, of the English People,
and not merely of the English Sovereigns, than any
other work upon the same subject that could be
very readily mentioned. His Once upon a lime
again turning her© for a moment to his less
ambitious and more miscellaneous productiene—
surely those who have read it, as we have done, with
so thoroughly enjoyable a satisfaction, will speak of
it only as a sort of model work of its class, being, as
full as an egg is of meat, crammed from cover to
cover with instructive entertainment. And Charles
Knight's Autobiographic "Passages of a Working
Ltfc During Halt a Carl tury"—a workowo.ehirds of
which are happily completed, lying here before us
in effect, as they do, in these two goodly volumes
but just now submitted to our consideration—is a
Literary production that in the pervading style and
manner of it, is very much of a-piece with the
charmingly discursive pages last mentioned. Only
here, in this later work, there is of course the
added interest of a consecutive narrative, perfected,
so speak, by that nameless charm which is in-
separable from all autobiographic confidences. As
,ffording a taste of the quiet humour flavouring the
narrative of these memorials here—is Mr. Knight'a
comical iLustrative mention of the manner in which
jastice was administered some half a century ago by
,ne of the then magistracy :

Under the guidance of the town clerk, corporate magis-
trates generatly got through their busineEs decently. Some-
times they made little slips. Late in the eyening an cirender

was brought before one of our mayors, having been
detected in stealing a smock-frock from a pawnbroker's
door. "Look in 'Burns's Justice,' " said his worship to
his son; "look in the index for smock-frock." "Can't
find it, father. Not there." " What! no law against
stealing smock-frocks ? my heart, young fellow,
but you've had a lucky escape."

Hardly 80 decorous appears to have been the system
in vogue, about the same time, among those who had
the management (even in a royal chapel) of the re-
ligious ceremonies of the Courch as by Law Esta-
blished : ex. gr,—
I have seen, says Mr. Knight, a stranger civilian
stalk (with his spurs on) into the choir of St. G-iorge's
Chapel. The spur was instantly dt,tected ; an&
when the bewildered man was surrounded by a bevy of
white surplices as he loitered in the nave, there was no help
for him but to pay the spur-money.
Such interruptions to the beauty and solemnity of the
service were not sufficient to prevent their abiding impres-
sions; and thus the salt of devotion was not wholly washed
out of me. I was, however, well nigh rushing into the
desert, in going through the ceremony which was to keep me
in the fold. I had diligently prepared myself for confirmation.
Dr Fisher, Bishop of Salisbury, was to perform the rite.
There was an absence of all solemnity, and even of decency,
upon which I look back with disgust. I still see the bishop's
officers driving the young people to the altar•rails as if they
were sheep going to the fair ; the monotonous formality of
the imposition of hands upon the huddled batches who
knelt a few minutes, and then were chased back to their seats
by the impatient ministers of the solemnity. Its failure
altogether to satisfy my excited feelings compelled me into
a passion of tears, and I went home and told my father that
I would be a Quaker or Unitarian. I think that confirma-
tion confirmed whatever was sceptical in my composition ;
and I had to escape into the region of natural piety, and long
dwell there, before I could become reconciled to the estab-
lishment which could endure such profanations.

As affording a very striking contrast between
what is and what has been, the following account
by Charles Knight of the duties devolving half
a century back upon one of the then Volunteers
will be read with the liveliest interest, we doubt
not, by our Victorian Itifiamen.
The Cambridge organisation was complete. At Windsor,
the chief business of life appeared to be volunteer drills
and reviews. My father was a lieutenant in our local
corps, and I was ever at his side in those midsummer
merchinga and counter-marchings. This volunteering was
not altogether playing at soldiers. Our volunteer had some
work to perform wholly unknown to the volunteer of Queen
Victoria. He had to pipe-clay his white breeches and
gaiters. He had to polish the bright barrel of his musket
till he could see his face in it. "Brown Bess" was a
later invention. He had to grease and flour his hair like
a modern footman ; and then to wash the grease and flour
out, till he was fit to stand at the court' er and sit at the
desk, like an honest tradesman. He had no railway to
carry him to a review; but marched through the night to
Bulmarsh Heath, near Reading, to take his place amongst
the other bold warriors of Berkshire. The discipline was
not very exact. I have laughed, although I was scanda-
lised, to see an impudent corporal play tricks with his.
lieutenant's queue. Rods were sometimes left in the bar-
rel when a volley was fired, to the no small danger of the
colonel in front. We had a yeomanry corps, composed of
the choicest spirits of our town. It was commanded by
a pursy wine-merchant, who was not so well mounted
as his men. On more than one occasion, when he headed
a charge, they would open right and left, and leave him
behind, when he roared, " Unparalleled in the annals of
war, gentlemen." Full of fan as they were, our volunteers
would have fought to death if the necessity had come. The
volunteer of my boyhood was not altogether unprepared for
war ; for there was a ball practice at a target fixed in a
chalk-pit. But, as far as I recollect, the hits were as few
as the ordinary calculation as to the musket-firing in a
field of battle—that not one shot in a hundred told. But
what of that? There was the same emulation as I have
rejoiced to look upon in the noble rivalry of the Wimbledon
meeting of 1563. Though sixty years have made all the
difference between the musket and ►he rifle, and more
difference in the skill of th 3 volunteer the emulation both
of one period and the other is derived from our ancestry.

From first to last, we have ❑ever found the interest
of this work flag in the perusal of it. It is precisely
the very kind of autobiography we should have
expected from the hand of Charles Knight—un-
affected, manly, vivacious, entirely devoid of self-
glorification, nudisfigured by evidences of designed
reticence or intentional concealment, and this for
the simple reason enough that a manly, truthful,
honest, open nature like that of Charles Knight had
nothing whatever to conceal. Enough however,
if we close these remarks of ours with two very
brief but sufficiently significant observations—each
of them distinctive of the man—each of them a very
noble panygeric. Firstly, that it will be remem-
bered of Charles Knight that he was the friend and
fellow labourer of Brougham. Secondly, and finally,
that it was more than a mere radiant witticism of
Douglas Jerrold's when—on being asked one night
by our author, on their way home together, if he
(Jerrold) 'could suggest a fitting epitaph for his
companion's tombstone—Jerrold answered at the
streetcorner, with a hearty grasp of the hand at
parting—" Good Knight !"

Toddleis• Highland Tour. With 21 illustrations.
Pp. 150. Routledge and Co.

Under this ridiculous title—as, " Tne Strange
Adventures of Richard Toddles and Tom Stepwell
during their Journey in Scotland"—the reader is
here presented with a really useful as well as
entertaining guide hook, showing him the way
to a very cheap and, at the same time, a very
delightful excursion. Daring the Nine Days
occupied by Toddies and Stupwell in traversing the
route marked out for themselves north of the
Tweed—these two excursionists certainly contrive
to make a Nine Day's Wonder of it, by seeing so
much and paying so little. For, which in effect
among the sights that ought to be seen upon
a Scottish tour do these knapsacked lowlanders not
see yonder in the land of cakes ? Loch Lomond,
Glencoe, Fort William, Ben Nevis, Killiecrankie,
the Trosachs, Holyrood, Melrose, Abootsford,
Dryburgh—with a multitude of other famous
localities, hill and dale, river and lake,
inhabited building and deserted ruin—Toddles
and Stepwell visit together. And yet—at the
end of all their pleasant sightseeing and gad-
ding about, hither and thither, they have spent
absolutely not a ten-pound note a-piece! The
sum total of their expenditure from the huu
of their starting upon their holiday expedition
to that of their return homewards, being jotted
down, item by item, during the course of their nar-
rative—the sum total being given upon the last
page as, to a nicety, just exactly £lB 16s. 2d. It
we are not very much mistaken, Mr M'Connell's
pencil has contributed to this pleasant little gossip-
ping guide book through Scotland two or three at
least out of the twenty-one illustrations scattered
through it.

INTERESTING DISCOVERY OF ROMAN REMAINS.
—The excavations in Hot Bath-street for the new
wing of the Bath United Hospital, the foundations of a
large Roman building have been recently discovered.
These foundations are exeeedingly strong, and indicate
that the building to which they belonged must have been
one of some importance. The base of pillar, turned upside
down, and built into the foundation, was likewise found,
and appears to have formed part of even an older structure.
This week a further interesting discovery has been made, in
the course of excavating the site of the house lately in the
occupation of Mr William Foote, Lower Borough-walls.
This discovery consists of a large portion of a beautiful tasse
lated pavement. The pavement seems to have formed the
flooring of a room about 12 feet square, and rests upon pil-
lars and hollow tiles—the tiles having been used for heating
purposes. The design of the pavementis different to any found
in Bath before : in the censre is a rose, which is surrounded
by several borders of geometrical pattern. Enough of the
Pavement remains to enable au accurate sketch of its entire
design to be taken. The foundation of the dwelling just re-
moved was built upon this hollow Roman floor, and the pave
went is in consequence much crushed and thrown out of its
level. A second pavement, composed of larger tessera;, ad-
joins this first one, and eppears to have been the floor of a
passage or vestibule loading to the apartment. Tracings of
the designs are being taken, and the interesting remains will
be preserved with jealous care, Some fragments of Roman
pottery have also been turned up in the course of the exca-
vations. The discovery has come just in time for the meet-
ing of the British Association, and is to be regarded as a
valuable audition to the relies conhecl ed with ehe Roman
occupation of the city of King Bladud.—Bath Chronicle.
A call of X 5 per share has been made by the
Continental Bank Corporation, to be paid on or
before the 10th proximo.
During the last few days there has been very
little animation in the Foreign and Colonial Pro-
duce Markets, Sugars have barely sustained former
prices, while coffee has also been rather cheaper.
lea has been in moderate request at steady rates,
vhite in rice, fruit, spices, and ta►_ow there havj.
wen no dealings of iuoportanee. P.Y.C. on thr
spot is quoted 41a 9d, and last three months deli-
very 43a 9d per cwt.