The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-07 00:00:00

THE LATE M. THA.CKERAY,

A vc: y interesting sketch of Mr. Thaekeray, from
the pcu of Mr. James Hannay, the well known
writer, has appeared in the Edinburgh Courant. The

following are a few extracts :
By birth Mr. Thackeray belonged to the upper middle
class—a section of our curiously divided society which con-

:able many cadets of old families, and forms a link between
the aristocracy and the general bulk of the liberal profes-

sions. Ho used sometimes to say that "it takes three gene-

rations to make a gentleman," and though this was not a
maxim which he would have applied strictly in the case of
another man, he was far from insensible to the advantage in
himself. He was descended from an old Saxon stock long

settled inYorkshire. His great-grandfather was Dr. Thacke-

ray, of llarrow, who went to Cambridge in 1710, an exeel-

ieni scholar and clever man, who partly educated Sir Wm.

Jones, and whose epitaph was written by his pupil Dr. Parr.

The son of the doctor married a Miss Webb, of the old Eng-

lish family to which the Brigadier 'Webb, of Marlborough's
wars, belonged—whose portrait is drawn with something of
the geniality of kinsruanship in " Esmond." This Thacke-
ray, we believe, was the first of the race to settle in India,
where his son also sought his fortunes, and where his grand-
son the novelist was born, at Calcutta, in 1811. There are
numerous descendants of the scholarly old headmaster of
Harrow scattered over the English Church and in the
Indian service, and traces of the influence of family con-
nections are found all through the books of the man who
has made his name famous. _

Like other English children born in India, young
Thackeray was sent home early, and the voyage—during
which he had an eager and wondering peep at the great
Napoleon in his island prison—was among his earliest re-

collections. He received his education at Charterhouse--

the well-known Greyfriars of his stories—an ancient and
famous public school. From Charterhouse he went to
Cambridge, which he left without taking a degree ; and he
_ _ _.

entered on life with health, strength, a noble figure, an

excellent genius. and £20,000, the last of which blessings
was the first (owing, it is said, to unfortunate speculations)
to leave him. But this loss was not complete till he had
had the full benefit of a good culture and a good experience.
He travelled over Europe, and resided in its capitals,
while his mind was young and fresh; and laid in those
stores of observation to which we owe sketches with
which everybody is familiar. He had an interview with
Goethe at Weimar, his description of which may be
seen in the " Life of Qoethe" by Mr. Lewes ; and he

studied art at Rome. If he had had his choice, he
would rather have been famous as an artist than as a
writer ; but it was destined that he should paint in
colours which will never crack and never need restora-
tion. All his artist experience did him just as much good in
literature as it could have in any other way ; and in travel-
ling through Europe to see pictures, he learned not them
only, but men, manners, and languages. He read German ;
he knew French well, and spoke it elegantly ; and in market
places, salons, hotels, museums, studios, the sketch-book of
his mind was always filling itself. Paris was ono of his most
important headquarters in every way, and to his stay there
the world owes perhaps the best of his poems—the " Chro-

nicle of the Drum."
Thackeray was still young and opulent when he began to
make the acquaintance of London men of letters. Certain it
is that he lent—or in plainer English, gave—£soo to poor
old Maginn, when he was beaten in the battle of life, and
like other beaten soldiers made a prisoner—in the Fleet.
With the generation going out—that of Lamb and Cole-
ridge—he had, we believe, no personal acquaintance. Sydney
Smith he met at a later time ; and remembered with satis-
faction that something which he wrote about Hood gave
pleasure to that delicate humourist and poet in his last days.
But his first friends were the Fraserians, of whom Father

Front—always his intimate—and Carlyle, always one of his
most appreciating friends—survive. From reminis-
cences of the wilder lights in the Fraser constel-
lation were drawn the pictures of the queer fellows
connected with literature in " Pendennis," Cap-
tain Shandon, the ferocious Bludyer—stout old Tom
Sergeant—and so forth. Magazines in those days were more
brilliant than they are now, when they are haunted by the
fear of shocking the Fogy element in their circulation ; and
the effect of their greater freedom is seen in the buoyant,

riant, and unrestrained comedy of Thackeray's own earlier
Fraser articles. " I suppose we will begin by being too
savage," is the phrase of a letter which he wrote in 1819 ;
"I know one who did." lie was alluding here to the

"Yellow plush papers" in particular, where living men
were freely handled. This old, wild satiric spirit it was which

made him interrupt even the earlier chapters of " Vanity
Fair," by introducing a parody, which he could not resist,
of some contemporary novelists. In the last 15 years of his
life, he wrote under greater restraint, and with a sense of
his graver responsibilities as one of the leading men of letters
of the country. But his satire was never at any time malig-
nant ; and the fine freedom of his early writing, developed
his genius, as the scenes of the arena developed the athlete,
He was writing tor 12 or 13 years, as a professional author,

before " Vanity Fair" made him really known to the world
at large. The best works of that epoch will be found in the
" Miscellanies" published by Bradbury and Evans iu 1857.
But there is much of his writing buried in periodicals, some
of which have been long dead. He was connected with at least
one failure. The Parthenon--an ill-omened name,borne after
a long interval by another journal quite recently defunct. He
certainly contributed some things to the Times, during
Barnes's editorship—an article on Fielding amongst them;
though not, we should think, leading articles, a kind of
work for which he had no relish, and for which he believed
himself to have no turn. Fraser was the organ with which
ho was most successfully connected till the days of his
funeh engagement. It was, indeed, as a magazinist that
he educated himself for a novelist. The offer of " Vanity
Fair" was declined by one publisher ; and good judges said
that a necessary impulse was given to its appreciation by
an article during its progress in the Edinburgh Review.
When Thackeray wrote " Vanity Fair," in 1846-7.8, he
was living in Young-street, Kensington; and here, in 1848,
the author of this sketch had first the pleasure of seeing
hint, of being received at his table, and of knowing how es-
sentially a kind, humane, and p erfectly honest man he was.
"Vanity Fair" was then unfinished, but its success was
made, and he spoke frankly and genially of his work and his
career. " Vanity Fair" always, we think, ranked in his
own mind as best in story of his greater books ; and he once
pointed out to us the very house in Russell-square where his
imaginary Sedleys lived—a curious proof of the reality his
creations had fur his mind. The man and the books were
equally real and true, and it was natural that he
should speak without hesitation of his books, if you
wished it; though, as a man of the world and a
polished gentleman who knew the world thoroughly, litera-
ture to him only took its turn among other topics. From
this point of view, his relation to it was a good deal like
that of Scott. According to Lockhart, people were wrong
in saying that Sir Walter declined at all markedly to talk
about literature, and yet his main interest was in active life.
Just so, Thackeray was not bookish, and yet turned readily
to the subject of books, if invited. His reading was un-
doubtedly large in memoirs, modern history, biography,
poetry, essays, and fiction—and, taken in conjunction with
his scholarship, probably placed him, as a man. of letters,
above any other novelist except Sir Balw, r Lytton. Here is
a characteristic fragment, from one of his letters written in
August, 1854, and now before us I hate Juvenal," he
says; " I mean I think you a truculent brute, and I love
Horace better than you do, and rate Churchill much lower;
and as for S .01t, you haven't made me alter my opinion. I
admire, or rather admit, his power as much as you do ; but I
don't admire that kind of power as much as I did 15 years
ago, or 20 shall we say. Love is a higher intellectual exercise
than hatred ; and,when you get one or two more of those
young ones you write so pleasantly about, you'll come over
to the side of the kind wags, I think, rather than the cruel
ones." Passages like this—which men who knew him, will
not need to have quoted to th m—have a double value for
the world at large. They not only show a familiar com-
mand of whom it is by no means easy to know well,—
but they show what the real philosophy was of a man whom
the envious represented to the ignorant as a cynic and a
scoffer. Why, his favourite authors were just those whose
influence he thought had been beneficial to the cause of
virtue and charity. " 1 take off my hat to Joseph Addison,"
he would say, after an energetic testimony to his good effect
on English life. He was, in fact, even greater as a moralist
than as a mere describer of manner; and his very hatred of
quackery and meanness was proved to be real by his sim-
plicity, humanity, and kindliness of character. In private,
this great satirist, whose aspect in a crowd was often one of
austere politeness and reserve, unbent into a familiar naivete
which somehow one seldom finds in the demonstratively
genial. And this was the more charming and precious that
it rested on a basis of severe and profound reflection, before
the glance of which all that was dark and serious in man's
lie and prospects lay open. The gravity of that white
head, with its noble brow, and thoughtful face full of feel-
ing and meaning, enhanced the piquancy of his playfulness,
and of the little personal revelations which came with such
a grace from the depths of his kindly nature. When we
congratulated him, many years ago, on the touch in
" Vanity Fair," in which Becky "admires" her husband
when ho is giving Lord Steyne the chastisement which
ruins her for life, " Well," he said, " when I wrote the
sentence, I slapped my fist on the table, and said that
is a touch of genius I' " Tho incident is a trifle, but it will
reveal, we suspect, an element of fervour, as well as a
heartiness of frankness in recording the fervour, both
equally at variance with the vulgar conception of him.
This frankness and bonlommie made him delightful in a
tete-a-tete, and gave a pleasant human flavour to talk full
of sense, and wisdom, and experience, and lighted up by
the gaiety of the true London man of the world. Though
he said witty things now and then, he was not a wit in the
sense in which Jerrold was, and he complained, sometimes,
that his best things occurred to him after the occasion was
gone by,
After " Vanity Fair," Thackeray's fame steadily in-
creased. " Fendennis" appeared during 1849 and 1850, and
though it was generally considered inferior in mere plot to
its predecessor, no inferiority was perceived in the essential
qualities of character, thought, humour, and style. The
announcement in the summer of 18:51 that he was about to
lecture on the English Humourists gave a thrill of plea-
sure to intellectual London; and when he rose in Willis's
Rooms to commence the course with Swift, all that was
most brilliant in the capital was assembled to hear him,

Amidst a throng of nobles, and beauties, and men of
fashion, were Carlyle, and Macaulay—Hallam, with his
venerable head—and Charlotte Bronte, whose own fame
was just at its height, and who saw in the lec-
turer her ideal of an elevated and high-minded
master of literary art. The lectures were tho-
roughly appreciated. Everybody was delighted to see the
great masters of English of a past age brought to life
again in their habits as they lived, and endowed with the
warm human reality of the lecturer's Dobbinses, and War-
ringtons, and Pendennises.
It is a pity that Thackeray did not write expressaly on
America, for we think that he would have written the most
impartial English book to which that country has yet given
rise. When he returned from his first visit he was a good
deal away from town. " Since my return from America,"
he writes in August, 1854, " I have hardly been in London
at all, and when here, in such a skurry of business and
pleasure as never to call a day my own scarcely." The
passage is significant. Few lives were more engrossed
than his, discharging, as he did, at once the duties of a
man of letters and a man of fashion. He dined out a great
deal during the season. He went to the theatres. He be •
longed to three clubs—the Athenaeum, Reform, and Gar-
rick, to say nothing of minor associations for the promotion
of good fellowship. With less of this wear and tear we
should have had more work from him—should have had,
perhaps, the history which long dwelt in his imagination
as one of the creations of the future. As it is, he achieved
a great deal during the last eight or ten years of his life.
Two such elaborate novels as the " Newcomes" and the
" Virginians," a second trip to America, and a ramble
over Great Britain—with a new set of lectures on the
" Four Georges"—not to mention a contested election, and
what he did for the Cornhill, established on the strength of
his name, and for a long time directly conducted by him—
these were great doings for a man who, though naturally
robust, was plagued and menaced by more than one disor-
der of long continuance. And he did them greatly—
going into the world gaily and busily to the last; and
always finding time for such holy little offices of personal
kindness and charity as gave him, we believe and know,
more real pleasure than all his large share of the world's
applause.
Latterly, be had built himself a handsome house in
Kensington, to which he moved from Onslow•square,
Brompton—his residence after leaving the Young-street in
which he wrote " Vanity Fair." It was a dwelling worthy
of one who really represented literature in the great world,
and who, planting himself on his books, yet sustained the
character of his profession with all the dignity of a gentle-
man. A friend who called on him there from Edinburgh, in
the summer of 1862, playfully reminded him what Horace
says of those who, regardless of their sepulchre, employ
themselves in building houses—
" Sepulchri
Immemor, struis domos."

"Nay," said he, " I am manor sepulehri, for this house
will always let for so many hundreds (mentioning the sum)
a year." How distant, then, seemed the event which has
just happened, and with which the mind obstinately refuses
to familiarise itself though it stares at one from a thousand
broadsheets. Well, indeed, might his passing bell make
itself heard through all the myriad joy bells of the English
Christmas. It is long since England has lost such a son; it
will be long before sha has such another to lose.

The Late Fight Between King and Heenan.

LEWES, Wednesday Night.
At the quarter sessions, this day before the -Earl of Chi

cheater and a full bench of magistrates, the matter of the
prizefighters committed by the bench of magistrates at Mark
Cross, for taking part in the recent fight at Wadhurat, again
came before the Court, the bench of 'magistrates here having
deferred giving judgment upon an application made yester-
day by Mr. Edwara Begley.
_ . .

The defendants were in attendance, and it may be advis-
able to give their names :
Thomas King, John Carmel Heenan, Thos. Sayers, John
Tyler alias Boa Tyler, John Calvin Noon alias Jerry Noon,
John Macdonald, James Mace, and Robert Travers, were
called upon to answer an indictment for "riotously assem-
bling, together with divers other person, to the number o

500 and more, to disturb the public peace, and riotously as-
saulting and beating the said Thomas King and John Came
Heenan at Wadhurst, on the 10th Dec., 1863.
Mr. Roupell and Mr. Willoughby, instructed by Messrs
Stone, Wall, and Simpson, clerks to the Rotherfield bench
of magistrates, conducted the prosecution. Mr. Edward
Besley, instructed by Mr. J. G. Langham, of Ucklefield, de-
fended Thomas King, John Calvin Noon alias Jerry Noon,
James Mace, and John Tyler. _

Mr. Besley begged leave, before the defendants were called
upon to surrender, to renew the application he bad made to
the bench on the previous evening. That application had
been for a postponement of the trial of those defendants for
whom he appeared, and his lordship and the bench had de-
ferred dealing with it, in consequence of the absence of some
of the other defendants. He (Mr. Begley) understood that
those parties were now present before the bench, and were
able, therefore, to answer for themselves. He did not know
that it was necessary for him to repeat anything that he
said on the previous day, but would press upon the atten-
tion of the bench the fact of the depositions having been
signed at such a recent date, and the prosecution being at
the instance of one of the magistrates of the county of Sussex.
The depositions had bean taken on the 22d of Dec , and he
(Mr. Besley) thought he ought to put the bench ih posses-
sion of the fact that from that time up to almost the last
moment, indeed up to Monday afternoon, the pat ties were
all represented by the same solicitor, Mr. Thomas Beard, of
Baainghall-street, London; but owing to some disagreement
amongst the defendants themselves, as to the mode of ar-
rangement of the issue of this writ of certiorari, that gen-
tleman no longer represented Mr. King, and the other de-
fendants, who had since they had been in Lewes em-
ployed Mr. Langham, a solicitor at Uckfield, who now re-
presented them, and had instructed him (Mr. Besley).
The noble Chairman—Who do you appear for, Mr.
Besley, because at present the bench do not hear of any one
except the defendant King ?
Mr. Besley—l appear, my lord, for Thomas King, Jas.
Mace, John Calvin Noon, and John Tyler. He (Mr. Bes-
ley) felt sure that his lordship and the bench would forgive
him for saying, that men situated as the defendants were
might well object to being tried in the county of Sus-
sex, especially when they knew that the prosecution had
been instituted by one of the magistrates on the very bench
that would have to try them, and who was himself a prin-
cipal witness against them. He (Mr. Besley) thought that
that might well account for the application to Mr. Justice
Shee for the removal of the place of trialt and those who art
around him, would rather prefer such a course being taken,
if they considered it consistent with their duty.
The noble Chairman made a gesture of dissent.
Mr. Besley continuing, observed that he did not know
whether the writ of certiorari would.be granted, inasmuch
as the recognisances had not been entered into, but Mr.
Justice Shee had intimated that it would be granted upon
the usual conditions. On his own behalf he (Mr. Besley)
begged to urge on the bench that it was only on the pre-
vious day, late in the afternoon, that he had received his
brief, and he felt that he should not be doing justice to the
case by going into it at present. He, therefore, asked the
magistrates to exercise the discretionary power vested in
them, and postpone the trial till the next sessions. Beyond
that which he had already stated he would press upon their
attention the difficulty he felt in taking up such an impor-
tant case, and he really had not had the necessary time to
examine thoroughly the form of the indictment or the legal
effect it might have upon his clients. He therefore respect-
fully asked for a postponement.
Mr. Roupell hardly thought it necessary to say anything,
but felt bound to notice that the grounds upon which the

application for a postponement had been based on the pre-
vious evening were essentially different from those just
urged on personal grounds, which he (Mr. Roupell) would
of course at once have acceded to; but his learned friend had
put forward, as a new reason, that a fair trial could not, or
had inferred that it could not, be had in the county of Sus-
sex, and yet asked for a postponement to a time when it
would come before identically the same tribunal. With re-
gard to the writ of certiorari the bench knew nothing of it,
as though it had been so reported in the newspzpers, those
reports could not always be taken as exactly correct. If it
had been desired to remove the trial the writ could have
been completed and served upon the Court, who could have
dealt with it. As to his learned friend having been so re-
cently instructed, that fault lay with the defendants' attor-
ney, who neglected his duty, or with defendants themselves,
who did not urge the matter on. The prosecution ought no:
I to be put to additional expense ; nevertheless if the applica-
tion rested on the fact that the parties were not prepared to
go on with the trial, he felt, on the part of the prosecution,
that he could hardly resist the application.
The noble Chairman observed that the bench wished to
know whether those defendants who were not professionally
represented agreed in the request preferred by let r. Besley
on behalf of the others.
A consultation then took place between Mr. Charles Bush,
Mr. Coney, Heenan, Sayers, and the others, which resulted
in

Mr. Bexley informing the noble earl that all the defen-
dants agreed in the application for a postponement.
After conferring with the other magistrates,
The E irl of Chichester said—As it appears all the defen-
dants concur, the Court feel that that being the case, they
are justified in postponing the trial. For myself, I confess
I do not think the grounds are very strong ; but if they all
concur, we will grant it. Of course the parties must renew
the same recognisances.
The required bail having been renewed, the defendants
left the Court, Heenan and Macdonald returning to London
immediately,Tom Sayers betaking himself to Brighton,Tom
King remaining to indulge in a constitutional over the
downs, the invigorating air of which he had so much reason
to be grateful for in his recent contest. The crowd that
thronged the court quickly dispersed when the heroes of the
hour had vanished, and Lewe& was left to its wonted quie-
tude.

LUDGATE HILL.—A suggestion has been made in
the Builder for raising the whole line of street in the valley
of the Fleet from Blackfriars-bridgo. The gradients of
Ludgate hill and Fleet street would be thus improved, and
it might be then practicable to carry the much-deprecated
railway under, instead of over, the main approach to St.
Paul's,

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TIMES —ln the earlier period of the American
war the Federal land forces received very effictive

support from the gunboats on the rivers. More
than once the flotilla that accompanied the march

of the troops proved of essential service. The cap-
ture of New Orleans and a full share of the other

successes of the Northern Generals on the Missis-

sippi were due to the co-operation of naval officers.
But of the later incidents of the war the Federal

fleet, though immensely increased in number, has
not borne so prominent a part. The blockade of
the Southern coast has been kept up strictly enough
to cripple the export trade of the Confederacy, if
not to close its ha:bours totally against contraband
enterprise. Bat of the combined operations of the
siege of Charleston the navy failed in the part as-
signed to it, and how complete the failure has been
the American public has only just discovered. The
truth has long been suspected from the inaction of
the fleet of ironclads throughout the summer and
autumn. It was, of course, fully known to the
heads of the Navy Department, but the Govern-
ment would not avow it, preferring to impute the
defeat of the Monitors by the land batteries against
which they were sent to Admiral Dupont. He was
recalled for not having succeeded, and insinuations
against his professional skill or capacity were re-
peated in the recent Report of the Secretary of the
Navy appended to President Lincoln's Message to
Congress. The admiral and the officers under his
command naturally resent the implied censure, and
appeal to the official returns of the condition of the
whole fleet after the engagement to prove that any
repetition of the attack must have resulted in itv
total destruction. We have no interest whatever in
the dispute between Mr. Welles and the Admiral,
but very much in the question it involves as to the
power of land batteries to resist the attack of iron
ships. The first great experiment may not be
decisive, for we know that the American Moni-
tors were not the best possible vessels of the
kind. But it is the decided opinion of the
officers engaged that these irou:cased ships had no
chance against the concentrated fire of rifled artil•
lery. From the first few minutes after the Monitors
came within range of batteries the result was evi-
dent. The ships could neither sustain the fire to
which they were exposed, nor return it with any
effect. The repulse was a severe disappointment,
for the Northern people had been assured, and were
very ready to believe, that the iron fleet was invin-
cible. The attack was made on the 7th April last,
and within a few days afterwards the return of the
damage sustained must have been in the hands of
the Secretary. But the facts were too discouraging
to be published. The truth was suppressed, and
the public assured that, with a few repairs, the fleet
would be in a condition to pass all the batteries and
steam "up to the wharves of Charleston." The
Monitors were not withdrawn, as it would have
been an admission of the defeat. They have re-
mained in Charleston B ay, useless for all the opera-
tions of the siege, which has been carried on ever
since the spring by the military engineers and the
troops. The snore batteries they have constructed
have demolished the external works of Fort Sumter,

but this has not brought the assailing forces any
nearer the city. The failure of the Monitors was,
in fact, the failure of the eiege. Of all the depart-
ments of the Federal Government, the administra-
tion of the navy is at present the most unpopular.
But we do not see why Mr. Welles should be blamed
for the miscarriage of the ironclads. The whole
fleet was only an experiment. The ships were has-
tily constructed, but on the model of a vessel that
had done good service. It was impossible to cal-
culate the power of the guns the Southerners
were placing in the forts. These have proved
heavier and of longer range than the Federal
shipbuilders anticipated. And it appears from the
reports that several ironclads manoeuvring toge-
ther create difficulties not perceived in handling
a single ship. All the defects were discovered in
the two hours of trial. Unfortunately, they were
hours of battle, and what under other circumstances
would have been only the failure of an experiment
turned out a naval disaster. In some of the details
the particulars of the damage sustained in the action
are instructive. We discover the weak points of, the
invulnerable. They appear to be the " turrets ' and
the " port stoppers." A single unlucky shot, even
if not heavy enough to crush the iron armour, may
indent the metal on which the turret revolves, and
stop its working. The ship is at once disabled, On
board several of the Monitors the turret thus " be-
came jammed" and immovable. The " port stop-
pers" were also frequently hammered tight by a
shot, and could not be opened. A ball need not
pierce or smash everything in its way to inflict what
may be called a mortal wound on an ironclad; a
comparative scratch " will do" if it reduces the re-
volving turret to a fixture, or shuts its gun inside.
O.herwise the Monitors have great powers of endu-
rance. Some of them received 30 and 40 shots in
the hull without material injury, though one blow
on the turret may disable the ship as a combatant.
Another defect discovered was that these monsters
are purblind. The captain of the Patapsco found
"the want of vision one of the most serious defects
of this class, making it impossible to fight them
advantageously, to avoid danger, or to make a satis-
factory reconnaissance. In different terms, other
officers make the same complaint, A good look•
out is difficult. On board one Monitor the bell-wires
that communicated with the signal in the engine-
room were cut by a shot, and no orders could be sent
below. It does not appear that the heaviest hits do
the most serious damage, for there are portions of the
fittings that cannot be protected, and if these are
touched the ship is practically useless. But in all cases
the safety of the crew is nearly complete. The loss
of life in the engagement was very trifling. Some
of the captains conclude the account of their da-
mages by a few general inferences on the efficiency
of the class of vessel they had fought under such
novel conditions. The commander of the Montauk
says, " After testing the weight of the enemy's fire,
I believe that Charleston cannot be taken by the
naval force now present, and that had the attack
been continued, it must have resulted in disaster."
Another captain thinks that Monitors carrying a
15-inch gun cannot attack batteries mounted with
heavy ordnance. The ships must come within a
range that would be fatal to them, Capt. Fairfax
"is convinced that although this class of vessel can
stand a very heavy fire, yet the want of more guns
will render them comparatively harmless before
formidable earthworks and forts." He is " dis-
appointed beyond measure" at the result of this
experiment with the Monitors, but admits " it was
a fair trial." It is evident the new fleet of iron •cLads
will do little more in the siege of Charleston.
POST.—The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a
ready, eloquent, and effective speaker on almost any
subject that comes before him. By none of our
great statesmen, Lord Palmerston excepted, has that
best gilt of oratory which consists in the adaptation
of the speech to the audience been so remarkably
developed as by. Mr. Gladstone. In a country
reading-room, as in the Imperial Parliament, he
carries his hearers along with him, fascinated and
spell-bound even when they are not convinced. The
earnestness of the man supplements the skill of the
rhetorician, and in the rush of words that dazzle
the senses there is a deep under current of thought
which penetrates to the understanding and asserts
an irresistible mastery over the mind. Mr. Glad-
stone is one of the greatest orators of the day, and,
happily, he is also one of the truest and most dis•
cerning of philanthropists. There is no clap-trap
in his " extra-parliamentary utterances ;" nor does
he when he speaks to the labouring classes preach
discontent, or propagate agrarian theories, as is
the manner of some. He does not say one thing
ie the House of Commons and another thing in
Flintshire, and that which he says every where is
practical and to the point, and it is said heartily,
kindly, and evidently with a desire to do good.
At Buckley, where he inaugurated a working
man's reading-room on Monday last, Mr. Gladstone
delivered an address which can be read with profit
in every similar institution throughout the kingdom,
any by all of the class to whom it was especially
spoken. It was exactly one of those plain, un-
adorned, yet always eloquent speeches which the
Chancellor of the Exchequer has the happy power
of making acceptable and agreeable. There was no
cant in it. It was not the speech of a Pharisee, but
of a man of the world. Mr. Gladstone did not run
down the publichouses ; but on the contrary, ad-
mitted that they had their uses, and that stimulants
taken in moderation were of the necessaries of life
to those who worked hard as ho himself did. Nor
did he recommend reading-rooms as resorts in which
all the leisure hours of the working man were to be
spent; but, in pointing out that they offered faci-
lities for mental instruction which the men of this
class could not be expected to obtain at their own
homes, he took care to have it understood that home
duties were of primary importance. In short, he
took that view of the mission, if we may so call it,
which he was advocating, that if taken more gene-
rally would, we are persuaded, tend to bring work-
ing men to a better appreciation of the benefits of
literary instruction than they appear now to pos-
sess. It is too much the fashion to speak of these
reading-rooms as if they were adult schools or
places of relaxation conducted on the " total absti-
nence principle." There is nothing human in the
manner in which they are commonly supported,
and the chairs and tables and second hand-news-
papers are all redolent of charity and direction.
They are not places in which the working man can
take his ease as he can at a publichouse ; and
hough they seldom strive after it in the right way,
there is nothing working men like better than ease
and independence. And it was to this feeling that
Mr. Gladstone principally addressed himself.
Taking for his text-word economy, he showed, as
persuasively as cogently, that the working men had

the means of achieving their own independence. He
invited them to help themseiveta, and he indicated the
means they had of doing FO. Nor did he hesitate to
enforce his argument by a comparison which would
only a few years ago have been very unfavourably
received in the rural districts. In Scotland and in
France the labouring classes were, he said, more
thrifty and provident than they were in this coun-
try, although, as regarded the French, their wages
were 20 to 30 per cent. cent less than here. Mr.
Gladstone minutely explained the character and
the ohject of the Post-office snvings binks, dwelling
forcibly on the advantages they presented to the
working man who was disposed to be economical,
and emphatically replying to the objection that had
been made to them, and which we noticed at the

time, that the depositors were not protected by
secresy. The Chancellor now states that this is a
binding obligation on the part of the postmaster,
and that any violation of it will 13a visited with
censure, and, if repeated, with dismissal. He added,
and our own information confirms his opinion, that .
he did not believe the old saving banks were over
particular about the secresy the depositors naturally
desired. Three thousand of the Post-office banks
have been opened, and nearly five millions of money
have been already deposited in them. This, there-
fore, is at all events a good beginning, and one on
which Mr. Gladstone is particularly entitled to
speak in terms of congratulation. As he truly said,
Parliament cannot supply a frugal disposition ; the
Government is not able to compel people to be pro-
vident; but in opening the way to that end, which
has been done in the establishment of these banks,

the State has recognised its duty in the matter. The
rest must come, as come it will, through education

—through the agency of reading-rooms such as
that in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer
appropriately introduced the subject of banking tor
the people—and the more working men are taught
to rely on themselves, on their own energies, and on
their resources, the better it will be for them. They
may not see this immediately, though many of them
do; but in the long run they will all, more or less,
be brought to acknowledge that it is not in poli'ical
reforms, nor in philanthropic associations, but within
themselves—in their own honest hearts and strong
arms—that their real ability to rise in the social
scale is to be found.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

.1-•
LYNN--.TUESDAY.

The weather is now clear and frosty. At to-day's mat,es
ket there was a fair show of wheat, with a ready sale, and
the prices of last week advanced is per qr. Malting bar-
ley 18 higher, and grinding descriptions sold better. Beans
and peas were about supported.
White ..45s to 46s / Barley ...36s to 375
Red .. 4ls to 48s I Grinding .. 33s to 34s
Beans .43s to 44s I Oats .22s to 26s
New 3Bs to 40s I Peas —s to --

MELTON MOWBRAY-TUESDAY.

The following were the currencies :—New white wheat,
42s Od to 45s Od; new red, 38s Od to 42s per 36 stone;
beans, 38s to 41s for old ; new sorts, 34s to 36s per 38 st. ;
barley, 36s to 39s for malting, and 28s to 30s per qr. or
grinding; new oats, lbs_ to 23s Od per 24 stone ; old, 250
to 275.