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in all these political occurrences was combined with a consciousness not less habitual or intense of their inherent vanity, There is a seeming paradox in the solicitude with which he devoted so much of his life to secular pursuits, and the very light esteem in which he held them. The solution of the enigma is to be found in his unremitting habits of devotion. No man could more scrupulously obey the precept which Mr Taylor has given to his statesman'-To observe a Sabbatical day in every week, and a Sabbatical hour in every day.' Those days and hours gave him back to the world, not merely with recruited energy, but in a frame of mind the most favourable to the right discharge of its duties. Things in themselves the most trivial, wearisome, or even offensive, had, in his solitude, assumed a solemn interest from their connexion with the future destinies of mankind, while the brilliant and alluring objects of human ambition had been brought into a humiliating contrast with the great ends for which life is given, and with the immortal hopes by which it should be sustained, Nothing can be more heartfelt than the delight with which he breathed the pure air of these devotional retirements. Nothing more soothing than the tranquillity which they diffused over a mind harassed with the vexations of a political life.

Mr Wilberforce retired from Parliament in the year 1825. The remainder of his life was passed in the bosom of his family. He did not entirely escape those sorrows which so usually thicken as the shadows grow long, for he survived both his daughters; and from that want of worldly wisdom which always characterised him, he lost a very considerable part of his fortune in speculations in which he had nothing but the gratification of parental kindness to gain or to hope. But never were such reverses more effectually baffled by the invulnerable peace of a cheerful and self-approving heart. There were not wanting external circumstances which marked the change; but the most close and intimate observer could never perceive on his countenance even a passing shade of dejection or anxiety on that account. He might, indeed, have been supposed to be unconscious that he had lost any thing, had not his altered fortunes occasionally suggested to him remarks on the Divine goodness, by which the seeming calamity had been converted into a blessing to his children and to himself. It afforded him a welcome apology for withdrawing from society at large, to gladden, by his almost constant presence, the homes of the sons by whom his life has been recorded. There, surrounded by his children and his grandchildren, he yielded himself to the current of each successive inclination; for he had now acquired that rare maturity of the moral stature in which the conflict

between inclination and duty is over, and virtue and self-indulgence are the same. Some decline of his intellectual powers was perceptible to the friends of his earlier and more active days;

but

To things immortal time can do no wrong,

And that which never is to die, for ever must be young.' Looking back with gratitude, sometimes eloquent, but more often from the depth of the emotion faltering on the tongue, to his long career of usefulness, of honour, and enjoyment, he watched with grave serenity the ebb of the current which was fast bearing him to his eternal reward. He died in his seventy-fifth year, in undisturbed tranquillity, after a very brief illness, and without any indication of bodily suffering. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the presence of a large number of the members of both Houses of Parliament; nor was the solemn ritual of the church ever pronounced over the grave of any of her children with more affecting or more appropriate truth. Never was recited, on a more fit occasion, the sublime benediction I heard a voice from 'Heaven saying, Write, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.'

The volumes to which we have been chiefly indebted for this very rapid epitome of some of the events of Mr Wilberforce's life, will have to undergo a severe ordeal. There are numberless persons who assert a kind of property in his reputation, and who will resent as almost a personal wrong any exhibition of his character which may fall short of their demands. We believe, however, though not esteeming ourselves the best possible judges, that even this powerful party will be satisfied. They will find in this portraiture of their great leader much to fulfil their expectations. Impartial judges will, we think, award to the book the praise of fidelity, and diligence, and unaffected modesty. Studiously withdrawing themselves from the notice of their readers, the biographers of Mr Wilberforce have not sought occasion to display the fruits of their theological or literary studies. Their task has been executed with ability, and with deep affection. No one can read such a narrative without interest, and many will peruse it with enthusiasm. It contains several extracts from Mr Wilberforce's speeches, and throws much occasional light on the political history of England during the last half century. It brings us into acquaintance with a circle in which were projected and matured many of the great schemes of benevolence by which our age has been distinguished, and shows how partial is the distribution of renown in the world in which we are living. A more equal dispensation of justice would have awarded a far more

conspicuous place amongst the benefactors of mankind to the names of Mr Stephen and Mr Macaulay, than has ever yet been assigned to them.

Biography, considered as an art, has been destroyed by the greatest of all biographers, James Boswell. His success must be forgotten before Plutarch or Isaac Walton will find either rivals or imitators. Yet Memoirs, into which every thing illustrative of the character or fortunes of the person to be described is drawn, can never take a permanent place in literature, unless the hero be himself as picturesque as Johnson, nor unless the writer be gifted with the dramatic powers of Boswell. Mr Wilberforce was an admirable subject for graphic sketches in this style; but the hand of a son could not have drawn them without impropriety, and they have never been delineated by others. A tradition, already fading, alone preserves the memory of those social powers which worked as a spell on every one who approached him, and drew from Madame de Staël the declaration that he was the most eloquent and the wittiest converser she had met in England. But the memory of his influence in the councils of the state, of his holy character, and of his services to mankind, rests upon an imperishable basis, and will descend with honour to the latest times.

ART. VI. Retrospect of Western Travel. By HARRIET MARTINEAU. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1838.

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THES HESE volumes form a kind of supplement to the three which Miss Martineau published last year under the more ambitious, but less affected title of Society in America.' I have 'since been strongly solicited,' says she, in her preface, 'to com'municate more of my personal narrative, and of the lighter 'characteristics of men, and incidents of travel, than it suited my purpose to give in the other work. It has also been represented to me, that as my published book concerns the Americans at 'least as much as the English, there is room for another which 'shall supply to the English what the Americans do not want— a picture of the aspect of the country, and of its men and man'ners.' Nevertheless, we cannot say that we have discovered, on perusal, many traces of the difference which she here points out between the scope and purpose of her two works. On the contrary, they seem to contain abstruse speculations in politics and philosophy, personal narrative, picturesque description, anecdote and illustration, mixed up in pretty equal proportions; and, al

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though the first may bear at first sight more the appearance of a collection of essays, and the latter of a book of travels, the difference does not go much farther than the title-page. And, as is natural, the choice leaves of her scrap-book have found their way for the most part into the earlier of the two works. Nevertheless, there is much to interest readers of every class in the three volumes before us; and, as we did not give any account of their predecessors at the time of their appearance, certainly in no spirit of neglect, but from a reluctance to follow the writer on that sea of political and social controversies into which she plunged so vigorously, we are the more bound to pay some attention to this publication.

Undoubtedly, Miss Martineau enjoyed advantages for the prosecution of her observations on the society and habits of the United States, very far superior to those possessed by any of her predecessors. She came neither as a supercilious Tory, nor as a disappointed republican; she had no prejudices to surmount on the one hand, no exaggerated expectations to correct on the other; her mind and her habits were already, it may almost be said, akin to those of America. She belongs to that party in England, religious and political, which, ever since the days of Priestly, has kept up a peculiar connexion with one of the most important portions of American society. The very strongholds of that party in England-Liverpool and Manchester-are allied by close mercantile ties to Boston and New York; and the alliance of mind is closer still. The party of which we speak does not count a very numerous following in either country; but it is peculiarly distinguished by its high intellectual cultivation, and by a certain degree of exclusive pride with which that cultivation is attended. In England its tenets approach to a tempered republicanism; in America, it is looked upon as rather aristocratically inclined. But this is a difference which the opposite circumstances of the two countries naturally seem to produce; for, in England, intellectual superiority, wherever it does not bow in willing subjection to the existing oligarchy of birth and wealth, always has a tendency to train off from it, and form a commonwealth apart; in America, where little other aristocracy exists, a high degree of education is looked on as a sort of title of nobility, and regarded with some jealousy by the multitude. Affinity of opinion has produced between members of these parties, on each side of the Atlantic, a sort of cousinship, and similarity of manner and tone of thought, not to be met with between any other classes in the several countries. The slight peculiarities, both of habit and mind, which appear to characterise well-educated Americans of the Eastern States, are

more nearly to be matched among the higher classes of Dissenters, in the great provincial towns of England, than any where else; and an English Unitarian, especially if connected by family and acquaintance with the select people of that sect in his own country, is pretty sure of meeting in America, not only with the kind and hospitable reception which all travellers with good recommendations can procure, but with a sort of family greeting. Adding these advantages to her own high reputation, it is no wonder that Miss Martineau found herself at once received on a footing of acquaintanceship, and soon of intimacy, in the best circles of every part of the Republic.

There is one more reason which we may venture to suggest, as having often occurred to us in the perusal of these pages, for the pleasure which Miss Martineau takes in American habits and society, and her freedom from all sensitiveness to some of those alleged defects on which English observers are generally apt to insist. It arises out of the character which she bears with a dignity far beyond the reach of vulgar ridicule,—that of a lady of high literary talent and attainments. All of us must often have observed, how much more acutely (over-acutely perhaps) every man and woman perceives and judges the fault of exaggeration in manner and deportment in his or her own sex than in the other. One who is judged a coxcomb among men, is not always condemned as such by the taste of female observers ; nor do gentlemen always agree with ladies in fixing the limits between decent vivacity and over-boldness in the female character. And, by the same rule, it will be pretty generally found, that literary coxcombry, or pedantry, is a sin far more rudely criticised by male than female judges. There is nothing from which men shrink so carefully, in what is called highly polished society in England, as this species of display. And this is not owing to the influence of females in that society, but to the influence of the man of fashion, the sportsman, and the man of business, who give, in different ways and degrees, their respective tones to most of the conversation in which Englishmen indulge. Shy pedantry, driven by ridicule or superciliousness out of such circles as these, often finds refuge under the protection of the other sex; by whom the boundaries between the lawful and unlawful, the brilliant and the tedious, are certainly not laid down quite as scrupulously as they are by men. Now, in America there is no large class in easy circumstances and abounding in leisure, yet generally careless of intellectual pursuits, to give its gayer colour to general conversation; there is little, too, of that peculiar education which men of the world go through in European capitals, acquiring finish and point often at the ex

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