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to win and to diffuse them; that it exhibits not merely to claim, but to select for his own literature, once the privilege only of a clois- a portion in that inheritance which the mighty tered few, supplying the finest links of social dead have left to mankind,-secured by the anion for this vast society, to be expanded by magic power of the press, against the decays those numerous members of the middle class of time and the shocks of fortune; or to exult whom they are now embracing, and who yet in a communion with the spirit of that mighty comprise, as the poet says, "two-thirds of all literature which yet breathes on us fresh from the virtue that remains," throughout that greater the genius of the living; to feel that we live mass which they are elevating, and of whose in a great and original age of literature, proud welfare they, in turn, will be the guardians, also in the consciousness that its spirit is not we feel that this assembly represents objects only to be felt as animating works elaborately which, though intensely local, are yet of uni- constructed to endure, but as, with a noble versal concern, and cease to wonder at that prodigality, diffusing lofty sentiments, sparkfamiliar interest with which strangers at once ling wit, exquisite grace, and suggestions even regard them. for serene contemplation through the most rapid effusions, weekly, monthly, daily given to the world; and, far beyond the literature of every previous age of the world, aiding the spirit of humanity, in appreciating the sufferings, the virtues, and the claims of the poor. And if I must confess, even when refreshed by the invigorating influences of this hour, that I can scarcely fancy myself virtuous enough to join one of your classes for the acquisition of science or language, or young enough to share in the exercises of your gymnasium, where good spirits and kind affections attend on the development of physical energy, there are yet some of your gay and graceful intermixtures of amusement to which I would gladly claim admission. I would welcome that delightful alternation of gentle excitement and thoughtful repose by which your musical entertainments tend to the harmony and proportion of life itself. I should rejoice to share in some of those Irish Evenings by which our friend Mr. Lover has suggested, in its happiest aspects, that land which is daily acquiring, I hope, that degree of affection and justice which it so strongly claims. I would appreciate with the heart, if not with the ear, the illustrations of Burns, by which some true Scottish melodist has made you familiar with that poet, and enabled you to forget labour and care, and walk with the inspired rustic "in glory and in joy" among his native hills; and with peculiar gratitude to your directors for enabling you to snatch from death and time some vestiges of departing grandeur in a genial art, which the soonest yields to their ravages;-I would hail with you the mightiest and the loveliest dramas of the world's poet, made palpable without the blandishments of decoration or scenery by the voice of the surviving artist of the Kemble name-in whose accents, softened, not subdued, by time, the elder of us may refresh great memories of classic grace, heroic daring, and softened grief, when he shared the scene with his brother and his sister; and those of us who cannot vaunt this privilege of age, may guess the greatness of the powers which thrilled their fathers in those efforts to which your causethe cause of the youth of Manchester-breathing into the golden evening of life, a second spring, redolent with hope and joy, have lent a more than youthful inspiration. And while I am indulging in a participation of your pleasures, let me take leave to congratulate you on that gracious boon, which I am informed-(and rejoice to hear it, as one of the best of al prizes and all omens in a young career) your

Personally till a few days ago a stranger to almost every member of your institution, or rather cluster of institutions, I find now to-day, in the little histories of your aims and achievements, which your reports present, an affinity, sudden indeed but lasting, with some of the best and happiest passages in a thousand earnest and laborious lives. I seem to take my place in your lecture room, an eager and docile listener, among young men whom daily duties preclude from a laborious course of studies, to be refreshed, invigorated, enlightened-sometimes nobly elevated, sometimes as nobly humbled, by the living lessons of philosophic wisdom-whether penetrating the earth or elucidating the heavens, or developing the more august wonders of the world which lies within our own natures, or informing the Present with the spirit of the Past;-happy to listen to such lessons from some gifted stranger, or well-known and esteemed professor, scattering the gems of knowledge and taste, to find root in opening minds;-but, better still, if the effort should be made by one of your selves, by a fellow-townsman and fellowstudent, emboldened and inspirited by the assurance of welcome to try some short excursion of modest fancy, or to illustrate some cherished theory by genial examples, and privileged to taste, in the heartiest applause of those who know him best and esteem him most, that which, after all, is the choicest ingredient in the pleasure of the widest fame. I mingle with your Essay and Discussion Class; share in the tumultuous but hopeful throbbings of some young debater; grow placid as his just self-reliance masters his fears; triumph in his crowning success; and understand, in his timid acceptance of your unenvying congratulations, at the close of his address, that most exquisite pleasure which attends the first assurance of ability to render palpable in language the products of lonely self-culture, and the consciousness that, as ideas which seemed obscure and doubtful while they lurked in the recesses of the mind, are, by the genial inspiration of the hour, shaped into form and kindled into life, they are attested by the understand ings and welcomed by the affections of numbers. I seek your Library, yet indeed but in its infancy, but from whence information and refined enjoyment speed on quicker and more multitudinous wings than from some of the stateliest repositories of accumulated and cloistered learning, to vindicate that the right which the youngest apprentice lad possesses,

virtues have won for a large number of your lence, that I anticipate the best fruits of you! fellow-workers-that precious Saturday's half-peaceful victories. A season has arrived in holiday-precious almost to man as to boy, the history of mankind, when talents, which in when manhood, having borrowed the endearing darker ages.might justify the desire to quit the name from childhood, seeks to enrich it with obscure and honourable labours of common all that remains to it of childhood's delights-life in quest of glittering distinction, can now precious as a noble proof of the respect and only be employed with safety in adorning the sympathy of the employers for those whose in-sphere to which they are native; when of a dustry they direct-and most precious of all in multitude of competitors for public favour, few its results, if, being brightened and graced by only can arrest attention; and when even of such images as your association invokes on those who attain a flattering and merited popu your leisure, it shall leave body and mind more larity, the larger number must be content to fit for the work and service of earth and of regard the richest hues of their fancy and heaven. thought, but as streaks in the dawn of that jocund day which now "stands tiptoe on the misty mountain's top," and in the full light of which they will speedily be blended. But if it is almost "too late to be ambitious," except on some rare occasions, of the immortality which earth can bestow; yet for that true immortality of which Fame's longest duration is but the most vivid symbol; for that immortality which dawns now in the childhood of every man as freshly as in the morning of the world, and which breaks with as solemn a foreshadowing in the soul of the most ordinary faculties, as in that of the mightiest poet; for that immortality, the cultivation of wisdom and beauty is as momentous now as ever, although no eyes, but those which are unseen, may take note how they flourish. In the presence of that immortality, how vain appears all undue restlessness for a little or a great change in our outward earthly condition! How worse than idle all assumptions of superior dignity of one mode of honourable toil to another!-how worthless all differences of station, except so far as station may enable men to vindicate some everlasting principle, to exemplify some arduous duty, to grapple with some giant oppression, or to achieve the blessings of those who are ready to perish! How trivial, even as the pebbles and shells upon "this end and shoal of time," seem all those immunities which can only be spared by fortune, to be swept away by death, compared with those images and thoughts, which, being reflected from the eternal, not only through the clear meridian of holy writ, but, though more dimly, through all that is affecting in history, exquisite in art, suggestive in eloquence, profound in science, and divine in poetry, shall not only outlast all the chances and changes of this mortal life, but shall defy the chilness of the grave! Believe me, there is no path more open to the influences of heaven, than the common path of daily duty; on that path the lights from the various departments of your Athenæum will fall with the steadiest lustre; that path, so illumined, wil! be trodden in peace and joy, if not in glory; happy if it afford the opportunity, as it may to some of you, of clearly elucidating some great truth, which, being reflected from the polished mirrors of thousands of associated minds, sure of the opportunity of affording the means of perceiving and accepting, embracing and diffusing many glorious truths, which, when once fairly presented, although they may be surveyed in different aspects, and tinted with the hues of the various minds which receive them, may

Thus regarding myself as a partaker, at least in thought and in spirit, of the various benefits of your association, I would venture to regard them less as the appliar.ces by which a few may change their station in our external life, than as the means of adorning and ennobling that sphere of action in which the many must continue to move; which, without often enkindling an ambition to emulate the immortal productions of genius, may enable you the more keenly to enjoy, and the more gratefully to revere them; which, if they do not teach you the art of more rapidly accumulating worldly riches; and if they shall not-because they cannot-endow you with more munificent dispositions to dispense them than those which have made the generosity of Manchester proverbial throughout the Christian world, may ensure its happiest and safest direction in time to come, by encouraging those who may dispense it hereafter, to associate in youth, with the affection of brotherhood, for objects which suggest and breathe of nothing but what is wise, and good, and kind. It may be, indeed, that some master mind, one of those by which Providence, in all generations and various conditions of our species, has vindicated the Divinity which stirs within it, beyond the power of barbarism to stifle, or education to improve, or patronage to enslave, may start from your ranks into fame, under auspices peculiarly favourable for the safe direction of its strength; and, if such rare felicity should await you, with how generous a pride will you expatiate on the greatness which you had watched in its dawning, and with how pure a satisfaction will your sometime comrade, your then illustrious townsman, satiated with the applause of strangers, revert to those scenes where his genius found its earliest expression, and earned its most delightful praise. If another "marvellous boy," gifted like him of Bristol, should now arise in Manchester, his "sleepless soul" would not "perish in its pride;" his energies, neither scoffed at nor neglected, would not be suffered to harden through sullenness into despair; but his genius, fostered by timely kindness, and aided by your judicious counsel, would spring, in fitting season, from amidst the protecting cares of admiring friends, to its proper quarry, mindful, when soaring loftiest, of the associations and scenes among which it was cherished, “true to the kindred points of heaven and home." But it is not in the cultivation and encouragement of such rare intellectual prodigies, still less in he formation of a race of imitators of excel

seem to have "a difference," will be found es- | all momentous changes of the world have been sentially the same to all, and will enrich the being of each and all.

produced by individual greatness, so all popu lar and free institutions can only be rendered and kept vital by individual energies-a result which nothing can even threaten but that most insidious form of indolence which is called modesty and self-distrust; a result against which not only the welfare of this great town, and of each stranger who comes to Manchester, and who may now hope to find beneath the shelter of your roof a great intellectual home, but also the exigencies of the time in which we live, plead with solemn voices! They remind you that existence has become almost a different thing since it began with some of us. It then justified its old similitude of a journey; it quickened with intellect into a march; it is now whirling with science and speculation into a flight. Space is contracted and shrivelled up like a scroll; time disdains its old relations to distance; the intervals between the "flighty purpose" and the deed

its attenuated films, are almost annihilated; and the national mind must either glow with generous excitement, or waste in fitful fever. How important then is it, that throughout our land-but more especially here where all the greatest of the material instruments have their triumphant home-almost that of the alchemist

There is one advantage which I may justly boast over both my predecessors in this office, -that of being privileged to announce to you a state of prosperity far more advanced and more confirmed than that which either could develop. The fairest prophecies which Mr. Dickens put forth, in the inspiration of the time, in the year 1843, have been amply fulfilled-the eloquent exhortations of Mr. D'Israeli, in 1844, have been met by noble responses. From a state of depression, which, four or five years ago, had reduced the number of members nearly to 400, and steeped the institution in difficulty, it is now so elevated that, as to life members, you number 133 of those who have made the best of all possible investments, because the returns are sure and certain, and the rewards at once palpable and fair, which thus greet your life governors upon these happy anniversaries; you have of pay-through which thought might lazily spread out ing members no fewer than 2500-with an income of £4000 a year-with a debt annihilated, with the exception of that on mortgage, and with good hope even that this encumbrance may be soon swept away, and of informing the Courts of Bankruptcy, which I understand have taken shelter beneath your roof, that it will soon be time for them to look the spiritual agencies should be quickened out for a more appropriate home. Before I into kindred activity; that the few minutes of entered this room, I confess I was inclined to leisure and repose which may be left us should, wonder how these great effects had been by the succession of those "thoughts which achieved; I knew they had been principally wander through eternity," become hours of accomplished by the great exertions, the sac- that true time which is dialled in heaven; that rifices scarcely less than heroic, of some few to a mind winged for distant scenes, convermembers of your society, who had taken its sant with the society of the great of all ages, interest deeply to heart; but now, when I see and warmed by sympathy to embrace the ast the scene before me, so graced and adorned as interests of its species, the few hours in which it is, I certainly need be surprised at no energies the space between London and Manchester is which have been put forth,-I can wonder at now traversed-nay the little hour in which it no results that have been attained. Those ex- may soon be flashed over-shall have an inertions, however, permit me to remind you, tellectual duration equal to the old, legitimate, having been of extraordinary character, you six days' journey of our fathers; while thought, can scarcely hope to be renewed. You must no longer feebly circling in vapid dream, but look for the welfare of this institution to its impelled right onward with divine energy, younger members. To them I speak when I shall not only outspeed the realized miracles say, "To you its destinies are confided; on of steam, but the divinest visions of atmoyou, if not its existence, yet its progress and spheric prophecy, and still keep "the start of its glory depend; for its happiest success will the majestic world." Mr. Canning once not arise mainly from emancipated revenues, boasted of his South American policy, that he or the admiring sympathy of strangers, or even had "called a new world into existence to from a scheme remarkably liberal and com- redress the balance of the old," be it your prehensive, adapted to all, and embracing the nobler endeavour to preserve the balance even feelings of all; nor yet in laws admirably between the world within us and the world framed, to preserve and support its proportion without us-not vainly seeking to retard the and order; but it is by the vigorous efforts of life of action, but to make it steady by conyourselves perpetually renewing spirit and templation's immortal freightage. In your life in its forms-without which their very course,-members of the Manchester Atheperfection will be dangerous, because, while næum,-society at large may watch, and I presenting the fairest shows, they may, with believe will mark, the clear indications both less violence of apparent and startling transi- of its progress and its safety. While the solition, cease to be realities, and, instead of a tary leisure of the clerk, of the shopman, of great arena of intellectual exertion, may the apprentice, of the overseer, as well as of become only the abode of intellectual enjoy- the worker in all departments of labours, from ment and luxury-fair, admirable, graceful the highest to the lowest, shall be gladdened, still; but the moving and elevating impulse of at will, by those companions to whom the a vast population no more!-I know I wrong" serene creators of immortal things," in verse you in deprecating such a result as possible; and prose, have given him perpetual introa result I only imagine, to remind you that, as duction, and who will never weary, or betray

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or forsake him;-while the voluntary toils of thundered as the watchwords of unnumbered associated labour and. study shall nourish struggles for power are now fast waning into among you friendships, not like the slight alli-history, it is too much to hope, perhaps to ances of idle pleasure, to vanish with the hour desire, until the education of mankind shall they gladdened, but to endure through life with more nearly approach its completion, that the products of the industry which fed them; strong differences of opinion and feeling while in those high casuistries which your should cease to agitate the scenes on which most ambitious discussions shall engender, the | freemen are called to discharge political duties. ardent reasoner shall recognise here the beat- But the mind of the staunchest partisan, exings of the soul against the bars of its clay panded by the knowledge and embellished by tenement, and gather even from the mortal the graces which your Athenæum nurtures, impediments that confound and baffle it, assu- will find its own chosen range of political rance that it is winged to soar into an ampler associations dignified-the weapons of its warand diviner ether than invests his earthly heri- fare not blunted, but ornamented and embossed tage; while the mind and heart of Manchester,—and, instead of cherishing an ignorant atturning the very alloy and dross of its condi-tachment to a symbol; a name, or a ribbon, tion to noble uses, even as its mechanists expressed in vulgar rage, infuriated by intemtransmute the coarsest substances to flame and perance to madness, blindly violating the speed, shall expand beyond the busy confines charities of life, and disturbing sometimes its of its manufactures and commerce to listen to holiest domestic affections-it shall grow calm the harmonies of the universe;-while, vindi- in the assertion of principle, disdain the sugcating the power of the soul to be its own gestions of expediency, even as those of corplace, it shall draw within the narrow and ruption, and partake of the refinement which dingy walls to which duty may confine the distance lends, while "with large discourse body, scenes touched with colours more fair looking before and after," he expands his and lovely than "ever were by sea or land," or prospect to the dim horizon of human hopes, trace in each sullen mass of dense and hover- and seeks his incentives and examples in the ing vapour, tragic pictures of history. A politician thus instructed and ennobled, who adopts the course which most inclines to the conservation of establishments, will not support the objects of his devotion with a mere obstinate adherence, while it shall give the last and noblest proof of chiefly because they oppose barriers to the the superiority of spirit over matter by com- aims of his opponents, but will learn to revere manding, by its own naked force, as by an en- in them the grandeur of their antiquity, the chanter's wand, the presence of those shapes human affections they have sheltered and nur of beauty and power which have hitherto nurtured, the human experiences which mantle tured the imagination in the solitude and still-round them, and the inward spirit which has ness of their realities;-while the glory of such institutions shall illumine the fiercest rapids of commercial life with those consecrating gleams which shall disclose in every small mirror of smooth water which its tumultuous eddies may circle, a steady reflection of some fair and peaceful image of earthly loveliness, or some glory of cloud or sky, preserving amidst the most passionate impulses of earth some traces of the serenity of heaven;-then may we exult as the chariot of humanity flies onward with safety in its speed, for we shall discover, like Ezekiel of old, in prophetic vision, the spirit in its wheels!

"A forked mountain, a blue promontory.
With trees upon 't that nod into the world,
And mock our eyes with air;"

There is yet one other aspect in which I would contemplate your association before I enter on the more delightful part of my dutythat in which success is certain-the soliciting for you the addresses of distinguished men, some of them attached to your welfare as well by local ties as by general sympathy, others gladly attending on your invitation, who feel your cause to be their cause, the cause of their generation and of the future. It is that in which its influences will be perceived, not merely banishing from this one night's eminence, raised above the level of common life, and devoted by knowledge to kindness, all sense of political differences, but softening, gracing, and ennobling the spirit of party itself as long as it must continue active. For although party's out-worn moulds have been shivered, and names which have flashed and

rendered them vital; while he who pants for important political changes will no longer anticipate, in the removal of those things which he honestly regards as obstacles to the advancement of his species, a mere dead level or a vast expanse redeemed only from vacancy by the cold diagrams of theory, but will hail the dawning years as thronged by visions of peaceful happiness; and, as all great senti ments, like all great passions, however oppo site may be their superficial aspects, have their secret affinities, so may these champions and representatives of conflicting parties, at the very height of the excitation produced by the energy of their struggle, break on a sense of kindred, if not of their creeds, at least of their memories and their hopes-embrace the past and the future in one glorious instant, conscious, at once, of those ancient anticipations with which the youth of the past was inspired, when the point we have attained was faintly discerned at the verge of its horizon by the intensest vision of its philosophy, and grasping and embracing the genial idea of the future as richest in the ever-accumulating past which time prepares for its treasure. Then shall they join in hailing, as now we hail from this neutral eminence, the gradual awakening of individual man of every class, colour, and clime, to a full consciousness of the loftiness of his origin, the majesty of his duties, the glories of his destiny. Then shall they rejoice with us in the assurance that, as he con

quers the yet desert regions of the earth which was given him to be replenished and subdued, the same magic by which you are here enabled to let in on the densest population the air and feeling of mountain solitude, will, in turn, breathe through the opening wilderness the genial refinements of old society; that, as the forest yields to his stout heart and sturdy arm, the dominion of imagination and fancy will extend before him, their powers investing the glades he opens with poetic visions, shedding the purple light of love through thickets and groves till then unthreaded, and touching the extremest hills, when first disclosed to the human eye, with the old familiar hues of Christian hope and joy. Then, in the remotest

conquests of civilization, shall new Athena ums arise, framed on your model-vocal with your language-inspired with your hopes-to echo back the congratulations which shall be wafted to them even from this place, on each succeeding anniversary, if not by yourselves, by your children and your children's children, and yet more remote descendants, and to bless the names of those who, amidst the toils, the cares, and the excitements of a season of transition and struggle, rescued the golden hours of the youth around them from debasing pleasures and more debasing sloth, and enabled them to set to the world, in a great crisis of its moral condition, this glorious example of intellectual courage and progress.*

LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL.

[QUARTERLY REVIEW, DEC. 1844.]

THE remarkable success which has attended | thus appreciated, vividly suggests the rememthe publication of Mr. Twiss's Life of Lord brance of a kindred instance of industry, Chancellor Eldon is a striking proof of the worth, and success-less prominently placed deep and enduring interest which attaches to before the world, because less intimately assothe character it develops. More than six ciated with its contests and its changes, but years had then elapsed since Lord Eldon's not less crowned with emolument and honour, death, and many more since he ceased to dig- and hardly less fertile of instruction-that of nify the highest seat of British Justice-or to Lord Eldon's elder brother, Lord Stowell; and influence, except by the weight of reputation if each life is worthy of separate contempla and age, the discussions and the conflicts of tion, both are attended with additional interest the busy world. The principal incidents of his when considered as springing from one source, life were too well known to leave room for the and fostered in the same nurture. That two gratification of curiosity-the political scenes sons of a reputable tradesman in a provincial in which he moved had passed from the arena town at the extremity of England, devoting of living things without having reached an their powers to different branches of the same historical distance-and yet the sale of these profession, should attain the highest honours three massive volumes has exceeded that of which could be achieved in the course which any similar work within our recollection. each had chosen-and that each, after attainThis success has not, we think, been height- ing an age far beyond that usually allotted to ened by the courtly revelations and piquant man, should leave, with a magnificent fortune, anecdotes with which the work is diversified a name indestructibly associated with the desome of which, indeed, so far impair its effect partment in which his work was performedas to suggest the wish we expressed for their is a moral phenomenon not worthy only of excision-but has arisen purely from the inte- national pride, but of respectful scrutiny. rest excited by a vigorous, honest, and affec- This similarity in the results of the labours tionate delineation of the character and the of these two brothers is rendered more refortunes of a great Englishman of sturdy na-markable by the points of strong difference ture, by a hand peculiarly fitted for its office. This remarkable career, thus depicted and

*TO SERJEANT TALFOURD,
On reading his Address to the Manchester Athenæum.
BY EDWARD KENEALY.

O'er the white urn that held the sacred heart
Of great Isocrates of old, was placed
The marble image of a Syren, graced
h all the loveliness of Grecian art;
lem of eloquence, whose music sweet
Won the whole world by its enchanting spells;
Oh, with what type shall we our Talfourd greet?
What Image shall pourtray the spirit that dwells
Within his soul? An angel from the skies
Beaming celestial beauty from his eyes-
The olden Syren sang but to deceive,

To lure mankind to death her voice was given;
But thine, dear Talfourd, thy bright words enweave
Immortal truths that guide to God and Heaven.

between their intellectual qualities and tastes, as developed in their mature years: inviting us to inquire what faculties were inherent in their youth; how far they were affected by early education; how far varied by the cir cumstances of their history.

The incidents of Lord Stowell's life, not supplying materials for voluminous biography, are laboriously collected and admirably detailed in an Essay in the "Law Magazine," apparently from the pen which, in a series of papers, seemed to have done enough for Lord Eldon's fame, until Mr. Twiss proved how much more might be achieved by happier op. portunity and larger scope. Fortunately, how. ever, the intellectual triumphs of the elder

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