to them, with ever so much kindliness
and sentimental affection. There was
the tree under which the bully licked
you here the ground where you had
to fag out on holidays, and so forth.
In a word, my dear sir, You are the
most interesting subject to yourself,
of any that can occupy your worship's
thoughts. I have no doubt a Crimean
soldier, reading a history of that siege,
and how Jones and the gallant 99th
were ordered to charge or what not,
thinks, "Ah, yes, we of the 100th were
placed so and so, I perfectly remem-
ber." So with this memorial of poor
Hood, it may have, no doubt, a
greater interest for me than for
others, for I was fighting, so to speak,
in a different part of the field, and
engaged, a young subaltern, in the
Battle of Life, in which Hood fell,
young still, and covered with glory.
"The Bridge of Sighs
"" was his
Corunna, his Heights of Abraham
sickly, weak, wounded, he fell in the
full blaze and fame of that great vic-
tory.

revisit the old school, though hateful | Who cared about his birthplace, his parentage, or the color of his hair? To-day, by some single achievement, or by a series of great actions to which his genius accustoms us, he is famous, and antiquarians are busy finding out under what schoolmaster's ferule he was educated, where his grandmother was vaccinated, and so forth. If half a dozen washing-bills of Goldsmith's were to be found tomorrow, would they not inspire a general interest, and be printed in a hundred papers? I lighted upon Oliver, not very long since, in an old Town and Country Magazine, at the Pantheon masquerade "in an old English habit." Straightway my imagination ran out to meet him, to look at him, to follow him about. I forgot the names of scores of fine gentlemen of the past age, who were mentioned besides. We want to see this man who has amused and charmed us; who has been our friend, and given us hours of pleasant companionship and kindly thought. I protest when I came, in the midst of those names of people of fashion, and beaux, and demireps, upon those names "Sir J. R-yn-lds, in a domino; Mr. Cr-d-ck and Dr. G-ldsm-th, in two old English dresses," I had, so to speak, my heart in my mouth. What, you here, my dear Sir Joshua? Ah, what an honor and privilege it is to see you! This is Mr. Goldsmith? And very much, sir, the ruff and the slashed doublet become you! O Doctor! what a pleasure I had and have in reading the Animated Nature. How did you learn the secret of writing the decasyllable line, and whence that sweet wailing note of tenderness that accompanies your song? Was Beau Tibbs a real man, and will you do me the honor of allowing me to sit at your table at supper? Don't you think you know how he would have talked ? Would you not have liked to hear him prattle over the champagne?

What manner of man was the genius who penned that famous song? What like was Wolfe, who climbed and conquered on those famous Heights of Abraham? We all want to know details regarding men who have achieved famous feats, whether of war, or wit, or eloquence, or endurance, or knowledge. His one or two happy and heroic actions take a man's name and memory out of the crowd of names and memories. Henceforth he stands eminent. We scan him we want to know all about him; we walk round and examine him, are curious, perhaps, and think are we not as strong and tall and capable as yonder champion; were we not bred as well, and could we not endure the winter's cold as well as he? Or we look up with all our eyes of admiration; will find no fault in our hero: declare his beauty and proportions perfect; his critics envious detractors, and so forth. Yesterday, before he performed his feat, he was nobody.

Now, Hood is passed away - passed off the earth as much as Goldsmith

There is my

or Horace. The times in which he justifiable homicide. lived, and in which very many of us friend Baggs, who goes about abusing lived and were young, are changing me, and of course our dear mutual or changed. I saw Hood once as a friends tell me. Abuse away, mon young man at a dinner which seems bon ! You were so kind to me when almost as ghostly now as that mas- I wanted kindness, that you may take querade at the Pantheon (1772), of the change out of that gold now, and which we were speaking anon. It say I am a cannibal and negro if was at a dinner of the Literary Fund, you will. Ha, Baggs! Dost thou in that vast apartment which is hung wince as thou readest this line? Does round with the portraits of very large guilty conscience throbbing at thy Royal Freemasons, now unsubstan- breast tell thee of whom the fable is tial ghosts. There at the end of the narrated? Puff out thy wrath, and, room was Hood. Some publishers, I when it has ceased to blow, my Baggs think, were our companions. I quite shall be to me as the Baggs of old remember his pale face; he was thin the generous, the gentle, the friendly. and deaf, and very silent; he scarcely No, on second thoughts, I am deopened his lips during the dinner, and termined I will not repeat that joke he made one pun. Some gentleman which I heard Hood make. He says missed his snuff-box, and Hood said, he wrote these jokes with such ease -(the Freemasons' Tavern was that he sent manuscripts to the pubkept, you must remember, by Mr. lishers faster than they could acknowlCUFF in those days, not by its pres-edge the receipt thereof. I won't say ent proprietors). Well, the box being lost, and asked for, and CUFF (remember that name) being the name of the landlord, Hood opened his silent jaws and said Shall

I tell you what he said? It was not a very good pun which the great punster then made. Choose your favorite pun out of "Whims and Oddities," and fancy that was the joke which he contributed to the hilarity of our little table.

Where those points are drawn on the page, you must know, a pause occurred, during which I was engaged with "Hood's Own," having been referred to the book by this life of the author which I have just been reading. I am not going to dissert on Hood's humor; I am not a fair judge. Have I not said elsewhere that there are one or two wonderfully old gentlemen still alive who used to give me tips when I was a boy? I can't be a fair critic about them. I always think of that sovereign, that rapture of raspberry-tarts, which made my young days happy. Those old sovereigncontributors may tell stories ever so old, and I shall laugh; they may commit murder, and I shall believe it was

that they were all good jokes, or that to read a great book full of them is a work at present altogether jocular. Writing to a friend respecting some memoir of him which had been published, Hood says, "You will judge how well the author knows me, when he says my mind is rather serious than comic." At the time when he wrote these words, he evidently undervalued his own serious power, and thought that in punning and broad grinning lay his chief strength. Is not there something touching in that simplicity and humility of faith? "To make laugh is my calling," says he; "I must jump, I must grin, I must tumble, I must turn language head over heels, and leap through grammar; " and he goes to his work humbly and courageously, and what he has to do that does he with all his might, through sickness, through sorrow, through exile, poverty, fever, depression - there he is, always ready to his work; and with a jewel of genius in his pocket! Why, when he laid down his puns and pranks,put the motley off and spoke out of his heart, all England and America listened with tears and wonder! Other men have delusions

of conceit, and fancy themselves great-closing a copy of Peel's letter, says, er than they are, and that the world" Sir R. Peel came from Burleigh on slights them. Have we not heard Tuesday night, and went down to how Liston always thought he ought to play Hamlet? Here is a man with a power to touch the heart almost unequalled, and he passes days and years in writing, "Young Ben he was a nice young man!" and so forth. To say truth, I have been reading in a book of "Hood's Own" until I am perfectly angry. "You great man, you good man, you true genius and poet," I cry out, as I turn page after page. 'Do, do, make no more of these jokes, but be yourself and take your station."

When Hood was on his deathbed, Sir Robert Peel, who only knew of his illness, not of his imminent danger, wrote to him a noble and touching letter, announcing that a pension was conferred on him:

"I am more than repaid," writes Peel, "by the personal satisfaction which I have had in doing that for which you return me warm and characteristic acknowledgments.

Brighton on Saturday. If he had written by post, I should not have had it till to-day. So he sent his servant with the enclosed on Saturday night; another mark of considerate attention." He is frightfully unwell, he continues: his wife says he looks quite green; but ill as he is, poor fellow," his well is not dry. He has pumped out a sheet of Christmas fun, is drawing some cuts, and shall write a sheet more of his novel."

Oh, sad, marvellous picture of courage, of honesty, of patient endurance, of duty struggling against pain! How noble Peel's figure is standing by that sick-bed! how generous his words, how dignified and sincere his compassion! And the poor dying man, with a heart full of natural gratitude towards his noble benefactor, must turn to him and say "If it be well to be remembered by a Minister, it is better still not to be forgotten by You perhaps think that you are known him in a hurly Burleigh!" Can to one with such multifarious occupations you laugh? Is not the joke horribly as myself, merely by general reputation as pathetic from the poor dying lips? an author; but I assure you that there can be little, which you have written and acAs dying Robin Hood must fire a last knowledged, which I have not read; and shot with his bow as one reads of that there are few who can appreciate and Catholics on their death-beds putting admire more than myself the good sense on a Capuchin dress to go out of the and good feeling which have taught you to infuse so much fun and merriment into world - here is poor Hood at his last writings correcting folly and exposing ab-hour putting on his ghastly motley, surdities, and yet never trespassing beyond and uttering one joke more. those limits within which wit and facetiousness are not very often confined.

You may write on with the consciousness of independence, as free and unfettered as if no communication had ever passed between us. I am not conferring a private obligation upon, but am fulfilling the intentions of the legislature, which has placed at the disposal of the Crown a certain sum (miserable, indeed, in amount) to be applied to the recognition of public claims on the bounty of the Crown. If you will review the names of those whose claims have been admitted on account of their literary or scientific eminence, you will find an ample confirmation of the truth of my statement.

"One return, indeed, I shall ask of you, -that you will give me the opportunity of making your personal acquaintance." And Hood, writing to a friend, en

He dies, however, in dearest love and peace with his children, wife, friends; to the former especially his whole life had been devoted, and every day showed his fidelity, simplicity, and affection. In going through the record of his most pure, modest, honorable life, and living along with him, you come to trust him thoroughly, and feel that here is a most loyal, affectionate, and upright soul, with whom you have been brought into communion. Can we say as much of the lives of a men of letters? Here is one at least without guile, without pretension, without scheming, of a pure life, to his family and little

modest circle of friends tenderly de- | other end of the table. Very gratifying,

out of your earnings, small or great, | be able to help a poor brother in need, to dress his wounds, and, if it were but twopence, to give him succor. Is the money which the noble Macaulay gave to the poor lost to his family? God forbid. To the loving hearts of his kindred is it not rather the most precious part of their inheritance? It was invested in love and righteous doing, and it bears interest in heaven. You will, if letters be your vocation, find saving harder than giving and spending. To save be your endeavor, too, against the night's coming, when no man may work; when the arm is weary with the long day's labor; when the brain perhaps grows dark; when the old, who can labor no more, want warmth and rest, and the young ones call for supper.

I copied the little galley-slave who is made to figure in the initial letter of this paper, from a quaint old silver spoon which we purchased in a curiosity-shop at the Hague. It is one of the gift spoons so common in Holland, and which have multiplied so astonishingly of late years at our dealers in old silverware. Along the stem of the spoon are written the words: "Anno 1609, Bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen In the year 1609 I went thus clad." The good Dutchman was released from his Algerine captivity (I imagine his figure looks like that of a slave amongst the Moors), and in his thank-offering to some godchild at home, he thus piously records his escape.

smith, and the splendid contempt with which he regards him. Read Hawkins on Fielding, and the scorn with which Dandy Walpole and Bishop Hurd speak of him. Galley-slaves doomed to tug the oar and wear the chain, whilst my lords and dandies take their pleasure, and hear fine music, and disport with fine ladies in the cabin!

But stay. Was there any cause for this scorn? Had some of these great men weaknesses which gave inferiors advantage over them? Men of letters cannot lay their hands on their hearts, and say, "No, the fault was fortune's, and the indifferent world's, not Goldsmith's nor Fielding's.' There was no reason why Oliver should always be thriftless; why Fielding and Steele should sponge upon their friends; why Sterne should make love to his neighbors' wives. Swift, for a long time, was as poor as any wag that ever laughed: but he owed no penny to his neighbors: Addison, when he wore his most threadbare coat, could hold his head up, and maintain his dignity: and, I dare vouch, neither of those gentlemen, when they were ever so poor, asked any man alive to pity their condition, and have a regard to the weaknesses incidental to the literary profession. Galley-slave, forsooth! If you are sent to prison for some error for which the law awards that sort of laborious seclusion, so much the more shame for you. If you are chained to the oar a prisoner of war, like Cervantes, Was not poor Cervantes also a you have the pain, but not the shame, captive amongst the Moors? Did and the friendly compassion of mannot Fielding, and Goldsmith, and kind to reward you. Galley-slaves, Smollett, too, die at the chain as well indeed! What man has not his oar as poor Hood? Think of Fielding to pull? There is that wonderful old going on board his wretched ship in stroke-oar in the Queen's galley. the Thames, with scarce a hand to How many years has he pulled? bid him farewell; of brave Tobias Day and night, in rough water or Smollett, and his life, how hard, and smooth, with what invincible vigor and how poorly rewarded; of Goldsmith, surprising gayety, he plies his arms. and the physician whispering, "Have There is in the same Galére Capitaine, you something on your mind?" and that well-known, trim figure, the bowthe wild dying eyes answering, "Yes." oar; how he tugs, and with what a Notice how Boswell speaks of Gold-will! How both of them have been