other time. She had a husband who, after a great brute-fashion, worshipped her in life and in death held her memory sacred above that of all of womankind the world had ever seen. This might have been the outcome of the egoism of his nature, perhaps. I, Thomas Carlyle, am greatest of the sons of men, therefore is my wife fairest and best and most accomplished of the daughters of women. Whether it was so or not is, however, no great matter. Certain we are of the supereminent esteem in which Mrs. Carlyle was held by her friends and her husband, and that is enough for us. Caroline Fox, on the other hand, had none of the life-advantages of her competitor. She had no great man husband; had no husband at all, in fact, passing her life and fulfilling its mission in pure and blameless spinsterhood. Her home was at Penjerrick, in Cornwall, a place of which very few people can have heard even the name. Society there was of the scantiest, and her Quakerism must have acted as a bar to prevent her plunging into it elsewhere had she been so inclined. And yet we find nearly every man and woman of note in contemporary literature and science and art attracted to her, and remaining her fast friends to the end. With her they did not break as with the Carlyles; probably for the reason that she did not bore them with Iliads of headaches and paint-smells, drunken servants and shirt rendings; she did not preach to them from the stomach nor trouble them with day dreams sicklied o'er with the pale cast of dyspepsia. She was fonder of listening than of talking, particularly if she had nothing to say, and she made no attempt either to preserve friendships by showing the tooth of satire, or to worry others into the circle by fear of her bite. Hers was a calm, kindly nature, and observant withal. In her sketches we are not presented with herself painted large in the foreground, and the really greater figures thrown in just to fill up the picture. She reverses all this, keeping herself well out of sight and presenting us instead with portraits as perfect as she was capable of making them, leaving it to other hands to preserve her lineaments, if the owners of those other hands should happen to think such a proceeding at all worth their while. The result is a book which has plenty of 'body' in it, not one of those repositories of brilliant common-places which fall flat upon immediately its adventitious newness has ceased to us effervesce. After all this prologising, let us pick a few of the plums from the book for the benefit of readers of the Red Dragon. On the very first page almost we meet with a very good story of the brilliant but eccentric and violent Lady Hester Stanhope. We are introduced to Derwent Coleridge reading his father's "Christabel," and afterwards to Sir Henry De la Beche, the geologist, and Tom Moore, the poet, whom Miss Fox found in all his glory "looking like a little Cupid with a quizzing glass in constant motion," at a meeting of the British Association at Bristol. Of Dr. Buckland-Bridgwater Treatiseman-Professor Wheatsone and John Martin, the painter, Professor Sedgwick, Sir Charles Lemon, Admiral, then Captain, Fitzroy, who had just finished his voyage in the Beagle, Darwin, "the fly catcher" and stone pounder, Sir Edward Belcher and Sir James Ross, the Arctic voyagers, the Begum of Oude, John Murray, the naturalist, and Southey, the poet, the writer tells us a good deal, and if some of the information come to us at second-hand most of it will be found quite new. Capital stories are those about Southey and Charles Lamb. The former on a visit to Derwent Coleridge took down a book from a shelf, observing which, Derwent, who must have been in a deliciously dreamy state, murmured apologetically, "I got the book cheap--it is one of Southey's." "Derwent!" exclaimed Mary Coleridge, who had overheard the remark, and the dreamer was awakened into consciousness at once. Coleridge (Samuel Taylor) holding forth on the effects produced by his preaching said to Lamb, " You have heard me preach, I think?" "I have never heard you do anything else," replied the imperturbable innocent appealed to. Professor Wightwick, a friend of Charles Mathews the elder, lecturing on the Pyramidical style of architecture, said in illustration: When the French Army under Napoleon came to the Pyramids they passed on without emotion, but when they reached the Temple of Karnak, which is a horizontal elevation, they with one accord stood perfectly still. "Rather tired, I suppose," was the delighfully impudent comment of Snow Harris, who was among the audience. At Rydal Miss Fox heard Hartley Coleridge read Elia's "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," which must have been a treat, and at Liverpool Sir David Brewster and Whewell discussing spectrum light. Conversations are noted with Sir Wm. Hamilton and with Dr. Lardner, the man who, having quarrelled with his wife, got a divorce. His name being Dionysius and hers Cecilia, people went about calling him by the august title, Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily. A story is told of Charles Kemble's lofty thoughts on contemplating Niagara being knocked over by the exclamation of the Yankee who stood behind him: "I say, sir, what an omnipotent row!" The Right Hon. W. E. Forster was a frequent visitor of the Foxes, who were intimately known also to the Fowell Buxtons and Sir John Bowring, from which latter they got no end of good things concerning Shelley and Byron, both known to him well. We must pass quickly over Nadir Shah, Henry Mill, Dr. Calvert (mentioned by Carlyle in his "Life of John Sterling"), Julius Hare, Sir Boyle Roche-why is there no bio graphy of him by the way?-O'Connell, Macaulay, whose critique on Bacon, Sterling, and many besides thought a brilliant falsehood, Walter Savage Landor, and a number of lesser names until we come to the Carlyles, Sterling, and Stuart Mill. The two last were great and constant friends of the Fox family, of which the members and the Carlyles visited and corresponded with each other a good deal. Guizot, the French historian, whom Mill held in ridiculously high regard, Miss Fox saw, heard, and spoke to frequently. Concerning Wordsworth the characteristic story is told by a friend that he was never heard praising any poetry but his own, except a piece of Jane Crewdson's. The early part of the second volume of the work is rendered additionally interesting by the Carlyle letters of which Miss Fox was the recipient. The Chelsea sage, sad and sick under present pressure of work, nevertheless can see some twenty thousand in pauper-Bastilles looking for a Voice, inarticulately beseeching, "Speak for us!" And can he be silent? Of course he can't, and won't if he could. Mill's "System of Logic" arrives, and the diarist, Frederick Maurice, and John Sterling a man who must have been esteemed rather for what was in him than for what came out indulge in some not very profound speculations on the philosopher's masterpiece. Carlyle's book, once written, was copied for simultaneous printing in England and America, "so that he being the Prophet to both lands, may receive the profits from both," about the only attempt at punning of which we remember Miss Fox to have been guilty. Sir William Molesworth, editor of "Hobbes," if we remember, just on the verge of blindness, the Carlyles at Cheyne Row, and Professor Owen having been visited, we find Dickens' Christmas Carol coming out; and Carlyle revealing himself writing "upon Oliver Cromwell." The great one "wishes for a Fortunatus' Hat that he might fly into deepest silence to meditate this sad problem of mine, far from Babylon and its jarrings and its discords, and ugly fog and mud, in sight of the mere earth and sea, and the sky with its stars. But," adds the philosopher sorrowfully, "I have not such a hat, there is none such going." Of course not; the hatters have no customers for such articles. "Hyperion," Mrs. Carlyle tells W. E. Forster," answered, and Longfellow has married the lady, Mary Ashburnham, otherwise Fanny Appleton-at whom he wrote it." Good. Visits now to the Wordsworths, resultless, except for fresh displays of egotism. "His whole deportment virtuous and didactic," Miss Fox says. Merle d'Aubigné's acquaintance made and Landseer's. Latter "has a somewhat arrogant manner, a love of contradiction, and a despotic judgment." A good deal is told about the Bunsens, Sir Roderick and Lady Murchi son, Mary Ann Schimmelpenninck, Archdeacon Hare, and Frank Newman. Froude's "Nemesis of Faith" makes a stir, and a very ugly one; is publicly burnt at Oxford (what an honour!) and so on. Caroline describes the work as "a wild protest against all authority, Divine and human." Elihu Burritt turns up and Henry Hallam; Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, walking Capt. Barclay, Thackeray, Faraday, and Carlyle (lecturing), and then a lot of letters of Miss Fox, which might in great part have been omitted, because as a letter writer she was rather of a failure. Charles Kingsley, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Livingstone, Dr. Whewell, John Ruskin, Tennyson (who, contrary to Mr. John Howells, St. Athan, has "a firm belief in Arthur as an historical personage, though old Speed's narrative has much that can be only traditional "), Holman Hunt, Val Prinsep, and a whole host of other well known men and women, 66 come like shadows, so depart," whilst we are turning the pages of this pleasant book whose writer, herself a shadow now, has impressed us with her kindly, brilliant personality in a manner we shall not easily forget, nor soon. LITERARY AND ART NOTES OF THE MONTH, &c. Mr. Edwin Poole, editor and publisher of the Brecon County Times, is engaged in the compilation of a pamphlet, entitled "The Parliamentary Representatives of the County and Borough of Brecon, from the Earliest Times, with Biographical Notes," &c. Mr. Poole, who published a popular history of the County of Brecon some years ago (now out of print) contemplates the re-publication of the work in an enlarged form, bringing it down to date. The work will be published in parts, at a popular price. No doubt Mr. Poole will be glad to hear of intending subscribers. The history will consist of about twelve shilling parts, issued at intervals. The Pall Mall Gazette, speaking of the recent performance of Sir George Macfarren's "King David," says that the soloists and conductor were the same as at Leeds, with the exception of Mdme. Valleria, whose place was filled by Miss Anna Williams, who sang the thankless music admirably. One or two slight alterations have been made; but none of them affect the more prominent pieces of unintentional humour, which remain as droll as ever. The work was well received. According to the Rev. F. W. Weaver, vicar of Evercreech, Bath, the first syllable in the place named "Mendip" is from the Celtic maen, a stone or rock. Cf. Maen-dû (Monmouth), black rock; Mehenist (Cornwall), for which see Tregellas, Cornwall, page 51. A correspondent of Notes and Queries writes to ask who was Gwion the Red, to whom the parish of Llanbedr Mathafarn Goch was primarily dedicated. Gwion Goch is traditionally said to have been a physician. Mathafarn signifies a hospice or hospital. Mr. R. S. Charnock, Boulogne-sur-Mer, wants to know the meaning of the Welsh baptismal name Hwfa. Does fa stand for ma, place, spot, &c. Mr. Lewis Morris's volume of "Songs Unsung" has already reached a third edition. At a recent meeting of the Numismatic Society, Dr. J. Evans in the chair, Mr. G. D. Brown exhibited a gold coin of Cunobeline, similar to the one in Evans' "Ancient British Coins," pl. ix., 3. |