Chapter XIV: Part 14

The highest ambition of James Montgomery was, then, to do that by his pen which his brethren did by word of mouth. He had not abandoned that great object to which he had as an orphan been, as it were, dedicated by those good men in whose hands he had been left; he had only changed the mode of attaining it. At the very time that he quitted their tranquil asylum and broke forth into the world, he was, unknown to himself and them, following the unseen hand of Heaven. His lot was determined, and it was not to go forth into the wilderness of the north or south, of Labrador or South Africa, but of the active world of England. There wanted a bold voice, of earnest principle, to be raised against great oppressions; a spirit of earnest duty, to be infused into the heart of poetic literature; and a tone of heavenly faith and confidence given to the popular harp, for which thousands of hearts were listening in vain; and he was the man. That was the work of life assigned to him. He was to be still of the UNITAS FRATRUM--still a missionary;--and how well has he fulfilled his mission!

Fulneck, the chief settlement of the Moravian Brethren in England, at which we have seen that Montgomery continued till his sixteenth year, is about eight miles from Leeds. It was built about 1760, which was near the time of the death of Count Zinzendorf. It was then in a fine and little inhabited country. It is now in a country as populous as a town, full of tall chimneys vomiting out enormous masses of soot, rather than smoke, and covering the landscape as with an eternal veil of black mist. The villages are like towns, for extent. Stone and smoke are equally abundant. Stone houses, door-posts, window-frames, stone floors, and stone stairs, nay, the very roofs are covered with stone slabs, and when they are new, are the most complete drab buildings. The factories are the same. Where windows are stopped up, it is with stone slabs. The fences to the fields are stone walls, and the gate-posts are stone, and the stiles are stones, reared so close to one another, that it is tight work getting through them. Not a bit of wood is to be seen, except the doors, water-spouts, and huge water-butts, which are often hoisted in front of the house, on the level of the second floor, on strong stone rests. The walls, as well as wooden frames in the fields, are clothed with long pieces of cloth, like horses, and women stand mending holes or smoothing off knots in them, as they hang. Troops of boys and girls come out of the factories at meal-times, as blue as so many little blue devils--hands, faces, clothes, all blue, from weaving the fresh-dyed yarn. The older mill-girls go cleaner and smarter, all with colored handkerchiefs tied over their heads, chiefly bright red ones, and look very continental. Dirty rows of children sit on dirty stone door-sills, and there are strong scents of oat-cake and Genoa oil, and oily yarn. There is a general smut of blackness over all, even in the very soil and dust. And Methodist chapels--Salems and Ebenezers--are seen on all hands. Who, that has ever been into a cloth-weaving district, does not see the place and people?

Well, up to the very back of Fulneck, throng these crowds and attributes of cloth manufacturing. Leaving the coach and the high-road, I walked on three miles to the left, through this busy smoke-land, and a large village, and then over some fields. Everywhere were the features of a fine country, but like the features o the people, full of soot, and with volumes of vapor rolling over it. Coming, at length, to the back of a hill, I saw emerging, close under my feet, a long row of stately roofs, with a belfry or cupola, crowned with a vane in the center. These were the roofs of the Moravian settlement of Fulneck, the back of which was toward me, and the front toward a fine valley, on the opposite slope of which were fine woods, and a fine old brick mansion. That is the house, and that the estate of a Mr. Tempest, who will have no manufactory on his land. This is the luckiest tempest that ever was heard of; for it keeps a good open space in front of Fulneck clear, though it is elbowed up at each end, and backed up behind with factories, and work-people's houses; and even beyond Mr. Tempest's estate, you see other tall, soot-vomiting chimneys rearing themselves on other ridges; and the eternal veil of Cimmerian smoke-mist floats over the fair, ample, and beautifully wooded valley, lying between the settlement and these swarthy apparitions of the manufacturing system, which seem to long to step forward and claim all--ay, and finally to turn Fulneck into a weaving-mill, as they probably will, one day.

The situation, were it not for these circumstances, is fine. It has something monastic about it. The establishment consists of one range of buildings, though built at various times. There are the school, chapel, master's house, etc., in the center, of stone, and a sister's and brother's house, of brick, at each end, with various cottages behind. A fine broad terrace-walk extends along the front, a furlong in length, being the length of the buildings, from which you may form a conception of the stately scale of the place, which is one-eighth of a mile long. From this descend the gardens, playgrounds, etc., down the hill for a great way, and private walks are thence continued as far again, to the bottom of the valley, where they are further continued along the brook-side, among the deep woodlands. The valley is called the Tong Valley; the brook, the Tong; and Mr. Tempest's house, on the opposite slope, Tonghall.

At the left hand, and as you stand in front of the building, looking over the valley, lies the burial-ground, or, as they would call it in Germany, the "Friedhof," or court of peace. It reminded me much of that of Herrnhut, except that it descends from you, instead of ascending. It is covered with a rich green turf, is planted round and down the middle with sycamore-trees, and has a cross-walk, not two or three, like Herrnhut. I asked Mr. Wilson, the director, who walked with me, whether this arrangement had not, originally, a meaning--these walks forming a cross. He said he believed it had, and that the children were buried in a line, extending each way from the center perpendicular walk, along the cross-walk, from a sentimental feeling that they were thus laid peculiarly in the arms of Jesus, and in the protection of his cross. The grave-stones are laid flat, just as at Herrnhut, and of the same size and fashion. Here, however, we miss that central row of venerable tombs, of the Zinzendorf family, and those simple memorial stones lying around them, every one of which bears a name of patriarchal renown in the annals of this society of devoted Christians. Yet, even here, we can not avoid feeling that we walk amid the ashes of the faithful descendants of one of the most remarkable and most ancient branches of God's church, whose history Montgomery has so impressively sketched in a few lines:--

"When Europe languished in barbarian gloom,
Beneath the ghostly tyranny of Rome,
Whose second empire, cowled and mitred, burst
A phoenix from the ashes of the first;
From persecution's piles, by bigots fired,
Among Bohemian mountains Truth retired.
There, mid rude rocks, in lonely glens obscure,
She found a people, scattered, scorned, and poor;
A little flock through quiet valleys led,
A Christian Israel in the desert fed;
While roaming wolves that scorned the shepherd's hand,
Laid waste God's heritage through every land.
With those the lonely exile sojourned long;
Soothed by her presence, solaced by her song,
They toiled through danger, trials, and distress,
A band of virgins in the wilderness,
With burning lamps amid their secret bowers,
Counting the watches of the weary hours,
In patient hope the Bridegroom's voice to hear,
And see his banner in the clouds appear.
But when the morn returning chased the night,
These stars that shone in darkness, sunk in light.
Luther, like Phosphor, led the conquering day,
His meek forerunners waned, and passed away.

"Ages rolled by; the turf perennial bloomed
O'er the lorn relics of those saints entombed:
No miracle proclaimed their power divine,
No kings adorned, no pilgrims kissed their shrine;
Cold, and forgotten, in their grave they slept:
But God remembered them:--their Father kept
A faithful remnant; o'er their native clime
His Spirit moved in his appointed time;
The race revived at his almighty breath,
A seed to serve him from the dust of death.
'Go forth, my sons, through heathen realms proclaim
Mercy to sinners in a Savior's name.'
Thus spoke the Lord; they heard and they obeyed.
--Greenland lay wrapped in nature's heaviest shade;
Thither the ensign of the cross they bore;
The gaunt barbarians met them on the shore
With joy and wonder, hailing from afar,
Through polar storms, the light of Jacob's star."

The internal arrangements of the establishment are just the same as at all their settlements. The chapel, very much like a Friends' meeting, only having an organ; and the bedrooms of the children as large, ventilated from the roof, and furnished with the same rows of single, curtainless beds, with white coverlets, reminding you of the sleeping-rooms of a nunnery.

My reception, though I took no introduction, was most kind and cordial. The brethren and sisters were well acquainted with the writings of both Mrs. Howitt and myself, and, of course, with our visit to Herrnhut. They have here about seventy boys and fifty girls, as pupils, who had just returned from the midsummer holydays, and were, many of them, very busy in their gardens. As I heard their merry voices, and caught the glance of their bright, eager eyes among the trees, I wondered how many would look back hereafter to this quiet, sweet place, and exclaim, with the poet who first met the muse here--

"Days of my childhood, hail!
Whose gentle spirits wandering here,
Down in the visionary vale
Before mine eyes appear,
Benignly pensive, beautifully pale:
O days forever fled, forever dear,
Days of my childhood, hail!"

When Montgomery removed from Fulneck, says a memoir, to which the poet has directed my attention as accurate in its facts, the views of his friends were so far changed, that we find him placed by them in a retail shop, at Mirfield, near Wakefield. Here, though he was treated with great kindness, and had only too little business, and too much leisure to attend to his favorite pursuit, he became exceedingly disconsolate, and after remaining in his new situation about a year and a half, he privately absconded, and with less than five shillings in his pocket, and the wide world before him, began his career in pursuit of fame and fortune. His ignorance of mankind, the result of his retired and religious education; the consequent simplicity of his manners, and his forlorn appearance, exposed him to the contempt of some, and to the compassion of others to whom he applied. The brilliant bubble of patronage, wealth, and celebrity, which floated before his imagination, soon burst, and on the fifth day of his travels, he found a situation similar to the one he had left, at the village of Wath, near Rotherham. A residence in London was the object of his ambition; but wanting the means to carry him thither, he resolved to remain in the country till he could procure them. Accordingly, he wrote to his friends among the Moravian Brethren, whom he had forsaken, requesting them to recommend him to his new master, conscious that they had nothing to allege against him, excepting the imprudent step of separating himself from them; and not being under articles at Mirfield, he besought them not to compel him to return. He received from them the most generous propositions of forgiveness, and an establishment more congenial to his wishes. This he declined, frankly explaining the causes of his late melancholy, but concealing the ambitious motives which had secretly prompted him to withdraw from their benevolent protection. Finding him unwilling to yield, they supplied his immediate necessities, and warmly recommended him to the kindness of the master he had chosen. It was this master, with whom he remained only twelve months, that, many years afterward, in the most calamitous period of Montgomery's life, sought him out amid his misfortunes, not for the purpose of offering consolation only, but of serving him substantially by every means in his power. The interview which took place between the old man and his former servant, the evening previous to his trial at Doncaster, will ever live in the remembrance of him who could forget an injury, but not a kindness. No father could have evinced a greater affection for a darling son; the tears he shed were honorable to his feelings, and were the best testimony to the conduct and integrity of James Montgomery.

From Wath he removed to London, having prepared his way by sending a volume of his manuscript poems to Mr. Harrison, then a bookseller in Paternoster-row. Mr. Harrison, who was a man of correct taste and liberal disposition, received him into his house, and gave him the greatest encouragement to cultivate his talents, but none to publish his poems; seeing, as he observed, no probability that the author would acquire either fame or fortune by appearing at that time before the public. The remark was just; but it conveyed the most unexpected and afflicting information to our youthful poet, who yet knew little of the world, except from books, and who had permitted his imagination to be dazzled with the accounts which he had read of the splendid success and magnificent patronage which poets had formerly experienced. He was so disheartened by this circumstance, that, on occasion of a misunderstanding with Mr. Harrison, he, at the end of eight months, quitted the metropolis, and returned to Wath, where he was received with a hearty welcome by his former employer. While in London, having been advised to turn his attention to prose, as more profitable than verse, he composed an Eastern story, which he took one evening to a publisher in the east end of the town. Being directed through the shop, to the private room of the great man, he presented his manuscript in form. The prudent bookseller read the title, marked the number of pages, counted the lines in a page, and made a calculation of the whole; then, turning to the author, who stood in astonishment at this summary mode of deciding on the merit of a work of imagination, he very civilly returned the copy, saying, "Sir, your manuscript is too small--it won't do for me--take it to K----, he publishes those kind of things." Montgomery retreated with so much confusion from the presence of the bookseller, that in passing through the shop, he dashed his unfortunate head against a patent lamp, broke the glass, spilled the oil, and making an awkward apology to the shopmen, who stood tittering behind the counter, to the no small mortification of the poor author, he rushed into the street, equally unable to restrain his vexation or his laughter, and retired to his home, filled with chagrin at this ludicrous and untoward misfortune.

From Wath, where Montgomery had sought only a temporary residence, he removed in 1792, and engaged himself with Mr. Gales of Sheffield, who then printed a newspaper, in which popular politics were advocated with great zeal and ability. To this paper he contributed essays and verses occasionally; but though politics sometimes engaged the service of his hand, the muses had his whole heart, and he sedulously cultivated their favor; though no longer with those false, yet animating hopes, which formerly stimulated his exertions. In 1794, when Mr. Gales left England, a gentleman, to whom Montgomery was an almost entire stranger, enabled him to undertake the publication of the paper on his own account: but it was a perilous situation on which he entered; the vengeance which was ready to burst upon his predecessor, soon fell upon him.

At the present day it would scarcely be believed, were it not to be found in the records of a court of justice, that in 1795, Montgomery was convicted of a libel on the war then carrying on between Great Britain and France, by publishing, at the request of a stranger whom he had never seen before, a song written by a clergyman of Belfast, _nine months before the war began_. This fact was admitted in the court; and though the name of this country did not occur in the libel, nor was there a single note or comment of any kind whatever affixed to the original words, which were composed at the time and in censure of the Duke of Brunswick's proclamation and march to Paris, he was pronounced _guilty_, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment, and a fine of £20. Mr. M. A. Taylor presided on this occasion. The first verdict delivered by the jury, after an hour's deliberation, was "_Guilty of publishing_." This verdict, tantamount to an acquittal, they were directed to reconsider, and to deduce the malicious intention, not from the circumstances attending the publication, but from the words of the song. Another hour's deliberation produced the general verdict of "_Guilty_." This transaction requires no comment.

Scarcely had Montgomery returned to his home, when he was again called upon to answer for another offense. A riot took place in the streets of Sheffield, in which, unfortunately, two men were shot by the military. In the warmth of his feelings he detailed the dreadful occurrence in his paper. The details were deemed a libel, and he was again sentenced to six months' imprisonment, and a fine of thirty pounds. The magistrate who prosecuted him on this occasion is now dead, and Montgomery would be the last man in the world who could permit any thing to be said here, in justification of himself, which might seem to cast a reflection on the memory of one, who afterward treated him with the most friendly attention, and promoted his interest by every means in his power.

The active imagination of Montgomery had induced him to suppose that the deprivation of liberty was the loss of every earthly good; in confinement he learned another lesson, and he bore it with fortitude and cheerfulness. In York Castle he had opportunities of amusement, as well as leisure for study; and he found kindness, consolation, and friendship within the walls of a prison. During confinement he wrote, and prepared for the press, a volume of poems, which he published, in 1797, under the title of Prison Amusements; but his spirits and hopes were now so broken that he made no exertion to recommend this work to the public.

I went in August, 1845, to visit York Castle, with the particular object of seeing the room which Montgomery occupied during his last imprisonment, and where he wrote the Prison Amusements, and by his own description of it corrected a curious mistake which the keepers had made. "The room which I occupied," said Mr. Montgomery to me, "is up stairs, and is distinguished by a round window between two Ionic pillars, at the end of the building nearest to the city and Clifford's Tower, and facing the courthouse." On requesting the turnkey to show me that as the room where Montgomery had been confined, he assured me that it was not the room, but the true place was the corresponding room at the opposite end of the building. It was not easy to persuade him. He went to the gatekeeper, who supported his view of the case, assuring me that his father was turnkey at the time, and that it was well known, and had been always shown as Montgomery's room. There could be no mistake. I asked them if they thought it possible that a man could be shut up six months in a prison, and after fifty years could give so exact a description of the spot as Montgomery had given me--showing the above identification in my note-book, as written down from Montgomery's statement at the moment--and be mistaken? But men in authority are not readily convinced. What! could all the clever turnkeys of York Castle, for fifty years almost to a day, have been showing a wrong room to thousands of visitors? Impossible! I was therefore obliged to bring another impossibility to render their impossibility more impossible, and that was the impossibility of seeing through, not merely a stone wall, but a stone house. I told them that Montgomery said that he could see the meadows along the Ouse from his window; and that such intense longings for liberty did the sight of people taking their walks there daily give him, that the moment he was liberated he hurried out of the court, descended to the Ouse, and perambulated its banks just where he had seen the people so often walking. This was a poser. It was only from the window described by Montgomery that any such view could be obtained. Facing it, was merely the court wall, over which the river could be seen; but facing the other window stood the court-house--that was a terribly stout impossibility; and so the lords of locks and bolts gave up the point, and said, "Well, it was very odd that every body should have been wrong for fifty years, and that the room should be wrong--how _could_ it have got wrong?" That is an interesting question, which, perhaps, in the course of the next half-century their united wisdom may contrive to set right.

The castle is a spacious affair. It consists of buildings of different dates and styles, and an ample court. No part of it is old, except a large round tower, called Clifford's Tower, which stands on a mount just within the walls. The rest consists of four buildings. One is the court-house, in which the county assizes are held, parallel with the river Ouse, from which it is but a few hundred yards distant. Opposite to this is what was once the felons' and crown-prisoners' prison; a building with several Ionic columns in the center, and two at each end. This is now chiefly occupied by a turnkey's family, and the female prisoners. The large area between these buildings is closed at one end by the debtors' prison, and at the other by Clifford's Tower. Between the tower and the turnkey's house just mentioned, stands the new felons' prison. This, as well as the outer court walls and entrance-gate, is built of solid stone in castellated style. The room occupied by Montgomery is now in the turnkey's house, and is the bedroom of the servant.

The felons' prison is much in the shape of a fan, forming alternate ranges of cells and court-yards, where the prisoners walk in the daytime. The assizes being just over, there were scarcely any prisoners in the jail except those convicted and awaiting their punishments, of which none were capital, but most of them transportation. These men were all clothed in the convict's dress, a jacket and trowsers of coarse cloth, of broad green and yellow check. They were mostly basking in the sun in groups, on the pavement of their respective court-yards, and appeared any thing but sad. The whole prison seemed as if hewed out of solid stone; and everywhere were gates of iron, closing with a clang and a twank of the lock behind you, which must sound any thing but cheering to a prisoner just conducted in. The openings into the different court-yards were filled with massy iron railing; and the pavements, walls, every thing else, was one mass of solid stone. Many of the stones in the wall were nine feet long, and of proportionate quadrature. The chapel presented a range of partitions with strong bars, as for a wild beast's den, in front, and doors behind, so that the prisoners from separate cells are let in there, and can not get sight of each other. The partition for the women is boarded up in front, so that they are quite unseen, except to the preacher. The windows were everywhere, as it were, a complete network of knotted iron bars; and the dining-rooms of the prisoners were those long winding passages of massy stone, along which we went to their cells. In these, with the iron gates locked behind them, they stand at a long, narrow board fixed to the wall, about the width of a plate, and take their meals. No place surely was at once so clean, and so hopelessly ponderous and strong. The very idea of it seemed to weigh on one like a nightmare, and make one stretch ourself, as for a sense of freedom.

The few women who were in prison, were, of course, convicts. They all rose at our entrance into their room, where they were all together, and courtesied very respectfully, and if one were to judge from their countenances, we could not think them very criminal. The men seemed hardy, reckless, and inclined to be insolent, for every word uttered in passing along these courts of solid stone was flung back from wall to wall, and was heard in the remotest corners; and more than once, we heard the convicts take up our words, imitate them in a burlesque style, and then join in laughter at their own audacity. There were numbers of them that we should not be glad to meet in a solitary wood. But the women, had I not known that they were convicts, I should have regarded as a set of as decent, modest, and honest women of the working class as one usually sees. There was no expression of hardened guilt or gross depravity about them. A thoroughly debased woman is one of the most revolting objects in creation; but how rarely is woman's nature so thoroughly degraded! How long do the feminine qualities of gentleness and amiability outlive in them the temptations and incentives to crime! How often are they the tools and victims of men, and how often and readily might they be called back from error to the purest and most devoted virtue!

The beds of all the prisoners were laid on iron frames, supported on solid stones, so that they could cut no wood from them for any purposes of escape. Everywhere, above and below, all was stone, stone, solid stone, and bars of massy iron; and yet out of even this place there have been escapes.

But the most extraordinary scene in the whole place is an iron cage in the lobby of the keeper's house, containing the irons of the most signal malefactors, and the weapons with which they committed their murders. There are Dick Turpin's shackles, with a massy bar of iron, about two feet long, and more than twenty-eight pounds' weight, which were put on his legs when he had twice escaped out of the castle; and a girdle of iron to put round his waist, with chains and iron handcuffs for his hands. There is the most horrid collection of hedge-stakes, huge and knotted pieces of rails, of pokers, and hammers, of guns, and knives, and razors, with which murders have been perpetrated, each of which the jailer relates. There is a huge piece of a spar and a heavy stone with which one murderer destroyed his victim. The stakes with which three men knocked out the brains of another in a wood. There is a stone, I suppose ten pounds' weight, at least, hanging by the cord which a mother put round the neck of her infant, and sunk it to the bottom of a pond. There is a piece of the skull of Daniel Clarke, murdered, as it is said, by Eugene Aram; and hats battered in, or shot through by the assassin. There are iron bludgeons terminated with knobs of lead, to conceal under coats; and crowbars bent at the end, to force open doors. These, with the casts of the heads of some of the most noted murderers, form a sufficiently horrible spectacle. It is a history of human ferocity and guilt, actually written in iron and in blood, which still dyes the dreadful instruments of its perpetration with its dismal rust of death. Escaping from this exhibition, I did not do as one of the visitors said he must go and do--get a stout glass of brandy to rid him of his queerness,--but I did as Montgomery did on escaping from the prison,--went and walked along the footpath by the Ouse, under the noble elms which he had so often seen waving in their greenness from his cell.

From the period of his imprisonment in this place, Mr. Montgomery has continued to reside in Sheffield. For the long period of half-a-century he has been essentially bound up with the literary and social progress of the place. Editing, for the greater part of that period, the Iris newspaper, on which his name and writings conferred a popular celebrity; and from time to time sending forth one of his volumes of poetry, there is no question that the influence of his taste and liberal opinions has been greatly instrumental in the growth of that spirit of intelligence and moral culture which highly distinguish Sheffield. With the religious world, as was to be expected, James Montgomery has always stood in high esteem, and in the most friendly relation. The names of Montgomery and Sheffield will always mutually present each other to the mind of the man of taste. Through his own exertions, the proceeds of his pen, and a small pension of £150 a-year, in testimony of his poetic merit, the poor orphan who set out from the little shop at Mirfield to seek fame and fortune with less than five shillings in his pocket, has now for some years retired to an enjoyment of both; and no man ever reached the calm sunshine of life's evening with a purer reputation, or a larger share of the grateful affection of his townsmen, or of the honor of his countrymen in general. One of his oldest friends, from whose written statements I have been enabled to draw some of the facts here given, has sketched the following well merited character of James Montgomery: "It may be said, that nature never infused into a human composition a greater portion of kindness and general philanthropy. A heart more sensibly alive to every better, as well as every finer feeling, never beat in a human breast. Perhaps no two individuals, in manners, pursuits, character, and composition, ever more exactly corresponded with each other, than Montgomery and Cowper. The same benevolence of heart, the same modesty of deportment, the same purity of life, the same attachment to literary pursuits, the same fondness for solitude and retirement from the public haunts of men; and to complete the picture, the same ardent feeling in the cause of religion, and the same disposition to gloom and melancholy. His person, which is rather below the middle stature, is neatly formed; his features have the general expression of simplicity and benevolence, rendered more interesting by a hue of melancholy that pervades them. When animated by conversation, his eye is uncommonly brilliant, and his whole countenance is full of intelligence. He possesses great command of language; his observations are those of an acute and penetrating mind, and his expressions are frequently strikingly metaphorical and eloquent. By all who see and converse with him he is esteemed; by all who know him, he is beloved."

Strangers visiting Sheffield will have a natural curiosity to see where Montgomery so many years resided, and whence he sent forth his poems and his politics. That spot is in the Hartshead; one of the most singular situations for such a man and purpose often to be met with. Luckily, it is in the center of the town, and not far to seek. Going up the High-street, various passages under the houses lead to one common center--the Hartshead, a sort of _cul de sac_, having no carriage-road through, but only one into it, and that not from the main street. The shop, which used to be the Iris office, is of an odd ogee shape, at the end of a row of buildings. It has huge ogee-shaped windows, with great, dark-green shutters. The door is at the corner, making it a three-cornered shop. It is now a pawnbroker's shop, the door and all round hung with old garments. The shelves are piled with bundles of pawned clothes, ticketed. The houses round this strange, hidden court, in which it stands, are nearly all public houses, as the Dove, and Rainbow, and the like, with low eating-houses, and dens of pettifogging lawyers. From what funny corners do poetic lucubrations, to say nothing of political ones, sometimes issue! The Hartshead seems just one of that sort of places in which the singular orgies of the working children of Sheffield, traced out by the Commissioners of Inquiry into the condition of children and young persons in the manufacturing districts, are held. "There are beer-houses," says the Rev. Mr. Farish, "attended by youths exclusively, for the men will not have them in the same houses with themselves. In those beer-houses the youths of both sexes are encouraged to meet, and scenes destructive of every vestige of virtue or morality ensue."

The sub-commissioner visited several of these places, attended by a policeman. He says: "We commenced our visits at about half-past nine at night. In the first place we entered, there were two rows of visitors along each side of the room, amounting to forty or fifty. They were almost entirely boys and girls under seventeen years old. They were sitting together, every boy having apparently his companion by his side. A tall woman, with one or two attendants, was serving them with drink, and three or four men were playing on wind instruments in a corner. Several boys were questioned as to their ages and occupations. Some were grinders, some hafters, and a few had no calling which it was convenient to name to the police. Some were as young as fourteen, but mostly about fifteen or sixteen years old. The younger children do not usually remain so late at these places. We visited several others. In some they were singing, in others dancing, in all drinking. In three successively they were playing at cards, which the police seized. On one occasion we went into a long and brilliantly lighted room, of which the ceiling was painted like a bower. Benches and tables were ranged along the side of each wall. This place was up a dark and narrow lane, and was crowded with young people and men and women of notorious character. There must have been a hundred persons there."

But from a glance at the orgies, which, spite of all that education and the philanthropist have so long been doing, still are to be found in the dark purlieus of the manufacturing town, we must hasten to bid adieu to the poet of religion and refinement. James Montgomery resides at the Mount, on the Glossop road, the WEST END of Sheffield. It is, I suppose, at least a mile and a half from the old Iris office, and is one regular ascent all the way. The situation is lovely, lying high; and there are many pleasant villas built on the sides of the hill in their ample pleasure-grounds, the abodes of the wealthy manufacturers. The Mount, _par excellence_, is the house, or rather terrace, where Montgomery lives. It is a large building, with a noble portico of six fine Ionic columns, so that it looks a residence fit for a prince. It stands in ample pleasure grounds, and looks over a splendid scene of hills and valleys. The rooms enjoy this fine prospect over the valleys of the Sheaf and Porter, which, however, was obscured while I was there with the smoke blowing from the town.

In the drawing-room hangs the portrait of the Incognita, on whom the beautiful lyric under that title was written, and which may be found in the same volume as Greenland. As is there stated, he saw the picture at Leamington; it hung, in fact, in his lodgings, and completely fascinated his fancy--and no wonder. One may imagine the poet, continually met on returning from his walks by that "vision of delight," addressing it in the words of that charming poem.

It is evidently a family portrait, and is no doubt by Lely or Kneller, probably by the latter; at all events by a master. It is of the size of life, three-quarters figure; a slender young lady in a pale silk dress. She is very beautiful, and the expression of her countenance is extremely amiable. All that Mr. Montgomery could learn from his landlady was, that it had belonged to Sir Charles Knightly of Warwickshire; and there can, therefore, be little doubt that this fascinating creature, fit to inspire any poet, was one of his family. The landlady, no great judge of either beauty or art, said she was willing to sell it for _two guineas_, and Montgomery, in a joyful astonishment, at once paid her the money, and secured the prize.

Below Mr. Montgomery's house, on the other side of the road, lie the botanic gardens. These stretching down the hillside, lie charmingly. They are extensive and delightful. The kind and active poet, though in his seventy-fifth year, would accompany me to see them. You enter by a sort of Grecian portico, and to the right hand along the top of the gardens, see a fine long conservatory, in which the palms, parasitical, and other tropical plants are in the most healthy state. The curator, a very sensible Scotchman, seemed to have a particular pleasure in pointing out his plants to us. What struck me most was, however, not so much the tropical plants, as the size to which he has cultivated certain plants which we commonly see small. The common, sweet-scented heliotrope, in a pot, was at least five feet high, and had a stem quite woody, and at least an inch in diameter. It formed, in fact, a tree, and being in full bloom, filled all the conservatory with its odor. The fuchsias were the same, though this is not so unusual. They were tied up to rods, and reaching to the very roof, formed archways hung with their crimson blossoms. The scarlet geraniums were the same; had stems nearly as thick as one's wrist, and were not, I suppose, less than twelve feet high. How much superior to the dwarf state in which we usually keep this magnificent plant! The curator said that they cut all the side branches from these plants quite close, in the autumn or early spring, and that they shoot out afresh and flower.

The gardens themselves are extensive, beautifully varied, richly stocked, and sloped with fine turf. In one place you come to secluded waters and thickets; in another to an open wide lawn, all filled with beds of every imaginable kind of roses in glowing masses; in another, to the remains of the original forest, with its old trees and heathery sward; and with fine views over the neighboring valleys in different directions. It is a most delightful place for walking in, and is naturally a great resort and luxury of the poet. We traversed it, I suppose, for a couple of hours in all directions, and talked over a multitude of poets and poetry. I was glad to find Montgomery as ardent an admirer of Tennyson and of Moile's State Trials as myself, my review of the latter poet in the Eclectic having first brought them under his notice. At the gate of these pleasant gardens I take my present adieu of James Montgomery, the most genuinely religious poet of the age. With a wisdom, founded not on calculation, but on a sacred sense of duty, he had made even his ambition subservient to his aspirations as a Christian, and he has thus reared for himself a pedestal in the poetic Walhalla of England peculiarly his own. The longer his fame endures, and the wider it spreads, the better it will be for virtue and for man.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

Walter Savage Landor is one of the class of fortunate authors. He was born with the silver spoon in his mouth; and he was far more fortunate than the host of those who are born thus; he cared little for the silver spoon of indulgence, and has always been ready to help himself to his share of the enjoyment of life with the wooden ladle of exertion. His fortune has given him all those substantial advantages which fortune can give, and he has despised its corrupting and effeminating influence. It gave him a first-rate education; a power of going over the surface of the earth at his pleasure, of seeing all that is worth seeing at home and abroad, of indulging the real and true pleasure of surveying the varieties and the sublimities of scenery, and studying the varieties and genuine condition of man. Hence his original talents, which were strong, have been strengthened; his mind, which was naturally broad, has been expanded; his classical tastes have been perfected by the scenery of classic countries, while he read the ancient works of those countries, not twisted into pedantic one-sidedness in monkish institutions of barren learning. To him classical literature was but the literature of one, though of a fine portion of the human race. He imbibed it with a feeling of freshness where it grew, but at the same time he did not avert his eyes from the world of to-day. It was humanity in its totality which interested him. Hence the universality of his genius; the healthiness of his tastes; the soundness of his opinions. In stretching his inquiries into all corners of the world he loosened himself from the restrictions of sects, parties, and coteries. Born an aristocrat, he has nevertheless remained fully conscious of the evils of aristocracy; educated at the schools and in the bosom of the Established Church, he is as vividly sensible of the pride and worldliness of the hierarchy as any dissenter, without the peculiar bigotry and narrowness of dissent. Born a gentleman, he has felt with and for the poor; being interested, if men of landed estate are interested, in things remaining as they are, he has announced himself, in no timid terms, for advance, liberty, and law for the many.

These are the characteristics of the man and of his works. His prose and his poetry, his life and his conversation, alike display them. The man is a man of large and powerful physical frame, of a passionate, impulsive, yet reflective mind. There is no disguise about him. He lives, he writes, he talks, from the vigorous strength of this great and equally developed nature, and you can not be a day in his society without hearing him enunciate every principle of his action, and much of its history. His sentiments and doctrines seem continually to radiate on all around him, from the living central fire of a heart which feels, as a sacred duty, every great truth, which the mind has received into its settled conviction. It is therefore astonishing, after a few hours' conversation with him, to find on opening his works how much of his philosophy you are acquainted with. But though you soon learn, through the noble transparency of Landor's nature, what are his principles of action, you do not soon reach the extent of his thoughts. Those which play about his great principles, which illustrate and demonstrate them, are endless in their variety, and astonish you not the less by their originality than by their correctness. His extensive range of observation through nature, through men and things, has stored his mind with an inexhaustible accumulation of imagery, equally beautiful and effective. Whenever you meet with similes drawn from life or from nature in Landor's writings, you may rely upon their accuracy.

The same accuracy marks his conclusions regarding man and society. He is one of the few who, with the inherited means to distinguish himself in politics, to ascend in the scale of artificial life, to acquire fame and wealth by the ordinary means of promotion, has reserved himself for a higher ambition, that of directing the future rather than the present, and of living as a philosophical reformer when the bulk of his cotemporaries are dead forever to this world. For this purpose he has stood aloof from the movements of the hour; he has refused to sit in Parliament; he has gone and spent years abroad, when shallower thinkers would presume the only patriotic position was at home; and by these means he has qualified himself, in various countries and various society, but chiefly through the steady use of his faculties in poring through men and books, and viewing them on all sides, unfettered by interest and uninfluenced by hope, except that of arriving at a true knowledge of things, to speak with authority. From these causes it is that there have been and there are few men who will so permanently and so beneficially act on the progress of society as Walter Savage Landor. The independence of his position and of his nature, his thoroughly high and honorable disposition, seeking truth and hating meanness, thus aided by the wide sphere of his observation, stamp upon his experience the characters of indisputable truth and genuine wisdom. He has no petty bias to any party, any school, any religious sect--all his aspirations are for the benefit of man as man, and whatever comes in the way of the growth of what is intrinsically true, beautiful, and beneficent, he attacks with the most caustic sarcasm; strikes at it with the most ponderous or trenchant weapons that he can lay hands upon, and, careless of persons or consequences, calls on all within hearing to help him to annihilate it. In this respect his fortune has enabled him to do much with impunity.

He promulgates doctrines, and attacks selfish interests, in a manner which would, on the other hand, bring down destruction on an author who had to live by his labors. There are critics, and those calling themselves liberal, too, who have crushed others for the very deeds for which they have applauded and still continue to applaud Savage Landor. Why? Because they know that Landor is invulnerable through his property. If they raised the hue and cry against him of democrat, republican, of violent or revolutionary, he would still eat and drink independent of them; his book would remain, and his position and influence would enable it at length to testify against them. There is, moreover, a large class of critics who see principles, when they see them at all, through the medium of a man's condition in the world, and that which is audacious in a poor man, becomes only a generous boldness in a rich. If I were to select the opinions of Savage Landor on half-a-dozen great questions from his works, and quote him in all his undisguised strength upon them, I could show half-a-score men of less fortune who have been immolated by Landor's own admirers for the proclamation of these identical opinions, or whose works have been left unnoticed because they could not very consistently condemn in them what they had eulogized in him! How few men in this country can afford to be honest!

But not the less do I recognize, nor the less estimate, the sacrifices of Landor to immortal truth. Though he could not be deprived of his daily bread for his sins of plain speaking, yet he has had his share of the malevolence of the low and selfish. The reptiles have bitten, and no doubt have stung, at times, deeply, when he has trodden them beneath his feet, or flung among them his clinging and scalding Greek fire. But he knows that the fruit of his life will not be lost. Already he has lived long enough to see that the tide of opinion and reform is setting in strongly in the direction which he has indicated. It is amazing what progress the truth has made within the last twenty years; and a man like Landor knows that at every future step it must derive fresh strength from his writings. He has pandered to no corruption, he has flattered no fashion; his efforts are all directed to the uprooting of error and the spread of sound reason; and, therefore, the more the latter prevails the more his writings will grow into the spirit of the age. There are those who say that Landor's writings never can be popular. They are greatly mistaken. There is a large reading class, every day becoming larger, in which, were they made cheap enough, they would find the most lively acceptation. It is the class of the uncorrupted people itself. His opinions, and his manly, uncompromising spirit, are just what fall on the popular spirit like showers in summer. They are drank in with a thirsty avidity, and give at once life and solace. In this respect I do not hesitate to place them among the very first of the age.

The poetry of Savage Landor has not been so much read as his prose. His Imaginary Conversations have eclipsed his verse. Yet there is great vigor, much satire, and much tender feeling in his poems, which should render them acceptable to all lovers of manly writing. His Gebir was written early. The scene lies chiefly in Egypt, and introduces sorcerers, water nymphs, and the like characters, which might charm a youthful imagination, but are too far removed from reality to make them general favorites. Yet there is much fine, imaginative, and passionate poetry in this composition. His Hellenics transport you at once to the ordinary life of ancient Greece, and are written with great force, clearness, and succinct effect. His dramas of Count Julian, Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, Fra Rupert, The Siege of Ancona, etc., are reading dramas, very fine of their kind. They abound with splendid writing and the noblest sentiments. Giovanna of Naples is one of the finest and most beautiful characters conceivable; and Fra Rupert has furnished Landor with a vehicle for expressing his indignant contempt of a proud, arbitrary, and hypocritical priest. There are many occasional verses, in which the poet has expressed the feelings of the moment, arising out of the connections and incidents of his life; and these are equally remarkable for their tenderness and their very opposite quality of caustic satire. I must not allow myself to do more than quote a few passages from his poetical writings, which are characteristic of the man. This fine one occurs in the last of his Hellenics, p. 486, vol. ii. of his uniform edition:--

"We are what suns, and winds, and waters make us;
The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills
Fashion and win their nurslings with their smiles.
But where the land is dim from tyranny,
There tiny pleasures occupy the place
Of glories and of duties; as the feet
Of fabled fairies, when the sun goes down,
Trip o'er the grass where wrestlers strove by day.
Then justice, called the Eternal One above,
Is more inconstant than the buoyant form
That burst into existence from the froth
Of ever varying ocean; what is best
Then becomes worst; what loveliest, most deformed.
The heart is hardest in the softest climes,
The passions flourish, the affections die."

This true sentiment is put into the mouth of Count Julian--page 506, vol. ii.

"All men with human feelings love their country.
Not the high-born or wealthy man alone,
Who looks upon his children, each one led
By its gay handmaid from the high alcove,
And hears them once a-day; not only he
Who hath forgotten, when his guest inquires
The name of some far village all his own;
Whose rivers bound the province, and whose hills
Touch the lost clouds upon the level sky:
No; better men still better love their country.
'Tis the old mansion of their earliest friends,
The chapel of their first and best devotions.
When violence or perfidy invades,
Or when unworthy lords hold wassail there,
And wiser heads are drooping round its moats,
At last they fix their steady and stiff eye,
There, there alone, stand while the trumpet blows,
And view the hostile flames above its towers
Spire, with a bitter and severe delight."

There is not less truth than satire in this:--

"In all law-courts that I have ever entered
The least effrontery, the least dishonesty,
Has lain among the prosecuted thieves."--P. 557.