lover, who it seems had proved the more constant | friend of the two. At all events, there are not many in Petersburg who may throw stones;-nor, to do them justice, do they seem disposed.' It is only in little chance remarks of this latter kind that we can detect the author's general dissatisfaction with the character of Russian society. And so we close her most charming volumes. THE PEARL-WEARER. BY BARRY CORNWALL. [It is recorded of a pearl-diver, that he died (from over-exertion or some other cause) immediately after reaching the land or boat from which he had plunged; and that, amongst the shells which he brought up, one contained a pearl of surpassing size and beauty.] WITHIN the midnight of her hair, Gentle bride, no longer wear, O sweet Lady! cast aside, Let the wild-eyed conqueror wear Weigh on bosoms hard and cold! Friendship's Offering. Recall me ever in thy saddest mood, Remember then how I have ofttime sued Thus, sweet one, only would I fill thy mind, To all my sins I'd have thee very blind, And see me only fond, and true, and kind, Pure as that heart wherein I'd lie enshrined, If Fate unkind would let me. Guernsey, Jersey, and the Isle of Man 124,079 Total, 26,856,028 Exclusive of the army, navy, and merchant seamen afloat, and of all persons travelling abroad; which would raise the number to 27,000,000-an increase of 2,000,000 since 1831.-Literary Gazette. From the Britannia.* VISCOUNT PALMERSTON. LORD PALMERSTON enjoys the unenviable distinction of being the best abused of all her Majesty's universally abused Ministers. Just at the present time more especially, he is the object of more of the sinister attention of his countrymen than any other man in Europe. O'Connell, indeed, is quite jealous at his peculiar privileges being thus usurped. No one thinks of him, now: Lord Palmerston is tied to the stake, and all the political foes of the two worthies are too much occupied in devising new and various modes of torture for the noble viscount, to be able to bestow a thought upon one who has now been abused well nigh into oblivion. For the perfection to which Lord Palmerston has carried one of the virtues, he deserves to be remembered his patience is super-human. There is, indeed, but one member of the animal creation whose meek endurance of cuffs and blows, and all indignities, at all approaches to that of this longsuffering Minister. A consciousness of slighted worth alone enables it to bear up against the scorn and injustice of mankind; and it is highly probable that some similar sentiment may support Lord Palmerston against the accumulation of blame which time has heaped already upon him, and which even now seems to be likely to be increased tenfold. On one point, however, I consider Lord Palmerston's enemies have made an egregious error. They attribute to him incapacity, and a want of ability. This is a great mistake. Lord Palmerston does not want ability-all he wants is political principle. Time, also, and long practice in parrying or evading the innumerable attacks that have been made upon him, have so far sharpened his wits that he is by no means an antagonist to be despised. Had Lord Palmerston's peculiar career, indeed, ever admitted of his taking an enlarged and high-minded view of foreign policy, he might have made a very good Minister, for he has, by some means or other, picked up a good stock of information on details, and he is really a good man of business of the red-tape school. But, as I before said, he wants political principle: he never seems to see beyond his nose; and always appears as if he were to-day devising the expedient to put off or to evade the evil of to-morrow; as though, in fact, he had never, since he entered the Foreign-office, been able to go through that process which gentlemen in difficulties call turning themselves round. intelligibilities. If Lord P. never committed himself by his actions, he certainly never would by his words; for I much doubt whether he ever, in the whole course of his political life, pledged himself to any opinion, or to the adoption of any course of policy, in plain intelligible words that could not be cavilled at. He has also a very great facility of language-never stops, as some foolish persons do, to hit out original ideas: all is one harmonious flow of grammatical proprieties, with here and there an attempt to be funny, which ought to succeed, were it only for the evident labour bestowed upon it. No; Lord Palmerston does not want ability-all he requires, in order to make him a statesman, is that he should have some fixed principles of action. All that he now seems to strive at is, to preserve in the management of his foreign policy as great a resem blance to the home policy of his colleagues as possible. This he contrives to do with very great skill. For every defeat they experience on domestic subjects, he takes care that he meets one abroad; and he copies to their admiration the system of expe diency-of making shift for the moment, and letting the future take care of itself,-of smiling when beaten, as though blows and kicks were all honours and, above all, of keeping up the appearance of some system of policy, very profound but very secret, all the while laughing in his sleeve at those who do not see through the joke. But really, it is scarcely fair to find fault with him for want of definite po litical principle. A man's mind can only be the growth of his education, and the circumstances in which he has been placed. Now, looking at the position in which Lord P. has been-at the various administrations of which he has been a member in some shape or other, from William Pitt's down to O'Connell's-how could he have ever acquired any of those fixed principles of action which made a Pitt or a Canning great ministers? I can only conceive his mind to have been in a state of intense bewilderment-so rapid were the changes from Tory to Whig, Whig to Tory, Tory to Whig again, and then from Whig to Radical! The only chance by which such a man could avoid insanity was, to have no fixed principles at all, but to wait upon Provi dence. Yet an attentive observer may note one result from his service under so many colours-you will constantly hear from him, even in the course of the same evening, scraps of the opinions of each party of whom he has been from time to time the hack. They have probably been unconsciously imbibed by him in moments of involuntary attention to the policy of his various colleagues; and they now Those who have only heard of Lord Palmerston come out in most admired confusion. Has he to deby means of the attacks of his opponents, will be fend an alliance with the Emperor Nicholas, nothing somewhat surprised to hear that he is by no means can be more aristocratically despotic than the tone a bad speaker; nay, that at times, when he hap and temper of his address; has he to defend Espar pens (a very rare case) to have a good defence, or tero and the Spanish turbulents in their attempts to when his antagonist is only one of the small fry, control the very monarchy in mantaining which Lord from whose powers of reply he fears nothing, he even P. has spent so much of his invaluable paper and red rises into temporary brilliancy. I have occasion- tape, nothing can be more loosely and liberally deally heard from him speeches that evinced great mocratic than his arguments; or, on the other hand, talent and readiness-of that sort which consists in when Louis Philippe was to be praised, the juste skipping about in order to avoid the point of an milieu (the Whiggery of France) was the only panaantagonist's sword. Of the language of diplomacy cea. Thus it is that this ingenious chameleon rehe is also a perfect master. No man knows better flects the colours of his temporary political atmosthan he how to clothe nothings in a vesture of baf-phere. fing and incomprehensible words; or, on the other The personal appearance of Lord Palmerston achand, to mystify what ought to be candid avowals cords with his character. There is nothing at all of principle or policy into very high-sounding un-striking about it. Nor, on the other hand, is there * September 19, 1840. any thing to take exception at-nothing ugly, nor mean, nor absurd. All is in a well regulated state of modates his body to the movements of his coat, not his coat to the inclinations of his body. Lord Palmerston will, therefore, never be the founder of a dynasty of dandies. commonplace and gentlemanly namby-pamby. His only for his own. The one is all carelessness and attire is comme il faut, evidently the result of much sci- gaiety, as though his dress were a part of himself entific calculation and manual labour. Perhaps there (and, indeed, one might think it was, so exquisitely is a supernatural symmetry about the bust and waist; does it melt into his frame;) but the other seems but I will not undertake to pronounce an opinion, haunted by an uncomfortable consciousness of being and, besides, the subject is sacred from inquiry. Im- well dressed, as though a wrinkle in his coat would pertinent people have also insinuated that his lord-give him a stitch in his side. He palpably accomship enjoys a colour of a more delicate hue than generally attends sexagenarians, and that his eyebrows are considerably darker than his hair. Here, again, I protest against inquiry. Politics and paint have no immediate connexion with each other; and if the noble lord finds that the habit has not lessened his influence and attraction with the fair, he may well afford to laugh at those who find fault with his complexion because it is too handsome. Had they the same delightful temptations, most probably they would go and do likewise. Lord Palmerston is tall and well proportioned; and if his limbs no longer exhibit all the full elasticity of juvenility, they, at least, have none of the decrepitude of age. For Time has spared his muscle. In short, in every thing except youth, he may fairly be said to be the model of a "nice young man.' One observation I must be allowed to make upon Lord Palmerston's dressing. A well-dressed man is an ornament and an advantage to society in a country where the ornamental is too entirely rendered subordinate to the useful. A Count d'Orsay dresses for the benefit of his cotemporaries, but a Lord Palmerston dresses From the Britannia.* The face of Lord Palmerston presents few temptations to the physiognomist. It is guiltless of any marked or unpleasant expression. It is all mildness, regularity, and no-meaning. Had it a character of ferocity, or of humour, or of cunning, it might still be handsome, but, as it is, it is nothing. His voice is equally devoid of expression. In his speeches, he begins with languor, continues with insipidity, and ends with exhaustion. In hearing him give an account of some of his Continental exploits, you might almost imagine you heard an antiquated maiden recounting the vicissitudes of her first love. Yet, when roused by some stinging philippic, Lord Palmerston sometimes shows that he is a man. He has occasionally delivered speeches in the House of Commons so manly, as to make one almost doubt that they had emanated from such a specimen of incarnated neutrality. LORGNETTE. currying favour with the multitude. Credit is given MR. SERJEANT TALFOURD. to him for single-mindedness and honesty, even by those who most strongly and decidedly condemn the THE very general sympathy that has attended the principles which he advocates. For, if all the Libeefforts of Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, to procure a legisla- rals were like Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, there would be tive recognition of the broad principle of literary copy-comparatively little danger in allowing the principle right, or at all events a partial removal of the disabili- of democracy, or rather the theory of political perties under which the highest class of authors labour fectibility, to assert itself, or even to experimentalize in regard to their property in the creations of their in legislation. He is essentially a gentleman, averse own intellect, has naturally produced in the minds of by his mental constitution, his education, his tastes, those who have not had the opportunity of observing and his temper, to the slightest approach to violence, the hon. and learned gentleman in public, a desire to or to the admission of any agencies into political know what sort of man he is, and how far his per- warfare, save those which would rather be calculated sonal and parliamentary claims on their esteem bear to elevate than to degrade-to lead to progression in out his already widely-extended reputation. good than to retrogradation to the evils of anarchy, and the barbarism which originally grew out of the exaltation of the physical over the intellectual and the moral. It is, in fact, this very tendency of mind rather to philosophize upon politics, than to look to them as practical every-day matters, coming under the surveillance of legislative police-rather to presuppose an imaginary virtue in human nature in the abstract, and to yield to every being bearing the human form those rights and that freedom of action which would be cheerfully acceded to that abstract human nature, if its supposed virtues were admitted An interest, indeed, attaches to Mr. Serjeant Talfourd of no ordinary kind, and it is only when we consider the various sources from which it arises, and the versatility of the talent on which his fame is based, that we perceive that the ability which has raised him to that degree of eminence must be really of no ordinary kind. To be, at one and the same time, a dramatic poet of a high order-very high, if success be the test of genius-and an advocate, and parliamentary speaker of unquestioned superiority, is a distinction which it is the pride of few men to enjoy. Yet Mr. Talfourd does fairly own this honour, that has led this distinguished gentleman to throw and by none is it more readily and heartily conceded the weight of his talents, his reputation, and great than by those who most strenuously oppose his poli- private worth into the popular scale, and add one tical sentiments. more to the list of social suicides that is already Even in regard to his political opinions, Mr. Ser-crowded with so many brilliant names. jeant Talfourd, though pushing liberalism to the very verge of discretion and safety, has succeeded in obtaining the respect of his opponents. No man ever thought of imputing to him insincerity, or of charging upon him the advocacy of popular, not to say democratic, sentiments, for the sinister object of * February 13, 1841 There is prevalent a vulgar prejudice, to the effect that men whose sympathies are strongly intellectual, whose love for philosophy, poetry, the fine arts, and an abstracted and truly Christian worship of moral virtue, amounts really to the fervour and the purity of passion, are by their nature incapable of strong reasoning faculties, and of a practical application to the commonplace business of life; and that they are, therefore, unsafe guides in all affairs, where that useful quality called common sense is required. O, that same common sense! Of all the various kinds of cant that reign in this self-sufficient world, save us from the cant of your practical men-they who make common sense the idol of their worship, and glory in a ribald negation of the highest attributes of our intellectual nature. Had Lord Bacon--the most common sense mind the world, perhaps, ever produced had he no imagination, no poetry in his soul? did he tie his intellect down to the rule of three. Had Sir Thomas Browne-another shrewd and keeneyed observer of mankind-had he no power of shuffling off this mortal coil of plodding commonplace, and walking with the greater intellects in their ethereal atmosphere? Were genius and common sense incompatible in Napoleon Bonaparte. But woe to the lawyer who attempts to reconcile the delights of literary relaxation with the dry details of the practical portion of his profession? It has been definitively settled by those who conceive themselves the orthodox dispensers of legal fame, that a man who admits any other intellectual companions than John Doe and Richard Roe, who is conscious of the pre-existence of one William Shakspeare, or recognizes in the profession of the law not merely the means of earning reluctant guineas, but also a vast field for observing human nature-it has been long since adjudged that such a man is positively contemptible, and unfit to hold a brief, or, to use their own emphatic phrase, that he is "no lawyer." No man has suffered more from this prejudice than Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. With talents and knowledge of his profession qualifying him to rank with the most celebrated of his contemporaries, he was, for a long period of his career at the bar, looked on with suspicion and dislike. The fact of his having original ideas was fatal to him. Those who thus summarily threw cold water on his pretensions were probably ignorant of the circumstance that some of the most distinguished lawyers the country ever produced were men of highly cultivated literary tastes many of them poets or patrons of poets. To pass over past times-and, above all, the illustrious Bacon -one can find among contemporary lawyers sufficient evidence of the fallacy of this view. Lords Lyndhurst, Brougham, Denman, Mr. Justice Littledale, Mr. Baron Bolland, Mr. Justice Holroyd, and a host of others, living or dead, are, or were, men remarkable for the alacrity with which they flung aside the wig, and plunged into the delights of the library and the dressing-gown and slippers. But enough of this. The fallacy is almost too absurd to require refutation. Though Mr. Talfourd writes dramatic poems, and though the periodical literature of his country is indebted to him for many productions, inferior only to those of Macaulay, yet his practice as an advocate does not seem to be diminished, nor is his legal reputation jeopardized. We have at present, however, more to do with Mr. Serjeant Talfourd as a member of Parliament than as an author or an advocate, though it is here that the mental peculiarities, which result from his literary habits, more disclose themselves than in his speeches at the bar. He is, in the first place, an independent man-elected by the comparatively unsolicited suffrages of his fellow-townsmen, who conferred the honour upon him as a mark of their sense of his literary and legal abilities. The borough (Reading) which he represents is not one which has any predominant class interest to advance, and the hon. member is therefore free to pursue the bent of his inclination in the course which he may take in Parliament. This, though favourable to the development of his peculiarities of mind, has perhaps militated against his parliamentary efficiency as a legislator on general subjects. The question of literary copyright is precisely that which one might have expected him to take up; it is congenial to his innermost sympathies and wishes, and the passionate and exalted earnestness with which he has followed it up have immeasurably raised him in the opinion of the House generally. No doubt the Warburtons consider as a species of amiable monomaniac the man who would, against such fearful odds, persevere in his advocacy of the interests of those who have nothing like a quid pro quo to offer in return; but the support which he has received on that question, from men like Sir R. Inglis and Lord Mahon-men diametrically opposed to him in general principles-is the highest testimony that can be paid to the practical rationality of his views. The manner, too, in which he has conducted the bill, against perhaps the most pertinacious and unfair opposition ever offered to any measure that did not involve a party question, has much added to the general prestige in his favour. That his personal feelings were much mixed up in the matter no one could fail to see; yet he never for a moment departed from that line of gentlemanly courtesy which so entirely accords with his charac ter. His first speeches were strongly marked with that enthusiasm for the subject which was to be ex-, pected from his early associations and predilections; and when the shop-keeping spirit began evidently to grow too strong for him, though he could not disguise the mortification he felt, yet he never displayed petulance, or a disposition to avail himself of the argumentum ad hominem. He spoke more in sorrow than in anger. I do not myself like Serjeant Talfourd's style of speaking. It is unsuited to an assembly so consti tuted as the House of Commons, where a good party clap-trap or a successful calculation of the profits of a railroad are of more avail than the most profound philosophy, or the most elevated enthusiasm for the intellectual welfare of mankind. Mr. Serjeant Talfourd's speeches are always listened to with great interest, and he is himself treated with the utmost respect; but still there is a want of congeniality between him and the assembly. His objects are too elevated, too abstract, too far removed from the ordinary pounds, shillings and pence concerns of mankind. The mass of members may feel rebuked, may value at a distance views and principles which admirably well serve to round a period, but Mammon will, for all that, prevail. If Mr. Talfourd could relieve his poetical and legal labours by a course of rigorous though unintelligible statistics, or if he could invent a new system of drainage, he would stand in a brilliant position in that House. There would then be some sympathies in common, and it would come to a sort of compromise:" You patronize my pigs, and I'll patronize your poetry." But, as it is, he "flies his kite too high;" and, while he really has all that common sense and those practical qualities which superficial observers are apt to deny him, he never gets credit for them, because he has, perhaps, disdained to exhibit them. If the subject matter of his speeches be not very palatable to the House, his manner of treating it is not calculated to render it more so. To a person of decided literary enthusi asm, nothing can be more delightful than the fervour with which he pours out his feelings on a topic which is interwoven with his earliest and deepest sympathies. There can be no doubt of his sincerity; it speaks in the voluble haste of his delivery, the nervous excitement of his frame, and his kindled, flashing eye. He is fully possessed, and, while the excitement lasts, the House are possessed too. But his style is not calculated to produce a permanent effect. It is too poetical, too redundant in words, too expressive of foregone conclusions in the mind of the speaker, to fall with any weight upon an assembly which is mainly influenced by the plainest language and the most every-day ideas an assembly indeed which would seem to hold itself unconscious of any question until the whole country has rung with it. But notwithstanding these drawbacks, I must prefer Mr. Talfourd to Mr. Macaulay, as a speaker. There is an air of study and preparation about the latter from which the former is wholly exempt. The wearisome monotony of his style, too, contrasts with the varying manner of Mr. Talfourd, which reflects every turn of his mind, and every shade of feeling; and although Mr. Macaulay's speeches, when well reported, read incomparably better than Mr. Talfourd's, because they are all prepared with inconceivable labour, yet there is that charm of earnestness and sincerity about the mode of delivery of the latter, that makes him a much better speaker, to hear. The redundancy of his language proceeds, too, from the fulness of his mind-some men use many words from the lack of copiousness of meaning, but Mr. Talfourd's redundancy of words proceeds from a redundancy of ideas, and an inability to curb his imagination, if not an indifference to attempt it. Mr. Talfourd's personal appearance, to a superficial observer, is not in his favour; there is an apparent want of manliness about it. Slender, without being tall, he is not symmetrically made; and he has a peculiar stoop in his shoulders (he is somewhat round-shouldered) that gives him an undignified appearance. He casts his eyes down, and, altogether, his mode of walking would lead a stranger to think that he was anxious not to be seen. Except that he is really a most retiring, unassuming man, this personal peculiarity belies his character for he is a singularly upright, honest, high-minded man, possessed of much moral courage. It is in his eye that the whole expression of his intellect lies; until that is turned full upon you, you would think you were speaking to an ordinary and undistinguished man. But there is a combined expression of intelligence and benevolence in his eye, which at once enchains your regard and commands your respect. His face is of an oval form, though irregular, and the lower or fleshy part is unduly developed, giving it a full, plump, infantine expression. The forehead is high, and strikingly intellectual; and as he has a very good set of teeth, forehead, eye, and teeth, when he is under the excitement of speaking, combine to give an air of sparkling intelligence to the whole countenance that neutralizes the defects of feature. From the Britannia.* FEVRE (SPEAKER.) Like Mr. Gladstone, the late Lord Durham, and Lord Brougham, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd has no whiskers; in fact they would go to neutralize the intellectual character of his countenance. His complexion is almost as dark as a high-caste Hindoo. While mentioning Mr. Gladstone, I would observe, that although the politics of the hon. gentlemen are as opposite as light and darkness, there is a great general similarity between him and Mr. Talfourd. The same gentlemanly mildness, the same enthusiasm for literature, the same tendency to philosophi cal abstraction, exist in both. It is an evidence of that strange instinct which attracts to each other kindred dispositions, that these two gentlemen are often to be seen familiarly chatting together in the House, on those ocasions when party spirit is in its lucid intervals. Mr. Serjeant Talfourd is the son of a gentleman who was, formerly, a brewer at Reading. He is in his 46th year; and has been, since 1822, espoused to a lady of great personal beauty and worth, the daughter of J. Torvel Rutt, Esq., a name well known in the literary world. He has several children, and adds to the gratifications of public honour and fame, the more solid enjoyments of domestic happiness. Mr. Talfourd may be said to have fought his way up in the world. He was early entered as a student for the bar, and, during the probationary period, supported himself by contributions to the periodical press, and, also, in the capacity of a reporter to a newspaper. He reported the Court of King's Bench for the "Times," for some considerable time. He was, also, a distinguished and valued contributor to the "Edinburgh Review;" and his dramatic criticisms in the "New Monthly Magazine," were only second to those of Leigh Hunt, if, indeed, they were inferior at all. Those who are curious in literary matters, may, by referring to the "Pamphleteer," a periodical long since gone the way of all pamphlets, see an article by Mr. Talfourd, when scarcely more than a youth, on the then neglected poets, who were afterwards confounded together under the epithet of the "Lake school." It bears undoubted marks of genius, though disfigured by a too great luxuriance of style. This paper brought Mr. Talfourd into close connexion with Lamb, Coleridge, and that circle of literary men. Mr. Talfourd's dramatic pieces are too well known to require further mention here; he has also published the life and letters of Charles Lamb, a very interesting piece of literary biography, charming from the naïveté with which it enters into the simplest details. At the bar, Mr. Talfourd's success was for some time deferred, but afterwards very rapid. His election for Reading, was really an honour to him, and though he has for a time failed to carry the Copyright Bill, yet he may depend, if he perseveres, and does not enter into unnecessary compromises without receiving in return pledges of acquiescence, he will ultimately succeed. LORGNETTE. post of the Speakership of the House of Commons. THE RIGHT HON. CHARLES SHAW LE- It requires, as will be hereafter seen, a combination of requisites and qualities not often found united in the same individual; and the actual bodily fatigue induced by the discharge of its functions, is greater than that attaching to almost any other office. THERE is not an office in the kingdom, from that of Prime Minister down to that of a Master in Chancery, the duties of which so fully warrant the payment of the salary attached to it, as the high and important * August 7, 1841. The Speaker of the House of Commons, by the very nature of his position, must of necessity be, if not an extraordinary, at least a superior man. How else could a miscellaneous body of six hundred and |