thing or other; and uttered it so pertinently that, six | the killing of thousands,' "-sarcastic learned-seror seven times in the end, he got great applause by the whole House."

"At once the Commons began to grumble. Glyn "He made a speech large two hours and ane half. posed him, On what articles he would examine wit-* To all he repeated nought anew, but the best nesses, then? They did not believe that he wanted of his former answers. And in the end, after some to examine witnesses, but put him to name the arti- lashness and fagging, he made such ane pathetic cles. He named one,-another,—a third,-a fourth; oration, for ane half hour, as ever comedian did upon and not being like to make ane end, the Commons a stage. The matter and expression were exceeding on both sides of the House rose in a fury, with a brave: doubtless, if he had grace or civil goodness, shout of Withdraw! Withdraw! Withdraw!' he is a most eloquent man. One passage made it get all to their feet, on with their hats, cocked their most spoken of his breaking off in weeping and beavers in the King's face. We all did fear it would silence when he spoke of his first Wife. Some took grow to a present tumult. They went all away in it for a true defect of his memory; others, and the confusion. Strafford slipped off to his barge and to most part, for a notable part of his rhetoric: some the Tower, glad to be gone lest he should be torn in that true grief and remorse at that remembrance had pieces; the King went home in silence; the Lords stopped his mouth. For they said that his first to their house.' Lady, the Earl of Clare's sister, being with child, and finding one of his whore's letters, brought it to him, and chiding him therefore, he strook her on the breast, whereof shortly she died."

Session sixteenth vanishes thus, in a flash of fire! Yes; and the "harsh untunable voice" of Mr. O. Cromwell, member for Cambridge, was in that shout of "Withdraw!" and Mr. Cromwell dashed-on his rusty beaver withal, and strode out so,—in those wide nostrils of his a kind of snort. And one Mr. Milton sat in his house, by St. Bride's Church, teaching grammar, writing Areopagitics; and had dined that day, not perhaps without criticism of the cookery. And it was all a living coloured time, not a grey vacant one; and had length, breadth, and thickness, even as our own has!-But now, also, is not that a miraculous spyglass, that perceptive faculty, soul, intelligence, or whatsoever we call it, of the Reverend Mr. Robert Baillie of Kilwinning! We still see by it-things stranger than most preternaturalisms, and mere commonplace "apparitions," could be. "Our fathers, where are they?" Why, there; there are our far-off fathers, face to face; alive, and yet not alive; ah no, they are visible but unattainable, sunk in the never-returning Past! Thrice endeavouring, we cannot embrace them; ter manus effugit imago. The Centuries are transparent, then; -yes, more or less; but they are impermeable, impenetrable, no adamant so hard. It is strange. To be, to have been of all verbs the wonderfullest is that same. The "Time-element," the "crystal prison!" Of a truth, to us Sons of Time, it is the miracle of miracles.-These thoughts are thrown out for the benefit of the curious.

Such is the drama of life, seen in Baillie of Kilwinning; a thing of multifarious tragic and epic meanings, then as now. A many-voiced tragedy and epos, yet with broad-based comic and grotesque accompaniment; done by actors not in buskins;ever replete with elements of guilt and remorse, of pity, instruction, and fear! It is now two hundred years and odd months since these Commons members, shouting, "Withdraw! Withdraw!" took away the life of Thomas Wentworth Earl of Strafford; and introduced, driven by necessity they knew little whither, horrid rebellions, as the phrase went, and suicidal wars into the bowels of this country. On our horizon too, there loom now inevitabilities no less stern; one knows not sometimes whether not very near at hand! They had the Divine Right of Kings to settle, those unfortunate ancestors of ours: Shall Charles Stuart and William Laud alone have a soul and conscience in this nation, under extant circumstances; or shall others too have it? That had come now to require settlement, that same " divine right;" and they our brave ancestors, like true stalwart hearts, did on hest of necessity manage to settle it,-by cutting off its head, if no otherwise.

Alas, we, their children, have got perhaps a still harder thing to settle: the Divine Right of Squires. Did a God make this land of Britain, and give it to One thing, meanwhile, is growing plain enough us all, that we might live there by honest labour; or to every body: those fiery Commons, with their did the Squires make it, and,-shut to the voice of "Withdraw! Withdraw!" will have the life of that any God, open only to a Devil's voice in this matpoor prisoner. If not by free verdict of their lord-ter,-decide on giving it to themselves alone? This ships, then by bill of attainder of their own; by fair is now the sad question and "divine right" we, in means, or by less fair, Strafford has to die. "Intoferable pride and oppression cry to Heaven for vengeance." Yes, and Heaven has heard; and the earth now repeats it, in Westminster Hall here, nay, worse still, out in Palace yard, with "horrible cries and imprecations!" This noble baited lion shall not escape, but perish,-be food for learned sergeants and the region kites ! We will give but one other glimpse of him his last appearance in Westminster Hall, that final speech of his there; "which," says Baillie, "you have in print." We have indeed: printed in "Whitelocke," and very copiously elsewhere and since;-probably the best of all speeches, every thing considered, that has yet been printed in the English tongue. All readers remember that passage, that pause, with tears in the "proud glooming countenance," at thought of "those pledges a saint in Heaven left me.' But what a glare of new fatal meaning does the last circumstance, or shadow of a circumstance, which Baillie mentions, throw over it:

this unfortunate century, have got to settle! For there is no end of settlements; there will never be an end; the best settlement is but a temporary, partial one. Truly, all manner of rights, and adjust ments of work and wages, here below, do verge gradually into error, into unbearable error, as the Timeflood bears us onward; and many a right, which used to be a duty done, and divine enough, turns out, in a new latitude of the Time-voyage, to have grown now altogether undivine! Turns out, when the fatal hour and necessity for overhauling it arrives,― to have been, for some considerable while past, an inanity, a conventionality, a hollow simulacrum of use-and-wont; which, if it will still assert itself as a "divine right," having now no divine duty to do, becomes a diabolic wrong; and, by soft means or by sharp, has to be sent travelling out of this world! Alas, "intolerabilities" do now again in this new century "cry to Heaven;"—or worse, do not cry but in low wide-spread moan, lie as perishing, as if "in Heaven there was no ear for them, and in earth no

From Fraser's Magazine.
MY LIFE AND TIMES.

BY NIMROD.

GREAT men seldom write their own lives. "Alexander had his Quintius Curtius," said Napoleon, " and I shall have mine;" which he had. "It is a hard and nice subject," saith Cowley, speaking of himself, "for a man to write of himself; it grates his own heart to say any thing of disparagement, and the reader's ear to hear any thing of praise from him." Again, what saith another great essayist in allusion to an autobiographer? "He must needs be a wise man; he speaks so much of himself." Am I a wise man? Certainly not, or I should have been worth a hundred thousand pounds twenty years back; it was on the cards, as I shall presently show, in more ways than one. But it is not merely your wise and good men whose history may be entertaining and instructive. On the contrary, the lives of even vicious persons have not been without their use and moral, as a warning voice to others, to avoid the fatal consequences which sooner or later generally follow vicious practices; and thus, whatever may be the objections to the early cantos of Don Juan, amends were subsequently made in the heart-rending power with which the noble and highly talented author exposed the miserable consequences attendant upon error, and the agonizing remorse that invariably follows the commission of actual crime. On the other hand, with really good men, it seems but a just debt that their memories should be perpetuated after them, and posterity acquainted with their benefactors, either by their own pen or by that of another; the expectation of which we know to have been no small incentive to noble and virtuous conduct in the Pagan world. As Milton says,

66

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise;
That last infirmity of noble minds."

love themselves, and to be much inclined in their own favour: which makes it a difficult task for any one to write an impartial history of his own actions. That which may have appeared great or good if told by another is lost when related by the party himself. It is, in fact, difficult to follow the advice given by Cicero on this subject. "If," says he, "there is any thing commendable, people are obliged to speak of themselves with great modesty ;" a precept that has not often been strictly observed; and the most striking instance of it is perhaps to be found in the Confessions of Rousseau, of which it is asserted that "there is more vanity concentrated in the first ten lines than in the whole contents of any other book in the world." Notwithstanding, however, the rebuke that

"The world's all false; the man who shows his heart Is hooted at for his nudities and scorn'd," works of this kind are very often amusing. They are bought and read, though not always believed. But, after all, what subject is so interesting to man as man? There is no glass in which we can so well dress out our moral nature. There is nothing that so fully enables us to obey the celebrated injunc tion, "To know ourselves." And what more agreeable and useful than skimming the surface of living manners, and portraying the follies and eccentricities, as well as the wisdom and good conduct, of those persons we have met with in life? Think not, then, ye readers of Fraser's Magazine, too lightly of such autobiography as an humble individual like myself is now about to present you with. It is in humble life only that we can securely draw the veil, and enter without fear into family privacy, exhibiting human nature, as she is there so often found, in her brightest garb. If you are fathers, you may avoid the errors that my father committed; your sons, the rock on which my own frail bark struck; and your wives and daughters may be assured that not a thought nor a sentiment will be breathed throughout these papers that could produce a blush on the female cheek; and and if they do not rise the better, they will rise none the worse from the perusal of them.

Although it was Dr. Johnson's opinion that every man's life may be best written by himself, few writers, Julius Caesar excepted-and some think that It, nevertheless, may be asked, whether any man even he had better left it to others have gained re- of humble pretensions, such as mine are, can justify putation by recording their own actions. Yet who his delineating himself from his cradle, and attemptbut Julius Cæsar could have handed down to us his ing to entertain the world with a long series of narexploits, with that eloquence and spirit that he him- ratives, one half of which they will probably care self has done in his admired Commentaries? Who little about, and the other half they will perhaps in but Xenophon himself could have made us follow great part disbelieve? To this I answer, and withhis ten thousand Greeks with such interest and at-out indulging in the maudlin language of sentiment, tention as we do in his Anabasis? And how lost would have been many of the heroic qualities and the consummate abilities of Henry IV. of France, had they not been so ably recorded in Sully's Memoirs? The pros and the cons, then, are both numer-pressions-who cannot look back to the pleasing asous and striking.

The autobiographer may justly plead that no one can be so much master of the subject as himself; and, as has already been observed, there are many instances, both ancient and modern, to justify such conduct. Plutarch, indeed, mentions two cases wherein it is allowable for a man to commend himself, and be the publisher of his own merits; but the difficulty, he adds, lies in making people believe him. On the other hand, it may be said that if a man is not likely to find a historian to do justice to his character, it is because his character is a matter of no consequence to the world. And these do really appear to be serious objections to any person's history from his own hand. It is natural for men to

that there is a link in that bright chain of memory which binds our affections most strongly to the days of our infancy; and I envy not the man to whom the events of such days are without charms and im

sociations of those days, although occasionally with regret-as in my own case-that he did not make a better use of the advantages they afforded him; and likewise lament that the hurried events of active life should have obliterated the memory of many a striking epoch which he would much wish to recall. There may be many persons, indeed, who now find little interest in everyday incidents, especially when offered through the medium of a plain and unpretending style. But this has not generally been the case. Our fathers, at all events, thought differently: they enjoyed nature, and the delineations of her, in all her various forms, and even in her homely garb; nor did they ever love her better than when they traced her lineaments in the humble walks of private

life, by the skilful hand of a Fielding or a Smollett. | British army, and that his head was taken off by a Yet it is not the mere history of myself that I am cannon-shot at the siege of Carthagena in 1740, at about to write. It is that of others that have crossed which time my father must have been in his tenth my path in life, together with that of those to whom year, as he was born in 1730-one hundred and I owe my life, an attempt, in fact, at a fugitive eleven years from the present time. But surely there sketch of the sayings and doings of my own times. can be no other man but myself who can say he never That I must act the part of Orator Ego is unavoida- heard his father mention the names of his own father, ble here. It was only Cæsar who could write his mother, or his sister, whilst living with him, as "Cæsar did this," and "Cæsar did that." Nimrod was my case, in uninterrupted harmony for nearly must strike a lower key; and thus he begins,-say- forty years! Neither can it be easily accounted for ing to himself, reverently, "God speed me in this that I should never inquire into their history, or that not very easy undertaking.". my father should not have volunteered to tell it to me. But so it is; and at the present period it matters little. My father was a scholar, and, I may venture to say, a critical one, inasmuch as there was found amongst his papers, after his decease, a letter from Dr. Percy, the then Bishop of Dromore, signifying that he had sent him a copy of his Collection of Ancient Ballads for his revision, previously to their going to press. And he set his heart on making both my brother and myself scholars, in which he signally failed. But could he rise from his grave now, and find that one of his sons, whom he was used to call "the idlest fellow in the world," contributed (as was my case in the December of the present year) to six different periodicals in one individual month, how surprised and delighted would he be !

But what a curious beginning I am about to make! I do not know who I am. "It is a wise man," however, saith the proverb," who knows his own father." And yet, though not wise, I am quite sure I knew mine; and for these reasons,-I see his face when I look at my own in the glass; the broad forehead, the bald head, and the grey eyes. He stammered much in his speech to his last day. I did the same up to my twentieth year; and still have at times a hitch on my tongue, as now and then I have on my pen. Added to this, my mother may be said to have been chastity personified, in thought, in word, and in deed. Nothing to be doubted, then, on that head; nor on any other save one. My father was a very wise, a highly accomplished, and a very good man; which renders my legitimate pretensions not quite so strong. But how is it that I know not who I am? Why, because my father never told me who he was. That he was somebody is evident from his position in life. He was a gentleman commoner at Oriel College, Oxford; in the commission of the peace for, and one of the deputy | lieutenants of, the county in which he resided: he inherited his landed property from his father; and, had he lived some years longer, would have inherited a large estate in Herefordshire, by virtue of entail by his maternal ancestor, a daughter of John the fifth Viscount Scudamore;* and in virtue of which descent, my elder brother was one of the claimants to the fine estate of Hom Lacy in the same county, the property of the late Duchess of Norfolk (a Scudamore,) who died inestate some dozen years back. That he was somebody is also evident from the place he held in society; from his correspondence and acquaintance with Dr. Johnson; and his having been selected by the friends of the father of the late Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, as the most proper person to accompany him on the grand tour of Europe, which laid the foundation of their close intimacy in after life. But how is it that, although my father never told me who or what his father was, I should never have asked him the question? I am now, I confess, at a loss for an answer; but the fact is, I never troubled myself about the matter. Strange, however, as it may appear, I never heard him mention his father on any occasion whatever, nor his mother, nor his only sister, who married a baronet, but left no family. The honour and respectability of the two first were never called in question, which renders his silence respecting them more remarkable; but as much could not, I believe, be said of the last. Whether her ladyship, as we say on the road, "jumped over the pole," or "kicked over the traces," I am not able to determine in some way or another she went wrong; but as she and her husband have been many years in their graves, and the baronetcy extinct, it is useless to say any thing more of either of them. I have heard that my paternal grandfather was an officer of rank in the The reversion of this estate was sold by my brother 10 Lord Ashburton for £73,000, consequently its real value must have been £100,000, at least.

I have a perfect recollection of Bishop Percy and his lady visiting at our house, on their road from Ireland to London, and hearing the latter sing some of those beautiful lyrics which have so greatly delighted the lovers of poetry and nature; and also that beautiful song, written by himself, "O Nanny, wilt thou gang with me?"—the said Nanny being his own accomplished lady. To my taste, this is one of the most beautiful songs it has ever been my lot to hear; and although it may affect the originality, it but little depreciates the merit, of the composition, that it is rather a close imitation of some of the most tender and poetical passages in Henry and Emma. Barring the Melodies, it is worth a hundred of the cantilena trivia of the present day; and his lordship's "Collections" had a tendency to restore the genuine taste for poetry in England. I much regret my inability to produce Bishop Percy's letters, or those of Dr. Johnson, to my father. They are in my elder brother's possession, and unfortunately mislaid. I, how ever, remember the commencement of one from the latter, requesting my father's interest in his college (he was at Oriel at the time) towards the accomplishment of some object which the learned lexicographer had at heart. "Believing it to be impossible," he says, "for you to live in any society without obtaining influence, I write to request you will exert it," &c. &c. Then there is a postscript, which is quite in character with the writer,-"If you can do me this service," he writes, "do it quickly

"If it were done, when 'tis done,
'Twere well it were done quickly,'

says Macbeth."

But I must quit my worthy parent for the present. It is my intention that one of the chief features in these papers shall be a sort of Vicar-of-Wakefield description of the sayings and doings of what we may call a country-bred family, of a certain station in life far, by the by, from "thinking small beer of themselves," which country-bred gentlefolks are by no means prone to do; and, without dilating on the pride of pedigree, or tracing further than I have done the stream of ancestral blood which flows in my veins. plunge at once into the innocent haunts and rural pleasures of my early life.