[From "The New Monthly Magazine," No. 147.]

EARL FITZWILLIAM AND ALDERMAN WAITHMAN.

[In the second part of this journal there is a notice of Earl Fitzwilliam, occasioned by his recent death. Alderman Waithman, whose name has long been familiar to those acquainted with English politics, died February 6, 1833. The peculiar spelling of the word Alderman in the following notice of both, is intended to remind the reader that Alderman (Saxonicè Ealderman or Ealdorman) was in Saxon times a title of high dignity and office, equivalent to that of Earl at the present day. We doubt, however, whether there be any authority for the spelling, Eorlderman.]

EARL FITZWILLIAM AND EORLDERMAN WAITHMAN. - The prince and the shopkeeper: what a difference there was a month ago between these two men - each eminent in his way - and now the distinction is but small! If it were desired to pick out of all known men of the last age the two individuals who had run a kind of parallel career of distinction, and were yet the most contrasted, where could better names be hit upon than those of the two who are just now deposited several feet below the bustle of humanity? The distance established in an old society like ours between individual and individual is enormous; nature is altogether controlled, and artificial distinctions are set up of a force stronger even than nature. Had these two men been put together in a republic, Waithman would have been the tyrant of his tribe, and Fitzwilliam would never have moved from the respectability of a steady and amiable citizen. Had they been born under some old monarchy, such as that of Louis XIV., Fitzwilliam, by the force of his rank and birth, would have shone a court star, and might at any one moment have had Waithman bastiled or bastinadoed for a look of impertinence. England is the juste milieu : we give each the opportunity of a distinguished career, and yet in all things personal hold them as far as the poles asunder. Publicly, that is to say in controlling the tide of events, there is no doubt that Waithman has played even a more important part than the distinguished nobleman; and yet how high in society the Yorkshire prince has always stood over the Fleet-Street shopkeeper!

How tenderly was the now dead earl nurtured! — what tutors awaited his opening intellect, what grooms, what masters, what doctors watched the developement of his limbs what youthful pleasures were laid at his feet what a succession was promised!- how he travelled!-into what capitals he was ushered! and then he reigned as viceroy over a kingdom became beloved was suddenly recalled, and the nation went into mourning!on the day of his sailing out of the bay of Dublin all the bells of Ireland were muffled: it was a national funeral, and they buried their best hopes. He then came home to his Yorkshire palace; to his wide domains; his stud which kings might envy;

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to tenantry who followed, and met him, and attended in town and country, like retainers of old; and then he had his public day, and, in short, his court, where we have seen a numerous and yet chosen band of the representatives of the richest and oldest country aristocracy of England. In revenue, in power, in worship, in dignity of person, character, and bearing, Earl Fitzwilliam was a prince! he was a prince in bounty, too; tempered benevolence was the daily habit of his mind. He was the regal steward of enormous revenues, which he administered for the good of that portion of the public over which he presided. In this high and equable career he moved with order and reverence for upwards of fourscore years. Had he been formed in a stronger mould, he might have gone on for a score or two of more years, for no vice or passion ever hurried or rendered turbid the fine stream of blood that circulated in his noble frame.

Now look on this picture :- Waithman, a somewhat younger man, was cradled in hardship; education he snatched; nay, he grappled and wrestled with circumstances for grammar and spelling; he walked into London and bore his burthen as a linendraper's porter; by saving and shrewdness, and by demonstration of strong character, he worked his way to a sort of booth-shop, and secured a fair average of passing custom. The bread and cheese being provided for, he turned round to look at his position in reference to his fellow-men: he found that the city was the prey of a privileged class, and that the hogs did not know how they were cheated of their food. He was a member of the livery, and had the right of speech before an assembly, -the most invaluable of privileges, before which no abuse can last very long; he spoke out of the honest conviction of his heart, for he had sense and passion, and a deep impatience of wrong: he persuaded a few moulded of the same cast-iron as himself; but from the multitude, the hopers from the present, the meanly doing-well, the timid and the peaceable, not to mention the bold gainers by the old Pitt system, from these he drew upon himself an intensity of obloquy, that none could have stood that was not by nature formed for controlling and enjoying the storm. He went on from municipal to national wrongs, --taking a strong vulgar view of our country's evils; and partly by the aid of an old rump of Beckford whigs, and Wilkes-and-liberty adherents, but principally by his own broad and highly-colored denunciations, which created partisans, he succeeded in making and keeping up a party powerful in speech, from the days of the French revolution to the days of doctrinal reform, which we think we are right in saying superseded the old Burdett school of politics about the time of the establishment of the "Westminster Review,”- a work that has had more to do with recent changes than many suppose.

In the mean time, Waithman's business throve, for his strong sense and sharp dealing was as applicable to Manchester goods as to Manchester politics, and he spoke himself into the Common

Council; and his prosperity seemed to justify the shrievalty; and hence the mayoralty, and the membership, and, in short, all the honors the city can bestow; and how dearly earned, by shouldering the world both in public and private affairs! Many are the nights and days of deep chagrin, and stern anxiety, and struggling will, that this man must have gone through in the course of his fight, first against the difficulties of life, and next against the bitter hostilities of the political contests of those days. It was then a supposed struggle pro aris et focis. Men had been so completely mystified by the authorities of this country, that it was pretty generally deemed that the sacrifice of such an agitator as Waithman would have been a civic virtue. This was our reign of terror. Waithman was, in fact, the city agitator; and amongst his brother citizens he had all the capacities of an agitator. He lived hard, like them, and yet with a sort of rule and mastership over apprentices and journeymen. He loved, too, a social union; was absolute and even sublime, in a sort of broad, overwhelming joke, which gagged and suffocated his opponent; and then he would come down with a common-sense view of a question which overwhelmed both sides as ignorant as himself, but neither half so clever.

His presence was impressive, and yet there was something repulsive in it; he spoke well, for he never appeared to be thinking of speech-making, but of hammering his own notions into a public body. Waithman was honest: he was too proud to be otherwise; he was scarcely liked, for the weapon with which he used to slay his enemies, he used to swing it about in joke, and it gave rude hits. He was not rich, for, in order to make wealth, wealth must be the god, and only god. Waithman, on the contrary, thought a great deal more of the machine the Creator had set a-going, and whom men called Waithman, than of any thing the said Waithman could put into a recess the tailor had fabri-. cated in his coat of West of England cloth. No wonder he died under seventy; adamant would have worn out sooner: deduct the tare and tret from this man's constitution, and the result would have given a continuity of life equal to that of the patriarchs of old.

We have sat with both these men at the table, where character shows itself; and conclude as we began, with saying, that nature never made two more different men, and that society, while it made both eminent, yet contrived that their distinctions should be a thorough contrast.

We recommend the conideration of these two different walks in life to our friends in America, as a curiosity, at least to those who will take the pains to consider it to most thoroughgoing republicans, the idea of a Lord Fitzwilliam will appear a fable.

SELECT JOURNAL

OF

FOREIGN PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

OCTOBER, 1833.

[From "The Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 22."]

ART. I.-Le mie Prigioni. Memorie di SILVIO PELLICO, da Saluzzo. Torino. 1832. 8vo.

[My Ten Years of Imprisonment in Italian and Austrian Dungeons. By SILVIO PELLICO. Translated from the Original, by Thomas Roscoe. Small 8vo. London. 1833.]

WE will candidly confess that the deep interest we have felt in the perusal of these Memoirs nowise arises from any great sympathy with the actors in Italian revolutions in general. Admitting the oppressive character of the Austrian government of Italy, and the undisguised contempt for national feelings and prejudices with which it is administered; and therefore conceding to the Italians in the fullest manner their right to obtain redress, par voie de fait, when constitutional representations are disregarded, there has been in their late insurrections a union of fool-hardiness in the conception with faint-heartedness in the execution, sufficient to throw discredit on any cause, and to postpone, perhaps indefinitely, the chance of any general and vigorous effort in behalf of Italian freedom. In the fate of the actors in these ill-advised explosions it is difficult therefore in general to feel much interest. If they will set their lives on a cast, they must abide the hazard of the die. But exceptions do occasionally occur, and it is the very nature of these which must make every man of calm judgment regard with an unfavorable eye all such premature and hazardous movements; men, of whom their more scheming and worldly associates were not worthy, and who, by their firmness and passive fortitude under adversity, captivity, and exile, shed a redeeming lustre upon a cause which has little else to recommend it. It is the misfortune, we say, of these rash movements, that, once commenced, they involve in them, against their better judgment, many virtuous and amiable men, who, had they been left to themselves, would never have attempted, with means so inade

quate, and minds so unprepared for a serious and lasting struggle, to precipitate their country into the certain miseries which must in the outset accompany every revolution, and with scarcely even a probable chance of ultimate success. The wise and rational attachment they feel for liberty, as being but another word for the happiness of the community, would have taught them how little the interests of liberty, in its true sense, could be promoted by such attempts, the failure of which would only afford to their stern masters a justification of their iron system of coercion, and an opportunity for increasing its rigor. But when once the cry of liberty has been set up, the very generosity and chivalrous nature of such men prevents them from hanging back; they would not needlessly have challenged a gigantic enemy, but they cannot refuse their support when called on to aid their countrymen in a desperate struggle; and their reward too often is, that while the scheming agitator, who had set the whole in motion, makes his escape, or his peace, on the first reverse of fortune, the disinterested and intrepid, who have adhered to a hopeless cause through good report and bad, are ultimately the victims on whom the vengeance of their successful antagonist descends.

For men such as these, whose natural disposition is averse from the troubled elements of revolution, who, if left to themselves, would have pursued the quiet path of philanthropy, of science, of literature, but who have been involved by the force of circumstances in the movement which rasher heads or more interested minds have set in motion: for the Gioias, Arrivabenes, and Pellicos of suffering Italy, we feel that interest and sympathy which a generous though mistaken self-devotion must always awaken. When Pellico, therefore, lays before us the narrative of his imprisonments, in this simple and beautiful volume, with scarcely a loud complaint, without a single invective, with no political disquisition whatever, and where the mild, benevolent, and pure-hearted character of the author shines out in every page,

men of all parties and political opinions must equally yield to the charm which it possesses; and, whether he look on the revolutionary movements of Italy with the eye of a liberal or an absolutist, the reader must equally regret that one, whose nature seems so opposed to conspiracies or political struggles, should have been their victim.

For our own part, we will candidly say, that this little work seems to us more calculated to enlist the sympathies of mankind against Austria, to expose the cold-blooded and relentless character of its Italian administration, and to prepare the way for its downfall, than any revolutionary movements to which it is likely to be exposed, or the political invectives by which it has been