THE SKETCH-BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT. "I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for. A mere spectator of other ΤΟ SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART., THIS WORK IS DEDICATED, IN TESTIMONY OF THE ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION OF THE AUTHOR. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. they be deemed of sufficient importance to attract the attention of critics, he solicits for them that courtesy and candour which a stranger has some right to claim who presents himself at the threshold of a hospitable nation. February, 1820. THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF. I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of her shel was turned eftsoones into a toad, and thereby was forced to make a stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne country is in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, that he is faine to alter his mansion with his manners, and to live where he can, not where he would.-Lyly's Euphues. I WAS always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot whero a murder or robbery had been committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighbouring villages, and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit of the most distant hill. from whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited. THE following writings are published on experiment; should they please, they may be followed by others. The writer will have to contend with some disadvantages. He is unsettled in his abode, subject to interruptions, and has his share of cares and vicissitudes. He cannot, therefore, promise a regular plan, nor regular periods of publication. Should he be encouraged to proceed, much time may elapse between the appearance of his numbers; and their size will depend on the materials he may have on hand. His writings will partake of the fluctuations of his own thoughts and feelings; sometimes treating of scenes before him, sometimes of others purely imaginary, and sometimes wandering back with his recollections to his native country. He will not be able to give them that tranquil attention necessary to finished composition; and as they must be transmitted across the Atlantic for publication, he will have to trust to others to correct the frequent errors of the press. Should his writings, however, with all their imperfections, be well received, he cannot conceal that it would be a source This rambling propensity strengthened with my of the purest gratification; for though he does not as-years. Books of voyages and travels became my pire to those high honours which are the rewards of passion, and in devouring their contents, I neglected loftier intellects; yet it is the dearest wish of his heart the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully to have a secure and cherished, though humble corner would I wander about the pier heads in fine weather, in the good opinions and kind feelings of his country-with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessenand watch the parting ships, bound to distant climes men. London, 1819. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. THE following desultory papers are part of a series written in this country, but published in America. The author is aware of the austerity with which the writings of his countrymen have hitherto been treated by British critics; he is conscious, too, that much of the contents of his papers can be interesting only in the eyes of American readers. It was not his intention, therefore, to have them reprinted in this country. He has, however, observed several of them from time to time inserted in periodical works of merit, and has understood, that it was probable they would be republished in a collective form. He has been induced, therefore, to revise and bring them forward himself, that they may at least come correctly before the public. Should ing sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth! Farther reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I visited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely influenced by a love of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its gratification: for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with their bright aërial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verd ure; her broad deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine :-no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery. But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievement-to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity-to loiter about the ruined castle-to meditate on the falling tower-to escape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past. I had, beside all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of the earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a city but has an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been almost withered by the shade into which they cast me; for there is nothing so baleful to a small man as the shade of a great one, particularly the great man of a city. But I was anxious to see the great men of Europe; for I had read in the works of various philosophers, that all animals degenerated in America, and man among the number. A great man of Europe, thought I, must therefore be as superior to a great man of America, as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson; and in this idea I was confirmed, by observing the comparative importance and swelling magnitude of many English travellers among us, who, I was assured, were very little people in their own country. I will visit this lan of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I am degenerated. It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passion gratified. I have wandered through different countries, and witnessed many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that I have studied them with the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the sauntering gaze with which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window of one print shop to another; caught sometimes by the delineations of beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of landscape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists to travel pencil in hand, and bring home their portfolios filled with sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the enter tainment of my friends. When, however, I look over the hints and memorandums I have taken down for the purpose, my heart almost fails me, at finding how my idle humour has led me aside from the great objects studied by every regular traveller who would make a book. I fear I shall give equal disappoint ment with an unlucky landscape-painter, who had travelled on the continent, but following the bent of his vagrant inclination, had sketched in nooks, and corners, and by-places. His sketch-book was accordingly crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and ob scure ruins; but he had neglected to paint St. Peter's or the Coliseum; the cascade of Terni, or the bay of Naples; and had not a single glacier or volcano in his whole collection. THE VOYAGE. Ships, ships, I will descrie you I will come and try you, What's your end and aim. One goes abroad for merchandise and trading, Another stays to keep his country from invading, OLD POEM. like a cloud in the horizon, it seemed as if I had closed one volume of the world and its concerns, and had time for meditation, before I opened another. That land, too, now vanishing from my view, which contained all that was most dear to me in life; what vicissitudes might occur in it-what changes might take place in me, before I should visit it again! Who can tell, when he sets forth to wander, whither he may be driven by the uncertain currents of existence; or when he may return; or whether it may be ever his lot to revisit the scenes of his childhood? I said, that at sea all is vacancy; I should correct To an American visiting Europe, the long voyage the expression. To one given to day dreaming, he has to make is an excellent preparative. The and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea voyage temporary absence of worldly scenes and employ- is full of subjects for meditation; but then they are ments produces a state of mind peculiarly fitted to the wonders of the deep and of the air, and rather receive new and vivid impressions. The vast space tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes. I of waters that separates the hemispheres is like a delighted to loll over the quarter-railing or climb to blank page in existence. There is no gradual tran- the main-top, of a calm day, and muse for hours tosition by which, as in Europe, the features and pop-gether on the tranquil bosom of a summer's sea ;ulation of one country blend almost imperceptibly to gaze upon the piles of golden clouds just peering with those of another. From the moment you lose above the horizon; fancy them some fairy realms, sight of the land you have left, all is vacancy, until and people them with a creation of my own;-to you step on the opposite shore, and are launched at watch the gentle undulating billows, rolling their once into the bustle and novelties of another world. silver volumes, as if to die away on those happy In travelling by land there is a continuity of scene, shores. and a connected succession of persons and incidents, that carry on the story of life, and lessen the effect of absence and separation. We drag, it is true, "a lengthening chain at each remove of our pilgrimage; but the chain is unbroken; we can trace it back link by link; and we feel that the last of them still grapples us to home. But a wide sea voyage severs us at once. It makes us conscious of being cast loose from the secure anchorage of settled life, and sent adrift upon a doubtful world. It interposes a gulf, not merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes—a guif, subject to tempest, and fear, and uncertainty, that makes distance palpable, and return precarious. There was a delicious sensation of mingled security and awe with which I looked down, from my giddy height, on the monsters of the deep at their uncouth gambols: shoals of porpoises tumbling about the bow of the ship; the grampus, slowly heaving his huge form above the surface; or the ravenous shark, darting, like a spectre, through the blue waters My imagination would conjure up all that I had heard or read of the watery world beneath me: of the finny herds that roam its fathomless valleys; of the shapeless monsters that lurk among the very foundations of the earth, and of those wild phantasms that swell the tales of fishermen and sailors. Sometimes a distant sail, gliding along the edge of the ocean, would be another theme of idle speculaHow interesting this fragment of a world. Such, at least was the case with myself. As 1 saw the last blue line of my native land fade away tion. We hastening to rejoin the great mass of existence! What | could put the ship about, she was under such heada glorious monument of human invention; that has way. We returned as nearly as we could guess, to thus triumphed over wind and wave; has brought the the place where the smack had anchored. ends of the world into communion; has established cruised about for several hours in the dense fog. an interchange of blessings, pouring into the steril We fired signal-guns, and listened if we might hear regions of the north all the luxuries of the south; has the halloo of any survivors; but all was silent-we diffused the light of knowledge, and the charities of never saw or heard any thing of them more." cultivated life; and has thus bound together those scattered portions of the human race, between which nature seemed to have thrown an insurmountable barrier. We one day descried some shapeless object drifting at a distance. At sea, every thing that breaks the monotony of the surrounding expanse attracts at tention. It proved to be the mast of a ship that must have been completely wrecked; for there were the remains of handkerchiefs, by which some of the crew had fastened themselves to this spar, to prevent their being washed off by the waves. There was no trace by which the name of the ship could be ascertained. The wreck had evidently drifted about for many months; clusters of shell-fish had fastened about it, and long sea-weeds flaunted at its sides. But where, thought I, is the crew? Their struggle has long been over-they have gone down amidst the roar of the tempest their bones lie whitening among the caverns of the deep. Silence, oblivion, like the waves, have closed over them, and no one can tell the story of their end. What sighs have been wafted after that ship; what prayers offered up at the deserted fireside of home! How often has the mistress, the wife, the mother, pored over the daily news, to catch some casual intelligence of this rover of the deep! How has expectation darkened into anxiety -anxiety into dread-and dread into despair! Alas! not one memento shall ever return for love to cherish. All that shall ever be known, is, that she sailed from her port, " and was never heard of more!" The sight of this wreck, as usual, gave rise to many dismal anecdotes. This was particularly the case in the evening, when the weather, which had hitherto been fair, began to look wild and threatening, and gave indications of one of those sudden storms that will sometimes break in upon the serenity of a summer voyage. As we sat round the dull light of a lamp, in the cabin, that made the gloom more ghastly, every one had his tale of shipwreck and disaster. I was particularly struck with a short one related by the captain: As I was once sailing," said he, "in a fine, stout ship, across the banks of Newfoundland, one of those heavy fogs that prevail in those parts rendered it im possible for us to see far a-head, even in the daytime; but at night the weather was so thick that we could not distinguish any object at twice the length of the ship. I kept lights at the mast-head, and a constant watch forward to look out for fishing smacks, which are accustomed to lie at anchor on the banks. The wind was blowing a smacking breeze, and we were going at a great rate through the water. Suddenly the watch gave the alarm of a sail a-head!'-it was scarcely uttered before we were upon her. She was a small schooner, at anchor, with a broadside toward us. The crew were all asleep, and had neglected to hoist a light. We struck her just a-mid-ships. The force, the size, the weight of our vessel, bore her down below the waves; we passed over her and were hurried on our course. As the crashing wreck was sinking beneath us, I had a glimpse of two or three half-naked wretches, rushing from her cabin; they just started from their beds to be swallowed shrieking by the waves. I heard their drowning cry mingling with the wind. The blast that bore it to our ears, swept us out of all farther hearing. I shall never forget that cry! It was some time before we I confess these stories, for a time, put an end to all my fine fancies. The storm increased with the night. The sea was lashed into tremendous confusion. There was a fearful, sullen sound of rushing waves and broken surges. Deep called unto deep. At times the black volume of clouds overhead seemed rent asunder by flashes of lightning that quivered along the foaming billows, and made the succeeding darkness doubly terrible. The thunders bellowed over the wild waste of waters, and were echoed and prolonged by the mountain waves. As I saw the ship staggering and plunging among these roaring caverns, it seemed miraculous that she regained her balance, or preserved her buoyancy. Her yards would dip into the water; her bow was almost buried beneath the waves. Sometimes an impending surge appeared ready to overwhelm her, and nothing but a dexterous movement of the helm preserved her from the shock. When I retired to my cabin, the awful scene still followed me. The whistling of the wind through the rigging sounded like funereal wailings. The creaking of the masts; the straining and groaning of bulkheads, as the ship laboured in the weltering sea, were frightful. As I heard the waves rushing along the side of the ship, and roaring in my very ear, it seemed as if Death were raging round this floating prison, seeking for his prey: the mere starting of a nail, the yawning of a seam, might give him entrance. A fine day, however, with a tranquil sea and favouring breeze, soon put all these dismal reflections to flight. It is impossible to resist the gladdening, influence of fine weather and fair wind at sea. When the ship is decked out in all her canvas, every sail swelled, and careering gaily over the curling waves, how lofty, how gallant, she appears-how she seems to lord it over the deep! I might fili a volume with the reveries of a sea voyage; for with me it is almost a continual reverie-but it is time to get to shore. It was a fine sunny morning when the thrilling cry of "land!" was given from the mast-head. None but those who have experienced it can form an idea of the delicious throng of sensations which rush into an American's bosom when he first comes in sight of Europe. There is a volume of associations with the very name. It is the land of promise, teeming with everything of which his childhood has heard, or on which his studious years have pondered. From that time, until the moment of arrival, it was all feverish excitement. The ships of war, that prowled like guardian giants along the coast; the headlands of Ireland, stretching out into the channel; the Welsh mountains, towering into the clouds; all were objects of intense interest. As we sailed up the Mersey, I reconnoitred the shores with a telescope. My eye dwelt with delight on neat cottages, with their trim shrubberies and green grass-plots. I saw the mouldering ruin of an abbey overrun with ivy, and the taper spire of a village church rising from the brow of a neighbouring hill-all were characteristic of England. The tide and wind were so favourable, that the ship was enabled to come at once to the pier. It was thronged with people; some idle lookers-cn, others eager expectants of friends or relatives. I could distinguish the merchant to whom the ship was consigned. I knew him by his calculating brow and restless air. His hands were thrust into his pockets, he was whistling thoughtfully, and walking to and fro, a small space having been accorded him by the crowd, in deference to his temporary importance. There were repeated cheerings and salutations interchanged between the shore and the ship, as friends happened to recognize each other. I particularly noticed one young woman of humble dress, but interesting demeanour. She was leaning forward from among the crowd; her eye hurried over the ship as it neared the shore, to catch some wished-for countenance. She seemed disappointed and agitated; when I heard a faint voice call her name. It was from a poor sailor who had been ill all the voyage, and had excited the sympathy of every one on board. When the weather was fine, his messmates had spread a mattress for him on deck in the shade, but of late his illness had so increased that he had taken to his hammock, and only breathed a wish that he might see his wife before he died. He had been helped on deck as we came up the river, and was now leaning against the shrouds, with a countenance so wasted, so pale, so ghastly, that it was no wonder even the eye of affection did not recognize him. But at the sound of his voice, her eye darted on his features; it read, at once, a whole volume of sorrow; she clasped her hands, uttered a faint shriek, and stood wringing them in silent agony. All now was hurry and bustle. The meetings of acquaintances-the greetings of friends-the consultations of men of business. I alone was solitary and idle. I had no friend to meet, no cheering to receive. I stepped upon the land of my forefathers-but felt that I was a stranger in the land. ONE of the first places to which a stranger is taken in Liverpool, is the Athenæum. It is established on a liberal and judicious plan; it contains a good library, and spacious reading-room, and is the great literary resort of the place. Go there at what hour you may, you are sure to find it filled with gravelooking personages, deeply absorbed in the study of newspapers. by trivial or sordid pursuits, and jostling with the crowd of common minds in the dusty paths of life. They pass before our imaginations like superior beings, radiant with the emanations of their own genius, and surrounded by a halo of literary glory. To find, therefore, the elegant historian of the Medici mingling among the busy sons of traffic, at first shocked my poetical ideas; but it is from the very circumstances and situation in which he has been placed, that Mr. Roscoe derives his highest claims to admiration. (It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves; springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear legitimate dulness to maturity; and to glory in the vigour and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their steril birth-place all the beauties of vegetation. Born Such has been the case with Mr. Roscoe. in a place apparently ungenial to the growth of literary talent; in the very market-place of trade; without fortune, family connections, or patronage; selfprompted, self-sustained, and almost self-taught, he has conquered every obstacle, achieved his way to eminence, and having become one of the ornaments of the nation, has turned the whole force of his talents and influence to advance and embellish his native town. Indeed, it is this last trait in his character which has given him the greatest interest in my eyes, and induced me particularly to point him out to my countrymen. Eminent as are his literary merits, he is but one among the many distinguished authors of this intellectual nation. They, however, in general, live but for their own fame, or their own pleasures. Their private history presents no lesson to the world, or, perhaps, a humiliating one of human frailty and inconsistency. At best, they are prone to steal away from the bustle and commonplace of busy existence; to indulge in the selfishness of lettered ease; and to revel in scenes of mental, but exclusive enjoyment. Mr. Roscoe, on the contrary, has claimed none of the accorded privileges of talent. He has shut himself up in no garden of thought, nor elysium of fancy; but has gone forth into the highways and thoroughfares of life, he has planted bowers by the way-side, for the refreshment of the pilgrim and the As I was once visiting this haunt of the learned, sojourner, and has opened pure fountains, where the my attention was attracted to a person just entering labouring man may turn aside from the dust and heat the room. He was advanced in life, tall, and of a of the day, and drink of the living streams of knowlform that might once have been commanding, but it edge. There is a “daily beauty in his life," on which was a little bowed by time-perhaps by care. He mankind may meditate, and grow better. It exhibits had a noble Roman style of countenance; a head | no lofty and almost useless, because inimitable, exthat would have pleased a painter; and though some ample of excellence; but presents a picture of active, light furrows on his brow showed that wasting yet simple and imitable virtues, which are within thought had been busy there, yet his eye still beamed every man's reach, but which, unfortunately, are not with the fire of a poetic soul. There was something exercised by many, or this world would be a parain his whole appearance that indicated a being of a dise. different order from the bustling race around him. But his private life is peculiarly worthy the attenI inquired his name, and was informed that it was tion of the citizens of our young and busy country, ROSCOE. I drew back with an involuntary feeling where literature and the elegant arts must grow up of veneration. This, then, was an author of celeb-side by side with the coarser plants of daily necessity; rity; this was one of those men whose voices have gone forth to the ends of the earth; with whose minds I have communed even in the solitudes of America. Accustomed, as we are in our country, to know European writers only by their works, we cannot conceive of them, as of other men, engrossed and must depend for their culture, not on the exclusive devotion of time and wealth; nor the quickening' rays of titled patronage; but on hours and seasons snatched from the pursuit of worldly interests, by intelligent and public-spirited individuals. He has shown how much may be done for a place were loitering about the place, whom my fancy pictured into retainers of the law. It was like visiting some classic fountain that had once welled its pure waters in a sacred shade, but finding it dry and dusty, with the lizard and the toad brooding over the shattered marbles. I inquired after the fate of Mr. Roscoe's library, which had consisted of scarce and foreign books, from many of which he had drawn the materials for his Italian histories. It had passed under the hammer of the auctioneer, and was dispersed about the country. n hours of leisure by one master spirit, and how completely it can give its own impress to surrounding objects. Like his own Lorenzo De Medici, on whom he seems to have fixed his eye, as on a pure model of antiquity, he has interwoven the history of his life with the history of his native town, and has made the foundations of its fame the monuments of his virtues. Wherever you go, in Liverpool, you perceive traces of his footsteps in all that is elegant and liberal. He found the tide of wealth flowing merely in the channels of traffic; he has diverted from it invigorating rills to refresh the gardens of literature. By his own example and constant exertions, he has effected that The good people of the vicinity thronged like union of commerce and the intellectual pursuits, so wreckers to get some part of the noble vessel that eloquently recommended in one of his latest writings;* had been driven on shore. Did such a scene admit and has practically proved how beautifully they may of ludicrous associations, we might imagine somebe brought to harmonize, and to benefit each other. thing whimsical in this strange irruption into the reThe noble institutions for literary and scientific pur-gions of learning. Pigmies rummaging the armoury poses, which reflect such credit on Liverpool, and of a giant, and contending for the possession of are giving such an impulse to the public mind, have weapons which they could not wield. We might mostly been originated, and have all been effectively picture to ourselves some knot of speculators, debatpromoted, by Mr. Roscoe: and when we consider the ing with calculating brow over the quaint binding rapidly increasing opulence and magnitude of that and illuminated margin of an obsolete author; or town, which promises to vie in commercial importance the air of intense, but baffled sagacity, with which with the metropolis, it will be perceived that in some successful purchaser attempted to dive into the awakening an ambition of mental improvement black-letter bargain he had secured. among its inhabitants, he has effected a great benefit to the cause of British literature. It is a beautiful incident in the story of Mr. Roscoe's misfortunes, and one which cannot fail to inIn America, we know Mr. Roscoe only as the terest the studious mind, that the parting with his author-in Liverpool, he is spoken of as the banker; books seems to have touched upon his tenderest feeland I was told of his having been unfortunate in busi-ings, and to have been the only circumstance that ness. I could not pity him, as I heard some rich could provoke the notice of his muse. The scholar men do. I considered him far above the reach of only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, commy pity. Those who live only for the world, and in panions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become the world, may be cast down by the frowns of ad- in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly versity; but a man like Roscoe is not to be overcome turns to dross around us, these only retain their by the reverses of fortune. They do but drive him steady value. When friends grow cold, and the conin upon the resources of his own mind; to the supe-verse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and rior society of his own thoughts; which the best of commonplace, these only continue the unaltered men are apt sometimes to neglect, and to roam countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that abroad in search of less worthy associates. He is true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deindependent of the world around him. He lives with serted sorrow. antiquity, and 'vith posterity: with antiquity, in the sweet communion of studious retirement; and with posterity, in the generous aspirings after future renown. The solitude of such a mind is its state of highest enjoyment. It is then visited by those elevated meditations which are the proper aliment of noble souls, and are, like manna, sent from heaven, in the wilderness of this world. While my feelings were yet alive on the subject, it was my fortune to light on farther traces of Mr. Roscoe. I was riding out with a gentleman, to view the environs of Liverpool, when he turned off, through a gate, into some ornamented grounds. After riding a short distance, we came to a spacious mansion of freestone, built in the Grecian style. It was not in the purest taste, yet it had an air of elegance, and the situation was delightful. A fine lawn sloped away from it, studded with clumps of trees, so disposed as to break a soft fertile country into a variety of landscapes. The Mersey was seen winding a broad quiet sheet of water through an expanse of green meadow land; while the Welsh mountains, blending with clouds, and melting into distance, bordered the horizon. This was Roscoe's favourite residence during the days of his prosperity. It had been the seat of elegant hospitality and literary refinement. The house was now silent and deserted. I saw the windows of the study, which looked out upon the soft scenery I have mentioned. The windows were closed-the library was gone. Two or three ill-favoured beings • Address on the opening of the Liverpool Institution. I do not wish to censure; but, surely, if the people of Liverpool had been properly sensible of what was due to Mr. Roscoe and to themselves, his library would never have been sold. Good worldly reasons may, doubtless, be given for the circumstance, which it would be difficult to combat with others that might seem merely fanciful; but it certainly appears to me such an opportunity as seldom occurs, of cheering a noble mind struggling under misfortunes by one of the most delicate, but most expressive tokens of public sympathy. It is difficult, however, to estimate a man of genius properly who is daily before our eyes. He becomes mingled and confounded with other men. His great qualities lose their novelty, and we become too familiar with the common materials which form the basis even of the loftiest character. Some of Mr. Roscoe's townsmen may regard him merely as a man of business; others as a politician; all find him engaged like themselves in ordinary occupations, and surpassed, perhaps, by themselves on some points of worldly wisdom. Even that amiable and unostentatious simplicity of character, which gives the name less grace to real excellence, may cause him to be undervalued by some coarse minds, who do not know that true worth is always void of glare and pretension. But the man of letters who speaks of Liverpool, speaks of it as the residence of Roscoe.-The intelligent traveller who vis its it, inquires where Roscoe is to be seen.--He is the literary landmark of the place, indicating its existence to the distant scholar. He is like Pompey's column at Alexandria, towering alone in classic dignity. |