the year 1826, removed to this house from No. 5 Melina Place, Kent Road. "He ceased to exist on the 17th of October, 1836," says his medical attendant, in a letter published in the memoirs of the Colman family. But this is an error, as on the 19th of October he appears to have written to Mr. Bunn. The last earthly struggle of George Colman has been thus described: "It has never fallen to my lot to witness in the hour of death so much serenity of mind, such perfect philosophy, or resignation more complete. Up to within an hour of his decease he was perfectly sensible of his danger, and bore excruciating pain with the utmost fortitude. "At one period of his life a more popular man was not in existence," observes Mr. Bunn; for the festive hoard of the prince or the peer was incomplete without Mr. Colman. He has left behind him a perpetuity of fame in his dramatic works; and much is it to be lamented that no chronicle has been preserved of his various and most extraordinary jeux-d'esprit. He has, moreover, left behind quite enough of renown, could he lay claim to none other, to be found in the following tribute from the pen of Lord Byron:-' I have met George Colman occasionally, and thought him extremely pleasant and convivial. Sheridan's humour, or, rather, wit, was always saturnine, and sometimes savage; he never laughed (at least that I saw, and I have watched him), but Colman did. If I had to choose, and could not have both at a time, I should say, let me begin the evening with Sheridan, and finish it with Colman. Sheridan for dinner, Colman for supper. Sheridan for claret or port, but Colman for every thing, from the madeira and champagne at dinner, the claret with a layer of port between the glasses, up to the punch of the night, and down to the grog or ginand-water of daybreak. Sheridan was a grenadier company of life-guards, but Colman a whole regiment of light infantry, to be sure, but still a regiment.'' The sale of Colman's effects took place on the 29th of November, 1837; among the pictures sold was the wellknown portrait of George Colman the elder, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which has been engraved; another by Gainsborough, also engraved; a third in crayons, by Rosalba; and a fourth by Zoffani, which formerly belonged to Garrick. A highly finished miniature of Shakspeare, by Ozias Humphrey, executed in 1784 (a copy of which, made for the Duchess of Chandos, sold at her sale for 401.); some water-colour drawings, by Emery, Mrs. Terry, and others; some engravings; more than 1000 volumes of French and English books; and a collection of miscellanies, including the MSS. of the elder Colman's most admired productions, and several by George Colman the younger,-amounting in all to twenty-six pieces. John Reeve bought largely of the books; but before two months had elapsed Reeve himself was no more. No. 23 Brompton Square was occupied in 1829 and 1830 by Mr. William Farren, the unrivalled representative of old men upon the stage; and No. 24, between the years 1840 and 1843, was the residence of Mr. Payne Collier, who has lately given to the public an edition of Shakspeare, and who has been long distinguished by his profound knowledge of dramatic literature and history, and his extensive acquaintance with the early poetry of England. Mr. Collier's house, in Brompton Square, stood between that which Mr. William Farren occupied, and one (No. 25) of which Mr. Farren was proprietor, and has now sold. At present Mr. William Farren resides at No. 30, next door to Mr. Henry Lutell (No. 31), "the great London wit," as Sir Walter Scott terms him, and who is well known in the circles of literature as the author of many epigrams, and of a volume of graceful poetry, entitled, Advice to Julia. In addition to these literary and dramatic associations of Brompton Square, I have been told that Liston resided for some time at No. 40, and that that pair of comic theatrical gems, Mr. and Mrs. Keely, are now inhabitants of No. 19. BROMPTON NEW CHURCH, a little beyond the Square, is dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The architect was Mr. Donaldson, and the first stone Iwas laid in October 1826. On the 6th of June, 1829, the Bishop of London consecrated this church and its burial-ground, which had been a flower-garden. When the first grave was made in the month following, many of the flowers still appeared The place is purified with hope- And pious faith, are there! The golden chord which binds us all I do not know who sleeps beneath, He is in death the same,- Those gentler charities which draw Corpe was a ladies' shoemaker, and his son still carries on that business at No. 126 Mount Street, Berkeley Square. While sketching the grave, the sexton came up, and observed, "No one has ever noticed that grave, sir, before, so much as to draw it out for a pattern, as I suppose you are doing." John Reeve's grave ("alas, poor GLIMPSES OF THE PAGEANT OF LITERATURE. EVERY body has read the Lectures The spirit that animates him is the spirit of a hero. He asserts, with uncompromising zeal, the supremacy of literature among the powers and splendours of the world. This alone survives the storms and outlives the shipwreck of empire and fortune. It is the pen of Thucydides that preserves the war of Peloponnesus; it is the stage of Eschylus that exhibits VOL. XXXI. NO. CLXXXI. the Persian overthrow; it is the hand of Spenser that keeps the sword of chivalry bright in the mist of ages; it is the gallery of Clarendon that contains unfaded the portraits of some of our noblest patriots. Such a lesson should not be read in vain. The army of Xerxes sleeps motionless, with all its banners and plumes beneath the sand which the wilderness of time has drifted over it; while the conquerer gradually moulders away, until the heart of a lonely scholar throbs with a sudden exultation, as, over some faded coin or mutilated inscription, he discovers a feeble glimmering of names" which had once challenged the reverence of the world." To literature belongs the mighty privilege of embalming, for all ages, the departed kings of intellect. There they repose within the eternal pyramids of their fame. Well, then, may the German critic disclaim any impious hardihood in the saying, that it was scarcely possible even for the Deity Himself to confer upon man a more glorious gift than language. We speak not of it as the instrument by which His own will was conveyed to his creatures. We contemplate it upon a lower ground, and even there we gaze on it with wonder and awe. Speech was the true fire that came down from heaven and kindled the creature into happiness and praise. It was the visible soul; and as the word, Let there be light, had breathed a lustre, and beauty, and warmth, over the landscape of Nature, so the word, Let there be language, shed effulgence and joy over all the scenery of the mind. It was the bloom rising from the ground and filling the air with fragrance. It will not be forgotten, that Adam was endued with speech in his solitary state, and before the creation of Eve. Is not this a wonderful thought? Who does not travel back into the morning of creation and behold the scene? There, in the centre of Paradise, amid all that was lovely in colour and majestic in form, stood the breathing, the exulting father of mankind. If he hung enamoured over his own C shadow, reflected upon those clear fountains, did he not listen to the shadow of his voice rolling in all its softening music down the dark arches of cedar and fig-tree boughs? And how must his cheek have flushed with strange emotion when, along those consecrated shades, was heard a voice still sweeter answering to his own, and the first accents of human sympathy and tenderness broke over the garden of the world! We dare not dream of what visions of magnificent achievements, or suffering de basement, in the remote history of his race, may then have been permitted to shine before the illuminated eyes of this man created in the image of God. But, if only the miracles of the tongue had been wrought before his prophetic gaze, surely he would have felt a solemn sense of the majestic gift committed to his charge. Babylon, and Nineveh, and Jerusalem, and Athens, and Rome, might have flashed upon his inward eye in all the startling magnificence of empire and art; but, if he could have known the mysterious sorcery of language, he would have understood that it alone was the incorruptible architecture of beauty and power; and that all the golden cities, whose dawn and fulness were to light the world, would survive only in the pictures of the historian and the poet; that Troy would raise its towers only in the description of Homer, and the Roman despotism lower only through the narrative of Tacitus. And there are two aspects in which language may be viewed as a medium of communicating admiration, wisdom, delight, to others: one would be speech. Then how astonishing, to think that you can stand in the centre of a mighty congregation of learned or ignorant, thoughtful or reckless men -all the elements of the understanding cast together in tumultuous disorder and knock at every one of their minds in succession. Think how this has been done,-by Demosthenes, waving the multitude into repose from his mound of turf, on some Grecian hill-side; by Plato, subduing the souls of them who listened to him under the boughs of a dim plane; by Cicero, in the stern silence of the Forum; by our own Chatham, in the chapel of St. Stephen. Think how each and all not only knocked, but entered; wandered over the hearts of their hearers; traced the secret and winding circuits of feeling; roused the passions in their darkest recesses of concealment, knocking, entering, searching. This was much, but they did more. In every heart they set up a throne: they gave laws; they wielded over it the sceptre of intellectual royalty. Thus the Athenian crowd start up with one accord and one cry to march against Philip; and the Senate throbs with the convulsive agony of indignant patriotism, rushing upon Catiline; and the vast assembly of genius and power in our own parliament is dissolved for a season-as happened after an address of Sheridan-that it might recover from the benumbing wand of the enchanter. And this is the working of language under the aspect of speech. But it is in the second shape of language, that of literature, in which the most wonderful faculty resides. The power of persuasion is mighty, but perishable: its life, for the most part, passes with the life of the speaker. It darkens with his eye; it stiffens with his band; it freezes with his tongue. The swords of these champions of eloquence are buried with them in the grave. Where is the splendid declamation of Bolingbroke? Vanished, as completely as the image of his own form from the grass-plots of Twickenham ! But in that speech, which is created by the printing-press into literature, dwells a principle never to be quenched. Literature is the immortality of speech. Here, however, as under the former aspect, the medium of communication affects, in the strongest manner, the object conveyed. Hence it has been ever found, that those books are the most admired and the most enduring which reflect the thoughts with the most lucid simplicity. Thus it is in Homer, Plato, Livy, and Ariosto. The transparency of the diction preserves every feature of thought unbroken. And this transparency is always the result of intense fervour of conception. That exquisite material through which, from our sunny chambers, we gaze out on the scenery of woods and gardens, has received its crystalline purity only through the fiery processes of the furnace. It was melted |