fect of a law before it is formally proposed. The executive body, exclusively of its standing members the upper and lower masters, is composed of a sheriff (whose duties are to levy fines imposed by the court of justice, and to imprison on non-payment) of a magistrate, and of two constables. All these officers are elected every month by the committee immediately after its own election. The magistrate is bound, in conjunction with his constables, to detect all offences committed in the school: petty cases of dispute he decides himself, and so far becomes a judicial officer: cases beyond his own jurisdiction he sends to the attorneygeneral, directing him to draw an impeachment against the offending party he also enforces all penalties below a certain amount. Of the judicial body we shall speak a little more at length. The principal officers of the court are the judge who is elected monthly by the committee, and the attorney-general who is appointed at the same time by the master. The court assembles every week and the jury, consisting of six, is "chosen by lot from among the whole number of qualified boys: disqualifications arise in three ways; on account of holding a judicial office, on account of conviction by the court within the preceding month, and on account of youth (or, what we presume to be tantamount, being "in certain lower classes"). The jury choose their own foreman. The attorney-general and the accused party, if the case be penal, and each disputant, if civil, has a peremptory challenge of three, and an unlimited right of challenge for cause. judge decides upon the validity of the objections. Such is the constitution of the court: its forms of proceeding we cannot state in fewer words than those of the Experimentalist which we shall therefore quote: "The officers of the court and the jury having taken their seats, the defendant (when the cause is penal) is called to the bar by the crier of the court, and placed between the constables. The clerk of the court then reads the indictment, at the close of which the defendant is asked if he object to any of the jury-when he may make his challenges (as before stated). The same question is put The : to the attorney-general. A short time is then allowed the defendant to plead guilty, if he be so disposed: he is asked no question however that he may not be induced to tell a falsehood: but, in order to encourage an acknowledgment of the fault, when he pleads guilty-a small deduction is made from the penalty appointed by the law for the offence. The consequence is-that at least five out of six of those who are justly accused acknowledge the offence in the first instance. If the defendant be determined to stand his trial, the attorney-general opens the case and the trial proceeds. The defendant may either plead his own cause, or employ a schoolfellow as counselwhich he sometimes does. The judge takes notes of the evidence, to assist him in delivering his charge to the jury in determining the sentence he is guided by the regulations enacted by the committee, which affix punishments varying with the magnitude of the offence and the age of the defendant, but invest the judge with the power of increasing or diminishing the penalty to the extent of one-fourth." A copy of the sentence is laid before the master, who has of course" the power of mitigation or pardon." From the decision of the court there lies an appeal to the committee, which is thus not only the legislative body but also the supreme court of judicature. Two such appeals however are all that have yet occurred: both were brought by the attorney-general-of course therefore against verdicts of acquittal; and both verdicts were reversed. Fresh evidence however was in both cases laid before the committee in addition to that which had been heard in the court below; and on this as well on other grounds there was good reason to acquit the jury of all partiality. Whilst appeals have thus been so rare from the verdicts of juries, appeals from the decisions of the magistrate, and even from those of the teachers, have been frequent generally indeed the decisions have been affirmed by the committee; and, when they have been reversed, in all but two cases the reversal has met with the sanction of the teachers as a body. Even in these two (where, by the way, the original decision was only modified and not annulled) the Experimentalist is himself of opinion (p. 12) that the nonconcurrence of the teachers may possibly have been owing to a partiality on their side. So far indeed as his experience had then extended, the Experimentalist tells us (p. 79) that "one solitary instance only" had occurred in which the verdict of the jury did not coincide with his own opinion, This judgment, deliberately pronounced by so competent a judge, combined with the entire acquiescence in the verdict of the jury which is argued by the non-existence of any appeals except on the side of the crown (and then only in two instances), is a very striking attestation to the spirit of conscientious justice developed in the students by this confidence in their incorruptible in tegrity. "Great," says the Experimentalist, "great, but of course unexpressed, anxiety has more than once been felt by us-lest the influence of a leading boy, which in every school must be considerable, should overcome the virtue of the jury: but our fears have been uniformly relieved, and the hopes of the offender crushed, by the voice of the foreman pronouncing, in a shrill but steady tone, the awful word-Guilty!" Some persons, who hate all innovations, will pronounce all this "mummery, which is a very compendious piece of criticism. For ourselves, though we cannot altogether agree with the Experimentalist, who seems to build too much on an assumption that nature and increasing intercourse with human life contribute nothing of themselves without any artificial discipline to the evolution and culture of the sense of justice and to the power of the understanding for discovering where justice lies, yet thus much is evident, 1. That the intellectual faculties must be sharpened by the constant habit of discriminating the just and the unjust in concrete cases such as a real experience of life produces; 2. That the moral sense must " be deepened, if it were only by looking back upon so large a body of decisions, and thus measuring as it were, by the resistance which they had often overcome arising out of their own immediate interest, the mightiness of the conscientious power within which had compelled them to such decisions; 3. That all sorts of forensic ability is thus cherished; and much ability indeed of larger application: thus the logical faculty of abstracting the essential from the accidental is involved in the summing up of the judge; in the pleadings for and against are involved the rhetorical arts of narrating facts perspicuously-of arranging arguments in the best order of meeting (therefore of remembering) the counterarguments; of solving sophisms; of disentangling misrepresentations-of weighing the value of probabilities to say nothing of elocution and the arts of style and diction which even the records of the court and the committee (as is urged at p. 105) must tend to cultivate: 4. (to descend to a humbler use) that in this way the master is absolved from the grievous waste of time in administering justice, which on the old system was always imperfect justice that it might waste but little time, and which yet wasted much time though it was imperfect justice. The author's own moral of this innovation is as fol lows (p. 76); and with this we shall leave the subject: "We shall be disappointed if the intelligent reader have not already discovered that by the establishment of a system of legislation and jurisprudence wherein the power of the master is bounded by general rules, and the duties of the scholar accurately defined, and where the boys are called upon to examine and decide upon the conduct of their fellows, we have provided a course of instruction in the great code of morality which is likely to produce far more powerful and lasting effects than any quantity of mere precept." (We are sorry our limits compel us to defer the insertion of the remainder of this Review till the next month.) FLEET-STREET BIOGRAPHY.• STERNE said, he pitied the man who could travel from Dan to Beersheba, and find all barren; he might have extended his pity a little further, and have expressed his willingness to bestow it on him who could take his place for life in any given spot " in this varsal world," and not find ample materials for history around him. Every keeper of an apple-stall might unstore his "fruits of experience" if he chose to abandon the pippins for the pen, during a brief hour or two; and each sweeper at a crossing might give a trifle to the world, if he did not generally know that the besom was more profitable than the book. That worthy walking advertisement of Warren, who stands hat in hand at the bottom of Ludgate Hill, taking a constant toll from those who venerate clean shoes and black faces, could and should bequeath "the fruits of experience" to mankind. With his knowledge of, and intercourse with, his fellow creatures, he would manage a brace of quartos as big as Parry's Pole Books, or those of Westminster in the severest election days. The world passes on before him, and he, with his back against the obelisk, remains a calm looker on!-He angles in that thick and endless stream for any thing he can catch, and all fish are welcome to his beaver net!Of course, angler like, the sport cannot be carried on without meditation, -and why, we earnestly ask, should the fruit of this meditation be lost? We have had our attention more particularly attracted to this flower, born to blush unseen,-this gem, of purest ray serene !-because a neighbour of Mr. Waithman and of this sable philosopher, with an industry highly honourable to him, has, in his 80th year, written about to the right and left of him, and given us a faithful and energetic history of Poppin's court, Ludgate-hill up as far as Blades's glass-shop, Whipham's a little above Bouverie-street, and the people and places within the rules of decency and St. Bride's parish. This is History in its night-gown and slip pers-History' near-sighted, sitting by the fire, and pottering over domestic intelligence with magnifying glasses. We love this unpresuming conduct in Old Memorialists! Why should kings and countries only have their Recorders ?-May not the City be allowed one, and not merely for Old Bailey purposes? There are the Gibbons, the Humes, and the Robertsons, for big History in its feathers and finery; but the time is come, when, as the clergyman says, "Pride shall have a fall!"-and therefore the Brasbridges arise for little History in her deshabille moments. There is room in the world for tiny Miss Biffin as well as the Swiss giantess!-Fleet-street, Ludgate-hill, a few doors round Bridgestreet, and the forehead of Fleetmarket are now written down for ever; and we only intreat that the author will go on with his good work, and do St. Dunstan's with as little delay as possible!-Wright's Shrimp and Oyster-shop, and Richardson's Hotel, and the Cock, and Mr. Utterson's fishing-tackle-shop, will become a cluster of Solomon's Temples under bright Mr. Brasbridge's hand. But to the Fleet-street volume. Our historian thus opens his book, and we think it is in a style which should tempt the public to follow his example. "Better late than never," is an old adage, the truth of which I hope to exemIt has been said, that the life of any indiplify in the course of the following pages. vidual whatsoever, would, if fairly and impartially narrated, afford abundant materials for instruction; and I am willing to hope that mine will be found equally productive of warning to the dissipated, and of encouragement to the industrious; for whilst I honestly confess, that at one period of it I might but too justly be classed with hope, that at another I might as fairly rank the former, I may likewise reasonably with the latter. the latter end of the year 1770, in partnerI began business as a silversmith, towards ship with Mr. Slade, an honest, worthy man, whose brother-in-law I became in June 1771, having the good fortune to ob The Fruits of Experience; or Memoir of Joseph Brasbridge, written in his 80th year. London, 1824. APRIL, 1824. 2 E tain the hand of his sister, a most lovely and amiable woman, with a portion of two thousand pounds. The strictest friendship, subsisted between our families, and my domestic happiness seemed, to have no room for increase, excepting what might be brought by children, to whom we naturally looked forward as the seal of our felicity, But alas! when this blessing, for some years delayed, did at length arrive, it was in the form of the heaviest calamity. My dear wife was safely brought to bed on the 19th of March, 1776, and appeared to be recovering extremely well; but on the tenth day afterwards, whilst sitting in her chair, she leaned back her gentle head, and died in a moment. My poor infant was put out to nurse, but the woman who took him having at the same time a child of her own at the breast, most unjustly neglected him, and laid the foundation of a sickly habit, which deprived me of him in his ninth year, to my inexpressible sorrow. Thus left a widower, and childless, I unhappily sought that relief in dissipation, which would have been better found in better means. Charles Bannister was one of my associates, and it will be readily be lieved, that no deficiency of wit or hilarity was found in parties over which he presided. "You will ruin your constitution," said a friend to him, "by sitting up in this manner at nights.”— you do not know the nature of my constitution: I sit up at night to watch it, and keep it in repair, whilst you are sleeping carelessly in your bed." (P. 1-3.) Beginning the world under the auspices of old Charles Bannister was not very likely to help a silversmith on in trade: and we are soon put upon the scent of a bankruptcy. First, however, he introduces us to Mr. Tattersall, with whom he became acquainted as a member of the Highflyer Club at the Turf CoffeeHouse. Mr. Brasbridge is invited to Highflyer Hall, and thither he goes in company with "Thomas Smith, of Bridge-street, brandy - merchant," and Mr. Fozzard," the great stablekeeper!" Tattersall shows the historian sixty brood mares, with their progeny, which latter, to his utter astonishment, had been sold "in their mothers' bellies." The chances and changes in commercial life are alinost proverbial; yet it may be deemed a singular instance of worldly vicissitudes, when I inform my readers, that of this quartette who set off so merrily for Highflyer Hall, Mr. Smith became the Lord Mayor in after life, Mr. Fozzard and myself were bankrupts, and the fourth, whose name I have forgotten, experienced such a reverse of circumstances, that he was glad to accept of the situation of patrol, which I procured for him on the walk before the house of this very Mr. Smith, whose companion and associate he had been only a few years before. And here I must be allowed to pay a tribute of respect to the memory of Mr. Smith, of whose worth, Well tried, through many a varying year, I can scarcely speak too highly. He was of humble origin, and had no advantages from education, but he was one of whom it might be said, that he was born a gentleman; and he joined to the activity and acuteness of a tradesman, a polish of demeanour, a suaviter in modo, that would not have disgraced a courtier. (P. 10, 11.) We are now, as it will be seen, fairly set afloat amongst the Smiths, and all that." We do not like, however, our friend Brasbridge's forgetting the name of the patrol, his old Highflyer chum in the days of glory: if he had forgotten the Lord Mayor's name, we should have liked it better. At the club, Whitfield was a social soul,-the comedian, whom Goldsmith mentioned also, and at whom, therefore, fame now may be said to shoot with a double-bar relled gun! He had an unbounded. attachment for the T. B. facetiously translated " T'other Bottle," by our biographer. Colburn too, of the Treasury, was a member, and " Bob Tetherington, as merry a fellow as ever sat in a chair," and "Dear. Owen," the confectioner, who, like other wags, wrote his own songs, and sang them agreeably.. The re-. flection of Mr. Brasbridge at the death of all these inestimable spirits. takes the following pensive turn. "The loss Yet so it is! we all desire long life, yet we all know that it must be held by the tenure of seeing those whom we most love drop into the grave before us. of our friends," said his late Majesty, on the death of one of his brothers, "is the fine which nature levies upon our own lengthened days." If, then, it be in the order of nature, let us submit to her de crees without repining; and if the morning of our life be gilded with hope, let not the mild beams of resignation be wanting to cheer its evening. (P. 16.) Mr. Brasbridge gives two instances of his own kindness, and the generosity of others: they cannot but have a great moral effect on all the people in his ward. He saved" Dear Owen' from stepping into the Thames, and lent Mr. Chilcot money at the Pitdoor of Drury-lane, both which acts met with a proper return. Two or three pages are now devoted to "a pair of pinchbeck sleeve buttons," which we cannot dilate upon. Mr. Brasbridge is a Tory, and a Tory of 80 is of course pretty strong in his prejudices. He liketh not men of other opinions, as we shall see anon. We just discern his political feeling, budding in a parenthesis, in the following passage. The pleasantry at the conclusion is a severe punch in the side of Joe Miller. I frequently used to ride to the Christopher at Eton on a Sunday, to be ready to go out with the King's stag-hounds on Monday. I was generally accompanied by Mr. Griffiths of Marlborough, a most worthy and good tempered man. He was at that time Secretary to the Guardian Society, for protecting against swindlers (not political) and sharpers. He was succeeded by Mr. Foss, a highly valued friend of mine, for whose success in getting the appointment I exerted myself to the very utmost of my power; and he has drank my health ever since on the return of the 21st of March. I respect Mr. Foss, as much for his amiable qualities as a man, as for his ability and watchful attention to the interest of his clients, in his profession. He has conducted three causes for me, and gained them all. In the last, my opponent wanted another trial, which Mr. Foss opposed; but I requested he would not balk the gentleman of his fancy, for, if he had not had enough, I would, to use a vulgar expression, give him a belly-full. "This first suit," I added, "shall be for every day and the other for Sundays.” (P. 24, 25.) Lord Mansfield figures away in a page of our history. The next time I saw Lord Mansfield was on the trial of Mrs. Rudd, an enchantress whose charms, so fatal to the unfortunate Perreaus, seemed to inspire his Lordship with fresh eloquence, and the liveliest zeal in her behalf. She was, indeed, the very head of that fascinating and dangerous class of women of whom it may be said, If to her share some female errors fall, Look in her face, and you forget them all. Lord Mansfield was very desirous of long life, and, whenever he had old men to examine, he generally asked them what their habits of living had been. To this interrogatory an aged person replied, that he had never been drunk in his life. "See, gentlemen," said his Lordship, turning to the younger barristers, "what temperance will do." The next, of equally venerable appearance, gave a very different account of himself, he had not gone to bed sober one night for fifty years. "See, my Lord," said the young barristers, "what a cheerful glass will do." "Well, gentlemen,' replied his Lordship, "it only proves, that some sorts of timber keep better when they are wet, and others when they are dry." (P. 26, 27.) Mr. Brasbridge was a great member of clubs. He haunted the Crown and Rolls in Chancery-lane, and trumped the tricks of Ramsbottom, the brewer, and of Russell, who ruined himself by the lottery: he sat, too, at the Globe, in Fleet-street, where "Mr. P., the surgeon, was a milton, the printer, and "Thomas constant man," and Archibald HaCarnan, the bookseller, who brought an action against the Stationers' Company for printing almanacks, and won his cause!" And Dunstall, the comedian, famous for "I'm not such an elf," in Love in a Village: and Macklin too, of whom we have the following characteristic and amusing anecdote. The veteran Macklin, when the com pany were disputing on the mode of spelling the name of Shakespeare, was referred to by Billy Upton, a good-tempered fellow, with a remarkably gruff voice, the loudest tones of which he put forth as he observed, "There is a gentleman present who can set us to rights: " then turning to Macklin he said, "Pray, Sir, is it Shakespeare, or Shakzper ?" "Sir," said Macklin, "I never give any reply to a thunder(P. 34, 35.) bolt." Akerman, the keeper of Newgate, and William Woodfall, the reporter, were also Globe boys! Brasbridge smartly says, in conclusion, "The Globe was kept by deputy Thorpe, and truly it might be said that he kept it, for it did not keep him." The following anecdote of Dr. Glover is not unamusing; it almost takes the romance out of Frankenstein. Another of our company, whose social qualities were his ruin, was Doctor Glover; he was surgeon to a regiment in Ireland, and rendered a man, who was hung in Dublin, the doubtful favour of restoring him to life; he found it was, at any rate, no favour to himself, for the fellow was a plague to him ever afterwards, constantly begging of him, and always telling him, when the Doctor was angry with him for it, that, as his honour had brought him, into the world again, he was bound to support him. (P. 36, 37.) |