1830.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



339 



company mixing, consequently, with de- 

 pendents, and coarse in habits, reckless in 

 conduct, and overwhelmed with debt. At 

 -the early age of fourteen, already initiated 

 in the vices of manhood, the boy was 

 thrown upon the world by the imprudence 

 of his parent, who fell in a skirmish with 

 smugglers, with which he had officiously 

 mingled. The commander of the Revenue 

 cutter, who takes him under his wing, is an 

 admirable specimen of the naval officer not 

 very uncommon sixty years ago a com- 

 mon sailor promoted by the good will of a 

 man for some personal service, and subse- 

 quently made commander by the influence 

 of a sister, the mistress of a lord of the 

 Admiralty. The hand of the caricaturist 

 is perhaps a little too conspicuous. While 

 on shore, at Dublin, he is entrapped into a 

 garret, and escapes robbery and murder by 

 dashing a pewter pot at the head of the 

 woman, which unluckily finishes her ca- 

 reer. Flight on board saves him from 

 hanging, and he next figures in a ship- 

 -wreck off the Scilly Isles. Though liable 

 all his life to the most formidable mishaps, 

 he had a trick of falling upon his legs ; and 

 in this case fell into the protecting arms of 

 a clergyman, residing on St. Mary's one 

 who, notwithstanding his professional po- 

 sition, believed himself the slave of fate, 

 though obviously to others the victim of 

 violence and imprudence. By the daughter 

 of this benevolent and singular person, he 

 was in a few weeks nursed into health 

 again, and into a warm attachment for his 

 youthful and beautiful nurse with whom 

 and her parent all arrangements for mar- 

 riage were made, when she was bitten by a 

 mad dog ; and in spite of instant caute- 

 rization, died of hydrophobia. The disap- 

 pointed father, however, does not desert 

 the youth, but procures for him a com- 

 mission in an infantry regiment, where he 

 speedily gets into hot water, and finally 

 shoots the colonel, driven to it by tyranny 

 and personal vexation. The administration 

 of the regiment, and the petty but into- 

 lerable domineering of the commander, 

 with all the miserable manoeuvres and sor- 

 did trickeries of the subalterns in office, 

 are admirably shewn up ; but it is a scene 

 of other days none such, by regulations 

 effectually enforced, can occur now ; though 

 of course an ill-grained commander can 

 produce annoyance enough, and roguery is 

 not easily baffled. 



To escape the consequences of his duel, 

 though the colonel finally recovers, our 

 hero flies to Lisbon, where quickly new 

 adventures spring up. He is a very hand- 

 some fellow, and soon finds a marchioness 

 who thinks so too ; but unfortunately he 

 has a rival, a monk and saint, of little in- 

 fluence over the marchioness, but very great 

 with the inquisition, into the prisons of 

 which institution he speedily plunges the 

 youth. Here he is subjected to sundry 

 kinds of torture, and finally escapes burn- 



ing or hanging, by the desperate expedient 

 of a companion arrested with him, who 

 professes himself to the grand inquisitor 

 as a freemason, whose death would be 

 revenged by the 35,652 brethren in Lisbon, 

 all ready to inflict the blow. 



From Lisbon the scene shifts to Paris, 

 and nearly one-half the whole work is 

 there occupied with details of the French 

 revolution. The chief actors, from D'Or- 

 leans and Mirabeau to Robespierre, are in- 

 troduced, and characteristically exhibited. 

 Many of the more remarkable scenes of 

 the times also are presented, not only of 

 blood and reality, but those of trickery, and 

 perhaps of imagination. The author makes 

 liberal use of the Abbe Barruel especially 

 in painting masonic mysteries. Escaping 

 finally from the guillotine and the prisons, 

 he returns to the shores of England, and 

 being in absolute want, he joins a society, 

 called a Marriage Society, the object of 

 which is to fit out young likely men with 

 dress, equipage and servants, for the pur- 

 pose of entrapping wealthy widows and 

 heiresses, on condition of receiving a cent- 

 age on property thus obtained. The so- 

 ciety of course exists only in the imagina- 

 tion of the writer, and is perhaps but a 

 clumsy conception. The hero fails, and 

 some of his associates are rather the dupes 

 of their own schemes than the dupers. 

 Arrived at the end of the third volume , 

 the limit prescribed by the existing fashion 

 and the commands of the publisher, the 

 adventures of the Irish gentleman are sud- 

 denly and abruptly brought to a close. 



A Parisian dress of the days of Robes- 

 pierre is thus described it is a curiosity in 

 its kind. A light grey coat, with a black 

 silk collar ; a yellow satin waistcoat, striped 

 with red ; pea-green breeches ; a sugar- 

 loaf hat, with a velvet band and a steel 

 buckle, decorated with a large three-co- 

 loured cockade. 



Family Library, Vol. X. Allan Cun- 

 ningham's Lives of British Painters, Vol. 



II. 1830 Mr. Cunningham has added 



another acceptable volume of the Lives of 

 British Painters, written in the same spirit 

 of knowledge and wisdom, eloquence and 

 poetry, which characterized the former. It 

 contains the lives of West, Barry, Blake, 

 Opie, Moreland, Bird and Fuseli a pleiad 

 of eminent persons, so completely unlike 

 each other, that if the writer's sole object 

 had been to search for variety, he could not 

 have discovered seven names better suited 

 for his purpose. No two of them approxi- 

 mate in any respect, as men, and as a con- 

 sequence perhaps, as artists, and the bio- 

 grapher is thus secured against the chances 

 of repetition. If we find any fault, it is 

 that, while he discriminates with great tact 

 and delicacy, he is too intent upon shew- 

 ing it by phrases of emphasis, and his want 

 of simplicity is thus forced too much upon 

 the reader's notice. His sentences run 



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