364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and very poor, and I went to work in the fields at a very tender 

 age." At fifteen, or thereabouts, he states that he began to write 

 verse, " lisping in numbers, for the numbers came." When six- 

 teen he went to visit his sister, who was a servant in the family of 

 a physician at Brighton, and the wife of the doctor, who was a 

 lady of literary tastes, manifested an interest in him and made 

 him her amanuensis. A physician, who lectured on phrenology, 

 shortly afterward became a guest of his benefactress, and learn- 

 ing of the young poet's ventures made use of some of them in one 

 of his lectures to illustrate the organ of ideality. Among the 

 listeners was Lady Byron. She with Rogers, Mrs. Jameson, and 

 Lady Jane Pell, determined upon publishing a collection of his 

 verses, and did so in 1852, under the title of Guesses at the Beau- 

 tiful. He soon realized that he was in danger of being spoiled by 

 condescending patronage and praise, and therefore wrote to Lady 

 Byron, who was then at her country residence in Surrey, begging 

 her to get him away from surroundings which might make him 

 forget the honest peasant parentage from which he sprang. She 

 at once made arrangements for him to go down to Leicestershire 

 to her nephew, Mr. Noel, manager of one of her estates, where he 

 would have opportunity to study the science of agriculture as 

 well as to prosecute his literary purposes. Like all men of poetic 

 temperament, he had the fatal faculty of falling in love, and an 

 attachment soon sprang up between himself and the eldest daugh- 

 ter of Mr. Noel. Realizing that there was a gulf between them 

 which could never be bridged, he determined to come to America. 

 Reaching New York in 1854, he began to explore the slums for 

 the purpose of writing sketches, but instead became a sort of Five 

 Points missionary. He kept at this work for two years, and then 

 in 1856 conducted a large number of Free State emigrants to 

 Kansas. He became intimate with John Brown, was with him 

 at Harper's Ferry, and narrowly escaped lynching. He enlisted 

 in 1862 and served through the war with credit, rising by promo- 

 tions to the rank of captain. The next step in his history has a 

 local interest for us who live in the western part of New York, 

 for in the autumn of 1867 we hear of him in Rochester writing a 

 series of remarkable poems for the Rochester Union. It was 

 there that Rossiter Johnson, who was then assistant editor of the 

 Democrat and Chronicle, became interested in him, and it was 

 also there that he contracted the unfortunate marriage which 

 darkened his life and ultimately brought it to an end. Johnson, 

 who has written fully of this episode, tries to excuse him by say- 

 ing that the woman had nursed him through a critical illness, and 

 that his gratitude made him believe that he could find peace and 

 contentment where an ordinary man would have known that 

 nothing but disappointment and unhappiness would follow. 



