162 A CHARACTER. 



him. Money, with the pleasures and 

 enjoyments it produces, was his ob- 

 ject, and fortune seemed to mark him 

 as an especial favourite; for she tempted 

 and rewarded his advances with her 

 choicest gifts, and his name and fame 

 were as familiar to the inhabitants of 

 Birmingham then, as is that of the great 

 Radical orator now, though the origin, 

 as well as the career of the two men. were 

 very different. He was not a button- 

 maker, or a gun- maker, or a hardware 

 manufacturer at all ; but he had con- 

 trived to hammer out himself conside- 

 rable wealth, from the pulpit or rostrum 

 of the well-known and much-frequented 

 repository he had established. 



" By what bye-paths and indirect crooked 

 ways" he had risen to this station no 

 man but himself could tell. Illiterate 

 in the fullest meaning of the word not 

 being capable at one time of writing 



