MR. BEARDSWORTH 5 



Radical orator uow, — tliougli 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 manu- 

 facturer at all ; but he had contrived to hammer out him- 

 self considerable wealth, from the |)ulpit 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 meanino- of the word — not beino; 

 capable at one time of writing his own name even — he 

 had ascended from the very lowest step in the ladder of 

 life, and, by dint of intuition, perseverance, and cunning, 

 had ultimately attained the topmost round — that summit 

 which many of our magnates have aspired to all their 

 lives in vain : — he won the St. Leger — and rightly named 

 his horse ^ after the town that had been the scene of both 

 his strufTfrles and his success. 



CO 



Providence had given him a help -meet for him, who 

 conducted his correspondence, superintended his books, 

 graced his hosjoitable board, and otherwise by the ease and 

 unaffected politeness of her demeanour, and the use of 

 good, soiuid common sense, had contrived to make his 

 name respected and his acquaintance desired by men of 

 all grades and people of all denominations. 



About the time I knew him he had reached the 

 meridian of life, and to all appearance was moving in a 

 respectable sphere. His manners and speech were 

 homely, but not coarse, his conversation fluent on all 

 matters of business of any and every description ; he was 

 ^ Mr. Beardsworth's " Birmingham " won the St. Leger in 1828. 



