84 11TEBATT7RE ASD THE EIKE AETS. 



portance of the event, when the States General were assembled In France. If wef 

 remember light he actually was present in P.u-is at or about the time, and may 

 have heard with his own ears Mirabeau hurling defiance at the court, and seen 

 Danton and Robespierre whispering to each other that their time was not yet come. 

 Let us go back to other events as standards of admeasurement. As the war of 

 French Revolution and that against Napoleon Bonaparte were episodes in the iipo 

 manhood, so was the Ameriean war an episode in the boyhood of Rogers. lie 

 was of an age to appreciate the grandeur, if not the political meaning of events, 

 when Rodney won his naval victories and when General Elliott successfully de- 

 fended Gibraltar. 



"lie could remember our differences with our American colonies, and the battles 

 of Bunker's Bill, Brandy wine and Germantown, as well as a man now in manhood 

 can remember the three glorious days of July and the Polish insurrection. To 

 have lived in the days of General Washington, and to have heard discussions as 

 to the propriety of admitting the independence of the North American Provinces, 

 and to have been alive but yesterday seems well nigh an impossibility, but such 

 was the case of Samuel Rogers. When he opened his eyes upon the world, that 

 great and powerful country which is now known as the United States of North Ame- 

 rica, was but an insignificant dependency of the Mother country — a something not 

 so important as the Antilles are at the present moment." 



Sonic such remarks might doubtless be made with equal truth of any illiterate' 

 beggar, dying at the same advance I age in the parish workhouse; but we must 

 remember that the poet had advantages which few of bi3 time enjoyed. Born at 

 Newington Green on the 30th July 1762, the son of a wealthy London banker, he 

 enjoyed far more opportunities, and far greater means for observation, intellectual 

 culture, and intercourse with men, than the titled Byron. The perusal of Be;i: 

 Minstrel, it is said, first inspired him with the poet's longing?, and buying composed 

 seme verses which he deemed fit for the critic's eye, he proceeded to the well- 

 known house in Bolt Court, Fleet Street, to submit them to the awful tribunal of 

 the seer. The young poet rapped tremblingly at old Sam Johnson's door, and then 

 his heart failing him, he ran off before it was opened. When nest he summoned 

 courage to knock and wait, it was only to learn that the great critic and moralist 

 then lay a-dying. 



Such associations with a past so remote to all our ideas as the age of Johnson,- 

 naturally suggest other ideas akin to those found to pertain to the deceased poet. 

 A writer in the Daily Neies says — " We have seen Moore die in decrcpid old age - r 

 yet did Moore, in his boyhood (when he was fourteen), delight in Roger's ' Plea- 

 sures of Memory.' When young Horner came to London to begin his career, he 

 found Rogers a member of the King of Clubs, the intimate of Mackintosh (who was 

 his junior), Scarlett, Sharpe, and others, long gone to the grave as old men — and 

 one, Maitby, who wasa twin wonder with himself as to years. The last evening 

 that Mackintosh spent in London before his departure for India was at Rogers's- 

 It was Rogers who ' blabbed r about the du-d between Jeffrey and Moore, and was 

 tbe cause of their folly being rendered harmless; and it was he who bailed Moore;, 

 it was he who negotiated a treaty of peace between thetr. ; and it was at his house 

 that they met and became friends. Moore names him as one 4 of those agreeable 

 rattles who seem to think life such a treat that they never can get enough of it/ 

 There was much to render life agreeable to a man of Rogers's tastes, it must be 

 owned, Ue saw Gariick, and watched the entire career of every good actor since- 



