BACK TO KHARTOUM.

17

already in his hands. Providence is more potent than Eastern governors. The selfwilled Captain who would not listen to reason very quietly submitted to a voice from which human folly and impatience appeal in vain. The very first day after his appearance in Labayed poor Churi was seized with fever and ague, and two days afterwards his companion was violently attacked with the same complaint. On the 26th of November Capt. Peel first began to crawl, but Churi was still apparently in a dying state. To speak truth, they had not the best quarters n the world.

It

"Labayed stands in a vast plain, and is a straggling collection of mud huts with thatched cone roofs. has to be rebuilt almost every year after the rainy season. As soon as night sets in there is a furious howling of wild beasts, leopards and hyænas, all round, who are kept off by strong abattis of thorns, behind which the dogs yell them defiance. Water sometimes is very scarce, and the wells are nearly a hundred feet deep it is extremely unwholesome."

What wonder that Captain Peel, as soon as he could stand erect, should entreat the faithful Churi, had he only half a leg to stand upon, to avail himself of that half to hop out of so miserable a hole? On the 27th of November-let it be a red day in your calendar, oh captain!—the two friends shook hands with the Governor, turned their heels upon the hyænas, and made the best of their way back to Khartoum. As for the poor Arab messenger, who had been sent on to the Sultan of Darfoor, nobody, it appears, ever heard of him again. Captain Peel thinks some "accident" must have happened to him, or it is just possible that the

Sultan may have torn up the note and the bearer together.

The return journey is a pleasanter business for reader and writer. The mind of the former ceases to be oppressed-the pen of the latter assumes a livelier and more entertaining tone. We could have afforded more time to spend on the road, and to listen to longer descriptions of men and beasts, of customs and scenery, than any the author has cared to furnish. It is not often that we have to complain of brevity in a traveller's journal. The diary of Captain Peel is much too short. He has capacity for narrative, and his paintings have all the simplicity, truth, and quiet power of nature. Let him instruct the public without risking his own neck in the attempt. The world is very large, and he need not go to Darfoor for excitement or a subject. Moreover, the blacks are not so much in need of his services as the whites. All our fetters are not yet broken; and who shall say, looking around, and noting the absence among men of true Christian charity, that our conversion is complete? Verily the European field is not exhausted. We have, however, fears for our author. Who knows but the restless spirit is on the wing again? It is certain he cannot be quiet and be happy. "It was," he says, "with a feeling of reluctance that he left the dry air and reckless life of the desert for the murky climate and wordy warfare of England;" and when he reached Cairo and received intelligence of the coup d'état in France, he hurried on direct to England "in the hope of employment on active service." Such a Paladin is the fiery son of the calm and undemonstrative Sir Robert.

A BIOGRAPHER.

19

BIOGRAPHY.-MEMOIRS OF LORD LANG

DALE.*

A BIOGRAPHER, as described by Mr. Macaulay, is a literary vassal, bound by the immemorial law of his tenure, to render homage, aids, reliefs, and all other customary services to his lord.” But a biographer, according to modern practice, is a literary plasterer and bricklayer, working with a hod on his shoulder and a trowel in his hand, most industriously engaged in the disposal of bricks and mortar. Nothing, it will be admitted, is easier than to pile up in a waggon a whole warehouse of papers and to shoot the contents bodily into Mr. Bentley's printing-rooms; but the labour is surely that of a carter, not of a litterateur.

It is not very difficult, we know, to arrange a deceased gentleman's correspondence in the order of time, but a counting-house clerk is not a biographer when he has performed the mere mechanical service. Since the immortal Bozzy slept-having achieved biographical fame that Plutarch might have envied-men's lives for the most part have been written in water, and that of the muddiest. We have gone on from bad to worse. this moment the biographical art is extinct in England; it has gone out with pugilism and the drama. We

At

* Memoirs of the Right Hon. Henry Lord Langdale. By Thomas Duffus Hardy. London: Bentley. 1852.

need not be ashamed of our historians, for Macaulay, Grote, Hallam, and Mahon are among us. Scott is dead, but we will not blush for the novelists while Dickens and Thackeray are here, and the author of Coningsby is Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. Poetry is not lost, for Tennyson still lives. Science is upheld in the three kingdoms by the most illustrious representatives; but where are your biographers? Southey died the other day, and we knew not how many monthly volumes appeared to give account of his most interesting life, yet no one denies that the memoir of the virtuous laureate has still to be written. Wordsworth soon followed his friend, and a literary chronicle of his career was put forth which we are bound to pronounce discreditable to all parties concerned in the publication. The survivors of great men are, in fact, not to be trusted with the records of the dead; they attend to their own personal needs rather than to the public requirements, absurdly magnifying points respecting which the world at large is utterly careless, and jealously withholding information which, if a memoir is to be written at all, it is of the very first consequence to supply. We do not pine for every epistle-good or bad, dull or clever, frivolous or important—that a hero has written, neither do we call for every memorandum that may be found after death in his drawers; but, when heroism is vindicated, we demand all the evidence essential to uphold the vindication. The exact measurement of a departed worthy is not a matter on which we are over-solicitous; but we do claim all the particulars-and genius knows how to give them, briefly as well as vigorously-without

which it is impossible to know wherein consists the excellence or what constitutes the worth. Dryden tells us that, "as the sunbeams, united in a burning glass to a point, have greater force than when they are darted from a plane superficies, so the virtues and actions of one man, drawn together into a single story, strike upon our minds a stronger and more lively impression than the scattered relations of many men and many actions." There is no disputing the fact, but the single stories" with which we have been favoured of late years are themselves "scattered relations" altogether without point, without force, and without fire. A man's memory has been suffocated by the very means taken to perpetuate it. The world has asked for an embalmed heart, and it has secured a lumbering carcase. We care not to name exceptions to the rule, for they are too few to be admitted against the argument. It is lamentable to think that one of the most interesting branches of literature has been thus suffered to decay either from the insufficiency of men to do the work or from the folly and perverseness of those who have refused to place the work in proper hands. It was with a feeling of positive relief that we heard upon the death of Tom Moore that the poet had left behind him, written with his own hand, an account of his life sufficiently elaborate to save his editor all the anxious pains of composition. Great as our faith may be in the fearlessness of Lord John Russell, whether in politics or literature, on land or at sea, we should unquestionably have had to enrol him in the daily increasing list of dreary biographers. How is it possible that the gay, sparkling, exuberant spirit of Moore could find