OF

Foreign Literature, Science, and Art.

From Fraser's Magazine.

GRANT THORBURN,

THE ORIGINAL "LAWRIE TODD."

Our well-informed readers do not require to be told, that upwards of thirteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine regular subscribers to any monthly work is an acquisition not to be attained without great assiduity, and, we may add, some talent. We shall not, however, descant on our own laudable endeavours; although the portrait which faces this article of the celebrated Mr. Thorburn, the original "Lawrie Todd," bears witness that they are of no ordinary kind.

and myself to send forth a true Copic.-I think the events of my Life are more strange in realietie, than many which I have read in fiction, and as I owe the giver of all good a large debt of gratitude, I think its my dutie to make sure that the world shall know it,will be published in a few days by Mr. James Fraser, No. 215, Regent Street, which is the only true history of my Life ever printed in Britain.

(Signed) "Grant Thorburn, Seedsman, New York.

"Now at No. 14, Tavistock Row, Covent Garden,
16 Novr. 1833."

It is not, however, so much by this announce ment that the curiosity of our numerous particular readers, nor that of the public in general, ought to be excited, as by the nature of the book itself. As soon as our number with the autobiography For of late it has not been quite so much the of this eminent gentleman reached America, the fashion as it ought to have been, for literary men whole republic was set astir, as if the election of to acknowledge their experiences of a special the president was contested. Mr. Thorburn was providence; although it cannot be supposed that obliged to forego the weighing of seeds, the feed-the teachers of the earth are less sensible of its ing of birds, and the culling of flowers: in short, to do nothing all day but to state to the ladies and gentlemen who resorted to his store, the reasons which had hitherto prevented him from visiting London, with his precious manuscript of the instances of special providence which he himself had experienced. Indeed, the crowd became so great to hear him, that he was obliged to ascend into one of his galleries; and there, mounting on a barrel-head, by which he became visible to the crowd below, to hold forth on the subject.

aid than the rest of the human race. We therefore solicit attention to this great feature of the forthcoming volume; convinced that it will not only afford amusement in the perusal, but edification in that somewhat obsolete manner which our ancestors, with all their often-referred-to wisdom, deemed not unbecoming to feel and to confess. To be serious, Mr. Thorburn's book, written entirely by himself, will be no ordinary treat to those who discern the hand of Sustaining Succour in the various vicissitudes of private life, as well as in the more obstreperous transactions of the world, and humbly recognise that Impartial Power which beholds alike, unmoved from its purposes,

"A hero perish and a sparrow fall."

From the New Monthly Magazine

All, however, that he could urge was of no avail; the ladies and gentlemen, assembled on the occasion, highly applauded, no doubt, his eloquent speech; but they could not listen to his argument. London," they said, 66 was the mart of the mind; and though it was becoming his innate modesty to profess his contentation at the great eclat he had attained, still they thought that the candle of so rare a genius should not be hid- REVOLUTIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENden under such a bushel as New York." Accordingly, his blushes and diffidence were overcome, and he was constrained to come over the sea; and here he is, his likeness illuminating the pages of REGINA, and his person irradiating the streets and social parties of London--the press is big with his important work, and the day of the deliverance of which is at hand-as may be seen by the following advertisement, published verbatim in all the London daily papers:

"TO THE PUBLIC.

"As Mr. John Galt in his Lawrie Todd, and sundrie other Periodicals, Magazines, Newspapers, &c. in Europe and America, have published so many Scraps and Fragments of my Life, I think its a duty I owe the Public VOL. XXVI. JAN. 1835.-1

TURY.

The title of this paper may lead the reader to imagine that it is political-it is not-at least not exclusively. Its object is to bring before the eye a brief review of the wonderful change which has taken place in governments, institutions, manners, arts, sciences, and manufactures, since the year 1800. The result of such a review, in itself by no means uninteresting, will be, in our opinion, a conviction that never was so much done, in the same space of time since the world began, especially as those revolutions more particularly relate to, and affect Britain and British society.

Before we bring this enquiry to bear directly upon our own circumstances, and the position of

A

our own country in the scale of European nations, Miguel, second son of Don John, claimed the it may be necessary to take a cursory view of throne as the law of the land and the decree of other states, and the alterations which their cha-Lamego warranted. In the meantime, a revoluracters and constitutions have undergone during tion occurred in Brazil, and the emperor took to the last thirty-four years. flight-his son, a child, is now the emperor. The

In France, at the commencement of the cen- struggle between the brothers is too familiar to tury, there existed a consular government,-Buo-need a word of remark; the claim of Don Pedro naparte being first consul-a government raised for his daughter is at present successful, and upon the ruins of a sad and memorable revolu- Donna Maria, a child, occupies the Portuguese tion; in 1802, Buonaparte became consul for life; throne. in 1804, Emperor; in 1808, he deprived the pope, Spain, on the renewal of the war in 1803, was who crowned him, of his territories; in 1809, he compelled by France to take active measures divorced his wife; in 1810, he married Marie against England; in 1804, she declared war Louise. Between the commencement of his ca- against us; in 1805, Nelson, with his heart's reer and its close, he created three kingdoms, blood, bought us the glorious victory of TrafalBavaria, Saxony, and Wirtemberg. He made his gar, in which the Spanish fleet, combined with brother Joseph, king of Spain; his brother Louis, that of France, was destroyed; in 1808, Buoking of Holland; his brother Jerome, king of parte threw off the mask as to Spanish affairs; Westphalia; his brother-in-law Murat, king of Charles IV. abdicated, and Ferdinand VII. was Naples; and his son-in-law Eugene, viceroy of proclaimed. At this period, Charles IV. having Italy. Facts, astounding in themselves, not more been induced to declare his abdication, a compulstrongly illustrative of the revolutions of the pre-sory act, was also induced to throw himself for sent century as connected with France and its emperor, than as exhibiting the generality of revolutions as to the other nations in which those family promotions were made.

safety upon Buonaparte's kindness. Then it was that Buonaparte invited Ferdinand to come and meet him on his road to Madrid—the king was deceived and went-he arrived at Vittoria, where he was surrounded by French troops, and where he received a letter from Buonaparte, addressed him, not as King, but as Prince of Austrias, assuring him that he, Buonaparte, not only as his friend, but as the general protector and benefactor of Europe, was visiting Spain merely with a view to make such reforms as might be most agreeable to the popular feeling, and best tend to the pacification of the country.

Keeping our eye then upon France, we see in 1814 the exiled and denounced Bourbons restored to their throne-Russian cossacks bivouac in the Champs Elysées, and English soldiers mount guard at the Tuileries-Buonaparte is banished to Elba-his family are dethroned and degraded -from Elba he escapes, returns to Paris, is again in the ascendant; reigns for his Hundred Days, and then, by a series of victories, crowned and consummated by that of Waterloo, is beaten Upon the receipt of this friendly communicadown never to rise again: unable to escape, he tion Ferdinand continued his journey to Bayonne, makes a merit of surrendering to England, and where he dined with his illustrious friend and for the sake of peace in Europe, is sent to St. patron; and, after dinner, heard from his imperial Helena, where he dies. On his departure, the host that he thought it good to fill the throne of Bourbons again succeed: Louis XVIII. dies at a Spain by placing one of his own brothers on it. good old age in his palace; and is succeeded by Ferdinand found himself in fact a prisoner, and Charles X. The son of the Duc de Berri, mur- was shortly after compelled to renounce his crown dered before his infant's birth, is heir presumptive at the desire of his father, expressed in the preto the throne-a new revolution breaks out-sence of Buonaparte himself, to whom that father Charles X. abdicates-his ministers are tried and had the day before sold his kingdom and his imprisoned for life-the throne is occupied by his birth-right for a stipulated sum. nephew, as Citizen King of the French-the son This compulsory step caused the patriotic reof Buonaparte dies-the widow of the Duc de volution in Spain. Joseph Buonaparte arrived at Berri is imprisoned-marries a second husband-Madrid to assume the regal power; but the inhehas another child,—and France, altogether in the strictest alliance with England, her oldest and most inveterate enemy, is only kept from a revolution, by the unflinching severity of the "liberal" king, who was forced upon the throne by the last one. All these events have occurred during this century.

rent force of the nation was irresistible, and he was driven from his precarious dignity. Then came the Peninsular war, with all its glories, and its expenditure of blood and treasure. In 1814, Ferdinand returned to his country. He married four times; and by his last wife had one daughter, which daughter he proclaimed heir to the throne, In Portugal, after the measures of the French to the exclusion of his brother, Don Carlos. This had driven the prince regent and his family to declaration he subsequently annulled, but, eventhe Brazils, the English rescued that country tually, finally confirmed. Don Carlos, at his brofrom French tyranny. In 1821, the king (as he ther's death, asserted his claim to the sovereignty, had then become by the death of his father) re- with, as it is said, the support and concurrence of turned to his throne; in 1820, his eldest son, Don a great majority of the people. Foreign interferPedro, having formally dissolved the union be-ence has hitherto thwarted the views of Don tween Brazil and Portugal, caused himself to be proclaimed Emperor of Brazil; Don John VI. died in 1826, when Don Pedro claimed the crown of Portugal for his daughter, Donna Maria; Don

Carlos, whose consort, harassed by misfortunes, privations, and anxieties, has fallen a victim to persecution, and died in the parsonage-house of a village near Gosport. The success of the widow

of Don Ferdinand has enabled her to proclaim | his country, how soon died his great opponent, her daughter as Queen of Spain, she herself as- Fox? Lord Granville is dead: Percival was mursuming the title and character of Regent. By dered; Lord Liverpool stricken by a calamity this revolution, for such it is, the Spanish throne is occupied by a child.

In 1814, the electorate of Hanover was erected into a kingdom, the crown of which belongs to ed the names of Romilly, Whitbread, and Calcraft. * In the melancholy record of suicides may be insertthe King of England, but is separated from it

whenever a queen governs this empire; conse- those eminent in each line, it might appear invidious to + Where there is not space to give the entire list of quently, upon the accession of the Princess Vic-name any except the acknowledged "heads" of profestoria to the British throne, the Duke of Cumber-sions; but in the two instances of art and the drama, we berland, as next heir to the crown, becomes King think no thirty-four years in the annals of the nation of Hanover-the Salic law in that kingdom ex-possessed and lost so many, and such distinguished men cluding females.

in the former, as Opie, Owen, Copley, Romney, JackThere are peculiarities of circumstance in this son, Harlowe, Northcote, Hamilton, Cosway, Wheatley, mortality of the royal family (which it would Smirke, Stothard, Hoppner, and others, no doubt, which neither be right, nor indeed have we space to at the moment do not occur; or in the latter, such a enter into them, even if it were) which render combination of talent as was to be found in the genius the course and order of these events very remark- Emery, Suett, Palmer, Lewis, Holman, Quick, Knight, and powers of Elliston, Munden, Johnstone, Cooke, able. Not less so have been the casualties by King, Moody, Wroughton, Kean, Mrs. Mattocks, Miss which the ministers of the crown and many emi-Pope, Mrs. Billington, Madame Storace, Mrs. Jordan, nent men have been removed from their stations Mrs. Bland, Mrs. Davenport (alive, but retired), and during the period to which these observations Bannister, similarly situated. This, we say, is but an refer. After the death of Pitt, avowedly acceler-imperfect catalogue, but it is sufficiently extensive to ilated, if not actually caused, by his devotion to lustrate our principle.

coach, rail-road, and steam-boat travelling.

Leipzic, Orthes, Ligny, besides others, amount-ing to the ordinary and established rules of stage ing to nearly two hundred general actions. It has been only because Nelson at Trafalgar established the sovereignty of England on the seas that we have not to record equal triumphs of our navy to those which have graced our army.

But, then, let us see what has taken place in civil life. England has been united with Ireland; the test and corporation acts have been repealed; thirty millions of taxes have been removed; the Roman Catholics have been emancipated; slavery has been abolished; parliament has been reformed; the poor-laws have been changed; the constitution of the church of Ireland has been altered; several bishops have been reduced; the East India Company's privileges have been abrogated; the bank has resumed cash payments; bank notes are now a legal tender; the game laws have been repealed, since which time poaching has increased in a ten-fold degree; beer houses have been permitted in order to better the morals of the lower classes, which have produced drunkenness and all its evils to an unparalleled extent; for humanity's sake, forgery has been made punishable with transportation and not death, since which forgery has increased very much in the same ratio as drunkenness and poaching. It would, however, greatly exceed our limits, as we have already said, to enter into minute details of the wonderful alterations which have been worked during the century; we shall, therefore, select a few of those which strike the senses most forcibly, and which, from circumstances and localities, are most familiar, reserving to ourselves for some other opportunity a more elaborate working-out of our proposition.

Well then, say we, this introduction of steam, or rather its adaptation to vessels and locomotive carriages, has been-and it is in its infancy yet -one of the greatest strides ever made in so short a space of time. Next comes gas. Let any body read Mr. Davies Giddy's, now Mr. Davies Gilbert's, formal denunciation in the house of commons of the bare idea of obtaining light and profit from gas, and the case will be made as strong as we can wish it. Not only is the use of gas as a light universal, but if any body will take the trouble, or rather give themselves the pleasure, of visiting the gallery of national sciences, in the Lowther arcade, they will find cookery performed by gas in the most perfect and satisfactory manner.

Within the present century, vaccination has superseded, nay, annihilated, that tremendous affliction the small-pox-an event to which the wonderful decrease in the mortality of all classes, proportionably to the general increase of the population, may, in a great degree, be attributed, despite the evidence to the contrary afforded in the maudlin report of the drunken parliamentary committee of the present year. Again, reducing, as we must, our sphere of observation, for want of room, let us look at our own metropolis within the present century; hovels and alleys have disappeared, and palaces and terraces risen in their places. Look at those splendid bridges, Waterloo and London-the vast iron bridge across the Thames in the city, and the extremely useful one at Vauxhall-see those stupendous works, the West India Docks, East India Docks, London During this century, England has acquired the Docks, St. Catherine Docks, Surry Canal Docks, Cape, Ceylon, Curaçoa, Demarara, St. Eustatius, all erected within this century-the magnificent Mauritius, Bourbon, Madeira, Malta, Martinique, Custom-house, the healthy and spacious Bedlam, Senegal, and Surinam-several of which have the London University, the King's College. been ceded, But what are these ?-what are her Within this century Ranelagh has vanished from conquests in Egypt ?-what her successful war-the earth, the Pantheon has become a bazaar, every fare at Nepaul or in the Burmese country?-what theatre in London, except the opera house, which her wonderful extension of territory in India ?-had just risen from a conflagration, has been what her capture of Algiers?-what her sov- either burned or pulled down-Covent Garden, ereignty of the Ionian Islands?-what the recol-Drury-lane, the English Opera House, the Surry lections of the share she has borne in the glories Theatre once, and Astley's twice, have been of the world, under Providence, compared with burned and rebuilt-the Haymarket pulled down, the strides she has made in art, science, and the Royalty pulled down, both rebuilt, and the mechanism since 1800? latter, under the title of the Brunswick, destroyed in the twinkling of an eye.

In 1800, would any man have believed-and in 1800 men fancied they traveled at a most ex- Carlton House, with all its splendour and gaietraordinary pace-would any man have believed ties, and all the associations of wit and mirth, that he could leave London in a stage-coach in has, with the noble and joyous company which the morning, and eat his supper by eleven o'clock made its walls ring with festivity, vanished. The at night in Manchester? or if his credulity could Prince! Fox, Sheridan, Fitzpatrick, Hanger, Ershave been stretched so as to admit of such a pos-kine, the Duke of Norfolk, and fifty others, are in sibility, would he have suffered himself to be told with impunity that if he chose, instead of supping at Manchester, he might proceed to Liverpool in one hour and three-quarters-a distance of upwards of thirty-miles-that he might steam himself over to Dublin in time for breakfast the next The interior of St. James's Park, which was a morning, all of which he may now do supposing swampy meadow for the dull diversion of smokethe conveyances ready? but, as it is, and without dried cows, has become a beautiful garden; and any hurry or trouble, a man breakfasts at the Buckingham House, built in the full uniform of Bull and Mouth in London on the Monday, and bad taste-"red with white facings"-has given breakfasts in Dublin on the Wednesday, accord-place to a palace much censured originally, and

their graves, the scene of their revels exists no more, splendid terraces and magnificent squares occupy its site. The wretched streets between Pall-Mall and Oxford street have given place to grand and commodious drives and promenades.

latterly much disfigured; but which still is a as a foreign custom: in no foreign city is this palace worthy of the country. In the Regent's nastiness permitted in the streets-it may be in Park, groves, canals, villas, parades, dioramas, Paris, but that under the citizen-king is exactly (what did we know of dioramas in 1800?) cres- the place for it. cents, and terraces, ranges of splendid buildings, Look at our balls: in 1800, modest women occupy a space previously monopolised by graz- danced modestly, and let the conversation which ing cattle; while a navigable canal, which cir-passed between two partners, standing as far discumvents London, and forms a military ditch tant from each other as people ordinarily do in a round her assailable parts, in case of rebellion, drawing-room, be what it might, it could do no brings all the commodities of the world floating to the very doors of warehouses in the most inland part of the metropolis.

brawny shoulder. This thing is called a waltz; there is another of the same character, called a gallopade, where the same operations are performed, and in which, instead of turning the woman about till she gets giddy, the fellow makes no more ado, but claps her up in his paws, and hurries her right on end from one corner of the room to the other.

harm in the way of example. Within this century it has become the fashion for a delicate girl, who would, as Fielding's "Huncamunca" says, In order to tranquillise the country, we have "shudder at the gross idea” of man's advance, to fifteen judges instead of "the twelve"-we have permit herself, and be permitted by her motheralso "a vice-chancellor" to moderate the rigoursay, or her husband—to flourish about a room to a of the law; and we have, what is more to the wriggling German air, with a strange man's arm point, a Sir Somebody Macadam, who, by break-round her waist, and her delicate hand upon his ing the stones over which we used to travel, has more successfully conduced to tranquillise the town than any thing else in the world, except perhaps the New Metropolitan Police, which has utterly and entirely exterminated the ancient race of watchmen, except, we believe, in the case of one deluded veteran, who, under the special auspices of the Protestant Bishop of London, and the Popish Duke of Norfolk, still continues to howl A dance, to be sure, existed in the time of the at the moon in St. James's square. In conse-"Spectator," which must have been something quence of this macadamisation, the Londoners of the same sort, for the old gentleman says (No. no longer measure distances by being on or off 67, vol. i.) "I suppose this diversion was first the stones, and are whisked in wet weather over invented to keep up a good understanding benoiseless masses of mud-pudding, in hearses tween young men and young women, but I am painted of lively colours, called omnibuses, sure, had you been here, you would have seen vehicles of French origin,-in which they are great matter for speculation." This appears aptly packed by dozens; or whirled through the tho- to describe those irritating indecencies-the morough-fares in hack cabriolets, carriages of which dern waltz and gallopade. no human being in 1800 had any defined or undefined notion.

Another extraordinary change has taken place in London society; we mean the universal introOf greater things, look at the Breakwater at duction of clubs and hotels. In 1800 it was rePlymouth, at the Tunnel under the Thames,-markable that London had scarcely any hotels, even unfinished as it is, and unprofitable as it while all other cities were full of them; now alever will be, it is a triumph of science and perse- most every second house in the streets below verance-look at those bridges, hanging, as it Grosvenor-square is an hotel. Clubs were rare, were, in air, spanning arms of the sea, which, in and used by no means as clubs are now; White's, 1800, no man would have thought possible by as old as Hogarth's time-Brooke's and Boodle's such means. That pretty toy, the chain pier at the Cocoa Tree, Graham's, and another, were Brighton, is a toy that no man would have ima-all. The Union, which existed within this cengined in 1800. Who, in 1800, would have ex-tury, was a regular gambling club, and was held pected to find water without digging for it? first at what is now the Ordnance Office, Pall Who would have engraved upon stone? Who Mall, and subsequently in the house now occuwould have thought of calculating sums by ma-pied by the Bishop of Winchester, in St. James's chinery? Who would have thought of stuffing square; but all these were clubs of recreation and cushions with iron for softness? Who would amusement, of conversation or dissipation. Now have worn a caoutchouc cloak or Indian rubber shoes to keep them from the wet, or who would have fancied it possible to make gin up the chimney while he was making bread in the oven?

see the difference. Crockford's, with the best cook and coffee-room, rears a splendid front, and well may, for its members are of the first class, and the aspersions cast upon it of the falsest chaLook, too, at society. The young men drink racter. The Travellers' is a magnificent house; nothing-in 1800 they drank deeply; in 1800, a they play high in the evenings, but no game of man who smoked would have been voted a beast; chance that we know of. The Junior and Senior now the vulgar under-bred shop-boys smoke about United Service Clubs-invaluable institutionsthe streets, because they have heard that their where our gallant defenders are enabled, upon betters do it elsewhere. Smoking was introduced their shamefully small half-pay, to enjoy the during those campaigns to which we have already comforts and luxuries they have so gallantly alluded, and then there were millions of reasons earned, at an easy rate. The Union, a resort of for its use; now nobody but the lowest and vul- wealthy citizens, who just fetch Charing-cross to garest continue the practice; and what makes inhale the fresh air as it draws from the Park this custom as absurd as it is filthy, is the justifi- through the funnel by Berkeley House, out of cation which these simpletons offer, by quoting it | Spring Gardens, into their bay window; and the